Galantyne stumbled, the dead weight of Kara strapped to his chest, leaving his arms free to climb, to help others climb. It was his duty. His mission, these were his people! He stopped and turned to look back at the wreckage of the village, the crumbled entrance to the Mountain, and the overflowing bowl of Auditorium. Minions still climbed over the cliffs hauling their meager belongings. A few, who had escaped the water, told him the tale of moonfish coming to them and asking for their kai to be returned. They said they had been afraid as they felt the essence and the substance of life leaving them, but they suddenly felt they could breathe easier on their own. Galantyne longed to get to the shore, to revoke his own kai.

Kara's reddened and gritty eyes now opened, and he felt her stir against him. The first few moments of recognition and awkward reunion made them both uncomfortable. "How do you feel?" He gazed down at her keeping the more pressing demands of their situation out of his conscious mind so she could not read them.

Kara smiled weakly, her lips did not move, but her voice trembled into his Zalez. "Like a burden. Please let me down. I can walk." It was more a demand than a request, and he knew he would have to let her go, even if she was too weak to walk. Kara was too proud to allow him to carry her when others were in such terrible need.

Galantyne helped a woman carrying a child from the village to pass him on the trail. He watched as her ragged feet left bloody prints in the dust. His heart swelled with anger that this was so. Did Quildor feel so little for those who had followed him? These people from the village, who had risked their lives and their son's lives nearly every day breathing toxic air and finding no relief from the attacks of Salimantor and Pheroon? He had left them, after taking their only means of survival. Their men.

Galantyne wiped his bleary eyes on the back of his blood spattered hand and looked up once again this time to see a familiar face come trudging over the last rise, supporting a woman on his arm and pulling a travois carrying another.

"Dmitri!" He did un-strap Kara and let her down gently to the soft trampled dust of the trail that led them all north toward the shore. His big hands reached to relieve the older man of his immediate burden.

"I found you! Did you find Kara?" Dmitri was already looking to the ground where the afore mentioned girl was sitting up, rubbing her shoulder with one hand, the other braced in the dirt. She'd pulled her feet out of the way so a group of villagers could go by, and was even now using a boulder to hoist herself to her feet.

"I did." Galantyne said needlessly, watching briefly as Kara stood, ready to assist her should she prove too weak to hold her own weight. When she'd been delivered to him, he'd thought she was dead. "But you managed to get them out of the fortress before the water filled the mountain?"

"Yes, some of them." Dmitri nodded, wiping a hand over his brow, staring up at the lowering moons in weary annoyance. "The glare out here is unfamiliar!"

Galantyne laughed. "Don't tell me that after griping to get out of the undersea domes for so many years, now you are out and would gripe about the land conditions? You who have lived on the land?"

Dmitri crookedly grinned under his mustache, knowing Galantyne was right, and he had no right to complain. "What is your plan, my Lord?"

"I must get all of these people to the shore as quickly as possible. My mother awaits us there to help them revoke their kai. Many of those who were liberated from Auditorium and had been endowed with kai were able to revoke them when the water filled the bowl."

"You realize there is no going back? The fortress is filled with water. I got as many out as would come, and closed my ears to the screams of those who wouldn't."

Galantyne's quickly drawn breath confirmed his pain. "I had sent those able to travel on ahead of us already with Josh and Kane, not a very experienced group, but loyal." He ran his own hand through his hair in agitation. "Wendar?"

"Dead."

Galantyne sensed immediately that more story was there than a refusal to come and subsequent drowning. Still, the pain of losing him flooded him with remorse. Wendar had been a seasoned veteran of the first war, and had been a stalwart help to him. He felt his heart constrict at the confirmation of this suspicion. "Was there a confrontation?"

"I demanded that he release the city wide communication system to my control, and he refused." Dmitri looked away. His sigh was regretful, tinged with a bit of determination. "I had no choice. Him or all of them."

Dmitri's voice was full of regret.

 Galantyne tried to picture those who knew him, and who refused to leave.  "Feniece?"

Dmitri swallowed hard, his gulp of air audible as the wind came up and captured it.

"You found Feniece and the children, didn't you? They were in the tunnels already."

The older man's face had bent to survey the rocky ground trembling in front of them.

Galantyne grabbed his shoulder and forced him to look up. "You did see them, didn't you?"

"I did." Dmitri forced his eyes to meet Galantyne's. 

The younger man's eyes searched his in frantic hope. The little girls, the baby, Dostal... Galantyne imagined Feniece's fear, her desire to have everything stay the way it always had, her reluctance to admit that the prophecies were true. Now he saw clearly that her acquiescence was all for his benefit, she didn't ever intend to follow him outside of the fortress. His chin bobbed, his jaw worked, and his eyes finally squeezed shut against the pain.

"She could have followed along, she could have come out after you left."

"Yes." Dmitri said, but it was only to comfort, he had no hope, he'd seen Feniece and the children following Grammon back into the fortress.

Kara plucked this information from his mind and stood bravely to lay a hand on Galantyne's arm, his eyes opened to stare into hers, and then he wrapped one arm around her shoulders. "It is likely they got out after you left." 

Galantyne clapped the older man on the back and kept his hand there comfortingly. "Do not think I will debate the logistics, Uncle. You did the only thing you could. This is war, and there are many factions and conflicting views. We can only fight for reason and right the best we know how." He let his arm, drop as he stared out toward the Mountain which had suddenly begun to belch a thick black tar bilge from the crest of the highest peak. "Did any others from Aquaria make it to Galantyne and get out?"

"Yes. There were a few, some were very sick. I fear the plague has followed us to the land. I saw your father's wife and son, Lynette and Conn. They had been infected-- they refused help from the healers."

"Were the Aquarian healers able to help people?" He was startled and had not heard that any inoculation had been functional.

"They had something. I don't know enough about it. All was chaos. I was only able to help a few, Galantyne. I got Sossana to safety, and she is further along the trail, but Pellanor was showing signs of infection."

Kara lifted her weary body. "I will go after Lynette and Conn." 

Dmitri guffawed, "You're in no shape, girl."

Galantyne eyed his sister gently. "Get to the sea, Kara, I will go back for them."

Dmitri followed his gaze in awe. "We must get to higher ground and hurry, Gal. Higher ground and then lower, to the sea. How long until we are at the shore?"

"I would estimate two or three hours. Too bad we aren't able to go directly through the villages to the sea, but Talisman expressly forbade it, saying the prevailing winds and landscape would turn the flow and the smoke south, we need to head north."

Kara stood close to Galantyne, thinking of the meld of minds that had saved her from imminent death, Galantyne's had been one of them, but he had thought that his family was already freed. What might he have done had he known his own children were threatened? What should she have done? She too gazed with shielded eyes at the terrifying sights above and below the mountain. Their view, higher than the shores, the villages, the crystal fields and the swamps, was nevertheless even with the outer entrances and caves that dotted the sides of the majestic peak of the cone-like mountain. She could see the tops of the mountain as could anyone else who would turn to look at its oozing black muck. In what way would this stuff heal the toxins in the air?

"I will find Feniece and the children. I'm sure they are already headed north."

His eyes searched hers for just a moment, bleakness camouflaging his usual proficient exterior. His jaw worked again, and the tiny tick in his cheek that indicated agitation flickered. Kara reached up and touched it, and he grabbed her hand and held it there. "Find them, yes."

They both looked about, people were fleeing, racing against the thunderous black smoke, the threatened heat, the terrible rumblings and the smell.

"Come on Gal. Let's get these people to safety." She grabbed the arm of a woman carrying two small children and pulled her to the summit, then lifted the older of the two children into her own arms and struck out north again, hoping there was enough time. When she looked back, the great blue dragon was circling overhead, and Galantyne was looking up.

*******