Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two)

by Gregory J. Downs

  All except Karmidigan and the other Frost Striders. They moved their feet in strange circular shapes, somehow managing to stay upright no matter what ripples or shudders came their way. When the tremor had subsided, they were the only ones on their feet. Lightning flashed in the dark sky overhead.

  “Take my hand, Prince Vale,” Karmidigan grunted, taking his hand in an iron grip and pulling him upright.

  “Thank you.”

  “It is nothing. Prophet Gribly? Lady Elia?” the Frost Strider quickly had his two friends standing again. The other nymphs were scrambling to their feet and clutching at their dropped weapons. One had sprained his ankle and another had cut himself on his own sword. He tossed it to another and retreated behind one of the debris-piles to bind his wound. There weren’t many swords in the Reethe arsenal; Karmidigan had only been able to offer Lauro a pike, which the prince hastily picked up.

  “Karmidigan!” he called, “We’ve got to find out how it’s making these quakes! Could it be the storm?”

  The Frost Strider shook his shaven head wisely. “Of course not. The smoke is from the Demon. The storm is from us.”

  “What? How can-”

  A deafening CRACK sounded from somewhere out towards the inlet. A massive explosion of snow and ice and everything Mythigrad was made of burst up at the sky. Water sprayed up hundreds of feet, fire spurted in blinding spirals out from the tempest, and over all a shuddering, creaking sound that drowned out all else. Lauro was ready this time. Before the ground could quake again and throw him off his feet, he snatched his pike off the ground and vaulted up into the air, kicking his feet and ascending rapidly. Before he had even risen to the height of the Shrine’s front wall, he saw what had happened.

  The city of Mythigrad was slowly being plowed aside by a gray-white something of titanic proportions. The thing moved steadily forward as it rose foot by foot by hundreds of feet from the surface of the inlet, completely disregarding the iceberg that stood in its way. The icy ground and the buildings atop it seemed to offer no resistance, cracking and peeling, thrusting upward and to each side like hard soil broken by a farmer’s plow.

  “By the Aura… What in Halla is this creature?” Lauro felt the wind around him suddenly die away, and he frantically tried to climb higher in the air to avoid falling. The Sea Demon was many times as large as the Ice Demon that had attacked the Mirrorwave, and it was relentlessly pushing its way towards the Shrine, intent on obliterating the last vestige of Reethe resistance. How the damnable Pit Strider had summoned it, Lauro couldn’t imagine. He knew only one thing: it was his task to send it back to hell.

  Lauro spun the pikestaff above his head and found he could use it to help him wind stride. You never told them, you know. His inner voice had chosen just the wrong moment to speak, as usual. If you die trying to prove yourself, they’ll never know why it was you did it. So what? He didn’t intend to die, and he especially didn’t intend to let Gribly know how much of a liar he was. Elia neither. No, he couldn’t tell them. The old fear and hurt was freezing in his chest, and he needed to chase it away with the heat of battle.

  “For Vastion!” Lauro screamed. Channeling all his power, he summoned the greatest blast of wind he had stridden yet. It picked him up and tossed him towards the oncoming behemoth with the speed of a dead leaf in a winter’s storm.

  I will redeem myself, he thought. And my father will be proud.

  ~

  “Bre Spectansis! Lei Lekion-Scorr terminas! Preterons per climactue!” Elia heard the Frost Strider shouting above the deafening roar of the monster’s approach. By Allfar! The Sea Demon has returned! Prepare for battle! The accent of his nymphspeech was new to her, but it wasn’t too hard to comprehend… luckily.

  Most of the nymph soldiers were still trying to keep their feet on the buckling, bucking ground. Elia managed to get upright for a second and used the opportunity to jump a few feet off the ground, spreading her mind out around her like a net, catching water-particles in the air to lend her buoyancy as she hopped around lightly, avoiding the tremors when they came. Karmidigan and the far-off brigade of chanting, swaying Frost Striders didn’t seem to be having a problem.

  “Girl! Lady Elia!” called the shaven warrior, waving at her frantically. He had obviously noticed that she could keep her feet. “Come! Follow me if you can! We will have need of your gifts!”

  She didn’t trust herself to speak, so much was she shaking, but she nodded and made her way nimbly across the heaving snow towards him. On the way she passed Gribly, crouched low, a snarl written across his mild face. He seemed able to hold his own against the earthquake, but he hadn’t gotten farther than staying on his feet. Following her was out of the question.

  “Are you all right?” she called to him, and just as she feared her voice cracked with unsteadiness. This was a new kind of fight for her.

  “I-I’m f-f-f-fine,” he stuttered, hopping and falling to his knees and jumping up again each time the ground heaved. “G-g-go o-on and s-s-see what h-he w-w-wants…”

  She nodded and continued on. Lightning flashed overhead, and thunder roared, but she could barely hear it above the tumult that boomed around her on all sides. The whole scene was so utterly noisy it was a wonder she could even hear what Gribly said. It occurred to her they had both been yelling over the noise, and then she was face to face with Karmidigan.

  “My Lady!” he called. Snowflakes whirled in the air and formed an insubstantial tunnel around his mouth whenever he spoke. He was casting his voice, somehow. She nodded, carefully spreading her legs to withstand a small shockwave that hit them suddenly. Karmidigan put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. When he spoke again, it was in the nymphtongue. “We have to slow this devil down. It is the only way. If we can slow it, mayhap we can stop it. Our cleric is with the Raitharch, healing him, so we can expect no help from his power. However, we have been preparing for this next attack ever since the first came. Come.”

  He was just turning away when a new series of jolts shot through the ground, shaking the Shrine like a straw hut in a hurricane. Elia went flying- literally- but Karmidigan caught her in his huge arms easily. Without waiting, her held on to her and sped away towards the rear of the structure, riding the heaving snow like a ship on the waves. Frost striding.

  “T-thank y-you,” Elia said in her own language, shaking. The Frost Strider grimly nodded.

  All at once, the tremors stopped. She looked up and saw that they had arrived at the raised platform of soft-stone where the other Frost Striders were. Karmidigan put her down gently, and she thanked him again.

  “It is nothing. Look! The prince buys us time!” the man pointed behind her. Elia turned and saw the top of the Sea Demon’s sludge-gray form rising just over the fortress wall. It had stopped moving and rising, and an almost indecipherable black shape whizzed back and forth in front of it. Faint cries came across the air.

  Lauro. He was actually attacking the thing, and throwing his voice with the wind like she had seen him do from afar when he had tried to save the Zain trireme.

  “Crazy lad,” Karmidigan groaned, but he was smiling as he said it. “Come, My Lady. I will now show you the Strength of the Reethe.”

  With a tremendous leap he jumped onto the snow-dusted platform, then reached down to help Elia up after him. She shook her head. The snow under her new boots had begun to melt, and she called on the water it formed to spout under her feet, effortlessly raising her up to the platform’s level, where she immediately stepped forward to join the astonished Karmidigan.

  “Truly you have the skill,” he said, still using nymphspeech. “I hope it will be sufficient.”

  “Sufficient?” she broke in.

  “To help us cast our storm,” he told her. In the few swift seconds it took them to walk to the center of the platform, he explained his plan to her. All around them, the loose circle of ten or so Frost Striders took no notice, continuing their endless routine of arm-and-hand motions, putting the full energy of their body a
nd will into their conjuring.

  “They have been shaping a snow-storm in the heavens for hours now. There are too few Striders here, too few.” Karmidigan stopped in the center of the circle. “We hope to slow the Demon with our power, and the storm should do that for us. However, until now we had no hope of controlling it. We have the power of Winter at our command, but the water of the skies evades us. Our storm has strength but no momentum. I had hoped when I saw you that you would be able to help us control it. Make it grow. Throw rain and lightning at our enemy with your wave striding. Is this within your power?”

  “I do not know,” Elia answered him simply. It was almost incomprehensible to her how important this all was. How deadly. She was being asked to combine forces with other Striders- to control a thunderstorm, no less! It was something that should be far beyond her power… but it was what she’d always dreamed of! And then again, there was the battle with the Pit Strider’s draik… “I may be able to do it,” she said finally. “At least I will try.”

  “Good. Good,” Karmidigan said, nodding grimly. “Have you combined energies with other Striders before?”

  “No. I have had little real training that did not come from my Father.” The memory almost choked her, sudden and striking amid the clash of coming battle.

  “Then I will show you the way,” the Frost Strider confidently told her. “I sense a Power within you. It shall not be hard for you, I think.”

  “Then let us begin.”

  Chapter Fourteen: Wind Tunnel

  It saw him. He felt sure it saw him. Lauro couldn’t see any eyes on the Demon, but when it had risen head and shoulders out of the sea he noticed two large indentations where its eyes might have been. There was no mouth and no nose, either, but for some reason the effect was even more terrifying than the tentacle visage of the Ice Demon from the southern part of the Inkwell. At least the sheer size of the thing made it slow… he hoped.

  The air around him crackled with energy: his energy. He was striding the wind like never before. The rushing, soaring, flashing feeling intoxicated him; made him feel strong enough to beat this enormous thing on his own. In some corner of his mind, he knew it wasn’t possible, that he could and most likely would die if he attacked it… but somewhere along the line he’d simply stopped caring.

  “Take this, father!” he spat at the wind. It rushed around him, pushing him forward faster and faster through the air while continually building a cushion of pressure under his feet. The Demon slowly eased its gray, shapeless head back, and Lauro realized that it was following his movements, after all. Good. Maybe I can slow it down.

  It was hard to judge distance while flying, especially when the size of everything below was so large. Buildings toppled and collapsed as the Sea Demon tried to raise one massive shoulder through the iceberg. If it gets an arm… or tentacle… near me, I might as well kill myself for all the luck I’ll have getting away. It’ll catch me like a fly. The prince soon realized he needed to get somewhere the monster couldn’t immediately reach him.

  His decision was made in a second. Gripping the pike he still carried in both hands, he held it parallel to his own body while twitching his feet ever so slightly. The effect was instantaneous: the wind flipped him onto his back. With the heightened vision his gifts gave him, he could see the spiraling currents of air growing stronger at his feet. When he released them, they would shoot him through the sky at a ridiculous pace- one he wasn’t sure he could physically handle, but one he knew was necessary to foil his enormous foe.

  Grunting with the exertion it took to move against his own momentum, Lauro spun the pikestaff to be perpendicular with his torso; all while still flying backwards towards the Sea Demon as it grew ever taller. The movement temporarily slowed him: in his mind he was bottling up the gathered wind, preparing for a mighty Wind-stride. He needed more power; more energy; more pressure.

  He waited a second. The colorful strands of wind-energy visible only to him were growing stronger as he gathered more of them in.

  Another second. If anyone had been close enough to see him, they would have seen that he had slowed almost to a stop. Any slower and he would fall right out of the sky.

  A third second passed. To Lauro’s vision, there was a whirlwind of crimson churning beneath his outstretched legs, held back by his own will and the pike he was using as his tool.

  At that moment there was a frightful roar and explosion from below. It was if both the prince and the Sea Demon had been moving slower and slower in time, stretching it farther and farther, building tension until it finally snapped and released them both at a supernatural speed. The Demon suddenly raised itself up to almost its full height, breaking through what remained of the shattered Reethe city and rearing up so that its head seemed as if it was about to touch the clouds.

  Its arm, a grasping, slimy thing with less than normal fingers and a hideous sludgy quality, shot up at hundreds of miles an hour, trying to crush Lauro just as he had imagined it would… like a fly. But just as the fly oftentimes eludes the housewife by the sheer virtue of its small size, so the prince survived what else might have killed a larger creature. By luck or quick thinking, Lauro spun onto his stomach and thrust the pike forward just as the Demon struck. The enormous pressure and power of the wind stored at his feet was released all at once.

  Like an arrow from the bow of the Allfar, Lauro shot across the sky and out of the Demon’s reach. It was a close race: the monster’s claw passed like a thunderbolt not more than ten feet from his side, but he barely noticed it.

  The wind tore the hair from his head and melted his skull and turned his body into jelly… or at least it felt like it. He felt his whole body wracked with the pain of moving faster and farther and in a shorter time than was ever intended for the human body. White lights and black lights searing his eyeballs until it felt like he had none. His lips were forced back onto his face like the peeled skin of a fruit; his tortured eyelids tried to force themselves shut and couldn’t. His whole body was crushed under the inconceivable force of the wind he had tried to tame. The pike was ripped from his grip like a twig and his arms were plastered to his sides. There was no steering and no sight. His ears were dead.

  Then, suddenly, it was over. The wind died away to almost nothing, and he felt the air around him grow absolutely still. The only noise his ears could hear was a faint fluttering and rustling, as if he was flying near a small group of starlings. If any could fly so high, he thought.

  He noticed several things at once: one, he was not controlling his own flight. He had the general idea he was flying but the energy wasn’t going out from him like it normally would if he were wind striding. Two, the reason for his confusion was that he still couldn’t see. The world around him had calmed down, but his eyes were streaming with salty tears and even a bit of blood. The bowshot flight he’d taken was still taking its toll on his sight, making him virtually blind. His eyes blinked open and closed rapidly, trying to heal themselves by a constant flow of liquid. While it happened, he was helpless.

  Finally they cleared, and his vision returned. What he saw amazed him.

  The Sea Demon stood below, standing or swimming at its full height, completely stopped and strangely still. At least, that was how it appeared- he couldn’t know for sure. The entire scene was whirring by at a tremendous pace below him. Despite the out-of-place calm feeling he had, it seemed his speed hadn’t decreased at all: in fact, it had increased.

  He was in a tunnel. Yes, that was the best way to describe it: a tunnel of wind. He caught glimpses of the rest of it behind him whenever he turned his head: a fleeting, ghostly apparition of white; a charged, sparking space where no snowflake fell and no raindrop landed. It shouldn’t have been possible, even with all he’d learned about his gifts so far in life. But there! It was happening, wasn’t it?

  It made him feel powerful, in control of the battle; and, what was more, it utterly confused the Sea Demon. How he knew that he was wasn’t sure, but from the sight h
e gleaned of it as he flew the hundreds-of-feet-wide circle around its head, he assured himself that it was, indeed, holding perfectly still. How the hellspawned thing worked and thought he had no idea, but so far it didn’t seem to understand him or his powers. Good: the longer it was confused, the longer it would take to reach the center of Mythigrad and the longer the Frost Striders in the Shrine would have to conjure up some form of resistance.

  The fluttering noise he’d heard when he’d first “entered” the tunnel grew louder, and something smacked hard into his knee. Looking down, the prince found it to be nothing more than his pike, which for some reason seemed to have entered the tunnel and continued flying alongside him even after it had been forced from his grip by the wind. Reaching out to grab at it, he felt the tunnel start to slow and his own body to slip out of the safe zone. The wind tugged at his cheeks again and threatened to collapse his tunnel.

  Quicker than thought, he snatched the pike and returned to his former posture: arms at sides, legs flung out straight behind, face forward and body flat. The weapon’s haft was tucked neatly under one arm, and the wind-tunnel’s grew stronger again until there was no more danger of its collapse.