by Mark Albany
“Frarris!” I called, grinning like an idiot as I watched the dragon take to the air once more, looking down at the hellhound as it launched a projectile at her.
“Get out of the way!” I warned. Norel and Braire didn’t need my interjection, rushing to the side of the cavern as Frarris looked down at the monster, looking like she was taking a deep breath before releasing what looked like a steady stream of green flame at it. The impact was too bright for me to look at directly. I turned away, trying to ignore the blast of heat I felt on the side of my head that knocked me back a few steps. Then I saw Aliana picking the lamp up off the pedestal and drawing one of her daggers, hammering it home onto the piece. It shattered.
The change in the room was almost instant. I felt a chill rushing through the air as the river of lava suddenly cooled, giving me a view of the still-glowing cinders as the river itself turned solid in a single stroke. The only light in the room now was the pile of destroyed limbs that was still flickering with the green flame Frarris had launched at it. I couldn’t help a soft laugh as Frarris dropped onto the ground where the river used to be, allowing Aliana to climb up over her wing since it was still presumably too hot for the djinn to walk across.
I jogged over to where the three sisters were now together on the other side of the chamber, speaking quickly and excitedly in elvish before turning to face me.
“Is that all?” Norel asked. “Was there anything else we needed to do?”
“No, the elf told me all we had to do was break the lamp,” I said, looking around. I was honestly a bit disappointed by the lack of results to be seen in the cavern but considering the amount of magic that had gone into making this place what it was, there was a lot I didn’t understand about it.
“We need to rejoin the battle,” Braire said with a firm nod. “Whatever happened here doesn’t take away the fact that there are still hundreds of people dying while fighting the undead back at the city. We need to help them, one way or another.”
I nodded, turning to face Frarris as she looked down at us expectantly. “I expect you can find your way to the capital?”
Frarris snorted, giving me the impression that my lack of trust in her skills would not be forgotten as she flapped her wings, pushing herself up into the air and out of sight. I turned back to Aliana, gritting my teeth.
“It’s time to return to the fight,” I said, and she nodded, quickly opening a portal for us to step through.
17
As we returned to the fortress, I noticed a massive change in the overall climate in the area. There was something happening that was apparent even as we were coming back through the portal. Cheers could be heard from where we landed and as we looked around, we saw that the battle-worn and weary troops which had been fighting Cyron’s undead forces back all morning had been replenished somehow. Tall men in what looked like gold and silver armor were fighting alongside them, helping to push the corpses back.
Not men, I thought with a small smile. Elves. Hundreds of them. Most looked like they were soldiers, ready for battle as they cut down what corpses had managed to reach the tops of the walls, while the rest used their longbows, shooting at those that remained on the ground. More than few, however, were dressed in long, flowing robes of purple and red and were summoning all kinds of spells,sending them down in flurries of strikes that shook the ground we were standing on.
“Impossible,” Aliana said softly, tears starting to brim in her eyes as she looked at the view of her people back in the land of the living, finally released from the prison that had kept them for however long, fighting against the evil that had sought to end them all that time ago. Seeing the reaction in the sisters’ eyes was enough to bring tears to mine, as I could feel the same utter wonder starting to fill them. It was almost enough to make me forget that there were a few troubles that still needed to be handled.
Almost.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as the memories that had been shared with me by an elf that I could see was deeply engaged in the battle on the ramparts came to the forefront. More was shared than he intended, I thought, a result of the sudden and very urgent need to bring about the end of their captivity. I’d learned more in those few seconds than I could have in years of training. Not to bash Aliana or her form of training, which was rather spectacular, of course.
Aliana turned to me, her smile and joy quickly fading when she saw the pained look on my face as I tried to make a quick and unnoticed exit.
“Where are you going?” she asked, taking my hand in hers and making me turn around to face her. I steeled my nerve. I knew she wanted to come with me, wherever I was going, but she really needed to be with her people again to help them fight and win.
“There’s something I need to do,” I said softly, pulling her hand to my lips and kissing her open palm. “Something I need to do alone.”
She opened her mouth, a gentle shake of her head telling me that she knew where I was going and wanted to say it was something better done with someone there to guide me, but she also seemed to know that any urging would fall on deaf ears. She’d known since our first stay in the cave that I was going to take my revenge on Vis for murdering my parents, and that it was something I’d do by myself. No help, no assistance.
She nodded. “Be safe.”
I smiled, leaning in to kiss her lips softly as I flicked my hands around, gently pushing the spell into the runes. I could feel the familiar spike in energy behind me as I took a step back, feeling myself twisting and arcing through the portal which quickly dropped me, breathless and struggling for balance, in front of the ruins we had camped in before. I knew it had to be here. There had been some talk about defending this place so as not to leave it as an easy campsite for our enemies, but there had been greater needs elsewhere. It was either here or the cave, and since the latter had been checked when we freed the elves, the former was the only solution.
As I stepped inside the ruins, I could hear the soft chanting I was familiar with. It was one of the best ways to get more than two or three minds melded into the work of being a familiar, meaning that I’d guessed well.
It hadn’t been a guess, not really. I remembered seeing the power coming from these ruins as I had been rushing back from the cave after my meeting with the elf spirit and knowing it was likely the spot where the familiars were placed, so I knew it was the first place I had to look when I came for them.
On my own. I pulled my sword from its sheath, feeling the power pulsing in the air around me, but it was all being fed elsewhere. None of it was being used here. In fact, all the mages present, two and a half dozen of them, seemed to be in a state of stupor. They looked like they had started mediating, but as Cyron had drawn more and more power out of them, there was very little left to give.
All but one, it seemed. There was a pair of eyes following me as I stepped into the room. They kept following me as I moved closer, blade in hand, the runes on it glowing a pale white.
Vis pushed himself to his feet and moved over to greet me. He looked tired. Like the rest of the familiars he had been pushed to the limit, and yet for some reason he had broken away from the chanting as the rest continued.
“So, the slave returns to his master,” Vis said with an annoyingly calm smile as he pulled a sword that was hanging from his waist. I glared at him, struggling to contain myself as I moved forward. I watched as he pulled the same spell I’d seen him use a hundred times in our combat training. It was something that came easily to him, and the natural movements and muscle memory might have helped him had I not been recreating this fight in my mind for what felt like forever at this point. I stepped in, ducking into the flash of lightning that arced toward me, not waiting to see it fizzle harmlessly into the warded walls, then pirouetted on the balls of my feet as I predicted his thrust with the blade followed by the strike with a ward on my feet.
I felt the ward wrapping around my ankles but I kept moving, both of us watching as the binds slipped off me. Vis had only
a moment to register his surprise as I continued the spin, using my momentum to swing the longsword toward his head. He jumped back just in time but was still left with a long cut that followed his cheekbone.
“Well, then. Someone’s been teaching you to fight, Grant,” Vis said, looking around and trying to find any kind of advantage. I knew what he was thinking. I didn’t need any bonds to know it, either. The confusion in his eyes told me he was wondering how I’d gotten so powerful in such a short amount of time. It never once occured to him that his ward had slipped due to the slippery nature of my power. I had learned to contain it, hold it, but others would need more time to grow accustomed to that.
I smiled. The cold fury in me was back. I was seeing every move Vis made, running it through my mind along with everything I knew about the man and predicting his every move. I knew I shouldn’t be toying with him but at this point, it was just me and him, and there would be no witnesses to what happened.
“Aren’t you full of surprises?” Vis said, trying to show some hope as he rushed toward the door and escape but was cut off as I flooded power into my blade and launched a strike at him, sending him stumbling back.
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing how furious I was just having him in front of me. I gritted my teeth, kept a firm smile and watched his every move. Aliana told me to be safe, and I had every intention of being just that. There was no need to underestimate him. Yes, I knew him, and I knew he was a sneaky bastard who was smart enough to have survived trying to betray Cyron. He would do anything to survive.
I tilted my head as I watched him cast a spell I didn’t recognize, raising my blade in defense as I watched tendrils of power stretching out from his fingers. But they weren’t coming for me, I realized. They were arcing toward the rest of the familiars who were still stuck in the trance, supporting Cyron. As I watched, he took control of the power they were leeching out, taking hold of everything they had and turning it on me. Cyron would not forgive him for this but it was a matter of survival. He needed to get past me, and then he could probably talk his way out of his master’s revenge, most likely using the excuse that if he hadn’t done that, Cyron would have lost all his familiars anyway.
A sneaky bastard who knew how to survive almost any circumstance, I realized. Except for when someone came wanting vengeance for dead family members, I mused, taking a step forward, watching as he gathered all the power rushing into his body into a powerful if wild shot aimed at me. I watched it arcing my way, waiting for a long moment before diving out of the way at the last second and rolling toward him as my blade arced up. I watched his look of power change to one of horror as his right hand fell away, the stump that remained spouting blood over the men and woman assembled. They didn’t even flinch as they continued their chanting.
“You bound their lives to yours, didn’t you?” I asked, watching him stumble back as he tried to stop the bleeding. “You may not realize it, but you just made my work here that much easier.”
“Your work?” Vis asked, his eyes wide open. I could see the effects of shock starting to set into his body. “I thought you came here to take revenge for some farmers you barely knew.”
“My family is my family, Vis,” I said, following him and placing my blade to his neck as he dropped to his knees. “My lack of knowledge of them doesn’t change the fact that you stole my future from me and forced me down a path of violence to serve someone else’s demands.”
Vis nodded quickly. “Yes! Yes! It was Cyron’s commands that robbed your parents of their lives!”
“And he will pay for that in due course,” I said with a nod. “But it was the pawn’s hands that took their lives from them. Simple they may have been, unimportant to you or even in the grand scale of things. But they were mine!” I roared that last word. “This is for my parents, you son of a whore!”
I raised my blade and chopped it down. As close as I was, I could feel his warm blood splashing up from his severed neck to land on my hands and arms as his head bounced away under the force of the impact.
I turned around quickly, hearing cries of pain as, one by one, the rest of the familiars fell to the ground. Some struggled, scrabbling for non-existent neck wounds until eventually they were all lying on the ground, dead.
I took a deep breath, turning back to look at Vis’ lifeless corpse. There was something inside me that had changed but it was hidden deep, a complex emotion I had no time to fully process at the moment. I took the time to wipe my blade clean on Vis’ shirt before getting to my feet and exiting the room, quickly opening a portal that dragged me back to the fortress.
18
As I returned to the fortress, the one thing that struck me was the silence I was greeted with. It wasn’t full, of course, as there were still the sounds of people moving about the place, trying to pick up after the battle had moved elsewhere, but the near-constant din of fighting was gone. I looked around, seeing the almost awed reaction from the people who saw me. I wondered where that was coming from as I made my way to the gates where a handful of soldiers, too tired or too wounded to keep on fighting, had remained behind.
“My lord!” one of them called as I approached, drawing my attention to the man as he ran over to where I was standing. “The Sisters Three have offered you an invitation to rejoin them at the battle front once you returned from your mission.”
I nodded. “How goes the battle?”
The man smiled, looking around at the two men with him. “The undead were forced back after the elves came to our aid, my lord. They lost their grip on the battlefield and the elves and whatever soldiers we still had standing pushed them back. They are retaking the city as we speak!”
“Thank you,” I said with a smile. I still wasn’t in the mood for much of anything, really. The bloodlust in me had been all but spent when I’d killed Vis and the rest of Cyron’s familiars, and hopefully gone a long way in crippling his ability to control his army of undead monsters. I marched past the gate they opened for me and made my way into the city. The silence persisted as I made my way through the pieces of street that had been torn up during Cyron’s golem attack. Even as I closed in on the original battle site, I found that there were still no signs of battle except for the bodies of the dead littering the city streets. A far cry from the state it had been in when we’d originally returned to the city, but I wasn’t fully sure which was the better option. With the blistering sun hanging overhead, the smell was already starting to become unbearable. I gritted my teeth, keeping my hand on my blade as I passed by the original walls. It was only when I reached the edges of the city that I heard the sounds of fighting.
It was a few minutes before I reached the front line. The ranks were manned by a mixture of the men in traditional Lancer armor, others who were wearing the scraps I’d come to associate with the soldiers fighting at the behest of the lords or maybe the civilians who had joined in our ranks, as well as the pale silver and gold armor of the newly-arrived elves.
Aliana was the first to see me, running over and quickly wrapping her arms around me. She held me there for a long few seconds before taking a step back, silently looking me over from head to toe, noting but not commenting on the blood that still stained by clothes.
“Is it done?” she asked simply, and all I had to do was nod before she tugged my arm, pulling me toward where the ongoing fighting.
“I suppose we have you to thank for the horde’s sudden change in demeanor that came to pass not too long ago,” Norel said with a smile, coming over to kiss me firmly on the lips. “It seemed like all of a sudden a vast majority of Cyron’s undead creatures lost the will to fight and began to wander around the battlefield listlessly, without any true purpose. There are still enough of them fighting to pose a threat, but it would seem Cyron has lost control of most of his horde. We are killing what few we encounter that weren’t torn to pieces by their comrades. They are too dangerous to be allowed to wander unchecked.”
I no
dded, agreeing. I looked over our new battlefield, realizing Cyron was the one having to defend himself now. What remained of his creatures were taking up defensive positions on a hill that led deeper into the forest. I wondered if the man was considering retreat at this point, or if he would refuse to accept defeat and would fight to the last monster. From the way the creatures were defending that hill though, it seemed like Cyron was having them protect him with their lives. No, that didn’t sound right.
I turned as Braire placed a light hand on my shoulder, offering her a smile. They all knew there was something different about me, something that had changed, but all three seemed to know it was a matter for another time and another place.
“What do we do next?” I asked, looking at the three women. “Is Cyron holed up in that hill yonder? If so, why hasn’t he started retreating yet?”
“Well, I would have to say he’s too arrogant to admit defeat,” Aliana said with a nod. “The man seems like he has more than a few tricks he’s willing to try.”
I looked around the hills, watching the way the united forces seemed to be corralling the undead troops, keeping them unable to expand anywhere. There was still a lot of open territory leading into the forest as well as Abarat’s ability to open up portals that could allow them to escape, and I wasn’t willing to give them that luxury. By this time, after a day of having to command an army that required their magical powers to keep control over, the two of them had to be exhausted by this point as well as severely lacking in options.
“We can’t let them escape,” I said softly, twirling my sword around to loosen my wrist. “We have to end this here and now. Otherwise, we’ll just be allowing them to do this all over again, in a place where we are in no position to defend. They are at their weakest here.”
