Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [345]
With a grunt, the demonkin let go of Zophie’s leg. Wataru was able to pull her all the way up onto Jozo’s back this time. He took another slash at the voracious creature.
“Fly up! Shake them off!”
Jozo picked up speed, but the two stubbornly clutched the stump of his tail. Wataru slashed them away with his sword and fired a magebullet at the crowd swarming through the air after them. The bolt of light hit, scattering demonkin in every direction. They had gained a lead, as small as it was.
“Jozo, fire!”
Flame gushed right beside Wataru’s face. Bull’s-eye. The demonkin were hit square. They fell to the ground, trailing black smoke. Half of the swarm faltered in its flight, and a few of them began to fly away.
“Where’s everyone, Jozo?”
“Meena and Kee Keema are with the pillars,” he answered between gasping breaths. “I was too tired to carry them much longer. What are we going to do?”
The dragons were still in the air above Solebria. Wataru wondered what had happened to the one he saw fall.
Jozo was clearly exhausted. Blood streamed from cuts all over his body. His eyes swam in tears. He lurched as he flew, his flight path meandering like a snake, occasionally gaining altitude only to drop back down.
The girl in the white dress was rigid with fear. She moved her mouth but no voice came out.
“Take this girl to the forest,” Wataru said pointing to a thick stand of trees ahead of them to the right. “You can hide from the demonkin in there. Stay out of sight until I come get you with the others, okay?”
“O-okay. But what will you do?”
“I’ll be fine. Now, fly and hide!”
Wataru held the sword in both hands and prayed. Take me to Meena. Take me to the dragon she’s riding on!
The warp worked. When the world snapped into focus around him again, he was sitting on the back of one of the seven pillars. The dragon was wearing a crown like a rooster’s crest atop its head. Meena was holding on to the dragon’s neck, but when she saw Wataru she sprang up and jumped through the air to him.
“Meena, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine, I’m fine!” She was pale and covered in soot. “Look at it, Wataru, just look at it!”
He looked up to see the mirror being lofted into the air on a pair of giant dark wings. It was a black portal out of which the demonkin armies came streaming, a spring of evil that would never dry up. They blotted out the sky over Solebria, flying to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west. They would soon cover all of Vision.
The leader of the dragons was bravely flying toward the mirror. He breathed balls of flame and beat the air with his wings. He valiantly knocked away all demonkin that dared come too close. Yet there was no hope against such overwhelming numbers.
“We’ll never make it to the mirror like this!”
“Yet we must try—just one breath—I must try!” the dragon’s head whipped around, tearing a demonkin off its neck and tossing it into empty sky.
“We must run for now. We can’t win against these numbers. We have to protect the people below from the demonkin, tell them to run into the forest. That’s where we’ll hide!”
“Never!” the dragon roared, spitting jet after jet of flame at the retreating demonkin. Wataru stood on his back, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Everyone, to the forest! Retreat! We’ll be destroyed out here!”
“Wataru!” shouted Kee Keema atop a nearby dragon. He held his great axe high above his head. Though his face brightened at seeing his friend again, he had never sounded so disheartened. Behind him several of the wounded from Solebria hung on the dragon’s back. The dragon protected them as they clung cowering to its scales, and Kee Keema, howling with rage, cut down the demonkin that came swarming in like insects. “Vermin! I’ll send you all back where you came from!”
“To the forest! Get everyone into the forest!”
“Right!”
Enough demonkin now filled the sky to block