by Tony Johnson
In the corner, near the fireplace, Grizz saw Dart openly weeping into his mother’s lap. His father was rubbing his shoulders trying to comfort him.
I guess it was his little brother who died after all, the Dwarf realized sorrowfully. Poor kid. This is going to be tough on him.
Meanwhile, Captain Griegan smoothed out his mustache and addressed the gathered onlookers. “I am Captain Griegan, second-in-command of the warriors of Serendale.” He paused for a second, almost as if he was allowing the spectators to soak in the title.
“This morning, a man named Saven rode into my city and told me about the death of…” Griegan stopped what he was about to say after noticing Dart and his emotional family and changed his words, “about what happened last night. We were sent here to find this monster and kill it. Since it attacks at night, we will be leaving to search the area immediately. We’ll search every night until our mission is complete. I ask that you stay here in the protection of the Den and do not leave under any circumstance. We will be back either after we kill the monster or when the sun rises. When one of those events comes to pass, you’ll be free to leave. An escort will be provided back to Serendale if you would like to travel there before heading home if you’re from another area.”
There was a general murmuring from the people in the lobby and those who had come out of their rooms upstairs, but no one voiced any objections to the plan. Many of them had seen the damage the monster had done and didn’t want to risk being its next victim.
As the warriors exited out the door, Grizz stayed behind, seeing that Dart was leading his parents towards him. His mother was still crying and his father looked like he was doing everything possible to hold in his emotions.
“Thank you for bringing our son to us,” Dart’s father said, shaking the Halfman’s hand.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. McVaughn,” Grizz said as Dart’s mother hugged him. She was unable to fully reach her arms around him with his armor on, but she squeezed tightly anyways. “Thank you. It’s nice to have our remaining son here with us as we deal with this tragedy,” she said before crying even harder.
With his father taking his mother’s hand to sit her down at a nearby table, Dart stayed to talk to his master before he left with the warriors.
“I want to come with you,” the sixteen-year-old said flatly.
“No,” Grizz said even flatter. “Not a chance. I know you want revenge, but your job is to stay here and protect the Den while we’re gone.”
“Okay,” Dart understood.
Grizz could tell by the boy’s response that he wasn’t too disappointed in his refusal. He already knew how I was going to answer before he even asked the question.
“Just promise me you’ll kill this thing,” Dart begged, angry at the monster, now knowing it had killed his little brother.
“I will,” the Dwarf nodded and then turned and headed outside, fully intending on fulfilling his apprentice’s request.
Chapter 37
The three heroes walked under a moonlit sky, now filled with the flashes of distant lightning and rolling booms of thunder. The smell of smoke hung heavily in the air.
It’s the rain, putting out the fires in Celestial, Steve thought somberly. It’s like cold water hitting a hot frying pan. I can’t imagine how smoky it must be in the city. The monsters lit so many buildings on fire.
“There’s something up ahead,” Kari yelled over the continuously pounding rain. Another flash of lightning confirmed there was a tall, dark structure ahead of them.
“It might be another scarecrow! Get your arrows ready Kari!” Ty teased the Halfling.
After thirty steps of cautiously pacing forward, the heroes emerged into a large clearing in the cornfield. High above several trampled and crushed cornstalks loomed a massive wooden catapult.
For a couple minutes while playing in and enjoying the rain, the three had somehow managed to smile and have fun, temporarily forgetting the damage and destruction of the siege, but smelling the smoke and seeing the catapult brought them back to reality.
“It’s huge,” Kari said in astonishment as she approached the giant structure. “I’ve never seen one up close before.”
As she examined the torsion-powered trebuchet, Ty asked Steve, “How do you think the monsters got so many of them? Those flaming boulders were coming down one after another.”
“I have no idea. Monsters don’t have the intelligence to build catapults by themselves. Maybe they were being collected and stored from successful sieges of past cities. Maybe the Hooded Phantom personally saw to it that some were built. I’m not sure, but I know they had a lot of them. I saw six of them when I looked out the window at the face of the castle and that’s only overlooking part of the city. Considering Celestial only has twelve of their own, it’s impressive they had at least six. I’m guessing they had double that amount.”
Ty sighed. “Monsters using catapults. It’s not something you see every day.”
“Today has been anything but an every day,” Steve corrected.
The two stopped talking and jogged over to the backside of the catapult when they heard Kari groan loudly. She was standing next to a cart, but looking away from it. After seeing what was inside, Ty had to turn away as well. Only Steve stared into the box without flinching. It was filled with the dead bodies of people.
Kari continued to look at the ground, away from the cart. Out of the three companions, she had been the only one to witness the catapulted remains of the murdered farmers crashing into the city during the siege.
“It was horrible,” she mumbled to herself. “The sound they made when they hit.”
“What?” Steve asked, turning around, not hearing what she had said.
Kari didn’t like thinking about what she had seen outside the arena and she certainly didn’t want to go into detail explaining it to Steve.
It’s no use dwelling on the horrible things we saw during the siege. It’s in the past and we can’t change what happened. She quickly changed the subject by asking, “How far have we come so far?”
“Already on it!” Ty called out from above.
Looking up, Kari and Steve gasped in surprise to see that their Elven friend was in the process of climbing up the catapult and was already nearly fifteen feet up the side.
“Excellent idea! Climbing up to a high point in the middle of an open sky when it’s lightning!” Kari shouted up sarcastically.
“There’s a certain thrill from doing dangerous things!” Ty yelled back.
“That’s one of his favorite mottos,” Steve told Kari. “He’s always saying, ‘If you’re not close to getting caught or getting hurt then you’re missing out on all the fun!’”
They watched Ty while grimacing at the danger of the climb, especially because the pounding rain was growing even fiercer, dripping like a waterfall off the trebuchet’s wet-soaked wood.
When Ty’s footing slipped, Kari called out in a motherly voice of concern, “Be careful!”
“Don’t worry, he’s an excellent climber,” Steve reassured, then, raising his voice so Ty could hear, he badgered, “It’s only when he’s at the top that he might fall. Just like the Celestial Qualifiers.”
Ty stopped and looked down shaking his head at his grinning brother. Growing up, whenever one of them beat the other at any sort of competition, they also won bragging rights. Six months ago, Ty had been a high seed in the Celestial Qualifiers, but Steve ended up defeating him, earning the right to joust for the Capital City in the Warriors’ Tournaments.
He’s going to hold that over my head for a long time, the Elf knew, smiling at the jest.
“What do you see?” Kari yelled out through cupped hands around her mouth once Ty had reached as high as he could go.
“You were right what you said back in the sewers,” he shouted to Steve. “We were in the northeast quadrant of the city. The Fluorite is directly north of us and the eastern outer watcht
ower is southeast of here.” With one hand Ty pointed out the location of the markers.
“Good, we are where I thought we were,” Steve announced.
“Alright, I’m coming down!” Ty yelled before starting his descent.
“Okay!” Steve called up at the same time Kari yelled for the second time, “Be careful!”
Turning to Kari, Steve described his plans. “Depending on which of the three cesspools we exited in the northeast quadrant of the sewers, two would’ve left us on the left side of the river, while one would’ve left us on the right of it.”
Kari thought for a moment and said, “Ty said the Fluorite was north of us, so that means we came out of the only cesspool exit on the right of the river.”
“Exactly, which I think will work out better for us. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. Coming out on the east side of the Fluorite sets us up to travel north to Serendale, the closest city. If we would’ve exited on the west side, we would’ve been closer to Almiria, which is roughly the same distance away from Celestial as Serendale, but the terrain is almost all uphill.”
Steve stopped and stared up at Ty, who had been climbing down the catapult, but had stopped and was staring intently back in the direction of the castle. He sees something. He’s squinting, trying to make out whatever it is.
Before he could ask him what he saw, Kari interjected, “We’re in luck. If we’re traveling to Serendale, that means we are going through Whitebark Woods. That’s where I’d typically hunt game for the tavern I worked at.”
“You’ll be able to keep us on the right track and provide us with meals?” Steve smiled. “You might be a more useful companion to travel with than Ty. He does the exact opposite of that. He usually gets us lost and consumes more than enough food for three Giants.”
The tunic-wearing warrior dropped from the catapult and defended himself. “I may have gotten us off course once or twice in the past, but if I didn’t lose our way we wouldn’t have ended up with such great stories of adventure.”
“That’s true,” Steve confessed, then turned to Kari. “Remind me sometime to tell you about the day we woke up only to realize we were in a direboar cave or about the time we ruined a wedding ceremony by accident. Both of those tales happened because of our curious-natured Elven friend here.”
“Whatever the journey ahead has in store for us, it’s bound to be an interesting one with you two along.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Steve asked Ty, trying to gauge his plans after determining their location from atop the catapult.
“Serendale?” Ty asked, assuming Steve would agree. Being brothers for so long, they tended to think along the same lines.
“Yes. If we continue northeast through Whitebark, we can be there in four or five days. We’ll have them send word to Misengard and the other Primary Cities so we can summon a large force of warriors and together make a stand against the army before they advance too far into the kingdom.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Kari said.
Ty nodded in agreement and began heading further into the cornfield. He urged his two fellow travelers to follow. “Come on, let’s get going. We have a long road ahead of us.”
Kari followed behind, but stopped when she heard a rustling coming from the cart of dead bodies behind her. “Ty stop!” she said, since he was still walking, not having heard the same noise.
Her mind raced, wondering what was coming out of the cart. As she and Ty looked back, they saw it was only Steve, rummaging through the cart.
“What are you doing?” Kari said in disgust, but Steve did not answer. He remained bent over the side of the cart, sorting through the dead bodies that the monsters hadn’t launched into the city.
“Here we go,” Ty and Kari heard him happily say, apparently finding whatever he was looking for. Standing up, the warrior tossed each of them a canteen. “Farmers always carry these when working the fields. We’re going to need them if we want to make it alive to Serendale.”
Each of the three held their canteens up to the sky, allowing them to fill with water. After drinking every last drop, they filled them again, only to drink the canteen in its full for a second time. As they filled them up to the brim again, Ty, tapping his foot, proposed, “If we need more later, we can stop and get it. We should really get going.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Steve realized Ty was urging them to hurry. “What else did you see from the catapult?” he asked, knowing Ty wouldn’t have stopped halfway down like he had for no apparent reason.
“Nothing,” Ty lied, looking down at the ground, clearly not wanting to relay what he’d seen.
“What was it?” Kari asked dreadfully.
Unsure of whether to tell the two of what he had seen from the top of the catapult, Ty sighed. Kari’s already worried enough as it is. If I tell her what I saw, she’ll recommend we run through the rest of the farmlands and into Whitebark, but Steve is too injured to travel at that pace.
Ultimately, Ty knew it was wiser to tell his friends what they were facing. “Kari, I don’t want you to worry, and Steve, I don’t want you to push yourself harder than you’re capable of, but I saw dozens of monsters, all mounted on direwolves, direboars, and horses, filing out of one of the city exits. They appeared to be investigating the area around the cesspool where we exited the sewers. They’ll be searching for us.”
“How can you expect me not to worry?” Kari shouted louder than she intended, reacting exactly as Ty envisioned she would. “They’re going to find our footprints in the mud around the sewers! And what about our scent? You know direwolves have a strong sense of smell. We just came out of the sewers. We stink. We’ll be easy to track. They’ll know which direction we’ve headed.” Already, she was nervously glancing back in the direction they had come from.
“Yes, but most the monsters are riding larger beasts,” Ty argued. “The rows in this cornfield are too tightly planted for them to trek through. They will have to go down one of the laneways, setting them somewhat off course from our position. Plus, the rain has washed off the sewer smell. They’ll be lucky if they can track us with their noses.”
“We’re miles and miles ahead of them,” Steve insisted, also trying to reassure her, “We’ll be in Whitebark far before they can get to us. Once we’re in there, they’ll have no idea which direction we’ve headed. Finding us will be nearly impossible. It’d be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Come on, let’s get going.”
It wasn’t long before the refreshing rain that washed most of the stench, sweat, and sewer grime off their bodies grew tiresome. Every strand of the heroes’ hair was soaked and their clothes were so waterlogged they couldn’t retain anymore. To make matters worse, they had crossed the length of the cornfield and were now walking through a seemingly endless apple orchard. Unlike the close, condensed corridors of the cornfield, the orchard was more spread out. The night carried a cold breeze they were walking straight into. Wind whipped down the open aisles of the evenly planted trees, adding to their chill as they sloshed through the wet and muddy ground.
After thinking about it for a bit, Kari apologized. “I’m sorry for being too worried and anxious back in the cornfield. I just prefer being the hunter over being the prey.”
“There’s no need to be sorry,” Steve commended her. “You were considering all the ways they can track us; footprints in the mud, scent. It’s a good thing you’re thinking that way because those things never crossed our minds. You’ve spent time as a hunter. You know the ways you find your prey, and you’re making sure we can’t be tracked as easily. We need that.”
“Don’t doubt your instincts,” Ty suggested. “You have them for a reason. Keep telling us your thoughts. Your input could be what saves our lives.”
“We wouldn’t have made it this far if it wasn’t for you,” Steve added. “I hope you know that.”
Kari nodded, happy the two warriors made her feel
like an integral part of the group. “Let’s hurry and get into Whitebark. I’ll be more comfortable once I’m in there.”
“That might be easier said than done,” Ty said quickly while pushing Steve and Kari underneath one of the orchard trees. “Stay down! I think something is flying above us!”
Quietly, they each stood with their backs against the bark of the tree, craning their necks upwards and looking through the branches and leaves into the night sky.
“Are you sure?” Steve asked, with a look of doubt on his face.
“I’m positive,” Ty replied. “I heard the flapping of wings.”
“I don’t see anything. There’s nothing above us. Not even stars. It’s completely pitch black.” The moment Steve whispered those words, he knew exactly what was above them. Ty knew who it was as well. With anger in their hushed voices, both warriors simultaneously announced the name of the Dark Dragon who had killed Wildwing, the Supreme Commander, and caused so much destruction during the siege.
“Nightstrike!”
Chapter 38
“You didn’t tell us there were flying monsters after us!” Steve uttered to Ty while pulling Brightflame out of the sash around his waist.
“I didn’t know there were!” Ty shot back.
“Keep quiet! I don’t think he’s spotted us yet,” Kari warned, although she exercised caution by equipping her bow and arrow. “The rain, wind, thunder, and darkness will make us hard to find.”
As she spoke, Nightstrike let out a tremendous roar above them, forcing the three heroes to cover their ears.
“I KNOW YOU’RE HERE,” came a booming voice from the sky. The black-scaled dragon could smell the Human, Elf, and Halfling with his heightened senses.
With a force of what felt like an earthquake, Nightstrike landed in the orchard six rows from where the heroes stood. Ten apple trees were crushed under his body as easily as if they were toothpicks. Wasting no time in his attempt to kill the three that escaped the city, the monster whipped his massive spiked tail and reduced a line of five trees to splinters. Gracefully shifting his tail in another direction, he cut through eight more like a hot knife through butter.
