Merlin's Travels (An Untimely Error Book 2)

by Tom Larcombe

  A crossbow bolt came flying at the renegade student and struck his shield. The entire thing flashed and disappeared, then the dragon struck Horst from above, knocking him to the ground. Horst didn't try to stand back up, he came up on one knee and aimed his pistol at Anguis. The gun popped several times, and the only result Merlin saw was sparks flying off the dragon's body.

  Anguis reared up and a river of flame flowed from his mouth. Horst was like a piece of wood thrown on a fire, the flames igniting first his clothing and then his hair and skin. Anguis continued to release his flame and Merlin watched as Horst's exposed skin turned charcoal black. Horst's scream filled the area, loud even through Merlin's deafened ears. When Horst collapsed, his body turned to black ash when it struck the ground.

  Merlin looked around the battlefield. Gunter was limping towards him, a gleam in his eye. Anguis came over and coiled himself around Merlin.

  {Did I do right Merlin? I killed him.} Anguis sent.

  {You did wonderfully Anguis, don't doubt it for a moment. He might have killed me if you didn't get him first.}

  {It was right? I don't like killing. It isn't fun.}

  {No. It isn't, but sometimes it's the only way.}

  Anguis wrapped himself tighter around Merlin, comforting himself with the contact.

  Gunter broke into a smile as he took the last step that put him beside Merlin.

  “How did you do that?” Merlin asked.

  “She didn't have a tight hold on my body yet, she still had to concentrate to make it do things. So, I used that shield against magic that you put in the crystal to give me an edge. She was trying to make me give up. When I got control of my right arm and started firing, I was overtaken by a cold battle rage. I've felt it before, when everything's at stake. Rumor has it that there are Vikings in my ancestry. I guess one of them was a Berserker and it came down through the generations. She left when the rage took me and I used the physical shield in the crystal to protect myself.”

  “But you weren't even firing when most of those soldiers dropped,” Merlin said.

  “Ricochets Merlin, that's how the bitch took my finger. I noticed before that bullets ricochet off of your shields. So I had you surround the entire area. Both my bullets and theirs, when they started firing, were trapped in there. They couldn't get to me because of my shield, but with three hundred or more bullets flying around, some of them were going to hit them.”

  “What happened to Ave when you drove her out?”

  “I have no idea. I'm hoping she went back to Horst's body though,” Gunter said.

  “I can't believe she did that. She would have done something much worse than shoot at me.”

  * * *

  Chapter 23

  Verruckt's voice rang out.

  “Merlin, we've got big trouble!”

  Merlin turned to look at Verruckt. The Dverger was pointing towards the barn, which was shaking itself to pieces.

  “I think we know where Ave went now,” Merlin said, adding under his breath. “May demons eat her rotting excuse for a soul!”

  “Merlin, does this mean she's as big as the barn that's about to collapse?” Gunter asked.

  “We're about to find out.”

  “Is she vulnerable to anything?”

  “They needed anti-aircraft guns to damage Anguis and he's not even a full dragon.”

  Anguis looked up at the sound of his name.

  {Very hot fire, big guns, powerful magic, or a total lack of magic. Those are the only ways I know of to stop a dragon.} Anguis sent.

  Merlin relayed the information on to Gunter.

  I wonder if we can re-purpose the portal spell into something strong enough to kill her? I can't think of anything else we can do right now, he thought.

  Gunter's movements attracted Merlin's attention. He was drawing out two metal grenades, their gray bodies marked with yellow stripes.

  “What are those?” Merlin asked.

  “White phosphorus grenades. The next most evil thing to poison gas that I know of. They'll burn almost anything.”

  “Almost?”

  “I'm not an expert on these. I don't know where that SS patrol got them, but they're made in America so I don't have much information about them. I do know that we'll need some means to launch them since their bursting area is very close to the distance most people can throw them, and that their time delay before detonation is four to five seconds.”

  The barn collapsed into a pile of rubble, drawing everyone's attention. After a few moments, the rubble was thrown into the air and a large black creature with purple highlights where it was struck by the sun began to clamber out of the hole beneath the barn.

  Merlin saw the general resemblance between Anguis, Praesagium, and this creature. It ended at the physical. He knew that Ave was insane and malevolent, unlike the other two. When Merlin saw Praesagium's true form, he had run scared. This time he didn't have that option, and Ave was half again as big as the Welsh dragon.

  “That thing's bigger than the bombers stationed at the base!” Gunter said.

  Merlin didn't reply. He was paralyzed by old fears and the memory of his parents being killed by a dragon. That killer was this one's first mate, if the information he was given was accurate. And she'd been the one to send her mate after his parents.

  “Merlin, help me,” Gunter said. “I can feel her pushing at my mind again.”

  “What can I do?” Merlin asked, his feeling of helplessness evident in his voice.

  “Shield my mind? If you can't do that, then at least take these so they're in the hands of someone who can use them,” Gunter said, thrusting the grenades towards the wizard.

  Merlin reflexively took the grenades in one hand. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore Ave's emergence as he gathered his power.

  I don't have enough power to do much, he thought, but I can certainly give Gunter some respite and a chance to retain control.

  He formed a mental shield around Gunter, giving it as much strength as he could manage. Then he dug into his pocket.

  Only a single charged crystal remaining, Merlin thought, what can I do with a limited power level? Wait. Praesagium's scale should be full. It recharges on its own. Ave is either going to kill us or be killed, so a slow drain on the portal spell is no longer necessary. Either she won't be around to anchor it, or we won't be around to take control, so...

  Merlin opened his eyes and took off at a sprint towards where their efforts to change the anchor of the portal spell had been taking place. As he ran he called to Nimue with his mind.

  {Get your scale. They'll be no use where they are right now and they're extra power we can use.}

  As he ran, he saw Nimue burst into a sprint towards the same destination. Merlin arrived first and snatched up the closest scale. He tossed it to Nimue, who was only a few steps away, before picking up the second one. His exhaustion faded as he drew power from the scale.

  Verruckt was following Nimue.

  “What are we going to do?” he said.

  “I don't know yet but we've power, maybe not enough to harm her, but we have these as well.”

  Merlin held up the grenades.

  “Gunter said she's trying to take him over again so he gave them to me.”

  Verruckt looked blankly at the gray cylinders.

  “They're white phosphorus grenades. Gunter told me they might burn hot enough to damage her. He said they'll burn through almost anything.”

  “Almost?” Verruckt asked.

  Merlin grinned a pained smile.

  “That's what I said. Do you have a better idea?”

  “I hate the thing but... should we maybe try the demon knife on her?” Verruckt asked.

  “I don't want to get close enough to try to stick a knife in that, do you?” Merlin replied.

  Verruckt looked at the knife, then over at the dragon who had finally freed herself from the rubble.

  He reached towards the grenades.

  “No, I don't. Give me one of thos
e things.”

  “Gunter also said that we'd need a means to propel them since their burn radius is about as far as most people can throw a grenade.”

  “It's metal. I can work with that. It'll go as far as I want and close to where I want it.”

  Merlin turned to face Ave. The massive dragon was stalking towards Gunter, who stood immobile, either unable or unwilling to move.

  “Verruckt, can you put up a stone wall to protect Gunter?” Merlin asked.

  The Dverger shook his head.

  “Not quickly enough from the looks of things.”

  “Ave!” a voice bellowed from the sky above.

  She looked to the sky. Merlin's eyes followed, and found Anguis circling high above.

  “Ave! This is wrong. I told you before, but you never listened. You drove me to my death, just like you drove your first mate to his death.”

  The voice came from Anguis, but it was not Anguis' voice.

  “Who do you think you are?” Ave screamed.

  She launched herself skyward, her wings beating heavily. The downdraft was strong enough that Gunter was slammed to the ground and the cabins behind him creaked precariously with the first beat of her wings. They followed Gunter to the ground with the second beat.

  “I know that voice. It haunted my dreams for years,” Nimue said.

  “Who?” Merlin asked.

  “That's the dragon that died in the air above me when he tried to free you from your spell. His name was Fortis. It was his blood I used to create Anguis. I guess there was more of him remaining than I thought.”

  “Or Praesagium made him stronger when he was supposedly helping Anguis,” Merlin said darkly.

  “Don't complain. He's buying Gunter more time.”

  “But possibly at the cost of Anguis' life.”

  Verruckt interrupted.

  “While you two argue, what are Gunter and Anguis doing?”

  Merlin snapped back to look at Gunter. He was still collapsed on the ground.

  “Can you give him a thick dome of stone surrounding him Verruckt? It looks like Ave has a hold of some sort on him. We need to protect him physically.”

  “And it'll keep him from doing something he'd regret later if she focuses on him some more. It'll take a minute or two, but I'll work on it,” Verruckt said.

  Verruckt dropped to his knees and plunged his hands into the ground. Stone mounds began to rise in a circle around Gunter. They grew higher at a painfully slow pace.

  Merlin looked back to the sky. The dragons were speaking to each other from a distance. Anguis used his better speed and agility to stay well away from Ave as they spoke. Echos of the conversation fell to the ground but, try as he might, Merlin couldn't make sense out of what he heard. The language was not one he knew.

  The conversation in the sky went on for several minutes. Ave finally gave up on trying to catch Anguis. She was slower than he was, and Merlin would swear that she appeared to be having some problems with her wings. Perhaps her long sleep allowed them to atrophy, or she was simply not adjusting well to being in her draconic body once more.

  When Ave began to dive towards the ground, Merlin glanced back to Gunter. All he could see was a stone dome about eight feet high and with a diameter that was larger still. He glanced at Verruckt.

  “I wanted to leave him air for a good length of time and the ability to stand without knocking himself out on the roof.”

  “Thank you. That's one worry off my mind,” Merlin replied.

  “I hope you made it strong enough,” Nimue said, “Look.”

  Her finger pointed towards Ave, who was landing on top of the dome.

  “Let her try to get through. She'll lose some claws and teeth. That's solid Harz granite, two feet thick,” Verruckt said.

  Ave perched atop the dome and scanned the area. When she saw Merlin, she launched herself towards him.

  “I told you we should've killed her before,” Verruckt said. “Maybe we ought to put some distance between us, just in case?”

  The Dverger moved away from Merlin at a run.

  “He's got a point. If we're together and she's a flame breather she can hit us all at once,” Nimue said.

  She ran in the opposite direction from Verruckt.

  Merlin stared at Ave. Her movement was half flight and half pounce. She came at him quickly, skimming along the ground. At the last moment, Merlin dropped and rolled into the trench he'd retrieved the scales from. Ave went shooting by close enough that his hair whipped in the wind of her passage.

  He stood and found her on the ground fifty yards beyond him. Verruckt was angling towards her side, but far away from her. On the other side of Ave, Nimue had taken cover behind a boulder and was peering out at her.

  The massive dragon was not graceful on the ground. She lumbered as she turned to face Merlin again. She switched her tail, sending clouds of dust and stone into the air.

  Verruckt hurled his grenade. Merlin watched as it reached the top of its arc and was then pushed along through the air. The grenade landed on Ave's haunches and bounced back towards her tail. The dragon was moving towards Merlin again and when the grenade detonated the cloud of smoke and burning phosphorus was behind the main portion of her body.

  Ave leaped straight up into the air. Merlin saw that the last few feet of her tail was on fire, burning fiercely. She landed with enough force to shake the ground. Merlin almost fell but in the last moment before she landed, he could see that the back section of her tail, the portion that had been burning, was simply gone.

  Ave turned to find out what was causing the agony she felt and Merlin used the distraction to create an illusion of himself, standing on top of the real him.

  {Nimue, can you hold a cloaking shield on me while I move around?}

  {Yes. Tell me why later. No time.}

  Merlin took a step back and saw his illusion standing immediately in front of himself. He pulled the ring on the grenade but held down the lever that would light its fuse. Timing would be critical.

  I need to goad her beyond whatever reason she has left, he thought.

  “Ave!” Merlin yelled, “You pathetic overgrown lizard. Why did you keep sending your mates out to do your dirty work? Were you trying to kill them off or were you just too lazy to do it yourself?”

  Ave roared and turned back towards Merlin, the pain from her incinerated tail forgotten.

  “I killed the first one when I was just a young boy. I guess you like your mates on the feeble side so you can control them. Otherwise how could a helpless twelve-year-old human have killed one?”

  The dragon began to rush towards the illusion of Merlin, far faster than he would've thought possible after watching her turn.

  Merlin slipped to one side. Far to one side.

  “I hear that nowadays you prefer humans for your mates. What's wrong? Your own kind doesn't want anything to do with you, or do you just prefer perversion?”

  Merlin loosened his grip on the grenade, and the spring-loaded lever flew away. A cloaking shield covered the grenade as he tossed it to the ground beneath his illusion of himself. He began moving away as quickly as he could, causing the illusion of himself to rapidly sink into the ground as he'd seen Verruckt do before.

  Ave struck just as the head of the illusion disappeared. She slammed her muzzle into the ground taking a huge bite of dirt, illusory Merlin, and grenade.

  Four, and five, Merlin thought.

  Ave raised her head to the sky and swallowed. Moments later a gout of white smoke forced its way out of her mouth. She tried to scream in agony but couldn't, as the necessary appendages for speech were already burned to a cinder.

  Ave made one final try at taking her opponents down with her. She broadcast the pain she was feeling to the minds of the three wizards, dropping them in their tracks. Her control was shoddy and her thoughts came through with the pain. As Merlin passed out he could hear her thinking.

  {Must retreat to my human body... Only way to survive... Take Vengeance!
}

  * * *

  Merlin woke and was sure only moments had passed. Ave was no longer broadcasting her pain and when he looked over, he saw why. Her head and neck were entirely burned away. He must have started recovering as soon as the dragon's body died, since there were still flames near the corpse.

  He staggered to his feet and almost fell over again when a surge of magic pulsed against them. He looked down and saw that he was standing on Praesagium's scale. He bent to pick it up and received a shock, magic arcing from the scale to his hand. He used his Sight to examine the scale.

  The portal spell, it can't anchor on Ave's corpse so it's moving to where we were trying to get it to go, he thought.

  He could feel that the spell was pushing power to the portal grid from his scale, but it wasn't receiving the power back. The cycle was broken and the spell was faltering. It was feeding the last of his own energies to the spell, and he was already light-headed.

  {Nimue!} he sent.

  A mental grunt answered him.

  {Grab your scale Nimue. Hold it in your hand, and come here quickly.}

  Nimue's head appeared above the rock she had taken cover behind. She staggered a bit as she moved towards him, and Merlin decided to meet her in the middle. He approached her and saw her hair rising in individual strands, her clothing arcing with tiny white flashes.

  He reached out his empty hand and she took it. Sighs of relief escaped from both of them. The power of the portal spell was now flowing from the cliff into Nimue, passing to Merlin through their joined hands, and flowing back out towards the cliff face from him.

  Nimue's hair still stood on end and within a minute Merlin felt his own rise to join it. Now the white arcs were passing from Nimue to Merlin and back again.

  “This is too much power,” he said. “We can't handle it.”

  “Use the spells I designed for this purpose. If we both use them, we might be able to keep it under control,” Nimue replied.

  Merlin steeled himself and formed the spells that Nimue had designed. Forcing the power of the spell through them kept it under control. He felt Nimue doing the same alongside him but when she finished, the power flows became unsteady. He could feel them ebb and flow, pulsing in an erratic manner.