by Pedro Urvi
“We’re not afraid of you,” Iruki shouted, chin high.
“Hah! Well, you certainly should be!” Yuzumi brandished her silver axe at her.
“Get ready!” Aliana warned.
Sonea and Asti stood up, rather the worse for wear, and strengthened their shields.
Komir commended himself to the three Norriel Goddesses.
Beast and Steel
The Dark Lady began to cast a spell, and in reaction the defensive spheres of the five Bearers strengthened. From the Sorceress’s axe surged a great darkness which began to take shape in front of its mistress. Before the astonished eyes of the bearers, a giant beast solidified and came to life. It was bigger than a three-storied house, shining black, with a snake’s body covered in scales and two giant wings on its back. Four long arms ending in sharp claws came out of its body. Its eyes were blood-red and its entire mouth was filled with sharp teeth. It rose with a chilling bellow, supporting itself on its reptilian body like a gigantic viper.
“By the love of Mother Steppe!” Iruki cried, stepping back
Sonea, her eyes wide as saucers, unable to react, began to shiver.
“Kill them, my little one,” Yuzumi ordered it. “First the Marked, then the rest.”
The monster bellowed and fell on the five Bearers like a demon from hell.
Panic spread throughout the group. They huddled back.
The beast went straight for Komir. It delivered a lightning stroke with one of its claws. He tried to avoid it, but could not help being grazed. The sphere will protect me, he thought as he felt the impact. It always has. The beast won’t be able to get through. But he was wrong. Completely wrong. The creature’s blow was so powerful and its claws so sharp that they penetrated the defensive sphere like an eggshell.
“Move, Komir! Get away!” Iruki cried.
He was so confused at the sight of his half-destroyed defense that he did not react in time. Two more strokes reached him on both sides and his sphere collapsed completely.
“By the Goddesses! How is this possible?”
“Get out!” Aliana yelled at him.
One last stroke sought to tear off his head. Komir saw it coming and threw himself to one side. He groaned as he felt the pain of a torn ligament in his shoulder.
“We’ve got to protect him!” Aliana shouted. “The beast is too powerful, the sphere isn’t protecting him, it’ll destroy him!”
Pain and Aliana’s voice made him act. He threw himself to one side, avoiding the reptilian jaws. The long scaly neck chased him, seeking to make an end of him. He ran to one side, trying to avoid it, but the beast seemed to cover everything with its huge body. He dodged another bite aimed at his head with a sudden feint, but tripped and fell.
Iruki and Sonea pushed themselves between the beast and Komir. The nightmare creature rose like a mountain, shook its wings and bellowed in rage. The two Bearers summoned up their courage and stood their ground, then began to cast a spell with their medallions. Hope returned to Komir’s heart as he watched his two brave companions facing the monstrosity. Suddenly, before they could complete the spells, the tail of the monster swept the ground and hit both girls with tremendous force. They were thrown backwards, hit the ground and rolled more than twenty paces. For the moment neither of them was able to get up.
Komir saw the crash and cursed in anger. At once the beast was on him. The giant maw opened, revealing evil-smelling fangs, which closed on Komir’s face.
At the same moment there came a brown flash, and Komir’s body was covered in a cloak of hard earth, like rock. A second skin, hard as stone, covered him from head to foot. Wide-eyed, he watched the fangs close on his face. He felt this was going to be the end of him. This abomination was going to crush his head, chew it and spit it out. But the fangs hit the hard rocky cloak and were unable to penetrate it. Pain exploded in his head from the pressure of the bite. He stole a glance at Aliana and saw that she was holding her medallion. A brown flash still shone in the air. Then he understood what had happened. It’s a spell of Earth Magic, a protective spell. How could Aliana have managed to do it?
The beast bellowed in fury and attacked again, seeking to close its murderous jaws on Komir’s chest. The protection held and the fangs did not meet flesh. He could feel the terrible pressure of the jaws on his body as they tried to reach him. It’s going to break me in half!
He screamed as the beast lifted him in the air and shook its head from side to side violently. Held aloft, chest and back trapped in the monstrous maw, arms and legs dangling, he looked like a broken doll. So violent was the shaking that he lost consciousness.
“We have to stop that monster or it’ll kill him!” Sonea shouted.
The winged beast shook Komir in its grip again and again. When it saw it could not break through, it dropped him. He hit the ground with tremendous force and lay stunned and wounded.
“Komir, no!” Aliana cried as she tried to reach him. The beast saw her and with a swift flap of its wing hit her with enormous force. She was thrown in the air and hit the ground hard twenty paces back.
The beast struck Komir again, so that he rolled downhill like a felled tree and lay there still while the beast bellowed its victory to the sky. The penetrating sound woke him. He opened his eyes and was swallowed up in a sea of pain. He tried to shout, but was unable even to do that. He could barely breathe or think; he was in agony. He felt like dying and leaving his suffering behind. But then the air entered his lungs and after the first painful breath came the second. I’m alive… I’m still alive… I must fight… keep on… But the pain was so great that all he could do was breathe.
The beast rose in the air, flapping its huge black wings.
“It fly!” Asti cried in horror.
The monster came down towards Komir and stuck its claws in his side and leg. The rocky armor protected him from the claws, but not from the impact. He almost fainted again. The beast flapped its wings, bellowed and stepped back, ready to break him in two.
“You leave!” Asti shouted. She ran towards the beast inside her protective sphere of fire in a desperate attempt to protect Komir. The beast saw her coming. Asti closed her eyes and tried to cast a spell. The beast struck Asti before she had managed to use the medallion to conjure. When it hit the Usik’s fiery defense the beast roared with pain. Its claw had caught fire. Asti was thrown to one side, rolled violently and was still. The beast bellowed and went for her.
“Asti, look out!” Aliana shouted as she struggled to get to her feet.
The Usik reacted. She got up and faced the furious beast, closed her eyes and strengthened her shield of fire. The burning claw hit it and tried to pierce it with a tremendous blow, but the defense held. Asti on the other hand felt the impact on her ribs and fell to the ground, unable to breathe. The beast bellowed. The fire was spreading from one claw to another and up its arms. It roared with pain and shook its burning limbs, but the fire merely gained in intensity.
Asti was still on the ground, holding her ribs “You… burn!” she gasped out.
The beast’s cries of pain and rage were deafening. It could not put out the flames and there was no water nearby. It was going to burn, its whole body was going to go down in flames. There was hope! But hope died as fast as it was born. Savagely the beast bit off its burning limbs and spat them on the ground. It roared and bellowed, maddened by the pain.
“I just can’t believe it,” Aliana said in despair as she ran to help Asti.
The wings flapped, raising dust and earth, and the beast advanced again towards Komir to carry out its mistress’ order.
But Iruki ran towards it and got in between. “Stand back, beast of the abyss!” she yelled. The courageous Masig was clutching her shoulder. There was pain on her face.
The beast eyed her for an instant and roared. Iruki did not cower, as if she were immune to fear of that winged monstrosity, as if the prospect of death did not make her quail.
“Go back to the abyss whence you came!” sh
e yelled.
The beast looked from Komir to Iruki. It hesitated, unsure which to attack first.
And that moment of doubt was all Iruki needed. There was an intense blue flash round the Masig’s neck. It was Water Magic. Iruki had cast a spell with her medallion. Suddenly something whitish began to spread across the dark skin of the winged reptile. It took a moment for Komir to realize it was frost. After a moment the frost gave way to ice which began to cover the whole gigantic body of the beast. It began to freeze.
“Yes!” cried Iruki in delight. A beam of pure ice shot from her medallion and hit the beast right in its torso.
Before the astonished eyes of the group, the beast tried to move towards Iruki, but only managed a couple of steps. Its body was half-frozen. Where before there had been black scales was now white ice. The wings stopped moving, and they too froze.
Iruki concentrated hard and intensified the strength of her spell.
Finally the monster, covered in frost, was frozen alive.
“We have to finish it off before it manages to get free!” Aliana urged.
“I’ll do that,” Sonea said confidently. She limped in front of the beast, pointed at it and closed her eyes.
Her Ilenian medallion, the Medallion of Air, flashed with a whitish gleam. A deafening clap of thunder sounded above the frozen beast. An instant later a devastating bolt of lightning zigzagged down. It hit the beast’s head, so that it exploded into a thousand shards of ice which flew in all directions.
“Yes! Yeeeeesss!” Sonea shouted in ecstasy.
Iruki stared at her, mouth agape. “How… how did you think of that?”
The little librarian shrugged. “Don’t know, it just came into my head.”
“That little head of yours must be pretty good!”
Sonea smiled.
Aliana ran to help Komir, leaving Asti half-sitting. “Help her, please,” she said to Sonea and Iruki, who went to the Usik at once.
“Be well, I well,” she said, and got to her feet with the help of her friends.
Behind the Bearers, shouts could be heard as the fighting against the living-dead went on…
“I’ll finish you off, you bloody fiends”
“Damned treacherous magic”
“Norriel we are…”
“For Rogdon!”
The Dark Lady cursed silently.
“How could they defeat my creation? I cannot believe what I have just witnessed!”
“It is the Power of the Medallions, my Lady,” Isuzeni said.
“Those five pathetic apprentices have no idea even how to cast a spell!”
“No, but their medallions do it for them. And the spells are growing in power. It may be that the more they conjure, the more attuned they become… and that could be dangerous. Eventually they might be able to conjure with all the power of the medallion.”
Yuzumi was briefly thoughtful.
“You have always been very cunning, Isuzeni, you are probably right…”
“It is no more than a guess, but it makes sense…”
“In that case, let us see how they fare against steel.”
She turned to her elite guards.
“Moyuki!”
The Moyuki unsheathed their swords.
“Kill them!”
The Elite warriors, her Guard of Honor, launched into the attack with their swords raised.
“It will be a bloody spectacle,” Isuzeni said with a malicious smile.
“I want their heads! Bring me their heads!”
The Moyuki shouted in unison: “Yes, Mistress!”
The Bearers hid the fear their hearts were feeling under a thick blanket of tense silence. Asti, injured, came to the side of Aliana, who was trying to bring Komir round, but the battering the Norriel had sustained was tremendous. He had fainted and was lying on the ground, Aliana was trying everything, but without success.
“You heal, I kill,” Asti told Aliana with a cold ferocity unusual in the timid Usik. Aliana stared at her in wonder, then nodded.
The Moyuki were coming at a run with their swords ready, spreading terror with their grotesque masks. But Asti did not cower. The Usik closed her eyes and spread her arms wide, determined to confront them. Her medallion flashed with the golden red of fire. From her chest shot burning flames which spread before her like a fire in a forest driven by a strong gust of wind. The flames advanced as if they had a life of their own and burnt the first Moyuki without giving them a chance to react. A hundred of them were reduced to ashes.
Hope surged in the hearts of the Bearers. But the elite soldiers of the Dark Lady reacted. Those of the second group, seeing the flames approaching, cleared them with incredible leaps which belied their imposing size.
“No!” protested Asti. She conjured again as fast as she could. A huge ball of fire issued from her medallion at dizzying speed. It hit the group which was already on them. There was no way they could dodge it. Flames erupted everywhere and devoured the Moyuki mercilessly, like tongues of fire from a volcano. Another hundred died without even a cry, enveloped in flames, in a terrifying silence.
“I defend!” Asti said with determination.
Sonea came to her side. “Well done!” she said.
The last group of Moyuki was running toward them. Asti prepared to conjure. But she could not finish the spell. With a cry of pain, she bent to one side.
“Side… hurt…” was all she could say before she fell.
The Moyuki reached them.
“Sonea, look out!” Iruki called.
“Oh, no!” Sonea cried when she saw the group of Moyuki upon her. In reply to her fear the Medallion of Air shone, as if trying to convey the message that it would protect her. Sonea watched as her protective barrier formed: a swirl of winds and currents whirling at great speed. She had the impression it would not stop steel, that it would penetrate it as far as her flesh. It was no more than wind! Air! How was it going to stop a sword-stroke? She had the answer a moment later when the sword of the first Moyuki to reach her hit her sphere with all his might. The librarian felt a terrible shock throughout her body and screamed in fear, but the steel had not penetrated the sphere. The whirlwind had deflected it to one side. Another Moyuki reached her and struck hard. Once again Sonea felt the blow on her body, but the steel bounced off to one side.
She held her arm and grimaced in pain. “It’s holding!” she cried in relief.
“Fight back, or else they’ll end up destroying either the sphere or your body!” Iruki warned her.
The first Moyuki prepared to deliver a two-handed blow. A whitish glean struck his side. Before he could complete the blow his torso froze, then his arms. His mask turned to ice, and even his sword became an icicle. Sonea glanced to the left and saw Iruki defending her with her hand on her medallion.
“Thank you!”
Sonea received another shock. The other Moyuki was trying to break the sphere with mighty blows. Her body felt every one of them as a physical punishment, and she knew that unless she did something about it things were going to end badly. Every blow hurts like hell, and it’s getting worse. I have to do something before he cuts me in half or pierces the sphere and gets me. The Moyuki raised his sword. Sonea put her hand on her medallion and closed her eyes. Without opening them she pointed at the Moyuki with her other hand: Take him off me! Get him away from here! she urged the medallion in desperation. At once golden symbols took shape in her mind and formed a sentence of power. Sonea opened her eyes. The Moyuki struck the sphere an instant before he was launched into the sky and carried away by a tremendous gust of wind. Sonea felt the impact on her body but barely noticed it in her astonishment at seeing the Moyuki flying away on the wind.
“By all the books of Erenal!” she cried, as she watched him disappear in the sky.
Iruki was fighting off two Moyuki with her icy spells. “You have the rest on top of you! Look out!” she shouted.
Sonea saw the last group of Elite Soldiers coming at her. A hundred of th
em ready to end her life, everybody’s life. Fear made her knees unsteady. There are too many of them! I won’t be able to deal with all of them! They’ll hack me to pieces! The medallion shone, begging to be used, communicating a feeling of trust. As she realized this she stopped trembling. I must use the medallion, it’s my only chance. Yes, that’s it, I have to create a spell, but it has to be one of great power. She breathed deeply, pointed at the hundred-odd Moyuki, closed her eyes and conveyed her command to the medallion. Five swords fell on the sphere. Sonea cried out in pain and crouched down, hugging herself. Tears were running down her cheeks.
She opened her eyes and saw something that left her speechless.
A violent tornado had formed in front of her in the midst of the Moyuki. It was more than sixty feet high and was sucking everything around it into hurricane eddies. The Moyuki were drawn to its center by great gusts of wind, then thrown out into the sky. Sonea watched them fly off in violent spirals, swirl around the vortex like rag dolls and then disappear into the distance. The tornado roared as it dragged away everything around it. All the Moyuki were drawn into it, all except the five who were trying to break Sonea’s sphere.
She glared at them and, under the blows, she got to her feet and summoned all her rage and pride. With tears of pain in her eyes she told them: “You won’t succeed in killing this librarian! No way!” Swiftly she cast a spell. The medallion flashed. With a wave of her hand she launched a great blast of wind at the five Moyuki. They were thrown backwards and swallowed by the tornado behind them. They disappeared into it, sucked in by whirlwinds which then hurled them into the sky.
Sonea stood up, straight and proud, and dried her tears with her sleeve. She cried: “I did it!” She turned to Iruki and saw that the Masig had turned two dozen Moyuki into ice statues. She was about to take a step towards her when she realized something was wrong. She could not manage it. Her leg began to shake uncontrollably, then she felt a pang like the worst cramp ever. What’s happening? And this awful pain? Before she could find an answer to this the pain spread to her other leg. She groaned and fell to her knees, unable to stand.
