A cluster of flaming arrows fired into the back of the monster’s throat and choked the beast. When it collapsed, it felt like a tremor. Indrid approached the crocodile and pierced his sword into its eye just to be sure, and when he did it burst into dust again forming back into the body of the elder.
Apollo was thrown from the explosion.
Without time to react, the elder grabbed Indrid by the neck and raised him up off of his feet. Indrid’s men charged the mage from all angles, but the elder waved them off as an invisible force hurled them through the air, slamming against tree trunks and boulders. While the elder was distracted, Indrid reached for his waist, unsheathed his short sword, and slammed his tapered blade through the back of the elder’s skull.
Before the elder’s collapsing body could reach the ground, Indrid’s men roared in cheer. But Indrid needed a moment to catch his breath before he celebrated; his heart raced. A good number of his men and horses had survived the battle, but Apollo was again nowhere in sight.
Although Indrid’s small brigade was victorious, the rest of the Ikarus army had been slaughtered. The mages had made it to the Ikarus gates.
Now, there was nothing left to stop the invasion.
After the mages of Cobb stormed through the Ikarus army, Rayne Volpi, an entity of the higher dimensions caught between the world of the living and the dead, was now Demitri’s last obstacle. He stood in front of the stone pillars that surrounded the Ikarus kingdom ready to defend the people within the walls.
Demitri slowly approached, watching Rayne’s transparent form flickering in and out of view. He snickered. “This is fine architecture,” he said, walking right through Rayne without resistance. As Demitri grew close to the giant stones, the engraved writing on the pillars started to glow. He reached out and touched one, but it burned his hand and shoved him back. “You’ve decrypted my genetic structure without a single drop of my blood. Very impressive indeed!” Demitri said.
Rayne had put a spell on the stones that surrounded the kingdom, preventing Demitri’s body from penetrating the perimeter.
“This will only delay the inevitable, my lord. And after we conquer this kingdom I’ll need a bride. There are such pretty women within these walls. But I already have someone in mind.” Demitri turned to a small clan of his bloody-faced servants. “Get the Mern. I will handle the wizard.”
Rayne became furious. In the form of a black mist, he hovered toward the host’s pawns. But Demitri stepped in his path and grabbed the image of Rayne by the throat, and pulled him slowly into the material world. The pressure of Demitri’s grip was painful. Now Rayne felt vulnerable. He felt his flesh and blood again—exposed.
“Here we are. Gods among men, and yet we fight. For what? Peace? Peace among filthy mortals who claim to own a planet? They are all savages.” Demitri stretched his smile. “I don’t want to hurt Anna Lott. I just want to taste the sweetness between her legs before I gut her and decorate the kingdom walls with her blood,” Demitri said, his voice intensifying.
“If you touch her, I will make you and the ones you serve beg for death!” Rayne said.
Demitri threw Rayne to the ground. It was the first time since Rayne had come back that he’d felt victim to physicality.
“Welcome to a world of pain,” Demitri said.
Two dead elders surrounded Rayne. His body pulsed with faint light. They pulled out long chain-linked whips wrapped in barbed wire. At lengths end a series of smaller chains dangled off the tips with smaller metal hooks. They lashed at him; the hooks pulling dark matter from his cloak until reaching his flesh. Before long, Rayne’s bloodied physical form collapsed.
In a puddle of Rayne’s blood, Demitri dipped his finger and dripped a drop onto his tongue. “Volpi blood, how delicious. Thank you for the keys to the kingdom, Lord Rayne.” Demitri stamped his blood-covered hand onto a pillar, and the resistant vibration surrendered to his palm. “Collect the wizard’s body and bring it to the Ikarus castle,” he said to his clan. “I want to snap his limbs and crush his skull in front of his own people.”
Demitri once again walked freely onto Ikarus ground.
A BROOD of mages stormed through the south gate. Anna Lott crouched behind barrels that lined the front of the alehouse adjacent to their path into town. She carried a small knife for protection. She was terrified by the thought of killing someone, even in battle. But when she saw the wicked faces approaching from the distance, they looked more like rabid creatures than human beings. Some even looked more dead than alive. It made it easier for her to shut off empathy. Mage and elder alike raced up the street towards her. There was nowhere for her to go, to run; no one to hide behind.
My flute. How could she forget? It was in the pocket of her jerkin.
After Indrid had told her not to look at, A Wizard’s Guide, the book that Montague had urged her to read, she did anyway. She remembered what was on page two hundred, and sixty-four; where Montague had said to look. The chapter was filled with sheet music charting melodic enchantments. There was a specific progression of notes that would produce a compressed wave of sound that would stun an enemy.
Anna could only watch as the rest of her civilian fighters were taken down. The mages threw glass sphere’s that set fire when shattered and packets of powders that completely stripped men to the bone.
Before she was surrounded by the tips of staffs and wands, she brought out her flute and played out the notes. As the last note of the melody
