The Path of Giants by B.T. Narro (best novels to read .txt) 📕

suddenly light again as I found myself rolling out and falling through the air. I lost one of my spears in the tumble as I used dvinia to help myself land. Gourfist flew back with a strong beat of his wings, spitting out my other spear in a stream of blood. He screeched as he came down on top of me.

I crouched and held my single spear with the back end of it pressed against the ground, but he shifted his attack to my surprise and scraped a claw down the front of my chest. I hollered as I fell away from him.

Looking down, I could see some of my chest bone exposed, my shirt ripped in half.

Gourfist went for the kill with another frontward swipe. I picked up my spear off the ground just in time, intercepting the talon with the tip. But there was so much force behind Gourfist’s attack that the spear penetrated and was ripped out of my hands as Gourfist pulled back.

The beast screeched again, my spear stuck in his talon.

I ran the opposite way for a breath, then took the ten long seconds necessary to heal myself, eyeing Gourfist the whole time. I was done before he was, the beast finally using his other talon to pull the spear out. He tossed it away with clear anger, looking more intelligent every moment I fought him.

Now weaponless, my only hope was to go for the bloody spear on the ground between us, the one that had fallen out of Gourfist’s mouth. I made a dash for it, but Gourfist got his talon over it just before I made it there. He tried to swipe at me with his other talon, but I lifted myself above it with a hoist of dvinia.

He snapped his beak at me, but I flew backward to avoid it. He was right there, snapping at me again. This time I flew high and toward him. I let myself drop to come down on his back.

I grabbed his huge feathers for balance as he violently shook his body. The force was too much for me, whipping me around as I held on with extended arms. The feathers couldn’t take the pressure, two of them coming out. Suddenly, I was loose and rolling down his back. I tried to grab more feathers to stop myself, but I was moving too quickly.

I hit the ground, a cloud of dirt rising up around me. I knew I had to move, even if I couldn’t see what was coming. I took off into the air again, throwing myself up and forward where I knew Gourfist to be turning around.

Sure enough, he snapped at the ground where I had been at the same time as I rose into the air. I landed on his back again, but this time I was ready for it. I didn’t bother trying to hold on as I readied a simple spell of Fire.

I still wasn’t very good with fire, but I was a powerful sorcerer nonetheless. I had the capability to take a simple spell and make it strong.

A jet of fire clumsily erupted out of my hands, singeing them and catching my frayed shirt on fire. But it did the trick, as I saw his feathers catch fire.

Gourfist writhed, throwing me from his back. With the fire spreading across both ends of my cut-in-half shirt—the heat singeing my body and forcing my eyes shut—I didn’t have the concentration to catch myself. All I could do was try not to die as I hit the ground hard.

I’d broken enough bones in my legs by now to know that I had broken something in my right ankle. I let out a holler from the pain as I managed to finally get my flaming shirt off, then I got to work healing my ankle first in case I needed to run.

I was starting to heal the rest of my burned body when I took a glimpse at Gourfist. He had flipped over, rolling on his back to put out the flames, smoke squeezing out from either side of him.

I saw the bloody spear lying near his head and went running for it.

“Fire!” I heard someone yell from the castle wall nearby.

A rain of arrows fell into Gourfist’s underbelly. It seemed to do nothing to hurt the beast.

He squirmed up onto his feet before the archers could load their next set of arrows. Gourfist took off into the air, and many of the archers went still with fear as his shadow fell over them. I noticed Aliana among them. She was one of the few with the sense to load a second arrow.

That’s when I saw Hadley with one of Gourfist’s giant feathers in her hand. She must’ve run here, through the courtyard and around the wall, all the way from the keep. She was pouring blood from a vial onto the massive feather. She waved her hand over it as she murmured something, her gaze on Gourfist as the beast swiped its talon just over the parapets of the wall.

All the archers ducked as I bit my lip in fear.

Suddenly, Gourfist came back down to the ground and screeched again, but the sound was different. He sounded more confused than angry as he stumbled a bit.

He whipped his head around, and that’s when I saw his eyes. There was a cloudy film over them as if he had been blinded.

A curse! I realized.

“Now, Jon!” Hadley yelled.

I lifted myself up and came down onto Gourfist’s head. His feathers were long and lush everywhere, including here. They gave beneath my weight, but not enough for me to feel his flesh.

I knew he would throw me off at any second, so I just had a moment to do this. I put all my strength behind a downward thrust, driving the spear deep below the feathers.

I felt the spear penetrate through flesh and stop at something hard that I figured to be Gourfist’s skull, but I hadn’t