The sounds multiplied, and seemed to come from everywhere. The entire forest seemed to be full of approaching creatures. For the first time, the teens could discern a look of urgency in the depths of the man’s eyes. With a quick breath, he ordered them to leave the forest. They started off and ran the hundred feet that separated them from the edge of the forest in record time.
Just as they reached the edge, four arrows struck, burying their tips deep in the earth, exactly in the place where the group had stood just moments before. Then, the bushes around the clearing that they had abandoned exploded under the effect of repeated sword strikes. The archers didn’t show themselves, but the brutes that had destroyed the thicket came face to face with them. In that moment, a hundred feet separated the four adolescents – surprised and frightened – from four green mountains of muscle that reeked of dried blood, accompanied by the archers, still concealed within the green of the foliage.
“Orks,” Glaide said with a short exhale of breath, looking at the verdant masses with torn armor, full of holes, carrying weapons of rusty steel. The whole appearance gave the impression of filth and contamination. They turned as though they had heard their names called, and the small yellow eyes, deeply recessed in their orbits beheld the group. Imposing, yellowed fangs dripping with saliva eclipsed the protruding lower jaws. Glaide recognized the monsters that he had already heard of and read about in so many games and books. He felt fear creep in as he faced these... creatures, but also a certain amount of excitement in discovering what the creatures really looked like. He even almost wanted to confront them, but the damaged blades that they held dissuaded him of that desire.
The two girls and Jeremy remained frozen with fear, but the old man gave the monsters a defiant look, and pronounced a phrase that, while understood by no one, since it had been spoken so softly, helped them keep calm. However, that didn’t seem to be the primary purpose of the phrase, because a soft crackling sound was heard, as the old man raised then lowered his hand in an abrupt gesture. Just as the arm came back down, a flash of lightning from the sky fell among the trees, striking in three places, followed by brief cries and the sound of bodies falling to the ground. Near the orks, three cadavers appeared, similar in appearance to the orks, but armed with bows and arrows.
Glaide, along with the rest of the group, couldn’t believe his eyes: he’d just witnessed a deadly act of magic. No simple slight of hand, but actual magic. A flash of lightning had appeared from out of nowhere and had killed three of their adversaries.
“Orks,” the old man spit out. “The most loyal and the most numerous servants of Baras. You will have dozens, hundreds perhaps, to combat.” Jeremy threw a rapid glance at Glaide that expressed his thoughts: he, too, knew what orks were, from the stories he had heard.
No negotiation seemed possible, and Glaide began to understand that it would be difficult for him to sympathize with Baras under these conditions. It seemed that the god had set the rules from the very beginning: he and these young people were enemies. The adolescents put their hands to their sides, there, where one would normally find a sword, and one can only imagine their surprise when they discovered the cold but reassuring texture of the pommels of their swords. It seemed that the old man had indeed been right.
They drew their swords with a single, fluid movement that startled the girls. Their swords gleamed with the light of the setting sun, and despite their apprehension, they at least felt reassured. They held themselves ready for an assault, because the trees in front of them had already begun to rustle anew. A monster similar to those that had preceded him erupted from the trees, followed by a dozen others. The group of creatures began to advance, as the man and the teens retreated in equal measure, preserving the distance between the two groups.
“Hmmm, that makes quite a lot for a first time,” murmured the man to himself. “I think that a small helping hand wouldn’t be overdoing it.” Once more, he spoke those strange words, and ten monsters died under the shock of new lightning bolts. But that didn’t slow the progression of the remaining monsters by even a trifle. A safe distance had been conserved, but the group of young people now approached the slope that led down to the plain, where the tall plants waved tranquilly. It was out of the question to descend the hill, as that could prove fatal if their enemies began to launch an assault while they had their backs turned to make the descent.
The old man didn’t seem willing to act again. So, Glaide and Jeremy did what they could to chase away their fears and concentrate on the battle, when the one who seemed to be the leader of the orks spoke. “Me Gornak the Dreadful, servant of Baras. We here for killing you all. You possessor of great magic,” and here he pointed to the old man with a finger, dirty and crooked, “I leave your life safe if you go.”
The old man responded, “I am their guardian, and I will defend them, even if I die trying.”
“Since you offering, I take your life! ATTACK!!” The monster charged the small group with a shout, followed by his cronies, and the little courage that Glaide and Jeremy had accumulated up to that point evaporated. The two friends dropped their weapons and turned to run. However, they found themselves face-to-face with the horrified visages of their maggs, and crossed the hard gaze of their guardian, which put them back in their place: this was no time to waver. They had confronted one monster who had been more impressive. They turned again to face their enemies, who continued to yell as they covered the ground between them far too quickly for the adolescents’ taste. Glaide told himself that the time for thinking had passed; now for a bit of action and hopefully a bit of luck. He leaned down for his sword, but he couldn’t find the weapon. “Ahh! Now is not the time! Where is it?” he exclaimed.
Fortunately, Jeremy attempted to draw his weapon without even thinking, and immediately felt the pommel of his sword. Again astonished, he cried to Glaide, “Draw!”
“But I don’t have my sw...”
“Draw I say!”
Glaide did as he was told, and he also perceived the already-familiar feel of his weapon against his palm. He was astonished as well by the feel of a belt that he had never noticed surrounding his waist, as he slowly drew his sword, taking pleasure from the sound of the cold steel as the sharp edge of the blade slid against the sheath. Once drawn, the sword flashed with the light of a thousand fires, seeming to dissipate the shadows surrounding them and at the same time, the fear that had tugged at their insides up to that point. A glance at Jeremy proved that he, also, had taken up a combat stance.
“Oh yes, approach us,” whispered Glaide with a dark smile. “We’ll show you what we can do.” As he looked at the adversaries before him, he now felt that he could, in fact, defeat them. He again felt excitement, and no longer thought of the imminent danger. Then, as the two friends charged, an almost inhuman cry came: a bestial cry from deep within the chest of Glaide – a cry that he never would have thought himself capable of making. It expressed all his joy and excitement, but no hate: he had nothing to hate for the moment. With what little reason remained in him, he established in his mind that he was fighting to save his life, and the lives of his friends, an ideal that was much more noble than that of fighting for vengeance or merely to kill.
The effect of their charge was rapid: within mere seconds, the boys found themselves before their adversary. Their charge had surprised their enemies, and Jeremy parried a strike, too slow and too soft, that had meant to cut him in two, from top to bottom. He grimaced in pain as his sword vibrated from the shock, but then performed his own counter attack that left a much more profound gash on the torso of the ork.
“Impressive!” Glaide cried out to him, as he leapt to the side to avoid a strike, then moved quickly to the back of his enemy, piercing him through and through with little effort; the armor did little to protect the creature, as it was so worn, and except for skin, nothing particularly blocked the progression of the sharpened blade. “Two orks fewer; a good start. But they are coming to their senses; it’s now that it’
ll get tough,” thought the young man in excitement.
It was then that Emily cried out. They had entirely forgotten that they were not alone! The fight seemed to have short-circuited their neurons. Now, they took pleasure at dodging the blows, counterattacking, and killing, completely indifferent to death, which threatened them with every strike. Glaide ran towards his ward as Jeremy dispatched another monster. The old man had moved a little away from the scene, and seemed to contemplate it as though he were a spectator before a good film. It had apparently not entered his mind to help the young woman. The younger man seized the young woman by the shoulders and tackled her to the ground just before a sword could strike at the level of her hair. He rose up again and killed the attacker with a pitched blow of the sword. He looked to his ward: she was unharmed. He helped her to her feet, and she thanked him. “Look at that,” Glaide thought to himself. “She can speak. Good news, she must be getting used to all of this!” A cry from Jeremy and Gwenn at the same time reached his ears.
“Glaide, look out!”
“What the...”
Then, he cried out in pain. He dropped his sword and gripped his arm. A sharp, excruciating pain made him fall to his knees on the ground. Emily had cried out as the ork slashed the arm of her friend. But he had been lucky, because as he had turned to the cry, he had unintentionally prevented the monster from actually killing him, as the strike had been meant for his head.
Glaide no longer knew what was happening; he no longer felt anything but pain – a pain like he had never felt before, and that he hoped to never feel again. He felt it in his arm and all of his body. Blood flowed abundantly from the wound; his hand was stained with it, and his torn sweater was soaked with it. As oblivion threatened to invade his senses, one thought alone remained clear in his mind: the next strike would come, and he would die. Emily, who still hadn’t moved, was near him, and a little farther away stood the old man, who seemed amused. But the thing that caused him the most pain was that his adventure, barely started, was already reaching its end. He would leave behind him the three people he was supposed to have guided.
But the blow never fell. He had just enough strength to lift his head as he saw Jeremy draw near to him, while the last ork fell to the earth with a sword through his body. His friend had saved him. He owed him an immense debt, but he had only enough time to recognize that before he felt a deep void begin to seize him. He began to black out from the pain. He could heard his friends crying as if from far away:
“Hold on! Stay with us!”
“Hey, Glaide, can you hear me?”
He focused his attention on the warm and reassuring voices of his friends.
The old man approached and examined the wound. It was then that something strange happened: Emily approached the boy and crouched down near him. She made her hands into a dome about an inch over his wound, and suddenly, her hair moved, as if blown by a violent and invisible wind. She began to glow with an internal light. Her eyes opened wide, but her gaze seemed vacant and empty. Her forehead wrinkled from the intensity of her concentration. Her hands began to glow even more, but without being blinding.
From the darkness that was gradually obscuring his vision, Glaide could distinctly see this light from his savior. He used the last of his strength to force his eyes to remain open, and he stared at the light. A small bolt of energy appeared, coming out of the hands of the young girl. It struck the wound and spread through the opening in the flesh. Instantly, the young man felt an intense sensation of well-being; the pain disappeared bit by bit as the light spread.
Emily drew back her hands, and the ray of light disappeared. It had lasted for only seconds, but in the place of the wound, all that remained was a scar of a couple of inches. “And there you have white magic: the magic of maggs,” declared the old man with a voice, soft and calm, that broke the silence that had fallen on the group. Emily fell to the ground, supported by Gwenn, as Glaide painfully pulled himself together.
An hour passed during which everyone treated themselves to cookies brought by the Guardian. They were nothing exceptional, and they closely resembled those of the adolescents’ own world. They discussed everything that had happened: the battle, magic, and their fear and excitement. The old man, when they demanded why he hadn’t intervened, responded simply that he had wanted to test them. If they were dead, that would have meant he’d been mistaken. Since they had all survived unscathed, or nearly, he no longer had any qualms about their identities. It was then that a simple but important question came to mind.
“Our parents, our friends! Do they know where we are? Are they worried about our disappearance?” demanded Gwenn, suddenly distraught.
“They’ve forgotten you.” As it was obvious that this answer satisfied no one, he was forced to add, “As soon as you passed to Galadria – actually, as soon as the monster that you confronted arrived in your world, to be exact, you ceased to exist in your world. Your parents, as well as your friends and everyone else that you knew, no longer have any memories of you. It is as though you never existed; as if you were never born.”
This declaration was met with a silence filled with incredulity, worry, and questions from each of them. The Guardian moved away to let the four friends meditate on this idea. The faces of Jeremy, Emily, and Gwenn were non-communicative, their shoulders drooped. Although they no longer worried about the anxiety they would have caused, they couldn’t wrap the minds around the idea that their family could forget them in such a way.
Even if Jeremy could fathom what had happened to him, he had never really thought about what it had meant in terms of time; such an adventure, and the idea of being so far from everything he was used to for an undetermined duration with no one worrying about him was unbearable.
The two girls had lost all of the courage that they had managed to gather before: courage drawn by the hope that they would soon return home, and see their friends again. They had considered their arrival with a certain detachment, thinking that the separation would end one day. However, their future now looked bleak, and they couldn’t stop themselves from imagining what would happen if they weren’t destined to return home. All four of them would have to live here; they’d have to make friends, find new activities, find jobs, age, and die, here. All of this without the parents, brothers, and sisters that had shared the first seventeen years of their lives, and who no longer even knew them. These men and women had lost, perhaps forever, a son, a daughter, and they would never even know. No, this battle was certainly not theirs.
Glaide’s thoughts, however, were completely different. He felt no sorrow, just a certain amount of nostalgia for his seventeen years on Earth. He was even reassured by the fact that those who knew him weren’t worried; back when he imagined leaving for the Other World, he couldn’t help but think of the feelings of his parents, who would cry, and he had never ceased to hate the egotism that told him to abandon everything, and to think only of himself and his dream. But everything was okay now, as no one would be worried in his absence. He could simply live in what promised to be a great adventure, rich with action and thrills.
It was at this point in their thoughts that a whistling sound could be heard. By reflex, the four teens ducked to avoid arrows, but the arrow had already reached its goal, and they heard the sound of a body falling to the ground. Their guardian lay on the ground, motionless. They ran to his side and shifted him onto his back. An arrow with a jet-black point pierced his throat through and through. With a feeble, though still reassuring voice, he said to them, “My time seems to have come. I wanted to guide you, but alas, you can count only upon yourselves. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you longer.” He paused for a moment and coughed up blood, then he spoke again, with difficulty. “You seem to be young people with... great strength. Do your best and... I’m sorry to have imposed... this new life on you...” The adolescents had to lean closer to hear the final phrase, as it was said so softly.
Glaide heard a sound from behind him: the archer ork th
at had shot the arrow was now in the middle of the clearing. He was moving to put a new arrow in his bow. The young man was overcome with rage at this creature that had just killed the only link between their world and Galadria. Before anyone even realized what was happening, he leapt up and drew his sword with lightning speed. Everything around him was a blur as he rushed towards his target. The ork had no time to react as Glaide decapitated him with a violent gesture.
But vengeance does nothing to appease one’s despair, and it was with a still-murderous look on his face that Glaide returned to his companions. Just before he arrived, he could see the man gather the last of his forces and whisper something in Jeremy’s ear as he gripped his hand. A strange white light emanated from his palm, but it disappeared again so quickly, the adolescent doubted that he had really seen it. Then, the maggs tried to use their magic.
Glaide arrived in front of the lifeless body of the old man. He carefully closed the eyes that no longer saw. He asked why the girls hadn’t been able to heal him, and they replied that though the small, regenerative bolt of light had appeared, it had never reached the injury; a jet black dome had appeared and swallowed up the spell. What did that mean? Was it possible that a magg could heal no one other than their protector? Or was it because the man himself had used some kind of magic? They had many questions, but sadly, little chance of obtaining any responses.
The four friends decided to simply bury the body, without concerning themselves with the traditions of that world. The contents of their hearts, full of gratitude for some, and a certain hesitation for others, served as the only funeral rights, and the ever-present twilight the only gravestone.
Chapter 4
THE four friends were dubious. What should they do? Behind them was an impenetrable forest, and before them, a plain that continued as far as the eye could see. If they ventured into the latter, they could at least hope to see their eventual adversaries before they were upon them, while in the forest, where the darkness and trees impeded their combat, the danger seemed greater. So, they opted for the plain. After verifying that they had forgotten nothing – though actually, they had very little, so merely contented themselves with pocketing the remaining cookies – they slid down the small embankment and turned towards their destination: far in front of them, they should find a land more welcoming, of that they were certain. Hadn’t the old man said that this expanse only appeared immense, to discourage the curious? The only question remaining was whether they would reach a village before they died of hunger or thirst.
Chronicles of Galadria I_The Other World Page 4