Too Young to Die

by Michael Anderle

  “Come see.” Amber beckoned urgently to Mary, who had stayed at Justin’s side the whole time and gazed at his face while tears streamed down her cheeks. She had heard the entire conversation but she hadn’t seen any of the context behind it. “Come look.”

  Mary bent her head. “I can’t hear any more of this.”

  “You won’t.” She came to take her hand and lead her to the monitors. “He knows his own worst fears and he used them to lure his other self into a trap. He was tempted with everything he wanted to be at the start of the game but he chose to be a different self instead. Justin saved his friends and he’s…well, he’ll go to kill the wizard now.”

  It occurred to her how strange it was to be emotional about someone choosing to kill a pixelated wizard. She cleared her throat and lowered her gaze.

  “Well, he’s not doing that yet,” DuBois said. Everyone looked at him and he shrugged. “He still has to see his birthday present, after all.”

  “Are you okay?” Justin demanded as he helped Lyle up. He went to offer Zaara his hand. Both his companions could stand, at least. That was something.

  “I feel wonderful, actually.” She looked confused. “All the life was draining away from me but everything came back in a rush.”

  “Thought I was a goner,” Lyle agreed. “Guess not. So who…” He stopped and looked from one Justin to the other.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Apparently, there were two of us—I hope that was all. That one said Sephith has a machine he uses to steal people’s life force and give it to others.”

  “Wait.” Zaara pointed at him. “How do we know you’re the right one?”

  “You tore me a new one the first time we met,” he told her. “You watched me burn my hand on the ropes trying to get us both untied. Lyle, we met in the jail at Riverbend and I mortally offended you by suggesting you might have left me to drown and run off before killing Sephith. The other Justin wouldn’t know that.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Zaara said.

  A roar outside shook the stone of the tower.

  “What was that?” he asked wearily. His wrist lit up with a blue light and he considered it for a moment. Given everything that was happening, he should probably check his messages sooner rather than later. He pressed the button and was surprised to see Dr. DuBois’s face appear.

  “Your parents remembered one of your favorite aspects of games when you were younger, and they wanted to give you a birthday present. This is only a beta test so you won’t be able to take it outside this zone, but if it works well, you might get it back later. And don’t worry, we gave you a buff to make sure you can’t plummet to your death. Have fun.”

  The man vanished as the roar was repeated.

  “I have no idea what it is,” Zaara replied to his earlier question. No time had passed for her or Lyle while the message was active. “But it’s big.”

  He walked to the door and pushed it open as purple scales flashed past. His face broke into a smile.

  “It’s a dragon,” he said and began to laugh. “I’m going to be a dragon rider.”

  The creature soared through the night air outside the tower and swooped to hover in front of Justin.

  “How much time passed while we were in there?” Zaara asked.

  “That’s what you’re focused on?” Lyle asked her. “There’s a dragon, girl.”

  “I know.” She gulped audibly. “I’m trying not to think about that.”

  Justin stepped out onto the ledge. This high up, the wind whistled around the tower. He extended his hand as the dragon flew closer. Softly, it lowered its snout into his palm. One eye—a brilliant green with a slit pupil—closed in a long blink.

  “Hello,” he said.

  It snorted.

  “Can I…ride you?” He looked at its back.

  It lowered its head and maneuvered close to the little ledge so he could slide onto its neck and down to the saddle. He made a sharp intake of breath as he stepped out onto nothing, but the creature caught him and a moment later, the air returned to his lungs. He laughed shakily.

  “Already outfitted for a rider, huh?” The pommel was fine leather and he traced his fingers over it before he leaned closer to see the letter embossed there—J. “Thanks, Mom and Dad,” he whispered.

  “Justin!” Zaara called. When he looked at her, she pointed at the sky. He narrowed his eyes to focus and identified dark shapes in the black expanse. “You must have to do something with those! And—good luck!” With that, she turned and buried her face in her hands.

  “Do you see those?” he asked the dragon. “Let’s go check them out.”

  It must have understood because it stopped sculling in midair and flapped its wings twice before it soared into the night. Justin gave a whoop and a laugh. Air rushed past him, the beat of the dragon’s wings made its body ripple with muscle, and the stars were incredibly close.

  The creature spiraled as it ascended steadily. It took delight in flying, Justin could tell. It was made for this and was intelligent enough to love it. He stroked his hand along the scales and smiled.

  “You’re more wonderful than I ever thought,” he told it, and he thought it snorted again.

  The dark patches in the sky were a series of stars, each ornate and each the absence of light rather than the presence of it. They circled the very top of the tower, but he could make no sense of them. Dragon and rider were on their second circuit when a look over his shoulder revealed something strange.

  “Fly close to the tower,” he called to the creature, who obeyed without a flicker of doubt. They circled and descended toward where Lyle and Zaara waited, then spiraled to the top. Ornate stars were etched faintly in the stone, each like those in the sky. Justin counted eight of them. He memorized four and urged the dragon up and around until they found the first.

  He bit his lip. There was only one thing he could think of to do.

  “Fire,” he told the dragon and pointed at the first star. It opened its mouth and roared, flames erupted into the darkness, and the void turned into pure, shining fire. Below them, there was a shout and he looked down as part of a stairway sprang into existence.

  Justin had the dragon light each of the stars in turn until the stairway extended to the top of the tower. The creature swept toward the ground in a dizzying rush before it carried him up again. He clung to his saddle and his blood raced, and he honestly didn’t think he had ever been this happy in his life.

  When the dragon deposited him outside the wizard’s inner chamber, his heart pounded. He stroked its snout a little regretfully.

  “I hope we meet again,” he said gruffly.

  It blinked slowly at him again and banked into the night with a final roar.

  “Shall we?” he asked the other two.

  His companions nodded and with his heart in his throat, he thrust the door open and strode into the wizard’s sanctum.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The room held nothing Justin would have expected in a wizard’s tower. The only thing present was the machine—a giant computer shimmered white, its casing carved ornately of ivory with a throne atop it. Sephith sat with his head tipped back and his arms resting on the arms of the throne. One hand clutched something but otherwise, he looked as if he might be asleep.

  Around him in a circle were a dozen people, each suspended as Zaara and Lyle had been. They looked as if they had been there for some time and the lines of blue power that led to the machine were very faint.

  No one in the room seemed to be aware of their presence. Justin edged closer with his sword drawn and Zaara and Lyle followed. All three of them exchanged glances as they moved. Where were the guards? Where were the traps?

  The answer turned out to be about a yard from the throne. Sephith’s eyes flew open and the door to the stairway slammed shut. With a shout, he elevated and hovered once again on flames of black and green. He was smiling.

  “So you defeated your other half.” He began to laugh. “You could not
even make yourself whole.” He held an iron key up, the thing he had clutched with one hand. “Only together could you take this from me—and you need it to get home.”

  “He’s bluffing,” Lyle said immediately. “Humans are terrible at it. I know.”

  Sephith snarled at him. “What do you know, dwarf? You’re a drunk and a brawler. I’ve seen dozens of your kind and drained them of their life. I’ll take yours, too. All three of you will give me your talents and your thoughts—so much better, I must say, than these simpleton villagers.”

  “You must have learned a lot about herding cows over the years,” Zaara taunted. “And breeding pigs. Who was the last person you took—the baker? Can you make a good sweet roll?”

  The man’s mouth twisted. “You want to play, the three of you? You have no idea what you’re up against.” He slipped the key into his belt. “On the count of three? One, two—three.” With both hands, he unleashed a pure, roiling cloud of black directly at the companions.

  “Oh, my.” DuBois snatched his phone up and his fingers fumbled over the keys. He could barely drag his gaze away from the screens as he typed.

  “What’s going on?” Mary had stopped crying but she still clutched Nick’s hand in a death grip.

  “He’s beginning…to show some progress.” The doctor tore his gaze away from the monitor. “I’m ordering a portable MRI machine to be brought right now. We need to know what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on?” Tad asked from the doorway. He looked at them one by one. “I’ve had the worst flight you could imagine and not a single one of you has answered your phones.” His look took in Mary’s tear-streaked face and DuBois typing furiously. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  “So much,” his wife said finally. “So much.” She smiled. “He loved the dragon.” She looked at the monitor. “But now, he’s fighting the wizard.”

  “It looks like I got back just in time.” Tad wrapped her in his arms.

  The spell surged through the air and Zaara yelled, “Duck!”

  Lyle and Justin crowded close to her and a magical barrier suddenly activated. Her face paled as she fought to keep the shield operational. Around it, the air seemed to be at once melting and on fire, as well as being pitch black. Justin had a feeling the sight would haunt his nightmares if he ever got out of this alive.

  Sephith laughed. “Oh, you little fools. This is only the smallest piece of my arsenal.”

  “How long can you hold the spell?” he whispered to Zaara. When he saw her strained face, his heart sank. “Hold it as long as you can. Every second counts. Let me guide you across the floor, okay?”

  She responded with a jerk of her head and walked slowly forward. Her breath dragged into her lungs in shallow, rapid breaths, while Lyle and Justin crouched nearby and shuffled along with her. It wasn’t, he thought, the most dignified thing he had ever done.

  On the other hand, he still wasn’t dead.

  Sephith must have realized what was going on because he suddenly yelled. A red orb of magic soared toward them out of the black and Justin raised his blade on instinct. The sphere struck it and shattered. Another hissed toward them and he batted it away from them.

  “Exactly like baseball,” he said. He had sucked at baseball. For all their sakes, he had better get good, and fast.

  They reached the machine and he kicked Lyle to get the dwarf’s attention. “Hey. Stout.”

  “What?” The dwarf watched as he dispatched another ball of magic with his sword and fired ice from his hands to spear a fourth.

  “Destroy the machine,” Justin whispered.

  “How? I’m not an engineer.”

  “What do you mean, how?” He spared him an impatient glance. “What do you do with really complicated things to break them? You hit them hard.”

  “Oh. I can do that!” Lyle set to work with a will. He grunted continually with pain as his fists struck the ivory repeatedly, but he seemed to care less about the pain than Justin did.

  The sound of flesh and bone hitting something hard like that was not a sound he ever wanted to hear again. He was grateful to have the distraction of the wizard’s fireballs.

  “I wish I could get in that machine for a little while!” Zaara’s voice cracked. “Oh, gods. Oh, this hurts. Ow. Ow.”

  “Only a little longer,” he told her. He felt much the same, although he knew he wasn’t in as much pain as she was. Each time he managed to swing the sword to connect with the balls of magic, he counted it as a lucky coincidence. He had almost taken one directly to the face when he missed and had needed to duck hastily, unable to get a spell off quickly enough.

  Still, he had been able to throw a few spells between the balls of fire. Sephith circled them at surprising speed, yelled obscenities, and taunted them, but Justin could hear the fear in his voice.

  “We’re winning,” he called to Zaara. “Don’t give up. Please don’t give up. Give Lyle a little more—”

  Her whimper of pain came at the same time as the dwarf’s triumphant shout and a crackle of electronics. Sephith screamed, the black cloud disappeared, and twelve people thudded unceremoniously to the floor.

  Zaara staggered and caught herself on what remained of the throne. Her face was an unhealthy gray but she looked practically radiant next to Sephith. The wizard seemed to age in front of their eyes. The green and black flames disappeared and his back began to hunch. His hair went white, his skin sagged, and his eyes turned milky.

  “No!” he croaked. He fished the key out of his pocket but fumbled with it. He attempted to throw it but his joints gave out and he fell to his knees. “No!”

  The people on the floor began to wake up. Men and women rubbed their heads and looked around as if they had no idea where they were. Then, with an ominous rumble, the tower shifted and began to lean slightly.

  “No!” Sephith’s scream seemed to resonate in the very stones.

  “Lyle!” Justin yelled. “Get these people out of here—and Zaara.” He had to get the key but he couldn’t live with himself if the rest of them died. He pointed to the side of the room where a small box was visible now that the throne had been destroyed. “Put them in that, take it to the ground floor, and get out!”

  The dwarf began to usher the villagers toward the makeshift elevator. Zaara clung to him. Her breath wheezed into her lungs and she looked exhausted.

  But Sephith uttered a last, triumphant shout. He flung his hands up and vanished in a burst of purple lightning that hung in the air for a moment and crackled before it disappeared into the machine, which hummed to life once more.

  Zaara stopped. She looked at the elevator and then at Justin. Slowly, she straightened.

  “I’m staying,” she told Lyle.

  “Zaara,” Justin called.

  “Go!” she shouted to Lyle. “I’ll stay.” She looked at Justin. “There’s no way you can fight this alone. And get that key!”

  He flung himself down to grasp the key, rolled sideways as the tower groaned and swayed again, and tried to keep down the rabbit he’d eaten earlier.

  I’m not afraid of heights, I’m not afraid of heights, I’m not afraid of heights, I’m not afraid of heights…

  A hologram of Sephith rose from the machine. The ivory crackled with power and the figure—young and glossy-haired once more—laughed.

  “A true wizard is immortal,” he told Justin. “You cannot kill the body and expect the mind to follow.”

  “I know,” he said. “After all, I was trained by Kural.”

  “Kural?” Zaara whispered.

  “How did you think I learned magic?” He grinned at her. “I’ll tell you the story when we’re done. Right now, I’d say that hologram has a bluish glow, wouldn’t you?”

  She grimaced with effort, but she fired a fireball from one of her palms directly at the machine. Sephith shrieked and began to cycle through the colors, which flickered in and out with a speed Justin’s eyes could barely follow. The tower groaned and shook.

&nb
sp; “Oh, it is on,” he said. He lowered his sword, grinned, and steadied himself.

  The lift barely made it in one piece. At regular intervals, the tower seemed to sway and throw it and its inhabitants against the walls. Boards began to pop off the sides of it and people clung to one another and screamed.

  When it was close to the ground, Lyle leapt free. “This way!”

  Thankfully, they followed him without question. Dust sifted onto them as they ran out of the storeroom and into the yard at the main gate.

  Zombie guards lay still and silent on the ground. The dwarf guessed that they had been sustained by the power of the machine. Perhaps every one of them had given their soul to it. Poor bastards. The few living servants, meanwhile, hitched horses to a cart and cast fearful looks at the tower.

  “Wait!” he called. “Wait for us!”

  To their credit, they did. They helped the villagers into the cart and it lurched into motion not even a second later.

  “There are two more in the tower,” he called.

  “Then they’ll need to get out on their own.” A man who looked like a blacksmith extended a hand to haul Lyle into the cart by his collar. “And I’ve seen this tower kill too many to let you die here, too. Come along, dwarf.”

  Sephith might be a wizard, but he was only one man, and Justin noticed something very interesting. Every time there was a strike, whether or not Sephith was immune, the flicker between immunities stopped for a split-second.

  He waited for Zaara to notice it too and darted her meaningful looks each time it happened. When she saw it, she nodded. Her color was returning but she still looked drained and slow.

  They worked in unison. One of them would attack and the other would slip in to use the correct type of secondary attack while the color was stable. Sephith’s health bar ticked down slowly. He called insults to them and shouted that they were nothing and would be rubble with the rest of the tower.