by Eric Vall
“I think it has to use its beak or crest to be able to,” I agreed with a grateful sigh. “Thank the Maker, otherwise that thing would be invincible.”
“At least it wasn’t too hard,” Erin pointed out thoughtfully as Ashla jogged back to us. “Once we figured out the trick to it, that is.”
“Excellent,” Ashla said as she strolled to a stop. “Now, we just wait for a real squad to arrive, and their banisher can close the rift without a problem.”
At that moment, the rift swirled and warped as it shifted to a blood-red, murky color.
“Why did you have to say that?” Erin squeaked.
A swarm of elemental imps emerged in a storm of sparking electricity, shooting flames, and icy hail. Usually, I never balked at the idea of taking care of a gang of imps, but there must have been hundreds pouring from the rift opening without stopping.
Even worse, the portal yawned and widened as something large prepared to step through.
“Too late to regret it now,” Ashla replied as a battle-ready grin spread across her face.
A spotted, scaly green face as big as a house poked through the rift, and a fat, rotund body followed. It wasn’t very tall, but it must have been a hundred feet long, including the thin, whiplike tail. The monster crouched low to the ground with its legs spread to the sides like a squat lizard, and its face was squashed and wrinkled with folds of excess skin.
Its stubby maw opened to reveal a toothless mouth, and a kind of green slime dribbled from its jaws to the ground below. Spikes traveled from the top of its head down the center of its spine, and they increased in length as they got farther down the monster’s back. The spines on its tail were each longer than I was tall, and I shivered to think of it using those weapons to impale its prey.
“It’s a craus’lar,” Erin gasped. “I’ve read about this before.”
“Western?” Ashla asked.
“Yeah,” Erin responded. “I don’t think one has ever been seen this far east. Their slime is corrosive and immobilizing, and a hit from the tail is deadly. It eats its prey whole and digests them to create more slime.”
“That’s … not promising,” Ashla replied hesitantly, “to say the least.”
“I don’t know about this one,” I said carefully. “I think we might be outclassed.”
My team crouched half-hidden beside Ashla’s snowy wall, and the imps swirled around by the dozens as they searched for a target. It was only a matter of time before we were spotted.
“What do you want to do?” Ashla asked as she furrowed her brow in thought.
“Protocol says to guard a rift until backup arrives,” I pointed out, “but the Academy also doesn’t expect us to throw our lives away on principle. There are only three of us, and we’re not prepared for a rift. We could be justified to leave this fight.”
The girls glanced at each other before they looked back to me.
“Whatever you decide,” Erin told me, “we’ll follow it.”
“We’ll understand your choice either way,” Ashla added as she nodded in agreement. “You’re the leader. Don’t worry about what we’ll think.”
I pressed my side against the snowy wall while I considered our options. Three members didn’t make a full monster response squad, and Erin wasn’t usually expected to do much besides piloting and assisting during fights. Ashla wasn’t even a member of the Academy anymore, and she wasn’t obligated to carry out operations like this. How could I force either of them to go into a battle like this?
However, that wasn’t what came to my head first. The first thing I thought of was thousands of innocents being slaughtered by imps and hundreds of homes being wiped off the map by the enormous craus’lar in front of us. Both women had dedicated themselves to helping humanity, so how could we walk away?
“We’re going to fight,” I said with conviction. “Even if we can’t beat them, we’re going to make them hurt before we’re done.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Ashla answered with a grin.
“This is a fight worth the risk,” Erin responded as her amber eyes flashed with determination. “Let’s do this.”
I stood, and the girls rose up behind me. In the back of my mind, Sera stirred and roused her magic as she prepared for battle. Her dark powers left a strange, insidious feeling in the corner of my thoughts, but I couldn’t deny her magic, not when I needed it the most.
Suddenly, a pair of flying fire imps swooped a little too close, and they stopped with interest as they spotted us frozen in place by the wall. One chittered and flew a little closer, and its eyes widened as it realized we were enemies.
Quick as a striking snake, Ashla shot out a single shard of bullet-like ice, and it went clear through the closer imp’s heart. She sent off a second shard in quick succession, but the second imp dodged it with an awkward flutter of leathery wings.
“Shit,” Ashla swore, and she readied another spell, but it was too late.
The surviving imp shrieked and backpedaled as it screeched out a horrible, grating noise. The alarm was given, and our cover was blown.
Instantly, the imp horde erupted into angry chatters as they spotted us. In one large cloud of seething monsters, the swarm turned and bolted straight for us. Through the onslaught, I could just barely see the green, spiky form of the craus’lar as it turned to face in our direction.
Erin snapped her hands out to produce an enormous fireball, and the blast mowed through dozens of imps in an instant. They screeched as they burned and fell from the sky, but more took their place without a moment’s pause.
Ashla followed the mimic’s attack with an icy hailstorm that ripped into the imp swarm, but it was merely a drop in the bucket of the onslaught, and I readied my monsters as the imps neared.
My kalgori came out, and I ordered the single butterfly to multiply and whirl around us in a defensive shield. Dozens of kalgori became hundreds, and my team stepped into a tight, back-to-back formation as the ball of swirling, living knives dashed around us. Imps tried to fly through the barrier, but they were slashed to pieces by the blades of my kalgori, and the green butterflies felled large swathes of imps at a time.
“Nice going!” Erin complimented as we sheltered inside the kalgori ball.
“I just hope it can last,” I responded with a tight smile.
Slowly, my kalgori began to thin noticeably, and my stomach churned as the implication took hold of me. The kalgori rarely died, but every bolt of lightning or ice that hit just right could take out a single one of my monsters at a time. It was simply a game of numbers, and the imps were winning it.
“I’m going to do something risky!” I shouted to Erin and Ashla as they brandished their spells at the ready.
“Oh, more risky than this already is?” Ashla asked with a yell. “How can it hurt? Go for it!”
I slammed an essence crystal to the ground, and my sprucebore emerged with a puff of smoke. Its red carapace gleamed in the flashing light of the imp attack, and its body buzzed with a willingness to obey.
“Light ‘em up,” I told it, and the mental command I gave echoed my words.
My sprucebore flickered its wings once in agreement, and then it began to draw lightning to its treelike metal rod. The sparks surrounding my kalgori storm drew to the rod in quick succession, and then it began to absorb even the bolts of lightning from the imps. A few of my kalgori fell due to getting caught between my sprucebore and bolts of electricity, but I knew the loss would be worth it.
“Gryff, you better do something quick!” Erin yelped while she shot down an imp that slipped through the barrier.
Its leathery wings fried and curled as the fireball consumed it, but more were going to follow, and soon.
“Just a second,” I yelled as I waited anxiously for my sprucebore to build up more power.
My beetle monster began to glow with a powerful light that hinted at the tremendous amount of electricity it carried within. Yellow sparks shivered over its lightning rod growth, an
d its abdomen hummed faintly with restrained power.
Then I ordered it to let it loose.
An enormous explosion of electrical discharge rocketed from my monster and sliced a wide path of destruction straight through my kalgori. From there, it shot onward and arced from imp to imp in a multilayered burst of lightning that instantly destroyed every monster it touched. Over a hundred imps shuddered once and died even as the intense heat lit their bodies aflame.
“Our shield!” Erin shouted in warning as my kalgori formation fell into disarray.
Too many had died in my sprucebore attack, and the few remaining members struggled to swarm around us. Many of the survivors were injured, and their wings flapped unevenly as they attempted to follow my command.
“It’s fine,” I answered back as I recalled my kalgori, “they weren’t going to last anyway. Instead, I know the perfect monster for this battle.”
I threw out my pyrewyrm, and it shrieked as it launched onto the field with an eager thirst for blood. It was unsatisfied with ferrying around my teammates at Svellfrer’s Rest, and now it was going to show exactly the kind of battling it was made for.
My pyrewyrm launched into the sky on my command, and it spiraled into the midst of the swarm as imps of every color turned their focus to killing it. On my order, the pyrewyrm started its onslaught with an ear splitting cry that made my teammates wince and flinch even from this far away. The imps thrashed in pain and confusion, and those closest to my serpentine monster fell dead and bleeding from the sky.
Not all of the imps were drawn away, though, and a thick cloud of them swarmed toward us as they prepared their blasts of magical energy.
“Incoming!” Erin shouted, and she downed a few imps from the air with gouts of hot fire.
Ashla followed it up with a blast of chilled air that frosted many of the imps’ wings and hindered their movement, and a few more dropped to their deaths on the ground below.
I accessed Sera’s power with a grunt of effort, and I snapped a portal open just as the horde advanced dangerously close. A hundred or so imps blasted through my rift and into the Shadowscape before I squeezed the portal shut again.
“They’ll be back,” I panted to my teammates.
“Not comfortably, though,” Ashla warned with a grimace a she twisted her hands around a new spell. “Open up another portal right above me, and I can give them a proper welcoming.”
I grinned and thrust my hands upward to slam a new portal open directly overhead Ashla’s waiting hands. When the first imps came through, they ran straight into her spell.
Her spell turned out to be spearlike shards of ice that slammed upward into the rift opening as they wiped out dozens of imps at a time. Their corpses stacked over the spears as dozens of imps fell prey to the unstoppable force of their own momentum, and Ashla’s icy shards piled high with bodies.
As soon as Ashla’s spell slowed, Erin stepped in with her own gout of billowing flame. Ashla swung her axe off its holster to pick off stragglers that flew from the fire, and our enemies piled to the ground in gruesome displays of scorched flesh, dismembered corpses, and frosted stab wounds.
I shut my rift when the swarm was gone, and it closed more easily before it winked out entirely in a matter of a few seconds.
It seemed like Sera’s power was beginning to flow through me more easily. I regarded the change with mistrust as I considered what it possibly meant.
You know what it means, Sera hummed as she languished in the back of my mind. My power grows, and you grow too as you learn to accept me. Soon, you’ll be mine, and both realms will tremble in fear at the sight of me and my mortal consort, side by side as we lay waste to my dear, traitorous sister and every inch of land she has ever dared to set foot on.
No, it wasn’t like that. I was using the Archon, and not the other way around. I wouldn’t let her take over, not while I knew what she was capable of.
Suddenly, a fresh batch of gargoyles burst from the main portal, and they flew toward my pyrewyrm on wings that grated with the terrible sound of stone-on-stone. They were followed up by a shrieking flock of beakroks that shot toward us on naked, membranous wings.
“More flying monsters?” Ashla gasped in despair.
“Why are there so many?” Erin asked in confusion. “We can’t take them all, can we?”
“We have to try,” I said as I gritted my teeth and clenched my fist around my rhin dagger.
I had more monsters I could use, but conserving mana was of utmost importance right now. I would have to rely on my own hands to get this job done.
A group of beakroks spotted us, and they flew toward us as their long beaks snapped with uncanny strength. Their grayish, naked skin glinted with sweat in the light of the sun, and the disturbing sight of them made my gut churn with anticipation. I thought they were bad enough to fight at night on the airship, but this was worse, if anything.
I dashed to meet them, and my companions followed behind me closely. I ducked under one, slashed another with my rhin dagger, and pierced a third with my father’s dagger as I ripped it from the hilt and jammed it into the nearest body. Blood sprayed at my face as I fought, but I didn’t let the gore bother me as I fought to keep my fighting rhythm. Bodies became nothing but a series of coordinated targets, and I could feel my arms and legs following the motions of my Academy training. I buried my daggers into ribcages, through skulls, and across spines as I stepped from one monster to the next.
When too many beakroks came at me, I dropped my daggers and thrust my hands into opening a portal with barely a moment of delay. I snapped it closed with just as much precision, and I sheared off a few naked, ratlike tails as the beakroks hurtled past me into the Shadowscape.
Beyond the fight, I barely registered the movement of the craus’lar as it began to draw near on its steady, lizardlike legs.
My fighting rhythm thrummed along to the beat of my heart, and I snapped one dagger out to score a gouge along the side of a beakrok as it angled toward my back. Another threatened to dart past Ashla’s guarded stance, and I slammed a tiny rift open just in time to send it home.
More, more, more! Sera crooned as the Archon fed me power with willing glee. Embrace how we could work together. We’re perfect for each other, made for one another! Let my magic free!
I slid away from Sera’s wild thoughts with a shiver as I blocked her hastily from the forefront of my mind, but I couldn’t pay much attention to keeping her away. Beakroks swarmed me, and my hands and legs flashed as I fought them with dodges, kicks, and daggers.
Fire flew from Erin’s hands as she picked beakroks from the sky, and Ashla’s axe swirled in mesmerizing movements as frost crackled from Bessie’s double blades. I thought for one moment that we had a real, actual chance of beating them.
Then the craus’lar began its attack.
The scaly monster’s mouth opened, and green liquid dribbled from its toothless jaws. Slime oozed across the battlefield in a pool of thin, green acid that spread rapidly over the ground. The grass sizzled and smoked as it came into contact with the slime, and we stepped back in alarm as the hundred-odd feet between us and the craus’lar was quickly filled with corrosive ooze.
“We need higher ground!” Erin shouted. “Order back your pyrewyrm!”
“It can’t come back,” I responded as I backpedaled away from the advancing slime. “It’s trapped there for now!”
My pyrewyrm was stuck in a dense ball of flying magic and stony blows as imps and gargoyles writhed around it in a vicious, unrelenting attack. It was taking out a truly impressive number of enemies, but we would need another method if we wanted to escape the craus’lar’s flood.
I threw out my vingehund’s essence crystal, and my monster emitted a frantic bark as it faced the battlefield. Its pale blue, canine-like form was interrupted by two arched horns and two feathered wings that sprouted from its back. That would have to be our ticket out of this situation before it was too late.
I jabbed my fath
er’s dagger into another diving beakrok and carved a deep hole into its side before it collapsed, keened, and died.
“What do we do?” Ashla asked as she swung Bessie through another winged monster and sliced its elongated head from its shoulders.
“Both of you on my vingehund,” I ordered in a loud voice. “One at a time, and Erin goes first. We can’t go far, but it will have to be enough.”
The mimic dashed for my vingehund, and she swung onto my canine-like monster’s back. My vingehund pumped her wings as she strove to lift off from the ground, and eventually she managed to take flight. I directed her to set Erin at the top of Ashla’s snowy wall, and my vingehund followed her orders quickly before she flitted back to us.
Next went Ashla, which left me to defend against the beakroks alone. Slime oozed through the grass toward me, and I stepped back as it came within inches of my shoes. The sizzling grass charred with an odd smell that made me nauseous, and my stomach churned as I waited for the vingehund to return.
She did, and I hopped on eagerly as I directed her to her final flight. She set me down near the other two mages, and all three of us reunited on the thin, rounded top of Ashla’s snowy wall. Then the ice mage gestured out a spell to thicken our footing into a compact, steady plane of snow and ice.
A pair of beakroks followed us up, and I nabbed one with my rhin dagger while Erin blew the other one out of the sky with a fireball.
“What if the snow melts?” Erin asked in concern as the green slime puddled around the base of Ashla’s wall.
“Then we figure out a new plan,” I said grimly.
Suddenly, an alarmed thrill went through the bond between me and my pyrewyrm. It was in trouble, and the gargoyles had the upper hand.
I could do nothing but watch as my pyrewyrm began to plummet from the sky, and the women gasped as they noticed it fall. I recalled my pyrewyrm before it could hit the ground, and its grayish, wing-shaped crystal returned to my hand.
Yet another monster down.
“This isn’t looking good,” Ashla ground out as she clenched her hands around the haft of her axe.
