Liridia

Chapter 31: Payback: Part One

Liridia
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The doors fling open and the cacophony of deranged, helpless and pleading screams is deafening. I press my hands to my ears to try to dull the noise, forgetting mother was beneath my sword and she slowly gets to her feet, smiling demonically.

The mass of people crawl and push over one another to fill the room, and I back myself into a corner, trying to push them back with my magic.

I fall to my knees as they reach me, my mother watching malevolently from the chair.

They tear at my hair, rip at my armour, bite my exposed hands and neck, and I scream.

The unrelenting terror unraveling in my gut claws up through my throat in one terrified scream, and they freeze. My scream shakes the room and they convulse in strangled pain. With my eyes screwed shut, my scream causes them to dissolve, first their faces and their hands which still try to reach for me. The many who reached me first are the first to disintegrate, their faces frozen in a horrified screech.

Mother stands and weaves her way through the throng of demons which continue dissolve as she walks by them.

My eyes fly open and I thrust my hand at her, causing her to halt in place. I stumble through the dying mass of dead souls until I am almost right in front of her face.

I grab her hand and with a flick of my shaking hand, a dagger appears in my palm. I unfreeze her head, and I have to concentrate to keep her body frozen against her strong magic.

She glances at me and shakes her head in disappointment.

"And what are you going to do? You can't kill me. And you are going to lose control of my body any moment now. Pathetic, Liridia. Still learning." She spits, eyeing my dagger with barely contained fear.

I am about to lose control, my anger ebbing slowly, I have to use something stronger than hate. Stronger than anger.

Ayala.
When she first fought me, cursing my name to the heavens.
When she smiled as she finally perfected that swordplay maneuver.
When she came back. A pack of wolves following her.

Mother's attempts to gain control, but the gold in my eyes silences the purple dripping from her hands like tar.

I grip Mother's first finger, and place my knife against it. If I can't kill her, then I'm going to make her hurt.
I press down on the bone hard, and when the finger comes off, she screams in pain. The purple tar hisses on the exposed wound and her scream gets louder.

I grab the next, and as she orders for me to stop, I slice another off. I grab her arm and wrench it around the wrong way, causing the bones splinter and break in a hideous crunch. Her face contorts in pain and helpless tears stream down her face. She wails in pain and a grim smile turns my face stony.

One for Pa.

One for me.

And one for fun.

I release her body out of the freeze and I kick her over, the blood gushing from her fingers and her grotesque arm cradled by the other. As the bones click back into place in her arm, she screams and shouts at the pain at the healing process she bewitched herself with.

I look for the box, and the light emanating from it pulses and catches my eye.

I can't kill her, but I can trap her.

It floats over to me from the stand when my palm invites it to rest my hand. The symbol engraved into the wood throbs with a black slick liquid and Mother gets to her feet, nursing her newly healed arm and her slowly healing fingers. Her eyes turn dark when she glances at the box and growls viciously.

"I didn't want to kill you, daughter. But you leave me no other course of action. If you don't come with me now, I will kill you and your friends. The choice is yours." She seethes animalistically.

I can't let her hurt them. I shake my head slowly in finality.

"No deal, Ma."

Her hands thrust towards the floor, and the ground shakes with such violence that it knocks me off of my feet. The box flies from my grip and clatters to the floor. Mother's groan causes me to pay attention to the floor her hands are trembling at.

I watch horrified as the ground opens up, tearing and exposing a hideous purple glow from beneath. A growl from the depths evolves into a roar that shakes the room and causes me to shrink away with fear.

A wyvern erupts from the ground, its wings whipping up a foul wind and its two legs digging into the floor beneath it.
The wind blows away the last of the dissolving people and it's roar makes me almost cower. It's thick black hide ripples with scales and muscle, and I reach for Trinity with a quivering hand. It's barbed tail swings viciously around behind it's giant body. It's hostile eyes lock onto me and it roars. The room seems hardly big enough for it to fly or even move, but Mother thrusts her arms out and the walls stretch and ceiling grows higher and higher.
I get to my feet and wonder how I'm going to live long enough to kill a wyvern.

I make my own.

In a hopeful attempt to create something to combat the impending doom that looms over me, I shove my hands up to the heavens and concentrate to make something bigger and stronger, something to kill the wyvern that tries to swing its tail in one easy move to kill me.

Trinity flies from my grasp and shoots straight for the beast's neck. The tail just barely misses my stomach as it whips it back up to protect itself from the now flaming sword going for its throat.

The ceiling cracks and I gasp from relief, it's working. The rubble rains down, and the effort to make it open nearly makes me faint. A heavenly glows lights up the room, and the ceiling splits and cracks. The black wyvern roars into the void of light and my own beast bursts through the ceiling.

It hits the ground with an enormous thud and causes me to fall over again. The ground crumbles underneath the weight of my beast, the ceiling patching itself back up, leaving the animal behind. It glares at the wyvern malevolently and huffs a plume of smoke out of its nose.

A golden wyvern.

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To be continued...

God I feel bad, i hyped this up, but I made it into a two parter because it's way long.

Anyway, thank you for close to 500 reads on my amateur story.
It's nearing the end of my story, and I'm a bit sad. BUT IT MEANS I CAN MAKE A SEQUEL!
So I'm looking forward to that.

Book recommendation: (I heave this read all of it, but read it before it comes out in cinemas because imagining Tye Sheridan as Wade Watts is making me hyperventilate) Ready Player One, by Ernest Kline.

Song recommendation: You can call me Al, (god I can't remember who it's by and MasterOfAwesomeness1  is gonna murder me)

Welp bye