Hovering lights filled the chamber—sprites in their diminutive forms. Many trolls and other wildlife meandered in circles behind them as if entranced and mindless. It was a place of layered stone platforms.
“Who has wandered into my domain?” said an eerie, crackling voice. On the center platform, against a tapered pillar, was a glowing green creature sitting in a bed of reed grass. Wide silvery eyes gazed with intrigue as webbed hands parted long strands of grass from a centerline. “Come closer, newcomers.” The sprite smiled, a finger curving over her lips. Lurid butterfly wings expanded and contracted behind her. Hair, the same color as her skin, cambered back as if gathered in a large net, a chain of shells weaving through it.
Her seaweed dressed torso disappeared in the ground as if she’d been seamlessly one with the grass bed. Runes marked her skin. “Nixie?” I called. She shrugged with excitement.
Irvina kneeled before her. “It is a pleasure, ancient sprite.” Nixie’s eccentric gaze found her.
Sergio moved in circles, giving attention to a drooling, senseless troll that shambled about in a euphoric stupor. “I don’t think we should be here, Winn. I think that old jolly green giant, Voreg, threw us into a—”
“Trap,” Nixie finished. Irvina stood. “That would be correct, halfling, though the brutes have underestimated you three, I think.” The green sprite explained how nothing but a troll could move the plate we entered from, and there had been no other exit from the cave. Sergio was right. Voreg had locked us in. “I want you to know that this was not Shenkii’s plan—to entrap you forever—in my beautiful, humble abode. Your witless escorts acted on their own accord. Welcome, naiad,” she said to Irvina warmly. “It is good to have company at least half as old as I for a change.” As she watched Sergio’s baffled eyes follow a lollygagging troll, she said, “He’s charmed, is all.”
Sergio winced. “For how long?”
Nixie laughed. “It was for my own protection. The trolls sought to destroy me once—deathly terrified of magic, they are. The charmed ones you see here are tools to keep peace. We’ve developed quite a relationship over the many, many years, but they are a treacherous kind, and it would be unwise to surrender my only bargaining token. The others would soon forget my powers for doing so and surely try to destroy me again. They are a forgetful bunch.”
I’d never seen a sprite like Nixie. Most were more human looking with similar skin texture, color, and hair. Their three-foot height and butterfly wings were the only things that differentiated them from Men. She was different in form and presence—archaic-like in mind and body. “We were ordered here by Shenkii to be... examined. They didn’t take lightly to our abilities either.”
“Shenkii gave the order?” she questioned with astonishment. “He’s the least repulsive of them all. It’s surprising. And you agreed?”
I nodded, briefly telling Nixie what happened to us. She stopped me with a hand. “I have already seen it in your recent pasts, as I have seen many things about you already. Nothing happens within this cave that I have not descried, and no one comes into my domain whose souls I haven’t already scrutinized.”
“The trolls want to know—”
“The extent of your magic, I know. Though I cannot be of much help to Shenkii because the power of the trinkets you carry are far beyond me.”
The Amethyst and the Emerald glowed. Nixie turned up an ear as if listening to something—the orbs. “Ah... yes,” she said, her eyes gleaming with liquid. She listened for a long while, grunting and murmuring as if she’d entered a conversation with voices inside of her own head.
“It is an honor for you two to have been chosen for such greatness,” she said. “Your orbs are very old, indeed more precious and powerful than anything ever to come upon this world, past or present—even the Angels. Those trolls that escorted you truly are foolish. They presumed that I would charm you same as the others and you’d be imprisoned in this chamber for as long as I saw fit. Your orbs would have destroyed me.” She listened to the silent voices again.
Tears flowed from Nixie’s eyes. “T’would be an honor,” she answered.
We didn’t know what she was talking about because we couldn’t heard the stones. “What honor?”
She looked at us with a hopeful simper. “My time has finally come it seems. I’ve lived long enough, chasing death. I leave whatever energy remains in my bones to your orbs. You will need it. I am glad to join their cause against the Abyssians. Finally, I may enter the Ambiance.” The cave rumbled in tandem with her swaying hand. To the right, and beyond the center stalagmite, a tall archway formed in a collapsing wall. Darkness lay beyond it.
When her hand went toward us, her green brilliance magnified blindingly. “Beyond the threshold, there is the destination you seek.” Her last words were to me. “Great power has found you, Darwin. You must accept the fate that has befallen you. It will only bring great tragedy if you do not.” Moments after her wisdom dwindled she began to fade until she vanished in the light, and wisps of liquid light swam through the air, finding the orbs. There was no sensation when the light entered the Amethyst and swirled within its mauve pearliness. The speckled sprites scattered about the chamber left with her, blinking out of existence. The captivated trolls groaned as they returned to reality. Nixie’s departure had liberated captured minds.
Irvina raised her chakram.
“I think we’ve got another problem,” said Sergio irritably.
A troll larger than most Bashers ran toward him. Just before it swung an arm the girth of a horse’s torso, another troll stopped it with his own hefty limb. “No. They saved us.” Ice gray locks fell to the center of his back, bunching neatly. Wool armlets cuffed his tattooed arms, and a leather tasset, held by a belt with a troll’s skull for its buckle cinched his waist. Fur boots rose to his shins.
He shoved his twelve-foot counterpart back. “Your prince orders you to stand down, Basher.”
Prince?
A piercing looped through the prince troll’s septum. “You’ve destroyed the sprite-witch,” he said. “To what do we owe our hospitality, human?” His voice was strikingly similar to the Elder’s.
The Amethyst blinked at the question. The troll staggered and dipped as if something struck him and then shrugged with a grunt. “I am Genkii,” he said. “Son of Shenkii. We’ve been trapped in this chamber for many years,. I thank Ultima for bringing you to our cave.” The orb had told him that and other things I presumed. We introduced ourselves to him and the other trolls unsettled by our sudden emergence. There were twenty—a mixture of male and female Bashers. Cave spiders scuttled about, crawling across the walls.
Our presence sparked an immediate argument between them. Genkii barked with authoritative reprimands in our defense. It seemed to do nothing. They calmed as much as they could only when the Amethyst thumped them with thaumaturgy full of information as it had the prince. Suddenly they knew who we were. Some, though, were still distraught by our unique prestige. “We shall go with you to the outlying caves and save my cousin. Vakuu is much too young for death to hunt him. We will fight this Kreshauros,” said Genkii.
I nodded. From the black arch behind Nixie’s stalagmite, there was a roar and the bellows of trolls locked in a terrible struggle. Not soon after, there were shrieks. Familiar shrieks not of peril, but fury. Sergio, Irvina, and I flashed our eyes at one another with skin crawling realization.
“Curses,” Sergio groused.
“We must hurry if we wish to aid them while they still live,” said Irvina.
I knew they would come eventually.
nasracans.
Tower Prison
Arkhadian guards led Nova across the city of Ortiz as if she were queen. At the head of the formation was the hooded and armored man, the one who took her from her kingdom by way of magic. She would never forget how she stepped out of a shadow world and back into an entirely different place. The way the land materialized before her eyes was a sight beyond comparison. She’d always w
anted to leave Lucreris, but not like this. Not without those she loved. Not with the traumatizing anguish that coursed through her flesh, binding her lips.
Ortiz was an industrial capital, not the type of city meant for residing but for forging things of metal. The men Nova saw were dirty and oily from harsh labor; clothed profoundly in cloth like the desert nomads. They were scared and vigilant. It was the look in their eyes that told Nova so. She hadn’t seen an Abyssian since she’d entered the unsettling city. There were only men—men that belonged to Ortiz—and men that had not. The latter of the two sauntered with pompous gaits. Weapons hung from them, some utilized for beating slaves as they drafted many in chains.
When a guard nudged her, he apologized quickly—as if his life depended on it. Nova said nothing back. She only looked forward, entranced by the haunting vision of the flames of Lucreris, drawing tears beneath her eyes, and making her lips quiver. She understood why Darwin was the way he was when he spoke of his adventures with the Militia. War and the death it wrought were the other side of life where hell belonged. How could she have been so foolish to think she could bear the sword like him? She heard his voice in her head, telling her of the reasons to be thankful for everything she once had in Lucreris.
It made the tears streak down her face. Those things no longer mattered. She was different now—changed by the invasion just days ago and unknowing if she would at all recover. She heard the soldiers’ marching sabatons come to a unified halt. The hooded one kept walking, though, toward the door of a black tower stretching to the ruddy sky.
He faced her with a motioning hand. He wanted her alone. She followed, going before him into a depthless cylinder with a spiraling staircase that disappeared into the mesmerizing blackness above. She stiffened when she felt something pinch the back of her tube-top. Unexpectedly, she thrust into the air, her feet distancing from the ground at incredible speed. The shadows consumed everything beneath her, as it had the ceiling. When she looked behind her, the hooded man was over her, looking up.
They landed at the top staircase and went through the door into a dark empty room. A single slit window was wrought into the wall too high to reach. She sat in the center of the floor submissively. The man stood in the doorway. “You’ll be safe here,” he said. “No one will find you. Everything you need will be provided.” He turned to leave but faced her once more. “I apologize for these meager accommodations, but it is as it must be for now. Your safety is foremost. I do hope you understand, Nova.” He left this time for sure, slamming the door. She jerked, staring with intensity, bewitched by awe. How had he known her name? She racked her mind to decipher it, going over a thorough list of everyone she knew, trying her damnedest to recall the sounds of their voices.
The hooded man’s voice was unfamiliar. She left it alone laying down on her back; sinking into her pillow-plush pigtails. More questions filled her mind.
Safety? Why were they so kind to her? Who was she? What was she? She remembered the light that had come from her body, destroying an entire segment of Lucreris. She rolled with a gasp and looked at her hands in the dark, perceiving their contours in what little evening twilight poured from the window. She’d forgotten about the explosion until just then. How did she do it? It was another traumatizing instance that thieved another portion of her innocence. Suddenly, she was unsure of herself and of many other things. Hurt and pain nauseated her.
There was one realization that overwhelmed her: everyone she’d ever known, except Darwin, was dead. She wept for the first time since it all happened. She pounded a fist against the cold stone until the edge of her peeling skin bled with cracks and scrapes. The tears and pain gladdened her. For a while, she was beginning to think she couldn’t feel anything anymore. When she thought of Darwin, it calmed her. Truly, she didn’t know if he were still alive. King Dimicus wasn’t known to wield a merciful hand. If the young fiendish ruler had put Darwin to death, it was her fault. The king was furious with her, and when she hadn’t answered him, he lost his temper.
In her heart, though, she felt her brother was still alive, and that, somehow, their innate connection would strike a resounding nerve if he wasn’t. She remembered then the magic she’d seen him do while he was fighting the fiery fiend—how he disappeared in one place and reappeared in another, and of how he moved over the air, and the gold sword he wielded, and his supernatural strength. It replayed in her head several times.
Magic. Never in a million years did she think she would be this far away from home. Never in a million more did she think she would ever see magic or any manifestation from the primordial translations of Doctrine. Life as she knew it had unraveled, irreversibly so. Why had Darwin kept it a secret from her? How long had it been a secret? She would ask him when he came for her. She knew he would—for as long as he lived—come for her. They were meant to leave Memoria together—her and their mother. Nova’s mind replayed that horrid moment—the moment when death had marked her, and her mother took her place. Her heart thumped, and chest grew heavy. She leaned, pressing her forehead against the dirty floor.
“Mama,” she cried. And she wept more.
Kreshauros
The roar of the necrein, Kreshauros, echoed with petrifying severity. nasracans with long horns swarmed the capacious cave room, poised to destroy every foe with their razor-sharp claws and swordtails. The trolls with whom we began our journey from the village, were locked in a grim battle. Many of them succumbed to the overwhelming number of their nasracan adversaries. Genkii and the twenty that accompanied us from Nixie’s chamber crashed into the fray like a rushing tide. Shaaka and Voreg swept and whirled their weapons about, vehemently crushing and skying the Abyssians, near the center of the skirmish.
Obsidian eyes scanned Sergio, Irvina, and I intensely before the evil fiends to which they belonged attacked. The wild battle separated us instantly. A troll combatting an Abyssian knocked me around unintentionally, forcing me to evade burly arms and nasracan blades that could’ve slain me. “Darwin, the evil ones have broken the seal at the cave pass! They’ll enter the village if we don’t stop them. Please, use your magic to help us,” Vakuu yelled across the pandemonium from the higher part of the inclining rock ground. The troll child fled from nasracans, rolling beneath the legs of towering giants and biting whatever tails that managed to snag him.
The deadly Kreshauros crouched in the dead center of the quarrel, ready to pounce. It rippled with lean muscle far more impressive than its lesser counterparts, the sifters. Two hooked fangs hung from its jowls, and arching claws, like talons, protruded its paws. Its fleshy face quavered ferociously as an Abyssian leashed its neck with a thin tail.
“Annihilate them. Feast on their souls,” its Abyssian master commanded—a nasrogh. Its blackened skin gleamed, hand gripping the hilt of an iron sword.
“Vakuu!” Genkii surged through countless Abyssians, thwacking them into the cavern walls with a spiked mace he’d found on the ground. The troll to whom it once belonged was dead. “For the tribe!” Rotating the mace in spirals, he exploded toward the enemies, surrounding the young troll. “I’m coming!” Seconds before saving Vakuu, the nasrogh unleashed the vicious Kreshauros. It strode across the cave in rumbling bounds, catching the daring Genkii in its saber teeth. Clenching the prince with impossible, trembling strength, his bleeding body flailed like a rag and hung from the sharp fangs of Kreshauros when it calmed.
“Genkii!” the child cried, hoping the mortally wounded royal troll would respond. Releasing the prince from its jaws, the colossal beast gnawed on bits of skin and roared as Genkii clung to dear life below its dripping fangs.
Summoning the strength of the orb, Sergio broke the necks of the Abyssians that encircled him with lunging punches. He fought his way to Genkii and engaged the formidable Kreshauros. Transforming by the power of the Emerald, the orb’s light engulfed his body, and he became a three-headed beast that matched the size and prowess of the massive necrein—a chimera: one of the most powerful creature
s of the lesser kind. With the head of a dragon, a serpent, and a maned lion, Sergio’s staggering transformation would balance the match. But, the grueling strength of the necrein was hardly an effortless trifle. Brawling with the flesh face beast brought a consequence of many casualties—trolls and nasracans alike. Their roars juddered the cavern. Deadly stalactites fell from the pinnacle, killing those beneath them.
Irvina kicked into a somersault, sending one of the demons to the floor. Upon landing, another Abyssian rushed, swinging its tail. She evaded in sidesteps. Jumping acrobatically and landing with shins on its shoulders, she squeezed her legs against its head and twisted in a circle. As it collapsed, she rode the withering corpse to the ground and rolled onto her feet, running to commence yet another violent assault. She drew her chakram.
The Amethyst burned. There was something different about it, its potency exponential and energy invincibly domineering. Thrusting forward, I crushed the ribs of a nasracan in my shadow with a strong kick. Another kick sent it crashing back like an erected wall. I moved along quickly, unleashing terror upon them. Shattering a nasracan’s dropped jaw with a bare fist, I evaded the ensuing attacks that followed, glimpsing them in flashing visions long before they occurred. Dodging tails used as sharpened blades, I overpowered them effortlessly. Luring Abyssians toward me, the Amethyst cast them into each other with an invisible force while I vaulted into the air.
“Divine willpower,” the orb mentioned.
The tails of their comrades impaled them, and other grisly means saw to their defeat. The nasrogh, however, continued to hold the center of the cave, slaying every troll that dared to challenge it. It required a rival of worthier skill.
I fought toward it relentlessly, maneuvering around deadly thrusts until we were opponents at last. I abruptly appeared, unleashing a swift uppercut into its throat that sent it careening through the air. Dashing, I hunted the soaring creature, pounding it on the brow midair. It crashed brutally, imprinting the ground with its body. But it quickly sprang again onto its feet, growling, and retreating.
Enigma: Awakening Page 20