Wishing for a miracle, Hope drove his sword into the pool of blood that had almost hit him in the head. As he withdrew the blade, it glowed with a faint golden light.
The Crystal Blades kept up their relentless assault of the dragon until the unthinkable happened. Cyan Iceblade cried out “TAREN NO!” just before the large sapphire that was his heart stone exploded into thousands of tiny shards. He hung in the air for a moment, his blade went dark, and the clattered to the ground. The other weapons paused their attacks, uncertain what had just happened. Was he dead? That wasn’t supposed to be possible. The Crystal Blades were immortal, or so they had thought. Yet here was one of their own; lying on the ground, lifeless.
Embolden by the death of the sword that had caused her so much grief over the centuries, Silax renewed her attack with a new energy. She swatted at the blades as they continued their attacks. A jet of flame erupted from her mouth as Narissa clawed her hind leg, tearing several scales from it. She kicked back and felt her claws connect with the flesh on Narissa’s side. The large cat fell to the ground with a dull thud.
Hope swung his sword in a wide arc. As the blade struck the dragon’s leg, it passed through the flesh like a hot knife through butter stopping when it hit bone. He dragged the sword from the wound and dodged out of the way as Silax screamed in mixed pain and fury.
“You will be the first one that I eat, son of Sareth,” She growled at him.
Hope stood up boldly. “Mother Dragon, see that I no longer fear you. I have seen you bleed.”
Silax knew that the Elf was right. His sword was now a dragon killer. There was something else that was bothering her as well. From under the ground another, greater, power was emanating. It was a feeling that she had not had in a very long time. The Dragon Talons had been found and were now being wielded by one that had the power to use them. She began to feel nervous for the first time in a very long time. Between the power of Hope’s sword and the power of the talons, the tide could very easily turn to the Guardian’s favor.
Deciding that discretion was the greater part of valor, she jumped high into the air and flew off to tend to her wounds.
CHAPTER TEN
True Legends
“Do not linger where the dead walk.” -Dark Elf Creed
Taren was not prepared for the pain that hit him as he returned to the smoky air of the surface. He was able to determine that there was a battle and that it must be over. Beyond that, he was only aware of the excruciating pain in his head. He didn't know what happened to his companions and was not in any condition to go and look for them. He was only able to crumple to the ground and hold his head, whimpering, while he closed his eyes to try and keep the light out of them.
Painfully, he thought "Cyan? Cyan, where are you?" There was no answer,
"Arrre you all rrright?" A gruff voice asked, the sound making Taren wince.
"No, I am not,” He whispered.
"Let me help you, yourrr majesty,” Taren thought it was strange that his voice knew who he was, but he thrust the thought away.
Taren felt as if someone had reached into his head and removed a portion of his brain. The slightest thought caused him such pain that he wished that he would die, so it would end. That, however, was not meant to be. Sturdy hands lifted him, cradling him like a baby. He didn't know if he was hallucinating or not, but the person that was carrying him looked really weird. He seemed to be covered with thick brown hair and his face looked like that of a dog. The idea made his head throb.
"Rrrelax, majesty, I will carrry you to yourrr frrriends,” The weird dog man growled. "You will be fine.”
Taren laid his head on the furry shoulder and allowed himself to be carried. It didn't take very long for them to reach the site where the battle had taken place. The fires where the dragon's blood had fallen still burned as they approached. Hope was kneeling over Narissa, the strange blue healing light causing severe wounds in her side to knit themselves closed. He was growing paler by the moment. Shaunna stood next to him, her right arm hanging limply at her side.
When she saw the strange beast approach bearing Taren in her arms, Shaunna cried out," Taren!?", and ran over to them. She stopped several feet from them. "What, I mean who are you?" She asked.
The creature grinned wolfishly. "I am Grrrathius Wolftrrracker. I am a Canavarrr"
"I thought Canavars were extinct,” She said.
"Rrreporrrts of ourrr extinction arrre grrreatly exaggerrrated,” He said.
Grathius set Taren on the ground and began to pace on all four limbs. He looked like a large wolf. The only things that belied his true nature were the hands he had instead of front paws and the sword strapped across his back.
The young king just slumped to the ground, covering his head with his arms as he tried to keep the light from reaching his eyes.
"What is wrong with him?" Shaunna asked?
"I do not know,” Grathius replied. "When he came out of the underrr place, he fell to the ground. I do not know what happened beforrre then.”
Hope was pale and looked very tired when he joined them. A fine sheen of perspiration covered him. "She will live, but we cannot move her for a while.”
"That may not be feasible,” Grathius interjected. "The spirrrits here grrrow rrrestless. There is one that is trrrying to hold them back, but he will be overrrwhelmed eventually. Therrre is a prrresence herrre that scarrred them. I am trrrying to bolsterrr the one, but even my powerrr cannot keep so many at bay indefinitely.”
Shaunna's eyes looked a bit wild upon hearing this. "We need to get away from here. I am the one they will be coming after.”
Taren groaned as he rolled over and retched on the grass. "Where is Cyan?"
Hope slowly walked to where the sword lay on the ground, lifeless. He picked up the sword and the larger pieces of the heart stone and carried them back to Taren.
"Here he is, Taren. At least what is left of him,” He said as he laid the pieces on the ground. "He fought bravely. We don't know why it happened, but he is dead.”
Grathius tapped Hope on the knee. "It looks like someone is in need of yourrr assistance,” He said as he gestured towards Shaunna's limp arm.
"No, I will take care of this,” She replied. Hope is still too tired from helping Narissa,” She was looking around nervously as she spoke.
"Come,” Grathius said to Shaunna. "Let us put a splint on that limb. I will need some help. We need to create a way to move yourrr feline companion.”
They walked to the edge of the trees where Grathius found two straight sticks. He then set the broken bone, causing her to wince slightly. Pulling some strips of clean cloth, he bound the sticks to her arm.
"I am not a healerrr, I am a Shaman, but this should keep the bone frrrom moving again,” He said. "Now we need to find some long poles that we can lash togetherrr to make a sled that we can use to pull the cat.”
With Shaunna’s help, he lashed three logs into a roughly triangular shape. Taking some more cloth strips, he wove a rough net and strung it between the logs, leaving two strands as handholds. He then took the rest of the cloth and fashioned a sling for Shaunna’s wounded arm.
He quickly dragged the contraption over and laid it beside Narissa’s heavily slumbering form. With the one-armed help of Shaunna and the tired help of Hope, they transferred Narissa to the makeshift stretcher. Grathius grabbed the sturdy cloth handholds and, using his powerful hind legs, began to drag her towards the forest.
“Can you two get the king? She is much heavierrr than she looks, just as her fatherrr was,” Grathius commented. “It would be nice to have Orrran’s magical prrrowess herrre to help us.”
Shaunna stopped and turned. “How…”
Grathius shook his wolfish head. “Rrretrreat now, question’s laterrr.”
Shaunna did not argue and hurried to support Taren with her good arm. As they started to follow Grathius, the first spirit appeared. The spirit appeared within, what was once, the heart of the Gardens of Night. Shaunn
a’s heart soared as she beheld the lovely form of her mother, looking much as she had in life. The happiness was short lived as the mob of spirits materialized next to the dark elf spirit. Shaunna was horror-struck as she once again beheld her mother being struck down by an invisible blade. Shaunna knew that the spirit of the man that had murdered her mother would not be here. He had been the last person that she had been sent to assassinate before Taren.
As her mother’s spirit fell, other spirits began to raise all around them from the castle grounds and what had been the town that had been built around it. All of the spirits turned toward Shaunna and started moving toward h her for the second time in her life, she felt real fear. She didn’t see how she was going to get out of this.
She looked around, wild-eyed, and saw Grathius and Hope disappear into the forest. She tried to get her legs to move her in that direction as she bore the extra weight of Taren’s mostly disabled form. Sorrow washed over her as the knowledge that both she and Taren were going to die here.
She continued to urge her body to move as thousands of spirits surged towards her. She was just about to give into complete despair when walls of flame shot up on either side of her blocking the spirits from her view. Taren’s weight was lifted from her and a gruff voice yelled “Rrrun!!!”
Shaunna did not wait for a second invitation. She ran down the hallway of fire that led to the forest’s edge, closely following Grathius as he carried Taren. As they entered the forest Shaunna stopped for a moment to look back. The castle grounds looked just as they had before the spirits had attacked, with the exception of the two back strips that marked where the walls of fire had been. As she turned, she did not see the single spirit standing where the throne room had once stood sadly watching her go.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Reminiscence
“Paths through the past can be dangerous roads.” - Shaunna Nightshade
Dusk was just beginning to take over the land as they walked into the cave that housed the Wolftracker pack. It was a simple dwelling at first look. It consisted of a large cave that was used for pack gatherings, such as meals and meetings. A gigantic fire pit was arranged in the center of the cave. The floor was rough with scratches in the stone from centuries of pups roughhousing. Several long hallways led from the main room to where, Taren thought, the pack must sleep.
"Welcome to my home,” Grathius said with pride as they entered the large cave. "I have things I must attend to. Please wait here.”
All of the Canavars in the main hall stopped what they were doing and stared as Narissa was dragged carefully into the chamber. A small pup crawled up to her and began to sniff her face. The tickle sensation woke her. She quickly became aware of the discomfort if the dog people that were staring at her, so she changed back into her smaller, less feline form. Shaunna pulled a blanket from her pouch and covered Narissa with it.
The four waited in the main hall in silence, waiting for their host to return. As they waited, each of them walked back through the paths that had brought them to this point:
Taren remembered the look on his human mother's face as she revealed the painful memory of how he had come to live with her and her husband. He remembered the loss of two of his companions. He again wondered if this quest was going to be worth the trouble. How many more of his loved ones and friends was he going to lose before this was all over?
Shaunna allowed herself to walk along paths that she had previously forbidden herself from treading. She remembered vividly the day her world had been shattered. She and her parents had gone to visit the king to celebrate his children’s birthday. On the day of the celebration, the dragons attacked, killing almost everyone. She had thought herself the only survivor.
At the age of five, she had witnessed her mother's death at the hand of the frightened Elves. The castle had literally come apart around her as she fled from the mob that had pursued her, thirsty for her half dark elf blood. She had thought she was going to die until Ularen Hope had found her and healed her.
For twelve years she had to fend for herself, picking up various skills here and there; sometimes had been harder than others. When she was ten, eight years ago, she had found someone that she had thought would be her savior. He was a guard in one of the smaller towns near the ocean she couldn't even remember the name of and he was well respected by the town populace. He had seen her come into town, broke, filthy, friendless, and homeless.
He took pity on her, gave her a place to live, and got her a job as a barmaid in the tavern. She had been well-liked at her job. Nobody knew about her past or her heritage.
Then one day it all came crashing down around her ears. He had come home in a drunken stupor and forced himself on her. He beat her within an inch of her life. "I know what you are, dark elf witch," he had proclaimed to her as he grabbed an empty wine bottle to hit her over the head. As his hand rose for the blow, her hand trying to find some means of protecting herself, found the long knife that had fallen from his belt. As her hand wrapped around the hilt of the dagger, she rolled to the side to avoid the blow that had been aimed at her head. In one fluid movement, she had rolled to her feet and thrust the dagger into the man's heart. Four years of fury then took hold of her, and she pulled the dagger out of the man, plunging it back into his body several times before he fell to the ground lifeless.
As comprehension of her predicament dawned, fear set in. She had just killed a well-respected guard. True, it had been in self-defense, but how many people had been informed of what he knew about her. Stories of her great-grandmother's trial and execution sprang to mind without being consciously called forth. As the final vision of her ancestor's neck snapping in the hangman's noose flitted through her mind, her fear developed into sheer panic. She quickly packed the few belongings that she had managed to procure, grabbed the dagger, and fled the town without looking back. As she fled silently through the forest her body reacted as if all of her life had been leading her up to that moment. The skills she had learned, the mindset that had been forged through years of strife, and an attachment to nowhere all added up to the choice she made at that time. She dropped her first name, choosing instead to go by her surname, Nightshade. In the next few years, she became an assassin for hire, and she was very good at what she did. She had never failed to pull off whatever job she had been given, until now.
She remembered then the strange dark man that had approached her in the tavern in some un-named city telling her that he had a job for her. She was to track down an elf male in the forests around the old castle. A dark-haired human girl would accompany him. Nightshade was to kill them both. The man paid her in advance and told her exactly where to find her quarry.
When she found him, however, a large white tiger was mauling him, trying to rip his wings off, and the human female had just struck the beast with a sword, causing it to focus on her instead of the young man. The tiger leaped off the man to attack the woman. The man took the time to look around trying to find a weapon. After an instant, a strange sword had erupted into his hand. Nightshade recognized it at once. It was the Sword of Star Fire. At that point, things got very interesting.
No mortal was supposed to be able to wield that sword, yet here was her prey using it like any other sword. She watched the rest of the battle without actually seeing what was happening. It wasn’t until he had fallen unconscious due to blood loss that she had come to her senses. She recognized the signs immediately, having just recovered from near-fatal wounds. He was dying. She made a rash decision to use the teleportation crystal twice in quick succession. It had been risky, but it had paid off.
The wings would have been enough to convince her of her targets' identity, but his ability to use the Sword of Star Fire filled her with a new hope. Not only was the prince still alive, but he was the one that would fulfill the three-hundred-year-old prophecy.
Narissa remembered vividly the hallway and everything that had occurred before she found out that Dareth had betrayed her. She remembered the loathi
ng in his voice as he spoke of the young king. She was still having occasional flashes of memory from before the Lord of Night had stolen her life from her, but these flashes did not bother her as much as the first one had. She knew that she was going to be hunted by the Dark Lord and his brothers for failing him, but she didn't care. She wanted to hurt them as much as she could. She wanted them to suffer for the pain they had caused her and her family.
Ularen Hope had led a hard life since the disappearance of his mother. His father had been murdered two years before, and he and his mother had lived alone since then. They had run a medical clinic in a small out of the way town. After his mother disappeared, the burden of the clinic had fallen squarely on his shoulders, a burden that a teenager should never have to handle alone. For ten years he ran the clinic by himself. It was in this clinic that he had run into an old childhood friend, Shaunna Nightshade. She had sustained severe injuries somehow, and he had nursed her back to health. It was during this time that he had discovered that she was none other than Nightshade the assassin. He had turned a blind eye to it. Suddenly here she was, and he didn't know why. He had found his mother's old sword and discovered its secret of life. The sword had informed him of the life of the son of Paron, his mother's friend and king. He had dismissed the news until the young king had shown up on his doorstep. Now he was traipsing all over the place from one danger to another, just as his mother before him. He had not expected to enjoy it this much.
Nobody knew how long it had been before Grathius emerged from the hallway carrying a scroll in his hands. He beckoned them over to a large rock, where he smoothed the scroll out, revealing an ancient map of the world.
The companions all gathered around the rock, which was just high enough that they could all, with the exception of Narissa, sit on the floor comfortably and see the parchment that now resided there. They all stared at the ancient map, reliving stories that had been told to them.
Master's Mind: The Dagger of Dragon Rose: Book 1 Page 13
