Nightfall (Book 1)

by L. R. Flint

  When the grip of the second tree was released, I flew toward the first as if I had been shot out of an enormous slingshot. I thudded full-bodied against the stone-hard surface of its trunk and my sword sank lengthwise into the thick bark on the far side of the tree, my arm having swung partway around it. The tree reared—or fell forward, I truly could not tell which—and I was flung backward through the air, about thirty feet, ‘til I collided with the first tree in my path.

  I groaned as I slid toward the ground, letting my knees buckle beneath me, just thankful that the new tree was actually a tree, not one of the frenzied monoliths. “Izotz,” my sister’s worried call brought me to attention, I quickly looked in the direction from which it had come and saw that she was being buried deep in a cocoon of writhing, vine-like branches. All I saw of her, before she disappeared in the mass, was her bloodied face and an outstretched hand. I launched myself through the air toward her and her captor, and brought my sword out in front of me so that I could hack away at the vines that wrapped themselves around her.

  As I supposedly brought my sword in front of me, I realized that I did not have it; it was still stuck in the rough hide of one of the many other trees attacking the rest of my companions. I landed ten feet before the tree in which Izar was buried, and quickly checked the situations of everyone else. As a completely heartfelt gift, I sent each of the thrashing trees—that did not have any of my companions entangled in their deadly embraces—an inferno of blue fire. The fires were stenciled with blinding white, as they bloomed on the dry bark, and left the trees to crumble to ash on the ground, as the flames wilted from existence.

  I turned around again and decided to do something I had never even dared try before; I turned myself into an essence which had no physical form. It (more-or-less) worked so I filtered easily into the innermost layer of the tree—its heartwood. When there, I transformed myself into an arrowhead of molten iron and climbed steadily upward, or at least in the direction I took for such (I was a bit disoriented—being in a form that should not have sustained intelligence).

  The entire frame of the tree shivered in pain and the vibrating caused my liquid hot form to lose its shape; I refocused myself into the form of an arrowhead and continued on my upward path, leaving a sizzling tunnel of burnt wood behind me. The sap hissed as it burnt, and the liquid evaporated. I had not gone very far, from what I could tell, before the entire tree just gave up and every inch of it exploded into sticky slabs and slivers, all blasting from the innermost layer of the tree—and me. With a lack of anything holding me up, I dropped to the ground and, glad my plan had worked, I transformed back into my natural form.

  I stood and looked around for Izar; she had landed fifteen feet away from me and was curled up in a ball. I walked over to her and touched her shoulder. “Izar?” I asked.

  “Hmm?” I sighed, the knowledge that she had survived my little attack on the tree, and its explosion, took a great weight off my chest. “Did we die?” she asked. I chuckled and replied that we had not, so she relaxed out of her curled up position and stood, taking my offered hand. “You are smoking,” she said. I looked down and saw that the tree’s sticky blood, which I was covered in, was still sizzling from the heat I had given off as a molten spearhead of iron.

  I chuckled again and said, “Smoking hot.” My sister’s smile was short lived, as she yelled at me to move, her sight having been directed over my shoulder. We leapt out of the way of a falling tree, headed in opposite directions; the ground trembled from the power of the impact and I turned to get a sight of the fallen beast. The branches of the fallen tree writhed weakly in its final moments. As it finally went still, I cast my eyes along the trunk toward the foot of the tree and saw, to my great surprise, the dwarf, Kepa.

  As our sights connected, I nodded my head in congratulations to the small dwarf who brandished his enormous battle ax, in both a sign of victory, and a welcome to any other enemies to battle. I looked around the clearing again and set fire to a few more trees, after which I scanned the others for my missing sword. At first I could not find the sword, and hoped I had not melted it in one of my infernos, but then Alesander called my name, distracting me from my task. As I approached, the elf held my broadsword carefully by the blade, I accepted the hilt, and thanked him. The white runes reflected the funneled sunlight filtering down through the forest canopy, as I took the weapon back in my hands, and Alesander’s dropped away from it.

  The clearing seemed almost silent with the lack of thrashing branches, and people yelling and hacking away at wooden limbs, but if I paid attention I could hear the normal forest noises playing out as a backdrop. I looked around the clearing yet again, that time counting the faces I recognized, some stained with dirt or streaked with blood, but all still alive, their bodies still moving as they willed them.

  Izar’s face was smeared with blood, but after she washed it off I could tell it was not all from the small scratch on her left cheekbone, most of it had dripped from a gouge on the back of her hand, which must have been suspended above her head while she was being entangled in the cocoon of branches. Alaia, when we found her, was alright, other than the excess of scrapes and bruises that she sported all over her body. No one else was hurt as bad as Arrats, and though I felt sorry for him, I was glad that no one had been hurt worse than receiving a broken arm. My friend’s arm, and any other wounds that were bad enough to be worth the time, I healed, before we left the clearing and went back in search of our packs.

  We had not lost either of the two packs up to that point, because the contents of the two belonging to our scouts had been divided up, for the rest of the group to share the extra weight. The scouts were needed to be lightly packed and fleet footed for their purpose.

  When we got to the space where the packs had been deserted, the thought occurred to me that Sendoa had been traveling through that way before, but had forgotten to mention the existence of the lively, moving—and more importantly, attacking—trees of the area. I posed the question for Sendoa and his reaction came also as confusion. “Last time I came through here, which was only a few months ago, these tree-demons were not to be found within seven days of Baso Argi. I felt no need to inform any of you yet, seeing as we should not have run into any until at least three days from now. Obviously things have changed.”

  ~ ~ ~

  One pack was nearly lost the next day, as we crossed a wide, swift river just above a towering waterfall. There were enough boulders in the river that an elf could have easily made it, if not for the spray of the river which left a treacherously slick film on their surfaces. Erramun had flown across the river a few times, and taken the packs which carried food, or other items that would be destroyed by the water, and waited for everyone else to cross. He had offered to carry people, but I did not want to exhaust him, the packs of each elf were incredibly heavy, and his wings were not meant to carry too much more than his own weight. Kepa was small and I thought he might be light enough without his armor, but he had stubbornly refused to be flown over the river, so the dwarf was seated on my shoulders and had a death grip on my shirt, which I was sure was not going to survive the trip.

  Alaia and Izar had just made the trip across the river and were being pulled onto the bank by Sendoa and Erlantz, who were already there with everyone but Arrats and Mattin, who were in the middle of the river, and Kepa and I, who had been the last to enter the river’s raging torrents. Kepa seemed to think that his pack had inherited his fear of heights, and would not allow it to be flown across the water, so it was on his back, adding to the things I had to ensure made their way across. We were near the middle of the river, which was also the deepest—right up to my chin—and the swiftest, when one of the straps securing Kepa’s pack snapped.

  I reached out and grabbed the second strap, which was then the only thing holding the pack in place, and it too, snapped; the next few moments were ones of confusion, as I gave up my footing and dove after the pack, which carried a thirteenth of all our provisions th
at we would be needing for the remainder of the trip, and seemed to carry something that Kepa did not want to let out of his sight. As I was buried under the water, Kepa was dragged under as well, and I did not take notice of him until I had just caught hold of the pack again. Kepa still clutched a portion of my shirt, his cheeks bloated with captured air, and his eyes filled with terror. It would have helped if he had not torn off the piece of fabric he grasped, for the river’s current was whisking him away toward the waterfall and after that, certain death.

  I threw the pack onto the nearest boulder and, amazingly, it stayed there. I dove under the water to get into the fastest possible current and propelled myself toward the small dwarf held hostage by the rushing river. At the same moment that I caught hold of Kepa’s foot, the boulder on which I had left the pack was swamped and it continued its own merry ride toward the waterfall. I did not make much headway up the river until I finally made it out of the middle current, and then I slowly made my way to the nearest boulder, which I managed to hang onto long enough to make sure my passenger was alright. From that point I realized that the pack had disappeared, and when I looked toward the waterfall I saw Erramun swooping down in the hopes of retrieving the pack, before it was broken into thousands of pieces of useless refuse.

  I still clung to the boulder when Erramun flew back over the top of the falls, pack in hand. Kepa had not said a word and clung to my neck, and his teeth had been chattering nonstop. The dragonman deposited the rescued pack with the others and came to fetch my growth. The dwarf was either too cold, or so incoherent, that he did not mind being flown the rest of the way across the river—that is, after we finally broke his grip on my neck. As soon as the dwarf was gone, I easily made my way through the remainder of the restless waters and to the thickly grass-matted bank of the far side.

  I grabbed hold of the thick sod on the bank and hoisted myself up, with a bit of help, and flopped onto the ground like a dead fish. I soon noticed that my human friends were shivering from the chill of the water that had soaked into their clothes and was being cooled by the wind at the top of the cliff, from which the river descended in its grand fall. Kepa’s pack was the only one to get swamped, so blankets were pulled from the others and draped over those who needed them until we had gone further into the cover of the forest, where we started a good, warm fire.

  34 CHAMPIONS’ DUEL

  The next spot of bother we ran into was only two days later and it was not quite what one would normally expect; we ran into quicksand, to which we nearly lost four of our group, and I thought had killed Mattin, until Izar shoved me out of the way and jump started his heart and got his lungs working again. That, however, was not when we lost our pack—that happened a few days later when we were being chased by a gnome.

  Gnomes are tall and that one was no exception, he was three times my height, with a spindly body, vaguely resembling a tree with two branches and two roots, he was grey in color, with light blue tracings all over his hide, and his arms and branches bore drooping lichen. Gnomes rarely attack travelers, but they are extremely curious and have a strong grip; their prodding usually results in the curio being squeezed to death. Anyway, Balendin tripped and before he could right himself, the gnome had caught hold of his pack. The elf slipped his arms from the pack and was able to escape, the exchange was easily worth it, so we let the pack go.

  ~ ~ ~

  Over the next six days, I got to find out what a goblin looked like, kill a couple of them, and be annoyed to no end by their pestiferous little cousins, the hobgoblins. The fifteenth day of our journey we heard ghouls screeching through the treetops. I wanted never to hear the soul-shattering sound again, and wondered why the creatures were permitted to live within the bounds of the sunlit realms.

  ~ ~ ~

  So it was that I found myself kneeling in front of Sendoa, as he drew a general layout of the icebound mountains we would shortly be passing through. “This thin area of the mountain range, which is to the West of us,” he pointed in the direction mentioned, “would be the quickest, though this time of year the stretch of plains bordering the sea will be teeming with basilisks, so we shall be taking the Northern route, which will take a bit longer because of the width of the mountain range, but is less likely to harbor any basilisks. Also, we will be trekking across the wasteland for a whole day’s march.” He blended the picture he had drawn back into the dirt, and looked up at the circle of faces gathered around. “If any of you still wish, you may follow the coast, though I will not be guiding you,” he said, a trickster’s grin spread across his face.

  The firelight playing across the look on my friend’s face made me think of a deranged beast on the prowl. The sinister persona disappeared as Sendoa stood and stretched, yawning before he announced that he was ready to get his greatly needed rest, after the day’s surprises. His words were meant as a joke though, since we had not run into anything throughout the course of the day, and we had been able to march straight through it in relative quiet.

  ~ ~ ~

  As the first bright rays of sunlight split through the trees, they pierced through to my sleeping mind, and in my attempt to ignore them I pulled myself from the realm of dreams and into wakefulness. I rolled onto my back and lay there in silence, listening to everything around me, before blowing the almost black lock of hair out of my eyes; I needed to trim my hair. It was still dark out, but again the bright flash of light pierced my line of sight and I turned to look in the direction it had come from—the West. I started; the sun did not rise in the West.

  A small creature, mostly resembling a small, black, furry ball of fluff, held my dagger, which had caught the reflection of the full moon and shone it in my eyes. “Hey,” I shouted, and caught sight of two large, black eyes before the startled being bounded away and disappeared back into the dimness of an early morning, deep within the forest.

  I only had time to grab my belt and its sheathed occupants before I bounded into the woods, pursuing the little thief. I could hear the creature scurry ahead of me, its hasty movements left a wake of disarray amongst the undergrowth and I found it quite easy to follow its path, though I never did catch up to it. After an hour of chasing the creature who had stolen my knife, I was ready to give up. I made no headway; I could see the creature’s disruption of the plants ahead, but I never gained even a foot of distance on it, and I was sure the others would call me foolhardy for chasing recklessly through unfamiliar woodlands.

  I came to a stop and stood there, I let the creature continue on its way, its prize won. I heard a scuffling behind me and spun around. There was a small arrow on a bare section of ground before me, it was formed with acorns and pointed in the direction I had been going. What is this? I wondered. I turned around again, and there in the direction I had recently been facing, was another arrow, facing the same direction. “Who are you? And what do you want?” I asked aloud.

  There was another bit of rustling ahead of me, so I took a few steps forward and there was another arrow, laid carefully in the dirt. My feelings did not tell me to run back to my friends, so I took a chance and continued on the path I had been following, though at a slower pace, more wary of my surroundings. Whenever I would slow down or pause to take in my surroundings, an unseen visitor would again lay an arrow of acorns, to make sure I was still following in the direction they desired.

  There was a second point when I sincerely considered returning, but still my instincts told me to continue on, even though my head did not. I was again ready to turn back, when through the trees ahead, I caught a glimpse of a bare hilltop. No arrows came when I paused, but the clearing ahead intrigued me; was that what the creature had been leading me toward? I heard a cry of terror ahead, and was startled by the sound of a human voice.

  The pained sound was something I would not blatantly ignore, so I hurried to the hill and climbed it, and lowered myself to the ground as I reached the peak, so that I could look out over the valley below without being spotted. In the bowl of the valley, a sma
ll village was collected into a small circle with an empty space in the center for the inhabitants to gather in, surrounded by the houses and shops in two rings. I wondered how such a small society could survive there, so far from anything else—so far especially from the help of other nearby towns or havens.

  The village square—obviously they had paid no heed to the fact that that indicated that it should have four straight sides, and the same number of corners—was much larger than the rest of the village, it could easily have contained three or four times as many people as I assumed lived in the small establishment. Though it was the middle of the night, I noticed that a few people stood in the square, and there was a ruckus as an old man, with three small children huddled around his legs, was pulled from a house and into the cold, open space in nothing but their nightclothes.

  The antagonists were a group of armored men, and filthy goblins wielding rough-hewn spears. An evil laugh came from one of the men as, from the next house, a family, including a girl my age, was pulled into the square. The man who had laughed stepped toward the girl and stroked her long, messy hair. The girl’s father stepped up to the man and told him to leave his daughter alone. That angered the other man and he hit the father, sending him to the ground.

  “Who are you—that you think you can speak to me?” the man yelled, outraged. “Who do any of you think you are—that you can do anything against me? I own you,” he howled. “I bring you food, I let you live, and this is how you repay me? By withholding my payment?” He sneered at the girl’s father, and turned to look her up and down. “You have no champion, how can you possibly hope to do anything but what I tell you?”