Soul of the Sorcerer - Part Three: Daughter of the Dragon (21 page)

“You coming monk? I need a beer!” he said to Kenelm; without even turning around to face the stunned monk. Kenelm slowly pushed his chair back and made his way around to stand uncomfortably next to the still mute Rhodalie.

“What do you think?” he asked, looking up at her.  Her sharp blue eyes were looking a little less intelligent than usual; she blinked and then looked at the monk standing beside her, “Yes...I think you should join him for a beer” she replied utterly bemused.

Kenelm smiled briefly, before shrugging “No, I mean do we pardon Master Darrion?”

High Master Rhodalie turned to Brother Kenneth for guidance. The older monk was still standing behind the table utterly flummoxed, but finally, after what seemed an eternity - in which he surveyed the chaos in the room around him - he turned back to the man and woman on the stage.

“Based on what we have just seen, I’m not going to challenge him...are you?”

Rhodalie just nodded in agreement. Kenelm chuckled, jumped off the stone platform and walked with a whistle after his friends. “I will return, friend Kenneth, I promise” he turned to say before continuing through the exit…”Now for that beer”.

Edala’s frantic fight against the Ebony Being had resulted in them both being covered in blood. Fortunately the blood was not hers; her terrified scratching had torn strips from the creature’s skin, one scratch biting deeply into the dragon tattoo on his arm.

It reminded Edala a little of the pendant of Daria, but very crudely drawn. Fortunately her frantic onslaught had snapped him out of his lust; his eyes blinking back to white and a look of horror his face. The lustful creature, who had been there moments before, now buried in some part of its mind, but how deep, Edala could not tell.

Edala instinctively stopped her struggle, but the being did not remove his hand from her mouth; she could still taste his blood, where she had bit him. Although it tasted fairly similar to a human’s; there was a bitterness...no a vileness, to it. She gagged, but he still did not release her.

The female creature, who had been leaning over the comatose Bethany, now moved over to her accomplices side and looked down at the pinned Edala.

“He will not hurt you daughter of Ingemar” she said in a voice which was hard to tell if it was either feminine or masculine. “Here!” she added handing the male Being something.

Edala’s eyes widened in shock when she recognised the Pendant of Daria.

“Edala,” her name sounded strangely pained from the lips of the male being, who had relaxed considerably from moments before, “we are here to help, although I know that will sound strange coming from Daemon-kind such as us. I am going to take my hand away now, but be aware there is a sphere of silence around this room, even if you were to shout, none will hear” he cautiously took his hand away from her mouth and rubbed the wound where she had bitten him.

Edala spat the contents of her mouth out onto the floor beside her bed, and pulled herself back towards the headrest, where she could sit with only her legs under the hulking form of the Daemon.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, eyes fixed on the Pendant of Daria.

“That is not important. The memory it contains, however, is” the female replied. It then looked like the male was going to speak; but somehow, both Edala and the female being could sense anguish within him. The ebony female placed her left hand on his shoulder, and turned to Edala.

“We have waited until this night, the night you and the Sorcerer have lain together, as it is the event which must not change. This evening the Sorcerer and child of the dragon have conceived a child.”

On any other day, Edala would have cursed a tirade of expletives at being told she was pregnant, but she was so absorbed by the words of the ebony female that her only reaction was to place her right hand protectively over her belly.

“Soon something terrible is going to happen; an event that will ultimately cause the destruction of both this, and the Sorcerer's adopted world” the female continued, she then nodded to the male, who gently pushed the Pendant of Daria against Edala’s forehead.

Edala suddenly found herself standing in the circle of stones on Arrenloft; a sense of panic filled her mind. She realised quickly, however, that this was not her panic, but someone else's…she was experiencing another’s memory. She recalled that her father had told her that this was a property of the pendant; so she relaxed and let it take her where it will.

Whoever she was experiencing, had been on some urgent quest to get someone from Earth. Her vision turned to discover Lloyd’s Mother, Amy, carrying her medical bag, with her husband Master Darrion.

“Are you ready Lloyd?” Darrion asked reaching an arm to Edala’s shoulder. She nodded, or Lloyd did, she corrected herself.

It felt strange to be inside the mind of her lover, but it was also frustrating; because the pendant only provided an implant of the memories and thoughts at that moment in time. She could not steer or interrogate them, in any other direction.

There was a strange sensation as Lloyd and Darrion merged their large air portals and cast the translocation spell which took them to…, she waited for Lloyd’s vision to clear and the blood to be wiped from his nose...the palace courtyard at Seadawn, Lloyd’s ancestral home.

Within moments of arriving; guards were ushering them with some urgency through door after door, to the grand staircase and the royal apartments.

A young man appeared, who Edala took a few seconds to realise was King Hegan. He had matured a lot since the time she had met him at the Admiral at Sea Inn, back in the town of Fish. In fact, with his spots all cleared up, he was nearly as handsome as her Lloyd.

At this moment, though, his face was pale and full of fear; he took his brother Lloyd, by the arm, leading him towards the main royal bedroom, where an anguished scream brought a chill to Edala’s heart and the young man's whose memories she was somehow reliving.

Lloyd entered the bedroom, and the horror of the vision before him almost knocked him out of reality…and Edala from the effects of the pendant.

There on a four poster bed with red sheets was Edala, completely naked with stomach and breasts swollen with pregnancy. A sense of coldness overcame Lloyd when he realised that the sheets were only red because they were soaked with blood, Edala’s blood, which was flooding out from her dilated vagina.

His wife's eyes met his…this was a surreal moment for the watching Edala; for one, the sense of being a husband from Lloyd’s perspective, but also the look of love, mixed with desperate hopelessness, in her own eyes, as they looked into hers through Lloyd’s.

In seconds Amy Brook was at the bedside, attaching devices and feeling parts of her body.

“How long has she been in labour?” she asked frantically of one of the royal physicians in attendance nearby.

“Two days” one of them replied.

“My God, I can’t believe she has survived this long!” the doctor replied.

Lloyd’s emotions were numb as he moved over to take his wife’s hand.

“I’m so sorry my husband” she said weakly, tears filling her eyes.

The watching Edala then felt Lloyd snap back to reality with an anger…no…a passion and a drive, to make sure the one he loved, above all else, would live.

His four soul portals opened and the watching Edala gasped, as the intoxicating powers of sorcery flooded first through Lloyd, and then into her dying body on the bed. For the first time, since being thrown into this intense memory implant, Edala found herself becoming strangely distracted by the process she was watching Lloyd perform. She realised that what she was witnessing, was the blood replication process Lloyd had used to save her, on the Isle of Retreat.

Blood cell after blood cell, both red and silver, began to burst forth from all over her body. It was then that the watching Edala felt, for the first time, what it was like, to be under the thrall of Sorcerers wrath. The wrath she realised stemmed from anger, and also fear; the fear of losing someone you love, and anger that this could happen.

Lloyd worked frantically to save her, but Edala could tell it was a losing battle, but fight and fight he did. The watching girl was vaguely aware of Amy working equally as frantic; at first to try and save her, but then the baby.

There was a moment of blackness, before Edala found herself, looking through Lloyd’s eyes, at her own dead body. A blooded hand, Lloyd’s, came before her vision; the blood was from a wound on Lloyd's head where Darrion, it seemed, had knocked him unconscious before Lloyd had pushed his power too far.

The emotions that flooded from the memory to Edala nearly stopped her heart. She would never ever doubt that Lloyd loved her again. She felt the tear, as her loss virtually ripped his heart out from his chest. Not only that, she also felt a void open within him; a pit of darkness where no light would shine…a place as dark and heavy as the deepest sea…a place where one could easily lose their soul.

Edala blinked and found herself staring up at the two Ebony Beings. She was surprised to find that her face was wet with tears.

“What of the baby?” she asked with a sob.

The female Daemon just shook her head.

“There is one more memory that must be shared” the male said placing, the pendant back against her head.

This time Edala found herself staring at Allen, Lloyd’s protector, as his lifeless body lay in her freckled arms, glazed sad eyes looking into hers. It did not take much deduction to realise this was Bethany’s memory; soon confirmed by the mass of long red hair as it dropped across Allen’s face as she kissed him, on the lips, goodbye. She then closed his eyes, with a hand bearing a gold wedding ring.

All had seemed silent; but as soon as she lifted her head, the sounds of the battlefield, regretfully, snapped her attention away from her dead husband.

To her left came the raging horde of the Bremethren - Edala had not heard that name before, but it was the name in the memory. Closing fast was thousands of powerfully built albino warriors; their muscled torsos reminded Edala of the ebony male who, no doubt, still hovered on the bed above her. Their red eyes showed no rage, just emotionless determination at the task before them.  Rushing to meet them, head on, were the remnants of what Edala, through Bethany, knew had been an immense army; comprising of soldiers from Kalana, the Clans People and even those of Crescent Empire. They were a sorry few; and hundreds more fell before they even reached the albinos, as white beams of magic from a thousand or more albino mages at the rear, vaporized them out of existence.

“Bethany to me!” a familiar voice commanded; there was no fear in this voice, just determination and anger.

Her vision turned towards the voice and there stood Lloyd Brook, looking a few or more years older than he was currently. His Sorcerer robes were still smoking from where he must have deflected one of the vaporising beams. His face was red with third degree burns and he was a vision of total bleakness.

Around him stood the few remaining masters and apprentices from Arrenloft and the Isle of retreat; about a hundred bodies of their friends and colleagues lay at their feet. His four portals were currently open and he returned his attention to some spell he was formulating. A sphere of some kind of metal was hovering a few feet in front of his head and was steadily increasing in size.

Bethany walked over to stand beside him.

“What are you doing?” she found the strength to ask, from reserves she had not realised she had.

“It does not matter; just summon the power to transport us to the mountains when I say so.”

She nodded as even more mages were vaporised around her. Some, it seemed, had the ability to defend against the white beams and others did not.

Lloyd suddenly moved the metal sphere several hundred metres away to hover over the meeting armies.

“NOW!” he ordered; and Bethany quickly finished the enchantment, to shift them the ten miles or so to one of the hills at the base of the Highheart Mountains, above the territory of the bear clan.

As Lloyd and she appeared; the bright light that accompanied the translocation paled into insignificance, in comparison to the light that reached them from where they had been on the battlefield seconds earlier. Moments later a huge ball of boiling and flaming cloud, began to climb turbulently upwards. As it climbed it began to spread out in, what Edala could only describe as, the shape of a giant mushroom.

The terrifying noise of the explosion reached her seconds later; Bethany’s hands gripped hold of Lloyd’s arm for support.

“I have never witnessed such power” she said in a mixture of shock and fright. “Do you think anyone survived?”

The Sorcerer turned his emotionless gaze towards her and shook his head.

“What of our allies?” she asked in horror.

“No” was his simple monotone response.

Edala sat in stunned silence as she returned to herself.

At first, her heart had been broken, as Lloyd’s heart had broken at losing her. Now it broke again, at seeing the man she loved, kill thousands of both friend and foe, without even one flicker of remorse.

“You know now, Edala daughter of the dragon, why you must live!” the female being said, bringing her face within a few inches of Edala’s. The Dragon-Girl had not noticed before just how physically imposing the She Daemon was; the combination of taut muscles, under a tight yet smooth black skin, and the maze of tattoos identical in nearly every way to the males; except, she noticed, for the dragon tattoo.

On the male this had been at the top of his right arm, beneath the shoulder; but on the female, Edala could just make out a glimpse of it, on a hint of left breast, peaking above the cream coloured cloth material binding her chest.

The female then stood up and used her left hand to pull the male with her.

“One final thing,” the male said in a thick voice quivering with an emotion that Edala could only interpret as anger, “tell the Sorcerer that, above all else, the promise must be fulfilled, the child must be delivered to the Mae!”

“No more my love” the female Daemon said clenching his arm.

The male nodded, with a look of defeat, and turned to look with affection at the other; they then both turned to Edala and nodded before vanishing.