by Frank Morin
Some were more feline or wolfish, while others were roughly humanoid, but their heads were wide and complex, their granite profiles ornate.
Harley caught sight of them too, and she paused in surprise and glanced back at Evander. For a second, she might have even looked impressed. She swept a hand toward the nearest gargoyles as they leaped the inner-city wall. Waves of earth swept them away.
Two of them shattered against the wall, but within seconds, the rest of them clawed their way out of the earth and resumed the charge.
More gargoyles galloped through the main inner gate, running away from the fight. Each carried one or two people in their gnarled, stone hands or paws. Those must be the people too proud, too stubborn, or too stupid to have fled earlier. The gargoyles raced with amazing speed out to the western gate in the outer wall, tossed the people to the ground, and returned for more.
But dozens more gargoyles swarmed Harley. Shona expected her to simply obliterate them all, but her defenses seemed less effective. Perhaps Evander was blocking or diverting it somehow.
Shona gaped anew at the spectacle. Each gargoyle rivaled the great stone pedra for sheer mass. That summoned monster had challenged the entire might of Rory’s initial command, delaying their attack on Ilse. Kilian and Ilse together had summoned that pedra and it had tested their limits.
Now dozens of gargoyles swarmed right through Harley’s defenses. Many were swept away by waves of earth, but some clawed back to the surface after several seconds. Gaping holes yawed open under others and the sides of those pits smashed shut around them.
Some shattered into whirlwinds of broken stone that wailed their final death cries, while others broke into piles of dark earth. The effort to summon so many should have killed Evander or left him comatose with exhaustion. At minimum, the distraction of managing so many summoned creatures should have left him standing helplessly with a vacant-eyed stare.
He was standing still, but not idle. His hands were raised to shoulder height, cupped inward around a globe of intense amber light. He slowly pressed his hands together, shoulders hunched with the effort to compress the light. He completely ignored the raging battle between Harley and the swarm of gargoyles.
At least ten gargoyles reached her and attacked with granite claws. Harley lunged to meet them, cursing loudly in a language Shona didn’t know. It was far more musical than either Obrioner or Grandurian, and those beautiful sounds didn’t fit the brutal moment.
Harley caught the first gargoyle, a beast with a short, but thick torso, but with enormously muscled arms. She shattered its wide fists, then ripped its head apart with a single mighty heave of her shoulders. The impressive move shocked Shona. How strong was that woman?
It took a couple seconds too long, though. The other gargoyles swarmed over her, raking her with deadly claws that tore horrible gashes across her face and torso. Blood sprayed from the ghastly wounds, but she did not cry out, did not even seem to feel them, and the wounds healed as fast as they appeared. Harley methodically dealt with each monster, tearing them apart, shattering skulls and ripping off stone limbs in a mind-boggling display of raw ferocity and brutal strength.
Shona had seen some miraculous healings, particularly from Connor and his sculpted sandstone pendant, but she’d never witnessed anything like that.
It took only seconds for Harley to smash apart the amazing gargoyle army. Shona hated to think what would happen to any human army that challenged her. Even the mightiest Petralists would have fallen to her seemingly unstoppable strength.
Harley stomped on a few fragments of broken gargoyles and shouted with victory. Then she blew out a breath and turned toward Evander. Her voice echoed clearly up to Shona.
“You annoying, little fool! I’m going . . . wait!”
She raised a hand defensively, for the first time looking afraid.
Evander had condensed the light into a narrow beam, thinner than his finger. It blazed with blinding intensity, bathing his face in its pure, amber glow.
Evander released it.
That narrow beam of light shot across the distance to Harley in less than an eyeblink, leaving an afterimage hanging in Shona’s enhanced sight. The spear of light easily drilled right through a defensive wall of earth Harley began to raise around herself. It plunged into her chest and erupted out her back in a horrible spray of blood and gore, as if it abruptly widened inside of her.
Harley’s entire body convulsed under the impact, as if struck by the force of a landslide. She screamed and fell to her knees, convulsing, vomiting blood. Her eyes stared wide with shock and she seemed to have lost her strength.
Shona gasped. Had he really done it? Was she witnessing Evander kill Harley with a power Shona had never seen before, never imagined possible? He’d used light. Like a Solas.
Could she do the same?
The thought terrified and excited her in equal measure. If only she could learn that technique, she could defend herself from anyone, maybe even the queen herself.
Evander looked exhausted, but stumbled toward Harley, drawing a short-handled hatchet from a deep pocket of his coat. Shona had never seen Evander bother drawing a weapon before, had never imagined a time when he might need more than his incredible earth powers or superhuman strength.
Hadn’t he killed Harley already? Did he plan to remove her head, just to be sure?
Harley had toppled to the ground, eyes closed, not seeming to breathe. A cloud of dust shuddered off the ground, momentarily obscuring her.
Evander broke into a charge, hatchet raised. He leaped the last ten feet, fully extended, bringing the hatchet down in a mighty blow that would have probably cut all the way through a mountain.
Harley caught it.
Her hands erupted from the mist and met his on the handle of the hatchet, stopping it dead. Evander crashed down over her and the two tumbled together, the hatchet flying from their hands as they beat on each other in renewed fury.
Then Evander somersaulted off Harley. Shona blinked in astonishment, not daring to believe her quartzite-enhanced eyes.
Harley rose to her feet, looking whole and healed, and extremely angry. She stalked after Evander and demanded, “Did you think that abomination of yours could kill me? Fool! I’m the greatest Healer who ever lived. I invented sandstone healing!”
He lunged to his feet and struck at her, but she caught his hands and spun, yanking him right off his feet.
She threw him.
Shona expected the giant to topple back to the ground, but he kept ascending, limbs flailing, as if he weighed nothing at all. A roaring wind rushed in around him and threw him higher still. He soared away, flying faster and faster, tumbling wildly, his great coat billowing around him like ineffectual wings.
He soared all the way to Mount Murdo, halfway up the mountain. The wind carried him at least three miles and Shona winced at the impact. He struck so hard he drilled deep into the solid rock of the mountain.
She glanced down at Harley again, who stood with hands on hips, head tilted up toward her. “That’s how you deal with annoying men.”
Maybe she’d loan Shona that incredible strength long enough for her to throw Verena into a mountain like that?
A distant crack, like a dozen thunderbolts together violently shook the air over the Carraig and sent Shona’s observation bubble sliding southeast. She turned back to Mount Murdo and suddenly wished she could fly several miles higher.
One entire shoulder of the mountain had broken free. Instead of avalanching down the steep slopes, it was soaring through the air toward Shona.
Evander was riding it.
She rubbed her crystal-hardened eyes, butthe view didn’t change.
“We are so grouted,” she mumbled, borrowing one of Connor’s favorite phrases.
As the gigantic piece of mountain neared, it looked as big as the entire inner city. Harley had thrown Evander several miles. He was throwing a mountain back at her.
It lost altitude as it neared, and Shona
breathed a sigh of relief when she realized it would miss her. It swept past, with the furious Evander riding on top, his gaze fixed on Harley. Wind raced around the flying mountain in a howling whirlwind that sent Shona floating even farther to the southeast. She silently encouraged it.
Harley didn’t flee. She erupted off the ground to meet Evander’s new attack, sweeping most of the ruined ancient city along with her in a gigantic, earthen tidal wave.
The two colossal forces smashed together in an explosion of earth and stone that erupted in every direction. The shockwave triggered several avalanches on Mount Murdo. The concussion also knocked Shona from her feet and whisked her observation pocket away like a bubble on the Macantact. Debris whistled past and she instinctively tapped granite. Rubble struck with jarring force, accelerating her journey away from the epicenter of the epic battle.
For a moment she lost sight of Harley, Evander, and most of the Carraig under the clouds of debris and dust. Wind whistled in from every direction, creating merry dust devils that spun away in chaotic patterns as the heavier debris cascaded down over the shattered plain.
The plain was gone, as was the Sculpture house, the Rhiddoroch, and the eastern side of the inner-city wall. Several palaces on that side of the city had collapsed under the onslaught, the thunder of their implosions lost amid the booming shockwaves of the mid-air collision of two mini-mountains. The air was heavy with earth, but smelled charred, like stone struck by a heavy hammer.
Then the debris stopped falling.
It just hung there in the air, a wall of earth and air a quarter of a mile high and more than a mile thick in every direction. Shona spotted movement in the center of it. Evander and Harley hung in the center, again pummeling each other with unrestrained fury.
Always when Sentries clashed, much of the battle happened underground, visible to the rest of the world only as trembling ripples or occasional geysers in the earth. This time, surrounded by the elements, that aspect of the battle raged around them in its full, terrifying glory.
As the two mighty Petralists fought, earth and air swirled together and clashed in a growing cyclone of destruction. Invisible currents of their will threw the elements at each other. They formed enormous fists and spears on every side, slashing and stabbing. The battle raged with such speed and ferocity that Shona could barely follow it.
Her bubble continued drifting south, away from the fight. It also ascended, keeping her just above the combatants. Was that simple happenstance, or was Harley somehow still controlling it? How could she spare any attention for Shona and still fight that incredible duel.
Shona only wished she could accelerate. Even with her enhanced vision, the two combatants often appeared as little more than ghostly figures caught in battle rage that might never end. She was starting to wonder if either of them could ever find critical advantage over the other? Would one of them die, or both of them? Or would they stay up there forever, battling for all time?
The aerial battle drifted slowly toward the inner city, like a shadow of doom that blocked out the sun and all hope of salvation. Billowing clouds of mixed earth and air first caressed the battered palaces and chipped towers, then began clawing at them.
Harley’s voice echoed past on the wind. “Today you die, and this entire city will serve as your coffin.”
Something new rippled through the whirlwind, and Shona frowned as she tried to make it out. The fighting continued, clashing and smashing elements in an eye-twisting, chaotic confrontation that boomed with deafening thunderclaps as tons of elements smashed into each other over and over again.
But now a new wind rushed out of the center, toward the city, bearing with it a storm of brown dust. It looked different than the dark earth and decaying rubble of the rest of the fight. That brown wind engulfed one of the nearest towers, a majestic building with delicate lines that had once been sheathed in pure basalt.
At the wind’s touch, the outer facade of the building simply disintegrated. The wind was like a scouring sandstorm that seemed to melt the structure as fast as a hot wind might melt a dusting of snow.
Within seconds the elegant tower collapsed, the pieces disintegrating further even as they fell to the ground. Waves of new dust rose into the whirlwind, reinforcing it and adding to its might as it swept on to the next tower.
Shona decided she needed to flee. That had to be another higher power that she’d never heard of. How many deadly powers did those two possess? Might they unleash something that would catch her in its grip too? She was only a mile away from the edge of the gigantic battle, but it felt far too close. She beat against her imprisoning air, but found no purchase against it. Evander and Harley were going to destroy the Carraig and she didn’t want to become another casualty.
Trying to control her rising fear, she settled to a cross-legged position to watch the titanic duel. They still battled in the heart of the raging elements, but the sandstorm had rebounded back against an invisible barrier.
Evander’s voice rose above the constant booming clash of the ongoing struggle. “The simple crab tears down any who try to climb above them and escape the trap, but—”
His words were cut off by a stiff uppercut from Harley that would have ripped the head off of any other man. “Oh, shut up.”
The fighting actually intensified, a swirling maelstrom of mixed earth and air that smashed and collided in terrifying intensity that spread out farther and drifted far too close to Shona. She silently hoped the whistling, gusting wind would carry her away faster, but it rushed in from every direction, canceling out any progress she might otherwise have made.
With a heart-stopping groan, an enormous section of ground erupted upward out of the inner city, ripping up through one of the school governing offices as it swept into the air and smashed into the two combatants. Shona couldn’t tell which of them pulled it into the fight, couldn’t see that it made any difference. That new chunk of earth simply dissolved and joined the murky tumult.
More sections of ground erupted upward, as if the natural laws became broken over the Carraig. Shona could no longer see the two combatants in the center of the storm as it intensified and darkened around them. The wind turned colder, carrying with it the scent of ice-covered peaks.
She glanced at Mount Murdo and gasped as streamers of earth ripped free of the mountain and rushed in to add to the bulk of the aerial battlefield.
How much could the two of them support? Would they rip off the entire mountaintop, strip the Carraig to the roots of the mountain and use all of it to continue fighting?
Without warning, everything stopped.
The sound faded away to distant echoes as all the swirling, smashing elements ceased all movement, as if frozen solid. The air shook with a silent thunderclap.
Shona looked around, wondering what new devilry the two combatants had unleashed, but nothing moved. Even a palace had stopped in mid-fall. For five long heartbeats, the area remained absolutely still, as if the fight had broken time too.
Then everything fell. The rumbling impact built upon itself, creating a rolling crescendo that shook Shona to her bones as the elements smashed down over the inner city in an avalanche of destruction. Palaces shattered, streets filled with earth, and within seconds, the entire inner city lay in ruins, buried and consumed by the disaster.
Dust billowed up around the destruction, concealing it from view. The air smelled tired and thin.
Then Shona felt a warm breeze. The change from the icy cold air of those heights startled her and she glanced around for the source.
That’s when the top of Mount Murdo exploded.
The eruption came with the grandfather of all thunderclaps. It shattered the air and would have shattered her head if she’d been applying quartzite to her ears. She still screamed and clapped hands to her ears as the thunderclap and tornado-strength winds shredded her protective bubble. She plummeted into the murky cloud concealing the earth.
Shona max-tapped granite as she fell, but didn�
��t look down. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the gigantic explosion of stone and fire and ash as the mountain blew itself apart. The eruption made Evander and Harley’s duel seem a paltry, childish thing.
Crimson lava sprayed out the broken mountaintop in a deadly fountain at least half a mile high. Shona struck soft earth and plunged several feet into it just before a shockwave of superheated air blasted past, scouring the ground and sucking the air from her lungs.
She buried her face in the protective earth, holding her breath and clenching her eyes against the searing heat that charred her exposed skin, despite the protection of granite. Her battle leathers smoked and melted to her, and she refused to think about what was happening to her hair.
If she hadn’t fallen when she did, that wind would have killed her. Even several feet underground, she felt scoured raw and terrified.
After the initial blast, she managed to suck in a lungful of rank, sulfur-laden air that stank like the earth’s innards. Gasping, Shona clawed her way back to the surface and risked peeking out.
What remained of the peak of Mount Murdo was obscured by the mushrooming cloud of destruction, which glowed a sinister orange from the lava still erupting through its heart. The scarred landscape around her was shrouded in dust. The desolate scene was drained of color, like a funeral pyre. No trace of the beautiful Carraig remained. The countryside was scoured completely of all life.
Then Evander erupted out of the earth nearby and staggered to his feet. His clothing was shredded, his face bloody, and he swayed like a drunkard. Shona felt only relief at seeing another living soul.
Seconds later, Harley burst into view in a spray of dirt, clawing her way to the surface. She looked filthy and exhausted. And terrified.
Evander pointed at the mountain ripping itself apart in the murk above them. He shouted, his voice hoarse, tinged with fear. “You arrogant fool! You broke the root of the mountain. The elements are enraged, just like at the border. Do you again plan to destroy everything that you cannot conquer?”
Harley cringed, and her gaze lingered on the eruption. She grimaced, rubbed her hands across her face, then glared at Evander. “At least I got you speaking normal.”