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Souls of the Night

104.

"You know you're all acting like jerks," Tachi rumbled as she struggled with the peas - always a special challenge for Gargoyle with beaks.

"There's your first strike for that," Katana muttered but you could see from her expression that she herself was unhappy with the clan's behavior - with her own behavior.

"What are we going to do? The situation is difficult. Nathaniel is avoiding all of us-" said Goliath.

"Because you're making him feel like he has to avoid you." Tachi thought for a moment, taking a deep breath. "He'd probably seek distance on his own, as well," she admitted, self-reflectively.

Heather began to whimper. "How much longer is this going to go on?" she asked, rubbing her eyes. She had hardly eaten anything."How much longer do I have to pretend to be afraid of him?"

"No one told you to pretend to be afraid of him, don't twist our words," Nashville pointed out defensively.

"You guys told me not to go near him. Not even for braiding hair. Not even to comfort him. You guys are mean, and because of you, Uncle Nate thinks I'm mad at him."

"I'm sure he doesn't," Angela said, stroking the child's hair. "Nathaniel loves you. He doesn't want to hurt you. Neither one of us. But we don't know how fast it takes the heat and fire inside him to get out apart from waking up. You need to keep your distance."

"How long? How long until there's a solution?" the child urged.

Everyone heard my frustrated grumble. The fork in my hand bent-and then broke in half. Nashville got up without a word and without being asked and brought me another.

But I did not continue to eat.

"It's going to be all right. I'll find a solution," I said, as I had repeated over and over like a mantra in recent days.

"But time is racing. If we had more time," Angela said, thoughtfully propping her chin in one hand.

Broadway, who had pulled Heather onto his lap and was slowly rocking her back and forth, screwed up his face. "This reminds me so much of the night the magus put us all to sleep."

"Nathaniel won't be petrified forever. Those certainly weren't the terms of the spell. Fey magic doesn't have conditions written down like they did in the Grimorum arcanorum," Goliath pointed out.

"It's still the most sensible option to wait for Alexander's feedback."

"One "certainly" is not enough for me. I CAN'T sit around idly. Depending on how hard Oberon pushes Alexander, he may not call in at all for the next two months. And who knows if Alex can bring Nathaniel back if he hibernates entirely -."

At that moment, the phone rang in my pocket and everyone froze, stunned.

.

.Avalon.

Ananzi laughed uproariously so that the walls of the castle courtyard trembled, then disintegrated. Into millions of spiders. Alex swung into the air with mind power before the black tide of tiny crawlers reached him, split into four duplicates then he (and thus the other three Alexanders) reached out and fire shot from their palms. Thousands of piercing screams from thousands of creatures burned black in seconds filled the night air. Until the banshee, which he had just pinned to the ground with a gravity spell, jumped into his back. His duplicates disappeared into thin air. She put her now materialized slender but strong arms around his neck and squeezed. Instantly he slammed the back of his head into her face and she let him go. Even against immortal children of Oberon, his years of training with his parents paid off. With his father he had learned karate, with his mother martial arts like capoeira, ju jutsu, boxing and one or the other unfair trick from their wilder times. But his tongue could also hurt and throw the opponent off track.

Alexander grinned at the banshee he had once shared a bed with.

"Ah, songbird," he cooed. "Still bitchy about that snub back then?"

"You impertinent roach!" screeched the wailing fairy, letting out a shrill howl of rage that would have paralyzed all the spectators on the castle battlements, fey and gargoyles alike, in pain if the magic barrier had not protected them. Alex, swaying briefly in the air, raised his hands to his head. Oberon, watching the battle from his throne at the edge of the square, saw him whisper words, then he took his hands away and his ears were gone. Titania beside him laughed softly. When the banshee saw that her death cry would have no effect, she shouted even louder, enraged, and morphed into Crom-Cruach. Wind arose, worthy of a full-blown storm. Those children who had secured the best places hovering above the scene took - like some of the gargoyles - refuge in the window embrasures of the masonry, others clung to the battlements. The Death Worm, a massive twenty meters tall, roared, its mandibles in front of its slavering mouth clacking menacingly. The worm stretched, snapping at Alexander, who narrowly escaped its jaws and took himself refuge in the monster's back. But no, not really an escape as Oberon now saw.

The almost-human, grandson of his spouse proved his talent again. Called - over wind and roar of the beast - now again a spell, quickly thought up with words that meant something to him and thus were also meaningful for the magic:

Little bawler, little worm

Unleashes here some silly storm

Senseless roar as well as song

Stick and wire proof you wrong

Alexander's raised hand briefly bathed in a glaring silvery light, not a moment later he had two sticks in his hand. And a coiled golden wire. While he was still at the back of Crom Cruoch, who twisted and turned to devour his inferior prey, there was silence on the part of the onlookers, except for the crunch and rush of the monster and the howl of the wind. Then someone began to laugh. More voices - timeless, disembodied or topical solid joined in. As even most of the gargoyles burst into peals of laughter at Alexander's choice of weapons to save perhaps not his life (since Oberon would revive him) but at least his honor, Oberon once again had the thought that he just didn't understand humans. He would never let anyone know that their actions and intentions often left him perplexed, but perhaps they could not be blamed. Those whose lives were so short and ephemeral might be walking steadily along the precipice of madness. But out of the corner of his eye Oberon saw his beloved leaning a little further forward, the hint of an enchantingly expectant smile around her lips. And that demanded his own attention for this unequal fight.

Alex, meanwhile, had wrapped one end of the wire around each of the sticks and knotted them. And although he could barely hold himself up on the back of the true form of the banshee, he crouched on it like a cowboy on a bucking wild horse. The crazy boy pushed one of the sticks into the folds between two segments of the worm. He did not ram the stick into the skin - because it was just a stick and not Gae Bolga. But Oberon saw that it was never Alexander's intention to pierce the worm. The boy rose into the air again, flew around Crom-Cruach, and the monster was so astonished that it could only strike at the small body with its short arms. Also at the second, third, fourth time Alexander glided around the worm, always the second stick in his hand, always unwinding one layer more of the seemingly endless wire.

Dozens of times the boy slid around the worm, at different heights even in front of his maw he passed, so close that the jaws tore open the soles of his shoes. And at the latest at that moment, the most simple-minded and arrogant of the children understood that the little human had a plan. All laughter was silenced. Only to be replaced by partly frightened sounds, partly shouts of joy at the victory of one of the real children of Oberon, when the worm finally managed to hit the fly, which had been such a nuisance, with one of his arms. Alexander banged so hard against one of the walls that Oberon thought he heard the human's bones crack even over that distance. He glanced to the side. But not a single wrinkle of worry scratched the flawless beauty of Titania and he looked forward again. Only to see Alexander- though kneeling on the floor and breathing whistling- smiling smugly. He raised both arms- in each hand one of the sticks with the now wholly unwound taut wire. And just as the wailing fairy in monster form began her howl of victory - unconcerned by the shimmering wire in whose lacing she now was, but which didn't restrict her movement - and started to strike the final blow against the insolent mortal, Alex jumped up, flew high and tugged at the sticks.

The golden wire strained. A hundredfold. Squeezed. Mercilessly. Strangled, throttled. Unstoppable. Without the human wielding the sticks having to exert very much force, magical tissue was cut like clay - until the worm, apparently unable to transform back through the magical wire - was cut into a thousand pieces, its remains slapping the ground with sickening wet sounds. Luna, Phoebe and Serene next to Oberon gasped in triplet-like equality. The storm subsided within seconds. Silence again for a moment while Alexander struggled to stand up, catching his breath. Then he looked to the ranks and raised his ridiculous weapon above his head. Now the surprised silence turned into cheering and clapping. The wailing fairy - an angry malevolent child -was not particularly beloved anywhere, and even though most children would have liked to see the human with the touch of fairy blood be put in his place, no one was overly sad or outraged when the banshee got the short end of the stick. But Oberon was not yet ready to end this long first day for young Alexander. It was easy to "kill" an immortal being (only for a short time, he would have the individual parts of the worm put together later) if someone did not feel sympathy for the opponent. Because of cold indifference Oberon had banished his children and his wife from Avalon at that time. He had even forced himself to learn this lesson in humility. But that did not mean that he allowed the human boy to show the same indifference. With him, other strings had to be pulled.

Oberon flicked his fingers. "Gabriel," he said softly, and the handsome turquoise leader of the Avalon Clan, his illustrious honor guard, stepped out of the shadows at his side.

"Yes, Lord Oberon?"

"Alexander has inhibitions about hurting real gargoyles because of Goliath's clan. Find two suited conspecifics and push the boy to his limits. He's capable of more."

A second of hesitation, a second of worry and rebellion in the gargoyle's gaze. But then his expression turned mild and understanding, and he nodded. Oberon appreciated Gabriel. Not as quick-tempered as Goliath - not indignant and argumentative, as if he didn't realize that Oberon would keep any gargoyle Gabriel sent into battle alive until the sun rose. What did a few minutes of pain matter when this was about training.

Gabriel raised his arm and now flicked his fingers so that all the gargoyles nearby were looking at him, despite the continuing cheers.

He pointed to Ares, his best archer. The black-haired orange colored male with the fifteen centimeter long hedgehog spikes on his forearms pointing towards his shoulders was tall and wiry but not massively muscular. A few gestures were enough for him to shoulder his quiver and swing into the air with his large bow.

After that, Gabriel picked out Amalia, whose big eyes briefly grew even wider. She wasn't really a warrior - not even by the standards of the battle-inexperienced Avalon gargoyles. She was a dreamer and a bookworm. She was fast at gliding but so clumsy on foot that she sometimes tripped over her own feet like a hatchling, which is why she was even excluded from some combat trainings because some feared she would strike herself down with a weapon or get within reach of a taloned hand. And that hurt her - Gabriel knew that. Although she was unsuitable in some respects, it hurt every Gargoyle not to be taken seriously.

But her looks spoke for themselves. Alex had shown Gabriel the pictures on his little magic box, to which all modern people seemed to be attached as if their lives depended on it. On that cell phone he had seen photos (paintings captured with technology) of Lexington, who had helped raise Alex and of whom the boy was talking with a gleam in his eyes that spoke not only of admiration but of real familial love. And Amalia, with her fragility (she was the smallest of the clan) and her web-wings, despite her more gray than green coloring, looked so much like Lexington that there was probably no doubt that they had had the same parents. Although, apart from the five-centimeter-high bone crest that stretched across the middle of her head from front to back, she was not bald but called beautiful brown curls her own, which, to the horror of all the other gargoyles, she had cut short one night (they had gotten in the way of her reading). But the resemblance would be enough. Enough to make Alex hesitate. After briefly recovering from the shock of actually being chosen to fight - and her face had reflected that she was probably about to get the beating of her life - Amalia grinned broadly as she was pushed to the front of the line by other, equally surprised Gargoyles. Pats on the back and congratulations were distributed, then his rookery sister jumped into the air.

Gabriel himself, although by his size and strength already an impressive opponent - at least against normal humans - grasped his sword. In fact, he was Guardian Tom's best student in swordplay, and no one would consider it a disgrace if the leader of the clan pointed a weapon at someone who had just wiped the floor with Ananzi and the Death Worm. Gabriel nodded confidently to Tom, who was standing on the battlements near the gargoyles, and his foster father returned the gesture - although both knew that they would probably not win this fight. Princess Catherine had retreated completely to her chambers - unwilling to see her eggs getting their butts ripped open.

In the meantime, Alexander had restored his ears. He, regaining his breath but clearly exhausted and also physically assaulted, turned around as Gabriel was walking towards him. He wiped his sweaty and, due to a scratch inflicted by Ananzi's legs, bloody forehead with his sleeve and pushed his back through again with obvious pain. Maybe a few cracked ribs, Gabriel thought, and although he felt quite sorry and a little ashamed to attack an already injured opponent, he stored this injury in the back of his mind as a possible advantage. There was no honor in attacking a weaker opponent. But Alexander had proven his growing power in the last months - each time a few human years older. He was not weak. He was probably superior to the whole clan if he could bring himself to fight seriously. So Gabriel swallowed his doubts and considerations and stood broad-legged against the one head shorter ginger.

"Now against me, Alexander," he shouted, his eyes lighting up. His tail twitched joyfully and he shook out his wings, knowing it made him appear even more threatening.

The human member of Goliath's clan blew air through his cheeks with a deliberate expression that looked like he was considering whether he would have to endure THAT too.

"I assume I get to choose a weapon, too," he said with that strange smile that just made you queasy.

"Go ahead, friend," Gabriel returned, "if you're quick enough."

With that, he leapt at the human and brought his sword down on his opponent. Alexander threw himself to the side, rolled off and began to run. And as he ran, he shouted the words:

What flies without wings,

what seeks no goal and still spins around,

not to steer, no strings

yet strikes you to the ground

Once again, a weapon materialized in his hands. This time also a piece of wood. But no wire. Only a flat bent piece of wood, quite pretty, smoothly posed and obviously of high quality - but just wood. However, this time it didn't cause any laughter. Everyone, Gargoyles and Oberon's children alike, watched spellbound to see what Alex would do with it. The little human whirled around, took a swing and threw the piece of wood at the onrushing Gabriel. The thing bounced around itself due to its rounded sides as it sliced through the air, but flew far past the gargoyle, who raised his sword, perhaps not to split Alex's skull, but at least to deliver a near-fatal blow. The human dropped onto his back and clapped his hands together, wedging the blade between the flat of his hands. Gabriel's eyes widened at this trick.

But still - the human had only stopped his blow. Above him still loomed a much stronger gargoyle. If this was how it went, neither Ares nor Amalia would have to interfere. Alexander groaned under the pressure Gabriel applied to the sword to push it down toward his body.

"Impressive with that hand trick," the Gargoyle admitted - in no hurry to defeat his inferior opponent. "You'll definitely have to teach me that one tomorrow. But the one with this bent stick backfired big time."

Alex grinned pained.

"I'd be happy to show you that trick. But the one with the stick wasn't a backfire."

At that second gabriel heard a whirring sound- and was brutally hit in the back by something.

"Ouch!" he cried, surprised, even frightened, and fell to the side. Horrified, he saw Alexander straighten up, take Gabriel's sword that he had dropped and pick up the stick from the ground.

"He came back to you," Gabriel muttered, stunned, and Alexander laughed as he tucked the cane into his belt at his back.

"Yes- I have such an effect on sticks."

Alex's gaze grazed for a blink of an eye the gleaming blade of the borrowed weapon - and immediately had to leap aside before the arrow he had seen in the reflection pierced him. Ares, quick and deadly, had already drawn a second arrow from his quiver before he saw that his first shot had gone into the gauge, held himself upright in the air briefly to draw the bow, and shot again before Alex could even sit up. The arrow pierced his shoulder and he howled as did some of the more empathetic audience. Alex fell to the ground, saw Gabriel leaping toward him, and pressed his hands to the ground despite the pain.

"Devorare!" he shouted, and the just solid ground of the castle courtyard softened under Gabriel's paws, sucking the clan leader in up to his waist. Another painful leap to the side as the next arrow struck only five inches from him, a renewed pressure on the ground.

"Apprehendere" resounded through the castle courtyard, and a tentacle of earth shot upward, plucking Ares from the air. Only by strong, presumably painful wing beats did the archer manage to avoid being slammed full force to the ground. Still, the landing was rough, the quiver whirled around and the arrows trickled to the ground right up to Oberon's boots. Ares cursed and thrashed the tentacle of earth with the almost arm-thick middle of his longbow (which, without arrows, could only be used as a stick) until it disintegrated. Then the orange male glared hatefully up at the human who had dared to force him to the ground. Alex, the sword now in his left hand - not his strong side - narrowed his eyes as well.

"Not very nice with that shot. Pretty close to missing an artery," Alexander said coldly. Ares grinned and showed a lot of fang.

"I'm not here to be nice."

"Good, neither am I." Alex jumped up as Ares tried to sweep him off his feet with his tail.

"Oh come on. I grew up around gargoyles. Like I don't know that old trick." Again a jump, then immediately a violent stomp with the foot which left the gargoyle hissing and the tail briefly numb. Long enough.

Alex raised his sword and heard a shrill screech behind him shortly before Amalia dropped into his neck, brutally ripped the arrow from his shoulder and dragged her claws across his back before Alex could even react. The scream stuck in his throat as the barely fifty-pound female leapt onto his shoulders and pushed off violently to rise back into the air, warbling with triumph. But her kick had the effect of causing Alex to fall forward - directly onto Ares, who groaned under the sudden weight. A shudder went through Alex at the sound, and the second he and the gargoyle looked at each other in surprise was instantly over. Simultaneously, both men acted. The human slammed his head against the gargoyle's brow bone, and the gargoyle ripped a spike from his forearm and rammed it into the human's side.

Had to separate the chapter. And if there are any latin speakers among you, you may tell me if Devorare and Apprehendere are more or less correct.

Thanks for reading, Q.T.