Airel - Aaron Patterson [101]
Torches blazed, captains issued orders in gruff shouts, and the guards on the perimeter began running toward the noise. It was like being trapped inside an hourglass. Kreios bent his legs to take to the air but something held him back. Yamanu looked to Kreios and he nodded: he too was unable to fly.
Within the gathering mass of enemy combatants there came a thick dirty sound—flesh tearing from flesh. The men twitched and jerked as if being rent in two. Black hooded demons with glowing eyes wrenched and twisted from the mouths of the men, as if their tongues were tombstones that guarded the wretched stinking open sepulchre in each one.
The dark forces came free. They drew black swords that dripped, wet. The earth beneath turned to boiling tar. Kreios felt distress in Yamanu. It had become too late now for them to flee. One course of action remained. Kreios erupted with a shout: “For the Sons of God and for Ke’elei!” He unsheathed the Sword of Light, blasting a shattering hole into the very heart of the night.
Kreios charged through the horde as an enraged bull. Men and demons flew in all directions, felled beneath the crush of his mighty arm. The fog vanished in an instant as Yamanu withdrew his shadow, drew his sword, and fought bravely in the light of the Sword.
As Kreios maneuvered his way through the onslaught, he kept a steady eye on the tent of the Seer. A cry came from his left side, and Kreios could feel the pain in Yamanu’s thoughts. He turned to see a large demon standing over his friend, a curving black sword held high overhead, ready to deliver the final blow.
Instinctually, Kreios threw his Sword, cleaving the demon into a disemboweled wreck. The Sword of Light passed through its target as if it had been nothing, lodging firmly into the trunk of a tree on the edge of the enemy encampment. Yamanu stood; the horde army closed in. Kreios sprinted for it, alarmed at his rashness. Perhaps now that Yamanu was freed, they could work together to regain possession of the Sword.
He heard a distant but immediate voice. “Take them alive. And you, Kreios: stand still where you are, or I shall remove this one’s head from his body.” Kreios whirled and beheld the Seer in all his evil glory, standing with a small jagged sword to Yamanu’s throat.
He froze.
Kreios thought about so many things in that instant that only one mattered, for all its importance: he knew that he might never see his little girl again.
The Seer burned a hole in him with malicious eyes. Was this Lucifer?—Kreios wondered—or just another piece on the game board? He locked his gaze onto the Seer’s eyes once more, determined to see if he could recognize anything at all. He held there… until the creepings of fear consumed him. He was not going to escape this time.
Kreios turned toward the Sword that stuck out of the distant tree and noted that its light had been snuffed along with his last hope of deliverance.
Two enemy warriors grabbed his arms in the darkness and held fast with inhuman strength, their demonic counterparts nearby, faces hooded and black. It was like firelight flickering where their eyes might have been.
He was dragged toward the Seer’s tents at the center of the camp, quite a distance away. He struggled, but it was no use. They took Yamanu somewhere else, which completed the crushing of Kreios’s spirit. Each moment was more and more draining; Kreios could feel it. His breathing became ragged and harsh. He slumped to the ground, spent, and the two enemy warrior-slaves who had been carrying him tossed him like a rag doll into the Seer’s tent.
Kreios landed on his face, his body a crumpled rag. Bright white stars flashed before his eyes, and for an instant he thought he was going to fall out of time. The Seer materialized in front of him, hiding under a hideous dripping hood. The