Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 9-12

by Wilson, Sarah K. L.

  We were tumbling from the sky, golems all around us like a cloud of metal and fury.

  Snatch. Snatch. Snatch. Snatch.

  They fell around us, raining bodies heavier than teams of oxen onto the ground.

  Snatch. Snatch.

  But there were more, still more. I focused harder, trying to grab two or three souls with every snatch, sometimes succeeding, sometimes only getting one.

  Snatch. Snatch. Snatch.

  My jaw slammed shut, rattling my concentration as we hit the ground.

  Saboraak? Are you okay?

  Snatch. Snatch.

  Lost my wind.

  I leapt from her back. We had landed on a mound of fallen flying golems, but around us, all I could see was a sea of metal-bodied wolf-golems as they turned all their attention to us.

  Chapter Six

  I began to sing.

  Bataar’s song for the dead spilled from my lips like pearls from a velvet bag.

  Rest, weary one,

  The sun, the sun

  Is rising.

  In this new life,

  The pain has flown, away.

  I shoved them back in waves, stopping them a dozen here, a dozen there while the song lifted the souls of each one I stopped, drifting them up to the World of Legends.

  Rest child of earth,

  And let your soul,

  Fly heavenward,

  No tear to mar the eye,

  Or pain the heart again.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw our wing landing around us, forming defensive positions around Saboraak, their own wings torn and bleeding. Hyoongan had a bite mark in his neck. Tachril had lost the tip of his tail.

  Until one day,

  When we, our hearts united,

  Stand under sun,

  We’ve never seen before.

  I shoved them back relentlessly, singing, singing. There was shouting behind me. These days, there always seemed to be shouting.

  “Except this time, it’s for a reason,” the mimic said.

  Until one day,

  When hope has shown her merit,

  And all will rest in faith

  and warm to brand new life.

  I continued to turn, slowly, pushing, pushing. Whatever they were yelling about would reveal itself in time. Until then, I had thousands of golems to stop. The hundred or so I’d managed so far barely seemed to make a dent as I piled them up around me.

  At the next turn, I saw what the commotion was.

  “I wondered when she’d come out to party,” the mimic said.

  Ambrosia was striding toward us, the golems clearing a path for her as she walked, hands held out on either side, blazing with magical fire.

  The dragons tightened around us, protective.

  Saboaraak? Can you ask them to move back? I think this is between me and Ambrosia. I think I have to fight her.

  Why? That’s just stupid. Let us stand with you!

  Hyoogan flamed at Ambrosia, blocking her way. She flicked a wrist and he tumbled aside as if blown over by a massive wind. Janes rolled with him, keeping his seat – but barely.

  If I stood and fought her, then the other Magikas would see what they were up against. Maybe it would shake them enough to pin them here while the armies of the Dominar were rushing to reinforce Questan. Maybe, it would buy everyone a little more time to survive.

  Or maybe she’ll kill you!

  And then, like she was being called, Saboraak’s head whipped to the side.

  What? What did she see?

  Zyla! She made it back! She’s here!

  But she would be alone out there, surrounded by enemies and vulnerable. Saboraak shifted back and forth like she was being pulled in two directions.

  Go! I insisted. Go and get her!

  But you...

  I’ll be fine. Take everyone with you. You need them all!

  Tor – she sounded agonized, like it was hurting her to leave me. I knew the feeling.

  Please, Saboraak! Please help her. Please take your friends to go and get her. I’ll keep the army distracted. I’ll make sure the attention is on me so you can swoop back there and get her. Most of the army is concentrated over here, anyway.

  That’s not what I’m worried about.

  Ambrosia was almost level with the hill of fallen golems I was standing on.

  “Let’s see how long you can pull those little stunts when you face a real Magika,” she said, a troublingly warm grin on her innocent face.

  I’m worried that she will kill you, or the golems will. I’m worried that you won’t have anyone to protect you.

  Please, Saboraak. Zyla is in that position right now and she has nothing but that little bit of magic I gave her.

  With a sound that was more like a cry of frustration than anything else, Saboraak spread her wings behind me, throwing shadows over me as she lifted up into the sky. Around us, the other dragons joined her, lifting up into the grey clouds above us.

  The weather, like my mood, was grim.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Ambrosia said. “Just you and me and our shadows.”

  Her shadow pulled away from her, stepping out to stand on her own, her mimic hair gleaming despite the cloudy day.

  Uh oh.

  “And your grandmother, I guess,” Ambrosia said with a tinkling laugh.

  I looked behind me, surprised to see Gran there. Hadn’t she flown off with Saboraak? Stef must have. She was not beside Gran.

  “Stay back,” I warned Gran, easing my way over fallen golems to pull away from her. Ambrosia would be aiming her attacks at me. No need to get Gran killed while I played this gamble.

  Because I knew it was a gamble to face a powerful Magika like Ambrosia one on one. And I knew it could get me killed. I was just hoping that Gran was right about the pendant and that it really would nudge the lines of the future in my favor. I could see the pattern weaving all around me. And if it didn’t weave in my favor, there was no way I was going to survive this.

  Chapter Seven

  “I thought maybe you could fight Gran,” I said easily. “I’ve always thought it was bad sportsmanship to pick on people weaker than you.”

  Ambrosia’s face clouded over with anger and her mimic pulled a magical whip out of thin air, flexing it threateningly.

  “I think the mimic is even prettier than the Magika,” my mimic said. “It’s not often that you get to meet other shadows.”

  “Why have I only ever seen her shadow and Shabren’s?” I asked, not realizing I’d said it aloud until Ambrosia replied.

  “Everyone has a shadow, Tor. But you only see the shadows of people who play with magic. We mess with things in the spiritual world and so we have a spiritual residue that can be seen.”

  “Then where is Eventen’s?” I asked.

  “It takes a lot of magic to develop one. He’s simply not as strong as me. Or you.” She snickered. “Now say goodbye to Grandma, Tor. It’s time to show the watching world why Magikas are going to win this war.”

  “Well, it can’t be because of your practicality. A one-on-one showdown is ridiculously showy. And I’m guessing it’s not because of your warm hearts, either. If there was an award for ‘Coldest Heart of the Year’ it would be a close heat between you and good old Apeq.”

  “Oh, I’d win that one, Tor. I treasure my cold heart.”

  “It’s the only treasure you have.”

  She threw the first fireball and I dodged to the side while my mimic laughed. He should be trying to get her mimic! If he could kill it like he’d killed Shabren’s then we’d win. Shabren had gone insane.

  “I don’t think I want to kill her mimic,” he said. “She’s pretty. Maybe she has some good in her.”

  Unlikely. My mimic didn’t seem to have any good in him and he was my mimic. Ambrosia was already pure evil. Her mimic could only be worse.

  “Maybe her mimic is the good one,” he said.

  That got a laugh from Ambrosia. “If you think that, then you’re more naive than
I could have hoped for!

  “If you think you can kill me with fireballs, then you are exactly as naïve as I’ve been betting on,” I said, leaping to the side as she threw the other one and sucking it up into the ring like I had with Eventen’s.

  I pulled at her soul, trying to pluck it from her like I had accidentally done to the cooks and farriers, but it didn’t budge.

  “If you’re trying to steal my soul, Tor,” she said with a smirk. “You should know that the mimic protects me from that. There are no easy wins for you today.”

  “There never are,” I mumbled.

  Our battle was working. Around us. The golems continued to crowd in, their focus on us, and when I looked up from my precarious perch on top of the fallen golems, I could see Magikas and soldiers watching us from afar. It was the perfect distraction from Saboraak.

  Almost there!

  And the perfect way to stall the war.

  “You can only stall for so long,” my mimic warned. “And then you have to figure out what to do next.”

  “Don’t worry, Tor.” Ambrosia laughed as she began to climb the pile of fallen golems to meet me at the top. “I know exactly what to do next. I’m going to take back that ring – it seems I was wrong about that – and then I’m going to take your soul and use it to fuel this fascinating little item.” She pointed to the spiritual whip her mimic held. “Which I’m pretty sure I can use to bring back the souls of the few golems you have destroyed and continue our little war.”

  “You threatened me with that before,” I said dryly. “Try a fresh threat.”

  I leapt forward before I was finished speaking, knocking her backward and grabbing her arm, twisting it behind her back.

  “Surrender!”

  My mimic shrieked and I spun, losing my grip on Ambrosia’s arm. Ambrosia’s mimic had him by the throat, her hands digging in as her face twisted in violence. I leapt toward her, twisting my ankle over a fallen golem and stumbling as I leapt. I jumped right through her, falling through their struggling bodies, my hands empty.

  “You didn’t think I was planning to kill your body, did you?” Ambrosia asked sweetly. “Oh no, Tor. I’m planning to take your mind – just like you did to my dear friend Shabren. It will be much easier to take your soul then.”

  My mimic’s flailing was growing weaker. I reached again for Ambrosia’s mimic, but my hands closed on nothing as Ambrosia laughed.

  My mimic stilled. He had seconds left – if that. Seconds before I lost my mind to madness. With every fiber of strength I had left, I reached through the ring, drawing on the power of the World of Legends and pulled at the mimic, my jaw dropping as she was sucked away. I should have started with her first.

  My surprised gaze met Ambrosia’s shocked one and then she slumped to her knees with a cry, falling forward onto her face, blood pooling around her shattered skull.

  Gran stood behind her with a bloody rock clutched between her aged palms.

  “Talk is fine. Action is more useful,” she said after a moment, dropping the stone.

  I couldn’t seem to stand up. My legs felt like jelly. She’d killed the Magika without hesitating. She’d bashed her head in with a rock.

  Horror shook me. We’d almost died. We’d almost died because I couldn’t do what Gran just did.

  “She saved my life,” my mimic muttered in disbelief.

  “Remember this, Ko’roi. There is no man so powerful that a blow from a common object can’t be the end of his life. There is no woman so skilled that she can’t be outsmarted by an old woman she thought wasn’t worth watching. You’re made of flesh just like her. We all are. And no one, not even the Ko’roi is above that.”

  I didn’t feel above anything as I pulled myself painfully to my feet, favoring my twisted ankle, clutching at my sword-grazed ribs and feeling the ache of my burned face more intensely.

  I felt overwhelmed.

  The golems still surrounded us. The war was still raging. If I’d thought that defeating one powerful Magika in one-on-one combat would end a war, I was wrong. War was too big for one person to end in one stand-off. I was going to have to think bigger than that.

  “Eat this,” Gran said, offering me a small hard cake from her belt pouch. “You look pale.”

  Chapter Eight

  We’ve got her. Saboraak’s voice seemed tense.

  What was the problem?

  We got Zyla but, Tor, the flying golems have wheeled away from the city. They’re coming straight for us. We’re already mired down by Magika attacks.

  I needed to see this for myself. Hastily, I scrambled up the pile of still golems to the highest point and looked over the battlefield. Saboraak and the others swirled in the sky near the doorway, dodging and darting as they fought groups of Magikas riding flying golems, lightning and flame spurting from the rods they held. More flying golems streaked across the sky toward them like a flight of deadly birds.

  I craned around me, looking for a way to help. The dragons on the city were occupied, fighting the golems beneath them. The teams of golems below may have failed, but that didn’t stop the crawling masses of golems from creeping up the sides of the city. I couldn’t get help from anyone in the city.

  On the distant horizon, a black mass was growing larger. I hadn’t noticed it before, but something was flying from the south and east. Did I dare to hope it was allies? Could I dare to hope it was the Dominar’s dragons coming to our aid?

  There was a cry from below and Gran pointed to the wolf golems closing in.

  I began my song again, stilling them in waves as I sang. But holding this one place was not enough. I grabbed one of the golems racing toward us and stopped him, but I didn’t pull his soul free. Instead, I turned him around.

  “Come on!” I called to Gran and we hurried to the golem. I sang and fought with my mind as she mounted the golem and then I quickly mounted, too, pushing the golems nearby out of the way to make a path for our golem.

  Forward, I thought to the golem, pushing other golems as I drove him toward our friends.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” Gran said, as if it wasn’t hard enough to urge this golem forward and clear a path without her chattering away, too. I needed a bigger mind for all this mind-work. Hubric should have chosen a scholar instead of me.

  “Or anyone, really. Then you and I could be flying around exploring instead of fighting this war,” my mimic said.

  But that wasn’t how it worked. Powerful blessing – the kind that transformed you into a new person, the kind that meeting Saboraak had brought me – didn’t just drop in your lap. You owed something for being given it. Or maybe not owed. Maybe it was just that if you didn’t live into that transformation, then it just disappeared. It was like moonbeams and smiles. You couldn’t store them up, or trap them, or trot them out when you wanted them. You had to enjoy them when they came, had to seize them while they were near. You had to live into beauty and love. You couldn’t just take them for granted.

  “Pay attention,” Gran said, gripping my arm uncomfortably hard.

  “You have my attention,” I said through gritted teeth, still pushing golems aside and sending their souls to the World of Legends. It was getting a little easier every time I did it. And wasn’t that an insane thought?

  We were racing down a wide lane, golems standing on either side of it like they were waiting to wave to a parade.

  “The soldiers,” Gran said. “You need to think of the soldiers as you did before.”

  “I won’t be able to freeze them in place,” I agreed. “Hopefully, the dragons can help there.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She sounded disgusted, but I was too busy fighting with my mind to understand why. “They are your people now. And you had the right instincts about them back when those cooks attacked us.”

  “What?”

  “You are our Ko’roi! That means they’re your people!”

  “Well, then they should stop fighting me!” I thought she’d wanted me
to kill in this battle. After all, she hadn’t been too shy with that rock.

  We were getting closer to the dragons now. Close enough for me to pick off one of the golems carrying a Magika before returning to freezing golems along my path. I felt like there was too much for me to be concentrating on. I couldn’t keep up with the golems around me, the dragons in the air, where the soldiers were, where Apeq was, what was happening with the city, and the faraway black mass. I was going to forget to act somewhere and someone was going to die. My nerves were buzzing at the thought and that didn’t help with concentration at all.

  “They are loyal to their Heads of House. Didn’t you see them with Apeq A’kona when we were flying on your dragon’s back? It was easy to pick them out.”

  “I didn’t see them.” I’d had just a wee bit on my mind.

  “Well, we can’t just kill the soldiers – not if they are following their Heads of House. They’re your people. And they’re trying to be loyal. That changes things. You need to find a way to save them, too.”

  “You killed Ambrosia!”

  “She is not of Ko’Torenth.”

  “Neither am I!”

  Agh! ‘Save the Dominion, Tor,’ they said. ‘And the spirit world, oh and all the souls that were put in the golems. And the dragons. And, is it really too much to ask you to save Ko’Torenth, too?’ When did it end? When could he just please, for the love of the Skies and Stars, just please take a nap?

  “If you can prove to the Heads of House that you are Ko’roi, they will listen, and we can save the lives of all these men. My countrymen.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said through gritted teeth. After all, I owed her. She’d just saved my life. But she sure did know how to call in a favor!

  Chapter Nine

  The problem with power was that it attracted attention.

  “We like attention,” the mimic reminded me.

  But this was not the good kind of attention.

  I had been mostly unopposed as I rushed toward where the dragons fought for dear life against flying golems and Magikas. Or at least, it felt like fighting unopposed because I could just stop every golem in my path, but as I froze the last golems ahead of me, I realized that behind them were hundreds of human soldiers, forming up in a line with polearms and pikes in a proper formation. If I didn’t stop the wolf-golem I rode, I’d run right into their formation – or over it more likely. Which would be fine if Gran wasn’t slamming her fist into my ribs.