Source: GoodFon.com

The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode click here. To read it from the start, click here.

Gina and her brother Zack were battling her monstrous nemesis when her sword simply disappeared.

The Beast plunged its gargantuan neck down toward them. It surrounded them with its huge foreclaws and encircled them from behind with its thirty-foot tail. Boiling saliva oozed between its teeth. Smoke billowed from its nostrils. Its leathery lips curled in a predatorial sneer.

Zack had no weapon, and Gina apparently no longer did either. Within seconds they’d be roasted alive or sucked into its bottomless gullet. Where was Gina’s broadsword, and what was in her hand? Just as the creature thrust its head forward, something blurred in front of her.

It was the millboy B’frona. He’d scrambled over the Beast’s foreleg, tossing a ten-foot pike ahead of him. Then he picked up the pike, ran under the creature, and braced the circular end of it against the ground. The Beast’s own violent downward momentum caused the pole to skewer its jaws together. Its strangled scream shattered the air.

Safe for the moment, Gina finally looked at the object in her hand: it was “the letter opener,” the Revealer — her broadsword had been the Revealer in disguise all along! There’s a reason it changed when it did, she thought. It wasn’t just to save Zack. The tiny bejeweled Object seemed harmless. But it was made of amarrildin, the Dark Tinkurs’ mysterious ore… She suddenly realized what she had to do. She ran toward the monster’s flailing maw.

“No, it can’t be killed!” Zack pointed at the Beast’s wounded leg: the severed artery was slithering shut, the leaden scales sliding back into place.

“And the pike will give way!” B’frona added.

“Gina, we have to go!”

“No! I have to kill it!” She didn’t know how long the pike would hold, but she had to try. She grabbed one of the Beast’s nostrils and attempted to swing her foot up onto its lower jaw. The monster’s head jerked up and to the right, sending her crashing down onto the slippery turf. She got up and tried again. But this time a blast of steam from the creature’s nostrils scalded her hand, and again she was hurled to the earth. Suddenly, she felt herself rising. She looked down:

Zack and B’frona each had one of her feet in their hands. With a final all-out effort, they shoved her up on top of the Beast’s muzzle. Flaming spittle began burning holes in Gina’s cloak. She rubbed out the fire by sliding back-and-forth on the creature’s igneous skin. Then she slowly began creeping forward…

Toward its huge dead eyes.

φ

Thoughts: There are times we must face the unbearable now in order to avoid an even more unthinkable future.

To read the next episode, click here.