by Sever Bronny
The dragon went rabid with desperation, clawing and kicking and biting, but this was where Augum’s skill as a trained warlock warrior finally evened the playing field, for the beast was no match for Augum’s blistering follow-up attacks, attacks that combined with Bridget’s Confusion-infused arrows. And right alongside, Leera’s opponent began squealing in terror as the Fear spell from her simul-enchanted blade took root.
Thunder caromed across the chamber as the pair of necromantic dragons flailed wildly beneath the trio’s barrage. Leera’s blade sang a watery Fear-laced verse that dovetailed with the crackling chorus from Augum’s lightning blade, and Bridget set the tempo with her unceasing and rhythmic shooting, each earthen arrow making a deep thrumming sound. Her strikes compounded the Confusion castings until the pair of black dragons were so befuddled they abruptly attacked each other, allowing the trio to deliver the killing blows.
Before long, the pair of dragons lay in a black pulpy mass of scales and blood.
The trio, dragon chests heaving, then turned their attention to the pair of dragons held at bay by Mrs. Stone just as her strength failed, for she had been holding them back for an impossible stretch of time. The four-barn snatched her up and took off toward the entrance nearby, while the other shot at the trio.
“You get this one, I’ll get Mrs. Stone,” Leera snapped, and disappeared her shield. She then lowered herself like a cat ready to spring, watery shortsword poised forward with both paws. “Impetus peragro spectra xae.” She teleported with a mighty thwomp, reappearing in midair underneath the flying dragon in time to slice its belly open, before disappearing again with another thwomp—just as the dragon lashed out at her. She reappeared a little ways down the tunnel, where she whirled about and shot back at the black dragon, which had faltered and was losing height, Mrs. Stone writhing in its clutches, blood dribbling from its belly. When Leera got close, she feigned a sword strike only to swerve at the last moment, performing a neat mid-air roll and delivering a killing stab to the dragon’s heart.
Meanwhile, Bridget shot off arrow after arrow at the dragon she and Augum faced, not one of which the beast was fast enough to dodge—nor did it know the basic Shield spell—and so the arrows lodged into its scaly flesh with sickening thuds, disappearing moments later but leaving gaping wounds. By the time Augum came upon it he only had to slice its neck and the beast fell dead at his feet.
The pair looked to the tunnel to see Leera flying back, Mrs. Stone held gently in her forepaws, the black dragon lying dead behind her.
Bridget flapped her wings and sped to Olaf, while Augum trailed. Both of them reverted upon landing near. And although neither had any arcane stamina left after the Spirit of the Dragon casting, no enemies remained.
They had survived.
Leera swooped in and let Mrs. Stone down. “I’ll stay in dragon form as long as I can in case they’re only regrouping,” Leera said, and placed herself between the sheltering group and the entrance.
Mrs. Stone wordlessly sat down, crossed her legs, placed her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes. Augum thought it a brilliant idea to renew her arcane stamina as she also knew a bit of the healing arts, and would therefore be able to aid Jengo with his work when he rejuvenated.
Augum noticed Bridget trying to haul Olaf to his feet, but he was too heavy. Tears were rolling down her cheeks as she whispered over and over, “You’ll be fine, Ollie, we’re here now, you’ll be fine.” Augum shot to Olaf’s other side and helped haul the big man up.
“My legs don’t work,” Olaf blubbered. “My legs don’t work …”
The pair of them dragged him over to Mrs. Stone and Jengo, the former meditating silently, the latter writhing in moaning agony. They lay Olaf down between them, with Bridget lowering his head gently to the ground and smoothing his blond hair, which was sweaty and matted to his scalp. His face was splattered with blood.
“I’m right here, my love, I’m right here,” she cooed, and kissed his forehead.
Augum next went to Edwin, who clutched Haylee as if she was all that was left to him. He still wore a slack-jawed expression, as if disbelieving where he was or what had happened.
“How is she?” Augum asked, examining Haylee.
“I’m … all right,” she whispered, opening her eyes. She looked up at Edwin. “You … you saved me.”
“I murdered my mother,” Edwin whispered, staring off at nothing. “I murdered my mother …”
Haylee struggled to sit up and Augum helped her. She cupped Edwin’s cheeks with her hands and said, “You saved us. All of us. You are not a murderer. You are a hero. My hero,” and she kissed him before drawing him into a tender hug. He only sat there, blinking in a manner that suggested he was still trying to comprehend what he had done.
“Hey, uh … everyone?” Leera said.
Augum looked back to see that she had reverted and was backing away from the entrance.
“I’m empty here and there’s something big coming,” she said.
Augum, seeing that Haylee and Edwin were all right for now, ran over to his girl. Bridget soon joined, and the trio listened as a steady low rumble got louder and louder from the passage.
Augum rubbed his hot forehead, wincing from a headache. “I can lob a spell … maybe two, but that’s it.” Gods, what was coming now?
“Same,” Bridget said. “And I don’t have near enough for Teleport.”
Leera swallowed. “Uh … that sounds like an army. An army. What are we going to do?”
The trio turned to Mrs. Stone, yet she remained statue-like, eyes closed in serene concentration.
“We do the same,” Augum blurted, and the trio dumped themselves to the ground and began meditating. But the rumbling kept increasing in magnitude and he knew that there simply wasn’t enough time, nor were they anywhere close to being adept enough with the skill to renew the arcane stamina required to fight an army.
They heard the beasts long before seeing them—a cacophony of predatory calls and screeches and bone smacks and lumbering growls. None of the trio were able to successfully meditate and, one by one, they stood to face the entrance.
Leera slipped her hand into Augum’s. Bridget glanced back at Olaf, who was gibbering about not knowing where he was or what was happening. She looked to the entrance, then to Augum and Leera.
“Go to him,” Augum said.
Leera nodded. “He needs you.”
Bridget’s face tightened as she pressed a hand to each of their shoulders and squeezed. “I love you both,” she whispered, then ran back to Olaf and crouched over him. She pressed her forehead to his, closed her eyes, and whispered soothing words of love.
Augum drew Leera close to him and kissed her head. She only wrapped her arms around him and nuzzled close.
The black entrance at last belched forth the horde, which spilled into the torch-lit chamber like an angry swarm of wasps. Except these were not tiny things—these were lumbering undead behemoths of the largest creatures the jungle had to offer, from huge muscled ape beasts to mammoth and lithe tigers to monstrous six-armed lizards. Everything had rows of teeth and claws and was half rotten or freshly killed or stripped to the bone by carrion. There must have been a thousand of them. And at the very rear was a six-barn undead black-and-crimson dragon, its bones creaking, its wings tattered. For a moment, Augum thought it was the same dragon Gavinius had taken over, only to see that its flesh had long rotted, meaning it had been dead for some time.
Augum looked at his friends. Haylee whimpered and Edwin began to weep as he drew her in tight. Jengo looked at the horde and shook uncontrollably, stuttering, “Un-n-n-n-n-n-n-nameables help-p-p us.” Olaf, as if reliving a childhood nightmare, gazed at the horde with an expression of wide-eyed horror. Bridget refused to look at all and simply hugged him, shoulders heaving. Even if Augum and the girls eventually regained enough stamina to Teleport, they couldn’t leave their friends behind.
The horde roared as one chaotic mob and began to charge. Augum glance
d at Mrs. Stone, whose eyes had opened. He nudged Leera. “Look.”
A young-again Mrs. Stone levitated up to her feet as if an invisible force had picked her up from behind. She slowly rolled her neck, stretching it, curled her long brown hair behind one ear and then the other, and finally lowered her head, wolfing her gaze at the horde.
“My turn,” she said, and strode past them.
Augum’s chest tightened along with his hold on Leera. His great-grandmother was a lone figure walking to meet impossible numbers. A tree before a gale, a pebble before a mountain. He could almost hear the bagpipes of war, perhaps a single note, waver and soar above the fray.
And then came the annihilation.
Anna Atticus Stone began like a conductor of a great orchestra, every sweep of her arms a death knell. With a mere twist of her right hand, a hundred beasts at the very front turned on each other, causing those charging behind to stumble over them. With a complicated squiggle of her left hand, she paralyzed another hundred in place. Returning to her right hand, she made a graceful S motion and still another hundred slowed down to a slithering crawl. And back to her left, this time quickly opening and closing her fist. Another fifty exploded from the inside out, sending a shower of bones soaring across the horde. She repeated the gesture with her right and another fifty exploded. Then she pointed to the left corner and snapped off a complex incantation. A towering version of herself appeared and pretended to cast spells. That illusory incantation alone drew nearly a third of the horde.
But the legendary warlock once known as the Arcane Artist wasn’t anywhere near done. Like a painter creating a masterpiece, she next made a wavy dual-armed motion as if petting two invisible cats, and just like that, another hundred beasts went to sleep. She followed up with a familiar series of gestures that involved drawing a line across the horde. When she smacked one hand into the other in conclusion, a monstrous wall of lightning as high as the dragon appeared behind the horde, trapping it inside the chamber. It was a signal to Tyranecron that Mrs. Stone would take no prisoners—there would be no mercy.
She then drew a star shape and a huge champion elemental appeared in the right corner, boiling with potent lightning that lashed out at all nearby. But this behemoth was no illusion, and it began stomping on and clobbering and frying whatever unfortunate beast got in range of its lumbering tree-sized limbs.
For the final act, she swept her arms about and conjured up a monstrous storm within the chamber. Lightning blistered and crashed and exploded beasts all over the place, launching bones into the air as if celebrating a twisted birthday extravaganza. There were so many lightning volleys that the chamber strobed and pulsed with them, and the thunder boomed so loud that the friends had to put their hands over their ears. Mrs. Stone followed the spell with a casting requiring a complex set of quick hand gestures, exploding into a fearsome and gigantic lightning-infused version of herself.
“Incarnate,” Leera said over the din, continuously shaking her head. “17th. Spell of Legend—a standard and required one too. Massively complicated. Haven’t even seen Jez use it.”
“She makes it look so easy,” Augum noted.
Mrs. Stone next summoned forth a mighty lightning whip as long as a dragon’s tail and began thrashing the enemy like an angry farmhand subduing recalcitrant oxen. Each snap of the whip resulted in a slew of enemies getting incinerated, some slapped so hard they rebounded fifty feet into the air before crashing back down on the others in a shower of bones and rotten flesh.
At last, the mighty undead dragon got close enough to Mrs. Stone for her to lash out at it. Her enormous whip coiled around its neck and she yanked it forth, only to punch it in the mouth with a cart-sized fist, exploding its lower jaw. Then she kneed its belly, shoved it back and slapped her wrists together. “Annihilo lito!” she roared, and five mighty prongs of lightning, each as thick as a grain silo, crunched into the behemoth, exploding its already exposed ribcage. The creature tumbled into a mash of bones and rotting flesh at her feet.
“Didn’t even think five was possible,” Leera muttered, pressing a hand to her cheek. “That’s 20th degree mastery for you. Fates what a thing to see.”
At long last, as the storm raged and pummeled and punished the monsters swarming around her, Mrs. Stone extended her hands, spread her fingers, and shot out multiple potent strands of lightning that connected with the throng. The lightning then spiderwebbed from one monster to another until the entire horde was lit up in a crackling array. They rose as one, legs twitching beneath them, and fried as if pressed to a grill, causing smoke to billow from every single beast. For one awful moment, Augum could not help but recall his father performing the very same spell against an innocent village what felt like forever ago.
All at once the smoking horde fell back to the ground, dead once more. Simultaneously, the storm, the illusory doppelganger, and her summoned champion elemental disappeared, leaving a vacuum of sound so thick Augum and Leera flinched.
Mrs. Stone, regular-sized again, emerged from the smoke as casually as if returning from an evening stroll. “It was good to flex those muscles again,” she said as she strode past a gaping Augum and Leera.
She kneeled before Jengo. “Come, my child, straighten yourself up and meditate with me. You have some work ahead of you still.”
Jengo could only nod, jaw as slack as everyone else’s.
In Golden Quiet
“I believe that last attack was nothing more than a measure to buy himself time to make a thorough escape,” Mrs. Stone replied to the question of whether or not Tyranecron was planning a follow-up attack.
They stood amidst a graveyard of bones, the smoke from the battle still lingering acridly in the air.
“So what are they going to do?” Haylee pressed, holding Edwin’s hand. They had taken to each other like a pair of nesting pigeons.
“Regroup, then perhaps sacrifice each other. If they are zealous enough and believe in their cause enough, they will be successful. But they will have to start again. Find more dragons.”
Augum recalled Gavinius telling him that one of his group had sacrificed himself so that he could take control of the dragon. “They’re zealous enough,” he said. “Nana, you can’t let them return to Sithesia. Once the emperor hears about his son, and how his attempt to become immortal has been thwarted, he’ll destroy the castle, kill everyone in Arinthia, and probably destroy all of Solia—”
Mrs. Stone stayed him with a raised hand. “I will present the arguments on your behalf to the council, Great-grandson. But the Canterrans shall be heard and Leyan custom shall be respected. Is that understood?”
Augum dropped his head and, after a short internal battle, surrendered a nod. “Yes, Nana.” He looked back up. “How long until they return to Ley? What’s their aim?” He needed to know how much time they had to prepare, for knowing Leyans, the Canterrans would be allowed to wander back for the sake of “balance,” or some such nonsense.
“That is difficult to say without knowing the details of Tyranecron’s own plans, which have been spoiled somewhat with the prince’s death. If they survive Endraga Ra, I would expect them to return to Ley and then they will lobby to be allowed to return to Sithesia. By then, you will have already returned, of course. I suspect their aim will be to combine the strength of Orion with a few Path Archon dragons, although I do not know what form their newly acquired spell knowledge would take. Will they be able to turn themselves into dragons? Perhaps your new companion may shed light on the matter.”
All eyes turned to Edwin, who stood alongside Haylee, their hands still clasped.
“Gavinius and Tyranecron did not share their plans with the rest of us,” Edwin replied in a distant voice, staring at his feet. “We have been trained by the emperor with total obedience in mind. We were taught to bring one of you to a dragon, and that dragon was supposed to in turn teach us powers beyond imagining. Gavinius was the only one to do it after a loyal brother sacrificed himself to the dragon on his behalf.
Gavinius then somehow took possession of that dragon, surprising all of us, and went in search of Augum before we were able to find out the extent of his powers.”
“So Tyranecron doesn’t even know what sort of knowledge the necromantic dragons passed on?” Haylee pressed him.
“He revealed nothing, only told us to be patient.”
“What was the plan after?”
Edwin shrugged. “Just as Archmage Anna Stone said—return to Ley then to Sithesia to help my kingdom. My kingdom …” His voice trailed off, as if it was dawning on him what he had done.
Leera looked to Mrs. Stone. “Will Tyranecron be punished in Ley?”
“He shall be required to perform penance for any sins committed in Ley, and he will be observed closely regardless, but as is our law, any sins committed in Endraga Ra shall remain in Endraga Ra—as will mine.”
“Yours, Mrs. Stone?” Olaf asked. He held onto Bridget, who stood before him, gently caressing his beefy arm. With Mrs. Stone’s careful help and mentorship, Jengo had completely healed him.
“Pride. Vengeance. A slew of others. These are not Leyan ideals. Much self-reflection lies before me. It will take time.”
“I don’t understand something, Mrs. Stone,” Leera began. “If we’re to return before they do—back to Ley, that is—why don’t we simply close the portal behind ourselves and trap them here forever?”
“I am bound by Leyan custom and laws. The knowledge I have gained is not just mine, and therefore neither is the portal. A council meeting shall be held. But I can tell you now that they will keep the portal open until the enemy returns. And then it will likely be dismantled.”
Augum scrunched his brow. “Dismantled? Why?”
“Assuming that the enemy returns with dragons, the council will consider it a balancing. You must remember that we Leyans believe everyone deserves a fair hearing, and your enemy’s argument is that of balance. That balance shall be tested, and the results of that test will be noted. Perhaps we speak of a decade of nothing but observance, or even generations.”