Kings, Queens, Heroes, & Fools

by M. R. Mathias

  Looking up at Gerard’s soft-eyed gaze, Hyden saw recognition flare in those eerie orbs again. Hyden yanked the limb to him and began fumbling with the ring, trying to get it off the limp bloody finger.

  “No!” Gerard thundered. “Mine!”

  Hyden almost let go of the limb and fled. The beast’s voice, though deep and as powerful as shattering stone, still sounded somewhat like Gerard. The pleading look on its face cut through Hyden’s resistance straight into his heart. Still, he managed to get the ring from the dead thing’s finger, and when he did, its glow vanished completely. Darkness enveloped them again.

  Hyden rolled over half a dozen times, trying to put distance between him and Gerard. The dizziness that followed caused him to fumble the ring from his hand. Terrified and confused, he felt out in the direction he heard it tinkling on the floor. He couldn’t see it. The world was spinning and he was starting to cough up his mushy guts again. He could feel Gerard coming up behind him. He could almost feel his brother’s savage claws tearing him to pieces. The heat and moisture of the evil creature’s breath grazed his neck. Desperately, he felt for the ring, but his hands found only flat cold stone. Defensively, he rolled to his back and looked up. The slick glistening shape of Gerard was there. And in the darkness those eyes looked nothing like his brother’s. Deep inside them, reddish orange flames flickered and glinted prismatic hate. The Warlord, the Abbadon, the new Master of the Hells took a long step toward him out of the bloody gore of its kill and huffed out a low growl.

  “Minnnne,” the word sounded so inhuman and evil that Hyden felt his heart stop. Whatever this thing was, it was about to destroy him. He hoped it would be over quick. He had suffered terribly and he didn’t want to die thinking of how he had failed the White Goddess. All he could do was throw an arm protectively over his face as the thing that was once the brother he loved, lurched down at him to feed.

  ***

  King Jarrek’s troops managed to trap about half of the Dakaneese forces against the new lake at Seareach. The other half fought tooth and nail to help win their fellows free of the Seawardsmen, Valleyans, and the savage dwarves. It wasn’t meant to be, though. King Jarrek and his troops closed the gap and killed the Dakaneese they had trapped, to a man. They would have pursued the thousands of Dakaneese that escaped the trap, but the Choska attacked and stopped them from it.

  The demon bat had no rider this time and it was able to attack them with a speed and agility that it hadn’t been able to employ before. It was ferocious as it swooped in at impossible speeds and yanked men out of the ranks.

  The bald-headed wizard was riding on the back of the black dragon’s shoulders now. They came out of nowhere and rained acidy spew and wizard’s fire over Jarrek’s men to great effect. Master Sholt managed to cast a protective ward over a couple of buildings that still stood, but only a few hundred men could get under the protection. The dwarves, at least some of them, found refuge in the foothills. The breed giants fled as well. In a matter of a few moments the angry wizard and his dragon managed to maim or kill most of Jarrek’s men and nearly half of General Diamondeen’s dwarves.

  Against all the odds, King Jarrek had managed to defeat the Dakaneese force that had caused him so much trouble, but now he was left huddled under a roof like a rabbit in a fox den. It was only a matter of time, Master Sholt warned, before his wards wore off. Then the dragon and the Choska would be able to pick them off as the structures they were hiding under were eaten away by the dragon’s saliva.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  After dropping the three Westland girls in Dreen and hearing about Lady Mandary and the General, Mikahl and Lord Gregory made to review the known situation in Dakahn. Before they were able to get started, a Valleyan mage named Cresso, who had been communicating with both Highwander wizards for Lord Gregory and the General, came hurrying into the map room.

  “It’s King Jarrek,” he said. “They are trapped, southeast of Seareach by the black dragon and a winged demon.” The brown robed young man didn’t even stop to draw a breath as he went on. “Master Wizard Sholt said there isn’t much time. There aren’t enough of them left to mount a defense. If the Dakaneese troops that slipped out around them regroup they are... They are done... Uh...” he realized that he was speaking to the High King and his jaw fell open and hung there.

  “Where are the dwarves?” Lord Gregory asked. “And the breed?”

  “The breed?” Mikahl asked sharply.

  Lord Gregory put up a hand to still Mikahl’s question. He nodded for Cresso to answer him.

  “Some of the dwarves may have managed to get into the foothills,” Cresso repeated what he had been told. “Nothing was said of the breed giants.”

  Mikahl’s sharp look told Lord Gregory that he needed to explain.

  “A handful of the breed giants deserted the Dragon Queen and joined King Jarrek’s cause. I have to admit they have saved a lot of men and managed to put some serious thorns in Shaella’s side.” Lord Gregory didn’t tell Mikahl what King Jarrek had promised them in return for their service. Now wasn’t the time for that.

  “I’m going,” said Mikahl, shaking his head in disbelief as he started out onto the balcony.

  “By the gods, Mik,” the Lion Lord started after him. “We’re so close to being able to take O’Dakahn, and Westland too. Be careful.”

  “Aye,” Mikahl said over his shoulder without slowing. “I will, but Jarrek fought beside me in Xwarda. I’ll not leave him stuck out.” With that he drew Ironspike and called forth the bright horse.

  ***

  Hyden waited for the death blow to come. He heard it whooshing deeply through the air at him, but before Gerard’s dagger claws could tear into his flesh, the blackness of the Nethers exploded with lavender light. The kinetic blast of energy was so intense that it made Hyden’s hair stand on end. It was so bright, that it burned his eyes through his closed lids.

  He had to squint under his arm to see what was happening. A ray of magical energy had seared into Gerard from above. As it died away, Hyden saw a spider-like body with what appeared to be two dragon’s heads connected to it. One of the heads hung limply, but the other was baring its teeth to attack. The creature was coming down hard and fast at Gerard. Hyden glanced back at where he thought the ring might be. As the afterglow of the magical attack faded, he saw the finger-long shadow it threw, but it was about twenty feet away.

  Above him, a great roar, followed by an earsplitting scream, filled the darkness. The sound of tooth on bone, and wet, tearing flesh came next. A cerulean pulse flared between two large freakishly entangled bodies and the grunting of the battling creatures filled the darkness that followed.

  Hyden crawled on his hands and knees toward the ring. Another lavender blast, this one shorter and more concussive, guided him to it. Once his hand closed around it, he somehow managed to get to his feet and started sprinting away from the horrific mêlée behind him. A glance back, at the same moment Gerard blasted forth a long streak of fire from his maw, revealed a ragged looking stump on the spidery beast, where a third head must have once been. The main bulbous bulk of its body had several wet glistening holes torn into it and Gerard was on its back now, making another. With short ripping claw strokes and searing gouts of fiery dragon’s breath, Gerrard attacked relentlessly. Just before Hyden turned away he saw a deep emerald beam shoot from the spidery demon’s eyes. It shot directly into Gerard’s chest. The rays cut right through Gerrard and he screamed out in agony as he went tumbling to the smooth stone floor.

  The scream sounded so much like his little brother that Hyden’s heart clenched in his chest. He ran until a sudden breathlessness caused him to fall hard to the ground. Another racking fit of vomiting followed. He couldn’t swallow. He couldn’t get any air. When he coughed up a chunk of something the size of a quail’s egg, which tasted of infection, he realized that this fit wasn’t going to subside. The blackness around him began filling with tiny white star bursts and a loud roaring of rushing blo
od filled his ears. He fumbled with the ring again and found that it had been stretched to a size far too large for any of his fingers. He coughed again and nearly inhaled his tongue when air shot into his lungs.

  He shoved two fingers through the hole in the ring and thought for a minute that he had dropped it because nothing happened. Then, the world exploded into bright blinding whiteness. If something other than death was happening, he couldn’t fathom it because the stark absolution of the brightness that he found himself in left him as blind as it did thoughtless. Strangely, after a few moments of utter nothingness, everything began to make clear and perfect sense.

  Everything.

  ***

  Gerard felt the emerald rays burn through his thick chest plates and sear him to the core. He felt the strange magical energy rapidly heating his guts, and then he felt it burst out of his back as it passed completely through him. He had to let go. The pain was excruciating. After his tormented scream died out, he rolled under Deezlxar and blasted out a white hot stream of dragon’s fire straight up into its underside. It might be bony underneath, but as Gerard just learned, even bones cook. Gerard sucked in air quickly and let out another blast. Deezlxar seemed not to notice at first, but then the heat worked its way up into the bottom of its body.

  Like a crab skittering across sand, Deezlxar went left, then right, almost dancing on its many segmented legs. It spun around and leapt off of its foe, and then sent another searing emerald blast into the dragon-blooded demon-god that was Gerard. Gerard cast a spell of his own and this time an angry yellow bolt of lightning hit Deezlxar right in the base of its remaining neck. Deezlxar’s emerald rays burned into Gerard too, and both of them roared out in agony.

  Somehow, the true Lord of Hell managed to get Gerard in his teeth again. It didn’t bite down as it had before. Instead, Deezlxar shook its dragon head violently about until the sound of splintering bone and tearing flesh could be heard. Then it let go, leaving Gerard spinning through the air, to come crashing down into a tumbled heap on the floor.

  At once, Deezlxar pounced on the would-be-usurper. But Gerard wasn’t done. An explosive change, born from hatred, and anger, and the raw demonic power that both Kraw and Shokin afforded, came over him. He wasn’t going to die here in this endless blackened place, he told himself. He was going to eat the man who had killed his Shaella bite by bite, and he couldn’t do that if Deezlxar killed him. His dragon blood boiled, and his demonic essence swelled and morphed him. His devilish armor projected and exploded into a plethora of long sharp spear like projections. What Deezlxar landed on flared crimson and exploded into an orange and white bone-crunching blast. There was no escaping the power of it. The Master of Hell felt the projections shooting up through its under armor into its brain cavity and searing its life away. All the Dark One could do was use its bulk, and its last dying bit of magic, to try and destroy the thing that had just killed it. It let out a defiant death roar then turned itself to stone as it came down hard on top of Gerrard.

  Gerard was pinned under the bone-crushing weight as it pressed on him. After the breath was driven from his lungs and the settled weight stopped snapping his twisted bones, all he could do was lay there and gasp. But then, as with all the other hell-born creatures he had killed and consumed, Deezlxar’s demonic essence, rushed in and filled him to the point of bursting. A darkness unimaginable reached up and enveloped him, and he was gone.

  ***

  Flick could see the fading yellow aura of the weakening protective magic below him. It wouldn’t be long, he knew. Already Vrot’s acid was eating through the shell in places. Soon King Jarrek and his remaining men would have to come out and face him. If the shield somehow managed to hold, the few thousand Dakaneese soldiers who were circling back from the southwest would root them out and end them that way. Flick wanted so badly to kill King Jarrek himself, though. The Red Wolf King would be a poor substitute for the vengeance he wanted to unleash on the High King for killing Shaella, but for now Jarrek would have to do.

  Flick was racked with emotion over the death of his friend and queen. She had been far more than either to him. Sure, Gerard had come along and stolen her heart away. How she had kept such strong feelings for the stupid mountain clan boy after he got caught up in Pael’s madness, Flick never understood. All he knew was that her happiness meant everything to him, and if that thing Gerard had become made her happy, then so be it. But now she was dead, killed in cold blood by the mighty High King. If what the red priest said was true, she hadn’t even had a weapon in her hand.

  Flick was fairly certain that the man hadn’t lied to him. His spells would have detected the dishonesty. Besides, the priest had dutifully brought him the dragon’s collar and helped him perform the healing on Vrot’s wing. Flick sensed that the priest was hiding something, but if it had been important then Flick’s mentally intrusive magic would have picked up on it. Now was not the time to worry about the last priest of Kraw, though. Flick was about to slake his thirst by killing King Jarrek, and he intended to save his revenge for the High King.

  Vrot cut a hard arc through the air and blasted forth another gout of wet sticky acid. It came raining down over the feeble shell that was protecting the building below. Flick snaked out with his mind and contacted the Choska demon. It was circling to the north, waiting for the dwarves to show themselves.

  “Kill any and all of them that you can,” he ordered the winged demon. “No mercy whatsoever.”

  The Choska didn’t comprehend mercy. It thrived on fear, and it lusted to kill and devour human flesh. It would follow Flick’s commands explicitly.

  Flick wheeled Vrot around and darted to the southeast awhile. He spied the Dakaneese force marching double time toward him. Whatever Battle Lord that Ra’Gren had put in charge of them was pushing them to their limits. This would have pleased Ra’Gren, but Flick wanted them to take their time. If they arrived before the Red Wolf’s wizard’s shield failed, then they would get the pleasure of stomping over the King of Wildermont themselves. Flick wouldn’t get to do the deed. He looked at the last tendrils of sunlight reaching out of the sea to the west and estimated that, at their rate of travel, it would take them at least until the middle of the night to reach Jarrek’s force. He doubted that the spell shield would last that long, but he had learned long ago not to underestimate a determined Highwander wizard.

  He sighed as he brought Vrot back around. Either way, Jarrek would be dead. As they flew back to the battlefield a thought occurred to him. After he, his dragon, and his Choska demon stopped the eastern forces from invading Dakahn, and after he took his revenge for the cold-blooded murder of his friend and queen, who would run Westland? The zard were still there, but would they follow him?

  “King Flick,” he said out loud. It didn’t have the ring he would have liked, but the sound of it didn’t taste bad on his tongue. “The Dragon King,” he decided, sounded much, much better.

  ***

  The Choska saw movement below and darted down toward it. A pair of dwarves were creeping out of the rocks and peering upward, looking for winged danger. General Diamondeen spotted the Choska a moment too late. The demon had tucked its wings back and was coming down in a streaking dive. The dwarven general had to leap head first into the rocks, but the Choska was the one who received the surprise. Just as its razor sharp claws would have torn into the General, a spear came launching out of the boulder-strewn hillside nearby. It missed horribly, and a few jeers at the shooter’s lack of accuracy came from the dwarves hiding in the surrounding hills. The missile shot past the Choska and buried itself in the ground a few hundred feet away. The rope attached to the spear fell like a dead snake across the earth.

  The Choska shot back up out of range and sent warnings to its master. Had it known that three dwarves had wrestled one of the dragon guns against a rock and managed to fire it, it would have been far less wary, but the demon had to assume that at least one breed giant was hunkered below.

  Just to remind them of
its might, the Choska sent a cherry red blast streaking into the rocks where the limp rope ended. Two of the dwarves crouched there were killed instantly; the third was hurled through the air in the opposite direction, his flaming hair and trousers lighting the arc of his trajectory in the darkness.

  A couple of heavy stones and an axe went hurling up out of the rocky hillside, but none of them came close to the winged beast. The Choska marked the location of one of the hurled objects and sent a blast that way. Another dwarf met his end, but two others managed to scurry to different hiding places undetected.

  ***

  Mikahl flew too far south. Fearing that time was running out for his friend, he sped back to the north scanning for any sign of them on the ground. He had to pay attention to the skies as well. On his way he came across the fast marching Dakaneese troops that were coming to finish off King Jarrek’s force. In a sharp, steep diving swoop he shot across the ranks and let loose a series of massive lighting blasts. The crackling streaks split the force nearly in two, leaving hundreds of soldiers dead or writhing on scorched strips of earth. Mikahl let loose a few more blasts of lightning, and enough of Ironspike’s magical fire to burn down a city. When the Dakaneese lost their structure, he blasted them some more. Most of them survived, but they were no longer on the march.

  Mikahl left them and found Jarrek’s position by the fading yellow glow of Master Sholt’s shield. The sun was gone now, but the evening sky had just a touch of rose left to it. As Mikahl swooped in to land, a soldier braved the open and waved him away, pointing up toward a sinuous shape in the distance.

  Mikahl didn’t have a plan. He could think of nothing other to do than engage the dragon. He could tell by the pale egg-shaped head of its rider that it wasn’t the red-robed priest that had flown away from him over the marshes earlier. He could also see that the damage Ironspike’s blast had done to one of the wyrm’s wings had been healed somehow.