by Rex Jameson
After a half-day spent fighting through the sparse undead that wandered and feasted on the living south of Xhonia, the paladin Cedric Arrington and the dark elf prince Jayden found themselves in a clearing just outside the ancient city. They had not come across any undead for a few minutes, but the upturned earth and trees nearby told Cedric that a major battle must have taken place. He took pause to admire the white towers and large buildings of Xhonia that seemed to meld into Mount Godun. Meanwhile, he strained to listen for sounds of battle over the hoof beats of their horses.
“The paladins were here,” Cedric said, inspecting a scorched spot of earth under a man’s crumpled bones.
Jayden nodded as he unfurled his whip. Cedric stared at it, curious about the source of its power.
“I wonder if you might tell me where you got that,” Cedric said.
Jayden cast a wary glance before returning his focus back to his path. “Why?”
“Because if I would have known something like that existed,” Cedric said, “maybe I wouldn’t have had to pledge myself to the paladin order. Maybe I could have saved myself and my family some heartache.”
Their horses trotted along the path of destruction left by battling undead, demons and paladins, and Jayden seemed torn over something he wanted to say.
“In truth,” Jayden said, “it’s a good weapon against the undead but not much for fighting demons. Fire is not very effective against the naurun.”
“So, what’re you going to do if we run into a demon?” Cedric asked, smiling good naturedly through his visor. “Hide behind me?”
Jayden looked at Cedric for a moment, as if he was still surveying the paladin to see if he could trust him. He seemed to mull over Cedric’s words. He reached past the white-handled normal daggers and produced another handle from his waist. This one was dark with light blue trim.
“I would use this,” he said.
Cedric looked for another black filament trailing along the ground from the new weapon, but there wasn’t anything obvious.
“Is it another whip?” Cedric asked.
Jayden shook his head. He squeezed the handle and a shard of ice five-feet long violently shot out of the device. Cedric’s horse was so startled by the sudden movement that it reared slightly and stumbled away from Jayden. Cedric got Isilme back under control and pulled alongside the elf again.
“Is that ice?”
Jayden nodded.
“And it comes from the handle?”
“No”, Jayden said. “It is not magic, per se. It’s a connector of sorts. The ice shard comes from the heart of a very cold planet. It’s not quite ice; the molecules are so dense that the result is almost as hard as metal, for a time at least. It melts like anything else, especially when exposed to fire for too long.”
“Where did you get it?”
“These were both gifts,” Jayden said.
“From who?”
Jayden chewed at his lip and glanced at Cedric again.
“I only ask,” Cedric said, “because our world may need more of them to fight the horde.”
Jayden nodded. “That’s not really possible. These were given to my family by Selenor the Seer, acquired during her travels through astral projections across the galaxy.”
Jayden lifted the ice weapon. “This one is called Khelekhoon. It was given to my father Shivat through Selenor by a race of ethereals, who live many light years away on a green, lush planet. They had connected this device to the heart of a world called Frignir. It was presented as a trinket, not a weapon. We didn’t know, at the time, that such a doodad would be so valuable against the demons. We simply repurposed a gift.”
“And the other one?” Cedric asked. “The whip of fire?”
“Also a present to my family,” Jayden said, “this one is called Aikanaro. It’s connected to the heart of a massive glowing ball of magma in a remote part of our galaxy. I don’t think it’s a star. I believe the other end of this is connected to the heart of a warm planet. The liquid runs down the filament. It’s very viscous but easy to spill. I’ve burned many tunics.”
Jayden smiled, but Cedric didn’t return it. He got a chill just thinking about the vastness of the heavens, where both of these gifts had come from. The Monks of Godun made observations of the night sky, and in his youth, Cedric had asked them to describe what was up there. The Monks had been meticulous in recording all of Selenor’s travels, and a simple, brief introduction to their knowledge was enough to overwhelm Cedric’s mind.
Millions and billions of stars with planets around them. And here an elf owned devices connected to two of them. It seemed odd to Cedric that some of these planets might serve no other purpose than as fuel for gifts to princes in faraway places. He chuckled at the thought. Jayden gave him a queer look.
Somewhere in the distance came the distinctive clanging of metal-on-metal. Cedric spurred his mount and brought it to a canter. Jayden kept speed to his right.
They rounded a vein of the mountain and saw dozens of flicks of light in the growing twilight.
“They still fight!” Cedric exclaimed.
He felt an immense pride and then a profound sense of worry. Somewhere in that group of Light-infused swords and hammers were the weapons of his wife, and nearby might be his children. Or at least, he hoped so. He tried not to think of the alternative—that Allison, Sylas, Jonas the Elder and Younger, and Sarah might still be trapped at the house, or worse.
Cedric spurred his horse again, and it responded headlong into a gallop. He brought his spear down into a charger’s stance and closed the gap quickly. 300 paces. 200 paces. Some of the light eruptions in the night were not from hammers and swords but from fire demons. He panicked at the thought of his sons Sylas or Jonas trying to fend off a demon without Light-infused weapons. At 100 paces, an undead fiend jumped out of the darkness and shoved its full weight into his horse Isilme, who righted herself with practiced effort. However, Cedric had not been prepared for the sideward force at full gallop. He tumbled from his mount and his spear slid across the grass.
He saw Aikanaro’s fiery whip sail across the air and wrap itself around the neck of the undead man. Jayden jumped from his horse and let his momentum topple the wailing undead assailant. The flames seared the neck and hands of the struggling undead as it tried desperately to remove it. Within seconds, the head was cleaved off and the body spasmed as it fought the flames spreading across its body.
Cedric got to his feet and pulled his two-handed hammer from its holster on his back. The shaft lit up the moment the grip touched his fingers, and all around him, a dozen pairs of eyes peered from the underbrush. Jayden ran across the short field between them, leaping over Cedric’s discarded spear as the frightened horses ran through the darkness.
“We need to get to a more defensible position,” Jayden said as he flicked his wrist and scored a deep burn across the torso of a second undead fiend.
The light from Cedric’s hammer and Jayden’s Aikanaro helped illuminate the area enough to distinguish features of the battle and numbers of assailants. Most of the undead were between Cedric and the other paladins. There were only a couple between Cedric and a forested area that might be easier to defend and then press the attack once numbers were on their side. Cedric pointed to a nearby grove of trees, just outside of the entrance to Xhonia. Once Jayden nodded, Cedric charged.
Jayden turned and followed not far behind. The whip made quick work of the closest undead, and Cedric took care of the other with a huge overhead smash through its skull and half of its torso. He lamented leaving his spear in the field, but his hammer would be more useful in the trees anyway. He turned to deal with an undead just before he got into the forest and rammed a deep, sizzling wound through the creature’s heart. A second and third cretin reached out at him over the stunned man’s crumpling body, and Cedric crunched through their arms and faces with two devastating swings.
Jayden circled around and let his whip fly, setting the three injured undead aflame. The cr
eatures screamed and fell into a nearby ditch, but the fires did not go out.
“Thanks,” Cedric said, as a fourth undead beast charged into him.
Cedric rolled along the ground and into a hole. He managed to keep hold of his hammer, but he was in no position to swing it. He lay on his stomach, face-first and half in the hole. He felt the pressure of the creature on him and the feel of its hands clawing at his backplate. It screeched in simultaneous triumph and panic as its claws failed to find an opening.
Cedric pushed against the soft ground and managed to flip himself on top of the creature. He pummeled it with a fist and then with the butt of his hammer, over and over until the skull caved in. The undead continued to grope at him as he placed an armored foot onto its fragile torso and caved that in too as he stood up.
Cedric held his hammer in a defensive stance, mostly to illuminate what was in front of him. Only a few pairs remained.
Two creatures with glowing eyes lunged at Cedric and the third creature charged Jayden. The elf gripped the wayward being with the whip-end of Aikanaro and yanked the creature to him where the ice shard from his left hand ran the undead through. Jayden pulled hard with his whip hand, decapitating the twitching man, and then kicked the body off his ice sword. The blade broke off, protruding out of the fiend as it tumbled backwards.
Cedric body-checked his lead attacker with his pauldrons, knocking the undead berserker to the ground so he could deal with the second one. The latter skid to a halt as it seemed to realize the trouble it was in, but the sudden reversal was too late. Cedric swung his hammer low, cracking the creature’s legs in half at the kneecaps and finishing the assailant off with a violent series of overhead smashes.
The last undead man tried to crawl away, but Cedric was on him in seconds, searing and obliterating him back to the Abyss.
As the danger appeared to have passed, Cedric rammed his hammerhead into the ground and put his hands on his hips. He breathed heavily as he paced in front of the hole he had fallen into. The digging here looked fresh. At the other end of the disturbed earth was a single board sticking out of the ground.
“Looks like a grave,” Cedric said.
“Or maybe it was buried treasure,” Jayden said, examining a silver box in his hand. “I can’t believe what I’m holding.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a stolen artifact,” Jayden said. “This is one of the ice explosion devices we used to fill the caverns below our cities. This is probably the same one that was stolen from Xhonia—the one that allowed Orcus to escape and terrorize Surdel.”
“You think it still works?” Cedric asked, looking through the trees and across the field at the paladins who still fought the demons and undead to reclaim the entryway to Xhonia.
“Yeah,” Jayden said. “If we can get back to the caverns, we might be able to stopper the flow of reinforcements coming from the underworld. Orcus can still raise the dead in Surdel, but if he’s cut off from his demons, that could give our world a chance.”
Cedric nodded emphatically. “Yes!”
“The only problem is,” Jayden said, “there’s a horde of demons and undead trying to escape through those very caverns. We’ll be like two fish swimming upstream during rainy season. The two of us might do fine in small hallways with only one angle of attack coming at us, but the caverns open up. We’ll be surrounded quickly.”
Cedric looked back across the field at the glowing lights and violence. “I know where we can get some reinforcements.”
He whistled loudly, and his white horse Isilme came running. Cedric had personally groomed her since he had been fifteen years old, staying with the Shelbies. She would charge through fire if he asked her to. She stepped over the smoldering piles of bones and pulled alongside Cedric. He leapt into the saddle and trotted toward the paladins across the field to the east.
Jayden pursued on foot. He whistled similarly, but his horse did not seem similarly trained. It wandered out of range, spooked by nearby undead.
“Just go!” Jayden said, still running behind him.
Cedric pressed his heels into Isilme’s flanks and broke the horse into a gallop, back toward the field where he left his spear. He jumped down, retrieved it, and quickly returned to his saddle before turning Isilme again toward his friends and family. 100 paces. 50 paces. His spear pierced an undead man grappling with Henry Claymore, who cheered as Cedric galloped past.
Cedric brought the 7-foot, glowing spear to the other side and stabbed another undead corpse through the torso. The spear broke free from the body, and then he saw what he was looking for. Twin short swords arced through the air, cleaving an undead in two. His wife spun gracefully to parry an ancient sword before sliding her bright blade through the rusted breastplate of another. The flames from the Light-infused weapon spread within the putrid corpse, burning it from the inside-out.
“Allison!” Cedric yelled.
She turned, and he could see her smile through the opening of her barbute helmet.
“To your father!” Allison replied.
“Dad!” Jonas said.
Cedric jumped down, and Isilme charged into a gathering of undead who were engaged with Corbin and Constantine Shelby, Allison’s brothers. Henry Claymore cleaved through two of the horde with quick slashes from his massive two-handed blade. Cedric’s horse Isilme continued to crash into and run over undead as it neighed and snorted in defiance.
Cedric counted maybe fifty enemies, including three demons who had escaped Xhonia.
His wife drove her swords into the ground and threw her arms around him. He picked her up and kissed her warmly on the lips between the open cross of her helmet. He cupped the sides of her armored head as he looked at her. Tears streamed down her face as she struggled with words in the heat of the battle.
“He came to our house!” she said finally.
“Who came to our house?” Cedric asked, as his youngest son Jonas wrapped his arms around him.
“Orcus,” Allison said.
“We couldn’t save him,” Sylas said, nodding toward Cedric as he squared his shoulders toward the menacing undead and demons. The twenty remaining paladins formed ranks around the Arrington family. Between and behind them were a dozen children with regular weapons like his sons.
“Good to have you back, boss,” Henry Claymore called back as he cleaved through the legs of a lunging creature. The undead man with the peeling face crawled toward Cedric. Before it could get close, Cedric’s daughter Sarah cut off its head and then its two arms. It squirmed harmlessly on the ground until Allison finished it off with a thrust of her sword.
“Words can’t express my joy at seeing you all OK!” Cedric exclaimed.
Sylas looked away and Jonas joined the others on the line. A flaming whip came alive some fifty yards away, making violent arcs amongst dozens of undead who screamed in alarm at an attack coming from behind their lines.
“Papa’s dead,” Allison said. “Orcus…”
Henry Claymore retreated from his engagement with two undead but kept his guard up in case something slipped through the line.
“Jonas is dead?” Henry Claymore asked.
“He stayed behind to fight off Orcus,” Allison said. “We heard his hammer fall over and over again, and then it fell no more.”
Tears welled in Cedric’s eyes. Jonas had been more than just his father-in-law. He was a fellow council member and his adopted father after his dad Sylas had died on Mount Godun. Allison hugged Cedric again, and he kissed her exposed skin on her forehead.
“There’s an elf coming,” Cedric said. “He has a device. We have to get it into Xhonia.”
“We’re a little bogged down at the moment,” Henry said, pointing at the undead and then at two demons who still remained.
“The device can block the caverns,” Cedric said. “If we don’t close it up, more demons will pour out. Before long, we’ll be dealing with two demon lords—not just Orcus.”
Henry dropped his long sword, the
point shoving into the dirt. He ran his dirty hands through his hair.
“We’ve been fighting all day,” he said. “Everyone’s on their second wind.”
“We’re going to have to find a few more breaths then,” Cedric said. “Otherwise, our world is lost.”
“Then it’s as she told us during our initiations,” Henry said, picking up his sword again. “We are Nirendia’s last great hope. We are the water that will extinguish their fire. Let that give us strength!”
Cedric nodded uncomfortably, and then raised his hammer in a collective cheer with his men and women.
The fiery whip Aikanaro ripped through flesh and seared bone as the elven prince made his way to them. Cedric heard the rush of the ice shard filling Khelekhoon as it pierced the crumpling body of a naurun. Only one demon remained and it faltered at the onslaught of three paladins pushing it back toward Xhonia.
“Besides,” Cedric said, pointing toward the dark elf prince, “we have reinforcements!”
“Forward!” Henry called out as he joined the line that faced the towering spires of Xhonia. “Push ‘em back, boys!”
Allison and Cedric cleared a path for Jayden. The elf panted as he bent over in the center of the formation and nodded toward Cedric.
“Thank you,” Jayden said, wheezing as he struggled to move with the advancing line of paladins. “Just a second.”
“Can’t stop,” Cedric said. “We need to get your device to the caverns.”
“Yeah,” Jayden grumbled.
The last demon fell, smote by Constantine Shelby, but there was no time to celebrate. Wherever one went down, two more undead plugged the gap. Still, the ranks of the undead were dwindling, and they wouldn’t be able to keep up a united front for long. No more than twenty harassed the paladins now, but fiery naurun trickled out of the abandoned city one and two at a time.
Henry Claymore and the lead elements of the formation swarmed around these demons, overwhelming them with hammers and two-handed swords. Allison and Cedric attacked a pack of a half-dozen undead who wandered outside of an old, dark-elven guard house.
The paladins fought through the paved streets and between crumbling limestone statues of elves reaching toward the stars. Cedric smote his first demon of the day at the foot of crumbling stairs that led up to the former governor’s mansion. Forty-foot, single cut marble columns rose high above. The smoldering ruins of the demon seemed like a mockery to such beauty, but there was no time to protest or grumble. The cavern was in view and lit by the demons within, some of whom retreated back into the arched opening at the sight of the advancing paladins.
