The Purling – Chapter 35

*Scene 01* – 00:00 (Death Throes)

Maeven’s cry was only a muted, “Umph!”  More like a cough of pain than a shriek.   A spritz of blood spattered the ice surface around the puncture point where the Manticore’s barbed telson broke through.  The hard carapace vesicle and sting bard stabbed upward entering the backside of Maeven’s thigh, just above the bend in the knee.  Blood gushed from the wound but was being sucked up by the stinging barb’s hollow tube.

One of the young men dove for her, as the thrust of the barb, lifted Maeven off her feet into the air.  James responded to the assault, swinging the halberd downward into a swinging arc.  The young man slammed into Maeven as she rose up on the point.  The collision caused her to cry out in agony, not because of the impact, but because the barb in the flesh under her leg was wrenched in the wound and tore at the flesh in her muscle.  The force of the blow and tackle, however, did dislodge the barb and propelled them off of its savage point and out of reach of the bloody jabs of the tail.  James’ halberd swept underneath Maeven and the young man, the curved ax blade, striking one of the bellows-like spiracles of the tail at a joint, cutting into it with an explosive spray of blood and gore, cracking the carapace, driving with force into the knuckle joint with a loud crunch, and cleaving it through.  The severed tail slung across the ice, flexing and spraying bright red arterial blood from the stump, spasming and wrenching as if the severed limb was still part of the Manticore’s submerged body, and stabbing angrily.

The Manticore’s face shifted in the seconds that followed, from savage delight and cruel euphoria as it fed upon Maeven’s blood, to shock and pain as it felt its limb’s dismemberment.  In those moments, my Honor Sword flashed, and I slashed at the torso of the Manticore, opening its chest with my cut, the creature’s own blood spraying me with its wounding and matting its brown shaggy mane with dark red.  The attack and response all happened within a matter of seconds, barely time for us to think through our actions.  The Manticore’s powerful forearms with long black razor-sharp claws were beneath the surface of the ice, having no way to slash at us with its death throes, but the Manticore’s face pulled once again into that disturbing smile, as its eyes shone with hatred glared at me as it slumped forward.  I noticed the feathered shaft of an arrow bristling from the Manticore’s shoulder as the muscles in the creature’s proud and arrogant neck surrendered to death’s call.  Evidently, Maeven had gotten off a shot from her bow, within the attack as well.  The human face, bearded and burned, turned one last time, its extended jaw working, its fanged mouth, dripping with its own blood, drooling out onto its chin.  It was trying to say something.  Cautiously, I approach it, straining to hear what it struggled to say before surrendering to Death’s shadow.

“Cay…Caylub.  I remembered you from before, Bry-un.  We took your Caylub.  His death…was marvelous…” a smile spread across its bloodied lips as the life faded from its eyes into a blank stare, its tongue lolled and then hung from its slacked jaw.  The Manticore was dead.  It’s mention of “Caleb” a last parting shot into a private wound I did not share with the others.  Though I did not recognize this Manticore before, changed as it was by the burns and scarring, I remembered it now…from before.  A breathy shudder escaped my lips, as I looked upward and over to Maeven, lying on her side on the ice, the young man, trying to staunch the gush of her blood from the back of her leg.

Christie, who I knew to be a nurse in her Surface World life, approached them, tearing loose a strip of material from the cloak she wore.

“You’ll need to get a tourniquet on that.  She’s losing too much blood.”

James and the other young man, seeing that Maeven was being attended and that they would just be in the way, set out across the ice towards the other four Moon Sprites, now shrieking angrily, at our intrusion, struggling to get at the body of the Manticore that they fully intended to eat.  They seemed to smell the blood spilled and became even more agitated and excited by it.  Their savage thrusts might soon free them from the pockets of ice that now held them.  Both James and I realized this and we were determined to end that threat as well.  I approached Maeven and the courageous young man that had acted decisively in that moment of danger, as Christie and the young man were beginning to tie and tighten the tourniquet around Maeven’s leg, pressing a wadded cloth into the puncture wounds.  Maeven moaned, her body numbing with shock.

“Will she be okay?”

Christie glanced up, her eyes fixed on mine for a moment, and then back down to her ministrations with Maeven.

“The ice helps, but she’s lost a lot of blood.  I don’t know.  We’ve got to get it to stop.  To clot soon or she’ll bleed out.”

I looked to the young man.

“That was a very courageous thing you did for her.  Thank you.”

“Matthew.”

“What?”

“My name is Matthew, but I go by Matt,” he responded, still holding the compress to Maeven’s wound as it continued to saturate with her blood, “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be connected to this place by giving my name, but now I am sure, Mr. O’Brian.  You can count on me.  I’m in.  I want to find this place you spoke of, this Excavatia.  We’ve got to give these people hope.  I’m joining this fight.  Just let me know what you need me to do.”

“You’re doing it right now, Matt.  Thank you.”

He nodded, and I proceeded towards James and the other young man.  Dominic was coming across the ice in a steady shuffle to help as well, carrying a mace cudgel.

*Scene 02* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 03* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

We angled towards the shrieking Moon Sprites.  From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the giant pearl stilling rolling in an arced gyre, but it was becoming stained in the blood that had sprayed upon the ice, its opalescent surface now bathed in a pinkish hue.  The continued chill arising from the frosted surface made the wet blood freeze into a pink slush.  The pearl continued to roll into a wider gyre expanding to the areas where we’d dispatched the first Moon Sprite.  As it rolled near it, the surface of the pearl took on a silvery patina, its surface gathering the Sprite’s mercurial blood as well and mingling it with the red of Maeven’s and the Manticore’s blood.  The pearl was responding and somehow mystically and magnetically drawn towards blood.  Amazing.

I realized that I had halted halfway across towards the remaining Moon Sprites.  James and the others would need our help of the Moon Sprites managed to dislodge their tentacle-shaped young to flee the assault.  These could slither across the surface and escape into the surrounding forest.  Those of our company waiting along the shoreline, might not be able to intercept these in time, especially if they did not know to expect something much smaller than they had observed together from the distance.  The shoreline was not even along the bank.  Parts of it were bordered by great grey boulders that formed a rocky shoulder, not easily crossed.  Other areas were reedy and grassy, seeming to blend in with the shore, making it unclear where these creatures might make landfall.  The frost extended to the shore, but in irregular cuts and short shoals, clutter with broken limbs and blanketing ferns.  The ice crystalline chandelier of water arrayed the edge where the waterfall had poured from the heights, forming irregular columns, and ice sickled fangs of water that could cavitate and smash downward, with the slightest thaw.  If at all possible, we needed to ensure that these creatures were contained and dealt with while they were still on the frozen lake.

Maeven did not have much time, though I couldn’t say so within her hearing.  The Manticore’s anti-coagulating agent would retard her blood’s ability to clot, and it depended on how much of it had been injected into her, as to whether it could be staunched before she passed the point of no return and exsanguinated onto the ice.

I was afraid for her, but I could not let that fear incapacitate me.  I had to be doing something for her, for Christie and Matt and the others, to buy them some time to treat her.  We had to neutralize the threat of the Moon Sprites.  Execute them with extreme prejudice, Maeven had said to those left on the bank.  And this coming from a person who was purported to be a veterinarian in her Surface World life.  Not exactly the admonition you might expect from an animal lover.  But these creatures were something other than the animals we knew in the Surface World, and it appeared that Maeven might have come to realize that as well.  I wondered at what kind of experiences she must have had here in the Mid-World with these creatures to have so altered her perspective and nurturing and healing proclivities towards these subsets of the animal kingdom.  But if I did not focus, those Moon Sprites would soon be free and I had no doubt their bodies were more suited to getting quickly across this surface than we were.  A sudden thought crossed my mind as I picked up my shuffling pace towards James and the other boy, as they began to attack another of these Moon Sprite creatures.  We had seen and counted five of them in this particular attack on the Manticore, but what if there were more than these, still trapped under the surface sheet of ice, waiting for us to break through.  I began to run.

Silver splattered the surface, as the second Moon Sprite fell under the assault of James’ halberd blade.  The young man with him held a short-shafted battle-ax.  Evidently, two of the writhing young had freed themselves from the back of the mother-creature’s head and were attempting to slither away across the ice in opposite directions.  The young man was striking at the surface of the ice, trying his best to keep them from getting away from him and heading to the shore.  I called out to him, “You go after that one to the left.  I’ll get this other one.”

He looked up as I spoke and then nodded.

As best and as fast as we could, we pursued the slithering suckers across the ice, trying not to slip and fall.  The creatures were quick.  We chased them, getting further away from the one James had just killed.  Dominic saw us chasing after these and angled towards where James was moving towards the third Moon Sprite so that he could assist him with any that might separate from it.

*Scene 04* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 05* – 00:00 (Breaking the Ice)

I focused on catching up to the slithering young Moon Sprite as it flipped and jumped, like a fish out of water, and slithered back and forth, sliding ahead in an erratic pattern that was difficult to follow.  I hoped the other youth was doing better than I was.  Man, I was out of shape.

The Moon Sprite left some sort of slick snail-like substance in spats as it fled like an amniotic flush from its separation.  As slick as the ice was, those dangerous patches promised to be more viscous still and I instinctively avoided them.  My honor sword flashed with a blue scintillation as I swiped at the creature juking to the left and right in front of me.  The tip of my blade grazed it, opening a silver razor line along its side.  It flexed like a coil spring and bounced with a coughing bark from the sting of my blade.

Then I did something that was foolish, especially on such a slippery surface.  I reversed my slash with a force, slinging the blade opposite from the downward arc that had nicked the creature.  This would be a foolish move against an opponent on land because it throws the balance of the one who does it off, and it makes the blade coming up vulnerable to a more powerful down-strike which would cause the wielder to either loose grip on the blade or lose footing and wind up on the ground, susceptible to a forward kick thrust.  The person who attempted it against an armed opponent would find themselves flat on their back staring upward along the shaft of the victor’s blade, its tip pointed at their throat.  The strongest grip of any sword blade is done with the knuckle leading the cut, rather than the top of the hand.  The wrist acts as a shock absorber to the impact of the blade, but the wrist’s range of motion it shorter with an upward tilt and cannot, therefore, recover as easily from the clash, without a turn of the elbow, to deflect the force downward again.

Thankfully, this creature bore no counter striking weapon, and my ill-thought-out move did not prove disastrous.

With the weight shift, I felt my footing slip and pivot.  I knew I was going down and would strike the ice hard with my left shoulder and hip.  It would be only seconds before the creature saw my fall and turned and went for my face with its black beak ready to chew my eyes out.

Miraculously, however, I felt the front tip of my blade hook it underneath.  I felt its weight.  I felt its body lift from the ice and shifted my wrist, so that the edge, rather than the flat bore its weight aloft.  That shift and the momentum I had put into the slash caused it’s cylindrical, coiling body to roll down the razor’s edge and cut the creature partially in half.  The thing fell back down to the ice, the two parts of its body in right angles to each other, silver blood spurting outward from the break.  My body struck the ice with a thud and I slid for about four feet before coming to rest, my cheek blistered red by the biting cold, my shoulder and hip bruised by the ignominious display.  Panting and out of breath I rolled over on my back winded, trying to catch my breath.  I counted a five-beat before rolling back up onto my knees, the soreness in my hip protesting the move.

In the distance I saw the young man who had gone after the other young Moon Sprite, striking downward with his battle-ax, its wedge-shaped blade cutting divots into the ice with each miss.  I found my feet again and shuffled toward him, ready to assist if need be.  As I approached I saw that he had wounded the creature but had yet to kill it.  A small 3-inch piece of its tail lay in a silver puddle flexing involuntarily, yet the greater part of its body had turned upon the young man and was savaging lunging at him, staved off only by the bite of the young man’s war hammer.

“Use the blunt side.  Turn the handle,” I called out to him, “You’ll break up too much of the ice and it’ll escape back into the water below.”

The young man flipped the weapon so that the war hammer side was now the striking surface.  He raised it, poised to thwart another strike from the creature.  The thing was issuing forth some sort of whistling noise and wheeze, its puffing body around its head working like a bellows to give full-throated force to its protest.  Its black hooked beak clack and snapped together as it coiled and gathered for another lunge.  The young man noticed the mica-glint off of two spots on the creatures back and realized this younger one did have eyes.  The sparkling flash was meant to distract him.  It almost worked.  The creature suddenly lunged, its black jaws opened and hyper-extended, with the full intention of satisfying its craving with a large chunk of torn flesh.  The young man reflexively shifted just in time to avoid the bite, and brought his blunt striking hammer down, smashing its head to the ice with an audible crack.  Its head smacked the ice and nearly exploded as the weight of the hammer disintegrated it into silvery pulp.  The two eyes, further back strobed with white fire, pulsing with diminishing intensity until they faded into a dull cataracted glaze.  We stayed there a moment catching our breath, the young man on his knees, his war hammer/battle-ax weapon spattered with silver.  The ice appeared blue under the moonlight.  A scar traced the edge of where the young man knelt, slowly connecting the wedge-shaped gashes where the battle-ax blade had busted the surface.

Seeing this, realizing what was happening, I slowly crouched down onto all fours and spoke calmly, “I am going to need you to carefully give me your hand.  What is your name?”

The young man looked up from the crushed Moon Sprite to me, noticing the change in my behavior.

“What’s going on?”

“Please stay still.  I think the ice has been compromised.  I need you to get your war hammer and to give me your hand.  Stay low.”

He looked behind him perhaps thinking another of these creatures was approaching from behind, but that did not comport with what I was telling him to do.  And then he saw the crack.  His eyes shifted back to me, panic on his face.

“Calm down.  Stay calm.”

“Mason.  My name is Mason.”

“All right then, Mason.  You need to redistribute your weight across the surface of the ice.  Try to flatten out and lie down on your belly.”

He did as I asked, and I laid down on my belly as well extending my hands towards him.

“Extend your hands towards me as far as you can and I will pull you to me.”

Another crack splintered the ice between us and moisture from below splashed a little from the aperture.

Try as we might, our hands were still six to eight inches apart.  I tried to inch my way forward, but the ice below made a strange noise that I knew I could not chance.

“The hammer,” I said, take the hammer by the handle in both hands and extend the blade and punch end towards me.  I’ll pull you across.”

A further bluish cracking noise radiated outward from under Mason, and he whimpered and searched frantically for the battle weapon he had laid aside.

“Slow down,” I soothed, “Make slow even movements.  It will slow the breaking.  We’re gonna get through this, you and I.”

He found the battle ax-hammer and slowing brought it up alongside his body extending it above his head to both hands, his eyes investing hopeful trust in me with each slow movement.  The wedge-shaped blade lay flat on the ice as it was slowly pushed within my reach.  It’s frost-speckled blade and blunt was flecked with silver from the blood of the Moon Sprite.  I reached out touching the cold steel of the war hammer but also feeling a stinging bite from the silver blood that made contact with my bare hands.  The silver blood felt at first like bee stings and then grew hot as searing to my flesh, but I could not let go of the blade and blunt.  I grimaced through the pain and firmed my grip, pulling the young man, Mason, forward towards me.  He was a stout young lad, but I was able to pull him a few inches at first before I began to slide forward towards him.  The blood seemed to scald me the more I touched it, but I could not give up on Mason.  The ice below him was beginning to sheet with a growing layer of water, spilling onto the surface from the cracks in the cuts and breaks.  Mason’s legs were beginning to feel the chill of the water creeping up on him, soaking into the material of his pants.  His eyes pleaded silently with mine.

I rolled upward, bringing my knees up under me like the skis of a sled.  I angled my knees outward and leaned forward using both my arms and my back to arch backward and pull him forward.  Mason’s body slid forward another foot towards me, and I worked my knees and feet further back so that with a rower’s motion I might be able to bring him further forward.  I strained against the weight and the burning throbbing of my hands around the blade and the blunt.

The cracking continued behind Mason, and he closed his eyes as more frigid water swelled around his body as the ice plate upon which he rested sank just a fraction lower.

From my left, I caught movement but was reluctant to turn towards it.  I needed to stay focused on pulling Mason to stronger ice, capable of bearing both of our weight.  I skootched backward again, tugging the ax and Mason another foot more towards me.  A blue fissure appeared between us, its underlying break filling with liquid visible by the bubbling slosh below.  I knew it was only a matter of moments before it caved and broke away, leaving a slushy pool.

My eyes and Mason’s fixed.  He’d seen it and I’d seen it.  There was not much more I could do in such a slow deliberate pace.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

Mason looked again at the swirling blue water, just below the thin veneer upon which he rested.  The cold chill was beginning to burn his legs with claws of frost.  He shivered, his lower lip trembling, as he gave me a barely perceptible nod.

“I don’t know how to swim,” he told me, as I adjusted my burning grip on the ax head and cup-gripped the hammer blunt.

“Then you’d better hold on tight.”

I pivoted up from my knees to my heels leaning slightly backward.

With one mighty pull, I extended my legs and lunged backward, my heels cracking into the ice below my feet.

I pulled Mason up onto my torso catching him in a bear hug.  I felt the edge of the ice give way beneath my feet as our collective center of balance shifted to the upper half of our bodies.  Mason pulled his legs up out of the water further pulling his weigh onto the ice sheet that caught us under my back.  We landed with an unfolded roll, Mason pulled to my chest his legs bend at the knees calves clearing the slushy water.  My feet and calves, however, bent down on the edge of the ice, my feet and calves submerge into the shock and cold jaws of the slushy ice water.

Mason rolled off of me and lay back on the ice gasping for breath.  The wind had gone out of my lungs and I could only draw in air in short rapid gasps.  Mason must’ve realized what was happening, that I was exhibiting signs of shock, and in his quick thinking, he was able to scramble behind me and drag me away from the edge of the break, pulling my wet legs and feet out from under the water.  My body trembled with shivers, as it felt like needles were being sewed into my flesh, and I could only lie there and gape silently like an expiring fish on land.  The underside of Mason’s clothing was wet and dripped frigid water as he rubbed my arms and legs, trying to ensure that my circulation still flowed.  My legs had only been in the water for half a minute and already I was feeling its effect.  I didn’t know much about how Mason’s might be handling it, or how deeply the water had soaked through his clothing layers and down to his bare skin, but I was certain that he couldn’t be feeling much better than I was.

*Scene 06* – 00:00 (Scene Title)

*Scene 07* – 00:00 (The Bull-Sprite)

The darkening, violet sky looked bruised above us and striated with ominous clouds edged with silver from the light of the moon.  A heavy cloud bank seemed to settle atop the edge of the frozen waterfall and just linger there in a roiling fog bank.  I leaned over and saw the steady movement that had almost distracted me before.

The pearl.

It was still making progress, rolling across the surface of the lake leaving a shallow furrow in the permafrost as it went.  Its arc circled the places where we had encountered the Moon Sprites, seemed to roll around the spots gathering the variant blood spill onto its polished surface and then progress onward to the next site of strange blood spill.  There was some connection between this mystical pearl and blood that I could not fathom.  Something ethereal and supernatural, in that the pearl seemed to take into itself self and surface, the residue of conflict and make it part of its coating.  No silver splatter remained from where the carcasses of the Moon Sprites were killed.

Mason and I knew that we had to get moving.  The more still we lay the greater chance that stillness would become permanent.  We had to get our circulation flowing back into our frost-bitten limbs.  To do that we had to get up and walk no matter how bad it felt to do so.

The pearl was getting closer to us and rolling towards our place of conflict with the young Moon Sprite.  It had left the site where I had killed mine and was now coming to our place of conflict.  Mason and I watched as the giant pearl rolled past us and towards the broken slush pool.  We almost dove for it, to prevent it from rolling over the edge and sinking into the break but were unable to catch it.  A low-level crackle of bluish energy seemed to follow in its wake, that we had not noticed before.  When the pearl reached the edge of the lip of ice, it continued out across the slush, the surface hardening once again into a sheet of ice in its wake.  It gyred and swooped around the half-separated body of the Moon Sprite larvae.  For larvae is what it had seemed all along to be, though the apt word for it only came to me now.

Silver blood, added a luster and polish to the pearl’s surface as it circled the fallen creature, its progress seeming to clean the ice of its silver splatter.

The pearl then circled wider and seemed to come towards us.

Not knowing what force, malevolent or otherwise, moved this mysterious pearl we were naturally afraid of its odd behavior.   Mason’s war hammer lay on the ice before us and the Pearl rolled toward it, striking the blade and the blunt hammerhead together with a light pinging noise.  Tiny flecks of silver seemed to slide off of its surface and swim like insects towards the pearl, blending in with its lustrous surface.  The pearl was constantly on the move, never slowing, must making constant progress, as if it was cleaning up the areas, taking into itself the blood lost in each fight.

I didn’t know if it had some sort of vampirical power, or if it was merely obsessed with some ethereal sense of cleanliness.  As it approached me, I drew put forth my sword, rising as best I could onto my legs and being supported by Mason.  The pearl rolled to the pointed tip of my sword and pinged against it, and in amazement, I watched as flecks of silver were drawn down to the tip of the blade and swam onto the patina of its surface.  I descended downward and knelt in awe, at last feeling that this wondrous object could not be reflective of evil, but of something more wonderful than we could imagine.  I knelt to catch it once again and coax it into the pouch in which I had carried it but was stopped by a shouted warning across the ice in the distance.

“No!  Don’t lift it yet.  Leave it on the surface of the lake!”

Maeven had turned and was struggling to get up, but I could tell from the movements of Christie and Matt that they were trying everything that could to advise her against it.  Maeven was weak from the loss of blood, but adamant about my leaving the pearl to its own path along the lake’s frozen surface.

“Don’t lift it without the log being close!” she shouted, her voice echoing and bouncing off the sheet of ice separating us.

Matt and Christie again admonished her and reprimanded her to stay down and lie still, though I was less able to hear their voices than I was Maeven’s.

The Pearl remained in an oscillating circle at my feet, seeming to wait for me to do something, but I did not know what.

There was some reason, Maeven did not want me to lift it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t supposed to touch it.

I left the bag pouch tied on my belt and put the now cleansed honor sword back into its sheath.  My hands were numb from the cold and the burns, but now as I sank to my knees before the wobbling orb, they began to burn anew and the bones of my fingers felt like they had been run over and set afire.  The palms of my hands swam with silver that was cutting into my flesh but releasing no blood.  I gasped as the pain intensified and my fingertips felt as if the nails had been plucked out of their cuticle beds.  Wince against the pain and almost blinded by it, I reached out for the giant pearl and felt a coolness begin to soothe the fire within them.

“Don’t lift it!” I heard Maeven cry out again, this time lying prone on the ice, her head turned in my direction.

“I won’t,” I answered back hoping to reassure her and allay whatever worries she had should I change my mind.

My hands gently stroked the pearl’s smooth and swirling surface, and I felt the cooling sensation once again, rise up through my fingertips and extend into my forearms.  Something was being drawn out from me, and I realized what was happening as silver threads sprouted outward from my fingertips, swirling and raveling into the complex washes of silver and red and pinkish colors forming a miasma across the pearl’s rounded surface.  Living toxins from the Moon Sprites’ blood were being removed from my body, and from my forearms, and I had had no idea that this was spreading within my bloodstream.

All at once the pearl pulled away from my touch and angled its continual grooved trek across the ice, where Dominic and James were dealing with the last of the Moon Sprites who had surfaced with the coming of the twilight.  I looked at my hands and felt a natural warmth returning to them.  The scalded marks and silver etching was gone, and my palms were smooth and uninjured.  I felt a strength in them that I had not felt before, and I wondered just what had truly transpired between me and the mysterious pearl.

With no further time to lose, Mason and I gathered his battle-ax and war hammer and moved across the circle to assist James and Dominic about 60 yards away.  The last Moon Sprite was shrieking with its multiple mouths and raging, sloshing amid a cold pool of water, its ice capture becoming less and less of a certainty.

I wondered if the Pearl Orb had the capacity to heal me if it could also do so with Maeven’s injury.  We needed to dispatch the other Moon Sprite soon and then see what further could be done for her.

In the meantime, we need to deal with the remaining Moon Sprite.  As we approached, the creature appeared bigger than the others, and I suspected that this one was the first one we had seen from the upper ridge.  Unlike the others, this one did not have a writhing brood of tentacle, black-beaked and mouthy children sprouting from the back of its head.  This one did have its own mouth, and it bristled with silver spiked teeth jutting forward and backward, shark-like, ensuring that whatever it clamped its jaws around would not escape those jaws without leaving a significant part of itself in the creature’s mouth.  This Moon Sprite, with its differences, must be the male of the species: the bull, if one were comparing it to its closest Surface World equivalent in shape and girth, a giant white elephant seal.  Even though this one was the male, it did bear about three young ones, and these were affixed like lampreys underneath its lower lip, their silver eyes shining along their upper knobby-head, a portion of their mouth suppurated and siphoned off the morsels falling from the male’s lips.  These were developed further and would most assuredly be able to separate from the parent and set out on their own.  They were thicker than those children affixed to the females of the species, and one might wonder what became of the other larvae like brothers and sisters who did not make it to the chin rest of the male.  My brief wondering was met with a sudden certainty that the reason though disturbing to any human, was that the young were then cannibalized by their family and only those making it to the chin of their father survived into adulthood.  A sinister cycle of life and death, indeed.

James and Dominic were making feints and lunges with their weapons, but the bull Moon Sprite had one fin lined forearm extended out over the ice surface, with a hard, bony surface that appeared like blued metal.  With every swing of James’ halberd, the Moon Sprite raised its forelimb and deflected the blade away, once slamming it to the surface of the ice, and dislodging it from James’ grip.  James was able to retrieve the end of the pole and pull it back into his use, but not before the creature slammed the weapon back down again, drawing James down hard to the ice with it.  A welt of the impact stung and burned James face and shoulder, but dauntless he raised and challenged the Moon Sprite monster again and again.

Mason and I came up behind them, shielding our eyes from the strobic flash of the creature’s eyes.  It was difficult alone fighting such formidable creatures in the daylight but even harder fighting them in the alternating darkness.  One’s eyes could either adapt to the absence of light or the flooding of it.  Under low light, our eyes respond by enlarging the pupil and dilating the iris to allow more light defining definition in to allow us to perceive those things normally hidden within the darkness.  In bright light, our eyes contract the pupil, limiting the excessive light from entering the inner eye, allowing us to still perceive the differences between illuminated shapes and shadow.  With strobing light, however, the eye is unable to adjust so quickly, and the movements of the threat appear to jerk and vanish and reappear as if revealed only between the flash frames of a theater projector.  This gives the mesmerizing beast an advantage over their victim’s color and shade, hue and tint, light and dark natural binary eye adjustment proclivity.  For that purpose, we avoided looking directly at the eyes of these monsters, watching its torso movements and looking for its tells by the way it flexed its tensors.  The creature’s ponderous weight strained and struggled in the clamping of the ice, causing the water beneath it to slosh and spout in sprays from around its body as its muscles contracted and expanded its torso.

I glanced back in the direction of Maeven, Christie, and Matt.  Maeven still lay on the ice and I knew we did not have much time.

We needed some way to distract the creature.  If we got too close it would pull us towards those terrible jaws, or tear us limb from limb and beat the everliving pulp out of us with its powerful forelimb.  Meanwhile, Maeven would bleed out onto the ice.  We had to get back to her, and we had to find a way to use that mysterious Pearl to heal her if we could.  Then, off to the right of where Maeven lay and the dead Manticore sprawled in the ice, I saw something lying there that might just work.

I had no idea what purpose it was intended for in Maeven’s mind, but in my mind, it was just what was needed.   I turned to Mason and told him my plan.  He nodded and set out to retrieve what I had spotted, hoping he could enlist Matthew to join him.