Savage Rising: Eternal Forest Saga - Book 1

Chapter 13

Sunrise had finally settled himself on top of the small storehouse when the chaos began. The crowd of dwarves below him, packed shoulder to shoulder, turned quickly and fled to their stone city like stampeding cattle. The screams and cries from the west were hard to hear over the pandemonium around them. From this distance, no one knew what was going on at the other end of the marketplace, but it sounded terrifying enough to know they should run away.

"What's happening?" Sunrise asked Firefly. He hopped up onto the balls of his feet, ready to jump off the roof at a moment's notice.

"I don't know!" Firefly shouted back. She was hovering high enough above him to barely see the western end of the marketplace, but still close enough for him to hear her tiny voice. She squinted her eyes while shielding them from the sun with her hands. "Something is coming from the Safe Road."

"Can you see what it is?"

"I can't, but whatever it is, there's a lot of them." With the distance so great and her field of vision not nearly comparable to what a larger creature could see, Firefly could only make out a series of tiny, indistinguishable specks on the horizon. All she could tell was that they were taller than the dwarves that were fleeing from it.

A motion above the coming hoard stole her attention away. From her vantage point, it looked as though hundreds of tiny birds had suddenly taken off at once. The unidentifiable objects were getting closer by the second. It wasn't until they finished their arch in the sky and began their descent that Firefly recognized them as a hail of arrows. "Watch out!" she screamed.

Sunrise looked up just in time to see the barrage of projectiles bearing down on him. "Get below me!" he shouted. Firefly tucked in her wings and fell like a stone as Sunrise extended his hands out to either side of his body. He flicked his wrists, and two large fireballs sprang to life just above his palms. As soon as Firefly was below him, Sunrise tossed his hands up in the air. The fireballs arched across the sky, catching the arrows in their inferno and burning them to harmless ashes by the time they reached the roof.

Below them, the fleeing dwarves were not so lucky. Wave upon wave of helpless dwarves fell as the arrows rained down on them. Those that did survive kept moving, thinking only of their stone walls and the safety they could provide. The unfortunate ones lay motionless in the dust, with trails of blood streaming from their wounds across the dry earth.

Sunrise hopped down onto the ground as the hoard finally came into view. His eyes finally beheld their assailants, but he couldn't believe it. "Balisekts?" he questioned. Like bloodthirsty animals, the lizard-men cut through the fleeing dwarves without mercy or pause. Sunrise watched the panicked eyes of a running dwarf suddenly go wide in alarm as a rusty blade exploded from its stomach. As the dwarf fell, the attacking balisekt trampled over it. Its eyes and bloodied weapon were set hungrily upon the elven acolyte.

Sunrise threw his hands forward, sending twin bolts of lightning from his fingertips into the creature's sternum. The blast knocked it back twenty feet, impaling it on the extended spear of the balisekt charging behind it. Another attacker moved in close, swinging its crudely made sword at Sunrise's throat. The elf ducked below the blade and placed his open palm on the balisekt's chest. Another bolt of lightning from his palm caused the creature to explode in a shower of blood and bone.

Firefly zipped out of the way as the creature's severed head went sailing by her. Her small size and wings were able to keep her out of harm's way quite easily. In fact, she could see many of the visiting faeries already taking off into the trees towards the south. Unfortunately, her lack of magical ability made her powerless to help anyone. Determined to participate, she held her hands out in front of her as a balisekt went charging beneath her. The creature waved a rusty ax over its head with no discernible skill. "Come on, Firefly. You can do this," she said to herself.