Chapter 18: Running Out

The group huddled together around the large salamandrite rock, trying to keep close to the only source of heat in an entire world. Cleo understood in theory what Law had said about the world being cold, but the severity of his words had not actually dawned on her until she had entered the realm. Thick clouds of steam shot out of her nose as the scant air in the region immediately battled for supremacy over the new, warmer, lung emissions. Law pulled a shard of tornadrite out of his bag and put it in the ceiling before taking another stone out and set it upon the glowing red rock in the middle.

“How about some information on what Winoa is doing out there? The core of this artifact is the same as the material used to make the minor world, which means I could use it as a really simple scrying tool to show us what is happening to her, or anyone who is currently wearing the bracelet”.

They all looked at the image that floated in front of them, casually following Winoa as she journeyed, unaware of the five sets of prying eyes that were upon her. After about twenty minutes of watching, Jim turned to reading his Book. Cleo quickly followed suit. There was something slightly unsettling for her when it came to watching her friend who was unaware that she was being spied upon. Instead she made herself a small mountain out of the blankets she had in her ring. It was easier to channel mana through her to heat herself up if there was something to catch the heat she was producing. She sat in the room mulling over the finer points of elemental manifestation instead of watching Winoa. Water was her weakness, and she knew how hard it could be because to understand it she had to turn all her preconceptions inside out. She knew all about the precepts of heat, of movement, of energy, of light, but water... That was a different beast entirely.

There were aspects of life, of movement, of state change, of purity in water, but they were so alien to cleo that she was struggling to grasp ahold of them. Every time she seemed to come close she realise that what she had worked out was incorrect and that she had been on the wrong track because it conflicted with earth or with air. Chaos was wild and unrefined, but there was still a sense of connectedness between everything. It was simply up to Cleo to find out how that connectedness applied to anything. She was zoning out, attempting to work out why water was so important to life, but in too great a quantity would simply kill anything alive when she looked at the image of Winoa and saw that she was flagging. Garuda was dipping down, only five or ten metres from the ground, and she was moving far slower than she had been when they began. No one else was really paying attention to her so Immediately Cleo clambered out of her mountain of blankets and yelled at Law.

“Law!” She shouted, slightly louder than she was expecting, shocking him out of some sort of daydream or meditative state. She felt bad about it, because she knew that it could be difficult getting into that state but Winoa was in trouble. “How do you swap with the person outside?”

“Wha...?” Law replied, taken aback by Cleo's aggressive interruption of his musings. “Oh... Err I can just swap you now. Do you want me to bring Winoa in here or just go ahead and switch you?”

“You can do that? Why didn't you say?”

“You never asked,” Law said, completely nonplussed. Cleo bit the inside of her mouth at that. The boy could be so infuriating when he wanted to, and it was always because he never said things completely outright. “Tell you what, I'll bring her in and we can just move on to picking someone to swap with her”.

Law clicked his fingers and suddenly there was a very tired girl sat on the back of an eagle filling the area. Not realising that he was going to bring Winoa in with Garuda, but Law and Cleo were knocked over before Winoa got the chance to return the bird back to her spirit reservoir. She looked at everyone with slightly glazed over eyes while cleo lead her to the pile of bedding she had been in. She tucked Winoa in before saying, “Law, let me go out. I don't mind running on the back of Fenrir for the next six hours, and it's better than disturbing everyone else”.

“Just me, eh?”

“Yes. You,” Cleo said, walking over to Law and poking him in the chest. “This is your world, so it's your responsibility. You may not need to run because you're slower than us over a long distance, but you still need to look after us and make sure we don't end up like Winoa just did”. She took a deep breath before continuing, “Send me out now, and swap me out in six hours. Got it?”

“Yes ma'am!” Law replied, laughing at her seriousness. She never did get his sense of humour. It seemed so ad hoc, coming out of nowhere most of the time. After accepting her order, he clicked his finger and she found herself five metres in the air, plummeting towards the ground. She called out Fenrir before she landed and felt a chunk of her mana sliver away. She had about seven eighths left, which would probably last her about six hours of travel. Spurring her canine familiar on, Cleo landed on the ground and sped off into the distance. Because of the nature of the terrain, she could not see the stone soldiers that stalked her, but the rumble of twenty stone feet pounding away in the distance behind her was impossible to miss.

Thump thump, thump thump went the sound behind her, growing ever closer as she moved on, even through the extremely rocky terrain. These creatures were bizarre, but Cleo could understand why they had been made. They never tired, worked perfectly in unison and were extremely difficult to destroy through magical means. If it was not for their major flaw in construction they could have been considered the perfect foot soldier. Perhaps fortunately they had been flawed, so rather than some sort of monstrous fascist state they were just roaming packs of indestructible terror.

Cleo idly wondered what their top speed was, and if she could really outrun it. They had been gaining on her for the entire time she had been outside, and now she was over three quarters out of her mana. She could safely run for an hour longer, but she was worried. Fenrir was a fast beast, with great depth of stride. If he could not outrun the golems, and they only made back time on Winoa and Garuda, the likelihood was they would soon be face to face with the swarm of golems behind them. She stared at the mountains ahead and doubled down on her giant dog’s speed. It would cost her more mana, but every second counted. There would be no escape before the mountains.

The sixth hour was quickly approaching as she got to the steppes of the mountain range. Rugged terrain quickly became rickety paths and rough, near vertical slopes, before finally just becoming peaks and gorges. The pounding behind her never stopped though, in fact the longer Cleo listened, them more she sweared that there were more soldiers behind her than when she first began carting her friends. Fenrir leapt gorge after gorge, before coming to a plateau. She sped across it, and about half way over she looked behind her. Immediately she regretted it. There were at least thirty men made of rock sprinting after her and she could tell by their speed that they would catch up to her before she reached the other end of the plateau. She began breathing heavily, trying to calm herself down and not hyperventilate, but all she could do was grip Fenrir’s fur tighter and hope upon hope that she made it. Her mana edged away far quicker than she would have liked, but there was nothing she could do. She had to push her hound as fast as he would go. Step by step they moved, quickly approaching the girl as she quivered on the back of the giant dog that was beginning to lose substance. It wavered and as she slid to the ground she felt an extreme chill come over her. Everything was dark, but there was light ahead of her.

Is this what death is like? She thought as she looked up.


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