Three – Shadow

Shimmer - Enna

As the girls passed through the arch, the transparent image folded around them, heavy like wet fabric, yet it still snapped from their passage like a soap bubble.  Enna felt her sister’s hand grow faint in her grip and panicked.  She squeezed down harder on Eillim’s fingers; the wall of dizzy lightness passed and Enna found herself standing in a patch of wildflowers.  Around them a summer lit, rolling green prairie stretched into the distance.  Eillim remained at her side, their fingers still linked together.

Enna looked around her at the surrounding landscape.  She shaded her eyes against the warm sun to inspect the blue gray line of the forest off in the distance.

“Where are we?” Eillim asked her.

“I believe these are the plains of Borasch,” Enna answered.  She felt calm and safe here.  She dropped her sister’s hand.   She walked out of the patch of flowers, carful to not step on anything vital.  Eillim followed her. “If that road is the path to Marbeth, then we must be near to the Temple.”

“Is that where we are meant to go?” Eillim spoke quietly.  Enna nearly didn’t hear her sister over a breeze rustling through the grass around them.

“Indeed it is,” answered a low voice.  Enna whirled to see the Foxen standing a few yards away.  Enna glanced at her sister, who regarded her god with no expression.

The Foxen’s main focused was Enna.  Under his scrutiny she studied him under the familiar sunlight of a place sacred to her.  She felt a damping down of the fear she’d felt in the turret.  The Foxen stood with his arms crossed over his muscled chest.  His dangerous whip hang forgotten at his side.  The Foxen watched Enna with the reflective green-gold eyes of night walking predators.  His pointed ears were flopped lazily back, but still listening; always listening.

“Where is Svanir?” Enna asked.

The Foxen shrugged, “She’s around, I am sure.  She always does seem to turn up and toss things about a bit.”

“Why are you here?” Enna asked.

“To help you,” the Foxen grinned and gave Eillim a disinterested glance. “How else do I tell you how to free me from this awful place?”

“This place is sacred,” Enna told him

“This place stinks of complacency,” the Foxen growled.  He let his arms drop approached her.

Enna felt like his prey, locked in place by his graceful stalking motion and piercing eyes. 

“You have everything here you need,” the Foxen continued. “Fresh water in abundance, fat, happy animals to catch and eat, wood to build shelter and which does not burn itself into nightmares.  Do you know what prey tastes like when it has not been made to fight for its own survival every hour of every day?”

“No,” Enna breathed.  He towered over her now.  She could smell his dusty feral aroma and almost felt the heat of the desert radiating from him.

“Delicious,” the Foxen chuckled. “But unsatisfying.  There’s something in consuming a life fought for that simply makes you feel quite invincible.”

Enna stared at him with revulsion and terror, “We are to go to Marbeth’s temple?”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Then perhaps we should move on,” Enna suggested in a voice she recognized as her mother’s. “You’re killing the flowers.  Come on Eillim.”

Enna and Eillim linked hands once again.  They started down a slope toward the paved path leading to Enna’s temple.  The Foxen watched them go, glanced around his feet at the wilting, scorched grass and the tiny shriveled flowers, he smiled and started down the hill after the girls.

The road to the temple was long, but Enna and Eillim covered the space solidly.  The Foxen trailed along behind but did not say much.  The girls did not feel the need to converse so they walked silently following an initial whispered conversation.

“Do you have any thoughts on what has happened?” Enna asked, hoping that something in their studies could give an explanation.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Eillim asked.

Enna was silent for a moment.  She glanced over her shoulder at the Foxen behind them. “We made our gods mad.” She answered finally.

In the long ago this land of the Eastern Continent was covered over only with wandering tribes.  The ranging grounds were green from top to bottom, east to west.  On the equator of Beth and blessed with continuous water from the mountains, the land was one of the richest on the developing world.  Then came the time of chaos, when the entire eastern continent shook with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused, the people assumed, by strife in the heavens. 

At one point a volcano near the eastern ocean blew itself out of existence while an earthquake was shaking in the north.  The earthquake ripped a seam in the land radiating out from the new crater.  Eventually this crater filled with water and the warm temperatures urged life along.  The tribes flocked to the new abundance of food and fresh water and soon there were no more prairie wanderers. 

The chunks of rock that had once been part of the destructive mountain had been thrown far and wide.  Huge gray hulks littered the green praries and were often stumbled upon in the dense forests where they’d come to rest.  They became as common as the trees themselves to the people of the upper baronies.

Boulders marked land borders, way points, distance markers and meeting places.  In one case the alien rock had even become a temple to the civilized Cheysa people.  The largest of all of the unfortunate volcano’s pieces had landed queerly over hanging the edge of the newly formed rift shaken open in the chaos.  Nearly a third of the length of the fragment hung in open space over the cliff.  The huge projecting overhang on the ground side kept it balanced over the precipice.  It was under this overhang that the people built the outer gardens; it was into this rock that they carved their temple.

The twins and the Foxen approached Marbeth Temple from the ravine side.  The massive bridge that spanned the gorge had been constructed over one hundred years during the carving of the temple.   Enna stared in horror at the eight crumbling arches that rose into the sky along the length of the bridge.  The footpath itself appeared to be in no better condition.  Gaps had appeared in the smooth paving and spider web cracks spread across the entire span.  Enna saw the middle third of one of the six support beams rising from the rushing water at the bottom of the gorge had disintegrated.  The two jagged columns reached for one another like broken teeth.

“What has happened to the temple?” Enna turned on the Foxen. “What is going on?”

“This isn’t exactly real now, is it?” the Foxen closed the gap between himself and the girls. “Real enough for you to die, of course, but not so real that there’s anyone can help you.”

“This is your doing,” Eillim said.

“No, it’s yours.” The Foxen answered. “What did you think would happen if you forced us together as you did?  I have begun to destroy her.”

“You seem almost regretful,” Enna observed.

“We’re destroying each other, my little Preyling.” The Foxen laid his ears back and swished his tail in impatience. “If we’re both destroyed then we will no longer to be able to go to battle.  And I do love a battle.  I am not willing to give up existence at this very moment.  Especially not in a draw.”

“How very noble,” Enna scoffed.

“There’s nothing noble about it,” The Foxen answered. “Can we move on?”

In another few minute they reached the foot of the bridge.  Enna saw even more clearly how everything seemed to be crumbling at this holy place.  She did not hesitate to start across the uneven bridge, though the structural defects terrified her.  She was fed up with the Foxen condescendingly calling her prey and insinuating that she was weak and stupid.

Enna studied the arches as she passed under them, craning her neck to read the ancient inscriptions carved into the rock at the apex of each.  Eillim followed just a little off to her left, taking in the view of the raging river in the gorge below.  The Foxen brought up the rear of the group.  As Enna set her foot across the shadow of the third arch reading “Life” and looked up to the fourth “Glory” an earthquake gripped the land and shook her from her feet.

Enna scrapped her hands as she caught her fall.  She turned to search desperately for Eillim.  Enna spotted her sister near the fractured edge of the bridge, too near the edge.  Enna scrambled to her feet as a snaking crack wound its way under Eillim.  She was distantly aware of the Foxen nearby, shouting gleefully that he had not expected things to be quite so exciting.

The fracture deepened.  A dislodged platform of gray rock tipped down toward the gorge, the dark twin still clinging to it.  Eillim leapt for safety as it went over and though she missed Enna’s outstretched arms, she grabbed a hold of a stable section of the bridge.

“Hold on, Ellie,” Enna shouted down to her and flattened herself on the footpath, hanging over, arms reaching.  The quake continued to shake.  Eillim clung to the rock, unwilling to let go.

Enna didn’t know what told her to move.  Perhaps it was the sliding shadow, perhaps one earsplitting sound of rock disintegrating among the many, perhaps pure intuition saved her.  She rolled to her left as the apex of the Life arch collapsed, crashing through the bridge where she’d just lain.

The earth stopped shaking but Enna was not aware of it.  She heard only her own breathing.  Her only thoughts lingered on the huge span of open air beside what had been an ancient and holy bridge.  Though she couldn’t begin to comprehend it, the only thing she could focus her mind to was the fact that Eillim was gone.

A shadow passed over her face and she heard the clatter of rocks.  The Foxen grabbed her, his claws digging into her shoulders.  He pulled her roughly to her feet.  His touch burned her and forced her to focus.  She twisted out of his grip and finally heard the words he was shouting at her.  Chunks of rock continued to break off the trembling structure, intent on joining their brothers in the gorge below.

Finally, she heeded the Foxen urging her to run with threats and intimidations.  Enna glanced once to the place where Eillim had been clinging to life.  The length of pathway along the outer edge of the bridge jaggedly gave way to empty air.  Enna turned and ran.

Shift - Eillim

As the girls passed through the arch, the transparent image folded around them, heavy like wet fabric, yet it still snapped from their passage like a soap bubble.  Ellim felt her sister’s hand grow faint in her grip and panicked.  She squeezed down harder on Enna’s fingers; the wall of dizzy lightness passed and Eillim found herself standing in a shade of a rocky outcropping on sun baked sand.

Eillim breathed in the dry, dusty air of the desert.  She released her sister’s hand and stepped out into the bright light.  The bright flare of the sun was intense, but the heat dry and immobile.  And it was quiet.  With no wind rattling leaves in waving branches, no sound of running water nearby.  Eillim heard the occasional scrabble of animals far off in the distance, but nothing more. Everything seemed so still.

“Where are we?” Enna voiced sounded faint and thin.  Eillim glanced over her shoulder, fearing her sister verged on disappearing again.

Enna stood solid and whole, though she was afraid. “We’re near the Mizrith Ridge in the western part of the desert,” Eillim answered.  She had never been out of the Cheysa green territory but she recognized this place as home.  She could see for wavering miles across the sand dotted with razor trees and desert grass and rock.  She scanned the horizon and identified the distinctive ridge from her studies. “We’re near sacred ground.”

“How anyone could call this filth and destitution ‘sacred’ I will never understand,” A voice spoke behind Eillim.  She turned and saw only glittering, rippling air that told her Svanir hovered nearby.  In the bright desert sunlight this ever-morphing creature disappeared entirely.  Eillim felt an instinctual threat from this enemy she could not see, blending so well with the shimmering desert light.

“What are you doing here?” Eillim asked.  She felt a snarl rising in her throat.  She held it back.

“I am here to help you, Savage,” Svanir answered. “You may call it sacred ground but you know what lies near here.  A massive bone yard, burial place, and location of legend that even now remains feared.  The dead still walk there.  It is quite disgusting, this barren place.”

“The soil here contains more minerals and magic than any of your soggy valleys,” Eillim told Svanir as she turned and crossed back to Enna.  The fair twin had remained silent through all with one hand up to shade her eyes and looking all around.”

“And there is no vegetation to grow from such wealth, no animals to be nurtured and fed.  Thus, it is pointless, a waste.”

“The tribes always had all they needed,” Eillim answered.  She took Enna’s hand and started away from the ridge.

“The savages got what they needed,” Svanir corrected Eillim as she fell in behind them.

Enna lagged in the heat, and Eillim did her best to keep a pace her sister could handle.  Eillim felt exhilarated by the sun and the dust and the outcroppings of razor trees where lizards and small rodents took advantage of the shade.  The shimmering glints that circled her as Svanir paced through the air reminded Eillim of how transparent Enna could become so quelled her own excitement.

They conserved their energy, they did not speak.  Eillim led them toward a canyon that ran nearly straight south through the desert.  The nearly dried riverbed had always acted as a road to the tribes of the Ariv desert following the explosion of the volcano in the northeast. The once wide, bending river, fed from snow melt from the mountains had slowed to almost nothing following land’s chaos.  Life had changed with the loss of their water, but it certainly had not disappeared.

There were several smaller streams and rivers that had once broken off of the main rushing river now.  Like the main river there were many dry stream and lakebeds.  There was one in particular Eillim was searching for.  She knew they couldn’t be far from it when she spotted the carved staircases in the face of the canyon cliff that led all the way to the bottom.  Dozens of these staircases had been built in strategic place along the length of both sides each one given a name, carved into the rock so travelers could find their way. It allowed the people to cross the huge barrier as well as access the slow waters that flowed at the very bottom. The crevice had always been a meeting and trade spot for the tribes.

Eillim and Enna stood at the edge of the canyon, staring down at the staircase. Beyond it a lush, creeping green reached toward them from the center of the canyon floor.  Huge green trees rose from thick grass along the edge of the wide and quickly running stream.  Birds and insects and small animals not at home in a desert flew and chattered in the little oasis at the bottom of the canyon.  Vines and grasses had extended all the way out to the walls of the canyon and then begun to climb, digging roots into the walls and reaching for the sun.

“What happened here?” Eillim asked in a hoarse whisper.  “Why is there so much water? Why is it so green?”

“Life is returning to this desolate place,” Svanir answered. “You should rejoice.”

“And what of the life that was already here?” Eillim growled. “You wiped them out.”

“I did no such thing,” Svanir was indignant. “You did it.  You brought me here.  You forced me into his space.  What outcome did you expect? I am beginning to overwhelm him, to erase his imprint on this place.”

“Isn’t that what you have always desired?” Eillim snarled, finally losing her control.

“We are trapped, together, Savage.” Svanir answered “I am bound to him, bound to this place.  If he dies now, so would I.  I will not be taken this way.”

“Right, you would want to linger over your victory,” Eillim muttered.

“What is the point of winning if you cannot bask in your own glory?” Svanir agreed. “It is time to move on.”

The ancient steps had begun to crumble under the searching, reaching feelers and roots of creeping ivy.  Eillim started down first, close to the wall, but walking confidently.  Enna followed behind her.  Eillim held one of Enna’s hands in her right and trailed the left against the rock wall at her side.  They descended into the shadow, out of direct sun and into a cooler climate. Svanir’s shifting outline became more apparent in the dimmer light.

The twins were about a third of the way down when Eillim first saw the sloping V shape of the canyon splitting off in to the burial ground in distance along the river.  Eillim hopped over a missing stair, leaving Enna behind to follow once she’d landed.  The dark sister spun around to wave Enna forward when the earthquake began to shake.

Eillim saw the shimmer of Svanir hanging in open air to the left of the stairs.  Enna crouched low against the wall far from the edge of the stair.  The rock wall began to crumble and stones and dust started raining down around them.  A thick fracture appeared on the step under Enna.

“Nini jump!” Eillim screamed.  She darted toward the edge and reached her arms out to her sister above her.

Enna launched herself at Eillim as her step sheered off the wall.  The shifting rocks under her feet caused her to falter.  Enna’s leap was short and the girls’ hands slipped through the air inches from each other.  Eillim slammed flat on the rock stair as Enna grabbed a handhold and clung to the trembling rock and twisting vines.

“Enna hold on!” Eillim shouted.  The world continued to shake around them, the stairs disintegrating and tumbling down the wall, splashing into the racing river and onto grassy banks below.

Eillim reached for Enna, to grab her hand and pull her up.  Eillim nearly had Enna’s hand in her own when she felt the rock sliding beneath her.  The rock under her crumbled and Eillim’s reaching arm betrayed her, swinging away from Enna to grab a hold of a protruding vine.  She dug her fingers into the thick foliage and wedged her toes into gaps in the rock wall as the stairs tumbled down around her.

Eillim hung against the wall with her forehead pressed against the rock as the earthquake shook itself out.  When she finally willed her eyes open again, she already knew the stairs stretching to the top of the canyon had all gone.  She knew that Enna was gone.  She looked up to find a place to grab, to drag herself back to the top.  She saw Svanir’s ghostly shadow hovering above her head, waiting.  Eillim began to climb.

To Be Continued - Come back next monday for part 4, entitled 'Shade

UPDATE - Part 4 - Shade uploaded as of july 5th