The Vale Part 1
Blood and Starlight Chapter 1: Part 1
Blood and Starlight: A conjurer, a vampire, and a mechanical demon embark on a rescue mission.
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Chapter 1
The Vale (Part 1)
Ely woke underground.
Steam hissed in his ear, and sulfurous fumes stung his nostrils. He sat up slowly, head fuzzy. Above, he could only just see the sky from the opening down which he had fallen. He was lucky to be alive. As he glanced at the fire spitting from a fissure in the stone, he realized just how lucky.
How had he lost his balance in the first place? He usually excelled at climbing.
The voice, he thought.
Halfway down the wall, he had heard someone speak his name as clear as if they clung to the rocks beside him. Perhaps he hallucinated it. That was entirely possible. He was, after all, hovering over an interspatial rupture. Where two places leaned against one another, bending and folding and melding, strange things were bound to happen.
Ely passed his fingers across his face. A swirl of midnight ether took shape, forming a contoured mask over his nose and mouth. Protection against the dangerous miasma that leached from temperamental ruptures. He approached the flaring gap in the stone with practiced caution.
Dr. Faidra had brought him to view these phenomena in his first months as the only living resident of Death’s Vale. He had perfected, over the past twenty odd years, a method for stabilizing troublesome ruptures like the one he now sought. Like sutures in a wound, a coil of death magic could knit the edges of the aperture together. The procedure left scars and occasionally burst open again, but for the most part, he was able to calm the tremors and noxious smells. This particular rupture had caused a violent earthquake that shook him from his bed and demolished a portion of the University roof in the north wing. Dr. F had easily located the source of the quake with her well-tuned instruments.
As he squatted down to the opening, the steam cleared just enough for him to view the frayed edges of the rupture glowing crimson. Before he could work out how to maneuver closer, a pair of jaws jutted from the vent, snapping at him with crooked teeth. Ely leaped back. The beast appeared to be an enormous, long-snouted gar. Then its scaly body scuttled into view over a multitude of insectile legs.
Ely crouched low. Darkness spiraled around him, sliding over his body as armor. The beast screamed like a steaming kettle, then it charged, stabbing a clawed leg. Ely rolled beneath the flailing limbs.
A twist of his fingers conjured an obsidian lance in his hands. When the creature struck again, its prey bit back. Not a skilled maneuver, but nevertheless, a fiery geyser spewed magma where the lance plunged deep. Ely leaped out of the way as the creature stumbled. A rivulet of the molten blood struck him. He growled in pain, clutching his wounded shoulder.
The scaly head turned. Its gaping jaws seized him and tossed him high into the air. Ely collapsed. Breath scattered. The beast reared up again. An icy surge rushed through him, and his eyes clouded over. Death's infinite void permeated his every cell. His hands raised without conscious direction. Black ether burst free, coiling around the beast's multitude of limbs. He felt the power sinking into its pores to the molten core of its body. With an echoing shout, he retracted the force, and the beast erupted, its blood frozen into a basalt shower.
With the danger past, Death receded, and the milky veil lifted from Ely's sight. His armor dissolved in a spray of violet embers.
“A machnid,” he panted, once again in control of his faculties. “Fascinating.”
He hated to kill a creature so primordial, but according to the University texts, machnids infested a healthy mantle, eventually fracturing the crust and causing violent volcanic eruptions.
Ely edged closer to the vent once again. His shoulder screamed as though a hot iron pressed against his skin. The fabric of his tunic appeared to be unscathed. At least the conjured armor had been good for something. It was a nice tunic. He would have loathed to lose it. The damage to his arm? Probably substantial. It would be best to make the climb out of this hole before he lost use of it entirely. Still, he could not leave the rupture unattended.
Ely reforged his mask, groaning as he stooped near the opening. He knew it would be unwise to reach in without conjuring full armor, but he felt his inner resources perilously near spent. Taking a breath, he dispersed ether like ice through the heated vent. It steamed and stilled, but it would not hold for long.
Ely stretched his arm inside the opening, threading darkness between the edges of the rupture until it was rendered suitably closed. A shimmer still trembled in the air like a beam of light escaping through a canopy. It would have to suffice.
The climb back up the rock wall proved far more difficult than anticipated. By the time he collapsed into the dust at the top of the ravine, his throbbing arm refused to move. Dr. F would fix him up, no doubt with a lecture on being a fragile, careless mortal.
The undead doctor had first brought him this far out into the wilderness when he was still new to Death's Vale. Winter was approaching. He wore a cloak with a thick fur-lined hood, boots cuffed in the same gray hide, and over large gloves. He surely cut a comical figure in garments meant for a full-grown man.
The doctor scrabbled over sheer rock faces. Deft as a spider. She did not slacken her pace for the young human struggling after her. By the time he caught up to her, Ely found her preoccupied with a strange machine tucked away in her pack.
A cave opened into the rock wall. At least he thought it a cave until he got a better look. Light poured from inside. The edges pulsed as though the opening were drawing breath.
“Don't get too close,” the doctor cautioned. “This one needs to be stabilized.”
She tuned her instrument, and it hummed as she set it on the ground just beyond the lip of the glowing aperture. It rippled and sputtered, shaking the cliffside so that Ely reeled back. He caught himself before tumbling over the chasm. The doctor bared her razor teeth and swiped her fingers across a set of dials on the machine. A stream of azure light projected from a curved lens at the end of a copper tube. The light formed into glyphs which rose into the air, shifting in a ring about the tear in the stone wall. The quaking ceased. Slowly, the light dimmed.
Ely peered through the opening, a jubilant grin on his face.
“Now, remember what I told you,” Dr. F said. “The nest will be high. Likely on the cliffs. I only need one feather. If you see even a shadow, find cover.”
“I remember,” Ely beamed.
He summoned his armor as she had made him practice, then stepped into the rupture.
A breeze caressed his cheek, cool and salted. When his vision cleared, he saw golden sands washed by fervent ocean waves. He freed himself of his winter furs and ran through the foamy surf, splashing and howling like a wolf pup.
A shout rang from up the shoreline. Weapons clashed. Ely caught sight of templar red, eye and blade insignia gleaming alabaster. Death usurped all thought as he rushed toward the fray, gathering black magic in his palms.
The templars fell swiftly to his unanticipated attack. They had been too focused on the band of shackled children to notice the lone shadow that now hunted them. When the last of the crimson-clad warrior priests lay still, Ely freed the captives of their chains.
They were garbed in colorful patterned fabric accented by polished shells and shimmering feathers. To the Canon, the Séoc of the Barrier Keys were pirates, but elsewhere they were hailed as paladins of the waves. One of the liberated prisoners stepped forward. He was not the tallest among them nor the broadest, but his presence named him unmistakably the leader of the group.
"Thank you, diakana," he said, his easy smile brushed with good humor at the dimpled corner. He spoke in heavily accented Lanica, the language of the Free Cities. Not Ely's native tongue either, but a good common ground.
The Séoc boy continued, "I am Kailari Novara. Kai for friends." He pointed to a sturdy girl at his elbow. "This Salía. Cousin. This Yamon. Mirit. Baby cousins."
More chuckles from the pirates. Yamon and Mirit both stood a head taller than their older kin.
"I am Elyssandro Santara Ruadan."
Kai laughed and said something to his crew in the Séoc tongue.
“What do friends say for you?" he asked.
"Ely."
"Much better," Kai beamed. "I wonder how you get here, Ely? They say diakana fall from sky."
"What does diakana mean?" Ely asked.
Kai's brow ruffled in thought. "Star hands?"
Ely smiled. "Then, yes, something like that."
"What brings you to Séocwen?" Kai asked.
"Do you know of Cocatl? I'm to bring back a feather," Ely said.
Kai frowned, looking at him thoughtfully. "The sky snake."
"The doctor says it nested here," Ely said. "Dr. Faidra is my…" He thought a moment, trying to puzzle out what she might be called. "My family."
"Cocatl disappear long ago," Kai told him. "But maybe feather stay in nest. We go look, yes?"
"You know where it is?" Ely asked.
"Come," Kai gestured.
Ely followed him down the beach to the mouth of a creek where the young Séoc crew had moored their vessel. It was not a ship exactly. More a narrow sloop with a single sail and a small shelter with enough room for two to lay comfortably side by side. Still, Ely gaped in awe at the smooth mirrorwood hulls that reflected water, sand, and sky.
The crew pushed the sloop into the sea. Ely stood at the bow as they sailed along the shoreline. Porpoises leaped from the emerald water, crystal waterfalls unfurling from their tails.
He returned to the shore salt-kissed and exhilarated. While the rest of the Séoc crew stayed with the boat, Ely and Kai hiked inland to where shifting sands hardened into soaring cliffs. Kai assembled a system of ropes and spikes to aid them as they scaled the pockmarked rock. As they ascended higher, the enormous crenulated edges of a nest peeked at them from a plateau above. Ely's excitement lent a burst of speed. His feet slipped from the narrow ledge, and he tumbled into open air. The line pulled tight around his waist. He slammed a shoulder into the stone, but he fell no further. Kai shouted down to him, and when he waved with a pained smile, the pirate hauled him back to his side.
At last, they reached the cliff where the monolithic nest had been woven into the rock from tree limbs, strips of bark, and the curved rib bones of some bovid animal.
Kai approached the base. A tar-like substance crusted the walls. The pirate tested his weight against the woven branches. When they held, he scaled the side with practiced ease. Ely followed. Unsteady but determined to keep up.
Inside they found petrified bones and fragments of eggshell thick and heavy as slabs of turquoise stone. No feathers.
They returned empty-handed to where the Novara cousins had lit cook fires on the beach. Ely had never tasted anything so delicious as the fire-blistered fish slapped into his hand as he collapsed in the sand.
They watched the blood orange sun plunge beneath the ocean waves. Kai rose and beckoned Ely.
"Come with me, diakana."
Ely followed him to the boat's prow. He had not noticed the carving that adorned the ship's face. A serpent with curved fangs and a forked tongue.
Kai pried loose a leather thong from a hook set in the figure's neck. It was braided with scalloped shells, carved beads, and one long, lustrous feather of deepest emerald green. The pattern at the base looked smooth, almost scale-like before flaring into downy curled ends.
"Cocatl?" Ely asked, staring in awe at the shimmering plume.
Kai nodded, a roguish sparkle in his black eyes. "They say the Novaras come from Cocatl. My…how you say mother of mother?"
"Grandmother?"
Kai nodded. "Yes, grandmother. She find this. She is king of Séocwen."
He held the feather talisman out to Ely. "Take it. For your family."
"What? I couldn't do that," Ely gasped.
"You save my family." The pirate prince pressed it into his hand. "Take it…"
Ely blinked away the waking memory. Delirium must be setting in if he was thinking about Kailari Novara.
He raised himself to his feet with a groan and set out across the bleak landscape.
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