So apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t have all of the information on goblins. That would have made me feel better if I wasn’t now certain that everyone would be blaming me for this fiasco, on top of blaming me for the troll fight earlier.
I took another glance over my shoulder, and just as I did, they came.
Like a tidal wave they emerged from the darkness, their mottled skin and dark, angry eyes illuminated in the twin glow of red and blue from Blade and Raven. Their small, crooked teeth were bared in snarls and roars. They ran, they leapt, they clambered and jumped over one another. There were so many. Like a swarm of bees or a school of piranha. I could have taken one in a fight. I might not have even needed to use my sword—I certainly wouldn’t have needed my magic. But it was like fighting a single locust. Sure, you’d kill it, but then its thousands of buddies would destroy you.
“Holy crud!” I shouted.
My cry drew the attention of the others, and they all looked back at the horde pursuing us. All but the Runegard—they knew better than to look at the creatures pursuing us.
“Ride!” cried Cara.
The chittering increased as the goblins drew closer. Their long, leaping legs propelled them forward faster than the horses. With every passing second, they closed the gap between us.
“They’re like killer bees!” shouted Miles.
“Cara!” I shouted. “They’re going to catch us!”
“My Lady!” she shouted. “You must slow them down!”
Without even glancing back, Sarah gestured. A wall of rock sprang up from the ground behind us, blocking the path. It worked for a few seconds, but then the goblins crested the top of it, leaping over on the bodies of their fellows as they clustered against the wall. It bought us a little space, but not enough.
“Calvin! Tess!” called Sarah. “Put up plates. Anything you can do to hold them back a bit.”
I gritted my teeth. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. I summoned a thick plate of air and placed it across the path behind us, extending far into the woods on either side. The goblins slammed into the plate like a hammer blow in my mind, and I winced as I grunted from the pain. In a moment, the pressure of too many bodies grew strong enough to punch through. The plate shattered, feeling like a punch to my gut. Tess tried the same thing, and I saw her flinch as the mob of goblins hit it.
“I can do something if we hit a river,” Miles said. “But we’re moving too fast for me to draw ice out of the air.”
“Blade!” called Sarah. “Flame them up!”
“No!” cried Barius. “You’ll only anger them further. If we can just put enough distance between us, they’ll give up eventually. But attack them, and they’ll never let us go.”
Sarah cried out in frustration and threw up another wall. In seconds, the goblins had scaled it once more.
Suddenly the chittering grew louder, and I felt it grow all around us. I barely had time to wonder what was happening before a fresh swarm of goblins burst from the trees to our left, right into the middle of our group.
We dissolved into chaos, everyone wheeling their horses away from the new threat. With no time to come up with a better plan, I plunged into the woods, fleeing from the goblins into the trees to our right.
In the trees the horse slowed down, fearful of falling or striking a trunk. The goblins grew closer with every second. I couldn’t see anyone else around me. I didn’t know if they were riding through the trees with me, or if they had become separated as well. For all I knew, the goblins had caught them.
No, I thought. That can’t be. They’re safe.
The goblins were close enough now to snap at the horse’s flanks. It whinnied, a shriek of terror that rang out in the rapidly deepening night.
I only had one choice. I prayed the goblins were at least smart enough to know that the horse was no threat, and I launched myself from the saddle. Jet streams of Air snatched up my hands and feet, and I flew through the darkness between the trees. Freed from my guidance, the horse veered hard to the right and vanished into the thick of the woods. No goblins turned to pursue it, instead electing to chase after me.
Good, I thought insanely. At least the horse will be safe.
Freed from the restrictions of running, I zoomed through the trees, barreling between them, always keeping a good dozen yards between myself and the goblins behind. Now that I had a better hang of the flying thing, it was easy for me to slip through the trees, passing them with inches to spare on either side.The space opened up a bit as the trees thinned, and I put on a fresh burst of speed. The chittering sound faded away behind me.
Figuring that I’d led them on a far enough chase, I flew up and into the night. There was barely enough light left for me to see the trees and ground below, but I spotted the red flame of Blade’s light racing madly along the gap in the trees that marked the path. I flipped around and headed for it. Only when I’d almost reached them did I realize that I didn’t see Raven’s ball of blue lightning anywhere.
Blade and Miles were dashing along the path as fast as they could, with goblins close on their heels. With them were Melaine, Samuel and Cara. None of the others were anywhere to be seen. I dropped altitude, coasting along the path beside them and flying up to come level with Cara.
“Where are the others?” I asked. “Where’s Sarah?”
So intent was Cara on the chase, she did a double take before she realized that I was flying alongside. Her eyes grew wide, but her voice was firm. “We were separated. You must find Lady Sarah.”
“I don’t see Raven’s ball of lightning,” I shouted back. “They could be anywhere. And I don’t want to lose you guys again. My horse is gone, and I can’t keep this up forever.”
Cara growled and gestured at the saddle behind her. I slid right and grasped her shoulders, pulling myself onto the horse behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Thank me if we escape,” she retorted, and gave her horse a nudge with her boots.
We tore along the path, ducking the occasional low branch that stretched across it. The sky was now completely black, the only light coming from the ball of fire that Blade still kept burning brightly above us. The goblins showed no signs of slowing down.
“Aren’t they supposed to give up?” I said, exasperated.
“Apparently we haven’t run far enough,” she said grimly.
The chittering sound grew louder again. And again, I heard it begin to surround us.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
We came onto a long, straight stretch of the path, and out of the darkness before us erupted a fresh ocean of goblins. They hissed and screeched as they bore down on us, yellow teeth gnashing and sharp claws glinting in the red light of Blade’s fire.
“Into the trees!” I shouted. “Go right!”
“No, left!” said Cara. “Right will take us into the elven kingdoms!”
Samuel listened to his captain, wheeling the horse around to the left and plunging into the woods to our north. The rest of the horses followed, and soon we were flying haphazardly through the forest once more.
“Can you slow them down?” Cara asked.
“I can try,” I said. I began to throw up plate after plate, but each one shattered almost immediately. “There’s too many of them,” I said with a grimace after my fourth try. “I can’t hold them at all.”
Cara turned forward again with a grim look. “Lord Blade!” she called out. “Burn the forest down around them!”
“Barius said that would just tick them off more,” Blade called back.
“It’s that or die,” said Cara. “If you set enough of the trees ablaze, they might run. They’ll think it’s a forest fire.”
Blade shrugged and waved his hand. Tree after tree began to erupt into flames around us, casting the whole forest in a thick red glow. The screams and hisses behind us grew louder and more fearful. But they also began to recede.
“It’s working!” I shouted. �
��Keep going!”
Blade cast flame after flame like some sort of mad wizard, looking like he was trying to set every tree in the world ablaze. He cackled madly at the insanity of it.
And then Blade and Samuel disappeared.
I barely had time to register their sudden vanishing before Miles and Melaine were gone, and then I suddenly found myself weightless. Then I crashed hard into the ground, pitching off the horse and landing on top of Cara in a heap. But rather than land on something flat, we were on some sort of slope. It was rock, but it was steep and slippery. We slid down it like some kind of sick carnival ride, surrounded by total darkness. Blade’s torch had disappeared.
“AAAH!” I screamed helpfully.
We slid faster and faster, the slope growing and growing. Then it evened out, and we began to slow down, only to pick up speed once more as it dipped to what felt like near vertical. I could feel Cara skidding and slamming around beside me, occasionally hitting me bodily and pitching on top or underneath me. We tumbled, rolled and fell as we slid further and further into the depths of the earth. Soon I even stopped screaming—what was the point? We were either going to hit the end, or we were going to keep going until we hit the earth’s core and incinerate in an instant.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the slope leveled at last. Gradually the friction of the stone brought us sliding to a jerky halt. I rolled over onto my back, fighting to catch my breath. Adrenaline and the surge of my own pulse thundered through my system, sounding like the crashing of great war drums.
“My Lord?” came Cara’s voice from the darkness. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “At least, I think so.”
I heard the shuffling of clothes. Then her hands found me in the dark. She probed my shoulders, my arms, then my legs.
“Does anything hurt?” she asked.
“No.”
She sighed with relief. “Then probably nothing is broken. That is good. Hold on. I think I can get a light started.”
I felt her scrabbling around in the darkness, and then I heard the tearing of cloth. A moment later a brief tchk, tchk sounded out before I saw a tiny spark illuminate the pitch blackness around us. The spark grew into a flame, and then I saw that Cara had fashioned a torch out of a stick she’d found, plus a strip of her shirt that she’d ripped off and dipped in pitch she carried in a flask on her belt.
“Pretty handy,” I said, wincing at the sudden brightness. “Though I’d prefer one of Blade’s lights.”
“As would I,” she admitted. “This will last us only a few hours.”
My eyes adjusted to the sudden glow, and I looked around. We were in a dark, cavernous space, the walls of which stretched up only about six feet. The walls were oddly round and ridged, as though they’d been dug by some sort of alien mining equipment. There were no structural supports like you’d find in a human mine.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“I have no idea, my Lord,” said Cara.
“Where are the others?”
“I do not know.”
“How do we get out?”
Cara pursed her lips and turned to me. “My Lord, assume for the moment that I know exactly as much about our situation as you do.”
I blinked. “Oh. Okay.”
She smirked and turned back to look the way we’d come. The slope of the rock ran up and into the darkness, out of sight. Where it led or how it came to be there, I had no idea. Where Blade, Miles, Melaine or Samuel ended up, or for that matter our horses, I had no idea. Only one thing was for sure: we weren’t getting out the same way we came in.
“I guess we’d better go down the dark and scary tunnel,” I said dubiously, looking into the inky blackness before us.
Cara nodded and stood, still holding the torch. “It would seem that is the only course of action available to us, yes. Come. Let us find the others.”
She stepped over to me and reached down for my hand. I grabbed hers, and she yanked me up. I stood for a second, looking into her shockingly blue eyes. They were almost the same shade as my own. I could see the flickering light of the torch reflected in her pupils.
“Do you really think we’ll find them?” I asked, suddenly fearful.
Cara put on her warmest smile. “Of course we will, my Lord. I’m sure of it.”
She released my hand and turned to stride into the darkness. I looked anxiously up the slope we’d come down.
A tiny voice in my head whispered that Cara might just be trying to make me feel better.
I shrugged it off and turned to follow her into the unknown.
TO BE CONTINUED IN…
THE CAVE
RAVEN
MY NAME IS RAVEN PENBROOKE, and I’m living a double life.
I’m not leading a secret life of crime—and yet I can never tell my family, or most of my friends, what I’m doing. Not because I’m ashamed of it, but because they’d never believe me. They’d think I was crazy and lock me up—delivering me right into the hands of people who are searching the world for me, trying to kill me.
Every day, I go to school. I have what looks like a perfectly normal life, even if I’m a far cry from normal, what with my white face makeup, my black lipstick, and my dark, moody clothing. But on the outside, you’d think I was just like any other messed up kid in high school. In other words, a kid in high school.
But when I sleep, I’m something else entirely.
For months I’d been fighting an endless war against Chaos in Midrealm, where I was one of the most powerful wizards in the world. I’d seen people die. I’d lost friends. I’d fought desperately for my life on more than one occasion. Up until the time I became a Realm Keeper, I’d never even broken a bone on True Earth. Since I started living two lives at the same time, I’d been stabbed and shot with arrows on multiple occasions.
And yet, right at that moment, it didn’t look like it would be the blades, claws or arrows of Chaos that would finally take me down. Right at that moment, it looked like I might die at the hands of a pack of semi-sentient goblins.
They were all around us, the sound of their padding feet turning into a roar that sounded like it would destroy the world. Their chittering, screeching voices were like a chorus of demons as they tried to catch us and pull us from our horses.
“Blade!” called Sarah. “Flame them up!”
“No!” cried Barius. “You’ll only anger them further. If we can just put enough distance between us, they’ll give up eventually. But attack them, and they’ll never let us go.”
I gritted my teeth. I’d been on the verge of turning the closest ones into lightning rods, but instead I just pushed on. How were we supposed to escape if we couldn’t even fight to defend ourselves?
The swarming noise grew louder. I barely had time to feel fear grow in my chest before goblins erupted onto the path from our left. Suddenly we were swamped by the creatures, dozens of them leaping up all around us and swiping at us with their tiny claws. I felt the rush of air as a tiny talon passed through the space by my head. Our group dissolved into a mass of confusion, each of us wheeling our horses as we tried to break free from the horde.
I tried to keep my cool, knowing it wouldn’t help anyone if my horse panicked and darted away into the night. Keeping myself in the saddle absorbed my attention, and I lost my grip on the ball of energy I’d kept suspended in the air to light our way. It was dark, the early evening sky being the only light to ride by, but at least I didn’t fall from my saddle—something I was sure would mean certain death.
I saw Calvin’s horse bolt into the trees on the right side of the path.
“Calvin!” I cried. But I couldn’t even keep an eye on the direction he’d gone. Barius’ hand swooped in out of nowhere, seizing my horse’s reins as he spurred his own forward. With whinnying cries of terror, the horses plunged ahead and broke free from the goblins. We resumed our flight even as I saw the others burst from the swarming sea of tiny bodies beside us.
&
nbsp; “Chaos take them!” shouted Darren, dismayed. “A few of them were trampled beneath our hooves.”
“Crud. Does that mean they’re going to keep chasing us?” I said. Then I did a double take. “Wait, Darren—where’s Calvin?”
His eyes went wide and he looked all around. “Lord Calvin!” he cried. “Lord Calvin!”
“I saw his horse take off into the trees,” I said. “I thought you followed him.”
“Which way?” said Darren, looking as if he might plunge into the darkness.
“Stay with us,” commanded Barius. “You’ll do him no good going on your own.”
The goblins put on a fresh burst of speed. I heard a screech as they flew along the path behind us.
I’d had enough. I was ticked off beyond recognition. Turning in the saddle, I cast a wide swath of lightning across the front of the goblin horde. If we’d already accidentally attacked them, they weren’t going to give up until they caught us. We needed to buy time to figure out how to escape.
The goblins shrilled in pain and terror as their front row went down, arcs of electricity leaping back through their ranks and causing the whole group to slow, goblins tumbling over each other in a twisted mass. It worked, they disappeared through the trees behind us as we sped on. But their voices didn’t completely die away. They were still coming, and their anger was rising.
I did a quick head count. “Barius, it’s not just Calvin who’s missing. I don’t see Miles, Blade or their guards. Or Cara.”
Sarah had had her eyes focused on the path as we weaved along it through the trees. But at that, she started and looked around. “Cara!” As she sat up, her horse began to slow ever so slightly.
“We have to ride on!” Barius said. “We’ll find them later.”
He was right, and we all knew it. I turned my attention forward again. The night had grown even darker as the last rays of sunlight disappeared from the sky above. I threw up another ball of blue energy, making it hover in the sky above us. It gave us just enough light to see where we were going. I’d rather have had Blade’s fire, but it was the best I could do.
Wyrmspire (Realm Keepers Book 2) Page 17