All the other columns retreated then, going back near the door, dispelling any of Avelyn's thoughts of escape.
The monk stubbornly pulled himself up to his knees, then struggled to stand tall before the monster. The dactyl, eyes narrowed, showing-respect for Avelyn but no fear of the monk, stalked in.
Perhaps this would not be a battle of magic, the monk thought suddenly. He had Elbryan's sword after all, that most powerful of weapons. Perhaps this was to be a test of his body against the dactyl's, a contest of physical strength.
In one fluid movement, Avelyn lifted Tempest high and darted ahead at his foe, slashing wildly.
He missed, the cunning dactyl easily sidestepping and then countering with a beat of its leathery wing, slamming the rushing Avelyn on the shoulder and launching him head over heels to the other edge of the dais.
"You are no swordsman," the fiend remarked, and Avelyn could hardly disagree. Still the monk stubbornly climbed back to his feet and stalked toward the monster more cautiously this time, prodding Tempest with shortened, measured thrusts.
Bestesbulzibar began to slowly circle to Avelyn's right.
Avelyn's free hand came up, launching a handful of celestite crystals that popped in minor explosions all about Bestesbulzibar's face. Thinking that he had his opening, the monk charged ahead.
Bestesbulzibar was gone in a puff of smoke, in the blink of a surprised monk's eye. Avelyn skidded to a stop, then understood his sudden dilemma and swung about hard.
The demon, standing right behind him, battered him with its wing again, knocking him to the ground before the swinging sword ever got close.
Avelyn struggled to his feet once more, stumbling toward the rear of the raised platform.
Bestesbulzibar, cackling with laughter, walked around him, putting Avelyn squarely between itself and the solid wall, cutting off the one route of escape.
Avelyn had no ideas, no plan at all. He came forward a step and began waving Tempest, again in shortened strikes, more to buy time, to keep the fiend at bay, than with any hope of winning.
But the demon's patience was at its end, and Bestesbulzibar came forward in a sudden, terrifying rush.
Out went Tempest, a quicker thrust, aimed for the dactyl's heart, but Avelyn, for all his training in those years at St.-Mere-Abelle, was no Terranen Dinoniel, and the dactyl accepted a minor hit and swept aside the awkward attack with one forearm, then quick-stepped into the opening.
Always ready to improvise, Avelyn launched a heavy punch with his free hand and connected solidly with the powerful beast's chest.
Before the monk could begin to congratulate himself, he found Bestesbulzibar's free hand around his throat, lifting him from the ground. Avelyn tried to whack with Tempest, but the demon understood the power of the ranger sword and would not allow the monk to bring it to bear.
"Fool," Bestesbulzibar thundered, squeezing harder - and Avelyn feared his head would simply pop off! "Did you think that you could even hurt me? Hurt me, Bestesbulzibar, who has lived for centuries, for millennia? Every day I destroy creatures ten times your worth!"
"I deny you!" Avelyn gasped.
"Deny?" Bestesbulzibar echoed. "Tell me that I am beautiful."
Avelyn stared incredulously at the demon's angular face, at the fiery eyes, the white, pointed canines. Something about Bestesbulzibar, the sheen of the demon's skin, the strong angles of its features, struck Avelyn profoundly as beautiful indeed. The monk felt an overwhelming urge then to do as the demon had asked, to admit Bestesbulzibar's beauty.
But Avelyn saw the lie, the temptation, for what it was. He stared Bestesbulzibar right in the eye. "I deny you," he said evenly.
The dactyl heaved Avelyn across the dais, to slam hard into the back wall.
Avelyn slumped low, his vision blurred, sharp explosions going off in the back of his head. He tried to stand but slumped again, and the room at the edges of his vision began to grow dark.
The monk tried to get to his sunstone, thought to kill the magic in this area as he had done in the hallway. But to what end? his reeling thoughts screamed back, for Bestesbulzibar needed no magic to destroy him.
The dactyl paced in, towered over him.
Avelyn swooned; his thoughts went flying back to the glories of his life, back to Pimaninicuit, the closest he had ever felt to his God. He saw again the island at the start of the blessed showers, saw Brother Thagraine, poor Thagraine, running desperately, reaching out toward the cave, toward Avelyn.
Then falling dead, and Avelyn remembered rushing to him, remembered his horror, fast turned to curiosity . . .
Avelyn reached into his second pouch and pulled forth the giant amethyst crystal, the mysterious stone humming with magical energy.
The dactyl hesitated at the sight, at the stone aglow with teeming magic.
"What have you?" it demanded.
In all truth, Avelyn didn't know the answer to that question. Growling with every inch, all pain vanished, Avelyn Desbris forced his legs under him and slid back up the wall to stand before the hellish fiend.
The dactyl growled and came on.
Following instincts that he could only hope were from God, Avelyn tossed the stone into the air, and then he and the dactyl both hesitated, surprised, for the heavy crystal did not fall but hovered in place.
Again, with no logical basis for the movement, Avelyn exploded into action, grabbing Tempest in both hands and swinging mightily even as Bestesbulzibar reached for the tantalizing stone.
Mighty Tempest sheared right through the crystal, and the whole of it blew into dust, shattered a thousand times.
The demon stared dumbfoundedly at the dusty cloud, at Avelyn, as if to ask what the man had done, and again, Avelyn had no answers.
From within that dust cloud came a low humming noise, a growling almost, and, like a ripple in a pond, a purplish ring emanated, rolling through Avelyn and the dactyl, rolling out to the edges of the room, deflecting off the stone again and again, crossing back in on itself.
More rings, rolling, humming, mounting.
"What have you done?" Bestesbulzibar demanded.
Avelyn, his head throbbing once more, clutched desperately at his sunstone, though he thought the thing a pitiful counter to the mounting strength.
The ominous growling increased tenfold, a hundredfold, deafening Avelyn, blocking the sounds of the dactyl's shrieks. The creature watched in amazement as its stone columns crumbled to dust, as if the very vibrations had shattered the obsidian.
Bestesbulzibar turned on Avelyn, murder in its flaming eyes.
The dais lurched; a great crack opened in the floor and a gout of steam hissed through.
"Fool!" the dactyl shrieked wildly. "Fool! What have you done?"
"Not I," Avelyn answered under his breath, though he knew that the demon could not possibly hear him. "Not I." The monk understood then, knew his fate and willingly accepted it.
He hooked the bag of stones, all but the sunstone which he still clutched tightly, over Tempest's blade. He noticed then the stone in Tempest's pommel, and recognized it for the first time as some sort of sunstone, an accessible gem. It was too late for him, though, and so he grabbed the sword at mid-blade, and thrust it straight up above his head.
The left-hand wall of the throne room crumbled; the twin lava flows intensified, spurting molten stone across the room.
The dactyl shrieked and loosed a bolt of black lightning at Avelyn, but the monk was fully into the sunstone shield then, and the magic was stolen before it ever got to him.
Bestesbulzibar leaped away, flew all about the room, looking for an escape. Then, with none evident, the fiend came straight for Avelyn, thinking to punish, to tear and to kill.
But then the demon was tumbling, the resounding, deafening roar overcoming it in mid-flight, stealing its concentration, stealing its strength. Bestesbulzibar crawled across the dais, away from Avelyn - who was standing tall, shining, praying - and toward one of the lava flows.
The hundreds of purplish rings converged in the middle of the room.
Aida, the very mountain itself, exploded.
Far below the jolt sent all three of the friends, even sturdy Bradwarden, flying wildly about the tunnel. Elbryan slammed hard into the wall of the narrow passageway with his already broken arm. Waves of agony assaulted him, and despite all the courage and determination he could possibly muster, he found himself slumping down into blackness.
Pony, too, was dazed but not so much that she couldn't hold fast to her diamond and keep the precious light glowing, though in the sudden burst of dust, it seemed a meager beacon indeed. She struggled back to her feet as the rumbling continued, as the walls and the floor beneath her feet shifted and bounced. She somehow got to Elbryan and propped him up, hugged him tightly, thinking it fitting that they die in each others' arms.
But then, after what seemed like an hour but was in fact no more than a few minutes, the rumbling stopped, and the ceiling did not fall in on them.
Pony's relief lasted only until she managed to locate Bradwarden through the dust; the centaur was by far the worst off. He stood braced against the corridor's right-hand wall, wedged in tight, his human torso bent far back, arms widespread with muscles bulging, to hold back the largest slab of stone imaginable, to hold up the very mountain itself!
Pony gently eased Elbryan down, then ran for the centaur, crying out his name. She pulled out the malachite as she went, thinking to levitate the block that the centaur might escape.
She couldn't begin to move it; Avelyn himself, with a piece of malachite ten times this one's strength, would not have budged so huge a slab. To Pony's surprise, Elbryan came up then, groggily, barely conscious, Hawkwing, in hand. With great effort, the battered man wedged the bow in tight against the wall, trying to use it as a lever to relieve some of the pressure on the centaur.
"Ah, me boy, ye'll not be moving this one," the doomed centaur groaned. "She's got me stuck, and got me dead, don't be doubting!".
Elbryan fell back against the wall, dizzy, defeated, with no answers.
"Bradwarden," Pony breathed helplessly. "Oh, my friend, all the mountain would have fallen on us but for your great strength."
"And all the mountain'll be falling soon enough," the centaur replied. "Run to the outside and yer freedom."
Pony's horrified expression was all the reply Bradwarden was going to get.
"Go on!" the centaur yelled, and the exertion cost him an inch, the huge slab sliding ever lower, bending him backward. "Go on," he said again, more calmly. "Ye cannot move the damned mountain! Don't ye make me death a meaningless thing, me friends. I beg ye, get out!"
Pony looked at Elbryan for guidance, but the man was past reasoning, slumping once again into blackness. She stared hard at the centaur then, thinking this to be the cruelest play of all. How could she leave so gallant a friend? How could that be expected of her?
And yet Pony realized the sincerity of the centaur, saw it clearly in his calm features. She imagined herself in his position and knew what she would expect of her friends.
Pony moved up very close to Bradwarden, bent over to him, and kissed him on the cheek. "My friend," she said.
"Always," the centaur replied, and then his visage and his voice hardened. "Now run. Ye owe me that!"
Pony nodded. It was the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do, and yet she did not hesitate. She pulled Elbryan up to his feet, hooked her arm under his shoulder, and started off without looking back. The pair had barely left the corridor when they heard the rock shift once again, heard the resigned groan of the breaking centaur.
Pony wandered for hours in the twisting darkness, with only the diamond light to guide her, and that growing ever dimmer as exhaustion sapped her energy. She found tunnels blocked by flowing lava, others by thick concentrations of sulfurous fumes, and still others that simply ended in a solid wall or in a deep chasm that she could not cross.
Elbryan tried hard to keep up with her, to be less of a burden, but his legs were too wobbly, the pain too intense. Several times he whispered for Pony to leave him behind, but that, of course, she could not do. Another idea came to her, then, and she took out the malachite, lending some of its levitational magic to Elbryan's body, greatly lessening her load.
And then finally, as hope began to fade to empty despair, as her magical energies at last began to fade to nothingness, the woman felt a breeze, and it was cool and soft, not like the hot wash of flowing lava.
Pony concentrated hard. The diamond was all but out, a pinprick of light that showed her nothing in the heavy air. The malachite's power was no more, Elbryan leaning heavily against her. She stumbled on, following the current, backtracking the gentle breeze. She stumbled and fell, crawled back to her knees and tugged Elbryan along, and then she stumbled again. It wasn't until, exhausted beyond her limits, she rolled onto her back, that she realized that she was out of the mountain; under a sky darkened by smoke.
Just before Pony drifted off to sleep, one patch of that sky cleared, showing a single, shining star, then a second, then a third.
"Avelyn, Bradwarden, and Tuntun," the woman whispered, and merciful sleep took her.
Epilogue
It was Elbryan and not Pony who was the first to wake, the sky still dark before the dawn and still heavy with billowing smoke. The ranger tried hard to remember what had happened, then he did, and he sat, head bowed, fighting away despair.
Worst of all, Elbryan did not know Avelyn's fate, though he suspected the monk was dead. What of the dactyl? Had the creature been consumed, or had it merely flown away before the blast?
Elbryan lifted his eyes at that unsettling notion, looked at the sky as if he expected the dactyl demon to be swooping upon him even then.
What he saw was a glow, coming from higher up on what remained of the mountain, a soft white light atop the blasted peak.
Pony awakened shortly thereafter, the dulled dawn just beginning, but still the glow from atop the mountain was faintly visible. Without saying a word, the battered pair gathered up their things and started off, up the mountain trails, supporting each other through every step. Only when the dawn broke fully - dimmed by the huge smoke cloud - could they appreciate the absolute devastation that had come to the mountain and to the valley before it.
Nothing lived down there, they both knew. Nothing could possibly have survived. All the trees that had been on Aida's slopes were laid out flat, leafless, most of their branches blown away. Empty logs, gray with ash, stretched away in the gloom. Nothing moved across that gray sea, save the occasional flutter of ash, caught by a swirl of wind. No birds flew above it, no sounds at all broke the eerie stillness of the devastated morning.
Neither did Elbryan or Pony speak out, too overwhelmed by the sight. They continued on their way, struggling past broken stones and through patches of warm ash hip deep, hoping for some answer.
They came over the edge of the now flat-topped mountain, in sight of a huge plateau of empty grayness - except for one tiny spot of light. Toward it they went, trudging on, plowing through the heavy ash. They could not discern the source until they were very close, within a dozen strides, and then they hesitated.
An arm, Avelyn's arm, protruded from the ash, holding fast Tempest at mid-blade and with a bag hanging below that.
Elbryan rushed ahead, thinking to dig his friend from the ground, thinking that Avelyn had somehow survived, had enacted a magical shield to protect himself even from this level of destruction.
When he reached the spot, he found his folly, found that the ground around Avelyn's arm was solid and only lightly covered in ash, and the monk was surely dead, his arm and hand withered, dried out, as if the great heat of the explosion had taken all the fluid from his body.
"The dactyl is destroyed," Pony said firmly when she arrived beside Elbryan. "Avelyn killed it."
Elbryan looked at her.
"Else his gift to us would have been stolen away by the demon," the woman reasoned, and
she reached over and worked the sword and bag free of the withered hand. The glow went away instantly, but the arm remained, extended.
Pony handed Tempest to the ranger, and she was not surprised when she opened the bag to find all of Avelyn's stones, except the amethyst and the sunstone, within.
"It is a message," she said with confidence. "He gave this to us as a message that the dactyl is defeated."
"A message and a responsibility," Elbryan replied, looking from Pony's eyes to the bag of gemstones. "Avelyn saved us, saved us all, but the friar is demanding repayment."
The woman nodded and looked, too, at the precious bag, at Avelyn's choice, at her responsibility. "There may already be another Brother Justice on our trail," Pony remarked.
Elbryan lifted Tempest with his healthy arm. "Then I must mend my arm," he replied. "Or learn to fight left-handed."
Thus, Elbryan and Pony walked away from Avelyn's chosen grave, from Tuntun's last breath, from Bradwarden's tomb. They crossed the ash-filled valley with great difficulty, having to stop often from weariness, and that only making things worse since they had no food or water.
Finally, they made the mountains bordering the Barbacan, and just over the ridges, they found life again and water to drink. They spent more than a day at rest, and when she felt strong again, Pony used the hematite to relieve much of Elbryan's pain and to set his bones fast on the mend.
And so it was with strides much stronger that the pair continued on their way down the southern slopes of the Barbacan. Near the bottom, wary for any goblins or other monsters that might be about, they found another friend.
Elbryan sensed Symphony's approach long before the horse came in sight. The ranger didn't know how the stallion had gotten out there, but then he thought of a certain elf, a stubborn and mischievous elf that had never learned to accept an order.
"Tuntun," Pony remarked, figuring the riddle.
Elbryan managed a smile. He slid Tempest into its sheath, looped Hawkwing over his back, then climbed up, offering his hand to Pony.
They rode easily that day, picking their careful way, wary of enemies. That night, they camped on a high plateau, which they agreed to be the most defensible position in the area. No monsters presented themselves, no threat at all, but the choice of the high plateau proved a good one, for in the southern sky, reaching about the horizon like the arms of God, shone the blessed Halo.
Demon Wars 01 - The Demon Awakens Page 67
