Time, which still felt like it moved in slow motion, returned when he heard a cry behind him.
He looked back to the main battlefield. The dust had settled some. Bahamut, with scars all over its body, rose out of the crater it had created, bellowing, in obvious pain.
Then, seconds later, Ifrit came out. Eric couldn’t believe it had survived that attack.
Then the worst sight of all.
Artemia gasped for air. She still lived.
***
Zelda quickly ran back to Romarus as Tetra did her best to hold off Shiva.
“Don’t waste your time on me,” Romarus said. “It is time for me to learn if Chrystos is real.”
“Romarus, come on!”
Zelda tried to put her hands on him, tried to see if she could cast a spell to save him. But Romarus pushed back on it, using what powers he had to resist staying alive.
“Zelda!”
Zelda quickly looked back to see a block of ice fighting against Tetra’s column of fire. It didn’t take a mage to see which magic had the advantage. Feeling trapped, but with no choice, she left Romarus and helped Tetra fight back the column of ice. Gathering her power from the essence of Indica, not only did she send the column of ice back, she overwhelmed Shiva and left her burning on the ground.
“Romarus is hurt!” Zelda said once Shiva had dropped her attack. “Come on!”
She dragged Tetra back to the resting place of Romarus. But when she came there, he did not breathe. He did not move. Hauntingly, his eyes remained open. She had taken too long. Romarus had perished.
“Garo was like this just before he died,” Zelda said, begging for a return. “Remember, he saw Chrystos, and then he came back, and…”
But her voice trailed off as Romarus failed to move. Too long had passed for him to return. Even as she pleaded, she knew.
“Romarus!”
He didn’t move. His eyes remained in the same spot. Zelda knew Romarus would never cast a spell again, never draw a breath.
“No!”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Hey!” Tetra said, shaking the girl. “Listen! Stay with me. We still have a battle to fight, OK? We can mourn everything that has happened after. But if you grieve in the middle of battle, you’ll die too.”
Zelda shook herself, even as she sniffled. She knew that. She’d kept going in Dabira and against Indica. Of course, it had nearly taken her death in Dabira for her to win the fight, but she would not let the same thing happen here.
“Let’s go,” Zelda said, her voice shaky, her cheeks stained with tears. “Let’s end this.”
They left Romarus, Zelda silently promising to give him a proper burial when they finished this battle.
The two girls found Yeva still standing in the same position that they had left her. Shiva, sporting black burns and peeling skin, levitated, though the pain on her face never went away.
“You have more power than I anticipated,” she said. “However, this—”
Zelda had moved past words. She launched another fire spell at the ice monster, this one catching her square on the feet, leaving her without a shin on her right leg. Shiva screamed in agony. She fell to the ground, looking like a fallen angel, and Zelda prepared to finish her off.
But before she could, a ferocious impact from down in the valley knocked her and Tetra out of sorts. A massive cloud of dust rose to the heavens.
“Ifrit!”
The blue-skinned monster levitated, its lower leg still nothing but a stump, and moved awkwardly down into the valley below.
“Get back here!” Zelda yelled.
But the monster headed into the cloud of dust. Zelda looked at Yeva. She would have to wait. Hopefully, once they killed Shiva, they would get her back fully healthy. Hopefully, she was not too late for the second time in battle.
Zelda and Tetra followed the monster into the valley. She found Eric on his knees in front of Abe, who laid in the same position as Romarus. Chrystos help us all.
She looked over to see Artemia rising, her face a pulverized mess.
***
“How?!?” Eric roared as Zelda and Tetra came to his side.
On the other side, Ifrit and Shiva linked up with Artemia. Behind them, the great dragon, Bahamut, rose up. The dragon’s wounds suggested a ferocious battle that would not have a clear winner until the very last moments.
“You cannot kill me, Eric,” Artemia said. “The killer cannot be killed. And the same goes for you magi.”
Eric stole a quick glance at Zelda and Tetra. Zelda had a slight burn on her left arm, but Zelda didn’t even favor it. Tetra didn’t even look like she’d suffered any damages, although fatigue had become a factor.
“Romarus?”
Zelda shook her head, her eyes remaining on Artemia.
But then someone more important came to mind.
“Yeva?!”
“Alive,” Tetra said. “But imprisoned. Only killing Shiva will we save her. And we have to do it fast.”
Then Shiva dies first. We kill one of them, get one of ours back. And I help her.
“None of you have any chance against me!” Artemia roared. “Shiva! Ifrit!”
The monsters closed in on Artemia, creating a sort of barrier between the warriors and her. No magic or actual barrier prevented Eric from charging, but he wasn’t ready for suicidal tactics yet.
“I have brought you into this world so that you may take down the legendary dragon rising before us,” she said, punctuated by a rather timely bellow from Bahamut. “Your time has come. Focus all of your energy on taking down that dragon! Leave me to die if necessary!”
You’re insane. You’d die if it meant accomplishing this task? You’re not even fighting for anyone. You’re fighting for your own selfish goals. And you’d die for that. You’ve lost your mind, if you ever had it to begin with.
“As you command, master,” both Shiva and Ifrit said simultaneously, their voices resonating in disturbing fashion, the soft-spoken Shiva and the demonic Ifrit combining in a way Eric never hoped to hear again.
The two monsters roared up, seeking Bahamut, while Artemia, her face a swollen mess, turned to the three remaining fighters.
“You could kill me easily here,” she said, laughing as she coughed up blood. “But I know that one of you has sought my death far more than the rest of you. Zelda, you are too young and too inexperienced to know anything. Tetra, Kara, whatever your bloody name is, your time has past.”
But then she held the hand aloft at Eric. Her arm trembled as she did so. Eric knew this would not take long to finish. He had energy, he had rage, and he had magi behind him. Artemia didn’t even have a sword, her blade cast aside by Abe’s body.
Artemia didn’t even seem to care, though. It almost seemed like she wanted him to kill her.
“But you, Eric Garland. Let me tell you something.”
“No, let me tell you something!” Eric said, having enough. She would know the truth of her relationship to him before he killed her. She needed to die knowing the full truth. “You killed my mother. You killed my sister. That alone should be cause enough for me to see your head on my sword. But did you know you killed my father as well?”
Artemia’s pulverized face seemed to search through her memories for the answer.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s the man you hate the most in this world.”
That made the answer instantly obvious for Artemia, who also found a level of rage.
“I did the world a favor in killing Auron,” she growled. “If you knew who he was, you would thank me for doing it.”
Behind her, the monsters engaged in warfare with Bahamut. Eric scarcely noticed, their roars a distant sound.
“In any case, nephew,” she said, treating the word as a curse. “To win this fight, to give your soul peace, as you so eloquently put it, you’ll have to kill family. Oh, the irony. You sought to avenge your family’s death, and in doing so, you’ll have to contribute to more deaths in yo
ur family.”
“No,” Eric said. Though he still felt rage, he had done something crucial for the sake of battle.
He had put it back on his terms, not Artemia’s. Artemia had controlled the conversation in the moments before, causing Eric to lose his mind. Now, though, he’d gotten control of that, and in turn knew how to execute his rage properly. He would not let her take it back.
“You see, you’re not my family,” Eric said, his sword catching fire, a whiter fire than before. The flames danced on his sword, the sound of fire igniting filling his ears. He suspected that one of the magi behind him gave him power. Good. He would win this battle as part of a team effort, to show Artemia what destroying her allies and relationships had done to her. “My family loved me. My father, even if he didn’t live long enough for me to remember him or show me love, protected my mother. My mother died begging for you to show mercy to me and fought to protect me. And my sister always looked up to me.”
He came forward. He stared into Artemia’s eyes, and while those soulless abominations did not seem to have gotten any sense of sympathy or sorrow, he saw something that brought a smile to his face. Fear. An almost paralyzing, crippling level of fear. She realizes far too late what I’ve learned.
“You have lied to me for six years. You sought my death as soon as you returned from Dabira six years ago. Only a fortunate choice of words from the man you just killed kept me alive. You manipulated me. You controlled me. You call that love? You call that family? No. Blood does not determine whom I consider family. Love does.”
“You think I did nothing for you?!?” Artemia shrieked. Now it’s her turn to have her emotions control her. “I taught you to hunt! I taught you to use a sword! I gave you more gold than any man, including the emperor, could ever give! And you want to throw it all away and kill me.”
“Do you think I care for that?” Eric said. “I’d rather live as a homeless man with my family than have experienced what I have. What you offered, I will use to kill you. Do not think for even half a second that any of that can make up for love.”
Artemia’s arm trembled some more. She let out a ferocious cry, and Eric, in turn, did the same. He charged her, moving in to kill Artemia Theros.
***
Zelda had sought to join Eric in battle. She even enhanced his sword’s fire, the better to ensure that he would have the best chance of victory.
But Tetra had placed a hand on her arm.
“I have watched their battle from afar while we fought Shiva,” she said. “Eric will kill her quickly. We will only create havoc. Let him finish his task.”
Zelda still sought to join in for as much a danger as Artemia posed, but then she heard Eric say something that kept her in place.
“I’d rather live as a homeless man with my family than have experienced what I have.”
I lived that life. And… I had the love of Mama every day. It was tough. I wouldn’t want to go back.
But if what you experienced is worse, I’m not taking your fight, Eric. I’ll help the other fight here.
The two dragon hunters shrieked at each other and Eric charged forward. Zelda looked to the sky and saw Ifrit and Shiva combining forces against Bahamut.
She’d expected to see Bahamut crushing them. But instead, their forces in unison created more havoc for Bahamut than it did opportunity. In fact, after a couple of shrieks, Zelda felt genuine panic.
“We can’t let them win,” she said.
As if a single second more would’ve allowed them to win, Zelda fired a single ball of fire from her hand toward the heavens. It struck Ifrit, but instead of doing damage, it actually seemed to heal him.
“They’re just going to absorb each person’s elemental attack,” Tetra said. “The more damage we think we will cause, the more one will take it and become stronger. We have to get close enough or lucky enough that we make sure we strike the right monster.”
“What can we do?” Zelda said, panic taking over.
Stay calm. You can figure this out. If you beat Indica, you will find a way.
“Come on,” Tetra said. “We need to get above this valley. We need to get a better angle.”
The two hurried to the cliff they’d just come from, trying to tune out the cries behind them. Every shriek from Bahamut, every pained cry, created a fear that Zelda would not be able to stop its death.
When they reached the cliff, they saw that Ifrit and Shiva had continued to strike at Bahamut. The great dragon roared in defiance, but the damage it suffered had become too apparent. One of its wings had torn, and blood splattered to the ground.
Zelda, on pure instinct, fired a massive fire spell. She got lucky in that it hit Shiva, but it also hit Ifrit. One weakened, the other strengthened.
“I have to get closer,” Zelda said. “I’m not relying on luck.”
“But there’s no place to get closer,” Tetra said.
I have to come closer. I have to. There’s no other way around it.
She couldn’t scale the mountain. The battle shifted in place too much for that to work. She almost wanted the power to fly. The power to…
An idea came to Zelda. It seemed obscenely dangerous and would probably kill her. But she didn’t see much of a choice.
“Here,” she said, giving the essence of Indica back to Tetra.
“Why?” Tetra asked. “I can’t do anything with this. Your power will diminish.”
“Yes, but not so much that I can’t kill these beasts,” Zelda said. I’m really going to suggest this. Well, this is what it’s come to. It’s like when Roland first taught me to hunt. “You can use the power of wind in your elemental spells, right?”
“I… yes, why?”
Zelda sighed. In any other circumstance, she might have laughed at the insanity of her suggestion.
“I want you to use wind magic to hold me aloft in the air. I’m going to move toward these beasts, get on their level, and kill them.”
“Are you insane?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy.”
“There’s no other way. Not unless you have any ideas.”
Zelda racked her brain even now for a better solution. Unless she could suddenly learn to levitate like Shiva, she would not have a way of defeating her and Ifrit without some incredible luck. The last thing Zelda wanted to do was depend on fortune to favor her.
“The crystal will give you enough wind power to hold me up,” Zelda said.
“This is absolute madness,” Tetra said. But then she laughed. “Then again, what about this situation isn’t madness? I’m witnessing a second fight against Bahamut because of man’s greed. Some things never change.”
She took the crystal with some nervousness from Zelda. Zelda felt her power fade, but not as much as she had anticipated. Perhaps, with time, she had just simply absorbed the power the crystal had given her. That was just as well. If she had enough power to freeze an entire city when the guard tried to choke her, she felt pretty good about her chances against these two monsters.
“If this works, you’ll be the greatest mage who ever lived,” Tetra said. “But if it fails…”
“I know what I’m facing,” Zelda said. “But if we don’t try, we certainly will fail. Go! I’m going to jump off here and when I do that, use your wind magic.”
Tetra hesitated for just a second before running back down. With a few minutes before she would jump, Zelda studied the battle of the gods before her.
Bahamut had suffered serious wounds, no one could make that mistake. But it wasn’t like Ifrit and Shiva hadn’t suffered damage either. Zelda had a feeling that if she just got a clear shot, she could, at worst, harm them enough that Bahamut would finish them off.
It wasn’t an impossible task. In fact, the more Zelda watched, the more confident she became.
But it still carried a lot of risk. The obvious one was Tetra losing power and Zelda falling to her death. The next was that her mobility would be severely limited, dependent entirely on Tet
ra staying beneath her. If Ifrit or Shiva knocked her out of place, she’d probably fall to her death.
And that said nothing about unforeseen risk. Maybe Bahamut, as it attempted to maneuver, would knock Zelda over. Maybe she would achieve victory, but Bahamut would strike at all humans, thinking them responsible. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But there was no question about what she was about to do. Like it or not, Bahamut was losing its battle because of its fatigue. It needed help to survive.
Zelda glanced down. The drop from the cliff seemed much higher than she had anticipated. Her stomach lurched. She would get one shot at this, and if she failed, she didn’t want to think about what her death would look like. Tetra came into view and motioned for her to jump.
Zelda paused. Should she take a step off and fall feet first? Should she go with her body parallel to the ground? Should she—
Stop! Go!
Zelda took a step forward and fell from the cliff.
The fall made her scream. She felt light, her stomach rising in her chest. She felt the rush of wind—not the kind Zelda wanted to feel—push her hair up and her clothes against her chin as she accelerated to the ground.
“Tetra!” she screamed.
She looked down. She saw the ground coming, seconds away. She closed her eyes, preparing for impact. Tetra wouldn’t get her spell cast in time.
Then her stomach stopped rising.
Then, she felt an even faster rush to the top, one that felt like a catapult. She couldn’t help screaming at the chaos of her rise. Would she fall back down? Would she ever find stable ground?
She didn’t open her eyes until, finally, her stomach settled and she seemed to have found a still place.
She didn’t dare look down after her first glance, which placed her about two hundred feet above the cliff from which she had stepped foot off of. She looked north to the mountain and saw Ifrit and Shiva fighting at about her eye level a hundred feet away.
“Follow my lead when I walk!” Zelda yelled down to Tetra.
Tetra didn’t respond. Zelda couldn’t wait for a response.
Legends of the War (War of the Magi Book 3) Page 26