Earth

by Rosie Scott

  His screams of fear echoed through the air. One of the other soldiers redirected her griffon to try to help her comrade, but it was too late. The leather of the stirrup began to rip, and then snapped. The man fell, his screams rising in tone and panic as gravity took its course.

  The screams ceased when his body hit the ground with a snap which broke his spine backwards, the force of the fall causing the ends of his rib bones to crack straight through the front of his armor. Blood sprayed out in all directions from the body, coloring the snow around him in a red mist.

  The woman who had gone to save him screamed hoarsely in the air, before she set her eyes directly on me, spurring her griffon into action. The animal shrieked, its beak parting just enough to give me a glimpse of its long, pink tongue. Another bolt of lightning struck down from the sky, but the griffon's quick reflexes allowed the duo to dodge it.

  Zwip. A shield bubbled around me, and I glanced over to see that Cerin had given me one. Past him, the snow was bunched up and disturbed in small piles, where his skeletons had risen. A few of the Twelve had landed their griffons, and were fighting heroically through the dead to get to the necromancer.

  I could not see where Nyx was, but I could have sworn I heard her voice screaming obscenities from somewhere above my head. I was unsure how this was possible, but given the griffon swooping down toward me with such force, I did not have the time to wonder.

  The creature opened its beak. It was planning on decapitating me with the sharp edges of its beak before returning to the skies. I watched it with defiance, building an earth spell in my hands even as the griffon curled its paws up to its stomach in order to fly low enough to the ground to take me out.

  I would have been lying if I said I wasn't terrified as the creature barreled those last meters toward me with the force of its own power combined with gravity. I was terrified. But I was also confident in my power.

  I counted down to what I felt was the right moment to unleash my spell, before I threw the earth magic to the ground. As the griffon completed its arc toward my body, a pillar of stone rose sharply from the ground before me, towering over my head. The griffon screeched in panic, but its own power forced it straight into the solid rock.

  I heard the crunch of many bones as the griffon was crushed into the stone, head-first. The resulting vibration shook the ground beneath my feet, the stone I'd conjured holding its own from beneath the earth where I'd summoned it. The creature's body bunched up just feet away from me, the back of its body crunching in toward the front from the pressure. The snow beneath the stone was painted red in an obscene amount of its blood. One large, back paw, nearly the size of a wagon wheel, twitched in the snow in a sporadic nerve error after death.

  Its rider had been thrown far over the stone, and far behind me. I turned to face her, even as she scrambled to stand in the snow. The woman held a long spear at her side that somehow hadn't been lost to her when she'd been thrown off her mount. She used the end of the spear to help her stand, and she lifted her face to look at me even as I neared her. Her eyes were overflowing with tears from seeing a comrade die in such a way, and her gaze was full of hatred for me. I vaguely recognized her from Sera, though I did not know her name.

  “You will pay for this!” She wailed, even as she fell to the ground once more. One of her legs sat at a sickly angle behind her as she crawled to try to stand once again. I knew then that the fall had broken it. My nostrils flared with indecision. I did not want to kill her. She was simply Sirius's pawn. She had lived her whole life in service to a city which called all of the shots for her.

  I came to a stop just feet before her, watching her cry pathetically in the snow before my feet. One hand still held the spear, though her agony had caused her to stop trying to stand, for the moment. She was crippled. To kill her now would be no different from killing the innocents in Sera.

  I heard a ghostly hiss that whistled through air between bone. One of Cerin's skeletons hobbled over to the battle veteran before me. Unlike me, it had no qualms about killing anyone. It lifted an ax which was so elaborate and beautiful that it must have been looted off of one of the Twelve, and it made the decision for me, removing the woman's head from her body in mid-sob.

  I turned back toward the others, catching a glimpse of Cerin in mid-battle with a soldier, his scythe clashing with the other man's sword. The necromancer was using it as a two-handed weapon, given that the strength of the other man was immense. All around the two were mismatched piles of bones. The majority of the dead had been defeated, and Cerin could not focus on making them rise again.

  Given that only three of the Twelve had been defeated so far and the dead were already few and far between in the midst of these mostly empty grasslands, I decided to release the spell I knew Cerin wanted to. Black tendrils soon raced across snow and blood splatter, calling the skeletons to attention for another battle. Behind me, the freshly deceased soldier rose again, the broken leg of the corpse no longer an inhibition as the magic energy filled in gaps and reconnected bone, at least temporarily. Even as the corpse hurried past me and into the fray, warm blood escaped the slit between her head and body, steaming in the frigid air with the energy of the life which had just been taken. Amongst the battle, the corpses of both man and griffon fought those who were once comrades.

  “Fucking die!” Nyx's voice. Above me, again. Confused, I glanced up just to feel thick blood splat onto the side of my face as an injured griffon sailed above me and to the ground, crash-landing meters ahead, leaving a trail of lowered snow and blood before it finally came to a stop. My best friend was on it, and she hopped off as the creature whimpered in pain and attempted to snap at its unwanted rider. Nyx kicked the creature's head to the ground with a thick boot, before leaning over it and quickly gouging its throat out with a dagger. The whimpers ceased.

  I wasn't sure how Nyx ended up on a griffon, or where its original rider went, but as my best friend ran toward the fighting, so did I. All of us were becoming fatigued with battle, but many of the Twelve still remained. I watched as the dead soldier who had fallen from his griffon earlier killed a previous comrade with a sword through the throat. Nearby, another of the Twelve was motionless, dead from multiple bites of an undead griffon.

  Theron was holding his own against one of the Twelve, a flickering magic shield surrounding him that must have been placed by Cerin, though it was one or two hits away from disappearing. Beside him was one of my skeletons, hissing angrily between swipes and stabs of a short sword at Theron's target. The living and dead were teaming up, and it was proving troublesome for the Twelve.

  “Creatius les fiers!” That wasn't my voice, and I was the only one of us who knew fire magic. My eyes quickly scanned for the woman who'd spoken it, and I found her on the edges of battle. Two balls of flame were building in her hands, and her eyes were on me. Knowing what she was to do, I whispered a life spell in one hand, and a water spell in the other.

  Ssss! A fireball hurtled toward me a second later, the enemy mage hoping to attack me before I had the time to put up a defense. And she nearly succeeded. My ward was not prepared in time to deflect the fire, so I started to dodge it, though I doubted I would be quick enough.

  A hollow scream sounded out from the ground I'd just left, and I turned just in time to see the fireball hit the side of the undead griffon who had died from running into the stone earlier. Its head was little more than mush, and streaks of gore ran down the long feathers of its neck. Even still, it only moved via my magic, so it did not require a brain.

  I thought back to learning necromancy from Cerin, when he had told me the undead would sometimes make drastic decisions when it came to protecting their master. Other than a few moments in Sera, this was the first time I'd actually used necromancy. Given that the dead griffon had made such an effort to protect me, I realized how useful the dead could be in battle.

  The undead griffon was now set ablaze, and screeched toward the mage as it started to give chase, its mostly br
oken body shifting awkwardly over its four massive paws. Panicking, the mage hurried backwards, preparing more fire.

  I dispelled the ward I'd prepared to combat the fireball, since I no longer needed it. I lifted both hands to the heavens, releasing water energy.

  Rains began to pelt down from the skies moments later, the water heavy when it hit flesh as it slowly froze from the frigid weather. The flames surrounding the undead griffon slowly lessened from my spell as it approached its victim. The mage decided her fire was useless beneath the precipitation, and unsheathed a mace from her belt as a last resort. She hacked at the dead griffon with it, and managed to land hits, but was overpowered. When the griffon rammed the woman to the ground and began to disembowel her with what was left of its beak, I looked away.

  My eyes fell upon Cerin, who had finally gotten an edge in his battle with the soldier he'd been fighting the majority of the time since the initial attack. One of the undead Twelve I'd risen had stabbed him through the calf, disabling him. The man fell to his knees. Cerin took his scythe with both hands, hacking the curved blade into the back of the man's neck. The soldier jerked, his body giving up its life as the blade cut deep into spine. Then, leaving the scythe curved along his victim's neck, Cerin ripped the weapon past the man's face, and the blade sliced clean through the soldier's throat, decapitating him. For a few moments, the head still sat upon its neck, having fallen to it after Cerin's quick slice of the scythe. Gravity pulled the corpse down to the snow seconds later, and the head finally separated from the body, rolling away as the corpse collapsed. Snow beneath began to melt with the hot blood.

  The necromancer heaved with fatigue from his long fight, and immediately turned to leech from one of the remaining Twelve, regaining his energy. On the battlefield, only four of the Twelve remained. Bodies of griffons lay in small hills of feathers and fur across the snow. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the cries of another echoing in the night. It appeared some of the griffons had fled the battle, their loyalty not as strong as their fear.

  I was running low on energy reserves, and rushed past the shambling bodies of my own minions to regenerate from one of our remaining enemies, leeching his life force until he collapsed at my feet. Then, I raised the corpses which had either fallen or had recently died, and they rushed to surround the three remaining soldiers.

  I gave Theron energy to rejuvenate him, and it was enough to allow him to kill the woman before him with a sword through the heart. After she collapsed, I turned my attention to Nyx, who had engaged another in melee, but between her and one of the zombies of a recent corpse, the man was in the midst of falling to the ground, dead.

  That left one. The last living member of the Twelve held a longsword in his hands, and had multiple collapsed skeletons at his feet. He was fatigued, though, and he had four people and dozens of undead surrounding him to finish him off. He knew he was defeated. Though the man looked to be in his mid-forties and had to have had hundreds of battles behind him, his eyes held fear.

  “Wait,” he pleaded, lowering his longsword to the ground. The tip of the weapon sunk through the snow and to the frozen ground beneath.

  Because I had immediately opened myself up to hearing his plea, the undead surrounding him stopped their pursuit, watching the man with unfeeling glares. This included even the man's friends and companions which I had risen from the dead, and I could tell that using them against him had broken him.

  “I am no match for you alone,” the man went on, his words shaky and pleading. “Please, allow me the dignity to retreat.”

  “You will return to Sera with news of this battle and our location,” Theron replied.

  “I would rather be defeated here than to admit defeat to Sirius,” the man retorted, desperate.

  “Then you shall be defeated here,” Theron said, before raising his sword.

  “Theron, be still!” I exclaimed. The ranger lowered his sword, and the man watched me carefully. It was an odd feeling to see one of the Twelve regard me with fear in his eyes. “Tell me of Sirius's plans,” I demanded.

  “Your death,” the man replied, simply. “That was our only mission. Your death was requested over all others. Even the necromancer's.” The soldier glanced over to Cerin.

  That information shocked me. My destruction of Sera had encouraged my adoptive father's wrath upon me. I had fully expected that, but to order my death above even Cerin's? Hurting Sirius's pride must have been a bigger offense to him than killing his people.

  “What was the plan if the Twelve were to fail?” I asked him, next.

  “We...” the man trailed off, his eyes falling upon the undead corpses of his fellow soldiers, who all watched him from hollow eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was choked up with emotion. “We weren't supposed to fail. That's why he sent all of us.”

  “But you have,” I said, evenly. “What was his plan B?”

  “I...I'd have to assume he'd send his armies.”

  I nodded. That made sense. Given Sirius seemed to be acting out of rage and revenge for my actions in Sera, I figured he would throw everything he had at me.

  Theron turned to me. “Kai, if we leave this man be, he will return to Sera and have Sirius send his armies immediately. Kill him here, and Sirius will be required to send out scouts to find the Twelve. Only when he hears the news of their defeat will he send his armies.”

  I watched Theron, understanding his meaning. If we were to leave this lone soldier alive, we would have much less time to escape Chairel and cross the Naharan border in the south. Kill him, and our escape to Nahara was all but assured.

  I swallowed hard, dipped my head once toward Theron, and turned away.

  “Wait—!”

  Ching! I heard the man's head hit the snow and tumble away. I dispelled my death magic, and heard as dozens of bodies fell to the ground. I took a deep breath, before turning once more back to the battlefield.

  It was a gruesome scene. The snow was patchy where hot blood had splashed across it in dozens of places. The stone I'd conjured still towered above the snow, a griffon's brains smeared along the length of one side. The Twelve and most of their mounts were splayed across the snow. Some were gored, some were decapitated, and one had exploded by hitting the ground with the force of gravity. There was something so depressing to me about seeing the most honored arm of the Seran Army in such a state.

  We had destroyed the Twelve. Sure, other soldiers would be promoted in their place, but the fact remained that over the span of an hour long battle, we had completely demolished both their lives and their name. I knew that had we been able to talk with them, I would have preferred that over killing them. I knew had I had the choice, I would have avoided killing completely.

  That didn't make killing the Twelve in self defense any better. They were honorable soldiers who were simply following orders given to them by one hateful man.

  I did all I had left to do. I shed tears for the men and women I had once so admired.

  Four

  Comercio was an impressive city, with buildings of many stories towering above its massive stone walls. Caravaneer Road dead-ended straight into its massive gate, where the main road appeared to go all of the way through the city to the other side, where it finally continued to Nahara.

  To our left just before the city was the great Tieren Lake, Chairel's only significant body of water. It was only days after the water had thawed from the frigid weather, but even still, fishermen and women lined its shores, catching fish to eat or sell. Across the lake were the faint glows of campfires, where many were staying at the lake for work or pleasure.

  I caught Cerin's eyes admiring the lake, though he said nothing. The necromancer's mother had fished for her trade, and had taught him many years ago before his move to Sera. He had fished for us whenever we'd come across streams on our trip, which was sparingly, but he was fantastic at it. He would barely be gone for an hour before returning with enough fish to feed the four of us. I knew he missed fishing, and would ha
ve loved to stop at the large lake to see what he could catch. But we were still on the run. Although the Twelve were now dead and we most likely wouldn't come across any further resistance on our way to Nahara, we couldn't risk wasting time.

  After walking through the front gate of Comercio, the air was filled with noises. Merchants calling out to passersby about their goods, customers of all types perusing products and making comments to friends, or haggling. Sizzling from multiple directions cast attention to various foods being cooked on flames right on the streets, where hungry tourists watched, stomachs grumbling. The streets here were cobblestone, like back in Sera, and they were extra wide, leaving room for trade caravans to pass through and also for trade stalls to be set up in front of buildings.

  While Sera had its own merchant sector, the entire city here dealt in the imports and exports of products from all cities of Chairel to Nahara, and vice versa. Dwarven traders from Narangar sold gemstones and dwarven made armor and weapons to nearby merchants, just to pick up goods they couldn't get from their location in the mountains. Bows and goods made from the pearl white bark of the trees of Celendar hung from pegs on stalls. Some stalls dealt in goods imported from Nahara. Fruits of the sort I'd only seen after Sirius's trade deals with Nahara as a little girl sat plentiful in baskets. Slabs of raw meat from animals only known to roam the deserts sat on ice. Soft, flowing fabrics colored with intense dyes. Clothing, weapons, and armor which appeared vastly different from the fashions of Chairel. There were robes, and armor with pockets for excess water storage, and even curved blades.

  This would be the last settlement before we reached Nahara, so we would need to stay here for the night and make sure we were prepared for the trip. Given that all of our eyes were on the sights and the unique products at various merchant stalls, I doubted it would be hard to do. The city was one for trading, and it was built to keep people here to spend their gold.

  “Is this actually any good?” Nyx's voice called my attention to where she'd stopped at a stall, where meat was being cooked over a flame on skewers. The man preparing them wore a thick red scarf around his head in a fashion rarely seen in Chairel.