Grym Prophet (Song of the Aura, Book Three) (24 page)

The five ships that formed the rearguard for the escape would not be bypassed so easily. The two friends had already come within an eighth of a mile of the river, and- without knowing it- into the firing range of the metal vessels.

Suddenly, gaping portals opened all along the sides of each ship that faced them. Gribly watched in horror as balls of fire wider than a man was tall rushed out of each aperture and flew towards him and Lauro with astonishing speed.
That must have been how they destroyed the inn!

“Move, idiot!” Lauro shouted at him. A burst of wind threw Gribly up into the air, and Lauro grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, kicking his legs to propel them high out of reach of the flames.

A rush of heat passed under them, pushing Lauro even higher on its superheated air. By the time they were forty feet high, the fireballs had burned their way past, carving a new patch of blackness in the Grymclaw.

“I can't hold you much longer,” Lauro gasped, straining against the effort of lifting two whole people on the wind.

“I'll be fine!” Gribly assured him. The prince nodded, then let go.

As he plummeted, Gribly curled into a ball and spun in tight series of flips. The air was still hot enough to scorch him from the passing of the fireballs, but he ignored it and uncurled himself when he judged the angle to be just right.

WHAM!

He hit the stony ground with enough force to break every bone in his body... but his Stone Striding was powerful enough that he felt no injury. Dirt and dusty soil sprayed up all around him as he landed in a one-knee crouch, hands pressed to the ground on either side of him.

I am the master of the strongest element,
he told himself, energy racing through his veins with every second he touched the earth.
The feeble flames of my enemies' hate cannot break me! I am invincible!

Lauro landed on the ground next to him, stumbling with fatigue. “That was too hard. I can't do it again...”

At the river, four of the five ships began to glow from inside, readying more fire. The fifth spewed smoke and listed to one side for no apparent reason- courtesy of the Aura, most likely.

“It's up to me, then,” Gribly snarled. “Guess we'll have to deal with these fools first, after all.” As one, the four remaining ships emitted a wall of scarlet flame that careened towards them, too fast to dodge. “Get behind me, Lauro!” the prophet shouted. The prince stepped sideways, reluctantly placing Gribly between him and the danger.

Gribly knelt to the ground in a flash, thrusting his hands into the earth up to their wrists. The packed ground softened beneath his touch, and he felt his mind extend to encompass all the stone and earth from his hands to the bank of the river.
If the Creator is my master, I can do anything in Him...

The wall of flame rolled closer. In seconds it would hit him.

In one fluid motion Gribly stood and flung his earth-grimed hands in the air. The ground in front of him erupted upwards, mimicking his motion by forming a hasty wall of earth as wide as the approaching firestorm. Once more he repeated the Stone Stride, doubling the thickness of his makeshift shield.

Then the fireballs hit. The impact jarred the landscape, but Gribly managed to throw up another wall of soil despite the rumblings beneath his feet. The effort made his head throb with excruciating pain, and his arms felt like they had physically lifted every pound of the earth, but he kept at it until he was sure the inferno on the other side had died away. Lauro leaped, spun, and vaulted to the top of his earthen wall, propelled by Wind Striding.

“The Aura are tearing a second ship apart!” he called down from his perch. “One's already sunk... two more are jammed close together, trying to fire at Wanderwillow- Blast! He's summoning huge roots out of the river to pull down the boats!”

“That leaves one for us,” Gribly shot back. “Let's finish it on our own.”

Lauro looked back at him and nodded, leaping off the wall to land in a swirling whirlwind next to Gribly, crouching with arms flung wide. “How'll we do this, Prophet?”

Am I really becoming the leader, like the Aura said?
Gribly wondered, but he grinned. “I've got an idea... If two Sea Striders can summon a storm, what could a Stone Strider and a Sky Strider do?”

For the first time since they'd emerged into the physical world, Lauro actually smiled. His eyes glinted viciously. “Let's send these Children of the Pit back where they belong.”

Gribly nodded in agreement, walked over to his wall of earth, and thrust his hands towards it. With a grunt of surprise, he realized he had fused it together so hard that it had become stone, hence being able to withstand the heat of the golden ships' fireballs.
I'm becoming more powerful every day... we all are!

“Very well,” he huffed, “I can work with this.” With another grunt he shoved his hands into the bare face of the rock, sinking his fingers into the surface, then broke it apart. All along the wall, rock shivered, shook, and diffused into sand. As the entire structure collapsed, a strong wind blew the grit and grains into a spiraling mass that scattered into an enormous dust cloud, blowing outward in a veil that would obscure the vision of anyone on the boats. “Good work,” he called back to Lauro.

“Right,” the prince agreed, “Now let's give them something they won't forget!” The land was clear again, but the golden ships would be blinded for a few moments more. The river was almost invisible behind a gray-brown dust cloud that flashed from moment to moment, illuminated by the titanic struggle within.

“I'll form the stones into something usable,” Gribly decided, “And you can help me throw them. We'll make a storm of our own!”

Lauro nodded, and Gribly set to work.

He stomped his feet, first the left, then the right, and the earth buckled beneath him. He swept his foot across the dusty ground, pulling his clawed hands towards him forcefully, and the heaving ground burst upward in a thick vortex of churning earth.

Suddenly, whatever he did was magnified a hundredfold. With a quick spinning motion, Gribly turned a full circle with his arms outstretched, intending to cause the vortex to grow taller and spin faster. It did all that and far, far, more, shooting up for a hundred feet, flinging soil and shards of rock in all directions, spreading wide as three men laying end on end and almost engulfing Gribly, who leaped backwards in a handspring to avoid it.

The earth-vortex followed his example, slamming into the ground to form a huge U-shape over him. Standing stock still, he lifted his arms toward its peak, feeling the earth with his mind. What had happened? There was so much... wind.

Lauro laughed out loud behind him. Gribly looked at his friend and saw his wild eyes... it had been him. Lauro was Striding Wind to augment his Stone Striding.

“Together we can do
anything!”
the prince yelled, raising his arms. Wind whipped Gribly's vortex faster and faster.

The smokescreen cast when Lauro blew the dust cloud forward was thinning into nothing. Without warning another fireball roared out of the nearest ship towards them.

“AGH!!” Gribly cried, stepping to one side and moving both arms in a high-flying arc towards the flames.

The vortex whipped one end up from the ground, soaring through the air faster than should have been possible thanks to Lauro's efforts. Its end slammed into the fireball a hundred feet away, engulfing it in swirling stone and earth, crushing it easier than a flat stone snuffing out a candle.

“END THIS!” Lauro shouted, and he punched the air with a wordless screaming battle cry. Lightning shot from the sky and smote the whirling pillar of earth, flickering up and down its outside. Gribly saw small dark forms scurrying about on the ship's deck, running and leaping overboard. One figure in a dark cape raised his fist and shook it at them, then vanished in a plume of smoke. “NOW!” Lauro yelled.

Gribly flung his arms to the sky, and the vortex became a tornado of awesome proportions, flashing with lightning and frothing with tormented earth.

I’ll never be helpless again,
he realized.

Then he slammed both fists into the ground with a shout that shook the earth.

Doom fell on the golden ship. The torrent of earth and wind ripped the war vessel apart as if it were made of tin, shredding its metal bulk and hurling huge pieces of shrapnel for hundreds of feet all around. Fire blossomed in a series of mushroom-like explosions as the mysterious glowing innards of the ship were mauled by the vortex of alien elements.

Suddenly Gribly felt the power added by Lauro's Wind Striding flicker, then die. “We've got trouble!” the prince shouted.

Gribly cursed, channeling the rest of his earth vortex into the ruined shell that was left of the ship. They had taken down one themselves, and three seemed out of commission thanks to the Aura. That left one warship still mobile- it would have to be dealt with later. Arms loose and ready for Striding, Gribly turned to face the problem that assaulted Lauro.

Smoke billowed up from the ground, spinning in a sort of weak imitation of the larger vortex they had summoned before. Lauro threw a mild, testing blast of wind at it, but the smoke appeared undisturbed. Orange sparks shot up in a fountain of fire from the inside, and the next second the flames spewed forth a creature like Gribly had never seen before... or so he thought, at first.

It wore black robes, with black plate armor scattered at vital points on the thing's body. It had the general shape of a man, but its hands and feet were clawed, and its skin was jet-black and wrinkled. Milky, bulbous eyes glared at him without pupils, and fangs bared in the creature's mouth. It raised a hand, and branded runes in its palm began to glow with fire.

“What in the Blaze are you?” Lauro spat. The thing turned its head towards him with a jerk, hissing through teeth that seemed better suited to ravaging small animal corpses than talking.

“I am a Child of the Pit.”

Gribly began to slink to one side.
He's one of the ones who chased Traveller, all that time ago!

“What makes you think you can touch me?” Lauro sneered at the creature, which howled, flicking its wrists and generating a ball of swirling flame in each hand.

“I have been taught by the Golden One himself the arts of Pit Striding, foolish man-child! I will burn you blacker than death!”

“Hah!!” Lauro laughed, and thrust his arms forward, hurling a small bolt of lightning he had been gathering straight into the Pit Child's chest. With a gurgling yell, the black beast-man was launched into the air towards Gribly, who had sneaked around behind him. “Now!” yelled the prince.

Gribly punched out with his left arm, and a sharp, tooth-shaped spear of rock burst from the ground, impaling the Pit Child as he tumbled back to the ground. The hideous face contorted in a snarl of defiance... then froze in a mask of death. Ebony blood trickled from the corners of its mouth and dripped from the fist-sized wound that penetrated its back and emerged from its chest.

BOOM!
Thunder rumbled overhead, and both friends looked to the river simultaneously. There was nothing to see except sky-high pillars of smoke, and a few half-submerged smokestacks. The Aura had completed their task.

“You know,” Gribly remarked, swaying a little from the shock of the battle's aftermath, “I think this is getting a little easier!”

Then he passed out.

Chapter Twenty: The Prophet, the Prince, and the Pirate