And then I was alone in Curym’s lair. Alone with seven nagia bodies, the sound of the lapping ocean, and the soft blue glow emanating from the altar.
I drew in a deep breath and felt a slight twinge of pain running down my left arm. To my surprise, when I touched my bicep, my fingers came away wet with red blood, not blue. One of the nagia must have managed to land a lucky shot. Thankfully, I had Rizzala’s magic, and I knew the cells of my skin and muscles would repair the wound far faster as they shifted to camouflage me with my surroundings.
I strode toward rear of the lair, my eyes fixed on Curym’s altar. It looked the same as the others: a single block of some deep blue stone, with a glowing blue jewel set into its top. I was surprised to see tendrils of water slithering all around the altar, as if the magic had somehow made the water come alive and was using it as a protective shield. But those few threads of water wouldn’t be enough to stop my axe from shattering the gemstone and the altar.
I gripped my axe in both hands and planted my feet for the strike, but something stopped me. There was no warning of danger, no shout from Nyvea or pinging on my magical radar. Instead, it was a curious sensation coming from off to my left, in the alcove a few yards away from Curym’s altar.
“What’s wrong, Ethan?” Nyvea gasped with worry. “The altar is right there!”
“There is something strange to the side,” I said as I lowered my axe.
“What? I don’t sense anything.”
It was a sensation I couldn’t quite describe, almost as if the Mark of the Guardian was sensing a hole in the world around me. The Mark had always been able to detect the presence of the elemental magic that filled the world, but it didn’t respond to inert objects like stone and metal. But this felt like I was feeling a total absence of not just magic, but existence entirely. It was like some massive vacuum had sucked everything out of the back of the cave.
The problem was, I didn’t see anything strange. I’d read enough sci-fi to know about rifts into other dimensions or tears in the space-time continuum, but I’d always expected them to look like holes into a gaping void or total blackness. Yet there was nothing, not so much as a thread of super darkness. To my human eyes, the rear of the cave looked totally normal.
“We can look at it after, just destroy the altar!” Nyeva pleaded.
“Yeah,” I said, but something about that odd sensation held my attention. Curiosity burned within me and I desperately wanted to know what was causing that feeling. Something like that had to be a serious threat, one I couldn’t ignore.
Once more, I tapped into the Mark of the Guardian and tried to get a better sense of whatever it was. Again, it felt like there was something simply missing from the world, like some magical or cosmic entity had taken a bite out of reality.
Something else, something much more urgent, pinged in my magical radar. A massive surge of powerful, flowing water magic racing toward me at breathtaking speeds. I could feel it rushing up the watery shaft that led to the open ocean below.
Curym was coming to defend her lair.
The blue dragon’s head broke the surface of the water with a tremendous splash, and the cave around me shuddered as her bulk slammed into the stony slope that led toward her altar. For the first time, I got a clear look at Curym in the soft light of the altar.
I suddenly understood why ancient sailors on Earth had been so afraid of the tales of water dragons. Curym had a broad dragon snout, close-set blue eyes, and two horns protruding from the top of her head. Her body was serpentine but twice as thick as Letharia’s, and covered with thick blue scales, all except for her white underbelly, which looked to be covered with a thick carapace of some sort. The only wounds I could see had to come from sharp dragon teeth and claws, and they leaked bright blue blood onto the stones. But her body had been created to withstand the tremendous pressures deep underwater, so I knew there was no way anything I threw at her would so much as scratch her. Not the sharp steel blade of my axe, Rizzala’s spear, or even the fire or ice magic would damage her toughened body.
Worse, she hadn’t come without magic of her own. Blue light shone from the gemstone set into the back of her head and filled the cave with near-blinding brilliance. Water splashed around her body and surged toward me in a foot-thick column. I threw myself to the side just in time to avoid the powerful pillar of water, which struck the wall behind it with enough force to shatter stone.
“You will not take the Dreamkey!” Curym roared, and her massive, scaled body hurtled up the stony incline toward me.
The mention of the Dreamkey set my curiosity on high alert, but I pushed it to the back of my mind. Though my gut clenched at the sight of the dragon rushing at me, I forced the fear down deep and jumped back to they nearby altar in two long steps.
“What?” Curym’s rumbling voice set the walls quaking. “What are you--” Her words cut off in a roar of rage as I raised the axe over my head.
I could feel the air rushing around me and the water droplets flying through the air as I brought my axe down hard onto the blue gemstone. The stone cracked with a loud crash, and I heard the audible snap in my mind as Curym’s tether to the magic was severed.
The blue dragon’s roar of rage turned to a shrill of pain, surprise, and confusion. Rocks pelted my back as Curym plowed into the sidewall of the tunnel.
“Noooooo!” Curym cried out. Her scaled body crashed into the stony ground with a clash of scales on rock, and the air filled with a terrible scraping sound as she writhed about. “My magic!” Her voice was garbled, her words confused.
I whirled and raced toward the blue dragon. I’d severed her connection to the magic, but the battle wasn’t done. I had to cut the gemstone out of her head and touch it to the altar to finish the job.
Curym seemed to understand the threat she faced, because she managed to get her twitching body under control long enough to lift her huge horned head off the ground. For a moment, I thought she’d retreat back into the water, but she coiled her body tight then hurled herself forward, right at me.
I had a second to throw myself out of the way, and I barely avoided being crushed. But Curym wasn’t going to give up that easily. Her huge head whipped to the side too fast for me to dodge, and she slammed into me with bone-crushing force. I sailed through the air and crashed into the stone wall. The impact knocked the air from my lungs and the axe from my grip. My head cracked against hard stone and stars spun in the underground cavern.
A sudden surge of pain in my legs and torso pushed back the momentary dizziness. I felt the bones of my legs, hips, and lower back protest as Curym’s huge bulk crashed down atop me. Her twitching hadn’t stopped, but that only made things worse. The thrashing would actually crush me faster, if her scales didn’t cut me to shreds first. I wasn’t strong enough to push her huge body off me, and there was no way my flesh and bones could handle this level of punishment.
If I didn’t do something now, I was going to die.
Chapter Seventeen
Desperate, I called on my ice magic and summoned a shield to form around my body. I’d given most of what I had to turn Arieste into her dragon form, but I had enough for an inch-thick coating of magical armor. The ice hardened in a protective layer around my body just in time to stop Curym’s scales from slicing my skin and crushing my bones. I had a moment to draw in a breath as the pain faded to a dull ache. With that split second, I drew on the fire magic and shot the largest, hottest blast of flames I could at Curym’s face.
The blue dragon reared up and recoiled from the heat, and I could hear her water-covered skin sizzling and hissing. But my attack did little more than piss her off. The fire charred her thick, pressure-hardened scales but didn’t burn through to the dragon flesh beneath. She let out a roar of pain and rage, then whipped her head forward to clamp her jaws around my legs.
Ice cracked beneath the force of her snapping teeth, but thankfully it held. To my horror, I felt myself sliding along the water-slicked stones, and I realized
Curym’s plan. She might be in terrible pain from the severed connection with her magic, but she was still rational enough to know that she could simply drown me. All she had to do was pull me underwater with her and I’d be at her mercy. The magic I’d siphoned off her minions would give me maybe three or four minutes to breathe underwater.
I scrabbled for my axe, but the wooden handle slipped through my fingers before I could close my grip on them. I clawed at the floor in vain, then shot another blast of fire right at her face. A pained roar rumbled in her throat but she refused to release her grip on my legs. I could feel the ice beginning to crack, and I knew I had seconds before those teeth broke my magical armor and sheared through my legs in one powerful bite.
“Use the magical tube!” Nyvea shouted in my mind.
For a moment, I had no idea what she was talking about. Then the image of a brass tube with a bronze cap and red gemstone flashed through my mind. With all the speed I could muster, I reached into my clothing and ripped the tube free from my belt. Even as I saw the water closing around Curym’s scaly blue head, I pointed the hollow end of the tube at the gemstone set into the top of the dragon’s forehead and pressed the gemstone.
A surge of magic blossomed from the red stone, and there was a loud crack as the round stone shot out of the tube right at Curym’s head. My shot had been desperate, but my aim was true. The black stone flew through the air and slammed into the blue gemstone set into the crown of the blue dragon’s head. The round stone burrowed deep enough into the dragon’s scaly flesh that it dislodged the gemstone. Horror raced through me as the stone burst free of Curym’s head, sailed through the air, and landed in the water with a quiet plop.
“Get it!” Nyvea shouted.
I tore my legs free of Curym’s jaws and threw myself into the ocean after the gemstone. As my head broke the surface of the water, I tapped into the ice magic and summoned an ice shield to form five feet below me and block the entire entrance to the tunnel. At the same time, I shot a burst of fire from both hands. In the momentary flash of light before the water extinguished the flames, I caught sight of the blue gemstone twinkling against my ice shield. I swam down with powerful strokes, scooped up the stone, and raced toward the surface.
I came out of the water to find Curym thrashing around the stone tunnel, and her tail lashed against the walls, ceiling, and floor so hard I feared she would bring it down atop me. Even as I crawled out of the water, I stared at the massive blue dragon blocking the way to the altar with her huge bulk. If I tried to get past, I’d get crushed.
Another surge of magic appeared from behind and below me, and hope blossomed in my chest as I felt the biting, metallic edge of Letharia’s acid powers. The green dragon burst through my improvised ice shield and surged up out of the water beside me.
“Hold Curym!” I shouted to Letharia as I hauled myself out of the water onto the rocky slope. “I just need to get to that altar!”
With a hiss, Letharia’s serpentine body slithered up the wet stone toward the thrashing, jerking blue dragon. Curym let out an angry roar and tried to strike out at Letharia, but the loss of both her magic and her gemstone left her weakened. Letharia’s long, green coils encircled the blue dragon’s heavy-scaled body.
“Go!” Letharia hissed.
I raced up the slope, ducked a wild flail of Curym’s tail, and threw myself out of the way as Curym tried to roll her body over Letharia’s to crush me.
“Hurry!” Letharia shouted. “She’sssssss ssssstronger than me!”
I poured every shred of strength and speed into my legs as I raced up the slope toward the altar. Twenty yards, fifteen, ten, then five.
“No!” Curym shouted. “You don’t know what you are--”
I pressed the gemstone to the top of the altar, and Curym’s words cut off in a terrible roar of agony. In that instant, I felt a massive wave of power sweep over me, and the skin on my right side burned like a thousand waterjet cutters lancing through my flesh. My legs seemed to turn to liquid as the water magic rushed from the altar, through my hand, and into my body.
The force of the magic surging through me stole the breath from my lungs. It roared with the power of Irenya’s fire, but it was as immense as Arieste’s ice magic. And yet, it was unlike the others. I could feel the magic washing through every fiber of my being, yet it wasn’t burning its way into me like Zaddrith’s acid or changing my cells like Emroth’s darkness. Instead, it flowed around and between everything, until it occupied the empty spaces between each of my atoms. The water chose the path of least resistance to find its new home, yet it was implacable, relentless.
Raw energy coursed through my veins, and I felt like I had the power of Poseidon himself burning within me. It was as if I could sense every drop of water on the rocks in the cave, feel the currents of the ocean far below me, and even follow the rushing of the blood in my veins. Everything in life contained water or liquid in some form, and in that moment, it seemed like I could control all of it.
Then, as always, the magic settled within my body, and the rush of power dimmed to a gentle throbbing in the back of my mind. I let out a long breath and stared down at my hands.
“Fucking awesome!” I said in a quiet voice. “That is an amazing power.”
“I can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it,” Nyvea purred in my mind. “Now you really are unstoppable.”
I drew in another breath and looked up to where Letharia was coiled over the prone form of the woman that had once been Curym. Like her nagia, the woman had beautiful features that were feminine despite the sharpness of her chin, nose, and cheekbones. She was tall, taller than Arieste even, and with a slender elegance to her form that was amplified by the corded muscles of her arms and shoulders. She reminded me of Lady Galadriel from Lord of the Rings, but with one significant difference: her hair wasn’t elven white, it was a soft baby blue color.
“Keep an eye on her,” I told Letharia. “If she wakes up, you know what to do.”
Letharia bared her fangs, which dripped with neon-green acid.
“No, not kill her,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Sssssscare her to keep her doccccccile,” the green dragon hissed. “She will not protessssst. She issss the sssssmart one.”
“Good.” I nodded. “Let me know if she comes to.”
“Where are you going?” Letharia asked.
“There’s something else in here,” I replied. “Something powerful.”
I turned and strode back toward the now-dormant altar, then around it to the alcove where I’d sensed that strange magical vacuum. Again, I was struck by the utter wrongness of the presence there. The Mark of the Guardian could detect magic in any form, yet to my magical radar, there was a total absence of anything in the alcove. My eyes saw nothing, but I could feel the black tattoo on my chest recoil from the presence there.
With effort, I ignored the Mark’s strange behavior as I entered the alcove. I summoned a small flame to my hand and held it up to illuminate the rocky hollow. Light glinted off something metallic nestled in a small hole in the stone, and I found myself staring down at the strangest-looking length of metal I’d ever seen.
It was roughly six inches long and bore a resemblance to a key, or more accurately a part of a key. Almost like someone had cut a fancy medieval-era key into many pieces, and this was just one of the pieces. When I picked it up, I could feel the Mark of the Guardian recoiling from it, but the five magic powers within me flowed down my arm toward the key. It was the strangest sensation I’d ever experienced, and I knew without a doubt that this was the Dreamkey the nagia had tried to stop me from reaching.
The moment I removed the key from its place, the cave began to shiver and shudder, and the ground beneath me quaked with enough force to crack stone. My heart leapt to my throat as I was nearly knocked off-balance by the tremors running through the rocks, and I had to catch myself on the wall. My mind flashed back to every treasure-hunting movie I’d ever seen, and my gut clenche
d. Of course removing the magical item would trigger some sort of self-destruct mechanism.
“Shit!” I stuffed the key into a pocket, whirled, and raced toward Letharia. I scooped up my axe and crossed the distance to the green dragon in ten sprinting steps. “We need to get out of here!”
I hefted the unconscious woman into my arms, draped her over Letharia’s back, and clambered on behind her.
“Swim fast!” I told Letharia. “This cave feels like it’s going to collapse any second.”
“Hold on,” Letharia hissed and coiled her long, green body around. I could hear the clatter of stone on stone as the cavern crumbled behind us, and my gut tightened as Letharia slithered toward the water’s edge. She barely dodged one huge falling boulder, which crashed two feet from my head, then we were plunging into the watery passage out.
Letharia dropped like a stone, and her sinewy body sped up our descent. A tremendous splash echoed above my head, and I looked up in time to see a boulder plummeting through the water toward us. I summoned as much ice as I could manage and formed a shield to stop the stone’s descent. But, given its massive size, I knew it would only buy us a few seconds.
But seconds was all we’d need. I couldn’t use ice to shield the unconscious woman and myself from the water, but I had more than enough water magic to do the job. I tapped into Curym’s power and summoned it to form in both of my hands. The magic I’d taken from the nagia felt like a trickle in comparison to what I had now. I could breathe underwater forever, but that wasn’t all the magic could do.
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