by Dante King
Eight catmancers, unconscious or drugged. There were four of them to each side, levitating inside the alcoves. A glass tube snaked up each of their bodies and disappeared into their chests, precisely where their hearts would have been.
So, that was it; this was a bloodletting chamber, and these poor women, connected via the glass tubes to the crystal device in the center of the room, were the blood bags.
Through his vibrating teeth, the Shaykh uttered another foul, indecipherable word.
I threw my Chaos Spear as hard at the Shaykh as I could, but as it hit home, it vanished in a puff of Chaos Magic.
“Fuck!” I yelled.
Conjuring Shadow Spheres to both hands, I flung them at the Shaykh—one at his head, the other at his heart. Both spells should have resulted in his head and chest being blown into ether, but the spells simply vanished in puffs of silvery-sable smoke.
What the fuck is going on here? I thought to myself.
Uncertainty rose in the pit of my stomach. I had been in situations in my life where force had been no avail, both on Earth and after I had stepped through that portal with Elenari into the Mystocean Empire. But I had never seen magic thwarted like that, not since I had become a dragonmancer.
I stuck out my hands and fired a blast of Forcewave magic at the Shaykh. The spell whipped the robes under his armor around and set his golden chainmail and scales to flapping. His carefully oiled black hair was blasted free so that it streamed out behind him, his cheeks flapped as if he was skydiving.
But the Shaykh stayed where he was, hanging now in the air. The tubes swayed a little, but the blood of the catmancers continued to flow down the glass IV lines into him.
I fired more Shadow Spheres at Shaykh Antizah and the tubes, but with no effect. The Repeating Hand Crossbow, which had felled the giant warrior in the corridor, appeared in my hand. I leveled it at the Shaykh’s head and squeezed the trigger over and over and over again, unloading the magical firearm like Bruce Willis emptying his Colt M1911A1 semi-automatic pistol in The Last Man Standing.
The thaumaturgical bolts shattered and sparkled into rose-colored fragments when they came a quarter of an inch from the Shaykh’s flesh. There was nothing that I could see that the man was doing to account for this, so I could only assume it had something to do with the magic he had called up to activate the crystal.
Looking over to the catmancers nearest to me, I could see that the women were definitely getting paler and more drawn, as the blood was sucked straight out of their hearts. I gritted my teeth and let forth a wordless snarl of rage.
More innocents paying the price for some entitled madman’s whimsies, whatever they might be.
I hadn’t wanted to touch the Shaykh, not when I saw what was happening to the pure magic I was sending his way, but I couldn’t see any other way of breaking his hold on the tubes—or the tubes’ hold on the man.
The Shaykh himself was twitching and vibrating, his eyes fixed unseeing at some point four inches above my head. His face was contorted in that disquiet rictus of a smile. He looked like he wanted to burst out laughing, to sing with happiness. He looked like he wanted to cry.
Once more, the Stormhammer appeared in my hand. It had already proved itself formidable against foes of the flesh and blood kind, as well as the crystals.
I strode toward the Shaykh.
Lightning traced arcing patterns down the handle of the hammer as I held it upright, preparing to pulp the leader of Akrit into something that would likely resemble a meaty sandwich spread.
Four paces from the man, I ran into something solid and invisible; a barrier that I could neither move nor see.
“You’re fucking kidding me!” I roared.
I swung out in frustration with the Stormhammer, and the weapon connected with something. That invisible something rebounded the Stormhammer and caused lightning to spray in all directions, blowing holes in the walls and reducing a shelf of assorted baubles to powdered glass and molten gold.
I tried again. And again.
I tried shoving through the barrier, utilizing every ounce of dragon-shared strength I possessed.
All to no avail.
Whatever magic was taking place in this room, it was potent, and it was beyond my understanding.
There was only one other, quite extreme thing, I could think to do. I’d have to summon the drag—
The Shaykh let fly another word of power through lips that looked like they were tight enough to tear. Once more, I staggered back as the word hit my ears and brain like an icepick.
All the blood in the lines shot into the Shaykh, as did every other drop of blood that was still inside the catmancers. I could only watch on in dismay as the catmancers connected to the crystal were drained completely. In an instant, what had been eight attractive, healthy women were left as little more than hanging husks in the chambers they had been held in.
“Goddamn it!” I yelled in unadulterated fury.
There was nothing that I could have done to save the eight comatose catmancers. I allowed myself a crumb of comfort in knowing that they had probably felt nothing as they were systematically bled, but it was a meager crumb. No, there had been nothing I could have done to save them.
But there was something I could do to avenge them, and to make sure that no others met the fates that they had.
I thrust myself at the invisible barrier that had bloomed around the Shaykh. I was rebuffed by the forcefield with such vigor that I was catapulted backward and smashed through a cabinet holding a collection of very valuable-looking and, as it turned out, awfully fragile vases.
“I’m going to show you why storms back on Earth are named after people, motherfucker!” I bellowed.
I picked myself back up, fragments of china and glass cascading out of my hair, and prepared to charge again.
“M-my most l-l-l-loyal catmancers!” the Shaykh managed to say, squeezing the words out from between clenched teeth. He was stuttering like a man driving down ten miles of bad road on top of a washing machine filled with bricks. “Y-y-your sacrifice w-w-will not go unappreciated.”
I looked over at the hanging corpses of the eight catmancers, looking like macabre humanoid raisins where they still levitated in their alcoves.
So, these had been some of the ones that actually supported Shaykh Antizah and wanted to please him. The ones who had been most eager to help him in whatever mad scheme he had in mind. Well, I was sure that his appreciation meant the world to the poor wretches now.
With a monumental effort, I braced myself and shoved into the barrier. I roared as my muscles bunched and my joints took up the strain. So hard did I push against the forcefield that my booted feet actually went through the floorboards, and I ended up standing in the dusty cavity beneath.
Still nothing.
Inside his protected bubble, the tubes still poking out of his body, the Shaykh began to howl and cackle like a mad thing.
I looked up, ceasing trying to bust my way through the invisible barrier.
As I watched, Shaykh Antizah’s torso glowed red and started to grow. The pitch of his howling changed, heading up into the register of those who are in mortal agony.
The blood of the catmancers was being transfused into his body.
Before my eyes, the once handsome, if incredibly annoying and punch-worthy, Shaykh began to change. In a twinkling, the man had grown about two feet in height. The skin of his hands and face turned red, redder than an Englishman on vacation who’s forgotten his sunscreen—devil red.
His body under his robes and armor looked to be taking on about thirty pounds of muscle; his shoulders broadened, his chest deepened, his arms grew larger so that the chainmail that had been loose around his biceps now looked like a second skin.
I looked down and saw that his supple, expensive leather boots were writhing and bulging as his feet and legs underwent some violent transformation within. Abruptly, the boots just burst apart, scraps of leather flying in all directions like shed skin,
to reveal a pair of bright red, elongated feet, the toes of which were tipped in two-inch black claws.
All this was very confronting, but it was nothing compared to what was happening to the Shaykh Antizah’s head. His facial features were being reconfigured in a truly awful and mesmerizing way.
With a spine-chilling cracking of bone, the man’s whole face elongated and broadened, his jaws crunching forward and growing, so that it resembled more of a muzzle than a human face. The blackness of his pupils spread out until both his eyes were filled with an inky darkness. His ears extended upward into points. His nostrils became bigger and narrowed into slits. Skin stretched like elastic, leaving deeper crimson stretch marks amongst the bright red.
Then, with a suddenness that would have scared the bejeezus out of ninety-nine percent of Earth’s population, the transformation ceased. The tremors that had been shaking the Shaykh to his core stopped, and his teeth halted their rattling in his head.
The tubes, having now returned to their innocuous translucent state, each dropped out of the Shaykh’s now massive torso and thudded to the floor.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the new and improved, seven-foot Shaykh Antizah turned his blood-colored face and gazed at me with his pitiless black eyes.
To be fair, though I wasn’t about to tell him this, the motherfucker did look pretty tough; a badass cat-man-demon monstrosity, a little evocative of Anubis or Bastet.
There was precious little of the old leader of Akrit left to see. Only the straining golden chainmail that covered his now bulging muscles, the armor that was now about eighteen inches too short and far too tight across the chest and…
“Well,” I said, my tone light, but my eyes heavy with the threat of imminent violence directed his way, “at least your hair’s still looking pretty good.”
Shaykh Antizah let loose a deep, throaty, bowel-loosening growl. The long yellow fangs that had taken the place of his perfect pearly whites were bared. His huge hands, with their long red fingers and black claws, curled into fists like bunches of bananas. Knuckles popped and cracked.
And the invisible barrier, which I had still been unconsciously leaning on, vanished, leaving nothing between us.
The Shaykh’s growl went up into those reaches that spoke of bloody, gleeful murder.
“Oh, I see, you think that just because you’ve put on some muscle and gotten yourself a scary new paint job that you’re a beast that needs fearing now, huh?” I said, setting my stance and loosening the muscles in my shoulders. “Well, I’ve got news for you, Antizah; there’s a beast in all of us, all the time. It’s just up to us to decide when to let it off the leash.”
Chapter 19
I had half a dozen dragons backing me. That is a powerful thing to know, to have in the back of your head—both literally and figuratively. I was feeling confident, and not just in my own abilities as a fighter, but in the skill and capabilities of each individual dragon with me. We were a team. We had always been a team. We were a team that got stronger and stronger with every new addition. Stronger and more dangerous. Yet, on the outside, I was still just one man.
That was a formidable illusion in its own right.
It was understandable then, why I hit Shaykh Antizah with the confidence of six souls when the two of us went at one another.
At some unspoken, mutually recognized signal, the posturing and the words stopped and the whole intense business of trying to kill one another began. I launched at him, just as he sprang at me. We were only ten feet apart, and we both crossed that space in a fraction of a second.
I hadn’t even thought of employing magic initially. Hadn’t really thought of anything except getting my hands on Shaykh Antizah’s throat and twisting his head off his neck. My right fist pulled back and hammered forward, aiming for the Shaykh’s ribs, aiming to stove them in like a car door being hit by a truck.
At the same time as I went to hit him, Shaykh Antizah lashed out with one of his newly elongated feet, the right, aiming for my side.
I elected to take the hit. If I had moved to defend myself, I would have jeopardized the power in my own punch and I didn’t want that. I wanted the motherfucker to really feel the blow.
We struck each other simultaneously. My fist drove into his armored ribs while his foot cracked into my side.
It was like being hit by someone wielding a shovel—a snow shovel—and, moreover, giving it everything they had. It might have been closer to the truth to say that it was like being hit with a snowplow.
I was catapulted off my feet, just as my punch connected and bowled Antizah off his other foot. I was flung in one direction, he in the other. I crashed through four glass display cases before hitting the floor and rolling to my feet, coming up in a fighting crouch with my teeth bared. Glass fell around me like diamond hail.
Antizah was hurled through the air and crunched into the wall face-first. Shards and splinters of wood went spinning through the air at the impact. The wood around his body actually warped and rippled like water, before bursting apart in a ring of expanding shrapnel. He smashed right into one of the desiccated corpses of the unfortunate sacrificial catmancers.
“That must’ve stung a little,” I said, my eyes narrowing.
Of course, I had seen the results of these sort of do-it-yourself transfusions before. Captain Remington Cade, former employee of the Drako Academy and overall megalomaniacal cocknoggin, had put himself through such a process not long after I had arrived at the Academy. The results had been, well, far from good. The man had been imbued with ultra-strength and stamina, a suped-up resistance to pain and injury and, I suspected, heightened regeneration powers.
So, Shaykh Antizah’s new body would probably be molded from a similar cast. I expected this fight to go all the way. One thing I was not expecting, though, was the way that he simply sprang back out of the mess that he had made of the wall and came at me like a cougar on bath salts.
I had dragon-enhanced reflexes, strength, and speed, but I still found myself backpedaling, as Antizah swiped and slashed and raked at me with his massive clawed paws.
Cade had not had this kind of ferocity or this kind of furious momentum. Yes, I had only been bonded with less dragons at the time of fighting him, but I knew for a fact that the Shaykh was far stronger and faster than Cade had ever been.
As I stepped backward and sideways, dodging blows that would have caused even a regular dragonmancer to wince, I could only speculate as to why the Shaykh was so much stronger.
A sideswipe that would have sent me flipping through the air ruffled my hair as I ducked and delivered a lightning-fast roundhouse kick to Antizah’s guts.
It should have at least sent him back a step, but it was like kicking a building.
The scaled armor that my enemy was wearing bent inward where my kick had connected, but the Shaykh only grunted and barely slowed.
It must be because the Shaykh hasn’t just taken on the blood of a dragon or a cat, he has sucked the blood out of living catmancers, I thought, backflipping over a raking sidekick from the Shaykh that smashed through a cabinet and crumpled up an ornate breastplate like thin tin. They already had enhanced blood, so I wonder if that means the Shaykh has taken on a sort of distilled dose? Is that what’s made him a far more unpredictable and potent adversary?
“Focus on the battle at hand, Mike!” Noctis spoke into my mind. “Save such speculation for later. First: survive!”
“Sound advice,” I said, and turned my shoulder to absorb a haymaker from my foe.
The force of the punch rocked me sideways, but I was ready for that. I shifted my weight and swept my foot low, knocking the Shaykh off his feet. He rotated, and I smashed him with a doozy of a jab right in the solar plexus. Antizah was thrown backward fifteen yards and crashed through a table.
I knew he was going to leap to his feet again like a fucking jack-in-the-box, and he didn’t disappoint. He jumped up snarling and met the pair of glittering silver throwing stars I had scooped up and th
rown at him head on. One hit him in the shoulder with a meaty thwack, the other struck him in the center of the chest and ricocheted off and stuck quivering in the ceiling.
I wasn’t sure if Antizah felt the inch-long spikes buried in his muscular shoulder. He just shrugged, and the throwing star popped out, leaving a couple of wounds that healed shut before my eyes.
“I’m going to need something a little bigger, I think,” I said.
Antizah charged once more.
I conjured a Shadow Sphere into my palm, pumped it with as much mana as I had time to, and then let it fly at the oncoming juggernaut.
Antizah batted the sizzling orb of Chaos Magic aside, as if it was no more than a tennis ball flung at him by some cheeky kid. The Shadow Sphere hit one of the hanging corpses of the catmancers instead and vanished one of its shriveled legs.
“Shi—” I started to say.
Antizah hit me like the fucking Amtrak Empire Builder. He propelled me backward, his legs pumping, as I pummeled the back of his head and neck with my fists. The two of us careened through glass, wood, and metal, sending precious items flying in all directions. Glass rained down. Chunks of wood spun through the air.
The bastard’s grip was unbreakable, and he seemed to not even feel my punches at all. Behind me, the wall was approaching at bone-breaking speed. I was clad in my Onyx Armor, but I had always stood by the policy that if you can avoid being plowed through a wall, then you should do it.
So, I utilized the Smog Form spell yet again, but only for an instant.
The Shaykh ran on as I quite literally slipped through his fingers. Reforming, I turned and hit him with a Forcewave right in the meat of his broad back. The propulsion of the spell wasn’t as concentrated as it might have been, due to the fact that I had just rematerialized into my usual shape. But the spell had enough juice to send Shaykh Antizah flying forward and through the already busted doorway that led to the outside corridor. The big bastard ripped out even more of the door frame as he crashed through it.
I summoned my Stormhammer back to my hand, thinking that I’d bound in there and pound his head into hamburger meat and then maybe cut it off just to be sure. But in the brief time that it took the Stormhammer to form in my hand, Antizah was already back on his feet.