Inside the magical void sat Anneliese. Through concentrated meditation, she reconstructed the pagan stronghold, the maze of corridors, which she aligned in a one-way trajectory from the Temple of the Last to the rear of Sir Bradfrey’s forces.
Standing guard was Bjarke, with the dormant shimmer of his magical battle-axe reflecting the rippled light from fissures crawling up the dead-end walls. His left shoulder was hanging loose by the side of his slouched frame, and he felt a growing uneasiness that permeated his adrenaline-honed focus.
Even as the spiritual, magical bound manifestation of Id approached, Bjarke’s thoughts split between commitment and the hefty weight of his impotent sidearm.
To their rear stood Lascivious. He was a guide to his subject as his hands traced the mental map needed for Anneliese’s world-building. While simultaneously, he was twirling his right index finger, causing waves that became ripples. The fractured light then seeped in through the fissures and broke the transient plain between the magical and physical realm.
The collapsing wall revealed the distant throne of the Bishop Arcadius and the raised heads of his blind monks.
Back in the physical realm, Sir Bradfrey perched himself high on his mount. His mind was detached, with an eagle-eyed mental map of his formations and perked fox ears for the surrounds, only to find the danger at his side, as Arcadius’ head jerked back and forth in the most unnatural manner. ‘You seem worried?’ asked Sir Bradfrey.
‘None of the sort,’ said Arcadius, which was spoken by his less invisible doubleganger. The blurred second head then twisted and jerked as it slowly shed itself from its host and became a pale-black smoke-eyed figure, whose neck pivoted a full three sixty degrees, tracing the lines from the temple to a vacant point behind their lines.
The disturbance triggered a cascade of whiplash from the previously dorsal blind monks, as they snapped their heads in Sir Bradfrey’s direction, as though they sensed intent and were ready to reciprocate on any wrong move. Their frowns twitched in a delayed mimic of the one central monk who echoed quiet screams through his slacked jaw. The central monk’s eyes then illuminated a deep red that pierced the thick fabric blindfold.
The cold tension realigned Sir Bradfrey’s retinue from forward facing to a tightly bound rear guard around their beloved commander. Except for one brave squire, who dared to cross no-man’s-land and offer soft words with kind intent. ‘Is anything the problem?’
The central monk merely shifted its cloth-covered glare, so that the squire could see the darkening patches of his concealed eye sockets and the red tinge illuminating through cracked, dried ink-stained cloth.
It was a threatening sight that forced the squire backwards upon staggered footing to his pack. Whom quickly pulled the junior into a place among the protective formation as each knight aligned themselves for imminent conflict.
‘What in God’s name?’ said Grand Templar Eberstein as he tilted his gaze towards the two-sided standoff. Oblivious to the frozen bishop, he watched the slow-moving conflict between Sir Bradfrey’s retinue and the monks.
Bishop Arcadius remained unresponsive and started to tremor as his fingertips blackened with shades of gangrene. His heart skipped, studded on repeat, to the sensation of a hefty object being pulled through his abdomen. ‘Lascivious,’ he said.
‘ARCADIUS,’ yelled Eberstein as he leapt from his horse. With holy water in hand and chanted biblical verses, he dived to embrace the possessed bishop and extinguish the evil infliction. Only for the invisible blast to his ribcage, which sent him skimming over the snow-speckled earth, a full battle-battalion deep.
The red-eyed monk, having delt the invincible missile to Eberstein, readied himself to unleash a second. Until the emerging portal and the haunting call of a far greater adversary shifting the monk’s attention rearwards .
‘My old friend,’ Lascivious yelled at the red-eyed monk with amplified volume; it was as if the devil himself had arrived. His figure was a constantly rejuvenating form that splintered and shed, as though being pulled back into the portal’s void.
Against the backdrop of the pounding drums and shaking ground, the two evils of Lascivious and the red-eyed monk converged. The sound of subtle screams from the monk’s slack jaw was now a squealing pitch while the accumulated hate grew in symbiotic intensity with the strange vibrations – tremors that cascaded from the temple grounds to the portal gate.
While inside the magical realm, Anneliese sat among the blue-flamed firepit of the old pagan stronghold, where she repeated the words. ‘I am the empty; I am the fissure; I am the divide.’ Her figure was a transient haze between two worlds.
The full-blooded Bjarke was at her rear, staring down the endless hallway. Every buckle and crack was felt as the black shape-shifting tsunami churned its way over tremored floors. Bjarke’s injured backhand caressed the warm fuzzy static of the portal gateway that kept him orientated among the chaotic rumblings. His internal clock counted down to final contact.
The white of his eyes contracted by the extinguishing torchlight until the dimness found him in a backwards hot step through the portal gate. His dormant battle-axe was now alive upon entering the physical realm, and the fierce glow of green, held high, was ready to strike. ‘Come, come,’ said Bjarke.
His peripherals picked up the fast-moving, red-eyed monk to his location, which was close to the fading decay of Lascivious, whose ghostly form fought the portal’s gravitational pull and tried to offer distance for Bjarke as the blind monk summoned its spiring ball of destructive energy.
‘Show yourself, you coward,’ said Lascivious to the red-eyed monk, arms outstretched to welcome the impending strike from Bjarke upon the monk.
Then, without warning, a burst of airs preceded the explosion of black chaos through the portal gate. It was a constant flow, like a fountainhead, endeared to break its magical constraints before succumbing to the portal’s gravitational pull. The red-eyed monk’s ball of destruction veered wide and into the mouth of a shape-shifting beast. While the remaining monks, having sensed their masters’ emerging presence, found themselves raised in religious embrace, with hymned verses of the old tongue.
Back at the mid-ground between the temple and Sir Bradfrey’s army, the visible but unseen Weddle kept to his slow, unassuming pace. All but forgotten to the demonic manifestations, he gathered a fist full of magical sands and pushed old faithful into a gallop. Like a needle between the entrenched lines of foot soldiers he rode, until their approach neared the frontline of Sir Bradfrey’s main army’s, at which point he flicked his wrist and ignited the stallion into a stream of fire. The horse then bulged with deep deformation before splitting into the flabby bodies of Gideon, Kulum and Zizrum.
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‘This is it,’ said Weddle.
While behind Sir Bradfrey, the portal’s extrusion, the black shape-shifting manifestation of Id constricted and contorted into a weaving multi-headed snake, whose existence created a rift between the portal and Bishop Arcadius.
With Arcadius no longer in control of his faculties, the black-stained tears began to cannibalize its human cocoon. His mouth swelled to the internal rot of Id’s transition from spirit to physical form, with his jaw splitting sideways to the many fibres of black-headed snakes, which longed to reunite with their parallel from the magical realm.
And then a stray blade of Sir Bradfrey’s sword sought to sever the demonic black snake-like creature emerging from its physical subject, only to be repulsed by the magical force fields that expanded out. The high impact threw Sir Bradfrey from his horse and away from his nearby knights.
The blind monks then formed an impenetrable dome around the creature formerly known as Arcadius, which with every strike shuddered and stirred them further into hard-boiled rage.
The competing threats distracted the frontlines and permitted the bright flame of Kulum to speed past the templar and foot-soldier ranks, splitting them in half. The soldiers lined sword and spear either side of Kulum and the blind monks, to form the converging lines, from demon to demon, unsure of the true enemy.
A fast-acting Gideon ran to Sir Bradfrey’s aid, where squire and retinue dug and levered their master’s pinned leg from under his downed horse.
‘Get up, you stalk-legged panzy before I pull a heartledge and leave you to this dump,’ said Gideon as he dragged Sir Bradfrey from the churned dirt pillow.
A mouth full of grass and sediment, the disoriented general tried to make sense of the blurry images. In the distance, he could see Bjarke swinging heavy against the red-eyed monk, the demon slayer’s green axe striking hard against strands of tainted glass-like structures. From magical fissure piercing the physical world the red-eyed monk conjured his projectiles. With a whip of the monk’s wrist, he flung volleys of glass-like structure, which worked to steered Bjarke away from Id’s spiritual form, the black smoky creature still spawning from the portal opening.
In the foreground, the waves of foot soldiers gave space to a searing heat of the leather-skinned Kulum, whose fire-engulfed body intensified from yellow to red. With clasped hands and intertwined fingers, Kulum manipulated the flame. Blue smoke eclipsed his eyes, as a small phoenix burst into life, flying wide circles around its master. Kulum’s shirt burnt beyond ash to dust. His veins enlarged to the strain of concentrated flame, which he pulled and contorted into the cylindric firestorm. Kulum’s demon was finally unleashed within the restraints of controlled anger.
The cylindrical firestorm spun faster and faster. The centrifugal force spat strands of solar flares, until the tension cracked and Kulum’s body ignited further from red to blue, as the firestorm unraveled into the unstable tornado inferno, which swayed wildly from its point of origin. His eyes were a blinding white. The ground below was a crusty black. His demon was summoned with all spitting fury as the small phoenix drifted out to catch the wayward fire tornado and guide it into contact with the collective monks’ magical shield.
The blind monks, unable to withstand the heat, retreated. Their leader, formerly known as Bishop Arcadius, lurked forward. The flames merely burnt off the excess of Id’s seemingly endless form, as skin and ligaments melted away to the many intertwined serpents that spewed out of Arcadius’ disintegrating human body. Until the hundreds to thousands of intertwined serpents of Id’s physical converged into a single form with claw-like legs and reptile-like wings.
‘The Serpent Dragon,’ said Weddle, who was far from danger but every bit vulnerable to the unfolding chaos of Id and its new physical form.
Like a piercing breeze through the cloud of kicked-up ash and dust, Anneliese teleported next to Weddle from the magical realm. By her side stood the mental image of Lascivious. His words of wisdom emanated through Anneliese’s wizard’s state as she shifted back and forth from full cognitive control to partial withdrawal. ‘How do we defeat it?’ Anneliese asked.
‘We can’t penetrate that shield, but if we take out the monks, Id will only grow stronger and live longer. But it’s not like we have any other option,’ said Lascivious.
‘Trust the prophesy, trust Bjarke, save the innocent,’ said an unknown voice from within Anneliese. ‘Stay here,’ she said to Weddle, before teleporting herself to the wounded Sir Bradfrey, who was carried upon Gideon’s shoulder as they and the remaining retainers tried to escape from the converging firestorm of Kulum and the ancient Id’s newly formed Serpent Dragon.
‘You need to order the advance on the monks. They are the shield protecting the Serpent Dragon,’ said Anneliese, pointing to the fire tornado that still swirled around their magical forcefield.
‘But you left,’ said Sir Bradfrey, barely able to make words in his semi-conscious state.
‘We’re here now,’ said Gideon. ‘And that friend of yours is forty feet tall and about to make a mess of us.’
‘My lord, we are bound by your orders. But please don’t throw us away so carelessly,’ said his senior knight, draped in half-burnt black and white insignia. There was a coward’s quiver to his voice, and he appeared to beg for a retreat.
It brought a sobering clarity to Sir Bradfrey, and he shoved himself free of Gideon’s aid, despite his sprained abdomen that had him staggered and grimaced. Against his senior knight he held himself steady. ‘If I lead, will you follow?’
‘My lord, please, I beg you. You will not last a single blow.’
‘Then see to it I survive for the second. What say you,’ said Sir Bradfrey.
‘For … for you, my lord, we pledge our lives,’ said the senior knight as he fixed his visor to disguise his swollen eye that no tear would falter.
The retainers followed in lockstep. Each mounted their horses and watched their beloved leader play unfamiliar with the horse’s saddle. Sir Bradfrey fumbled around with no sense of direction. The slightest movement rendered him dazed and confused.
Even Gideon’s shook his head at any notion of dumbfounded bravery, while the spitting ambers of Kulum firestorm implored Gideon to take charge, and against Sir Bradfrey’s delirious judgement, sound the retreat.
The Serpent Dragon – Id – unleashed a deafening high-pitch roar as it solidified its intertwined serpents into hardened scaled skin. It’s claw-like feet were now fixed with three razor-sharp talons that were the size of man. And they churned the ground with every step. Every inhale, the beast flexed its chest to reveal a more fluid serpent underbelly.
The prospect of a weak spot had the crossbowmen unleash volleys of arrows that lined the beast like a decorative headpiece. There was nothing they could do. It was a battle of the demons. An unstoppable force against the immoveable object, an equilibrium of fire and grit.
The Serpent Dragon extended its talons upon Kulum’s flame-engulfed body. Its full weight bared down on the young man. Its burly body shimmered with a super-heated orange as the beast withheld its breath, less expose its vulnerable underbelly to the unrelenting flames.
While for Kulum, it was all or nothing.
The small phoenix rested upon his shoulder and then dissolved into his own being. The chosen one then withdrew completely into his wizard state. The demon of thorns and fire emerged by spiritual outline visible through distortions in the flame. His smoke eyes were now laser-like beams of light. The blue flame a blinding white. Not a mortal soul could bear the sight as the super-heated air cut a ring of scorched earth.
The Serpent’s armored scales bulged and warped. Its head whipped and recoiled, unable to bear the heat. Their competing forces kept in equilibrium, as Kulum’s spiritual demon floated up to touch the beast’s orange-glow scales. The fire demon’s claw-like hands latched on like piercing knives while the demon directed Kulum’s anger into a spherical white flame. Like the blinding sun, its brightness consumed all, while the child prodigy let rip a concentrated beam into the Serpent Dragon’s underbelly.
Then, as quick as it were intense, the flame vanquished. No light, no sun. All sense of sight blinded for a few daunting seconds as the dust cleared, and the surrounding knights regained their vision.
The ground where Kulum stood was now a crater of super-heated rock that surrounded a flailing half-seared Serpent Dragon. Id shrieked in pain from the charred skin that shed upon the beast’s violent impulsions. Its fangs ripped and gnawed at the hard, crusted scales, as it reverted to fluid form, before it rearranged back into a dragon form – smaller yet equally formidable, and without the threat of the prophesied child prodigy.
Where the swirling firestorm had dissipated, stood the six blind monks – unaffected bar the stream of black ink that now flowed down their cheeks. Cupped around their own magical balls of destruction, they were poised for retaliation.