"No!" Braxton yelled, startling them all. "I suggest we prepare to fight because something is coming very quickly."
"What is it?" Cryelos asked. His arrow was already nocked and ready to draw at a moment's notice.
"I'm not sure, but they are our size, and there are five or six of them." Braxton pointed back down the trail they'd traveled the day before. "Coming from that way."
Seeing that Braxton's eyes hadn't opened during the whole exchange, Suclair started to ask him a question. Nixy stopped her and urged her toward the fire where she drew her sword and took up a position to defend her curious, bald-headed friend. "Just keep the light," she commanded.
Darblin rolled awkwardly to his feet. He was clearly favoring his crotch where Big H had clobbered him, but he made his way back to his bed roll and produced his huge axe. The look he gave Big H was so intense that the other dwarf immediately fell to a knee and bowed.
"Forgive me, my prince," Big H said. "I truly thought it was the snake, and you told me to smash it."
"Get up, pickle head," Darblin said with a forced grin. "You was doin' what you thought best, and I forgive you. Now get yourself ready for battle. The wizard says something is coming for us."
Moments later, Big H stood by Darblin with his impossibly large hammer at the ready.
In his mind's eye, Braxton saw all this. It was easy to forget that Darblin was the prince of the dwarven realm, but he didn't dwell on the idea.
He saw Vinston-Fret and Sorrell ease out of the light and into the trees. They moved down the edge of the trail a few paces, probably hoping to gain some sort of tactical advantage while Cryelos and the dwarves spread out around the clearing. Braxton stood and walked to where the trail entered the clearing with one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other pointing in the direction he sensed the creatures coming from. He still hadn't opened his eyes.
What Braxton saw was what the white hawk perched in the higher branches saw. It was almost directly above him. The bird sat silent and still, unobserved by anyone or anything, it's keen vision locked on to the movements of whatever approached. Without drawing any attention to itself, the bird opened its wings, stepped off its branch and swooped through the tunnel-like trail to seek out what it was.
It turned out it was nothing more than a pack of hungry kobls who followed their trail, probably in hopes of an easy meal. The bird flew back to their encampment and Braxton quickly broke his own concentration so he could bring himself back to the moment in his own mind and body.
"It's kobls," he whispered out toward where he knew Vinston-Fret and Sorrell were hiding. "There are six of them." He then turned and went to his bed roll. He came up with his bow and pulled several arrows from a bundle. He stuck them tip down into the soft forest floor in front of him. He was positioned five or six paces away, but directly in front of Nixy and Suclair. This left Cryelos to his left, Big H to his right, and Darblin on the opposite side of the fire.
The kobls were heard long before they were seen. Two of them passed the elves and were surprised by the crossfire they found themselves in. One of them was spared for the elves both fired on the same one. Once the uninjured kobl bolted toward the camp, neither elf could loose at it. If they missed, a stray arrow might fly into the camp and injure one of the others.
Braxton realized that the kobls had spread out. From not too far away he heard the terrified horses whinny and pull at their reins.
The kobl that fled the elves didn't live long for Braxton's first arrow struck it through the heart. It went crashing headlong into his feet, and he had to dance around it to keep from being tripped. When he looked down the road, he saw Vinston-Fret aiming an arrow straight at him, Sorrell was beside the other elf, motioning wildly for him to duck, and duck he did. He dropped flat just as the arrow whizzed over him and hit something behind him with an audible thump.
Braxton rolled out of the line of fire and turned to see Nixy pressing a methodical attack against one of the snarling, dog-headed creatures with her sword. It lunged and clawed at her, clacking its teeth menacingly while trying to dodge her shining blade.
Cryelos made short work, ending the kobl Vinston-Fret had skewered, while Big H swept his mighty hammer into another one that came leaping out of the darkness. The crunching blow sent the kobl yelping toward Darblin, who let out a garbled battle cry. His axe cleanly severed the thing’s torso from its legs. The cut sent a grizzly spray of dark, stinking blood across Suclair's face, causing her to falter and let go of her light spell.
The area went black save for the dull orange glow of the fire's embers. Braxton was forced to blink the bright splotches out of his vision. He could hear Nixy grunting and her heavy breathing. He also heard the creature's snarling growl and the whoosh of her sword as it sliced through the darkness.
A soft, pain-filled scream filled the night and, immediately, Braxton thought the worst. The sound was quickly followed by a high-pitched wail that was anything but human. Then a tired sounding, "Whew," came, and he knew it was Nixy's voice.
A nearby crash in the forest was followed by an angry howl, and the fading sounds of creatures retreating into the woods slowly faded away from them. Suclair managed to cast her light spell again, and she immediately ran to Nixy's side with tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Nix," she cried. "Please say you're all right."
Braxton was there as soon as he could get his feet untangled from the dead kobl before him. Nixy was covered in dark sticky blood, but she grinned at them from where she'd slumped to the ground.
"I'm alright, Suclair,” Nixy soothed her. "I think you saved me when you lost the light and left this thing blind." She pushed part of a hairy arm off her leg, and then looked at Braxton. "Get it off me, please."
Braxton and Cryelos drug the dead kobl from Nixy's lap, and Suclair helped her up and began examining her body closely for wounds.
There was only one, and luckily it was only a scrape where a broken branch had ripped across her shoulder. Suclair used her water skin to wash the wound, and then the putrid smelling blood off both of them.
"Is anybody else wounded?" Vinston-Fret called out. The first tendrils of dawn's pink light began to illuminate the forest outside of the range of Suclair's spell. When no one answered, the elf produced a small leather envelope and threw it to Suclair.
"Put this on her wound," he said. "It will keep the vermin's blood from infecting her."
"It's only a scratch," Nixy protested. "It came from the tree, not that foul thing."
"The kobls nasty blood got in it," Suclair said as she dipped a finger in the leather container and rubbed a grayish-green cream on the wound.
As she applied the salve, Suclair whispered, "Thank you for saying that losing my light saved you. I think it was the other way around."
Nixy wondered why Suclair was always like that. The girl should be proud of herself, not so worried about offending others or making a mistake. She'd scorched that sea monster pretty good and saved them all back on the ship, and even if she'd accidentally let her light go out because her face had been covered in foul blood, it was alright.
Nixy decided to talk to her about it sometime when they were alone away from the men. She didn't like her friend always acting self-conscious and timid, especially when she was what Nixy considered a powerful user of magic. It just didn't make sense.
Nixy figured it had something to do with the fact that her father was rumored to be the most powerful wizard in the entire kingdom.
It almost made Nixy mad, for Suclair would never know what it was like to not have a father. If she did, it would probably change her attitude a little bit.
Already regretting having such a thought, Nixy touched Suclair's shoulder softly, "You can put your light out now, the sun is coming up." It turned out that one of the horses had been killed, and there was more than a little complaining when the load the animal had been carrying had to be split among them. Throughout the morning, the complaints continued as the added weight wore them down, but arou
nd midday, they came out of the forest and were overcome with relief.
By the time the sun started to set, the lights of New Scarlee were visible in the distance. This brought on a renewed vigor in hopes of another soft bed and a warm meal, if only for a night. Those thoughts of comfort slowly faded when they saw the lights they were seeing were burning buildings.
The people on the outskirts of New Scarlee looked ragged and horrible, and they quickly explained to the newcomers their village had been attacked by a band of wood trolls, not once, but twice, in the last few days. The last attack having come just the night before.
Not even the strong salty ocean breeze could carry away the smell of charred flesh and burning wood. More than half of the people in the small fishing town had been killed or wounded. Some of them eaten, some of them just ripped apart and discarded. The survivors were attending the wounded and mourning the dead while attempting to clean up what they could.
The smell was what took the contents of Braxton's stomach and turned them up and out onto the grass. That and the sight of a young girl's limp, armless body being heaved into the fire by a man who was having to fight off a frantic, teary-eyed woman who pled shamelessly for her deceased daughter to please wake up. Nixy couldn't help herself and ran to the woman, clearly trying to comfort her. This started somewhat of a commotion as many of the survivors stopped what they were doing and started paying more attention to the strangers who had arrived.
A young man finally mustered up enough courage to approach them. "What is your business here, elf?"
"We are just passing through," Vinston-Fret answered as respectfully as he could.
"Through!" the man yelled. He immediately recoiled as his gaze found the elf's wild yellow eyes. "There is no through," he continued. "All that is beyond here is the troll-filled Wilderkind."
"That is where we are going," Vinston-Fret said.
"Then I will pray for you as I pray for them," the man said, pointing to the burning pile of debris and bodies that remained.
"We need a place to sleep tonight, sir," Braxton asked, knowing the unease one could feel when speaking with an elf. "We will pay. And we need a boat, a small one I think." He looked to Vinston-Fret for support. "We need a rower. Just a small one that will take us across the bay and up into the mouth of the river north of here."
"Ya’ll be fools," the man said with a shake of his head.
"Will you be killing trolls?" a different man asked.
"If they cross our path, yes we will," Braxton answered.
"Then I'll take you up the river," he said with conviction. "You can sleep at my place." He looked angrily at the fire. "Them damn trolls took all my family. I'm the only one left so there's plenty of room."
Chapter Three
Krookin Bloodthorn, king of the wood trolls, was nervous. It was an unfamiliar emotion for the vicious leader of the second most dominant creatures of the land. Wood trolls were outnumbered only by humans and kobls, but kobls were little more than rats to the trolls so they didn't count. The wood trolls ruled everything east of the Dragon Teeth Mountains. The mountains themselves were ruled by Craggon, king of the mighty rock trolls. But Craggon wasn't who was making King Bloodthorn nervous. What had him uneasy was his failure to find the Sapphire of Souls for Pharark.
After having band after band of his trolls scour the Wilderkind Forest for the powerful gem, it somehow eluded them. King Bloodthorn was sure that the stone's magic was somehow protecting it from discovery, but each time he tried to explain this to the demon of destruction he found his words not only fell on deaf ears, they brought terrible repercussions. Pharark would rant and rave, and kill and crush, until King Bloodthorn trembled on his knees. Hundreds of his trolls had been pulped and devoured by Pharark's insane displays of power. The demon couldn't be stopped. Not by the combined might of all the wood and rock trolls together. Not by anything King Bloodthorn could imagine.
Worse, each tantrum only made the demon stronger, for it fed on fear and misery and thrived on senseless destruction.
Now King Bloodthorn was about to have to tell the evil thing he'd failed again, that the Sapphire of Souls was no closer to being found than it had been when Pharark ordered his people to seek it out. This terrified the king because hundreds of loyal and unsuspecting wood trolls would surely die a horrible death for this failure. The Sapphire was either not in the Wilderkind as Pharark believed, or its magic protected it from being found. There was no other explanation.
King Bloodthorn sat upon his thorn-bush cathedra and looked down his tree-formed throne hall. The gnarled trunks of rowed tangle oaks twisted and curled around each other, and the higher reaching limbs formed a canopy of curving and bending branches whose leaves fully blocked out the sun's powerful light. Pools of flaming sap along the sides of the long oval room lit everything from underneath. Huge, menacing shadows danced across the thorny, leafy walls and ceiling. They mocked King Bloodthorn's tired expression as he waited nervously for the coming of the demon while trying to prepare himself for the horrors it would surely leave behind.
Debain's cell was dark and wet and smelled of rotted meat, but he was glad to be back inside the safety of its stone walls and heavy iron door, because being in the cell meant he was no longer in Reaton-Stav's torture room. Where and how the young man had learned to use evil magic with such mastery was beyond Debain, but as promised, he had discovered just how powerful his former pupil had become.
There wasn't a place on Debain's flesh that wasn't torn, cut, or burnt. He was sure he would die at one point, but the self-proclaimed necromancer had stopped and used his magic to heal him just so he could repeat his unbelievably painful techniques of torture. Debain wasn't sure what he'd told the boy, but he knew it was too much. He told him what the dwarves knew and that the medallion Braxton Bray carried was a powerful artifact. He'd answered every question he'd been asked, but he hadn't revealed the quest for the Sapphire of Souls yet, but only because he hadn't been asked about it.
Many of Reaton-Stav's questions pertained to the ship full of elves and dwarves and its purpose, destination, and what Suclair had to do with all of it. He'd been asked where the amulet and the boy who wore it were at least a hundred times. Debain held those answers back only because his daughter was with them, but it had cost him dearly. He figured he would die whether he gave Reaton-Stav the location of the medallion or not so he chose to die with his mouth shut, if he could manage to do so.
Debain knew that, sooner or later, his mind would shatter like a porcelain plate on a granite floor, but the boy would have to break it. Every second he held out was a second he gave his daughter and the others on the quest to find what they were after.
From Reaton-Stav's bragging, Debain had learned that Pharark had control of Ulrich Gruell, the gothican battle lord. And how Lord Ulrich had made a deal with King Rayden of Nepram to sneak an army through his kingdom into Narvoza. He learned about the pact with the vermin and how the kings of the rock and wood trolls had called a truce and were also working toward the destruction of Narvoza.
Reaton-Stav boasted how he had built quite an army of his own, an army of corpses, and not only human ones. Pharark was the demon of destruction after all, and like a master puppeteer, he pulled the strings, manipulating Reatron-Stav and all these leaders to bring about his end.
Debain decided he wouldn't give in. He would fight until he had no fight left in him. The Sapphire of Souls couldn't be allowed to fall into Pharark's hands, for if it did, not only would Narvoza fall, but so would all the human kingdoms of the world.
Debain closed his eyes and tried to force the pain from his mind. Without magic to aid him, he had to settle for the least painful position he could put his body in and hope the rats weren't as hungry today as they had been.
He was certain most of his toes were gone. He had been in such a state of shock that, while they were eating his digits, he could only feel the breaking of the skin and the sharp tugging shakes of their heads. As it happened,
it was more the anguish of helplessness than actual pain that assailed him.
He woke when his cell door opened. He was so stiff and sore that he was unable to move while one of Reaton-Stav's zombies grabbed him under the arms and dragged him down the torch lit hallway to the torture chamber.
Reaton-Stav waited until the rotting corpse dropped Debain to the floor before rising from his padded leather seat. He strode casually over to the bruised and broken form of what was once the most powerful user of the magical arts the Kingdom of Narvoza had ever known. He kneeled beside him and placed a cold, clammy hand on Debain's forehead. He then unleashed a surge of brutal force into the old man that caused Debain's back to arch, and his limbs to spasm, as the ruined joints and torn muscles inside him were magically fused back into a semi-healthy state.
Being healed like this was more painful than Debain imagined it could be. All the nerves that had finally deadened to sensation were rejuvenated back to a state of tenderness that only hurt him that much more.
Reaton-Stav wouldn't heal him all the way, just enough to keep him conscious and aware of what was happening to him. Just enough to keep his nerve endings raw and his mind on the verge of breaking.
After a few moments, Reaton-Stav walked back to his chair and sat down. The powerful spell that kept Debain from using magic to escape or defend himself was of a permanent nature. Even if Debain survived this somehow, he would never be able to use magic again, unless Reaton-Stav died before he did, or decided to break the spell.
Debain remembered once telling the boy he would never amount to more than a side show attraction, and he was lucky he was being allowed to leave the Sorcerious with any dignity at all. He understood now that his anger at the boy was rooted far deeper than his use of the darker arts. Suclair had been in love with Reaton-Stav, and the boy had used this to his advantage until there was no advantage left to use. He then discarded her like so much fodder. Remembering these things gave Debain strength as the interrogations began anew.
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