全城危机

"Dari!" Shira and Liz\'An shouted once the darkness lifted. They scrambled towards where they heard Kan-Dari\'s voice earlier and found her sitting on the ground, leaning on her Wyvern. Her face was pale, and there was an awfully large bump on her head.

Shira immediately knelt down and pressed her hand gently on her bump, injecting copious amounts of verdant healing energy into her head and quickly revitalizing her injured best friend.

"I truly am the weakest link, huh?" Kan-Dari whispered with a weak smile.

"No, you\'re definitely not the weakest link. You\'re the toughest link!" Shira said loudly.

Kan-Dari smiled and her heart felt slightly touched. Shira was actually praising her!

"Look! You were unlucky enough to fall from a Wyvern and actually hit your head hard, but all you suffered from is a small bump on the head? What are you? A human-shaped metal golem? Oh I know, you must be a rock-shapeshifter pretending to be an elf! HA! Your secret is out! I will tell Mistress!" Shira shouted.

"WHAT?!" Kan-Dari shouted back, all the warm feelings in her heart evaporating like a drop of water under the hot desert sand.

"YOU\'RE THE ROCK SHAPE-SHIFTER! YOUR WHOLE FAMILY IS A ROCK SHAPE SHIFTER! YOUR AUNTS AND UNCLES AND NIECES AND NEPHEWS ARE ROCK SHAPE SHIFTERS!" Kan-Dari shouted at Shira, who was still healing her head.

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?! DON\'T BRING MY CUTE NIECES AND NEPHEWS INTO THIS!" Shira shouted back.

Liz\'An sighed and smiled in relief. Kan-Dari seemed fine. Shira was definitely fine too. All was well.

"Quickly heal up." She said sternly to her two friends. "We need to rescue the other civilians!"

Both Shira and Kan-Dari turned to glare at Liz\'An. But she merely smiled her ferocious smile at them, which always worked like a charm when she wanted to calm them down. It hadn\'t failed her before, and it didn\'t fail her then.

The two girls flinched slightly and immediately kept quiet. And started making ugly faces at each other.

Liz\'An sighed. The peace between them only lasted for mere seconds. "Maybe they should bump their heads more often." She thought for a quick moment before shaking her head vigorously to drive such evil thoughts from her.

"Liz\'An, you okay? Are you dizzy?" Shira asked in a concerned voice. She immediately transferred her hand from Kan-Dari to Liz\'An.

"No, I\'m alright. Do-don\'t worry about me!" Liz\'An said. "Quick, let\'s go! In fact, I\'ll go first!" She jumped back to her Wyvern and quickly left.

"She\'s acting kinda weird." Shira said as she got on her Wyvern as well.

"You\'re the weird one! Your whole family, aunts uncles and..." Kan-Dari began as she hopped on her Wyvern.

"I SAID DON\'T BRING MY NIECES AND NEPHEWS INTO THIS!" Shira roared.

*-*-*-*-*

"What in the world was that?" Isabella croaked to her comrades as she stood up upon shaky legs and dusted herself clean.

"I dunno…" croaked Gabriella, another Verdant mage, as she kicked Valen, an Earth mage, viciously off her.

"Oof!" croaked Valen painfully. He didn\'t know how he ended up on top of Gabriella, but Gabriella sure didn\'t hold back on her strength while kicking him away.

"It came from the King, though…" croaked Justin, an Earth mage from somewhere.

"Should we go save him?" croaked Rhode, another Earth mage who, by a stroke of luck or overwhelming skill in riding Wyverns, was the only one still sitting on his Wyvern.

"Dubaza would have our hides if anything happened to him with us so close by." croaked Justin again, poking his head out from beneath a large, black Wyvern.

"Yes." croaked Bellaria, a Fire mage, from somewhere in the pile of Wyvern bodies.

"Save the King!" croaked Tim weakly as he appeared beneath his Wyvern. He was a Lightning mage.

"Now?" croaked Grent, an Ice mage as he too poke his head from beneath his Wyvern.

"Now?" croaked Emily, another Ice mage as she tried to sit up after bumping her head hard on the ground.

"NOW DAMN IT!" croaked Isabella loudly. "Let\'s go! You lazy, useless good-for-nothings! UP!! UP!!!!"

"Uhhh…" The renowned King\'s Guard for their matchless power and mysteriousness grumbled and moaned their way back to their Wyverns.

Grahh. Graaaah. The Wyverns grumbled weakly.

Finally, after all of them had climbed back up to their Wyverns and regained quite a bit of their wit and dignity, Rhode said the very thing that was on everyone\'s minds.

"If that mysterious power came from the King, and affected us so much all the way out here, wouldn\'t it mean that it would be much more powerful the closer we get to him?" Rhode asked the group thoughtfully.

"Definitely, By simple law of exponents, I estimate that it would be at least ten times more powerful, if not more." Justin said with an intelligent look on his face.

"Ten times? Our king is that powerful?" Gabriella asked half in mock surprise, half in genuine surprise.

"Apparently, he is. What a surprising, yet wonderful thing it is! To have a King that is beyond powerful, and able to fight all the difficult battles to protect his beloved citizens! Battles that are beyond the power of normal archmages, battles that only Kings can participate! " Valen said admiringly as the group began to rise into the sky slowly. Very, very slowly.

"A marvelous thing. Best king on the continent, I always say. Handsomest too." Gabriella giggled.

Rhode cleared his throat. "Erhm, but it occurred to me, ladies and gentlemen, that we are NOT Kings. Nor are we that powerful, for that matter."

The rest of the group looked at each other, as if taken by surprise.

"Well, would you have it, I believe we are not!" Emily exclaimed.

"In fact, I do not believe we bear the slightest resemblance to a king too!" Justin concurred enthusiastically.

"And I do not think I could last even one second if caught in the epicenter of that energy outburst." Tim chipped in.

"Yes. But don\'t worry! Our king is extremely thoughtful, so he would definitely dial down the power when we come within range." Isabella assured the group. "We should be fine!"

"Yes, yes, he is extremely kind, thoughtful and caring!" chirped in Bellaria. "But…"

"But if he had to dial down his power, then wouldn\'t that mean that the enemy will have a bigger chance of defeating him?" Valen asked with a frown.

"Friends, it seems to me that if we were to go and \'save\' the King, we would end up endangering him, that would be very, very bad wouldn\'t it?" Tim asked wisely while stroking his beard like a wise old man.

"Yes, yes, very bad! I shudder at the thought of endangering our beloved king by our own extraneous, stupid actions! See? I shudder!" Shuddered Grent.

"So what do you say we steer clear of the City of Rin, for the sake of the King?" Rhode asked the group.

"I guess we do not have a choice." grumbled Emily.

"No choice indeed." Valen agreed.

"Isabella? What do you think?" Gabriella asked her.

Isabella sighed. "As the King\'s Guard, we must always, always have the King\'s well being at heart. So to that end… To the City of Turah! Let us not bother the King!"

"To the City of Turah!" shouted Valen.

"Save the civilians!" shouted Grent.

"Protect the King! Save his life by saving the civilians!" shouted Justin enthusiastically.

"Okay that\'s too shameless, Justin." Isabella said.

"Hee hee." Emily giggled.

*-*-*-*-*

The three girls and the nine members of the King\'s Guard quickly brought the trolls and Wyverns to order, and flew as fast as they could towards the City of Turah. They had absolutely no casualties in the battle against the undead, and the seventy dead trolls were caused by the falls from the sky and the subsequent squashing by the Wyverns.

The mages from the Royal Dragon Battalion and from the general populace could deal with the healing and tending for the wounded, thus freeing the rest to continue their rescue operation.

Thirty thousand Wyverns filled the skies once more in a mighty air.

However, there were no heroic feelings in the hearts of all who sat upon the Wyverns. Instead, they were filled with shock and disbelief.

Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, and the eyes of archmages could see very, very far, were crumpled remains of undead. Skeletons, wraiths,, specters and ghouls were strewn messily on the ground.

Among them were also a few fresh human corpses, stragglers from the evacuation who did not escape the killing radius of the phenomena earlier in time.

Still, it was the magnitude and the mind-bogglingly large area of effect which the spell had which totally blew the minds of all the mages who saw it. The carnage stretched from the Eastern Main where they came from all the way towards the Southern Main where they were slowly approaching.

It was incredible. Hundreds and hundreds of miles. They were expecting to bypass the epicenter of the spell minutes ago. But now, apparently they were still in the fringes of the spell area of effect. How could any man do such a thing?

"Was it really cast by the King?" Isabella wondered worriedly. "But it was definitely his arcane aura. There could be no mistake about it. Still… Such a powerful spell… It was most probably a forbidden spell of some sort. And forbidden spells would entail a great cost of some sort."

"Would the King be alright?" Emily asked her softly. Apparently, she had the same thought in mind.

Isabella sighed deeply. This was beyond her. She had no idea what sort of power the King was dealing with for him to cast such a powerful spell. And did the King even defeat his foe after casting the spell?

With a startling realization, she realized that the King might be in serious danger. If he used all he had to cast this incredible spell, then he would be spent after that. And if the foe was not defeated, then the King\'s Guard needed to be his shield, dying one by one if need be, until the King recovered his strength to resume the fight.

"TO THE KING!" Isabella roared angrily, hating herself for coming to this decision so late.

However, before the remaining King\'s Guard could respond, they heard a powerful roar resound somewhere in the distance from the North.

Immediately, ALL the Wyverns began to tremble violently.