by Paul Drewitz
It sparkled, jumped, and flew into the dark recesses to light the area. The magic flamed and crashed into the ground as a shooting star. Little men, fairies, given life by the monumental powers danced in the showering lights which sprayed across the circular stone floor to bounce lightly and then dissipate.
Everything within the stone’s realm of influence that spread throughout time became solid: the stone pillars and floor, the giant pyramid. Likewise, everything that did not exist in this area in all of time, which had only briefly existed in the circle, appeared like a wraith. Many people of all races of the world again, for this one moment, in this one place, again lived for a brief moment. All who had ridden and camped beneath the shadow of the jutting rock of King’s Time again relived that moment of their life, looking like a ghost as they were only in a small fraction of the time that was combined by the stone.
Dust devils of past ages again tore paths through the dirt and dust, tossing leaves and gravel, spitting it as if their mouths had become dry. They tossed around only to die and come back to life. Yet at the same moment as they died, they also lived, for every moment was still there before the eyes of the wizard. Clouds above tumbled in life and death. Growing high, they poured out a rain that Erelon felt but knew at the same time did not exist, except for in the past or future. For every day that had been and would be given to the earth, the sun rose and fell. All at the same moment, the world was night and day.
As Erelon's mind began to focus, he was able to filter out those things which came through time, that appeared ghostly. The ruins, grass, blowing dirt, occasional visitors. He even could watch himself wandering around in the past. He saw himself as he rode through as a proud young man on an errand for the Wizard's Council and then again when he had fled through, running from the pursuing goblin army. Erelon filtered it all until only what was solid remained. The pillars, the stone table, the Humban stone.
Dark silhouettes began to appear in the hazy fog on the boundaries of the circle which enclosed King's Time. Slowly, ominously, without any features showing except for cloaks drawn over slouched, bent, and almost broken bodies, the creatures came from out of the mists of time. They crept, shuffling their feet it almost seemed. Erelon watched them, for they seemed to be the only physical elements in this orb which had real dimensions, mass, which seemed as if they could be touched.
The wizard was immediately wary. His experience told him all was not as it should be. But in such a situation, Erelon knew that there was no norm by which he could judge if the events occurring before him were natural or not threatening. Erelon made a mental note as to how many there were and where they were placed.
He counted five, but he had never been able to find an exact number of wizards who had turned rogue and left Mortaz. There had always been rumors. The numbers he had been told went from only a few to hundreds. Erelon tried to remember the dream, the vision he had while sleeping in the outpost at the top. He tried to remember how many he had seen in that vision, but he could not recall those dreams. As Erelon looked on, four stopped, allowing one to continue forward. The creature shrugged back his cloak and stood, losing its slump all in one easy, flowing movement. Erelon grinned at the warlock who he faced. An unmistakable mirror of Erelon himself, and it was at that same moment Erelon knew that these were indeed the enemies he had come to face.
The spell that gave the warlock the physical appearance of Erelon was simply a psychological move and was quite a weak one at that. Still, many times this one had proven quite useful in battles of wars past, especially on the inexperienced. A man unaccustomed to seeing himself on the field of battle might begin to question which one was real, begin to grow frantic of the idea of fighting and possibly killing himself.
Yet this futile attempt to disconcert Erelon, to make him second guess his own identity, amused the wizard. Here were warlocks, strong in lost magic found through their trespassing on the past. Their confidence had grown along with their power. Yet, even as they controlled vast amounts of magic, they now used almost useless spells as they faced their own death. Even with all of the knowledge stored, they could not stop mortality.
For now, while all other objects and people within the realm of the stone were no more than ghosts within time, the renegade warlocks appeared whole. Every century, month, day, hour, and second was brought together in this one area, and the warlocks infested every fraction of every second. So their forms were brought together and became once again physical. Erelon now had no need of piercing time with a weapon as he had brought time together.
One of the warlocks, with an open cloak, stood before Erelon dressed in armor of ages past, intricate designs engraved upon the silver metal glinting like a gold river as the sun, dropping below the horizon, caught every line. The warlock’s cloak dropped to its feet, enshrouding them in its darkness. The copy of Erelon grinned evilly and then struck.
A ball of blue fury streaked past Erelon’s face as he neatly leaned back, letting the ball go cleanly by. Erelon could feel its heat as it blazed with the magical fury of one who had been interrupted from a hundred year's rest and did not yet wish to arise. Erelon could only grin at this most common of weapons used by wizards. A very typical, common spell, a ball of fire. Why should someone of such great potential in power use something so common? Then Erelon got clipped from behind. It felt as if something exploded behind his head. The object singed Erelon’s hair and knocked him over as if a stone had landed on him from above.
The world seemed to turn slowly as his body hurled toward the ground, and he slammed into it. The wizard’s mouth dove into the stone, feeding him a mouthful of dust. The dust sprayed into his face, yet he did not notice as the impact against the stone turned his lips into a red pulp of blood and tissue. His teeth were chipped and a couple knocked lose. His head began to pound as he could now feel blood surging through it.
Blood dripped quickly from a cut across his forehead and, mixing with his sweat, stung his eyes as well as continued on down to mingle with the blood from his mouth. It silently poured down his throat. He could feel a burning, tingling sensation banging against the back of his head. Erelon groaned against his stiff, sore muscles which commanded him to lie at ease. Erelon reached back to find a groove cut into the back of his head along with locks of hair missing.
The wizard grimly reprimanded himself for allowing his pride and confidence to blind his mental attention to the situation before him. He began to mentally look his body over, feeling for each twisted joint, looking for broken bones, checking for bruises. And all at the same time, he was feeling out his enemy. The wraiths did not move. Their confidence was building. The one who had just knocked Erelon to the ground only leered at him, a slow laugh gurgling from his throat. Gingerly, Erelon began to pull his body underneath him, to get up and again face these that had once been of his own kind, which for a long time now had betrayed their oath to the wizards and humanity.
With one quick motion, Erelon rolled to his feet and faced his nemesis while trying to mentally regain his confidence, composure, and self-esteem. Erelon’s copy still grinned at the wizard, but now Erelon was more wary. The wizard’s head hurt, and the world seemed to toss and turn as if trying to dump him upside down on his head.
Erelon stared at the creature that had no respect for Erelon’s presence or power. The warlock just stood before Erelon, one naked hand resting gently by his side ready to obey any command the warlock would give it. The other hand was gloved. The glove of the weapon had been forged from a black reflective metal unlike that of the armor which the warlock wore. This black glove held the ball of plasma.
As Erelon watched the warlock, the enemy began to spin it lackadaisically over its comical head which now wore a comical, almost grotesque grin. The ball of plasma appeared to be attached to an elastic band as it stretched further and further from the menacing warlock. It flew, blazing a blue halo of fire around the powerful warlock. Then, as the ball of plasma soared behind the nemesis, its route was cut short,
as with a mighty fling, the warlock brought it about, throwing it at the wizard.
Erelon again easily moved from the path of the plasma ball that with a hot, blinding flash blew by. This time, though, Erelon also watched as it stalled, seemed to catch on the invisible gasses which gave it life, and snapped back into the protected gloved hand of the warlock.
Both enemies looked at each other with a grin that said, you are dead. Erelon reacted. Rivurandis swung from its sheath, the collected magic rushing into the blade from the protecting, enclosing sphere. The sword's rivers of magic swept like a flood down the length of its blade. The black gaseous form wrapped and flooded down its length. The blade seemed to also now smile and chuckle, as it had its own personality. Erelon appeared to grow in size, becoming two wizards, receiving the best attributes of Chaucer, especially Chaucer’s ability to control his emotions.
As the sword of Chaucer came around in front of Erelon and through the warlock, the mask of Erelon that the warlock had worn fell from his body. A brown-headed young man with skin so white that one might have thought he had never seen the sun was revealed. The warlock’s disguise seemed to fall off his body, much like how he had shed his cloak earlier. Yet even as the two rivals continued to stare at each other, the evil grin of the wraith turned goofy, weird, crazed. The warlock stood in front of Erelon in the body with which he would have stepped into King's Time decades ago. Erelon looked at a man who looked younger than himself, a wizard whose own aging had been protected by the power of this relic built by the Humbas.
Erelon only cocked his head and looked at the wizard, as if to say, I told you so. Then Erelon watched as the two halves of the warlock slipped apart. Cloven from head down, like two halves of heated, soft lard, the pieces slipped apart and flopped to the ground, no blood spilling as the flesh had been seared. Smoke arose from the body that had been split by pure, raw magic. The ball of plasma bounced on the ground, slowly dimmed, and then died out completely.
Erelon quickly pulled his mind back into the game. There were four more at least. No longer would they remain aloof or look upon Erelon as only an intruder to easily destroy. This wizard had effortlessly killed one of their own. They would no longer be willing to make or tolerate any more mistakes. Here stood a creature that represented death, something which they had not feared for a generation, and now he brought it back on them. He dealt it out as readily as they themselves had done. They closed in, dropping their cloaks and straightening all in one motion. They had become masters of war, and they outnumbered this intruder. They intended to fully enjoy the moment when they hacked Erelon apart with their swords.
The wizard watched others approach from the gloom. He quickly unsheathed his other sword, the elf blade, which scratched as it came out and afterward continued to ring as the wizard stood wielding two, two-handed swords. Erelon guided them with the swift assurance of one experienced in their use.
Twisting and turning, Hendle looked for the wraith that had disappeared. At first, Hendle felt it all around him, enveloping his body, trying to fill his lungs and suffocate him. Then the wraith was completely gone. The presence of the wraith, the magic, the oppression and darkness that it had thrown over Hendle’s mind, were all gone.
Black horses ridden by skeleton riders flew from the main army, bolting toward the gates.
“Stop them!” Hendle bellowed, “Stop them!”
Bunkir grabbed a log and brought it around, taking the skeleton riders cleanly off the horses, sending their bones scattering into the battle.
“No one gets through the gates,” Hendle told Bunkir.
As Hendle turned back toward the battle, a squalling and screeching sound split the sky. Hendle’s throat and stomach twisted. Looking up, he watched as a cloud of dragbas glided into the fight. For the giants, they were no more than mosquitoes, but for the main soldiers of Hendle’s army, they were a horrible end to life.
Chapter 20
WITH the wraiths pushing their army with their very presence, their army surged forward, pushing Hendle’s into a retreat. Slowly Hendle’s army was being pushed against the wall’s edge. There were no towers to flee down and only a few ladders. The only other exit was a couple gates, and slowly the wizard’s army began to trickle through them. The dragbas picked at random members from Hendle’s army to take into the air and then consume in seconds. Hendle watched as empty chunks of armor rained back down. He saw before his eyes the battle that had consumed Mortaz over two decades before—except the goblins were on the opposite side this time.
Bahsal tried to reassemble his dwarve warriors to try a counter attack. The dwarve leader yelled at different commanders, taking the full force of his own dwarve army along with those of the Broken Mountains, and waded into the enemy, a wall of axes and thick bodies. He formed them into a wedge, pushing forward. He kept shoving banner men around, commanding new rhythms from the drummers. He wanted to push the wraith's army apart, but he did not want his own men to march behind the enemy, to be cut off from their escape.
Bahsal came close to Hendle. "We're going to push them apart, divide them, force them back and to the sides. Use the gates behind us to escape. Topple the towers over the edge and make a ramp. Can use them to at least get off this first wall. And get the giants to swat those damn dragbas down," Bahsal told the wizard.
No one could get an exact count as to how many wraiths there were. The warlocks drifted around both armies, appearing and then fading away. Wherever they appeared, the soldiers of Hendle’s army began to cough up dust as they immediately aged from the inside. Within moments, the soldier would become a handful of dust that was added to the desert.
Wherever a wraith appeared, Hendle's army surged backward into a retreat that became an enormous wave of shoving bodies. The army of the wizards feared the power of the wraiths and the death that their very presence brought. A wraith stood on the upper wall chanting a spell that flowed down into the bottom tier. It was a high-pitched screech that caused the ears to bleed and warped the mind. It was a spell of insanity, of panic and despair. Members of the flailing army began leaping from the walls to plummet to the earth far below as the spell stole their logic, destroyed their ability to think.
Hendle began humming his own counter spell. A sparkling blue wave started at his feet and moved through his army, filling their minds with the calm of the twilight world of the elves. It was a spell taught to Erelon by the elves of the twilight world, and this spell he had handed on to Hendle.
The enemy loosed a huge arrow with attached chains. It was shot by a machine with cranks and pulleys. The recoil caused by the release of the arrow, made the machine jerk backward, leaving the ground for a moment before landing with a crunch. The arrow burst through a giant’s body. The chains were attached to a spool, and monsters began to reel the chain in, slowly pulling the giant to its knees. Every pierced muscle in the giant’s body popped out as the force was intense. Several more burst through his body, tearing through muscles, breaking bones, a red explosion of mangled flesh bursting from where each arrow struck.
As the giant came to his knees, thrashing against the chains which grounded him, goblins swarmed onto him like ants over a dead carcass. Their swords pierced and tore into the giant, carving away his muscles. Many goblins bit in, the giant struggling as he watched the goblins eating his own flesh as they tore it from his body.
A chain snapped free, and the thrashing body of the giant caused the chain to slip through the air, smashing into the enemies. It whistled and then collided into the bodies of the goblins, breaking them with tremendous force. The tip of the chain caught an ogre in the face, smashing every bone. A troll strode over, driving his large spear through the giant's throat. Auri watched as his own army was forced apart, slowly separated from the giant, unable to help his ally. Slowly the thrashing of the giant grew less intense as goblins carved pieces away, and then the giant finally crashed to the earth on his chest, a few nerves still jerking, causing muscles to vibrate, but soon, even those ce
ased.
Bahsal had learned long ago how to use every part of his axe as a weapon. He blocked with the flat of his axe and then brought the top up, smashing it below the goblin’s helmet, stunning it, smashing its jaw. Then Bahsal brought the axe around, up over his head and then down, splitting the goblin’s helm and skull.
Bahsal breathed heavy and stopped to take a short look around. The dwarve’s greatest fear was that the enemy goblins underfoot would come back to life among his army. The dwarve dropped his head and ducked back into the battle, bringing the axe in low, into the belly of one creature, and then taking the legs out from under another. He wasted no time making sure the goblins were dead. All that concerned the dwarve was that they could no longer fight. The dwarves behind would make sure the fallen enemies were dead.
An ogre jumped from within the goblins, scattering its allies. As other dwarves stood paralyzed, Bahsal rushed in. The dwarve rolled below the mace as it came crashing into the earth. Bahsal heaved his axe into the belly of the big monster. Then he swung the axe around, taking a leg just below the knee joint. As the ogre dropped, Bahsal brought the axe back down, taking the arm that carried the mace. The monster's weapon dropped to stick upright in the earth. Finally Bahsal’s axe came back up into the ogre’s helm. The ogre dropped to the earth with a flop.
Though Bahsal’s part of the army fared best as the dwarve leader tried to push forward, the wraiths would not allow it. When Bahsal gained ground, the wraiths would appear, destroying Bahsal’s army with panic and death. Bahsal watched as the dwarve beside him disappeared into dust, the armor falling to the ground. Bahsal jumped backward as a ghastly form developed beside him.