by Aaron Gansky
Erica stood slowly, brushed the leaves from her dress, and said to Sparky, “Don’t just stand there!” The wolf rose off its haunches and bounded toward the smoldering animal.
The beresus pulled its arm back and made low grunting noises like a gorilla.
Sparky leapt toward its throat. The beresus caught him and threw him to the ground. Sparky yelped.
More mumbling from Oliver. On one knee, he’d dug the tip of the prayer staff an inch deep in the damp earth. He hung on to it with both hands, bowed his head until his forehead touched the staff. His face lit with blue light from beneath his cloak.
“Do something!” Lauren shouted.
Still kneeling, with his eyes closed, Oliver stretched his hands toward the night sky.
He was praying. Had to be. His prayers healed the wounded, made them stronger.
The beresus moved to Aiden and picked him up by the ankles.
Lauren put her hands together and pushed them toward the beast. Another explosion of flames, another yelp. It dropped Aiden.
Deftly, Aiden flipped in mid-air and landed on his feet. In the light of the flaming beresus, Aiden grabbed his shield. He rotated it quickly, so the pointed end faced the gorilla-like animal, and plunged it into its chest. While the beast screamed, Aiden wrenched his sword from the depths of the beast’s belly. He jumped and slashed at the beresus’s throat.
The colossal creature staggered backward and fell on its back. It rolled over as the flames dissipated, pulled its knees under it like a baby learning to crawl, then collapsed. The rising and falling of its back ceased.
Terrified and exhilarated, Lauren smiled. “We did it! Totally amazing!”
Oliver didn’t look as excited. He looked tired. Erica stood over Sparky, running her hand over him. And, were those tears?
Aiden kicked the beresus over and pulled his shield out of the beast’s chest. He pushed its chin up with the heel of his left foot and plunged his blade into the soft neck. He stood over it for a while and watched it bleed. “Any more of these things hanging around?” he asked, his voice deep and smooth like water carving a river in rock.
Lauren’s excitement waned, and the freezing air chilled her. “We can’t be sure until we get to Varuth. They’ll have guards stationed outside the walls. Keeps monsters at bay.”
Oliver moved behind Erica, touched Sparky, mumbled.
“What are you doing?” Erica asked.
“He’s praying,” Lauren said.
“I can’t understand a word he’s saying.” She sounded irritated and a little sad.
“It’s not English. It’s in a language I made up.” Suddenly, her cheeks heated with embarrassment instead of magic.
“Tell me what he’s saying.”
“I don’t understand it. I can’t remember it at all. I wrote it years ago.”
Oliver continued his prayers. Sparky’s feet twitched.
“How can you not remember a language you made?”
Aiden walked over to join the group.
Lauren shrugged. “The same way I can call fire from heaven, the same way you can talk to animals, the same way Aiden can stick a sword a foot deep in a beresus. We’re becoming more like our characters. And my character doesn’t speak the ancient tongue.”
Aiden nodded. “For sure. I don’t know how I did any of that, but it sure felt like I’d been doing it a long time.”
“Vicmorn’s prayer healed you, and his prayer will heal Sparky as well.”
“Vicmorn?” Erica asked.
Aiden pointed to Oliver. “This guy here.”
“You mean Oliver?”
Lauren closed her eyes. She hadn’t even noticed she’d used Oliver’s game name. Even more surprising, though, Aiden picked up on it.
Sparky stood up quickly and leaned against Erica’s leg as if nothing had happened.
She petted the dog gently. “Listen, it’s great you all can do that stuff, but I can’t talk to animals.”
Sparky howled.
“Sure about that?” Oliver asked.
“If I could, don’t you think I’d call our horses back?”
“Give it time. You’ll learn to talk to horses soon enough. For now, we can walk.”
* * *
Humidity hung in the girls’ locker room of North Chester like a wet blanket. The stench of sweat mingled with the sweetness of shampoos, soaps, and perfumes. Nearly everyone on the girls’ basketball team had showered, dressed, and driven home.
Bailey Renee sat on the bench and leaned back against the wall of purple lockers. She had an iPod earbud in her left ear and her cell phone on the other. “Come on, Lauren. Stop pouting and pick up.”
Autumn, the six-foot senior center, dried her hair in a purple towel. “Your sister picking you up?”
Bailey Renee hung up. “She’s supposed to. But she’s not here, and she’s not answering her phone.”
Autumn flipped on a blow dryer and spoke loudly over the whir of the motor. “Maybe she’s outside.”
“I’ve been checking. Her car’s not here.”
“So, what? You need a ride or something?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I could call my mom, but she’d get super mad. She hates us calling her at work. I’m telling you, I am so irritated with Lauren right now.”
Autumn ran a brush through her thick blonde hair. “She must have a good reason for it. Maybe she’s busy, or she won a million dollars but has to pick it up before seven.”
“It’s a good thing you can play basketball,” Bailey Renee said. She took her backpack out and slung it over both shoulders. Her legs ached from all the running during practice. Her stomach growled, and she wanted McDonald’s more than anything. She opened her locker and checked her makeup in the mirror for the third time. “I have homework to do. We’re normally home by now. Honestly, I could probably walk the distance, but in this cold it’d be suicide.”
Autumn turned off the hair dryer and wrapped the cord around the handle. “Well, I can give you a ride if you want.”
Bailey Renee considered the offer. Her mother forbade her to ride home with anyone but Lauren. Sure, she’d let Franky give her a ride a couple times, but that was different. Franky was Franky. She never told her mom about those days. Come to think of it, Lauren never did either. So if Lauren didn’t sell her out, why should Bailey throw her under the bus because she didn’t pick her up one afternoon?
She shrugged. “Sure, if you don’t mind.”
* * *
The moon gleamed off the steel helmets of Varuth’s City Guard. They patrolled the high walls while moonlight glinted off arrow tips. The smell of irises and honeysuckle—the famous Varuthian gardens, revered for their impressive array of colors year round—distracted Lauren. Unlike Castle Alrujah, no moat surrounded the city. Three-story tall walls, thick and granite, encompassed the people and buildings within. From far away, travelers often mistook the city for a small mountain. But up close, they marveled at the intricate designs wrought in the stone with chisel and hammer—battle sequences of meticulously etched dragons attacking ships on the high seas, soldiers locked in hand-to-hand combat or engaging in elaborate swordplay—became evident.
The snow hadn’t come as Lauren thought it would. Instead of the spongy soil from earlier in the day, the frozen ground stiffened under her feet. She should be home now, picking up Bailey Renee, working on homework, playing video games. Instead, she traipsed through a too-cold evening toward a heavily guarded city.
Oliver took the lead. Aiden walked behind him, then Erica, and finally Lauren. Being in the back, a necessary evil, unsettled her. If any unsavory creatures—another beresus, or a fangand or arachand, or even an assassin hiding behind the trees—leapt out, she’d be the first one hit. The marching formation made sense, even though they’d not scripted it this way. Such a small change couldn’t have any profound impact on the course of the game. She and Oliver, because they knew the game best, would be the most prepared. Still, after seeing Aiden in action, Lauren wond
ered if he should be in the lead. But Oliver knew the script best, and he should be the one to do the talking.
The trees behind Lauren rustled, and she spun around. Electricity tingled through her crackling fingertips. “We got company,” she said.
In an instant, Aiden positioned himself next to her. His sword slid out of its sheath. “Now what?”
Lauren didn’t have time to respond.
A whisper came from the bushes, smooth as the smell of honeysuckles. “Indigo?” The way it uttered her name, like the first secret spell whispered in a young mage’s room, she knew she should recognize the voice, but she didn’t. Strangely, though, it put her at ease. The crackling of electricity faded. Unlike the first time the magic came upon her, she felt more in control this time, able to harness the energy. Best she could tell, her magic and emotions were inextricably connected. Controlling her magic meant controlling her feelings—something she’d never been good at.
Aiden’s voice came from behind her, even quieter than the strange whisper from the underbrush of the Cerulean Woods. “Who is it?”
She shrugged under the slight weight of her white cape. She pulled the edges around her arms and shivered. “I have no idea.”
“Should we be worried?”
“No.”
Aiden turned his attention to the walled city. “Bro, I think they know we’re here. They’ve got arrows ready, and they’re aiming right at us.”
“Into the bushes,” the voice whispered again. “Hurry.”
An arrow shot past Lauren’s ear, and she fell to the frozen soil. “Why are they shooting at us?” she asked Oliver.
Erica said, “I’m guessing this isn’t in the script?”
A loud clang made Lauren spin around. An arrow glanced off Aiden’s helmet.
“Not cool,” he said.
They receded deeper into the woods, away from the city walls. Aiden followed Lauren to shield her from the barrage of arrows. A scream pierced the night, a loud mix of pain and anger.
Erica held her side. Oliver knelt over her. In an instant, Aiden held his shield between their group and Varuth.
Twangs of strings reverberated and melded with the thunking of arrows in the frozen turf. Arrows flew in both directions now.
She wondered, for an instant, who was shooting back at Varuth.
Hard hands yanked her shoulders. She couldn’t hold her feet under her, and she fell back. The hands held her firmly, but softly, and dragged her to the woods. “Keep your head low,” the voice said.
Two men dressed in black emerged from the woods. They grabbed Erica by her shoulders and pulled her back into the underbrush. Oliver went with her each step of the way. Aiden sneered on his way in.
Lauren finally saw the face of the voice. It looked familiar, something she’d drawn, but nothing she could remember exactly. Like déjà vu, only with the added frustration of a confused dream.
“There are those of us who cautioned me against contacting you. They wanted me to leave you to the marksmen of Varuth. And after what your father has done, I honestly thought about it,” the voice said.
“You speak too freely. Guard your tongue. I am the daughter of King Ribillius, Princess Indigo. And I am not my father.” She’d adopted the voice of her character, more on instinct than conscious will.
“It is as I told them,” the man said.
She had trouble identifying his face in the dark, but he had a short, flat nose. He wore the same black leather as the other men. The Varuthian crest—a blood red dagger pointing down at a forty-five-degree angle, piercing the head of a serpent that moved up at an opposite angle, forming a macabre V—adorned his tunic.
Varuthian Elite. Her thoughts cleared like the mist rolling back over the ocean. Ullwen.
Before Lauren met Aiden, in the earliest version of the script, Ullwen played the role of Indigo’s romantic counterpart. But Varuthian soldiers never attacked the travelers, in any version of the script. And the Elite would never be outside the walls of the city. They would guard the castle.
“Why are they shooting at us?” Lauren asked.
“Varuth has closed the city completely. Your father is convinced the Mage Lord is within our walls.”
“Then why are you out here? Shouldn’t you be inside with the others, hunting the Mage Lord?”
Ullwen grimaced. “We need to go. We need to keep moving. Varuth is no longer safe.”
Did she even have a choice?
“Keep low.” He pulled her to a stop by her arm. “We have horses on the edge of the woods.”
“But it’s night,” she protested. “It’s not safe to travel.”
“It’s not safe to stay,” he said. “Varuth won’t follow us into the woods.”
“But there are fangands in the woods,” Lauren said.
Ullwen didn’t break stride. “Better to fight a mindless pack of animals than a mindful troop of trained soldiers.”
Chapter Ten
But their ways were evil. They sought irresponsible power, subjugated their people to slavery, and ignored the well-being of the other races. They worshiped strange gods and fashioned for themselves idols to worship. They celebrated themselves instead of Adonai. The jealousy of Adonai burned against them, and upon them Adonai passed judgment. He placed a plague upon them and banished them from Alrujah. And the plague was called the nar’esh.
—The Book of the Ancients
OLIVER WAS A COMPUTER programmer, not a track star. But he wasn’t even a little bit tired. His taut muscles showed no signs of weariness. In fact, drawing the cold air into his lungs, he felt more alive here than he ever did in North Chester. Every muscle in his body, every tendon, every cell, responded to his unconscious call for obedience.
Erica dropped to her knees, and Lauren looked like she might be next. “We’ve got to stop,” Erica said. Her breath came in gasps, and her arms shook. “We’ve been running for an hour.”
Ullwen stopped. The other Varuthian Elite, who had been running flank, knelt next to Erica to urge her up. She pushed their hands away and flopped on her back. “I can’t run anymore.”
Ullwen said, “The horses are near. You can rest when we reach them.”
“This game is starting to suck pretty hard.” Her words came through heavy gasps of air.
Oliver marveled at Aiden. Athletic and strong in North Chester, here he was freakishly conditioned. After an hour’s run in hundred-pound barbed armor, he didn’t even breathe hard.
“You okay?” he asked Erica.
“Never better.” Sparky sniffed the air. His large ears perked up. “Something wrong, boy?” Sparky’s hair bristled. “I’m guessing that’s not a good thing,” Erica said.
The Varuthian Elite drew their weapons. Oliver’s hot blood raced through his veins in the wintry evening. His heart beat like a dwarven hammer on his chest.
Sparky growled.
Erica raised an eyebrow. “What in the world is a fangand?”
Ullwen answered as he moved, sword unsheathed, closer to Lauren. “Surely you jest. Have you never ventured into the forest?”
Oliver whispered to her, his staff at the ready. “Think werewolves, but without the sense of humor. They hunt in packs, often attack from the trees.”
The leaves behind her exploded. Oliver and Erica spun around. Erica screamed and Sparky leapt at the dark beast.
Streams of moonlight illuminated the heavy black fur accented with red and silver. Larger and broader than a man, the fangand flexed his chest, near four feet across from shoulder to shoulder. The beast grabbed Sparky by the neck.
Erica screamed again, high-pitched and loud, but not a cry of terror or fear. Oliver turned to her, convinced a fangand had her arm firm in its crushing jaws. But he found no other fangands though he should have—no fangand hunted alone. There should be at least two more, maybe three.
A caw similar to Erica’s echoed through the night before being drowned out by a new sound, the sound of a thousand beating wings. She’d called razorb
eaks.
They blotted out what little moonlight filtered through the trees. The air hummed with the beating of wings and the angry caws. Oliver heard the fangand before he spotted it in the animalistic darkness. It roared—an angry, guttural growl.
Sparky’s muzzle erupted in choked snarls and snaps.
The murder of razorbeaks tore ravenously at the fangand, which flailed its long, sinewy arms in the night air. Razorbeaks bounced off its paws, its elbows. Some crashed to the leaves below, but righted themselves and circled around again, darting past its waving arms. Sparky, now free, ran past Oliver and Erica toward the imposing shadow of another fangand.
Lightning split the sky. Heat flashed against the left side of Oliver’s face. Electricity punched the ground under his feet. Lauren backed slowly away from a smoldering fangand. She looked haggard, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. Her eyes, sunken, glowed blue. Her hair snapped like synapses. Ullwen and the other Varuthian soldiers circled around the second fangand, swords swinging and glinting in the periodic moonlight.
With sharp, hungry claws and teeth, fangands were perhaps the fastest creatures in the woods. Oliver wanted to charge into the fray, and while he could hold his own against a human opponent, in a fight between a martial-arts monk without a bladed weapon and a fangand, the beast would easily have the upper paw. He might be able to serve as a distraction, but more than likely, without coordinating a battle plan, he’d be in the way of the highly trained soldiers.
Prayer presented itself as the best option. It took every ounce of willpower he had, but he closed his eyes and, with one hand on his amulet, lifted his prayer staff toward the sky. “Adonai!” he shouted.
The Ancient Language bubbled up in him. He felt it first in his chest, and it crawled like spiders up the inside of his neck until he opened his mouth and the ancient words spilled out. He had no idea what they meant but knew it was important.
All at once, his eyes snapped open. Instead of the sallow blue moonlight that diffused through the thick tangled branches of the harspus trees, Oliver saw everything in the woods as yellow, bright as day, as if both suns were at their zeniths.
Ullwen cried from Oliver’s left. He’d been knocked down. The two Varuthian soldiers with him readied their bows. They fired a quick volley. Two arrows stuck in the angry black fangand. It roared, broke an arrow in each hand and leapt at the two archers. Oliver targeted the beast’s chest and hurled his staff at the fangand.
