by Tony Johnson
“This is unbelievable,” the Elf said. “It must be a sign…that my life will not end as early as his did.”
Kari nodded, not knowing what she was agreeing to. “We have to get out of the open. Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. She didn’t know what to do if he was immobile. She would not leave him here to be killed by monsters.
“I’m fine, just a little dizzy right now. My head is spinning.” The warrior started to stand up, but immediately went as pale as a ghost and began slumping back down. Kari caught him under his armpit and helped him to stand, supporting his weight as he leaned on her.
The warrior took a good look at Kari and realized how beautiful she was; her face, her body, her smile. Those were always the first things he saw in girls his own age. But with her, he also noticed her confident walk and her caring tone of voice when she spoke to him. He had seen many beautiful women in his life, but this half-Elf stood out like no other.
“Usually I’m the one to rescue the pretty damsel in distress, not the other way around.”
“You did rescue me. Although whether it was intentional or not, I’m not sure.” She smiled, hoping the simple expression would relieve some of his pain.
“I’m just glad we both survived. I actually thought I did die, and you were the beautiful angel to greet me into heaven,” the warrior said as the woman put on the necklace she was holding and dropped the attached locket down in the crevice of her chest.
“Me the angel? You were the one who came down from the skies to save me. If anyone is the angel here, it’s you,” she laughed.
The warrior loved her laugh as much as every other part of her. He took her response as a sign that she was somewhat interested in him. “A quick wit and attractive, topped off by a woman carrying a bow and quiver? You’re my kind of lady: deadly attractive, but equally dangerous… depending on how good your aim is.” The warrior had learned that complimenting a girl but also questioning her skill made her want to prove herself to him and seek out his approval. He was very skilled in the underlying technique of manipulating the thoughts and emotions of girls. Other than using his double swords and cracking funny jokes, it was the one thing he knew he was good at.
The answer she gave him was not what he was expecting. “My accuracy is excellent, warrior. You can be sure of that. It’s a lot better than your weak flirting method. Do you go around telling all the girls they are pretty and funny angels?”
The Elf ignored the question and clutched at his heart in mock pain from this lady not accepting his advances. It’s not often I get shut down so quickly. She is different. “There used to be a day when falling from the sky and saving a helpless woman’s life automatically won you her heart,” he said.
Kari let go of him, and the warrior was able to balance himself on his own. The dizziness of the spiraling fall and hard crash were fading away, but the pain in his mouth still throbbed. Kari could see it was bothering the warrior.
“Let me see inside your mouth. I can tell you how bad it is,” she offered.
“You’re a hard one to read. You didn’t seem like the type of person that would want to progress a relationship so rapidly.” The warrior said as he opened his mouth.
Kari could see the injury, but she said, “Wider,” happily causing the warrior a little extra pain as a punishment for slightly insulting her. She stood on the tips of her toes to look in his mouth as she held his jaw. He was only a little bit taller than her at five and three quarter’s feet.
“The cut is not bad, but it’s not good either. You bit it pretty hard. The bleeding looks like it is starting to slow down though.” Kari let go of his jaw. “At least you didn’t bite it completely off. So you will be able to work on your pick up lines and maybe redeem yourself for the awful one you used on me.”
“Does that mean you’re giving me another chance?” he asked.
“Let’s see if we can both survive this day and then maybe you’ll find out.”
“Sounds good to me. Where are you headed? I’ll take you there.”
Kari shook her head unknowingly. “Well, since my house is burning a couple of blocks over, I don’t know where to go now. I was headed to the nearest watchtower.”
The warrior saw her eyes well up when she mentioned her destroyed house. “Sorry about your home. It seems like we’re all losing things we have grown attached to.” He quickly glanced back to where his dead gryphon lay on top of the phoenix in the crater. “The watchtowers are probably closed up now. The monsters have advanced too far in. But I think I know a place where we will be safe. Follow me.”
The two began to walk side by side, down the road, away from the wreckage of the plaza. “What’s your name,” the warrior asked his new companion.
“Kari Quinn. Yours?”
“Ty Canard, grandson of the warrior Jackson Canard, who died honorably in combat serving King Zoran,” Ty said, pointing back to the broken, headless memorial statue.
“Let’s get to safety before we end up like him,” Kari encouraged.
“Yeah, I haven’t done enough yet in my life to be worthy of getting a statue like his,” Ty agreed.
“Then we’ll have to stay alive long enough to change that,” Kari said. “Where are we headed?”
“My brother Darren and his wife Cassandra live only a few streets over from this plaza. He is a warrior, so he won’t be there. But she should be. I will escort you to the safety of their home before resuming battle.”
Kari was about to begin arguing against his returning to battle comment, but thought it best to keep silent. Most warriors were too stubborn to stop fighting even if they were injured like Ty was. He still looked very pale and was walking with a limp.
Warriors. They would rather die battling alongside their brothers, saving the lives of citizens, than live on knowing they had been a coward. In a way, Kari admired the Elf. Sometimes stubbornness for the right reasons can be attractive.
Before they turned the corner, Ty stopped, turned around, and took one last look at his dead monster friend. It was only a brief second, but that was all he needed. Among the hundreds of memories he had made with his gryphon, this would be the last one. Ty filed the image of the scene in the back of his mind and said a wordless goodbye to his good friend Wildwing.
Ty used his sword to break the lock off a tall building. He and Kari climbed up the long spiral staircase and exited out onto the roof, being careful not to be noticed by any of the many flying enemy monsters.
He pounded his fist angrily onto the floor of the roof, holding back his screams of anger.
“What is it?” Kari asked in alarm, but then she saw his cause for frustration.
Ty knew the attack was bad from what he saw when he was atop Wildwing. But it wasn’t until he stood on the building that he could concentrate and fully assess the siege. “We’ve lost Celestial,” was all he said, seeing the overwhelming amount of monsters. We’re vastly outnumbered.
From where they were in the southwestern corner of the Circle City, he saw no warriors, not in the air, not on the walls, and not in the streets. The closest watchtower was surrounded by monsters both on the ground and in the sky. Warriors and civilians had bunkered down inside. Leaving the security of the tower would lead to a quick death. All they could do was hope other warriors would eventually come and rescue them.
But it wasn’t rescue warriors who made it into the watchtower first. Ty watched as the flying monsters broke a hole in the top of the tower. The stone tower was impenetrable to fire, and monsters were not patient enough to wait there until they starved. If there was one thing that monsters did not have, it was patience.
Three blue flying monsters began to fill the tower with their element of water. The warriors and civilians who were taking shelter in the tower were forced to open the doors to avoid being drowned. Hundreds of people, coughing and choking, spilled out into the plaza in a wave of water.
The monsters waiting outside killed them all.
Kari noticed that
the last of the monster army was making their way into the city, through the breaches. They mostly came in groups of similar type creations, showing their clan affiliations.
Ty explained to Kari the stages of a typical monster attack. “The first stage of the monsters’ goal of taking over Celestial is to break into the city and get to the castle or warriors’ watchtowers. Since the watchtowers are an important part of the city’s defenses, capturing them is a huge advantage. The second stage of their goal is to cause as much death and destruction in the streets as possible, killing every living thing they can.
“We are witnessing the third and final stage right now. See how the monsters aren’t progressing into the city anymore? They are all gathering around the edges, on the inside of the inner wall. What they are going to do is work together towards the city center. They will comb every house and every building for people. If you don’t come out and follow them, your home is burned with you alive in it.”
“How do you know all this?” Kari asked him. “Monsters have never gotten past the inner wall in previous attacks.”
“We were required to study attacks on cities of the past to learn monster strategies in Warrior Training. There weren’t many case studies of large organized attacks like this one in the historical documents, but from what we do know, the three stages are generally the steps used. Draviakhan invented the system. He would have his army tear apart the city, finding every single person. Sometimes he let them all live as slaves, but most of the time he killed them all, usually in a cruel, torturous way.”
“What are they going to do with all of us?”
“That is up to them. You know as well as I do that whatever it is, it will not be the pleasant and comfortable life we have come to know in Celestial.”
“What can we do?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not going to roll over and give up. If I’m going to die, then I’m going to go out fighting. I’m definitely not going to let them make me a slave. That would be even worse than death.” Ty sighed in exasperation. It had already been a long, taxing day both physically and emotionally. The future held no hope of change for the better, but Ty refused to give up. “Don’t worry, when the opportunity comes, we will strike back.”
From his vantage point high on the tall building, Ty used his finger to trace the roads that would serve as the fastest path to Darren’s residence. There was a crumpled building blocking the way he wanted to take, so he retraced the roads and found an alternate route.
Ty and Kari exited back out onto the street. They started down the path Ty had mentally memorized. The two had to be very stealthy and avoid making noise, which was not the easiest thing to do. Kari’s arrows rattled against each other and Ty’s armor pieces clanged together. There were a couple times they narrowly avoided being caught by monsters.
When they finally got to the street Darren’s house was on, it was blocked by two orcs. Ty snuck up and threw a rock at one, making both turn around and chase him. Ty turned the corner into an alley, baiting the monsters. As soon as the orcs rushed around the corner, Kari released her already prepared arrow. At such close range, the arrow went completely through the head of the first monster and lodged deep into the skull of the one following it.
One of the orcs had been an archer. Kari excitedly grabbed the arrows in its quiver and added them to her own. She had been low on arrows, but now she had a little more freedom to be less conservative in her attacks. She would still try to keep as many as possible, lest she almost run out of ammo again.
Kari reached down and pulled the arrow out of the orc’s skull. She used a ragged cloth the monster was wearing to wipe off the blood and then inserted it into her bow.
Ty led Kari to the door of his sister-in-law’s house. On a normal day, they could have covered the distance from the building in a ten minute walk. It took them twenty-five minutes to get to her home because of the alternate route they had to take. Ty hadn’t even been able to take the alternate route he had scouted from the top of the building because a dead dragon had fallen across one of the roads he was planning on using. He had to backtrack and go out of his way just to get on another path that would safely take him and Kari to their destination. An alternate of an alternate, he realized, annoyed by the wasted time.
Despite the encumbrance, they finally arrived at the only safe place he could think of. Ty rapidly knocked on the wooden door. Somewhere behind him he heard the growls of monsters who had just found the two dead orcs. Undoubtedly they would quickly be searching the area for the murderers. Ty charged his shoulder into the locked door, but it didn’t budge. His furious knocking offered no return from the other side of the door. Ty began to call out the name of his sister-in-law, quietly at first, but louder with each call.
“Cassie! Open up, its Ty! Please open the door! Cassandra!”
“Hurry!” Kari cried, knowing there was nothing she could do to speed up the situation. She looked to her right and saw a group of angry monsters turn the corner and come out onto the street. There was nowhere to hide.
Ty and Kari were standing in plain sight.
Chapter 22
Finally, there was a clicking noise from the other side of the door as it was unlatched, and the door slowly squeaked open. Ty and Kari burst inside right when the monsters turned their heads to look down the street in their direction. A split second longer and they would have been spotted.
“Tyrus!” Cassandra smiled and immediately hugged Ty. Ty knew that smile would have been wider and that hug tighter if it had been her husband, Darren. Nonetheless, he was happy to see her and learn that she had not been one of the many victims of the siege.
Kari quickly closed the door behind them and latched it shut. She noticed the meat cleaver that had stuck into the floor when Cassandra dropped it to hug Ty. She must be scared out of her mind in here, hearing the sounds of destruction all around her and smelling the smoke from nearby burning buildings. I can’t blame her for delaying in opening the door. I would have been cautious too.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Ty. Have you seen Darren anywhere?”
“No, I haven’t, but I’m sure he’s okay. He’s one of the strongest swordsmen I know, much like our father before us.”
Cassandra took a deep breath and nodded. Hearing Ty’s strong belief in the skill of his brother gave her reassurance that her husband was still alive.
Darren was Ty’s older brother by three years. Darren lived with Ty and Steve under Titus Thatcher’s roof after their parents were murdered. After eight years, he turned sixteen, passed the warrior’s test and entered Warrior Training. A couple years later he married Cassandra. One year later they were blessed with a son.
“Uncle Ty!” Lucan had nervously been peering around the corner from his bedroom, waiting to see who came through the door. As soon as he saw it was his uncle, he ran to Ty and jumped into his arms. Kari couldn’t help but smile as she watched the two embrace.
“Did you fight on Wildwing?” the five-year-old asked.
Ty had forgotten how much Lucan loved the gryphon. He thought Wildwing was the coolest monster, and Ty was just as cool for riding him. Ty sighed deeply, debating if he should tell the sad news to the excited child. He bent down and looked Lucan in the eye. “Yes, I did. You should have seen how fast he was today!” Ty knew he couldn’t break the heart of this wide eyed child.
His mother saw the expression on Ty’s face and changed the subject as she looked at Kari. “Hi, my name is Cassandra.”
“Hi, I’m Kari. Thank you for allowing us into your home. I realize how scared you two must be in here.”
“You have no idea,” Cassandra said, glancing quickly at the meat cleaver. “So are you one of Ty’s girlfriends?”
Kari was somewhat startled by the question. “What? Me? No, no, we just met actually.”
Lucan walked up to Kari and held out his hand like a proper gentleman. Kari shook it politely and complimented his manners with a wide smile. “I think you’re beauti
ful,” the boy slowly said, annunciating the last word of the sentence.
Kari’s smile turned into an open-mouthed laugh. Cassandra and Ty joined in.
“You Canard’s are quite the ladies men, aren’t you?” Kari asked Ty.
“Lucan, go into the other room please. I need to talk with your uncle and his friend.”
“Awww, but mom, I want to stay with Uncle Ty,” the five-year-old whined.
“Mind your mother, nephew. Do what she says.”
Lucan slouched his shoulders and slowly paced into the next room, closing the door behind him. He liked Ty so much he didn’t want to disappoint his uncle by arguing with his command.
Lucan had left for his room, but Ty knew the boy’s ear would be up against the door, as he tried to eavesdrop on the adult conversation. His mother knew he was doing so as well, so she talked in a softer tone as the three moved to sit down at the kitchen table. “Wildwing?” she asked.
Ty hung his head and shook it from side to side. Cassandra shook her head back and forth, understanding. Ty was too hurt to speak about it.
After a moment of reminiscing about the gryphon, which had become like a part of their family, she said, “Remember when you took me up on him to get to know me before I was going to marry your brother?”
Cassandra looked at Kari to tell the story since Ty’s head was still bowed. “I was so scared. It was my first time flying, but when we got up there high above Celestial, and Ty told me I could look down…It was a sight I will never forget. Absolutely incredible. It was breathtaking.”
Kari smiled at the picture she was visualizing. She thought the city was beautiful from the ground. From a bird’s eye view, Celestial must look amazing. She had seen artists’ paintings of Celestial from the Valpyrio Mountains, but paintings could never do reality justice. Celestial from above was a sight Kari wanted to experience with her own eyes someday.
“I wonder what it looks like now.” Cassandra said. If she had had any idea how much damage had been done, she would have realized how morbid her question was.