“Now, let us praise our King of Glory until the battle commences. Worship is where many victories are won!”
The preacher led the masses in songs of praise and worship—victorious, chant-like songs that shook through the quarry and beyond. The enemy could hear the joyous thumping and triumphant cries. Rashnir held Jibbin and stood next to Jorge but he couldn’t locate Kyrius. From the edge of his vision he was able to catch a glimpse of an angelic figure taking flight through the night air, outspread wings contrasting against the starry sky.
Chapter 10
Shinna clung tightly to the angel. Kyrius carried her through the sky with incredible speed and held her tightly in his powerful arms. Minutes earlier Shinna grabbed the angel and explained the inner turmoil in her heart; she moved his heart with her personal conviction.
When the ranger, Jaker, told of those who’d been imprisoned for their resistance to Luciferian control, something in her heart cried out for them. She couldn’t shake the intense feeling and so she spoke to Jaker about them. None of them were Christians and had likely never even heard of the alternative faith—most of them simply resented dictatorial control. Each of the imprisoned would likely be interrogated and given a chance to accept the tenets of the Luciferian faith since the Order ran the prison and prisoners who claimed any adherence to the Christian religion would have been executed immediately.
Jaker insisted that there was no way to reach them. The prison was well-guarded, staffed by overzealous trainees who hoped to impress their superiors. They were the kind of troops that itched for any reason to strike down prisoners in cold blood; inflicting pain on inmates demonstrated skill and loyalty to the callous Luciferians on staff.
Shinna persisted, searching for more information about the place, telling him that she felt prompted to do something about the condition of their souls. Jaker discounted her words and passed her off as a crazy old woman; any attempt at rescue was pointless from his point of view. He was even more convinced of her craziness when she told him the details of her impromptu plan. A prison break was not her intention: she volunteered for imprisonment with the rest.
The old woman pumped the apathetic ranger for as much information as she could and then spoke with Kyrius. Jorge, along with Rashnir, had already been given a great task: leading the armies in the inevitable battle at the gorge. But Shinna needed supernatural help to enact her plan and so she sought out Kyrius.
Shinna knew it was the Lord who moved her heart and called her to minister to those in the prison, to offer them a chance to accept the gospel. She knew that she would not be of great tactical importance in this battle but she could accomplish something great aside from it—and satisfy that urgent call she felt stirring in her soul. The child, Jibbin, would miss her, but that was the way of things.
“You know that this thing will cost you your life?” the angel cautioned her, keeping his voice low.
She looked down the steep slope until she could pick out the two figures in the distance. Minstra and Leethan fidgeted nervously in the flickering light of a campfire. Her lips tightened with resolve and she turned to face the angel.
“I am aware of that,” Shinna replied. “As I look at these people around me, I am filled with compassion for them. Each one reminds me of my own children. All my sons and daughters died years ago. I was never able to show them there was something lacking in their souls, that we all in this realm were condemned and in need of a redeemer. The responsibility of ministering to children is a duty that every parent should honor, but I missed that chance; all my own children may be gone but I can minister to these others as if they were my own.
“When I think of those jail cells, in my mind, I see them filled with my own sons and daughters who desperately need the Lord. Who will go to them if not their mother? This path is placed before me, and I would gladly risk my life to go to them. It is what any mother would do for her child.”
Kyrius nodded. He scooped the thin old woman into his arms and ascended into the night sky, bearing her to the chosen mission field, passing unseen over the armies gathered against them. The angel knew that he could not deny her request.
As Kyrius soared through the sky, the cold wind streamed by as he streaked toward his destination with incredible speed. Shinna hugged him tightly, holding on for both security and warmth; the frigid, whipping wind blurred her vision and pulled hot tears across her cheek in long rivulets.
The angel descended as his superhuman senses alerted him to a danger in the distance. He plummeted downward with both extreme speed and angelic grace. They alighted near the edge of a wooden glade on the northern edge of the Quey forest; they’d gone over halfway to their destination by the time Kyrius identified the hazard. He chased the old woman under the cover of trees where they watched the massive shadow swoop across the sky, casting its dark eidolon on the ground from the brilliant illumination of the moon. It darkened a large portion of the stars with its terrifying, draconic silhouette.
Once the threat had completely passed they resumed flight, fearful for their friends’ plight as much as their own.
***
The Christians separated those who would pray from those who would fight. All who did not fight were expected to pray; a different sort of battle waged in their spirits. Tension grew thick in the air; it was so heavy and tangible that it drove some of the people to their knees.
They located a cleft dugout in the stone which made a natural pocket in the hill. It had a flat floor and a high wall, backed by the butte itself. The Christians took what wooden posts they could spare from the fuel piles and erected a palisade around that area to wall it off for protection. They placed the children and the elderly inside its fortification.
Kevin stood outside; he climbed as high upon the stony plateau as possible and looked out over his people as they crawled around the spire like a busy ant-mound. Giving them something to inspire them, he held up his weathered Bible and stood defiant against the Luciferian opposition. Bright starlight bathed him with illumination and made him something of a beacon atop the hill. He cried out with praises to God in the face of the rumbling thunder that pealed through the clear night sky.
The rolling thunder which came from the footsteps of the enemy armies began to shake the ground. Just beyond the quarry’s ridge, Luciferian hordes shouted battlecries and tried to demoralize their opposition.
Rashnir stood at the palisade entrance and recognized the sounds of impending battle. He knew the attack would crash down upon them at any moment. Werthen and Zeh-Ahbe’ accompanied their friend as he tried to deposit Jibbin within the safety of the walls erected to shield the children and others who could not fight.
Werthen had placed both of his bags around the child’s neck, slung like bandoliers. “Hey, little buddy; I need you to take care of my ferrets! Nobody else is as good at it as you are… maybe not even me.”
Jibbin squirmed and resisted. A fearful look filled his eyes; the terror on the child’s face nearly broke Rashnir. He felt cruel as he pried the horrified child’s grip from his arms. “I am sorry, Jibbin, but I must go. You will be safe here.”
Still maintaining his grip, the child resisted and cried. The guttural moan tore Rashnir’s heartstrings and the child clawed at his protector as if his life depended on it.
“You must remember the ferrets; Werthen will need you to look after them.”
Werthen nodded his head and agreed, but the child would not relent in his grasps for Rashnir. With every hand that the warrior pried free, another seemed to wrap ahold of his clothes in horror.
Finally, Rashnir took both of Jibbin’s’ wrists and held them firmly. “You must stay here,” he spoke sternly. “It is too dangerous for you out there.” He held the child dangling tearfully by the wrists; he put him in the arms of an adult woman who stayed in the protected area to comfort the children. She did her best to restrain the fighting little boy as Rashnir started to close the entrance to the Palisade.
Jibbin cried out, “Please! Please don’t leave me!”
Rashnir looked up, startled. The child had never spoken before and his voice surprised everyone. Jibbin relented and slumped in the woman’s arms. Broken and crying, he flopped dejectedly to the ground.
“Please don’t go. I need you. I’m scared and I love you!”
Rashnir ran to the little boy and scooped him up into his arms. He hugged him close and used his shirt to dry the boy’s tears as he buried his face in Rashnir’s chest. The warrior was crying now, too, his heart broken by the voice of the child. Neither Werthen nor Zeh-Ahbe’ could keep their eyes dry.
“And I love you. I am sorry, Jibbin,” Rashnir said as he moved Jibbin’s head so he could look into his eyes. “I am so sorry that you lost your parents and that I have to go now, but others need me too. God needs me to fight for him. You understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Jibbin said through the ragged sobs, his lungs spasming in sorrow. “But what if you don’t come back?”
“I will do my very best to come back to you. I promise I will. But I might not; I might go to be with your parents in Heaven, I don’t know. I am sorry that I don’t know, but sometimes we just have to trust God. Do you understand,” Rashnir asked.
“Yes,” he wailed regretfully, his little body trembling in Rashnir’s embrace.
“I will tell you what you can do to help me, Jibbin. I need you to pray for me. Pray to Jesus that he will guard me and keep me safe. I know that you have heard the stories about how God can do that,” he gave the child a mission. Jibbin nodded his head.
“Remember how God was with the armies of Joshua? God made his children invincible before his enemies and they defeated them all. Pray that God will do that for me. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” the child replied as Rashnir surrendered him back to the woman. “I will pray very hard,” Jibbin said as Rashnir and his friends set the last few posts in place, completing the wall.
***
Prock guided his beast down towards the plains below. As he descended behind the battle lines, the beating of the great dragon’s wings scattered dirt and debris in the gusts it created as it landed. The massive reptile crashed to a triumphant landing in plain sight of everyone, friend and foe alike. It roared as the rider shifted in his seat and splayed his hands wide to present himself to the awestruck army surrounding him.
The beast settled to the ground before the acolyte’s master, Absinthium and the weathered old mage leaned on his staff, a grizzled gleam in his eye. Nearby, the remaining acolytes stood erect and respectfully took in the scene of Prock’s triumph with measured reservation. He locked eyes with Wynn and nearly risked smirking at his rival.
“You will take the far side of the mound,” Absinthium commanded his acolyte. “Annihilate everything there. This is your secondary objective only. Before all else, you must kill the one who preaches this ‘Gospel’ message. Kill the preacher, this man called Kevin. If you do not succeed in this, dragon-rider, then all else in your life has been moot.”
If the krist-chins fled south and broke through where the battle lines were weakest, the great beast could sweep them up easily. If they charged to any other side, the armies would destroy them. Prock was the hammer; they were the anvil.
The Dragon-Rider nodded his head resolutely. He urged the Dragon Impervious into the air as the cheers and cries of his armies reached a frenzied crescendo. The armies began beating the war drum as they whipped themselves into a blood-rage. The remaining acolytes, poised for battle, beat their kamas together in time to the rhythm; those around took up the action and clanged shield and weapon together.
Near Absinthium stood the King of Jand, Rutheir. He commanded his own band of war-hardened mercenaries. As Prock sailed skyward, he spotted the Steward of Grinden, Dyule, the sniveling coward, who kept to the furthest reaches of the battle lines, well behind the militiamen where he was flanked on all sides by the Narsh Barbarian mercenaries. Their leader, the arrogant and bitter Pinchôt, had been stationed near Dyule who demanded his personal presence as bodyguard. Frinnig, the local High Priest of the Luciferian temple stood with the militiamen, chanting blessings over the faithful.
Jandul, the combat master of the Grinden temple kept with the rest of the warriors and initiate monks from the monastery. They manned the war machines which were capable of inflicting massive damage upon the huddled masses from a safe distance. The flinging arms of the machines attached to large chambers which had been loaded with large boulders and flammables.
Prock guided the creature high into the air and whirled to take stock of his prey. The Dragon Impervious bellowed a roar from a mouth already stained with the blood of the rukhs and announced itself to the doomed prey below. Caustic chemicals spewed beyond its jaws, shooting flames across the sky as the massive beast spiraled wide arcs above the enemies below.
Far below, the Acolyte spotted his primary target with his eagle-like eyes. The preacher stood atop of the hill and out in the open like a fool. Prock bent the dragon’s will to his own, climbed, halted, and then plummeted into a steep dive, intending to snatch the man up in the Dragon Impervious’ mighty jaws before slaughtering the cultists like a child obliterating a writhing colony of insects.
***
Rashnir and his two allies walked away from the palisade, intending to head down and shore up the battle lines. They heard the gasps of their own people over the drums of the enemy; many of them pointed towards the sky. The Dragon Impervious spiraled high overhead and spat bright, chemical fire across the air. His roar echoed through the rifts and quarry tunnels; the ugly sound ricocheted off the carved walls where the noise thickened with deep reverberation.
The three Christians looked back and saw their leader exposed on the hilltop. Intrinsically knowing that they needed to protect Kevin, they sprinted back up the mound, trying to reach Kevin where he prayed alone and vulnerable. The preacher stood there: with arms spread wide, Bible in one hand, his voice declared the good works of his Creator even as he shut out all distractions and focused on God.
As Rashnir, Werthen, and Zeh-Ahbe’ ran up the slope, they gasped in horror as the legendary Dragon Impervious writhed through the air, propelled by massive wings. As it cut through the sky, the dragon looked like a snake gliding across water. Its momentum peaked, and with a roar, the beast turned its movement downward on an intercept path with their leader.
The dragon streaked towards their mentor. Rashnir grabbed Zeh-Ahbe’ by the shoulder. “We will never reach him in time. You must throw me.”
Zeh-Ahbe’ looked at him like he was crazy. “You want me to do what?”
“You must throw me; use your werewolf strength and get me up there to intercept that dragon!”
“They didn’t name it Impervious for nothing!” Werthen insisted.
Rashnir didn’t have time to rethink the dangers. “You’ve gotta have faith, friend.”
Zeh-Ahbe’ hesitated, and then grabbed Rashnir by the shoulders, taking a step of faith. They both trusted each other with their lives, and trusted God above all—that he would make this desperate plan work. It had to; Kevin seemed oblivious to his imminent demise.
As Zeh-Ahbe’ gripped Rashnir, he turned his back to the dragon and rolled onto his back. His shape shifted as he assumed his mighty wolf form, mid-roll. Harnessing the momentum of the roll while pulling Rashnir by his shoulders, Zeh-Ahbe’ thrust his feet on his friend’s hips and kicked him as hard as he could, flinging the human warrior skyward and propelling him into the jaws of danger.
Rashnir streaked through the air on an intercept course. His sword flashed into his hands as he sped like a bullet across the dragon’s path. He spotted the hooded acolyte who he’d met once before in battle.
Prock glared at the flying human missile; his eyes narrowed to slits as the two locked gazes. He had full confidence in the legendary beast’s ability to resist his enemy’s attack and he willed his hate to kill the ranger from a
distance.
The warrior cut upwards with his azure blade as he flew under the beast’s flank. The Dragon Impervious’ flesh met with no resistance whatsoever to the Sword of the Lord and Rashnir’s cut severed the joint at the monster’s wing. The wounded beast pitched and shrieked, flopping sidelong and deviating off-course. Unable to maintain its dive any longer, the beast fell uncontrollably.
As the Dragon Impervious tumbled from the sky, it bucked the rider from his seat and sent Prock plummeting through the air, wide-eyed, even as his mount picked up a new passenger. Rashnir reached his hand out at the last moment and caught the tail of the dragon as it spiraled to the ground.
Prock fell through the empty vapor and an old conversation rattled through his mind as the ground rushed up to meet him. Perhaps the Dragon Impervious is not as perfectly formidable as always assumed in the past... perhaps new developments have grown far deadlier things than an indestructible mountain of terror?
The acolyte crashed into the side of the rocky rise and crumpled as his body impacted upon the steeply sloped ground. His unconscious body rolled down the hill and fell inside of the walls of the protected palisade.
Rashnir held onto the flailing dragon as firmly as he could. Reptilian shrieks and wind rushed by his ears, deafening him as they fell. He whipped back and forth, trailing the beast’s movement like slackened fishing line.
The Dragon Impervious smashed into the ground of the quarry with a terrible noise. The massive surface area of the beast assumed the brunt of the impact. Its tail fell with less force and Rashnir was able to roll with the crash landing, tumbling across the beasts flank. He quickly scrambled to his feet and patted his body all over in a search for damages; he discovered himself surprisingly unharmed by the crash.
The Kakos Realm Collection Page 50