Wings of Fire: Revenant

Chapter Six

Peacemaker awoke in a place he didn't recognize.

He was standing atop a huge summit, the twin peaks of Jade Mountain silhouetted against the light of the rising sun in the distance. He gazed upon the scene in bewilderment. This didn't make any sense. Where was he? How had he gotten there? There was no peak in the Claws of the Clouds range high enough to look down on Jade Mountain like this.

Even the more familiar hills and valleys in the distance seemed strangely off-kilter, as if some of the rocks and surrounding trees had been picked up and moved around. The moons now slipping down the opposite horizon were brighter and fatter than they had been when he had gone to bed that night, as if time itself had somehow been rearranged around him.

Peacemaker's confusion was just beginning to give way to intense fear when a voice suddenly slashed its way through the deafening silence. "Nothing I did worked."

Peacemaker whirled around to see a dragon sitting some distance away from him, facing out towards the pale-lit mountains.

"I thought I was so careful, and we still ended up here." Even with her back to him, Peacemaker thought he recognized this dragon.

"Truthseeker?"

She didn't respond, instead continuing to speak in a voice that was at once familiar and strange. "Now it's all happened, and I can't change any of it, and I still don't know where it all went so wrong."

Peacemaker cautiously approached her. "Seeker? Is that you? What are you talking about? What went wrong?"

"Maybe it started the first time you lied to me," she said, as though she hadn't heard him. "Maybe it was all the small moments where you felt threatened or powerless or out of control, and all the things you did to fight those feelings."

These words stung in a way he couldn't quite explain.

"I don't understand what you mean. What things have I done?"

She didn't respond.

"Seeker? Why won't you look at me?"

He reached out to touch her, only for her to suddenly swing around to face him. Peacemaker leapt back in terror at what he saw staring back at him. This dragon had no face! Where her face should have been there was only a gaping black hole, and her voice seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

"Or maybe it's just part of you, something you hatched with. Maybe you were always going to turn out this way, no matter how hard I tried to save you."

"I don't understand. Who are you? What are you talking about?"

No reply.

"Answer me! Please!"

In desperation, he tried to reach out for her again, but found himself unable to move. Something was holding tight to his talons, keeping them fixed firmly to the ground. Terror seized Peacemaker's heart as he looked down to see that it was the mountain itself holding him in place.

The dark stone was parting around his feet, swallowing them up like quicksand. He struggled against it with all the strength in his body, but the mountain wouldn't release its grip. Every second he sank lower, the shifting rock opening wider to swallow him up. In mere moments he was up to his chest, the frigid cold of the hungry stone lapping at his scales.

Panicked, he cried out to the faceless dragon, "Please ... please help me!"

The other dragon didn't move, simply staring back with that dark, expressionless mask.