Heir To The Nova (Book 3)

by T. Michael Ford

  “Let’s just say we’ve had some life-changing experiences since you last saw us. We’d love to tell you all about it, but we need to get you guys moving,” I supplied, hurrying them along.

  The two of them led us down yet more stairs, stopping every now and then at another set of doors to see if the residents were there. When we actually found people, they all asked the same questions; ‘who are you?’, ‘what are you?’, and ‘are you going to save us?’ But it was still easy to convince them after they got a good look at the two of us, the memories of the last tournament being one of the last good times most of them had of Xarparion.

  It didn’t take too terribly long for us to get to the second floor. Ranny and his sister went off to round up everyone else so we could talk to the teachers. There were three blue-robed teachers, two men and a woman who all jumped at our approach.

  “What the…who are you people?” one of the male instructors shouted nervously, preparing a ball of water in his hand. The other two teachers flanked him, doing the same.

  “Relax, we’re from the Enchanters Hall. We’re here to free all of you,” Maya said calmly, but forcefully.

  “Enchanters? We’re supposed to trust our lives to enchanters?” the robed female instructor questioned dubiously.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know; we’re the scum of the magic world. We’ve heard it all before,” I snarled, reacting to the look on her face. “Like it or not, the stone wall protecting this tower is going to be coming down in less than a minute. So you have a choice; follow us through the portal outside to safety, or stay here without a wall over your front door. Now we need you and your students to move!”

  The teachers stewed in that for a bit as more students started to gather around. Ranny came up to me. “This is everyone who’s left, Alex; we’re ready to go.”

  “Ranny! Why are you reporting to that enchanter? We’re still in charge of this tower, not them,” scolded the woman.

  “Sorry, teacher, but they are here to save us,” Ranny blurted out bravely, and then he turned to the assembly of students and raised his voice. “Alex is a good guy; he’s the one who won the tournament, and we can trust him.” Then he looked over at me. “The only problem is the wards in front of the main door were made by Master Tisdar, and he died from a ghoul bite. It will take us hours to take them all down safely.”

  Maya and I looked over the balcony rail at the entry area below. From this vantage point, nothing looked too out of place. Switching to mage sight, I instantly found twenty circles placed on the floor. All were ice spike traps that were set to go off by movement.

  I turned to Maya and talked to her through Winya. “Ice spike traps, twenty of them, set for proximity movement.” Maya nodded and walked over to one on the stone railings. She broke half of it off with her hands and almost no effort; then nonchalantly tossed it over the side, right into the middle of the traps. The stone shattering on the floor sent bits and pieces in all directions, and the traps cooperated by detonating in rapid succession with loud cracks. The ice shards each trap put out flew up into the air and, upon landing, caused even more traps to trigger. In a matter of seconds, all twenty were depleted and dead.

  Maya turned back to the teachers and students and smirked. “All clear; let’s go.”

  As if on cue, the front door swung open and Hons was standing there. “Let’s move it, people! We’ve been here too long already!”

  The students behind us all started scrambling for the door. Maya and I followed them out, nodding to Hons and his team as they took over. Outside, not much had changed. The Wind Tower was cracked open and I caught what looked like the last batch of wind users going though the portal. The druid girls were there standing off by themselves, so we walked over to them.

  When we got there, Nia took her normal place on my shoulder as we talked with the disgruntled druids.

  “What happened with you three?”

  “Wind users are very rude,” said Julia.

  “Jerks,” commented Lin.

  “They hated me, even without knowing I’m a dark elf,” Ryliss growled.

  Suddenly, someone behind us started screaming. I turned to see a sight I had hoped to never see again. A minotaur demon had just appeared out of nowhere and was goring a guardsman to death. Behind him, three more demons that looked like scarlet red boars with razor sharp, ten-inch tusks materialized in a puff of brimstone-scented smoke. The minotaur looked a lot like the one I had battled in my brief trip to the hell dimension, except he was smaller.

  Hons, who was bringing up the rear of the water wizards, literally started picking up the smaller kids and throwing them toward the portal. The other earth wizards with him were doing the same.

  “Get out of here, girls; we will deal with our red friends here,” Maya commanded. “Nia, get to the portal and protect everyone going through while we handle these things.”

  I knew the pixie didn’t want to leave but she knew what she had to do. With them gone and the demons still coming our way, we drew our weapons and readied ourselves. “At least this one is smaller,” I said.

  “Smaller? It’s bigger than Somnus, and you say it’s smaller?”

  “Notice I said smaller, not small.”

  “So how do we kill it?”

  “Well, stabbing it with its own horn worked for me.”

  “Sounds like a plan; you distract it and I’ll kill it.”

  Maya vanished from my side in a blink, leaving me with a pissed demonic minotaur to deal with. Just as the other one did, this one seemed to like bull rushing its target; but then again, it is a bull so that makes sense. But this time, I had my shield with me. Setting my feet firmly on the ground, I leaned my shoulder into the back of the shield and let the full weight of my gear work for me. He hit the shield like a knight’s charger full-tilt on. I heard a crunch as his horns snapped, and he slid stunned to the ground. I picked up a piece of horn and jammed it into his bovine ear canal. Before he could rise up and shake it out, a well-aimed hammer blow drove the horn through the side of the beast’s head; my hammer spike followed neatly behind and turned brain matter to mush.

  Off to my side, I heard Maya, “Aww, you killed it too fast; I didn’t get a chance.”

  “I have a feeling that scarcity isn’t going to be a problem,” I said, scooping up the other horn and sticking it in my pouch. Oddly, the demon wasn’t dissolving like it did in the arena plane; it just became another of hundreds of corpses on the ground. While I couldn’t see her, I knew that my dark elf had moved off to engage one of the boar demons that were battling with our guardsman. From the cries of dismay I was hearing, it didn’t sound like ordinary weapons were even able to scratch the demons. I moved my shield in front of a pair of guards who were trying to hold off one of them. “You boys tighten up the circle around the portal. As soon as those dwarves get back, we need to leave. I’ll take this pig.” They gratefully retreated closer to the portal. The boar, while not as strong as the minotaur, was built a lot closer to the ground, and seemed to be just made for hooking its tusks under my shield and tilting it up in order to slide under my defenses. A few heavy taps from my hammer convinced him that his conduct made for a very bad little pig. Finally, after he plowed into my ankles a few dozen times, I was able to sweep the spike end of my war hammer through an eye and into his skull, downing him for good. Thankfully, at least on this plane, the demons didn’t seem to be able to regenerate.

  Maya came skipping up, Winya in one hand and a handful of boar tusks in the other.

  “My first demon kills; these will make a nice trophy. These guys don’t seem to like Winya’s blade much. But I can see what you mean; they are amazingly strong and not the easiest to kill. I would hate to face a lot of them.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think these are very high level demons, but it’s disturbing that they are here at all from what my father tells me,” I said, walking back and tossing the remaining minotaur horn through the portal. Maya did the same with her tusks. All the students a
nd earth wizards were through the portal, leaving just the guardsmen, us, and an agitated Combat Pixie on this side.

  “Just waiting on the dwarves now, Sir,” answered Higs of my unasked question. We waited for about five more minutes; the group of us dispatching about a dozen undead that had wandered into our area.

  “Look, there they are,” Maya whistled in awe, and pointed. “Looks like they have company.” A troupe of black-clad dwarves came boiling around the corner of one of the low buildings, just past the towers. They were moving in a rough box formation with the dwarves in the center straining under the weight of several large crates, while the outer warriors fought off a hungry pack of ghouls that was dogging them. With all the milling about, I couldn’t count the exact number of dwarves, but it sure didn’t look like twenty. Fortunately, I caught sight of Elsa barking orders at the front of the formation. They appeared to be holding their own against the ghouls, but the real threat was from the skies. There was a cloud of red bat-like demons with membrane wings flying overhead and spitting fireballs down into the dwarf formation, screaming and cackling in high-pitched shrieks.

  “Higs, Nia, help them out with the ghouls; we will take the demons. Once finished, get everyone through the portal, even you.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  The Combat Pixie darted forward and centered a nasty fireball in the middle of the ghoul pack that toasted about half of them in an instant. The rest of the guardsmen waded in and helped lift the crates off the backs of the exhausted dwarves and ran them through the portal.

  Maya and I flew up to meet the winged demons. Winya’s crossbow clacked away softly as she strafed the first wave of three, tearing holes through their flimsy membrane wings and joints. Up close, these demons didn’t look that tough, but there were a lot of them. As usual, Winya in her sword form pared through them nicely, but my hammer didn’t really seem capable of dealing out a death blow. Oh, it hurt them alright, but it just wouldn’t put them completely down. Frustrated with my lack of offensive punch and tired of dodging fireballs, I dived in and grabbed one physically, ripping off a scythe-shaped claw in the process and stabbing it through the neck with it. The demon howled piteously as it plowed face first into the field below us. Using the claw, I dispatched several more, but never approached Maya’s body count. With the last one dead and spiraling down to the ground, we flapped cautiously back to back, looking around and assessing the situation.

  I contacted Rosa in my mind. “Is everyone through yet?”

  “Yes, just waiting on you two.”

  “Be there in a minute.”

  Maya swung around so she could see my face, but still scan for trouble. “Alex, something is bothering me,” she said uneasily. “If the Lifebane had flying demons at his command here, they could have taken out the two towers at any time; why didn’t he?”

  I looked at her and her deep green eyes widened, and we spoke at the same time.

  “Bait!”

  Below us by the portal, the hundreds of corpses in the commons that we had stepped over during the entire operation started to stand up. Eyeless and gouged beyond recognition by carrion birds, they still had the prime directive to kill, as they staggered ever closer to the blue ring.

  “Rosa, close and withdraw the portal now!”

  “Alex, it’s a trap! I can’t leave you two there!” Rosa cried.

  “You have to! We’ll be fine. We’ll find a clear spot out in the woods later and you can open the portal there; but close it now!” I saw the portal’s blue signature color fade and wink out before the first zombie reached the gate.

  “Just so you know, there is a very annoyed pixie here right now. Stay safe, my children,” Rosa sent. “Call me when you are ready for the portal.”

  Maya and I flapped lazily a few hundred feet in the air over the spot where the portal had vanished, watching the zombies below crash into each other and flail about impotently.

  “Ha!” Maya laughed melodiously. “We got all the wizards out of both towers, and the Lich was still too slow in springing his trap.”

  Suddenly, the ground shook and we could even feel the low vibrations through the air. Below us and slightly to our left, the cut stone parapets of the huge central tower seemed to flake off like stale pastry and fall to the ground a hundred feet below. The flat roof of the structure burst open and the entire top of the structure blew outward like a wet dog shaking itself; rock, wood beams and mortar spewing in all directions. Slowly emerging from the wreckage was a huge draconic head, easily three times the size of Dawn’s or Dusk’s. Wings followed; and to our amazement, a full-grown, white-hued dragon hoisted itself up onto the top of the tower remains. It roared a mighty challenge that shook every remaining structure on the campus. Since we were the largest things currently in the air over its head, I could see its huge plate-sized eyes track and lock on to us. Bunching up its massive leg muscles, tendons straining at the tension, it threw itself into the sky.

  “Run! Err…fly!” I shouted. From my brief glimpse of the monster and what I remembered from Rosa’s books, whites were tough guys. Unlike the sleek silvers, these dragons were much stockier and had shorter, thicker necks. Air speed and maneuverability would never match a silver dragon either, but they were built like brick privies. And they had all the prerequisite dragon parts; huge teeth and claws, nearly invulnerable scales and, of course, the breath weapon. A white’s breath weapon was comparable to a silver’s; but where Dawn’s and Dusk’s breath cones were highly variable for the situation, a white’s was more like a red dragon’s gout of flame–uncontrolled mayhem. It was a weapon that would pretty much freeze everything in its path indiscriminately; but then, they are truly evil and don’t really care.

  “Alex, this way,” Maya sent through our link with Winya. Looking ahead, I could see where she was headed, the huge pine forests outside Xarparion. We had built up a decent lead and it was holding for the moment, but a quick glance back confirmed that the white was following and pumping its wings hard. I could tell Winya was finishing up relaying my knowledge of white dragons on to my dark elf owl maiden.

  “So I take it this isn’t one of the nice dragons?” Maya sent sarcastically. “Any point in trying to reason with it?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Good,” she smirked.

  I paused, a little taken aback by that remark, but decided to fill her in with more information. “Whites are evil bastards, probably the least intelligent of all the dragons. But don’t underestimate them; a stupid dragon is still smarter than most mages. They’re basically the twins’ nasty cousins; either one of our girls could easily take this guy if they were full grown, but that’s not going to happen. Anecdotally, white dragons are probably the very critters that made you dark elves so afraid of dragons.”

  “Dark elves fear no dragon, Magic Boy,” she corrected me.

  “Oh yeah? You were pretty scared in my foster parents’ stable when you found out what the twins were.”

  “Do not confuse surprise and loathing for fear,” Maya said aristocratically.

  “Right… So what’s our plan?”

  “Plan? You think I have a plan?”

  “You always have a plan for these things,” I chuckled.

  “Really? You honestly think I woke up one morning and made a battle plan tailored for the highly improbable event that one day I would sprout wings and have to fight a dragon in the air?”

  “Um, yes.”

  She giggled a bit, which I thought was odd considering that we had a dragon trying to eat us at the moment. “Ah, my love, you know me so well. Follow me!”

  Dipping our wings, we dived into the forest below, gliding soundlessly through the trees. This was classic old growth, giant white pines rising 250 feet or more over the mossy, fern-covered underbrush. The bases of some of these grand trees were wider than my wingspan. I couldn’t imagine even a dragon wanted to hazard hitting many of these. As we dropped below the upper canopy, there was almost no breeze; and light only penetra
ted in occasional shafts of light stabbing down from above. Our eyes adapted to the lower light automatically, and I noticed small animal life, insects, and small birds, moving quickly out of our way. Soon the trees were so thick, we had to constantly shift sideways and tuck in our wings slightly, to continue to fly. Fortunately, this was exactly the type of environment that our owl wings were created for; it was actually fun while it lasted. But our descent had slowed us down considerably, and now our sharper ears could pick up the rockslide sounds of the big white passing overhead with his massive leathery wings. Circling, he headed back to the spot where we had first dipped down into the trees and started blasting the forest below, hoping that we were just hidden in place. The unfortunate trees where his breath weapon hit froze to the core instantly. The abrupt expansion of the liquids inside exploded the bark and small branches outward off the trunks like siege engine shrapnel.

  Still well away from the destruction, I watched as Maya slowed, flared her wings, and dropped soundlessly to the forest floor. She sprinted under a huge deadfall and I followed as quietly as possible. As soon as I joined her under cover, she ripped off both our helms, and threw herself into my arms and kissed me passionately.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” she gushed, practically dancing up and down like a schoolgirl.

  “Why, yes,” I deadpanned. “I have always wanted to tangle with yet another monstrously oversized evil dragon.”

  “I know, right? Isn’t this fantastic? Ok, are you ready for this?” she bubbled with a bit more enthusiasm in her voice than I was comfortable with.

  “Ready for what? I think we can get away if we’re really quiet…”

  She silenced me with a disapproving look from those emerald eyes and shook her head.

  “Alex, we can’t leave it running rampant around the countryside. What if it shows up at Sky Raven when we aren’t there? Or worse yet, supporting the Duke’s army? Right now, we have the odds in our favor; we need to put this mad dog down.”

  “You’re wayyyy too happy about this, you know,” I muttered accusingly.