Fortress Al-Mir

It might have been in the middle of winter with a war going on but the world continued to turn and life had to move forward.

The morning started as any other for Jacob of Loan. He got up with the sun, headed out to the coops, and did a patrol around the perimeter. Coyotes, wild dogs and cats, and even harpies all liked to feast on the chickens any time but winter was an especially vulnerable time of the year. A lot less food to go around with the cold.

No alarmed squawking had woken him but still best to make sure the fence was intact. Didn’t want the mangy mutts prying something loose one night and then breaking in too fast to react to the next. Finding no problems in any of the likely areas, he opened the coop gate, stepped inside, and started spreading feed. With the chickens happily enjoying their feast, he started collecting eggs. Egg output dropped in winter months as well but it didn’t stop completely. With enough chickens, there were more than enough eggs to go around. Keeping them happy and safe helped.

Heading back inside, he handed off the eggs to his lovely wife. She was already prepping for breakfast. Leaving a peck on her cheek, he headed back into the bedroom of their small house to rouse the boys. Jacob’s father had never let him sleep in. While Jacob was a little more lax, there was work to be done.

James, the older of his two boys, got up without complaint. With a gargantuan yawn, he headed off for the latrine. Jims, however, wasn’t even asleep when Jacob entered the room. His youngest boy sat back on the bed, eyes wide as he stared up at the ceiling. Jims had his fingers gripped tight on the edge of the blanket, knuckles as white as his face.

With a sigh, Jacob sat down on the bed and rested a hand on his son’s chest. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. “Did you have another nightmare?” he asked, giving his son a firm squeeze of his hand. “It’s alright. Everything’s fine, Jims.”

Jims turned his head, eyes unblinking, to stare at Jacob. In the hoarsest whisper, he spoke two soft words. “It’s happening.”

“Nothing is happening, Jims. It was a nightmare. A dream. It can’t hurt—”

“It’s today,” he half-shouted, lurching forward as much as he could with Jacob’s hand on his chest. “The sky is breaking!”

“I was out there not five minutes ago and the sky was fine, Jims. Did you get any sleep last night?”

Slowly, still without blinking, the young boy shook his head.

Jacob let out a heavy sigh. He didn’t know how to handle this. He knew what his father would have done. Under no circumstances was he about to bend the boy over his knee and whip him until his bottom bled. Instead, he just patted his son on the chest. “Close your eyes, Jims. I’ll have your mother bring you something to eat but try to sleep, alright? Everything is fine. I promise.”

As if those words were the only thing he needed, Jims nodded his head and slowly closed his eyes. Jacob sat still on the bed for a long moment, watching as the tension drained from his son’s grip on the blanket. After a moment, his breathing slowed and steadied and he fell asleep. As easy as that. With a sad shake of his head, Jacob got up from the bed—carefully; he didn’t want to wake his son—and quietly stepped back out into the main room of the home.

Annette gave him a concerned look. Jacob could only shrug. He was about to explain when he heard his eldest son calling from outside.

“Dad? Daaaad?”

Hearing the undertone of fear in his voice, Jacob rushed out, grabbing the heavy club that rested by the door. If some coyote had been prowling around the latrine, it wouldn’t even know what hit it.

But his son was just standing outside, halfway between the house and the latrine. Jaw open and eyes wide, he stared upwards.

Bugs eating at his stomach, Jacob slowly followed his eldest son’s gaze.

The sky, the bright blue sky, wasn’t so bright or blue anymore. A dark, vibrating line split the gray sky in two, stretching from horizon to horizon. The club slid from Jacob’s loose fingers, thumping lightly against the ground. The chickens in the coop were going wild, clucking and thrashing and beating against the fence. In the distance, he could hear the baying of dogs or coyotes, howling as if they were being torn apart.

Color fled from the world. There wasn’t much color to begin with in winter but the browns of the house’s wood faded to a mute gray. The green needles on distant trees, cloaked by a dusting of snow, turned completely black. His son’s brown hair turned to a snowy white.

Jacob, mouth dry and fingers numb, just stared.

The slit in the sky peeled apart, warping and twisting the dark gray of the cloudless sky. The vibrating lines of the fissure trembled and shook violently, like a continuous bolt of ever-changing lightning. It continued widening, filling the sky with a void filled with numerous tiny lights. Like stars except… not quite. They danced around, darting here and there.

A moon rolled into place, obstructing most of the void. It wasn’t the normal moon—he could still see the normal moon, low in the sky and somehow less real than usual, lacking not just color but presence. This new moon, covering a full third of the entire sky, was a deeply violet moon with bright purple jagged lines radiating out from the black center.

Something snapped in the back of Jacob’s mind. He sank down, knees settling in snow-damped soil. It soaked into his clothes but he barely felt it. He was too busy staring up at the sky, watching as the sky stared back down at him.

It happened.

It was today.

The sky broke.

Priscilla barreled through three trees before she lost enough momentum and the next caught her. She tumbled and fell, snapping branches and scattering needles to the wind. The frost-covered ground was as hard as a rock but dragonoids were hardy. It barely felt any worse than crashing into several trees had.

She was too preoccupied to think about pain anyway.

Sightless eyes stared up at what had been a perfectly normal sky only moments ago. The great burning stars overhead had been shoved aside like they hardly mattered. In their place, a beacon formed.

Priscilla wasn’t one to admit fault. Ever.

Leaving her mountaintop without a guide had maybe not been the wisest course of action, however. She had been stumbling along, flying toward nothing more than a feeling. She hadn’t known where to go and the Stars, though they clearly had been pointing something out, had never been something she had been that good at reading. Too vague. Too far off. They just didn’t have the context to give proper signs to any who might watch. Good for asking about something as grand and ever-changing as the future but not so good for asking specific directions.

Now, it was as if a finger jammed down out of the sky, practically pointing out exactly where she needed to go. Like the powers of old had seen her fruitless wanderings and decided to take pity.

Well, she wasn’t one to ignore the old ones offering a gift. More than a gift, even, a sign. This was it.

Priscilla stared up. This wasn’t something that only she could see. Everyone would see it. Everyone would know.

Claws dug into the tree as she pulled herself back to her feet, all without blinking even once.

That fiery dragon heart she had left at the base of her mountain would see as well. She would know. And she would come.

But Priscilla would get there first.

Sule nearly fell out of his chair. To be fair, aside from the listeners, everyone in the room at least jumped. The listeners went into an outright panic as the movement caused ripples in their bowls. Some screamed short, clipped squawks of fear and surprise, others faceplanted straight into the water.

When the resident monster in human skin with bright gold eyes jumped to his feet and rushed out of the room, it was hard to maintain a semblance of calm. When he first jumped up, Sule had thought that that was it. The golden-eyed monster was finally going to dispense with niceties and platitudes and just usurp the position of sultan in full. He was already running practically everything.

But he just left. Not a word.

That was… odd.

Normally, the man moved with a practiced lethargy. As if nothing, no matter the situation or the people involved, could possibly be a bother to him. To see him rush out like he had contracted a sudden bout of dysentery had more than just Sule staring at the door. Zarkov, his Grand Vizier, gathered the presence of mind to rush through the room, pulling the listeners away from their disturbed pools of water. As soon as he finished, he turned to Sule and quirked a single eyebrow.

Sule, supposed Sultan of Evestani, sighed. “I suppose I’ll go see if he’s… alright?”

“I would hate for him to reenter in a distressed state.”

“Of course,” Sule said, not bothering to fight the sneer off his face. He heard what Zarkov hadn’t said. The man didn’t want to risk their resident monster returning upset so better calm him down. The coward was just worried over his own skin.

With one last look over the large table and the map it held—their campaign into the Duchy of Mystakeen was going quite well, especially with the golden magic their monster provided—Sule stalked out of the room and searched around for where he had likely gone. It didn’t take long to notice the foot-shaped cracks in the stone floor. Figuring they would lead him in the right direction, Sule left the central area of the palace, heading to one of the guest rooms. The nearest one. The door was wide open and half hanging from its hinges.

The golden-eyed monster stood out on the balcony, staring up at the sky. His fingers, gripping the balcony’s railing, clenched tight enough to crush the smooth stone in his grip.

Sule felt he had a working survival instinct. That instinct screamed at him that approaching would not be the wisest course of action if he ever wanted to see his daughters again. He was about to turn around and walk away—he could figure out what had happened later when he wasn’t in immediate danger of having his head crushed—when something strange started happening.

The colors left. The guestroom bed, covered with a rich red blanket and translucent blue curtains, simply lost all of its brightness. The red turned dark. The blue faded to a gray. The floor even lost its color. Which didn’t quite make sense given that the black and white mosaic tiles didn’t have color to begin with.

Confusion made Sule step into the room. Rich dark wood turned pale. The amber glowstone lights dimmed to the point where he could barely see. In the polished silver mirror, his own face, normally a healthy brown, looked like it had been coated in ash.

Staggering forward, nausea filling his stomach, Sule stepped out onto the balcony. If this was a counterattack, he wasn’t quite sure what its purpose was. Nevertheless, the source was outside.

Stopping just behind the man with the golden eyes, Sule couldn’t help but gape.

In the far east, on the distant horizon, the sky had been torn apart. A great not-moon hung in a black void. So vast and so encompassing—

“Don’t look at it.”

Sule blinked. He was on his knees for some reason, staring up. But his view of the sky was blocked by the back of the glowing-eyed monster. Sule couldn’t see his face but he could hear the barely-concealed rage vibrating just beneath his calm tone.

“That is what we fight. That will be the end of all if we fail. We must not fail.”

Sule could still see the holes in the sky on either side of the monster’s shoulders. He didn’t dare move, however. Not if it meant seeing that not-moon again. He simply nodded his head, perspective on this war altered. Perhaps it was more important than he had thought.

Ilya folded her arms across her chest, glaring up at the sky.

“What? W-What is this?” Duke Woldair stammered.

Alya, Ilya’s mother, had a hand clutched to her chest as she stared up with nervous eyes. Beads of sweat dripped down her face. Two other advisors had rushed over along with seemingly half of the manor’s guards. All to her room. It was on the right side of the manor to see the event in the sky in full but there were surely other balconies to watch from. Then again, they could have seen it from practically anywhere. It was almost directly overhead. Not even the mountains shading Cliff could obstruct that thing.

From the manor balcony, Ilya could easily see the streets of the rest of the city. Not all of them, of course, but enough to guess that everywhere was probably the same. The streets were crowded, packed full of people. Many were on their knees, staring up. Praying, perhaps, though whether out of fear or reverence was anybody’s guess.

With everyone in varying states of panic, Ilya felt like something of an outsider. She was the only one not experiencing some level of distress. Worry, certainly. It was hard to not worry when the whole sky split open. Yet it wasn’t the all-encompassing dread that seemed to have hit everyone around here.

There was some sensation in the back of her mind that this was fine. Not normal, but fine. This wasn’t going to kill everyone or destroy the world. It just… was.

The other major emotion running through Ilya’s mind was a tinge of irritation. She didn’t know exactly what this was but, given that she was apparently the only one immune to whatever they were experiencing, she had a feeling that she knew who to blame for it.

There had been one large ritual they had been planning. The ritual that would weaken the barriers between planes so that the archway could reconnect to the Underworld. There had been concerns that it was too strong of a ritual, that it would do something far more than what was intended. Savren and Zullie were supposed to have tuned it back.

Was this what they called holding back?

Ilya had a feeling that the whole fortress was falling to pieces without her there to make sure everything ran smoothly. Arkk was good but he got focused on his ideas, often rushing off to handle them personally. Vezta was an inhuman monstrosity who probably didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘restraint’. The orcs, gorgon, and thieves were hardly reliable. She had thought that Zullie, at least, had a good head on her shoulders…

Now?

She needed to get back.

Her wounds were better these days. She wouldn’t be drawing back a bow or running through a forest anytime soon but she was at least back on her feet. She could make her way back now. Perhaps not on her own, but…

Ilya looked at Alya. Something must have caught the older elf’s eye. She managed to pull her gaze off the spectacle in the sky.

“You… knew?”

“Knew what, Mom?” Ilya said with a glare. With their voices, the Duke had managed to drag his eyes off the sky, though he didn’t quite look all there. He stared in confusion.

“This… you knew it was coming,” Alya said, eyes wide and fearful.

“I didn’t know anything of the sort,” Ilya said as she glared up at the purple moon thing. “I’ve been trying to tell you, Arkk and I went into the Cursed—”

“This is my fault. We were warned of this. I’ve failed.” Alya’s shoulders slumped. “I left, thinking I could stop another war from starting. And I failed at that too. I left my position behind and now… My whole life…”

She sagged, leaning up against the doorframe that led out to the balcony. Like the weight of all her centuries hit her all at once. Ilya could only stare, wondering how her mother had ended up like this. She was warned? Warned of what, exactly? And who warned her?

Ilya tried to ask but, with tears in her eyes, Alya just shook her head.

Grabbing her by the wrist, Ilya dragged her back indoors. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“Now,” Ilya said. “I don’t know if I’m well enough to travel on my own—damn Arkk for destroying the teleportation circles on his way out—so you’re going to help me. You’re going to explain everything on the way. No more deflections, no more lies.”

“Where are we going?” Alya said, her voice sounding steadier as Ilya dragged her away from the balcony.

“Back to Fortress Al-Mir. You have explaining to do. Arkk has explaining to do. And I’m sick of that handsy duke coming into my room to check on my condition,” she growled. Her mother could throw herself at the Duke all she wanted. Ilya wanted none of it.

Even with that Fissure in the Sky, the Duke paid far too much attention to the women. Ilya made it a mere five steps before he called out after them.

“Guards! Guards! Stop them. They know something!”

The pair of guards, normally posted outside Ilya’s room for her protection, stepped into the room. They hadn’t left their posts with all the commotion. They hadn’t fallen into a stupor after seeing the sky. They did glance at one another, surprise riddled in their faces when they realized the Duke was pointing at his chief advisor and the guest they had been guarding for the past several weeks.

Their confusion didn’t stop them from lowering their pikes, stopping Ilya in her tracks.

At Ilya’s side, her mother looked back and forth with just as much confusion as the guards must have felt. It was like she couldn’t quite comprehend what was going on.

Ilya glared. Not at anyone in particular. Just at the situation. Slowly, she raised her arms in surrender. “Perfect,” she hissed. “Just perfect.”