The central dark-glass castle of Low Earth was so much larger up close— when it wasn't looming in the dark at the end of a bone road.
Not that Thena knew, she barely made it inside. Rushing past the open great stone doors was jarring. It was even colder inside. She spun around and whistled for Titus to hit the other side.
They pushed the stone slabs into eachother to shut the doors, only barely cutting off the pursuing hordes.
A severed arm fell to the ground between them. Still twitching against the cold dead ground.
Titus snorted once and stomped it into a paste.
"So much for silence." Thena mumbled.
Titus licked her bleeding arm.
"Let's go." She spun her mace and ventured further into the castle.
The massive corridors and hallways were easily traveled. The castle functioned like a series of caves where sparse airflow became her guiding light.
In every nook and cranny she could smell the myriad scents of life lived. Artistry from berry paints and blood. Small crafts from wood and stone rubble. Curtains, dark-lights and leather flags hung from stalactites. She could hear them sway in the stale wind.
War felt so far away inside the castle.
She climbed the highest heights. She tripped on a oddly shaped stone. Only realizing what it was when Titus pushed it back to her with his nose.
"A….. toy?" It was a toy of a bat.
A toy.
A toy in the underworld.
"Who needs toys in any manner of hell?"
She tried to shake off the goosebumps growing on her sk—
The doors blasted open many floors below her. Back where she came from.
"THENA!" Leanna raged.
The roar of war echoed up the stone floors.
"THENA! GET BACK HERE NOW!"
She no longer understood anything or knew what specifically to beleive. Other than one thing. Stay in the castle.
She kept on upward until she felt the cold cleanliness of midnight sky.
She was on the top floor.
In a main hall of sorts.
The air was acrid with magic and blood and pain. It had a physical feel to it.
The floor was different on her sensitive feet. She could feel it through her thin boots. It was designed. Purposeful.
"Have you come to slay the Low-King?"
His voice was so deep it was almost unintelligible.
"My Queen may not appreciate you succeeding— then again, she might. I think she grows annoyed of me. Of this…. This all."
"Just kill her!" A female ordered from beside him.
"I'd rather wait for the other one to come. Two birds with one stone as they say. Or two Druids with one root pul—"
Leanna came flying up the stairs behind Thena in the form of a massive crow. She spun back into her human shape in a burst of green energy and feathers.
The shift back was imbalanced. She was mentally frayed from something so intense it was shifting her internal mana flow. It left her half shaped. She had the fangs of a wolf. Avian bulging eyes leaking red tears and feathers covering her arms.
"Well, hello. You sure you aren't one of us?" The Low-King inquired.
Leanna snarled and shot six charged bolts from her crossbow. One of them cut through Thena's ear.
The Low-King yawned as he caught them casually. His queen hissed in offense.
"Thena, Titus, ready yourselves!" Leanna coughed.
Thena didn't move. Rangers words still bounced around in her mind. Even more now as they all stood in the open foyer.
The stories of the Low-King weren't adding up. He was said to be a language lacking brute of impossible power and evil.
Yet there he sat, joking.
It must've been a rouse. But for what?
"THENA! You foolish bitch! If you won't help me then you can die with the—"
Titus sent her crashing into the leftmost wall where she lay unconscious.
"Twist of fate…." The Low-King mumbled.
The Queen was silent.
Thena turned to them both. The ones she'd been read scary bedtime stories about by her mentors since she was a child.
"Are you planning an uprising?"
He scoffed.
The Queen spat on the floor, "Why ask? You green demons move on whatever you feel. Or should I say see?"
"You said you're oppressed….. by who?" Thena inquired.
"Girl, you come to my home, kill my people and demand answers like you're a friend?" The Low-King questioned.
"Friends are made, not born."
"HaHA! The Druid comes to tell us what is made. Your blindfold is quite…. fitting as you wear it." For the first time since the start of the war, the Low-King sounded venomous.
The cave rumbled as Druids rushed inside.
"Well, your end grows closer. You were a weird one. I won't remember you." The Low-King stood.
"Wait!" For the first time, the Low-Queen wasn't enraged and snappy. She was urgent.
"You said friends are made, not born."
It took Thena a moment to realize the queen was speaking to her.
"Yes."
"Then what is born?"
She didn't fully understand the question. "What is born? Life."
"And what is life?"
"Life is." That's all it ever would be.
"It is what?"
"It is…. To be determined. It is precious and unpredictable. Where our roots dig deepest is unknown and can change our shape forever." Thena said. She often had similar conversations with her father before he grew… silent. As silent as she was blind.
It was silent then. Even as the Druids reached the top steps in the form of bark-skinned warriors, massive deer and giant wolves and harpies. There was silence. Even as the Low-King and Queen— evil incarnate, unveiled an impossibility. Silence remained until it could no longer.
"Save him."
The baby wailed. Vocal chords strong and as dominant as his father. The Low-King. The sound was unlike anything she'd ever heard.
A baby's cry in a world without them. A world where they were said to never exist.
Things so precious and innocent couldn't survive in the ice cold home of evil.
Yet there he was.
She could smell the fresh birth on him. Newborn. But strong. Big. Healthy. Alive.
"Let his life be determined— as all should be. He shouldn't die here. He's done nothing. WE'VE done nothing….. nothing we wanted to. If you can't see that, at least see him, woman without sight. I beg of you like I never have to anyone."
The Druids reached the top stairs.
"What the….."
"They've stolen a baby! Kill the Queen!—"
"Stop!" Thena aimed her mace at them.
"What are you doing?"
Before Thena could reply, a crossbow bolt ripped straight through her ear.
She went down screaming. Though she only heard it on one side of her head.
The ground spun. The heavy footfalls of the Low-King attacking the Druids added to her plummeting balance.
She sluggishly got to her feet.
Leanna roared maddeningly. The sound of a heavy slap shook the stone castle. The Low-King was knocked back into his throne where his son cried in his mothers shaking arms.
"THENA! After I slay the Low-King, I will avenge Lucian and Sandy by tearing your heart out! Betrayer! They died because of you! Conspiring witch! You abandoned the grove!"
"What good is a grove if it's laced with lies!" Thena got her footing thanks to Titus.
"Kill the traitor!" Leanna yelled at the Druids.
They charged.
Thena threw down a handful of bramble seeds, conjuring a wall of twisting weeds, roots and spikes.
She turned back to the Low-King and Queen.
"I am a Druid. I swore an oath to preserve life and learn from the green spirits therein."
"Then don't break it here." The Queens voice was cold with determination and urgency. She heard mothers back in Center-Earth sound the same.
The same.
Leanna raged on the other side of the bramble wall.
"BETRAYER! BETRAYER! BETRAYER!"
"Hurry! Take him to Center-Earth. He's not like the Low-Earth spawn you're used to. He's Unbranded. Untouched by the Core-Dwellers! You can't see his skin— or ours. But they won't be able to know. Please! Let his life be determined." The Queen held the baby out to her, sniffling, heart aching as she perceived her end.
More Druids flooded the building. Along with maddened Shadow-Kin. A whole swarm of minds lost to violence. Unaware of the intense unknown brewing atop the castle.
Thena said nothing. Only sharing a sightless look with Titus.
The bull transformed into a massive black striped hawk with horns and a ring running through its beak.
Thena followed suit turning into a giant brown furred eagle.
She flew for the Low-King and Queen with her talons outstretched.
The walll behind her came crashing down, revealing a flood of wild Druids and Low-Earth monsters charging in the midst of their own war.
Thena's wingbeats were hard. Urgent. Following the thought of Ranger's words. The Queen's explanation.
When her talons wrapped around the baby's small arms, she could feel the weakness in them. So young and frail and unlike everything.
She escaped out the back window, flying off into the night with Titus the bull-hawk.
The castle lit up with violence on all floors as it left the streets empty and desolate with bodies.
"BETRAYER!" Leanna yelled from the window in some mangled half form of woman, raven, bear and dog. Her voice was worse than shadow-kin. Raw and everchanging and torn with rage. "I WONT FORGET! YOU RUN! ….. and I will chase until I have you stuck in my TEETH! YOU AND THAT WRETCHED RUNT!"
The construct of a flaming Phoenix bloomed from the streets. Highlighting the form of Ranger. So small from so high up but mighty with his Fire-Speaker magic. He roared with a smile as smoke flowed from him. Within its plume, shapes slithered. Shadow-Kin descending on the last Seer left alive.
"NO!!!" Thena screeched.
He was gone in a flash. Giving more thought to his smiles. He must've seen his death. He must've seen it all in the flames.
His burning Phoenix hit the castle.
The castle crumpled with the explosion of some pollen blast at the same time. Tree roots and vines spun from the crumbling stone and glass. Flames ate away at the weakened portions.
Blood pooled at the pit of the crumbling disaster. Flowing and fizzling with magic left to scar the cold earth as a hideous mangled willow tree bloomed from the carnage.
Thena flew in a panic until the sounds of war and rage were a distant echo. Loose feathers fell like rain in her wake. Tears spilled from her blind eyes.
It was only then that she realized.
The baby in her talons. The shadow of her wings at his back.
"The vision…..the boy with wings…."