Two Necromancers, a Dwarf Kingdom, and a Sky City

by L. G. Estrella

  Daerin stroked his beard. Like his brother’s, it was a steel grey colour. “They must have entered this world only to be attacked by that… thing.” He gestured vaguely at the colossal cosmic fungus wrapped around the Sky City.

  “Yep. They’ve most likely been stranded here ever since. It makes me wonder if they were just unlucky or if they forgot to test the waters by teleporting something else first.” Timmy frowned. “Although sending a smaller object through probably wouldn’t have attracted a lot of attention. Transporting the entire city…”

  “Skygarde would have stood out like a torch in a dark cave,” Amanda murmured. “Even from here, I can feel the power emanating from the Sky City. Its power source is still active. That thing has most likely been feeding off it all this time.”

  “We need to be careful,” Timmy warned. “We’ve seen how dangerous the smaller ones are in our world. I’m going to bet they’re stronger here on their own turf. I think it’s also safe to assume that the giant one is much stronger than the smaller ones. If the ability to stop time is proportional to mass or volume, then that big one could keep time stopped pretty much forever. It’s got to be, what, a little over two miles tall? That makes it hundreds of times taller than the ones we fought around the Hearthgate. It has the same sort of shape as the smaller ones too, but its body is even wider relative to its size, so it’s volume could be millions of times larger. If we end up having to fight that thing, our chances aren’t exactly stellar.”

  “So how do we get out of here?” King Barin growled. “I have a kingdom to run – one that might be relatively free of goblins for the first time in centuries – and we all have a war with the empire to win too.”

  “If the necromancer is right, and I think he is,” Daerin said. “Then Skygarde’s teleportation device ripped a hole into this dimension. If we can reactivate the device and do the same thing again, we should end up back in our world although probably not where we started since the Hearthgate was not in a good state when we left.”

  “That’s right.” Timmy grimaced as he looked around. “Not everybody is here, so I’m hoping some of the others managed to get clear and tell everyone what happened. We do not need people panicking. At the very least, I’m hoping they can kill off the rest of the cosmic fungi in Diamondgate. They’re tough, but if you know what they can do, you’ve got a chance.” He sighed. “But let’s not forget the teeny, tiny problem with trying to reactivate the teleportation device.”

  “Aye.” Daerin pointed at the hulking cosmic fungus that was leeching off the Sky City. “First we’d have to get to the Sky City without being captured or killed by these overgrown mushrooms, and then we’d have to find the teleportation device and somehow get it working after all these years. And even if we could do both those things, we’d then have to fight off that big one and who knows how many smaller ones too.”

  “It sounds… troublesome,” Old Man drawled. He was still breathing a little heavily from using so much of his magic, but he was looking a bit more lively than before.

  “It sounds like a damn nightmare,” King Barin muttered. “Isn’t there any other way?”

  Amanda felt a tingle at the edges of her eldritch senses. It was a warning. She needed to be careful. “We need to move.” She pointed at a rocky outcrop a short distance away that was overgrown with strange mushrooms and twisted, mutated shrubs whose ever-shifting colours made no sense whatsoever. It was like being inside a fever dream. “Something is coming this way. I don’t know what it is, but I’d rather avoid it if we can.”

  “Aye.” King Barin eyed their forces. The dwarves were all tired and many were wounded to some degree. Against normal foes, he’d still have favoured his stalwart elites, but these were not normal foes. They had no idea what they were up against. Until they did, discretion was wiser than valour. “Let’s get moving.”

  The group – there were perhaps two hundred of them in all – swiftly made their way to the outcrop. By chance, it was large enough to shelter all of them, but every step they took was marked by a sickly wet squelch as they crushed spores and other, less identifiable, things underfoot. Gerald looked especially hesitant about crouching down amidst the strange, multi-hued mushrooms that carpeted the area beneath the outcrop, but Chomp solved the problem. The dog simply lifted the bureaucrat by the scruff of his cloak and moved him into position.

  Chomp was no coward, but he had a dog’s cunning. He likely sensed the same danger Amanda did and knew well enough that they could not afford to get into a fight right now. She was honestly amazed that Gerald hadn’t completely lost it. He didn’t exactly handle big changes or stress well and being teleported into another dimension most definitely counted as a big, stressful change. However, he was somehow remaining relatively calm for the time being although he was clutching onto a whole stack of protective charms like his life depended on it. Given how many times he’d almost been killed during the battle around the Hearthgate – the ninja rats must have saved his life at least a dozen times – he was right to be concerned. On the upside, the cosmic fungi hadn’t targeted him specifically. They’d seemed more interested in eliminating Katie and Old Man. As they waited anxiously for what was to come, the dwarves began to down potions and use what magic they could to heal themselves. If there was fighting to be done, they’d not make it easy for their enemies. Dwarves could die, but they would make their enemies pay dearly for every life they took.

  The creature that arrived was unlike anything Amanda had ever seen. It was a vast floating sphere more than a hundred yards across with tentacles hanging down from several apertures in its bottom half. It moved with a sound like hissing from a punctured pipe, and its tentacles poked and prodded various collections and clumps of mushrooms. At one particularly dense clump, it was greeted by a keening cry, and smaller, narrower versions of the fungi they’d fought emerged from the ground. Tentacles lifted the lesser creatures into the air, and several sets of eyes emerged from the sphere upon long, flexible stalks. Tubular organs spewed gruel of some kind at the lesser fungi, and the spherical creature set them back on the ground before continuing its journey as the smaller creatures burrowed back into the earth. Amanda suppressed a shiver. They were standing in what was essentially a nursery for the cosmic fungi. Who knew how many more were simply waiting for their chance to strike? And that spherical creature – its size alone would make it a formidable opponent, and there was no telling what other abilities it might have. Thankfully, it hadn’t noticed them, and it continued on, stopping now and then to tend to smaller fungi. They waited until it had vanished over a series of tall, jagged hills before emerging from beneath the outcrop.

  “Okay.” Timmy shivered. “That was weird.” As usual, he had a gift for understatement. However, nobody was laughing. “Like it or not, I think the Sky City is our only way home. Does Skygarde have any weapons? If we’re going to fight that giant monster, we need to know what we’re working with.”

  “It should,” Daerin replied. “I’ve studied what information we have of the Sky City more than any dwarf alive. Skygarde was our greatest achievement: a flying fortress capable of challenging any other fortress in the world. It has weapons capable of fighting even an enemy of that size. They must have been disabled or damaged, or it stopped time before they could be used.” He smirked. “There’s not a dwarf alive today who can match me in artifice. If you can get me up there and those weapons are still around, I’ll get them working again.” He nodded at some of his golems that had been dragged into this place with them. “I can cannibalise my golems for parts if I need to.”

  “You’d better,” the king muttered. “The longer we stay here, the less I like our odds.” The rolling fields of mushrooms and other fungi were far more menacing now they knew what they concealed. “There are far too many of those cylindrical bastards here for us to beat all of them.”

  “But how will we get up there?” Gerald asked. “The Sky City is more than a mile off the ground. There’s nothing to climb on exc
ept the giant fungus, and I really, really don’t want to climb it.”

  “You still have some of my flying zombies stored away, right?” Timmy asked.

  “I do, but not enough to carry two hundred people.” It went unspoken that for all of their short stature dwarves weighed as much as grown men – sometimes more – due to the density of their flesh and muscles.

  “We could make several trips.” Timmy frowned. “It’s not ideal and it would increase our chances of being spotted, but we can’t leave anyone behind.”

  Amanda nodded grimly. “This will be a one way trip. Anyone left behind when we make our escape is going to be stuck here.”

  “There might be another way.” Old Man lifted his hand. He looked a bit weary, but his eyes were razor keen. Space bent and twisted around his fingers. “This place is different from our world. Manipulating space and time is much easier here. I should be able to create a portal between the ground and the Sky City. It will be harder then simply teleporting, but I can’t take more than a few people with me when I teleport. Provided I can keep it open long enough, a portal should be able to transport everyone.”

  “You can do that?” Gerald asked.

  Old Man nodded. “I’m old, Gerald. In my prime, I could have done it even without this place making it easier. These days, I mostly just teleport and even then only sparingly and using lines of sight.” His weathered features creased into a smile. “But as old as I am, I’m not dead yet, and I’ve no intention of dying here either. I’ll make it work.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do.” Timmy glanced at Amanda. “What do you think?” As an ancient vampire, she was the only whose senses were actually enhanced by this place – although perhaps Spot’s had been improved as well – and she’d already shown she could detect threats before the rest of them.

  “It sounds like a reasonable plan,” she said. “But we need to avoid being noticed for as long as possible. There are things that can see us that I don’t think the rest of you can see.” Her senses shifted back and forth between the mundane and the eldritch. “Right now, they don’t seem to care about us, but that could change.” She frowned. “We should check if Spot can see them too. If he has awakened his astral dragon heritage, he should be able to see them.” One of those things – a strange, balloon-like creatures the size of a kite – fluttered by, trailing spores in its wake. None of the others reacted to its presence except her and Spot despite it seemingly passing right through several of the dwarves. “I suspect that the cosmic fungi we’ve encountered are amongst the most material of the creatures in this world. The others might be almost completely astral or otherwise non-corporeal in nature. We should also avoid rushing. I know many of you have taken potions or have used magic to restore yourselves, but we’ve been fighting all day. We need to be wary of mental fatigue, and we are simply not prepared to fight another major battle so quickly.”

  The king met her gaze. It was clear that the thought of taking their time did not sit well with him, but he was a pragmatic man. The constant warfare against the goblins had forced him to be. “I don’t like it, but you’re right. We should try to get closer and then find a place to rest. I doubt we’ll get much sleep, but we could all use a few hours off our feet.” His eyes hardened. “There’ll be plenty of fighting in our future, and we need to be at our best.”

  They moved from outcrop to outcrop, the jagged spires and strange overhangs interspersed with towering tree-like mushrooms that stretched up toward the sky and cast vast shadows over the land. Both Amanda and Spot were on high alert although the dragon seemed pleased. He had gotten his glow down to a more manageable level, and he was brimming with energy. Eventually they stopped for the day, or was it the night? They had no way of knowing. The outcrop they’d chosen to shelter under was closer to the Sky City and large enough to accommodate all of them.

  “This will have to do,” King Barin said.

  It was hard to tell how long they’d been walking for without the sun to help them gauge the passing of time. It was also hard to differentiate between all of the mushrooms, weird shrubs, and fungi that filled the area. Everything looked the same, and the only landmark they could rely on was the Sky City. Gerald summoned some bedrolls with his magic, and the dwarves began to pass them out. She had no idea why he had so much bedding, but no one was going to complain. A bedroll might not be as comfortable as a proper bed, but it was a lot better than sleeping directly on the fungus that coated the ground.

  “You’ve all done well today,” the king said. “And I’m proud of you, but try to get some rest. We’ve got more fighting ahead of us, and we’ll need to be well rested to get through it.”

  As the others began to settle down, Amanda turned her attention to their surroundings. It was a good thing the others couldn’t see what she could. Oh, Avraniel might be able to sense it – elves had excellent instincts – but she and Spot could see it, and seeing was believing. On the horizon were colossal cities of blooming fungus that vanished up into the turbulent sky and filled the air with vast curtains of spores. Titanic shambling monstrosities covered in mushrooms and tendrils of mould plodded from one place to another, hidden from normal sight since they were more astral or non-corporeal than material. Their huge feet didn’t leave so much as a single footprint as they passed. The skies were alive with verminous multitudes of fliers, their shapes utterly alien. They looked nothing like animals and more like overripe fruits, swollen mushrooms, or mutated flowers. But the sounds they made – it was a mercy the others couldn’t hear them. It would have driven her mad if not for the eldritch power in her blood. Elsewhere, roads of phosphorescent light stretched from mountain to mountain and horizon to horizon in strange, winding paths that defied all logic and geometry.

  Strange. Spot sat down beside her. This place is very strange.

  The dragon wasn’t afraid, but he had a hunter’s instincts. Those instincts, much like Amanda’s, were telling him to stay wary. This was not a place for open battle, not when they were so badly outnumbered. The things only they could see had not shown the ability to affect them yet – most astral beings could neither affect physical objects nor be affected by them – but there was no telling how long that would remain the case. If they were lucky, then these creatures could only perceive astral and non-corporeal objects, which would mean they wouldn’t even notice them and the others at all.

  Amanda could sense the astral energy inside him, and she wondered what it would do to him. She had only seen a handful of astral dragons in her lifetime. They had a tendency to wander from world to world via the astral planes that connected different worlds and dimensions, and all of them had been formidable creatures. They could easily have annihilated entire armies had they wished to.

  The mightiest she had ever encountered had actually been an empyreal dragon, a dragon that represented one possible pinnacle of power that an astral dragon could attain. Empyreal dragons were dragons that had touched the very Flame of Creation and had been forever changed by it, or so the stories said. It had arrived in a blaze of light and fire that had made it seem as though a second sun had risen during the middle of the night. The dragon had unleashed coruscating blasts of impossible brightness and heat that had scythed through stone, armour, and even the land itself as easily as paper. Even in his prime, Black Scales could not have faced such a foe and emerged victorious, but the empyreal dragon had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, once more seeking out the endless, infinite pathways of the astral plane.

  She had encountered another variant of astral dragon in her dreams – a spirit dragon. The long, serpentine creature had chortled as it taunted her about her past and hinted at her future before disappearing into the ether, a winged titan walking from world to world and dream to dream. She wondered if Spot would attain such lofty heights. Astral dragons did not revel in devastation as much as fire dragons, nor did they savour suffering and torment the way corruption dragons did. Instead, they were haughty and proud, assured of their superior
ity and utterly confident in their power. But Spot was different from both of his parents. He was a warm dragon, kind in his own way and caring, not yet made cruel and cynical by the overwhelming power dragons possessed.

  I feel strong. Spot bared his teeth. But I also feel strange.

  “Save your strength, Spot.” Amanda patted his side. His scales were warm, almost hot to the touch, and her fingers smoked lightly, the radiance that had enveloped him anathema to her vampiric flesh. “We’ll have need of it soon enough.”

  He tilted his head to one side. Look. Something is coming.

  When he pointed with one claw, the others responded, so it must have been something their more mundane senses could perceive. The outcrop was within a mile or so of a lake full of swirling colour. No one had been foolish enough to even think of drinking from it, especially since Gerald had water, and they had all agreed that staying away from it was the safest option. Now, though, fog had risen from the swirling, ever-shifting liquid of the lake, and as it drifted past them it left two spectral copies of each of them in its wake.