“On the ground, too,” Zeezle added pointing to a rise in the terrain where seven or eight men were just standing there, weapons at their side, looking at their feet.
Their attention was immediately drawn back to the Paragon, who’d found Vanx and Poops, for Vanx screamed in pain under the emerald’s shimmer, and Poops came flying up above the sparkling plane of power, away from the raging blue dragon-like beast.
“Save Poops!” Chelda’s knuckles dug into Zeezle’s side. He’d been absorbed in what was happening around them, drifting on the river of dour magic that was flowing from the teardrop Kelse had cried for him. He shook his head back and forth, shattering the hold of the potent trance. Then he tried to encircle Poops’s with the controlled force of levitation.
The radiant field of the crushed stone disappeared then, and they were falling. Zeezle didn’t even know if his spell had reached Poops, before his head hit a rock and his body crumpled over, causing his spine to crackle all the way from his arse to the base of his skull.
The last thing he heard was Chelda’s heavy thump into the ground, and the slow groan that followed. After that, the dour magic carried him into unconsciousness, for he’d kept hold of the dragon tear. Since it was Kelse’s, it was something he didn’t think he could ever let go of.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Do you remember those wild days playin’ the fool?
Those hot summer days, and long winter nights.
We learned it all from each other just by breaking the rules,
but looking back seems like just a waste of time.
Vanx pushed Poops away from his face, and when he touched his cheeks and looked at his hand, he was surprised by the lack of blood. He felt the chips of stone wiggling in his skin, and saw that around him, on every surface, shoots and vines were sprouting out of similar pieces of glistening emerald. Stalks of thicker growth forced their way up through the spaces between the firebrick that formed the cobbled park, and creeping leafy vegetation swiftly began to overtake everything.
Vanx wiped at his face, and a few green growths fell away. They looked like clover sprouts, and when they came loose, it felt like popping one of the many whiteheads he’d had on his face back when his body was maturing. He jabbed himself in the calf with the Glaive of Gladiolus then, and he stuck Poops again too, for good measure.
He felt the stuff that had been stuck in his skin being forced out, and even grimaced when his skin was torn a bit, but the power of the elven blade caused the budding growths to leave his body, and then healed his skin as if they’d never been there.
He examined the endless expanse of green power, which had created a ceiling so low that he could hardly crawl under it without being smattered with emerald dust and energy again.
He’d just decided to jump up to the altar, so he would be standing on top of the Earth Stone’s remaining bits instead of under the field they’d created, when a blue-glowing claw, speckled with emerald dust, reached down and grabbed Poops.
The dog yipped, and Vanx could only assume that his familiar had been tossed aside, for here was that same hand again, as well as the Paragon’s other, smashed one, blocking his leap.
Vanx tried to dart away, but the Paragon grabbed him. Vanx had dropped the hammer, but he still had the Glaive of Gladiolus in his hand, so he stabbed the Paragon Dracus with it, over and over again. He would have stopped, but he could feel the blade discharging its healing power into the thing; he could only hope it was healing Richard Blanchard’s mind. Then Vanx had no choice but to stop, as he was squeezed so hard that he couldn’t even breathe, much less move.
Had he just been healing the stupid bastard’s smashed claw? Vanx had hoped he was healing Richard Blanchard from what he’d become, from his addiction to dragon tears, and his broken, power-saturated mind, but now he wasn’t so sure.
He was held up above the emerald’s explosive ring to be examined by the Paragon, but he saw that the entire Trigon citadel was being overtaken by vines, trees, and even expanses of turf, all growing at an unbelievable rate.
The Paragon saw this, too, and then paused, examining its regenerated claw. It lessened its grip on Vanx, but not enough to allow a physical escape attempt, just enough to enable him to breathe.
Vanx reached out for Poops, and when he found the dog, he teleported out of the Paragon’s grip, right to him.
He didn’t expect to appear in the air, and was immediately falling. Luckily, the emerald’s field disappeared in the middle of all of this, and he landed a few feet below where Poops was suspended by some unseen force, just above the ground.
He heard Chelda moan. At the same time, the Paragon roared. Vanx was angry with himself for using the Glaive on the bastard. He’d hoped it would reach into the soul of Richard Blanchard, who was once a human king, and a defender of everything good; all he’d done, though, was made its claw whole again, and rid it of all the emerald dust that might have grown over it.
Vanx stuck Chelda, then Zeezle, with the Glaive.
Zeezle opened his eyes just in time to roll to his feet and dive into Vanx, carrying them both out of the way of the Paragon’s slimy blue blast.
“It wants this.” Zeezle showed Vanx the teardrop.
Vanx saw the pain and anguish on his friend’s face. No amount of magic, no force of power or rush of the blood could fully take away the pain of loss. Vanx saw it in that instant. He’d seen the same look in his friend’s Zythian eyes before, at the death ceremony for Zeezle’s brother Dorlan, who was killed by a dragon in a farm field back on Zyth.
Vanx knew that it was Kelse’s teardrop, and that Zeezle wasn’t going to part with it. He also knew that the addictive power of the dragon tears didn’t affect Zythians as much as it did humans. There was a lust for them, but it was no stronger than the lust for a woman, or a bottle of wine, every now and then. Vanx himself had kept a dragon tear for several days, without succumbing to the desire to squeeze it in his fist and feel that dour rush.
The Paragon wanted that teardrop, though, and it came stalking up and kicked Poops, who was helplessly suspended a few feet off of the ground by some spell.
The dog yelped and seemed to go limp as he arced away from them like a leather ball punted by a boy.
Vanx felt Pyra’s rage from nearby. The darker part of himself, the destructive side the Hoar Witch had warned him of, started to come out, and he sent the Paragon sidestepping, then into a tripping fall, with one harsh pulse of kinetic energy after another.
“Ya!” he heard Chelda say. “He has no one left to control. It’s just him now.”
Three pulses into the spell, Vanx felt himself weakening. He’d cast more teleport spells since the battle at Orendyn than he ever had in his life. There was no way he could keep going. He was scared for Poops, too, for his familiar wasn’t responding to his mental call.
Vanx threw Chelda the Glaive of Gladiolus. “Go find Poops!” Then to Zeezle, he said, “I think it’s time to give this fucker a real thumping.”
“I’m going to skin the bastard and make a new jacket,” Zeezle said. “They took mine when they caught us, and you know how much I loved that jacket.”
“Yeah,” Vanx laughed, despite the fact he could now feel that Poops was in terrible pain. The fact that he could feel Poops at all was all the relief he needed, but Zeezle must not have realized his state. “They took more than your jacket, Zee.” Vanx shook his head.
He would have laughed out loud at Zeezle’s expression when Zeezle saw that he was still naked, but here was the Paragon Dracus again, coming to get Kelse’s dragon tear from his friend.
Letting his rage over the treatment of his familiar and the death of mighty Kelse strengthen his spell, Vanx used another pulse of energy, this time directed right at the Paragon’s big, blue chest.
His spell cast true, but the power of this blast dissipated around a spherical shield, right before it would have impacted.
“Shit,” Vanx heard Zeezle say, before sending a similar blast up
at the Paragon using Kelse’s teardrop.
His blast, too, was shed away like so much water hitting a scalding sheet of invisible steel.
“What now?” Zeezle asked.
Vanx could feel Poops greeting Chelda, and when he felt the dog’s pain ease, he let out a long, slow breath.
This once scorched, firebrick section of the city, especially the immediate world around them, had been covered in a literal jungle of new growth.
“We use you for bait, since you have what it wants,” Vanx said.
“I don’t like that plan.” Zeezle gave Vanx an incredulous look. “I say we quit jacking around and get its skin back to my tailor in Flotsam before winter sets in.”
“Agreed.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I try to live good.
I try to live well.
And since I’ve lived much,
I’ve stories to tell.
The Paragon wasn’t ready to be skinned just yet. It was ready to take the teardrop from Zeezle. It didn’t seem to worry about the rest of them, for here came a hill giant ripping out of the growth at the base of one of the towers. Behind it came three more, and they looked to be as angry and crazed as the Paragon was.
After the huge, mind-washed giants took only a few strides across the now lightly-wooded glade, Vanx understand that they were after Zeezle’s teardrop, too—no, they were doing the Paragon’s bidding, for it was commanding them. At least it looked like that was what the Paragon was doing.
Then Pyra shot up the Paragon’s back, letting loose a gout of roiling flame that should have cooked the blue bastard’s meat from the bone, but didn’t.
The dragon fire didn’t do nearly as much damage as it should have, but it hurt the Paragon. It hurt him enough that when he leapt after Pyra to rake her with his newly-healed claw, he faltered, and had to fight to land on his feet.
The Paragon’s folly was short-lived, though, for here he came, the massive spike-maned, lion-headed thing, landing and running at them more like a feline than a dragon now. In fact, Vanx saw no wings at all, and all the scorched scales were gone, replaced by spiky growths that would keep Pyra from coming at him again with her claws or teeth.
The Paragon didn’t seem to care about the great fire wyrm anymore at all, only Zeezle’s teardrop.
Chelda and Poops came jogging up to Vanx’s side. She’d donned the clothes from some of the dead Trigon fighters, and was holding the Glaive in her clenched fist. It looked like a table knife in her hand.
“He is crazy, ya?” asked Chelda.
“Yup,” Vanx replied, as he watched his friend running naked through the lush field, away from them and the citadel. Behind Zeezle, the Paragon was loping like a hundred-foot-long predator cat after an extremely agile man-sized mouse.
“What do we do?” she asked.
Vanx knelt down and greeted Poops with a hug and a scratch behind the ears. “We go save him. Look.” Vanx pointed at the hill giants, who were loping along not far behind the blue shapeshifter.
“How—”
Pyra landed near Vanx, Poops, and Chelda then, and the greenery around the mighty red wyrm starting browning from the heat she was emanating.
“You’ll have to keep from cooking us, mighty Pyra,” Vanx said, as he climbed onto her back and called for his familiar. Poops came leaping up into his place in Vanx’s lap.
Chelda started to climb on behind them, but Vanx shook his head and motioned for her to get between the spinal plates ahead of him.
Chelda scoffed.
Vanx wasn’t sure what she thought his reasoning was for having her sit ahead of him.
Pyra leapt into flight with one neck-whipping jump. The power of her mighty wings could be felt by all of them as she started them up and away.
Well met, said Pexicon Croyle through the ethereal. I wish the others who came with us had fared better.
Then came Master Ruuk’s astonished voice. Is that Zeezle Croyle?
It is, Vanx answered.
A moment later, the Paragon smashed head-first into an invisible wall that had been cast there, no doubt, by Master Ruuk.
Well done, Pexicon joked.
Vanx saw the two Zythians in the distant sky, and he saw the Paragon change forms as it crashed. The blubbery waterborn form the shapeshifter assumed shimmered and shook from the sudden stop, but then a hundred-pace-long rooster tail of dirt and debris shot out behind it, and by the time Pyra banked around for a closer look, the big blue glowing thing had changed into something else, and burrowed all the way under the newly grown forest.
“Get Zeezle off the ground!” Chelda yelled back at Vanx, but Pyra was already diving toward their naked friend.
Pex and Master Ruuk, on the back of the lighter blue-colored wyrm, were going down toward Zeezle, too.
Vanx was trying to decide what they should do after they got him. They could just teleport back to one of the towers and use it to get back to their side of the world, couldn’t they? They’d done the wizard’s bidding and ended the daze, and the Trigon for good. The Paragon would starve from lack of dragon tears, because he’d been banished from the other side of the world by Vanx’s spell. His breeder wyrms had all been undazed, and if they hadn’t gotten away yet, Vanx would make sure they did before he left.
It looked like Pex and Master Ruuk would get to Zeezle before Pyra could, but the turf-like stretch of ground Zeezle was streaking across exploded right behind him, sending him sprawling forward through the air. His arms and legs moved around crazily, reaching, like a cat trying to land on its feet, and he didn’t land all that badly.
The hill giants that had been coming were now being drawn away by a pair of lesser wyrms that had followed Pyra.
Vanx shifted his attention to the long, tubular, blue worm that came reaching up at Laanard’s unsuspecting dragon through the hole it had just opened up. The snake-like creature’s upper end was just a tooth-filled circular maw. It bit, sticking to the light blue dragon’s underbelly. Then it let its massive weight pull them all back to the ground.
Vanx was relieved to see Pex and Master Ruuk appear near Zeezle.
The Paragon’s full length came out of the hole then, and wrapped around its victim. It was shifting back into its dragon form now, too, and it twisted the blue wyrm’s wing right off, before any of them could do anything to stop it.
Vanx understood then why the wings were a dragon’s greatest weakness. Without them, the glory of flight and the predatory advantage were gone. Without wings a dragon was nothing but a worm that couldn’t hunt or travel. Without its wings, even the strongest of their kind would probably die of despair.
The Paragon snatched up the poor dragon’s teardrops from where they fell and swallowed them. The roar that followed was so deep and full of power that Vanx felt fear shoot through Pyra.
Poops’s whimper gave Vanx’s unease a voice, and Chelda, of all things one could do, roared right back at the big blue bastard, while shaking her sword in the air.
Vanx almost laughed, despite the fact that he was as afraid as he’d ever been.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tomorrows come,
and tomorrows go.
How many tomorrows are there?
How should I know?
The Paragon used its heavy clawed foot to smash the head of the blue dragon writhing on the turf. The dragon flipped and flopped and shook, but the Paragon Dracus just stood there roaring, its tiny blue scales covered in crackling energy. It twisted its foot-claw back and forth, crunching the dragon’s head flat, until the tail finally stopped twitching. Then it pointed at Zeezle and the other two Zythians.
The earth, right where they stood, exploded, leaving a huge, empty crater. Shattered firebrick, dirt and greenery went flying in every direction.
It took a few heartbeats, but now the Paragon saw that his intended victims had teleported away. Another roar resounded; this one was deeper, angrier, and if possible, full of quite a bit more menace than before. The terribl
e shapeshifter was riding the power rush of the dour magic that came with consuming the fresh dragon tears, while in the middle of the rush of the one he’d eaten earlier. As the roar faded, the Paragon turned his attention to Pyra.
Poops sent a shiver of canine fear up Vanx’s spine, and Vanx would have tucked his tail between his legs, had he a tail to tuck.
“Where is that fargin’ hammer?” Chelda growled. She had the Glaive of Gladiolus in one hand, but Vanx could see her wielding that hammer to far better effect. Her gargan frame was suited for such a weapon.
“It’s near the altar.” Vanx figured Pyra might not like his misplacement of part of her hoard.
He was right, for she arced her course and banked around to the altar, which was a good way from where the Paragon was now. She seemed to be up to something, but Vanx wasn’t sure.
“You have a spell to destroy the mad blue letch, ya?” Chelda asked as she slid from Pyra’s back to go retrieve the dwarven weapon.
Vanx had no such spell, but he did have faith that Zeezle, Pex and Master Ruuk had survived, and wouldn’t abandon them.
Stay here, Pyra hissed into Vanx’s mind. I cans fight better withoutss youss on my ssshoulders.
Vanx slid down after Poops did, and as soon as Pyra leapt back into the sky, he stepped toward the charging Paragon and let his spell loose.
The spell he used worked, in the sense that it did what it was intended to do, but the result was ineffective, at best. The great ball of sticky wizard fire Vanx summoned to his hand was thrown, and it grew in size as it arced toward the now feline-bodied Paragon racing at them, but the magic dissipated around the crackling field the bastard had protected himself with. By the time Vanx could cast something else, the Paragon was already pouncing at them.
The pulse of power that left Vanx’s hand this time surprised even him. He had no idea what the effects were of many of the spells he’d memorized. The one that, at that moment, impacted the Paragon’s shield as he was coming down over them was called “Tempus Fist.” Vanx had never cast it before, but for some reason, it was the spell that found his tongue, and it sent the raging thing flinging in a sideways spin, about halfway around, where it landed facing away from them, on its side. It wallowed in a tangle of thorny growth that looked to be trying to get hold of whatever the Paragon was changing into now.
The Far Side of Creation (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 7) Page 10