Chapter Three- Koreth
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to die. This dragon is going to fall from the rafters and spear me with its claws and rip me apart and I am going to die. The blood pounding in my ears drowns out the screech of the dragon’s roar and sends ice running, running through me
The dragon does leap down, but it doesn’t land on me, it falls a few feet away, between me and that person, whoever he is, who called out before. I realize that I never even saw his face, not that it matters now.
The dragon speaks. The dragon speaks in a voice that causes me to tremble even worse. It’s a terrible voice, but not in the sense that the voices of monsters in books are always described as terrible. It isn’t a growl, or a screech like nails on a blackboard. It doesn’t hiss it’s s’s like the snake from The Jungle Book. In fact, it sounds almost human, the words pronounced with austere care, like someone trying very hard to recite a rote-learned sentence in an unfamiliar language, making sure that everything is pronounced exactly right. And yet there is something about this almost-human speech that’s so very not human, so very strange, and that is what frightens me. There is no accent on the words, no inflection, no meaning. They are carefully measured, almost mechanical, every syllable getting exactly the same amount of emphasis. Only twenty-one words, but enough to make my heart freeze in its tracks.
“Turn back. Your trespass in this tower shall not be permitted. That blade will not save you if the Spellweaver attacks.”
For a minute, I don’t know what the dragon is talking about. Then I remember, with the feel of cool metal against my palm, the sword I found outside the village, which I;m still carrying now. My hand slips almost automatically to the hilt.
But it’s useless! Useless! Useless, just like I am. In the hands of a fighter, in the hands of one of those cheesy book heroes or even one of those idiot jocks at school, this might have been the most powerful sword in the world. But in my hands? I can barely lift the thing, let alone fight with it. No, I’m useless and that’s all I am.
Despite the “rational thought” part of my brain pointing all this out, my hand is drawing the blade, completely without any help from my head. Not only am I pretty sure this is scientifically impossible, but it’s pretty creepy, too, like my hand is connected to invisible marionette strings being pulled by some incredibly helpful being in the sky.
Now, if the person I was threatening was drawing a sword, I’d be pretty freaked out. But the dragon, being a dragon, doesn’t seem at all intimidated by this. In fact, all this seems to have done is convince the dragon that I’m really here to kill something, rather than hiding from all the people who are for some reason out to kill me.
My hand raises itself to hold the blade, parallel to the ground, before the dragon’s eyes. Inwardly, I groan. Who does marionette-strings-person think I am, the freaking King of Gondor? Just lovely, I’m about to get myself killed because whatever is controlling me has no idea that I’m a weakling.
The next thing I know, the world is rushing by like a blurred painting, and suddenly, I’m standing in a perfect “aren’t I cool” landing pose, with blood dripping down one side of the sword.
I don’t even remember what I did exactly. I have a vague recollection of jumping- no being pulled into a jump- and my arm slashing out at the dragon’s chest... but I can’t quite say how I did so. I can’t say it wasn’t sorta cool, though, whatever it was. Of course, to something that big and that powerful, this murderous slash of doom is more like a murderous paper cut of doom, but hey, don’t spoil my moment.
The dragon’s already done that for me.
“Turn back. Your trespass in this tower shall not be permitted. That blade will not save you if the Spellweaver attacks.”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time!” I shout, more to calm myself down than anything else. My whole body is trembling from, well, you know, general panic, and the invisible threads seem to only make it worse. But, hey, on my own here, I’d be dead, so there’s not much point in worrying about it.
Of course, the second I reach this conclusion, the strings disappear.
So now I’m stuck standing here.
All alone.
Fighting a dragon.
In other words, back to square one. Pass Go, get killed.
I raise the blade in a hopeless attempt at self-defense, but, as I mentioned, my only talent is an unsurpassed ability to screw things up. The sword feels lighter than I would have thought a sword would, but I still have no idea what I’m supposed to do. The dragon bears its teeth and begins to struggle up from the ground.
“Please, move over towards the wall!”
Huh what? Oh... that voice from before, the voice that told me to get away from the tower. Well, whoever he may be, I sure paid the consequences for not listening to him before...
I back up towards the wall, quickly as I can, but the dragon has recovered from the blow and its amber eyes swivel towards me. It must have heard me moving, or seen me, I suppose. I read somewhere that certain lizards can only see things that are moving, or something like that. It seems like another lifetime, now. The dragon takes a giant, ground-shaking step in my direction. Of course, now that the strings are gone, my common sense is back from the dead, thank you very much, And I spot something that makes me wish I could hit myself over the head for being so stupid: an avenue of escape.
The door.
Well, hooray for deus ex machina, and all that. I’ve been saved from certain death by a door I forgot about. Still marveling at my own incredible cranial ineptitude, I seize the handle of the heavy door and pull.
And then pull harder.
And pull some more.
The door won’t open.
Well, what did I ever do to you, God?
I whirl around, just in time to see a little point of light, like a star, gathering at the dragon’s throat. I freeze, for only the fiftieth time in a few hours completely lost as to just what’s going on here. As I stand, bewildered, the light begins to grow, and the light from the background begins to dim, like some cheesy special effects. Then the light obscures the dragon within it, and everything other than that light is pitch, pitch black.
The light continues to swell, and something tells me I shouldn’t be caught in it. I turn and quickly press myself as close to the wall as possible. The trailing edge of my hair touches the light for just an instant, and when I’ve pulled back, the tips of the strands are slightly singed.
Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the light begins to fade, the windows are streaming once again with the late morning sunlight, and tiny gleaming particles fall to the ground from the exact point at which the dragon’s huge, white, and very deadly head had been only a moment ago.
Eeep.
Of course, now that the imminent doom has faded, I have a moment to look around at the room I’m in.
The ceiling rises high above me, cathedral-like and intimidating, even with all the rafters knocked loose way up at the top. The floor is bare, unless you count the huge spatter of dragon blood I just streaked across the stones. The walls, also stone, are lined with wooden bookshelves, and upon them is (obviously) row after row of neatly stacked, carefully indexed books, hundreds upon hundreds of books, enough to please even the faintly insane librarians of Boulder Ridge. There’s something with the wall… squinting closer, I can see something like a row of tally marks, neatly scratched into the stone.
“Sorry that took so long...”
I jump about a foot in the air, heart pounding, my ever-so-useless sword raised in a pathetic attempt in self-defense, before I realize that there’s no new monster standing at the other end of the room, it’s only the voice from before.
The person who had spoken is only about my age, which surprises me a bit. I mean, since when do thirteen-year-olds know how to cause instant death by dramatic glow-y light? He’s not exactly the type of person I’d expect to be the bearer of ultimate power, either, very slight and thin, with dark hair that falls ever so slightly into his eyes, dressed in long, black, magician-ish robes, and leaning back a little bit against the wall.
“Again, sorry. I could have helped you sooner. If it weren’t for this stupid spell limit. With my luck, It’ll kill me even before... “ He stops talking suddenly.
“Huh?”
“Oh... nothing. Anyway, sorry...”
“Yes, um...” I say, eager to steer the conversations back in a direction that makes sense to me, “well, you did save me, so thank you, err...”
“What?”
Dammit, that always works in movies. I hate asking people for their name, it’s so awkward. Maybe because lately, whenever I give my name, I always get a cold look and rolled eyes, as everyone knows my name. That Emma, who is a suckup and a geek and ugly besides. Then again, I’m in the middle of a place where a teenager evidentially holds imperium, even farm villages need to be guarded and gated at all times, and the mayor has never heard of Phoenix, Arizona, so obviously no one can say that here, but... I still feel uncomfortable introducing myself.
“Er... who are you, exactly?” Well, it’s a start, right?
“Huh? Me? Oh... my name is Koreth. You?”
“I-I’m Emma...”
“Oh. Er... hello.”
“Yep.”
Neither of us has anything to say to that for a minute.
“Ah...” as soon as my mouth opens, I feel like I can’t hold back all my questions anymore.
“Okay, first of all, what the heck was with that dragon?”
“Protective spell.” Koreth says slowly, “but I can’t believe you didn’t know that already. I mean, there’s a reason no one heads towards this tower... are you from Chiren, or something?”
“Chi...ren?”
Koreth looks even more surprised. “You don’t know the name of the capital city?”
Oops. “Er... no.”
“Well, you’re definitely not from around here, then. Chiren’s the Hanoran capital, I figured everyone knew that. You’re certainly not from Naroth, then. Anyone from up there wouldn’t be so quick to forget our ‘fair Golden City’... but you don’t look like you could be from Sareil or Ealym... Sarracorian, then?”
“Huh? Erm... you kind of lost me at Hanoran.”
Koreth laughs a little. “You’re an odd one, aren’t you? So, if you’ve never heard of Hanora, just what backwoods corner of the world are you from?”
Do I really want to tell him? I’ve ended up panicking the entire village of Yoake (not that there are that many people there to panic) just by letting the name slip to the mayor. What’ll happen if I tell Koreth? It took me all of forty-five minutes to make 71 enemies in this town, Koreth is the last potential ally that I’ve got. Then again, not answering would probably be even more suspicious.
“I came here from Phoenix, Arizona.” I say at last, wincing slightly as I wait for the proverbial bomb to drop.
“Oh.” Koreth doesn’t say anything else for a while. Then he mutters, almost to himself, “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Explains what, exactly?” Finally, some answers!
“The reason you don’t know anything about this place. And your powers.”
“You know about them?” My heart is pounding in my throat. I just want to know how I can get home, not about any of this, but somehow I can’t silence myself, though I know I’m asking all the wrong questions. The truth is, I do want to go home, but at the same time, I have a bad feeling about all this, about this new strange place and this strength that comes from nowhere. It makes me tremble just a little bit, because, I mean, who on earth passes out in their eighth-grade Social Studies and wakes up able to injure dragons? And why me?
“Well... I sort of know about them. Not really...”
“What? What do you know?”
“Other people– people like you... have come to Yoake before, claiming to be from the exact same city. “
Well, whatever I’d expected to be told, it certainly wasn’t that. Other people?
“They even had the same powers. Of course, I don’t know where they would have gotten them from. No one’s ever talked to one of them before, not really. Well, except for you, obviously.”
“Well, I will talk to them then!” I say, my confidence restored. Finally, someone else I can speak to who actually understand this, maybe even someone who has figured out how to get away from here! “Where can I find them?”
“They aren’t here anymore.” Koreth says quietly.
“What? Oh. You mean... they already figured out how to get back?” My heart sinks back down again. But at least that means there is a way back, and better yet, it has been found. Maybe if I can just locate someone who witnessed their escape back into our world, or at least someone who can tell me which way they went–
“No. They didn’t go back.” Koreth says slowly, “They didn’t go back. Emma, the villagers killed them.”
“What?”
My useless question never gets answered though, because at that moment a small red circle flickers into form on the ground, swelling slowly as I stand there without the least idea what’s going on. The stone beneath the light begins to evaporate like water left in the Phoenix July, with an evil sounding hiss.
Another protective spell.
“Okay... I say slowly. “I guess we should hurry up and get out of here before the floor kills us.”
Keeping to the edge of the walls, we make our way quickly but painstakingly to the heavy door.
“Wait.” Koreth says suddenly.
“Huh?”
“That door. It’s supposed to trigger protective spells whenever anyone touches it. That’s why the dragon attacked you and probably why that circle is appearing now. We’ll just trigger more attacks unless we destroy the door...”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Why don’t you use that light thingy on the door then?”
“I can’t use that spell more than once per day, now.”
“What? And you don’t have any other spells?”
“None.”
“Alright. Well, evidentially, this sword is here for something.”
“What-?“
As imposing and heavy as it is, that door must be made of some really cheap wood if I can stab through it, but I can, and when I pull back to free the sword the door snaps from hinges that must by rusty, falling to the ground with a bang.
I step out from the tower into the bright sun, the green grass, and– oh yeah– the angry mob. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who’d forget something like that.
“Koreth, sir, please step back!” calls the person at the front of the mob, who I recognize as the mayor from before. Well hoo-ray for local government.
“Please, sir, step away from it!” the mayor repeats, and I realize that the “it” is referring to me.
They all take a step in closer, lowering their makeshift but still deadly weapons until the points are just barely touching me. The mayor turns away from Koreth, who, I am (for some reason) happy to see, hasn’t shrunk back at all. So instead the mayor glares at me, and says, with a pomposity that doesn’t quite match the indifference in his eyes:
“By Council decree, we have a right to defend our city! All intruders such as that girl are to be killed!”
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Whew. I'm immensely grateful for any and all comments, critiques, anything, if anybody feels like writing some. ^_^ This was my first fight scene in LoSLoR, so I'm a little doubtful about it's quality... looking back at it almost a year later, now... *headdesk*.... so any and all help is appreciated. Oh, and if it's too long, just tell me, I absolutely don't mind breaking up the chapters in the future... I just couldn't find a good halfway point in this one. ^^; )
