by Joe Jackson
Erik squared off with the lieutenant and tried a few simple combinations to gauge how skilled the man was with two weapons. He found that his enemy had not picked up the second sword just for show, and Erik grimaced: Sherman wouldn’t last long against the general. When he heard his companion yell in pain, Erik steeled himself, knowing the lieutenant would come in when he was distracted. Instead, Erik crouched as black flames burst forth from his skin, and he drove his shoulder forward into the rir’s midsection. The lieutenant’s swords glanced harmlessly off of Erik’s plate armor, and the demonhunter grabbed hold of the lieutenant and held him in an incinerating grasp. Within moments their armor began to glow with absorbed heat, and the scent of searing flesh filled the air. The lieutenant screamed out in agony, and Erik dropped him to the floor and rushed to Sherman’s aid.
Katarina saw her brother fall, but she kept her wits about her just as she’d been drilled to do so many times by Serenjols and Typhonix. She turned as if to approach her brother, but then she bounded three steps to her right and swung sideways at her opponent. The reach of her great sword’s swing drove the guard back toward Aeligos, and the guard didn’t realize his error until it was too late. Aeligos punched one of his katars through the guard’s liver, and then he finished the man off with three more well-placed punches across the chest, with one last strike to the throat. Katarina turned to help her brother, but she saw that she couldn’t stop Gaswell in time.
“Alarm! Alarm! Intruders in the castle!” came a shout from the hallway. Aeligos found that curious, but he moved to chase after whoever had yelled. He was stood up straight at the doorway by an arrow that whistled past his face and took down the man who’d shouted. Aeligos looked east down the corridor and saw Eryn standing at the intersection with her bow, no longer in the guise of a terra-rir woman. She nodded to him and notched another arrow, and she began scanning in all directions down the hallways.
Aeligos rushed to the intersection where the dead man lay, and then south toward the stairwell. Far below he could hear the sounds of a melee, and he smiled grimly: Typhonix and Jol were doing as they were asked. He rushed back to the intersection, whistled to gain Eryn’s attention, and made a sharp gesture to ask her if more guards would be coming from the bailey. She shook her head and made a gesture in return that clearly said she had barred the door, just as he had expected. Aeligos smiled, wanting to rush down and kiss the woman. Instead, he made another gesture to ask her if there was any sign of Emma. He let forth a sigh of relief when Eryn shook her head negatively.
Erik rushed sideways and threw a reckless double-chop at Gaswell to chase the general away from Sherman before he could perform a coup de grace. Erik’s eyes were full of fury as he stood up before Gaswell, but the general simply backed away a few steps. “What do you hope to accomplish here, fool?” Gaswell asked, and he began to circle his enemy. “My death will change nothing, another will simply take my place.”
“On the contrary,” Erik said, crossing his swords before his chest, “your army is in the process of being completely demoralized by a much larger and stronger shakna-rir and human force. That army you think your demon allies have sent from the north…those are our allies. Your army is doomed. Don’t you get it? The demons betrayed you. That’s what they do. They got you to try to start a war for them, and then they left you. You’re on your own, and your bloodline and your foolish quest both end here.”
Gaswell glanced away however briefly, and Erik could see reality had sunk into the man. But then the general looked up and said, “My bloodline, perhaps, but the quest I was appointed to will not end with me. If Emma’s found what she was looking for…you’re all doomed.” He tested Erik with a complex routine of diversionary, half-hearted swings and thrusts, and his more pointed attacks came in at odd angles. He was no slouch: his fighting style was similar to Kari’s, and for a moment Erik wished that Kari was with him, if for nothing more than to see her pit her style and skill against the general.
Katarina dragged Sherman to a safe corner behind the door, and she knelt down and pulled up the shirt of his chainmail to survey the damage. “Oh, gods!” she cried, and she tore off a portion of her brother’s tabard and pressed it to the bleeding wound on his belly. It was deep: the flesh and even the muscle were cut partway through, but she was by no means a healer like Grakin and couldn’t tell how substantial the damage truly was. At the very least Sherman hadn’t lost consciousness and no blood was coming forth from his lips. She took that as a good sign.
Aeligos returned to the doorway and surveyed the scene before him quickly. He rushed over to dispatch the lieutenant his brother had burned. The man was struggling to his knees in pain and offered little resistance as Aeligos gripped his head and gave a sharp twist, breaking his neck with a satisfying crack. Aeligos gave Erik only a cursory glance as his brother squared off with the general, and the rogue made his way over to Katarina and Sherman. Aeligos was no healer, either, but he patted the girl on the shoulder and told her to keep pressure on the wound. He then tore off two more pieces of the tabard and stuffed them under the chainmail at each of the young man’s other two wounds.
Erik parried and dodged, threatening whenever the general overbalanced, but as he had learned from the weeks of sparring with Kari, the demonhunter didn’t press his own attacks too hard. He knew that eventually the general would either tire or make a mistake, and like his partner had done so many times to him, Erik would be waiting to capitalize. Gaswell was a skilled swordsman and it seemed he may have earned the military title instead of simply taking it upon himself like so many would-be tyrants did, and Erik was hard pressed to keep the slashing blades away from himself. The advantage he had – and he wondered if Gaswell understood – was that he had the constitution of a half-guardian demon: there was no way a terra-rir would outlast him in a contest of endurance. At the very least, Erik knew he could outlast Gaswell.
“Aeligos!” Eryn called, and the rogue returned to the hallway once more. “I’m going out on the balcony to cause some havoc with the soldiers outside. I think you should go see how your brothers are doing downstairs!”
The rogue shook his head. “Sherman is wounded! I have to watch the door!”
He couldn’t hear her, but he could clearly see her swear. “How bad?” she yelled.
“I think he’ll live but he has to be tended to!” Aeligos called back. “Go ahead, I can keep the hallways locked down well enough from here!”
The woman nodded and was gone from sight in moments. Aeligos looked back once at his brother and the general fighting, and a grim smile came to his features; the deed was almost done. While Gaswell displayed obvious prowess, he could not outlast a half-demon, and the rogue thought he must know it. There would be no escape and no real chance of victory; the fight was done unless something truly and extraordinarily bad happened. In the back of his mind, Aeligos simply prayed that Eryn was right, and they would not come face-to-face with Emma before the fighting was done.
*~*~*~*
Kari kept her hands to her temples until the fire in her mind subsided. Once she got her wits about her again, she looked up to find the kirelas-rir girl floating within her prison cell. The girl was looking around as though trying to identify her surroundings, and when her glowing white eyes met Kari’s they were full of wrath. Kari got to her feet but suddenly found that she could not move. She was pinned in place as if by an invisible hand, and the war wizard floated toward her in ghostly fashion.
“Where is the demon?” the kirelas-rir girl demanded. Her voice was light and playful like a young woman’s despite the tone she tried to take.
“Which demon?” Kari managed. She was having a hard time breathing in the crushing grip of the woman’s spell. Sonja lay beside her motionless, and Kari wondered if the war wizard had done something worse to her friend while she’d been fighting the mental fire.
“The serpent who captured me,” the kirelas-rir girl clarified.
“The sylinth? It’s dead; my partne
r and I killed it,” Kari said and she gasped for a second, trying to suck enough wind in to speak. “My friend and I came here to rescue you.”
A confused expression crossed the girl’s face but she held Kari’s gaze. She waved her hand dismissively and the force that had bound Kari in place dissipated. Kari fell to her knees and crawled over to Sonja, who began to rise even before Kari reached her. The two regarded the kirelas-rir girl curiously for a few moments, until at last the war wizard’s feet touched the ground and her eyes became more solidly blue once again. She moved to sit on a dry patch of the dungeon floor, and her face scrunched up in disgust as she saw how filthy she was.
“Are you all right?” Kari asked, daring to approach and kneel before the girl.
“I…believe so,” the kirelas-rir girl replied, and she blinked a few times before meeting Kari’s eyes. “I am not certain what has happened. I know not where I am, or why. I know only that I am filthy, hungry, tired, and quite confused.”
“But you mentioned the demon,” Kari said. “You were captured by the sylinth?”
“It overwhelmed my senses,” the girl said. “I could not tell up from down, or even who I was, before it was upon me. Your grabbing my shoulder was the next thing to happen to me that I was able to register properly. Where am I?”
“You’re in the dungeon of a madman named Braxus Gaswell,” Sonja said, and she rose to her feet. She took up her sword and moved toward the exit to listen for approaching guards.
“I recognize that name,” the war wizard said. “It was an invitation from him to any and all terra-rir males of a proper age for military service to join him that drew me to this island. I was curious to see if he was truly a descendant of the fool that attempted to attack my people a generation ago, and if so, what his intentions were.”
“Was he with the demon when you were captured?” Kari asked.
“I do not remember clearly, but I think so,” the girl answered. She thought to herself but ultimately shook her head. “It is not important at this time. You have come to rescue me; does the castle rest in the hands of your allies, then?”
“No,” Kari said with a shake of her head. “We have friends upstairs trying to capture Gaswell, and volunteers from across the island are fighting on the fields before the castle to make our mission possible. Now that we’ve freed you, our job is to get you out of here safely.”
“Nonsense,” the girl said, and she rose to her feet once more. “I will not hide in the shadows while your friends risk their lives for those of my people. Come, we will join with them and I will take you to safety when the general is in your hands.”
“Other than the sewer exit, I’m not sure if there’s an easy way out of here,” Kari said.
The war wizard smiled grimly. “I was not interested in taking the easy way out,” she said. Her feet rose off the floor as her eyes went white once more. The blue vertical stripes on the sides of her snout began to glow with mystic power and she hovered above the cool, wet stones, gliding like a banshee toward the doorway. With a gesture, she tore the door from its hinges and cast it aside into a nearby cell with a crash. Several alarmed voices came from farther up the stairway, and two rir males appeared at the far end of the tunnel and yelled for her to halt. Without a word, she held her hand forward and forked lightning shot forth up the staircase. Kari and Sonja turned away from the blinding light and covered their ears as a deafening thunderclap followed the display. Screams sounded from up the stairs only briefly, and when Kari rose to her feet, she could smell the curious scent of ozone mixed with that of charred corpses.
She and Sonja followed silently as the kirelas-rir girl floated without hesitation up the stairs, and the three ascended to a long hallway that ran east to west by Kari’s best guess. Armed soldiers came around a corner from the west, but with a gesture the war wizard engulfed the entire hallway with flames, consuming the men in moments. Kari looked to Sonja in complete shock, and the scarlet-haired woman could only give a shrug that clearly said such magic was far beyond her skills. The demonhunter shrugged in return, and they followed their kirelas-rir guide as she floated down the hallway to the east. Three more times they met armed resistance while the young woman floated undeterred down some specific route, and three more times she annihilated their foes utterly without a hint of effort. If she felt at all hesitant or bad for what she did, she didn’t show it: there was no expression in her blank, white eyes or upon her face. Whatever she was doing, she apparently knew the way, and led them to a staircase before her feet finally touched the floor again.
She regarded her rescuers for only a moment when her eyes returned to normal, and she blew out a fatigued sigh. “I must conserve my energy for what is to come,” she said. “Please defend me as we make our way to your friends.”
“Sure thing, um…,” Kari began.
“Triela,” the girl said with the barest of smiles.
“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” Kari said, and she bounded up the stairs before them. When they reached the top, they could hear the sounds of a melee from somewhere near, and Kari motioned for her two companions to remain on the stairwell while she went ahead to scout. From the nearby intersection she could see blood trails on the floor, and a corpse laying in a doorway down the eastbound passage.
“I think we found Ty and Jol,” Kari called back over her shoulder, and she gestured for her friends to come forward. “We should probably look in on them.”
Without a word, Triela once again floated above the floor, and she glided down the hallway without a sound and turned to face in the doorway. Kari watched the girl encase herself in a shell of crackling, arcing lightning, and Triela bellowed into the room where the fighting was taking place. “Lay down your arms or be incinerated!” she yelled, and after only a moment the sounds of fighting ended abruptly. Soon enough, Typhonix and Serenjols ducked past the girl and came up the hallway toward Kari and Sonja, and Triela yelled into the room once again. “Leave this castle and be far from it when it is destroyed. Remember what you have learned this day, and do not tempt fate by repeating this iniquity!”
Apparently that was all that needed to be said. Soon the soldiers that Ty and Serenjols had been fighting all ran past Triela and down the hallway without weapons in their hands. Kari couldn’t help but chuckle as she tried to take a headcount. Ty and Jol had been fighting at least a dozen enemies, not including those they’d already wounded or killed. Ty and Jol weren’t in prime condition: based on the black blood on their armor that was clearly theirs, they were each bleeding from dozens of wounds. Most of those appeared superficial, though, and neither man was staggered or too wounded to breathe or speak normally.
“I see you found the war wizard,” Serenjols commented dryly, which drew laughs from Kari and Sonja.
“I almost pissed myself when she yelled at us all,” Ty said, trying not to laugh. He sniffed the air a couple of times and glanced at Kari and Sonja. “You two smell wonderful.”
“We came in through the sewer; what’s your excuse?” Sonja shot back.
Ty scowled at his sister playfully and Kari chuckled, but she stood straight when the last of the soldiers fled past them and headed northward, to where she suspected the front door was located. “Triela, our friends are on the next level!” Kari yelled, and she was surprised when the woman simply nodded and then disappeared with a buzzing pop.
“This way!” Ty shouted. He led the others up the stairs to the next level, and within moments they were at the door Aeligos was guarding. The rogue was clearly happy to see them and let out a shout of triumph at their approach, but he jumped in shock when the kirelas-rir girl appeared beside him. He nearly took a swing at her but caught himself when he realized what she was. After giving her an obviously appraising glance, he made his way into the room.
Kari and the others entered soon after, and Sonja knelt down beside Katarina to check on Sherman. He was unconscious but appeared to at least be stable. Erik was still fighting Gaswell. Each had managed to
inflict only minor wounds on the other, and both were apparently growing tired. When Triela floated into the room, the general balked, and Erik seized the opportunity to knock one of the blades from his hand. It mattered little: a moment later the other sword flew from his hand. It floated before Triela for only a moment before it melted into a glowing puddle of metal at her feet.
“Your time is at an end, Braxus Gaswell,” she said calmly. She made a gesture and the terra-rir general suddenly stood in an odd pose, as though being crushed by the same spell the woman had gripped Kari with.
“Wait, don’t kill him,” Erik said, but he did a double take when he turned around and realized it wasn’t his sister’s magic that had disarmed and immobilized the general. “Um, please don’t kill him, mistress. We should take him into custody.”
“I will not kill him. His fate will ultimately be in your hands, not those of the people he truly sought to destroy,” Triela said. She fixed her glowing white eyes upon Sherman and gave a casual wave, and what appeared to be a disembodied glowing blue hand passed over the young man’s wounds. The bleeding was stanched in its wake, and Kari wasn’t sure what to make of it; she’d never heard of wizards utilizing divine or any other type of healing power.
Erik nodded and turned his gaze to Ty and Jol. “Report, gentlemen?”
“The young lady scared away all the soldiers we hadn’t killed yet,” Typhonix said, but once he finished speaking, he put a hand to his belly and grunted.
“Are you hurt?” Erik asked.
“Couple of stab wounds, nothing Grakin can’t fix,” the blonde warrior said. He put his axe into the strap across his back and sat down, and despite his best efforts, Kari could see he was in pain.
