The Gift of Volkeye

by Marque Strickland

  “Zu will get through…many others as well, so stay sharp, Asha! I have one other trick up my sleeve, and when that’s done, you’ll await my signal!”

  8

  Zynathian was right. They’d been too quick to start cheering, for no sooner than his transmission ending, did a massive body of burning creatures rush from the swamp of flames. Most of them dropped and began rolling around, extinguishing the fires. However, there were some that were in such frenzy that they didn’t realize they’d come out of the sea of fire. They ran aimlessly forward and sailed into the deep trench before them.

  The gap had been covered by an earth coloured tarp with a bit of dirt atop it. Upon first inspecting this trap, Zynathian couldn’t take it seriously, chastising himself as he acknowledged its mediocrity. He knew it wouldn’t fool anybody who looked closely enough. However, he was lucky in the fact that they hadn’t been looking!

  More than fifty of them went sailing into the trench: a hole made all the more lethal from the sticky bombs that laced the bottom and clung to the sides of the ditch. The devices exploded, burying the beasts in earth as the world before them went black faster than they could blink their eyes.

  Phyllamon had sustained massive losses. With these new casualties, there was a mere seventy of them left! As Zu rolled off the last of the flames, his body stung when the seared skin fell and his blisters popped. Aching, he climbed from the earth. Zu decided that he wouldn’t wait on help, because all of his remaining team was injured just as he was, and he knew they couldn’t take pain as well as he. He’d have to do this all by himself!

  As he leapt over the mound of demolished earth, landing on the other side of the now-closed Shit Surprise trench, he decided that he’d go out in a blaze of glory.

  As the first wave of Igloo rebels rose from their trench, Zu positioned himself in a battle stance, grit his teeth, and unleashed hell.

  9

  This second trap was an even bigger surprise for the Igloo soldiers. The Dickery boys, amongst the others who’d previously questioned Zynathian’s logic and secrecy on certain matters, were silenced at this. They’d never doubt him again, because the man meant business! As Zu and the remaining beasts prepared to face them, the Igloo soldiers were unshaken, once again invigorated as they received the command.

  10

  “Now!”

  Zynathian saw Teshunua and Lyn Sha leap from the trench, opening with fury. Khyeryn, the Dickery Boys, and the rest of the first wave of soldiers followed them. Even from here, Zynathian could feel the ground tremble. The vibrations shook Lyn Sha’s book off a shelf above his head. When the heavy, leather bound book landed open on a random page, Zynathian was again hit with a spiritual impression. The phrase read:

  Their fate is in my hands—not yours. Leave them at once, for time is of the essence! Take advantage, as you’ll not likely get another chance at this!

  Being an intuitive person, Zynathian didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed his things and ran from the ship. Just as he reached his hoverbike and fired up the engine, a friend landed on the handlebars.

  “Jix, you’ve done an amazing job!” Zynathian kissed him and rubbed him behind both ears, making him purr. “I need your help…will you come with me?”

  Jix hissed, arching his back. How could you ask me something so foolish? I’m with you till the end, Zynathian!

  Zynathian opened the pouch in his backpack, and Jix hopped in. Then they were off on their perilous mission, armed with nothing but brains, claws, and a burlap sack filled with Shit Surprise.

  11

  Phyllamon let go of a flurry of curses that would’ve put the foulest mouth to shame. He was resolved with the fact that they could do nothing more in this battle. This nasty turn of events had only one saving grace, and that was the fact that, at this very moment, Zephranie was performing unspeakable acts. She had to have done several hours worth of killing by now!

  Zynathian Volkeye, don’t be too quick to celebrate! Take a ride on over to Mashyuvah, and see what I have in store for you! Let’s see if your head is still swollen with pride after you bear witness to that place!

  Through the shield, he could see his winged beasts finally approaching from the north. However, he didn’t care, for he knew this battle’s fate had already been decided. As he and Murlach sped off into the distance, Phyllamon sighed at the fate of his army and the time he’d wasted. However, there was one saving grace, which he knew would reap great vengeance until he fell: Zu.

  12

  Lyn Sha and Teshunua leapt into the air and landed to go in separate directions for their target. Zu’s shots whipped pass them, and they were chilled to the bone, hearing howls of agony from behind. These separate individuals suddenly cried out and then went silent. The two of them dared not look back, focusing on their target.

  Lyn Sha ran in circles, spraying Zu with lasers every which way. However, being as tough as he was and having many of his sensory nerves already burned away, Zu did nothing but shrug off the holes that were being punched through his body. She jumped and tried to attack his upper body but made the mistake of leaping from his front side, and he saw her. Zu reached above and swatted Lyn Sha like a mosquito and sent her sailing into the distance. She landed in an awkward position, breaking her right arm upon impact. Thankful she wasn’t laid out with part of her anatomy split open like some of her comrades, Lyn decided to rise and resume the fight.

  Meanwhile, Teshunua was in a fury, seeing Lyn hit and many of the Igloo soldiers falling victim to Zu’s wrath (and this was in addition to the havoc wrought by Phyllamon’s remaining troops). Though their weapons were much less accurate than Zynathian’s versions, they were incredibly powerful, nonetheless. Zu’s was the worst of all, for it was so much bigger with more laser barrels. Teshunua knew that if he couldn’t take Zu down all by himself, he’d at least have to disable his weapon, for it was killing far too many of them.

  As he put on a burst of speed of which he didn’t even know he was capable, he discovered a new detail of his mysterious ability.

  …your speed can easily match that of a cheetah, he remembered Zynathian say.

  At first, he was so overwhelmed at his speed that he almost didn’t notice, but when he cut a hard left, evading laser fire from some of Phyllamon’s troops, Tesh noticed their expressions. Curious of their awestricken faces, Teshunua looked down and found the reason. He was running on all fours!

  Teshunua pounced Zu and climbed up his body, sitting on his shoulders. Zu, still charging forward, killing one after another, didn’t notice Teshunua until claws slashed across his face. Howling in pain as the gushing blood blinded him, Zu reached above and tried to pull Tesh from his back. However, being far too agile for Zu, Teshunua crawled up his right arm and began blasting it with both of his guns.

  Perched like a bird on a tree branch but with the grip of a boa constrictor wrapped around its prey, Tesh was unshaken as Zu swung his arm wildly about, trying to dislodge him. Finally, seeing that he was not to budge, Zu swung his arm into the hard earth with all his might. The frame of Zu’s weapon (already damaged from laser fire) was now splayed outward in a hideous array of directions. However, Teshunua was unconvinced of its uselessness. He let loose with his pulse cannon.

  A few days ago when Teshunua asked how his cannon worked, Zynathian had explained that the human body was filled with charged particles, and, if harnessed properly and sent outside of the body, those same particles would react violently when coming into contact with charged particles of other matter. It was really the same principle as two people shaking hands and one giving the other an unintentional shock. This was just a much larger and more dangerous scale of the same type of reaction. So when the red pulse of light went flying from the barrel on his left arm, Teshunua now understood why it was all the more important that he be a good distance away.

  His legs extended, sending him dozens of feet in the air. Teshunua arched his back and finally pushed off from the ground, leaping far out of reach o
f the explosion. His movements were so fast that by the time he somersaulted over to Lyn Sha and touched down, all his limbs were normal length again.

  The red pulse of light impacted with Zu’s already useless weapon and caused an explosion of such magnitude that Teshunua realized he’d only survived the incident on the tower by the grace of God!

  With his arm as nothing but a bloody stump and jagged pieces of metal protruding from his body, Teshunua expected Zu to topple over. Much to his dismay, this was not the case.

  My god, he’s still not dead! Tesh thought as he and Lyn witnessed the horrific spectacle. Zu was now killing people with one blow of his fist, crushing them into the earth!

  Everywhere they looked, the Igloo soldiers were falling just as fast as Phyllamon’s remaining infantry. Murlach’s weapons, though inferior by comparison, sprayed in such an un-uniform, crazy fashion that when being handled by angry, flailing beasts, the guns actually worked to their credit. The beasts slew many more men than they aimed at.

  One Igloo soldier lost his legs, and another, his head. The small boy, Mystiphar, had his neck opened up, and shortly thereafter, the black girl, Sonji, lost the lower half of her face. She staggered about, looking for her bottom jaw until she was put out of her misery, crushed by the left hand of Zu. Tomas met his end at the same time when Zu backhanded him with such force that he sailed into the treetops!

  Even with all the death they witnessed, the thing that frightened Teshunua and Lyn Sha most was the fact that Khyeryn was still out in the open, fighting like he had back at the castle. He wasn’t one to back down, adamant on killing Zu and Phyllamon’s soldiers all by himself if he had to.

  Parrying right and left, Khyeryn blew one chunk away from Zu’s body after another, finding time to take down two or three others, in between. However, it was to the credit of Sing, Asha, and Nicolas (the sharpshooters) that he was still alive. They picked off anyone who looked in his direction.

  Although Zynathian had told them to watch the backs of all the soldiers, the three snipers put Khyeryn’s importance above all the other soldiers near him. In life and death situations, it was impossible for family members to be impartial, so they couldn’t consciously leave Khyeryn to fend for himself just to help someone else that they weren’t as close to. As a result, a great many of the Igloo soldiers were falling at his side.

  Knowing that Khyeryn needed backup, Teshunua pulled Lyn from the ground. Toughened by recent events, she was able to ignore the pain, as he pushed her arm out of her sleeve and then quickly tied the arm of her coat in a tight knot, constructing a rudimentary sling. Once she was set, they nodded to one another.

  “We have to take Zu down, NOW!” Teshunua said.

  Lyn snarled. “This time, I’m aiming for his head!”

  13

  Looking through her binoculars, Bahzee nearly choked with fear when she saw the eight winged creatures approaching in the sky. However, the Igloo fighters were so busy with Zu that she didn’t know if they’d spotted them. She went to her many piles of ammunition, intending to hurl one thing after another and make those flying beasts scatter…

  …and maybe kill Zu and take the rest of Phyllamon’s troops with him!

  Just as she made to grab something, the winged beasts started firing. Imagining they might have hit someone she was too close to, Bahzee panicked and began hurling objects without thinking. It was only until the first rock had soared half the distance that she thought to warn the others.

  “INCOMING!”

  14

  Khyeryn, who fought like a hero and had worn Zu down to an unrecognizable state, suddenly fell. Samuel, the youngest Dickery boy, who’d taken quite a liking to Khyeryn, was dumbstruck with terror. Over the last few weeks, he’d played card games with Khyeryn, ‘thumb war’, and had even wrestled in the snow with him. And, already having seen several of his brothers murdered this day, he wouldn’t stand to see another of them die...even if he wasn’t blood-related. Samuel dropped his weapon and sprinted after him.

  15

  They were so flustered from all that was going on, Asha, Sing, and Nicolas had completely forgotten about their duty of reporting to the hospital. Several times already, Annie had called them over their comlinks, asking if they needed anything. The only replies she got were screams, grunts, and swears. However, now that Khyeryn lay on his back, it all came back to them. Nicolas wailed into his comlink.

  “ANNIE, SAM, ANYBODY…GET A MEDICAL CAPSULE OUT HERE FAST! KHYERYN’S DOWN! I REPEAT, ‘KHYERYN IS DOWN!’ ”

  16

  Annie, angry at herself for not listening to her instincts sooner, allowed her leadership skills to take charge. She started giving orders.

  Nigel, Lux, and Reena were shocked at this, as her affections for the boy, Nicolas, had led them to assume her merely a child. However, they now realized that Annie’s ten-year-old body was just a shell protecting a very old soul. She quickly impressed the three of them with her diplomacy, and they let her run the show as she gave out tasks to a group of a hundred Mechs.

  “You’ll go out in packs of twenty…two of you to every injured person, and after one group makes their rounds, the next will leave. Am I clear?”

  They nodded simultaneously.

  “Good. Get to it,” she finished, watching the first twenty Mechs rush from the ship, each pair accompanied by a hovering medical capsule. Annie then looked to Lux, Reena, Nigel, and her mother, Sam.

  “You four, open the canisters of cauterizer, and take great bundles of bandages and painkiller to your stations. That way you don’t have to keep running back and forth to the cabinets. Standby…you’ll each have plenty of work to do in a moment!”

  17

  A great feeling of dread tingled down Maugrimm’s spine as he came upon an already well-worn battlefield. There was a huge fire standing and, beyond it, he saw death everywhere, much of it belonging to the Igloo soldiers.

  Because Jalum couldn’t survive in the frigid temperatures surrounding the Igloo, he’d been left at home these past weeks. Zynathian knew they needed him for this fight, so several hours ago he dispatched Maugrimm in a hover to go pick up Jalum. Mawg had gotten to the castle in an ample amount of time, but on the way back down they encountered a vicious windstorm. It was so bad that, for most of the way, they flew about as fast as a falling piece of notebook paper!

  Now that he and Jalum had finally arrived at the battleground, Maugrimm was angered to find that many of his comrades had died. As he prepared to take vengeance on their behalf, Maugrimm noticed his friend, Rufus, emerging from the trees in his deadly hoverchair. Rushing to his side, they simultaneously engaged the aerial beasts.

  18

  Lyn Sha and Teshunua dashed back and forth, somersaulting in the air, shooting at the winged assailants. They were in a fury, having seen Khyeryn get his legs lasered off by these aerial beasts that had appeared out of nowhere! They had to take them out quickly, for they didn’t know how long the snipers would be able to hold off a now-sluggish (but nevertheless, still deadly) Zu from killing Khyeryn. He seemed adamant on making this his last task, for Khye’s legless body was all that held his attention.

  This was the biggest problem for the snipers; they now had to watch Zu and the winged creatures! Nicolas took it upon himself to scare off the latter, while Sing and Asha fired at Zu, who was unfazed by the pain. Nothing could stop him. Several headshots in a row would’ve done the job, but because Sing and Asha were so flustered, their aim was off. It was clear that Zu would get to Khyeryn before they could take him down, so Seth and Samuel, the two remaining Dickery boys, couldn’t have had more perfect timing.

  19

  Zu slowly trudged forward, again using his fist to knock the life from three more individuals. This time it was Bo, Adrian, and Daum who met their end. Their deaths were most gruesome, for Zu had vertically compressed them like discarded soda cans.

  The little one has blown away almost every piece of my flesh…before I lay down my life, he shall pay dear
ly!

  20

  Samuel didn’t have a launcher in hand like his brother, Seth, but he did have one of the bombs. As he slid forward and avoided Zu’s swatting hand, he whipped his arm as hard as possible. Simultaneously, his bomb and the other fired from Seth’s launcher, landed on opposite legs. Zu, being so enthralled with getting to Khyeryn, didn’t notice the sticky substance that clung to his limbs. As he raised his arm to crush Khyeryn and Samuel, the bombs detonated, blowing off his legs.

  Finally, he was down, roaring in agony.

  Lyn Sha and Teshunua were of the same mind, taking positions on opposite sides of Zu. They began firing and didn’t stop until his head had disintegrated.

  Again, laser fire began showering from above, and they watched Samuel throw Khyeryn over his shoulder, running into the distance.

  “Look out!” Sam yelled over his shoulder.

  Tesh and Lyn looked up not a moment too soon, for they found boulders and trees, hailing from the sky! They leapt out of harm’s way.

  As Bahzee figured, the winged creatures were startled by her attacks. A tree killed two of them, and the others scattered…only to find themselves attacked by Rufus and Maugrimm, coming at them from behind!

  21

  Rufus took three of the creatures down. As Maugrimm watched Rufus’s kills smack into the hard earth below, he sent a few bombs down to ensure their defeat. When he’d finished vaporizing their remains, he turned to find two more directly in front of him, firing.

  As a laser nicked his wing, Jalum gave a cry that rendered his prey stagnant from fear. Maugrimm took the opportunity to cut one of them down, and the other was cloven in two by Jalum’s talons.

  The last one of the aerial beasts was attacked with astonishing athleticism. In a single bound, Teshunua leapt to one of the enormous stones Bahzee had thrown, rebounded off of it and grabbed the beast by the throat. He snapped its neck and dangled from the creature like it was a parachute, as it sailed to the treetops. Teshunua let go and fell into the depths of Saint Marcleese Forest.