A Realm of Shadows

Kyra tried to force herself to be strong, not to veer from the path. She knew this was a journey she had to take, and she knew she could not shy away from what was demanded of her. She tried to push from her mind the horrors that awaited her on the far side of the Flames. A nation of trolls. Volcanoes, lava, ash. A nation of evil, of sorcery. Unimaginable creatures and monsters. She tried not to recall the stories she had heard as a child. A place where people tore each other apart for fun, led by the demonic leader Vesuvius. A nation that lived for blood, for cruelty.

They dipped down beneath the clouds for a moment, and Kyra glanced down and saw, far below, that they were passing over the northeastern corner of Escalon. Her heart leapt as she began to recognize the countryside: Volis. There were the hills of her hometown, once so beautiful, now a scab of what it once was. Her heart fell at the sight. There in the distance lay her father’s stronghold, the fort, all now in ruins. It was a great heap of rubble, scattered with untended corpses sprawled in unnatural positions, visible even from here, looking up at the sky as if to ask Kyra how she could have let this happen to them.

Kyra shut her eyes and tried to push the image from her mind – yet she could not. It was too hard to just fly over this place that had once meant so much to her. She looked up toward the horizon, toward Marda, and she knew she should continue on, but something inside her could not bring herself to just pass over her hometown. She had to stop and see it for herself before she left Escalon, on what might be her final journey.