He kept fighting and fighting, and after a time, he was no longer able to put magic into his blade to make it fast and light; he had to rely purely on his body alone, which was waning against the endless onslaught. They were going to die, he was realizing as he kept up his frenzy of decapitating swings. There was no preventing it. The murderous fanatics would prevail. The one thought that gave him the heedless determination to fight beyond utter exhaustion was that he and his friends were going to make them suffer as much as possible, cost them as much as possible.
Karl faltered at holding up the defensive wall of stratum only long enough to send a large cobble from it at a zombie’s head, crushing through and bursting it’s skull even as it came close enough to try to bite Vincent’s neck. The blood sprayed all over him, including his face and eyes, the disgusting coppery taste of it getting in his mouth. Vincent had to spit and blink furiously even as he breathed hard and swung madly, snatching only small glimpses of his foes before striking. A glimpse was enough.
When they were beyond all tolerance, when Rick and Stacy had to divide their attention between the cult members and the endless zombies, and when Vincent’s swings came almost simultaneously with the rotted hands grasping at his flesh, there finally came a spark of hope in their favor. While Vincent cut relentlessly, his blade showering and flicking blood with every swing, the bodies piling, he dimly heard voices among the din of flames, explosions, and his own scything. Unless it was his crazed mind playing tricks on him, it seemed that the enemy was beginning to lose their nerve.
“Clyde…”
“General Clyde,” the voice of their leader corrected, “Lord Kargoth has bestowed me a place among his honored.”
“General, might I suggest that fighting these heathens is too risky right now. A number of our faithful have already fallen. Perhaps we should retreat and dispose of them through some other means.”
“Hmm, they are a little stronger than expected,” he concurred. He raised his voice to the remaining others. “Alright, all of you pull back and let the zombies do their work. There’s no need for you to die…prematurely.” Vincent couldn’t make out much else after that and had trouble concentrating on it because of the fighting. A fat zombie in farmer’s clothing tripped on a dead body as it lunged toward Stacy, and Vincent was only barely able to bring his sword down on its neck in time for the bloody stump to crash into Stacy’s wet dress, smearing red all over it. Crazed, Vincent kicked sideways to his right out of desperation to keep from being overwhelmed and brought his sword around to claim all but another that Karl once again had to cranially pulverize in a red spray. Thankfully, most of it splattered Vincent from behind his view and spared his eyes. After the sound of the head bursting, he thought he heard Clyde say something about it being ready and to “hand him a cup to scoop it out.”
The black robed cultists continued shooting green flames as they retreated, until they were behind the edge of the raised dirt and rock. The reprieve granted Rick and Stacy, whom he could tell were exhausted, the opportunity to turn more fully on the oncoming undead. Still cupping her left hand to the bleeding bite on her neck, Stacy first used a powerful gust of wind to knock back all the closest ones. After that, she only let loose an occasional lightning bolt, appearing too week from fighting and blood loss to do more. Rick blasted apart several with small compressed fire sparks that caused their bodies to explode on contact; his attacks were also becoming more infrequent. Vincent’s breath was ragged and hard, his face and clothes drenched with rain and blood, and he could barely lift his sword any longer, but for the first time in the course of the battle, he felt hope. He held his sword up toward his foes, readying himself while feeling the blood and water dripping down the blade and onto the top of his hands.
His hope died instantly when he heard more talking between Clyde and his subordinate as they were leaving. His subordinate seemed in a fret. “General, what of the nonbelievers? Our zombies won’t be able to finish them. They must still pay for all they have slain. They have seen too much.”
“It won’t help them,” Clyde assured him, “concern yourself with it no longer. The zombies merely require some small assistance, and I have something that they won’t be able to dispatch so easily.”
“You don’t mean the…?”
“I do. We only need to escape while it does our work for us.” Vincent heard him putting his fingers to his lips and blowing with a loud, shrill whistle. After that, there were only footsteps amongst Rick’s explosive fire sparks which punctuated the rainy stillness of the night. The zombies were starting to get closer, but were still far enough away that Vincent wasn’t needed again just yet.
Just when he thought Clyde was bluffing, he felt the rain lessen above him and a steady gust of air beating down. Wordlessly, the four of them looked up. Vincent’s eyes widened in shock and his ragged breathing stopped short for a moment. The dark form of a small dragon without arms, a wyvern, hovered above. Gray scales counter-shaded the underside of its black body. Large yellow eyes with black vertical slits gazed down from atop its massive snout filled with sharp white teeth half as long as his sword.
It let out a hoarse roar.
In wild abandon, Vincent grabbed Stacy’s right arm in a death grip, bringing her up and yanking her along as they all dashed out in separate directions from their place of concealment. A horrific blast of bright green flames from its mouth chased them as it touched down and spread along the ground. Vincent could feel the heat on his back and could smell the acrid fumes.
In the dark as they wearily clambered to get away, Vincent and Stacy both stumbled and fell face first into the wet grass and mud. Dread being his only source of strength, Vincent scurried back to his feet and reached around her with his left arm. The weight of his arm felt like lead as he struggled to pull her up while holding the sword in his other hand. “Come on, Stacy! You have to get up!”
“Go without me,” she barely managed to say, her voice weak and laced with pain. A small trickle of blood was still coming through the hand over her neck, and her skin was getting pale.
Vincent’s voice was simultaneously panicked and strained as he pulled. “Don’t talk like that!” Harsh pain seared through his sorely fatigued muscles when with a mighty heave, he hauled her up to her feet and then struggled to keep his balance with her. It didn’t seem like Stacy could hold on much longer.
The motions had left him twisted somewhat to the right just in time to see that the wyvern had turned itself around in the air and was gazing their way with the yellow lanterns that were its eyes. Its big jaws opened up and another horrific blast of flame went right at them. Vincent instantly knew they were finished. He closed his eyes and with his arm not holding Stacy, brought up his sword in a frightened and useless gesture as if to try to shield from the blaze. They waited for it to embrace them.
Certain death.
At the very instant when it should have struck them, Vincent felt only heat. He quickly opened his eyes and noticed something unusual: the green blaze had curved abruptly at its end and was hitting the ground off to the side of them. Rick was across the clearing holding his arms out, his body shaking fiercely while his mustached face contorted from the great effort it was taking to steer the flames away. Vincent pulled Stacy along with him and went several feet just inside the darkness of the trees. Pressing through the dark to flee for his life, he caught only one glance over his shoulder to see what had become of Karl and Rick.
Enraged, the wyvern had stopped breathing fire and used its snakelike neck to whip its head around and look for the source of the interference. As it did, zombies approaching from the left forced Rick and Karl to run at top speed under the hovering wyvern in sheer terror. Vincent tensed and kept fleeing while seeing them look up and spread out from each other just as the enormous claws from its feet came down to furiously tear at the muddy ground between them. The distraction had caused the two of them to get separated as they dashed in different directions toward the thicket.
The wyvern’s head chose to follow him, and it closed in, its reptilian eyes hungry for his blood. As it opened its gaping jaws, preparing to snap its head in, Vincent saw him turn around and use his power to rip and fling two pan-sized sodden mud cakes directly into its vicious eyes, causing it to shriek a fiery breath that was drastically skewed off course. The large blast streamed through the woods and hit not far from Vincent and Stacy, causing them both to jump. Vincent ignored the rest, hoping his friends safe, and ran blindly, helping pull Stacy along with him into the pitch black forest. Only small lingering green flames on the wet wood behind generated any light to see by, and he intended to get them as far away from it as possible.
They heard bushes, leaves, and branches being disturbed far back to their right from zombies giving pursuit either to Rick or to themselves. The wyvern’s loud, angry roar pierced through the thicket and shook the trees behind them. In the absence of the green fire, Vincent’s eyes tried to readjust to the darkness but could never quite do so enough. His heightened level of fear made him disregard this danger completely since pushing through a forest in the dark was far preferable to what lay behind.
Wet tree branches and stubs poked and raked at their skin and clothing, and Vincent could feel them make stinging cuts on his face. Stacy put her right arm around Vincent’s neck to hold herself up and continued to press tightly with the other hand on her bites. Vincent kept his arm around her waist to keep her close while he helped her along. Even though he could barely hold onto it any longer, much less lift it, Vincent kept his sword out the entire time just in case.
They pushed on and Vincent walked into a pine he couldn’t see, one of its broken low branches scraping the side of his head before his face hit the trunk. After going around, he held his sword out flat in front of him to feel for obstructions and disregarded the many minor scratches he continued to get.
After a while, he heard no further sign of pursuit but kept going. Forgotten due to the intense combat and fear, the pain from Craig’s bites to his calves surfaced anew and stabbed into his flesh while he moved forward, as if the teeth were still there. Each step brought forth renewed agony, and Vincent struggled to fight past it.
Stacy seemed hardly conscious at his side; her feet began slipping more and the weight she put on him was growing heavier. It worried him. He could tell that her life was being threatened by her injuries. At the moment, he didn’t know what else to do for her except continue getting them out.
“I change my mind,” she mumbled quietly, “I want to go home.” He barely even heard her.
“I’ll get you there,” Vincent promised, pushing some more leafy wet bush stalks out of the way with his sword arm.
“Thank…” her scarcely audible voice started but didn’t finish.
“Stacy?” She didn’t answer. He shook her. “Stacy!” There was no response; she didn’t move.
Vincent cursed profusely and pushed on harder, searching for a safe place to set her down. His arm holding her was getting tired, but he had another more important reason for doing so. Under no circumstances was he going to leave her behind. He swore to himself that he was going to bring her back even if his arm holding her fell off. Some leafy bush branches suddenly jammed into his face because he had forgotten to hold out his sword, and he swiftly hacked them out of the way in frustration before moving on. She was slipping and he was having trouble keeping her up.
The rain never stopped pouring. Past the bushes, he sent magic into his sword to give the tip a small flame that granted him only the smallest bit of visibility. Shortly after, he found a less rocky patch of earth before a shallow sloping rise covered in dead pine needles and moss. Before she slipped too far and fell, he laid her gently down on top of it.
Released from his burden, he was finally able to sheathe his sword, putting out the flame at its tip first, and all was dark again. Vincent then pulled out his knife and used his power to make a tiny flame at its tip. He got down next to her and held the flame close to the side of her neck where she had been bitten.
Since her hand was no longer pressing on it, even in this amount of light he could see that it was a ghastly wound that still bled. He was afraid that if she lost any more blood, it would be over for her. There was only one thing he could think to do to stop the bleeding but dreaded doing it.
The gaping bite would have to be cauterized.
Vincent turned Stacy over carefully so that she lay on her neck’s uninjured side and then straddled lightly the curvature above her hip with his legs to keep her in place so she wouldn’t fall one way or the other. With his right elbow on the ground near her head to hold himself up, he gently brushed aside her brown hair which was soaked with water and blood. Erring on the side of caution, Vincent gently took a hold of her jaw and opened her mouth to take a brief look, checking to make sure that her tongue was behind her teeth before closing it: He didn’t want her to bite it off if she came awake from the pain and jerked too suddenly.
As Vincent put the flat side of his knife blade closer to her bites, he heated it red hot while maintaining the tiny flame at its tip so he could see what he was doing. It was a tremendous strain for him to use his magic at all; he had taxed himself to the brink with its use during their fight with the cult and now felt drained. He had to force himself to concentrate against the strain and make it work. The area around the bite still had too much blood which was getting mixed with rainwater. He quickly wiped it away with his hand so he could see where the openings were. He could feel a grimace overtake his expression as he firmly pressed the heated metal to the spot near the bottom left of her neck where the zombie’s overbite had been. There was a searing sound with first steam and then the smell of burning flesh rising from her skin.
He lifted the knife and checked underneath to confirm the closing. The pain did not bring Stacy awake nor did her eyes open. Vincent took it as a bad sign, desperately hoping that she wasn’t too far gone. He did not enjoy this in the least, and made himself do it only because there was no other way. Bringing his mind into focus again, he next pressed the red glowing blade to the other part of the bite, where the teeth from the dead person’s lower jaw had been. Again it seared the curved opening shut, and he was glad to finally be able to cool the knife.
Rain fell off pine needles and leaves in big drops soaking Vincent’s black hair and running down his face. It was laced crimson when it dripped off his chin and onto Stacy’s blue dress, mingling with the mud, water, and blood already there. Most of the blood dripping from his chin wasn’t his, yet one could not pass through a thick grove in the manner he had without paying a price.
His thoughts were fraught with anxiety; he worried if what he had done for Stacy would be enough. Even though it was June, the water and the air had a cold streak to it at this hour of the night. This created a whole new problem for him, he realized.
He put his knife away, plunging them into darkness, and felt around in the dark in order to pick her up. He wrapped his arms around Stacy and laboriously hoisted her to her feet. He had stopped the bleeding, yet if her body’s heat bled away too much, she would perish just the same. Deciding that his discomfort at holding his female friend in such an intimate and inappropriate way was a small price to pay for her life, he twisted and jostled her around in his arms until she faced him and then held her body to his in a tight embrace, resting her head against his shoulder.
She still felt cold.
A panic went through him, and Vincent pulled Stacy tighter to himself, rubbing his hands on her back quickly. His alarm lessened when he started to feel the slightest amount of heat coming back from her. It must have been their cold wet clothes t
hat made him think there was none. He held her only a few moments longer to make sure she was warm enough and then crouched down so he could sling her onto his left shoulder.
When he stood up, the pain in his leg from Craig’s bites was intense, almost enough to make him collapse. For Stacy’s sake, he did his best to ignore it. There was no time for him to check them or cauterize them, and he needed to stay conscious if he was to carry her back. Her body was still in contact with his, and he hoped that the rising heat from his exertion would help sustain her for now.
Vincent pulled out his knife and set the tip on fire again, holding it out in his right hand so he could see. It was small enough that he didn’t think it would be noticed. He felt a headache start to creep on because of the strain at doing so, but kept it going because he needed the light.
He pushed on through the soggy vegetation, heedless of pain, heedless of exhaustion, occasionally tipping forward or back, left or right while he carried her, but kept on going. From the tiny flame at his knife’s point, Vincent knew only wet tree barks, leaves, and bushes. And only those directly around them in his small sphere of light as he traversed. Rain continued to pelt them from above, adding a fresh smell to the forest it wouldn’t otherwise have. In the distance, he heard the low rumble of thunder. Even though his left arm felt like it was burning from overuse, he made it hold tightly around Stacy’s thighs, his aching left shoulder continuing to bear the brunt of her weight.
Time had no meaning as he slogged away through the dense, wet forest, carrying his wounded friend. There was no contemplation of how much longer it would take or how much further it was: only the urge to put one heavy foot in front of the other, and not fall, hoping that they would emerge on the other side and return to Gadrale. He knew he must not fail. His weariness only increased as did his body’s heat from his exertion. What dripped constantly from his face became a mixture of rain, blood, and sweat. His muscles burned and burned, aching for rest, and his breathing was never slow or calm, yet his desire to leave this place always seemed to remain stronger than his fatigue.
Storm of Prophecy, Book I: Dark Awakening Page 20
