In Mornland and Arrun, people clung to each other, and stared at a sun wreathed in a black shroud, and in Callodon, Brock frowned as daylight suddenly waned, and when the windows began to rattle in their panes, he glanced to the north, and braced for Morloch's Breath…
Gawain opened his eyes. Dust fell, and there was a curious dark tint to everything. At his feet, the shattered remains of clear crystal, and scorch-marks. The tunnel leading to the chasm seemed a lot bigger than he remembered, and was pitch black.
"Longsword!" A voice cried, distant, muffled.
He gazed down at his blade, still light as a feather, lighter, if anything. But black as night, the blackness swimming in the steel, shimmering, almost crackling with energy. He held it closer to his face, looking for his reflection, but saw nothing. Just the deepest blackness swimming in the steel, the length of the blade.
"Longsword! Run!"
Gawain turned. A familiar figure was beckoning urgently. Martan. The dwarf looked terrified, and so Gawain, stunned and half-deafened, hurried across the rock-strewn ground to the tunnel.
"By Morloch's stinking breath! Your eyes!" Martan cried.
"What about them?" Gawain asked, confused, and sheathed his blade.
Again, Martan looked shocked, and blinked. "Nothing…I thought…they looked like Morloch's eyes…"
The ground shook again, more violently.
"Run!" Martan cried, pushing Gawain towards the tunnel's distant opening.
Gawain vaguely understood, and together they began running. But Martan was sorely wounded, and soon hobbled to a halt. Gawain paused.
"Run! Leave me, Raheen, or die when the roof goes!"
That name galvanised Gawain, and he lunged forward, grabbing the old man by the collar at the scruff of his neck, and began running for his life, half-dragging and half-carrying the dwarf with him.
The earthquake grew, the ground moving forward and then back, pulsing, terrifying. In the open air at the mouth of the tunnel, a great scree slope angled gently down towards the farak gorin, and at the bottom, a wagon, bearing two Ramoth emissaries, half a dozen shaveheaded followers, and standing agog, four armed guards.
Gawain lost his footing and they fell forward onto the scree, over the edge and onto the slope. Martan rode the scree feet-first sliding skilfully in spite of his broken ribs and wounds, but Gawain tumbled and rolled, and were it not for his cloak would have suffered terribly.
Behind them, the tunnel roof collapsed with a roar that was muffled by the rumble of the earthquake, and clouds of dust and rubble blasted from its mouth. When Gawain found his feet, dazed and bruised, he found himself staring at two Ramoth guards. They, and the Ramoths in the cart, were staring skyward, jaws slack, terror etching their features.
Gawain suddenly remembered who he was, and who they were. Heads swung in his direction as he slipped the longsword from its sheath. Again, the world seemed to take on a faint black tint, as the woman Ramoth Emissary pointed at him and screamed:
"It is he! The Darkslayer!"
Guards fumbled for weapons as the eye-amulets on emissary chests opened.
Gawain cut them down, all of them, and then collapsed to his knees, breathing heavily as the earthquake subsided.
Martan knelt in front of him, and offered a leaking waterskin. "Not much left, Serre. Lost the other one in the fight. We still got the farak gorin an' all."
Gawain drank. "I'm tired."
"I ain't surprised. Not too chirpy meself now's you mention it. But best get on, away from this lot afore the ground quakes again."
"Where are we?"
"On the scree of the Teeth, some twenty mile west o' where we started."
Martan sat down with a groan, clutching his ribs.
"You are injured." Gawain sighed. "I'm sorry."
Martan chuckled. "Better'n being dead, I reckon, and I thought we both was. You recall what 'appened up there?"
"Vaguely."
"What did 'appen then, if you'll pardon me asking?"
"We burned a nest of bloodflies."
"Ah. That'll explain the smoke then."
Gawain glanced up at the fading column of black fire that shimmered and flickered high above them. "Aye.”
"Come Serre, snow's a-falling. Put up yer sword, and let's away from here."
Gawain sheathed the longsword, and rose unsteadily. The ground had stopped shaking, but every step they took was tentative, as if the ground would move or disappear before their feet touched solid earth. The feeling lasted for hours.
The farak gorin was spiteful as ever, but great cracks and chasms crazed its surface in the aftermath of the earthquake, and snow formed a welcome crunching barrier between their boots and the bitchrock surface. Darkness fell, and snow fell heavier. It was cold, and soon they both stopped, and sat.
Martan groaned as he lay on his blanket. Gawain was not so fortunate, he'd lost his pack somewhere in the melee. But the arrowsilk cloak and the layer of snow that blanketed the farak gorin provided a modicum of comfort.
"Is it winter already?" Gawain asked in the darkness.
"Aye.” Martan replied wearily. "By the moon, I'd say we been gone near two months. But that's a good thing, I reckon."
"How so?"
"Means we'll be back afore mid-winter's day."
Gawain gazed up at the sky, peering at the misty moon where it broke through clouds from time to time.
"Is Morloch dead?" Martan asked.
"I doubt it."
"Ah. Must've been a cloud then, flying over the moon, and yonder. Hoped it'd been his arse."
Gawain smiled. Then something seemed to break inside him, and the smile turned to a grin, and then to laughter, and then to tears.
Memories, flooding back in. Home, loss, grief, friends lost, friends gained. Elayeen. Morloch. Everything. Martan sat up, concern on his wrinkled and bloodstained face, as great wracking sobs shuddered through Gawain like the earthquake triggered by the aquamire blast.
"Oh my friend Raheen!" Martan gasped, "Wait ails thee?"
The stone that lay cold and hard in Gawain's chest shattered at that, and an ineffable agony of grief washed over him. "Raheen!" he cried, and gasped for breath between great wracking sobs, "My home!"
Martan eased Gawain up from the cold and unforgiving rock, and held him close, tears streaming down his own wizened face while the young warrior's grief-wracked body heaved with sobs, until finally they subsided, and Gawain slept.
When dawn broke, Gawain awoke to find the old man's chest serving as a pillow, and both of them wrapped in Gawain's cloak. The first rays of sunshine were breaking across the eastern slopes of Threlland, and Gawain slipped off his cloak and stood on shaky legs to greet them.
Behind him, he heard the old man stir. The sun was weak, a pale mime of its full summer glory, but Gawain had not thought to feel it on his face another dawn, and so he welcomed it, and closed his eyes, and remembered.
He would've wept, but his tears had been spent in the long hours of night. When he opened his eyes, and turned to the north, the Teeth looked far away, and there was no black shimmering beyond them. The fermenting lake of distilling aquamire was nothing but ashes now. Like Raheen. Morloch's great storehouse of the vile stuff was gone, liberated. Morloch was all but powerless, his own lands wasted and blasted, like Raheen. Justice, and vengeance, had been served. Yet Morloch lived. So too did Gawain, and he silently prayed that the vile dark wizard would greet this morning with the same crushing sense of loss and bereavement as he himself did. It would be fitting.
Martan coughed, and struggled to sit, clutching his ribs. His face was puffed and bruised from the Ramoths kicking, and he did not look well.