Halcyon Rising_Bastion of Hope

by Stone Thomas

  “I’ll see if I can catch the wind while we wait,” Mamba said. She started to dance in place, bending her whole body forward to graze her palms against the ground, then tracing her body with her hands, up her ankles, her thighs, her ribs. It was mesmerizing.

  “I enjoy eating as much as the next gal,” Cindra said, drawing my attention back to the moment, “but I don’t need to. I don’t run on food like you do. If there were anything here to hunt though I would do what I could.”

  “No,” I said, “there’s nothing for me here. If you don’t eat, can I ask what sustains you?”

  “I expect Mercifer took care of that,” she said. “I only spent a few days with the elf that conjured me, before he sealed me up in the cave we now mine for resources. He kept casting spells over me that I didn’t understand. Each new wave of magic filled me with a blissful energy. That magic must fuel my body as we speak.”

  “I’m glad you’re not hungry like I am,” I said. “It’s very distracting.”

  Okay, stomach, I said in my most stringent inner voice. You can growl all you want, but you’re not the boss of me. There are body parts much larger and louder than you!

  I got to my feet and walked toward Mamba. “How’s the wind?”

  “Scattered,” she said. “Like I’d need to listen in a dozen different directions at once. Maybe my snakies could help.”

  She reached out her arms to draw snakes from the earth, but nothing happened. Her eyes grew wide. “What kind of a forest doesn’t like snakes?”

  “Maybe your snakes don’t like this forest,” I said. “If I had the chance to go back in time, I’d steer clear of it myself.”

  “No,” Mamba said, “my snakes know when they’re not welcome. My welcome isn’t strong enough to overcome the unwelcome this place breathes.”

  I sat back down and took the map out of my pocket. One of the small energems from the mine got caught on the parchment and rolled across the ground.

  “Say,” I asked, “have either of you ever tried to charge an energem yourself? Lily and Ambry said their mother filled the electric energem we have now with her own action points.”

  “I never did,” Cindra said. She sat on the ground next to me, pressing her body against my side and taking the energem from my hand. I took another one from my pocket as we sat there.

  I focused my mind on the small rock. It looked like a tiny diamond, but it held so much more potential than a normal gem. I strained with effort without knowing what that effort was for. I didn’t feel like my AP were leaving me, and the gem didn’t feel like it was warming with new energy.

  Cindra seemed to do the same thing I did, narrowing her eyes and clenching her jaw. Then she placed the gem between her breasts and let it sink inside her green gelatinous body.

  “That can’t be it,” I said. “No one else can fill an energem that way, Cindra. You’re one of a kind.”

  “And maybe that’s the key to it,” she said. “If there’s a mental trick, it won’t be the same for everyone, now will it?” She shimmied her body for a bit, then gave up. “Still nothing.”

  “Hold onto it,” I said. “Maybe we’ll figure this out yet.”

  “I caught it!” Mamba yelled.

  “The wind?” I asked. “You make it sound like it’s contagious.”

  She started to wander away from us, caught in some kind of trance. Cindra and I got to our feet to follow after her, otherwise we might have lost her in the Wall-o’-Woods forever. Her path sometimes doubled back the way we came, sometimes looped around trees and rocks. One time she climbed up a few branches as the wind lured her in a direction best described as pure nonsense.

  If there were anyone I trusted with nonsense, it was Mamba.

  Our position on the map also changed. No longer were we trapped in a single bar of old trees, popping up in random spots as we walked in a straight line. We were pushing forward, further south for the first time in hours.

  Mamba barely opened her eyes now, she just wafted along with the wind, sensing it in a way that was still a mystery to me.

  Finally, after another hour’s walk through the dense trees that masked the path ahead, the woods ended. Before us lay the start to a grassy plain.

  “Well,” I said. “Would you look at that. A pyramid.”

  +24

  Aspiring toward the sky itself was a massive pyramid, its sides shaped like steps leading to a flat platform at its highest tip as if the last pointy block had not been placed. Hanging down the eastern side of the pyramid were dark green vines with large orange and pink flowers in full bloom.

  Also in full bloom were large patches of the earth that had been tilled, tended to, and planted with all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and grains. As we walked through those fields toward the pyramid, my mouth watered just scanning those succulent plants, bearing corn and tomatoes, watermelon and plumberries, asparagus and lima beans.

  It’s funny, the things a man can salivate for when he’s this hungry.

  “How do these plants grow so well with no farmers?” Cindra asked.

  “Maybe this is the goddess of healthy appetites,” I said, “and her foremost skill is keeping me from getting hangry.”

  “If so,” Cindra said, “find me a farmer so I can negotiate a little meal.”

  “Just don’t offer to let him plow your field in exchange,” I said. “That logic didn’t work out so well with Blade last time.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cindra said. “There’s only one farmer I want in my field.”

  “And I’ll bet it’s not one of them,” Mamba said, pointing toward two dark creatures running toward the pyramid’s entrance.

  “Cretins,” I said. “This is a temple alright. We can’t let them get away.”

  I brushed past stalks of plants with fresh food hanging on them, resisting every urge to tear something off and sink my teeth into its juicy nourishment as we ran. I may have a scofflaw’s curse, but I wasn’t a thief. If we stopped the cretins heading for the temple, maybe the deity here would take pity on our hungry souls.

  “You run ahead,” Cindra said, slowing her pace. She pulled an arrow from her quiver and stepped forward in graceful, even steps. Mamba and I kept sprinting toward the dark, rectangular opening that led into the heart of the temple.

  One of the cretins was in arm’s reach. I prepared to stab as far ahead as I could with Razortooth. Before I could thrust, something rammed into my side and threw me off the ground.

  It was… a ram. I got rammed by a ram.

  The animal’s dense mat of white hair was tinged with gray, and its eyes were glassy and dark. A thin strand of black drool dripped from its mouth.

  “They’ve been cursed,” I said. “Focus on the cretins!”

  Mamba squared off against another male sheep with the same affliction, and Cindra’s arrows sailed toward the temple’s opening but fell short of hitting the cretins. They disappeared into the temple’s depths.

  I dodged another attack from the enraged creature that had head-butted me, wondering how to calm it down so we could continue on.

  Cindra stalked closer to the animal from behind.

  “Easy now,” I said to the ram. “You gotta fight this for me, okay? This curse is too powerful. If you give into it you won’t make it. Unless you let me raise your Resolve.”

  The ram didn’t listen. It couldn’t, it was just an animal, like a donkey or a twolf. It occurred to me that these rams were someone’s animals, their companions. If Duul tried to work this evil magic in Halcyon I’d have yet another reason to bring him down.

  I backed away from the ram. It puffed angry air from its large nostrils. Then its front legs buckled. It collapsed onto the ground as thick black spit leaked from its open mouth.

  “Shh,” Cindra said, approaching the animal from behind. She lay a hand on its side first, then its forehead. The animal breathed heavily a few times and closed its eyes. Duul’s curse had worked its way through the poor creature and robbed it of its life.


  “Poor little rammies,” Mamba said. Cindra and I walked toward her. As we neared the temple’s entrance, something caught my eye.

  Two dark green statues stood motionless on either side of the large opening ahead. Their bodies had the texture of wood, as though they were carved from trees and painted with green watercolor. They appeared as minotaurs with heads like a bull’s, and their limbs were powerful and muscular. They stood on two legs, each holding a staff in their hands.

  Except, they weren’t statues at all. Their faces had no eyes, just as the cretins and anibombs didn’t, but their chests lifted and rose with breath.

  I held a hand out to stop Mamba and Cindra from getting any closer. “Do you protect the deity here?” I asked. They nodded. “Then how come you let cretins inside? They’ll kill your god! Come with us, we’ll stop them.”

  They said nothing and did nothing. Some protection they were.

  “At least bury the animals that died from Duul’s curse,” I said. “We can’t leave them there to rot, they deserve better.”

  This, the minotaurs were willing to do. They marched toward the fallen animals whose curse-racked bodies lay among long blades of wheat.

  “We have to do something,” I said to the girls, “but we have to be quick. Landondowns is still south of here.”

  “Nola wouldn’t want another god to fall to Duul,” Cindra said. “We’ll save whoever’s inside.”

  As we stepped inside the temple, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the relative darkness. A few torches burned in holders on the walls, but they were far and few between.

  The front chamber of this temple had limestone floors and walls, with a hallway stretching ahead, but another to the left and the right. We walked forward, and quickly found that the path ahead forked and split into more alternate paths.

  A shadow moved in the distance, and that was our cue. We picked the path that led to whatever cretin hadn’t already run deep into the heart of the temple yet.

  Mamba and Cindra stayed close as we dodged down corridors that snaked in unpredictable directions. This temple was some kind of maze, and its end was nowhere in sight.

  We rounded a corner and entered a dead end of sorts. The hallway ahead led to two rooms, and the cretin charged into one without hesitation. The second he crossed the threshold of the doorframe, I lost sight of him. I crept toward the door and peeked around the corner. The room was completely empty. No exit door on the other side, no hole in the ceiling or floor, and no cretin.

  I listened, but couldn’t hear any sound that would lead us to the brutish monster. A word was carved into the stone next to the doorframe: “Evanesce.”

  The other room sat opposite that door. It likewise had no exit, but it did have a pedestal in its center with a single pitcher of water sitting on it. The word next to the door said, “Thirst.”

  “Let’s turn back,” I said. “There’s nothing here.”

  We began the long walk back the way we came, when two things happened. First, my stomach growled. That wasn’t much of a surprise. Second, I realized something. “We’re totally and completely lost, aren’t we?”

  “I was afraid to admit that,” Cindra said. “I rather hoped this one might still be following the wind.”

  “The winds dispersed after they brought us out of the woods,” Mamba said.

  As we turned down new hallways splitting off from other ones, I read the words etched into the walls. Some were next to open doors, but others had only solid stone walls beside them.

  Something ahead caught my eye. It looked like a flash of light reflecting off the black metallic form of another cretin. I ran. When I reached another hallway’s end, I had to wonder whether I had seen anything at all, or if my hunger was causing delusions.

  “This room is called ‘Hospitality,’” Mamba said. “Should we check it out?”

  The air in the room ahead was hazy. A long bench covered in velvet sat against one wall, and a buffet lined the other. A platter of ripe fruits sat next to two pitchers of dark red wine. A chunk of stone sat next to the wine with an engraving that said, “Life is short. Enjoy it.”

  “It seems like permission to eat,” I said. Cindra had already lifted a small berry from the platter, while Mamba filled a cup with wine.

  I took a melon and cracked it open against the side of the buffet table. Juice ran down my arms, but I didn’t care. I dove into the melon face first, enjoying the sweet, nourishing nectar of food for the first time in a day and a half. Mamba ate too, between long sips of wine.

  Cindra took her berries to the velvet bench. “It’s cushioned,” she said. “Come sit.”

  I brought my food and sat next to her. My mind was starting to relax as the strain of constant hunger fled me. Cindra held grapes up and I lay my head in her lap, letting her feed them to me one by one from the bunch. For every grape I ate, she ate one as well.

  “These are so succulent,” she said. “And this bench is so soft.”

  “Come here,” I said. I didn’t know what was coming over me, but there was something intoxicating about good food, good wine, and two gorgeous women in the same room. With my hand on the back of Cindra’s neck, I pulled her face toward mine. I kissed her, then bit her bottom lip lightly as we broke away.

  Mamba knelt next to the bench with her wine. She held the cup to my mouth and I sat up for a moment to drink from it, then pulled her toward me. Her mouth was sweet from our shared drink as my tongue played against hers.

  As I lay my head back into Cindra’s lap, my hands stayed behind each of their necks. Cindra and Mamba glanced at each other for a moment, then Cindra’s eyes drifted toward Mamba’s lips. They leaned toward each other, my hands guiding their mouths closer.

  When they kissed, Cindra’s soft green skin reflected some of the light from the torch burning on the wall. Mamba’s rich red color stood in stark contrast to Cindra’s gleaming green. I sat up, just far enough to press my cheeks against theirs and join them both.

  Mamba broke away from our kiss first to take another sip from her wine. I took a deep breath, then reached for Cindra’s back. Her Radiance Gown was cinched together with a few thin cords, and it wouldn’t take much to loosen them.

  With each small maneuver, her tight-fitting dress became less tight. She reached behind her neck and pulled the front of the dress down around her. Her large breasts heaved forward, finally free of their constraints.

  I sat up now and swung one leg over Cindra’s body while the other nestled against her hip. I straddled her, staring down at her cleavage from above. I kissed her again, then tilted her head back and kissed down her neck, and further. I kissed above the space where her breasts converged, then pressed my face between them.

  Mamba came up behind me, placing her face against my back and running her hands up my front inside my vest. Pressed tight between my skin and the leather I wore, her hands traced up my stomach, then my chest. I reached back and grabbed her thigh, letting my hand slide up her bare leg until it was under the skirt she wore tied to one side.

  I breathed deep, momentarily lost in the bliss of that moment. My lungs burned with desire. My stomach was full, my mind was starting to swim from wine, and my pants were begging to hit the floor.

  I reached down to unbutton my leather pants when a thought struck me. Since when did lungs ‘burn’ with desire? Was the ancient dust that hazed this room’s air dust, or something else?

  A sweet red berry teased against my lips and I opened my mouth to let it in. I pinched it with my teeth and leaned down to tease Cindra the same way, running the berry against her lips before passing it to her in a kiss. Mamba’s hands continued to worship my body.

  The first two buttons of my fly were undone, but something still bothered me. “Does the air in here burn?”

  “All that’s burning is me,” Cindra said. “I want you, Arden. We both do. Don’t make us wait.”

  With the last button open, the tightness in my pants was freed. A warm hand curled around me as I closed
my eyes, happy to be lost in this moment.

  Still, I couldn’t banish that one doubt from my mind. I opened my skillmeister menu, knowing that I alone would see the glowing numbers and letters clouding my vision.

  It took a moment for anything useful to materialize. I scanned through my attributes, and then the combat stats that they related to. My HP wasn’t full, which was no surprise. I had been battered in the leg by an angry ram just a short time before. But then my HP declined. It was only one point, and I second-guessed whether what I saw was real, but then it happened again. Something was injuring me.

  Cindra leaned forward, her mouth beginning to part. I put my hands on her cheeks to stop her. “There’s something in the air,” I said. “It’s foul. We can’t stay.”

  My words didn’t seem to register. The wine, the food, the plush velvet bench, they were an aphrodisiac meant to keep us in this room as the air itself drained away our life. The engraved stone next to the food was an invitation alright, but not to eat, drink, and be merry. It was an invitation to a shortened life.

  As Cindra took me inside her mouth, I almost forgot about the poison in the air. I knew we needed to leave, but my body wanted to stay. Why was I the only one that seemed the least bit worried?

  Then I realized. I had been improving my own Resolve recently, but Cindra’s and Mamba’s were still lower. They had fallen completely under this room’s spell.

  Everything about this room screamed magic. The perfectly ripe fruit and full carafes of wine just sitting in place, the instant effect it had on our libidos. It was an unconventional magic attack, but a magic attack all the same.

  I pulled my hips back, releasing me from Cindra’s warmth. Mamba nibbled at my ear as I spoke. “Cindra, let me skillmeister you.”

  “Is that what you’re into?” she asked. “You want to feel my body blossom with strength, or sense my renewed energy as you make me a better woman? Go ahead, mold me.”