A huge island was floating toward them, its base an inverted cone of craggy pale stone, the golden waterfall of mana pouring up and soaking into the stone, but it was the castle that caught Scorio’s attention, a rambling ruin built around a rough peak, complete with towers and battlements and a central keep. Sleek green fiends flew on batwings about the keep, on whose roof he saw a massive nest built of whole trees.
Its owner fortunately never flew into view.
Ydrielle spent much of her time below with Druanna. Scorio was sourly humored by this hypocrisy; he was denied training, but she got to cozy up to a Pyre Lady and no doubt ask her all manner of questions about how to rank up? The perks of power, he supposed.
The Flame Vaults ignored him. That suited him just fine.
They crossed the Farmlands. Scorio watched the tilled fields and barns roll by. Teams of farmers, Great Soul patrols, all slipped past quickly.
Ydrielle chose not to cross the Rain Wall; instead, they followed the great cliff below it and down whose length spilled countless grand waterfalls. The Dread Blaze didn’t bother to explain her rationale, but Scorio could surmise; she’d have to burn Iron or Bronze to get that high, only to have to recharge the tanks in order to cross again on the far side.
They followed the Rain Wall’s perimeter, and the sight never grew old. Finally, Ydrielle emerged from below to steer them back out over the Farmlands, and the journey mirrored itself in reverse.
The next day passed smoothly; they crossed the Farmlands and the Golden Circuit, then flew out over a brief stretch of woodland before the horizon manifested a dramatic change.
A huge and brutal mountain of black stone reared up ahead, with two chains branching off beyond it in a massive V. Smoke rose from the land contained between both ranges, and the air soon took on a metallic tang.
Scorio tried to imagine a floating island plunging so hard into the Plains that it would carve up the land to that extreme. How big had the island been? How much momentum had it had before impact?
They sailed between two peaks, rising high to clear the scorched slopes, and passed into a deadland. Here and there Scorio saw greenery, tenacious moss or bushes rising up, but something about the soil had to be inimical to life. The valley between the twin chains was made of congealed black rock, its surface endlessly swirled as if it had once been mud that had cooled and hardened into black rock.
Not mud.
Lava.
Scorio grimaced. Good thing his friends weren’t around to have heard him make that observation.
Up ahead, in the center of the monumental valley arose a single peak like a smith’s anvil. As they drew closer he realized it wasn’t one massive mountain, but a necklace of volcanoes, all of them active and belching fumes as they spilled bursts of lava down their slopes.
Everyone moved to the prow. Their journey was almost at an end.
Gusts of sulfur pushed them along and the air was rife with pockets of Iron and Coal mana. Ydrielle spun the wheel expertly, navigating as best she could amongst the reefs of dangerous mana, but even so the ride was fitful and chaotic. The Sloop would drop even as Ydrielle released a puff of Iron or even Bronze, then slew to the side as a blast of Copper would come rushing over them like a gale.
Despite the coldness between himself and the Flame Vaults, Scorio moved up alongside Crush and clipped in. “Why’s the mana so wild here?”
“You think I know?” But her tone was one of amusement. “Probably something to do with the nature of the whole place. You know that this was all caused by a falling island?”
“Someone told me, yes.”
“Most of the island speared deep into the ground. Or the mana shock stirred up the layers below. I don’t know. But everything’s thrown off here. Makes for a hell of a ride.”
As if on cue, The Sloop suddenly slid down as if it had strayed out onto a steep slope; Scorio’s stomach lurched up and he grabbed onto the railing as Crush let out a whoop of enjoyment.
Ydrielle grimaced and wrestled with the wheel, buffering their descent with a flash of Bronze, and then they rose swiftly as Iron flowered beneath them, hurling them up a handful of yards.
The anvil of volcanoes drew closer. The stench grew thicker, cloying, and coated the inside of Scorio’s mouth. Just as he remembered it in the Fiery Shoals.
Druanna emerged from below. She looked greatly recovered, her color returned, her Kraken robes cinched tightly about her trim waist by her sash, a safety harness over both shoulders. She moved hesitantly, however, as if she didn’t quite yet trust her balance, and clipped in beside Ydrielle.
The anvil drew closer, ever closer, looming massive, the volcanoes awesome, each shuddering up great gobbets of fire and white smoke, spewing their lava trails down over endless petrified spills.
And perched on raw ledges, clinging to lonely outcrops, their branches swaying back and forth as they were buffeted by the wind, were the Lava Trees. Glowing pink petals streamed from their boughs like tears, swirling away into oblivion and smoke without surcease. They were beautiful, appeared fragile, insubstantial, but clearly they were impossibly tough to even grow here in the first place.
The Sloop swung out wide around the flanking volcano and then pulled back in, canting over, sails creaking, to slide down a slope of Copper shot through with Coal between a beetling mass of Iron that was rolling in like a tidal wave of power.
The volcanic slopes revealed themselves as their ship curved around, and then there it was, the Fiery Shoals themselves, jet black and angular, fitted into the raised edge of a broad plateau like a cork into the neck of a bottle of fresh hell, lava pouring in thick, clotted waterfalls from chutes beneath the fort’s walls to spatter down into the great lava field below, that endless roiling nightmare sea of orange and crimson and black crust. Around it all rose the cliffs upon which the tenuous pink trees grew, and Scorio’s heart rose at the sight, the speed of their approach, Ydrielle’s daring as she slotted them down between the great masses of mana at a precipitous dive toward the huge esplanade where The Celestial Coffer and a second ship bearing House Hydra’s emblem were docked.
The rigging strained, the sail creaked, the very boards beneath their feet groaned. Ydrielle was draining the area of all mana, creating a bubble of nothingness around them, a bubble that sank rapidly toward a lonesome pier.
At the last moment Ydrielle threw the wheel to the side, spinning it so that the spokes blurred. The boom swept across the dock, the sail snapped taut, the ship slurred through the air, the stern coming out wide as the prow turned toward the dock, and they slid through the air several hundred yards above the lava to come in smoothly beside the dock, a final blast of countering Iron bringing them to a standstill just feet from the great stone pier.
Crush leaped over the side to turn and catch a coil of rope which she set to tying around a large iron bollard. Ydrielle’s face was flushed with excitement, and Scorio caught her glance with shining eyes at Druanna, her lips parted.
Showing off?
Scorio almost snorted. Druanna had surely seen far more thrilling sights—but no, the Pyre Lady returned Ydrielle’s smile without reserve.
Perhaps she enjoyed a thrilling entry as much as anyone else.
The Sloop was made fast as a delegation of House Kraken dignitaries approached, most of them looking like non-Great Soul scholars and bureaucrats.
No one was looking at him, so Scorio shrugged out of his security harness and leaped onto the pier. For a moment he was thrown off by its very solidity, but then he adapted and inhaled deeply.
Ah, that familiar stink.
The House Kraken delegation stopped where a gangplank was extended to the dock, then froze at the sight of Druanna who moved to stand at the side of The Sloop.