by Dante King
“So, if I had a Death item, I could channel Death Magic with this sword? And if I had an Ice item, I could channel Ice through it?”
“Yes! This is one of the most powerful and versatile weapons ever created by the gods. It truly is a weapon fit for not just a ruler of men, but a ruler of gods.”
“Many had to die in order for me to get this weapon, Vance,” Friya said, “but my dreams have been relentless with their messages in recent weeks. I was told that without this sword, you could not succeed in your ultimate quest. I did whatever it took to get it, so here it is.”
“I owe you a lot, Friya, and I’ll make sure that you’re appropriately rewarded for what you’ve done. But now we need to move, and we need to move fast.”
Friya shifted back into her werewolf form, and sprinted along with us up into the mountains with Yumo leading us to the cave. I filled in the gaps in Friya’s knowledge, and she was very eager to rescue the rest of my women from the Warlock’s so-called dragons. The last mile or two of the path was a steep scramble up a rocky slope. When we reached the top, we found ourselves looking down into a small valley.
Down in the valley were seven massive beasts, all snorting and growling and pawing at a pile of rocks. Between a gap in the rocks, I saw Elyse’s face. She leaned out and blasted a ray of bright white fire from her mace, which hit one of the monsters. The beast roared, but the fierce intensity of the beam seemed to barely harm it. In response, the creature shot a short burst of fire from its mouth at Elyse, who ducked back behind the rock into the shelter of the cave.
“Those things aren’t dragons,” Yumo said, “but they’re close.”
I recognized the beasts right away; they were the same type of giant lizard as Fang, but they seemed to have been altered. Fang, of course, could not breathe fire, and his scales weren’t nearly as tough as these monsters’. Furthermore, these giant lizards had wings. They were small, leathery bat-like wings, covered in reptile scales, and they were too small and weak for flight. But they were there.
“It looks like the Warlock has been trying to make dragons by mutating these giant lizards,” I said.
Yumo recoiled. “All he’s succeeded in doing is to create mutant abominations.”
“It’s time to put these mutants out of their misery, and end their man-eating rampage,” I said as I hopped off my panther, carrying the greatsword. “Let’s see what this Dragon Sword can do.”
“Yumo, give me covering fire when I need it,” I said to her. Then I turned to Layna. “I’ll need your help with some spiderweb shooting. If you can get onto that ridge over there you should be able to shoot some webs at the monsters without getting roasted.”
“I don’t think my webs will do much against those things,” Layna said.
“They’ll distract them and slow them down, and that’s all I need,” I said.
Friya transformed back to her human form to talk to me. “What can I do to help?”
“My monks and I are willing to fight these beasts as well,” Ji-Ko said.
“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want you guys getting killed, and I’m the only one strong enough to fight these monsters. You can stay here with Anna-Lucielle. Do what you can to distract the monsters if you see that I’m in trouble.”
There was nothing else to say; the monsters were about to break down the last section of the rock barricade. Before they could get to the cave, they would have to get through me.
A rocky outcrop nearby jutted out in a ledge over the valley. I pulled all of the Death energy from the massacred village into my body and mind before I channeled it into the greatsword. The swathes of energy amplified the weapon’s power and made it feel as if it was growing lighter and nimbler in my hands. My main worry was getting blasted with fire from the mutant dragons, so I needed a shield. A shield of ice would be the best defense against fire, and I knew exactly how I could create one.
“Yumo, I need one of your Ice arrows!”
She pulled a blue arrow from her quiver and tossed it to me. I tucked it into my belt, then called up a small tornado using my access to Wind magic from my kusarigama. Gripping the greatsword, I focused on the three separate elements of magic currently at work: Death, Wind, and, with Yumo’s arrow, Cold.
With the Dragon Sword, I found I now possessed an ability I’d never before had access to. It was akin to a sort of alchemical ability. I saw before me, glowing and semi-transparent, in the same way I saw the fruits of the Gray Tree on the Black Plane, three swirling balls of different-colored energy: blue for Cold, black for Death, and white for Wind.
All I had to do to combine them was to think about what I wanted to achieve, and then reach out and grab the requisite quantities of energy needed from each ball. Immediately a three-dimensional, semi-transparent image of a whirling tornado popped up in front of me. I hastily pulled chunks from each of the different energy orbs into the tornado. The Wind power increased the speed at which it spun around me, the Death power fortified it with strength, and then, at the end, I invested it with a hefty chunk of Cold power to turn it into an ice tornado. With my improvised ice shield spinning around me, I gripped the Dragon Sword in both hands, took a sprint, then somersaulted off the ledge into the midst of the giant lizard mutants.
I delivered a powerful downward hacking stroke at the neck of the nearest lizard, which only barely had time to look up. In one stroke the enchanted blade sliced straight through the monster’s six-foot-thick neck. Its huge head rolled away as its dead body flopped to the ground, its open neck gushing out a torrent of blood.
The blade was sharper and stronger than I could ever have imagined. The other monsters, who had me surrounded on all sides, stared in anger and disbelief at their headless companion’s corpse for a second or two—then they all attacked at once.
Yumo’s blue Ice arrows came streaking in, slamming into the lizards closest to me. The arrows and their magic did little damage to the monsters, but provided enough of a distraction to take the heat off me. Layna’s spiderwebs worked in a similar manner as she smeared the lizards’ heads and faces with them from the safety of the ridge. It wouldn’t take the monsters longer than a few seconds to rip the webs off or break them apart, but I only need a few seconds.
I dived forward, launching myself at one of the lizards with my blade outstretched. My dive catapulted me toward the beast, and it opened its jaws to receive me—but I was no morsel to snack on. I landed in the lizard’s jaws and thrust the blade up through the roof of its mouth as it bit down. The force of its own bite drove the blade into its brain, killing it instantly. Both the sword and the force of my protective tornado prevented the jaws from closing fully and crushing me. I dropped, my back resting on the monster’s bloody tongue, and kicked up with both feet, forcing the dead beast’s jaws open and pulling the sword from the roof of its mouth at the same time.
I jumped out, but before the dead monster crashed to the ground behind me, I’d resurrected it as my own creature. As another of the mutant lizards lunged for me, the undead one grabbed its throat, and the two monsters started thrashing around in a violent struggle that sent shock waves rippling across the ground.
Two more converged on me, while Layna and Yumo kept the remaining two distracted. Both lizards who came for me streamed fire from their maws, but the spinning tornado of Ice and Death around me absorbed the flames and prevented me from being burned to a crisp.
I rolled swiftly to the left, and as I came up, I slammed the sword into the monster’s right eye. Ji-Ko hadn’t been exaggerating about the Dragon Sword’s cutting power; it traveled effortlessly through the creature’s skull, and the tip of the six-foot-long blade emerged just above the socket of the monster’s right eye.
A lunging bite from the other monster came within an inch of severing my torso from my legs. It let rip with another blast of fire, and while my Ice and Death tornado absorbed the flames, it was growing weaker and less effective as a shield every time it took a hit. I grabbed the hilt of the
Dragon Sword and yanked it out of the dead monster’s skull. Before the other monster produce another fiery torrent, I swept the sword upward and cleaved the head off the lizard in a single sweep.
These two I resurrected as my creatures, and now, with only two living mutant monsters remaining, the odds of this fight shifted. The two remaining lizards backed away, blowing blasts of fire at me and my undead lizards as we advanced on them.
“It’s time to end this,” I said.
Chapter Thirty
With a flick of my hand, I directed my undead lizards to attack one of the living ones. As my undead lizards charged, biting and blasting black Death fire all over their target, I charged in with the Dragon Sword to finish off the other living monster. The beast, having witnessed my tactics against its fellow lizards, tried a different attack. It swung around and lashed its long tail in a whipping motion. The lizard’s heavy tail was easily strong enough to smash a large wine wagon to splinters with one hit. Had the tail struck me, I would have been flung into the rock wall of the valley and splattered like a rotten egg.
It did not strike me.
I somersaulted over the tail, and as I came down, I sliced it in half before it could lash at me again. The creature roared and blew out a billowing fireball, then reared up onto its hind legs. I dashed in, stabbing the long blade through the lizard’s underbelly into its heart. It let out a weak cry and tottered for a few seconds on its legs after I plucked the sword out. I jumped back as the monster came crashing down and hit the ground with an impact that even my party members up on the valley walls felt.
By this time, the undead lizards had killed the last living one. I called off my protective tornado and resurrected the lizards as my own creatures, all except the one I’d beheaded, of course. It wasn’t just that it was useless to me without a head, it was also because I wanted the skull of the beast as a souvenir. It was the closest thing I had to a dragon skull for the moment.
From the gap at the top of the barricade a cheer erupted. I glanced up and saw the faces of Elyse, Rami-Xayon, and Isu looking down at me, smiling.
“We thought we were done for, Vance,” Elyse said. “It seemed that nothing could hurt those terrible monsters. We tried everything: Rami-Xayon’s Wind powers, Isu’s acid rain, my holy fire—nothing worked. All we could do was barricade ourselves in here and hope that you got to us before they did.”
I dusted myself off. “And I did, so come on out, you’re all safe now.”
Ji-Ko called his monks over, and they all helped to move the boulders out of the way and remove the makeshift barricades. Once a large enough gap had been made, Rami-Xayon, Isu, and Elyse all crawled out, and they came running over to me. All three women wrapped their arms around me and hugged me tight while they covered my face and neck with kisses.
“I’ve never been so happy to see anyone as I am to see you now, Vance,” Rami-Xayon said.
“For the first time in hundreds of years, I thought I was facing my own death,” Isu said. “But then the God of Death came and rescued me from death. A fitting twist, I think.”
Two elderly Yengish people also came crawling out of the hole at the top of the boulder barricade.
“I’m guessing those are your parents, Rami-Xayon?” I said.
She nodded. “They were safe, thank goodness, but as for the rest of the village …”
She trailed off and tears began to well up in her eyes.
“I tried to fight these beasts off, Vance, I tried everything,” Rami-Xayon said, her voice cracking. “All three of us fought hard, using all our powers. We hurt the beasts, but we couldn’t kill them, and we couldn’t stop them from slaughtering the village. All we could do in the end was flee, and bring down the boulders and rocks around the cave entrance to barricade ourselves in. But even then the creatures came for us, and they were relentless. They don’t seem to need to sleep or rest. They just attack, and they keep attacking until everyone and everything is dead.”
“From now on, they’ll only be killing people I tell them to kill,” I said. “And I’m really looking forward to watching them eat the Warlock alive. He created these monsters, and I’ll make sure that he pays for what he did by having them tear him limb from limb.”
“That sword you were wielding, it carved through the beasts’ impenetrable armor as if it were nothing but wet parchment.” Isu gazed at the Dragon Sword in wonder. “I can sense just how tremendously potent its magic is. Is it the lost sword of the Dragon Goddess?”
“It sure as hell is, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t carve these dragon-lizard-things up like steel does wet clay. It’s a big thick greatsword, but it feels as light and nimble as a rapier. I think this might be my new favorite weapon.”
“Well, if anything dethrones Grave Oath, that weapon would be it,” Isu said.
Rami-Xayon’s parents walked up to me, got on their hands and knees, and pressed their foreheads into the ground, as was the Yengish way. They said something in Yengish, looking up at me with a reverent gaze.
“They said they owe you their lives, and the lives of their daughters,” Rami-Xayon said. “They will forever be grateful for what you have done today, and if there is anything they can do to repay you, anything within their powers, all you need do is ask.”
“I might take them up on that one day, but for now their simple thanks are enough for me. Please, ask them to get up, I’m no emperor.”
Rami-Xayon said something in Yengish to them, and they got up and dusted off their hands and knees, beaming at me all the while.
“We can’t hang around,” I said. “We need to get to the Warlock’s tower and attack him before he regains all his strength. He must have expended a lot of by attacking us last night with that lightning storm. We need to hit him hard and fast.”
“I agree,” Isu said. “There’s no time for celebrating this victory. We must strike when he’s at his weakest. Seeing what he’s done with these creatures has made me realize that he’s a powerful opponent, certainly the most powerful one you’ve faced up to this point, Vance.”
I nodded. “I’ve felt the power of his lightning strikes; my Death magic was barely enough to shield me from just one of them. Even so, I have a few tricks up my sleeve. In fact, my newest power, Death Titan, might just be the perfect weapon to use against him. The only thing is, I need a lot of corpses to truly utilize it to its full effect.”
“In this part of the world, after what these lizards have been doing, there are plenty of corpses,” Rami-Xayon said sadly.
“What about your army, Vance?” Elyse asked. “What happened with the Emperor of Yeng? Did you get permission for your army to disembark the ships?”
“To cut a long story short, yes, we did. I also got the Dragon Gauntlet.” I lifted up both my hands, and Elyse gasped.
“That’s most wonderful news!” she said. “Now that you have them both, you can resurrect a dragon.”
“I’ll need an embalmed dragon heart before I can do that, but this lost gauntlet was the next thing on the list. For now, we have to kill a Warlock and free Yeng from the Cult of Prosperity.”
“The Warlock will surely send an army to meet you,” Isu said. “Far easier to send an army to deal with you than risk his own neck.”
“Sounds likely,” I said. “From what I’ve seen of him, he’s a coward at heart.”
“God of Death,” Ji-Ko said, “getting to the Warlock will not be easy. We know the way to the ruins of the Dragon Temple, where he built his tower, and the terrain is treacherous. However, the tower itself, is situated on a flat, grassy plateau up in the mountains. If he positions his army on the plateau, it will make it all but impossible to get your army up there. Only a few passes lead up to the plateau, and he can hold these with his best troops and his magic. The Warlock is also near invincible while he remains in his tower. You must capture him and bring him out of the tower to kill him, or find a way to make him leave it.”
“We have to draw him out of his tower, into battle on
open ground, where he thinks he has the advantage,” I said.
“But he will have the advantage on open ground,” Yumo said. “If you’re talking about a wide open plain, he can gather his storm clouds and hammer us with precisely aimed lightning strikes. Then there’s his army on top of that, which by all accounts outnumbers yours. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, but that’s crazy, it’s almost suicidal!”
“And that’s exactly why he’ll fall for my trap,” I said with a cold smile.
“Trap? How is it a trap when you’re the one who’s going to get killed, and your army wiped out?” Yumo asked.
“I just need to get every fresh corpse—or not-so-fresh corpse, as long as it’s intact—to the field where the battle will take place.”
“I think I understand where you’re going with this, but how will you know where it’s going to happen?” Isu asked.
“Easy. I’ll let the Warlock decide.”
Yumo’s jaw dropped.“Vance, did one of these monster lizards manage to smack you in the head during that fight? If you ask the Warlock to pick a place, he’ll choose a spot that’s perfect for him, one where his strengths are maximized, and your advantages destroyed!”