The Battle of Ebulon (13 page)

“We join the battle of course.” Zelphan
answered.

“I’ve never fought a battle in my life,” Oren
said. Zelphan thought he detected just a slight quiver in the
giant’s voice.

“Oren, I’m sure we’ll be okay. We came here to
fight for Ebulon and we will do just that.”

“
Maybe we should come up with a
plan.” Smalls suggested.

“
That’s a good idea.” Zelphan
agreed and Xazaz nooded.

“
Oren, you can take out the Orcs by
kicking and hitting them with something. Throw rocks at them,
anything to make them lose numbers. Xazaz, what can you
do?”

“
I can let out a sound so shrill I
can deafen or even make their heads explode.” Xazaz
answered.

“
That sounds great but one thing,
what about our ears and the ears of those around us that fight with
us?”

“
It will only hurt the Orcs.” Xazaz
answered.

“
That’s perfect. I can blind them,
but you’ll have to look away. Unlike your noise, Xazaz my light is
not subjective. I can let off a small series of flickers and you
will have to warn the others to look away, then Oren can lay into
them again, along with everyone else. Zelphan, what do you
have?”

“
I have the sword.” He
answered.

“
You mean the one that can summon
dragons?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Well it’s obvious then. You’ll
summon the dragons and we’ll fight until they come.”

“
Alright, so now that we have the
plan worked out where do we need to go?” Oren asked.

“
We’re surrounded, does it really
matter where we go?” Zelphan asked.

“
I don’t think so as long as we’re
helpful,” Xazaz answered.

“
Then let’s go.” Smalls said
fluttering into the air.

They followed him forward, weaving around
buildings and people until they reached the wall. They heard
shouts, and the whiz of arrows, some of the tips were lit on fire
and they had to doge them. The four worked their way to the wall
and found an entrance. Zelphan found a guard and explained to him
what their plan was. The guard was more than happy to have the help
and wasted no time telling the others. Once they were set up on the
wall Smalls gave the signal flashes before releasing his bright
green light. Xazaz’s mouth was open, but no one could hear anything
except for the Orcs who put their hands to their ears and screamed.
Zelphan held his sword up in the air and began reciting the words
that would bring the dragons. It was a long complicated stream of
words that were in a different language. He was trying to
concentrate on what he was saying but was distracted by the Orcs.
He had never seen creatures such as these. They had grey flesh,
sharp jagged teeth, pointy ears, clawed fingers and no hair. Their
limbs were long and bony and while they looked spindly and weak
they were stronger than Zelphan first thought. He kept slipping on
the words as he watched the Orcs try to climb the wall. A lump in
his throat formed and he began to feel afraid. When Xazaz said they
were creatures that nightmares were made of he wasn’t joking. These
were the most vile things he had ever seen. With a shaky hand he
held the sword up into the air. Closed his eyes and began to yell
the words at the top of his lungs. He wanted to shut everything
else out so he could bring the dragons. He was certain that once he
was able to get them to come the battle would be won. He was
betting on the fact that no one in Ebulon would have a weapons made
of unicorn horn, for it was the only thing that could kill the
dragons he was trying to summon.

Oren stomped around on the ground killing as
many Orcs as he could. The Orcs shot at him and slashed their
swords against his legs, but his skin was tough and the metal held.
He only received a few scratches and nicks from their
attempts.

Between Oren, Xazaz, and Smalls they had
managed to put a dent in the in the massive crowd of Orcs, but more
were still coming and Zelphan was still summoning the dragons.
Smalls was beginning to tire, the use of his light was draining his
energy and he would need to rest soon otherwise he would faint.
Xazaz was feeling his voice become raspy, and Oren was starting to
slow down. His feet felt heavy and he was going to need a break.
The men that stood in line with them have been fighting bravely,
but they seemed tired as well. The seemingly endless assault was
beginning to take its toll and they began to wonder if the fighting
was ever going to end and if they were going to see an end in
sight.

The soldiers around them noticed the tired
threesome, and called out asking them to take a break. “There’s no
use in tiring out so bad that you perish,” Said one soldier.
“You’ve fought bravely and you deserve a break for now so you can
regain your strength.” Xazaz, Oren and Smalls grouped behind the
wall and were given a warm drink, a bit of bread and some mutton on
the bone. Everyone but smalls tucked in, the butterfly on a diet of
only nectar. He found a single un-touched flower close by and drank
his fill while the other two ate and drank. Oren spoke of home
between bites, of his warm bed and peaceful town. The three swapped
stories comparing their homes and favourite places, until they
realized that if the Orcs gained entry and won the battle their own
home would be lost as well.

Oren and Xazaz finished off their drinks,
feeling refreshed and filled with new energy and urgency to win the
battle, not only for Ebulon but for their own home. They rejoined
on the other side of the wall and began fighting again. The three
didn’t have to fight long before they felt a mighty wind and heard
the flap of invisible wings. Fire came from the sky and they knew;
the dragons were here.

The soldiers of Ebulon seemed confused until
Zelphan explained that the dragons were invisible thanks to a man
in Ellandra. Zelphan was able to see them because he was given the
special spell to see them, having gained the trust of the
beautiful, yet terrifying guardians.

The dragons
swarmed the Orcs and made quick work of the them. They tried all
they could to bring the dragons down, but they could not. These
dragons were special and only a unicorn’s horn could kill a them.
Dust of a unicorn’s horn was in the sword that Zelphan possessed
and it was the only surviving weapon from Zelphan’s homeland that
could kill a dragon if the need ever came.

Once the dragons came the Orcs fell or ran
away once they found out they couldn’t harm the creatures. By the
time morning came, the air seemed just a little cleaner and Ebulon
seemed just a little brighter. They were making some headway and it
was comforting to know that Ebulon had a fighting chance. What
seemed like a sea of dead Orcs lie before them and they knew they’d
be off to the next battle. But before they could make their way
they were relieved of their duty and sent back to their room for a
little bit of rest.

The four were tired but they knew they would
not only return home eventually, but they knew they would return to
a home that was safe and free of Orcs. They went back to their
room, Oren his back yard. They were dirty from their battle but
they did not care. Before they slept they knew more Orcs would fall
but they also knew more good men would fall as well. War wasn’t
ideal for them, but they were happy to help and glad they had
skills that were of some use. When they fell to sleep; they slept
so deeply that their dreams of home seemed real, and despite the
grim circumstances they all had a peaceful smile on their
faces.

This Entry Point features
a character or characters from:

Ellandra by R.M. McDaniel

Upcoming.

Entry Point 6- by Kaine
Andrews

Land of Sour Milk and Bitter Honey

Andrew was in chains. Again.

And it had all been going so
well
, he thought. He inched one of his eyes
open a quarter inch, the darkness of the cell doing little to
impede his unnatural vision. What he saw was more encouraging than
he had first expected, but still not as promising as he might have
hoped.

The chamber was small and cramped, eight feet
to a wall, with a sodden floor that — from the smell — was equal
parts shit and mud. The walls themselves were weeping stone with
trickles of foul water seeping through the cracks; it appeared to
have been hewn with crude tools from a natural cave formation. Even
with his enhanced abilities, Andrew was unable to detect a ceiling;
he suspected it was likely some form of natural oubliette, too far
down for even light to reach, assuming there was any to be
found.

He was shackled to the back wall, allowing him
to stare down the hallway that the room was attached to. Even if he
had not been chained, however, such a view did him little good.
Thick bars, pitted and flecked with reddish stains that might have
been rust but that his nostrils claimed were more likely to be
blood, blocked the path. Such would have meant little to him except
for one crucial detail: he could smell the iron in their cores. His
abilities would have no effect on such things, and to even touch
them would bring immense pain and potential destruction.

He counted himself lucky that the shackles
weren’t made of such material; from the feel of them against his
wrists, and the moonglow shade of them, he guessed them to be
silver or something akin to it. Those would pose no
threat.

Allowing his eye to slip
closed again, Andrew leaned forward, then jerked back, slamming his
head against the wall. He paid no heed to the blood that trickled
from the scrape he earned on his skull; instead he listened,
straining his ears in an attempt to tell how thick the wall might
be. No reverberation at all came back.
Great. Solid.

Determining that there was little to do but
wait — obviously his captors didn’t intend to leave him here
forever, or they wouldn’t have bothered chaining him, leaving a
door, and dressing the wounds he could still feel on his arms and
chest — Andrew slouched against the wall again, thinking of how
he’d come to be in such sorry circumstances.

*****

When the woman had brained him, she had started
a chain reaction of events that had led to his eventual
incarceration in the closest thing to hell someone like Andrew
could contemplate: Homeview Institution. A mental hospital, kept
floating on a constant diet of dream suppressing pills and emotion
dampening cocktails. Everything kept just so, perfectly sterile and
placid.

It very nearly killed him.
Each day that he had sat in his cell, awaiting his trail, Andrew
had felt his dreamself — his
real
self — grow weaker, being starved and poisoned by
the air of banality and conformity that surrounded the place and
ran so counter to his own nature. He woke, he ate, he took his
meds, he slept again.

The routine had nearly ground down the last of
the being he truly was, the ancient spirit that some called Ulato;
remembering that life rather than the lie he’d crafted for the
friendless boy grew steadily more difficult. Finally, he had
resigned himself to the little death, to life as an outcast from
what he had been made to do; when he retired that night, he’d
expected either to wake with no memories except those of his
fleshself... or to not wake at all.

But then the voice had come. Echoing through
every fiber of his dual natures, it was impossible to deny,
pleading for aid and succor, claimed any price would be paid if
only salvation and vengeance were delivered.

Andrew, being what he was,
couldn’t resist. In his dreams he had seen wide mountain vistas
that reminded him of his long-ago home, craggy aeries that called
to mind his mother’s retreats and shrines. Best of all, he
could
hear
them,
the people who lived in that kingdom below. Could hear their cries,
smell their pain and fear. A veritable feast for his true nature
awaited.

How could he resist?

Andrew’s dreamself had tugged away from the
flesh, abandoning it to whatever fate might be ahead and had
plunged through that image.

He had found himself standing in the middle of
a town square, gray cobbles arranged in a spiral design radiating
out from a fountain made of marble. The fountain had apparently
been made to commemorate some sort of battle, with a regal-looking
man driving a sword through the chest of something that looked
intimately familiar to Andrew.

The dying thing had a manlike shape — two arms,
two legs, head and torso arranged symmetrically — but the facial
structure was closer to that of a pig. Two jutting tusks thrust out
from the lower lip, the left one cracked off halfway down. The
jowls were thick and dangling, and the nose was a rounded snout
with two slits instead of nostrils. The eyes — all three of them —
were small and beady, but the artist had done well applying very
human pain into the carving.

He glanced around himself,
noting the people who were now backing away from him — he suspected
it wasn’t every day that strangers suddenly just appeared in their
square, let alone strangers wearing clothing that probably appeared
freakish and strange to them — and their manner and bearing; all
seemed to have dusky flesh, be taller than he — though at only five
and a half feet tall, that wasn’t saying much — and have thick dark
hair and green or brown eyes. Most were wearing expensive clothing
cut in formal — though old, from his standpoint — style, heavy
velvet and silk with fur trim and silver accessories. Reds and
browns seemed to be the colors of the day, and he found himself
laughing inside.
Don’t imagine black jeans
and purple t-shirts are too common around here
, he thought. Not that he particularly
cared.