Chapter 25

Rone pushed himself as hard as he could. He despised these mountains more than he’s despised anything else in his life. The one he was climbing now seemed to go out of its way to lay a rock directly in front of him to where he would trip and stumble, causing his stump to erupt in a burst of fiery pain. Each time, however, he would grit his teeth and press forward. It was hard. It was so hard to force his mind to ignore the pain and the added damage he was doing to his remaining leg.

The only thing that kept him going was the promise of seeing Keiara again. The sleeping girl he’d lugged out of the mountains was just a cruel consolation prize. He’d watch over her for hours since she’d collapsed in the Polaris Mountains back on Purga, but that Keiara hadn’t been the one that he’d come to know. She hadn’t been the one he fell in love with back in the Qarri Forest.

The one trapped here, in this forsaken, cursed, and blasted wasteland…that was the Keiara he knew. And he wasn’t going to stop until he found her and brought her home.

He was placing his feet as carefully as he could when a sudden sense that he was being watched overcame him. There was no fear however. There was no inkling that the watcher was malevolent. In fact, it was the opposite. It left him feeling an overwhelming sense of joy.

“Rone.” The voice was low but unmistakable.

He stopped suddenly and looked up. At first, he saw nothing but the bottom of a huge outcropping jutting out from the mountain. Then, as he focused harder, he saw two outlines standing near the outcropping’s edge. They were shadowy and indistinct and one was quite a bit larger than the other. He knew without a doubt, however, who the smaller one was. He could vaguely make out slim, feminine features. He saw long, dark hair blowing about in the breeze.

The bigger figure started to slowly fade. Its dark silhouette became grey and hazy. He could see the outlines of the mountain behind it. Another second went by and then it was gone altogether.

He didn’t care.

His eyes remained glued to Keiara.

Knowing that she was there…right there…brought a renewed surge of fire to his aching, tired limbs. They sang with adrenaline and he climbed the mountain faster than ever. He pushed past the rocks, jags, and fissures. If he stumbled, he righted himself almost without thinking about it.

By the time he hauled himself over the lip of the outcropping, he was breathing hard, his leg yammered at him with the intensity of the beating he’d given it, and his cheeks were bright red.

But he’d made it.

“Rone!” a soft, enchanting voice said.

His vision blurred for a minute and then slowly started to get clearer. Hovering over him with a huge smile on her face was Keiara. Her soft brown eyes sucked him in and he felt like he could lose himself in them for the rest of eternity.

He blinked several times and then slowly got off the ground. Without any hesitation, he pulled her into a fierce hug and kissed her with everything he had. Every bit of love. Every bit of joy and happiness. Every last emotion that he felt. They cycled through him and were amazingly overwhelming. There was a sense of rightness to his world now, like a sucking black hole in his being had suddenly been filled. He’d never felt like that with anyone before.

He broke off the kiss and stepped back so he could look at her. A wide smile lit up his entire face.

“I know you ran away from me before but don’t you think escaping to some alternate world is a bit much?” he teased, laughing.

She laughed too, punching him lightly on the arm.

She stared at him, the smile dropping off her face suddenly as she broke down crying, her harsh sobs wracking her entire body. Rone pulled her to him and just held her, gently caressing her hair and back.

“I-I thought he killed you,” she whispered. “I thought I would never see you again. And then you were there in that cave. I wasn’t sure what was real anymore.”

“I’m real,” he answered her immediately. “That’s the only thing you need to know. I am real, Keiara and…,” he paused, nervous fear causing him to hesitate, “and I love you.”

She looked up, her eyes red and swollen.

He gently brushed the tears off her cheek.

“You do?” she asked.

He didn’t want to, especially because of the worried expression on her face, but he laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“Of course,” he said. He held the side of her face with a gentle hand. “Do you think I would come here for just anyone?”

Before she could answer, he kissed her again. For a few blessed moments everything else didn’t matter. The war with the Blak Army. The growing power that Wilhelm was amassing. The worry and fear he harbored for his friends and family. For those few, heavenly seconds, it was just the two of them and he wished time could freeze.

A thundering crack splintered that dream of his. It was loud enough to shake the entire world. The ground underneath their feet trembled sharply. They stumbled for a second with Rone holding onto Keiara as tightly as he could.

Another huge crack ripped through the air and this time they stared uncomprehendingly as the world they were stuck in slowly started to tear itself apart. Deep cracks and gaping chasms flowed across Purga’s devastated mirror world. Purple fire flowed out of each one in raging torrents as the inky darkness surged and flowed across the lands.

“What’s happening?” Rone asked. He swept his gaze over the landscape but everywhere he looked there was more of the same.

The cracks and the fissures were overtaking everything. The only island of safety appeared to be the mountain they were standing on. Even that, however, was starting to change. Rone watched as the cracks started racing toward their safe haven. They reached the mountain’s base and started climbing up the slopes. He could see the purple fire lurking inside each one, making the cracks glow with unnatural light.

“Time is almost out,” Keiara said as she remembered the Roc’s words.

The burned man’s power is growing, she thought and if they didn’t hurry there wasn’t going to be a Purga to return to.

She turned to Rone.

“How do we get out of here?” she asked him but when Rone stared at her with a blank look, her heart dropped. “You don’t know?”

“Heari didn’t say,” he responded. “I’m really starting to think she gets some kind of sick pleasure out of messing with me.”

“You didn’t ask her?” Keiara responded, an edge to her words.

Rone looked sheepishly at her.

“In my defense, at the time I was only concerned about getting to you,” he told her. “I guess I’m a little single-minded that way.”

“Well I’m glad you came for me, but it’s not going to do much good if we both die here!” she responded.

She was angry at him for not thinking to ask Heari for the way out, but she let go of it. Most of her was still too overjoyed at seeing him, alive and talking, to care about his stupid mistake.

Four or five thunderclaps, one right after the other, caused them both to clamp their hands to their ears. They were so loud that their teeth vibrated.

Rone’s heart hammered with fear.

Keiara grasped his hand, holding it tightly.

Both of them watched as the darkness rapidly overtaking everything started to bubble and froth. Each miles-wide tendril of purple-veined darkness flowed over the land and ran into each other. Pretty soon there was an enormous globule of the stuff. It covered nearly three-fourths of the entire continent.

“What’s happening?” Keiara asked, frightened.

Rone didn’t respond. Instead, he watched as the nearly liquid-like darkness started to hump and bubble up. He knew how this was going to turn out. It was nearly the exact same thing that happened to him at Ro Lake.

Only this time, the scale of the thing was way more massive.

Unsurprised, the disgusting, slimy darkness started to form appendages, eight of them in fact. Its body was segmented into three parts, a head, an abdomen, and a thorax. Massive mandibles at least three miles long jutted out of its head. The slimy darkness dripped off their ends and fell hundreds of feet to splatter on dry, destroyed earth. They watched as the darkness bubbled up furiously and ate away at the ground like acid. More purple fire erupted from the hole it created.

“What is that thing?” Keiara nearly screamed, watching in horror as the gigantic spider creature became fully formed.

“That is Blak,” Rone answered, remembering its words from his previous encounter. “That is Chaos.”

Keiara shuddered visibly with fear. She could feel the dagger claws of panic digging into her mind. Her heart thudded against her chest. How are we supposed to defeat that? Everything the Roc had told her seemed so ludicrous in the face of physically seeing Blak in all its power. She couldn’t fathom how they would even be able to hurt it. She envisioned bringing her fires against it and watching as it simply blew them out in one breath and laughed at her maliciously. Hopelessness quickly followed on the heels of that image.

“How can we beat that?” she asked, out loud this time, her voice almost a whisper.

Rone grabbed onto her, locking his hands onto her shoulders and digging in painfully with his fingers.

The shock of the pain did its job. Keiara’s shell-shocked eyes widened slightly and then focused on him.

“Don’t think about that,” he urged. “Don’t think about what you have to face. If you let yourself be defeated before you even begin a battle, there’s no hope for you to win.”

The saying was an old one and it caused his heart a lot of pain. It was one of the sayings that Wilhelm had taught him when he’d been his teacher.

“You have to see your victory in your mind. You have to feel it. Taste it. Let that vision take control of everything and you’re that much closer. That thing is terrifying, I know. That thing is powerful too, but so are we. Look at it. Look at it closely.”

Keiara didn’t want to. She tried to shake her head but Rone wouldn’t let her out of it. He forced her to stand next to him, on the slowly crumbling ledge. Together they looked at the monster consuming the world.

“What do you see?” he asked.

The monster seemed to be looking right at them. The force of its gaze was almost enough to drive Keiara to the ground, but with Rone by her side she had more strength than even she knew. They stood firm.

“I see something old and powerful,” she responded. “But…,” she paused, looking more closely. When she saw it, she almost didn’t believe it. When she saw it again, she knew her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her. The creature, even though it could clearly see them, didn’t look her in the eyes. Or Rone. Whenever they tried to lock eyes with it, it looked away from them. “It’s afraid.”

“Of us.” Rone nodded. “Whatever it is, it knows us. It knows our power.”

He turned her face toward his so that he could deliver his next words with more emphasis.

“It knows to fear us.”

“Why?”

“Because we can destroy it,” he answered, knowing his words were true.

Keiara felt the power of his words fill her. The fear and terror the thing inspired slowly evaporated, which was a relief. She’d always hated feeling scared and was not one to give in to her fear. That thing, however, inspired a raw, primal dread that had little to do with what she wanted. Now that it was gone, she felt like she could breathe easier.

The creature, sensing that its hold of fear was waning, seemed to renew its efforts. Its spindly legs started to scurry, bringing it even closer to them.

Keiara and Rone, however, stood their ground.

The cracks, fissures, and yawning chasms ate away at what remained of the world between. The darkness flowed around the giant spider creature as it swarmed even closer to the two of them. The mountain, which had previously been almost untouched, was disintegrating more quickly now.

[Nowhere to run, meat-things,] the voice hissed. Even its voice was hideous. It seemed to crawl sluggishly through their minds and grated against every nerve in their bodies.

They shuddered.

“We will destroy you! We will feed you our power and watch as it turns you to dust!” Rone yelled, his right fist glowing faintly blue along with his eyes.

The creature hissed at him in anger.

[Your world will fall to me,] it replied. [It is only a matter of time.]

It laughed, the sound cold and vicious. All around them the inky, purple-streaked darkness surged and flew at them.

They watched as it crawled closer and closer. Their island of safety was beginning to dwindle to nothing.

[I will devour you both,] it laughed again.

Rone grabbed hold of Keiara’s hand. They watched Blak’s mutated spider form come at them, mouth agape and mandibles twitching.

“It fears us,” Rone whispered to Keiara. “It fears our power.”

Energy, raw and potent, surged through both of them. They could feel it from the pit of their stomachs to the deepest corners of their minds.

Rone's eyes blazed with bright blue light.

Keiara's eyes lit up with red orange fire.

Rone looked at Keiara and saw that her dark hair was tinged with orange flames.

Keiara looked at Rone and his eyes were spewing sparks of blue electricity as wind swirled around him.

They gripped each other’s hands a little harder.

Blak dropped even lower toward them, intent on swallowing them. It didn’t realize its mistake until it was too late.

The winds raged into a massive tornado with Rone and Keiara at the center. At the same time, she thrust out a hand and a column of fire shot out, merging and combining with the huge tornado.

With a loud cry, Rone directed the fire twister forward.

It hit Blak with a loud whoosh!

Then the world between was gone and they were back on Purga.