Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) (22 page)

   
PHWOOOOOOOOSH!
A gust of red flames shot from Steamclaw’s mouth, drenching the Sea Demon’s flesh in a deadly heat. A horribly hot, sticky substance that burned like acid splattered on Gribly’s face and arms and chest. He flung his head and shoulders over Steamclaw’s side and threw up as a wave of nausea choked him.
Disgusting! Demon fat!
He thought.

   
For some reason, that set him laughing, and he was still chuckling when Steamclaw burnt its way into the Demon’s body.

~

   
The Sea Demon’s screech was so loud, and the shockwave of power that came out of it so great, that Lauro and Elia were both thrown to the ground again.

   
“Look at it!” the prince shuddered. “It’s clawing at its back as if a giant bee had just flown up and stung it! Look at those arms! It’s like they’re not attached to anything!”

   
“Working by themselves, you could say…” Elia agreed, in a quiet voice.

   
“Allfar! Look- it’s stopped moving… it’s just hanging there like it’s too tired to fight! The flames! It’s head is all in flames!”

   
Just then, Karmidigan rushed up beside them in a whirlwind of sleet and frost. “Look, my friends,” he smiled grimly, “The Demon is under attack from more than us! Someone has taken the battle to the inside!”

   
“Impossible!” Lauro nearly shouted.

   
“You’ve been saying that quite a lot today,” Elia observed wryly. That shut him up.

   
“I must strengthen our defense. Whoever and whatever has joined our cause, he must be aided. The fury of the Frost Striders will be a thing to sing of in days to come!” The burly nymph threw his head back and roared to the sky. Whiteness appeared in blotches on his face and grew to cover his whole body in seconds. In a quarter-minute he was in his Second Form, bounding away over the churning, icy earth.

   
“There’s a man if I ever saw a nymph worthy to be one,” muttered Lauro respectfully. Louder, he said, “I wonder who could have gotten to the Demon like that. I thought we were dead and gone, for sure.”

   
“I think I know, or could guess,” Elia replied, softly, but to him it looked like she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She looked thoughtful… too thoughtful for a battle.

   
“Well, whoever he is, he’ll need help. I’m going up there.” Lauro braced himself for flight before a sudden memory stopped him. “Blast! Where’s my pike?”

~

   
Time did not exist; there was only slime and heat and pain and ugly horror.

   
It could have been a minute, it could have been a year. All Gribly knew was that at last Steamclaw had stopped and he was tumbling off its back onto the gummy, nasty floor of the tunnel the draik had burned into the Sea Demon’s flesh. He slumped there motionless for a minute, his palms and knees sinking deep into the ooze.

   
“MASTER. THE DEMON IS AWARE OF US. WE MUST MOVE QUICKLY.”

   
“Right…” he mumbled, spitting and trying to dislodge the awful taste in his mouth. Finally he looked up. “What next?” He didn’t bother standing; he wasn’t sure he could if he tried. In answer, Steamclaw let loose a final spurt of flame. It melted away the portion of the sludge directly in front of them, revealing a rounded surface that looked to be made of stone. “Oh.”

   
With an effort he found he could stand without wobbling too much. Stumbling forward, he pressed his hands against the rough hardness. It was stone after all, scored and burned deeply all over with various runes and symbols, none of which Gribly understood. In fact, where he ought to be frightened he felt only a strange sort of apathy. The whole battle seemed so unreal he had a difficult time training his focus on the task ahead. He only hoped he could still maintain his unlikely connection with the stone enough to stride it.

   
Grunting, he pushed his palms against the surface, willing it inward. Nothing.

   
“MASTER. TIME IS RUNNING OUT.”

   
The Sand Strider gritted his teeth. “Right, then. Let’s try something else.” His patience was running thin, and he felt more anger than fear. Stepping back, he pushed the cuffs of his heavy Reethe cloak up to his elbows. Then, with a cry, he leaped forward, bringing his fists into a double-strike on the stone’s surface. Before, he had been trying to mold the element to his will. Now that it had failed, his only thought was to break the power that held the stone together with a greater power of his own.

   
His fists struck the stone with tremendous force, bloodying his knuckles and cracking something in his right hand. But the move worked: thin cracks spider-webbed out from beneath his fists and rippled outward like a miniature earthquake. The stone began to flake and peel like dead skin on a scaly reptile.

   
Gribly stepped back. “That’s all? Nothing else?”

   
Suddenly the cracks were lit from within with a fiery light. The stone shuddered, shook, and split right down the middle.

   
“That’s better,” he huffed, but his voice shook. Bloody light poured from the crack and bathed him in its murderous glow. Yet even so, the interior of the stone seemed dark and forbidding, unlit by its own luminance.

   
The tunnel shuddered as the Sea Demon tried to shake them out.

   
“GO! ENTER THE SHELL! THE DARK POWER IS HOUSED WITHIN!”

   
“Do I have to?” he wheezed, the full extent of what he was about to do threatening to choke him.
I can’t know what’s in there… It’ll probably kill me, or drive me mad!
Steamclaw turned a bloodshot eye on him. “All right, all right… I’m going.”

   
With a deep breath, the reluctant hero dove into the darkness.

~

   
“Found it!” Lauro exclaimed, dislodging his weapon from under a fallen block of ice. “Now I can-”

   
“Hail!” called an unsteady, high-pitched voice behind him. “Lord Prince!”

   
“What?!?” he yelled, “Who is it now… oh…” he wheeled on the interloper, only to find himself staring at a scrawny old nymph with ridiculously large ears and stringy gray hair, dressed in the most voluminous blue robes he had ever seen on anyone. A sash around his thin body bore the rune of the clerics, and he gripped a polished white staff in his hand with a lit candle affixed to the top. The flame was the color of sapphire, unwavering and bright.

   
“Are you the Cleric of Mythigrad?” asked Elia breathlessly as she ran up.

   
“Lithric is my name,” the nymph nodded, gripping his staff in both hands for support as the ground heaved. “The care of this Shrine is my task in life, as is the Healing of Ills and the Binding of Wounds. And I would have you know your peril!”

   
Excitable old goblin, isn’t he?
Lauro thought. “Peril, good Cleric?”

   
“Peril! Yes! You must not go up to the Dark Power, Lord Prince!”

   
“Why not? I need to help whoever’s up there fighting the Demon. And how do you know my title?”

   
The cleric ignored the second question, and his answer to the first was vague. “The One who fights Inside is not your concern. His fight is his fight Alone: A battle of the Mind and Soul. He will have all the Aid he requires. A destiny is on him. A Prophesy is his, and he is… a Prophet!” During the speech, the cleric’s eyes had drifted shut. Now they shot open, in alarm or excitement.

   
“No…” Lauro shook his head. “You can’t mean Gribly… He’s not…”

   
“What?” Elia glared at him. “Not what? A hero?”

   
“Well…” Lauro bit his lip. It was exactly what he’d been thinking. “Well, he’s not a warrior… he’s not very strong… and… and he’s a thief! He didn’t want to help me when I met him… and he’s only helping
you
because he’s smitten with you!”

   
“He is
not
!” Elia retorted, but her face was uncharacteristically red.

   
Wind Strider and Wave Strider stood face to face, inches apart, smoldering eyes locked on each other. Lauro felt a not-uncommon emotion flooding his chest: envy. He couldn’t deny he was furious at Elia for defending Gribly, and he also knew that deep down… he was jealous of them both. Gribly had never known his parents, and Elia… she had known and loved them with all her heart, before they’d died. Either choice was better than his: a mother dead from the pain he’d caused her in birth, and a father who had rejected him.

   
“Silence!” groaned Cleric Lithric, standing nearby with a sorrowful expression. He raised his staff. “It is not for you, Prince, or you, Lady, to determine who is heroic in this world. No, that would be too deep a task even for me, old as I am. All that you or I can decide is who we shall follow, and what we shall do with our time. And at the moment… there is nothing for us all to do, but wait. The die is cast; the game is begun. This is but an early move. Wait, and see how it will be determined. In the meantime, Be Silent!”

   
His voice grew deeper with each syllable. Lauro dropped his gaze from Elia’s eyes and looked away. What he saw shocked him: the old nymph was growing taller, brighter, and
whiter
with each passing second! He was, in fact, Changing. For some reason it had not occurred to the prince as something a cleric would do; now it stunned him and silenced him better than any words could have.

   
At the end of the Change, Cleric Lithric stood seven feet tall, slim and shimmering in a frosty coat of his snow-like second form. He looked stately and regal, so totally unlike his former appearance that Lauro almost gasped.

   
“Lay aside your disagreement, Young Ones,”
the snow nymph advised solemnly. His voice was deep and melodious, like the voice of the earth or great mountains themselves. It sounded again, like a bronze gong in a deep cave of the earth.
“I must meditate, and cast my thought towards the heart of the battle. For good or evil, the outcome of this battle will mean much for the cause of the Aura, and the One Whom they serve.”

   
“Waiting…” Lauro shook his head and grumbled sullenly to himself. “There are few things in life I despise more…”

Chapter Eighteen: Names in the Nothing

   
Shadow, all-consuming and all-penetrating. It gnawed at the boy’s mind like a corruptive worm. He no longer knew his name or who he was. He knew only one thing, and that was why he had come: to kill the Demon.

   
SO, PROPHET. YOU HAVE COME. YOU WERE WARNED. NOW YOU WILL PAY.

   
That voice! It was the Demon, wasn’t it? He could not see where it came from. There were no distances here, no shapes or hues, no smelling or seeing or tasting or touching. The Demon had called him Prophet, hadn’t it? Fine then… a prophet he would be.