Phoenix: The nuruk beast.

Chapter Twenty Six: The first Knights of Dameran

The rajmirik slowly entered the dark castle through the main entrance, unable to see anything under the cover of night, it relied on its sense of smell to track Aldrich. Alston sat still behind a tipped table as the creature passed right beside him, he calmed his breathing as the creature approached the corridors. He waited until the creature had its first paw in the hallway before he used his sword to cut a rope that was fastened beside him. About a dozen blades began to fall on the creature, it took quick notice of it and hastily evaded most of them. It did however come out with a slight injury on its right forelimb, the creature began to walk faster towards the stairs that led to the throne room. As it ran up the stairs, one of the knights waited to set off the second trap.

At the end of the stairway was another corridor, still unable to see, the creature began moving with caution. Just after the beast passed the second knight, he held his rope preparing to tug at it when the rope suddenly snapped loudly. The creature hearing this quickly dashed forward avoiding the melee weapons that were falling overhead. By the time all the maces broadswords and even clubs had fallen, the creature had come out unscratched. Lydia who had seen this cursed under her breath, she looked at where Evelyn and the other knight hid and took a deep breath.

As the rajmirik drew close to Evelyn, Lydia picked up a lit torch and set something on fire on the ground, it was a line of oil that surrounded Aldrich, the creature looked at where the sudden burst of flames was and saw Aldrich sitting in a ring of fire. It began to growl as it brought out its silver claws and suddenly began to run at full speed towards him. Lydia gathered the five spears with her and began throwing them at the creature. The beast easily avoided them as it was now able to see, Lydia however threw every one of the spears she had at it trying to taunt it as much as possible. Just as the creature got closer to the throne room, Lydia yelled;

"Now!!" Immediately, Evelyn and the other knight came in from opposite facing rooms pushing half a wooden make-shift wall along with them, the wall had all sorts of blades mounted facing forward on it with half a carved hole on their edges. The beast tried to stop in its tracks but was going with too great a speed. It dug its claws into the concrete floor creating scratches along its path, Lydia bit her lip anxiously waiting for it to crash into the spiny wall, but alas there it was, just a hairs length away from a blade pointing at its face.

Just before it could move back a spear came through the carved hole straight into its chest. On the other side of the wall was Lydia holding the wooden end of the spear.

"You did it." Evelyn breathed, but Lydia still had a stern look on her face, she stepped back and pulled back out a mere broken piece of wood,

"Get slage out of here." She said to them, but even as they made haste towards the throne room, the creature sent them all tumbling towards the ground as it crashed through the wall.

"Aldrich!!" Evelyn shouted trying to get him to run away, "Aldrich get out of there!!" she bellowed. But Aldrich, as though he was completely unaware of anything that was happening around him stayed put in his seat. While everyone else reckoned that Aldrich had fallen victim to his own fears once more, both Lydia and Evelyn something far more dreadful was going on. Much like the nuruk wolf's, Aldrich's eyes glowed as it completely turned white. Lydia drew out her sword and moved as quickly as possible towards Aldrich. She swiftly dashed through the fire and gripped Aldrich by his shoulder as she shook him violently. As soon as she turned around, she could already see the beast steadily moving through the flames unharmed by it. Lydia knew well that its prey was Aldrich, but it was willing to cut down anything the dared stood in its path, which was in this case, Lydia herself. As the beast bared its fangs at her, she pulled out a chain necklace that was tucked under her shirt but stopped mid-way when she noticed the beast had suddenly stopped. She noticed it had begun sniffing out something else, it turned around and began moving at great speed towards the exit of the castle.