The earth convulsed violently; it seemed to be flinching in pain at every blow of the Stoneguard’s feet. Each step the massive creature took drove the its feet dozens of meters into the soil, searching for the hard bedrock deep below on which to anchor itself. Raim flew close behind me as I gazed up the length of my arrow and loosed. I watch the arch of the shaft and its white feathers as they riffled through the air, and then it tilted towards a huge pillar of stone- the knee if I had to guess- and vanished in the eclipse. The titan did not give the barest hint of a reaction. It’s leg rose in a slow, inexorable motion, reached its apex, and came thundering down like an meteor.
BOOM.
It was absurd, of course, to expect these simple arrows to do any harm to stone and metal. I knew what I had to do, but I had sustained some hope- or delusion rather- that I would’t be forced to that final act.
The shaking had been growing steadily worse since the night before. The buildings in Telaru had first rattled, then trembled, then succumbed to the increasing tremors and lay in alternating heaps of rubble along the streets; the sturdiest among them: the chapels and temples, ironically, were serving as shelter for the refugees. I could hear their frenzied invocations as I left Master Artificer Eichnor’s study, riding hard towards what I perceived to be the epicenter. The beats of Zephyr’s hoofs pounding the cobbled street in a counter point to the deep bass boom in the distance.
BOOM.
The ground shook and Zephyr struggled to remain standing. My hand instinctively reached back to grasp another arrow, but is met only with empty air. Terror drove into me as surely as those terrible feet dug for the hard stone beneath the soil. I held my breath as a panicked hand groped frantically at my quiver. My fingers bump clumsily into two shafts, one of which began to cause my arm to go eerily cold. I recoiled from the sensation and drew the other, it’s wood grain shaft feeling comfortingly familiar beneath my ungloved fingers. I fit the arrow, pull my bow, an fire. Raim following the arrow up and dangerously close to the Stoneguard’s body. I call her back but she does not respond. Somehow, through the creaking of its colossal joints, I hear the sharp plink of metal arrowhead meeting stone and see Raim diving quickly downward. Old friend. Clever friend. She is retrieving my spent shafts, a trick I had taught her on our first hunting expedition ten years prior. As she dives to intercept the falling arrow I barley have time to react. The towering leg closest to where she flies rises with an impossible speed and crashes into her leaving only a cloud of feathers drifting in wide circles to the ground.
BOOM.
The implosion of my heart or another wretched step of this disgusting automaton? I care not anymore. My hand is steady and firm as I pull the rains on Zephyr, dismounting. I stare up the length of the massive body, and for a moment I think the creature is looking down at me. I sense its stare in the same way one might feel the presence of a full moon or the great eastern ocean. There is nothing human in it, only power and implacability. I send Zephyr off back to Telaru, they will need him there after this is all over. I reach my hand back to my quiver and feel the brush of steely feathers on the end of the shaft- dragon’s feathers, I remember reverently. Master Eichorn's expert work and the cities last hope. My hand grips the shaft and withdraw it from the quiver. Immediately I feel a deadly cold crawl up my arm like snake ivy while at the same moment the tip of the arrow begins to glow, and them shine brightly. The chill diffuses through my chest and into my torso as I fit the arrow to the bow. My eyes are watering at the brightness of the arrow tip now, I look away as I draw the arrow back to its full length. The ice begins to wrap its way around my neck, like the hands of a corpse seeking to strangle me. I take aim at the cold pricks of light in the head of the monstrosity and am surprised when I can see through the radiance of my arrow and directly to my target. It is as if I am standing only feet away, yet I know I am still firmly on the ground. As I loose the shaft I shout the name of my fallen ally as mingled grief and exultation close over me,
"RAIM!"
And I feel myself leave myself, ripped from my body on the wings of a name. I am flying through the skies just like she would, but oh so much faster. I streak like a bolt of lighting upwards and see the golem's eyes, and in them I see something one would never see in the great eastern ocean, or the full moon. I see puzzlement, and then a split second before impact, I see fear.
Story by Russell Lee Nasrallah
Art by Chad Gowey
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