As unseen hands clutched different parts of his body, Viven blacked out.
***
Viven came back to his senses when a resounding slap fell upon his cheek. Tasting blood, he opened his eyes. Spots kept flashing in his vision as he made out a puny candle a few metres in front to his right. After they cleared, with the help of the candle’s meagre light, he saw a woman’s face not more than a foot away from his own.
However, the face was unlike that of any other woman he had ever seen. It was not constant, the shape of the head altering every handful of seconds as though it was made of gas. It resembled the looks of both a teenage girl and that of an old woman.
“You are Bezon’s grandson, aren’t you?” the woman asked in an icy voice.
“Yes,” said Viven, taking himself by surprise that he could speak. He glanced at his body—nothing! No trace of the purple sticky substance that had earlier covered him. He relished being in control of his own body,
Then he came to see the metal chains around himself binding him to a massive pillar, and his glee strangled itself and died.
“Please let me go!”Viven begged the woman, whose appearance Viven was finding to be very disturbing by now. “Let me go!”
“Let you go?” The woman smiled with malice, revealing misty teeth. “Without what you came seeking for?”
At that moment, Viven abruptly knew who the woman was—the witch, MaiCanniola. It could only be her.
Seized by fear, he stammered, “You-you have my aunt, don’t you?”
“Ah! That’s what I’d call clever!” She patted him with force on the head twice, making it ache, and moved aside.
Now that she wasn’t in front of him, he saw that there was an altar. And a figure was mounted atop it: a woman. Viven’s heart sank so low that it might as well have fallen into his guts.
The unconscious woman was Aunt Gina.
He could identify her face even with the poor light. She was bony as though she hadn’t eaten a meal in days and days on end. She was breathing slowly.
Gritting his teeth, Viven struggled with all his energy to break free from the chains. “Aunt!” he cried, hoping like mad she would wake up upon hearing him. “Aunt Gina!”
After a minute or two of frantic efforts, Viven gave up, forcing himself to realise it was pointless. If only he were strong enough.
“Please let us go!” he said to Mai Canniola. He felt pathetic as tears swelled in his eyes. No wonder he had found himself coming to battle ironic. Begging was all he was capable of.
Mai Canniola smirked, eyeing him detestably.
“What would be the point in bringing you here, then? Anyway, I’ll still be letting you and your aunt walk away free from my castle on one occasion.” Viven sensed the words before they came. “You must destroy the sword Navarion.”
Canniola’s words were tempting, and Viven wished the sword Navarion had never existed. The decision was painful, but Viven had to make it.
“No, I-I can’t do that.”
“Really?” Mai Canniola raised a bushy eyebrow. “Well, I can assure you that you can definitely destroy it . . . you do want to destroy the sword, don’t you?”
Viven didn’t answer. Mai Canniola stared at him for a while, glowering. Then she raised her arm and slashed at his cheek with her long nails.
He yelled, feeling for one fleeting moment as if his life was being taken out of him, the nails being poisonous, beyond doubt.
As Viven whimpered, his head bowed and fighting to not pass out from the pain, Mai Canniola grabbed his nose and lifted his head. She snapped the fingers of her other hand.
There was a spark, and then she was in possession of both the axe Acario of infinite powers and the sword Navarion, the monitor of evil.
“Look here,” she said. “This is the sword. And you will destroy it using this axe.”
“I won’t,” Viven said, feeble but firm. He well knew that even if he destroyed the sword, the chances of Mai Canniola letting him and Aunt Gina go out of the castle without becoming corpses were zero. Scowling, she nodded and walked backward to the altar.
“Your aunt might not enjoy it if that is what you say. Come on, be clever. Think!”
Viven considered the situation, his gut never being more uneasy than now. It would be easier if Mai Canniola killed the two of them, rather than making Aunt Gina suffer, him watching.
It was then that Viven struck gold, though corroded gold, that is to say.
“That is not my aunt, just an imposter like the previous one.”
“Ah,” Mai Canniola said, grinning in her evil way. “You want proof, then, don’t you? Fortunately, I have proof in plenty that this woman is your aunt.”
She slashed at Aunt Gina’s feet with her nails. Blood seeped.
“See that?” she asked. “Red blood. We witches bleed milky white, not red like yours.”
There was every possibility that Mai Canniola was making it up. Viven hadn’t seen the imposter Aunt Gina bleed before.
“So, what do you say now, boy?” Mai Canniola asked him. She edged closer to Aunt Gina and laid her nasty fingers on her neck. “Think fast. We don’t have an age.” Viven was indeed thinking fast, his legs quivering from his mental agony.
He opened his mouth and closed it, his gaze ever on the long nails of Mai Canniola that she kept drumming on Aunt Gina’s skin; then, she raised her forefinger and, with the nail, made a small cut so that blood oozed.
Viven sighed. A man had his limits.
“Wait!” he screamed as the witch raised her middle finger to make a second cut. She stopped and raised a brow, smiling a self-contended evil smile at the same time.
“I will destroy the sword,” Viven gasped. “I’ll destroy the sword.”
“Given up being stubborn, have you?” said Mai Canniola, relishing his despair. “That is a good boy.”
She placed the sword Navarion on the altar beside Aunt Gina. Then she came over to Viven. She ran her hand over the chains binding Viven to the pillar. They disappeared.
The first thing Viven wanted to do once he was free was to hit Mai Canniola. But such an act would only reap him bitter fruits. He accepted Acario from the witch.
Mai Canniola quickly returned to her position beside Aunt Gina and placed her hand on the latter’s neck, nails ready to dig into the soft flesh.
“Any smartness with the axe will cause you your aunt’s life,” she hissed. “Remember that. Now destroy the sword!”
Viven looked at the axe and felt dumb that the thought should come to him only after Mai Canniola had mentioned it herself— he could use it against her.
Slowly, Viven approached the sword lying on the altar, the weight of the task making his legs shiver.
Taking a deep breath, he raised the axe. For a moment, he wanted to bring it down on Mai Canniola. But those nails . . . Suppose she backed away before he struck her, what then? He couldn’t dare to think what the witch would do after that with Aunt Gina.
Viven looked down at the sword.
“Destroy it already, will you?” Mai Canniola said impatiently.
Destroying the sword was suicidal. Mai Canniola would do away with him and Aunt Gina right after he split Navarion into two.
Suicidal.
A thought floated to his mind, and he allowed himself the luxury of a grin. Hadn’t Bufo talked about a saying that Acario could destroy everything but its handler? Viven brought the axe down with all his strength.
On himself.
He heard Mai Canniola shriek as the blade of the axe split his skull. All he knew after that was pain.
Red dots covered his field of vision as he felt his face smack onto the cold floor.
And then, very strangely, the pain ended.
“You cannot do this,” a mystical voice said that echoed everywhere inside his head. He couldn’t see where the person was. He wasn’t even sure if he was seeing anything or not. It was like being in a dream and not at the same time.
“You are my han
dler,” the voice continued, and it dawned upon Viven that the speaker had to be Acario itself. “I cannot kill you. I cannot let you pass to the other world. Return to the world of the living!”
Viven opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor. He was alive. It had worked!
Meanwhile, Mai Canniola had fallen silent, making a small sound that hung halfway between laughter and sobbing. A moment passed like that. And then she began screaming; it was unbearable.
He sprang up. The surprised Mai Canniola stopped screaming at once.
“You are alive!” she said in glee, managing a ghastly smile. Then her eyes went wide as Viven grabbed the sword.
“Do that and your aunt dies,” she hissed, but Viven had already pointed the tip toward her. He concentrated on the thought of destroying her. A beam shot out.
Just before the beam could strike her, she waved her hand, and a dark translucent screen formed, shielding her from the beam.
All of a sudden, Viven found himself requiring a lot of mental effort to keep the beam going; otherwise it was flickering. However, he could see that Mai Canniola too had to put in a lot of effort to keep the shield up.
Then his eyes fell on the axe lying on the floor. He crouched, one hand still pointing the tip at the witch, and picked it up. Acario might not be able to kill its handler, but it definitely had the power to destroy the magic shield.
“Die!” he roared, and hurled it at the shield. The shield gave way the moment Acario hit it, and now the beam from the tip struck Mai Canniola.
She screamed, and it was only some seconds before she was reduced to dust.
Viven fell onto his knees, drained of all energy. With his hand, he touched his head where he had hit himself with the axe. It was wet with blood, but he didn’t feel the slightest pain on touching. Somehow Acario had healed his wound.
Viven took in deep breaths and looked at the sword. He owed it not only all the troubles in Tropagia but also his life.
There was a great ringing sound, and from nowhere, a man leapt in front of him.
He was spectacularly built. Muscles decorating his body that was bare if not for the tight short trousers on the lower part and strips of clothes on his huge chest that appeared to be remnants of a shirt. His face was clean shaven, though his greasy black hair cascaded down to his shoulder and below.
Barely did Viven register the man that the latter snatched the sword from his hands.
Boy, couldn’t his troubles end with Mai Canniola?
He scrambled to the other side of the altar and, picking up the axe, wielded it in a pitiful threat display.
“Now who are you?” he asked the man.
The man didn’t reply. Instead he turned, pointed the tip of the sword at a wall, and roared. The beam from the tip melted the wall and the wall after it in the next room and the next and so on, creating a kind of straight passage, at the end of which Viven could see daylight.
Then the man looked at Viven and gestured at Aunt Gina on the altar and the passage he had created.
“What?” Viven said. “You want me to take her and go?”
The man made a clumsy nod.
Viven didn’t move, still unsure if that was what the man really meant.
The man grunted and lifted Aunt Gina from the altar.
“Hey! Don’t touch her!” Merely did Viven finish speaking that the man heaved Aunt Gina onto Viven’s shoulder.
“Urgh!” Viven said, struggling to maintain his balance under Aunt Gina’s additional weight.
The man patted him on the back and pointed at the passage; then he pointed the tip of the sword at the ceiling of the room, and another beam shot out and hit it. A rumbling noise arose as the castle began to vibrate, the vibrations getting stronger and stronger with the passing seconds.
“So, you coming?” Viven asked the man, trusting that he wasn’t on Mai Canniola’s side and only meant to help. The man shook his head and gestured Viven to go.
“Okay,” Viven said.
He trotted off along the crude passageway as fast as he could. There were several dark shapes of short-armed men in the rooms through which he ran. But none of them tried to bar him, and on the contrary, tittered away, apparently frightened of him.
Once reaching the end, he looked back. Was the man going to come?
The castle vibrated with much intensity by now. It was only a short length of time before it would fall down on itself with the stability of a matchstick castle.
Unclear of the man’s intentions, Viven decided against waiting.
He took a deep breath and sped toward the trees. The war was raging on outside; hopefully, though, it was the allied army that was wrecking havoc now. The demons and their counterparts, the bugs, seemed to have been weakened by the demise of their mistress, Mai Canniola. Also, the Potion Makers appeared to have utilised their healing potions, and most of the allied army soldiers were in good shape and up and fighting.
Viven’s legs were wearing out. Carrying Aunt Gina was rigorous. Still, he kept his limbs going on, delivering himself and his aunt farther and farther away from the castle, being fuelled not only by fear but also the mad realisation of how lucky he had been. He imagined Manu’s face when he saw his mother. Viven had been successful in keeping his promise . . . But he could only shudder when he thought what if he had died after hitting himself with the axe.
He came to a halt, gasping. Lowering Aunt Gina to the ground, he turned his head.
Just then, the castle collapsed onto itself. It was all dusty for half a dozen minutes before it cleared. A shrill cry echoed everywhere, and three giant translucent heads formed above the debris—each resembling the witch, Mai Canniola, but none exact.
New spirit dawned over the coalition army battling the few demons left, sparking the thirst for victory.
That day it was the coalition army soldiers who drank victory.
***
Aunt Gina’s Tale
The hospital wing of the Potion Makers’ castle was pin-drop silent. Aunt Gina was opening her eyes very slowly, as though even that was a labour for her. It was half a minute before they were fully open.
Manu broke the silence with his tears.
“Don’t cry, Manu,” Viven told him, patting him on the back.
“I-I am not,” said Manu in a quivering voice, putting his hands over his eyes. Viven patted him again, trying to console.
“Where are we?” Aunt Gina asked in a weary voice, eyeing uncomfortably the two Potion Maker physicians standing beside the bed, only Viven and Manu containing her.
Viven smiled.
“It’s a long story, Aunt. We’ll tell you later.”
“So,” said the elder physician who had a red beard going down to his chest, “there you go; she’s back. I think we’ll let you have some time alone with her.” He nodded at Viven, and he and the other physician walked to the door on the somewhat far left. They opened it, and Viven had a brief glimpse of the giant green mass that was Bufo, waiting outside.
Bufo had been in the hospital wing for the whole of yesterday. His right arm had been fractured badly, and he had also received ghastly bruises on the head. Viven had been feeling very guilty toward him, for he had been the one who had thrown Bufo and knocked him out. Of course, though, as Bufo had later dismissed, Viven was being controlled by the purple living substance. Still, the guilt remained.
The day before yesterday had been Viven’s biggest day. Sometimes he thought of all his weak emotions back in the castle with Mai Canniola, and he couldn’t believe that he had survived. What’s more, by now it felt more like a dream than reality. All the same, he had achieved his goal, and he knew given the circumstances he couldn’t have performed better.
Viven had returned the axe to the Potion Makers and told them of the stranger who had taken the sword from him in Mai Canniola’s castle. They said that they had never seen or heard of him. Nevertheless, he had only helped by destroying the witch’s castle, and they could only be grateful to him.
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Then, there were the coalition army soldiers who had been critically injured at the battle. The numbers were only a handful, and the Potion Makers little doubted at failing to revive them. Many were already half-healed, a couple being at the verge of full recovery. Sadly though, eight casualties had occurred on the battlefield. Also, three of Luidhor’s wolf-monsters, or Bherias as they were called, had gone down. They had fallen into a crack and, because they failed to climb out fast enough, soil and rocks had fallen over them and they had been buried alive. However, Luidhor hadn’t taken it as a cause of grief, and instead, tagging the animals as martyrs, he told his other Bherias to feast on the remains of the insects and demons that were in huge quantities at the site of the battle. As for the dead soldiers, the Macacawks and Potion Makers had held a funeral service yesterday and distributed gold to their family members.
“No,” Aunt Gina said, “you two tell me now. Where exactly are we?”
“We’ll tell you later, Aunt. You should rest.”
“No!”Aunt Gina was getting agitated now. “Tell me we aren’t anywhere near the coast!”
Manu wiped his face. It was glistening, but he was no longer crying and looked happy, on the contrary.
“We are in the Diamension of the Potion Makers, Mum,” he said, a smile wide on his lips. “In the Tropagian forest . . . but why are you asking if we aren’t near the coast?”
“In the Tropagian forest?” said Aunt Gina, her eyes darting from Viven to Manu. “So this is where she brought you after separating us?”
“She?” said Viven. “Whom are you talking about? The imposter?”
“The witch . . . S-Sezia was no spirit or friend of my father, but a wicked witch! She-she kept me in a dungeon first and then moved me to a cave in a large rock overlooking the shore. For days I wasn’t given any food or water. I was weakened, but the shackles I was put in were magical. They provided me with just enough energy to prevent me from dying. I reckon we were never brought to Nascat either. It was some hideous place belonging to the foul witch.”
“Wait, Mum,” said Manu. “Slow down . . . When exactly were you parted from us?”
Aunt Gina’s face contorted into a strange expression at the question. “You don’t know?” she asked, and Viven couldn’t refuse the incredulity in her voice.
The Sword of Tropagia Page 15