“Brand, come and see Glynmor!”
Brand’s nostrils flared and he stayed fixed on her for another beat, two, a muscle ticking in his jaw. It felt like an eternity before he finally turned to acknowledge his brother’s voice booming from the top of the hill up the way. She’d been so distracted, she hadn’t even noticed it looming there.
“My pride and joy!” Magnus shouted with a grin, his arm sweeping out towards what she assumed was the village.
Lunara didn’t need any more encouragement. Before Brand could move, she fled up the incline ahead of him, towards the relative safety that waited at the top. She raised her chin and ignored the strange looks as she joined the others, Brand’s heavy footfalls closing in from behind and mimicking the sickening pound of her heart.
There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Not with the beauty stretching out before her and snatching what little breath she had away.
Closest to them, Solyrian beat down on a swaying field of grain, a rolling rainbow of vines and vegetables alongside it. Bees buzzed and birds chirped, the warm breeze flutteringbetween branches and blossoms and bringing the smell of fresh tilled earth to her nose.
In the near distance, beyond a meadow brimming with wildflowers, lay the Thodelemaia Dread Chasm.
It was said that two warring Celestials—sister Star Goddesses from the Unknown—had torn through space and time, locked in a legendary battle of wills and carnage. Their epic conflict finally reached its bloody end when they crash-landed upon a ghostly hill in this barren and unformed world.
Both gravely wounded from their starfall, the Sisters joined hands in silent apology as they lay dying, their weeping regret mingling on the earth between them. After eons of fighting one another, it had become too much, their injuries too great. With the ground cradling their broken bodies, the earth trembled and a mighty plateau formed, lifting them towards the empty sky, and a ring of mountains shot into existence to enclose their island deathbed.
As the life slowly drained from them, the pool of their tears multiplied, filling the newly-formed basin that circled the goddesses. It overflowed, and the raging waters swept out into the void in different directions, carrying the Sisters’ power with them. Magic leached into the grey nothing as the rivers clawed through its fog and mist. Whole landscapes were born as rocks, and trees, and creatures sprang from their depths. Moons and stars rushed from far away galaxies to witness the formation. Where once there was nothing, there was suddenlyeverything.
With the last beat of their fearsome hearts, the universe quaked with sorrow, snapping the infant lands apart and leaving immense, fathomless rifts between them.
Even now, the cosmos still came to pay them homage in the form of the Occurrences, the surrounding celestial bodies mourning the death of their own and honoring the Sisters’ creations with continued gifts of power.
Thus, Bordoroth and the Five Realms were born—and the endless, gaping maws of shadow and stillness known as the Dread Chasms.
Every realm was completely surrounded by them, cut off from their neighboring lands. There was no such thing as physically crossing one to reach the other side, no way to successfully enter their depths. They dropped off into nothing and that was it. If someone was unfortunate enough to fall in, they were never seen again.
The Chasms were used as a punishment for a reason.
With the endless night in the Evesong, Lunara had never actually seen one. Not like this. Not with the sunstar hammering down to highlight just how unfathomable they could be, how impossibly dark. It was as though the inky, undulating gloom was actually consuming the light, swallowing it in and erasing it from existence.
“Shitting stars,” she breathed.
Hedda chuckled beside her. “I had much the same reaction the first time I was this close to one as well. There aren’t really words.”
Lunara tore her gaze away from the dense murk and turned to take in the village of Glynmor, tucked neatly off to the side between their fields and the edge of a small forest. The idyllic scene called to her, and she dipped into the well of her power, reaching out to brush mystical fingers over the beauty of it, as if she could snatch some back to keep for herself.
Oh… no.
Wait.
No, no, no.
At first, she didn’t understand what her mind was trying to tell her, couldn’t comprehend what she was feeling through the thread of her magic, but then?—
“Sisters help me,” she whispered, her feet moving of their own accord.
No wonder there hadn’t been anyone around. No sounds outside of nature. No one to greet them as they approached.
Before she knew it, she was flying down the hill. Just as she hit the halfway point of the decline, arms banded around her middle like a cage of iron, halting her momentum and knocking the wind right from her lungs, and she was lifted from the ground.
“Let me go!” she shrieked, legs flailing. “Something is wrong!”
Her body thrashed as she jabbed her heels back, Brand grunting when she finally connected with solid bone.
“Weeping fuck!” He hefted her up, shifting to wrap an arm around her thighs, trapping her against him, her back pressed firmly to his front. “You can’t go running off like that if you suspect there’s danger, you bloody fool,” he hissed into her ear, voice little more than a growl. “Calm yourself and speak plainly. Do so and I will put you down.”
Calm yourself? Calm yourself!
