Page 258 of Of Empires and Dust

“Gods dammit! Why are you here? What is the point? You bring me to this place only to speak words that make no sense, talking in circles like a drunken fool.”

“A drunken fool often speaks the truth, even to those they wish to hide it from. If I could answer your questions, I would. Come, it is time we leave, but first let me show you what it is to walk the paths.”

Rokka reached out and cupped his hands on either side of Calen’s face, and the world twisted and turned, the misting white light blending with the blackness before everything snappedinto place and a wave of sound rolled over him: screams, wails, crackling fire, crashing steel, falling rocks.

Calen stood in a field of corpses, no end in sight. Some were blackened and charred, others mutilated beyond the realms of understanding, some simply still and lifeless.

Enormous shapes lay amidst the bodies, still and cold, their fires extinguished. Calen counted thirteen dragons, all dead, horrendous wounds gouged through their scales, limbs severed, blood flowing like rivers. One dragon with orange scales and golden wings lay slumped over the body of another, a hole the size of a wagon in its side.

Everywhere he looked he saw faces he knew: Ella, Haem, Tarmon, Vaeril, Erik, Dann, Rist…

Calen’s eyes fell on the corpse of a white dragon, its belly opened from navel to throat, smoke billowing from scorched wounds in its side. The creature was far bigger than Valerys, but he would know his soulkin anywhere, in any time, in any world.

As his heart broke and he reached out with his mind, the world spun once more, and he now stood at the centre of the battle. Two enormous figures marched through the corpses, one clad in green armour with sunbursts for pauldrons, the other wore black leather, the light seeming to shrink around him.

The two figures charged at one another, swinging blades of pure light as large as Calen was tall. Each time the weapons collided, a shockwave swept across the ground, sending corpses careening through the air.

A creature with leathery wings swooped and was sliced clean in half by the glowing green blade, its two sections slopping to the ground, innards spilling.

These were gods, of that Calen had little doubt. Everywhere they moved, the dead were crushed beneath them, the living faring little better. Each motion was death and destruction.

“One path in a million.” Rokka appeared at Calen’s side, his face sharp and youthful, his eyes a gleaming blue-grey with black slits.

The world shifted and blurred before it all took shape once more and Calen was perched atop a hill, a battle raging at its base. Wolves and stags the size of horses crashed through a sea of black and red leather while giant hawks swooped and tore into the flesh of anything that moved.

Banners rippled across the battlefield: the golden stag of Lunithír, the silver star of Vaelen, the green tree of Ardurän, the black lion of Loria, a red gryphon in a white sky. Hundreds more banners jutted into the air above the carnage. Some Calen recognised, many he didn’t. One stood out in his mind: the white dragon on a purple field, golden leaves blowing about the edges. His banner. It was spread all across the carnage, only matched in number by the black lion.

The world continued to shift and change at a pace that turned Calen’s stomach. Battle after battle with the slightest of variations, dragons falling from the sky, flesh and bone torn asunder with the Spark, rivers of black fire consuming everything.

A thousand times he watched himself and Valerys die. A thousand times he watched Dann, and Rist, and Ella, and Tarmon, and Erik, and Vaeril, and everyone he loved burn or take an arrow to the heart, an axe to the neck, a talon to the chest.

Again, and again, and again, until eventually Calen found himself kneeling on the broken rock at the edge of the Burnt Lands, Valerys standing over him, Rokka before him, and the other druids at Rokka’s back.

“Why… what…” Calen’s mind was a storm, the images flashing over and again, blood spraying, people screaming. Heswallowed hard, his hands resting on his lap, sweat slicking his face. “What was that? Why did you…”

“I once told you that the path you were on would bring death beyond your wildest dreams. You are the leaf, Calen, not the wind. Death is coming and you cannot change that, no matter what you do. I want you to be ready, to be steel unbending in the face of what is to come. You are an anchor to which others bind, a point at which paths cross. Without you, this world always burns. Without you and your sister.”

“Ella…” Calen stood, his chest heaving. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his gauntlet.

“Go to her. We will not be far behind.”

Calen flinched as Rokka laid his hands on Calen’s pauldrons and stared into his eyes. But this time the world didn’t shift or change. “Together, we can save them all. With the Gifts of our people, we stand a chance. You are a druid, Calen. One of few. Do not forget your blood.”

Calen nodded as he walked backwards, his mind still racing. He looked to the druid with the two axes hanging from her belt – Tamzin. “She is all right?”

“She is. I delivered her myself.”

Calen nodded again, feeling incapable of anything else. He climbed up Valerys’s outstretched wing and took his place at the nape of the dragon’s neck.

He gave one last look down at the three druids and the kat-like creature, then Valerys launched into the sky. With every beat of the dragon’s wings, a new image of death burned in Calen’s mind. He urged Valerys on faster.

Chapter 59

Family

19thDay of the Blood Moon

West of Achyron’s Keep – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom

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