Yvan sighed as soon as the knights of the Chivalric Order of Custodians left. “They’ll probably all die before they get anywhere near the Voyant.”

  “I wonder if any of them has ever been out of this Island,” Vidal remarked. “They don’t seem to know anything about the Coil.”

  “There’s another town over there.” Niyazi pointed behind him—upriver where he and the others just scouted. “We should head for that.”

  Yvan only nodded and the whole party set off up the river. Walking along it sure was pleasant compared to walking over the bone fields.

  The group didn’t see any further sign of the Chivalric Order of Custodians. The countryside got steeper and the hills taller with deep channels and valleys between them.

  Eliska checked at each hilltop. She never saw the knights again. They couldn’t have traveled beyond this little pocket of serenity and stability, but they seemed to vanish into the landscape.

  She tried to push them out of her mind. People had been disappearing out of her life for as long as she could remember. She accepted long ago that they probably died in the Coil.

  She found it harder and harder to brush that off now. Some part of her finally woke up and revolted against all of this, including her own part in it.

  The party topped another hill and Niyazi pointed out the town in the distance. It was much more than a town.

  A cloud of those flying vehicles buzzed around tall buildings the way Marine and Eliska had seen them flying in that giant city in the illusion Layer. Was that city real after all?

  Marine seemed to think cities like that existed throughout the Coil, so why not here?

  What would it be like to go inside one of them and find out how everything worked? Eliska couldn’t fathom that.

  None of the Watchmen commented on how different the city looked from the other Islands they’d traveled through. Did any of the Watchmen even see the flying vehicles or the enormous, towering buildings made of glass?

  The Watchmen all just kept walking as if Niyazi pointed out a quaint country town like Middleborough. They didn’t even stop to study the city from a distance.

  Niyazi led the way into a valley that joined up with a road leading to the city. The hills dropped away so the party could see the city getting bigger as they got nearer.

  The sight of all that activity, prosperity, and magnificent advancement gave Eliska a feeling of impending doom. Maybe her instincts didn’t go away when she lost her magic.

  The travelers headed out into the open countryside to approach the city, but they only made it a few miles before storm clouds started to gather over the city’s highest buildings.

  “This looks bad,” Omer muttered.

  The clouds roiled and lightning crackled inside them even as they spread through a clear blue sky. The clouds obliterated the sunshine and the wind picked up.

  The flying vehicles kept on with their business as if nothing was happening. None of the people in the streets or behind the windows seemed to realize anything was wrong.

  The clouds covered the whole city, but they didn’t spread beyond that. The lightning didn’t leave the city, either.

  Barsali stopped walking. “Are we really going in there? It looks dangerous.”

  Almost as if his words made it happen, at that moment a revolving funnel of fast-moving air snaked out of the clouds. Lightning twined around the spiral as it stretched downward toward the buildings.

  It missed the buildings, stabbed between them, and hit the ground somewhere deep inside the city. The travelers couldn’t see where it hit.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  That one instant set off the disaster Eliska had been dreading. Darklings erupted out of the ground surrounding the city, ringed it exactly the way they ringed Middleborough, and attacked the buildings in fury.

  The Darklings smashed the buildings to smithereens and sent a rain of debris and broken glass showering into the streets. People screamed and ran, but they couldn’t run fast enough to get away from the Darklings.

  These Darklings looked about the same size as the Darklings that destroyed Middleborough, too. They pulverized buildings, brought them down on fleeing citizens, and Darklings stormed through the city snatching up people left and right.

  The Watch stopped at a distance. No one took another step toward that city. Everyone stared in sinking horror at the city crumbling before their eyes. So much for seeing how the city worked and discovering all its wonders.

  The Darklings rising out of the earth cracked the soil from a Layer underneath. The ground rumbled when they emerged and those rumbles didn’t stop. Fractures spread outward from the holes the Darklings broke through the surface.

  The Darklings’ stomping feet shook the terrain. The cracks and fissures kept spreading….

  More Darklings blasted out of those cracks. Those closest to the city turned on the city. Those Darklings too far away turned on the only thing left—each other.

  Omer wheeled away. “Run for it!”

  Yvan grabbed the two girls. “Move!”

  Eliska didn’t dare to turn around to see how close the Darklings were getting. More forks and cracks split the soil under her feet. How soon would the Darklings come and devour the group, too?

  The noise coming out of the city sent a wave of goosebumps over her skin. The screams of dying people mingled with crashes and booms of explosions mixed with the Darklings’ feral roars.

  The cracks and fissures overtook the party, but no Darklings broke through to pounce on the fugitives.

  The fracturing landscape rushed past the group and swept forward in front of Omer and Niyazi who wound up in front.

  The cracks swept the whole countryside. That wave of Dark wiped out the beautiful landscape—if it ever had been beautiful. Maybe that was all part of some illusion that turned the bone fields into something nicer.

  Eliska would never know because she couldn’t use her magic to find out.

  The wave erased the sunshine, the blue sky, the trees, all the vegetation, and everything before it. Only the river remained, but it didn’t look the way it looked before.

  Lava bubbled down the channel. The wave of cracks shattered the illusion—or whatever it was. The Dark rewrote the landscape into a volcanic wasteland venting lava and sulfur from cones built out of solid rock.

  Rivulets of lava trickled here and there, but the landscape showed a few signs of whatever it might have been before the Dark took it over. The crumbling remains of a few houses dotted the riverbank.

  Churning red and orange vapors replaced the blue sky. Shadows of Darkness blocked out any sunlight. The lava gave the landscape a reddish glow of permanent night.

  The Watchmen didn’t stop running. Niyazi followed the river all the way back the way he came.

  The group only made it a few hundred yards before it became obvious that they were still following the same river. It followed the same contour over the same hills and valleys.

  The Watchmen had to divert around lava streams, leap from one section of solid rock to another, and then correct their course to keep going.

  Marine staggered a few times. Yvan steadied her.

  Eliska should have done that, but fear and horror wiped out every other thought beyond just staying alive.

  Her terrified eyes darted around the landscape trying to see something—any trace of something that would help her to survive.

  She’d never been in this kind of danger before—not ever. She’d always been able to do something to save her own life. Her magic always got her out of any dangerous situation.

  Terror gripped her. It wiped out her mind and left her spinning in a nightmare of pure petrified fear and anguish.

  Her brain no longer seemed capable of thinking anything—not even to come up with the most basic idea of how to help herself. Forget about helping anyone else.

  Yvan stayed near the two girls. He was the one who helped them whenever they needed help. He guided them where they needed to go.

  The group ran a long way before Omer and Niyazi finally slowed down and eventually stopped on top of one of the hills. Intense heat radiated off the lava river. It burned Eliska’s skin, but her addled mind didn’t even register enough to get her away from it.

  She followed the Watchmen in a numb trance. She was going to die out here. She knew that now, but she couldn’t even relax into the inevitable.

  Fear froze her into a zombie hypnotic state. Every nerve stretched to the breaking point, but she couldn’t even break into the hysterical panic lingering just beneath the surface. She really wished she could.

  The other Watchmen pulled up on the hilltop. Rien doubled over propping his hands on his knees and gasping for breath. Neils buckled onto his seat panting hard.

  Marine whimpered in terror looking all around her, wrung her hands in desperation, and her features screwed up in misery.

  Yvan went from one person to the next checking on everyone. Then he stopped in front of the two girls.

  He gave Eliska a hard look, but he softened when he made eye contact with her. Did he see just how close she was coming to losing it completely?

  The others scanned the surroundings. “We won’t be able to find food and water in this hellhole,” Omer remarked.

  “Then we’ll just have to take the next best thing,” Yvan replied. “Keep heading up the river—but walk. Find us one of these broken-down houses where we can shelter—at least for a little while. Something else is bound to happen to send us somewhere else.”

  End of Chapter 7.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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