Elfborn: The Quest

Guardian

"Burn me," he gasped, a hand feeling for the sword he had dropped when he slammed into the column. "Where the hell ...?" he began.

Before the injured man could go on, something took hold of him by his tunic and, without any effort, hoisted him into the air. Lash turned his head to the side to bring his peripheral vision to bear as whatever had him held him up for a moment, as if to examine him. But that yielded nothing. It was as Kenneth had said: the creature had the power of invisibility.

Then, without warning the creature shifted, something Lash could feel through the broad grip that held him seemingly unsupported in the air. In that instant he thought he caught sight of a bending line, like the outline of something, only visible when the light cast by the torch itself was bent passing over it.

Lash found himself swallowing hard. If that glimpsed line was any indication of the size of the thing he now faced, it was truly massive. And that meant the Hybernian was truly in big trouble!

Done its examination of him, Lash could feel the creature shift again. The grip that it had him in, a massive hand or paw twisted in the fabric of his coat and tunic so hard that the fabric was ripping as he stared wide-eyed at it, was itself shifting. Putting Lash in position for ...

The blast of energy caught him almost directly in the chest, powering him helplessly backward until he hammered into the stony wall behind him. Winded and with stars dancing in his vision, he dropped limply to the ground. How he managed to avoid getting charred to ash, he didn't know. It certainly wasn't the chainmail shirt he had worn under his tunic. He felt that tear as the blast first struck him. What he did know was that his whole body burned, as if he was once again in the river of fire, with Lord Astor staring down at him, demanding his fealty.

"It comes, it comes, it comes," Kenneth moaned over and over, rocking back and forth in his agony as Lash looked up to see shifting lines in space advance towards him, outlining something huge.

Something seemed to move inside Lash's head and, with a cough, he vomited blindly onto the stone in front of him as his body was abruptly tied into knots of agony, his brain feeling like it was being split in half with a hammer. Then instinct was throwing him forward, his feet and hands working mindlessly against the rough ground in time to avoid a crushing blow, so powerful that it ground the sharp spikes of stone where Lash had lain into blunt stubs.

Jerking himself to his feet, he looked around wildly, his eyes wide as he tried to find his sword. There! By that jut of stone. But, as he glanced back to where he had lain, he could see that the creature had already spun around to rapidly advance towards him, a visible aura of blue light gathering around the barrels it called hands. 'Ithus! If you ever wanted your descendant to succeed, now's the time!'

His desperate mental shout must've worked. For in the aching space that followed his plea, Lash felt his hand jerk up against his will.

"Povrada!" he barked as the word swam in front of his mental vision, sweat oozing down his face despite the chill, his face a mask of determination even as his body ached sickeningly.

A ripple of magic washed through the crevice as the Word of Power echoed and re-echoed, quickly gathering the power around Lash's battered body. It was enough to make the creature pause, abruptly uncertain as to what it was facing. And give Lash enough time to set himself as, with a flicker of reflected light, his arming sword lifted from the ground to dart through the air to slam its hilt back into his hand.

Instantly Lash whirled around, the sword held ready.

"Now come and get me, demon!" he hissed and, with a rush of displaced air, the creature charged towards him. He could hear it snarl low in its throat like a bear as it closed on him, the energy curling around its limbs nearly rendering it completely visible. And then it was attacking.