Onnd and Sann flowed into perfect concentric circles in opposite directions around the hydra, working in fluid harmony to land blow upon blow on the hapless beast. The preacher, on the other side of the whirling battle, lifted his arms to the sky and wailed, “Submit to the mighty Marklar! Test your faith-ah!” His followers ran that way and this, unsure of what was to come, in the next life or before. As the warriors orbited the beast like spritely white particles, the hydra twisted round on its heavy legs, thrusting its snapping serpent jaws out into the blur. As it did, the tether tautened, reeling in the panicking Shen and Blaiput, bound helplessly to the beast at one end and the lifeless Kai on the other.
As the warriors landed on lissom feet, elastic energy pervaded their muscles immediately impelling them up again into an endless fluid dance in which gravity had no say. At each hidden strike the monster flinched in immense fear, but with the preacher grinning on behind it, the beast seemed only to be growing stronger, recovering more quickly.
With a terrifying, deathly rasp Kai suddenly lurched up straight between Shen and Blaiput who stifled their cries at once and stared at Kai as Kai stared out agape with eyes awash, aswirl with surging sighs upon the flowing truth in mists of slender shadowed staffs outstretched from urgent flowing white to dim its prime a child in crimson flush in restless anguish seeing all and naught in secret bodies streaking silent courses to a fiery close in incandescent arcs to wake his sight his queen in white and grey alone with flaming eyes as shadows burn and swallow all...
Without warning, the white trails ended abruptly with the warriors standing calmly upon the forum’s sheen — breathing only slightly more deeply than before — their staffs by their sides, directly in front of Kai, Shen and Blaiput. The wounded hydra staggered over to the preacher, pulling the pile of three across the stone; Onnd and Sann stepped aside to let them slide past.
“What? WHAAAT?!” screamed Shen in red, “You’re just going to let us...us.... DO SOMETHING!!!!”
Onnd flicked her piercing glare down at him. His colours froze at once, and he squashed a reserved, “Please?” out his throat as he slipped over the stone.
At the other end of the tether, the preacher placed his hands upon the hydra’s new heads, crying out, “By faith in Him-ah we are restored by Ephaïl’s eternal light-ah!” Onnd and Sann looked at each other; a hint of uncertainty etched lines across their high brows, as, in front of the preacher, the hydra quickly revived and grew in strength — and size. The preacher cackled loudly and cried out, “The Marklar! The mighty Marklar prevails over even the once-great I’sta!”
The hydra spun round, its writhing serpents full of fury, and began thundering straight towards them. Shen and Blaiput clattered fresh screams off each other. Kai looked on, agape, silent. Onnd turned to Sann and calmly uttered a single word —
“I’sta.”
Sann’s eyes peeled even wider in disbelief and apprehension, but Onnd nodded, and smiled. Shen heard; he stopped screaming and strained his neck to look back at the warriors.
“Truth? TRUTH? A TRUTH SURGE?!!! WITH US HERE IN THE MIDDDDLE?!!!!!” he screamed in scarlet wrath. Blaiput ceased his sobs and looked at Shen with wide eyes full of realisation. Shen’s red flushed away to a green as pale as his coat; he gulped, then whimpered, “We’re lost!” The two tried with renewed vigour to scramble away in opposite directions, but the tether held them fast. Kai simply looked around, as though hypnotised. The hydra hurled itself into a gallop across the stone. Realising there was no way to free himself in time, Shen grabbed Blaiput with a surprising surge of strength and wrestled him to the front to bear the brunt of the imminent assault.
Sann had still not moved. Her breath quickened. Onnd nodded, and whispered, “You are ready, my Sann. Trust!” then leapt away towards the hydra, sailing over its knotted necks, and stretched out her staff in the air to run an agonisingly graceful line down the monster’s spine as she passed. The hydra wailed out louder than ever as it slowed — but it did not stop. Onnd came to a faultless rest in front of the preacher and glared disgust straight into his eyes, holding up her staff as a warning. The preacher simply grinned — albeit nervously — and they both looked back at the charging hydra.
Sann took a deep breath and kneeled. She wrapped her staff into her robes, flicked the mesh-gloves from her palms and closed her eyes. She drew in a deep breath of time, then took her staff in her bare right hand — at once her neck twisted involuntarily in pain; she steeled herself against it and retook her composure, then lifted up her left hand towards the charging beast. The hydra faltered, shaking its heads at some unseen force, but fought on. Sann closed her eyes again and focussed her strength.
Those looking on in the forum saw nothing.
Kai, however, saw all — his head swam and his heart raced as he looked back and forth between Sann and the beast, wide eyes ablaze, no longer able to blame the lowly sun and clouds above for what he saw. A strand of shadow twisted out from the centre of the hydra as it ran, and snaked towards Sann’s staff. As the shadow swelled and spun, light began to bloom deep within the warrior’s body. The hydra slowed and breathed heavily; the glow inside Sann intensified as the staff drew shadow from the charging beast. And when its venomous thunder was almost raining down onto Kai and the others, Sann calmly uttered —
“I’sta.”
Her word cut like a dagger through Kai’s eyes and down into his heart — “Truth”.
A sudden pall of shadow wrenched out of the beast directly into Sann’s staff, and then, her heart ablaze, a bolt of blinding illumination shot out from her centre through her left arm and straight into the massive beast. The hydra simply collapsed at once, unconscious, as though all its breath had been sucked from it, and slid to a halt inches from Kai, as the whirling clouds of light and dark dispersed around him.
Sann remained on the ground, head down, breathing heavily. Onnd looked back at the dumbfounded preacher; the corner of her mouth curled up in defiance, before, with the tiniest flick of her foot, she leapt up high, high into the air, sailed over the broken body of the hydra, and landed with perfect grace beside Sann. Sann swallowed hard and forced herself to her feet with her staff — its texture was noticeably darker than before. As she raised her eyes to her master’s, Onnd put a tender palm to her disciple’s cheek and whispered proudly, “My Sann!”
Shen looked around, throughly unimpressed: “Is that it?! Really?! No fireworks or explosions or anything?! I always thought the ‘surge’ would be so much more...impressive!”
The blinding light still ablaze inside him, Kai looked at Shen in disbelief — had he not seen the truth?
The hydra stirred; first one head awoke sluggishly, then another and another, each hissing a faint whimper as they looked up and around, terrified and broken. The preacher erupted in tears of joy as it revived, painfully aware of the price of smuggling a new hydra cub into Destiny. He ran to his pet and threw his arms around its feeble necks. His few remaining followers scuttled in behind him, having nowhere else to go, followed by the purple-lipped girl, who seemed to have forgotten everything and was now eagerly eyeing one of the preacher’s young followers.
The I’sta turned to Kai and stepped towards him, as Shen finally loosed himself from the tether, apparently now with ease, and looked at the warriors with insipid disinterest as they trained their intense eyes down onto Kai. Kai looked back up at them in trepidation. In tense silence, all eyes in the forum flicked from the warriors to the boy and back to the warriors.
Ignored completely, Blaiput sighed gruffly, “I fine. No, really...I fine.”
Next chapter — Lúez
Sunday 26 December 2010
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