Lithoniel

Lithoniel woke startled, an uncontrollable tremor shaking her body. She felt sick, the cold second only to the pain. Her broken arm was just a lump of flesh, she was having trouble breathing without wheezing and she was wet from head to toe for some reason. But the biggest problem was she couldn't see. She started breathing erratically, fumbling around in the darkness as she searched for a clue, however small, to understand where she was.

After a while, she found it. Under her feet. There was something there, something wet and cold. Water.

A river?

However, the water was still and stagnant. It had to be some sort of underground lake, maybe the same thing that saved her from the fall. She tried to follow the watercourse, not an easy thing to do when you can't see your hand in front of your face. But gradually the water level started to rise until it reached her knees, then up to her waist. She was almost unable to go further without swimming when she began to see a light, dim and far. It came from above, where the rock ceiling gave way to a solid wall.

Lithoniel's lips quivered. She was close to the bottom of the chasm, the moon so far she could barely see it. She had been lucky, all thing considered. The lake must have been just a tiny puddle from the top of the chasm, the chances of falling here instead of crashing on the rocks below extremely small. None of this changed her situation. Even if she was in her best condition, and with a grappling hook, a scaling like this would have been extremely difficult. Now? Impossible.

She had to find another way out. However, the only one she could see wasn't up but down, deeper in that pitch back darkness she came from. Lithoniel retraced her steps, her teeth rattling as she came out of the water. She tried to pick up her pace, but she had to slow down when she bumped into something. A wall.

She traced it with her fingers, using it to orient herself in her descent. Lithoniel didn't know how long she kept going down, wobbling in the darkness. From time to time she stopped, without even breathing as she tried to listen. But there was nothing to hear, just silence. That absolute absence of sound was driving her crazy, eroding her sanity little by little. She was about to let go when she saw something. It was a warm light - similar to fire but without its heat - springing from the strange stalagmites rising from the floor of the cave.

Ember crystals.

They had the same consistency of rock formations but emitted an iridescent red light. There could be just one explanation if they were there.

There has to be muddyfire nearby.

As Lithoniel kept climbing down, the narrow tunnel widened while the temperature kept rising, the freezing cold giving way to a pleasant warmth. The slope became softer, the rough rocks under her feet replaced by smooth stones, every one of the same size and polished by hand.

Stone tiles? What are they doing here, so deep into the chasm?

But when the tunnel finally came to an end, Lithoniel was left without words from what lay on the other side. It was a city, like a small island rising above the sea brushing against its borders. A sea of fire.

The temperature went from the freezing cold of the icy lake to the scorching heat of the magma boiling around her. Its fumes started to make her eyes water as she went deeper inside, lurching on the cobbled road to see what no one saw for a thousand years: a piece of the ancient elven capital, a city of which no one remembered the name or history.

Lithoniel marveled at the sight of the massive, and yet slender buildings surrounding her. They were different from what she imagined; tall but slander not crude and stocky like the ones the humans used to build. They seemed to grow in height like they wanted to reach the sky as the mountains and trees they were made of. A pity so little of them remained.

Most of them were just ruins, piles of rotten wood and crumbling stone. Most of them, but not all them. There was one in particular which stood above all the others, left alone in the square at the center of the city. Lithoniel headed there.

She was almost halfway when she saw something on the cobbled road that left her even more shocked than everything she had seen so far. Footprints. Lithoniel closed her eyes, reopened them and then shook her head. They were still there. The fact there might be footprints here, at the bottom of the chasm, was ridiculous enough, but not nearly as much as who made them.

Liara. But that's not possible. Lithoniel thought, trying to convince herself she was wrong, that maybe she was hallucinating when in reality she was already dead, crushed in the fall. But she was neither dead or wrong. She'd learned to recognize those footprints very well. They came from her opposite direction, maybe from another tunnel or passage of some kind.

They were fresh, crystal clear on the thick layer of dust covering the road. Clear and close. Liara was heading in her same direction, toward that building in the middle. Lithoniel took a breath before venturing further inside the city, the lights from the embers waning as she did, obscured by lost ruins which retained just a hint of their past glory. The darkness looked more appropriate for something that hadn't seen the light of day for eons. Appropriate, but not for that less eerie.

Because there was another sound aside from the sizzling lava, the creaking buildings and the noises of her own steps; a cold breeze creating strange noises as it went through the wood and stone the city was made of. It wafted against her skin and made her shiver, and it was only in small part for the cold. The temperature kept dropping as she went further, the darkness thickening until the only thing she could see was that tall building, growing closer and closer to her.

She had the distinct feeling she wasn't welcome here, that someone or something was watching her. That feeling became even stronger when she arrived and took a closer look at the building. Unlike the others, the construction before her was intact, made of black ebonwood, and not of planks or logs, but trees and branches, all intertwined together to form that grim building looming there, at the center of the city.

It was ominous, and for some reason, Lithoniel knew something bad was waiting for her inside. She was close to the entrance when she heard something. A whisper, so soft and low she could barely hear it. But then she heard another, and another until they became close to a chorus of distorted voices, a scathing noise grating on her mind and ears. Suddenly the building in front of her changed, as branches became limbs, trees became bodies, and blood became the lime binding them together in one whirling tangle of death and horror.

There were people of every age and gender, men and elves alike, engaged in a war with no sides, fought without swords or arrows, but nails and teeth. It was a chaotic struggle with no rules, just death. Lithoniel opened her mouth, but her scream of terror turned into a cry of pain, when something she had never seen, but just dreamed, emerged from behind that dreadful tree. It was the sun, and not just the sick and pale sun engulfed by thick clouds like the one she was used t seeing, but a bright star, standing in the middle of a clear and blue sky.

It swept away the darkness but burned her eyes, not used to that luminous and blinding light. It was a kind of pain she'd never felt, like hundreds of needles were piercing her eyes, their blazing tips melting them a bit at the time. And then, just like it came, the pain disappeared. Lithoniel found herself kneeling on the hard stone, her mouth wide open and her throat dry like she had been screaming all along and had no voice left.

Did I imagine that? She wondered.

But she could almost feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, see those red lines running on the logs of the black tree and fresh blood dripping from its twisted branches. She was almost certain it hadn't been a nightmare. Almost, but not quite. But even if it was true, it didn't change anything. She had to keep going.

The heavy door creaked when she pushed it open and entered. The place was plunged into darkness, so Lithoniel had to walk blind, her heavy breath the only sound she could hear. Then she felt something, snapping under her feet. She stopped, changing direction, but without avail. Whatever it was, the floor was riddled with it.

That's when she felt heat sweeping all over her, followed by a crackling sound. All of the sudden the place was filled with light as several big braziers started catching fire without apparent reason. Lithoniel was shocked, but then she saw what laid beneath her feet, and that shock turned into dread. They were bones: dozens, maybe hundreds of bones spread all over the floor.

The entire place was a graveyard. Lithoniel shuddered, unconsciously backing away, just to step over another bone as she did so. It was small, no bigger than her fist. It shattered like dry wood under her foot, its jaw turning into a tiny yellowish powder. The skull of a child.

Lithoniel tried to rein in her emotions, but it was like trying to stop the flood with a wall of sand. She started backing away, going closer and closer to the exit when she saw what lay beyond those bones. There was an altar there, entirely made of ivory, the huge fangs of some extinct predator. However, it wasn't the altar that attracted her attention, but who was lying close to it.

Liara!

She was on the ground, her coppery hair turned gray by a thick layer of soot. Aside from that, she seemed fine, like she was sleeping. But the only way to know for sure was to get closer, crossing that same sea of bones that terrified her. Lithoniel closed her eyes, taking a deep breath as she mustered her courage. Then she made a step forward. The crossing was grueling almost as much as dreadful since it was hard avoiding the remains and even harder not destroying them when she failed to do so. They were too brittle, and stepping over them was literally like walking on eggshells. When she finally reached the other side, Lithoniel hurried to check her out. Liara was unconscious, her breathing weak but steady. She had no visible wounds except some bruises and small cuts on her arms.

"Liara" Lithoniel whispered as if she was afraid to raise her voice.

Liara's eyelids moved, but she didn't wake up.

"Lia..." Lithoniel tried again but stopped when she saw something on that altar not far from her.

A moonstone slab. It was small, barely wider than her palm and not much longer. But there was something there, written in a lost language completely different from the current tongue.

Ancient Elven.

Unwittingly Lithoniel stood up, her feet moving on her own accord as she approached the moonstone slab. It was like she was inside a dream; she wanted to touch it, trace the embossed words with her fingertips to unravel the secret hidden behind it.

It was a desire stronger than her will, urging her to move even when her common sense was screaming her to run away. She had to know what those words meant. When she finally came back to her senses, it was already too late. It wasn't much, just the tip of her finger, but she was touching it.

All of a sudden those cryptic words became easy to understand.

Three from the lands of light

Two where the darkness lies

Five will be called blight

But none will hear their cries.

In the sea of Ember where the fire ever burns

The scourges of Doom bide its return.

They wait for a sign

A spin of the wheel

The way to make the stars align

Beware the dangers of the human soul

Or the rage will churn

For betrayal at every turn.

Those words meant nothing to her, but she could still feel it, in her nose; a strong smell of dried blood and decay like she was inside an old battlefield surrounded by countless bodies. It was an inexplicable feeling of death. But she had other problems at the moment.

At soon as Lithoniel pulled her hand back, the moonstone started to crack and then to crumble, until there was nothing left of it. Lithoniel backed away, but she had nowhere to go. The fires on the braziers started flaring up from behind her, the smoke springing from them coalescing in a single point.

It started twirling on itself, slowly at first, but then faster and faster until it became a small whirlwind, a miniature tornado which blew away everything in its path. Lithoniel ducked, trying to protect herself from the bones fragments darting around her when she heard a sound: something like a hiss coming closer and closer to her.

She raised her head just in time to see the smoke moving across the temple like a coiling snake, heading directly toward her. She attempted to avoid it, but it was too late. It hit her, but she felt no pain. Not at the beginning at least.

Instead, She started seeing strange things, images of forgotten places: a lost world of green lands, blue rivers, and clear skies. Then she heard them: voices.

They were just a few at the start, but they soon became hundreds and then thousands, all talking at the same time. Lithoniel tried covering her ears, but there was no way to escape from them. The voices became louder and louder until they turned into screams, and the only thing she could hear was a cacophony of jarring sounds.

Faces and voices kept coming like waves, overlapping each other until she started to lose her sense of self, completely engulfed by memories and images she couldn't even begin to understand. When she started to forget who she was, when her past became just fragment and her name a word without meaning, a single sound came out from her lips.

"Enough!"

Her voice sounded low and weak, but the smoke seemed to waver and then retreat like she physically pushed it away, a long scream filling the temple as it flew outside.

Is it over? She wondered.

That's when a ghastly, bestial shriek resounded inside the temple. Lithoniel turned to look at the entrance. There was something there, and it wasn't human, animal or elf.

It was a monster.