Knights of Alchemy
Chapter Eight: Out of the Fire, Into the Flood
"What kind of things are we talking about?" asked Cian, casting Restore on Elys. The girl looked vaguely disappointed when the world came into sharp focus again; possibly she had been hoping the ground had spontaneously softened.
"Predators," said Howl in a sure voice slightly tweaked by fear. Humans didn't like werewolves, and wolves didn't like werewolves. If there were any Psynergy-altered animals in the area, they would undoubtedly strike for him first. Then another bit of information caught up to him.
"Howl? What is it?" asked Cata.
"I've never heard of animals around here that walk on only two legs," he replied.
"Alhafrans?" Padriac suggested.
"Alhafrans aren't eight feet tall," said Meg, shaking her head.
"What's your point?" asked the captain.
"That thing is," she said. The Knights turned.
"No, that's definitely not an Alhafran," Cata agreed.
"It's definitely not coming any closer, either," Meg added, and if she hadn't already drawn her weapons and put on a tempered-steel expression, she would have then.
The creature was indeed eight feet tall, and looked as unnatural as they could imagine. Its face was a smoothed-out combination of wolf and dragon, its arms were thicker than Padriac's neck, and aside from the black bat wings, it was a bizarre mixture of blue, pink, and an incredibly cheerful yellow. The back-bent legs and hooves gave it an even more demonic presence, beyond the soulless depths of its eyes.
"Cian?" asked Cata, slowly backing away from it while drawing her sword and gathering their packs. "Ever seen something like that before? Ever? With encyclopaedic knowledge about its weak points, maybe?"
"No," said Cian, backing away much more quickly to load Zak's saddlebags. "And that tells me that finding out what it is would be a risky endeavour."
"Why?" asked Elys, still a little disappointed at the sharpness of indifferent reality.
"Because I won't be ready when a huge venomous spike shoots out of its forehead or whatever it does," the Lemurian explained. "It's a survival principle." It was fortunate that they were fully ready to move and the creature hadn't approached any closer, because Cian chose that moment to cast Douse and extinguish the fire.
The moment the firelight vanished, the creature screeched a terrible howl and rushed for them. Cata didn't hop onto Zak's back, knowing that he was carrying enough already, but grabbed the reins anyway and fled. They were unfamiliar in her hand, never having had to use them before, but she knew Zak's night vision wasn't up to figuring terrain.
As the others ran, Padriac stepped into the predator's path and dealt an incredible straight punch into its forehead, and the Riot Glove was probably the only thing that kept his fingers whole. The creature did hesitate, though, possibly just shocked at the idea of something daring to strike it.
"What on all the accursed continents of the world are you?" Padriac exclaimed. The monster's only reply was to raise a hoof and smash Padriac in the chest with it, sending the captain rolling. "Ah. Unfriendly. 'M deeply familiar with those."
"Padriac's still back there!" Elys protested as Cian tried to hurry her along.
"He's been taking care of himself for years, he'll be fine," said Cian. "But if he's got to worry about us trying to save him, well, who knows what trouble we'll end up in."
"Where'd Cata go?" asked Meg, glancing back at the others.
Zak tried to look innocent. "I figured she was just… um…"
"Unleash Hail!" Padriac shouted, and a rush of ice rose up to crash into his foe. It shook off the cold easily, but the impact of the piratical Djinni's attack seemed to shake it, and Padriac leapt to his feet as well as a lifelong sailor could leap, dashing off into the dark woods.
"What the-" Cata yelped, a half-second before the collision.
"What are you doing?" Padriac spluttered, climbing out of the groundcover with leaves in his hair.
"Helping," said Cata, defensively.
A red flicker of light split the shadows and a sapling toppled, along with an avalanche of leaves and twigs, revealing the bizarrely coloured beast, its eyes glowing a terrible violet and a sudden blast of hot breath escaping its jaw.
"Well that's interesting," Padriac murmured. "Very interesting."
"Storm Ray!" Cata shouted, blasting the creature to little effect. A few trees around them also caught the blast, but they were too quickly scorched to catch fire. It did, however, let out a cry that sounded like a wolf howling in pain in an echo valley and lash out at them again. Padriac rolled, and took Cata with him.
"That was not an especially helpful sort of help," he commented.
"I had to do something!" she protested, getting up again. "You were just muttering about how interesting it was!"
"I'll explain once we're safe- flee now, discuss later," the captain replied.
"Oh, right. Unleash Zephyr!" They shot off between the trees, leaving a mere wake of rustling plants. The monster let out another howl in the growing distance behind them. Cata might have felt less relieved if she had known what it was complaining about. The thing was beginning to worry that it wouldn't be able to catch up in time to join in the destruction.
"You're okay!" Cian said happily as Cata and Padriac caught up with the others.
"Yeah, Padriac and Hail hit it hard enough to slow it down so I could give it a good blast of lightning, and then we left it in the dust," she reported.
"Something like that," Padriac allowed.
"Let's keep moving," said Meg. "I don't know how quick they are, but I'd hate for the last thing I think to be 'very fast, it seems'."
"I am so in favour of that," Howl added.
"Humans do sleep, right?" asked Coal, perched on Zak's shoulders. "I've been left out of the whole civilization loop for a few centuries, but I was pretty sure."
"All in favour of ignoring the Djinn?" asked Elys.
"Arr, ye're walking a thin plank!" Hail growled.
"Sounds good," Cata agreed.
"It's soundin'
good to load the lot o' yer into the cannons, too,
but y'don't see me doin' it!" Hail roared.
"Then can we get moving
again?" asked Howl, hopefully. "I don't
mean to order anyone around, but we're being pursued by terrible monstrous
beasts, and that plays hell with my predator instincts."
They did take off into the night again, at a less frantic pace, and kept it up for at least a paranoid week- that is, an hour, but it felt a hundred-fifty times longer because every rustle of motion in the forest caused them to twitch a foot into the air and reach for weapons.
Eventually, when Cata was thinking that they should look for another campsite for the night, the rest of their dilemma made itself known. There was no clear path through the forest; the Knights had been stomping through as quickly and quietly as possible through brush and the occasionally unpleasant bramble.
The result of this was that there was no side of the path for the other two beasts to leap out from, but they did their best anyway. One of the unnatural creatures dropped from a tree, the other crashed into their midst and swept one clawed hand at Cian's face while kicking out at Meg.
The Lemurian parried the attack with his sabre, and was surprised to notice that it was actually a parry, rather than the hand-removing block he had hoped for. The creature's arms were plated with some kind of built-in armor.
Fortunately for Cian, it had made the mistake of attacking Meg in the middle of the night after a very long day, most of which had been spent inside a city, and an ugly one at that. Her exhaustion was washed away by a tide of righteous fury, and her swords seemed to spring to her hands, wreathing themselves in fire.
An incredible frenzy of strikes followed as Meg drove the monster back out of the group and into the brush. Her blades wove too quickly to set anything ablaze, aided by a recent rainfall in this area, though a few branches were reduced to scorched stumps.
And her flaming swords had another advantage. The monster back at their camp had only charged when the fire was put out, and now its retreat in the face of Meg's blazing brands gave more evidence to her theory- they were mortally afraid of fire.
Howl caught onto this quickly enough, and quickly took the pressure off Cata, who was having enough difficulty keeping her sword on guard against the other creature's attacks. The lycanthrope rushed forward, called out "Unleash Fever!" and dealt a burning blow to the side of its head with his claws.
"Keep going!" Cata called to the others.
"Already gone!" Elys replied from further ahead. "I think we're coming up on a river!"
"Oh, wonderful, more water," groaned Zak. He kicked at the delusion-afflicted monster once with a hind hoof and then took off toward Elys' voice before it could think of retaliating.
"That or become steaks," Cian pointed out.
"Move it, people!"
"I'd rather stay and fight to the death, thank you. Do you know what a wet lycanthrope smells like? And I'm the one with the most sensitive nose here," Howl pointed out. Behind him, one of the creatures extended a long blade from its forearm.
"Duck!" Meg warned, and before she had even finished Howl was crouched, just dodging a wicked stab. Practically blurring with the speed, he rose again and drove his fist into the beast's neck. It was an unstoppable strike, like watching an iron bar extend into toffee, and the monster collapsed backwards, clutching at its throat.
"He's not human," Padriac mumbled.
"Oh thank you for noticing," Howl shot back.
"Can we get to the water now?!" demanded Fever.
"You're excited for a Mars Djinni facing a river," Cian remarked.
"Don't get him started," said Spring, "or we'll be hearing about the time he was in Prox for the next week." Confused, but still very clear on whether or not he wanted to stay in the same area as an armored monster with hooves and blades and an apparent lack of interest in sitting down and working out issues through constructive conversation, Cian made for the direction Elys had gone in.
By the time he reached the river, with the others following close behind, Elys had crafted a large ice raft, and was keeping it as steady as possible while they got on. Zak's weight sent it tipping, but a quick push into the water with Mercury Psynergy forced them even again, and they started moving.
"We're not heading for the Great Western Sea, are we?" asked Cata.
"That'd be a big help, wouldn't it? No, the river flows north from here," Elys replied.
"Fast, too," Zak noted nervously.
"Good. Maybe we'll outrun them," Cata said, looking back at where they had left the bank.
"Outfloat," Elys corrected her, absentmindedly. "I'm exhausted."
"You're going to try to sleep on an ice floe?" asked Meg, disbelieving.
"No. I'm going to succeed."
"And if we start to tip over?" the huntress went on.
"Capsize," Padriac added. The motion of the waves was making him rather sleepy as well.
"I'll handle it," said Cian. "Try to rest, at least."
"I'm worried about sticking," Meg muttered.
But as they travelled further and further down the river, the Knights fell silent. Elys did manage to fall asleep, leaning against Padriac and Howl, while Cian kept an eye on the river, Meg scowled at the "whole Mercury-infested situation", and Cata tried to figure out what was bothering her about the creatures. She had drafted Zak to help, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to do except try not to shift his weight much.
"Possibly the fact that they were trying to kill us?" he suggested. "That's a good one."
"No, besides that," Cata insisted.
"What else do you need once you've got 'trying to kill us'?"
"I mean there was something sort of familiar about them, Zak. Something like… you know when you're trying to remember a word, and you knew it until just a second ago, but suddenly it's gone?"
"Oh, yeah. What's that called… it's on the tip of my tongue…"
"Zak!"
"Well, what do you expect from a horse? I tend to focus on 'they're trying to kill us'! I'm not a natural predator!"
"I'm trying to figure out what it's from, I mean. Do you remember any stories about dragon-goat-bat things in bright yellow and pink?"
"Not really, but if you ask Elys, I bet she'll have a whole story about how they prey on travellers and in another day one of them'll be a Knight of Alchemy and the whole thing'll have been a misunderstand-"
"Druj." The word fell like a hammer onto a forge. Cata whirled around for a moment before she noticed that Meg was looking at them. "I remember from when I was really little. My parents were probably Mars Adepts, like me. And they told ghost stories about creatures called Druj that used to prey on the Mars Clan, way up north. I had forgotten until you mentioned stories just now, but they were a sort of evil dragon, more or less like we just saw."
"Great. Druj." Cata looked around the river, at the forested banks that were pure black in the night, mixed with shadows from the moonlight that somehow didn't manage to brighten things up at all. No one spoke for a while, just waited as the ice raft carried them further along.
Once the sounds of voices were gone, the rest of the world seemed to grow louder. The waves sloshed against the ice with impossible volume, like the wet footsteps of an underwater beast. Cata knew that if it had been footsteps, it wouldn't have been possible to hear them coming from underwater, but she was struck by the sort of sudden irrational fear that she hadn't felt for years.
Cata was the kind of person who always looked. If you told her that the door in front of her led to room containing the most horrible thing in the universe, one that would send her into a screaming insanity for the rest of her life, she'd take a quick peek through the keyhole. And now, suddenly wondering if something could be following them underwater, she crept over to the edge and looked down.
There was nothing but black water, of course, and her own spectral reflection from the moonlight, wavering a little in the ripples. And the moon far overhead, nearly full and shining brightly. A darkness crossed it, and for a moment Cata wondered if it had been a shadow or just a wave.
That was answered quickly when the water ahead of them seemed to explode. She spun to see a huge burst of droplets fly from the surface, which all stopped in mid-air and seemed to be sucked together, shaping into a strange sort of wall. Cata had seen the way frost formed on windows during that one frigid winter a few years ago, when it actually snowed in Daila, but this was on a scale a few hundred times bigger, and without the glass. Instead the river was suddenly blocked up ahead by a net of ice.
"What the heck is that?" shouted Meg, leaping to her feet.
"Elys," Padriac hissed urgently. "Time to get up, lass."
"Mph," she replied, definitively.
He glared at her, a tactic that was lost on someone with her eyes closed. "You do realise we're all about to die."
"You'll handle it," she assured him, somewhat incoherently.
The captain continued glaring for a moment. "If we don't find a way to stop these 'Druj', Daila is going to be overrun with monsters, within the hour," he told her, matter-of-factly. A half second later, Elys was on her feet, firing Ice Psynergy. "Yes, well done, taught that shrub a lesson it won't forget, now how about the wall we're about to hit?"
"If you don't mind, I'm trying to concentrate!" Meg snarled, her eyes closed. Mars Adept or not, Psynergy wasn't her strong suit, and she was frustrated by her failure so far to gather enough power to break the wall.
"Concentrate faster," said Cata, nervously. Lightning was a dangerous thing around water, she knew, so her own Psynergy wasn't going to help.
"I'm TRYING!" Meg shouted, and a flare burst from her hands. Unfortunately, instead of blasting the wall up ahead, it dropped straight down and carved the ice raft in two.
The two parts immediately rolled over, dropping the Knights in the river without ceremony. Cata fought hard enough to rise to the surface quickly, gasped for air, and hit the wall. It reached down under the water, probably all the way to the bottom.
Meg was flailing at the ice wall, so red from anger and exertion that Cata was surprised steam wasn't rising from the water around her, but the ice was too thick, and she could only chip so fast.
"That's not working," she said.
"Do you have a better idea?" the Mars Adept replied. A motion at the edge of her view caught Cata's attention, a Druj landing at the edge of the river. Only slightly surprised that the minor wings on the beast's back let it fly, she watched helplessly as it gestured at the river again. Back the way they came, a wave rose up and froze, turning into a wall of sharp crystals as it did.
"Megacool," Cian muttered. "I hate Megacool." The frozen spike wall rolled toward them on the current, and for a moment Cata's mind was filled with images of very unpleasant futures not unlike a huge garlic crusher.
Then Padriac rose out of the water, holding Elys with one arm, and lashed out repeatedly with the other, breaking the ice wall wherever he could, The Riot Gloves were strong, as was he, but there was far too much for him to destroy in just a few moments.
What he did manage was to create a small safe area, so that when the Megacool blades did reach the frost wall, the Knights were simply trapped inside an icy alcove. One that Cata was worried to notice was shrinking as the two barricades ground together.
An insane plan occurred to her, the sheer danger striking her as a sign that it would probably work. Near-suicide was never a wasted effort. "Everyone grab hold of someone else!" Cata called to the others, and they did, forming a chain of slowly drowning Adepts. Bracing herself, Cata shouted "Storm Ray!"
Lightning lanced down from the sky, blasting the river. Sudden heat fractured the ice and literally blew most of it apart as ice was transformed into vapour, but Cata didn't notice. She was focusing as hard as she could on calling the Psynergy to herself. A Jupiter Adept shouldn't be hurt by her own Psynergy, surely, but the others were in trouble… unless she could do this.
Electricity crackled through the water, promising harm to anyone in the area, but whenever it touched one of the others, Cata's call drew it in, along the line of her friends until she could absorb that power. It still hurt a little, but it was better than flash-frying the lot of them.
When the lights had faded away -the lightning, at least, Cata expected she'd be seeing rainbow-coloured spots for the next few years- the Adepts didn't waste much time being shocked. They rushed for shore and dragged themselves up, A couple of the unluckier ones coughing water.
Meg was alert instantly, and fencing with the Druj a few moments later. Her swords hissed for a moment as their auras of flames boiled the last traces of water, and the Druj made a similar sound when a pair of firebrands appeared in its face.
She led with a double slash high, then spun, stabbed low, and swept the other across to fend off its attack- except that the Druj hadn't attacked. Every step of the routine, it had simply given away ground, apparently without worry. Confused, Meg looked up at its eyes, and instantly regretted it. Both black orbs flashed white as stars, with all the colours of the spectrum at their edges. The blinding light was bad enough in the night, but worse were the rest of the Evil Eye's effects.
All around Meg's feet, grey shapes rose like smoke from the ground, but smoke tended to at least look less harmful. It might destroy your lungs and ability to breathe, but at least it didn't normally look like it would take any pleasure in it. These looked like they would be doing bhangra dances on your larynx.
The spirits clawed at her legs, climbing all around her, whispering malevolence, sneaking into the dark places in her mind where they could hide for as long as they wanted, slowly destroying her from the inside, they were unstoppable, they were invincible, they would defeat her…
"Serupento Fyumu!" cried a voice Meg didn't know, and a blazing shape dove in a spiral around her, catching the shadowy ghosts in its mouth before it struck the ground and exploded in a fountain of sparks. Freed from the spirits' curse, Meg renewed her attacks, scorching lines along the Druj's yellow armored skin.
A moment later, a red-white bolt darted in from behind her, nearly catching the fringe of her short hair, and struck the Druj between the eyes. It staggered back, apparently immobilized by this assault. Meg spun, in case the attack had only hit the Druj because it missed her, but found only a strange woman standing in the moonlight.
"Move quickly," she said, with a strong accent from the Far Northeast. "Your friends have already set out for the nearest village of Anemos."
"Who are you?" Meg asked, sounding more indignant than grateful.
"I am of the Yu Clan," the woman replied, "and have not the time for any more words. I will see to these abominations. You must go on."
"Um… right," said Meg, off-balance. She headed into the forest, in the direction given, only turning at the last moment to add "Thank you." The Yu Clan, from what little Meg knew of it, was a family of travelling protectors, people who rarely asked for anything in return for their services. All Adepts, all self-sufficient, but to encounter one just when she was needed, so far from Izumo, seemed unlikely. There was something very strange happening that night.
"Did you see-" Meg began when she caught up with the others.
"We saw her," Cata replied. "And we were just as weirded out as you look."
"I wouldn't be much of a captain if I trusted someone who went around saving lives for free," said Padriac, and Hail gave an "Arr" of agreement.
"Then you can trust me, I expect," said a voice in the shadows ahead, and suddenly Elys found an arrowhead's point touching her neck. "Because I'm offering not to kill you in exchange for knowing what you're doing in our realm."
[Author's Notes] Cliffhangerlicious, isn't it? But things are almost never what they seem… almost. Review if you want the next chapter (and answers) soon.