by Teddy Jacobs
But then a Rider swooped down on me, pushed at my shield and stuck his dead arm through.
Your magic protects you against the living, rider. Feel the kiss of the dead.
Its shriveled head pushed through my magical shield, its dry yellow lips pursed. Zuruck! I screamed with my sword, and the sword cleaved head and arm from body as the rest of the rider and steed became transparent and then vanished.
But it had taken longer for the spell to work this time, and around me the dark air grew even colder. They are becoming resistant, or we are weakening.
Carolina moved my blade for me, knocking new frujen away. They are growing stronger. The colder it gets, the more the sun is blocked out, the stronger they become. The more that come through, the more they can block out the sun and freeze us all. Our only hope is that Woltan and Elias close the barrier. Jona is with them, helping from the ground, but she is weak.
I spoke another spell. I dug down deep in myself, felt the energy of the forest around the forgotten city, of the trees and shrubs within. Sonnenlicht! Lebenslust! I swung my sword around, and the spell burst forth from it, life and light and sunshine and heat, and dragonfire burst from Yesenia’s mouth as she turned as well. I felt the freezing despair melt around me, felt the undead riders shield their eyes and the frujen turn away, blinded.
Carolina spoke to us then. To Elias and Jona and Woltan now, Yesenia. They cannot fight off the attackers and close the rift at the same time. They must be defended.
With blazing sunlight and burning dragonfire, we clove our way through the mass of frujen. Herr, their minds whispered at me. But they drew back or were burned away or cloven asunder as we moved forward. Still it was slow going. Yesenia could barely fly, for fear of touching one of the foul things.
I twisted around in my harness. One of the frujen was about to bite at her tail. Zuruck! The frujen was blasted back and faded into nothingness.
We could not go on this way.
We were surrounded, and no further to helping Woltan and Elias than we had been five minutes ago.
There had to be some way to protect us all, to make my shield meaningful. It needed to be hot, and bright, and burn away cold dead attackers. Finally, it hit me.
Sonne! I spoke the word of power through my whole body, through Yesenia and through my sword, willing the spell to be all around us, in a circle: and we were surrounded by a globe of burning natural light and heat.
Quick, now, Yesenia, I do not know how long I can keep this spell up!
Forward she flew, through the attackers, and they burned away or shrank from our approach. I reached around for more energy and felt energy from the trees and the sun itself flow into me and out around me, burning the black swarm away. I pulled more from the sun, and felt a connection form. A burning band of solar energy reached up from my magical sun to the real sun far above, burning through the frujen grouped above us.
The energy flowed through me and I was sweating now. The chill that had frozen me to my bones was gone. I pulled more energy and made the sun bigger, greater. Moving out, warming my friends and burning away or driving away my enemies. A growing ball of natural fire, so bright it was blinding, shone from all around me and my steed.
Up we flew into the center of the black swarm, burning them away. I pulled more, and the sun expanded, until we were a great burning globe of fire, in the middle of the sky – burning away the unnatural frozen night that the frujen had created. Slowly the unnaturally dark cold sky brightened into a natural hot summer day. We fell upon the remaining enemies, as we made for Elias and Woltan, who had flown high up in the air to find the rift.
And they had found it, and were flying in front of it, shielding themselves too from the frujen who were still moving through it. They had closed it half-way, and the frujen were struggling now to get out.
We flew closer to the gateway, and our heat came with us, our sun met the cold that rushed through the gateway. I pushed and pulled with the heat of the sun above us and pushed it toward the gateway. A funnel of liquid fire ran from my hand and Yesenia’s mouth, meeting in the cut in the air through which a frujen was emerging, a rider on its back. The frujen was covered with flames.
The frujen pulled back, and disappeared.
Now, Elias, Woltan! We can’t hold them much longer.
Together then. One Two Three.
SCHLIESSEN.
The rift got instantly smaller but refused to close … the poison remained in the air, the shrinking hole was a wound that would not heal, with cold fetid air escaping through it. I pulled from the grass beneath us, from the trees, from the tree people who fought far below, and from the city itself. To the poison and infection I sent healing green energy. Schliessen. The cut in the sky narrowed until it was no more than a red scar. But still it would not heal, and I knew any moment the wound would, could reopen and let out more pollution. I needed one last spell. Heilen. With the last word, the red cut in the sky, from which so much death and destruction had been birthed into this world in such a short time was healed.
The rift was closed.
Below, the battle raged. Around me, the remaining frujen regrouped. One of them, I noticed, was bigger than the others. And atop it was not a dead man, but a human rider.
How could I have ignored his presence? It must have been cloaked by all the death and cold around me, all the other frujen and their dead riders.
Gerard.
He did not look happy. Covered in leather, almost unrecognizable, he held his staff high.
Nacht!
I did not hear the word; I saw it in his aura.
I pulled more energy in, and diverted it towards Gerard. Tag!
I did not even have to look at Gerard to know his spell had been thwarted. I could feel his rage.
Carolina impinged on my consciousness than. Careful, Anders. You may think you have surpassed him, but you haven’t. He is more evil and dangerous than he appears. Watch out. Maybe I should have listened to her. But around us the second sun burned on. I felt like some kind of deity, on top of a dragon in the middle of it, feeling all the energy course through me. Perhaps Carolina was right, but it felt glorious. Surrounded by this second sun fed by the energy of the sun high above me, I felt invulnerable, filled with the energy that coursed through me as my dragon beat its wings high up in the air.
Somewhere nearby, someone very close to me screamed.
I felt and heard it over the sound of the battle. It ran up and down my spine, as cold as the dead frujen and their riders gathered above the forgotten city.
Karsten.
A great mass of the frujen were attacking my friend from behind, grabbing him with their foul stinking hands. Before we could react, they pulled him off his mount. Octavia swung around – I could feel her confusion, afraid as she was to spit fire for fear of burning him. Elias spun towards them, flying into the mass, Esmerelda burning them away. But then he too was engulfed. Elias, too…I could feel his pain; the poison was deep within him, burning at him, cold icy death taint. And my friend Karsten would bake no more bread.
Gerard laughed. Later I would remember the screams, and that laugh.
An alien dragon intelligence touched my mind then. It was Esmerelda, contacting me directly. I must bring Elias down, Anders, he cannot stay on dragonback. I will come back to fight without him.
After the shock I felt at last a rage well up in me that knew no bound. From Octavia too came a wailing scream. The last barrier between my blood and brain broke down then, the last barrier between my sword and the pixie within, between my blood and Octavia and Yesenia beneath me – we all became one in rage. I reached up and grabbed at the sun and sent it smashing down at Gerard, and I watched him burn: there was a look of panic on his face, but then with a twist of his staff he was gone.
Anders, there are too many of them still, and many of the forgotten city have been touched…
I reached out to all the friendly sorcerers of the city. I reached out to the tree mother, to all the
dragons around me, to all my friends, and to the wizards down on the ground below. In my mind I connected all the friendly wizards, all the dragons. I took control, and said a spell, sucked all the energy from the sun as I spoke. My word was purifying heat, and clean, out to all the frujen that surrounded us: brennen.
Never before had I felt so much power flow through me. The air burned, and my voice was fire; I was no longer a human — I was a dragon, spitting fire. I wanted to bite and snap but I knew that I must not touch the burning frujen, that their very touch was poison, that they were polluting the air that we breathed. Knew that only in burning them with clean fire could we eliminate the poison that clouded over the city.
And on they burned.
And when the last of the frujen was burned away and nothing remained but polluted ash over the city, then I slumped on my mount and felt limp and powerless, as if I too had burned away to ash. Relax little one. I will protect you until you get your strength back.
I felt her glide down towards the city below.
We must get rid of some of these ladders. But then I will take you down and they will feed you. Great magic requires food and rest. There is nothing left inside you that you have not burned up. Such great magic I have not seen since the last riders rode our kind.
I looked down and saw ladders on the walls again, with kobolds and trolls climbing up the walls. From below came arrows raining up to hit us. I was too weak to put up a shield. I ducked, and hid myself behind the dragon, and the arrows broke against Yesenia’s hide.
Then she was diving, and spouting flame, and three ladders caught fire, and broke, and there were sonic booms around us as the sound dragons blew holes in the enemy, and the fire breathers burned the ladders and the rams.
The battle must have raged on for some time after that, but I did not rage with it. I could do no more.
Yesenia flew me over to the other side of the wall, and I lost consciousness.
BACK IN THE WHITE ROOM
When I awoke in the white room I wondered for a moment if everything I had experienced in the last few days had been a dream; it felt like nothing had changed; but the feeling of calm and sameness was momentary. My senses came back to me, slowly, and I realized I was not alone in the hospital wing; I heard and felt the pain from the rooms around mine, and slowly, I got to my feet.
I still felt numb.
Not only were my hands and feet lacking in sensation, but my hearing was dull and my vision blurry. I sat back down on the bed. On the table next to the bed was a plate of food and drink.
The pain that throbbed in my head was not my pain, it was another’s, it was from Elias, and the others. Pain from the living. From the dead, I felt nothing but an empty ache. I felt small and weak, but realized I needed to eat now, before I walked out of the room.
I filled my mouth with a roll, chewed mechanically and swallowed, then drank a gulp of juice. I tried to think of nothing, to hear and feel nothing with my already dulled senses.
I ate. I drank. And I ate once again.
Slowly, warmth flowed back to my members. I felt tingling in what had been numb, and felt blood flowing throughout my body as warmth radiated out from my stomach.
I realized I was parched as well as hungry, and drank the juice in great swills.
We had won the battle. Had it been worth it? It was too early to see if we would win the war.
I wanted to get up and see my fallen friends. Karsten was gone. I could feel his absence, an ache in my stomach. He had been a better baker than a warrior, and would he have even ever been a warrior at all if it were not for me? Now it would be my turn to plant a seed in the forest.
There would be many seeds planted. I didn’t want to think how many.
Elias too was slipping. All the power he had in him, all the power around him in the city still didn’t seem enough. I wanted to put my hands on him and try to suck the poison out of him. To suck it out of all those who still lived and suffered next to me.
But I was too weak to even get out of bed. From somewhere far overhead, dragon song came into my mind then, soothing, and drowned out some of the pain from those still suffering all around me. Yesenia and I were one now, I knew, she loved me unconditionally, no matter how many people I had caused to die. We would never be separate for as long as I would live. She sang me a song I knew, a song I remembered from long ago, from my grandmother, or maybe my great-grandmother. A song I had sung with Kalle, one day that seemed so long ago, when we had trained on the packed dirt of the practice field. A song that I had forgotten then, but somehow my blood had remembered, and Yesenia had pulled out of my head now, or from my blood. A song that brought back memories of long ago, of pleasures long forgotten, of my childhood in the far north.
Sometime later I slept. And dreamed of a world without bloodshed, without evil lords, without battles and pollution and hate. But even as I slept, part of me knew it was just a dream.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Teddy Jacobs writes epic and urban fantasy for all ages from his home in New England. Learn more about his books at www.teddyjacobs.com.
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