by Logan Jacobs
A few of the bandits nearby faltered as they stared, but before the fire mage could launch another attack, one of the mounted bandits sent a crossbow bolt through his head, and he fell next to the dead water mage.
A moment later, the fire mage's last victim fell silent as well, and whatever distraction he'd provided ended. Still, it had given me an idea. I couldn't cast fireballs, but I didn't need to. All I needed to do was make the bandits believe it, and then we could get the upper hand.
I backed up toward Clay's wagon so that I could see the entire camp and braced myself, then I raised both of my hands out. I had been able to cast an illusion over a clan of dwarves once, but I'd never tried to single out multiple targets in a crowd before. Still, one of the first things Aerin had told me about my power was that it was directly connected to my will, so I focused on the bandits as I began to cast my illusion.
My arms tingled as my mana rushed out toward my fingertips, and I set my jaw as the now-familiar ache started up at the base of my skull, but I held the image in my mind of the bandit as he'd burned to death, recalled his agonized screams. I tried to imagine his death from his perspective, what he would have seen and felt, and I willed the other bandits to see the fire on their own bodies and feel the burning flames consuming them.
The headache spread quickly, rising from a dull ache to an all-consuming pounding in my skull, and with my attention pulled between the pain and my own concentration on the illusion, I couldn't tell what was going on in the battle. I didn't know if my illusion was working, but I didn't want to risk dropping it yet in case it was. I held it for as long as I could until the pain in my head became unbearable and black spots clouded over my vision.
When at last I had to drop my hands, I nearly fell over with the wave of nausea that rocked me, and I only managed to stay on my feet by holding onto the side of the wagon behind me. My senses came back slowly, but as I looked out at the camp again, a surge of pride rose inside me.
My illusion had worked, that much was clear by the sudden increase in the number of dead bandits in the camp. I'd been able to distract them by making them believe they were on fire long enough for the rest of the caravanners to turn the tide of the battle and overcome them, precisely as I'd intended. Only a few bandits remained, surrounded now by the rest of the caravanners, but even as I watched, those last few were killed as well, shot in the chests by a tall man with a crossbow.
Just then, I felt a hand on my arm and turned toward Aerin.
"Are you alright?" the healer asked with a frown. "You look pale." Then the crease between her brows deepened. "That was you, wasn't it? When all the bandits started losing their minds?"
I nodded, and Aerin cast a quick glance over her shoulder. It was risky for me to use my power like that, but I'd hoped that in the general chaos, no one would suspect me as the originator of the sudden madness that had overtaken our enemies. Thankfully, it looked as though the risk had paid off. We'd defeated the bandits, and none of the other caravanners seemed to be paying us any attention.
"Sit down for a minute," Aerin said gently. "You need to rest."
I thought that was a great suggestion, but just as I was about to comply, the ground shook suddenly and violently as a deep pit opened up in the center of the camp.
Chapter 4
People scrambled back as the dry ground in the center of our camp cracked like an egg and caved in. The sinkhole spread rapidly, from two feet across to twelve in a second, and it swallowed up the debris, fallen weapons, and dead bodies around it.
I heard the chime of bells and felt the warmth of Aerin's hand around my wrist. The headache and fatigue that had plagued me after casting the illusion faded as the elf's healing magic did its work, but I couldn't tear my gaze away from the newly formed sinkhole. More cracks radiated out from the main break, but despite the danger, several people in the camp, including the caravan's captain, kept their weapons in hand as they edged toward the sinkhole and peered over the edge. I couldn't tell exactly how deep it was from my vantage point, but I knew it must have been a few feet deep at least.
"What's going on?" Lena asked. She began to tiptoe forward, but Clay caught her arm and stopped her.
"You'd better stay back from there, miss," he warned. The dwarf's sun-weathered face was set in a troubled expression, and the usually cheerful light in his blue eyes was gone as he stared at the sinkhole.
"What is it?" I asked quickly though I could guess. Clay had said there were two things our caravan had to worry about out here, bandits and dragons. When I'd first seen the crack in the ground, a small part of me had hoped that our luck wouldn't be so bad as to face both in one evening, but one look at the dwarf's face quelled that hope.
"Might be nothing," Clay answered, his gaze still fixed on the sinkhole. "Lot of old tunnels around here, could just be a weak spot." I could tell by his tone and the rigidness of his posture that he didn't believe that.
"How big do these burrowing dragons usually get?" I asked as I watched the captain lean over the sinkhole with a torch in hand.
"Did you say dragons?" Lavinia demanded with alarm.
"The hatchlings could fit in the palm of your hand," Clay answered, "but we've seen adults as big as oxen."
I swallowed and channeled mana into my dagger blade again as the captain waved a guard armed with a crossbow over. I couldn't make out what the men were saying, but they gestured at the sinkhole as they spoke, and I had to resist the urge to step forward to check it out for myself.
Everyone else in the camp had moved as far away from the sinkhole as they possibly could and stood frozen as they watched the captain.
Then something small and lizardlike shot out of the sinkhole, darted between the captain's feet, and tore across the camp. It moved so quickly that it was hardly more than a sand-colored blur in the firelight. People shrieked or cursed and the twang of several crossbows being fired sounded as the thing passed, but every bolt thudded harmlessly into the dirt, and the creature was lost to the night.
The captain grunted and kicked a bit of dirt into the sinkhole, then turned away from it to address the camp. "Pack it up," he called out in a rough voice. "We'll camp somewhere else for the night."
A dark-haired man stepped forward with a frown. "What about the injured and the dead?"
"It's not safe to stay here," the captain answered. "Leave the dead, and we'll tend to the wounded when we've put this thing behind us." He cast another glance at the sinkhole which gaped like an open mouth.
More people stepped forward then to voice their protests, but the captain crossed his arms as he faced them down.
"There's a whole network of tunnels right beneath us," the captain said. "If we stick around, it's only a matter of time before more of those damned dragons start crawling out of there. We need to move--"
Before he could finish his sentence, the ground beneath the captain’s feet caved in as the sinkhole opened further and he cried out as he fell into it. The guards leapt back as the cracks spread farther, and then the ground shook beneath our feet.
From somewhere down in the sinkhole, there came a low hiss. The captain’s fearful shouts came up from below, but he was cut off violently and abruptly.
Several people screamed, and a few fled behind the circle of the wagons out into the desert while others still scrambled to pack up their belongings. Then a massive paw reached up over the edge of the sinkhole and the clatter of falling pebbles and dirt mixed with the dragon's low hiss as it dragged itself up out of the ground.
The dragon was certainly larger than an ox, over twenty feet long from the tip of its blunt snout to the end of its tail. Its skin was covered in a mottled pattern of black and tawny scales that were raised up like warts over every inch of its body. Its frame was wide and muscular, and its belly scraped against the ground. Each of its five toes was tipped with a long, curved talon. Its head was wide and wedge-shaped, and when it opened its mouth wide to hiss again, I caught sight of the purple-grey flesh on the i
nside of its mouth and its long, forked tongue. Strings of sticky, red-tinted saliva swung from its chin, and I realized with a cold feeling that the dragon's mouth was covered in what could only have been the captain's blood.
At the sight of the dragon, the camp dissolved into complete chaos. Several more people abandoned their wagons and fled despite the protests of the remaining guards and merchants. Those with weapons gripped their armaments tightly but made no move to attack the dragon. I sensed that without the captain calling the shots, they didn't know who to look to for leadership.
They were lucky we were here.
I glanced over to Maruk and Lavinia on my right, then Aerin and Clay on my left. I knew my guild would be up to the task, but I was glad to see that the dwarf had his crossbow loaded and met my eyes with the same determined expression as my guildmates.
"Maruk, Lavinia, I need you two to keep it busy," I said. "We can't let it get to any of these people. Aerin, keep an eye on them."
The orc nodded and stepped forward with a shout to draw the dragon's attention. It whirled toward him with a hiss, and its tongue flicked rapidly in and out as it tasted the air.
Lavinia already had an arrow nocked and aimed a shot at the dragon's flank while Maruk distracted it. The arrow pierced the creature's flesh, and it skittered back across the sand as it cast about for its assailant. Maruk stayed on it though as he shouted and butted at its face with his shields. From behind me, Merlin transformed into a magpie and flew around the dragon's face with indignant caws.
Then I turned to Clay. "Circle around and get the wounded and anyone else who's not prepared to fight that thing back behind the wagons." The other merchants knew Clay, and so I figured they would be more inclined to listen to him than to any of us, and if he was occupied with that, there was less of a chance that he would notice me using magic.
"I want to go with him," Lena announced as she looked nervously from the dragon to me.
I had no reason to argue with her if she wanted to go, so I nodded before I returned my attention to the dragon. By now, a few of the caravan guards had followed our lead and joined in the battle. One warrior armed with a sword and shield stayed behind the dragon and slashed at its hind legs and tail. He kept an eye on Maruk and timed his attacks carefully to divide the dragon's attention between them.
I moved into the shadows between the wagons where I would be less likely to be noticed and began to cast illusions that only the dragon would see. Whenever the beast got too close to Maruk or the swordsman, I sent out an illusory warrior to distract it, though unfortunately, distracting it at a distance was all I could do at the moment. There were just too many people around for me to attempt anything more direct.
Maruk did what he could to injure and disorient the dragon by repeatedly bashing it in the head with his shields or swinging them around to drive the sharper edges into the dragon’s flesh, but the beast was hardier than I would have expected. More than anything, it seemed as though the orc’s attacks were merely annoying it. What was more, the dragon was large enough that even Maruk was in danger of having his entire arm bitten off in one gulp any time the dragon rounded on him.
The swordsman showed incredible bravery and agility as he continued his own attacks at the dragon’s hind legs and flank. Despite its size, the dragon was fast, and it could whip around in the blink of an eye which it proved several times when the warrior got in a good hit. Three times, the warrior barely danced out of the way before the dragon’s massive jaws snapped shut with an audible clap.
The fourth time, though, his luck ran out.
The warrior still had his sword buried in the dragon’s knee joint when it whirled toward him, and neither Maruk’s shouts nor my illusion could distract it as it lunged, jaws agape, for the guard.
My heart lurched as I threw out another illusion, the image of a rival dragon, in the desperate hope that it would command the real dragon’s attention, but it had had enough of the swordsman’s attacks, and it would not be diverted.
The guard didn’t even have a chance to scream before the dragon’s enormous jaws closed around the entire upper half of his body, and I could hear the sickening crunch as his bones shattered even from my place by the wagons.
The dragon jerked its head back and pulled the guard’s body apart. The red loops of the man’s intestines swung from between the dragon’s teeth and splattered blood over its throat. His trunkless legs stood for a ghastly moment before they buckled at the knees, and more blood and viscera spilled out onto the dirt.
The dragon threw its head back as it swallowed the upper part of the guard’s body whole. It didn’t even seem to notice Maruk as he charged forward again with a cry and rammed his shield into its flank.
A pair of guards, each armed with a crossbow, moved back toward the wagons and fired upon the dragon as rapidly as possible, though I noticed that most of their bolts seemed to bounce right off the dragon’s thick hide. In fact, I realized, only a few of Lavinia's arrows had stuck into the beast’s flesh. The ladona archer had begun to aim exclusively at the softer skin behind the dragon's foreleg, but even then, her arrows didn't pierce as deeply as I knew they should have.
My mana blade could cut through anything, I knew, but with all these guards around, someone was bound to notice such a blatant use of magic. I'd already taken a risk when I killed the two raiders, and with the illusion I'd cast over the bandits, so I worried about drawing too much attention to myself again.
My mind raced, and suddenly I remembered something that I'd seen in one of Allowen's books, an illustration of an assortment of weapons that shimmered with blue light like my mana blade. The page had been torn so that I hadn't been able to read the annotation next to the drawing, and I'd assumed it was a representation of the various weapons that a manipulator like me could create with magic, but I realized at that moment that I may not have been considering the full possibilities. Perhaps it hadn't meant to show only the various weapons I could create, but to represent the ability to project my magic onto others' weapons as well as my own.
If Lavinia's arrowheads had the same properties as my mana blade, she could kill the dragon in one shot. I didn't know for sure if I was even capable of using my power to augment someone else's weapon, but it was worth a shot, at least.
As the dragon whipped around again in pursuit of Maruk, its heavy tail smacked into the swordsman behind it with an audible thud and sent the man flying. One of the guards with a crossbow dropped his weapon and ran to his friend's aid.
"Lavinia, wait!" I called as I ran over to where she stood with her last arrow fitted to her bowstring. I could see the light of her mana flare brightly in her chest as she prepared for a particularly powerful shot. Her arm relaxed just slightly as she cast a glance at me over her shoulder, one brow arched in a silent question.
"You need to aim for its head," I told her.
The archer frowned. "Its scales are too strong," she argued. "My arrows can't go through. Its flank is softer."
I could see by the numerous arrows that sprouted up from the creature's ribs that even the scales on its flank were too tough for us to do the amount of damage we needed to in order to bring this thing down. If I could enhance Lavinia's arrow with my magic, it should be able to go through either way, but I wanted to make sure that when it did the hit would be lethal. A shot to the head was the safest bet.
"I need you to trust me," I told her. "I think I can help."
Lavinia held my gaze for a moment and then nodded. "Tell me when to shoot."
The other caravanners were still pretty preoccupied with the dragon that I doubted they would notice me, but just to be safe, I moved behind Lavinia and put my hand on her shoulder. Hopefully, if anyone saw us, they wouldn't realize that I was casting a spell.
I focused on the tip of Lavinia's arrow where it rested against the riser of her bow, and the archer held it perfectly still as she awaited my signal. My skin prickled as the power coursed down my arm, and I guessed that Lavinia coul
d feel it too by the way that she tensed slightly. I envisioned my own mana blade as I willed the same magic to augment Lavinia's arrow, and a moment later, the arrowhead lit up with the blue light of my mana.
"Shoot," I said quietly.
Lavinia loosed the arrow, a perfect shot that cut cleanly through the air and pierced deep into the dragon's head between its beady black eyes. It didn't even have time to open its mouth in a roar of pain before its legs gave out from beneath it and it slumped to the ground, dead.
I stepped back from Lavinia as she lowered her bow and the remaining caravanners turned to gape at us. Across the camp, one of the guards stood near the wagons with the guard who had been knocked back by the dragon propped up on his shoulder. Aerin skirted the fissures that spider-webbed out from the sinkhole as she made her way over to the pair, but for a moment, no one else moved as they looked from the dead dragon over to Lavinia and me.
I began to wonder if the guards had somehow noticed me cast my spell, and that was the reason they appeared so stunned, but then one of them laughed suddenly in relief, and the others joined in.
Careful to avoid the sinkhole, Lavinia and I crossed the camp to join Aerin, Maruk, and the guards.
Then everyone cheered.
"You saved us," one of the men said to the dragon-woman, and the awe and relief in his voice were apparent. "Thank you." He was old and gray-haired, obviously a veteran of this sort of work, but his shoulders sagged with weariness.
"Don't mention it," the ladona woman replied casually as she walked past the guard to pry her arrows from the dragon's mottled hide.
"It was an incredible shot," I agreed. "I don't think we could have taken that thing down without you."