Rhakis Mountains

«When I find my wings, Rain, I doubt you'll ever get me down from the sky.»

Ellysetta closed her eyes in bliss as her truemate's sleek tairen form soared into a cloudbank. The wet chill of cloud-mist streamed across her cheeks and dampened her long, spiraling coils of flame-hued hair. She'd dropped the invisibility weave less than a bell's flight north of Orest, and now Rain and Steli soared and swooped side by side through the sky.

Clinging to the saddle on Rain's back, Ellysetta enjoyed the vicarious thrill of tairen flight. She loved flying. She loved the weightless joy of it. She loved the grandeur and the solitude of the heavens. Most of all, she loved the silence—broken only by the whoosh of magnificent wings scooping air from the sky and the rush of the wind passing by.

She hadn't realized how drained she'd become after these last weeks of war—the endless days and nights filled with battle cries and clashing swords and the shrieks of sundered men pleading for her to grant them either healing or a quick end to their suffering. But here, enveloped in the sublime peace of tairen flight, she felt as if a great weight had lifted from her shoulders. She could breathe again.

«How much farther?» she asked. The other tairen who'd launched to mask their departure had departed long ago, and Rain and Steli had been flying northward through the icy reaches of snowcapped mountains for several bells now, using the dense, low-hanging clouds that wreathed the peaks for cover.

"We are here,» Steli answered. Up ahead, the white tairen's form was nearly invisible against the cloud-covered peak of a snowy mountain. She put on a burst of speed, flying straight for the mountain. Bare instants before crashing into it, her wings angled and she shot suddenly skyward. Up she streaked, arrowing through the clouds and disappearing from view.

«Hold on,» Rain warned. A split second later, he mimicked Steli's daring ascent.

Ellysetta gasped as the sudden vertical flight left her stomach several tairen lengths behind. They broke through the clouds and burst into the clear blue sky above, where the tallest peaks rose from a sea of white cloud-mist. Black wings spread wide, gleaming in the late-morning sunlight as Rain glided after the graceful white form of Steli. They soared, weightless, at the apex of their ascent, then folded their wings and plummeted, diving back into the clouds. Ellysetta clung to the saddle and laughed in delight.

The tairen broke through the clouds into a deep, narrow gorge and raced north, following the rushing river at the bottom of the ravine. They zigzagged through the river's bends and curves, then flew up over a series of breathtaking white waterfalls and emerged in a broad basin at the center of five enormous peaks. Crystal Lake dominated the basin, its waters a clear gemstone blue that reflected the five soaring, snowcapped mountains ringing it like a crown.

An abandoned city hewn from the gold-veined gray rock of the mountains rose up on the southwestern shore, seeming to sprout from the mountainside. Clearly Fey but falling to ruin. Beautiful and melancholy in its gilded gray solitude, it stood like a monument to a once great race.

«Dunelon,» Rain said. "The first lost city of the Fey. Abandoned near the end of the Second Age except as a military outpost. Not because its Source died, like in Lissiln, but because our people were too few to remain. I suppose we should have known then our race was in decline.»

Rain's and Steli's wings angled to slow their speed and they alit on the rocky shores of the lake just north of the ancient city. Steli padded to the water's edge and stuck her nose near the surface, purring as she inhaled the heady aroma of magic that perfumed the air above the lake. «Strong Source. Very powerful. Good for Rainier-Eras and Ellysetta-kitling.»

She stuck a paw in, then gave a squawk of outrage. "Cold!» Images of a white Tairen encased in icicles accompanied the exclamation.

Ellysetta laughed as she slid off Rain's back. "It's a mountain lake, Steli. What did you expect?"

Steli tossed her head and sniffed. She didn't like being laughed at. A moment later, a calculating gleam entered her bright eyes. She drew a deep breath and breathed tairen fire on the water's surface, holding the flame until the water steamed to near boiling. She padded into the hot water, head held high, tail swishing with feline superiority, and plunked down just off the shore. "Mmmmrrrr," she purred.

A cooked fish, boiled by the sudden heating of the water, bobbed to the surface. Steli's whiskers twitched. She sniffed the floating fish experimentally, then lapped it up with a large pink tongue. Clearly, she liked what she tasted, because she boiled a wider circle of water and paddled around, slurping up the tasty fish treats as they bobbed to the surface.

"Shall we join her?” Rain asked. He'd Changed back to Fey form and summoned an Earth weave to shed his golden war steel The armor, boots, and blades re-formed in neat piles beside his bare feet, but the magic of the Tairen-forged steel left a gleaming aura swirling around him that amplified his natural Fey luminescence. The Fey king's war steel, once donned, could never be returned to the Feyreisen's palace in Dharsa until the Fey were victorious or the wearer of the armor died. Until then, even when Rain removed the armor to sleep or bathe, a part of its magic remained with him.

His lean, well-muscled form glowed with the silvery luminescence that, even unenhanced, had earned the Fey their mortal appellation, the Shining Folk. Black hair, without a hint of curl, hung in fine, silky strands down to his shoulder blades, framing a face of both indomitable strength and breathtaking masculine beauty. Muscles, lean but well-defined and hard as stone, rippled beneath smooth, gleaming flesh. If Lord Brandis, the god of war, ever chose to take physical form, Ellysetta thought he would look like Rain did now, magnificent and male, dazzling and deadly.