by Eric Vall
“True,” the phoenix giggled.
“I’m glad to see you all getting along, though,” I said as we watched the dryads form a circle and close their eyes.
“They are very sweet,” Ravi said with a smile. “When I came back with you to Hatra … I was worried.”
“Worried?” I repeated and looked down at the orange-haired woman. “About what?”
“Where I would fit in,” she shrugged, “if I would fit in at all. I never really … connected with anyone in particular in my tribe. Especially not with any of the females. I was always ‘Chief Fiyero’s daughter,’ never just ‘Ravi.’ And when I came to Hatra, I was concerned I would just be ‘the phoenix princess.’”
“You were never just that to me,” I told her sincerely.
“I know,” Ravi smiled up at me, “and even though I haven’t been in Hatra long, I quickly learned my worries were unfounded. Laika and Alyona have treated me like a true friend, and now the dryads are treating me like one of their own sisters.”
“I’d like to think of us like one big happy family,” I snickered, “a motley family, but a family nonetheless.”
“Yes,” the phoenix laughed, “and I think it’s beautiful.”
“Not as beautiful as you,” I teased.
Ravi flushed and opened her mouth to reply, but then the earth started to rumble gently beneath our feet, and we turned back to find the dryads holding hands and frowning in concentration.
We watched them for a long moment, and the rattling of the earth steadily increased with each passing second. Then, with the sound of a gunshot, the ground cracked open like an egg, and tree roots shot up into the air.
And impaled on the roots was a wagon twice the size of one of our own.
“Nice, ladies!” I shouted as the roots creaked under the weight of the wagon, and the ground rumbled one last time before everything fell silent.
“We did it, Lord Evan!” Polina cried out as she and her sisters opened their eyes.
“Did you see, did you see?” Marina tittered and bounded over to us, but she was careful to weave between the wide roots that jutted up ten feet toward the sky.
“I saw,” I chuckled. “Great job. I’m really proud of you three.”
The dryads blushed and swooned over my praise, and then Trina looked up at the wagon suspended over our heads.
“What kind of people do you think used to own this?” the dryad mused.
“Who knows?” I shrugged my massive shoulders as I stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter either way. It’s mine now.”
“What’s inside of it?” Polina wondered.
“Let’s take a look,” I said as I flashed a fanged grin.
The five of us cautiously approached the lofted wagon. The day was tending toward afternoon now, so the cart cast long shadows across the red dirt, and it was notably cooler as we stepped into its shade. The dryads’ roots had lifted the wagon high off the ground, but in my dragon form I was tall enough that I was nearly eye level with it.
“Be careful, Lord Evan,” Ravi called up to me when I arched my long neck toward the cart.
“Will do,” I muttered back as I studied the aged and rotten vehicle before me.
It was hard to tell how old the wagon was exactly. The wood was darkened with age and mold, and chunks of it had completely rotted away. Red dirt and sand also trickled from the interior through numerous cracks, and it looked like one strong wind would be enough to obliterate the wagon completely. However, gold detailing could still be faintly seen here and there, and I thought the cart might have been painted a royal purple at some point in time.
I carefully wedged my head and neck through the splintered doorway of the wagon, and my eyes quickly adjusted to the murky light of the interior. Roots several feet in diameter skewered the vehicle through the floor and up into the ceiling, but several metal chests laid between the roots along the bottom of the wagon.
I opened my maw and wrapped my fangs around the closest, and largest, chest, and then I withdrew from the wagon like I was playing a game of Operation. My neck scales caught slightly along the doorframe, and the wagon shuddered minutely, but I was able to back out completely without bringing everything crashing to the ground.
“Ooooh, what is it, what is it?” Marina giggled and clapped her hands as I set the chest on the ground.
“Some of the chests feel like gold and normal gems, but this one feels different,” I replied, and then a sharp grin spread across my maw. “Actually, I recognize this sensation.”
It was a little harder to discern from my general treasure finding sense, but a thrum of energy emanated from the chest, and it reminded me of Alyona’s purity.
So, I reached out and crushed the lock on the chest with a flick of my powerful claws, and then I gingerly lifted the lid. Ravi and the dryads crowded in around the box, and then they gasped.
“This looks like the metal the Asurans had in their mine,” Polina said as she looked up at me with wide jade eyes.
“That’s because it is,” I nodded and gestured to the bars of metal within the chest. “This whole thing is full of orichalum.”
“How interesting,” Ravi mused as she tentatively reached out and trailed her finger along the sacred metal. Even after being buried underground for who knew how long, the orichalum looked like it had just been refined yesterday. The bars were such a brilliant silver, they almost appeared white, and a faint glow emanated from the material.
“Wait,” Trina suddenly gasped, “do you think this wagon came from the Asuran village?”
“Maybe,” I shrugged, “who knows?”
“Natalya will be happy her people’s sacred metal made it back to Hatra,” Marina noted with a smile.
“I’m sure she will be,” I agreed before I craned my neck and looked back up at the wagon. “Well, I should pull the other chests out real quick. I bet Laika and Alyona are wondering where we are.”
I started toward the wagon again, but then the earth began to rumble beneath my claws.
“Uh, ladies,” I said as I turned back to the dryads, “I can reach the wagon just fine. You don’t need to move it.”
The dryads’ emerald eyes were wide, and they shared a quick, worried look before they faced me.
“That’s not us, Lord Evan,” Polina said, and her expression was uncharacteristically serious.
“What do you mean that’s not--”
Before I could finish my sentence, the ground suddenly bucked beneath our feet like an undulating wave, and Ravi and the dryads cried out in alarm as they lost their balance.
I quickly summoned my own power over stone and kept the women from falling into a trench that had abruptly appeared behind them, and then I whirled around in a circle to locate our assailants.
“Lord Evan!” Ravi shouted from where she was picking herself up off the ground. “To your left!”
I snarled and spun in the direction she indicated, and I immediately caught sight of my opponents.
“What the fuck are those?” I muttered as I took a defensive stance in front of the women.
Three lumbering figures were slowly making their way toward us. They were mostly humanoid, but only if those humans were taking every steroid in the known universe. Actually, they kind of looked like The Thing from The Fantastic Four. Their heads were round and set between their shoulders without much of a neck to speak of. Their bodies were made from the red rock and clay of the canyon walls, and boulders jutted from their forms like bulging muscles.
I swore I could even see rocky six packs on their abdomens.
“Golems!” one of the dryads cried out behind me. “Those are golems, Lord Evan!”
“Okay,” I shouted back, “what does that mean? How do I beat them?”
Before the dryads could respond, the ground rattled beneath us again, and I bared my fangs.
Guess I would have to find out for myself.
The golems continued to amble toward us at a glacial pace, but the earth shuddere
d every time their feet struck the dirt. As they drew closer, I realized they were a lot bigger than I’d first assumed, and I estimated that they were closer to my size in my dragon form than in my human one.
By the way the canyon reacted around us, and my general knowledge from back home, I also surmised that the golems’ power dealt with earth. That was kind of a vague deduction, but it was all I had to work with at the moment.
“Ladies!” I called out. “I want you to stay back until I can get a feel for these guys. Dryads, use your magic for defensive purposes only until I tell you otherwise!”
“Yes, Lord Evan!” the sisters chimed in unison.
With that taken care of, I bent my legs and pushed off from the ground, and my massive black wings snapped open as I took to the air. I quickly gained altitude, and I circled overhead as the golems came within striking distance. They didn’t look as imposing from the sky, but I wasn’t about to let my guard down, so I reached into my spiritual sea and summoned my own stone power.
First, I tried to attack the golems directly. They were made of rocks, so I thought my power would be able to dismantle them. When my magic wrapped around the first golem, though, I was instantly met with resistance. The golem’s power felt different from any I’d encountered before. It was sturdy, immutable, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t directly affect the stones that made up the golems’ bodies.
“Time for Plan B,” I growled, and then I shifted my focus to the ground beneath the golems’ shuffling feet.
A moment later, the earth split open in a wide trench, and the golems made a strange noise that sounded like a landslide tumbling down a mountain. The creatures stumbled over their feet, and then they disappeared into the crack in the dirt one by one. For good measure, I sent out another wave of my power, and the lips of the trench caved in on itself and buried the golems beneath rock and rubble.
Dirt and dust plumed into the sky, and I wheeled overhead as I studied the ground below. The dryads and Ravi were still standing back to back near the lofted wagon, and aside from a few pebbles sliding into the collapsed trench, I couldn’t see any movement from the golems.
I started to tuck my wings and descend, but then a thunderous noise echoed from the crevasse I’d made, and the ground started to tremble like a magnitude 9.5 earthquake.
“What the fuck?” I gasped.
I got my answer a moment later.
As I watched from the air, a massive stone arm broke through the ground where the trench had once been. Only, this arm was easily twice the size that the golems’ arms had been before. Slowly, inch by inch, the golems heaved themselves out of the ground, and it looked like they had been upgraded.
The creatures had bulked up considerably, and jagged red boulders stuck out from their arms, legs, and shoulders. Roots like the dryads used were also woven around the golems’ bodies, and the tendrils banded across the monsters’ chests and backs like wooden, ropey armor.
The golems shook their massive heads as if to clear them, and dust and pebbles rained down on the earth below. Then they looked up at me one by one, and I noticed their eyes glowed a reddish-orange, similar to the clay of the Crimson Canyons.
“Lord Evan!” Ravi called out, and I whipped my head toward the women.
The dryads were jumping up and down and waving their arms to get my attention, and I gave a roar to let them know I’d caught it.
“The golems absorb earth!” one of the dryads shouted up at me. “Ground based attacks only make them bigger and stronger!”
“What’s their weakness?” I roared as I kept one eye on the golems.
The beasts had finally seemed to notice the women by the suspended wagon, and two of them turned in that direction.
“We don’t know,” another dryad yelled, but I couldn’t tell who it was.
“Laika would know!” the third sister cried out. “She’s read the Rahma bestiary back to front.”
“Not helpful right now,” I grumbled under my breath, but the time for indecision was over.
Two of the golems had started to lumber toward Ravi and the dryads, and the third one stood directly below my hovering form and stared up at me with unnerving intensity.
Then, before I could even think of my next course of action, the golem below me lifted one of his bulked-up arms and leveled them at me. A moment later, several large boulders rocketed through the air like surface-to-air missiles.
And they were all coming directly at me.
“Shit!” I gasped as I tucked my wings and barrel rolled out of the way.
The propelled rocks whizzed by me with a sharp whistling sound, and I felt the air brush across my scales.
Close fucking call.
“Okay, asshole,” I snarled as I snapped open my wings and leveled off in the air, “if ground-based attacks make you stronger, what about fire?”
The golem below me was raising his arm for a second attack, but I wasn’t about to give him the chance.
Before he could fire off another round of rock missiles, I opened my maw, took a deep breath, and let out an ear-shattering roar.
The sound echoed through the canyons like thunder, and a column of fire exploded out of my mouth a moment later. The flames were white hot and blinding, and they slammed into the golem below me with all the force of a freight train.
I kept up the stream of fire for several long moments, and then I cut it off with a snort. I flapped my wings a few times as I hovered in the air, and my eyes darted across the ground while I waited for the smoke to clear.
The haze finally began to dissipate, but through the fog I could still see the silhouette of the golem staring up at me.
“Fuck!” I cursed and braced myself for the creature’s retaliation …
But it never came.
I blinked in confusion and swooped lower to the ground to get a better look, and I kept my guard up as I waited for the golem to attack. As I drew closer, though, I realized it wasn’t going to.
Because the golem had turned into a statue.
My fire had burned so hot, it baked the creature where it stood, and the golem was now frozen with its arm held aloft in the air. The beast’s eyes no longer glowed a reddish-orange, and when I reached out with my stone magic toward the golem’s body, I couldn’t feel the resistance of its magic anymore.
I bared my fangs in a savage grin, and then I tucked my wings and slammed down on top of the golem turned statue. Its rocky form gave way beneath the weight of my massive body, and I crushed the beast into dust between my claws. When the golem was nothing more than hot sand and dirt, I threw back my head and let out a roar of victory.
“Lord Evan!” I heard Ravi scream, and I spun around to find the other two golems had corner the women up against the suspended wagon.
The dryads were keeping the beasts at bay by using roots like whips, but I could quickly tell this tactic wouldn’t hold up for very long, because the moment the roots touched the golems’ bodies, the tendrils were snapped off and absorbed into the creatures.
“Ravi, use your fire!” I roared as I bunched my legs and leapt into the air once more. “They’re vulnerable to fire!”
Even with the distance between us, I could see the phoenix’s blue eyes go wide, and then she disappeared in a column of blue flame. A moment later, an orange blur shot into the sky, and it wheeled overhead for a moment before it dove toward me.
“What do you want me to do?” Ravi called out as she drew level with me in her phoenix form.
“Light ‘em up!” I shouted. “But avoid the dryads as best you can!”
Ravi dipped her bird head once, and then she swooped down toward the lumbering golems.
The stone beasts looked like tattered rope monsters with the amount of shredded roots hanging off them, and I could tell the dryads were at their wit’s end. The golems were their elemental match, and alone, the sisters had no hope in defeating the creatures.
Luckily for all of us, Ravi and I had some flames up our sleeves.
I dove toward the ground at a rapid speed, but because I didn’t want to harm the dryads, I didn’t unleash another torrent of flames. Instead, when I opened my maw, white webs shot out from between my fangs, and the netting descended on the golems’ heads. The beasts swatted at the cumbersome material now obstructing their vision, but I knew it wouldn’t hold them for long.
Hopefully, it would hold for just long enough.
“Ladies!” I roared down at the dryads. “Retreat!”
The sisters didn’t need to be told twice, and with the golems trapped beneath my webs, the dryads sprinted away from them and back into the canyon toward where the caravan waited.
With the way now free and clear, Ravi and I dove in unison toward the still pinned golems, and we strafed the beasts with flames of blue and white. Smoke curled into the air, and the golems let out another strange screeching clatter, but when I circled around for a second pass, I found it wasn’t necessary.
The two remaining golems were frozen in place with my webs still knotted around them, and they looked more like artwork found in a museum than murderous monsters.
I wasn’t taking any chances, though, so I swooped down and smashed one of the golems beneath my claws and swept my tail through the second creature. Rocks and rubble scattered across the canyon floor, and I landed on the ground with an earth-shaking thud.
The second I touched down amongst the golems’ shattered remains, I felt a sensation of power flood through my veins, and then a series of words flashed before my eyes.
Predation: Assimilation activated.
Skill: Ground, earthquake.
Status: Assimilation complete.
I blinked in surprise. An earthquake ability? That sounded fucking awesome. I couldn’t wait to try it out.
I turned in a full circle as I searched for any more opponents, but I found nothing. There was just the red dust settling back on the ground, and the echoes of our battle reverberating around the canyon walls.
“That was amazing!” Ravi gasped as she alighted on a boulder beside me.
“That’s one word for it,” I chuckled dryly before I looked the phoenix over. “Are you okay?”
The firebird disappeared in a flash of blue flames, and then Ravi’s red dirt-streaked face smiled up at me as she sat on the remnants of a golem and kicked her feet back and forth.