Blaze (The High-Born Epic) (54 page)

             
Slowly, he gently pushed her back and she looked up at him.

             
“I have to, Ollie,” he looked into her eyes.  “I have no other choice.  I cannot let this stand.  They’ve got your...” Harold thought a moment.  “They’ve got
our
momma.”

             
“Can you take me with you?” Ollie asked.

             
“No, baby,” Harold answered.  “I can’t.”

             
“Why not?” she asked.

             
“Because it is too dangerous,” he said.

             
“But can’t nobody stop you,” Ollie replied.  “You can protect me.  Just like you did with that snake that day.”

             
“Ollie,” Harold thought for a moment.  “If I take you, you will probably get hurt and I can’t fight like I need to if I’m worried about you.”

             
“But I won’t get in the way,” Ollie shook her head.  “I love you.”

             
“I love you too, baby,” Harold kissed her on the cheek.  “But Sarah and the others need your help here.  There are lots of young’uns who need you.”

             
Ollie did not say anything else, she just held on to Harold and he to her.  Eventually, Harold got up out of his chair and stepped away from her.

             
“Why don’t you go outside and play with Cooper and Scott,” Harold said to Ollie.

             
She sniffled as she walked out of the back door.

             
“Harold,” Sarah said.  “I don’t know how we can win, but I want you to know that I love you.”

             
Sarah stood up as Harold stepped towards her and he caught her by the waist and she wrapped her arms around his neck.  Their lips met, and they kissed.  Tenderly... warmly... lovingly... and sadly... each poured in their feelings for the other.  And each knew that it was very well the last kiss they may ever share.  They spoke an inaudible language of tenderness as they gently rubbed their hands over one another.  Time seemed to slow as he ran his fingers through her hair, and all problems faded into nothingness as she stroked his face.  And they lost themselves in their feelings for the other as they continued kissing.

             
Neither one knew how much time had passed when they finally stepped away from each other.  And he held her gaze to his as they stood there, just looking at one another.  Finally, Harold stepped away from her and she begrudgingly let him slip from her embrace.

             
“I have to go,” he said.

             
“I know,” she replied. “Good luck, my blazing knight.”

             
“I love you,” he answered.

             
“I love you more,” she smiled.

             
And Harold turned and walked out of the front door.  As he was walking down the steps, he prepared himself to air-burn, but something to his right caught his attention.  He looked to see Cooper and Scott standing there.  Harold gritted his teeth and half-laughed, half-cried as they stood, stone-faced, like two little soldiers.  They had on their burlap helmets and they were holding their make-shift swords down by their sides.

             
They looked at Harold and clicked their feet together.  Then, they slowly raised their swords in a salute to him.  Harold smiled as he faced them and assumed their stance.  He put on his helmet, and drew his sword.  Then he clicked his feet together, and slowly raised it, returning their salute.  The two little boys stood silently as Blaze’s eyes beamed from within his helmet.  They slightly grinned as flames burst to life all over him, and then twirled down the length of his katana.

             
Scott took a deep breath.

             
“Now go forth in the name of all good folk, and slay the dragon that lurks in the dark places of the world, Sir Harold,” the little boy said with stoic tears running down his face.  “They can’t never win, ‘cause they ain’t good... And don’t you never forget that.” 

             
Cooper’s sword was still held high as he nodded in the background. 

             
Blaze bent his knees and brought his sword up to his shoulder, and stood there silently for a moment just regarding them.  Deep within the little boys’ eyes, he could see the reflection of his own crackling fire.  Though the boys could not see it, he smiled, and nodded to them.  Then, Blaze blasted from sight in a tremendous gust of wind and a powerful clap of thunder that echoed across the entire town.                           

Chapter 46

              Harold appeared in the town circle and glanced all around at the ghostly images of villagers.  The Kristall was apparently playing over and over because it was now showing the scene from Marksville again.  Off to his right, he saw a square door seemingly open out of the thin air.  As he walked into the gunship, he saw Gabby at the controls.  As usual, she was looking at the grid.  Harold sat in the co-pilot’s chair and saw that the Vista playing out in the town was playing on the control panel as well.  However, the action on the screen and grid did not match in perspective or time frame.

             
“Have you finished your recording already?” Harold asked.

             
“Yes,” Gabby said as she kept her red, puffy eyes locked on the screen.  “Converting the Vista to play in this format didn’t take long.”

             
Harold placed his hand on her shoulder, and she laid her hand on top of his as they both watched.  There was a green bar in the top right corner of the recording and it read 46%...47%.

             
“What’s that?” Harold asked and pointed at it.

             
“I’m making a backup copy of this Vista,” Gabby replied.  “Just in case something happens.”

             
“That’s a good idea,” Harold answered.  “Have you figured out how to find them yet?”

             
“Maybe,” she answered as she activated a second screen to her left.  “They never say where they were in the Vista.  So the first thing we have to do is find out where they were.”

             
Harold nodded understandingly as Gabby pressed symbols on the other screen.  He could see dozens of small pictures appear on the other monitor.  Gabby pointed at a monitor to Harold’s right.

             
“You see that circle with the green light?” she asked.

             
“Yes,” Harold answered.

             
“Press it,” she said.  “It’s about time you learned how to use this stuff anyways.”

             
“Yes it is,” Harold said as the switch clicked and his monitor came to life.

             
Gabby pressed a few symbols and Harold watched as dozens of small images appeared on his screen.

             
“Okay,” Gabby said.  “I think you have a hundred images there to check.  I’ll search images 100 through 200.”

             
Harold pressed one of the small images and it seemingly spun towards him and then filled the entire monitor.  At the top of the picture was the word: Elaios.

             
“I guess that’s the name of that city, huh?” Harold asked.

             
“It makes sense,” Gabby answered.  “Just check each city against the one in the Vista.”

             
Gabby pulled up a frozen image of the city from the Vista.  It looked like the moment just before the camera began zooming in.

             
“I took this image from the Vista,” Gabby said.  “We’ll find the right city soon enough.”

             
“They all look alike,” Harold said.

             
“There are slight differences,” Gabby answered.  “You just have to pay close attention.”

             
Harold nodded as he began clicking and pressing the various pictures, comparing and contrasting them to the frozen image of the city.  Harold was looking at the third picture when the word
‘
Complet
e
’ flashed across the main control panel.  Gabby pressed the screen and the word
‘
Ejec
t
’ appeared, and she pulled a small thing out from underneath the panel.  She handed it to Harold.

             
“This is a recording of the Vista,” she said.  “We need to hide it somewhere that we could come back to and find if we ever needed it.  And I don’t think we need to hide it here.”

             
Harold nodded, and thought for a moment.

             
“Let’s put it somewhere around the lake where we kept all the kids,” he said.

             
“Okay,” Gabby answered.

             
Harold looked at the Kristall that was still showing the images of the slave auction.

             
“Have you got everything you needed from that?” he asked and flicked his head towards the Kristall.

             
“Yes,” Gabby half-sneered at it.

             
And Harold flashed to the outside of the gunship.  He stood and looked at the terror flashing around him and heard its echoes all across Foxx Hole.  Flames spun down his blade and a large ball of fire glowed in his palm.  Harold spun and slung billowing fire all over the pyramid and Kristall. 

             
The images flickered all around him and Harold fed the fire his emotion.

             
The pyramid began melting and the Kristall began popping and cracking.  Harold flashed from sight and appeared at one of the pyramid’s corners.  His blade did not even clang because the extreme heat surrounding it cut through it before the blade even hit the metal.  And before he even quit spinning, he flashed again, finishing his whirling sword strike as he reappeared at the other corner.  He flashed two more times and two more deep gashes appeared on the other corners.

             
He flashed away and watched the burning pyramid for only a moment.  The ghostly images running all around flickered as they flashed in and out of sight.

             
He arched over backwards, slowly raising his hands as he shouted. 

             
The flames rose and popped, swirling as they roared, and in a few moments, the Kristall exploded, sending shards of its strange substance and some kind of thick liquid inside of it in all directions.  He regarded the flames for a moment as they swiftly devoured the pyramid.  Once he was satisfied that it was finished, he pulled the remaining fire to him so that it would not burn down Foxx Hole, and reappeared inside of the gunship.

             
“Let’s go,” he said as he took his seat.

             
Gabby pulled on the control panel and they rose into the air.  She oriented the aircraft to the northeast and then pushed forward on the control stick, and they soon left Foxx Hole behind.  Harold called up the images of the various cities and began clicking through them while Gabby paid attention to the scenery and patrols all around them.  Harold just settled into the task at hand, and some of the cities were obviously different, but many were very similar with subtle differences.

             
It wasn’t long before Teos was visible to their left and Harold took a break from scanning the images to look across it.  Dozens of ripples skittered through the sky, and he could see the evidence of mechanoids pacing the building tops.  He even caught glimpses of visored snipers all over the rooftops.

             
“They’re ready, aren’t they?” Harold asked.

             
Gabby slowly turned her gaze to Harold’s and he saw that her eyes held a slight shimmer to them, “They’re gonna’ need it.  Just find that city.”

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Harold replied with a smile.

             
It was not much longer before the outline of the lake appeared on the grid.  He continued viewing and comparing the pictures as they neared it and by the time he had ruled out the 82
nd
image, Gabby was landing the gunship in the same clearing that they had used on their first trip.

             
Once they landed, Gabby went to work on her part of the pictures.

             
“When you finish with those,” she said.  “Start on images 300 through 400.”

             
For the next hour, they both worked tirelessly, twisting and turning the angle of the various buildings in their minds to make sure that the angles did not cause them to make a bad decision.