Brendan found himself running through a dense forest somewhere in the Midwestern United States trying to keep pace with Sorcha and Samoset. He wasn’t certain of how much time had passed for the pair since his last vision, but it must have been several weeks at least since they had made it all the way from New York to the Great Lakes. Samoset carried the stone coffer in a leather satchel tied to his back. This freed his hands to carry his bow and to reach his knife. The Wampanoag Brave led Sorcha in and out of trees that blocked their pathway.
“Come on, Sorcha! Hurry!” Samoset urged.
“You don’t have to tell me that!” she said breathlessly.
What struck Brendan about Sorcha was that she was a great athlete. She could jump like a dear, sprint like a jackrabbit, and had the apparent endurance of a marathon runner. She reminded Brendan so much of Lizzie. He would have to share that with her when he returned from the vision.
They ran until they came to a river. Samoset slowed his gait and ordered, “Wait, Sorcha!” He took in the river and the banks with keen eyes. “We are not alone.”
Sorcha scanned the area, too, but spotted nothing. It wasn’t until a group of natives surrounded them that she finally understood.
Samoset reached out and pulled Sorcha closer to his side. “We just mean to pass through,” he said in his native tongue. Brendan could see that Samoset was hoping that the other tribesmen could understand him.
Brendan listened in on the conversation among two of the warriors. A tall one leaned in and whispered to a shorter man, “Chief Hibon, these are the two who have brought evil to our lands. The evil hunts them and wishes to destroy them. I say we let it take them and leave.”
The shorter man seemed to consider his advisor’s words. “This is not like any evil that we have seen, Ashemonqua,” Chief Hibon argued.
“We kill them now and the evil will vanish from us!” Ashemonqua barked, not hiding the urgency that he was feeling.
In the end, further discussion was moot since Brendan could hear the noises the giant and her company made as they drew closer and closer. Samoset and Sorcha both gasped as the noises grew louder. All of the warriors reacted when the giant’s pet let loose with a terrifying howl. The next moment the trees near the banks burst into flames and that got the whole band of warriors spooked.
Samoset unslung the box from his back and handed it to Sorcha. “Run, Sorcha!” he ordered.
“No! I can’t leave you,” she protested.
The giant’s voice hollered through the trees, “Kill them, my Alphyn! Kill them!”
In the next seconds it was too late to run as the Alphyn erupted from the flaming debris and landed before the warriors on the banks. It had scaly skin and a slithery tongue that looked way too sharp and dangerous to come from a creature’s mouth.
Samoset smiled at the Irish girl, her skin almost as pale as the winter’s snow back in his native land. He readied his bow and took an archer’s stance.
Sorcha pulled two fourteen-inch blades, one for each hand, from her waist. She tossed the box on her back and clanged her blades together. “Eagla aon olc scrios ach é a!” The native tribesmen and Samoset called out with war cries of their own.
A dozen Ruas that Conchar had made from the Wampanoag stealthily made it through the fire. Their skin was not constructed of the same scales that the Alphyn had and their flesh began to fall away in chunks.
Samoset wanted to cry for his kinsmen, but his features remained hardened. Only when his father stalked through the burning debris did Samoset scream. “Father!”
Sorcha knew what kind of pain Samoset was in since they had both lost their fathers to Conchar. She took both blades into one hand and reached over to touch the young brave’s cheek. “Your father is gone, Samoset. That is just his husk and I promise you that he would not want his body to be used this way.” Samoset nodded but allowed the tears to streak his cheeks anyway. There was no shame in his tears.
Chief Hibon looked at the Ruas and the Alphyn, and Brendan couldn’t imagine what the man was thinking. One thing was for sure, Chief Hibon was not thinking about calling a retreat. “Attack!”
The warriors and the Ruas charged at one another as the Alphyn bounded toward Samoset and Sorcha. The creature led with its razor-like tongue and followed the attack with slashing strikes of its front claws. Sorcha deflected the tongue with one blade and attempted to slice it off with the other, but it only bounced away on contact. The Alphyn’s momentum carried it past Sorcha and Samoset into the docile river. It circled back and stalked towards the banks. It spit fire at the pair, but they were able to avoid the plume of flames with a quick step backwards.
“Stay back and look for a good shot,” Sorcha suggested. “I’ll keep it busy.”
“I will aim for its neck,” Samoset said.
“No,” Sorcha protested, looking the young warrior in the eye. “Put an arrow right down its throat.”
Samoset nodded and jogged a few feet away to get a little distance. The Rua was getting the best of Ashemonqua and tried to rip his head off. Samoset roundhouse kicked the red-eye in the back of the head and caused it to stagger away from its victim.
The Rua craned its neck in a very unnatural way to face Samoset. “Father,” Samoset lamented.
The Rua that was once his father moved so fast that Samoset barely had time to move his head out of the way from a clawed strike. Samoset blocked three more slashes with the hard wood of the bow’s back. “Father! It’s me Samoset!”
His father showed no signs of recognition for his son. The creature he had become wished only to kill the young man. Brendan’s heart broke for Samoset, but he also knew what the Wampanoag warrior was going to have to do.
…
The Alphyn’s claws tore into the soft dirt on the banks as it crawled out of the river. Sorcha stared into the beast’s soulless eyes, a determined Celtic warrior. “Only one of us walks away from this.”
Brendan couldn’t believe that she was brave enough to face that frightening thing without the aid of Leprechaun magic. He was pretty sure he would have run like crazy.
The beast pawed the grass like a bull ready to charge, but Sorcha didn’t seem fazed by it in the least. What amazed Brendan was the speed his ancestor had. The thing came at her with strike after strike, but she continually deflected the claws and the tongue. Her blades moved so fast!
…
“I am sorry, father,” Samoset said with a heavy heart. “But I have to free you from this demon’s body.”
The Rua came at Samoset and he spun to his left and grabbed a knife off of his father’s waist. He tightened his fingers to gain a better hold on the weapon, pulled his head to the right and dropped into a squat. He thrust the blade up and into the Rua’s chest. The creature’s eyes grew large with the shock of the wound and its legs began to wobble. Samoset caught the Rua by the shoulders and laid it done gently.
“I will never forget you, Father,” he declared.
“Samoset!” yelled Sorcha.
Samoset nodded and readied himself. The creature rounded back to face the girl and growled.
“I’m right here, ugly,” Sorcha taunted.
The creature shot fire from its mouth again, only this time with more force. The hem of Sorcha’s cloak became alit and she dove past the creature and into the river. The Alphyn started to jump in after her but an arrow shot directly into its backside caused it to howl in pain and turn back to face Samoset. The Wampanoag youth already had another arrow ready and let it loose. It soared with great accuracy and went directly down the beast’s throat just as it was ready to spit another burst of fire. The Alphyn let out a horrible howl of pain and thrashed around, trying to dislodge the arrow from its throat. It toppled over and Sorcha scampered out of the water, jumping on top of the flailing creature. She drove her blades through the creature’s eye and held on for dear life. The Alphyn thrashed and bucked, but the Irish teen was tenacious and pushed the blades further into its skull. Seconds later, it stopped moving.
“You’ve got to find a soft spot on creatures like that.” Sorcha removed her blades and wiped them on the grass.
Chief Hibon was out of breath when he reached Sorcha and Samoset. He pointed across the river and turned back to attack a red-eye. They ran into the slow-moving river and made their way across it. They climbed onto the far bank and darted into the forest, the stone coffer in hand.
Brendan stood for a moment as he waited for something to happen. Usually he was yanked from the vision back to reality or at least into another vision. Basically, he stood there and looked on as the remaining Ruas battled with the native warriors.
He wondered why he was still there, but when the giant finally pushed her way out of the trees, he figured out the reason.
He wanted to look away, to see something else, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the atrocities that the giant did to the warriors. Brendan’s heart broke at seeing all of the death the giant caused. She was actually enjoying it and that sickened him.
He wanted to remember this moment. He wanted it to fuel him! According to Dorian, the giants were siding with Conchar and Dullahan and now he knew for certain that he couldn’t sit back and do nothing.
…
“Brendan,” Dorian said, shaking her boyfriend.
He came to and found slobber on his sleeve as he raised his head off of Dorian’s shoulder. He glanced around and saw the others looking at him, with the exception of Lizzie who was driving. He leaned back and ground his knuckles into his eyes.
“You were kind of scaring us, mate,” Garnash said with concern.
“I was? You sure it wasn’t Liz’s driving that was scaring everybody?”
“Hey! I’m a good driver,” barked Lizzie.
Dorian gripped his hand. “You obviously were somewhere else and you were yelling for someone named Sorcha to run.”
Brendan went ahead and told them about his visions involving Toren, Sorcha, and Samoset. He told them everything he could remember all the way through Sorcha and Samoset’s escape across the river.
“I hate Alphyns,” declared Dorian. “They are horrible creatures.”
Brendan nodded, remembering her retelling of her adventure in Leeds and in Argentina. It was still so weird to think that someone could travel in that manner, but then again, he saw the world in a whole new way. Anything was possible.
“What does ‘Eagla aon olc scrios ach é a’ mean in English?” Brendan asked Dorian and Meghan.
“It means, loosely, ‘Fear no evil only destroy it,’” Dorian answered.
Brendan considered the words carefully and felt an instant kinship to Sorcha. Those words represented everything he felt about who he had become.
“Hey, what’s all this?” Frank asked, pointing ahead.
Lizzie brought the car to a stop at the mouth of the street directly in front of a police blockade. All of the flashing red and blue lights made the neighborhood a surreal sight. Brendan hopped out and approached a police officer.
“What’s going on?” he asked the officer.
“A house blew up down there,” the cop replied.
“Is everyone okay?” Brendan asked in horror.
The officer nodded. “Nobody was home and it looks like the neighbors weren’t home either, so everybody’s fine, kid.”
“What’s the number on the house?”
The police officer turned and faced Brendan. “Look, we got our hands full back there, so you need to sit back and relax and let the firefighters do their job, all right?”
Brendan explained that he lived on this street and gave the address number. He knew right away from the cop’s expression that this blockade was for his house. After a bit of convincing, the officer allowed Lizzie to drive past the wooden saw horses.
“What’s going on, Brendan?” asked Lizzie
Brendan didn’t reply. He just stared out the window at the smoking shell of a home that was once his family’s. They all exited the car, stood on the street, and watched the firefighters do their duty. Dorian nestled in under Brendan’s left arm while Lizzie snuggled in under his right. Frank held her hand while Garnash masked his presence on Meghan’s shoulder.
“What happened?” Lizzie asked through tears.
Brendan knew what happened. He narrowed his gaze at the fire. This kept getting more and more personal and his thoughts kept returning to the advice from the voice in the vision. Do nothing? How could he do nothing?
…
The morning sky was laden with pink tones and scattered, billowy clouds. It was oddly beautiful and serene—the exact opposite of the mood among the Descendants of Magog.
The giants milled about in their valley village, which was tucked away from prying eyes and shaded by powerful spells to allow the brood privacy from a world gone mad. It seemed that the Descendants themselves were the only sane beings on the planet, at least according to D’Quall. Not long ago, the Magogs had their way with the land and lived prosperous lives, but that all changed with the dawn of mankind. All of the Descendants of Magog hated humans with a fervent passion.
The Bloodright Lord looked out among the warriors of his village, males and females alike, battle-worn and ruthless. The Bloodright Lord was proud of his brood. They were fearsome warriors that never stopped. Every one of them would rather die than retreat.
“Brothers and sisters of Magog!” he began with a thunderous boom.
The Magogs burst into shouts of their approval. They were a prideful bunch, as so many groups are, and were eager to hear their leader’s words.
“We have an opportunity, my fellow Magogs, an opportunity to step back into the world without fear and without concealment. We have a task set before us—a horrible band of Leprechauns, the kinfolk of our hated rivals the Gnomes, has risen up against our powerful ally. Their actions threaten our opportunity!”
The Magogs reacted with hisses and shouting. The Gnomes and the Leprechauns were holding them back, along with the humans, and they should be destroyed!
“Lord Elathan from the North has sought our aide in annihilating these vermin, these human lovers, this disease from the Earth! When the order comes down, we shall act and the Descendants of Magog shall prevail on the side of the righteous!” D’Quall took in the fervent exuberance of the gathered. “The Descendants of Magog shall once again take our place among the gods and the privileged! Our ally, Lord Elathan, the great Bringer of Death shall be our trailblazer!”
The warrior giants were nearly frothing at the mouth at their chance to destroy the Leprechaun menace and any who stood by their side.