Legend of Ecta Mastrino Box Set 2

by BJ Hanlon

  He heard a loud whimper and saw a dire wolf’s limp body being tossed back toward the river that was flowing again. The wolf crashed in and sunk without attempting to surface.

  Suddenly, Edin felt a presence from his right and twisted but something got through. He felt the hot, needle like pain of a slash across the top of his hand. Edin barely was able to hold onto his sword.

  Then something hard crashed into his butt cheek. It hurt and spun him but there was no lasting damage.

  As Edin had twisted, he let his sword swing free and took off the head of a dematian. He could still see more coming. Edin was hot, sweating and growing weary; he was being attacked from every direction now. Edin blocked with his sword and kicked out at one of the beasts. The ethereal light encircled the sandal and the dematian flew off into a line of his own monsters with the force of an avalanche.

  The inn was a few yards away. It was quiet and the door was still open. He needed a place at his back. He needed to keep them in front of him.

  “Bliz,” he shouted as he started to cut a swath through the attackers taking heads, arms, legs and anything else he could. Edin leapt a strike toward his knees, though it took more effort and he nearly didn’t clear the attack. His breathing was ragged and his arms were growing heavy.

  It was getting harder and harder to move. Edin turned to see a crillio coming toward him. A large one leaping from the crowd almost like it had wings. Edin took a step to dodge but his legs were tangled up with the staff between them.

  Edin tripped and fell forward sprawling out before a dematian. The dematian stepped in front and raised a large sword ready to strike down and end him.

  The crillio couldn’t stop and crashed into the dematian, its claws tearing at the demon as Edin twisted and let the bodies fall past him and slam into the rocky outer wall. Edin crab-walked toward the door. Over to the right, he saw a pair of dire wolves go down. He heard a loud howl and watched as Bliz leapt into the fray twenty yards away from him.

  A moment later, a great yellow beam shot down from the clouds above. Two cliff raptors were torched almost instantly, two that had been near those had turned away and were immediately swiped out of the sky by the flying primeval flyers.

  Edin leapt into the inn and slammed the door. He shoved his back against it and felt his chest pounding like crazy. He needed to catch his breath. Just a moment or two.

  Edin reached into his pocket to feel the birth stone in his palm. To feel those sharp edges to feel something normal.

  He felt the inner lining, he felt lint at his fingers and pressed them deeper in. But it wasn’t a deep pocket and there was nothing else inside. He started to panic a bit and reached into another pocket. Then a third.

  The stone was gone. He didn’t have it.

  The monk called Monk, Edin thought and a little smile came over his face. At least it was out of the demon’s reach for now. Hopefully it’d stay that way.

  Then something slammed hard into the door behind him. His torso was thrown forward and then he slammed back into it again. Another thunk, then another. He felt each running through his body, the attacks pulsing into him, and Edin was waiting for the moment when a blade pierced it.

  A moment later one did. It was inches above his head and Edin was showered with shards of broken door. Edin dropped to his knees and scampered toward the bar. He looked around and spotted the fire in the hearth.

  The door flew open and suddenly three dematians tried to leap in at the same time. They all crashed into each other and were stuck in the open doorway for a moment.

  It would’ve been hilarious but for their snarling, chattering needle like jaws and the wicked weapons they held before them. Edin felt the fire in his mind and waited until all three had finally figured out how to get in.

  He sheathed his sword and reached out for the fire.

  A moment later, he brought the flames on them. A stream of orange and yellow flames flew at the three dematians and burst onto them. Then he felt it grow and surround the three. He heard their screams as they were burnt, like the dematians had burnt the townsfolk in Glustown.

  They cried but he did not stop. He saw more and more pushing in and getting caught in the flaming pyre. Charred bodies were tumbling forward and out of the fire as they came closer to him.

  Edin had to start stepping backward to retreat. The heat was growing intense and the flames were catching on the wood paneling and stools and bars.

  It was kissing the floor above them. For some reason, he saw them still coming in, pressing forward and burning up. Smoke was beginning to cloud just above his head. It grew thick and a deep gray.

  Edin glanced toward the kitchen and through it to the rear door. He knew the table was still wedged between the door and the counter.

  Then he spotted a glowing reddish color through the cracks of the door. Backlighting it as if there were a giant light illuminating the entirety of the outdoors.

  The door and then the table burst apart as a beam of red light burst into the room. Edin barely had a moment. He leapt sideways and had to suck in his gut as if he were a fat fella trying on a new pair of trousers.

  The beam barely missed his stomach though he felt the heat.

  A great heat that lit his quarterstaff aflame. Edin dropped it.

  The beam crashed through the rear wall and made a large crack in the side. A part of the stone wall collapsed out and stones tumbled to the ground behind him.

  Edin looked out and saw the dematian king standing there. The staff in hand. It was clearly wood but it sparkled. Red, two different blues, and a yellow.

  The lapse in concentration caused him to lose control of the fire. The floor was aflame now as well as the walls, the bar, everything but the stone. The beam though added a bit of much needed ventilation as smoke poured out.

  Edin took back control of the fire, breathed and twisted his hands, one on top of the other, turning it into a horizontal tornado and sent it toward the dematian king.

  With the staff in hand, the dematian king batted it away and the flame dissipated like it’d been swallowed by a wave of water. Edin searched for the lightning around but could only find a bit of local electricity. He sent a bolt of yellow toward the dematian king.

  The same result. He turned water to hail and sent strong gusts.

  Everything was batted away.

  The dematian king grinned at Edin. Or he felt that it was a grin. A creepy smile with sharp needle teeth, some in, some out of the mouth.

  Nothing had worked. The beast has all of the gemstones and they provide a sort of protection. Edin thought. Then he remembered, not all of the gemstones.

  Edin reached for some of the stones that had fallen from the walls. He picked them up like he had long arms and they were barely an ounce each. Edin hurled them like arrows at the dematian king.

  The look on that ugly face would’ve been shock… if Edin could tell what dematian facial expressions meant, but all he knew was that when a large rock the size of his fist struck the dematian king in the jaw, he saw three teeth fly out like small spears.

  Edin charged. He summoned ethereal knives and whipped them at the dematian king who dodged. He burst out into the rainstorm again, pulling his sword, he was ready to end it. To take the dematian king’s head and stop Yio Volor from ever rising in this land. Even if he died here, there’d be no king to open the gates for the god.

  This was it. Edin would win. His eyes narrowed, he saw the target, the way to end this and the threat forever. Or at least for now.

  Edin was about to bring the sword down when he heard a voice yell in his head.

  ‘Halt or we kill her.’

  The voice, raspy and slurred shocked him into stopping. Edin’s feet skidded on the wet grass. The voice was as if the person speaking knew the right words, but not how they sounded.

  Edin skidded to a stop and looked around for whoever said that. Then he looked at the dematian king near his legs. His eyes were a reddish purple and they looked about as evi
l as eyes could look.

  The dematian king held up a sharp, clawed hand and pointed to the sky.

  In the gray billowing cloud he saw it, the dark giant shape of a wyrm. “I am not afraid.”

  ‘It is not my beast that you should be worried about. It’s what is strapped to its back.’

  Edin swallowed and then he saw the wyrm break from the clouds and began to fly down toward the ground as if it were on a twister.

  Edin caught glimpses of what was on its back and each one set his heart burning and soaring. Blonde hair and pale, formerly ivory skin. He couldn’t be sure, but the cloak looked like the one he’d last seen her wearing.

  The wyrm dropped down next to the dematian king and spread its giant mouth. There were great teeth inside.

  They looked like wolf’s teeth only ten times the size. The dematian king did something and ropes that had bound Arianne separated and she slid, almost like she was on a slide, down the side of the wyrm and onto the wet grass next to the wyrm.

  The king stepped back until he was near Arianne.

  “Let her go,” Edin growled. He gripped his sword as tight as possible and readied ethereal knives. They’d cut this demon in half and with the force he’d put in them, he was sure he could cut the wyrm in half too.

  “The stone, give it to me.” The end of the dematian king’s staff turned a bright red. It was the beam that nearly tore the building in two. And it was pointing at Arianne’s chest.

  “No,” Edin shouted and summoned an ethereal bubble over Arianne.

  In that moment, the dematian king turned the staff toward Edin and fired the beam. Edin barely had time to shield himself when he was struck.

  There was a blankness to his mind. It hit Edin in the chest and took him off his feet and into the air and he corkscrewed at least five times before his back slammed against something hard. Breath escaped him in such force he was left wondering what happened. Edin dropped to the ground and barely caught a glimpse of three dematians coming toward him from the right. If they got him, she was dead. Though they’d be disappointed with not getting the stone. At least not yet.

  He couldn’t let them win. He couldn’t let her die. Edin barely had the strength to do so but he rolled to his side and summoned three ethereal knives.

  He whipped them at the dematians who seemed extremely shocked to be split in pieces.

  “Ahh!” the dematian king yelled in his head and Edin turned toward it, summoning more knives to his hand.

  “Let her go.” He screamed.

  “The stone and she will live. I will tell our lord that you were helpful. He may make you a pet rather than destroy you.”

  “Never!”

  Then he heard her cry. Arianne’s voice rocked him, nearly off his knees where he was currently. Her wailing, tear-filled and terrified scream struck him to the center of his being.

  Edin waivered.

  ‘Don’t.’ A voice said in his head. It was the abbot in his mind. ‘You will murder my brother and the world.’

  Edin gritted his teeth. He was in a standoff and there was only way to live and fight another day.

  ‘Do not do it. I ordered your companion to take it. I ordered him to.’ Edin cut the voice from his head.

  “I do not have it,” Edin said.

  The dematian king growled and the light grew redder. Arianne screamed, more pained as if the dematian were doing something to her.

  “No, I sent it down the river before you arrived. A monk has it.” Edin quickly sheathed his sword and reached into his pockets and pulled them out. “I swear on the gods.”

  ‘Traitor!’ Somehow the abbot got through his mental barrier.

  The red light faded and a moment later, the dematian king leapt onto the back of the wyrm and they flew off down the river.

  A brief second of thought made him want to send ethereal knives at them, but he didn’t have the strength. Edin stumbled to his feet and ran to her. He dropped and skidded on his knees on the wet grass and stopped a foot from her torso. She was still tied at the hands and knees and her eyes were wild as she stared up at him.

  Her jaw trembled. “What? Where?”

  Edin bent down and kissed her. He hugged her and pulled her to him as deep and as strong as he could. He didn’t know what else to do.

  He heard soft feet padding near him and then a whimper and looked up. Coming toward him was Bliz. Blood covered much of his fur and he was limping.

  They were alive for now. He looked to the sky above the river and saw the black outline of the dematian king on his wyrm as they followed the waterway.

  They were alive, but for how long?

  Soon, the final battle would start with Yio Volor rising from the underworld to destroy them all.

  Book 6: The Battle of Bestoria

  1

  Run

  Screeching cries, pained roars, and howls came from behind. The battle still raged on the far side of the burning, crumbling inn that held one of his few good memories.

  He reached an arm under Arianne and lifted, helping her to her feet.

  She swayed and leaned heavily on him. It was clear she was beyond weak; she was nearly gone. Her lips were cracked and he guessed she weighed eighty pounds. More skittering calls, hollers, yelps, and cries called out from the other side of the inn.

  Then from farther down the river, there came the shriek of a wyrm finding its prey.

  Ahead of him, Bliz, the friendly dire wolf, dropped his head to the ground and tried covering his ears with his paws in a way so familiar to Edin.

  Edin clenched his jaw.

  The shriek crawled toward him like a giant wave approaching and as it reached him, his body began to tremble and sweat.

  Then slowly, and only for a moment, everything stopped. The entire battle seemed to cease. There were more mundane sounds in those moments, sounds that he’d pick up sitting on the back porch of the old manor house: insects buzzing, water bubbling, and wind rustling. There was peace.

  Then a cry like a gong came and the din of battle erupted once more. Metal clanged, feet pounded, cats roared, the primevals squawked, and chittering calls echoed through the air like a giant conversation erupting after a much debated about gladiatorial result.

  He didn’t have time to help. She didn’t have time.

  “Bliz, go!” he shouted and lifted her onto his shoulder. With the dire wolf ahead of him, he started running down the river road toward the attack and toward Alestow.

  It was dark and getting darker as he ran. Thanks to her rather radical, albeit non-voluntary diet, she wasn’t heavy. She groaned.

  “We’re going to be alright,” Edin said. He didn’t look over his shoulder. There was no need to know what was back there, what was coming up behind him. It sounded as if some of the demons were still being fought by dire wolves and the cliff raptors were battling the leathery primevals.

  The thought of why they dove into the fight with the primevals touched him but thinking about it wasn’t any good.

  Not then. Not now.

  To the left, the water flowed slowly and as far as he could see there were no crossings. That was his first thought of escape. Get across the river, but he was weak in the talent, weak in energy, and trying to cross didn’t seem like the makings of a successful plan.

  To the right was an open field of dirt. Sopping wet mud that seemed to go on for at least a half mile. Maybe more. With the darkness he couldn’t see much further and wasn’t certain he could even run that far.

  Ahead, the dematian king was chasing Monk. Monk would not get away and he wouldn’t survive this encounter. Edin had betrayed him.

  He was a traitor. The abbot was right.

  Edin ignored that. Arianne mattered more.

  His sword bounced against his leg as the rain began to come down even harder. It started in huge droplets as if the sluiceway of the heavens were opening up.

  Maybe to wash Edin the Betrayer away.

  The road grew muddier and his feet grew heavier in
concert with his breathing, panting gasps of air.

  Edin could hear ahead the river beginning to gurgle and churn. Not rapids, but there was clearly something that would break up the monotony of a peaceful cruise down the river. The slower paced water ran for about thirty yards further then the banks narrowed. Still, he was too weak to use it.

  Edin saw no sign of the raft, broken up or otherwise, and above, in the dark clouds the dematian king and his wyrm were gone.

  Thunder cracked almost directly above him and the air buzzed with a static current that tickled his nostrils. He felt it like it were a part of him. Another appendage that happened to be able to kill a person with a single touch. He heard clanking of metal and chattering teeth behind him as he was just about even with the rapids.

  As he grew closer, he saw there were larger rocks under the water and they were covered thoroughly with a sheet of water that flowed over them.

  Edin tried steadying his heart and his breath but it wasn’t working. Panic was there and he knew his eyes were like large tea saucers.

  A lightheaded feeling came over him and he wavered; his right knee gave out for an instant but then it held. He caught himself after a dip of six inches or more.

  Arianne grunted. “Ed…” she said and trailed off.

  He was trapped, running with no escape. The knowledge of that was pressing on his mind like a cook trying to pound out a particularly tough chunk of meat. There was no place to hide. No way to get away from the chasing dematians and the coming storm.

  “Edin,” Arianne gasped.

  “I am here, love,” Edin said. He had to go on for her until he couldn’t anymore.

  There was no way he’d give her up. He just got Arianne back and wouldn’t lose her to a chasing horde of dematians and their brood. Never again.

  Edin turned back to the river and the rocks, that was a no go.

  Then to the right, to the southwest and the muddy fields. The mud could help.

  It may tire out the dematians and the crillios but then he thought of those damned flying things he called primevals.