Chapter 107
Nothing more was said before all hell broke loose.
Avalina stood there, completely frozen, as the Horned King swept toward them.
Eilonwy screamed, a piercing sound, and yanked Taran's arm, who had been just as frozen as Avalina was, staring at the Horned King like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Now, the boy shoved Eilonwy quickly to the side and out of the way, before backing up himself.
The Horned King approached as silently as any predator. He paid no heed to the screaming princess, focusing only on the one who was to blame for all he had suffered.
Even now, his movements were not hurried in the slightest, simply deliberate as he strode after the boy, hatred billowing off him like smoke off a fire.
Then Avalina's joints could move again, shaken from her horrified stupor, and she ran at them.
"No!" She cried, pulling at the Horned King's robe.
"Stop!"
He pulled away from her like he didn't even notice. All his attention was on the Pig-Keeper and would not be swayed.
Taran was backing up swiftly, looking like he was seeing his worst nightmare come to life. Shock prevented him from simply fleeing the scene, although even if he were thinking rationally it was unlikely he would abandon his friends.
The Horned King's longer, smoother strides were gaining on the boy's, and his burning eyes were locked only on his prey.
"Run, Taran!" Eilonwy screamed at him.
"RUN!"
Hearing her screaming, Taran seemed to snap out of his stupor and actually turn around and flee, right as Avalina grabbed the Horned King's arm.
"Sir, stop!"
He batted her away like she weighed nothing, throwing her backwards without even glancing away from the boy.
A pine cone thwacked against his horns, and his attention was diverted, for the briefest of moments, to Eilonwy, who shrank when he fixed his terrible eyes on her, her arm still up as betrayal of her action.
With the Horned King's furious glare no longer on him, Taran was able to think a little more clearly than before, and he glanced around himself frantically, looking for something, anything, to use as a weapon.
He found nothing.
"Please, stop this!" Avalina cried, grabbing at the Horned King's arm again, but he pushed her away without even a sidelong glance, returning his attention back to the Pig-Keeper.
Taran spent half a moment too long glancing around himself, looking up to see the Horned King directly in front of him.
Taran gasped in terror and leaped backwards, turning to run, and it was this that saved him, as the Horned King, realizing he was an inch too far away to actually grab the boy, struck him hard with a blow intended to break his neck, but as Taran moved he got his shoulder instead.
Taran cried out in pain as the hit sent him spinning through midair to land on his stomach.
"Sire, please, stop!" Avalina cried, grabbing the lich's arm again, but he shook himself free, pushing her backwards. All his attention was on the pig-keeper and he seemed to have forgotten she was there at all.
Gasping in pain, Taran laboriously got up, moving slowly away from the lich, who was nearly on top of him, with the horrified realization he couldn't move his left shoulder without fire coursing down it.
Something that felt like a battle hammer struck Taran across the back, earning a scream from him as it threw him forward several feet through the air to land on his bad shoulder, rolling for a few feet from the force of it.
The Horned King approached as slowly and deliberately as ever, and this only added even more menace to his presence as he drew steadily nearer.
He knew the boy was going nowhere.
The Pig-Keeper could not escape him this time.
Another pine cone bounced off his horns, followed by another hitting his shoulder, but this time he paid no heed to them.
The boy was his, and nothing would change that.
The Horned King felt something grabbing at his arm again but he yanked his arm free and shoved his opponent away, hearing them fall to the ground behind him.
'The flames scorching every inch of him. . .'
"Sire, stop!"
'The screaming. . .the burning. . .his master laughing. . .'
"Please!"
'Everything.'
The lich growled in hateful remembrance as he towered over the one responsible for all his agony.
Terrified, Taran got up as swiftly as his pain and useless left arm would allow, only to receive the equivalent of a stone crashing into his ribs as the Horned King drove his fist into the boy's stomach, lifting him from the ground and throwing him backwards through the air with the force of the blow.
Taran's breath went out of him in a sharp, hiccuping gasp as he bent double with the impact. As he left the ground the Horned King struck him violently across the face, making the boy spin away in midair. As Taran crashed to the earth several feet away he heard something give with a soft snap, right before a behemoth of pain blossomed from his side.
The wind knocked out of him, he could only lay there, his mouth open in a silent scream, gripping his side with his good arm in a habitual gesture in an attempt to block out some of the agony his system was flooded with, but to no avail.
His head had gone completely numb with the force of the Horned King's strike, rendering him completely dazed, and for a moment, he forgot everything except how much pain he was in and the taste of blood filling his mouth. He couldn't hear a thing.
Agony coursed through his body from many areas at once, and his lungs were refusing to work like they were supposed to.
A shadow fell over him, and he looked up, those blood red eyes filling him with a numbstruck terror only this monster could evoke as they stared down at him, murder in their depths.
The Horned King grabbed Taran by the throat and pulled the boy up to him, his grip swiftly tightening.
Taran, already suffocating from having the air removed from his body, could only gag desperately as his airway was quickly sealed off.
The ground disappeared beneath his feet as the Horned King brought him to eye level, their faces mere inches apart.
Taran's already wide eyes got even wider, staring back into those blazing eyes that bore right through his own, unable to look away.
Stripping him bare, they stared right into his soul, and he was stricken with the pure horror of what he was seeing.
He saw the very flames of Hell in those eyes.
"How does it feel?" The Horned King hissed out, watching the boy with that same victorious expression he had worn when surveying his undead army rise for the first time. No word could truly describe the blazing triumph he was filled with at this moment.
He wanted the boy to feel it before he died. See it. All of it.
Taran felt the icy draft of air against his cheek. He heard his death in the sound, saw his death in that demonic face, and he realized it was over.
Dimly, he could hear the girls screaming in the background, but everything seemed rather detached. His agony that stemmed from his body in half a dozen different places was the only thing keeping him conscious, and the Horned King shook him like a rag doll as he weakly tried to break the monster's grip around his throat with his good hand, despite knowing it was futile.
The Horned King was going to kill him. He was killing him now.
The monster gave a dark, delirious chuckle, and Taran's agony was multiplied tenfold as the Horned King shook him harder, his limbs flapping uselessly.
Black spots filled his vision as he felt his world going dark, and he knew he would never see the light of day again.
A pain in his scalp indicated the lich had grabbed him there.
"You're not closing your eyes," the monster snarled in his face, poison in every syllable.
"I'm going to see you die."
Taran's already weak struggles were swiftly becoming nonexistent. His legs shook uncontrollably and his good arm twitched feebly at his side, its owner having no strength left to lift it.
All he could see through his rapidly failing vision was those blood red eyes, and he realized in horror they would be the last thing he ever saw.
Everything lost meaning to Taran. Thinking was impossible with the Horned King staring so deeply into him. If he would only look away for a moment. . .
But he did not.
It seemed as if the lich shook him violently again, but Taran could scarcely feel it.
Right before he knew no more, the last things he was aware of were the girls' faint screaming, a vague sensation of weightlessness and the Horned King's flaming red eyes.
And then everything. . .stopped.
All of Avalina's attempts to stop the lich were completely fruitless. It was as if he no longer knew she was there.
He threw her back every time she tried to interfere without so much as a glance in her direction.
Avalina did not know if she was the one that hadn't stopped screaming the whole time, or if it was Eilonwy.
Or maybe it was both of them. Her own throat ached from screaming and her ears rang from hearing it.
She and Eilonwy both cried out in horror as the Horned King struck the boy repeatedly, but he ignored them all.
Avalina knew why this was happening. Taran had killed the Horned King before, and now the lich was hell-bent on revenge.
Getting to her feet again after the lich had thrown her aside, she saw Taran hanging limply in the Horned King's grip, their faces mere inches apart from one another, and she realized what was happening in an instant.
The lich was killing the boy.
It was in that moment both she and Eilonwy charged the Horned King at once.
They both grabbed his arms and tried to yank them down.
"STOP!" Avalina screamed, tears pouring down her face.
"PLEASE!"
"LET GO OF HIM, YOU MONSTER!" Eilonwy screamed, her own eyes spilling over as she yanked at the creature for all she was worth.
"LET HIM GO!"
The Horned King dropped Taran as he tried to shake them off and was promptly dragged away from the prone form by his attackers, and he suddenly realized he had two different opponents this time, one on each arm.
They dragged him backwards across the clearing, determined to get him as far away from the Pig-Keeper as absolutely possible.
Everything after that happened in a split second.
Twisting around, he grabbed the blonde's arm with his left hand (Despite the fact another opponent was gripping his left arm) and bodily threw her away from them with a snarl of fury as easily as he would throw the Creeper.
The blonde landed with a cry of pain and terror.
The Horned King yanked the other one loose from his left arm and backhanded it mightily across the face as a scream of pain was heard.
Turning to attack it, he realized he had thrown the human halfway across the clearing with the force of his strike. They landed heavily near the Pig-Keeper.
"AVALINA!" Eilonwy screamed in horror as her friend went spinning through the air to land near Taran.
"NO!"
Avalina's eyes flickered as a strange black film crept over her vision. Everything was blurry. . .but she realized what had happened. Faintly.
'He struck me,' she thought numbly, barely able to think at all as the pain took a grip on the side of her face and stabbed deeply into her head, again and again.
Stunned, she lay there, on the verge of passing out. Her world shook violently and she wondered dimly if the Horned King had dealt her a killing blow.
Nothing made sense. Sharp cracks and groans filled her ears, and her vision was all but non-existent.
Weakly, she managed to roll over on her side, feeling something warm and sticky sliding down her face.
The ground was still shaking. It felt like a herd of cattle stampeding toward them. And that cracking and groaning. . .
A shadow fell over her as she dimly heard Eilonwy scream a single word across the clearing that made her blood run cold.
"EARTHQUAKE!"
The Horned King staggered as the ground shivered beneath his feet, hearing the earth growl like a feral beast.
His eyes still burning, he took a step towards the fallen humans, but another shudder, worse than the last, shook him off his feet.
'What is this?' He thought in fury, right as a crack like thunder crashed against his ears.
In shock he watched the ground split open and separate between him and his quarry, the edges falling off in chunks to disappear into nothingness, and as one of the humans faintly moved, he came back to himself with a jolt as recognition flashed through his system.
"NO!"
Avalina saw the ground separate, dimly. Weakly crawling away from it, she felt the ground she was sitting on shudder and begin to sink.
Gasping in pain and fright, she crawled to Taran and shook him.
"Taran!" She cried, noticing in horror how pale he was.
"Taran!"
The ground lurched underneath her and she screamed in fright.
Swaying, she got to her feet and slid her arms underneath Taran's, locking her hands around his chest. She had to get them away from the edge!
Weakly, she pulled him away, inch by painful inch, as the chunks of ground disappearing continued to draw ever closer.
Staggering, she tried to go faster, but in her injured state she could barely move.
Right before her eyes, the ground seemed to swallow some of the trees around the treeline, their roots flailing as they disappeared beneath the earth.
Avalina fell backwards over a fallen log, losing her footing. The lifeless boy fell beside her in her arms, and she swiftly attempted to rise, adrenaline flooding her system.
The ground lurched, throwing her off balance and back towards the steadily growing crater. In panic she tried to grab one of the branches on the fallen log but found herself grasping only air.
The ground sloped downhill steeply towards the crater, and Avalina landed on her stomach, before sliding swiftly toward the massive hole in the earth.
"No!" She cried in terror, trying to grab anything under her hand to stop her fall. All she got was fistfuls of dirt.
The chunk of ground she was on promptly sank. There was no warning, but Avalina felt her stomach rise to her throat, and she grabbed a sapling tree near her, right as it fell over sideways as the earth around it began to crumble.
"No!" She cried, gripping the sapling.
"Help me!"
The sapling went over the edge, taking her with it.
Avalina screamed in horror at the sight of the massive black crater gaping up at her directly below her shoes, the tree's tiny crown staring down into it.
The roots were the only thing preventing the tree, and by extension herself, from falling into dark oblivion.
She stared in panic as the roots slowly began to slide from the earth, exposing themselves bit by bit.
Sobbing, she gripped the tree, hanging on for her life, and cried out again as the roots gave several inches.
"Help me!"
One of her hands slipped on the muddy roots, but a hand caught it, preventing the earth from claiming her.
Tearfully, she glanced up, and felt her mouth drop open in a shocked, relieved gasp.
"Taran!"
The boy was white as a sheet, and obviously in an overwhelming amount of pain, but he gritted his teeth and groaned through them.
"Climb up the tree, quickly!"
Holding onto his hand, Avalina was able to use her legs to hitch her way up the tiny sapling as the roots continued to give, and she heard the boy cry out in pain.
But he did not let go, and with a final massive effort, they managed to haul Avalina up over the side of the earth, and helping each other, make it back from the edge.
After passing the fallen log, (many feet from the crater) the two of them stopped and looked back.
The Horned King was watching them from the other side of the gaping hole, his face unreadable at this distance. His eyes were still glowing brightly, and Avalina and Taran both froze at the sight, leaning on one another.
A scream rang through the air, and as one Avalina and Taran turned their heads just in time to see Eilonwy (lying on her stomach gripping the ground) begin to slide over the edge on the other side of the massive opening.
As one they screamed her name, causing the lich to whip around himself.
"EILONWY, NO!"
"EILONWY, NO!"
Eilonwy shrieked in terror as she felt the earth she was lying on crumble to nothing. Her flailing hands could not find a grip on anything, and she fancied she saw the black hole open a little wider, as if to invite her inside.
Tears pouring down her face, she felt the earth come away and the sensation of falling through the air come over her, and she screamed in horror.
'I'm going to die!' She thought.
Images of Taran's lifeless body flashed before her eyes as she fell, accompanied closely by the faces of her parents, of her friends, of Taran, of Avalina, of Taran. . .
"TARAN!"
Something snaked around her wrist, yanking to her to a sharp halt.
Dazed, she stopped screaming, turning her eyes up to see what had stopped her fall. . .
And stared directly up into the horrifying countenance and flaming eyes of the Horned King himself.
I got a new reviewer today! Whoo! XD
To Wolfie: Yes, I'm going to keep updating this as regularly as possible. My best friends/editors will make sure I keep going XD And thank you so much for leaving a review, it dearly means a lot:)
To Kitteninthemoonlight: Hope your brain is still in one piece. Lol! xD Don't forget to review! XD