by Justin Sloan
She gritted her teeth and pushed her way up that hill, calf muscles and even her butt now shooting with pain. It wasn’t like she was out of shape in the least, but she certainly hadn’t been one for long runs when living with the paladins. Learning to use the sword in her spare time to the extent she could had been one thing, but going out and running would have made her look like a lunatic.
Still, she wished she could give up the present pain for any amount of lesser past appearance.
Finally they crested the tall hill and Rhona saw the others stop, then froze as well. The light was still moving, but a small army of remnant were in its path, staring straight at it.
The remnant screamed and shouted in confusion as the light passed through them, likely figuring they were all being slaughtered by some ancient magic. But the light didn’t harm them, instead going directly through their bodies.
When they looked up, their gaze came to rest on Rhona and the rest of her group, the source of the magic as far as they were concerned. Their cries of confusion morphed into shouts of rage.
“I’ll eat the bitch, screaming!” one of the remnant yelled, the others roared, and then they charged.
“SHITE!” Stone shouted, pushing Tina behind him and pulling out his sword.
Alastar drew his, too, and Rhona stood next to Estair, each pulling out two short swords.
“I’d kill for my bow and some arrows right now,” Estair grumbled as she dodged an arrow. “Guess killing for that one will have to do.”
She charged, and Rhona, heart pounding, placed herself between Tina and the attackers. She wasn’t exactly skilled with her swords, though she had certainly been trained in their use. Knowing that she had magic to fall back on if needed greatly helped her confidence, so that when the first line of remnant hit and one made it past the two paladins and Estair, she was ready.
No fighting or parrying here, just a simple sidestep followed by a backward slash of her right-hand sword. The remnant fell back with a shout, not dead by a longshot, but with a long gouge in its side.
The remnant stumbled backward and snarled, only to find a rock slamming into its head, courtesy of Tina.
“Nice teamwork,” Rhona complimented her, and Tina smiled. The smile faded as she pointed and cried, “Watch out!”
Rhona spun and saw that her brother was now fighting three at once, his sword glowing and gold light streaming from his leg where one of their spears had caught him. One of the remnant had just turned to her, likely assuming her brother was done for, and he lunged with an ax in one hand and small shield in the other.
She didn’t see any way out of this other than magic, but wished to the Saint that she had more control over it. Letting her eyes cloud over with black, she did her best to concentrate on the shadows coming to her aid. In her mind, they picked her up and whisked her out of the way, but as she brought her hands up, trying to command the shadows, the darkness mimicked her movement, becoming like a claw in the night as she swiped across the remnant.
He spun, blood seeping from claw marks across his face and body, and turned back in confused terror.
Blood sprayed again when she made the same motion with her other hand, and he collapsed to his knees, convulsed, and then fell back, dead.
She stared at what she had done and felt her insides clenching. The vomit came spewing out and she was on all fours, trying to fight the urge to simply lie down and let the darkness take over.
It didn’t make sense. She had done so much more than this before, when they were fighting the sorcerers. But now it was making her weak faster, draining her like she’d never been drained before. It was like she had been drawing on it too much.
She didn’t have time to give it too much thought, however, because soon another remnant stood cursing over the corpse and looked at her with spear at the ready.
“What are you?” he muttered, his voice harsh and slimy-sounding.
He lunged, but she threw out a hand and willed the shadow forward. This time it was like the remnant ran into a massive wall. He hit it hard and flew back, landing on his arse, just in time for Alastar to turn and slice, removing his head.
Again a convulsion took Rhona and she spun as she fell, just barely avoiding the vomit, then rolled again as she clutched her stomach.
“Alastar!” she shouted, and saw him kick a remnant away before running to her side.
“Don’t use your magic,” he cautioned. “Not until you have control over it.”
“We need to keep moving!” Stone urged, pointing to their left.
After Alastar had helped Rhona to sit, she saw why. A larger group of remnant had taken notice of them and were heading their way.
“Save the magic,” Alastar commanded, holding her so that she had no choice but to stare into his eyes as he spoke. “Right now, we just need to run.”
She nodded, and with a renewed focus, followed him as he led the group away from the oncoming horde. They could have possibly taken on that many if they unleashed all the magic at their disposal; hell, they had done it before. But the focus here wasn’t to kill remnant, it was to find the Sword of Light.
A loud rasping came from behind Rhona and she glanced over her shoulder to see Stone, red-faced, doing his best to keep up. Even Tina, not the active type, was running ahead of him, encouraging him onward.
“That fight might not be optional,” Rhona told her brother as they hit a steep decline. Their run became a controlled descent, each of them flailing their arms to avoid falling.
“If we can make it there,” he declared, pointing to the outskirts of a ruined city, “we stand a chance.”
Rhona was about to argue, but as they reached a point where they had to jump across a precipice to reach the hill that half-blocked the view of the ruins, she glanced back to see the army of remnant at the top of the hill.
They seemed to be forming a line and…stopping, for some reason.
“Don’t tell me,” she remarked, looking back at the ruins. “Ghosts.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Estair, at her side, agreed.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Alastar chided them. “But something has the remnant spooked.”
They rounded the hill and slowed to a jog, now that the remnant had given up the chase. Stone had a chance to speak between wheezing breaths.
“Ghosts are real enough, you can be sure of that.”
“Not this again,” Alastar groaned, as he gave Rhona an amused look.
Back at the castle, Stone had always been the one who told stories of ghosts he had seen when they were out walking among the trees. The other paladins had been quick to tell him it was his imagination, or maybe just druids, but he had insisted.
“Tell me there’s no such thing as ghosts when you’re looking one right in the eyes,” he always said, then told the story of the castle dungeon, and how one time he had gone down there and noticed a dark shape staring at him. He swore it had continued to stare as he drew close, and only vanished when he attempted to reach out and touch it.
Why he would try to touch a ghost was beyond Rhona’s scope of understanding.
Thinking back on this topic, she turned to him and said, “You realize that with our understanding of clan spirits, or even how the mystics’ magic works, there are multiple explanations for what you saw that night.”
He opened his mouth to argue, closed it, scrunched up his face in thought, and trudged on with a simple, “Ghosts are real.”
“Why not?” Tina demanded, coming to her man’s defense. “If there’s magic, why not ghosts?”
“It’s the same old argument,” Alastar offered, leading them along the edge of the hill, which had become somewhat of a cliff. “If there’s magic, anything’s possible. Next you’ll be saying there are dragons or, hell, even vampires and werewolves. Give me a break.”
“Aye, those things all might be real,” she replied, more as if she was agreeing with him than arguing. “The truth of the matter is, we don’t know, d
o we?”
Alastar shook his head and chuckled. “Sure. Just like we don’t know if there are greater beings out there among the stars, but I’d bet my left hand there aren’t.”
“I’d bet my left nut there are,” Stone countered.
“Can we stop betting body parts and just stick with the whole ‘nobody knows’ answer?” Tina asked, twining her arm with Stone’s as they came to a walk. “As much as I’d love for you to be right, I don’t want to see Alastar lose a hand, and you know I love your precious stones way too much to see you lose either of them.”
“Changing the subject,” Rhona cut in quickly, “we have an army of remnant at our back, a possible group of paladins roaming this island looking for the same sword we are, and—maybe, or maybe not—ghosts. How about we worry about each in turn, as they present themselves?”
“Deal,” Alastar agreed, crouching at the edge of the hill and holding up a hand for the rest of them to stop. He looked across the area, much flatter than what they had traversed so far, and assessed the ruins ahead.
Rhona had to squint to see in the darkness, but this had clearly been a much more advanced city in its day than the ones she was used to. There were stories of the large cities in Roneland, now piles of rubble with the occasional metallic structure mixed in, but she had never come up with a reason to visit the ruins.
It was so amazing here that she wished she had.
In the midst of the ruins was a large structure with a dome on top, and nearby there were old buildings of stone with great pillars that had fallen to the ground. Her foot hit a slab of cement as she inched closer for a better look, and, as she knelt to investigate, she looked back and realized that the hill they had just come around might have once been part of the city, now covered with dirt and grass. Much of the city might have been buried like this, she thought. She could be standing on the old city square at this very moment, for all she knew.
Her hand reached out and she prepared to pull on her magic, but noticed someone looking at her from the grass on the hillside.
“Shhh, calm,” Estair murmured, motioning Rhona closer.
When Rhona took a step forward, she saw that it had simply been her reflection in a piece of glass with dark earth behind it. But as she leaned in, a shape moved quickly behind it and was gone. She frowned, looking at Estair to see if she’d noticed. The woman’s eyes narrowed and she nodded, then stepped forward and pressed on the glass. It didn’t budge.
“What’ve you two got?” Alastar asked, noticing their concentration.
“Someone was behind the glass,” Rhona told him, pointing. “There.”
Alastar stood and inspected the glass, no bigger than the size of his head—at least what was visible.
“If we had a small child, we might be able to get in there and give chase, but as is—”
“We’ll have to find another way in.”
“If there’s someone who doesn’t want to be found,” Tina asked, “why are we trying to find them?”
“Based on this setup, this person probably isn’t paladin or remnant,” Alastar replied. “Meaning, we might have found our ghost.”
Stone glared at him. “You prepared to lose that left hand?”
“Shut up,” Tina barked, giving him a scolding look like that of a mother to a child. “Enough already.”
Looking shocked, Stone stepped back with his hands raised and did as she commanded. Not a bad move, Rhona thought, knowing Tina. In all the time they had been friends, they had mostly been cordial to each other. But there had been that one time when all Rhona had been trying to do was help in the kitchens.
The third time she messed up a recipe for rhubarb pie, Tina had lost it, told her that she was a lady of the castle, and to stay in her place. That place was not, she had insisted in a voice that bordered on shouting, in the kitchens.
The fury she’d seen that day in Tina’s eyes made Rhona take extra precautions to not upset her again, so when Tina had passed them and Rhona shared a knowing look with Stone, she had to smile. It was clear he had tasted her wrath before as well, and didn’t want to repeat that mistake again.
Without another word, the group moved into the ruins. The tall domed structure looked ready to topple at any moment, and it was only a monument. Someone had set up large cloths in a corner of one of the old buildings so that the remains of one wall acted as shelter from the winds, and Rhona guessed it was their friend from behind the glass.
Alastar’s fairy of light was sitting on the dome. Her little head with its indistinguishable features seemed to be looking around, debating, but as they drew closer, the fairy faded.
“Any idea what that means?” Estair asked, but Alastar just held up a hand. “Could be that I’m drained. Give me a minute.”
“Is it safe, with someone out there presumably watching us?” she asked.
“Safer than back that way,” Stone replied. “I’d take my chances with some lone survivor over an army of remnant any day.”
“For all we know, this person knows more magic than anyone we’ve ever met and could delete us from existence with the swipe of her hand,” Rhona said.
“Her?” Stone asked with a raised eyebrow.
Rhona put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. “Of everyone here, who has the more powerful magic, the guys or the girls?”
Stone considered that, then shrugged. “True. Let’s hope this lady isn’t having her time of the moon then.”
SMACK! Tina had hit him upside the head.
“Just because a woman decides to use magic and kill us all doesn’t mean she’s having her time of the moon,” Tina snarled. “By the Saint, I hate it when you blame everything on that.”
“Please don’t hit me?”
“Talk like an adult, and I’ll do my best.”
Rhona caught Alastar and Estair sharing a look that said they were amused by this, and she had to admit the relationship between Stone and Tina wasn’t what she had expected. A man built like a mountain, getting bossed around like that!
“You two need a little time out?” Rhona asked. “I mean, some time to yourselves?”
Stone stared at her with confusion on his hard features as Tina blurted, “What?”
“You seem a bit…wound up. Easily agitated at each other.”
Stone laughed and waved her off. “This is how we always are. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”
“Wonderful,” Estair muttered, earning a glare from Tina.
“You want lovey-dovey all day long, go give yourself googly-eyes in the stream,” Tina told them. “This is a real relationship we’re building here.”
“Actually, she has a good point,” Estair commented, turning to Alastar. “How come we haven’t had an argument yet?”
“You want a fight?”
“No. I don’t know. It’d make whatever we have more real though, huh?”
Alastar looked at Rhona for help, but she just crossed her arms and smiled. With everything going on around them, this was too much fun.
“Let’s argue about having a fight then,” Alastar agreed. “I say it’s stupid to fight for fighting’s sake, especially when there’s danger and threat of a real, physically violent fight all around us.”
“Damn, me too,” Estair agreed, pursing her lips. “I guess we’ll have to find something else to fight about later then.”
Alastar scratched his head. “Aye, maybe so.”
“Now you lot are just making me sick,” Rhona grumbled. “It would’ve been more fun if you had just had a nice little disagreement and distracted us for a time.”
“Agreed,” Stone added. “I’d hate to be the only couple that bickers here.”
“We’ll find a reason, don’t you worry.” Estair looked at the ruins and past them to the water they had come from. “We can’t go back that way, and southwest is out of the question if we want to avoid the remnant. So that leaves north.”
“I’m not sure we’re ready to move on just yet,” Rhona mus
ed, thoughtful now. When the others looked at her in confusion, she added, “Not until we’ve had a chance to question our local friend here.”
Stone shook his head, but Estair said, “She’s right.”
“How’s that?” Tina asked. “We have no idea what we’re dealing with here. There could be hundreds of sorcerers or who-knows-what hiding in these ruins.”
“But if they are locals, if they’ve explored these lands…” Estair turned to Rhona to finish the thought.
“They might know about the Sword of Light. How to find it.”
Alastar nodded, then found a pile of rubble that looked secure and climbed it. Reaching the top, he held onto the wall and called, “If you’re out there, we mean you no harm.”
Everyone waited, and after several moments, Alastar leapt down.
“What did you hope that would accomplish?” Stone asked.
“Not much, but it was worth a shot.”
“Try this on for size.” Stone walked over to the area with the cloth over it. He shouted as he undid his britches, “No harm, but if you don’t show yourself, I’m going to piss all over your humble abode here.”
This time Rhona beat Tina to it, shouting, “Put your trunk away, this isn’t the circus and it sure as hell isn’t a place where we piss on people’s houses. Tina, will you please slap your man?”
Tina smiled. “Gladly.”
Before she could however, Stone turned around, hands up, everything where it should be in his pants, and smiled. “A joke, ladies, just a joke. I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Was he such a child back at the castle?” Rhona asked her brother.
Alastar shook his head. “Must be something to do with the whole freedom thing. Built-up immaturity, waiting to bust out.”
“That, and lack of sleep,” Stone added, glancing back at the small shelter and tilting his head. Rhona figured he was checking for a bed.