Masters of the Storm

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Those words were repeated, over and over in a mumbled, frantic tone, by a figure stumbling through a hurricane in the dead of night. “Not here, why here, this upends everything!” he frantically spoke aloud. The wind rushed vigorously, sending curtains of rain streaming sideways that felt like shards of glass against his skin. Anyone with an ounce of sanity would’ve turned back days ago or surrendered their fate to the elements. But his mission was anything but, it was too important. Traversing the Kethiat Mountains by going through the Valley of Iron was almost certainly a death sentence these days, for reasons that were quickly becoming obvious. But he had to find someone known as Nashiri in this region, that’s all he had been told by his doomed traveling party before they were annihilated in a blast of light. He was almost at his destination, he was sure of it. A flash of lightning illuminated him, scrambling over a broken, twisted path of rocks, accompanied seconds later by a drawn-out roar of thunder. It sounded different every time, this time it sounded like an actual roar of a fast-approaching monster, chilling and unnatural. Nothing about this seems natural, he thought. The rain was leaving small red marks on the parts of him that weren’t covered by his bulky gray part cloak, and the wind felt both impossibly cold and searingly hot. In the corners of his vision, blurred by the rain, a pale golden glow appears. There’s another loud crack of thunder, this time it sounds only meters away. He looks back and realizes his mistake, as he saw what looked like a claw made of lightning appear from the storm, moving toward him. The air around him begins to feel dry and energetic, as a hissing noise quickly overpowers the noise of the gale. Without time to react, the claw strikes the side of his face, and his vision gives out. A searing shockwave propels him forward, causing him to trip and fall, as an unbearable burning pain shoots through his head. As the rain pelted him, he felt a warm liquid trickling down his face. ‘Probably not a good sign’ he thought. Looking around, he noticed that his vision was faded and blurred. Out of his one eye that was working, he saw the scattered interior of his bag strewn among the ground. His food and remaining clothes that he accumulated from his prior journeys were all out in the open, ruined by the downpour. He turns around, lying on the ground and staring up as the rain hits his face, washing away the ever increasing amount of blood on it. “Why do I even try?” he groans, “It was a fool's errand to begin with”. As he lies there, panting heavily, the linings of the pitch-black clouds above him begin to glow with an ethereal red light, and the sound of the rain is accompanied by a low rumbling that sounds like breathing. With difficulty, he props himself up, and starts to move back slowly. The glow gets brighter, revealing what looks like two large dark red pearls with black pupils in the center. The light it casts faintly shows the huge head of a terrifying reptile-like being. “Ah… just as I feared. Pity, I was really hoping this nightmare would end” the downed figure says in a nervous tone. Looking around frantically at his scattered belongings, he lunges with what little strength he has remaining, and ends up flopping over to a cylindrical silver canister, etched with glowing orange lines in various shapes, reminiscent of hieroglyphs. Grabbing it tightly, he musters what little strength he had left and yells in a deep voice “INGENI, MAI”! The runes on the cylinder glow, and the ground around him begins to quake, the rumbling sounds briefly overpowering the howling gale. A plume of lava gushes forth out of the ground, jarringly illuminating the mountains and the dragon, with its stag-like antlers and ethereal smoky gray wings. It shoots high enough to strike it in one of its eyes. He’s then deafened by its roar of pain, loud enough that he can feel his body vibrate under the pressure. The ground around him cracks and convulses, as more jets of both lava and steam shoot forth. The creature rears its head back from the bursts and the hissing sound is heard again, as purple lightning shoots out from all along the creature’s body, striking the surrounding land in a vain attempt to counter the attack. Unable to stand amid the chaos, the figure crawls along, the canister tucked under his arm. He pays no attention to his other belongings, the instinct to escape powers him along, until he ducks behind a boulder, coughing violently. He winces as pain shoots through his arm. On his arm and hands are the inverted marks of the runes, etched into his skin. “I must… too far… where is she?” His thoughts swirled around, unable to think coherently among the howling vortex of wind and rain. His haze of thoughts is suddenly broken by the low rumbling sound of a dragon breathing. Panic grips his body and soul, as he realizes that his attempt at salvation failed. With a large thud that sends shockwaves through his body, the boulder providing his cover cracks in two. Looking up, he sees in horror that the boulder was broken by the weight of a large bird-like claw on it that crackles with electricity. Not staying to examine it, he runs on in panicked manner, trying to find some relative safety from his pursuer among the scattered boulders and cliffs. He sees an opening underneath an overhanging rock, and his basic instinct of survival kicks in. As he sees the pale golden glow behind him, and the hissing sound of an impending attack from the unnatural lightning, he dives for it, and realizes too late that it’s deeper than he thought. He rolls down a small slope into a stagnant pool of water. There’s a feeling of a rock catching his back, and the unbearable pain returns, as he collapses. The jolting feeling of the freezing water making contact with his skin is the only thing keeping him conscious. There’s a loud crack, as he sees the mouth of the cave suddenly engulfed by the purple lightning. In the dim glow, he sees the cave lead further in. He slowly moves forward in a hunched pose, his hands outstretched in front of him, ignoring the blood trickling from the gash in his back. He feels like he’s been moving for hours through the silent darkness, the only reminders of reality being the muffled sounds of the storm and the cold rock walls. Eventually, the rocks become clammy and he feels the faint spray of water. ‘An odd feeling for a cave’ he thought ‘but at least I’m getting somewhere’. Moving forward, the muffled sound of the storm gets louder. It’s now accompanied by the sound of a rushing river. As he continues on, he sees the outline of an opening in the cave. It appears to overlook a raging river, dimly lit by what he hoped was starlight, a comfort in his current situation. He stumbled over more small rocks in his path, and his legs gave out from fatigue. “No… almost there… Nashiri, save me…” he gasped, as he shuffled along. His vision became more blurred and monochrome, his breathing became heavier and longer. ALl he could hear now was the beating of his own heart, gradually getting slower and slower. At the edge of the cave, he gazes upon the river, and looks to what he assumes is the south where the river is running to. He sees a faint pulsating blue glow high above the left bank of the river far away. He gets a warm feeling when viewing it, either from its apparent passiveness or the pool of blood he’s lying in. His eyelids begin to flicker closed, as he wishes for the soothing warm feeling to stay. His body goes limp and he feels himself slipping away. “I suppose I’m not saving them” he says, as he falls into the raging waters below.

In the quiet peaks of the Kethiat Mountains, the mist settles over a small monastery nestled in a valley. The air is cold and damp, and everything is still. Breaking the silence, thunder faintly rumbles far to the north. While an oddity in the crystal-blue skies, it’s the sign of a recently-passed storm. Among the curved copper-green and golden shingle roofs and white walls of the complexes, one stands out on top of a terraced hill of farmland, looking down on the large marble walkways and stairways of the compound below. a single wooden door slowly opens. A pale figure of young-adult age, dressed in cargo pants and a vest, slowly emerges.

“Nathaniel? I think we’re clear!”

He unsheathes two jet-black daggers, and moves out the door onto a grassy terrace. Behind him, a groggy figure dressed in azure robes walks out, holding a mug of dark yellow liquid and carrying a silver sword. He looks out over the terraced hill that the compound is built on, and sighs.

“It happened again, Valan. Look around.”

Gazing across the landscape, Valan notices scorch marks and small craters in the hillside. Hoping it’s not what he fears it is, he chuckles and turns to Nathaniel;

“Strong lightning last night, huh, good thing it didn’t hit the houses. One of those mountain storms probably, no big deal.”

“Don’t be coy, Valan. you know what did this”

“Yeah, I was hoping it wasn’t that. Y’know, another dragon attack”

Nathaniel slowly starts walking down the hill, examining the burnt farmland, and muttering to himself. He looks over to his right, where across the hill there’s a large white spire stretching up into the sky. On top is a pulsating blue orb of plasma.

“I reckon the dragons were after Nashiri again, Valan. I don’t know how many more attacks she can take, all alone up there. I get that she’s ordained to protect us, but she’ll break eventually”.

“One thing that continues to baffle me is why we’re supposed to put blind trust in a woman we never see to protect us. I mean, we hear from her in the monthly reports and she sometimes shows up in apparitions, but there’s no reason why we can’t defend ourselves as well! Or maybe go on the offensive!” Valan retorts.

Nathaniel turns back toward him, his voice now stern, sounding like a lecture, “Listen here, need I remind you what happened last time we fought dragons in a conflict? You’re a historian, you know about our past, and the needless amounts of carnage that occurred when a group of self-righteous bastards would slay a couple and they’d retaliate. Hell, the reason Nashiri showed up was to make sure we didn’t all die! You want to go out there and fight dragons?” he says as he brandishes his arm out to the horizon, “Go ahead, I’m not stopping you. But you’ll be on your own when the storms hit, and you’ll have to live with the guilt of killing all your people!”

He continues walking down the hill, still lecturing.

“In the current world order, sitting back and pretending we don’t exist to save ourselves is the best option. It’s not the most noble, but it’s the best we got. I don’t want a conflict with the evil empire around us”.

Valan rolls his eyes and walks down the hill, following Nathaniel during his speech. “I just wanted to duel this morning before our duties start. Can you take a break from your older-person-knows-best lecturing and just have some fun for once?” Valan says, his voice heavy with annoyance.

“I suppose if you want to indulge in these crack-of-dawn training regiments, Valan, I’m not stopping you. I enjoy these training sessions as much as you, but you just need to get a hold on your hubris at times. Just let me finish my drink, and I’ll be ready” Nathaniel says, now standing on a marble walkway at the base of the hill that leads to the other complexes throughout the monastery. He slowly drinks from his mug, taking his time and enjoying the twin sunrise. He liked seeing the suns rise, the blue-white and orange colors provided an interesting contrast. That’s all he wanted in life someday, a place to relax and take in the natural beauty around him. And, preferably, a place with sword duels. Of course, he had that here at Tian-Shang monastery with Valan, but his daily duties of being the lead farmer sometimes prevented his idyllic life goals. He finishes up his drink, feeling much more awake than before, and unsheathes his sword with a smile on his face. “Let’s fight!” he says as Valan approaches. “It’s about time!” Valan says as he sees Nathaniel unsheathe his sword; “we only have half an hour until our duties start.” Over the next half-hour, the silence on the walkway is partially broken by the sound of metal on metal, and shuffling footsteps. Valan always liked these moments, where he could use his favorite daggers. It's a bit childish to have a favorite weapon, he thought, but these were more important than the average weapon at Tian-Shang. Simpler-minded people would call them magic, as they would occasionally emit small bolts of lightning when in close combat to hit others. But it wasn’t magic, as Valan was the only one who knew that the bolts were activated by a small switch on the hilt. He had no idea how it worked, and he didn’t want to take the daggers apart to find out. As they spar, they move closer to the cliff by the river at the edge of the monastery. Eventually, Valan loses his balance and falls back, with one of the daggers flying out of his hand and landing on the ground. “Well” Nathaniel remarked, “You still have some things to learn, most importantly, the ability to not trip over yourself”.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it” Valan replies, clearly embarrassed. He gets up and brushes himself off, looking for his misplaced dagger. His eyes momentarily glance at something shining down in the water. He tries to get a better look, despite the distance to it. The object looks like a silver cylinder with black runes etched into it, stuck in between the rocks under the rushing water. He doesn’t get a long look at it, as the still air is pierced by the sound of a faraway gong. “Well, looks like our day is beginning. It’s been fun, Valan, but it's time for work” Nathaniel says, as he puts his sword away and hurries away. Valan’s gaze is broken, and he starts following. In the back of his mind, he wondered what he momentarily saw. Why would a random item like that be on the riverbed? And who, or what, did it belong to?