Aurelius and I (31 page)

“Y...you get lost,” he stammered. “I... I don’t see why I should go anywhere, just because you say so. I mean, it’s not like everyone else feels the same way. Charlie wants me here, don’t you Charlie?”

As the purple demon turned to look at me with tear-filled eyes, I could see just how sorry he was for what he had done, even if he could never bring himself to say so. I knew he had not deliberately tried to hurt anybody. I knew that we could ill-afford to lose another member of our already insufficient and quickly dwindling band of courageous but untrained warriors. I knew that one word from me would be enough to allow him to stay regardless of how the others may have felt about the decision. But knowledge is one thing, action is quite another, and while logic may have begged me to convince the dragnor to stay, my contempt for his persistent irresponsible, dangerous behaviour muted any words of reassurance I may have had long before they were able to reach my mouth. As a result, my only response to his plea was a stony silence which, after enduring for what seemed like an eternity in a desperate hope for redemption, followed Grahndel as he turned and slumped away into the forest.

And then there were four.

We had approached the caves from a different direction to our previous visit and, as such, we had been unable to hear the river until we were practically upon it. Indeed, had it not been for the distinctive sound of rapidly flowing water and the glint of the moonlight upon its surface we may never have made it any further than the cave’s entrance, for, arriving from above it, I failed to notice the enormous drop down to its mouth until I was mere footsteps from toppling over it.

“No, Charlie, stop!” hissed Ophelia a good three seconds after I had already done so, thereby rendering her warning a great deal more useful to the rockalusses below than it had been to me.

Slowly, yet very scarily, the two living pillars that guarded the cave’s entrance turned to look above them (although with what I have no idea, since they had no discernable means of vision).

With the element of surprise instantly disposed of, we had to act quickly. Fortunately we had developed a plan of sorts shortly before hand. It was, of course, a plan that had been built around the assumption that we would be approaching our enemy from the front, and at ground level, but it remained the only plan we had.

“CHARGE!!!!” yelled king Rolinthor with all the volume and authority of a man who was accustomed to leading into battle armies which consisted of more than his wife and daughter.

At the king’s command all three fairies flew toward the enormous rock demons and proceeded to buzz rapidly amongst them, causing the powerful yet stupid creatures to swing out wildly, missing their targets and hammering their fists into to outer walls of the cave with such force that pieces of their hands visibly crumbled away. Unfortunately, these fearsome collisions seemingly failed to hurt or even slow the enormous creatures in any way.

An additional encumbrance to our initial plan was the fact that, not having been blessed with the eminently useful gift of flight myself, I was having to scooch my way slowly down the steeply-sloped, rocky wall to the caves on my backside, meaning that the scimitar, now our only viable means of fighting the unfeeling beasts that sought to destroy us, was delayed with me.

“WOULD YOU PLEASE HURRY UP!” cried the queen as she narrowly avoided another crushing blow.

“I’m trying,” I assured her as I tried to navigate my way down to the action without breaking an ankle.

“WELL TRY HARDER!” shouted Ophelia, pushing her father out from under a giant stone foot at the last possible second.

Even when I did finally reach the bottom I was of little help to my fragile compatriots. You see, whenever you watch films about pirates on the television, one thing you take for granted about their master swordsmanship is how easily they manage to bring their weapon to hand in the first place. No sooner have they contemplated the brutal murder of their unwitting victim than the sword is their in their hand, ready to slice through flesh at the will of its holder. I however, was no pirate. As such, I discovered to my cost that the unsheathing of an ancient scimitar from its equally ancient and therefore somewhat stiff case was a great deal more difficult than one may think, particularly when attempting to simultaneously avoid having one’s head crushed by enormous stone fists.

“I say their boy, why don’t you use the scimitar?” the king suggested helpfully in between dodging blows as if I had neglected to do so simply through a careless lack of thought.

“Good idea,” I replied in sarcastic triumph as I finally managed to free the mighty blade from its overly tight casing. Now all I had to do was stop running from powerful stone punches long enough to get a swing in myself; something which would be easier said than done.

It seemed to take another good few minutes (although, in reality, probably no more than thirty seconds) before such an opportunity arrived. Indeed, as is so often the case with even the most famous of plans, the chance to strike arrived only as the result of our enemy’s mistake. In its eagerness to crush to death the overly talkative king fairy (a desire I was beginning to sympathise with), one of the huge stone beasts slipped on the wet rock and fell to its hands and knees as, not being the most naturally buoyant of creatures, it sought to avoid being dragged into the water below.

It was now or never, I had to take my chance. I raised the scimitar high above my head and prepared to strike.

It was only at that moment that a terrifying, confidence-shattering thought occurred to me;

Why should the fact that a blade was strong enough to cut through a tree be taken as any kind of proof that it was strong enough to cut through stone?

After all, people had felled trees for centuries with no more than mere axes. As I looked with horror at the immensity of the creature quickly regaining its feet before me, an axe seemed severely insufficient. The plain fact was that I had risked my life, and the lives of my friends on the basis of a myth.

“
Hit him, Charlie,
” cried Ophelia in a fit of panic at my unexplained hesitation. She was right, of course. It was too late for plan B (not that we had one anyway). It was scimitar or bust. I closed my eyes and hoped against hope that my life would be saved by a legend as I brought the blade crashing down across the torso of the beast.

I felt nothing. No resistance travelled up my arms as an indication that the scimitar had made contact. It was as if I had sliced through softened butter. Had it not been for the noise that had accompanied my blow I would have assumed that I had missed. But the unmistakable sound of shattering rock, like an explosion in a mineshaft, confirmed to me that I had not. I opened my eyes to discover the shattered corpse of my victim, a mighty beast reduced to a series of oversized pebbles with a single swing.

I was immediately and crudely reminded that our fight was not yet won as the second rockaluss glanced a blow across my back. In truth he barely caught me (for if he had I would most certainly not be here to tell you about it), and yet it was the most painful thing I had ever experienced. It was like being winded, stabbed, and rendered concussed simultaneously whilst being unfortunate enough to remain conscious for all three. I felt like I was going to either be sick or pass out at any moment. But as it was I just lay there, face down in the mud, uncomprehending of the melee that continued around me.

It was only Ophelia’s scream of startled agony as her wing was crushed between the stone of the cave wall and of the remaining monster’s fist that dragged me briefly from my hollow stupor back into the realm of lucidity. In that instant I knew what I must do; I had to heal myself.

I did not, however, know if I
could
heal myself. Would my power still work if I was the one who was injured?

Gingerly, I moved my hand around to the source of my injury, sending a tearing pain through my shoulder as I did so. I tried to shut out the panicked cries of our impending defeat which filled the air around me and concentrate. At first this seemed impossible. When I tried to concentrate on my injury, all I did was think about the pain, making it worse and panicking me over the extent of the damage that might have been done. The only things interrupting such ponderings were the waves of dizziness and nausea which consistently rolled across me, clearing my mind of all thoughts but those of remaining conscious and keeping what little I had eaten in my stomach. In the end it was probably this lack of concentration that enabled me to fall naturally into contact with my powers.

As you are already aware, dear reader, this story is no fictional tale, but merely a memoir. And I am no great writer, just and old man with a tale to tell. As such, it has previously been very difficult for me to describe to you what it feels like to heal somebody. Trust me when I tell you that to describe the feeling of both healing and being healed simultaneously is perfectly indescribable. The best way I have of explaining it is as follows; it is somewhat like having pins and needles all over your body at the same time, but in reverse. Instead of feeling slowly returning, it is slowly leaving. Combined with this is the feeling of an intense warming of the skin, directly contrasted with a sudden cooling of the blood. Wrap all this together in the somewhat inexplicable smell of cherry blossom and you are somewhere near to what I felt that day.

The thing about being healed that you don’t realise until it happens to you is that it is a far less instantaneous process than it may appear from the outside. While the pain certainly disappears pretty much immediately, this is not to say that one is left feeling completely normal as soon as the healing has stopped. What remains is a strange and unpleasant sensation of nausea, dizziness, and needing to relieve oneself. Needless to say then, that although when faced with a great emergency I had again successfully managed to push my powers to the next level and further extend the boundaries of what I thought myself capable, I was by no means in any fit state to rescue my friends from the impending doom they faced at the hands (or should I say stumps) of the rockaluss.

Imagine my horror then when I turned gingerly around to discover Ophelia sprawled across the muddy floor, clutching her broken wing and with her leg buried deeply into the mud, unable to move, the insidious stone beast looming ominously above her. Her parents were doing everything they could to rescue their little girl; her mother trying in vain to distract the beast while her father pulled with all his might to try to free his daughter’s leg. Even in my dizzy, semi-conscious state I could see, as the rock demon raised a crushing foot, that the king’s efforts were destined to fail. If anybody was going to save the young princess, it was going to have to be me.

Summoning every ounce of strength left in me, I sat up straight and searched for the scimitar which by some great mercy had not fallen far from my side. Doing my best to ignore another wave of dizzy-nausea, I reached for the blade and, using every part of my remaining energy, I lurched forwards and sliced off the offending limb with one foul swoop.

Overwhelmed by relief and giddyness, I watched as the defeated giant teetered on his remaining foot before realising with horror the direction in which he was going to fall. I sat paralysed as I watched the mammoth frame of the cave’s guardian collapse toward the king and his daughter, bringing about their certain death in what seemed like slow motion. Tears filled my eyes, and I felt as though the air had been sucked from my chest as the shadow of my companion’s impending doom fell upon them. I couldn’t bear to watch, and yet I found myself unable to turn away, captivated as I was by the horror and disbelief at what was about to occur before me. Then, in the last possible fraction of a second, a flash of purple tore across my vision so quickly I felt unsure as to whether I had really seen it at all.

And then nothing. Nothing but the inevitable silence of death. Two more of our number had fallen for our cause. Once again overwhelmed by the curse of duty beyond my years that had fallen upon me, I rolled onto my back, stared into the starry sky and began to weep.

After a few short moments my silent tears were joined in symphony by the hopeless wailing of the fairy queen’s broken heart. As I lay there listening to her screams of primal pain I felt as though I was supposed to do something. To get up and let her know that she was not alone. To say something reassuring. But how did you reassure somebody who had just lost their husband and daughter in a single moment?

After all these years I still have no answer to such a question and I most certainly didn’t back then, and so I did nothing. I simply lay there, listening to a mother’s pain while trying desperately to escape my own. At that moment I cared not one iota for our mission or the fact that time was ticking ever-more rapidly towards midnight. As far as I was concerned the forest was doomed. How was is supposed to defeat some of the most fearsome demons in existence with only the help of a grieving widow when I had allowed half of our forces to be defeated by two mere whims of a sorcerer? It was hopeless.

“Why? Oh why? Oh WHY?” cried the woman’s voice.

“There, there dear. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”

The comforting reassurances of a male voice dragged me from my own self pity as I lay perfectly still, listening intently to reassure myself that I had not dreamt it. Had King Rolinthor really gotten out in time? But how?