Dragon Magus 1: A Progression Fantasy Saga

by DB King

  Eliza’s amazing. She can hold her own among foes stronger and faster than herself. Raphael shot her a quick grin, which she returned, before sweeping his gaze back to the front. A Spirit Shield fell over him, just in time to catch a torrent of lightning pouring from another bale-wight.

  Raphael speared the undead spellcaster in the chest, twisted his glaive, then ripped it skyward, bisecting the monster from the diaphragm up. More bale-wights clustered before him, gesturing and chanting in readiness to hurl a unified barrage of magical energy at him. Raphael reeled back, fortifying his draconic armor with as much Ryu-To-Ki as he could muster. He remembered how the green-robed captain had been overwhelmed by a tide of Lesser Order spells cast in concert.

  Chain Lightning poured along his flanks, washing harmlessly off the Spirit Shield, before setting the monsters ablaze mid-chant. Explosive Orbs hurtled past his ears. They hit the flailing, convulsing bale-wights and blew them apart.

  Nicely done, Fenix, Raphael thought as he pressed forward, glaive held high. His next opponent was a revenant, born from the flesh of a fallen armsman and clad in runic plate armor. Its corpse-gray face was a rictus of unholy hatred, and it brandished a massive, two-handed sword. Purple lightning crackled up and down the blade’s length. Hissed obscenities poured from the revenant’s bloodless lips as it swung its sword downward in a mighty, whistling arc.

  Raphael caught the monster’s blade on the shaft of his glaive, matching his strength against its unnatural might. Thrusting his glaive out, he pushed the revenant back and struck at its unarmored head. The creature smashed aside Raphael’s weapon and countered with a sweeping cut toward his neck. Raphael caught the blow on his forearm, the scales of his draconic armor creaking from the impact.

  Casting a quick glance all around him, Raphael saw that the Hell Drakes’ charge had stalled after breaking through the ranks of skeleton warriors and crushing the bale-wights. Now, armsmen locked blades with their revenant counterparts and mages, both living and unliving, filled the air with spells.

  Raphael readdressed his glaive and brought it into a whirling, sweeping dance. The polearm’s blade cut repeatedly at the revenant’s neck and limbs. The glaive’s steel-tipped butt thundered for the undead creature’s skull and joints. But the revenant parried or slipped past each blow, its massive sword singing. As Raphael’s offensive flurry played itself out, the revenant took to the offense, and this time, it was his turn to weather a storm of sword strokes. He blocked and parried frantically, but the revenant’s blade slipped through his defenses more than once.

  The first time occurred when he mistimed a low block, allowing the monster’s sword to skim a line of broken draconic armor scales and a thin trail of blood from his thigh. The second was when he attempted a risky counter-cut into a storm of sword strokes aimed at his neck, only to have his shoulder guard shorn off, along with a sliver of skin and flesh. Then he locked blades with the revenant. The undead monster cackled, let go of its sword with one hand, and thundered its free gauntleted fist toward Raphael’s face.

  Trusting in his draconic armor to prevail against the revenant’s strength, Raphael stepped into the blow and slammed his forehead into steel-sheathed knuckles. Metal and undead flesh bent and broke beneath the impact with a wet, grisly crunch. Shaking his head against the ringing in his ears, Raphael heightened, then reversed his grip on the shaft of his glaive and forced the sword locked against the polearm’s blade downward.

  The revenant snarled, but before it could begin to counterattack, Raphael seized its weapon arm by the wrist with his right hand, pulled downward to widen the opening in the revenant’s defenses, and plunged his glaive into where its heart would be.

  The undead monster roared, more in fury than in pain. It dropped its sword, twisted its undamaged hand out of Raphael’s grasp, and caught him by the throat, digging its steely fingers into his flesh.

  Eliza appeared out of nowhere. Leaping high, she thrust Tiresias’s dagger into the revenant’s neck, just above its armored collar. Then she twisted the blade and swept it sideways. The weapon’s enchantment took effect immediately, dissolving the revenant’s gray flesh into hissing and bubbling ruins. With the front of the revenant’s throat completely destroyed, the creature’s head fell backward to dangle between its shoulder blades by a strip of sinew.

  Still the monster advanced, reaching blindly for its prey, until Fenix blasted its limbs off with a barrage of Explosive Orbs. As it fell, reduced to little more than a writhing torso, Raphael picked up his glaive and speared the revenant through its skull. Only then did it cease moving.

  Another revenant surged forward, then. It was a former mage. Now, it was a nightmarish apparition of dark swirling hair and a gaping maw from which a perpetual scream emerged. The Casella triplets, the three mages who’d hurled the tide of silencing magic previously, stepped forth to confront it, allowing Raphael to catch his breath and reorient himself in the midst of the swirling melee.

  He nodded to Eliza and Fenix as they moved to stand by his side. A gentle hand fell on his shoulder, then. Raphael half-turned. It was Gabriella. The princess uttered a final series of arcane syllables, and white light washed over him. The stinging pain from his wounds vanished, as did the strain and fatigue he’d accrued in battle so far.

  “Intermediate Heal and Invigoration should do the trick,” Gabriella muttered, her brow furrowed in concentration.

  The princess hadn’t been lying about her skill in magic. Raphael felt fresh and brimming with energy. Casting the light of the Dragon Meridian within himself, he found that his Ryu-To-Ki reserves had been slightly replenished as well.

  “Thanks, Gabby,” he said.

  Gabriella’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re really going to call me that? Am I really going to be “Gabby” from now on?”

  “Why not? Like Eliza said, it sounds adorable,” Raphael replied.

  A faint blush crept up the princess’s cheeks, making her resemblance to Eliza even more striking. “Very well, then. After all, I did agree to being thus addressed.”

  Eliza nudged Raphael irritably in the ribs with her elbow. “Since we’ve settled such a pressing issue, Raphael and Gabby, might I remind you that we’re fighting for our lives right now?”

  “Right. Let’s go.” Raphael hefted his glaive. The rest of his war party fell into formation as well, with Eliza at his left shoulder and Fenix directly behind him. Gabriella stood beside Fenix, mirroring his position as the war party’s mage.

  The shrieking revenant was now a smoking pile of ash. Raphael stepped past the Casella triplets, who were bent over, their hands on their knees, as they tried to catch their breath. All around them, Hell Drakes struggled against revenants, their faces angry and bitter as they were forced to fight their former comrades-in-arms.

  They caught sight of Sylvia, then. The elf had advanced deep into the enemy’s ranks, and she was now surrounded by skeleton warriors, bale-wights, and revenants. But she hardly seemed worried. Her sword flashed and cut, sometimes by itself and other times in her grasp. Its sweeping arc sent broken bones, shards of armor, and rotting limbs cascading all around her. She punched the hearts of revenants out from their chests and kicked their skulls from their shoulders. Lightning, fire, and ice poured from her fingertips in turn, annihilating everything her spells could reach.

  Two revenants leaped at her from behind, enchanted weapons blazing in their gray fists. Shadowy copies of the elf misted into existence, seized the undead creatures, and twisted their heads from their necks. Sylvia slammed her fist into the ground. Earthen spikes burst forth from the dirt to impale the revenants and skeleton warriors between her and the war party.

  And all of a sudden, there were no enemies in a wide circle around her. More undead monsters were advancing toward them, but it would be several moments before they reached her.

  “Get over here, Raphael! Bring the others, too!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the din of battle.

  The war party hurried pas
t the twitching forms of the impaled monsters to join her. Raphael shook his head in admiration. “You’re amazing, Sylvia!”

  The elf smirked. “I know, right? Now pay close attention.”

  She pointed at the advancing tide of monsters. Most of them were revenants, but these ones seemed far more formidable than those they’d fought.

  “All of the revenants heading our way now were once captains,” Sylvia confirmed, “like the one you took down, Raphael. I saw it. Good job! That used to be Hotaru, an actual Yamato Swordmaster and a Hell Drake captain. Far from the strongest of them all, but still, he was formidable and had a lot of potential. Damned shame this had to happen to him, but I’m sure he’d appreciate you putting him to rest.”

  Raphael rocked back on his heels, stunned. It was no wonder that the revenant with the two-handed sword used to be a captain, given how formidable it had been in battle, but now more than two dozen former captains were advancing upon them.

  “I hope you have a plan, Sylvia,” he said. “I don’t know if we can take on so many captains at once, especially with all these other revenants, skeleton warriors, and bale-wights still around.”

  “I do have a plan. It’s me,” the elf replied. Reaching into her belt pouch, she took out the Pocket Dimension Prism. “Or rather, it’s this. And me, of course.”

  “Get to the point, elf!” Fenix yelled.

  “See that bony thing in the middle of all those revenant captains there? The one that looks like a skeleton warrior?” Sylvia asked.

  With the light of the Dragon Meridian, Raphael immediately caught on to what she was referring to. A fleshless, emaciated creature sheathed in rusted metal shuffled in the midst of the approaching revenants, but it was something far more sinister and formidable than a lowly skeleton warrior.

  “That’s the Pale Haunter.” The elf tossed the Pocket Dimension Prism slightly into the air before catching it again. “I’m going to bring the Pale Haunter, along with all those revenant captains, into the Pocket Dimension.”

  “But you’ll have to go in with them!” Eliza cried. “That’s the only way the artifact’s enchantment can work!”

  “Well yes, but you’re forgetting something else,” Sylvia explained. “The Pocket Dimension Prism can only hold unwilling occupants for roughly ten minutes.”

  “You’re saying that we must finish the battle here and then be ready to turn all our strength on the revenants and the Pale Haunter by the time they emerge from the Pocket Dimension,” Raphael reasoned.

  “Close enough. And one other thing. Unless a revenant’s body has been utterly obliterated, it will regenerate,” the elf told them. “But then again, you have another way to deal with fallen revenants.”

  “My Deliverance spell. Got it. We must destroy all the enemies here and do so permanently within ten minutes after you use the Pocket Dimension Prism.” Raphael caught Sylvia’s wrist. “But you’ll be stuck in there with them all this time! Are you sure you’ll be fine?”

  The elf patted Raphael fondly on the cheek. “Of course I will. Think of it this way. I won’t be stuck in there with them. They’ll be stuck in there with me.”

  Chapter 28

  Before Raphael could say another word, Sylvia dashed off, charging headlong into the pack of revenant captains and the Pale Haunter.

  “Sylvia! Wait!” he cried. “It’s too dangerous!”

  The elf looked over her shoulder and flashed him a brilliant smile. And then she was among them. Four revenants struck out at her, each of them wielding a potently enchanted weapon. Sylvia ducked under a flaming sword and hurdled an axe that seemed to part the very air itself. Her own sword, Willowleaf, smashed aside a frost-encrusted mace, and she caught an icy halberd blade between her palms. More revenants left the Pale Haunter’s side and charged toward her, hefting their weapons or chanting spells.

  Raphael almost ran in after Sylvia, but he stopped himself before he could take a single step. He would be no help to her against such mighty foes. Worse, if he did try, Fenix and Eliza would follow him as well, to certain death. He gritted his teeth and held up his glaive.

  “Let’s fall back a bit,” Raphael said. “Eliza, can you think of anything that can help us destroy or weaken mass numbers of undead creatures at once? Fenix and Gabriella, if you need to replenish your spell dust, do so now.”

  The rest of the war party nodded or shouted their assent as they withdrew from Sylvia’s battle against the captain revenants. Raphael destroying any stray skeleton warriors or bale-wights that came within range of his glaive. Soon, they were in a pocket of relative peace, roughly twenty paces away from the swirling melee between the other captains and lesser revenants. Raphael destroyed any stray skeleton warriors or bale-wights that came within range of his glaive, but most of the monsters had their backs turned to the war party, so engrossed they were in their attempts to pull down and slay the other Hell Drakes.

  As Eliza racked her brains and the two mages reached into their robes for more Spell Dust, Raphael returned his attention to Sylvia. The elf had somehow broken through the press of the captain revenants, her sword cutting a swathe through their unliving flesh. Pursued by a pack of mighty undead Hell Drakes, she dived toward the Pale Haunter.

  For the first time, the monster lifted its head. Its face was fleshless, not unlike the typical skeleton warrior, but human eyes, complete with iris and sclera, glared from the sockets in its skull. The Pale Haunter cast its gaze on Sylvia. Its field of vision fell on Raphael as well, and for a moment, the monster’s soul was bare to the light of the Dragon Meridian.

  The Pale Haunter didn’t belong to the junkyard. The monster had come from somewhere far away, drawn to the cries of something twisted and horrific within the heart of the changing landscape and borne here on waves of impossible Spatial Magic. On its arrival, the Pale Haunter had latched onto the convulsing tides of Time Magic pouring through the junkyard, filtering the magical energy through its very being and turning it into a torrent of Necromantic Magic.

  Then it had reached out through space and time, calling every dead thing still ridden and bloated with hatred and malice. Thus did a legion of undead rise at the Pale Haunter’s behest, empowered and preserved by Time and Spatial Magic.

  If we can destroy the Pale Haunter, all the skeleton warriors and bale-wights will go away, too! Maybe even the revenants! Raphael started to shout to Sylvia, but the words died his mouth as the elf lifted a rainbow hued cube in her hands.

  The Pocket Dimension Prism spun as it expanded, encompassing all the captain revenants and the Pale Haunter. The undead monster flinched, something like doubt filling its overly human eyes. The Prism’s spinning prismatic walls swept over the Pale Haunter and the revenants, transporting them to the realm of prismatic infinity where Raphael had trained with Sylvia. The elf uttered several arcane syllables, and the magical artifact contracted in on itself, spinning all the while. Just before its walls converged on Sylvia, she turned to Rapahel and winked.

  And then all that was left was the Prism, rotating gently in midair where the elf had raised it.

  “Time starts now,” Fenix muttered. “Ten minutes. Did anyone bring a timepiece?”

  Gabriella produced a small brass watch from her robes. “I did. I’ll mark the time. There, done!”

  Raphael gave the princess a grateful nod before turning to Eliza. “Any ideas, Eliza?”

  “Undead creatures cannot usually abide sunlight because it drives Necromantic Magic back, but here, that’s not the case. The skeleton warriors are really just walking bones, with whatever is animating them hidden deep within where marrow once was. The bale-wights are wearing thick, hooded robes, and the revenants share the Pale Haunter’s immunity to sunlight,” she explained. “The only way to defeat such monsters is to destroy them in direct combat.”

  “Smash them to pieces with weapons or blow them apart with spells,” Fenix said.

  “Yes,” Eliza confirmed. “But...”

  “We don’t have enough t
ime for that, if we can even win this fight.” Raphael swept his gaze across the raging battle. Though they were outnumbered, the Hell Drakes were gaining ground, but they would take far more than ten minutes to triumph.

  Worse, Raphael was now certain of something beyond a doubt. Some of the corpses of the Hell Drakes who’d been slain before Sylvia and the other captains’ war parties had arrived were twitching. He’d believed himself mistaken, but the truth, awful as it was, would play itself out whether one decided to confront it or not.

  The victims of revenants became revenants themselves. Within minutes, even before the effects of Sylvia’s Prism wore off, the Hell Drakes would find themselves beset by a fresh wave of formidable enemies.

  Without knowing why, Raphael brought forth Sunkiller. Koshi’s bow shimmered into existence into his grasp. Now I can fight from a distance, but I don’t think a single arrow will be enough to bring down a revenant, and even if it could, I can’t shoot a few hundred in the time left.

  Gabriella stared at him, wide-eyed. “What’s that? Did you just cast a spell? Without Spell Dust? I’d thought that something was off, with you moving so fast and hitting so hard just now with not a speck of Martial Magic, but I thought you were just using some rare potions of some sort. But that’s not true, isn’t it?”

  “Long story,” Eliza told the princess, her voice laden with a note of slight satisfaction, before she pointed at Sunkiller. “Do you have a plan, Raphael? Was that why you took out your draconic weapon?”

  “Eliza, what do you know about Sunkiller? All the legends and myths, things like that?” Raphael asked.

  “Since our run-in with Huo Xian, I actually have been thinking about what I read about Sunkiller,” she replied. “The lore surrounding Koshi’s weapon is so old that facts are indistinguishable from hearsay, but one thing that came to mind is how it can carry spells on its arrows.”

  “Carry spells...” Raphael turned to Fenix. “Will your Banish spell work on these monsters?”