by B. A. Scott
The Golgril’s roar erupted toward the charging Skaelar. Treäbu crouched as he sped, then sprung from the swamp floor, soaring up and over the roar. He somersaulted in the air, and landed on the black, uneven plates that shingled the Golgril’s back.
Dareic ran as fast as he could, fighting every urge to look back. But he wanted to know if Treäbu was still alive. He turned his head to see what had become of his Skaelar companion. Yet as soon as he looked over his shoulder, he tripped over something bulky in the thick mud.
He landed next to a large metal shield, which lay atop a half-decayed body. The skin covering the jaw-dropped skull was green and leathery, as were the remains of long tendrils, gracing the deceased Skaelar’s diminishing scalp. Its eyes had long been gone, and the smell of the fly-infested cadaver was almost unbearable.
Dareic quickly brought himself to his feet. He stood at the edge of the clearing. Almost to the trees. Almost to where he could escape the Golgril forever. But when his eyes moved from the tree line back to the dead Skaelar warrior, he could not bring himself to take another step.
No, he thought. He may be a self-righteous bastard, but I can’t just leave him to fight that thing alone. He picked up the dead Skaelar’s shield—the back of which was covered in a layer of maggot-filled mud.
Dareic broke into a dead sprint. He raised the shield, and held his bloody blade behind him. When he reached the Golgril, he jumped into a foot-first slide, skimming the surface of the wet mud, and stopped himself directly under the creature’s belly. Then, he slashed away at its underside.
The Golgril snarled as it tried to jerk Treäbu off its back, while stomping viciously around Dareic. Treäbu straddled the beast’s neck like it was a wide horse. He reached behind him, unsheathed one of the blades from his back, and struck furiously at the beast’s head. Yet every swipe was thwarted by the Golgril’s resilient plates.
Dareic rolled, avoiding a giant, stomping leg that missed him by a fraction of a second. But just when he thought he was safe, another massive foot came down upon him, crushing his whole body down below the surface of the mud. The Golgril sneered in evil joy as Dareic disappeared beneath it.
At that moment, Treäbu buried one of his blades between the beast’s plates, straight into its neck. Around the wound gathered a tiny pool of clear liquid that dissolved the Golgril’s skin. Even the plates, hard as they were, were eaten away by the mysterious substance. Treäbu withdrew his blade, and saw the tip of its metal sizzling, and melting away.
His mind raced. He had struck something peculiar in the beast’s neck. Something deadly—something volatile that disintegrated everything it touched. The very same lethal quality of the Golgril’s roar, he thought. Then, his eyes widened with a sudden realization. He had either wounded or punctured whatever gland or sac that bound the terrible substance within the Golgril’s throat. He tried to stab the Golgril in the same place, but a shuddering movement sent him flying off its back.
A moment later, a mud-soaked glove rose from beneath the surface of the swamp. Dareic emerged from the muddy pool, covered head-to-toe in earthen filth. He picked up his shield, and stood just paces away from the trouncing beast.
The Golgril’s eyes met his own as it calmed its rage. Dareic shook the mud from his face, but did not look away. The beast moved slowly toward him, its mouth opening to reveal an army of teeth. Its head came less than an arm’s length from Dareic’s face. They looked at one another, each reading the hate in the other’s eyes. Then, the Golgril raised its head to engulf Dareic in its massive jaws, but the movement allowed Dareic enough time to swing his blade upward at the beast’s neck, slicing it from the underside.
Metal clinked against the creature’s plated exterior, and a furious leg came down upon Dareic once more, knocking him onto a hard patch of earth. Only this time, it did not let him up. Dareic’s body sank slowly into the mud, inch by inch, and his head protruded from between two of the Golgril’s heavy, clawed toes. He had dropped his sword, and his shield fell so that its handle was just out of reach.
Then, the Golgril’s chest heaved.
“Oh no,” Dareic said as the beast prepared to roar. “Oh no no no no no.” He thrashed wildly beneath the Golgril’s foot, but could not escape its clutches. This is it, he thought as the Golgril lowered its head just inches from his sinking face, then opened its mouth to belt out its deadly roar.
At that moment, Treäbu leapt to the beast’s head from behind, and with a yell, plunged both of his blades into either side of the Golgril’s neck, between the plates. The blades criss-crossed inside its throat, and from the puncture-wounds came a violent spraying of clear liquid.
The glandular fluid splattered over Treäbu’s right hand, causing him to howl, and tumble off the beast. He landed on his back, screaming in pain as the slick substance ate through his skin. He quickly rolled over, and plunged his burning arm into the wet mud.
Dareic watched as the Golgril’s eyes bulged. Its mouth opened wide as though the beast was struggling to cough up its heart. Suddenly, the spraying from its neck wounds erupted, and the Golgril’s head exploded forward, nearly ripping completely from its body. Only a sinewy scrap of flesh bound it to the creature as it hung like a morning star upon a massive flail. Bloody chunks of flesh struck Dareic like birds falling from the sky as the Golgril’s body collapsed to the ground.
“Treäbu!” Dareic called out, half buried in the mud, yet he heard nothing in return. “Treäbu!” he yelled again, “Are you dead?!”
Then came a muffled moaning from the Skaelar. “I can’t be dead,” Dareic heard him say. “I’m in too much pain.”
Dareic wriggled himself free of the swamp, then crawled on his hands and knees and finally reached Treäbu’s side.
“You... came back,” said the Skaelar.
“Yeah.”
“But your mission,” said Treäbu. “The lives of your people depend on you. And you risked it all to come back.”
“Well when you say it like that, it just makes me sound completely daft,” Dareic said.
“You are,” Treäbu said, pulling his arm from the mud. “My hand,” he groaned.
“Come on,” Dareic told him, helping the Skaelar to his feet. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Treäbu said.
“I’d rather get moving, if you don’t mind,” Dareic urged the Skaelar.
“No,” Treäbu insisted. “We must claim our prize.”
“Our prize is our lives, you lunatic. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
But Treäbu detached himself from Dareic’s side and trudged toward the Golgril’s head. Every step he took looked to be the last step he would ever take. The Skaelar crouched to one knee in front of the beast’s open mouth.
Dareic watched in reluctant fascination as Treäbu clawed two teeth free from the back of the Golgril’s jaw, which were much smaller in size than the ferocious fangs at the front of the beast’s mouth. After he placed them in his belt pouch, Treäbu returned to Dareic’s side.
“Who would believe us?” the Skaelar asked.
Dareic still didn’t understand why it was so important to ‘claim their prize,’ as Treäbu had stated. He would have rather used those precious moments to gain as much ground away from the Golgril as possible.
They left the clearing, and stumbled through the tree line. After minutes of walking, and resisting the urge to collapse, Dareic noticed that the trees were changing from the grey-green of the swamp, to a rich, deep, reddish-brown. Full, green leaves dripped rainwater on their heads, the ground grew firmer, and an ephemeral haze gave Dareic and Treäbu the notion that in this place, no harm would ever befall them.
Bloody, muddy and tired to the core, Dareic barely had the capacity to utter the words, “I can’t take another step.” Then, feeling Treäbu’s full weight upon him, his legs gave way.
“Neither can I,” Treäbu said.
They both fell to the ground, side by side. Dareic felt like he could fall asleep in a matter of seconds
if only he welcomed the peace, but before he could do so, something strange caught his eye.
They had fallen to the forest floor upon a bed of leaves and flower petals. And circling the very spot on which they had collapsed was a series of small white stones, jutting out from the ground. How he and Treäbu had not seen them before escaped him, for they were quite obvious now. The stones looked glazed and lustrous, and rose no higher than a foot’s length above the fallen leaves.
“What is this place?” Dareic asked.
Treäbu scanned the stones around them, searching for an answer. Then, he discovered something. There was one stone that was special—only one, for it alone bore a peculiar engraving.
“The Goddess of Fortune?” Treäbu said
“What?” Dareic asked, heaving himself up on an elbow to see Treäbu reaching out toward one of the stones.
“Her symbol—there,” he told Dareic, who squinted through sweat to see the engraving on the stone.
It was there, Dareic saw. But what did it mean? Who put it there? And why was there a circle of white stones in the middle of the forest?
Dareic concentrated on the symbol, and read it aloud.
“Arey’n,” he spoke the Goddess’s name.
Suddenly, the ground shuddered, causing the trees around them to tremble, and shower leaves down to the forest floor. Then, the circular area, bound within the outlying stones, began to glow.
“What’s happening?!” Dareic yelled as he felt his hand sink into the brilliant light below him. The circle of light illuminated the forest around them, and consumed them completely into the ground. Once the entirety of their bodies had sunken below the surface of the forest floor, the glowing circle dimmed, its intensity lessening, until at last, the ground was normal once more.
Then, all was as it had been before Dareic had uttered the Goddess’s name. All except the circle itself. For now, within the ring of stones, Dareic and Treäbu were nowhere to be seen.
Table of Contents
Chapter 10: Allestron
Light flickered through the leaves passing overhead, waking Gabrel from his unconsciousness.
“Kaven?” he spoke hoarsely into the crisp morning air, discovering that he sat armorless upon a horse, sharing a saddle with his brother. His shirt was torn and soiled with sweat.
“Oh, thank the Goddesses,” Kaven said, supporting Gabrel from behind. “You’re alright.”
“What happened to me?”
“The spirisortium, Gabrel. You burst into flames.”
“How?” Gabrel whispered, bewildered.
“That is the question on all our minds,” the Erygian Sage spoke, riding up alongside them.
“Gabrel, this is Athiux,” said Kaven. “Athiux Amirraden. He’s the Erygian Sage.”
“How are you feeling?” Athiux asked.
“The Sage,” Gabrel said to himself, still trying to make sense of things. “I’m—I’m fine. My mind’s a bit fuzzy.”
He noticed that his surroundings had changed greatly. The road took them over the foothills of the Fadenward Mountains, where forest trees had changed to jungle. Far off to the west, the massive Mount Breyen—the highest peak in the range—disappeared into the clouds.
“You had me worried,” said Kaven. “But Athiux said your passing out was perfectly natural.”
“Perfectly?” Gabrel said, still trying to wrap his mind around everything that had happened. “You came to our rescue?” he asked the Sage.
“And healed your wounds as well,” said Athiux, “with the power of Revival.”
Gabrel hadn’t even noticed that every scrape and gash he’d suffered were gone.
“Thank you,” he said. “Why were you on the road to Trendell? We were pretty far north of Allestron.”
“Our recent patrols have encountered Primen and Blessed along the road—even within our own realm,” said the Sage. “I was traveling to Trendell to ascertain the extent of their presence, as we’ve lost several traders and merchants who frequent the town. From what your brother tells me, Trendell’s current inhabitants wouldn’t have been very welcoming.”
“Well, thank you again,” Gabrel said graciously. “And it’s an honor. We’ve never met a Sage before. Not even our own.”
“You never met Finwynn Fayle?” asked Athiux. “A pity. You will probably never get another chance.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Kaven.
“Finwynn was present at the Adorcenn Tower when Lord Daro took it for his own. The Human Sage now lies within a prison of the Dark Lord’s magic. I doubt even your King knows these things.”
“How do you know them?” asked Gabrel. “Were you there with him?”
Athiux’s mouth formed a wry smile. “In a way,” he said. “Your Sage and I are mind-marked. We share a bond of thought. Now, unfortunately, his mind cannot penetrate Daro’s holdings, though his heart still beats, I am sure of it.”
“Well, that’s a small comfort,” said Gabrel.
“Gabrel, we need to talk about what happened to you,” Kaven said.
“Yes,” the Sage agreed. “Your spirisortium.”
“But I’m not Erygian,” said Gabrel. “Our father’s Human. So was our mother.”
“Then there is a secret in your past,” Athiux told him.
Ahead of them, the trees thinned, and ended before a field of grass. Far off, the distant towers of the Erygian city basked in the warm light of day.
“There it is,” Kaven said. “We made it.”
“Allestron,” Gabrel spoke as relief filled his heart.
Awestruck by the grand, sand-colored city, Kaven and Gabrel couldn’t believe they had finally reached their destination. They took in every detail Allestron had to offer as the group made their way down the road to the city walls. Beyond the main gate, columns of golden stone supported impressive buildings, and domes donned many a rooftop, yet more than anything else, Gabrel and Kaven noticed that a number of the towering structures boasted at least one statue gracing their summits.
They stopped before two massive stone doors. No guards spoke from the wall overhead, nor did any of the warriors utter a single word. Gabrel saw that Athiux had an odd expression on his face—a look of calm concentration. Is he going to open the doors with magic? Gabrel wondered. It seemed likely, yet his eyes were not ablaze, for no magic filled the man.
Then, the doors groaned as they slowly swung open. As the gap between them widened, Gabrel and Kaven saw a single person, silhouetted by the morning light.
Gabrel could make out white hair that came to just above the person’s shoulders, but it wasn’t until the doors had swung completely open, and the warriors escorted them through the gates, that he was finally able to see the person for who she was.
The Erygian woman’s eyes pierced Gabrel’s soul. He could not look away from them. She wore a broad-collared necklace, and bracelets upon each wrist. Her frame was slender, yet toned. She looked similar in age to Kaven, if not slightly younger.
“Glory,” Kaven uttered, unable to restrain his tongue. Athiux and Gabrel glanced over to him.
“What was that?” Gabrel asked, not sure he’d heard his brother clearly.
“The Erygians of Allestron welcome you, ambassadors,” the woman said.
“Who are you?” Gabrel asked.
“I am Kade Amirraden, an Enchantress of Allestron.” the young woman said as Athiux stepped forward to embrace her.
“My dear,” said the Sage.
“You’re injured!” she noticed the blood on Athiux’s shoulder. “Does it require Revival?”
“Already taken care of.”
“You said your last name’s Amirraden,” Kaven addressed the Enchantress. “Like Athiux. Are you related?”
“He is my grandfather,” said Kade. “Come. The Enchanters are waiting.” She turned, and escorted the group through the city.
“Did she know we were coming?” Gabrel whispered to Kaven, who shrugged his shoulders. As they made their way through the busy s
treets, Kaven noticed that both Athiux and Kade bore the same tattoo on their shoulder. From what he could tell, it consisted of three horizontal lines, each dark blue in color. The Enchantress had markings on her other arm, and one on her lower back as well.
The city of Allestron proved lively, and the Erygian people looked to be a civilized and expressive culture. Their fashion consisted of a minimal amount of draping cloth, and the brothers noticed not only tattoos gracing their deeply tanned skins, but piercings, necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments upon many of the people they passed.
Gabrel and Kaven tried to take in all they could, but were mesmerized by the prevalence of magic wherever they looked. They walked by a fountain, whose water swirled unnaturally into the air, and showered down upon invisible platforms, where it trickled in smooth waterfalls back into its basin. Women toted baskets that floated with them wherever they went, and men with glowing bracelets lifted heavy loads with a single hand.
“This city is filled with magic,” Kaven voiced his observation.
“To the brim,” said Athiux. “Enchantments are everywhere. Spells fill the air. Sorenti can be found in nearly every Erygian household.”
“Sorenti?” Gabrel asked.
“Enchanted objects,” the Sage explained. “A sorentus can be anything from a healing bracelet to a sleep-inducing flute.”
“What about weapons?” Kaven asked. “Have any sorenti been made for your armies?”
Athiux received the question uneasily. “Of course,” he said.
“Anything that could wipe out Daro’s forces in a single blow?” Kaven inquired.
“Not that we have in our possession,” Athiux spoke solemnly. “Yet such things do exist, Kaven. Furenti—deadly artifacts forged by the Sages of old. Put them out of your mind, though. Not a single furentus remains today that isn’t locked away from the world in one of the junakothari.”