Instead he directed Starria to land back out in the middle of the plain just as they had done the previous day. He could hear sporadic cheers from the king's army, yet it was barely an echo compared with the roar he had received the day before. The almost mythical aura that had surrounded him because of the Battle of Tattel had dissipated into reality. He had not saved them.
When Starria landed he wasted no time in dismounting. He grabbed her firmly, but tenderly by the beak and pulled her head down so she was looking him in the eyes. With the other hand he stroked her neck gently.
"I set you free once before Starria, now I am setting you free once again. Go back to Solomon and help him take the Nizari somewhere safe where they can heal Razma. After that your life is your own."
Starria screeched loudly and shook her head angrily, then nudged her beak against him affectionately. Farrel pulled away and this time raised his voice.
"Do as you are told Starria! You owe me that much. Now go!"
Starria stared back at him in silence for a moment. She looked at him then towards the enemy army beyond, then back to him. He thought she was going to protest again, but she didn't. Instead she bowed her head slowly and ceremoniously. Although he did not know the exact significance of the gesture it appeared very solemn and formal. Perhaps it was her way of saying thank you, it didn't matter, he copied the gesture.
She raised her head again, nodded at him then launched into the air. A few seconds later she was nothing more than a small speck in the morning sky.
Farrel turned to face towards the king's army. He wondered what stories these men would tell after the end of this day. Would he again be a hero or would he make magic something to be feared and mistrusted even more when they saw what he was capable of?
He turned back towards the enemy. They had already started to slowly advance across the plain towards him. He ignored them and pulled out the ivory pendant that hung around his neck. He traced his fingers lovingly over the tiny silver runes engraved into it then kissed the firestone embedded in its centre for good luck.
"Looks like we might meet again soon Grandfather."
He tucked the pendant back inside his robes then knelt down on the ground and pulled out a small vial of lamp oil and two small flint rocks from an inner pocket in his robes. He then grabbed a handkerchief from another pocket, scrunched it into a ball and poured the oil all over it until it was completely soaked. It was only going to be a very small fire, but it would be more than enough with the power of the pendant.
Before he had a chance to strike the flint rocks however, the air around him started to stir and within seconds wind was blowing dust from the ground into his eyes. It was an unnatural wind and he could sense the presence of magic. The Azdaha were trying to stop him casting his spell.
He quickly shielded the oil covered handkerchief as he spoke the words of his own spell. He waved his free hand in a large circle and the air immediately around him became calm while everywhere else across the plain was blowing like a gale. The wind was now so violent that it had the entire king's army hunkering down against it and had subsequently stopped their advance towards the enemy.
On the other side of the plain the enemy army continued to advance free of the effects of the magical wind. They began their rhythmic bashing of sword and spear against shield as they marched.
Farrel went to strike the flints again, but this time before he could a voice slithered into his mind. It startled him so much that he dropped both of the stones.
"Listen to my voice," it whispered, followed in quick succession by several other voices all whispering the same thing over and over.
He shook his head, grabbed the flint rocks again and tried to concentrate on the words of the spell. If he got them wrong even slightly or lost his concentration even for a moment, the flames he wanted to control would turn on him and consume him. Yet he found he could not recall the words and the voices in his head would not relent.
"Come to us. You must obey. You will come to us."
Farrel dropped the flint rocks involuntarily and found he could not move to pick them up again. In fact he could not think at all as the words started to consume his entire mental focus. The air started to stir around him as he lost concentration on his previous spell too.
He felt himself start to stand up as the voices in his head demanded, but just as he did he felt suddenly dizzy, his eyes rolled back and he fell forwards onto the oily rag and the flint rocks, unconscious.
#
Farrel opened his eyes to find himself standing on the plain with everything else around him frozen in time. The enemy army had now started to charge and was not more than fifty yards away. Behind him equally statuesque the king's army was also charging, the gold and silver armour of Lord Cortria at the very tip of the spearhead of knights.
The voices were gone now and he wondered if he was already dead, then he saw her walking towards him and he breathed a sigh of relief.
"What is happening?" he asked Kimiya as she walked up to him.
"I could not let the Azdaha take you. If they changed your destiny and you became one of them, they would know everything in your mind. Your first born would not be safe and the future of all Umijia depends on that child," she said sadly. "I wish there was another way and I wish I could have saved you."
Kimiya leaned towards him with tears in her eyes and kissed him gently on the cheek. She started to pull away, but Farrel put his hand under her chin and gently pulled her forwards and kissed her lightly on the lips.
"I wish I had known you as you had known me all my life Kimiya. Keep the child safe."
She turned away from him again and started to walk away.
"You will wake again in a moment and you must cast your spell."
#
Farrel opened his eyes again to find his face planted into the dirt and his nose feeling like someone had punched him. The wind was still blowing with force and he struggled to see through the dust that it whipped into his face. The enemy army was charging towards him and would be on top of him in moments.
He put his hands under his body to push himself up from the ground and that was when he felt the oily cloth underneath him. He covered it as best he could as he sat. He quickly grabbed the flint rocks and struck them together. The oil caught fire immediately and a small blue flame fed on the oil doused material.
He shielded the flames as best he could against the wind with his body and focused his mind so that all he could see was the inner part of the small blue flames. He then carefully spoke the words of the most powerful fire spell he knew. As he did so he felt the chaotic rhythm of the flames try to lure him in, to hypnotise him and then consume him, but he resisted.
As the final words of the spell came to an end in a dramatic crescendo he reached for the fledgling flames with both hands. The little blue flames jumped from the burning handkerchief onto each palm. There they slowly began to grow as he repeated the final words of the spell over and over again.
The violent and hypnotic magical energy from the flames tried again to mesmerize him and take control, so desperate it was to burn his flesh. Only by the will of his mind was he able to resist and keep the fire under his control. Soon the flames had grown into fireballs as big as watermelons that now engulfed his hands completely.
The enemy army began to falter at the site of him holding the large balls of flames in his hands. Some slowed, some even stopped. Farrel willed them all to stop, to turn and run and never come back to Risandea, but most of the enemy kept coming. He told himself he had no choice, yet he still found it hard to watch as he released the fire upon them.
It raced towards them in two streams and he directed it all along the charging enemy lines. The flames were so hot that flesh caught alight instantly and even metal started to melt.
The front lines of the enemy army now scattered in panic as hundreds of them were caught by the flames, burning them alive where they stood. The chaos quickly turned into a route, yet Farrel kept going, kept fuelling
the fire with his magical energy until the fireball was so large that it enveloped him entirely.
At the same time the magical wind sent against him blew harder and harder feeding the ferocity of the fire even more until it was burning so ferociously it literally roared.
Unfortunately the energy he had to expend sustaining the powerful magical fire was quickly becoming too much for him and he began to lose control. He had just one option left as he felt the first sensation of heat against his skin. In one last burst of mental strength he cast the fireball from him in an explosion of flame.
The mighty fireball exploded forth with such force that it cut a trail of scorched earth right through the centre of the enemy army and continued a thousand yards beyond right to the base of the northern mountains.
The exploding fireball also left a crater ten yards wide and half as many deep where Farrel had stood only moments before.
#
Kimiya held tightly to Razma as Starria launched into the air. Solomon made some type of angry barbarian curse about flying as they left the ground. Raamen squeezed her shoulder from behind reassuringly.
"Don't worry my dear, your sister will be up and walking around again soon enough. I promise."
Kimiya did not reply. Raamen had come looking for her when Starria returned and found her sitting at the edge of the stream sobbing uncontrollably. He had assumed it was because of her sister, but it was not.
She held back more tears as she thought of Farrel again. She looked east back towards the plains and saw the great streams of terrible fire burning her brethren. She wanted to turn away, but found she could not. She knew how this ended, she had dreamed it a thousand times before, yet with morbid fascination she still needed to see it with her own eyes.
The sound of the explosion was more chilling in real life than in her dreams. She knew that the huge fireball that consumed him would leave nothing except shattered earth behind. There would be no visions of him after that, there never had been.
All her life she had known this man in her dreams. All her life she knew that she could have saved him. All her life she knew that if she did so all of Umijia would one day be the slaves of the Azdaha. She wept like she had never wept before and at the same time vowed to Zartosh that her first born would avenge him.
#
Lord Cortria shielded his eyes from the blinding flash of the exploding fireball. He pulled his horse to a halt and bellowed orders loudly to those around him to halt their advance.
As the orders were relayed along the lines the army slowed and finally stopped in a serpent like line across the plain. Lord Cortria looked on in disbelief at the destruction before him.
"What demonic power is this?!" he exclaimed. "This type of magic is a curse on us all. It must be stopped!"
"You may not have to worry about that my lord," replied Aren who was riding next to him in the line. He pointed emphatically at the crater in the ground as the dust settled.
Lord Cortria could not help but smile. The enemy army was in retreat and at the same time Risandea was rid of the Crimson Wizard and his deviant magical ways at the same time. He would have been more than happy to sacrifice a hundred wizards for the same result.
He signalled for his army to advance across the plain cautiously. He wanted to fight the enemy while they were still in disarray, yet he did not want to advance so fast that he broke up his own lines which could leave him vulnerable to counter attack. Despite the devastation the enemy still had superiority in numbers.
He ignored the crater in the ground and kept moving forwards, however the enemy army had now retreated all the way to the foot of the mountains and was rapidly reorganising its lines close to its own camp.
Lord Cortria halted his army again just outside the range of the enemy archers and shook his head in disbelief at how quickly they had turned a route into a last line of defence, their discipline and order was unnatural.
He passed his eye along their lines and quickly estimated their army still outnumbered his by at least five to one and that was when he realised his folly. From his original position, on the far side of the plain, he'd always had the last option of ordering a fighting retreat back towards the nearby forest. Now he would have to retreat across the entire plain and that would be impossible without it turning into a complete route and a massacre.
It was too late to turn his army around. They had no other choice now except to stand and fight and die. He slowly climbed down from his horse and signalled for the remainder of his knights to do the same. He took off his gold and silver helmet and placed it onto the ground then turned back to his army and yelled defiantly to them.
"Let not one enemy tread the earth beyond this line! For the king and for Risandea!
#
When Farrel opened his eyes all he could see was blue sky above him. There were no sounds of battle around him as he had expected to find. He wondered briefly if he was in another dream with Kimiya. The burning pain that radiated all over his body suggested otherwise.
Most of the pain was in his hands and down his arms, but his face and neck also hurt. He tilted his head so he could look down at his body. Even that small action was excruciating and he cried out in pain which forced him to drop his head back to the ground.
After a few moments of deep breath and with gritted teeth he tried again. This time he was prepared for the pain and endured it. He looked down at himself and saw that his robes were blackened and even burned through in places. His arms were red and blistered and it was progressively worse closer to his hands. The skin on his hands was so badly burned that his skin hung from them and his fingers were gnarled and melted.
He let his head fall back again and bellowed as much in anger as in pain. His cries soon turned to a choking cough as dark blood surged into his mouth. He tried to roll onto his side, but it was too painful so instead he turned his head so as not to choke on the blood that spewed forth from his mouth. Each chest rattled cough brought him a renewed sense of agony.
It seemed Kimiya's visions were right and he was going to die on that plain. Yet he would not allow himself that luxury until he was certain that the Azdaha had been defeated. There was only one way to do that and that was to see it with his own eyes.
He needed to sit up, but he was afraid to touch anything with his hands so it took him a few moments of struggling and torturous pain to get himself into a sitting position. All he could see was the blackened earth walls of the crater around him and he remembered casting the fireball.
Slowly and painfully he wriggled up the side of the crater until he could just see over the top to the plain beyond. Charred and burning corpses lay strewn in all directions either side of the black corridor of scorched earth that the fireball had created. Yet the enemy army had managed to retreat to the very foot of the mountains where it had regrouped into an ordered formation ready to face the king's army yet again.
No army could have survived such devastation and morale breaking terror set about by that spell. Except this was no normal army, it was filled with slaves whose minds were bent to the will of the Azdaha. The men and women of their army were mere puppets and the puppet masters had not yet given up.
Despite its losses the Azdaha's army still significantly outnumbered the king's army and there was now no way that Lord Cortria could retreat across the plain. The next battle would be the final battle.
Farrel cursed loudly. He was not going to let that happen. His quest to unite all of Umijia in peace would go unfulfilled, but he could still stop the Azdaha. Destroying their army would buy Risandea more time and perhaps even deter the Azdaha from invading again.
It was a romantic notion, but one that he allowed himself, knowing that his own life would soon end. He needed to feel his life had meaning in his last moments, whether it was actually true or not.
With one last surge of energy and determination he half wriggled half crawled on his elbows up over the top of the crater edge where he then unceremoniously rolled down the other
side and onto the plain.
There he rolled over onto his stomach and reached out so that his deformed hands pressed against the blackened earth. He cried out in pain as he pushed them as hard against the ground as he could manage.
Then he focused his mind as he had trained for so many years to do and the pain moved to a distant place in the back of his consciousness. He recalled the words of an earth spell and he spoke them with ferocity.
As he spoke the final words of the spell he felt the earth connect to his hands as though it wanted to pull him down into the deep depth of the soil and rock below, yet he resisted the temptation to fall into that dark abyss.
Instead he focused his mind on moving the ground that was now connected to him. He shook it with all of the mental strength that he had left.
On the far side of the plain he could see both armies start to panic as the ground below them shook violently. The king's army started to retreat in disarray and the enemy army started to move back towards the mountains.
Above them both the north mountains rumbled then roared as large avalanches started high up in the snowy peaks. As the earthquake continued to gain in intensity the very sides of the mountains started to sheer away. Soon rock and snow began to rain down onto the plains below where it engulfed the bulk of the Azdaha's army and even some of the king's men.
Finally Farrel's mind could not keep the spell going any longer and the earthquake stopped as quickly as it had started. He did not need to wait for the dust to settle to know that he had destroyed the entire enemy army. They had been literally crushed by the side of a mountain.
His body was spent and he coughed up blood again violently. He could not move and his breath had become ragged. He wished desperately that he was not alone in his last dying moments.
What he would have given for Solomon or Gabrielle to be by his side. He needed someone to forgive him for the blood he had on his hands as he left this world for the afterlife. He wondered what would become of his friends if the Azdaha conquered Risandea. He had let them all down, he had let all Umijia down by not completing his quest.
Visions of Magic - Invasion Page 11