rss1.14 – Fight
Carda stepped into the entry, barring Rayn’s way. “Get out, Mistral.”
Rayn stepped up to Carda and grinned maniacally in his face. “Are you going to make me?” He planted his right hand in Carda’s chest and shoved him with a flash of green light. Carda flew backward ten feet and crashed to the floor.
Rayn laughed. He spun his wrist and a dagger appeared, held lightly between his fingertips. The blade was a foot long and serrated along both edges. Balancing it on his palm, he sauntered toward Carda.
Carda scrambled to his feet and tried to summon his staff. Through the gossamer layers of space, he thought he felt it—but it refused to come to his hand. He backed away from Rayn and tried a second time. Again it felt on the cusp of responding, but failed at the last second.
Carda halted his retreat at the doorway of the lounge. If he allowed Rayn any further into the house, his parents and Xironi would all be in range of that knife. Steeling himself, Carda let a spark of spatial power flow into his left hand and held it in his fist.
“The more I see of it, the nicer this place looks,” said Rayn conversationally. “Too bad it’s about to get really messed up.” Suddenly he flicked his wrist and the dagger flew at Carda.
Carda ducked and simultaneously hurled the stored energy outward. Rayn’s dagger entered the resulting space curvature and embedded itself in the ceiling.
“Nice trick,” smirked Rayn as he raised a hand, compressing space and pulling the knife free. “I see you’ve been practicing. Try this one.” He again threw the dagger, but this time it was accompanied by a burst of green power.
The knife left Rayn’s hand, vanished, and reappeared to Carda’s right, continuing its deadly flight from another angle. Carda dropped just in time; the blade sliced a chunk out of his shirt, grazing the skin.
Rayn retrieved the dagger again before Carda could even rise. His face continued to sport a sickly grin. “Killing you will be so easy. I hope you know that I’m just messing with you. Letting everybody think that the Strider of Chronos had a fighting chance.”
Carda rolled to his feet. The cut on his chest burned, and he could feel the warm trickle of blood beginning. But Rayn’s words had reminded him that he was the Strider of Chronos. Rayn had no power over time. Why not use it against him?
Before Carda could do more than ignite the purple lightning in his right hand, Rayn ran at him and slashed at his face with the dagger. Carda threw up both arms to shield his face—
And found his staff in his hands. Rayn’s dagger glanced off it, and Carda brought it down with a whistling crack on Rayn’s head. Rayn staggered backwards, looking surprised. Carda followed it up with a lateral half-twist that swung the staff around to strike Rayn in the side. Rayn recoiled, snarling, and threw his dagger again. It vanished.
Carda grabbed onto the timestream with his right hand and rode it forward twenty seconds. He dropped back into reality in time to see Rayn going after his future self with his own staff. Carda darted forward and hit Rayn across the head from behind. Rayn stumbled and fell. Carda tossed his own staff to his future self, snatched the other staff out of Rayn’s hand, and jumped back in time twenty seconds.
He was just in time to narrowly avoid being stabbed in the back by the dagger, which had reappeared behind him. He ducked it, blocked Rayn’s attempt to recapture it, and then grabbed it himself. Rayn grabbed Carda’s staff instead. They had a brief struggle, Carda gripping the staff with one hand and Rayn with two. Then Rayn managed to tear the staff away from him.
Rayn had no idea how to fight with a staff. He swung it like a club and charged at Carda.
At that moment Carda’s past self appeared, hit Rayn over the head, shuffled the weapons around, and vanished.
From the kitchen, Xironi cheered.
Ben crept down the stairs and peered through the banisters. He could hear thumps and yells from downstairs, and it made him curious.
Crouching on a step, the little dragon gazed forward in time. He saw a strange man with black hair and a knife fighting with Carda. He saw Xironi attack the strange man, saw the strange man hurt her. He saw the strange man hurt Carda.
Ben hissed through his teeth and scrambled the rest of the way down the stairs.
Rayn charged into the kitchen, where Xironi, David, and Abigail stood together, peering through the doorway at the battle. They fell back before him, but Rayn dove at Xironi, teeth bared in a triumphant grimace.
Xironi swept one hand upward and decked Rayn from five feet away. He staggered and caught himself against the wall, but the blow had done little more than surprise him. “Aw, Xironi,” he said, “don’t tell me you’re taking his side.”
“Duh,” she retorted, green fire flickering from both hands.
Rayn straightened, and the hand holding his knife burst into flame. His wrist flicked, and the blade vanished. It reappeared halfway through Abigail’s wrist.
She screamed and doubled up, grasping the knife’s handle. “Don’t pull it out!” yelled Xironi.
“No, don’t!” Carda yelled, having just appeared in the doorway and witnessed Rayn’s deed. “The blade’s serrated!”
David looked at the knife in his wife’s arm, then gaped at Rayn, who was laughing.
“You guys are so pathetic,” said Rayn.
Carda snarled and moved his left hand in a circle. He reached through space, gently grasped the blade, and pulled it out of its resting place in his mother’s arm.
“Aw, spoil all my fun,” said Rayn, reaching toward Carda.
Carda felt Rayn’s spatial power grab the knife. For a moment they struggled—ten feet apart, yet still arm wrestling—then Rayn twisted the knife away and threw it several miles. Carda lost track of it. He released the power, then aimed a spatial blow at Rayn’s head. Rayn did the same and their energies collided in midair, expending themselves in a green flash.
Xironi pulled a dishcloth from a drawer, hurried to Abigail and tied it tightly around her arm as a tourniquet. Abigail was panting and half-sobbing, but she was not looking at her wound; her eyes were fixed on her son and his enemy.
“You have to get out of here,” Xironi whispered to Abigail and David. “Get to a hospital.”
“Can you… move us?” said David hoarsely.
Xironi frowned at David, wondering why she hadn’t thought of that. “Well… yes.” She pulled space, folded it around them, and pushed the whole package through the fabric of matter to the hospital downtown.
Meanwhile, Carda and Rayn were fistfighting with spatial power, still several steps apart, but dealing blows to each other just the same. “You know,” panted Rayn, “even if you win, you’re still going to die.”
Carda blocked an uppercut and dealt a low blow to Rayn’s breastbone, but took a jab to the chin and fell backward through the doorway. His back slammed into the floor of the hub room. He struggled to hands and knees, and had to stop there, because the world was black and the white stars in his vision kept him from seeing which way was up.
Rayn strode in, grinning and wiping blood from his mouth. Xironi dashed over and leaped at him from behind, but Rayn whipped up his right hand to create a spatial shield. Xironi was repelled as though she had hit a wall.
Her distraction, however, gave Carda enough time to regain his feet. As Carda turned to face his attacker, he absentmindedly noticed Ben peering around the foot of the staircase. The dragon’s yellow eyes were narrowed to slits, and his head followed Rayn’s every move.
Rayn turned back to Carda and put a shimmering green barrier between them. “Try to get through that, Mister Chronostrider.”
Carda clenched his right hand and drove it through the barrier. The field collapsed as time-power touched it, and Carda landed his punch in Rayn’s left eye.
Rayn staggered backward, shocked, then ground his teeth and lunged forward. He lashed out with his fist, again striking his quarry from across the room. Carda flew backward and had the bad luck to collide with one of the support posts that ringed the hub. He slumped to the floor, stunned. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard his enemy’s footsteps as Rayn moved forward to finish his work.
What…? That chiming sound was more than the ringing in Carda’s head. It sounded like an alarm clock going off. He opened his eyes to see little Ben entrenched between his master and Rayn, the chimes on the back of his head ringing as they bristled. Carda felt a new stab of fear. Ben was a time elemental; he could not defend against Rayn’s spatial attacks.
Rayn laughed. “What a cute little lizard, Carda! Frankly, I prefer cats.” He drew back a foot to kick Ben aside.
The chimes deepened a note. They sounded like wind chimes. They deepened again. Now they sounded like a grandfather clock’s gong. And Ben grew into a black scaly dragon the size of a draft horse.
“How dare you assault my master!” growled Ben in a voice like a brass gong. He swiped at Rayn with one massive clawed forepaw. The Strider jerked backward, narrowly avoiding disembowelment.
“How do you have a dragon?” Rayn shrieked. “How is that even possible? There are no dragons here!”
“He’s not a dragon,” Carda wheezed, climbing to his feet. “He’s a time elemental.”
Rayn glared at the dragon, and threw out both hands. A wave of green fire flashed from his fingertips and knocked Ben sprawling. Ben struggled to rise, his claws gouging the wood floor and his tail knocking over furniture.
Rayn laughed maniacally, and raised both hands above his head. Between them, a huge green fireball began to coalesce.
“No!” yelled Xironi. She dashed out of the kitchen with one fist outstretched, walloping Rayn in the kidneys from three feet away.
Rayn arched backward and stumbled to his knees, dropping his fireball on the floor, where it burned through the flooring and vanished, leaving a black crater with smoldering edges.
Ben inhaled.
At the same time, Carda gathered up a handful of space, intending to imprison Rayn while he was down.
Ben exhaled, breathing a bright violet bolt of lightning at Rayn. The lightning and Carda’s spatial power hit Rayn at the same time. They wrapped around him in a whirlwind, each seeking to ground itself through his body. But Rayn was not the Strider of Chronos. He could not absorb temporal power and spatial power at the same time, and he lacked the protective medallion.
The power exploded outward. Rayn fell apart like a deck of cards, his body splitting into multiple translucent copies and flying outward on the rim of the explosion. In the place where he had been standing, Carda glimpsed the smoky black shape of a shadow spirit. It darted this way and that, then faded from sight. Its host was gone.
“Carda,” said Xironi shakily, “what did you DO to him?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, staring at the spot where the shadow spirit had vanished. “I think we hit him with both time and space at once…”
“We did,” said Ben, also looking at the place where Rayn had been. “It made him… shatter.”
Xironi shuddered. “I’ve heard of things like that. It’s very rare, because hardly anyone has the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the right time with the right enemies.” A pause. “I imagine Rayn’s really uncomfortable right now.”
“You mean he’s still alive?” said Carda.
“Of course he is,” said Ben. “He’s just… broken to bits. We won’t have to worry about him for a while.”
Carda looked up at Ben. “How did you grow like that, anyway? And since when can you talk?”
“I’m a time elemental,” said the dragon, baring his metallic teeth in a cheeky smile. Each one was square, like the teeth of a gear. “I wound my age forward. This is how I’ll look in about twenty years. As for talking: at my correct age, I’m still very young. I only know one word.”
“What word?”
Ben nudged Carda’s medallion. “You have to ask?”
Carda smiled wryly. “By the way, sorry about that. But I needed the medallion.”
Ben’s orange eyes half-closed. “You could have asked first.”
Carda patted the elemental’s scaly nose. “I didn’t know you could understand me. Next time, I will.”
“Hah!” scoffed Ben. “There won’t be a next time! I’m hiding my stash so well you’ll never find it.” He began to shrink, and Carda felt a ripple of temporal energy. “By the way,” said Ben, his voice now an octave higher, “try talking to me the way you talk to any other person. I can understand you. I might even shiny teach you shiny a few new shiny things shiny.” He reached his former size, and looked sadly up at Carda.
Carda picked him up. “All right. I will.” Then they both looked at the deep scratches in the wood floor made by Ben’s adult-sized claws. “When you’re full-grown,” Carda told him, “you’ll sleep outside.”
“Shiny,” answered Ben, looking skeptical.
Xironi walked up to Carda and rubbed Ben’s head. “And here I thought you’d never be useful.”
Ben reared up on his hind legs. “Shiny shiny shiny!” he scolded her indignantly.
Xironi laughed. “I didn’t mean to offend you! Tell you what. Next time I go to the store, I’ll buy you the shiniest jewelry I can find. How’s that?”
“Shiny!” said Ben, leaping to her shoulder and rubbing his head against her hair.
Then Xironi turned and hugged Carda. He hugged her back, and they stood that way for a few moments, feeling the fright and tension slowly drain out of them.
Carda suddenly stiffened. “Oh my gosh. Mom!” He ran into the kitchen, then returned, looking panicked. “Where’re Mom and Dad?”
“I sent them to St. Matthias downtown,” said Xironi. “Teleported them, I mean.”
Carda tried to summon his cellphone. It took three tries, but finally it appeared in his hand. Then he dialed his father’s number.
Xironi retreated to the hub lounge and collapsed into a cushy seat. Ben jumped from her shoulder to the chair back, where he stretched out and closed his eyes.
A moment later, Carda appeared. “Dad said Mom’s okay. She’s getting her arm patched up right now. The knife missed the major nerves and arteries, but there’s a lot of tissue damage. She’s getting stitches.” He flopped in an armchair across from Xironi’s. “Man, I’m tired.”
“This has been a heck of a morning,” agreed Xironi. “I don’t know how I’m going to fix the floor in there…”
Silence descended. Xironi closed her eyes for what felt like a second, and when she opened them, Carda was asleep in his chair and the sunbeam in the east window had narrowed to a sliver. Almost noon.
She tried to stand up, but the adrenaline rush of the morning had left her drained. She sank back into the chair and closed her eyes again.
They awoke two hours later. Xironi was stiff and sore, and staggered into the kitchen to find something for lunch. Carda’s injuries had stiffened him as well, so that he could hardly sit up. He groaned and rubbed the sides of his head, feeling every bruise as a deep, throbbing ache.
Xironi brought him a sandwich, and he ate it carefully, trying not to move his arms or mouth too much. “I think I’m going to go home,” he told her after a moment. “I want a hot bath.”
“I hope your folks go easy on you now,” said Xironi. “They’ve seen you in action, and they’ve seen what you’re up against.”
Carda rolled his eyes. “They’ll find something to tell me off about. Just watch.” He finished eating, cautiously summoned green fire to his left hand, and teleported home in a swirl of sparks.
Xironi looked at the newly-vacant armchair and sighed. “And now I get to clean up,” she remarked to Ben, still curled up on the chair. “And I want you to help me.”
Ben made a sound like, “Awwww.”
