Eternal Beasts

The Good and the Bad

Pushing Nikeera into Wren's arms, Jared waved Gereth back.

"Hug the rock face, you three!" he shouted, using griffon magic to bind the falling snow immediately around them into a shimmering shield of ice easily as long as Jared was tall.

"And get underneath this shield!" As Gereth, Wren, and Nikeera staggered under the shield's umbrella, Nikeera throwing a fearful look over her shoulder at him, Jared hazarded a look out at where the dragons hung, switching back to the Second Sight to do so.

"If this doesn't work, Nikeera, I'll need you to hit them with something big," he said, swinging his vision to his left.

There they were. The use of the griffon magic had acted as a lure, bringing not only the two closest towards them, but the other three as well. The only person that could use griffon magic would be the last surviving griffon rider. And if they could destroy him, it would assure their victory over the Light in the new War of Balance! Carefully the five worked closer, the reptilian eyes working hard to penetrate the blowing snow even as their magical senses reached out to locate the lone griffon rider.

"Just a little closer," Jared muttered as a nimbus of blue light appeared around a newly determined Nikeera just behind him, his eyes narrowed as he watched the dragons inch agonizingly closer. "Just a little ... closer."

Then, rumbling low in its throat, the head of the nearest dragon appeared to the naked eye out of the shifting wall of blowing snow to bear directly down on them. It was already sucking in air for a fire strike.

"Close enough!" Jared growled and, looking upwards to the snow pack he hoped was above them, he flipped up his eye patch.

The ground shuddered as the orb blast hammered into the cliff face directly above them.

"An avalanche?" Gereth had just enough time to gasp before Jared jerked the shield up in time to catch tonnes of snow abruptly tumbling down onto the narrow pass. He barely managed to angle the shield and brace it against the cliff face so the snow would deflect off of it before the mass crashed down. The powerful griffon rider then groaned with the strain as his strength was taxed to its very limits holding the shield in place as the triggered avalanche pounded them.

The dragons, caught moving in, weren't so lucky. The mass of snow found all five totally unprepared. Like a hammer from God, the avalanche smashed into the hovering Beasts, instantly dropping them from the sky. It then buried their shattered carcasses as a winter's worth of snow dropped from the mountainside into the valley below.

The roar of the passing snow seemed to last forever. But, just as Jared began to fear that his vast strength was finally going to give out, burying them as well under the snow, the flow began to wan. He swallowed hard, trying to coax every last ounce of energy out of his straining muscles as the rush slowed, then finally stopped.

The big man heaved a sigh of relief as he felt the last shiver of the mountain before it went silent.

"Is it over?" Nikeera asked in a small voice.

"Yeah," Jared replied in a voice made hoarse by his growing fatigue. "It's over!" he looked up through the shield he had made. 'And I hope we're not buried too deep!' he silently added. Already the snow, dry and powdery, had filtered in on the sides to pack in close, pressing the four companions tightly together. It wouldn't take long for the air to grow stale in such close quarters.

Jared shifted the shield slightly, trying to take a bit of the pressure off his aching arms. And was quickly rewarded with a face full of snow. 'Damn!' he thought darkly as he stared up at the white mass piled high on the shield. 'If I move this thing, we'll get buried anyway! I'm going to have to use the orb to burn our way free.'