Some say in ice
From what I know of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice
-Robert Frost
***
Everyone has rules they live by.
There are laws, the framework of society, the pillars of civilization - in ideal times, the true ruler of a people, over any head of state.
There is religion, the acknowledgment of forces greater and beyond man's understanding - something to believe in for those things where there is nothing but belief to hold.
There are expectations, ambitions passed on by others or grabbed onto by oneself, goals to strive for and to dream about and to dictate to what end lives were lived.
There is honor, a standard to which one adheres, a line which one does not pass - in order to carry oneself with dignity, in order to be able to face oneself in the mirror.
And then there is the code of survival - the rules formulated through nothing but living and experiencing – when one learns what works and what does not, what one should do and what one shouldn't do in order to live, to thrive, to survive - the code unhampered by morals or popular consensus or consideration for others.
Will had been a good citizen of the United Kingdom. He'd obeyed the laws. He'd professed loyalty. He'd loved his nation.
Will had been a good Anglican. He'd gone to services faithfully. He'd said his prayers every night - he'd even been a choir-boy in his church.
Will'd had a goal and he'd worked for it - and if saving the world and keeping it saved was a bit more than most boys kept as dreams, Will rather thought he'd done a decent job at it.
Will'd had a sense of honor - it was sort of compulsory, being an agent of Light and all.
But now all that was superceded by Will's need to survive; and to succeed at his not-exactly-self-appointed goal of watching over the Earth and keeping it free from Darkness. In the years he'd spent fighting a solitary, almost guerilla-like war against the Dark, he'd stumbled across quite a few rules that, being followed, made his life - if not easier - longer.
***
The element of surprise is an enormous advantage.
***
Will whispered a quiet incantation - one meant to hide him from all senses. It didn't work very well with Dark of the first- and second-tier, but until some of those showed up he'd stick to it. He needed to save his strength.
Now under the blanketing influence of the spell, Will watched as the other five jumped at his sudden disappearance - well, Bran and the Drews jumped; Merriman merely nodded. Hidden within the spell, Will sneered silently. 'You don't know anything, old man.'
The attention of the Six was drawn by four black shapes, rapidly increasing in size and definition. Will narrowed his eyes, estimating their flight-path as he heard the others gasp and point. The four had come close enough, now, to be seen. They looked like horrible parodies of animals, with too-broad chests and legs, looking like they had been twisted backwards before being jammed into their sockets, that seemed too splindly to bear their weight. They were mostly covered by sickly-glistening skin, looking raw and slick in the autumn sun, though two had a few patches of scraggly fur. Although they flew, none of them had wings - they seemed to be speeding through the air by the power of their churning legs.
The ground was torn and rent by the force of their earthfall, their claws digging into the soil for traction. They turned their heads, growling and chittering, as they looked at the five people underneath the oak. Their eyes were uniformly pale red, like blood mixed with dirty water. Beast-like their appearance was, but clear, if manevolent, intelligence shone in those eyes. They fell silent as they began to circle the five humans, jaws open in such a manner that laughter was conveyed. They were unaware that they were themselves being circled.
Will had moved so that he'd be to the back of the four Dark-beasts when they landed. They hadn't known he was there, of course - not even the others knew where he was, and that was how he wanted it to be.
***
Check for weakness – and attack those viciously.
***
He moved quietly nearer, gauging their strength, trying to decide in what order he should attack them. Take that one with the black hair – he let his eyes go slightly unfocused as he looked at the Dark-beasts, a pale-red 'glow' of sorts emerging around their twisted forms as he called on his Old One senses - yes, he'd take the one with the black hair, then move to the one near Bran. If he guessed right, the two remaining would then attack him, as long as none of the other Six tried to do anything stupid. Yes...that would work...he looked back at the group under the tree. He could 'see' the circle of warding that Merriman had invoked around them. Merriman's power may have been lessened, but he was still First of the Circle - the wards would hold them safe for as long as Will needed.
Which really wasn't very long at all.
***
Head-to-head is a stupid way to fight. The best is head-to-back - your head, their back.
***
Will slipped out of the sense-hiding spell. All four Dark-beasts wheeled around as his presence suddenly registered in their minds. Before they could do anything, however, Will was among them.
'Magis ceron, llande natur, fal lacht wird tain gesprun! Bereich Feuers!'*
Forces suddenly bent to his will, erupted, coalesced into a sphere of dark-blue flame – the same color as Will's currently light-filled eyes – in between his hands. Will grinned at the suddenly wide-eyed expression of the four Dark Ones and lobbed the fire-spell at them. They scattered (Will smirked) and the fire-sphere veered sharply in midair, homing in on its target.
***
Keep the enemy feeling unsteady as much as possible
***
Will slipped back into the hiding-spell as the beast incinerated, wrinkling his nose at the smell. He could see the three who remained turn and turn, searching for him. Their jaws snapped restlessly at the air, triple- and quadruple-rows of fangs gleaming yellow as ropes of saliva dripped out of the gaping mouths. The ground hissed and turned black where the saliva fell. One reared into the air, long talon-like claws raking the air and leaving trails of Dark residue visible to his Old One's eyes.
Even just moving, they polluted the world.
Those fangs couldn't hurt him.
That acid slaver couldn't hurt him.
Those claws couldn't hurt him.
They could, however, hurt others.
So he'd just have to hurt them first.
'Ariscert eis seterod holen den eigen nicht baan. Kalter bruch!'**
The death-howls of the first still lingered in the air when Will phased back into their sight. The space he folded around himself was a null-magic environment, so his spells had little effect when he was 'phased out' - but Will had learned that as soon as he exited the hiding, if he'd put enough concentration into the spell, the magic would (for lack of a better term) catch up, sometimes almost instantaneously, to him. So though he knew better, to everyone else it looked like he had suddenly materialized with a dozen crystalline javelins suspended in the air around him. He took the time - a nanosecond's worth, anyway - to savor their impending doom. Then he thrust his right hand at the Dark-beasts.
***
There was a single note of music before the icicles launched. It sounded like, Jane thought half-hysterically - wondering why she was remembering this - like the time Barney had dropped one of their mother's special wine goblets on the floor. There had been a crash, and then a tinkling, of all the now-shattered pieces of crystal hitting the marble floor. If you isolated the sound of one piece of crystal - yes - that would be exactly the sound...
...no, though, on second thought, it was higher and thinner...
...thin and clear, like diamonds turned into sounds, like diamonds...
...like the way the sunlight glanced off those giant shards of ice as they flew through the air, like light being refracted through a prism...
Her thoughts were going all jumbled. But it was better to try and grope for half-formed ideas than have to focus on the way those...things...
A scream tore the air as a lance of ice buried itself within the chest of one of the bestial-looking creatures. Its scream turned into wet, hacking coughs as blood began to bubble up through its mouth.
Will appeared again, in that strange way he'd been phasing in and out of reality. His fingers flashed in a quick-flickering pattern, and the icicles shimmered into non-existence. Their effects remained, however - one of the beasts now limped on three legs, its fourth one now just a bloody stump that had been sheared cleanly off by one of Will's icicles. The other was sitting down on its haunches, head bent to its side as it licked at a huge gash. And that last one...
Jane averted her eyes.
In averting her eyes, she found she was looking directly at her grand-uncle. Who was, in turn, looking directly at the young Sign-Seeker with an expression that was partly horrified and partly angry - and very upset.
***
Move as much as possible. Try not to stay in one place. Anything in a fixed location can be taken with proper resources.
****
Will phased out after launching his ice-spell, just long enough to move to another location, negating the risk of a pain-maddened Dark-beast jumping at where he had been. He phased back in once he was a respectable distance away and summoned the icicles back. They'd done their job - no point in expending energy to keep them within the Earth-plane. He looked at the two remaining Dark-beasts. Both injured - good. Originally he'd meant to kill the one with another fire-spell, but decided that, considering the elemental alignment, an ice-spell would be better.
The Dark-beast with four functioning legs leapt at him, howling in rage. Will sidestepped away at precisely the correct moment so that it couldn't stop or correct its flight. As it sailed past him, still snarling and unaware of the fact that the intended prey had moved away, Will snapped out a command.
'Einascher!' ***
The Dark One suddenly burst into blue flame. It twisted in mid-air, its howl of rage turning into a more keening sound as it landed heavily on its side, legs out and thrashing as the fire spread. Two seconds after Will had cast his second fire-spell, all that remained of the Dark-beast was a pile of ashes that emitted a truly foul stench.
Will turned his gaze towards the last surviving member of the four, knowing full well the effect his fire-dancing eyes had on Dark Ones. Sure enough, the Dark-beast cringed, its whimpers a pathetic contrast to its earlier growls, as Will came nearer.
There was a blurring around the edges of the Dark-beast's form, and a sudden smell of rotten eggs. Where once a Dark-beast cowered now trembled a human. The man was tall and blond-haired, hand clasped over a bloody side. He stretched out a hand in supplication. "Please," he gasped, voice weak, "…please…"
Will looked at him in disgust. Were they trying that old ploy on him again? True, in the beginning it had been hard for Will to kill Dark Ones in human guise. But that had been a long time ago. He'd learned since then.
You'd think they'd figure out I'd gotten over that.
He raised his hand, palm towards the bleeding 'man'.
'Einascher!'
With a scream of agony, very human in tone and pitch but with the strange harmonics of the Dark-beast's voice underneath it, the Dark One burned as his comrade had just seconds ago. The flames consumed his frailer body more quickly, and soon nothing was left but ashes.
Will smirked, lowering his still outstretched arm. He rolled his shoulders back, delighting in the feel of the battle-rush that always accompanied fights. And killing Dark Ones, of course, had its own pleasure.
He turned suddenly at the feel of a hand on his shoulder, berating himself as he leapt back. His tense stance relaxed slightly as he saw that the one who had startled him was Merriman. His eyes strayed past the old man to the other four teenagers standing behind the professor, their eyes wide and gaping as they looked at Will. But his gaze was drawn back to his darix's face, noting the dark eyes blazing at him.
"Where did you learn the War Spells?"
***
August 8, 2002
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the first battle sequence in Out of Bounds. One of the first battle sequences I've written in quite a while. How'd I do? My specialty's not fighting. ^^;;
I'm a huge fan of anime, so, um, fighting scenes might be somewhat non-Susan-Cooper-ish. What can I say? I like Slayers and Sorcerous Stabber Orphen. ^_^ And I like flashy, elemental, fireball-lobbing icicle-throwing fights.
The spells Will says are not really speech. What I did was write the spells in English (for a different, original story) and then translate it into a foreign language (using Altavista – that engine's pretty dang good) and then mangle the now-translated words into unidentifiable gibberish. The original English spells are as follows:
*Magic's force, nature's flame, for battle's sake be bound in twain! Fire's Sphere!
**Arctic ice, silver death, bring eternal stillness. Coldbreak!
***Incineration!
Remember the golden rule of fanfic:
Reviews=chapters. ^_^
***
Revisions completed October 11, 2003, while watching a series of presentations my class at college was giving. Ours hurt. I couldn't bear to watch.
(cough) ANYWAY, lots of tweaking as usual (I cannot believe the structure of some of this stuff) and revising Will's rules a little. Also removed all mention of the Astral Plane, as that will no longer be any part of my story.
A thought just entered. Will's policy regarding the Dark Ones (I'll just have to hurt them first!) seems awfully like Bush's regarding Iraq. Does that say a lot about our new Will...or about Bush? Hmmm. ^_^
***