Colin Tabor - The Fall of Ossard

The very air began to chill and become brittle, as if haunted by Death’s stale breath. The tension rose as more and more people stopped fighting to focus on a threat they felt, yet that remained unseen.

Nervous, Baruna shifted beside me, so I reached out to take her hand. Before they met, the gap between them blazed into life with a fat and flaring spark. She started, but I grabbed her hand.

I whispered, “Please Schoperde, I’ll give anything to save these people from whatever doom stirs.”

Power began to gather in my soul, seeping through into my body as it came into our world. I worked to control it, wrestling with it while the air around me buzzed and snapped.

Baruna turned to me. “Please, you must stop him!”

But I barely heard. I was lost in my efforts to manage the power flooding into me.

For the briefest of moments, I risked a glance at Anton to see if he was close to finishing his task. I could see his spell gathering in the celestial, some kind of fiery coil, it rank with power.

I called, “The Inquisitor brings death, get out of the square!” and my voice rang out over a sea of people looking for a threat they felt, but couldn’t see.

The Inquisitor replied into my mind, “You can’t save them!”

He was probably right, but I had to try!

Seig Manheim stood at the heart of the bloodstained square, his torn battle colours hanging limp from the pole strapped to his back. He could also sense the strength of Anton’s casting, seeing him call, “Retreat! Get out of the square!”

The disbelief was plain on his warriors’ faces: They were of Kave and had the skills and numbers to fight. They could finish this, win it, and take the city. There was no need for flight!

“Get out!” he demanded, his voice booming.

While some wondered at his wisdom, his fellow priests worked at breaking the curses still plaguing so many of their brethren.

He bellowed, “Retreat!” and something close to fear edged his voice.

His tone saw others take up the call, while the alarm on his face washed away doubts.

I realised that he knew what was coming; he could read Anton’s casting.

All the while, the Reformers of the new saints kept pushing into the square at the Kavists’ rear. Unaware of the coming danger, they were blocking the Kavists’best line of retreat.

My eyes began to sting, my stomach knot, and my legs cramp. There was going to be much death here, too much.

I had to do something!

Anton commanded from his belltower, “Rally to your priests, the heretics run!”

And the Loyalists charged to attack the Kavists in their confusion.

Anton grinned from above as his eyes came aglow with power.

Baruna begged, “Do something!”

I lifted my arms as the font within me boiled. “The Inquisitor brings death, get out of the square!” This time my message was powered by the energy that filled me. I didn’t just think it or hear it, but felt it thrum through my heart, bones, and flesh.

In a moment, thousands of eyes locked onto me.

Someone yelled, “The Forsaken Lady cries doom!”

Seig and his priests bellowed, “Retreat!”

And Baruna called, “She’s trying to save you!”

Finally, the Reformers pushing into the square behind the Kavists began to slow and the first of them turned and fled.

Despite all that was happening, the Church’s Loyalists continued to fight on. Unknown to them, their priests fell back behind them to head for the Cathedral.

The Kavists were mostly caught between the Reformers and the Loyalists. They were never going to get away.

I called out, “This way!” repeating the message in the celestial.

And every Kavist heard me.

Those with no better choice ran for me. They forgot the jammed streets, the mobs, and their foes and fallen comrades; they just ran for the opera house.

I clicked my fingers on both hands.

A wind rose up as a sudden squall to gust across the square. It knocked people over and tore at banners, before blustering past to punch open the main doors of the opera house.

The first Kavists came sprinting up the steps followed by hundreds of others. Sef was amongst them. “Juvela, you must come inside!”

I shook my head. “Go!” And my perception was lost to him.

I searched the Inquisitor’s gathering power, trying to understand its weave.

What was it?

I held my hands out, my fingers tingling. I was about to begin casting, but I still didn’t know what to do to or how to protect us.

And then the Inquisitor finished brewing his magic.

His words spilled across the square like a mountain’s deep rumble to make the ground shake and draw dust from buildings, “May they be cleansed by your fury!”

Silence…

The smoke-heavy sky started to flare and spark, as though the night’s stars had come out early to discuss the bloody events below. The white and yellow lights only got brighter, their heat growing.

I looked closely, my perception straddling both worlds. Something was up there working to nurture it, whatever it was.

Angels!

Krienta’s winged servants laboured without question, using their sacred swords to cut into the very fabric of our world. They opened a tear between it and the third; the elemental.

What I could see was elemental fire!

The anger of that primal place boiled through, and from there it spilled to begin its long fall to the ground. It let out a chorus of fiery screams as it scorched the very air.

I had to hurry!

I still didn’t know what I was casting, but I could feel the beginnings of its power flow.

Someone in the square yelled, “A miracle!”

The falling fire wasn’t a divine gift, it wouldn’t know friend from foe. It would incinerate everybody.

The Kavists continued to flood past.

Baruna said, “We should get inside!”

“Go, Baruna, I’ve got to cast.”

She looked to the sky. “We need shelter!”

“Go, I have to see this through.”

My fingers stung as though pierced by nails. I could feel the power, it invisible, yet rushing out.

Again from the crowd, “A miracle!”

And then the rising scream of the falling fire drowned out everything else.

The Reformers were now retreating, some even running up the steps and into the opera house. Many others stood to stare skywards in bewilderment. About them lay hundreds of injured and a thousand dead.

Anton’s casting howled louder, its light now blazing brighter than the sun. Those still in the open no longer spoke of miracles, instead they finally began to turn and run.

Too late!

I flicked my fingers to see the opera house doors slam shut.

It was time to ignore those caught in the open, and to concentrate on my casting: Whatever I was going to do, I had to get it right.

Baruna whispered, “Sweet Mother!”

Then all I knew was blinding heat, hot enough to redden my skin and draw sweat to dampen my clothes. It was madness! The whole square was going to burn, thousands would die, and the heart of Ossard would be scorched!

My grandmother hissed, “Any time now, dear!”

Nasty bitch!

The air filled with the stink of sweat and singeing hair, while the clothes of those still trapped in the open began to smoulder. A searing wind came up to squall about, its gusting blast seeing me go from being wet with sweat to being as dry as the brittle pages of my grandmother’s tome.

Thinking of her, I whispered, “Time enough, indeed.” And the power that had been running through me burst out tenfold.

What had previously seemed like a strong flow had just been leakage, now the real magic began. It left me gasping: It was ecstasy, orgasm, and childbirth, and so much more.

My spine arched back as my arms were thrown out wide, and my fingers lost to sparking jets of blinding blue.