Page 2 of Crown of Flame
Nielsen reaches into his haversack and retrieves a golden spyglass, peering into the distance.
“I was afraid of that,” he says, before tucking it away. “Guards stationed out front.”
Pierce huddles over, shivering. He notices a long, sturdy branch on the ground beside the nearby cliff and picks it up, testing its durability. As Nielsen spurs back into movement, Pierce uses the branch as a walking stick.
“Alright,” Nielsen says. “I’ve got the ring the dark elves left behind. You’re all going to need to huddle close and stop talking, or we’re all going to be seen. Everybody, grab the hands of the person next to you, and we’ll walk.”
I nod, reaching out to Beth and Aldor, but Beth refuses my hand, walking away toward Nielsen. I grab Pierce’s hand, and we all form a line. As I grip Aldor’s hand, I feel warmth enveloping me, a jolt of excitement running down my spine. He flashes me a cocky smile, exposing his bright white teeth, and I feel myself blushing.
If only, I think.
I know he mostly sees me as the kid of the group, but there’s something empowering about the way he looks at me. His past is a mystery to me. And the thought that he comes from another world, completely different from what I know, entices me.
“Remember your stealth training,” Nielsen says as he slips on the ring. “Try to move with the winds. If you’re in the open and exposed, duck for cover and hide your breathing.”
And we all become invisible, marching toward a common goal.
Today, we’re going to liberate the human subjects, and we’re going to topple the towers, letting the dark elves know once and for all that they aren’t welcome here. If we can’t free the prisoners, we’re detonating a bomb on the top floor—an arcane device left behind in elven raids.
I’ve always found it sad that the only way we can fight the dark elves is with their mistakes.
Sometimes, it feels like the idea of delivering justice is my only remaining motivation… for my mother, for my father, for my brother, and most recently, for Ket.
At first, I struggle to keep pace with the people leading my hands, being pulled slower by Pierce and faster by Aldor. It’s something that challenges all of us as a group, finding a common pace without communicating out loud. Even the most silent whisper could give us all away, and then our mission would be compromised entirely.
Eventually, we find a compromise, ambling slowly through the icy fields toward our ominous demises, bleak towers, which on closer inspection, emanate a strange, sinister hum. By now, we are within earshot of the tall guards, with their black, inky eyes staring blankly and unwaveringly into the abyss.
I feel myself trembling, struggling to keep myself on my feet. And it’s not from the bitter chill.
It’s sheer terror, as I peer into their faces, and remember what they did within several feet of me. I can still hear the screams.
A strong gale blows through, and we walk. It dies down, and we stop.
The struggle now is in articulating how to get through the hollow door without alerting anyone.
Either they need to leave, or we need to distract them. But how do we do that without communicating?
The bright sun casts hues of gold, yellow, and orange across the glassy snow, a beautiful reminder that night will soon come to kill us if we don’t move. There are monsters that come in the night that I can’t begin to fathom, if the freeze doesn’t simply bury us.
That’s when Pierce, in an enormously stupid move, throws his walking cane with all his might. It clatters harmlessly several feet away.
“What in all the hells?”
One of the guards moves to investigate the disturbance, but the other is still unblinking, gazing out emotionlessly.
Suddenly, I feel myself pulled forward, guided through the narrow door by a line that has changed orientation. If the second guard hadn’t left even for a moment, we might not have gotten through the hole in the tower.
It looks just like home.
For how strange the towers were, the interior of the first floor is not unfamiliar. Shelves and shelves of books line the walls of the room, dark elves each reading to their heart’s contentment.
It’s hard to believe they’re torturing people here.
If they discover us, we won’t stand a chance. We each have crudely fashioned daggers. Some of us wield swords.
Dark elves have magic. They can send fire from their fingertips and scorch our bones. They can conjure winds and crush our bodies into the ceiling.
What’s more, there are no natural breezes indoors to cover the sound of our movements. If a dark elf perks his ears up and hears my jangling amulet or Pierce’s limp, we’re surely dead.