Above the din of renewed movement, an amplified, high-pitch voice screeched from the dome on the obviously magically mutated Quib at the rear. “Kill the dragon! Kill it, kill it, kill it!” the little thing ranted. “Plazzio, use your magic! Smash the dragon for our mother dearest!”
Neither Tulip, Alyra, nor I needed an engraved invitation. In fact, the moment the two Quibs dropped their rifles, my lovely compatriots were already moving. Alyra went for her Wander as she launched into the air while Tulip uncoiled her new toy as she dove into the fray, her free hand drawing one of her pistols as she went. The moment the screech from the dome confirmed my suspicions, I was jumping myself, cutting loose with a bolt of dragonfire at Double Trouble as I let the dragon out of play.
Physics cried out for mercy as my mass quadrupled, fangs and snout erupting from my face as draconic scales and muscle overtook the frailty of the human body. Just in time, because my leap broke the spell of the moment. Even as my sizzling Dragon Bolt rocketed across the room, the Quibs too stupid to take a good thing when they saw it unloaded on me.
The speed of my movement and the sudden change in arc caused by my dramatic increase in mass made most of those initial shots go wide, scoring the inert stone in the ceiling with bullet holes and blast marks, while my own blast of fire looked to be headed right on target. As my clawed feet slammed into the ground a good fifty meters away from Plazzio and his little buddy, the brute roared in what I swore was a mixture of anger and fear, the crystals in his mace glowing with a dull green light. In response to his cry, a slab of stone ripped out of the earth in front of him, the Dragon Bolt bursting on it, covering it in liquid, burning fire.
“Terrakinesis,” Alyra called out over the comms as she swept her Wander towards the space in front of the largest group of miners. “Deal with the abomination. I will protect our allies.” Where her weapon passed, a wall of glowing force sprang up from the ground, curving upward to guard the mostly unarmored slaves.
“And I’ll thin out the enemy, David!” Tulip joined in. “Leave the little stuff to us!” She had started firing in mid-leap, sending the Quibs near her landing spot running for cover, as she landed neatly into a forward roll, coming up to her knees with a sidearm lash of her Scourge, the sparking whip wrapping itself neatly around a Quib’s throat.
“Give ‘em hell, ladies,” I growled as I pushed up from my crouch, the stone cratered from my forceful landing. Plazzio and his plus one were still hidden by the melting wall of stone, so I barreled forward. Now that I was grounded, I was a much easier target, but I didn’t care. I raised one arm to cover my head just in time to catch a blaster bolt in my gauntlet. The charged particles danced over my shields as bullets raked across my body. While my Ascension powers were absorbing most of the damage, causing scarlet Recompense energy to surge around my form as I ran, my shielding was taking some real hits. These guys were armed with higher grade gear than even the Quib Elite, and now that I was in their midst, I could see mounted crystals and the brass fixtures that denoted magitech enchantments on their weapons.
That was just more incentive to end this quickly. Over the continued shouts and commands of the Resistance leader behind me, something about repairing the ramp, I lashed out with my golden claws as I kept bulling forward towards the most dangerous target, the power of Recompense surging through my claw tips. Though their weapons were cutting-edge, the Quib’s armor wasn’t nearly as well-made as I bisected the one I swiped at, bloody chunks flying through the air. With my off-hand, I unloaded all three barrels of my Swarmer into the next Quib to cross my path, the air screaming with a cloud of pellets that shredded his upper chest and face, blowing him clean off his feet.
Behind me, the Resistance leader called down to her charges, “Now is our chance! Don’t waste the chance our brother and sisters have bought us! Get that hover platform running now!” Good, they were being smart about this. I was afraid they might go full-on fanatic and leap into the fray along with us.
Plowing into another Quib and throwing him aside, I pushed on. Alyra took a simple approach to her job, summoning up simple wall constructs and sweeping them like bulldozers across the field, throwing her half of the battlefield into chaos. Tulip, well, as usual, she preferred a more hands-on approach to the Quib infestation, dancing and spinning through their midst to force them into melee combat, shooting bursts from her Starshot as the whip formed a constantly whirling circle of electric death around her.
So far so good, but one misstep and this could all come crashing down. With these enchanted weapons, one clean hit could take Tulip out of the fight, and Alyra was already hurt. A concentrated barrage could break down her force shields, just as they were doing to my own shielding. Though half the Quibs were already either dead or being thrown around by force walls, I was worried that Master Blaster was still hiding behind his half-melted stone wall. I put on another rush of speed, ignoring the warning that I was down to fifty percent shields as I let dragon oil pool in my snout.
Whatever was going on, I’d stop it fast. Activate Flames of Freedom for a little of my dragon form duration and go full burn on this Plazzio character before he decided to collapse the entire cavern on top of us.
That had been the plan, anyway. Swapping my pistol for the Thorax as I reached the curved wall of stone, my enhanced ears picked out what sounded like an argument past the wall, a deep, rumbling voice protesting that, “Plazzio hate fighting, Enzio. Please, we leave?”
While that was interesting, I couldn’t let that stop me from pushing on. As I swung the Thorax across the length of the wall with all my considerable strength, the mono-molecular edge cutting neatly through the slagged rock, that shrill voice from the turret on Plazzio’s back shot back. “No! Mother wanted us to kill these bad people, and the dragon too if he showed up! Don’t make me use the power, brother.”
A large chunk of the top of the stone fell away from my slash, giving me a good view now of the ogre-like Plazzio, hunkered down on all fours, flinching away not from me, but from something above him. It didn’t take a degree in psychology to realize that the powerhouse of a creature was deathly afraid not of the fire-snorting dragon in front of him, but the little thing riding on his back. At that moment, I had a calculated hunch and decided to change my plan, turning my snout upward as I began to suck in a breath, calling up the Flames of Freedom inside me.
Dragonfire enhanced! Thermal intensity increased by 100% and oil mixture concentrated by 50% for 5 seconds!
But before I could let the flames free, aiming right for that dome on Plazzio’s back, the tinted window slits around it went white with intense light. The mighty magical Quib spasmed and roared with pain, one hand clutching his helmeted head while the other, the one gripping his mace-like focus, raised towards the roof, that muted emerald magic surging again.
As if in response to that roar of pain, the very stone all around me, around all of us, shuddered, cracked, and surged. Thrown back by a pillar of stone haphazardly shooting up underneath me, I landed roughly on my back just in time to see a massive chunk of collapsing ceiling hurtle down towards me.
18
The choice I had to make in that split-second was a simple one. Dragons are pretty much immune to heat and fire, but we’re not immune to being crushed by tons of solid rock. I let out the gout of enhanced dragonfire already built up in my chest, the flames surging to blue-white plasma as I pushed myself sideways with my elbow. I couldn’t get completely clear, and slagging the boulder wouldn’t make it any less heavy, but turning it liquid would make it splatter and diffuse the force. Between that and my evasive maneuver, I hoped it would keep me alive.
The surging flames washed over the massive chunk of stone, and as I predicted, it was reduced to a bubbling goopy lump of magma by the time it slammed partly into the ground, partly over me as I kept rolling. My shielding flared with red light, the raw force of hundreds of pounds of liquid rock splashing down on me shattering them entirely as temperature alarms screeched in my ea
r, even though it felt as cool as a spring day to my draconic hide. Though my shields softened the blow and Scales of the Victor cushioned me more, it still knocked the wind out of me. But you know what? I was alive.
Shielding compromised! Suit temperatures exceeding normal operational parameters! Please enter a region with lower temperatures or find a fire suppression system at your earliest convenience!
Not like anyone else was doing much better, and that included the Quibs. Whatever the pint-sized Enzio had done to Plazzio, it had made the giant’s magic run wild. The immense hideout of the Resistance was no longer the neatly chiseled, square chamber. Jagged chunks of stone jutted out at seeming random from the walls, floor, and ceiling, the flat surfaces now a maze of immense cracks, sudden cliffs, and broken ground. As the ground shook every single person, friend or foe, was thrown from their feet. Well, except for Double Trouble, who seemed immune to the rippling earthquake and shattered stone, and Tulip, whose feline agility was still keeping her safe.
Even Alyra had been forced out of the skies by falling rocks, barely managing to shield herself, the Synatan, and a clump of miners with a quickly-summoned force dome. White light seeped through the cracks of the pile of rubble where they had been. Resisting the urge to make sure they were safe, I trusted that my squad status display showing that her vital signs were still strong was still working despite the high temperatures.
As the tremors started to subside, I forced myself to my feet, ignoring the cooling magma hardening around my armor. Plazzio stumbled away from the chaos of destruction before him, fear and disgust evident in the big man’s crude posture. Enzio, though, was cackling like a maniac from his armored dome of safety. “Again! Again, again, again! Mother will reward us for his hide!”
“Tulip,” I growled into the comms, hoping it was still working through the intense heat, “it’s the little monster on the big guy’s back. We need to try to pry it loose.” I broke rock off of me while turning towards the pair of magic Quibs and focusing on Plazzio. “How about I get that monkey off your back, big guy? You don’t want to hurt anyone else, do you?”
As the ten feet of armor and muscle let out an almost sympathetic whimper, Tulip’s voice crackled into my ear. “Affirmative, David. Keep them occupied, I’ll do my magic.”
I didn’t risk giving her away, so I didn’t turn to look at what she was doing, just like I didn’t shift focus as I heard stone tumbling behind me. Though I didn’t drop my ax, I did raise my clawed hands in a sign of peace, even though the chunks of now-cooling magma weighed me down. Before I could get a word in or take a step forward, Plazzio raised his mace and shuffled back another step.
“Pan hurt Plazzio, but Mother can make the pain go away,” he snuffled. “But Mother wants dragon-man. Will dragon-man come quiet? Help Plazzio?”
“She’s lying to you, she doesn’t want to help you, only use you,” I countered. I was going on hunches and instinct, and I hoped that either he’d back down or Tulip would make her move before I ran out of time. I had less than three minutes left with all the chatter, and if I got down to a minute and a half, I was going to have to take Plazzio down, even if I had the suspicion he was just a big, dumb pawn here. “We’ll try to help you if you’ll let us.”
“No,” Enzio, his hump fortress now hidden from view, “only our Mother can help you, Plazzio! And if you won’t do her bidding, I’ll make you. Do you want to feel my magic again?”
I really, really was growing to hate that voice, especially when I saw that surge of light illuminating the still-smooth tunnel behind Plazzio. The moment I saw the first flicker, I rushed forward, hoping against hope that I could cut Enzio did, well, whatever the hell he was doing to the big man. As fast as I was, though, I wasn’t faster than the speed of magic.
This time, the effect on Plazzio was dramatically different but just as bad, I think for him as well as us. The stone around his feet rippled like water right before a radial tsunami of rock exploding outward accompanied by his horrible scream of pain. Taking advantage of my dragon reflexes, I rode the wave, springing ten feet in the air.
As I twisted in mid-air, turning my newfound upward trajectory into an advantage, the tremendous crash of stone on a massive force construct wall echoed throughout the chamber as brilliant white light surged up from behind me. The only thing that cut through that splintering rock was Alyra’s piercing cry of effort, as she gave her all to protect the miners with her magic.
“I can hold them, David,” her wavering voice came through the comms. While our power suits might have recharged over the long walk, our bodies had been going hard with nary a rest, and I could hear strain in Alyra’s voice, coupled with the pain from her still-untreated injuries.
That was the last straw. We were ending this now before the constant crude manipulations of the stone triggered a landslide or worse. I had a bad feeling a real earthquake might have some very explosive consequences for everyone involved.
Though I had been deprived of the forward momentum of my leap by the waves of stone, my newfound height would still let me crash down on Plazzio. I might not have been able to get to Enzio right away, but if I could wrest away Plazzio’s magitech focus, that would end this all the same.
A thousand plus pounds of dragon and armor came down on top of the big guy, but he was about as heavy. Plazzio staggered as I roared, digging my talons into his thick armor for a good grip on his right arm. He was strong, but I was stronger and managed to twist his arm down.
“Come on, man,” I roared, fire spewing out of my nostrils, “work with me here! Drop the mace, and no one else gets hurt today.”
My focus was on that giant brown-and-gold plated arm, so I didn’t notice right away the change in attitude, the scintillating light seeping out of the eye-slits of Plazzio’s helmet. I did notice that while Plazzio’s voice answered me, the words weren’t his.
“My brother Plazzio is too soft, dragon,” Not-Plazzio practically whined, “which is why Mother sent me along. To make him do as he was told!” I didn’t know the mechanism, be it mind control, spiritual possession, or something else crazier, but I knew exactly what Enzio was capable of now. He was puppeting his ‘brother’, which meant I had to work faster.
“C’mon, Tulip,” I growled under my breath as I wrestled Plazzio’s arm down, the mace tantalizingly close to the tip of my talon. It would have been so much easier if the big guy was as horrible and twisted as Tur, the first magically enhanced Quib I’d fought, had been. I’d just have melted him down, ripped his arm off, those kinds of nice, simple solutions to problems.
As I finally managed to get my hand around Plazzio’s giant mitt, the stone around us still rippling and crashing in waves as the cave shuddered from the tectonic strain, a big, armored fist crashed on my back. My barely-rebooted shields shattered once again from the tremendous impact, my entire body rattling from the force of the blow. My grip didn’t budge an inch though as I shook off the blow, my Ascension powers still channeling much of the force into scarlet energy swirling around me.
“No!” Enzio-in-Plazzio shrieked, the crystals in the mace suddenly shedding the dullness, the light doubling in intensity, letting me know something was about to happen. “Entombment!”
As his words echoed in my ears, the cooled magma still clinging to my armor seemed to double in weight like it was a magnet being pulled to the ground below while the stone at my feet began to ooze over me. It was the worst case of reverse-quicksand you could imagine, and while I knew I could throw myself free, doing so would give Tulip away. No. I had to take it.
“Is that the best you can do?” I cried, causing Enzio to focus on me. The rock rose up around me, encasing me from feet to arms as stone crept over the flickering force dome around my draconic snout. While I wouldn’t have to worry about suffocation if it did, I focused on keeping the guy focused on me. I only needed to buy Tulip another moment. So, instead of tearing myself free, I smashed my forehead into his armored bulk, staggering him back half a step.
“That’s it! Now you die, dragon!” Enzio shrieked, turning to me and raising his brother’s arms like a macabre puppet master. Which was exactly what I wanted because, of course, the little bastard hadn’t accounted for Tulip. From the shadows of the tunnel behind us, she appeared like a streak, her armor battered, and a bleeding gash above her forehead. Guess the constant barrage of earth and stone hadn’t done her any favors either, but it didn’t matter. The barrel of her pistols, one in each hand now, burst with the golden light of her Magic Bullet ability, the shots unerringly rocketing through the air, twisting like guided missiles before punching into the dome Enzio had been hiding in the entire time.
Both voices, Plazzio’s deep one and Enzio’s nasally whine, let out a mutual scream of pain and the creeping stone of the Entombment magic froze, leaving at least my head and neck free. Unfortunately, that armor had been thick, and the light that radiated from Plazzio’s helmet didn’t fade entirely.
“Tulip, look out!” I roared in alarm as Enzio forced his giant partner to spin, lashing out at Tulip as she made a lunge for the hump with that massive club. My warning gave her just enough time to twist her body, curling so that the crushing force of the blow only glanced her instead of taking it full in the face.
Still, Tulip’s feline screech of agony as she was knocked aside made me see red. Her vitals were still strong, but that didn’t matter. You just didn’t hit one of my ladies like that, a sentiment that the dragon in my heart roared in agreement with. And at that moment, with Plazzio turned away from me, the punctured turret now clearly visible, I realized I didn’t even have to move to kill the little bastard.
But even in my rage, I didn’t want to hurt the puppet, just the puppet master … and I didn’t have to. Summoning the fire from my heart, feeling it rush into my Cestari, still fully functional despite the stone that encased them, I concentrated on what I wanted to do most at that moment, to make Enzio’s soul burn. My vision slipped from burning red to the green-gold of the strange flames I had seen before, and suddenly, without a bolt of fire or single spit of dragon oil, the little cockpit filled with flickering green flame.
Star Conqueror: Recompense: An Epic Space Harem Adventure Page 14