Among the Birches *NaNoWriMo 2013*

The Depths of Darkness

It was impossible for them to know how long they had slept in the static blackness of Fratyra. They hoped it had not been long-- their five days was down, at least, to three-- but the fear of enchantment made them frantic. Jasper looked into the stone, saw that Luka was not there and that the scenery was still constant, and this brought them some assurance that still there was time left to save the captured. Still, he had no idea where they should go in the huge kingdom of darkness.

"Look longer," Kya said.

"We shouldn't stay in one place too long-- we've been here far too long already," said Fjorn.

Nicholai, still in desperate pain, could not make up his mind: "Let's go, then! Wait! No-- let's stay... Just a little longer."

So Jasper gazed deep into the sphere once more.

The same bleak landscape: it was almost engraved upon Jasper's mind. It's terrible emptiness, darkness, and sinisterness had become almost welcome, despite the enigma behind the whole affair and the danger in not solving the riddle.

As Jasper gazed in, stone-faced and utterly unmoving, Kya looked from afar at the scene. Each person had their eyes glued onto Jasper and the precious stone, and Kya saw their reflections in the milky surface. Jasper looked true to his form, but the next reflection-- Fjorn's-- brought some changes. The sun elf from Tarazen looked dark and dreary: his skin was dulled, his hair a brown just bordering on black, his brows furrowed, and his eyes tired. But more alarming to Kya was Nicholai's reflection: it flickered back and forth between an almost exalted form of the poor man, with beautiful clothing and a glow about him that very rarely came to humans; and a disturbing image of him with a kind of black flame entwined about him which grew from his chest and his left arm. In the latter image, his face was contorted with pain and suffering, but his eyes betrayed hatred and not agony. She looked away abruptly and recalled the king of the sun elves' explanation of the power of the stone. She walked away from the small circle that the three had formed around Jasper.

Kya faced the west, where they would walk towards after the seer stone had been probed thoroughly. She could not distinguish the horizon from the ground: all was the same black. It seemed important to her, however, to continue trying to distinguish between the two, and her staring temporarily pushed the terrible and haunting image of Nicholai and the peculiar one of Fjorn, whom she hardly knew, out of her head.

In the far, far distance-- miles and miles away-- a small flash of light, like a slow bolt of lightening, shed a temporary glow on what Kya saw was the land. It was such a far off phenomenon-- whatever it was-- that the flicker of light did not reach Nicholai, Jasper, or Fjorn. Moments after the first, a second, more extended flicker faintly lit the darkness. It was not lightening, which Kya knew well from seeing thunderstorms so often rage around the Island; but Kya could not determine what it was, though it sparked a deep feeling of unease in her.

Directly after the second bit of mysterious light, Jasper spoke that he had seen something odd.

"What is it?" Fjorn asked.

"In the distance, a kind of flash of light, like the flicker of a large candle," he said.

Then Kya knew: the lights in the distance were bursts of fire. She waited for Jasper to continue talking and finish seeing before she would tell the others that, in the distance, the fire was visible-- albeit slightly so.

"It's getting closer," Jasper said. "I-- I don't know what I am seeing..."

There was a kind of swirl of deep black, grey, and brown, beginning in the right side of his vision and moving front and left. Ripples of orange, red, and yellow seemed to appear from nowhere and travel upwards or sideways. Then a long jet of flame-- looking similar to the Fratyra in its width and ferocity-- streamed downwards and split into a star of flame which travelled outwards from its stream upon impact with the ground. Jasper could see, now, where the flame came from. It was a dragon, dark as the rest of Fratyra, which glittered with flame and hovered in the air. It was immense and was not fully visible from Jasper's vantage point.