A Realm of Shadows (12 page)

Suddenly, the
sky rumbled with thunder and lightning, and a moment later, the battle stopped
on both sides as everyone froze and searched the skies. There followed an awful
roar, louder even than the thunder, as the skies parted and from their midst there
suddenly appeared a host of dragons, ferocious, horrible, enraged, all opening their
great jaws and diving down right for them.

It was, Merk
knew, death coming for them all.

Kyra stood unsteadily
on the small raft, watching the sluggish, black river pass by below her as she
wound her way silently, deeper into the heart of darkness. The creature behind
her kept his head down and dragged his pole along the river floor, the gentle
splashing the only sound punctuating the thick and gloomy silence. The deeper into
Marda she went, the more her sense of unease deepened. She felt as if she were
being led in a funeral procession to her death.

The air here was
hot and moist, sticking to her like glue, the sky stuck in twilight, the only
sound in this land that of distant explosions of volcanoes, of the hissing of
the streams of lava that cut through the black mountainside. This land was all
shades of black: the black sky, the black waters of the river, the black soil
and ash of the countryside, and the two towering black mountains which loomed
before her.

Kyra looked up with
hesitation as the river carried her between the mountains, feeling
claustrophobic. Each rose hundreds of feet high, black as ink, and as she
looked closely, she saw thousands of tiny yellow eyes appearing in their crags,
tiny creatures watching her as she passed. They looked like a thousand small
stars in the night sky. She braced herself, wondering if they would pounce as
she went.

Kyra tightened
her grip on her staff, wishing she were anywhere but here. She had never felt
so alone. She peered into the horizon, wondering where these waters were taking
her, and sensing that wherever it was, it was leading her to the Staff of Truth.
She felt she was being led to it, and yet she also sensed it was a trap. Yet
she had little choice. She had no other beacons in this foreign and hostile
land.

Kyra sensed a
massive battle coming, a battle of spiritual forces, and she closed her eyes and
felt a slight burning in her stomach. She knew that where she was going would
test all that she had, all that she was, would force her to face the darkest
parts of herself. She would rather battle a thousand men in an open field than grapple
in this realm of darkness, a realm she did not entirely understand. It was the
realm that held the key to saving Escalon, a realm of spirits, a realm of
hidden powers. A realm of shadows.

The river finally
led her out to the other side of the mountains, and as it did, the landscape
opened up again. Kyra looked out into the countryside and this time spotted
thousands of small, black structures, looking like clay cottages, abandoned. This
seemed to be one of the cities of the troll nation, all deserted when the
trolls fled south, for Escalon. Now Marda sat empty, awaiting their return, if
ever. Lucky for her, Kyra realized—or else she would be battling thousands of trolls
right now, on her way north.

Kyra studied the
city as she passed through it, the endless cottages all the same, the streets
of dirt, and she recoiled at what she saw: the black ground was littered with
bones. There were bones everywhere, carcasses of rotting animals, all, she
realized, the trolls’ victims. It looked as if the trolls ate these creatures and
then just left the bones on the ground. She also spotted fresh bodies on
spikes, and realized the trolls slowly ate away at them. A savage nation.

Amongst these, Kyra
spotted grotesque troll heads on pikes everywhere she looked, and she wondered
if these trolls had been killed as a warning, because they had defied some sort
of law, or if this was just some sort of sport. She felt sick as she saw some human
heads amongst them, too, and wondered if these were the innocent victims
kidnapped during their expeditions into Escalon.

The river
turned, and Kyra recoiled as she saw an entire field of human bodies, dead,
chained to each other. She gasped. Slaves. Poor, innocent humans the trolls had
abducted when raiding Escalon, humans who’d had the bad fate to live a horrible,
awful life here as slaves of these creatures, before finally meeting a
miserable end. Kyra tightened her grip on her staff, determined to avenge them.
A part of her wished all the trolls were here now, so she could battle them
herself. No, she knew. A much worse battle was awaiting her.

Hearing an
explosion on the horizon, Kyra forced herself to look away and instead focused
on the huge ball of lava shooting into the air, sending thousands of streaks of
bright light into the gloomy landscape. There arose a gentle clacking noise,
and she looked down into the waters and was horrified to see they were sailing
past bones, all floating downriver, bouncing gently off the raft, first a few, then
dozens of them. They were of all shapes and sizes, and she tried not to wonder
whose they were, or how they had got here.

Kyra thought of
her mother, needing her strength. She pondered her words:
You must empty
your mind, Kyra. You must unlearn everything you know.
What had she meant?
It is you, Kyra. It is you who must go there and retrieve the weapon.

Had her mother been
right? Did Escalon’s salvation really lie here, in this hell? Had she ever even
truly seen her mother? Or had it all been a dream?

Mother
, Kyra called
out in her mind.
Where are you? Are you with me?

Kyra listened,
quieting her mind, hoping to hear back. Yet nothing came but silence. It was as
if the silence of Marda were too thick to penetrate, as if Kyra had gone too
far to the ends of the world for her mother, for anyone, to be with her now.

She tried to
focus, to draw strength from herself. What was it that Alva had once said to
her?
To complete your training, first, you must forego the illusion that
others are with you. You are born alone and you will die alone, and what you
seek will come not from leaning on others, but on yourself. How deeply have you
looked inside, Kyra? How deeply have you trusted yourself?

Here, now
utterly alone, Kyra was beginning to sense the truth of his words. And it began
to dawn on her that this utter loneliness was what she needed to complete her
training. She had been leaning on others for too long; this would force her to
lean on herself. This was, she realized, the final leg of her training.

The river turned
again, and Kyra’s heart quickened as she watched the landscape change. Replacing
the barren fields of dirt and ash, up ahead she saw a forest, a thick and
tangled wood, stretching across the horizon as far as the eye could see. She saw
huge thorns protruding from them, making the forest resemble one massive thorn bush.
As they neared, she saw the trees themselves were sharp, thick, with gnarled, tangled
branches, all black, devoid of foliage, devoid of life. At the entrance to this
wood stood a narrow opening, a natural arch grown out of the thorns, allowing a
single person entry into this foreboding place. And at the foot of this arch,
the river came to an end.

Kyra felt her raft
suddenly come to a stop, beaching on the shore before the wood. She stepped
off, exchanging one foreboding surface for another, and wondering which was
worse.

Kyra looked back
to thank the person who had brought her—yet as she did, she was shocked to see
the raft was already far away, floating downriver—and on it, there was nobody. Her
sense of foreboding deepened. What was this land?

Kyra began to
walk toward the entrance to the wood, knowing this was where she needed to go, and
she had hardly gone a few feet when suddenly, the black soil before her shot up
in an explosion.

Kyra recoiled
and stepped back, on guard, as there emerged from the very soil itself, a massive,
grotesque monster. It grew taller and taller, forming itself out of the ash,
taking on the shape of a man, a grotesque man, three times the size of any man
she’d known. It was a giant, shoulders three times as broad, with sharp daggers
for fingers, claws for toes. He had spikes sticking out of his rib cage, and
his head was large and misshapen, with three orange eyes and razor-sharp fangs
for teeth.

She glanced down
and for the first time noticed a pile of bones at its feet, and she realized: other
sojourners. He was the guardian. No one got past him.

The monster reared
and roared, its muscles and veins bulging, a roar sharp enough to shake the
world. It raised its claws, and suddenly rushed her.

Kyra had to
think quick. The beast sliced its claws down for her head, surprisingly fast,
and she let her reflexes take over, ducking at the last second. Its claws
whooshed by her, just missing, slicing off some of her hair, which fell in
locks down into the mud at her feet.

Next, it swung
backwards the other way, faster than she could anticipate, and she barely
ducked in time, the claws grazing her cheek. She was struck with a sharp pain as
the claws scratched her and drew blood. Yet, luckily, the main force of the
swing had missed her, and Kyra, regaining herself, raised her staff, swung
around, and cracked its wrist.

The beast roared
in pain—yet it backhanded her in the same motion, and she went flying,
airborne, up twenty feet, landing on her back in the mud.

Kyra, winded, backed
up as it bore down on her. Its footsteps shook the earth as it sprinted right
for her. She had nowhere to go, she realized in a panic, slipping as she backed
up in the mud.

Kyra closed her
eyes, sensing death approaching, and focused internally. She could not physically
overpower this beast. She needed to summon her power. She needed to transcend
the physical world.

Kyra felt a sudden
burning in her palms, and feeling her power rising up within, she raised her hands.
As the beast neared her, she held them out before her.

Two glowing balls
of energy shot forth, smashing the beast in the chest and knocking it on its back.

It roared, and a
second later, to her shock, it bounded back onto its feet and charged her
again.

Please, God
, she thought
.
Give me the strength to leap over this beast.

Kyra took two
steps, running for it, and leapt into the air, praying her powers would not
fail her now. If they did, she would die in its awful embrace.

To her immense relief,
she found herself leaping up, higher and higher into the air. She leapt over
its head, as the beast ran right past her, and landed on the other side of it.
As she did, she wheeled and cracked it on the back with her staff.

It stumbled and fell
face-first in the mud.

The beast looked
back at her, seemingly stunned. Kyra, emboldened, would not give it time to
regroup.

She charged
forward to finish it off, yet as she did, it surprised her, swinging back
around at the last second and knocking her legs out from under her.

As she landed on
her back, it spun, made a fist, and raised it high, preparing to smash her into
the ground.

Kyra rolled out
of the way at the last second, its hammer-fist leaving a huge crater in the
earth, just missing her.

She rolled as he
hammered again and again, just missing each time, until finally she raised her
staff, twisted it, and split it in two, revealing the concealed blades, grabbing
one end in each hand. She raised it high, and as the beast struck, she rolled
out of the way and plunged the two blades into the beast’s hand, pinning it to
the earth.

The beast shrieked,
stuck, unable to free itself.

Yet it surprised
her by reaching over with its free hand and grabbing her by the throat. It
squeezed her neck so fast and so tight, she was certain she would die.

Unable to
breathe, Kyra gasped in agony, while the beast swung her left and right,
shaking her until she felt sure she was about to die. It then he brought her
toward its open mouth, opening it wider and wider as if to bite off her head.

Kyra closed her
eyes and forced herself to focus not on what was before her, but on the energy
coursing within.

You are stronger
than this beast,
she
willed herself to believe.
You are stronger than all forces outside of you.
They all inhabit the world of illusion. The only world that is real is that
inside of you.

Kyra slowly felt
the certainly of her thoughts, felt them morph into beliefs, into what she knew
was true. As she did, she felt her palms get burning hot. She opened her eyes
and raised her palm and knew without fail that a white orb of light would come
shooting forth, would save her.

It did. It flew
through the air and smashed the beast in the mouth—and as it did, the beast went
flying backwards, releasing its grip, the force so powerful that its other
hand, impaled in the ground, came free. It flew a good twenty feet through the
air, until finally it crashed onto the ground and lay there, dead.

Kyra, finally
free, gasped for air. She saw the creature lying there, and she began to feel a
great sense of power. She
did
have power. She was growing stronger in
this place, she could feel it. With no turning back and no one to fall back on,
she was learning how to become herself, how to master herself. There was
something, too, about the darkness of this place that egged her on. Was she
transforming into something else?

Kyra went to the
wood before her and stood before the arched entrance. She felt it beckoning her,
leading her deeper into darkness. Now she no longer feared it.