StarGrace waited a few minutes until she was sure they were gone, then she resumed her climb.
Within two turns of her stairwell, Spiredore presented StarGrace with another blue-misted tunnel.
They emerged onto a plain blasted with an icy northerly wind. Wind-driven snow stung at their faces and eyes before it hit the ground and disappeared into the numerous cracks and chasms that wove their demented way across the flat, barren surface.
“Where are we?” DareWing gasped, wrapping both arms and wings about himself in a vain attempt at protection against the wind and snow.
DragonStar looked about, as uncomfortable as was DareWing. “Somewhere in the northern Avonsdale Plains, I think. See? Those must be the southern Western Ranges. Or maybe even a bit further west towards the Andeis coast … I’m not too sure.”
Frankly, DareWing didn’t give a damn about their precise location, and wished he hadn’t asked. “How will you get us to the Field of Flowers?”
DragonStar turned to look at DareWing. “Oh, I am not. I think you should.”
“Me? How am I going to do it?”
“Look within yourself, DareWing. You have been in the Field before. You have been through the gate. This time you must open it for yourself.”
DareWing tightened his arms, wondering if he would freeze solid in four breaths or five. “Why couldn’t you have told me this while we were still in Sanctuary? I could have thought about it before. I could have had it all worked out before we got into this —”
“DareWing. Do it!”
DareWing almost cursed before he realised he’d have to open his mouth and expose himself to more of the freezing air in order to do so. He contented himself with a hard glare in DragonStar’s direction, then he concentrated on the problem at hand.
This was the first time since DragonStar had transformed him that he’d been well enough to even contemplate exploring the newly-resurrected Acharite power within himself.
Let alone use it to propel both of them into the Field of Flowers.
“Think,” DragonStar whispered underneath the howling wind. “Think … what do you remember most about the Field?”
DareWing frowned. Flowers. He remembered flowers. Then he almost smiled, for he remembered the feel of the sun on his back, and the peace of the Field, and then he did smile, for those were things he’d enjoy feeling right now.
Instantly he was overwhelmed with the scent of the billions upon billions of flowers that existed within the Field, and then they were there.
DareWing leaned back his head and laughed.
StarGrace smirked. She stood at the edge of the blue-misted tunnel, still safe within Spiredore’s power. Beyond her lay a chasm, and beyond the chasm a road wended its way through a plain dotted liberally with flowering shrubs. Far away rose a line of blue and purple mountains, cradling the entrance of a valley. With her powerful sight, StarGrace could see the shapes of Icarii spiralling above the valley entrance. The hidden souls had been found.
Her smiled widened momentarily, then she stepped back into Spiredore.
“See,” said DragonStar, and from the infinite sky above them floated down DareWing’s warriors.
The Strike Force, and yet not.
That these warriors were Icarii was easy enough to see, for together with their human bodies they had the wings and the chiselled facial features of the Icarii.
And yet they had been changed. Every one of them had wings of a different colour — purple wings, another bronze, yet another gold, until all the shades of the rainbow had been represented — and each warrior had jewel-coloured eyes that matched the particular shade of his or her wings.
But it was their bodies that were the most amazing. Every one of them was diaphanous, almost completely translucent. They glowed with a silvery hue, and as they floated down by the score the outlines of individual bodies were lost in the collective rainbow-coloured shimmer of wings and flashing eyes.
DareWing had never seen anything so beautiful, nor so deadly. Each warrior’s eyes shone brilliant with determination, with anger, with the need for the fight.
“Your Strike Force,” said DragonStar, awed himself. “My vanguard.”
“What do you want us to do?” DareWing said. His eyes had not left the milling hue before him.
“I want you to fight for me,” said DragonStar softly, and a great cry went up from the massed warriors.
Qeteb leaned over the saddle of his beast and laughed. “It was that easy?”
StarGrace inclined her head.
“That tower will lead us straight to the huddled masses?” StarGrace waved a hand about languidly. “Almost instantly.”
“There must be a trap somewhere,” Sheol muttered. “It can’t be this straightforward!”
“The tower is a simple thing,” StarGrace said. “It does as it is bid.”
Qeteb sat and thought. It was too easy, but he wasn’t sure where the difficulty would be: in their use of Spiredore, or in their attempts to reach the crowd of souls awaiting their appetites across the chasm.
“There is something else,” StarGrace said, and Qeteb jerked out of his reverie.
“Yes?”
StarGrace told them of the two men she’d seen pass briefly through the tower.
Qeteb stared at her, then grinned. “We have them,” he whispered, and the whisper reached into every corner of the land. “Not this hour, or even this day, but we will eventually have them.”
He laughed, and then waved his fellow Demons through the door into Spiredore. As they entered, Qeteb turned and thrust his fist towards StarLaughter.
“Stay here, bitch,” he said, “because if you are not here when I return, I will hunt you down and stake your naked body out on the wasteland for the dogs and boars to couple with.”
“Stay here,” DragonStar said, “until I need you.”
DareWing raised one black eyebrow.
“Something is not right with Spiredore,” DragonStar continued, “and I would rather not risk you. You will be safe enough — more than safe! — within the Field of Flowers.”
“When will you call me?”
DragonStar shrugged. “When the time is right, my friend. What else can I say?”
“Be careful,” DareWing said, and DragonStar nodded, letting his eyes drift over the shifting throng of silvery bodies before him, before giving DareWing a perfunctory smile.
Then he turned to one side, drew the glowing doorway, and stepped through into Spiredore.
DareWing stared at the spot where he’d vanished, then furrowed his brow thoughtfully. Surely he would be able to move back into the wasteland in the same manner he’d moved into the Field? To imagine the environment, the sensations, the smells? Then, of course, he’d be able to transfer back here whenever the need arose.
In the meantime, his band of glinting warriors could be what they’d trained for in their previous lifetimes: a Strike Force.
“Let me prepare the way for you, StarSon,” DareWing whispered.
DragonStar knew the instant he stepped into Spiredore that he’d transferred into crisis.
When he and DareWing