The Finisher

VIGINTI TRES: Who Must Survive

I FELL HARD TO the ground and rolled over twice from the force of whatever had hit me. I started to rise, but something was holding me down. When I glanced up, I could see it was Harry Two with his paws on my shoulders. He was surprisingly strong.

I finally managed to push him off and sit up. The field was far bigger than the Duelum pitch back in Wormwood, but I could see nothing that would have knocked me down. There were blurs of light racing here and there and emitting sparks and rays of colors. At first it seemed truly beautiful and somehow melodious, though it made no sound. But when a silver ray of light hit one of the blurs that I saw racing across the sky, there was a tremendous explosion. An instant later, a body dropped from the heavens and plowed into the dirt less than two feet from where I sat.

I screamed and scrambled to my feet. Harry Two barked and jumped next to me. I stared down at the body. It was blackened and bits of it were blown off, but I could see the great bearded face and the metal cap and breastplate the male wore. There was liquid all over it, like blood, except instead of red, it was a sparkling green the likes of which I had never seen before. I screamed again and this seemed to rouse him. For a moment, he stared up at me with the one eye he still had. Then he gave a great heaving shudder, the eye froze and he just died, right in front of me.

I backed away in horror until I heard Harry Two howl. I turned in time to see a steed racing at me. Its size would have put any of Thansius’s sleps to bloody shame. And on the steed was a tall, lean figure outfitted all in chain mail. The figure wore a full metal helmet with face shield and was racing right at me. Only when it raised the face shield did I see with astonishment that it was a female. I could only see a bit of her features because the helmet covered most of her, even with the shield up.

She lifted her arm. In her gloved hand was a long, golden spear. She took aim as she rode and hurled it right at me. Only it didn’t hit me. It sailed six feet over my head and I whirled in time to see it strike a huge male full in the chest as he was charging me astride another enormous steed. There was a sky burst like I had seen come down from the heavens on stormy nights, and the bloke simply disappeared in a hail of black dust and red fire.

The spear emerged from the ball of fire, turned in the air and flew back into the female’s throwing hand. Only now she was right on top of me. I covered my head and waited to be trampled. When I looked up, all I saw was the underbelly of the steed as it rose up in the air, lifted by wings that had seemingly sprouted from its withers. It soared into the sky and I watched in fascination as the rider engaged in battle with another figure perched on a winged creature that looked like an adar, only three times as large.

Everywhere I looked, something was attacking something else. From the air and the ground, powerful streams of light whizzed by at unfathomable velocities. If the streams managed to hit their targets, they simply exploded. If they missed and hit the ground, the concussive force lifted me off my feet. Suffice it to say, I was off my feet just about every sliver.

Then it occurred to me that this was very nearly identical to the scene I had observed on the wall in the cavern at Stacks before the river of blood had come to nearly hurl me to my death. A full-fledged battle was raging and now I was right in the middle of it.

As I watched, there came a slight lull in the fighting on the ground. I took the opportunity to run full out, with Harry Two slightly ahead of me. Eon had told me that I could not be seen or heard or presumably touched. Well, I had been knocked down and nearly crushed. I knew if I stayed here, I would die. As a silver beam ricocheted off a boulder, it struck the ground a glancing blow barely five yards from me. I was thrown into the air and came down hard on something. When I rolled away, I saw that that something was a body. It was the female rider in the chain mail, the one who had destroyed the male bearing down on me.

She had evidently been blasted out of the sky. Yet even as I started to get up, her hand reached out and gripped my arm. A strange, near-terrifying sensation went through my entire body at her touch. My mind clouded over. I felt cold, then warm, and then cold again. An instant later, my reason cleared, but I felt as heavy as a creta. I couldn’t seem to move.

“Wait,” she said breathlessly. “Please wait.”

As I looked down at her, she touched the side of her helmet. It took me a moment to comprehend what she wanted. I carefully lifted it off and her long auburn hair swirled around her metal shoulders. I could now fully see her face, and her features were beautiful. As I stared down at her, I was certain I had seen her before, somewhere. Then my gaze went lower and I saw the hole in her chain mail dead center of her chest. Red blood just like mine flowed from this wound. She was dying.

I had a sudden thought. I whipped out the Adder Stone and waved it in front of the wound and wished her to be healed. But nothing happened. Then it struck me. I was in the past. This female had died long ago. I couldn’t change that.

I slowly put the Stone away and gazed down at her body. She was tall, even taller than I was, and leaner if that was possible. But I had felt the immense strength in her grip when she grabbed my arm. And she must be extraordinarily powerful to have wielded the sky spear the way she had, and to wear the chain mail while astride a steed.

The spear! It was lying beside her. I reached for it. But as I did, she spoke again.

“No, wait,” she gasped, but with urgency in her tone. She struggled up a bit and held out her right hand. On it was a glove made of a bright silver material.

“Take … this … first,” she said, each word separated by a gurgling breath.

I hesitated, but only for a moment as the battle raged with increased ferocity all around us. I took the glove off and slipped it onto my own hand. It looked like metal but was as soft as leather.

She dropped back to the ground. “Now,” she said breathlessly.

I reached over and picked up the spear. It was lighter than it looked.

“The Elemental,” she said in a low voice that I had to bend down to hear.

“What?”

“The Elemental. Take it.” She took a long burbling breath that I knew heralded the end of her life. “When you have … no other friends … it will be there … for you.”

I couldn’t think how a spear could be a friend. “Who are you?” I said. “Why are you fighting?”

She was about to say something in reply when a sound came that shook the very ground. When I looked up, I saw to my horror that advancing upon the battlefield were three gigantic figures, each standing at least twenty yards tall, with huge muscular bodies and small heads. They were grabbing flying steeds and riders out of the air and crushing them in their grasp even as they galumphed across the ground.

I looked back down when the dying female grabbed my cloak. “Go!”

“But —”

“Now.” And what she said next shocked me more than anything ever had in my life.

She took a shuddering breath, gripped the back of my head and pulled me so close I could see that her eyes were so brilliantly blue they made the color of the entire sky look insignificant. Those eyes bored into me. “You must survive, Vega Jane.” She shook violently and her hand fell away. Her eyes glazed over as she stared upward.

She was gone.

I stared down at her. She had called me Vega Jane. She knew who I was. But who was she? And how did she know my name?

When I looked down at her right hand, my heart nearly stopped. On one of the fingers was a ring, with the same three hooks that my grandfather’s held. I reached out to touch it. And then take it. But it would not come off. I would have to cut off her finger to leave here with the ring. And I could not do that, not to a brave female warrior who had saved my life.

I took a moment to close her eyes, gripped the Elemental, scooped up Harry Two in my free hand, looked back once at the giants whose every stride covered a score of yards, and ran for my life.

While the giants were now the focal point on the field, the battle raged on, both on the ground and in the air. As I turned back once to see how close they were growing, a steed and rider swooped low, wielding a great sword nearly as long as I was tall. He ducked under the outstretched arms of one of the giants, and, using both hands, he swung his great blade with incredible force. It sliced the giant’s head clean off its shoulders.

“Take that, you bloody colossal!” he screamed before he and his steed swooped safely away.

A colossal? What the bloody Hel was a colossal?

But as the colossal fell, it soon became apparent that he would topple right onto me. And as I estimated he weighed the better part of four tons, there would be nothing left of Harry Two or me.

I ran as fast as I’d ever run, even as I could see the shadow of the colossal blocking out the light and reaching ahead of me by a handful of yards. I was never going to make it, not while carrying both the Elemental and Harry Two. And I was unwilling to sacrifice either one.

And then it occurred to me. “You prat,” I told myself.

As the shadow of the falling colossal engulfed me, I lifted off the ground and soared straight ahead, barely a yard in the air. I needed distance now, not height. I half closed my eyes because I was still unsure if I was going to squeak past. The thunderous crash that occurred right behind me jarred my eyes fully open. I glanced back. The dead colossal had missed me by less than two feet.

I soared upward, but this only made me more of a target. Streams of light were coming at me from all directions. Harry Two barked and snapped at them, as though his teeth could defeat the threat they each carried. I used the only tool I had: the Elemental. I did not hurl it because I was not practiced at aiming it while flying. Rather, I used it as a shield. I didn’t know if it would block the lights coming at me, but I found out quickly enough.

It did. The lights ricocheted off. One deflected blue streak knocked a rider clean off his steed. A purple streak struck one of the remaining colossals squarely in the chest and he dropped to his knees and fell face-forward, digging a hole ten feet deep in the ground with the force of his impact and crushing a rider and his steed underneath.

All I knew was, I wanted to get the Hel out of here. But to do so, I had to find the gates. And I had no idea where they were.

As I flew, I looked ahead and saw my own death speeding toward me. Six abreast they were. All huge males wearing chain mail. They were riding steeds with withers as wide across as I was tall and they had upraised swords in hand. Yet they didn’t wait to get close enough to swing them at me; they brought them down in a slashing move and out of each sword blasted shafts of white light. I gripped the Elemental like I had seen the dead female do. In my head I knew what I wanted the thing to do, but I had no idea how to make it happen.

I hurled the Elemental with all my strength, but I didn’t throw it straight at the oncoming shafts of light. I threw it to the right side of the shafts with as much backspin torque as my poor arm could muster. The spear turned to the left, gained speed and shot straight across the air. It hit the first white shaft, then the second, the third, and then the remaining three. It caused them to bounce off and head in reverse, like an orb thrown against a wall.

When the deflected shafts of light struck the wall of riders and their steeds, there came the loudest explosion I had yet seen on the battlefield, even louder than when the first colossal had fallen. Harry Two and I were knocked heels over arse as waves of concussive air pummeled us. When the smoke and fire cleared, the riders and their enormous steeds had vanished. I did not dwell on my improbable victory. I had righted myself in time and had caught the Elemental squarely in my gloved hand as it reversed course and soared back to me.

As I pointed downward and looked toward the ground, I saw them in a valley miles away and partially obscured in a sea of mist. But they were still unmistakable to me: the flaming-red gates. I went into a dive. I had to. For a new peril had emerged from the heavens. Right behind me was a creature I can only describe as a jabbit with wings. And if it were possible, the vile thing was even more terrifying than the dirt-bound variety. And as fast as I could fly, the winged jabbit was swifter.

I looked at the Elemental. I knew I could not throw it as the chain-mailed female had. But she had said that, when I had no other friends, it would be there for me. Well, friends are supposed to be good listeners. I looked back at the jabbit. It was now or never.

I spun in the air, faced the oncoming jabbit and threw the Elemental. In my mind, it flew straight and true at the target.

The jabbit exploded and the Elemental flew in a graceful curve right back into my gloved hand. I landed, set down Harry Two and we ran full tilt toward the gates. I’d had quite enough of the past. As soon as I passed through the gates, everything became black.

I knew where I was. I could feel the grass around me. I heard Harry Two’s yips, the impact of his four paws with the ground near me. Part of me just wanted to lie there with my eyes closed for the rest of my sessions. But I slowly sat up and opened my eyes. Stacks was in the distance. I looked to the sky. Hardly any time had passed. It was still light, though growing darker by the sliver. The only things to tell me I had not imagined it all was the glove on my hand and the Elemental gripped in that hand.

And the bulge in my cloak pocket was the Adder Stone.

I rose and held the Elemental tighter. What was I to do with the thing? It was as tall as I was. I couldn’t carry it around Wormwood. I couldn’t really hide it.

And as though the thing could read my mind, it shrunk down to the size of an ink stick. I stared at it, dumbstruck. And yet it seemed that I was growing accustomed to inexplicable things happening to me as they mounted in number.

It occurred to me that I had not returned to Eon even though he had said time travelers did. Yet then again I was not supposed to be seen, heard or harmed while I traveled back in time. I looked at a burn on my arm. Well, I had been seen, heard, injured and nearly killed.

I touched the burn and pain shot all the way down my arm.

“Oi, Eon,” I called angrily out to the air. “You need to rethink your rules of time. They’re a bit dodgy.”

I took out the Stone, waved it over my wound and thought good thoughts. The pain eased some, but the burn did not heal fully. I sighed resignedly and put the Stone away.

“Figures,” I said to myself. “I guess this is a burn from the past that the Stone can’t sort out all the way. Thanks loads, Eon.”

I walked along, thinking about so many things that I finally couldn’t think at all. My head truly felt like it would burst at any moment.

Bloody Hel, Vega. Bloody, bloody Hel.