“Wonderful!” Rizzala’s face split into a delighted grin. “The more the merrier.”
She gutted a merslayer with a quick slash of her spear, then seized the creature’s neck with her left hand and dragged her up the stairs. I slammed my axe blade into the merslayer’s skull and, as it flopped to the ground, I ripped the water magic from its dying body. Rizzala buried her spear into another monster’s throat, tore it free, and whipped it around to slam the butt end between another merslayer’s eye. As the creature fell, stunned, I brought the pick side of my axe up in an overhand blow that crunched down into her back. I felt the sharp steel tip strike stone as it punched through ribs, heart, and chest. By the time I dragged the merslayer up the stairs like a hooked fish, most of the water magic had seeped from her body along with her pale blue blood.
The merslayers kept coming, and Rizzala and I kept killing and draining them. I felt no anger toward these creatures, no hate. They were coming to kill us because their master ordered them to, and we killed them because we had no other choice. We couldn’t fly away from this battle.
Irenya’s fire and Arieste’s ice kept the merslayers from overwhelming our position. When the monsters crowded too closely on the stairs, Irenya sent a blast of flames at the creatures farther down. Arieste seized the opening to throw up an ice shield, and the merslayers lost precious seconds slashing at it with their claws or throwing their feminine shoulders against the solid wall. By the time they broke through, Rizzala and I had dealt with their companions.
I could feel the growing power of the water magic flowing through me, but I knew we didn’t have enough for our underwater battle. When I’d drained the Circlet of Darksight and shared the power with Irenya and Arieste, the magic had lasted for just a few short minutes. There was no way we’d defeat Curym and her army of sea monsters that quickly. We needed a lot more magic to make this work.
I had to find a way to get more power more quickly. Rizzala had to kill a merslayer for each one that I drained, or else risk her position being overwhelmed. At this rate, we’d be fighting for at least half an hour before we had enough magic to make this work.
An idea suddenly struck me, and I almost kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner.
“Arieste!” I shouted. “Help me throw up the thickest ice shield you can manage.”
Magic surged through the platinum blonde, and a moment later a wall of glistening ice winked into existence in the staircase. I added my magic to make it even thicker and poured the power on until the wall was easily three or four inches thick. In the seconds it would take the merslayers to break through it, we’d be ready for them.
“Rizzala, time to change tactics!” I said, and drew out the black gemstone. “Your dragon form will win this battle a lot faster.”
Her eyes flew wide. “Of course!” She nearly ripped her clothing in her hurry to strip down to the scant black dress beneath. “After all that time in the cramped tunnel below, how did I not think of this?”
The towertop chamber was easily forty feet in diameter and fifteen tall, more than large enough for the compact, panther-like dragon. I crossed the distance to Rizzala in two steps and pressed the onyx stone to her neck. She closed her eyes as I tapped into the darkness magic and pushed it through the gemstone into her body.
Her skin shifted and changed from a deep coffee color to a midnight black and the gauzy fabric of her dress transformed to dragon scales. Her powerful hands and fingers elongated into feline claw-tipped paws. Muscles sprouted all along her body as her shoulders changed to panther-like haunches, and she fell forward onto her front paws. The black dragon bared sharp teeth in a grin as she shook her head in a very cat-like gesture. Her eyelids popped open and she fixed dazzling green eyes on me.
“Let’s do this,” she growled in her deep-throated dragon voice.
In her dragon form, Rizzala was only twenty feet long, her shoulder barely taller than my head. Yet she was as powerful as she was compact, and one hell of a scrappy fighter. The merslayers would never know what hit them.
I dispelled the ice shield I’d summoned, and Arieste did the same. The merslayers momentarily fell back, stunned, as the obstacle disappeared in front of their eyes. Their shock lasted just a second, then they took their assault on our position with renewed determination.
That lasted all of three seconds, because they engaged hand to hand with a grinning back dragon crouched at the top of the stairs. Rizzala pounced before the monsters could let out a hiss of surprise. Her powerful jaws snapped shut over a merslayer’s head, chest, and shoulders with bone-crushing force. She shook the creature once, then hurled it back to where I waited. While I drained the water magic from the dying monster, Rizzala’s claws snapped out to bat two more merslayers down to the stone stairs. Two more bleeding monster bodies joined the pile growing at my feet, and my store of water magic increased.
The merslayers came on, either too stubborn to quit or driven by Curym’s will, but they stood no chance against even a small dragon. Rizzala’s jaws and claws tore through fishy scales, crushed bones, and ripped gaping wounds into pale-skinned flesh. Light blue blood stained the floor all around me and turned the marble tiles slick. The pile of dying monsters grew so quickly I barely had time to drain one before another was added. I could feel myself growing more powerful with every monster I siphoned.
“Ethan!” Letharia’s panicked cry echoed behind me. “Ethan!”
I whirled to find the dark-haired woman pointing at the ocean outside the glass walls of the tower. For a moment, I could see nothing but the churning, foam-covered sea. Blue-green water stretched to the horizon to the north and east, with nothing but fluffy blue sky to interrupt it.
Then I saw what she was pointing at. Half a mile to the east, a wall of water rose thirty yards out of the ocean. Curym had summoned a tidal wave to drown us. Even as my brain registered the sight, I knew we had no time to escape.
Chapter Fourteen
I sucked in a breath as I stared at the the massive wave coming toward us. I had no doubt in my mind that the force of that crashing wave would shatter the glass walls, break the tower, and sweep us away. No way we’d survive that.
Yet as I got a better look at it, I realized that it wasn’t a proper tidal wave. It wasn’t a solid wall of water that stretched for miles in every direction. Instead, it was one huge a-frame wave aimed directly at the tower, as if driven by a concentrated rush of water. Curym’s doing, without a doubt.
The blue dragon’s nickname was Waterblade, given to her by the pillar of water she could summon using her magic. She’d attacked Irenya and me with a smaller pillar as we flew over the Crystal River, but now that she had all of the water in the ocean at her disposal, she could make it as large as she wanted.
I spotted tiny flecks of pale blue riding the waves, and the Mark of the Guardian alerted me to the presence of dozens of magical pulses hurtling toward us. The merslayers were literally surfing Curym’s pillar of water. When the force of the crashing wave shattered the tower and dragged us under, the merslayers would pick us off as we floundered in the sea.
My gut clenched as I tried to figure out what to do. Being from Chicago, I’d never had much concern about tidal waves on Lake Michigan. I had seen pictures of massive sea walls that protected cities from strong ocean currents and tsunami waves, but those were made of solid stone or concrete and rebar. Even if I threw every shred of magical power into summoning an ice shield to encase the tower in a protective dome, there was no way it would be thick enough to survive the impact. It would just drain my strength and leave me more vulnerable to the merslayers. I could use the water magic to breathe underwater, but that would drain me of the power I and the dragons needed to fight Curym. There was no time to turn even one of the other women into a dragon to fly out of the tower.
All this flashed through my mind in a second, and my heart sank as I realized I had no idea what to do. The ocean was something I couldn’t punch, blast, or cut my way through.
“Arieste, I need you!” I shouted as I ran toward where Letharia stood watching the approaching pillar. Arieste ran toward me, then drew in a sharp breath as she saw the tidal wave.
“Goddesses!” she breathed. “There’s no way I can throw up a wall to stop it.”
“We’re not going to throw up a wall, but we’re going to use a blade.” I spoke at a hundred miles an hour. We’d have to move fast if we were going to summon enough magic before the water hit us. “We need to cut the water right down the middle and split it so it goes around us. Think of a plow cutting through soil or a blade through flesh.”
Her eyes went wide, and I could see the wheels in her head turning as she tried to picture what I was telling her.
“There,” I said, and pointed straight ahead, toward the wall of water. “We erect a wedge-shaped wall of magic that slices the wave in half and redirects it to either side like the head of my axe.” I mimicked the movement with my hands.
“Let’s do it!” she said.
I gripped her hand in mine and summoned every shred of ice magic I could squeeze from deep within me. Power sizzled through my veins as I gathered the magic, then pushed it out of my body and willed it into existence right in front of the tower. In my mind, I pictured the wedge plows or “cow catchers” old locomotive trains had used to clear objects, snow, or debris off the rails. But instead of a steel device at the front of a train, I had to make this wedge-shaped wall tall enough to split the entire wave.
I felt Arieste grip my hand tighter, and she added her magical energy to mine. Before my eyes, a towering wall of ice sprang into existence in front of the tower. The glistening blade-like front edge of the wall rose for twenty five yards above the water’s surface, and the side walls spread out three yards past the northern and southern walls of the tower.
Then the magic ran out and I slumped to one knee, exhausted. I managed to catch Arieste as she sagged, and held her in my arms as we watched the massive wave hurtling toward us. Her hand gripped mine with a strength that matched the stubborn defiance in her eyes. We’d done what we could, the rest was up to the laws of physics.
The sea-green wall loomed high above the towertop, so high it blocked the sun for a full second before it crashed into our ice wedge. The tower shuddered as the force of the water slammed into it, and I held my breath in anticipation of what came next.
Our ice blade sliced through the cresting wave, and the water splashed along the side walls before rushing past at a hundred miles per hour. A massive boom echoed as the ocean slammed into the shore and raced inland for miles, wreaking devastation all along the coast.
But the tower still stood. I almost couldn’t believe it, but we had survived what should have been total destruction. Arieste’s hand trembled in mine, and her eyes were wide as she stared out at the now calm ocean.
“We...did it,” she breathed. She blinked, swallowed, then broke into a massive grin. “We did it!” She threw her arms around my neck and pressed a fierce kiss to my lips. “We did it, we did it, we did it!” Her laughter echoed in the towertop chamber, and I felt myself break out into relieved laughter as well. There was nothing else to do but smile when you came that close to death.
Rizzala’s furious growling reminded me that we weren’t out of the woods yet. We’d survived one of Curym’s attacks, but it wouldn’t be her last. We needed to get as much water magic as possible so we could take the fight to her before she found more ways to destroy us.
“That had to take a lot of magic out of Curym, right?” I asked a very pale, very shaken Letharia, who had fallen to a sitting position by my feet. She clung to my pants leg and I guessed that she had planned to hang onto me incase the plan didn’t work, and we got tossed into the ocean.
Letharia looked up at me with shock in her eyes, but managed a nod and a weak, “Y-Yes. A lot.” Then she let go of my pants and let out a long exhale.
Curym’s water pillar back in the Crystal River had been powerful enough to knock Irenya from the sky, but the amount of magic it would have taken to generate this tidal wave would have drained the blue dragon’s magical energy. We might have a few minutes before she regained enough strength to attack us either in person or with another water pillar. I intended to use those few minutes to drain as many of her minions as Rizzala could set up for me.
My legs were leaden and my body numb with fatigue, but I forced myself to my feet anyway. Thankfully, I only wavered once as I staggered over to where Rizzala and Irenya held the stairway. I was stunned by how many merslayer bodies lay piled around Rizzala, and the dragon’s black scales were covered in a terrifying amount of pale blue blood. Yet as I tapped into the Mark of the Guardian, I could sense that she hadn’t slain all the merslayers. Despite their crushed chests, snapped spines, and mangled limbs, they had enough life left in them for me to drain.
“A beast on the streets and a beast in the sheets.” Nyvea chuckled.
“I think it’s actually ‘A lady on the streets and a freak in the sheets,’ Nyvea,” I chuckled. “How do you know Ludacris?”
“Luda-who? I was talking about you, handsome!” Nyvea giggled, and I smiled as I looked back at the black dragon.
“Good work, Rizzala!” I shouted as I set about siphoning the water magic out of the merslayers’ bodies. A few of them put up some resistance, but my fire-headed axe put a quick end to their flashing claws and snapping teeth. The more magic I drained from them, the faster my body recovered from its recent expenditure. By the time I had gotten through the nearest pile of ten or fifteen merslayers, I felt more energized and refreshed by the new water power than I had since waking up that morning.
I used the Mark of the Guardian to scan the tower below us for more enemies. There were dozens crowded into the room, with more splashing all around the tower waiting their turn to come at us. Even though her plan with the tidal wave had failed, Curym was keeping up the pressure by sending the merslayers after us. Doubtless she hoped that they’d overwhelm us and cut us down, or at least distract us long enough to recover. She couldn’t know about my magic-siphoning ability, which meant she couldn’t know that her clever plan was playing right into our hands.
“How are you holding up, Rizzala?” I shouted as I set about siphoning the magic out of the next merslayer the black dragon sent my way.
“I could do this all day!” she roared, and from the delight in her voice it sounded like she was having as much fun as a cat playing with mice.
“Then keep it up,” I told her. “I’m going to get the others ready.”
“Ready for what?” Irenya called over. The curvaceous redhead stood a short distance behind the black dragon, well out of the way of snapping teeth and flashing claws. She had her fire magic ready to unleash, but by the looks of things, Rizzala didn’t need any help. The black dragon was like a paper shredder and the merslayers were the world’s tastiest documents.
“To take the battle to Curym,” I said. “I think I’ve almost got enough water magic to make this work, so it’ll soon be time to hit the depths.”
“Yes!” Irenya grinned and pumped her fist in the air, a gesture she’d evidently learned from me. “After seeing that wall of water, I was just thinking that Curym’s getting desperate.”
“Her plan failed,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean she won’t have back-ups. If we hit her while she’s still recovering from using that much magic, we might be able to catch her with her defenses weak.”
“You say the word,” Rizzala growled, “and we’ll do it.”
I turned to Letharia. “What can you tell me about Curym’s lair?” I asked. “Where do I find it? How do I get in?”
“The entrance to her
lair is at the bottom of a deep trench, just beyond what used to be the eastern boundary of Emerald Deep,” Letharia told me. “It is eighty of your human feet down, and it is hidden beneath a rocky shelf. Unless you know what you’re looking for, it will be impossible to find.”
“But you can find it, right?” I asked. “You know where it is?”
Letharia hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I believe I do.”
“Good.” I rubbed my stubble-covered jaw as I began to formulate a plan of attack. “Will she be guarding it?”
“Curym is too smart for that,” Letharia said with a shake of her head. “She will stay away from the lair, thus making it harder for her enemies to find it. But she knows I am here, which she will take to mean that I am helping you. I cannot say if she will guard her lair against me or take to the open water where her versatility and magic give her the advantage.”
“We’ve got enough dragonpower that she’ll have to split her focus,” I told her. “Irenya and Arieste will go straight for her, while you get Rizzala and me into her lair. Then, once you drop us off, you can help the others distract Curym.”
“You want me to face Curym?” Letharia’s eyebrows shot up and her face went three shades paler than usual. “The mightiest dragon of Iriador, in her own habitat?”
“Hey, I resent that!” Irenya called out from where she stood. “We all know I’m the most bad-ass!”
“Yes,” I told Letharia in all seriousness, though the somber effect was broken because I couldn’t help grinning at Irenya’s words. “You’re the only one who’s used to maneuvering in and under water, so you’re our greatest weapon against Curym. The three of you together—“
“Cannot win!” Letharia’s voice rose to a shout, edged with panic. “The others may rule the skies, but the seas belong to Curym. We have no hope of defeating her.”
“Letharia, think about everything you’ve done thus far.” I was surprised to hear Arieste speak up. The platinum blonde walked over and crouched in front of the now-trembling Letharia. “You discovered the way through the tunnels of a long-dead nation of people, survived a trap that should have killed us, and saved all of our lives in the process. You did the impossible when you used ice magic, and in doing so, saved my life. You are strong, not because you are fearless like Rizzala, but because you face down your fears rather than allowing them to overwhelm you.”
Dragon Slayer 4 Page 18