Changeling Dark Moon

by Steve Feasey

  He was about to point this out to the others when a large section of the rock seemed to pulse, shimmering in a way that suggested it had changed at some molecular level. Just as suddenly, a huge creature appeared in the opening, trapped inside what appeared to be some globe of energy, its outline visible as the rain bounced off its surface. A car that had been waiting on the ground below switched on its lights to illuminate the scene.

  ‘What is that thing?’ Alexa asked, sidling up next to Trey to look down at the huge blue-black creature below them.

  ‘Draugr,’ Charles said in a low voice. ‘And from the look of things, it doesn’t appear to be particularly pleased to have been resurrected.’

  The creature bellowed up into the night sky, hammering at the invisible envelope that imprisoned it. Even from up here Trey could smell the unmistakable stench of rotting putrescence that emanated from it – the smell mirroring perfectly the colour of the creature itself.

  ‘Where are they taking it?’ Alexa asked.

  ‘Away,’ Charles said, shifting his weight a little and causing a trickle of stones to cascade down the slope behind them. ‘My guess is that they underestimated the volatility of these creatures and have now decided that they will be better off cutting their losses and getting shot of it while they can.’

  ‘They can’t just set that thing loose!’

  ‘I think you’ll find they can, and quite happily will.’

  Suddenly, shuffling out from the entrance, a new creature was picked out in the car’s lights. It shambled forward, arms stretched out in front of it, hands held palm out, like some ancient evangelical preacher. It appeared to Trey that this new creature was somehow responsible for keeping the giant monster from breaking loose and destroying everything in its path.

  ‘Gwendolin,’ Charles said in a small voice.

  Trey glanced round at the sharp intake of breath at his side and saw Alexa looking with undisguised horror at the person who had given birth to her. ‘It can’t be,’ she said. ‘That … thing can’t be my mother.’

  Charles turned to look at her. ‘You’re right, that thing is not your mother any longer. The being that once inhabited that body and that loved you and your father has long since gone. The thing that we call Gwendolin is now little more than a husk to house the creature of darkness that she has become. I’m sorry, Alexa.’

  ‘How do you know that’s her?’ Alexa hissed. ‘You can’t be sure.’

  Charles looked across at her before turning his attention back to the scene below. ‘Whoever that is down there is simultaneously performing three separate, and very difficult, spells. They are containing the Draugr, moving it at the same time, and have created that entrance to the tower. Perhaps my father could have accomplished such a feat when he was younger and at the peak of his powers, but there is only one mage that I can think of that is capable of it now.’

  The Draugr was now almost fully inside the truck, and had begun to roar again, the noise making the hackles on Trey’s back bristle up and his lips involuntarily draw back from his teeth in a snarl.

  The demons that were standing by rushed forward to slam shut the heavy doors of the armoured vehicle.

  The sorceress appeared to visibly sag, her shoulders dropping at least an inch or two and her head lolling forward.

  Eventually she turned to one of the Maug demons that were hovering behind her, barked an order and moved off towards the car that was waiting.

  She had opened the door and was about to climb inside when she stopped. She turned slowly and looked up at the ridge that they were hiding behind, scanning it for the something that she could sense was concealed up there. Trey and the others held their breath and watched as the sorceress stood staring up in their direction, a puzzled look on her features.

  There was an enormous bang from the inside of the armoured truck and a large convex dent appeared in its roof like some great metallic ulcer had suddenly erupted on its surface. Gwendolin’s attention was swiftly drawn back to the task in hand and she shouted something to the driver of her car and climbed inside, slamming the door. The lorry, with Gwendolin’s car in front and a second bringing up the rear, started their engines and began to pull out.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Tom. ‘I thought for a moment we were done for.’

  ‘We can’t let them take the Draugr away from here, Tom. If they free that thing, thousands will die.’

  ‘We need to get into Leroth, Alexa. With Gwendolin and that many guards leaving together, this is our best chance. We can see about sorting this other mess out once we’ve got what we came here for. It’s not good, I know, but we need to get inside that place before they up and disappear again.’

  Alexa had turned her attention back to the vehicles. ‘We may not get the opportunity,’ she said. ‘Look.’

  The banging and bellowing emanating from the truck had intensified, and the entire vehicle started to rock violently on its suspension, shifting forcefully from side to side in time with a series of deep, hollow bangs. The demon sitting in the driver’s seat was looking about wildly. The sound in the lorry’s cab must have been deafening. As the driver attempted to turn the vehicle to follow the leading car there was a surge against the opposite side of the truck. For just a split second the wheels on the side nearest to them lifted clear off the ground, the tyres spinning in the air and throwing an arc of mud and stones out behind the vehicle. The tyres, back down on the ground again, struggled to find purchase in the muddy ground, and the vehicle now swayed violently from side to side as a result of the Draugr’s savage attacks on the walls of its prison. There was an enormous crash and the entire vehicle pitched to one side again. A metallic groaning sound suggested that the vehicle was not built to endure such treatment. Trey waited for the truck to crash back down to earth when from the corner of his eye he saw Charles throw an arm out, the palm of his hand extended like a traffic cop commanding an onrushing car to halt. Trey watched in fascination as the truck started to topple, the wheels now at least twice the height from the ground that they had been.

  That low groan of metal buckling under pressure was louder and unrelenting now, punctuated by a staccato hammering, like the beating of an anvil with a blacksmith’s mallet, as steel approached its breaking point.

  The lorry tipped further until gravity had its inevitable way. An enormous crash filled the air, hurting Trey’s ears, and he stared down at the lorry on its side with its wheels spinning against nothingness.

  Charles was still in a trance-like state, his face a mask of concentration and effort. A small grunt escaped his mouth and his right hand suddenly jerked upward. The back door of the lorry flew open.

  The Draugr charged out of the opening and lifted its head to the heavens, roaring in anger and frustration.

  Trey watched the creature leap up on to the side of the overturned cab, smashing at the thick bulletproof glass of the side window with its fist. The laminated glass shattered under the blow but held in place even after three more heavy blows were rained down on it. From their vantage point Trey could see the two demons inside cowering backwards in fear, believing that the monster would break through at any second. The Draugr stopped its assault and hunched forward to peer in at the creatures trapped in the steel shell, tilting its head to one side as if studying animals in an enclosure at the zoo. Suddenly it leaped high up into the air. At the same time its size increased so that at the zenith of its ascent it was the size of some colossal bear. It plummeted down with tremendous force, landing with both feet directly on top of the cab and crushing it inward as if it was little more than a tin can. The door buckled, the metal screeching in protest. The Draugr jumped again, crashing on the already mangled metal repeatedly until it was completely crushed. The screams of the demons inside had stopped.

  The car containing Gwendolin came skidding to a halt, the brake lights creating little islands of red in the black rain that still poured from the sky. The sound made the giant creature stop and turn. It jumped down from the ca
b and started to run towards the car, sensing that it would have a much easier time of smashing it, and its contents, to pieces than it had enjoyed with the larger lorry.

  The Maug were out of the vehicle and running to meet the Draugr as Gwendolin got out. She shrieked angrily at them to destroy it, raising her hands to her head and clawing at her own wet and matted hair in fury. Three more demons of a type that Trey had never seen before ran from the opening in the wall. They were carrying long, vicious-looking spears and they fanned out to approach the Draugr from behind in a semicircle.

  Tom turned to Trey, who was looking down at the scene with a mixture of horror and fascination. ‘You’d better be going, lads,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that we’re going to get a distraction any better than this one right here.’ He nodded to Charles and Trey before turning to face Alexa. ‘You and I are going to stay here and see that these two have every chance of getting out once they’ve rescued the Globe from Caliban.’

  ‘Are you kidding, Tom?’ Alexa shouted above the rain and the noise of the mayhem that was unravelling below them. ‘This is not what we discussed. If you think I’m waiting back here with you while these two—’

  ‘This is the plan, Alexa,’ Tom said, his voice harsh and firm. ‘Trey and Charles are the two best equipped on this team to get into Leroth and get out again with the Globe. I’m sorry that we didn’t discuss it with you, but we knew how you’d react.’ He turned to look at Charles again. ‘Have you got the map?’ he asked.

  Charles nodded and patted his back pocket.

  Alexa stared at the three of them as what Tom had just told her sank in. ‘How could you?’ she said, looking hard at Trey. ‘How dare you make plans behind my back?’

  Another roar exploded from below, followed by the wailing screech of a demon in its death throes.

  ‘Do you think that I might lose it in there if we were confronted by my mother?’ Alexa continued over the din. ‘You’ve seen that thing down there. Do you think that I harbour any feelings except utter contempt for that? You complete and utter—’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Alexa.’ Trey used magic to communicate with her, momentarily forgetting that they had agreed not to.

  ‘Forget it, Trey. You knew about this before we came out here, didn’t you? Some friend you turned out to be! And you, Charles – what’s up with you? Nothing to say?’

  Charles flushed a bright pink and turned his attention to a muddy clump of grass growing just in front of him.

  ‘We don’t have time to argue this out now, Alexa,’ Tom said sternly. ‘The boys will need our help when they get out and I will not be able to do that on my own. I might be able to blow things up with this,’ he said, nodding towards the grenade launcher, ‘but if it comes down to sorcery, I’ll need help.’ The Irishman fixed her with a cold look. ‘Your father would understand what’s needed in this situation. I hoped that once we got here and had to face this moment, you would too.’

  Alexa looked at him for a moment. He’d hit a nerve with his last comment and he knew it. She took a deep breath and very slowly nodded her head. ‘OK, Tom. I’ll stick here with you. But the three of you should have had the balls to discuss this with me. I thought that you might have held me in enough regard to do that.’

  ‘OK,’ Tom said, and addressed Trey and Charles. ‘Go on now,’ he said. ‘In and out again as quickly and quietly as you can. And don’t either of you go taking any stupid risks. Remember what it is that we came here to do, and stick to the brief. Look out for each other in there.’

  Trey and Charles nodded at Tom, but Alexa refused to meet their eyes. They set off, clambering down the slope to their right, Trey ahead, with Charles just behind him. They were almost at the bottom of the hill when a high, keening scream cut through the night. It was a painful noise. Trey looked behind him to see Gwendolin and the demons facing the Draugr, the scene lit by the lights of the lorry that was lying on its side. The deafening wail was coming from Gwendolin and as Trey watched she began to transform in front of him. She had already changed dramatically – she had taken on a dark grey hue from head to foot so that her skin looked like charcoal – and then the very air around her began to dance and shimmer like the surface of a road on a hot summer day. Trey turned to ask Charles what was going on when suddenly thousands of tiny stones and pieces of grit began to fly through the air at tremendous speed. The two boys dropped to the floor to avoid being hit, but even so fine particles bit into their flesh and they could feel the ground beneath them being drawn as if by some irresistible force. The stones came from every direction, flying straight towards Gwendolin and sticking to the howling sorceress like iron particles attracted to some super-magnet. Layer after layer coated every part of her until she was completely covered. The stones continued to fly through the air, larger and larger ones until eventually she was attracting stones and broken fragments of rock the size of a small fist that created a sharp cracking sound as they met. The sorceress appeared to have doubled in size.

  ‘She’s invoked an Elemental,’ Charles said, shouting above the deafening noise. ‘That’s difficult to do.’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘I’ve no idea how she could still have the strength to do that after raising the Draugr. That’s not a good sign.’ He was watching the scene, his eyes wide in wonder.

  A low growl brought him out of his reverie. He looked back at the werewolf, whose attention was on the opening in the wall of the fortress little more than twenty feet away. ‘You’re right, Trey, we need to get inside.’

  Trey sprang to his feet and half dragged his companion towards the breach in the wall, the two of them passing through it without so much as a backwards glance. They would miss the battle between the Draugr and Gwendolin that had just begun.

  Tom and Alexa watched as Trey and Charles slipped unnoticed through the opening in the wall and disappeared from sight as soon as they stepped into the darkness. They checked the scene unravelling before them, making sure that no one else had seen the two boys enter. Gwendolin and the demons had enough to occupy them. The demons that had emerged from the tower advanced on the Draugr, their spears held out ahead of them. The revenant, like everyone else, had stopped and watched the transformation that Gwendolin had undergone moments before. It had been impossible not to.

  ‘What in the name of Mike is that?’ Tom asked, looking down at the huge stone-and-rock thing now standing in front of the Draugr.

  ‘She’s summoned an Elemental,’ Alexa said, staring down at the giant stone-monster that had been her mother. ‘She wants to take on the Draugr by force.’

  Tom looked over at the sound of Alexa’s voice and saw the unmistakable look of admiration on the teenager’s face.

  ‘Let’s not forget who we’re rooting for here,’ he said under his breath.

  Alexa fixed him with a cold, hard stare. ‘I’m rooting for one person and one person only, Tom. And if you think that I’ve forgotten that the failure of this mission could mean the death of my father, you’re not the man I always thought you were. Yes, I’m impressed that that … creature is capable of pulling off one of the most difficult summonings ever known, but that’s only because I know that I will never be able to do it.’

  She turned her face slightly towards the Irishman, but kept her eyes firmly on the scene below. ‘I don’t have any feelings for her, Tom. I know what she is and I know what she has done.’ She stopped, and when Tom glanced over at her he could see that she was struggling to hold back tears. ‘And, yes, I even know that she was going to use me as a human sacrifice all those years ago.’

  ‘How long have you known about that?’ Tom said after a brief pause.

  ‘People like to gossip, Tom. And a story as juicy as that?’ She blew out her cheeks. ‘That’s a doozy. There’s no way that people can help but talk about something like that. I picked up snippets here and there and eventually I worked the whole thing out. I still thought that she was dead though. I thought my father had killed her.’

  ‘He would have.
But she disappeared.’ Tom’s voice sounded hollow to his own ears.

  ‘I wish he had. I wish he’d wiped her off the face of the earth right there and then.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Alexa. You shouldn’t have had to find out something like that about your past.’

  She nodded her thanks. ‘By the way, you were right not to let me go down there. I’m sorry I said those things to you all, especially to the boys. I hope that Trey and Charles are OK in there.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re doing grand.’

  Alexa was about to reply when a huge roar ripped through the night air.

  Below them, the Draugr had transformed in size again so that it must have stood a good fifteen feet in height. The creature roared its fury into the night sky and threw its body forward towards the vast stone-and-rock-clad Elemental, trying to topple it. The Elemental swung its arm, and the heavy, stone fist crashed down into the Draugr’s back, smashing the creature to the floor. A deep, ugly sound came from the mouth of the Draugr as the force of the blow shook it to its core. It looked up just in time to see the Elemental lift its foot in an attempt to stamp on its head. But the stone-monster was slow – incredibly powerful, yes – but slow, and in the time it had taken to raise its bulky leg to deliver the fatal blow, the Draugr had rolled to one side and regained its feet in a single movement. The revenant jumped impossibly high into the night air, thrusting its feet at the head and shoulders of the Elemental, pushing out with its muscular legs to maximize the impact. Great chunks of stone and rock fell away from the Elemental, rattling and tumbling on to the floor at its feet. It groaned under the assault and staggered to one side, only just maintaining its balance by putting an arm out and pushing back up against the ground. To Tom and Alexa, it wasn’t clear how it would have got back up again had it gone over; it was obviously extremely heavy, and if the Draugr did succeed in toppling it the Elemental would be at the complete mercy of the rampaging revenant.