"By the Founders," he whispered, the words snatched away by the wind.
Where the ocean should have been, a vast expanse of absolute blackness stretched to the horizon.Not the darkness of deep water, not the midnight blue of a moonless night—but a perfect void, an absence so complete it seemed to pull at his vision, creating afterimages when he blinked.The line between sea and sky remained discernible only because the heavens, though overcast, retained some semblance of light and texture.
This was no natural phenomenon.The blackness pulsed with a rhythm that mimicked heartbeats, slow and deliberate, as if the entire mass were a single, living entity.As he watched, ripples moved across its surface—not like waves driven by wind, but like muscle contractions, purposeful and controlled.
Roran forced himself closer to the edge, his legs moving mechanically while his mind screamed at him to turn back.The cliff dropped away sharply, its face descending nearly a hundred feet to where the sea should have lapped against the rocks.But the darkness had risen, reaching perhaps halfway up the cliff's height, and where it touched the stone, the rock was...disintegrating.
There was no other word for it.The solid granite that had withstood millennia of ocean assault was simply ceasing to be, disappearing into the blackness without debris or dust.The process continued even as he watched, the darkness creeping upward by imperceptible degrees, consuming everything it touched.
And Eastwatch Fortress?There was nothing to indicate it had ever existed.No ruins, no foundations, not even scattered remnants.The entire structure, along with the portion of cliff it had been built upon, had been erased as completely as writing wiped from a slate.
Roran's hand strayed to the hilt of his sword, a useless gesture of comfort.What good was steel against something that devoured stone?His other hand clenched reflexively, storm magic tingling beneath his skin, responding to his fear with eager anticipation.The power he'd hidden for so long, revealed only recently and still viewed with suspicion and hatred by most mainlanders, might be the only effective weapon against what waited below.
He should return to Frostforge now.He had seen enough to confirm the survivors' accounts, enough to bring credible testimony to the War Council.But something kept him rooted to the spot—a terrible fascination, the same instinct that made people stare at approaching lightning rather than seek shelter.
The wind shifted, bringing a new scent—not the expected brine of ocean air, but something acrid and empty, like the space left behind when all other smells had been stripped away.It stung his nostrils, made his eyes water.This close to the darkness, the air itself seemed thinner, as if the void below were gradually consuming even that.
Something changed in the rhythm of the black surface.The pulsations accelerated, becoming more agitated, more...aware.Roran took an involuntary step backward as the darkness directly below his position began to roil and churn.
A tendril of perfect blackness rose from the mass, twisting upward like smoke but with deliberate purpose.It paused, hovering perhaps thirty feet below his position, seeming to test the air.Then it continued its ascent, reaching toward the cliff face.
Where it touched the stone, the rock simply vanished, leaving a perfectly smooth depression that widened as the tendril explored further.More tendrils emerged from the main mass, each finding its own path up the cliff, each leaving trails of absence in the solid stone.
They were coming for him.Somehow, impossibly, they knew he was there.
Roran stumbled backward, his breath coming in short gasps as panic clawed at his chest.This wasn't the controlled fear of battle, the heightened awareness that kept a soldier alive.This was primal terror, the recognition of something so fundamentally wrong that its mere existence threatened everything he understood about the world.
The tendrils continued their ascent, moving faster now, as if encouraged by his fear.Behind them, larger shapes began to emerge from the black surface—massive, undulating forms that defied description.They weren't creatures in any recognizable sense, but voids given motion, absence shaped into terrible parodies of living things.
One rose higher than the others, its form shifting constantly, sprouting appendages like tentacles that grasped at the cliff face.Where these limbs touched, stone disappeared, providing new handholds for the monstrosity's ascent.It moved with a fluidity that belied its size, flowing upward rather than climbing in any conventional sense.
As it neared the cliff top, features emerged from its amorphous mass—not a face, but hollows that suggested eyes, a gash that approximated a mouth.These weren't fixed, but formed and dissolved and re-formed in different configurations, as if the entity were trying on appearances like masks, discarding each as quickly as it was created.
Roran's back struck something solid—a pine tree at the edge of the forest.He hadn't realized he'd been retreating.The contact jolted him from his paralysis, and he drew his sword in a single fluid motion, the blade catching what little light filtered through the clouds.
He knew, even as he raised the weapon, that conventional steel would be useless against these things.But the motion itself was comforting, a ritual that centered him in the familiar.And perhaps more importantly, it reminded him that he possessed something beyond steel, something that Captain Ragnor and his men had lacked.
Storm magic stirred within him, responding to his silent call.He extended his free hand toward the sky, fingers splayed wide.Power surged through him, electric and wild, seeking expression.The air above him began to churn, clouds darkening and thickening, responding to his will.Within seconds, the sky transformed from overcast gray to threatening black, wind whipping to a frenzy around his solitary figure.
The first entity had reached the cliff edge, its shapeless form spilling onto level ground like oil.Behind it, others emerged, their bodies—if such things could be called bodies—flowing together and then separating again in a horrifying dance of formless unity.
Lightning crackled between Roran's fingers, blue-white and eager.The storm above mirrored his gathering power, energy building with each heartbeat.He waited until the lead entity had fully crested the cliff, until its writhing mass had begun to flow toward him across the barren rock.
Then he released everything.
Lightning split the sky, a jagged spear of pure energy that struck the darkness with blinding intensity.Thunder cracked so violently it shook loose stones from the cliff edge, sending them tumbling into the void below.The entity caught in the strike...reacted.
It didn't burn or explode as normal matter might.Instead, its form destabilized, the perfect blackness disrupted by threads of electric blue that spread through it like cracks in glass.For a brief moment, it lost cohesion, parts of its mass dissipating into wisps of dark vapor that quickly dispersed on the wind.
But it didn't die.Even as Roran watched, the remaining darkness gathered itself, reforming though smaller than before.The other entities hesitated at the cliff's edge, their fluid forms rippling with what might have been uncertainty.
Roran didn't wait for them to recover.Drawing deeper from the well of power within him, he called down another strike, then another, targeting each entity as it emerged from below.Each bolt temporarily disrupted their forms, forcing them to reconstitute with less mass than before.
They could be slowed.Not killed, perhaps, but weakened, driven back.The realization sent a surge of wild hope through Roran's chest, bubbling up as laughter that escaped his throat—a sound more manic than joyful, edged with the hysteria of one who faces extinction and finds the smallest possible chance of survival.
"Come on then!"he shouted at the darkness, his voice nearly lost in the howl of the storm he'd summoned."Come and taste it!"
Lightning answered his call, a relentless barrage that illuminated the cliff top in strobing flashes of electric blue.Each strike found its mark, disrupting the advancing entities, forcing them to retreat or disperse.But for every one that fell back, another emerged from below, drawn perhaps by the commotion or by some alien communication between parts of the greater whole.
