Chapter 3 - The Mountain

The wind howled through the valley like a pack of distant wolves. Sometimes it was close and loud, and other times it was far away, whistling across the rocks.

Rayne trudged through the deep snow, pressing on despite how tired and cold she was. Large boulders and stones littered the ground, sometimes hiding beneath the snow, making every step treacherous.

They weaved through a graveyard of trees with skeletal branches reaching toward a hopeless sky like skeletal fingers.

“We should probably take a break,” David called to her from a few feet behind. “Like a little snack break or something.”

“We have to keep moving,” she said, wiping away the sweat threatening to freeze on her cheeks. Her voice was ragged, her lungs burning with every breath. “If we do, we can get to the top of the mountain by nightfall.”

Even as she spoke, Rayne dreaded the thought. They were at the mountain now. Dark and solemn, it loomed over them like a lost monument of the world. Rayne meant to conquer it, and she couldn’t stop now.

They started going up, the terrain getting steeper until they were faced with a near vertical climb. They scaled large rocks and walked precarious snow-topped ledges until coming to a sheer cliff wall.

“Welp.” David looked up the cliff, where a piece of the plane hung over its perch. “This is gonna suck.” He gave Rayne a sidelong look. “Think you’re up for it?”

“Of course I am,” Rayne snapped back without any hesitation. “Of course I am.”

Not giving herself a chance to stop and think, she reached up and began to climb. The good news was that the route was full of good handholds and easy footings. The problem was when Rayne looked down. There weren’t any piles of snow to catch her this time. The terrain below was too harsh, too angled.

“Oh fayr,” she hissed. “Fayr, fayr, fayr.” She gripped the stones tightly and pressed her forehead to the wall, her cloak whipping in the wind.

“Hey, Miss Rayne, you okay?” Dustbunny asked. He was leaning out of the rucksack, and David had somehow managed to climb up beside her as though it were nothing. He had his hand wedged into a crevice and was leaning back, picking at his teeth.

“I’m fine,” Rayne said, her voice no louder than a breath.

“Are you frozen in place or something?” David asked, a finger still stuck in his mouth. She gave him a glare, and his face changed. “Oh, crap, you’re afraid. My bad.”

“Way to go, man.” Dust bopped David on the head, then leaned forward, flakes of snow catching in his fur. “You can do this, Rayne! Just keep climbing. You’ll only die if you fall!”

Rayne winced. He wasn’t really helping, but the effort was encouraging. She took a deep breath and reached out to dust the snow off a small ledge, then pulled herself up.

Her arms strained as the wind slammed into the cliff, but her grip was sure. She found another foothold and continued moving up, and up, and up. The top of the cliff was in sight.

Despite everything, Rayne knew this was what she wanted to do. This was who she wanted to be. Someone who conquered her fears. Who climbed mountains. Who—

Her foot slipped, and she lost her balance. She hadn’t been paying attention. David reached out and caught her wrist as she fell, yelping when her weight pulled him down. Rayne slammed into the cliff, her knees sending a searing message of pain.

“Oh jeez, oh jeez,” David wheezed. Dustbunny leaned down and grabbed Rayne’s cloak, trying his best to help hold on. “Maralyn . . . gonna need you to . . . grab something please.”

Rayne was suspended, frozen, her brain unthinking. The feeling in her stomach, the pure terror that inked up her veins. It threatened everything. Everything.

“Come on, come on!” Dustbunny squeaked. He was pulling hard, his ears bent back in concentration.

“I’m not gonna lie.” David’s face bloomed red with effort. “You’re not as light as you look . . .”

Rayne snapped out of it. She looked up, glaring, almost daring him to drop her. She was still afraid, still terrified, but she was also annoyed.

“You fayring idiot,” she hissed, her feet kicking at the rocks, her free hand grabbing on. She clutched the cliff tightly, and David’s grip loosened on her wrist. “Let go of me.” She pulled away and pressed her forehead to the cold stone, the erratic beat of her heart resounding in her ears.

And it was like nothing had even happened, save for the frantic nerves in every part of Rayne’s body. She trembled uncontrollably, and it only made her more scared, because what if the shaking—the fear—caused her to fall?

“Ha! That was close.” David sighed, a small maniacal laugh escaping. “Oh, that was great. I gotta . . . I gotta write that one down or something.” Then he looked down at Rayne. “Oh yeah. If you were afraid before, I bet you are absolutely terrified now.”

“Shut up,” Rayne snapped, not caring if the dragon out there could hear them. “Just shut up, David.”

“Look.” David paused to take a breath. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m pretty used to this crap, this life-or-death stuff. Right, Dust?”

“This is true,” Dustbunny agreed. “We almost die, like, three times a week.”

“But,” David continued, “you just gotta get through it.”

“How the fayr am I supposed to get through it?” Rayne’s eyes were closed, and her hands were still shaking. “Because you are not helping.”

“Well . . .” David sighed, sounding almost frustrated. “I don’t know just . . . What advice would you give to someone if they were in your shoes?”

The answer came almost immediately. Rayne had been about to respond with another sharp reply about how stupid his advice was, but if she was only admitting it to herself, it wasn’t that bad. Because she had an answer; she knew what she would say to someone else.

“I would tell them to remember.” She opened her eyes, and the feeling in her stomach eased, if only a little. “I would tell them to remember why they’re risking their life in this godsforsaken valley in the first place.”

“Oh yeah.” David raised an eyebrow. “And why are you?”

***

Three Days Ago

Rayne wrinkled her nose. Cars were loud, and they had a strange smell that permeated the city streets and made her feel a little nauseous. She was in Old York, the biggest city on the Crescent Isles, one of the largest islands in the East. Old York was a city unlike anything Rayne had ever seen.

Sure, Royal City was big and home to plenty of people, but it wasn’t as dense. In Old York, people were packed into the streets and sidewalks, and there were layers of the city as well. The subways below, the streets in the middle, and the towering skyscrapers and condos above.

Taxis honked as Rayne passed a group of knights waiting in line to get coffee. On a bench next to them was a group of kids about Rayne’s age. They each held a phone or device of some sort and were leaning over each other, shouting as they played their games.

That was something else about the city. It never stopped. Lights were everywhere she looked, and the constant rumble of life amid the city was almost overwhelming.

Accents, sounds, and words from every island in the East were condensed into one place. The way people walked, dressed, ate—

everything was a fascinating culture shock. The stores, too, were amazing. They served food from all over the world, even the North—though it wasn’t quite the same as home.

Then she’d discovered bookstores. They were like libraries, but where you could buy the books. 

Hundreds and thousands of books were available to her.

Now, as Rayne walked along with an armful of books, she realized she might like the city. Maybe even a lot.

She was relieved when she and her parents finally made the drive home, though. Their new home was a three-story mansion with sprawling grounds that was set just far enough from the city that things were quieter. Wrought-iron gates opened to a neatly cut lawn with carefully shaped shrubs wrapping the base of the house. The arched windows and large wooden doors were similar to Northern architecture, but the electrical outlets, fans, and lights were so far removed from what Rayne knew.

After stepping out of the car, Rayne approached the house with her armful of books. The weight of them tilted her off balance, and she teetered on the front steps before her mother caught her.

“Have you got enough books, my girl?” Lillian Rayne asked. Her voice was airy and refined, and her dark silver eyes had three hundred years of noble ancestry behind them. She stood tall, her posture perfect, everything about her perfect. Her hair was a darker shade of plum than Rayne’s, which bordered on black, but in the sun it shimmered with purple hues. She wore an ivory dress with a high neckline and lacy short sleeves.

“For now.” Rayne grunted, hefting the stack again and continuing into the house.

“Ah, it’s good to be back,” Rayne’s father, Aaron Rayne, said as he brought the rest of their shopping bags in and closed the door behind them. His short black hair was slicked back, and his clean-shaven smile always made Rayne feel happy. “I’ve quite missed the city.”

“Why don’t you take your books up to your room,” Rayne’s mother said, stroking her hair and adjusting her ribbon. “We’ll have dinner ready shortly.”

Rayne nodded and started up the main staircase, this time with a little more care. She managed not to fall and made it to her room, eager to find a place to store her new books.

Her room was spacious, though not as big as her old one. The walls were painted a soft pink with darker stripes, and most of them were covered up by bookshelves and large maps. Her bed sat to one side, and at the end of it was her desk, already covered in scattered parchment papers and ink bottles. 

On the other side of the room was Rayne’s reading nook, a cushioned seat in the rounded sill of a large circular window that overlooked the manor grounds and the city beyond.

She took her books to the desk, setting them down and stretching her arms before cleaning up the mess of parchment paper. She preferred the thicker Northern paper compared to the thin notebook pages everyone in the East seemed to use. She also preferred her fountain pens to the ballpoint, even if those were a little less messy. Matter of fact, Rayne had a whole desk drawer of Eastern things that she had to decide whether she liked or not.

Also on her desk were a few of the salt ingots the East used as currency. The ingots were small rectangular chips of hardened salt crystal. They were bright in color—opaque white, speckled blue, pink, gold, even black—and clinked together as she scooped them up and spilled them into her money pouch, which was also new.

In the North, everyone kept their bells and towers on a money cord around their neck or belt. The bell coins were in the shape of their namesake, and the towers were longer, thicker rectangular pieces. Each had a symbolic notch at the base and a triangular hole at the top to fit the cord.

Rayne had a stash of Northern currency in one of her chests, but she kept a leather money cord around her neck with two copper towers and a silver bell just to remind her of home.

She set aside the stack of papers, and underneath it all was the journal. Of all the books and scrolls on her shelves, the journal was the most important.

Her fingers drifted across the scratched leather cover, and she sat down, scooting up to the desk. The journal flipped open with easy, loose pages.

An Explorer’s Journey

Those were the first words, written in dark indigo ink. The words below that were perhaps some of the most important words in the whole book.

Marshall Rayne.

Rayne thumbed through the pages, glancing over the scratchy handwriting, stories, sketches, mistakes, and coffee stains. A whole world lived within those pages. There were maps to places no one else had ever seen and descriptions of monsters few had ever fought and even fewer had lived to speak of.

Every time Rayne opened the journal, she became enthralled, lost in the adventures her grandfather had embarked on. She could see herself running through the forests on Gorma Island and being chased by ants the size of horses. She could practically taste the blood on her lips as she envisioned fighting in an underground battle ring on Seraphine Island.

There was a welling in her chest, a tangible excitement. Chills danced across her skin, her breath quickened, and then . . . and then she blinked. She was still in her room, surrounded by her unpacked belongings. She wasn’t an Explorer.

After the Breaking, everything had been chaos. Islands from different places and times had been placed next to one another. They were disconnected and confused. The islands became separated into three groups: the Remnant Islands, those that had existed prior to and through the fracture; the Modern Islands, which came from a future not yet seen, with different types of technology; and the Alternate Islands, islands that had come from other timelines and other planes of existence.

When the dust had settled, the different islands began to notice one another, notice the differences in thought, in culture, in ability to make peace or destroy. They became afraid, threatened, and were willing to fight for their survival. There were some attempts at peace, but it was peace balanced on a razor-thin edge.

But despite the fear and confusion and world-rending magic, there were brave men and women representing each island who went out to discover the newly Broken World. They came together and created the Explorer’s Guild.

Their mission was to explore the new world and fight for peace within it. That meant trekking through the unknown, fighting monsters of nightmare, and learning to work with one another.

The Explorers became heroes of legend, their exploits known all over the world of Flenever. They went out into the Broken World, and they fought to put it back together.

That was who her grandfather had been, and that was who Rayne wanted to be.

For as long as Rayne could remember, she’d wanted to be an Explorer, to join the guild, fight evil, and save the day. She wanted to go on amazing adventures and write them down in a journal of her own, to tell her own story.

But there was another story at play, one that needed to be finished.

As Rayne flipped through the loud ink-filled pages, she reached the point where her grandfather’s story fell silent. Where ink no longer painted the parchment.

It was empty, blank, nothingness all the way to where the book ran out of pages. She turned back one, and there was the last sketch he had drawn. It was rough, splotchy, and smeared, but it was a diamond, and beneath it was the word Alkania.

Alkania was the city where the cataclysm had happened. Ground zero. The city was renowned for its use of magical technology. They used magical accumulators to power their city and their studies into the nature of magic.

Magic was an energy—an element of the world, like wind, water, or fire—but it was also much more. There were creatures and places that lived and thrived off of magic, and without it, they wouldn’t exist. Those creatures were part of the magic, and the magic was part of them.

When enough magical energy was brought together, the force would materialize into crystals that sorcerers and wizards could use to touch the magic, to use it for great and terrible purposes.

The city of Alkania had had in its possession the largest accumulator in the world, known as the Oasis. It was a massive crystal filled with the might and energy of magic and was used to power the city in wonderful ways.

Before the siege, Alkania had been a superpower of the ancient world, a beacon of hope and progress.

But now it was a crater. Alkania was gone, and the world had been left in pieces.

No one knew what had happened that day; there were no survivors. Alkania had been at war. The bakiri, reptilian creatures of the deep sea, had broken through the walls, overrun the city, and boom.

Now it was all gone.

Rayne ran her fingers over the sketch of the Oasis. Based on the notes her grandfather had left, he believed that maybe in the crater where Alkania used to stand, there might be a piece. It was just a spark compared to a flame, a fragment of the Oasis that had once been. It would be an artifact of priceless importance—an artifact the Explorer’s Guild would do anything to possess.

Because the Explorer’s Guild wasn’t easy to join. One had to prove themselves capable of survival in some of the harshest climates, capable of chasing down mysteries and lost treasures, and capable of walking paths others feared to tread.

So that was what Rayne was going to do. She was going to finish her grandfather’s adventure and find that piece of the Oasis. It would be her key into the guild, and then she could take the pieces of the Broken World and begin putting them back together.