ETERNITY

Excerpt 3

 

I hadn’t moved since it let me know it was here. Instead, I concentrated on its sound, trying to determine where it stood from behind me. 

It was breathing, slow and shallow, but the noise echoed off the metal inside, disrupting any potential at honing in on it. A rustling sound told me that it had just opened its wings…readying for attack. 

I couldn’t get a firm fix on the sounds until the very last second. Only when it had launched itself into the air did I know where it was hiding. 

A scraping, long and hideous, against the metal told me that it hadn’t been standing in the shadows at all. It had been clinging on the main beam running from one end of the roof to the other.  

It had been hiding from above.

That wasn’t what threw me, however. 

The scraping sound came from claws and if my attacker had claws, it wasn’t a Fallen One.

I was now in the presence of an Elsic.

Although I attempted to turn, my body only made it halfway around before the collision came.

The force of it made my body flip, heels sweeping fully around towards the sky and back to the ground again. Already in motion, I fell backwards, landing hard against the firm dirt.

My breath was gone. My mouth was open, my chest was moving, but no air was filling my lungs.
The wind had been knocked out of me.

Haggard, my breath drew in then, but the damage had been done. My attacker had me where it wanted me: On the ground, alone, and without a single weapon in sight.

Then my mind slowed, focusing. From its walk I knew it would attack from the right side. 

Its muscles were tensing on that side of its body.

I, however, wasn’t going to wait around for it.

Flipping my legs over my head again – this time with purpose – I rolled over and landed on my feet. 

Its wings drew out, stretching longer than a man’s body.

I couldn’t see much of it in the darkness, but I assumed it was sneering.

“Let’s go,” I hissed, not allowing my voice above a whisper or my housemates would hear and certainly be hurt in an attempt to rescue me. 

It came at me then, but it never touched me. 

The influx of sensory perception when a Fallen One was present had now been controlled. Using it, I watched its attacks, diverting them, sweeping, hurling, and ducking out of its way.

It nicked my ear and slammed against my elbow but never came any closer.

Then it was on the ground, tumbling. Another body was on top of it, this one with white wings.

In one fluid motion, my savior rose up and sliced my attacker across the chest.

Blood spewed, it bent in pain only to snap back and spring towards the sky. Its wings flapping wildly, it disappeared a second later.

The one left on the ground, my guardian, turned to me. “Are you harmed?”

“No, Eran,” I said quietly in awe of him. 

He bent his knees then and launched himself upwards, his wings carrying him rapidly in the direction my attacker had gone.
 

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