Karl looked up the mountain. “There aren’t many patrols, so let’s keep going, with Remi’s blizzard covering for us, it will be difficult to tell when we came through. Speed is our friend until we reach the caldera.”
They kept moving, using the blowing snow as cover, both for their tracks, and to keep them from being noticed. It seemed to be working well enough, and they made it most of the way up the mountain without being intercepted again, but the closer they got to the top, the stronger the feeling that there was something seriously wrong grew.
[Rae, is there any sign that we’re being tricked by an illusion?] Karl asked.
[No, it all looks good, not like that strange situation underground. This place just feels wrong, like something bad is about to happen to us, but I can’t see anything that could cause us problems.] She insisted.
Then she paused. [Whatever is wrong, it is here.]
Remi stared out of her space at the same time. [Stop, there is something here.]
Karl signalled for everyone to pause. The beasts had senses they didn’t, and a few moments to understand what they were sensing wouldn’t hurt anything.
Karl closed his eyes, focusing on his mental space, the one he used for mediation, in hope that he would gain some understanding from the void.
As he focused on nothingness, he felt something staring back at him. The feeling made his skin crawl, as the sensation of attention grew.
They weren’t joking, something was?really wrong with this place.
Then, the ground began to shake under their feet, and the Thermal Vision that Karl only paid minimal attention to during the day began to show him hot spots everywhere on the hillside, and even more potently above them.
“Oh shit. The volcano is about to erupt.” He realized.
“U-turn, it’s time to leave.” Lotus announced, pointing back.
Ophelia was momentarily frozen, but when Thor began to turn around and run, she joined the group.
The first spout of hot gas vented only a few metres from their path as they ran, and the rumbling of the volcano got worse.
Thor and Tessa were glowing with golden Holy Light, which was unusual, as they would normally spread the effect to everyone. But, as most of the group was on Thor’s back, it might be the best way to protect them from venting gas from below. Rae was doing a better job of dodging the vents, as she could see them coming, but Thor could feel the rumbling in the ground before they erupted, and he wove through the trees as he ran down the hill, struggling not to topple over forward.
Like a Warbear, with his build he was a bit top-heavy, and the steep slopes were hazardous for him when running downhill.
The top of the mountain exploded in a shower of rock and fire, firing high into the sky. That almost certainly spelled the end of one of the statues, but this time they weren’t lucky enough to have recovered it.
A sense of power drew Karl’s attention behind them, and what he found was the horror of every Frost Giant in the world.
There was a massive mottled red dragon bursting free of the volcano, flying easily among the explosion of magma and stone.
“Lotus, look back. What is that?” Karl shouted over the roar of the volcano.
She only looked for a split second, then shuddered and looked forward.
“That is a Magma Dragon, a form of Chromatic Dragon. But I don’t think they’re supposed to get that big. Even an Ancient Forest Dragon doesn’t have a wingspan that large.” She shouted back.
“Do you think it might be on our side? It looks pretty mad at the Frost Giants.” Dana asked.
Lotus just laughed and shook her head. “Magma Dragons aren’t really known for their kindness or humanitarian actions. It’s better that we just get out of here before it turns its attention in our direction.”
As if to prove her point, the Magma Dragon tail swatted an enormous glowing red boulder in their direction, headed straight for their group.
Everyone scattered as it crashed down between them with an impact that shook the ground even better than Thor’s earthquake skill. Karl was momentarily blinded by the steam from all the melted snow from the impact trench, but quickly realized that they had fully evaded the attack, and they could keep going.
[Wait, shiny rock for me.] Thor cheered as he picked the boulder up with his horns and moved it to his space.
It was still radiating huge amounts of heat, but as it cooled, Thor could see that it was a naturally blue crystal, a large portion of the Frost Stone from the top of the mountain, that the Dragon had used as an artillery projectile.
It would look good next to Thor’s pond once it cooled enough to regain its natural blue appearance, Karl decided as they ran down the hill and away from the tidal wave of molten stone making its way down the slope behind them.
But the flow was not the greatest danger, at least not to the common people who weren’t on the volcano’s slopes. The massive cloud of ash and fire had blackened the sky, turning day to night, and blanketing the snow in a thick layer of ash.
“Maybe this was their plan all along? That volcanic eruption is going to throw the entire region into an artificial winter. It will take months for that cloud to clear, and even longer for the temperature to start coming back up.” Lotus noted, looking backwards from her perch on Rae’s back.
[Remi is a Shaman, tell her to make the cloud go away. Shamans do weather, right?] Hawk insisted.
An extra winter, when they were already in winter, seemed like it should be prohibited by some sort of rule. That was just too much winter in one place for Hawk to accept.
Remi thought about it for a while and then shook her head. [If there is an Overlord Rank Shaman, they could blow all of that back away from us, but I don’t have that much power, I’m just a small snake.]
Remi was doing her best cute and innocent act, even curling the ‘hood’ of scales around her head to make it look like she was hugging herself. Hawk wasn’t buying it, but Thor thought it was adorable.
However, neither opinion changed the fact that Remi simply didn’t have the power to change the weather over hundreds of kilometres and blow the ash cloud away from the Golden Dragon Nation. But worse than that, the prevailing winds were blowing out of the Frost Giant Nation, and would be moving more of the ash into human territory, and after that, into Stone Giant territory, where Lotus knew it would stagnate as the air off the ocean halted its momentum.
The Stone Giants would not be happy, but this had to count as a Force of Nature, unstoppable and not preventable. It might not have happened right now if the Frost Giants hadn’t either deliberately or inadvertently upset the Magma Dragon, but it would have risen from its slumber eventually and the result would have been the same.
“I hope your stamina is beyond impressive because both the lava flow and the ash cloud are gaining on us.” Karl informed Ophelia as they reached the bottom of the hill, over half an hour later.
“It’s good enough to run all day, but what way do we run?” She asked.
“Upwind. That will take us back over ground that we’ve already covered, and toward the first incident, but we know there is a force there, even if everyone is busy with the chaos.” Karl explained.
“Does the wind even matter to that?” She asked, pointing upward at the mushroom shaped cloud.
“Honestly, I have no idea. Later it should blow the ash away, but it does kind of look like it doesn’t care.”
The volcano was making its own weather now, and the wind was blowing outward from the eruption, rapidly heating everything and melting the snow all around them into slush.
“Do we go for the main line?” Lotus shouted as they moved down into the open, hoping to make better time than they had through the hills and trees.
“No, go for the Dwarven Village.” Karl called back.
That seemed safer, and if it wasn’t for their barriers, the ash would be burning their clothes already.
There were spots on the trees that were already scorched, despite the snow which had built up on them, and to Karl, that meant there was likely to be a massive wildfire.
How to escape an erupting volcano had not been one of their school subjects.