RavensDagger

  Chapter Thirteen - An Enemy Felled

  51st Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden EraShorefarm Lighthouse, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

  "E e e e e," Red ughed as she slowly climbed back to her feet and picked up her short sword.

  The light that had been blindingly illuminating the interior of the lighthouse was fading now, slowly returning to something more peaceful and ordinary.

  The lighthouse keeper spun his mace around and regarded them all warily. Blue had moved around so that she was o Green, with Red just a bit behind them and still rec from her tackle... and ughing mogly in the meical, reverberating way that their voices forced on them.

  "Dog," Blue accused the man.

  "I am a keeper of the light fon lord Thalmyrion. I am no dog," the keeper said.

  "Dog," Green agreed. It wasn't just an accusation, she realized. It was a tactic.

  Blue moved right. Green moved left.

  The mahem both, then he reached over, hand covered in blood from where it had dribbled dow on his bicep. He cupped the top of his mad muttered something, then, raising the mace high above his head, he shouted. "The light of Thalmyrion shiernal, and you will burn in its glow!"

  The head of the ntern-shaped mace roared to life, then the fme abated. There was now a small ball of fire within, ner than a closed fist. It burned brightly, however, and Green suspected that magical fire wouldn't be good for someone whose body was made of wood.

  Still, this was a dog, and something had to be done.

  Blue poked towards him, a teasing attack that did little but make him swat his mace at her sword.

  Green moved in from the other dire, ready to stab.

  Which is what she tried to do when he luowards Blue, fming mace swinging from above. She ran in, arm cocked to stab... and then the man stopped and flung his leg back at her. The heel of his boot caught her in the chest, and Green discovered herself falling backwards to nd with a ctter.

  "Green!" Blue shouted.

  The man had turned and was now moving towards her at speed.

  She dropped her swrabbed the floor, and pushed herself bad out of the way of a sm. She didn't quite make it.

  There was a heavy ch as the head of the mace crashed into her l, and Green watched with straat as her leg snapped like an old, rotten table leg uhe blow.

  Blue got a quick cut in as repayment, but the damage was done.

  "Ah," Green said. She looked up, but now the man was refocused on Blue. To be fair, was she even a threat anymore?

  "Sword," Red said.

  Green looked over, then caught on. She grabbed her short sword and tossed it up towards Red who caught it out of the air.

  Now armed with twice as many swords, Red rushed towards the Keeper. He parried her swings, but they didn't tire, and even if they were clumsy, they also didn't bleed.

  Green tried to stand, and discovered that only having one leg was something of a detriment to that. Still, the fight raged on just a few paces away. Blue kept trying to get a stab in with Red swung and swung, her arms a whirling blur that occasionally created sparks when her swords cshed with the haft of the mace.

  She waited. She might have been somewhat useless, but that wasn't entirely useless. The fight shifted, came closer...

  Green unched herself forwards. She crashed onto her front, but skidded forwards along the ground.

  Her arms snapped around and gripped onto the man's leg. She dug her blunt-ended fingers in as hard as she could into the meat of his calf, then shifted and tugged him as best she could to u him.

  The man roared, and Gree a hard blow strike her bao pain, but the impression of a hard impact against the wood of her torso.

  The distra was worth it, however.

  Blue lunged forwards from the man's off side, and her sword dug a handspan into the space between his lower ribs. Bck-red blood came p out of the wound as she tugged the sword out and the a quick swipe in before he swung his mace around to make distance.

  Red used that opportunity to close in, and with a body-spinning ssh of both swords, she left two deep sshes along his bad side.

  The fight was over at that point. The lighthouse keeper stumbled away, tripped as Green pulled his leg out from under him, and his fming mace cttered away.

  Red put him out of his misery a moment ter, shoving her swords into his chest. His st gasp came with a final prayer. "Thalmyrion... five me... the light... fades...."

  The three of them stopped, then Green found Blue running over to her. "Ff...ffire," Blue said.

  "Fire?" Green asked. Theiced the fmes lig up at the edge of her vision. "Fire!"

  Blue ran around the room for a moment, and quickly returned with a rge piece of cloth that she thre Greeinguishing the fmes.

  Red ughed, then started to tug at her chest. "Eat," she said as she deployed her siphon. The rods holding it in pce were a little crooked, but it seemed funal still.

  Green looked at the lighthouse keeper's body, then nodded.

  While they did their gristly work, and she watched her essenumbers tick up past 200, then into the mid 300s, she sidered what to do. Her leg was shattered about mid-calf, the wood nothing but splinters barely hanging onto her articuted foot.

  Her reader stopped at a respectable 384. One lighthouse keeper was worth a dozen peasants, it seemed.

  "Wood," Green said as she turned over and sat down. "Need... wood. R-rope."

  "Fix?" Red asked.

  "Yes," Green said. "Going... fix."

  She couldn't. Not really. The leg and foot were too plex by far, but a temporary fix might be possible. She eventually poio the high-backed chair the keeper had been sitting in, and with judicious use of his mace, one of the legs was ripped off.

  Some rope, found in one of the small ste rooms along the edge of the open space ter, and Green was the someroud owner of a peg leg.

  She wasn't sure it would hold under even a long walk, but wheoave her the mace, and it was just long enough that she could pnt its head into the ground and use it to keep her weight off the peg leg she'd fashioned.

  Giveer tools, she imagined she might be able to do better.

  "Let... us go... up," Blue said.

  "Up," Red agreed.

  There iral staircase running up the interior of the tower. It was quite a lot of steps, eae treacherously small, and with no handrail, but at the very top was a door into the room at the height of the lighthouse, and they wao see what was there.

  The others helped her up, even if it might have been wiser to stay below.

  It took a solid half hour to climb, but, ohey arrived at the top, the view was almost worth the effort.

  The room at the top of the lighthouse was wide and circur, with rge, open windows on all sides. The light of the sun, now much lower thahey'd entered, spilling in and caught on an array of mirrors in the tre of the room.

  An egg floated there. It was round and smooth, its sides unmarred by anything, and it glowed from within brightly enough to rival a bonfire, ahere was , just pure light.

  Surrounding it, inscribed into the floors, were hundreds of runes written in tric circles.

  Some sort of plicated magical array, Green supposed, but she knew nothing about it.

  Instead, she stumbled closer to the edge and looked out across the o.

  The Geidings was moored out in the distance, sails tucked away and the ship bobbing on a geernoon wave.

  The golden fields of Yellowfield stretched endlessly to the horizon, interspersed with the glinting blue of distant rivers. The vilge below looked tiny and insignifit, a scattering of rooftops amid the wildflowers.

  "Pretty," Green said.

  "Pretty," Blue agreed. "Down?"

  There wasn't much here to take.That egg was rger than they were, and likely difficult to move besides, but they could report that it was here... ohey got back to the vilge below.

  Green looked at the trail she'd have to walk. She decided that she wasn't looking forward to the trip at all.

  "Down," she said at least, because while it may be painful, it at least promised some fort at the end, and hope was a struide than any lighthouse.

  ***

  ENEMY FELLED