by Ryan Johnson
Valverno was glad and he came closer to ending her life and no longer had to live with the hatred he had for her. When he came on the same mountain Belverda was on but from a higher altitude, he looked down and saw the witch casting magic with her staff, which seemed damaged and nearly cracked.
“I’ll show all of you when you mess with a witch with a staff from Pangaea. Anyone who stands in my way will end up dying and they won’t live to tell the tale.”
Valverno saw Belverda using her cracked staff and making lose rocks from the cliff she was standing on. Bringing the rocks together, Belverda used the small rocks to form a large boulder. With a magic staff starting to lose its magic, the boulder stayed on the ridge Belverda stood on and she was ready send down the boulder to crush the enemies chasing her.
“Look out!” shouted Flavius, seeing the boulder being made and pointing out loud.
The witch laughed loudly as she seemed she had won and the White Knight power was as good as hers.
But just as she thought she had won, Valverno leaped from the high altitude and landed beside the witch and sliced her staff in half with the sword. The boulder stopped being created and just limped on an edge over Flavius and his men.
Valverno raised his hand, curved his fingers like a spider, and waved the hand down. Two small sparks fired down at the half-broken staff from Belverda’s hand and over the edges of the mountain cliff. He pointed the sword to the witch, with full intent to kill his most hated woman.
“This is your end, witch, as your sisters met their end when they messed with magic the wrong way!”
“Wait! Please! I’ll do anything!” begged the witch. The witch was standing near the cliff.
“Too late! Seventeen years too late! And its curtains for you, witch!” The demigod swung his sword and the witch waved her hands, magically shooting lighting from her hands.
Valverno saw the lightning coming from the witch’s hands. Quickly, he switched the sword in defense and swinging it toward the rock beneath the witch’s feet.
The purple lightning bolt thundered at rock the witch was standing on and crumbled into small pieces. And without her staff and no more magic to call upon, Belverda fell over the cliffs, screaming.
Valverno gave an emotionless glare as he saw his most hated person on both islands fall over the cliffs and he turned to the direction Flavius and his men were coming up. He looked at the boulder Belverda created. It was tilting to where Flavius and his men were coming up.
But Valverno grabbed the boulder with his right arm and tilted the opposite direction. He heaved it to the other direction: the direction where Belverda fell.
All he heard, after he flung the boulder over the cliffs, were the boulder cracking over the edge and Belverda’s falling scream. After several seconds, the screaming faded and a loud lightning sound roared across the sky and two lightning bolts striking the sky.
“Valverno!” shouted Flavius. Geraldus’s second son came climbing over the edge Belverda was trying heave her boulder to. Several men came following behind him. “You’re here? Where is the witch?”
There was another loud sound that wasn’t scary thunder or a lightning bolt lighting the cloudy sky, only it sounded like a strange type of thunder but not echoing from the sky. It was the sound of crushing rock.
Flavius and his men walked past Valverno and gazed over the cliffs where Valverno sent the witch and her boulder plunging.
“Valverno, did you…?” asked Flavius.
“Belverda, the witch I thought to be my mother for seventeen years, the witch who experimented on me and used me as a lab rat, and the person I hate the most, is dead.”
NEW LEADERSHIP FOR THE ISLAND
Valverno and the men behind climbed down the slope they came walking up. On the ground, their horses were waiting. The men mounted on their horses while Valverno ran with his speedy feet pacing him through the trees and went ahead to find Sora and Marina. The Crystal Sword he held in his hand he stuck it on his back. On his Crystal Sword was stuck if it was glue.
He followed the scent of the two girls coming from the forest the witch was being chased by Flavius and his horsemen. He found them lying on the same spot when he was doing his mountain climbing. From the looks, Sora was slowly standing up with Marina and the other soldier.
“In my life, I’d never thought I’d get to meet a real White Knight,” said the soldier.
“And the White Knight of Charity would be my half-sister,” said Valverno.
His voice startled the three people standing in front of him. The soldier drew out a broadsword and saw Valverno’s wings and legs glittering like the moonlight. “Who are you?”
“Valverno!” gasped Sora. The White Knight weakly limped over to get closer to her brother but she fell half-way.
Valverno quickly dashed and caught his falling sister in his arms before she could break her face. “Careful, Sora! It seems you are not fully regained your power.” Valverno could see Sora’s legs trembling very strongly. It were like her nervous system had been paralyzed. “What happened to you?”
“That witch used some kind of magic I haven’t seen in a long time: magic from Pangaea. How did she manage to get such an item from the destroyed world? No weapon should have survived Pangaea’s collapse.”
“And I made sure it was destroyed.”
“You destroyed the staff? Could have been Mother’s staff?”
“I remember Mother’s staff she held perfectly, and the staff Belverda had wasn’t our mother’s. Magic from a Pangaea staff is a natural source of using magic, and everyone could use the power of a staff, if they know how to use it.”
“Do you think that witch Belverda may have been a Pangaean?” asked Sora.
“No, she was never a Pangaean; she used to be a little girl who gotten lost during a battle some four thousand years that led her to the Pool of Shadows. All her memories I saw before she fell she’d completely wiped out. Belverda clearly doesn’t want to remember her past.”
“Fell over?” said Marina said. “Does that mean she’s… dead?”
Valverno nodded.
“Belverda and Uragiru are both dead, but Lusìvar still remains. Not to mention the other girl, Stephane. She would want to take the throne before someone else claims it. And I don’t know how well trained she is into ruling a nation, yet alone the city itself.”
“Then I gauss we should go back and get the other leaders who brought their armies from around the island,” said Sora. She still tried to stand up on her feet, but her legs remained very numbed and collapsed. “That battle did more damage to me than I thought.”
Valverno stretched out a hand and his hand glowed blue; his skin color changed and his scales turned to a different color. Valverno laid his sister on the ground so that Sora was sitting up. Then Valverno used his glowing hand to swirl glittering glowing liquid on Sora’s legs.
From his eyes, he was her muscles disabled from her bones and it would have been impossible to walk.
“It seems your battle nearly cost you: your leg muscles nearly look like they were ripped from the bone and the ligaments of your joints. Luckily for you, Elder Brother is here to help his baby sister help her to her feet.” Valverno gave a small blow from his mouth and an icy chill roared on Sora’s legs.
Sora smiled. Then she shivered at the sudden cold from a healing power Valverno was giving her. Now she couldn’t feel her legs and she began to feel ice growing on her bare feet.
Valverno then touched both her both legs with both hands and the glow had vanished. After a few seconds, Valverno released his hands from her. “There. How do you feel?”
Sora could move her legs again and she slowly stood up. She stood perfectly with the help of Valverno’s healing power. “I feel like my old self again. Thank you, my dear Elder Brother.” Sora leaped forward and embraced her half-brother, in appreciation for helping her when she needed his help at the moment.
“Touching, isn’t it, sir?” asked a man’s voice.
Valverno and Sora saw from an angle Flavius and his horsemen standing several feet away from them. They all were staring at him and Marina.
“You think he’d saved a princess, but he may claim all the ladies around every corner part of the island,” said Flavius.
“You may right, soldier,” agreed Flavius. “And he may just go after my village next. If we go to war again, we all can make sure we go after the hybrid first. We wouldn’t want him taking a dragon girl.”
The soldiers laughed at that.
Sora and Valverno released from each other as they heard the soldiers laughing at Flavius’s remark. As Valverno turned around to see the men, Sora gasped so loudly. This made Valverno turn to see what Sora had gasped at.
“What is it?”
Sora showed Valverno with a worried face. “Your back! It’s been cut.” Sora held out a mirror she suddenly created out of thin air and handed it Valverno.
Valverno held it in his hand and looked his reflection in the mirror. Instead of looking at his face, he saw his entire backside of the mirror. He saw the wings attached to his back-shoulders, and there a long thin deep-red cut stretching down his spine. That flesh wound was badly red it could have been a cut for a pig.
“Uragiru gave me it,” said Valverno.
“Let me return the favor then.” Sora walked to see Valverno’s backside and the flesh wound bleeding horribly. Sora raised her hands and a thin emerald mist showed up. Her eyes turned green and the mist went to Valverno’s spinal wound. Sora swirled her hands in the air and guided the mist go into the wound.
Valverno grunted once Sora’s magic spell touched his wound. Of all his life not feeling any physical pain, he was now feeling it again. He could have kept the abilities given to him by Belverda but he didn’t want to have any animal DNA upgrades in his own; he was a demigod. His half-godlike power was enough for him.
“Sorry about that, but healing can hurt badly like losing an arm in battle.”
“I’ll better the healing’s hurt than the arm-cutting hurt. And I feel like the gap I have to starting to be sewed back into place.”
“Or maybe your just lucky, Valverno. This cut would have killed you. It goes in deep and wide enough for you to bleed to death. It more than a miracle you have survived an injury. I gauss being the half-god you are made you lucky enough to keep you alive.”
Valverno was stunned. When he felt the cut at him in the buried city, it felt like a bee sting. But being compared to a sword’s blade slashing a hundred percent mortal and retained no divinity could have killed the victim.
Valverno was very lucky to have been half god. Otherwise, he would have died and hope for the islands would have been lost.
“Well, having the tough DNA hide of a Minotaur and dragon scales are what made my skin so strong in the first place. When the God of Shadows sent his swoop to banish all unnatural thins from the islands, those things Belverda inserted into me were unnatural. Now I don’t have those abilities anymore and I have my natural abilities now. It was good while it lasted, but now it was time to say goodbye to those upgrades I no longer need.”
After several short minutes, Sora waved the green mist away and her eyes blinked back to her regular eyes. “There we go. Your wound has been healed, but it is going to remain scarred for life.”
“I’ll get used to it, as I have one already,” said Valverno, placing a hand on his right eye. Then he flapped his wings and he slowly rose into the air. “I can fly once again, but my inner spinal cord is feeling some pain. I’m going have to fly slower than usual.”
Valverno drifted back to the ground. He could feel some twitching aching going in his back. He discovered Sora’s healing power can heal flesh wounds, but she can’t heal aches that comes afterword.
Marina walked over Valverno and looked at the healed scar. She brushed her hand on Valverno’s skin. “Another one like your eyes,” said Marina.
“And I could be looking at many more in the future. Now that my body doesn’t have the upgrades Belverda gave to me, I am back to the demigod I once was.”
“Two-thirds that,” said Flavius, stroking his horse to the family of three people standing together. “I was told you only found two the three. You have one more to go. Is that right?”
Valverno nodded his head.
“That is right. Before we go to that, we should get back to the camp. The leaders who brought their armies must be toasting to our victory. They would want to hear of the enemy leaders. And give a proper farewell to one of our own.”
Flavius gave Valverno an ill look. Then Flavius strode his horse and trotted away. The horsemen followed behind their leader. After the horses disappeared, two horsemen came up to Marina and Sora. Valverno told his two female family members to get on their horses, as his flying ability was in a weakened state.
The two girls got onto the horses and they rode off, with Valverno walking behind them and flying at the same time. He was only flying a few feet from the ground.
W
The group traveled back to the encampment of the united army. It took them several hours to travel back to the camp, which they saw the tents set up. Going through the hills Valverno created, the armor and the weapons of the enemy army had been piled up. The metal of the weapons and armor was rusted and dulled it could not be reused or refurbished by any experienced blacksmith; they were junk ready to be deposed.
Valverno soared about thirty feet in the air and saw thousands of tents set up. There were a few hundred large tents big as Geraldus’s house. He could smell the scent of flesh wounds polluting the air he was flying in, and he couldn’t hold his breath for very long as he used to in the past.
Valverno landed to the ground and walked about the army’s camp. He saw wounded soldiers from both sides covered in white bandages in every small tent there was.
In the big tents, stretching out wide enough to fit a hundred people, were beds for soldiers who lost a foot or an arm in the bloody battle. But most of the beds were covered with dead bodies.
Valverno made his way to the center tent; the opening was decorated with gold drabs and the roof of the tent sparkled in emeralds and rubies, unlike the other tents that were just plain white. Inside he looked at a row of dead soldiers lying on each bed. Valverno looked at the few people he didn’t recognize, and he assumed this one special tent was for the leaders of each army.
In one corner he saw Monico sitting over at one bed with a shining goblet with orange diamonds. He drank from the goblet to the state he looked like he was near drunk. Of the body he was drinking near was Wasso with deep cuts across his face.
Valverno grunted at the dead body of Wasso, and from the smell he smelled coming from the room, Wasso had the worst wounds of the dead people in the tent.
Then he turned to the left corner by the entrance and he saw the body of no one else than the man he mostly respected: Geraldus.
Geraldus’s body had lain across the bed if it was asleep. Valverno placed his hand on Geraldus’s chest plate. The man who had raised him lies dead before his eyes. The White Knight of Loyalty was dead and now the title would have to be passed on the next successor: Flavius.
A few tears dripped down from his eyes. This man he looked up to and the closest man he had close to a father laid dead before his eyes. At one point, the man was alive and fighting alongside the hybrid, and the next point he had been stabbed by Belverda by a sneak attack that caught them both unguarded.
The witch killed a White Knight that Valverno thought would have been stronger, but it seemed the staff she had made her equally powerful. But now the witch is dead and Geraldus had been avenged.
“White Knight of Loyalty, you have shown me the greatest loyalty. You have raised as a son and you have been the closest thing I had to a father. Belverda could have raised me, but it was her mistake to have left me at your doorstep.
“Now, she is dead as well as the king. I am thankful of the deeds you have done for me. I was thinking of repaying you back.
But since you have passed from the Mortal Realm, the deeds you have done for me I can never pay back. I just hope, in the Realm of the Gods, or wherever you may be now, it must be a paradise. At least, you can be with Alaric. Farewell, Geraldus and thank you for being the father I needed you to be.” Valverno turned and exited the tent.
As Valverno left, his ear picked up the sound of loud cheers coming nearby. It was the sounds of people both men and women roaring loudly from the tent he was in. Valverno followed the sounds to a nearby tent.
Valverno came to a yellow tent and went inside and it was loud inside. There were mugs people were drinking from and the people shouting and pouting.
Behind Valverno came Sora, Flavius, and Marina. The four of them had went into the tent to see what the commotion was all about and it was people celebrating their victory. They were hearing loud cries and cheers of victory.
“There he is!” shouted Kelda, lifting her mug.
“To the Demigod of the Mortal Realm!” shouted Bjorg.
“To the Demigod of the Mortal Realm!” shouted all the men and women in the tent.
After they shouted Valverno’s title, the loud noises ceased as the drinkers drank from their big mugs. After several seconds of drinking, the three clan leaders resumed their loud noises of cheers and did the people.
Valverno saw Teutates sitting in one corner only holding a mug but not joining in their cheering. There were other people dressed in brown armor and didn’t recognize those soldiers as people from any of the clans or men from Geraldus’s army; they have to be from the Southern Swamps Geraldus called for aid.
The tent had lots of people from all the corners of Shimabellia drinking and partying around. Strangers from different lands are together and not killing each other for gold coins or power; they were just having fun and giving stories how people went to battle.
“Come. Sit down. Grab a chug of cheers. Let us toast to our victory. Cheers.”
The three clan leaders drank their large mugs with great cheers of joy. They seem exited and Teutates hardly drank at all with the emotionless face as he was always showing. Sora decided to join them into their drinking and grabbed an untouched mug full of strong ale she never had tasted before.
