He froze. “How dare you,” he said in a strangled voice. “Are you suggesting I am a—”
“Warlock? Yes, I am.” She took a step closer, her own eyes fixed on the bowl’s swirling contents. “Strange sort of color for someone who calls himself the ‘Lord of Light,’” she observed lightly.
“You know nothing about me or my patron,” he snarled.
“I know a lot more than you think.”
Gardos had said the book by Ar’bek Kitt—the one that had referenced the elven gods—contained the clue to Varnell’s power. What little she’d read of the account had mentioned two beings: the light elf god, aka “The Lord of Light”; and the night elf god, aka Garim R’ok or “The Tyrant of Darkness.” According to Kitt’s account, both gods had mysteriously disappeared centuries before after one had betrayed the other.
She hadn’t had enough time to think about it—she suspected that even if she had years that wouldn’t be enough time—but the cogs of her academic mind were whirring, piecing together the clues to complete the puzzle.
The book’s title had referred to “the art of soul-shifting.” It had referenced elvish gods of light and dark. The Guildmaster sitting before her was a half-blood light elf, a warlock whose patron called himself the Lord of Light yet whose Aspect was dark as sin and ancient beyond comprehension.
“Your patron,” she said, watching his face carefully to gage his reaction, “is Garim R’ok. The former god of the night elves. The one they called the Tyrant of Darkness.”
Fifty-Nine
Cannot End
Corey
A deep orange glow beckoned from up ahead. At first I thought it to be another magma cavern, and glanced around warily for more pyromanders.
Behind us, Longshank clutched his spear tightly and did his best to keep up, though the replacement leg was clearly causing him some discomfort. He was limping more than usual, and I’d seen him wincing and rubbing his lower back on more than one occasion, as though the driftwood limb jarred his bones with every step. The hunter’s endurance was humbling, and I silently vowed to reward him once all this was over.
As we got closer, Ris’kin’s nose started to pick up other scents mingling with the heavy sulfurous air, and I realized the light up ahead was from nothing less than the setting sun.
We’d done it. We were out!
My avatar carried us forward with a surge of renewed energy until we emerged onto the mountain’s summit.
The caldera spread before us. We’d emerged on the opposite side to which I’d last seen the place; I found myself drawn by the light to where the last dregs of late evening sun reflected off the lake at the far side, so that the surface of the black water looked as though it were on fire.
As my gaze traveled further, I spotted structures that looked like trebuchets dotted around the outside—presumably to defend against predators from the air, though they didn’t exactly look as though they were in working order. Also around the edges were dwellings built into the very sides of the crater. What had looked from my former viewing point above the lake to be mere caves in the rock revealed themselves as windows and doorways, some of which still held the broken remains of shutters and doors. Most of them had been hidden from my previous vantage by overhanging shelves, like the entrance to the bear’s cave—a clever trick of perspective.
The space in between was filled with the rubble of half-ruined buildings. Enough remained standing here and there to provide a testament to their former glory.
What happened here?
Scanning the caldera, I realized that the pattern of destruction was odd; it was as if something had impacted the city from above, sending out a shockwave of devastation that had utterly leveled the area around where we now stood, but had done gradually less damage to things further away.
What could possibly have caused so much destruction?
I looked to my right, turning fully around because of Ris’kin’s blind eye, and almost fell over in shock.
What I’d thought earlier to be a range of rocky growths were actually bones. An enormous skeleton sprawled across this side of the caldera. It was difficult to measure scale from Ris’kin’s height, but it looked as though the skeleton reached almost entirely from one wall to the other. Ridges of tail vertebra stood out on the far side, even in the darkness, while behind and above us loomed a colossal draconic skull.
Taking a few steps away from it, I realized there were actually two skeletons. Two dragons, entwined as though they’d been embracing as they crashed down from the sky.
Is this why the gnomes fled their ancestral home?
It seemed more than a little odd. Mysteries on top of mysteries. But solving this one could wait a while.
I tore my gaze away from the fallen behemoths and hurried toward our destination.
Time remaining for Exodus: 41 minutes, 40 seconds
We’d cut things very fine indeed. If we didn’t claim our new settlement in time, I would permanently lose all my progress and have to start again at tier one. Thankfully, there wasn’t much farther to go.
We wound our way through the ruins of the ancient city toward a wide plaza at its center. Standing tall amongst the rubble was a circular building. Its domed roof had been held up by what looked like a black metal frame, similar to the inner structure of our traveling shelters, though the rest was hollow and open to the sky. The ground underneath was littered with fragments of glass or crystal.
Illumishrooms glowed around the edges of the plaza. Wagons waited, badgers milled around patiently, and there beyond them knelt the rest of the tribe. Rows and rows of gnomes knelt. Adults and children alike had their heads bowed, hands clasped together. Most were silent, but some were whispering, their lips moving in fervent prayer.
The sight was stirring, and reminded me of the time they’d all come together in the Grotto
