The midday sun laid its hot blade against the open desert, its wind kicking up tendrils of sand crossing the ground like restless spirits. Kael Morrin wiped the sweat beading down his forehead and readjusted his wide-brimmed hat to better shield his eyes, squinting at the opening to the ruin before him. A far cry from the great discovery he once had aspired to make during his career, it would have to suffice now.
This better be worth it, Kael grumbled under his breath as he brushed off the sand sticking to his trousers.
"Talking to yourself again, Morrin?" the voice called out too easily.
He turned to Alec, assistant and longtime friend, who was leaning with his back to the rusting frame of their jeep, with a smirk oozing out of his tanned, sweat-glistening skin.
"Maybe I'm talking to the ruin," Kael said dryly, heaving his backpack over one shoulder.
Alec chuckled. "Well, good luck. I'll be out here keeping the jeep company. Holler if you find something that'll pay our bills for once."
It wasn't a kindly cut, either, and though Kael would never show it, those words stung well past what he accepted as comfortable truth. A good reputation as an archaeologist had suffered because of several spates of fruitless expeditions. This was his last hope at redemption-or graciously slipping into obscurity.
He stepped into the shadowed entrance of the ruin, and the temperature dropped instantly. The air inside was musty, thick with the smell of dust and decay. He flipped on his flashlight. The beam sliced through the darkness to reveal faded carvings running along the walls.
"Not bad," Kael murmured, running his fingers over the ancient symbols. "Could be pre-Arcadian. Maybe older."
Before him opened the chamber: the ruined stone altar at the middle, fragments of broken potteries, and shards of statues strewn all over the floor-a testament to time long forgotten.
Kael approached the altar warily, as his heartbeat began. There was something there-he felt it, a subtle buzz in the air, almost a vibration that seemed to have started with the strumming of a cord.
As he drew nearer, the beam of his flashlight fell upon a faint glow emanating from a crack in the altar.
"What the." Kael whispered.
He carefully brushed the rubbish aside to disclose a shard of crystal no larger than his palm. It pulsed with an otherworldly light; its surface etched with intricate patterns that appeared to shift and writhe as he stared.
"Kael, you still alive in there?" Alec's voice was faint from outside.
Kael didn't answer. He was entranced by the shard. His hand reached out of its own accord and touched it.
The instant his fingers made contact with the crystal, the world tilted. A searing, icy energy shot through his body.
Kael yelped and stepped backward, but it was too late. The glow began to build, swirling into a brilliance that blinded.
The light finally subsided, leaving Kael on his back, staring upwards into a sky like he had never seen. It was fractured-like a mirror dropped onto the hard earth, shards reflecting kaleidoscope colors.
"What in the…", Kael sat up, head pounding.
Everything was surreal in his vision-the landscape, the ground, the sky, mountains, trees. The surroundings were also weirdly off: dark, shattered mountains in the distance, shining peaks; streams of smoldering lava crossing emerald fields; islands hung lazy in the air.
"Where am I?" Kael muttered, scrambling to his feet.
He spun in a circle, trying to get his bearings. The shard was still clutched in his hand, its glow dim but steady.
It was before he could get a hold of his thoughts that the rustling sound caught his ears. Kael spun around, his heart racing.
A figure emerged from the shade of a nearby copse: a woman, tall and commanding, clad in shining armor that was like polished steel. Her hair, pure silver, hung from the back of her head in a tight braid, and across her back lay a huge sword.
The woman's piercing gaze settled upon Kael.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice sharp, commanding.
Kael raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm Kael Morrin. I.I don't know how I got here."
The woman's eyes narrowed. "You're an outsider."
"An outsider? What does that mean?
Before she could answer, a deafening roar split the air. Kael's stomach dropped as a massive creature…a blend of wolf and dragon, its scales glinting like obsidian descended from the sky.
"Stay behind me!" the woman growled, her hand drawing out a sword in one smooth pull.
Kael didn't need to be told twice. A moment later, the beast leaped at the woman, calmly meeting its attack. Her sword cut through some sort of bladed arc through the air as crossing claws tore through the wind in a wild blur of steel and fur on steel.
Kael was frozen, his heart racing in his chest while he stared on at the battle of woman-beast that Rhea waged. She moved very fast, if not too quick for him, each of her strikes promising death. Still, the beast-the wolf-like animal with its shining metallic scales and eyes bright red-continued relentless. The wolf creature howled. Its hot, flaming breath singed the dry earth they tread on. He instinctively went a step back just in time when fire belched from its jaws.
Rhea didn't even bat an eyebrow, and the line of sight was right before her as she shifted and moved forward, her blade flashing within that poor light. She's good-no, *incredible*. He'd never seen anyone like that-a little supernatural, almost. Nonetheless, her marvelous skill weighed nothing in as a monster just kept on barreling along, eyes laid full on her.
"Do something, stranger!" Rhea screamed in a strained voice, dripping sweat beading on her brow as she blocked yet another attack by the creature.
"Do what?!" Kael yelled back, panic rising in his chest. His hands were shaking, the shard still clutched tightly in his grip. He didn't know what he could do. He had never fought anything like this before-hell, he had never fought anything *at all*. He was an archaeologist, not a warrior.
It was then that his increasing panic seemed answered, and in his hand, the shard pulsed, a faint warmth-like energy coursing through his hand. Kael stared at it, utterly unbelieving, while the humming of its power hummed within his fingers. Again he saw the battle; Rhea gave a step back -the creature's claws raked an inch from her. The worst moment was reaching its peak. Desperate. In one instinctive, terrified motion, Kael raised the shard toward the beast. The instant that the crystal was raised, from it shot a bright beam of light through the air, like some sort of released bolt of energy. The beam cut squarely into the chest of the creature and shook the air where it went in that moment. One final spasm, and the beast let out a guttural scream that sent a shiver down Kael's spine, then exploded in a cloud of ash. The wind was out of nowhere, and carrying the ash along with it was an eerie silence left thereafter.
Kael's eyes were agog, and his breath caught in his throat. The shard in his hand had ceased to glow; its pulsating energy was stopped. His mind refused to hold onto what had just transpired: he had killed the creature with not so much as a wave of light from the shard.
One fluid motion and Rhea sheathed her sword, hard breathing never once her eyes off Kael's face. Impossible to read behind the weight of that stare, it didn't stop the flicker of unease from dancing in his chest. A slow, cautious step took her closer, her eyes unbroken from the lock.
"You have no idea what you've done, do you?" Rhea's voice was calm but with an edge to it, a note of concern lurking beneath her cool exterior.
Kael's mouth had gone dry, his head beginning to shake a little, boggling him. "No clue. Care to fill me in?" He hardly recognized his voice, which shook and was not quite sure of itself. The terror that had lanced through the encounter still lingered, but was being eaten away fast by a deep-seated curiosity: what the hell is going on?
Rhea regarded him a moment, her eyes surveying his face as if weighing him. She finally blew out a breath, straightening up. "I'm Rhea. Warrior of the Water Continent." She extended a hand, though her gaze was guarded. "If you're here, then Aetherion is in more danger than I thought.
"Aetherion?" Kael repeated, his brain still fighting against the quick transposition into this plane of existence. He looked upwards toward the fractured sky: shards of light and dark entwining with each other in a juddering pattern. "What is Aetherion? Where am I?" It was little more than a murmur now; quiet, tinged with awe and misunderstanding.
Rhea hadn't uttered a word first. She jerked her head upward to the sky with a narrowing of her eyes. "Welcome to the world you've just stepped into." She stopped, pursing her lips together. "Aetherion is the world you've found yourself in-thought I don't know how you managed to get here.
Kael's eyes followed her hand, his gaze rising once more skyward. It was almost too much to fathom-the fractured sky in pieces, as if it had been shattered by some great force. Everything just seemed too unreal, too *wrong* around him. He had only just come into this strange place, and it already felt as though everything was about to collapse in upon itself.
"The shard," Rhea said in a low, urgent tone. "It's tied in with this world…*with everything here*. You shouldn't have had to touch it. But since you did, now you're connected with it." Then she turned to him, and the keenness in her gaze turned even sharper. "You'll *need* that shard if you're to survive here."
As he looked down at the shard in his hand, its glow pulsed once more, faintly, as if it responded to Rhea's words. It felt ordinary enough, but something convinced Kael this was anything but. Deep within the crystal, an inexplicable sense of power tugged, and while not able to fully decipher what that meant, somehow Kael knew this was so much more than any artifact. It was a key, a piece of a much larger puzzle that he had unwittingly stepped into. He swallowed, trying to make sense of it all. "So, this shard. it's important? And I'm not from here?
"
"Not even close," Rhea said, her voice flat. "You are of another world-yours. You came here by means of the shard, though I have not one clue how it was done." Her eyes had become so intently introspective, considering something. "But your coming might yet prove to be merely a portent of worse events.
Kael felt his stomach lurch. "What do you mean?
Rhea's hesitation flickered upon her lips, first frustration, then uncertainty. "Aetherion is in turmoil, the skies are shattered, the world is divided, and little by little things are falling. And now you…*you*, the outsider part of this tangle.
Already he opened his mouth to reply, but Rhea had already turned, her face hardening. "I don't have time to explain it all to you right now. I'm taking you somewhere safe-at least, as safe as we can get."
"Safe?" Kael echoed, his brain going a mile a minute. "Where? For that matter, I'm not even sure where I am."
Rhea shot him a look of both amusement and annoyance. "Follow me, if you want answers. Stay here, and you'll be dead within a day." And with that, she struck off through the forest, her strides swift and sure.
Kael had hesitated for but a moment before following. He had no other choice. He did not know what was happening or why he was here, but one thing was for sure-he had to figure it out. And Rhea seemed to be his only chance of getting the answers he desperately needed…