CHAPTER 24: SOUTHLAKE BATTLE
Gha'haram dropped the Grey children in the circle of Revenant and Dark Tide rebels. His giant bearlike form towering over them all like a giant monster from some twisted fairytale.
I have Thomas' children. He said in all their minds. Now lets get to business, before the lore-kin arrive.
Holding each other tight, James and Alora cowered under the malicious eyes that analysed them intensely. They could feel the hate and silent accusations emanating from the crowd, fencing them in, waiting for the order to move on them and tear them to pieces.
The Revenant men and women did not take the shape of dogs or wild animals like Veil's pack, but were in their human forms. Tattered clothes hung from their gaunt, ghostly pale bodies, and a haunted hunger dwelt in their blackened eyes. Dead, all of them; holding onto life's last thread through the Doom Stone shards that burned like lanterns in their foreheads.
Amongst the undead, stood the rebel Lemurians who were shawled in black cloaks with glaive-tridents held firmly in their hands. The emblem of the silver skull under a crashing wave were sewn onto the hoods of their cloaks; and on their faces were looks of assured arrogance, which did not hold any sympathy for the modern-world children at all.
Alora began to cry, but James grabbed her face and held it firmly in his hands, looking deep into her eyes with what little courage he had left.
“Don't worry gnat, I'm here,” the boy said, trying not to tremble. “I won't let anything happen to you.”
“Promise?” she asked with a sniffle, her eyes rimmed with tears.
“I promise,” he said, and she didn't doubt the conviction in his voice. “They won't hurt you, I swear.”
“Touching,” came a voice that brought both captives attention to its owner. A man with one green eye and one blue eye sparkling like gemstones under the dark of the forest's canopy stepped forward from the gathered circle. “However, the boy is right, little miss. No one here is going to hurt you. Least of all, myself. And I tell these brutes what to do.” The last comment was directed at the giant bear.
Gha'haram scowled at the insult, but did not say anything.
“My name is Xharan Ar'Taarg.” The Atlantean was quite tall, and his long white hair draped down to his shoulders, almost hiding the vine tattoo that crept up his neck. “The Right Hand of Kaelan's armies, when our esteemed leader is absent.”
Evidently Gha'haram did not agree, as he rose to a more threatening height.
“That bear-creature is Gha'haram Vith'Daethar. He was once a Nysaean; a good, noble man of great lineage. Then he met a fellow by the name Meztor, who was not too terribly nice—kind of like me—and was tempted by the Doom Stone. Now he is what you call a Revenant. But I'm sure you already know that. An undead, life-force sucking parasite—”
Gha'haram growled a warning at Xharan's jibe and bared his teeth. Then his body suddenly began to stretch and tear itself apart. Animal fur and claws retracted into gaping wounds that had opened up all over it; which were quickly sealed over by newly formed flesh and skin. He also began to shrink in height—the sound of bones inside his body compacting into each other. Gradually the transformation was complete, and a man with black hair and dressed in scant rags collapsed onto his hands and knees. Closed eyes shot open and two pools of midnight stared at James and Alora, who flinched under his savage gaze. “That is all you need to say about me, Xharan.”
Climbing to his feet, the Revenant leader walked over to stand just behind the Dark Tide captain like an unwanted shadow.
“What do you want from us?” James demanded from Xharan. “We have nothing of value. And we don't know where our brother is. Even if we did, we wouldn't tell you!”
Xharan glided across the lawn that the children huddled on, and loomed above them. “You have something your father left behind. Something that will change the tide of war to our favour.” He squatted down next to James with his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled under his chin. “You probably don't know what I am talking about. But it will become crystal clear once I reach into that mind of yours and snatch out the memories I'm after.”
“I won't let you,” James said, but he doubted his own words after uttering them.
The rebel's face seemed to soften, but it was not because of kindness; it was a look of pity. “James, you know as well as I do that you have no power here. Your father never trained you, and you carry no weapons that I can see. Surely you do not think that I am at your mercy?”
“I-I...” James stuttered. “We don't have those memories.”
“I will be the judge of that,” Xharan said with a cold smile. He then reached into his black jacket and withdrew an archaic looking device that caged a large diamond. A magnify glass protruded from it on a small copper arm. “The Akashic Eye can see all things, James. All your darkest dreams...”
Jai's right arm was hooked around Dart's neck, holding the Revenant in a firm headlock.
“You will never defeat us all,” the giant Revenant growled, his hands clawing at Jai's choking forearm. “We will tear you apart, including the children. We will feed on your flesh!” He strained to stand up from his knees, but the Kratoth's strength pressing down on his back was unyielding. He even tried to use his inherent power to absorb Jai's essence; but something was stopping him from doing so.
“Is that so?” Jai said, squeezing tighter. The gold bands on his arms glowed brighter as the Revenant tried to absorb him—counteracting the dark power with its own. He reached out his hand, and Rowan tossed his glaive to him.
“Enough!” Veil screamed, her nails suddenly growing long like curved daggers. “Release him, or you will pay dearly!”
“You were going to kill us anyway,” Jai laughed. “I will release this brute, if you release the children.”
Veil was about to say something, then hesitated. Her fear of Gha'haram and Xharan was too great to even entertain a truce for the life of her friend and personal bodyguard. “You will not escape,” she finally said, her voice cold. “You will all die.”
“No!” Dart howled, reaching out a clawed hand to his master. “Veil!”
“Harming James and Alora,” Jai whispered in Dart's ear, “is something you will never live to accomplish.”
Raising his glaive into the air, Jai shaped it around his fist into a metallic gauntlet with spiked knuckles, then smashed it into Dart's forehead, shattering his Doom Stone shard.
The Revenant's body went limp in the Kratoth's arms. Then it ignited into flames, burning to ash.
“Kill them!” Veil screamed, pointing a long black nail at the lore-kin. “Kill them all!”
A howl of bloodlust erupted like a ravenous chorus from the pack of Revenant and they surged forward like a wave, with Veil at their lead.
Rowan, Emily and Jai held their glaives ready; each blade changing into various deadly shapes as each wielder searched for their preferred weapon.
“Now we can have some fun!” Arthur said with a devious grin as he unslung his backpack and began rummaging inside. Finally his hands withdrew two, grey, metallic spheres. Reeling his right arm back like a baseball pitcher, he hurled the first sphere into the advancing line of Revenant. Then the second. They both had time to roll for a brief second until...
Boom!
A wall of a flames shot upwards from the turf and five Revenant were blown to pieces, their Doom Stone shards shattered from the blast. Smouldering pieces of charcoal rained down over a yawning crater in the ground that was almost twenty feet wide.
Boom!
Four more dead.
“Thomas did not leave one single memory in either of them!” Xharan shouted in frustration, pulling the Akashic Eye away from Alora's whimpering face. Light projected from the diamond into the air forming a mirage of Alora laughing and running away from an irritated James hot on her heels—a memory Xharan had been perusing. It wavered, then vanished. The rebel leader's anger cooled, and he reverted to his calm voice. “Then Jack is our only hope.”
&n
bsp; A sound of an explosion was suddenly heard beyond a cluster of trees from the direction where Gha'haram had come earlier with the children.
“The lore-kin,” Gha'haram said, furrowing his brows. “We must finish this now!”
“You must finish this,” Xharan replied. “I have pressing business back at the Library of Alexandria. Our master will be waiting for me to report. I also need to find the boy, and that is exactly where I believe Jack will be headed.”
The Revenant nodded, but the scowl on his face revealed his displeasure with the situation. “Do what you must. But I will see that these troublesome lore-kin are disposed of once and for all. As for the boy, he was with Aramthaeus when we fought last night, north of the house. They came here and took what they needed and left; but I do not know what and I don't know where.”
“I can suspect where.” Xharan pointed at the gathered rebel Atlanteans. “You can use my men to help you in this fight. A parting gift.”
“Thank you, oh generous Xharan,” Gha'haram said sarcastically. “Perhaps they will want to join my people after the fight is done. The Doom Stone is still big enough for more followers!”
The Dark Tide soldiers looked at the Revenant with disdain and some with fear, but they did not say anything for they were outnumbered by the undead army.
Xharan ignored his rival's taunt and walked away, disappearing into the trees in the opposite direction of Thomas' house. Gha'haram's mocking laughter chasing after him.
Revenant swarmed towards the house. Armed with daggers, axes and crude clubs made from deadwood scavenged from the forest, they moved as an undisciplined mob. Their combat skills were poor compared to the military-trained lore-kin, and their mad hunger for flesh—to restore their decaying bodies—made them unfocused in their attacks.
Jai, Rowan and Emily met them head-on with their glaives, while Arthur fell back after he had expelled his last bomb.
“The last line of defence,” he whispered to himself, finding a clear spot in front of the family van. From concealed wrist gadgets, two black chains ending in metal claws suddenly shot out of each of his coat's sleeves, which he whipped into whirling circles above his head.
He had barely released the weapons when five Revenant appeared from behind a copse of trees. Four in human form and the last a large, grey wolf. They had skirted around the fighting at the base of driveway and made a mad dash for the house.
“Come on, scumbags!” Arthur challenged the eager, twisted faces of his enemies. They looked like crazed, wild animals with their jaws open in salivating hunger. Their eyes like the Doom Stone shards in their foreheads, ablaze in red fire.
The first to reach Arthur had half a face; the rest was gone, revealing blackened bone beneath. One burning red orb glared out at him from within its sickly eye socket.
Buzzing like bees, the two spinning chains suddenly snapped over Arthur's shoulders with the flick of his wrists, like bullwhips, then forward at the same time. The metal claws at the end of each chain smashed into the Revenant's head, shattering its Doom Stone shard and caving its head in like it was a clay pot. Black bone exploded into dust, and a headless body dropped to the ground.
Laughing like a giddy school boy, Arthur swung his chains in unison at the second Revenant that leaped over the smouldering remains of its felled companion. Unfortunately for the lore-kin, the claws whizzed over its target which had crouched low. The Revenant rolled to the side, out from under the falling chains, and then sprung at Arthur like a cat.
“Oh no you don't!” he huffed, dropping onto his back. As Arthur fell, he flicked his wrists and the hidden gadgets reeled the chains back into his sleeves faster than he could blink.
There was a loud crunch as the bulging backpack hit the turf under the full force of his descending weight. Knees bent, Arthur caught the Revenant's chest on the flats of his feet and then kicked out, pushing the undead flying into the air with surprising strength. Shooting both arms out forward, the chains exploded from his sleeves again, and the claws found their target before it cleared his sight. Seconds later, another headless body fell to the ground only inches from where he lay. A shower of Doom Stone shard fragments followed; red motes glittering down like fireflies in a shaft of sunlight.
Arthur's backpack suddenly began rattle as he lay on the ground, looking like a flipped over tortoise. He could hear the last three Revenant slowly approaching his prone body, and began thrashing his arms and legs to roll over and get to his feet.
“Ha-ha-ha! Look at the fat man squirm!” One of the Revenant mocked him in a shrill voice. His laughter was cruel and piercing, and his heavy footfalls began to quicken. “Maybe I should let Wolfie here take a few bites before we drain you of your life-force!” The sound of excited, bloodthirsty barks followed as if on cue, and then the sound of a blade whipping the air. The Revenant swung a thick-bladed machete in slow circles between both hands, which came whirling into view as it leered down at Arthur, grinning with black, rotted teeth. The man had cracked skin like mud, with sparse, wispy hair and a cleft chin. “Now, lets cut up this fine morsel!”
The backpack kept shaking, which caught the attention of the Revenant. Its cruel laughter ceased and its eyes narrowed.
“What's in the bag?” Another voice growled. The second Revenant walked into view; it was a woman with long knotted brown hair and carrying two thin, curved daggers.
“Damn contraption!” Arthur cursed, ignoring the question. “Always gets jammed—ah, there, just a little...” he wiggled his body and gave the backpack a quick elbow on each side, and then “...got it!”
“I said—!” The female Revenant's demand was cut short by sudden mechanical sounds of moving parts inside the bulging bag.
Then the sounds stopped, and a tight cluster of long metal poles sprung from a coil out of the backpack, tearing off its lid and causing the Revenant to jump backwards.
“Okay, it was just warming up,” Arthur laughed.
“What is warming up?” The undead man asked, his black eyes wide and his machete pointing fearfully at the lore-kin. The wolf-shaped Revenant crouched low near its companion's ankles, growling through jagged teeth. Bits of tattered clothing clung to its bloodied fur—the result of it shapeshifting from man to beast.
The poles, which had little spike tips, extended further out, and then splintered apart into six, three-jointed legs, which stabbed into the ground and dragged Arthur up to his feet and then up into the air by the bag's straps. He looked like a giant spider, with metallic legs blooming out of his back.
“Now, where were we?” He said with a dark grin and a raised brow. Rolling up his right sleeve, he revealed a gauntlet around his forearm, engraved with ancient Atlantean symbol—a glaive. Sliding it off with his free hand, he mind-shaped the silver cylinder into a square-headed mace.
Confusion turned to rage as the two human Revenants rushed him; while the wolf stayed back, barking and snapping at the metal legs from a distance.
Arthur scuttled around the charge, tripping the female over with one of the spindly legs, and smashed her head with the mace as she fell. Her Doom Stone shard was dust by the time her male companion had leaped forward to take her place. His machete clanged furiously against the metal legs, causing a couple to bow. Arthur swung his mace a few times, but kept missing. Then finally he managed to knock the blade out of the Revenant's hand, and brought the mace back with another blow to its jaw, sending it spinning backwards.
Elbowing the backpack again, the metal legs retracted together and lowered Arthur to the ground. They folded into themselves like the frame of an umbrella before lowering down into the mysterious backpack.
The Revenant lumbered forward again, slashing wildly at Arthur with its clawed hands. Its jaw hung from the left side of its face by thin black sinews of rotted flesh.
Arthur screwed up his face in disgust and swung his mace again, this time smashing the undead's Doom Stone shard and head to smithereens in a blast of black ash.
He had barely take
n a breath, when the wolf-Revenant sprang for his throat. Arthur's mace swept up for a defensive block, but the full force of the wolf collided into him, throwing him to the ground, where he knocked his head against a garden bed rock. The Revenant continued to sail through the air, finally crashing through the front door of Thomas' house.
Rowan and Emily fended off a barrage of attacks from the Revenant who came at them from all sides. They had managed to secure a safe position in a copse of trees growing beside the driveway, and stood back to back, turning together to ensure they weren't exposed to attacks from behind.
The lore-kin's glaives sung with each strike against the enemy's metal; but rarely met a second parry, as the Revenant were easily dispatched. They had slain eleven of them, crushing their Doom Stone shards with their weapons, when Veil managed to weave under the couple's defences and gouge Rowan in his left shoulder with her long, black nails. Then with incredible speed, she leaped out of reach, evading his retaliative strikes. The pale-faced blonde laughed and spat ridicule at the couple from behind the safety of the oncoming Revenant horde.
“Rowan!” Emily screamed, grabbing her partner with her free arm, whilst smashing another Revenant's forehead with her glaive that had formed into a mace. “Are you okay? I'll kill her—”
“I'm okay,” he said, swaying a little. Blood seeped through his leather jacket where the claw marks had torn into him. “I've felt worse.”
“You both will suffer!” Veil hissed at them. “I will cut your throats and drink from the wounds!” She then giggled insanely and began to slowly lick Rowan's blood from off of her claws. “Sweet, sweet tasting...”
“I'd like to see you try that again!” Emily threatened, brushing her wild blue hair out of her face. The glaive in her hand flashed through different savage shapes before settling on her favourite: the trident. This time the diamond shaped blades were much longer, and serrated.
“Be careful,” Rowan warned, “she has something that is making her move quickly. It has to be an old world artefact—”
“I don't care what she has!” Emily cut him off. She then broke from Rowan's side and charged out of the copse of trees at the lithe girl who taunted her with a coy smile. “I'll tear that blonde hair right out of her head!”
“Emily, wait!” Rowan said, chasing after her.
Two more Revenant were felled in Emily's charge before she took a wild stab at Veil. Like an agile cat, the blonde-haired waif summersaulted over the lore-kin's charge and slashed her from behind with her claws. Emily screamed and stumbled; the claw marks bright red across her back.
Rowan leaped at Veil, but his hands passed through a blur of colour as the girl ran out of his way. “She is impossible to catch!”
Another blur, then a slash across Rowan's chest. The man reeled backwards from the attack, then fell to his knees.
“Jai! Help us!” Emily cried swishing her trident about her head as if trying to swat a fly.
The shirtless lore-kin, who was some distance away near the tree-line, stood holding two Revenant in the air by their necks; his glaive had snaked around his right wrist to free up his hands. Smashing their heads together, and destroying their Doom Stone shards, Jai looked over his shoulder at Veil dancing circles around the stumbling couple. The other Revenant were staying back, watching the spectacle with sadistic glee.
Jai hurled both burning carcasses to the ground and sprinted towards his friends, knocking an airborne wolf-shaped Revenant to the ground as it attempted to maul his throat. His glaive whipped from his forearm, shattering the fallen enemy's Doom Stone shard to pieces, before curling back into place like a spring.
Rowan stood up, cradling his wounded arm. The shirt under his leather jacket was spliced open on his chest, revealing a glimmer of a metallic chest-plate beneath it. “Emily, I—watch out behind you!”
Emily spun around and stabbed her glaive at Veil who had suddenly swooped in for another strike at her. Nimbly, Veil back flipped from her charge, catching her feet in the u-bends of the trident and pushed herself away from the thrust. Unfortunately her backwards trajectory landed her in the open arms of Jai, who grabbed the Revenant tightly around the waist and pulled her towards the ground.
“I have her!” Jai shouted.
Squirming violently, Veil doubled over and began to bite her captive savagely on the forearms. Jai howled in shock and almost let her go. Growling, the gold bands glimmering brightly on his arms, he swung her around, pivoting on his heels and threw Veil like a shot-put into the air.
The girl spun head over heels, screaming all the way into the distant trees.
A loud crash of breaking branches and a puff of leaves around the spot of the canopy where Veil fell through brought a snicker from Emily.
“Nice throw,” Rowan panted, grinning at his friend.
“Where is Arthur?” Jai asked, uncurling his glaive from his wrist and forming it into a two-headed axe with his mind. His eyes stayed on the remaining Revenant pack that had begun edging slowly away from the three. They had seen enough of their companions killed by the lore-kin; but the loss of Veil weakened their resolution even more.
“He was standing guard near the...” Emily huffed.
“House! Mum and Caleb!” Rowan finished her sentence with a desperate look to the broken front door. He turned from them and began sprinting up the driveway.
“What about the kids in the woods?” Emily shouted after him.
There was another loud crash from the tree line and Rowan stopped his retreat, turning to look where Emily and Jai's gazes were frozen.
A giant, black bear tore its way out of the tree-line and began to lumber towards them. Behind the gigantic beast was a horde three times the size of the first assault; men and women, some in horrible shapes of half-animals, but all with red eyes like fire. Amongst them were also shoaled figures who were much taller than the undead. They bore the silver skull and wave on their hoods and carried tridents and spears, which gleamed in the bright sun.
“Dark Tide as well,” Rowan said grimly. “I see Kaelan has little trust in Gha'haram getting the job done.”
“Run!” Jai shouted. “Back to the house!”
“The children!” Emily screamed.
“We will be no good to them dead!” Jai rebuked. “They will have them imprisoned somewhere beyond the trees. Now lets go!” He grabbed Emily's arm and pulled her after Rowan.
Run! Rowan said with his mind to his fiancée and friend who were hot on his heels. Gha'haram won't stop until we're dead. We must make our last stand in the house!