Halcyon Rising_Bastion of Hope

by Stone Thomas

  The general stood, releasing me. I got to my feet as the zenocat coughed, spraying black spit from its mouth. Its breathing was heavy now, labored. This creature had lasted longer than any that I had seen suffer through Duul’s curse before. It lifted one paw from the ground, sending the platform spinning and tilting at unpredictable angles.

  My mind was spinning too. Darkness seemed to encroach on the edges of my vision. Thinking was difficult, while feeling became easy. I felt every slight I had ever absorbed, every foul word ever thrown my way. I felt caged like a mighty animal yearning to rip its captors’ flesh from their bones. I bit my lip, relishing the taste of blood against my tongue.

  The general’s power was stronger than the cretins I had built a resistance to. I couldn’t give into this curse, not now. Not while Nola was writhing on her temple floor in pain, and while a hundred cretins ran through Halcyon like a plague of rats ready to devour the people I had pledged to protect.

  I clutched at my hair, my neck, my vest. I wanted to tear my skin from my body and scream with primal rage. When my hands reached my hips, I felt a curious bump in my pants.

  It was hard, and long. Now was the time to release it.

  I whipped the potion bottle from my pocket and held it against the moonlight. Its soft blue glow called to me, begged me to reveal what my spirit animal was through its magical liqueur.

  The general stepped toward me, seemingly alarmed. I had been unarmed a moment ago, and now I held a mystery in my hand. I pulled the cap off the bottle and held it to my lips.

  Before I could tip that strange potion toward my mouth, the liquid inside bubbled. Fumes rose from the glass rim and entered my nose. I breathed in the sweet heady aroma of that brew and exhaled it through my mouth.

  The vial was empty now. I wondered whether Carzl had misjudged its lifespan and whether this potion had reached its expiration. Then the fumes that had escaped my lips began to coalesce. They grew and solidified into a regal white bird with wings as wide as three men. Its beak was short and came to a small curved point on its angular face. It gripped my shoulders with its white claws and lifted me from the rocky isle.

  The general raced forward, lifting his spear from the ground and stabbing toward me, but not fast enough.

  “We can’t let him win,” I said, half to my avian spirit guide and half to myself. The black magic rage inside of me kept my blood boiling in my veins.

  The pure white bird flapped its wings, sending a powerful gust toward the general. He slammed his spear into the ground to gain some stability, but it wouldn’t last. We dove toward him at breakneck speed. I extended both legs, landing in his chest, knocking him down and rising into the clouds as we flew higher out of reach.

  We flew in a wide arc around the hill, watching the battle below. Cretins and war dogs kept crawling over the electric wall, and while many died, a few made it through between bursts of deadly energy. Vix had stopped using Twitch Hitter and Wallop. Her battle lacked the orange luster of a woman with action points to spare.

  If I were going to help her, I needed to stop the general and get down there.

  My trip through the cold night air picked up speed as we arced back toward the spinning island, held aloft by a zenocat with only one paw left in the soil. The general stood, arms outstretched, waiting to catch me, my bird, or both.

  We approached him dead on. He clapped his hands together, but we soared too quickly, diving under his arm and close enough to his spear that I was able to yank it from the ground and fly off with it.

  We slowed in the air and turned back. I pulled my arm behind me and threw that spear with all my might. The general stepped back, out of its path. It sank deep in the soil, splitting a crack down the center of the island in the clouds.

  My bird flapped and squawked. It flew closer to the island, then dropped me onto it before flying into the clouds and turning back into vapor. I landed on one knee and both hands. That spear was only a few feet from me now.

  “Enough!” the general yelled. He pumped black magic at me with both fists now, holding nothing back. Images of my hands soaked in blood flashed before my eyes, and I reveled in it. The power, the anger, the fury, in my delusional mind, they were the birthright of man.

  “Yes,” he said, pumping more black magic from his palms. Those spells took up new residence inside my body, my heart, my brain.

  “Tap into that part of yourself that wants this,” he said. “Let go of your childish goddess and your fragile hill. Stand behind a god with true power.”

  “This,” I said, forcing my mouth to form complete words when my brain was a raging tempest. “Is,” I said, taking another two steps toward the general before I could form another word. “Wrong.”

  The general laughed. He let his arms fall to his sides. His body seemed to relax as I trudged closer to him, my eyes and my skin darkening under the constant assault of his spell. In his mind, he had already won.

  I opened my skillmeister window. I had slain enough cretins and war dogs to add to my unspent XP. This may be my last chance to spend it. My mind was still swimming as the numbers and words arranged themselves before me. I added points to Resolve. All I had to do was confirm the change, but something held me back.

  My feet took a step closer to the general, then another. I left my menu hovering before me, begging for an answer. “Confirm?” It asked. “Yes / No.”

  I had no answer, not yet. My mind was twisted by the strange visions that competed against my menu.

  “My master is the oldest god in the pantheon,” the general said. “He will open your mind to the freedom war provides. He has seen the birth and death of cities and gods. Every man must ask himself, which side of war is he on? The side that yields to death’s cold demand, or the side that delivers it?”

  I stalked around the island while the zenocat whimpered. I stood at the edge, facing the general while his spear sat far behind him. I had only one hope left, if I could muster the self-control to pull it off.

  “Tonight,” I said, wiping cold black sweat from my forehead, “I’m the delivering type.”

  I struggled against that curse as I confirmed my skillmeister changes, boosting my Resolve by 12 points. A wave of coolness washed over me, steadying my hands and relieving my mind of the constant rage that had built up there. I raised my hand toward the general’s hulking body and activated one last skill. Call to Arms.

  The general’s own black weapon shot from the ground and pierced his chest from behind, tearing a hole through his body as the weapon flew toward my outstretched hand. Black energy gushed from his body in the form of liquid blood. He fell to his knees.

  “You said Duul made two mistakes in the last war,” I said. “What was the other one, besides being an asshole?”

  “Allowing the Great Mother an opportunity to build her army,” he said, coughing blood from his mouth.

  “So you’ll charge the Imperial City now?” I asked.

  “Her army cannot grow behind those bastion walls,” he said. “No, Duul comes for Halcyon. The next time his army approaches, Arden Hochbright, he will meet you face to face. The Great Mother puts her faith in Nola. It is time to snuff the flame that stokes that hope.”

  Black blood continued to seep from the general’s body as our rocky platform crumbled around the edges, falling faster with each second toward its inevitable crash. “You won’t live to see the world Duul fails to create,” I said.

  “I don’t need to survive,” he replied. “I was never alive in the first place. Ask yourself, were you?”

  +40

  The general’s body splashed into a puddle of dense black ooze as it collapsed in death. The zenocat, still coughing, finally wrestled its last paw free from the soil it had tapped into. It promptly fell over onto its side.

  “No,” I said, crawling toward the massive animal. It was breathing, and color returned to its face, but I wasn’t sure it would survive much longer.

  The rocks beneath my feet cracked apart as our floa
ting island stopped floating. The massive feline had kept it aloft, but when its connection to the soil broke, so did the magic it controlled.

  Wind beat against my face and small chunks of dirt and stone pelted my skin on our fast-faster-fastest descent toward Halcyon. I put one hand on the zenocat’s ribs while I found the general’s spear with the other. This was it. It didn’t matter that the general was dead, all three of us were dead the moment the earth brought us into the clouds. There was never any way out but down.

  The sounds of cretins screeching and metal clanging grew louder in competition with the rush of air around us. Then the air began to quiet and our rate of falling, still terrifying, grew perceptibly slower. When we crashed into the ground some seconds later, the earthen platform erupted into a cloud of dust and rock, but the pain I felt in my bones from the fall didn’t kill me.

  “I did it!” Mayblin shouted. “I used my rock skills on you!”

  “You,” I said, panting, “saved my life.”

  She and Vix ran toward me, a wall of cretins trailing behind them. “Where did that skylancer come from?” she asked.

  “Is that the white bird?” I asked. “It’s from that spirit animal potion we picked up in Meadowdale.”

  “The skylancer is a creature of myth, Arden,” she said. “They’re either extinct, or never existed in the first place.”

  Cretins encroached on each side now. A few gi-ants wrestled with the monsters, but not enough to stem the tide. They stalked slowly, and I knew: the second anyone made a move, all hell would break loose.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said. I lashed out with the black spear in my hand, slicing four cretins open without encountering any resistance. Their energy whipped through the air in random directions, finding the empty energems that the goblins had strewn about the hill.

  “That’s not Razortooth,” Vix said as the cretins charged us from all directions.

  “No,” I replied. “The general extracted Razortooth from me, but he left me this.” I stabbed again, spearing two cretins along my new polearm. War dogs bounded through the crowd as well. One slammed into me as three cretins piled on top. Their blades and teeth sank into my body, reducing my low HP even further.

  I looked up from the ground. Cretins had Vix’s arms and legs in their clutches. Mayblin was buried like I was.

  “Vix,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” she asked, struggling against an increasing number of cretin captors.

  “For staying,” I said. “You’re the most talented person on this hill. You could have gone anywhere.”

  “You sound like you’re giving up,” she said. “I’m not done here. And neither are you.”

  “She’s right,” came a man’s voice echoing across the hilltop. In my limited field of vision, I saw Gowes floating toward us. His body glowed with the same cheery light as always.

  A deep purple wave of force bomb energy blasted past us, blowing me backward and sending the cretins and war dogs tumbling in every direction. Arrows flew overhead, sinking into their shiny bodies. An army of Halcyon residents marched toward us, which meant they had left their posts at the temple.

  “But,” I said. “Nola.”

  “I’m here, Arden,” she said. Eranza and Biddy helped Nola limp toward us. Her cheeks were stained with dried red blood, as was her long robe. “Let’s finish this.”

  I nodded. Despite Duul’s psychic attack on her mind, she had pulled through. Our people withstood the frontal assault of hundreds of Duul’s minions and marched on the hilltop to purge our fair settlement of the last of these monsters.

  I stood, aimed my spear, and activated Spear Cannon now that my HP was near empty. A beam of white energy pierced the night and burned through a wall of black monsters. Snakes, fire, and ice pelted the enemy army as we pushed them back, closer to the electric wall that held our activated energems.

  Larry rose from the earth like a geyser and slammed his bones on a row of those fiends, flattening them under his weight. Other cretins pressed back against the stone wall, realizing too late that there was nowhere left to go. A quick zap of electricity ended them.

  A single cretin was left, snarling at us as if he could menace a people that had just overcome terrible odds to save their goddess, their home, and their future.

  “May I?” Nola asked. I looked back. Jessip handed her Carzl’s bronze sword. Nola stepped toward me.

  “I can’t hide inside forever,” she said. “If I want to grow strong enough to fight back against Duul, I need all the training this war has to offer.”

  With slow, difficult steps, she trudged toward that cretin. It lunged toward her with its mouth agape, but she sidestepped. It turned to face her while she did the same. Then, with one quick motion, her blade sank deep inside that monster’s chest. It fell to the ground and that was it.

  No one cheered. No one hooted or hollered or clapped themselves on the back. We had done that earlier in the night, only to find it premature. We had stopped Duul for now, but the reality of this war hung too heavily on our shoulders in the dark of this night. This wasn’t over. It wouldn’t be over for a long time.

  Vix walked forward and rested a hand on the zenocat. “Poor baby,” she said. “Duul finally found an animal with the power to survive his curse long enough to do some real damage. The twolves we saw in the forest were no match for that dark spell, and maybe that was a mercy. They didn’t suffer long, not like this poor cat.”

  “The zenocat is a magical beast,” Nola said. “Enough magic runs through its blood to protect it from this curse for a time. I wish there were something I could do.”

  “Do nothing,” Gowes said.

  I wanted to protest, but the god of wishful thinking had made some good calls recently. We watched the feline beast lie on the dirt, breathing slowly. Its color was returning. It twitched a paw for a moment, then another one.

  A crowd had formed, far enough back from Vix that the beleaguered cat had room to breathe. We waited to see whether Duul’s war would add this majestic animal to its list of casualties.

  Then, in a moment that seemed to surprise even Gowes, the animal leapt to its feet. Vix stepped back and smiled. The monster’s paws dug into the dirt and raised a small patch of soil under itself. It stepped off the edge of that small island as another piece of earth lifted to meet its feet.

  It took off in a sprint through the sky, small footholds of rock and dirt shooting from the earth below to carry it into the night.

  “It survived the curse,” I said. “Where is it going?”

  “Back to the forests I assume, well past the elf lands,” Vix said. “Creatures like that live in the wilds, far beyond the cities.”

  “Duul’s reach must be greater than we thought,” Nola said. “The wilds are empty of humans, elves, and beastkin. They are empty of gods as well. If his forces have penetrated that deeply, who knows what he’ll bring back with him.

  “When he attacked my mind,” she continued, “I couldn’t sense any of the foot soldiers he sent here, or the general on the hilltop. I couldn’t sense or speak with any of you. I was trapped in a world of conflicting visions, none of them good.

  “It was confusing,” she said. “Elf and beastkin cities flashed before my eyes. Some were piles of rubble with children climbing from the remnants of their homes, crying for mothers and fathers that wouldn’t return. Other cities were on fire as cretins and monsters I’ve never seen before scooped up survivors and tore the life from their bodies.

  “The work we do here is important. Other cities will continue to rely on the safety we’ve all enjoyed since the last god war. We may have to show them that Duul’s new war is a greater threat than the Great Mother or the empire will ever admit.”

  “Duul did say he would head to Denvillia next,” I said, “and somewhere called Mournglory.”

  “We can’t let Denvillia fall to Duul,” Vix said. “My family is there.”

  “And Mournglory is where Mercifer calls
home,” Cindra said. “The more cities Duul takes, and the more gods he kills, the stronger his army will become.”

  “We won’t let that happen,” I said. “But enough talk of Duul for tonight. I think we’ve finally earned our feast.”

  +41

  I limped through the front gates to the temple and saw how badly the solid iron doors were damaged. The cretins had torn holes through the metal and ripped the doors from their hinges. I climbed past the fallen metal slabs and into the temple’s main room.

  The tables we had abandoned earlier were brimming with roasted meat, stewed vegetables, and platters of fresh fruits.

  “Roda,” I said, “you didn’t stop cooking when the attack started?”

  “Why would I?” she asked. “I knew you’d kick ass out there and need a good hot meal.”

  “I would have bet otherwise,” Lura said, leaning against the wall. Hork had a drumstick in his mouth while Prandon stared disdainfully at the juices running down Hork’s arm.

  “The thought never even crossed your mind to help out there,” I asked, “did it?”

  “Thoughts like that know better than to cross me,” she said.

  I just shook my head. “Eat with us,” I said. “Afterwards, I have a gift for you.” Lura looked skeptical as I approached my seat at the long table by Nola’s altar.

  “Where’s Nola?” I asked. Mamba, Vix, and Cindra shrugged.

  I’m here, Nola said. Still I didn’t see her.

  A pillar of soft yellow light shot up from the floor before Nola’s stone slab altar as the sound of a female chorus sang three rising notes. As the center of that light grew brighter, Nola took shape. She floated downward, her hands clasped together as if in prayer. A few intangible feathers made of that same light swirled around her. The light vanished as her feet touched down gently on the floor.