Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

"It's so nice to find somebody else interested in Salid's rich history," Singel said, the man's face practically alight with excitement.

"Mmm, rich history," El nodded uncommittedly. The man had been talking for five minutes without taking a breath since Glasses had introduced her, and he hadn't really said anything useful yet. And he hadn't even asked what she was looking for. He just went off about the architecture and how it withstood the ever-changing coastal weather, along with the intricacy of the designs.

"I can't wait to take you on a tour," the man continued, having taken a heaving, deep breath. "We'll start with the original docks – did you know they are constructed of stone, with heavy, wooden slats that rise and fall on the tides? We've replaced the wood several times, but they were clearly designed for just that purpose. From there we'll go to the nearby warehouse district. The freezer areas are ingenious, with very little effort needed to keep the cold in. Something about the walls provides excellent insulation. After that, though it's a bit of a hike, the Ember's shrine is close, and even the steps leading up to it are a wealth of information.

"Each of the steps is carved with small pictographs. I haven't quite been able to piece together what the pictographs mean – it's like each step represents a different location. Except, there is very little that ties them together. One or two of the stairs seem to be places I recognize, but the others? Perhaps locations lost to time. I'll have to…"

"Hold up," El finally interrupted, truly understanding how Singel would 'talk an ear off'. "The steps. Different places in the pictures you said?"

"Pictographs," Singel corrected with something of a huff, either at getting interrupted or at El getting the word wrong. "And, yes. There is clearly different flora and geographical topography within the images."

"Makes sense." El nodded. With the Salidian's ability to travel the In-Between, distant locations wouldn't really be so distant. One of those locations could be where they'd escaped when Pycrin had invaded. "How many steps are there? How many different locations?"

Singel's annoyance at being interrupted seemed to fade when it was obvious El was interested in what he was talking about. "One hundred and thirty-six."

El groaned. "Do any of them, I don't know, look more important than the others? Does anything stand out? Whoa, and that street looks like it heads down to the water. Can we just go to the stairs?" She pointed where Singel had started to turn, shaking her head the whole time. To her right, a stark cliff rose towards the sky, and that would be where the Ember's shrine was – along with the stairs.

"The tour…?" Singel asked weakly.

"Maybe after. I'm here for a relatively time-sensitive reason. Looming invasion. The unsealing of another angry god, and all that."

"The docks really are…"

"Stairs," she said in her I'm-the-commanding-officer-and-you're-going-to-listen-to-me voice. Despite not being in the Firestorm, Singel thankfully got the message, standing up a little straighter at the tone.

"Right. This way," he said, gesturing for El and Glasses – she really should ask the man's name – to follow. "It might make it faster if you told me what you were looking for."

I would've, if you'd stopped speaking long enough for me to get a word in.

Instead of voicing her thoughts, however, she explained she was looking for the original Salidians, and how they may've been able to use the In-Between to get around. Her ability to travel that way had gotten out already, so it wasn't some giant secret.

"… which makes me think each stair might be one of the locations the original residents visited," she finished.

"And you believe you can find their descendants at one of these places?" Glasses asked.

"That's what I'm hoping," El said. "Though, even if we figure out which place they're at, I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to get there so easily. I might have to… oof," she cut off as she bumped into Singel who had stopped suddenly right in front of her. "What…?"

Singel spun so fast El almost ignited a weapon in her hand, blue licks of flame dancing between her fingers until she saw the ah-ha look on his face.

"I have an idea," he said.

"I can tell," El responded flatly.

"There is one commonality on each of the steps," Singel explained. "A… logo. Or a symbol. I'd thought it was maybe a crest for the city, but as you talk about this other place, this In-Between, it made me think the symbol looks a lot like a stylized doorway or gateway."

"Okay," El said. "And?"

"And! There is one other place I've found this crest prominently displayed. So prominently, in fact, its carving dominates the entire floor. Right in front of a large archway leading straight into a blank, stone wall!"

"You think it might be where they opened the gates?" El asked.

"Possibly! I'd never even considered the probability the square could be used for something like that, but it's not far from here. Come, come," Singel said, leading them off the path – even though the stairs were visible in the near distance.

"Are you taking us to that second, important building?" Glasses asked.

"Exactly," Singel said.

"If you didn't know about the In-Between – or that this building could be some kind of gatehouse – what did you think the place was for?" El asked as Singel picked up the pace down the street.

"The archway is up a ramp on a raised dais," Singel said. "I thought, perhaps, it was some kind of stage. Feasibly a playhouse, though I always found it odd there was no seating. How empty the rest of the building is always puzzled me. If it was used as a gathering place, though, or perhaps a waiting area? That could make sense."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Are there any more of those pictures from the stairs in the room?"

"Pictographs," Singel corrected without missing a beat. "And, actually, yes. A copy of each of the steps can be found in the building. In the same room as the large crest, in fact!"

"Lending to your theory this could be a gatehouse," Glasses spoke up from behind El. "How much further is it?"

"You'd know, if you'd every accompanied me when I invited you," Singel said, only a slight snark in his voice. "Just around this corner."

With those words, the conversation died as the trio took a right at the next intersection, a large building with wide doors standing directly ahead of them. Compared to the narrow street they'd been following until this point, the new roadway was easily twice as wide, with the doorway ahead being even bigger still.

"Easy enough to fit a pair of wagons side by side," El noted. "Door is tall enough too."

"Now that you mention it…" Singel said, apparently looking at the area with new eyes, his head swiveling left and right like he couldn't take it all in fast enough.

"Ah, this area," Glasses spoke up. "We'd noted it in flyovers, marking it as a place we could move the population if the Depths came. This roadway we're on connects directly to the other districts of the town, and would make for moving large numbers of people quite easily. The building ahead of us, as well, is one of the largest around and made of heavy stone. We'd thought it was another warehouse…"

"Makes sense," El said. "C'mon, let's go in." Now that she knew where she was going, El didn't wait for Singel to take the lead, instead quick-stepping around the man and jogging up to the front door. "How does it open…?" she asked, tentatively pushing on the huge stone doors. Surprisingly, the door swung open with hardly any effort.

"I took the opportunity to grease the hinges," Singel said, catching up. "Plus, there are counterweights to make opening the door easier."

"Convenient," El said, her mind barely on the word as she took in the room ahead. Like Glasses had said, it was easily as big as any warehouse she'd ever been in, but far more empty. The roof had to be almost three stories tall, with thick stone pillars supporting the weight of the building at regular intervals. Those pillars, however, made way for the road to clearly continue on towards the far wall where an archway was built directly into it.

"Sorry about the lighting in here," Singel said, following her in. "There are torches along the walls and on the columns, but no matter what I do, I can't get them to light. I've had to resort to laying out the occasional lantern to see."

Mostly ignoring his words, El ignited four small wings on her shoulders – Singel gasping in surprise at their appearance – and darted ahead. Her eyes picked out some of the torches the man had mentioned, as well as the few lanterns providing light, but they weren't important now. No, there was something else about the room. Something special. Could they others feel it? Singel had said the building was important, and he was definitely on to something.

It only took El a few seconds to reach the center of the building, her eyes immediately drawn to the large crest carved into the floor. Somewhere between the image of an open book and a gate, the symbol spoke to her.

That wasn't right. It spoke to her Spark.

Letting instinct take over, El settled her feet in the center of the crest, and held her right hand out in front of herself. Blue flames licked to life, but not the flames she'd use to ignite a weapon. Instead, these were the flames she'd used to open the portals to the In-Between. Almost like they were summoned, as soon as the flames burned within the palm of her hand, they shot out in dozens of thin streamers.

Darting through the room like streaking fireflies, the streamers struck one torch after another, igniting them in glowing blue flames. Footsteps behind her suddenly cut off as Singel and Glasses stopped at the appearance of the light. Within seconds, the entire room was alight, but El's flames didn't stop there.

Instead, the streamers twisted above her hand, some outside force guiding her flames. Around and around, they spun, weaving themselves into a burning rope as thick as El's arm. Brighter and brighter, they burned, until their light eclipsed the rest of the room combined. Tighter and tighter they twisted, compressed almost to the plasma state.

Before they reached that point, though, El's eyes settled on the peak of the arch on the wall. There. Without even considering how she knew what to do, El directed the end of her rope towards that peak. Searing through the air in the blink of an eye, the rope connected the archway to El – to her Spark.

Then, like a parched land finally receiving rain, it greedily sucked in that power.

El's Spark pulsed with energy, the air around her dropping a dozen degrees in temperature, while the torches flared brighter. Feeding the power into the archway, strange shapes ignited down the two sides of it towards the floor. Shapes she recognized. Kind of.

Runes. Just the like ones from the rings in Wirock.

As power streamed into those runes – more and more of them lighting up – images around the room seemed to flash in response.

Inhospitable cliffs with crashing waves at their base. El dismissed it – That's not right – and the image faded.

Snowy fields, a picturesque town built around a central temple. No, not right either. The image dimmed, another on the opposite side of the room glowing to life.

A large city with a giant, egg-shaped building. Vestis? Not what I need. El pushed past the location – that's what they were. No, not locations. Destinations.

Understanding washing over her, connections to the wide world seemed to stream into her. This… this was a gateway! More than Singel could possibly guess. Each of the images was a set of coordinates, pre-set into the building to guide the opening of paths to the places along the walls. With these, she didn't need to go into the In-Between and find the path herself – it was already laid out. All she had to do was pick the right location, and the portal would open.

There, an image of buildings shaped like rolling flames! Pycrin. Now, she just needed…

Images flashed faster and faster as El narrowed her thoughts to what she was looking for until…

A walled city on a small island, rivers by the hundreds in the distance – the Isles of Pili!

There had to be buildings like this in all the nations – assuming they hadn't been destroyed over the years. She could connect Pycrin to Pili. They could use the path through the In-Between to move troops to the front lines of the war. She'd done it!

And yet… and yet something continued to pull at her. A need beyond her own. Yes, she could stop – could cut off the power feeding into the room – but she didn't. There was still something else. Another secret waiting hidden. Waiting… for her.

Scrolling through the images – the destinations – one after another, faster and faster as they weren't what she was looking for, the room around her flashed from all sides. Some of the images she went through a second, a third time, like she was following a trail. Clues here – a heavier sense of touch – and there, an impression like longing, her mind raced around the room.

Words bloomed from Singel and Glasses – though she ignored them – at the lightshow.

What was it? What was she looking for? Every image, she'd gone through them all. More than three times each. Whatever she was looking for wasn't…

El stopped, all the images coming to life at once.

All of them but one.

A blank stone – the absence of a pictograph. Except, it wasn't blank, was it? At least, not exactly.

Pulling all her power from the other images – the room practically falling into darkness after the bright lights, if not for the torches – El pushed it all into that blank stone. As soon as her power connected, understanding washed through her.

It was the simplest of the stones, the one she should've understood from the very beginning, since its destination was the only one she'd really used before.

The In-Between itself.

With a twist of her power – like turning a key in a lock – El ignited the gateway on the far wall. Blue flames erupted outward from the arches, consuming the wall in the blink of an eye. When the fire faded, the roadway El stood on led straight into the In-Between.

And into a long-decrepit town amongst the tall trees.

The original Salidians hadn't escaped through the In-Between. They'd escaped into it.