“Enjoy it while it lasts, impostor,” said King Magnar in a haughty tone. “Because this time, I won’t leave you alive. You’re an eyesore, and an affront to everything that’s noble and decent.”
King Calder’s face twisted. “Fine words for a boy on a dragon. Why don’t you face me like a man?”
King Magnar drew back and swung his leg over the saddle.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
“Facing him man to man, monarch to monarch,” replied King Magnar.
I clenched my teeth and glowered at the fool. “It’s not a fair fight. He’s wearing enchanted armor.”
King Magnar sniffed. “You of all people should know the Redcap Helmet isn’t unbeatable.”
Astri screeched at her brother to stay on the saddle and let the dragons and witches deal with their Father, but King Magnar continued climbing down Byrrus’ foreleg. A spasm of fear rippled through my gut. I’d only won my duel with the enchanted King Magnar because the flames of the parched sword had damaged his armor. Without it, I probably would never have survived.
“He’s being stupid,” said Fyrian. “Tell him to stop. Or at least lend him your sword.”
My shoulders sagged. “He’s an eighth ogre at best. Not powerful enough to wield a mage weapon.”
With a smoky snort, Gladius drew back his head, opened his jaws, and formed a ball of yellow flames in the back of his throat. “Let me save time and bake this human in his metal container.”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“This is King Magnar’s fight. This entire mess would never have happened if his father hadn’t imprisoned his sisters. He deserves a chance.”
Gladius harrumphed. “All right, but the moment it looks like he’s going to lose, I’ll kill that other King.”
“Can you clear the air, so King Magnar can fight without getting drowsy?” I asked.
“I did that the moment the horses bolted. It’s safe to come out.”
I turned to Evolene. “It’s safe to pull down the shield.”
The moment the yellow dome of protection fell, Astri stood on the saddle and shot red bolts of pain at her father. “Die in agony, you fiend!”
They hit King Calder’s armor and bounced off the parched earth as though they were toy snakes. His lips split into a serrated grin. “Witch magic is useless against my enchanted armor. Attack with all your might, but I will have you in the end!”
“Botti.” Astri kicked at her whimpering sister. “Act now unless you want to go back to that dungeon.”
King Calder waggled his finger. “No dungeon for my girls.” He spread his gauntlet covered fingers. The blades at their tips lengthened into long spikes. “I intend to feed on you where you fall. Your mother is already producing me a replacement.”
I curled my lip. This man needed to be put down like a rabid grim-hound. “Spit some venom at Magnar’s sword when you get the chance.”
“All right.”
King Magnar reached the ground and stepped out from the protection of Byrrus.
“Raise your sword,” I shouted.
King Magnar did as I asked, and Fyrian released a small stream of venom onto his blade. I turned to Evolene. “Can you make sure none of that splashed on his uniform?”
She pointed her staff at him and bathed him in pink magic. Then, as if she had read my mind, she set his blade alight.
“Thank you.” Lightness filled King Magnar’s voice. “I can now face you—”
King Magnar’s hand clapped over his throat, and he staggered forward making harsh, choking noises.
“Idiot,” snarled his father. “Do you think I would let your flames near my beautiful armor after hearing how yours was defeated? The spriggans imbued me with power. Power they deemed you too unworthy to possess!”
With an unseen strike of magic, King Calder lifted his son into the air. King Magnar’s hand scrabbled over invisible hands as though trying to loosen the fingers tightening around his throat. His entire body jerked from side to side as though being shaken, and the fingers holding the flaming sword loosened, letting it dangle at his side.
“Now can I kill this human?” asked Gladius his voice laced with impatience. He stood a few feet away from the fight in his smaller form, tapping his foot and folding his arms across his chest.
“Do something.” Sobs filled Astri’s voice. “Magnar’s going to die!”
“Spit venom on his legs and set them on fire,” I replied.
“I can do better than that!” Gladius unfolded his arms and breathed a stream of black flames onto King Calder’s armored legs.
The blood-red armor blackened, fizzled, and emitted dark smoke. King Calder dropped his son to the ground, and King Magnar landed in a crouch. He stared down at his shrunken legs. “What is the meaning of this?”
Before anyone could reply, King Magnar sprang up and swiped his flaming sword across the Savannah Sun on the breastplate of his father’s armor. Black smoke oozed out from the fissure, making King Calder clutch his throat and cough.
“You don’t deserve to wear such an emblem,” said King Magnar, his voice as cold as an executioner’s. He pointed the tip of his flaming sword at King Calder’s throat.
“There’s one thing I can say about Magnar,” said Fyrian. “He sure knows how to recover from a beating!”
A huff of laughter rose up from my lungs, and I clenched my jaws and pressed my lips together. There was no place for jokes in such a serious situation, and I needed to make sure King Magnar emerged from his fight victorious and with his dignity intact.
King Calder’s breastplate and the placard underneath it shrank to the size of a human torso. As though his body could not support the weight of its magically enlarged arms, the older human slumped forward, resting his knuckles on the ground.
“Kill him,” screeched Astri. “Now, while you have the chance!”
Gladius stepped forward. “Allow me. A being should not have to murder his creator.”
“No.” King Magnar raised his sword to the right, aiming for his father’s throat. “He deserves to be executed by the people he hurt the most.” With a swing of his flaming blade, King Magnar sliced across the lower part of King Calder’s helmet.
King Calder’s turquoise eyes bulged, and black smoke oozed out from the slash in the helmet, making him scramble for a fastening at its back. I held my breath. If it was anything like the one King Magnar had used during our duel, it would explode. King Calder roared with frustration and dipped his head, hands fumbling over a non-existent latch or buckle. The metal turned molten and wound tighter around his back as if the armor had been enchanted to punish King Calder for failure.
The King rocked forward, resting his weight on his oversized knuckles. Smoke billowing from both sides of his neck made it difficult to see if the armor was rumbling with the force of its potential self-destruction.
“Is it going to explode, or what?” asked Fyrian.
I choked. “It sounds like you’re looking forward to the spray of chunks of evil King and broken armor.”
“If it wasn’t for him, the spriggans wouldn’t have the manpower to unearth the Forgotten King.”
BOOM!
The force of the explosion threw King Magnar through the air. He landed on a cushion of magic, and Astri raised him to Byrrus’ back.
“Ha!” bellowed a voice from within the smoke. “You cannot even perform this simple act of murder. I was right to have decided to discard my heir!”
“Let me go.” King Magnar struggled within invisible bonds, face puce with fury. “I have to finish him off.”
“You’ve done enough,” said Astri.
Botilda pointed her staff at the smoke. “It’s like you said, Maggie, he should be killed by the people he hurt most.”
My jaw dropped. “Would they really—”
A pained moan from the site of the explosion was my answer. Botilda raised her father from the smoke, making him dangle in the air just as he had d
one to King Magnar. Through a voice choked with tears, she said, “I used to be terrified of you, but now I see you for what you are: a pathetic, greedy man desperate to maintain a position of power he doesn’t deserve.”
Rubble, presumably from the drummers’ enchantment, rose up from the ground and surrounded King Calder’s body.
“You kept us in that basement our entire lives before Magnar realized we weren’t characters in his dreams.” Botilda swallowed hard. “Now, I’m going to show you what it feels like to live in the dark. To have never ending days of walls closing in on you so much you can’t breathe.”
“But it won’t be never-ending for you,” said Astri. “Because you’re going to die.”
The rubble dented the remnants of King Calder’s armor, forcing out harsh, gasping sobs. “P-please.”
“That’s what we used to say to you on your inspections. We begged to leave our room, but you just laughed.” Astri growled the last word.
The rubble continued to build around King Calder, with pebbles filling the gaps made by the larger stones. No matter how much debris the witches added to their pile, it continued to shrink. A shudder ran down my spine. The meant to crush him to death.
Fyrian clacked her teeth. “This is the least he deserves. I spent less than a week locked up, and it was terrible. I can’t imagine being stuck in a basement my whole life.”
Blood seeped out from the stones and dripped onto the parched earth like hot drops of summer rain. Nausea seized my stomach in its tepid, slimy grip and squeezed. I turned my head from the gruesome sight. By the time King Calder’s heaving breaths had stopped, I turned around to find the witches had crushed the rubble to the size of a cabbage.
“Worthless!” snapped a voice from above.
An army of man-sized spriggans flew down from the clouds, on familiar, double-sided halberds. The leather of their black uniform gleamed in the moonlight along with the helmets covering their oversized heads.
A boulder of dread rolled through my belly. “Spriggans.”
“How could we not have noticed them?” asked Fyrian.
Gladius snarled. “They don’t have the same foul magic as their full-sized creators.”
Round-bottom flasks hit the ground in a chorus of clinks, and poisoned mist swirled up toward the spriggans. The first few dozen fell from the sky and landed in clouds of dust, but those at the top darted back into the sky.
Gladius snarled. “Why don’t they stay still and take their poison?”
“Come on,” I pointed to the clouds. “Let’s follow them and see if we can’t drive them back down.”
With stomach-lurching speed, Fyrian leaped into the sky and caught up with the escaping spriggans in seconds. Gladius had already reached his destination, along with Phoenix and Evolene. Both dragons let out identical, ear-shattering roars, making a bubble of air shimmer around the spriggans.
“What’s that? A protective bubble?”
“They said they’d had centuries to devise ways of defeating dragons,” said Fyrian. “Maybe this is their way of countering a purple dragon.”
Gladius blew a stream of flames over the bubbles, which remained intact. “There is one fast way to break through their defenses.”
“What?” I poked the nearest spriggan with the flaming end of my Parched Sword, only for the fire to roll off the creature’s protective sphere.
Gladius disappeared. Somewhere up above, one of the spriggans screamed. My head snapped up, and I found a spriggan falling through the clouds. The others turned around in their halberds to see the source of the noise. Fyrian flapped her wings and rose several feet to get a better view. A man-sized Gladius reappeared on the back of a spriggan’s flying halberd and transformed into a dragon. The protective sphere burst like a bubble, jostling the spriggan off his enchanted vehicle, and causing him to plunge to his death.
After disappearing for several moments, Phoenix returned and followed the example of his fellow dragon master. I held my breath, watching the spriggans fall out of the sky. Their protections had failed to take into account that some dragons could change their shape.
“Remember their shock at the sight of a sleeping dragon?” said Fyrian. “I don’t think they knew anything about the dragons’ final stages of development.”
“Because they’d been banished before the dragons formed cocoons.”
“And even if the librarian’s reports explained this, they probably would never have guessed a dragon master would use his transformation as a weapon.”
“Me neither.”
Some of the spriggans tried speeding away on their flying halberds, but they were no match for the blink-of-an-eye movement of a purple dragon. In moments, they had cleared the sky.
“Well done,” I shouted. “Let’s hope that’s the last we’ll see of any spriggans!”
Lightning flashed across the sky.
“This is no longer amusing,” said a bored voice. “I suppose if anyone’s going to get to these dragons, it will be me.”
Chapter 19
With a flare of his silver wings, the Forgotten King lit up the sky brighter than the moon on a cloudless night. I gaped at the being, whose long, platinum hair swirled in the nonexistent wind.
“My children,” he said in a voice so resonating it made the air tremble and the fine hairs on my body stand on end. “It is time to raise up arms against those who betrayed me. Those who banished me deep within the earth and forced me to relive unspeakable torments for a thousand years. Those who would see you dead!”
Gulping hard, I squinted at the deluded fairy. He certainly had a peculiar way of seeing his situation.
Fyrian trembled beneath me. “I-I’m not scared.”
“You’re the bravest dragon I know.” I patted her on the scales and sent as much reassurance as I could through the bond.
The Forgotten King raised his hand. A bow materialized in his palm, as did a quiver on his back, filled with silver-tipped arrows. He strung his bow and aimed his arrow at the wards.
“What in the Known World is he doing?” I asked.
Fyrian blew out a long breath of smoke. “I-I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good.”
Gladius growled. “His thunderbolt. He can fashion it from a lightning.”
The King released his arrow and sent it straight through the wards. A hole large enough to fit a sleeping dragon opened up, and black smoke billowed out toward him and wrapped around his neck.
My eyes widened with anticipation, and I held my breath. The smoke had to be laced with fairy iron, the only substance known to kill high fairies. It hadn’t been tested against one as powerful as the Forgotten King, but such a potent poison had to cause enough damage to at least slow him down. The smoke seeped into his silver armor and wrapped around his limbs, not letting go despite his struggles. In moments, the smoke engulfed him completely, and his bow and arrow fell to the ground.
My heart flip-flopped. A weapon like that might be powerful against the Forgotten King.
With a stomach-lurching burst of speed, Fyrian dove to the ground. “Let’s grab it!”
I grunted my agreement and leaned out to the side, arm outstretched. Everything around me blurred, and I had to squint to maintain my focus on the bow and arrow. My hands wrapped around the bow, but the arrows fell toward the ground.
“No!” I cried. They would most likely shatter and become useless.
But the arrows floated up through the air, making me catch my breath.
“There you go!” shouted Evolene.
“Thank you!” I held the straight part of the bow in one hand and pulled the stringy end.
“Alba?” asked Fyrian.
I squinted. How was I going to put the arrows on the bow? “Huh?”
“Do you even know how to use a bow and arrow?”
My shoulders sagged. “No.”
She flew down to the ground. “Stop wasting time and give it to someone who knows what they’re doing!”
“Sorry!”
> It turned out that everyone knew how to use a bow and arrow, but as Stafford was the most experienced flyer in our group, I handed the weapon and half the arrows to him. He and Fulmens surged up to the sky. The silver dragon looked magnificent in the light of the setting sun.
Evolene expanded her arrows to the size of spears whose sharp tips glinted with malice. She and Phoenix disappeared and reappeared in front of the writhing ball of smoke enclosing the Forgotten King. Stafford shot his arrows into the middle of his target. Since they didn’t fall through the other end, I assumed they hit true. With a rush of magic, Evolene hurled her first spear into the smoke.
A high-pitched scream made me clap my hands over my eardrums.
“Keep going!” I shouted.
Evolene pulled out a vial of the spriggan poison and coated the second arrow. My throat dried. Before Master Jesper had spelled it to exclude my physiology, the poison had affected me so badly, I’d needed to sit on the ground and take an elixir. What kind of effect would it have on the Forgotten King?
The second spear flew into the ball of smoke with the speed of the first. This time, there was no scream.
A thrill of triumph shot through my insides. “More!”
Phoenix appeared on the other side of the Forgotten King, allowing Evolene to shoot another poison-coated spear into a new side of his body. Byrrus joined seconds later, with King Magnar’s sisters launching missiles of fairy iron into the smoke. Once Evolene finished with the spears, she opened her burlap sack and joined the other witches.
The smoke thinned around the edges to wisps that curled and swirled out toward the witches.
My stomach dropped. Something was about to happen. “Fall back!”
Byrrus sped away with the speed of a rapier red, and Evolene and Phoenix disappeared.
With an explosion of air, the ball of smoke disintegrated into thin wisps, leaving the Forgotten King covered in red welts and skewered with spears and arrows and swords. Silvery liquid poured from the fissures in his armor, tarnishing the metal with streaks of black rust.
The Forgotten King’s face twisted into a rictus of anguish. “Why must you resist me, my creations? I made you to carry out my will, and this is how you repay me?”
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