Rollalong Hill [part 6 of 6]

Rollalong hill Part 6

Renice pursued the male gnat and rider. The more she watched, the more fascinated she was. The girl rode bareback in a litter of female gnats. Now the girl rode in a saddle on a male gnat. Renice felt her adrenaline rushing every time she came close and the downwind current turned. If he could smell her, Renice knew she could easily be devoured. In the most recent war against the relic tribes and their beasts, gnats had remained neutral, never claiming humans on either side.
All in her troop had been ambushed in the night by a litter. She was the only one to get into the sky quick enough. She watched the gnats move to another camp after hers was slaughterd. The relic tribes sky gliders were devoured too. It seemed that they had now chosen a side. The Vice wanted this girl, and she could see why.
The gnat moved faster every time she caught up. The storm slowed her, forcing against her air with billowing gusts. The lighting cascading around her, she did not have to fear being struck down, but if her wall absorbed any of the charge she could be sent streaming down in flames. She wanted that girl. The adrenaline made her take risks. It had served Renice well her entire career at Unitary. With the female gnats close behind, she could not stop and she could not waver.
Renice wanted the rank of Admiral more then surviving the vengeance of the female gnats. She would be the first sky glider to make Admiral in over 100 years. She just needed them to stop one more time and she could scoop the girl up and take her back to the Vice.
The sky-glider was not a seer as Jax was. She could not see the static shell around Nattalie growing into a vast sphere of energy in the lighting storm. Nattalies wall kept magic at a distance, but the energy around it clung to the wall like a magnetic field, piling upon itself. Lighting struck faster and heavier around that sphere than anywhere in the storm. If Jinx could not reach the edge of the storm soon, the barrier would not hold under the energy compression and the entire mountain meadow would be wiped from existence. Allen had created a terrible weapon of war out of his child. It was the gnats job to make sure she survived long enough to rip the power from the hands of the humans and give it back to the earth.
Jinx hated using her, but it had to be done. The relic beasts, as big and strong as they were would find him a deadly opponent if they thought they could strip her from him and use her without his guidance.
Jinx feared though, that was exactly their plan and his sisters had hidden that dark truth from him. Female gnats were incorrigable secret keepers.

Allen watched the raptor hop from perch to perch, stalking them as they approached the trail of a great host of soldiers. Allen stooped, putting his finger to a footprint. It was a bare foot that had touched the earth. It was large…. The energy seeped into him from the soil. “This is not Unitary.”
Stewart threw his hands in the air, “Of course not!” Stewart pointed to the cart full of weapons.
“How is it that the Relic Tribes have come south to band with the Northern tribes?” Allen knew from his time in Unitary that the Relic beasts of the deadlands only consorted with the human tribes living amoung them. For the ancient beasts of the north to come south to join in a war with humans was unfathomable. The blood of the earth itself would spill in the battle. Unitary had never made it farther then the borders of the deadlands. There was a magic amongst the creatures and men there that no one south of its territory had even touched amongst the highest of magicians.
Stewart tried to hasten their journey northward into the mountains. “Nattalie will be among them, one way or the other.”
Jax became very concerned. “She’s going to be in the midst of this war.”
Allen finally recognized the words of the chief gnat who brought Jinx to his home as a pup. The large male gnat wore a boney human hand necklace that moved as if alive. It stood in his then untilled land and pointed to lightning in the south when he spoke those 17 years ago. “Your daughter will be blocked from all magic, until the day she reaches our lands and frees all living things from the bondage of man.” Allen had not known what it meant, only that Jinx was to be Nattalies guardian until that day. He should have prepared her. He should not have let himself deny what was going to happen.
Jax floated, enraged. “What the hell is going on Admiral.”
Stewart motioned them forward, not wanting to stop. “Young man, we have to get there or she’ll be in even more danger then she already is.”
Allen hushed his uncle. “The chief gnat has a protection barrier on Nattalie.” He waited for Jax to acknowledge that he already knew there was a static shell. His ability as a seer was not limited to people, and he could see the magic being manipulated around them as well.
“Nattalie was born with relic powers.” Even Stewart gasped. “Her ability to pull energy from around her is so intense that it can suck the life from any living thing….” Allen could feel his heart breaking all over again. Maria had been killed instantly when the child breathed for the first time. Allen was out in the field screaming to the heavens when the chief gnat had showed up to place the barrier on her. “I have been keeping the barrier up for seventeen years, breaking the weak points and rebuilding it with my own magic.”
Jax remembered the static shell. “It’s getting bigger.”
Allen nodded. “The Relic beasts promised they would release her from it when she was able to harness the energy.”
Stewart let out an angry laugh. “How the hell is that going to happen when she’s never been trained?”
Allen pointed to the walking mass of scales and spikes that had appeared on the trail ahead. Its rider slipped off and glided through the air like a ghost to their little caravan. His skin was pale and almost florescent, and his bald head was encircled with tribal tatoos. His large long ears flopped and twitched in the breeze. A long braided beard was all the hair that could be found.
Stewart bowed, Allen kneeled and Jax stood defiantly, glad now that Stewart had stripped the Unitary symbols from off his cloths and hair.
The Relic scout hissed at Jax and pointed at the web in the cart. “Is this meant for Shaman?”
Stewart stood greeting the scout with a clap of his hands and a strange curtsy. “It is the nether web, I have completed it.”
The scout looked pleased. “And these two?”
The bag of herbs in Allens cloak was opened, and he had began loosing the dried up concoction into the air. Relics could sense any magic use, like a gnat could smell food. Remelda had told him to save the sleeping plant for when he most needed to escape.
The scout turned and looked down at Allen with curiosity. “You are Allen! Where is the girl?” The chief gnat had said to never trust the humans of the north, only the beasts. Only the beasts had honor and truth. The scouts ears drooped low and his florescence started to dim. He tried to stumble back to his mount but fell over peacefully. Allen had learned through using his shield how to use tiny trickles of energy. The scout must not have thought anything of the tiny bits of air breezing toward him. Jax’s floating wall must have been enough to explain the odd little breeze. “That trick won’t work again.”
Stewart looked frazzled and more then upset. “What are you doing Admiral?” Stewart had drawn more then a couple small daggers from his coat.
Allen put what was left of the bag of herbs back into his cloak. “Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
Jax had caught on quickly and was ready to flee with Allen. “They don’t want the web for peace old man.” Jax pulled more air too him.
Allen finished the statement and started to build his own flimsy wall of air. “They want to use Nattalie as a weapon, not for peace.”
Stewart did not want to believe his web would be a weapon. “But the web collects the flow of energy…”
Allen nodded. “They want to use it to harness her and suck the life out of Unitary’s army.”
Jax couldn’t steady Allen’s floating wall. “Stewart, I need the small web.” Stewart stuck the daggers back into their hiding places and pulled out the tiny version of the nether web.
Jax had only seen a little of what the web could do and was not prepared for the flow that came bursting through when he took hold with Allen.
Allen could see the air, he had not only gained the ability to share in Jax’s energy flow, but in his ability as a Seer. The net of air that carried Jax like a wall was not simply air, but the gathering of hard thin pieces of static, energy masses that balled and became form, invisible to the normal magician. Allen stared at the multitude of formed spheres that kept Jax wieghtless in the air around him. Like Maria had said. Form and energy, and sky gliders created both. “How do you make those?”
“They just form, I don’t know how, I just want to fly and the air does what it needs to.” Jax tried to create enough to make Allen float too. Allen’s energy ran like a broken faucet. It was much more then Jax had ever pulled. “Theres so much!”
Stewart knew how Jax felt. His energy had been a trickle compared to Allen when they joined in the nether web. Allen didn’t ask for the energy, it naturally flowed through him like water flows downstream.
Allan could see for the first time what he had always felt. The magic did come to him, from all around the streams of energy flowed toward him, mostly from the Earth. He could see Jax’s magic resisting the pull like a downstream current he had to scoop water from.
His great grandfather had been from the northern peaceful tribes and his Uncle and Mother had moved south to escape the relic tribes detection. Allen had never discovered why until now.
Stewart nodded at Allen. “You have some relic magic in you as well. Nothing like Nattalie has, but it’s there.”
Steading himself and still holding the web so that he could see how Jax was doing it, Allen lifted himself from the earth. The streams of energy wanted to flow upward into him but began to fall away. As if to compensate, the air flows around him became stronger and Allen felt Jaxs anticipation of something great.
“Do you know how fast we can go with this much power?” Jax sounded giddy and child like with excitement.
“Don’t let me fall Jax!” Allen felt clumsy and peculiar in the air, but holding the web between them Allen could sense that Jax was ready and quite pleased with his ability.
Stewart kicked at his cart. “What am I supposed to do when he wakes up!” Stewart pointed to the fallen Relic, the glow starting to return to his pale forehead.
Allen thought for a moment. “Pretend we were unitary spys, your smart think of something, AND don’t let them use that nether web on Nattalie!”
Stewart yelled some choice expletives as Allen and Jax prepared to head over the mountains to find Nattalie. The giant raptor waited from a distance to follow.
Steadied and gathered up in the wind and spheres of energy Jax pointed to the currents of air flowing high above them. “With this much magic, we can split open the sky itself.”
Allen had kept himself from thinking of his magic as powerful or useful Nattalies whole life. It had become a curse and death to those he loved. But now, it was as if he had reconnected with a long lost friend. The air did his bidding with the guidance of Jax. “I think we can sky-glider.”
The skinned bird of prey could not hope to follow them when the clap of thunder erupted from around Jax and Allen. Even the ground beneath trembled when Allen pulled from the streams that flowed toward him readily. They bolted up through the stormy mist into the clear of the cold blue sky. Jax held on to the web, but reached over and held onto Allen’s arm as well. “Lets get my daughter.”
Jax smiled overjoyed when the Admiral demonstrated once again his legendary power. They bolted through the atmosphere, jetting toward Nattalie over the mountains.
Allen had received message again through a tinker wasp on their journey to the mountains. The gnats were taking Nattalie to the Relic Beasts camped far north of the impending war on the rim of the deadlands.


Nattalie collided with the dry desert sand as Jinx collapsed beneath her. He had run himself into exhaustion, and couldn’t stand. The trickles of energy were getting stronger, and Natt managed a large sphere of water out of the humid air. Jinx gulped it thankfully but then passed out. His head barely rested on the large wet arms. The storm had grown extremely violent when they had reached its end. Jinx had to weave side to side avoiding the fires that burst up around them from lightening strikes. The elder female gnat stood a great distance away howling for Natt’s attention.
“We will tend to Jinx!” Nattalie tried to walk to the elder, but the gnats backed away the closer she came.
“Whats going on!” Nattalie was sick of being left out. Sick of asking. She wanted this nightmare to end.
The storm had started dissipating and the gnats standing on it’s edge all kneeled. “Go to him!” The elder gnat shook her head toward the dessert.
Nattalie had been so concerned about Jinx she never looked into the long horizon of gleaming sand. A large version of Jinx stood a small distance away. It’s giant soft head was covered in grey, and a large silver mane surrounded his neck. Nattalie noticed he had a collar of bones hanging under the shining metallic fur.
Jinx shifted his head, still deeply asleep and panting softly. Nattalie bent down to his broken form. “Oh Jinx, you promised.” Nattalie unbuckled all the straps from the saddle. She pulled it off with all her strength. Jinx never woke even when his fur was yanked tight from the straps catching underneath him.
Her hand caressed his ears limp against his head. She pulled them up and said, “You are my best friend Jinx, please…” It was all she could say.
It was time to be brave again. The chief gnat stood waiting. He watched the human show his son great respect. he watched the woman pull the saddle away from his sleeping body and walk toward him bravely.
Messages had been coming from his son through the various traveling insects for seventeen years. And for seventeen years he could not send a message back. If Jinx had known the truth, would he have brought the human back home?
Nattalie stood under him. Her tiny frame looking up into his eyes piercing his majestic camoflauge. “What now?” The king of the gnats and of all Relic beasts looked down at her puzzled. “You kill one of your own, Jinx practically kills himself to bring me here.” Nattalie did not waver even though tears had once again escaped and began flowing down her cheeks. “Why!?”
The female litter had come close enough from behind to reach in toward Jinx. The elder jerked her paw away from Jinx as if stung by a massive nettle thorn.
Nattalie watch as the king pointed. “They will die trying to reach him if we don’t get moving.”
His voice was harmonious like the other gnats, but it vibrated deeply.
Nattalie watched over her shoulders as the gnats tested the air around them sniffing at it and reaching for Jinx. When they finally got a small grip, when Natt was far enough away, they dragged him quickly to the grass covered ground. The king of the gnats, the one Allen had thought was a chief of a small clan, tried to answer Nattalies questions as they walked. He didn’t have much time. He had already seen his barrier cracking under the static wieght. The sand was starting to pool into stones of glass on it’s perimeter. He ignored the glass stones as they walked. A path was being layed in the sand merely by her presence.
“Jinx promised he would tell you.” The gnat stared only ahead, and would not look at Nattalie.
“Since I am his father, it is my duty to fullfill his promise.” Nattalie was done with being surprised. She just listened and waited. “When your mother became pregnant, the eldest of the Relic lords recorded a vision on his deathbed.” A colossal structure of mounded dirt started to come into view on the horizon. Jinx had run so far, so fast that the day was only half done in the desert. The sun beat down on them heavy and hot. “You are born to take away war child.”
Nattalie didn’t say anything. It was a nightmare, and she would wake soon.
“Humans can not make war without power.” Nattalie nodded and studied the ground as they walked. Beautiful shimmering pebbles of glass pooled up out of the ground in a path. It seemed to end some ways out, but it kept growing as they walked. The gnat continued, not sure if the human was prepared for her task. “You have the magic to pull all magics away. You can stop the humans from destroying our earth.”
Nattalie stopped. She could see the huge dragon like sentinals that guarded the gates to the city ahead of them. They towered into the hot sun higher then any tree she had seen in the Yellow wood. Their scaley heads could have chomped at the clouds. “Me?” She laughed. She really was dreaming. She was almost joyful, “I can’t use magic!”
The gnat put his great furry head down and stared into her eyes.
“You are the one human.”
Nattalie grabbed a hold of his horns like she used to do to Jinx when they wrestled as a child. “I CAN not USE magic!” She giggled, sounding like a crazy Terry from town.
“Because I put up a barrier from it human.” The beast shook Nattalie’s hands from his horns. If he had shaken any harder, or Nattalie had held him any tighter, she would have lost a hand.
It was then that she noticed the bones on his necklace were hands. Lots of adult human hands. “My father? He knew? Jinx knew?” The pain had broken Nattalies tiny lapse into insanity.
The king bowed his head and beckoned her forward. That’s why Jinx had come to them, and that’s why Jinx… “why did the female gnat die?”
The king growled. “My youngest daughter died to bring you to fullfill your destiny.” He snorted something that sounded like “gnat… filthy humans.”
“Tomalu died because your anti magic is so strong, it sucked the energy, and the life from her body.”
Nattalie tripped and almost fell, she caught herself on her already injured hands. “Oh no… Is Jinx really going to be ok?”
The king looked down at her again, pondering the connection she had made with his son. His son.. Had claimed a human for his own. This weak ignorant thing. “Male gnats are not as bound to their magic to live as the females of Relic clans are.” He waited for her to start walking again. “Jinx’s magic has grown strong against your energy over these years.”
They walked past the dragons of the gate. When Nattalie came close, they scooted away like frightened mice. Their claws as large as she was tall spit up dirt which fell into tiny glass pebbles on the sand. Nattalie watched, throughout the city as creatures she had only seen in fairy tales and fable books would dart away from her presence.
She wanted desperately to grab onto Jinx’s dad and hold his mane as they walked. The king sensed her trepidation and held down his noble head, “It will be safer if you stay close. Hold my mane.”

The ground had turned cold, and the structure in front of them resembled nothing around the city. Its massive gears turned and whirled around a singular black sphere floating in the middle. Two massive stone dragon sculptures held a shiny metal roof over the turning rings. The ground below it had a circular border so that it seemed the metal sphere turned in solid glass.


Renice watched from a distance long enough to see the structure, and the relic beasts flee from the girl. She could also sense another very powerful sky glider approaching quickly, more quickly then any sky-glider was recorded to be able to fly. Renice shot off to the Vice’s army camped marching distance to the west in the mountains. They had the weapon! He would need to march soon or all would be lost.


Allan watched the female sky glider fly off to the army camped a few miles away. From high in the atmosphere, and linked to Jax, Allen could see the silken warrior, the Unitary army- tens of thousands- and the so called peaceful tribes in the mountains getting ready to be slaughtered by them. Jax was the first to point out Nattalie. She was with the king.
“No!” Allen did not need Jax to help him fly now. He released the web and fell like a brick toward Nattalie and the gigantic device. All he could keep telling himself was not yet NOT YET.

The battle had begun, Renice had to dart stealthly around the rebel sky gliders, The Vice General would be near the back of the battle. The ugly glowing relic tribe was fighting without the aid of their beasts. The other tribe was carrying strange weapons, and one caught her in the arm and pulled her down. It’s tip poked through the other end of her arm and spread like a hook. She could do nothing but brace her fall.
Stewart stuck a bloodied sword to her throte. He had lost his daggers when the unitary soldiers jumped the outer rim of the camp not but minutes ago, thirteen had been taken out by his quick strong throws before he narrowly escaped their fields of magic. The glider had flown in from the deadlands, the direction Allen and Jax had gone. The woods were filled the the smoke of fires being lit by Unitary and tribesmen alike. His net had been confiscated and carried away by relic men. They were going to try and seize Nattalie before Unitary new what was happening.
Renice could not gather enough air to force the wrinkled old blacksmith off from her. “Unitary will execute you for this crime!”
Stewart let the blade slip slightly into her beautiful tanned skin. “Do you know why you can fly sky-glider?”
Renice became frightened for the first time in her career. She spit up at the old man’s face.
Stewart laughed and pulled another small nether web from his coat. He pulled string from his boot and tied the girls hands to the web. The wire was dark and shined black even in the darkening night. The storm was starting to move backward and lightning was beginning to crash in the distance. “You will fly for me.”
Stewart grabbed her protesting hands and looped his leg around her waist. He pulled the magic through her and stratteling her body flew to catch up with the nether web.


Allen crashed to the glassy ground the static shield had become enormous, and it’s own girth out birthed that of the ancient anti-magic device that lay in the center of Relic territory. The thousands of magical beings that had inherited the city were fled. Only a few elder male gnats patrolled it’s gates.
The king pounced onto Allens legs holding him where he landed. Nattalie screamed from inside the twisting and turning rings of the device. One black sphere had turned into thousands holding her inside it’s huge circumference.
Allen hollered to her, “Hold on baby!”
The king roared in his face. “You were supposed to train her!”
Allen boiled over with guilt and anger, “She shouldn’t have to do this! It isn’t your choice!”
The king released Allen. Inside the field there was nothing he could do to defend himself against the King of all Relics. Jinx was no where to be seen. “Your son would not have protected her all these years just to watch her die!”
Allen could see all the error in what he had done. Nattalie was inside the Nether wheel afraid, trapped and only cried out for her dad. He should have told her. He should have trained her. He should have loved her enough to trust her with the thing she had to now do.
The rings of the giant sphere turned faster. The gap that allowed entrance and exit from it’s center was almost sealed by the speed.

The king stepped toward its spinning mass. “The magic is not yours human.” The king turned and faced Allen. “The magic belongs to all living things,”
The gust created by the turning whipped his silver fur in a frenzy. A metallic fire glowed about his furry face. “If we must die to save this earth, then it is our duty.”
Before Allen could stop him, the king lept into the wheels exploding into a swirling prism of glass dust.
Nattalies barrier, tied and maintained for seventeen years flew open in an explosive shock that tore the very walls of the ancient city from the ground. Allen surrounded himself in a cocoon of the particles that Jax had shown him how to create. Jax. Allen watched him rocket down from the sky above and through the impossible twisting wheels in to Nattalie. The earth stopped trembling and Jinx came running from the city gates darting to a stop next to Allen. Stewart was not far behind flying through the air carrying the giant nether web.
Much to all of their amazement, He hoped to a stop on the back of a Unitary sky glider.

Nattalie watched them gathering outside, She tried to focus through the cloud of tears, she tried to call out for her father, but all she could feel was emptiness. A great sinking void swallowing her in. Jax fell onto the ground in front of her. His face was pale and weak. She couldn’t move to help him up. The void pulled her to the ground, bound her in its darkness.
Jax had heard enough, and he had seen enough ancient texts about the machine to know what the king was trying to do. Nattalie was the catalyst for the removal of magic. The machine was taught to be a myth. An ancient myth.
Jax could hear Stewart yelling from the other side of the spinning sphere. “You have to tell her to pull the magic!” Jax didn’t know what life would be without magic, but if she died, it wouldn’t matter what life was left in him. He felt himself growing weaker as he approached her. She looked at him from behind the fog of dark magic, her eyes distant and terrified.
“Nattalie, you have to pull the magic.” Jax was not sure what was supposed to happen. Nattalie wasn’t listening to him.
Allen shouted from above the sphere. “Nattalie! I’m sorry! Please, if you don’t fight now, the darkness will kill you!”
Leon and a host of soldiers had approached the gates. He had made a terrible deal with Unitary to save his only grandaughter. He would use the Netherweb and kill the tribes of the north. His first true ally in the rebellion, Stewart had swept down from the sky and flown away with the web to this place. His heart sank when he realized that his small akward family stood around the ancient device. Without the web, Leon was useless to Unitary. If that ancient device was the one he had seen in his studies at Unitary, magic would end. All the energy they used to war, to build fires and kill, it would be rendered nuetral and uncontrollable by humans ever again. Nattalie was the true relic lord, The decendant of the very lord that set the magic loose among mankind, was now in the sphere to reverse the process.
Stewart could see Leon approaching. He grabbed the Netherweb and threw it onto the glass pebbled ground. “Save her!” Leon stared down at it, and back at Vice General who waited for Leon to strike.
They had removed the poison. Stewart put a bare foot onto the web. “Save her Leon, or we could all die.”
Unitary had, and was still trying to destroy everything that mattered to him. Leon stepped out of his boot and onto the web. She was georgeious like her mother. Nattalie was the spitting image of his Maria.
Allen flew down onto the web. “Save my daughter.” Allen started drawing from the web. The flows came massive gushing against the force of the machines field, the flows broke like a tide on shore overflowing into the air, the ground, and into him. Stewart threw a wall in front of the soldiers. With Allens flow of magic his ability was more then even ten Unitary master Magicians could hope to disassemble. It was a tightly woven mesh of air and earth, water and fire.
The Vice General beat against it with his hands and stormed away through the soldiers fists smoldering.

Jax felt himself fading inside the sphere. “Nattalie please… Just… live.”
Nattalie could see him, she could hear him, but the darkness just grew stronger. The void pulled at her and threatened to crush her in it’s wake. Another person would die. How many would die just so that she could live. She could see now why her father had kept the magic from her. It was overwhelming… It made her very breath feel backwards. Jax fell with a thud to the glass floor beneath them.
Nattalie couldn’t let any one else die. She felt for the energy… the smallest trickle… anything.
At first it was like grabbing a spiders thread, she grasped and grasped at a shadow that elluded her.
Nattalie screamed shaking the structure around her. Jax was dieing. “Make my energy yours and heal.”
She pulled at the slippery string of energy, begging for it to grow. “Make my energy yours and heal.”
The void grew stronger, and the structure rumbled and shook.
Allen, Stewart and Leon chipped at the spinning metal around Nattalie. The spinning rings made the energy disperse and splinter when they tried to throw it in.
Leon bellowed, the wheels had started to screech under the pressure. “This isn’t working! We need to break the device!”
Stewart nodded to Allen. Allen pulled. He pooled from everything around him a massive lake of energy beneath the two skilled wizards beside him. The two men pulled from the earth pure beams of static energy. It seeped up through the web and coalesced into a tall cylinder form.
Jinx stood barring their path. “She has to finish Allen!”
Allen felt his body being absorbed into the flows of energy he pulled from below. This is why others had died pulling magic from within. Soon he would be sucked into the tide. Form into energy.
“Jinx! She doesn’t have to do this! She doesn’t have to die!”
Jinx picked up his fathers bone necklace and tossed it over his head. “The magic does not belong to man Allen!” Allen didn’t know how much more he could feed the magic and not be absorbed..
“Jinx! I can do it for her! Let her go!”
Jinx looked in at the dieing man, the woman falling into darkness, and the father ready to be engulfed on the web.
All relic beasts had a pact with the earth. To protect it at any cost. Unitary and man alike was sucking the life out of the planet with their frivolous use of the magic gift they had been given.


Nattalie started to pull at the thread of energy. The void sucked at it, breathing it in hungrily. The pull became bigger, the thread now a flow, It tumbled and spilled into the darkness. Jax stirred beneath her. She screamed to the heavens. “Make my energy yours and HEAL!” It was working. Nattalie felt the light wash in like a tidal wave over the void. Nattalie felt faint. She had to stop the death.
Nattalie pulled more. She pulled even though it flowed freely washing over her. She pulled and could feel her flesh wishing to burst from her bones.
Jax stood. It was working… She was doing it.
Jinx could see the particles of magic being swept from all around into the sphere. It was being drawn into Nattalie. Even from the horizons, waves of energy flowing in.
Before the pool was completely drained back into the earth from which it belonged, Jinx jumped out of the way, “Now!”
Stewart and Leon hefted two massive bolts of energy at the stone dragons holding it’s top, and its base.
The dragons shifted, started to crumble, and then fell in giant chunks onto the spinning prison.
The rings spit the first few chunks out into the Unitary soldiers. The wall had dissolved, being sucked along with the rest of the magic into Nattalie.
The web was useless now. Allen ran to the wheels, they started to falter as the base started to tumble.
He had to save her before she was absorbed by the earth.

When the wheels finally screeched to a halt Nattalie was engulfed by a pillar of energy, reaching into the darkening sky. The storm had caught up to the gates. Lightning struck into the pillar from the edge of the storm. Jax pounded against the glass case melting upward over Nattalies body.
Jinx padded in softly and stood, his whiskers grazing the beam and sizzling off.

Nattalie smiled, the light gathering so brightly. The void had gone. She was euphoric with inside it’s embrace. She could hear Jinx purring from outside her, “You have to give it all back to the earth Nattalie.”
Nattalie could hear him, but she couldn’t understand.
Her father cried from below, “Let go honey! Just let it go free!”
Jinx shook his head sadly at Allen. Leon looked at them both, a necromancer no more. “Fools.” Leon stepped up to the light. His hands burning, he shoved one arm into the beam and onto Nattalies forearm. There was no pain, his arm was being absorbed by the light. He lost his Maria, and he would not let Allen lose his granddaughter. “Nattalie, Your mother would be so proud.” Leon cried as he yelled into the loud humming of the light. “Just let go!” Leon shoved his other hand in onto her arm. “Let go Natt!” Allen watched the old man throw himself into the beam. His image burned into the mass of light. His face and content, his smile like Maria’s. k
Allen threw his cloak off, knowing what he had to do. The herbs. There were still the herbs. Allen ran to the beam and thrust the bag into Nattalies face. The energy swept it away. Allan pulled out his boney arm, his tiny finger bones flopping uselessly. The flesh burnt and healed over onto the elbow.

Jinx watched his elder sister approach from the back. He knew what she was going to do. She looked at his necklace, grinned and bowed before she jumped into the beam.

Nattalie could hear them. An old man telling her to let go. The elder gnat, her voice so beautiful echoing in the flow of light. “It’s time to let go.”

Stewart and Allen stood helplessly. Jinx Howled into the sky mournfully. The storm swirlled about the beam of light. Lightning crashing into it, wind whipping up it’s long shaft.

Nattalie could hear Jinx crying. She could see her father pounding his fists to the ground angrily.
Nattalie could feel her mother brushing her hair away from her face. She whispered into her ear. “Let it go back to the earth baby.”

She let go. She let herself fall onto the glassy ground overgrown beneath her. She fell down into Jax’s capable arms. Soldiers scattered when the energy around them refused to aknowledge their bidding. Stewart stood wielding the large heavy hammer left on the abandoned steps of a clay hut. Jinx stood snearing, his large white teeth glaring under the black gums of his pulled back lips.
A couple soldiers stood for just a minute longer as if to debate the fight, and then scattered into the cooling desert sand.
The last of the ancients, a male gnat tied not to magic but to a human family, left the city barren and filled with the ghosts of magical creatures that could not survive when the magic was freed from their bodies.
Nattalie woke a day before the arrived back home at Rollalong hill. She couldn’t remember anything passed Jinx’s sisters stealing her away from Jax. She laughed when she found out no one could use magic anymore, and to hearing she was the cause, she burst into snorting giggles. “Serves all you right! Isn’t that right Jinx!” Jinx had recovered most of his strength. And rolled Nattalie over like a swatted mouse and playfully nuzzled her into the fall leaves. Jax tried to escape when Jinx reached out and pulled him in to the dog pile but couldn’t.
Nattalie pulled at his dreadlocks, “Now you can’t fly away from me ever again!”
Jax smiled, “I couldn’t fly away from you even if I did have magic.”





The story was told for generations, that the sky had ripped open, and a storm flew across all lands, sucking the magic out of every man woman and child. For generations people left behind stories of magical times and magical beasts that towered over trees, and stalked man like prey.

Allen only cared about his generation. The new one was quite a surprise, and Stewart was more then happy to show Allen how to make a cradle from carved wood and something he called nails.
Unitary crumbled without its magic. Free people fought and won against their now useless abilities to manipulate energy. A simple club made from a fallen branch had taken the Vice General out of the battle back in the mountains that night, and Renice the sky glider was said never to have found her way out of the desert.
Allen’s arm never healed, Uncle Stewart had made him a wooden one with hinges and straps. But he still got to hold his grandchild. It was not long before a rumor surfaced that the Unitary Emporer and a few of the high council had been chased out of a northern territory and were heading for Rollalong hills’ neighboring town. After spending a good few hours with his daughter, his son-in-law, and his new grandson Allen pulled Maria’s favorite sword from over the fireplace. Jinx lay huddled against the hot stone wall, taking up half the room and snoring loudly.
“I have a trip to make to Withering Stones.”
Bandits had grown overly brave on the trails between towns now that magic was useless.
Nattalie smiled, cooing at her baby boy as Jax went to the cupboards for some bread. “Would you bring me back some of that fine blue yarn they are making out there now a days?”
Allen smiled. It wasn’t really a secret, not technically. “I’ll be back soon.”