by R A Baxter
Clara dropped the hatch door, letting it stab six inches into the dirt. “We’re so much stronger here. I was thinking if all three of us sneak up behind one of those broken-down tanks, we can push it toward Mr. Farley and distract him.”
“That might give the imps a window to attack him!” Jack grinned wide.
“It’s risky, if he sees us,” Katie said. “We don’t know what that light beam will do if it hits one of us. It could burn us to ashes.”
“We’ll have to make sure he doesn’t see us,” Jack rushed along the trench floor, head lowered, until he arrived at a location where a crushed tank stood between him and Farley. Katie locked step behind Clara and they soon caught up to him.
Jack pulled himself over the rampart and helped the girls climb up. Katie moved with them across the field toward the tank, with her head down. She couldn’t see Farley, but she saw two of the imps charging at him from opposite sides in the air, each taking a pulsing blast and vanishing in downpours of sparks. Another two beasts dove and took cover in depressions in the battlefield to his left when his back was turned, his light blast swiping the air above them.
Jack positioned himself with both hands pressing against the crushed tank, his feet planted firm on the ground, ready to push. Clara did the same, then Katie.
“On the count of three,” Jack said. “One…two…three.”
Katie pushed with all her strength, along with her companions. The tank rolled from the depression it sat in and tumbled toward Farley, rolling two times. Katie, Clara, and Jack fell to their knees as it left their hands. Farley’s tail beam sliced downward, dividing the tank down the middle and forming a wide gap. The tank stopped short of hitting him.
The distraction, however, worked. The two imps hiding in the nearby crater rose into the air and pounced on Farley’s barbed tail, throwing it to the ground and sitting on it. Their success triggered twenty more creatures to attack. The breeze from their flapping leathery wings brushed across Katie’s face and hair. Ten of the imps pinned Farley’s tail down and he dug his feet into the ground, groaning in his effort to free it.
Farley continued firing his grounded tail weapon, burning a deep hole in the side of the hill behind him. Ash trees toppled one after another in a row, their roots incinerated by the pulsating beams. The shaft of energy, however, slowly decreased in strength.
Other imps pressed upon Farley, but he held them at bay with his six swords, and the powerful snapping of his large pedipalp claws. He slashed through the air, crisscrossing his swords in the faces of any being within reach. The imps took turns lashing at him whenever his gaze turned. Three imps blitzed him, two taking wounds from the edges of his crisscrossing blades while the third perished in the powerful grip of his right pedipalp. Each imp wiggled and fell, sputtering to nothing but mist and sparks.
“Derek!” Farley slashed another imp to oblivion. “Help me out here! So help me, I’ll have your mind wiped! Get me out of here!”
Derek had his hands full with the hoard of imps smothering his bunker. Gunfire continued exploding from the bunker across the battlefield and Katie laid low, hoping Derek and his companions couldn’t see her behind all the tree branches and machine parts lying on the ground. Jack and Clara crawled over to her.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Jack said. “Good idea, Clara.”
An imp dived behind Farley, carrying a large stone, and began crushing Farley’s tail with it. Farley thrashed around, trying to slash at the imps behind him, but couldn’t reach them. An imp caught one of Farley’s right arms and yanked a sword away, along with the pincer-hand holding it.
A loud crack sounded from behind Farley and he screamed. The imps behind him backed away, and one of them launched into the air, swinging around a three-foot section of Farley’s tail. The imp spun around and hurled his prize far over the hill behind him. The stump of Farley’s tail darkened, now useless and unthreatening.
A trumpet echoed through the clearing and Ezekiel led his horse through the stone wall, past Clara, and stopped in front of Farley.
“My loyal servants!” Ezekiel’s voice resonated louder than should have been possible. Every imp stopped and turned to face him. “Thine loyalty shalt be rewarded. It is time for thee to retreat and give this battle over to your master.”
The imps didn’t waste a second. They leaped into the air and darted for the shadows in the trees and undergrowth, some gliding over the hills.
Katie turned to Jack. “Are they calling it off?”
“I don’t think so,” Jack pointed over her shoulder.
She turned and discovered over thirty Ghost Knights had emerged from the trees in a long row, many with their lances raised. She turned the other way, looking over Jack’s shoulder, and found another twenty Ghost Knights sitting similarly at alert on their black steeds.
Farley backed away three steps, his eyes wide.
“Spare our quarry,” Ezekiel said. “Fire away!”
Missiles shot from the knights’ lances in rapid succession, pummeling Derek’s bunker in a symphony of explosions, buzzes, and loud cracks. Cannonballs shot from the lance of the knight ten feet behind Abby. Lightning buzzed from the lance of the knight next to him. Three knights took to the air on their steeds, blasting beams of blue and red energy at the bunker. Concrete chipped, cracked, and exploded, only to refill and heal itself seconds later.
“It’s a mental battle,” Clara said. “Each side is trying to un-shape what the other side shapes. We better stay out of their way.”
“Back to the trench.” Katie pushed herself to her hands and knees and crawled backward toward the stone wall, unwilling to look away from the battlefield for even a second. Clara and Jack did the same, though Jack moved at a slower pace, apparently too distracted by everything happening in front of him.
A thirty-foot-tall oak tree took form in the air above Derek’s bunker and dropped, slamming down on it and making the earth rumble. The bunker split into two segments and part of the wall tipped over, exposing Barbara, Travis, and Carl. The tree transformed into gray dust and dispersed into a massive cloud that washed across the field in all directions.
A massive grizzly bear appeared in a flash of green light and charged through the opening in the bunker. Its six-inch claws swiped first at Barbara, then Travis, and then Carl, each of them vanishing in turn before Tamera shrunk the animal to the size of a squirrel and Derek re-formed the concrete barrier walls.
Katie couldn’t tell who was shaping what. She helped Clara over the rampart wall into the trench and watched both Jeb and the tusked knight stare intensely at the bunker, weaving their hands through the air like they were practicing tai chi. A dozen other knights did the same. No doubt, Derek and Tamera were gazing out the slits in their bunker, shaping weapons and defenses as fast as they could think.
Two Apache helicopters started to form in the air, but then melted and turned to mush and dropped to the ground with a splash.
Three camouflaged K2 Black Panther tanks melded up from the ground in the clearing and fired on the Ghost Knights. A ten-foot-wide fissure wove along the battlefield, and the tanks tipped into its endless depths. The crack worked its way to the bunker and split its walls with a loud crack. The bunker healed itself. The fissure filled with dark soil.
A rounded shadow surrounded Katie and Clara and Katie looked up and screamed. A ten-foot boulder was dropping from the sky over Jack, who still lay ten feet from the safety of the trench. Jack’s Ghost Knight admirer stretched her arms out and a nearby tree uprooted, spun through the air, and cracked against the boulder, flinging it away like a golf ball. The knight sent the tree across the field where it crashed into Derek’s bunker and blasted another wide gap in the concrete.
Ezekiel saw his chance and leveled his lance at the gap. A thin funnel cloud emerged from the lance’s tip and stretched across the field, widening as it went, until it broke from the lance and became a full tornado. Ming flew from the gap, hanging onto a bar of twisted steel reinf
orcing, his legs wiggling in the air. Tamera then flew out of the gap and slammed into Ming, sending them both into the clearing. Tamera rolled several feet before Abby blasted her with a bolt of white light from her lance. Tamera disappeared.
Ming lay alone in the clearing, dazed and shaking, his eyes wide with fear.
“Ming’s terrified,” Clara said.
“We can’t help him,” Katie said. “He’s on their side now.”
Jack was about to climb into the trench but stopped and shook his head. “I don’t know what they did to him, but he’s my friend.”
“He’s a friend who won’t hesitate to kill you.” Katie reached for Jack’s leg, but he’d already moved out of her reach.
Balls of steel flew all around Ming, slamming into the earth or crashing into the concrete bunker behind him. He threw his hands over his head and laid flat on the ground.
“Their guns can’t hurt me,” Jack said. “I’m going to help him.”
“You have cracked ribs and bruises that tell a different story,” Katie said. “Besides, he’ll just wake up if they hit him.”
“He’ll wake up thinking I hate him. I’ll be okay.”
A lightning bolt carved a line through the battlefield near Ming and exploded at the bunker. Jack pursed his lips and charged toward his friend, zigzagging around craters in the ground and dodging flying steel balls and blasting bolts of lightning all around him. He winced when a bullet tagged him in the back of the neck, and again when one pegged his left thigh.
Jack arrived at Ming’s side and took his hand, trying to pull him up. “Come with me!” He had to yell over the din of the battle.
“Just let me die!” Ming yanked his hand away.
“Come on, Ming. You’re my friend. You’ll be safe with us.”
Ming looked up at him and stared for several seconds. He stretched out a hand and let Jack pull him up, but they ran only three steps before Ming vanished. Jack stood wide-eyed and confused, but Katie had seen the rifle barrels firing from the edge of the opening in the bunker.
Jack’s face contorted with fury. His shoulder jerked and he winced when a bullet pelted him in the back. He turned toward his attackers and raised a clenched fist. “What’s wrong with you people! How do you live with yourselves?”
Jack turned away from the bunker and marched toward Katie, his face showing only contempt.
The shooting from the bunker stopped.
“My gun stopped working!” Katie recognized Tony’s voice yelling within the bunker. “Hurry! Derek, make me another one!”
Jack arrived at the rampart and jumped over it to the trench floor next to Katie.
Katie embraced him, astounded that he’d risked his life for someone who’d betrayed him.
“For what it’s worth, he woke up knowing you forgave him.”
“That’s what matters.” Jack smiled at her.
Katie released him and turned back to observe the battlefield. The gap in the bunker clouded up and solidified into concrete again, but Derek was working alone now. The Ghost Knights moved in closer, Jeb and the tusked knight taking the lead of six other knights, all shapers judging by the way they held their hands forward. The tusked knight let out a roar and jabbed his arms forward. The lid of the bunker cracked, flew upward, and crashed through the pines, disappearing in the meadow grass. Derek lifted his arms to restore it, but the front wall began resonating and it crumbled into a pile of stones, metal bars, and chunks of concrete. Derek, Damien, and Tony stood exposed.
Derek’s eyes bulged, and his arms shook in his effort to reshape the bunker, but the dark dust dissipated only seconds after he shaped it. A boulder appeared in the air above him. Damien lurched, grabbed Derek’s arm, and the two of them stood frozen a full second before vanishing. The remains of the bunker melted to liquid and flopped down, flowing into the grass.
Tony stood alone in the wreckage. He checked the ammo in his gun, grinned, and tried to fire it, but nothing happened. Jack had somehow rendered his gun useless. Tony snarled and charged in Jack’s direction, laughing and raising his weapon high above his head like a club. He arrived within ten feet of Jack when a tall, branchless pine dropped from the air and stomped Tony into Materia. Jack’s admirer ghost knight nodded her head at Jack.
He grinned and nodded back.
The Ghost Knights closed in on the trembling and wounded scorpion form of Francis Farley. Jack peered over the cold capstones of the wall. A hand pushed down on his shoulder for leverage and Katie swung herself over the barrier and ran toward Jeb.
“What are you doing?” Jack pulled himself up and rolled over the capstones.
“Wait! Give me a hand!” Clara reached up a hand, Jack pulled her out of the trench, and they rushed to catch up with Katie.
Jeb sat on his horse behind the circle of knights, the frog nestled on his back with only its green head visible below Jeb’s grizzled hair. “’Tis best ye stay back.” Jeb stretched a hand in front of Katie.
She shoved it aside. “Abby’s my sister!” She darted past him, only stopping after squeezing past the steeds of the crowding knights.
Clara rushed past Jack, and he ran to keep up with her. He could only see Abby and Farley sporadically through drifting gray mists and the waving of horse tails. Clara pushed between two horses and the riders moved to let her stand next to Katie, allowing Jack a clearer view of the fight.
Farley extended his massive pedipalps, snapped them at the knights, and danced in a circle, waving his three remaining scimitars at them. “You think I don’t know you ghosts are a bunch of cowards?” Farley snapped his right pedipalp at the tusked knight, who pulled his horse back three steps. Farley’s furrowed brow and wide eyes exposed his inner terror. The red stump of his tail wobbled over his back when he moved, a constant reminder of his powerlessness.
“They’ll be back for me,” Farley said. “Damien went for reinforcements. You’ll see. Touch me and you’ll have to deal with the entire Intershroud. Your actions have already shredded the treaty of Phantasmagoria. Lynch won’t tolerate that. You’ll see.”
The laughter of a woman erupted from a mounted Ghost Knight facing Farley, mocking and merciless. She removed her helmet, let it slip from her hand onto the ground, and swung her leg over her horse and hopped down.
Farley spun to face her. “Abby Frost? I figured you might be here somewhere, but I didn’t think you’d joined these wingnuts. Not really your style, or so I thought.”
Abby laughed again. “Enjoy your thoughts while they last.” Her smile turned to a sneer. She tightened her grip on her lance and jerked it toward him. A blast of yellow light shot from its tip with a loud crack. The beam connected with Farley’s chest and threw him backward, slamming him against the horse of the tusked knight. The knight jabbed him with his lance, forcing him to crawl, groaning and wincing, to the center of the circle.
He looked up at Abby. “Are you really this ignorant? You can’t kill me. I’m in a coma.”
Abby’s face contorted with hate, her eyes swelling, teeth gnashing, and hands trembling. “Death is too good for you! I’m not just going to kill you. I’m going to disintegrate your mind, reduce you to a mindless, living corpse. You’ll be nothing! Then, after you’ve rotted in a hospital bed, Katie will finish the job and pull your plug.”
Farley cried out and lunged at Abby, his swords slicing the air. She zapped him in the chest, and he rolled backward, head over heels, three times before collapsing in a cloud of dust.
Katie placed her hands over her mouth and cried. Jack didn’t know what to say to her.
Farley took several deep breaths and righted his scorpion body.
Abby walked around him. “So pathetic! Before I erase you, I want you to spend your final thoughts pondering on your stupidity. We knew you were hiding in these hills, but we also knew nothing would lure a coward like you out of your rathole. So, we tempted you with something we knew you’d think you could easily destroy—a small band of Ghosts Knights and a few naïve child
ren.”
“You used your own sister as bait?” Farley sneered. “You’re no better than I am.”
“Katie wants me avenged as much I do! Start the Rite of Vengeance!”
Ezekiel raised a hand and looked around. The sounds of trumpets, drums, and an ethereal chorus echoed from the trees, same as when Jack’s Aspect had fought Avard’s ghost. Farley trembled and glanced at Jack, his eyes begging for help.
Jack looked away and found Clara hugging her cousin.
“She’s lying,” Clara patted her back. “She’s just trying to humiliate him. She wouldn’t have used us like that.”
Jack shook his head. “No, she wasn’t. I saw the red-eyed knight blast a spy hawk earlier. Another one took off to the northwest hills and he let it go. He wanted it to go to Farley.”
“You’re not helping,” Clara said.
“It’s alright, Clara.” Katie’s frowning lip quivered. “I don’t blame Abby for this, after what Farley did.”
“But she’ll disappear,” Clara said. “We’ll lose her forever.”
“You heard Jeb. We already lost her. That’s not my sister. It’s just her tortured mind, obsessing with her pain and suffering, giving Farley what he deserves.”
Farley lunged forward again, but a blast of yellow light struck the shoulder of one of his left pincers with another loud crack. Farley spun to his left and his pincer tore from its socket, his scimitar flying through the air and twanging against a tree trunk far behind him.
“That was for Elian.” Abby leveled her lance at Farley’s left side. “This is for his brother, Julian!” She fired, and the beam tore off the only remaining appendage on Farley’s right side, spinning him around. His sword skidded through the dirt behind him.
Farley raised his only remaining sword and inched forward, but Abby’s lance blasted off one of his two left legs. He tripped and stumbled forward onto his face, moaning.
“That was for James Durden,” Abby said.
Farley started to stand up and she blasted one of his right legs, sending him rolling on his left side. “That was for Emily.”