The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(104)

We passed an outpost that was vacant, and the distance between our enemy and the forward point of our persistence was closing. We surged against the jungle wall of Jaakruid like a tidal wave driving up and over, and leaking through.

I set ablaze with gleaming light my sword Wrath, and ripped through the jungle wall. My sword easily splintered the wooden barrier, and gave passage for my Elon warriors.

I crossed the brink of the wall, and after about three strides, I felt the ground flee beneath me.

“A trap!” I shouted.

I lost my stomach, because I was falling toward a solid bed of dirt. As I dropped toward the bottom of the trap my ears popped from the depth of the hole.

Just as my body was to fracture completely against the rocks below—my lifters elevated me to safety.

I looked up and saw that I had fallen about fifty feet before my lifters saved me.

Using my powerful shoes, I rocketed upward to accompany my army. Dreading the Morlorian, my amulet warmed my chest. I flew quickly because I knew that there was danger at ground level.

I catapulted my body toward safety to the edge of the hole, and just as I broke free, I saw an enormous green monster thrashing erratically. I could only assume it was the plant menace, the Morlorian. Five arrows from Elon warriors surrounding the perimeter above zinged downwards past my body toward the monster. Ed swooped in to move me away as the Morlorian lashed its green aloe-like tentacles in my direction.

Its arms were as wide as a sidewalk and its body as thick as a driveway. It unleashed its poisoned stench to ensue me into madness. The dastardly creature sprayed streams of toxic pollination toward me, and I retreated back through the hole that I had blasted through the palace wall. I reasoned it would be safer for me outside enemy territory. I searched out higher ground to evade the poisons.

Just as I exited though the hole from my previous blast, a puff of the Morlorian’s toxic pollen brushed by my face and found a path to my lungs through my inhalation. I was disappointed in my body’s total surrender, but by then I had already passed out. Veering wildly with my lifters still amok, I crashed softly atop the branches of a non-sentient tree. The battle raged beneath me, while I lay atop the treetop structure.


Enraged at the immobilization of me, their leader, the Elons stormed the Morlorian. Meanwhile, Ed flew to my aid, carrying the remainder of the deflicontis mucilage.

‘Swallow this, Theodore. It is the only way the affliction will pass!’ Ed yelled, although I was unconscious. He forced the rest of the vial down my throat.

The medicine did the trick. Within seconds, I was sitting up, taking stock of the battle raging on below. The morning sky lit up even more as arrows blazed from one end to the other.

My vision was still fuzzy, and my hearing was sporadic, thanks to the after-effects of the poison from the Morlorian. However, there was no mistaking the searing pain from the amulet upon my chest, as if a burning log was placed upon it. Moaning with pain, I clawed at it to remove it from my skin.

That burning sensation had awakened me to my full senses. Before my eyes, an image lay that seared itself forever in my head. Right in front of me, my robotic companion Ed, was split into two from behind, and he was no more.

As Ed’s two sides, left and right, fell apart from each other, standing behind Ed’s demise was the person I wished dead from the start. It was the man who drained pure life from my loving guardians—Travis. He sheathed his sword and stood with his hands over his hips to address me.

‘So, you have it in you to come to me,’ he said, spitting on me as I lay there at his feet, ‘This must be a joke. Look at you all dressed up, what do you think was going to happen here? A teenager is going to defeat us with his inherited army of idiots?’

‘No,’ I said, because I learned that day, lengthy speeches were not meant for war. I rolled on to my belly and took a brief look toward the battle on the ground. My Elons were lost in the confrontation of their conflicting equals, the Dark Elons. I could only slightly tell the good guys from the bad guys.

I clenched Wrath, and with sleight of hand and ferociousness of anger, I lashed my weapon toward Travis’s dainty armor. My blade’s scorching rage rippled the hide of his armor, nearly penetrating to the skin itself.

To my consternation, Travis didn’t flinch once at his close call. This warned me that the worse was yet to come. Travis no longer cared about his own safety; he had only one immediate goal: my utter and total destruction. Hatred swelled within his eyes.

Snarling, Travis withdrew his sword and aimed it menacingly at me.

The sword consisted of a wire projecting upward from the handle, with a saucer about an inch in diameter pinnacled at the top. It looked like a 1950’s do-it yourself handyman project; a car’s radio telescoping antenna with a miniature satellite dish atop its tip. At first glimpse, I snickered at the sight of it.

‘And you plan to defeat me with that; I have seen better weapons in my grandparents’ shed!’ I shouted.

‘You mean, the shed that I burnt to the ground when I ventured back to your home—along with your precious house?’ he asked. I could feel the darkness closing in. My tunneled vision zeroed in on that son of a devil’s ass, ‘You have nothing to go back to. You are nothing!’ he shouted as he gripped his sword tight, and from the handle flowing to the top of the saucer at its peak—gleamed sparkling yellow flow of energy.

It looked electric, like a bolt of lightning, pinned between handle and saucer, and flames somersaulted off its edge. His sword took form, and was much more intimidating after it charged. He zapped up a flaming ball of blue lightning on the ground, and flames encircled it.