Cheered, Adira turned to her soot-smeared comrades. "Shift those other crystals and crack them open! We'll see if the creature thanks us or eats us!"
Heartened by success, pirates and pine warriors grappled the eleven remaining crystals across the ring of fire, then splashed on handfuls of water. All the crystals split and the precious fluid soaked in. The monster looked healthy and happy as a summer cornstalk.
"Adira! Johan wishes to speak!" Wilemina, with her arm in a sling, stood guard.
Adira walked to Johan's side. Framed in golden glass, the triply horned red-black emperor looked like a djinn trapped in a bottle.
The emperor piped, "Will you renege your word and refuse to free me?"
Adira snorted and kicked the crystal. "I never promised to free you, Homhead. Dare not accuse me of crawfishing on a pledge. I can name two hundred Palmyrans who died because you were discontent in your rocky homeland. We'll lug you home in your box. For now, don't go away." Tapping a finger on the smooth top, the pirate queen turned to go.
But with the crystals sundered, Adira's pirates and Mag-fire's foresters gathered for the next step. Jedit Ojanen loomed over the amber trap like a primitive god.
Rumbling like distant thunder, the tiger said, "I've a question, Johan. What of the prophecy of None, One, and Two?"
"Here?" The devil-bedecked emperor glowered behind glass walls. "I know somewhat. Shauku blithered about her cleverness. The people of the pines were told by a gibbering seer the time of prophecy had come, were they not? That they must reclaim their ancestral lands and heritage?"
"Yes!" said Magfire. "The prophecy foretold-"
"A sham," interrupted Johan. "Shauku visited your seer with a vision, same as she gulled me in the Western Wastes with visions of her palace. Nonsense about history and ancestral pride was mere pap to lure you north within her grasp. You were herded here like cattle for slaughter."
While the foresters digested this shocking news, the pensive
Heath asked, "Why did Shauku imprison you? What was her intent?"
"I remember you." Johan's black eyes narrowed. "You shot an arrow into my breast on the lake at Palmyra."
"Had I known it would prove ineffectual," said the archer coldly, "I would have poisoned it with venom of pit scorpions."
"You'll regret… regret…" Suddenly distracted, Johan shook his horned head. The heroes of Palmyra and Arboria stared, for never before had the tyrant shown befuddlement or hesitation. Johan mashed his hands against his eyes. Clearly his skull throbbed. Adira wondered if the emperor had run out of fresh air. If so, was she obligated to liberate him now and punish him later?
A piercing whistle cut the smoky air. Down a murky passage raced one of Magfire's pickets. "Shauku comes with legionnaires! Not a hundred yards behind!"
Pandemonium.
Adira Strongheart bawled, "Stick together! Heath, find us two boltholes where we can fight clear! Any direction will do! Jedit, scoot Johan's prison behind those boulders! Partner up!" Between tunnels and the littered cavern floor, a thousand hiding places beckoned, but they would give advantage to legionnaires as much as pirates. As Adira orchestrated a line of defense, teams of black-clad terrors charged from the haze. Battle was on.
Eschewing any partner, Jedit Ojanen leaped to meet black-hiked swords with wicked black claws. Leaping at a pair of Akron Legionnaires, Jedit swiped left and right to force one or the other back, lest one gut him while the other was distracted. The soldiers were trained to stand their ground and work in pairs, yet the quick ferocity of the man-killing tiger knocked one man against a boulder, so he skidded and fell. Immediately, Jedit Ojanen whirled to kill the other.
Looming like a behemoth, Jedit shot both paws like clusters of knives. The soldier's back slammed a boulder, but he kept his feet. Perhaps too well. Claws punctured leather and ripped long tears that half-undressed the man and raked his skin with stripes of blood. Still the soldier gamely rammed gloved fists and sword hilt to crash under Jedit's jaw. The tiger's teeth clacked, and he bit his tongue. Another brutal slam actually shoved Jedit back, so he momentarily lost track of his foe. He paid a double price as a painful jolt crashed on one eye and an ice-cold slice behind slashed his upper thigh.
Enraged, Jedit scooched and leaped to escape the returning sword swipe. As he landed, he didn't hesitate, for that invited attack. Squatting like a bullfrog, Jedit lunged and tackled the wounded man before him. The legionnaire hammered his sword's diamond-shaped skull-popper on Jedit's head with both hands. The blows stung so hard Jedit saw stars. Still, straddling him, Jedit Ojanen knew where every squirming limb must be. Opening a jaw full of razor fangs, the tiger bit savagely into the soldier's left biceps, slapped one paw on the man's chest for leverage, then humped his powerful neck and wrenched backward. With a gruesome grinding and snapping, the tiger ripped the man's arm from the shoulder.
Again Jedit paid a price for his single-minded attack. From his left, the surviving legionnaire whacked him across fur and skin and muscle, and almost creased his spine. Spitting out the arm, Jedit ducked, whipped a half-circle, and cannoned into the legionnaire. The soldier was bashed so hard against another boulder he lost his breath and almost his sword. The tiger warrior gave him no chance to recover. Scooping both hands under the man's crotch, Jedit slammed him headfirst into the rock so hard his neck and spine snapped in a dozen places.
Similar fights boiled all around. Salted amid the brawl ran a perpetual argument.
"We must pull out!" hissed Magfire, swinging her spike left. "I told you these caverns are unlucky!"
"We can't retreat with a job half done!" snarled Adira Strongheart, slashing right. "Johan's still alive!"
"Legionnaires know each other's whereabouts!" reminded Magfire in her husky whisper. "Killing one will fetch down all fifty! We'll be massacred!"
"Shut up and fight the enemy!"
Completely forgotten, the cosmic horror bubbled with new life. Freshened and strengthened by luscious nectar, the monster fought for its own freedom in its alien, half-mad fashion.
Nearby, Johan suffered inside his crystalline prison. Having once read the dreams of the star-lost beast, Johan now found his skull throbbing and reeling as the alien marshaled its thoughts. Other-worldly ideas and laments and pleas and phrases surged through his mind like seawater through a sinking ship. An apt analogy, for Johan felt his sanity ebbing as a thousand incomprehensible images blared in his brain.
Then, one stark truth shone like a beacon.
A shooting star.
Johan fixated on the picture. A rock. Falling through an infinite black void. With nothing to compare against, the wizard could not guess its size. It might have been a pebble, or a boulder, or larger. Straining to understand, Johan watched the pebble glow from dark dusky gray to a warm orange. Then a fiery red. Then white-blue. Then pure white, so bright and sparkling it was painful to see.
White hot?
Trapped in the crystal with the throbbing thoughts of the cosmic horror, Johan fought to think. How could a rock become hot? Ah! The rock had become a falling star!
Falling where? wondered Johan. And in the same instant he knew the answer. The monster was trapped and could never win free. Overwhelming despair wracked Johan. This landing place had proven hostile. The monster was imprisoned by painful fire. It would rather die than be a prisoner. So, with a tiny reserve of strength, it sought oblivion.