Swords of the Six

by Scott Appleton

  “Drusa,” Glandstine roared, “look out behind! There are more of them!”

  Caritha, Rose’el, Laura, and Evela clashed their swords together. Blue light rose in the darkness, sizzling in the rain, then surged like a wave toward Drusa.

  The It’ren rolled off Dantress. The blast of energy passed over its head. Then it jumped to its feet, screaming such a high-pitched, horrible sound that Dantress and her sisters dropped their swords to cover their ears with their hands.

  As the rain slackened, the sisters retrieved their swords and joined their blades again. Another wave of energy charged forth from the swords. This one struck two of the dragons with such violent force that they were thrown against the trees at the clearing’s border. Both dragons fell limp to the ground.

  “Glandstine, leave the old woman,” Drusa hissed, darting past Dantress and tackling Laura. “Help—me—get-t—thisss one!”

  Before any of the sisters could react the remaining five dragons dove after the It’ren and subdued Laura. Glandstine flew off into the dark sky, roaring his victory, a limp Laura hanging from his black claws. The It’ren screamed into the night and shot after him, disappearing in the darkness.

  “No!” Dantress stood, grasped her sword, and dashed to the scene of the kidnapping. Before the remaining four dragons could attempt to take off, she thrust one of them through his chest and stabbed another in the neck when it clawed at Rose’el.

  The remaining two dragons coordinated their attack against the sisters, yet they never blew fire. It appeared that they did not have that ability.

  Tears ran down Evela’s face. She fought half-heartedly, thrusting here and there but never dealing serious blows. The color had drained from her face.

  One of the black beasts gathered its wings and crouched. Its muscles flexed, preparing to flee. Caritha sliced its wing.

  “Back you foul thing!” Dantress stabbed it in the leg.

  She must have hit an artery because exorbitant amounts of the green blood mixed with the rain-soaked mud and the monster fell.

  The last dragon slipped its tail through the air like a whip across Rose’el’s chest, throwing her a dozen feet. With a roar it flapped its wings and launched into the air.

  “Great, we’ve lost him.” Caritha stabbed her sword into the ground.

  “Oh no we haven’t!” Dantress ran to where the last segment of the dragon’s black, shiny tail was slipping into the air. She caught hold of it, held on with desperate resolve.

  The upward thrust of the dragon’s wings loosened her grip on his wet scales. She clamped her hand tighter. The scales bit into her hands and the rain pelted her face, making it near impossible to see. She stabbed her rusted blade through the tail, and held on with all the strength she could muster. The dragon roared in pain and thrashed about in the air.

  Releasing her hold on the dragon, she gripped the sword’s handle with both hands. It held fast.

  The dragon crashed into the forest. Branches and leaves stung Dantress’s face and still she clung to the sword’s handle. Someone had to make this beast pay.

  When they landed on the forest floor she stood, pulling her sword from the black tail; it slurped out of the dragon’s flesh. At last, wiping the rain from her face, she stood with sword held aloft. “All right,” she said, “now you are going to tell me where your companions have taken my sister and you had better be quick about it. My patience is reaching its limit.”

  A shiver ran down the length of the creature’s body, and it lifted its head to turn and gaze at her. She felt a shiver run through her body as she looked into its simmering yellow eyes. “Seek out my master, the wizard, if you dare, young one! But be forewarned that you have not the power to bring him down. Dragon blood you have, but your destiny lies not with my master’s death. So go, if you dare, if you are foolish enough. I care not. Mayhap he will slay thee as you have slain me.”

  She sheathed her sword under her sopping outer skirt as the black beast closed his yellow eyes. Green blood flowed from cuts along his legs and belly. “Farewell, beast of doom. May the Creator reward you in death for the harvest of pain you have reaped this night. It was not I who decided your fate. It was you.”

  ANGEL AMIDST THE DARKNESS

  Specter raced through the forest lightning quick, the scythe held with both hands. He’d gone through the portal in search of the dragon’s daughters. And he’d trailed them to the clearing where he’d witnessed Laura’s abduction. Only he could save her and he’d set out to do it. He didn’t have to look above to know that he was still managing to tail the unsuspecting dragon. He could hear its growls and the beating of its wings.

  The dragon had gone far enough for Specter to determine it still headed south and did not intend to change direction. The It’ren, Drusa, flew ahead of it. The dragon clutched one of Albino’s daughters in its claws.

  Specter did not want them to go farther.

  A fallen tree rose into view, wedged into the ground and angling upward, creating a sort of ramp to the forest’s ceiling where its branches had snagged in another tree.

  He ran faster. Branches whipped at his face and scratched him, but he ignored them and ran onto the tree’s wet trunk. For an instant he lost his footing, slipping on the bark. No! He had to press on. Suddenly his boot soles radiated heat. The moisture steamed off the tree’s trunk and he raced up it, leaving flames in his wake. His speed surpassed that of the dragon, placing him in the lead.

  Specter reached the end of the tree at the exact moment Glandstine shot overhead. The ugly scythe blade sliced through the pelting rain and barbed into the dragon’s belly. Specter held onto his weapon with an iron grip as the dragon’s screams filled the air around him. Lightning zipped from the sky and struck somewhere in the forest ahead of them. Glandstine crash-landed among the trees, taking one of them down on his way to the forest floor.

  Before the dragon impacted the ground, Specter withdrew his blade and dropped from the log, standing unharmed. The branches dislodged Laura from the dragon’s claws. He pulled his hood farther over his face, the better to watch the creature’s demise. The dragon hit the ground harder than a ball of lead. His body furrowed the ground, knocked over several more trees and sprawled out, his sides heaved weakly.

  Having fallen from her captor’s grip, Laura now lay on the ground. Stepping over a fallen tree trunk, Specter laid one hand on her forehead and then checked her pulse. Strong. She would waken before long.

  He left her there, strode up to the still-living dragon, stood by its head, and raised his scythe to strike.

  “Sssoooo,” hissed a voice, before he could swing the weapon forward, “another stranger invades these forests.”

  Specter turned slowly and evaluated the winged woman perched on a log nearby. An image flashed through his mind of a similar creature, this one a male; an Art’en. How far the Art’en and It’ren had fallen. “There is no need for you to die, too, It’ren.”

  She spat a wad of filthy spittle in his direction. “Do not insult my intelligence by feigning superiority, Ghost Man.” Crouching, Drusa hissed carnivorously. “I know your kind: would-be heroes looking for glory and reward. Do you expect me to cower in fear?”

  Specter let her eat silence.

  “Answer me, Ghost Man!”

  He stared at her. Standing beside a dying dragon, his scythe blade dripping great drops of green blood, such a scene would, at the very least, throw deep shadows of doubt into her mind and cause her to question what he was. She had no way of knowing what he was really capable of. It would be up to her to decide whether or not to challenge him.

  The It’ren snarled and sprang to perch on a broken branch somewhat closer to him. “Anssswer me!”

  “There is no need for you to die, too, It’ren,” he repeated.

  She jerked her head back, confusion, then uncertainty playing in her eyes. She crept a little closer and reached out, her overly long, dirty fingernails splayed as if considering whether he were man or ghost.

/>   Specter willed himself invisible again and, just as the creature’s fingers clawed within inches of his chest, he vanished.

  Drusa’s eyes bulged and she shrank away, her dark feathers shivering. She twisted on the log, looking into the woods and the shadows.

  While her face turned away, Specter slipped his scythe’s blade under Glandstine’s neck, and cut him open jawbone to jawbone. The creature shuddered, then its maw opened and froze in place. Specter still kept a watchful eye on Drusa. The woman rose in a manner that reminded him of a spider, then she spread her wings and flew away.

  Satisfied, Specter walked over to Laura. Her purple dress showed remarkably little wear, a testament, no doubt, to the fact that it had been crafted in Emperia. He stroked her brown-red hair, silky smooth. Her face, fine and delicate—yet underlain by sobriety beyond her years. The dragon would be pleased with him for saving this treasure.

  Withdrawing his hand, Specter looked up at the sky. Just in time, too.

  Borne on the wind, three dark, winged forms, in sync with Drusa’s smaller body, angled toward him and the dragon’s daughter.

  Very well. If she wanted to test him. So be it.

  The three dragons landed together. Drusa dropped in front of them. “He isss here, sssomewhere!” She looked at Laura, lying unconscious and, apparently defenseless. Flapping her wings, Drusa flew to Glandstine and shrieked back at her companions.

  They lumbered over to her and laid their clawed hands on their fallen leader. Their beady yellow eyes darted from shadow to shadow.

  “Dead?” Drusa dipped her fingers into Glandstine’s wound and lifted her hand, coated in green blood. Then she slapped it across her cheeks and inclined her head toward the clouds. “I want that murderer’s head on a ssspear before dawn!”

  Specter did not give the dragons time enough to fulfill Dru-sa’s wish. Slipping over to the dragon nearest him, he plunged his scythe under the creature’s hide, ignoring the agonized monster’s roar, and hauled back on the handle. The blade cut through several feet of flesh, its point of entry and point of exit became the edge of a large flab of scaled hide that hung off the dragon’s body, leaving the tender pinkish white flesh underneath exposed.

  The dragon sprang into the air, splattering blood upon its companions, and made a hasty getaway. The remaining dragons raced about the area, knocked down trees and made a useless commotion until Specter stabbed one in its leg and sliced open the other’s side. Both dragons flew after their companion, groaning, growling, and roaring as if the world had reached its end.

  “Ssshow yourself, Ghost Man,” Drusa hissed from behind.

  He spun around. Drusa stood over Laura, a dagger poised in her hand.

  “Show yourself!” the It’ren rested her dagger’s point on Laura’s left breast. “Or I ssshall—?”

  Specter spun the scythe above his head and threw it. As the blade flew through the air it slit Drusa’s arm from elbow to wrist. It also struck the dagger, sending it into the woods. And the handle, as it whirled after the blade, crunched across the side of the bird woman’s face.

  Retrieving his weapon, Specter masked his heavy breathing beneath his hood. “There is no need for you to die, too, It’ren.” He repeated the sentence deliberately. A ghost would probably have done the same.

  Clutching her blood-drenched arm, Drusa bounded swift as a deer over the fallen trees until her wings spread out and lifted her out of sight beneath the southern clouds.

  Specter stood on a log, prepared to face a long, watchful night. His attention wholly focused on the prone, bruised daughter of the dragon. He would stay here, her guardian, an angel amidst the darkness.

  Darkness surrounded Laura, a cold thick darkness that freed her mind yet left her, somehow, feeling physically bound. She groaned and rolled onto her sore side. How much time had passed she could not be certain. Last thing she could remember were several large, scaly dragons and a winged woman rushed viciously upon her. They had knocked her out—after pounding her head and body with fists and claws. She could remember nothing after that.

  She struggled to her feet, gazed around. The moon emerged from behind the clouds and spread its soft rays over the fallen and broken trees littering the ground for several hundred yards in all directions. A large body, black and shiny, lay sprawled to her right. A moonbeam glinted off the jagged teeth in the dragon’s open mouth and she gave a start.

  Glandstine! Stepping carefully over the trunk of a fallen tree, she shivered and looked down at her dead captor. Green blood dripped from a gash in his throat, three quarters of the way up his short muscular neck. From the way his body had sunk into the mud she guessed that he must have unintentionally crashed.

  Where was the It’ren creature, Drusa?

  There was no sign of her anywhere. There was no sign of anyone. She stood alone in the tangled mass of fallen forest trees. Who, then, slit the dragon’s throat? The It’ren? No, Laura felt certain that was not the case. It would have been counterproductive for the winged woman to kill her strongest companion.

  Something crashed out of the forest at that moment, hairy and hulking. Four beady, green eyes dared her to stand in its way as it placed a dragon-like foot on Glandstine’s body and ripped off the dragon’s scales to reveal the pink flesh underneath. Before she had time to consider what she should do, five more creatures bounded out of the trees. Four of them tore into the dragon carcass but one of them ran straight for her. It launched itself into the air and slammed its head into her chest.

  She fell down, the beast made a gurgling sound in its mouth and its lips curled back to reveal fang-like teeth. Its front feet pressed her arms down before she could reach for her weapon. It opened its jaws wide enough to swallow her head and she screamed.

  Suddenly the creature yelped and rolled to the side. Dark blood ran from a gash in its side and its four eyes darted around as it growled and slashed the air. The other beasts ceased feasting on the dragon and darted through the fallen trees toward their companion.

  Laura did not wait to see the outcome. The clouds slid across the moon again and she ran as fast as her sore and tired legs would allow. She climbed a large tree at the edge of the undamaged forest and perched on a thick limb, holding another branch for support with her right hand.

  The furry creatures jumped around their fallen companion, slashing the air with their razor claws. All of them now made the horrible gurgling sound. Then, as she watched the wounded creature that had attacked her, its head separated from its body. She blinked, unsure she had correctly judged what had happened. The creature’s body collapsed, its four-eyed head rolled on the ground.

  Another of the creatures dropped. Blood ran from its jaws. The remaining creatures continued to attack the air as if seeking an invisible opponent and she thanked the Creator that she was no longer down there. More of the hairy beasts emerged from the forest. They swarmed over Glandstine and, within half an hour, left little more than his bones.

  The beasts left and quiet settled over the area. She drew her sword and hacked branches off the tree. She used them to build a makeshift nest in the sturdiest branch. She laid her sword in front of her and curled up, then she closed her eyes. The wind howled through the forest, an owl hooted somewhere in the distance. One of the creatures gave a gurgling call. With those creatures about it would be foolhardy to try and find her way back to her sisters’ camp in the darkness. Her mind and body weary, she fell asleep.

  The poor old woman knelt in the mud at Dantress’s feet with her grimy gray hair clinging to her face. “You have saved me from a fate worse than death,” she whispered, looking up into her eyes. “The secret of Ostincair Castle is safe. The devil worshipers have fled.” She grasped Dantress’s skirt and smiled as Dantress set her sword on the ground and knelt in front of her, gently holding her arms.

  Caritha and Rose’el walked up behind Dantress, one on either side of her. Tears welled in Dantress’s eyes as she noted the cuts on the old woman’s arms and the bruises on her face
.

  “Do not weep for me, dear children,” the old woman said. “A long life—and a fulfilling one—I have lived. Look now to yourselves and beware: these forsaken lands should not be trodden lightly.

  “What b-beautiful and honorable young ones you are! I have not seen your equals in all my lifetime and now, while death draws near, I thank you … You would have died for me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes. And I am a mere stranger to you. Fortunate are the ones who are numbered among your friends and cursed be those that make themselves your enemies!”

  Gently Dantress laid the woman on the ground and closed her eyelids with her fingers. “We couldn’t save her. We were too late.”

  “It doesn’t seem right!” Rose’el kicked her foot into the mud, spraying it on her clothes and those of her sisters. “I say we go after that creature—that It’ren—Drusa. She and that dragon are going to pay for whatever they do to Laura, and for this deed.”

  Caritha raised her right hand and shook her head. “No, Rose’el. Revenge is not ours to deal out, at least not while we have a mission to accomplish.”

  “But that creature and the dragon have taken Laura!”

  “And we do not know where, Rose’el,” Caritha snapped back. “Remember what Father promised: he is watching over us … Laura is on her own now unless we come upon her along the way to Al’un Dai.

  “We have a mission to accomplish—”

  “With the four of us?” Rose’el harrumphed. “In case you haven’t noticed, my dear sister, Laura is gone and Levena is quite unwell and we have here the body of an elderly woman that needs burying.”

  “No, Rose’el. Not four of us. Evela must remain behind with Levena, that leaves you, myself, and Dantress.” She walked away and whispered something into Evela’s ear.

  Evela set her mouth in a tight line and wiped her blade on her dress. “I will do as Caritha says,” she told Rose’el.