Chapter 4: New Day

Some of you bring corruption here. The creeping blight of the outside world.

A voice echoes loudly inside your head. It is nearly impossible to describe in any certain terms. It is loud, but so perfect in tone that it is not painful. It is deep, but you cannot imagine assigning a gender to it. It is not angry, not like you would normally picture an angry voice, but neither is it calm. It fills not only your head, but down through your spine and into your gut, out to your fingers and toes.

It suffuses you, fills your being. It is not entirely pleasant.

Your words mean nothing. The faint mewling of a sightless whelp. It knows nothing, attempts to make sense of everything without thought.

This one. And this one.

The voice sounds again, though quieter. As it speaks, you can hear birdsong approaching. A flock of sparrows bursts from the trees nearby, and surround Ember and Elora's heads, flapping and tweeting, but not touching or threatening.

Have you not done enough? Has your power not destroyed enough of the world that you must bring it here as well? You will not destroy this place!

The sparrows scatter as though frightened, only to reform into a constantly roiling, chirping cloud of feathers. As you watch in amazement, the cloud shapes itself into a face, at least 3 or 4 feet high, hovering above the path. The continually flapping, fluttering birds that make up the shape give it a curiously liquid appearance, not settling on any one exact set of features.

As the voice sounds in your head again, the face's mouth moves along with it. The face hovers forward to stare directly at Ember.

Every bit of magic you use poisons the atmosphere more. You can leave, you can foreswear your inborn powers, you can throw yourself off the nearest cliff. But it is too late. The world dies more every second.

The voice is quiet now, but intense.

Hubris. Those who would have been gods failed to recognize that without a world and its people, even a god can die and be lost to the emptiness of the universe.

The face turns to Willitan.

Do you think that mere good intent can possibly overcome the end of the world? You are more naive than I thought.

It is not your fault you cannot see...

A profusion of birds of all shapes and colors boils from among the trees, swarming the party. Wings and feathers and bird calls overwhelm and dazzle your senses.

...so I will show you...

The voice of the Guardian fades into a distant series of echoes, and your senses go blank for a moment...

-----

You stand unnervingly high above the ground, looking down at a battlefield. Tens of thousands of... soldiers? It's difficult to discern from this height and distance... spread across the landscape. The sky is roiling with clouds of a thousand different shades, none of them natural: greens, purples, yellows, colors you can't name. You look to the side to see a single man, his features twisted with mindless fury, an aura of power pulsing around him. As you look around further, you realize where you must be... these are the Floating Towers of Ardraven.

The fabled runescribed arches and delicate stonework of the Towers are rubble now. The ground lurches unsettlingly beneath you. Among what once were the streets and squares of the Upper City are countless people. Many lie on the ground, unmoving and quite possibly dead. Some struggle to keep their feet, looking exhausted if not completely drained. One man, his features drawn with weariness and pain, leans against the scattered remains of a marble fountain. He calls out toward the man standing next to you.

"Ryzan! You do not need to do this! Step back from this madness! Come back to me, and we will quit this pointless destruction... we will live together in peace... just us. We can let the world heal." The man's voice fades, his strength flagging. "Please, Ryzan. I beg you..."

The man, Ryzan, standing next to you half-turns to look back. "They have destroyed everything, Avalin. The Towers fall even as we speak," he says, his voice booming out loud enough, maybe, for the combatants far below to hear, his eyes wide with madness. "Someone must pay. And you will help me extract that cost, my dear. Our last great work together, even if the fabric of reality itself is rent asunder."

Ryzan reaches out one hand toward Avalin, who jerks forward, back arched unnaturally far, his head twisting away from Ryzan as though resisting the gesture. A glowing force floods from Avalin's body to surge into Ryzan's, who turns to face the battlefield once more and throws his arms wide. From the forests dotting the fields below, the same glowing force races into the sky, merging with the clouds above. The trees are flattened completely as you watch, and lightning surges from the sky. Bolts slam into the ground one after another, with barely a pause between them, surging through the bodies of the soldiers. Bolts saturate the crumbling, faltering ground you stand on, which tilts nauseatingly to one side. Debris slides off the edge, cascading to the ground hundreds of feet below. Ryzan seems unaffected by any of this. He continues to stretch his arms toward the horizon, the aura about him growing into a blinding intensity.

Finally, with one gesture, made as though fighting against an impossibly heavy weight, Ryzan lifts his hands to the sky. "Be... no more!" his voice echoes over the landscape.

In a single blink of an eye, the battlefield is... gone. It is as though the entire area was cut from a piece of cloth and the hole sewn shut again. In the sudden, shocking silence, you look to your side as the blinding aura winks out, and Ryzan turns to look back at the husk of what was once Avalin. If there is recognition of the magnitude of what he has done, none of it shows on Ryzan's face. He simply stares, and lets himself fall backward over the edge. As he falls, his body seems to unravel, fading into a cloud of component molecules that dissipate on the wind.

Can your good intentions heal a rift such as that, small one? the voice says, not unkindly.

For the first time, it seems to show some emotion. Sadness. Loss. Grief.

If your tiny group of crusaders knows of a way to restore a balance of power so badly tilted, then I would be happy to listen. Men and women who draw power from everything around them, turning it to their own selfish ends, ignoring the warnings screaming all about them... selfishness... greed... is it beyond repair? I have dwelt here for hundreds of years, watching, witnessing, unable to do anything other than protect what tiny pocket of reality over which I have been given dominion. If there is hope, I know not where to find it.

The scene fades from your vision, and you return to the forest path, the face of sparrows still present, but the other birds now gone.