by S. M. Welles
Images of the attack on Phailon flashed through Leviathan’s mind: the falling pillar, two evil black dragons, people running and screaming, trolls, one good man’s death and the Elf who toppled him. Fury, sadness, fear, the sharp smells of fire and blood. All the pictures and emotions in Aerigo’s mind filled Leviathan’s. He snatched his clawed hand away as if he had been burned. “Nexus!”
As soon as Roxie laid Aerigo down at the campsite, with his body leaning against a log, she borrowed his dagger and collected tinder to start a fire. A circle of rocks with black and grey ashes inside was already provided for her. She set up a tee-pee with her tinder and collected a bunch of dried moss at its base. Now for the hard part, Roxie thought unhappily to herself. She reached for Aerigo’s dagger and the flat rock she had found earlier.
There was a clatter of small pieces of wood.
Roxie snapped her gaze to the fire pit, holding the rock and dagger loosely. “No! That took me forever to set up!” She kneeled over the pit and painstakingly propped all the pieces of wood against each other. “Now stay up this time,” she ordered the tinder, collecting the dagger and rock once more.
A breeze came by and the teepee shifted—but stayed standing.
Roxie stared at the teepee, waiting for it to fall, yet the tinder stayed put. She closed her eyes, exhaling with relief, then adjusted the moss and began trying to make sparks.
All she managed to do was heat up the rock with friction as she wore a groove on its face. After several minutes of trying all sorts of ways to scrape, scratch and cut the rock to make sparks she gave that up and tried to magically light the wood, even though she didn’t know any fire-starting spells. She pointed a finger at her teepee. “Fireball!”
Nothing.
“Fire blast!” she yelled, pointing with her palm.
Still nothing.
She held out both hands. “Flame-oh, light-oh?”
Nope.
“Alaka—oh that’s so cliché!”
She threw the rock down in frustration. The rock connected with another sitting along the ring and, thanks to her brute strength, sparks flew out and landed in the moss. Smoke rose from the moss.
Dumb-founded by her stroke of luck, Roxie almost let her success die at the hand of a passing breeze, but regained her senses just in time to cup her hands around the glowing moss. She blew gently on it and, a few more handfuls of moss later, the tinder began to burn. Once the entire teepee caught flame, she chanced leaving Aerigo behind in search of extra fuel.
Roxie learned that it took a lot of wood to keep a fire going. By midnight she decided it was time to let it die down. But not to sleep. She had promised herself and Aerigo to stay awake all night. The distraction of keeping the fire alive had helped greatly. Fatigue was catching up with her now though. Her eyelids kept lowering and it hurt to keep her eyes open. She longed to lower her chin to her chest, and every so often she snapped into wakefulness every time her head dropped forward. Roxie stopped drawing in the dirt with a stick, threw it in the fire and reached for her canteen. At some point growing up she had been told that drinking water would keep her awake, but the cool liquid did nothing to help. If anything, it made her sleepier.
Roxie rubbed both eyes, yawned, and scooted closer to Aerigo. She sat in the crux of his waist, her knees drawn up to her chin and arms, hugging them to her chest. Small flames and glowing embers flickered under her gaze. Roxie stared at these dancing lights, mesmerized. In under a minute she was asleep.
In her dream Roxie was being chased by a dark figure that she refused to turn around and identify. She had to get away but her arms and legs wouldn’t pump as fast as they could. Something was dragging her down. Suddenly she was falling down the side of a cliff. Right before impact she woke up.
The pale colors of dawn painted the horizon. She yawned while the first birds filled the air with their song.
A faint click from the forest snapped her awake. Something shot out of the bush towards Aerigo’s unprotected shoulder. Roxie managed to catch the object before it struck him, but the impact stung her palm. She pulled it out and threw it to the ground, then clutched her hand. The foreign object was a dart of some kind with a thick, inch-long needle. An image of a dragon was etched into the glass vial. She looked at the hole in her palm and the skin around it turned a livid pink. Poison!
There was another soft click from the forest and Roxie shielded Aerigo again.
A second dose of toxin entered her system.
Roxie moaned as she pulled out the dart. Her hand was already swelling and it burned and itched. She gritted her teeth, forced herself to her feet as she mentally searched the trees for who’d shot at Aerigo. She fell to her knees after one step and waited for her head to stop spinning. She tried to stand again, gave up when her head spun again, and sat on her heels. And then it felt like her windpipe had shrunk. She put a hand to her throat and tried to take a deeper breath but couldn’t get air in as fast as she wanted. Roxie crawled over to Aerigo on three limbs, her poisoned hand pressed to her stomach. She called his name weakly.
Aerigo continued sleeping.
She sucked in air. “Aerigo!” Roxie gasped at a sudden stab of pain, which blossomed all the way to her shoulder. She squinted her eyes closed and prodded his side. “Wake up,” she pleaded hoarsely.
A pair of hands clasped her left hand.
“What happened?” Aerigo asked.
Roxie snapped her eyes open and Aerigo repeated his question. She glanced at the pair of darts, then held up her throbbing hand. Aerigo took her hand and looked at it, then glanced at the spent darts.
“Help me,” Roxie said. She started tilting to one side, but Aerigo caught her by the shoulders.
“Try to stay awake.”
The fire in her arm was spreading to the rest of her body, making her feel faint. Bad fire. Aerigo’s vision of the phoenix surfaced in her mind. She opened her mouth to say the two words but no voice came out.
“Rox?”
Her head lolled forward and she fell unconscious.
Nexus lay sprawled on his throne, an elbow on one armrest and his leg hanging over the other. Once again, he was waiting. His vaulted palace glowed amber, like some eternal sunset, and the air hung warm and heavy. Nexus hated sunlight and kept his realm’s sky blanketed with dark clouds that stormed when he was in a foul or exultant mood.
In the center of the hall, a patch of air blurred while its edges looked like they were getting sucked into the middle. A pale hand appeared, followed by an arm and the rest of a body cloaked in black. The Elf stepped forward as the air returned to normal behind him. Kabiroas pulled back his hood, revealing a narrow, pale face full of gloating.
Nexus stood and and beckoned the Elf forward. “Welcome back, Kabiroas. What news do you bring?”
“Excellent news, Master. Our task is fulfilled.”
“The Aigis are dead?”
“The girl took both poison darts. Her death is certain, and Aerigo is still spent. He has fled to yet another world.”
“Then he’s wasting his timing trying to save the girl,” Nexus said. “Call back Gilonas and Dakar. Aerigo is no longer a threat now that everyone’s armies are almost done assembling.”
“Yes, Master,” the Elf said, inclining his head.
Nexus made his way down his stairs and past the Elf. “Follow me,” he said in a low, excited voice. They crossed to the palace entrance and two great doors swung open of their own accord, groaning deeply. An expanse of rocky desert blanketed in storm clouds splayed out before them. The air was hot, yet the gusts of air cold. Electricity tugged at loose hair. Nexus clasped his hands behind his back and gazed at the empty land before them. “Is this land fit for open warfare, or what?”
“It is, Master,” the Elf said, one of his hands twitching for a saber.
In the middle of this plain rose one stump-shaped plateau, with a gnarled tree atop it. “That’s where I shall be watching the war unfold,” Nexus said. “I’ve shaped my realm with
the sole purpose of war in mind. One army on that side.” He raised an arm and gestured to the ride side of the plateau. “And one on that side.” He held out his left arm and pointed to the left side. “And both will collide in the middle.” He clapped palms together, interlocking his fingers. “Bam. No sneak attacks; just a simple battle to the death.”
“What’s with the tree? I suggest cutting it down.”
Nexus laughed. “That tree has earned the right to live. It’s a long story.”
“What next, Master?”
“Now the war can begin.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you, Mom, for your encouragement and patience, even during the time you were too afraid to read my manuscript, fearing you wouldn’t like it. A big thanks to Gran and Jessie, for being my first avid fans. Thank you, Jennie S., for editing over 300 pages of the first incarnation of the story, and for your encouragement to keep going. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you. Thank you, Jonathan S., for the full review of the next draft, and all those suggestions and advice on how to revise it, and how the literary market works.
To my mentors in the MFA program: Tim Weed, who set me into motion to strive for better language and pacing; Nick Mamatas, for your brutal honesty and amazing advice; Mary Ann Campbell, for being a fan when it felt like no one would ever like the manuscript; Melissa Sanders-self, for being another avid fan, yet full of ideas and suggestions to make the story better, and for introducing me to Diane Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland; and to Oscar De Los Santos, for all your wonderful suggestions, critiques, edits, and making sure I don’t try to sneak in filler chapters just because I think they’d be entertaining to read.
To my fellow MFA students: a big thanks as well for your broad range of feedback that I would have never noticed on my own, and for giving me the whole “alien” confusion to address. Comedy has blossomed from that.
To Reginald King: thank you for all your analysis and support, even on the days I drove us both nuts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S.M. Welles’s journey to bookshelves has been a very roundabout one. She didn’t discover her love of reading until around age fifteen or sixteen, when the fourth “Harry Potter” book was released and the first film adaptation hit the big screens. Her mother convinced her to give the first “Harry Potter” book a shot, which she grudging agreed to “read the first chapter, then stop.” Four chapters later, Welles realized she’d forgotten to stop. She hasn’t stopped reading books since, and now has a Master’s in writing from Western Connecticut State University. She has lived in Connecticut all her life. Shield of the God is her debut novel. And when she isn’t writing or reading, she spends time playing MMOs, like League of Legends and World of Warcraft. Druid ftw!