06-25-2017, 08:05 PM
Carried through the air, her voice was clear across the night, as was the warning pitch embedded within it.
‘Sakir! Go!’
No, he could not. Would not. What was going on?
Doggedly he pressed on, springing down from one boulder to another until his hooves met with the patchy mountain grass and he could descend even faster. He was vaguely aware of the smell of smoke and the screams beginning to echo through the kingdom. But mostly, his attention was on Iset, and what was happening to her. From the heart of their home, the lake, tendrils were spat out from its centre. They reached for his twin in an instant, twisting around her legs before pulling her ever so slowly back towards the waters from where it had come.
“Iset!” he screamed at her, a useless warning as he raced even faster down the mountain slope, flitting agilely through the trees now as he rushed to reach her and the stranger who remained unnervingly impassive.
Was their home protecting her in some strange and twisted way? If it dragged her into its waters without releasing her she would drown. No, if their home harboured any magic at all, surely this wasn’t it. And suddenly the magnitude of what was happening, the smoke, the distant yells and squeals, the embers beginning to float in the dark sky… they were under attack.
And as that realisation hit him, the earth at his hooves shifted. The soil sinking where he swore surely it should’ve been solid beneath his weight. The leaves rustled in the canopy above him, and it wasn’t from the wind. And then the trunks fell. Alongside, behind and before him. He could be as agile as a dune kite. Though agility meant nothing when there was no exit. He was no match for this, and his downfall was sudden. His legs crashing through branches and strands of wisteria that tangled his legs like ropes. He fell. Crumbling down shoulder first, his head whacking the ground with a thud… Iset. And then it was just dark.