The Hero's Peril (The Sorcerer's Saga Book 5)

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The Hero's Peril (The Sorcerer's Saga Book 5) Page 8

by Rain Oxford


  Zuras protected himself from it with an umbrella, which he had also pulled out of his robe. Merlin and Yuri struggled as the goo clung to them, making it impossible for them to stand. My first instinct was to help Merlin, but the best way to do that was to make it stop raining, and the best way to do that, was to defeat Zuras.

  That being said, I couldn’t let Merlin’s situation get worse. I aimed my wand and levitated them. The goo tried to hold them to the ground, but I was stronger. As I floated them across the open rain and onto the covered porch, sticky strings of black followed them all the way from where they had been on the ground. I considered attacking Zuras with my magic alone, but decided that it was better to defeat the sorcerer in one move than try and fail to fight him with a number of lesser attacks, which would have only depleted my energy.

  So I pointed my staff at the open air in front of me and yelled, “Veðrgramr!”

  I focused on my dragon, visualized him appearing, and directed my magic through the staff. The power of the galaxy stone surged through me. It was my magic in the sense that it was what I used every time I wielded my staff. However, it was also different, because the staff had a mind of its own.

  After flowing through me, magic rushed back out in the form of smoke. Inside that smoke, the dragon took shape. His body was stone-gray, matching the underside of his wings, while the outward side of his wings was blood-red. His head was narrow and angular with two backward-curved horns and reddish-orange, glowing eyes.

  He was a beautiful dragon. Although he wasn’t the oldest, largest, or wisest dragon I had met, I thought he was perfect. He was also under my control, which I felt a little guilty for. Of course, if it hadn’t been me who bonded with the galaxy stone, it would have been someone else controlling him.

  Unlike everything else on this world, Veðrgramr retained every bit of his color. The black rain also had no effect on him whatsoever. The townspeople who had been reluctantly watching the “epic duel” were now enthusiastically running back into their shops to hide. Every window in town that could be shut, was shut, and every one that couldn’t, was barricaded.

  Zuras took one look at my dragon, shrieked, and tossed the control board aside. I had never seen someone realize they had underestimated their opponent so quickly. The rain stopped and the sorcerer ran into the nearest building. Veðrgramr looked at me. I shrugged. “I guess I overestimated my opponent,” I said.

  “I do not like being summoned for petty squabbles,” Veðrgramr said with obvious warning.

  “I’m sorry. He stole a dragon egg.”

  I didn’t get the chance to say anything else before the dragon roared and faced the building Zuras had disappeared into. Please don’t burn the building down.

  Veðrgramr did not burn the building down.

  Instead, he roared and the building collapsed in on itself.

  The dragon stepped forward, undoubtedly to make sure he had killed Zuras. It was then that I realized my dragon was irresponsible. Every dragon I knew, no matter their age, was wise. Mine, however, had just destroyed a building to save a dragon egg, despite the fact that Zuras probably had the egg on him.

  Veðrgramr could have just killed the egg.

  Merlin must have known exactly what I was thinking. “It takes more than that to harm a dragon egg,” Merlin assured me.

  Unfortunately, it also took more than that to defeat a sorcerer.

  Veðrgramr dug in the rubble of the building, cluttering the street with furniture and wood. There was no sorcerer to be found. There was, however, a broken floor-length mirror. “We’re too late! He’s gone!” I wished I could blame someone, but it was just bad luck on our end.

  That was exactly what Zuras had wanted his adversaries to think, and while Ayden was trying to convince himself it wasn’t his fault, Zuras was escaping through a side door into another building.

  Thank you, I thought to the voice, even while hoping he didn’t hear me.

  You’re welcome.

  I turned my attention to helping Merlin and Yuri, despite the fact that Zuras had to be stopped. They were now unable to move at all, as the goo had hardened, and Merlin was struggling to breathe. Yuri’s mouth was covered, but his nose was clear. Before trying magic, I touched the black goo. It was dry, but not hard like wood. It had almost a soft, dried sap texture. I wedged my fingers between it and his snout and pulled. It was difficult and took time, but it did slowly come off. Once I had enough space between the substance and his fur, I used my knife to cut off more. I got his snout free first and as soon as I freed his entire head, he started struggling. He bit it and tore it easily, so I left him and freed Yuri.

  Yuri was white as a ghost and couldn’t take his eyes off of Veðrgramr. “Is that a dragon? Did you summon a dragon?”

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “What’s ‘sort of’ about that?” He pointed to the dragon. “How did you do it?”

  “I’ll explain later. It’s a long story.”

  Yuri seemed satisfied with the promise of getting answers later.

  Down the road from the battle, a door opened. Sheriff Gray, having finally dragged himself out of his depression enough to pretend he didn’t hate his job and everything about the town, stared long and hard at the dragon, before deciding that nothing was worth taking another step forward. He went back into his house and got into bed.

  The strain on my magic that Veðrgramr caused was too much and I had to let him go. He dispersed back into a cloud and was reabsorbed into my galaxy stone. As this happened, it felt like a huge weight eased off my chest.

  “We made a mess,” Yuri said.

  “That was Zuras’s fault not ours.”

  Nevertheless, it would be the townspeople who would have to clean up the mess. For months. All by themselves. Without help.

  “Yes, I know! I’ll leave them some gold… no, not that. I’ll do something nice for them later. Now, we know he needs a mirror large enough for him to fit through to escape. We should go back to the tavern and make sure he can’t get out.”

  Ayden’s plan would have been a good one if only Zuras had entered this world through the mirror in the saloon, instead of the one in the general store. In fact, Zuras had not even known there was one in the saloon.

  The sorcerer in question could be heard yelling obscenities from the building across the road from me.

  Neither of them knew that there was another mirror in the building to the right and the building to the left of the general store, and there was no way Ayden could guard all three before Zuras could reach one.

  “Where is the general store?” I asked.

  “Perhaps it is the one with the sign over it that says, ‘general store’. I say we try that one,” Merlin said.

  We all started running towards the general store. The moment we reached it, Zuras ran out of the building across from us. All he had to do was cross the street, but it was a lot easier for us to hold our position than it was for him to break through our defense. That wasn’t to say it was impossible, of course.

  Ayden had a plan, and it would have been a good one had he been dealing with the typical villain. Unfortunately for him, Zuras was not one such villain.

  “My name is Captain Chaos!”

  Zuras insisted.

  He pulled another device from his pocket. This one resembled a pistol, only larger and made of black metal. “The weather machine was a dud, but you’ll all perish before my grow-ray!” He pointed it at something a little ways up the road, by the mine. Lightning shot from it and struck the road. Before my eyes, a small pebble grew and grew until it was a massive rock that was taller than me.

  “How did you do that? That’s elemental magic!”

  Zuras laughed maniacally. “I have my ways.”

  To Ayden, that was a perfectly good explanation.

  “What? No it wasn’t!”

  The wolf and prince, however, were getting pretty tired of the sorcerer’s bravado.

  The rock started rolling down the road to
wards us, gaining speed as it did. “Do something,” Merlin said.

  “Like what? I’m not an elementalist.”

  Yuri drew his sword as if he intended to stab the rock.

  Just then, Ayden got an idea. It was a silly idea, and that was why it would work.

  “Um… thank you?” I pointed my staff at the advancing rock and focused my mind. I was not an elementalist, so I couldn’t control dirt and rocks, but transformation was one of my strengths. I focused my mind and unleashed my magic. Energy shot into the mass and transformed it into a large rock creature. It had a clunky, crudely shaped body, similar to a troll. Its head looked like a regular boulder, except it had two eyes and a mouth.

  Confused, the creature considered us and Zuras. It didn’t know who to attack and since I couldn’t control rock, I couldn’t tell it to attack Zuras.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered.

  Zuras must not have realized I couldn’t control the creature, because he darted back into the building. His sudden movement drew the attention of the creature and it attacked. Well, it attacked the building Zuras was hiding in.

  Aside from destroying the building, it didn’t get very far, because with a flash of light, the creature exploded, showering us with small rocks and dirt.

  “Did you think I would be that easy to defeat?” Zuras boasted, climbing out of the rubble that had been a building a moment before. He tripped on a board and coughed. He was covered in more dirt than the locals now.

  “Tell him ‘You will never get away with this!’ It should cause him to tell you all his plans.”

  “I don’t want to hear his plans. We need to save the egg so that we can get out of here.”

  He muttered something I was glad I didn’t hear.

  “Now you will face the wrath of Captain Chaos!” Zuras crowed, reaching into his robe pocket again. I pointed my staff up.

  My magic surrounded us in a ward at the same moment a small vial landed at my feet. It was full of sand, which spilled out harmlessly. “Am I supposed to be afraid of that?”

  “You were clever to escape my torturous rain and monstrous rock, wizard, but let’s see you escape quicksand so easily!”

  I didn’t need him to explain what he meant; I saw it for myself. The sand beneath my feet turned to mud and I was sinking. I aimed my staff at Zuras. Attack. Magic surged from me to the staff, and from the staff into him. He dived behind the rubble of the building.

  I tried to step out of the mud, only to sink a little further, as if it was pulling my legs in. It wouldn’t let go of my feet.

  “Do not move!” Merlin demanded out loud. Yuri and I froze. “Keep calm. If you fight it, it will suck you in.”

  Zuras reemerged and crossed the road, staying well away from the circle of mud around us. Yuri clutched his head in pain. Zuras stopped before entering the building and turned to us with a purpose.

  The sorcerer decided to monologue instead of making a clean escape. Little did he know, it would be one of many mistakes he would make that day.

  Zuras hesitated, gazing skyward. “On second thought, never mind.” He went into the building.

  The mud was now almost to my knees. “Merlin, what do we do?”

  “Stay calm.” As if to emphasize his point, he slowly tilted onto his side. “Distribute your weight across the surface as much as possible. Do not try to pull out your legs yet.” Once he was lying in the mud, he made short kicks until he could work his legs free, then he sort of swam on the surface until he was out of the mud.

  “I’m having a very hard time staying calm,” Yuri said, panic lacing his tone. He seemed to have recovered from his headache.

  “Reassure the prince and make sure he does not struggle. Take off your robe, too. I will be back in just a minute. You cannot drown in it.”

  He ran into the rubble of the broken building. I took off my robe and tossed it to the dry sand.

  “Where’s he going?” Yuri asked. “Isn’t he going to help us?”

  I took a deep breath. “Don’t worry. Merlin will be back. He’s got a plan. He always does.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “I trust Merlin.”

  That seemed to calm him more than anything else I said, as if he could tell how strongly I did. No one in the Dracre family would lift a finger to help me except for Thaddeus. The Rynorm family would avenge my death, but if I needed their help, I wasn’t worth it to them. Although my friends would do what they could, there was only so much they could do. Merlin was the one who wouldn’t let anything happen to me. He was my mentor in magic, and to him, that meant he had a responsibility to protect me. To me, he was my best friend.

  Merlin returned dragging a door. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for him to drag an entire door in his jaw without magic. He let it go at the edge of the mud pit, went around it, and pushed the door towards me. It was just large enough that it was braced on either side of the pit. “Do I climb on?” I asked.

  “Lean your upper body onto it so that the quicksand cannot suck you in further. Then kick in small jerks to work a water channel around your legs.” I did as he explained. “You should be able to work your legs free at that point.”

  With my weight on the door and staying calm as I kicked, my legs soon came free of the mud. I crawled back to the sand and panted with exhaustion.

  “This is really starting to hurt my legs,” Yuri said, now almost waist deep. I scooted the door over to him and explained how to get out exactly as Merlin had. It took him longer, as he had been deeper, but he eventually freed himself of the mud.

  “We lost Zuras and the egg,” Yuri said, trying to catch his breath.

  “We’ll get him,” I said. “What happened? He came out and you clutched your head in pain. The voice said you were in pain before, too. Is Zuras hurting you in some way?”

  “No. I just had a headache.”

  The prince lied.

  Yuri sighed.

  I glared up at the sky. “A lot of good you were when we were being sucked into the mud!”

  Not surprisingly, there was no answer.

  “Does that have to do with your secret?” I asked Yuri, picking up my robe and putting it on.

  “Yes.”

  But it was still a lie. It was not headaches that plagued the young prince, but voices. Although he could not understand them, he knew they had something to do with his immortality, since they started when he was healed from his mortal wounds.

  “Can I hire you to follow my mother around and reveal all of her secrets?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “I’m serious.”

  Still, more silence.

  “They never hurt before, though,” Yuri said. “I was able to block them out. When the egg was stolen, they stopped completely.”

  “Until you saw Zuras?”

  “They actually started again as soon as we arrived on this world, but they weren’t painful until we got near Zuras.”

  Merlin and I looked at each other. “And that’s the big secret the voice was talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  But… it wasn’t.

  If Yuri was capable of casting curses, the voice would have been in trouble.

  Then again, Ayden hadn’t been completely honest with the prince, either.

  Yuri’s eyebrows lifted. “I haven’t lied,” I insisted. “I only neglected to tell you everything about me. We haven’t had a chance to talk.”

  And he didn’t trust Yuri.

  “Well, we did just meet today,” Yuri said.

  Zuras finally found the mirror he sought, only to realize with great embarrassment that it was so old and tarnished that it could not be used as a portal.

  The profanity we heard coming from inside that building was so vulgar I was pretty sure my mother was blushing. The voice’s mother, on the other hand, was being called all kinds of mean and nasty things.

  I saw movement in the corner of my eye and turned to see Mr. Charcoal peeking out of his saloon. T
hen Alice appeared with a quick flash of light. No portal or mirror; she just appeared there, much like transporting. I knew, however, that it couldn’t be used to go from world to world. And like Veðrgramr, she was in color.

  “Hello. Have you seen my kitty?”

  Mr. Charcoal jumped a little, as if he hadn’t seen her appear in front of him. “No. I haven’t seen a cat in a year or so.”

  “Oh…” she pouted. “I thought he came this way.” And then she vanished.

  We had a more pressing issue.

  Realizing that Zuras seemed to be exceptionally adept at finding rear and side entrances, we split up. Yuri and Merlin went to the saloon to guard that mirror. I went to the general store. As soon as I entered the shop, everyone decided they had important business elsewhere.

  Inside, there was everything from clothes and furniture to food and medicine. The mirror was with the clothes. It was actually in pretty bad shape, but I supposed it must have been good enough to use as a portal. It was almost as tall as me and a little wider, so the sorcerer had to contort himself to get through.

  Before I could even contact Merlin telepathically and tell him I was in place, I heard a window open in the back. My plan was to hide and wait for the sorcerer to approach the mirror, but when I didn’t hear anything else, I ran out of patience. Staying low, I snuck towards the back, where I saw an open window. Zuras himself was not there.

  Instead, there was a crate beneath the window. In bold black writing, it said ACME. A lot of good Alice’s potion did. I figured it probably didn’t have anything to do with Zuras, but it couldn’t hurt to see what was in it.

  Curiosity killed the cat, and Ayden was about to prove himself no smarter.

  I froze. “Are you on my side or Zuras’s?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “I don’t know if you’re trying to help me stop Zuras or trying to get me killed.”

  Still, no answer.

  With a groan, I turned and walked away from the box. I didn’t get more than three steps away before an explosion behind me sent me flying forward. When I hit the wall, it was head first. The room spun and I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t figure out how to roll over and I had enough self-preservation not to vomit on my back. Sometime later, Merlin was trying to draw me back to reality. I saw him because my eyes were open, but I didn’t register his presence.

 

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