Return To Sky Raven (Book 2) (26 page)

We danced like this for probably thirty minutes before the realization hit me that I seemed to be tiring but the demon didn’t. Additionally, the pain in my ribs was intensifying and my breathing was sounding more ragged by the minute. I coughed and felt something warm and coppery in my mouth; I noted a design flaw in my armor, sealed up as I was, there wasn’t any way to spit properly.

The thought did cross my mind that this could be the end of the Child of Light after all; my father did say that the universe loved balance above all things. Never seeing Rosa, Nia, Darroth and the rest of my friends again was a bitter pill that I contemplated as I dodged yet another charge. This time the creature was devious, he pulled up his bull rush at the last moment and managed to plant a monstrous fist against the side of my helm. The armor did its job, but the whiplash effect on my brain made my vision go spotty for a few seconds. I backed up and tripped, falling backwards just as he followed up with a blind rush. Suddenly meeting no resistance, he ran right over the top of me, his momentum carrying him straight into a pool of lava!

I scrambled to get back on my feet and spun, hoping to see him boiling in his own juices. But the bull just stood up, casually walked out of the fiery mess like it was a warm bath, and shook himself off like a big dog. I could have sworn I saw a sheepish grin cross his ugly face as he reset his stance to fly at me again.

Okay, I was getting seriously tired now. Normally, the suit’s properties and lightness made wearing it a joy. But the heat was seriously overloading its ability to keep me cool, and I could feel sweat or something else soaking through my leather undersuit in buckets. If something positive didn’t happen soon, I would never see Maya again! Damn, I was consciously trying to not think about my dark elf through all this but, obviously, I was failing.

Another bull rush caught me in the side and crushed me against the rocks; this time, it felt like more ribs were damaged, and every time I moved, bone grated on bone. I feebly smacked the bull on the pastern with the sharp edge of the hammer head and watched him hop backwards in a rage, but only for a second before he was back at me. I dodged and ran to the side to give myself more room. As I looked back, I noticed the footprints I had just left had a decidedly bloody red tinge to them.

If the damn universe loves balance so much, how am I supposed to kill this thing? This isn’t balance; it’s not even fair, I thought bitterly. Nothing I’ve been able to do to it has done any more than annoy the monster. I saw it walk through hot lava and shake it off! This place, this arena, is his personal playground; the deck is stacked against any challenger. So if I can’t defeat him my way, is there a way to defeat him his way? Something I pondered as I threw myself out of the way of a giant fist directed toward my skull.

I took stock of my situation as he charged me again. I was definitely slowing down, not quite nimble enough to evade him. The beast changed tactics again and this time slowed at the last instant and, instead of ramming, he grabbed my free arm. I flailed away impotently at his head with my war hammer as the demon spun me around and threw me across the floor of the arena. Given my weight, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. I rolled over several times in the dirt before ending up on my burning chest. Coughing, I think I blacked out for a couple seconds. I wanted to vomit, but that would seriously not be a good idea in this sealed up armor. Laboriously getting up on one knee, I looked around for my hammer which I had lost in the exchange. There it was, ten feet from me in the dirt, with the bull creature standing nonchalantly on the handle with a bovine grin if I’ve ever seen one.

Staggering to my feet, I shook my head in an attempt to clear it, but the edges of my field of mage sight vision were starting to blur. My opponent laughed at me, a tittering, horrid snorting sound, and with a contemptuous bow, backed away and indicated I should come forward and claim my weapon. Great, now he’s just toying with me. Taking advantage of my foe’s apparent temporary good nature, I hobbled forward slower than necessary, stalling for time. Oddly, now I was starting to feel really chilly. The little voice in the back of my head that remembered healing was screaming something important at me, but I was too tired to listen. Picking up my war hammer, which was starting to feel heavy, I reset and faced the beast. I took a deep, grating, painful breath and nodded at him. Through mutual agreement, we decided this would be the last round.

He charged, with my last ounce of reserve speed, I dodged around him and sprinted away from the beast, pulling up lame in front of the largest flat wall of solid rock in the arena area. Grabbing my hamstring, I hoped my acting skills were better than my energy levels. Again, I saw the semblance of an evil smile cross the bovine features of the bull as he pawed the ground, lowered his head, snorted, and launched himself at me with everything he had. This creature was amazingly fast, but more than an hour of sparring with him gave me the insight I needed to time things perfectly. A shoulder feint and a backward, falling dive allowed me to avoid his charge. Again he had counted on hitting me and so was taken off guard when he crashed into the solid rock wall headfirst, shaking the ground beneath our feet violently.

“Oh, come on…really?” Was he dead? No, of course not, just pissed…and also stuck deeply into the rock face. Bellowing madly, he thrashed from side-to-side in an attempt to free himself.

I had executed the backward dive flawlessly but at the expense of even more damage to my ribs, and the tunnel vision I was experiencing was getting markedly worse. Using what little strength I had remaining, I brought my war hammer down in a two-handed overhead smash to his thick skull. It snapped both horns off, still embedded in the rock. He dropped face down, slightly dazed for a moment. Not wasting any time, I struck another hard blow to the rock face, shattering it into several chunks and freeing the two broken horns. Snatching up one of them, I drove the horn tip into the back of the beast, about where the heart would be on a human. Swinging the hammer, I attempted to drive the broken horn deeper, but my failing strength and vision wouldn’t let me hit the target; I missed again and again. By this time, the beast was shaking its head back and forth and trying to leverage itself back up on its knees.

Tossing my hammer aside, I brought both my fists together and brought them down onto the horn, slamming them down again and again with my last desperate vestige of strength, practically collapsing on the bull’s back. I think it was more the weight of my armor than anything I did that finally drove the horn deep enough into its thick torso to bring up a satisfying gout of foul black, greasy blood that spread across the arena floor. My chest landing on the horn end made my ribs feel like someone had dumped red hot forge irons into my ribcage. The loud steady heartbeats, which had been sounding like a drum throughout the battle, were receding and becoming irregular and pitifully weak.

Staggering back from the demon, I picked up the other horn, swaying drunkenly on my feet. I held it out in front of me like some kind of curved dagger in the event it looked like the creature was healing this damage as well. But after a few quivers, the demon’s skin started to crack and dry, then dissolved into reddish flakes of ash. The molecules spread by the hot wind into the lava and sucked down into the flows. I stood there for a moment, not entirely sure what had just happened. The next thing I knew, I was falling, my back hitting the rock face where I slid down hard into a seated position just as my field of vision went completely blurry, then spun lazily, and finally faded to black. As my heart slowed to a near stop, I think I might have dreamed of unicorns.

……………………………………………

Maya

The sun was halfway to its zenith on a day that I had never envisioned happening, a day without Alex! This isn’t how things were supposed to happen; I am the fragile mortal being! All this time since meeting his parents, I had imagined myself years from now dying an old, shriveled-up elf woman in a soft bed in a large brightly lit room filled with solemn children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And there would be Alex, sweetly, gently cradling my head, still looking as young and hale as the day I met him. A last, simple kiss goodbye and I could drift off into the end having lived a life and loved a man like no other. Damn it, I was supposed to go first!

The girls had hastily made a small camp outside the back entrance of the cave since no one really wanted to relive the carnage inside over and over again. And at least outside, there was fresh untainted air. The vampires were all dead, at least the ones not under Belrothe’s protection, and I might have taken out a couple dozen of those by accident, I couldn’t be sure at this point. I really don’t remember much past the amulet incident and Winya’s constant yelling in my mind. I essentially turned off our link and became the bloody harvester of the undead; I suppose I have Portia’s dreams to thank for that. When I regained sanity, the carnage was appalling even by my dream standards; I didn’t just kill them, I made them unrecognizable as ever having been human. Still it did nothing to make me feel better. I gather by the fearful looks and the muffled whispering of my companions that they were too frightened of me to even venture back into the cave. Instead, they sent Reginaldo in to carry me physically out of the bloody abattoir.

I sat on a log staring into the campfire, oblivious to the activity around me. In front of me, hanging from a branch driven into the ground, was the amulet that had caused all this trouble. I hated looking at it, yet it was the last object my lost lover had touched and so it held a certain sad fascination for me as well. My mind reeled from the enormity of it all; I was adrift, no direction, even the thought of continuing on to the dark elf capital seemed without value. I was truly undone and alone.

Belrothe had, of course, left before dawn with her entourage of vampires she thought she could rehabilitate. I could also tell she needed to visit Riverfield and see for herself. There were a couple of times before she departed that it looked like she wanted to come up and say something to me. But her own personal grief, combined with the mad slaughter she had witnessed, was probably too much for even a 1200-year-old being to comprehend and deal with. Her human liegemen were still bustling around the area, however, feeding and readying the last of the farmers for transport back to their homes. Even more wagons had shown up recently to transport the greater numbers of captives back to their villages. From the shouts of joy and laughter I heard, it sounded like we had saved them all, except for Bel’s family, that is.

I heard a buzzing sound, and Nia flew up and gently hugged my face before she settled on my shoulder. She looked exhausted and completely wrung out from crying. I noticed a pair of sad-eyed druids shuffle up and sit down dejectedly on a nearby log. They had been moving back and forth on the periphery of my vision for some time now, trying to gather the courage to speak to me. Their young minds struggled to reconcile the dark elf sitting before them in silence with the berserker who stalked the cavern last night steeped in blood.

“What do we do now, Maya? Shouldn’t we look for Alex?” Lin whispered, eyeing me cautiously, keeping herself between my sword arm and Jules.

I continued to watch the fire, willing it to spread out of its containment and burn the world down to a blackened cinder. Instead, I managed a hollow answer for them, not bothering to look at them. “Believe this, if Alex was anywhere on this planet, I would run, walk, or crawl on my knees to reach him. But Winya says he is not; she believes he was dragged into Hell itself.”

“But surely the Nova must be able to find him!”

“Perhaps, but in all the legends, I have never heard of anyone returning and the Nova are forbidden from interfering. In any case, Rosa knew the moment it happened, and the way they watch us, so did the Nova. You can believe if there was a way to bring him back, his parents would be here right now and damn the rules or consequences! But it’s been half a day and nothing…just nothing.”

I shifted uneasily on my log seat, silently cursing what I was about to do, but I had no stomach for tact, or even life itself at the moment, as I continued, “I am a warrior, I have seen hundreds of comrades fall in battle and, in the end, only the mission and the damn memories remain. There is nothing to be gained by dwelling on what we cannot change. Tomorrow, you girls will take the warhorses back to Sky Raven. I tied Alex’s shield back onto Somnus’s saddle, and you will need to see that the horse and shield are returned to Oreale. Humans place great importance on this custom of returning the shields of the fallen. Afterwards, you will return to your studies. Nia, you will be going with them; you are still listed as a student. There are many things that Rosa can still teach you about being a wizard, and you have your people’s future to think about.”

“Aren’t you coming with us, Maya?” Jules whimpered softly as Lin wrapped an arm around her for comfort.

“No,” I said tonelessly. “I will continue on to warn my people and fight by their side to the end. If I should survive, I will secure the magic stone from the dark elves and bring it to Sky Raven in the hope that we can still use it to restore magic to the world. Hopefully, Darroth can do the same with the dwarves.”

There was a soft thud of footsteps behind us, and the girls whipped around to see Kaima and Somnus standing there, heads down, flames at the lowest level I had ever seen, as if joining in our sorrow. Lin got up and took their reins and walked them back to the grassy area where she’d had them tied up to graze. Securing them again, she walked back and sat down exhausted with the rest of us.

We sat there for a long time, each lost in our own thoughts, no one speaking a word, just gazing into the slowly dying fire. I threw more wood on the flames and watched it catch and flare up.

This time, I wasn’t even surprised when the familiar thud of heavy hooves moved steadily up behind us again. Lin raised Jules head off her shoulder and glared at the Vakhas over my shoulder.