A litany of curses escaped our mouths as we scrambled away from the colossal projectile flying at us. The massive orb of hyper-condensed earth distorted the air around it until it plowed into the ground hundreds of meters away from us. It lost no speed, and the earth rippled towards us as it buckled under the impact. We could barely maintain our footing as we fled, and it only got harder as more of the enormous mass tore through the plains behind us.

  Drifter kept to the back of our group, looking back constantly to judge the situation. I did not think there was anything to be done about our predicament - truthfully, I assumed we were moments from death - but if we had a chance it would be through Drifter.

  The orb turned out to be about fifty meters in diameter - an enormous meteor more than capable of wiping out a city if it fell from orbit. It moved strangely, though, as if it was too dense for the world itself to cause more than a small bit of resistance to its path. The minerals had been polished into a shiny black void, visually amplifying the effect.

  "Keep going," Drifter shouted to us as he spun on his heel and faced the calamity behind us. I staggered as I turned to question him, but Borin spun me back and pushed me into a running pace away from the conflict.

  I did my best to keep an eye over my shoulder, not wanting to miss Drifter's actions, but I failed to fully grasp what happened. The impact as the orb hit Drifter created a shockwave blasting the rest of us off our feet, even as we'd cleared dozens of meters of space between us. Drifter was pushed back a few meters, then he slowed, and then he stopped, Durin's meteor inert in front of him. It was not an object that could be stopped by bracing oneself and holding out one's arms, but Drifter seemed to do just that.

  We picked ourselves up in a hurry and continued running. Whatever Drifter was going to do to buy us time, it was clear he would be capable.

  Our godling drew his blade and leaped to the top of the enormous boulder Durin had thrown at him. From his new vantage point the destruction wrought by Durin was clear: the plains were dredged up past the bedrock in a line stretching most of the way to the tiny figure on the horizon. The loose upper layer of sand and glass was blown away in a huge swath on either side of the meteor's tracks, creating an enormous valley in the middle of this flat landscape.

  The air was still full of debris, sand and dust and glass, that had yet to settle. It descended as a thick cloud obscuring the world, including his opponent far to the south.

  Drifter could feel Durin's eyes tracking him across the expanse of desert, even through the obscure wall of sand and glass. And he did the same. Drifter had some sense of Durin's presence beyond his physical being, beyond his magical impact. It felt as if they should not exist in the same space together.

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  Was this what it was to be Awakened, to feel the presence of another with the power of a god nearby? I knew nothing of the experience, and Drifter knew little of normalcy, so it was hard to know for sure.

  The battle between the two, here on the plains, was no longer flashy. It was even hard to call it a fight from an outside perspective. Drifter felt that his presence was being rejected, as if Durin was a being he simply could not approach and could not stop, yet he stood atop that meteor asserting that he would stop Durin anyways. Every moment of delay meant that we would get farther away, which meant he could leave sooner himself.

  It was not a fight that Drifter knew how to fight. The strain wore on him in ways he did not know how to describe. Regardless, he knew needed to stay in it for as long as he could.

  The rest of us ran north until our legs gave out. We were lucky in that the mana and the weather were both unsettled from Durin's attack, preventing a storm from forming in the area, but that luck would not hold if Drifter failed to hold the mad mage back, nor if he decided to pursue us endlessly.

  We took only a few minutes to catch our collective breaths before continuing on, proceeding at a fast pace but no longer able to run. My legs burned but my imminent demise kept them moving as fast as they needed to go.

  Night fell. The plains turned dark, a near pitch black in which we could not even see our feet below us in the dim starlight. The moon was a sliver that provided us no relief. Orwyn called us to stop. "We need rest. We just need to hope Drifter saved us, somehow."

  Damien lit a fire and started on dinner, as he normally did. We set up what tents we could in silence, unsure of Drifter's state and unsure of our futures. The food tasted dim, none of us able to process much more than the feeling of hot liquid on our tongues.

  Just as we cleaned our bowls we heard the sound of footsteps in the sand, quiet but growing louder. My first instinct was fear, but that faded quickly; Durin would have killed us long before we heard his footsteps.

  Drifter walked into our circle of light looking more haggard than I had ever seen him. We served him food and water, and we set up the remaining tents with the steel rods he was tasked to carry. I could not even begin to guess why he hadn't left them behind when they began dragging him down, but I appreciated getting my own tent regardless.

  "He knows me, now. We won't be able to pass by as long as I am present. He won't let me." Drifter's words were ominous, in a way. They reflected a discussion that happened with Durin that involved no words, only wills. None of us denied that it was the result of their conflict, though; these were creatures beyond our understanding.

  "If we can't avoid him we're left with few options," Orwyn replied with his head down. "We can't return to Beorne. Eswar has no path further south. Wystole is at war with itself... I suppose that may help us in this case? And maybe he'll leave us alone if we cut into the Blasting Mountains directly."

  The path south from Wystole would take us through a segment of the Blasting Mountains considered passable, at least by some definition. That meant our options were the Blasting Mountains or the Blasting Mountains, but three weeks later and only mildly safer. "If we need to pass through the mountains either way we may as well get it over with sooner," I said. Begrudging agreements went around.

  The next morning we cut directly east. A storm of ash and fire loomed over the mountains on the horizon.