by Mark Tufo
The Lycan were in our midst. Men and women were being struck so hard they were launched into the air, sometimes as much as fifteen feet, then crashing back into the earth with significant impact injuries. I realize fifteen feet doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the equivalent of jumping from a second story window; I wouldn’t have done it. And most hit the ground in severe positions, sometimes landing on a shoulder, sometimes straight on their heads. Bones snapping, in addition to the bleeding punctures and spilled innards, were depleting our ranks. The numbers were fairly even, but with the close combat fighting, the rifles were practically ineffective, and at triple our size, the advantage was all lupine.
I had picked up a sword and was swinging that with my right hand as I hacked with my axe-laden left. Under swipes, away from bites, over legs; I moved fluidly and with all the speed I could muster to deliver cold steel justice. Kalandar had a ring of five Lycan around him. He’d wrapped his powerful hand around the throat of the first one willing to launch itself at his body. He’d squeezed hard enough, the eyeballs burst forth from that unfortunate beast’s head. Then he’d used the still warm body as a weapon, swinging it around and striking the others. Three jumped out of the way; the fourth was caught in a skull-to-hindquarters crushing blow. He yelped out as contact was made. Teeth and fur went flying away.
I don’t know if the animal survived the contact, as I found myself being approached warily from two sides. They circled cautiously, crouched low, claws at the ready to deliver whatever damage they could. I feigned an attack to the one on my left; I surprised it enough that it stepped back. I turned to my right, the other had already made its move. My axe cleaved its paw in half, the blade coming to rest a third of the way up its arm. Spittle flew from its mouth as it screamed in surprise and pain. I was preparing to finish him off with a sword thrust through his ribs when I was batted to the side, my shoulder laid bare from the ruthlessness of the sudden attack.
“Motherfucker,” I muttered as I rolled on the ground. The one that had delivered the damage pounced onto my chest; anything resembling air was forced from me. It was only muscle memory that made me thrust my weapon into the belly of the beast, it was not enough to kill him but thankfully it was enough to make the lycan jump off me. Now I just had to recover quickly enough to prevent him from attacking again. I couldn’t think of the pain because I couldn’t get enough air to my mind to process the information, though the more oxygen I did start to take in, the more the pain flooded through me.
“Linnick, are you all right?” I was barely able to push enough air over my vocal cords and through my clenched teeth to ask the question.
“Do not be concerned for me, Tallboat. This body is exceedingly resilient.” I was suffering deep in my misery but not so far that I didn’t realize she was hurting as well. Not sure if she’d been struck or I had rolled on top of her.
It was Azile to the rescue. I watched a tendril of fire no thicker than a pencil lead fly past my face and into the chest of the Lycan. Shock registered on his face as his heart was illuminated through his skin and fur. Looked like a ruthless way to die, and I was glad it was him and not me. I coughed and rolled over, wanting to push myself up. My left arm was junk; if I had wanted to, which I most certainly did not, but if I had pulled the sliced fabric away from the wound I would have been able to see the gleam of bone. A soldier and a Lycan were fighting nearby; the soldier backed up and fell over a Lycan ready to pounce.
“STOP!” I shouted, and surprisingly, it worked. I just needed half a minute to collect myself and fight on. I felt the power gather in my mind then flow out of me. I’d not been prepared for the results. In a circle roughly twenty feet around, nothing moved. The soldier was about to hit the ground. The Lycan had launched; his feet no longer touching the soil. It was amazing, but I had no idea how long it was going to last. I got to my feet as quickly as I could and plunged my sword straight through the Lycan’s chest. Then, realizing his forward momentum would still take him into the soldier and most likely cause a lot of damage, I forced the animal down. There was not any part of me that felt guilty for killing him. Maybe there should have been, but I couldn’t muster any.
Two more Lycan entered into my sphere of influence and were immediately trapped. I was like an orb-weaving spider and anything that came into my lair was captured. I hate to keep using the spider analogy, but draining one of them dry was just what my depleted and injured body needed. I worried that the blood might be as stagnant as the body it was trapped in; I needn’t have been. I pulled quarts of the vital fluid into me, enough to where I could feel it sloshing around in my belly. It was disgusting and it was glorious. Power surged through me, the pain in my shoulder ebbed and then completely faded away. Had I taken a moment, I’m sure I would have noticed the wound knitting itself. A Lycan, backing up from Kalandar, placed his left leg into my pitfall and was stuck more effectively than had I chained him.
He yanked desperately at his non-moving appendage, and when he realized he could not free himself, began to chew into his knee in a desperate bid to get away. Kalandar wasted no time. He hit the animal so hard in the side it was ripped free from the rest of its immobile leg. He then proceeded to crush it under his heel.
“You all right?” I asked the soldier, once my spell fell away.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said as I helped him up. He wanted to know what happened. Hell, so did I but it was going to have to wait. The Lycan were taking a beating from Azile. She had something that looked like an electric whip coming from her fingertips; it would lash out, and where it connected, there would be left a smell of burning fur and flesh. Not wholly unpleasant, surprisingly. I had to think Lycan meat wouldn’t taste so great, though.
“Shit,” I said as I caught movement to our side. Landian warriors were running full-tilt away from fighting the polions and straight toward us. They were moving silently, but a grim, determined look was upon their features. Whatever they were doing, fear didn't drive it. The Lycan gave not two shits about this new invader, and we weren’t going to last long if we had to battle on two fronts. I was once again fighting two-handed, stabbing with my sword and hacking with my axe, after I ripped the snout off the Lycan I was fighting, I turned to confront the Landian warrior who was fast approaching. His eyes let me know I wasn’t the intended target. They were focused on a Lycan behind me; I didn’t like the fact that he was going to have to pass so closely. If this was a ruse, he could inflict some serious damage before I could retaliate. It took everything I had to not strike out or, at least, push him away.
Wasn’t sure when we’d become friends again, but when he plunged his long spear into the Lycan’s side, as far as I was concerned, we were old chums. What had looked like our demise had quickly turned with the addition of so many Landians. The Lycan were being forced back, sometimes four or five soldiers on one. They knew a rout when they saw one, they just had no avenues of escape. We had them hemmed in; the only way out was toward the polions, who were still somehow receiving a battering. Sonic booms were blasting in the sky, tough to say from who, but we could feel the energy from the release of the weapons being deployed. Though the sun was out and there wasn’t a cloud hanging, the sky was black, and it could not all be blamed on dirt, dust and debris.
The Lycan finally broke. Better to run into the teeth of the enemy you don’t know, I guess. The problem with that was the awkward, uncomfortable state we now found ourselves in with the Landians. Yeah, the Landians and us were enemies with the Lycan, but that didn’t make us friends. That became painfully obvious.
“Is there going to be a problem?” I asked the closest warrior.
“There appears to be many of them,” she answered dryly.
“Giant war is going on and I happen to run across the only other sarcastic person in the area.”
“I would say that you are attracting your own kind,” Azile replied. “He is asking if there is a problem between our two peoples.”
“Not from us–we are loyal to I
nuktuk. We left when the false god sacrificed our leader to her pagan beliefs.”
“And you are?” I asked.
“Lyndajin.”
“Thank you for yourself and all of those with you.”
“It did appear that you had your hands full.”
“You’re about as dry as…”
“Michael, allies are in short supply,” Azile interceded.
“Right. I wonder what Halifax is thinking now that she realizes Gabriel was never her friend,” I said as I shifted my attention to the fireworks happening in the distance.
“We are under the assumption that Gabriel gave Halifax her powers; if that is the case, why does he not just take them back? It seems foolish that he would continue to battle her,” Kalandar said.
“What are we missing?” I asked.
“I can think of several possible answers, none of them or all of them could be true. The powers are hers and hers alone. Possibly, Gabriel gave them to her and she has found a way to hold on to them…or perhaps it is another who bestowed them upon her.”
“The Great Deceiver,” Linnick said in hushed tones. “Halifax could save us and kill us, all at the same time.” We all looked to the ley line that appeared as if it was going to melt. The Lycan had disappeared among the ground clouds; there was a chance they could escape, but to me, it seemed as likely as a mango hiding from the blades of a blender. No matter what damage Halifax managed to do to the polions, they kept advancing. We were going to be fighting again and soon.
“The root cellars!” Benjamin yelled. People were looking around. “Get into the root cellars!” he shouted. Soldiers began to grab the injured and head back into town.
“Retreat?” I asked.
“We can rebuild Talboton, but we’re going to need our people to do it. If it was just the underworld beasts, I would say we hold but…”
Couldn’t fault him that, we were fighting beings of legend; what chance did a bunch of humans have? He turned to go. Azile, myself, Kalandar, Lyndajin and her people stayed put.
“I meant us all–there is room for us all.”
“Halifax and her followers have taken our leader and the polions our land…the angels and demons would dare to take our very souls! We will stay and we will fight, for we have nothing left to lose and everything to win.”
“Go, Ben. I am and those with me are particularly suited for this challenge,” I said. “Nothing would give me more hope than to know at the end of all this, the Talboton people still stood.”
He looked at us all. “You are the bravest of…people…” he was looking at Kalandar for that last word before continuing, “I have ever known, nothing here will ever be forgotten.”
I gave him a quick hug before he ran and caught up to a pair of injured soldiers struggling to move quickly enough.
“The only ones that give a shit about legacies are the living,” I said as I got next to Azile.
“Then perhaps we should make sure we make it through the day.” She gave me a small smile, I turned and gave her a light kiss.
“I do not much care for humans,” Kalandar spoke. “That being said, I count you two as friends, though I have had little experience using that term. I thank you for that. If neither of you should live through the day, take comfort in the thought that I will not soon forget you.”
“Gosh, Kalandar, you make me feel all gooey inside. Heart fluttering, legs weak, all of it.”
“Tallboat!” Linnick admonished. “This is how he shows his feelings, you cannot fault him! He is expressing it in the best way he knows how.”
“Damn it, stop making me feel bad. Thank you, Kalandar, it has been a pleasure knowing you as well. Maybe instead of saying our goodbyes, we watch each other’s backs.”
“I will do that.” He turned me around.
I smacked my palm to my head. He had taken me literally. We had a few minutes before the storm made it to us, always the worst time–ask any warrior. To have all that adrenaline blasting through you, the dread, the fears, the worries, and to have no outlet for it. The energy builds inside; you feel as if your mind is going to give itself some cerebral concussion by the way it is thrumming within your skull. I have always hated this part, even when I was nothing more than a kid in the parched deserts of the world. The dread for myself and my personal safety was only overshadowed by the fear for the safety of those with me. Back then I did not care about the ultimate goal we were trying to accomplish. I didn’t give a shit about protecting the world’s energy supply or stopping the spread of differing religions or ideologies–it was about surviving, about my friends surviving, about getting back to my family–that was all that mattered back then. The only thing that had changed between then and now was I did care what we were fighting for. This was much bigger than me; I was fighting for us all, for our right to exist in the world we called our own. That mattered above all else–except Azile. I would die a thousand deaths to make sure no harm befell her. If I didn’t think she would have kicked my ass, I would have shoved her in a root cellar and threw away the key.
“Linnick?”
“Don’t even ask, Tallboat. I know I cannot do much, but I prefer to stay with you until the end.”
“Good end or bad end?” I asked her.
“You already know the answer to that.”
Azile reached over to grab my hand; I gladly took it. Got real weird when Kalandar’s tabletop-sized hand reached down as well to grab my free one.
“What the hell,” I said as I took it. The four of us together, we were some skewed version of the Avengers, and as long as I wasn’t that rubber man, it was cool. I wondered how I would look in a lycra suit, then I got claustrophobic thinking about how tight those fucking things were. Hell, I didn’t even wear underwear because I hate any part of me being constricted. If it had been socially acceptable, I would have just walked around naked with flip-flops, most of the time. Unless it was cold or I was going to go swimming…I didn’t want to have to explain the shrinkage.
Kalandar leaned over. “Your back still looks well; let us hope it remains that way,” he said as he let go of my hand to prepare his magic.
“You are my wife in every way possible, Azile. I just need you to know that,” I told her as she also released my hand.
“I do not accept that, Michael Talbot. You are going to have to show me.”
We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. “Oh, I’ll show you alright.”
“We were having a moment!” she shouted. “And you had to go and ruin it.” Though she was smiling as she said the words. When she turned back to the front, she was all business.
“I wish I had studied harder during my time at Hogwarts. I was always off exploring and getting into trouble…how much more would I be able to do had I buckled down and studied Defense Against the Dark Arts? Hold your shit together, Talbot.” I ended my tangent. Even Linnick, who was less than a foot away, didn’t hear my words.
The polions, who thus far never seemed to care for their losses, looked as if they might be in active retreat. Unfortunately for us, advance and retreat led them to the same place: our doorstep. The only thing we could hope for was they would keep moving on by and not look to fight. The hitch was they were taking the rest of the gang with them. Halifax and the fiends were slugging it out with the angels; some had fallen on both sides, though it was impossible to tell who.
It was Halifax that reached us first. I’d come across more than a few people in my life that had tipped the far side of the sanity scale. It was amazing what a damaged mind could do to the appearance of a person. Sure, there were some that had found a way to disguise themselves, but most could not and Halifax fell within that order. Her eyes were both sunken and open wide; her lips were pulled into an exaggerated smile that looked like a child might draw, the mouth too round, too many teeth showing. Her posture was canted to the side, as if she knew she had something to hide, just wasn’t exactly sure what it should be.
“You live?” Surprisingly she w
asn’t asking me; she was looking at Lyndajin.
“You have attempted to destroy our ways, who we are as a people–you are an abomination!” Lyndajin shouted.
Personally, I would have gone for the more diplomatic approach, considering, for now, we needed to pick our side of the line drawn in the sand and at this exact moment, it just so happened to be her patch of beach we found ourselves on. Sure, it was littered with quicksand, but that isn’t as big a problem as I thought it was going to be when I was in my youth. Was there a show on in the seventies and eighties that didn’t have someone sinking in a quagmire?
I could see Halifax preparing some horribleness to unleash. “Hold on… let’s just hold on for a second here!” Foolishly, I stepped in front of whatever might be coming.
It took long seconds for Halifax to first acknowledge my presence, and then even more to sift through the wreckage of her mind to figure out who I was. When she finally got there, it wasn’t good. Alarm immediately registered on her face.
“Halifax, we’re on the same team here!” I held up my empty hands. “Gabriel lied to you; you know that now!”
“You’re lying,” she shot back defensively and without conviction.
“About what? About wanting to save what’s left of Landia and Talboton? I don’t think so,” I told her.
“You’re…you’re fighting with a demon! How can you possibly be fighting on the side of right!?”
“I hate to point out the obvious, but have you taken a good long look at your backup?” I asked.
“I need no help!”
“Be that as it may, who are you fighting?” You could be as crazy as any fucker that said to hold his beer before he attempted to slide down Niagara Falls in some sausage casing, but it would be hard to deny the identity of someone who was actively attempting to kill you and everything you held dear. Though in reality, I thought the only thing Halifax held dear was herself.