Aikira and her dragon had gathered themselves and returned to help him. One of the alien’s arm-like appendages was waving around in the air crazily. There was no shoulder, no elbow, or wrist, just a long limb formed of vein-lined flesh with a three-clawed grabber at its end. Another of the alien’s appendages was clutching its lumpy head where Golden had just spewed forth molten dragon bile in its face.
Blaze dove to avoid being struck again. When they were clear of the creature, they pulled up to find Zahrellion right there, about to let loose another blast of druid magic. March was mistaken in thinking that he was the target. When Zah let it loose, the blast whooshed right past him, grazing his wyrm, on its way down to impact the earth near the cavern opening.
There was a man there writing in the sky with a fingertip, like the druids sometimes did. He was unfamiliar, but one of the witches March remembered from Clover’s Castle was there behind him. She was struggling to keep King Blanchard away. The tattoo on the king’s forehead was glowing just like Zahrellion’s, and he was struggling.
The witch was trying to keep the king from stopping the spell caster, March realized, when a prismatic display of energy exploded from the man and blasted the alien into a backward windmilling stagger. March saw Aikira and Golden swoop down toward the cave.
“Follow me,” Aikira yelled at all the people pouring out of the opened hole in the earth. Some of them ran away, as afraid of the dragon as they were of the vermin roaming the city. March decided that those who were already out of the shaft would probably make it where she was leading them. But from his vantage he could see that there were still hundreds and hundreds of trellkin savaging that part of the city. They wouldn’t get far unprotected.
Seeing that the alien was trying to gather itself from the powerful blow, Marcherion searched the sky for Zah and Crystal. They were nowhere to be seen.
The alien roared out again, and this time there was an angry buzzing accompanying the noise. From all over the rubble in Delton, from behind ruined buildings, back alleys, and the nooks and crannies of the city, bloated Sarax began to rise back into the air.
After a few heartbeats, the master alien began savaging the people trying to escape the cavern. It bashed and crushed and slung them about as if they were so much fodder. When March looked up, he saw that the sky ahead was full of Sarax. There was no way to fly through them. He urged Blaze to turn, but Zahrellion was attacking him from behind with a warbling flow of her potent druid magic.
This is it, March thought as the Sarax came snapping and gnashing in with their terrible teeth. This is it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The master alien stopped stock-still, raised its bug- eyed head, and roared out a sound that loosened men’s bowels. It suddenly elongated itself, stretching so far it snapped into two separate pieces. Then the bigger part repeated the process. The two newly formed globules of milky veined flesh were the size of houses. They stayed where they were, jiggling spheres, for a few long moments.
King Blanchard, the queen, and Linux were all fleeing the stiflingly crowded tunnel amid a group of terrified Outlanders. Aikira and her golden wyrm were leading them. Linux couldn’t help but look back and take in what was happening. The alien blobs began to shimmer and stretch. One of them reared up and turned, revealing a smaller pair of fiery sunset eyes. The other blob rose up into a mannish shape and was twice as big as any ogre Linux had ever seen. They turned a corner, cutting through part of the city, not knowing where Aikira was leading them. A few goblins skittered away, startled by the dragon’s sweeping shadow and the noise of the group. Linux was forced to pay attention to where he was going instead of what was behind them, for charging at them from the side was an ogre lashing his flickering whip into the orc and the two trolls he was mindlessly driving.
All of them looked eager to get their share of fresh human meat.
Linux stopped and started casting a spell, but one of the citizens behind bumped into him and ruined his concentration. He stepped away from the group this time, placing himself between them and the charging vermin. Again he began his casting. As the huge orc came clawing into him, a turquoise pulse of power blasted the thing into a bloody mess of gore that splattered the trolls. One of the Hazeltine witches, maybe the queen, sent a spiraling explosion that sparkled into a sort of magical barrier that the feral ogre ran right into. The wall didn’t waver, and the ogre hit it hard. He stumbled and dropped backwards. The length of crackling whip trailing from the device’s handgrip exaggerated the motion of his fall with a whooshing overhead “crack!”
One of the trolls dove on the witch, while the other went for Linux. Rolph’s body was fit, and Linux ducked and rolled out of the way easily. It was a shame there were people huddling behind him.
Just before the troll grabbed hold of the witch who had knocked its master unconscious, Golden came sweeping by and snatched it in her claws. The dragon banked and sent it flailing across the city. Two Sarax converged at the exact same moment, from either side, and both Aikira and her dragon were taken down.
Linux looked back at the king, who had a desperate, pleading look beneath his tattooed forehead. To Linux, it was almost like looking back at his twin brother when they were younger. But it was his own body he was seeing. He wanted to be back in his own skin, to make sure that the king was safe and protected throughout this ordeal, but he felt a deep urge to go see if he could help the fallen Dragoneer.
He had only known Aikira a short while, and it was more for Zahrellion, Jenka, and Rikky, all of whom he loved dearly, that he decided to leave his true body behind so that he could try to save the fallen dragon rider.
Zahrellion was trying desperately to blast Marcherion out of the sky. The Sarax were swarming all around him, and Crystal was fighting twice as hard to keep her rider from hitting him with a spell. Crystal understood that Zahrellion was under the master alien’s control. The frost wyrm wasn’t, and she was intentionally flying erratically so that Zahrellion couldn’t find her targets.
When Crystal saw Golden, two Sarax were tearing into her. The yellow-scaled wyrm went crashing into a structure, and rolled into another. The Sarax quickly converged on her and a wild thrashing battle ensued. It was clear to Crystal that Golden was wing-wounded, otherwise the dragon would have lifted back into the air.
Crystal felt Zahrellion about to cast another spell and prepared to veer sharply when it was released. For the dozenth time, she tried to cast the spell to break the hold the master alien had on her Dragoneer, but it wasn’t meant to be. This time, when Zahrellion let loose her magic, Crystal made a sharp wing-shift and caused her rider’s blast to hit a Sarax that was attacking Blaze. It fell away, but Marcherion’s dragon was bleeding profusely and now going down.
Before the fire wyrm hit the ground, one of the globules of white alien flesh came stalking over in a somewhat mannish form. As soon as Blaze was low enough, the alien wrapped itself around the red dragon’s neck, making it impossible for the wyrm to direct its fire.
Crystal roared out in frustration. She couldn’t reach her rider’s mind, and now Zahrellion was moving to blast at Aikira where she was struggling to pull herself out of the street and into some cover. Crystal decided the best place for Zahrellion was away from the others where she couldn’t do them harm. She banked east and began flying in the general direction of Clover’s castle.
Zahrellion grew livid. She yelled and screamed and cursed, and then finally she reached down and cast a painful shocking spell into Crystal’s back. The frost wyrm roared out in pain. She fought the vile alien’s will that was trying to command her through Zah. A tear formed in Crystal’s eye. It was a tear of sorrow; for her rider, the person she loved and trusted the most, had just assailed her with magic. Crystal knew that Zahrellion didn’t do it on purpose, but it was done, and it hurt. Instead of complying with her rider’s will, Crystal let them crash into an unplanted field. It was a slippery slide through mud and slush. The teardrop then fell from her eye and landed not t
oo far away. Zahrellion didn’t fare so well. Crystal nearly shed another tear because the angle of her rider’s neck and the way she was lying in a jumble with one of her feet touching her sizzling blue-lined face suggested that she was dead, or at best broken beyond repair.
King Blanchard didn’t want Linux to go, but he was glad the man had the stones to try and save the ebon-skinned Dragoneer. Even with half the toes missing, Linux’s body was far better than the huge one he had been born into. He was continually surprised by the witchy capabilities of his wife and queen. She wasn’t leading them, nor was the other Hazeltine witch, but they were doing a good job of keeping the lesser vermin from hindering their passage through the wreckage.
The tattoos on the forehead of the druid’s body he was trapped in were icy and hot at the same time. King Blanchard was suddenly compelled to throttle his wife where she was standing, defending the way before him. He hit her so hard that her jaw snapped and she fell into a heap. He turned to attack the other witch, but before he could reach her a Sarax snatched her right out of the group.
The swarm converged over them then. When King Blanchard looked in the sky he saw nothing but black-skinned alien creatures. There were no dragons in sight.
For most of his life he’d hated the foul wyrms. His ancestors had fought dragon against dragon in the pits on King’s Island for generations. One of the wyrms had attacked the king’s grandmother, and that act had fueled the fires of hatred. Now he was here, his mind was being flooded with complex thoughts, and even more were being extracted. He was wishing that the sky was filled with mighty wyrms. They were all that could save the kingdom.
The alien knew everything about the realm that the old king did, everything that Lanxe, and Zahrellion did, too. It was particularly curious about the populace to the west, and the islands of people it could feed from as it needed. If it had to suffer an eternity trapped on this planet, they would be its new self-generating food supply. After all, they were surrounded by the salty liquid ocean and couldn’t get away. The alien had been in the ocean before the humans came and pushed the vermin into its mountains. There were things in the sea that tasted as good as men.
Then like a whip crack, King Blanchard’s mind was his own again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aikira watched as her dragon was forced to fight the two Sarax that had downed them. She hit her head hard when she tumbled to a stop. She was huddled under the raised porch of an empty shop. She wanted to help Golden, but was having a hard time clearing her mind to cast a spell. Blinking, she scanned the sky and saw nothing but alien wings.
She was overcome with dread. She had never seen so much death and destruction. Now her dragon was getting bested.
She closed her eyes and tried to cast a spell again, but when she opened them Golden was taking a bite that was terrible to see. She looked up screaming in frustration, but the sound died in her throat. Her heart swelled with hope. She thought it was Jenka at first, but it was Rikky and Silva who were spraying the sky with salt water from a larger version of the bladder line. Behind Rikky, now engaging the Sarax, was the Nightshade with black-armored King Richard sitting proud. He and the hell-born wyrm were commanding a sky full of dark mudged dracus.
A concussive blast pulled her attention back to her dragon. She turned to see Rolph the guardsman standing there over the flickering Sarax he had just killed. The other alien was back-flapping away, and now it was lifting off to go find an easier meal.
In a quick tattoo, three Sarax exploded in the sky. A moment later, another met the same fate. The Sarax that weren’t getting doused with sea water were fighting the mudged dragons. Claws and teeth and ferocious aggression tore into each other while struggling to stay in the sky. More than one pair took their fight to the ground and ended up destroying entire blocks of structures as they battled.
A large blue-black mudged had a Sarax in its jaws when the alien creature emitted its shocking pulse. An explosive gout of fire erupted as the combustion forced the thing out of the wyrm’s maw. A few of the huge dragon’s teeth were blasted apart, but the black was more angry now than injured. In a savage spree of lashing foreclaws and sword-like teeth, the wyrm eliminated half a dozen of the Sarax before it was swarmed over and devoured.
For a long time it seemed as if it were raining blood and flesh. The air was filled with disturbing sounds: growls, screams, and that constant thundering drone all combined with the stink of brimstone, charred flesh, and coppery blood. Golden slithered over to be near her rider. With Linux’s help, Aikira gathered enough sense to cast a healing spell on her wyrm, and though it worked, Golden was far too damaged to take flight again.
Above them she saw that the feral dragons were doing well against the Sarax. Then she remembered that neither King Richard nor Rikky knew that there were more than one of the milky-white-fleshed aliens..
No sooner did the thought cross her mind than one of the pieces elongated upward into the sky and tried to snatch Silva with its tongue.
From beside her, Linux let loose a hot sizzling blast of turquoise druid magic. The stuff streaked out and exploded where it hit the segment of alien. Part of the thing fell to the earth, while the other piece went skulking back toward the creature’s main bulk. The remaining segment of alien went stalking across the city in its huge mannish form. It caught one mudged wyrm and slammed it against the ground by its neck. Then it grabbed another and crushed its wings before throwing it aside.
Aikira watched speechless as King Richard and the Nightshade seemed to attack at the exact same moment. They sent some intertwining streak of translucent gray magic into the remaining segment. It went flailing, and then rolling away. When it came to a stop, it resumed its mannish form and went charging toward the master alien.
It dove right into the thing from which it had separated. Once the segment rejoined its master, the whole freakish alien blob rose up like some humongous stump and began lashing out with dozens of long, claw-tipped tentacles.
Linux blasted up again, but his spell didn’t seem nearly as potent this time.
“Oh no,” Aikira yelped as she leaned into her dragon and hugged it close. When she let go, she had a different look about her.
“What is it?” Linux asked as he staggered to kneel down beside her. It was clear that he had exhausted himself.
“It got Silva,” she growled. “And the Warlock King is running away.”
Linux was drained. He had nothing left in him, even if he had a spell that might change things. He was relieved when Aikira stood fiercely and began a casting of her own.
When Rikky told him about the massive alien, King Richard believed the youngest Dragoneer wholeheartedly. He didn’t conceive, though, how huge the thing was. Nor did he understand how it could shift shapes so swiftly. Like some giant tentacle-waving tree trunk, it had gotten hold of Rikky and Silva, and several mudged dragons. It almost got the Nightshade, and the hell-born creature was so repulsed by the alien that it sped away from it.
King Richard didn’t feel like running, and he got the Nightshade back under his control and turned around. He saw a yellow flow of wizard magic that grew bigger as it shot up from the rubble and hit the huge alien. The blast blistered its skin raw over a large portion of its pale form. A knot hole like a mouth opened up and roared out, and the deep thrumming vibration was terrible. Tentacles flew, and mudged fell from the sky, and soon all Richard could see were Sarax. Some of them were about to converge on the ebon girl who’d just scorched the alien.
Richard was angry. Gravelbone’s madness, the madness of death, thrilled him to no end. With Rikky down and all of his mudged scattered, Richard really felt he had no business risking himself. He still had three islands full of people to protect. Then he saw Linux carrying his mother through the wreckage. It was his father in Linux’s body, he knew. And as much as he didn’t want to have a confrontation with the man who sired him, he still wanted to protect his mother. When he came near them, the druid’s body looked up, the l
ines on his face blackened like cattle-branding scars. The man who stood there didn’t resemble Richard’s father at all. He really didn’t resemble Linux that much either, but the eyes flared with recognition. The druid dropped the queen as the Nightshade landed smoothly on the cobbles before them.
“It knows all, son,” the pitiful-looking body before him said. “It read my mind, Richard. It knows. It knows about the islands. It can swim.”
It enraged Richard, and filled him with some fear. The huge alien hadn’t been affected by the saltwater he and Ricky had been slinging around. It hadn’t been affected at all. It had to be stopped. Just a few days south of here lay Three Forks and Port, and beyond that there were thousands and thousands of people still in Mainsted. Not to mention three islands full of helpless folk.
The Nightshade stepped forth and plucked Queen Alvazina’s unconscious form from the cobbles with a claw. King Blanchard moved back with more than a little fear showing on his burned face. “Save the kingdom, son. Save it,” he said. He began backing away then, but before he turned and ran he added, “And don’t forget you’ve a brother.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rikky was strapped to his saddle, so when the huge alien’s tentacles latched hold of Silva he was right there. He was slung and whipped around as his dragon fought with tooth and claw to break the grip around its lower midsection. He saw the mighty frost wyrm trying to carry Zah away from the area. He wanted to help Zah. He owed her his life for what she’d done out on that distant island. She’d heedlessly dived on the unicorn-serpent to save him. There was also the sense of loyalty he felt toward Jenka. He had to try and save his best friend’s love. Zahrellion was their sister by a bond stronger than blood.
The Confliction: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga Book 3) Page 12