Storm Crow

Chapter 1-2

Damp and stiff wasn’t the most pleasant way he had ever woken, but there were worse ways. At least the little hollow of rock he had found to sleep in was weathered smooth and formed a shallow bowl. If he hadn’t known better, Alegan would swear the dip was carved and polished for this exact purpose. The air was hot and humid well above the place where trees tapered off into scraggly brush and crab grass, the only plants hardy enough to survive the harsh air.

No ash drifted on the wind, which Alegan thanked the Powers for, though the smoke from the little vents pocked the ground as far as the eye could see. It smelled the same as Graynight, a faint scent of sulfur, on a much greater scale. He swore the odor was trapped in every inch of his skin and heavy wool clothes.

Alegan sat up and reached for his ankles, trying to loosen the stiffness in his muscles, and then stretched his hands up toward the impossible blue sky above, broken with trailing wisps of smoke from Toa’s caldron high above. None of his motions helped. Ah well, such was the price of his forty winters living. Once he was done and returned home with his family, he would have his comfortable bed with his beautiful wife for all the rest of his days. Discomfort meant nothing in the face of that promise.

The vent he found the day before lay a handful of steps from his stone bed, better than a campfire. Better than his own fire. He dragged his pack up when he stood, not too lumpy or damaged from its use as a pillow in the night, and settled down with it in his lap right in front of the glowing hole in the mountain.

With a deep breath, Alegan eased open his pack and pulled out the top items with reverent hands. The tarnished bronze star his wife, his Gadal, wore in her sunshine hair every chance she got. Jasa’s favorite drawing book, his eldest girl, filled to the brim with fantastical work from her own hand of machines and gears and the great works of the world. One final item and his breath hitch on a wet choke of emotion. His Tima, their youngest little girl, with only a handful of springs under her dainty feet, had loved her little stuffed butterfly almost to death. It bore the colorful marks of repeated repairs, the thread from whatever knitting project his wife had in progress at the time.

He held them cradled in his lap while he drew out the very few aids he needed to call on both the power of Toa and the presence of Serena, the great Death. A thick twig of willow carved with the Goddess’ sigils, a plain clay bowl in which Alegan placed severed strands of his wife and girls’ hair, and the traditional offering of belladonna. At the very bottom, wrapped carefully in Tima’s swaddling blanket was a flask of his own blood.

The tokens of his family went back in the pack and he set it aside, far out of reach. There was no reason to risk their incineration. His girls would cry if they were destroyed.

Alegan centered the rust red bowl between his spot and the steaming vent. The hair was scattered in the bottom with no order at all and he splashed the blood over the locks in dark ribbons. Willow stick in hand, he etched the illegible incantation in the coarse black sand.

The spell he had found, buried in the dusty stacks of Tanchar’s palace library was from before, when the first monarchs reigned with an iron fist. When magic was bigger, wilder, still a molten force fresh from the Gods, thousands and thousands of years ago. The original manuscript was in the ancient language of humans, no longer spoken now, and Alegan had been lucky enough to find someone to translate the work into the common tongue. If he had known it was so simple, he might have thought it a waste of time.

“Hail Serena, the great Guide of the dead. I summon you to hear my petition.”

Heat built to unbearable levels and stole his breath in seconds, hot ash blistering his face and tongue. The glow of the vent blazed red and then white. Lava bubbled, splashed up over the lip of the vent. A screech picked up in his ears, behind his eyes. Pain lanced through his temples.

Power roared in a firestorm through his veins. Alegan moaned as it burned down every last vessel in his body, heart a smoldering limb of iron in a blue flame. He saw it in the darkness behind his eyes in its frantic, deadly pulsing. This was Toa? The power Graynight had warning him about not a day before?

Ragged, faint whistles rushed past his ears. Where the screech went, he couldn’t tell. Skin burned at his fingertips. Stars splattered in agonizing constellations against his face. Even the stars rained down their objections? His dream of his family was objectionable?

Hot grit scraped at his face and hands and some rancid stench assaulted his nose. Burning hair, maybe. And the ground moved under him. Below him. Cool liquid ran over his cheek. Above him, more grit and brittle crunching. Just the darkness and smell and sulfur. Pain, distant from the hot iron heart he’d somehow acquired, followed the grit. Oh, his chest was going to melt from the inside out.

Cold.

Nonexistence.

* * * *

The dull throb in Alegan’s spine eased him out of his stupor, squinting up into the sapphire blue sky above. How he ended up on his back was a simple explanation the moment he rolled his head to the side, gaze directed up the slope. Dirt was scattered in an arc where he toppled to the side and smoothed flat where he’d rolled.

Blade sharp pain shot up his arms and his fingers ached as he pushed up into a sitting position. Blisters and blackened bits of skin decorated his hands. More charred spots were peppered on his pants and shirt, the smoldering, acrid scent of hair still in his nose.

Alegan swiped at the odd trickle on his face with the side of his hand, hissing from the tender bubbles on his fingers. Blood glittered when he looked at his fingers, mesmerizing garnet in the sunlight. It was funny. His face didn’t hurt at all. He knew his face was still, mostly, in one piece, judging by the small amount smeared on his hand.

Every limb was sluggish, heavy, as Alegan staggered to his feet. His knees didn’t want to hold his weight at all, because they refused to bend more than a fraction as he made his way back up to his original spot in front of the smoking vent. It had dropped back into its cool red.

“That’s not going to stop me, you know,” Alegan uttered through the ash clogged in the back of his throat. Who he was talking to, Serena or Toa or even the highest Malan, he didn’t know. If he had to destroy himself to bring back his family, so be it.

Alegan squared his shoulders and chomped down on the groan working its way from his screaming injuries. The bowl and sigils remained intact, though glassy black had filled in the impressions in the dirt. The willow twig was gone, probably burned to cinder or swept away.

This time, he raised his hands above his head.

“Hail Serena, the great Guide of the dead. I summon you to hear my petition.”

An incomprehensible scream shattered the air and his ears, piercing like a giant roc in the mountains. Lava spat out of the vent. It fountained, sputtering around his supplicant form in a vast circle. Sulfur burned his senses.

Alegan writhed as his whole body lit up from the inside, as if he had bathed in the heart of the volcano. Something in him snapped. His heart pounded and sizzled in his chest. It went beyond agony. It flayed him open, strip by strip.

Blood bubbled in his throat and the lights went out.