It sounds as if you’ve been everywhere, Myrana.”
They were lounging around a campfire. It was the night of Amoni’s kill, and their bellies were full. The day’s progress had been hampered by a wrab attack, three of the bloodsucking winged serpents hunting together, and although the comrades had defeated the creatures, most of them had suffered at least one bite. In the late afternoon they had spotted an oasis in the distance, and they had pushed on through the gathering dusk until they reached it and ascertained that it was safe to stop at. Filling themselves and their skins with fresh water, they made camp a short distance away. A fire, fed by downed branches and fronds from oasis trees, held off the night’s cold.
Myrana and Aric sat close together, and she had been telling him of her travels with her family’s trading caravan. “Not really,” she said. “I have seen much of the Tablelands, it’s true. But nothing beyond those, and there is much else to the world.”
“I suppose. It’s just that when you’ve never been anywhere, like me, even a few journeys seem like a lot.”
“You’ll find more adventure, Aric.”
“Do you think so?”
“I sense a need in you. Perhaps one that’s just been awakened, but a powerful one just the same. You have spent your life in one place, but now that you’ve tasted the outside world I don’t think you’ll stop exploring it.”
“You might be right.” That simple fact meant more to him than she could have known. He had his small circle of acquaintances in Nibenay, but most strangers he met were off-putting, distrustful of half-elves. For someone to accept him so readily—and not just accept him but seemingly to understand him—was a rare occurrence indeed.
Rare, and wonderful.
He was about to say something else when a distant rumbling sound caught his attention. “What’s that?”
“Sounds like a storm,” Sellis said.
“A rainstorm?”
Sellis and Amoni were on their feet, peering into the darkness. “That’s what it sounds like.”
Aric sprang up and gripped Myrana’s hand, helping her stand. Real rainstorms, like true friends, were so uncommon that he remembered every one he had experienced.
“Do you think it’ll reach us?”
“It seems to be headed this way.”
Aric still had Myrana’s hand clutched in his. She squeezed. “Ready to get wet, Aric?”
“I can’t wait.”
He didn’t have to wait long. The storm still sounded as if it was some distance away, but without warning, drenching water flooded down from above. The campfire guttered and went out. Aric and the others were instantly soaked, head to foot. For a few moments, the water was refreshing. Aric tilted his head toward the sky and opened his mouth, letting it run down his throat. But soon, with the sun having long since set and the night’s chill settled in, the combination of the fire’s absence and wet skin and clothing left him freezing.
At the same time, his body seemed to be rebelling from within, as if all the moisture inside him was trying to push out through his flesh. Already dimpled from the cold and wet, he saw his veins swell his skin, pores opening, liquid starting to seep out.
“It’s not a storm!” Sellis cried. “It’s a beast!”
“What manner of beast?” Aric yelled. He had to scream to be heard over the pounding downpour.
“A rain paraelemental beast!” Myrana shouted back.
The rain, or what had seemed at first like rain, passed on, but that only meant that the beast itself had reached them. It rose in the moonlight to a height of almost twenty feet, looking like a mobile, sentient waterfall, spray curling where it touched the ground.
But an ordinary waterfall didn’t have a sinister purpose, or roam about the desert. A rain paraelemental sucked up whatever moisture it could find. It had to have been summoned by a worshipper, then escaped his control, been released, or destroyed its summoner. The beast skirted around them and went to the oasis, giving the traveler’s a moment’s respite. Aric was shivering uncontrollably. They all were, he saw. At least his skin was no longer oozing, for the moment.
“It’ll be back,” Sellis said. “As soon as it drains the oasis.”
“How do we fight it?”
“I don’t know that we can.”
Ruhm grabbed up his club without waiting for the thing to come back. They had camped far enough from the oasis to allow other creatures who might want its water to approach it without having to go through them, but near enough to make use of its pool in the morning before they moved on. Ruhm ran toward it, and when he reached the traveling waterfall, he swung his huge weapon at it.
Aric, Amoni, Sellis and Myrana followed Ruhm, and Aric had almost reached him when the club struck the water. The water buckled under the blow, but then straightened again. A jet shot out, hitting Ruhm with enough force to knock him back a dozen feet and flatten him against the ground. Most men, Aric knew, would have been crushed. Only the goliath’s great strength allowed him to survive it.
He didn’t know that a half-elf would. But he had a big metal broadsword, and the beast had hurt his friend. He swung the sword in a wide, flat arc. It sliced through the water, and he thought he heard a change in the pitch of its liquid voice, as if he had caused it pain.
The creature turned a jet of water against him, as it had Ruhm. He reeled under its force, shoved back, collided with Myrana. As the pair fell, he managed to turn so that he landed on her face down, arms and legs spread out around her, shielding her from the worst of the water’s impact and taking it on his back instead of his chest and face.
The beast might kill him, but if he could, he would keep it from killing Myrana too.
Aric heard his companions shouting and fighting, and then he heard another sound, one he didn’t know. It sounded vaguely like a giant sheet of fabric being torn, or perhaps hundreds tearing at once. He couldn’t even guess at what it was.
When it ended, the force of the water smashing against his back was gone. He raised his head from where it nestled next to Myrana’s. “Are you hurt?”
She blinked, droplets clinging to her eyelashes, and offered him a tentative smile. “I won’t be, if you get off me.”
“Sorry,” he said. He went to hands and knees, careful not to put any of them on her, and moved away, then rose unsteadily to his feet. He was bruised, felt as if he had been dragged behind runaway kanks for several leagues, but he didn’t think anything was broken.
When he turned, the beast was gone. The oasis pool was almost dry, with only puddles remaining, and even the trees looked as if a fire had passed by, evaporating any moisture from them. Bits of green remained at the ends of their leaves, but in the soft moonlight that was barely visible.
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know,” Amoni said. She was just now sitting up. “It knocked me down, same as it did you. With the water rushing into my face I couldn’t see a thing.”
“I guess you all weakened it enough,” Sellis said. “When I struck, it dissipated almost at once.”
“Lucky,” Ruhm said. “All lucky to be alive.”
“You’re right, Ruhm,” Aric said. “And thank you, Sellis. However you defeated it, we all owe you.”
“No, Ruhm’s correct, I got lucky too.”
“We should s-s-see if we can g-get a fire lit again,” Aric stammered. With the adrenalin and violent motion of the fight behind them, they were left wet and cold. In minutes, the water would freeze, and the beast would have killed them anyway.
“The fuel’s s-soaked,” Myrana pointed out. Her teeth, like Aric’s, were starting to click together.
“Perhaps,” Sellis said. “But if the b-beast sucked enough moisture from them, then p-perhaps …”
He hurried to the far side of the oasis, away from where the beast had turned to fight them. In what seemed just moments, Aric saw the glow of embers, then flame lick the darkness. “C-come,” he managed, grabbing Myrana’s hand once more. The water had very nearly frozen. Less than a minute to go, he believed, and they would die where they stood, not falling until the next day’s sun melted them.