A heavy bank of clouds obscured the moon. Roland shuffled toward the river, aiming for the small clump of cottonwoods along the ribbon of river at the bottom of a ravine. Their sturdy, silent companionship seemed what he needed to ward off despair.
When the Nephilim came, would he ever be truly alone again? Would he even be safe with his own thoughts? Did those demonic spirits ever leave anyone alone, or were they there all the time, tormenting without mercy? How many Nephilim were there? He tried to imagine what Ishyrus looked like and what could possibly warp a Seraph’s mind so badly that he would visit such pain upon the world? What was Ishyrus getting out of this?
But Roland was not destined to walk alone on this night. Before he reached the slender maples, he received a jolt that nearly jarred him out of his skin. Lying next to the stream, so close that he nearly stepped on it, was an enormous grizzly bear.
“You a deserter?” asked a powerful, throbbing voice. The bear licked its upper lips as it lay with its forepaws extended, stretching its muscles.
Roland gulped. “No.” He tried to remind himself that these great bears, although not technically allied with the animal armies, had rallied to their cause. “Just trying to clear my head.”
“Of what?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Thoughts, I guess,” said Roland, just for the sake of saying something.
The grizzly laughed. In contrast with the intense and desperate mood of the camp, the genuine merriment rang like a chime. “Your parents sacrifice years of their lives and enough effort to move mountains just to get thoughts to grow in that clump of dirt you call a head and here you go doing your best to weed them out.”
After a brief silence, both asked at once, “Who are you?”
“The name is Bannaclaw,” said the grizzly. “I don’t expect you’ve heard of me, so don’t pretend otherwise. You do not appear to be Tishaaran, despite your clothing. In fact, I would have placed you as a Second Realmer, just on a guess.”
“Mmmm, not exactly,” Roland hedged.
The bear waited for a further explanation, but when none came, it merely yawned. “Doesn’t matter to me. I don’t particularly care where you came from. But I did ask who you are.” This last statement came with a throaty warning growl that so many beasts appeared to use in dealing with strangers. Coming from a beast that large, it carried an unmistakable threat.
“My name is Roland. I’m actually from another world. Not another realm, another world. Tell me, uh, sir, why do the other animals talk about you grizzlies as if you aren’t to be, you know, trusted. I mean, you saved a lot of their lives today.” Immediately Roland wondered if he should have reported that bit of gossip.
“First off,” said the bear, “you won’t last long in these parts calling females ‘sir’. Second, I wouldn’t waste two seconds of a long winter nap caring what animals whisper in their idle moments. They can chatter about us all they want, if that’s all they can think of to do. But I notice they are very careful what they call me to my face, and that’s a sign of wisdom that I can respect.”
“I’m sorry, ma’m,” said Roland. He had a feeling he should probably just walk away from this creature, but he decided to push his luck. “You know, though, I don’t think you really answered my question.”
“There’s no think about it,” said the grizzly. “I didn’t.
“But you are on our side, right?” asked Roland, nervously.
“Fine excuse for an army,” sniffed Bannaclaw. “Don’t know who we’re fighting or who’s fighting with us. Were you on the field of battle today? If you were, you know the answer."
Roland hesitated. “May I ask you a question?”
“You just did. Care to try another?”
Roland sighed heavily, too tired to play games with the bear. “They say you grizzlies don’t care about the other beasts. They’re mostly scared silly of you. Why did you come to their rescue?”
The bear’s unblinking eyes glowed strangely in the faint moonlight. “Just because we don’t go in for a lot of yapping with a bunch of blowhard squirrels and silly deer doesn’t mean we’re Droom on four legs, like some of that rabble think. Ask the Droom if I’m on their side,” she said, with a satisfied chuckle.
“We know what’s going on in the realms. We know that a scheming spirit from the Accursed Realm sits not two miles from here,” the bear continued. “Hiding behind an army to rival the Droom. Fixing to take over the realms, we hear. Destroy the bonds. We don’t want that, plain and simple. That’s why we’re all here, right?”
“Yeah.” But the spark of purpose that the grizzly’s words kindled in him quickly faded at the remembrance of their plight. “It ‘s hopeless, though. We have a snowball’s chance in hell. Ishyrus broke the realm bonds so it and anything else from the Fifth Realm can use all their powers, once they gain their strength. And that includes his Nephilim allies, the phantom trees. We got nothing to fight them. And to top it all off, now we find the Droom are in with Ishtrus on it.”
Bannaclaw closed her eyes as she stretched. “Hah!” she snorted.
“No, it’s true. Didn’t you hear about the near disaster between the bison and wolves? Ishyrus seems to have set them up for the Droom to destroy both armies. And the Droom let the Raxxars pass through their land to Point Harrow. They’re helping Ishyrus. They’re in this together. Even Digtry admits that all the forces in all the realms combined could not hope to stop Ishyrus and his army and the Doom.”
“Droom aren’t in league with anyone,” sniffed Bannaclaw. “I make it my business to know the Drooms’ business. They don’t like sharing the air in the Fourth Realm with anyone, much less power. If they hatched something with a spirit like Ishyrus, it was only because they thought they could get the better of it.”
Roland looked at him uncertainly, “Are you su--”
“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you,” warned Bannaclaw. “I feel no need to share this world with folks who doubt my word.”
Roland snapped his mouth shut. It took several tense moments for him recover his courage. “But how do you explain the bison-wolf incident if you don’t think the--”
“It’s not a matter of thinking; it’s knowing. The Droom hate Ishyrus and Nephilim as much as they hate animals, and that’s considerable. I don’t give a rat’s gizzard what happened with the bison and wolves. My guess? Ishyrus made the Droom an offer they couldn’t refuse. Say he delivers the bison and wolves to them on a platter if they allow Raxxars a one-time pass through Droom lands. Something like that.”
“But how could the Droom be so stupid?” protested Roland. “Ishyrus is a greater threat to them than all the animals who ever lived! The only chance we had of stopping it was before it could break the realm bonds. Now that it has done that, the Droom are screwed along with the rest of us. Don’t they understand that?”
“Oh, they will in a few days when they find out Ishyrus broke the realm bonds,” chuckled Bannaclaw. “They’ll find that out real good. It would be a treat to see their faces, in spite of everything. The Droom think they’re so all-fired brilliant. But they were as ignorant as everyone else. Like all of us, they didn’t know that the realm bonds could be broken. As long as that was the case, they weren’t going to lose a minute’s sleep worrying about Ishyrus. Yeah, smug in their power, the Droom would turn a blind eye to Ishyrus’s diddling up in Point Harrow in exchange for a quick and easy slaughter of their ancient foes, the wolves and bison. They couldn’t believe Ishyrus posed any serious threat outside the Fifth Realm.”
“Would you mind telling that to the war council?” asked Roland. “It might give them some hope. The wolves and bison don’t see any point in continuing the fight because they believe they are battling the Droom as well as Ishyrus and its legions. They think we should all flee to far corners of the realmlands. Go into hiding and try some sort of guerilla warfare, I suppose.”
“Go into hiding from the Nephilim?” scoffed Bannaclaw. “Yeah, that'll work!”
“Your absolutelly right. So would you tell them what you just told me?”
“Tell them yourself. I don’t enjoy their company. I have nothing to say to them.” Abruptly, the bear rose, stretched, and walked away along the river bank. Roland saw there was no point in pursuing the beast. Whatever else they might be, grizzlies were not team players.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
He walked back to camp, mulling over this new perspective. Someone ought to tell the animals. With the realm bonds broken, the Droom must finally see their danger. They will have to join us. The Droom are the big power in the lower realms. If we can get with them, maybe together we can figure something out.
By the time Roland reached the dune, the beasts had resumed their war council. Roland hated being the center of attention as he walked through their meeting, but he had to talk with Digtry.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Digtry. After Roland told him of his conversation with Bannaclaw, Digtry nodded. “Smart bear.”
“So shouldn’t we fall back and then send someone, you know, to see if the Droom will join us now that they see the danger they’re in?” asked Roland, letting a trace of hope back in his thoughts.
“No.” Digtry’s answer was like a slap to the jaw.
“But—” protested Roland.
Digtry bit his lip in pain, and held up his hand. “I’ll explain in a moment.”
Hatanwa was nearing the end of his rope in his efforts to control the beasts. “If we had half the stomach for fighting as we do for bickering, we would have nothing to fear!” he grumbled. “What are we to do? Come now! We have accomplished nothing so far beyond shoring up relations with the Gnomes.”
“That’s nothing to sneeze at,” said Digtry. “But you’re right. Time for action.”
“No one can doubt my willingness to fight to the death,” declared Hatanwa. “I do not fear Ishyrus and his legions, though they recruit the Droom to their side and their numbers be as the sand in the desert. Yet I see no point in offering ourselves as an easy sacrifice. I at least would deny them the pleasure our easy slaughter would provide them. The bonds are broken. We have no food. We have no hope. What can we possibly accomplish here under such odds? Why pretend that we can prevail against Ishyrus’s cunning or its magic, or the powers of the tree wraiths, or that army, or the Droom? The battle is lost. Have we any alternative to disbanding and resorting to guerrilla warfare?”
“Could I suggest something?” said Roland, hesitantly. Digtry shook his head at him as vigorously as he could given his limited mobility, and the effort seemed to cost him dearly. But Roland plunged ahead anyway. With the daunting glares of the animals bearing down on him, he related what he had learned from Bannaclaw: that the Droom were not in league with Ishyrus. A chorus of snarls showed what the animals thought of Roland's proposal to join forces with the ancient enemy, the Droom, against Ishyrus.
“The Droom and the bison may both fight against the Darkness of the Fifth!” roared Chama. “But never shall we fight alongside a Droom!”
Howls and barks of agreement echoed over the dune, with only the Gnomes displaying no reaction.
Desperately, Roland turned to Digtry. “You tell them,” he pleaded. “Reason with them. They’ll listen to you.”
Digtry smiled wanly, the reflection of the fire embers turning his face blood-red. “I tried to tell you. The last thing we need is to set off the beasts’ tempers again.” He raised up painfully on one elbow. “Friends!” he called, in his loudest voice. “Time grows short. May I bring a proposal before the council?”
“Please do,” urged Hatanwa.
“Let’s attack tomorrow at daybreak.”
Every creature in the dune froze in stunned silence. For a moment, the only movement was Redmerit’s eyebrows arching up into his hood.
“He’s mad!” whispered several animals, and this was clearly the consensus.
“Explain yourself,” demanded Hatanwa.
Steepling his fingers in front of his lacerated chest, Digtry said, “Yes, things look grim. But not as pathetic as might appear. Heed the words of the grizzly. We need fear nothing from the Droom for the time being. Although I ask none to join them or even treat with them, the fact is that, for better or worse, the Droom are now our allies against Ishyrus.”
“Huh! Who can trust the word of a grizzly?” muttered the boar.
“You dare speak that question out loud?” countered Digtry. “After their part in today’s battle?”
“But even so!” protested the elk. “What is the point of continuing this fight? The realm bonds are broken. Ishyrus is no doubt on its way this very moment to the Second Realm to seal the breaking of the bonds. What would we accomplish even if we could defeat this army?”
“Ishyrus is not going anywhere for the next day or so.
“How do you know this?” asked Hatanwa.
“A little bird told me.”
A furious snarl from the wolverine raised the hairs on Roland’s neck. Digtry, this is no time to get cute.
Digtry cut off Hatanwa’s protest. “I am serious. A bird sent from Katra, daughter of the wizard Mageroy. She has loaned her considerable knowledge of the Fifth Realm to a swallow, who transferred it to me. I can tell you that Ishyrus is weak. And, again, Roland can back me up on this.”
Roland jumped as Digtry turned to him and said his name. “Roland, is illusion the greatest power that the spirits of the Fifth wield?”
Roland tried to think back to his harrowing experience. What he had learned and heard and felt. “Well, no. Their powers can be very real. If I understood it correctly, they resort to illusion only when they’re in a weakened state. Which they have been in for centuries apparently.”
Digtry turned back to the council. “Ishyrus used illusion against us. After the breaking of the realm bond. That shows it is still weak. And that makes sense. Warped though it is, it is still a Seraph. It derives nourishment from that which is good, and there’s precious little good comes from war. In its famished state, the act of spreading that mass illusion among the Gnomes had to have taken all the strength out of it; it will need at least a day or so to recover before it can go anywhere. And as I said, it will find little sustenance on a battlefield.”
“But our ranks have been decimated,” argued the elk. “Under more favorable conditions, we could perhaps rise to the occasion and give a good account of ourselves in battle. But even if Ishyrus is weak, as you say, it is but a relative term. You heard what Ishyrus did to the Gnomes today. What can we do against such magic?”
“I am telling you, Ishyrus will bring no Fifth Realm powers tomorrow,” said Digtry. “At least none that we need fear. While it is yet in this state, we can defeat it.”
“What good would that do?” asked Hatanwa. “It is immortal--a spirit we cannot kill or even touch. We can neither stop it nor contain it. Once it recovers its strength, what will prevent it from going to the Second Realm regardless of our success tomorrow?”
“We cannot restrain Ishyrus,” agreed Digtry. “But it is under a time constraint. It has 50 hours to complete the bond destruction in the Second Realm. We need not destroy or contain it; we merely need to delay it. If we prevail on the battlefield before Ishyrus recovers its strength, we can perhaps keep him from reaching the Second Realm in time to seal the bonds destruction. I know that I am grasping at straws, but if you are looking for a ray of hope, this is the last one I can see.”
“Even if all this were true, what hope have we of winning the battle?” asked the eagle. “Weak though it may be, Ishyrus can still plan and devise and reason. How do we prevail against its flawless strategies?”
“And what do we do against the tree wraiths it has brought from the Fifth?” demanded the boar. “The violence feeds them and they grow stronger by the hour. And now that the bonds are broken, what is to stop all the Nephilim from sweeping down upon us?”
“As isolated as the Fifth Realm is, most of its inhabitants may not know for weeks, perhaps even months, that the realm bonds are gone,” said Digtry. “As for the wraiths, I have no answers. Yes, it may be that any move to oppose Ishyrus is suicide. But what choice have we? What did the beasts say many times when marching to Point Harrow: if we do not stop Ishyrus here, the realm bonds will vanish, and the Nephilim will come to torment all the realms. Need I remind you that they are immortal? Once they are let loose, they will be here forever. Surrender the field now, and we condemn not only ourselves but our grandchildren to lives of misery. Is not even death on the battlefield a better alternative than that?”
“Have you a battle plan?” asked Redmerit.
“Of sorts,” answered Digtry. “Ishyrus is a master schemer who builds with facts, figures, and methods. If logic and strategy are the strengths of our enemy, then we ought to avoid them.”
This provoked groans and a chorus of sarcastic comments.
“What then?” cried the badger. “Charge mindlessly like mad swine?”
“No. Ishyrus would recognize panic and make short work of us.”
Hatanwa resumed his restless pacing. “What do you propose?”
“An illogical plan. The more ridiculous, the better."
“Come on! We have wasted enough time on this drivel!” shouted the boar. “Let us quit this futile quest and return to our home, to our families.”
Hatanwa held up a paw for quiet. “Go on, Digtry,” he said, doubtfully.
Digtry’s dark eyes never shone more brightly that when he addressed the animals and Gnomes by the starlight and campfire embers on Point Harrow. “We may be able to foul up the mechanism of Ishyrus’s logic by feeding it information it cannot process. Note what happened when our good friend Sloat covered the retreat of the animals this morning. The idea that a pacifist Tishaaran would take part in a Fourth Realm assault is illogical. It confused Ishyrus's troops and bought us precious moments needed to regroup. And Roland. Not to disparage you Gnomes, but would you have uncovered the deception of Ishyrus’s illusion were not Roland there to help you?”
Redmerit and Greenrafter shook their heads.
“Ishyrus could never have taken into account a person freshly escaped from an encounter with the Fifth Realm, present and offering perspective on the nature of the Fifth Realm. Without both Sloat and Roland, the efforts of the grizzlies, bison, and wolves, bold as they were, would have been in vain.
“If we continue to use illogical elements in our plan of attack, Ishyrus must do one of two things. It must either suppose there is logic behind our actions, and therefore act inappropriately to counter it, or else tie itself up in frustration at its failure to understand what we are about. Either way, we neutralize its intellect.”
The proposal was so bizarre that neither the animals nor the Gnomes made any response. Finally, Hatanwa said, “Suppose this does scramble Ishyrus’s thinking. What about the phantoms of the wood? I fear nothing made of flesh and blood, not even the Terrible Ones. But how do we fight against spirits that cannot be killed or even touched? And unlike Ishyrus, they are Nephilim. The battlefield is to them a banquet hall and they feast upon such carnage as we offer up to them. They grow stronger by the hour.”
Memories of those dread shadows strangling Gnomes and beasts with their invisible webs of death cast a chill over the entire dune. Murmurs and curses were offered, but no solutions.
“Digtry?” asked Hatanwa, at last.
“Yes.”
“Your advice,” Hatanwa demanded, impatiently. “About the tree spirits.”
“I’m just a civilian,” said Digtry. “Here to conduct a campaign of lunacy against Ishyrus.”
“He’s mad!” muttered the boar.
“I’m trying to be,” chirped Digtry, with an unsettling glint in his eye. “The madder the better. Every stroke of insanity chips away at Ishyrus. For instance, how about color? An illogical weapon, certainly. Is there some way to use this against the enemy?”
Redmerit’s face darkened. “How dare you!” he cried, his bulbous nose bobbing as he spoke. “The color lodes are sacred! Those that Greenrafter and I wear have been passed down from our ancestors since ancient days. The Gnomes will bear many hardships and offer many sacrifices for a good cause. But none will surrender a color lode for any purpose. Every soldier under my command would sooner carve out his heart and hurl it as ammunition. To speak even idly of destroying a lode for any purpose, let alone your whims of haphazard foolishness, is a crime in the Spectral Hills!”
“If we are defeated tomorrow, Ishyrus’s troops will take the lodes from you anyway,”Digtry pointed out.
“Only when they pry it from the cold, dead fingers of the last Gnome!” declared Redmerit, his jaw firmly set. “The lodes are not a subject for negotiation nor even discussion. No one dares mention this again!”
“Oh, I was not serious,” admitted Digtry. “I’m just searching for the kind of lunacy that we need to keep Ishyrus's head spinning.”
“This is the talk of a witless, panic-crazed coward!” said the boar.
Hatanwa turned on Digtry slowly, muscles tensely coiled as if ready to spring. “I do not know if any hope exists of stopping Ishyrus and the destruction of the—”
“There is none,” interrupted the badger. “Not tomorrow, or anytime.”
“Doubtless, that is so,” said Hatanwa, curling his lip in restrained irritation at therudeness. “Nonetheless, I will go into battle tomorrow.
“Join me, who will. No, I do not consent to Digtry’s unorthodox plan. I see no honor, only disgrace, in cheap tricks. Courage, strength, quickness, intelligence, and determination are the weapons the Creator has given us. If those weapons cannot defeat the enemy, at least we shall die as beasts. With our teeth around his throat rather than with his chains around our necks.”
Chama stomped his approval. "And our hooves on their faces."
“That is how it must end,” said Hatanwa. “As long as there remains any chance of stopping Ishyrus, we are duty-bound to take it, no matter the risk. I see no other way.”