CHAPTER THREE

 

As he had been instructed by Charon, Orion completed organizing the previously haphazardly arranged books. But before he had a chance to open the volume he had been tossed, A Basic Overview of Magic and its Arts, the old wizard spoke.

 

“Boy, come here,” Charon called from his place standing over a table built into a niche in the wall. His voice bore something that Orion had not heard there before – urgency. Quickly, the young elf stood from his crouch next to the shelf he had completed ordering, and walked across the small room to join his new mentor.

 

“What is it?” Orion asked curiously, trying to peer around Charon’s body to see what was on the table.

 

“Quiet!” Charon said with unexpected vehemence. “Did you never learn manners, boy? It is not polite to speak to someone when they’re in the middle of something.”

 

“But, sir,” Orion replied with a tone of slight annoyance, “You called me.”

 

“My summons was not an invitation to speak,” the magician said before he held up his hand, indicating for Orion become quiet. After a few more moments of evident concentration, focusing on whatever it was that rested on the table, Charon stood up straight from his hunch, then stepped aside. He waved his hand, gesturing for his new apprentice to take a look.

 

Charon had been standing watching an orb that looked like it was made of blue quartz, roughly the size of a cabbage, and with a surface that was impeccably smooth. The totally round ball lay atop a golden tripod, with decorative claws on the feet. Within the orb were azure and white energies that glowed and danced in a never-ending cycle.

 

From his prior training, Orion assumed that this was his master’s crystal ball, a focal object of his divination powers, a tool that let him see into the future. Charon spoke a word in some tongue that Orion had never heard, and the lightning-blue lights within the crystal ball began to move faster.

 

“Watch, boy,” Charon said in a low voice, covering the sphere with his hand for an instant. When he retracted his fingers from its surface, the translucent globe flared with luminescence, flashing a bright white –

 

– The blackness was impenetrable to Orion’s vision, but it was echoing with a multitude of sound. The ringing of a bell, mixed with the dull thud of blades into flesh, the screaming of the fallen, and the clang of shields blocking blows. All of a sudden, the clamor was cut off, and replaced with a series of soundless visions –

 

– Death lay all around inside the walled courtyard. Bodies of short beings, which Orion knew to be dwarves, lay mangled, shredded, and bloody all across the ground. Limbs and weapons littered the earth, most likely far from their original owners.

 

Weaving in and throughout the carnage were other bodies, and despite how these beings were taller than the dead dwarves, their crouches and hunches made them appear shorter. The figures looked like they had no right to be alive – clad in faded, torn garments, with sharp, yellowed nails, and graying, flaky skin. Many of them were no more than animated skeletons, with cracked bones caked in mold and dead tissue.

 

These corpses were, as a group, hauling out the bodies of the fallen dwarves, bony fingers clasping the smaller beings by the backs of their necks like mother wolves carrying pups. They dragged the dwarves outside of the walls through the fortress’s door, heaping them into a pile –

 

– The sky was now the grey of morning after its previous star-ridden darkness, and a plume of smoke curled into the sky from outside the walls of the castle. Crows circled in the air above, hunger in their eyes –

 

– A horseman clad in all black and with a horned helm galloped into a mass of dwarves, cape fluttering behind him as he rode, wicked scythe raised in its hand, the sickle-like blade glimmering under the moonlight –

 

With a start, the visions ended. Orion found himself once more in his own body, and he reeled backwards from the horrific sights, staggering back to lean on the edge of Charon’s desk. The old wizard looked at him with an unreadable expression, and then waved his hand over the surface of the crystal ball. Its lights dulled until the orb became no more than an opaque sphere once more.

 

Orion blew out his cheeks in awe, then looked up, asking, “What… what was that?”

 

Charon pursed his lips before replying. “These are fragments of the events that shall occur tonight. The dwarf city of Corinthal is to be assaulted, and taken, in only a few hours. It will be a massacre.”

 

“Who?” Orion posed the simple question. “Who is going to take Corinthal?”

 

“Scallow of Uthras,” Charon told him, speaking as much to himself as Orion. “A Necromancer as ambitious as he is malignant… He has been gathering power for years, and now, at last, he has chosen to reveal his intents.

 

“And after he takes Corinthal, it will be only a matter of time before he fully mobilizes – no doubt Scallow chose the city for its industrial facilities – he will be building war machines, forging weapons. We must move quickly, the Coalition of the Triquetra must be called together once more.”

 

“Er…” Orion interjected. “Coalition of the Triquetra? What’s that?”

 

“The Coalition of the Triquetra is an ancient pact made during the first war of time, hundreds of years ago,” Charon informed him. “The Demon Wars. When the gates of ###### were broken, the Gods of Death let loose upon life all the devils of the Netherworld. It was a seemingly unstoppable threat.

 

“The three great races, those of men, dwarves, and elves, realized that the only way they could overcome this supernatural threat was by allying into one army, an army to rebuff the forces of Death, an army… to protect the existence of life itself. They succeeded after a long, difficult struggle, and banished the Demons back to the forbidden places from whence they came.

 

“But since then, the friendships and the bonds forged between the three races that made up the Coalition during those troubled times have eroded… how soon the peoples of the world forget, how quickly they revert to their groundless assumptions and prejudices.” Charon’s eyes seemed to drift away into memory, and his jaw tightened.

 

“Since the Demon Wars ended,” He continued, “the Coalition has never been recalled. Then again, there has not been the need for it.

 

“But all who tread this earth will need it now.”

 

Charon muttered another word that lay beyond Orion’s understanding, and with a rumble, the table bearing his crystal ball retreated into the crevasse in the wall, and a section of bookshelves slid across the wall to conceal the opening. If he had not seen a minute earlier that the secret room was there, Orion would never have been able to guess it existed.

 

Walking past his apprentice and over to a coat stand by the room’s door, Charon picked up a black-wood staff that had been leaning against it. The staff was roughly six feet long, with ancient-looking runes carved into its shaft. At the tip was affixed a crystal stone of deep sapphire that refracted the light of the room through its multifaceted prism. Charon also fastened a belt about his waist, from which hung a steely sword.

 

Thus armed, he waved two fingers at the heavy wooden door, which swung inward with his command. As the wizard donned a much-worn traveling cloak, he turned back to Orion.

 

“Don’t gawk there looking like some swallowing carp, boy,” Charon said, “Be useful and get ready to leave.” Orion hastily closed his opened mouth, and started towards the door. “No,” Charon told him. “Take the book.”

 

The young elf pointed at A Basic Overview of Magic and its Arts on its place on the floor, and a nod from Charon prompted him to stoop down and pick up the big book. As Orion stood with the tome in the crook of his arm, he saw his master toss him a sturdy-looking satchel from the coat stand. With his free arm, Orion snagged the bag, and slipped it over his shoulder. He put the book inside; it fit perfectly. After checking that his sword was still in its sheath, Orion felt prepared to go. Charon noted this, and started out the door, down the hallway, followed by his apprentice.

 

The hall spiraled around the room they had just exited, and, after a near-complete circle, ended in a staircase. This descended to a large antechamber with tapestries and shelves of assorted objects decorating its stone walls. Charon continued through this room, taking another short stairwell that led to a small stable. Here corralled were two horses – but they were very different from normal horses. These horses had wings.

 

The creatures looked for all intents and purposes just like normal stallions, one snowy-white, and one chestnut brown. The only noticeable difference was that from behind their shoulders sprouted pairs of eagle-like wings with elegantly feathered tips. The wings must’ve had an eighteen-foot span when they were extended, but at the moment, the appendages were folded flat against their owners’ backs. Both wore adapted saddles that encompassed their wings.

 

Orion’s mouth hung open in astonishment. “Sir,” he asked in awe, “Are those… Pegasi?”

 

“Yes, boy,” Charon said, rolling his ice-blue eyes. “These two are Pegasi. What else could winged horses be?”

 

“Oh, no, I know that,” the young elf corrected, “I was just under the impression that the species was extinct.”

 

“Very nearly so,” Charon replied with unconcealed pride, “I believe I have two of the perhaps only ten left in the world.”

 

Orion cautiously approached the chestnut Pegasus, at which the horse amiably trotted forward, and nuzzled his outstretched hand. “I think he likes me!” Orion exclaimed, smiling.

 

“If she does,” Charon said, “Then she has even more terrible tastes than I’d imagined.” The wizard himself walked over the white Pegasus, and began to stroke its grey mane.

 

“Sir,” Orion asked, “Where are we going to be flying?”

 

“We to fly northeast,” Charon informed him, “To Eretra, the capital city of the Odresian Kingdom, most powerful of the nations of men. I am going to try to call together the Coalition of the Triquetra once more. It is essential that we do so with haste – Scallow will not wait to act.”

 

Charon swung himself up onto the white Pegasus with surprising agility, and Orion followed his example. Another word from Charon, and the stable doors opened outward of their own accord. Before the wizard exited, however, Orion voiced a question he had been pondering for a while.

 

“Sir,” the young elf began, “You talked about the Demon Wars, which I don’t remember ever having read about in any historical accounts… Not that I doubt that they were real, of course, but if it was hundreds of years ago, and they were never documented, how would you know what happened?

 

“I thought that maybe you had seen into the past, but then I remembered that you could only divine into the future. Could it just be passed on from person to person? Or maybe you uncovered an old account –”

 

He stopped speaking when he saw Charon’s face change expression. After a moment, Orion realized that it was a small, close-lipped smile.

 

“The answer is far simpler than any of that, boy,” he said, “I know what happened because I saw it with my own eyes.”

 

Without giving Orion a chance to reply, he urged his horse into a canter, which soon broke into a gallop. As the horse ran, its wings began to slowly extend. Then, with a triumphant whinny, the Pegasus at last rose into the air, its huge bird-wings beating with immense power as it ascended higher and higher into the endless skies above.

 

Orion, not wanting to be left behind, quickly followed suit. The brown horse began moving forward, gaining speed with every new moment. The young elf felt the huge strength of the creature below him as it accelerated. When his Pegasus at last ran out from the stables, into open land, it took a few more running steps. Then it took off.

 

The sudden lack of ground below the horse almost made Orion fall off it due to how he had been sitting – his previous straddle worked perfectly well when they had been on the ground, but now, in the air, it was an ineffective riding position.

 

Seeing two hand-holds built into the saddle near his stallion’s neck, Orion leaned forward and held on to them tightly. He could sense the shoulders of the Pegasus’s wings in motion against his chest, felt the winds whip at the exposed parts of his face.

 

When he gained enough confidence to sit up more and take a look at his surroundings, Orion saw that they were in the sky, flying rapidly over hilly woodlands. The trees below looked the size of coins, but, strangely, this didn’t bother Orion. In fact, he felt better up here in the air than he had remembered having felt for a long, long time.

 

Charon and his mount flew about thirty feet in front of the elf and his Pegasus. The wings of both animals beat slowly – they barely had to flap at all. The power of each stroke enabled the horses to simply glide for a few seconds before having to push again.

 

Seized by a sudden urge, Orion let go of the handholds on his saddle, and sat up fully. He raised his arms into the air and whooped exuberantly, reveling in the feeling of being airborne, reveling in the thrillingly cool wind all over his body.

 

It was this wind that pushed him cleanly off of the back of his flying horse and down into the skies below.