Songs of War - The Unsung Heroes: Volume 1

Chapter 2

154 YEARS EARLIER

MOUNT VELGRIN, THE GREAT WAR

Aurora made her decision. Her head still hurt, but she took her enchanted sword, and set off towards the towering form of Mt. Velgrin, stepping aside the dead Ardoni and humans who had helped finalize the fate of Ingressus's army. She used her sword as a hiking stick, which helped support her weight as she climbed the mountain. She trekked all the way to the peak, and scanned her surroundings. She breathed hard in the strangely warm air of the mountain, but shivered nonetheless. There, she saw several Songs lying in the snow. No Deathsinger. No Tidesinger. Just the Songs.

She picked up a yellow Mobilium one, and examined it closely. It seemed to radiate power, and had an aura of pure Song - a Prime Song! She looked at the others, and found that there was a Protisium and a Supporium Prime Song. They belonged to Ingressus Voltaris, she knew, but where could he have gone? And why were his Songs, along with Achillean's, just lying there?

"Uh, General Tidesinger?" she called out to him, but no reply came. She looked closer at her surroundings, and noticed there was a glowing purple light somewhere to her right. She walked closer, and found that there was a mysterious open portal, which was the source of the light.

The only place that Ingressus and Achillean could have gone, she thought, was the portal. She started walking towards the portal slowly, as the snow crunched under her feet. Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks. What if the portal led to a dangerous location? Like the Nether, perhaps. She knew of Nether portals and their mysterious purple substance.

Just then she heard the portal hum and it began to close slowly, the purple swirling depths shrinking by the second. She made her quick split-second decision and decided to follow them, picking up her pace into a run, sheathing her sword and diving through the portal just in time as it closed at her feet.

The crash she made in the snow was soft, and soft enough that the Voltaris around her didn't seem to hear it. She was surprised at having found the Voltaris so soon; Ingressus himself was standing on a cliffside on the other side of the mountain peak. She slipped around the portal and hid behind a niche in one of the surrounding mini-mountains.

She contemplated her surroundings: still Mt. Velgrin... but all the snow had returned, and it was thunderstorming now. Where had the portal taken her then? She also noticed several dead Ardoni around. Since their markings had faded she wasn't sure what clan they were from, but since the Voltaris were roughly dragging the last of them off the cliff, she suspected they weren't theirs.

"Ingressus, sir, the cleanup is done and we are ready to move," said one younger Voltaris.

"Excellent. We're off to get the first Prime in a few months... but I need time to create my plan. For now, we're going to..." Aurora didn't hear him from this distance for the rest of his sentence as he walked farther away and near a cave opening with torchlight emitting from it.

She then began to wait as the Voltaris seemed to be discussing something. Several times she displaced some snow while trying to get into a more comfortable position, and a small avalanche tumbled down on top of her. She froze - and not because of the snow. She heard footsteps and talking.

"Ummm... did you hear something?" one said, in a very raspy voice. She recognized it; she had battled it earlier today, in fact. The voice of Ingressus' lieutenant, Tygren Voltaris. She peeked out at him from under the snow. He seemed to have gained two pixels in age. However could that have happened so fast? Aurora wondered. She felt her own horns, but nothing had changed. She was still Lieutenant Aurora Nestoris.

"I don't think so," said another voice. The footsteps crunched away back towards Ingressus, who had been talking with some other Voltaris for the rest of the time.