The Beast of Begmire Read online



  About The Beast of Begmire

  The novella runs about 42 pages in book form and consists of 11,100 words.

  The Beast of Begmire

  By Duane Gundrum

  Copyright 2013, 2014

  Also by Duane Gundrum

  NOVELS

  INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUITY

  LEADER OF THE LOSERS

  DESTINY

  ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE (AWOL)

  DEADLY DECEPTIONS

  THOMPSON’S BOUNTY: A SHIP OUT OF TIME

  THE AMERIAD

  THE TEDDY BEAR CONSPIRACY

  NOVELLAS

  BETWEEN A LAUGH AND A SCREAM

  ALL ROADS LEAD TO PINE BUSH

  MAPPING THE SILENCE OF DREAMS

  THE SHADOW PEOPLE

  THE BEAST OF BEGMIRE

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  DARKENED PASSAGES

  POETRY

  LICENSE TO QUILL

  SHORT STORIES

  BURIED MEMORIES

  NONFICTION

  NEO REVOLUTIONARY MESSAGES

  The Beast of Begmire-TITLE PAGE

  The character and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright 2013 © Duane Gundrum

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express permission of the copyright holder.

  THE BEAST OF BEGMIRE

  by

  Duane Allen Gundrum

  If there was one constant in the history of warfare, it was that wars were rarely completely decisive. Even in the most one-sided conflicts, even the losing side gained a momentary advantage at some point during the clash. When Magnus defeated Larsus in the Battle of the Bride, even Larsus’s army had instances where it looked like history might not have been written as currently taught. When Walner’s forces spread out across the lands with no defeat in sight, a lone baron held out long enough for the boy king to find Sarbonn and turn back the tide. But on this day, the devastation brought upon Fireme was so one-sided and demonstrative that no memory of success on the part of the vanquished would ever be remembered. The dark forces were both overwhelming and of a magnitude never before seen in the history of Reagul.

  Retreat was the order of the day, and the complete abandonment of Fireme was all the few survivors could do as demon armies and impassioned followers of the Dark One slaughtered anyone they could find. Minor wizards sacrified their lives to shield any surivivors from sight long enough to escape, even though evil blindly hancked through the darkness, finding victims as more swords and axes swung freely through the shadowed cloaks. One by one, the wizards fell to blades as they did what they could to offer brief windows of escape for the many potential victims of this lost battlefield.

  Over the cries and screams, a lone exhausted voice could be heard wailing: “Evina! Evina!” The voice wailed over and over until the bloody warrior calling out the name emerged from bodies of dark army soldiers, slashing his way through like an explorer trapsing through the jungle, seeking a river. As drak forces moved towards his voice, his sword swung deftly before him, cutting down evil men and creatures who came near him. As many tried to reach him, all that appeared important to him was the object of his search, which remained elusive no matter how many enemies he sliced through before him.

  As he plowed through the enemies before him, his eyes latched onto the figure of a slender woman, standing before a throng of enemy creatures who seemed to be apprehensive about approaching any closer to her. Their fears were founded as lightning erupted from her fingers, frying several columns of enemies right where they stood, leaving nothing but ashes in the wake. As another group tried to flank her from the other side, blue light exploded all around her, ripping through anyone foolish enough to come close to her.

  “Evina,” he said. “I thought I’d never find you.”

  She turned to him. “Helm, forget about me. Protect the wizards. Their cloaking spells are all the people of Fireme have left to protect them.”

  His eyes protested. He was sworn to protect her above all else.

  “I am fine,” she said, reading his thoughts before he could reveal them. “Protect the wizards!”

  Hearing that, Helm turned and rushed at the first wizard he could see, putting himself between the wizard and soldiers trying to reach him. The wizard, realizing what Helm was trying to do, extended his cloak to cover Helm as well, so that when the warrior lashed out with his sword, he would do so from the cover of darkness.

  So Helm started hacking away. Quickly, the sea of enemies before him became and ocean of corpses, his sword given little time to rest as he moved from one enemy to the next.

  Every now and then, Helm would glance back to Evina, remarking as she blinked out of existence, appearing an instant later behind a wave of invaders, scorching them with deadly flame, blinking to nothing again and then appearing elsewhere to continue her onslaught.

  As a seasoned tactician, Helm quickly realized that with so many enemies surrounding them, even their vicious defense wasn’t going to save Fireme. When the Dark One set his mind upon an objective, often the resistane of those overwhelmed, even as formidable as Evina and Helm were, was of little consequene.

  As Helm battled forward, he glanced at Evina again and saw her falter, dropping to one knee after vanquishing nearly a dozen soldiers who had been standing before her only a moment ago.

  He’d seen her like this before. She was exhausted, her powers having tapped a resource that had its limitations, to which she had finally reached. The battle had been too fierce and too consuming; no one could maintain that type of energy and still keep going.

  The wizard Helm was protecting caught Helm’s furtive glance and understood immediately what was happening. Having saved dozen of villages from slaughter, the wizard turned and rushed towards Evina, throwing up his shadow cloak around her in a movement he’d done so many times before that it almost seemed effortless.

  Helm rushed over to her and reached down to steady her shoulder, as his other hand flipped the sword dexterously so that it was up and ready to counter anyone foolish enough to come close.

  He had never seen her unleash this amount of damage before. He knew her powers were limited, but until now he had never seen how much of which she was truly capable. But there were so many dead bodies around her, a scale of destruction he might never have believed possible if he hadn’t been there observing her do it.

  She turned to him. “I’m losing my focus. I’m afraid the battle is lost.”

  Helm nodded, realizing his steadying arm was all that was keeping her from falling over. “The battle was lost before it began. All we’ve done is stoke the ashes and hold open the door.”

  The wizard was still with them. “I can cover your escape,” he said. “You needn’t die here with everyone else.”

  Helm shook his head. “We don’t run from a fight just because it’s hopeless.”

  The wizard paid Helm’s words no attention and began to produce another spell, this one taking much more time than the cloaking spells he had been throwing up a short time ago. “You and the Lady Evina hae a much greater destiny than to die on this insignificant battlefield. One doesn’t need to be a seer to recognize that.”

  Helm just stared at him.

  A portal of energy appeared where the wizard was focusing his spell. Quickly, the wizard gestured to the portal that flickered in the darkness of one of the wizard’s earlier spells. “This is not a time for heroics. You have done all that you can here.”


  Helm maneuvered Evina towards the portal. And then he stopped and turned back to the wizard. “But what about you?” He knew little about portals, but he was pretty sure someone had to actually hold one open for someone else to go through it.

  “I’ll follow behind you,” he said, gesturing at the portal frantically. “Go!”

  Helm nodded slowly, still not convinced, but then remembered how weak Evina was. So he pulled her off her feet and slung her over his back like an oversized pack. Then he stepped into the portal.

  After Helm and Evina stepped through the portal, they were gone. The portal then collapsed on itself and disappeared into the darkness.

  The wizard had lied. He knew there was no one to hold open the door for him, but he also knew how important Evina and Helm were. When the portal shut, he nodded to the gods, convinced he had done his part to protect Reagul from the Dark One.

  Sometimes, that was all a lowly wizard could ever hope to do.

  The procession had been traveling for days through the desert to the east, until the road bended north into the Twin Forests. Usually, people did not take the journey without much preparation, and without some type of protection as there were rogues and bandits often working through the forests, but the few thousand people walking through the forest had no choice. Fireme had been lost, and all they had left was the hope that they might succeed in reaching Begmire on the northern exit of the forests.

  Evina and Helm caught up with the long line of refugees and quickly became a part of the sprawling army. At