The Awakening
“Hurry up brother. We haven’t got all day,” shouted Dail as he peered down the rock face to where his sibling Greelish was manoeuvring a tricky section of the climb.
“I’m coming, just hold on a minute” said Greelish in reply. He looked back up the mountainside and snarled, cursing his brother from under his breath. Greelish knew that Dail was the better climber, he had two years on him, and at the nimble age of twenty, his brother could easily climb a mountainside without any assistance or fear. Even with a heavy bag on his back, Dail would glide across the Cliffside as though his body were ethereal.
Greelish on the other hand was not as agile as his older brother. He had been born with a different trait. Where his brother could slide into a tender crevice, Greelish would simply make the crevice wider with his unmatchable and brutish force. He could climb; and discounting his brother, Greelish considered himself as good a climber as anyone from the southern Firasi villages with his raw power more than making up for his lack of agility.
”here’s a ledge up there, do you see it? That’s where we will stop for the night” yelled Dail, pointing to a section of flat rock about thirty metres from his position. ‘Follow me’ he finished.
“Coming brother” said Greelish with a sigh. His hands were starting to hurt from the climb, so he cherished the idea of a rest. By now the brothers had been climbing a long while, they were twelve hundred feet above the ground, and the sun was approaching its set in the early evening.
Dail reached the ledge first; he lay on the floor with an exhausted relief and ran his hands across the firm and even ground. After a short while, the larger hands of Greelish grasped the edge and his tremendous upper body strength pulled him easily to the platform above.
“I knew you’d make it” remarked his brother, with a smile, who was now back on his feet. “There’s an area over here we can lay out the bedroll’s and set up for the night, hurry though brother, or you’ll miss the sunset.”
The brothers had never camped on the Cliffside before, they had climbed the mountain on countless occasions but they had never spent the night. They were eager to find out what a Firasi sunset looked like from so high up above the Everwood. After Greelish had unpacked the bags, laid out the bedrolls and started a fire from some small branches they had collected just outside the village, he joined his brother who was sitting, feet dangling off the rock that held them stable.
“Beautiful isn’t it” said Dail with a calm and soothing tone of voice.
“It really is” replied Greelish looking out onto the infinite expanse of the Everwood. “Why is it forbidden to us Brother?”
“A good question” answered Dail. “Mother had told me that for as long as Sentinel has existed, so has the Everwood. Its life-force in tandem with that of the world we live in now. She told me that the Settlers walked out of the Everwood and started the four Domains. So we honour the Everwood as the site of creation for all of Sentinel. We can’t go in Greelish, because it is a sacred land, and it must be left unchanged so that the essence of Sentinel remains strong.”
“But what of the other Domains?”
“Don’t worry of the others Greelish, there is a mutual agreement amongst us that forbids entry to the grounds of the Everwood, it is sacred to us all.”
Greelish never understood the importance of the Everwood until that very moment, and as the sun began to set over the north of Sentinel, he could see exactly why it meant so much to its peoples. A spectacular shade of blood-red crimson filled the skies above the vast expanse below, and a mellow light had set upon the highest canopy and flood across the horizon like a rising tide.
With the coming of the night, the land fell silent and the grasp of its darkness left an unsettling tranquillity in the air. Not a sound could be heard from the forest below, only the faint crackle of the brother’s fire and the gentle rustle of the southern winds were audible in that midsummer moonlight. Vega, Astris, Morne, and Dwell – the four moons of Sentinel – bathed the Everwood in a soothing glow. Greelish and Dail lay silent on their bedrolls, staring at the stars sipping water from their canteens and as their tiredness overcame them, they drifted swiftly into their sleep.
A few hours later, after the fading of the campfire, Dail awoke with an unsurity about him.
“Greelish, wake up” he whispered to his brother, shaking him by the shoulder. “Something is wrong.”
“What’s the matter Dail? I was having a lovely dream about Lyla, the baker’s daughter.”
“Quiet a second. Do you hear that?” he said softly, his face wrought with concern. The brothers both stilled themselves making as little noise as possible, until a deep and unsettling murmur broke the silence. Greelish turned to his brother, startled and afraid. Neither of them spoke, instead they sat there, trapped within their silence, listening hard for another sound. Again, a deep sound from the below brought the brothers swiftly from their weariness. It was the dead of night, the Everwood seemed calm, and there were few villages in the surrounding area to have produced such a sound. The brothers wondered, moving back from the edge and closer to the rock face behind them.
“What in the flame was that?” said Greelish, breaking the brothers’ silence.
“You think I know?” remarked Dail, who was just as clueless as his brother.
When the third sound bellowed from below them, the brothers both froze in fear. This time, the sound was not alone. With it came a movement, the very stone on which they made their camp began to shake, unnoticeable at first, but with a growing intensity. Without so much as a word, Dail grabbed the bedrolls and wrapped them into their holsters. He threw Greelish a bag and uttered a single word.
“Climb!” Dail screamed as the mountain shook once again. He threw the backpack over his shoulder and secured it before heading for the ledge. Greelish followed behind him watching his brother carefully as they began their descent in the dark of the night, with only the intimate glow of the four moons as their guide downward.
Greelish leaned over and secured a footing on the wall below. As he dropped over the ledge where once they had slept, he peered skyward towards the mountains peak. What Greelish saw next sent a shiver down his spine. A cloud as thick as mud and as dark as the sky itself, blew high towards the stars. Dail had not yet seen the smoke arising from the peak and was well on his way down the mountain, when Greelish drew his attention.
“Dail, look in the sky!’ he shouted, ’look at the smoke!” Dail froze mid climb, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move, he just stared, motionless, at the smoke filtering from the peak of the mountain. Surely it could not be true he thought to himself. Dail knew the true nature of the mountain in which they climbed, but he had believed it was no longer a danger to Firas. The last eruptions to take place throughout the Firasi domain had been well over a thousand years ago and the volcanoes had been considered dormant.
Dail snapped himself from the trance he was in, and once again called up to his brother.
“Just climb Greelish, there’s no time to explain, just climb” he urged. It was easy for Dail to descend. He was nimble, thin, and dextrous, but Greelish was bulky, his powerful arms made fine tools for a climb upward, but on the down climb, Greelish struggled with speed.
A thunderous roar from the peak once again stopped the brothers hard in their climb. This time the mountain shook with a fury unlike before. Some fifteen feet above him, Dail saw his brother begin to lose his footing, slipping on a rock that was shaken loose by the explosion. His heart was pounding faster than it ever had, but soon enough, his brother regained balance by controlling himself on his mighty arms. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dail shifted his body and began climbing upwards to be closer to his brother. He peered at the rock to find a good hold and then back to the sky above him, when a light from the top of the mountain began moving towards them, and growing in size.
Dail was immediately aware of what was coming down towards them, and so he quickened his climb. He skipped between the stone holds faster than he ever had before, in desperate attempt to be by his brother’s side. The light still fell, growing larger and larger by the second. It was Greelish who now looked up, seeing the darkness broken by a falling orange light.
“There’s no use in climbing” Dail said as he reached his brothers side, hugging the stone as he spoke. “We’ll never outrun it.”
“You’re right’ Greelish agreed. He lowered his head and turned to look at his brother. ’May the flame find you Dail.”
“And you too.”
Greelish and Dail stared intently at one another, refraining from looking towards the sky. As the light from the mountain drew nearer, both brothers could see its true detail. Within seconds, the fireball made contact with the mountainside, shattering into smaller pieces, and once again racing towards Greelish and Dail. Unbeknownst to one another, each brother held close a memory of the other in their mind as the inferno loomed nearer. In spite of all that had – and was – going on, the sound that came from the brothers’ mouths was not that of fear, or sorrow. It was simply a laughter so fierce that it overcame the emotions of dread that grew with each passing moment. It was then, at that very instant, when the raining fire from the mountain overhead crashed hard into the stone above them, knocking them free of their footings, and quickly into the darkness below.
