The Shadow Realm

by James Galloway

  Tarrin smelled smoke, and realized that the heat was getting to his leather clothing. He wove a quick spell and released it into the leather, fortifying it against the heat of the lava, making it resistant to fire. Getting his clothes burned off wouldn't be a good thing, especially if there was a guardian, and it thought it amusing to face a naked opponent. Tarrin had no modesty, but to be laughed at was another matter entirely.

  No Guardian, though. At least nothing that he could see or hear. Was Camara Tal right? Had the Guardian actually died after five thousand years?

  It was a possibility, but he wasn't going to assume it to be true. Tarrin remembered the Demon that came out of nowhere when he went after the Book of Ages, how it had very nearly killed Sarraya because she rushed headlong into the chamber without thinking about the possible danger. Tarrin was not going to make the same mistake. He may see his goal and not see a defender, but that didn't mean that there wasn't one lurking around somewhere.

  He crept out of the tunnel slowly and carefully, slinking out onto the ledge while still on all fours. He would not stand up and draw attention to himself. He looked over the ledge and got superheated blasted in his face, drying his eyes, and had he not been immune to fire, it would have boiled his eyes right out of their sockets. There was lava about fifteen spans down from the ledge, and the stone under his pads was so hot that it would have set fire to clothing or parchment placed atop it. His leather breeches would have burst into flames if he put his knees down on the ledge, had he not used Sorcery to protect them.

  Still no sign of an adversary. Tarrin pondered for a moment how to get across the lava. It looked like the consistency of thick mud, and while it couldn't burn him, it could still quite effectively drown him. He didn't think it would be a good idea to try to swim across it. The idea of using Sorcery to cross did occur to him, but if something did jump out at him, he didn't want to be caught high in the air and at the mercy of something that may be able to fly.

  Using Sorcery would work, and still allow him to keep his feet on the ground--as it were--where he would feel most in control. Using a weave of pure Fire, Tarrin sucked the heat out of the lava directly before him, diffusing its energy into the Weave. The result was that the lava suddenly crusted over and solidified, then hissed savagely as the lava beneath it sought to heat it. The cooled lava suddenly split in half with a loud crack, so loud it startled him nearly into falling off the ledge. Tarrin had never expected it to do that! He looked around desperately for a moment, fearful the noise alerted some hidden lurker, but there was still no sign of an opponent and no movement from anywhere in the chamber.

  But his idea would work. Using the same weave, he sucked the heat out of the lava on the surface and to a depth of about five spans down, over a width of about five spans, and across from the ledge to the island, forming a solid bridge between the base of the ledge and the solid ring island in the center. It was about a thousand span walk from the edge to the island, and the rock bridge he created was already starting to break and undulate as the dynamic lava beneath it churned.

  Dropping down onto his unstable creation, Tarrin realized that speed of movement was going to be necessary to get across without falling in. He'd never swam in lava before, and he didn't think that this was a good time to try it and see what it was like. So he rose up onto his legs and moved both quickly and trying to be quiet, dancing along the broken sections of his rock bridge as they rose and fell in the hellish tides of the boiling lava. Despite the shifting of the rocks, he managed to get across both quickly and gracefully, jumping up the ten spans from the surface of the lava to the top of the rock island without much difficulty. As soon as he alighted, he again dropped down onto all fours and surveyed the ringed island thoroughly.

  It was the same as it looked before. Relatively flat but with enough knobs and protrusions to make footing tricky in some places. Its interior sections were noticably lower than the edges, almost as if some Giant had scooped out the middle with a great spade. Spats of cooled lava along the edges formed irregular formations and grooved or ridged rock along those borders, where bubbles of lava spat chunks of the gooey substance up onto the island, and it would cool, harden, and build up the rock. That was why the edges of the ringed island were higher than the middle.

  His gaze rose higher and higher, until he looked up at the Firestaff. It was so close now! Just a little more, and he would have it!

  No rushing. He told himself that over and over, conjuring an image of that Demon swiping Sarraya right out of the air and holding it firmly in his mind. Haste could get him killed, and this was no time to die. Not when he was almost in physical reach of his goal! It couldn't be this easy. There had to be something here. Maybe he had to get closer to the Firestaff before it would show itself and challenge him.

  And so, with painstaking care, setting each foot or paw on the ground as if it would break through and cast him down into a bottomless pit, Tarrin slowly and cautiously shuffled his way towards the inner pool of lava, towards the Firestaff. He stopped almost every time he set down a foot or paw, staying on all fours, and swept the area with his eyes to look for any change, any sign of motion. Before he made his next move forward, he would carefully check the rock for any sign of foreign material. He would not be blindsided, and he would not fall into a trap.

  About halfway across, as he looked down to check the ground, he noticed something that stood out. It was red, like glowing lava, and it was wedged into the rock. He pinched it with his claws and yanked it out, and found himself staring at a roughly diamond-shaped thing about the size of a small book, with chipped edges. It was scarlet, like dark blood, and it had the hardness and consistency of stone.

  Tarrin peered at it for a very long moment, until a memory tickled him, a memory that made his blood absolutely run cold.

  That thing was a scale. And it had the same shape as the scales on the drakes. But where theirs were the size of flakes of snow, this one was as big as a book. It had to be a hundred times larger than Sapphire's scales...and that meant that it had to be a hundred times bigger than Sapphire.

  Tarrin stood up, forgetting himself, holding the scale in front of him with both curiosity and fear in his eyes. What could have shed something like this? He couldn't smell anything off of it, so covered over with the smells of the volcano it was, and it looked very, very old. It was chipped and nicked and scratched, and it just didn't seem like it was fresh. If it really was that big, then where was it? There was nowhere something so huge could hide in here. There was nothing but flat rock and lava. What was it doing, hiding in the rock itself?

  No matter if it was there or not, it spooked Tarrin badly. He stopped where he was and looked up at the Firestaff, almost yearning for it now that it was so close. Maybe, he considered, he should stop thinking like a Were-cat and start thinking like a Sha'Kar. He didn't have to get any closer to it than this to recover it. Sorcery could bring it to him, and since he knew it was safe the way he came, he could retreat back that way and get out of the cauldera before anything happened.

  It was worth a try. What could it hurt?

  Setting his feet, he considered what spell to use. An Air weave would be simplest and easiest. That would be best. He set his will against the Weave and pulled out flows of Air and Divine, readying to create a net of soft Air to capture the floating Firestaff and bring it towards him.

  There was a rumbling beneath his feet.

  Tarrin stopped what he was doing and felt the tremors beneath his pads. Was it an earthquake? Was the volcano about to erupt? He looked around, and saw no Guardian. There was nothing there. He realized that it had to be an earthquake. They happened all the time around volcanos. He was just getting jumpy. He bent himself back to the task at hand, and looked up at the Firestaff. He set his will against the Weave--

  And then hell exploded in his face.

  He was staggered back as the lava in the pool between him and the Firestaff erupted in a massive geyser of spraying, flying lava, and th
e rock beneath his feet shuddered and vibrated from the power of the eruption. But the mass of the eruption didn't scatter as the lava did, and it caught his eye. Two dark masses spread out from the central one, above and to the sides of it. Tarrin backed up a few more paces as the dark mass seemed to rise even higher, and then it dropped slightly. Tarrin felt the stone under his pads rock as if the cauldera dome had fallen down on it. The dark mass loomed more and more as the lava of the geyser fell away.

  And that was when he saw the eyes.

  Eyes as big as the Twin Moons at zenith, eyes bigger than kite shields, two amber, serpentine eyes that stared down at him from an unfathomable height, so far above him, blocking his view of the Firestaff.

  Tarrin gave ground, trying to fight a sudden wave of mindless panic. The Cat, for the first time ever, fled from him, unable to comprehend, to face, to stand against what now rose before him in all its terrible, majestic glory.

  It was a dragon!

  Dumbstuck, absolutely shocked, and almost terrified into insensibility, Tarrin gaped at the monstrous beast as its incredibly huge forepaws shifted on the edge of the rock pool. It was so huge! He could only see half its body, and the tips of its wings were higher up than the Firestaff was! It had to be five hundred spans long! Covered in iridescent red and scarlet scales, the titanic replica of the drakes looked down at him with those huge eyes, regarding him, assessing him. It had the same general build as Sapphire, with the wings and the long, serpentine neck, and the backswept horns over those massive eyes. It had a boxed snout, unlike Sapphire, with flares at the tip for nostrils and containing a huge maw full of teeth that were as long as bastard sword blades. It too had spines growing down the backbone, as well as hair-like tendrils that grew in tufts betweeen the bony spines. Those tufts of tendril were also under its chin, giving it the appearance of having a dark red beard of sorts.

  Tarrin felt as nothing compared to something so absolutely immense, like a flea staring up at an angry dog that it had just bitten. He would fit in the grasp of its forepaw! It could swallow him whole with no effort!

  How was he supposed to fight something like that?

  It shifted, and he saw the Firestaff again, right between its wings. No! He couldn't give up now! He couldn't bow to fear! His children were depening on him! His mother, his mates, his parents, his sisters, they all needed him! He couldn't give up!

  No matter how big it was, if it could bleed, then it could die. He realized that he just had to survive long enough to figure out how to kill it.

  Sorcery. He couldn't fight something that big with claws. He had to use Sorcery!

  Screwing up his courage, Tarrin set his feet apart and stared up at it, hopefully without an expression of terror marring his attempt to stand against it. He felt the nearness of the Conduit, felt it singing in his soul, and he reached out to that power--

  --And it was not there.

  Tarrin blinked in shock. He could feel it, but it was as if something had set itself between him and the Weave! He tried again, and felt the Weave dissolve away from him, as if something had grabbed it and pulled it beyond his grasp.

  He didn't understand. What was happening? His power had never failed him before! No, wait, he had felt that once before, a long time ago. It was a city, with strange devices called cranes. He was hiding on top of a warehouse, hiding from Triana--

  Triana.

  Tarrin backed up even more as the dragon seemed to comprehend, and it looked amused.

  That thing was a Druid!

  It moved with a speed that defied imagination. Nothing that big should have been able to move that fast. Tarrin barely registered it through his shock and dismay, his consuming chagrin that the dragon could block his power, and just barely managed to dive aside as one of its forepaws blasted into the rock right where he'd been standing. The ground shook as if an earthquake had struck and bits of rock flew in every direction, pelting him stingingly, and that pain shocked him back to reality. It was a Druid. He couldn't do anything about that. But he couldn't give up! Not now! He rolled to his feet and turned tail to the dragon, dashing back towards the outer ring of lava. That thing was half in, half out of hte inner pool, and the time it would take it to get up onto the ring would buy him precious time. His mind worked feverishly as he ran through his options. It wasn't attacking him with magic, so it seemed content to use its vastly superior physical advantage to finish him. And it was vast. One blow would finish him, regeneration or no regeneration. It had just proven its speed to him, and if it was anything like Sapphire, it would also be deceptively agile and surprisingly light on its feet. Everything about it was a weapon. The forepaws and the mouth were the major ones, but a strike from that long, long tail would cut him in half, and a blow from those wings would send him flying. There was no safe approch to try to get close to something with its incredible physical size and power. Its advantages were speed, power, sheer size, and its Druidic ability to cut him off from the Weave.

  Tarrin's advantages were agility, a little bit of insanity, and the fact that he had other magical means at his disposal.

  To the dragon's surprise, Tarrin turned in midstride and summoned his sword from the elsewhere. If he could keep it a little off balance, maybe he could survive long enough to come up with a plan. That meant that he would need to do the unexpected, make it pause to try to figure him out. And turning and attacking something that was so overwhelmingly superior would definitely make it think.

  The dragon had climbed up onto the rock, and he realized that all its vital organs were hanging about twenty spans over his head. It was so big that when it reared up on its hind legs, the only thing he could possibly strike were its legs and tail. A blow there would only irritate it. It leaned forward, looming over him like a mountain of death, and he sensed more than saw that forepaw hurtling towards him. He slipped aside with barely room to spare, nearly losing his footing as the stone beneath his feet buckled from the crushing impact and dust and bits of stone shrapnel shot out from the dragon's paw. He reflexively slashed his sword across its scaly wrist as he ran by at full speed, slicing the scales neatly and getting a satifsying eruption of blood from the wound for his troubles. The dragon recoiled its forepaw with a hiss of surprise, but Tarrin still rushed madly towards its main body. He jumped over the whipping tail, moving so fast it cracked the air like a whip, evaded another forepaw crushing into the ground, then literally dove between its jaws as it tried to snap over him. He rolled and came up running, getting closer and closer to its soft underbelly, the target of his mad rush.

  The dragon reared up a bit more and then flexed its wings sharply, beating them down. The sudden blast of wind picked up the ash and dust and smoke from the chamber and hurled it into the air, stinging at Tarrin's eyes. He faltered in his charge, and just barely managed to sense the oncoming of another forepaw. He jumped aside as it slammed into the rock, and he sliced another bleeding gash in that same forepaw as it tried to withdraw it. It beat its wings again, kicking up more ash and dust, and Tarrin had to turn his back to that onslaught to protect his eyes, running at full speed to the side of the dragon, his frontal charge thwarted. He got out to where the dust and ash weren't so thick and immediately turned around, found the body of the dragon hazy and partially concealed by the cloud of dust and ash. If he could get close enough to throw the sword, he may have enough force behind it to--

  --he never saw it coming. The dragon's tail whipped around its body, coming out of that concealing cloud of dust with terrific speed, and the tip of it hit Tarrin squarely on the side. Bones shattered as his body was bent in double around the very tip, a wave of agony as split skin sprayed blood and bits of bone onto the stone to hiss and bubble from the heat. He was virtually catapulted across the chamber, sailing a hundred spans in the air after his broken body came free of the tail, and he slammed so hard into one of the jutting boulders of rock rising out of the outer lava pool that it split in twain. The impact knocked him senseless, and he was only dimly aware of his bo
dy falling into the mud-like lava, sinking down into it as liquid rock seeped into the hideous wound in his side. Somehow, he wasn't sure how, he had protected his head. He could feel his regeneration already at work reparing the ghastly damage done to him, and he was honestly surprised that the blow from the tail, whipping with such incredible force, had not torn him in half. He felt like he'd been ripped in half, that was certain. He lay partially in the lava, its gooey nature allowing him to sink only very slowly, then he clawed at it with a ragged intake of breath as his lungs were restored to the point where he could breathe again. He clambered across the surface of the lava, half swimming half crawling on its elastic surface back towards the ring of rock, which only about ten spans from where he landed.

  There was no fear now. The pain scoured it out of him, and left him calm, almost emotionless. He had to come up with some way to fight the dragon, or it was going to kill him. There was no way he could attack it physically, and he couldn't use Sorcery.

  But he'd bet that it didn't know that he was also a Druid. A wild plan formed in his mind, a crazy scheme that probably didn't have a prayer of succeeding.

  That would work. After all, what other choice did he have?

  The dragon's greatest advantage was its titanic size. Tarrin had to eliminate that advantage, either physically or forcing it into a situation where it couldn't use that size against him.

  It regarded him with some surprise as Tarrin clawed his way out of the lava pool and back up onto the ring of stone. There was still an unnatural bulge on one side of his torso as his regeneration sorted out the massive damage done to his midsection, having to grow new organs to replace ones virtually liquified by the impact of the tail. His skin split and grisly blood and ichor spewed from that bulge as his body purged itself of the excess matter. Tarrin reached within, through the Cat, and made a connection to the boundless energy of the All. Firstly, he Summoned his sword back to his paw, and then he touched it again with a new image and intent clear in his mind.