Marhyn watched as her dark hordes of monsters and things conjured from nightmares swept over the battlefield, and smiled.
* * *
Truin and his ragtag force were descending on the next ship when it suddenly turned around and retreated. The mermen gave a cheer, hoping the rest of the ships would follow suit and retreat also. It seemed as if they had finally stung their enemy enough to cause it to go back to wherever it had come from. They were wrong. The first ship retreated, but in its place a new ship surged forward. This ship was not like the others, it was darker and had spikes jutting out from every imaginable position, and it was teeming with sinister life that hung in the shadows.
The ship headed straight for Truin and his mermen warriors, and still no clear definition of any shapes was possible. Then, suddenly a huge winged monster, looking like some deformed dragon with beady red eyes and razor sharp claws burst from the deck. It shot upward, hovered in the air for just a second, then with one beat of its leathery wings propelled itself downward and into the closest merman. The creature dug his claws into the merman’s muscular chest and then ripped out his still-beating heart. As the dead merman slumped into the water, the creature let out a screech of pure rage. The sound hurt Truin’s ears, but what he saw hurt his eyes even more. At the creature’s battle cry, Truin saw hundreds more creatures of every shape and size emerge from the dark recesses of the ship and start forward. Their queen had told them to attack, and these monsters did not need to be told twice.
Unlike the confused and untrained men the mermen had earlier encountered, this new enemy did not cower and sink but swam and viciously attacked, a whirlwind of knives and claws and teeth. The mermen were not without defenses of their own, however. Truin lead his half of the men straight into some hairy eight-armed beast, bearing down on it, cutting limbs off, and stabbing its trunk, but the monster would not fall. Truin watched it grab his friend Urhdi and tear him in half. It threw Urhdi’s upper body at Truin, but Truin dodged out of the way and struck the blow that finally finished the nightmare.
As he glanced to his right, Truin saw Forn engaged with a gigantic serpent. The creature darted in to bite him but Forn smashed his three-pronged pitchfork down on its head before he had the chance. Stung, the creature brought his head back, weaving about, waiting for his next opportunity. The snake cautiously circled Forn, waiting…
* * *
Tustor sensed movement on his left, whirled, and sent fire lancing from his fingertips into the creature. The being screamed in pain, then became quiet as Tustor sent the fire into its throat and burned out its heart. Lifeless, it floated on the water for a minute until Tustor gave it one final blast, turning it to ash. Now a new creature attacked Tustor from the front. Tustor looked at him, made a gesture, and then nodded his head. The molecules in the air about the creature exploded with such force that pieces of the creature were splattered for ten meters. A piece of greenish black ooze landed on Tustor but he quickly brushed it off. What was that monster anyway? It was like nothing Tustor knew of. It was a mass of teeth and claws and muscle and sinew unlike anything Tustor had ever seen before. And Tustor had traveled over most of the natural world…
Tustor stumbled and caught hold of a rock to steady himself. His use of the magic was further draining the already weakened merwizard. No one used magic without consequences. When the Creator had first made the world, he had arranged it that way. To have power, one must sacrifice. That is what the Death Lord and his sister did not realize. They took the power, but they ignored the consequences. Dark forces absorbed the pain for them, dark souls whispered that they were the exceptions…so they used their power recklessly, but it would catch up to them in time.
Once again, the vision of the Eternal Vale shined forth for Tustor. He saw the peace, the serenity, and the joy that awaited him as soon as he died. How easy it would be for him to die! He had just to gather up his magic, make one final blow, and then let himself quietly slip into oblivion. As soon as he had thought this, he banished it from his mind. His place was here, with his people! His people needed him. But again, another vision shined forth for Tustor. He saw his friends, the mermen who he had ruled over and loved all of his life, flying through the air and into the Vale. Who was he kidding? His race was no more! They would all be killed and he would be a leader without a people—his people didn’t need him there, he had no people! But what about the survivors? a voice whispered in the back of his head. Some of the merfolk had made it to safety in the caverns, and the boy Girn was with them also. Tustor let out a sigh and with it let out his hope for reaching the Vale anytime soon. He would be needed if the Water Orb was to be of any use to the forces of the king and his alliance. And if it was ever to be of any use to the mermen again. If there were any mermen to use it.
So in that moment Tustor made the decision that was tearing at his soul. He longed to lie down and die and leave the pain of the world behind, but he knew that he could not be that selfish. If he was not there to help Tarthur use the Water Orb, the knowledge could be lost forever, and probably the Orb along with it. The boy Tarthur was the key to his people regaining their beloved treasure. Tustor used his magic to make a lifeless replica of his body and sent it to attack the nearest monster. The monster howled in delight at being able to face the one that his queen said must be destroyed at all costs. He heedlessly tore into the body and decapitated it, then swam back to show his master the prize he had gotten her. Tustor nodded in satisfaction, then quietly slipped away to go join the survivors.
* * *
A creature that was half fish and half demon and fully grotesque charged at Truin. Truin answered the charge and swam forward, bringing his huge triton smashing down on the creature’s head. As he did so, the tail of the creature whipped around and knocked into Truin’s side. The tail was sharp, barbed, and equipped with spikes and wires that drew blood. Truin glanced down at the nasty wound in his side, and saw he was not only bleeding red, but green and purple and black also. Poison! Truin dove under, hoping the stinging salt water would wash the wound clean and dispel enough of the poison to render it ineffective, or at least slow down the spread long enough for him to finish the battle and seek help. Truin was not planning on losing. Truin hit the bottom and then shot back up, burying his three-pronged triton into the soft underbelly of the thing that had come from some nightmare, and then tore it free, sending small chunks of flesh throughout the water, which was already beginning to turn black from the dark creature’s blood. As Truin surfaced, the beast shot forward and tore a chunk out of Truin’s forearm with his razor sharp teeth. Truin dodged away just in time to avoid being devoured whole, and then looked down in horror as he saw the white of his bone exposed. Oddly, it didn’t hurt. Truin was so numbed from seeing his children and friends and countrymen slaughtered and from fighting the battle, he didn’t feel anything anymore. Now his head was beginning to pound and Truin was beginning to become a little dizzy. The poison was working, he realized, and with it the grim certainty of his own death. He had failed to wash out enough of the toxin and now it was inside him.
At that moment, Truin became furious. He wanted nothing more in the world than to kill the thing that attacked him. It became for him the symbol for all the bad that had happened in his life, for all of his failings and shortfalls and everything that he had not done as he should have. It became the symbol for the things that had attacked them that night, as if by destroying this one thing he could win the battle.
Golden hair flying in the wind, Truin turned to face his adversary.
The monster swung his huge and dangerous tail at the enraged Truin once more, but this time he brought up his triton to block it, then reversed his direction and stabbed his fearsome weapon into the thrashing tail. Truin pulled it out and black blood spurted out from three holes, but Truin did not notice. He was already attacking the head. The creature opened its jaws wide in anticipation of this foolish merman who was swimming straight for his mouth. Truin used his powerful hind fin o
ne last time to propel him into the mouth of the beast. Raising his pitchfork, he rammed it down its throat and into its heart. In rage, the creature bit down once and then was still. Truin felt a searing pain in a dozen places on his chest and back as the monster’s teeth ripped through his flesh, and then nothing.
* * *
The night had faded into morning, and Marhyn stood alone on the hull of her personal ship studying the smoldering remains of what history books would record as the place that once was the dwelling of the merfolk, from the beginning of time until their destruction by Queen Marhyn in the first battle of the war in which she took control of the Lands of Daranor. Their attack had accomplished their purpose entirely, there were no survivors. Most importantly, one of her dark ones had brought her the head of Tustor; his death was one of the principal reasons they had made this attack. To destroy Tustor with no successor was to severely hamper or even stop any plans the king had for finding and using the Water Orb. And without that to aid them, King Garkin and her brother would be at a perfect balance…
Marhyn ordered the ships to set sail west in the direction of home just in case anyone had survived. It was always better to leave nothing to chance. The captains would change the course in about an hour, and Marhyn’s killing force moved on.
SOMEONE’S IN LOVE…
He didn’t even really know why he had come. He kept asking himself that question over and over in his mind as he was walking through the empty and silent city streets. The whole idea was rather perplexing. Tarthur had no rational reason to believe that Yvonne would be there, and although back in Krendon Tarthur frequently did things when he had no rational reason, this time it was different. It was probably useless, even stupid, to come out there just to see the girl again, to try and get his money back. Although, somewhere deep inside him, Tarthur knew it wasn’t just the money. But what did it matter anyway? She wouldn’t even be there.
Tarthur lay back on a bench and just stared into the fountain. The statue of Hana-Chan had already faded into darkness, and Tarthur looked down into the swirling water and let his tired gaze flow with the clear liquid over and around the fountain. Tarthur sensed a presence in the darkness and looked up. A figure stood tentatively in the shadows on the other side of the fountain.
“Tarthur?” The voice was a mix of shock and pleasant surprise, mingled with fear. Stern faced with a hard and unmoving exterior, Tarthur got up and walked slowly to meet the figure. He realized he didn’t have the first clue about what to do, if the figure was even who he hoped it was. It was Yvonne.
“Tarthur, what are you doing here?”
Tarthur stood still for a moment and then answered. “I uh, I was just walking through this part of town when I got tired and so I decided to rest on that bench. No, I mean I was coming to remember what Hana-Chan’s sword looked like. I had forgotten. Yeah.”
Yvonne just looked at him and laughed. It was not a mean-spirited laugh, but it put Tarthur on the defensive. “Well, what did you come here for? You better have come to give back my money or I’ll hurt you, even if you are a girl!”
Tarthur’s remark cut into Yvonne only as much as her defenses would allow, yet it still irked her. “Well you can go ahead and ‘hurt me’ ’cause I’m not giving you the money. I don’t even have it anymore. Go ahead you big brave man, hit a girl. Hit me!” Yvonne stood with her arms out only inches in front of Tarthur, waiting for the blow that Tarthur knew he could never give. She stood there, vulnerable to attack, and Tarthur could feel the heat of her body drifting toward him in the chill winter night.
Yvonne realized she had won, at least for now, and continued to taunt Tarthur. “Why won’t you hit me, huh? You stupid little rich boy, with your morals and ethics, you think you’re too good for me? Well, you’re an idiot, that’s what you are! If you took a moment to see how the world really works you wouldn’t be so naive as to get your money stolen. In fact I’m glad I stole it, you deserved it!” Tarthur just stared ahead blankly. Rich boy, with morals and ethics? What was she talking about? Tarthur looked down at the ground in confusion. Yvonne, however, mistook his confused look for shame as if she had not discovered the real reason Tarthur did not hit her. “So that’s not even it, is it?” Yvonne probed and cut deeper with her words and twisted them around as if in an open wound. “You’re afraid of losing, aren’t you? You know that I can really beat you and then you’ll go home crying to your daddy; some poor, bloody, pathetic, nothing that got whooped by a street girl!”
Tarthur had been furious before in his life. He had wished he could kill Marhyn for the evil she did to Yan, and for the lives of so many that she wasted. He had wanted to punch Morty in the nose so hard it would come out the other side on numerous occasions, and he had always wished he could get back at some authority figure in Krendon who had punished him—usually rightfully—for something he had done.
But he had never, in his entire life, felt like this.
With reckless abandon he charged into Yvonne, trying to hurl her to the ground. The surprised girl spun just in time to hit the ground with Tarthur on the bottom and herself on the top. Tarthur felt a thud as his back hit the cement and a whoosh as his air was knocked out. Heedless of the pain that was burning his stomach and lungs, Tarthur rolled and pressed his weight against Yvonne.
On top now, Tarthur seized his opportunity and swung for her jaw with his right fist. Yvonne deftly blocked the blow, then Tarthur brought his left straight down onto her nose. The blow struck with a little more power than Tarthur had intended, and he hesitated as he saw a stream of red emerge from her nose and trickle down her cheek. Tarthur felt so bad that he would have been inclined to stop the fight right then and there, although this wasn’t one of the acceptable reasons to cease fighting, except that at that moment Yvonne launched a flurry of blows in Tarthur’s gut with her right hand. The unexpected nature of the attack gave Tarthur no time to tighten his stomach, and soon he rolled over in pain. It appeared this fight was not over yet.
As Tarthur grabbed Yvonne while the two rolled around on the floor by the fountain, he couldn’t stop thinking. Tarthur had always subscribed to the doctrine that thinking was usually a bad thing when one is trying to pummel an enemy, especially if it is not even about the fight. But try as he might, he couldn’t escape the heat that came from her body. He couldn’t ignore the feeling of touching her. He could’ve regained his feet after the last pass, but his instincts told him to grab her.
Tarthur was trying to gain the top again and was succeeding with a whirlwind of strength, before which Yvonne had no choice but to succumb. Tarthur got ready to punch Yvonne again, but before he could Yvonne felt her hand up his leg, then grabbed where it counts, and squeezed as hard as she could. Tarthur yelled out in pain and then rolled away. Exhausted, Yvonne did not pursue.
The two stared at each other in the darkness, each recovering from their wounds and catching their breath. It was a long moment before either one spoke.
“I told you I could beat you,” Yvonne said, wiping a stream of blood from her nose.
Tarthur was about to charge in and begin the fight anew, but then thought better of it. “You are so stupid. You don’t know who won the fight; you don’t even know anything about me!”
Yvonne spat into the dust. “I know you’re a used-to-be rich boy who doesn’t know anything of the streets and the way the world works!”
“Have you ever been out of this town?” Tarthur’s question caught Yvonne off guard.
“I have taken many trips around it and met many people from far places who come here and…”
“Just answer the question.” Tarthur’s words were harsher than he had intended them to be. Yvonne shook her head no. “You say I need to know how the world works?! You think I’m some gentleman?! Well, I’ve got news for you. I’ve been around the world. I know how it works! How dare you talk to me like that!! I have seen things in real life that you wouldn’t even dare to see in nightmares!”
“Oh, is that so,” Yvon
ne retorted, trying to sound doubting but at the same time believing him herself. “Do you know what pain is? Do you know what it’s like to live in fear? Have you ever seen your friend dying, right before your eyes?”
“Yes.”
In that moment, when Tarthur had uttered this one word, he looked into Yvonne’s eyes, and she met his gaze directly. He felt all his preconceptions of her melt away, and saw her as a young girl with pain, a girl way too young to have felt all of the troubles of her young life. And she saw something similar in his eyes. In that moment they both realized how little they knew and how much they had to learn.
By the light of the silver moon, they sat on a bench and began to talk.
* * *
“And so, the energy of magic, or magergy, is really all around us at every moment in time, and it remains only for the individual, that being the magician to act upon it and to capture a part of it for his own use. The currents being extremely potent to the right user, as a matter of course, one must only try to harness a small amount, or you all know what will happen, namely, the destruction of balance and equilibrium; and to tear at the fabric of the universe is to invite disaster. For example, to summon the forces of fire, one need only imagine a fire burning to the correct destination and say the three words of Derse, Yreds, and lastly…”
“Tarthur, Tarthur wake up! This is the third time today that you’ve fallen asleep in the midst of a very important…I’ll not tolerate this and it shows a complete lack of respect for both Pol and me, for me because I’m your teacher and when you fall asleep it severely limits, yes severely limits the amount of attention I am able to give to Pol and furthermore…” Akin droned on for a few more minutes, and then finished off his words by wrapping Tarthur smartly on the head several times with a pointer that he had been using to point out certain things on various charts and posters throughout the room. It wasn’t that Tarthur wasn’t trying to pay attention, (although, Akin was without a doubt the most boring person he had yet encountered on the face of Daranor, and sleeping helped the hours to creep by) but rather the fact that Tarthur had been up until five o’clock talking with Yvonne on the park bench. The two still had their differences, but Tarthur knew that the meeting had ended with the two on a friendship, or maybe even something more. Tarthur had given Yvonne his coat at the end of the night (after checking the pockets first, of course) and this time she even promised to return it later. There had been no mention of the money.
Lands of Daranor: Book 01 - DreamQuest Page 21