[h2]At that moment, in Colchetta[/h2]Distantly rose a cacophony of screams, rumbles, and cracking stone. The floor under Rosella's feet began to tremble. An earthquake?

Above, the floating trees began to change color; like some deranged autumn shift, a metallic glimmer seeped into the quivering leaves, and soon the trees high above were laden with foliage that shimmered with some unearthly color that hurt to stare into.

Sparkles of soft pollen drifted on the breeze and showered peacefully down upon the city.

The trees rose higher, while pollen rained gently down.

A tower on the far side of the city ripped and cracked away from its foundation in a cloud of frightening dust and debris. More buildings throughout the city -- the tallest first -- broke away, twisted, their foundations crumbling, and rose slowly into the sky, following the trees higher toward the clouds, some of them with people trapped inside.

The boy inside the library had been still, uncertain what to do, clutching a map to his chest. But when the walls of the library itself began to shake and twist and drop dust and splinters on his head -- when the shelves shook loose their books and scrolls and pens rolled and bounced off the tables -- he threw his last caution to the wind and sprinted into the hallway, carrying the map with him.

He yelled unintelligibly, shouting at Rosella while the floor and walls twisted around them and his eyes watered from the falling dust. He opened the map hurriedly -- the map that Rosella herself had helped design -- and he pointed at the Ruins of Kimberton, jabbering urgently in a language she didn't understand. He poked a finger at the ruins, then pointed frantically outside. They had to go to the ruins, urgently.

The guild hall cracked and splintered from its foundation, prepared to rise up off the ground altogether, with Rosella and Collin and the boy inside.

Collin, still in the doorway, swayed on his feet, unusually and frightfully calm. Pollen rained down outside. Collin's eyes had turned dark and glassy. The madness of the Ruse had taken him.

The madness was spreading throughout the city. Everywhere people dropped to their knees, or fought one another like wild animals, or ripped themselves apart, while buildings rose up around them and the rising trees were gilded like lords.

[h2]At that moment, on the Rosario island[/h2] The young woman peered hard at Nisa with a hunter's determined gaze -- but she could not understand. She caught the words [i]Rosario[/i] and [i]leave[/i] and heard Nisa's voice lilt upward in a question, and knew she was being asked for a clarification she could not give when she knew so few words of this language. The woman instead gestured with an arm and a wide hand to encompass all of the Rosario tribe -- then she snatched back her fist, meaning the tribe and everyone in it would soon be snuffed out if the warning was not heeded.

"Rosario must leave," she repeated again in a deadly and finite voice. She looked up, her eyes widened, staring past Nisa to the expanse of blue water that had since the morning been peaceful and blue.

Halfway between this island and the next, the water began to swirl and bubble.

The whirlpool turned faster and faster; the water seethed and hissed and roared wider and wider around it, as if being sucked deep and down into a dark abyss far below the ocean floor. Two fishing boats and the screaming fishermen upon them were devoured into the spinning depths. The hungry waves tossed high on the shore of the island, so strong so quickly, as if the ocean planned to take the tribe and the island with it into a watery grave.

The roar of water was deafening, and only a moment had passed.

At the center of the whirlpool -- now wider and more far-reaching than the island itself -- something monstrous was moving against the impossible current. Black spines pricked above the water, followed by the graceful sleek of black shimmering scales, each as big as a house. Whatever moved below was as enormous and terrible as a mountain.

The woman in sealskin tugged on Nisa's arm, hurriedly, back toward the forest through the forbidden gate. It was now far too late to escape to the far island to safety: their only chance lay in the jungle that the Rosario people had feared for so long.

The monster in the ocean -- revealed only by the length of its many spines and scales to be something like a colossal eel -- unfurled and began to circle the island hungrily.

Water roared up onto the beach. The tide rushed in, higher and higher than it ever had before, as if the ocean would try to swallow the island whole.

But, in fact, the island was sinking. Within five minutes, everything would be engulfed by spinning, churning water. The tribe would be the colossus' first meal after eons of slumber.

Above, translucent in the blue calm sky, hung visions of long-rooted trees with silvery leaves.

[h2]At that moment, in the Rune Desert[/h2] The woman in black was quiet while lightning flashed; the storm moved closer again, more ferocious than before, kicking up dust and sand and goats and wagons.

"There is no time for that, small one," she said, in the same language but with a stiff lilting accent. Her deep blue eyes flicked down to the orb held tightly in the boy's arms, and then back to his face. "Any harm done to me is by my own affliction, for the sake of staving off this storm a moment longer -- the East Wind has fallen to chaos, and I and the North Wind can only battle it for so long. Something terrible is coming, we must get your people to a safe place --"

She had spoken too long. A huge, reverberating CRACK echoed from the distance across the dune. By the light of the stars they could see the silhouette of the far mountain -- so long a familiar comfort to the tribe -- was shifting, shaking, and undulating. The dark, rigid picture of the peak changed its shape, twisted and writhed and [i]moved[/i] as if the stone itself had come to life.

Something lifted up out of the distant destroyed mountain: a pair of colossal, leathery wings.

"We must go!" The woman turned and flung her bleeding arm, but this time there as no effect on the spinning storm. The clouds began to gather again, and the voices of the stars were in threat of once again being silenced.

Another funnel sprang up on the sands -- and another, and another. The tornadoes whirled and whipped around one another in frantic destruction. The air was thick with stinging sand and deafening howls.

And then, a cold wind -- the North Wind -- spun around Cyrus alone, like a bubble of safety in a sea of disaster; it gave him clean air to breathe and ensured his link with the stars remained strong, while the world around him was lost in spinning sand. The rest of his tribe was not afforded the same protection.

A hideous, enormous screech rang out over the desert, over the noise of the storm. The tribe would hear the ominous flap of wings, so huge that the storms themselves quivered with each rush.

The mountain itself had awakened after eons of slumber -- and now it had unfurled, and flew over the desert in search of its first meal. Glimpses of the monstrosity showed it to be the color of the desert, spiked with stony scales, with a hungry red eye. As it came closer, its bulk and its enormous wings blotted out the sky.

There hung in the dark sky the translucent images of floating trees with silvery leaves, fading in and out as the storms passed through them, the colossus drew closer, and the tribe screamed.