by Max Jager
But Estellese slammed her knee into the demon's crotch and as soon as it's grip loosened she ripped her hand free and slammed her fist into the demon's mouth. Keeping her fist in its mouth she shot two more fireballs out of her fist then flipped them back over and slammed the demon's head back into the ice before letting out one last fireball for good measure. She stood up, picked up her axe, and seeing that the demon was finally dead she kicked it in the head. That had taken much longer then she wanted, now that it was finally over she turned to see two more entering the arena and rushing straight for her. She looked around for a way out seeing that the walls keeping her locked in the arena didn't go away when she killed the demon, she growled and sprinted after the two charging demons. With the extreme rush of adrenaline and rage pulsing through her, she barely felt her wounds. The demons let out a hail of fire and ice but she quickly ducked behind one of the bigger ice spikes she had dodged earlier.
The demons split up and tried to flank her. She listened to their footsteps as they moved closer and as soon as they stepped into striking range she leapt out from behind the ice and slammed her axe down at the first one she could see. The demon sidestepped her attack and slashed a sword at her from the side, but she blocked it with the handle of her axe and as she spun around to face the demon she slashed her axe at its side. The demon jumped backwards and held out its hand, firing a stream of flames at her like a flamethrower. Estellese ran straight through the flames, sustaining serious burns, and lunged at the demon. The demon was caught off guard and just barely blocked in time. Their weapons clashed but before it could use its strength against her she swept its legs with a low kick and shoved the demon to the ground.
As the demon hit the ground it sent an ice spike back up at her, forcing her to jump back to dodge. As she dodged she shot a fireball back at the demon in an attempt to hit it anyways. The demon rolled out of the way and as it started getting back up its ally caught up and attacked Estellese from behind, lunging at her with its knife. Estellese heard its clunky armor moving up behind her and spun around, swinging her axe at its side. The demon was caught off guard and struck by the axe, but its armor protected it from the blow and it was only knocked over. Estellese quickly stepped back to dodge a fireball from the first demon. She turned on the unarmored one again and rushed after it. The demon made a spiked ice wall spring out of the ground between them, halting Estellese's attack. She turned around again to see the armored demon coming up behind her, letting out another barrage of fireballs. She was quick to run behind one of the ice spikes and used it as a temporary shield from the flames, but they weren't falling for that twice. The spike shattered and the shards of the spike all turned on her and rained down on her. Several if the ice shards struck her and she was knocked to the ground. She didn't get back up.
The demons hesitated for a moment, watching her as she laid there. When she didn't get back up they walked over to her and the unarmored sword wielder stood beside her. It raised its sword over her chest, then suddenly she swept its legs out from under it with a swift kick and sprang to her feet. As the demon fell it slashed its sword at her and missed her chest, striking her arm instead. With the demon's superhuman strength the offhand blow was enough to sever her arm and cut part of her side. Estellese screeched in pain but continued her attack, tackling the demon with an ice spike in her good hand and driving the ice spike through its head.
She immediately spun around to see the armored demon rushing at her with its dagger, the demon didn't see her as a threat since she was weaponless and missing an arm, it knew she couldn't fight anymore. She let out a roar as she sprinted back at it, as the demon stabbed its dagger at her chest she sidestepped just enough to make the dagger strike her shoulder, and grabbed the demon's helmet. Her thumb was pressed through one eye socket and two of her fingers were shoved into the other. The demon was stunned and recoiled, trying to pull its eyes away from her fingers but she pushed her fingers deeper and kept her grip as she took advantage of the demon being stunned, and slammed its head into the spiked ice wall. She slammed its head into the wall again and again, not caring that the ice spikes couldn't pierce the armor, and each time shooting a fireball out of her hand and directly into its eyes and head. It died on the second slam, but she slammed it nine times in total before she threw the body aside.
She was panting and gasping for air, feeling herself growing lightheaded and weak as blood loss set in incredibly fast. Little by little the adrenaline was running out and she was starting to feel the pain from her wounds. She grit her teeth and tears were slowly falling down her cheeks from the sheer pain she was in, but she picked up her axe and stumbled over to the edge of the ice arena. She refused to stay down. When she reached the wall of the arena she slammed her axe into the wall over and over, violently hacking away at the ice until it shattered. By the time she broke through the blade of her axe was cracked and chipped, and a portion of it had fragmented off.
Finally, she smashed her way through and stumbled out of the ice arena, back onto the battlefield. She looked around to see what had happened in her absence, and couldn't find any of her friends fighting anywhere. Where had they gone? She skimmed the area until she finally spotted one of them, the suit of armor lying on the ground. "Mendelen? No…" She breathlessly murmured. "Did they all lose?" She looked over at the machine to see a full demon and two lesser demons standing over it, the machine was torn to pieces and destroyed. The demonic rift had significantly shrunken but this one had been absolutely massive before the battle, it was still very big.
Estellese tightened her grip on the axe and started stumbling towards the full demon, it wasn't facing her she could sneak up on it. She had to keep fighting just incase her friends were okay and still out there. But after taking a few steps she collapsed, her body was too weak to get back up. She had lost too much blood and exhausted her body far too much with her magic. Everything went black.
She didn't know how long she was out for, but it couldn't have been long. She was awoken and nearly choked when she felt someone pouring something down her throat. Her eyes shot open to see Kaden kneeling beside her with a healing potion, he looked unharmed but judging by the two empty potion bottles on the ground beside him she assumed he used one himself. "Shhh" He said quietly, holding a finger up to his mouth. He then took his necklace off his own neck and placed it around hers before laying her back down on the ground. She saw him sneaking off towards some ice walls with a fourth potion bottle, but she blacked out again a moment later and didn't see much else. With her unconscious and not moving, the necklace made her turn invisible.
It was a few more minutes before Sybil and Asre made it over to them along with a small group of other fairies, it felt like an eternity but it had only been ten minutes since Seree had died. As the fairies reached the area they looked around at the devastation, "This explosion, can only mean that Seree…" Sybil said quietly.
"She fought bravely, and will be missed." Asre stated, "The human thing has been destroyed, and I think we lost the humans as well. Damnit, if only we had more time to prepare. The thing did a number on the rift, it is almost closed enough to stop the abyssal demon from getting out. If we had time to plan this out and prepare, this would have been an easy victory."
"We did all we could. If we stopped fighting the abyssal demon it would have come straight for them. We had to hold it back, and the humans are not dead. I can sense them, they are still alive. We need to pull back and evacuate the Altia Isles."
"They are alive? Resilient little bas-" Asre started but stopped when Sybil gave him a look. He glanced back at the ongoing battle behind them and gestured to the thinning number of demons. "We put a massive hole in their lines and as we speak the abyssal demon is marching through hell and is on its way back to our world. If we don't end this now the abyssal demon will come back to life and their army will regroup, all the slain demons will be back, and more. We-"
"But we can't end it at all, we lost the machine. We have no way of clos
ing the rift." Sybil interrupted.
"We have the humans, they can build a new one. Right?" Asre countered.
"We don't have time, by the time we heal them and they rebuild it the abyssal demon will be back." Sybil argued.
"Can they build a new one?" Asre insisted.
"Yes, but-" Sybil started
"Soldiers, get the humans to the city and heal them immediately. Get the queen to safety as well. Do not let her follow me, I am buying us two weeks worth of time." Asre instructed, and the soldiers all nodded and rushed off to follow his orders.
"No!" Sybil interrupted. "You PROMISED me you wouldn't learn that spell! I will not let you do that."
"I'm sorry, I lied. I learned the spell anyways, just incase. Make it count." Asre stated. He went to fly off towards the center of the battlefield but Sybil blocked him.
"NO! I FORBID it! Evacuate the islands instead!" Sybil demanded.
"I'm sorry. I love you, remember that." Asre answered, and with a wave of his hand he fired eight black orbs at Sybil, all of them coming at her from different sides.
"Asre! I said NO!" Sybil struck each of the orbs down one by one with her ice magic, dispelling them, but one slipped past and struck her in the back. She suddenly dropped out of the air.
"I'm sorry. Bring her to the city!" Asre called out as he flew off towards the center of the rift as quickly as he could.
Sybil screamed out his name as she dispelled his black Aether curse and immediately rushed after him, but he was too far ahead of them now. The fairies grabbed the four Alphas, using earth magic to levitate a chunk of the ground underneath them, while two of the guards rushed after the queen.
Kaden and Zanath were both awake and watched as they were flown out of the battlefield on a levitating chunk of rock, heading back towards the city.
The fairy king reached the center of the rift and clapped his hands together, then suddenly he turned to ash and his ashes blew away in the wind. The next moment a black bubble suddenly expanded outwards from his location and covered the majority of the battlefield, everyone and everything that was caught within the bubble looked like it was suddenly frozen. The entire battlefield, including the rift and the queen, was frozen in time. And the king, was gone.
Next Chapter: Recovery.
Chapter 17: Recovery
~~ Chapter 17: Recovery ~~
She didn't know how long she had been out for, but Estellese remembered she had passed out on the battlefield. Now that she was awake again, it was obvious she wasn't on the battlefield anymore. She felt like she was lying on a cold and hard metal table. Her memory of the battle was a big blur, she just knew that the machine had been lost, her friends were missing, and that she was badly hurt. She didn't feel the pain of her wounds anymore, so she assumed they were either healed or numb, but she also couldn't feel her right arm. She kept her eyes closed and didn't move, pretending to be asleep. 'Was I captured? Or rescued? Only one way to find out." She thought. She peeked one eye open for just a brief moment to see what her surroundings were and what was in front of her, the room was big and had plenty of space. She heard something move near where she was lying, then all of a sudden she heard this really loud screeching sound.
They knew she was awake! She immediately flipped off the table, twisting her body as she flipped so she would turn and land with her back against the wall, facing the rest of the room. Or, at least, that was her plan. As soon as she went to place her hands on the ground to push herself through the remainder of the flip, only one of her hands touched the ground, causing her to lose balance and fall flat on her face.
Estellese could hear someone laughing and giving her a slow, sarcastic clap in the background. She opened her eyes and looked around, the room looked a lot like a doctor's office and was lit up by a few diamonds on the ceiling. Kaden was standing beside the bed she had been on, he was the one laughing and clapping and presumably the one who made the strange screeching noise to scare her. She looked down at her numb arm, wondering why she hadn't moved it the way she expected to. As soon as she looked her heart jumped into her throat as she saw and remembered that it was gone, severed just below the elbow.
"Need a hand?" Kaden asked as he walked over and extended a hand to help her get up.
Estellese was in shock, she assumed by now that she and Kaden had been rescued, possibly the others too. Her wounds were healed, but why hadn't they fixed her arm? The question kept ringing through her head over and over, surely their magic can fix it, right? Why didn't they? A fear was building up in her, she was afraid they hadn't healed her arm because they couldn't. She heard Kaden and saw his hand, but she couldn't stop staring at the space where her arm was supposed to be. She reached out and grabbed Kaden's hand and went to get up, but when she tried to pull herself up the hand detached from Kaden and she fell right back on the ground with a severed arm in her hands.
"This hand comes with a free arm attached to it, at no extra charge! " Kaden laughed "Plus I believe it is your arm anyways, I dunno I just found it on the table over there."
Disoriented and confused, Estellese looked at the hand she was holding onto. It was a severed hand with part of an arm attached to it, a replica of her own missing limb. She looked back up at Kaden, who couldn't' stop laughing, and promptly punched him as hard as she could in the crotch. Her punch knocked him two feet backwards and flat onto the ground.
Kaden shouted in pain and didn't get up right away. "Ow! What was that for?"
"For being a dick." Estellese answered as she stood up. "That wasn't funny. Where is everyone else, and what is going on?"
"They went into the city. I figured I'd stay here to make sure you are alright, since I assumed it would be scary waking up in a foreign place without an arm." Kaden answered.
"What about Pex? Is she alright?" Estellese asked.
"Uh, she is in surgery at the moment but will probably be fine. She got a little crushed… Well, I guess a little may be an understatement, she was very crushed. They were surprised she actually survived." Kaden answered. "You must have fallen on her at some point."
"Oh…" Estellese looked a little upset and lowered her head.
"Don't worry, it wasn't your fault. You did your best and she may have died without you." Kaden replied.
"So what is going on? Why didn't they fix my arm? Did we win? I saw the machine in pieces on the ground." Estellese asked.
"We lost, the machine was destroyed. But the fairies rescued us, and the king sacrificed himself to trap the abyssal demon and a large portion of both armies in some sort of time warp or something. They are frozen in time for two weeks. And the demons that didn't get caught in the time warp were killed." Kaden answered. "As for your arm, they said that healing someone's wounds is one thing, and is easy. But a loss of a limb can't be healed, they need to grow you an entirely new limb via nature magic. Or something like that."
"If they could just regrow it with nature magic, why didn't they? I mean, I would assume the fairies would have no problem with using nature magic." Estellese asked.
Kaden shrugged. "I'd assume the arm I handed you was meant to be your new arm, I dunno why they didn't attach it."
"Well that is a simple answer." A woman's voice spoke up. Kaden and Estellese turned to see two fairies, a woman and a younger man fly into the room. The woman, like all other fairies, was wearing loose, flowy, and revealing clothes. Her hair was red with pink highlights, and her clothes were white and red. Like other fairies she wore a lot of jewelry and gems, all her gems were rubies and diamonds. "Let me first introduce myself, I am Rose and this young man is my student slash assistant. He's just here to watch and learn."
"Nice to meet you." Estellese replied.
"What she said." Kaden added.
Her assistant bowed his head a little in greeting. He looked to be in his late teens early twenties, he had bright green hair and he too wore flowy, revealing, and loose clothing. His clothes and jewelry seemed to favor green and pink colors, with a little blue h
ere and there.
"Nice to meet you too. It is not often that I get to see entirely new species. Never mind ones that are previously undiscovered." Rose replied. "How are you feeling? Do you feel any irritation or discomfort around where your wounds were? Or any odd sensations you're not accustomed to?"
"No I feel fine with the exception of my missing arm." Estellese replied.
"Great." Rose replied. "Then that means we were successful. None of us know anything about human biology, so when we were healing your wounds we were concerned we may not do it right. We attempted to make a replacement arm, as you seem to have found, but it wasn't an exact match to your body and your body rejected it." She explained. When she noticed the worried look on Estellese's face she quickly clarified herself. "Don't worry! We can still fix your arm, we just need to make a new one, which is actually pretty easy. We just decided that since your body is more similar to the elves, and since the elves have arrived with their own master nature mage, we thought it would be best to let their nature mage try before we continued trying. Her experience with the elves may help her understand your body better. If not then we'll just have to figure it out via trial and error."