Elven Legacy

Chapter 116

Jaden

His mind hovered miles away from conscious thought, eerily calm like the air inside Noah's protective dome.

Jaden watched with cool detachment as the mages and their demons set out to surround them, some running faster to reach all the way around, bearing sharp glinting steel whilst their demons snarled to reveal their fangs.

They wore no armor, so no metallic clanging rang across the air to herald the fight to come. Just soft-footed running all around. Jaden had only ever fought Azurian soldiers before. This was unlike anything he'd ever faced, he was out of his depth. And yet he wasn't afraid.

He knew he should be. But that knowledge paled in comparison to the faith he placed in Noah. The dome took his breath away. Pulses of light chased across it and he could feel their vibrations and echoes like music. Ever-changing, it sometimes resembled the surface of an icy lake, other times lightning captured in broken glass, and then ripples like windswept water with textured lights and pale colors Jaden had no reference for. There was this subtle throbbing about it, like a heartbeat.

Jaden's heart was beating to the same rhythm, as though longing to be part of it.

Glancing to his right, Jaden could see it in Noah as well. A subtle, nuanced brightness coming from under the skin, a fire in his dilated eyes. He looked like he was a second away from smiling, in spite of the enemies surrounding them like some massive noose.

Jaden couldn't help but feel that said enemies had no idea what they were up against.

Viper shouted a command. Jaden's head snapped to the left where he saw her among the men. A slim figure with her blade raised high in the air, catching the suddenly fierce sunlight, as if the sun had come out on her cue.

She shouted in a loud rasped voice, followed by a hushed loaded second inside which Dharkan and Fenek shifted their feet and threw uneasy glances about, Noah clenched his fists and lowered his knees as if to brace himself for impact, and Jaden breathed out into the space between bowstring and stave as he chose a first target. A man facing Noah with a double-handed grip on his curved blade's hilt, just about to hack into the shimmering barrier, tiger demon by his side, mouth open in a silent roar.

All hell broke loose.

Fifty blades and more hacked, sliced and stabbed into the barrier at once, whilst their comrades pushed from behind to try their luck at it too. Again as many demons charged, clawed and bit into the quasi-invisible wall blocking them from their prey. Horses stood on rear legs with their front hooves smashing, birds stabbed down with their beaks. The ground beneath Jaden's feet shook with the force of all their attacks combined, and the barrier itself oscillated, straining like something alive and hurt. It caved inwards in many places like warped metal, and yet it didn't give.

Noah, you're amazing.

Jaden's arrow twanged free, went through the dome like a knife through hot butter and hit home. The man tumbled down with a sharp cry and the tiger demon vanished. They got replaced by a woman who could give Viper a run for her money with how many piercings and marks she had, and a gray fox demon who never had time to hack into the barrier because it too vanished when Jaden took down its master.

Now the air was laden with noise. Frustrated shouts erupting from the men and women; clashes of metal when their blades accidentally hissed across one another in their futile attempts to cut open the shimmering surface; stomping of horses' hooves as they tumbled back down; high-pitched shrieks of demons as they flung themselves over and over, trying to tear their way in. Yet more shouting as the mages urged each other on. After all, the barrier was swaying and warping under their blows. Some sounded quite excited, others sounded like they were cursing.