It was Esteri, she knew immediately.
Esteri’s curled, golden hair hung downwards, not quite touching the ground as she slowly drifted towards the mage, over the lava below. Esteri’s stone-still body was surrounded by a yellow halo, as if she too were encased in a magical bubble. Moriallaj beckoned her with his hands until she hovered over the plinth on which he stood, frozen and unmoving. Tears rolled down the cheeks of both Cerana and Jana as they watched their little sister come to a stop in mid-air beside the mage.
“Esteri…” Cerana whispered to herself. “That does not show me she is alive! She hasn’t moved!” she yelled.
Moriallaj grinned and waved a hand over Esteri’s face.
“I see you.” The emotionless words from Esteri’s mouth were hers, but chilled Cerana to the bone. She roared, unable to contain herself any longer. She ran forward – to do what exactly, she did not know – but right now she wanted to tear the head right off the scrawny mage’s shoulders.
“STOP!” Moriallaj screamed. Inexplicably to her, Cerana stopped. She realised Jana was right behind her. “You have seen enough, and wasted enough of my time. I considered keeping you alive long enough to witness my triumph. But I have changed my mind. Archers!” he commanded. Six of the onlooking goblins raised their bows, arrows nocked. The sound of the stretching bowstrings was like a slow, tortuous execution sentence being passed. The sisters embraced and hugged each other close, awaiting their deaths, in no position to change their fates.
This time it was over. There was no-one to help them now. They had miraculously come all this way, just ordinary country girls, with no skills or powers or anything except their undying, unfaltering love for each other. They had endured so much in their quest to save young Esteri, and now that will all count for nothing. Cerana felt sick as she cradled her younger sister in her arms.
After everything they had gone through, now was the time it all ended. They had failed their youngest, and that is what hurt more than anything. The euphoria of finding Jana for the second time, then the hope when they discovered the dragon, all now forgotten, simply dissolved memories as they were about to be executed when they were so close to their goal.
Cerana wept. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Jana cried into her sister’s shoulder, but before she could respond, Moriallaj ordered an end to their lives.
“Fire!” the mage yelled.
The sisters huddled together as the cavern descended into a deathly hush.
But the silence was soon replaced with six goblin arrows simultaneously hissing through the air.
CHAPTER 52 – Unrelenting
The sisters hugged each other tightly as the arrows flew towards them. Cerana buried her head into Jana’s shoulder and closed her eyes, braced for the impact.
Plink-plink-plink-plink-plink.
She should be dead now, but Cerana breathed. Lifting her head from Jana’s shoulder in puzzlement, she gasped and flinched as more arrows smashed against a pulsing, semi-transparent wall of blue energy, just a few feet from their huddle.
Plink-plink-plink-plink-plink.
The arrows thudded into the barrier, causing the magical shield to throb and ripple like a calm lake that had just been disturbed by heavy raindrops. One by one, the iron heads of the deadly projectiles crashed into the shield, leaving the sisters unharmed. Some arrows disintegrated on impact, some split in half. But none of them found their target. Astonished, Cerana shook Jana vigorously. “There’s a shield!” she yelled.
Jana looked up, eyes red from tears, scarcely able to believe she was still alive. “Wha…how?” she sobbed.
“Look!” yelled Cerana, pointing towards the corridor. She could scarcely believe her own eyes. Have I died, and this is just a dream? A hallucination as my soul leaves this earth for the afterlife? Hurtling towards them as fast as her long legs would carry her was the most welcome – and surprising - sight of Coviche. Her long blonde hair bounced up and down as she sprinted towards the barrier. She wore the same beautiful, full-length, light blue silk dress with the ornate gold and silver embroidery on, and Cerana thought she had never been as pleased to see someone in her whole life.
As Coviche neared the partial safety of the barrier, Moriallaj – who still flanked the women from his position on the plinth – cursed and cast a spell. A fiery meteor burst from his hands and rushed towards the women. Still running, Coviche quickly cast a spell of her own. “Ishnar fethis!” she yelled, and a magical blue orb flew forwards, enveloping the meteor and extinguishing its threat. Moriallaj cursed again, and Coviche reached the barrier as more goblin arrows fizzed towards the shield and spat into the wall of pure energy.
“How did you…” Cerana began to ask, her sentence trailing off in bewilderment.
“Well done, Cerana Proudstone. You did it!” Coviche interrupted. “The dragonstone has been neutralised!”
Cerana looked shocked. “But, I didn’t – it’s there, look!” Cerana pointed towards the crystal in the lava, slowly floating and bobbing inside the magical sphere.
“Oh,” Coviche said, somewhat surprised. “That is not the dragonstone,” she said bluntly, as she countered a lightning bolt from Moriallaj with the ease and nonchalance as if she were picking an apple.
“What?! But then how….how are you here? And what is that in the lava?”
“I don’t know what that is, but something must have happened to the dragonstone, something else. The barrier keeping me away is down.”
Cerana was perplexed. “What about your mother then, why has she not recovered?” she asked.
They were interrupted by the cry of the mage. “Kill them! Go!”
The goblins dispersed around the lava lake, attempting to reach the women around the side of the pulsing barrier.
“She must still be too weak from being so close to the stone, and whatever they have done to her. Come, we must get out of this cavern.”
“No!” shouted Cerana. “I’m not leaving Esteri here with him!”
Coviche surveyed the scene around her. “Then we must fight our way through. I’ll handle the mage, can you two take care of these goblins?”
Cerana retrieved her sword and dagger. The weapon she had liberated from Varros glowed bright red, she noticed. “You bet we can.” The words had new defiance to them; renewed vigour and determination. Jana lifted her bow and nodded, albeit with a terrified look on her face.
Coviche smiled. She turned and roared at Moriallaj. “It ends here, goblin! Varigheri mostorfa BERENDITH!” A beam of white energy exploded from her hands, bolting towards the mage like a shooting star. Just in time, Moriallaj cast a spell, and a barrier of ice appeared around his small, robed body. The beam pulsed and pounded at the ice shield for a few seconds before fading away. The mage’s barrier depleted.
“Be careful!” the dragon-woman yelled. “The shield will not last forever!” Coviche nodded towards the barrier where they stood, the one she had cast to save the sisters from death once more.
“Why don’t you transform?” Cerana cried as Jana fired off an arrow towards the advancing pack of goblins.
“I need time to channel the transition. I’d be dead before I finished, “Coviche said, firing a quick bolt of lightning that instantly killed a goblin archer that had flanked their position.
“C!” Jana yelled. “Help!” Jana was firing off arrows as quick as she could, but twenty goblins had now run around the side of the cavern - four of which were archers, who now had line-of-sight to fire at them.
“Take out the archers!” Cerana ordered. “I’ll deal with the swords!”
The goblins were now on the path outside the corridor from which sisters had arrived through, blocking any possible chance of escape.
The mage fought at one side, archers and swordsmen at the other. The three women were trapped right in the middle of them all.
Cerana roared. “Let them come!” she yelled, sword and dagger poised.
Goblin archers who had run anticlockw
ise around the edge of the cavern - along with the group of melee swordsmen - were now approaching the side of the barrier to face Cerana and Jana. The remaining archers ran clockwise with two swordsmen to face Coviche alongside Moriallaj. The magical barrier - positioned at a slight angle to the converging pathways - meant that the group of archers could not all get line of sight at the same time. Realising this, two of them quickly traded their bows for swords and ran down the path towards the women. Jana had managed to take one of the snipers out already, the unfortunate goblin falling face-first into the lava, his small body quickly dissolving into the burning mass.
A goblin arrow whistled past Jana’s nose as she loosed another arrow. Luckily for her, it missed and sailed away across the path. The swordsmen almost upon them, Cerana dashed past Jana to tackle the attackers head-on whilst her sister fired off her arrows into the group. Due to the narrowness of the pathway, the advancing group could only fit three-wide, which made Cerana’s task slightly easier than fighting them all at once.
Growling, screaming and yelling, the first wave of goblin swordsmen reached Cerana. She took up a position at the front of the path before it opened out onto the island on which they stood, as to prevent the goblins from swarming and overwhelming them.
Jana had managed to take out two more of the attackers before they reached their position. She would have killed more if it had not been for some of the melee assailants wielding circular iron shields that prevented the arrows finding their intended targets.
Despite being taller than the swordsmen, the crowd of attackers provided an effective shield for Cerana against the goblin archers. The first goblin to attack her did not last long as she easily parried his clumsy swing and pushed him into the pool of lava below whilst he was off-balance. Luckily, not all of the soldiers were fully-trained fighters, which came as some welcome relief to her. Another swung hard with a gleaming blade; Cerana was able to duck backwards to avoid her head being hewn clean off her shoulders, but her assailant easily blocked her retaliating attack.
Jana, dipping in and out of the cover of the magical barrier, tried to concentrate on the remaining archers who had stayed back to attack from range, but found more success by picking off the melee attackers who advanced up the pathway.
Two snarling goblins attacked Cerana at once, steel ringing through the cavern as she skilfully blocked their attacks with sword and dagger. One of them then took far too long to wind up a huge blow, Cerana wasting no such time slashing her sword across his exposed neck, blood spraying in all directions. But as soon as he fell, another took his place, slashing and cutting with his sword. From her left, a wild swing of steel caused her to take evasive action, which gave another goblin opportunity to thrust his dagger at her heart. She just managed to avoid the blow that would otherwise have killed her, but the blade found its way across her forearm, opening up a deep cut that spilt blood over her arm as she screamed in pain and shock. The goblin grinned at his breakthrough, but Cerana’s fury and adrenaline allowed her to instinctively swipe a devastating backhand attack that sliced clean through the faces of two shocked goblins, who fell seconds later. The blow was sent with enough force to cause a third goblin to stumble following an attempted parry, which allowed Jana the opportunity to fire off an arrow. The shot was so well placed, it pierced the off-balance goblin straight through his throat. The deadly projectile burst through the soft flesh with enough force to skewer the unfortunate goblin behind him right between the eyes. He fell backwards into the next advancing goblin who could not get out of the way quick enough before the lifeless body tumbled into him. In his attempt to sidestep, he lost his footing on the edge of the path, the lava quickly swallowing him. With a brief and welcome moment of respite, the sisters nodded their appreciation to each other. Cerana’s arm was bleeding profusely, but she had no time to tend to it as more goblins attacked.
At the opposite end of the oval island of rock they fought on, Coviche and Moriallaj traded spells, effectively cancelling each other out. Moriallaj dealt mainly in fire-based attacks, and such was the ferocity and power of his magic, it was all Coviche could do to merely keep his attacks at bay without being able to launch any attacks of her own. The skill and ferocity of his spellcasting astounded her; the massive difference in physical size between the two counting for little as Moriallaj kept up his advantage, probing with fireballs, blasts and barrages to pin Coviche down and prevent her from aiding her allies.
During one such exchange between the casters, Moriallaj channelled a massive burst of pure flame that honed in on Coviche like a trailing comet of destruction. The tall dragon-woman used all her strength and resolve to keep the blast from obliterating her on the spot. Her defensive spell shone like a beacon of light and met the fiery blast between the two casters, but Moriallaj’s spell was the more powerful. His small body twitched and trembled with the considerable effort of channelling the fiery force, whilst Coviche used every ounce of energy she possessed as the spell burst from her fingertips. Her sweat-drenched face contorted in a grimace and she moaned aloud as Moriallaj’s spell slowly overpowered her own. She watched in growing horror as the blazing trail inched its way towards her, forcing back the defence of light.
Both spellcasters called on every reserve they had: Moriallaj straining to overpower his enemy whilst Coviche fought to keep the fire from destroying her.
Moriallaj shook violently with the exertion. Coviche was forced to her knees as energy sapped from her by the second. The fire was now just a few feet from engulfing the dragon-woman, her strength and will both fading quickly. But just as Coviche thought that she was defeated and her life merely seconds from being ended, exhaustion claimed Moriallaj, and he broke the spell. The mage collapsed in a small heap atop his plinth, next to Esteri’s unmoving body which hovered parallel to the ground. Coviche also collapsed, fighting to retain consciousness. Her head crashed to the ground, strands of blonde hair plastered against her face. And there she lay, unmoving on the stone floor, her heaving chest the only sign that life clung onto her.
Jana turned to see the huge dragon-woman lying comatose on the hard floor. Dismay and fear instantly threatened to take over her. Cerana was holding off two more goblins as she smashed another in the face, his small body careering off the edge of the path to his fiery death. The goblins were slowly pushing the sisters back onto the rocky island, allowing more of them to spill through at once. But the women had thinned over half their ranks, and now only one archer remained on the ledge, thanks to Jana’s skill with her bow.
From her lower viewing point, Jana did not see that the mage had also collapsed. So when she looked to the plinth and saw only Esteri floating in mid-air, she began to wonder if Coviche had killed Moriallaj. Along with the first signs that they were actually winning this battle, this seemed to lift her spirits. But when she reached into her quiver for another arrow, her heart missed a beat as she withdrew her last projectile.
With one archer remaining, Jana knew that this last arrow must find its mark. She took aim from the edge of the magical barrier and steadied herself for the most crucial shot she would ever take. But Cerana’s cry jolted her concentration, and she saw her sister had been pushed down to her knees, her weapons crossed above her head as she strained to hold a large goblin’s sword from splitting her in half. For a heartbeat, Jana froze. But as another goblin ran onto the ledge, raised his sword and was about it bring it round in an arc to decapitate her beloved sister, Jana sparked once more into life. She adjusted her aim and let fly her final arrow. It thudded into the middle of the big goblin’s back, just as he began his murderous swing towards Cerana’s neck. The goblin dropped his sword, fell to his knees and crashed face-first to the ground. The larger goblin who fought with Cerana was distracted by the fall of his ally, which gave Cerana enough time to heave his sword away from her head, and in one deadly move she sliced open his belly with her glowing dagger. The shocked goblin’s eyes bulged as he looked to his stomach, blood cascading from it like a grues
ome red waterfall. He fell, never to rise again.
Jana reacted quickly. She sprang over to the goblin she had just killed with her arrow, grabbed the protruding shaft and yanked it out of the corpse. She quickly nocked it to her bow and took aim at the one remaining archer, who was doing the same thing as she was. But it was Jana who released her arrow first, blood dripping from the arrowhead as it was unleashed from her bowstring. It flew through the air and impaled the goblin on the side of his nose as he aimed, crashing up through his skull and into his tiny brain, killing him instantly.
The last archer was down.
Cerana booted one more goblin into the deadly lava and stabbed another in the eye with her dagger. The goblins were weakening. The sisters were winning the battle.
CHAPTER 53 – The Upper Hand
Coviche slowly began to rise, shakily getting to her knees and groaning with exhaustion and pain. She looked up, only to see Moriallaj rising too. As exhausted as she was, she awkwardly rose to her full height, albeit on shaky legs. Blood trickled down her face from her temple following her crash to the ground, and she felt like at any moment she would fall again.
But this was her opportunity.
The mage was still groggy as he stumbled around atop his plinth, disoriented. Coviche raised her tired arms, muscles groaning at her with the pain. She summoned all her remaining strength and cried out, “BYSTHANTO MEJARIA!” Lightning crackled from her fingertips and danced their way towards the tottering mage, bolts of energy pounding into him. The small robed figure convulsed violently as the energy coursed through his frail body. He screamed in pain as spasm after spasm wracked through him, energy crackling away all around him. Finally, he dropped to the ground like a stone. Coviche sank to her knees once more, drained and spent. She stared at the ground, struggling for breath.
She had done it. The mage had fallen.
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