“Help me! Stop it, please!!!” wept Shen, “I’ll die, I’ll DIIIIEEE!”
Sann remained standing close to her master as they continued observing from afar.
The girl pulled ineffectually at Blaiput trying to free him from the flailing hydra’s tether.
The inexorable gushing light filled and swamped Kai’s sight, a surge of wretched fear that bled through Shen’s colour-prism fingers. He looked to Kai in desperate need, in terror, his life, his fading blazing life engulfed in the shadows of a seven-headed beast and its wraithlike keeper. A soul engulfed. Repressed and crushed. And now in silent, searing immolation —
flowing into gold renewed aswirl about the shining outstretched hands
returned
Kai leapt instinctively to Shen; his left hand reached inside the fluid light, unharmed, as his other hand covered the wound. Slowly, calmly — emphatically — the light began to gather and shape around Kai’s fingers. He smiled serenely as the blaze flickered off his gaze.
Onnd’s eyes peeled wide with a fluid ripple of blue. Sann looked to her master — and saw the truth reflected.
The preacher’s mouth fell open, then curled into a grin. He stepped away from his floundering beast towards Kai.
Onnd flicked her hands, and the mesh half-gloves snapped straight to her palms, fusing onto them automatically. She took her staff and rose to her feet.
Kai’s calm intensity pierced the blaze and held it, focussing the light into a single, fantastically bright core. His tranquil breath belied the moment as he pulled it back towards Shen’s skin, the colour of which was rushing from shock to wonder. Released from light, the serpent flailed wildly in its final throes as the flames scorched it down to a stump, then subsided leaving only blackened scales. Kai lifted his right hand from Shen’s arm. Shen’s fearful, wide eyes pierced Kai’s; the warm serenity of Kai’s deep gaze calmed him. Shen then tentatively lifted his own hand from his arm — the wound was inexplicably healing in a scar of light. Shen looked on in awe as Kai guided the final flickering filaments back through the scar into him. It fused and healed.
Restored.
Onnd and Sann looked at each other in tense silence, then turned and began making their way slowly over the cold stone forum towards Kai and Shen.
“H...how di...?” stammered Shen, then, looking deep into Kai’s eyes, he said carefully, “I’m sorry....I’m sorry you saw that.”
Kai smiled back at him warmly, calmly — centred. Then, as the sounds of the forum bled back into his now, his smile faded, as though he too was waking from a dream.
As the hydra stumbled about on unsteady legs, the preacher strode up to Kai proclaiming to his scattering followers, “Wait! The Marklar shows the Way, the light of prophecy and self-immolation. Praise Ephaïl, his light inside us! Praise Elúcian-ah!”
The hydra came to from the pain with renewed flailing fury and thrashed both Blaiput and the preacher off their feet. Blaiput became even more entangled in the hydra’s tether and the preacher glared at the beast with seething, hidden wrath. The hydra’s choler grew, and all around watched on in awe as, almost imperceptibly at first, then undeniably, something began to sprout from the charred stump.
“Oh no,” muttered the preacher, although loud enough for all to hear, “Not again!”
Making their way slowly across the forum, Onnd and Sann drifted past the string quartet, three of whom, oblivious to the fact that their entire audience had now fled, were still shouting caustic insults at one another, as the fourth sat by himself, used to such arguments, spinning himself a quiet, calming melody.
“It is the prophecy, I say,” boomed the preacher, leaping to his feet again, “Death and resurrection!”
The raving hydra lumbered up to Kai and Shen with thundering hooves, as, growing into the blackened space where the lost serpent had been, came two embryonic reptilian heads. Suddenly the beast reared up on its hind legs and screeched into the air with triumphant wrath, flicking Blaiput through the air on the tether over and onto Kai and Shen with an agonising crunch. As they writhed and scrambled over each other to get away, all three became impossibly ensnared in a pile of limbs and rope. The hydra pounded its front hooves back onto the ground, cracking the stone beneath them, and dragged itself towards the three as two new heads continued growing.
"By Lúez,” gasped Blaiput, “Now it really angry! Now we die! And my head not freezed yet!”
Blaiput began sobbing as they all scuffled and scrambled to get free. Shen pulled abruptly with surprising strength, whipping Kai round to the top of the pile. Eight serpents descended to his face with a baleful hiss, as the formation of the two new heads completed inches from his eyes. The hydra readied itself to strike again. Shen’s face flushed into an intense mosaic of terrified colour, engulfing Kai and Blaiput in his fear. Kai stared up helplessly as the hydra’s necks curled back to smite from within the darkening skies above.
A single, elegant word — spoken without urgency — cut calmly through the chaos.
Kai, Shen, Blaiput, the purple-lipped girl, the preacher, his followers and the hydra — all turned to see the source, as the wind momentarily ceased its flow through the forum.
Standing tall, silent, and poised were Onnd and Sann — I’sta — Truth Warriors. Both commanded stares of respect soaked in fear from all around, as they stood almost as tall as the hydra itself, their keen eyes soaking in every detail. They each held their long truth staff, with a black, smoky texture in noiseless flux within.
The breeze returned. The clouds opened. The warriors’ elegant white robes, sheer and strong, billowed gracefully, gathering an almost imperceptible shimmer.
No one moved or made a sound in the impossibly tense silence. Sann slowly turned her head and looked to Onnd — the commanding word was hers.
The hydra’s eight spiny tongues flicked at the air and sensed. Tasted. Its sixteen eyes narrowed defiantly at the warriors, then each and every serpent let out an icy, deathly, deafening hissing screech, before it turned back to its prey, the hapless pile of three.
It pounced into a stabbing strafe of fangs.
Kai, Shen and Blaiput scrambled and screamed and clawed. But the hydra was upon them. Their fates were no longer their own.
Onnd gave a single, subtle nod, with a single, supple word — and her loyal Sann leapt in.
Next chapter — I'sta
Sunday 12 December 2010
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