by Davis Ashura
Serena swallowed heavily. For all their accomplishments, their greatest test remained.
The Servitor stood against them. A lifetime of teaching, a lifetime of fear of her father’s power told her he couldn’t be defeated. Shet’s voice on Earth. The Master’s most powerful servant. The records and accounts of his abilities were scarce and vague, but Serena sensed that if anything they undersold the terror of an unbridled Servitor.
And for whatever reason, her father had yet to unleash his full abilities.
Serena bit back a bolus of panic when her father sourced his lorethasra. The power he held … it dwarfed the imagination.
“Come and earn your doom,” the Servitor called.
Rukh and Jessira were the first to take on his challenge. They moved with that odd synchronicity and flat affects Serena had noticed since the battle’s birth.
“You two.” The Servitor smiled. “I shall enjoy tearing you apart and learning your secrets.”
The Servitor blurred. Serena blinked. One instant, he had been standing still, the next he’d launched into motion, too fast to follow.
But Rukh apparently could. He blocked a blow from Shet’s Spear. Jessira ducked a return swing. She aimed a kick, but the Servitor ghosted away. He spun his Spear, and lightning-fast thrusts and swings reached for Rukh and Jessira.
Serena could barely see the strikes coming.
Jessira gave way while Rukh blocked all the blows aimed at him. He smiled after a final set of lunges and swings, the first emotion on his previously expressionless face. “If that’s the best you can do, I’m unimpressed,” he said.
“You’ll be impressed when I split you in twain,” the Servitor promised. Serena sensed her father source his lorethasra more deeply.
A tree branch crashed toward the Servitor’s unprotected head.
He managed to leap clear and snarled in outrage.
“I wish to leave this island and you impede my progress,” Travail said, shifting the branch to his shoulder.
“I will strip the fur from your hide,” the Servitor promised.
“Threats in the midst of battle are a waste of breath,” Travail answered. “Fight us or let us go.”
“Us?” The Servitor dipped his head in acknowledgment. “You are correct. I’ll fight all of you.” He darted forward and leapt over Rukh and Jessira.
Serena gasped. The Servitor landed before her. She desperately raised her jian and partially blocked a blow from the Spear. A line of fiery pain ripped down her side. Blood soaked her shirt. Serena tried to heal the wound, but found herself cut off from her lorethasra.
Two more cries of pain warned that Fiona and Mr. Zeus were out of the fight as well. They slumped unconscious. Serena stumbled backward as Rukh and Jessira arrived. They drove off the Servitor.
William’s sword glowed like it had when he’d fought Kohl Obsidian.
The Servitor retreated, a flicker of alarm on his face. “Who are you to wield the Wildness?”
William pressed forward. His eyes glowed as white as his sword, and he simply smiled in answer.
Serena screamed in frustration and fury. The battle of her life, and she couldn’t do anything to help.
She watched, impotent as Rukh attacked the Servitor from the right. Jessira came from the left. Travail with his branch swung from dead center. The Spear spun about in defense.
A blast of air hammered at Jessira. She held her ground and leaned forward. Her hand thrust forward. From it crackled green webbing. It billowed around Jessira like a sail caught between opposing winds. Her teeth clenched in effort. The air in front of the webbing glowed red. She slowly gave way.
Rukh and William relieved the pressure. They attacked with a storm of slashes and thrusts. All were smoothly blocked or shifted aside. The Servitor’s Spear raged lightning against William, but his glowing sword sucked it in. An earthquake sent Rukh leaping skyward. As soon as he landed, he immediately reengaged.
White-hot fire blasted from the Spear, aimed at Jessira. She twisted aside. The blaze struck behind her, hammering a hillside and ripping it apart. Trees snapped, broken into kindling. Mud and stones boomed in all directions. Serena’s ears ached from the thunderous explosion.
Electricity crackled and buzzed about the Servitor’s form. He levitated skyward and thrust the Spear forward. A wall of fire and lightning sheared off of it.
Rukh took it head on. Crackling green lines, similar to Jessira’s web, fractured about him. When it passed, he leapt for the Servitor, sword aimed like an arrow.
The Servitor dropped to the ground, barely evading the blow. Rukh flew past him.
Serena raged at the lock barring her use of lorethasra, clawing at it with thin braids of Fire and Earth, bare threads compared to what she could normally weave. There! She’d weakened it.
Fiona groaned, and Serena flicked a glance in her direction. Mr. Zeus sat up, blinking owlishly.
William came from the Servitor’s right, Jessira from the left, and Travail from the center. This time the Servitor was the one to give way. He defended.
A blast of air knocked William off his feet. He shouted as he tumbled end over end. Rukh took his place. He attacked with slashes and thrusts. Travail swung his branch.
William and Jessira returned to the fray.
Unable to defend against all their blows, the Servitor leapt into the sky again. He floated above them and hurled his Elements. Water poured forth like from a fire hose. Furrows burned into the ground. Mud exploded. Steam lifted, and visibility diminished to less than thirty feet. The stink of sulfur suffused the air, mixing with those of blood and ozone.
William and the others evaded all the blows.
The Servitor remained aloft. This time he sent snakes of hissing air and water at the four who stood against him.
Travail dove aside. William bent low behind a wall of dirt, but a flung stone slipped by his defenses. It clipped him, and he crumpled. His sword stopped glowing. Serena went to help William, but a rippling bar of lightning cut her off.
Again Rukh leapt upward, reaching an impossible height. He hurled a ball of fire. It screamed like tearing wood as it covered the short distance between the two men.
The Servitor raised a shield of air and a pulsing film of water.
The fireball impacted. Steam hissed. Thunder rumbled. The world seemed to stop. The fireball appeared frozen in time.
The pause ended. Rukh’s fireball concussed into the Servitor and sent him crashing into the ground.
“Get through the anchor line,” Rukh ordered Serena, his voice flat and emotionless.
Serena startled. The way to freedom stood clear. “Go!” She shouted to Mr. Zeus and Fiona.
“But—” the old man began.
“Do it!”
The Servitor’s face twisted into consternation.
Fiona and Mr. Zeus hustled through the anchor line. The Servitor hurled a bolt of lightning at them, but Rukh stood in its path. His invisible shield crackled with green webbing and defended against the Servitor’s blow.
Mr. Zeus and Fiona fled through the rainbow bridge, and Serena breathed out a sigh of relief.
“They might have escaped, but you won’t!” the Servitor promised. The window to the rainbow bridge constricted.
“No!” Serena cried out. She gritted her teeth and dug at the lock again. There! The lock blistered and broke. Serena sourced her lorethasra and healed the wound on her side.
The Servitor twirled his Spear and slammed the butt into the ground. “You will not live to see another day.”
A lance of lightning sent by Jessira knocked the Servitor’s Spear from his hands. It tumbled midway between Serena and her father.
The Servitor dove for the Spear. Serena did as well. He reached it a split second before her. She rose to her feet while her father’s hands curled around his weapon.
She stabbed at him with her jian.
The Servitor blocked. A swing of his Spear forced her to withdraw. The Servitor rose to his feet, a
nd she gave way further.
The anchor line began shrinking again, but not before Travail leapt through.
Rukh reached the Servitor in a blur.
While the Servitor blocked cuts and thrusts, the anchor line stabilized. Serena wondered why her father didn’t close it. Maybe it was because every time he tried, he had to focus on his protection.
She continued to watch the battle, unsure how she could help. The combatants moved too swiftly for her to be of use.
Jessira trailed on Rukh’s heels, and the two of them blazed forth like arrows.
The Servitor blocked their blows, calmly giving ground, blocking the attacks with his spinning Spear. He parried and deflected thrusts, slashes, and cuts. One blow nearly penetrated his defenses, and he leapt back, his jump covering twenty feet.
Fire surged down the length of Shet’s Spear. It erupted from the tip, straight at charging Rukh.
Rukh bent backward at the waist. He slid forward on his knees, the back of his head dragging an inch off the ground. He snapped upright. A cobra-fast strike sliced into the outside of the Servitor’s thigh.
The Servitor snarled wordlessly. Blood dripped from his wound.
Jessira slashed and cut deeply into the Servitor’s side.
The Servitor hunched in pain, and leapt away once more. After landing, he attempted to heal himself with his ocean-deep lorethasra.
Serena attacked before he could fully do so. From her hands roared a wall of fire.
The Servitor glanced her way. Serena shouted in fury when another lock settled upon her. Damn it!
William reentered the battle. His sword glowed once more. From it erupted a blistering spear of fire.
Serena cast about, desperate to find a way to help. Her gaze fell upon a bow and sheaf of arrows next to the body of a fallen mahavan. She seized the weapons, quickly strung the bow, nocked an arrow, and waited for her moment.
The Servitor leapt away from Rukh, Jessira, and William. Her father’s back was to her.
Serena let the arrow fly.
The Servitor must have sensed its whistling flight because he spun about. He blocked the arrow with Shet’s Spear. Before he could recover, Rukh launched inside his guard. A flying knee to the ribs sent the Servitor stumbling back.
“Get through the anchor line,” Jessira ordered.
Serena didn’t need to be told twice. She dashed for it, but William made it there first. He jumped through, and Serena followed. Her body stretched to snapping, but she embraced the pain. Freedom lay on the other side of the suffering.
“Good Lord,” Daniel said. He’d been standing no more than ten feet away when Dalton immolated, and some of the fire must have caught him. Soot covered his face. His hair stood out in singed, uneven lengths. He stared at Jake through blood-shot eyes filled with horror.
“He’s the one who enslaved me and William,” Jake said, trying to explain his actions. “I had to kill him.”
Daniel shook his head.
Anger at his friend’s refusal to understand burned within Jake. “Forget it,” he said. “We still have a fight to win.”
Daniel appeared on the verge of saying something.
Jake’s eyes widened. Someone large loomed behind Daniel, an indistinct figure rising out of the smoke and clouds of dirt.
A mahavan.
Jake shouted a warning.
The features of the mahavan became clear. Adam Paradiso. His sword rose. Daniel spun around. He lifted his arms to ward off the blow.
“I’m sorry,” Jake heard Adam say.
Jake pushed Daniel out of the way. Adam’s sword thrust forward. Jake’s eyes widened. The blade quivered as it thrust forward. Raindrops glanced off its tip, dripping off its edge, and guard.
Pain speared through Jake’s chest.
William exited the anchor line and entered chaos.
He’d escaped one battle and found himself in another.
Braids of fire roared across the sky. Superheated air punched through embankments of earth. Lines of water exploded into steam, and the world shook, rumbling with staccato blasts of thunder. The smell of ash and blood smoked the air.
William held his sword at the ready. It no longer glowed, and he couldn’t rightly figure out how he’d set it alight to begin with.
Serena exited the anchor line and cursed on arriving. “What the hell is going on?”
“Look out!” William pulled Serena down on top of him. A line of fire roared overhead, inches from where her head had been.
Serena rolled off. “Where are our people?”
William had no idea. He could barely hear her over the tumult. He quickly looked around. There! “Fiona and Mr. Zeus.” He pointed.
The two older asrasins fought back-to-back against three opponents, moving spryly despite their age, and holding their own.
“There’s Travail.” Serena said.
He still had his large branch and swung it about, barely keeping the mahavans at a distance. William saw four mahavans face off against Daniel and Jason. His friends fell back. A mask of blood covered Jason’s face.
William’s jaw clenched. “Attack on my mark. You’ll know when.”
He wove Air and vaulted upward. At the apex of his leap, he yanked his arms to the side. A four-foot wide trench ripped open. It extended dozens of yards. One of the mahavans attacking Jason and Daniel tumbled into it.
The other three spun about. They saw William and gestured. Serena unleashed a fist of air and a line of fire. Her attack caught another mahavan. He screamed. The other two fled before regrouping behind an old, white bus.
Three more mahavans charged at William and Serena from only a dozen yards away. William drained the lorasra around him—he should have done it sooner—and waited in anticipation.
The mahavans showed no sign of being affected.
Nomasras.
William readied braids of Earth and Fire. He lifted a boulder and accelerated it like a rifle shot. A mahavan crossed her arms. A cross of fire shot out and split the stone in half. Another mahavan caught the two pieces of rock and redirected them at Travail.
The troll saw them at the last second and ducked the one aimed at his head. He couldn’t evade the other. He grunted in pain when it struck him in the shoulder. The tree limb tumbled from his grasp.
Serena did a front roll and came up with a handful of dirt and mud. She hurled it at the mahavans. William ripped up more dirt. He and Serena formed a muddy funnel cloud. It wouldn’t hurt the mahavans, but it would splatter across their faces and obscure their vision.
While the mahavans wiped at their eyes, William and Serena used the momentary respite to retreat toward where they’d last seen Jason and Daniel.
William startled when he heard a crack like snapping wood, followed by a high-pitched scream and an enraged “Goddammit!”
Lien.
He searched across the battlefield and found her huddled fifteen feet away. She clutched an obviously broken arm, appearing more furious than in pain.
“Where’s Mr. and Mrs. Karllson?” Serena asked.
“There.” Lien pointed at a set of earthenworks with her good arm. “Mrs. Karllson’s knocked out. It’s only him. He won’t leave her side.”
William thought quickly. “Get to Mr. Zeus and the old woman he’s with. Join up with Travail, the troll. The four of you need to link up with Mr. Karllson.”
“There’s too many mahavans,” Lien said. “We can’t hold much longer.”
“We don’t have to,” William told her. “All of us made it through the anchor line.”
“Except for Rukh and Jessira,” Serena reminded him.
“They’ll make it,” William said, praying his confident sounding words would become the truth. “We’ve got our own battle to deal with until they do.” He gestured to Lien. “Go!”
She nodded before sprinting to Mr. Zeus and Fiona, who fought nearby. She moved awkwardly with her broken arm clutched to her side.
“We need to join with Daniel, Jason
, and Jake,” William told Serena.
“Too late,” Serena said. She pointed.
Daniel was down. Adam Paradiso had his sword ready. Four mahavans flanked him. Jason stood alone against them.
“Shit!”
The anchor line whined, a screeching sound like grinding metal. William had never heard one make a noise like that. Apparently, no one had. Both sets of combatants paused.
The keening increased, and the anchor line distorted. The rainbow bridge flickered momentarily before regaining coherence. It flickered again. The colors brightened. Faded and brightened before stabilizing. The doorway bulged, stretching like a balloon before snapping open with a thundercrack and disgorging Rukh and Jessira.
William broke into a relieved grin. The odds had shifted in their favor.
Rukh and Jessira surveyed the scene with faces devoid of emotion. Shockingly, they sheathed their swords before blazing into motion.
Three mahavans fell to Rukh’s fists or kicks before the others could even ready themselves. Then he and Jessira paused their attack.
The other mahavans retreated from William and his friends, withdrawing into a single, condensed cluster. Eight of them.
Serena’s Isha stood at their head. He glared defiantly at Rukh and Jessira.
“You are Adam Paradiso,” Rukh stated, his voice inflectionless and mechanical. “You are deemed the finest warrior on Sinskrill, yet we both know you cannot survive us. We already defeated you once. Retreat to Sinskrill.”
Adam sneered. “We have our lorethasra this time. And when the Servitor comes—”
“The Servitor is defeated,” Jessira said, her voice every bit as emotionless as Rukh’s.
“No,” Adam whispered. His face drained into a rictus of disbelief.
Rukh exploded forward. This time four mahavans fell. William blinked. What the hell had happened?
Jessira launched. Two more mahavans fell. This time William could follow her movements. Jessira had struck with a straight left to the temple and a spinning kick to the liver.
“Peace!” Adam shouted. He dropped his sword and held up his hands in surrender.
Rukh nodded, and life returned to his features. Anger suffused his face. “I won’t kill you, and peace you shall have. Go back to Sinskrill and never return.”