by BJ Hanlon
They were something else. Something that wouldn’t be stopped. But at least he could split up the attacking horde.
There was something else too. A gut feeling, like a hunch that going that way would be best. It could’ve been the new talent of the earth that was calling him.
Maybe there was a hideout or a cave that way. Maybe a large burrow or something he could make now that he was a terestio.
He didn’t turn though. Not yet. Edin held out his left hand and pointed it to the ground. He closed his eyes and felt the mud and the rocks and the dirt below it. There was a hard stone too, but that was at least ten feet below the dirt. He wondered if he could make it muddier. Swampier.
Edin let the talent flow as best as he could. It was challenging to get out like getting coin from a miser.
Then it flew open. The ground all around started to groan like the beginnings of an earthquake. Edin knew enough to let a single swatch of solid land, a foot in width, survive for his escape.
The soil began to churn like a river as the mud and the dirt on either side began to loosen more. Then it began to almost bubble like a rolling boil and soon grew into a soupy mix.
A dirty, soupy mix.
He held out for ten strides, maybe twenty. Ten long and tiring strides. Then let go.
Then there were panicked cries. A lot of them, chattering and squealing and roaring. Edin kept running; stumbling to be more precise. He heard flaps of bat-like wings over the chattering calls of the dematians.
Bliz glanced back but kept running, keeping speed with Edin.
Running, his hope to get away by fleeing started to fade.
The world was getting darker and he wasn’t sure how far he’d be able to go before he ran straight into some obstruction or worse, a pack of hungry demons.
Edin had no choice. He had to turn and fight, he had to kill as many as he could, all if possible, so he could get Arianne to safety.
Then Edin spotted a tree standing on the riverbank. For a moment, he moved to set Arianne under it and out of this rain.
Then the world lit from a flash of yellow and a streak held in his eyes the moment before the tree erupted in flames.
It lit up so quickly it was like throwing a match onto a torch already doused in oil. As it went up, he skidded to the right.
Edin groaned and lowered his head as he dodged falling sparks and limbs to get past it.
The heat was intense and the flames wanted to wick away the rain. It didn’t and he guessed the tree wouldn’t be on fire for long as the rain continued to intensify.
Something caught his ankle then and he stumbled forward. At the last moment, he turned as he fell and slung Arianne back over him.
He was quick and still had speed that rivalled a terrin. The simultaneous sandwiching collisions of the ground and Arianne on his gut shot the air from him for a moment and Edin laid there looking up at the darkness and streak of light that was still in his vision.
Something odd was behind the light. The clouds were seemingly turning black.
After some time, seconds probably, he rolled Arianne off him. He took a breath and looked up at the approaching horde.
They’d been stopped by the flaming tree and it gave away their number.
It had dwindled to no more than a dozen dematians and only three primevals; no crillios. They were about fifty yards away in a more or less straight line.
Edin stood and Bliz moved next to him. The dire wolf growled as Edin reached out toward the burning pyre that was once a tree. It was fully engulfed now while the water and fire fought.
It may last for a bit longer. Hopefully long enough, Edin thought.
With the little strength he had left he reached out for those flames.
It was at that moment, the beasts decided to continue the pursuit.
Then Edin took hold of the leaping fires as the beasts grew closer. A few yards, then feet, and then Edin screamed and drew the fires like a curtain across the muddy dirt road just before the monsters.
For an instant, he saw them trying to speed up, trying to get through, as they leapt or flapped their wings into the wall but the flames were hot.
Lightning hot.
If the dematians weren’t already black, they’d have been charred. One of the gray primevals fell from the sky like a meteor and crashed into the ground five feet away and slid in the mud for a few more. Another tried flying up and over but was slow and began steaming and then its wing caught on fire and it turned to a wick lighting the entire bird aflame. The third disappeared as did many of the dematians.
The strength was becoming too much to hold. The muddy ground and now the fire.
Edin dropped to a knee just as a dematian came through the fire brandishing a sword and completely aflame. It looked like the dematian was a sort of fire demon from the pits of the underworld.
Then after three steps, it too dropped while swinging at him. Its swing was erratic and wild. It missed as it fell after the attack.
Edin exhaled, his other leg dropped, and he fell back on his heals. He sat there watching the flames get snuffed out by the rain, and the tree that had been brown and was torched alive turned white like a birch.
The smell of meat and tree and rain mixed together like some sort of unappetizing meal or an alchemist’s brew. Edin blinked as the fires that had been on the bodies were washed away and soon the tree was barely crackling.
Beneath the tree and all around, the bodies were strewn about. The figures were charred so much that any feature, other than their general shape, was incomprehensible.
Farther away in the distance, back where he’d churned the mud, there were clawed hands reaching up from the road like skeletons reaching up from their grave.
With all of the death here, the destruction of this dematian army and the heroic beasts, Vestor’s Beasts, he thought, there was none but him to know that anything happened here. Nothing but him and the tree.
A pure white tree, forked and forged by lightning and flame and water. But there was much more in that forging. Edin saw that in his mind and knew that none of it mattered. The world was going to burn or turn to the swamps of old.
The creatures, like that giant thing that destroyed the valley, would rule.
None of that mattered.
Only Arianne mattered. She and their survival, at least for as long as they could. The dematian king would soon have the last of the Ballast Stones and then it was only a matter of time until Yio Volor, god of the underworld, would rise and overthrow everything he’d ever known. Destroy the world and all of its beauty to forge the destruction the monster was so used to.
And it didn’t seem that Vestor was going to be of much help except sending beasts.
He had to run. Had to get as far away as possible and hope Yio would only want Bestoria and not the southern isles or any other lands south or east or west.
If any other were real…
They could sail off into the sea; he could control the water and the wind. They could live on a ship like they’d done fleeing Alestow.
But not yet, he had to get away from this place first and make it to the sea. He knew if they followed the river, eventually they’d run into the dematian king and his wyrm. Or at the very least, the body of Monk and the wreck of the raft. Neither was something he wanted to see.
He crawled to Arianne, his legs were weak and slow to respond and as he grew nearer, his arms began to shake. There, in the mud, soaked and as white as a deep winter’s blizzard was Arianne.
Curled up next to her was Bliz. Edin pushed himself to his feet and stumbled, almost like a cat with too much nip, toward her.
He fell back to his hands and knees, all points of contact digging into the muddy earth two inches.
“Arianne?” he called and reached for her. Through the caking of mud, he shook her, he squeezed and felt her thin and emaciated bicep. It was as if the muscle was gone.
He shook her softly. Bliz whined and stared at him with sad eyes. It was a look tha
t somehow said, ‘be careful, she’s the weakest of the pack.’
He wiped his hand on his cloak. It felt like he was wiping off the guts of the beasts. The layer of mud peeled off and he reached for her neck.
She looked like she was dead. Like a ghost or a draugr with her sunken face and withered body. Edin’s heart raced and he started searching for a pulse and the hope that was held in that weak and slow beat.
Edin reached for her neck but his hands shook and he pressed his fingers to the base just above the collar bone.
Not where the pulse is.
His coordination was so off that he wasn’t sure he could hit the ground if he threw a stone in the air. Slowly, his fingers crawled up.
Was it the cold or fear that caused his hand to shake? He felt the middle of her neck. Around the throat, there was warmth. Not a lot, more like ash after smoldering for a day, but it was there. He felt higher, putting his fingers to the base of her head. His fear-filled mind, so disparate to his normal thought, shook like his fingers in the freezing rain.
There was nothing.
No movement, no pulse. The thumping in his head, in his chest increased. He pressed deeper; he felt the still warm skin surrounding his fingers like it was the thick blubber of some dying sea creature.
“No,” he whispered, or he thought he did. Beyond the crashing rain and the rapids he could barely hear.
Bliz had his head resting on her thigh and was just staring at them. His sad eyes, so much like a puppy who didn’t get what he thought of as enough food.
He shoved his fingers over, moving them to the right only an inch. There was nothing but the red marks left from those fingers. He kept going.
Suddenly, there was a beat.
Edin exhaled greatly. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath and wasn’t certain he felt what he did.
Another. It was there. Three, maybe four seconds apart and weak.
“Babe.” He coughed and gasped at the same time. He felt tears forming and lifted her into his arms. Edin squeezed but it was like lifting a bundle of interconnected sticks. Then he heard an exhale in his ear.
“Edin,” the voice said barely audible though he felt the breath, the warmth. It was real as was her voice.
“Hey there, how are you feeling?” Edin asked then realized it was a supremely stupid question. One only a blotard would ask.
He let her back slightly so he could look her in the eye.
“Where are we?” she asked, then her eyes widened. “The demons,” tears began to fall, “they had me. My…” Her voice trailed off, her gray-green eyes seemed to grow hollow and fearful. She raised a shaking hand to her mouth and covered it.
“Don’t worry, I’m here,” he said squeezing her into him again. “I’ll always be here.”
She squeezed him back, her nails pressing into his shoulder blades though not enough to cause any discomfort.
Arianne sobbed for a minute or so. She cried in his arms in the rain on the side of that rough river that had taken Monk and their future away with it.
Then he glanced to the north. He could barely see the smoldering ruins of the inn and the dots of the bodies from the battle.
Bliz moved his head between them and Arianne looking down slowly. “Is this a,” she paused, her voice staccato. “Wolf?”
“Bliz,” Edin said, “a friend.” He said as he pulled her lips to his. They were thin and chapped but it felt good. He kissed her long but softly and she responded by moving her lips.
After they broke Edin said, “we need to get shelter.”
“Food,” She paused, “so hungry.”
Edin nodded and glanced around. With the exception of dematian meat a ways back, a definite no, and the primeval reptile meat, another thought that made his stomach churn, there was neither food nor shelter in the immediate vicinity.
The world was black and grey, muddy, wet, and dying. The late winter rain was near freezing and everything seemed slow.
The charred corpses were losing the char as the rain beat that layer from them. He couldn’t follow the river and they couldn’t go back to the inn.
Yio Volor is rising.
Then he thought of the valley. What if that fog rolled over the mountains that separated the ancient vale of the monastery and the real world?
Southwest, away from the vale, away from the river and the dematian king who could probably kill Edin with a single swipe of his claw right now.
There was something else too, the gut feeling from before that said to go that way. It felt like a signpost. That was their only option although it looked like there’d be little in the way of food or shelter that way.
Edin knew it to be prairie lands, at least according to the maps he’d seen. Some horse and cattle ranches but they were spread out for miles upon miles.
“No other choice,” he whispered mostly to himself. “Can you walk?”
Arianne gritted her teeth and then gripped Edin’s bicep.
Gradually, steadily, Edin helped her up, she’d either grown heavier or what was more likely, he’d grown weaker in the last however long it had been since they’d stopped here for the rest.
As he helped, his legs and arms shook. But he wouldn’t let her down. Never again.
“Can you walk?”
Arianne nodded slowly and they started off into the farmer’s field. One, Edin guessed, that wouldn’t be planted or harvested this year.
There was almost nothing left in him as they walked through the field. It was slow going and the mud clung to his boots. They trudged through the field. There were little critters skirting around and through the brush. Edin spotted a heard of some sort of deer a few hundred yards away but couldn’t reach them and didn’t have the energy to hunt them.
Arianne used him almost like a crutch and at one point, Edin found a stick that was about chest height and he used that to keep himself from tumbling.
The world was swollen around him. Swimmy and soupy and there were things that moved within it. He felt like he was drunk.
They hiked for hours before falling down at one point to sleep.
Edin woke up the next morning, a dark morning, and continued on, still starving and exhausted.
They stumbled that way for days, each day the trek was shorter; the camping and sleeping was longer. At one point, he began thinking about how he’d gotten there. He tried to remember what day it was and didn’t know. Edin stepped and nearly stumbled but the walking stick caught him.
How long it’d been since the battle. Three days before or maybe four days? Five? The last was quite probable.
Edin stumbled through the prairie field that may have once been a farmer’s. They crossed small circuitous streams with a nasty, but still drinkable water, or so he hoped. That was good because they had no waterskin and the rain had stopped a few days ago.
Edin had woke the next morning and saw that Bliz had run off. Edin wasn’t sure where or why but couldn’t blame him. The wolf had to hunt and Edin didn’t have anything for him. Edin’s stomach growled.
Maybe he’d bring back a deer to share. Edin chuckled at the thought.
A few feet away was a stream. He slowly crawled to it and began scooping water into his mouth. The water helped satiate his appetite. At least a little.
Edin dropped back to sit on his heels and glanced around the landscape. There were hills to the south and there were trees there as well. To the north-ish he saw something protruding over the landscape but couldn’t figure out what it was. He stared hard at it but his eyes were constantly losing focus. Then he heard a rumbling.
The sky behind it lit up and he saw it was a building. Though they were maybe a mile away, he was close enough to see that one of the walls had caved in and there was no roof.
Soon, a great storm rattled in from the northeast and swept the sky. Luckily, Edin and Arianne were on the periphery of the storm and felt only a slight sprinkling. He leaned back and let the cool, clean water splash into their mouths. It was a million ti
mes better than the streams.
After a bit, they began again to walk on.
Arianne’s face was even more boney than before and sunken like the skeleton of a draugr that hadn’t tasted human flesh in weeks and was about to die a second time.
She was shaky on her feet and so was Edin.
He wondered if there were any roads this way and why there were so few ranches and farms. Was the soil no good?
As they walked on the fifth day or so, he began to see the sun for the first time in a long time. Since the vale of the Monks of Vestor. The warmth of the sun felt good on his face but showed just how bad Arianne was. Edin couldn’t look at her without his heart breaking. I am the man, he thought, I’m supposed to help provide…
Tears were forming in his eyes as he looked back away to the north. There, he noticed that the sky was dark but he didn’t see clouds. It was as if the blue sky had become a charcoal gray sky.
His mind let go of the idea as his stomach grumbled again though it was grumbling less and less.
If it were a little later in spring or possibly summer these fields may have wild corn or carrots or potatoes; his mouth salivated. Maybe a few of the tall and wide bushes were berry bushes.
The lack of food was draining him. Edin felt so weak but he continued on. Behind him, in front or somewhere off to one of the sides was the threat he was running from. The rising of the demon god who has been reborn only to destroy the world.
So Edin walked on. He had to get Arianne away from this place. She needed to be safe, she needed to not think about what she’d gone through. What that demon had put her through.
Arianne hadn’t told him, and he did not ask.
But he saw it in her eyes.
The gray-green that had been so bright before, seemed to have faded like the withering branches of time. And with it, her spirit and now Edin’s.
There hadn’t been any other sign of dematians for the last few days. That was good, because Edin doubted he could kill one right now. In fact, he would probably just lie down and play dead as if the dematian were a grizzly.
That too he doubted would work but it would’ve been the only option he’d have.