Darkin A Journey East - By Joseph A. Turkot Page 0,99

stood.

“Run!” shouted Adacon as the first boulder landed with a thunderous tremor directly behind King Terion, who narrowly escaped being crushed to death.

“At a sprint men—sprint!” shouted the king. The whole company began running from the crumbling wall, scrambling toward the steep trail that led to the Teeth Cliffs. Many in the party panicked as they fled underneath the stone rain, and the once uniform line of the troop fragmented.

“Room for two!” said Falen amidst the frenzy, just as another piece of the great wall came crashing down nearby. “Three if one is a gnome.”

“Adacon and Calan, get on him,” Slowin commanded. For a moment Adacon froze, not sure what to do, hesitant to abandon the rest of the warriors. “Now!” Slowin ferociously roared. Adacon pulled Calan close and they jumped on Falen, who had bowed his back for them. Just as they hopped on, Remtall, who had been nearby, bounded on as well, slamming against Calan’s back. Falen took off immediately, and with great speed they shot up into the sky. Adacon’s vision leveled with the crumbling wall, and he could see hairline fractures running its length. He knew the humming noise had to have been a spell of Aulterion’s, slowly working to collapse the great wall. Down below, the funneling line of elves and dwarves could be seen hurrying up the trail toward the cliffs, narrowly escaping boulders that toppled from the Dinbell.

“I can’t believe they’re destroying it,” Calan said. Adacon continued to look out at the crumbling wall, in awe of the black throng that struggled behind it. Falen took them high above even the tip, and they could see everything on either side of the failing Dinbell; it was the most horrendous thing they had ever witnessed: on the opposite side of the wall writhed an endless army of near-black, stretching into the distance as far as could be seen. The army of trolls was a throbbing sea of arms, legs, torsos and sun-glinting armor and blades. Interspersed throughout the dark mob of trolls were shiny golden specks—warpedes—weaving through the dense Feral army, trying to force their way forward, left or right, away from where the Dinbell brought their path south to a halt. Most shocking to behold was an enormous bubble of shiny film rising as if an island in the north plain, isolated; beneath the film was a patch of green grass, stark against the frenzied black mass that surrounded it. The film of energy encased a single man, standing nearly a league from the chaos unfolding at the wall. From within the translucent blue-gold bubble, a tremendous stream of light was issuing forth in rolling waves. Adacon froze, something clicked; he placed the low humming noise as coming from the direction of the streaming light. The energy was shooting out from the man, through the shiny bubble’s film, high up into the sky, then colliding into the top of the northern face of the Dinbell Wall, precisely where the wall was cracking, falling piece by piece to the earth far below.

“Aulterion!” Adacon screamed.

“Let me loose, foul drake, so that I can get down there and fight!” roared Remtall. “Quickly, before I jump!” Adacon did not doubt the gnome’s threat.

“Fair enough,” Falen replied. He pointed his nose toward the ground and dove, taking them toward the Erol Drunne militia who defended the cliffs. Behind the militia, Adacon saw Slowin marching forward at great speed with Terion’s army, trying to reach the militia.

“Coming in fast—be ready,” Falen instructed. He descended rapidly to where the Erol Drunne militia fought. Adacon reeled as the figures below enlarged. The drake spun to avoid a shower of arrows, heaved up, and then dove toward solid ground once again.

“Erguile!” Adacon shouted.

“What?” Remtall said in shock.

“Look there,” Adacon pointed. Sure enough, Erguile was charging back and forth atop Weakhoof, thrusting his sword in every direction, slaying trolls wherever they approached.

“And Great Gaigas, there’s Flaer!” Remtall cheered, nearly falling off the turbulent dragon. A dreadful excitement for battle filled Adacon as he trained his eyes to where Remtall pointed, and just as Erguile was below them battling, so was Flaer: he was forging a path through the Feral army using the Brigun Autilus, alone and on foot, cutting his way past endless trolls, directly toward where Aulterion stood inside his magic field of blue-gold.

“He’s mad—he marches alone to Aulterion!” Adacon exclaimed. Calan watched in awe, continuously glancing backward to make sure her brother Iirevale was safe. In the distance a great burst