Gaze of Fire

by Melissa Kellogg

  Karena snorted, unable to laugh because of her lungs straining for oxygen and space.

  Chapter 21

  The keep loomed ahead of them. Karena could now see the detailing around its windows.

  “We’re almost there,” Hadrian gasped as he lunged up the broken stairs towards it.

  She couldn’t reply. She didn’t have the ability to when she heaved for air as hard as she did. They only had about a couple hundred feet more before they reached the keep.

  Suddenly, the swamplands hushed. Every hair on the back of her neck stood up. Something wasn’t right. Everything had gone silent. All of the noises, some of which had been ear-splittingly loud, had ceased. Nothing moved in the underbrush anymore. All of the cryptids had gone into hiding.

  “Not good,” Hadrian said. “Run!”

  Karena didn’t need to be told. She already knew. There was an apex predator somewhere around. They didn’t have time on their side to wait and hide like all of the other creatures were doing. They ran towards the keep with extra speed, drawing upon reserves they didn’t think they had.

  A rotting pond yawned before them. Karena threw out a sheet of ice. They dashed across the pond with the weak ice fissuring underneath their feet.

  A sound, low in volume, but knife-like in quality perforated the air. As it got louder, it irritated her eardrums. It was like a high-pitched ringing, which echoed into her head. Evelyn screeched. Karena looked up, seeing Evelyn transform into her halcyon form. Evelyn now had a bird-like head, long claws, and taloned wings. She was a predator now, but would that be enough to deter or fight what had caused their surroundings to go quiet? Karena didn’t think so. She kept running.

  Shadows flitted across the ground. Karena looked up again and saw a flock of winged creatures flying high overhead. They plunged downwards. Evelyn let out a warning shriek, but it didn’t stop them from descending. Evelyn careened towards them. They converged on her in order to take her out.

  “They’re going to kill her, whatever they are,” Hadrian said. “She’s outnumbered.”

  He put on the brakes and came to a halt. His eyes were wide with fear for Evelyn. Karena stopped too.

  “Come on. She’ll be alright,” Karena said, grabbing his arm and tugging. He wouldn’t budge.

  She glanced at the aerial fight above, and reconsidered. Evelyn was in trouble. Karena could barely see her in the sky because the winged creatures were attacking her so viciously. They had swarmed her. She glanced to the keep. Its main door was less than a hundred feet away. It was so close.

  Hadrian put his hands to his mouth and cupped them. He imitated a bird’s call, and then a screech. The creatures paused. As they hovered in the air, their oversized ears wiggled to listen better. Now Karena could see that there was skin between their spread-out digits. They were bat-like creatures. Due to sustained injuries, Evelyn fell to the ground. She was too far out of reach for them to retrieve her. The vegetation swallowed her up from sight.

  Karena didn’t have to wait long to find out what all seven of the bat-like creatures were going to do next. The bat-like creatures opened their mouths to let out a pulsating, violent screech. Karena’s hands sprung to her ears. She pressed them again her ears, but it didn’t block out the sound or relieve the pain. Her ears rung and pain hammered through her head in sync with their soundwaves. Karena cried out to Hadrian, but she couldn’t even hear her own voice.

  The bat-like creatures swooped down. Karena fired off a round of icicles at them, but their sonic vocals shattered them. What was left of her attack glided back to earth as a fine mist. She was defenseless. It was as though she was up against an Air elemental with lightning or sound abilities, to whom she would be at a grave disadvantage against. But instead of one being, there were multiple creatures, all with this same ice-shattering ability of theirs. The horror of being unable to defend herself traumatized Karena. In her life time, she had encountered few, if any, circumstances where her powers were rendered useless.

  It was now up to Hadrian and Evelyn to defend them, and Evelyn had disappeared, having fallen somewhere, and it would take her time to heal. Beside her, Hadrian was animating plants to move, but there weren’t any truly large plants that could be used to fight the creatures. The closest cypress trees were half a mile away.

  Before she could make the mad dash to the keep’s door, one of the creatures dropped from the sky and hobbled across the ground. Shock swept through her. The world disappeared for a second or two from realizing what these creatures were. Before her, was none other than a nargoth, a level six cryptid that was known for its swarming tactics to take down prey. And it wasn’t just a normal nargoth, it was a vampiric nargoth. Due to her alarm, she hardly processed that their sonic peals had stopped.

  Its mangy fur swam with lice. Having been eaten away by rot, gaps in its skin revealed bone and muscle. Its face was partially gone. Its stubby nose sniffed up and down at her. Huge fangs curled from its upper set of teeth, while a lower canine from its bottom jaw jabbed upwards. Those fangs made it so that it could latch onto its prey while it used the claws on the ends of its wings, and its talons at the end of its feet, to tear apart its prey. It was four feet tall with a massive thirteen-foot wingspan that it had tucked in.

  The others landed behind it, and crawled on all fours by using their wings as front limbs. Because they were vampiric, as evident by the decay on them which probably had come from lying in an unkempt grave, they fed exclusively on blood in order to nourish and regenerate themselves. Not many creatures survived the process of becoming vampiric, so they were highly prized by their vampire masters. Whatever vampires there were in Archelm City, they had used the elite of their winged hunting forces to ensure their demise.

  Karena reacted, and blasted a sweeping chill towards them. The nargoths screeched, and she gasped in agony. The sounds echoed in her head, bouncing from one side of her skull to the other and bruising her brain. She iced her head, but the ice shattered from the sharp frequency. Nothing she did could fight them off or shield her from their sonic screeches. Hadrian animated what little there was around him that wasn’t dead. Bushes and the carpet-like growth on the ground lashed out at the nargoths, weak, but strong enough to frighten them away and send them back into the skies. She sprinted for the keep’s door with Hadrian behind her.

  Karena glanced up again. The nargoths flapped around, and bumped into each other. Soon, they would discover that the moving bushes and low-lying foliage that were convulsing under Hadrian’s influence like a nest of snakes weren’t a threat.

  Karena passed by two cat statues that seemed odd in appearance, but she couldn’t get a good enough look at them to know why. They arrived at the front door and tugged on the circular handle. Rust and time had corroded the handle, but somehow the door was still solid. They pulled and pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge. In desperation, she and Hadrian threw her weight against it in the hopes that they could dislodge whatever was gluing the door to its frame. They yanked on the handle again. The door still wouldn’t open or yield even an inch.

  “It’s locked!” Karena said, having a hard time hearing herself. Her voice came distantly through the sonic waves and her own damaged eardrums.

  Why would it be locked? The keep was abandoned. She banged on the door until her hand hurt. On the door, etched into the wood, was a crude, distorted picture of a cat. Below it, it said: Beware of the Mimecat. She didn’t know what a mimecat was. She put her back against the door and tried to think about what to do next.

  The nargoths nosedived towards them. Angered by them, Hadrian threw out his hand. All of the ivy vines above them, which were in a snail-like race to the top of the keep, cascaded downwards. Four of the nargoths were caught inside of its net-like assembly. The other three spun away before they could be ensnared. Though he was dealing with four, squirming targets at once, Hadrian wrapped them and crushed them with all of the strength that the plants had until their fibers burst and fluids leaked from both the plants
and the nargoths. He let go, and the vines wilted to the ground, having died from being used. The nargoths were nothing more than a mangled pulp of fur, flesh, and bones. Their internal sacks of blood had burst. They couldn’t regenerate without them intact.

  Above them, the remaining three nargoths cried out in anger. Next to her, Hadrian panted from the exertion. He trembled, and sweat beaded his face. As a regular elemental, he didn’t have the energy reserves like she did. He was spent, as was Evelyn. Miraculously, Evelyn limped towards them, somehow alive. The nargoths hesitated, unsure of whether to attack her again. They grunted at each other, communicating with each other. Evelyn waved her arms, signaling them to go, to not wait for her.

  Karena looked at the front entrance of the keep, resolved that it wasn’t going to open, even if she used her powers to try to force it to do so, and dashed away from it to look for another door. Hadrian dragged behind her, and she had to slow down for him. They rounded the side of the keep. There had to be another way in. They needed to find one soon because they were out in the open and defenseless against those nargoths. If the nargoths decided to swarm them again, she didn’t think that they would survive.

  As she jogged, she visually scoured the keep’s walls for any erosion or cracks that they could slip through. The stiff, vertical sides of the keep didn’t soften, and the windows twenty feet above them were too narrow for them to fit through. Higher up though, they were wider, but too far out of reach for any one of them, with the exception of Evelyn when her wings healed.

  At the rear of the keep, they came to another door. An overhang arched over it. It gave them some cover from the skies, but not by much. The back door was locked as well. Karena screamed in frustration.

  Wings pounded the air. The screeching continued. Hadrian felt around in his pocket and produced a tiny seed. He looked at her, and then at his palm. She stopped him by covering his hand with hers. She couldn’t risk having him over-expend his abilities, which could kill him. As testament to his condition, Hadrian leaned against the door and slid to the ground to rest.

  In their small alcove, danger was nearing. Her right foot sank into the ground. She yelped and pulled it out. She bent down and felt at the ground. She stuck her hand into the hole that had appeared from her weight. Under the soggy ground, her hand waved in air, unable to grasp anything. She searched, and felt hard stone or bricks on the sides of this unknown cavity below them. It took her a moment to understand what this could mean. It indicated that there might be a tunnel underneath them.

  She couldn’t use her powers, not in such close proximity to Hadrian. It would take a bit of freezing and prying to create a large enough hole to drop into. It would be faster and easier to find its entrance. She blew cold, snowflake-laden air into the tunnel to get a feel for where the tunnel went. Her mind connected with the iciness and gave her a rough spatial reading. It went under the keep’s door, and then the other end extended outwards.

  Her eyes traveled across the ground, and settled on an aged greenhouse that was a sprinter’s distance away from her. Its green glass and blue-tinted, metal framework gleamed like cat eyes in the moonlight. It sat behind what had once been an open courtyard. Swamp-loving palm trees had popped up like giant dandelions around the greenhouse. She hoped that her deduction was spot on. There wasn’t any room for error, not when death circled as it did in the skies.

  Footsteps approached. Evelyn appeared, and dove in for shelter. There wasn’t much shelter under the overhang, but it offered a sense of it. She was bleeding from multiple wounds. Her left wing was hanging on by a flap of skin, but Evelyn was healing. She stood in front of Hadrian, as though to be a barrier between him and the nargoths.

  “What do we do?” Evelyn shouted at her, but it came out muffled due to Karena’s impaired hearing.

  Karena pointed to the ground, not to indicate that there could be a tunnel underneath them, but that Evelyn needed to stay with Hadrian and protect him if she could. Evelyn nodded. Karena had to give her credit. Despite looking like a nymph, with blonde hair, an angelic face, long legs, and a fit body, which would grant anyone the status of a princess and the mindset of one, Evelyn was a warrior.

  One of the nargoths plunged downwards and tried to angle its way under the overhang. Karena blasted it with cold air, forcing it out of the small space and into the air. It screamed in rage, unleashing its vocal weaponry, and her mist lost its velocity. The ice particles in it vibrated, showcasing the soundwaves cascading through it. Her head spun, and so did the world around her. She gritted her teeth and surged forward, leaving Evelyn with Hadrian. Though dizzy, she pumped her legs into moving as fast as they could over the waterlogged ground.

  Above her, she felt the rush of wings. Their shadows converged onto her. One of them threw itself at her. She tumbled to the ground. Her shoulder and side flared up in pain. She rolled in the overgrowth, becoming scratched by the prickly weeds and grass. She got onto all fours, but then fell onto her side. Her brain couldn’t discern what was up and what was down anymore.

  The moonlit bath around her trembled as her head seesawed due to the sonic pings. She wasn’t even aware of the fact that one of the nargoths had landed behind her until its teeth punched several holes into her shoulder. It tried to shake her like a rag doll, but she was too heavy for it to be effective at doing so. She cried out worse than before. Its wings wrapped around her, about to claw her to shreds.

  Her hands and body went cold until they were of arctic temperatures. She reached her hand back. The agony of both her head, her ears, and now her shoulders caused black spots to burst in her eyesight. She grabbed onto the snout of the nargoth and shot cold air into its snout. It let go, and she whirled around to grab at its eyes. It flapped and scooted backwards, but not fast enough before she froze its eyes and facial structure. They turned black with frostbite.

  Before she could kill the nargoth, the other two nargoths descended and landed on the ground. They scuffled towards her. Their eyes blazed with hatred and a thirst for blood. Their mouths were open. The ringing was at its strongest now. Karena wanted the noise to stop. She couldn’t hear, and her ears and head throbbed. She was disoriented, but the greenhouse was in sight. She had to get to it.

  Despite the pain in her shoulder, she heaved herself to her feet and sprinted past the nargoths on the ground. They loped behind her and then took off into the air. The one that she had blinded howled in anger as it flopped around, waiting for its self-healing abilities to kick in. Three nargoths were definitely better than seven, but she was still outnumbered and at a severe disadvantage.

  Chapter 22

  Karena’s feet carried her to the glass door of the greenhouse. She fumbled with the rusty latch. Her fingers jiggled it up and down, trying to press up on the lever and to turn the door handle at the same time. The internal locking mechanism clicked and a rune showed on the door. She hoped that the rune was benign in nature.

  She flung open the door, darted in, and slammed the door close behind her. The glass rattled, but was too thick to crack. She breathed in the silence, relishing it, basking in it. It was sweet relief to her aching ears. The nargoths landed on the pitched, glass roof. Their talons and claws tapped on it, looking for weaknesses in the centuries-old structure. Karena wasn’t surprised by their display of intelligence, and turned her attention away from them and to what was inside of the greenhouse.

  Rows of overgrown vegetation, pots of vines spilling over, flowers the size of dogs, and mutated fruit crowded the greenhouse. They all competed for room. She waded through the jungle that had formed. She kicked at the ground, and pulled up on the tangles of roots and plant matter to try to find anything that resembled a hidden trapdoor or hinted at the presence of one.

  Above her, noises drummed against the roof. She ducked under a hanging pot. The tendrils of the feathery vine brushed against her hair. The pungent fragrance in there was making her nauseous. A loud crack alerted her to the alarming fact that the nargoths were making progress. Sh
e looked up at the ceiling. The glass bowed and vacillated. Hairline fractures appeared in the glass next to the metal crossbeams of the greenhouse ceiling. The nargoths’ sonic screeches were going to make the glass panels explode. She lifted up her hands, and summoned her powers. Ice particles wafted upwards and frosted the glass ceiling. Hopefully, the ice would strengthen the ceiling and keep the glass intact for a little while longer.

  Now Karena searched even more frantically for a way into the tunnel that she knew was underneath the greenhouse. She wished that Hadrian had been able to come with her. His affinity with plants would’ve been extremely helpful at that moment.

  She jumped over the rows of plants, and went from one end of the greenhouse to the other. Out of desperation, she tore at the ground, ripped up the plants, and kicked over the massive, ceramic pots on the ground. But she couldn’t find a door or any sign of one. She stomped her feet and clenched her fists. She had to get into that keep. Had her efforts been in vain? Mist swirled around her. Ice blackened the plants around her, killing them. She wailed in anger and from the pain in her eardrums and bleeding shoulder. The ice accumulated in sync with her emotions, piling into layers.

  The ceiling above her shattered. Shards of glass fell like hail onto her and cut her. It coated everything in a green-tinted, razor-sharp layer. The sonic screams came to her as a deafening, pain-inducing wave. She put her hands to her ears, but it did little to stop the torture. She looked around her at the ice that had spread from her emotions. It gleamed everywhere, as it did on the pieces of the glass ceiling. It was beginning to break apart due to the sounds that pulverized them.

  Above her, the nargoths fluttered around. Having learned their lesson from Hadrian about the danger of moving plants, they were hesitant to fly in. She lowered her hands to the ground. Because there was still ice on the shattered glass, she could get a hold on the shards. The sonic waves were destroying the ice, so she had to be quick. With her powers, she gathered the glass into two, large balls on either side of her, and then heaved them upwards as hard as she could. Immediately, the ice on them disintegrated into a fine mist.