A Warrior's Legacy (31 page)

It was an odd feeling smacking down energy
blasts. It was also very painful. On and on they just kept coming.
I didn’t understand the technology I was using, but I wished it
helped me to move even faster than I was.

I was twisting and swinging at all sides
seemingly at once. The sword in my hands was ringing so bad it hurt
to hold onto it let alone force myself to smack it into another of
the energy bolts. I wasn’t quick enough and one of them slammed
into the curtain of red light around me.

I felt like I had exploded inside. I could
hear myself wheezing for breath and my head didn’t seem to reason
well. I didn’t want to do this anymore and I almost dropped the
sword, but some reason of thought penetrated the splitting pain in
my head that I wouldn’t survive another hit.

I doubted I had survived this one came the
responding thought. I realized I was on my knees in the halo of red
light and I looked up to see a bolt coming directly at my head.

Desperation aided me in lifting the heavy
sword up one more time. I didn’t swing, but instead let the beam
impact itself on the blade. I felt the shock ripple out over me and
into me.

I was going to die.

If I died though everyone else would die
too. My brother would die. Raya would die. Everyone would die.

I shoved the sword into the bottom of the
floating red halo of light and forced myself to my feet screaming
with the effort, as it felt like I was tearing myself apart.

My days of training with Rolf took over
then. He had taught me how to fight through the pain. To channel it
to some distant corner of the mind and lock it away there until
there was a time and place to let it back out and feel its agony.
This wasn’t the time or the place.

I sliced through a bolt and then another and
another and another after that. I was stumbling around the small
box of space within the spiral halo trying to keep on my feet, as I
readied myself for the next energy bolt strike, but it didn’t
come.

I looked out of the red halo toward the
distant clouds, but they had been reduced to just a little puff of
smoke almost no thicker than a patch of morning mist. The sorcerer
was finished!

He’d used up the rest of his available
power. It was time he got back a little of his own medicine anyway.
A red beam of energy shot out from the end of my sword and coursed
through the air towards the wispy cloud. It encircled the small
cloud faster than the eye could see and began to reduce the size of
the cloud even further.

The sorcerer’s voice no longer sounding
thunderous and prideful came through weakly garbled and painful
sounding, “Kill them! Kill the warrior and take his sword!
Kill….”

His voice was cut off as the cloud
disappeared with a red hued snap of color. The sorcerer’s legions
ever obedient started forward like dumb oxen to accomplish their
assigned task for they knew nothing else but blind obedience.

I felt the vibration of their movement on
the ground beneath me. There were voices, Raya’s voice. I heard
Raya’s voice. I opened my eyes and there she was.

“Raya.”

Tears were slipping out from under her face
mask, which then slid down her face to dribble onto my chest.

“Yes Zevin?”

I looked up at her wishing I could see her
eyes that were masked from me, wishing that we had never had to
leave the caves of Lanoria.

“I need you to finish it Raya!”

My hands moved hers from where she had been
holding mine to form around the handle of my sword.

She tried to resist, but I held her hands to
it, “No Zevin I’m not leaving you? I’m going to take care of you!
You living is all that matters!”

I shook my head slightly, “To late for that
honey. No one else here needs to die. Raya I need you to save our
people! I need you to go on and lead them into peace in my absence,
but right now I need you to take my sword, pray to the Creator and
save our people and my brother’s too. I know you can do it. You are
a stronger warrior than I ever was.”

She was shaking her head violently her body
quivering with barely suppressed emotion, “That’s not true! I can’t
do it Zevin! I can’t leave you!” She wailed out at me.

I pushed her away roughly and she fell
backward clutching my sword, “You must! You have to! You will! It
is my last wish now go!” I said half pushing up supported by my
brother from behind.

“Zevin!” She screamed out bent over as if in
agony.

“I’m lost without you! I have nothing if you
leave me, but an eternity of emptiness! I can’t bear to lose you!
I’d rather die than be without you!”

My tone was gentle, “One day you will die
Raya, but not this day. My love for you Raya will never die.
Remember that! Now go Raya! Go!”

She screamed a guttural cry of inexpressible
fury and pain and wheeled away and started to run towards the enemy
line in the distance. I couldn’t see her!

“Lift me up Gavin!”

Gavin lifted me up so I could see her again
as she ran.

“Isn’t she beautiful brother!”

Gavin responded not really even looking as
he held his brother from behind, “Yes she is. You did well for
yourself brother.” Gavin said letting his cheek rest against his
brother’s head.

“Zevin?”

Gavin’s eyes met Talin’s, who was kneeling
in front of Zevin. Big tears tracked down Talin’s face as he shook
his head side to side slowly.

“No! Not my brother!” Gavin cried out and
then began to sob into Zevin’s neck as he held him with his arms
about him.

Holon looked away from his leader, his
friend, the master he would have done anything for. He gripped his
sword tighter and started for the enemy, a blood lust for revenge
overwhelming any common sense he might have had.

Talin and Lohan quickly grabbed a hold of
him, but Holon was so strong that he would have dragged them along
with him if need be, but Talin got through to him.

“No Holon! Let this last battle be fought
the way Zevin wanted it to be! No more dead friends!”

Breathing hard Holon stopped and nodded as
he stared after the girl in the distance that kept running right at
the enemy line with no sign of fear.

Tears still flowing with abandon Raya caught
her breath on a half sob gripping the sword in her hands she looked
up at the heavens with the enemy column only a couple hundred yards
away, “Creator I haven’t known You long. I don’t like You right
now, but I know my husband loved You and did anything You asked him
to. He asked me to do this, but to do it I need Your help. Please
help me! And if You don’t that’s fine to, because I don’t care if I
live. So on behalf of my husband give me the strength of pure power
to destroy the enemy and deliver the people!”

A warm presence filled her from within and
made her instantly regret her harsh words, but amazingly she felt
no judgment levied against her. Her head fell forward and fresh
tears fell as she felt the words whispered into her raw soul.

“I will do more than to just win a battle
for a faithful servant and his bride. I Am the God of battles, but
I am the One that heals too. I feel your pain and your tears can
never equal Mine for the loss you feel I have already felt even
more keenly than you ever could. I Am also the One that restores.
Have faith even as I build your faith so that you will trust Me and
be ready for the next part of your journey. Your husband’s blessing
is extended to you. The enemy is given over into your hand. Do not
leave one left of them standing!”

The words ended and Raya lifted her head,
even as the sword pulsed alive with color in her hands. Starting at
the sword Raya’s hands began to turn an icy blue as the element
that she was partially made of crystallized, and within moments she
was entirely made of the icy blueness emanating from the sword.

Her skin was the color of her eyes, while
sunlight reflected off of her skin like she was a faceted diamond.
The intensity of her eyes shone through the tinted orange of her
mask as if they were molten flames of fire.

The ground shook as Thora and Kregridor
touched down a safe distance from her to either side of her.
Together the three faced the enemy line that had come to a
screeching halt. Silently the three waited, and within a moment a
massive shower of small arrows thudded into them.

Each small cross bolt arrow shaft was dipped
in the same poison used to kill the royal family, but it didn’t
matter because the arrows uselessly pinged off the hard scales of
the tannin and the even harder faceted quality of crystal power
that Raya had become.

Gripping Zevin’s sword with both hands Raya
pulled it apart into two identical swords. She gestured with both
swords upward and an icy blue veil shot up out of the ground on all
four sides of the enemy creating a box.

A soldier reached out and touched the
shimmering veil and there was a loud snap and he fell over
clutching at his heart already dead. The enemy seeing the
ineffectiveness of their arrows charged the three with weapons held
high.

The ground rumbled and Raya pulsed with cool
blue intensity even as naked blue trinial power bolts shot out of
the tips of the twin upraised swords in her hands.

The thin streams of energy sparked and
frayed apart into several strands that stretched at least fifty
feet high into the air. Raya brought her swords down as if she held
the handles of a pair of bull whips.

The strands of blue snapping fire cut
through the onrushing enemy soldiers. Raya killed hundreds with the
flick of a wrist even as hundreds more were consumed alive by the
unquenchable fire roaring out of the mouths of the tannin that
burned with a depth of intensity grown over a century of being
cooped up away from their skies.

The massed attack turned into a riot as the
trapped soldiers ran to and fro in hysteria at what they were
confronted with, an unreasoning fear that ate through whatever
manipulation and programming that had been done to them.

Many perished by flinging themselves
desperately against the shimmering side curtain walls of the box.
Many more fell to the quick slashing sting of the trinial power
strands or the crushing talons and fire of the tannins. Not one of
the enemy was alive within twenty minutes.

The tight quartered box made of raw power
was filled high with the charred remains of those who had fallen.
The shimmering walls collapsed and the massive tannins took flight
with the ease of a sparrow as the warrioress with now only one
sword again walked steadily back across the plain.

As she came closer the glow of her skin
lessened until she was the same as when she had left. Warriors of
both the East and of Lanoria drew back away from her in a mixture
of awe and fear.

She paid them no mind, but simply glided
past them. Gavin had let Zevin down to the ground and was wrapped
in Zalisha’s arms, who had come from the city at the battle’s
closing.

Both watched as well as the crowd of
surrounding spectators as Raya dropped to her knees beside Zevin.
She took the sword and laid it on his chest closing his cold right
hand over its handle.

Zalisha gave a sharp sob imagining fully
what it would have been like to do the same for Gavin. Raya didn’t
cry and she surprised many when she lay down beside Zevin on the
ground. She lay against his side and laid her hand over top of his
on the sword and then she closed her eyes.

Her body shut down and her breathing
stopped. There was no desire left in her to face the long empty
years of her life without the joy she had encountered in the arms
of this man, who had loved all of her and had made her forget the
past and actually see the hope of something better for the
future.

The crowd of spectators drew back even more
as the thunderous beat of the tannin’s wings signaled their
imminent arrival. They landed surprisingly lightly upon the ground
given their great size and folded their massive wings inward.
Everyone other than Gavin and Zalisha had drawn back.

Both tannins bowed their heads to Gavin and
Zalisha and Thora spoke, “Were it a better time than this to meet
such a noble king and a queen such as yourselves. We have known
your brother for only a short time, but if you are any measure of
the man he is you will be a great leader of your people and one
that rules wisely.”

Gavin didn’t seem to care for the praise the
tannin offered him, “My brother is dead!” He said flatly still
caught in the grief of the moment.

Thora shook her head, “Now is not the time
to despair young king! Does not the King of all creation yet rain
in authority over all matters in heaven above and in land
below?

Now is the time to pray and even worship the
Great Creator that made you. For who can tell what the Master of
all destiny will yet choose to do!”

Gavin ducked his head at the rebuff of his
faith, “How can you be so hopeful? He is dead!”

Thora cocked her head to the side slightly,
“Have not other men been risen from death back to life by the
Creator of all life? Why should it be any different in this
case?”

Gavin stared speechlessly up at Thora, “You
were there?”

Thora shook her head, “No I was not, but as
a member of creation I declare that the Creator’s Son is Lord of
all and that He is risen and alive indeed. I may speak in a tongue
understandable to you, but I assure you as a beast that I only echo
the rest of what all creation is saying and is already
proclaiming!”

Gavin looking hopeful for the first time
asked, “Why do you think life is still possible for Zevin?”

Thora spoke gravely, “Zevin knew that the
cost of victory would most likely require his life and yet he did
what he did to achieve victory anyway. As the Holy Scriptures says,
‘He who loves his life loses it and he who loses his life finds
it.’”