‘Okaysh!’ said Walter when they had killed all the monsters. ‘Where to now?’
‘Er,’ said Silvia. ‘Horatio just told you. We need to head for that tower in the distance. Weren’t you listening?’
‘Oh yesh?’ said Walter. ‘And what’sh over there, then?’
Silvia slapped a hand to her face in disbelief.
‘Come on guys,’ Horatio said, keen to put an end to this inane chatter and be moving on. Every moment they wasted was another moment that the Braxians got closer to the tower with the sword themselves… And another moment that Alex gets closer to getting it back from them… He still didn’t fully know what to make of Alex. Was he really Qind’s chosen hero, or had he snatched that rightful title from Horatio, from right under his nose? Was Horatio hopelessly deluded and arrogant to even consider that that could possibly have been the case? He shook his head to clear it. ‘Ursula,’ he said to the former Braxian shaman, ‘how far away is the tower, roughly?’
‘It’s about [two days’] march from here,’ said Ursula. ‘It’s not possible to teleport closer to the tower because its magical field is so strong it interferes with the spell, which also stops non-Braxians with teleportation abilities from launching surprise assaults on it. I warn you though, the land gets hotter in that direction, and there are volcanoes and lava flows. [Poss need to write in far-off description of these earlier.] And there are all sorts of horrible monsters in Braxia, in much higher concentration than you usually find in the rest of Gard. It’s two days’ dangerous journey.’
‘[Two days]…’ repeated Horatio, ignoring the warnings, which as far as he could see was irrelevant. ‘That could be enough time for us to catch up with the Braxians, if we’re fast. Let’s go, everybody.’
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‘Hang on,’ said Egea, ‘are we just going to walk over these open plains undisguised, making straight for the tower?’
‘Yes?’ said Horatio. He didn’t see that they had any other option.
‘But this whole country is crawling with monsters!’ said Egea. ‘They’re everywhere!’
‘Well, we’re just going to have to risk it,’ Horatio replied. ‘We’re a strong team, and we have Walter now as well. We don’t have any way of disguising or hiding ourselves. We’ll just have to make for the tower as quickly as we can, trying as best we can to avoid the monsters. If they slow us down, they slow us down. But we don’t have any other choice. We only fail if we give up. We’re wasting time even now by standing around talking about this. Come on everyone, let’s go!’
Horatio began to walk in the direction of the tower, by himself, striding out across the lifeless, barren plains. For a few moments he did not look round to see if anyone was following him, but when he did he was surprised to discover that they were.
Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised. There was no turning back now, after all. They didn’t even have a way of getting off of Braxia, even if they wanted to. [Unless Ursula can teleport them out? Need to have discussed this earlier, or cut this line.] They were all-in. All or nothing. Twelve crazy adventurers on a doomed quest to try to save the world.
Horatio turned back round to face the tower and set his jaw.
He wondered what Ceres was thinking of him, right now. Did she too entertain the possibility that Horatio could be the hero destined to recover the Clarent Sword and defeat Brax? Or had that thought never even crossed her mind? Did she think that Alex was the chosen hero, and that Horatio and the rest of them had messed everything up by leading the Braxians to the Sword? He wished that he knew if Ceres felt the same way about him that he did about her…
It wasn’t very long, and nobody had said anything else, before another group of monsters spotted them traversing the Braxian plains. It wasn’t as though they were easy to miss. The monsters began to make a bee-line for them. Horatio picked up a run in an effort to sprint round the far side of a cluster of rocks and evade them, but they wren’t going to be able to do that in
The monsters reached them.
Battle 2