The Seed - Chapter 6

To BC

Happy Birthday, and have many more!

The door flew open before Gerald's knuckles hit to knock.

"What in the blue hell were you doing out there?" shouted Helga as she grasped him by the shoulder and hauled him into the cottage.

"… talking," Gerald muttered, most of him in the cottage, a part of him elsewhere.

Helga eyed the crowd of irg-wraiths just yards from the door and hissed an incantation. A clutch of the creatures barreled backward, driven by a force unseen, as if Helga's very words smashed them into a battering ram that toppled scores of others behind them.

The door slammed shut.

"Talking to who?" Arnold joined his friend at his side, familiar with his distracted look.

Gerald took a breath and said, "Rhonda."

At Arnold's perplexed look, he said, "Lloyd. Rhonda Lloyd. Lady Wellington."

"No, no," said Helga, having finished an incantation she'd performed on the door, "Lady Wellington is gone, Gerald. I know you had history with her, but that couldn't have been her."

Gerald threw a look at her. "I do have history with her. And it is that history that allows me to say that no, she is not gone, and yes, she was outside." Then he paused, looking off. "Something like her."

"What?"

He'd suddenly broken away, moving to his armor sitting on the chair nearby, still wet from the night before. "If there is a later, I'll explain it then." His cadence was now more clipped, faster. His eyes darted about, mapping out a strategy. "The long and short is this: we have five minutes to get out of here, and there's no doubt in my mind that some of those monsters have a poor sense of timing and may pay an early visit."

Helga's eyes flew wide. "You expect me to just leave my home?"

He deftly put on his chest piece, harness and sword belt, and then went into his knapsack, fiddling with something. "I don't care to argue the point, Helga."

He pointed at the throng outside the window, his left arm now wrapped in a leather gauntlet. "If you wish to discuss it with them, feel free, but a warning-" he then attached something metallic to the gauntlet. "- their conversation skills are notably lacking."

Helga seethed. "Damn it, this is my home!"

Arnold looked at her pleadingly. "Helga, please be reasonable, we didn't lead them here."

Helga opened her mouth to respond, but a loud click stole her attention. The metal fixture secured on the wrist of Gerald's glove sprang open. From it jutted a pair of crescent-shaped razors, four inches long and glinting in the light. Through the anger, the realization of the danger of the situation flashed in her eyes.

Gerald pressed her, "Is there anywhere … anywhere we can run?"

She thought for an eternal second. "A cave. There's a cave at the edge of the forest. There are tunnels inside that lead everywhere in a maze. It's less than a league from here."

The blood drained from Arnold's face. "Less than a league…? That's still so far …"

"Well then," said Gerald, "You'll need time. I aim to give you more time. When I open the door, run. I'll engage them as long as…"

The sorceress spat out what both men at first thought was a curse, actually stopping Gerald from advancing on the door. But she continued, angrily swiping through the cabinets in the kitchen while uttering a litany of spells. Stopping at a particular cabinet, she withdrew an urn. Still spitting out the incantations, she thrust the jar into Gerald's hands.

"What's-?" he managed.

"Here!" she growled, whipping off the urn's lid. Inside was a white powder that shimmered with an eerie, light blue glow. For a second, Gerald was transfixed.

"Ah, hey! This thing's hot!" He yelled, trying to put it back in her hands.

"Indeed it is," Helga barked, walking over to Arnold. "Go pour it out. A circle around the house. And if you don't want your hands seared off, be quick about it."

"But what's this supposed to d-"

"DO AS I SAY!" Helga blared, and the front door flew open again as if fearing for its safety. The force of her enchanted anger blew away yet another host of monsters.

Little more than that was necessary to get Gerald to cooperate. He moved outside, trying his best to stare down the irg-wraiths as he poured the glowing powder in a parameter around the cottage, his hands growing unsteady with the increasing heat.

He couldn't help but notice that the crowd around him looked more agitated before.

Inside, Helga had taken Arnold's arm and moved him to the back of the house. She sat him down in the same secret spot that her sword had been hidden in. "Stay here," she said.

"Helga," Arnold said, trying to stand up. But Helga placed a hand on his shoulder, and he stayed seated. "Gerald said we should run," he finished.

"You will, believe me. Now, stay here."

It was meant to sound definitive and strong, a command. But, she had to admit, there was a pleading nature in her voice that worked against it. That and the small caress of his face as she walked back to her sword.

Gerald stormed back in, kicking the door shut and tossing the urn out of his hands. It shattered empty by the wall. Helga eyed him.

"When we see the end of this," she said, "you're buying me a new jar."

Gerald waggled the pain from his hands. "What was the point of all that? You two can't be here! Any minute now, they're going to -"

POPFF! Gerald was in position instantly, sword raised toward the direction of the sound that had sent a jolt through the house. But no enemy was coming. "What in the …?" he muttered. Arnold craned his head from his hiding place, trying to see, but a sharp snap from Helga's fingers stopped him when he tried to get up for a better view.

Silence. Then - POPFF! POPFF! Gerald threw himself against the door and peeked out the window. "What is that?" he whispered.

"The powder," said Helga, her eyes fixed beyond the wall in an intense stare. "Move away from the window."

Gerald did so, and as he did, he saw one of the talonned creatures take a tentative step forward, then another, until it reached the circle of burning powder Helga had instructed him to pour out. As it put its scaly foot down on the ring, it stopped for a fraction of a second, then a flash of pink light blew out from its insides, bursting its squiggling innards against the window, a resounding POPFF its only eulogy.

He turned to offer Helga a compliment, but she thrust a finger up at him. Be silent, I'm concentrating.

A series of unpleasant vocalizations came from all sides of the cottage, and a strange surge/retreat motion seemed to wave through the throng.

They were fighting each other.

The mass at the back of the crowd shoved against that at the front, which was desperately trying to avoid the ring of powder. A cacophony of POPPF POPPF POPPOPPOPPFFs signaled the failure of the front line creatures. One of the still-intact windows had been rendered opaque by a steadily-replenished ooze of green-gray guts.

Helga coughed, and at once held her sword up. "You ready?" she asked. Gerald shifted his eyes to her. "Always. You?"

She moved over to his side, her gaze never leaving the door in front of them. "How do they attack?"

"In a swarm," he said. "This may be over in a minute or in seconds."

She stole one quick glance at Arnold, then back at the door. "We need to make it longer than that. I've just been in contact with my sisters."

"You ….?" The question of how she could have contacted anyone from simply standing in her kitchen died in his mind almost as soon as it arrived. "You're sure they heard you? Can they come in time? Can they help us?"

"Question number one, yes." She steadied her breathing, her eyes narrowing into slits as she saw the first of the creatures bump up against the house unaffected.

"What about questions two and three?" he asked.

Helga's voice erupted in an ear-splitting howl. The circle of dust around the house blasted into a column of flame. The throng was repelled once more, smashed yards away from the cottage.

Gerald moved to steady the panting sorceress as she pushed the hair out of her eyes. "Stop asking questions," she said.

And like that, she tore open the door and ran out of the cottage, her voice now a blood-curdling roar as she hurled herself at the bewildered wraiths.

A litany of words poured through Gerald's mind as he saw the lithe, beautiful young woman in a pink nightgown run screaming to the mob of beasts. The only ones that registered was not his own, though; it came from Arnold behind him.

"HELP HER!" he screamed.

His feet were thundering across the grass before he even knew it. Helga had already begun her attack, but only a handful of wraiths perished by her blade. She had uttered a number of spells that were taking effect on numbers of the beasts; some were blasting into burning embers, others were frozen where they stood. Taking his cue, Gerald swept the horrid statuaries with his wrist razor. They shattered like ice sculptures.

The knight quickly rid himself of the notion of protecting Helga - the strategy was to clear the mob and make a path for her and Arnold.

As such, he covered a radius around the front of the house. His blade was edged wind, whipping around the wraiths and leaving them to fall to pieces before they knew they were dead. On occasion, he would lose costly seconds by plunging his blade directly through their beaked faces, but his wrist claw would take up the slack, removing the heads of the beasts often three at a sweep.

Ah, well. Mother always wanted me to be a farmer. Here I am, reaping a harvest.

It seemed a spectacularly uncomical thing to think, he thought. Why couldn't he be funny during battle?

The slight movement at the ceiling of his vision caused him to drop the thought and flip out of the way as the group of wraiths he was about to sail into was suddenly crushed by one of the winged creatures which, by its increasingly graying and rigid form, seemed to be turning into stone.

His warrior's instincts beckoned him to keep ducking away, and he obeyed, just as the calcifying husk burst into pieces.

Over the din of battle he was able to make out a feminine voice yelling "Brimstone spell! Watch the hell out, bucko!"

He looked up into the gray, cloud-darkened sky, and again, he rolled, ducked and pivoted as a near-squadron of the things cratered into the ground around him, the impact and subsequent detonation taking out even more of the wraiths.

He tumbled again and rolled to his feet, in position, withdrawing his blade from the body of the wraith he'd skewered upon rising. He considered retreating into the house - one of the little demons may have gotten inside. If just one of them had, Arnold would be -

It was more of an agonized grunt than a scream, but the wraith that sliced his leg with its claws had done its damage. Another was on him in an instant, clawing at his back. A third barreled into his midsection and knocked him to his knees. His sword fell from his hand.

He felt his forehead being bashed into the ground by the beast on his back, which was using both its balled paws. The one which had surprised him began to tear away at his leg armor. Gerald struggled to fight both, helplessly swinging at the one at his leg with his wrist razor.

With every bite, every swipe, every hit, he could feel yesterday's wounds opening back up.

The third irg-wraith had gotten back to its feet after bouncing off his middle. It deliberately turned to look at him, as if seeking out his eyes. A new, viscous, gray slime ran from its mouth. The impregnating ooze. The seed.

It inched towards him.

Gerald bellowed and suddenly thrust his hands up and behind him. The wraith on his back gasped a gargled scream as Gerald had driven his razor through its throat. He jumped to his feet and spun in a sweeping motion, knocking away the wraith at his leg with a satisfying THWACK.

In one movement, he had regained his sword by booting the hilt, and brought it down with a wrathful cry. His two closest attackers were run through.

Gerald turned then, shooting a glare directly into the hungry eyes of his third attacker.

It seemed to have lost a bit of its confidence.

HA

Helga's hands were bleeding.

Its wasn't simply that she'd been bitten and scratched - she had, of course, but Sir Tall Hair couldn't be faring any better, could he? - but that the had been casting one destructive spell after another. Without powders, meditation or preparation, and that was the worst part. With proper preparation, she could have fought for weeks without food or rest.

But she had had no prep. This was simply dropped in her lap, and now she had to call on her human reserves of strength to see her through. And so, now, she was bleeding from under her fingernails. It made the sword a little hard to grip.

Elspeth, whom her sword was named after, was the warrior who had seen the Scinta sisterhood through the dark Scourge of Shek centuries ago, preserving the faithful from extinction. She was known as the Avenger, and she and her five generals - Scinta warriors all - had created the fighting technique that made the women of the religion devastating.

It was a mix of martial art and sorcery, and Helga had only put a fraction of her knowledge of it to use. Combusting, melting, freezing irg-wraiths fell before her very will. The sword, used as a type of enchanted staff, had caused her to become invisible, move at great bursts of inhuman speed, rip up the internals of an enemy from a distance. And now, at last, she was seeing a break in their ranks. They were not retreating, though - they were being eradicated. A safe path for she and Arnold to the cave was becoming a solid possibility.

But she was tired. No, not merely tired. Between last night and the day's new horrors, she was exhausted. She called upon the goddess to give her strength, trying to force the image of Arnold from her mind as she tried to maneuver over the slick bodies of the fallen beasts around her.

She bashed in the skull of one of them as it hissed at her, another she sliced right in half. The more she fought, they harder they seemed to come at her - they must have known their end was near.

This was but a delaying tactic, however - she'd been out longer than she'd intended to be. She had to move back to the house and see how her two dummies were faring. Calling the name of the winds, she started back to the cottage as gale forces blasted the throng, blowing their dead into their living and bowling them over out of her path.

Her legs pumped her over the dew-kissed grass, and the accumulated slickness sent her stumbling once or twice. A short distance ahead she saw Gerald, and a cry for him to watch out for the wraith coming up behind him died in her throat as she slipped fully and hit the ground running. She quickly collected herself and was up again, but Gerald had seemed to already deal with the wraith that jumped on his back, and soon dispatched the other two.

He then ran into the house. What did he think he was doing? He must have been looking after Arnold, but -

There was a noise behind her. Helga pivoted, slashed, angled and whirled around again - two wraiths down. Two amongst an army. A dwindling army, to be certain, but an army nonetheless. She took her attack stance again, knowing another clutch would be coming at her.

The beasts wailed and growled, surrounding and darting at her, but she was immovable, neither ducking away nor dodging, until with fluid movements she attacked. Her blade sang a dirge for the horrid creatures as she flayed them open, slit their throats, cleaved their skulls. She had expertly stabbed one and kicked it away, bringing her sword arm back and driving Elspeth's hilt directly into one of their faces. The force was enough to smash its eyes out of its socket. It held her attention for a fraction of a second.

Had she not been distracted by the tiny, yellow orb, she would not have seen it - the anomalous activity far off in the distance. She had to continue her death-dance with the swarm while gazing at it, the …. movement? … quite a ways away from the battle. Where was it coming from? What ….

Then it settled into her mind, cold and sick and draining.

The cloud. The big, black storm cloud that had sat in the sky since early that morning over the far hills. It was ….

"Gerald!" she shouted, barreling back toward the cottage.

HA

"The head, boy! Hit it on the head!"

Gerald had fallen again, this time tripped by two attackers as he made it into the house. He'd managed to gore one with this wrist claw, but in the ensuing chaos somehow ended up fending off an increasing group of irg-wraiths using Helga's kitchen table as a barricade. One had become smashed between the doorway and a table leg, and managed to grab Arnold by the arm.

And so it was that he was shouting at the blond youth to kill the monster with whatever weapon he could find, which, at that moment, was the unwieldy lump of pounded metal that he'd intended to make into a sword.

Unfortunately, Arnold didn't seem to know where to grab it. It was heavy as well and, with one arm being yanked out of the house, difficult to swing correctly. He grunted in pain upon accidentally bashing his shoulder.

"Your arm is not the enemy!" shouted Gerald as he gouged a pair of yellow eyes out. He lunged over to Arnold and ripped the lumpy blade out of his grasp, swinging it overhead and pounding the irg-wraith dead with it. "Keep it!" Gerald shouted, and tossed the sword out into the shrieking group.

It plopped to the grass without ceremony. One of the wraiths sniffed at it curiously, and then continued its attack on the house.

"I don't think their interested," said Arnold, nonplussed, after Gerald pushed him back into the kitchen.

"Didn't think they were," said Gerald. Suddenly, he swung his sword in an arc, killing four of the creatures, then yanked the table out of the way. Helga stumbled through the door, falling to her knees as she did. Gerald picked up the table and angled it into the threshold.

"Helga!" Arnold cried, running to her. Her hands were covered in blood, burns and scars lined her forearms. She heaved gasps of air as Arnold helped her up.

"The cloud …" she whispered. "The cloud is …."

Arnold put his hand around her shoulders. "Helga, don't speak. You're exhausted. You-"

She threw his hands off and pointed out the window - the broken one which was strangely not being overrun with wraiths. Gerald moved away from the barrier and glanced out the window. His jaw dropped.

The thick, black cloud outside hovered over the ground as it had since that morning. Something was descending from it - but it was not rain. As it had come closer to the house, Gerald could now see that the cloud was not a cloud at all.

It was a swarm. A swarm of seed monsters.