Summoner 5

by Eric Vall

  “You don’t say?” Ashla spat and drew her axe as she took a battle stance. Where she thought she was going to go with the aforementioned axe, however, was beyond me.

  I hastily stuffed the newly acquired cipher in my bag and then ran my hands through my hair. I was the one who had convinced them to follow me here, so I should be the one who came up with a plan to get us out.

  “Any bright ideas?” I asked anyway, but I was met with silence. They were just as stumped as I was, and the horde of monsters marched closer. I started to see their shadowy figures through the purple light that filtered into the window, and by the sound of their uproarious cries, they weren’t too pleased with us.

  “Okay, okay,” I thought aloud to myself, “we can’t go back up through the sandpit, and the only door in this entire hallway is locked with no indication on how to open it.”

  I paced back and forth between the same six feet of space so much I started to feel nauseated and dizzy. There had to be a way to get out of here, but the only thing that came to mind was to blow a hole in the side of the wall and run out into the monsters that had begun to amass outside.

  “I don’t suppose anyone has any bombs, huh?” I asked hopefully, but I was again met with shakes of heads, another loss.

  I groaned in frustration and then jumped when a variant troll slammed itself against one of the windows.

  “Gryff, we’re running out of time!” Orenn said as he encased his body in armor.

  I should get ready, too, but with such tight quarters, a monster battle would be hard to manage without someone getting severely injured.

  I suddenly stopped in my tracks and snapped my fingers. We might not have had a bomb, but we certainly had a monster big enough to take a hit and probably had enough strength to knock out a wall. My hand flew to my baroquer crystal, and I smashed it to the ground.

  My baroquer roared to life, and the space in the hallway was only just large enough to hold it with less than a few feet for it to move. As we stood there, the giant armored monster completely docile in my presence, I was reminded of how powerful the bond between a captured monster and its summoner was.

  It looked down at me through its helmet and held out its massive armored fist. Even in the wake of the events outside, I couldn’t help but be a little bit humbled by the gesture, and I bumped my fist against its own.

  I was proud of the gawking looks Ashla and Orenn gave me when they saw how tame the baroquer was in my control. I didn’t know if Ashla had any experience with one, but I knew Orenn did. We’d fought one together in Bathi Highlands earlier in the year, so to stand before one now after being nearly decimated by one of its brethren, it was likely to be a little surreal for him.

  The baroquer, seemingly pleased, withdrew its fist and awaited a command.

  “Think you can get us out of here?” I asked it, and the monster turned its head toward the wall. The whole chamber seemed to vibrate as it turned in a ninety-degree angle to face the outside, and it reared its arms back. The baroquer lifted its sword, made of the same iron its body was made of and wreathed in flames, into the air above our heads, and the foundation of the ceiling began to crumble.

  “Take cover!” I yelled, but there was really no safe place to do so. Instead, the three of us gathered under the baroquer in the hopes that its body would be enough of a shield to protect us from any falling debris.

  In one fell swoop, the baroquer brought its sword down and cleaved a massive gash in the wall. The glass shattered, and part of the wall crumbled into a pile of dust and chunks of marble. There wasn’t any time to celebrate our success, however. As soon as the wall gave way, the monsters that lurked outside started to force their way in.

  “Sweep them!” I commanded the baroquer, and it brought its sword across the horde in a long, low swipe. Monstrous screeches accompanied by a spray of spilled essence announced the fall of several lower grade monsters. A handful of chatteroshi and some lesser trolls now laid in a pile before us, but I knew that wasn’t going to be the last of the monster waves.

  “Let’s go before we get stuck fighting in such close quarters,” Ashla suggested, and I nodded. As she and Orenn ran out into the Shadowscape, I had the baroquer lift me onto its shoulder, essentially out of harm’s way for the time being, and steadied myself as my monster strode outward.

  As we jumped into the fray, I realized a number of things at the same time. The first was that the light we saw was actually just how bright the sky was here, purple and eerie and still headache inducing.

  The second was that this was the only building in sight, but there were several mountains around us. That much would make sense given where we were when we entered the rift in the first place, but it still didn’t explain how we had ended up in the strange hallway after falling downward. That brought on thoughts about the sky again which plainly shouldn’t be here, but I forced it out to concentrate on the final thing.

  The third and final thing was the fact that there were monsters everywhere, and we were sorely outnumbered. We had a slim chance of holding out with this wave, but there was no way the three of us would be able to take out the hundreds of monsters I could see from my new vantage point.

  Things were far worse than I knew how to describe to them, and I thought it better to let my friends fight this wave without inducing any terror that this wasn’t the last of them, at least not yet. We were already on the brink of being overwhelmed, and the battle had only just begun.

  Below me, I heard Orenn and Ashla’s battle cries as they launched an assault on a pack of imps that clawed and screeched at them. Orenn punched straight through one of them, and Ashla’s axe cut through two more. Ice shards ripped through the air and plunged into the backs and chests of other imps. The monster’s screams of rage mixed with agony as they kept coming at my comrades, but I knew the two of them could handle the beasts.

  I took it upon myself to take out some of the bigger guys. I spotted a cyclops nearby that stomped itself in a circle as it appeared to contemplate its life choices. Cyclopes weren’t known for their intelligence, after all.

  Without a verbal command, I ordered the baroquer to bring its sword down on it. It wound up, but the cyclops caught on that we were coming for it, and it charged at us. In response, my baroquer roared as it ran, sword out in front of it to impale anything that could potentially get in our way. We tore through a few of the smaller mid-grade trolls along the way, and they crumpled at our feet. However, the cyclops leapt into the air at the last minute.

  It didn’t get very far off the ground, but it was enough that its feet barely grazed over the edge of the baroquer’s blade. As the cyclops cleared the danger, a bright beam of yellow light shot out from its eye, and it hit the baroquer’s shoulder. He stumbled, and I had to grab onto the horn of its helmet to keep from being thrown off. When the smoke from the blast cleared, the cyclops had run off, and part of the baroquer’s armor was charred, but nothing more.

  “Damn it,” I swore, “where did it go?” I turned in all directions and finally spotted it behind us as it started to charge Orenn and Ashla.

  “After it!” I yelled, and the baroquer ran back toward where we’d left our comrades who had moved on to a small pack of spinners, little spider creatures that were more ugly than menacing. Still, their bite was pretty painful, and their yellow-green bodies were about as big as two human faces put together.

  The baroquer brought its sword around again, but the cyclops cast a backward glance just in time to see the swipe and dodge clear. At that moment, I took back what I’d said about cyclopes lacking in intelligence. Clearly, this one was a special breed of some kind despite the fact that it looked like any old flesh-toned, one-eyed beast.

  I was about to yell for my baroquer to unleash another attack when I spotted two more of the same variant of cyclops on the horizon. They made their way to us quickly as though they had a mission in mind, and that mission was to put us in an early grave.

  “You’ve got to be kidding
me,” I groaned as I wiped my hands over my face. One was bad enough, but three would be a nightmare with their speed and cunning. I took a deep breath and steadied myself on the baroquer’s shoulder. I’d been in tougher positions, and I wasn’t going to go down without putting up a fight that left them scarred.

  Orenn and Ashla soon realized our predicament as well, and I heard Orenn curse as he punched one of the spinners into the blackish-purple sand.

  “More incoming!” he called up to me, and I set my jaw as I locked my sights onto the oncoming cyclopes.

  “Keep fighting! Let’s show them we won’t be taken lightly!” I hollered back. I didn’t give him a chance to respond, though. Instead, I silently commanded the baroquer to charge the three cyclopes head on. It was reckless, but it was better than sitting and waiting for them to bring the fun to me on their own terms.

  Besides, I could never resist a good fight.

  The ground shook as we charged forward to attack. I could see the sand fly up like dust at the baroquer’s feet, and I thought the sand might slow him down because of how heavy his armor was, but he maneuvered like a champ and never faltered. I wondered if that was also a perk of having caught him as opposed to simply collecting its crystal after defeat. Maybe it made monsters impervious to things such as that, but that was a theory to think upon another time. For now, we were in for one doozy of a fight.

  The cyclopes bumbled along as their stomachs jiggled from side to side in an almost hypnotizing manner, like grotesque fat pools. It was so ugly, so gross, I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I supposed, in hindsight, that was both a blessing and a curse. I was able to see by the way they stretched their arms upwards and bared their teeth that they were ready for a fight, but I was so distracted by their mesmerizing flab that I simply didn’t give a command.

  It wasn’t until they were nearly on top of us did I yell for my baroquer to attack, and he immediately launched into a flurry of heavy sword attacks. One hit connected with the cyclops closest to us, and it howled in pain as dark purple blood began to seep out of the gash left behind on its blubbery stomach. The second cyclops, however, managed to get ahold of us, and its fat fingers gripped the horns of my baroquer’s helmet. It jerked us forward, and I almost lost my footing as I danced on my monster’s armored shoulder to keep my balance, but then the cyclops shoved us back, and I wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of force that was put into it. While the one-eyed beast wasn’t strong enough to knock my baroquer down, it was enough to cause it to stumble and more than enough to send me flying backward off the baroquer. I plummeted to the ground, some forty feet in the air.

  On my way down, I looked to see Orenn and Ashla were still under fire from several smaller packs of mid-grade monsters, and it was with a certain amount of fear that I watched the fatigue grow on their faces as they exhausted as much of themselves as they could with each new wave.

  If we didn’t do something fast, we might call this place our grave for real, and I wasn’t ready for that. I doubted they were, either.

  “Catch me!” I hollered, and the baroquer turned around instantly. Its armored hand jutted out and folded into a cup under me. I landed on it hard, and I groaned as I sat up.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, “but we should work on the landing.”

  My baroquer shrugged, and I couldn’t help the little smirk that curled on my lips despite the otherwise grim situation. Three cyclopes, one that was still bleeding and two that showed no signs of relenting, surrounded us. Even though I was something of an optimist, I knew six fists compared to two and a sword were no match, even if my baroquer was a higher grade than them individually. Together, however, they were just as strong, if not stronger.

  We were outmatched, but that didn’t mean I was ready to give up.

  “We’ve got this,” I chanted partly to myself, but it was also meant to encourage my baroquer which fed off my energy, literally and figuratively. I didn’t have time to come up with some elaborate plan of attack as per usual, but I’d gotten pretty used to thinking of things on the fly.

  I could use kalgori to trip them up and make them easier to take down, but I ran the risk of the cyclopes stomping them out, and that would sap my mana pretty harshly. The thought of bringing the pyrewyrm back out wasn’t ideal, either, as that took a great amount of mana to keep under control. I could have summoned my freshly captured roosa, but I didn’t want to risk summoning a monster I’d never handled before on top of using my baroquer. Even though both of them were caught, it would still take a sufficient amount of mana to maintain them both, and losing one or the other, or even both, was a risk I wasn’t too keen on taking in this particular predicament.

  It looked like it was just the baroquer and me until a good opportunity presented itself, and I was fine with that.

  I swung my arms out in an imitation of the sword techniques we had learned in class, and my monster followed suit with its own blade. They were long, sweeping arcs, meant not so much to attack any of the cyclopes directly, but to force them back under the heavy sword. If I could injure one or more of them in the process, so much the better, but in the meantime, I could keep my eye on each one better to know when to anticipate an attack.

  One of the cyclopes was clipped with the tip of the fiery blade. It howled, much like the other one had, though its injury was far worse. Instead of being slashed along the belly like its comrade, the fire from the baroquer’s sword charred the flesh on the second’s neck and chest. The stench alone was something awful, never mind the bubbles and smoke that appeared along the incision. The smoke got in its eye, and it began to water out of irritation.

  The other one still remained unscathed, but it seemed to halt its attack when it noticed the others’ injuries. I took the pause in the action as my opportunity to strike and commanded the baroquer to take out the blinded one.

  In a swift, almost untraceable move, the baroquer slid its sword straight through the blubber of its stomach and brought it upwards to effectively slice its torso in half. Purple blood gushed from the monster like an overflowing dam, and I had to look away from the carnage as the cyclops’ eye, cut in half, stared up at me, unmoving, unblinking.

  “Brutal,” I commented to the baroquer, and he grunted in response before he turned his attention back to the other two who roared and smacked their bellies. Well, the one did. The other was still trying to hold its organs intact after we sliced open its stomach.

  It would be the next to go.

  I clung to the horn of the baroquer’s helmet and narrowed my eyes. With the one nothing more than a pile of blood and saggy flesh, the cyclops would be easier to handle, but I had a hunch the one that remained uninjured would persistently be a problem. Maybe I had been wrong in thinking the three of them were of the same variant. I had fought that super-charged fire-eye a few months back in Bedima. It was possible this cyclops was like that. After all, I had already confirmed the angel was involved with Gawain’s disappearance.

  “Take out the one on the left,” I commanded the baroquer. “It’ll be the easiest to defeat. We’ll need to focus all of our attention on the last one.”

  The baroquer nodded. I was still impressed with how the bond between a caught monster and its summoner was so strong. It was as if we were comrades, friends even, as opposed to one species controlling the other for the purpose of war.

  Without hesitation, the baroquer reached out with its armored hand, the same one that had saved me from certain death, and clutched the throat of the cyclops that was trying to hold itself together. Its fingers tightened, and it picked the cyclops up from the ground. It was only slightly, cyclops tended to be on the heavier side of the known monster species, but it was enough for the baroquer to get a decent swing going before it used the one-eyed monster as a weapon to swing at its cousin.

  The stronger variant cyclops stumbled and lost its footing as its bleeding brother slammed into it, and the ground shook as it collapsed. We were long from done with that monster, but it was out of
the way for the baroquer to finish what it started with the one in its grasp.

  The flesh-toned monster gasped for air as its skin started to turn a deep shade of purple that matched the color of the blood that had now almost completely saturated the lower half of its body. My baroquer’s metal fingers continued to squeeze the cyclops’ throat, and I watched with both horror and amazement as the baroquer choked it to death. Between the loss of blood from its injury to its stomach and the lack of oxygen, there was no chance for the cyclops, and it finally fell limp in my baroquer’s hold.

  “Well, you’re in a mood,” I mentioned to the baroquer as it dropped the lifeless cyclops beside the other dead one.

  The armored monster grunted again, but there was a certain rhythm to it, as though it were laughing. In fact, I could feel the little bit of joy in the connection we shared, and I chuckled myself.

  “All right, last one,” I told it. “We can do this.”

  The stronger variant cyclops managed to get to its feet by the time we stalked over to where it landed. It wasn’t far from where it started, but my baroquer’s blow had knocked it a good few feet away and closer to where I had left Ashla and Orenn to fight the spinners and chatteroshi.

  I looked beyond the cyclops to see they were still fighting wave after wave of little monsters. The fatigue on their faces had grown increasingly more obvious, and they were wearing down fast. It never seemed to end. The monsters kept coming and coming, and I was here fighting these big old fatties when I should have been down there helping them.

  I just hoped they could hang on, or Ashla had an elixir of some kind that would give her or Orenn a boost of mana and energy. Her ice magic started to look more like snow falling than anything actually dangerous, and Orenn’s stamina showed signs of slowing down.

  We had to end this fast and find a way out of this.

  The remaining cyclops howled, and I was brought back to what was right in front of me. It was then that I noticed there was, in fact, a bluish glow around it, the same as the fire-eye in Bedima had while it was super-charged.