Chapter 6: Common Ground

When Caden awoke, his companion was missing. With a start, he leapt to his feet, expecting his pack to be raided and his waterskin to be missing. Instead, he found everything exactly as he had left it. If she hadn’t robbed him, then had she finally seen fit to head home?

As much as he had urged her to do just that, he felt an unexpected pang of disappointment. Kadal wasn’t exactly the most desirable traveling companion, but he had been alone for so long that he welcomed even bad conversation. It made for better company than his own thoughts, which tuned increasingly darker the longer he dwelt on them.

He gathered up his affairs, then exited the cave through the shimmering barrier, noting that her tracks led away from its mouth. He could see the trail that her dragging tail had left in the sand, and it looked recent. He was no hunter, but after erasing so many of his own tracks, he had learned to recognize their age. Curious, he decided to follow it for a little while, her footprints weaving between the rocks. The sun had already risen fairly high, he had slept through the dawn. It would have been nearing nine or ten in the morning under normal circumstances, but such distinctions meant little as of late.

As he rounded one of the reefs, he came across his companion, Caden quickly darting back into the cover of the rocks when he realized that he was intruding. Kadal was draped over a large boulder, stretched out to her full length, the heat of the sun beating down on her. She was completely naked, her sling and loincloth lying beside her, clear of the sand.

Slowly, Caden peeked around the corner, his cheeks starting to warm as he beheld her nude form. She was so lean and sleek, the delicate mosaic of her scales reflecting the bright sunlight, making them shine like her skin had been coated in lamp oil. Caden had never seen a woman so exposed before, and if he had, it wouldn’t have looked anything like this. There were parts of her that were so familiar, so human, her feminine curves drawing his gaze with an almost magnetic power. At the same time, so much of her strange anatomy was unfamiliar, the conflict making his heart pound and his head spin.

He had already seen much of her body, she was sparsely clothed even when fully dressed, but he had never been able to examine her in such intimate detail before. Suddenly, the term ‘female’ seemed an inadequate way to describe her. Kadal was a woman. His eyes roamed up her body, drinking in the details.

Caden had seen her run and leap with such ease, she was alarmingly agile for her size, and these slender legs were the source of that athleticism. They were so incredibly long, ending in strange feet with irregular, clawed toes. So much strength was packed into her stout thighs, the contours of her developed muscles clearly visible beneath her shining hide, dimpling its surface. The scales were so smooth that they looked more like glass than anything living. Why did the sight of them ignite such a fire in his belly? If only he could see what lay between them...

They were joined to her torso by wide hips, made doubly so by the presence of her tail, which emerged from somewhere out of view to trail down the side of the boulder. Those broad hips tapered into a narrow waist, giving her a figure like an hourglass, the muscles of her lean abdomen clearly visible as they bulged from beneath her skin. Caden would never have imagined that a woman could be so strong, her flat stomach interrupted by two perfect rows of muscle that looked like they had been chiseled from stone, each one almost as large as his fist. They flexed and shifted beautifully with her every subtle motion, catching the light, her scales making them gleam.

There was an odd dryness in his mouth as he gazed upon her bare chest, a pair of full, heavy breasts on display in the absence of her sling. Gravity was spreading them apart, yet they were pert enough to keep their round shape, her soft flesh molding around her biceps like balls of melting wax. Blue nipples protruded from between her scales, Caden’s eyes lingering on them, his blood pounding in his ears.

What was she doing? Why was she just lying there? He remembered seeing snakes and lizards basking on rocks, warming themselves in the morning sunlight. Kadal must be doing the same.

Her senses were far more attuned than his own, but even a clumsy scholar could walk quietly on sand, so she hadn’t noticed his presence yet. Caden turned back, intending to slink away, but quickly realized that his footprints would betray him. It was probably better to announce himself rather than to let her think that he had been spying on her in secret.

He cleared his throat, Kadal jolting awake, gathering up her ample bosom in her arms to preserve her modesty. Caden averted his eyes, his face burning.

“I-I wasn’t looking,” he stammered. “I just wondered where you had gotten to. I’m heading off now, are you coming?”

“It is rude to intrude on someone when they are basking,” she replied tersely, reaching for her sling. Caden turned his back to her politely, staring off into the corals as she put her clothes back on.

“Well, my kind don’t bask,” he said.

“How do you warm yourselves enough to shake off your morning lethargy?” she asked.

“A pot of tea, maybe some fried eggs,” he replied with a nervous chuckle.

“I am surprised that you did not try to flee when you realized I was gone,” she said, Caden risking a glance over his shoulder to see her drop down off her boulder. She was dressed now, or at least, as dressed as one could be in only a sling and a loincloth. She cocked her head at him, perhaps sensing that he was flustered, but the redness in his cheeks likely meant nothing to her. “I would have found you again in short order, of course.”

“Considering that I haven’t done anything wrong, I have no reason to evade you,” he replied. He set off at a brisk pace, waving for her to follow him, almost as though he could physically outrun his embarrassment. “Come, the end of the world will not wait for us.”

“If only my mission here was a scholarly one,” Caden said, pausing to admire some of the coral formations on his way past one of the reefs. “There is so much of interest here, the Coral Sea is truly remarkable, a wonder of the world. Look at these table corals, do you know how long it must have taken them to petrify like this?”

Kadal was trailing behind him, still maintaining a healthy distance between the two of them, but she seemed less wary of him than she had been the day before. She watched him curiously as he knelt down, sifting the sand through his fingers.

“This red sand must have once made up the seafloor,” he explained. “I wish I could catalog all of this, the Master would have loved it. Look, there are shell fragments, shark teeth, tiny fossils. How I wish I had the time to take notes, there must be so many discoveries to be made here.”

“Why does it fascinate you so?” Kadal asked. “Do you not have these things where you come from?”

“Not at all,” he replied, rising to his feet and brushing some of the sand from his trousers. “If you have never ventured beyond the Western shore, you might assume that the whole world looks like this, but that could not be further from the truth.” He started to walk again, the reptile hurrying to catch up, intrigued by his tales of foreign lands. “My homeland is wet and verdant, it rains almost every day. Or at least, it used to, before the endless summer. The rolling hills are covered in great fields of grain, and green pastures where our livestock graze. There are forests of trees near as tall as these spires, their canopies so thick that one can scarcely see the sun beneath them, and the undergrowth is so dense as to obscure the ground completely. I might have told you that I disliked the wind and drizzle once, but now I long for the feeling of rain on my skin, for the bite of winter frost.”

“How can it rain every day?” Kadal wondered. “Surely it would drown you?”

“Desert regions only get rain on a seasonal basis,” he explained. “Where I hail from, there are great, roaring rivers snaking their way through the landscape. You could scarcely go a mile without encountering a burbling brook, or a pond full of frogs and fish. These days, the rivers are running dry, and the trees are wilting. My land is becoming a desert not unlike this one.”

“Does our home displease you so?”

“It’s not that it displeases me,” he replied hurriedly. “On the contrary, I think it’s beautiful, fascinating. But my kingdom becoming a desert means death. Death of the plant life, death of the animals, death of the people who can no longer sustain themselves as they once did. That’s why I’m here.”

“The noble quest that you spoke of?” she asked, hopping deftly over a rock that was in her path. “Tell me what has driven you to march until your feet bled.”

Should he tell her the true nature of his quest? The Master had warned him against revealing information about his mission to strangers, but the reptiles already knew of his destination, so what did it matter?

“I came here to save the world,” he announced, Kadal giving him an incredulous glance. “This summer shows no sign of ending, the days will grow ever longer, and the sun will burn ever hotter until nothing can survive. My Master devoted his every waking hour to finding a solution, and he discovered that an identical calamity was averted thousands of years ago. The sorcerers of the time were able to correct the celestial imbalance using an artifact, and that artifact is said to reside in the ruined city that you consider sacred. That is what I seek.”

Kadal stopped, Caden turning to glance back at her. He was met with her furious stare, but there was conflict behind those yellow eyes, indecision making her hesitate.

“When I drank of the Shaman’s potion,” she began, “the world before me melted away. I was shown a vision, a prophecy, one that I revisit every night in dreams so vivid that I awake unsure of what is real. I saw the world scorched by a sun that engulfed the entire sky, I saw the glass spires of the sacred city, and you were at the center of it all. I felt your will as if it were my own, your desire to possess the secrets that the city holds. The Shaman saw something similar, and she believes that you will be the architect of the world’s demise.”

“Architect of the world’s demise, eh?” Caden muttered. “No wonder you wanted to kill me so badly.”

“You told me that your quest was a noble one, yet you freely admit that your goal is to violate the sanctity of the sacred city,” she continued. “You talk of plundering its secrets without shame. Everything that you say only confirms my fears, and duty would have me strike you down where you stand, but I do not ... I do not understand...”

“Your Shaman also claimed that I was a bloodthirsty battlemage,” he replied. “If she was wrong about that, then maybe she’s wrong about other things, too. Did you consider that?”

“This may yet be a deception,” she hissed. “You are fond of tricks and subterfuge, I know this to be true. No, I felt your desire to possess the black stone. Surely nothing good can come of wielding a dead star.”

“I want to know more about this ‘vision quest’ of yours,” Caden said, continuing on his way. Kadal followed, keeping her eyes locked on him. “The Guild looks down on shamanism as a primitive and inferior form of magic, and as far as I know, there is no known way to predict the future. Yet, you somehow know of my quest, you know that I have to reach the ruined city at all costs. A traveler heading East across the Coral Sea could only have one destination in mind, even a savage could deduce that much, but talk of this ‘black stone’ disturbs me. What exactly is it that you saw?”

“Do you not even know what you seek?” she asked. “How can that be?”

“I know not what the artifact looks like, not exactly,” he admitted. “But in the ancient scroll that told of its existence, it was said to ‘shine with a dark light’. Is that what you saw in your vision?”

“That day, I learned that Gods can die and that stars can fall,” she lamented. She wasn’t lying. Whatever she had seen had deeply affected her, be it the product of magic, or that of some hallucinogenic concoction of desert herbs. “It was blacker than black, perfectly round, like the full Moon. There was a sense of ... weight to it, I got the impression that lifting it would be impossible. It was as though it was absorbing the very light itself.”

“Sounds like a likely candidate,” Caden said.

“What do you intend to do with it if you find it?” Kadal demanded.

“I have no idea,” he admitted with a shrug. “I’ll have to learn how the ancients used it, and try to replicate the process as best I can, assuming there’s no way to take it back to my Master.”

There was silence for a minute, Kadal lost in thought as she followed behind him.

“What if by interfering, you somehow make things worse?” she posited. “You do not have to be evil for your actions to bring about catastrophe.”

“What choice do I have?” he replied, climbing over a small sand dune. “If I do nothing, the world will surely burn. This is my only chance to set things right.”

Kadal watched as her companion stopped to examine one of the corals, his strange, blue eyes full of wonder. He reminded her of a hatchling in a way, seeming to find joy in the most mundane of things.

What the battlemage had told Kadal disturbed her. He had confirmed all of her fears, that his intention was to enter the city, that he sought to possess the dead star. It was everything that the Shaman had warned of, everything that she had seen in her vision. So why was he being so kind to her? He had healed her, fed her, spared her life on more than one occasion. No matter how hard she tried, she could not imagine this little creature dooming the world. Perhaps by accident, but not with malice.

Still, she had seen that bloodlust in him during their fight, the fury that the Shaman had described. She had seen his magic drain the life from the desert with her own eyes. There was a duality to him that confounded her, and there were things that he was unwilling to reveal.

Despite the dangers, she could not return to her tribe, not yet. She had to learn more about this man and his intentions. She had never beheld a male so small, there was no meat on his bones, he hadn’t the muscle to wield that stave in the way that he had. If that was some kind of magic, then she must learn of it.

As they made their way through the corals, they came across an impasse. Before them was a great wall of stone, towering thrice as high as Kadal’s people could leap. It seemed to bridge the spires, creating an insurmountable barrier between them, the massive blocks cut so perfectly as to fit together without leaving so much as a crack. She turned her head first to the right, then to the left, seeing that it extended out of view in both directions. It became obscured by the reefs beyond a point, she couldn’t tell how long it truly was.

“Well, what do we have here?” the battlemage mused as he walked up to the foot of the wall. No, Caden, that was what he had asked her to call him. “Kadal, have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“These barriers were erected by the Gods to prevent their enemies from reaching the sacred city,” she replied. “There are several of them in the Coral Sea.”

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me how to get around it?” he asked.

“They are too tall to leap, and too smooth to climb,” she replied. “When hunters range this far East, we take the long way around, until we find a break.”

“And how long does that usually take?”

“It depends on the distance of the nearest breach,” she replied. “If this is the wall that I think it is, the nearest breach is about a day’s walk North.”

“I can’t afford to waste that kind of time,” he said, running one of his five-fingered hands across the stone. “This construction is amazing, not even our stonemasons could cut rock so precisely. You couldn’t slide the blade of a knife between them. I think these blocks are made from limestone, has to be. Some of these have to weigh twenty or thirty tons...”

“You speak as though you have a choice,” Kadal scoffed, crossing her arms as she watched him inspect the wall. “Fire and thunder cannot rend rock.”

“That’s not entirely correct,” he replied. “If I had a black powder charge, I bet I could create a breach. They’ve been used to assault fortresses in a similar way. Looks like there’s no mortar. This structure is entirely self-supporting. If I could just pop out one of these blocks, I don’t think it would collapse...”

“And how do you intend to do that?” Kadal asked skeptically. “Do you have a spell that can bring down a mountain?”

“Perhaps,” he replied, shrugging off his pack. He fished inside it, retrieving that massive, leather-bound book, setting it on the ground as he began to leaf through its yellowed pages. Kadal waited as he prepared his ritual, her tail batting against the sand as she grew increasingly impatient.

“Take a few steps back, would you?” he said as he waved her clear. “If this whole thing comes tumbling down, I don’t want you to be in its path.”

“You are serious?” she asked, uncrossing her arms and retreating a short distance as she glanced up at the wall warily. Surely he couldn’t really bring it down? Calling down lightning was something that she could understand, even stealing life to heal one’s injuries, but what force could breach a barrier that had been erected by the Gods themselves?

He lifted that stave of his, gripping it tightly with both hands, beginning to whisper under his breath. It looked like such an innocuous weapon. It had no sharp blade, it was not a club or a hammer, it was more akin to the sticks that young warriors used to spar. In spite of its appearance, she had felt its bite, she had seen what terrible forces it could call upon.

As she watched, something odd began to happen. Water started to drip from one of the stone blocks, forming rivulets across its pocked surface. It was one of the lesser blocks, but that wasn’t to say that it was in any way small. It was almost as tall as she was and just as wide, cut into a vaguely rectangular shape. Before long, its every pore was bleeding, as though a freshwater spring was burbling inside it. After a minute, the flow suddenly stopped, Kadal watching the moisture begin to evaporate as the sun baked the wall. Caden did not break his intense concentration even for a moment, a sparkling layer of frost beginning to spread across the bronze figurehead on the end of his stave as he chanted, covering it entirely. It extended to the stone, too, icy fingers slowly covering its surface. There was a tremendous cracking sound, fissures appearing in the immense block, spreading through it like a cracked eggshell.

“What are you doing?” she wondered aloud, risking a step closer to take a better look.

“A sorcerer must have an intimate understanding of the forces that he wields if he is to make effective use of them,” he began, waving the staff as he kept his eyes fixed on the stone. “Let me tell you something about this type of rock. It might appear unbreakable, but limestone is porous, like a giant sponge. It’s full of tiny holes that let water pass through it. Using hydromancy, I can summon water from the moisture in the air, and fill every last one of those little pores.”

“But how can water crack stone?” she demanded.

“Do you know what happens when water freezes? It expands,” Caden explained. “Using cryomancy, I can turn the water in the rock to ice, which creatures pressure enough that...”

He gave the wall an experimental tap with the end of his staff, then drew it back, his feet sliding in the red sand as he braced himself. With a startling yell, he swung with all his might, the impact shaking a shower of dust from the ancient structure. The fissures spread further, fragments of stone falling to the sand below. He hit it again, and again, his blows striking with the force of a hammer. The wood should have splintered in his hands, the staff shouldn’t have the weight or momentum to hit so hard, it defied all logic.

Kadal watched in awe, both impressed and frightened by his show of strength. His furry head barely reached her chest, and he claimed to be no warrior, but he had strength enough to outdo any male in the tribe. Strength enough to outdo even her. It had to be some kind of magic, surely, but that made the sight no less impressive.