The Adventures of the Junior Phoenixes, Part 5: The Last Pendant

Chapter 11: The Snake and the Fox

Chapter 11

     Teller grabbed Crock and Destíne and covered them as debris and rubble flew every which direction. The Embers of Easter blasted Suntooth’s old house with the intent on destroying the place.
     “My house!” Suntooth screamed. He grabbed his wand and tried to put a few Shield Charms on his things but the blasts kept striking repeatedly. His owl was struck by a large piece of rubble and fell to the ground. The large red bird suddenly awoke and squawked loudly. “Hold on, Corny! I’ll keep you safe, old buddy!” Suntooth jumped over to the big red bird and shielded him with his body.
     “Corny?” Teller asked.
     “My phoenix!” Suntooth answered. “His name is Cornelius!”
     “What is happening?” Destíne asked.
     “They’re here,” Crock shouted. “Told you it wasn’t me!”
     Teller kept them covered. “Not now!” He yelled out to Suntooth. “Bayman! Do you have a back door? I can’t Apparate! How do we get out of here besides through the front door?”
     “I have something even better!” Bayman shouted. He pointed over to the red couch. “There’s a trap door underneath it! It goes under the house and lets you out on the far side! Use that way!”
     “Come on!” Teller shouted. He grabbed Destíne and Crock and rushed them towards the red couch. When they stood up a big blast nearly blew them off their feet. One of the walls had a hole blasted into it. Teller roared. Both his left hand and his wooden right hand went to his eyes and his wand fell to the ground. Crock shook off the effects of the blast, checked on Destíne, then grabbed Teller’s wand before grabbing Teller.
     “Get up, Teller!” Crock shouted.
     “My eye!” Teller screamed. “I can’t freakin’ see! My damn eye!”
     “Get up before you lose the other one, too!” Crock demanded. He pulled Teller along. He waved his wand and threw the red couch aside with a charm. There was a rug under it. He kicked the rug away and revealed a trap door. Crock looked back at Suntooth and his phoenix. “You coming?”
     “Go!” Suntooth yelled. “I’ll give them a little distraction! There are brooms outside! Get to them and get out of here!”
     Crock nodded. He urged Destíne down the trap door, then (not-so-gently) tossed Teller into it. He jumped down and closed the door. “Colloportus!” he spoke, locking the trap door with a spell. He got down and crawled, with Destíne leading the way and Teller groaning and struggling behind her. Crock pushed Teller forward, trying to get them out in a hurry. “Destíne! Don’t go out yet! Wait for Suntooth’s distraction!”
     “Oui!” she replied. She waited at the crawl space’s exit door, the two men behind her.
     “Let me see your eye,” Crock demanded of Teller. He crawled to Teller and looked at his wounded left eye using the Lumos Charm. Teller’s left eye had a piece of wood in it. His eye was destroyed, blood everywhere. “You’ve lost your eye, Teller.”
     “You got to be kidding me,” Teller grunted with pain. “First my hand, now my eye. Can you heal it?”
     “I can try,” Crock said, “But if they used a curse to blast that hole in the wall, it may not heal.”
     “Just do something about the pain, will you?” Teller grunted.
     “Hold still,” Crock said. The din of the blasting kept going. He took his wand and hummed a charm; it sounded like a lullaby. The charm cleaned up much of the wound and healed the skin that had been lacerated. The eye began to heal and repair as the charm worked its magic. “How’s that?”
     “I still can’t see,” Teller said.
     “If there’s damage to the insides, you need a skilled Healer,” Crock said. “If we get out of here, I have a leech-man on the ship. They’ll be here soon.”
     “What?” Teller asked.
     Crock pointed to his head. “Remember: My man Noctem and I are connected. What I see, he sees. He sees us right now. In a few minutes my men will be here. Let’s just hope your pal Suntooth’s distraction works.”
     Suddenly the whole house above them shook, followed by a loud whooping and hollering. The din of curses hitting the house stopped, followed by the sound of spells being shot in an unknown direction. A large squawking echoed in the valley.
     “Now!” Crock shouted. “Destíne! Go!”
     The trio emerged from below. The Embers of Easter were fixated on something in the sky. Above everyone’s heads was a man hanging from the legs of a phoenix flying overhead. Suntooth’s shoulders were in the grasp of his phoenix, Cornelius, and he casted curses and spells at the villains below. Crock hit one that didn’t see their approach. He gave Teller back his wand and went left while Teller leapt right. Teller shot a curse at another Ember and knocked the witch out. Another wizard, a tall man, threw a jinx at Teller. Teller instinctively waved his wooden right hand at the jinx, hoping to block it. Instead, and to his surprise (and the surprise of the tall Ember) the jinx deflected off of his hand and flew straight back at its creator. The tall Ember screamed in pain as a Flaming Jinx caught his robes aflame and engulfed him.
     “What the heck?” Teller asked.
     Another curse flew at him. Teller hit it with his wooden hand and it, too, deflected right back at its caster. The wizard was struck by it; a Stunning Spell. He fell over, out cold from the force of the returned spell.
     “That bloody genius!” Teller muttered. “Sherman Locke, next time I see you, I’m going to kiss you!” With his wand in his left hand, Teller attacked the other Embers, deflected curses and jinxes with his right hand.
     Crock kept Destíne close. He dueled with a very skilled Ember witch. The witch stood near the evergreen tree, honing her curses in on Crock and Destíne. Crock noticed that she seemed to intensify her fury on Destíne. “They mean to kill her,” he thought to himself. He countered a spell she directed at him that blew up halfway between him and the witch on its return. They reeled for a second as the mini-shockwave momentarily shook their equilibrium. The witch would have had the drop on him as she recovered faster than Crock did, but by anger or out of fear the gnomes intervened. They ran out from under the evergreen tree and jumped on the witch. Two of the five gnomes grabbed onto her arms and bit her. Two others got into her crimson robes and bit any part of her legs that they can get a hold of. The last one, the biggest one, lunged at her face and shoved pine cones into her shrieking mouth. She threw one on the ground and kicked it hard. It was hurled to the ground in a thud. Crock ran at the woman and kicked her hard in the midsection. He wished he had his sword still; he had left it behind in Tierra Varitas. The witch doubled over and flew to the ground, clenching her stomach. The gnomes dispersed as Crock knocked her out with a Stunning Spell. Another witch approached him with her wand aimed at him but she was hit by a curse from above, the work of Bayman Suntooth. The other Embers were still trying to hit the flying man and his phoenix in the air.
     Teller, meanwhile, got over to where Crock, Destíne, and the gnomes were, near the evergreen tree. He watched as more Embers arrived by Apparating. Teller thought quickly. He looked around and his thoughts landed on the tree. “I have an idea!” he shouted. He aimed his wand at the tree and spoke an incantation: “Floramortis!”
     Suddenly the tree came to life. It pulled itself out of the ground like an ancient statue come to life. It bent its old, cracking body down and swung its upper half as a long-haired siren would whip her hair. The upper branches, dead and sharp, tore through the Embers with great effect. They stopped and turned to flee from the big walking tree that bore down upon them. The gnomes joined in, as well, hurling pine cones and rocks at any Embers nearby. Crock and Suntooth did what they could to hold the Embers at bay, but more of them began to arrive.
     “Suntooth!” Teller shouted. “Get down!”
     “I’m on a roll, Teller!” Suntooth laughed. He was hurling curses and laughing at the same time. He then lifted his wand high into the air and shot a spell that rose like a firework. When it exploded it created a great smoke ring that twisted and turned; a smoke signal. Then, as he looked back down and was about to cast a spell on an Ember that had been knocked down by the charging tree, Cornelius was hit by a very strong Stunning Spell and burst into flame. “Ah, crap!” he shouted. He fell from a three-story height and crashed, back-first, into the aluminum roof of his house. He broke through one of the rusted patches of his roof and was lost as the house shook and fell inward, collapsing onto itself; the damage done by the Embers had taken its toll. The house fell, swallowing Suntooth and everything else within.
     “Bayman!” Teller yelled. His concentration broke and the tree fell down. The Embers turned and began to attack the trio. Teller hastily put up a Shield Charm but it barely held up against the bevy of curses that struck it. Teller yelled in fury and anger. He tried to make the tree rise again but the Embers had set it aflame and torn it to pieces.
     Then, as the Embers closed in on the trio and the gnomes, help arrived. Apparating in various spots all around the property were the Shadow Confederacy, the pirates of Alligus Crock. A dozen witches and wizards arrived, hitting the Embers of Easter and staving off their onslaught against the trio.
     “Noctem!” Crock yelled. An older man, with a short gray beard that went from ear to ear and gray curly hair ran towards him. He was deaf and mute, unable to speak, but due to magical charms and special spells he utilized to his advantage, he could hear perfectly and speak wordlessly with Crock. He had a special way of communicating with Crock; what Crock saw and heard so did Noctem. “There’s an Anti-Apparating Jinx around us,” Crock told his deaf-mute First Mate, “We need to get Destíne out of here! There’s a town close to here! Grab those brooms! We’re going to need them! Find the other girl! Find Rain Fox! Her Pendant can Apparate us out of here beyond the jinx!”