by BJ Hanlon
He had to kill the dematian king or be killed by him. There was no other option.
“I wish you luck,” Edin said following the monk to the back. Edin pulled away the prep table as Monk slipped out back. It was near dusk by the looks of it.
Edin imagined that the world was somehow shoved into a large cave or a giant sock was being pulled over it. A cave or sock of thunder and lightning and gods playing with the world as if it were a ball. Then he thought of the gods as infants kicking it and not really caring what they’re doing but just doing it. Doing infantile things that would hurt humanity.
They really didn’t care, Edin thought as he watched Monk slowly untying the raft from the tree.
Bliz howled. A thick, strong howl. One of sadness and possibly farewell. Edin closed the door and put the prep table before it and wedged it between that and the wall. Edin tried to yank on the door handle. The door didn’t flinch.
Edin looked down at Bliz. “No one’s getting in that way,” Edin said and headed toward the bar. He refilled his ale mug and went again to the front door. The soft patter of rain began to sound on the roof and windows.
He’d always liked the rain. The smell was fresh and clean and the feeling was that of a washed day. Like all past indiscretions were wiped away. It would be a hopeful day.
Edin went to the front. He held his ale in one hand and the quarterstaff in the other. He opened the door to see the entire northern sky was dark. The clouds that had been gray were now black and exploding with sparks of lightning and fire. As he thought about it, he saw something explode above him. He felt it was a large chunk of rock.
It shattered like throwing a spear through a pane of glass. Chunks the size of his head rained down toward the earth at great speed.
Edin held up his hand and caught them before they hit. Then he sent them into the river where they plopped into the trickling water. He heard noises coming from the northwest. Edin thought he could almost see the Great Cliffs though they were many hundreds of miles away. He thought he could see Cliff Raptors on the winds, but the winds high above him were howling. They were whipping past at an enormous speed.
The lightning cracked violently above him again, but he didn’t flinch.
In that crack, he saw the outline of something huge. Another thunderwyrm, though this looked like it was three times the size of the last.
Edin barely had a moment to blink when the cloud, or something in the cloud, sent a bolt toward him. Edin held out a hand and felt the electrical shock strike his arm. But it felt like a feather was tickling his palm.
Then he looked back northwest and saw the cloud, not in the sky but on the ground. He looked north too. More clouds. The east, he saw nothing over the river, but that sky hadn’t turned black yet.
It was moving that way, though he had a feeling it couldn’t completely cover the land.
Not while Yio Volor was still trapped beneath the earth. Not while men and magi still fought on the surface.
A piercing cry of the wyrm echoed through the world. The one that had sent Edin to his knees before.
This rattled his head but didn’t make him collapse. He thought he heard a ‘you’re welcome’ in his mind but it was too hard with the lashing wind. Then he saw the cloud near the ground beginning to crest a small rise and burst through a barren field. Edin knew what was in the cloud now.
Dematians, a lot of them. Edin turned north and was able to pick out more of them. Hundreds of them coming from each side.
They were converging on him as if a giant, or a god like Yio Volor, were slapping together a sandwich with two slices of bread.
The wyrm screeched out again.
Slowly, and as calmly as he could. Edin sipped the ale before he set it down. He was still standing in the doorway of the inn with Bliz right behind him.
Scattered between the dematians, Edin saw large, black cats. He saw black eyes to contrast with the dematian yellow or red eyes.
“Crillios,” Edin whispered. Bliz howled. A loud, strong howl like that of a pack leader. Edin petted Bliz’s head and gripped the quarterstaff.
Surprisingly, the robe gave Edin a lot of room to maneuver and he’d gotten used to the sandals enough that moving in them was even easier than moving in the boots.
Edin stepped out before the monsters coming toward him. He felt a charge of lightning coursing through his body. And he felt it above. The thunderwyrm was producing it.
Edin lowered a hand to the western company as they came at him. It was a staggered line with crillios and dematians. Edin closed his eyes and let it out.
The lightning crashed at the demons striking the blade of one and sparking. It leapt from the dematian to at least three others. Those ones stopped mid run; their bodies seized but more continued on.
Many more.
To the north, he saw things flying above the dematian army. Long headed beasts with gray skin, black eyes, and wingspans nearly ten feet across. They weren’t wyrms or dragons, they were something else, something primeval.
That was the only word Edin could think to call them.
Primevals.
The rain was starting to come down and they seemed to be all covered in water. Edin took a breath and felt the lightning above them. The dematian king had done him a favor in bringing the storm. He had offered Edin a way to fight them all.
Edin felt for the lightning crackling above him again and suddenly couldn’t feel it. Then he looked up. He saw the lightning. It cracked and sparked but he couldn’t feel it.
The water came down and a great explosion erupted above him. He saw it and knew what it was. Another meteor or comet.
Edin reached out and felt the stones in the air. With a great thrust, he sent them down onto the northern attackers. There were great explosions and he saw a few of the primeval birds drop from the sky and heard the cries of the demons and crillios.
He reached to the water to the east and took the river’s momentum.
Edin took it in his hand and lifted the water up like he was pulling a long rope out of a trough. He pulled it out and then sent the water in a wave toward the northern army.
There was cries that sounded surprised as many dematians and crillios and even a few of the primevals were taken out by the waves as beasts crashed into each other.
There was an exhaustion coming on him. He tried to remember what Rihkar had said, tried to let it flow through him.
With a deep breath he put an arm out as he reached for the energy that was all around.
There were bits and he let it flow into him as he also felt the rain coming down; he held it and turned it to hail. Small and large chunks of razor-sharp ice. He sent those toward the western group.
There were more pained and tortured cries and Edin could see the bodies, like lumps of black coal on the ground.
But the attacks didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. There were more behind. Waves of the dematians, and crillios and the flying primevals.
He needed to steady himself on the hitching post for a moment. Then Edin looked down at Bliz from the corner of his eye. “My friend, this isn’t going to end well.”
Bliz was looking to the northwest and the demons coming from that way. In a crash of lightning, he saw more flying beasts. A huge V shape of them. They’d just crested the hill a mile or so away.
Then he heard a howl, something from the east. Edin turned and saw blurs of gray, white, and black running across where the river had been. He’d sent the wave into the dematians, but the river should’ve immediately refilled. It was refilling, but slower than it should’ve been. It was as if the water slowed for him. For them.
Vestor.
Then he saw the dire wolves, a pack of them, leaping out of the riverbed. He heard the cries, squawks of a different kind flying in from the north.
The primeval birds began to waver, the northern group were being flanked by the wolves.
Suddenly, there were brown and white birds flying low and appearing from behind a rising hill
. Cliff Raptors were swooping into the western group and plucking dematians up from the crowd and tossing them when they were thirty or forty feet in the air.
Edin drew his sword and stepped into the rain.
He felt the water wash over him and felt streams rushing down his face and past his eyes. Edin put up the green hood. He spun the sword in one hand and the quarterstaff in the other as the dematians rushed toward them.
“Ready,” Edin said. Bliz snorted or sneezed. Edin thought the dire wolf was saying. ‘Come on already.’
Then the first dematian was within reach. The beast came at him with a large horsehead knife. The dematian was slow and seemed like he could’ve been scrawny. Edin parried the haft with his staff and drove his blade through the dematian’s neck. Edin flicked his wrist and the head popped off.
Then he summoned an ethereal bubble and he heard the crash. Metal scraping, crillios and dematians howling. He heard Bliz roar and a chattering, crying scream from a dematian.
Then there was another.
Edin released the shield and started forward. He parried an attack with his staff and smacked the dematian in the head with his own weapon. A mace.
The dematian dropped and didn’t get up. He blocked and dodged two more, one with a spear the other a greatsword. Then Edin countered both. He slashed through the shoulder of a crillio that was about to pounce but was too slow. The crillio still leapt but it was hobbled and barreled into three dematians. He saw the blur that was Bliz and other dire wolves dodging between the forest of dematians and crillios.
The primeval birds were attacking and being attacked.
A giant one was gouged by the beak of a Cliff Raptor. The raptor tore out its neck. Blood splattered in the rain and the thing started to careen down like it had a few drinks.
Edin saw it coming toward him out of the corner of his eye. He leapt back and two crillios took his place.
The bird crashed into one and both bowled into the other. Edin sent ethereal knives into the two downed cats but more took their place.
He had felt good for a moment, then he saw three, no four, cliff raptors taken out by a blast of yellow from the sky. A bright yellow beam.
He heard a loud whimper and saw a dire wolf’s limp body being tossed back toward the river that was flowing again. The wolf crashed in and sunk without attempting to surface.
Suddenly, Edin felt a presence from his right and twisted but something got through. He felt the hot, needle like pain of a slash across the top of his hand. Edin barely was able to hold onto his sword.
Then something hard crashed into his butt cheek. It hurt and spun him but there was no lasting damage.
As Edin had twisted, he let his sword swing free and took off the head of a dematian. He could still see more coming. Edin was hot, sweating and growing weary; he was being attacked from every direction now. Edin blocked with his sword and kicked out at one of the beasts. The ethereal light encircled the sandal and the dematian flew off into a line of his own monsters with the force of an avalanche.
The inn was a few yards away. It was quiet and the door was still open. He needed a place at his back. He needed to keep them in front of him.
“Bliz,” he shouted as he started to cut a swath through the attackers taking heads, arms, legs and anything else he could. Edin leapt a strike toward his knees, though it took more effort and he nearly didn’t clear the attack. His breathing was ragged and his arms were growing heavy.
It was getting harder and harder to move. Edin turned to see a crillio coming toward him. A large one leaping from the crowd almost like it had wings. Edin took a step to dodge but his legs were tangled up with the staff between them.
Edin tripped and fell forward sprawling out before a dematian. The dematian stepped in front and raised a large sword ready to strike down and end him.
The crillio couldn’t stop and crashed into the dematian, its claws tearing at the demon as Edin twisted and let the bodies fall past him and slam into the rocky outer wall. Edin crab-walked toward the door. Over to the right, he saw a pair of dire wolves go down. He heard a loud howl and watched as Bliz leapt into the fray twenty yards away from him.
A moment later, a great yellow beam shot down from the clouds above. Two cliff raptors were torched almost instantly, two that had been near those had turned away and were immediately swiped out of the sky by the flying primeval flyers.
Edin leapt into the inn and slammed the door. He shoved his back against it and felt his chest pounding like crazy. He needed to catch his breath. Just a moment or two.
Edin reached into his pocket to feel the birth stone in his palm. To feel those sharp edges to feel something normal.
He felt the inner lining, he felt lint at his fingers and pressed them deeper in. But it wasn’t a deep pocket and there was nothing else inside. He started to panic a bit and reached into another pocket. Then a third.
The stone was gone. He didn’t have it.
The monk called Monk, Edin thought and a little smile came over his face. At least it was out of the demon’s reach for now. Hopefully it’d stay that way.
Then something slammed hard into the door behind him. His torso was thrown forward and then he slammed back into it again. Another thunk, then another. He felt each running through his body, the attacks pulsing into him, and Edin was waiting for the moment when a blade pierced it.
A moment later one did. It was inches above his head and Edin was showered with shards of broken door. Edin dropped to his knees and scampered toward the bar. He looked around and spotted the fire in the hearth.
The door flew open and suddenly three dematians tried to leap in at the same time. They all crashed into each other and were stuck in the open doorway for a moment.
It would’ve been hilarious but for their snarling, chattering needle like jaws and the wicked weapons they held before them. Edin felt the fire in his mind and waited until all three had finally figured out how to get in.
He sheathed his sword and reached out for the fire.
A moment later, he brought the flames on them. A stream of orange and yellow flames flew at the three dematians and burst onto them. Then he felt it grow and surround the three. He heard their screams as they were burnt, like the dematians had burnt the townsfolk in Glustown.
They cried but he did not stop. He saw more and more pushing in and getting caught in the flaming pyre. Charred bodies were tumbling forward and out of the fire as they came closer to him.
Edin had to start stepping backward to retreat. The heat was growing intense and the flames were catching on the wood paneling and stools and bars.
It was kissing the floor above them. For some reason, he saw them still coming in, pressing forward and burning up. Smoke was beginning to cloud just above his head. It grew thick and a deep gray.
Edin glanced toward the kitchen and through it to the rear door. He knew the table was still wedged between the door and the counter.
Then he spotted a glowing reddish color through the cracks of the door. Backlighting it as if there were a giant light illuminating the entirety of the outdoors.
The door and then the table burst apart as a beam of red light burst into the room. Edin barely had a moment. He leapt sideways and had to suck in his gut as if he were a fat fella trying on a new pair of trousers.
The beam barely missed his stomach though he felt the heat.
A great heat that lit his quarterstaff aflame. Edin dropped it.
The beam crashed through the rear wall and made a large crack in the side. A part of the stone wall collapsed out and stones tumbled to the ground behind him.
Edin looked out and saw the dematian king standing there. The staff in hand. It was clearly wood but it sparkled. Red, two different blues, and a yellow.
The lapse in concentration caused him to lose control of the fire. The floor was aflame now as well as the walls, the bar, everything but the stone. The beam though added a bit of much needed ventilation as smoke poured out.
&nb
sp; Edin took back control of the fire, breathed and twisted his hands, one on top of the other, turning it into a horizontal tornado and sent it toward the dematian king.
With the staff in hand, the dematian king batted it away and the flame dissipated like it’d been swallowed by a wave of water. Edin searched for the lightning around but could only find a bit of local electricity. He sent a bolt of yellow toward the dematian king.
The same result. He turned water to hail and sent strong gusts.
Everything was batted away.
The dematian king grinned at Edin. Or he felt that it was a grin. A creepy smile with sharp needle teeth, some in, some out of the mouth.
Nothing had worked. The beast has all of the gemstones and they provide a sort of protection. Edin thought. Then he remembered, not all of the gemstones.
Edin reached for some of the stones that had fallen from the walls. He picked them up like he had long arms and they were barely an ounce each. Edin hurled them like arrows at the dematian king.
The look on that ugly face would’ve been shock… if Edin could tell what dematian facial expressions meant, but all he knew was that when a large rock the size of his fist struck the dematian king in the jaw, he saw three teeth fly out like small spears.
Edin charged. He summoned ethereal knives and whipped them at the dematian king who dodged. He burst out into the rainstorm again, pulling his sword, he was ready to end it. To take the dematian king’s head and stop Yio Volor from ever rising in this land. Even if he died here, there’d be no king to open the gates for the god.
This was it. Edin would win. His eyes narrowed, he saw the target, the way to end this and the threat forever. Or at least for now.
Edin was about to bring the sword down when he heard a voice yell in his head.
‘Halt or we kill her.’
The voice, raspy and slurred shocked him into stopping. Edin’s feet skidded on the wet grass. The voice was as if the person speaking knew the right words, but not how they sounded.
