The buzzing was only just fading, a residual vibration that seed to emanate from the stones themselves. The group hung on her every word, every soldier on edge, scanning the horizon of motionless ruins.
"A resonance, you say?" repeated Maggie, slowly lowering her weapon. Her officer’s gaze analyzed the situation, weighing risk against gain. Plunging headlong with twenty exhausted n into a maze of stones, potentially trapped or inhabited, was madness. But ignoring Elisa’s new instinct, now tied to this place, was another kind of folly.
"Tonar, your opinion?" she asked, without taking her eyes off Elisa.
The warrior observed the young woman, then the temple with its shattered do. "Walking as a group here is like poking a hornet’s nest with a stick. If sothing sleeps in these stones, we’ll wake it." His gaze shifted to Zirel. "Zirel and I are used to discretion."
Zirel nodded, his lean face tight with an expression of intense concentration. "Two pairs of eyes are better than twenty for seeing without being seen."
Maggie hesitated for a final second, her instinct urging her to keep Elisa close. But it was precisely the young woman’s new sensitivity they needed to exploit. "Alright. But not you, Tonar. Your build casts too big a shadow. Zirel, you accompany Elisa. Reconnaissance, stealth, evasion. You only fight if escape is impossible. You have one hour, not a minute more. If you’re not back, we’ll co looking for you, and it won’t be quietly."
Zirel gave a thin, slitted smile. "An hour is a long ti for a shadow."
Elisa, for her part, seed already gone. Her dizziness had passed, replaced by an intense focus. She nodded, accepting the mission without a word. The runes on her arms were inert again, but one could sense a tension just beneath the skin, like a drawn bowstring.
They set off, their silhouettes quickly blending into the landscape of broken stones and dust. Zirel led the way, supple and silent as a feline, choosing each foothold, skirting unstable rubble. Elisa followed, surprisingly agile, her light steps raising only a thin cloud of ash. Maggie watched them disappear behind a collapsed section of wall, a knot of worry tight in her chest.
"The rest of the group, defensive positions here," she ordered in a low voice. "Conceal yourselves. We’re setting a periter."
anwhile, Elisa and Zirel delved deeper into the dead city. The silence was absolute, oppressive. Only the breath of the wind played a hollow lody through the arches and empty windows. Zirel advanced using natural cover, stopping often to listen and observe the heights. There was no sign of recent life – no tracks, no smoke, no droppings. Nothing but the slow dissolution of ti.
"The resonance... is it getting stronger?" Zirel whispered after about ten minutes of progress.
Elisa closed her eyes for a mont. "Yes. It’s not a sound. It’s... a pressure. As if the air itself rembers a scream." She opened her eyes and pointed slightly east of the main structure. "It’s coming from over there. From sothing behind."
They changed course, scaling a slope of debris that must have once been a public square. On the other side, the landscape changed. The ruins were lower, more spread out, like the foundations of a vast complex. And at the center of this expanse stood a monolith.
It wasn’t a construction, but a single block of blackish stone, smooth and polished, as tall as three n. It was tilted, as if the ground had given way under its weight. At its base, the earth was bare, without bone dust or ash. A strange sensation of emptiness emanated from it.
"By the fallen gods..." murmured Zirel, his scout’s composure cracked by astonishnt.
They approached with redoubled caution. No sculpture, no inscription adorned the surface of the monolith. It was perfectly smooth, apart from a few deep, irregular gashes near the top, which looked less like decorations and more like... impacts.
Elisa stopped about ten ters away, her face suddenly pale. She brought a hand to her chest. "It’s here," she breathed. "The echo is strongest here. It’s not a call. I’d say it’s more of a scar."
Zirel circled the stone, scrutinizing the ground. That’s when he saw the other patterns. Around the monolith, the stone floor was marked with deep grooves, radiating from the base like cracks caused by an impact. But looking closer, these grooves weren’t random. They ford concentric patterns, broken spirals that bore a furious resemblance to the carvings on the walls and the runes on Elisa’s arms.
"It looks like... sothing exploded from this rock," observed Zirel. "Or was sucked into it."
Elisa closed her eyes, stretching her hands palms-out toward the monolith. The runes on her forearms didn’t light up, but they grew warm to the touch. She shuddered.
"Not an explosion. An extraction," she corrected, her voice becoming distant, laden with ancient horror. "They took everything. Everything. The life, the soul, the anima of the trees, the beasts, the people... Everything was ripped out in one go. Sucked here, then... taken away. This monolith isn’t a stone. It’s a wound. The scar of a bite upon the world."
The revelation chilled Zirel. He imagined the scene: a city vibrant with life, an ordinary day, and suddenly, a cataclysmic silence. A void that fell, draining all vital energy, leaving only empty shells and cold stones. This wasn’t the wild destruction attributed to a dragon; it was an end far cleaner, far more terrifying.
"The dragons... their sub-species... are they capable of this?" he asked, unable to hide his unease.
Elisa opened her eyes. They were filled with that deep turquoise, a mirror to an ocean of stellar pain. "I don’t know. But this hunger... this coldness... It reminds of sothing. Sothing ancient in recognizes it."
Suddenly, a dry, minuscule scratching sound made Zirel start. He turned sharply, his knife already in hand. The sound ca from a small pile of rubble about fifty ters away. Nothing moved. Then, another scratch, a little further to the right. And another.
"We’re not alone," murmured Zirel, his voice once again a thread of steel.
They crouched behind the foundations of a wall, observing. The scratchings multiplied, light, rapid, coming from several directions. It wasn’t the heavy tread of a beast, but sothing smaller, more nurous.
"They’re not normal beasts," whispered Elisa, her gaze piercing the shadows. "Their anima is... distorted. Twisted. Like a tangled thread."
Zirel narrowed his eyes. In the gloom of a collapsed arch, he finally saw a form move. It was a creature the size of a large fox, made not of flesh, but of grey stone and intertwined black roots. It had no eyes, only a slit where a faint, sickly amber light glowed. It twitched its stone muzzle, scratching the ground with claws of dry roots.
Then another appeared. And a third. They converged slowly, not towards them, but towards the monolith. They seed drawn, hypnotized, like moths to a deadly fla.
"The residue," Elisa understood, horrified. "The remnants of life that were corrupted by the bite. They wander here, drawn to the scar, unable to leave it."
One of the creatures suddenly turned its stone head towards their hiding place. The amber light in its eye-slit flickered, then fixed on them. A harsh hiss, like the grating of two stones, escaped its being.
"Ti to go," declared Zirel, his voice low and urgent. "Now."
They backed away slowly, making no noise, but the stone creature had sounded the alarm. Other hisses answered from the surrounding ruins. The scratchings beca more insistent, drawing closer.
The scratching beca a clatter, then a dry crackle, like a shower of gravel on stone. The stocky silhouettes erged from the shadows by the dozen, their forms of stone and twisted roots moving with sudden agility. The sickly amber light of their eye-slits fixed on them, a pack of the starved converging on living prey in this desert of death.
"Too many," growled Zirel, his knife in one hand, a dagger in the other. His mind calculated escape angles, all blocked. They were surrounded.
Elisa didn’t panic. Her face was taut with absolute concentration. She raised her hand, and the spear she was holding – a standard infantry weapon, heavy and simple – began to float in the air, horizontally, at her waist height. The runes on her arms didn’t ignite, but a deep turquoise glow flowed along the spear’s shaft, like water in invisible channels. The air crackled with static energy.
"What are you...?" Zirel began, eyes wide.
He didn’t have ti to finish. In a swift motion, Elisa straddled the spear and sat on the shaft, like a witch on her broomstick. The spear oscillated slightly under her weight, held by an invisible force. She thrust her hand towards Zirel, her gaze piercing.
"Your hand!" she ordered, and her voice was not entirely her own; it carried the echo of the authority that had felled the Wooden Mask.
Zirel, overwheld by confusion and urgency, hesitated only a fraction of a second. He grabbed her hand, and the force with which she pulled him was incredible. He was flung forward, landing precariously behind her on the spear, his arms wrapping around her waist to keep from falling off. The position was absurd, humiliating for a swordsman of his reputation, but survival trumped pride.
"Hold on!" Elisa cried.
She pushed off on the spear not with her feet, but with her will.
There was no gradual acceleration. It was a silent detonation. A battering ram to their stomachs. The world exploded into a grey and beige blur. The wind beca a wall that tore at their faces, ripping tears from their eyes and breath from their mouths. The ruins beca nothing but an indistinct streak on either side, a tunnel of erased stones.
Zirel, the stoic, the silent Zirel, could not suppress a sharp cry, a scream of pure terror and total surprise that was in no way inferior to that of an eight-year-old girl caught in a whirlwind. His fingers dug into Elisa’s coat, his knuckles white. He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to bear the dizzying speed.
They shot over the ground, the spear slicing through the air with a strident whistle, leaving in their wake a wake of stirred dust and the furious chorus of the stone creatures’ hisses, already far, so fast, so terribly far behind.
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