Most of the valley was engulfed by the molten rock now. Everything in its path was set aflame, if it wasn’t already. The ground continually shook, and the rain of ash and stone through the air obscured any view farther away than a few feet. Calixte didn’t know if her host body had merely remained paralysed by terror, or if the true owner of the body had passed out, but ’she’ was still crouched in the middle of the now-burning copse of trees.

She strained her attention through the ash- and smoke-filled air toward the city, but could only make out hazy outlines of rubble. It looked like nothing in the city was left intact, and that even the Palace, built with the best possible engineering to withstand everything the Great Mother Goddess could throw at it, had taken massive damage. She could no longer see the Tower of [something].

If she had been in a real body of her own, she would have been in tears. The helplessness was driving her mad. But she forced herself to watch, to try to see it all, though as the ashfall continued to increase there was less and less she could see.

The lava flow crawled within a few feet of her position, and her host body abruptly leapt up and began to run down toward the city, stumbling and tripping, in abject and unthinking flight. They dodged through several interconnecting valleys, all filled with fire and ash. A few, branching upward, were filled with creeping molten rock, and as they rounded the back of the Palace Calixte noticed that more and more valleys were filled with a jumbled mass of tree trunks, rocks, and mud, and less and less with lava. The mud, too, crept downward, engulfing all in its path, and it seemed there was little choice between the two deaths.

The host body emerged, stopping short, on the edge of the [slab] on which the Palace was perched above the city, and some trick of the air currents provided a clear corridor down to the sea. The sun’s light was still blocked by the smoke and ash clouding above, but Calixte could see the blank, wreckage-strewn sand of the harbour, and far in the distance the towering wave that would complete the destruction of the city. Death loomed from all sides, encroaching on the few safe places people had found.

Her host body seemed to think it had found one of those rare safe places, backing away from the precipice and falling to its knees, gasping for breath. Calixte turned her attention frantically around, hoping against hope for some kind of miracle, some way to stay the final blow. Surely, surely, if the city could be saved at all everything could be rebuilt. If the city fell to the oncoming wave, or was engulfed by the creeping lava, all would be lost. She refused to consider what might happen if the two met.

So far, this precipice seemed to be untouched, as the copse before had been, by destruction. She could look upward and see the mountain, oddly scooped out looking now, still spouting fire and ash from its summit, or look downward and see the wave inexorably approaching. Helplessly trapped, guiltily observing, for Calixte time seemed to simultaneously crawl and hurry, as the two awesome forces rushed toward one another.

The enormous wave, its surface seething and boiling, arched up over the city, throwing the already dim light into even deeper shadow. Arms of molten rock had already crept down through the city streets, spreading between and over every building and blocking every street, and everything flammable was in flames.

Everything seemed to hold its breath for a long, long moment, silence enveloping the doomed city. Nothing moved, no smoke rose, no lava sparked, no ash fell. The rumble of the erupting mountain, the thunder of the encroaching wave, the crackle of the fires, all seemed silent or distant.

The wave fell.

The devastated city vanished under a roil of water. Steam exploded upward, obscuring what little view was left. Calixte could see, as the water fled inland, uphill, swirling and catching up debris, sprays of molten rock combined with water flashing into more steam. The air grew even more unbearably hot, and she could feel her host body struggling for breath.

A wild gust of air swept aside some of the hanging cloud of debris and steam, and her last view of the city – the rubble of the city, glorious and fallen – was the second wave of the tsunami sweeping onshore and pushing the water from the first wave so far into the city it reached the down-thrust arms of molten rock.

As the two elemental forces contacted one another, a final, air-ripping explosion threw chunks of stone high into the sky. Her host body hunkered down on the edge of the cliff, hands clapped over ears, breathing harshly in air that seemed not to carry any life any more. Numerous smaller explosions dotted the far edges of the rubble, spitting chunks of rock and unidentifiable objects into the air.

Calixte wanted to scream. She wanted to cry, to bang her head on the rock, to curse the gods at the height of her voice. She wanted to hurl herself into the water, into the fires, into the molten rock. She wanted to die with her people, as her pride and selfishness condemned them to oblivion and devastation. She wanted to be anywhere but in this body that was not hers to command, watching helplessly and of her own will as everything she’d ever cared for and everything she’d ever known vanished under the onslaught of wrath.

Ash, steam, and smoke closed in around ‘her’ body again, but Calixte didn’t try to peer through the muck this time. Her world had ended in fire and water, and a depression more profound than night enveloped her. It was time to die. Survival no longer meant anything. For what had she struggled, for what had she fought, for what had she made her treacherous way through the labyrinth of the Fair Folk’s land? For this? For hubris?

Her host body stood up, smoke-borne tears making runnels through the grime on its face. She knew nothing about this body. What did it look like? What gender was it, even? She’d been so absorbed in finding out what was going on in her city, she’d neglected to even care.

Too late.

They spread their arms wide, as Icarus preparing to soar to the sun. There was no sun. There was only the smoke, the ash, the fire, the water, the rock.

They spread their arms wide, and leaned forward. Forward. Everything seemed to fall away, and then they were racing down a long, pale tunnel that flashed and swirled around them. The choking wind streamed past.

Blackness.

Epilogue

Calixte sat with her head in her hands, honey-dark curls spilling down to hide her face. “Why did you save me?” she asked into the table.

“Are you kidding?” the Sorceress asked. “You’re the only person to face down the king of the Fair Folk and survive!”

Calixte exploded off the bench, turning on the Sorceress in a flash of fury. “He destroyed my entire city in retaliation, you bitch! How can you /say/ that? Gods of my ancestors, yes, /I/ survived, and everyone I’d ever known and a good many people I didn’t know paid for that!” She dropped back on to the bench, deflated. “I wanted to die with them. Why didn’t you let me die?”

~~~

Calixte groaned and started to sit up, then put her hand to the back of her head and winced, lying back down. The ground was cold, bare, and hard, and a chill breeze was whistling through something nearby. She opened her eyes a slit, trying to make out where she was.

The last thing she remembered was … was what? There was a mad jumble of memories in the forefront of her mind; painting, Ishan, Vidatha, the Sorceress, the king of the Fair Folk, Atlantis … the court of the Fair Folk collapsing around her.

Columns crumbling, mad explosions of growth ripping up chucks of marble from the floor, benches and chairs weathering as of years all in a moment, fabrics decaying and shredding, animals of the forest invading. The Fair Folk wailing and shrieking. Their king … their king ageing years, before her eyes, from young and vibrant and powerful to a husk of a man, stooped and grey and withered. Feeble. Powerless.

Overwhelmed by his own court. Calixte remembered a frenzied blur of motion as she toppled backward, numb and frightened and somehow immune to the [mad] decay happening all around her. A swirling blur of colour engulfed the king, his feeble screams rising out of the whirl, and then as darkness began to overwhelm her vision she remembered seeing streams of colours fleeing the encroaching devastation, and a pitiful, stripped heap of bones in the centre of a last, untouched square of marble.

The horror of it jerked her eyes open, and the first thing her sight landed on was that pile of bones, white and weathered and bare. She screamed, flinging herself across the broken stone, as far away as possible. Holding her hand over her pounding heart, she tried to slow her breathing down, staring at the bones like she was afraid they would get up and move.

Here, they might. Take no chances.

A few minutes passed, and she began to feel calm enough to take a closer look around. While she was clearly still in the great hall of the court of the Fair Folk, it looked as though it had been deserted for several hundred years. Moss and ivy grew over the stonework, the throne was worn and rounded, every marble tile had cracks through it except the one on which the bones rested, there was no trace of any of the banners or tapestries. The roof was gone, and most of the pillars were toppled to the ground. A few enterprising trees had rooted and begun to grow amongst the rubble.

So what had happened? She turned her hands up, examining them closely, suddenly afraid that whatever explosion of time had happened here had affected her too. But they seemed the same as ever, and when she pulled a handful of honey-dark hair over her shoulder she couldn’t find any white strands.