Elvenborn Fanfiction

The Gate

The way to the Gate was different to Kyrtian this time.
It held no visible or tangible threat. The forest was thick and healthy as before, but this time it was full of comfortingly normal sound. Birds sang in the trees, squirrels argued and chittered as they hunted for choice pinecones and nuts. Deer wandered through the forest casually, and upon occasion there would be a wild goat or an elk, or perhaps a fox. There were no alicorns so far.
But this was not particularly comforting. It seemed unlikely that any disturbance from the cave and the Great Gate would manage to make its way through a solid half mile of dragon-fused stone. Kyrtian tried to comfort himself with that thought, but something still bothered him, haunting and taunting the recesses of his mind. Did it only bother him because his father's final resting place was a ghoulish, forever frozen scene of horror? Or was it something else?
Well, he would know when he got there, he supposed. He pressed his calves against his gelding's sides to hurry their pace. Soon they would be there.
 

Kyrtian was perspiring by the time they arrived at the clearing left by the dragon's work. His gelding was sweaty and nervous from his rider's anxiety, and Kyrtian swung down with a gasp of relief. Everything looked as it should. He dropped the gelding's reins on the ground and began to walk around the clearing. It was still littered with ancient rubble from Evelon. He picked up a metal plate and studied it for a moment, curious as to what it might have been used for. It had places to insert pegs, perhaps it was a lid for something, or a base. He set it down again and glanced at his gelding. He was beginning to graze at the young grass which had sprung up in the clearing. Kyrtian felt the tension in his shoulders ease a little and walked to the rock wall that had once been the mouth of a great cave. He stared at it for a tense moment before touching it tentatively, as he might touch iron. It did not burn or break at his touch, so, dragging in a shaking breath, he pressed his ear to it and focused his power to his hearing. Nothing.  No ominous knocking of a horrifying construct. No rustling sound of an ambush beast. Nothing was in that dreadful cave. Nothing alive, anyway. He thought briefly about the wagon load of dead Elf children.
He let out a breath he had not realized he had been holding. Now he could leave and know that this evil place had no reason to haunt him. He still should walk around the clearing a bit, and make doubly certain, but it would seem that there was no cause for concern.
There was little of much interest on the ground as Kyrtian searched the clearing for anything strange. Scraps of metal from another world, ancient and twisted, useless to anyone on this earth. He did find an ancient necklace, it's  chain broken but it's token intact. It looked to be a jeweled representation of a winged horse, missing a hinged casing. He put it in his pocket and continued looking, but there was nothing of interest. Since he had no desire to spend a night so close to the scene of terror, he decided to leave and make camp as far away as he could ride before nightfall, and abandoning his seemingly pointless searching, he went to tighten his gelding's girth.
That's when he heard the tapping.
He at first refused to believe it, but the gelding cocked his ears and tossed his head. Kyrtian flicked his own ears, straining to identify the sound. It was coming from underground. And not too far from the surface. It was almost certainly a construct. Whatever had gone on down there that the constructs were working? Kyrtian felt the blood run from his face, and he thought fleetingly that he must be as utterly white as quality parchment.
He knew what he had to do. He had to drain the constructs.
The noise was closer, and Kyrtian could now tell that they were digging out of the back of the cave. Odd, it seemed to him, that a construct could know to do that on it's own.
Or would it know on it's own? The gate had been known to open a little at a time and let the ambush beasts through.  Could it be Elvenlords? Kyrtian knew that he could not discount this possibility any more than he could ignore it.
He sent cautious pulses of power into the ground to break it where the construct was digging. The sooner he engaged it, the sooner the dread would be over.
When the ground started to sink down where the construct was digging, he got back and sank down. He had to surprise it, or his chances would hardly be good.
He tensed, ready to spring, as it slowly emerged, first a digging mechanism, then an arm, then a body, the elfstone glowing on the side where there was a place for someone to sit.
Kyrtian sprang.
He leapt across the ground and into the seat in one clean movement, slamming his hand onto the elfstone and concentrating on drawing away the power. It was like being struck with a levin bolt. Kyrtian gasped as the power shot through him, lifting his hair and itching his skin. It felt as if he might explode, then suddenly he felt the agonizing swelling morph into something exquisitely pleasurable. The foreign power absorbed into his own, filling him and expanding him into something greater. The construct silenced, the elfstone dimming to nothing. Kyrtian shook his head, his body shaking. He looked down the tunnel made by the construct, and shakily began a descent.

The cave made him want to be sick. It was a hungry tomb. Kyrtian traveled cautiously, wondering what had awoken the constructs. Perhaps they had fed off of Aelmarkin... And his own father, for that matter. Best not think of that, he told himself.
The constructs loomed in front of him, and he set about draining them. Most of them had little power that he could tell, but it felt strange to him, unlike the active power he had taken from the other construct. He was careful to expend as little power as possible for fear that the gate might be activated, and so the work took him longer than he had hoped. By the time the last construct was drained, Kyrtian felt horribly sick, and had a raging headache. He leaned over and vomited, surges of power involuntarily shaking him. The rush of power no longer felt pleasing, it was sickening, making it almost impossible to keep it contained. The need to use it was almost debilitating. He had to get out of the cave and close it somehow.
Then to his dismay, the gate began to shimmer.
Kyrtian ran to it, to close it, but suddenly realized he was not opening it. It was being opened. By someone on the other side.