Chapter 80
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Ellery
“Are you going to kill me if I do?” I asked.
“If you believed that would happen, then why free us?” the gargoyle inquired.
“Because I didn’t know what else to do and had nowhere else to turn. What’s happening in Tempest now is… it’s… it’s… a nightmare. We were trying to fight against it, but that’s all falling apart. If I can’t save Ryker, then it’s all lost.”
“The realm will fall to ruin if he dies?”
“The amsirah will.”
And so would I. I’d never give up the fight, but I’d never be the same again. Only a shell of who I was would remain if I failed Ryker.
“I understand our ancestors are the ones who put you here, but most amsirah are good, kind, and caring. They don’t deserve what’s being done to them, and their children especially don’t deserve it.”
“The children?” the gargoyle inquired.
“The duke, Ryker’s father, is taking them from their homes, from their parents, and training them to become soldiers.”
“And Ryker’s the other lightning bearer?”
“Yes.”
“You know you’re unique among your kind.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“You’re unique in more ways than being a lightning bearer and controlling all the weathers. You also withstood the power of the stone.”
“That doesn’t make me unique. Someone else must have done so too, if they stole it from you.”
“Did they withstand it?”
“You didn’t possess it, and it was on a pedestal in that castle. Someone put it there.”
“Yes, they did. But they took the stone to keep it as theirs, and they paid the price for that —the whole town did. But you withstood its call enough to return it. That’s a feat most wouldn’t accomplish; not only because they couldn’t touch it, but also because the call of its power would prove to be too much for them to resist.
“They’d want to keep it for themselves, just as the amsirah who stole it from us tried to do, but the stone isn’t meant to be controlled by only one.
It’s too powerful for that. It needs its energy to spread out, like it is between us.
When only one or two of your kind hold it, its power is more concentrated and harder to resist. It is also far more destructive.
Yet, even with its powerful allure, you returned it to us instead of keeping it. ”
“I almost kept it,” I admitted in an ashamed whisper.
“Oh, I am sure it was very tempting, but you relinquished it. The trees were right to bring you here.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’ll help you… if you withdraw your lightning.”
“You’ll help me free Ryker and defeat those who are imprisoning us?”
“Yes.”
“We can’t open portals in and out of Tempest; the duke and his cohorts have ensured that.”
I sensed his surprise when the gargoyle lifted his head to look at his friends. “How did they do this?” he asked.
“With the help of the warlocks,” I told him.
“You are prisoners too, then,” another said.
“We are. We may not be frozen and trapped beneath the earth, but we are prisoners. The nobles can still leave, except for Ryker, but we can’t.”
“Well, things have most certainly changed,” the one I’d given the stone to remarked. “We will help to fix that too… if we can.”
“Why? What’s in it for you?”
“We are the guardians of this realm. At one time, we looked over it and protected it. That was our duty, and we upheld it with great pride. Then those we trusted betrayed us and locked us away. They paid the ultimate price for that.”
“And why would you help me and Ryker when we could take the stone from you again?”
I wasn’t sure if it was possible or how to do it, but if it happened before, it could happen again.
“You know what will happen if you try to do the same as your ancestors,” the gargoyle replied.
“The stone will destroy the realm… or at least it will ravage everything close to it.”
“Yes. While it is with us, the stone cannot unleash such power, but once free of us, it will build in strength until it ravages the land again.”
“What will stop you from killing me the second I relinquish my lightning? I’m a threat to you.”