The old hunter didn’t even grunt, as his body slammed, and broke, over the heavy limbs. Mikahl prayed that his friend had died with an inner peace. Loudin’s valiant death had saved Mikahl a lifetime of shame. The man could have easily let go long ago, and died somewhat intact, and without so much excruciating pain. Mikahl swore then and there that he would never give up. Neither Loudin’s, nor Lord Gregory’s, sacrifice would be in vain.
The angry roar of the hellcat, as it circled around and dove back towards him, made Mikahl’s blood boil with rage and vengeful anger. As he pulled the sword free of the earth, he welcomed the beast’s approach. Loudin’s death couldn’t be avenged this day, Mikahl told himself. This beast was just a weapon, or a tool sent by another, but he could send a message to whomever it was that wanted Ironspike so badly, a message that was plain and clear.
Ironspike’s blade lit the clearing, like a star, and a symphony of magic filled Mikahl’s ears. The hellcat lowered its hind claws, and at a blinding speed, came swooping down on Mikahl. The surge of static heat that filled Mikahl then was tremendous. A dozen different voices sang into his brain, each one a separate melody that added to the angelic chorus in his mind. Each voice represented a different means of magical attack, and all of this, somehow, became crystal clear to him in that moment. He knew he could access them with a thought, but he knew he didn’t need them for this. He felt the time around him slow, as if the whole world, save for him, was moving through molasses. That effect, and the heat of his rage was more than enough to mark this dark thing.
The hellcat was on him now, and even though the world had slowed, the beast was coming in hard and fast. As Mikahl leapt, and spun in the air, the blue glow of his blade went through all the shades of lavender and purple, until its glow was a deep, bloody red. His head came up under the creature, and he twisted in his spin, so that its dagger-like fore claws missed his shoulders, and its hind legs swept past him. Only then, did he complete the now white-hot blade’s blinding arc.
Vaegon watched in fearful awe as Mikahl pulled the sword free of the ground, and strode forward to meet the streaking approach of the beast. The sword was bright, radiant, and quickly became the cherry color of forge heated steal. Mikahl leapt into the air, his acrobatic movement so swift, that all Vaegon could make out, was a furious blur. It was all happening so quickly, that it made the elf’s head spin.
One second, it looked as if the hellcat would grab onto the boy and carry him off, like it had done Lord Gregory. A fraction of a heartbeat later, Mikahl was behind the beast, his sword sweeping like a white-hot sheer through the creature’s rear thighs as if they were nothing more than butter. As the beast’s hind legs tumbled to the ground, free of its body, the would-be bloody stumps sizzled and smoked. The intense heat of the white-hot blade had cauterized them cleanly. A third piece of the hellcat spun smoking through the air, like a half-embered piece of firewood. Later, Vaegon would find out that it was the spiked tip of the beast’s tail, the very thing that had gouged his eye out of his face and ruined his elven sight.
The creature was ten feet past Mikahl, raising its bulk up on its wings, so that it might clear the trees, and come around again, when it realized what had happened to its hind-legs and tail. The primal shriek of terror and pain that it let out was earsplitting. It was all the legless hellcat could do to stay aloft, as it fled howling over the trees and out of the valley.
Mikahl felt no pride or joy in the rush of emotion that came to him after the beast had gone. Instead, he fell into a crumbling heap of sorrow, and cried out for the loss of his friend.
The tattoo covered Seawardsman, who would be forever immortalized in the histories of both elves and men as, “Loudin of the Reyhall,” was dead.
Chapter 38
Vaegon watched over Mikahl until Hyden finally returned from the ravine. Both the humans were exhausted, so the elf took on the task of cutting Loudin’s body down out of the trees.
It took most of the day, and as horrible as the work was, he knew he was the best one for it. Not only did he know the trees, and have a way with them, as all elves did, but the fact that he wasn’t human, made the death of the hunter a thing he could accept more peaceably than his two companions might.
Once the body was on the ground and intact, Vaegon rolled it up in a woolen blanket, and set an old elven warding around it that would protect it for the night. Mikahl would need to take part in the burial, but only after he had rested. Where elves might let their dead decompose back into the ecosystem, Vaegon understood that the nature of the short-lived humans, and their delicate mentality, made the funerary process a necessity. Not so much for the deceased, but for the friends and relatives that survived him.