The Last Pantheon: of spiders and falcons

by Jason Jones

  “Saberrak! What in the eight hells are you doing?!” James started to jog after the minotaur, his head aching from the days of wine and days without. Raising his shield, the once knight followed.

  The elf moved quickly into the woods off the trail again, moving to the rear of the ferocious feline, her steps making barely any sound. Azenairk put the steel shield high over his head, marching forward, unsure of what to do besides crush the cat’s leg and paw with his hammer. Yet nonetheless he moved in on the predator as well.

  “Vundren bless these insane travelers, bless their blades and their souls, protect them from harm father!” Prayer always proceeded battle in Boraduum and the last Thalanaxe kept tradition intact, even far from his home.

  The gray gladiator huffed, growled out his breath, stewing his anger and energy into his chest. He lunged head first at the side of the panther, just as the beast turned to see him, the white horse still kicking in its jaws. With all his weight, shoulders and neck locked tight, Saberrak hit into the ribs behind the white and black fur, knocking the feline monstrosity back a foot or more and getting its complete attention.

  An ear piercing hiss issued from the bloody mouth of the beast, backed up on all fours, hair raised on its lower back, it turned to face the thing that had just hurt it. Not wasting a moment, horns red with streaked blood, the twin bladed axe swung at the cat's face, clipping hair as it snapped its head up and away. Then the bone blade hurled from Saberrak’s hand, lodging into the face of his enemy just below the eye. The great horned panther let out a foul hiss and high pitched growl, a growl of warning. The minotaur stepped in, paying no mind to the noises or threats, and swung at the beast's throat. Before the axe could land its mighty edge into his foe, a paw struck out and toppled the horned warrior from the side, sending him tumbling into the snow bank ten feet away.

  The bestial feline hunched back to pounce on the downed menace of a minotaur just as two blades dove deep into its rear legs. Shinayne pulled her swords free, ducking in anticipation of a rear kick from the cat, which she guessed correctly. The howling roar was followed by the rear legs swiftly and reflexively scraping the ground where the elf had been a moment earlier. The beast looked, green eyes the size of wagon wheels, right at the stealthy elf and then its front paws felt the pain of a sword plunging through the left, and a warhammer crushing bone on the right. The great panther reared up on its back legs, snapping its head forward, seeing two little men with shields raised. It dove down in anger and hissing fury at the taller one on its right,.

  Crouching behind his shield, James suddenly saw a pair of giant canine tusks on either side of him, just as tall as him, and felt the grip of something on his shield as the moonlight vanished and he was lifted into darkness. James did not reason to hang on to the shield, just reflexively his muscles tightened as he was lifted by the fanged cat's mouth. His feet dangling ten feet above the ground, James tightened the grip on his blade. Staring at the back of his shield, noting the scratches he had put there over the years, one for each ogre he had killed, James swung his body. Suddenly tensing his muscles, he swung up to the side of the panther’s nose, driving his broadsword deep into the soft black flesh on the end of its face.

  The face wrinkled and hissed in pain, whipping its head side to side, and James hung onto the hilt of his blade and the shield for his life. A clawed paw swatted him off, cutting his leg and arm as the knight flew over the dwarf and skidded across the ground, his shoulder numb from the impact, his shield arm likely broken.

  The cat reared again, growling and roaring as pain shot again into its left paw, the crack of bones heard loud this time as the priest of Vundren swung into the middle of the top of the paw with the large steel hammer. Limping, favoring that leg now, the great horned predator beat at the dwarf with its good paw, raking claws across the dwarf's shield, and sending him back almost five feet. Azenairk stayed his ground and did not tumble or fall, his stocky girth and forward weight harder to break.

  Another cut from Shinayne, this time across the hind leg of the wounded cat, into the bone. Dancing around its scrambling back paws, she plunged her shortblade into the hip muscle and cut downward like it were cloth, spilling blood to the snow covered ground. Now having its full attention and no other enemy within reach, the enormous feline turned on the elf. Lowering its head to the ground and backing her against a small maple tree, the beast turned its mouth sideways to take its meal in one quick bite, then recoiled quickly as an axe head hurled from many feet away, lodged into the side of the cat's neck with a thud and slicing sound upon impact. Blood ran live a river, and the feline shuddered in pain.

  Saberrak staggered forward toward the hissing beast, now curling in pain and losing pots of blood from the wound. Shaking violently, the cat freed the axe from its flesh, and growled a high pitch feline warning. It turned, sinking its canines into a spasming horse, and leapt off south, limping and growling into the darkness of the winter night. Saberrak picked up his axe, in one fluid motion with his steps, and kept after the giant feline.

  “Thank you, Saberrak. Have you ever seen anyth…hey, where are you going?” Shinayne was heading toward the dwarf and James, who still had not gotten up from his fall. “The other knight ran with one of the horses, there is no way we can catch him on foot in the middle of the night!”

  “I am not going after the rider.” His focus on his axe, and the bloody trail into the woods, the minotaur would not chance the beast returning in the night for another attempt for a meal. Saberrak followed the great horned panther, alone, to finish the fight. He knew not to let an injured enemy survive.

  “You can’t go alone, that is insane! James is hurt, get back here!” the elf was talking to no one that would listen and her horned friend walked into the darkness, alone. “Very well, go get yourself killed then! Men.” Shinayne went to see her human friend, and see what the dwarf was talking about over him.

  “Lay still brave human, let me see your arm there.” Azenairk looked at the posture of this man, saw the arm raised up a bit too high, muscles tense. “Ahh, your arm is broken there, son. Shoulder as well. I will have to set it before I heal ye up, and it will hurt. A lot.”

  “Are you a priest, dwarf?” James was squinting, trying to loosen the straps on his shield with his good arm, not wanting to move.

  “Aye. I am Azenairk Thalanaxe, my father always called me Zen, for short. Man of Vundren, the creator of the mountains, God of my people. I can heal this, but if we don’t set it right first, well, you will never be thankin’ me since ye will have little movement there. So bite down there, James, is it?”

  “James Andellis, formerly of Southwind Keep, formerly a knight thereof.” James pulled off his leather gauntlet, and bit down on it, seeing this dwarf setting his shield and hammer to the side and getting into position.

  “Formerly? Well James, ye fought like any knight I have ever heard tale of, formerly or no. Now hold there, and don’t move.”

  Snap! The bone fit back into where the dwarf was sure it was meant to go, the arm looking straight and normal. He held it together trying not to look at the face of this man as he was in severe pain. Azenairk had set quite a few breaks over his decades in the temple, forge incidents, mining collapses, mountain falls, but never from the assault of a giant panther. In several days of routine prayer, Zen hoped it would be just an uncomfortable memory for James Andellis.

  “Obrildin avgen ledbrorem Vundren, velk verden brelm Vundren, femraal Vundren, hamannt Vundren est ouras,” his dwarven dialect and temple prayer perfect as his hands held the trembling arm and the moaning human. The last Thalanaxe, feeling his prayers were heard, repeated three more times the passages of healing and removing pain of the flesh derived from battle. Azenairk felt the trembling cease a minute later, deep in trance, merely uttering the prayer under his breath and beard with his eyes closed. He then began the prayers of thanks and gratitude to Vundren.

  Shinayne watched as the pious dwarf opened his eyes and James moved his arm fre
ely. She had always been amazed by divine worshippers of Siril, the power of faith and belief, yet trusted her blades much more than any prayer. Her eyes glanced to the unmoving traitor and horses, bloody stains and steam in the night rising in the cold sky. She did not see the minotaur nor the giant panther. Shinayne gripped her blades to fight the cold in her fingers and turned back to James and Zen.

  “Impressive Thalanaxe, my thanks.”

  “Make no mention, Lady Shinayne.”

  “Mine as well.” James gripped his hand over and over in the cold air.

  “Vundren told me to watch you closely, James Andellis. His power through me would not have come if ye had been a coward or unworthy to bless. However, you need to watch yourself with the wine. It can ruin a man if he be not careful.” Azenairk smiled, standing up and helping the knight to his feet with an outstretched hand.

  “Vundren told you all that?” James was pessimistic about those that claimed to hear God in their prayers or have conversations with their deity, and it showed in his words. Alden had never answered a prayer of his.

  “No, the wine I figured by your smell and the redness of your eyes. The rest, well, I just know to be true.”

  “Huh. Where did you find him? Where is Saberrak?” The once knight picked up his shield and his broadsword from a few feet away, cleaning the blood of the great horned panther off in the snow. James looked around, surveying the carnage of dead horses, a deceased knight of Southwind, and a torn up, still twitching brahma. His arm felt no pain and he nodded to the dwarven priest.

  “He went after the cat by himself.” Shinayne replied, picking up the bone shortblade from the blood splattered snowy trail. “He forgot this. We should go after him.”

  “And where is our other traitorous escort?” James asked, looking at the lower half of a dead rider still partially in the saddle of a mutilated horse.

  “Made off on the last living horse, headed west.” Shinayne pointed down the snowy trail.

  “So, do we go after him then?” Zen asked.

  “We?” Shinayne raised her eyebrows and looked to James.

  “No, we are close to Vallakazz, backtracking in this weather will do us no good.” James knelt over the dead man from Southwind, his top half on the other side of the horse he had made a run for. Were it not dark and bloody all around in the cold night, the scene may have lost James his stomach.

  He looked through his pack, looking for perhaps an order or writ or something that would explain why these men would abandon them in the night, taking their steeds. He found nothing, but his hand did pick up something hard and heavy, smooth and cold inside the leather pack. James pulled out the smooth stone scroll belonging to the minotaur, weighing close to ten pounds, He put it in the dwarf's pack.

  “Letter of recommendation is gone, but hold onto this, it must be more valuable than we were told. Let’s go save our foolish horned friend, shall we?”

  The three walked, following the easy trail of blood and cat prints big enough for them all to stand in. Saberrak’s booted tracks following as well. Shinayne took the lead, weapons drawn and ready for the panther to spring out any moment. The walk took half an hour and then they all heard it. The roaring, the hissing, and the sounds of trees snapping in the winter forest. Following the sprinting elven woman, all three ran to save their friend before it was too late.

  The shadow was evident in the open moonlight at the edge of the trees, the minotaur walked slowly out of the lowland near a stream. They saw the shadow of his axe in one hand, and the other arm seemed unusually long, as if injured, dragging on the ground. Besides heavy breathing and footsteps, he made not a sound. They stopped, waiting for the cat to lunge out of the forest any moment, watching the silent shadowed minotaur walk closer.

  A thud in the ground in front of them sent their reflexes into motion, shields and weapons went to the ready. They looked down, seeing a spiraled horn longer than a man lying before them without the attached feline owner. Saberrak kept walking, silently, in need of rest and water, his body aching slightly from a few blows and the exertion of tearing one of the horns from the defeated panther.

  “Now it’s dead.” He huffed.

  The elf, James, and the priest all looked in amazement at the horned gladiator who kept walking back to camp, his enemy’s life taken. Shinayne peered into the pass by the stream, seeing the panther, bloody and unmoving, laid out with massive cuts in its chest and neck. She was sure, regardless of the horn, that it was finished.

  “So that is Saberrak then? Glad he is on your side, I suppose?” Azenairk turned, following the horned warrior back to camp, thinking about what he just saw his first week outside his city of Boraduum.

  Only in stories and myth had he heard of giant panthers, minotaurs, elven nobles, or knights of Southwind. Only in the tales of merchant families and traders from the other dwarven kingdoms in other mountains far away, did these things truly live. He reached into his pack, removing the heavy scroll, jogging up in his armor to hand it to the minotaur.

  Saberrak paid him a glance, still walking off his intensity, clearing his focus on the panther. He was not really interested in anything the dwarf he did not know, or anyone else, had to say at this moment. Azenairk recognized that the minotaur was needing silence and respected it, keeping in stride, but not bothering the gray warrior. The priest knew that quiet meditation was healthy for the soul, and tried to concentrate on his father. Wherever he may be, whatever this strange journey was, he hoped he was safe with Vundren. Saberrak took the scroll from his hand and nodded to the dwarf beside him.

  “Those two are sure quiet, aren’t they Shinayne?”

  “Yes, best leave them be. How far is the walk to Vallakazz?”

  “Maybe the end of a hard two days march.” James was rolling his arm around and around, loosening the muscles and feeling no pain from the injury that the priest had healed.

  “Let’s take enough food from the horses and get ready then. I feel that Azenairk knows something. Let’s talk to him in the morning.”

  “Agreed. I think he knows something as well. His arrival is no accident. It is as if he knows us already.”

  “Indeed.” Shinayne squinted her eyes. “But who sent him?”

  “We will find out soon enough.”

  James made conversation, but his stiff muscles reminded him of the bottle of wine still half full at the camp, several more hidden. His mind concentrated on it, knowing what relief it would bring him soon. Southwind Keep, treachery, scrolls, giant cats, ogre armies, these things would not be bothering his weary mind for much longer, as the wine always promised.

  Sorceries I:II

  Lazlette Academy

  West Tower over Lake Pellicram

  Vallakazz

  “Magic is not a power to be wielded, a gift to be stolen, nor a secret to be locked away. It is an art to be preserved, passed on, and never forgotten.”-from the teachings of Flanius Lazlette, Archmage and founder of the Lazlette Semanarium Arcanum.

  Snow fell in small wispy flakes from where she stood high on the bridge between the south and west towers. This spot, though not much of a view of the city at night, was overlooking Lake Pellicram, the traditional place for all wizards graduating their ninth and final year at the Lazlette Semanarium Arcanum. Gwenneth felt the winter air, annoyed that she, having graduated her family’s academy at the age of twenty-two, eight years ago, still had to attend this ceremony.

  The students all lined the bridge, seventeen this year, more than usual. They ranged in age from her own to twice that or even more. They came from a dozen different nations, all from wealthy families. Gwenne watched all six of the professors align, as well as her mother Aelaine, High Wizard and Lady of Vallakazz. All the students were in their robes of deep blue, customary sashes of gold, holding their oaken staves and wands to their sides at attention. The professors, including herself and her mother, were dressed in traditional black with gold trimmed robes of the Academy, having no further need of wooden items of focu
s. They were more symbolic of status and class, useful at times to channel certain energies, but not required of proven wizards such as Gwenneth.

  The procession began, trumpets blared from seven floors below on the terrace, and Gwenne followed the professors as they stepped from stone, one by one. They were incanting the words of arcane flight and levitation in unison, and she joined in.

  “Vianminor efrenti felanashrae.”

  The eight black robed masters rose slowly to a height of five feet above the bridge and drifted in mid air, turning to face the class assembled as they hovered effortlessly almost a hundred feet above the lake. The trumpets gave their final notes and the crowd of several thousand below viewing the ceremony all clapped and cheered at the spectacle. Gwenne, next to Middir of Kivanis and Dasius of Caberra, looked to her mother out of the corner of her eye, waiting for her signal to begin.

  The prodigal daughter had never liked Dasius, the bald old Caberran, with his tan skin and arrogant accent, and the feeling of dislike was mutual. Gwenneth had bested him at a harmless duel of arcane offenses half her life past now and called him “Dasius the lesser” in front of the class as the man tired out and gave in to the exceptional youth. Gwenneth had many months of Academy hours and cleaning duty for such an insult to a professor and they had made an example of her, most said because of who she was, rather than what she had done.

  Needless to say, the two had not spoken many words since and were nearly considered rivals by the rumor mill of the Academy. Gwenne looked past him as though he did not exist and watched the others, Brellmond Graniff a man from here in Vallakazz who knew her late father and taught much alchemy and classic arcane. Enira D’Fallow of Harlaheim was present, a woman that once served the late King Philliam the third of Caberra and studied the attraction of magical energies with the great Kalzarius. Linnel and Damoval Traelsidian, the two esteemed brothers from Shanador that once traveled with many famed wizards before retiring here, both well versed in the elemental and telekinetic forces of the arts. Gwenne had studied under each and every one of them, grew up with them and their stories, and envied their power and knowledge from lifetimes spent in the arts. She longed to have been the places they had been and met the mighty and famous wizards they had met. Though now, she knew she had surpassed them all in power.