Summoner 7

by Eric Vall

  I blinked, and my mind was suddenly preoccupied with fantasies of what she might come up with next. I shook them off by turning to glance out at the wasteland of cracked earth and trees. So many trees.

  I frowned. “Hey, Erin?” I asked. “Were there always this many trees? And so … close?”

  She tilted her head and considered the dead forest. “I dunno, it looks like regular old Shadowscape to me. You okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I just … ” I rubbed my face and tried to shake my growing sense of foreboding. When I pulled my hands away, I swore I saw movement in the forest, but it stopped before I could get a good look.

  I frowned and turned my head away, but I kept my eyes focused at the very edge of my vision. There, something rustled slightly, but I’d been wrong. There wasn’t something moving between the trees.

  The trees themselves were moving.

  “Erin?” I asked nervously. “Do you know of any tree monsters?”

  “Hmm … ” she considered. “Oh! There are the sprucebores, but they aren’t very observant. I’ve heard it takes them a while to realize somebody has stumbled into their forest.”

  As the last words fell from Erin’s mouth, the forest began to rumble in low tones. Bare branches shuddered, and roots crackled as they pulled free from the earth. One tree ripped itself fully free, and underneath it I could see a glistening red carapace.

  It was a creature like a five-foot-tall beetle, with black shiny legs and long, serrated pincers that glistened in the light. The tree on its back was no tree at all, but a kind of metallic growth that stretched straight up from the monster’s torso into an irregular branching shape.

  The distant thunder of the Shadowscape grew louder, and with a tremendous crack, a bolt of lightning struck the tree. Static raced down from the upper branches and arced into the beetle at the base. The red carapace seemed to glow from within with power, and the tree sparked and popped with electricity.

  “It’s a lightning rod,” I realized with wide eyes.

  “Shit,” Erin swore. “Oh Maker, we’re surrounded by sprucebores.”

  She was right. Around us, dozens of beetles crawled from the earth as they chittered and skittered toward us.

  “Any words of advice on these things?” I asked as I gathered a few crystals from my bandolier.

  “They’re uncommon but are usually found in huge groups when they do appear,” Erin said. “Don’t get close, touching one means electrocution for a human.”

  The beetle nearest us snapped open its carapace with a flick and revealed double layers of wings.

  “Oh, and they fly,” Erin squeaked.

  That decided which monsters I could use. I bared my teeth and threw out my pyrewyrm with a speed slug as well as my kalgori. The single kalgori settled at the base of the pyrewyrm’s tail, and its delicate legs clung to the leathery hide.

  “Hop on,” I said as the sprucebores drew near, and their wings buzzed ominously. “Hurry!”

  Erin’s apprehension evaporated as she took my hand and mounted the pyrewyrm. As soon as she was settled, my monster crouched and launched upward with teeth-chattering speed as the swarm of over a hundred beetles crashed together in an angry storm behind us. The buzzing blended with thunder and the crack of lightning as bolts shot from the sky around us.

  Erin took the opportunity to rain icicles onto the beetles below, but for every one she struck down, a dozen escaped unscathed, since their tree structures provided them a hardy cover from the falling ice.

  I gestured for her to stop and conserve her mana.

  “We’re going to get blown from the sky!” Erin yelled as I maneuvered my pyreworm haltingly between bolts.

  “Well, what do you suggest?” I shouted back over the din of thunder and insects.

  “Let me drive,” she demanded.

  I wasn’t about to argue with that, but I wasn’t sure how she hoped to control a monster that wasn’t her own.

  Erin grasped at my shoulders and pressed her body to mine from behind. Like this, I could feel her every muscle movement as if it were mine. I realized the aim of her idea and touched at the bond between me and the pyrewyrm as I directed it to follow my thoughts closely.

  It gave an irritated growl, but when I copied Erin’s directions, the pyrewyrm obeyed. The difference was clear and immediate. Instead of shrinking away from the lightning crackling around us, Erin’s maneuvers took us on a twisting escape at breakneck speed. The pyrewyrm slid sideways around bolts and dove under the snapping pincers of beetles, and its movements were fluid and effortless. We dipped and swooped with natural grace, and Erin was in total control the entire time.

  This was her pilot experience, I realized. I hadn’t thought it could translate to control of a flying monster so well, but she had one thing I didn’t. Erin was experienced in thinking about maneuvers in three dimensions, and she was damn good at it.

  As I translated Erin’s directions to my pyrewyrm, I threw out wallerdons at opportune moments. Their wide, wall-like bodies and tough segmented plates were perfect for what I needed. When their crystals collided with the airborne sprucebores, my monsters emerged to crush everything below with the full force of their weight. They could take out as many as half a dozen sprucebores in one fall.

  When I ran out of wallerdons, I directed my kalgori to multiply, and the single butterfly grew to a dozen that clung to the tail of my pyrewyrm. Whenever a sprucebore got too close, one whip of that kalgori-laden tail could slice its wings to shreds and send it plummeting to its death. Some kalgori were electrocuted in the process, but it was a rare occurrence.

  Better than that, Erin seemed to know which maneuvers would result in the perfect opportunity for a tail whip, and we took out a good number of monsters with that method.

  Suddenly, one beetle got too close and scored my pyrewyrm with its pincers. Its jagged edges tore through the soft wing of my mount, and the pyrewyrm shrieked.

  Erin clapped her hands over her ears, and I ordered my monster into silence with an apology to both of them. The pyrewyrm steadied with Erin’s help, and our flight leveled out.

  A bolt of lightning struck so close the flash blinded me temporarily. I laughed nervously at the odd smell of powerful electricity that accompanied it. If we didn’t finish these beetles off soon, we were bound to get unlucky and end up toasted.

  “Erin,” I asked over the roar of the wind and thunder, “how much of Ashla’s power do you have left?”

  “A good amount,” she called back, “but it doesn’t work very well against these sprucebores.”

  That was fine by me.

  “When I take him out, I want you to ice up my baroquer. Can you do that?” I asked.

  “What?” she yelled, shocked, but it was too late for arguments.

  I threw out my crystal for the baroquer and watched it fall the long way to the ground.

  I’d already been tired, but summoning the baroquer twice in so little time sapped a noticeable amount of my mana. I sagged in my seat on the pyrewyrm and clutched to its back, but I wasn’t near complete exhaustion.

  Still, it was better to conserve energy. So, I called back my kalgori and any of my wallerdons still wandering around on the ground and watched as Erin worked her magic.

  Well, as she worked Ashla’s magic.

  Our mount swooped back and forth around my baroquer’s head, and within a couple seconds, Erin coated the baroquer in a thick crust of ice, and he looked like a sculpture carved for a party.

  I sent him a mental apology since it couldn’t be very comfortable to be covered in several inches of thick frost, even with metal armor. Like this, he couldn’t move or fight.

  What he could do, however, was be the biggest metal thing in the area. Far bigger than any sprucebore’s lightning rod.

  I cackled as lighting cracked across the sky, but time and time again, it struck the baroquer and nothing else. His thick ice coating protected him from most of the damage, and it dissipated harmlessly against his head
.

  The sprucebore exhausted their stored electricity in less than a minute trying to zap us from the sky, and they soon found they had no more lightning to call on.

  “You took away their spark,” Erin gasped.

  I turned to smile at her, and she planted a full kiss on my lips. I felt that familiar tug of mana leaving, but she only took a trickle of power.

  “Now let’s finish this,” she said with a wicked grin. Then she took out a crystal I’d never seen before and crushed it between her hands.

  From it emerged a squirrel-like creature with flaps of feathered flesh between its arms and legs. Four needle-sharp fangs peeked from its jaw and curved over its chin, and a whipcord tail with short feathers flicked in the wind.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  Despite the fact that it was obviously a monster capable of some violence, its large black eyes and quivering brown nose made it seem a little too cute for any kind of real destruction.

  “It’s a volascura,” Erin said simply, and without a word, threw it into the sky.

  My heart leapt for the creature, but I soon saw I had no reason to worry. It landed on the back of a sprucebore not far below us and ripped through its red carapace with an eagerness that made me shiver. Its fangs carved a hole through the sprucebore’s wings and torso before the volascura came out the other side and unfurled its feathered flaps. Then it glided away to its next victim with deadly accuracy and began carving through that one as well.

  Impressive, but it was no pyrewyrm.

  I turned away and asked my monster to let loose.

  Free from the danger of electrocution, my pyrewyrm dove for the nearest group of sprucebores and tore them to shreds with its talons. It even broke the treelike structures into twisted metal pieces. Great swipes of claws took out many beetles at a time, and a gleeful screech tore from its throat as it ripped apart the enemies that once had it on the run.

  Erin flinched, but the volume wasn’t bad enough to injure her.

  My pyrewyrm seemed pretty prideful. It didn’t like the idea of losing, so this kind of revenge must’ve been satisfying for it. I patted it on the flank fondly as it and the volascura finished off the last few sprucebore.

  Only a few more to go.

  From my vantage point, I checked on my baroquer. The ice was melted and pitted in spots, but it had held. My big lightning rod was both effective and protected. I smiled and waved at him, and I got a sense of reassurance back along the bond between us. He hadn’t been hurt in the slightest.

  With a start, I realized my pyrewyrm was headed with talons out for a sprucebore that was still sparking and crackling with electricity. Why it hadn’t used its power before, I wasn’t sure. I ordered my pyrewyrm to stop, but it was too late. Our trajectory couldn’t be reversed.

  In the final moments before impending disaster, I considered what had gone wrong. For some reason, this sprucebore had held back. It flew poorly and low to the ground, and one set of wings fluttered unevenly. It was injured, and perhaps that prevented it from battling.

  We collided with the beetle, and with a sharp crackle of electricity, my nerves caught on fire. The pyrewyrm was entangled with its pincers, shrieking, and it was caught in the shocks without recourse. Erin and I were screaming too as the electric load arced between us. Not quite enough to be immediately fatal, but we wouldn’t last long. I could smell that chemical oddness again, only this time it was accompanied by the smell of burning hair.

  No, it couldn’t end like this. I pulled my rhin dagger from its sheath at my side, dropped down to my pyrewyrm’s talons, and slammed the blade into the beetle’s back.

  For a moment, everything hurt. My heart stuttered haphazardly in my chest, and my vision blurred and swam. Every nerve was on fire, overloaded with sensation. The sprucebore struggled in my arms and snapped its pincers near my face, but I held on.

  I slashed repeatedly with the dagger and buried it deep in the beetle’s carapace as I tried to kill it and end its lightning. Yellowish blood dripped down my arm as I stabbed it over and over. The beetle made a chittering noise as it thrashed weakly, but it simply wouldn’t die.

  I realized the dagger wouldn’t be able to kill an insect like this quickly enough, and the mounting pain of the electricity began to grow unbearable.

  To make matters worse, my pyrewyrm keened and started to drop from the sky as the ground grew frighteningly close.

  In that case, I would have to take out the sprucebore with a faster way.

  I slipped an empty essence crystal from the bottom of my bandolier and held the point of it over the sprucebore’s thorax. With effort, I pounded my hand down and slammed the crystal home through the thick carapace while I kept the rhin dagger buried deep in its flesh. The sprucebore seized up, and the electrical discharge stopped. Then the monster shrank into the crystal beneath my hands and disappeared.

  My pyrewyrm leveled out with a relieved shudder as it shook off the aftereffects of the sprucebore’s attack.

  I had actually done it.

  My joy was only outweighed by my exhaustion and pain. I couldn’t risk falling asleep, though. If I wasn’t careful, I would pass out, and my own monsters could be unleashed on Erin and anyone else who happened to be in the way. I wondered how Varleth and Ashla were doing. I hadn’t noticed a flare. Surely they were okay, weren’t they?

  Distantly, I realized my pyrewyrm was clutching me gently in its talons, but I couldn’t remember giving it that instruction. I smiled slightly, pleased with this progress in our bond. I could only sense concern from my baroquer, but perhaps my pyrewyrm cared for me too, in its own way.

  I directed it to set Erin and me down, then recalled it. The baroquer went too, even though I trusted him more than any other monster not to wreak havoc with me out of the picture.

  “Gryff!” Erin shouted as she ran over to me.

  I thought about sitting up but decided not to. I was awfully tired, and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d make it to an upright position without passing out.

  Erin pulled off her jacket, threw it over my body, and patted it hard in some spots with urgency. The smell of smoke reached me, and I realized my clothes must had been partially on fire. I felt a vague sensation of disappointment at the prospect of losing another good shirt.

  With the fire smothered, Erin leaned over me, and her eyes were glistening. She looked so distressed, I just wanted to comfort her and tell her everything would be fine. She pulled my shirt upward and pushed her hair out of her face to search for wounds on my torso.

  “Erin,” I murmured, “your hair.”

  She put a hand to it distractedly. The orange locks were just barely blackened and burnt in some places at the tips.

  “I’ll have to cut it again,” she said as her hands ran over my stomach. Her hands were frantic, distressed. She bit her lip and breathed quickly and nervously.

  I definitely didn’t feel good, but it was difficult to tell if I had any serious wounds. The pain didn’t seem to come from anywhere.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “I like it short, too.”

  She just stared at me for a moment. I thought something had gone horribly wrong, but then Erin burst into tears and wrapped her arms around my neck to hug me. Her tears dripped onto my shoulder, and her sobs shuddered through her as she gripped me tighter and jostled me slightly.

  “Ow,” I hissed.

  She let go immediately while I tried to take back my words. I sure wanted the embrace to keep going.

  “C’mon Erin,” I muttered, “I’m fine, good to go. Hugs are nice. No pain at all … ” My words trailed off as the world around me seemed to swim and blur. Despite my best intentions, it did seem like I shouldn’t go asking for hugs. I breathed for a while and focused on staying awake.

  As I panted, I felt the familiar sensation of the rift dissolving around us. The cracked earth underneath me became soft grass, and the sounds of rolling thunder were replaced by birdsong and human voices.

  Loo
ked like Varleth and Ashla had found the catalyst.

  I heard my name spoken by somebody, and I turned my head. A whole group of people were running up, some of them in mage outfits. In fact, a whole lot of those people looked pretty familiar. There was a gorgeous professor wearing a tight miniskirt and dress shirt, a short cutie with auburn hair and a uniform that hung around her lithe frame like a second skin, a mocha-skinned woman with a slender body, big beautiful eyes, and lips fuller than a plump strawberry, and a beautiful white-haired woman with legs that seemed to stretch up forever until they formed an unbelievably tight ass barely concealed under her skimpy military uniform bodysuit.

  “Gryff, you asshole, I told you to stop getting injured,” Arwyn snapped.

  I smiled nervously as I tried to be charming and keep my eyes focused simultaneously. “Oh, Arwyn, uh. Lovely to see you again. I’m really not that hurt, I promise.” I tried to get up, but a foot on my chest stopped me.

  I looked up at Nia, and she smiled as she increased the pressure on my chest. Her long, ashen hair was in a complex braid over one shoulder, and her blue eyes pierced through me. With her delicate nose, plump cheeks, and melodic voice, the elemental mage seemed like an ice goddess from another realm.

  “Gryff, if you move another muscle, I’ll kill you myself,” she said sweetly. “Isn’t that right, Cyra?”

  Cyra stepped forward as she pursed her lips, and her big chocolate-colored eyes were serious for once. Her dragon familiar, Kalon, let out a chirp from within her dark mass of curly hair.

  “Oh yes,” Cyra agreed. “Nia doesn’t mess around when she makes threats. You’d better keep still, Gryff.”

  “Oh, hi Cyra,” I wheezed.

  Layla came rocketing out from between all of them and squeaked when she saw me close up. Her short auburn hair bounced around her shoulders as she leaned in with wide, hazel eyes.

  “Gryff! Your eyebrows … they’re … um.” She paused and started up again with her cheer in full force. “They look lovely, nevermind. Definitely don’t worry about them, I’ll take care of it. You’d better rest up and recover.”