Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  It was the movement of air at different heights and in different directions and the movement of air against the ground that created lightning storms, and slowly but surely he could feel the lightning charge building in the skies above him. So could everyone else he guessed, as he could hear small crackles of electricity snapping above and see tiny flashes of light in the water laden clouds high above them, and he could feel the way the hairs on his arms were beginning to stand on end. The beast itself though, seemed to notice nothing as it continued destroying the forest all around it in an endless feast of death.

  In time, probably only a few minutes though to him it seemed longer, he could feel the charge like a force in the air all around them, a crushing force, and like a dam overfull with water he knew it was time to release it. The only thing he didn’t know was how great and how terrible the blast would be, or if it would be enough. It would however, be the largest blast he’d ever attempted.

  With a single thought, a single impulse, he created the path through the skies and the land that would allow the lightning to pass freely, and all of it ending directly in the beast’s head, and he braced himself for what he knew would be a terrible blast. After that the world turned white.

  Even having known what was coming, having closed his eyes and covered them with his arms, having prepared himself for the blast, Marjan was caught by surprise as he could suddenly see the long bones of his arms in front of him through his closed eyelids, and he knew he’d summoned a bolt far greater than any he’d ever seen before. He also realised as he dove for the safety of the forest floor, that worse was coming. Six seconds later it arrived.

  The noise of so many sky cannon exploding all at once was louder than he’d ever heard before, so loud that even as far away as he was it shook the ground until it felt like jelly underneath him. It was only thunder of course, but that was like saying that the unimaginable fury of the sun was just a flame like any candle might have.

  For the longest time, heartbeats seemed like hours as his world was simply torn apart, he lay there, hanging on to the cold damp earth, terrified of being flung screaming into the air, and somehow he seemed to manage it. At least he didn’t go flying off, though all around him he could hear even the trees seeming to writhe and scream with pain. But at least they were alive.

  Later, much later, when the sound had returned to normal and sight had returned to his eyes, Marjan found the strength to sit up and even to look back at what remained of the beast, and he realised with a growing sense of dread that more of it had survived then there should have been.

  The beast was dead, of that he was certain when he saw it lying stretched out on the ground, smoke pouring from its mouth and blackened eyes, and large parts of its back, and he was grateful for that, but when all around it for hundreds of paces in every direction the land was a lake of burning, molten rock, all from one single blast, to see its form still largely intact, the land under its body still solid, that frightened him. His blow had been enough to kill it, it should have levelled a small city, but it had been only just enough, and lightning was the traditional weakness of all draconic forms. Suddenly he feared what lay ahead of them, and even more, what was coming.

  “Its dead?” The captain had joined him again, and by that Marjan could only hope that the rest of the troop was all right. They should have been, sheltered by the top of the hill, but it had been a powerful blast.

  “Only just.”

  “I’ll take it.” A cheer went up as the captain pointed out the obvious, and Marjan turned to see at least a dozen rangers also lined up beside them, peering over the edge at the nightmare below. They were right too, a powerful enemy had been defeated. But the questions remained. How many more of these things were out there? How much more damage had they already done? And would the land ever recover?

  Marjan kept his questions to himself as he guessed the druids did also. They could not be answered and given what they knew, their only value would be in depressing everyone. It was time to move on and slowly they made their way back down the hill to the rest of the party and their journey.

  “To the skies!” The warning came from the rangers still standing with the horses, and the moment he heard it Marjan’s blood ran cold as he suddenly understood what was happening. They had defeated the drake, but it had friends and they had heard of its death. Everything for at least a dozen leagues had heard it die. Instantly he started running for the horses and the road and the clearest view of the skies anywhere nearby, even as he started shouting for the others to take to the trees. They needed the protection the forest could give them while he needed to see what was coming to kill it.

  By the time he broke through the tree line, his heart thumping in his chest, he could see the rangers doing much as he’d asked, but not quickly enough, not nearly quickly enough. He knew that when he saw the pride of wyverns already diving out of the distant blue sky, dinner in their sight. But these were like no wyverns he’d ever seen before.

  Normally the beasts were little more than feathered lizards, perhaps twenty feet long and possessed mainly of a terrible bite from the hundreds of crooked teeth that jutted out from their elongated jaws. Nasty creatures, deadly if they weren’t spotted early on, but an archer could handle them. No archer in creation could have brought down these beasts however.

  A year of playing host to wyrmlings had transformed them almost beyond all recognition. Now twenty feet had become a hundred or more, they were easily as big as a drake, and black fire streamed from their mouths, but that was only the beginning of what had been done to them. Several had two or more heads, each balanced on the end of its own long sinuous neck, while the feathers had given way to scales in too many places, strange, multicoloured scales that glistened in the sunshine with a sickly sheen. Feathers now ran only along their dorsal lines, running from the tops of their heads to the tips of the their tails.

  Worse still were the taloned feet. Wyverns normally had only short legs, while their talons were mainly to let them grip on to tree branches where they roosted, but that had changed. These creatures now had long, powerful legs, easily thirty feet long, with vast clawed talons on the ends of them that he knew could easily pick up a horse and rider, or from their wicked sharpness, cut them into pieces for consumption later.

  What bothered him most however, were the evil black eyes. These creatures, and there were hundreds of them in the skies all diving for them, weren’t just savage and unnatural, they were intelligent. They knew their dinner was on the ground in front of them, and like a pack of wolves, they were already planning their attack.

  Without thinking about it he launched his first bolt of chain lightning, drawing the power directly instead of letting the sky build it for him, and he was pleased when the brilliant whiteness shot out from his fingertips to hit half a dozen of the terrible beasts full in the face. He was less pleased when he saw that only two of them fell to his blast, tumbling out of the sky, the others were shaken, their flying became erratic for a bit, but in the end they were undeterred as they kept coming for them.

  A volley of lightning arrows streaked out from all around him, and Marjan was suddenly infinitely grateful that he’d enchanted so many arrows as the druids unleashed their fury upon the enemy and another half dozen or more began plummeting to the ground in a series of crazy spirals.

  Even as he watched them tumble he drew a deep breath and cast a second bolt of chained lightning at the beasts, all of which were now far too close for his liking, and this time he drew all the strength he could muster at such short notice. A dozen of the beasts were suddenly encircled by white fury and this time he watched with satisfaction as all of them simply seemed to explode and then start tumbling to the ground, trails of black smoke following them down. It was a much better blast, but he knew as he realised how close they were getting, that it would have to be his last. A third attack would get them killed. Now was the time for defence.

  “To me!” He screamed the warning even as he knew wh
at he had to do and like a charm it seemed to work as the entire troop started gathering around him, looking decidedly nervous as the wyverns grew ever closer.

  Though he hadn’t used the magic in earnest since Master Argus had left, suddenly Marjan knew it was time to raise his defences, and he was staggered at how easily the shield of vitality and the barrier of force simply came to him. It was as if the knowledge and the magic were always there within him, just waiting for him to use them, and he unleashed their full strength.

  Bare heartbeats later his defences were in place and despite his fears, he knew they were strong. He could feel them, feel the perfection of their forms and the vast strength bound within their structure. It was just as well, as the instant they were in range the enemy immediately struck back with their own surprising weapons, black fireballs, and he watched with a sinking feeling in his core as surely the best part of a hundred or more streaked towards them almost as fast as his own lightning bolts had struck them.

  Their impact was horrendous, there was no other word for it, burning heat and sheer brute force tearing harshly into his shields, and the noise was unimaginable, it was like being inside a cannon when it went off while a thousand banshee’s screamed their evil inside his eardrums, and it was all he could do not to simply fall to the ground curl up into a ball, cover his ears and scream for mercy, yet somehow his shield seemed to hold, though it took him a little while to realise it. Then when he did, he watched with relief as all of the fireballs seemed to finally fizzle and then evaporate off the huge dome he’d erected, an inferno of black and orange flames barely a hundred feet above their heads, just as their makers levelled out of their dives to fly overhead. He wasn’t the only one to breath a deep sigh of relief at the sight of them leaving.

  “Keep firing!” The captain was yelling his head off though he could barely hear him over the ringing in his ears, and Marjan watched with a sense of deep gratitude as surely a hundred arrows flew from all around him, rising like an army of vengeance to meet the enemy. Only half a dozen of them were lightning arrows as only the druids had the magic to release them, but as before they worked perfectly, sending half a dozen more of the beasts crashing into the ground in a series of minor explosions somewhere in the distance. At least the rest were enchanted as well for speed, accuracy and penetration, and many of the surviving beasts he could see flying past them with arrows sticking out of them like spines on a cactus. Surely they hurt. That was all the time he had to hope as he concentrated on restoring the strength and order to the vast invisible dome above them, knowing that these beasts would be back and he had to be ready for them.

  He wasn’t wrong as he watched the swarm of wyverns wheel in the sky like a flock of swallows in perfect formation, before returning to the attack. As before they began with the black fire and once more the impact was impossibly loud as they blasted on to his shield of vitality and then seemingly exploded and fizzled away too close for comfort, but this time they added some more to the attack, as a score of them chose to try and dive right through his shield of force even as the fire was dissipating. It was a mistake.

  Despite their massive size and the vast speed at which they seemed to hit his barrier, not a one of them managed to budge it, possibly because of the fear powering his magic, and like birds flying into glass windows, things didn’t go well for them. Several of them broke bones, snapped necks and wings as they seemed to simply slide over the invisible dome, and more than a few simply bounced off the barrier screaming their insane rage before tumbling and crashing to the ground all around them in explosions of dust and broken trees. The arrows took more out as the beasts flew too low overhead, and he watched several of them hurtle to the ground in the distance looking like giant pincushions. But he didn’t have time to celebrate as he concentrated on strengthening his defences once again. Each impact, each black fireball seemed to eat at the strength of his shields like acid and he knew that if any of them were to survive, he had to hold them strong.

  The enemy knew it too, they knew that they had to keep attacking, and off in the distance he watched as the wyverns wheeled again in perfect formation, preparing for another attack. He also noticed with some pleasure that holes were appearing in their formation as they were loosing beasts. Those holes became larger as another half dozen of them once more lit up with brilliant white fire as the lightning arrows did their worst, before tumbling to the ground in trails of black smoke. The rangers were finally doing them some damage, a blessed relief considering their situation, but the enemy didn’t seem to care about such matters, and Marjan watched as they once more came at them, already resigned to the next volley of black fireballs they would launch at them.

  As expected they hit perfectly, and then he and the rest had to endure the continuing explosion of noise, fire and fury that enveloped them, that blocked off the entire sky from them, but this time he fancied, that fury was just a little bit less than before, that maybe it didn’t last quite as long, and that neither did the enemy try crashing through his shields having hopefully learnt a lesson. That brought him some cheer as well as a little more hope. Some of the others felt it too and he heard several of the rangers yelling their heads off as they fired arrows into the bellies of the beasts as the black fire cleared and they could be seen flying overhead. A year ago he could never have created a shield so tight or so vast let alone held it against so many powerful beasts, but he was becoming stronger, the magic coming more easily and quicker to him. Master Argus had taught him a lot, though he wouldn’t want to endure any more of his training any time soon.

  The druids were getting stronger as well, and learning to fight. He discovered that as he saw the tornado approaching from the south, a majestic column of wind extending all the way into the angry storm clouds so high above and with lightning bolts shooting from it periodically turning the dark mass of clouds into a brilliant white. Meanwhile at its feet clouds of dirt and whole trees were being ripped free of the earth and tossed up into the air only to be shredded and scattered as kindling all around it. Lost as he had been in the battle he hadn’t noticed them creating the monster, and to see it springing forth from nowhere, already howling in fury came as a surprise, a good one, but also a worrying one as he knew he’d have to hold strong against it. This was no mere whirlwind that a minor wizard like he might create, it was a full sized colossus of raging fury, and he was briefly awed by it, though he shouldn’t have been.

  Even though his own affinity with such magic was weak, he knew that weather magic was always powerful as well as useful, and that in a battle it could be decisive, but it was also inaccurate and slow. He only hoped the druids had enough control over their creation to keep it at arms length from them because he wasn’t at all sure that his shield of force could hold against its full fury.

  The wyverns surely saw it too, saw their death approaching, but as before it seemed unimportant to them even as it raced into battle. But then everything was unimportant to them except dinner and perhaps they didn’t understand the danger. Quite possibly they didn’t understand the concept of danger at all. Whatever the reality of their understanding, they continued pressing their attack as the tornado approached, oblivious to the sight of certain death getting closer. The same had been true of all their comrades over the previous year. Whether human or creature, they seemed to have no concept of fear or danger, which had always puzzled him. What sort of life doesn’t fear death? Perhaps they didn’t understand that the tornado was dangerous, or perhaps they didn’t even know what danger was. He had no idea at all what life must be like in the void, but it was certain to be vastly different to life outside of it, storms, pain and even death might be completely unknown to the wyrmlings.

  Then, as the druid’s towering monster finally rolled into the attack, he forgot to wonder about such things and instead simply concentrated on holding his shields as tight as he could, and praying a little as well when he could.

  The impact when the tornado’s leading edge touched his shields
was immense, exactly as he’d known it had to be, an endless explosion of raging wind, ear-splitting noise and pressure, while a storm of dirt and bits and pieces of trees began forming walls against his shield, and yet not quite as bad as he’d expected as the druids had obviously tried to keep it a little apart from the group, above them. Somehow he held his protective shields tight, while the entire tornado seemed to simply travel over them and then stop, eventually leaving them unscathed in its eye. The wyverns were not so lucky.

  As the last sixty or seventy of them wheeled in for the attack and then let loose their main weapon, their black fire seemed to simply sizzle on the spinning wind’s leading edge before just being completely swallowed up by it, and a heartbeat later they followed it in, foolishly either believing it wasn’t dangerous or not caring. It was the last mistake they would ever make.