Chapter 42
The Lormian army poured through the
gates of the Palace out into the blizzard-shrouded battlefield. Many men repelled down the fortress walls on
ropes amidst the blinding snow. The
archers let fly a volley of arrows towards the last position of the Demon’s
men. Screams of surprise and pain rang
out as the deadly missiles found targets through the intense snowfall. Tolian had never heard such ferocity in her
countrymen’s battle cry before. But she
never would have imagined that they would have to defend the Palace against
invasion. Every man knew that this was
it. This was the only battle that
mattered. Their families, their homes,
their world depended on winning this battle.
Now that the dragons were grounded they had a chance, and they were
going to make it count.
The Demon’s men had not expected such
a turn of events. They had assumed that
the dragons would have done the majority of the killing for them. Now it was a different. Now the most feared warriors of the Western
Kingdoms were attacking them. The Demon’s
army was caught between the bloodthirsty Lormians and the insane power of the
Demon.
Tolian waited a few moments for her
men to catch up to her, before she let wail the war cry and led the assault on
their attackers. She hacked her way
through the wall of the enemy’s warriors. None could withstand her or her
Moonsword. A company of the Royal Guard
fell in behind her forming a wedge between the enemy troops. Great splashes of red flashed in the
whiteness as the Lormian soldiers routed the Demon’s men. Tolian could hardly see anything through the
fury of the snow. She made powerful sweeps with her
blade and sliced anything that dared stand in her way.
Who said a woman could not be a warrior? Battle fever took hold of her. She could not be stopped. Wielding her lunar blade she cut a path into
the heart of the invader’s army. Tolian
noticed that she could see further and further ahead of her as she
progressed. The blizzard was already
beginning to wane.
“Hurry!” Tolian shouted back to her
men.
Now she could she the horror on her
adversaries’ faces as she disembowelled them.
It was only a few more moments until the snow had subsided to a mere
flurry. The Demon’s men found confidence
as the snowfall lessened, and the roars of the dragons could be heart over the
Palace again. Tolian urged herself on to
a greater level of fierceness; she knew she had to get to the Demon before the
dragons could destroy the fortress of Lorm.
She was a force of speed and violence.
None could stand before her. Her
motions became a blur to those around her, her blade moved with such velocity
as to knock men down by the shear power of the air currents it projected. The Demon’s men fled before her. Or was it something else, Tolian wondered as
she saw her own men fleeing as well.
Then she saw it. A gigantic mass of human flesh, two stories
tall. It had a thousand heads and four
times as many limbs, grasping, kicking, writhing, screaming and biting.
The Abomination that loomed before her had grown on the journey to
Lorm. Two hundred deformed head’s stared
down at her with a malevolent awareness.
It was the other countenances that most horrified her. They were the faces of men, of women, of
children who were screaming in revulsion of what they had become. Many were clearly aware of the unholy fate
that they suffered. A shudder of fear
shot through Tolian. A fleshy tentacle
reached out for her as the thing lurched towards her.
Tolian had not been prepared for the
supernatural agility of the Abomination.
It surged over her like a wave.
She felt the scratches and punches from the claw-like hands that mauled
her. She was trampled, kicked and bitten
as the rolling wall of twisted flesh poured over her. Its weight came crushing down on her. The Moonsword was snatched out of her
hand. She reached out, but the thing
pulled it away from her at once.
Its hot foul breath reeked of dung
and rotting meat. Its groans and wails
were louder than the dragons’ roars.
Tolian received hundreds of blows in only a few short seconds. She struggled to lift the monster off of
her. The weight felt as if it would
crush her. A warm, slimy substance
contacted her bare skin. Tolian’s
nostrils burned instantly. The thing had
defecated on her.
She weakened. She strained under the monstrosity. Sharp
teeth tore off the flesh on her wrists.
Her lungs cried out for air.
Blackness danced around the edges of her vision. She pushed with all her might against the
crushing force of the gargantuan blob. Her arms failed. The full weight of the Abomination was
focused upon her. She could do nothing
but endure the pain of her ribs giving out under the hulking mass. She lay still and waited to die.
In the back of her mind, she heard
the trumpets call the retreat.
Everything was lost if she died then, and she knew that. But the blackness beckoned to her. Peace.
Rest. Quietness. Her mind wrestled with the urge to surrender
to death. Thoughts of Brythia came to
her. She could not abandon Brythia. Now, she knew what she had to do.
Her consciousness slipped past the
suffocation, past the savage mauling she was still receiving beneath the
shambling mountain of nightmare.
Her thought reached out above the battlefield, above the towers and turrets
of the Palace, above the clouds in the sky.
Her mind raced into the void of space and beyond that realm too.
Tolian stood upon the doorstep of the
Worlds. The point where universes and
realities converge, where the astral plane pours its energy into the world and
gives it sustenance of an etheric kind.
Energies beyond mortal comprehension churned and spiralled with
ceaseless motion. In that place, time
and distance were meaningless. This did
not bother Tolian, she had stood there an infinite number of times before, or
so it seemed. She stretched her arms
above her head. Ripples of power flowed
out from her fingers. She drew a circle
in the swirling currents of existence that danced before her.
“Now, Ymrisiva,” she shouted. “Now.”
Instantly she found herself back
under the Abomination. Now, however, her
lungs were no longer clamoring for oxygen.
The weight of the thing was not so oppressive. She was calm.
She called a vision of the Moonsword to her mind.
Come to me my sword, she thought.
A new cry arose from the
Abomination. Tolian opened her hand in
time to feel the cool handle of the Moonsword slip between her eager
fingers. She was charged with lunar
power. She thrust upwards with her
magick blade and jumped straight into the creeping mass of horror. She opened herself to become a conduit for
the Moon Power. White brilliance burned
around her as she lunged through the monstrous torso. A flash of light broke upon the field as the
Champion emerged atop the Abomination.
The thing heaved violently and fell motionless. It was dead.
Its many faces bore a contentment
that spoke of their release from agony.
Tolian wasted no time in jumping off the hulking mess. She looked into the sky and felt waves of
hope and joy pass through her.
Appearing out of the thin air, thousands
of winged Faeries, flying soldiers, took the offensive against the dragons,
their charmed arrows quickly finding their reptilian targets. The dragons roared in protest and spat fire
at their new adversaries. Burning
faeries fell from the sky, but the host of the Sidhe did not stop in their
attack. Everyone on the ground stood, for a moment, in wonder and surprise at
the aerial conflict. Tolian found
herself staring at the unbelievable battle in the sky. A company of the elfin warriors had swarmed a
dragon and were administering devastating blows to the enraged, though now powerless,
monster.
She wheeled about. The man who stood there was short, and rather
stocky. His eyes were black as
coal. She knew immediately that this was
the Demon who stood before her.
“I must admit, I underestimated you,”
the Demon said. “I did not expect your faerie
army. Most impressive.”
“Prepare to die, fiend,” said the
Champion.
“But I cannot die, for I am death
itself.”
“We shall see.”
Tolian raised her sword and stepped
towards the Demon. The Demon in Hertrid’s
body drew his own sword and laughed with maniacal glee. To look at him, he did not appear to be such
a threat. Yet, Tolian could feel such
evil radiate from him that was far beyond the scope of anything she had experienced
before. This was a creature of raw evil,
of the chaos that churned ere the universe was formed. Tolian knew this was it. This one fight was the reason she had
undergone her transformation and become the Champion. Her victory or defeat signalled hope or
despair for the world.
The Champion leapt at Hertrid’s form,
bringing a furious stroke of her lunar blade upon him. She moved like the lightning itself. Holding his own sword in one hand the Demon
easily deflected her blow and sent her tumbling roughly to the ground. She hit the cold hard earth hard, but rolled and
sprang to her feet to again face the cackling fiend.
“Oh my,” hissed the Demon. “I had expected much more from the famed
Druidic Champion. No doubt your emasculating
transformation has affected your fighting prowess.”
“We shall see,” returned Tolian. She was not going to let the Demon’s words
unsettle her.
She rushed at him again, with even
greater speed and more strength in her sword thrust. Sparks went flying as the two swords
contacted with the impact of thunder.
This time, not only was Tolian knocked to the ground but the Demon got
in a deep gash at Tolian’s legs. She
cried in pain as she again hit the ground.
She did not spring back up. The
Demon waited patiently for her to get to her feet. The pain was intense as blood gushed from
her wound.
She did not know what to do. She circled him with the Moonsword brandished
defensively before her. The Demon
continued to laugh with his obscene mirth.
There had to be a way to stop him.
There had to be. The Demon,
however, did not give her a chance to come up with one. He shot forward on the offensive this
time. He was clearly faster and stronger
than her. He struck at her with a dozen
blows in the space of a second. She used
all of her own speed and skill to deflect as many of the fiend’s blows as she
could. He beat her back to the
ground. The force of their sword’s
clanging made it appear that there was a thunderstorm taking place in the
middle of the battlefield. With every
swing he seemed to gather new strength, and his laughter grew louder and
louder. A cut to Tolian’s arm drew more
blood. On her knees she fought, with
every thing she had left, to survive.
She knew there was no chance of victory.
She was doing was struggling to
stay alive. Even that, she would not be
able to do for long. Then the Demon
stopped.
“Now, do you see your folly?”
“How can it be folly to endeavor to
stay alive,” she answered trying to catch her breath as she did so. “Surely, even an inhuman monster can
understand that.”
“Inhuman? You are mistaken. I am all that is human. All of
the vileness, the jealousy, the hatred, the greed, the selfishness. Everything
that I am has been made by humanity.
Before man, I was formlessness and chaos. It is humanity that has made me, I am here to teach you that.”
His words crushed Tolian. For she knew the fiend was right. It was the evil in humanity that gave form to
the chaotic forces of the Demon. Now, he
had brought that evil back to the world, in concentrated form. She felt hopeless. Seeing the look of despair on Tolian’s face,
the Demon raised his sword and stepped towards her. She struggled to get to her feet. She could not. Please, she begged the Universe, don’t let it
end like this.
She watched the malicious grin spread
across Hertrid’s face. The black eyes
stared down at her with supreme hatred.
The Demon’s arm started down, his sword striking down upon her. Tolian forced herself to bring the Moonsword
up to protect her. She knew she did not
have enough strength in her arms to deflect the Demon’s blow. The sword descended with the same lightning
quickness, yet to Tolian it seemed to take an impossibly long time. It was certainly going to come down on her
head. Ending everything.
Far away, in the back of her mind,
Tolian heard Brythia’s voice, “Tolian, help me please, Tolian.”
I’m sorry, my love, she thought. I can’t help anyone any more. I love you, Brythia.
Then she saw the change of expression
on the Demon’s face. Gone was the crazed
jollity, the supreme self-assurance. A
look of confusion clouded his features.
Rage, doubt, and uncertainty vied for dominance on Hertrid’s chubby
countenance. For a quick second, the blackness receded from Hertrid’s
eyes. Clearly something that Tolian
could not comprehend was taking place.
She did not wait for an explanation.
She shot up at the Demon, easily deflected his stalled attack and
knocked him to the ground. Just as the
monster’s eyes regained their typical darkness, Tolian brought her sword down
into Hertrid’s chest.
“You have not won yet, woman,” he
hissed.
Just before death took the body, a
smile of relief touched Hertrid’s mouth.
“Thank you,” he said. Hertrid
closed his blue eyes in the finality of death.
“Tolian, hurry up.”
She heard those words in her
mind. It was Kilfrie. Her tone bespoke a great urgency.
“Brythia needs you."Copyright 2002, 2015 Diana Hignutt
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