[The Twining] 29. The Rear Gate (Patreon)

He didn’t think through the implications of the question—he just knew it was a powerful opportunity, one that might shift the balance of the invasion.

He mentally acquiesced, and the fire immediately became docile, like how it had been a minute before.

Suddenly, the girl on Talis’s shoulder gasped. The warrior held her tight as she struggled, clearly disoriented, then set her down, supporting her injured body, not that she needed it. She stood fine on her own power. The injuries hadn’t disappeared; the girl just seemed not to feel them.

She looked around in bewilderment, then stared down at her hands and her bloody torso. Her eyes roved over the corpses near the funeral pyre, her face bathed in the blue-green glow.

“This is...”

Isen flinched as words that weren’t his own entered his mind. “Lumina?”

The girl’s gaze snapped to Isen. “You,” she said, her words spoken in common straight into his mind. “Grab a torch to carry the fire. As long as it does not go out, I will be with you.”

There was no time to question the impossibility of what was happening. “What should I use?” he asked. He couldn’t grab the tiny pellets fueling the fire. He looked around for a flammable item and spotted the papers the woman had dropped earlier. They’d mostly blown away, but a few sheets remained. They’d definitely burn, but too fast.

The possessed girl didn’t provide an answer. “Can’t you control fire?” Isen asked out loud, frustrated and fully aware of the confounded and incensed expression on Talis’s face.

“What are you talking about?”

The girl ignored Talis. “Not this fire, since it holds my spirit. But another could, if there is a mage among you with the affinity.”

Isen snapped his gaze to Talis. “Can Druinala control fire?”

The warrior recoiled. “Yes…”

Isen sensed there was more to the answer based on the way the man trailed off, but if Druinala could really manipulate fire, she might be the key to carrying the mystic flames with them as they went. An actual mage controlling the fire had to be better than relying on a mundane torch or a lantern.

Isen ran to Druinala, leaving the warrior and girl behind. “Come, need you,” he said simply. She looked hesitant but followed him to the flickering pyre. The other elves pursued uncertainly behind her.

“Tell her what you need,” he said to the possessed girl, “in elvish.”

She gave him a piercing stare, but finally spoke aloud, her voice languid and articulate. Talis and Druinala seemed taken aback by whatever she was saying. After a few seconds of back and forth, Talis faced Isen and just stared.

“What did you do to her?” he whispered, though it felt like he wasn’t really asking for an answer. Isen ignored him and focused on Druinala, who faced the fire, biting her lip. She said something to Talis, who ran off to grab the sheets of paper scattered on the ground. Balancing the bow against her side, she snatched the papers and held them up to the flames. They burst into a vibrant turquoise.

She wrapped her hands around the fire, pressing it down into a single ball, then held it up to Isen. Her gaze was strained, but he sensed her intense focus… and something that felt like hope. “Take it.”

He frowned, but reached out, sensing the energy radiating from the ember. Sure enough, as though the fire had a will of its own, it hovered over Isen’s left palm. He moved his hand around, and the fire remained in place, pleasantly warm.

“Proceed, and I will see everyone to safety,” the possessed girl mentally commanded. “Rescue as many as you can as you go.”

And so Isen set off again. The girl kept pace, no longer needing Talis to hold her, her weak body somehow able to keep up. The girl’s parents approached with frantic expressions, but Talis restrained them and offered mollifying words, convincing them to hang back with the group.

Unlike before, they immediately ran into danger—three lizard-like drayavin.

Before Druinala could even string her bow, powerful pillars of light stretching ten feet into the sky, white like the stars and thick as support columns, smote them from existence.

Everyone watched in shock, but only the two guards and Isen knew to stare at the girl.

“How much more of that can you do?” Isen mentally wondered. The drayavin had been reduced to little more than ash.

“As long as the flame burns near me, as much as you could ever need.”

Emboldened, Isen continued his course. It seemed that this path always took them in the direction of maximum conflict, but the incarnate spirit of the elf queen vanquished all enemies as they appeared.

Finally, they reached the rear gates.

A massive snakelike beast, not unlike the serpent from the radiant lake, spanned the wall, bidding no one passage out of the city. From its size alone, and its cohesive, resplendent form, Isen knew this was a monster… one at the core consolidation stage. The third tier. There were no drayavin nearby, but there didn’t need to be. The one beast was already more than enough.

Cries of anguish resounded, the elves breaking their silence. Over a thousand people lay dead around the gate, their butchered corpses sprawled out in a mind-numbing scene of carnage.

Isen didn’t know what lay on the other side of the town, by the other gate. He figured it would be someone—or something—similarly powerful to prohibit escape. Isen thought he could probably scale the walls and get himself out, but everyone else?

And what’s to say that other drayavin and monsters aren’t waiting outside to catch isolated escapees? This clearly wasn’t some random attack, but an orchestrated assault. Isen just couldn’t understand why.

He turned to the girl, then asked mentally, “Can you defeat the serpent on your own?”

“As I am, it will be difficult.” Suddenly, the girl began speaking out loud in elvish while still mentally communicating with Isen in common. “Distract it, force it to open its mouth, and I should be able to send a fire lance up through its brain.”

She said it nonchalantly, as though distracting a tier three was a reasonable ask. Talis nodded quickly, too fast—his entire body was shaking. Druinala wasn’t much better off, though she hid it better, her eyebrows pinching together.

Isen looked around. “I need someone else to carry the flame.”

Talis called out to Sorina, and the weathered but elegant woman approached. Isen noticed a distinct change in the way she looked at him. Instead of doubt, he saw fear mixed with awe, and that extended to the possessed girl.

“Protect this fire,” Isen instructed, suddenly feeling like a fraud under her gaze. “Whatever you do, do not let it go out. If it dies, all our lives are forfeit.”

Her hands trembled, but her posture was unflinching as the glowing fire transferred from Isen’s left hand into her own. Meanwhile, Druinala strung her bow, pointing it at the serpent, which was still only looking at them.

Isen and Talis exchanged a look. “Your first tier three?” Isen asked. The half elf’s pale mien was enough of an answer. “Follow my lead—and don’t get hit.”

Isen burst forward. As he neared the serpent’s massive body, it looked down at him with imperious disdain, sliding its tail across the ground in a lazy attempt to bowl him over.

He leapt, cresting over fifteen feet, then ran across the beast’s back. Talis followed behind, though far enough away that they wouldn’t both be taken out by the same maneuver.

The serpent hissed in annoyance and writhed, but Isen kept his footing, thankful that he wasn’t wearing shoes. The serpent’s tail whipped around again, bending back in a loop over its own torso in an attempt to swat Isen. He narrowly dodged, the barbed stinger on the end of the tail—Isen hadn’t even noticed it until now—gliding across his chest, slashing the red tunic.

The material held, though a stripe of red split open, easily an inch deep. The stinger looked slick, as though dripping with venom, but Isen didn’t feel any adverse effects. It’s the shirt, he realized, grateful he’d decided to put it back on.

Once he crossed the midway point, it struck at him with fangs bared, which was what he wanted… but the beast faced the wrong way, so the possessed elven girl didn’t have a good shot. Isen dodged, but the serpent pivoted, heading for Talis. Its strike had been a feint.

Suddenly, Druinala’s arrow soared toward the serpent’s eye. Its eyelid shuttered and the arrow bounced off, but the attack gave Talis time to jump away. He fell from the monster’s titanic body and landed roughly on the ground, tumbling. He pushed himself up, but the tail was sweeping him from the side.

He dove into the pile of corpses, disappearing. The tail strike swung around, flowing into yet another attack, only gaining more momentum. As it crested upward, a terrifying pressure emitted from it and a scythe of power—nearly invisible to the eye but a roiling scar in the energy mist—slashed out toward the gathered elves.

The queen narrowed her eyes and raised her arms, calling forth a barrier made of fiery columns to dissipate the attack—but some of the monster’s power pushed through on the edges.

A half elf man’s torso separated from his legs, collapsing in a flood of blood and viscera. One person’s arm flew, the attack carrying it for over twenty feet before it came to a stop on the sanguine cobblestones.

As the fiery wall dissipated, Isen noticed a key development: the ember in Sorina’s hand looked far weaker, like a candle that had almost been blown out. He didn’t think it was because of the queen’s energy expenditure—none of her attacks before seemed to have affected the flame. Most likely, part of the energy blast had filtered through. Not strong enough to hurt anyone, but enough to threaten the fire.

The depletion clearly alarmed Druinala, who raced over to Sorina. She screamed something to the other half elves, and they began to circle around the weathered merchant woman, their bodies serving as a barrier against future gusts.

Isen couldn’t afford to watch their efforts any longer—the tail swung back around and came for him again. This time, without Talis to serve as an additional annoyance, all its attention was focused on him.

Its head lunged his way while its tail twisted, the stinger-like tip homing on Isen’s body as he dashed out of the way. The snake monster was strong—one successful direct hit and Isen would be a smear on the stone—and it was large enough that he couldn’t hope to do more than superficial damage. But it lacked mobility, clearly finding it difficult to swat such an agile pest, much like how people struggled to kill flies.

The analogy felt accurate—Isen was like a buzzing insect, a harmless annoyance. But a fly could make a person move, and that was all he needed to do to the snake.

Having already revealed so much about himself to the onlookers, he decided showing off external energy manipulation wouldn’t matter. At least with the present group of elves, his days—or more specifically, his half day—of being low-key were over.

Isen bit the sword between his teeth, relying on his powerful jaw muscles to secure the longer weapon, and formed a ball of energy between his hands. Before the beast’s mouth closed around him and its tail stabbed him through the heart, he fired the energy right into the beast’s mouth. It recoiled, seeming to almost sneeze. The blast was angled to shoot Isen off course, past the wicked stinger, but unfortunately in the wrong direction, away from its head and from the incarnate elf queen.

The snake reacted quickly. Like before, the tail continued gracefully and arched back around.

He was ready for it, Druinala’s borrowed blade already in his right hand, a ball of energy in his left. When the stinger stabbed toward his head, Isen pushed himself ever so slightly off course with a barely formed energy ball. Then, he cycled energy into his body and stabbed the sword into the snake’s body with all his strength. His efforts were only enough to make a shallow incision.

He opened his mouth, revealing another energy ball, this one fuller with the additional time to channel. He grasped the sword handle tightly with both hands. Then, he released the energy ball into the hilt, hammering the dagger deeper into the serpent’s skin.

It had been a gamble—he hadn’t known how good of a blade Druinala’s sword was—but what was likely tier two metal held fast as the energy ball forced it through the thick hide and into the flesh beneath, turning the sword into a handhold.

A menacing hiss, like the high crackle of thunder and the sizzle of water on hot oil, rumbled from the serpent’s entire body, humming through the blade. Pale blood gushed over Isen’s fingers, dripping from the hilt and in rivulets down its pearly white scales.

The serpent’s tail swung around toward the gathering of elves, energy building. Isen felt it through the sword like fire and ice, a burning, numbing intensity of sensation. Isen held on tightly, his head spinning from the jarring motion.

As the tail moved, the snake’s head tracked it, focused on Isen. It bared its fangs in spiteful indignation, its forked tongue pressing up against its lower teeth.

Just as the second tail energy attack finished charging, the incarnate elf queen fired off a blast so instantaneous, so inescapable, the snake didn’t have even a moment to react. The lance of starfire pierced the roof of its mouth. It lacked the power to pass all the way through, so nothing came out the top of the monster’s skull, but its furious gaze suddenly became unfocused and its body shuddered.

The serpent’s last energy attack still went off.