My fire-headed axe chopped through the nagia’s upper right arm, and it spun away with the hooked swords still clasped in its hand. The nagia stared dumbfounded at the bleeding stump, and never saw the pick side of my axe hurtling toward her face. Steel crushed nagia skull and the creature sagged backward, sharp pick buried in her brain.
The second nagia screamed at the sight of her fallen comrade and charged me with fury etched into her beautiful, monstrous face. Her hook swords wove deadly arcs in the air all around my head. I met her charge with a ball of fire right to the face. When she fell back, her pale skin scorched and black, I lopped off her head with a powerful chop of my axe.
Magic burst to life all around me. Irenya hurled a ball of fire at one nagia, while Arieste summoned a dome of ice just above the head of the nagia that was aiming a two-handed strike at Rizzala’s back. A stream of acid poured from Letharia’s hands and set the face and neck of a third nagia sizzling. Rizzala’s fire-tipped spear opened one nagia’s throat while the pillar of fire she summoned engulfed another’s head. I brought the burning monster down with a single blow of my axe to the side of her neck, then ripped the water magic from her dying body.
“Sisters!” A piercing wail echoed through the room, and I whirled to find a huge blue-and-white-scaled nagia gliding down the stairs. Mistress Rannis was easily half again as large as Mistress Queraya, and her four arms were so heavily muscled it was a wonder she could move them at all. She gripped a four-foot long sword in each hand, and rage shone in the eyes she fixed on me.
“You will die for this!” she hissed.
“Come and try me, you scaly bitch!” I hefted my axe and raced forward to meet her slithering charge. As the distance between us closed, I tapped into my magic and summoned all four powers into my body. Ice slicked the ground beneath Mistress Rannis’ serpentine tail, and I hurled a stream of acid onto the marble in front of her. When she tried to slink out of the way, her tail could find no purchase on the ground, so her forward momentum carried her straight onto the acid. The stink of sizzling snake flesh filled the towertop, accompanied by her shriek of agony.
I released the fire magic in a pillar aimed straight at her face. Instead of a concentrated blast, however, I sent a broad fan of flames right at her. It did little damage, but she had to fling herself back to avoid getting roasted. In that single moment when she was blinded by the flames, I activated as much darkness magic as I could muster. Instantly, I felt my body shifting as the power cloaked my skin, hair, and even my armor. When Mistress Rannis recovered from the fire, her searching eyes met only empty air.
She never saw me coming as I stepped up onto the corpse of another nagia and leapt into the air. I brought the axe swinging across in a diagonal blow that chopped through her upper left arm, crunched through ribs, carved organs, and slammed into her spine. A cry of agony burst from her lips, yet she managed a wild swing with the two swords in her right hand. But I wasn’t where she’d expected. I’d released my axe, then dropped into a sideways roll and came up on her right side. She committed every shred of her remaining strength to the blows, so she had no way to pull her arms back in time as I leapt onto her back.
I couldn’t tap into the fire, ice, or acid magic yet, but I didn’t need them. I drew my right fist back and unleashed a devastating punch into the base of her skull. I heard a loud crack as her spine snapped, and she sagged forward onto her flailing right arms. Two more cracks echoed in the room as her falling bulk crushed her arms.
She would never rise again, but I didn’t give her time to try. I reached for the rushing, surging magic within her, gripped it tight, and pulled with all of my willpower. A sizzling pain raced down the left side of my chest, and the Mistress twitched beneath me as I dragged the power out of her. The water magic flowed into my body with the force of a crashing tidal wave, and it pushed back my fatigue. Again, I was struck by the terrible might of Curym’s water magic.
“And to think, it’s just a taste of the power you will command once you have taken her magic for yourself,” Nyvea said.
“Ethan!” Arieste’s call echoed faint in my ears, but it snapped me from the momentary trance. I looked up to see an ice dome around me and a nagia hacking at it with furious blows, her monstrous rage-filled eyes fixed on me.
Six heartbeats had passed, and I had all the magic I needed to bring her down. I summoned fire magic to my hand and I drove my fist at the wall between us. The blistering heat radiating off my skin melted the ice before my hand touched it, and my blow slammed into the nagia with enough force to punch straight through scaly skin, organs, and bones. I felt soft tissue sizzle and char as my balled fist plowed up to elbow in her guts. With a roar, I unleashed a left-handed punch up into her jaw. Her head snapped to one side, and the flame covering my hand left a burned mark on her face. She slumped to the ground, unconscious. It was the work of two seconds to tear the water magic out of her.
When I looked up, I found the chamber empty. The Mark of the Guardian revealed only four magical presences, with nothing coming from the fifteen nagia bodies that lay scattered around the chamber.
Arieste stood near the staircase, and I could see the scorch marks on her dress left by the fire she’d summoned to burn the nagia curled into a smoking heap at her feet. Letharia had brought down just one nagia, but the acid had eaten through its face so completely that it bore little resemblance to a woman. Three nagia had scorch marks as a testament to Irenya’s magic, and Rizzala had filled the room with almost as many corpses as me.
We hadn’t escaped the battle unscathed, however. I felt a little twinge in my left shoulder, and glanced down to find a gash left by Mistress Rannis’ long sword. Rizzala had two cuts across her forehead, along with a furrow carved into the back of her right forearm. Irenya was hunched over, breathing hard, and holding her gut as if she’d taken a blow to the solar plexus. Blood stained Arieste’s white dress where a nagia spear had slashed the outside of her leg. Letharia was staring at a long cut along her side, but I could tell at a glance that she’d escaped serious injury.
But we had won, and we had claimed Mistress Rannis’ power. I could feel the added water magic coursing through my body and felt more alive and energized than ever. We’d escaped the rising water and won another battle without serious losses. That alone was worth celebrating.
We didn’t have a chance to enjoy the success, because at that moment, I felt the presence of scores of merslayers surging up through the water toward us.
Chapter Thirteen
“Shit!” The merslayers would reach us in less than a minute.
My mind raced as I tried to figure out what to do next. The merslayers could breathe above water just like the nagia, so they’d have no trouble fighting us. My magical radar picked up fifty or sixty creatures approaching us, with more coming every second. We’d have our fight cut out for us if Curym decided to send all of them right at us. Worse, she could just use her minions as a distraction as she prepared another attack, one we’d never see coming.
But we had one advantage right now. Curym couldn’t know about my siphon ability, so she’d have no idea that sending her merslayers against us played right into our hands. We needed this fight because it was the only way to get enough water magic to face the blue dragon underwater. The trick would be in fighting smart.
“We need to get upstairs, now!” I shouted to the four women. “Merslayers are on the way, lots of them, and they’re going to hit us hard in thirty seconds. But the top level of the tower is above the water level, so they can’t get at us that way. If they want to fight us, they’ll have to come up the stairs, and they’ll find we’re ready for them.”
“Good plan,” Rizzala said as she yanked her spear from the chest of her last kill. “You and I will hold the stairs while the others to watch our backs.”
I tapped into the Mark of the Guardian again, but this time I directed my search upward. My heart leapt as I sensed two faint magical pulses from the room above us, the familiar soli
dity of ice and a crackling, sizzling power I’d never encountered before.
“We might have some magical backup to help us out,” I said. “I sense two weapons up in the nagia’s nest.”
I led the way up the stairs, with Arieste and Irenya helping Letharia behind and Rizzala to guard our backs. I could feel the merslayers’ magical presences growing stronger as they approached our position. That knowledge filled me with a sense of urgency as I dug through the piles of weapons, rotted furs, clothing, and trinkets piled high on the circular bed in the middle of the room.
“Aha!” I said as I pulled a pair of brass knuckles out of the pile. I slipped them onto my right hand, then used my thumb to trigger the blue gemstone set into their side. There was a faint hum of magical energy, then four two-inch ice spikes sprouted from the metal and a sheath of ice encased my hand to the forearm.
“Damn, these are wicked!” I said with a grin as I stared down at my right hand. They might look like simple brass knuckles, but thanks to the magic, I felt like I was Wolverine sprouting claws or an Roman gladiator ready to fight with spiked battle gloves.
I pressed the gemstone again to shut off the magic, and the spiked ice gloves winked out of existence. I tucked my epic find into my pocket. It would come in handy if I ever found myself fighting bare-handed.
I kept digging through the pile until I found the source of the strange crackling energy. The weapon was a trident with a silver gemstone set into the handle. The moment the stone clicked into its setting, electricity hummed between the three spiked tines like a bad-ass magical taser. With a sigh, I set the trident to one side. It was a real shame we were headed into an underwater battle, as I wouldn’t be able to use the weapon’s magic for fear of electrocuting myself and everyone around me.
Drawing my axe, I tapped into my fire power and used it to summon flames to coat the head of my axe. Though I’d used a lot of my magic to create the ice wall to shield us in the passage, draining the nagia of their power had restored my stamina. I had energy enough for the battle to come, but I couldn’t help thinking that Curym was planning something devious. She wouldn’t just throw her merslayers at us like Zaddrith had at the city of Whitespire. There was something else coming for us, but what?
“Nothing you can’t handle, hero,” Nyvea purred. “And I’ve seen you handle a lot!”
“Letharia, I need you to keep an eye on the ocean,” I told the dark-haired woman. “Curym’s up to something, no doubt about it, but I can’t figure out what she’s going to do.”
“You think she’ll attack us from behind while we’re occupied fighting her merslayers?” Rizzala asked. “The same tactic she used in Whitespire?”
“It’s possible,” Letharia said, but she didn’t look convinced. “If she sensed my presence here, she’ll have to know that I’ve aligned with you just as the others did. She’d try a new tactic, something I didn’t know to expect.”
“She already threw the ocean at us,” I told her. “She had the merslayers crack the glass to flood the towers and the corridors, so it’s clear she’s going to find as many ways to come at us as possible. While she sends some merslayers up the stairs at us, I need you to watch out for any other tricks she might try to pull.”
“I will stay vigilant,” Letharia said with a nod.
“Thank you,” I told her. “We’re going to have to stay focused on the battle ahead of us, so we’re counting on you to watch our backs.”
I turned to Irenya and Arieste. “Rizzala and I will hold the top of the stairs and use our weapons to hold back the merslayers. I need you two to use your fire and ice to keep the merslayers from overrunning us, got it?”
“Of course, Ethan,” Arieste said with a nod.
“Why not just use magic to kill them all?” Irenya asked. “Wouldn’t that be much easier?”
“It would be, if we were trying to kill them,” I replied. “But we need to wound and weaken them as much as possible so I can steal their magic. We couldn’t get the magic from Mistress Kalrak and her nagia, so it means we’re going to have to make do what the merslayers. But that means a lot less magic from each kill, so we’re going to need a lot more of them.”
“Smart as well as handsome, eh?” Irenya said with a sly grin.
“And well-endowed,” Nyvea chimed in.
I winked at the redhead, then turned to Rizzala. “To make this work, you’re going to need to be holding the front of the line. It only takes a second or two to drain the magic, but--”
“Even a second of distraction is all it takes for a merslayer claw to tear out your heart,” Rizzala said.
“Exactly.” I shook my head. “I’d hold the front, but we need that magic to keep us alive when we fight Curym.”
“I will hold them,” Rizzala said with a savage grin.
“I’ll have your back, and so with Arieste and Irenya,” I told her. “And, you can use some ice magic to form a protective armor around your body, like this.” I explained to her the method I’d discovered to generate the ice armor, then drew out her gemstone and infused her body with the magic she’d need.
Then the sound of splashing fins and hissing merslayers echoed in the chamber below, and I knew our time was up.
“Let’s kick some ass!” I shouted, then raced over to take my place in front of the staircase and called down to the monsters. “Hey, fish fuckers, come up here and get us!”
I felt a flare of fire magic as Rizzala triggered the red gemstone in her spear, and bright red flames coated the twin heads of the weapon she leveled at the staircase. Behind me, I could feel Arieste and Irenya tap into their own magical powers as they prepared to guard our backs.
A gleeful laugh burst from Rizzala’s lips as the first of the merslayers slithered up the stairs toward us. “Come and die!” she shouted and shook her spear at them.
Once again, I was struck by how human the merslayers looked. Like mermaids of Earth legend, they had a human-looking face, with sparkling blue eyes, pale cheeks, and a nose that was just a little too flat to be beautiful. Long white hair flowed around their delicate features, down their sleek shoulders, and over their ample, scale-covered breasts. They even had the gently curving waists and fishy tails of Earth mermaids.
But there was nothing gentle or delicate about the rows of sharp teeth in their mouths, their claw-tipped fingers, and the spiked tip of their serpentine tails. Though they lacked the heavy musculature and visible power of the nagia, I’d learned back in Whitespire that they were fearsome creatures in their own right.
Fearsome or not, they’d still get the ass-kicking they deserved. I needed their water magic, and they were coming to kill us on Curym’s orders. There was only one way this battle could end.
The first merslayer tried to slither out of the way of Rizzala’s lightning-fast spear thrust, but the flaming blade opened her pale blue throat with a follow-up slash. I grimaced as the mermaid-like creature fell backward and slid down the stairs onto the comrades climbing behind her. That was one less monster to siphon the magic from.
But Rizzala knew what she was doing, and she’d heeded my instructions to wound as many as possible. The merslayer’s thrashing corpse forced the others to slow, so they could only come up the curving staircase one at a time. When the next monster reached the warrior woman, Rizzala drove her flaming spear into the merslayers right shoulder, just below the collarbone. With a grunt, Rizzala lifted the merslayer off the ground and tossed her toward me like a farmer baling hay.
I hit the thrashing monster with a skull-crushing blow, then siphoned the water magic out of its dying body. It took only a second, but by the time I looked up, Rizzala had another enemy for me to drain. Even as I stole the creature’s life force, I felt the flare of magic coming from where Arieste stood, and an ice shield popped into existence in front of a merslayer preparing to slash at Rizzala’s legs. Rizzala drove her spear through the ice into the monster’s chest, then ripped her weapon free with a spray of pale blue blood.
One me
rslayer burst through the wall of ice and lunged at Rizzala too fast for the warrior woman to react. I hit the monster with a blast of fire that roasted its head and chest, and a moment later Irenya’s fire struck it from behind. The creature struck the glass wall with a loud smack, then flopped backward and rolled down the stairs.
“Is that the best you can do?” I shouted at the mermaid-like monsters. “We’re getting bored up here!”
“If you get too bored, handsome, feel free to bed Letharia, Nyvea whispered in my mind. “You should see the way she’s been eyeing you. Not that I blame her for wanting all your rugged goodness.”
“Nyvea, another time, please!” I didn’t mind Nyvea’s comments, but mid-battle wasn’t really the best moment for them.
We needed the monsters to keep coming at us if we wanted enough water magic to face Curym, but every moment that we spent locked in hand-to-hand combat would give the blue dragon more time for whatever she had planned.
“I think they heard you,” Rizzala said with a mocking laugh as more of the mermaid monsters slithered over their fallen comrades and up at us.
“Good!”
I shot a glance over my shoulder at Letharia, who stood at the far end of the room, her eyes fixed on the ocean. She’d warn us if Curym tried a sneak attack from behind. I tapped into the Mark of the Guardian to scan the water around the tower for any sign of the blue dragon. I felt close to a hundred merslayers crowding around the opening in the glass below us, but no Curym.
There was a loud crashing sound from below, then more and more. My gut clenched as I realized what was happening.
“The merslayers are breaking the glass,” I shouted at Rizzala. “They’re going to try to rush up the stairs and overwhelm us.”
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