Chapter Four

For now, every morning, I'm to drill on what has been told to me by Lantos. If I get any questions wrong, he will lecture me again on the topic till I get the correct answer.

"How many elements are there, and what are they?"

"Four, they are air, water, earth, and heat." It is monotonous, but he hasn't tried to ask any trick questions so far.

This pattern of question and answer continues for almost an hour as we travel.

Today was a nice day, clear skies, warm, with a gentle cool breeze. Lantos says that we will make it to San'hallon by mid-afternoon if we make good time.

My brother, I smile at the thought, my brother had tied his dagger at the end of his quarterstaff. Making a very shoddy spear, but anything is better than nothing against a Beast.

Anyways, passing a split in the path transitions from an overgrown footpath to a well-trodden dirt road. We're close. A few more hours, and we should be seeing the torch boundary, possibly even some farms.

We walked for another couple of hours, exactly as I predicted the boundary, infusing the midday sky with a light orange glow where it meets the ground. They seem brighter than the ones back home.

As we got closer to the boundary, more details stuck out to me. The first was that the "torch" boundary was actually made of lanterns mounted on metal poles. Each pole stood at a distance that, at home, I would consider dangerous. Surrounding each lantern are wooden stakes driven into the ground in a perimeter. The ones directly beside the path were the most concerning. They were damaged, the spikes splintered, blunted, loose. The lanterns, their poles bend, scratched, and rent open. The lanterns are just barely lit, flickering out before relighting in an erratic pattern.

"Is this normal?" I ask nervously looking toward Lantos.

He kneels next to one of the spikes, examining something next to it. Speaking, "Damage happens, sadly Beast blood isn't as foolproof a deterrent as we like to believe." Coming to some kind of conclusion, he stands up facing toward San'hallon, speaking to himself quietly, "The damage is fresh and seems to come from something on the path. An older one then."

Turning back toward me and Daniel, he says, "They're preparations in place if this happens, so the problem has probably been taken care of already. Just keep an eye out, you know, just in case."

That just made me more nervous. From the stories told the one time the village lost a torch there almost stopped being a village. That San'hallon allows the damage to remain all morning was ... concerning, to say the least.

Daniel shifts his hold on his spear to a cautious position.

Moving forward, the grasslands abruptly shifts to farmland—a clear line of destruction intersecting the otherwise pristine and orderly golden fields of wheat and barley.

It was quiet. It was mid-afternoon. There should be people wrapping up work, children playing, and the calls of animals from their pens, but instead, it was silent.

Eerie.

The trail of destruction continued throughout the fields, sometimes swerving into a farmhouse and sometimes circling back on itself.

I can't imagine that every house was empty when the Beast came through, but I can hope. I'm too scared to check either way.

A few minutes later we notice a figure laying half-obscured on the path.

A man was lying halfway on the path face down half, his waist down obscured by wheat. A spear held in his hand.

"Sir, are you okay?" Daniel calls while running forward to help him before being stopped by Lantos, grabbing him on the shoulder

"Don't waste your time. Look at his legs." Lantos says moving aside the wheat.

He didn't have legs anymore.

"The wound is fresh, maybe an hour ago at the latest. Boy, take up his spear, Ann stick close to me." Lantos moves on not even glancing back at the body.

I do as he says and try to walk as close to Lantos as possible without getting in his way.

It's not the first corpse I've seen. Accidents happen. However, it was the freshest. He reminded me more of a passed-out drunk than the dead I've seen. Small blessings he died face down.

Moving past the body, we cautiously continue moving forward.

We encounter a few more bodies along the way. Daniel occasionally pauses to close the eyes of some. They were all similarly cut up, some missing limbs, others succumbing to deep wounds.

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Nearly thirty minutes and a dozen bodies later, I hear people yelling and the loud steps of a Beast. The noise came from my right off into the fields somewhere beyond sight.

"So we know where it is," Lantos says, visibly releasing the tension in his muscles. Turning to face me and Daniel and clapping his hands together, "So let's ignore that and get going."

Lantos actually smiled at that, like leaving people to die somehow was a good thing.

But it is for us. We don't have to risk our lives fighting, and once inside the city, we can warn the guards about the Beast if they don't already know. It's not good, but it was probably the safest option. It left a sick feeling in my chest, but 'we do what we must,' and we certainly are not ready or able to fight a Beast right now. Especially one so brazen to both attack during the day and get through the boundary. If it can do that in its weakened state, I don't want to find out if we take it down just if we can get away.

Nothing could be done. Silently apologizing for my cowardice to those fighting the Beast. I being to follow Lantos, checking on Daniel to see how he is taking thi-

Where's Daniel?

---

Why in the everlasting flame would he run toward death! It is beyond daft. Sprinting after Daniel, I desperately try to call for Daniel to stop running. He was some fifty feet ahead and holding a spear in each hand.

I know it's sad to leave them to die, but we have to if we want to live. I thought he knew that.

Running through the field, Daniel got further and further away. He was too fast. I was never going to catch him. I'm not a bad runner. If he were anyone else from the village, I would be able to catch him, but it's Daniel, and the usual rules don't apply to him. Agh, curse his weird athleticism.

He crests over a small hill and moments later, so do I revealing the battle. I expected to see a slaughter, but the defenders held their own.

They weren't the farmers or the lightly armored guards from before. These were knights of some kind. And they fought with skill, preciseness, and quickness I didn't expect to see out of people wearing full-body suits of plate armor. They welded what looked like spears with an over-long blade and a cross-guard where the blade met the haft.

The Beast was almost as knightly looking in a certain sense. Thick bone plates covered most of its horse-like body, and a long barbed tail ending in a straight blade. It had to be at least ten feet tall, but it moved with a gracefulness that clashed with the brutality of its attacks. Its head was completely covered with that same bone plating revealing only its hollow eyes.

Just looking at the Beast brought a chill to my spine.

The Beast took a blow from a knight that deflected off its skull. It retaliated with a slash toward that knight's neck.

Who barely dodges the strike and pulls back to allow another knight to take their place.

There were four knights—two at the Beast's front and one on each flank hemming it in.

It was a delicate balance between the Beast and the knights, almost evenly matched. The first to make a significant mistake was going to die.

Daniel, of course, saw this and, in his infinite wisdom, decided that to unbalance the fight in the knight's favor, he would do the sensible thing and throw his makeshift spear at the Beast. Hard.

He leaned back, holding the spear like a javelin before stepping forward and twisting his body as he released the spear.

There was a loud crack as the spear hit dead on a plate on the Beast's shoulder. Completely sundering the spear, blade, and haft both, and knocking the Beast off balance as the force of the hit rocks it back.

One of the flanking knights moved in, thrusting at the unarmored underside of the Beast, driving the blade in deep, twisting it, then pulling it out and trying for a second stab.

He doesn't make that far. The Beast swung its tail around the knight's leg, slicing him behind the knee and sweeping him off his feet in the same movement. Then moving almost faster than I could track, it pounced onto the knight crushing him beneath its weight. A spray of blood and viscera coating its legs as it turns to keep the knight in front of it. But now, keeping one eye firmly pointed in Daniels direction.

"Fool," startled, I turn, and behind me, I see Lantos slightly panting, walking up to me. " Did he actually think that would work." He surveyed the battle with a peculiar look in his eyes. "At least he has enough sense to stay out of the fight."

Daniel stood a little over a dozen feet away from us. The other spear gripped tightly in his hands as he quietly observed the battle looking for another opportunity.

One of the knights in front of the Beast moves to the uncovered flank of the creature.

Lantos puts a hand on my shoulder, leaning over me. "Let's make this a learning experience. Tell me what to do."

What? I look at him, confused. How am I supposed to know what to do or even be done?

" Elementalist need to be creative and resourceful to do our job. Tell me what to do, and I'll do it if it can be done. But do hurry with it. Every second you waste the potential, someone dies rises."

I turn back to the fight, looking frantically, searching for a weakness.

The Beast shoulder plate that the spear hit was cracked. The knights can handle the rest if we can take out one of its legs. How do we do that?

The beast charges the knight in front, attempting to ram them with its head. The knight gets mostly out the way but still sends him sprawling from the force.

Two knights on the flanks are able to stop it before it can repeat what it did to their companion as the fallen knight stands and returns to the fight.

I don't have time to figure out how to get through the armor. I have to figure something else out. Think, think, think! What to do?

The Head! It's covered in bone. It has to be hard at hearing, meaning-

"Its eyes! Get rid of its eyes!" Lantos almost looked approving.

"How?" It was a simple question and an equally simple answer.

"Burn them out." That nearly got me to smile until I remembered that whether this works or not might get someone killed.

Lantos touched his gloved hand to the orb containing the ash, a light, harmonious tone ringing out. Pointing his wand at the Beast's face, he flicks the wand upwards.

A loud pop sounded out, along with the smell of burnt flesh.

The Beast roars a thunderous wailful roar that echoes into my bones and penetrates deep into my mind.

I covered my ears to try and block out the mind-splitting sound that seemed to last for an eternity, driving me to my knees. My eyes were pulsing painfully behind my eyelids as if the sound was threatening to do to me what Lantos had done to the Beast.

And then it stops.

The Beast was gone, disappearing from the shallow valley to somewhere beyond sight.

It wasn't till minutes later that I realized that blood was coming from my ears.

Four knights, an Elementalist, gods know how many farmers and guards, and a Daniel, and we didn't even kill the thing. And this is when it's weak.