Peter and the Kuroneko (War of Contractia)

by Dixon, TJ

  My head is spinning like mad and pounding like a drum as Elucia reaches a hand towards me, or perhaps Lucy. I fall to the floor. The way I am now it is the only way I can dodge. I hear Lucy’s voice but not her words. Then I hear Dairon singing in a beautiful lilting voice that reminds me of the wind on a spring day. I don’t hear his words, but I wouldn’t understand them even if I did.

  Chapter 17 (Multiple)

  (Lucy)

  Elucia stands there staring at me unable to move or use magic. There is no escape for David. The enchanting words of Dairon’s song are filled with ancient magic. All they will do is return David’s soul to Hinata, but when he has returned to her the soul gate will do its work. It isn’t strong enough to contain him, but it is a gate and not a prison, so it doesn’t have to.

  The Kuroneko and Envoy are fighting desperately. I can see the earth spears and the Kuroneko’s claws but I know there is far more to her attacks than just that. The Envoy is probably just using those dark lances but their power is not a simple or weak attack, and should not be underestimated.

  Kai and Ara Kii stand behind me. There is nothing they can do in a battle between such powerful beings. It is not often you witness a battle between a god and a being even more powerful. Of course the Kuroneko isn’t the strongest of gods. Against the most powerful of gods even the Envoy would lose. The Kuroneko is buying us time though, and we don’t need much more.

  The song finishes and though I cannot see David’s soul getting dragged out of Elucia I can instantly sense the change in her. After a moment she collapses to the ground. Her own soul has been suppressed for too long, so she cannot simply get up and start moving straight away. In fact she is unconscious now. With Peter on the floor unable to move that leaves us two people to carry and when Ara Kii is gone that will leave only Dairon and Kai to carry them.

  One of the black soul gems in the soul gate explodes as David must be struggling to resist its pull. I see blood seeping through Hinata’s clothing, but it is not going to kill her. I will heal her once the soul gate has done its work.

  I cannot sense David’s soul, but I can sense the Spirit of the Mountain as it enters the soul gate. The soul gate is designed to send a human soul to either a god or nature spirit as a sacrifice. For it to work there must be two souls within the body that the gate is bound to. There must also be a god or nature spirit with a strong connection to the place where the human body rests. In this case there are both, but it is the Spirit of the Mountain I am relying on.

  The stronger of the two souls will be sent to the nature spirit, but if the weaker soul is too strong it risks being sent too. That is why someone young whose soul is still weak like Hinata is perfect. As a mage she was of some use to us the whole time but, unlike Peter or even her sister Asuna, she was not strong enough to risk losing her soul.

  I sense the Spirit of the Mountain leave the soul gate, returning to his body with David’s soul. The Envoy realises the danger just in time and ports away just as massive earth hands try to grasp her. The Kuroneko jumps back to avoid getting caught in them. Thanks to the Spirit of the Mountain and his earth hands we don’t have to worry about the Envoy for now.

  “Heal the girl now if you wish me to take her.” The Kuroneko tells me. I heal Hinata and before I can even say anything she is gone. So are Ara Kii and the Kuroneko. That just leaves Kai, Dairon, Peter, Elucia and myself, but both Peter and Elucia are still unable to move.

  “Dairon carry Peter. Kai take Elucia. We need to get out of here quickly. Preferably somewhere the enemy can’t find us, and definitely not the forest. That would be suicide now the Kuroneko is no longer distracting the elves.” I say. Before I have finished Dairon and Kai are holding Peter and Elucia.

  “Follow me.” Kai says and dashes towards the far wall. With three knocks a small door opens and crawling she leads the way. I float between her and Dairon. The door closes behind us and we are in pitch black. Then a dim white light glows from Kai’s entire body. It is enough to see by but still far weaker than Hinata’s purple gem.

  “How far can we get if we continue this way?” I ask as we continue to follow Kai down the tunnel. It is tall enough for Kai to walk through with a spare foot or so above her head.

  “We’ll need to leave the secret tunnel for the deep mines. Once we are past the deep mines though I can take you through the newer tunnels until we reach the dwarven homeland.” Kai says.

  “The dwarven homeland?” I ask in shock. “You know where that is?”

  “I’ve never been there before, but yes, I know where it is.” Kai says.

  “Will the dwarves welcome us?” I ask dubiously.

  “More so than the elves, as long as we don’t mean them any harm or try to deceive them. They can tell when you lie or try to deceive, so honesty is always best with a dwarf.” Kai tells me.

  I don’t have any better ideas. I had planned to use the portal. If I could remove my curse then I could send us home myself, but in this form opening a portal is impossible. With David dead the enemy shouldn’t be able to anticipate or follow our moves as easily. I was pretty sure his power allowed him to see and hear us, but thankfully he was unable to read my mind, at least at a distance. He thought I planned to use Kuroneko, perhaps assuming I didn’t know about the Spirit of the Mountain, or at least didn’t know how powerful it is. Rarely is a nature spirit even stronger than a god. This is not the first time I have been to these mountains though. I fought that nature spirit once, but in this form I doubt he recognised me.

  “So Kai, how do you create that light?” I ask to distract myself from the dire situation we are in. I haven’t seen magic quite like it before, which is unusual since I have seen most magic before. Hinata’s glowing stone was just standard earth magic but to use your body instead of a stone would require a completely different magic.

  “It is dwarven magic. A full dwarf can create a much brighter light, but as a half-dwarf this is the best I can do, because my body is so different.” Kai says without really explaining how she does it. It doesn’t sound like a human could use it though.

  “It sounds like your father is a good person and taught you a lot. What was your mother like though?” I ask.

  “She’s a good mother. My parents both wished me well when I left and helped me get past the village guards safely. My mother taught me everything I know about cooking, but I will never be as good a cook as she is. It’s normally the man’s job to cook, but dwarven cooking was never really to my taste, or to my mother’s.” Kai says sounding happy as she talks.

  “If life was so good, why did you leave?” I ask.

  “It was boring.” She says but I’m not sure I believe her.

  “So how long were you exploring on your own?” I ask her, not wanting to pry too far for now. We need her help if we are going to survive so it is not wise to upset her.

  “Only a few months. I had a great time exploring the tunnels and mines here, before the enemy captured them. I had a horrible time in the forest though. If I never see another forest it will be too soon!” Kai says with a shiver.

  “If I never see another tunnel it will be too soon.” Dairon says unhappily as we walk down the tunnel. “A forest on the other hand would be great, assuming it wasn’t filled with enemies.”

  “The closest we have to that is a forest full of enemies that will kill you if you enter it again.” I tell him.

  “I’m just glad the tribe up there isn’t my tribe. I still want a forest free of enemies though.” Dairon says. “Was your home in the forest, Kai?”

  “I can’t really talk about my home. My parents made me promise not to.” Kai says apologetically.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it then.” Dairon says with a shrug.

  “What was your home like?” Kai asks him.

  “It was a forest very similar to the one above us. Not exactly the same, but the trees and plants were more or less the same. Many of the creatures were different, and our tribe was different.” Dairon says.

>   “What sort of creatures were there?” Kai asks and Dairon begins to describe them. I don’t pay much attention though, because I sense something ahead.

  “Kai, what’s that up ahead?” I ask urgently.

  “Nothing to worry about. Just a kari, like that one the elf woman annoyed in the forest. As long as we don’t step on it, it isn’t going to bother us.” Kai tells me. That is a relief. If we have to fight even a weak monster we are more likely to draw the enemy to us.

  (Nairon)

  The air is still as we sit on our spiderflies atop three trees. The light is dying. We are just waiting for orders so there is nothing to do. The battle is under the ground and will soon be won.

  “Do either of you have any plans for the victory feast?” I ask Ishki and Seraph. Seraph smiles evilly and even I feel a bit nervous.

  “A jug of blood wine and some roasted kari.” Seraph says. It seems there was no need to be concerned. The blood wine is made from animal blood and is always served at feasts. It tastes great so I will be having some too, though only a glass or two. A jug is excessive but it is a feast so there is nothing wrong with that. Kari are small animals that are always served at feasts too. Magic is used to enlarge them and they taste delicious roasted with mild spices.

  “And you, Ishki?” I ask.

  “I’m sure I’ll have a few glasses of blood wine, though a jug is more than I can handle. I prefer snake and spider meat rather than kari though, so that’s what I’ll be eating. A pity we can’t roast these ugly beasts.” Ishki says with a grin.

  “You’ll be the one getting roasted if you try that. I can understand why you’d want to though.” I tell him with a sympathetic grin. I hate these awful things just as much as he does. “Do you both just plan to eat and drink though? There’s other entertainment too.”

  “The spymaster is dead.” Ishki says urgently, looking and sounding stunned. His words are more than enough to stun me. Seraph never really understood how powerful he was so she seems unsurprised.

  “That’s the problem with humans. Too weak.” Seraph laughs.

  “The one thing he wasn’t was weak.” I say shaking my head. “He probably wasn’t as strong as the Envoy, but no other elf in our tribe could beat him in a fair fight. Not that he would ever fight fair.”

  “There’s no way an elf would lose to a mere human.” Seraph laughs.

  “Orders!” Ishki says urgently. “We are to hunt and kill the enemy humans in the mines and tunnels below!”

  Seraph looks as unhappy as I feel but I don’t show my feelings and neither does Ishki. We are too experienced to do that. I take a deep breath and then calmly give the order that I really I don’t want to give. “Down the shaft.”

  I urge my spiderfly to jump down to the forest floor. I enjoy the forest wind and floating leaves, racing past my face for the last time until this hunt is over. Landing beside the tunnel that those drake riders made, I take one last breath of pleasant forest air. Then I urge my spiderfly forwards and lead the way into the dark dismal tunnel.

  The tunnel slopes steeply downwards towards the mountain and is big enough for a drake to pass through without too much trouble, so on our spiderflies there is plenty of room. There is scattered earth and are many loose stones lying throughout the tunnel where the drakes threw them. It was fine watching from far above as the drakes dug this tunnel, but I never expected to be going through it myself.

  It takes only a few minutes to reach the end and come out in the mine, but even those few minutes seemed to last forever. I can only hope we find those humans quickly so we can return to the forest. If they are the same ones from before we may have trouble, but we are not the only hunters looking for them. I can hear other spiderflies racing through the tunnel behind us.

  As the next group catches up I start to lead my group through the mine. The mine’s winding grey tunnels and large chambers were carved using both magic and some sort of bladed tool. In the first chamber are piles of stone and ore, as well as carts filled with ore. The humans we captured were digging here but they are gone and I sense the remains of unnatural magic. The enemy must have used a portal. We are soon past the large chamber where our prisoners were and enter the first tunnel we find.

  We delve deeper into the mine and soon the other spiderfly riders have gone their own way. There are enough of us that if the enemy are in the mine we will find them, and whoever does so can easily let the others know where. Ishki is my specialist at communication magic, so if it is us I will be relying on him to pass the message along the wind to the other groups.

  “The wind sisters have entered the mine.” Ishki tells me as we race along the winding grey tunnel. Then we come out in a small grey bricked chamber. It is empty and there are no obvious exits other than the large square gap in the wall we just entered from.

  “Dead end?” I ask looking at Ishki and Seraph. They both nod, so I turn my spiderfly, but as I do so I sense a small breeze blowing from the far corner of the room. It is only there a moment. “Wait!”

  “What is it?” Ishki asks cautiously.

  “I sensed wind over there. There must be another exit.” I say and cautiously approach the corner. With the wind gone I have no way of telling exactly where the exit may be. It was definitely here somewhere though. After studying the wall I decide we should wait. When the wind blows again I will be able to tell where it is blowing from.

  We wait a while and Seraph shows her displeasure the same way as normal. I don’t think it is conscious, but she repeatedly taps the middle finger of her right hand against her thumb. She isn’t really very patient at the best of times, and none of us are very happy to be standing around waiting in this awful mine. We’d much rather be waiting atop the trees of the forest above.

  Then I sense it again. This time I am ready and work out immediately where it is coming from. I jump down from my spiderfly and kneel by the gap. It is perfectly hidden, but as I gently apply earth magic a small hole appears in the wall. It is too small to ride the spiderfly through, but on the other side is a large grey tunnel very much like the one we rode through to get here, although there appears to be about an inch of water on the tunnel floor. I can see the tunnel but my senses still don’t extend past the wall.

  “We’ll send our mounts through first. Then we’ll enter the tunnel.” I tell Ishki and Seraph. Then I use magic to urge my spiderfly through the gap. Just like normal spiders they can squeeze through much smaller gaps than you would have thought possible. I watch as Seraph and Ishki’s spiderflies squeeze through right after mine. Then I get on my hands and knees and crawl through.

  As my head passes into the tunnel I sense danger. Just in time I raise a wind shield, which barely holds back the fireball. Our mounts however are instantly turned to ash. Seeing they are already lost I quickly pull myself back into the chamber, almost bumping into Seraph’s legs.

  I jump up onto my feet and ready another wind shield. Sure enough the head of a huge snake sticks out the hole and another fireball is shooting straight at me. I block it much easier this time though, because I am expecting it. Two bolts of lightning strike it. One to the right of me jumps out of Ishki’s hands, whilst one to my left comes from Seraph’s hands. I hold my wind shield steady even as I see the snake’s head explode. I am glad I do because a moment later there is a huge explosion where its head was.

  The wall collapses sending bricks flying as flames roar towards us. The wind shield is way too weak to hold back the sheer power of that explosion, but it lasts a fraction of a moment and that is all the time Ishki needs to pick us all up with wind magic. We are thrown through the air with his flight magic as flames race after us propelling shards of stone and brick.

  We just about outpace them and make it out of the chamber and round the first bend in the tunnel. The flames don’t make it quite as far as that and the shards bounce back when they hit the wall of the tunnel. I breathe a sigh of relief and then hear an almighty bang.

  “I guess we’re not going that w
ay.” Ishki says with a nervous laugh. I use my senses and realise that the chamber has now collapsed completely.

  “Looks like we need to replace all our mounts this time.” Seraph says sounding unhappy.

  “This time…?” A small cheerful sounding voice says. I gulp and turn. It is the Envoy. “I don’t remember your report from the last time.”

  (Kai)

  The door we entered through opens again. I don’t sense anything yet, but the wall here blocks your senses in both directions. Whatever comes through that gap is going to mean trouble, and I gulp when I see what does come through.

  Spiderflies and pyroconders really don’t get on too well at all. Putting them in the same place is a bit like storing large pots of oil in a fireball range. You just know there’s going to be trouble, so when the first spiderfly squeezes through the gap I know we don’t have long to get out of here.

  We were playing it safe, simply waiting here at the edge of the tunnel, because only Dairon and I are capable of using magic to defend ourselves at the moment. We had hoped to wait until Peter recovered before moving on. Elucia will probably take longer, but Lucy seems to think it should only be a few hours until Peter recovers. The good news though, is that the many pyroconders in this tunnel are now much more interested in the spiderflies than in hunting for anything else. Anything else, such as us...

  “We should hurry. Follow me and try not to reveal your presence.” I say and lead the way down the dark wet tunnel. Another large pyroconder slithers through the shallow water beside us. It must be fifty foot long and almost two foot wide, but it is past us in just a few seconds. Its red skin glows in the dark revealing the power of the fire magic that it is preparing to use. The tunnel is large enough that if it was empty we could all easily walk side by side, at least if we were all able to walk right now. The pyroconders would make that far too dangerous though.