Chapter 32 - Exdurum.
The remains of several companies of knights showed dark among the fallen trunks and the churned earth.
The Forest Watch archers hauled themselves up on the exposed roots with their hands on the bark and the low branches, while the warriors at the epicenter got back onto their feet one after another.
Bernard leaned on the haft of his two-handed axe and breathed hard; Arswald, Armund, Askir and Ray caught at the nearest trunks to stay upright.
Alistair was struggling to lift Edith, whose head would not stay up. The discharges from her last attacks had caught the upper branches, and Ursus's energy pulse had fanned the flames, so that the fire was now crossing from crown to crown.
Only Elen had felt nothing of the pulse, and he did not understand why. He ran to Alistair and helped settle him beside Edith against a root, then reached for his bow.
Aren stayed down on one knee and held his head up with an effort while Ursus straightened above him.
The cold had got into every joint, his body shook, and his hands would barely obey him.
The beast-god stared straight at him and did not hurry the last blow.
Not long before, Ursus had taken attacks from every side, had lost its shell and gone down; now a single spent enemy knelt in front of it, unable even to lift his arms.
An arrow buried itself in Ursus's side.
Ursus swung its muzzle to the far side of the clearing, where Elen stood with his bow drawn and tried to pull its attention away from the wounded.
Aren turned heavily and found him in the smoke.
"Elen..."
The beast-god looked from the archer to Aren and back. The edges of its muzzle drew apart and bared the long fangs.
A fresh shudder ran down Aren's back.
Ursus stepped over him and went toward Elen.
"N... no..." Aren breathed out.
He drew air into his tightening lungs and turned after the beast-god, though the arm holding him up buckled under his own weight.
"EL-EN! RUN!"
Elen did not fall back.
He sent arrow after arrow and put all his despair into every shot, but Ursus kept coming, and the shafts standing out of its chest did not slow a single step.
Elen's fingers found an empty quiver when the huge silhouette had already risen over him.
In that shadow only two eyes showed, burning with blue fire.
Bernard hit Elen with his shoulder and drove him aside. The two of them rolled across the ground while the beast-god's paw came down where they had been.
Bernard was up on his feet at once, and for a man who had come under Exdurum he was recovering far too fast, though the magic had not returned to him yet.
He took the weapon in both hands and went around Ursus in a wide arc without closing for a blow. The beast-god watched him until it turned with a hissing breath and threw out a clawed paw.
That was what Bernard had been waiting for. He rolled off the line of the attack and struck the limb before Ursus could draw it back.
Aren got to his feet and saw the blade open a wound, though there was no magical energy on Bernard's axe.
He isn't shielded by his shell... The wounds aren't closing... So this effect works on him as well?...
Aren looked hard at the arrows jutting from Ursus's chest.
So...
Suddenly a burning branch came down beside him, so that heat washed over his face and sparks scattered across the grass.
The fire was taking crown after crown, and under them lay men who still could not get up.
Bernard kept changing his angle and answered every movement with a blow to a leg or to a paw that had not been pulled back.
Ursus turned on him and loosed a focused roar, so that a wave of air rolled across the clearing, though Bernard held his ground, the axe out in front of him.
"You think that frightens me?..." he began, and shifted his grip on the axe.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"I've seen things..."
For a moment a battlefield out of the past flared up in his mind. The ground was drenched in blood and strewn with bodies, black smoke shut out the sky, and at the center of it all a human figure in black with two blades stood in front of Bernard.
"...and creatures... far worse than you," he finished.
Ursus bared its teeth and lashed out with a paw.
Bernard turned to meet the claws, let them pass his chest and carried the axe around with the movement of his body. The blade severed three claws, and then the smith pushed off and got clear.
The beast-god howled and lifted the wounded paw off the ground.
Bernard set himself for the next attack, but caught a movement at his side.
Aren stood beside him with someone else's sword in his hand, his weight steady on both legs.
He's over the pulse already? Bernard thought, while Ursus turned toward them.
"Don't rush. He's slowed down, so wait for his attack. Get off the line and hit him before he brings the paw back," Bernard said.
"Mhm," Aren answered with a short nod.
They split to opposite sides.
Ursus looked first at one of them and then at the other, before it crouched and swung a circling attack with both paws spread wide.
Both sprang back and let the claws pass between them, then threw themselves in as they landed and struck the beast-god in the back at the end of its turn.
Ursus answered with a backhand sweep, but Bernard had already pulled clear. When the beast brought its head around to the other target, Aren was not in front of it.
The beast-god felt someone push off the fur on its back and threw its muzzle up. Aren was falling from above with the sword pointed down.
The blade sank into the right eye.
Aren braced his feet against Ursus's muzzle, tore the weapon free and pushed off before the beast-god's paw reached its own head.
He landed on the nearest raised root while Ursus roared and shook its bloodied muzzle.
"Good... now this is our chance!" Bernard shouted.
He got in behind Ursus and struck the axe through the tendons of both hind legs.
The beast-god went down onto its knees; Aren had already pushed off the root and was flying at its head with the sword aimed between the horns.
"TA-KE THIS!"
The point struck the skull, and a metallic crack carried across the clearing.
Aren was left standing on the beast-god's muzzle.
Between his feet lay the two halves of the sword, broken against the red shell, which had come back an instant before the blow.
The survivors froze among the roots, still not clear of the Exdurum.
Ursus looked at him with its one remaining eye.
It jerked its head and threw Aren to the ground.
Aren rolled backward and came up onto a knee, but the single claw left on the wounded paw was already on its way to him.
Bernard drove in to help, but the distance was too great.
It was too late. Aren had no time to react, or even to understand that he was about to die.
Suddenly a shove knocked Aren aside. The last thing he saw before he fell was Elen's face.
A heavy impact sounded behind him, and blood poured onto the ground after it.
The din of the fight died, and silence hung over the clearing again.
Elen had been run through by the long claw, whose tip stood in the ground behind his back.
He was still looking at Ursus while blood ran from his lips and his chin.
The beast-god let out a deep growl and pulled the claw free, so that Elen dropped beside Aren.
Aren froze, unable to believe what he had seen.
He pitched forward and crawled to Elen on all fours, forgetting Ursus standing over them.
His hands slipped on the grass wet with blood, but again and again he braced his palms and kept moving.
"N... no..."
He got to him and stopped over his friend, with no idea where to put his shaking hands.
Blood was running from the gaping wound in his stomach, while every breath Elen took broke off in a wet rattle.
"E... Elen... no... nonononono... NO... Hold on!"
Aren pressed his palm to the wound, but the blood came through his fingers.
Elen raised his eyes to him, coughed up blood and barely parted his lips.
"A... ren..."
"DON'T SAY ANYTHING! JUST DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES! PLEASE, HOLD ON! DO YOU HEAR ME?! ELEN, I'M HERE, HOLD ON! I'M BEGGING YOU!"
Bernard stood to one side, unable to take his eyes off Elen.
When he looked over at Ursus, the beast-god was still not attacking. Its pupil slid from one youth to the other, as though it were deliberately drawing the suffering out before the last blow.
Bernard's fingers closed on the haft of his axe.
"BBAAASTAAARD!!!" he shouted, and threw himself at Ursus with the weapon raised.
Aren's world had shrunk to a small space that held only him and the dying Elen in his arms.
Aren turned his head from side to side and looked for help where no one else could get up, while Elen's eyes were already rolling upward.
"NO! ELEN, NO! HEAR ME! Y-YOUR MOTHER! ELEN, YOUR MOTHER IS WAITING FOR YOU, DO YOU HEAR?! YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU DECIDED! WHAT WE DECIDED?! ELEN! SHE IS WAITING FOR YOU! SHE BELIEVES YOU'LL COME BACK! ELEN, PLEASE, DON'T GIVE U—"
The shout broke off when Elen's palm came to rest on Aren's chest over the heart.
"Y... you're... a h... hero too..."
Aren stopped breathing.
He looked into Elen's bloodied face, where the tears kept running, and heard nothing around him anymore.
The palm slid off his chest, and the head dropped without strength.
Elen's body went slack in Aren's arms, though the eyes stayed open and looked past him.
Bernard kept attacking Ursus, but the shell had come back and would not let through a blade that was not covered in magical energy.
On one of the lunges the smith hurried, and the backhand sweep caught him as he pulled away.
Bernard softened the blow by springing back with it, but even so he broke a thick root with his back, rolled across the ground and was left lying face down in the dirt.
Ursus straightened and turned to Aren, who was still sitting with his back to it and holding the dead Elen against his chest.
The beast-god came forward, and the ground shuddered under every step.
Fragments of memory flared up in front of Aren one after another.
First Selma standing at the tavern window with her face wet from crying, still hoping to see her son.
Then Elen saving Aren from the Cortexes, and holding out his hand to seal their decision to find the truth and return to Ockhaven together.
Words Aren had once spoken sounded in his memory.
"For me, living in the dark about who I am is worse than death."
Then came Elen's answer.
"You're... a hero too."
Deep inside Aren a special organ, sealed behind a blocking shell of energy, began to overload.
The shell cracked, and the freed pulse ran through every cell and set off a chain reaction across his whole body.
Ursus stopped as the air changed around it.
Those who could already move were trying to crawl away from Ursus, but then they froze.
Edith, held up by Alistair and Arswald, raised her head and saw a blood-red aura gathering around Aren.
The runes on his body flared red, and every survivor felt the change in the air.
Ursus felt the threat at once and dropped into the familiar stance, one paw out in front, the other drawn back, then broke from where it stood and threw its claws at Aren.
The blow raised a cloud of dust, out of which a flash of red energy burst.
A few moments later the beast-god's severed clawed hand fell out of the air in front of the survivors.
Ursus opened its remaining eye wide.
Aren stood facing it. Claws of red energy had formed around his hand, three times the size of the old ones, while armor of black stone with flecks of red light spread over his body.
Aren raised his eyes to it, and nothing was left in them but pain and an inhuman fury.
When the last particles of the armor came together, he sprang at Ursus with such force that a shockwave tore across the ground.
Everything else was gone from his mind, leaving one purpose.
Kill.