by Brian Beam
I brought Telis to a halt. “Let’s stop here,” I announced, interrupting Til’. I wasn’t even sure what he was even talking about anymore. I still felt a sense of foreboding, but the night was still and silent aside from Til’s talking. Something just felt wrong, though.
Just as I was about to dismiss myself as crazy, Sal’ stepped Windmane closer to Telis. After shushing Til’ she turned to me. “Korin, something strange is going on. There’s some kind of magic close by. It feels sinister, but I can’t see it or pinpoint its direction. It’s like it’s all around us. Magic shouldn’t feel like this, yet it feels familiar.”
There was no apparent reason that I should have felt the magic around us, but I think I was feeling what Sal’ did. I twisted in both directions trying to see anything out of the ordinary. “Can you give us some light?” I asked. Sal’ promptly created one of her silver balls of light above her hand and set it floating above her head. I could see the grassy clearing and the trees in the distance, but nothing else.
“I can feel it now too,” Til’ said suddenly with a shiver. Before he could say more, the wind picked up and started barraging us from all angles. Fallen leaves from the distant trees flew through the chaotic wind around us. Telis reared back and I quickly took hold of his reins with one hand and grabbed Max with the other to keep us from falling off. Til’ and Sal’ were fighting a similar battle to my side.
“Do you have something against me sleeping?” Max muttered before noticing my attempts to calm Telis and the unusual wind whipping at us.
“Well, that and I have something against dying. What’s going on here, Max?” I yelled over the increasing volume of the gusting wind.
Max’s body tensed in my hand. “This is not good, Korin. Raijom knows exactly where we are,” he called over the wind.
“What makes you say that?” I yelled back, as my cloak’s hood beat against the side of my face.
“Because eldrhims are being summoned to this very spot,” he screamed. “We are so close to the negative energy of the summoning that I can feel it.” We all could. It was a feeling that made my spine feel as soft as a honeycake.
Sal’ gasped. “He’s right,” she shouted, trying to keep Windmane at bay with minimal success. Sal’ pointed upwards to the empty sky in front of us. “I can see some kind of portal opening right there. That must be the same thing I sensed the night I met you. That’s why it feels familiar. It’s a gateway to wherever eldrhims are summoned from.”
I couldn’t see anything as I squinted through the wind. Sal’ was able to see spells that weren’t visible to others, though, unlike the rest of us. However, after a moment, I could see what looked like black, oily smoke—if smoke were tangible—billowing out of the empty space Sal’ had pointed at ahead of us.
The thick oily smoke coalesced into a spinning tornado that threatened to pull us forward into it. Leaves swirled violently, through the air. My cloak pulled out from beneath me and felt like it would rip from my body. My left arm burned with tension as I gripped the reins, barely allowing me to remain saddled as I continued to keep my other hand on Max. Even with Sal’s light, I could only barely make out her and Til’s shadowy outlines through the swirling dirt and leaves. The feeling of wrongness seemed to multiply a thousandfold.
“I think we should run,” Sal’ screamed desperately over the roar of the wind.
“You all should go,” I screamed back, hoping she could hear me. “The eldrhims will be after me. I have to hold my ground here.”
“Then we’re going to stand with you,” Sal’ called.
“Yeah, just try and stop us,” Til’s shrill voice cut through, muted slightly by the wind.
Max turned his beady eyes to me. “I have not saved you so many times to watch you die now, so I guess I am with you too.” Max’s voice could barely make it to my ears through the noise, but it did, and I smiled. After all we had all been through, taking on another eldrhim didn’t seem so bad. I was confident in what we were capable of together. And then that confidence shattered to pieces. And was then ground to dust. And that was then blown away as if by the vortex ahead of us.
The oily smoke tornado suddenly stopped, causing Windmane and Telis to stagger back a few steps from where we had been reining them back against its pull. The oily smoke retained its conical shape with the tip hovering just above the ground for a moment more before exploding into seven separate tendrils that shot up in an arc and came back down a few paces in front of us. It was a battle to keep Telis from bolting as I watched the tendrils reach the ground, each being about four paces apart.
As the tendrils made contact with the ground, they started to mold into forms that grew in size as they came down. My breath caught in my throat. The eldrhims were forming in front of us. There were seven of them. Seven!
The oily smoke began coalescing into the shape of eldrhims starting from the ground up. Two of the eldrhims must have been quite a bit shorter as the substance had already reached above their waists. My mind raced for any kind of plan for the four of us to take on seven of them. We had maybe ten seconds before the smaller ones were formed. It took me five to come up with my reckless plan.
I let go of Max and dropped from the saddle, rushing towards the forming eldrhims while drawing my sword at the same time. Max, Sal’, and Til’ all screamed some variation of “What are you doing?”
“Sal’, Max!” I called back as I charged. “Attack as they finish forming.”
“What about me?” I heard Til’ yell.
I didn’t take the time to answer Til’ as I reached the first smaller eldrhim that was in the center of the forming creatures. The black substance finished creating the silhouette of a body with two short, scrawny arms on one side and single long arm on the other. The shadowy head looked like an insect’s with antennae and pincers. The eldrhim was about a head shorter than myself. I had a feeling that our weapons would do nothing to the smoke, but if we waited until right when the eldrhims fully formed…
As the black smoky substance started to morph into a dark-green, chitinous-looking body, I swung my sword with a scream and sliced through its neck. Its insect head fell to the ground, spewing black ichor. I jumped back as the body fell forward, the black eldrhim blood just barely missing me. Now it was two heads shorter than me. Sorry, that was in bad taste, wasn’t it?
Without a pause, I jerked my head back and forth to see where to attack next. The other small eldrhim was already on the ground at my far right, an unmoving yellow lump. Lightning shot down out of the sky and hit the one next to it as soon as its patchy brown fur began to show. The eldrhim dropped to the ground with a headache-inducing screech as a ball of fire came shooting towards it to finish the job. Sal’ and Max were definitely on top of the situation. That’s three, I said to myself.
I spun to my right and had to literally jump as I swung my sword to behead the tall eldrhim that had formed to my left. What appeared to be a large human head with only smooth skin where eyes should be, dropped from the shoulders of a green-furred body with goat-like legs.
Something glinted in Sal’s light as it flew inches past my head. I looked over to see Til’s dagger jutting from an eye of the eldrhim beside me. Three-fingered hands, ones that had been reaching for me, shot up to the dagger as the eldrhim let out an inhuman shriek. The eldrhim had a head that looked somewhat like a turtle on a snake-scaled humanish body. It fell thrashing to the ground. I shot a glance behind me to see Til’ beaming at me.
Gripping my sword, I readied for my next attack and then paused. Six eldrhim bodies littered the ground around us. Max and Sal’ had taken down another to my right. Til’s eldrhim was in its death throes, but otherwise they were all unmoving. The air was full of the smell of burnt flesh, burnt hair, and the general putrescent odor of the eldrhims. My attention was drawn to where the last eldrhim would be on my far left and my mouth literally dropped.
Before me stood an eldrhim that would have given the bullratopus a run for its money in size. The bl
ackness morphed into its true form at that exact moment before I could hope to reach it. Its humanoid body was made up of large silver scales that had the metallic sheen of steel-plated armor. With Sal’s light, I could see my reflection in them. Not an inch of its body lacked the scales. Its head was flat and elongated, looking like a sideways hammerhead on a tree-trunk neck. Beady black eyes were spaced way too far apart on its wide head and its mouth stretched the distance between them. The mouth opened in a snarl, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth. There looked to be hundreds of those teeth.
From behind me, a ball of fire came rushing past towards the eldrhim. It exploded in a shower of sparkling flame against its chest and then disappeared. The fireball was followed by a strike of lightning from above and a jagged, pointed crystal to its stomach. The lightning deflected off its scales to the ground before it. The crystal shattered, the glinting shards springing off of the eldrhim in all directions in front of it. The eldrhim’s foot-wide mouth curved up in a wicked grin while my heart attempted to set some sort of speed record.
“Run,” I screamed as I turned and bolted towards Telis. Now, I understood that this eldrhim was solely after me and that I would most likely be unable to outrun it. However, being faced with something pushing fifteen feet tall that couldn’t be hurt by our weapons, had rows of flesh tearing teeth, and wanted to kill me, I chose to take the chance.
Til’ was staring up in awe at the beast as I ran back toward the horses. I grabbed him’ by his cloak’s hood and started dragging him with me. “Did you see that?” Til’ asked as he started to run on his own beside me.
“If you’re talking about the giant metal-monster behind us, then yes. Run!” I screamed. I could feel the ground shake as the eldrhim began to give chase.
Mostly out of fear, I didn’t look back until I reached Telis. I leapt onto the horse and helped hoist Til’ up behind me with my free hand. I didn’t see Max anywhere. Sal’ was facing towards the eldrhim with the ball of light above her head reflecting off of its massive body. For once, she didn’t even have one of her hands in her wicker case; they were too busy trembling on Windmane’s reins. However, her face was all resolve, her mouth set in a firm line as the metal-monster eldrhim was closing in on us with a lumbering gait.
“Run, Sal’!” I screamed, turning Telis to attempt my own escape.
Sal’ just stayed where she was. “Just watch,” she called over to me without actually looking at me.
That was a pretty tall order with death only a couple giant steps behind me, but I turned Telis to face the eldrhim against Telis’ protests. I felt Til’ lean over to get a view of the action. I tensed up and squeezed my eyes shut as the lumbering beast came within one last step of our position.
Instead of a ground-shaking step, all I heard was a sound like sand falling to the bottom of an hourglass, only multiplied a thousandfold. I opened my eyes to see the metal-monster eldrhim sunk up to its thighs in the earth which had solidified around them. It futilely tried to lean forward and grab at us, but its hands fell short of our position by a couple human paces. I backed Telis away a few more paces just in case. Telis didn’t seem to mind.
“Wow, that was amazing, Sal!” Til’ exclaimed. “Korin, did you see that? That thing can’t get us now. Haha, eldrhim! Do you think we should try and kill it now or run away? I don’t think we can hurt it, so…”
As Til’ rambled, I turned towards Sal’ and looked down to her wicker case. Max’s head poked out and then the rest of him came crawling out from under the flap. “Nasty, filthy mice. To think I have to share the classification of rodent with them now.” He crawled onto the saddle in front of Sal’ and curled up. He must have been tired after his spell.
Even with the gargantuan, thrashing, screeching eldrhim in front of us, I smiled. “Well done, Max. Now, I say we put some distance between us and metal-breath here, give Bhaliel her egg, and then add some more distance. Then a little more for good measure.”
“I’m with you on that,” Sal’ agreed.
“Good idea, lunkhead,” Max said tiredly.
“But, maybe we could—” Til’ cut off as we all shot heated glares towards him. “Nevermind, let’s go,” he finished meekly.
We had just set off at a gallop away from the towering, silver-scaled eldrhim when the ground rumbled beneath us, our horses just barely keeping their footing. I turned my head reluctantly, knowing that behind me something bad was happening.
The eldrhim was pressing against the ground with its massive scaled hands and pulling its legs out, sending earth flying out around it. With a high-pitched screech, it literally sprung into the air and landed with the torn earth from its escape behind it, knocking the horses off kilter again.
Sal’ looked at me with wide eyes. I didn’t think that Sal’ would be able to cast the same spell as Max had. Max must have been at the end of his rope or he would have buried the entire eldrhim in the ground as opposed to just its legs. In other words, we were in a big heap of trouble.
The ground shook with each of the metal-monster eldrhim’s footsteps as it gave chase. Its inhuman, screeching roars cut through the silent night and sent chills through my body that had nothing to do with the temperature. There was only one thing I could do.
“Til’, I’m going to get closer to Windmane and I need you to jump onto him,” I screamed over my shoulder, not knowing if he’d be able to hear me over the eldrhim’s earthshaking footsteps and screeches.
“You want me to jump?” he asked in disbelief. Before I could respond, he shouted, “Hurry, veer the horses away from each other.”
I didn’t question why and pulled the reins to steer Telis to my right as Sal’ took Windmane to the left. Not even a second later, an entire tree that had been ripped from its roots soared past where we had been, missing me by a matter of a few feet. The tree crashed to the ground and spun towards Windmane’s trajectory. I braved a glance to see Sal’ violently tug the reins to force Windmane to the side instead of trying to jump it. It was a good call on her part since she didn’t know if Windmane was capable of making it over a tree trunk that was bigger around than my arms could encircle. The downside was that she took her light away with her, leaving me with only the moonlight to go by.
My desire for Til’ to jump to the other horse had been for me to be able to lead the eldrhim away by myself since I was the one it was supposed to be after. That would keep everyone else safe while giving Sal’ and Max time to come up with some way that they could take it down with magic. By Vesteir’s blood I wasn’t going to be able to do anything with my shortsword.
Instead, I found myself leading the eldrhim away as planned, but with Til’ being at risk with me. I could have asked him to just jump off, but not only would he be likely to hurt himself in the attempt, there was also no guarantee that the eldrhim would simply run past him as it continued after me. Therefore, I just took Telis further to the right, away from Windmane, and whipped the reins to keep him at as fast a gallop as he could manage through the cold, moonlit night.
Another quick glance behind me showed the metal-monster eldrhim thankfully chasing after me and not Windmane. Its scales shone in the moonlight, enveloping the eldrhim in an eerie glow. I kept my path away from trees as ably as I possibly could to keep from giving the eldrhim any more long range weapons to toss at me.
The cold air bit at my face and hands and burned my lungs. I could see my ragged breaths misting in the air. Til’s grip around my middle, in addition to my nerves, made me feel like I was going to empty my stomach of the dinner we had eaten in the saddle earlier that evening. I could tell that Telis’ was tiring with our pace slowing ever so slightly.
Another glance towards the eldrhim showed it close enough behind us that if it could gain a single step’s length on us, it could reach out an arm and end the chase. I could faintly see Sal’s light bobbing in the distance. It looked like she was coming towards me, but she was too far away to make it to us before the eldrhim caught up. I silently said a praye
r to Vesteir to keep Telis running strong. Again, I may not be religious, but when facing death, you’ll look anywhere for help.
I was about to jump from the saddle to face the eldrhim so that Til’ could get away when a booming roar sounded from above us. I turned again to see a giant shadowy shape crash down into the eldrhim from above, sending the eldrhim to the ground with earthquaking intensity. The reflected moonlight from the eldrhim’s scales revealed the shimmering green-gold scales and red mane of Bhaliel.
Bhaliel lifted back into the sky, turned, and came back down again, ripping all four clawed feet across the eldrhim’s downed form, sending it rolling across the ground. The eldrhim screeched in pain, indicating that Bhaliel’s claws apparently were good weapons against eldrhims, even ones made out of metal. However, Bhaliel let out a pain-filled roar of her own. If Bhaliel’s claws had pierced the eldrhim, then she’d have gotten its blood all over her feet.
“Was that Bhaliel?” Til’ asked in wonder as we continued racing away from the battle behind us. “I bet it is. She’s going to save us. See, dragons aren’t bad.” Til’s voice was full of childlike awe and made it seem as if he was in no way fearful. My pounding heart and rapid breathing indicated the exact opposite for myself. I could hardly force myself to keep Telis going forward as I tried to snatch quick glances at the fight behind us.
Bhaliel, her shadowy form larger than the eldrhim, came coasting back down towards the downed metal-monster eldrhim with her wings fully outstretched. With her neck reared back, she let out a roaring burst of seemingly liquid flame so bright that for a moment, it was as if the sun had peeked over the horizon.