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    THIRTY-SIX


    <h2 style="text-transform: uppercase">TOMFORD</h2>


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    After escaping with their bounty, the group kept moving for a long while before Freyn proclaimed they’d safely escaped the Kin’s clutches. Tomford leaned back against a wizened tree at the edge of a sprawling forest that brushed up against the mountain range’s eastern slope.


    “Now what?” Wade asked, still clutching the cloth bag Heradion gave them.


    “We catch our breaths,” Emeryn said, breathing hard.


    “That’s great and all, but we still need Taera.”


    Tomford heard a snap coming from the forest. He peered between the rather sparse clumps of trees. Seeing nothing, he focused on his healer’s glow. He didn’t have Freyn’s power to sense other magic users, but if someone was injured or possessed an ailment, he would detect it.


    “Emeryn, Wade. We’re not alone.”


    “What?” Wade asked.


    Emeryn frowned and turned to Freyn. “You’re not sensing anyone, Freyn?”


    When Tomford looked at Freyn, she was gone. In her place was an older woman who shared similar features with Emeryn.


    “The growers are coming, dear daughter,” the woman said. “It’s time we ended this farce.”


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    * * *


    Tomford barely remembered the last time he set foot inside Anea’s holy chambers. Even then, he was unimpressed as he didn’t particularly care for the righteous significance of the place. He definitely did not enjoy the ritualistic cleansing that was necessary to just touch the door to the chambers.


    Unfortunately, the elder priests insisted on him going through each agonizingly slow step even now, when his only goal was to kill the monster within.


    Tomford glanced around. Nothing was out of the ordinary in the antechamber, not one holy artifact was out of place. He deduced that the creature was confined in the main chamber. The one that represented the very essence of healing within the church. And, in the church’s mind, that meant water.


    On his last visit as an acolyte, he wasn’t allowed to touch the water that covered the lowered floor. Today was an exception. The elders had scrutinized the holy texts until they discovered a passage that fit their need and granted Tomford access into the holy space.


    Byn read the relevant texts, but Tomford only half-listened. For the first time in a long while, he was anxious. He needed to succeed. Eldsprak desperately needed the healers, and there was no other way to get them.


    “And as such, you have Anea’s blessing in your endeavors,” the priest before him intoned, his voice dying away. The ritual was finally over.


    Tomford stood and nodded at the priest holding the chamber door open. He quickly closed it behind Tomford. A key rattled in the lock. There was no leaving now. Not until the task was complete.


    The water reached to his ankles. Usually, it would be clear and clean. Now, it was murky with blood and gore. The water was sullied, tainted.


    In the darkness, something moved. Something big.


    The door suddenly opened, and two men entered before it was once again locked.


    “What are you doing here?”


    The soldier who’d offered his spear earlier eyed the dark. He grinned nervously. “Couldn’t let you go in alone. Haven’t been able to sleep. That thing has taken everything from me. I want revenge.”


    Tomford’s gaze shifted to the other man, a rough-looking type with facial scars and a mouth half-filled with gold-teeth. “What about you?”


    “They offered me a lot of money. I like money. I’ll deal with this thing, whatever it is,” the man said, his voice rough and accented. Not a Vatner. “I’m Moldavianes, but you can call me Mol,” he continued, holding out his hand. “They found some sort of loophole in that blasted text of theirs that allowed me to enter after they paid themselves a handsome tithe.”


    Tomford took his hand, dumbfounded that someone would risk their life for such little coin.


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    Before any more was said, all their attention was drawn by the sound of splashing water. Tomford looked up in time to see the monster charging at them from the darkness, its head held low like a bull. Horns glistened in the dim torchlight.


    The soldier stumbled back, spear clutched in both hands. Mol danced to one side with surprising speed, drawing a curved blade. Tomford set his jaw and stood his ground, hardening his body.


    His two impromptu companions shouted as the monster crashed into Tomford’s chest, pushing him into the wall and forcing the air out from his lungs. Tomford dropped to the floor, gasping for air. A hard blow struck his head, making him woozy despite using his magic to absorb the impact.


    The creature’s wide stance allowed Tomford to roll between its legs to escape the onslaught. Despite the ringing in his ears and the burning in his lungs, Tomford managed to strike the back of the monster’s left knee, thinking it would unbalance it. Tomford put significant weight behind the blow, but it did nothing. The monster’s leg didn’t buckle. It didn’t even move.


    An enormous foot came down on Tomford’s leg. A normal man’s limb would have been crushed flat, but he held on, rolling again to get up on his feet.


    “Tough, aren’t you?” Mol shouted, his voice full of panic. No, not panic. Was it exhilaration?


    The monster charged again, but stopped short and swung a fist in a wide arc, allowing Tomford to duck under it and deliver a blow to its unprotected flank. This time, the leverage was just right, a blow his former martial arts trainer would have been proud of. It did nothing. The monster didn’t even flinch, and Tomford, dumbfounded, didn’t back away in time as a sharp knee hit him in the shoulder, sending him tumbling to the floor. Water splashed all around him.


    Jumping to his feet, Tomford found himself backed into a corner. Once again, his fists were useless against a monster.


    “My fists can’t hurt it!” he shouted to the others.


    Mol shouted back. “What kind of moron uses his fists to fight a hulking behemoth?”


    What kind, indeed?


    “I’ll distract it and you attack!” Tomford shouted.


    The monster’s beady red eyes shone in the darkness. With no face, there was no expression to read, but its eyes were telling enough. It was excited.


    Tomford charged back in. With no intention of striking, dodging the monster’s sweeping blows proved somewhat manageable.


    Mol moved like a viper, lashing out with his curved sword like it was part of his arm before stepping back to avoid retaliation. Multiple attacks from the mercenary found their marks. Though not wanting to step within the monster’s reach, Mol’s attacks couldn’t inflict real damage.


    The unnamed soldier didn’t display the same level of natural skill but tried to make up for it with courage. He stepped in again and again, thrusting with his spear aimed at critical spots like the heart and the groin, barely escaping the monster’s counters. Unfortunately, none of his attacks reached their intended target.


    “You have to get closer,” Tomford grunted, blocking a blow rather than moving aside. Pain lanced up both of his arms despite his magically imbued toughness.


    Mol slid under the monster’s outstretched arm and thrust upward, skewering the monster’s arm. Not a drop of blood from the wound, and the creature didn’t even flinch. Instead, it kicked to the side, straight for the mercenary’s gut.


    “No!” Tomford shouted, ignoring the strike to his own chest to focus on Mol’s survival. His healer’s glow flared and stretched to the other man in an attempt to improve his toughness. It didn’t work.


    The kick crushed Mol’s belly, organs, and spine. Even as Tomford worked frantically to heal the man, pouring healing into the injured body faster than he had ever done before, Mol’s eyes dropped back into his skull, and he fell to his knees. Tomford let out a wordless scream and flexed the source of power inside him to bursting, forcing Mol’s body to stitch itself together.


    Mol came back, blinked, then picked up his saber. The madman laughed, his eyes wide with fear, excitement, and incredulity. “I was dead, ya bastard!”


    Another blow came for Tomford, but this time he neither dodged away nor blocked. He grabbed the arm and held on. “Now!”


    The soldier thrust his spear, aiming for the monster’s now unprotected flank, but he wasn’t quick enough. Tomford found himself picked up and then used as a shield, the cold, metal spear tip slicing through his clothes and into his back.


    “Sorry!” the soldier yelped, pulling the spear back.


    Tomford groaned and healed himself as Mol burrowed his sword deep into the monster’s back. It bellowed in pain and shook its arm, trying to free itself from Tomford’s clutches. Unable to, it resorted to bashing Tomford’s head in with its free arm. Tomford took the blows, holding on despite the massive drain on his power.


    Mol pulled his weapon free and attacked again, and the soldier did as well, finally landing some strikes of his own. The monster kicked and screamed, abandoning its attempts to shake Tomford off.


    His companions were struck repeatedly, and Tomford focused on mending their crushed limbs and broken bones. The pain Mol and the soldier withstood as Tomford forced their bodies back together again and again must have been unfathomable, but they didn’t waver in their attacks. Trusting in Tomford’s magic, they put all their effort into ending the beast.


    With Tomford’s ability to heal their every wound, his companions no longer dodged away from the monster’s attacks. Their own strikes began to slow the beast.


    Tomford slowly wormed his way up the monster’s arm. Bleeding from multiple wounds, it flailed and faltered, but stubbornly refused to die.


    Tomford reached for the thing’s neck, wrapping his arms around it. It was much too wide and muscular for him to have any hope of strangling it into submission. Instead, Tomford pulled away and then slammed his forehead into the monster’s face, screaming, “Die! Die! Die!”


    He was blinded by a river of blood running down his face. He didn’t know if it was his or the monster’s, but he knew the other two rushed forward to take advantage of the distraction.


    The monster fell and Tomford cracked his own skull against its face, following it to the ground, where he pulled back to start pounding it with his fists. “Die!”


    By the time Mol and the soldier pulled him away, the monster’s head was nothing more than tough skin covering a pulp of broken bones, cartilage, and soft tissue. Its brain, if it had one, was turned into mush.


    “It’s dead!” Mol shouted near Tomford’s ear.


    Tomford blinked the blood from his eyes as he sat straddling the monster’s shoulders. Coming back to his senses, the excruciating pain from the multiple blows to his head, body, and fists suddenly overwhelmed him. Tomford wanted to scream. Instead, he blacked out.