Elpis

by Aaron McGowan

  “Don’t use those Nexi stones,” Terico said. “You might punch a hole straight through these eigni.”

  “Worry not, Terico my boy,” Borely said. “My control over these Nexi is flawless.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have any Nexi,” Kitoh said.

  “Here, you can use this,” Terico said, handing the boy his green Nexi. Terico had been given a light blue one that he could fall back to in case his sword wasn’t enough. “Just keep a safe distance away from them.”

  Once everyone was ready, Terico charged down the path to the main street and on toward the entryway—a large open arc carved into the thick fence. Areo, Borely, Jujor, and Kitoh followed from behind, raising their weapons and Nexi stones.

  A moment later, the red-robed eigni unsheathed their long, pointed daggers. Several of them took out Nexi stones of their own. Two of them fired streams of water, and a third shot a series of vines. Terico slashed away at the vines while the others got out of the way of the jets of water.

  One of the eigni turned his blast of water toward Areo, who raised her tan Nexi and released a torrent of dirt from the stone. It formed into a barrier and deflected the water away. At the same time, Borely reached the nearest council member and punched away the man’s dagger.

  Terico pushed through the vines and ducked beneath a blast of water. Another set of vines rushed past him from behind, and he realized these were Kitoh’s vines, heading toward the group of council members. An eigni immediately shot off fire from a red Nexi, engulfing the vines in flames. Terico quickly cut off Kitoh’s vines before the fire could rush down to burn the child.

  Jujor ran past Terico and slammed his sword against the dagger of the largest eigni. As the eigni slipped out a tan Nexi to fire at Jujor, Borely leaped in front of Terico and punched the eigni in the head, knocking him out cold.

  Borely turned to the next closest eigni, avoided the man’s dagger swing, and landed a solid punch into the eigni’s stomach. The eigni stumbled back a bit, a thin yellow glow around his body revealing the protective barrier he had activated with a yellow Nexi. Borely caused his right fist to glow orange, then slammed it again into the enemy’s stomach. The eigni flew back several meters before rolling backward against the stone ground several times, finally lying flat on his stomach in an unconscious heap.

  Another council member pushed through to Terico and jabbed his dagger for Terico’s chest. Terico parried the attack, then slammed the flat side of his sword against the man’s arm, knocking away the enemy’s dagger. With his free hand, Terico slipped out his light blue Nexi and shot off a gust of frozen wind at the eigni councilor.

  One eigni threw his dagger at Terico, who turned in time to swat it away with his own blade. Two council members rushed for him from either side, one with a dagger glowing bright orange. A third eigni aimed a red Nexi for him.

  Borely rammed a shoulder against one eigni, while Areo wrapped an arm around the second eigni’s neck. While Borely fought off the eigni wielding the Nexi-strengthened blade, Areo forced the other eigni down to the ground, and briefly lengthened her claws to bat away the man’s dagger. She forced her fingernails back to normal before Borely could notice.

  At the same time, Terico fought off the blasts of fire with bursts of cold air from his light blue Nexi. While Terico fended the eigni off, Kitoh’s vines slunk across the ground. They wrapped around the eigni’s feet, then pulled against the councilor, slamming him to the ground. The back of his head impacted the stone floor, knocking him unconscious.

  Jujor pushed a white Nexi against the face of another eigni, and managed to knock the man out cold with his sword’s hilt while he released a burst of light from the Nexi stone.

  Soon enough all of the red-robed eigni were taken care of, and Terico and his companions were able to catch their breath. One eigni was still conscious, and Terico bent down to one knee in order to speak with him.

  “What are you people doing here?” Terico asked. “Why are you controlling everyone in the city?”

  The councilor gazed toward the sea above, his eyes unmoving.

  “Why are all the civilians mindless?” Terico yelled.

  But still the man didn’t respond. He was just as unresponsive as everyone else in Vursa.

  “It seems the councilors are under control as well,” Jujor said. “I’m not sure why they would be capable of fighting like this, but not be able to speak.”

  “Or even seem to realize what’s going on,” Terico said. He pushed the man back down and sighed. Nothing about this city was making any sense.

  Borely picked up one of the Nexi stones the councilors had used. “Spoils of war, at least?”

  “Not necessarily,” Jujor said. He picked one up and looked it over. “There’s a small triangle scratched into this one. It’s a method people can use to ensure that only one individual can use a particular Nexi stone. A way to keep enemies from using your own Nexi against you.”

  “It looks like they’re all marked like that,” Borely said, looking over a couple more. He held up a dark blue one and tried using it, but no water came out.

  “We’ll just have to keep fighting with what we have,” Terico said. “Let’s make our way inside before more councilors show up.”

  Once they were ready, they hurried down the path leading to the main entryway into the building. The doors were several meters tall, and made of a thick metal. It was locked, and the councilors didn’t have any keys when Terico and his associates checked the pockets of the red robed councilors.

  “I can handle this,” Borely said, raising a fist back as far as he could manage. “Everyone step back!”

  Worried the doors were going to shatter into a thousand jagged metal shards, Terico led the others back a good ten meters or so while Borely readied his massive punch. The captain’s right fist glowed an illuminating orange, shining too bright for Terico to look directly into.

  Borely bashed his fist against the thin crease where the two doors met, pounding his arm straight through. The doors bent inward with a brief screech, forming an opening just large enough for Borely to walk through when ducked down a bit. The effect was a bit anticlimactic, but it worked nonetheless.

  The five entered the building and walked quickly down the main hallway. To either side of them were blue statues of eigni men and women, the sculptures curiously wearing actual red robes just as the real eigni councilors did. The floors were of the same material as the paths outside, though there was much more of an echo in this hallway. Terico thought the building in general had the smell of strong-scented soaps, but he could never find where the smell was coming from.

  When they spotted eigni in red robes approaching from connecting hallways, they usually managed to slip into a room in time to avoid having to dispose of the eigni councilors.

  Eventually they reached the central room of the main hallway, which was a large square room that housed a single long table. It was oval-shaped and shined a glossy black. Surrounding the table were what Terico guessed to be about fifty light gray chairs. Other than the table and chairs, there was nothing in the giant room but tall, empty white walls.

  The door on the opposite side of the room opened, and a large eigni man in red robes walked in. He carried a staff with a large indigo Nexi at the end of it, with a pink Nexi embedded just beneath it. He also wore a golden vest draped over his shoulders—perhaps marking him as the head of the city’s council. A dozen red-robed eigni followed him in, silently forming two lines of six to either side of him.

  The council leader approached Terico and his companions, his staff echoing a hollow thump with every second step. The eigni man gave a calm smile when he stopped about ten meters away from Terico. “Good evening, visitors. What brings you to my quiet, peaceful city?”

  At first Terico thought this eigni was a portly man, but on closer inspection he seemed much buffer than he first appeared. The man was bald, but had a black goatee, dark brown eyes, and a deep, powerful voice.

  “What
happened here?” Terico asked. “How come you can talk just fine?”

  Jujor pointed toward the Nexi at the end of the man’s staff. “He has everyone’s souls, I imagine. Though how he got it to work on eigni, I can’t really guess.”

  “Now, now,” the large eigni said. “Let me first welcome you to my fine city and introduce you to the new order that has been established.” He raised a hand to the side. “I am Ganto, the emperor of Vursa. The grand council of traitors are now under my command, and through them—this entire city of fools obeys my every whim. The latent energy within every eigni flows from the civilians, to the councilors, and on to me, rendering me much more than an emperor... I am an invincible god.”

  Terico unsheathed his sword. “So you’re controlling everyone. For some mad lust for power.”

  Ganto looked unperturbed by Terico’s raised weapon. “For the improvement of society. How many other cities can claim to have no crime, no hunger, and no sadness? Nobody fights. And nobody gets hurt. And when anyone seeks to disrupt this utopia, I can simply strike down our foes with my unlimited supply of Nexi.

  “Quite the improvement from the grand council’s ways. Pretend there is nothing amiss in the world. Act like there are no threats to our people. Dismiss any notion that something terrible could ever happen to this city. And never, ever take action. Not one of these councilors would heed my warnings. Not once—not even for a second—did they consider what I had to say.”

  He pointed his staff to some of the councilors to either side of him. “But look at them now. Now they listen. Now they take action. Now they actually do something for this city.”

  Though Ganto looked about as composed as one could probably hope for in a leader, Terico couldn’t help but think the man had gone completely mad.

  “That is the situation in Vursa,” Ganto concluded. “We have achieved a peace unrivaled in all the world. You may return to wherever you are from in order to share this news with others, but I’ll have to ask that you don’t come back here. There is no need for outsiders in Vursa. We can’t risk this city getting contaminated by the troubles of the outside world.”

  “Okay...” Terico said. “That was probably the most ridiculous little speech I have ever heard in my life.”

  “Can I bash this guy’s skull in?” Borely asked, raising his fists. “I’m afraid he’ll open his mouth and start talking again.”

  Jujor sighed as he unsheathed his sword. “So much for talking things through. We could’ve at least found out a thing or two about how his power works.”

  Ganto frowned and raised his staff toward Terico. “So you all have a death wish, it seems. My judgment will be swift and just.” He slammed the end of the staff against the ground, and his whole body became enveloped in pink and indigo light. The glow steadily grew brighter, and it quickly turned impossible to see Ganto within the light at all. The pink and indigo mass shifted, growing larger and larger. It grew several meters wide, then almost a dozen meters tall—nearly reaching the top of the building.

  “What’s going on?” Terico asked.

  “He’s using the power accumulated from the eigni souls via the indigo stone,” Jujor said, “and activating the pink stone for some kind of transformative power. He’s... turning into something.”

  “Some of the most powerful eigni are capable of transforming into creatures,” Kitoh said. “But this is... This is big...”

  Terico and the others had to take a few steps back to put some distance between them and the steadily growing mass of light. An earsplitting roar emanated from the glow—the roar of some terrible, giant beast.

  Terico had dealt with monsters before, but never one this large. The plant monster he had fought with his father and Turan was big, but the thing looming within this foreign light was even larger.

  Once the glow faded, Terico stared up at a massive, lumbering dragon.

  It was a dark blue creature with clawed, bat-winged arms and bony legs that bent at three points. The dragon hunched down to leer its long head toward Terico. The creature as a whole was grotesquely muscular, and a giant fin at least three times Terico’s size grew from the beast’s back, giving it a vaguely amphibious appearance.

  The beast’s tiny red eyes leered down toward Terico. It grinned a long smile that stretched far down either side of its face, reaching back to its beefy neck. There had to be well over a hundred needle-like teeth running up and down the beast’s jaw.

  “Perish,” Ganto said, his voice much deeper and louder in his dragon form.

  He lunged for Terico, who leaped to the side and bashed his sword against the dragon’s neck. The blade bounced off the beast’s tough scales, not even leaving a scratch. Ganto swung his his head against Terico, flinging him back onto the table.

  Borely rushed for the other side of Ganto’s head, and landed an orange Nexi-powered punch against him. The dragon was only slightly deterred, and quickly turned its giant maw toward Borely. Areo ran to Borely and pushed him out of the way just as Ganto released a massive blast of fire from his mouth. The fire scarred the floors black—even melting part of the stone away—and blew a hole in the wall. It even scorched the wall on the opposite side of the adjacent hall.

  Terico pushed himself up and ran to Ganto’s left leg. He took out his light blue Nexi and blasted cold air at the dragon. Ganto turned and simply flung his long, winged arm down at Terico. With only a moment to react, Terico leaped against the sharp, webbed wing and slammed his sword into it. He held on to the sword to keep from being thrown back through the air.

  Kitoh sent vines toward the dragon’s snout, perhaps hoping to clasp Ganto’s mouth shut, but the beast released another burst of fire, the power of the blast strong enough to send sweat rushing down Terico’s body and even blind him for a moment. A brief glimpse above Ganto’s shifting wing showed Terico that Jujor had grabbed Kitoh with some vines of his own, saving the eigni boy from Ganto’s fiery inferno.

  Terico saw Ganto was hardly even feeling the blade piercing his wing, so he forced his feet against it and pulled his blade out. Terico landed on his feet and tried shooting another gust of cold air at the dragon’s feet, in hopes of freezing it to the ground. The air in the room was far too hot for it to have much effect though, and Ganto was quick to adjust his footing and face Terico again.

  Borely slammed a punch against Ganto’s right leg, but the dragon immediately kicked him aside, knocking him back against the far wall. He slumped to the ground, groaning from the pain.

  While Jujor shot off a jet of water from a dark blue Nexi at Ganto’s neck, Areo ran up the dragon’s tail and forced her claws to lengthen. The dragon leaned hard to the right and slammed back a winged arm toward her, but she slammed her claws into the dragon’s back and leaned behind the other side of the tall, arcing fin of the beast.

  Terico ran in front of Ganto and slammed the end of his blade into the dragon’s chest. The hard scales protected the dragon here as well, but Terico felt he found a weak point in the beast’s armor. He ripped his sword back out and rolled away from Ganto’s swinging left arm. Terico avoided the curved claws running along the top of the wing, but was bashed against the ground by the wing itself. Terico forced himself back to his feet and slammed his sword for the same point he had attacked before, hoping to penetrate the beast’s insides.

  Ganto ran forward just as Terico swung his blade. Terico fell backward and barely managed to keep hold of his sword. Just before Ganto could trample over Terico, Jujor shot a blast of water at Terico, shoving him just to the side of Ganto’s giant clawed foot.

  His whole body bruised and beaten, Terico struggled to get to his feet. He looked up and found Areo making her way up the rest of the dragon’s back. She reached the back of Ganto’s neck and slammed her claws into it. The claws pierced into the beast’s neck, but weren’t long enough to reach through to the other side.

  Ganto thrashed his neck back and forth to shake Areo off. She gripped her feet hard against Ganto’s scales, but her claws
slipped out and she fell back, crashing onto the table and tumbling against a chair.

  All of their attacks were having little effect on the beast. It was only a matter of time before Ganto flattened them, or burned them into ashes.

  “Jujor, the Elpis!” Terico yelled. “Use it now!”

  Ganto breathed fire toward the old man, who shot a blast of water against the fire. Walls of flame flew past Jujor on either side of him, his stream of water just barely strong enough to hold back the blinding flames directly in front of him.

  “I can’t!” Jujor yelled back. “Only you can!”

  Kitoh ran toward the back of the dragon and released a wide stream of vines for Ganto’s back. The dragon swung his long tail against Kitoh before the boy could react. He rolled several meters away, losing the Nexi stone in the process.

  Everyone was getting beaten down, and Terico was in poor condition to fight this oversized beast. “Throw it to me, Jujor! Now!”

  “It’s too dangerous, boy!” Jujor yelled.

  The dragon lunged for Jujor, snapping its hundred teeth for the man’s head. Jujor leaped aside and jumped over the melted portions of the floor.

  Terico knew Jujor was referring to the torture the Elpis put Terico through back in the underwater city, but he was just going to have to deal with the pain and get a firm grasp of the Elpis stone’s power. “This dragon’s more dangerous! Now hand it over!”

  At last Jujor relented, throwing the glowing fragment straight to Terico’s open hand. Terico immediately felt the surge of energy heal his wounds, filling his entire body with an incomparable vigor. He felt his hair lengthen, his vision turn clearer, his joints loosen, and his muscles strengthen. Glancing at his hands, he saw his skin turn a light gray, and his clothes turn black with gleaming gold trimming. Swirls of glowing light enveloped him, shifting through all the colors of the Elpis.