Donare Donum: The Gift Giver's Chronicle

The noise was so deafening and so surprising that I was knocked off balance by the sheer force of the heart-wrenching scream. I aborted my attack and staggered sideways, but my opponent wasn’t in much better shape. He fell over backwards, shocked into paralysis, eyes as wide as dinner plates and staring at a figure directly behind me. I leaped around and saw it.

It gazed down at us with eyes the size of small buildings, an iridescent purple glare bisected by jet black pupils. Its’ green scaled head was nearly the size of the arena and totally serpentine. But its’ neck was much shorter and well-muscled, proportionally speaking. It led down to a body that was covered by a strange looking purplish black shell I did not recognize. That shell was almost hypnotic, divided as it was into parts by intersecting black lines, with each part having its’ own unearthly whorl pattern. The beast was basking in our surprise, but it seemed to get bored of that quickly, raising a five fingered, green scaled hand tipped with sharp white claws and bringing it down into the far side bleachers.

Those were the bleachers that contained our warriors, and we were fortunate that many of them had already sprang into action, leaping down and out of the way of the incoming attack.

Some, unfortunately, were not so quick-witted or were paralyzed with fear or weren’t even Fighters, so they were caught up in the attack. We watched in horror as numerous villagers were killed outright, their bodies picked up and poured down the gullet of the ruthless killer, alongside the ruins of part of the stadium.

Bizarrely, the whole scene was entirely silent from my perspective, the rubble of the south-western bleachers tumbling down in a muted and dull cascade. I vaguely noticed that my ears had begun to ring as well, the shrill sound interrupting the horrific moment of quiet. I felt someone grab my shoulder, and I turned to look. It was my father, yelling something in my face, sword unsheathed and in his right hand.

“-the bunkers. Steve, you need to go to the bunkers, now!” He roared in my face, my hearing lurching back into operation. I could hear the yells and screams of the tide of humanity that was streaking back into the village, either to shelter in the bunkers or grab weapons and fight off the invader. A few were already armed, like Father, and were coming together in a plan to charge the behemoth. But my father was still here, yelling at me.

“Go now!” he roared, then took off to join the initial strike group. This last call galvanized me into action, and I leaped forward to follow his orders. I had managed to catch my breath a bit, and adrenaline was still running through my body, so I swiftly caught up to the crowd streaming towards the center of town. I quickly made out Isaiah’s distinct figure in the sea of humanity and made my way over to him. As I grew closer to him, I started to make out the faces of the rest of my friends and family nearby, only without the adults who had gone to join the strike group. I could also begin to tell, though, that an argument had broken out between Isaiah and Ann:

“We need to go back there!” She was shouting. “They need every sword that they can get!”

Isaiah was shaking his head and yelling back to be heard over the clamor, “Your father told us to escort the young ones to safety. We should follow his orders and trust the older Fighters.”

Ann looked like she wanted to argue back, but Mom put a hand on her shoulder. Mom was the only non-Fighter parent, and she had stayed back to watch over us. I couldn’t hear what she said to Ann, but Ann calmed down visibly afterwards. I was close enough to hear her next words:

“Listen to your father, but don’t forget the backup plan. I need to go organize the people so that they don’t kill each other.” She paused and looked at all of us with a sad smile, “Stay safe. I love you.”

With that, she dashed into the crowd, calling for order and summoning water from the nearby buildings to shock people into obeying her and calming down. Thanks to her efforts, and the efforts of several similar authoritative voices, things were now moving in a somewhat orderly fashion. Many were peeling off from the crowd and grabbing weapons to join the clash with the beast to the west.

The strange monster had apparently climbed up to the edge of the Mesa and it was now suspending itself on the edge with one hand, while fighting our village’s best people with the other. And the terrifying part is that that fight was competitive. A handful of archers did their best to pick away at it from a distance, but their arrows bounced off its’ shell and mostly failed to penetrate its’ skin. Some of our warriors had tried to target its’ ledge hand, but it could switch hands quickly and catch fighters that came too close. We were able to damage it, and I watched as father took advantage of an opening to cut into its’ attacking hand, drawing out black blood, but the beast didn’t seem to mind that much. Its’ confident mannerisms and aura never wavered, a fact which terrified me.

I buried that thought and followed the crowd, sticking close to our group and moving towards safety. Maybe it would get tired and leave us alone, eventually.

The moment I finished that thought, there was another roar that rattled my teeth, and new stars started to appear in the air above us. In broad daylight, little pinpricks of light appeared above the village that were a green in the center that bled out into a lighter purple on the edges. For a breathless moment, those wisps hung in the air above us. Then they began to fall.

When they contacted the ground and the buildings around us, they detonated into minor explosions that rocked the world around us. But that was nothing in comparison to what they did to the people they hit. The people who were hit by the wisps were totally immolated, the fire consuming them in an instant before they had time to even react. The people around them were either killed outright or burned horribly, their cries adding to the deafening cacophony of yelling and explosions.

After the first barrage, there was a steady drum of follow up attacks as wisps were created in smaller yet unrelenting numbers and hurled at the civilian populace trying to flee. The Purifiers fought back, of course, summoning water from the reservoirs of the various household to defend against the ceaseless fire. It was a losing battle. The fire was more persistent and harder to put out than normal flames, and the water supply was very finite. So was the supply of Purifiers, who were consistently targeted. They were doing their best to cover what was devolving into a mad dash towards the bunkers for safety.

“Wait!” I called out, hoarsely, trying to get my team’s attention. “Wait!” I had their attention now, but we were still running towards the bunkers, “We need to use the backup plan.”

They looked at me like I was insane, Lynn and Hope staring at me uncomprehendingly and the others rather offput as well. Victor was the first to understand what I meant.

“Those bunkers won’t be safe if the monster has firepower like that!” He exclaimed, eyes widening.

The barrage from the sky had destroyed whole stone houses and left deep craters in the ground. People wouldn’t be safe in the emergency network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the city after numerous rounds of those attacks. It was time for plan B.

“We’re going south,” I declared. Isaiah nodded, having figured out the plan and agreed. Al did as well. The three of us and Victor lead the charge towards the elevators, fighting to extract ourselves from the crowd. We received all sorts of strange looks, which we disregarded as we moved towards our destination. We tried to signal to other villagers that they should follow us but were ignored.

Outside of the crowd, we lacked the protection of the Purifiers, and we were targeted by some stray wisps that we narrowly dodged, the heat of their explosions scorching the hairs on our backs. One well-placed attack streaked right towards Isaiah, and he was unable to dodge. He struck the wisp with the flat of his axe in a last-second defensive move and sent the projectile flying harmlessly away.

Our frantic dash eventually saw us right to the elevator, where Ann, Al, Julia, and I wordlessly strained to get the cage above the shaft while Isaiah held onto the chain. I managed to gasp out,

“Julia and the non-Fighters into the cage. Ann and I will cover Isaiah.” Julia looked like she wanted to protest but I shut her down, “Your spear’s blade is too small to easily deflect the wisps. Plus, I always want at least one Fighter with the civilians.”

The others had already piled into the cage. Julia reluctantly followed suit, and Isaiah was hurriedly lowering them down before the door was even fully shut. Ann and I stood watch, regularly deflecting the couple of stray shots that came near either us or Isaiah. When I could, I glanced hopefully at the fight between our warriors and the creature, but I was sickened at the results.

Even with a stream of reinforcements, the strike force numbers had been whittled down under the barrage of wisps. Father had, strangely, turned red with an enormous shout, and he was now fighting almost single-handedly against the free claw of the beast, matching it almost blow for blow. The others were trying to get close to the other claw to dislodge it, but they were mostly too busy dealing with skyward attacks to do it serious harm. I saw Robert hit that arm with a powerful stab before being forced to jump out of the way of an incoming wisp, leaving little effective damage in his wake. The creature was just too big.

…

Isaiah

I lowered the cage into the ground as fast as I dared, going just on the edge of losing control but never quite letting the chain out of my firm grasp. I forced myself to focus on my task, rather than the hectic battle playing out to my left and my friends’ frantic efforts to protect me and themselves. I practically sighed in relief when I felt the cage hit earth and silently begged for the signal to reel it back up. When it finally came, I pulled on that chain with all my might. Hand over hand, I reeled it back up – until I sensed danger.

Turning, I saw a stray orb of fire flying in my direction. The fire had become more concentrated on my position now, and Ann and Steve couldn’t keep up. Steve was flagging hard, thanks to the exhaustion of his match. I was forced to abandon the chain and draw my axe to bat away an incoming shot. I could have held on with one hand, but I could see that it was hopeless now, as several more wisps were streaking their way towards us.

I immediately joined the defense with the other two, sending the balls of flying death in any direction besides towards us. I called out:

“Cage went down. We can’t hold it here. Need to—"

Then I saw them. Two orbs streaking from Steve’s right flank. Neither he nor Ann had noticed them since he was almost totally spent, and she was looking elsewhere. There was no time to call out a warning, so I immediately rush over, knocking Steve out of the way. But the attack needed to be blocked, or it would keep going and hit Ann. I deflect one with my axe and barely get my shield up in time to stop the other one. That was—

…

Stephen

The image of Isaiah going up in flames was literally burned into my memory. It didn’t make any sense. One moment, he was blocking heroically with his shield, the next he was a column of flame searing my eyeballs. It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t. But then something clicked.

His shield wasn’t Gwyniron. It was normal iron.

The realization made me throw up. I still almost couldn’t believe it. It was Ann yelling in my ear that snapped me back to reality.

“Steve. Steve! We need to go, now!”

Almost as if agreeing with her, the massive demon gave a third enormous roar. An immense amount of power was gathering in its’ throat. I knew instinctively exactly what that was. I gave one final look at the battered figures of my family in the distance, bravely fighting tooth and nail to hold the monster off.

And I ran away.

Ann and I both sheathed our weapons, and she jumped out, grabbed the chain, and slid down it into the abyss below. I followed right afterwards, occasionally using my feet on the wall to slow down. We half-fell our way down the darkened shaft, the explosion of light and heat aboveground shaking the world around us.

Our home was gone.