by C Lee Tocci
“They are the B’Ricas, the Wraiths of Wrath, servants of the Enemy.” Keotak-se turned and pointed to a crevice off the trail. “Get back behind the Sienna Sentries. And stay together. You cannot fight the B’Ricas.”
They retreated through the cleft and huddled between a large rock and the cliff face. From where they crouched, they could see the figure of the Stone Warrior turned to face the menace, but they couldn’t see the valley beyond or the approaching enemy.
With a glance to confirm the children were secure, Keotak-se scaled the face of the palisades, crawling like a spider up the cliff wall.
From where they huddled, Todd and the others could no longer see Keotak-se. They hid their faces from the slashing wind and clutched each other as the tempest tried to pry them apart.
The wind was howling so loud, Todd barely heard Marla’s warning scream. Looking back down the trail, he saw an arm of one of the B’Ricas had breached the Sienna Sentries. One long tentacle of fury was reaching between the columns, slowly advancing towards them.
It moved along the gap, blindly feeling its way down the trail, reaching in to inspect each crevice as it slowly approached their hiding place. Todd screamed a warning to Keotak-se, but even he couldn’t hear his own voice over the shrieks of the storm. And then the tendril was upon them.
If Todd felt battered before, it was nothing compared to the touch of the B’Ricas. He felt as if every inch of his body was being shredded. He clung to the others, but felt them slipping away. Then, with an almost explosive wrench, he felt one final rip from the storm. The winds abated slightly and he clung to the rocks, gasping.
Through stinging eyes, Todd saw that although the tempest still swirled around them, the worst of the battering had passed. Nita clung to his waist sobbing and Marla clutched at her stone, her eyes tearing and unfocused, her lips moving soundlessly.
A hand pulled at his arm.
“Todd!” cried Devon. “Where’s Lilibit?”
Todd leapt to his feet as he realized Lilibit was missing. Looking down the trail, he saw the tendril of the B’Rica disappearing as it retracted.
He ran up the trail towards the battle.
“Keotak-se!” he yelled. “It’s taken Lilibit!”
But the wind still howled and Todd knew Keotak-se could not hear him, nor could Todd reach him.
Todd ran back to the others and screamed over the gale. “Stay together! Marla’s in charge! When Keotak-se returns, tell him the B’Ricas have taken Lilibit and I’ve gone to find her.”
Grabbing his staff, Todd ran down the path where he last saw the retreating tempest.
Chapter Fifty
The Wrath of Syxx
Reaching the gap where the B’Rica had broken through, Todd crawled out through the breach. Creeping out onto an outcropping, he looked out. Off to his left he saw flashes of light and heard thundering booms from Keotak-se’s battle with the monsters. He scanned the cliffs to both sides and the rocks below but there was no sign of Lilibit. As he edged his way back to the trail, a scrap of movement from above caught his eye. He looked up the cliff face.
There, trapped on an isolated ledge high on one of the red stone palisades, lay Lilibit. In the dark, he could barely make out her silhouette.
Scanning the rock faces around her, he couldn’t see any path that would bring him close to her ledge, but off to one side there were a series of cracks and crevices that might serve as handholds and footholds. He hoped they would lead him close enough to reach her.
Sheathing his walking stick onto his back, Todd turned to scale the face of the Sienna Sentries.
The fury of the B’Ricas had whipped at Lilibit as she fought against their pull. She’d felt as if hooks had been sunk all over her body, dragging her in every direction. She screamed as her grip on Marla slipped and she was wrenched from the arms clutching her, but her voice was drowned by the roaring winds.
After that she couldn’t make any sound at all as she was sucked into the foul vortex of the B’Rica. She spun helplessly through the dark until the cyclone flung her against the cliff face of the Sienna Sentries like a cannonball. On the edge of consciousness, she was barely aware of her battered body sliding down the side of the precipice to land with a slam on a narrow ledge.
She tasted blood on her lips and coughed blindly. The world spun like water in a drain when she opened her eyes, so she closed them tightly and pulled herself together . When she was finally able to open her eyes and focus, what she saw made her wish she hadn’t worked so hard to regain consciousness.
A figure, like a finger of vapor, rose out of the dark. Lilibit opened and closed her mouth but no sound came out. She backed away, panic rising in her like bile in her throat as she realized she was trapped on the small outcropping. For the first time in her memory, cold rock pressed against her back gave her no comfort.
A man-like creature with black leathery wings towered above her. Twenty feet tall, its wings were nearly twice as wide as its height, dripping with slime and making a fluid, smacking sound as they beat. The bloated hairless body was covered with dark gray-green scales and the cracks between those scales glittered with red hellfire. Its head, too, was hairless, mottled grey and black with a ridge of bumps like a ring around its skull. Those bumps grew and retracted into vile horns, cresting and ebbing like a living crown of evil.
It hovered in the air in front of her narrow ledge. Lilibit felt her stomach roil as a blast of its breath hit her; it stunk of vomit and sulfur and decomposing bodies.
Then their eyes met and Lilibit, in a flash of memory, recognized the demon’s eyes. They were flat and black and bottomless: the same as the bald man who had attacked her so many years before.
Lilibit found her voice. She screamed.
The time for deception had passed. Syxx had decided his purpose could best be served by appearing in his true nature to the doomed child. His eyes glittered red and his long green-black tongue flicked the air, tasting her fear, reveling in her terror. Discipline, he reminded himself. Now was not the time to indulge in a slow, excruciating execution. He must complete this task quickly, as he should have five years ago.
Not that he regretted the glory of the past five years. At the time, the prolonged torture of the child had served two purposes. Her torment had been so delightful, not just her agony, but his enjoyment was also increased by knowing that Gil-Salla, the Old Stone Warrior, and all the other Defiant Ones of Kiva had all felt the echoes of her suffering. A lesson for them all: they had learned the futility of defiance.
But now he had been distracted from the true purpose of his calling by indulging himself with the pleasant diversion of manipulating the fools at the Institute into being his tools of torture and destruction. He should not have been surprised that such poor tools were, in the end, so ineffective in destroying the child. Now passed to him the bliss of her final annihilation. With a screech of triumph, Syxx lunged for the cowering child.
Her scream died in her throat as his hands wrapped about her neck. Her fingers raked futilely at his arms as the freezing shards of the Void impaled her body.
Beneath his palms, Syxx felt strength of the Earth Stone pulsing through the Infant Stone Voice. She had grown stronger since their first encounter, but Syxx channeled the might of the Decreator and, though his veins throbbed and his eyes burned with the exertion, in the end, the Power of Destruction was greater than the latent power of the Infant Stone Voice. He roared in elation. The end was foreseeable. The child would die.
And she would die now.
The Earth Stone trembled as She felt the servant of the Decreator destroying the Infant Stone Voice. The child was still too weak to channel enough power to repel the Enemy. With a shudder of despair, the Earth Stone felt the Infant Stone Voice slip away.
Syxx rejoiced. What could be better than to break the Infant Stone Voice right under the noses of the Defiant Ones? His laughter echoed off the cliff walls and rippled over the plains. The child grew cold and still under his hands.
&nbs
p; Suddenly, something unexpected struck his head with enough force to break his grip and rock him backwards. With a roar of fury, he stumbled and slipped off the ledge.
Scaling the face of the Sienna Sentries, Todd had heard Lilibit’s scream. Scrambling up to the crest of the cliff, he had run along the ridge until he reached the spot above where he thought her trapped on the ledge. Looking down, his blood froze at the vision of horror hovering below him.
A demon from beyond all his nightmares gripped Lilibit’s neck in a lethal grasp. Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the whites, and her fingers, which had been clawing at the death hold, twitched feebly and grew still.
Todd had no time to think. He leapt from the ridge.
Spears of pain shot through his legs as his bare feet struck the demon’s head. The demon roared as it dropped backwards. Todd’s panic flared as he felt himself slipping after his fallen foe, plunging towards certain death on the razor sharp rocks below.
Twisting in mid-air, Todd reached out and grabbed the ledge with his left hand as he dropped past it. The pain in his fingertips stabbed up his arm as his fingernails bore the full weight of his falling body. The grit on the ledge slid under his fingers and he felt himself slipping again.
Rocking his body, Todd grabbed at the ledge with his right hand and tried to climb back up, but his left hand was numb and his fingers wouldn’t close. Swinging his left arm back onto the ledge, he caught his breath. He glanced down and a wave of vertigo gripped him. The base of the cliffs was lost in darkness, all he could see were his own legs dangling. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself not to look down. He pulled his torso up onto the shelf. His thighs scraped against the stone face as he scrabbled back onto the ledge.
Panting heavily, Todd crawled to where Lilibit lay unmoving. Her face looked deathly pale and her skin was ice cold to the touch. He gathered her into his arms and hugged her against his chest.
“Lilibit!” His whisper cracked. “C’mon! Don’t be dead!”
Todd felt no answering movement in the still child. He chafed her icy arms. Tears of frustration stung his eyes.
“C’mon Lilibit! Could you, just for once, do what you are told!”
A faint moan and movement from Lilibit answered Todd’s plea. His relief left him as dizzy as the vertigo had, but he had no time to celebrate. A flash of movement emerged from the darkness below. Dropping Lilibit with more speed than care, Todd leapt to his feet, pulling out his staff. Standing above Lilibit’s semiconscious form, Todd brandished the only weapon he had and turned to face the returning Enemy.
The beast rose from the inky depths of the valley below. The red flame blasting from its mouth eclipsed the glitter of its flat red eyes. Todd ducked as a torrent of fire seared the rock face behind his head. Standing before a seemingly invincible enemy, Todd acted on instinct. He struck his staff on the rock ledge of the cliff three times.
Deep within Her core, the despair of the Earth Stone wavered. The destruction of the Infant Stone Voice was close, but it was not complete and now she recognized the summons of an ally. With each progressive strike of his staff, the Earth Stone discovered the new and untried venue of a Nascent Stone Warrior. Young, it was true, untested perhaps, but not weak. And, most important, it had both the will and the opportunity to protect the Infant Stone Voice.
The Earth Stone knew that, in channeling sufficient power to defeat the machinations of the Decreator, She could very well destroy the tool itself.
And yet She had no choice.
Standing on the ledge, Todd fought the urge to drop his staff. On the third strike, he felt it shudder so frantically he thought his arms would rip from his shoulders. The shaft glowed with a brilliant white light and at its apex, a blinding orb of energy began to form.
The Demon spewed another volley of flame directly at Todd’s head. Todd waved the staff in the hopes the flaring globe would deflect the assault but instead, the globe absorbed the flame. Sweat from his forehead stung his eyes as the white orb of power swirled bright red as it melded with the fire. His hands scalded from the heat as it traveled down the shaft. He smelled searing flesh and knew it was his own fingers that were burning.
A flicker of fear appeared in the eyes of the Demon. The stream of fire continued to pour from its gaping mouth but it appeared to Todd as if the energy orb on the staff was actually drawing the flame out of the Demon. The Demon wrenched his head to the side, as if to break off the link, but the stream continued to flow.
Then there was no mistake: terror flooded the eyes of the Demon. It wrenched its head back and forth like some huge foul shark caught on a line. The strain on Todd’s arms spread like a flashflood through his torso and his eyes clouded with pain. His vision grew dim. His knees buckled beneath him, but his grip on the staff stayed firm.
With a piercing shriek, the Demon dove at Todd, its long black claws extended to shred his face and neck. Todd twisted his staff, the butt catching the Demon in its torso as it lunged towards him. The stream of flame broke off, but the glowing orb of the staff, now white again, shot down the length of the shaft and exploded like a quasar into chest of the Demon. The force of that explosion sent Todd crashing against the face of the cliff while the Demon blasted backwards off the ledge and fell into the blackness of the gorge.
Todd struggled to his feet, his arms and legs shaking. Leaning heavily against the cliff wall, he brandished his staff and waited for the Enemy to rise again.
Crumbled at the feet of the Sienna Sentries, Syxx emitted a sound that could only be described as a whimper. A clash with such a puerile opponent should have been barely a mild skirmish. True, he had been weakened by his efforts to nullify the Infant Stone Voice, but how he had underestimated his adversary?
That the Infant Stone Voice might live long enough to reach Kiva was now a probability. That the child would survive long enough to reach her full power was by no means assured. This first skirmish may have been lost, yet Syxx still believed in the infallibility of the Decreator. There would be other opportunities in the future. Today, however, there were no options but to retreat and regroup.
Chapter Fifty One
The Valley of Kiva
Crouched on the ledge of the Sienna Sentries, Todd waited for the demon to return. His hands ached but it was ages before he dared loosen his grip on his staff. Then he crept to the edge of the ledge and looked down.
Nothing. Whatever that creature was, it didn’t look like it was coming back.
Tonight.
He crawled back to Lilibit who huddled, dazed and trembling, her arms wrapped around a craggy outcropping. Ignoring the bruises and cuts on her face, she pressed her cheek hard against the rasping rock. Todd dropped down to sit beside her and watched the rank black clouds retreat. The returning starlit sky was tinted purple with the coming of dawn. He sagged against the stone but his eyes stayed alert.
Lilibit’s color was also returning. He heard a mumbled sob from her and after a few moments, her eyes blinked groggily. Todd placed his hand on her shoulder and pulled her gently against his chest.
“I think it’s gone, whatever it was,” Todd replied to the question in Lilibit’s eyes.
A long, wary silence fell as they both watched the sky lighten. Todd heard Lilibit’s ragged sobs slowly ebb. He could feel her staring at him and he turned to look down at her.
“Thanks,” she mumbled.
“S’alright,” he mumbled back. She leaned against him and he placed his arm around her shoulder. Her trembling slowly faded.
Raising himself to his feet, Todd glanced up and down the cliff face, mapping out which handholds he could reach from their ledge. The rim of the Sienna Sentries loomed only thirty or so feet above them, but as Todd glanced at his blistered and bleeding hands, he realized it might as well have been a mile away. Yet he saw no other way. He turned to Lilibit as she rose shakily to her feet.
“I’ll scale up to the top, then I’ll find the others and come back with the rope to pull you up.
”
“NO!” Lilibit’s voice cracked in panic and she gripped Todd’s arm with surprising strength. “I won’t be left alone.”
Todd couldn’t see how, weak and shaky as she was, she could manage the climb, yet he couldn’t ignore her desperation either. Against his better judgment, he nodded.
Hoisting her onto his shoulders, Todd pointed her to the first handhold. She bit her lip with determination and clenched her fists to control her shaking hands. She gripped the first crevice and pulled herself up.
Glancing once more at the valley below, Todd anchored his walking stick onto his back and climbed up after Lilibit.
Pushing himself to think beyond the pain in his hands, he forced his fingers to grip the stone handholds. He didn’t allow himself to notice the blood dripping from the broken blisters and ripped fingernails. And he wouldn’t let himself look down to see the chasm looming below him. He focused every conscious thought on the next foothold and handhold. And on Lilibit.
Glancing up, he saw her reach for an outcropping right above her head. In the dim light, Todd saw that a fissure that ran along its base.
“Not that one, Lilibit, reach for the one higher, to your left.”
In hindsight, Todd realized it was virtually inevitable that Lilibit would ignore him.
With a crack, the outcropping failed. With a gasp, Lilibit fell. With a lunge, Todd’s arm stabbed out to grab her as she plummeted past.
With Lilibit dangling from his right hand, Todd gripped the stone lip with his left. The pain was blinding. Already seared and ripped from his battle with the Enemy, his left hand bore the full weight of Lilibit’s descent as well as his own weight. For a long moment, the two of them hung from his faltering grasp, swinging high above the chasm floor.
Todd swung his legs in an attempt to find some purchase for this feet, but his bare toes scraped fruitlessly against the stone face.
