Grym Prophet (Song of the Aura, Book Three)

by Downs, Gregory J.

  With sudden alarm the young prophet understood that he had just gathered the force of an attack into himself, much as Wanderwillow had done to the archdemon's fire!

  I've got to let it out, he realized, struggling to stand before the energy ripped itself from him. Elia was still nearby, lying on her side with her head in her hands, moaning and possibly very hurt. He couldn't unleash the restrained energy with Stone Striding here, or she'd be obliterated, along with the still-unconscious Lauro. How did Wanderwillow hold it in??? It's going to kill me if I don't do something NOW!

  Bursting through the wall of his earth-shell blindly, Gribly stumbled again and fell to his knees.

  “Idiot boy,” hissed a too-familiar voice of thousands behind him. A plume of smoke like the one the Pit Strider had used to disappear all those weeks ago burst from the ground, and the sorcerer Sheolus stepped from it, eyes aflame again. “Playing right into my hand!”

  “BACK!” Gribly shouted, whirling around on his hands and lashing out at the archdemon with both feet. The absorbed energy surged out of him in a single, violent current as his feet made contact with the sorcerer's face.

  Sheolus's jaw cracked as it was displaced, but his head moved not an inch. Rusty-gold colored blood seeped from a small wound at his wrinkled chin, but that was all.

  Gribly landed nimbly and sprung backwards in a somersault, despite the sudden exhaustion he felt as the unnatural energy left his body. “Back!” he called again, now hoarse and frightened. All that power, and barely a blasted dent! How could he ever hope to fight this hellspawn?

  “You cannot...” chuckled Sheolus, apparently reading his thoughts. One arm lifted slowly until it was perpendicular from his body, then halted. “Give up your soul, prophet!”

  My soul?

  “Never!” he yelled.

  Sheolus closed his outstretched hand, and the ground around Gribly erupted in tentacles of earth that clutched him and threw him savagely to the ground. Struggle as he might, there was no escaping their grip, and he could not move enough to Stone Stride back at the sorcerer.

  Blackness rushed in on his vision as the earthy tentacles hardened to stone and squeezed the life out of him. The thief's last thought before consciousness fled him was hoping against hope that Elia would somehow escape before the demon-man was finished with him.

  Chapter Seventeen: The Wrong Hero

  “Elia?” Lauro's voice was feeble, but he was alive! The Sea Strider took his face in her hands.

  “I'm here, Lauro. You're going to be fine, now that I've-”

  “BACK!” shouted an adolescent voice through the crack in the dirt sphere.

  “Gribly!” Lauro's eyes snapped open and he tried to rise, but a violent wheeze sent him sprawling on his back again. “You- you have to help him,” he grunted, obviously still suffering immensely.

  “But you-” Elia began.

  “Now.” The prince was whispering, but his whisper was an order. She leaped up without another word, twisting around and stepping quickly towards the open crack in the dome's wall. A slithery, malicious voice was speaking words she couldn't hear.

  “Never!” yelled Gribly in response. For a single moment she saw him, crouched and ready to fight against the dark-cloaked fiend who stood not three feet in front of Elia with his back turned.

  Then the sphere exploded and hard earth rained down upon Elia in heavy chunks. The ground softened like sand, and she felt her feet sinking in- but there was nothing she could do. Stumbling back, she threw up her arms across her body and face, vainly attempting to shield herself from the avalanche; rocks and turf pummeled her again and again until she dropped to the ground in a bloodied heap.

  A second later it was over. She raised her head, coughing on dust and filth, hoping against hope that Gribly had somehow won.

  No such luck. Her friend was trapped by a multitude of rocky loops and mounds that had leaped out of the ground like living things. His head lolled to one side against a large arm of stone, and blood dripped down his face. His eyes were closed and there was no breathing that she could see. The dark demon-man stalked towards him... and there was something in his hand.

  “No!!!!” Elia screamed at the top of her lungs, striving to get up and attack him with her bare hands if necessary. But searing pain filled her arms and legs, and she realized that they were stuck fast in the hardened ground. “No...” she moaned, tears streaming down her eyes as the hopelessness of her situation dawned on her.

  “What are you...” rasped the demon-man, almost to himself, and his red-gold eyes narrowed. His hand reached for her, and across the open space Elia felt a mental agony so acute she felt sure she would go insane.

  Something streaked across her blood-blurred vision: a golden-green that burned her eyes, yet felt more soothing than a healing draft. The pain in her head vanished, and she shook her head to clear it. The sight in front of her was mind-shattering.

  Wanderwillow, burnt and blackened, oozing golden blood from every part of his willowy body, had tackled the demon-man, Sheolus, she suddenly recalled, to the ground, and now both were locked in a deadly wrestling match. Lightning discharged from their bodies in a ceaseless concert of blinding flashes, so bright that the rest of the otherworldly wasteland looked dark as night.

  CRASH! CRACKLE! CRASH! The bedlam was loud enough to shatter glass, but her hands were unable to move to cover her ears and stifle the noise. Gasping in pain, she tried to wrench them free from the hardened ground, but they were immovable. Next she tried her legs, with the same result, and found besides that part of her side was stuck as well.

  Again she tried to break free. Again she failed. The pain in her trapped limbs intensified with each failure, but she refused to give up. I can't stop... I can't leave Gribly... I have to get him out of here!

  So she forced herself to keep trying, as the two mortal enemies clashed over and over again nearby, wreaking havoc on the surrounding terrain in their fury.

  BOOM! went the clouds overhead, as lightning was pulled from the sky and into the battling phantoms below. At the same time, Elia managed to rip one hand free of the earth. Her shrieks were drowned out by the battle, as she pressed her bloody, injured hand to her side, trying vainly to dull the pain.

  The darkness became laced with freezing rain and hailstones. She dropped her head to the wet stone beneath her and began to weep.

  “Elia!” a voice howled, and the next moment Lauro hit the ground beside her. “Use... the water,” he murmured tiredly; it seemed he had used his last reserves of energy to make it through the mayhem to her. “Water...” he repeated again, barely audible over the sounds of combat and storm.

  Water?

  Water!

  It couldn't help her get free, but water could heal her!

  Elia turned her face to the sky, ignoring the pounding hail and stinging rain, and lifted her injured hand.

  Be whole, she thought, and gasped as the rainwater flowed together as one with the water in her body, pulling and stretching her flesh until it had knitted her hand back together.

  “Save them,” Lauro mumbled, then rolled over limply, unconscious again.

  FLASH! The lightning streaking in all directions arced higher than ever, and Elia watched in horror as Sheolus flung a weakened, beaten Wanderwillow into the air, then summoned a second blast to slam him into ground mercilessly.

  “Nympharch!” she screamed, but her voice was drowned out. Her vision was blurred with tears and blood, but she saw no signs of the Aura rising. The demon-man turned and began stalking towards Gribly again, limping this time.

  He's forgotten about me... she realized. He's going to kill Gribly, or worse!

  “NO!” she screamed, tearing at the earth that restrained her as hard as she could.

  With a sickening squelch, the ground cracked and her body came free. Blood ran down her legs, hand and side; her garment ripped away where it had been submerged in the ground, but she staggered to her feet and tottered forward under the torrential delu
ge that perpetually issued from the sky.

  With every step her wounds healed a little as water seeped into them, but in seconds she saw it would not be enough. Finally she ignored her pain and focused every ounce of energy towards running.

  Blood. Water. Light. Shadow.

  Ahead, Sheolus raised his hand. In it was a bone dagger with a flaming blade.

  “GRIBLY!” Elia screamed, bare feet splashing in the mud as she halted, slid, and flung out her arms in a desperate Sea Striding maneuver. Mud and water streamed around her in a maelstrom that lifted her bodily off the ground and propelled her across the remaining distance in a whirling pillar of power.

  Sound died, feeling became irrelevant, and time itself seemed to slow. Elia saw the demon-man turn in surprise as she rocketed towards him...

  She saw individual beads of water splash on his gray, dead skin as the water she'd Stridden began to crash over him...

  She saw herself stretch out her hands towards his neck...

  She felt him lash out defensively with his flaming dagger...

  She felt him plunge its blade past her ribs and into her stomach, poking out of her back as her body slammed into his, knocking him over...

  She saw Gribly, imprisoned in the tangle of rock, open his eyes...

  She saw him scream...

  ~

  “Eliaaaa!!!!” Gribly screamed. The world rushed in on him, all blood and rain and stone, and he thrashed against his bonds. The nymph girl he was sure now he loved had just saved his life, again.

  Elia and Sheolus fell in a heap, the sorcerer's blade in her body and her hands gripping his neck. The water that had carried her splashed to the ground, no longer supported by her Striding, and the thoroughly soaked sorcerer began to pry her fingers from his throat with a strange slowness.

  A ball of hail struck Gribly in the jaw, bruising it and drawing another trickle of blood on his face, but he felt no pain. Rage built in his chest and seared the inside of his throat; rage so powerful and all-consuming that it drowned out all other feeling or hope. One thing occupied his entire mind: vengeance.

  Sheolus succeeded in getting Elia off, stood up, and pulled the dagger slowly out of her. She convulsed, and Gribly realized she was still alive.

  “Elia!” he howled, and the rage in him grew so hot that he could not hold it in. An animal bellow tore from his lips, and the stone holding his arms shattered into hundreds of pieces as he hammered it with his mind.

  The Sea Strider's body shimmered, then melted into a swirling golden mist that lifted from the ground, traveled quickly through the air, and dissipated as it hit the blade of Sheolus's bone knife.

  “Dog! What have you done?!” Gribly's roar of hate was so loud that the demon-man halted for half a second. Then he curled his bloody lip in a sneer and stepped forward, raising the knife to do to Gribly as he had done to Elia.

  But the Stone Strider had freed his arms. In two sweeping motions, Gribly swept away the stone that held his lower body, turning it to dust with the power of his Striding. Power from an unknown source even stronger than his rage, power like he had never known, lanced through his body like a draft of cold air.

  Sheolus leaped forward, eyes aflame, and struck with his knife.

  The remaining stone on and around Gribly exploded in all directions, catching the archdemon in the chest and hurling him backwards in a monstrous collision.

  His enemy landed amid the debris, but stood up a moment later, apparently unhurt. Fear hit Gribly like a cold block of ice in the stomach, despite his new and mysterious surge of power.

  Sparks danced up the blade of Sheolus's knife again, and it burst into flame.

  “Aura of the Creator!” the prophet screamed at the top of his lungs, “Come to me! If I am your prophet, SHOW ME! I can't do this alone!”

  Sheolus cringed- he actually cringed! But nothing happened.

  Then the rain and hail simply stopped. Gribly felt the power begin to drain out of him, and his head throbbed with new pain.

  “Your pleas are fruitless, Boy!” laughed Sheolus, walking forward with deliberate slowness. “I am more powerful than either of your exiled 'friends'!”

  But as he moved in for the kill, a single sunbeam broke through the clouds and fell on the space between the boy and the archdemon.

  The air shimmered. Gribly gasped as the surge of power returned to him, stronger than ever. The light was coalescing... forming the shape of a…

  Sheolus stopped dead, tensed, and stuffed the dagger back beneath his robes. Then he raised both fists and cursed loudly in a hideous voice. Fire spewed from his hands towards the still-wavering shape, engulfing it in a hellish torrent. With a cry Gribly leaped forward towards the sunbeam and fire, hoping against hope to stop the archdemon from killing whatever came out of the air.

  It was unneeded. There was a soundless flash of light, and the fire died away as quickly as Sheolus had summoned it. The sunbeam vanished, and the land was dark again...

  ...but in its place stood a young man in a long cap, dressed in weather-beaten gray robes and leaning on a gnarled wooden staff.

  “Traveller?” Gribly blurted, stunned. The Aura paid him no attention, his full attention locked on the archdemon who had tried to kill him.

  “YOU!” spat Sheolus, lifting his hands again. Traveller grinned mischievously and raised his staff.

  “You've fallen as far as an Aura can fall, Aurum Therestore,” the gray-clad guide of Gribly's dreams said. “It will be my pleasure to send you back to the Blaze.” Then he opened his mouth and let loose with a cock's crow louder and fiercer than any mortal's war cry.

  AURA? Gribly shuddered, gaping at the revelation. This archdemon was an Aura?

  Sheolus lifted a clawed hand to the sky, and lightning struck his palm. He caught the bolt and held it as it crackled and spat fire, hefting it back as if to throw.

  Before either combatant could attack, however, a deep rumbling quake shook the earth behind them all, from the direction of the blasted hill where Wanderwillow and Sheolus had fought. Gribly stamped his foot and Stone Strode to keep himself from falling, sending a hurried glance over his shoulder to find the source of the disturbance. Could there be another archdemon coming?

  The hill itself heaved, shuddered, and split open, transforming into a massive ball of churning earth that rolled forward over the land with extraordinary momentum. In three seconds it careened past Gribly, plowing around Traveller and straight into Sheolus, who cast his lightning bolt at it just moments too late.

  Half of the deadly orb was blasted away, but the rest continued on for another span before falling apart, leaving a battered, smoking Sheolus behind, victim to his own lightning as well as the concussive force of the quake-ball.

  The ground next to Gribly convulsed and ruptured in a spray of dirt, as Wanderwillow himself stepped up out of the earth. He was almost unrecognizable, so battered and gnarled... his skin had taken on the appearance of bark; his hands and feet were knotted messes of root and branch.

  With a surprising grace and speed, Wanderwillow ran to stand beside Traveller. No, that wasn't the right word; he didn't run... he flowed. His legs remained still, and his feet were a churning mass of tree roots, seeming to swim through the earth as a human might swim through water. If a tree could walk, Gribly thought, it would walk like that.

  Soon the two Aura faced their fallen enemy as Sheolus struggled to his feet, tottered, and fell to his knees in front of them. Traveller raised his staff, and wings sprouted from the end.

  “There are two of us and one of you,” the gray Aura said. “Surrender your weapon, and you will be sent to fester with the rest of your Legion.”

  Sheolus shrunk lower, shaking and cowering. Then he looked up, eyes glowing once more... but he was not looking at either Aura. He was glaring right at Gribly.

  “You will be mine!” he spat, and before anyone could blink he had drawn the bone dagger and slashed his hand open with it. Rusty-golden blood poured from the wound, and he
squeezed his fist shut on it, weaving strange words in an evil tongue as the ichor, the godblood, flowed onto the ground at his knees.

  Quick as a flash, Traveller flung his winged staff like a javelin straight at Sheolus's heart... but it was too late. The weapon impaled the ground where the archdemon should have been, but had vanished into thin air. The only sign that he had been there was a lingering, cackling laugh that echoed across the Nothing like the ghost, then died away on the wind.

  “Blast, that was close!” Traveller grimaced, stretching out his hand and calling his staff back to him. It shot out of the ground and into his grip; he spun it in a quick circle before slamming it into the ground with a loud, frustrated crack!