TYLER WODEN | FICTION | RIFTWALKERS #4 | FRACTURED REALMS: PART 6 | RAINBOW SALAD

Riftwalkers #4

Fractured Realms: Part Six

Contents (For Your Clicking Convenience)

Riftwalkers #1 — Prologue & Part One: The Mansion & Part Two: The Realm Of Eternal Dusk

Riftwalkers #2 — Part Three: Fenomet & Part Four: The Oracle’s Choice

Riftwalkers #3 — Part Five: The Horned Child

Riftwalkers #4 — Part Six: The Riftwalker’s Ultimatum

Please…enjoy.

~TW~

PART SIX — THE RIFTWALKER’S ULTIMATUM

MAXIMILLIAN

Maximillian followed the white light through the Rift. It was a bright beacon of promise and Maximillian’s only way out of whichever Rift he now found himself traversing.

Yet the beacon was always beyond his reach. Though the beacon had pulled him free of the Horned Child’s nightmarish room, Maximillian needed to reach it. Somehow he knew it was the only way back to Gandrad. He could hear it. Feel it.

Though Maximillian hastened his body and quickened his steps, his target seemed to drift further away. ‘What are you?’ Maximillian asked. And so he followed as a child follows their parent through a dark wilderness, every step further into the unknown.

As Maximillian pressed forward, the rift itself seemed to fight against his progress. Tendrils of shadowy entities reached out, their elongated, bony fingers clutching at him. ‘What in blazes is this?’

The entities whispered maddening things as they reached for him, attempting to drag him into the formless nothingness that lay beyond every Rift.

Desperation gripped Maximillian as he felt one of the entities latch onto his arm, its grip like ice-cold steel. Its fingers were so chillingly cold that they seared Maximillian’s flesh like a branding iron, and pain surged through him. He looked around, desperate for answers.

With a surge of fear and determination, Maximillian summoned his magic. Only fire would work within a Rift, yet at great cost. Nevertheless, it was the power of fire and flame that Maximillian summoned.

Red-hot flames erupted from Maximillian’s hand, searing through the entity’s skeletal arm. It let out an otherworldly screech as the arm crumbled quickly into white ash. The hand remained gripped on his arm, searing the flesh there, but Maximillian drew on more magic.

With a burst of flawless focus, Maximillian reached deep into the winds of magic. The heat there embraced him, yet even as he summoned, Maximillian could see…feel more of the skeletal arms, clawed, jagged, and threatening, reaching for him.

Maximillian squinted at the pain of the hand still gripping his arm. He could smell burning flesh. His burning flesh. The arms were closing in faster than Maximillian could anticipate, and, he knew he had only seconds before the end.

A bright light shone towards the end of the Rift, blinding him. Yet it gave him strength somehow, a strength in the air that flowed through his mouth and nose and into his lungs. His lungs were fire.

Like a volcano about to erupt, Maximillian kept his eyes closed and, from instinct, opened his mouth. Molten red fire erupted in a maelstrom of scarlets and crimsons. Maximillian’s insides felt hotter than any furnace as the burning fire poured from his mouth.

Minutes of agony followed. Only agony. The smell and sounds of everything around Maximillian were so intense that it threatened his consciousness. Yet still he breathed death to all those that wished death upon him until finally there was nought left within him.

Maximillian dropped to his knees. There was a sound that lingered. An echo within the Rift. It was a sharp cry that made Maximillian’s ears ring, a sound which slowly dropped in pitch until, finally, it faded.

With eyelids that burnt almost as much as his lungs, Maximillian, exhausted, opened his eyes. ‘Wh-where are you? Where have you gone?’ he asked of the beacon he had been following. His eyes searched the Rift, but wherever it was, he could no longer feel its presence.

Instead, all Maximillian saw was ash floating in the space around him. Some of it littered the ground, or whatever the material of the Rift was that his knees rested upon, Maximillian did not know.

Maximillian looked down at his arm. His robe had burned away and his arm was marked with a searing, ethereal scar. He winced at the agony of it and stayed as close to the middle of the Rift as possible, away from the reach of those things on the other side for fear of them coming back.

‘This Rift here is more torn than when I entered,’ Maximillian observed, his voice but a painful whisper, though it still echoed. Then, for a moment he listened. He could not quite make it out, so, with a wince and a sigh he stood and walked over to the tears in the Rift.

Maximillian brushed a hand over one of the rips in the Rift. ‘In all of my time in the Order, never have I heard, seen, or read of a tear within a Rift,’ he said to himself as a vacuum-like force pulled at his hand. ‘Such a thing should not be possible. Yet here it is before my very eyes.’

That was when he heard the voice whispering through the tears in the Rift. Fenomet. Again and again, that name was whispered from the other side at him, sending shivers down his spine.

‘That name again,’ Maximillian said to himself. Then he said to the entities residing beyond the Rift, ‘What do you want from me? And who is Fenomet? Answer me!’

‘You will get no answer,’ came a distorted voice from behind him.

Maximillian spun around, his hand aflame. ‘Who goes there?’

The figure’s form was just as distorted as its voice. It shimmered, floating above the ground. Maximillian was not quite sure what he was seeing, and so he asked, ‘Announce yourself before I send you where I sent the others.’

‘You sound like him already,’ said the distorted figure. When he listened carefully, Maximillian thought he recognised the voice, but the pain in his arm stole his focus, and the flames of his magic with it. ‘Though I see you have not yet reached your potential.’

Maximillian held his arm and squinted. ‘My potential? What are you talking about?’

A sound like laughter came from the figure and echoed throughout the Rift, escaping through the tears in a bizarre and twisted assault on Maximillian’s ears.

‘You have been chosen, Maximillian.’

‘Chosen? What nonsense is this? My duty is to the Order.’

The figure shimmered again and moved closer to him. Maximillian could smell sulfur. ‘Stay where you are,’ he said, holding a hand out.

‘You are yet weak,’ said the figure, ‘even you cannot remain within a Rift and use magic the way you are now. Even you will perish when they get their hands on you.’

‘Who are they?’ Maximillian asked though he feared he already knew.

‘The ones who dwell outside. The ones that burned your arm. The ones you have vanquished.’

Maximillian glanced back at the tears in the Rift. Even now he could feel their eyes on him. ‘They whispered a name. Fenomet. What does it mean?’

The figure gave what looked to be a nod. ‘They are warning you, Maximillian. You saw the Horned Child in your waking nightmare, correct?’

Maximillian squinted. ‘How do you know this? Who are you? Speak!’

‘I am the light you saw. There can be no more questions now, Maximillian,’ said the figure, and it reached out a hand to him. The hand was as pale as the moon, and its scent was different to the sulfur he smelled a moment ago. ‘Come with me.’

‘Where?’ Maximillian asked. In a blur, the figure touched Maximillian’s arm and when he looked down at it, the damage was gone. He was healed. When the pain faded, Maximillian shook his head. ‘How did you do that?’

‘A minor ability. Those entities out there desire to take you to Fenomet,’ said the figure.

Maximillian summoned his flames once again. ‘Fenoment, is it some sort of demon?’

‘Something like that,’ said the figure. ‘And if you do not come with me now, these entities will tear through what is left of this Rift and rip you apart, as they have done to the other Riftwalkers who came here. It is your choice.’

The figure, shrouded in enigmatic darkness, regarded Maximillian with a cool detachment. ‘The Wizard of Ages no longer waits for your return,’ it intoned cryptically. ‘Now, you must make a choice. Follow me and lend your strength to our mission to stop Fenomet, or be doomed to languish in this desolate Rift, fading into obscurity, forgotten by all.’

With those haunting words hanging in the air, the figure drifted down into the yawning abyss of the Rift. Its descent defied the laws of nature, an impossible velocity that only added to the surreal nature of the situation. It was an invitation and an ultimatum rolled into one.

Maximillian, his mind racing and heart pounding, faced a crossroads in the unfathomable depths of the Rift. The choice was stark, as he teetered on the precipice between two unknown destinies.

With an unspoken acknowledgement of the gravity of his decision, Maximillian followed the figure into the forbidding darkness.

End Of Part 6

The Story Continues In Part 7…

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~TW~