Chapter XV: Mustela’s Fang
As Makora thundered towards Cédes, Stefi fought to hold on to Ifaut as the beast veered side to side to avoid the fire and lightning being hurled their way. Cédes, her attention drawn to Makora’s pounding footsteps, had found herself a more visible target, in a manner of speaking.
Fire erupted from the land even more fiercely, and lightning crackled and danced about Cédes as the very air itself began to burn. Those soldiers who had managed to get close fell gasping now that the air was robbed of oxygen.
“Cédes, it’s us!” Stefi shouted. Her words were drowned by the gunshots and thunderclaps that rang loud in the dim day.
The next second a bolt of light seared across Makora’s side, filling Stefi’s nose with the clean smell of ozone and the stench of charred vegetation. The mass of earth didn’t slow its stride. It at last skidded to a halt a short distance from Cédes, close enough that they could see her bared teeth as she collapsed to her knees, far enough so they didn’t burn.
“Shizai,” Pheia said, scooping up the watery ferret and leaping to the ground, “you know what to do.” The others remained atop Makora, oblivious to the bullets that whined past and struck the elemental with no ill effects.
Let’s go! Shizai said. The elemental waddled closer. Nothing. Too hot! she shot back. The heat, there’s no water left in the air or earth I-
Before she could finish she disappeared in a cloud of steam as a pillar of fire erupted beneath her. Already weakened from helping Stefi earlier, and out of her element, she didn’t reform.
‘The only thing that can truly harm an elemental is another elemental.’ Cédes’s words rang in Stefi’s head. Did harm extend to destroying if they were weakened?
“She’ll live,” Ifaut said as if reading Stefi’s thoughts. “Makora survived worse. Isn’t that right, big boy?”
Makora let out a throaty rumble beneath them, a noise Stefi recognized as dooking.
“I don’t care, I only care about Cédes!”
Then let me help. The voice came from nowhere, breezing through the heads of all present.
“Who’s there?” Stefi released Ifaut and looked all about her.
Me! Fairun! The wind! Whoosh, and the flames are gone! the tiny voice squeaked, and in a gust that ruffled her hair Stefi found the ghostly outline of a ferret perched on her shoulder. It quivered, ever-shifting and barely visible.
“There… there’s still an airship left. Are you sure you’re strong enough? And wait, don’t you need an Acharnian to command you?” She took the stone from her pocket and clutched it tightly.
I can draw strength from a Fieretsi as well as an Acharnian, Fairun said as she drifted in front of Stefi, lighter than a thistle seed. I suffered a lot of pain from the humans. There was a time I sought only the source of Crepusculum’s four winds. Now I seek only revenge.
Before Stefi could ask what Crepusculum was, a gale screamed past, toppling a very puzzled Makora to the ground. His passengers barely had time to leap to safety before being crushed.
The gale’s howl rose with every passing second, growing more pained and angry. At last, with an otherworldly scream, it contorted itself into a funnel of wind about Cédes, drawing the flames into itself.
Stefi held her ground, glued in place by her fear. The human soldiers did no such thing; they turned and fled as the whirlwind howled about Cédes like a tortured beast, burning and crackling with forks of light.
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it vanished. Silence once more prevailed.
A gentle gust whirled about Stefi, tugging at her hair, and Fairun drifted towards her face like a tiny spirit. Go get her, she giggled.
Stefi hurried to Cédes’s still form lying spread out on the charred, smoking ground. As she propped up the pale Furosan’s head, two objects thudded to the ground beside her. The two stones. Thinking quickly, she pocketed them, along with Fairun’s.
“You… you came…” Cédes’s red eyes fluttered open, unseeing. “You stopped me. But why?” She tried to sit up. Too weak to do so, she fell into Stefi’s arms.
“We can win this without you blowing yourself up, stupid girl.”
“Yeah,” Ifaut piped in as she jogged over, a now upright Makora lumbering behind like a friendly pet. “Think we’d let you have all the fun, now?”
Cédes jerked upright despite the pain and lack of strength. “You’re alive, Miss Ifaut? How?”
“Long story,” Ifaut said. “We’ll tell you later. Right now we need to clean up here. You rest.”
“The young Furosan speaks the truth,” Rhaka interrupted. “You must rest. We cannot further discuss the nature of our world if you die here.”
“Too right, old dog-face,” Ifaut said with a cheeky grin. “Me, Sansonis, and Makora will go take out that stupid ship over there. There aren’t a lot of humans left thanks to Cédes. I reckon they’ll surrender once we destroy their only escape.” Once more she leapt onto Makora, gripped the vegetation on his back, and kicked him into life as Sansonis scrambled up behind her.
“Good to see Miss Ifaut’s as lively as ever,” Cédes said. “We were foolish to think something like an exploding airship could kill her. She wouldn’t allow it.”
Stefi turned to watch them leave as Makora trampled a path through the retreating survivors. She felt a sudden gust as Fairun blew past.
I’ll help! Her tiny form swept across the land, snatching up sharp weapons in its wake: swords, broken spears, even knives. In the blink of an eye she came to a halt between the humans and the Bold, suddenly assuming the form of a young girl who looked little more than five. Dozens of weapons danced about her as if gripped by invisible hands, slicing the air.
Now, do we surrender? she teased. All at once the weapons leveled themselves at what remained of the Sol-Acrimans. A few of the soldiers laughed, more from fear than mirth at a ghostly young girl threatening them.
No? Fairun shot back, not waiting for a reply. She waggled a finger disapprovingly. Then die! With a snap of her fingers the weapons hurled themselves forward, each a deadly missile. Nearly all of the humans fell dead, run through by their own weapons with such force that many were pinned to the ground.
Sweet revenge, she tittered.
The sight of her, a small child laughing gaily at the deaths of dozens of people, chilled Stefi more than any other sight she’d yet seen during the conflict, even more than the faceless Furosan falling to its death from Alzandia. She staggered as she felt ready to faint.
“Enough!” A commanding voice boomed across the landscape. A second later it was followed by Ifaut’s terrified scream as Makora tumbled over. After a few ground-shaking rolls he came to rest beside the Bold, unmoving, the elder tree sprouting from his back now snapped off.
Panicking, Stefi and Pheia began to run, Cédes supported between them, ignoring the dead and dying soldiers they passed. Ifaut and Sansonis were nowhere to be seen.
The cause of what had felled Makora soon flew into view. At first Stefi couldn’t tell what the large object that hurtled over their heads before tumbling a short distance was. When it came to rest, realization made her shiver. It was Makora’s front leg, torn off by some unfathomable violence.
As Sansonis’s world righted itself, he clambered to his feet, sore but with nothing broken. His attention fell on Ifaut. Her upper body lay unmoving, the rest of her pinned beneath the small hill of Makora. His focus soon shifted to the figure standing above him on the Bold’s deck, clad in leather and plate armor and a helmet in the shape of a grinning skull that revealed only gray eyes. It was the source of the voice from moments before.
“Ah, Sansonis,” it said, its voice gloating. Excited, even. “It’s been far too long. How are you, my dear boy?”
Sansonis ignored it and instead knelt beside Ifaut. Unconscious, he realized, but still breathing. By some stroke of luck she’d become trapped beneath what remained of Makora’s front right shoulder, a gap that pinned her body but didn’t crush it. The spear lodged
in the elemental’s neck jutted over her almost protectively.
“Sansonis!” He heard his name called again. Stefi this time, accompanied by Cédes, Pheia, and Rhaka. “Is Ifaut okay?”
“I hope so,” he said. “Though it appears we have more to worry about.” He gave Ifaut’s head a pat, a promise he wouldn’t be long.
“And Stefi Valtela too,” the figure continued. “We meet at last.”
Stefi jerked, too shocked to reply. How did this soldier know who she was?
“You have proven to be quite the nuisance. Giving us the slip in Valraines, destroying half the airship fleet in Sol-Acrima, taking our stone.”
You! Fairun screamed, streaking towards the soldier.
He laughed, and with a wave of his hand Fairun dissipated with a pained shriek.
“You like what we can do?” he asked, holding his hand before his face. “A handy little skill courtesy of your friend Sansonis there. Although we couldn’t have gained it for ourselves unless someone, rather unfortunately, killed him.” He turned his head to Ifaut, and Stefi was sure there was a smile beneath that echoed the ghastly one of the helmet.
“Who are you?” she shouted back, but it was Cédes who answered.
“Is it not obvious?” she said through gritted teeth. “I can smell the Nefairu seething before me. Karick IV and Kardin. The same stench Sansonis once bore, though no longer.”
Karick clapped his hands in mock applause. “Correct, White Demon, it is indeed us. For a moment there we were rather disappointed that our men had been decimated, the fleet reduced to but one ship. But now you wander into our midst bearing all five stones of Feregana’s elementals. This little gift is adequate compensation. Thank you.” He bowed before continuing. “Look about you. See this glorious night descending in the middle of the day? The world itself wishes to welcome in this new age of humanity. So eager it is that the light itself flees before our might. Observe.”
Karick flicked his wrist and Makora’s severed leg was lifted on unseen wings. Another flick, and it soared out of sight, crashing at last into Alzandia.
“And none of it would have been possible without the help of our dear Sansonis here, or TS-01 as we used to affectionately call him. Murdering his parents so he would be found by the Otsukuné, then murdering all of them too! Brilliant, if we may say so. A Kalkic, hated by other humans and losing not only his birth parents, but his entire adoptive race as well. How much grief, how much hatred, lay in his heart, at last manifesting itself as pure Nefairu. Hard work, yes, but a worthwhile investment. Too bad his little sister didn’t have the same will to survive the later phases of Project Nefairu.”
At those words Sansonis fell to his knees next to Ifaut, and tears of rage and sorrow burned in his eyes. His birth parents had been killed because of him, and a sister he had never even known existed had died. An entire race had been slaughtered on his behalf, all to nourish the latent darkness shared by all humans. He had been the one to drag the Otsukuné to the brink of extinction, leaving them poised above the endless abyss. And all he could do was cry for Ifaut, for the Otsukuné, the dead family he would never know, the world he had now doomed.
“Chin up, my boy.” Sansonis raised his head to see, through his tears, that Karick had jumped down to join him and that his friends had been hurled some distance away. He didn’t even resist when an invisible force clamped about his neck and hauled him upright and off the ground.
‘Good, let me die for what I’ve done,’ he thought as his vision darkened and he choked on the invisible hand tightening about his neck. The same power he had used to harm and kill others was now turned against him. How fitting.
Kalkic… he thought he heard a voice rumble from the depths of his mind. Mustela’s Fang. Use it. Only a fallen star may pierce the blackest night.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he thought, thoroughly tired of all the voices that had already inhabited his head and not wanting another.
The spear in my neck.
He turned, his fading vision alighting on the wooden spear centimeters from his hand. A new surge of strength arose inside him. “I’ve caused terrible things,” he choked aloud as his fingers closed about the spear’s shaft. “Leaving Ifaut alone won’t be one!”
In one swift movement he pulled the spear from Makora’s neck and swept it upwards before him. A yell of pain arose from Karick and the grip on his throat vanished. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath and still clutching the spear Makora had called Mustela’s Fang.
There was a clang as the helmet Karick had been wearing hit the ground, knocked off by Sansonis’s attack.
“No,” Sansonis said as strength slowly returned to his limbs and he gulped down stale air that now tasted of death and night. “Impossible.”
“No, more than possible,” came the reply from behind a now-visible smirk. “You know all too well that we Kalkics have a certain… affinity… for Nefairu.”