I stood all of a sudden in shade. Glancing at the shadows pooling at my feet, I craned my neck upward and saw… branches. “Uh-oh.” I turned and managed a weak hello wave at Obadai.
“Master demands your company.” His enormous hand closed around my torso with the caution of an old man holding fine china.
Dak popped into existence beside the knockoff Ent, spitting my ghost stone onto the ground. He lifted his steampunk chainsaw and ripped the cord. Choking black smoke puttered from the roaring engine and he sank screaming metal teeth into Obadai’s wrist.
Sawdust sprayed over Dak’s shoulder and I pried myself from the severed hand.
“What foul sorcery is this?” Obadai backed away, clutching his stump. He gaped in horror at the chainsaw, which he must have interpreted as a weapon specifically designed to murder his people. I mean, it basically was. “That metal demon screams with glee as it devours me.”
I flicked my hand and the rainbow gun appeared. I dialed to the yellow stone: telekinesis.
Obadai rallied. “But the Master gets what he asks for!” he bellowed, clutching his remaining fist and raising it high.
I fired, covering the tree monster in a yellow halo. Tilting the muzzle, I lifted him into the air. The rainbow gun had a pistol grip that accepted mental commands when touched. Push, I told it, firing Obadai in a long arc over the coliseum wall. The tree sailed into the distance, disappearing from view.
I sort of hoped he’d survive the fall.
“Okay, I’m warming to the gun,” Dak said.
“You’re alive!” I threw my arms around his middle. “What the hell happened? I watched you die.”
“Wasn’t too fun on my end, either.”
“Your neck snapped!”
“About that. Think I got translated from a high-level character sheet. I always keep a max-level sheet on hand so I have a build plan for my characters. My orcs usually stop regenerating when they’re dead, but there’s a racial feat toward the end of character progression…”
I punched his upper arm, since I had trouble reaching his shoulder. “Power gamer.”
“To be fair, I had to succeed at a pretty risky constitution roll to come back from the dead.”
I gave him my finest scolding stare, the one reserved only for my best friend.
“Well, not so risky with my constitution. But hey, let’s get rid of that collar.” He hefted the chainsaw, gunning the engine. “Hold super still. Maybe close your eyes.”
“No!” I picked up the ghost stone and tossed it to him.
“Right, better idea.” Dak dropped the chainsaw, bit his thumb and swiped blood on the collar, since it was the only way objects could be taken along for the ride. He and the collar both popped out of existence, and when they reappeared, he tossed the metal loop aside. “Ta-da.”
I took the stone and wiped drool off, pocketing it. “So what the hell is going on?”
Above us, dragons swarmed the ice destroyer, but it was cutting them to ribbons with its multitude of smaller freeze beams. “After I healed, the Citadel of Light disappeared,” Dak said. “Vanished into some pocket dimension. But I guess the dreamer had the Citadel docked in front of that thing, which she designed to take down Dracon. It even has some kind of hyperdrive that works like a teleport. Once I found Ronin and we figured out the Sky Keep’s coordinates, we came right for you. I found Ronin at the edge of the lake, and she’s a teensy bit pissed by the way.”
“I bet.”
“She’s putting it in park, which on that ship means ‘kill all dragons’ mode. Oh, speak of the devil.”
A winged shadow made me tense, until I realized it was Ronin’s glider cloak. She thumped gently to the arena floor beside us, the flared wings snapping limp and the fabric tightening over svelte armor plates. It might have been the coolest thing I’d ever seen had it not reminded me of a contracting scrotum.
I vowed never to say as much to Ronin.
“Kind of makes you think of a ball sac, doesn’t it?” Dak asked.
“What? Of course not.” I glanced at the samurai. “It’s actually—”
“Where is she?” Ronin never broke stride, her words razor sharp and demon mask affixed.
“Somewhere inside with her brainwashed mom,” I said.
Ronin drew her sword and leaped through a heat vent.
“Someone,” Dak said, “is about to get a very big spanking.”
Above us, a stray ice beam lanced through a dragon, freezing it solid. The gleaming ice statue toppled end over end, hurtling straight at us. For an instant, I tried to track its trajectory and figure out which way to run—but inspiration hit just in time. I nailed the enormous, iron hatch Dracon had disappeared through with my telekinetic ray, ripped it off its hinges and swung it in line with the dragon.
I flung the hatch like a car-sized throwing star. It sheared the frozen dragon in two, leaving a puff of frozen red mist in the air. The two halves slammed into the arena floor just short of us. A tinkling rain of glassy red shards followed.
“Can I have one of those?” Dak asked, eyeing my weapon greedily.
“Only if you call it a rainbow gun.”
He made a vexed sound.
“Oh, before I forget. Luck shield.” I spun the drum to violet, shooting myself in the hand. The glowing orb splattered my palm, seeping into the skin. My muscles tingled in response. I fired a second round into Dak, after which the stone turned dark. Apparently, that was it for the luck stone’s charge.
“What’s a luck shield?” Dak asked, watching the light melt into his hand.
“Think action movies.” We both turned and leaped through the portal I’d torn the hatch from.
Having neglected the fact that Dracon had used a ladder, we promptly dropped twenty feet to the hard ground. I hurled myself inexplicably into a forward roll, coming to my feet with naught but a scraped cheek. Dak did the same, putting a tear in his shirt that showed off his hunter-green bicep.
We glanced at one another. “That is the most stylish tear in an article of clothing I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“That scrape on your cheek actually makes you look dangerous.”
“I think we’re invincible when we roll or dive.”
“Like in an action movie. I get it now.”
We stood in the Burning Vault’s topmost terrace and orcs poured from every doorway on every level with axes and swords. The horde fell upon my insect swarm, stomping them underfoot in an effort to stem their downward trek to the magma core. It was like watching seagulls attack the migration of baby sea turtles waddling all together toward the ocean. Many died; many more struggled onward.
“What are those things they’re crushing?” Dak asked.
“Anti-magic bugs. Don’t let them eat your stuff.”
He cracked his neck, and we took stock of the dozen orcs on our level, absorbed in bug-squishing. The theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly blared from iSword. Dracon’s orcs finally noticed us.
“Say something in orcish,” I whispered.
Dak shouted something in orcish, voice booming through the huge chamber and drawing every nearby and malignant orcish stare to his elaborate series of illustrative hand gestures meant to convey things like positioning and vigorous motion.
All the orcs howled and one spat on the floor, drawing two hatchets.
“I meant something nice.”
“I said some very nice things about their mothers.”
The orcs charged with a bellow, and I rotated the drum to my red stone, squeezing the trigger. The butt kicked into my shoulder. A beam of pencil-thin red light scorched from the barrel and I raked it across the whole pack. Contact with the laser snuffed out their collective war cry. It sliced through torsos and limbs, strewing their sparking pieces across the floor. The wounded ones snarled, clutching their orange-glowing stumps.
Only three orcs made it through my laser beam unscathed, and they met Dak, who drew sword and shield in one smooth motion that ended in him chopping
and bashing his way through. A parting shot from Not-Captain-America’s-Shield sent one flying to a terrace four levels down.
“Why are there still no railings?” Dak shouted.
“They do take effort to draw.”
He pointed at me with his sword. “For someone who desperately needed a railing last night, that is no excuse.”
The snarling din of the orcish horde rose through the chamber. I surveyed the room, spotting an orc-free patch. Predictably, it was around Ronin, who seemed to project an aura of dead bad guys wherever she went.
I realized she was on the same terrace as Eliandra, each cutting through the orcs toward the other. Eliandra’s mother pursued her daughter, except she had a retinue of four orcs helping her push through the ones Eliandra hadn’t slain.
“Check it out.” Dak steered my chin. Dracon stood on a floating stone platform in the chamber’s center, descending toward the magma core. “What the hell is he doing?”
“The magma is the Sky Keep’s power source. He needs to preserve it somehow. Either way, this is our shot at stopping him.” I leveled my rainbow gun and my heartbeat slowed—the world did, too. My eyes homed in on Dracon with uncanny precision as I lifted the gun. The action-hero spell, I realized. I’d always been an okay shot while squirrel hunting, but this was another level.
I fired. The beam lanced through a football field of space and cut Dracon’s legs neatly off, dropping him to the platform.
“Nice shot!” Dak hollered.
But new, pale legs slithered from Dracon’s knees, regenerating in moments.
“See that?” Dak motioned. “That’s real power gaming. I’m not that ridiculous.”
Dracon’s platform descended until it hovered over the magma core and shot a beam of white light into the molten rock. A glowing altar rose from the platform, throbbing in time with the beam. “I’m not sure what he’s doing, but it can’t be good,” I said. “If we don’t end him now, who knows what might happen?”
“Not ‘we.’ You get into a fight and he’ll one-shot you. He’s got two thousand years of sword practice and you’re squishy. Send me down.”
“I’m not putting you head to head with that psychopath!”
“I’m a high-level sword-and-board. I’ll keep him busy. You get Ronin. The sooner you help her, the sooner she joins me. We double-team Dracon and he hasn’t got a prayer.”
He was right. I rotated the drum to my orange teleportation stone. “I’ll make you a shortcut.” Since teleportation in my world only worked through fixed points, my gun fired interconnecting wormholes. I fired the entrance portal into the wall behind us and the exit portal into the platform far below.
Dak stared with brazen covetousness. “I’m borrowing that later.”
“Borrowing what?” I grinned.
He rolled his eyes. “Your rainbow gun.” He jumped through the gate, popping up behind Dracon like an eight-foot, well-armed jack-in-the-box. Dracon spun and their blades crossed.
I became uncomfortably aware that I was alone on the terrace and more orcs were spilling from the corridors. Three stumbled on the burning remains of their friends and glanced from them to my big laser. Their expressions were not quite as intimidated as I’d have liked.
Below, Eliandra and Ronin had nearly slaughtered their way to one another. I fired a fresh gate to the wall behind Ronin and leaped through.
Shaking off the vertigo, I shut both gates down and got my bearings. A crossbow bolt nicked my ear and I reflexively cupped the wound, unsure which terrace it had flown from. “Just a graze,” I realized. I love you, action-hero magic.
Dialing back to laser mode, I jogged through Ronin’s murder path until I’d caught up, firing once at a crew of bold orcs trying to come up behind us. They fell like wheat, the air filling with screams and firefly sparks from their burning wounds.
Eliandra blew an orc off the terrace with her staff of office. On seeing Ronin, she flicked the humming axe blade from the end. The women rushed one another, weapons colliding, Ronin blocking the axe with her crossguard and coming in close. “You betrayed us,” Ronin growled through her demon mask.
“Going to punish me?” Eliandra teased.
Ronin gave no answer, but roared and kicked Eliandra into the wall. Her blade flashed. It seemed like a slower-than-usual strike, though—I saw it happen, and with Ronin I rarely could.
Eliandra deflected the sword into the wall beside her, where it sank too deep to pull out. She cracked the haft of her axe across Ronin’s face, breaking the grinning demon mask clean in two. “You’re sloppy. If you’re going to kill me, bloody well do it!”
The two mask halves hit the floor and Ronin wasn’t scowling or even angry. The hurt in her eyes went straight down to the soul. “Did you ever believe that I could?”
I fired another beam into the orcs behind us, pivoted, and cut down a cluster at Eliandra’s back. With the women having their moment, I was the only one paying the evil army some attention. “Faster, ladies…”
My next shot decapitated one of Koriana’s orcs. She leaped over its corpse and extended fingertips at Ronin. “The legendary Ronin—a woman? Won’t Dracon be pleased to hear!” She spoke a word of power. Lightning crackled from her fingertips and she Palpatined the samurai into the wall. Smoke poured from Ronin’s torso, and she writhed in an apparent effort to regain control of her stunned limbs.
“No!” Eliandra pivoted, snapping the axe head back into a staff so that she merely clubbed her mother with a scepter. The blow knocked Koriana staggering and blood fountained from her crushed nose.
I loaded the telekinetic stone and locked on Ronin’s sword, still trapped in the wall. Yanking it clear, I released the trigger and Ronin snatched it from the air. Koriana gagged on her word of power but fired another branch of lighting.
Ronin caught it on her sword, which absorbed the electric onslaught, then discharged the bolt straight over my shoulder so close it stood my fine hairs on end. Swinging around, I spotted a looming orc behind me, axe raised and prepared to split my head open. Koriana’s redirected lightning had left a smoking crater in its throat, and the creature collapsed, dead.
In the next instant, three things happened at once:
Ronin tried to slit Koriana’s throat.
Eliandra’s staff rang as she caught Ronin’s chop just short of her mother’s carotid.
Koriana clapped her hands together and sent a thunderous shockwave straight at Ronin’s midsection.
The shockwave would have struck home if Eliandra hadn’t shouldered Ronin out of its way with all her might. Instead, Koriana’s blast struck her own daughter and tossed the Queen into the wall like a rag doll.
I yelled something—nothing pithy or smart, just a strangled cry of rage—and nailed Koriana with my telekinetic ray. She flew back into a cluster of orcs she hadn’t come with, tangled into the knot of them. Eliandra had already struggled to her feet. When she saw what I’d done to her biological mother, she leveled her staff at me and I expected her to blow me apart.
Instead, she shot another orc behind me. Ronin, meanwhile, rolled to my side, caught a third orc’s axe, and hacked its head off for good measure.
“Pay attention!” they both shouted at once.
The orcs I’d tossed Koriana into didn’t seem to be on any particular side and had mistaken her for food. One had her by the hair and got sprayed in the eyes by the sorceress’s magical green slime. It melted his face down to the screaming skull. Another drew back his machete, but Eliandra arrived in time to drive an axe through his brain.
“Okay, I’m really unclear on the teams here,” I said.
Koriana wrenched free from the horde and advanced on us, speaking a stream of arcane words that chilled the air and summoned writhing shadows from her heart and into either hand. The surviving orcs retreated at the sight.
With a flicker of steel, Ronin held her sword point against the woman’s throat before she could cast.
Eliandra stepped to Ronin’s side,
one hand staying her arm, eyes flinty hard. “She’s my mother. You won’t take her from me.”
“The Fugue’s taken her from you already,” Ronin said bitterly. “All this blood and treachery for a shell of a woman.”
“Shell?” Koriana challenged. “I’ll enjoy serving you up to my master.”
Keeping better track of the orcs now, I fired three more times to hold them back. Alas, my beam sputtered out. The red stone had gone dark.
“You knew she was Dracon’s thrall, didn’t you?” Eliandra accused. “You knew and never told me.”
“I tried to warn you when you collared me.” Ronin didn’t look away from Koriana. “I went to save her six months after I took you in. Found her like this. It’s too deep; Dracon’s work, too thorough. Her only chance would be to destroy Dracon and hope it ends the Fugue for all elves.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Eliandra’s voice was uninflected.
“Killing Dracon was supposed to be my job. Didn’t want you taking it on. Raising armies and running empires is dirty business. When you insisted on it anyway, I… didn’t want you to know. I thought it would destroy you.”
“It has,” Eliandra whispered.
“You’re stronger than this,” Ronin said. “You can come back from it. I know you.” She looked her daughter in the eye. “I love you.”
Koriana laughed. “Then you’d better defend her from these.” The shadows in her hands erupted in the form of thick, dark snakes striking at both women. Ronin’s blade flashed in defense of Eliandra, slicing that snake in two. The other shadow latched onto Ronin’s torso, winding around and around until it had pinned her arms to her sides and legs together.
Ronin gritted her teeth in frustration, teetered, and collapsed to her knees in the bindings.
With three guttural words, Koriana’s lips produced an oily slime. She spat it onto her thumb and marked Ronin’s forehead with an unfamiliar rune. She pressed her palm flat to the rune, and Ronin lurched. Energy seemed to course from her body and charge up Koriana’s arm, arching the sorceress’s spine as she siphoned the life force from her host. Inky veins bulged from Ronin’s face and the samurai sagged.
Only Broken Things Are Free (A Pygmalion Fail Book 3) Page 14