by Matt Forbeck
Too late. Spark’s claws dug into my shoulder as he trembled against me. Too late!
The Dragon’s corpse had lost all its internal heat, without which its scales had lost their glowing luster. They’d faded from a fiery reddish-orange to the colors of a vicious bruise and the ashen tones of cooled magma. The creature’s teeth and claws seemed as sharp and dangerous as ever, and it wings beat at the air like great sails made of leather. A black, horrible gas curled around its snout, even as the undead beast looked out with its lone, whitened eye at the city it once ruled.
Kells must have spotted the Dragon’s corpse pulling itself up as Johan plowed the palanquin headlong toward it, still hoping to get there in time. He opened fire with the machine-gun right away, at the outside limits of its range.
Bullets stitched their way through the wreckage of Goblintown and toward the Ruler of the Dead, but the necromancer moved the Dragon forward to protect her with but a sweep of her wrist. The Dragon lunged into the bullets’ path, and the machine-gun’s slugs pinged and panged off its armored hide. The great beast didn’t howl in protest or flinch in pain. It just let the rounds bounce off it as if they were no more trouble than raindrops on a gentle spring day.
The Ruler of the Dead spotted the palanquin then and gestured toward it. The Dragon stared up toward the hurtling ride and stretched its bat-like wings wide. With a mighty leap, it flung itself into the air and climbed toward its incoming attacker.
“We need to get down there,” I said to Yabair. “Now!”
“This carpet can’t fall any faster,” he said with a snarl. “Unless you’d care to get out and push.”
If it would have helped, I would have done it. I considered lightening our load by kicking the guard off the front of the carpet instead.
We were close enough I could hear the steady stutter of bullets leaping from Kells’ machine-gun. I tore my gaze away from the crystal ball to watch the Dragon rise toward the palanquin with my own eyes.
Kells kept up a steady stream of fire, and Cindra joined in with her pistols, cracking out explosive bullets that tore tiny holes into the Dragon’s hide. Moira stuck her head out one of the side windows and blasted away with her own pistol, while Danto emerged from another window and let loose a spell that unleashed a massive explosion smack in the Dragon’s chest.
Kai pumped his fist to cheer on our friends, and Belle joined him with a whoop of her own. Yabair didn’t say a word. He just concentrated on pushing the carpet forward as fast as he could.
Me, I pulled out my wand and waited to see what happened.
Danto’s explosion enveloped the Dragon in a cloud of black smoke not even the crystal ball could see through. I couldn’t tell if the beast had been knocked from the sky or just blown to pieces. Or neither.
Johan didn’t leave anything to chance. He kept gunning straight for the cloud as if he could ram through it and smash the Ruler of the Dead flat beneath it. He howled in utter defiance of death the whole way down.
Then the Dragon emerged from the smoke. The beast already had its head cocked back, and as it lined up with the palanquin, it snapped its snout forward and let loose with a blue-black stream of decay.
I stared into the crystal ball and brought its vision around so I could see what was happening to my friends. The Dragon’s deathly breath enveloped the palanquin and bathed it in its lethal magic.
Exposed as they were atop the palanquin, Kells and Cindra took the worst of it. Cindra reached up to grab Kells, perhaps in some vain attempt to protect him, or maybe to embrace him one last time.
When the viscous gas touched them, it withered them away, aging them decades in an instant. Their skin wrinkled up and flaked away in the torrential wind, taking their whitened hair with it. They were dead before they had a chance to scream.
In the front of the palanquin, Johan didn’t fare much better. The Dragon’s breath caught him full on and aged him a full century all at once. His beard transformed into a snowy white, and wrinkles dug furrows into his flesh. He fell forward, in shock, and the palanquin banked with him, falling out of the sky.
Moira and Danto had ducked back into the palanquin, the interior of which had been screened against scrying. I couldn’t tell what had happened to them. I could only hope they’d fared better than the others, or they were doomed for sure.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kai said.
He was talking to Yabair, who had pulled the carpet into a steep bank to the right. “Away from that,” the guard captain said.
“You coward!” I punched the elf in the back. I couldn’t believe he was turning away from facing down the Ruler of the Dead. If we didn’t stop her here and now, we would soon run out of any chances at all.
Yabair ignored me. “We cannot take on the undead Dragon in an aerial battle,” he said. “As your friends just proved, it’s suicide.”
As if to punctuate his assessment, the palanquin crashed into the inside of the Great Circle at that moment. Built sturdy as it was, it bounced back instead of splintering to pieces, rolling over onto its roof as it fell into the pit where the Dragon had once been.
I stuffed the crystal ball into my pocket and readied my wand again. I was prepared to use it on Yabair if I had to.
“We can’t run away from this,” Belle said. She had her wand out and ready too.
“The Dragon’s breath ages the people it hits,” I said to her and Yabair. “You’re elves. You should be fine.”
“You and me would get turned to dust, but the elves would be just fine?” Kai shook his head in disgust. “Just as fair as the rest of our lives, I guess.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I said to Belle. “I won’t let you take on that abomination alone.”
“I’m not giving you a choice,” she said. And with that, she kicked me off the carpet.
I flailed around, windmilling my arms, desperate to find some way to hang on. The only purchase I could find was on Kai’s jacket. He’d spun around to try to catch me as I fell, which put him off balance too. The addition of my weight and momentum threatened to pull us both from the ride.
Then Yabair dipped the side of the carpet we were on, and Kai and I tumbled into the open sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I spoke the words to my fall-slowing spell as fast as I could and tapped myself on the chest. The trouble was the spell had been meant to keep me aloft — just me — and I had Kai to think of too. Whether I liked it or not, he had a death grip on me, and his extra weight hauled us both down hard.
Spark tried to help. He dug into my jacket with his claws and flapped his wings as hard as he could. He was just too small to do much good.
I started to say the spell again, for Kai this time, but glanced down as I did. The ground zoomed up at us fast — too fast. I gave up on the spell and shouted at Kai instead. “Brace yourself!”
Spark let go at the last instant. Kai and I slammed into what had once been the roof of a badly built apartment building in Goblintown. My spell and Spark’s help had slowed us down enough to make sure the landing wasn’t fatal, but it hurt. Kai’s injured arm meant he took it worse than me, and I expected him to howl out in pain. He remained silent.
Are you alive?
“I think so.” I had to work to croak out the words. Every bit of me ached, but at least I could feel something. “Kai?”
He still didn’t answer. When I managed to scrape myself off the collapsed rooftop, I saw why. He wasn’t moving.
I hauled myself over to him to make sure he was still breathing. I didn’t have time to be gentle about it, so I smacked him in the face. His eyelids fluttered open.
“What was that for?” he said with a snarl.
“Can you walk?”
He winced as he tried to push himself up on his injured arm, then stuck out his good one for me. I took it and hauled him to his feet. “That’s another I owe Yabair,” he said.
Spark circled down out of the sky then and landed on my shoulder. “They were
just trying to save us. If the Dragon hit us with that breath, we’d shrivel to dust.”
“Who was planning to get hit by its breath? It wasn’t any easier to survive the flaming version of it, was it?”
“Good point.”
I looked up and saw Schaef’s carpet zipping through the air, spiraling around the undead Dragon, keeping it off-balance. Alive, the Dragon would have roared with fury at his prey. His zombified corpse only groaned in frustration as it lumbered through the sky.
Belle peppered the Emperor’s corpse with spell after spell. None of them seemed to be doing spectacular harm to it, but each blast chipped away a bit more of the creature’s cadaver. Over time, she might have been able to wear the beast down enough to dispatch it, but I didn’t think the Ruler of the Dead would give her and Yabair enough of that.
“I got a plan,” I said, feeling my bones creak as Kai and I clambered across that rooftop and toward the pit from which the Dragon had risen.
“What’s that?”
“We find the Ruler of the Dead, and we kill her.”
Isn’t she already dead?
“We take her apart. Grind her into dust. Whatever it takes.”
Kai clapped me on the back. “I fully endorse this plan.”
I gave him an odd look. That was just the kind of thing Danto would have said, not Kai. He smirked at me. “I mean, ‘Right behind you.’”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Kai joined in for a moment, his hand still on my shoulder for support. Then his fingers clamped down hard enough to hurt.
I glared at him but didn’t cry out. We’d been in enough tight spots together that I knew better than to make noise when he got tense. “What?” I whispered.
“The Dragon isn’t our only problem,” he said.
Oh, no.
A low moan started nearby and grew. I glanced back and saw a pile of corpses that had somehow made it down from the top of the Great Circle start to move. They pushed themselves up on their hands and then got to their knees. From there, they climbed to their feet and began to shuffle forward again, their mouths open and emitting horrible groans. Every movement looked like it would have been agony had the creatures who made them been able to feel a thing.
I looked up at Spark. “I could use some reconnaissance.”
What?
“Fly up high and be my eyes in the sky. Let me know what’s happening.”
He leaped off my shoulder and wound himself into a spiral that led straight up into the air. That I can do.
I had no idea how far Spark could get from me and still speak into my head, but I figured there was no better time to find out. As he moved higher, Kai and I picked our way over the rubble as fast as we could, heading toward the place we’d last seen the Ruler of the Dead.
A part of me screamed at me that we were going in the exact opposite direction of the way we should. It informed me that it was only natural — smart, even — to run as far away from the Ruler as we could, but that was just the fear in my gut yammering. My head knew the real trouble was that there was nowhere we could escape to.
Zombies awake on the wall, sliding down into city.
I looked over my shoulder to see that he was right. The creatures had no fear of heights or death. They slid straight over the edge of the Great Circle, landing with sickening, wet crunches. If the first few dozens were destroyed in this way, I supposed they would only provide cushioning for those who came after them.
“What about the rest of them?” I didn’t shout up at Spark, as I didn’t want to reveal my position and draw the zombies toward Kai and me. The dragonet still seemed to hear me just fine.
Most are moving deeper into the city. They are not after you.
“Good to know.”
Kai gave me a curious nudge. I waved him off for the moment.
“Where’s the ruler?”
Standing near the edge of the pit.
I pointed in that direction. “We need to find her,” I said to Kai. “Now. She’s the lynchpin here, the master puppeteer. We kill her, this is all over.”
“Easier to make a plan than carry it out.”
I started legging it faster. “It’s less of a plan and more of an objective.”
I looked up at the dragonet. “Spark, can you get to Belle?”
Yes. The Dragon is chasing them out over the wall.
“Tell her to get back here and attack the Ruler of the Dead. We need her. Yabair too.”
I will.
Kai had lagged behind me. I waved for him to keep up. “You can rest when this is over.”
“I used to say I could sleep when I’m dead.” He glanced back at the zombies still spilling over the wall. Some of them were walking away from the impact now, and it would be only a matter of time before they caught up with us. “Looks like that was wrong too.”
I slowed down until Kai caught up, then slung his good arm across my shoulders. He grunted at me. “You’re a better friend than I ever was,” he said.
“You set a low bar.”
The land rose as we neared the pit, the rubble the Dragon had dug out of the ground protecting it. We climbed up the last bit of it and peered across the open gash to see the Ruler of the Dead standing on the far lip, the highest bit of ground around. Unfortunately, she was looking in the direction of the Dragon, who was chasing down Yabair and Belle, which meant she spotted us right away.
I cursed as I hauled Kai down behind the edge of the pit.
“You think she saw us?” he said.
“How could she have missed us?”
She saw you.
“You’re sure?”
I can see into the pit.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I put my wand in my left hand and my pistol in my right, and I crept up to the lip of the pit to see for myself.
Kai came right behind me, cradling the barrel of his shotgun in the crook of his injured arm. We reached the top of the pit and then popped our heads over at the same time, hoping that presenting multiple targets might confuse anyone inclined to shoot back at us.
The Ruler of the Dead had disappeared.
“Where’d she go?”
She’s circling around to your right, but don’t worry about her.
“She’s the Ruler of the Dead, and she’s hunting for us. What’s more pressing than that?”
Kai nudged me with his shoulder and pointed into the pit. The insides of it swarmed with zombies clawing their way toward the surface. There had to be scores of them, maybe hundreds, and they all looked hungry and mad. The closest ones were only an arm’s length away.
“Hello, son of Gib,” the nearest one said in the Ruler of the Dead’s voice. “How kind of you to join us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I stood up and fired a bullet into the closest zombie’s face as he reached for us. The creature’s head kicked back as its brains rocketed out of the back of its skull, and it tumbled backward, knocking the next few zombies behind it down the pit’s inside wall.
Next to me, Kai let loose with both barrels of his shotgun, and the head of the zombie nearest him disappeared in a black mist. The remainder of its corpse toppled over, taking its neighbors with it.
The rest of the zombies — every one of them in the pit — turned their heads toward us at once. They began to chant in low, guttural tones forced up through their rotted throats. At first I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Then it became all too clear.
“Join us,” they said. “Join us. Join us.”
“When Goblintown went down, it didn’t get all the zombies,” Kai said as he reloaded his shotgun. “Some of the dead were hiding in the tunnels below us!”
I shot the next three closest creatures. I didn’t bother to watch them fall back into the pit. “Or they were killed in the blasts, and the Ruler animated them back to life straight after that.”
“Does it damn well matter?” Kai blasted into the pit again, catching two zombies at once this time.
“Not a bit!”
I emptied my pistol into three more creatures and then smacked it against a rock to reload it as we retreated from the lip of the pit.
More zombies came curling up the other sides of the pit. If we didn’t move fast, they’d have us surrounded in moments. I glanced over at Kai, who had just finished reloading his shotgun again. “I got this,” he said. “I’ll keep them off you. Go!”
He didn’t have anything but his shotgun, really, but I didn’t have any choice. If I could get to the Ruler fast, I might be able to save us all, even him, but if I tried to haul him along with me, we’d all die.
I nodded my thanks at him, then sprinted off to my right.
The pit seemed bigger than I remembered it. Maybe the Guard’s blasts had widened it. Maybe the zombies just made every step around it seem longer. Either way, it seemed like forever until I came around the edge of it and spotted once again the Ruler of the Dead.
I had a spell on my lips already, but it died there when I saw her turn to greet me. I’d spied on her before through the crystal ball, sure, and I’d spoken with her through bodies she controlled. I’d never stood in her presence before, though, and it chilled me through.
“Surrender to me, son of Gib, and I will make your transition painless.” Her voice was clear, her diction precise, but it sounded dry as a desert tomb.
Every nerve in my body told me to turn and flee. I could outrun Kai. He’d slow them down for sure. Maybe I could get out of Goblintown, maybe even to the Dragon’s Spire.
And then what? Maybe I could fly away? But where? The entire city would soon be hers. All the land around it already was.
“Forget it.” I pointed my gun at her and fired.
She raised her hand, and the bullet stopped in the air before her and fell to the earth. I emptied the rest of the revolver’s cylinder at her, and every one of my slugs met the same fate.
She bared her teeth at me. “Painful it shall be.”
I brought up my wand to give that a try instead. I summoned up my mojo and put everything I had into a vicious blast I hoped would tear her apart. As I was about to cast it, she brought her hands together and then up.