Days Of Fire - Shattered Skies

It’s the third Thursday so its that time again. Here’s that short story about Al(with special guest appearance from Urk) that I mentioned in December. I do hope you enjoy it my dear readers, have fun!

Days Of Fire

Al’rashal had never wondered how it felt to roast alive but feared she might soon learn. The viperous thought drew her eyes to the dessicated body off to her left. Dead bodies, left long alone, would bloat with gas and become malformed blobs of waxy flesh, but not here, not in the Red Waste. Heat lifted from the ground roasting anything that remained too long on its coal black surface, at least during the day.

“Water?” asked Urkjorman.

Al cast the briefest glance over her shoulder to the minotaur who loomed in the shadows of the cave at her rear. “Not yet.”

Urk nodded, the tips of his iron black horns just barely catching the light before he retreated into the darkness.

By the god of sea and water, whoever that was, she wanted water. However she couldn’t afford the distraction, not yet. She could see them, flitting between the low rocks, trying to stay on the edge of her perception while positioning, waiting for the time to strike.

A low rumble drifted through her legs, and she could tell by the way her would-be attackers stilled they had felt t too.

Soon.

Al stretched her arms and lifted her four legs one after the other. Standing near motionless between baking sun and roasting earth had given her a network of cramps and sore muscles that she could ill afford.

Another rumble, strong enough to be heard.

Al took a few test swings of her man-catcher eliciting a few excited trills from the supposedly hidden creatures.

More shaking now, the ground vibrating in a long continuous rumble like the purr of a slumbering dragon. Al reached out as she had been taught by Omil and the Wind-Talkers of her tribe and cast her desire into the air. The Wind answered her plea, meandered through the sky and raced forward as she inhaled. Air poured into her lungs, filling them, and filling them more.

The wind enervated her, sweeping the ache from her muscles, the tire from her mind and filling her with such focus the world seemed to slow. Urk had told her, once, when she did this her nostrils flared, her ears rose to points like horns and her pupils opened until her eyes were almost pure black. She had said that sounded hideous, he had said she was beautiful still.

The errant thoughts were blasted from her mind with the erupting of the as poisonous gasses billowed into the air.

The sectic broke from cover, scuttling over the rocks and into the vermilion fog. It was a good hunting tactic, Al admitted, the gas would hide their approach while poisoning their prey. Most times.

The first cobra-spider-thing hissed at her hooves as it approached and Al swung hard practically wrapping the creature around the end of her pole-arm and sending it spiraling off into the air with the sound of broken chitin and pain.

The insect like creatures were a hue ranging from vermilion to black, perfect to hide them among these charred wastes. The poison vapors trailed them like a cloak as they scuttled around and over each other in a dizzying ballet, perfect to confuse the hawks that were their primary predator. It even confused Al to an extent, but finding it hard to pick out individual targets only mattered if you needed to pick out individual targets.

Al swung low, her man-catcher leaving a trail of sparks along the earth as she dragged it through half a dozen of the venomous creatures. A leap to her left sent her over another clutch of the murderous insect-things which she dispatched with the same fervor.

Her lungs quivered, an ache pressing them against her ribs as they began to beg for air.

Oh no, she told her traitorous lungs. We’re not inhaling a cloud of poison again.

It was a reminder though, she had to work quickly.

Al made two more broad sweeps at the surrounding creatures but they had grown wise to this and retreated like waves fleeing the shore only to rush back in at the apex of her swing. Al sprang backward evading the bite of one of the onrushing sectics and landing upon two others. Two her left was the desiccated body of one of the sectic’s previous victims and though it pained her to do so she stabbed it with her man-catcher. Sorry.

The body was light, even for a humaniod, dried out and wasted by weeks or more in the sun it felt lighter than her pole-arm but it was still large enough to serve. Al swung the corpse along the earth sending it tumbling and rolling across the charred ground to collide with the sectics like a stone into a shelf of pottery.

That would buy her some time but the vice creeping across her lungs reminded Al that she hadn’t much left.

The things hissed as they circled her, creating overlapping shrieks of menace to pull her attention in all directions. Al spun in place, half cantering, half leaping to keep her ankles away from probing claws and snapping fangs. She spun her pole-arm about and drove the butt into the blasted soil and was driven back a step as another cloud of poison gas blasted skyward. The heat was so intense she could feel her sweat turn to vapor and her skin dry.

The creatures shrieked.

I guess you don’t like that any more than I do, Al thought with a smile. She spun the man-catcher overhead and brought it down once more.

Nothing.

What am I missing? she wondered stabbing and sweeping at the sectics as they warily began to encircle her once more.

Pain like a twisting knife shot through her chest as her lungs begged her to breathe.

Hurry Al. Her mind raced as she sprang from hoof to hoof. I’m distracting myself.

It was anathema for a centaur to be still in combat but that very motion was robbing her of focus, so she stopped. Pulling her pole-arm close she simply observed. The sectics paused, made wary by this sudden change in posture.

Al listened, she watched and then she felt it. The network of tremors slithering beneath the surface like snakes worming through the tall grass. Some were deep and distant, jut the faintest trace of something dangerous deep in the earth but others, others felt like they were close enough to touch. There!

Al brought her weapon down and the earth burst open in a geyser of poison gas. Several of the sectics were hurled into the air and several more shrieked in anger and fear. There, another quiver and Al brought her weapon down again, and again, splitting the earth in a series of tiny volcanic explosions.

To the animal intelligence of the sectic it must have looked like Al was summoning fire. That was enough for them, they fled, racing over the rocks and between blasted bits of debris.

Al waited, allowing the wind to drag away the poisonous fog before at last exhaling and filling her lungs with the brimstone tinged air.

A gentle clap drifted on the wind drawing her attention to the cave mouth where Urkjorman stood with a smile.

“Now,” said Al’rashal. “I’ll take that water.”