by Tracy Lane
“Run!” she said, for no reason at all other than something – or several somethings – had to be making that kind of commotion and none of them were good.
They ran, not straight, for Aurora was too smart for that, but side to side. A horrible snorting followed them, a familiar sound but when Aurora turned, she saw only more trees exploding and leaves flying through the air.
“Here,” she said, yanking him behind a large rock formation that loomed to the right. They stopped, both breathing heavily, listening closely. Aurora pressed him back further, inching out to peer behind them.
That’s when she saw it: a massive beast, red eyed and snoutish, with rich black fur and spines sticking out of its skull and all along its spine. Black, cracked hooves beat the ground and steam blew from its dripping nostrils as it bore down on them.
It looked like a Bleater, but one that had been cursed, pulled apart, put back together and blown all out of proportion in the process. Her heart pounding, she looked frantically for an escape route. Looking up, she saw one at last!
“Climb,” she said, dragging him up to a higher rock, then another, until he was by her side and racing to the top of the small formation. “Hurry, Kayne,” she hissed, dragging him as high as they could go without tumbling back down to the earth.
At last they stood, clinging to one another, looking down at the giant Bleater as it stamped its cracked, bleeding paw and snorted up at them in frustration. It let out a horrible yowl, steam and spittle flying forth from between yellow, cracked teeth and a blistered tongue.
“What is it?” asked Kayne, inching away from the edge of the tiny outcropping. They were but a few yards away from the screaming Bleater. Just enough to be out of danger for now, but also trapped. There were no nearby trees or branches to jump into, and the only way out of this mess was down.
“I don’t know,” she confessed, joining him away from the sharp edge of the uppermost rock. “But we had animals on the farm like these. They’re called Bleaters, on account of the sound they make.” The beast roared again, the forest beyond exploding in more tree carnage even as it did so.
“That doesn’t sound like ‘bleating’ to me,” he stammered. “More like screaming!”
She shook her head, eyes growing wide as another, then two more, of the giant, blistered, black Bleaters joined the first, half-a-dozen of them steaming and spitting and bumping into one another as their cracked paws clattered on the first rock, trying to climb up.
“They can’t get up here, can they?” Kayne asked.
“How should I know?” she snapped, turning to him. “I’m not an expert on—”
“Minions!” he shouted, staring down at the howling beasts. “These must be Minions, created by Kronos to hunt us down and retrieve the Orb of Ythra.”
“But how?” she asked.
“Mages can’t create life, they can only alter it. They… they can take the shape of something, but only something that exists in our world. They can make minions, but only of creatures that are already alive. You say you had beasts like this on the farm. Maybe… maybe Kronos thought it would be funny to turn your farm beasts into monsters to hunt us down. Think of the irony.”
“Hilarious!” she shouted, shoving him out of frustration. The minions were squealing now, voices high-pitched and almost painful to listen to.
“We can’t stay here,” he said, pushing her aside and raising his hands. “We must get down and flee. What… what if Kronos is close behind? His minions may be fooled by us climbing out of the way, but I assure you my master will not!”
She couldn’t answer as she watched a small glow form in his palm, much like the other night when he’d tried to start a fire. It fizzled and soured, rose and then fell again.
“Curses,” he snapped, sweat dripping from his forehead. Still, he was intent on doing something, anything, to free them from their peril. The ball glowed, forming a small circle as little fingers of power fused together, crackling with each movement. She looked from it to the mewling animals fighting each other beneath them, twice as big as any steed she’d ever seen, and frowned.
“Here,” she said, grabbing his hand. “Let me try—”
Suddenly the ball doubled in size, glowing and glistening and sparking as it levitated just above Kayne’s palm, growing in power with every rotation.
“How… how do you do that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she hissed, breathing heavy. “But, now that I’ve done it, what do we do with it?”
The ball glowed a whitish-blue until Kayne whispered something and, with a whoosh, it flew from his hand to the nearest giant Bleater. The beast howled as the crackling sphere pierced its hide, cracking ribs and burning vital organs as it burst out the other side, landing blackened and bloodied and harmless on the ground.
A few sparks and sizzles later, the ball of power flattened and smoked and fell away to ash. The Bleater fell as well, silent and bloody as its fellow minions backed away cautiously. They mewled and drooled and sniffed it, one nuzzled it with its snout before looking up at Kayne and Aurora with red, howling eyes.
Kayne was already forming another white-hot ball in his hand but Aurora could tell he was already fading. She was, too. The power seemed to come from within them, and the bigger, more powerful the glowing ball in his palm, the harder it was for her to breathe.
She felt dizzy, like she did working in the fields during the dry months when she toiled too long without taking a drink.
“Must… kill… more!” Kayne gasped, raising his palm slightly as her hand followed until, like magic, another sizzling ball of white light appeared above his palm. As soon as it did, they released the sizzling ball of power into the middle of the herd.
It flew away, leaving them both gasping for air and tumbling to the hard surface of the rock to which they clung. The ball sizzled and flew, crackled and soared, slicing through the shoulder of one giant minion before bursting through the head of the second and landing in the chest of a third.
The beasts howled in pain. Those still living, that is. As the life bled out of them they gasped, steam rising from their fallen bodies, the smell of boiling blood and singed hair and cooked meat filling the air with more sourness than seemed possible.
The first beast, black fur torn away, skin ripped open, muscle and bone exposed, limped away before falling against a tree, crumbling in a heap on its side, massive chest rising and falling, falling and rising, until it stopped.
Aurora rose to one knee, peering down over the rocks to find four of the minions fallen, bleeding, no longer breathing. Their once red eyes were a deep, rich black, but two more still remained!
They stood on the backs of their brothers, paws clawing at the rocks, steam rising from their hot, wet snouts so that she could almost feel the heat as they clamored to climb and snatch their prey from the rocks high above.
“Now what?” she gasped, falling back on her haunches. “There are still two left and I’m not sure I can work up another hot ball of death with you, Kayne!”
Kayne looked over, skin pale and hollow cheeks drenched in sweat. “I agree, Aurora. I can’t… I don’t think I can conjure anymore spells until I recuper—”
Shrieking below made Aurora stand so fast she nearly fell over the side of the small rock ledge. Kayne grabbed her orange leather jacket sleeve, now ripped and stained from their travels, and yanked her back from the ledge.
They both stood at the edge of the rock as a minion, howling, snapped its cracked yellow teeth at a wooden spear lodged in its neck. Hot, steaming blood gushed from the wound as the last Bleater, teeth bared, faced down a man – a mortal man! – bearing a short broadsword.
“Help him!” Aurora begged as Kayne struggled to conjure up one last fireball.
“Help me!” he gasped as she put both hands on his. Instantly the ball of light doubled in size, but was still a far cry from the previous two. Still, Kayne’s teeth chattered as he spoke his spell and the ball whooshed and sizzled through
the air.
Below them, the human held his sword in trembling hands. The Bleater launched itself, snout first, at the quivering human just as the ball of power burst through its midsection, neatly cutting the beast in half as its legs, still quivering, fell to the ground.
The beast’s mouth, still open, landed just at the human’s feet. Without hesitating, blood gushing from its midsection, the man plunged the sword straight down through the Bleater’s skull.
Only then did the man, beard flecked with the Bleater’s blood, turn his face toward the top of the rock outcropping. Amazingly, his first word was: “Aurora?”
28
Aurora gasped, looking into the man’s warm, gray eyes. “How… how do you know my name?”
The man turned his attention back to his sword, wrenching it from the thick skull of the massive Bleater before turning back to them. “Come down and I’ll tell you,” he said, retrieving his spear from another fallen minion.
She turned to Kayne, who shrugged and helped her to the side of the rocks. It was much slower going down, not just the climb but the exhaustion from helping Kayne conjure his powerful spells.
Her legs were wobbly and weak as at last her foot touched the ground below, muddy from the spilled blood, foul and thick, from the Bleaters.
“Now,” she gulped, leaning against the back of the rock. “Who are you?”
Instead of answer, the stranger grabbed her by the lapel and dragged her forward. Weakened by her ordeal up on the ledge, she could hardly resist and felt herself being dragged along.
“Hey!” Kayne gasped, following closely behind.
“We must hurry,” he told them both, not unkindly but insistently nonetheless. “There may be more of the beasts still.”
She stumbled along, too weak and pathetic to argue. A few minutes later, in a clearing surrounded by woods, near a spring as clear as the blue sky above, the stranger eased her to the ground.
Gently taking the bladder from her shoulder, he smiled at her. “My name is Lutheran. I’m a friend of your father, Hilliard’s.”
She gasped and hugged him. He smelled of the road, sweaty and earthy, a familiar smell she knew well from her own father.
“But why?” she asked as she released him and he fled to the relative safety of the nearby stream to fill the bladder with cool, spring water. “How… how did you find us?”
“By chance,” he said, bringing the bladder back and offering it to her. She drank freely, then handed it to Kayne. She felt immediately better. “I found your farmhouse empty, and have been following your trail ever since. But it was trampled by those beasts awhile back. So I’d been tracking them, and they led me to you.”
“Just in time, sir,” said Kayne, handing him the bladder. Lutheran looked at Kayne for a good spell, then took it gratefully as Kayne continued, “I… I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t shown up when you did.”
“I could say the same to you,” said the man, wiping spring water from his face before filling the bladder once more for their journey. “I may have acted rashly in taking on those beasts myself.”
“Good fortune that you did,” said Aurora, grabbing Lutheran’s shoulder affectionately.
He paused, and smiled, but not for long. Then he stood and said, “We must flee. Those creatures could be heard miles away, and there’s no telling who might answer the call.”
Aurora agreed, but this time it was Kayne who helped her up, not Lutheran. “Thank you,” he said, quietly as they leaned on each other for support. “I… I couldn’t have cast those spells without you.”
Lutheran stopped in front of him. “And you are?” he asked, again, not unkindly. He had a gruff manner about him, born of adventures and hard times, no doubt. At least, according to Aurora’s father. But any friend of her father was a good man indeed.
“I’m Kayne,” he said, shaking the man’s hand briskly.
“He’s a squire,” said Aurora as the trio marched on. “From Mage City.”
Lutheran paused, eyeing Kayne curiously. Then he chuckled, but never quite slowed. “A week ago, Aurora, I might not have believed you. But having seen two mages battle with the same kind of fireballs you just used, son, have convinced me otherwise.”
They walked for a moment, until Aurora realized they were heading toward home. “Wait,” she said, panic in her voice. “We’re going the wrong way.”
Lutheran turned, wise facing showing signs of impatience. “Where else would we go, child? I made a vow to your father I’d bring you home and I intend to do just that.”
She brightened. “You’ve seen him?”
He shook his head. “I wish, child. I made the vow to your empty house. But still, I must keep it.”
Kayne’s voice was a shade deeper as he turned toward Lutheran. “We, too, made a vow sir. We must travel to the Morgis, the Land of Oracles, and learn our fate.”
Lutheran chuckled merrily. “You have time for that, young man. For now—”
“Not just our fate,” Aurora interrupted. “But the world’s fate. It’s… complicated,” she added when she saw uncertainty on the older man’s face. “But, you must trust us.”
Lutheran looked at them, eyes half-lidded with doubt. Then he nodded. “Who am I to dispute a squire?” he chuckled, offering a curt little bow to Kayne. “Lead the way, master.”
29
Kayne listened to the man snoring as the fire crackled. Aurora covered Lutheran with a thin blanket from her pack, then came and sat down next to him on a mossy rock just beyond the campsite.
They sat quietly for a moment. He liked that about her. She talked when she wanted to, and listened when he spoke, but didn’t chatter or preen or simply speak to hear her own voice.
He was already quiet by nature, and even more so since becoming a squire whose fate rested in the hands of a much more powerful, much more vocal, man. Kronos was a harsh master, and rarely did the two exchange words.
Kronos spoke, Kayne listened. Or, simply… did. The other mages were not much better. Most passed quietly in the halls of Mage City, nodding to each other from beneath their maroon cloaks.
Iragos had always been kind to him, but fate had linked Kayne’s destiny to an apprenticeship with a dark mage, not a light, and so the opportunities to interact with Iragos were few and far between.
If only he could reach out to the light mage now, get some advice on how to proceed, or even just battle Kronos’ violent minions. He felt abandoned by the mages, and alone.
How could they not protect the orb better? How could a simple spell disable the Guardians and allow him, a simple squire, to steal the world’s most powerful talisman?
Had they not assumed a mage would go so far as to steal the orb from right under their noses? Or were they just careless? Did the Council of Light underestimate one of its members?
Or mages in general?
Kayne rubbed his temples, tired from worrying about the fate of the universe. About minions and fangs and mages and squires and orbs and… Aurora nudged him gently.
“Copper coin for your thoughts,” she said quietly, eyes alight with the flicker of the distant fire.
He chuckled. “I’m just wondering what you thought when you saw your first minion.”
She nodded. “You’re saying you’ve seen minions before, tough guy?”
“In theory,” Kayne said. “I mean, Kronos once turned a small Barker into a slightly larger Barker, with a green tongue and red eyes, but… the Council found out about it and he never showed me anything like that again.”
“And Kronos is… your Master?”
He nodded. “Has been since they yanked me out of the Learning Place.”
“Does that mean you’re destined to be a dark mage?”
“ ‘Fraid so.”
He felt her eyes on him and shifted slightly to face her. “But you seem so… light,” she said.
He smiled. “I feel light. But Kronos is my master, and fate cannot be interrupted.”
; Aurora smirked. “If fate can’t be interrupted, why is your Master sending Minions out to kill you?”
Kayne shrugged, chuckling humorlessly. “Alas, I have no answer for that.”
“Wouldn’t that interrupt your fate as a dark mage?” she pressed further, eager for a better, more hopeful answer.
“If that’s my fate, then…”
“… then why fight it at all?” she asked, a little louder now. “Why did you resist those minions, if you’re bound to your grim fate? Why did you try to survive?”
He inched closer to her, green eyes wide as he confessed, “I wasn’t trying to survive so much as… protect.”
She looked away, the corners of her lips turning up in a smile that warmed her all the way to her belly. “You don’t have to worry about me, remember?” she teased him, turning back slightly. “Didn’t you say I was… enchanted?”
“You must be,” he insisted. “How else to explain why my powers double whenever you’re around?”
She shrugged. “Let’s not talk about—”
“But we must,” he insisted, reaching for her hand.
30
Aurora felt a small sizzle of power run through her skin at the slightest whisper of Kayne’s touch. It was like a sunburn, only instant and covering every inch of her body. She gasped and yanked her hand away, but he only held on tighter.
“You can’t deny you have some level of enchantment, Aurora,” he said through gritted teeth, his hair standing on end as it flowed around his face. “How else do you explain this?”
He held up their hands, covered in a kind of eerie, white-blue film of light that sizzled and shivered along her skin. “Or the fact that you could see Ythulia in the first place?”
She shook her head and yanked her hand free, instantly drained of power from the severing of their connection. She stood, legs wobbly; he followed.
“You can’t deny your fate, Aurora,” he said, facing her so that she was forced to peer into his even gaze. “Even after all this, if we survive that is, the Council will find you. They seek out all who are enchanted, for you do not belong Below. You belong above, with us. That is your destiny, Aurora. That is your fate.”