“Me, either,” I said. “But we need to figure it out, soon. Clem, why don’t you and Abi go down to the library cells, and Eric and I will root around on the web to see what we can dig up.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Abi said. He reached out and clasped my hand, then pulled me into a hug. He did the same to Eric. “It won’t be nearly as hard as fighting off a horde of hungry spirits from the Far Horizon.”
“We’ll see,” I said with a chuckle. “Good luck.”
“I’ll go with them to the library,” Hahen said. “Perhaps my old brain can come up with something their younger minds have not considered.”
“I’ll hang out here with you guys and make sure nobody tries to sneak in,” Niddhogg said, punctuating his offer with a tiny gust of flame. “Nobody’s getting past me.”
“Good to know,” Eric said. “I’ll be back in five minutes with my computer.”
“Let him in when he gets back,” I said to Niddhogg. “I’m diving in.”
“Will do, champ,” Niddhogg said.
I powered my computer on and let the quantic interface merge with my thoughts. Seconds later, I found myself awash in data.
I started with a simple search to find out everything I could about the Empyrean Gauntlet. The first hits I got weren’t historical articles, but a flurry of alarming news stories about the very public threats the heretics had made against the Gauntlet over the past week or so.
I selected a report, and the scene unfolded in my mind’s eye.
A lone figure stood in front of a pile of burning rubble. A metal pillar emblazoned with the stylized symbol of the Empyrean Flame lay on the ground next to her, and its tip glowed red where it hung above the leaping flames. The camera wobbled and jerked from side to side, struggling to stay focused on the figure. The sound of explosions rumbled in the distance, and sirens mixed with screams from much closer.
“We have vowed that we will not rest until we are free,” the figure shouted. Her voice was harsh and strident, and even through the recording the strength of her conviction hit me like a slap. She wasn’t just a terrorist, she was a zealot. She believed everything she said, and she was willing to die for her cause.
“We refuse to bend the knee to the Church of the Empyrean Flame,” she continued. “And we will bow to no dragon.”
Her finger stabbed toward the center of the scene as if to drive her point into my forehead.
“This travesty of a Gauntlet will not be allowed to continue,” she growled. “We will stop it. At any cost.”
Her words chilled me to the bone, and I banished the story when a talking head appeared. I didn’t need anyone to explain to me how real this threat was.
There were more stories of heretic attacks, all over the world. No wonder the elders of my clan had been so busy. They were fighting off attacks on every continent.
How many of those assaults had my mother organized?
How many had she led?
I had to find her.
I dug through more news stories, searching for some clue as to her whereabouts. My eyes scanned the footage, looking for my mother’s familiar gait, the silhouette of a frame I’d known my whole life. Fires and flattened buildings flashed before my eyes. Men, women, and children fled from explosions and gunfire. I couldn’t tear myself away from the horror until a small blue indicator light flashed in the upper corner of my vision.
I directed my attention to it, and Eric’s face zoomed into view.
“Hey, I found something.” His image vanished and was replaced by a detailed illustration of a medieval festival of some sort. In the painting, humans watched something in an arena below them, while dragons soared through the skies overhead.
“This is the first Gauntlet,” Eric said. “Or, what they think the first looked like, anyway.”
“Great find,” I said. “When did this happen?”
“Three thousand years ago, give or take. Right after the First Demon War.” Another picture replaced the first illustration. In this one, a human stood on a platform next to a youngling dragon. The human was adorned with a wreath of fire around his brow. The dragon, on the other hand, looked like someone had played whack-a-mole with its face. It was clear who’d won that fight.
“Let me guess. This is when humans took over as guardians of the Grand Design.” History was written by the winners, after all.
“Yep,” Eric said. “And then this happened.”
A third illustration replaced the previous drawing. This one depicted humans and dragons engaged in an ugly battle. Bodies littered an open field and streaks of fire arced overhead. A human stabbed a dragon through the heart with a black lance. A dragon ripped an arm from a human with its ivory fangs. Clearly, the dragons hadn’t been amused by the sudden change in their deal with the Empyrean Flame.
“That looks ugly,” I said. “How did it end?”
“Like this.” Eric called up another picture.
This one showed an older man, his eyes covered with a bloody bandage. An enormous serpentine dragon was coiled across from him, its snout bound in a heavy iron cage. Between the two of them, the Empyrean Flame glowed like an angry referee.
“The Flame was ticked off that its most powerful creations had gone to war with each other so soon after demons had bloodied their noses. It made the Blind King and Silent Wyrm exchange blood bonds. That ended their little tiff and secured humanity’s position at the top of the heap.”
“There’s something weird about this,” I said. “For our first prize, we got an eye. The slit pupil makes me think it’s supposed to be a dragon’s. But the dragon didn’t lose an eye. The king did. We should have gotten a human eye.”
“And what the
