The spells of concealment had prevailed, the dragon was unaware of their presence.
Falco held his breath as the dragon glided forward over the dragon stone. Then, with astonishing grace, it unfolded its limbs and alighted on the massive granite slab. In all his life Falco had never imagined anything so beautiful and so terrible.
The dragon was smaller than he thought it would be, its body no bigger than a slender horse. Its neck was fully four feet long, while its sinuous tail came to a sharp, spear-like point. Its limbs were heavily muscled, its movements fluid and powerful. Its entire body was covered in scales with armoured plates across its chest and shoulders and down the leading edge of its limbs. The horns on its head swept out from a brow that spoke of intelligence, and the expression in its eyes was laced with the promise of violence.
This was no creature of myth and legend, no fantastical beast born of the wild imaginings of man. This was a living, breathing animal and all the more impressive because of it.
The dragon took a few measured steps towards the centre of the stone. Then it stopped. Enormous talons tensed against the rock, gouging into the granite like spikes of hardened steel. Sharp teeth were revealed as the dragon curled its lip and took a breath.
Yes... It knew there something was here, it just did not know what.
As Falco grew accustomed to the sheer physical presence of the dragon he became increasingly aware of the force that the creature was exerting on his thoughts. Feelings and emotions began to ripple through his consciousness, glimpses into another frighteningly powerful mind.
There was suspicion and confusion as if the dragon was not sure why it had come to this place. It had been expecting to meet something, one of its own kind maybe. But there was nothing here. Or at least that was how it seemed.
Falco’s eyes shifted to a point just a few yards in front of the dragon where the shadowy figure of Darius stood ready to strike. Just a few more steps and the dragon would be in reach of his blade. To Falco’s senses the battle mage’s sword had begun to hum with magical force as if steel itself were not enough to cleave a dragon’s hide. Even beside such an awe-inspiring creature Darius did not appear daunted and Falco had a sudden revelation as to what it meant to be a battle mage.
Darius stood with his shield raised and his weight shifted forward onto his leading foot. His right arm was extended behind him, his sword angled back, ready to swing forward for a killing stroke.
Still the dragon held its ground as if it sensed the folly of taking another step. If Darius was going to strike the first blow he would need to close the distance that stood between them.
Falco felt the hum of Darius’s sword rise to a searing whine. He felt the combined strength of the magi closing round the dragon. They would wait for Darius to make the first move, but together they were almost ready, almost ready to slay the dragon.
As the truth of what was about to happen became real Falco had a sudden sense of what a tragedy it would be to kill such a magnificent beast. To strike from behind the veil of magic, like an assassin. Again the alien presence of the dragon’s thoughts intruded upon his mind. The creature was not in a place it would wish to be. It had come here for reasons it did not understand. This was a place of tragedy and death.
This was a place of humans.
Again the dragon took a breath as if it could smell what it could not see.
This was a place of humans.
Falco could feel the dragon’s hatred, as hot and black as its own obsidian heart. The force of it crushed all other thought from Falco’s mind. How could anything live with such loathing and not be driven insane?
Suddenly Falco knew that it was true.
Black dragons were mad.
He found himself wishing that Darius would strike. That he would cut down this apparition of dragonkind before it killed them all. But then, just when he thought he had plumbed the depths of the dragon’s malice, he sensed a hot spark of sadness burning at the creature’s heart. It was a spark of grief so terrible that tears instantly welled in Falco’s eyes and he paused in his wish to see the dragon dead. As he struggled with the overwhelming sense of desolation he found himself thinking of an ancient proverb.
The world knows no emotion to match a dragon’s grief,
Save perhaps a dragon’s rage.
Through his tears Falco saw Darius edging forward, taking slow and steady steps to bring the dragon within the reach of his pulsing blade. From the cliffs around him the magi had cast their web of energy. As long as the dragon remained unaware of their presence it would not be able to break free, but still it seemed to sense something. It tried to step back but the magi’s invisible force restrained it. It tried to spread its wings, but found them fettered. Confusion and fear flared in its mind as Darius prepared to strike. Just one more step and the dragon’s head would be cloven from its neck.
‘Wrong!’ thought Falco. ‘This is wrong!’
Darius was about to strike, but before he knew what he was doing Falco leapt forward.
‘NO!’ he cried, and even as the word left his lips he knew he had made a terrible mistake.
The dragon’s head snapped up towards him and the fury in its gaze was like a physical force.
‘What have you done?’ cried Meredith beside him. ‘You have broken the spell of concealment! By the stars, what have you done?’
Falco could not answer; he could not move. He could not look away from the creature staring up at him. At the edge of his vision there was a sudden rush of movement as Darius lunged forward, but Falco’s warning had broken the spell that blinded the dragon.
There were humans here.
It could see them now.
With astonishing speed the dragon lurched back as Darius’s sword flashed towards it. The battle mage’s blade sliced through the scales at the base of the dragon’s neck, but the cut was shallow, the dragon was barely wounded. Darius tried for a second stroke but the dragon lashed out with its tail, the spear-like tip whipping towards the battle mage with lethal speed.
Darius parried the tail with his shield and ducked away from the dragon’s savage jaws. But then the dragon attacked in earnest and Falco could not believe that anyone could survive such a savage onslaught. The dragon attacked with the speed of a panther, the talons on its front paws swiping with such violence that any one of the blows would have killed a normal man, but Darius simply gave ground, whirling backwards until it was his turn to attack.
Smacking aside the dragon’s muzzle with his shield he tried again to open the creature’s neck. The dragon twisted to avoid the deadly blade then, with a sudden flick of its paw, it sent the battle mage’s sword flying from his grasp.
The dragon’s teeth reached for him once more but Darius extended the palm of his hand and a bolt of searing energy burst forth. The dragon reared back in pain as flesh and steel-hard scales were blasted from the base of its jaw and Darius made a dash for his sword. He was just closing on it when the dragon caught him with a swipe of its taloned paw.
Darius took the blow on his shield but even so the force of it sent him tumbling across the dragon stone. He grabbed his sword and spun to his knees just as the dragon sent a gout of searing flame towards him. Darius raised his shield and the flames seemed to writhe across the surface of a bubble that had formed around him.
With its foe cowering behind its shield the dragon sought to rise into the air, but as it did so it encountered the restraining power of the magi and was thrown back down onto the slab of black granite.
For a second the mighty beast appeared beaten, forced to its belly on the stone, but dragons are not easily subdued and the strength of the magi’s spell had been undermined by Falco’s warning. With a great effort the dragon pushed itself up from the ground and stabbed its gaze into the shadowed ledges rising up around it. And now, with its will focussed, it could see its shadowy assailants, seven magi staring down upon it, the fear and the strain showing on their faces.
Now on its feet the d
ragon looked up as if it was trying to decide which of them it would kill first. Maybe it sensed weakness as it settled on one to its right. Expanding its chest it took an enormous breath then opening its mouth it exhaled a jet of writhing flame. The column of fire shot towards the terrified man and the mage raised his hands in a futile attempt to ward off the flames, but there was no need.
Back on the dragon stone Darius had reached out and formed a dome of protective light over the man. The dragon’s flames slammed into the dome before dissipating harmlessly into the cool evening air. The mage breathed a sigh of relief, but the damage was done, his concentration had been broken, his contribution to the restraining of the dragon had ended.
The dragon’s head snaked round to look once more at Darius while, on the ledge directly above them, Morgan Saker’s lips were moving rapidly as he tried to summon enough power to kill a dragon. He knew he did not have enough time. The last time he had killed a dragon it had taken him two weeks to prepare.
But still he had to try.
Darius stepped to the side as the dragon turned to face him. Then suddenly it leapt into the air, and this time the energy restraining it was not enough to hold it down. It rose up above Darius and was about to cover him in flames once more when the battle mage suddenly laid his sword across his shield. Inside his helmet his eyes closed with a sudden frown of effort and from the edge of his shield an arc of light shot forth. The dragon convulsed to one side in an effort to avoid the attack, but the shining blade of light scored its chest and burned a foot-long slash in the membrane of its right wing.
Darius darted forward as the dragon crashed to the ground but before he got close enough to strike, the point of the dragon’s tail slashed across his leg finding a gap in the armour at his knee. Pitching forward the battle mage turned the fall into a roll and as he came back to one knee he swung his sword inflicting a deep cut across the dragon’s shoulder. The dragon roared and leaned back to avoid another attack and Darius’s blow went wide.
Rising to his feet Darius stumbled on his injured knee and the dragon caught him with a massive blow that struck him full in the chest. The battle mage was sent flying through the air. He slammed into the rocks at the edge of the dragon stone and fell flat on his face. Blood flowed onto the black granite and Darius did not get up.
With a single beat of its wings the dragon swooped in for the kill. The injury to its wing made its flight awkward but its adversary was going nowhere. Darius Voltario was about to die when the emissary attacked the dragon from the rear.
With all his might the Knight Adamant hacked at one of the dragon’s hind legs. The strike was a good one and the emissary’s blade bit into the creature’s flesh. The dragon gave a terrible roar and swung round to face this new foe.
Standing on the ledge beside Falco and Meredith, the emissary had watched the battle unfold. But when it became clear that the fight was turning against them he leapt down from the ledge and descended the rocks as quickly as he could. He had been too late to prevent the attack that felled Darius but now he braced himself as the dragon spun to face him. As a knight of Illicia the emissary had faced several demons but this was the first time he had faced a dragon and, while it did not radiate the same crushing sense of evil, the dragon was every bit as terrifying.
The emissary held his sword in two hands. He had no armour, no mystical powers to call upon. If the dragon chose to attack with fire he would burn like a living torch. The dragon’s tail whipped forward and the emissary ducked as it sliced the air above his head. He dodged back as the dragon tried to fell him with a ferocious swipe. Twice the dragon’s talons scoured the air around him, but as it went for a third swipe the emissary attacked with his sword. The blade cut into the tough webbing between the fingers of its paw and the dragon hissed in pain. It was expanding its chest, ready to incinerate the emissary, when a ball of blue flame exploded against its ribs. A second burning sphere punched into the side of its face.
The magi had given up on their attempts to restrain the dragon and had finally conjured enough energy to launch an attack. But they were not battle mages and the damage they inflicted was pitifully weak. The dragon was simply enraged to further heights. It turned its back on the emissary, took three bounding steps, and leapt into the air towards the nearest of the magi. The man tried to summon another attack but the dragon flapped its wings and was on him in an instant. With its great jaws it tore the man’s head from his shoulders and threw his headless body down onto the dragon stone.
More burning projectiles struck the rock around it, but the dragon seemed to know that they could not harm it. It kicked off from the ledge and soared towards the next magi. The man turned to run for cover but the dragon opened its mouth and flooded the rocky ledge with flame. The Castle of the Winds echoed loudly with screams of agony as the man was consumed by fire. Moving on, the dragon was swooping towards the unflinching figure of Morgan Saker when a bolt of significantly greater power slammed into its side.
In mid-flight the dragon keeled over to see where this new and unexpected threat had come from. It came to rest on a pinnacle of rock and focussed its burning gaze on two young humans standing on a ledge. One wore the robes of a magic user, the other looked pale and pathetically weak.
Both were about to die.
Falco looked down as the dragon’s head swung round to look at them. Beside him Meredith stood gasping and exhausted, as shocked as any by the energy he had just unleashed. They had watched the battle like the unwilling audience of some terrible play, but now the dragon was looking at them and they knew the violence that had held them spellbound was about to fall upon them.
‘RUN!’ shouted the emissary as the dragon launched itself towards the two youths. ‘FALCO... RUN!
Falco turned from the apparition of death surging towards them. There were deep cracks in the rocks behind them. If they could get into them before the dragon arrived they might just escape the flames. He made to run then stopped. Meredith was frozen to the spot. The apprentice mage just stood there, too terrified to move.
With the strength of desperation Falco grabbed Meredith and shoved him towards the deep crevices behind them. Meredith stumbled in a daze as Falco drove him towards the safety of the cracks. He had barely managed to thrust him inside when he heard the, ‘whoomph... whoomph’ of the dragon’s wings.
Hearing the rush of a great indrawn breath he ducked inside the crack, pressing himself in as far as he could go. For a second he was aware of Meredith’s sobbing breath close to his ear then the world exploded in a fierce roar and Falco screamed as a terrible burning pain flayed the skin from his exposed shoulder, the flames writhing around his neck and face.
The emissary looked up in horror as the dragon spewed flames over the ledge on which Meredith and Falco had been standing. But the flames were suddenly extinguished as the dragon was yanked backwards and thrown once more to the dragon stone, cast down by the force of a father reaching out to protect his son.
The black eyes of Morgan Saker bore down upon the dragon as if he had the strength to kill it by the sheer force of his will. Unfortunately he did not. He knew it, and so did the creature looking up at him. In truth, there was no one now who could stop the dragon. It was going to kill them all.
Falco slumped to the ground as the brightness of the dragon’s fire was suddenly quenched. He knew they should be dead but somehow they were not.
His mind was flooded with pain and he shook uncontrollably, but still he had to see. It was he who had ruined the trap that would have seen the dragon dead. He could not hide away in darkness while others faced the death that he had brought upon them. Too faint and nauseous to stand, he crawled slowly back to the lip of the rocky ledge and looked down upon the dragon stone.
To one side the corpse of the headless mage lay near the edge of the thousand-foot drop. At the base of the rocks on the opposite side lay the armoured body of Darius, lying in a pool of blood, unmoving. Thirty feet above the lifeless battle mage Morgan Sak
er looked down and his eyes burned with a hatred to match the dragon’s own.
The dragon advanced with slow deliberation. It glanced at the emissary who moved to stand in its path and Falco wondered what kind of courage it must take to stand your ground in the face of certain death.
Even through the pain that wracked his body Falco could sense something of the dragon’s mind. It was going to kill the emissary, but what it really wanted was the mage that stood on the ledge above. Morgan Saker was the embodiment of everything it hated, everything that had driven it to the point of insanity. It would revel in the mage’s death, but the emissary blocked its path.
Falco watched as the emissary lifted the silver pendant from around his neck. He raised it to his lips, kissing it lightly before allowing it to fall. Then he readied his blade and prepared to meet his end. The dragon surged forward, its jaws gaping, its talons spread wide to strike down its human foe, and Sir William stepped forward to meet it, but before the combatants could clash a crackling bolt of energy shot past the emissary’s shoulder and slammed into the dragon’s chest. The dragon roared in pain as its ribs were laid bare by the attack that left a smoking hole in its flesh.
This was not the feeble power of the magi, this was power of an altogether greater magnitude. This was the attack of a battle mage.
Feeling like he was about to pass out Falco looked behind the emissary to see where the attack had come from. At the back of the dragon stone, Darius was getting to his feet. The young battle mage had shed his helm. His sword and shield were gone, but he had never looked more dangerous. One side of his face was covered with blood and he was hunched over several broken ribs. He limped on his wounded knee, but still he advanced.
Recovering from the attack the dragon looked past the emissary to the enemy it had thought vanquished. Its rage soared to a blinding pitch and it opened its mouth to cover him in flames, but Darius extended his hands and unleashed another fearsome bolt. Again the dragon stumbled back coming ever closer to the edge of the dragon stone and the sheer drop behind it, and still Darius came on. He ducked as the dragon’s tail whipped towards him, opening a gash on his cheek.
Battle Mage Page 9