Something stung her backside and she wheeled around to look at Cyrus. The old wizard had an arched eyebrow and pointed to the floor at her feet.
“You are losing focus again,” he said. “Take care of the imp.”
Another imp. Kyra rolled her eyes and hardly had to muster any effort whatsoever to conjure a ball of ice from nothing to encase the imp. To make her point she called down a flurry of lightning bolts that destroyed the sphere of ice and obliterated the creature within.
“I am ready for more,” she said.
Cyrus nodded and snapped his fingers. Kyra heard a rushing sound as wind picked up within the room, sweeping the desks off to the sides. A black fog rolled in and then the floor dropped out from beneath her. She fell into a black abyss that swallowed her whole. The air was hot and humid, causing her to sweat almost immediately. When she finally felt a solid surface beneath her feet again she was nowhere near the classroom she had started in.
“Very well,” Cyrus called from the darkness. “Let’s conjure forth something a little more ambitious.”
There was something in Cyrus’ voice that unnerved Kyra. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she definitely felt uncomfortable. The darkness swirled around her, unyielding in its attack on her senses. The fog was so thick that it not only hampered her vision but it dampened her hearing as well. Something moved in the shadows, breathing heavily and walking with labored, lumbering steps that shook the ground every time its massive foot fell. Something made a scraping sound off to her left, as if a large iron ball of spikes was being dragged across stone.
This time she did not wait for a signal from the old wizard. She put up her large ward that encased her entire body. Next she summoned forth four orbs of light and put them in orbit over her head. The rays of white and yellow light managed to penetrate the darkness for a few feet around her, but they did not defeat the shadows. Something shimmered in the distance, just beyond the reach of her magical light. It flashed a few times and then was gone, disappearing further into the black fog. Kyra called forth a wind to sweep away the fog, but all it did was stir it up. Black vapors swirled around her as one of her magical lights was swallowed and overtaken by the darkness.
A terrible screech sounded from behind her. It was like claws on glass, high in pitch, yet shrill and holding the promise of something sharp and ferocious. She turned around and directed a column of fire ten yards in front of her. Again she saw a quick flash, a shimmer in the darkness. Could it be scales? Was she to fight a dragon? Surely many people come to Kuldiga Academy to learn how to fight dragons, but she doubted that Cyrus had the power to summon one, especially given what Njar had told her about the curse.
No, it must have been something else. Eyes perhaps, that certainly made more sense. Any number of creatures have eyes that shine similar to what she had just seen. Something tapped stone behind her. She whirled around again but this time she had no time to create a spell. A large beast standing upright on massive hind legs lunged toward her. Luckily Kyra’s ward held and the beast was deflected by her protective shell. The creature reeled backward and screamed loudly, revealing a mouth filled with fangs the size of her fingers and a face that could almost pass for a large human except that it was covered with fur.
The beast stepped in close and tested her shell with a finger. Kyra studied the monster, noting that it was nearly humanoid in shape, somewhat like a great ape. It stood roughly nine feet tall with arms and legs as thick as tree trunks. Each hand had two fingers and a thumb tipped with sharp, curved claws. The torso was extremely blocky and covered with a dark gray fur, but as solid as if the animal had been made out of boulders. There were no ears that she could see upon the creature’s head, but it had three eyes that watched her every move.
Something slammed into the shell down and toward the left. Kyra just barely caught a glimpse of the massive tail as its spikes clashed against her protective shell and then scraped back across the stone. Nothing she had ever heard or read about fit the description of what she saw in front of her. Her shell held against the tail’s assault, but the vibration she felt from the strike was enough to get her refocused on the fight at hand. The beast cocked its arm back as a human might before launching a punch and then it brought it forward with tremendous force, striking with its fist against the shell. Kyra jumped back as a small fracture appeared in the translucent shell, leaking a golden light through the crack. She knew if she did not think of something, she was going to fail this exercise.
Kyra summoned forth a spear made of ice and magically hurled it at the beast. With unnatural speed, the monster turned aside and allowed the spear to sail past. It then turned back and growled with a voice so loud that it shook the shell around Kyra and made her chest vibrate from within. As she watched thin lines of spittle drip from the beast’s fangs, she felt the urge to scream and cower in fear.
The young sorceress did not let it stop her. She gathered her courage and summoned forth another column of fire, just under the monster’s feet. The flames rose up and singed the creature’s hair, but the spell did little to deter the creature. The monster leapt up out of the flames and landed on the shell that protected Kyra. The ward started to crack and she heard many popping sounds the same as one might hear if a bolt of lightning were to strike nearby and shoot off small tendrils in every direction. Tiny fissures tore through the shell, informing Kyra that she had only moments left before the beast could get her.
She knew that if she wanted to find her mother’s killer, she could not admit defeat to Cyrus now. If she asked him for help, there was no telling how long it would be before she was able to avenge her mother’s murder.
The sorceress in training acted on impulse rather than wisdom, trusting her gut and instincts to know what to do in the situation. She darted out to the right, using her ward spell to create a directional blast at the same time. The explosion was near deafening, and the flash of light that came from the giant bolt of lightning she called forth out of the ground blinded and deafened her momentarily. She heard the beast howl as it was thrown to the side as the pressure in the area changed. She could hear the howling grow distant as the creature’s body was flung upward from where the shell had been. A few seconds later she heard a large crash and felt the vibrations as the monster landed several yards away from her.
Assuming that she only had a second or two before the beast regained its senses, she turned and ran toward where it had landed. Her three remaining orbs of light hovered over her, following her as she sprinted through the darkness. The creature roared again, somewhat incoherently, but strong enough that Kyra took the threat seriously.
With a flick of her left wrist she cast the three orbs of light at the creature. They slammed into his face and pummeled him. The gargantuan beast swatted at its own face clawing and ripping at the orbs of light, trying to get them off. The distraction was exactly what Kyra was hoping for. She called forth several large spears of ice over the beast’s body and dropped them down. Two of them missed, but the three others struck their target. One drove through the beast’s left thigh and the other two pierced its torso. Kyra jumped into the air and called forth a ball of lightning between her hands. She came down on the beast’s chest and drove the ball of lightning into its face before tucking into a roll and escaping just before the beast swatted at her with its claws. The beast writhed and howled on the ground in pain, but Kyra was not done yet.
Remembering how she had defeated the ghoul at the dragon’s nest, she called forth a tornado and dropped it down on the beast. The wind swirled furiously, sucking in the black vapors from the area around her. Next she brought the column of fire down from the sky into the center of the tornado. The beast spun slowly, sliding across the stone and grasping with its claws to try and regain control. When the column of fire drove through the monster the fight was over. The beast let out one final howl and then collapsed inward on itself as the tornado pulled it in and crushed its now lifeless body.
In the distance, Kyra c
ould hear slow clapping. A moment later she found herself back in the classroom standing in the middle of the floor with Cyrus near the door of the room. The old wizard was smiling ever so slightly and continuing to clap. Kyra breathed heavily and moved to lean upon a nearby desk to catch her breath.
“I have never seen someone so young defeat the Baukin before. In fact, I would wager most of the recent graduates from Kuldiga Academy could not defeat such a creature.”
Kyra, still breathing heavily from the exertion, nodded her appreciation of the compliment. She did not collapse as she had after the fight with the creature at the dragon’s nest, but she could feel that she had used much of her energy in the fight. Still, she wanted to show strength to the wizard. She was tired of training, she wanted the real fight. Surely if she was half as good as he said she was, then she should be ready. She pressed off from the desk and forced her burning lungs to make do with shorter, even-paced breaths.
“So when do we leave?” Kyra asked.
Cyrus stopped clapping and looked at her confused. “Leave?” He shook his head and folded his arms. “We aren’t going anywhere.”
Kyra’s face blushed and she could feel the anger rising within her. “Surely the thing that killed my mother was not more powerful than this thing,” she said.
Cyrus pointed at her and shook his head in disbelief. “You think your mother would fall to this? This is not the same being that broke into your home and killed her. This creature didn’t even have any magical powers. It had a natural resistance to magic, and an unnatural amount of strength, but this was no demon. It is going to take months of training before you are ready.”
Kyra wanted to argue. No, she wanted to fight. Perhaps the old man was playing it safe because he was scared. There was a part of the young apprentice that wanted to test her strength against the wizard and see who came out on top. Luckily, the rational part of her brain took over as she remembered her mother’s words. Kyra chose quiet acquiescence and the appearance of submission. She forced the anger out and nodded her head. She would continue with this day’s lesson, that way Cyrus would have no reason to watch her or restrict her activities. Then, when she was free for the day, she would take Leatherback and see if they could hunt down clues of their own.
After the apprentice had calmed down Cyrus motioned to the books on the far shelf near the desk. “Go and pull the book entitled Masters of Shadow and use the index to find the section on what is called a shade. The rest of today will be spent studying that creature. You are not ready to fight it yet, but I believe that is what broke into your mother’s home.”
Kyra turned, hiding her smile as she walked away from the wizard toward the bookshelf. Her mother had been right, the appearance of submission would give her the opportunity she needed to make her own choices. She hungrily pulled the book down from the shelf and took it to the nearest desk. She flipped through the pages until she found the section she was instructed to read. Glancing at where the section began and ended, she noted that there were nearly one hundred pages about this creature. She flipped through from the back of the section toward the front to get an idea of what she would be reading. She stopped when she saw a page with a subtitle that read ‘Companions’ and had a very strange picture sketched next to it. It wasn’t exactly the same, but then again she wasn’t sure that any pencil rendering could provide an accurate depiction of the creature it purported to show. There on the page before her, she saw the ethereal creature she had fought in the dragon’s nest. Now she was more certain than ever that it had not come for the egg, it had come for her. It was called a Bibkin Wraith and was said to be a servant of the creature known as a Shade.
“Read it from the beginning,” Cyrus chastised as he moved toward his desk. “You can’t just start a subject in the middle.”
Kyra nodded and flipped the pages to the beginning of the section, not wanting to give the old wizard any reason to question her curiosity about the strange wraith.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the late afternoon after she finished her reading assignments that Cyrus had given her, Kyra snuck back to the classroom to take the book she had been reading from earlier. She slipped it into her satchel between the other books that she normally took to read to Leatherback. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to deal with Njar just yet. If Cyrus wasn’t of the opinion that Kyra was ready for the Shade, then Njar would be three times more defensive about the idea. Kyra wasn’t sure how she would escape the satyr’s scrutiny, but she knew she would think of something.
She closed the satchel and opened the portal. She could see the satyr chief sitting near Leatherback on the ground and playing his panpipes. She moved through the portal, arriving just a few feet away from Leatherback.
The dragon rose to stand, towering over her now as he stood nearly twenty feet at the shoulder. His horns had grown tremendously, and had she not known him from the time he had hatched, she might have mistaken him for a fearsome beast. But she knew better. The dragon lowered its head down toward her and allowed her to pet him between the eyes. It softly nuzzled its snout against her body and then dropped back down to the ground with a tha-WUMP! The entire glade shook and the aspen trees vibrated as the massive creature flopped onto the ground. Kyra nearly lost her balance, but was able to reach out and study herself on one of Leatherback’s horns.
The satyr chief rose to his feet and moved around the large head to address Kyra. “He has received the magic well,” the satyr said. “He is roughly a third of the size he will be when he is fully mature.”
Kyra looked at Leatherback in astonishment. If he was only a third as big as he would be eventually, then he would be nearly one hundred and forty feet long. He would tower over the trees in the glade, and be a veritable moving fortress of teeth and fire. Now, for the first time she understood Njar’s apprehension. Any creature of that size could destroy entire settlements and be nearly unstoppable. Of course, from her books Kyra knew how large dragons could become, but it was another thing entirely to see his sheer size in person and try to picture him three times larger than what she saw in front of her. As it was now, he could swallow her in one bite if he wanted to, just as he used to do to the squirrels they had hunted together.
Leatherback must have sensed her wonderment, for he cocked his head so that his eye could look at her more directly and he smiled at her with his slightly parted lips and kind eyes. As Kyra looked upon him she knew that he would never hurt her, or anyone else. She patted his head again and then turned to speak with Njar.
“I will need to stop accelerating his growth for a short while,” the satyr said.
“I thought you said it was better for him if he grew as fast as possible?”
The satyr chief nodded his head and shrugged sheepishly. “The truth is I’m tired. To sustain that kind of magic, even here in this grove of sacred aspens, a tremendous effort is required. For now I need to scale back my efforts. I can of course continue to augment the grove to ensure that the curse does not come within this area, but it will be a few weeks before I can return to help him grow faster. Still, as it is, I believe he has made tremendous progress. He shows no sign of the taint, and he is able to hunt with you for extended periods of time outside the grove. Truly it is a wonder.”
Kyra had a question she wanted to ask, but she did not want the satyr to catch any hint of why she was asking it. She had to be careful to hide her excitement. She took a couple of slow breaths to calm her nerves and slow her beating pulse. Then she turned to Njar and smiled. “You will stay here with him, right?” She figured phrasing it that way rather than asking if he was leaving out right was the safer route.
The satyr shook his head. “I will stay until nightfall. After you leave, I’ll return to my village. It’s just for one night, he will be safe here in the grove until I return in the morning.” He smiled reassuringly and patted her on the shoulder. “He has already hunted today. I guess he couldn’t wait to sate his hunger, so I rode him and we found three
elk. It likely won’t hold him for very long, but he’ll probably last through the night on that.”
Kyra’s mouth fell open and she grabbed the satyr’s hand in hers and nearly jumped with excitement. “You rode him?” The satyr opened his mouth to speak, but Kyra did not give him the chance to answer. “He flew? I mean, he actually flew and you could ride him?”
Njar smiled and gestured toward Leatherback. “How about you go and see for yourself.” The satyr smiled and gently pushed her toward Leatherback.
Kyra turned around annd Leatherback was smiling and purring softly. “When were you going to tell me you could fly?”
Leatherback emitted that soft, high-pitched squeak that Kyra had once categorized as a growl. He still couldn’t talk, but she could tell he was excited to share this with her.
“If you sit on his neck just behind his horns, you can hold them for support,” Njar advised.
Kyra didn’t need to be told twice. She ran over and jumped onto Leatherback’s neck. She reached up and grabbed the two horns closest to her and a moment later the large dragon leapt into the air climbing high into the sky above the grove.
Kyra looked down and watched the world fall away from her. The satyr shrank to the size of a bottle and then the grove became the size of a rock. A few moments later he disappeared entirely as Leatherback took her high into the clouds where the air was thin and cold. She laughed and smiled, screaming his name and shouting for joy. Leatherback stretched his great wings, soaring through the air, obviously every bit as delighted as she was given his loud and reverberating purr. The two of them circled around in the sky over above the clouds. The thick blanket of clouds that shrouded them from the ground below silenced any fears of being discovered. How far they flew, she had no way of knowing. All she knew was that she was having the time of her life. She looked off to the north and saw the far horizon there. She wondered how far Leatherback could fly now.
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