Glowing embers swirled through crawling blankets of smoke as the flames of Kilrane crackled and popped and roared with flared bursts as underbrush and dried limbs caught fire. The ground was a sea of red and yellow flame. Dark-feathered demons swooped and dove in gliding waves dipping down and then arising like fiery phoenixes, cackling and laughing cruelly as they charmed the fire’s progress onward. So blinded by their hatred and so intent on destruction, they failed to notice or see the high borne witnesses to their savage delight, clinging and climbing above into the canopy. Dryads, the former and recent occupants of the forest of Kilrane, were aghast and incensed at the destruction, yet fled for their lives, unable to stop the roaring tide below. The harpies, bearing the firebrands, crisscrossed below them, their frenzied fire dance crawling higher and higher up the trees, so that all the dryads could do was flee as fast as possible towards the edge of the forest, crying, “Treachery!” Some fell screaming as the fires spreading across the canopy above joined with the fires below, engulfing them in flames causing their branches and limbs to erupt in bright flares, as they tumbled downward disappearing into the smoky and haloed glowing sea. The shouts and screams in the back forest and the insane laughter of the fiery harpies wove together into a nightmarish symphony of terror that rolled forward in crescendo toward the dead slough where The Pan held court with his savage satyr-courtiers, and the shrieking harpies and the gathering number of displaced and scorched dryads.
Yet amid the terror and smoke one dryad lingered high above the forest roadway waiting for the right moment to present itself—A dryad by the name of Langula. As the harpies flew in and out of the smoke below, her vine twisted limbs encircled the long strands bearing rotting heads of dead satyrs and unfortunate men and sundry other animals that she and her fellow ‘ladies of the leaves’ had feasted on and collected as ornamental warnings for errant satyrs and men who dared broach their domain. Quietly and silently she swayed the ends of the grisly ornaments deftly through the rising smoke forming a slight spin to their sway. Carefully she timed the rotations of the various death vines to move and sway inward and outward in ever-increasing circles. The horrific faces, blackened by rot, twisted by shock and rictus, misshapen mouths hung slack around blood-stained teeth, gaped and swallowed smoke as they swayed inward and outward. A certain degree of fascination and savagery also shone in the golden and green eyes of the porcelain cream face ensconced in a ruffle of leaves as she watched the flame-bearing harpies fly ignorant of her presence above.
A harpy strayed off from the others, laughing and chanting, “Burn! Burn! Burn!” as she swooped under and over the smoke headed toward the area where the grisly ornaments weaved above. Four other harpies follow laughing and echoing the chant, their firebrand flickering yet remaining aflame.
Langula saw the back of one rise through the haze, wings extended, as she struck one of the rotting heads. Another, pivoted and suddenly the vines pulled taught and the branches bearing the anchor points thrashed, as something beneath the smoke became entangled. Savagely Langula jerked the dangling vine upward, eliciting a “Gawww!” sound as two vines twisted around something that fought below. Two of the harpies emerged from below, yet a third was unaccounted for and the voice of the first harpy ceased her smoky chanting abruptly, from somewhere ahead.
Vines lifted toward the canopy, and a black feathered body, curled in vines moving like green worms emerged from the smoke, the firebrand’s flames catching fire in the feathers of the entangled harpy, two dark heads pressing their rotted faces into her gawking crone face.
“Caught you, you burning bat-bitch!” Langula hissed, as she drew her hideous trophy upward.
What was not apparent from below was now becoming clear from above. A sharp-pointed spike jutted out from the severed neck of each head whose point lay even alongside the vines that extended upward. As the vines were rotated or struck, however, the barb jutted outward causing the grisly ornament to become a deadly hook, from which the dryads could catch or ensnare flying quarry interested in feasting on the rotting heads below. The harpy so trapped was also spitted with the skewered barb, and, struggle though it might, Langula would ensure that this particular feathered-fiend would never fly again.
Using this method, Langula caught four other fire-setting harpies before she was through air fishing, and then set off to deliver the evidence of their arsonous villainy to her chief Madame Briar, who now stood before The Pan.
***
The Pan towered over the groveling Trolls cringing and bowing before him. His arms flashed out grabbing both Shelberd and Grum-blud by their necks, lifting their dangling, struggling forms aloft.
“It is to you I hold the fault of these deaths. And this companion of yours, who properly fears me and has ever only cowered in my presence, I will grant a mercy.”
At this, The Pan flung Shelberd down into the filmy water of the slough, from which Grum-blud had crawled. A large splash of brown and blackish water wet the muddy bank, as The Pan moved quickly forward. His great hooves stirring clouds of water bugs and gnats as he followed his flung captive into the deepening water. When Shelberd burst upward from the water, coughing and sputtering he felt the great weight of a suspended hoof slam into his chest, plunging him back under. Ripples from the water and the floating mat of film, evidenced a struggle underneath, as The Pan cruelly pressed downward. He dangled Grum-blud over the pool holding him by his short leg, forcing him to watch the demise of his former companion. Bubbles and a cough of roiling water broke the surface and then ceased.
“The mercy, I grant him,” The Pan rumbled, “is the swiftness of his death. Yours will not be so swift, human frog.”
And with that, he strode out of the water, towards the onocentaurs, who were even now backing away in terror, towards a sneering group of satyrs laughing wickedly. The Pan reached out and grabbed the one called Bunt by the torso, as the man-half of creature raised his arms defensively covering his head. “Do you wish you could fly, little donkey?” The Pan rumbled, his face pulled up in a sinister grin, his cataracted eyes seeming to gleam with a cold monstrosity.
“P-Please, sire. We didn’t do anything. It was the trolls, they…” he begged.
With a mighty twist of his body, The Pan launched the onocentaur into the air, throwing his flailing body hard into the trees, where it sailed and struck branches and smacked hard into a trunk, and then tumbled lifelessly downward.
Several satyrs bounded after the flying body, chanting, “Feed! Feed! Make it bleed!” then laughing with delight, champing their sharpened teeth together, as they descended upon it under the cover of the brush.
The other onocentaur, called Dob, turned to flee and was pounced upon by the satyrs blocking his escape.
Shaggy arms and blackened grimy fingernails scratched and pounded his body mercilessly, as he cried, “No! No! No!”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” the satyrs mocked him, as they brutally struck him, a few biting his haunches and then slapping the bites, adding insult to injury.
The Pan squatted on his massive shaggy haunches, savaging enjoying the sounds of the pleading onocentaur.
“PAN!” a voice yelled above the cacophony, “Now see the evidence of your firebugs!”
The Pan sniffed the air smelling the scent of burned flesh and feathers, the harpies perched in the treetops around the deaden slough shriek in outrage as did the harpies swooping high overhead.
Briar flung the bound bodies of four scorched harpies outward landing in the mud of the bank upon which he stood. He bent down sniffing the corpses, attempting to listening to the whispered words of his designated courtier, who described the sight before his blinded eyes.
The noises of the beatings of the mobbed onocentaur prevented him from hearing his chief satyr’s words, and he roared a rebuke.
“Silence, you savage fools!” he bellowed, “Leave the donkey-man be, for now.”
When the satyrs did not hear him, clearly, he lunged forward and backhanded a few closest to him, his other senses giving him a quasi-sight to do so. His powerful fist, slammed into the side of a satyr, snapping its spine and flinging its body into the air off to his right, the brutal hand coming back across, clipping another, from the opposite direction, dislocating its shoulder, as it fell to the ground.
That got the satyrs’ attention and they backed away from the onocentaur’s battered, bloodied and bruised body. The Pan then turned and moved towards the fallen harpies that he smelled clearly, his hands pawing at their smoldering bodies, feeling the firebrand branches clutched and bound to their winged claws.
“What is this?!” his sightless eyes turned towards the scents he knew to be the smells of the dryads.
“Your harpies have burned the forest of Kilrane! The land you claimed and made us tenants of. Quite possibly they are responsible for the deaths of your Manticores. Did you authorize this destruction?!” Briar asked.
“No,” he growled, increasing his throaty rumble in intensity so that the sound of it trembled the leave around him, “Harpy Dellitch! What do you know of this?! Who authorized the burning of my forest?!”
At this, he dropped Grum-blud into the mud, and stood up to his full height, his angry face turned to the sky, his teeth clenched, and his eyes narrowed to glaring slits of white-hot fire.
Grum-blud grunted painfully when he struck the ground, but he quickly righted himself, seeing a sudden chance to save his own skin.
“My lord,” he gasped, “That is what I wanted to tell you. The harpies burned the forest behind us. We were beset with fire on every side. Your Manticores were intent on taking Azragoth under your orders and did not escape the fires. I and the onocentaurs, held back to oversee the destruction. We climbed trees to witness what we knew you wanted reported only to find the forest lit behind us. We called out to the Manticores, but it was too late to turn them. It was the harpies that are responsible for the failures you are punishing us for. So zealous they are in their hatred for the dryads. They did not keep their destructive zeal in check, even under your orders. They defied you, seeking to serve their own interests and vengeance. It is they that deserve your wrath. Not us! We are your loyal subjects. We honor your command. It is our pleasure to serve your mighty hand. To deliver wrath to your enemies. Yet they would see us bleed for their treachery.”
The Pan listened and pondered this, as the harpies shrieked in protest, like birds storming out of the trees under gunfire.
“Lies! Lies! Lies!” they shrieked. “Kilrane was already beset with fires to the north! The fires arose from the hidden city. We reported to you of its rebirth. We saw their walls catch fire!”
“Do you deny, spreading the fire?!” the Pan roared to the bird-women, “If so, why do I feel this firebrand, bound to the wings of these dead?!”
Dellitch flew in from above, “My lord, divine king, god of the lands and forest, the dryads are deceiving you. They killed our sisters and attached the brands to them. You are being deceived by these betrayers! We are not to blame.”
The Pan roared in anger and frustration, his fists clenching and unclenching, his hands grabbing at rooted brush, twisting it and casting it into the air.
“Do not think, foul-bird that because I am blind, I cannot see deception! Do not mock me! Do not smile upon my scarred eyes. I can hear the deception in your voice. I can smell the feverish sweat of lies bead upon your aged skin! I can taste beads of milk flowing from your feathered breasts. You have taken advantage of the limited liberties I gave you with regard to this command! Never insult me and think just because you can fly that you are ever out of my reach. You know what other forms of creatures I have under my command. You know what nightmares I can send against even you, though you may fly to the mountains, you will not escape the bite and claw of those I send after you! DO NOT MOCK ME!”
The last words caused both the ground to tremble and the swampy trees to sway, and its noise echoed terribly throughout the forests and surrounding canyons.
All of the gathered, pressed their hands to their ears and howled in pain at the sharpness of the power of the voice. For a brief time, no one could hear, as their ears painfully thrummed and throbbed. Grum-blud huddled in the mud below, his fat fists pressed hard into his bulbous ears, the ringing in his head unbearable, causing him to gasp in short breaths and mewl in agony, his legs drawn into a fetal curl as he writhed. The satyrs cowed, in similar agony, grimy hands pressed into the sides of their heads, grunting in pain. The dryads shrunk down into piles of twisted wood, appearing like dried cypress trees, curled around themselves, no greenery showing. The harpies, however, suffered the worst of the powerful roar, their wings folded as they plummet from the sky, falling bodies, formerly in flight striking the hard ground, splashing into the murky slough waters, embedding into the mud, caroming off bare branches with a hard wing-shattering crack, their hollow avian bones snapping with the impacts.
***
Jeremiah had at first thought that O’Brian was speaking from the high bough to The Pan, but then realized he wasn’t.
He was carefully ascending the back of a hill in the forest when a thunderous noise poured over the top of the hill with an audible and physical fist with a power wave, that seemed to shake everything in sight, knocking him flat against the ground with a thud, the limp body of the weakened man on his back slamming down hard upon him. Everything around him seemed to ring with the tine-struck note of a tuning fork, that echoed and bounced every which way he looked. The clap of the sound felt like he’d been struck on the sides of his head with a physical slap, and his ears pulsed and throbbed, muting all other sounds of the forest around him. When he was able to lift his head from the matted leaves, and groggily raise his body upon trembling hands, he glanced upward to see how the powerful sonic boom had affected the one he sought to rescue from the treetops above. What he saw both shocked and amazed him. The man was surrounded and protected by circles of glowing light.
***
I had heard of the beings that the Mid-Worlders called faeries, heard how they had been described, by those who had witnessed them from a distance but had never encountered one for myself, until that moment they descended upon me from the treetops. It was both terrible, frightening and wonderful all at the same time. They pulsed and throbbed with a power and energy that was beyond imagining and barely contained within this existence or any other for that matter. Their light shone piercing and sharp yet did not cut through me as I feared it might. I was dumbstruck before them and felt weak all over. I trembled and hid my face, shielding my eyes from the brightness of their being.
The branch under me felt like a gossamer thread that could break at any moment, and something about their presence made me weep. A sound emerged from them, some mystical tonal quality that I cannot describe adequately. It was beautiful, sad and joyous, tragic and lovely, evoking emotions and feelings in me that I did not know I had. In a language, my ears did not understand, but somehow my spirit knew instinctively, I felt words of comfort dance softly and fluidly with the sounds of the song in their voice. What they communicated in a language expressed with a fullness of thought, and to the best of my ability to translate, was “Do not fear. Feel courage. Embrace faith. Believe and trust in the One that has called you. You are known and loved. These are the keystones of the Kingdom which you seek.”
Only the final word, that I translated as “loved” seems so far inadequate to describe what they actually said. The feeling of that word made me weep tears of joy and filled me will a sense of place that had nothing to do with space or time because it was somehow coupled with divine intention.
The air around me became thicker and softer somehow as if it caressed me with a warm breath that stabilized me. Something external move all around us but peeled away from the presence of these living beings that seemed more alive than any other creature I had ever observed in this world or the Surface World.
“You are purposed for these moments. You are drawn forth from the well to be living water to those given. Return to them, for you will be made into what is purposed. You will find delight in your purpose.”
Their words swam through the air around me, touching me with sweet fragrance, bathing me in golden light.
“Upon your mind and in your memory, you will find the timeless words. They will meet you in your moments of doubt. Seek the wise counsel of called friends to confirm and clarify what you are hearing in your spirit. Learn to see yourself through the eyes of forgiveness. Surrender the old burdens you carry. You cannot repay the debt of the burdens you choose to bear. Empty your holding so that you may receive the greater gifts for your journey and for the benefit of those to which you are called to lead. Trust in the voice that speaks gently to your spirit. Choose to obey the direction of the One for only He knows the paths ahead of you. Mankind’s measure of success is deceptive, for only the One judges outcomes with all ends in sight. Obedience to the One is life. Obedience is better than sacrifice. Do not follow human reasoning which leads you into the darkness, but lead your mind with obedience, hope, and faith in the One who loves you and knows you most and has called you to live out the meaning of your name. Align your heart and mission to the voice of the Chief Cornerstone and build upon that Truth. The Truth will set you free to will and do that to which you are called.”
Then a melody from where I did not know rose up around us, flowing through me as if every part of my being were washed with cool water, refreshing my soul and spirit. I wanted that feeling to last forever, but soon after it left me, and it had no feeling of the passage of time, but felt placed again into a moment that I felt purposed for, though I did not fully understand the why of it. From down below me, I could finally hear some other voice, calling up to me trying to get my attention. A voice I was vaguely familiar with, from a distant past. I looked down below and saw a figure moving cautiously towards the base of the tree where I sat, some form borne upon his back as he moved from shadow to shadow, careful not to attract attention.
“Brian!” he called in a loud whisper, cautiously trying not to create too much noise but needing to gain my focus and attention.
I rubbed my eyes, and then looked down again, his face small because of the distance between us.
“O’Brian, or whatever you are called now!” he called, carefully kneeling to lay the form down upon the ground and gather his bow in his hand, which he hunched over and worked on a few minutes before turning again upward.
“Move back,” he said, raising the bow, the arrow point pointed above towards me.
Realizing what he was about to do I lurched backward as he let fly the arrow from his drawn bow.
Thwap! The arrow drove deep into the branch upon which I sat, and I noticed a small thread attached to its fletching, fed out by a light spool handing down below.
A memory crawled towards me in realization from a past I thought I had left long ago, as I realized to whom it was I spoke. Our last encounter had left me battered and bloodied, but I understood the fury and frustration of the man and the grief to which I had brought him. This was Caleb’s brother, the friend I had lost to The Pan as a result of my error in judgment and failure to humbly seek more than my own counsel. The man had sworn if he ever saw me again he might kill me. And I wondered if perhaps he had finally come to do just that.
***
The two former members of the traveling Surface Worlder party, who were not what they claimed to be, drove the wagon and the horses through the woods of Kilrane, fear mounting upon their minds and their heels.
The rode was more winding than they had remembered it, and the wagon and horse team almost ran off of the path many times as they raced faster and faster through the woods.
Something was following them, besides the ever-raging wall of fire gaining momentum as it hit the drier areas of the woods. The horses were getting harder to manage, being kept as they were on a runner line.
“We can’t keep this pace up, Zeelah,” the male shouted above the pounding footfalls of the horses.
“We’ll lose the wagon and the team if we don’t slow a bit.”
The woman addressed as Zeelah, cursed under her breath, still fighting the reins and the nervousness of the team, trying her best to maintain her seat on the wagon, bracing her feet against the coach toe board.
“Dergin was supposed to meet us in the woods long before now,” she groused, “Where are they?!”
“Tobias said they’d be here.”
“Tobias!” she snorted, “I don’t trust him, Hughland. I know he has helped out in the past, but I cannot figure what truly motivates him. He and that Sanballat fellow. There is something disturbing about the man. Wasn’t he some sort of cleric in the past?”
“Priest,” the man called Hughland answered.
“What’s the difference?”
Hughland began to answer and then stopped short. Something was on the road ahead. Something that did not look good.
“What is that?” Zeelah asked, slowing the team, pulling the reins back, wrapping her arms in the traces. Her arms were tired and shaking from the extended strain. The horses skidded to a stop, slightly rearing up on their back legs against the momentum of the tongue post of the loaded wagon.
“Hold, ho, horses, hold!” Hughland commanded, standing in the stirrups of his lead horse, but getting bumped by the horses following closely behind.
When each of the teams slowed, their riders looked at each other, and back to the strange mass stretching across the roadway ahead.
A breeze was drifting up the road, and a foul smell arose from whatever it was that lie ahead.
“Is that a fallen tree or something?” Zeelah asked, her eyes beginning to water, reflexively covering her mouth and nose with her trembling hand. “And what is that rotten stench?”
“I…I…,” Hughland stammered.
“I, I, what?!” Zeelah coughed into her covered mouth and shielded her watering eyes, “Say something. Why does that stink so bad?”
“We’d better go back!” Hughland said, also covering his mouth and nose, turning his horse into the other horses stand behind.
“What are you saying? We can’t go back now! Whatever that thing is ahead, it smells dead.”
“That thing is what Mister O’Brian talked about before back at the cabin. He said you would smell it before you saw it, but he did not account for a wood filling with smoke from fires.”
“You didn’t take him seriously, did you?” Zeelah asked, coughing again into her hand, trying not to breathe in any more of the noxious fumes.
“His account is not the only time I have heard of it,” Hughland choked on his own cough, wiping his watering eyes, “It is the Hollywood. The beast that crawled out of that accursed woodland swamp. It is poisonous and smells of sulfur.”
“Where do we go? There is only one road out of these woods. The others have not been kept clear for many years now. How do you propose we get this wagon out if we cannot go down the road.”
“We’ll figure that out when the time comes. Now come on before that thing begins to follow us.”
Zeelah pulled the reins back further and then guided the horse team into a tight turn, following Hughland and his string of horses.
Behind them, however, were a line of horsemen spanning the width of the road and blocking their way backward.
“Hello, Hughland,” the lead rider called out, “Zeelah. You are both very late.”
“Dergin!”
“Where do you think you were going? The way out of Kilrane in that way,” he pointed past them.
“You don’t want to go that way,” Zeelah shook her head saying it, “There is something on the road ahead blocking the way and it smells rancid.”
Dergin was a thickly built man, gruff and hard, his eyes were buried under thick eyebrows, his face lost amid a thicket of a black bushy beard. The man gestured for one of his horsemen to ride ahead to check it out, while he waited, curious to see the contents of the wagon and the stashed contraband the two had brought.
They waited quietly until the man on horseback returned.
“The way ahead is clear,” he announced, “I saw no cause for concern.”
Dergin nudged his horse forward, looking from Zeelah to Hughland regarding them with measuring suspicion.
“I don’t know what you two think your up to, but Tobias is waiting outside of Kilrane for this wagon and those extra horses, so let’s get this thing turned around shall we?”
“There was something there…” Zeelah began, but Dergin only stared hard at her and she fell silent, looking down.
“Since Maeven will no longer be running point with the Lehi horsemen, the resistance falls to us to supply its needs,” Dergin said gruffly, “The men in the towns below grow weaker by the day. The will to resist the Xarmnians is dying out. Tobias has agreed to help us, but he needs something from us as well. And we are finding it much harder to find allies in the fight anymore. So we welcome his help, even if it means some short-term costs. The Surface Worlders are not our concern. They will most likely stir up the Xarmnians and bring them down upon us before we gain enough strength and strategic positioning to upend their rule. The Azragothians are misguided. They should have never tried rebuilding that accursed place. They were warned from the beginning. Let us hope, now in their demise that they will provide enough of a distraction to allow the real resistance to Xarmnian oppression to gain strength. Do you both understand what I am saying to you?”
Both Zeelah and Hughland nodded, but that was not what Dergin was seeking.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“We understand,” they responded in unison.
“Good,” he said, “Then turn that wagon back around and follow me.”
And with that, the group proceeded down the road, further into the woods and eventually out onto the open road where another wagon and team of horses and several riders met them.
***
I moved and inched my way toward the arrow that had been shot into the thick meat of the branch. It was an amazingly precise shot by any measure, and I realized that if Jeremiah had planned to kill me, he could have just as easily done it without announcing himself to me from below. Especially since The Pan and his creature subjects were in close proximity. To call up to me was a risk to himself as well as to me, and it did not make sense for him to bring attention our way. When I was close enough, I reached down and pried the arrow out of the wood being careful not to lose the narrow spool that was two inches down from the end of the arrow point. The arrow was of more modern design, something fashioned from the ingenuity of the Surface World and not subject to the innovation of the Mid-World. The thread was fine yet strong, and the shaft tapered such that the razor point could be removed, and the grooved spool slid off the end. Righting myself, I quickly did so, knowing that the harpy who had deposited me here, could be back at any moment to collect me from the high perch. From the angry shouts and noises below, I knew that it was highly probable.
One end of the thread had been woven and tied securely to the arrow with just enough slack to allow the spool end to clear the shaft and slide off. I dropped the spool, allowing it to quickly unravel down towards the waiting arms of the man I suspected was Jeremiah.
He waited quietly marking the falling path of the unraveling spool, deftly catching its end and then affixed something to it and then looked up nodding. I wondered how such a small string would lift over forty feet of rope, but I soon saw that was not what he had in mind. What he attached was a cotton woven pole climber’s belt. If he’d not been intending to kill me himself, he might just accomplish it with this gear.
Having no other option, pulling hand over hand, I quickly hauled the belt up for a better look. The belt was braided and woven with a thick support strap, and cross-over straps that gathered in the front and allowed the climber to hug the pole with his knees using a slang balance and gather and slip strap to ascend or descend a vertical pole.
I took a deep breath and looked down. Jeremiah motioned again for me to drop the spool.
I had no idea what else he had to send up, but I was pretty sure it was not anything that would give me more confidence in what I was about to attempt.
When he caught the spool bob again he turned his back and knelt covering what he was doing so I could not see. When he had finished affixing whatever it was to the end of the thread, he turned again and looked up at me, this time cupping his hands around his mouth, once more risking exposure by calling up to me.
“Slowly,” he rasped making hand motions indicating that I should pull the line, then cupping his hands again said, “Very slowly. This may break the line.”
That gave me no comfort, but I nodded and slowly began gathering the line in my hands, being very careful not to jerk it, or let my sense of urgency risk me drawing it too fast. The item was heavier than the other and from what I could tell it appeared to be a set of leather saddle stirrups. I saw a set of buckles and short cinches, and the stirrup had a heavier metal barb at the bottom, and from this, I realized he was sending me the climbing spikes, that would strap to my feet and calves and allow me to descend with the strap, rather than just relying on a fulcrum press. Seeing these slightly spinning and twisting the stretched thread made me fearful of losing them. I might have an even chance with these, but I would most certainly fall attempting the descent without them. The tree bole was too big for me to get my arms around it, which was most likely why the harpy was confident that I would be here when she returned. I took deep breaths, trying my best not to let the thread torque and weaken, but I could not prevent it from doing so. Halfway up the metal and stirrups began to twist again, and I stilled my pulling, fighting the urgency and fear that made me desperate to jerk the gear upward. Patience and deliberate action were not my strong suits, and I closed my eyes, struggling to find calm and peace, knowing that was needed. I breathed deeply and slowly inch by inch began again. A wave of heat shimmered my vision, and I felt the forest beyond growing hotter as the fires moved and licked steadily towards us. Overhead I heard a whooshing noise, signifying that the canopy above me too was catching fire.
Excavatia 