by Aaron Oster
His hand grew slick with blood as he felt around, wondering if he’d cracked his skull. His back ached badly enough for him to be sure that his spine had been damaged, and judging by how stiff he was, as well as some numbness in his legs, he probably wasn’t going to be walking anywhere until he healed up. With the way his head was ringing, he wouldn’t be flying anywhere either. It was because of the myriad of ailments that plagued him that Morgan did not hear his attacker until it was too late.
The snap of a branch from just a couple of feet away was all the warning he got before a tremendous force slammed into the side of his head. Morgan hit the ground once again, his skull rebounding off the boulder which had so kindly arrested his attempts to plow up the entire forest, using his body. If his skull hadn’t been cracked before, the snapping sound most definitely confirmed that much.
It would take more than a single punch to take him out, but as he tried to reorient, forcing his addled brain into action, another blow struck him, making him see stars. He blacked out for a moment as another blow slammed into him, and on reflex, his leg snapped up, catching something hard.
“Damn! You are one stubborn bastard!” he heard someone say, just before being struck once again in the head.
Morgan’s vision fuzzed over again, and he struck back, his leg catching something hard, resulting in a loud crack.
There was no cry of pain, just another blow to the head, followed by three more. Finally, unable to stand the barrage of blows to his unprotected and already-concussed brain, Morgan fell into unconsciousness. However, he did not do so without throwing another punch, unleashing a wild blast of compressed air.
***
Grace winced as she pulled herself from the wreckage of the destroyed carriage, feeling the myriad of cuts, bruises and dozens of splinters, all screaming out for attention at the same time. Her ears rang, her head spun, and she felt like she was going to be sick. She staggered forward several steps, then collapsed to her knees, emptying the contents of her stomach. She groaned as her throat burned, the throbbing in her head increasing momentarily before fading to a dull ache.
She squinted up through blurry vision at the area where the two spheres of light had been about to collide. That was well over two miles from them, so it was shocking in and of itself that the force of that explosion had reached them all the way here.
“Lumia?” she croaked, looking around for the drake.
She’d been carrying the wagon in her talons when the explosion had washed over them and had been fully exposed. The fact that she’d been tossed from the air spoke to the power of that explosion.
Grace couldn’t see the drake anywhere but knew that she needed to find her. Morgan would probably be alright, seeing as he could survive anything, but Lumia – at least from what she understood – was a bit less hardy. She’d definitely be weaker when she wasn’t at her full size. Staggering to her feet and nearly collapsing once again, she began tottering towards the site of the explosion, thinking that perhaps Lumia had been thrown back, while she had been tossed forward.
She only made it half a dozen steps before dropping to her knees once again and vomiting what little remained in her stomach. She really wasn’t feeling well. The dizzying drop had not only disoriented her but had also completely thrown off her sense of balance. Her ears were still ringing, and as she tried to push herself back to her feet – tears involuntarily streaming from the corners of her eyes – her head swam dangerously.
The world went black for several seconds, and when she came back to herself, she was lying on her side and wondering how she’d gotten there. Reaching up to her head, Grace felt something wet, and when she moved her fingers before her eyes, could see that they were coated in crimson.
Am I bleeding from my head? That can’t be a good sign, she thought, especially if I’m this dizzy.
She must have hit it harder than she thought, and though she wasn’t nearly as experienced in receiving and diagnosing injuries as Morgan, he had been teaching her. Identifying injuries was one of the more important aspects of being a good fighter, as you could make the correct call after being injured.
For example, a broken arm shouldn’t prevent you from fighting, but a broken pelvis definitely should. Head injuries were the very worst of the lot, as they hindered and slowed your mind, as well as put you in serious danger. She briefly wondered if she might have a brain injury or something worse. However, her ability to think this clearly probably meant that it wasn’t something quite that serious.
Still, the continued dizziness didn’t exactly calm her down. She reached up to her head again, feeling at the area where she’d been bleeding, and felt a noticeable bump. Now, though, when her fingers came away, they contained far less blood.
Maybe she’d just whacked it against something tough and split the skin?
“Grace! Are you alright?”
Grace half-turned her head and was barely able to see a blurry outline approaching. That outline soon revealed itself to be Lumia, in her cat-sized form, quickly approaching.
“Fine,” she groaned. “I’m just…really dizzy.”
Lumia came right up to her, the silvery scales on her hide glittering in the moonlight as she looked over her.
“You have a nasty cut on your scalp, right below your hairline. You might have a concussion, but I don’t think it’s anything too serious.”
“How can you tell?” she asked, feeling bile rising in her throat once more.
“Because you wouldn’t be this lucid if it were,” Lumia said. “My guess is that the fall, coupled with how banged up you look, sent your body into shock. So, it has chosen a single facet of your injuries and prioritized them above the rest. But you can be sure that you are perfectly fine. I have seen many nasty injuries in my time spent with Morgan, and nothing you have looks to be all that serious.”
The knowledge that she was okay was all Grace needed to hear, and though she didn’t rise immediately, the nausea began to fade over the next few minutes. Lumia didn’t move from her side the entire time, for which she was grateful, and soon, she pushed herself into a sitting position.
“What happened back there?” she asked, wincing at all the discomfort she now felt.
It appeared that Lumia had been right and that her body was pushing her head injury to the forefront and blocked out the others.
“I can’t be sure, but it seems as though Morgan encountered someone of immense power. The explosion was a result of his Starbreaker and the opponent’s attack colliding. Sometimes, skills don’t match well, and when they don’t, bad things tend to happen.”
“Is he okay?” she asked, suddenly feeling a lot less sure about Morgan’s safety.
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Lumia said, walking over and flapping her wings to prepare herself for jumping onto Grace’s shoulder.
It was only when she did that that Grace noticed her injuries. The scales beneath Lumia’s wings had been torn away, leaving bloody smears in their place. When she flapped into the air, Grace caught sight of a bloody underbelly.
“Are you okay?” she asked, now more worried for the drake than Morgan.
“I’ll be fine,” Lumia said, settling onto her shoulder. “My injuries shrink along with me when I do, and while they might look serious, so long as I stay small, my recovery should be fine.”
“Wait. So, you won’t be able to become big again?”
“I can if I need to,” Lumia said. “But I’d prefer not to exacerbate the injuries. Now, come on. You’ve got a bit of a walk ahead of you, and I’d like to reach Morgan to see if he’s alright.”
Grace nodded, in full agreement, and set off at a quick walk, back toward the site of the explosion.
21
“I don’t see him anywhere, do you?” Grace asked, looking about the blasted ground of the crater they’d slid into.
“No, but I can smell a faint trace of him,” Lumia replied, her snout swiveling from side to side as she tried to find the sourc
e.
It was now fully dark out. The walk had taken Grace nearly forty minutes, as she’d been unable to even jog without discomfort, and they’d been searching for the better part of fifteen minutes, to no avail.
“He’s still alive, of that much I’m certain,” Lumia continued, turning her head once more and inhaling deeply. “Why don’t you use your Echolocation to see if you can find anything?”
Grace felt a bit sheepish at having to be reminded to use her most basic skill. Though, in her defense, she wasn’t thinking as clearly as she should. She was worried about Morgan’s mysterious absence and the lack of any other sentient beings anywhere in the vicinity. She clicked her tongue, activating the skill, and felt the soundwaves bouncing back to her.
They rippled outward, showing her a detailed layout of the landscape, but revealing nothing in the shape of a person. She turned, clicking her tongue again. Grace did this several more times until she’d completed a near-three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. It was on the last application of the skill that she finally got something, and when she did, she felt a small thrill of fear run down her spine.
“What is it?” Lumia asked, able to sense her sudden shift in mood.
“I think…I think I’ve found his spear,” she said, her voice tinged with worry and fear.
After all he’d been through to see it made, Morgan would never willingly leave the spear behind. Not unless…
“Do you think he could have been captured?” she asked, daring to voice such a ludicrous thought aloud.
It sounded ridiculous, even to her ears. Morgan, captured? It was impossible.
“That may very well be a possibility,” Lumia replied, tilting her head and sniffing once more. “It’s faint, but I believe I can pick up another scent nearby.”
Lumia went silent, then sniffed again. She shook her head a few times, then sniffed once more.
“What’s wrong?” Grace asked, seeing the troubled look on her face.
“I’m not sure,” Lumia said, turning her head from side to side. “Something about this whole thing seems…off, somehow.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Lumia said, sounding worried. “It’s not only Morgan’s disappearance that’s bothering me.”
“Well, would you look at what we have here?”
The voice that rang out was utterly foreign, one that neither of them had heard before. When Grace whirled, she found herself looking up the side of the crater, at an elf, dressed in patchwork leather armor. As she watched, more elves appeared, lining the lip of the crater and staring down at them.
How hadn’t she seen them coming? How hadn’t Lumia scented them?
She clicked her tongue, activating her skill and allowing it to wash over them. However, when the waves of sound returned, they carried with them a confusing mix of signals. She could feel that they were there, sort of, though had she not been able to see them with her own eyes, she may very well have dismissed them as part of the landscape. Grace briefly wondered if her skill might be malfunctioning, when Lumia let out a light hiss.
“I knew something was off! I could smell them coming, but it wasn’t until that one said anything that I understood what was happening. Be careful. There are some dangerous skills at work here.”
Lumia kept her voice low enough so that only Grace could hear her. Right now, their greatest asset was keeping the knowledge that Lumia was anything more than a small pet a secret. However, when Grace looked over the group of elves, she knew that there would be no fighting her way out of this. So, she decided to try and talk.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” she demanded.
“Oh, we’re just a group of friendly strangers who like to pick up lost souls,” the elf replied, his white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “Perhaps you’d like to come along with us.”
“I’m fine on my own, thanks,” Grace said, feeling her muscles beginning to tense.
“That wasn’t a request, girlie,” the elf said, the smile dying on his face. “Now, you can either come up here nicely, or we can come down and drag you up. The choice is yours, though I do have to warn you that my boys will be less than gentle if they need to come get you.”
“What do I do?” she asked in an undertone.
“Go along with them,” Lumia replied, equally as quiet. “I can’t fight, not in my current condition, and there’s no way you can take them all on your own. Besides, they may be the ones who took Morgan, so they might lead us straight to him.”
“What about the spear?” she asked, not allowing her eyes to flick in the direction of the gleaming shaft, which was mostly buried in some rubble.
“Leave it,” Lumia said. “No one will be able to touch it anyway, so it’s as safe as it can be down here.”
“Well?” the elf called down, his tone sounding impatient. “Are you going to come up or not?”
“I’m coming,” Grace said, turning to glare up at the elf. “No need for you to get your precious little hands dirty.”
She headed up the side of the crater, watching as the other elves moved slowly around front. If she dashed the other way now, she might be able to break free of their entrapment. But then what? She had no way of knowing how strong any of these elves were, nor their skills or abilities. As far as she knew, they could all be tens of ranks above her, meaning that she’d have about as much of a chance of getting away as she would of beating the entire group in combat. She stuck to her path, trudging up the side of the crater until she crested the lip.
“There’s a good girl,” the elf said, seizing her arm in a vicelike grip.
If he was surprised to see that she was human, he didn’t show it, instead, steering her by the arm away from the crater.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, scowling at the elf dragging her along.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he replied, giving her a nasty smile.
The elf was right about that. As they crested another rise, a small camp became visible down below. There, sitting at the center, was a large, wooden cage, complete with a very-familiar symbol carved into one side. Grace tried to struggle, but the elf’s grip tightened.
“Now, now. Don’t wanna go making any rash decisions, do we?” he said, turning to face her for the first time.
Grace felt her eyes go wide when she finally got a good look at the elf’s features. Up until now, she’d only seen his right profile – at least up close. But from just a few inches away, the tattoo twining over his left cheek and surrounding his eyes was unmistakable. She didn’t think she could ever forget the twining serpent tattoo of the cult of the World Beast Strangler.
***
Katherine appeared atop the walls of Sandhill, stepping from the churning red-edged portal and onto the sandstone walls. Following a moment later was the Captain of the Guard, Sadi’ and coming after her was Le’vine, Queen of the East Kingdom. A small contingent of powerful soldiers came next, flanking out around them as Hu Kiln approached with several guards of his own.
“You’ve made it just in time,” Kiln said as Sadi’ went over to stand by his side.
“I can see that,” Katherine replied, half-turning to look out at the bank of clouds and roiling dust in the distance.
She could feel it in the air. There was a distinct feeling of wrongness that that sandstorm carried along with it. The air was far too still, and even though the storm was at least a few minutes away, they should have been feeling something by now. Instead, all she got was the continual feeling of wrongness, one that she associated with only one other beast she’d ever come across.
“I think we can safely say that this is indeed a new Pinnacle King,” Le’vine said grimly, as the sky overhead grew dimmer.
“What did you do with the townspeople?” Katherine asked.
“I told them all to head indoors, lock themselves in and barricade them,” Kiln said. “There was no time for evacuation, and moving that many people outside the walls could have been a danger
ous proposition. I’m not so certain of my decision anymore…”
“No, you made the right call,” Katherine said, trying to time the storm’s arrival by counting the distance it covered in the span of ten seconds. “Moving that many people outside the walls, especially with no way of knowing where the Pinnacle King’s forces would be coming from, would have been a bad idea.
“How many soldiers did you manage to bring along with you?”
“Just over five-thousand,” Kiln replied. “They’re busy helping the last of the citizens into their homes, but I can already see several heading back here.”
“Good. The number one rule when facing these creatures is to keep your distance. We want to stay on the walls and not go down to engage them. If anyone goes down, killed by one of the enemy or not, remove their heads immediately. It is the only way to ensure they won’t come back and start wreaking havoc among your forces.”
Kiln nodded grimly, having already expected as much. They’d all heard the stories. Every kingdom had been affected by the Pinnacle King of Winter in one way or another. Now they were going to be facing an enemy of similar strength, and they were all too aware of the risks involved. They were making a lot of assumptions, of course, but seeing as the signs had been nearly identical – albeit in the fashion of a desert beast, rather than one of ice and snow – their theories seemed well-founded.
“We have four minutes before that storm hits,” Katherine said. “After that, assume we have another two or three before the monsters arrive. Show no mercy, and do not hesitate to drop powerful skills on their heads. There may be a few mighty monsters among their group. Even if the majority is made up of civilians, we can and should expect to have a difficult time.”
“That’s why I only brought the best along with me,” Le’vine said, clapping one of her men on the shoulder.
“Same here,” Kiln replied, looking at the wall of sand. “All we can do now is hope it’ll be enough.”
