The Solitary Arrow Ch. 12

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There were tears in Hyandai's eyes as she let the arrow fly, it tore the air toward the elf, but was stopped dead, shattering into splinters as the ehladrel simply passed between Letharon and the deadly path of the projectile.

The elf gave Harlen an almost pitiable look as he moved forward again. "I am sorry, human, that it comes to this." He said, the ehladrel swung around and came toward Harlen. He tried to parry it, but his sword clanged into the elven weapon, and was sent flying from his grip as Letharon twisted it subtly as it swung past Harlen's face.

It immediately began to flow back toward him, arcing quickly and looking like it would disembowel the huntsman. Harlen did the only thing he could, and lunged at the bladedancer. He felt the side of the ehladrel slide down his left side, removing skin for several inches, but not biting deeply. He impacted with the elf, driving him back and pinning one arm to his side.

The elf screamed in frustration as he was borne over and the two fell to the floor, tumbling over each other.

Harlen looked for the deadly elven weapon and saw it already coming toward him again, from the unpinned arm, flowing still in its gentle arcs and subtle angles. He rolled off the elf and the blade hummed past his ear. The elf leapt agilely to his feet as Harlen continued to roll until he had several feet between himself and Letharon. Another arrow shattered against the ehladrel, one of the black ones Harlen had given her. He looked at Hyandai. "You are a stubborn bitch are you not?" He said, smiling coldly.

Hyandai cursed under her breath and drew another arrow. Her last remaining white arrow, that she had brought from her homelands. "You will not win this, Letharon." She said, her eyes focused just as coldly as his own. "I will stop you."

As Letharon laughed, she spoke the words again, sending coruscating light through both bow and arrow. Harlen looked at her and knew that the bastard would simply deflect and shatter this arrow, too.

Suddenly, the doors reverberated with a massive boom. Someone outside was not pleased with them being locked, and was planning on coming through.

The ehladrel was coming up again, and Harlen knew what he had to do, in an instant. He could not allow that thing to parry Hyandai's solitary arrow. The elf was not even watching him closely and did not believe what he saw when Harlen stepped forward and allowed the ehladrel to impale his leg as it swung around from an underhanded motion.

Harlen screamed in pain as the blade sank into his thigh and deep into the bone at his leg's core. He then looked at the stunned elf, bringing his fist down on the elf's immobile hand. Then his leg folded as the bone snapped in his thigh and another bright spike of pain lanced through his body. The ehldarel was still in his leg as he collapsed, and through the haze of pain and shock he grabbed it in both hands, pulling it loose from Letharon's numb fingers.

Hyandai fired and the arrow drew a razor thin line of white energy from her bow to Letharon's chest, striking him from the left side and sinking into him until only the fletching remained visible. The razor barbed point stuck out of his other side, rich in blood and protruding just under his arm. The elf looked toward her, his eyes wide with mild surprise, then he turned back toward Harlen, opening his mouth to say something, but then collapsed onto his face, landing on the hunter's uninjured leg.

Harlen felt unconsciousness coming for him, and tried to slide from beneath the fallen elf. Hyandai grabbed his arm and pulled him free, then helped him half-crawl to the stairs to the throne. The door boomed again, and cracks appeared in the aged wood. Hyandai cried openly now, but looked up at the doors.

"They will break it down soon." She said to Harlen, reaching for the ehladrel he still clutched in both hands. "I need the weapon, my beloved." She kissed his hand and he let go of the gracefully curved blade. She pulled it free of his leg, sending his blood flying over the marble floor tiles. "Forgive me, my lover." She said as she turned toward the doors. Another loud boom reverberated through the large chamber as one door cracked completely. The next hit would split it.

Harlen propped his head on a stair. "No. Run, Hyandai, don't do this." He said.

She looked back at him, and smiled. "I must, Harlen, you have protected me for days now, and it now falls to me." She said. "You cannot deny me my own moment of heroism."

He groaned as the door split asunder, wood shattering in all directions as the main sections fell to the chamber floor. Orcs poured in through the gap, dozens of them, and they ran for Hyandai.

As they crossed the large chamber, Hyandai wailed something out in elven, and held the ehladrel before her in a perfectly vertical position, and she opened her eyes cold upon the orcs. The orcs in the frontmost rank stumbled upon seeing her visage, and the smile that came to her full lips, and the emerald ice that was her eyes. One orc in a farther back row hurled a stone at her.

As the stone flew toward her, she began to dance, the ehladrel becoming an extension of her arms. The stone seemed to hit her in the head, as she turned away from it on its fast shallow arc. However, it seemed to get entangled in her red silken hair, it now was encased in her fiery tresses. The first few, brave, and apparently not overly bright orcs stepped forward, bringing up their spears threateningly.

With a frightening laugh, Hyandai cut the heads from the spears, sliding the ehladrel through the shafts like a razor over chin stubble. One of the heads popped up into the air. And the ehladrel tapped it gently as it floated at the top of its trajectory. The point bulleted off into the crowd of orcs, and there was a scream as it tore through some unfortunate's body in the back ranks. The three leading orcs stared at their decapitated polearms for only a moment before their own heads separated from their bodies. Moving with blinding speed, Hyandai stepped up and swung the blade in what looked like a negligent motion, and their heads simply toppled from their shoulders, followed by their slower-reacting bodies.

The orcs in the front, witnessing this, were shaken greatly, but being pressed forward by their companions behind them.

Harlen watched in amaze as his vision flickered between near blackness and something akin to normalcy. She danced around the front rank, the orcs being cautious and fearing the whirling blade in her hands. Here an orc clutched at his gut as his organs flooded from him, there an orc's brain slid out of his skull as the bone and flesh simply folded away from his head. The blade was nearly invisible and she was but a indistinct blur now. Suddenly, she was spinning on the toe of one foot, then the stone that had been hurled at her shot out of the vortex, striking a particularly big orc with enough force to pulverize his face and send him flipping back onto several of his smaller compatriots. She stopped a moment, the orcs watching her closely. She hurled the ehladrel at one of the orcs in the front rank. It spun toward this unfortunate, but halfway through the flight of the weapon, Hyandai collapsed onto the floor, and the orc deftly caught the ehladrel. The orcs stood for a moment, then every orc standing near the orc who caught the weapon started to fall.

The orc screamed in elven with its raspy, harsh voice, as it started moving with an agility no orc ever possessed. Orcs fell all around it, arms and legs flying from them along with heads and chunks of other meat and gore. As the orcs started regaining their wits, the ehladrel was flying again, landing in the hands of a particularly large orc, with bulging muscles, heavy armor and a massive steel helm on its disfigured head.

Using brute force, and the ehladrel as a single handed blade, it started to lay waste to the orcs around it, the crowd that was in the room was thinning visibly as orcs quickly lost heart and started to flee the killing field within the chamber. The floor was now slick with their flowing blood, and there were pitiable cries of the dead and dying marking time with Hyandai's beautiful and terrifying dance. The massive orc shrugged off several blows from his companions, their blades deflected by the armor on its body or simply letting the blows land and do damage. Hyandai ignored the wounds, not concerned if this body survived. She reveled in the power in this beast's arms, and screamed out a incoherent cry of victory as she felled another large orc, severing his head in a clean stroke of the blade.

A hurled javelin arced toward him from near the door, and the ehladrel, seemingly of its own accord, batted it into the air, and as it floated there, swatted it on the backswing, sending it rocketing into a nearby orc even as the weapon nearly bisected another orc vertically from crotch to neck.

The orcs finally broke, their morale shattered by a foe that they could not kill at a distance and who they could barely wound up close, and who could move between them like a wraith, stealing their very bodies and using them to further its own ends.

Screaming that the witch queen of the elves was among them, the orcs began fleeing the chamber. Hyandai cut down over a half dozen as they fled the room, hurling orcish and elven curses at the retreating figures as they bolted down the hallway. She flexed her massive arms and roared at the ceiling of the chamber. She then turned toward her body, still lying limp and forgotten on the floor.

Harlen watched as the huge orc walked over to Hyandai's body, and hovered over it, placing the ehladrel gently into her fingers. Then the massive creature turned her face to him. Suddenly, the orc collapsed, falling to one side as Hyandai rolled from beneath him. He was breathing, but he did not move.

She rolled to her feet and brought the blade down on the orc's skull. Then she looked at the bodies littering the floor and dispatched the few who were grievously injured but not yet dead. One wounded orc was trying to crawl to the door, Hyandai's cold eyes came to rest upon him. "You wish to leave?" She asked.

The orc turned with horror in his red eyes. "Please, witch, do not kill me, I will never raise my hands to you again." He begged. Her head tilted a little as she brought the ehladrel down and swept it along the floor. A spear lying there seemed to spin into the air and lance toward the orc with such force that it picked him up on its flat trajectory and impaled him against the door, the spear quivering from his chest and the light of life fading from this bloodshot eyes.

"I know you will not, foul beast." She said.

She turned back to Harlen, her eyes still shards of emerald ice. She looked at him appraisingly for a moment, then walked up to him. "Human, you are hurt." She said, her voice marked by near emotionlessness. She knelt beside him and set the ehladrel down. As soon as the weapon left her fingers, her eyes shifted and softened, and warmed. "Spirits save me." She said, looking over her shoulder at the room full of carnage. "Harlen, I'm sorry, oh please, forgive me." She said, kissing his hand.

He twitched a little and looked at her. Then smiled. "Forgive you what, my betrothed." He said. "For being a war goddess?"

She smiled timidly. "It was not me." She said, eyeing the ehladrel. "It was the heirloom."

She kissed his hand again. "You were always safe." She said, then looked at his leg. "We must move quickly." She said. Leaning toward the wound.

Harlen watched in fascination as she started to mend his leg. Her sweet breath cooled the wound, and the numbness that was settling on his thigh receded, and pain lanced through him again. He gasped at the pain, but it soon passed, as she mended bone, muscle and sinew. His eyes widened in fascination as he saw muscle flowing like water, filling the gap between their cords, and veins rejoining, and pulsing with blood again. The heavy bone of his thigh rejoined and fused, forming a whole piece again. Within a minute, the leg was all but mended, with only a long pink area of skin marking its former state.

Hyandai looked up at him, and kissed the thigh. There were deep black marks around her eyes, and her face looked drawn and thin, even the luster of her fiery hair and the emerald of her eyes was dulled. She looked old, and she looked worn.

He sat up, pain aching through his side, where the ehladrel had skinned him like a filleting knife. She rose to her feet slowly, thought she did stay upright, she swayed. "I cannot run, Harlen." She said.

Harlen stood up. He stooped and picked up the ehladrel, which she seemed to have forgotten. "I don't think we have to." He said, looking at the empty passage beyond the door. "I believe you've scared them all off." He smiled at her. "You scared me pretty well, myself." He could feel the weapon tingling in his hand, but it was just a minor feeling, and probably all in his head.

He put his arm around her and helped her to walk. He stopped again, and picked up his own sword, and Hyandai's bow. He sheathed the sword and put the bow beside his over his back. "Come, my beloved." He said. "We should probably go from here."

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4 Comments
Prolonged_Debut10Prolonged_Debut10over 6 years ago
Didn't

Cross all my T's with this one.

AnonymousAnonymousalmost 15 years ago
Huahh!

The right stuff! Now we're reading a story here folks!

msboy8msboy8almost 19 years ago
Incredible!

The tale of a battle that will long be told at campfires everywhere. You have reached the heights of all your other chapters and stories.

I have noticed a few mistakes; however. You need to get your grammer/pronouns settled.

AnonymousAnonymousalmost 19 years ago
fantastic

I look forward to each chapter in anticipation of the new things that you will put in them.

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