Shield of the Gods (Aigis Trilogy, Book 1) (40 page)

             
Aerigo looked at her affectionately, and started to pour the last of the healing balm into his palm.

             
“Wait!” She took the bottle from him gently. “Here.” Roxie squirted the substance into her hand and gently rubbed the open slash on his chest. Aerigo squinted his eyes and clenched his jaw, and Roxie felt his muscles tense and relax under her hand. Once he took the empty bottle from her, she realized she could stop touching his chest. “All better?” she asked, flushing.

             
He nodded. “Thank you.”

Chapter 27

The Next Beginning

              Rooke’s corpse lay on its back with an ornate dagger protruding from his chest. His head was tilted to one side, his face relaxed, almost happy. Happy to be back with his wife, Roxie guessed. His legs were skewed and blood seeped from his mouth and the stab wound.

             
Aerigo bent down and pulled out the dagger, then chucked it aside. He folded Rooke’s hands over his rotund belly and straightened out his head and legs. Limping his way back to Roxie, he said, “It’s time to leave,” then fell to his hands and knees.

             
Roxie knelt beside him. “Aerigo! Are you okay?”

             
He was breathing hard. “I forgot how… draining that was.”

             
“Let me help you up.” Roxie wanted to panic. Who knew how many more enemies were nearby, closing in for the kill? Aerigo didn’t object. In fact he put one arm over her shoulders and they stood together. Aerigo was sticky with sweat and his skin felt like he was fire. “To Baku’s?”

             
“No. Too obvious. He knows me well enough to know that’s exactly where I want to go.” Aerigo took a deep breath, raised his free arm and tried to pass into another world. His arm shook and he almost collapsed again. He bent over gasping for breath. “I can’t—you gotta do it.”

             
“How?” she said.

             
“Stretch out your arm and spread your fingers. I’ll direct us to where we want to go.”

             
She did and he rested his arm and hand on top of hers, his sweat gluing them together.

             
“Do you feel anything?”

             
Frightened.
“Yeah.” Something like a fabric wall pressed against her palm. It felt solid, yet flexible.

             
“Find the center and push it with your mind.”

             
Center?
She felt around as if she were looking for someone with her mind, and accidentally found what she was looking for. The discovery startled her and she almost lost track of the door as her hand brushed upon something round and more solid than the rest of the fabric.               “Push the round thing?”

             
“Push it hard.”             

             
Roxie pushed at it and nothing happened. She pushed harder and the door responded by pushing back. No wonder Aerigo had almost collapsed. It felt like she was trying to push a ten-ton block. When the door pushed back it felt like deep water pressure trying to crush her skull. She braced herself, then pushed harder, and the air in front of her began to look watery and swirl. The door pushed back just as hard, sending them both stumbling backwards. They caught their balance and Aerigo plopped his arm back on top of hers.

             
“Again. You’re getting it.”

             
For some reason, the door’s stubbornness annoyed her. She imagined herself reaching out with both arms and visualized both her hands on the firmer center. As she physically leaned forward, she visualized throwing all her weight into the center of the door.

             
The shock of world-hopping jolted them, and then they were standing in a new world.

             
“I did it!” Roxie exclaimed, half disbelievingly. A willow forest lay ahead with remnants of a campsite underneath the largest tree. The surrounding land was covered with rolling, grassy hills.

             
Aerigo’s head fell onto Roxie’s shoulder and rested there, his burning cheek against hers. His weight bore down on her shoulders, and he began to breathe easier.

             
Oh goodie. For once I’m not the once passing out and having to be carried around.
Roxie bent her knees and grabbed Aerigo by the back of his own, then straightened up and trudged over to the campsite.

              As soon as Leviathan was freed of petrification, he excused himself from Din and Baku to what tragedy had befallen his city. He instantly transmitted himself to Phailon, hovering next to the pillar.

             
Half the city had been reduced to a smoky ruin and the remainder was scarred with wreckage. Phailon’s great pillar was intact but there were giant scorch marks in the shape of hands hundreds of feet from the top. The Dragon God flew over and grabbed at one as he tried to contain his rage.

             
Images of the attack on Phailon flashed through Leviathan’s mind: the falling pillar, two evil black dragons, people running and screaming, trolls, one good man’s death and the Elf who toppled him. Fury, sadness, fear, the sharp smells of fire and blood. All the pictures and emotions in Aerigo’s mind filled Leviathan’s. He snatched his clawed hand away as if he had been burned. “Nexus!”

              As soon as Roxie laid Aerigo down at the campsite, with his body leaning against a log, she borrowed his dagger and collected tinder to start a fire. A circle of rocks with black and grey ashes inside was already provided for her. She set up a tee-pee with her tinder and collected a bunch of dried moss at its base.
Now for the hard part,
Roxie thought unhappily to herself. She reached for Aerigo’s dagger and the flat rock she had found earlier.

             
There was a clatter of small pieces of wood.

             
Roxie snapped her gaze to the fire pit, holding the rock and dagger loosely. “No! That took me forever to set up!” She kneeled over the pit and painstakingly propped all the pieces of wood against each other. “Now stay up this time,” she ordered the tinder, collecting the dagger and rock once more.

             
A breeze came by and the teepee shifted—but stayed standing.

             
Roxie stared at the teepee, waiting for it to fall, yet the tinder stayed put. She closed her eyes, exhaling with relief, then adjusted the moss and began trying to make sparks.

             
All she managed to do was heat up the rock with friction as she wore a groove on its face. After several minutes of trying all sorts of ways to scrape, scratch and cut the rock to make sparks she gave that up and tried to magically light the wood, even though she didn’t know any fire-starting spells. She pointed a finger at her teepee. “Fireball!”

             
Nothing.

             
“Fire blast!” she yelled, pointing with her palm.

             
Still nothing.

             
She held out both hands. “Flame-oh,  light-oh?”

             
Nope.

             
“Alaka—oh that’s so cliché!”

             
She threw the rock down in frustration. The rock connected with another sitting along the ring and, thanks to her brute strength, sparks flew out and landed in the moss. Smoke rose from the moss.

              Dumb-founded by her stroke of luck, Roxie almost let her success die at the hand of a passing breeze, but regained her senses just in time to cup her hands around the glowing moss. She blew gently on it and, a few more handfuls of moss later, the tinder began to burn. Once the entire teepee caught flame, she chanced leaving Aerigo behind in search of extra fuel.

             
Roxie learned that it took a lot of wood to keep a fire going. By midnight she decided it was time to let it die down. But not to sleep. She had promised herself and Aerigo to stay awake all night. The distraction of keeping the fire alive had helped greatly. Fatigue was catching up with her now though. Her eyelids kept lowering and it hurt to keep her eyes open. She longed to lower her chin to her chest, and every so often she snapped into wakefulness every time her head dropped forward. Roxie stopped drawing in the dirt with a stick, threw it in the fire and reached for her canteen. At some point growing up she had been told that drinking water would keep her awake, but the cool liquid did nothing to help. If anything, it made her sleepier.

             
Roxie rubbed both eyes, yawned, and scooted closer to Aerigo. She sat in the crux of his waist, her knees drawn up to her chin and arms, hugging them to her chest. Small flames and glowing embers flickered under her gaze. Roxie stared at these dancing lights, mesmerized. In under a minute she was asleep.

             
In her dream Roxie was being chased by a dark figure that she refused to turn around and identify. She had to get away but her arms and legs wouldn’t pump as fast as they could. Something was dragging her down. Suddenly she was falling down the side of a cliff. Right before impact she woke up.

             
The pale colors of dawn painted the horizon. She yawned while the first birds filled the air with their song.

             
A faint click from the forest snapped her awake. Something shot out of the bush towards Aerigo’s unprotected shoulder. Roxie managed to catch the object before it struck him, but the impact stung her palm. She pulled it out and threw it to the ground, then clutched her hand. The foreign object was a dart of some kind with a thick, inch-long needle. An image of a dragon was etched into the glass vial. She looked at the hole in her palm and the skin around it turned a livid pink.
Poison!

             
There was another soft click from the forest and Roxie shielded Aerigo again.

             
A second dose of toxin entered her system.

             
Roxie moaned as she pulled out the dart. Her hand was already swelling and it burned and itched. She gritted her teeth, forced herself to her feet as she mentally searched the trees for who’d shot at Aerigo. She fell to her knees after one step and waited for her head to stop spinning. She tried to stand again, gave up when her head spun again, and sat on her heels. And then it felt like her windpipe had shrunk. She put a hand to her throat and tried to take a deeper breath but couldn’t get air in as fast as she wanted. Roxie crawled over to Aerigo on three limbs, her poisoned hand pressed to her stomach. She called his name weakly.

             
Aerigo continued sleeping.

             
She sucked in air. “
Aerigo!
” Roxie gasped at a sudden stab of pain, which blossomed all the way to her shoulder. She squinted her eyes closed and prodded his side. “Wake up,” she pleaded hoarsely.

             
A pair of hands clasped her left hand.

             
“What happened?” Aerigo asked.

             
Roxie snapped her eyes open and Aerigo repeated his question. She glanced at the pair of darts, then held up her throbbing hand. Aerigo took her hand and looked at it, then glanced at the spent darts.

             
“Help me,” Roxie said. She started tilting to one side, but Aerigo caught her by the shoulders.

             
“Try to stay awake.”

             
The fire in her arm was spreading to the rest of her body, making her feel faint.
Bad fire.
Aerigo’s vision of the phoenix surfaced in her mind. She opened her mouth to say the two words but no voice came out.

         “Rox?”

              Her head lolled forward and she fell unconscious.

              Nexus lay sprawled on his throne, an elbow on one armrest and his leg hanging over the other. Once again, he was waiting. His vaulted palace glowed amber, like some eternal sunset, and the air hung warm and heavy. Nexus hated sunlight and kept his realm’s sky blanketed with dark clouds that stormed when he was in a foul or exultant mood.

             
In the center of the hall, a patch of air blurred while its edges looked like they were getting sucked into the middle. A pale hand appeared, followed by an arm and the rest of a body cloaked in black. The Elf stepped forward as the air returned to normal behind him. Kabiroas pulled back his hood, revealing a narrow, pale face full of gloating.

             
Nexus stood and and beckoned the Elf forward. “Welcome back, Kabiroas. What news do you bring?”

             
“Excellent news, Master. Our task is fulfilled.”

         “The Aigis are dead?”

              “The girl took both poison darts. Her death is certain, and Aerigo is still spent. He has fled to yet another world.”

             
“Then he’s wasting his timing trying to save the girl,” Nexus said. “Call back Gilonas and Dakar. Aerigo is no longer a threat now that everyone’s armies are almost done assembling.”

             
“Yes, Master,” the Elf said, inclining his head.

             
Nexus made his way down his stairs and past the Elf. “Follow me,” he said in a low, excited voice. They crossed to the palace entrance and two great doors swung open of their own accord, groaning deeply. An expanse of rocky desert blanketed in storm clouds splayed out before them. The air was hot, yet the gusts of air cold. Electricity tugged at loose hair. Nexus clasped his hands behind his back and gazed at the empty land before them. “Is this land fit for open warfare, or what?”