Free Victim of Fate by Jason Halstead Page A

hand.
Alto cried out and reached for his sword. His shield, he realized,
was gone.
    Alto twisted and looked behind him. Where had
it gone? When did he drop it? A growl from his left alerted him to
turn back in time to catch the claw from something with black fur
smash into his mail-covered shoulder. Alto staggered away and
slipped down the bank into the stream.
    "Alto!" Tristam cried out from farther down
the stream.
    In the poison-induced confusion, the others
had gotten ahead of him. He rose to his feet and was about to rush
after them when the black-furred creature jumped into the stream in
front of him. He stared at it, trying to make sense of the beast.
Other shapes moved through the trees following his friends and
separating them further.
    "Go, I'll meet you at the horses!" Alto cried
out. He knelt down and picked up his fallen sword and lunged
forward as he rose. His blade plunged into the belly of the
horrific creature, causing it to cry out in a noise that was a
cross between a shriek of a bird and a howl from a bear. The
creature had a beak and cold avian eyes but its size, claws, and
the way it stood on its hind legs were all bear.
    Alto ducked an angry swipe and jammed his
sword in a second time. The creature snapped its beak, narrowly
missing his face. He backed away from the beast, drawing it towards
him, and smashed his blade into the side of its head to drop it
into the stream. Alto looked up and saw other creatures,
amalgamations of animals that could not inter-breed, coming out of
the darkness. He heard Tristam and the others cursing and fighting
but they were growing further away.
    Alto nodded. This was it then; he had to
fight his own way free. His horse was across the stream and some
distance away. He needed to cross over the water. He glanced at the
stream, his heart racing with the memory of the poisonous fog
rising out of it. Was the stream as cursed as these animals? Alto
staggered away from it and climbed back fully onto the bank. He
wanted to stay clear of it, that much was certain.
    A deer with the hindquarters of a rabbit
slammed into him, knocking him into a tree and off his feet. His
breath was jarred from his lungs by the impact, but one of the
deer's antlers had broken off. Alto used the tree to brace himself
as he rose up. His chest ached from the strike but his mail had
saved him from being gored. The hopping deer rose up and shook its
head. It glared at him and blew its breath out. The deer's head
lowered to bring the remaining tines of its antler in line with
Alto before it stamped its feet.
    Alto jumped towards it and to the side,
angling enough so that his arcing sword smashed into the twisted
animal's face as it charged him. Alto spun away, jarred by the
impact against his weapon, and saw that the deer would never bother
him again. He backed into another tree and pushed off it, anxious
to put distance between himself and the horde of unnatural
creatures.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    Therion watched the adventurers scatter.
They'd escaped his fog of death, surprising him, but then they'd
stumbled into his army of experiments. The creatures were failures,
all of them, but for once they were making him proud. The failures
feared him but beyond that, they had no intelligence or redeeming
qualities, or so he'd thought. He'd cast his thoughts of them aside
once he’d finished with them, but now he wondered at the wisdom of
doing so. They'd come together and fought against the invaders.
    With a few spells aimed at confusing the
warrior Rosalyn watched so closely, he'd ensured that the young man
was separated from the others. He'd fought back, though. Even
stranded and alone, he'd killed two of his experiments before he
fled from the rest. Therion had been forced to work more magic to
guide the warrior’s friends away and repel them from the forest to
ensure he had the young man to himself.
    The wizard strode through the forest, intent
on intercepting the warrior and dispatching him. He'd