Luke Swan and the Laistrynians: The Flood

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

~In Plain Sight~

I never realised I still had the sword in my hand until I was surrounded by a group of Selenos' demons.

They came at me with their bare hands, the stench of rotten flesh heavy on them. I ducked under their arms and sliced the air.

"Stay back!" I warned.

My warning wasn't headed. Instead, they came at me again, but I was ready. I jabbed my sword into the chest of one, and he moved no more. The others stepped when they saw their dead brother. This gave me a chance to manoeuvre around them and sprint down a dark hallway.

I was in Selenos' fortress again, and now I was running down a hallway that I remembered all too well. A hallway that led to the throne room of Selenos.

I stopped at a corner to catch my breath. Green flames burnt in ebony brackets, casting eerie shadows and making the smooth walls and floor look molten. Around this corner were the great, black doors, behind which I figured Selenos was right now.

But I was wrong. I heard footsteps behind me, and hushed voices. Hurriedly, I positioned myself at the other side of the corner and listened.

"Is it ready, Lord?" a lady's voice asked.

"Hyleniss, preparing a container with the capacity of a whole ocean is no small feat. Of course it's ready. I'm too brilliant not to have it ready."

My heart froze at that voice, Selenos' voice. I didn't know what they were planning, but it seemed important. Why would they need a container for a whole ocean?

The woman realised Selenos' comment was supposed to be amusing, and she forced out a high-pitched, fake laugh. What was I supposed to do if they saw me? I knew those demons weren't very bright, but surely they'd have followed me. I would be surrounded in minutes.

Selenos and the woman, Hyleniss, walked by me without looking. Selenos' dark robes brushed against my leg, and he stopped. I held my breath. And then he looked at me.

I cursed myself. So did the other two. We backed away from each other at the same time. I registered the fact that they were afraid of me, and I started planning a way to use it against them.

I brandished my sword. The two Selegonians winced at the sight, and the woman stepped in front of Selenos, almost like she was shielding him.

"You won't harm our Lord!" she screeched. "Not with that sword, the sword tainted with the presence of the One with Music before you!"

This was Swanicaa's sword? If it belonged to someone special, maybe it was special. But nothing happened. I tried gripping it with both hands, and realised that it felt even more balanced than the dagger I had at my "practice". This was my sword.

I hacked and sliced like a madman, the wounds I was making not very deep, but the sword must have been extremely painful. The woman screamed and ran away when I cut her arm, the wound smoking and oozing... was that acid?

"She's a coward," I pointed out. "Must be easy to keep her in check."

"You're a fool," Selenos countered, his eyes still showing fear but a slight smile tugging on his lips. "It's too easy to ensnare you."

Something knocked me on the back of the head, and I blacked out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I woke up, I was hanging by my arms over the balcony in Selenos' throne room.

"Zyra's little hero," Selenos jeered. I couldn't see him. I couldn't see anything. I could just hear the sea, crashing against the cliffs hundreds of feet below. "Is it so unfortunate that he needs saving?"

The rope tying my hands to the rail suddenly slackened, and I fell ten feet. My heart jumped to my throat.

"If she wishes to see you alive," Selenos said behind me, "she'll have to come here herself. Otherwise, I'll be sending your broken body to her in... oh, I suppose we could try stuffing you into a matchbox."

I dropped another ten feet, shouting out as I did. This man was really sick. What was next, would he be suggesting taxidermy?

"Or maybe I'll choose taxidermy instead," he said.

Ouch.

"Zyra can't come," I said. "She told me herself that she wouldn't be able to save me this time."

"That's a lie!" Selenos hissed.

"I don't lie."

"His eyes tell the truth," Hyleniss said.

How could she see me? I couldn't see her.

"Then we will break him by showing him... this."

My surroundings became clearer. I could see the fortress's turrets, the cliffs, the ocean and... whoa.

Below me, the ocean was reduced to maybe fifty feet in depth. What took up the whole area was a sphere of the ocean's water, constantly twisting and spinning to keep its shape. This thing could have been the size of a doomsday asteroid, but it was hard to tell being suspended so high. It completely freaked me out.

"This is our little pet project," Selenos said. "Our dark sea's water has almost been collected, and when we reach the bottom, we'll have found the gate to Laistrynia. And when we find the gate... What's to stop us, oh, I don't know, releasing our project on Laistrynia, and then the rest of your world?"

I couldn't move. It had dawned on me, this horrible idea. "A flood," I said softly.

"Exactly." Selenos' voice was filled with such malice and evil glee that I felt sick. The whole world... He was going to wipe out the world with a flood? But there couldn't be that much water...

"I know what you're thinking," Selenos said, "You think that this much water will only be enough to destroy a small area. But you have no idea how much it thrives in your Earth's conditions. Eventually, it will turn into an incessant flow, covering the highest peaks in you world."

"It isn't possible," I said hoarsely.

"Oh, but it is. We've planned for millennia, you see. But the only bump in the road... that was you. You had me convinced that you would do great things for the Laistrynians, but now you've just posed as a mild threat to me. The end of the world is there in plain sight for you to see, and now that we have you here, the threat of you is no more."

The rope slackened completely.

My hands and ankles bound, I had no way of stopping my fall. When I passed the ground the fortress rested on, I just kept falling. When the rope tautened, I was halfway down the cliff. First I swung outwards, and hope flickered inside me. But the rope swung the other way, back to the cliff, like an immensely powerful force was pulling me towards it-

By head and back crashed against the cliff, and all I could remember before passing out was that my whole body was broken.