Chapter LX: Gobudo (Cont. III)

Eza slowly slid back down into the crack, frightened by the wail and needing to catch her breath. She slid deep into the shadows and tried to stop the wail from freezing her all the way through.

The regiment continued to charge as West marched over to the tower and peered down, “Uh…Gobudo….how long until your Vasu friends arrive?” There was a series of grunts and then West glanced over to Blackheart.

“More than an hour,” he says.

“Oh…that’s bad then.” West glanced back and watched as the regiment collided with the front line of the dark warriors and with blazing speed, the dark warriors dispatched most of the regiment with ease, their swords making quick work of the warriors. Heads and limbs rolled and toppled as the regiment tried valiantly to fend off the blazing speed of the dark warrior’s swings, but to no avail. Soon, the entire regiment was laying on the ground, the dark warriors dismounting their horses and marching amongst the corpses to make sure all were truly dead. West stared down at his men who now lay in pools of blood, a few slowly dying and calling out for a medic, none would come. What horrors. He turned away, unable to look at his fallen comrades.

The battle had been so quick…..it almost seemed not to have happened. His warriors gone, so many faces disappearing from the face of the world…. And then it occurred to West, just how many faces had disappeared from the world of the living. There had been his guards from the streets, the Bouatian soldiers, all the elves and warriors who had been slaughtered along Baen’s path. Hundreds….no….thousands…. He glanced down at himself and his uniform, barely touched with the blood of the fallen…..barely touched with a single scar, save the few wounds he had received during battle….nothings compared the deathes and losses of so many young men, orcs, elves, and all other races that had fought against the dark terror that was the thirteenth watcher, most not even knowing what they were fighting for. To die for a cause one did not understand…..what a tragedy. It had begun to well up in West as he slid down the ladder, entering the main area of the tower. He opened his small bag and produced his last musket ball, loosing his sword and aiming his pistol towards the door. He could hear the wail dying and the hiss slowly rising as the figures began to advance towards the tower again. “Well gentlemen,” West said at last, slightly phased, “I think this is where we die. But damned if I’m not going to take one for every boy they took from me.” A tear rolled down his cheek as the first figure peered through the crack and was greeted with West’s final shot. He slowly lowered his gun and looked at the smoke rolling out of the barrel, then tossed his gun into the rubble and bared his sword. “Come on you scoundrels!”

Gobudo watched West, the man’s eyes burning with rage and desperation; this couldn’t be the end, not after what had occurred back at the Alabaster Temple. He had been sworn to secrecy, hadn’t he? He couldn’t tell them…but if he didn’t……then West and the others would throw their lives away….Gobudo’s eyes gravitated to the floor, barely hearing Laura yell that she was almost out of arrows as she loosed another through the cracks in the door and caught another of their warriors and watching the flames burst outside. Gobudo glanced up at Blackheart, who was now taking a stance much like West’s. They were going to throw their lives away. He couldn’t let that happen……

Do you feel it??

Yes….he plans to…..

Then all will be…….

Yes…..I know what must be done…..

The snap of magic ripped through the entire fabric of space all around the tower. It shredded the tower’s top, sending it rippling apart, it hurled the shadowed figures away from the tower, the closest ones being shredded into tiny shreds, their flames swirling up into the sky then raining down like God’s wrath. Eza rose from her crack far enough away and watched as the tower’s top spiralled and shattered, rock hurling out through the wastes and crashing down all over and burying itself all over the wastes. Upturned rock vaulted end over end right past Eza’s frightened head, but she couldn’t move it, to amazed at the center swirl of white and green light. And then she heard the roaring scream of two familiar voices as the two spiralled down, their images expanding and shrinking as they spiralled down like a comet right into the center of the tower.