Avalyne Series 02: The Easterling (26 page)

‘
Melia,’ Aeron turned to her, knowing of no way to soften the blow of what he was about to say. ‘It wounds me more than anything to have to say this to you but she is not your mother. Not any more. She has not been Ninuie since this Mage turned her into his creature. A River Daughter would die rather than become this thing he has turned her into. Do not let her suffer further degradation inside the shell of her ruined body. Let her go to the Stars and find some measure of peace.’

‘
I cannot!’ She exclaimed, looking away from him as she faced the choice he was presenting her. Fresh tears dampened cheeks when she saw the cocoon before her and the thing wriggling inside it like a worm. That was once her mother. The woman Hezare had loved until his last breath.

She approached it stealthily once again and placed her hand on the membrane,
ignoring Aeron's words of caution. Her heart wanted to shatter inside her chest and she wept again as she saw the figure inside reacting to her touch, sluggish limbs moving through the fluid to reach for her. Melia pulled away in revulsion, unable to bear the thing’s touch. Her hand flew to her mouth, mortified by her reaction.

Aeron was right.
What was inside this shell was not her mother.

Aeron
came to her when he saw the loathing of her revulsion. He hated himself to force upon her such a choice but he also knew that there was no other alternative. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he rested his lips against her hair and spoke gently, ‘‘I would rather die than hurt you Mia but you have to see what she has become. She would not wish to live this way, no one would.’

Melia wiped her tears away and nodded slowly,
‘I will not see her suffer any more than she already has. Let it end for her so at least she and my father can be reunited in the afterlife.’

Pulling away from him, Melia unsheathed her dagger and strode towards the pod, deciding that if this thing was to be done then
it should be up to her to carry out the execution. Melia raised the dagger, preparing to plunge the blade deep into the membrane to end the suffering of the poor creature within it once and for all.

‘
NO!’ Edwyn screamed defiantly when he saw her approach and lashed out without warning.

Melia
was swept of her feet and swatted aside like a rag doll. She hit the wall hard, all sense of the world fragmenting a moment as the disorientation swept over her. Pain flared in bright colours across her face before she crumpled onto the ground, her hands and knees hitting the hard floor beneath her. She thought she felt the snap of a rib but could not be sure even if her side was aching in pain. She heard Aeron calling out her name through the ringing in her ears.

‘
Edwyn what are you doing?’ Tamsyn demanded, unable to believe that Edwyn had attacked. Then again, everything that his friend was doing was so beyond what he knew of the man, he ought not to be surprised by now.

‘
I will not risk their freedom!’ Edwyn declared hysterically. ‘I do not know if they can be killed but I will not risk the foolishness of others to give them their means of escape!’

‘
They must be destroyed Edwyn!’ Tamsyn implored, quickly seeing the situation deteriorate with the attack upon Melia. Tamsyn was reaching the painful conclusion that perhaps Edwyn was beyond reasoning. The long confinement here and the guilt he carried at what he had done to these women had deteriorated Edwyn's mind to madness.

‘
NO!’ Edwyn screamed again, becoming more irrational by the minute.

Tamsyn
attempted to approach him but the wizard found himself swept off his feet by the same power that had assaulted Melia. His heart sank when he realised that Edwyn had turned his powers on him and would protect these creatures until death. Aeron had been correct, he lamented in silence, that in the end, Edwyn would give him no other choice but to fight.

Pushing himself up
to his hand and knees, Tamsyn raised his head to see Edwyn glaring down at him, surrounded by his cocoons, his eyes wide and almost feral with madness. He was too late, he thought with anguish. He should have stayed with Edwyn, should have braved telling Lylea that he was afraid instead of hiding.  There were so many regrets in his past but none would ever cut as deeply as this one.

‘
Do not make me fight you brother,’ Tamsyn pleaded, his voice filled with sorrow. ‘I do not wish to hurt you.’

‘
All I wanted was for you to help me!’ Edwyn screamed, his voice had the edge of desperation that would listen to nothing else. Frustration, disappointment and despair had trapped him in a perfect storm of rage and he lashed out with all the might he had left. ‘To take my place before my life ended! I wanted to make things right again and you have taken that away from me!’

Another surge of power ripped
Tamsyn from the floor and pinned him to the wall. Pain radiated through him as he stared at Edwyn. The wizard uttered a groan of pain and knew if he did not retaliate soon, he would unable to at all. Edwyn's madness had made his powers wild and frenzied. It would exhaust him soon enough but not before he caused Tamsyn considerable damage. When Tamsyn saw Edwyn approach him, he saw that the Mage's eyes were wide and his pupils opened, no longer able to listen to anything but his own cries of persecution.

Finally retaliating, Tamsyn struck with his own power,
throwing Edwyn to the ground, face first. The crunching of bone filled the air with its sickening sound and Tamsyn quick pulled himself to his feet, hoping to incapacitate Edwyn before the Mage could recover.

Edwyn's instinct for survival was strong and when
Tamsyn was only a few steps away, he raised his eyes to his brother, revealing a smear of blood running across his forehead. There was black fury in his eyes as he screamed and threw out his arm, pointing his fingers at the ceiling above Tamsyn’s head. Tamsyn glanced up in time to see the fissure appearing across the rock before great chunks of it broke free from the ceiling and tumbled towards him. Tamsyn leapt out of its way to avoid being buried beneath it.

Enphilim help
me
, Tamsyn thought as he saw the pile of rock that would have been his grave, he  could not keep holding back. Edwyn was not bound by such restraint. His brother had risen to his feet and was preparing to launch another assault but this time, Tamsyn did not give the opportunity to attack.

Broken pieces of ceiling floated off the ground and flew towards
the disgraced Mage. Edwyn froze the rock in mid air and for a few seconds, the fragments remained trapped in the space between them, suspended over the floor as it struggled to decide in which direction it would go. Tamsyn could see the strain in Edwyn's face as he maintained the battle of will and magic, his jaw clenched and his teeth biting down in a grimace of furious determination.

Suddenly the rock exploded, unable to take the pressure placed upon
it by both. Fragments became flying projectiles that forced both men to turn but neither was able to shield themselves from the barrage of rock. Sharp and jagged shards bit into their skin and drew blood. The rest crumbled to the floor in a cloud of dust. It was at this point that Tamsyn remembered Aeron and Melia.

Where were they? He thought frantically
and searched for them, hoping they were sensible enough to take cover when two wizards were duelling. However, he knew Aeron only too well. The archer would not sit back and allow his friend to fight alone and neither would his lady.

It did not take him long to realize why they had remained
out of sight.

Aeron
and Melia were dealing with a much greater problem.

When the battle between the two wizards had first begun,
Aeron was kneeling at Melia's side, ensuring that she was not injured severely after Edwyn had lashed out at her for attempting to end her mother's misery. Fortunately, the watch guard suffered only minor bruises and scratches, nothing that would impede her ability to fight. Though she was a little dazed to begin with, by the time he had to help her to sit up Melia had recovered enough to become aware of the pitched combat taking place between Edwyn and Tamsyn.

‘
Are you alright?’ He asked concerned as she gripped his arm and used it to support her attempt to stand.

‘
Yes,’ she replied quickly, wiping a smear of blood from across her cheek. ‘Nothing is hurt that will not heal in time.’

‘
The Mage has gone mad,’ Aeron declared stating the obvious as he took stock of the battle so that he could ascertain how they might help Tamsyn.

‘
He was mad before this,’ Melia retorted bitterly, feeling no sympathy for the man.

All she could feel for
was fury for what he had done to her mother. However, her attention was soon drawn away from the conflict to the cocoons around them. Her eyes widened in fascinated horror as she saw a hand push against the membrane surrounding one of the cocoons and then break through. Nails pierced the flimsy material, ripping it apart easily and causing fluid to slosh about in all directions, splattering other cocoons and spilling across the floor.

‘
By Celestial Gods,’ Aeron whispered softly. ‘They are awakening.’

Tearing through the shell that kept her prisoner for so long, the creature that stood up from the ruins of her fleshy cage was naked and covered with slime.
She still retained her original form which was slick with fluid. The true colour of her skin could not be discerned for the resin covering her body was amber in its hue and masked her pigment. She paid little attention to the two observers, more concerned with her own appearance. Examining her long tapered fingers, she ran their tips across her face and seemed to be adjusting to the world she had just stepped into.

For an instant, she looked like any woman and Melia found herself clutching wildly
to the hope that perhaps the Mage was wrong, that whatever had been done to the River Daughters was not as irreversible as he feared. The person before her was no monster, merely a woman appearing confused by her surroundings. If she was no a danger to others then perhaps Ninuie would be the same as well. Melia knew this was a desperate hope but she was hurtling towards an inevitable conclusion she was doing everything she could to avoid.

‘What are you doing?’ Aeron demanded when he saw Melia take a step towards the creature.

Aeron
had no such illusions about the nature of the beast before him. While it was wearing the skin of a woman, beneath it was anything but that. His elven senses could detect the terrible evil emanating from it, the rage that lay dormant to Melia's eyes. She was blinded by hope for her mother's restoration and fear of what she needed to do in order to release Ninuie from her torment. Aeron could not blame her for believing the creature before her was redeemable but he knew better. Even as she approached it, Aeron could see its eyes narrowing at Melia, looking at the watch guard, not as a person but as
prey
.

‘
Melia!’ Aeron ordered out before she got any further. ‘Hold your ground.’

Melia froze in her tracks but she was not ready to believe that there was danger, not when she could see other cocoons beginning to stir with life. They were clawing at the walls of the
ir shells, breaking out of them the way this one had. She saw the cocoon her mother was in starting to tremble with movement and knew that soon, she would be face to face with Ninuie.

‘
Aeron , it is alright,’ Melia cried out in turn. ‘She does not want to hurt me.’

Aeron
was not listening. The archer was already retrieving his arrows and loading his bow in readiness to shoot. His eye was fixed upon the creature that was staring at Melia with her dark gaze. When he ordered Melia to stop her approach, the River Daughter turned to him instead and Aeron saw the malevolence in her eyes, followed by black hatred for interfering with her prey's advance.

‘
Back towards me Melia,’ Aeron insisted.

‘
But Aeron …’ Melia started to protest.

‘
DO IT NOW!’ He barked sharply, startling her.

Melia
jumped at the sharpness of his voice before facing the woman again and fighting the compulsion to continue onward. It was the first time he had raised his voice to her and she knew that he would not do so without good reason. Melia could not ignore the order when delivered with such force. Slowly she began to retreat. Unfortunately when the River Daughter observed her withdrawal, she took great exception to it.

Whether it was instinct or premonition, Melia did not know but when the woman raised her arm
s towards her, her first thought was to run. It was an instinct that proved correct when black tendrils shot out forth from the River Daughter’s finger tips. Melia had little more than a split second before the creature was hurling those spidery appendages at her. Diving out of its way, she heard the woman howl in rage at being unable to ensnare her as the tendrils struck marble and dug into the rock like hooks.

The white stone immediately fissured, breaking apart and then crumbled to dusty
fragments before Melia’s eyes.

That was enough for Aeron who let
fly his arrow. It flew through the air with a faint whooshing sound towards the creature that once been a woman. The River Daughter's head snapped up at the approach and screeched an unearthly sound when her fingers jerked in its direction. The black tendrils flew from her fingers, intercepting the projectile before it reached her face. The black coils wrapped themselves around the shaft and decayed the polished wood into a matter of seconds. The fletch of the arrow withered into spindly strands and the quiver rusted and flaked, falling to the ground at her feet.

She raised her eyes to
Aeron only to see another arrow already racing towards her and this time, it was one she could not stop. It stuck her in forehead, tearing through flesh and bone in a blink of an eye.  Dark blood spurted out from the wound as the force of the arrow’s violation sent the quiver ripping out the back of her skull. Her body went slack and she dropped to the ground without any sound, the blood oozing out of her skull and creating a pool of crimson beneath her.

‘
Aeron ! Watch out!’ Melia warned loudly.

Aeron
averted his gaze from the creature he had just slain to see another emerging from her pod to witness the death of her sister at his hands. Her eyes were blazing with fury as she screeched at him and once again those ghastly tendrils were moving swiftly towards her prey, only this time it was not Melia who was her intended target but rather himself. Aeron leapt out of the way, dodging what would almost have been certain death. He landed hard and saw Melia throwing her dagger at the woman, trying to give him time to escape her reach.

As he scrambled to his feet, he looked up to see Melia's dagger slicing through the body of
her target. More and more of the creatures were beginning to tear through the walls of their prison now that Mage was no longer holding them back. He knew without any doubt that if they were allowed to emerge from their shells, Avalyne would be doomed. He and Melia had the advantage for now because their first steps into this world were clumsy and new. However, once they banded together and attacked, he knew they would be unstoppable.

Even
now, he could see more fingers tearing through the flimsy membrane that kept them trapped, ripping away the cage that had held them secured for so long. The Mage for all his madness had understood the danger, had sacrificed himself to keep them here. Aeron had pity for the part of Edwyn that was still sane enough to do that. However, he had greater worries to contend with now. They had one chance to end this menace before it escaped into the world and he was not going to squander it.

Despite her injury, the creature that Melia had struck
was still capable of retaliation and she lashed out with those life draining tendrils. Melia took refuge behind a stone column and watched the spidery threads of black continued onwards until they found another source of nourishment. Wrapping themselves around the empty cocoon of a creature previously slain, the ruptured pod immediately crusted over and then crumbled upon itself, going from rancid to dust in a space of seconds.

Darting out of her hiding place,
Melia hurried to the Prince’s side.

‘
What do we do?’ She asked anxiously. There was no longer any question in her mind that these creatures had to be destroyed. Even if one of them was her mother, Melia understood that they needed to act for the greater good.

The cocoons all around
them were shuddering with life even as Tamsyn and Edwyn were locked in their life and death struggle. Aeron saw their fierce battle and knew better than to be caught in the crossfire of two duelling wizards. Besides, he and Melia had enough to deal with as the River Daughters continued to strain against their pods. A section of ceiling collapsed with a thundering crash thanks to the deadly magic being wielded by the two serafs and buried one of the pods for good.

The River Daughters paid little attention to any of this. They were only conscious of the fact that their former captor was
distracted and they could now escape. If anything, the commotion was compelling them to struggle even harder against their prison, to rip through the membrane that kept them confined for so long and finally leave this mountain.

Aeron stared at their attempts to escape and tried to think what was to be done. So far he
and Melia were fortunate in their confrontations with the creatures. However, if more of them were emerge, not even luck would be enough to save the Prince and his lover. Aeron would even go so far as to say, he did not like the chances for all of Avalyne. Judging by the malevolence of the first creature, it would not take long for them to acquire a taste for murder.

Fire, Aeron thought suddenly.

They needed fire. It was the only weapon they had that would not wither and decay under the creature’s power. Fire was a power unto itself and could not be tamed once unleashed. While it did not sit well with Aeron what he was required to do if he chose that as his weapon, he also knew that his choices were limited. Scanning the walls of the room, he saw the torches that were hitched to the wall, covered in dust and cold ash.

“Melia, the torches!” He
shouted.

‘
You are going to burn them?’ Melia exclaimed when she saw him hurrying to the nearest bracket. Pulling the brass lamp from its fixture against the wall, he examined the inside of it and saw that it had enough oil inside to start a fire.

‘
There is no other way Mia,’ he touched her eyes as around them, more and more of creature clawed their way out of the pods. ‘I am sorry.’

He
fumbled for his satchel and produced the tinder box that had miraculously survived the journey through the river. Unable  to delay any longer, he struck the flint and ignited  the oil.

Melia thought of
facing her mother as one of those creatures and knew he was right. They had no other choice. Taking a breath that seemed to make her whole chest ache, she said quickly, ‘Do what you must.’

No sooner than she said the word
s, he flung the lamp as far as it would  go and caused it to smash against a stone column. The glass shattered spectacularly, spraying oil over the sealed cocoons. The flames spread quickly across translucent flesh. Shrill screams filled the air as the unholy creatures within the pods found death in a blanket of fire.

One of the
River Daughters, already emerged from the pod screeched in crazed fury, as she whirled towards her sisters’ killer. Rage drove her forward, making her forget her formidable powers as she moved on uncertain legs towards Aeron, her claws bared. Melia intercepted her slime covered body with a powerful tackle that had them both toppling to the ground. The creature, momentarily stunned by the attack, turned her dark eyes at Melia. Before the creature could attack, Melia grabbed a nearby rock and staved it against her skull. Once, twice, three times and the River Daughter struggled no more.

‘
Get on with it!’ Melia snapped at Aeron, wiping the splattered blood off her cheek.  This was hard enough to do without them wasting time.

‘
As you wish!" He shouted back at her and ran along the walls of the room, sword drawn, ready to cut down anything that lay between him and the path to the other lamps. One after the other, he took advantage of what little oil was left in them and hurled them at the cocoons, setting the room ablaze. The flames spread across the pods  like wildfire, causing some of them to explode once the heat had become so intense the pressure needed release.

The River Daughters who were climbing out of unsealed pods before he began his fiery assault were now
aiming the full torrent of their vengeance at him. Snarling and hissing at him like animals, they broke free of their slimy husks and started towards Aeron. Melia got to her feet and ran to his side as they attempted to converge upon him, swinging her dagger at them and forcing them to scatter before they could  use their dreaded powers to subdue her Prince.