Rain walked taller with the emerald hanging on her neck. It was not from the beauty of the piece, nor was it from winning the favor of Farro. Her brave stature was from knowing the final stone was now in her possession, and Kotah, and her mother, would now be waiting for her. Her tasks and all the risks involved were now complete.
Despite her current accomplishment, a sinking feeling still hung in the back of her mind from the things she had done to retrieve the stones. She had used her skills and cunning to outwit many creatures before, but it was generally for rescuing or slipping away from a bad situation. To retrieve the stones, she had been using trickery and dangerous methods in order to steal from others. She tried to remind herself that the means didn’t matter if her work had been completed successfully, but this reasoning soured quickly.
The blue grazer shook her head and pressed forward. Her beach cave was in sight.
Kotah was standing in the entrance of the cave, though it was difficult to tell his shadowed form from the shadows on the walls behind him. He opened wide his hands as she approached him. “What a stunning sight,” Kotah spoke with a laugh on his lips. “The final stone, here at last!”
Rain smirked, slowing to a stop before him. “Yep, no matter that I happen to be here along with it.”
“Of course—thank you, Rain,” Kotah’s fingers greedily waved over the stone, still hanging on Rain’s neck. “Let me have it!”
Rain shrugged away. “What about my mother?”
Kotah began breathe heavily in frustration. “I can do nothing until you give me the last stone!”
“Fine,” Rain reached behind her neck and untied the cord that held the stone.
“Good—set it here...” Kotah’s form leapt behind the pile of stones on the ground.
She held it towards the pile and flinched as the green stone began to glow.
“That’s it... set it down...”
Rain glanced at Kotah’s form. “Impatient, much?”
Kotah snarled under his breath. “I’m not sure why you feel the need to delay this!”
Rain retracted her hand. “Well, now I’m not sure I want to put it down.”
“Don’t start this again!!” Kotah’s shadow began to shift erratically.
The orb in her forehead pulsed and shocked her back into submission. “All right!!” she yelled and threw the stone down into the pile.
At once, a brilliant light burst from the pile of stones, blinding Rain from being able to see anything—much less Kotah’s shadow. She threw up her arms to block the light and staggered backward into the wall.
The intensity of the light faded, but now a thick blackness was beginning to bubble out of the crevices of the rocks. An odd warmth was beginning to radiate from the pile, and each stone was soon melted into the black matter.
“Yes!” Kotah laughed and raised his arms upward as the bubbling darkness began to overtake him.
“Kotah?” Rain’s voice wavered, but the dark mass was beginning to spread. She scrambled from the cave moments before another burst shot from the cave’s mouth and thrust her face-first into the sand.
“At last—I am free!!” Kotah’s voice bellowed from the cave.
Rain stayed low to the ground as the wind began to whip out of control and the clouds began to circle overhead. She turned to face the cave, squinting against the sand in her eyes. “Kotah??”
Lightning struck the top of the cave and nearly burst its rocky cover into pieces. Rain yelped and covered her head as stone fragments fell around her like raindrops. She braced herself in terror as thunder rumbled the ground beneath her. Of all times to be without her gear, this would be the time she had left it behind in the cave.
A dark foot stepped into the sand inches from her nose. She uncovered her face cautiously and shrunk back at the form before her.
A crested grazer was covered head to toe in dark, iridescent scales. With every breath and in every flash of lightning from the gathering storm, the colors that reflected across him changed and shifted. He stood tall and looked down upon her with broad shoulders, and upon his chest hung a large orb that appeared to be swirling deep beyond its physical bounds.
He held out his hands as the light caught their pearlescent sheen. “Rain,” his clear blue eyes locked onto hers.
“You—” Rain was aghast, “you’re… Kotah?”
“Indeed I am.” He leaned backward as Rain began to climb back to her feet. “I must thank you for reviving me… it is incredible to feel the sand between my toes… the wind upon my face… and very soon, food in my stomach!”
Rain remained cautious and glanced to the sky. “What’s with the lightning and clouds—and the black stuff?”
“There you are, always asking questions…”
“Because you never give me answers,” her lips pulled to a sneer.
“Because you don’t need them, my dear,” he drew his own lips close to her ear.
As his words fell upon her cheek, she shut her eyes and let out a short breath—before snapping herself out of it. “Yes I do,” she stepped backward. “And now that you’re back to normal, I want to know how you’re going to hold up your end of the deal.”
Kotah remained unmoved as thunder resonated around them. “My end of the deal… yes,” he fingered the curve of the stone hanging from his neck.
The sparkling vortex distracted her. “Where did that come from?”
“From the seven stones you so adeptly gathered for me. They were all pieces of this orb—scattered in hopes I would never be released again.”
“Released?” Her eyes locked back onto Kotah’s.
“Oh, I suppose I also neglected to mention I’ve been trapped inside this orb for the past five-hundred years.”
“Five-hundred—” Rain arched her neck. “So that whole shadow spiel you fed me—how does that fit into you being trapped and scattered across the world? Who did it?” Her teeth were bared as her breathing shortened. “…And why??”
Kotah’s iridescence seemed to pulse even in his physical form. “Silence!!”
He threw his hand at her, and the searing pain again pulsed through her head. She slumped to her knees and grasped at her face, but the pain was soon replaced Kotah’s steely gaze beating down upon her.
“After hundreds of years, my stones were finally discovered across this land, and I was able to feed off of each finder’s energy. It allowed me to send bits of my shadow magic back into the land to coax someone into finding them and bringing them to me.” Kotah looked down his nose at her. “With your skills, you were a perfect choice. I embedded a small stone into that fair, crested head of yours so I could connect with you, and my plan worked far better that I could have imagined. You just needed something tangible to place your trust in, a reason to perform the task even when things grew dangerous—and a chance for the companionship you didn’t even know you desired…”
Her eyes were wide in shock, but anger was attempting to seep in. “Then—my mother—”
Kotah flashed a grin, “As smart and as clever as you are, you can still be tricked just as easily as anyone else.”
She pushed back to her feet, squaring her body with his. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you aren’t the only one who can use someone else’s weaknesses to their advantage.” His lips revealed a line of grinning teeth. “I only needed a moment’s access into your thoughts to see just how very dear your mother is to you…”
Rain was trembling, though the number of emotions that were surging through her made it difficult to tell why.
“I shifted my shadow into the form of a motherly grazer and played back a memory of her speaking your name… thus exploiting the greatest weakness I could find in you…”
Rain had heard enough. Her sharp cry resonated through her long crest as she dashed forward.
Kotah caught her with both hands and sent her flying backward with a shock of dark energy. The darkness surged through her long after she hit the ground, and she was unable to regain her senses.
“I suggest staying where you are, Rain,” Kotah sauntered closer. “I don’t want to have to destroy you.”
Rain’s face twitched. “Sure—now that you’re finished using me!” She struggled to speak.
“I wasn’t lying when I mentioned you staying with me,” he pulled up her head by her crest as he knelt beside her. “Our kind is far superior than all others, you know.” He spoke gently into her ear. “Smarter than any hunter, faster than any other grazer. And with my great power you helped bring back to this world… Just think of all I could accomplish with you at my side…”
He tantalizingly rubbed his face into the hollow of her crest. He ignored her discomfited cries—and the sound of booming footsteps fast approaching.
Farro’s blood-curdling roar was immediately followed by his head making contact with Kotah’s body, flinging the dark grazer into a mass of thick sea grass beside the cave.
“Farro?” Rain grunted, shocked to see the tyrant looming over her.
“What has he done to you??” Farro spat.
“Get this—thing out of my head!” She grit her teeth.
“Ugh!” Farro struggled to position himself to grasp the orb in her forehead. “Blast my miniscule reach! Just… hold still!”
Rain flinched as he bent his head over and attempted to slip his sharp teeth on either side of the orb. The orb began to pulse again, causing Farro to grimace as Rain stifled a cry.
“Hole—shtill…”
With a loud pop, Farro reeled backward as the orb was dislodged.
The orb flew through the air and plinked into the sand behind them. Rain groaned a sigh and clutched at her head. Farro’s teeth left a gash across her forehead, but she would gladly take a scar in the place of Kotah’s mind-reading and mind-controlling device.
The two barely had a moment to half-smile at each other before an unearthly groan curdled from the grass. Deep blackness bubbled over Kotah’s form as he began consuming the grass ravenously. With each moment, he grew larger and more massive, stretching to devour nearby scrub bushes down to their roots—along with much of the sand in the area.
The circling clouds above darkened as if night had fallen, and the flashes of lightning cast an eerie light on the ground. The sand was shifting as Kotah’s form swelled, and as the amorphous blob heavily flopped back onto the cave, the cave’s mouth sunk below ground beneath its weight.
Even Farro shrunk backward as two massive hands fell upon the edge of the rock. Black sludge splattered across the ground and dripped from each finger. The mass above the arms began to roll as Kotah’s head twisted and broke from the slime with a deafening howl.
“No… it can’t be!”
Rain blinked, instinctively pressed against the tyrant’s legs. “C-can’t be what?”
Farro’s yellow eyes held a look of shocked bewilderment. “The legends spoken of Belzekotah—they were all true!!”
“Belze—kotah?”
The sludge-covered creature uttered another gurgling yowl as the iridescent scales formed back over its shadowy mass. He rose above the cave and stood at his full height, and the sheer weight of his massive form caused the ground to crack. Rain and Farro had to run to avoid falling through the broken ground. Rain managed to pull herself behind a chunk of rock, and Farro was quick to follow.
“What’s going on?” She gripped Farro’s clawed hand as he crouched behind the rock.
“Belzekotah is an ancient crested grazer who once awakened an evil power deep within our lands,” Farro was huffing to catch his breath. “Over five-hundred years ago, he destroyed almost every living creature—and he is the one who now stands before us!!”
Rain clutched at her head, though it had nothing to do with pain. “I can’t believe—and it’s all my fault!” She winced, “if I hadn’t found those stones for him...”
“Wait,” Farro lifted her chin. “You no longer have mine!” His eyes then widened in realization. “Was my stone... one of the stones?”
“You held the Stone of Love.”
“Love? Is that what he told you?” The tyrant sneered. “In the legend, the stones were all pieces of his worst qualities; Stones of Sloth, Pride, Greed, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and,” he swallowed, “...Lust. Oh no…”
“I know you can’t be far, Rain!!” Belzekotah’s height towered over the land as black sludge dripped from the elongated crest atop his head. “You may have broken my tie with you, but I know you’ll come running back to me once you remember that tyrant’s true motives!”
A fire lit in Farro’s eyes. “We do not fear you, Belzekotah!” he barked as he stepped around the broken ground. “Once your stone is broken, your presence will again be removed from our land!!”
“I’d like to see you try!” The creature’s fingers caressed the vortex stone, barely the size of a berry in his claws due to his enormous size. “I can watch you fail!!”
Farro let out a sharp roar, but he was aware he was far outmatched.
Rain also hung in uncertainty, but it was then that the smallest of claws tugged on her elbow.
“Hey hey hey!!” Treeka tugged again.
“Treeka! What are you—”
“No time for talking—I heard everything—what can I do?”
The corner of Rain’s mouth tugged upward.
“Come on, tough guy!” Belzekotah sneered. “Do you really think you can take what is mine? You’ve known so many females, you won’t miss this one!”
“I have learned the errors of my ways,” Farro chewed on the words. “And there is no one who could replace Rain!”
“Then why don’t you stand up for your ‘lady friend’ and make your move!” He stressing his words to berate the tyrant.
Rain slid in front of Farro as Treeka shot to the skies. “Why not make your own move, jerk!”
“What are you saying?” Belzekotah’s hands slapped the cave, causing another rock to crumble to the ground.
“I’m saying if you came down here, Farro would be able to take it!”
“You’re out of your mind!” The ancient beast growled in outrage.
“Rain, what are you doing?” The wary tyrant hissed in her direction.
Rain eyed the sky. “Now that I think of it, I bet I could get it from you no problem. But then again, you’ll never come back down here, so I guess you’ll never know.”
Belzekotah let out a shrill call and launched himself from the top of the cave. He landed with a splatter and shook the ground, landing mere feet before Rain. “Now—let’s see you—”
Treeka swooped in and snipped the cord that held Belzekotah’s stone around his neck before the distracted creature could retaliate. Unfortunately, Treeka’s harried flapping was unable to support the weight of the vortex stone, and she was forced to release it into the ever-sinking cave.
“No!!” Belzekotah bellowed, diving toward the cave as the stone fell through cracked ceiling. He sighed with relief when it had landed safely in the sand, and with a demonic snarl, he turned his head over his shoulder.
Retaliation was promptly served with a shockwave of shadow energy, knocking all three to the ground from their respective heights. Treeka squawked and dropped into the ocean as Farro collapsed into the sand. Rain had caught herself on trembling hands, but when Belzekotah saw her persisting, he snarled and thrust out an oozing iridescent hand.
“Your tricks will not save you this time, Rain!” He sent another wave directly at her. “Maybe now you will stay down!!”
Rain cried out as Belzekotah continued to paralyze her.
Farro grit his teeth and climbed back to his feet. He roared out a distress call at the top of his lungs, and then charged head-first toward Belzekotah’s legs. He struck them as hard as he could, but the ancient behemoth scarcely faltered from the force.
“What a valiant effort!” Belzekotah released Rain from his shadow-grip and glared snidely at the stunned tyrant. “I’m still surprised a hunter like you is even attempting to protect the life of a grazer—instead of trying to eat it.”
“If you truly wanted Rain by your side, you would be fighting for her too!” The tyrant stood as tall as he could.
“Oh, you want to fight? I can give you something to pummel on your own level.”
At once, a form began to rise from the thick, black ooze pooling at the foot of the cave. It rose as a tyrant, standing tall and expressionless at Belzekotah’s feet. Its eyeless face turned and directed itself at Farro, and this momentary pause was the only preparation he received.
It drove towards Farro, but the brown tyrant grasped it by the neck and shook it down. Its piercing scream hissed into the air as it melted away. Farro rose on his feet triumphantly, only for two more to break through the sludge and knock him from his feet.
Rain was still immobilized as she tried to regain her senses. The collective calls of other creatures was filling the beach and the rumbling of footsteps grew louder than waves. She curled into a ball in defense, fearing the worst.
But the creatures rushed past her.
She opened her eyes and finally brought the scene into focus: a mix-matched herd of grazers and hunters were storming onto the beach, and they were gathering front of Rain and Farro like a protective barrier.
For a brief moment, Belzekotah seemed shocked. “So, you're bringing the fight to me?” His head whipped from side to side. “All right—you'll have it!”
Hundreds of forms began rise as tyrants, stalkers, scavengers, and grazers alike, all moving like a black, emotionless cloud under Belzekotah’s control. Heavy raindrops began to fall from the swirling storm above, splattering across their darkened forms and coating them with an odd sheen.
“Attack anything that moves,” Belzekotah sneered to his shadow army. “I will bring this chaotic mess of a world back under my control once and for all...”
Lightning struck the cave and thunder rattled the rocks, and the creatures’ gaping mouths emitted other-worldly screams as they darted from the cave.
“Rain!!”
Before she could turn her head, Rain felt a horned muzzle scooping under her body, and she winced as she used the leverage to climb to her feet. “You don’t need to be here,” she huffed weakly.
“I’m not ‘Here’—I’m Rhoger.”
Rain blinked. “…Really? Now?”
“Come on, Blue, are you kidding?” Mirri inserted herself between Rain and Rhoger. “All this noise got the attention of every living thing in this area. And with Farro’s call, I don’t think anyone had a choice!”
Rain wiped the raindrops away from her eyes and glanced despondently at Rhoger. “Everything you and Arren said was true… I made a terrible mistake in helping Kotah...”
“I’m not here to berate you—yet,” Rhoger frowned and glanced at the behemoth towering over the beach. “But the second I saw all this and heard Farro’s cry, I knew this had to be the power you spoke of.”
Mirri leaned her slender neck into Rain’s line of sight before the blue grazer was able to slump back into shame. “By the way—I do believe this is yours.”
Rain was filled with relief as Mirri held out a long stick tipped with a sharpened rock. She accepted it gratefully, and not a moment too soon. An approaching shadow grazer was galloping towards them, and Rain swiftly made an end to its movements with a deadly pierce into its neck. She then twisted around and cut the feet out from under a shadow stalker attempting to leap onto Rhoger, and finished her movement with a stab into a swooping shadow windbeak. All three shadows hissed and melted into the sand.
Rhoger’s eyes nearly popped from his boney head as Mirri’s mouth hung wide open. “…I do believe that is hers.” The horned grazer mumbled.
Rain huffed and looked toward Belzekotah. “The seven stones I collected merged into one big vortex stone that released Belzekotah and his power. We have to smash that stone,” Rain pointed. “Treeka almost got it, but it fell in the cave.”
“What cave?”
Rain frowned. “The broken boulders Belzekotah is now standing on.”
Rhoger’s eyes bulged open again. “How are we supposed to get in there?”
“And get past him?” Mirri added warily.
Rain glared at the cave with narrow eyes. Belzekotah’s feet were inches from the former opening, but since the ground had shifted, the entire structure had sunken and covered the mouth of the cave. The top had been broken, but there would be no way past Belzekotah’s gaze to climb inside. The rest of the structure was bent upward, facing the ocean waves.
She stood straighter as she gripped her staff tighter in her hands. The alternate entrance into the cave was still accessible.
“Don’t follow me,” Rain gripped her staff tightly. “Keep Belzekotah’s eyes in this direction.”
“Rain—don’t—”
“I will make this right, Rhoger.” Rain spoke with conviction. The storm was picking up, and raindrops dripped across her scarred forehead as she looked directly at her friend.
Rhoger’s lips pouted into a frown as Mirri was forced to take on a shadow scavenger behind them. He at last nodded and ran to Mirri’s aid.
Rain sped through the chaos, past shadow and non-shadow creatures alike. She ran past members of her former herd, including Thorn. He flashed her a look of surprise as she stabbed through a shadow grazer attempting to attack him. She brushed past Reid, the plated grazer that attended to Perna, and one of the stalkers that had aided in guarding Farro. Even the three tyrants she had tricked days earlier were in the mass of bodies in the fight, and one managed to protect her from a swooping shadow windbeak.
The blue grazer was already soaked from the storm as she dodged violent waves that crashed against the beach. The sand was sticky, but she was able to scoot around a large rock and ensure Belzekotah did not see her. She almost laughed when she noticed Treeka eagerly attempting to peck his eyes out like a gnat buzzing around a tyrant’s snout. Regardless of how, her way was clear.
Rain bolted inside the cave on the heels of a wave and slid down the freshly created slope. There, at the base, lay Belzekotah’s swirling orb. She narrowed her gaze at the magical stone and stiffened her posture with determination. It was time to rid her world of Belzekotah.
She lifted her staff over her head and struck the vortex with all her might. A great crack echoed in her ears, but when the pointed end of her staff plunked into the sand beside her, she winced and tossed the other end aside.
Pressing her lips together, she reached forward and grabbed the stone with both hands. The shock that rushed through her fingers drew a shriek from her lips as she was forced to release it.
Belzekotah’s form pulsed, and he twisted his body to glance into the cave. “What’s going on??”
Rain clenched her teeth and hoped the remainder of the ceiling was enough to block his view of her. Thankfully, Treeka again rose to the occasion and at last managed to stick her pointed beak into his eye.
Belzekotah let out a bellowing cry and slammed his feet down, jostling the rocks of the cave and causing fragments to fall on Rain’s head. She winced as she brushed them from her wounded forehead, and then her eyes locked onto a huge jagged rock clinging to the cave ceiling. Supporting it were unevenly cracked stones barely making up the wall beside her. Below it was the vortex orb.
A tightness gripped Rain’s chest as her heart began to pound. This was the only option.
Rain squeezed her eyes shut and threw herself at the wall.
Rocks fell around her, but the main support still held. She backed up and grunted as she struck it again. A boulder fell, exposing her again to the storm outside.
Raindrops poured onto her scuffed side as she wavered on her feet. She gazed up into the storm one last time and felt the rain upon her face.
She pushed away to the other side of the cave, trumpeted a cry, and ran headlong into the wall.
The wall broke away and the cave collapsed.
Belzekotah let out a retch as brilliant white light shot through him. He held out his hands and they began to melt away. “No—th—the stone!!” The ancient behemoth’s howl echoed across the beach just as another bolt of light shot through his chest.
His shadowed army froze and dropped to the ground, clearing the field.
“Noooo!!” Belzekotah’s dark form bubbled up until it erupted into a splatter of black matter across the beach.
The storm clouds slowed their cycling, and the storm began to lift into a gentle shower.
The wrath of Belzekotah had again ended.
Mirri popped her head out of the clump of creatures that had been knee-deep in battle moments earlier. “She did it!!”
“Who did?” Another scavenger asked.
“Rain! She broke the stone!!” Mirri leapt over the scavenger and rushed into the field. “Rain did it!!”
“...Our Rain?” A crested grazer hesitantly shot a glance at Thorn.
“Rain?” Farro’s brows were piqued as he lumbered over to Mirri. He was clutching a badly wounded arm and sported a few red gashes that were not part of his usual markings. “Where is she??”
“The cave—oh no,” Rhoger slowed his limping when he noticed the lack of actual structure left to the cave.
Farro knew instantly what he had meant. “No!” He breathed sharply and rushed toward the rubble.
Mirri’s lithe frame and lack of serious injury had her leaping onto the rocks first, but she was forced to duck as Farro began thrusting rocks aside with his snout in an effort to clear them away.
“Whoa—calm down Ty-man! I’ll—”
The tyrant roared at her, silencing her efforts and causing her to slink out of his way.
He continued to push through the rubble until a heavy gasp caught his breath in his throat. He had uncovered her blue crest.
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