Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

"I have no idea what the Blaze is going on here!" El said as the three of them hovered above another town. A flattened town. They'd followed the tubing through the forest, then another few miles before Nidina reported spotting something in the distance. That something had turned out to be the ruins of the community they now looked down on—the tubing running straight along the main street to connect with another metal ring.

Like before, there were bodies piled around the ring—though far less of them. Unlike before, the buildings had been smashed apart, as if a brutal battle had been fought there.

"Definitely seawyrms," Laze said. "Look, there. The same kind of cuts in the stone we saw from their spit attack."

"Can we not call it a spit attack?" Nidina asked. "Sounds gross."

"Breath attack?"

"Not much better…"

"Guys," El interrupted. "Laze is right. At least some of this damage was done by seawyrms. And what… I need to take a closer look." Without waiting for her friends, El bent and dove, the air whistling past her ears as she zipped towards something that'd stood out. Not even five seconds later, her feet touched down on the broken cobblestone street, and she quick-stepped over to what she'd spotted.

Leaning up against one of the few remaining upright walls, El had, at first glance, taken it for a fallen statue. But, given that it seemed to be on the inside of the wall, she'd done a double take.

"Is this one of the Wirockian golems?" she asked as the other two landed nearby. "Er, half of one, I guess."

With nothing below where a waist would've been, the remains rested on the broken trunk of its own torso, shoulders propping it up against the wall. Almost like it dragged itself over. The construction of it was… actually quite breathtaking. The features had been impeccably sculpted, with clear musculature beneath what looked like a carved robe draped over one shoulder and across the chest. The face even had a perfectly shaped beard framing a dramatic chin. Nose was a little large… but was this made to look like the person had in the flesh?

Burn it, even if it wasn't, whoever had made this was extremely talented.

"Is it dead?" Nidina asked, inching closer. "Hey, can you hear me?"

The golem—or statue—didn't respond.

"I feel a little silly talking to a rock," she grumbled, gently nudging the golem with the toe of her boot. Still no reaction. "It's hard."

"It's made of stone," Laze pointed out.

"Yeah, well, it… AAAAGH!" Nidina yelped as one of the statue's hands snapped out like a viper. Perfectly shaped stone fingers opened and closed as if they were flesh and bone, snagging Nidina's ankle with a grip strong enough to set off her flame armor.

At the same instant, two flaming blades—one blue and one red—appeared on either side of the statue's—no, the golem's neck—El and Laze immediately reacting to the threat.

"If you can hear me, you have one chance to let me friend go," El growled.

"North… went too… deep…" a hollow voice echoed from unmoving stone lips. "… pushed… ice broke… cracked… door… the third… comes. Our Sparks… the key. Stop… it…"

El heard the words but looked down to where the hand still gripped Nidina's ankle. Red sparked as heat continued to build inside the fingers and on the palm, the golem still squeezing.

"Had your chance," she hissed, blade coming away from the golem's neck as she snapped her wrist around. One clean slice, and her flaming sword carved through the stone floor—and the golem's arm—before going right back to the thing's neck. If it felt any pain from losing its hand, it didn't show it, the blank expression on its face remaining completely still.

Nidina double-stepped back to make sure she was out of the golem's reach, then dropped to one knee to pry the clenched hand off her ankle. "Burning thing won't let go," she grumbled, flame armor still converting the physical pressure to heat.

Must be locked in that position somehow.

"Cut it off," El instructed, though she didn't dare look at Nidina out of more than her peripheral vision.

"What did you do? What do we have to stop?" Laze asked the golem. No response.

"Hey, we're talking to you," El said, gently poking its shoulder with her flaming blade. The stone groaned at the touch, frost cracking it open to spread an inch, then two, away from the point of contact. Still no reaction.

"Maybe it's really dead this time?" Laze asked, but she and El both carefully stepped back. It'd moved surprisingly fast, and by the fact Nidina was only now getting the hand unclenched from her foot, it was strong too.

Which also means whatever put the golem in this state was faster and stronger. Burning wonderful.

"Nidina, you okay over there?" El kept her eyes on the golem as she asked the question.

"Yeah, finally got it off. I could feel it through the flame armor. If you'd waited much longer to do what you did, I think I might've actually gotten hurt," Nidina said.

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"Flame—or frost—armor doesn't make us invincible." El pointed at her shoulder where the scaled bear had gotten through. "Just tougher."

"I know. I guess this is a good reminder," Nidina grumbled. "What about this… uh… guy? You think this is one of the Wirockian golem-people we've heard so much about?"

"It's entirely different than the Guldish golems," Laze said. "Much less… cannony."

"Not sure that's actually a word," El said. "But, I agree. If it had legs, it'd be what, seven feet tall? Big, but not building-big, and no obvious weapons. And the… sculpting of it is amazing. The details…"

"If you were going to spend decades, or maybe even centuries in a stone body, wouldn't you want it to look good?" Laze asked. "I bet they built them more human-looking to make the transition from flesh to stone easier to take. Less… foreign."

"Yes, yes, it's a very handsome stone man," Nidina interrupted. "Is it dead?"

El poked it again with her sword, more stone cracking beneath the absolute cold of her blue flames. Still no reaction. "Seems so." She doused her sword and took a step back—just in case—from the golem, then looked towards the ominous ring in the center of town. More steps leading up to the pedestal, but this one had two tubes connecting it. One led back to where they'd come from, while the other trailed off in the opposite direction, towards what had to be the center of the island.

"I see more golem bodies—probably golem bodies—out with the others," Laze said. "They look like they're in one piece. Not a lot of them, but…"

"But, if they went through the ring too, then that ruins our theory about what's happening here, and we're back to something sinister," El said, catching on.

"This guy said something about a door and our Sparks being the key. Did they do something, and now they're trying to fix it by stealing Sparks?" Nidina had the golem's severed hand in hers—without a thumb where she'd carved it off—and used it to point at the golem in front of them.

"Yeah, something about ice to the north," Laze said. "Should we head in that direction?"

El tapped her lip as she thought about it.

"He also said they pushed too deep," Nidina added, gesturing with the stone hand as she spoke. "And Tas said they'd never seen anything like these seawyrms until after the thaw. What if the Wirockians are the ones who released them? The Depths Bits was talking about might be more than an old sailor's tale."

"Could be," El finally said. "As for what we're going to do, we're going to keep following the tubing toward the center of the island. This north thing the golem talked about, it could be a mile from here for a hundred miles, and we have no idea what we're looking for. At least with the tube, we have a trail we can follow, and hopefully find some answers at the end of it.

"Uh, Nidina, you can leave the hand behind," El finished.

"Was thinking of bringing it was a souvenir for Dayne."

"A severed hand?" Laze deadpanned.

Nidina looked at the hand, then a small shiver went through her body. "Okay, when you put it like that, it's a bit morbid," she said, tossing the hand back beside the motionless golem.

"Now that that's taken care of, same plan as before," El said. "Nidina up high, Laze with me lower to the ground. Make sure you keep your distance from the ring. I don't want to find out how close we need to get to it to have it pull our Sparks out through our noses."

The other two gave her a nod of understanding, and all three ignited their wings. That done, El gave the ruined town one more quick look-over. Sure, they could stay and search for more clues there—maybe even find another golem alive enough to spill what's going on—but something in El's gut was pulling her towards the center of the island. And it was the same kind of feeling she'd had in Guld.

Something was not right there. Not right at all.

"In case it isn't clear, we're scouting," El said before she lifted into the air. "I know the golem asked us to stop whatever is going on, but that's not our mission right now. Find out what's happening and survive to report back. Those are our priorities. Questions?"

Laze and Nidina both shook their heads.

"Good, let's go." El shot into the air, seventy feet up in a second, the others close behind, then twisted and set off above the trailing tubing. Laze followed closely behind, while Nidina continued her arching ascent until she was little more than faint, flaming wings high above. "Got a good view from up there?"

"Yes. I think mountains ring the entire island. Almost like a natural fortress," Nidina replied. "And it's a big island. The mountains in the distance look tiny, but the fact I can see them at all means they're actually huge."

"Any other towns of cities?" Laze asked.

"Definitely," Nidina said. "I can see what are probably two—no, three—towns similar in size to what we just left, to our sides. And ahead of us, yeah, that's probably a city. Actually, a big one."

"How far?" El asked.

"Hundred miles?" Nidina said, obviously guessing by the tone of her voice.

"Won't take us long to get there," Laze said.

"The road you're following leads right there. Oh, another small town between you and it, I think…" Nidina trailed off. "Still too far for me to tell if there's a ring there, though."

"No problem, we'll find out soon enough," El said. "We're speeding up." With the words, El pushed more power into her wings, the ground not so far beneath her whizzing by. Laze's wings roared behind her, the other Firestorm forced to push even more power into her larger wings to keep up.

"When did you get burning faster?" Laze asked.

"The more I use my new Spark… I don't know, it's like a muscle. Practice is making it stronger," El replied.

"You and Nexin, absolute cheats," Laze said.

"More him than me," El said.

"Uh huh," Laze said flatly, but the two left it at that, turning their attention to the surroundings as they flew.

Unlike the Isles of Pili and the endless stone forests there, the nation of Wirock had lush forests of actual trees, practically bursting with green after all the stony grey. El and Laze passed over at least two wide yet peaceful rivers, each with their own elaborate bridge, carved statues on both sides. Part of her expected the statues to jump to life as golems, but they didn't even twitch as the Firestorm passed them.

Through it all, that same metal tubing ran along the road. Just what is it?

El didn't get any more of an answer as they got to the next town, just as smashed as the last one. There were even more golem bodies—at least, what El suspected were golem bodies—though these ones varied significantly in design. Sure, a few of them had the same type of sculpted perfection as they'd seen before, but things certainly branched out from there. Four arms, blocky shapes, reed thin and tall, or small like children. She spotted dozens of different kinds.

And, of course, in the center of the town was a third ring, complete with the piles of bodies around it.

"A lot more golems here," Laze pointed out. "They put up a fight."

"Kind of reminds me of Aldrana when we were fighting the Guldish golems there," El said. "Nidina, you see any seawyrm or hangnail corpses from up there?"

No response.

"Nidina?" El asked, turning with a bit of worry until she spotted her friend's wings up in the sky.

"Huh? Sorry, what was that?" Nidina finally asked.

"Maybe it can wait. What's got you so distracted?"

"I… I don't know if it's my imagination or not, but I think I see one of those rings in the city ahead of us," Nidina said.

"So?"

"So, I think it's got to be hundreds of feet tall for me to be able to see it from here."

"Oh, that can't be good," Laze said.

El couldn't disagree.