The Larenfall Cycle: Episode 5

Stones Like Rain

by Jeff Draper

Miah stood on the edge of the rock and looked down.  “We have a new problem.”

Her brother, Isiah, glanced up at her while drawing an arrow out of the quiver on his back.  “You mean the baergs making their way through the trees over there?  We see them.”

Miah turned towards the trees and the late morning sun.  She squinted in the brightness.  “Oh.  No, not them.”

Next to her brother was a large man in chainmail.  He was bleeding from two wounds in his chest and breathing heavily.  “You mean that the sky shards have already been delivered to whoever is behind the pirates?  We already figured that out.”

“No,” said Miah.  “Different problem than that.”

A rough-edged woman also in chainmail, with a shield in one hand and a silver and gold colored mace in the other, looked up at Miah.  “Where have you been?” she asked, waving with her shield at the brutish dead bodies lying in the brush all around them.  “There were more dreadgoblins waiting here for us.”

Miah jumped down into the hollow beside the massive boulder and adjusted her leather armor, dyed light blue with a star pattern down one side.  “I’ve been scouting ahead.  This ridgefold runs up and to the left.  There’s some old ruins and--” 

“Baergs are charging,” muttered Isiah, letting an arrow fly with a twangy thwap of his bowstring.  He followed up almost immediately by drawing and nocking another arrow.  About seventy feet away ten thinly armored baergan warriors, large blueish-grey humanoids, charged through a stand of pine trees.  The lead baerg dropped with an arrow sticking out of his chest.

Miah grabbed Isiah’s arm before he could loose another.  “Wait.”  She stepped past him and planted one end of her quarterstaff, carved with star patterns and spiraling lines, into the ground.  With a quick chant of a few spell words she stepped forward again and outstretched her left arm, hand in a fist.  A ring of tiny copper star shapes at the top of the staff glowed slightly and a small ball of fire shot from her fist.  It streaked across the clearing until it reached the trees and flew into the middle of the baergs.  She opened her fist and spread her fingers wide.

The fireball exploded in a roar of flame.  The baergs were crisped and the trees burst into fire like huge torches standing up in the dirt.

Miah turned, facing the rest of the party with billowing black smoke and a flaming copse of pines behind her.  “This is important.  Jo is here.”

Isiah sighed.  “I had three arrows back there I was going to gather.”

The woman in the armor and shield was Caelian, a cleric of Ayanwu, Goddess of Light.  She wore a golden sun motif on her chest and shield, both now stained with dirt and blood spatter.  “Jozinferal is here?  On this island?”

Miah nodded.  “I saw the rest of the island.  On the other end there’s something happening.  Maybe twenty people setting up some structures.  Jo is there, like he’s directing the work.”

The large man coughed and sheathed both the swords he had in his hands.  “The sky shards are for him?  That doesn’t make sense, he can already fly.  Wait, are you sure it’s him?  The other side of the island is over two hundred yards away.”

Miah’s face was set in plain determination, with her typical hint of not wanting to be questioned.  “How many Beherii are there in the Shattered Sea?  And of those, how many have yellow wings?”

Isiah raised the arrow in his hand and pointed with it towards the other side of the island.  “With your focus on Jo, Miah, you’re forgetting the ancillary problem you just created.”

“No, Isiah, I haven’t.  This is all on purpose.  We have one more minute before his enforcers show up to investigate the fire.”  She smiled at him with a cant of her head.  “Divide and conquer.”  

Kaspar, the large man in bloody armor, pulled both his swords back out of their scabbards.  He tilted his head side to side, cracking his neck.  “Here we go then.”  He looked back at Caelian.  “Kay, if you please,” he said, nodding down at his wounds.

Caelian stepped up and placed a hand on his chest, feeling the cold metal of his chainmail.  A glow sprang from her fingers and his bleeding stopped.  She looked up in his eyes and said softly, “One of those spears nicked your lungs.  Be careful.”

He gave her a lopsided smile and a wink of his eye.  “I don’t have to be careful when I have you.”

She blew him a kiss and turned to Isiah, motioning for him to back up towards her.   She reached behind to the small of her back and pulled out a metal vial from a pouch on her belt.  Isiah turned and reached back with the arrow he was holding.  Caelian poured holy water on all the arrow shafts while whispering a blessing.

Isiah then walked out into the trampled brush.  “I’ll draw them in, you all stay back behind the rock.  When they realize I have arrows they’ll want to close in for hand to hand.”  The others got into position.  With coordination both spoken and unspoken they arranged themselves out of sight.  

Isiah looked up towards the far end of the island and breathed in deeply.  The sun was to his right.  Deep blue sky above held just a few puffy clouds and a handful of other floating islands. There wasn’t much wind and he could just smell the burning trees behind him.  So far the mission had gone very well but the new complication made him nervous.

Five flying humanoid shapes rose up from behind the ridgeline.  “Damn.  Five of them.  Looks like Nehtelloths again.”

“Five?” asked Kaspar.  “Damn.”

“Anyone want to consider a tactical retreat?” muttered a steely eyed Isiah.  “No? Everyone but me must be forgetting what happened last time.”  He breathed in and set his stance.  “Three hundred feet.  Flying straight at me.”

The other three all became very serious.  Isiah felt the tingle of sweat breaking out on his face and back of his neck.  He dried his fingertips on the edge of the cotton shirt under his studded leather armor. 

Miah stood next to Kaspar in a slight crouch, ready to move.  “Just get them low.”

Isiah stilled his breath and concentrated.  In the air above the trees were bat winged devils, slightly smaller than humans, long spiked tails, iridescent in the sunlight with green and violet scales, and they all carried three pointed spears of red metal.  He sighted on the one to the far right of the group.  His arrow flew.

While it was still in flight he drew and nocked another.  The devil saw the arrow coming at the last second and tried to drop out of the way.  Isiah had anticipated that and aimed a little low.  His second shot released as the first one hit the Nehtelloth in the midsection.  A flash of radiance burst out of the wound as the holy water took effect.  The devil screamed.

The second shot also hit.  Another burst of damage.  The devil tumbled backwards and tried to keep aloft.

The other Nehtelloths tucked wings and dove into attack runs, dropping down beneath the pine tree canopy and swerving between the bare trunks.  Isiah loosed another arrow and it flew high, just missing its target which was still flapping awkwardly and trying to turn around.  As he drew and nocked a fourth arrow he said calmly, “Now.”  The arrow left his bow and he ducked.

Miah stepped from behind the rock, setting her quarterstaff and standing tall. 

Isiah’s last arrow hit the same Nehtelloth again and it plummeted out of the sky.

Her spell words were quick and Miah raised a hand, palm down, fingers outstretched.  Silvery strands of magical webs shot out and strung themselves up in the trees right in front of the devils.  

Kaspar launched himself forward into a run, both blades out and ready. 

Four Nehtelloths shot through the trees and tried to twist away from Miah’s webs.  Two made it through.  Two were held fast, screeching like broken brass horns and struggling to flap their wings.

The two still flying raced over Kaspar about twenty feet above him.  They both flicked their tails forward and released two spikes each that flew like darts towards him.  One he batted out of the air with his shortsword.  One drilled into the ground.  One glanced off the armor around his midsection.  One stuck into his shoulder with a little burst of flame.  Kaspar grunted and kept running.

The flying devils screeched as they soared over the rest of the party.  From his crouch, Isiah tracked them and let another arrow loose.  It struck one of the Nehtelloths in the back near its wings.  The devil tumbled to the ground, rolled, and came up on two feet with its spear ready.

Caelian closed in on it with mace and shield.  Miah ran behind her.

Kaspar reached the devils hung up in the webs.  He leapt up from a boulder and skewered the first immobile devil with both his swords.  The other was just starting to wriggle free.  It planted its clawed feet on the side of a tree and pushed off, using its wings to pull webs away.  It thrust out its red spear and came up short.

One Nehtelloth remained flying.  It circled around the edge of the clearing near the smoke, gave the battlefield a quick glance, and flicked its tail.  Two spikes zipped through the air at Caelian.  

The cleric had to stop and swing her shield around.  Both spikes impacted and bounced off.

Miah sidestepped around her and stopped with the standing devil twenty feet from her.  She raised a hand and pointed at it.  A shimmering ray of frost sprang from her fingertip and caught it square in the chest, but it seemed to shrug it off and came forward.

Isiah stood and aimed at the flying devil.  He let another arrow go, and another right after it.  Both struck the Nehtelloth and it dropped to the ground, flapping its wings like a wounded duck.  Isiah dropped his bow and drew his sword.

Back at the trees, Kaspar knocked the devil’s spear out of the way.  He stepped up to the edge of the webs and with practiced precision he swung first the longsword and then the shortsword.  Both blades struck the Nehtelloth in the head and it slumped forward, still hung up next to a tree.  Dark, syrupy ichor oozed out of both wounds and dripped to the ground with the stench of decay.  Kaspar immediately turned and started running towards the devil Isiah had just dropped out of the air.

Caelian rushed at the standing devil, shield in front, mace raised.  The Nehtelloth lifted its spear to parry but wasn’t fast enough.  The mace, a magical Mace of Holy Light, began to glow as Caelian brought it down on the devil’s head.  It connected with a radiant flash that caved in the side of the green skull and left a blackened scorch mark.  The devil dropped to its knees.  It looked up at Caelian and hissed through a ragged edged beak.

Miah stepped up and swung her quarterstaff like she was out on a game field.  It smacked into the Nehtelloth’s face and snapped its head back before it dropped, wings curling up around it like a dead bottlefly.  She smiled at Caelian.

About thirty feet away, Isiah and Kaspar dispatched the last wounded Nehtelloth with sword strikes.  Isiah backed up a step and looked around the battlefield.  Three dead devils to the north.  One dead devil at their feet.  One dead devil staining the ground black next to Miah and Caelian.  “Huh,” he said.  “I remember these things being tougher last time.”