Elven Legacy

Chapter 119

Noah

His knees trembled as if an earthquake shook the ground. His hands gripped tight around chakram and knife by his sides, he wished he could help his friends and take down some of their enemies. But it was all becoming too much.

Every lash against the dome felt like his skin being flogged, every stab like a butcher's knife opening him up, every empty-handed blow resonated in his bones. From all sides he got pushed, tossed, kicked, and he swayed and staggered from these ceaseless impacts.

It was like being torn to pieces and suffocating from being pressed together all at once. He shivered and he was sweating with the effort of exerting steady control over the dome-shaped barrier. The only rampart between his friends and the mages and demons that would tear them asunder.

But you know, no pressure.

The demons' shrieks echoed in his head, the mages' angered shouts lanced his heart as it raced achingly fast, like a storm trapped in a cage. A few paces to his left, the steel-on-steel clashes of Dharkan and Viper fighting resonated throughout the dome, as if they were sparring in a cave – or maybe it seemed that way only to Noah's sensitive ears. Everything rang amplified inside him, like bell strikes, even the twang-hisses of Jaden's and Fenek's arrows, and especially the rasped screams of fury and agony as those arrowheads plunged into skin or hide.

Jaden faced the west, where the barrier was caving inward at a worrying pace but still intact for now, and Fenek faced east, where the crack was still open to let in a single opponent at a time. They were both running low on arrows. Fear jabbed Noah's heart as he fervently hoped Jaden could pull off that nifty trick again with his called-back arrows.

After Fenek took down a fourth enemy, the dark mages changed tactics. They cleared the area in front of the lightning bolt crack, so that Fenek no longer had any targets. Instead they stood on either side and gnawed away at the vulnerable surface to widen the breach.

Noah braced himself, but even so he flinched and moaned involuntarily under the focused attack. Their long, curving blades arced gracefully up into the air then down again, one after the other, tirelessly slicing in around the crack. Jaden faced the other way, he couldn't see. Fenek shot Noah an alarmed glance. Noah swallowed hard.

He reached inside himself for the concentration and power needed to close the breach – he found neither. Icy panic flooded him. The dark mages wore smirks now and encouraged each other as they hacked away at the shimmering surface. Little cracks emerged from the main tear, like rivulets and creeks branching off a wider river.

Increasingly now, Noah shuddered and trembled with the effort, as if he was in the worst stage of some terrible fever. As their blades cut into his barrier, especially near the crack, he could feel the aftershock of it under his skin, like memories of agony, like being hurt inside a dream. At some point it felt so real, he half-expected blood to appear on his clothes.

His body felt like one throbbing, giant bruise, and he wasn't sure whether it was his imagination, but the pulsing dome took on a sickly purplish-gray hue. Patterns appeared across its surface, resembling smashed-in ice, and structures like networks of blue veins, fluttering, vulnerable, ripe to burst out at the next sword or talon slicing in, only his energy rather than his blood would leak out and be lost.

Keep fighting, just a little longer!

The catalyst again, sending him some message, more of a gut-feeling than words. It had filled him with glowing confidence earlier, but now he felt naive and foolish.

How? How do I keep fighting?

No answer. Right. Very helpful.

The moment hung, uncertain, fragile, in the space of a few seconds. And perhaps it was his imagination again, but the dark mages wore calmer looks on their faces now, like they knew this was almost finished. Like miners nearly done with their pickaxes and chisels; soon they would reach the promised gems beyond.