Zodiac Academy 7: Heartless Sky

More Nymphs than we possibly could have anticipated spilled from the trees, each of them in their shifted forms and screaming with the full force of their rattles as they ran between the thick trunks to come to the aid of their brethren.

We’d formed a ring surrounding the clearing, each of us in the trees above them as we waited for the carnage to descend, but there were so many of them that it was impossible to stick to our plan of picking them off from above.

Max swept between the trees to my right, firing his bow and arrow as he used his air magic to keep himself aloft, fighting to maintain a hold on his Elemental magic, but remaining high enough above them to lessen the effects of their rattles.

The twins swept across the clearing ahead of me, Phoenix fire pouring from their hands as they created a giant blazing X which cut through the ground and set fire to it, effectively dividing the Nymphs as they were forced to retreat from the flames and several of them were destroyed by their power.

“Stay close to me!” I bellowed, my eyes on Roxy as she tore across the clearing in her fully shifted form, fire gilding the armour Geraldine had given her and her hair a blaze of scarlet flames.

“Try to keep up, asshole!” she called back and I snarled, my grip on my axe tightening as I looked down into the clearing below, shooting more magic down at the Nymphs from my perch in the treetops.

But as Roxy and her sister beat their wings and launched themselves further away from me with the clear intention to keep going instead of following my orders, I gritted my teeth and leapt from my perch with my axe raised.

I roared a challenge as I landed on a Nymph who had been charging between the trees beneath me, colliding with it and cleaving my axe down upon its head just as I felt the sharp slice of its probes against my side.

I had no room to shift here with the trees packed so tightly, so I took off on foot, my flaming axe burning in the darkness as I ran to meet my next opponent, my gaze flicking between the Nymph and the two Phoenixes who were speeding away between the trees ahead of me.

I lost sight of them entirely as I met my foe, swinging my axe with a savage cry and taking out its leg as it lunged for me. The thing fell like the tree it resembled and I pounced on it the moment it hit the ground, bringing about its ruin with the weapon I’d been gifted from the sister of the woman I loved.

The fight descended quickly into chaos and bloodshed from there and I lost all sight of Roxy and her sister as I gave myself to the fray.

I swung my axe with such brutality that my arms ached and each strike of my weapon against bone or woody flesh reverberated through my body like the toll of a death march.

A howl burst through the trees at my back and Seth leapt over me in his enormous white Wolf form, taking a Nymph to the ground with his flaming metal claws and sinking his teeth deep into the creature’s throat as it snarled and kicked beneath him.

I wrenched my axe from the chest of my latest kill, a violent snarl passing my lips as smoke spilled between them and the urge to shift tugged at me incessantly, my inner animal aching to join the fight.

An arrow shot past my head so close that I felt the heat of the flames as they passed me by. I swung around to watch it find a home in the eye of one of the creatures a beat before a solid weight collided with me and sent me crashing down onto the forest floor.

I managed to roll as I fell, my fist cracking against the bark-like flesh of my opponent as it drove its weight down on me and its rattle sounded so loudly that my limbs damn near locked up with the power of it.

The magic inside me was frozen, my axe knocked aside as my muscles contracted against the alien feeling of the Nymph’s power taking hold of mine. I snarled in fury as the Nymph stabbed at me with its probes, jerking aside to avoid the blow which hit the leaves beside my head instead.

It struck at me again and again as I thrashed from side to side, evading the strike of those sharpened probes repeatedly as I drove my fist into its side and fought to get out from beneath it.

The Nymph screamed in my face, more of its foul power slamming into me and stealing my fucking breath from my lungs as I was incapacitated by it, the slice of pain in my chest breaking through the numbness in my mind to whisper promises of my death as agony broke through me.

But as I tried to take hold of my Dragon and shift to save myself, the Nymph screamed in pain and burst into flames above me, its body scattering into a mess of ash and embers which dispersed to reveal the blazing girl behind it as she raised her chin at me in greeting.

“Get up, asshole,” Roxy snapped like saving my ass had pissed her off and I shoved to my feet, fighting to access my magic so that I could heal the bleeding wound in my chest as I scooped my axe up off of the ground.

“Get back in the air,” I barked at her, my heart thrashing as she turned that feral gaze on a trio of Nymphs who had just spotted us between the trees.

Roxy glanced at me, the corner of her lips twitching in amusement as I felt the shadow of my own smirk in reply. 

“So fucking bossy,” she commented before beating her wings hard and taking off like I’d commanded. 

But instead of flying for the safety of the sky where she could continue to fire long range attacks down on our enemies like I’d commanded her and Darcy to do throughout this, she flew across the forest floor, barely an inch from the ground and sailed straight for them.

“Roxy!” I roared, taking chase on foot, my axe raised above my shoulder and poised to kill as the desire to protect her merged with the hunger of the monster in me, and I looked those Nymphs in the eyes and promised them their ruin at my hand.

I charged after her, the heat of her flames warming the air I ran through and the pure blaze of her red and blue fire damn near blinding me as I chased after it.

Roxy released a battle cry of her own as she made it within striking distance of the Nymphs and the blast of power which escaped her nearly put me on my ass as a heatwave crashed over me and burned the rain from the sky for several seconds with its intensity.

Fire poured from her in a torrent, engulfing the three Nymphs within it and by the time I’d made it to them, I merely burst through the burning ash which was all that remained of their bodies and watched her as she finally turned towards the sky and raced up out of my reach.

More Nymphs were closing in on us and I turned, meaning to head back towards the creatures we had left tied to the stakes in the centre of our trap, but finding an enormous Nymph stepping out of the trees blocking my way.

The sound of a Tarzan yodel drew my attention to my left and I glanced that way just in time to spot Geraldine swinging between the trees on a thick vine, her flaming flail aimed with brutal precision as she bore down on a Nymph with a yell of, “Not today you nilly nodger!”

The huge Nymph released a rattle so powerful that I felt it down to my toes and my magic was locked down hard once more, but I smiled as I slowly swung my axe back and forth in my grip, striding towards it between the trees while the rain pattered down on my head.

I was a man at home in the thick of the fight, and I was ready to prove my mettle against every dark souled creature here.