Thirty riders of seventeen red crosses, ten houses, two pagan and one reject of royal heritage; they formed a wide arrowhead of imperfect alignment. There were horses of splendor, horses of labor, war horses, whose riders bore no banners, no armor needed … on they rode towards the spewing storm of toxicity and destruction.

The Serpent Dragon’s venom lay thick concentric circles around Bjarke’s stranded battle-axe. This glow of green was their last bastion of hope as the thirty assigned themselves their own destiny.

The purple haze of fumes and splatter reeked a pungent smell of bile and rotten eggs. The competing atmospheres turned frost-laded ground to metallic sludge that churned under heavy-footed horses. As the thirty felt the dry, rancid burn upon their faces, they broke into disorganized misdirection.

It was a flurry of activity that caught the Serpent Dragon’s nostrils a twitching. Its angered red eyes enlarged with a sudden need to bank hard, then correct.

There were numerous dives and ascensions as each rider attempted their approach towards the glowing green. Not to claim Bjarke’s prized axe, but to act as decoy. A game of chicken, where they retreated at the first sign of danger, for the Serpent Dragon could not target the one within the many.

Infuriated, the ancient Id resorted to uncontrolled outbursts of frustration, grating the riders a window of opportunity that opened wider and wider.

Whereupon Gideon, riding a ragged Clydesdale, took his chance.

His bare feet gripped the saddle as he stood high with youthful balance. His body wrapped in blankets and padding as he made his leap of faith, over the explosive pools of purple toxicity, to the shifting sands as Anneliese moved heaven and earth to cover the last few feet needed to clear the gap.

He landed hard, but his technique was solid, hitting the ground in a controlled tumble. With bent legs and tight arms, he rolled hip to shoulder up to the bent shaft of Bjarke’s battle-axe. The reignited blade brought a loud shriek from the Serpent Dragon as the ancient hightailed up to a defensible elevation before streamlining itself towards the temple encampment.

‘There’s no other choice, is there?’ asked Anneliese as she accompanied Gideon in the ring of purple haze.

Her apprehensive plea for heroism was heard with absolute clarity among Gideon’s renewed hearing. It brought the former prince to full-bodied goosebumps as he became engrossed in the sounds of scattered horsemen, to the sizzling acid and Serpent Dragon’s squeal; the feeling of being alive in the direst of circumstance. ‘Try and try again, I guess,’ said Gideon.

‘But different,’ said Lascivious, whose voice reverberated through Bjarke’s battle-axe in all its ghostly distortions. ‘Send him high and drop him here, to where I will create a portal that will connect to Anneliese and, in turn, she will anchor your exit right below its underbelly.’

‘I will not relinquish control,’ said Anneliese.

‘Well, it’s only humanity we’re saving, right?’ said Lascivious.

‘Forget him,’ said Gideon. ‘You are the lady of the rain cave. Coble trusted you, and I don’t believe him wrong. So, send me high and make it count.’

The former prince yanked Bjarke’s bent axe, which he braced against his body in preparation for the freefall. The transition took seconds before the weightless caught him off guard and twirling backward. His body was whipped in all directions, and there was no orientation for the ground or point of entry. His only sense of direction came from the vibrating battle-axe that, like a compass, pulled him in Lascivious’ direction. His body was tight, bar his pivoting leg that kept his tail end aligned to the outstretched battle-axe. His pointed angle eased into a swayed approach that regressed into a steady straight-line wobble, directly into the center of the acid concentric circles. With squinted gaze, he endured the splintering winds and, with suicidal conviction, committed himself utterly to Anneliese’s magic.

‘You can’t do this alone,’ said Lascivious as Anneliese passed back and forth from the magical to the physical realm. In three ways omnipresence, she stood. At the toxic moat, she held the implosive orb in place. While her second, self-rearranged the tunnels of the pagan stronghold, which constantly crumbled and reconstructed themselves to the demands of her third self, who kept in rapid-fire teleportation as she tried to gauge the perfect point of departure.

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The mental strain had her conscience hazy as she struggled to keep focus against the imaginary image, of a broken mirror that reflected the red leather couch and Lascivious’ face staring back at her.

‘You are not a wizard. This is beyond you,’ Lascivious said.

This was counted by the calm, methodical voice of Draconian, whose ghost shadowed her at the point of Gideon’s eventual exit beneath the Serpent Dragon. ‘Forget all doubt. Just breath and built that tunnel, brick by brick by brick.’

The time slowed, her panic dimmed as she stood at the tunnel’s juncture. One hand was pointing towards the entry point. Bjarke’s green axe, a growing spec in the sky. Her other hand pointed to his eventual departure from the magical realm.

Until all three omnipresent selves became aligned, and the world appeared in third person.

Where she could stand back and witness Gideon’s pinpoint dive into the magical realm.

Bjarke’s battle-axe then extinguished and reignited as Gideon reappeared in near-perfect aim to Serpent Dragon’s underbelly and the ancient attempting a last-second veer.

Gideon reached wide to take no chances as he firmly struck the blade to the ancient’s winged elbow. The force tore the bent shaft from its head. The jolting force yanked Gideon’s arm free from the axe and left him suspended in mid-air, savoring a successful strike.

He was then able to witness the ancient’s spiraled descended. Its wing contracted in on itself as the green blade sucked in the infected limb with crushing deformation, and yet its head would not yield. With its razor-sharp fangs and acid breath, the Serpent Dragon gnawed at its shoulder. Disentangled snakes ripped chunks at a time until the compromised wing became its own entity, and the point of contact was constrained to the sacrificial limb.

Despite Gideon’s most valiant of effort, it was still not enough. And he himself fell victim to laws of gravity and the reversal of blood flow from feet to head, only for the gaseous claws of an unknown beast to rescue him before terminal velocity decided his fate.

The gaseous claws brought with them the faint outline of winged feathers, which with graceful elegance glided his return to Anneliese’s side. The flooding euphoria kept Gideon weightless as the frost-laden ground accepted him with a cloud’s softness, where he would remain with a tilted smile upon a face caught between laughter and tears. ‘If I ever.’

‘Kulum,’ said Anneliese, unable to look away as the phoenix ignited anew into a warm yellow with eyes of red, talons of white-tipped blue – the falcon of fire, in all its magnificent glory.

With Kulum’s reincarnation, the wounded and diminished Serpent Dragon squirmed its way through a rushed reconstitution. With a half-formed wing and a throat full of the toxic bile, the ancient directed its anger towards the phoenix and strafed the sky like an acidic firehose. Yet the acidic spray was itself an incendiary, fuel to the fire, as first contact with the phoenix ignited the toxic bile into backfire fury. Like a comet to deep impact, the ingested flames shed the fleshier inner snakes. Their crusty burnt bodies crumbled through the super-heated lesions that formed around the Serpent Dragon’s neck.

The phoenix then latched its fiery talon through scale and skin and lodged deep inside the Serpent Dragon’s abdomen, while the phoenix’s beak ripped and tore its way through the open crevasse of the Serpent Dragon’s neck. The combine efforts left the ancient deconstructed in its primal intertwined snake-like form, which with one last burst of flame, incinerated Id to dust and, with it, Kulum’s spirit.

‘The prophecy was right. He was the chosen one,’ said Anneliese in pale white of disbelief as she surveyed the battlefield, fearful some other ungodly manifestation would emerge in its place.

‘Don’t beat yourself up too much. Bloody hell, if it ain’t breathing, I ain’t worrying,’ said Gideon. His mind was away with the orange and purple sunset. The tension of tight muscles and troubled thoughts drifted away with the breeze.

‘But we didn’t slay the ancient,’ said Anneliese.

‘No, but we got our pound of flesh. And next time, we’ll grab a little more,’ said Gideon.

As the hours drifted and the evening winds brought the shade of the setting sun, the ghosts of warriors past returned to their spiritual graves. The few thousand remaining templars and cross-worshippers laid shocked into silence as their heads hung heavy with shame and dishonor. Were they saved or condemned? How had such an evil indoctrinated them so completely? These were questions they would ponder in quiet reflection as their pagan and gypsy saviors scoured the battle-scared plateau. Their charity was offered to all who would accept it.

Even Amos hitched a ride upon a gypsy’s wagon, his near-paralyzed body wrapped thoroughly under layers of pagan garments. A cosy cocoon that did much to keep him comfortable and still while his mind drifted into narrowed focus upon the slight sensation of movement of his big toe.

That was, until the inevitable crossing of paths between him and Anneliese.

‘It would take more than this to change my convictions,’ Amos said to her.

‘It takes a true believer to challenge one’s own church,’ said Anneliese.

Amos chuckled. ‘Let’s never meet again. Less, I need to finish the job.’

‘Rest up, Amos. You’ve done a great deed this day.’

‘If only,’ said Amos as he resided in his own misery.