Chapter Fourteen: From Beyond
Written by Ethan
In the exposed, white stone cave in the compound, Ja awoke shivering despite the suffocating humidity that hung in the air. A painful, icy chill worked its way up his spine, forcing his body to convulse so intensely that it roused the others from their sleep.
“Are you alright?” Kaia asked nervously.
Ja tried to nod, but his body twisted in pain and his head pounded as if filled with thousands of marching soldiers.
What’s happening to me? he thought as he stared up at his friends in desperation. They had gathered around him with concerned looks on their faces.
“He is getting worse again,” Torv stated plainly. “He is still being drained. We killed the monster. How can this be?”
“I don’t know,” said Kaia. “It doesn’t make sense. We won…didn’t we?”
They had succeeded in killing the Ghora, but their contentment in victory had gone up in smoke almost as quickly as the monster’s corpse on top of the flaming mountain. As if still connected by some mysterious, corrupting force, both Ja and the jungle surrounding Orn had continued to deteriorate after the Ghora had died. Only a few days had passed since the battle, and in that time the jungles in this area had gone from sick and wilting to completely, unquestionably dead.
Ja had begun to show improvement when the Ghora first died. The green had faded from his skin and life seemed to flow into the young man, but within a matter of hours, he began to look pallid and drained once again. For the first few days, the group assumed it was merely exhaustion from their strenuous journey. But as the other three regained their full health, Ja continued to deteriorate, but without the symptoms from before. It didn’t look as though he was being transformed into the vine monster anymore. He simply looked as if he were being sapped of life. With sunken eyes, pale skin, and flailing movements, Ja looked now like he was standing on the threshold of death.
“What should we do?” Doro asked with wide eyes. Ja’s companions had convened on the other side of the sleeping chambers.
“We could take him to my world,” said Torv. “Maybe one of the Ulvson shamans can help.”
“It’s too risky,” Kaia responded. “You’re banished from your clan, so you wouldn’t be able to come with us. And even if we are able to communicate with your people using the tongues, there’s no guarantee they won’t just kill us on sight. Sieg would definitely kill us if he knew we had any relationship to you.” Kaia lowered her voice. “Besides, I’m not sure Ja would make the trip in this state, anyway.”
“I’m not dead weight yet,” Ja’s weakened voice called out from the other side of the cavern.
He had pulled himself up to a sitting position and was in the process of downing half a vial of the pink fluid. The pallor of his skin seemed to improve whenever the liquid began to work its way through his body, but the effects were always temporary. A tiny drop of the liquid spilled from his lips and fell to the ground, landing on a dry and dying weed that had sprung up from the stone floor in the sleeping chamber. Just like Ja, the plant was immediately rejuvenated and sprung upwards, growing to a height that would have taken weeks had it not been exposed to the pink liquid.
“It works on plants too?” Doro gasped.
“It sure looks like it,” Ja responded, peering closely at the weed. “How much of that liquid do we have left, Doro?”
“Two and a half vials, counting that one. That includes all of it that we found in the Harvester’s bag.”
Ja nodded and his brow furrowed as an idea began to dance across his mind. He reached over and grabbed a large water skin, then poured a bit of the half-filled vial of pink liquid inside.
“Ja, stop! You need that!” Kaia yelled out, but the young man held up a hand as he delicately swirled the mixture together. Ja pulled himself up slowly and steadily and walked out of the domed cave and over to a far corner of the compound. He stopped in front of a patch of withered plant growth that had crept into the courtyard through the stacked stone walls. Carefully, he uncorked the water skin and poured a bit of it onto the plants.
New life seemed to spring into this foliage as well, though much slower; it didn’t shoot up all at once like the weed had. Ja poured a bit more of the solution on another area with similar results. He continued watering until a large swath of green covered an entire section of the compound's back wall.
Excitedly, Ja turned to his friends and smiled. They smiled back, but then he saw their eyes fill with concern, and he turned around to see what was happening for himself. The fresh tapestry of flora had already begun to wither and die before their eyes. He frowned and sat down in the dirt where he stood, face scrunching as he began to think through a new plan.
“There’s something wrong here,” he said after a moment of quiet consideration.
“Something wrong with the Harvester’s liquid?” asked Kaia.
“No, I’m pretty sure that works just fine. I think there’s something wrong with this world. We got here too late. I think the Ghora’s influence was already too deeply entwined with Orn…and with me. We may have killed the monster, but its disease is still infecting everything it touched.”
“But you attuned the mirror to the Ghora’s frequency,” said Kaia. “You killed it.”
“Yes,” Ja sighed. “I ripped out the monster’s heart with my hands. But its poisonous blood is still coursing through this jungle. I watched this pink liquid turn Doro from a skeleton to a living boy. If the plants it regrows can’t survive here, then this jungle, and maybe this entire world, might be unsavable.”
“You can’t know that for sure, Ja. We’ve barely left the compound. Maybe this is the only part of the jungle that’s affected.” Kaia’s words came out more defiantly than intended. She was not willing to give up hope.
Ja’s eyes broke away from his friend. “I just have a feeling. A strong feeling. It’s not like any other intuition I’ve ever had. I can feel what’s wrong with the jungle, Kaia. I can feel it inside of myself.”
The other three simply looked at the young man, unsure how to respond.
“But, it gives me an idea,” Ja continued, enthusiasm rising in his voice. “The Gamle and the gray-haired man were trying to restore the forest in Torv’s world, and I don’t think they had any of the pink liquid. Torv said they had already cleared up one diseased area, which means they have some sort of restorative method of their own. Assuming the random portals went away after we restored the mirror shard, and their impact wasn’t too devastating, our combined efforts might actually save Torv’s forest.”
“Ja likes my plan,” said Torv, nudging Kaia.
“But what about Orn?” Kaia replied, ignoring Torv’s unearned brag.
“If we can save Torv’s world, maybe we can eventually save Orn too, but we need help. I think it’s your only chance.”
“Our only chance,” Kaia corrected.
“Yeah. Of course. One thing is for sure though, we’re going to need as much of this pink liquid as we can get. We need to check around the Harvester's body again to see if there are more vials that we missed, or anything else useful that we didn’t see when we grabbed his pouch. We have to make sure we’re not leaving anything important behind. Then we can make our way back to the star stone at the bottom of the ruins and head to Torv’s world. There’s no point in staying here anymore. I know you have hope for the jungles here, Kaia.” Ja looked at her sternly but softly. “I’m sorry. There isn’t any.”
Ja began to stand up as if he were going to go to the Harvester’s body himself. Kaia reflexively put her hand out and stopped him.
“I’ll go. I’ll get there way faster than you. Besides, it will give me a chance to see for myself whether this jungle is lost or not.”
With no protest from the others, Kaia quickly gathered some supplies and her spear, trotting off towards the ruins of Orn and the flaming mountain where they thought their nightmare had finally ended.
This was the first time Kaia had left the compound since Ja’s condition had worsened and her stomach knotted as she saw what was becoming of the world they’d fought so hard to save. The trail to Orn was littered with blackened foliage and sagging, broken trees, the weight of their canopies too much for their weakened trunks. Occasionally, she spotted corpses of emaciated animals amongst the flattened undergrowth, and though the smell of death clung to Kaia’s every breath, she knew it wasn’t caused by just a few dead animals.
As she entered the leveled remains of Orn, Kaia moved intently through what was now a tomb, the bones of her people still littering the ground. Prior to Ja’s illness worsening, the plan had been for Torv and Doro to clear out the caved-in tunnels, starting with Orn’s larder and then eventually moving deeper to the Blood Summoner’s lair. It didn’t take long for them to realize that even with the great strength of the barbarian and the giant boy, the boulders were simply too heavy to move. Ja had begun to work out a plan to ease their work using ropes and something he called “leverage,” but his quickly-deteriorating state had made it difficult for the young man to contribute much.
This time, Kaia had brought plenty of water along to keep herself hydrated as she traversed the steep, fiery incline. Thankfully, she didn’t need to climb all the way up to the summit again, as Torv had thrown the Harvester down onto the rocks far below. Still, it was an exhausting trek most of the way up the mountain, and when Kaia finally made it back to the Harvester's body, she could clearly see the Ghora’s blackened tentacles splayed out over the edges of the peak up above.
Cautiously, she stepped among the sharp rocks and broken glass vials to the corpse. It had only been a few days since the mysterious man had perished, yet little remained of him but sun-bleached bone. His face had already been picked clean by carrion birds, desperate enough to brave the flames for any sort of meal they could find. The scavengers had tried to eat through the man’s clothing as well, but it was apparently made of sterner stuff than their sharp beaks and talons.
Having confronted death countless times before, the sight of the Harvester's corpse did little to frighten Kaia, but the remnants of his artifacts did. Broken vials and strange, shattered objects littered the ground all around the man. She hunched down and searched amongst the wreckage, picking up the pieces and trying to make sense of the smashed artifacts, but it was clear they were all destroyed. There was nothing here of use; nothing that could help her world, or her friend.
Kaia sat down and held her head in her hands.
“There’s got to be something I’m missing,” she grumbled. “If Ja was here, he would see something that I don’t. But what?”
Kaia did her best to slow down and ponder exactly what her next step should be, like Ja would have. She even went as far as to mimic his concentration face, but it did little to help. Though Ja had made some poor choices along the way, his ability to concentrate and process the world around him had gotten them out of quite a few binds. Doing her best to channel her friend, Kaia began to scan the area again, trying to take in the scene with new eyes. That was when she noticed that the Harvester’s body was lying face down on the rocks.
“He didn’t fall like that,” she remembered, thinking back to the man’s death. “He landed on his back. Torv must have picked him up when he took his pouch and emptied his pockets, and then put him back down that way.”
Carefully, Kaia turned the Harvester’s body over onto its side, worried that it might break apart and cause untold nastiness to come oozing out. Just as she had hoped, there was something beneath the corpse that they had missed, though she had no idea what the object was. Kaia had never seen paper before, and here was a stack of pages scattered atop a rectangular piece of hide. Torv either hadn’t noticed it, or had and didn’t think it was important enough to bring along. The pages were scattered loosely in a pile, but she could intuit that at one point they had been stacked neatly and wrapped inside the hide. As she scanned the pages, flattening and trying to re-wrap them in their binder, her eyes gazed across a trove of pictures and black scrawlings that were complete nonsense to her brain. Still, if this item belonged to the Harvester, it must be important.
Seeing nothing else of use, Kaia put the book inside of her pack and began to leave, but not before catching a clear view of the jungles past the streams of flame and smoke. This side of the mountain looked away from Orn and the compound. The jungles were all dead, flattened and black, as far as she could see. Ja was right. They had succeeded in killing the Ghora, but they had still lost this world.
A continual sense of dread washed over Kaia as she descended the mountain, but it seemed to morph and intensify as she reentered the devastated jungle. At first, she was consumed by the feeling that all her efforts had been in vain, and that she and her companions had lost far more than they had won. But as she walked through the dead trees, she was overcome by pure, unmitigated hopelessness. The sensation almost brought her to her knees. In her difficult life, Kaia had come to know dread well, but this sensation was different. It didn’t feel natural. It felt like something was forcing it into her mind.
Kaia’s survival instinct kicked in. Something was hunting her, but in a way that was completely foreign to these jungles. She stopped and scanned her surroundings, noticing a subtle parting in the dead foliage leading away from the path back to Orn. As a hunter, Kaia had learned to recognize minor details that could lead her to prey - or away from a predator.
She knelt down close to the ground, grip tightening on her spear as she steadied her heart rate and strained to see or hear any abnormalities in her surroundings. Once her eyes focused, she finally saw it. Deep in the undergrowth, lightly illuminated though hidden by shadow, was a pale and lanky being sitting cross-legged. Its eyes were bright green, with skin the color of pearl. It had a long, flowing mane of golden hair that seemed to float in the breeze despite the air being still. It was a being of incredible beauty, yet something about it frightened Kaia to her very core. As she watched, the feeling of dread intensified and became unbearable, and she had to fight every urge to simply lie down on the ground and curl up into a ball.
Reflexively, Kaia blinked and shook her head. When she looked up again, the being was gone, and with it, a great weight was lifted from her soul. Kaia felt truly exhausted now, emotionally and physically, but hastened her pace back to the compound.
Ja was sitting up against one of the walls of their former prison when Kaia arrived. He smiled at her meekly as she approached.
“Good news?”
“There wasn’t any more of the pink liquid,” she sighed. “But I did find this.”
His eyes brightened as Kaia handed him the hide-bound papers.
“Interesting,” he said, a little life coming back into his movements. “I saw the Harvester looking at this when he was helping us build the house on the beach. I think he called it a book.”
“What is it?”
“That is where the Harvester kept his thoughts,” Doro answered. “It helped him to remember and to create. It was his most important artifact.”
“It doesn’t look very important,” said Torv. “Not very powerful either.”
“Oh, it is,” Doro replied.
Torv grunted and rolled his eyes. Kaia realized now that the barbarian had definitely seen the book when he looted the Harvester’s body and decided to leave it behind, not understanding or appreciating its worth.
Ja opened up the hide wrap and began to slowly pull out individual pages. They were jumbled and scattered, and if they had once been in a specific order, they weren’t anymore. He only knew when pages were upside down because of the illustrations, which were neatly drawn and far more realistic than any pictorial representation he had ever seen. At first, the scrawlings on the pages were nothing more to him than nonsensical scribbles, but as he continued to stare at them, it was as if he could hear the language behind the writing being spoken inside his mind. Ja slowly began to understand the concept of the written word, and before long his eyes couldn’t take in the words fast enough, reading from the tome as effortlessly as if he had written it himself.
As Ja scanned page after page, it became apparent that many of the pictures were guides for the construction of different artifacts and inventions, some he recognized and most he did not. Horrifically, the Harvester had taken the time to sketch pictures of those he experimented on, adding a new level of depth and character to already-tragic scenarios. Ja became nauseous when he saw illustrations of the sacrifices who provided the tongues he and the others currently wore around their necks. Though each “first to speak” came from an entirely different reality, they shared clear physical similarities to one another. Drawn together like this, they almost looked like a family, and the Harvester had slaughtered them all for their gifts.
Ja pushed on, doing his best to block out the harsh reality behind the very power he was using to read these pages. Eventually, he found a series of illustrations regarding the construction of physical structures that thankfully that didn’t require human sacrifices to function.
“Here,” he said, handing a page over to the others. On it was a series of construction diagrams and an illustration of a device in running water with thin netting, two stacks of rocks, and a wooden frame that used piles of sand as a filtration system.
“I’ve seen this before,” said Torv. “It cleaned the water in my homeland.”
Encouraged, Ja pored over the surrounding pages and discovered a number of construction diagrams, recipes for strange tinctures, and sacrificial artifacts with the explicit purpose of clearing corruption and promoting growth. For every problem, it seemed the Harvester had a solution.
But as the stack of unread pages became smaller and smaller, Ja found less schematics and more detailed, concentrated writing. These pages were all upside down, and Ja realized they were likely the beginning of the book. Unlike what he had read before, these pages weren’t instructional: they were a story. Amongst the dense text were sketches of people who looked like the Harvester, though of varying shapes and sizes with descriptions about who they were and what they did. There were beautiful landscapes and scenes with his people doing both recognizable and unusual activities. From this perspective, the Harvester’s people seemed good and peaceful.
There was so much text here that it would have taken Ja forever to read it all, so he scanned the pages quickly. Then he reached a point in the story where the portals were introduced, and the fallout that soon followed. The drawings became lower in fidelity, as if the goal was to quickly log what was happening in real-time, in contrast to the thoughtful and detailed records he had been keeping before. The imagery became harsher and more terrifying, with a group of pale-skinned, long-limbed entities taking all the focus. Ja’s eyes passed over a messy set of symbols scrawled above one of the creatures and the word Dromluun rang out in his mind.
“Dromluun,” he repeated out loud to the group. “These must be the invaders that took over the Harvester's world.”
“They look feeble,” Torv laughed, taking the page. “If they had come to my world, my people would have crushed them.”
Kaia scoffed and then glanced over to Ja, who seemed more and more worried as he continued to read.
“What is it, Ja?”
“I don’t think they’re feeble at all,” he said. “I think they may be worse than anything we’ve seen before. All of these words and pictures are about them torturing the Harvester’s people. Not stealing their resources, not building up a society of their own… it’s like they only exist to cause pain and terror.”
“I don’t understand,” said Kaia. “Even the Blood Summoner had a reason for what he did to us. So did the Harvester. It doesn’t make sense.”
Ja frowned and put the page down. “I don’t think there’s any sense behind it at all.
He picked up another page and his facial expression became contemplative. His head tilted and mouth parted as he took in the information. He looked back up to Kaia.
“This page is about us.”
On it were illustrations of he and Kaia, and Ja marveled at the accuracy with which the Harvester had rendered their appearances.
“Bringing the Dromluun to this world was the Harvester’s plan all along,” Ja explained. “When we returned the shard and the mirror became whole again, it let out a ripple of energy that these creatures are able to detect. The Harvester knew it would draw them here, but we ruined his plan. He never expected us to beat the Ghora, at least not in the way that we did. He did not want me to shatter that mirror. He had planned on me using the plague from the Putrid Coast to stop it. Just like the Ghora, that plague is deadly to the Dromluun too. When they showed up to investigate the energy from the mirror, the plague was going to wipe them out as well.”
“So, when will they be here?” Doro asked.
“The Harvester said that whenever they sensed the ripple of energy, they would warp here. There’s no knowing how long that would take. It could be any time after we replaced the shard, and that was days ago.”
Kaia had a startling realization. “What do they look like?”
Ja handed her a page with a detailed illustration of a Dromluun, standing in front of a shimmering blue portal. Her face went pale.
“We need to go now,” she yelped, barely hiding the panic in her voice. “I saw one of these things when I found the book. I think they're already here.”
As if on cue, a chorus of hoarse laughter began to echo in the distance and then grow progressively louder and louder. It was like an entire village of beasts had been eavesdropping on their conversation and then revealed themselves when it would incite the most terror, woefully mimicking human laughter with horrific, guttural sounds. As the noise grew in intensity, the group could see a great flood of the Dromluun in the distance making their way towards them from the ruins of Orn.
Without another word, the group sprang up and gathered what supplies they had left. Doro slung Ja’s sick and withered body across his shoulders and the four quickly made their way out of the compound and out towards the ruins.
Kaia led the way, with Doro and Ja in the center and Torv in the rear for defense if the Dromluun caught up. While the prospect of battle piqued Torv’s interest at first, the horrific noises echoing behind him quickly filled the man with debilitating dread. Torv had only felt like this once before: when Sieg chopped off his brother's head in the longhouse. Torv decided to put as much distance between himself and the noise as possible. No battle was worth enduring that sensation any longer.
Before the jungle had died, the ruins that entrapped the Ghora had been obscured by overgrowth. Now, the ominous buildings could be seen clearly off in the distance, the light of the setting sun casting purple and orange hues across the lost, dead city. It appeared in front of the group before they expected; the suffocating fear of the Dromluun had made time tick rapidly forward. There were also few obstacles between them and their destination now that the plants were completely dead. Kaia felt a great hole in her heart as she took in just how thoroughly her world had rotted away.
At their frenzied pace, Ja hoped they were putting enough distance between themselves and their attackers, but looking back over Doro’s shoulder, he was gutted to see a group of shimmering white figures enveloping the compound like fireflies. A steady stream of the creatures was snaking down the path and branching through the dead jungle towards them. When the group finally reached the star stone, they would have little time to activate it before they were swarmed entirely.
“We’re almost there!” Kaia shouted out from upfront. As they ran, she saw that the enormous, hollow tree she and Ja had slept in had folded in and collapsed on itself. She kept her concentration on the path ahead, springing through the clearing and into the wide streets of the ruined city.
Torv did his best to keep up, but the pace was getting to him and he paused for a moment to catch his breath.
“Torv, don’t stop!” Ja called out to the barbarian. “They're gaining on us!” He had tried to yell the warning to his friend, but the words came out as a little more than a whisper.
“We are way ahead,” wheezed Torv. “I need a--”
Before the barbarian could finish his sentence, a tall woman with pale, softly-illuminated skin and golden hair emerged from behind a building on the man’s left side. He felt his stomach churn as the Dromluun approached, and couldn’t move away before she placed a hand upon his shoulder and gave him a grin with far too many teeth. Infinite dread welled up inside of Torv once again, convincing him that any action he took would be the wrong one. The Ulvson looked to his friends, unable to speak but with eyes pleading for help. The Dromluun woman wrapped her long, gangly arms around the barbarian, limbs stretching beyond their natural length to engulf the massive man’s body.
Kaia felt the dread begin to engulf her again as well, but she had broken from its hold once and could do it again. She screamed as she lifted her spear up to eye level and launched it at the terrifyingly beautiful creature. In an instant, the being’s head split in two as the spear went through the forehead and then clattered to the ground. The Dromluun’s limbs uncoiled and the spell the creature had cast upon them began to dissipate.
Torv reflexively pushed the corpse away and drew his axe, chopping at the illuminated, still-quivering body until it was a pulpy mess on the ground. Despite the mutilation, a low gurgling laughter could still be heard emanating from somewhere in its core.
“I get it now,” said Ja, his voice low and weak. “I get why the Harvester did the awful things that he did. He would have done anything to wipe these monsters from existence, and I think I would too.”
He didn’t say it out loud, but Ja realized definitively then: I probably shouldn’t have smashed the jawbone mirror.
Kaia was shocked to hear these words come out of her friend, but did her best to hide her disdain for what he had said. She wanted to scream at Ja and shake the cynicism from him, but she merely took a deep breath and accepted the reality they currently faced: Ja was dying, along with any hope he had left.
All exhaustion from the long run had been startled out of the group by the confrontation with the Dromluun woman. They could see dozens more approaching quickly on the horizon and knew that coming face-to-face with a throng of these creatures would spell an excruciating end. With renewed vigor, the group sprinted into the mouth of the cavern, down past the abandoned lair of the Ghora, and into the chamber at the bottom that housed the star stone. It was pitch black in the room and the only way they could see anything was by using the vials of pink liquid for light; the strange, oily substance glowed unnaturally in the darkness. The star stone sat cold and black on its pedestal of bones. Ja had everyone crowd in front of the pedestal and pulled the vine mirror from his bag. Trying to recreate the scene when he and Kaia were originally transported to Torv’s world, Ja held out the mirror in front of everyone, with the stone situated behind. He moved the mirror back and forth. Nothing happened. He turned to his friends.
“Something’s wrong. It isn’t working. I think it’s because the stone doesn’t have any light. The first time we used it, it was full of stars. It’s black now.”
“Maybe we have to take it outside, into real starlight,” said Kaia. They all knew there wasn’t enough time to carry the heavy stone up to the top of the caverns before the Dromluun converged.
“A sacrifice,” Doro muttered. “These stones require a sacrifice.”
Ja and Kaia nodded solemnly, remembering the star stone they had seen in Torv’s world. The Gamle had touched it and then disappeared into darkness, robes falling to the ground, stone pulsing with light in the pitch-black trees.
“Sacrifice!?!” Kaia shouted, choking back tears. “Haven’t we all sacrificed enough already?”
“I’ll do it,” said Ja. “I don’t know how much longer I have anyway, and I want you all to continue on.”
Doro stepped forward and laid a gentle hand upon Ja’s shoulder, smiling softly as he moved his companion away from the stone.
“It wouldn’t be enough, Ja,” Doro said as he inspected the stone. “The star stones need quite a bit of power to activate. It would take several of you, but only one of me.”
“Doro, no!” Ja pleaded. “Let me do it, please. You’ve only just gotten another chance at life…a real life. You’ve already sacrificed too much for the Harvester.”
“This is different,” the boy said with pride. “I had no choice before…now I do. I choose to save my friends. Thank you, for everything.”
With that, Doro stepped to the pedestal and placed his enormous hands on the ebony surface, then closed his eyes and let his essence flow into the stone. As he faded away into darkness, the black surface began to twinkle as an infinite array of stars exploded to life inside. Doro’s clothes fell empty to the stone floor.
Shaking, Ja started to hold up the mirror again but stopped short, struggling to process the loss of a friend who had become so dear to him in such a short time. Even Torv could not hold back his anguish, the brute’s stone face softening as the realization set in.
“We have to go now,” Kaia urged. “They’ll be here any moment.”
Ja didn’t raise up the mirror again to transport them to Torv’s world. Instead, he handed it to Kaia. With quivering movements, Ja dug through his satchel, pulled out the obsidian cube, and handed the bag containing the rest of the pink vials and the Harvester’s book to Torv.
The group felt a sudden heaviness as the Dromluun closed in on their position. Guttural laughter bounced against ancient walls and they could see a dim light beginning to illuminate the tunnel outside. As the creatures approached, the heartbreaking loss of Doro was magnified, causing Torv and Kaia to lose what little control they had left over their emotions. But Ja stood resolute, hunched over and frail, yet fighting the dread that was suffocating his companions.
“Come on, Ja!” Kaia cried. We have to go!”
“I can’t come with you, Kaia. We have to stop the Dromluun now. The Harvester was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about wanting to wipe these creatures out.”
“Stop it, Ja! We’ve come this far! We can leave for Torv's world! Why are you giving up?” Kaia felt a sudden, intense anger towards her friend.
“I’m not giving up. For the first time in my life, I’m in control of my own fate. Doro chose to save the three of us; I’m choosing to save as many people as I can. This is not the end.” Tears began to roll down his cheeks. “Not for you. But it is for me.”
A wave of desperation and despair crumpled Kaia to her knees. Ja looked up to Torv, and he knew the barbarian understood his sacrifice. Torv knew that Ja was acting as a protector. The Ulvson handed Ja his axe and the young man accepted it with a stoic nod, though its weight nearly toppled him over. Torv was paying attention when Ja had tried to transport them before, when the star stone was still dormant. Fighting the crushing sorrow that enveloped him now, Torv reached down and grabbed the mirror from Kaia, then picked her up and brought her head to his level. She kicked and swore at the man and had just enough time to reach out to Ja and scream, “No!” before the Ulvson lifted up the mirror and transported them out of the cavern in a dark flash.
Dromluun began to spill out of the tunnel and into the bottom chamber in a cacophony of horrid laughter, elation building as they crept in slowly closer. But at the bottom of the ruins, they did not find a victim who was debilitated by the anguish they spread. To their surprise, they found an emaciated young man greeting them with a satisfied smile and a vial in his hand. The Dromluun stopped and Ja could see confusion spreading across their faces.
“Hate to disappoint you,” he smirked. “But this is your last stop.”
With that, Ja pulled off the cap and threw the vial into the crowd of Dromluun. Roars of anger replaced their arrogant laughter as the creatures recoiled and tried to run, but the plague was in the air already like a mist, spreading and expanding. Within moments, the sickness began to course through their bodies, pale skin bubbling as their unprepared immune systems became incubators. As the creatures coughed and gagged, more plague was released into the air, sending the mist quickly up the tunnels like a chain reaction, infecting the swarm of Dromluun that had gathered to feast upon the suffering of Ja and his friends.
Exhausted, Ja collapsed in a heap on the floor, axe clattering to his side. Watching the Harvester’s twisted work actually do some good for once, Ja stared at the writhing creatures with a sense of real, earned satisfaction. His own feelings of dread and despair began to dissipate as the Dromluun convulsed and vomited in front of him. Looking down, he could see his skin begin to mottle and turn a pale shade of yellow, but he did not fear his end. For once, Ja finally felt confident he had made the right decision.
***
Kaia was still kicking at Torv when they blinked into the Gamle’s cavern. Her arms went slack as she heard the sound of the boar people singing, knowing for certain that they were in Torv’s world, and Ja was gone. She couldn’t tell if the despair from the Dromluun had passed, or if she was now drowning in sadness at the loss of her friends.
Slowly and silently, the two crept up into the meadow and found several Gamle working together on some sort of device, singing as they built. The boar people scattered in fear the moment they saw Torv, but as the man calmly walked up and began to inspect the device, they saw that the Ulvson was unarmed and had no intention to attack, and cautiously drew closer. He smiled and nodded at them as they approached.
“Does this device help clear the corruption?” Torv asked.
The boar people nodded timidly.
“Thank you for building this. I am sorry for attacking you before. I will do what I can to help you from now on.”
Torv and Kaia walked out of the cavern and into the mountain pass. They both breathed in sighs of relief to see that no more open portals were ripping apart the reality of this world. Things appeared to be back to normal. The forest was still a barren wasteland of splintered trees, but the growth from the river that the Gamle had cleaned was spreading. New, green life stretched from the water down towards the great forest. Torv opened up Ja’s satchel and pulled out one of the vials of pink liquid, and seeing it, tears began to stream down Kaia’s face.
“We lost your world,” said Torv. “We lost our friends. But we will save this world. Their sacrifice will have meaning.”
Kaia dried her cheeks with the side of her hand. She looked up at Torv and her expression hardened.
“We won’t be able to do it by ourselves. We’re going to need the help of the Ulvson first. I know you want to kill Sieg and get your honor back, but for that, we’re going to need a plan. A smart one. You ready to get to work?”
FATE INDEX:
1. Messiah-like figure attempts to remake society
2. An accident leaves a protagonist with heightened senses
3. Protagonist finds a source of healing/resurrection
4. Include a historical figure
5. A hidden foe is revealed
6. An obscure side character suddenly gets a crucial role in the story
7. Traditional gender roles are switched
8. Character finds a large egg of unknown origin
9. A betrayal brings thoughtful growth
10. Physical confrontation with an inanimate object
11. Discovery of higher technology
12. Monotony is broken
13. One of the protagonists is actually a spy
14. A catastrophic end
15. Too many cooks in the kitchen
16. Torrential rain causes big problems
17. A stranger shares consequential information
18. Ghost story
19. A dam breaks creating massive flooding
20. Infinity is discovered
Outcomes Used:
11. Discovery of higher technology
14. A catastrophic end
And thus ends the second book in the Cool Story Guys Saga: Beyond the Mirror
