The vision of Zumaki fixed his eyes on the twisted metal hulk and slowly extended his head down. As he approached, a cloudy stream of blue energy rose between the two dragons, linking the live beast’s eyes to the fading machine’s. The connection completed itself, and Zumaki drew glittering blue light from the mechanical dragon into himself.
Suddenly Zumaki stiffened. The flow of arcane energy shifted from the ceramic-scaled beauty to the fak mawa. A tendril of black metal with a vein of gold through its center stretched up from the machine dragon’s body. It curled above Zumaki’s head then plunged down into the top of the live dragon’s skull.
The blue energy flowing from the fak mawa was now mirrored by a steady stream of black metal and golden oil surging up into the live dragon’s brain. The two great beasts struggled at either end of this dread circuit, each trying to consume the other while resisting his own consumption.
Vaan continued. “Even in defeat, Zumaki triumphed. Though the machine dragon destroyed my master’s beautiful mind, Zumaki’s power and personality imprinted on the fak mawa. My master’s brain became black slag and glistening oil, but his mind endured.”
The vision expanded so that Cayce’s entire view consisted of the fak mawa and Zumaki of the Bottomless Pool. The machine dragon twitched and sputtered, casting sparks and gobs of golden oil across the treasure trove. Its body began to unravel and molten pieces of black metal flaked off and fell to the floor, dissolving the stones below.
Above the horror of the disintegrating fak mawa, Zumaki sighed and closed his eyes. The great old dragon listed backward, but tethered as he was to the machine, his body could not fall. Cayce heard an awful grinding noise that quickly became unendurable, then the poisoner’s apprentice winced as Zumaki’s head exploded, leaving a blood-black smear across the cavern ceiling.
“In death, they defeated each other.” Vaan recited his tale’s end as a dolorous prayer. “In death, they became one, both more and less than each had been. In death, they combined to become something far more terrible.”
“But they are still linked. Even in this life-death—perhaps because of it—they are still connected, still vulnerable to each other. Destroy Zumaki’s skeleton with the same stroke that destroys the fak mawa’s body, and I will be free. My people are all gone. Only I remain. Only I was spared to preserve the hybrid beast’s vanity, to preserve the fiction that he is still the master I once served. He will never allow me to leave, for I would take that illusion with me.” Vaan’s voice grew low and haggard. “Go I must, one way or the other. Anything is preferable to an eternity of servitude to a mindless impostor.”
The vision of the long-ago struggle between two dragons began to fade. Cayce called out, “Wait, Vaan. Why didn’t you tell anyone this sooner? Why did you save this vision for now, for me?”
Vaan’s voice was sad and helpless, the perfect accompaniment to the smile Cayce could hear but not see. “The geas,” he said, “prevents my speaking freely while life remains in me.”
“So how are you telling me now?”
The vision went completely black, but Vaan’s voice lingered. “Life remains,” he said, “but barely. As it fades, so does the power of the geas.”
Alone in the dark and cold, Cayce finally understood. For the first time she felt a twinge of real sympathy for the sad little pixie.
Cayce awoke. Vaan was dead but still warm on top of her as her mind returned from the vision. The little pixie still carried the broken tip of the dragon’s tail in his torso, where it poked painfully into Cayce’s sternum. Vaan was badly burned and his head hung at a distressingly peculiar angle, but his face was a study in calm tranquility and blessed, peaceful release.
Gently, she shifted him onto the cavern floor. She felt the folded remains of her apprentice headdress tucked into the waistband of his breeches, and she reflexively pulled it free. Cayce stood and yanked Kula’s tight wooden braid from her skull. It came away easily: Kula was either unconscious or dead, but either way she was no longer holding the leash she had placed on Cayce. With practiced hands, Cayce quickly wound her long white hair back under the headdress.
The remains of the dragon they had come to kill sat atop the rectangular platform. He was almost completely unrecognizable, little more than a pile of half-melted bones and ragged razor scales. Beside Cayce, the headless skeleton sat silently, unobtrusive and almost forgotten. It had lost its special blackness when the pixie magic died with Vaan, but the bones still stood out to Cayce.
Back on the platform, the blackened remains stirred as golden bits of light danced across their surface.
Cayce watched as the golden glow rebuilt the machine dragon’s glowing yellow eyes. The glassy orbs ignited, casting an awful light across the cavern as the creature’s head slowly reformed around them.
Cayce sprang to her feet and ran to where Captain Hask had unsheathed his sword. She had to find the Hand of Righteous Retribution and wield it again. Vaan had said it would work for her as long as it was fully empowered after Hask’s first blast. She could end this if she were quick and if she were just a little bit luckier than she had been so far.
A groan caught her attention, and she sprinted toward the sound. She found Captain Hask under a broken segment of column and debris with his face and hands blistered black. The handle of the foot-wide sword was still clenched in his fists. Either through Hask’s heroic effort or more probably due to its special enchantments, the scabbard had reappeared and the Hand of Righteous Retribution was once more safely sheathed.
“Deploy the golem,” Hask muttered, feverish with delirium.
“Boom is gone,” Cayce said. She reached for Hask’s hand and tried to pry his fingers open. “But I can finish this for you. Give me the sword.”
Hask groaned and tightened his grip. “Can only be drawn twice,” he said. “Once in… anger.”
“Then in wisdom. I know. I have the wisdom, Captain. Let me have the sword.”
Behind them a smoking, sparking head rose up on a serpentine tower that was growing longer, stronger, and more complete with each passing second. Garbled and broken, a wretched mockery of Zumaki’s smooth, cultured voice rolled out of the still-forming throat.
“Another unexpected guest gains entry to my home,” the beast said. “Am I so wretched a host?”
Cayce turned to Hask. “Give me the sword, Captain.”
Hask cursed her. “Never. I must… must avenge…”
The dragon’s neck was now complete, and his shoulders were emerging from the pile of formless debris.
“Vaan,” he said, his voice fuzzy and distorted. “Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again?”
Cayce flicked the officer across the nose. The wounded man stirred, grumbled, and fully opened his eyes at last. They focused up on Cayce.
She flicked him again. “The sword, Hask. Give it to me.”
“Get away.” Hask seemed to recognize her, but that only made him less compliant. “Give the Hand over to the likes of you?” He spat derisively.
“Suit yourself,” Cayce said. With a smooth, practiced motion she slipped a needle out of her headdress and sank the tip into Hask’s neck. The officer’s eyes rolled up in his head, and his body went limp. As his fingers relaxed, Cayce seized the Hand of Righteous Retribution and hauled it free.
The sword was even heavier than it looked. Cayce was barely able to keep her end off of the cavern floor. Moving with it was even more difficult, as its tip dragged across every crack in the floor and snagged on every broken rock.
The dragon extended one newly grown arm off the platform to balance himself as he leaned toward Cayce. Struggling, Cayce tried to circle away from. the dragon’s reach while continuing on toward the skeleton.
“What is…” the machine’s voice squawked and screeched pure static. “What is your name, child?”
Cayce threw herself forward, the sword scraping powder from the cavern floor even through its scabbard. She was now only twenty feet from
the remains of the merchant ship and the all-important cargo it concealed.
The dragon sent his other, incomplete arm clutching after Cayce. She circled wide again, staying well clear of his metallic grasp. The dragon’s entire body hummed and seethed like a swarm of metal bees.
The beast hauled his regenerating bulk off the platform and flopped forward. Cayce spun to the side, hoping to lunge around the monster, but she was too slow with the sword. The dragon stretched his neck forward so that his head blocked Cayce’s path, the merchant ship almost completely hidden behind it.
Cayce stared steadily into the half-formed nightmare’s lifeless eyes. She planted the tip of the sword in the broken cavern floor and stepped up onto the hilt, balancing like a child on a pogo stick as she brought both feet up under her. Fortunately, she didn’t have to balance this way for long.
“Vaan,” he said again. “Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again? What is your name, child?”
“Vaan’s gone,” she said, holding his eyes. “My name’s Tania. And I must thank you, you stupid, broken bastard, for giving me this wonderful opportunity.”
Still perched on the swords hilt with both feet, Cayce leaned back. The Hand of Righteous Retribution toppled, and as it fell Cayce pulled up on the handle as hard as she could while pushing down on the scabbard with her legs. The sword hopped up from the cavern floor as Cayce pulled and pushed. The scabbard’s tip popped out of the broken rocks and slid free, and Cayce felt a surge of pressure and heat.
It was easy now—once drawn, the sword became almost weightless. Cayce leaped up, pulling the blade completely free of the sheath and pointing the tip at the mechanical dragon’s leering head.
Cayce hung suspended above the cavern floor, frozen in place by the swords magic. The dragon opened his mouth, blue-white energy sparking deep inside it. The Hand of Righteous Retribution glowed more brightly and Cayce felt pure power surging up the blade, through the handle, and into her arms.
The Hand beamed a plume of purest white light toward the dragon. It slammed into the machine’s head, blasting him backward into the rotted remains of the merchant ship. A white veneer of energy surged along the dragon’s neck, stretching all the way back to the platform where it completely enveloped the shuddering mass of twisted black metal.
The searing white beam also continued straight on, burning through the hull of the merchant ship as Cayce had intended. It cut a swathe through the rotten wood and scoured a wide smoking hole before it struck the headless skeleton. A second skin of blinding white light covered Zumaki’s bones from the ragged neck all the way down to the needle-sharp tip of his spiked tail.
The sword’s beam expanded then, spreading horizontally as well as vertically until the entire cavern was lost once more in a flood of blinding light. Cayce felt herself slipping away from her body as the Hand of Righteous Retribution slipped from her fingers. Darkness took her, and she thought, that’s all for me. That’s all I’ve got, and it had better be enough.
As she fell she reached for the last needle in her headdress. It wouldn’t make a dent in the mechanical beast’s hide, but she wanted to go to the next world saying she had done everything she could to delay her arrival.
Cayce awoke several seconds before her eyes could open. She was lurching left to right and back and forth, as if she were sailing in the belly of a storm-tossed boat. This might have made her nauseated if there weren’t also something huge and heavy pressing into her stomach.
There was a cool breeze on the back of her neck. Her arms and legs flopped freely below her and she felt her long hair hanging straight down past her face. Cayce realized she was being carried, not on the sea but on dry land. Had someone tossed her over the back of a massive pack animal?
“She’s awake.” Kula’s voice came from under Cayce’s left arm. Cayce blinked and opened her eyes. Through the curtain of her own white hair she saw the anchorite’s broad arm swinging below her and Kula’s thick brown mane blowing carelessly in the breeze.
“Well done, little one,” Kula said. “I promised I’d carry you down the mountain if we survived, didn’t I?”
Cayce groaned. “You did. You’re a woman of your word. Please put me down now before I return your kindness with a spray of sick.”
Kula laughed. With distressing ease, she tossed Cayce off her broad shoulders. The anchorite caught her burden in midair then gently lowered Cayce to her feet.
Unsteady on cramping legs, Cayce staggered a bit. She stood breathing deeply as she recovered her balance and her strength. When her head and stomach stopped swimming, Cayce finally looked at the remnants of the hunting party.
Kula stood nearby, as smiling and as steady as ever. Behind the anchorite came Boom and one of Captain Hask’s Soldiers. The golem was dragging a makeshift sled they had lashed together with long branches and pieces of vine. Hask lay on the sled, unconscious, motionless, and badly burned… but alive. Farther down on the sled were three bundles of tightly bound linen in the shape of human beings.
“Fost?” Cayce said to the upright soldier, but the man shook his head.
“Fost didn’t make it,” he said. “Captain Hask and I are the only survivors.”
“And Boom.”
“And Boom.” The soldier stepped forward to Cayce. “I don’t suppose you saw what happened to the big sword, did you? We couldn’t find it in the wreckage.”
Cayce shook her head. The soldier seemed about to say something else when Kula called out, “Leave her be about that sword, soldier. If not for her, you wouldn’t even be alive to ask. And if not for me, you’d still be under a thousand pounds of gold and rock.”
The soldier demurred, falling back into formation alongside Boom. Cayce watched him for a moment, then turned and walked alongside Kula.
They went on for several minutes before the anchorite spoke.
“Vaan?” she said.
“Dead,” Cayce said. “But he showed me how to beat the dragon. Even with the geas, he found a way to make me see.”
“Pixies are crafty folk,” Kula said. “You should have seen the extended pantomime he had to go through to convince me to help him.”
They walked on. Cayce said, “Do I still get paid for this?”
Kula laughed. She thumped Cayce affectionately on the shoulder, almost knocking the smaller woman off the path.
“There was no way to carry our casualties and the treasure. Not that much survived.” Kula pulled from her pack a melted, twisted ingot of fused gold and silver, which she tossed to Cayce. “You’ve earned every bit, however,” she said.
Cayce hesitated then tucked the irregular lump of precious metal into her waistband. “Thanks.”
“You should give some serious thought to your future, young lady. Since you no longer have a master poisoner to apprentice with, I thought you might consider coming to live with me in the forest. An anchorite needs to pass on her knowledge to the next generation, after all. It’s nature’s way.”
Cayce walked a few more paces in silence. “No,” she said. “No, thank you. First I’m going to sleep for a month. After that I’m going to be very careful about who I let make decisions for me.”
“A sound policy.” Kula grinned broadly. “But you did me a great service today. You did us all a great service. If you ever need my assistance, just whisper my name to the nearest tree. I’ll be there shortly.”
“That’s almost comforting,” Cayce said.
“Almost?”
“Almost. It’s mostly disturbing, the thought of all three hundred pounds of you waiting around for a message from me so you can come running. But thank you, anchorite. I can think of a lot of places your help would make a big difference.”
Kula thumped Cayce again. “Let me know if you get tired,” she said. “I could carry a little wisp like you for a year without noticing.”
“Again,” Cayce said patiently, “thanks. But I’ll try to stay on my own two feet from now on.”
It was
several hours before they reached a real village, during which Boom said nothing, Kula sang softly to herself, and Cayce wondered how much the local pawn brokers would pay for a poisonous ruby ring.
The shattered floor of Zumaki’s treasure trove lay covered in black ash and metal slag. The cavern was silent but for the odd boom of settling rock and the occasional stream of dust and pebbles.
Something stirred in the center of the black field. Thin cracks ran along the surface of the brittle crust as a small humanoid figure broke through. It was featureless, charred beyond recognition, but it stood firm on its tiny legs. Across its edges, a golden glow scintillated and sparked.
The brittle black sea split again, this time near the great rectangular platform. A huge skeletal head rose from the carbonized debris, its yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness.
“Vaan,” a horrid croaking voice said. “Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again?”
A small blue pixie stepped forward out of the golden cloud that had surrounded the first figure to emerge from the black crust. His blue skin was incomplete, revealing the wires, cogs, and gears within his torso. His black eyes flashed then sparked to life, lit from within by intense white-blue light.
“No, my master,” Vaan said somberly. “I have been awaiting your pleasure, as always.”
As the dragon’s features filled out, the creature peered down at his attendant. “What are you saying, Vaan? You make less and less sense as the years go by.”
“Yes, my master.”
“Now, then. I’m feeling house-bound and restless. How long has it been since I ventured beyond the walls of my mountain?”
The pixie’s face was slack and dead, as if the muscles had been numbed with ice and then cut with a surgeon’s scalpel.
Dragons- Worlds Afire Page 19