Moonlight War- Act II (The Realmers Book 3)

by William Collins

  “Thanks,” Evan replied. He met Sintian’s eyes and could see something of the scared boy he kept buried down.

  “Thank you,” said Emi, “for helping me, I mean.”

  Sintian sneered. “No problem, it’s pleasure to rid the realms of scum like him.” He glared at Brisnik’s body, but Evan noticed Sintian’s gaze held a glimmer of shock and disbelief at what he’d done.

  Evan was glad. He’d have been terrified of Sintian if he had showed no emotion at taking another person’s life.

  Chapter 31- A Brush with Death

  “I’m having a panic attack,” Elijah wheezed, fluttering his arms up and down. “We’re trapped here forever. We’re going to die.”

  Usually Jed would’ve laughed at such an extreme reaction, but he couldn’t deny that Elijah was right. There didn’t seem to be any way out of the painting they’d found themselves in.

  “Calm down, Elijah.” Joelle grabbed Elijah by his shoulders, giving him a shake.

  Jed observed his surroundings in wonder and confusion; it felt like he was dreaming. The dirt beneath him looked real, as did the trees of the forest and the mansion in the distance, yet it was as if everything was being viewed through a sunset lense, and they were the only characters painted in this master piece.

  An uncomfortable and unnerving silence pressed in on his eardrums. This was a forest where no living creature lived, and how could they? It was a painting, for Rueda’s sake.

  When Jed took a step the ground felt normal enough, yet the space where his foot touched caused tiny ripples, like a lake. But as he continued to walk, the ripples stopped and the ground became more solid. When he peered closer at the trees, he saw that the leaves were wet, like the paint hadn’t quite dried.

  “We need to get out, we need to get out,” Elijah said desperately. “Everyone, looked out for the portrait opening, it has to be here somewhere, right? We need to get out.”

  “If you don’t calm down, I’ll use a spell to make you,” Joelle replied.

  “At least we know magic does work here,” said Jed, remembering how they dealt with the painted monster that’d pulled Elijah into the portrait. “Do you think a Rambrace could get us out?”

  “Maybe.” Joelle frowned. “Unfortunately I don’t have one.”

  “Oh no,” Elijah cried, his hands scrabbling in his pockets. “I didn’t bring my Holophone either. I can’t even try and contact a Master.”

  “Have you ever been inside a portrait before?” he asked Joelle.

  “No, not unless you count the illusion training chamber. I do remember Master Caldin mentioning portrait worlds in Archives class once, but I don’t know if he explained how you get out.”

  Jed vaguely wondered who Master Caldin was. Then he remembered that each training class had multiple Masters, considering there were so many Venators to teach. Then he realised now wasn’t the time to be dwelling on Masters he hadn’t met.

  “C’mon Joelle, think,” he urged her.

  She frowned, scrunching her beautiful face up in concentration.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Elijah muttered repeatedly as he paced up and down.

  “I… I think he said you can draw yourself out, or something like that,” Joelle said at last.

  “Perfect,” Elijah gasped happily, but then his face crumpled. “Draw with what?”

  “A paintbrush,” Joelle shrugged. “The brush the enchanted portrait was drawn with maybe?”

  “Well, I don’t see one around here do you?” Elijah whimpered, staring about wildly. “Oh Rueda, what if the brush is kept in the house we entered in from. That means we’ll never get it and use the brush to escape.”

  “Or it could be in the mansion.” Jed pointed to the extravagant house. “I bet the mansion isn’t deserted like the shack was. The kidnapped Venators are likely in there too.”

  “Yeah, and probably a load more of those kraken monsters,” Elijah replied.

  “So what?” Joelle said. “We know now that Battlebeard is the kidnapper. There’s too much that adds up for him to be innocent. We also know Battlebeard isn’t here. So the captured Venators are probably all alone, we could free them easily.”

  “But Jed said he heard Battlebeard come back.” Elijah pointed frantically at the spot where the portrait had been, probably expecting Battlebeard to appear there.

  “Maybe I heard wrong,” said Jed. “Or maybe since we entered this painting, it’s blocked. That’s why we can’t see the portrait we came in through. The only way out is if we find the brush. And I bet we find the kidnapped Venators in that mansion, too. Just like Joelle said.”

  She nodded. “We might as well check out the house. We aren’t accomplishing anything just standing here.”

  “Fine,” Elijah said. “Whatever gets us out of here. We just better not meet another painted monster is all I’m saying.”

  “We’ll keep our blades drawn,” said Joelle, “just in case.”

  And so the three of them went, clutching their weapons nervously as they travelled through the painted forest. Elijah kept looking behind him, as if the portrait door would suddenly re-appear again. As they went deeper into the woods, Jed waded through long grass that left faint emerald streaks on his boots.

  Soon, they encountered a narrow wooden bridge between clusters of trees. Below the bridge was a light blue river, yet the water wasn’t running like a normal river would.

  What seemed like white paint dripped down like rain on the edges of the bridge.

  Jed turned to Joelle. “Is it safe to cross?” he asked her.

  She placed her foot tentatively on the first wooden plank. “Seems so.”

  “Well, I’m running across,” Elijah huffed. “Just in case.”

  Thankfully, the bridge didn’t dissolve back into paint and held their weight as they crossed over. On the other side, the forest thinned until they reached the last copse of trees, where a field of giant sickly yellow flowers grew right up to the mansion’s front door.

  The butter-scotch blooms stretched to the edges of his vision. Jed supposed it was because they’d been painted to the edges of the portrait. The flowers were similar to roses, only their petals were ten times bigger. The blossoms rested on milk-white stems over five feet tall and their fleshy petals leered down. The way the flowers swayed, ever so slightly, unnerved him. At first he told himself it was the wind, then he realised there couldn’t be wind inside a painting. Could there?

  He had the sneaking suspicion that the drooping giants were watching him, and their scent was not flowery, but the aroma of death.

  “Eurgh,” he grimaced. “I guess smells exist in this place, too?”

  “What are they?” Elijah said.

  “They’re probably just decorations,” Jed replied, although he felt the same sense of uneasiness. The way the giant plants swayed gently was almost hypnotic.

  He stepped forward to take a closer look. As he walked between the first row of yellow blossoms, one of them writhed suddenly and struck like a snake, its petals latching onto his arm like a sucker. He cried out in shock, wrenching his arm back and stumbling away to safety.

  “What in Rueda’s name?” Elijah cried.

  His arm stung horribly, but when he looked, there was no wound. A patch of his flesh, however, had distorted to waxwork white, like all the blood had been sucked out of it.

  When he looked back at the giant flower, its milky white stem was now partially filled with a clear liquid. Had it come from him?

  “They’re bloody vampire flowers?”

  “No,” Joelle rasped in disbelief. “These are Drylilies. They got their name because they cause the dry death. Mistress Peezer definitely mentioned them in class before.”

  “Dry death? That doesn’t sound too pleasant,” Jed stated the obvious. It appeared that it didn’t matter that they were inside a painting, everything was real. The pain in his arm was definitely real, and he wasn’t about to dive back amongst the Drylilies again. “I don’t suppose Peezer said how to
destroy them?”

  Joelle shook her head furiously. “She might’ve, but I can’t glarqing remember. For Rueda’s sake, I’m useless.”

  “What do they do, exactly,” Elijah said, his voice barely audible as he watched the swaying giants in alarm.

  “Their petals leech on to the skin of any being who gets close to them,” said Joelle. “Then they suck out all the water from our bodies, sweat, saliva, everything. The majority of our bodies are made out of water. Without it, we’d slowly die.”

  “So…” Elijah squeaked. “Those flowers can kill us.”

  “Eventually they would.” Joelle nodded. “But we should be all right. It would take ages to drain all our water. I guess we could run straight through them.”

  “You guess?” Elijah exclaimed. “So if you’ve guessed wrong, we could all die instead?”

  “It’s okay. We can just cut our way through… I think.” Jed hefted his axe.

  In fact, he’d prefer to do anything else rather than go near the parasitic plants again, but he knew he had to; they couldn’t give up now.

  He dove in, hacking at the stem of the Drylilly which had attacked him, and getting his revenge. The vampiric flower fell and writhed in the grass like a wounded eel. The Drylilly quivered and then lay still, its yellow petals crumpling.

  Grinning, Jed hacked at another killer flower, and another.

  “Wait, Jed, come back,” he heard both Elijah and Joelle shout, but he knew what he was doing.

  Seconds later, it dawned on him that actually, he had no idea what he was doing and had made a terrible mistake. It appeared that every single flower in this yellow-headed army leaned toward him as one.

  Even as he slashed his axe wildly and lopped off many heads, the petals managed to clamp down on him. Stinging pain burst all over his flesh and he cried out unintelligibly. He tried to retreat, but all he could see behind him were more leering Drylilies. He couldn’t see the way out. Then one petal settled on his face and that was the final straw.

  Flames exploded from his fingertips and consumed all the petals in the vicinity. As Jed stumbled to the ground, he saw more Drylilies already blooming where he’d just destroyed them. More flowers were swaying his way, but then he felt hands on his collar as he was tugged back to safety.

  It felt like he had been stung by a swarm of bees and his tanned skin was now mottled by large white patches where the petals had latched on. His mouth was incredibly dry and his eyes stung, as if someone had thrown sand in his face.

  Jed’s fire spell had quickly died out, and more Drylilies were already growing in place of the ones that had been burned away.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Joelle roared.

  “I thought I’d cut a path through the demon plants for us,” he replied. “Well, at least we now know neither blade nor magic can destroy them. I never thought the day would come where I’d end up battling sweat-sucking flowers.” Jed shook his head in shock.

  “Okay, we’ll just have to run through them. They lead right to the mansion’s front door so we know there’s an ending point,” said Joelle.

  “What if they kill us? The petals keep feeding until we’re husks!” Elijah said.

  “We’ll just have to be quick,” Joelle grinned, though Jed could tell she wasn’t as confident as she portrayed. “Look, if we keep running, they won’t be able to latch on. Just now, Jed, you made the mistake of standing still to slice the plants down, but if we just keep moving, we should make it out to the other side. It’s not even that far, just several metres away. We could try mutating our flesh, too The stoneskin spell might make it harder for the flowers to feed on us?”

  “That’s actually a good idea,” said Elijah. “The stoneskin spell, I mean. The part about running through those things is utter madness.”

  “Oh I agree,” said Joelle. “It’s insane, but it’s our only choice if we want to find the kidnapped Venators, let alone get out of this painting.”

  Elijah took a deep breath and nodded. “Right, Jed, do you know the spell?”

  “Yeah, Greller taught a while ago.” He braced himself for the Anatomy magic, transmuting his skin. He closed his eyes and visualised himself as a life-size statue. Slowly, he felt his flesh tighten and then harden to stone. He felt like he was wearing a rigid rubber suit. When Jed opened his eyes, his body was encased under a layer of stone. Beside him, Joelle and Elijah looked much the same.

  “Hey Joelle, even covered in rock, you still look hot.” Jed thought he’d try his luck. Joelle gave him the finger instead.

  “Okay, on three, we all run for the mansion, yeah?” said Joelle. Jed could sense the fear in her tone now. He noticed his own arms and legs were trembling, and he couldn’t get them to stop.

  “Okay,” he replied, louder than he’d meant to.

  “Okay,” Elijah echoed him, his own voice strangled and barely audible.

  “Three, two, one, go!”

  On Joelle’s shout, all three of them threw themselves into the Drylilly army, running as hard as they could. At once, the vampire flowers writhed toward them, looking to latch on. Fortunately the stoneskin spell was working, the blooms slipped off of him. Others, he batted away with his free hand, or slashed with his axe. He made sure to keep moving. If he stopped, they’d overwhelm him and reduce his body into a husk.

  For the first couple of metres, all three of them made it through untouched. Then the flowers started to get a hold, biting down through their stone flesh and beginning to suck out their fluids.

  Jed slowed. It was impossible to keep sprinting when a dozen of the monstrous blooms ensnared him. His joints throbbed in agony and his eyes burned. His mouth was so dry he could no longer even attempt to swallow. His muscles spasmed and nausea rolled over him. The more the water left his body, the hotter his skin became. He was burning up, his own skin felt like cage he couldn’t escape from.

  He heard Elijah crying out, but he could no longer see him. To his left, Joelle struggled through her own thicket of parasite plants. Her skin had paled and wrinkled as the Drylilies went to work.

  Jed grit his teeth and blasted the blooms in front of him with the firestorm spell. As the flowers wilted, he fell to the ground, his body suddenly weak.

  Moments later, he realised he’d landed directly beside the corpse of a Droge. Its normal brightly coloured scales had faded to a grey-blue tinge and its poor body had shrunken in on itself. The flowers had sucked all the water out of the Droge’s body until it was only a husk. The same thing was going to happen to all of them.

  Jed roared in shock and horror, scrambling to his feet and lurching his way through the fiends. He saw the end in sight and leaped out into the open. He landed flat on his face on the mansion’s front lawn. Blissfully, the grass was completely normal. A second later Joelle landed on top of him, gasping for breath.

  “All of that just to touch me, Joelle?” Jed rasped, finding it difficult to talk. “Next time, you can just ask.”

  “Shut up,” Joelle croaked, likely finding it just as hard to talk. “Elijah!” She said suddenly. “Where is he?”

  Jed quickly crawled to his knees to look behind him, despite his body screaming at him whenever he moved. It was just him and Joelle outside the mansion, Elijah was nowhere in sight.

  “Elijah!” Joelle shouted desperately, the sound choked from the effects of the Drylilies.

  “Where is he,” Jed cried. Please be okay, please be okay.

  Only the army of Drylilies stared back at them, many had been destroyed, but many more had already grown back. An eerie silence hung over them like a haze. Surely they should at least be able to hear Elijah, even if they couldn’t see him. Silence meant Elijah was no longer struggling, maybe he was already a husk upon the ground, dead.

  “We have to go back in,” Joelle panted. “We need to--” Elijah exploded between two giant lilies and crashed into her, sending both of them to the ground.

  “Oh, thank Rueda you’re okay,” Joelle laughed weakly, gettin
g back to her feet.

  “Water, need water,” Elijah wheezed, flopping on the ground like a dying fish.

  “Me too,” Jed said as he helped Elijah to his feet. “But there isn’t any, mate. We’re screwed.”

  “There’s these,” Joelle said.

  He looked over to see Joelle had picked up some of the giant stems they’d cut in half whilst running the plants. A few of them contained liquid.

  “What and drink my own sweat?” Jed said incredulously.

  “Not just that,” Elijah croaked. “Those damn flowers take everything from our bodies. What if peepee is in there too?”

  Jed laughed, despite the pain he was in.

  “Well, it looks clear to me,” Joelle said, downing her stem. “But by all means, boys, stay unbearably thirsty if you want.”

  Jed shrugged and grabbed the stem Joelle held out for him. “Bottoms up then, I guess.”

  He was so thirsty he probably would’ve drank anything. No doubt, due to his extreme state, the liquid from the stem tasted heavenly. If he wasn’t so desperate, he suspected the liquid would taste foul.

  “Ahh, that’s better,” he sighed, grateful that his mouth no longer felt like it was full of ash. Thankfully, the large white patches all over his skin, where the lilies had latched on, were now starting to return to normal, too.

  Elijah also drank from a stem, although he grimaced all the while.

  “Well, that was fun,” Jed joked feebly, still feeling rotten. “At least we’re here at last.”

  Moments later, however, Joelle noticed their next problem. “There… there’s no door handle.”

  “What?” Jed asked as he and Elijah strode to the front door beside her.

  “We can’t get in,” Joelle said. “There’s no knob.”

  “I bet you’ve heard that before, eh Elijah?” Jed said. Elijah just scowled at him.

  “Can’t we just blast the door down?” Elijah suggested.

  “No need, Jed saves the day once again,” he said, striding away.

  “What’re you on about now?” Joelle asked.

  “This.” He leaned over a flowerpot hanging from the window and picked up the paintbrush he’d seen sticking out of it moments before. “We’re inside an enchanted portrait right. I’m betting we can draw a door handle on.”