Young Writers Society

Chapter One

Chapter Two

And now...

Chapter Three

Sarran could feel the power of his shikar as it permeated his being. He was as yet unsure of the gift it had bestowed upon him, but he knew it to be a mighty one.

The whole world seemed sharper now, more focused somehow. The previously greatly lacking light of the yakar caverns seemed more than sufficient. Sarran was a bael’kar now, one step closer to his goal.

Avain, on the other hand, was still the same bumbling oaf he had always been. The boy explored his new gift, testing the limits of its capabilities. They had already set off every trap ever laid in the long tunnel through which they now passed, but the deep hole Sarran knew waited at the end posed a real problem. Though he would if he had to, Sarran had no great wish to expound upon the injuries he had picked up the first time through. He would have to think of some way around that, perhaps something like convincing Avain to warp across and help pull him out.

But the idea of having Avain drag him helplessly from an otherwise inescapable hole did not appeal to Sarran. Nonetheless, he had yet to settle on a better solution by the time they reached it.

Sarran paused at the edge of the massive trap hole, feeling distinctly uneasy. Avain drew up beside him.

“Come on.”

“Avain…”

“What are you waiting for? Give me your hand.”

Confused, Sarran shot him a strange look. Avain huffed in exasperation and caught Sarran’s elbow in the hand that did not clutch his shikar. Sarran pulled away and stepped back, nearly toppling over the edge and into the chasm. Thankfully, Avain grabbed his shirt and yanked him to safety.

“You teleported both of us,” Sarran accused hotly, glancing over his shoulder at the hole that had been in front of him just an instant ago.

Avain nodded, looking a bit guilty at Sarran’s sharp tone.

“Don’t ever do that again!”

“Why not? I was just trying to help!”

“Don’t ever touch me, and do not ever, ever, try to control me!”

“I wasn’t! I just—”

Sarran did not allow Avain to finish, but swept past him and out of the chamber, into the next one.

Avain, flustered, caught up to him as they passed the dead Meep. “Look, I’m sorry. I was just trying to help. I didn’t think—”

“Well, start! You’re not half so clueless as everyone says, Avain. You’ve a head—it’s time you began to use it!”

Avain fumbled over the cloaked compliment, his face twisting in deep consternation, and Sarran wondered if he had spoken too soon. But he had seen enough today to know that Avain was not nearly the fool he so often played.

Sarran wondered why Avain always acted so childish. He did not subscribe to the general belief that a simple lack of authority had lain the foundations for Avain’s rather eccentric personality. After all, Sarran’s own parents had passed away just over four years ago, and he and Avain could not have turned out more differently.

No matter the reasons, Avain was a nuisance, a pest. Sarran did his best to ignore him as he passed through the final chamber of the yakar.

The sun was beginning to set as Sarran and Avain emerged onto the path that led back to the village from the yakar. The pair had not gone far when the high brush that grew very near the foot of the mountain began to sway and cackle ominously. Sarran came to an abrupt halt, and Avain, who had been following close behind, would have run into him, had he not teleported just in time. Sarran glanced about, alarmed to discover that he was fully exposed to whatever threat might emerge. There was no place to take cover in the sizable stretch between the rocks and the bushes. Whatever came, he would have to face it head on, a thing that could well prove to be very dangerous, considering the fact of the Crestilian wizard’s presence.

What a drag.

Sarran held his shikar out before him and settled into a comfortable battle stance. Whatever was making all the noise drew closer and closer. Sarran took a deep breath, and then—

“Haryth!”

Avain appeared, quite literally, out of nowhere, and caught Emar as the man staggered from the line of brush. Sarran straightened up, frowning darkly.

“Haryth/i] Emar,” he acknowledged with considerably more control than his companion. Emar did not look well. He looked pale and haggard, worn out. And he had his [i]shikar out, which could only mean…Sarran felt himself go rigid, and his voice came out stiff with tightly-controlled emotion. “Haryth, what has happened?”

Emar looked up at Sarran, and that was when the boy realized that Avain was not so much embracing their teacher as holding him up. Sarran looked even more closely and realized with a start why Emar looked so bad. Avain seemed to notice just then, too, for the boy lowered the man to the ground, helping him to sit. Avain peeled Emar’s shirt away from the gash in his side even as Sarran removed his own top, wadded it up, and pressed it firmly to the ugly-looking wound.

“They beat us to the village, Avain. Haryth, how badly have we fared?”

Emar shook his head, a bit dazed. “Not well…They came…without warning…”

“They’re Crestilian, haryth, we came across one of their wizards at the shikareen site. He used some sort of mind control on Amevon; it is possible none of the other initiates survived. We killed him, but Amevon was lost, as well. We got back here as quickly as possible.”

“Not fast enough,” Avain groaned in despair.

But Emar latched onto something else. “Then you…have succeeded? Both of you?”

Sarran held out his shikar. “Yes, haryth. We will both claim our place among the baeleen’kar upon our return to the village.”

“If there’s even a village to return to,” Avain added softly.

Sarran stood swiftly. “Come on, Avain. Others may have survived. They might need us. Let’s go!”

“But what about—!”

“Leave him here. We can do nothing more for him right now.”

Avain looked as though he might argue, but Emar caught his elbow. “Do as…he says, Avain. Hurry!”

“All right.” Avain removed his shirt and tied it about Emar’s midriff, making a rough bandage that held Sarran’s shirt in place over the cut in his side. “All right, haryth, you stay here and don’t worry about a thing. You’ve spent the last three years taking care of us, but now it’s our turn to take care of you.” He leapt to his feet. “All right. Let’s go!”

Sarran nodded once, and, with a final glance over his shoulder at Emar, he led the way down to the village of the baeleen’kar.

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“Um…Sarran?”

Sarran closed his eyes in a gesture of infinite patience. “What, Avain?”

“How are we going to get all those guys out without getting caught?”

“I’m trying to think this through, Avain. If you’d just shut your mouth, I might be able to figure that out!”

Avain shrank back from the edge of the rise from which he and Sarran surveyed the wreckage of their home. The whole place lay in smoking ruins, having been burned to the ground. A small group of villagers huddled together in the center of town, heavily guarded by the Crestilian forces. Sarran had sat, staring fixedly out at the dismal scene, for a very long time, and Avain wished the other boy would do something. This interminable waiting was beginning to drive him crazy.

“Um…Sarran?”

“What, Avain?” Sarran actually turned to glare at him this time, his annoyance evidenced by the tight set of his jaw.

“We’re baeleen’kar now, right? Why don’t we just bust in there and kick their butts?”

“Because that’s reckless and stupid, Avain, and if we get ourselves killed trying to pull off some rash maneuver like that, there’ll be no one left to fight these guys.”

Sarran turned back, and Avain huffed in irritation. “But we’re not really doing anything right now, anyway, so how’s that any different from doing something stupid and getting killed?”

“Because, you idiot, if we do something stupid and get ourselves killed, we won’t be able to do anything smart!”

“But being able to do something and not doing it isn’t much better than not being able to do it, is it?”

Sarran swung around to face Avain. “You. Are. An. Idiot.” He turned away once more.

“Oh, that’s not fair! I asked a real question, Sarran!”

For a moment, Avain thought Saran might hit him. But then the boy turned back around, his motions short and jerky with the force of his restraint. “If you want to go and get yourself killed, go ahead and do it. Just don’t blow my cover. Okay?”

Avain scrambled to his feet. “Okay!” Clutching his shikar tight, he tapped the power within it and vanished, only to reappear an instant later at the base of the rise. He raced off toward the village, and it was not long before one of the Crestilian sentries spotted him. The man shouted out a warning, and suddenly, warriors streamed from all over, emerging from the smoldering ruins of buildings and pouring down the cleared paths that had once been streets.

Suddenly unsure, Avain slowed his headlong plunge. He knew he was good—the best!—but there were a lot of Crestilians, at least a couple score of them. Perhaps this hadn’t been the best idea, after all.

Maybe Sarran was right.

Not a chance!

Avain felt his blood rise at the prospect of the coming battle, but he concentrated hard on not losing himself to the bloodlust. There was no way he could take on forty-odd opponents at once, but every baeleen’kar was worth five normal men when it came to combat, right? With just a few others…

Struck by a sudden burst of genius, Avain resumed his charge, pounding closer and closer to the oncoming Crestilians. He had pushed his newfound talent as far as he dared back in the caverns of the yakar, and had found no real limit on how far he could teleport. As far as he knew, all he had to worry about was running into things. So long as he could see where he was going, he could go anywhere.

An instant before he made contact with the first of his foes, Avain tapped the power of his shikar once more. He never stopped running, but took off the moment his feet found solid ground again, racing now away from the Crestilians. He reached the center of town even before the invaders realized what had happened, and the two who had remained to guard the prisoners fell before him like wheat before a scythe. Avain snatched the last of the knives from the yakar from his belt and slashed the ropes binding the nearest of his countrymen.

“Hurry, cut the others loose!”

Within moments, Avain stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a dozen of his fellow baeleen’kar, most of them unarmed, but eager to face the enemies of their people. They stood straight and tall, a formidable obstacle that caused the Crestilian lines to falter as they approached. None of the invaders seemed willing to try their luck against the wrathful defenders. Avain did not give them the chance to back down.

With a cry of sheer bloodlust, Avain leapt at the nearest Crestilian. The man fell long before he had time to react, since the boy covered the distance between them in the blink of an eye. Avain kept his twin-headed shikar spinning, trying to remember the drills he had practiced over and over, converting the momentum of his downward slash into the driving force behind an uppercut from the second blade. Blood spurted forth as he laid open the belly of his adversary, and he continued the assault, slicing deep into the ribs of the next man.

And then the others were there, slashing, hacking, kicking, punching, biting, and scratching their way through the Crestilian ranks. Several of the baeleen’kar took up the weapons their fallen opponents dropped, but many of them simply took on the invaders with nothing but their wits to aid them. They fought with the spirit of desperation, with the spirit of savagery and vengeance. They fought for the friends and family they had lost and the wounds they had taken that day. But most of all, they just fought.

That’s what they did best, after all.

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Edit 28 Feb: Added links to previous chapters.