Dragon Slayer 4

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Very well,” Arieste said with a nod. She caught my hand as I strode toward the open door. “You be careful, Ethan.” The concern in her voice matched the worry sparkling in her eyes. “If you push yourself much harder, you could collapse.”

  “I promise I’ll take it easy,” I said, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “After all, I’ve got four bad-ass women to keep an eye on me.”

  Arieste released my hand with a nod, and I stepped through the open door into the tunnel beyond. The rising water had soaked our torches, so Irenya joined me at the front of the group. I held her hands and fed her magic as she summoned a thread of fire to her fingers. Instead of releasing it in a burst of flame, she managed to let the power slowly trickle out, which kept the fire burning like a torch as we walked down the passage.

  Irenya’s fiery hand-torch cast a fifteen-foot globe of light around us. We walked down another tunnel lined with stone shelves, and upon the shelves sat more of the white and black stones from the previous corridor. The water escaping from the trapped chamber ran through a gutter along the left-side wall, and the air filled with a gentle trickling sound that soothed my ragged nerves.

  Every few steps, I used the Mark of the Guardian to scan for magical traps. Twenty yards from the door, I found another of the golden gemstone “laser beams”, which we stepped over with ease.

  As I helped Letharia step over the trap, I felt a tremor in her hand and heard the chatter of her teeth. I was surprised to find her lips were blue and her face pale. Rizzala’s face was strained, her jaw pressed together in a tight line, and she moved more slowly than usual.

  “Shit,” I hissed as I realized the problem. The ocean water had been ice cold, and Letharia and Rizzala didn’t have Arieste’s ice magic to shield them from the effects of the chill. Irenya had been using her fire power since leaving the room, and that had driven the cold from her body.

  “I’m so used to this fire and ice that I totally failed to think how the cold would affect you,” I told the two women. “Let me give you some fire magic to warm you up.”

  “Certainly,” Rizzala said, an eager note in her voice. I remembered that she had been the one to ask for a taste of Irenya’s fire power back in Whitespire. Her magic was purely defensive, so she’d been eager for something with an offensive edge.

  Letharia seemed hesitant at first, but a fresh bout of shivering made up her mind. “O-k-k-kay,” she said through chattering teeth.

  “I know it didn’t work so well back in Whitespire,” I said, “but there’s no space for me to turn you into dragons in here. I’d like to give it another try to see if I can make it work without turning you into dragons first.”

  I drew the black gemstone from my pouch and touched it to the side of Rizzala’s neck.

  “Here goes,” I said with a grin.

  I drew in a deep breath and tapped into Rizzala’s darkness magic. The shifting, sprightly power coursed through me with a vivacious energy, but I’d learned how to locate and control it. The skin along my arms and hands began to shift color as I poured the power down my arms and into Rizzala. It was just a trickle, enough to activate the gemstone but not enough to turn her into a dragon.

  Rizzala closed her eyes and opened her mouth in a quiet sigh as the magic surged into her body. Her skin began to change color along with mine, and deepened from a dark sepia color to the same deep grey of the stone walls.

  “Get ready,” I told her as I activated the fire magic within me and poured it into the gemstone along with the darkness power. Rizzala stiffened and her jaw clamped shut, but she didn’t flinch or break the contact. She gave a very dragon-like growl as the gemstone fought my efforts to infuse her body with the fire power. For a few long seconds, it was my will pushing against the crystal facets of the black gemstone, then there was an audible snap in my mind and the resistance gave way.

  Rizzala let out a gasp as the fire magic flooded her body, but it was one of delight and surprise rather than pain. The tension in her face and body drained away, and her expression turned to one of wonder.

  “This feels amazing!” she breathed. She shot Irenya an awe-struck smile. “This is how you feel all the time? Such power, such fury, a force beyond control!”

  “Pretty damn awesome, if I say so myself,” Irenya said with a grin. She reached out a hand and entwined her fingers with Rizzala’s, and I felt a surge of power from both of them as they summoned fire to dance between their fingertips. They both let out simultaneous gasps that echoed with a near-sensual delight.

  The fire faded from Rizzala’s fingers as the thread of magic I’d given her ran out, but her smile never waved. She pulled her hand back to her face and stared down at it in wonder.

  “Your turn,” I told Letharia. “Ready to get all warm and tingly?”

  “Ooh, I can think of a lot of fun ways to generate body heat,” Nyvea purred.

  “Ethan, if I may make a suggestion?” Irenya said.

  I shot a glance at the short, curvaceous redhead. “What’s up?”

  “When you tried to pass the acid magic into me back in Whitespire,” she said with a frown, “it felt like the two magics warred with each other. I could be wrong, but what if there are certain powers that do not mix?”

  “Arieste didn’t have a problem with your fire magic,” I said and scrunched up my face in thought.

  “All I know is how it felt,” Irenya said with a frown. “There was a sharp, biting pain, and my mouth was filled with the taste of metal.”

  “That’s the acid magic,” I replied with a nod. “That’s how it feels.”

  “Still,” Irenya persisted, “I did not like how the two magic powers mixed. It didn’t feel right, though I do not know how to explain it.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “You’re the expert on fire magic.” I turned to Letharia and drew out the green gemstone. “How about ice instead? It will stop you from feeling the cold, even if it doesn’t fully warm you up.”

  “I-I think I’d prefer that,” Letharia answered as she pulled down her borrowed dress to expose her right shoulder. “Less chance of pain that way.”

  “Sounds good.” I touched the stone to her shoulder, then tapped into the acid magic. The biting, metallic-edged power surged through my body with that same devouring force I’d felt when melting through the door, and I gritted my teeth as it burned every cell in my arm, hand, and fingers on its way into the gemstone. Again, I poured just enough of the magic to “open the conduit”, as I’d come to think of it. Just as Letharia’s pale skin began to take on a hint of green, I added Arieste’s ice magic to the mix.

  Letharia flinched from the chilling shock, but I didn’t release my grip on her shoulder. I felt more than heard a sizzling in my mind when the two powers met. The gemstone’s resistance was firm, and when I tried to push the ice into Letharia’s body, the acid would corrode it. But I’d had enough practice with the ice power to know how to wield it. It was hard, unyielding, firm, and it would not give way before the acid. There was the audible snap in my head, and the light shining from Letharia’s gemstone changed from deep emerald to a paler, lighter green.

  The effect was immediate. Letharia stopped shivering, and her eyes went wide in surprise as she raised her hand and studied the thin layer of ice that had formed on her fingertips. Laughter burst from her mouth at the sight.

  “Fascinating!” she said, her voice filled with wonder.

  I broke the connection after I’d infused her with enough of the ice magic to drive back the chill. Letharia and Rizzala stared at Arieste and Irenya with wonder in their eyes. I knew exactly how they felt, because it was the same way I felt every time I got a new magical ability.

  “Shall we continue?” I asked as I put the gemstones away. Now that I had stopped using magic, the exhaustion had returned and I could feel my body growing tired from the strain. Arieste was right, and I needed to rest soon or else I’d run the risk of burnout. “I’m ready for a bit of sleep.”

  “Agreed!” Ir
enya added.

  “Let’s do this,” Rizzala said. Her face had lost its usual seriousness, and an elated, almost youthful glee sparkled in her eyes.

  “After you, Lady Irenya,” I said as I stepped aside and swept a bow for Irenya.

  “Why thank you, Sir Ethan,” Irenya said with a wry grin.

  Together, the redhead and I led the way down the corridor, with Irenya’s fire to light the way. The Mark of the Guardian revealed no magical traps as far ahead as I could sense, so I focused on trying to spot any mechanical traps. I didn’t know exactly what to look for, but that didn’t stop me from giving it the old college try.

  To my surprise, the stone floor soon grew uneven and began to sag in places. The tunnel dipped into a gentle decline, which ran for twenty yards before the stone seemed to drop away. The light of Irenya’s hand shone on what looked like a thick coating of mud on the path.

  “Hold up,” I said. Something about the mud made me hesitate. I unslung my fireman’s axe from my back, gripped it by the metal head, and used the wooden handle to probe the mud. Sure enough, my axe handle sank deep beneath the surface, and a soupy mixture of water, sand, and dirt bubbled up from the hole I made.

  “Quicksand,” Letharia said from behind me.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the dark-haired woman and found her lips pressed into a tight line, her brow furrowed with worry.

  “There was a lot of it back in my…in Zaddrith’s swamp,” Letharia explained. “Even the murlocs and serpents knew to avoid the worst of it.”

  The light of Irenya’s fire-edged hand illuminated the passage for fifteen yards, but I couldn’t see where the quicksand ended and the stone continued.

  “Can you light up the way ahead?” I asked Irenya. “We need to see how far this quicksand stretches.”

  “Gladly.” Irenya thrust her hand straight out, and a pillar of fire burst from her fingers. The flames shot out for forty yards before dissolving into puffs of smoke. In the light of the blast, I’d seen where the stone path continued.

  “The quicksand stretches for about twenty-five yards,” I said and shot Rizzala a grin. “There’s no way any of us can jump that far, not even you.”

  “It seems a strange trap for the Elmentian priests to set,” Irenya said.

  “It’s not a trap,” Letharia replied with a shake of her head. “You see how the ground slopes downward, where it’s uneven. That’s damage that could only have been caused by the shifting of the current far below, the current that’s causing the quicksand in the first place.”

  “Should we go back, then?” Irenya asked. “See if the other door leads us to another way around.”

  “That riddle made it pretty clear that ‘honor guides your steps from danger’,” I replied. “Who knows where the other door could lead.”

  “Ethan’s right,” Arieste put in. “If the stone tablets are telling the truth, this is the way to go.”

  I studied the muddy ground and pondered what to do next. In her dragon form, Rizzala could have jumped across the gap easily. After all, she’d leapt over Whitespire’s city wall with a single bound. But once again, the corridor was too narrow and short for her dragon body to fit.

  I contemplated asking Irenya to use her fire to harden the mud to clay, but that might be too fragile a surface for us to cross. Then I caught sight of the water trickling from the cracked gutter into the quicksand and the solution became perfectly clear.

  “Arieste, you remember what you did to cross the Iron River in Ironfast?” I asked.

  The platinum blonde nodded, and her eyes filled with understanding. “Of course! An ice bridge should be the perfect solution here.” She pointed to the gutter. “We won’t need to pull condensation from the air to form ice because we can use that and the water in the mud to form the ice.”

  “Think you can make it strong enough to hold us all?” I asked.

  Arieste’s brow furrowed in contemplation. “Right now, as tired as I am, there’s a risk that I’ll burn myself out trying.”

  “But you won’t be doing it alone,” I said. “You’ll—“

  She held up a hand. “If you’re going to suggest that we do it together, get that idea out of your head right now. Trust me when I say that you shouldn’t do it either. It takes a lot of effort to summon that much magic, and you’ve already pushed your body too hard for one day.”

  “I was going to say that you’ve got three people to help you,” I told her with a grin, and gestured to the other women. “Letharia’s already familiar with the feeling of ice magic.” I turned to Irenya and Rizzala. “What do you say? You up for a try?”

  “Yes!” Irenya said, and her amber-colored eyes sparkled with delight.

  Rizzala nodded. “I’m game.”

  I drew out Irenya’s gemstone first and touched it to her neck, then poured fire and ice into the stone at the same time. There was a bit of struggle at first, but I had already mixed magic back in Whitespire, so the resistance soon faded. Irenya’s eyes went wide as fire and ice swirled around inside her body.

  “This feels…so weird!” She gave a little giggle. “Like I’m hot and cold at the same time.”

  When I repeated it with Rizzala, the warrior woman took the new magical ability with a bit more stoicism. She managed to summon a thin layer of ice to her fingers and gave a satisfied nod. “I can see the usefulness of a power like this.”

  I turned to Letharia. “You want to join in on the fun?”

  After a moment of hesitation, Letharia nodded. The moment I touched the gemstone to her neck and pushed the ice through it, the magic flowed into the dark-haired woman’s body with less effort. My nerves felt raw and ragged as I poured as much of the ice power into her as I dared. When I shut off the flow, my legs wobbled and I had to lean against the wall for support.

  “Ethan?” Arieste’s brow furrowed.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, and gave a dismissive wave. “Just a bit tired, that’s all.”

  Arieste looked unconvinced, but held her tongue as she turned back to the three women.

  “The thing you need to know about this magic is that it wants to be turned into a solid wall or shield,” she explained to Letharia, Rizzala, and Irenya. “All you have to do is have a clear idea of where you want it to form, and the magic will do the rest. And, instead of trying to make the ice pop out of thin air, use the water from the mud to form it.” She stepped aside. “Who wants to try first?”

  Irenya stepped up without hesitation. “Me!”

  “You’ve got this,” Arieste said with an encouraging smile.

  Irenya’s forehead scrunched up in concentration, and I felt the surge of power within her. A layer of ice suddenly popped into existence atop the surface of the quicksand. The ice was barely a quarter-inch thick, but it stretched almost halfway across to the other side.

  “Very good!” Arieste beamed down at the redhead, who returned her bright smile. “Rizzala?”

  The dark-skinned woman crouched beside the quicksand and reached out to touch Irenya’s ice shield. The moment her fingers touched the glistening surface, I felt the same surge of ice power from within Rizzala. Her ice shield stretched the entire width of the quicksand, and it was noticeably thicker than Irenya’s.

  “A woman of strong will,” Arieste said with a nod of respect and then turned to Letharia. “You’re up.”

  Letharia’s nose wrinkled the way it did when she was deep in thought or study, but long seconds ticked by and I still felt no surge of ice power from within her. I knew the magic was there, as I’d poured it into her body myself, but it seemed that she either didn’t know how to access it or it simply refused to form.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Arieste told her, and placed a hand on the dark-haired woman’s shoulder. “Try again.”

  Again, Letharia’s nose wrinkled, and again she failed to tap into the ice magic. She threw up her hands in frustration. “It’s not working!”

  “Remember what you’re trying to do,” Arie
ste said in a soothing voice. “You’ve spent your entire life using acid magic, so your body isn’t just going to automatically know how to wield ice. Give yourself time and practice.” She glanced up at me. “We’ve all spent a lot of time around Ethan, so we’re more used to feeling the different types of magic flowing through him. But you’ll get it, I promise.”

  Letharia nodded, but her expression showed her disappointment.

  “Watch, just like this,” Arieste said as she tapped into her ice magic. A moment later, an inch-thick shield of ice formed atop Irenya’s and Rizzala’s, and stretched all the way from one end of the muddy gap to the other.

  I was surprised by the amount of power that flowed through her. It wasn’t just ice, but there were hints of fire and darkness swirling around inside her. Somehow, the fact that I’d infused her with both Rizzala and Irenya’s magic seemed to have increased her magical abilities, independent of me. I could only imagine how powerful she would be when I fed her the full extent of the ice power I’d claimed from Frosdar.

  “Think it’s strong enough?” Rizzala asked with a skeptical eye.

  “I’ll test it,” Irenya volunteered. She took a few hesitant steps out onto the ice, then a few more. When nothing happened and the ice remained solid, she shot a grin back at us. “Feels good!”

  “Either way,” I said as I came to stand beside the women, “let’s not risk it. We’ll cross one at a time, starting with the lightest.”

  “That would be Letharia,” Irenya said, and hopped back onto the stone path. She gestured to her curvaceous body. “These are as solid as they are beautiful.”

  Arieste smiled, and even Rizzala cracked a grin. Letharia, however, looked hesitant.

  “Trust me,” Arieste told the dark-haired woman. “You’ll make it across no problem. Just use the wall for support, and move slowly so you don’t slip.”