Darkness Will Prevail
A Fantasy One Shot
Music to accompany your reading:
'Anda! We are here, where the fate of the world will be decided, the Prophecy was correct,' Sebastian bellowed, his words swallowed by the prevailing winds. Sebastian clung to a crag of rock ahead of Anda, scrambling over the precipice to the plateau above.
Anda climbed, hand over hand, up the jagged rock face. Icicles formed on his eyelashes and in his adventurer's beard as the wind slapped him. He reached the summit and turned to see Rasque not far behind, the cast iron pan hanging off a string from his backpack spun in the gale. Anda dragged himself over the peak, his sword belt catching on a sharp ridge of stone. He unhooked it and pushed himself to stand, he gasped at the expanse that stretched before. There was nothing but flat stone as far as the eye could see. Behind was the world, but only a few of the tallest trees pierced the mists. Anda struggled to believe the world he knew, the world he was fighting to save, was down there. Had it been a dream?
Rasque reached the summit, 'Sebastian?' he said.
Sebastian was a few yards ahead standing statue still on the grey stone with grey clouds all around him. This was the edge of the world, all who had tried to go further had vanished, or so it was said in the taverns and academies. 'Sebastian!' Anda howled. He heard his own voice snatched by the unending storm. He reached for the scroll on his belt, the scroll that would save him, his friends, his family, his town, the whole world from damnation. He thought of his mother, his sister, of the friends he'd lost along the way. He gripped the rolled fabric tight. The scroll was a simple thing made from cloth and fraying at the edges written in a dead language and guarded the dead of a forgotten race. 'Sebastian!' he howled again.
His friend turned, smiling, 'We are here. The end is here. Can you not feel His presence? We are saved! The evil is contained!' The clouds overhead parted to reveal an obsidian sky, a winged man descending with spear in hand, crowned with a golden helmet plumed with a red mane, with two amber eyes piercing Anda to his very soul. The seraph's armour radiated its own light. 'He is here!' Sebastian fell to his knees, hands outstretched to the divine manifestation hovering over him.
Anda sprinted, shouting, 'Sebastian! Get up! It's an illusion like all the others we have seen on the way, do you not remember?! Rasque, quick we have to –' but it was too late. The fabric of the winged man rippled and, Calgilar, a being of thorned flesh and amber eyes replaced the resplendent angel, the helmet melted into a crown of horns, the spear blackened and lanced downward, splitting Sebastian from head to toe. Anda's friend, who had journeyed with him since home, lost his smile and leaned from one side to the other before collapsing in a heap as the spear was retracted, his death over in the blink of an eye.
'You hasten your doom by coming here, mortals,' the Enemy landed on his feet, sickeningly gentle at ten foot tall with wings of leathery skin. The rest of him was scaled if it wasn't thorned and had a pearlescent quality in hues of red and black.
Anda dropped his pack and reached for his sword and unrolled the scroll. Rasque was beside him, his twin swords in hand, pack discarded. Anda felt the chill of the wind cut through his cloak and shirt as it twisted up his back. He shivered and began to read, 'Traitor of ancient days. Cause of all man's strife. Enemy of the good and bane of life, I banish thee!' rings and lances of light burst from the scroll, ascending to banish the clouds and thread through the sky and then plummeted to encase Calgilar the Fiend. Seven rings of golden light hovered around Calgilar as seven spears surrounded him. It works, I am the Chosen, Anda thought. The clouds evaporated and there nothing above but pure darkness with no sun or moon, no stars or planets; the Void, Calgilar's Domain.
'Old tricks,' Calgilar hissed, revealing his arrowhead-like teeth. With a flick of his wings the holy prison shattered and he marched toward Anda and Rasque.
Anda balked and staggered backwards. He hurried to read more, 'Fiend that stalks the night. Evil that lingers. Corrupter of hearts, I command your doom!' the scroll illuminated again in blinding stakes of brilliance. The shards leapt from the cloth and wound about Anda and Rasque's swords causing the steel to glow white. Anda felt a warmth radiating from his blade, the icicles in his beard melting.
Calgilar sniggered, his lipless mouth turning upwards in one corner. He lunged forward, the black tip of his spear aiming to skewer the scroll. Anda twisted, stashing the scroll in its pouch on his belt and deflecting the blow with his blade. The Fiend spun, his spear a blur. Rasque blocked with his left and thrust with his right. Small shards of obsidian fell away as the now holy swords chipped away at the essence of Calgilar's spear. The evil growled, his amber eyes grew hot, and he unleashed a torrent of attacks against Rasque, pushing the man to the edge of the mountain he'd just climbed. Anda chased after, driving the shaft of his sword into Calgilar's side.
The Fiend halted, Rasque teetering on the edge, to regard Anda. 'As I said, old tricks,' he grabbed Anda's sword, the blade crumpled against the Fiend's intact skin, and tossed it down the mountain. He kicked Rasque over the edge, his scaled foot snapping both swords as Anda's friend attempted to block the attack. Rasque's screams echoed, caught on the swirling winds. Calgilar advanced on Anda, 'Your Prophecy has failed, Chosen One.' He skewered Anda on his spear and hoisted him into the air with a triumphant roar.
Anda held tight to the spear shaft as he slid down it. A cacophony of inhuman elation, all snarls and howls, erupted around him. His vision faded, his grip loosened, and Anda felt himself slip away.
Calgilar planted his Spear of Triumph into the rock of the plateau, the failed hero's body a crushed rose upon the stalk. A crystalline barrier shattered overhead and a thousand thousand lesser fiends descended to ravage the world. The Arch-Fiend reached up and pried the scroll from the young man's belt, holding it between thumb and forefinger like a delicate orchid petal. He unfurled the archaic scroll that had bested him last time, so long ago. A trifle of a thing, brittle and pathetic. No great weapon, nothing to command legions, merely a few incantations to summon forth the dregs of a power long spent. Calgilar sneered and tore the ancient cloth in half, each skittering break through the desert dry fibres flaring with a burst of divinity. The last of the relic split apart and a fine gold dust flittered to lay at Calgilar's scaled feet. 'Where you belong,' he stamped on the crumbs of his primordial nemesis.
Strands of light crept from under his foot, latticing and then forming a circle beneath him. A pillar of golden wonder erupted beneath Calgilar's foot, widening until it surrounded him. 'No! NO!' the Fiend howled. The lustrous beam pierced the sable firmament summoning the clouds once more. His lesser demons and fiends shrieked and fled back into the Void. The fog crawled across the sky, those caught in its misty tendrils reduced to screaming ash.
Calgilar made to move but thick vines of pure light had grappled his wrists, his legs, his neck. 'I will not suffer your indignant judgment any longer,' he strained but it was futile. The rock beneath his feet began to hum and turn fluid. Calgilar sank into the stone, sinking into a pool of holy amber. 'I promise I will escape again and there is no scroll, no vestige of yourself to save your precious kin next time. You will fail!' the Fiend sank beneath the stone, the column of light vanished, the sky sealed once more. The few lesser demons who remained would be hunted in time. The two halves of the scroll drifted to land on the plateau, the last glow of power fading.
Thanks for reading.