Between Gates (The Gate Chronicles Book 1)

Chapter 35: Battles and Defeats

Andrew stood on the field, staring out across the airfield of West Base, waiting. 

Amory's forces were camped out on the huge, sprawling expanse of grasses and tropical flowers covering the open space around West Base. 

They were waiting. Waiting for something. 

Men and women mingled with strange, contorted beasts with snarling faces and twisted limbs. Fangs and snapping growls mixed with hushed whispers and anticipatory stares. The forces his brother commanded stood waiting, seas of bodies - whether man or beast - spreading out to touch the Gate and past the walls, which had previously kept out anything thrown at them but which now lay in a pile of rubble, desolate on the ground. 

It was time. 

Time to decide the course of the battle. 

Chenn had taught him what to say and what to do. Now it was time to use it. 

Amory's forces charged him in a swell, bearing down upon his small force of men and women with grim, determined faces and raised sidearms. He stood at their head, a desolate, lone figure, battered and worn, the dust and dirt from yesterday's battle still clinging to his body as he prepared to meet them, exhausted from a night spent sleepless and restless, reworking the words he had to say to end it all. 

The roars and yells of his brother's forces melted away, fading out of his ears. 

He closed his eyes, focusing. 

There was only his breathing now. The soft in and out, in and out that signified he still lived, still led those loyal to him. 

He raised the gleaming Wand high, lips beginning to form the arcane words that would end this battle once and for all. Perhaps even end him, if he was so unfortunate. But he prayed it would not end him. That he would end lucky. That his life-force would not be used up in this blast. 

Chenn had warned him that if he used the spell at the wrong time, it could drain him of his life within seconds, killing him as surely as any enemy laser or explosive could. 

The end wouldn't be without pain either. Chenn said that - according to the texts he'd read when studying the matter - it was highly likely that the victim of the unfortunate event would spend up to ten minutes in utter agony as they felt every ounce of life fade out of them, their bones snapping, brittle and unsustained, their skin shriveling up against the broken bones causing punctures that let the blood seep out, and their teeth falling out. Until finally they were only a pile of dust on the ground. 

That wasn't the worst part either. The Wand could drain one's very soul, stealing away everything that made the person human. And that knowledge that they were losing all that made them alive and human - different from the animals all around them - could be enough to drive them insane in the last intervening minutes before death. 

He prayed one last time that it would not be his end. That he would not go that way. He wanted to die peacefully - painlessly if possible; didn't everyone? He didn't want to die in the horrific way Chenn had described. 

Honestly, the boy had a knack for describing terrifying images and haunting events. It sent a shiver down his spine just thinking of the images Chenn's words had conjured. The boy was certainly a master at story-telling. 

The boy?

Chenn wasn't a boy anymore than he was. They were around the same edge. If Chenn was a boy, so was Andrew. 

This thought hadn't occured to him before now. But as time stilled to a halt for him, creeping by in barely noticeable fractions of an inch, he realized that perhaps all of them were too young. No. Not perhaps. They were too young. All of them were too young.