by Brandon Mull
“This is a prison,” Merek said, clanging his sword against the dome.
“Should I test this knife?” Seth asked.
“We won’t make it to the Dragon Temple if we’re trapped here,” Merek said.
Seth slashed the dome with the Unforgiving Blade and it tore open, vanishing completely an instant later. Isadore staggered as if injured, and her dome disappeared as well. Rain showered down on her and Basirus.
Merek drew his stake and charged forward as Basirus expanded into his dragon form. The transformation had barely finished when Merek plunged the stake into the dragon’s side. Instantaneously, the dragon disintegrated to ash.
Lightning flashed and Isadore screamed. Thunder partially masked her cry as the enchantress turned and ran. Sheathing his stake, Merek did not pursue her.
“Merek, wasn’t that our only ride?” Seth asked.
“Our partnership had ended. We weren’t going anywhere with them.”
“How did you kill him so quickly?” Seth asked.
“A Dragon Slayer has tools of his trade,” Merek said. “I lack my preferred sword and shield and my favorite bow. But if I can get close enough to use it, nothing ends a fight like my stake.”
“What about Isadore?” Calvin asked.
“She might double back and attack us,” Serena said. “Right now she’s devastated. Her regard for her brother was sincere.”
“She’s also wet,” Merek said. “She won’t be able to create that dome spell ever again.”
“Really?” Seth asked.
“The wounds of that blade are permanent,” Merek said. “You used it well. We were at her mercy.”
“We’re stranded in the Perennial Storm,” Serena reminded him.
Merek shook his head. “We’re only stranded if we act helpless. We’re drenched anyway—let’s head in the right direction and search for mounts.”
“And pray we don’t get struck by lightning,” Serena said.
“You’re catching on,” Merek replied, setting off at a brisk pace. Seth ran to stay with him.
With clouds blanketing the sky, Seth found it hard to gauge the time of day, though it was growing so dim, he assumed it was heading into the evening. Dazzling bursts of lightning and explosive concussions of thunder became a nearly constant accompaniment to their jog. Behind them, the pyramid had not fully collapsed, though it looked less steep and tall than before, and the summit was crumpled. The structure began to shrink in the distance as they progressed over the muddy prairie.
As they reached the top of a little bluff and started across it, the wind lulled. A searing bolt of lightning struck off to one side, and the electrical current reached Seth through the ground. The brutal shock hurled him to the mud, unconscious before he could register what had happened.
Raxtus breathed again onto Vanessa’s eyes, with Kendra lending support, her hand on his neck. The various exhalations he had attempted featured subtly different colors and scents. This yellowish vapor smelled chiefly floral, with hints of the sea.
“How about that one?” Raxtus asked.
“I don’t feel any progress,” Vanessa said. “I’m sorry for costing us so much time. I’ll be a liability if I continue with you. Please leave me behind.”
“Normally I would stay with you,” Warren said.
“This is an emergency,” Vanessa implored. “All of you need to push onward. With me sidelined, you’re already shorthanded. There are two more guardians to confront.”
“She’s right,” Tanu said. “I wish she wasn’t.”
“What if we apply more of your healing ointment?” Warren asked.
“A greater quantity will not be more effective,” Tanu said. “This injury is beyond my skills to heal.”
“Please,” Vanessa said. “You have to go.”
“I found a door that leads forward,” Tanu said. “From here, we can walk around the perimeter of the maze to reach it.”
“Go,” Vanessa said. “We all have a better chance if you hurry.”
“Here is a gaseous potion,” Tanu said, putting the little bottle into her hand. “If trouble shows up, become vaporous.”
Warren knelt, clasped one of her hands, and kissed it. “I’ll be back for you.”
“Don’t get eaten,” Vanessa said.
Warren grinned. “With this potion, I’m far too chewy.”
Tanu led them to an ornately carved wooden door. Beyond it, in contrast to the bright mirrors and gleaming piles of treasure, they found a dim, snaking corridor.
“I’ll hang back,” Raxtus said. “Go invisible. Other dragons have a hard time sensing me if I lie low. I might be more effective if I attack out of hiding.”
“My gumminess is fading,” Warren said. “Could I do another?”
“I think so,” Tanu replied. “Remember that how well it protects you will depend on the dragon. The gummy potion won’t do much against fire, for example.”
“I still have my speed potion,” Kendra said.
“Keep it handy,” Tanu said.
“I don’t like leaving Vanessa behind,” Warren said. “It feels like we lost our adult.”
“Kendra can step up,” Tanu said lightly.
The tunnel wound for a long time. Finally, it led them into an immense cavern where a tiny dragon splashed in a puddle. The creature was no larger than a chicken, with an oversized head shaped somewhat like a pterodactyl’s. The diminutive dragon hopped and flapped stubby wings, head bobbing left and right, big round eyes staring.
“How did that get in here?” Kendra asked.
“It can’t be the next dragon,” Warren said. “Did they give us a freebie?”
They ventured farther into the room as the little dragon bounced and splashed. Head swiveling, it made some croaky caws, then shook its tail vigorously.
“Maybe the dragon had a weird kid?” Tanu asked.
“It might be like the cat,” Warren said. “We kill it and it comes back bigger.”
“I don’t think we have to kill it,” Kendra said. “Let’s just pass it by. The goal is to find the prize.”
“I don’t know,” Warren said. “On our way out, it might be a thousand times bigger or something. The dragons aren’t stupid.”
“Could it have wandered in here?” Tanu asked.
“There is a doorway on the far side,” Kendra said. “Let’s just keep going. On the way back we can send it to dreamland if needed.”
Tanu shrugged. “We’ll have the Harp.”
“Sure,” Warren said. “Live and let live.”
The little dragon hopped from one foot to the other, head bobbling. As Kendra and the others neared the doorway at the far side of the room, the huge stone door crashed shut. A door slammed closed to block where they had entered as well.
“Guys,” Raxtus said from across the room, his form too perfectly blended with the environment for them to see him. “We’re in trouble.”
“Because of the doors?” Warren asked.
“I think that’s Pioleen,” Raxtus said.
“Is he a baby?” Warren asked. “What does he do?”
“If I’m right, she’s full grown and ancient,” Raxtus said. “No dragon was ever more powerful in magic. And no dragon was less predictable.”
The little dragon buried its face in the puddle, then tipped its head back and gargled. It flapped one wing rhythmically, then the other.
“She fell out of the stories long ago,” Raxtus said. “I should have guessed she became a guardian.”
“She doesn’t seem to notice us,” Kendra said.
“The doors,” Warren pointed out.
Pioleen jumped in the puddle with both feet, then swished her tail in the water. Croaking caws followed.
“Raxtus, are you pranking us?” Warren asked.
Kendra stood in a cabin. An extremely old man, thin and wrinkled, with a few stringy hairs on his bald, veiny scalp, sat in a wooden rocking chair, bundled in blankets. A fire burned in the fireplace, popping and sending sp
arks up the chimney.
The scene looked perfectly real. The details were right—the smells of the woodsmoke and the old man, his soft snoring, the scuffed floorboards, the way the flames made the shadows jitter.
But Kendra knew it couldn’t be real. She was in the Dragon Temple with Warren, Tanu, and Raxtus. And the eerie magical dragon.
“Pioleen?” Kendra asked. “Are you doing this?”
She approached the old man, reaching out a hand to shake him awake.
“Don’t bother,” said a female voice that made Kendra jump. The speaker was a face made of knotholes in the wall of the cabin. “You have bigger problems at hand.”
Something crashed against the cabin door, and Kendra whirled. The next impact shook the entire cabin and left cracks in the door. Was it a battering ram? Kendra ran to the window at the rear of the cabin as a huge brown bear exploded through the front door with a furious roar. The bear overturned a table with a swipe, then picked up the old man in vicious jaws and shook him.
Kendra yanked the rear window open and dove out into moonlit snow, an icy crunch breaking her fall. She lurched to her feet and started wading away from the cabin. The snow was almost two feet deep, powdery beneath an icy skin.
The bear roared from inside the cabin and burst through the window, destroying part of the wall in the process. Kendra fumbled with her bow. The bear loped toward her, thick fur sloshing over fat and muscles, then reared up, giving a mighty bellow as its paws raked the air.
Kendra pulled back the bowstring and was about to say “fifty,” to launch fifty simultaneous arrows at the beast, when she wondered what exactly she was really aiming at. None of this could be real, despite how authentic it looked and felt and sounded and smelled.
Kendra lowered her bow, and the bear surged forward, slavering jaws agape, but stopped just short of biting her. She flinched away, falling onto her backside in the snow. The bear loomed over her. She felt its hot breath on her face, smelled its shaggy fur.
But the beast did not make contact.
The bear huffed slobber onto Kendra and shook its thick coat, spraying icy pinpricks of snow. Kendra detected no cues to suggest the scene was imaginary. She only had the knowledge that she had just been in the Dragon Temple with Warren, Tanu, and Raxtus. She felt tempted to wonder if the Dragon Temple had been a dream and this might be reality.
Except why would she be in a cabin in a snowy wilderness?
Raxtus had warned that Pioleen was magical.
Was that goofy little dragon splashing in the puddle somehow generating all of this?
The bear turned and started plodding away. Kendra arose. Where the skin of ice had broken, she scooped up a fluffy handful of snow, fingers stinging with impending numbness as she packed it into a snowball. She threw it and watched it burst against a tree trunk.
A wild, angry cry startled Kendra, and she saw an ugly goblin racing toward her through the snow, coming from a stand of trees. Clad in furs and an oversized helm, the goblin raised a notched scimitar as he closed in.
Kendra resisted the temptation to reach for her bow. This had to be part of the show. As the goblin drew near, Kendra resisted the urge to run away or defend herself. What if she accidentally hurt one of her friends?
The goblin swung his sword as he came within reach. Kendra flinched, but the blade stopped short of her neck. Placing a hand on one hip, the goblin planted his slightly rusted scimitar in the snow. “None of you are any fun,” he complained in a female voice.
“This isn’t real,” Kendra said.
The goblin kicked up some snow. “It’s real enough.”
“We’re on a mission,” Kendra said.
“You seek something best left alone,” the goblin said. “I’ll tell you what. When this ends, you will have until the count of thirty to leave. If you don’t, I’ll squash you like bugs.”
“Why not just let us pass?”
The goblin shook his head. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
The snowy scene disappeared, and Kendra was back in the cavern, though she had moved to a different part of the room from where the illusion had begun. Warren stood where the goblin had been. Tanu was off to one side, roughly where the bear had gone.
“I’m glad I didn’t slash the minotaur,” Warren said to Kendra.
“I saw you as a goblin,” Kendra said.
“Who stabbed me?” Tanu asked, hand over a wound on his thigh.
“Sorry,” Warren said, wincing. “I didn’t catch on at first. You seemed like a werehyena.”
“Where is Pioleen?” Tanu asked, dabbing some goo onto the injury, then hastily wrapping a bandage around it.
Kendra scanned the room. Though the door that would take them onward remained closed, the door they had entered through stood open. The little dragon no longer splashed in her puddle.
“On the wall!” Raxtus exclaimed.
Looking higher on the wall of the cavern, Kendra saw the little dragon climbing like a lizard, perhaps thirty feet up. She wondered whether Pioleen’s wings worked, or if this was just more eccentric behavior.
“A gorilla told me it would squash us,” Tanu said.
“After counting to thirty,” Raxtus added.
“Quick, Kendra, take her out,” Warren urged.
Kendra drew the bowstring back and aimed. “Twenty.”
When she released the string, twenty arrows shot toward Pioleen. At the same time, a piece of the ceiling broke off, falling to intercept the swarm of arrows before they reached the dragon.
Thirty. Time’s up, Kendra heard in her mind.
The rock wall where Pioleen climbed bulged outward, becoming the perfectly sculpted head of a huge dragon. Pioleen perched on the head as the rest of the dragon emerged from the stone wall, complete with four legs, a pair of wings, and a long tail, detailed down to the texture of each individual scale.
Warren guzzled his potion and Kendra backed away as the stone dragon stalked toward them. The dragon stomped on Warren, mashing him cartoonishly flat, but before the living statue reached Kendra, claws gripped her from behind and swung her into the air. Raxtus carried her beyond the reach of gaping jaws that bristled with rows of stone teeth.
“Try again,” Raxtus urged, flying up toward the shadowy ceiling. “More arrows.”
Pioleen remained atop the stone dragon’s head, crouching low, wings spread wide. It seemed apparent the little dragon was controlling the larger one. Trying to keep her bow steady despite gliding high in the air, Kendra pulled back the string and whispered, “one hundred.”
When she released, a deluge of arrows hissed toward their target, but the dragon simply raised a wing like a stone shield, and the projectiles pinged away harmlessly. The stone dragon now pursued Tanu, who had evidently taken another speed potion, judging from how swiftly he evaded the pounding claws and snapping teeth.
Warren had peeled himself up from the floor and was starting to regain his shape, though for the moment much of his body remained disgustingly flat. He pawed at his fallen sword with flimsy fingers.
“What should we do, Raxtus?” Kendra asked.
“I’m really not sure,” Raxtus replied. “This stone dragon is a heavyweight, and who knows what other magic Pioleen might be ready to use? It might be best if I fly you out of here.”
Raxtus veered abruptly as several stalactites fell from the ceiling, barely missing them. He swerved again as more stones tumbled from above.
“We can’t give up,” Kendra said. “There has to be a way. Can you get in for a closer shot? One that it can’t block?”
“I can try,” Raxtus said, wheeling and diving.
Down below, a barefoot woman dashed into the room, tall and lithe, wearing a dark green gown and carrying a sword in each hand. The stone dragon swiped at her with its tail, but she nimbly jumped over the attack and fleetly raced toward the rear of the dragon. Pine cones nested in her dark braids.
“Cyllia,” Kendra said. “The hamadryad.”
Tanu c
ontinued to dodge the front claws of the dragon, and Warren clambered clumsily to his feet, sword in hand. As Raxtus swooped near the stone dragon, Kendra pulled back her bowstring again. “Twenty,” she whispered.
The flock of arrows flew, but the stone dragon tipped its head up and opened its mouth wide, and they sailed inside. Then the ferocious head shot toward Kendra and Raxtus, missing only thanks to a spiraling turn that made Kendra’s head swim.
As Raxtus climbed higher, Kendra saw Cyllia sprinting up the back of the stone dragon, following the spine. The dragon bucked and twisted, but she continued at an astonishing pace and remained surefooted. By the time she neared the base of the neck, the head of the stone dragon swiveled around and darted downward to bite her. Cyllia not only dodged the strike but leaped onto the head, driving one sword through the little dragon and decapitating it with the other.
The stone dragon instantly became rigid. As the immobilized dragon started to tip, Raxtus dove. Waiting until the last instant, Cyllia sprang from the head, and Raxtus snatched her with his hind legs. When the stone dragon struck the cavern floor, the neck broke off, as did a wing. After the impact, the stone dragon remained motionless.
Raxtus glided Kendra and Cyllia to the floor, then raced over to the small corpse of Pioleen and ate it in a single bite. “Just to be sure,” Raxtus explained after swallowing. “Plus, bragging rights.”
“Thank you,” Kendra told Cyllia, amazed by the height of the hamadryad up close. Head and shoulders above Tanu, she must have been nearly eight feet tall.
“I am assigned to protect you,” the graceful woman replied. Her arms looked too slender to casually wield such long swords. After swishing them through the air, presumably to dispose of flesh and gore, she sheathed them.
“You’ll stay with us until we get the Harp?” Kendra asked.
“I will serve you for as long as I am needed,” Cyllia said.
“Our chances just went up,” Warren said, his speech slurred, tottering toward them. “Did you see a woman in the previous room?” he asked the hamadryad.
“Vanessa encouraged me to hurry,” Cyllia said.
“Have you been in many fights?” Kendra asked.
The hamadryad smiled. “This was my first battle. Much like my tree, I am newly born. But I carry knowledge and instincts from my ancestors.”