***
Theo was in the middle of a rough circle formed by the rest; Lernea was down to her last few arrows, and Bo couldn’t shoot her fireballs fast enough. She barely had enough thaumaturgy left in her to hop around. Damon and Fidias were using their slings and blowpipes to little effect, while Master Sisyphus was quietly contemplating their situation. Everyone’s feet were wet, except for Theo who was hovering above the water of the shallow lake uncannily, as if praying solemnly. Around them, hundreds of Ygg were closing in, marching instead of charging, as if they were biding their time, reveling in the promise of the coming slaughter.
“Master, are we going to die?” Damon asked Sisyphus with a slightly guilty look on his face, his voice revealing the expectation of punishment. Fidias looked at Damon then with a sorrowful grin, his green eyes having lost their childish gleam.
“If it comes to that, there couldn’t be a better place, friend,” Fidias said and reloaded his sling with a pebble from the Hallowed Lake, letting it fly hard against an Ygg a few yards away. The pebble struck the Ygg in its mouth, whereas it begun choking and convulsing, before crumbling down onto its clawed feet and splashing in the lake. Others quickly replaced their fallen kin and followed in its steps.
Damon first and then Fidias felt a harsh, bony thing hit them hard against their cheeks, followed by a slapping sound. It was Master Sisyphus, who had shown them once again the back of his hand, while the rest of the party kept tightening the circle around Theo as if partaking in a silent, slow dance with death itself, every movement sombre and unique.
“No-one dies!” Sisyphus exclaimed and his face instantly returned to an unusually calm look of deep introspection. He then looked at the sky, and noticed that higher up near the clouds, a dozen or maybe more dark spots were being brilliantly lit from flashes of light. Various colours doused them in a flame-like appearance. Then he noticed the flapping wings of a red dragon, and his thin, craggy lips curled into a tight smile.
“We’ve got company,” Sisyphus said with an unseemly brilliance in his voice.
“We know that already,” Lernea said and looked behind Theo, exchanging a knowing glance with her former Master and mentor. She knew then he wasn’t talking about the Ygg - he looked up and saw the large red dragon coming down right on top of them, behind her, higher up into the clouds, strange-looking blots that were probably some kind of ship, literally having a blast.
For a moment she thought when it was the last time she had seen a dragon with her own eyes; it felt strange. She then saw the dragon coming straight at her, and saw the shine in those terrible glowing eyes, and all the people the dragon carried along and knew it was Parcifal.
“It’s Parcifal, master!”
“In full dragonform, no less!” he replied, grinning.
“Your sister is a dragon?” Bo sent to Lernea’s mind, sounding exhausted yet awestruck at the same time.
“Dragonkin, actually,” she replied while letting fly the last of her arrows, striking an Ygg straight in its maw, the arrow sticking out from the back of its grisly neck.
“But you’re twins! Why didn’t you turn into a dragon? You’d think it would be an unfair advantage?”
“I chose the other Path! Now’s not the time! We still have a fighting chance with Parcifal on our side!”
“What about that dwarf and the strikingly uncharacteristic young man she’s carrying?” Sisyphus asked, pointing with his staff.
“Winceham and Ned! Everyone’s here then? I don’t know how or why, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Lernea replied full of smiles, even as she drew her short sword, preparing to meet the first wave of the Ygg, in hand-to-hand combat as she ran out of arrows.
“Well, I’m pretty sure there’s no need for an explanation right now!” Bo sent, and perched herself on Theo’s shoulder, huffing and puffing from the exertion, feeling her powers nearly spent.
Parcifal spat a gush of fire from her snout, engulfing a row of Ygg in writhing flames, their raspy throats letting out otherworldly growls of dying pain. Her attack cleared some space in front of Lernea, while she flapped her wings quickly, breaking hard and releasing Winceham and Ned from a couple of feet into the lake, letting them splash feebly in the water, meeting its shallow bottom with their faces.
“That’s not a real lake, is it?” Winceham said grumpily, feeling his hurt nose, his face dripping with water.
“That’s not the real issue though, is it?” Ned added and they both looked at Lernea with a vacant, uncomfortable stare.
“Care to lend a hand? Or did the fall turn your brains into mush?” Lernea said sternly, while Parcifal let the surviving crew of the Maryland disembark from her back. A shot of bright blue light like thunder-flash cut a swath of Ygg down like a reaper’s giant scythe. It was Sisyphus, who was looking at his staff with a sad, pitiful gaze. Winceham and Ned got back on their feet, Ned loading his crossbow with a fresh bolt and Winceham brandishing both his daggers, eying his next move against the approaching Ygg.
“The Yul-mogur is spent, my queen. Your sister couldn’t have made an appearance at a more opportune time,” Sisyphus said to Lernea and turned around and saw the Lernea touch her nose against the red dragon’s snout, tears of joy running down her face.
“Sister! I never gave up hope!” Lernea said, while Parcifal shot her sister a gleaming gaze full of unspoken, true love.
“I thought I had lost you forever,” Parcifal admitted freely and a short moment later urged her sister, “Let us sent these defilers back into the void whence they came!”
“By Skrala’s might and Svarna’s light, lent us the strength of the Holy Mountain!” Lernea yelled, rising her short sword up in the air; then the two sisters charged headlong against the oncoming wave of the Ygg, cutting a path through them even as the monstrous abominations tried their best to slash and pierce them with their claws, their tendrils aiming to grab them in any way possible. Lernea hacked, swiveled and pierced them again, while Parcifal swiped with her claws and breathed fire upon them, cutting down half a dozen Ygg at a time.
The sisters were a terrible sight to behold, looking invincible, a powerful natural force of righteous revenge. But behind them, Theo was struggling with an unseen foe, his veins jutting out, sweating, twitching in an uncomfortable half-sleep, inches above the waters of the shallow lake.
“Master! They’re so close now!” Damon cried in terror, while Fidias popped up from behind him and stuck the foremost Ygg with his knife. Once, twice and then three times; yet the Ygg didn’t fall, white blood oozing from his punctured wounds. As the Ygg was about to lunge at Damon’s head, his tentacled maw twitched with the expectation of feeding on a young mind.
“I said, no-one dies!” cried Sisyphus and struck the Ygg squarely on its head, bringing his staff down with all his might, bashing the monstrous skull, the Ygg crumbling down into the lake with a mute splash. The crew-master of the Maryland urged his people then to stand fast:
“Rally to me, men!”
“We still have a couple o’ minutes to our break, sir,” one of the men complained, and quite forcibly the crew-master snatched him from the nape of his shirt and told him through gritted teeth: “File a formal complaint report to the captain, then,”
“But he’s unconscious sir,” the crewman replied feebly, looking confused.
“See my point?” the crew-master asked rhetorically, nodding intensely.
“No, not really,” the crewman replied shaking his head and shrugged. A moment later the claws of an Ygg were dug deep in his neck, his tentacled maw attached to the back of the man’s head. His eyes twitched and rolled impossibly, his face chock-full of mortal horror, even as his eyes were drawn inside from their sockets, the contents of his head sucked through the Ygg’s maw. A heavy cutlass struck clean against the Ygg, its head rolling while still alive, its tentacles still writhing with the splendor of a fresh kill. The crew-master looked at the Ygg with disgust as its body lay slumped against the empty husk of
the crewman who had just asked for his due break.
“Anyone else need a break?” the crew-master yelled and the crew of the Maryland drew their cutlasses, the Ygg crashing against them like a nightmarish tide of blue and black.
“Highly motivated crew,” Winceham suggested as he unstuck his daggers from a dead Ygg, tumbling at the last moment to avoid a deadly claw attack from another. Ned shot his crossbow at point-blank range, felling two Ygg with one bolt. He swerved to the side and dodged a dozen or so tendrils aiming for his waist, before kicking the Ygg hard in the face, making it dizzy for just enough time to hack at its head with a machete. The first hack dug deep; the second and the third made the killing a nasty, messy affair.
“Needs some sharpening eh?”
“Do they need to be that thick-skinned?” Ned wondered and wiped the machete against the Ygg’s body.
It was at that moment that everyone felt a wave of pressure overcoming them, feeling it reverberate through their bones. They saw the Ygg then tremble, growling in agony for a moment before succumbing to Theo’s powerful Rho, splashing in the water in an outward pattern, like stalks of grass blown against the wind. Theo fell down awkwardly with a splash as well, planting his feet in the bottom of the lake, gasping for breath, sweating profusely.
“That’s it, I’m spent. I need to sleep,” he said in what was almost a whisper.
“Well earned lad,” Winceham said, cleaning his daggers in the murky, white-stained water around him.
“Look!” Ned said and nodded to a small host of riders that appeared out of the small gate that led to the castle proper, from where Lernea and the others before had first appeared in the lake, where the giant crystal had been constructed out of the lake’s bedrock, smack in its middle.
“The Jangdrivals,” Lernea said, even as her sister returned to her human form once again, writhing and trembling in a controlled, practiced fashion.
“Their timing is rather... Fanciful, wouldn’t you agree, my lady?” Sisyphus said with a deep frown.
“Master, should we shoot them?” Fidias said eagerly, readying his sling.
“Not yet. You’ll know soon enough when it comes to that,” Sisyphus replied.
“Well, I guess you can now have the rest of your break, lads,” the crew-master said feeling at ease and the crew sat down in the shallow water, the water up to their waist as their buttocks touched the pebble-bed floor.
The small host of riders galloped at an easy pace, the horses’ hooves splashing in the water in a strange, perfect rhythm. A man wearing the Jangdrival’s colors over a shiny full-plate armor was at the head of the host, all in all no more than a dozen riders. Beside him rode a banner-man, flying the colours of the Jangdrivals proudly, on top of the Nomos crest, the Holy Mountain, embroidered in gold and silver cloth.
“Halt!” the leader of the host ordered and dismounted, a comfortable few yards away from Lernea and Parcifal. Eying them intensely, he walked towards them at an easy pace, his banner-man close behind. The rest of them remained mounted.
“What are you doing?” Ned asked Winceham in a puzzled whisper, looking at him having a smoke with a borrowed pipe.
“I’m having my two-minute break,” Winceham replied unfazed, forming small circles of puffy smoke with his lips twirled in an ’o’.
“I don’t think now’s quite the time,” Ned said shaking his head in disappointment.
“Union regulations, lad,” Winceham replied and shrugged.
“King Jangdrival of Nomos now, is it not?” Lernea called in mocking tones, pointing her short sword’s tip at the usurper of her throne.
“Encelados is still glowing, sister,” Parcifal whispered to her sister’s ear.
“I can see that. I can also see you’re buck naked,” Lernea replied, shooting her sister a disapproving look.
“Well, what did you expect? I was in dragonform!” she hissed and feeling somewhat self-conscious she asked, “I wonder why Winceham isn’t ogling at me. Or any of them at all, for that matter.”
“I’ve spent my last iota of thauma on a very thin illusion. All the men see you dressed in simple robes,” Bo sent in Parcifal’s mind. She nodded at the bunny in thanks.
“Let us dispense with the pleasantries, Lernea Testarossa,” the Jangdrival said approaching at a slow, even pace.
“Your rule is forfeit. I claim my rightful rule as Queen of the Kingdom of Nomos,” Lernea said authoritatively, her face set in stone.
“Laughable,” the Jangdrival replied and with a wave of his hand, the mounted riders circled around all of them.
“We outnumber you. Your forces are spent. Surrender or perish,” Lernea shouted, looking at the bland-faced riders with disdain.
“Reality escapes you,” the Jangdrival retorted and added, “Hand us the crystal and your vacant hulks will be of fitting service.”
“What’s going on lad? Hard negotiations?” Winceham said, putting out his pipe in the water and having second thoughts about it after he realized there was still a lot of white blood floating in there.
“I think these are not really men,” Ned replied.
“You’re correct in your assumption, Mr. Larkin,” Master Sisyphus said, standing close by.
“You must be Master Sisyphus. I’m honored,” Ned replied offering his hand.
“Now’s not the time for introductions, but likewise,” Sisyphus said warily.
“Never,” Lernea replied to Jangdrival through gritted teeth while beside her, Encelados shone with a bright blue and white inner light in the hands of Parcifal.
“Stubborn animals, humans,” the Jangdrival said and in an instant his body warped and twisted itself violently, revealing the true form of an Ygg, the men in his company doing the same, their horses transformed into large carapaced abyssal terrors with large bulging eyes and a mass of tendrils with an enormous reach.
“Just about when I thought I could have another smoke,” Winceham said and sighed.
“Does that mean the break’s off?” asked a crewman right before he was grabbed by one of the tentacled monsters and swallowed in half.
“Anyone else have any stupid questions, you scallywags?” the crew-master intoned, brandishing his cutlass, before the Ygg and their mounts charged them.
“This is tactically unsound,” Sisyphus said grumpily. Ned shot a bolt smack against an Ygg’s face but it was silently absorbed, like the body of an Ygg was made of some sort of sponge.
“That doesn’t look normal,” Ned said with a frown and at the same time, the others as well had a moment of epiphany.
“The crystal,” Bo sent to everyone who could hear her, “The huge Ygg crystal! It’s acting up, flaring with eldritch power!”
“The crystal, right!” Sisyphus said as well, as if he had a sudden realization himself, and he produced Theo’s crystal from his robes, attaching it deftly to his staff’s tip, like popping it into a make-shift receptacle. Bo saw what Sisyphus was trying to do and skipped and hopped toward him, while the Ygg were charging them in full force.
Parcifal readied Encelados while Lernea stood her ground with short sword in hand. They never showed whether or not it mattered to them that the Ygg now seemed to be impervious to damage. Winceham got up and and put his pipe in his vest’s pocket, looking quite pissed off at not being able to smoke in peace. The two boys looked at Master Sisyphus as his lips began to whisper words they had never heard before.
“What’s the master saying?” Fidias asked Damon.
“I don’t know. It looks like he’s praying,” Damon replied shaking his head.
“Should we shoot our slings?” Fidias asked, readying a shot.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore,” Damon said to his friend and shrugged casually.
Bo jumped right in front of the staff then, at the exact moment that a thin, steady line of light not thicker than a hair’s breadth shot through her, and behind her aiming at the Ygg crystal. And then a surge of immense power created a sphere of magnificent light, cr
ackling with a never seen before force, surrounded Bo and Sisyphus. In a frozen bubble of time, the sphere expanded, shining with a light that tore shadows apart, shredding them to pieces, a haze of unnatural heat radiating in the air.
Once it reached the boundaries of the Ygg crystal, the sphere of light collapsed in a single point centered at Bo. The next moment, a brilliant blinding white light exploded from the bunny outward, engulfing the lake, the crystal, and everyone else in the bosom of a miniature star.
Higher above the lake, in the clouds, Judith saw the fiery explosion of light below her; it was a massive, terrible sight to behold, blinding her temporarily. Her mind raced with all the possibilities, but she soon realized something momentous had happened.
“Madamme, the enemy fleet seems unable to act. It’s like they’re adrift in the air,” the tactical officer in the bridge of the Bellerephon’s Quagmire informed her.
“Fire for effect,” she ordered without blinking and sighed, unable to tear her eyes away from the shrinking, unbearably luminous ball of whiter-than-white light below.