by Ryan Johnson
“Now we’re talking about this, I’m starting to think there is only one possible way this village had been destroyed.” Vaeludar paused before he could was going to say a word he didn’t’ want to say. “A Banshee.”
Marina spat in anger. “Those black hooded fiends! They are considered to be the original Sirens. What makes them similar with my kin is they have voices, too, but they use their voices to spread mostly hatred, by creating illusions a person doesn’t want to hear or see; basically someone’s worst nightmare or their most hateful day they don’t want to remember.
“Among the Sirens’ legends, it wasn’t after the Shadow King’s downfall, they were mutated by the light of the Crystal Dragon’s scales, clothing and skin and ugliness turned into love, beauty, and singing enchantments of love. The remaining Banshees fled into the foggiest places on the island. Or so how Sirens tell other Sirens about these scary stories.”
“And we could be entering a potential Banshee’s territory,” stated Vaeludar, realizing they must in a lair of a Banshee. “How is Naìra? Is she secured?”
Marina showed Vaeludar Naìra sleeping next to Flavius. Both brother and sister were cuddling each other, which made Vaeludar and Marina stand closer together than ever.
“Typical family bonding,” said Vaeludar.
“I wish I was part of this family,” said Marina.
“What makes you say that? Was King Uragiru not enough?”
“He’s a good father, but he doesn’t a lot of time with me, due to his responsibilities as a king. And Princess Stephane doesn’t act like a real sister; she’s always out in the market places. I’m just left alone in a large dining hall with nothing to do.”
“Well, I’m sure I could arrange Geraldus to have you live at his house. That is if we do make it back south. This could be a one-way trip for all of us.” Vaeludar strolled away from Marina and walked to the boat’s font. “We must be weary of Banshees around these parts. It’s better if we let our companions sleep. I hope they don’t have the abilities to wake them.”
“Any evil can even wake the heavy-duty sleepers,” pointed out Marina. She was putting some blue think liquid on her arrows, dripping from her a deep cut on her calms. It was blood.
Vaeludar wasn’t amazed of what Marina was doing.
“Siren’s blood,” she said. “The most poisonous blood a creature could have. It can mutate a rabbit into a human-size monster. Anyone or thing touches a Siren’s blood, my blood, can be affected with a dreadful disease far more gruesome than smallpox and leprosy that can mutate and liquefy any kind of living being. Even the Shadow King himself, body and soul, can be harmed by my blood. My blood was the only living blood that can harm Spirits of the Dead such as ghosts, ghouls, and even Banshees.”
“Banshees are undead creatures?” asked Vaeludar.
“I consider them Spirits of ladies who hate men with the most disciple attitudes. They died with great hate; their spirits turned into wrenched, hooded figures, and started to show people their hates and told them their fears. And that is how show-and-tell was made of. Then years later, the Crystal Dragon comes and washed their evilness and redeemed them in his light. The surviving Banshees hid.”
“Ah, what a beautiful morning,” yearned Wonomi. Wonomi was looking at the fog, thinking he was seeing sunlight. He seemly was happy if he had won a tournament and people cheering out his name.
Vaeludar instantly knew Wonomi was hallucinating and tried to use his dragon eyes to see in the fog. Yet, he could feel a barrier provoking his vision to see deep into the fog. For the hybrid, he wasn’t going to give up his vision. But the harder he tried to get pass an invisible barrier, the stronger it became.
After minutes of trying, Vaeludar could feel his head starting to pound him like ten boulders smashing on his head. His hybrid eyes were aching as he was trying too hard to look far ahead. His headache was hurting so heavily he felt like he was sick. This made him drop to the floor in a weaken state.
“Vaeludar,” shouted Marina. She grasped him before he could fall flat on the ground like a dead man. Marina pulled Vaeludar in a knelling position as long he kept a wing of his from whipping in her face. “Vaeludar, can you hear me?”
Vaeludar could hear her voice alright but he couldn’t tell what she was saying. Vaeludar was wearing her voice chanting in his ears like the witches’ chanting he had heard yesterday. His eye vision was clearly fine. He could see Flavius and Naìra getting up; he was seeing their mouths move but sounding distorted.
Marina saw them, too.
Flavius was holding Naìra by the hand and looking overboard.
“Look at all the fish,” said Naìra. “Aren’t they pretty?”
Monico and Flarefur got up and they seemed to be happy too. Galvin was the only one who was sleeping heavily if he had a thousand bottles of alcohol. Marina saw the crew heavily happy and enjoying what was around them. She knew they were hallucinating by the fog, but she never knew the fog would show them something with great happiness.
She would try to wake them by any manner if possible but they were dosed out. Marina tried to call out to Vaeludar who was hearing distorted voices in his ears.
Then Marina rushed to him, holding an arrow she drained her blood on. She was shaking if a lightning bolt stuck her. Her face was lit with great reluctance. Her mouth muttered two words, which Vaeludar didn’t know what Marina say. Suddenly, Marina swung the arrow she was carrying into Vaeludar’s left ear and right ear, going in one ear and out the other.
Vaeludar could feel the Siren’s blood stinging his ears like a thousand beestings. He couldn’t feel pain but he could feel the blood melting his brain like an arrow piercing straight threw a weak skull. The blood was actually trying to bring Vaeludar’s hearing back to normal. The distorted sounds he was hearing were now the sounds of regular talking people. The headache he had was gone in seconds like a fly flying away from a human’s view.
With his strength back and the headache gone, he wiped off the siren blood from his ears. He got back to his feet and looked at Marina.
“Can you forgive me?” she asked.
“No need to,” he answered as he widen out his wings. “Apparently, this Banshee shows someone’s lovable nightmare, not the worst nightmare. We both will have to find it and kill it.”
Suddenly, the boat had crashed into a boulder. It thundered the boat to a halt. Rocks emerged from the water. Vaeludar knew they were now stuck. Suddenly, rocks beneath the water rose, surrounding the boat.
“Ok, maybe one of us should stay on the boat and the other one go,” Vaeludar corrected himself.
While the Vaeludar and Marina were the only ones truly awake from the fog’s power of hallucination, the others were dozed off like sleepwalkers. Vaeludar pulled out the sword and jumped to a leaning Flavius and Naìra. He looked overboard, too.
There were swimming fish with hunger and anger in their eyes. Fish rounded as an oval, eyes colored as blood, small fins, with scales of a rainbow and very small snouts with small teeth for biting.
Piranhas!
“Marina, we have some piranhas overboard! Would you do the honors of getting rid of these underwater stowaways?”
“My pleasure,” said Marina, smiling. Marina jumped and dived into the crowd of piranhas. Marina found herself not being attacked by the toothy fish; they were swimming right beside her.
Vaeludar knew since Marina was a creature of the sea and one who could sing underwater, she would be able to lure them away with her singing voice just like her kin did to men before they went extinct.
I hope she takes care of our underwater problems with teeth, thought Vaeludar. He ran towards the front of the boat and struck the rocks in their way, with his sword in hand.
The rocks spilt in half in one slash and suddenly rise twice the height every time Vaeludar cut one in half. If had cut them more, it would mean the rocks would rise even higher. It was as if he was fighting a hydra: cut one head of
and two more would grow. The boat was stuck.
He looked to see his companions still in their trances and totally and didn’t have a grip of reality. The boat wasn’t slowing and moved into the pointy rocks.
“Enough!” shouted Vaeludar, flying into the sky. He soared a higher than the rocks. He blew out orange fire on the sides of the boat and the rocks.
Heated moisture penetrated the fog and dimmed it down. The water surface suddenly waved franticly like the ocean during a hurricane. The boat was lifted and floated away. Vaeludar flew down and landed in the boat. He saw Marina jumping back on as he landed.
Vaeludar saw everyone looking scarred or amazed in their daydreams of hallucinating. Vaeludar felt such agitation everyone was in a different trance instead of having their eyes set in reality.
Then long cloudy images formed into monsters appeared before Marina’s and Vaeludar’s eyes. They began to whip the boat with their hallucinating arms like an octopus’s tentacles. This made everyone scream in horror.
Waves have pounded the boat down the river. The boat swerved over the wavering water if it was caught in the high winds of a hurricane storm.
“What did you do?” she yelled.
“Released this boat from rocks,” Vaeludar yelled back.
The boat started to flow with the strong tiding water carrying through trenches and ruined buildings. Vaeludar quickly strapped ropes around his dozing comrades in hopes they won’t fall overboard. Marina herself strapped herself in tight with one of the ropes. Vaeludar himself held onto the mast where his foster sister was.
After riding a strong wave, the boat had slowed. Floating softly again, the boat resumed its way. Clouds in the shapes of Chimeras, Cyclopes, Harpies, and Manticores took positions of terrifying looks, making the crew think they were real.
“Arh, Cyclopes” grunted Wonomi and Monico.
“Harpies!” yelled Flavius.
Everyone was terrified by the fake images of evil creatures.
However, Galvin was still sleeping while everyone was scared out of their wits. Naìra was crying in great fear. Flavius his sword out, pointing it had every object. Wonomi and Monico cradled together. And Flarefur snuggled to himself like a frightened cat.
Vaeludar unstrapped his comrades from the ropes and strode to the front of the boat. He, with his hybrid eyes, saw deeper into the fog. This time he could see further without a fight from the fog. He could see they had more miles to go until they could reach land. “We are still far away from our destination,” he said, calmly.
“At this pace, we may make it with us two al… ive… Vaeludar! WATCH OUT!” yelled Marina, pointing her hand at the starboard side of the boat.
Vaeludar looked and saw a black, clothed, hooded figure flying above them, whispering in different voices at once.
A Banshee!
“NO! But I don’t want to sew that old clothing!” yelled Naìra.
“No, father, I did not lose Naìra to the Shadow King that way,” complained Flavius.
“Oh, I did not be unless, King Uragiru,” said Monico and Wonomi.
“Your Greatness, I’d never betray you to the Griffin King. I’m your loyal servant, bound to serve you to death,” said Flarefur.
Vaeludar and Marina watched, in horror, as everyone and the Griffin being hypnotized by the Banshee’s silent, hooded voice.
“I had enough of this, Banshee!”
Vaeludar pointed up the sword up high. A pale glow of light gleamed from the cloud within the sword. “It is time for you to go to your watery grave, Banshee!” Vaeludar rose into the air without flapping his wings first. Great anger beat his heat with rage. “Oh, how I hate creatures of evil,” he said in a great loud dragon voice. “No more telling people and creatures they don’t want to hear.”
Vaeludar charged forward at a fast paste. His muscles tightened. His eyes were fixed on striking the heart of the Banshee, which was blowing glowing sparks from its hooded face.
The glowing sparks turned into knowing figures such as Geraldus, his three daughters, Alaric, and Marina. Relatively, everyone Vaeludar personally loved the most was appearing before his eyes.
“You have failed us all, and I called you my son,” said the voice of Geraldus.
“I’m still alive, am I?” Vaeludar asked the glowing image of his foster father and whipped it away with his glowing blade
Seeing the images he knew as illusions, Vaeludar slowly followed as he heard voices.
“I can’t believe you sold me into slavery,” shouted Eliana’s voice.
“My father trusted you, loved you, raised you and you killed him as your appreciation,” said Alaric’s voice.
“I thought you loved me more than anything in this world, but you have broken my heart too many times!” cried the voice of Marina.
Vaeludar was too smart that the voices were only the Banshee’s voice. He swiped the images away with one swing of his sword. He was drawing closer but the Banshee wasn’t flying anywhere in cowardice.
“You cannot elude me by using these false images. I know what is real and what is not, Banshee. These images before are not real as are their voices. Their voices are yours. You may be a form of fear, but I am fear-proof just like I’m fireproof from a dragon’s fire. You can’t put me in fear. You should be afraid of me, Banshee. And if you knew who I am: I. AM. VAELUDAR!”
Vaeludar wrapped his wings around the Banshee’s arms. Vaeludar waved the sword forward to stab his enemy in the heart, if it even had a heart.
For the Banshee, it had whispered in Vaeludar’s ears: “You cannot kill me; I am immortal. If you strike me down, I will only be reborn again like a phoenix. I cannot be killed, human dragon hybrid.”
“But what happened to the other Banshees when the Crystal Dragon came into the picture?” pointed out Vaeludar, stopping his attack. “What happened to them when he fought against the Shadow King? They turned into beautiful, female Sirens. Shall we test that?”
Vaeludar thrust the glowing blade into the central chest of the Banshee. It howled and cried like the wind in the mountains.
Vaeludar pulled out his sword and removed was wings from the Banshee’s arms.
The Banshee fell below towards the running water. An explosion detonated at the speed of light. Rays of light, sparks of fire, and smoke ignited all at once. The brightness impacted the fog’s images of the evil creatures to fade away.
Instead of being turned into a beautiful Siren, the Banshee was destroyed and the fog disappeared from eye view, giving a clearer surrounding of the terrains. It seemed the legend of Banshees turning into Sirens was wrong, as with the fog obscuring Vaeludar’s eye vision: it was a magical fog.
Vaeludar was rather glad the Banshee will no longer be any threat on the waters the boat was sailing on. He lowered himself onto the boat. Once he got on the boat, Vaeludar had seen everyone shaking their heads, and it meant they were awakening from their trances. As always, Galvin was still fast asleep.
“You have done well,” said a dark ghostly voice. “But this small victory will only be the pathway to many defeats for you.”
Vaeludar recognized the voice. He glimpsed over and saw a red cloud forming where the Banshee fell.
“Lusìvar!” grunted the hybrid.
“Yes, it is I,” he confirmed. “I am everywhere and nowhere. I chose where I want to be and when I can be there. I am not part of nature; I’m a force against nature. In time, you will see we are very much alike.”
“Alike?” laughed Vaeludar. “How are we alike? I am the opposite of darkness as you are the opposite of lightness. Just how are we alike, you and I?”
“You and I kill for reasons. We have purposes far more dangerous than a dying phoenix bursting into flames. We hunt those who are far lesser than us, and we both share a common enemy: us. Shall I go on?”
“I don’t know what scheme you have planned, Lusìvar, but I have nothing in common with you. You are evil, and I am the opp
osite of evil.”
“Oh, you shall see in the distant future what we both are and what we were born to be: nothing important,” hissed the evil ghost.
“Well, I beg to diff—”
“Vaeludar,” said Flavius, blinking his eyes. “Who are you talking to?”
Vaeludar should know Flavius would know that he was talking to the Shadow King. Or was he? Yes, what was he talking too? Was he talking to the Shadow King? Was he talking to nothing? Or was he talking to the dying Banshee?
Vaeludar’s was spotting the Banshee’s cloak smoking the cloud.
“An illusion,” shouted Vaeludar. Again as he did to the real Shadow King’s spirit, Vaeludar hailed a wrath of green fire from his mouth. The fire burst and flared in water-like waves. Heated winds flushed the boat downstream.
Now, the boat was floating down fast again.
With everyone awake, they gripped on anything they could hang on to. Vaeludar sheathed the sword and held onto Naìra near the mast. The boat flung around and about. Waves of waters carried the boat at a fast paste if a great hurricane had struck. The boat thundered over slashing rains of water and thundering sounds of dragon roars. There were trenches very narrow and catastrophic, pointy rocks.
With no room to maneuver, the boat crashed into the rocks.
Vaeludar had grabbed Naìra in his arms and flew into the sky before the boat had crashed into the rocks. The entire crew went flying into the air. Marina jumped and dived into the waters.
Flarefur went flying with Vaeludar. They saw the wingless people going high. Vaeludar went after Flavius and huddled him on his wings while the Griffin caught the two flying, girl-screaming knights on his back. Vaeludar caught Galvin, who was still sleeping, on his tail and wrapped around the big knight’s chest.
Vaeludar and Flarefur went flying high, carrying the wingless people to a safety point. On a high point on the river with trenched rocks, the two flyers carefully landed. Vaeludar laid Galvin on the ground first before the hybrid landed.