by B. T. Narro
“They’re here!”
Leida and the others had already begun to follow, but Desil’s shout removed their hesitance as they sprinted.
Desil took out his sword and ran toward the fallen Elf while Basen screamed for Rhy to run back into the forest. The Marros clawed at Rhy as they flapped their wings to hover just above. He stuck out his hand and pained them all. Many fell on top of him as Desil got there.
It was quicker to maim than kill. Desil swung wildly, cutting wings with every stroke. The injured Marros flew off awkwardly, clearly losing their will to fight. The others turned on him and looked ready to attack until the shouts of Desil’s comrades convinced them otherwise.
The creatures rose into the sky, but they too had reinforcements coming in behind them. A body tumbled out from the trees. Basen. He had blood running down his face, but he sprang up quickly. Alabell came running after him, a swarm of Marros hopping out from the trees after her.
“Oh my stars, Leida?” she yelled.
“Mother!”
Countless creatures descended, claws first. Desil ducked and swung, poked and slashed, but he had little hope of dodging them all. They went for his head, especially his eyes. He used his free arm to protect himself, but it was hardly a shield. After just a moment, his skin was flayed.
He put all of his effort into cutting as many feet as he could with two-handed swings. The creatures screamed in waves of agony, groups of them dropping at a time as the two psychics cast their spells.
“Kirnich, your sword!” Wade yelled.
Kirnich handed over his weapon and took out his bow instead.
A blast of heat struck Desil in the back and rolled him forward. He popped up and ran back for the sword he’d dropped near Leida as she held up a smoking wand. The cloud of Marros had cleared for the moment, but now they came back targeting her.
“Leida!” Basen screamed. “Come here!”
The headmaster shot a fireball over his daughter’s head as she ran toward him. It exploded against two Marros chasing her.
“We need to get back into the forest!” Desil yelled.
Adriya shot a man-sized fireball. At first Desil thought she’d missed all the Marros, but then he realized what she’d been aiming at. Two massive Marros were diving toward them from the sky.
“Lmars!” Adriya announced as both of them swerved to dodge her fireball.
One of the enormous Marros spoke a string of words, its deep voice rumbling through Desil’s chest. “Graliakreeeeekagashinaaaa.”
A pack of Marros came down hard onto Kirnich as he was lining up his shot. Two other groups of the creatures tackled Adriya and Basen. Leida seemed to realize what was happening just as Desil did. She screamed as she ran toward the cover of trees. The Lmars swooped down after her as two more packs of Marros swarmed Beatrix and Rhy.
But they had made a mistake leaving Desil and his father alone. “Into the earth,” Desil told Wade as he put his sword in his sheath.
“Got it.”
They sprinted toward Leida as she neared the trees.
The lead Lmar got low, extending its feet to grab her. Desil jumped and grasped the Lmar’s leg just above its long talons. His father came soaring in after, grabbing the other leg. They pulled the massive beast down, continuing to yank its legs until its claws were pressed against the ground. Desil and Wade stepped on top of each one as they told the ground to liquefy.
“Help soften the ground, Leida!” Desil told her.
The Marro struggled with huge flaps of its wings as they all sank into the muddy earth, but Desil and his father were too heavy for it to fly. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the creature from snapping at Desil with its razor-like teeth. He ducked but had nowhere to go when it got ready to strike again.
Then the creature hollered in pain as Beatrix ran toward them with her arm outstretched. There was an explosion above Desil, the other Lmar screeching as it toppled down. Darkness came as a wing blanketed him.
“Desil?” Wade yelled as the wing slapped Desil around.
“I’m ready!”
“Are you sure?”
He wasn’t, but there was no time. “Harden it now!”
He turned the ground solid again, as did his father, and perhaps Leida as well. Desil tried to jump out but couldn’t. The Lmar’s wing bent from the pressure of Desil’s head and hands as he pushed against the huge Marro. It swatted him backward, but at least it had freed Desil’s feet from the ground.
After a quick roll, he saw one Lmar taking off while the other’s legs were half buried. It yelled something in distress as Desil drew his sword and ran toward it.
Marros descended upon him like a hive of angry bees. He tried to swing his way through them, but they were intent on getting in his way and even grabbing his arms. Once they had hold of him, another came at his face, feet first. He tried to squirm free, but all he could do was turn his head as it clawed him down his cheek.
Desil screamed in equal frustration and pain. “I can’t get to it!”
He caught sight of his father tumbling away from the half-buried Lmar, a dozen Marros hopping after Wade. A fireball crashed into them. Another one came through the clearing and slammed into the side of the Lmar as it struggled to get free. It screeched as it shot out of the earth. But even with one wing smoking, it was able to take flight. What would it take to disable the behemoth?
Desil fought to free himself without success. The Marros seemed to be holding him rather than killing him, and he saw why as the smoking Lmar circled toward him.
“Beatrix…Beatrix!”
He didn’t know where she was or why she wasn’t responding, but he didn’t see another way out of this without her psyche.
The Lmar swerved up to avoid a fireball, then dove for Desil.
“Beatrix!” he screamed, thrashing for his life. There were too many Marros grabbing his arms and holding him upright for him to have any chance of dodging the Lmar. One Marro clawed his hand until he let go of his sword.
They all let go as the Lmar came close. Desil fell and dropped his arms to avoid the oncoming claws, but the Lmar scooped him up anyway with its massive feet. He felt a lurch as he came off the ground. With his stomach and legs on top of the Lmar’s feet, he tried to roll off, but the beast snatched him out of the air before he could fall.
Desil thrashed, expecting to fall and needing to prepare himself to soften the ground, but the grip of the Lmar was iron. It had its talons wrapped around his torso and legs, interlocked across the front of his body. He elbowed the creature’s feet, though it felt as if he was driving his bone into a tree.
His window of falling without injury was quickly disappearing as the scene of battle shrunk away. He screamed for help, though all of his comrades were buried beneath clouds of Marros.
The other Lmar had come up beneath him, stretching its neck to look up and watch its comrade soar higher. It seemed ready to catch Desil if he did manage to escape.
An explosion below cleared one cloud of the Marros. Adriya appeared out of the smoke, putting arrow to bow. She aimed up and shot. The arrow sang as it flew past Desil’s ear. The Lmar holding him screeched, its grip loosening. Desil thrashed with all of his might and managed to fall free.
Consumed by anger, he ground his teeth together as he fell toward the Lmar turning its body back to catch Desil. He stretched out and threw an overhead punch with a huge windup, bopping the creature square on its beak. It let out a grunt, though it still attempted to close its talons around Desil, but all it managed to do was clip his legs and send him flipping.
He fought back panic as he threw his body the opposite way in an attempt to straighten out. It hardly helped, though it did give him the chance to tell where his feet were compared to the oncoming ground. He gave his body one last jerk before pouring his effort into softening the earth. He came down on his feet, noticing his father right there with his hands on the ground.
Desil couldn’t tell what happened after he landed hard, only th
at he was uninjured. Soft dirt was in front of his eyes. He tried to move his hand up to swipe it away, but something heavy was holding his arms down. More soil, he realized. He was buried, but how deep?
He pushed with his feet and shot upward, but it wasn’t sufficient to break out. Still unable to see, he softened the soil around his arms enough for them to move freely, but he felt more dirt come down on top of him. He had a brief moment of thrashing in panic that accomplished nothing.
Struggling for air only made it worse. But Desil made himself calm down and think quickly. He had never manipulated two things at the same time before, but it seemed to be the only way to get free. He kept his left hand down at his waist while raising his right, making the soil hard at his feet while softening it around his shoulders. Then he began to climb.
He continued softening above and hardening below, picking up his pace as his urge to breathe began to take over his focus. Seeing some light sprinkling through, he jumped and broke out of the ground, although he was still in a hole. He sucked in a breath and was blessed with air as the cries of battle rang out. Shouts to help Leida mixed in. Desil climbed up the side of the hole and back onto the grass and realized Leida’s screams came from somewhere above him.
They have her! His only hope was to help the psychics or archers. He found himself behind the skirmish now, swarms of Marros knocking over his comrades. Beatrix was the first one in front of him, desperately trying to pain the Lmar in the sky as she defended herself against a horde of Marros. They scratched and knocked her down as Desil ran toward her. He leapt onto the back of the first Marro in his way to take it down, then he grabbed two heads and slammed them together. The third Marro he jumped onto tried to shake Desil off, but he was already grabbing the neck of another Marro, this one with its claws on Beatrix’s shoulders. Desil let himself fall as he pulled its head all the way down, his rear and its beak slamming against the ground.
Mostly free of Marros, Beatrix growled out in strain as she aimed both hands at the Lmar high in the sky. It screeched and thrashed its head, sinking as its wings refused to work, but it managed to keep hold of Leida. Desil threw dirt in the face of a Marro flying toward Beatrix, causing the creature to hiss and shut its eyes. Unfortunately, he was too slow to stop the other three from coming down on top of Beatrix and ending her psychic spell.
He looked for Adriya or Kirnich, or even the Elven psychic, but all were too far away for him to help them before Leida was too high. They all struggled against their own individual swarm of Marros. Wade tackled the creatures in hopes of freeing Kirnich. Alabell pulled the leg of one of the many Marros swarming around the Elf. Adriya finally broke free and looked like she was about to get a shot off when a waiting Marro swooped down and snatched the bow, initiating a tugging match.
Desil could do nothing as he glimpsed the sky, Leida too high now to fall without breaking something unless Desil or his father was there to soften the ground. The Lmar holding her made huge flaps of its wings to gain even more height. Leida’s screams for help tore at Desil’s heart as he ran to stay beneath her.
The other Lmar yelled something to its kin as it flew into the air. Suddenly every Marro stopped fighting and took off.
Kirnich still had his bow. He aimed and shot his arrow but it didn’t make it past the cloud of Marros, embedding in the chest of one of them. It began to flutter down, but two other Marros grabbed it midair. A third came to help them fly off with their injured.
Kirnich shot again, but his arrow only struck another Marro in the way. The same situation occurred. Desil became aware of Alabell screaming for her daughter as he continued running after the Marros. Soon he heard another set of boots behind him. He looked back to see Basen with his eyes aimed at the sky, his wand up.
Some of the Marros looked down at Desil and Basen. They said something to each other, then dozens started to dive. Basen shot, his fireball killing one instantly. But the rest were upon them. Desil couldn’t escape their claws as much as he tried to punch and elbow them away. The Marros tackled him. They clawed his chest and face every time he tried to get up. His arm was already open and bleeding, but he attempted to use it to bat them away.
There were just too many, and more were descending upon him.
Soon he realized they would kill him if he didn’t stop. He got a glimpse of Basen fighting and losing in the same way.
“We have to give up!” Desil yelled to him. “We live and get her back, or we die here and now.”
Basen screamed as if to keep fighting, but soon he appeared to realize Desil was right and stopped moving.
The Marros let up. They hissed as if in warning as they took off.
Basen yelled up at the sky. “We’ll come for you, Leida!”
Realizing it was over, Kirnich held up his bow but did not shoot. Adriya aimed her staff but did not fire. Beatrix and Rhy put up their palms, intimidation plain on the Marros’ faces.
The creatures batted their wings until they were as high as the rest of their kin, then flew off to join their group.
It was suddenly quiet save everyone catching their breath. Blood stained every shirt and many pants as well. Desil’s worst injury was the flayed skin on his left arm, but he wasn’t about to let anything stop him from getting to the center of the island.
Basen started marching in the direction the Marros had gone. “Let’s go,” he called.
“Wait,” Wade said. “They’re watching us.”
It was true. A few of the Marros had turned around as they hovered.
“Our only chance is if we wait for night,” Wade continued. “Then we can surprise them. Go back into the forest for now. Hopefully they’ll think we’re giving up.”
Alabell wept while Basen wiped away a few tears and cursed.
“Come on,” Desil said. “It won’t be long before night, and we have injuries to treat.”
The gravity of the situation finally sank in as all of them shuffled back toward the shelter of the trees. Desil wasn’t sure if he could speak, consumed as he was by the thought there was nothing they could do to prevent Leida from suffering a horrible death. His tears started surfacing. Panic seized his chest.
“How could you let this happen, psychics?” Basen asked in fury.
Neither Beatrix nor Rhy looked past their feet.
“I tried everything,” Beatrix said.
“There were too many,” Rhy added.
Desil could barely breathe. They needed a plan, but he couldn’t think. He knew what it was like to be carried into the sky by an Lmar when he thought they might escape with him. He couldn’t imagine the panic Leida was going through now that it had happened to her.
“We will get her back,” Desil promised, ignoring his inner voice that told him they were going to get themselves killed in the process.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Leida couldn’t burn the enormous feet of the Lmar wrapped around her shoulders and legs. The creature had her arms in its grasp as well, yet she still would’ve been able to gather bastial energy into a cluster, and then feed the sizzling ball of heat with sartious energy to make it burn, if she could’ve just been still for a moment. But no mage could cast and run, because all energy had to be gathered into a single point, and the Lmar flew faster than a sprint.
It was too late anyway. The ground had shrunk away while she’d screamed her throat hoarse, and now the trees looked like little bushes. To break free from here would mean falling to her death.
The Marros kept a tight formation as they flew, some giving her suspicious glances with their black eyes as if expecting her to misbehave. She would if she could, but fear had overwhelmed her to the point of losing her breath, the tight grip of the Lmar not helping. Neither had her endless screaming.
She’d passed out soon after her group was too far away for her to see anymore, and now her weak breaths didn’t give her enough energy to do much but strain for air. Her only solace was that her mother and father were still alive, though she knew they would com
e for her. Part of her was not ready for death and ached to be rescued, but her braver side recognized the truth. They would die trying to save her. If she could somehow show them she was dead, she would do it. But killing herself now seemed pointless, for they wouldn’t find out until they were already in danger.
The Lmar took her over an L-shaped set of symmetrical mountains. She located the path Wade had told her father he could take to the center, a large gap between the forward and backward L’s. There were no trees to provide cover, however. Only a river ran through the land. Her parents would have to come during the night. She knew Adriya and Desil would be with them, and therefore Wade would as well. Kirnich and Beatrix, she wasn’t so sure about.
The Lmar flew at what seemed to be an incredible speed, not slowing for hours. She couldn’t believe how strong the creature was. The other Lmar eventually flew beside the one holding her and spoke, turning sideways and opening its talons as if expecting Leida to be tossed over to it. She choked on the fear of falling, unable to scream. But the Lmar holding her said something to the other, and it disappeared behind a hundred smaller Marros.
The mountains below Leida finally came to an end. There was a ring of grass a mile wide wrapped around a huge circle of sand at the center of this place she assumed to be the Marros’ home. Hundreds more of the creatures were standing on peaks encircling the area, except to the east where two sets of rivers emptied into large lakes. She was too overwhelmed with fear to figure out what else she could see or might be able to do as the Lmar began its descent.
It made a sharp turn, Leida swinging out as everything turned sideways. When the Lmar straightened out, Leida saw many other Marros emerging from the mountains. The Lmar stopped and hovered as Marros circled around her, all chattering away in their scratchy voices. She felt like a helpless animal on display before slaughter.
