Excerpt from Alexan’s Ninth Journal, The Great Crusade.

Humans are a surprising rarity across the world, most likely to be found in the halfbreed cities of the Goblins. Often considered unusual and dangerous for the rare individual’s ability to participate in the elemental creation rituals, we are thought somewhat average otherwise. Not exceptionally fast, or strong. Normal in intelligence and aesthetic and with a capacity for aether that isn’t all that remarkable. I have even heard us referred to as boring, little more than “big gnomes without the pretty eyes".

It is apparent to me now, when the time has come for blade and blood, that Humans are uniquely, and deceptively, terrifying upon the field of battle. When fully trained we become creatures of perpetual motion and seemingly endless fortitude. There are limits of course, but those limits are beyond that of all but one of our allies, and all of our enemies. Further, even that singular ally is Barren without almost no capacity for controlling the Aether within them.

With seeds no longer unsown, bolstered further with the blessings of all the elements, we need not sleep, or potentially even eat. Although the experience does leave me feeling… unfulfilled.

Unnamed Tal

“How do you… huff, huff… run with all… huff, huff... that stuff!”

Tal pounded down the long tunnel as it descended deeper into the hollow home, Ouran bounding along beside him. The Erlkin’s bounding run wasn’t quite so steady as Tal’s straight-legged stride, but that wasn’t really the problem.

“Dunno!” Tal shouted out between breaths.

Tal had noticed, and so had the Erlkin, that he was just better at running long distances. The heavy pack he was carrying slowed him down some, but even with sweat pouring down his brow, he was still in better shape than the Erlkin next to Tal with his tongue hanging out. Although the crunch of the wyrm after them lent Ouran the motivation he needed to keep up.

“How is the shriek-flash coming?!” Tal shouted to the two gnomes muttering behind him.

They didn’t respond. The leather straps holding the two small gnomes into the backpack kept them from bouncing out, but the jarring experience of riding the rucksack definitely wasn’t making it easy for them to concentrate on their respective spells. Only Nisk and Easil’s continued muttering gave Tal any sort of confidence.

Tal dared a glance backwards.

In the outskirts of the hollow home surface, friendly snakes with green bellies and brown backs lived amongst the small branches of the tree. The branch snakes were tame and mostly harmless, giving only a numbing bite if you harassed them too much. The little things with bulbous snouts would even come out to curl around your hand if you brought treats.

This snake was as wide as half Tal’s height and pushed off against the sides of the tunnels to chase after them, tearing chunks of root and plants from the walls as it went. Its flesh was white under the glow of the flickering glowsticks but none of them missed the smoke of dark mana streaming from its mouth. Its overlapping scales slid and flexed over the barely visible patches of flesh revealed when it flexed too far. More sharp scales lined its lips like an armoured mask.

The muttering increased in intensity as the gnomes reached the end of their hastily constructed spell.

“Coming up on a corner!” Ouran belted out between breaths. He could see far better in the half-light than Tal. "Now is a good chance to throw the spell!"

“Shriek!” Easil yelled out.

“Flash!” Nisk yelled a split second after.

The flash of light lit the tunnel ahead of them far past the upcoming corner and around the distant natural bend of the tunnel, painting the walls in stark relief even for Tal’s vision. The burst of ringing noise deafened the world and would be ringing in their hearing for a while. It would also alert those who listened to the trouble the four of them were in.

Getting the light and the noise to go mostly in one direction wasn’t quite so easy. But the wyrm received the brunt of the spells.

Ouran reached the corner first, grabbing a thick root to help him swing around the turn and continue bounding away from the danger behind them. Tal arrived next and attempted the same, grabbing the root as he swung around, only to have the root give way. It tore from the wall, just slowing him enough for Tal to compensate. He slammed face first into the opposite corner instead of smashing Nisk against the wood tunnel with all the weight of the rucksack to flatten the little gnome into a nasty paste.

The ringing in Tal’s ears was joined by the stars in his vision from the impact.

Fetched up against the wall as he was, Tal got to see the wyrm crash past the corner flailing wildly and coiling upon itself. The hiss of frustration from the monster sent a chill down Tal’s spine and gave him a rush of fear inspired energy. He pushed off the wall and started running after Ouran with adrenaline driving his legs.

The slope of this tunnel was deeper than that of the one they’d exited, they would pass the upper tunnels soon, as if their group could even reach them.

“Ouran!” Tal called out to the guard ahead of him.

“I know! Keep going!” Ouran’s voice carried back, then, “I see moss up ahead, snuff the torches!”

Tal let his concentration on the torch waving around in his hand go. Nisk released concentration on his glow stick as well. It was suddenly so much darker, and Tal couldn’t help but stumble slightly. While Nisk and Easil let out muffled curses of surprise from his back, Tal felt relief at seeing the blue-green glow of the moss lighting his way.

A small hand smacked the back of his head, “Don’t slow down now, it’s coming again!” Easil hissed.

Tal pushed himself to speed again, gasping as he did so.

Suddenly, Ouran disappeared.

Tal had only a moment to register what had happened when he too dropped through the floor.

Three voices, one loud, two shrill, screamed as they dropped through this new tunnel. Tal kept his arm up as roots, branches and webs slapped occasionally at him. For a moment he saw Ouran, laid out flat ahead of them to avoid catching foliage with his face. The rucksack and the gnomes didn’t give Tal that option.

A few moments after that, they dropped again. Tal fell through and out of the tunnel and saw Ouran quickly scrambling out of the way. Tal landed on his feet and crumpled into a sad sack the moment he hit.

“Uah- Ack!” Tal grunted, holding his left leg. "I twisted it!"

“Come here!” Ouran whispered harshly, pushing his way under Tal’s arm and helping him lurch away.

“It’s a deep glade!” Nisk whispered.

They’d fallen not into a pit, but into a small underground forest. Pillars of wood stretched across the cavity, horizontally, vertically and every which way. Each pillar was a tangle of roots and branches twisted together, varying colours of wood and bark wrapped around each other to indicate the presence of different types of trees. In spots where the moss was most dense, leaves and even some fruits had started growing in, and Tal could hear the rustle and skitter of small wildlife scurrying into hiding. The whole of the cavity glowed with gentle light.

In another time Tal would have stopped to admire the rare beauty of the deep glade, thrilled at the sight of the place. Today he found himself a little distracted.

“I think I might recognize this one,” Easil replied, “It closed itself off two winters ago. Hard to tell with things changed though.”

“Keep moving Tal,” Ouran admonished.

Tal nodded his head, feeling the rough scraping of Ouran’s spiral horn against his face. His ankle didn't hurt so much if he kept his weight off it. Easil struggled loose from his pocket to run ahead to a promising looking spot to hide.

Ouran half guided, half dragged Tal into cover under the dense copse of almost trees that joined into a ball of wood. Ideal cover for the moment.

“It’s coming out!” Nisk whispered as they ducked through an entrance covered in new branches and old wispy webs. Ouran and Tal had to spend several moments spitting and removing debris from their faces as they settled into the hollow. A quick glance showed crumbled shelves, a broken chair and small table and a rat’s nest of a bed. This had once been someone’s home. Ouran was the first to peek out with Tal pushing out a moment later.

The massive white snake had braced itself within the tunnel through which they’d dropped. Now it hung its head out and it slowly scanned around, looking for its escaped prey. The tiny eyes didn’t seem to be focusing on anything that Tal could see from where they were, but he could see the snake slipping its tongue out into the air between the jagged scales lining its lips.

“I can’t see,” complained Nisk from his pocket on the rucksack.

“Do you want to see it?” Ouran asked. When he got no answer, the Erlkin continued talking. “Fortunately, I don’t think it can see us either, for the moment,” Ouran replied, backing up and pulling Tal with him. “But soon it’ll spot us for sure.”

“How so?” Easil whispered.

“We are told are told it can sense heat,” Ouran explained, “I’m not sure exactly how precisely, it didn’t seem to see us at first. That’ll probably change though. Supposedly it uses its eyes to see aether being consumed and has another means to sense warmth… oh, it's coming out of the tunnel. This really isn't good.”

Tal’s hand went to the stiff cloth gauntlet on his left forearm. On the inside of the gauntlet, he pulled the string to open the attached pouch and pulled out the char wand.

“What’s that?” Easil asked Tal.

“Nolsa has been teaching me for a couple of days,” Tal held the pale wand up, the piece of wood wasn’t much longer than his own hand. “It’s a char wand.”

“What can you do with it?” Easil asked.

“... Not much,” Tal admitted. “I’m barely even attuned to it, but maybe I can lure the wyrm away? I can make heat and it’s probably still blind from that flash and cant see aether...”

“Hmm, You haven’t succeeded at distant summons in any element, yet,” Easil noted, “But that we can work around. Ouran,” Easil called, waiting for the Erlkin guard to look at him before continuing. “Do you think the deep wardens will have heard the shriek?”

Ouran squinted his solid black eyes as he considered the question. “Yes, yes they would. You think we just need to wait it out?”

“Maybe, how long until they arrive?”

“They tell us to use a shriek for a reason. They can trace the sound of it through the tunnels…” Ouran shook his head once, then peeked back out into the dim light while continuing to whisper. “With Tal’s ankle twisted, that might just be how we have to play it.”

“Let us know where the pale wyrm is at as we work Ouran," Easil said as he turned to face Tal. "Give me the pit off that glow torch Tal.”

“I dropped it,” Tal admitted, feeling his face flush as he realized he hadn’t even noticed losing it. “Right when I landed I think.”

"The wyrm is following a big branch out to the far wall. It's all the way inside the glade."

Nisk dropped to the floor behind Tal and ambled around, his legs still wobbly from the involuntary ride. As he stepped up to Easil he turned around to present the smaller torch attached to his back, loosening the ties at his waist and chest, “Take mine.”

Easil pulled the glow torch and held it out for Nisk to start cutting the string holding the gem fruit pit. The two of them had it apart in short order.

Easil held the rough silver pit up to Tal. "Get your foundation in first Tal, I'll work around you. Nisk, can I get a visual scry on the pit?"

"It's coming down the far wall, it still seems kinda clueless, but it's coming this way."

Tal touched the pit with the fingers of his right hand. He then placed the fist gripping the char wand in the joint of his elbow to better focus and convert the aether circulating through his body into fire mana. The heat of it flowed through his arm and into the pit.

Once the hot mana circulated into the pit, Tal spread lines of it through the huge feeling vessel of the big seed. He concentrated hard as he grew the roots of the temporary enchantment. When it was set, Tal drew on the pit, pulling his mana though the roots to build a trunk. The trunk was barely more than a sapling, but it would have to do. Next came the sprouting of leaves, making a connection that would permit him to feed the simple enchantment even from a distance. The pit began to radiate heat like a cookfire.

Tal adopted a high focus pose, praying with his hands and elbows pressed together and the ends of the wand sitting in the joint of his elbows. As he fed the pit a constant stream of mana he could feel the more practiced gnomes winding their own enchantments around his clumsy construction.

"Oh, it started to move faster, I think it sees the heat… it definitely sees the heat!"

Both Easil and Nisk finished their tasks much faster than what Tal had done. Easil had placed a small flight spell in the core. Nisk had chosen a spell of scrying for Easil to see. For a moment, Tal saw his own face, white with fear.

"It's coming for us! Throw it! Now!"

Easil gestured and the pit flew out the door and sideways, glowing with heat as it went.

The pale wyrm was right on top of them, and as it shifted, Tal dared to think the distraction would work. The wyms head blurred with speed. With a thunderous snap, it caught the pit in its jaws.

Easil recoiled in horror as Nisk’s scrying spell let him see a preview of their imminent fate.

"Oh no…" Ouran squeaked out.

Only the heavy rustling of scales against the wooden surroundings was heard as the snake reoriented and raised its head up high.

"Everyone should run!" Tal hissed, "I can't move, let it take me!"

Nisk, Easil and Ouran looked at Tal with surprise, which was why he was the only one who saw it happen.

A creature of shining onyx struck the head of the pale wyrm. Snarling and snapping with rage, the new four legged beast hitting the snake sent them both reeling into a thick stand of glowing bushes and root strands.

Then Tal heard it. Amongst the hissing of the snake and angry snarling of the onyx beast. Amidst the crashing monsters and snapping wood, he heard it.

[Idiot! Run!]

End Chapter