by Cully Mack
‘Chaziz,’ Gabe boomed.
Lightning flashed from the sky. It arced over one of the chimera striking its spine. The chimera juddered, its body splitting open.
Behind him, hacking and thrashing, blubbering and choking, the cries of victory and men falling echoed around the death arena.
‘Reserve your strength. Wait for Shargaz,’ Meciel ordered, shooting past him to the portal. ‘Let Terra deal with the chimera.’
Terra landed on the rock bed. She folded her leathery wings. Her neck extended, jaws snapping at the remaining chimera.
Gabe searched over the fighting to see if he could spot Mirah. He spied her standing next to Nate who wielded his curved blades with blinding fury.
Meciel stopped at the portal and thrust his hand into the inky green membrane. The words he spoke were indecipherable. Gabe could only pick up ‘Atar’ repeated over and over. Meciel’s arm swayed around as he traced out the script to destroy the portal.
The portal’s glow dimmed, the edges shrinking against his chanting. It was taking too long.
Shargaz landed on the dais. Gabe had never seen such a grotesque being. Red ochre membrane stretched between the skeletal limbs on his wide spread wings. Arching over his flabby torso, a scorpion tail hung above his head. Gabe stared in disgust. There was nothing godly about this being.
‘Meciel, it’s nice of you to pay me a visit. Who is my dessert?’ Shargaz asked.
As he spoke his voice integrated with a series of rapid percussive clicks. The sound of which reminded Gabe of leaping beetles near his home.
Meciel ignored him. Shargaz focused on Gabe, edging closer, covering some of the distance between them. Gabe would have stepped back but Terra’s talons and the chimera’s claws scraped close behind him.
Doubt fell on him, taut, like a noose strangling. It told him to weaken his knees, his bladder, to listen to his stomach churning, to run. He was no saviour, just a boy pretending at manhood and nothing more than Meciel’s distraction. For what? To destroy a portal which Shargaz would no doubt rebuild once he’d slaughtered him.
‘If you continue, Meciel. I will kill him.’
Shargaz’s voice clicked with malicious intent and Gabe’s knees wobbled.
‘Gabe, remember what I told you. Guard your mind.’
He didn’t need his mind to conjure images of leviathans, the monster standing before him was real, not covered in impenetrable scaly armour but adorned with loathing, and murder.
He couldn’t move, if it weren’t for his heart beating against his ribcage, he’d have thought his essence had fled.
He tried to summon up a memory, something to fight the fear. There was nothing that could have prepared him for this reality.
Move you idiot, he begged himself.
Mirah screaming from somewhere on the far side of the crater shattered everything. Enraged he broadened his shoulders. Fake it, Gabe told himself.
Shargaz herded him backwards towards his chimera. Why was he being so cautious?
He licked his ruddy lips, ‘Before I kill you, boy, tell me your name?’
‘Thunder,’ Gabe barked.
Recognition flared in Shargaz’s dark eyes and then dissipated.
Gabe mumbled under his breath, ‘Raash, anam, raam.’
Swirling clouds masked the sky, thunder rumbled and the ground beneath them shook.
Shargaz laughed and unsheathed his sword. ‘Shemyaza has his Wielders but I prefer to do this a more intimate way.’
The barb on his tail aimed at Gabe.
He expected Shargaz to advance but his gaze lingered over the battle raging and he smiled. The beard shaping his chubby face reminded Gabe of mandibles. He realised Shargaz was stalling. Every moment another of his men perished and Shargaz reveled in their demise.
Anger bellowed up from within and forced him to act.
‘Pacach,’ Gabe commanded.
Shargaz froze. ‘What are these pitiful tricks? You think you can shackle me?’
As he realised he couldn’t move, his voice ascended higher, somewhere between confusion and hatred.
Gabe glanced over at Meciel. He’d dropped to his knees, the portal still half open. He needed more time. The distraction cost him.
One of Shargaz’s sons, a gigantic Nephilim, bound onto the dais. In two strides, he swung an axe at Gabe’s head. Gabe swerved but the tip of the axe caught his ear. He felt the warmth trickle down the side of his neck, pooling on his shoulder.
‘Chaziz,’ he called.
A lightning bolt surged from the sky and gripped the Nephilim’s shoulder. Lightning coursed through his flesh, his axe seared to his hand, blood vessels bursting in his eyes. The Nephilim’s scream made no sound. Blood seeped out of his ears and met with the web of branching scars spreading up his neck. The lightning snapped in retreat, the Nephilim fell to the ground.
Gabe swallowed the sharp tang licking his throat along with the memory of his clan burning at Barakel.
‘Call your Nephilim off,’ Gabe ordered Shargaz.
Bina flew across the dais towards Meciel.
As his mind registered she had wings a chain whipped around his ankles, and he crashed onto the serrated rock covering the dais. The air punched from his lungs. His shoulder popped from its socket and he screamed.
Another Nephilim dragged him from the dais. The flesh on Gabe’s back ripped open, every part of his back searing in pain. His muscles cramping against the chain cutting into his ankles. He leaned forward, grabbed hold of the chain and dug his heels into the rock bed. He tried to conserve his energy for Shargaz. It was pointless. If he didn’t take out this Nephilim, he’d be dead.
‘Lahat,’ he cried, and flames engulfed the Nephilim.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the barb on Shargaz’s tail. Shargaz was free. His tail whipped down to sting him. Gabe rolled, the stinger piercing into the rock bed where he’d just been. Yellow venom oozed out of the hole and dripped from Shargaz’s shattered barb. Gabe scrambled away on his hands and feet like a crab.
‘Ani thrd ash mn e shmin u thakl athk,’ he roared at Shargaz.
Shargaz halted his attack and looked up in shock. Two columns of golden fire spiralled down from the heavens wrapping their blazing flames around Shargaz’s wrists. He writhed and pulled against his tethering. His face contorted in anguish.
‘Raash,’ Gabe breathed.
He couldn’t stand and was too exhausted to say it louder. The volcanic rock bed cracked. ‘Raam, Raash,’ he said, over and over again.
Thunder rumbled over the volcano and the crater vibrated. Rock severed from its foundations. A void in the ground opening. Shargaz thrashed against his fiery lashings.
‘Let me stay. I’ll serve you,’ he begged.
‘Niphal,’ Gabe uttered and Shargaz fell to the ground.
‘I know how you can defeat Shemyaza,’ Shargaz whined.
The ends of the fire columns dropped from the sky into the gash in the rock bed dragging Shargaz under the ground. His pitched, panicked wailing reverberated in Gabe’s ears as he fell deeper into the chasm that would be his prison.
‘Atar,’ Gabe ordered with the slither of strength he had left.
The rock bed closed over sealing Shargaz inside.
Heat surged through Gabe’s head and he collapsed on the dais. The butt of his dagger’s handle dug into his waist and Terra nudged his side with her snout. He heard footsteps, a distant voice, he knew he should remember, calling his name.
He hadn’t noticed the cold until his mouth gaped open.
❊ 40 ❊
‘Gabe!’
By the time Mirah reached the dais, Abela knelt at his side.
‘He’s still breathing,’ she reassured her. ‘He has a dislocated shoulder and his back…’
She didn’t finish. What could she say?
Mirah yearned to touch him but hesitated.
The flesh on his back was stripped bare with loose bits of skin still attached. Blood seeped through his sh
redded clothing and leaked from his ears and his nose.
Mirah moved closer, careful not to touch him. ‘Gabe, it’s me. I’m here.’
Gabe didn’t stir.
Nate yelled to the closest tribesmen, ‘Bring that cart.’
It amazed her that the cart was undamaged although the little bay pony had not fared as well.
A chaos of questions broke out on the dais. She hadn’t notice Ammo until he demanded to know the whereabouts of Bina. Blood and snot covered his face. She saw no signs of injury other than a split lip and a cheekbone, so swollen, his eye would soon shut for sure.
Nate’s voice raised above the others, ‘Where’s Shargaz?’
Voices erupted, Gabe groaned, Terra snorted.
Everything became too loud.
‘Stop,’ Meciel called over them.
He was pale, burdened. Whatever had taken place on the dais had drained him to the core
‘What happened?’ Mirah asked.
Meciel trembled, and Ammo rushed and grabbed him to prevent his fall. He leaned into Ammo and a moment later Sojin appeared with his staff.
‘Shargaz is gone,’ Meciel said. ‘Gabe imprisoned him deep underground in the Abzu.’ Meciel tightened his grip on Ammo’s shoulder and positioned his staff to support his weight. ‘I tried, but constraining the Air Wielders’ whilst destroying the portal… it was taking too long. Bina came to assist me. We were close but then something gripped her from the other realm.’
Ammo glanced in the portal’s direction. Nothing remained except shattered debris covering the dais. A chimera, wings torn and missing its head lay lifeless on the edge of the dais. Terra stood beside it. A few deep gashes on her thigh.
‘Where is she?’ Ammo asked.
Meciel’s head sagged.
‘Ya have to get her back,’ he urged.
‘The portal collapsed the moment she disappeared. I’m sorry.’ The tears in Meciel’s eyes wept with devastation.
Mirah heard the wheels of the cart rumbling forward. She glanced up to see tribesmen dragging bodies out of the cart’s path as it rolled towards them.
The gathering of reusable weapons and looting of corpses had begun. Carrion birds as black as night, invisible if not for the shine on their beaks, settled their wings on the ridge of the volcano waiting to take their feed.
‘Ammo,’ Nate said. ‘You need to focus, help me get Gabe onto the cart.’
The glaze in Ammo’s uninjured eye sharpened.
‘Sojin, Eran, help Meciel,’ Ammo replied.
Moving Gabe became a four-man affair. After Sojin and Eran assisted Meciel, they returned to support Gabe’s legs. As much as Nate and Ammo tried, they couldn’t lift him without the wounds on his back splitting further apart.
Gabe never stirred as they lay him in the cart. Abela jumped in beside him and assured Mirah that he was still alive.
Nate wiped his bloody hands in the weaver’s fabric and asked, ‘Has anyone seen Galia?’
No one had seen her.
Mirah’s stomach churned. ‘Abela will you go with Gabe and the others into the city? I’ll come and find you wherever the healers are.’
Ammo organised tribesmen to push the cart and as it rolled away the Crimson Lion War Chief arrived. Nate instructed him to meet them in the city by the healers after the War Chiefs had taken care of the wounded and secured Shargaz’s surrendered forces.
‘What do you want us to do with the fallen?’ the War Chief asked.
‘From clay they came and to clay they will return. Bury the dead as is custom so they’ll not come back as ghosts.’
The War Chief went to do as commanded and Nate called after him. ‘Not the giants, they must burn.’
The stench of opened bladders, bowels, and disemboweled stomach remains tainted the air. The volcanic rock poached the heat from the slain, their blood abandoning them to flow into fissures in the scorched rock.
They searched amongst the living and the lifeless, and found Galia sat on the ground with her head resting in her hands. In front of her, Esha’s whole body including the smirk on her face was frozen in stone.
‘She wielded lava over her head. I was freezing it and it fell,’ Galia said.
Esha looked like an idol raising her hands to a god of fire and brimstone.
‘Are you hurt?’ Mirah asked, assessing the blood on her clothes.
‘Just a few gashes and bruises.’
She offered Galia her hand. ‘Then let’s catch up with the others.’
The healers in the city were known as the Gula. They’d set Gabe’s shoulder by the time she arrived. With no cone-heads in sight, they worked efficiently tending to his wounds.
As they left Abela offered to help with the injured. She paused by the door. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Ayla and those at the mines?
Mirah shook her head.
‘Gabe will recover,’ she assured her.
‘Thank you,’ Mirah replied.
She sat by Gabe’s bedside for hours, gazing at the sunlight on his face, trying to avoid glancing at the blood seeping through the bandages.
Somewhere in the distance the triumphant sound of horns blowing and dulcet cries of victory carried on the wind.
‘I guess I faked it pretty well if we’re still alive,’ he groaned. ‘Is everyone all right?’
‘Everyone here is fine,’ she reassured him.
She didn’t see the point in burdening him with news of Bina. Exhaustion harassed him, and no one had any ideas on how to get her back. She decided to let Meciel explain.
‘I expect you’ll be comparing scrapes with Nate for weeks. I had to force him to sit still for the healers attending his thigh before he limped off into the city with Ammo and the others to take command.’
Gabe’s eyelids were slipping closed. She suggested he rest but he never heard her.
Mirah found Abela and the Gula busy treating the injured. She set to work following Abela’s guidance. She was no longer a healer and the poultices and potions were unfamiliar.
Later that evening, Nate asked her to walk with him. They strolled through the volcanic rock city and he told her what he’d learned. How the glamour over Isriq collapsed as soon as Shargaz was sealed in the Abzu. How the giants fled and the guards and Wielders allied with Shargaz either fled with them or surrendered.
They were coming to the edge of the city.
‘I want to ask you something?’ he said.
‘Go on.’
‘All this time, you’ve said you’d never fight but today, what you went through, are you all right?’
Even though he didn’t say the words, she understood what he meant.
She had taken lives, crossed over a threshold with no return. She wasn’t proud of it. They were destroying everyone around her, people she loved, people who were fighting for their freedom. She knew in her heart if she hadn’t stepped in many more would have died.
‘The shadow… I mean the Beast. It didn’t force me if that’s what you’re thinking?’
His shoulders relaxed.
‘It doesn’t control me. I made my own choice to save these people and those I love.’
Nate didn’t offer pity. He understood her sacrifice.
An image of Bishnor flashed through her mind. In the moment before his eyes turned black she witnessed the hatred and the promise. He’d come for her once Shemyaza transformed him into one of his chimera.
‘What do you think Shemyaza will do?’ she asked.
‘Can we worry about him later? There’s something I want to show you. They said it wasn’t far.’
He led her away from the city and along a well trodden dirt track. They climbed up the spiralling track until they reached the top of the hillside. From here she could see over the volcano, to the dim torch lights of the city and the sun’s glowing arc as it settled under the horizon.
‘Down here,’ he said.
A path went over the hillside, leading onto a small plateau cut into the hill. On the grassy ba
nks, a purple carpet of lavenders and violets dipped their heads in the perfumed breeze. Nate strolled to the far side of the plateau and sat down, his legs dangling over the edge.
‘Come here, you have to see this.’
She sat beside him. What was she supposed to be looking at? The view was pretty, full of green swishing trees, their branches darkening through the lack of the sun.
‘Wait,’ he said pulling her down to lie beside him. ‘Look up there.’
Stars blossomed one by one until they filled the sky.
‘Over there,’ he pointed. ‘There you are.’
She followed his direction, spying the bright star glistening brighter than the rest. The heavens felt infinite and unbound.
‘We’ve had word that the attack on the mines was a success. Neviah and Ayla are all right but Zeev was injured.’
‘How bad is he hurt?’
‘Enough to suffer Neviah as a nursemaid,’ he chuckled.
Mirah smiled at the thought. She wasn’t decided on who she should pity more.
Nate shifted on to his side to relieve his injured thigh. ‘What you did today with the ice wall, it was foolish, you could have been hurt. Promise me you will never separate us again.’
‘You were wounded.’
‘I don’t care. Promise me.’
She brushed her lips against his. Tenderly he kissed her. Each kiss, a sacred moment strengthening their bond. She opened the keys to her heart and let him in. He understood, the invisible connection between them pulling taut.
She felt the weight of him pressing down on her and the grazing of his stubble on her chin. His passion rising, calling out to her. All her femininity cried out to him, begging him to come and claim her.
‘I want you,’ he groaned. He paused, motionless and then rolled back beside her.
‘I don’t want you to stop,’ she said, tugging on his tunic.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we have no contract.’
‘Then we’ll write it on our hearts.’
She leaned closer to kiss him.
‘Wait. I have something for you. I wanted to wait until we could—’ He rummaged around inside his cloak. ‘Will you have me?’ he asked, unfolding his hand to reveal a gold wedding band.
