by Billy Wright
As he was already a dead man, he was going to do everything in his power to do what he came here to do. And there would be no concern about going home again. Then, if he succeeded in saving the Princess, he would march into Baron Tyrus’s castle, or whatever the hell he lived in, and cut his head off. Or else die in the attempt.
“I am delighted to hear that,” the elf said. But was that hesitation in his voice? Maybe he could sense the Dark magic coalescing around Stewart.
Stewart gathered himself, peered out the small opening to check for anyone or anything outside. But there was nothing out there except empty canyon and cold stone. Not even the thorny brambles grew in this area. So he set about shoving away the rubble to enlarge the opening. As he worked, he told the elf, “You should probably turn around and go home. This is a suicide mission now.”
“It always was. I am with you until the end.”
Perhaps Stewart might have appreciated the sentiment once, but now it just annoyed him. Why did this immortal creature care what happened to him? Perhaps it was only self-interest, a desire to preserve the Light Realm. With one swipe of his axe, Stewart could cut this little man in two, save him the agony of what was coming. “Why are you here anyway?” He wanted no further company on this death-capade.
“It is my solemn duty to be here. Duty to...the Queen, duty to my house, duty to my honor.”
When he had enlarged the opening sufficiently to crawl through, there was nothing to do but resume his way.
The sky outside was a forbidding expanse of blackness peppered with pallid pinpricks, empty of wonder or comfort.
One look at the dial of his compass showed that his Sun had long since set and the Moon was rising. He would soon become a creature of the Dark. Stewart’s mouth was so dry, his throat parched, his voice became a rasping crow’s. Or maybe it was just the grief that would dog him every moment from now until his end.
As they set out again, Tyr Ar-Chaheris walked with an upright stride, shoulders back. There was no doubt in him. But Stewart’s feet felt embedded in lead. His muscles and soul screamed their weariness, willing him to lie down and just give up.
But he would not.
One more thing to do. Only then would he give up.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Hunter gripped his flaming katana with both hands, squeezing harder as his dad disappeared into the mouth of an entire mountain. As he watched the unbridled savagery of a bear that could shred entire trees, his legs trembled and his arms felt like noodles. He could hardly hear anything over the beating of his own heart. He ached with fear for his wounded mom.
And his dad was gone, maybe never to return.
He wiped a tear from his cheek with the back of one hand, then squared himself toward the bear again.
In the distance, the sounds of battle between elves and goblins continued, cries of anger and bleats of pain echoing against the Cosmic Tortoise’s face.
He could hardly believe what he had seen his father do. Dad had made Cassie’s voice come out of the sky.
If he could do that, anything was possible.
Behind him, Bob and the elf continued to work on Mom, with Cassie’s cracked voice soothing and focusing them.
Then with a tremendous explosion of fury, the bear leveled an entire side of his living prison. The force of it threw elves in every direction.
Pooh was free.
And barreling straight toward Hunter. He could feel the pounding of the huge paws through the ground. Pooh’s eyes blazed with bloodthirsty intelligence, straight into him.
He gripped his sword and raised it to strike. His flaming blade could cut through anything, even the bear’s armadillo-like hide.
Tears of terror misted his vision, but he held his ground, breathing deeply as he’d been taught in martial arts, calming himself.
The bear’s great maw gaped with slavering fangs.
Just then, a spear of dawn crested the nearby mountaintops, spreading across the valley, a line between bright and shadow sweeping toward him.
The bear was ten yards away, coming faster than a truck.
Hunter braced himself, holding his breath.
The moment the sunlight touched the bear’s ears, its eyes rolled back and its legs collapsed under it. It fell onto its belly and tumbled toward Hunter. He dived out of the way, and the enormous beast came to rest within a few feet of Cassie and Mom.
Hunter scrambled to his feet and ran around the small hillock of Pooh’s body to the head, raising his sword, ready for a desperate stab. “Is it dead?”
The elf’s face was gray and sweaty, his eyes wide, but breathing heavily with relief. “The possessing spirit has departed, driven away by the touch of the sun.”
Cassie said, “Will Pooh be okay?”
Claude answered, “I believe he will, my dear. That is, if Hunter doesn’t finish him off. Easy, my boy.”
Hunter lowered his weapon. “Just being careful.”
The great bear’s tongue, as wide as a trash can lid, had flopped out onto the ground. Its eyes were closed. Its stone-like armor became fur again. Deep breaths huffed in and out.
“What if he wakes up again?” Hunter said.
Claude said, “I daresay he’ll be somewhat embarrassed.”
“Is Mom going to be okay?” Hunter said.
“I think we can stabilize her,” the bright elf said, “but it is beyond our power to heal her. That vicious beast last night left some sort of Dark sliver within her, and we cannot extract it. It is like a worm, eating at her spirit. Only the Queen can save her. We must take her to the City, but she might not survive the journey.”
“Can’t we call the Queen and bring her here?” Hunter asked. “All the things magic can do, can’t we make a magic telephone?”
“The Queen is bound to the Source. We are too far from there,” the elf said.
“There must be something we can do!” Hunter said angrily. Mom’s face looked like gray paste. Her lips were the wrong color. Sweat sheened her face. Claude clutched one hand and Cassie the other. Cassie’s lip was clenched between her teeth.
Then he became aware of the silence downslope. The sounds of battle had ceased. Bright elves were picking themselves up from the ground, lending aid to their wounded. Scarlet unicorns searched for their riders among the trees and the wounded. A few bright elf bodies remained still.
“Let’s make a wagon for Mom,” Hunter said, “with lots of cushions.”
Bob approached, looking exhausted. His missing top hat let his hair fly into a black tumbleweed. “I reckon the boy’s onto something. We daren’t dally.”
The bright elf nodded. “Then we shall fashion a carriage, power it with magic, and set out immediately. Cassie, my child, you must stay with your mother, keep her focused on you, make her as happy as you can.”
Cassie nodded with conviction. “The Cassie Jukebox is open for business.”
Liz chuckled, then groaned, “Oh, goodness, don’t make me laugh.”
“Yay! You’re awake!” Cassie said.
“I’m not sure,” Liz said faintly. “Everything feels like a dream...” Her voice trailed off.
“We can waste no time,” Claude said.
The bright elf said, “I shall gather my brethren.” Then he departed down the slope.
“What about Dad?” Hunter said.
Claude said, “The Tortoise’s mouth is closed. If your father is to come back to us, he won’t be returning this way.”
Hunter sighed, skeptical. It didn’t feel right to bug out. But then something sharp jabbed him under the arm, gently lifting him.
A red unicorn regarded him quizzically.
Hunter’s eyes met the unicorn’s dark orbs. Untold intelligence sparkled deep within them, like stars in black marbles. Its coat resembled red velvet cake. The obsidian horn looked razor sharp, as long as his arm, wet with something Hunter didn’t want to think about. In that moment, he knew the unicorn’s thoughts.
Its rider was dead.
&
nbsp; Hunter gasped. “You mean—?”
The unicorn dipped its head and extended its nose to be touched. Hunter was about the size of a bright elf, the perfect size to ride this creature. He reached out, hesitantly, and stroked its nose.
It needed a new rider.
He ran his fingers through its dark-red beard.
The red unicorns were drawn to bravery and stoutness of heart, Claude had said.
The unicorn stepped closer, and Hunter felt a moment of sadness at its empty saddle and scarred barding. He felt the unicorn’s sadness, too.
Then it nuzzled him, and tingles of pride and gratitude dashed through him.
***
Stewart and the elf walked in the bottom of a dry, sandy riverbed. Tributaries branched from the riverbed, often populated by stagnant pools of black, tarry muck. Travelling in the Dark Realm felt just as abstract as in the Light.
Eventually the floor of the canyon rose to meet the land above, a bleak, undulating patchwork of black woods and jagged badlands. The only signs of intelligent habitation were conglomerations of machinery, smokestacks, and shantytowns clustered in haphazard heaps of metal and black brick. High, spindly torches belched black smoke into the sky. From a distance, movement was visible among the structures, but he got no sense of the nature of the inhabitants. They could have been semi-corporeal black smoke for all he knew. At random intervals around the landscape, bits of incomprehensible machinery poked from the ground.
The banks of the riverbed obscured their passage from any casual onlooker. Strangely, Stewart no longer feared being caught. He was a creature of the Dark now, traveling to meet the Master for the first time. Any creature he encountered would sense the darkness in him. If they didn’t, he would kill them. He had the power now. His whole body throbbed with it, to be unleashed at his whim.
The elf was a taciturn companion, seeming to be focused on looking for threats. Stewart welcomed the quiet.
They stopped to rest, sitting upon the termite-ridden corpse of a fallen tree. Then Stewart saw the infestation was not of termites, but couldn’t bear to look long enough to determine what they actually were.
The elf said, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some water, Stewart? I have a few drops left. A bit of bread perhaps? We’ve been traveling for days.”
Stewart blinked and tried to clear his head. “We have?”
“Indeed, it’s been six sunsets since we met, and I am weary and half-starved.”
“So even elves have limits.” Stewart’s mind was a stagnant fog. Had it really been six days? He only remembered sleeping once, inside the cave he had made. He didn’t remember marching nonstop through the night. It was as if he walked in a dream. Somewhere along the journey, he’d forgotten his thirst and hunger.
“We are nearing the Metropolis,” the elf said. “Can’t you feel it?”
For some time now, Stewart had felt something throbbing up through the earth into his feet, as if unspeakable things moved underneath, heading in one direction. “Yes, I think so.”
“It is there.” The elf pointed across the vast plain, up the riverbed, toward a single volcano rising out of the misty distance. But a volcano it was not. Its lines were too regular, its angles too unnatural, its sides too polished. It was an edifice of mind-bending proportions, reaching miles into the ruddy sky, even as it sprawled out of sight in the mist. From this distance, it was impossible to grasp the scale.
Tiny black things swirled like gnats around the Metropolis’s jagged minarets and sky bridges.
“The Princess is somewhere in there?” Stewart asked.
The elf nodded. “The Dark Lord would keep her close, to gloat over her, feed upon her power.”
How was he supposed to find one little girl in a city that size, a city crawling with enemies? Then again, were they enemies now at all? He was one of them. Would they even give him a second glance?
“Come,” the elf said, “you shall need all your strength to face the Dark Lord’s minions.” He held out a chunk of dry, hard bread.
It looked darker than the elven bread Stewart remembered. But he took it. His stomach was a twisted fist. He gnawed on a corner of it. It didn’t taste like the elven bread he’d eaten on the journey to the Tortoise’s mouth. It tasted bitter, metallic. “It’s spoiled,” he said.
“Perhaps we have been in the Dark Realm for too long. The Dark essence has suffused the bread. Nevertheless, it will feed us.”
The elf offered Stewart a nearly empty water pouch. Stewart lifted it to his lips and squeezed a little into his mouth. It tasted awful, like coppery medicine, but the more it swirled on his tongue, the more accustomed to it he became.
“The water, too,” Stewart said, handing it back.
The elf took the pouch and upended it. Did the elf relish the taste?
Stewart’s eyes went to the bread.
It was a corner of round, flat bread, but three or four finger-breadths thick. The bread he’d eaten on the journey to the Tortoise’s mouth had been uniformly half that thickness, with a lighter, fluffier texture. This bread was wrong.
“No,” Stewart said, immediately wondering why that was appropriate.
The elf looked at him.
“No!” he said, more forcefully, his anger gaining compression, like a corked bottle in a flame.
This was not a bright elf.
***
Jorath saw the snarl of rage twist Stewart’s face in the moment of realization.
He barely had time to launch a spell of defensive aura before Stewart snatched up his axe and swung it toward Jorath’s chest.
The spell turned the blow aside enough that the edge only grazed him, but the force of it threw him ten paces away. He rolled in midair and hit the ground in a somersault that bounced him back to his feet.
The veins and tendons of Stewart’s neck bulged, his face reddening, teeth clenching. His fists twisted the wrappings of the axe haft with white-knuckled fury.
Jorath whipped out his sword. The illusion of bright elf armor dispersed like sand in water, leaving him clad in his own metal plate. Breathing a great inrush of Dark magic, he channeled the magic into his sword. A nimbus of sickly pale light exploded from the blade, where it glowed like magnesium fire, blinding bright.
“It’s you!” Stewart snarled.
Rather than waste his breath, Jorath channeled still more magic into his blade and slashed in Stewart’s direction. Shards of Dark essence flew from the edge toward Stewart, becoming tiny razor blades.
Stewart roared with pain, bleeding from a dozen wounds small and not-so-small. His chest deepened and his arms swelled. A blunt snout sprang from his face. His skin hardened into reptilian scales, sealing the bleeding wounds. His eyes blazed with primal fury, and Jorath’s blood chilled. Stewart now resembled a cross between a silverback gorilla and a crocodile.
Until this moment, he had been certain he could protect himself from this ignorant human, but now...
Stewart charged with shocking speed, swinging his axe, its head leaving a streak of glittering Dark magic in its wake. Jorath’s protective spell might not work a second time.
Jorath back-flipped to avoid another lethal swing and landed atop a head-high boulder. Stewart’s next blow split the massive stone into halves, showering gobbets of molten rock in all directions.
How had a Penumbral human become so strong? And without real training? Stewart’s dizzying speed, both reptilian and simian in its ferocious alacrity, kept Jorath on the defensive, unable to gather himself for a magical strike. With his sword, he deflected a blow that left his arm numb to the shoulder.
His purpose had been to draw Stewart close enough to the Metropolis that the Master would sense their presence and dispatch a “welcoming party,” but Stewart had seen through his ruse too soon. The aim was still to recruit this powerful human, not destroy him, but he somehow retained his force of will against the wishes of the Master.
Jorath whipped his blade through an arc that released another shower of
ethereal blades. This time, they bounced off Stewart’s thick hide as he charged through the fusillade and seized Jorath by the arm.
***
This dark elf was a quick, wily little monster, but Stewart finally got hold of his arm.
This monster had killed Liz.
This monster had killed Hunter and Cassie.
He raised the dark elf above his head to dash him against the split boulder, but a searing pain across his forearm made him release his grip. The Dark elf skittered back like a monkey, gripping his short, curved blade. The elf’s armor looked insectoid now, like a carapace or an exoskeleton.
“How squishy are you inside that armor?” Steward taunted. He intended to find out.
But he could not match the creature’s quickness, faster than a human eye could follow. Worst of all, Stewart was tiring. His heart labored and his breath came in gasps. But he didn’t dare hold back. If he let this dark elf get away, it would bring hell down upon his head, because even though he was now a creature of the Dark, only the elf knew his purpose was still to save the Princess.
Stewart could muster no magical attack, or the time required would give the dark elf an opening. This creature would cut his throat given the slightest opportunity, just as it had destroyed his family. It would not see another sunset.
He leaped forward again, swinging his axe with tiring arms.
The elf parried the rain of blows again and again and even managed a few counter-strikes at Stewart’s arms and legs, leaving bleeding, searing furrows. Several obsidian shards, like slivers of darkness, were embedded in the coat of diamond mail.
Stewart drew back again and began to circle his enemy, axe poised.
If the fight went on too long, enemies would take note of the clamor. Maybe they already had and were incoming.
The look of fear on the dark elf’s face bolstered Stewart’s rage. To finish this, he needed to get his grip on the elf again.
The ground around them was a coarse mix of gravel, stones, and fragments of worked metal, as if mountains of great machines had exploded and scattered debris. Stewart snatched up a great handful of stones and dark metal fragments and flung them with all his strength, like a shotgun blast. Then another handful. Then another. The elf threw up an arm to protect his face, dodging left and right. But the speed and accuracy of Stewart’s old baseball arm had not diminished. Finally, a fist-sized stone glanced off the side of the elf’s skull, knocking him sprawling and dazed.