Zeezle laughed out loud at the audible gulp the wizard made when he swallowed.
“The plan will require you to go, King Russet,” began Zeezle, “leading all the gargans and skmoes who have been gathering in Orendyn—there are thousands of them—and attack the wizard, where he is harassing Andwyn. Keeping the wizard occupied will be key here. Take as many of your men as you can round up quickly. Master Kruuga will send his man with you, so that the lot of you can pass through a tele-gate made between the two of them, if we need you, or vice versa. We don’t want what happened to Fark to happen again.”
“I’ll keep that fargin’ wizard busy, then.” Russet nodded his understanding. “You try to make sure my sister gets back here alive.” With that, the young king started calling orders to his men.
Zeezle blew the whistle that only Kelse could hear, and ushered Master Kruuga, Moonsy and Buzz away from the tree to the clearing, where they would mount the great wyrms.
They had to fetch the Paragon’s trident before anyone else realized it was just lying about.
Chapter Thirty-One
The king saw the wizard and the wizard looked tired
“You might be a king, but you’re not so admired.”
“True,” said the king. “But that is why you’ve come.
They’ll love me by your magic, or I’ll feed you to my wyrms.”
- The Weary Wizard
Vanx let go the part of him that was now the Paragon’s and concentrated on building a mental barrier between what was his and the rest. He needed to think inside that space and obey the Paragon outside it, for that was the only way to figure this thing out.
He soon realized that, since part of him was still sentient, he could reach into the Paragon’s mind, just as it was reaching into his. He could also reach into Sir Poopsalot’s mind, which was how he knew Zeezle was coming with the three-pronged sticker.
If this didn’t work, he didn’t know what they would do, for he was finding that most of what the Paragon knew was long forgotten, even by it. It was crazed, and it only lusted for the power of the dragon tears. Vanx remembered something, then he quickly dismissed the thought before it betrayed him.
He found himself slipping away. He started drifting into a dream about Pyra and him, and what he’d seen when he’d had her take him near the tower; but then something changed, and it was the Paragon’s memory he was in.
The Paragon was standing on the top of the Sea Spire’s door ledge, and after tracing a symbol on a square stone, the seamless door opened, and he stepped inside.
A memory that came from deep within surfaced then: it was of his father’s ship Foamfollower floating a few dozen feet away from the tower. Then the Paragon sat a gem set in silver, a dragon tear set in silver, Vanx realized, in a small, bowl-shaped opening at the top of a waist-high replica of the spike they were now standing inside.
It touched one of the six smaller, multicolored gemstones that were mounted in the stone surrounding the bowl, and there was a flash. The Paragon turned, and the door opened. Beyond the opening was a huge lake—no, it was just a big swell in a wide, flowing river. The air was crisp, and beyond the river was a lush, healthy-looking forest. The Paragon stepped out, and Vanx’s mind went whirling off into different childhood memories, mostly of his mother, and his life before he left Zyth.
After a while, he found himself again, or maybe Poops found him, for here was his familiar, mentally licking his face and warming his heart, like nothing and no one else ever could. Knowing his familiar was safe in the nexus gave him the only comfort he felt, for now the Paragon was scrutinizing him both with its physical eyes and with its vastly incomprehensible mind.
It was all Vanx could do to abandon thoughts of his dog and hide what still remained of him while orders were imprinted on him, and a middling-sized wyrm was tortured and shriveled before his eyes.
He was given the resulting shriveled wyrm to ride. Then he was ordered to retrieve the trident from the castle top and take it to the Paragon’s remaining wizard in Andwyn, where they’d rounded up more men to be dazed.
When he arrived at the castle and found that the device wasn’t there, he smiled. He had no further compulsion to continue searching for it, so he immediately returned to Dragon Isle, hoping in the deepest reaches of his brain that Zeezle was there and already had it waiting.
When his mindless dragon banked them around over Dragon Isle, once one of the most terrifying places in the world, Vanx saw it was now deserted. Then he saw the Paragon holding Gallarael, in human form, in one hand as if he was studying her.
In that instant, what little hope he had inside him fled; for his master was growing angry and about to pulp Gallarael in his fist. Learning that the staff never made it to the wizard only made him angrier.
Then the Paragon began to squeeze his rage into Gallarael even harder, and her-- their-- no, he had to suppress it. There was nothing Vanx could do but hide his feelings and watch as the first woman he’d ever loved was crushed with their child inside her.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Old Master Wiggins
was dancing for contest.
He did a flip, but then he slipped,
and tore off his partners dress.
- a Parydon street ditty
Russet and his new, far larger, group of fighters and spellcasters swept into Andwyn and were not fooled at all by the Trigon wizard’s Paragon imitation. A quarter of the skmoes and gargans with them hadn’t been fitted with Heart Tree rings, for there were no more left to distribute, so they were left vomiting and flailing in the terrible goo that came raining down from above. The bulk of the force, though, stayed within the protection provided by some new Zythian wizards.
The sky was bright and blue. Cloudless, but full of stunted wyrms. A few of the dazed, blue-eyed fighters were mounted on the bigger of them, loosing arrows tipped with the mind-numbing blue steel they all used.
On the ground, there were as many unturned men as there were already dazed, but the unturned were all in a pen, far stronger than the last one Russet had busted open.
His plea to the Zythian Command had been answered with a full score of the race’s best wizards, sword fighters, and archers.
Inda, or Anda, whichever of the twin skmoes that had survived the battle for the Heart Tree, had kept his promise to Russet and Vanx, and had gathered nearly five hundred of his tribesmen. The fae didn’t have enough Heart Tree-dipped spears and arrows ready for them, so they had few.
The best archers were asked to step forward and were given three silver-tipped arrows each. They were instructed that they were only to be used on enemy spellcasters and things in the sky. The red and green dragons weren’t there but could return at any moment, so the newcomers were told not to shoot at either of them. Russet said to try to use them on the wizard himself, or the stunted wyrm he had been riding since Zeezle and Kelse had drowned the black-scaled dragon in the sea.
A similar distribution happened among the gargans, but they had spears that looked like arrows in their hands. The swords were full sized to fae, but in the hands of the gargans they looked like daggers.
They even handed out some of Andwyn’s dragon gun shafts, stopping to dip the tips in the few kettles of molten silver one of the wizards had brought along. These weren’t Heart Tree leaf-tipped, but the silver had some mulched Heart Tree leaves mixed in, and a drop of Chervil Longroot’s blood. These weapons looked only slightly larger than a normal spear did in a human’s hands, and seemed perfect for the larger race.
Melting the actual shaft-launching dragon guns was one of the first things the wizards had done when they had taken the island in the first place.
The alliance of races appeared in waves, each teleporting wizard sending back the location of a proper clearing to the next, until a full third of their number were in Andwyn.
Those left to defend Orendyn were making new shafts. The Zythian wizards were going back and forth between the sward and the icy cold seaport, gath
ering the sharper leaves and all the bundles of silver-dipped cuttings the fae had to offer, but there was no enemy yet.
In Andwyn, toxic gouts of foamy blue spray rained down, only to be turned into ashy powder by the Zythian wizards and their protective barriers. Non-magicked shafts still came through, and there were blue-eyed dazers loosing them with terribly poor aim at the groups of allied races trying to establish some sort of position.
Even with poor aim, it wasn’t hard to find flesh in a group of charging fighters.
Humans, gargans, skmoes, and even a few Zythians were dying beneath the wizard and his force, and Russet was starting to lose hope. Not one spell thrown at the wizard had affected him. Of the third of the Orendyn force he’d taken, about half of them were dead or incapacitated already. It was foolish to continue.
He had an inclination to call a retreat, to regather and try again, but he also had the feeling that if they went to Orendyn, the wizard would follow.
He was running out of options and wanting to find a handful of dazers to put his steel to, but they couldn’t get near him. What Royal Wizards remained had recalled and organized the King’s Guard. They placed them around Russet like an unwelcome ring of well-armored protection. It was maddening, and nothing was going as planned.
Then three glittery-haired, gray-robed Zythian wizards appeared in the sky, hovering in a triangular formation around the partly broken illusion of the Paragon. The wizard was so focused on the destruction he was causing below that he didn’t even see them.
A silver-orange streak of crackling lightning formed between the three. The strand of power closed the triangle, and a harsh blast erupted. All three streams of power collided with the wizard and his stunted dragon at the same time. Russet jumped with elation.
It didn’t do as much damage to the wizard as Russet had expected it to, but the dragon was dead and starting to fall. The wizard was shaken up, though, and as he fell, before he could gather himself, a gargan from the crowd embattled with the wyrm-riding dazers launched a spear up and shafted the terrible bastard.
The wizard still teleported away before he hit the ground, but the spear went with him.
This caused a huge cheer to erupt, and soon the battle turned their way, for the wyrms abandoned the dazers, fleeing through the sky toward Parydon Isle as fast as their gnarled wings could carry them.
“Where do you think he went?” one of the Zythian wizards asked him.
“Parydon Isle, Dragon Isle, maybe, but not Orendyn.” King Russet actually laughed, for he’d felt little joy in the past few days. “I’d swear it on my father’s gravestone, if we ever live to bury him proper, that I saw that old bastard’s eyes fill with relief when he was shafted.”
He turned from looking at the sky where the wizard had just been, and looked at the glittery-haired, yellow-eyed Zythian. “I wonder if that was a silver-tipped spear. They haven’t done much to the wizards when they’ve been blooded by the tree’s silver, but that one changed somehow when he was struck.”
“Hopefully, he is bleeding out this very moment,” the Zythian said. “What do we do?”
“I think we go, one lot after the other, to Dragon Isle,” Russet replied. “Vanx needs our help. That fargin’ wizard probably healed himself and is gathering for another attack. If we go at them, with wizards like those three who just jolted his arse silly, they won’t expect it.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
She poisoned all the fair-folk.
Doomed them to their end.
That heartless witch, a frigid bitch.
Whats worse? She’ll come again!
They say she’ll come again!
- Frosted Soul
Zeezle saw that the thing had hold of Gallarael. It was squeezing her. Her legs were covered with blood, and she was limp. Through the green-scaled dragon he was riding, he urged Pyra to melt its head. They had the advantage of total surprise, and when the fire queen came dropping out of the sky blasting infernal dragon fire across the Paragon’s face, it dropped Gal.
Zeezle melded his concentration with his wyrm’s, and Kelse caught her. Seated behind him, Master Kruuga sent a sizzling purple ball of concussive force that exploded in the Paragon’s blistered face as they passed.
The Paragon roared out in anger and grew larger. The size of the wounds stayed the same, though, and before the red dragon could get fully clear of it, the Paragon batted Pyra across the sky with its long, spiked tail.
Zeezle stalled Kelse long enough to allow Moonsy to slide off and get to the ground. She ran to Gal with all the speed her little legs could muster.
Kelse sat gently down in a small patch of grass. It was then that Zeezle saw Vanx riding a gnarled sea-blue wyrm. He decided he had to trust his friend and banked Kelse around, launching the trident right at Vanx.
Vanx forced his wyrm down quickly and caught the enchanted weapon. He approached the recovering Paragon, to do what Zeezle could only hope was not to return the terrible device to the ancient blue shapeshifter.
“Ahh,” the Paragon finished wiping at his eyes and face. “You’ve brought--”
Vanx brought his submissive pruned dragon to a hover just before the Paragon’s giant face. But instead of watching Vanx hand the weapon to his new master, Zeezle felt his friend draw on Poops through the ethereal. When the Paragon attempted to stop him from what he was doing, Vanx barked at him and growled. Then Vanx teleported himself right onto the thing’s snout.
“How have you defied the power of the Tridastem? No human ever--”
Just as the realization that Vanx wasn’t fully human bloomed in the Paragon’s strangely human eyes, Vanx ran the three strides it took to cross its snout. Just before he jabbed the Paragon in the forehead with the trident, he produced a glimmering amber gem in the hand that wasn’t holding the dazer.
A dragon tear? Where did he get one? Zeezle was amazed.
Vanx roared out some unintelligible nonsense and was jolted as hard as the Paragon seemed to be when he rammed the three prongs through the shapeshifter’s scales into its head. Then Vanx dove into the open sky flipping and flailing as he went.
Zeezle saw that Pyra was coming back toward them. She looked like she was about to roast the Paragon’s arse, or remove a good length of the tail that had just lashed her.
Zeezle knew it was time. He had his dragon make a certain call, and the island beneath them came alive, like a hornet’s nest that had just been kicked. “Master Kruuga, would you be so kind as to stall his fall?”
The Zythian wizard complied, and Vanx’s imminent impact into the trees was narrowly avoided. He’d been thrown a good way and was leaving a trail of smoke from his flaming clothes as he plummeted. Master Kruuga did one better and raised Vanx back up, so that Pyra could fly under him.
The Paragon had leapt into flight, trying to avoid all the smaller wyrms that were suddenly nipping at it.
“What did you command it?” Zeezle called as Kelse flew close to Vanx and Pyra. “It is leaving.”
“I told it to flee me, but that isn’t why it is going.” Vanx shook his head twice, as if to remove the cobwebs from it. “It isn’t under my control.” He shook his head again.
“I’m good,” he answered the question on Zeezle’s lips. “Poops saved me, but the Paragon knows I know its name. It also knows I am no longer under its daze.”
Then where is it going? Master Kruuga spoke in the ethereal and Zeezle heard the words in his head as well as with his ears.
The Paragon was being swarmed by a score of dragonkind, and it dropped out of sight before it left the island. Then there was an explosion of blue light and several of the wyrms went arcing up and away from where it had gone down.
“There,” Zeezle pointed. The Paragon was carrying a flailing wyrm in each claw out across the sea. None of Pyra’s wyrms were following.
“It is going to fetch a true army of dazed creatures and kill us all.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” Zeezle asked.
; “You can tend Gal, and then join me at the Sea Spire.” Vanx forced a grin, and Zeezle wasn’t sure his friend’s mind hadn’t been scorched by the Trigon Daze like the others had, for he doubted Gallarael was even alive to be healed by the Glaive of Gladiolus.
It couldn’t bring one back from the dead, and as if to confirm this, Moonsy yelled out with such anguish and sorrow that Zeezle felt his heart sink. The rage that mottled Vanx’s visage was scary to behold. The half-breed and the queen of dragons both roared out in rage.
Then they turned and started flying, hard and fast, toward the Sea Spire.
“Go teleport Moonsy and the body back to the sward,” Zeezle told master Kruuga. “I have to see this through. Even if Vanx has gone mad, he had enough sense to draw on his familiar, and feel sorrow over the loss of his love.”
“He isn’t fully lost, then?” came the elder Zythian’s rhetorical question.
“No, but how much sense remains is yet to be discovered.”
As soon as Master Kruuga found the sobbing elf and Gallarael’s still form, Zeezle headed Kelse after Pyra and Vanx. It was all he knew to do.
***
Baru appeared on the throne room floor, shafted by a dragon gun spear thrown by a gargan woman. It stung his pride that this is how he would die, but as he faded, he saw the Paragon flash before him. The amount of angst and rage he felt radiating off of his king and master was intense.
The Paragon circled behind him, and yanked the shaft right out. The pain that tore through him was raw and deep. Then the Paragon put its blue-glowing, all-powerful hand on Baru’s head, filling him with dour magic. His wounds were healed instantly, and the bit of hope that he could finally die and end his part in this crazed god’s reign was quelled like a candle being dropped into a sea: a raging sea of blood and death, for that is what King Richard would bring here, now.
Baru knew this had all been for sport, so far. The Trigon had nearly three hundred wizards, with skill levels ranging from novice, to expert, to master, and a hundred thousand well-trained troops in Harthgar, if not more.
Paragon Dracus: The Legend of Vanx Malic Book Six Page 10