Part 5 Continued

On the eve of the second day of their ascent of the mountain, Atark and Mensra made camp under a large stone outcropping in order to find some sense of shelter from the storm that they would soon be hiking into. They had still not thought of a way to safely venture into the tempest and the pathway Havre showed them was no longer viable. If they could not figure out something soon, they would have to make their way back down quickly or expose themselves to unnecessary risks. Atark kept turning this problem over and over in her mind as the night dragged on. The sound of thunder was almost continuous as they continued to increase in altitude. But there was something more to this place that kept Atark on edge, it was as if every bolt of lighting sent a chill down her spine no matter how far away they were and the booming thunder shook her skull with much more intensity than she had ever felt.

Mensra had felt this too, at least that was the impression that he gave off. But he wouldn’t say too much on the topic, as if he was trying to hide his feelings on the matter. That or he was just lost in thought, trying to analyze everything he could see and feel when it came to the storm. He did say at one point yesterday that there was something wrong with the way magic flowed through this place. It was not the still pond that he had compared it to before, but something wild and turbulent. Atark wagered that whatever this turbulence was centered around would be where they would have to look to find the cause of this storm. She tossed and turned, trying to fall asleep.

But why would there be a storm suspended up here anyway? From the descriptions of the locals it seems to have been here since they could remember. But if Mensra’s theories were correct then that wasn’t worth much of anything at all. Memories had only recently come about, before that when Buldren’s Seal was absolute and nothing changed then there wouldn’t be much of a point in memory, you would just experience everything passively. If that was true then how could she remember things from before the time Morven broke the seal? Surely it would just be some sort of void in her mind? But there was so much of the early world that stuck in her mind, the tempest that tore the world apart and reformed it time and again., and her sister who was swept away to who knows where.

Perhaps it was an imperfect seal? Like someone trying to hold back a great beast with nothing but a bow and arrow.

That had to be it, Atark thought. Buldren was lying about his seal, it wasn’t the perfect form of security that they had all entrusted him to form. It was flawed, cracked in its very foundations. Merely posing as an unstoppable force that could repel any threat to the Celestials. What else had he lied about?

A bright flash lit up her entire tent and the great crack of thunder ruined her train of thought. But unlike the lightning Atark always saw in natural storms, there were several additional sparks that ignited in the wake of the bolt. As these aftershocks sparked alarmingly close to the tents, Atark felt herself sinking into the ground, but once the sparks dissipated she felt herself return to where she should have been, leaving her with a sense of vertigo.

She quickly rose to peak outside at the remnants of the lightning strike. But before she could even reach out for the flap of the tent, another bolt of lightning struck the ground above them leaving behind a trail of thousands of smaller sparks. Once again, Atark felt herself shift in position again, but this time she felt herself be pulled backwards. But as she fell backwards she saw that her physical body had not moved, in fact she could see herself standing right before her. Then once again, she rebounded straight back into her body with another wave of nausea.

While composing herself as best as she could, she grabbed her bow and quiver before she scrambled out of the tent and saw that Mensra was also stumbling around. She raised her voice and called his name as another bolt struck the outcropping above them. A tip of the rock split off and began to fall down towards them as a trail of aftershocks trailed behind it.

Atark braced for another wave of nausea and felt her presence be pulled to the side. The whole scene seemed to move in slow motion as this happened. The rock was suspended in the air and Mensra was locked in place. And while the aftershocks were moving at a slower pace, they still appeared to be moving at a faster pace compared to everything around them. Once these sparks dissipated, Atark snapped back into her body, quickly dodging out of the way where the rock smashed into the ground.

Mensra shouted to her, she could barely hear over the ringing in her ears. “We can’t stay here! It isn’t safe!”

“Should we go back?” Atark ran towards him, constantly keeping an eye on the sky.

“It’ll be too far to get back down we have to find somewhere safe,” Suddenly, before Mensra could finish his thought another bolt struck so close to the pair that Atark could feel the heat coming off from it as she once again was pulled out of herself.

But this time she was ready for it and as she watched the sky she could see that it was not like any other bolt of lighting, it shot out from a spot on the mountain not too far from where they were now before arching down and striking them. She rebounded back into herself and was about to point out the location to Mensra but was stopped by the sound of a thud behind her.

She had not noticed where the bolt had landed, it was extremely close to where Mensra had been standing. Now he was collapsed on the ground and unconscious. Atark cursed to herself and ran to his side. He groaned in pain, and even when Atark tried to shake him awake, he was unresponsive.

The booming sound of distant thunder forced Atark to start thinking of a solution. She had to get him to safety, but there was no way that she could do so by going back down the mountain. Mensra said that they had to find better shelter, she guessed that he meant that they should find a cave or a more favorable outcropping. There was nothing of the sort that she could spy around them so she would have to improvise. She threw her bow to the ground and grabbed onto Mensra and carried him over her shoulders. She couldn’t leave him there in the open, and she would have to get closer to whatever was attacking them, which meant that she was going to carry Mensra up the mountain.

Her only fear was that another bolt would strike her down as well. Leaving the two of them stranded all the way out here with no way to signal for help. She kept her eye on the spot she saw the lightning launched from, hoping to spy some way to see it coming and hide in time. But as she focused on this one spot another bolt of lightning sprung from just out of her view and raced towards her. It missed directly hitting her, but it did strike the ground just near her.

It was as if someone had punched her in the back, her entire body locked up and fell down. But her presence stood standing as everything slowed down once again. She could see the area in front of her lit up as bright as day, meaning that the bolt was directly behind her. And radiating out from it, was a familiar yet rapid vibration. It was just like how Mensra demonstrated with his flame two days prior, but far more rapid. Where Mensra’s flame was a steady drum beat, this was a rapid pulse of magic that flowed through every part of her body.

She rebounded again and regained control of herself, Mensra had fallen onto her back. She rolled out from under him and grabbed an arrow out of her quiver. She reached for her bow and aimed up the mountain, shifting her gaze back and forth. Standing out in the open like this, she would have to be absolutely certain of her plan or else she’d get struck head on. Normally, when she would try to take a shot, she would try to slow her breath and steady her aim, but her plan required her to have a quick heartbeat. She pulled back her arrow and began to rapidly breathe in and out, afraid that she would begin to hyperventilate.

But then a flash of light caught her eye and one more bolt raced towards her. She then channeled magic around her and focused it all into her bow. Her heart raced and right behind it, another faint pulse followed it but with just as much frequency. The bolt of lighting passed by in the blink of an eye, followed by such a loud booming sound that all other sounds were drowned out in the sea of ringing in her ears. But there were no aftershocks or out of body experiences, as Atark looked upon her arrow, she found that the air around it was continuously sparking while small bolts of lightning danced across its surface. A strong heat radiated outwards from the arrow.

Her face lit up with excitement as she realized what she had done. Just as Mensra handed her a ball of fire, Atark caught a bolt of lightning with her arrow.

Without any further hesitation, she pointed the bow back towards the first spot and let it fly. A concussive force exploded around her as the arrow soared through the air, leaving behind its own trail of aftershocks, and the moment it hit the ground a hail of bolts shot out in all directions from its impact point.

Thunder echoed across the mountain range, as the final sparks extinguished themselves. Atark was tossed to the ground and struggled to catch her breath, her heart racing inside of her. There was no feeling in her arms, she looked at her hand and saw that there were burns all across it. She wouldn’t be able to keep this up. But as the thunder faded out the storm dissipated just a bit and the constant lightning eased up just a bit.

Atark felt fatigue creeping up on her. Her eyes were falling shut and her thoughts were muddled. For a moment her thoughts wandered to her sister, wherever she could be. In this moment Atark saw her standing inside an old greenhouse, with pots of plants spilled out all across the floor. All of these plants were a withered brown color, their leaves long fallen and their flowers nonexistent. Her sister was looking away from her, but Atark knew that it was her, same hair, same dark skin with the shimmer among all primordials. She reached out to touch her but her hand froze just before she made contact. It was another rebound, exactly the same manner as she was pulled back to her body after a bolt of lightning. But she couldn’t leave now, there was still so much she needed to tell her sister!

This unseen force pulled Atark away like a strong gust of wind had lifted her off the ground leaving her tumbling over a great distance. As she spun through the air she saw that she had been pulled out of Buldren’s Court and hurled over the primeval woods where she met Mensra not that long ago. And as she rocketed towards the mountain and into the tempest that raged around it she saw that an army had made camp just outside of the valley. Then she felt herself become suspended high above the mountain, inside the storm.

Lightning still struck around her, but was restrained as if it had been held back. Atark realized that the camp must have belonged to the Eterna. Their time in the valley would no longer go unchallenged, she could see that they were already making their way through the narrow passageways and into the valley. She would have to act fast, but there was no way they could make it to the others in time before things turned for the worse. They shouldn’t have found them like this, the storm should have protected them, that’s what Morven had promised! Now they were going to be overrun thanks to Morven’s miscalculation, unless Atark could do something about it.

She remembered how she had caught the bolt of lightning and how Mensra could draw fire from another flame. Whatever she was witnessing was strange, it didn’t feel like she was truly here, she couldn’t see herself or move about as one normally could. This had to be another out of body experience, but this one was different, much more sustained than the lightning. Perhaps she could draw on magic here? She thought back to Mensra’s lesson and how she took hold of his fire without even realizing it.

There wasn’t any breath to control here nor could she feel the beat of her heart. Instead she focused on the lightning. A faint beat began to ring out around her before it began to speed up, it did not come from any bolt of lighting but instead it came from her own essence. The beat grew louder in her mind and small sparks of electricity began to dance around her field of view. Now that she held onto this power she tried to think of a way to release it. She couldn’t let it loose like an arrow or throw it. Instead she looked down at the camp, hoping that Mensra’s teachings had been correct, before suddenly letting go of the power around her.

Like a dam letting loose its reservoir of water, the energy she gathered rushed forward forming into an arching bolt of lightning. The bolt branched off into a number of smaller tendrils and struck the camp randomly, leaving behind trails of aftershocks and starting several fires all across it.

Before she had any time to celebrate, her perspective changed again. This time she was in a pitch black room, save for nine clusters of nine candles each. One cluster sat in the middle while the other eight surrounded it. Atark’s sight was now resting just above one of these clusters, she could feel their heat warming her. To her right, two of the clusters spontaneously extinguished themselves leaving behind a faint trail of smoke.

The sound of someone’s footfall spooked Atark, but she couldn’t turn around to face them. The candles beneath her extinguished, leaving behind a cold void and a trail of smoke.

“Another one falters.” She heard this person mutter. His voice was rough and muddled, almost as if there was something stuck at the back of his throat. “But this time, I can reach out and find you.”

Atark felt a hand grab her by the shoulder, she snapped awake in terror while curling her fist, but before she could throw it she realized that it was Mensra kneeling over her, trying to shake her awake.

“Easy now!” He let her go and jumped back. “Are you alright?”

The memory of what had just happened was still fresh in her mind, but it was all such a blur that she doubted if it had actually ever happened. She sat up and looked around them. The storm had dissipated, replaced with clear skies as far as they could see. She looked back up the mountain, up towards one of the two spots where lightning shot out towards them.

“Where’s the storm?” Her ears still rang from it, but now she could at least hear herself.

Mensra followed her gaze, “I’m not entirely sure. I remember something hitting me in the middle of the storm and I blacked out. When I came to, the storm had faded for some reason.”

Atark looked down at her hands, they were still burned from the stunt she pulled last night, though it was much better than her initial assumptions. Still, there was one last question she needed an answer to. She got to her feet and charged up towards the spot she shot the lightning back to.

“Wait! We don’t know what’s up there!”

Atark made it to the spot, and sitting there in the middle of a charred crater, was a large half molten pillar of a metal. All across it were symbols that Atark had never seen before.

As Mensra caught up to her, he didn’t pay much attention to the pillar. “Atark! We really should make sure your wounds are doctored first!”

“This is what suspended the storm.” Atark voiced her realizations. “And it seemed to defend itself from trespassers. But it came from multiple directions…” She didn’t finish this thought and instead ran to the second place where the bolts originated from. Mensra groaned as he tried to keep up with her. Just like the first place here there was a pillar of metal stuck into the mountain, this one was intact though the base of it had been scorched, as if it had been heated by the base of the mountain. The same inscriptions were present here but unlike the first pillar, these were much more intact.

Mensra finally caught back up to her while he was digging through the remnants of his pack. “Here, I have some bandages to put on those burns, we don’t want anything to happen to them before we get back to camp.” Atark held out her right hand allowing Mensra to quickly dress her wounds. “What caused these?”

“I may have used your advice to catch lightning.”

Mensra’s jaw dropped. “Oh.” He glanced back and forth between her and the scorched pillar. “Impressive. How did you manage to pull that off?”

Atark smiled. “Perhaps we should get home first. We’ll have time to talk and figure things out then.”

It took another three days for the two to travel back down the mountain. Along the way, Atark shared the vision that she had with Mensra, who was puzzled by what it could mean. He would spend most of the remaining time in their journey thinking about these images and what they could possibly link to. Atark was just happy to have survived the whole ordeal and coming out with what little scrapes she had. But as they descended down the mountain, Atark began to feel different, it was as if the flow of magic that had evaded her senses before was now much more clear to her. It couldn’t have just been that Mensra’s teachings have shown her everything she needed to know, she had no doubts, whatever those pillars were, their destruction freed up a form of magic that was unfamiliar to her. Perhaps this would radiate outwards to other Celestials?

They reached the base of the mountain midway through their third day, and there to meet them was Morven who appeared to be battered and bruised as well.

“What happened to you?” Atark asked.

“The Eterna arrived while you were gone. They tried to fight us but we managed to push them off.”

“What about the others?” Mensra added, “Verna, Havre? Are they fine?”

“Havre was wounded, but he’ll be fine, Verna’s gone off to find her companion. Apparently Vindus was captured, Devanir went with her to help.” Morven sighed. “We’ll soon depart to meet them after they find her.”

“Then that means we’re at war, doesn’t it?” Said Atark. “Especially if we’re going to respond with our own counter attack. But before we focus on that, Morven, what happened to the storm?”

“It was shortly after the Eterna attacked, three days after you left.” He explained. “After we pushed back the initial advance, the storm picked up for a very brief time, we saw several bolts of lightning rain down on the opposite side of the mountain range. The next day, the storm vanished like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“Hm…” Mensra felt himself getting lost to his thoughts. “Perhaps we should discuss this over a warm meal, but first I must ask, what do we need to do now?”

Morven looked down to the ground while scratching the back of his head. Atark could see that he had gone over this same question many times before.

“I believe that we need to be ready to get out of this place.” Morven concluded. “They’re likely to return and in greater numbers. We need to hide and gain more followers. And then after that.” He shrugged. “We figure out how to take down the Sovereign. Most of us will head out to meet Verna, but there are some things that I want to take care of first, I’ll tell you more tomorrow.”

Atark knew that he was correct, they would have to readjust their plans, she also wondered what else Morven needed to get done so badly that he would have to split off from everyone else. She intended to share her visions to him, maybe that would get him to open up about his greater plans. Or at the very least, open him up to the idea of working more closely with her and Mensra. Things were getting more and more complicated, and it wouldn’t do them any good keeping secrets amongst each other. She tried to imagine how Mensra kept track of all of these things, just trying to think too much about one of these problems led to a spiral of other questions.

But that was enough wondering about these questions for one day. For now, all Atark wanted was to finally get a good night’s sleep.