Sons of Ironstorm - Book 3: New Alliance

Fire Wurm

With an abruptness that left Patrik staggering on the soft loam covering the floor of the chamber, a vision opened in his mind's eye, unfolding as if he were plummeting down into the depths of the earth. Before he lost his balance, however, he found himself standing on the shores of a vast, heaving sea of molten lava.

To each side walls of granite and obsidian soared upward, forming a great, vaulting ceiling which enclosed the sea in a vast cavern of fire, particles of crystal forming a star-filled sky illuminated by the seethe of Ramnor's blood below. Flames were dervishes of motion and heat across the molten expanse filling the cavern with a reddish glow, indications of just how hot the magma sea was. Yet not even a hint of sulfur touched Patrik's nostrils and the heat was a cool breeze across his brow.

Despite the wonder spreading before him, Patrik frowned. By all rights, a mortal frame should have withered under the oppressive heat, lungs suffocating with poisonous fumes. He, however, was untouched. Somehow his mind, not his body had traveled through the lengths of intervening stone to enter this place, a mind buttressed by his link with the Earth Sword.

Still mulling over the possibilities of moving through solid stone by the power of his mind, Patrik was letting his eyes roam over the molten plain when he caught sight of something in the distance. It wasn't much; maybe a trick of the ever-shifting light or waves of heat rising off the magma but it was enough to capture his attention. Especially in light of the knowledge the Earth Sword lay somewhere down in these depths. Whatever it was, it bore investigation.

Patrik began to step from the cobalt beach onto the fiery waves themselves, intent on walking to the object to investigate. Only to instinctively pause before he actually stepped onto the roiling waves of molten rock.

For a long moment he hung there, staring down at what appeared to be his booted foot, but a hand span above the magma's surface. No pain reached it there, no imminent collapse into a fiery demise. Instead the heat roiling off the magma was a mere tingle on the bottom of his foot. Finally he couldn't wait any longer and firmly put his foot down onto the liquid stone and he smiled when he found more tingling meeting him there.

Confidence restored, he strode out onto the lifting magma waves, intent on the distant object, which grew more distinct with each stride towards it. Until it became visible as a sword jutting from the magma, buried to half its blade length in the bubbling lava. Patrik grinned; he didn't need to see any more to know what the sword was. There was only one such blade that had the magic and power enough to survive a constant bath in molten rock. It was the Earth Sword.

A handful of steps found Patrik finally standing over the Weapon of Power he was chosen to wield, the hilt the same dark color he had seen it in his vision that day the Chain Islanders destroyed Beth Kabahla. And there was the symbol: a tree with three roots and three branches marking the blade just beneath the guard, the etching glowing with power from within.

A glance down at his left palm yielded a strange, pulsing brand there glowing in response to the hypnotic pulsing of the sword symbol. And the burning in his blood had become a boiling; now was the time he would take up the sword. Teeth grit in anticipation of the flow of power that would race through him at contact, he boldly reached for the sword's hilt.

With a roar to rival the greatest of storms, the magma around him exploded, sending great gobs of molten rock in every direction. In the hole revealed, black coils of what appeared to be carved stone shifted uneasily, further displacing the magma that once cocooned it, writhing with an unnatural life. Patrik had time enough to blink in shock as he stared at the coils before he found himself being roughly thrown through the poison-laden air by a displacement wave lifting beneath his very feet.