Page 62 of The Eye of the Fifth
‘What… why?’ Kyra stammered, rubbing her face roughly as if to wake herself from the sleep that still gripped her. ‘Wait, where are you… Naal-Naal!’
But Naal had already jumped from the Horse and was diving toward the heart of the city where the devastation was at its worst.
Whirlwinds of fresh snow and ash twirled fast around her as she landed, wings beating the air into submission. Tears welled in her eyes again with an overwhelming grief. Ash was piled high in the centre, and she knew it had been a pyre, stacked with countless dead, nameless dead, their souls now belonging to the Air, to Gallena.
All remnants of their mortal lives diminished to this heap of fluttering ash.
Nothing remained. Buildings were now rubble and charred black. Thousand year old skins that had once protected each home from the bitter cold now flaked around her, falling to rest at one with the snowy earth.
It was a nightmare of her deepest fears. One she would never be able to wake from. Her eyes did not lie in what they saw, her nose did not fail in what it smelt. An iron fist gripped her heart then. A twisting, guilt-ridden ache she knew would never disappear for as long as she lived.
A scream ripped from her, primal and convoluted with pain as she fell to her knees in the ash-snow.
Her city, her people… gone.
She knew whose hand had cast that deadly flame. The undeniable scent of his magic endured in the air, along with the reek of something else, something manufactured. It lingered on the ghostly remains of all those who had been victim to his mighty fire.
The threat from Zarynth had finally come. But she had not anticipated such a heinous arrival. She’d been foolish, so foolish, to underestimate the Empress’ sadistic mind.
Tears ran freely down her face now, freezing against her cheeks as they met the icy air.
Leaving the devastated city behind, Naal shot into the air without a look back.
Kyra, and Naal could not pretend she was surprised by this, had disobeyed her request to stay inside the Sky Horse’s carriage and was standing on the precipice overlooking the ruined city, her cloak pulled tight around her body.
She was not alone.
An Eternal Warrior stood beside her. Wings a shade of grey lighter than her own, olive-toned skin spattered with freckles, long curling hair the colour of molten lava, braided and twisted at the back of her head.
‘Zuriel,’ said Naal thickly as she landed before her.
Her daughter bowed her head, as though she could not bear to look Naal in the eye. Zuriel whispered, ‘We failed. We could not prevent it. We could not save them.’
Surging forward, Naal lifted Zuriel’s chin with her forefinger, and gazed into eyes as blue as the shallows of a Lorish shore, glassy with unshed tears. ‘It isIwho failed them, daughter.’
Without warning, Zuriel threw her arms around her as those tears spilled down her face. ‘His fire…’ she whimpered. ‘It broke through even our most potent wards and spread faster than any ordinary flame. Even the hawks did not see him coming. By the time they cried, the city was burning.’
She pulled away, wiping her face with her gloved hands, and Naal asked quietly, ‘And the survivors?’
‘The outer provinces weren’t hit at all. I feel sure that if the alert had gone up any later then they too would have suffered the same fate. The princes fled soon after. But the heart of the city… we counted three hundred and forty survivors.’
Three hundred and forty. Of thousands.
Naal’s throat was extremely tight as she said, ‘Where are they?’
Zuriel nodded at their Goddess teetering on the cliff’s edge behind them, immortalised in brilliant crystal, and Naal understood without a further word. ‘Take me to them.’
???
Kyra.
The decimated city was a sight Kyra was sure would be scarred into her memory for as long as she lived. Alongside the image of a despairing Naal, knelt in the ashes of her people.
Her cry had cut through the atmosphere, as though the air itself had parted for her grief, as though it wanted every being in the near vicinity to hear it and mourn with her.
Kyra quietly followed the Air Warden and her Eternal daughter across the frozen pathway, away from the shabby Sky Horse (which she was quite glad to see the back of: it became quite boring after the first half hour, not to mention her ass was bruised from sitting on age old hard-wood for so long) and toward the pillared entrance to the temple Zuriel had come running out of.
Back in Avaldale, all places of worship of the Four had been demolished long before Kyra was born, the sites built over with additional housing or buildings designed for varying enterprises. Archived art depicted what those holy places had once looked like, and she was certain there were a few temples dotted around Vrethian’s less developed areas that had survived the cull. Aside from those paintings and murals, she had never seen one in the flesh, had never walked inside hallowed halls dedicated to the Goddesses that had freed the world from Xados, Xusyn and their Void puppet, Dohra.
