A Child of Two Worlds
Page 12
A sound she couldn’t place awoke Caitlyn in the night. She sniffed but didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. Her feline eyes saw clearly in the overcast night. She noticed Alex asleep on his bedroll. Although he had heavy blanket and cloak both draped over him, he shivered in the cold night air. Terra’s bedroll was empty.
The sound that had awoken her came from nearby again. Sounds like someone retching, she thought. The changeling silently rose to her feet and walked toward the sound, the padded feet of her natural panther form making little noise.
The panther tilted her head with concern for Terra on her hands and knees vomiting behind a bush. Terra whispered to herself.
“Please, no. Not now. This is one thing too many—we can’t deal with this right now,” she whispered. If Caitlyn had been in her human form there would have been no chance of her hearing the woman’s panicked mumbling from eight feet away. But, in her panther form, Terra might as well have been shouting in her ear.
Caitlyn had always prided herself in being able to understand humans better than any of the other changelings she knew, except maybe her sister. She began examining Terra’s behavior over that last four days since they left Starfall.
Since they left, Terra had become increasingly sick. Alex had tried talking her into letting them go back to Starfall so they could get some medicine, but Terra kept telling him that because they had already left, they couldn’t turn around. It was too risky. She kept saying that she would feel better soon.
Nausea, Caitlyn thought, vomiting, something she can’t deal with right now. I wonder what’s… Oh… “Terra, you’re pregnant?” Caitlyn said, more than asked. She winced at how loud she was.
Terra’s head snapped up, and she locked eyes with Caitlyn even though it was dark. The Nexus’s eyes shown red with the light of a spell that allowed her to see heat. “Caitlyn,” she whispered harshly. “What are you doing out here?”
“What am I doing out here?” the changeling asked. “What are you doing out here? Does Alex know?”
Terra motioned Caitlyn closer. She snatched out at Caitlyn’s ear and pinched it as soon as the panther was in reach. “Will you keep your voice down, you fur ball?” She let go of Caitlyn’s ear. “I’m out here, not sticking my nose into other people’s business, and no, Alex doesn’t know. Are you insane?”
“Are you?” Caitlyn accused. “How long have you known you’re pregnant?”
Terra glared at her. “I only just found out. I cast a spell to confirm it. I’m seven weeks along.”
“Seven weeks!” Caitlyn exclaimed. “You have to tell Alex you are going to have his baby in a few months.”
“I don’t know if it will take nine months, or if it will take much longer,” Terra said. “I was in the womb for almost two years before I was born.”
“Almost two years,” the changeling said. Caitlyn shook her head sharply. “You have to tell Alex. If you don’t…”
Terra cut her off before she could finish the threat. “You will not tell him. When I tell you he has enough to deal with, I mean it. You don’t know what happens to the Guardian after he has wielded the blade for a time.”
Caitlyn blinked and studied Terra’s eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t talk about this now, not when Alex may awaken at any moment,” Terra said. “But trust me when I say now would not be a good time to tell him.”
The panther’s golden eyes narrowed and glared at the half-angel’s glowing red ones. “What secret is it you are keeping, Terra? Whatever it is, I bet you haven’t told him that either,” she said with anger beginning to seep into her voice.
Terra swallowed at the heat in her friend’s voice. “No, I haven’t.”
“What he doesn’t know will kill him as surely as what he does, but at least he will go in knowing what will happen. I’m going to tell him everything, that you are pregnant and keeping something from him, if you don’t.”
Terra’s jaw clenched in anger, and she glared at her adopted sister. “You will not tell him anything, Caitlyn. I am asking you as a sister, but you will obey me in this. If need be, I will order you as the Nexus. You will not tell Alex about the baby or anything else.”
They matched glares in a long, uncomfortable silence before Caitlyn let out a disgusted sigh. “Fine, Terra. But I don’t think you are doing the right thing. He deserves to know. Unless it isn’t his baby.”
Terra’s hand twitched like she wanted to slap the large cat. “Of course it’s his baby. If he finds out, he will start paying more attention to my defense than he does already, and that will get him killed out here. You know how dangerous it is now that Azreal has unleashed his hordes. I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing that for a long time.”
Caitlyn sighed again and shook her head. “All right, Terra. Just be careful. He will be crushed if anything happens to you.” Her voice took on a more serious tone. “If anything happens to that baby before you tell him,” she stopped before she said more. “Just be careful, ok?”
“I’m always careful,” Terra said.
“Terra? Caitlyn? Where are you two?” they heard Alex call.
“Let me do the talking,” Terra said as she stood. She cleaned herself off with a sweep of magical power.
“Here we are,” Terra said as the two of them walked the short distance back to the camp.
Alex was sitting up on his bedroll. “Terra,” Alex said with a shaking voice. He raised a hand and pointed at her face. “Why are your eyes glowing?”
She smiled and laughed. “It’s so I can see in the dark.”
“Were you sick again?” he asked as she lay back down in her bedroll next to him.
“I was, but I feel much better.” Caitlyn saw the doubting expression on his face. Terra saw it too. “Really, I do.”
He looked from Terra to Caitlyn and back. “All right. It’s still the middle of the night. Let’s get a little more sleep.” Alex lay back down and covered himself with his blanket and cloak. “When will we make it to the mountains?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” Terra answered as she covered herself. “Then another four or five days before we reach the tunnels that will take us to the core of the volcano.”
The sounds of them talking diminished to a faint murmur as Caitlyn padded off into the woods. “I think you are making a huge mistake, Terra,” she whispered. “I just hope it doesn’t blow up in your face.” She didn’t feel right keeping a secret from Alex, but Terra had given her no choice. The changeling continued to mutter to herself as she hunted for breakfast.
Alex, Terra, and Caitlyn walked through lush forests and deep undergrowth in the valleys between the towering peaks of the Adorac Mountains. Winter’s grasp hardly touched the shielded valleys. They were warm and humid. Alex didn’t want to experience them in the summer. He was having trouble trying to accept the drastic difference in terrain.
Four days prior, they had emerged from the Forest of Souls to see the Adorac Mountains looming less than an hour’s walk from where they stood. Alex was baffled by the sudden change in landscape.
“That’s not possible,” he had said. “Four-mile-tall mountains don’t just spring out of the ground without a hill in sight. It goes from almost perfectly level ground, to mountains out of nowhere.”
“So?” Caitlyn had asked.
“So?” he echoed. “Mountains are formed by the movement of plates under the ground that rests on a constant flow of magma,” Alex started to explain.
“Not here,” Terra interrupted. “You are applying Earth-based logic to a different Realm. Some things are the way they are here on Dae, simply because they are. It is the same on the other Realms. Not only the people of Dae are magical, the entire world is.”
Alex thought about the conversations from four days ago as he used the Guardian’s Blade to beat a path through the undergrowth. Terra followed behind him in the trail he blazed. Caitlyn was doing circuits around the two of them, ensuring that none of the large predators on th
e valley floor were stalking them.
They found a streambed that was clear of vegetation on either side just as a shrill scream pierced through the sounds of the forest. Alex spun to face the noise. “What was that?” he asked. The shriek came again, closer this time. The high frequency caused a shooting pain to knife through his ears.
“A banshee,” Terra shouted, covering her ears with her hands. “They are scouts for large groups of the undead. Cover your ears; it will help until she gets closer.”
Alex sheathed his sword and put his hands tight over his ears. The scream came a third time, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much. “How far away?”
Terra closed her eyes and stood still for a moment. Alex’s skin tingled as she released a pulse of magical energy. About a second later, she pointed ahead of them and up in the air. “It was a mile farther down the valley and about a half mile up. I didn’t sense anything else, but they could be anywhere. This place is easy to hide an army in.”
She has RADAR? he thought.
Caitlyn stumbled into the clearing, hands covering her ears. Blood seeped between her fingers and ran down her arm. Alex reached out to her, but she shook her head at him.
“Put your hands back up!” she shouted. He snapped his hands back over his ears just in time to muffle another shriek. The pain wasn’t as intense as the one before. Caitlyn looked to the sky with hatred.
“It sounds like she is moving farther away,” Alex shouted. “Are you all right?” Caitlyn watched his lips as he talked.
“I’ll be fine,” she yelled. “Was in my natural form. More sensitive ears.”
Alex nodded before turning to Terra. “Is there anything you can do about this?”
She waited for another shriek before lowering her hands. A bubble of energy that pulsed a light-blue color surrounded the three of them. Another shriek came, but this one was so diminished it sounded like a whisper.
“This will act as a buffer between us and the banshee until I can get close enough to destroy her. But, I will have to focus on channeling energy into the spell to keep it with us as we move.”
“How are we supposed to kill her? Anything special?” Alex asked.
Terra shook her head. “You don’t kill the undead; they’re already dead. You destroy them. But, no, there isn’t anything special about killing a banshee as long as it is done with some form of magic. Regular weapons will pass right through one. They don’t exist completely in our world. Ready?” she asked. When Alex nodded, she closed her eyes and held out an arm to be led.
“Let’s go, Caitlyn,” he said taking Terra’s hand. He felt gentle pulses of energy coming from her as he followed behind the changeling.
They walked in near silence with no sounds coming in from outside the bubble. Eerie, Alex thought. No wind or birds, just our footsteps. They walked for what felt like an hour through the valley.
Caitlyn led them around an area where all the plants had died. “Blighted,” she said. “Banshees and a few other kinds of undead suck the very life from an area. Don’t let the phantasmal touch you.”
Alex nodded and looked back over his shoulder at the deadened area. He thought he saw a wisp of something black, but he blinked, and it was gone. Still looking back, he was about to say something about it when he bumped into Caitlyn.
His eyes swung forward, confronting him with a sight that almost made him gag.
Less than three hundred feet away, stood an undead host numbering in the hundreds, if not a thousand. Skeletons, some with scraps of flesh still hanging from skulls, zombies holding perfectly still staring in their direction, and some kinds of malformed monstrosities he couldn’t name that looked as if ten or twenty corpses had been melted together, blocked them from continuing forward. The ground around the mass of undead was trampled clear of any undergrowth.
“Terra,” Caitlyn said too calmly. “There are hundreds of undead blocking the valley.”
Terra opened her eyes and grimaced. “I can’t hold the shield and attack at the same time, it would trap whatever I did in here with us. If I attack, then the banshee could incapacitate us without us ever seeing her.” She was silent a moment while she thought. “What are they waiting for? Undead don’t wait while the living are in sight. Something is leading this horde.”
A flap of what looked like wings caught Alex’s eye at the rear of the undead lines. What are they waiting for? he thought, anger beginning to make his heart pound. The wisp of black cloth sparked a memory he couldn’t have. After that, everything seemed to happen at once.
A flash of light announced the unleashing of the Wrathblade as Alex spun. He shouted, “Trap!” at the same time Terra yelled, “Behind!” The bubble shielding them from the shrieks shattered as the banshee broke through it. The undead spirit began to scream.
The near blinding pain would have crippled Alex were it not for the twin storms of hate and rage that pounded through him. Seeing Terra drop to her knees fed the storms further.
“KILL THEM ALL!” he screamed, his voice melding with the Voice of Wrath made an inhuman dissonance. He lost himself in a wordless scream as he cleaved bone and seared flesh.
Skeletons shattered into explosions of bone and dust. Zombies erupted into flame, becoming shambling horrors that quickly collapsed into ash. The malformed, the name planted into his mind by the blade, exploded in fiery gouts of blood and gore.
Nothing existed except for him and his enemies. A whole world full of enemies.
Alex shattered, cut, and cleaved until none stood to oppose him. Save one. The winged demon flew beyond the reach of The Wrathblade. He roared with hatred at its cowardice as it flew over a ridge and vanished from view.
He felt something behind him and swung his blade with all his considerable might, a wordless snarl on his face. The Wrathblade halted less than a half-inch from slicing this new opponent’s skull in two. A shell of blue energy kept the blade from connecting.
He swung again and again and again, blood from his sword spattering this untouchable enemy’s face.
The woman shouted something at him. She looked at him with sadness and pity.
“die, die, Die, Die, DIE!” he screamed in that inhuman voice. Every word bringing another blow from his sword.
The woman was shouting something that sounded like a name over and over at him. She had closed her eyes, but tears still flowed down her face. Her face was red, and the tendons in her neck stood out from the effort of her shouts.
“Alex!” she yelled, over and over. Definitely a name. A sudden flash of comprehension through the endless night that was his rage. My name.
The horrible reality of what he was doing crashed in around him with sickening clarity. “Terra,” he whispered in a voice that was his own as he lost consciousness.
The sword reverted back to its wooden form as it fell from Alex’s hand to land on the ground by his feet. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed.
Terra released the shield and thickened the air beneath Alex to catch him. With him cradled on a pillow of air, she surveyed the destruction he had wrought. The acrid smell of burned flesh and hair mingled with that of charred meat and decay. Hundreds, she thought part in awe, and part in fear. By one man. In a bare handful of minutes.
She peered down at Alex as if seeing him for the first time. She had known he was good with a sword, but it seemed as if he were everywhere at once, every swing a deathblow. She had seen a malformed kill an entire squad before being destroyed. She scanned him with a gentle touch of magic. Scratches, she thought. He isn’t in danger of dying before we make it to the volcano.
“He could have killed you if you were a split-second slower with that shield, Terra,” Caitlyn cautioned. Terra turned to face her. The banshee had affected the changeling more strongly, and Caitlyn had recovered just in time to watch Alex attack her.
Terra had regained her wits to help him with the last few undead. “Why would he do something like that?” Caitlyn shouted.
Terra changed the pillow of air to cover his ears. “I don’t think that he’s… I’ve read about the Guardian and the Guardian’s Blade,” she said, starting over. “That was the unleashed form of the eighth blade, The Wrathblade.
“It works by mirroring, multiplying, and feeding off of the anger of the wielder. It is extremely dangerous to use. If the Guardian can’t control it, he turns into a walking meat grinder. He does not feel pain, fear, or remorse, and will not stop unless killed.” Terra looked down at Alex. “We are lucky he was able to hold on to some shred of himself.”
She bent down and picked the wooden sword up from the gore spotted grass at her feet. A wave of her hand brought air to clean the blood and tissues from the weapon. She looked around for the packs he had discarded before charging into the horde.
“Lucky? Well, I guess we had to be lucky eventually. But what do you call lucky?” Caitlyn asked, her tone growing more heated with each word. “Being spotted by a banshee? How about the part where we were ambushed by an army of undead being led by a demon? Was that lucky? Or maybe, it was the part where the father of your unborn child tried to kill you. Is that where we were lucky?”
Caitlyn grunted as her pack hit her hard in the stomach. “How about the part where he butchered all of the undead while we lay on the ground helpless? I think that was lucky. How about the part where he was able to stop before he killed us too? I count that lucky. Or maybe it’s the part where he isn’t so injured he could die with neither of us able to heal him. Luck there too. I didn’t say our luck was great, but I plan on taking what small breaks I can get,” Terra said without sarcasm. She couldn’t really be angry with the woman. She would have likely reacted similarly had their roles been reversed.
Caitlyn let out a long sigh. “You’re right,” she said. “A fine job of protecting the two of you I’ve done so far.”
Terra gently set Alex’s pack on his stomach. He didn’t stir from his sleep in the slightest. You could have unleashed any of the other forms, she thought. But, you had to pick the most potentially disastrous one. She manipulated the air to lift Alex a few feet higher from the ground. “The tunnels aren’t much farther, and we shouldn’t remain here.”