He could no longer hear Ghaelya moving ahead of him, though her footprints were somewhat easy to track through the soft, heaving dirt. Crawling faster, he felt as though the ground might swallow him if he stayed too long in one spot. Breaking through the shifting press of thin stalks, he stood cautiously in a wide clearing. A glowing rock-mote drifted slowly overhead, illuminating the rising and falling sea of dulled green and flashing red thorns.
Hundreds of small, buzzing insects flitted through the clearing and over the tops of the living ocean, many swarming around a circle of large stones. As he approached the stone ring, he could make out worn, handmade lines amid the cracks and soft moss, bits of ancient architecture gathered together around the edge of a yawning pit of deep black. Thick branches snapped beneath his boots, but as he knelt to inspect the pit, wondering if Ghaelya had fallen in, he realized that he stood on a pile of bones.
As he looked down into the leering face of a dry skull, picked clean of flesh long ago, the ringing in his ears, the whispering vine-trees, and the buzzing wings of insects came together in a strange harmony. He wavered, leaning on the stone circle for support as the soft, beguiling tones of the song reached out through the myriad of sounds and left him gasping for breath on the edge of the deep pit.
Ghaelya descended slowly, her hands carefully finding holds on damp rock or making them in dense mud. Her body seemed to move of its own accord, and she felt more an observer than a part of her surroundings, watching herself drift, drowsy and calm, into flickering shadows and ghostly light. Dripping water echoed in a deep chamber somewhere below, the sound drawing her back to her senses for a breath. She wondered why it alarmed her so, but the feeling passed swiftly. She breathed in tune to the soft singing that led her down, her heart beatiner in time with the neaceful melodv. only vaguely aware of her last descent into a basement in Caidris. Like then, it did not occur to her to be afraid.
Dragonflies buzzed around her, hovering and studying her with their large, flashing eyes before flitting away. A’ long, spiraling column of drifting, motes stretched from the dark below to the open sky above, tiny graceful wings belying the hunger of hundreds of mosquitoes that did not stop to inspect her or feed upon her blood. The wajls of the pit fairly hummed with the sound of so much tiny life in the air. As her boots found the soft, gritty floor of the pit, she pulled her hands away from the rock, her fingertips tingling from the exertion of climbing. Trancelike, she turned to continue her dreaming journey.
A thin layer of seashells, bones, and fallen insects coated the sandy floor of a wide cavern lit by some unseen source of flickering illumination. A bowl depression in the center of the chamber bore a still pool of somewhat clear water. A sour smell of stagnancy hung on the air along with other scents that touched lightly upon memories of death and possibly burning, but they did not remain long as she stepped forward. There were more bones set into the walls, most of them old and yellowed, but some still bore the rusty blush of blood upon them. They were set deliberately, forming intricately detailed designs and patterns. She saw a mosaic of fantastic sea monsters amid stylized waves, and symbols of an unknown language that nevertheless spoke to the water in her spirit somehow, like an alphabet to describe the tides.
The largest of the seashells fanned outward from the edge of the still pool, their well-polished, opalescent edges swirling with eerie light.
As she knelt down, little ripples on the pool’s surface caught her attention. Dark shapes darted and crawled in the muddy silt of the bottom. The smallest, with large heads and legless bodies twisting back and forth to swim up and down from the bottom, she recognized as the larvae of mosquitoes. When she was little, she and Tessaeril had found some of the larvae in an old water bucket and had taken them home as pets. Their mother had screamed in disgust, emptying the bucket and punishing them for bringing the creatures home. Ghaelya knew better now, but she still smiled at the sight of the larvae.
The others, larger ones crawling slowly along in the mud, she did not recognize until one snapped up an infant mosquitoes. Tiny legs propelled it, hunting for more larvae, a long armlike jaw hinged beneath its upper body. Dragonfly larvae, or water-dragons she’d called them as a young girl.
“They brought me here to die,” said the unmistakable voice of Tessaeril. It filled the chamber, wafting gently over Ghaelya’s skin, and she did not look away from the water. She somehow expected her sister and accepted her presence as a matter of course, one more part of the dream. A reflection of faintly glowing crimson eyes danced on the water, as did the dark silhouette of their bearer who sat in shadow on the opposite shore of the pool. “The Choir brought us here, one by one, and asked us if we could hear it…”
“The song?” Ghaelya muttered, her tongue feeling thick and sluggish as the crimson eyes nodded solemnly.
“Those that could not hear it were slain… mercifully,” Tessaeril answered, her voice breaking slightly, causing a brief disturbance in the humming melody that held tight to Ghaelya’s will. “Those that could hear it..: were not so fortunate.”
Ghaelya swooned, dizzy as the chamber suddenly shifted, the ghostly light flashed, and ripples coated every surface, spreading out from the stagnant pool. She stumbled backward, blinking and shaking her head, trying to focus as Tessaeril’s eyes grew and split at their centers, blossoming into brilliant, deep red petals. Ghaelya slowly withdrew into t. hA shadows
“Is this real?” she mumbled hoarsely. “Am I dreaming?”
“We are, all of us, dreaming,” Tessaeril replied from the dark, her voice growing louder, echoing and rippling through the bone mosaic on the walls.
“Wait!” Ghaelya cried, reaching out and advancing only to splash into the pool, far deeper than it had appeared. She sank swiftly as the light faded, kicking as she fought to keep her head high, to keep Tessaeril in sight.
“Only, some of us are trapped,” Tessaeril continued, her eyes dripping streams of crimson nectar. “Some of us are not dreaming, but rather, are dreamed…”
“I don’t understand!” Ghaelya replied, trying to swim forward, but held back by a swiftly growing current. The edges of the pool spread outward, and the walls faded to a hazy black. A sense of unfathomable depth overtook her, and the distant crests of sloshing waves flashed far beyond the meager perimeter of the chamber as she called out to her sister, “Don’t leave me!”
“You will understand, when you come to me… ” Tessaeril said, the last echoing from far away, buzzing and repeating on the air. “…Come to me… to the blood… and to the bloom…”
A wave surged over Ghaelya’s head, blinding her for a moment and filling her mouth with a taste of seawater. She trod water, bewildered, flinching as thunder rumbled overhead and lightning tore through a cloudy sky, illuminating an expanse of choppy water that stretched in all directions.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, once again able to feel fear as a line of brilliant blue flared on the horizon. Gulls wheeled in circles, complaining loudly as they fled a swift wall of sparkling blue fire that roared across the surface of the water. Ghaelya tried to swim away, diving beneath the surface, but even the darkest depths glowed as the blue flames neared. She surfaced again, gasping as the seagulls, unable to escape, were engulfed.
Some simply disappeared, others were incinerated into little puffs of ash, but a handful were horribly changed, twisting into distorted masses of flesh that had little resemblance to the gulls they had been. Plummeting into the water, the lifeless lumps left behind a single bird flapping clumsily, little more than a collection of giant wings and squawking beaks, a monster that hung heavily on the air.
“The Spellplague,” she muttered in horror, recognizing and somehow bearing witness to events she only knew of through century-old stories and legends. The Blue Breath of Change had been born in the death of a goddess and ravaged all thai it touched as the fabric of magic fell apart at the seams.
Stunned and helpless, Ghaelya froze as the blue fire washed over her, shaking her violently and drawing massive waves behind it. As it passed, she felt no different, and drifted momentarily in a void of utter silence, waiting. The silence was broken by a drowned scream, a melodious shriek that rose from the depths beneath her and touched her soul with pain and terrible sorrow even as it ripped through her foody like a thousand spinning blades.
She screamed as well, her vision fading to darkness; and her body lifted, floating in a weightless void for several breaths before everything suddenly stopped.
Opening her eyes, she found herself lying on the floor of the chamber, bones and dead bugs pressed against her cheek. The light was gone, and in the dark she shuddered, inhaling deeply, relieved even by the scent of
