Allies and Enemies

Chapter Five: The Lost Cities

I let Rowan know about the gods and confessed my worries about the Lost Cities.

"You must go anyway," she said. "Whoever these people are, they're powerful if they can capture the gods. The last time that happened, only Artemis was captured, and even that took a while. We need as many allies as possible." Steeling myself for whatever I would find, I stepped through the door to Eternalia. I quickly realized that I was standing in a burning pool of crystal. I swore loudly, not that anyone heard it, became a falcon, and levitated up. Since I was a Froster and a Hydrokinetic, my feet (or should I say, my foot and my mechanical foot) hadn't burned off, thank the gods, but they were still burned pretty badly. I flew backward toward a hill in the distance and landed hard on my tailbone. I wheezed slightly and groaned from the burns. My boots were burned. I would have to repair them, especially the tech inside them, which was ashes at this point. I laughed hollowly to myself. Eternalia was gone, and I was worried about my boots. Eternalia is gone. I thought. I never much liked the Council, besides Oralie, Bronte, and Terik, of course, but without them, the Lost Cities' government would collapse. Sophie. I thought. I tried to stand, then collapsed. The pain was too much. I held up my leaping crystal to Havenfield and crawled into the beam of light. It took all I had to keep myself together. I appeared on the lawn of Havenfield. The manor was burning, and there was someone sunken on their knees in front of it.

"NO!" I yelled, my voice hoarse from the smoke. I tried to run, collapsed, tried to run, collapsed until I fell beside the person in front of the manor. Edaline.

"You can't do anything to help them, Kianna," Edaline whispered.

"SOPHIE!" I screamed, Edaline's hand on my shoulder and my burns preventing me from simply running into the fire to try and save the girl I considered to be a sister. I sank to my knees, sobbing, my tears blinding me from the image that had been one of my worst fears.

"Why, how?" I asked, slightly hiccuping.

"I don't know. I was washing Verdi when I smelled smoke," Edaline said sadly. My tears didn't stop, but I wiped them away. Once I did, I saw something.

"What's that?" I asked, crawling over to it. It was a symbol, burned into the grass. A crest. The symbol of the Death Eaters, a flame, a scythe, and the symbol of the Empire. A V was in the center. I slapped my hand on the ground. I knew what it all meant, but I didn't know how it was possible.

"What does this mean?" Edaline asked.

"All of my homeworlds are involved," I replied. I dug in my pouches and pulled out a medium-sized sack. I dumped out the contents on the ground.

"Leaping crystals," Edaline realized. "How did you get all of these?"

"Not important," I replied. "Take half and save as many people as possible. I'll take the other half. If the house is burned by Everblaze, don't go in."

"What about your burns?" Edaline asked.

"I've endured worse," I gritted my teeth. "I don't know where these go, but they only have one facet each." I took a couple of handfuls of crystals and put them back in my pouch. Take the rest and meet back here with the survivors.

"Be careful," Edaline said.

"Not likely," I muttered.

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I met back with Edaline in forty-five minutes. That was when I realized that so many of my friends were dead. Among the survivors were Tam, Linh, Maruca, Tiergan, Alden, Della, and Biana. Fitz had been at Foxfire when it was burned so he hadn't made it out, but I guessed that Alvar probably would have wanted to spare the rest of his family. Out of the hundreds of elves that I had been able to reach, few remained, about fifty. Rowan teleported us to the portal room, and I met her there.

"Elves?" she asked.

"So many dead."

"And the symbol?"

"All the worlds. I don't know what it means, though."

"What do we do? We have so few people to fight this."

"We recruit other worlds. We need allies.

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I treated my burns in my room. I sprayed a few layers of bacta spray on my feet, and while my feet healed, I repaired my boots. I thought about worlds I could possibly recruit to our cause. Once I had a list and I could at least limp, I met with Rowan privately. I brought up a hologram of a list of different worlds.

"Where do we go?" I asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "Wait, what about the Grisha? The Second Army?"

"I don't know if Zoya would want to help," I muttered. "Genya may, though. I'm probably going to pay a visit to the Dregs."

"Good idea. You did randomly save Matthias that one time. He owes you his life."

"Yeah, that'll be a good word. I'll probably go to the Jedi Council. That'll be great to have all of them, though considering what we're up against, we will need more people." 

"How about Fablehaven? The fairies, astrids, and unicorns would be good warriors," Rowan said. 

"Sure. I could reach out to them. They were the first world I accidentally teleported to, after Christophsis." I sat, thinking about worlds I had helped in my past. "Wait, I have an idea."

"Yeah?"

"What about Middle-Earth?"

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Chapter 6 coming soon!

-KS