The Skies above Calvern
Rankon swung his hoe down at the earth, tilling the field. Besides him, his brother mimicked his actions as their parents watched from the small patio attached to their home. Rankon looked up and waved at them, but something was odd. Their faces registered nothing, eyes unreadable, simply watching what was happening. Rankon frowned and began to take a step towards them.
"You must not disturb them Rankon. You must obey them." His brother Grazah's voice mixed with the sounds of his hoe still striking the earth.
Rankon looked back at his brother, brow furrowed.
"But what are they doing? Why are they watching us like that?"They are waiting." Rankon twitched as the sound of the hoe hitting the earth was replaced with the sonorous sound of a massive chime.
"Waiting for what?" Rankon nearly shouted the question to be heard over the repeated booming as Grazah's pace increased to frightening speed. Grazah stopped and turned for the first time to look Rankon full in the eyes. His eye sockets were dried and empty, insects crawled through them.
"Waiting to see if you are going to let me die again." Metal bars burst from the dirt field below them and encased themselves around Grazah. With a massive creaking sound, they pulled him deep below the earth. Rankon cried out in alarm and surprise, diving in behind the descending cage moving through the earth as fast as he could. The cage accelerated faster, Rankon pushed himself to his limits going faster and faster feeling the earth heat up around him as the stone gave way to magma. Grazah screamed out at him as fire engulfed his eyeless body.
"This is your fault! You let me die!" Rankon reached out his hand and felt the core of the planet searing away his flesh. He let out a wordless cry of misery and pain.
Rankon awoke with a start, the burning sensation from his dream still remained. He eyes rolled around taking in the confusing scene around him. He was somewhere on the mountain still, being carried by someone else who looked ready to leap up at the sky. Disoriented, he looked down at himself. Several bad burns covered his body, one or two of them letting off a bit of steam. He let out a yelp and pushed himself off the mans shoulder, bouncing slightly on the mountain shaking beneath him. As he gingerly picked himself up, unaffected by the earthquake, he took in the scene before him. Many new faces had arrived, massive birds flew through the air with strange riders, warrior had thrown themselves at the king's forces, and a small group of people were shouting instructions through the battle up at the sky riders. The scene was chaos. His eyes fell down to the village of Calvern below him. The only thing he saw was rubble and destruction. The homes had crumbled or been destroyed by the fighting. Calvern, the only home he had ever known, where he had invested all of his strength and care, the place where he had wanted to spend the rest of the days lay broken beneath him.
Rage revitalized him. The pounding of his burnt body only adding to fuel to the body of the growing pool of heat in his head. He turned with a snarl to stare at the king below him. The man who had stolen his family and his future away from him. This man would pay for that. In a voice of barely contained wrath, he said to the stranger who had saved him,
"Thank you." He turned back towards the battlefield placing his hands on the ground. Someone had encased the King is a dome of ice and the help that Rankon could apply there was limited. In manipulating the earth, the subtle, more precise actions were more difficult than the larger, forceful actions. The King's golems, on the other hand, were causing mass chaos on the battlefield. Taking them out would give the mountain's defenders a chance to focus their energy upon the King.
He had heard the warning shouted by someone from the "tactics" group about the golems ability to shift elements. That did not matter to Rankon, and it did not matter to the earth. The larger, denser stone could always smash the smaller stone. The golems had disappeared, but Rankon could still feel their power radiating to the tectonic plates below the battlefield causing the earthquake and the tidal wave of water was heading out towards defenders. Rankon called to the earth, gripping the stone in hands as though it were dirt. Taking a play out of someone else's playbook, he caused large earthen walls to cover both the hidden golems and their tidal wave, blocking the wave from hitting the defenders as it smashed against his dome and giving it only one place to go: Back at the golems.
As that occurred he reached down with his senses to where the Golems were sending their tectonic pressure. To block it or neutralize it would have been impossible. But that did not mean he could not redirect it. He sent out his own abilities moving the stone around the tectonic force, adding to it, bending it upwards back up at the golems trapped in the dome. The stone earth below the golems exploded into a massive force of exploding rock sending jagged rocks of death flying at the golems, the tectonic force of both Rankon and the Golem's combined together to create a more powerful attack than Rankon could have ever produced on his own. Rankon did not know the limitations of these beings, but he doubted that they would be able to survive attacks of both Earth and Water.
Rankon's body was more exhausted than it had ever been before, while he did not pass out, he did not think that he would be able to use his abilities or even move. His anger was spent for now and replaced with sheer exhaustion. He could do nothing about the flames in the forest below or the storm raging in the skies above. He could only hope that he had managed to destroy the King's golems. He stared up at the sky, as the smallest rider, appearing to be an extremely young girl, flew above on some kind of winged owl. Lightning was still flashing across the sky and it did not appear that she was taking any defensive measures.
He called out to her,
"Owl girl! Watch out from above!"