Preface: Onward

The girl shot up in bed at the sound of the earth shaking. Immediately she felt the heat of wood burning nearby, and as she opened her eyes they were stung by smoke-filled air. Panicked, she breathed in deeply, and just as she did she expelled the blackened air from her lungs with a harsh cough. She felt dizzy, and she could not see the exit as she forced herself to fall out of her bed onto the dirt floor of her sleeping chamber. She tried to crawl away from the heat, but it surrounded her, and she could do nothing but lay paralyzed on the hard ground, calling out for her mother through a sharp fit of coughs and a flood of tears. There was no response. As tears hit her cheeks, they dried almost instantly in the heat of the fire. The girl tried desperately to hold on to consciousness as smoke filled the air further, and could just make out the image of her bed collapsing in flames as it came to the floor with a great thud - the same bed she had been dreaming peacefully on only moments ago, now a pile of ruin on the floor, the wood popping and cracking loudly as the fire consumed it. The girl watched through tears, smoke, and clouds of dust as the walls around her too began to collapse, and she feared that the ceiling of her thatch hut would soon rain down on her as well. As her life, her home, her entire world was sundered around her, she understood the certainty of her fate, and closed her eyes. She felt the unbearable warmth of the flames encroaching on her ever quickly, but in the midst of the fear and chaos, she hardly noticed the sensation of the ground she lay on beginning to twist beneath her and mold itself to her bare, soot-covered legs. Just as the roof of her home came crashing down above her, a shield of hardened clay and rock rose to cover her faster than she could see, and at once the girl was in darkness, hearing the muffled sounds of the fire outside of her earthen shell; they dissipated into the distance as she felt herself thrust through the earth out of her control, as if she was being dragged into the burrow of a great beast. Pebbles and sharp stones pressed against her body as she was wrapped and spun in a tight vortex of mixed turf and soil.   Suddenly, the shell around her disintegrated and she was in the open air, staring upwards at the night sky, a spattering of stars barely visible through the canopy of the rainforest. Shocked and hopelessly confused, she cleared her eyes with the heels of her palms and clambered to her feet shakily. She could still feel the raging heat of the fire on her skin, although she now stood safely apart from her home, across the bathing stream from the rest of her village, which she could now see was entirely engulfed by a wildfire. Trees and crops burned all about the village, and she saw dozens of silhouetted figures fleeing from their homes, making for the waters of the stream, slowly approaching her. The girl heard an unfamiliar voice to her left, and turned to see a man holding a staff of gnarled magnolia wood, an orb of polished ceramic at its pommel. An Earthspeaker had saved her from the fire by pulling her through the ground to safety - but she did not recognize this man, nor the style of his clothes. She had just begun to register what was happening when she identified one man fleeing towards her as the local botanist. He was nude, with horrible burns all across his body, that she could just barely make out in the flickering of the inferno behind him. Just as he reached the edge of the river and was about to dive in, the botanist stopped short in his tracks, and a piece of metal attached to a wooden shaft protruded from his neck. He clutched at his throat, wrapping his hands around the object, which the girl now realized was an arrow, fired from somewhere behind the man. As the botanist clutched helplessly at his neck, blood poured from his wound, and he collapsed face-first into the stream, and began floating limply downriver. This was no wildfire that had taken her village, it was a raid.   The Earthspeaker grabbed the girl by her gown and began pulling her into the jungle. She managed to shriek through her sobbing, though her cries went unnoticed amidst the commotion, and she was dragged unwillingly into the dense forest growth. She screamed out for her parents but there was, yet again, no response. The flames dwindled on the horizon until they were merely a dim light shimmering in the distance, indistinguishable from the natural bioluminescence of many of the plants which grew here. The screams of the raiders and the villagers dwindled too, until one might have drowned them out among the discordant, ever-present chorus of cicadas and frogs. As they came to a clearing, the Earthspeaker let go his grip on the girl, and began to speak. "You are safe here" he said firmly, as the girl gazed up at him, frightened and confused. He was no man of the Mozhoni tribe, but she guessed he was not one of the raiders either, since he had apparently saved her.   "Where are my parents?" she cried out in response.   "I cannot say. Perhaps they were lucky enough to escape. You are lucky that I heard your screaming, girl. Now go from this place. Do not return to your home - you will find nothing there." As the man spoke, he sounded unaffected by what he had witnessed. It seemed to the girl that this was no unusual day for him, and that the confidence with which he spoke came from a depth of experience which she could not fathom. He was unafraid, and although it was dark, she saw that his face was expressionless and cold. He turned back in the direction of her village, raised his staff, and began speaking.   "Where are you going?" she interrupted his spell, the cadence of her speech broken by panicked sobs and heavy breaths. "What do I do?"   The man lowered his staff, but did not turn to face her. "Go to the mountains, child. It is not safe here anymore." With a flash of blue light, he raised his staff once more, uttered a brief incantation, and disappeared into the earth below his feet.   With that, the girl was alone in the clearing. Distraught, she collapsed onto the forest floor and clutched at her knees. As she hyperventilated, her lungs ached, and she coughed up dust and smoke in her hysteria. She sat there for a long time, frenzied by her thoughts, crying out for her mom and dad, praying that they might appear at her feet, transported by the mage just as she had been, yet no such salvation came to her. The glow of the distant blaze eventually faded to nothing, and as it did she gradually came to her senses, the scope of her perception widening to include the trees surrounding the clearing, the various plants and flowers which covered the ground around her, and the sounds of birds in the air as the sun began to rise, drenching the world in its constant, nurturing light. The flowing of tears dried up as her body stopped its shaking, and she stood. Looking around, she saw the world as she always had: fully alive yet utterly indifferent. The creatures of the forest were going about their business as normal, without even an inkling of the tragedy that had befallen her overnight. For a moment, she believed that she could turn and retreat to her village, and it would be standing proudly as it had always been, unmarred and unbothered, just as the rest of the forest was. But she remembered the words of the Earthspeaker, and fixed her eyes to the West instead: in the direction of the Melkost Mountains, barely visible on the horizon, cloaked in the rich orange glow of early morning.   The girl began to walk.