The Hollow: At The Edge (23 page)

It wasn’t fair.

Seething with rage, the
mage climbed to his feet and ran at the Illudin. He hammered his
bare hands against the barrier impotently, as Imperial soldiers and
Ferine fought and died around him. He pressed his hands against the
shield, and uttered a long string of ancient elven words of power,
willing the Illudin to hear his pleas.

Purely by luck, he
spoke the words of power that activated the Illudin. The huge
crystal lit up a deep crimson, and a beam of red light fired from
its topmost point, tearing though Serrel’s shield.

Up on the cliff,
feedback from the force of the energy beam ripping apart his shield
transferred into Serrel’s staff, nearly throwing it from his grasp.
It did snap upwards and smack him in the side of the face, knocking
him to the ground stunned.

“Oh, dear,” said
Mouse.

“Shit,” agreed
Victor.

The elf mage laughed in
joy. Charges of energy crackled like lightning across the surface
of the Illudin, and arced across the air and into the mage’s hand.
He felt the energy fill him, limitless, pouring from the ether in a
torrent. He lifted his free hand, and weaved the ether into a wide
beam of red energy that he swept across the quarry.

Two Legion soldiers and
several Ferine were cut into pieces instantly. Caellix saw the beam
coming, and threw herself flat onto the ground as it flashed
overhead. Then the mage turned, and directed all his anger onto the
foolish magic weaver who thought to keep him from the Illudin’s
power. He lifted his hand, and fired at the figures on the
cliff.

Victor grabbed Serrel
by the arm and dragged him to his feet.

“Come on, we need
to-”

“Look out!” Mouse
screamed.

The huge beam of energy
cast by the mage hit the cliff, just below where the three were
standing. Mouse threw a shield over them, but to no avail. The beam
shot through her barrier as if it were not even there, and blew the
rocky face of the cliff apart.

Victor and Serrel
suddenly found the ground beneath their feet dropping away. Victor
was ahead of the pair, and managed to fall forwards and grab a hold
of solid ground. Behind him Serrel had a second of unbridled panic,
and then he was falling.

There was the roaring
of collapsing stone all around him, and above him he saw the faces
of Mouse and Victor staring down at him in horror, and rapidly
diminishing in size as he plummeted downwards.

Strangely, it occurred
to him that he was falling off a high cliff for the second time in
two days. Now that was unlucky. And this time there wasn’t going to
be a river below to catch him.

There was nothing to do
except fall.

The destroyed section
of cliff hit the quarry floor and smashed to rubble, throwing up a
billowing cloud of dust that swallowed up Serrel moments before he
hit the ground.

Then there was a huge
force, yanking him upwards so hard he thought his joints would be
torn from their sockets. Coughing from the dust and dazed from the
unexpected assault, it took Serrel an embarrassingly long time to
realise he had not hit the quarry floor and splattered into a
bloody mess. He was in fact floating still in the air a metre or so
above a large pile of broken white stone.

He was wondering if he
was hallucinating. If he had had actually landed and was lying in a
pile of broken limbs dreaming he had been miraculously saved. With
eyes stinging from all the dust in the air, Serrel could just make
out the weird green aura that ebbed around his floating form.

Then whatever magic had
saved his life was dispelled as quick as it had come, and Serrel
dropped the short distance to the ground.

The landing was not as
bad as it should have been, but there wasn’t really a gentle way to
land on your back on solid rock. Serrel groaned, and rolled aside
to get away from whatever jagged edge was poking him in the kidney.
Through the cloud of dust around him, there came more flashes of
red light, and manical laughter cut with bouts of ragged
coughing.

Serrel pulled forced
himself up, using his staff as a lever, and limped towards the
ominous red glow that was obscured by dust. He saw the elven mage,
half blinded by the dust cloud, firing indiscriminately at any
moving shape he saw. He was killing more Ferine than Imperials, but
didn’t seem to care. His back was to Serrel, a long red arc of
energy crackling through the air from the Illudin and into him.

It was unsporting, but
Serrel didn’t really care at that moment. He lifted his staff, and
fired the biggest bolt of energy he could weave into the mage’s
back.

The mage’s laugh died
with a surprised grunt as his chest exploded outwards. His spell
ended abruptly, but his connection to the Illudin didn’t break.
Somehow he managed to stay standing, and on wobbling legs he turned
to face Serrel, the Illudin still pumping him full of energy.

The mage looked at
Serrel with eyes that were now pools of blinding red light. Even
the hole Serrel had blown through his chest seemed ringed with red
light. He was overflowing with ether energy.

“You...” the mage
slurred. “You think... you can... You think...”

The Mage’s legs gave
out on him, and he dropped to his knees. Except as he hit the
ground, the light in his eyes flared brighter. Pin pricks of light
began to appear across his skin as the energy within him began to
leak out of his being.

Serrel could only watch
as the mage began to smoke, his body rapidly consumed by all the
energy still pumping into him. Red pin pricks became giant holes of
light in the elf’s flesh. In seconds he was nothing but a blinding
elf shaped body of red light. Then with one blinding flash, he was
gone.

The arc that connected
him to the Illudin crackled and discharged itself on the few tiny
motes of dust that still remained of the elf. Then as suddenly as
it had activated, the Illudin’s outburst died. The beam that shot
into the sky disappeared, and the crystal returned to sitting on
the quarry floor, quietly feeding on the ether, its inner light
pulsing to its own beat.

Serrel stood there,
stunned and still in shock, the area around him obscured by the
thick dust. He heard low growls of pain, and someone groaning.

Then a woman’s voice
started shouting, “I need help over here!”

It was Caellix.

Serrel snapped from his
stupor. Unable to see, he lifted his staff, and weaved the ether
into a wave of force that exploded outwards from him in a circle.
The shockwave was strong enough to clear the surrounding area of
dust so that he could see again.

Caellix was kneeling on
the ground besides Holly. Holly lay on her side, a huge Ferine
sword was buried up to its hilt in her back, its broad blade
jutting out through her chest.

“It’s not bad,” Holly
said weakly. “Doesn’t hurt.”

“Don’t move,” Caellix
instructed. “Fresh Meat’s here. He can help.”

“Yay,” Holly replied
without conviction.

Serrel knelt down
beside her. He didn’t even know where to begin. Shock and terror
were clouding his mind. He forced himself to take a breath, and
think through what he knew about healing spells.

Gods damn it, he had
never been all that good at healing spells. Tiny cuts and grazes
were all well and good but what the hell could you do about a
bloody great sword stuck...

Stop the bleeding, he
told himself. First thing in any injury, you had to stop the
bleeding. He gently leaned over Holly and touched the tips of his
fingers against the edges of her wounds.

Holly groaned.
“Serrel?”

“I’m here, Hol.” He
focused on the word of power
Ilisolde
, reshaping his energy
so it could pass into her.

“I’m sorry I made fun
of you before,” said Holly.

“Stop talking, Wells,”
Caellix told her.

“I shouldn’t have made
fun of your story,” Holly went on regardless. “It wasn’t
right.”

“That’s all right,
Hol,” Serrel replied off-hand. He thought he had his energy in the
shape compatible with the girl’s aura. He slowly allowed it to
trickle into her.

“It isn’t funny that
you can’t go home,” he heard Holly saying. “I can’t go home
either... Serrel,” she grabbed at his sleeve weakly. “You have
to... You have tell my father something for me.”

“You can tell him
yourself,” replied Serrel, not really listening. He was trying to
get the energy into her body. Trying to give the severed flesh a
boost so it would start healing. But the blood wouldn’t stop.

“Tell my father I’m
sorry,” Holly continued. “He didn’t want me to join the Legion. We
argued, and he was so mad...”

The blood wouldn’t
stop. Why wouldn’t the blood stop, there was enough energy, gods
damn it?

“Fathers are like
that,” Caellix said gently. “They always think they know what’s
best. But I’m sure he forgives you, Holly.”

“You don’t know my
father,” said Holly. She closed her eyes. “I want to go home.”

“You will. Just picture
it in your mind. What does it look like?”

“Our cottage... with
the thatched roof... The dog liked to sleep under the stairs... My
stupid little brothers... always underfoot...”

Serrel cursed inwardly.
The damn spell wasn’t working, and he wasn’t sure why. He started
over.

“Just picture it in
your mind, Holly,” Caellix stroked the girl’s hair.

“I just want to go
home... Just one more time...”

Serrel weaved the ether
once more with
Ilisolde.
But now he could not seem to match
Holly’s aura.

“Fresh Meat.”

Why did this have to be
so hard?

“Serrel.”

A calloused hand closed
over his wrist. He looked up into Caellix’s face. Her expression
said it all.

Serrel looked down at
Holly Wells lying still on the ground. He fell back and sat down
hard. He noticed his hands were streaked with her blood.

“I didn’t save her,” he
breathed.

“There was nothing you
could have done,” said Caellix.

“There was... I just...
Maybe I didn’t...” He tried to think, tried to figure out what had
gone wrong.

“This wasn’t your
fault,” Caellix told him sternly.

“I didn’t save
her.”

“Neither did I.”

Serrel felt like
something was crushing his chest. He couldn’t breath.

“You were right about
me,” he said.

“Don’t, Fresh
Meat.”

“We me first met, you
were right. What is the point? What is the point of weaving if I
can’t even help save the life of just one person.”

“You’ve saved plenty of
lives. If it weren’t for you, more than one of us would have been
dead by now. But sometimes it doesn’t matter how good you are, or
how hard you try, sometimes the lives of other people are just
beyond your control.”

She stood up stiffly as
the rest of their group slowly gathered around them. Brant’s face
fell.

“Oh, no...”

“What’s happening?”
Caellix asked.

“The...” Dogbreath
swallowed hard. “The bloody Ferine did a runner after their bloody
mage went bonkers.”

“They’ll be back. We
need to finish this quickly. Brant?
Brant
!”

Brant looked up.
“Sergeant?”

“You know where we left
the elf. See if he’s still alive and bring him here.”

“But-”

“Move it, Corporal
O’Kellin.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Brant
turned and ran back to the woods where they had left Dhulrael
hiding.

“How many did we lose?”
Caellix asked.

“Four,” answered
Jurgen. “Including your girl. I’m sorry, Caellix.”

“She was a soldier. She
was brave. What about your new boy, and the Mouse?”

“I saw them on the
cliff, they’re coming down.”

They turned to regard
the Illudin, still pulsing ominously with light.

“So that’s what all
this fuss was about,” Caellix said.

“We can’t just smash
it?” asked Dogbreath.

“Let’s see what the elf
has to say.”

Dhulrael soon showed up
following behind Brant. He looked at the Illudin in awe and wonder.
He started to smile, then he saw Holly and blanched.

“Oh, my,” he whispered
sadly.

“Come on, elf, we
haven’t got day,” Jurgen grumbled.

Dhulrael ignored him,
and knelt by Holly’s side. Serrel heard him mutter a prayer in
elvish.

“What does that mean?”
Serrel asked him.

“It is a prayer used
when a traveller dies on the road. We beseech the gods to carry
their spirit back to their home.”

“Fitting.”

“Are you hurt, Caster
Hawthorne?”

Serrel looked at his
hands. “It isn’t my blood.”

Dhulrael nodded, and
stood up. “Come along, Caster Hawthorne. We are not finished yet,
and we are still, ourselves, a long way from home.” He held out his
hand to Serrel.

Serrel hesitated, then
took it, and let the elf help him to his feet. Then he pulled off
his coat and covered Holly’s body.

“Now, let us take a
look at this ancient wonder,” said Dhulrael. He went to the large
crystal and examined at it reverently. “Oh, my. All of my life I
have dreamt about looking upon one of the Anphalae.”

“And now you get to
break one,” said Dogbreath.

“I know,” sighed
Dhulrael. “A shame. But, one does what one must.”

As he walked a slow
circle around the Illudin, Serrel heard rapid footsteps behind him.
He half turned, but found a pair of thin arms wrapped around his
midsection.

“We thought you were
dead!” Mouse exclaimed.

“I’m fine. How are you
two?”

“Us?” said Victor.
“We’re peachy. We weren’t the ones who fell off a cliff. How did
you do it?”

“Do what?”

Victor rolled his eyes.
“Not go splat when you hit the ground. Shield? No, that wouldn’t
have worked...”