Ignite the Sun
Chapter 43: Last light

Chapter 43: Last light

As it turned out, Greenheart had a second gate on the opposite side of the wall, and that’s where the party was gathered before their departure.

Accompanying them were Lydia and Vinifer - Baor couldn’t come since he had students to take care of, but he said there was something he had to do in Mountainfall, so they would see him again soon.

"If you’re fast enough you should be able to make it before dusk." Lydia repeated fort

the 100th time.

"And if we’re not?" Calen asked.

"Then you have to pray the ancient ones don’t notice you - you won’t survive that, even with your enchanced strength."

His gaze instinctively fell on the mark - after he took the elixirs it changed again, now roughly half of the scorched skin has fallen off, revealing even more of the golden glow beneath.

Lydia hummed.

"Try to make a good first impression on Sylara, she probably has a lot of herbs that could help you." She commented.

"Didn’t you say she’s probably one of the guardians? If that’s the case then I have already made a first impression."

"Nah, I’m pretty sure a dream visit doesn’t count as a meeting."

"If you say so..."

Israra interjected to change the topic:

"Have you figured out how to transport Auren yet? The sun will rise in a few minutes and we’ll have to go."

Calen scratched his head.

"I just figured I would put him under my cloak, would that not work?"

She sighed.

"It would work, but only as long as he remains within the confines of the cloak - are you certain that he will?"

He nodded.

"He’s remarkably good at following commands, considering I’ve never actually trained him."

"Probably something to do with his connection to the Sun domain - since you carry a copy of it he must sense overwhelming authority from you." Elira piped up.

"Huh, neat."

Cassian whistled to get their attention.

"Get ready, the dawn is here."

As the first rays of scarlet light hit the protective wall around Greenheart, they all activated the enchantment on their cloaks.

Calen instantly felt a thin barrier form around him, separating him and Auren from the outside world.

He looked around to see if he could perceive the others - and he was able to see his companions, sort of.

Each if them was a wispy silhouette made of blue mist to the eyes of the others. Isara added this feature to ensure that they don’t lose each other while travelling completely invisible.

It even had a bonus side effect of detecting any low-level illusions and visual impairments - the enchantment wouldn’t work on something like the city barrier of course, but Calen was fairly certain it would allow him to see Stalkers, even when they were completely still.

There was a big downside to the cloak though, since it was cancelling the noise as well, they were unable to talk with each other while travelling. It wasn’t a big deal if they were only walking for a short distance, but today promised at least a dozen hours of going in the same direction.

Calen wasn’t entirely sure Isara was going to survive that - she might even start talking to herself.

Alas, they wouldn’t be able to solve that problem just yet, as setting up a communication array between two different barriers was some of the most convoluted spells out there, and they had neither power nor expertise to do that.

When they found themselves outside the city walls, Calen was grateful to see something resembling a path - since Mountainfall was currently completely invisible, getting there based solely on memory would be a bad idea.

They couldn’t talk, so he simply gave a hand signal, and started walking along the uneven road.

***

Two hours in, they haven’t seen anything anything particularly dangerous from up close - outside of a Noctharax flying over their heads once or twice, the region was basically devoid of life.

The only creatures hopping around were the overgrown rodents they’ve seen a few times before - they were called Scratchers, at least according to the bestiary he read.

It seemed like everything worth killing was hunted to extinction by the owl monsters, not that Calen was complaining about that, because of the lack of predators they could significantly accelerate their pace.

***

By noon their speed has diminished significantly, partially because of exhaustion, but mostly because of potential threats.

The most common creature that could see through their disguise was called ’Garbor’, and they were all around here.

Even when Calen saw one from afar, he could tell it looked very weird - it had a large humped torso, with four long limbs sticking out of the bottom, each adorned with massive claws.

It also didn’t have a head, but instead possessed a single enormous maw at the front of its body, filled with teeth facing in every possible direction. The only sensory organ it had was a large orange eyeball situated on a long eyestalk resembling an elephant’s trunk, just above the mouth.

And the way that organ allowed it to experience the world was perhaps even more fascinating than its appearance - the beast was able to see everything, literally everything, in a very small area around itself, but it came at a price, beyond a few meters the monster was functionally blind.

That characteristic led to its peculiar behaviour: normally it roamed around at a leisurely pace, seemingly moving at random.

The real magic happened when an unfortunate creature happened to wander inside its field of view - the moment a Garbor registers movement, it would pin its pray to the ground and kill it instantly. If it’s to big to be consumed at once, the beast would rip the carcass apart to make the pieces small enough to fit in its mouth.

Once that is done, the monster simply tosses the meat inside its mouth, its teeth start moving at a frightening speed completely shredding the food, and passing it deeper inside the beast.

Calen saw it happen to a Scratcher, and he almost felt sorry for the corrupted rodent.

Fortunately for them the Garbors were very slow, so avoiding their gaze was quite easy once they understood how far they could see.

Their progress was slow, but steady - since the creatures seemingly kept to one area, they would soon pass them and resume walking at normal speed.

***

The sun was already dipping below the horizon, and they still had a bit of the road to cover.

At some point Calen saw Isara stop, lift something to her eye, and give the rest of the team a thumbs up. It seemed they were going in the right direction.

***

Their luck have run out.

As the last bit if sunlight disappeared, a terrifying sound reached their ears - a howl of nightmares.

The night has begun.

Cassian lifted his hand and made a gesture - Calen remembered this one, it meant ’stay together’.

The ground around them got covered in black miasma, the foul substance boiling and frothing.

There was a disgusting wet sound, and countless shapeless figures formed from the rat-like substance, each with multiple purple eyes, which were staring right at them.

Calen understood that their cover was blown, so he deactivated the cloak, took out his sword, and set it aflame.

The radiance of the fire lit up the surroundings for a moment, making the strange creatures hiss in pain, but it didn’t last long as the darkness around him rose to fight his light.

In that brief moment of safety they had, his companions managed to grab their weapons, and set up a defensive formation.

"What the hell are those things!?" Cassian asked, swinging his sword to discourage the creatures from approaching.

"I have no clue, but they seem to be hurt by the Flame - Give them all you’ve got Cal!" Isara yelled.

Calen gathered all the flame available to him on the blade, and swung the sword.

A beautiful golden fan of fire spread, evaporating the strange creatures.

"Yes!" He shouted in triumph.

But his happiness was short lived - not a second later the monsters began reforming themselves, and soon enough they were standing there as of nothing happened to them.

"Shit."

Then, they heard an ear-splitting roar, a sound so powerful and ancient, Calen almost fell to his knees from just hearing it.

They saw a giant shape quickly approaching them - whatever it was, it was far bigger than anything they saw so far, bigger than should be possible for a living creature.

"Cal, I will try to distract, you and the rest run-"

Cassian didn’t get to finish his sentence, as an enormous deformed hand swatted him like a fly, sending him backwards a hundred meters, and knocking him out instantly.

Calen looked into the four yellow orbs far above him, and for the first time since he woke up in this world, he felt fear.

This was the day he died.

But he wasn’t going to go down without a fight - even though every muscle in his body was screaming in protest, he lifted up his sword and enhanced it with fire, pointing the blade at the god-like beast.

Then, something strange happened-

A verdant light filled the entire space around them, and a second later massive roots and spikes of stone shot out of the ground, killing both the miasma monsters and the ancient one with ease.

"I’m sorry about what happened to you." A melodic voice came from above them.

Up in the air, a woman engulfed in a green light was floating - something about her presence reminded Calen of a warm, spring breeze.

Despite the fact that he couldn’t see her face, he knew she was smiling.

Just behind her from out of nowhere, a massive fortress appeared, seemingly etched into the mountain itself.

"Greetings, esteemed guests - welcome to Mountainfall."