VIII
A long corridor rang under the tapping of wooden royal sandals, while the old man ran through the tombs of his ancestors. Statues of former kings were lined up on both sides of the aisle. Every single one of them, made in life size, was looking down at passersby, looking full of pride and courage. They were all named Yarael, with the addition of sequential number after the name. Behind each monument, there was a large plate with the body of the ruler that the statue portrayed inside laid down in an upright position. Between the plates, a bright light of a sunny day broke inside through large windows, painted with mosaic scenes from impressive Waeryehenian history, with kings in leading roles. And at the very end of the hall was the ultimate goal of an old man on the run: The tomb of the first and most famous Yarael.
Two girls in warrior outfits ran with the king on his both sides. They caught up with him quickly, while he was coming down the stairs. They did not want to ask questions, the old man already spent too much energy to stand further bothering. They wanted to see with their own eyes, where did Waeryehenian ruler rush so hard.
When he arrived at the end of the hallway, in front of a large stone door, he grabbed two handles made of pure gold. He expected them to open up. Despite the weight of the door, the mechanism used for their movement was very advanced and regularly maintained. But surprisingly, doors did not want to move even for an inch.
“No! Why? Why now?” The king was almost screaming. Dlora was forced to conclude after this kind of ruler’s behavior, that the monuments behind them, as well as heroic stories about the kings, were a bit exaggerated. Tenen even thought for a moment that they should try and do something with their weapons. But it was clear that human power alone could not run over a massive stone.
At that moment they heard a powerful slam of another door at the opposite end of the hall. They turned and saw, the girls again and the king for the first time, a man floating above the ground.
Declavius, a young wizard, approached them, this time very slowly, but with much more fury on his face. A defeat which he suffered in the previous meeting with the Ahlea warrior girls filled him completely with even greater hatred to the entire human race. On his way to here, looking for two women who made him ashamed, he burned all breathing life that came in his way. He crushed to dust a few farms along the main road, along with its inhabitants. Passersby were burned in a terrible fire, even before they could make out from a distance what was approaching. Forests near the main road were still burning at that moment. Before reaching this hall, he ripped several cities and castle walls in just one second.
But before reaching his final goal, only a few seconds before the king, the girls and a broken statue that he sought to destroy, the wizard was able to soothe his madness. He wished, to afford a large and long, unbearable suffering and pain to a pair that had successfully stopped him before.
The girls took out their swords. Without thinking, they charged to the flying human creature, one warrior girl next to each other. In such a situation they had no other option than to attack, even though they knew that such an act was in vain. The invisible force threw instantly right on the tomb doors and pressed them strongly on it, holding one on each door leaf.
The king watched all this with a face of a completely terrified man. Tears and sweat mingled beneath his wide-open eyes. All the legends about the mages, every single and most horrifying detail, that his ancestors from generation to generation conveyed to him, had developed such fear inside this man, So in this moment of meeting his biggest nightmare, the fear was not possible to control.
“Thanks to you people” mage spoke, replacing the angry expression with a sinister smile. He approached the girls, and placed his face before Tenen’s, so close that their noses nearly touched. “we the magicians had plenty of chance to learn patience. Now let me show you how patient we can be, while I torment you for hours!”
A powerful and very repulsive odor that was coming from the body of the wizard, as an additional product of magical force formed around him, the young warrior did not know what to compare with. Her colleague on the other hand clearly associated it with the memory of how burned human bodies on the battlefield smelled.
“But before I deal with you, I will first start with the direct descendant of the great mage Yarael! For his ancestor was the one who chased us out of the Continent in the first place - wizard spoke while turning his gaze to the ground. King laid there, completely curled up on the floor.
“Stay away from me, you bastard!” exclaimed Yarael Twenty-Seventh and then gathered the desperate courage to raise two broken statues, although he knew such act would not achieve anything. Indeed, the wizard just raised his hands and parts of Tarlaeth flew, just as they were launched with a catapult, from the king's hand to his. Evil wizard showed then even a bigger smile and began quietly to utter an incomprehensible spell in a forgotten language.
After the first words, the king lowered his head with a painful spasm and groans. How Declavius went speaking further and louder, the old king reeled and moaned more, apparently suffering increasing pain.
Both girls worked hard with all their strength to resist the supernatural forces holding them pressed against the stone. But it seemed to be squeezing them more and more painfully, the more they had tried to resist it.
Dlora had never felt so helpless and hopeless. She had stared death in the face at least a hundred times, but she never had this kind of feeling that there was nothing that could save her. This situation caused, after so long, the feeling that she almost had forgotten, called fear. Warrior girl could not remember when she felt it the last time. She thought that she beat it forever a long time ago, by containing a constant balance between courage and wisdom, and by knowing that there was no enemy who could not be beaten. But it was precisely this belief that she now rapidly started to lose.
Her young colleague did not let any kind of fear to overcome her. Tenen felt only anger and rage. She could not believe that already on her first assignment she ran into such force which even the greatest members of her warrior order could not defeat. She did not find this fair and wanted to somehow magically pop out of her skin, which she felt such pain in and beat the mage in an equal fight.
There was no salvation for the king. Luckily, his age and weakness rescued him from a long-suffering pain. He quickly died under the feet of a flying wizard.
Mage happily looked up at two warrior girls who still unsuccessfully tried to resist the force that held them fixed to the door.
“Patience, please. Just let me do the task that I was sent to do. It is the time that once and for all, we get rid of a threat posed by this ridiculous figurine.”
He started a new set of magic words. Both parts of the stone statuette started to glow as they were made of metal and began to heat up. Declavius did not seem to feel the temperature change of the objects in his hands. It seemed that in any moment the stone would melt and pour out of his hands like a lava from a volcano. Holy Tarlaeth was coming to its end.
Suddenly, they heard the crack of a broken window on the wizard’s right side. The tinted glass shattered all over the place and created an effective interplay of light. A strong black stallion burst inside the hall, with an armored warrior on his back.
The horse knocked the mage down with his feet. Wizard dropped two halves of a glowing statue and groaned loudly. It seemed that a surprise attack broke away the magic that protected Declavius’ hands from the heat of the stone, suddenly he felt the pain of the red-hot halves. He quickly recovered and tried to get up to go on a counter attack for an unknown stranger, but the noble animal put his large front legs on his chest and pushed him to the ground. At least one rib was heard breaking.
Horseman got off and quickly bent down to pick up parts of Tarlaeth. Then he stood up again, just above the body of a stunned mage. Blackbeard young warrior in shining armor, full of Waeryehenian royal family symbols, looked at the mages with his heroic eyes.
“I am sorry, b
ut your colleagues will have to postpone their return!” he spoke out in a firm voice.
After these words, a new spell started, but this time from the mouth of a young warrior. He connected both parts of the broken statue and they shone again, but this time with a more pleasant, clear white light, brightest exactly on the place where they were reconnected. The horse pulled away as soon as the mage started crying from the pain that was caused by reuniting the two parts of Tarlaeth. Declavius had just enough time before the man finished the witchcraft, to think that he might not be the one destined to become the greatest wizard of all time. As soon as the statue was fully restored, and the light went out, sorcerer's body burst into a dazzling flash of light, and the girls immediately felt the force that held them disappear, and landed on the ground.
“Well, you don’t see things like this every day” it was the first thing Tenen said when she stood on her feet again.
Dlora stared at the figure of a young warrior that had a sad expression on his face when he laid Tarlaeth on the floor and came close to the King's dead body. He knelt down and started crying:
“Father!”