Year 939,
When they reached their destination, Lyndabel and Velrodas discovered that Viryl was not joking. At the rocky cave, Viryl deviated from the path and went to sit in the shade of a large, purple-barked tree, similar in shape to a cedar, but covered with woolly, silvery leaves.
“Well, show me what you’re capable of,” he ordered his two colleagues, admiring his nails. “You have ten minutes.”
“Stop being such an idiot! You’ll be in serious trouble if you don’t do your part!” Lyndabel snarled, as she prepared to jump on him, as if she wanted to grab him and drag him by the scruff of the neck to the monster’s lair.
Velrodas grabbed her hand and gently pulled her toward him. “Leave him alone, we can do this by ourselves. Don’t scream, or you’ll alert the Voltzreoth.”
“You're right, but he must know. His behavior won't go unpunished,” Lyndabel hissed, seething with rage.
For his part, Viryl wasn’t shitting himself at all over the ridiculous threat. He was giving them five minutes, seven at most. And then those two fools would run out of there screaming. ‘Actually, I think an isolation potion is enough to almost completely eliminate the risks’: wrong. She had never seen a medium-sized Fekoro, to say such bullshit with such confidence. And the same applied to that other foolish, boastful mountain kid.
Viryl watched them as they drank their insulating potions, summoned their ethereal armors, and entered the narrow rock crevice, ready to receive the harsh lesson they deserved. He yawned. While they were out of his way, he would get to work on his own plan.
*****
“Are you ready, Velrodas?” Lyndabel asked, excitedly.
“Yes, but are you sure you want to do this?” Velrodas whispered. He was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the towering, steep, looming walls of the gorge. The gloom of that place had the solemnity of a cathedral nave.
“We talked about this last night over dinner. I had already presented you with the possibility that Viryl would prove unreliable, and that we would have to fight the Voltzreoth alone. You have no defensive spells, so I'm the one who has to be the bait,” Lyndabel confirmed.
“I know that, but…” Velrodas stopped. There were no buts. Anything he had said next would have been a useless display of humility. He wanted, with all his heart, to strike the decisive blow on the monster. He wanted to be the one that slayed it.
“I trust you,” Lyndabel reassured him.
Velrodas nodded, doused his sword with a vial of ‘Emerald Slime’, and cast his camouflage spell. His body seemed to turn into crystal, emitting the pattern of photons received from the opposite side. Then his vague outlines vanished into the darkness of the cave. He would climb the walls and find a suitable spot to hide.
Lyndabel took courage and advanced, protected by her pearl-colored armor trimmed in gold, brandishing her white dagger in her right hand and her triangular shield with the emblem of Ferlonia in her left.
She enhanced her poor eyesight with her sonic vision spell.
After about fifty yards, she realized that the ground was sticky. The silk of the Voltzreoth clung to her boots, and there was a slight resistance every time she lifted a foot to take a step forth.
The ravines curved to the left, and once they had rounded the blind corner of the bend, Lyndabel finally saw the beast. It lay waiting for her on a jutting rock, watching the direction from which she had come.
It was large, much larger than she had imagined. It looked like a deformed fox with the eyes and jaws of a spider, and its body was at least eighteen feet long. It was covered in wiry, ashen fur, and its six agile legs ended in clawed appendages that looked like four-fingered hands.
She had to surprise the monster with a preemptive strike before it noticed her. “Light Spear,” her only ranged combat spell, was the best choice. But what if she scared it? What if the sudden pain made it flee?
The Voltzreoth was already aware of the knight. It had felt the vibrations on his web long before she had turned the corner. It had expected to see a small Fekoro or a fawn approaching. A tasty, unsuspecting prey, to pounce on. Instead, a bipedal creature covered in tin stood before it.
Trusting in the power of its jaws, the Fekoro lunged for the attack before Lyndabel could decide whether or not to strike.
Seeing the six spindly legs lurching rapidly toward her, Lyndabel raised her shield and instinctively cast the “negate” and “reflect” spells. Before biting, the abomination reared up on its hind legs and summoned a violet arc of electricity to shock its prey. The spark connected with Lyndabel’s body and shot down into the silken strands.
The electricity slid harmlessly over Lyndabel's skin, but the spot on her breast where it had made contact felt like it had been struck by a vigorous fist. Lyndabel did not flinch, and gripped her shield tighter, ready to collide with the monster's fangs.
The Voltzreoth slammed its head down and arched, crushing Lyndabel between its pincer-like jaws. She brought her forearm up, slamming the flat of her shield into the creature’s muzzle. With “reflect,” all the kinetic energy the beast had loaded into its fangs rebounded back at him, and his head bounced back, exposing his belly.
Lyndabel thought it was her turn to strike, so she prepared to load her “light spear” into her dagger and launch a slash of light energy. But the Voltzreoth pushed forward again with its hind legs, and punched with its right forelimbs to the left side of Lyndabel’s body.
The creature was massive in size, and the strength of its limbs was incomparable to that of a human. Lyndabel could have resisted by casting her “strength increase tenfold” spell, but since she was focused on her light slash, she didn’t have time. She was thrown against the wall of the ravines, sinking into layers of silk five inches thick.
The covering cushioned the shock, but the double blow had knocked the wind out of her, and the tenacious silk threads trapped her. The Voltzreoth wagged its tail excitedly, and standing on four of his six legs, it raised its two front limbs to send another electric discharge at her.
Lyndabel thought that Velrodas must have reached the optimum position by now. If he had followed the plan without a hitch, managing to leap from wall to wall above the level on which the monster had deposited its silk, now he would be directly above their heads, waiting for the right opportunity to drop on the enemy’s back with his poisoned sword.
Lyndabel had to give him that chance.
Instead of trying to free herself from the trap, the knight cast the “earth sinking” spell on the monster’s paws that were on the ground. Lyndabel knew she had succeeded because, instead of launching another bolt, the monster looked down in bewilderment, trying to understand why it felt like its four feet were sinking into the mud.
“Now!” Lyndabel shouted, and Velrodas leapt down from a dozen yards, holding with both hands his sword’s blade down, intending to drive it in just above the monster’s tail.
Velrodas had taken excellent measurements, but Lyndabel had underestimated both the creature’s reaction time and her “earth sinking” endurance. The Voltzreoth shattered the living rock in which its legs were imprisoned, and rose up, snatching Velrodas in its jaws. The monster yanked the knight from side to side, then threw him to its right, like a dog tossing a tattered toy.
Velrodas was knocked to the ground on his belly, struggling in the sticky silk to get to his feet. His ethereal armor had protected him from a lethal laceration, but the jostling and impact had left him dazed and sore. The Voltzreoth, believing his new opponent was out of action, was determined to give him no respite. It approached menacingly, preparing to hurl a bolt of lightning at him. Velrodas summoned the sword that had slipped from his grasp during the struggle, but in doing so it lost its coating of “Emerald Slime”. He gripped the hilt, shaking uncontrollably. The titanic fox towered over him, so large it seemed invulnerable to his spells.
“Look this way, you filthy beast!” Lyndabel exclaimed, as she tried to tear at the fibers that held her in place. She had enhanced her limbs with the strength enhancement spell, and this was allowing her to wriggle effectively. However, thick strands of silk clung to her armor, hindering her movements.
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The monster seemed aware of Lyndabel's clumsiness and did not let it distract him. It unleashed its lightning bolt on Velrodas, who was knocked to the ground again and lost his sword once more.
Lyndabel, moving jerkily, raised an arm and shot a “Light Spear”, which pierced one of the Voltzreoth’s hind legs. The latter did not even yelp, but felt the scratch and decided to turn his fury on her. How foolish she had been to think she could scare it away with such a ridiculous spell.
“Now run! Go get Viryl!” Lyndabel screamed as the Voltzreoth leapt at her.
Velrodas heard the command, but hesitated. The monster had turned its back on him. It had thrown Lyndabel to the ground, and was spraying her with its silk, enclosing her in a cocoon. He only had to pour a second vial of Emerald Slime onto his blade and use “leap” to complete his task. But what if the monster turned again? What if he missed? What if the poison wasn’t enough? This creature was terrible. Even if he could nullify its magical powers, it was still too big, too strong, too impenetrable. Velrodas gave in to fear.
He heeded Lyndabel's final advice, and ran away.
*****
Viryl admired his work in the form of tall, slanted spires of stone. He hated using “rock shaping,” as it was easy to get carried away with that spell and consume too much Fuligine Stone. But, he had to admit, he had created a deadly threat. An impassable amphitheater of poison-coated spears.
So impassable that even Velrodas, running out of the monster's lair, almost ended up impaled on it. He managed to stop just in time, a couple of inches from gouging out his eye.
He gasped at Viryl, who was studying his masterpiece suspended in midair, “Please! Viryl of the White Gale, you have to help us! That beast is going to kill Lyndabel!”
Hearing that desperate cry for help, the knight landed next to his distraught companion.
“What the hell happened? You couldn’t even escape? You managed to exceed my expectations, negatively,” the five minutes Viryl had given them had indeed passed, but he didn’t believe they were foolish and stubborn enough to risk their lives. At the Academy of the Spheres Lazul the professors never tired of repeating that prudence is the first of the virtues of a knight, and he expected Lyndabel to have internalized at least that concept.
“That Voltzreoth is more dangerous than we expected. Lyndabel taunted it to let me run away, and now it's… wrapping her in a cocoon. It wants to eat her!” Velrodas explained.
“Okay, okay, I get the situation,” Viryl said briskly, “Look, I left a catwalk clear to the right of the trap. Use it to get the fuck out of here and wait while I lure the Voltzreoth out.”
Then Viryl rose into the sky, above the rocky ridge into which the gorge was cut, and disappeared over its summit. He flew over the crevasse, four hundred yards long, and descended opposite the northern exit. His goal was to trick the Voltzreoth into thinking that a Majonthael, a large Fekoro and its natural predator, was approaching from that side. The breeze that came down from the mountain peaks to the northwest and through the ravines was just what he needed.
To pull off his deception, Viryl had at his disposal two contraptions that he had invented and built himself, using the remains of a Majonthael that he had procured during a previous hunting mission.
The first: a scented lozenge made from the gastric contents, feces, and fat of the Majonthael. He crushed it in his hand, and a putrid, acrid stench spread through the mouth of the cave.
The second: a sympathionic phono-emitter connected to a micro amplifier on which he had recorded the Majonthael's cry. Entering the rock crevice, surrounded by air as fetid as the breath of death, Viryl reproduced the beast's deep roar. The thunderous sound waves reverberated in a deafening echo, bouncing off the walls.
Viryl had not yet been able to locate the enemy, and if his plan had worked he would have found Lyndabel well before it.
His predictions proved correct. About halfway he encountered a lump of ovoid silk clinging to the floor, and there was no sign of the beast. In return, distant desperate yelps echoed.
The untangling of the tangle was urgent: Lyndabel had no oxygen down there and, if she was still alive, she wouldn't be for long.
Viryl pulled his hunting knife from his ethereal armor belt, and began to tear at the tenacious web of the cocoon. He slashed and slashed, and finally the knife hit a metal surface. Viryl then used his hands to widen the slit he had made, struggling against the resistance of the fibers that clung to his fingers.
With unremitting work he managed to extract Lyndabel's pearly helmet, and lifted it. The fact that the armor had not yet dissolved was a good sign.
Viryl strained his ears and heard the girl still breathing, albeit with difficulty.
He then put his labor into freeing the rest of her body. That part was more complicated, because there was much more silk to cut and longer strands to untangle. Without aids it would have taken a good half hour.
Viryl remembered that he had a vial of flesh-eating acid, and wondered if the alchemical concoction might be of any use in making his task easier. He poured a few drops of the black stuff onto the cocoon, and it worked wonders in breaking down the protein matrix structure of the silk fibers. With this success, Viryl dripped the entire contents of the vial into strategic places, taking care not to let it drip into the joints of Lyndabel's armor.
It was extremely simple then to remove the blackish goo and the remaining shreds of silk. Viryl grabbed Lyndabel's inanimate body by the armpits and pulled her back a few steps, then began slapping her helmet and calling her name to wake her up.
After three slaps, Lyndabel moved her head and groaned a little.
"Get up, sleepyhead. We've got a Voltzreoth to finish off," Viryl urged.
"The Voltzreoth? Where is it?" the girl asked in a whisper.
"I scared him away, and now I think it's trapped. You have nothing to worry about," Viryl replied.
Viryl had his doubts, actually. There was a possibility that something had gone wrong. The beast's yelps had stopped during the rescue operation, so it wasn't out of the question that it had managed to escape. But there was no point in worrying her with that possibility. They would deal with the problem later.
“I’m exhausted… I don’t know if I can move,” Lyndabel complained.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take you there,” Viryl reassured her.
He put Lyndabel’s right arm around his neck, and helped her to her feet. She raised her visor, retrieved an energy vial from her belt, and chugged it down. Even though she felt better already, she let him lead her every step. Viryl’s hard armor against hers and his firm grip made her feel protected.
As they headed for the exit, the girl apologized, “I… I gave you quite a headache. It seems I’m not as good at taking care of myself as I thought I was.”
“Don't be so dramatic. If you hadn't let Velrodas escape to call me, you'd both be dead. You kept a Voltzreoth busy all by yourself, you did a good job,” Viryl tried to cheer her up. He wasn't very good at pep talks.
It didn’t escape Lyndabel’s attention that if Viryl had accompanied them from the start, probably they would have been able to take out the Voltzreoth without any setbacks. But she didn’t point it out. She didn’t want to start another fight with the man who had just saved her. She felt an incomprehensible gratitude toward him. She just forced a smile, which emerged from under her raised visor.
The distant crack of white light grew closer, as the footsteps of the entwined, silk-bedecked knights advanced, until the scene before the entrance to the rock passage became visible to their eyes.
The Voltzreoth's gigantic, lifeless body lay on its belly in the bed of jagged spikes. Velrodas sat on the abomination's shoulder blade, its gray fur bristling. The knight's ethereal swords’ hilt stuck out at the base of the monster's neck.
“It seems the trap worked,” Velrodas explained succinctly, the breeze from the ravines, fresh again and cleansed of the stench of Majonthael, ruffling his hair.
*****
When it came time to write up the report, everyone took their share of credit for the mission well done. Velrodas for giving the finishing blow to the Voltzreoth, Lyndabel for holding her own against it, Viryl for building the trap that had allowed them to capture it.
The little charade that had taken place at the beginning of the operations was not even mentioned.
Everyone came out proud, clean and refreshed, as if after a good wank: Viryl saw it that way.
It was just past lunchtime, and Velrodas had already left. Lyndabel and Viryl were taking a well-earned rest in the sitting room of the Sanctuary shelter.
They had been silent for a while, and out of nowhere Lyndabel said thoughtfully, “You were right, Viryl. Experience is not an irrelevant factor. I thought you were incompetent, but in reality you know your stuff. You’re just a slightly… wild knight.”
Viryl looked at her in amazement. What were his ears hearing? The princess had come down from her pedestal. He replied, “As a knight you are much more capable than I am. You learned a lot of hard spells, and you’ve got balls. Your future is much brighter than mine. But you’re wrong, it’s not just a matter of experience. You have to think outside the box sometimes, and try new paths. The one already traced by those who came before us isn’t necessarily the best. Do you understand what I mean?”
Lyndabel nodded. It was her turn to be surprised. Not only had Viryl managed to talk to her without getting on her nerves, he had even made her a compliment.
“If you want, we can go now. You must want to be back,” Viryl added.
Lyndabel smiled mischievously and replied, “It’s two o’clock, the hottest time of day. Perhaps we should go later.”
*****
Thirty-four years later, third day of Neviticus, 6:26 a.m., Toadmane Island,
It was dawn, and a blood-red solar disk rose from the waters. Tolomer was in a trance, and his glassy, wide-open eyes peered out at the infinite sea that embraced the horizon and was tinged with pink without really looking at it. His ego was totally dissolved in the flow of life that teemed in the most hidden recesses of the island. Every animal, every insect, every blade of grass, every stone, every molecule of water in the stream that roared around him was under the lens of the god Elfiethor’Baham, and Tolomer almost seemed to be able to perceive his thoughts. In fact, he could clearly hear them coming from up there, in a fold of space beyond the faded stars. Perhaps Elfiethor’Baham himself was listening to Tolomer’s thoughts, even if he didn’t seem particularly interested in him. He had accepted the presence of such a strange man in his sanctuary with passivity.
Then a seagull cawed before diving into the sea, and Tolomer’s ego instantly condensed into his body. Tolomer, coming to his senses, blinked in bewilderment. He had a bad feeling. The bird had dived into the water announcing to its flock that it had spotted a large fish. He heard hundreds of similar cries every day and usually they were not enough to break his concentration. No, it was Elfiethor’Baham who had chased him away. In fact, more than chased away, he had forced him to return.
Something was about to happen, something that would take him away from Toadmane Island, and he had to prepare. Tolomer had to make arrangements with the sea creatures to organize his return journey. His mystical experience was heading for a forced break.