by Ross Turner
She took off again at a dead run, this time back towards Compii Tower.
Only a few seconds later Cole and Rose burst from the fog, materialising directly in front of Isabel and Zanriath. Isabel screamed as she saw them, only at the last second, their horses on course to collide disastrously with Rose.
But at the last moment, in a single, enormous bound, Rose avoided the crash, and cleared both horses and riders easily, returning to her stride without a misplaced step, and charged head on towards the monstrous army of demons emerging from the fog.
“COLE! NO!” Isabel screamed in shrill terror, wheeling her horse only to watch her son vanish amongst the approaching black swells of malevolence and hate.
“DON’T DO IT COLE!” Zanriath bellowed after his fading son.
But their voices faded and were lost amongst the roaring screams of hatred and lusting.
“GO!” Was all Cole’s parents heard over the increasing din of the approaching mass, their son’s solitary command echoing endlessly in the fog all around.
With tears standing in their eyes, they looked back towards Hinaktor, knowing what they would see. As expected, they found themselves face to face with yet more demons, emerging from the water to block their path, standing menacingly between them and their destination.
A vast army surrounded them, upon the narrow corridor suspended above the ocean, offering them no means of escape.
It seemed they had failed before they had even warned all four islands. How could it have come to this?
Isabel’s cheeks were strewn with yet more fresh tears, even as she readied herself and gathered her angry, seething will, fuelled by hate and even a somewhat ironic vengeance - revenge for what she knew these beasts would unquestionably do to her family.
She didn’t care what happened to her at that point. Her son was about to give himself to an army for the slaughter, and there was nothing she could do to help him. It seemed she too was destined to become one of the massacred, right here, alone with her family, amidst the dense fog that engulfed everything it touched.
Grimly, the battle begun, not that Isabel expected it to be much of a contest. She and Zanriath dismounted resolutely and gathered their wills, with sorrow set deeply in their hearts.
They prepared themselves for the butchering that surely would end the troubled and pathetic efforts that their lives had somehow become, and the demons rushed from all directions in a bloodthirsty and frenzied charge.
30
Hearing his parents’ cries echoing behind him only drove Cole to fight harder. He had never been in a demonic confrontation before, and so, despite all his careful preparations and training, he was, to all extents, discovering strange new abilities even as he used them.
He leapt from Rose’s back and smashed into the hard ground with a great crash, the bridge even seeming to shake as he landed, though the impact did not hurt him. He rolled to his feet, instantly ready, the vibrations ricocheting through his body.
Rose, however, had not stopped, and the young demon thundered into the horde of beasts, most of which were considerably larger than her, like a charging rhinoceros.
Those unlucky enough to be in the vicinity of her initial impact were sent spiralling through the crowds lining the narrow bridge, knocking many back over into the water. And those that were not, fell victim to her vicious slashing claws and ripping teeth.
The carnage she created was truly merciless.
She tore great chunks of black flesh and bone from everything around her, attacking in a blinded and relentless rage, fuelled by something so furious that she became nearly unstoppable. Her marauding havoc only intensified as she tasted blood, and her attacks became more and more monstrous and unforgiving.
Cole’s attacks were no less devastating, nor relentless, and he for some reason seemed not to need incantations to direct them. He focused first on the thick mass of bodies before himself and Rose: the initial army that lined the bridge for as far as he could see. His first demonic strike was not aimed at any demon in particular, rather at them all, and, not really knowing what to expect from his own ability, he simply improvised.
Cole poured what could only be described as somewhat generous quantities of his strength into his attack, just to be on the safe side.
Those his strike first touched were, in effect, obliterated. It was not a struggle, it was not a contest - he simply removed them from physical existence, casting them back to their realm without effort. As his power rippled down the wave of beasts, its effects slowly lessened, and those further back were only fatally wounded, as opposed to being completely annihilated.
However, his experimental attack had cost him dearly, and sweat poured from Cole’s forehead already as he repeated his deadly strikes, but more and more waves of demons kept coming, rising murderously from the waters, never ceasing to replenish their fallen ranks.
Beside him now, having been stood still for a few minutes, demons clambered over the sides of the bridge and Cole was forced to fight them off too, resorting to both his demonic and elemental abilities.
Some he burned to cinders, and others he destroyed demonically, but he was fatiguing quickly under the sheer weight of numbers engulfing him. Rose had sustained several injuries and was fighting more and more desperately by now, simply just to stay alive. She used both her physical prowess and her demonic power to fend off the still encroaching beasts, desperately trying to force her way back through the masses towards her Cole.
She had to protect him.
Her wounds however, were beginning to take their toll. Deep gashes to her ribs and stomach bled profusely, and she limped heavily on one of her front legs, a demon having swung a lucky attack that had gouged deeply against the bone. And her injuries were only worsening.
Indeed they were both faltering, and their frantic efforts to reach each other fell futile against the walls of demons swallowing them.
Behind them, Cole’s parents were faring just the same, perhaps even more poorly, than their son and his demon. They were both exhausted.
Zanriath’s blazing columns of fire erupted all around, reducing demons to ash left, right and centre. Isabel’s strikes and screeching incantations were relentless as she felled the monsters ceaselessly, fuelled now by sheer desperation, for they were both tiring and weakening.
Their horses had been lost long ago to swiping claws and gashing teeth and the bridge was stained horribly with the blood of animals, demons and humans alike.
Each felled demon’s death was accompanied also by a terrible scream, as the lost souls infecting that particular demon’s mind, being very much entwined with it, also felt the pain and suffering inflicted upon the beast housing it.
But even so they remained adrift in the great ocean whilst the demons were banished to the demonic realm, and trapped within its blackened walls. The only problem being that, as soon as Thorn discovered how to open the path to the demonic realm, they would return, along with those demons banished by Isabel, and the carnage would only worsen.
There was precious little time before that terrifying possibility became an all too devastating reality.
With this horrible realisation, Isabel’s hopelessness reached new levels, as she saw, for some reason, just exactly how different her and her son’s tasks were, even as she still fought for her very survival.
How on earth were they going to endure? Let alone succeed?
It seemed that, quite simply, they were not.
In exhausted desperation, Isabel and Zanriath fell back to Cole and Rose’s position on the bridge, somehow forcing their way through the monsters all around and managing to reach the young heroes. The four of them formed a tight circle and clung to their last few moments of life, struggling dreadfully.
Combining their efforts, Cole and Zanriath cast vast sweeping arcs of searing flames in all directions, completely engulfing the four of them in a cocoon of scalding fire, giving Isabel and Rose a few precious seconds to recoup.
Then the
flaming barrier would weaken and the demons would charge through once more, often scalding themselves horrifically in the process. Then Rose and Isabel would drive them back, giving Cole and Zanriath a chance to recover. But the fiendish swarms were endless, and, before long, their strength could hold out no longer.
Nearing their limits, Isabel and Zanriath’s next attempts at defence failed and they dropped to the floor, exhausted, leaving Cole and Rose, both also near their extremes, to fight off the encroaching army alone.
Several demons capitalised on this falter, and were immediately upon them. Rose received several even deeper wounds to her side, providing a selfless defence for Cole’s parents, but nevertheless, she could not hold them off.
Next it was Cole’s turn to shed fresh blood as he received a gaping cut to his upper back. He could feel the hot blood mixing with his sweat, running menacingly down his back and legs, even as he incinerated the beast that had inflicted the wound.
Isabel’s leg was snatched between the claws of yet another monster and, in Rose’s struggles to free her, the monsters inflicted deep wounds to both Isabel’s thigh and stomach. Losing their grasp on Isabel, they settled instead for Zanriath, and inflicted yet again fatal wounds, but this time to his chest, in their attempts to claim their prize.
It was, finally, at the hopeless sight of his parents and his dear Rose crumbling to the floor, overwhelmed, fatally wounded, bleeding, dying, that Cole lost control.
He reached out for Rose and, at the last possible moment, her thoughts reached out to his, saving him from being completely lost in the uncontrollable surge of power that followed.
Looking up from the cold, stone floor, her blood spreading out around her in a great pool of thick, red, oozing heat, Isabel could barely even focus her vision.
Her head was spinning and her body was unresponsive, from both fatigue and from injury. She saw the encroaching demons halt their advance, the ever-present jealous lust in their emerald eyes replaced by a deep, compelling fear.
Flitting her blurry gaze across to Cole and Rose, Isabel could see her son’s body giving way, unable to support even his own weight. Rose was the only thing holding him up, keeping him alive even, both physically and mentally, and she too was on her knees.
Isabel suddenly realised what was happening and, knowing that now it was inevitable, was unsure whether to be glad or to be afraid.
She recalled quite clearly her own learning and experiences from her past, from those times when she had discovered new levels to her own demonic ability. But her advancements had never been driven by such rage as she felt emanating from her son now, and she could not begin to imagine how he was coping.
In actual fact, he wasn’t.
The next thing she saw was a blinding flash of white light. The pure white radiance robbed Isabel of her vision and she was forced to shield her eyes, save the damage be permanent.
It was from Cole that the light originated. His skin took on a strange glow that grew brighter and brighter until it became totally incandescent.
The light not only burned at Isabel’s eyes, but it overpowered her mind also. Cole’s immense power could not be contained any longer, and it burst from his body with the might of a thousand storms.
In the space of a heartbeat, the power within Cole erupted from him like an explosion, and an unstoppable white sphere burst out from where he stood, rapidly expanding and consuming everything it came into contact with.
It pushed the water below him back, forcing even the might of the ocean to recede against his will, engulfing everything. The demons that Cole’s white sphere reached were not killed, but instead their bodies were removed, destroyed, obliterated, vaporised so that no evidence of their existence remained. Only their souls survived, and they were cast far back into the depths of their hideous realm.
But his power did not stop there. He could not stop it. It was spreading freely now. It continued to run its course until it had drained Cole of all his strength, pushing vast quantities of water away for several miles in every direction, and annihilating any demons unlucky enough to be within that radius, which, it seemed, was the vast majority of them.
Finally, Cole’s seemingly limitless endurance ebbed and faded, and the sphere vanished also, leaving behind it no trace of the demons, save the bloodstains on the bridge. But these stains were washed away regardless as the enormous void in the ocean, left behind also by the sphere’s disappearance, was immediately filled. The rapid change in pressure caused a huge surge of water to rush over the bridge and high up into the air, soaking them all, and leaving the bridge somewhat flooded.
Coughing and spluttering from the eruption of water that had caught them by surprise, Isabel and Zanriath dragged themselves slowly and unsteadily to their hands and knees. Looking up through blurry eyes, they saw their son, drenched and shaking, lying in a collapsed heap on the floor with his Rose lying protectively by his side. His head only just cleared the half a foot or so of seawater that sloshed about on the perfect floor, stained black and red.
Dragging herself forward with tremendous effort, Isabel crawled over to Cole, her wounds stinging painfully from the salt. Rose looked up at her sorrowfully, barely able to even lift her head.
“Is he ok?” Isabel managed to croak to the weary, wet and still bloodstained demon, shaking from either cold, or shock, or loss of blood, Isabel did not know which.
Rose nodded vaguely, though not convincingly, in response, and nudged Cole’s arm gently. He stirred slightly but did not wake and Isabel could sense, even in her exhausted state, how drained he was.
His strength was completely spent.
He had saved them from the demons, but at what cost?
“Ok.” Isabel replied in a hoarse whisper, nodding, her throat burning, summing up her thoughts and emotions rather unwittingly in that single, pointless syllable, not knowing what else to say.
She collapsed again to the floor and fell unconscious. She was lucky that the water was gradually clearing and spreading out over the vast lengths of the bridge, else she would have drowned.
Shivering from the cold and drained from the battle, Isabel’s blood, and that of the rest of her family, still stained the perfect, polished stones of bridge all around her, mixed up in the covering of salt water, reddened by death, and blackened by evil.
31
Isabel was awoken by a steady clicking sound. The noise seemed to reverberate around her as she slowly recovered her senses. Eventually she became aware that she was bobbing rhythmically up and down, and her stomach churned slightly. Her neck and back ached fiercely and her eyelids were heavy as stone.
She felt a strong arm wrapped around her waist and as she began to move the bobbing slowed. Opening her eyes, her vision gradually returned, blurrily at first, but it finally cleared. As it did so, she saw the deep, rich, brown eyes that perfectly matched her son’s looking back at her, as Rose turned her head back to check that her passengers were ok.
“Isabel?” Zanriath’s weary voice sounded as she sat up and began to clear her thoughts.
He was sat behind Isabel on Rose’s enormous back, and Cole was propped, still unconscious, in front of her. A combination of Zanriath’s firm hold and Rose’s steady movements had kept her and her son atop Rose as she had trudged slowly through the fog and towards Hinaktor once more.
“Are you ok? How are you feeling?” Zanriath spoke again.
“I…I think I’m ok…” Isabel managed to say; unsure really whether or not that was true. Suddenly she remembered the gashing wounds she had received, recalling the searing pain and the loss of blood. She quickly ran her hands across her body, checking for injury. Strangely, she found none. Her leg and her stomach, where she was certain she had been badly wounded, were both healed.
Rose too, where there had been deep cuts and gashes on her side, seemed to now be fine, although she was clearly exhausted.
Confused, contemplating the prospect that she had imagined their injuries completely, Isabel
decided to let the matter slide, grateful for the fact that they had survived at all, let alone unscathed.
“How’s Cole?” She asked then, wrapping her tired arms forward around her young son.
“He’s not woken yet.” Her husband told her. “But he seems to be ok.”
Isabel nodded, but still did not let go of Cole. She had almost lost him enough times already, and now that she had him safe again, as always, she would do her utmost to protect him. Though the fear in her mind warned her that her best would probably not be enough.
Rose continued on through the heavily hanging fog. Cold moisture clung to their clothes and Isabel shivered violently, barely able to even do that due to her fatigue. Zanriath wrapped his arms more tightly around her waist. They could not afford to stop.
“We lost the spare clothes and food.” He said quietly. Isabel nodded again.
Silence seemed to hang for some time before her husband spoke again, this time his tone questioning.
“What happened Isabel? What did Cole do?”
“He lost control of his power again.” Isabel replied, spluttering slightly as she choked up some seawater she had swallowed. “He created a demonic barrier to stop the demons.”
“A barrier? Like the rings you use?” Zanriath asked.
“Yes.” Isabel replied. “Only, Cole used infinitely more power to create his, so it didn’t misdirect the demons, it destroyed them.”
“All of them?” He asked hopefully.
“I don’t know.” She admitted. “It was extremely powerful, and probably covered quite a distance.”
Though she was still in no condition for such an exertion, the question was indeed one of precedence, and Isabel cast out a quick thought over the ocean. What she found was pleasing, but only slightly.
“There are only handfuls left.” She reported, opening her eyes. “And they’re exhausted too, probably from outrunning it.”
