“Not there!” Devon shouted, grabbing her chin and forcing her gaze up. “LOOK AT IT!”
Zalia looked and suddenly she saw. Above the cloud, above where the palace used to be, there floated a flattened oval shape, hundreds of tentacles hanging from its body, all of it so faint that it could have just been dust if he hadn’t told her it was there, if Devon hadn’t forced her to look. The Hunter hung over its feeding ground, devouring the battle sylphs who sacrificed themselves on its tentacles so willingly, none of them able to see its actual body as it floated safe above them.
“Oh gods,” she whispered. It was nearly a hundred feet across, obvious to her now and horrible.
“I have to stop it,” Devon whispered. “Airi, I have to stop it and I need you to help me. Zalia, if I don’t, you have to tell them where it is, what it is.”
“How?” she gasped, turning to face him as he let her go and drew his sword, the first time she’d seen him even touch it though it had always been at his side. “How can you stop it?” Then he lifted into the air, carried by his air sylph, and she knew what he was going to do. “NO!” she screamed, though she couldn’t stop him any more than she could have stopped One-Eleven.
All she could do was watch.
Devon realized just as Zalia did what the battle sylphs were doing and why. It was utter insanity, but how much saner was what he was considering? He had no choice. They wouldn’t listen to him; it took all the courage he’d been able to gather to go up to Zalia’s battle sylph and try to talk to him. Now they were all insane and he felt like he had no courage left.
Why are we doing this? Airi shrieked, her terror beating at him as she carried him awkwardly up and over the buildings of the city, fighting to lift him above the battle sylphs and the Hunter. This is battler work!
“There aren’t going to be any battlers left in a few minutes,” Devon told her, clutching his sword hilt with sweaty hands as he tried not to look down. Airi did her best to carry him, but as always, the ride was rough. He desperately hung on to the sword.
Why us? she wailed.
Because there was no one else. Because he had to. Because if he stopped to think about it, he’d take Zalia and her father and run, and he’d never be able to live with himself. Of course, if he got Airi hurt, he’d definitely never be able to live with himself. There was just no other way up to the body of the Hunter. All he could do was pray he was right and that it was vulnerable there.
“Go right,” he told Airi, knowing she couldn’t see anything ahead of them except dying battlers flickering into oblivion in midair. She jerked them both to the right, making Devon want to vomit but keeping them clear of a massively thick tentacle that swung almost lazily, impacting against three battle sylphs who flashed and were gone, leaving only faintly glowing afterimages being sucked up the tentacle toward the body. Devon was still terrified, but he grieved for the battlers. They were sacrificing themselves for no good reason. The best they could hope for was to feed the Hunter enough that it would leave. They wouldn’t destroy it, only themselves.
“Go up,” he directed, his voice thick.
I’m trying, Airi sobbed, hauling them both upward, but still forward. She couldn’t just lift him and had to settle for circling upward, using the winds as much as she could. It seemed agonizingly slow, though they moved quickly enough.
“Left!” he screamed and she rushed that way, a tentacle lashing through where they’d just been.
I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.
“I’ll play an entire symphony for you after this,” Devon promised. “I will.” His gorge rose and he almost vomited. “And I’ll never ask you to carry me anywhere ever again.”
You better not! Just kill the thing so I can put you down and cry!
“Move right!” he shouted.
The Hunter fed lazily, gorging itself on the creatures so willing to feed it. Their energy filled it, pushing the gas production in its main body to maximum. It would feast on these creatures and the rest of the hive once they were gone. Then it would give itself to the winds. There was even more food in the hive than it had hoped for and it wasn’t worried anymore. It could cross that ocean with this much to fuel it. The underground hive would escape, but that didn’t matter. If the winds ever brought it back, it would have more food waiting for it.
The battle sylphs threw themselves at it, a nice delicacy that it savored. They truly were stupid creatures, given to instinct so much that they never even considered attacking except where it did damage. So they hurled themselves at its feeding tentacles and it savored their taste, enjoying itself as it always did when it managed to breech a hive.
For all its thousand eyes, it almost didn’t see the human and the air sylph. It didn’t see them at all at first, hidden as they were by the battlers, but it did spot them once they finally got clear of the cloud and continued climbing, rising to get above it. It paid attention to them then, never having seen such a thing, and listened. It couldn’t understand what the human said, but it could understand the sylph and listened to what she was saying with growing horror.
A moment later, it turned its attention away from the hive completely, abandoning its meal.
The battle sylphs hurled themselves without thought at the Hunter’s tentacles. They were hatched to protect, to keep the hive safe, and the hive was in danger. Abandoning it wasn’t even an option and the shrieks of their brothers as they died in agony didn’t get through their maddened determination. Caught in a fugue of insanity, they threw themselves at it more and more, knowing only that Hunters ate until sated, and if it had to be sated, it would be on them, not their hive or their queen.
It was a shock to many of them when the last of the battlers to hurl themselves down just raced through the entrance to the hive instead of dying. Inside, there was rubble everywhere from the devastation and blood, but no bodies. The Hunter had swept away any living thing it touched.
Alive along with the rest of the few survivors, One-Eleven gaped around himself and then started to roar in triumph, echoed by the others. The Hunter was gone, they’d driven it out!
It’s not over yet! Tooie shouted to all of them.
They turned, looking back up through the gaping wound in the side of the hive. One-Eleven stared with the others, not sure what he was supposed to be looking at yet, until he saw the last thing he would have expected. The human that Haru hadn’t let him kill earlier was being carried by that foreign air sylph through the sky, both of them darting around in all directions as though they were trying to avoid something.
Hadn’t the human claimed something about being able to see the Hunter? One-Eleven wondered with a sudden uncertainty.
When Eapha saw the palace crash into the hive, making a jagged hole fifty feet wide in the thick stone, she was horrified. When she saw the battle sylphs start to make their suicide run, her horror only increased. If she stopped them, everyone inside the hive would die. If she didn’t, the battlers would die instead.
Everything happened so fast she couldn’t even think, let alone tell Tooie what order to relay. Then she saw the human floating through the air and thought at first that he was coming up to where Tooie held her above the ground, only he wasn’t taking a direct route. He was darting back and forth, dodging awkwardly around swirling lines of dust and smoke that were almost like tentacles.
They were exactly like tentacles. “I can see it!” she shouted, startling Tooie. “I can see it!” Hundreds of tentacles, barely visible, all of them trying to lift up toward the man but most too heavy as he continued to rise. All of them were pulling away from the hive, straining toward him.
Send the battlers in, she thought, but couldn’t. There were so few left where there had been hundreds before and they couldn’t see the Hunter. Devon could. If they went in, if they got in his way, if they hurt him…
“Tell the battlers to hold their explosions,” she t
old Tooie, peering down from his embrace at the battle. “Tell them to let that man through. They have to keep him alive!”
Let him through what? Tooie wondered, but he obeyed and far below her, the battle sylphs obeyed as well.
“Left!” Devon shouted, seeing a tentacle swinging toward him. He was nearly at the level of the underside of the Hunter and it was so close it filled his vision, clearer and easier to see up close. It was still translucent, but obvious enough this close that he easily saw its tentacles lashing toward him. The tips dangled far below, apparently too heavy to lift, but the midsections were high enough to reach him.
Sobbing, Airi lifted him over the tentacle coming his way, Devon raising his feet high to avoid it. Immediately, another swung toward him from the other direction. “Down!” he screamed and Airi dropped, almost landing him in a mass of thinner tendrils below before his next scream stopped her. He didn’t like to go down, there were more tentacles there, but he had to get close. It knew he was there, he had no doubt about that.
The battlers knew something was up as well and they swarmed around him, staring at him with their terrifying ball lightning eyes. Devon saw one blunder into a tentacle and vanish immediately, his energy sucked into the length of it. The other battlers roared, having seen him disappear, and attacked that spot, two of them falling into the same trap and being devoured as well.
The tentacles stopped when they drew in energy. Devon didn’t know if it was intentional or involuntary, but he screamed for Airi to go up and she lifted him, gaining another fifty feet and carrying him over a feeding tentacle that had been impassible a moment before. He was able to see the edge of the Hunter’s rounded body now, only a few dozen feet away. The sides of it were smooth, faintly patterned and completely clear of tentacles. They all came out of it from its underside.
I can’t do this, Airi wailed. I’m too tired!
Be tired later, he wanted to tell her. He was terrified himself and really wanted to go home. Someone far braver than he was should be the one doing this.
A battle sylph swept up to them, eyes swirling, and Airi shrieked, nearly dropping him. Devon shrieked as well, at the proximity of the thing and at how he’d never reach the ground if Airi dropped him now. The entire air beneath him was a mass of crisscrossing tentacles and the battlers had already lost a half dozen of their survivors to it. More tentacles waved all around them, the Hunter lifting its smaller, lighter ones as fast as it could. They had to get out of their reach while they still could, but Devon could only stare at the battle sylph hovering before him. It was huge, even bigger than Mace back home, which meant it was old and powerful, though even the youngest of them could turn both him and Airi into an ash too fine for the Hunter to taste.
Some older battlers were skilled enough at shape-shifting to form a human voice in their cloud form. This was one of them. “So you can see it,” the creature hissed.
Zalia’s lover. Devon nearly wet himself and Airi pressed close, whimpering at the appearance of her master’s rival. The battler glared and Devon tried to speak, but he couldn’t get anything out.
One-Eleven moved closer, lightning teeth frighteningly large in its massive head. “Why you, you pathetic coward? You’re nothing.”
Devon swallowed, trying to talk. If One-Eleven would listen, he could point him at the Hunter’s head. He could destroy it in a heartbeat. It had to be vulnerable. The Hunter wouldn’t be trying to kill him so much if it weren’t. One-Eleven could kill it and Devon could just go and find a place to collapse.
“Are you trying to impress Zalia?” One-Eleven went on. “She’s picked me. Not you…me! You think you can change that by pretending to be brave? No one here thinks you have any courage.”
Devon tended to agree with that. He licked his lips, forcing himself to speak. He could feel how tired Airi was getting and she couldn’t keep this up for much longer. “I just want to keep everyone safe.”
“I don’t care what the queen ordered, that’s a battle sylph’s job!”
Behind the battler, who was between Devon and Airi and the Hunter, a tentacle only as thick as a human arm managed to lift itself up high enough, the curve of its middle rising up beside its bulbous body bag while the rest of its length hung below. Trembling from the strain, it lashed out, heading straight for them.
“AIRI! LOOK OUT!”
Airi screamed, not knowing which way to go.
Up, he tried to say, pointing at it, knowing she couldn’t move fast enough. One-Eleven gave him a look of pure disgust. “The queen gave her order,” he said, spitting the words.
Then he placed himself between Devon’s pointing arm and the Hunter.
Devon saw the tentacle hit him. One-Eleven grunted, shifting to human form, perhaps involuntarily, and Devon saw the pain on his face as the tentacle sank into him, or perhaps he sank into it, growing transparent until he was as hard to see as his killer, his eyes still locked on his rival’s before they closed and he faded entirely, becoming just a flicker of energy running up the length of the tentacle.
The tentacle stopped, hesitating as it fed, and Devon managed to get out his order. “Up! Airi, take us up!”
She did, howling, and the tentacle moved again, lashing below Devon’s hanging feet as they rose to where even the finest of the monster’s tentacles couldn’t reach. The whole body started to move, the Hunter giving up on catching him. Instead its tentacles lashed out below, ignoring any battlers still around as it grabbed for buildings, wrapping the ends around them and digging in as it used them to pull itself away, trying to flee. Battle sylphs howled at the sight of the tops of buildings exploding, trenches suddenly appearing in the stone, and whether by luck or desperation, they started to attack the buildings. Stone exploded, leaving the Hunter nothing to grab on to as it hung there.
It started to roll over instead, trying to turn its vulnerable back away from him and get its tentacles in the way. Carried by his air sylph, Devon rose above it, seeing those tentacles swirling under it, his mouth dry and his hands covered in sweat so that he had to let go of his sword with first one and then the other to dry them off on his shirt. He had no idea what would happen next, but he knew what he had to say.
“Let me go,” he told Airi.
What? she gasped. You’ll fall!
Yes, he thought, but only he would. Airi would be safe. He didn’t know how long she’d last without his energy, but surely they’d get her back to the Valley in time. Surely Eapha would be willing to give her that much.
“Drop me!” he shouted.
She wailed and did, unable to disobey. Devon fell straight toward the Hunter, unable to breathe as he braced himself, afraid he’d be absorbed the same as One-Eleven the second he touched it, but hoping that the steel of his sword, pointing downward, wouldn’t.
He hit it hard, his breath whooshing out of him and his feet slipping on a surface that was smooth and somehow slimy. His sword, however, plunged hilt deep into the Hunter, and he was lucky that he couldn’t inhale as foul gasses suddenly poured out of it.
The Hunter shrieked, its scream echoing in Devon’s head and into the minds of everyone there, human or sylph. Stunned by it, Devon could only hold on to the hilt of his sword with both hands, feeling the monster pulse underneath him.
He’d landed off center on it, on the slope of its side. After a moment, he started to slide, his sword blade slicing through the monster as easily as it would pass through water, leaving a great tearing rent in the side of the creature that poisonous air rushed out of as it continued to scream, now dropping in altitude as Devon continued sliding, reaching the bottom edge of its body in seconds and slipping right off the edge. Still clinging to his sword, he fell.
The battle sylphs still couldn’t see the Hunter, but they did see Devon sliding along it and they saw the distortion of the gasses escaping from it into the air. The first energy wave one of them threw hit the creature
dead center and it exploded. The force of that sent everyone in the air tumbling and hit Devon like a wall. He fell, unconscious, which meant he didn’t know it when, a few seconds later, a battle sylph caught him just before he reached the ground.
EPILOGUE
Zalia walked down the hallway, her hands clasped together before her. She was dressed in a beautiful blue gown found in the closet of her new room, but she didn’t feel beautiful. She wasn’t sure what she did feel but she knew there was a whole morass of feelings inside of her that she’d have to deal with someday.
One-Eleven was dead. She knew that from Airi, who’d seen it and turned herself solid so she could tell Zalia. He’d died to protect Devon long enough to kill the Hunter and Zalia didn’t know what she thought about that, or about the queen who’d ordered him to do it. He didn’t really feel dead to her, not yet. She suspected it would be very painful once he did.
The building she walked through was light and airy, with big windows to let in the cooling breezes of attendant air sylphs, much like the palace that fell out of the sky, though this one was firmly attached to the ground. It also wasn’t inside the ruined hive. No one wanted to stay there, so the light that came through the windows was natural.
Zalia went up to one door. She’d been there several times before, but Devon had been sleeping each time. There was no guard outside, so she tapped once and peeked in, just in case he was still asleep.
Devon was sitting up in the bed against the pillows, his hair spiking as she saw him.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, coming in and walking over to sit on the side of his bed.
Devon smiled at her, the sight of it making her heart skip a beat, even as his hair suddenly flattened out again to either side. “Better.” That was good. He’d been healed by a healer sylph, but it had still been very close. Zalia heard the healer say that if he’d actually inhaled any of the gasses that came out of the Hunter, he would have been dead even before the battler caught him. Tears welled up in her eyes and Devon looked alarmed. “Hey, I’m okay, really.”
The Sylph Hunter Page 30
