Dragonblaster cogd-5

by Alastair J. Archibald

  The worried mage lay down beside the sleeping Tordun and folded his arms across his chest. He closed his eyes and pulled back self-pitying tears; these would not help. After a few, deep breaths, he nodded to the hovering Numal.

  "I'm ready.” The delivery was not as cool and forceful as Grimm had wished. “Let's go; please keep a close eye on me. I've never done this before."

  He began to drift away, and he looked down at his slight, pathetic body as he began to rise above it. Now, all human cares and worries had flown away from him, and he was only keen to see what happened next, free of physical and mental fetters.

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  Chapter 16: Voyage of Discovery

  Grimm tried to clear his mind of all extraneous thoughts, as he had been taught in Magemaster Faffel's meditation classes. However, he had always found meditation to be an unpleasant and almost painful discipline. It was no easier, he found, when one intended to invade the mind of a creature of unknown origin and species, and his mind roiled and twisted, denying him the quietude he sought.

  The more he tried to force himself to relax, the more uneasy he became.

  How can you nag yourself into serenity? he asked himself. It's a logical impossibility! I'm going to need some sort of soporific…

  Despite Grimm's loss of Redeemer, his abductors had left him his pouch of medicinal herbs, and the mage's thoughts drifted to the linen bag and its contents.

  One herb in particular came to mind: Trina.

  Don't go there, the Questor thought, suppressing a shiver. You know, only too well, what that stuff can do to you…!

  The Barony of Crar had once been a ghastly parody of a real town, its citizens forced into grotesque stereotypes by the demon Baron, Starmor. The Questor and his companions, Dalquist, Crest and Harvel had faced the lone Starmor and attacked him with magic and more mundane weapons, but to no effect.

  As a result of this abortive confrontation, Starmor banished Grimm to an extra-dimensional pillar, whose guardian was his now-fast friend and Seneschal, Shakkar. Having persuaded Shakkar not to eat him, Grimm learned from the titanic, grey-green creature that Starmor's powers were derived from strong, negative emotions, such as fear and anger. With a fair knowledge of medicinal herbs, gleaned from Arnor House's well-stocked Scholasticate Library, Grimm had selected the strong narcotic, Trina, to suppress his emotions, and a stimulant, Virion, to give him strength of purpose. He had inhaled a goodly quantity of fumes from a smouldering heap of the substances, and this had allowed the mage to face Starmor alone.

  Overcoming Starmor had not been as easy as Grimm had supposed, but the herbs worked just as he had hoped, screening his emotions from the demonic Baron. However, soon after Starmor's defeat, the young mage discovered that the substances he had inhaled worked their medicinal wonders at a serious cost: he had inhaled so much of the smoke that he had become habituated to the drugs, needing greater and greater dosages just to remain on an even keel. Despite the fact that he was now free of the herbs’ insidious powers, Grimm remained wary of the risk of falling once more under their thrall.

  I won't touch that awful stuff again, he told himself, shivering at the painful memories. There must be another way… a touch of Inner Calm, perhaps?

  Inner Calm was one of the Minor Magics, a simple incantation taught to all Guild Students, and Grimm knew it as well as any other mage. However, his internal agitation was so strong that he doubted his ability to reproduce the runic incantation with the accuracy required for even such a simple spell. Two years as a Questor had left him somewhat out of practice.

  When he had re-united the souls of Numal and Guy, he had come up with his own Questor spell to achieve the same effect, but he could not marshal the clarity of thought needed for a Questor spell to… clear his mind!

  Sighing, Grimm opened his eyes and sat up, shaking his head.

  "Is everything all right, Grimm?” a nervous-looking Numal asked.

  "I can't seem to relax, Numal. I know it'll sound silly, but would you mind casting a spell of Inner Calm on me? I don't really trust myself to cast it. It's been a long time since I last had to cast a runic spell."

  Numal shrugged. “Of course, Grimm: it's a simple enough spell."

  A thought flashed into the young mage's head. “Oh, just one more thing, Numal.” He cast a glance at the far side of the room, where his other companions were still gathered around the sleeping Tordun. “Just keep it as quiet as you can, would you? I don't want Guy to think I can't cast even a simple incantation such as Inner Calm. I'd never live it down."

  Numal nodded, the ghost of a smile flitting across his face. “I understand, Grimm. You can rely on me. Lie down again, and just try to go along with the spell. I can't do it if you fight me-after all, it is only a simple Minor Magic spell."

  "I'll try, Numal.” Grimm sighed lowering himself back onto the thin, uncomfortable mattress and closing his eyes.

  "Indetrayara-neboulikatra-shimiduto…"

  Grimm barely heard the familiar, muttered runes, but he began to feel the spell take hold. Feelings of security and serenity began to wash away his doubts, fears and worries, and pleasant warmth suffused his bones. The Questor, now quite relaxed, allowed his mind to drift. He was now quite familiar with the phenomenon of astral projection, and the dislocation came with practiced ease.

  He looked down at his supine body, as his soul began to wander towards the door. After a momentary blur, as he passed through the flimsy portal, he was in the stronghold's central plaza. Picking up speed, he headed for the north wall, impelled by some dull, inchoate pressure. The stone walls of the compound might as well have been made of fog, for all the impediment they posed to his drifting soul.

  As he moved through the internal walls, he saw couples engaged in frantic coitus, but this spirit-Grimm was immune to feelings of embarrassment or disgust at the sights of fervid coupling. He merely was; a passive observer with no wants, desires, fears or tastes.

  At last, he gained the city outside the formidable stockade, and he saw scenes of wild celebration in the streets of Brianston. Couples were dancing, singing and carousing. Some engaged in unrestrained sexual congress, as abandoned as their Breeder counterparts in the compound, but with the evident approval of the chanting, cheering horde around them.

  This was a different Brianston than spirit-Grimm remembered seeing with his mortal eyes. Although dotted here and there with a few small structures and crumbling ruins, it was largely stark and bare. Only the large detention compound and maybe a dozen other buildings were in evidence.

  However, one magnificent structure surpassed all the rest: a splendid edifice in grey marble, decorated with inlays of gold and lapis lazuli. Proud columns held up an angular, terracotta roof, on which hung an engraved gold plate, bearing the legend ‘UNCLE GRUON, THE SLEEPER. ONLY IN DREAMS IS THERE REALITY. ONLY IN DEATH, LIFE.'

  Now, Gruon was close; spirit-Grimm recognised a presence beneath the lavish portico, and he drifted towards it. Dream-stuff floated away from the structure in all directions, fine tendrils resembling strings of wet dough, forming dense knots here and there and laying over the dream-city in a complex, knotted web. At its centre must lie Gruon, whoever, or whatever he might be?

  Despite the magnificent structure above the ground, Gruon's underground mausoleum seemed to consist of a series of huge, shattered stone blocks. Even spirit sight could not penetrate these, but all that was needed was to follow the stringy tendrils to their source.

  Ten feet? Thirty feet? A hundred feet down?

  Aaah!

  Spirit-Grimm fell, fell fell…

  With a bump, he came to rest on the streets of Brianston. Not the shattered wasteland of reality, but the magnificent illusion he had seen as a mortal. Spirit-Grimm looked down and saw he had apparent form, an avatar. This was no human form, but a damp, doughy mass that shivered and shifted. He was in the sleeping mind of Gruon.

  The citizens of Brianston were as clear and vibrant as they were to hi
s astral eyes, and they shied away from this strange, muddy figure, emitting cries of horror and disgust as they recoiled from him.

  Where is Gruon's temple?

  This was not as easy to determine as it might have been. Looking through Gruon's dream-eyes, spirit-Grimm saw the buildings and streets shimmering and changing at irregular intervals, and the only true physical structures in Brianston were not apparent.

  However, the fleeing citizens reacted to the invisible presence of the real, solid edifices, avoiding contact with the imperceptible buildings. Spirit-Grimm oriented himself by the motion of the fleeing crowds, discerning the position of the detention compound from the clearly-outlined voids in the terrified mass as it took flight.

  In this strange, fluctuating world, there was no marble-and-gold portico. In its place was an indistinct grey blur, towards which spirit-Grimm walked on unsteady legs of wet mud.

  It seemed as if his invulnerability to walls and barriers did not extend to this bizarre, mental construct, and the astral Grimm felt resistance at the periphery of the grey, shimmering field.

  Push, push!

  With a pop that he felt rather than heard, the unreal city disappeared, and spirit-Grimm became aware of… what?

  A confused melange of sensations and emotions filled the astral body.

  Emotion, pain, disquiet!

  This was no human, demon, or, indeed, any sentient being.

  Confinement, sorrow and anguish… Why can't I find this mind? Where is Gruon in this mass of emotion? It's almost as if he doesn't exist!

  A shock lit up spirit-Grimm's sensorium with blazing effulgence.

  There's something else… some new presence…

  Grimm's essence plunged into the grey mire, deeper, deeper, and the spirit eyes located a brilliant, gleaming thread, running away into the distance. This was the sign of a true, mortal being! The astral being clung onto the tendril as if it were his own life, sliding along it at an increasing rate…

  Bump!

  A small, middle-aged, dark-skinned, bald man sat cross-legged on a stone bench, a long, white pipe clenched in his teeth. Looking up, he removed the pipe from his mouth and smiled.

  "Hello, Grimm Afelnor."

  In shock that overwhelmed his astral serenity, spirit-Grimm looked down at his avatar, seeing the blue and yellow silk robes he habitually wore as a mortal. Now, he had arms and legs, and a true human form once more. He was sitting on a very solid-seeming stool in the middle of-nothing!

  As if from a great distance, he heard a voice, “Are you all right, Questor Grimm?” This was a dream of another sort; the physical world seemed so far away now. What, now, was real, and what fantasy?

  All right, Numal, he pulsed along the long, silver thread trailing behind him, using an analogue of the clumsy, leaden speech that mortals used. It's getting very strange, but I don't seem to be in any great danger yet.

  "Have you got a handle on it yet?” the smiling, gnome-like man asked.

  "What?” Spirit-Grimm now seemed to have a voice, instead of a series of vague, drifting thoughts. Now, confusion, a mortal feeling, had replaced spiritual tranquillity, and spirit-Grimm now seemed to have been crammed back inside his prosaic, physical form.

  "It's all a dream, moron! Haven't you worked that out yet?"

  Grimm slapped his hand to his occiput, his apparently-real hand finding a dense mass of hair. All the familiar, complex panoplies of adolescent anxieties flooded into him with an intensity he had never even known in his true, mortal form.

  "Erm, yes, I am quite aware that Brianston isn't real, thank you."

  "I'm not talking about that, idiot! I'm talking about the whole dragon thing. Good spell, isn't it?"

  "Dragon? I don't know what you're talking about. I'd be very grateful if you'd just treat me as an ignorant-"

  "Well, that's easy enough, I'm sure, boy."

  "Why don't you just tell me who you are? You seem to know my name well enough, you-"

  Grimm swallowed an insult; dumped back into a semi-physical body, he felt about as powerful as a newborn babe in this bizarre, empty world.

  "I am Garropode the Creator, Grimm! A long, long time ago, I was a Guild Mage, just like you. A Seventh Level Manipulant, unsatisfied with his lot. I became so confident that I believed I could create a true living creature from nothing but my own thoughts, and I succeeded where so many others had failed. I managed to create a dream so real that the borders between reality and fantasy began to blur into a cohesive continuum. That is where I lost control. Now, my creation and I are one. While you are here, in my realm, I know all about you. Out there, I am nothing."

  Dream-Grimm shrugged. “I can handle ordinary speech quite well, Garropode; there's no need to try to impress me with abstruse comments. Ignorant as I am about your craft, I'd be very grateful if you'd confine yourself to something a simple soul like me could understand! Another stream of incomprehensible babbling might sound good to you, but it doesn't enlighten me in the least."

  Grimm looked into the mage's dark eyes and saw absolute nothingness.

  Garropode sighed. “I am sorry, Grimm. I have been alone here for a long time, and the whole thing seems so simple to me. I do understand if it is too arcane for a mortal like you.

  "I have seen everything that has happened here for the last two hundred years, and I am tired. Gruon was my greatest creation, my triumph. During the course of my interesting little experiment, I saw him blossom and grow from a vague concept into an independent physical being. I had no idea that my little intellectual diversion would end up taking over my whole life. I became so obsessed with my living dream that I poured more and more of my essence into him, spending more and more time in his mind-until I became Gruon!"

  Grimm shook his head, reeling in confusion. “I understood that the people of Brianston were dreams of Gruon. Are you saying that Gruon is one of your dreams? If so, will he not vanish when you wake up?"

  "I cannot wake; in a sense, I no longer exist as an independent being. Whatever Gruon once was, he is now a true, living, breathing being with his own identity and self-awareness, and most of that is me. I am trapped here, in this created body, and I cannot escape. My own body must have turned to dust long ago, and I have nowhere to go. This is my new reality."

  Garropode seemed to have paid the ultimate price for his arrogance: he had surrendered his independence for the continuance of his own creation. For a brief moment, Grimm felt a pang of pity for the trapped mage, but this was soon subsumed by contempt for the proud man's conceit.

  "Because of your ‘interesting little experiment', Garropode, you have given rise to a race of beings whose only hope of survival is human sacrifice,” he said, trembling with anger. “Because of your irresponsible meddling, living men and women are kept as slaves, as mere baby-producing machines, providing nutrient for your precious creation.

  "I despise you and your egotistical pride. Because of you, men and women are drained of blood so that these dream-beings may continue to exist! I spit on you and your arrogance! What on earth possessed you to give Gruon an appetite for human blood, you maniac?"

  The Manipulant, or, more properly, his spirit form, shrugged. “When Gruon first came to be, he was a small, mute being with no more self-awareness than a rock. Along with my thoughts, I provided him with my own blood, so that he might grow and prosper. Once consciousness came to him, I realised I had made a serious mistake; I was already too deep inside Gruon, and I no longer knew where I ended and he began. We fused, merged, blended."

  "You seem sure enough of yourself, Garropode,” Grimm snarled. “I see no sign of such fusion at this time. Can't you command the dragon to wake, and to take no more blood?"

  Garropode laughed, long and loud, until tears began to run from his avatar's dark eyes. “That's the joke!” he gasped, trembling with mirth. “When Gruon wakes, any trace of Garropode the Creator will cease to exist, along with his dream-city. In his place will be Gruon the Dragon, the rampaging anthropophage, whos
e only desire is sustenance. Only when sated with human blood will he sleep and release me once more from my bondage."

  "And if I were to kill him?"

  "You cannot, mortal! Your body is confined in a structure immune to even Questor magic. You cannot reach Gruon, and I doubt that even a Seventh Level Questor could last against such a mighty creature, in any case. ‘Grimm Afelnor, called the Dragonblaster'-how ironic!

  "In any case, think of all the beings you would destroy along with my dragon-humans with dreams, hopes and desires little different to your own. My dual life may lack richness and variety, but it is my own, and I, at least, have accepted my lot. I suggest you accept yours with good grace-the citizens of Brianston will treat you well while you live.

  "Goodbye, Grimm Afelnor. This audience is at an end."

  Grimm felt his spiritual body fading away like mist under the morning sun, and he began to fly backwards with ever-increasing velocity, through the dreamscape, back out of Gruon's mind, through the walls of the stone mausoleum…

  ****

  "Say something, Questor Grimm!” The voice was urgent, concerned, and the mage realised he was back in his own body.

  Nothing but an incoherent gargle came from his throat at first, but the words came at last: “All… right."

  He opened his eyes and saw Numal, Quelgrum and Guy bending over him, their faces lined in concern.

  "What did you learn, Grimm?” Guy demanded. “Can you get us out of here? Did you wake Gruon? What's happening?"

  Grimm began to shiver, as the cold shock of the knowledge of absolute failure roared through his being in an icy torrent. Bitter, metallic and turbid it was-the taste of blood, mingled with ashes.

  "I failed, Guy!” he snapped. “Is that all right? Do you need to know any more? I failed, just as you thought I would-we don't have a chance! Now, just leave me alone, all of you!"

  Conscious of the critical, concerned stares of his colleagues, Grimm Afelnor, Mage Questor of the Seventh Rank, called the Dragonblaster, broke down in a flood of hot, self-pitying, adolescent tears.