Lahnthean Aria

8

Noorh stepped back, his boots sliding across the stone step's surface.

It wasn't until he reached its edge that he realized the young woman he swooped in to save was no longer behind him. He turned around and found her plummeting into the ocean of clouds, her hands outstretched in a last ditch attempt at seeking help.

His heart raced in panic. He didn't even realize that the giant serpent pounced toward him. He instead sheathed his sword and dove into the clouds, keeping his arms and legs as close to his body as possible so that he would fall down the cliff faster than Kiran.

Noorh soon found her staring blankly at him, resignedly falling towards her doom.

He stretched out his arms to grab her and pulled her tightly to his chest. He twisted his body so that they could fall to the ground feet-first, and muttered a spell under his breath until their descent slowed down to a halt in mid-air.

Noorh took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He almost lost her for good. He then examined her cold pale face and realized that she was already unconscious. She had gone into shock.

Noorh crouched slightly so that he could carry her properly in his arms. He then surveyed their surroundings. Based on the horizon he was seeing, they must have fallen close to the middle of the mountain. That meant the guardian wouldn't be able to reach them anymore.

All that was left was to descend the remaining hundred or so steps that led to the bottom of the mountain.

He muttered a spell and gently landed on the nearest stone step. He set Kiran down against the cliff wall and sat beside her. He fixed his eyes at the horizon where the stretch of black land converged with the starry night sky.

A blinding white line was slowly emerging between them.

He started the day before by hiking up the treacherous stone steps to reach the sacred shrine by nightfall. The ritual to summon a maiden from another world drained much of his energy. And just when he thought he was finally actualizing the plan that he spent years to prepare for, his efforts ended in failure.

His frustration led him to waste a lot of his remaining energy in nonsense musings.

Noorh glanced at Kiran who remained asleep beside him. She looked pale and sickly under the sparse light of twilight. She definitely looked nothing like Alessa Dia. He smirked, remembering the way she behaved around him. He had to admit it was refreshing to have someone freely berating him.

"I’m sorry," he said, knowing well that she wouldn't hear it. "I'm afraid this is only the beginning of your troubles." He shrugged off his cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders to warm her against the cold winds.

***

She wasn't dead.

That was Kiran's first realization when she snapped her eyes open and found a clear blue sky in front of her. She was also curled up on a stone floor and wrapped in a black cloak. Kiran sat up and gasped when she realized she had been sleeping against the edge of a cliff wall.

"How are you feeling?" a familiar voice asked from beside her.

She turned to the owner of the voice and found a striking young man staring back at her with sharp obsidian eyes. Mr. Kidnapper?

His skin glowed flawlessly against the morning light. The cold breeze blew his rowdy mop of dark hair to frame his face in all the right directions. He looked like a prince straight out of a beautiful Renaissance painting, despite the rugged long-sleeve shirt, brown pants, and black knee-high boots he wore. He was seated next to her with his back slightly hunched, but he clearly still towered over her.

"Are you in any pain?" he continued, his eyes fixed at her flushed features.

"Y-you…" Kiran finally choked, her voice cracking. Her throat was itchy and parched.

He fished out another flask from his cloak and handed it to her. "Drink this," he instructed.

Kiran did as she was told. Unlike the flask she drank from the night before, the flask he handed her seemed to contain water. The taste of the liquid awakened her thirst. She eagerly drank the flask's contents. Kiran released a sigh of relief once she was done, leaving the flask empty.

"Oh wow, I was thirsty," she gasped. "Oh no…Is this the only drink you have with you? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to drink all of it!"

He only smirked in reply. "It's alright. If you're thirsty, just tell me."

He cast his eyes at the wisps of clouds in front of them. He waved his right hand in a circular motion before offering up his palm toward it. The clouds gathered on his hand and formed a sphere. It twisted and turned until it became a clear liquid. He then motioned the liquid to enter the flask in Kiran's hand, refilling it with ice cold water.

"Wow!" Kiran gasped, amazed at what she witnessed. "That's magic, right? You can use magic!"

"Yes," the young man confirmed. "I heard your world calls it 'magic' and that you don't have anything similar to it."

"You know about my world?"

"Of course. I wouldn't have been able to summon someone from your world if I didn't."

"You really did summon me here. And that earthquake we experienced in my world was real. Your summoning ritual caused it, correct?"

"Yes. I heard it would cause a disturbance in your world, but I didn't know it would manifest as an earthquake."

"Can you send me back home?"

He looked sadly at the clouds blocking their view of the world below. "If there's a way to send you back, it's not through here. The portal in this mountain won't be open for another ten years."

"Are you saying that I have to stay here for ten years before I can return home?!" She won't be able to see her family anytime soon. Did they even know that she was missing?

He nodded. "You can spend those ten years here, waiting in the meadow for the portal to your world to open again if you like, but this place isn't exactly suited for human habitation."

Kiran sullenly looked away. That was true. She couldn't exactly live at the edge of the cliff. And with the monster living in the mountain…

"You saved me, didn't you?" she asked, recalling the events before she slipped and fell from the stone step. "I don't remember anything after falling off the cliff but if I'm alive and you're here, then you were able to save me somehow."

He looked uneasily away.

Kiran bit her lip and looked at his cold profile. "Thank you. You still kidn*pped me and left me alone though!"

He frowned at her. "I told you to count from one to a hundred. If you did what I said, you would have seen me in the meadow instead of between you and the guardian!"

"That monster was a guardian?"

He nodded. "This mountain has three guardians. The first guards the bottom of the mountain in the form of humanoid serpents: half-snake, half-humans who prevent people from seeing the stone steps.

Along the middle of the journey to the top of the mountain dwells winged serpents whose nests lay on top of these stone steps.

The one we encountered is the last guardian: a sacred giant serpent whose body comprises the core of the mountain. It only wakes up once every decade, when the gates to another world at the top of the mountain could be opened."

"The stone pillars," Kiran said, recalling the structures she woke up to when she first met him. "So it's a gate."

"It is. It can only be activated once every ten years. I opened it last night when you came here. I won't be able to open it again even if I try to, because it only works every ten years."

"You said there's still a way though, and that it's just not through here."

"We supposedly have three other mountains like this. I only accessed this mountain for the ritual so the other three should still be usable, if it's all still there."

"What do you mean?"

"It would be easier if you saw it yourself."