“It’s not Mackil, it’s Reginald!” I couldn’t help myself.
In fact, it might not have been all me. Mackil’s ghost brushed closer. “Thank you. Kill that bastard for me, okay?” A breeze went through me and he was gone.
Nivinal didn’t look surprised at our appearance; he already knew we were there. We weren’t supposed to know they were there—Reginald’s fight destroyed whatever sneaky plan Nivinal had for us. Covey and Nasif looked up and shook their heads as if waking up, but whatever else those collars did, they didn’t allow them to move.
Lorcan heeded my yell and went after Reginald anew.
Nivinal nodded to Flarinen and Kelm and both of them moved toward us. Nasif and Covey didn’t move. The faeries yelled from their cage.
Lorcan plowed into Reginald, slamming him into one of the Spheres. Reginald recovered and pulled a knife out of his waistband. Why he hadn’t before, I had no idea. Then I saw the look on Nivinal’s face. Most likely the knife hadn’t been there before.
Nivinal had expected us, he’d set this trap to bring us, so why wasn’t anything happening? Aside from Dueble standing an inch away from me at all times, and Padraig and Alric trying to fight off Flarinen and Kelm without actually hurting them.
I watched Nivinal. The breaking of his hiding shield when Reginald and Lorcan fell through it caused some other problems for him as well. He wasn’t making any moves towards any of us but watched the interactions with an annoyed glare. Nasif and Covey hadn’t moved though, so he still had too much control over my friends.
The faeries were jumping around in their cage and even from this distance they looked pissed. They’d been spelled and captured a lot lately, and I knew that wasn’t sitting well with Garbage.
Nivinal hadn’t looked at Dueble or I, but he obviously knew we were there. He was trying to get his original plan back on track.
I didn’t have a lot of options. “Garbage! That man behind you is who put you all in a cage—twice. He thinks you’ve lost and that male faeries will have to come save us.” Not a great taunt, but all I could think of at the moment. Making them mad might get them out of the cage.
Nivinal looked up at my yelling, but he was concentrating on something else. At first I thought it was Reginald and Lorcan, then I realized he was intently focusing on the Sphere behind them. He gave me a sneer, then went back to what he was doing.
The cage holding the faeries rocked, but they couldn’t tip it or kick it open. Bunky bleated, and he and the gargoyle dove down before I could say anything. They each grabbed part of the cage—Bunky in his mouth, the gargoyle in his talons—and rose up with it. Nasif tried to grab it but only when Nivinal turned to him. Nasif’s actions were slow, and I swear I saw him wink. Those collars could be losing power.
The faeries yelling had changed and they were now encouraging Bunky and the gargoyle to go higher. Which they did.
I should have realized what their plan was, but I naively thought Bunky would bring the cage to me and I could try and get them out. Bunky and the faeries had a more direct approach. I could barely see them in the sky above us when I noticed the cage was dropping fast. Directly toward one of the Spheres.
I yelled, but there was nothing I could do as the cage plummeted. It hit the Sphere furthest from the fighting, and shattered.
The burst of flying color that came from behind the Sphere was a welcome sight. Bunky and the gargoyle flew low over our heads, gronking and bleating. The faeries dove in as well and began harassing Reginald.
Nivinal was focusing on the Sphere he’d been staring at, but I wasn’t sure why. It looked the same as the others, but something about it was important to him. Which meant we needed him not to be able to do whatever he was doing.
Alric and Padraig were trying to disarm Kelm and Flarinen without hurting them. Kelm’s responses seemed a bit sluggish against Padraig, but Flarinen seemed to enjoy going after Alric far too much for it to have been simply the spell.
Lorcan and Reginald were fighting as well, the knife had been knocked out of Reginald’s hand, but Lorcan couldn’t reach it. I noticed that while Lorcan had one of Nivinal’s collars on, it seemed to be hanging on by a scrap.
The faeries were dive-bombing Reginald, but whereas Lorcan hadn’t shown signs of being able to use magic, Reginald was creating some sort of shield.
It was up to me to block Nivinal and whatever he was doing.
Sand. There was a lot of sand around us and that could work. I twisted my push spell and rose the sand around Nivinal’s Sphere into a sand curtain. Even I was surprised when it stayed hanging there. Almost immediately, Nivinal swore and spun in my direction.
I stared him down then yelled out, “Girls, grab Lorcan’s collar!” If the faeries could destroy the thing, then at least Lorcan had a chance. Which might be more than Dueble and I were going to have, judging by Nivinal’s glare.
I thought he’d start throwing spells, but he didn’t. Not directly. The ground between him and the sand-blocked Sphere roiled as if it was alive. Moments later, rakasa started swarming from under the sand. Unlike their usual underground activities, they weren’t coming out from a tunnel, but under the sand.
Garbage and Leaf were almost to Lorcan and his collar when the rakasa came out. Unfortunately, Bunky and the gargoyle were watching the faeries and flew too low; three rakasa jumped on Bunky and pulled him to the ground. Unlike my faeries, Bunky could be destroyed. I’d seen others of his kind ripped apart. Before the faeries or I could try to help, the gargoyle dove low and screeched at the rakasa.
I don’t know whether the gargoyle planned on using the basilisk as a weapon, or had forgotten it had it. The screech didn’t do much, but the glare of the basilisk from its open mouth managed to turn the three rakasa who were pounding on Bunky to stone. Bunky shattered their arms and rose to freedom, but the basilisk fell out of the gargoyle’s mouth.
“Don’t look near the Sphere! The basilisk is free.” Everyone dropped their eyes, even as they fought—except the rakasa. There were about twenty and seemed focused on grabbing the basilisk as it scrabbled around the sand. It wasn’t long before they were all stone. The gargoyle swallowed it again, and both it and Bunky flew higher.
The faeries were all gathering around the Sphere Nivinal had been staring at and appeared to be trying to help block it. Nivinal was a serious magic user and yet hadn’t moved from that spot. Then I realized that sand or not, projected image or not, he’d built up a serious spell and was about to let it loose.
My faeries were in the way. Most things couldn’t hurt them. But a strong enough spell could. Or send them to a different time.
I didn’t even think, just ran forward toward the Sphere. My plan was to get a spell between his spell and the girls, and somehow slow down or stop the spell.
That didn’t happen.
I’ll never know if Nivinal planned what happened next; this whole thing appeared to have been poor planning on his part. The look of surprise on his face as I dove in front of the faeries was real though.
The faeries managed to lift up enough to clear the Sphere—I didn’t have that ability. The spell from Nivinal didn’t hit me directly, but the glancing shot slammed me backwards into the Sphere.
All of the images from when I’d touched the other one hit me harder than the rock itself against my back. My body felt broken and pulled apart as lives, too many lives, tore through me. And I tore through the Sphere.
At first I thought I was unconscious or dead, there was smoke and shattered rock all around me. I was alive and conscious. The blow of Nivinal’s spell had shattered the Sphere.
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I had to think he wasn’t planning on destroying the Sphere. There was no purpose for doing it. Luckily, the images in my head vanished once I scrambled out of the rubble.
Unfortunately, a moment later I realized I’d been wrong. He had planned to destroy it.
We’d thought the basilisk had done its hunting on the paths leading to the Spheres, but at so
me point, long ago, it had allowed people to get closer to the Spheres before it attacked. It was long enough ago that no stone arms stuck out and we wouldn’t have seen them at all except that they were now coming back to life and crawling out of the sand.
Actually, life was too generous. Their white eyes and slack jaws said they were dead, just no longer stone and not happy to be in the sand.
Nivinal was focused on the slowly moving bodies; they were moving at his command. That new spell must have been too much for the spell he had on my friends because all of the collars popped off.
Covey and Nasif charged Nivinal, but he simply faded his image and they ran through him. The bodies were closest to where Lorcan and Reginald fought. I’d thought the bodies were really going too slow to hurt anyone, but that thought was shattered as two darted forward and grabbed Lorcan. Alric had been fighting Flarinen nearby and turned to fight the bodies, but how did someone kill a dead thing? Alric and Padraig were able to get Lorcan away but couldn’t stop them. Two more grabbed Reginald and tore him in half before anyone could get to them. Nivinal showed no grief as his former partner died, but he was very focused on controlling the creatures.
I was cut off from my friends as more of the bodies came out of the ground. There would soon be hundreds, all under the control of Nivinal. He wouldn’t need the Ancients’ weapon to control the world—he could do it with an army of these things.
I was standing near the rubble, knowing my friends couldn’t survive and that I couldn’t save them. I raised my sword to charge forward anyway when a horrible pain ripped through me. Fog filled the world around me and my body felt as if every single bone was being constantly broken and torn apart. My mouth felt too small for the teeth now growing, my jaw expanded, my back screamed in pain as it felt like a hundred swords ripped from the inside out.
Anger. The pain as my body changed was replaced by anger. The stabbing and grating stopped, and I felt odd. The world around me was smaller and my dropped sword looked too far away, like a child’s toy. I screamed as my hand came into view as I reached to grab the sword. My hand was now massive, scaled, and had talons coming from it. It looked as if someone had taken a large lizard’s leg and replaced my hand with it.
The fog I’d thought was visible only to me was spreading everywhere but I could still see my friends. The number of stone bodies were growing and my friends were backed against another Sphere.
Fear for my friends battled against the terror of the changes my body was going through. I was a monster, but even as such I wasn’t going to let the people I loved be killed.
My horror and fear at what had happened to me vanished a moment later, along with the pain. I ran forward, clawing, biting, and slamming the stone bodies into dust. Swords might not be able to stop them, but massive claws almost as big as the bodies themselves could. When I finished with them, none of them got back up.
My friends were still screaming, but at me now. I tried to speak, to tell them it was okay, but no words came out. The sounds that did emerge were little more than clicks and growls. I backed away from them, they weren’t charging me, but all of them, including Alric, had looks of fear and anger. They would come after me. I backed up still more and then the minkie I’d seen before appeared in the air in front of me. The fog around everyone increased. It didn’t hurt me at all, but my friends all collapsed as the fog overwhelmed them.
I needed to see if they were okay, but there was no way I could touch them like this. Even through the fog I could make out the movement of their chests—they were alive. I stumbled away from them.
One form was still moving, unaffected by the fog, Nivinal’s image was running to the pile of rocks near me. A flash of clear blue caught my eye in the rubble—the manticore. Nivinal looked at me with a sneer as he reached forward for it.
Hate filled my mind and I sent any spell I could think of at him. He was an image so I couldn’t destroy him as I had the formerly stone bodies. But I wasn’t letting him get the manticore.
Shock replaced the sneer as his image slowly shredded. His hands and feet went first, with his form finally vanishing in the middle. Pain and agony filled his face. Apparently having your image destroyed in that fashion was painful as hell. I really hoped so. I glanced back at my friends, the fog was still covering them but it was thinning now. They all looked to be asleep. I wanted to go to them but pain tore through my body.
I stumbled behind a Sphere. The top of it came to my shoulder now. Then the entire world grew around me and my body twisted and broke. Agony ripped through me as every muscle and joint burned and I collapsed to the ground.
For a few moments I fought just to breathe. When that wasn’t a problem anymore, I looked around. My hand looked like mine again, and the Sphere I was collapsed against loomed over me again. The manticore was near me and looked intact. I looked for something to grab it with but it slammed back into me. I rubbed the cold spot on my cheek. It said a lot about what had just happened that reabsorbing the manticore didn’t feel odd at all.
My body might have changed back, but I felt whatever I’d changed into still alive inside of me. Horrible and vile. I didn’t know what I’d become, but I couldn’t let anyone know the truth. How could I be this…thing? What if it happened again? What if I went after one of my friends? Yes, I hadn’t hurt them this time, but the massive amount of power that flowed through me was beyond terrifying. The need to destroy had been almost overwhelming. I needed to hide somewhere until this passed. It had to pass.
Another thought hit me; had I actually died at the moment I changed? Something had caused the manticore to let me go—that it went right back in once I became me again didn’t matter. It was only supposed to let go when the person was dead.
I heard Alric and the others yelling for me. I was right; whatever the fog was, it only knocked them out. A thought hit me—or I had knocked them out myself. Along with becoming that creature, I’d felt magic—old and deep—burn inside me. It vanished once I’d changed back. I snuck deeper into the fog surrounding us.
The fog ripped at my hair and I pulled back.
“We come.” Garbage’s voice was soft, as if she knew we couldn’t let the others find us. The fog wasn’t yanking my hair, my three faeries were.
“No, sweetie, you can’t come. It’s too dangerous, I might hurt you.”
All three let go of the hair they hung onto and flew in front of me. “Is okay. We know.”
They all looked sad, but Crusty was trying to smile. “We help.”
“Where are the rest of the faeries?” It looked to only be my original three here.
“Stay with others. Know what do.” Garbage sounded proud of her fellow faeries.
There was no way I could get rid of them. No matter where I went, they’d find me. And I believed Garbage when she said they knew what I was—and they still wanted to be with me. Going into hiding would be a lot easier with friends. Maybe they could even tell me what I was turning into and how to stop it.
“Okay, but only you three, right? We have to find a place to hide for a bit.” I looked back toward the fog where my friends were calling for me. Alric’s voice was taking a frantic tone. “Can you have the other faeries tell Alric I’m okay? They can’t let any of them know what happened. But let them know I’m okay, they don’t need to worry.” I knew they’d worry and probably try to find us. Hiding from a tracker wasn’t going to be easy, but I had to do it until I figured out what I’d become.
Garbage rose up and patted my cheek. “They will tell.”
A familiar, albeit low sounding gronk came out of the fog.
“They come too. Needed.” Leaf flew up to pet Bunky and the gargoyle.
I looked at all five. The odds of me, even when changed into whatever in the hell I’d changed into, being able to actually damage any of them were slim. They were all fairly indestructible. Not completely, but they would fare better than Alric and the rest of them if I changed form again and lost control. At the very least, all of
them could fly away.
“Okay, we’ll all go together. But you all need to stay hidden; no one can see you, or me.”
The faeries landed on me. “Like this?” I couldn’t tell, but I had a feeling if anyone looked through the fog right now they would only see Bunky and the gargoyle. Too bad the faeries couldn’t keep this hidden trick up when I moved. It would make for a much easier escape if no one could see me.
The fog was slowly lifting around us. Even the way it dissipated wasn’t natural. The ground below me was turning green, as millions of tiny blades of grass that hadn’t been seen in this area in a few thousand years poked through the dirt and sand. I would have loved to see what things ended up looking like, but I needed to be far away when the fog completely lifted.
The ghostlike minkie that I'd seen before appeared and scurried a few feet ahead. I’d almost pointed him out to the girls, but they got upset before when I did that. I swear the creature nodded his head to the right. It seemed as good as a direction as any, so I followed him.
This world was changing. I was changing. I didn’t think either change was for the better.
* * *
The End
Dear Reader,
* * *
Thank you for joining Taryn, Alric, and the faeries in the fifth book of the six book series—The Lost Ancients. We all really appreciate when folks come to play in “our” world, and hope you enjoyed it too.
This series will continue with THE DIAMOND SPHINX in winter 2018/2019.
If you’re also interested in a little bit of space opera, please check out the first book in The Asarlaí Wars trilogy- WARRIOR WENCH.
For steampunk fans, A CURIOUS INVASION is launchingThe Adventures of Smith and Jones series.
I really appreciate each and every one of you so please keep in touch. You can find me at www.marieandreas.com.
And please feel free to email me directly at [email protected] as well, I love to hear from readers!
The Golden Basilisk (The Lost Ancients Book 5) Page 34
