by Rosie Scott
Azazel dispelled the magic and pulled his longbow from his back before he quietly started to string it for use. Once it was prepared, he grabbed an arrow from his quiver and slowly walked to the edge of the path. He pulled the string back even before ducking out, ready to shoot.
...and then, he didn't. From beneath a flap of his hood, I saw the archer frown, before releasing the tension on his weapon and letting it drop to his side. Holding the bow and the unused arrow with one hand, Azazel repeated his detect life spell, and no matter where he held his hand, no red energy formed.
Azazel walked back to us a moment later, his black eyes finding mine between the Sentinels and the rocky wall beside us. “Is there something wrong with my eyes, Kai? I could have sworn the spell showed that someone was there.”
“No, your eyes did not deceive you. I saw it as well.” That was all I could say because I couldn't explain it.
“Maybe they went invisible,” Nyx whispered from behind Cerin.
“The spell still detects life through invisibility. It was how your mother found you behind her throne in Quellden,” I told her. To Azazel, I added, “The shape made it look like a person, but perhaps it wasn't. Maybe it was a bird that sensed you and took off.”
“But I heard nothing that would suggest it moved,” Azazel protested. “I heard footsteps earlier. That's how I knew someone was there at all. Now, they're just...gone.”
“Well, we need to continue on,” Uriel stated, though he looked just as confused as I felt. “Stay cautious and prepared, Azazel.”
The archer nodded before he spun to keep moving up the path. He repeated the spell before he turned the corner again, but whoever had been on the route earlier was nowhere to be found. I felt uneasy; if we were nearing Aleyah's location, it was possible other gods traveled through here to take advantage of her powers. And if we were dealing with the gods, it was impossible to know exactly what they were capable of, mainly because we had no idea which gods were located in Eteri right now at all.
Our army advanced, curving around the edges of the cliffs and into the midst of them. Ahead, the path was little more than a passage between two jagged and uneven walls of dark rock. Looking up, I could see that the crags stretched even farther into the sky past the ledges above us. There were many levels to this landscape, and part of me worried we would lose our way. There were many points where the rock walls would part, and the path would split. We trusted Azazel's judgment when he would take one route over the other.
Cicero had said Esen was visible from the mouth of Aleyah's cave, and if that was true, we had a long way to travel. We were completely engulfed by rock, and the only way to see the village from this distance was to be far above it. It was impossible to know how much longer we needed to go to get to the top when we could see nothing but sky directly above us and a seemingly never-ending path ahead.
Morning crawled into afternoon, and the faintest hint of a breeze came whistling through the rocks from far before us. It was a good sign that we were coming to the end of the narrow passageway, which was a relief given that Maggie was having a lot of trouble fitting through the rock. As much as the engineer claimed she was okay, I could only imagine how claustrophobic she felt.
Gratefully, the walls of rock did indeed open up, inviting us into a vast canyon with a relatively flat floor as if it had been carved with purpose. Judging by the size of the crags surrounding the area, we had traversed vertically halfway up the cliffs. The opening of them was split into two halves which were connected by a natural brown stone land bridge. On either side of the bridge was open air which mischievously beckoned to us to take the quick route back down to the bottom of the Pedr Crags.
The two halves of the canyon were formed like a bowl carved out from rock, and though much of it appeared natural, the stone here was too smooth for my liking. Across the gap between the two sides was something else that stuck out like a sore thumb.
Walls were standing above the other half of this opening, but they did not break into a narrow path like the one we'd just left. Instead, a gigantic mouth of a cave sullied the otherwise straight rock, so deep and ominous that it was pure black save for the reflections of the sun off of the earth nearest its entrance.
Aleyah's cave? I disregarded the thought in the next moment. We could not see Esen from here; we still weren't high enough.
The army piled out of the opening behind us, but we did not move forward to the land bridge just yet. Though we saw no man or creature, the air was thick with foreboding energy.
A flash of light streaked through the air on the other side of the canyon, so fleeting I nearly second-guessed my own eyes. I lost track of it, though Azazel immediately acted, pulling his bow up and loading an arrow. He aimed toward the left-hand side of the cave, where I noticed there was a big metal bell bolted into solid rock.
The arrow shot through the air, and just before it clattered off of the stone, there was another glint of light. I lifted up a palm, trying to understand what was happening. I sought life with alteration, and sure enough, I found it. Whatever we were dealing with, it could go invisible, and it was quick.
It was the first time I'd seen Azazel miss other than when he'd been blinded. The archer's ordinarily smooth face was creased with focus and frustration as he fired another arrow, then another. All of them clattered off of the stone. The red energy above my palm told me what my eyes couldn't; our enemy had reflexes which were far better than my own during a leeching high, and I struggled to keep up with their movements.
Azazel's black arrows rolled harmlessly over the stone on the other side of the gap. Behind me, I heard the others start to shield themselves, preparing for a fight. The red energy over my palm darted back to the bell beside the cave, before our invisible enemy finally tugged at its string, causing the instrument to ring loudly, the vibrations numbing our feet.
Shik! In the two seconds it took our enemy to ring the bell, Azazel was able to land a hit. The arrow stuck out of thin air for a moment before our enemy revealed himself.
At first, he appeared to only be an Alderi man, with deep purple skin and long, black hair that was pulled back into a lazy ponytail. As he glared at us with both anxiety and hatred, however, I noticed his eyes were gold. The god was shorter than most at a few inches above five feet. He had no weapons on his person, and only wore light, black armor that was much thinner and form-fitting than any I'd ever seen before. Whoever this god was, he did not seem to have offensive powers. He tugged Azazel's arrow out of his shoulder before he thrust both hands to the ground. With the sound of an intense magical implosion, the god simply disappeared.
“The fucker teleported!” Nyx exclaimed, rushing forward to point above the wall of the canyon, where I could see just the god's head before he rushed out of sight in a blur.
“What the hell kind of magic is that?” Cyrus blurted.
“Doesn't matter,” Uriel replied, forming a shield around his body before grasping his long spear with both hands. “We have company.”
The bell's ring still echoed off in the distance, as if the sound would never entirely go away in these endless corridors of rock. The vibrations it had left stayed, however, and grew more violent, alerting us to the fact that something else was causing them. Azazel fired arrows so quickly into the mouth of the cave that one barely had the time to pierce the darkness before the next flew in after it.
Finally, the creature emerged. It slithered toward us like a snake, its large head moving rhythmically from side to side. But this was no snake. Its head was svelte and came to a point like one, but though it had scales nearest its lips, the rest of it was feathered. Its body was only as wide as its head at three feet across, and as it swept out of its cave, two sets of wings that had been folded in at its back spread outward. The wings were adorned with long, teal feathers, and from the wrists of them popped scaled hands with three clawed fingers each.
The whole feathered serpent was teal and light gray, its feathers glistening in the mid-
afternoon sun as its body came fully into view on the other side of the land bridge. Its two eyes held silver irises that seemed to swirl around their own pupils. I hesitated before attacking, becoming mesmerized by their beauty.
“The eyes! Attack the eyes!” Cyrus was yelling the command over our soldiers. “Don't look into them!”
I understood what Cyrus was saying, but somehow, it didn't matter. As soldiers and friends alike rushed forward to battle with the creature, I walked forward to the abyss which cracked the canyon in half. It suddenly seemed so welcoming. I was intrigued to know what it was like to fall into its embrace.
“Kai! No!” Cerin's voice was hoarse with fear as he called out from behind me. I paid little mind to his concern and kept walking to the gap. When I finally reached it, I noticed the drop was hundreds of meters, and the chasm was full of thousands of bones. Then I remembered I'd given myself a shield. With a wave of my wrist, I dispelled it.
A hand grabbed my arm, tugging me back from the edge with such force that a jolt of pain rushed outward from my elbow in both directions. I stumbled back from the brink of the rock, finding Cerin was the one who'd foiled my plans. When I walked forward again, he jerked at my arm a second time, panic swirling in silver eyes.
“Azazel!” Cerin yelled back toward the fight, where I heard the screams of soldiers and a gurgling hiss of the giant creature. A moment later, a flash of emerald green energy hit me, and I was falling backward to the stone, paralyzed.
Cerin caught me before I could fall completely, and laid me back on the ground softly before giving me a new shield. “Avoid its eyes, Kai,” my lover murmured, his voice trembling from having nearly lost me. He threw his head back, pointing off toward the gaps. “All of them, Azazel! The soldiers are committing suicide!”
A few seconds passed before I heard Azazel call, “How long does this effect last?”
“Minutes,” Cyrus rushed in reply, before I heard the sounds of an ice shard slicing through flesh. There was an ear-piercing roar from the creature before its wings manipulated the air with great effort, causing the air trapped in the canyon to swirl with thick winds as it took off into the skies.
Whatever effect the feathered serpent's eyes had on me faded just moments before I was freed from Azazel's paralyze spell. I scrambled to stand just to see the tail end of the serpent soar through the skies and disappear behind the tall rock.
“It fled!” One of the soldiers exclaimed, though the Sentinels were not convinced.
“It will come back!” Uriel grasped his spear with both hands. It was a beautiful and impressive weapon, standing even taller than the sixth Sentinel at seven or so feet from end to end. The spearhead shone a dark silver just beneath red blood which rolled down from three separate bladed points, similar to a trident. The center blade was a bit longer than the two on either side of it, and by the looks of the tissue and broken feathers along its point, it had done the most damage so far.
“Get off the bridge!” Cyrus yelled, directing his soldiers. The two sides of the canyon were mostly clear of bodies because the few casualties we'd had were simply in the abyss below, having fallen victim to the same sorcery I had. A few other soldiers were standing from near its edges, having been paralyzed by Azazel to keep them safe from their own actions. The rest of the soldiers were trying to line the canyon's walls, staying out of the open for when the serpent returned. A few that weren't so smart were passing over the natural stone bridge, perhaps to take advantage of the safety of walls on the other side of it.
I could hear the flying serpent's wings flapping through the air slowly and laboriously, but each noise echoed everywhere in these canyons, and I couldn't tell where it came from. I sought it out behind the thick stone with alteration magic, spinning slowly until red energy gave away its location at the western end of the crevasse.
“West!” I cried, pointing in its direction. Soldiers readjusted. Many of them held balls of magic, and some aimed bows, waiting for the serpent to reappear. When it finally flew into view, it screeched, the harsh reptilian tones rattling off of miles of stone. Four wings folded back to its sides just before its thin body barreled between the walls of the gap, toward the few soldiers who were still crossing the land bridge.
“Off the bridge!” Cyrus screamed again. The soldiers heard his command and were trying to heed it. The flying serpent was extraordinarily fast, however, zipping through the canyon with the combined forces of determination and gravity.
Willin el material a nienda. Though no energy was visible over my hand, I felt its electric presence. I reached toward the soldier on the bridge nearest me, utilizing the telekinesis spell Azazel had taught me long ago. The soldier jerked back from the bridge, causing him to trip backward and fall back to the stone floor of the northern side of the canyon. It knocked the wind out of him, but at least he was saved.
The same couldn't be said for the others who weren't quick enough. The serpent barreled through the remaining soldiers on the bridge, picking one up with its strong jaws and causing the others to be thrown in every which direction. Two were thrown over into the abyss, screams echoing harshly against solid rock. More were cast to the stone on either side of the gap with bruises and broken bones. One of the soldiers was thrown hard into the far wall, and he did not stand up again. As the serpent's body flew past us, I was blocked from going to see if the man was dead or just had a concussion.
Arrows pierced through the monstrosity as it flew past, and I wielded both ice shards and fireballs, shooting them as quickly as I could. When the serpent's wings finally aligned with the canyon opening, they snapped outward to flap and gain air, crashing into soldiers on either side of the gap. One of the wings whipped into my shield, and the next thing I knew, I was thrown back into a stone wall, the breath forced from my lungs.
I regenerated my shield as I stood, only slightly disoriented. A soldier's body was motionless near the gap, her body so crushed from the flap of the wing that pieces of it seemed out of place amongst blood. The tail of the serpent flew past and upward, as the creature prepared to turn around for another pass.
This time, no soldiers remained on the land bridge. As the serpent barreled back toward us along the gap, it found no enemies to grab and screeched in frustration.
Then, Azazel rushed forward to the edge of the gap, alone. The feathered serpent continued on its course between the two canyons, happy to have a potential victim. I feared for the archer, but I knew he only did things if he had a plan.
As the creature's head first passed the walls of the open canyon, Azazel forced emerald green energy at its head before jumping back from the edge of the rock and removing himself from harm. The serpent's body became stiff, and as its wings finally came into view, they did not open. The creature flew through the remaining gap at the mercy of gravity, charging unintentionally to the ocean in the west.
A few of us ran to the edge to watch the serpent fall. Its earlier momentum was enough to force it straight into the ocean, where it crashed in a magnificent display of white spray, water rippling outward from the site.
“That was my idea,” I finally breathed, when the ocean waters became calm again. Azazel's eyes found mine before he chuckled.
“You were too busy trying to kill the thing,” the archer finally replied, walking to the land bridge as our army prepared to cross it. “In your lust for battle, you did not think to disable it.”
“You are lucky I don't push you into the abyss,” I retorted playfully.
Our army crossed the land bridge a few at a time, not willing to over-populate it and risk losing men to the crevasse beneath. I kept my eyes forward until I made it to the other side, afraid of losing my balance when crossing. Azazel was nearby to steady me, ever the protector despite my earlier sarcasm.
On the other side of the canyon, Anto was helping move the bodies of our casualties to the far rock wall. We had no methods of burying them here, and throwing the corpses into the abyss did not seem respectful. Moving them out
of the way was the best burial we could give them, so that was what we did. As Uriel looked over the dead to assess our army, Cyrus turned his attention to Azazel.
“Your alteration magic is useful,” the Sentinel complimented him.
“It is.” Azazel glanced back to me, then to the mages of the Eteri army. “Kai and I have taught these spells to many of your soldiers so that they can use them.”
Uriel chuckled dryly as he walked over from his assessment. The sixth Sentinel had also learned alteration magic, though Cyrus had been unable to. “I have to admit, Azazel, I've been using life magic and melee for so long that I didn't even consider alteration in that fight. Perhaps using it will come to me over time.”
Cyrus glanced into the dark cave before us, and asked Azazel, “Where to?”
“Through here,” the archer said, pointing into the blackness. “There is a smaller tunnel at the back of the cave leading farther south.”
Pssshhh!
The soldiers who had started entering the cave stopped at the noise of water erupting in the distance. As the majority of them hurried into the rock's embrace, Jakan rushed to the edge of the cave, looking beyond the stone outside.
“Uh...guys?” The thief laughed dryly. “Our friend's back.”
“Oh, come on,” Nyx complained, unsheathing her daggers for the second time. “It should've drowned in the ocean!”
“Some types of serpents can stay underwater for up to an hour,” Azazel replied. “It must have held its breath.”
“Then we'll go back to my plan and kill it,” I teased him, building water and fire energy over my palms.
Jakan rushed back from the entrance mere seconds before the flying serpent landed on the stone, water dripping off of its extended feathers, making the teal look metallic. I hadn't seen the creature up close since before its eyes had hypnotized me, so I only now noticed that the soldiers had succeeded in gouging them out to prevent their magic. A thick sludge of blood and pus drained over broken eyelids, matting the tufts of feathers just beneath the sockets. As willing as the creature was to fight with us in its home, it was in great pain and whimpered in shuddering waves as it slunk toward us.