The Dominion Pulse Page 12

  “What will the little human do without her magic?” D’Quall mocked Lizzie. “My guess is that she’ll just die without it.”

  D’Quall laughed and then began to stalk towards her, his club still attached to his side. Lizzie and D’Quall circled each other like two boxers sizing up their opponents before choosing when to strike.

  “Come on, Lizzie! Show jumbo what’s up!” Frank hollered from the sidelines.

  “Quiet, you,” warned a large female Magog standing watch over Frank and Garnash.

  “Isn’t that sweet? Her little boyfriend thinks she stands a chance without her magic. That’s adorable.” The humor D’Quall felt was short-lived and he turned a snarl on Lizzie. “I want you to know that I have never been beaten in battle in my entire life, so to you I give great respect. Even so, I have never hated a person more than I hate you at this moment. I will show no mercy to you or to your friends,” the Bloodright Lord said, pointing at her compatriots in chains. “I will not only snap off every one of your limbs and smash these two to bits, but I will go back to Corways and wipe every Leprechaun from the face of the Earth. Your brother and your father will beg for mercy as I tear their heads from their bodies.”

  Lizzie narrowed her eyes and focused on the terrible things D’Quall was saying. He was stirring something in her that she had never felt before. Her fear and her anxiety were subsiding, replaced with a focus she only had when training.

  D’Quall clomped forward and tried to stomp on Lizzie, but she dove out of the way and rolled into a sprint that took her to the opposite side of the circle near Frank and Garnash. The crowd cheered lusting for blood—just not too quickly. First, they wanted to enjoy the show.

  “Be smart, Lizzie. You know how to beat him,” Garnash encouraged.

  Lizzie looked back at D’Quall and her eyes flashed over with a bright purple for just a moment before retreating to their normal shade. The Magog charged at her again and she stood there waiting. He pulled out his club as he neared her, but she still stood her ground, to Frank and Garnash’s chagrin. Her eyes felt hot, fixated on her large foe. D’Quall brought his club down with a scream of hate, sure that his weapon was going to find its mark.

  Frank and Garnash screamed in fear of what was about to happen to Lizzie, but as her entire body took on a purple glow Gnome, Magog, and human grew silent.

  A purple staff flashed to life in Lizzie’s hands as she brought up her arms to defend herself against the Magog’s attack. D’Quall’s club was stopped short of Lizzie’s head and nearly bounced free of his grasp. He stepped back and stared in bewilderment at the teen that was now glowing.

  “That can’t be! I deprived you of your magic,” D’Quall whined.

  Lizzie spun and slashed the staff around her with expertise. She pointed it at the giant and glared at him through purple irises. “I am a Protector of the Earth, jerk, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  D’Quall roared in anger and tried to bring his club down again, but Lizzie was too fast for him and easily evaded the blow. She ran straight at the giant’s legs and thwacked D’Quall on his right knee, causing a sickening crunch as his patella shattered and a drizzle of blood leaked onto the hard-packed dirt. She rounded back as the giant fell to one knee and walloped him in the small of the back making him lose his handle on the club. Lizzie spun around to D’Quall’s front and swung the staff directly into his jaw, crunching the hinge and breaking it easily.

  D’Quall fell onto his side and writhed in pain. Lizzie marched towards the giants who were holding Frank and Garnash hostage and pointed her staff at them. “Let them go. Now.”

  The Magogs backed away, leaving the pair in chains on the ground. Lizzie reached out with her staff and touched the chains, melting the metal away. She held out her hand and helped Frank up, pulling him into a quick kiss and a long hug.

  “I don’t think we should stay put for too long,” Garnash suggested. “After all, we are in the den of a lot of angry Magogs.”

  A low grumbling came over the crowd of giants. Weapons were beginning to be pulled out, roars of anger were being released, and a few alphyns trotted in to create a second perimeter around the Magog valley village.

  “Ready yourselves, boys,” Lizzie warned Frank and Garnash.

  The Gnome King clapped his hands together calling on the plasma-like power of his ancestors. Frank pulled the falcata from its place on his back and geared up for a fight where he and his friends were outnumbered thirty-to-one.

  D’Quall crawled over to his club, stood it on its end, and used it to pull himself to a standing position. He limped around to face Lizzie, Frank, and Garnash; what surprised them the most was that he was actually smiling, broken jaw and all.

  “You see, you were never going to be able to get out of here alive,” he chuckled. “We are going to kill you and eat you and then the rest will die at the hands of the mighty Magogs. Kill… ”

  D’Quall’s pupils grew large and his mouth hung open as a huge hole in the center of his chest opened up. It was perfectly round and had small crackles of red energy that cauterized the wound as it was created. D’Quall’s order was left on the tip of his lifeless tongue when he hit the ground with an enormous thud.

  Confusion and panic began to set in; Magogs were accusing other Magogs, some were even taking credit for killing D’Quall, claiming their right to the leadership role, but all of them fell silent when the wall of red energy barreled its way past the alphyns and the giants’ circle, knocking everyone and everything aside. Huge clouds of dust and debris floated in the air, but two glowing red lights were easily seen emerging from the wreckage.

  “Dorian!” Lizzie shouted.

  Dorian nodded at Lizzie, but her face was stern, caught in the seriousness of the moment. “Magogs,” she called. “My friends and I are leaving. If you wish to fight, then we will kill every last one of you, but if you let us walk, then I will consider this the end of our quarrel.”

  The following few moments were tense, Magogs were silent, seemingly contemplating what to do. Finally, a large female with a tight strawberry blonde braid stepped forward. “Let them go.”

  “Arleen, what are you saying?” an older male with a braided grey beard asked. “They just killed the Bloodright Lord, we can’t just let them go.”

  “Why not?” Arleen asked, turning back to her kinsmen. “We didn’t ask for a war with the Leprechauns. I don’t really remember us wanting to feud with the Gnomes either, do you?” She searched the ranks of the Magogs. “We have a chance to start fresh right here in our valley, brothers and sisters.”

  Dorian’s hands never stopped glowing as she awaited their decision. No matter what happened in the next few minutes, she recognized that things had already changed among the giants.

  Arleen waited for any argument from the others but was met with silence and cross looks. She looked down at Dorian and the two allowed the look to linger momentarily. Arleen turned away from the center of town and walked away, never looking back. Many of the other Magogs followed her lead and walked away as well, while some lingered, standing tall and proud, not wanting to show weakness to the intruders.

  “Come on, we’re going home,” Dorian declared. Taking the lead she marched Lizzie, Frank, and Garnash out of the valley village of the Descendants of Magog.

  …

  Brendan rubbed the griffin on the side of his neck. “I’m sure glad to see you.” Griffin nuzzled his head into Brendan’s sore shoulder causing him to grimace. “Heads up, fellas. The beasts are back up.”

  “Can’t you just crush them and get it over with already?” Rohl asked, transforming into a large black bear, the glowing orange eyes the only sign that he was the Púca.

  “If we don’t have to kill them then we won’t, but let’s try not to let them kill us, either.”

  The niseags shook like wet dogs apparently trying to jar the cobwebs loose before they took a few snaps at one another. They roared, and like clockwork another niseag joined the pair, only thi
s one had hints of red in its scales. The red niseag had burst from a different loch about a quarter of a mile away and came streaking in to come to the aide of its kind.

  “Great,” Rohl said sarcastically. “This gets better and better.”

  “You get used to it,” Brendan retorted.

  The niseags hopped into the air and began to circle the trio. They started off so high that at first Brendan thought they were leaving, but they started to spiral down, releasing their icy breath so that it would meet at the central point of the circle.

  “What are they doing?” Rohl asked.

  “Not sure,” Brendan replied.

  It soon became clear when an icy funnel cloud began to form high above their heads and slammed down around them, trapping Brendan, Rohl, and Griffin in the center. The trio of niseags descended causing the wall of icy air to move faster and faster around them. It was getting harder to breath and the chill from the beasts’ breath was growing unbearable.

  “Do something!” pleaded Rohl, his feet lifting off of the ground.

  Brendan and Griffin were being pulled into the air as well, trailing the Púca by a few feet. The niseags had created a cold zone directly above Brendan’s head and the differences in air pressure were sucking him and the magicks up rapidly. He had to think fast, but it was getting harder to do in the frigid wind.

  Brendan cupped his hands over his nose and mouth and took a couple of breaths. They were nearing the height of the cold zone so he did the only thing that came to mind. Brendan reached his arm high above his head while he spun and focused on the clouds elevated in the atmosphere. He could feel the pent-up energy dancing among the electrons waiting to be called upon and so that’s exactly what he did. Several thousand crackling silver lightning bolts poured from the sky in a dazzling display of atmospheric and magical power. The bolts blasted the niseags with such voltage that Brendan could see their skeletons as if he were looking at an x-ray.

  The large beasts abandoned their icy vortex and attempted to escape the barrage of bolts, but the electric current had already snared the red and the silver niseags and held them tightly in the path. The black niseag was blown from the sky and tumbled towards the ground below, landing half in and half out of one of the lochs. Once the bolt had shown its might, it released the red and silver niseags and plummeted them to the ground landing in two smoke piles on either side of the black niseag.

  Brendan and Rohl began plunging towards the Earth as the cyclone of freezing air dissipated, but Griffin was able to collect himself and bring them gently to the grass. The three sat down and gasped for breath.

  “Well, that was something,” Rohl said, his body reverting back to Púca form. “I could have done without the delay, though.”

  “There’s no pleasing some people,” Brendan said with a wry grin.

  Griffin staggered to a standing position and clawed at the ground towards the unmoving niseags. Brendan motioned for Rohl to go and investigate the condition of the niseags.

  “Wait. What? You want me to go over to them?” Rohl laughed. “You are a header!”

  Brendan sighed and walked over to the black niseag. It was breathing shallowly, almost like it was in a coma. Brendan pushed it completely into the water where it sank out of sight. The silver and red niseags showed no signs of life.

  “What should we do with their bodies? It will freak people out to see something like this lying here,” Brendan noted.

  “Fling them into the ocean,” suggested Rohl. “People are always finding kooky stuff washing ashore that they can’t explain. Many a time what they find are dead creatures that originated in Otherworld but their logical minds won’t let them think about anything like that.”

  Brendan shrugged and hoisted one niseag at a time and threw them towards the Atlantic. He gave each of them an extra pulse in mid-fight to push them further out to sea so that with any luck the corpses would never be found.

  Finding Bibe was next on Brendan’s list.

  …

  “Didn’t anyone hear the knock on the door?” Bibe called out. She waited for some sort of reply, but the small cottage was quiet. She turned back to the mirror in her very old vanity in her bedroom, whispered a final chant, and walked into the hallway, calling out again for Fynn and Sinead. No one replied. “Worthless help if ever there was any,” she muttered to herself as she left her bedroom and walked down the hallway to her living room.

  Bibe’s cottage looked modest on the exterior, but she was feeling the length of it as each step jarred her shoulders. Flying had certainly taken a toll over the years.

  Knock, knock, knock!

  “Keep your pants on, I’m coming!” she shouted.

  Bibe unlocked the latch and pulled the door open and couldn’t believe her eyes. “Camulos!”

  “Not the powerful being you were expecting, Bibe?” Camulos said, his brow raised and his eyes bright.

  Bibe tried to slam the door shut, but Camulos kicked it in, throwing both the door and Bibe to the floor.

  “You were going to invite us in, weren’t you?” the war god said as he motioned for Tannus. He pulled out a few blue crystals, along with his favorite blade, and smiled like a wolf that happened upon a lonely sheep. “Find the sword, Tannus. I’d like to have a little chat with my old friend.”

  Chapter 10

  The Past is the Future

  Brugh was a much larger realm than Conchar had anticipated. He and the Seeker had already spent too much time traveling the vast caverns and fording the sometimes-rushing rivers that had carved out the interesting caves and tunnels for millennia. The wizard was beginning to understand why some referred to Brugh as the Realm of Caverns. There were plenty of open spaces as well, but it seemed the vast majority of the land was beneath the ground. The creatures of Brugh would have been well adapted to the environment so that meant that Conchar knew he was at a disadvantage if trouble came.

  When they first arrived in Brugh, Conchar and the Seeker had stepped in through the megaliths in Elathan’s cavern taken from the Sidhes many centuries ago. The crystal clear lake and the sparkling of the minerals that adorned the cave were enchanting. Conchar had hoped that the dominion pulse was there, but the Seeker began marching to the opposite end of the cave.

  What surprised Conchar was when the megaliths lit up when the pair had almost reached the exit. A very large, demon-looking figure emerged.

  “Which one of you is the Seeker?” the giant demon asked.

  Conchar stepped in front of the Seeker and pulled out his wand. Otherworld possessed so many powerful beings that he didn’t want to take any chances in underestimating his opponents. “The Seeker is under my protection. What do you want with him?”

  “Your protection?” the demon laughed. “Lucky for you I am not here to take him from you. He is to guide me to this realm’s dominion pulse. I am Dewi, the dragon god, and I am to be the Watcher of this realm.”

  Conchar took a moment to consider the god’s claim. It was hard to trust an enormous being that looked like he had gone a few rounds with King Arthur and his knights, but he had little choice except to trust. Elathan’s allies were the only ones who knew of the plan, after all. “Please join us on our hunt.”

  Dewi crossed the cave in only a few steps, rocks turning to powder beneath his clawed feet. The dragon god stood eleven feet tall and looked so much more like a dragon than what Conchar had expected. Conchar could sense that this was one god not to trifle with.

  …

  “This is just great!” the Púca said excitedly. “Where do I get me one of these?” Rohl had gladly accepted Brendan’s invitation to ride atop Griffin and search for Bibe’s home from above. “This sure beats walking.”

  “You’re a shape-shifter, why can’t you change into a griffin and just fly?” Brendan asked, his eyes searching the small stone houses and his mind reaching out to try and locate Bibe.

  “Eh,” shrugged Rohl. “I don’t trust myself to keep up my concentration enough to stay in any fl
ying form. Then what happens? I go crashing to the ground and make a small mess. No thanks.”

  Brendan shook his head. How did he always get caught up with these types of magicks?” See anything familiar yet?”

  “Hold the phone. There. Look!” Rohl exclaimed, hopping up and down on Griffin’s head, drawing an ill look from the animal.

  Brendan looked down and spotted a small cottage with part of its roof and wall blown out. His senses confirmed that this was the place he was looking for, but what would he find inside?

  …

  “It’s good to see you,” Rory said from the doorway of Dorian’s home. “And?”

  “And we’re back,” Dorian said solemnly. She strode past the many silent Gnomes and Leprechauns, small sparks of red energy dancing on her fingertips exposing the stress of her experience with D’Quall.

  “You did what you had to do, Dorian,” Garnash called after her. “He was a maniac! He left you no choice.”

  Dorian spun back around and faced her Gnome counterpart. “That doesn’t mean that I have to like it, Garnash! That doesn’t mean that I revel in the life I took.”

  Everyone watched the exchange with bated breath; a mix of joy, sadness, and anxiety hung in the air. Their faces displayed the odd mix of emotions as they waited to see where the conversation was going to lead.

  “That’s exactly the point, Dorian. That’s what separates us from them.” He gestured around at all of the gathered villagers, both mainstay residents and newcomers alike. “This is why we fight and that’s why the tough choices have to be made.” He studied her face knowingly. “That’s what you did today, Dorian. You made the tough choice, and that saved countless lives.”