Dire Sparks (Song of the Aura, Book Five)

• Title Page
  
• Prologue, Part One: Beginning of the End
  
• Prologue, Part Two: Remnants
  
• Chapter One: Awakening
  
• Chapter Two: Breaking
  
• Chapter Three: Beginning
  
• Chapter Four: Bleeding
  
• Chapter Five: Fighting
  
• Chapter Six: Flaming
  
• Chapter Seven: Rebelling
  
• Chapter Eight: Believing
  
• Chapter Nine: Darkening
  
• Chapter Ten: Writhing
  
• Chapter Eleven: Searing
  
• Chapter Twelve: Ascending
  
• Chapter Thirteen: Breathing
  
• Chapter Fourteen: Healing
  
• Chapter Fifteen: Seeing
  
• Chapter Sixteen: Overcoming
  
• Chapter Seventeen: Clashing
  
• Chapter Eighteen: Roaring
  
• ABOUT the AUTHOR and the BOOK
  
• BOOK SIX
  
• BOOK ONE
  

Dire Sparks

Song of the Aura: Book Five

Photo Credit to
Vanderfrog

to take the first steps.

The survivors of the Giant’s Isle called him a hero. The spirits of the world called him a prophet.

His best friend, though, didn’t seem to share either opinion.

“
You thief!” Lauro called to Gribly, jumping nimbly up to the top of the broken wall where he sat, thirty feet above the ground. “You stole breakfast from the quartermaster again, didn’t you? You’ve got to stop sneaking around the men like that… they’ll give you anything you ask for, you know. Scurrying about like you’re still a street rat just looks suspicious.”

Gribly shrugged, biting ruefully into a hunk of bread and staring off into the silence. “Old habits are hard to get rid of, I guess… and those two who command your army look at me funny, especially the woman.”

“
The Winter siblings?” Lauro shook his head. “They’re just soldiers, Gribly. They’ve been fighting tooth and nail since this war began… especially Karanel. Don’t worry about trouble from them. They’ll obey me as… as their ruler.”

Gribly stared at the prince, noticing the deep bags under his eyes, and the weary slump of his shoulders. “Oh… Been rough, without the King, then…”

Lauro had effectively taken over the rule in his father’s absence. Thousands of troops and civilians, all who could flee the destruction and assimilation of Vastion, had appeared on the edge of the Fellmere, right as Gribly had transported himself and all the surviving rogues to the same spot. They were led by Karanel and Marvol Winter, two seasoned fighters who had passed on the command to the errant prince, though they still hefted the majority of the management burden themselves.

Their story was a sad one, of battles fought and lost from coast to coast, as Vastion had been slowly pushed back by the undefeatable hordes of the Golden Nation. King Larion himself had gone missing during a raid to lift the siege of a Wind Monastery merely five days before the Vastic Remnant had met with the rogues, but Lauro refused to give in to the possibility that his father had died.

Loss brings families together like nothing else can,
Gribly thought.

“
Rough,” Lauro said, smiling sadly in response. “I don’t think that’s very grateful of us. We should be thanking the Aura… and
you
, Gribly… Without you we’d never have survived.”

The thief shrugged, kicking his legs off the edge of the crumbling wall. “I suppose… but I haven’t heard from Traveller or Wanderwillow… or… well, nothing since the Giant’s Isle.” He did not speak of the Voice… he did not dare to. It felt like something he would die before speaking of, even to Lauro.

“
Well,” the prince began, glancing around them at the mist-shrouded terrain. “We aren’t doing too badly, no matter what little troubles I’ve got. With the rangers now working actively with us, and the Lost Walls to halt our enemies… we should be able to hold out for a while yet.”

“
But for how long…” Gribly muttered. Lauro didn’t bother responding. They both knew that when the next great surge came, the remnant of Vastion would be crushed. Sheolus was just too powerful, especially now that the Red Aura Automo had joined him. “I…” Gribly began, intending to ask Lauro if he intended to use the Midnight Sword- but the prince cut him off.

“
Blood of the Ghost, Gribly…
look
…”

The thief looked, and for a moment couldn’t tell what he was seeing. Through the mists, approaching the Lost Walls, a seething mass of
something
was rushing silently forward, like a tidal wave that hugged the ground, glittering in the rare sunbeam that broke the clouds overhead.

Glittering…

“
Aura help us,” Gribly murmured, food dropping from his nerveless fingers.

“
They’ve come!” Lauro shouted, leaping up to his feet, balancing precariously on the top of the wall. His voice rang out through the mists, and sounds of muffled surprise and consternation began to break out in the hidden camp all around them, as soldiers and rangers, striders and clerics readied themselves for battle. “The Golden Nation is here!” Lauro yelled, “The tide has come! Prepare! Take your positions! For Vastion! For the Aura!”

Suddenly a bolt of lightning streaked down out of the sky, crackling with impossible energy as it smote the place where Lauro stood. Gribly yelped in shock as the force of the blast threw him backwards off the wall.

Striding quickly, the thief ripped chunks of stone from the wall, molding their shape to his desire. A heartbeat later he landed, crouching, on a lumpy platform of stone and earth that had risen from the ground at his command.

Lauro had vanished. For a half-second Gribly feared that a Pit Strider had somehow learned to control Sky, killing the prince… But then he remembered the tale Marvol Vale had told of the war, and King Larion’s powers.

Blood of the Ghost, indeed,
he thought, whistling aloud,
he’s learned to transport himself with lightning!
Heavenly useful, that…

Another bolt struck the earth out beyond the walls, throwing up a fountain of rocky shards. Blast! That meant the prince intended to take the invaders all on his own… brave, but stupid.

“
You could’ve waited for me,” Gribly grumbled. He didn’t have Traveller’s staff with him, but he also didn’t have time to get it from the tent where he slept. “Ah…” he groaned, “I guess it’s not a bad way to go, if it comes down to it.”

His hands swept to the sides, and the earth responded, sinking into the ground in an explosion of dust that threw him into a somersault. He landed atop one of the tallest walls and began to sprint along it. When it dropped away beneath him in a gaping hole, he Stone Strode, pushing himself off the block in an arcing leap. He landed on the far side of the gap, but a heavy whistling in the air alarmed him, and he leaped to the side as a huge orb of metal crashed through the wall.

With a startled “Oomph!” the thief landed in the grass, rolling back onto his feet without breaking stride. What had that orb been? More of Automo’s mechanical devilry, probably.

The next second, the walls around him were peppered again and again by more of the orbs, which fell from the sky like thunderbolts, smashing stone and earth with equal ease, sometimes bursting apart in flames and deadly shards of metal. Gribly cursed and ducked and dodged, trusting his reflexes to keep him alive… but it was only a matter of time before one of the things took off his head, to crush him to a pulp.

Screams and wailing came from the camp behind him, raucous cheers from the attackers beyond the last few walls.

“
Fine, be idiots,” Gribly grumbled. The Power of Stone coursed through his body, stiffening his limbs and strengthening him beyond mortal capabilities. Without pausing to think of the enormity of what he was about to try, Gribly leaped into the air, curling into a tight, spinning ball.

WHAM.
The ground gave way like water beneath him, blowing away as he sank into the dirt, then closing over his head.

Several meters into the earth, a tunnel opened where only solid soil had been before. Gribly dropped into it and began to run, opening a path before him with punches of his fists, simultaneously hardening the ceiling and walls so as not to collapse the tunnel on himself.

Speed. Silence. Stealth. The attackers would never see him coming.

The sounds of destruction reached him in muffled thuds and booms overhead, but he did not listen. His mind was emptied of anything but awareness: the Stone spoke to him, and he felt in every slight tremor and movement the reality of events above, below, and on every side. Beneath the earth, he was king. No Sky, and precious little Sea, but much, much life.