The Lost Eight by Duron Crejaro (read me a book .TXT) 📕

Old One-Eye started to speak, the words never left his mouth. A shrill cry echoed through the air, taking everyone attention from the miraculous events of moments before. Racing across the dunes at them, was a collection of Razariks, the creatures were a good foot and a half taller than even Creolis, who was tall for a human. They reminded him of small harmless mantises of the woods of his homeland. These grotesquely large creatures were not like those he thought, as he and his friends drew their weapons and braced themselves. The Razariks were here for blood.

Old One-Eye watched the scene in terror with both eyes wide. He was unarmed, relying on the present company for protection. Immediately he could see that his decision to trust them had not been misplaced. As before Desoil warped into the savage creature, built solely for combat, Creolis had drawn his overly large Ejora blade and dismounted, standing stoically awaiting the charge. Elris stood next to Dearn, his strange sadistic looking blades in hand, while Dearn firmly held a large spiked mace, a firm unwavering expression on his face. Kaelina had moved back from the others, closer to Old One-Eye. She was unarmed and looked positively horrified at the creatures stampeding towards them.

Six Razariks raced into them, making strange clicking noises at each other as they came. Straight away, the companions were in a fight for their very lives. Outnumbered but well trained they leapt into action. Desoil and Creolis each charging the creatures with surprising ferocity. Creolis’ telltale Adrari flame visible, but weak, as he blocked a huge stabbing blade-like arm of the Razarik before him. Desoil was a wall of carnage, acting on instinct, driven with the powers of the Crown of Elia. Elris and Dearn stood back-to-back fending off three of the vicious creatures that had encircled them. One-Eye for his part stood protectively hovering near Kaelina as he watched the bloodshed unfold, though unarmed, he knew that if push came to shove he would do his best to help. One of the creatures fell, several limbs missing before being gored by Desoil’s horns. Another now, this ones exoskeleton covered head crushed beneath the force of a well-placed blow from Dearn’s mace. Desoil moved quickly, joining Elris and Dearn, charging a Razarik from the rear.

Kaelina watched in awe, very little had real violence entered her life in such a real way. Yes, she had her vivid terrible dreams, and there had been the attack on the temple, yet this was different, carnal and vivid, unfolding before her eyes. Her friends, fighting for their lives and by extension her own, it all struck her with fear. She could not fathom how they could do it, the practiced ease with which they wielded their weapons, despite the mortal danger and threat of death looming before them. She watched one, then another go down, Desoil move to aid his friends, but most of all she was transfixed by Creolis. In the heat, he was sweating profusely, standing firm against a creature nearly four feet taller then himself. His near perfect precision with a blade nearly as tall as himself was awe-inspiring. A blocked stabbing limb, followed by a severing cut to another. He flowed in and around the creature with strained ease. The pale blue light, she had seen from other Adrari, flowed with him like a phantom dancer in the shimmer caused by the heat.

Time slowed as she watched, and her awe turned to trepidation. One of the Razarik had moved from the main group, whom were still locked in pitched battle. It was stalking towards Creolis. Her entire body was trembling, turn and see it she urged silently, unable to find her voice to yell a warning. She could tell he was unaware however, so transfixed on the creature before him, biting at him with its huge clicking mandibles and stabbing with its one remaining razor-like arm. It had crept perilously close now, he had no warning, and she stood thunderstruck, unable to move.

Elris launched himself from a crouch, barreling right into the face of the creature before him. He did not blink as a giant scythe-like arm swiped by, narrowly missing him. His hooked stiletto caught the Razarik in its plated shoulder. Using his momentum, he swung under the massive arm, rolling up behind the creature onto its back. Immediately he latched onto the creature with his legs and began repeatedly striking it with his scimitar in the neck, hacking furiously until finally the creature’s head rolled from its body, still clicking spastically as it struck the ground. Elris rode the creature to the ground as its headless body slumped forward into the sand. He spared a glance at Desoil and Dearn, who now had their enemy on the defensive, hacking at it as it attempted to fend them off while backing away. Then he too saw it, a short distance away. Creolis, engaged with a heavily injured Razarik. His attention solely focused on finishing off the wounded assailant. The other Razarik creeping up on him from behind, unseen, unchallenged. Poised it was, to end the young knights life. He hesitated, unsure. Could he cross the distance in time? No, the twenty yards or so he could never traverse in time. A yelled warning, maybe, but the distraction could prove fatal from either side.

It broke free like a flood-burdened dam. In the earth, it came like the vibration of a tremor. In the air, it licked across the skin with calm assurances, and heated strength. The pale weakened light of the Adrari flared with brilliance before unseen. Time was unmoving in this moment; Kaelina felt all these things ripple through her at once, as well as something else. It was a dark promise whispered in her mind, seductive and sly it sounded to her. Offering her power, struggling with her to acquiesce to its will and be free. It crawled through her. He was going to die. She could stop it. Make a choice it screamed at her, and she did.

It started as a soundless roar, as she pointed her hands at the vile mutated creation of the War of Eight. Such vileness it was, created from a time of greed and lust for power. Two millennia later, the havoc caused by their greed was going to take something away from her that she had never had, a sense of belonging, of friendship, of a closeness with other people. The rage crackled through her, moving by force of will and instinct. A courageous lithe freckled thing, starkly white against the tan of the sand, red hair fluttering with the same inner malice in the hot breeze. It reached her fingers and was released like raw power. A white hot crackling bolt of unrefined power arced from her towards the Razarik, sizzling through the already air. It struck the creature as it hovered behind Creolis, poised to strike. The creature was stunned, unable to move, as the lightning coursed through it, cooking all the liquefied innards. Seconds later, the smoking creature simply fell over, never having known what hit it. The flash and the power left her exhausted, and she slumped to the ground darkness taking her. The only remnant of the overpowering force of nature she had released, a strange trail leading towards the Razariks body. A line of sand turned to glass.

Only two people had watched the strange outburst. Elris and Old One-Eye. Both stood, as if hypnotized, unmoving. One-Eye because he was just at a loss, unable to understand what he had just witnessed, Elris because he did understand. He was not sure he believed, but he had seen it with his own eyes, felt it in the air. He was one of the few that had the memory to know. Magic, real magic, unseen by him or anyone else in over two thousand years, had just been unleashed.

Glancing around carefully, Elris realized with relief that no one else had seen what happened, other than that old fool. Ignoring the remnants of the battle, which was winding down, as Dearn and Desoil were quickly overpowering their opponent, as Creolis was finishing off the already wounded creature before him, he rushed Old One-Eye, grabbing him by the collar to shake the startled man from his stupor. Leaning in close, his cold gray eyes meeting the now mismatched pair that were staring at him frightened, he hissed, “I know you saw that, but you didn’t see it. Do you understand?” One-Eye was looking at him with a look of confusion, “Let me put it like this. If you breathe a word of this, you’ll be Old No-Eyes.” He dropped the startled man, sure that either One-Eye would remain silent, or he would carry out his threat, though he preferred the former. Quickly he moved over, scooping the unconscious Kaelina up to carry her away from the strange glass trail near her.

The battle ended, everyone regrouped. No major injuries, just minor abrasions and cuts, which were tended to quickly, and the general fatigue of combat. Elris quickly took credit for the slaying of the Razarik that had tried to sneak up on Creolis, with a resounding agreement from One-Eye who claimed to have seen it all. Kaelina’s condition was quietly blamed on the heat and excitement of her first battle, and surprising his companions, Elris fanatically requested to be in charge of caring for her. Dearn argued at first, as he was a cleric of Siladia, but Elris would not hear of it, and finally Dearn was forced to relent.

After gathering themselves, which required a little more work than originally intended, as the shock of the fight had caused several of their Danu to flee, and it took a bit of time for Desoil and Creolis to corral them. Finally, they managed to resume their progress, and after a few hours, night began to overtake them. Oddly, there was not much change to the weather as night fell, another quirk of The Desolation. Then, much to Elris’ relief Kaelina regained consciousness. He had her separated from the others, who were meandering about the camp doing various trivial things. Immediately after awakening, she began to try to rise, trying to figure out what had happened. Elris quickly silenced her. “I saw what happened, and yes, you saved Creolis, he’s fine, they all are. I know you have questions, and I know they’ve all told you who and what I am. Right now, you have to keep this to yourself, the others won’t understand. You just have to believe me for right now, that you’re very special, more special than I could have known. Soon, I will explain what I can, but for now you need to rest.”

She nodded meekly, unsure. Her mind still held an exhausted haze about it. “May I have a drink?” She managed to hoarsely ask, her voice cracked and dry. She was rewarded with a warm smile and a quick return on a canteen, from which she drank heavily. The water could not have been more amazing; she felt it was like tasting heaven. She sighed as she returned it and settled back onto her sleeping roll. She let sleep reclaim her, she was sure she had never been so tired in