The HaRT Knight Decaverse

Heir of Magic

Chapter 18

An Oasis and a Scorpion

Alexander stood staring at the endless ocean of sand in front of him where seconds ago there had been an entire city. His thoughts were racing, struggling to take in the gravity of everything that had just happened. The tower of Talitha had taken more than just The Wandering City, it had taken a part of him, leaving a vast emptiness behind. No, he thought. That’s been there for a long time now. I’ve grown so accustomed to it I forget it was there. Rose reminded me of it.
“I am sorry, brother,” Merrick said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Alexander shook his head. “She was right.”
“About what?” Merrick asked.
“I cared for her, I still do, but I confused my desire for the future Rose promised with love. She held a promise of a simpler, peaceful, and happy life, something I’ve wanted since I lost my mother.” Alexander let out a breath, and with that breath, he expelled let go of his delusions and accepted the reality of his fate. “But that life is not for me. I have a mission I need to finish and I can only do that alone.”
“Well, not entirely alone, brother. You have me now,” Merrick said.
Alexander beamed at him. There were no words to express his gratitude, so instead, he just gripped Merrick’s hand and nodded his thanks.
“So, what do we do next?” Merrick asked, staring off into the desert.
“I need to learn as many branches of magic as I can if I want any hope of defeating my uncle. Dante was the one who organized all my teachers.” With a pang of sadness, Alexander said, “Seeing as he never showed up at The Spider’s Den, it might be time to accept that he didn’t make it and that I’ll to find my own teachers now.”
“Where do we go for that?” Merrick asked.
“Well, the plan was to begin by mastering Jördai magic, and the best teachers for that is the five prime races of Anarchos.” Alexander thought aloud. “I’ve finished aeroturgy, and the plan was to learn pyroturgy from the pride next. After that, I don’t know. There are no other prime races to teach me.”
“None?” Merrick said sounding disappointed. “Didn’t you say there’s five prime races?”
“There were,” Alexander said. “The trozians started the War of the Prime and lost, they were all wiped out. During that same war, the stonelites vanished, no one knows what happened to them. The ranarians are still alive, but as far as I know, no one knows how to get to their kingdom.”
Merrick screwed up his face as he thought hard for a moment. “Jördai magic, that’s what people call fairy magic, right?”
Alexander nodded. “Or elemental magic.”
“Right, well then, it’s simple, isn’t it? We need a druid. I met one once, he could make the ground shake and call lightning from the sky.” Merrick paused and cringed as he said, “He had an unfortunate proclivity for certain inappropriate—shall we call them games—with bears.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Didn’t you listen, mate?” Merrick looked taken aback that Alexander needed to ask. Enunciating each word, he said, “He liked to fuck bears. He’s dead. Been so for a long time.”
“That’s unfortunate—well, not for the bear population I guess.” Alexander shrugged. “If we want to find another druid, we’ll have to leave Primoris, they all left as soon as Cain started his conquest.”
“It’s a problem all right, but one we have time to think about. You said you were supposed to learn from the pride next. Well, they live here somewhere in this desert, don’t they?”
Alexander nodded again. “Their village is said to be to the west near the ocean.”
“Right.” Merrick nodded. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder and said, “Then we need to go that way.”
Alexander frowned and stared up at the moon at its zenith. “How do you know?”
Merrick gave him a wolfish grin and tapped his nose. “I’ve got a keen sense of direction, brother.”
Alexander shrugged. “If you say so. Well, we should start going. From my experience of this desert before I reached The Wandering City, it would be best to travel by night and try to find some shade to rest in during the hottest times of the day.”
“Agreed,” Merrick said.
They set off across the seemingly never-ending ocean of sand. As they walked, Alexander filled Merrick in on everything he could not tell him before—from the night Tír na Angelus fell to the destruction of Moondrake. The other man barely spoke, only breaking the silence to express his surprise that they both knew Dora who had been Alexander’s tutor on The Golden Spear. This did at least help to pass the time, as there was not much more to occupy the mind in the barren landscape of the Sand Region. They walked at a steady pace as not to dehydrate their bodies and only drank every other hour—seeing as they each only had one water-skin on them. When the sun reached the central point of the sky, they took their cloaks and swords and built a small canopy for shade while they slept. Three hours later, they awoke and continued their wandering.
Two more days passed and still, they saw no end to the sand and heat, which presented them with a brand-new problem. They had depleted their supply of water and food. While Alexander could sustain his body with his thaumaturgic energy, Merrick had no magic and would not last long without water. And yet, even though he was the one in the most danger, he was more preoccupied with the moon than his growing thirst and hunger.
On their fourth morning in the desert, Merrick said, “There will be a full moon tomorrow night.”
“Yes, I know, Merrick. You’ve said so a hundred times already,” Alexander snapped. “What is it? Are you upset you won’t live long enough to see the pretty moon if we don’t find something to drink today?”
Merrick muttered something under his breath, but Alexander ignored it. It was understandable that their tempers would run high as they were both hungry, thirsty, and sick of the uninterrupted scenery of rocks and sand.
But now is not the time to fight each other. Alexander reminded himself. The last time I was in this situation I lost my temper with that silver-eyed bastard, I won’t do that again. We need to focus all our resolve on our real enemy. This desert.
Alexander had to admit, the desert was the most efficient opponent he had ever faced. As it weakened the body, it broke a person’s hope first. But as twilight gave way to night, hope found its way back into Alexander’s heart as Merrick reached the top of a rather steep dune and asked, “Is that a mirage?”
“If it is, it’s a very special kind to appear in the dark,” Alexander said sardonically.
“Then you’ll like this, mate,” Merrick said with raised spirits.
Alexander just stared at Merrick, trying to think what cheered him up so much, but the moment he reached the top of the dune he understood. There, only a few meters ahead were what looked like palm trees in thick bushes.
“Oasis,” Alexander gasped.
“Yes. Filled with food and water!” Merrick said with a beaming smile.
Both men embraced each other in a hug and gave a shout of victory that echoed across the sands.
“We’re saved!” Merrick shouted as he broke the embrace and sprinted to the oasis despite his dehydration and starvation. Alexander laughed and followed his friend down the dune.
But just as Merrick reached the bottom, he vanished. Alexander stopped and shouted, “Merrick?”
“Here!” Merrick’s voice came as a hand appeared from out of nowhere.
Alexander raced over and found Merrick hanging from the ledge of a cavern. There was no telling how deep it was as darkness enveloped the floor.
“Hang on,” Alexander said, and with more effort than it would usually have taken, he pulled the other man to safety. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Merrick said, sitting up. He nodded at the canyon that stretched for miles in either direction, separating the two men from the oasis and its promise of survival. “But this presents a problem.”
“I suppose we’ll have to walk around it,” Alexander said. “If we keep going, we should reach the oasis by midday.”
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” Merrick said with a sigh.
The longer they walked, the harder it was to believe that they didn’t see the giant cavern, it stretched on for miles before it ended, and by then, the oasis was nothing more than a green dot illuminated by the rising sun. Thirst was a constant reminder of the heat, and Alexander could not believe Merrick was not feeling the effects yet. A normal person would have been on the Shepherd King’s doorstep by now, but the man from Svartalgard coped just fine.
As Alexander had predicted, by midday, they had reached the beautiful paradise in the middle of the wasteland.
“We made it!” Merrick shouted when they were about a stade away from the oasis and the nourishment it held. Once more, he proved his supernatural endurance as he sprinted for the palm trees, intent on getting to the shade before Alexander. “Let’s see who can find the water first. The loser has to find dinner while the other gets to sleep.”
Alexander chuckled. “You are such a chi—” he cut off as he noticed the sand moving. “Merrick! Look out!”
The warning was too late. There was an explosion and a thick cloud of dust swallowed Merrick whole. Alexander drew both his swords and ran forward to meet the challenger. Using his aeroturgy, he blew the dust cloud away with a gust of wind to reveal Merrick, who had jumped out of the way at the last minute, now baring his teeth and swords at a giant scorpion with horns running around its sand-colored shell. The beast made a constant clicking sound as it attacked.
As Merrick used his curved swords to deflect the pincers trying to cut his head off, Alexander charged in at the scorpion’s rear. He struck the creature’s back legs as hard as he could, but his swords just glanced off the hard exoskeleton, not even leaving a scratch. But the beast noticed the new foe and turned. It shot out its right claw at Alexander who dodged it just in time. He dived shoulder first beneath the beast’s body and tried to cut open its belly, but it too was armored in the steel-like exoskeleton.
With the scorpion’s attention off him, Merrick had connected his two swords to the silver chains wrapped around his body, and swung them at the monstrous creature in wide arcs. But once again, the scorpion’s exoskeleton was too hard for them to penetrate.
Plan B, Alexander thought and pointed both swords at the underbelly of the scorpion and drew on the thaumaturgic energy of two of his argentari to create the most powerful air arrow he had attempted to date. The projectile of concentrated air struck the beast and sent it flying. It clicked in protest as it crashed back down a few feet away, still unharmed.
“Did you get it?” Merrick asked.
“No. But I think we made it angry,” Alexander said.
Merrick grinned, almost looking pleased that it wasn’t that easy. He laughed like a maniac and charged the scorpion as he shouted, “Let’s go little bug-thing!”
“Little?” Alexander exclaimed incredulously.
As Merrick reached the scorpion, this time, he swung his one sword by the chain and released it to dig itself deep into the sand. As the scorpion swung its left claw forward, Merrick ducked underneath and ran past its side, the silver chain uncoiling itself as he went. Once he was behind the creature, he slipped underneath its belly and pulled the silver chain behind him, tripping the scorpion and sending it to the ground.
“Just like tying up a bull,” Merrick said, leaping onto the scorpion’s stomach and tying its legs together with the chain.
“Merrick, the tail!” Alexander screamed.
The scorpion lifted its thick tail and struck out like lightning. Time seemed to stop for Alexander. The scorpion’s stinger was inches away from Merrick’s chest. There was no way he could dodge in time. And there’s nothing I can do. I’m too far away, he thought.
Alexander acted out of instinct. He raised the sword in his right and focused all his energy and might into folding air around his blade. The attack had never worked before, but he had never needed it to work as badly as he did now. And with that need came the answer. He drew all the energy from the argentari ring he had made to replace one radiance on Moondrake and infused the entire months’ worth of raw thaumaturgic energy into the air wrapped around the blade. The blade vibrated with the energy, but only once the world looked like it was on fire did he swing it. With a hiss, the ruby and azure razor sliced through the scorpion’s tail like a bolt of lightning.
The scorpion’s tail fell to the ground, and the creature let out a high-pitched screech. Hit bucked, threw Merrick off its body and disappeared below the sand again.
Alexander and Merrick stood in silence; their swords held ready to attack at any moment. Both refused to believe that the beast would give up so easily. They were right. With a massive explosion of sand, the giant horned scorpion leaped from the sand like a fish leaping from the water. It flew at Alexander who raised his sword to block the razor-sharp leg coming at him, but as the spear-point of the leg connected with the blade, the metal warped and shattered. The magic he had channeled through the sword had been too much for it. The sword’s last act, however, was enough to deflect the scorpion’s leg from Alexander’s head, but only as far as his shoulder. It pinned him to the ground and grabbed hold of his neck with its pincer and squeezed.
Alexander tried to pull the pincer open, but all he managed was to prevent himself from being decapitated. Even that much he could not do for very long.
There came a bang from somewhere nearby followed by a sound like gravel being disturbed, and the next second, there was a red flash and the scorpion was thrown off him. The beast scurried back onto its legs and its hundreds of small eyes darted around in search of the new attacker. It found him.
Standing on a dune not that far away, a man was using a walking stick to maintain a reddish-brown pentacle key as large as he was. He twisted his staff, and the pentacle sent a blast of strange energy racing across the sand and at the scorpion. As it made contact with the monstrous creature, the energy coated it in a strange substance that looked like fire in a liquid form.
Turning to stare back at the approaching figure, Alexander’s heart skipped a beat. “Dante!” he yelled with joy at seeing his old mentor still alive and well.