The Dominion Pulse

by Brad A. LaMar

  “Dad, didn’t you hear me? Come on!” Lizzie shouted in frustration. He was right there, so close to her, and all he had to do was follow her to safety, but he was just staring at the ground and muttering to himself.

  “You leave me no choice, Dad,” Lizzie walked forward and poised her staff to bonk Oscar on the head. An unconscious man didn’t have to follow; he could be carried.

  She swung her staff forward but it vanished from her hands just as she neared his head.

  “What the… ” she began to say, but her sentence trailed off in a shout of pain and surprise as she was plucked from her feet and thrown the distance of the cave. Her body was slammed harshly into the ground at Elathan’s feet.

  She rolled over and found that she didn’t have enough hands to clutch every part of her body that was in pain. Strangely enough, she didn’t think anything was broken, but when she looked up and saw the golden god standing over her, she knew that could change in a hurry.

  Elathan grinned with metallic energy dancing in his smile. “I remember you, Lizzie O’Neal. You deprived me of my kill. It looks like you can make up for it now.”

  …

  The Brags were shape shifters and charged at Rohl, Simmons, and Dorian, turning themselves into a variety of visages from demented-looking werewolves to centaurs to dragon-headed humanoids and a whole bunch of levels of ugly that the heroes had never seen before. Rohl countered by shifting into a large, dark-skinned bear with eight arms and razor-sharp claws. He bounded forward and met a dragon-headed Brag in an aggressive pounce, biting down on the creature’s neck without mercy. A werewolf Brag hopped on Rohl’s back and began to claw and bite, but Rohl used three of his arms to snatch it by the ankle and swing it into a dragon-head.

  A Bendith stretched its leathery wings and soared towards Rohl, aiming to pile on top of the brave Púca, when two gunshots tore through its wing and chest and it was thrown off course into the nearby wall where it convulsed briefly before it died. Simmons ran forward and blasted a second Bendith from the air and glanced up at Rohl in his new form.

  “Okay, you be Octobear and I’ll be the Terminator since none of this makes any sense anyhow.”

  “Who’s the Terminator?” Rohl asked, puzzled.

  Three fachen didn’t allow the lesson on 1980s cinematic history to continue since they ran at the duo with sharp claws slashing and jaws snapping. Only the small jolts from the wands of Patty and Wanda distracted the fachen long enough for Simmons and Rohl to duck out of the beasts’ reach.

  That’s when Dorian blasted the nearest fachen and launched it into the other two, scattering them across the cavern floor.

  “Man,” Brendan said admiringly after kicking a Redcap clear up to the ceiling. “You’re blasts have grown even stronger.”

  “Girls workout too, you know,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he replied.

  “Brendan!” Dorian cried. “Look! Lizzie!”

  Brendan followed her finger and saw Lizzie lying at Elathan’s feet, golden smoke trailing up from his eyes. Brendan bent his knees and built up as much strength as he could muster before he leapt into the air.

  He hoped that he could get there in time.

  …

  “You are no match for me, human,” Conchar grunted.

  “Oh, I think I’m doing alright, weirdo,” Frank said, blocking a thrust from Conchar.

  Conchar slashed down at Frank three consecutive strikes and then kicked the teen in the chest, knocking him onto his back. He pointed the sword down and gripped the handle with two hands high above his head, creating as much leverage as he could muster to drive the blade into Frank’s chest. There was no comment, just a downward push of the blade that would have found its mark had a searing blast of red magic not knocked the sword from his grasp.

  Conchar looked up and saw the Queen of the Leprechauns sprinting in his direction. He glanced down at Frank. “Protect your maker.”

  Dorian raised her palm and tried to blast a whole through Conchar, but Frank’s falcata moved in and deflected the beam. Frank stood up with a bent back and craned his neck at Dorian, his eyes red with the curse of the Ruas.

  “No, Frank!” Dorian cried, knowing the only way to free him from Conchar’s control was death.

  …

  Elathan wielded so much energy that his eyes were boiling in their sockets and sending crackles of golden bolts randomly into the air around him. Some of them zapped Lizzie, causing her to cry out in pain.

  “Humans, even chosen bloodlines, are broken so easily.” He raised his hands and directed his palm at her. “Your friends will be joining you shortly.”

  The energy built up in his hands until he felt like they were on fire, and then he discharged them, sending out as much energy as there was in a surface to air missile. Tons of dust and rock plumed up and he waved it out of his face to peer down at the gore that should have been left behind from the girl.

  “What!” he exclaimed, looking around to see where she had gone.

  He spotted her soaring through the air away from him, back towards the trilithons and her father. He was just about to yank her back when he caught a kick to the side of the head. He lost his balance and fell a few steps backwards in his surprise. Looking back to where Lizzie O’Neal once was he found the Protector instead.

  “You,” Elathan snarled.

  “Me,” Brendan replied snidely. “Can’t let you kill my little sister, goldie.”

  “I was going to kill you last so that you could watch all of your friends die and lose every bit of hope you had, but you’ve ruined the suspense. You meet your end now, Brendan O’Neal.”

  …

  Oscar took one last step and then dropped his last crystal to the ground. The crystal buried itself quickly and disappeared out of sight. Oscar backed away from the center of the prison and stepped outside of it so that he could duck behind the stones. Fear and death was coming.

  It started as a disturbance in the center of the cave compass Oscar had created and then it intensified. The cave compass quickly turned to fine powder then it began to swirl down the hole like a drain until all that was left was an empty circle. The ominous moan of an ancient and nefarious creature sang from the pit, shaking Oscar to his core.

  Oscar hid his eyes and wept.

  “What have I done?”

  …

  “Snap out of it, Frank,” Dorian pleaded. “You can beat it!”

  Frank’s jaw unhinged, and he tried to snap at her, but she quickly moved her arm out of the way. He leapt in the air off his left foot and carried his body into a spin, bringing his falcata into a high arc as it zipped around his body. He slashed at her over and over again, backing her up until her back was literally against the wall. She couldn’t allow him to kill her—self-preservation was a powerful instinct—but she wasn’t sure of what else she could do without harming Frank.

  As the blade edged closer and closer, Dorian’s eyes glowed red and her hands readied to blast her friend away, but out of the corner of her eye she spied a thin white line dropping in from above. It landed on top of Frank’s shoulders and then bounced up twenty feet and attached itself to the cave wall. Frank didn’t seem to notice and kept coming.

  Her hands pulsed with red energy and just when she was ready to hit him, Frank was yanked straight up into the air, hung from the wall by the thin, white string. He dangled from the wall like a fish on a line.

  “Sorry, mate,” Garnash said, rematerializing next to Frank as he growled and swung wildly with his sword. “Stay up here a bit and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  …

  Conchar didn’t see Garnash’s acrobatics with his new Rua. He was too busy gazing inside the prison, waiting for Caoranach to emerge.

  “Change him back,” Dorian demanded from behind.

  Conchar glanced back at her. “Stupid Leprechaun,” he spat. “So idealistic, like your father. He, too, thought magicks’ best days
were behind us and that we should just hand this world over to the humans. He thought peace could come that way. He was wrong and that’s why he was chosen, why you were chosen.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dorian said crossly, knowing she shouldn’t listen to a word the wizard was saying.

  “It was a set up all along, girl,” Conchar curdled. “You’re too stupid to see, but you were led to Galway, and O’Neal was led to Corways. Destiny had nothing to do with your relationship, it was Elathan’s will that made it happen.”

  “Shut your ruddy mouth, liar!” Dorian screamed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “We’ve been pulling your strings from the beginning. The Leprechauns and the O’Neals were always so predictable.”

  “Are you going to release your hold on Frank and Oscar or not?” she asked flatly, a cold stare passing through her eyes.

  Conchar held his fingers out low at his side and his wand shot back into his grasp. He raised it up and smiled. “No chance, princess.”

  Dorian wasted no time and butted the base of her palms together, sending a searing beam of energy straight through Conchar’s chest. He dropped to his knees and looked up at her, the color leaving his face.

  “How was that for predictable?” She turned and began to walk back towards Frank and Garnash but paused and looked back as he fell over onto his side. “And I’m the Queen of the Leprechauns, you blasted fool.”

  …

  Elathan’s body was entirely overtaken with gold energy as he stood near his megaliths. His armor crackled as the energy touched it, making it look like veins that couldn’t quite settle in.

  He moved forward at Brendan, faster than the Protector would have thought he could, and delivered a hook directly to his jaw. Brendan flew thirty feet back and skidded on the cave floor creating a rut with his back. Elathan took his time following up his initial attack and stalked towards Brendan. He leaned down and picked the boy up by the shirt.

  “I am a god! You have no chance of defeating me, human, I don’t care who chose you.”

  Brendan’s head was floppy and his chin bounced off of his chest. Elathan backhanded the Protector and launched him again. Brendan’s body bounced through the stream and landed near the trilithons. This time the golden god took in the action of his ferocious band as they began to wear down O’Neal’s paltry group.

  This was going to be a sweet and easy victory.

  …

  “Frank? Are you yourself, buddy?” Garnash asked.

  Frank had stopped moving entirely and hung limply against the wall, his body swaying slightly. Garnash edged closer to the kid and shook his shoulder gently. “Frank?”

  Frank inhaled a massive amount of air and the sudden motion nearly gave Garnash a heart attack. “What happened? Where’s Conchar? Lizzie?”

  “Easy,” Garnash said soothingly. “Dorian killed Conchar and thankfully that freed you.”

  “Freed me?” Frank looked at Garnash as the Gnome began to lower them both to the ground.

  “Yeah, you were a Rua, and we thought we were going to have to kill you,” Garnash said offhandedly.

  “What! You wouldn’t have killed me, right?” Frank croaked.

  Garnash finally got them all the way to the ground and very subtly—or not so subtly—ignored the question. “Look, Dorian’s found Oscar!”

  …

  Dorian approached Oscar slowly and knelt down next to him. The moaning from the pit called out again, but Dorian put it out of her mind. Oscar needed her.

  “Oscar, are you alright?” she asked softly.

  Oscar was still hunched down behind some stones weeping. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” That’s all the man would say, and when Dorian looked up at the center of the prison, she could see why.

  Two pale hands with slender fingers complete with yellow talons dug their way into the solid rock of the cave floor. Caoranach was rising and Dorian wasn’t about to let that happen. She held her glowing hands out ready to blast the demon mother when the time was just right.

  …

  Elathan eventually got to where Brendan was struggling to get up.

  “Earth’s Protector,” Elathan said with venom. “Hard to believe this is the line of Arawn.”

  He was just about to finish the Protector off when out of the corner of his eye he saw Dorian aiming her energy in towards the prison. “Caoranach!”

  Brendan followed Elathan’s eyes and traced them to Dorian. He watched the Bringer of Death raise his palms as his eyes burst with golden heat.

  “Nooooo!” Brendan screamed, bloody teeth accentuating his pain.

  Elathan let loose a directed pulse that he knew would turn the Leprechaun Queen into nothing more than vapor. Brendan reached out with his own powers and encased her in a silver shield just as the golden beam slammed into her. The impact drove her body into the cave wall thirty feet back where she collapsed to the ground, groaning and holding her head.

  Elathan looked at the Protector in utter shock. How could the boy be so weak and so strong at the same time?

  He kicked Brendan in the face as hard as he could and knocked him away from the trilithons. He marched over to the invisible barrier and placed a blue crystal in the barrier’s stream and watched it dissipate. Elathan used his powers and pulled Caoranach’s weak form to him, and with her under his arm, he jumped across the cave to the megaliths.

  “Caoranach,” Elathan said, holding her head so that she could hear his voice. “I have freed you and protected you from those who seek your destruction.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she squinted to look out over the battleground. “They shall see my might.”

  She opened her mouth and exhaled the yellow spores necessary to cause the creatures among them to change. The spores wafted on the subtle air current in the cave and found their symbiotic specimens in the Redcaps, Brags, Bendiths, and fachen. Instantly, the creatures began the change.

  Elathan carried Caoranach into the midst of the megaliths. “Let them suffer your wrath, mother of demons, let them all suffer.”

  In a flash, the golden god and the mother of demons escaped, the megaliths turning to rubble as soon as the ancient symbols cooled.

  …

  “Lizzie, wake up,” Ken said, lightly slapping her cheeks. “We need you. Come on, get up!”

  Lizzie’s eyes fluttered and she rolled over onto her side. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the room was in chaos. The Goblin clans and the fachen had somehow doubled in size, had long split talons on the ends of their hands, and bright yellow veins that were easily identifiable under their skin. She had no idea what she was looking at until it hit her.

  “Caoranach is alive?” she asked Ken.

  “I guess, but things are much worse than before,” he replied.

  Lizzie got to a sitting position even though she was feeling like a bus had just hit her. She held her hand out; her staff appeared and she used it to get to her feet. Her headache forced her to close her eyes for the briefest of moments, her balance a bit wobbly. She opened them in time to see a juiced up, mutated Bendith dropping like a predatory bird in her direction. She drove the end of her staff up and slammed it into the creature’s midsection, flipping it into a Brag that tried to sneak up on her from behind.

  Ken was nimbly evading the daggers of a Redcap, which was the size of a professional wrestler. To his credit, Ken was delivering serious sidekicks and strikes to the beast, but the Redcap was too strong to feel it.

  Lizzie thwacked the beast as hard as she could to stun it, then she spun and batted it into the stream.

  “Where’s Brendan?” she asked in a panic.

  …

  Brendan pulled his body off of the ground, but his head was feeling too heavy to lift. He felt the hot blood drip from his nose and from a gash above his eyebrow. Probably needs stitches. He placed his legs beneath him but remained in a bent position, trying to gather himself enough to see what was happening in the cave. He didn’t eve
n notice the mutated fachen standing above him, lifting its arms into a double ax handle high above its grotesque head. The creature brought its fists down with a massive amount of force right on Brendan’s back, but instead of falling, the Protector looked up at the giant fachen with eyes blazing and silver energy crackling in his sockets. His whole body was overtaken with the silver glow, pulsing with untapped power that he didn’t even know he had. His wounds sealed up instantly as he glared at the abomination before him.

  The energy grew too hard to contain. His mind raced with all of the horrible outcomes that would follow Caoranach’s release. He did the only thing that he could: he emitted a massive pulse of silver energy. He screamed as he tried to control the silver pulse radiating from his body, willing it to pass through his group and to destroy the mutated creatures that opposed them. The pulse ballooned throughout the entire cave, disintegrating all of Caoranach’s creations where they stood, as if a nuclear bomb had targeted only the mutants.

  Lizzie and the others were confused. She was just about to battle a pair of Brags one second, and then in a blink of an eye they were gone, the only evidence of their existence was a black stain where they had been standing.

  Brendan dropped to his knees exhausted. “Elathan!” he screamed.

  Lizzie and Ken walked warily over to Brendan because he was still emanating small static bolts of the silver energy. Simmons, the Smith sisters, and Rohl approached, each just as exhausted as Brendan. Garnash and Frank were cut and bruised but still breathing and joined the group. Lizzie wrapped Frank up in an extremely tight embrace.

  Brendan looked up at the faces of his friends, bloody, sweaty, and tearful, and knew that his heart matched theirs. “Where’s Dorian? Did she make it?” he asked quietly, his words softly echoing off of the cave walls.

  “I’m fine, and look who else is here,” Dorian’s voice called from just out of sight.

  Simmons and Ken stepped aside and Brendan’s tears streaked his face when Dorian and Oscar approached the group. Oscar dropped down and hugged Brendan and Lizzie who had dropped to her knees as well. The O’Neals cried together again and rejoiced in their reunion.