by Dan Allen
No more rules. No more coercion to find a mate. She could try her luck at anything she wished and any enemy the wastelands of Arcadia could conjure up.
Nyan-Nyan gave a growl of pleasure as the incredibility of the situation dawned on her. She took one last look back at Felicity Springs then turned to face her future as a soaring feeling swelled within her.
I’m free!
If this was punishment, it wasn’t working. Other than a little sore spot in her heart for disappointing the village—she could nudge her feelings around that—Nyan-Nyan felt alive.
More than alive.
As sure as the mountains under her feet, Nyan-Nyan could tell there was something more than just the council’s will, something grander, just beyond what her mind could grasp.
It was light. She couldn’t see it, but it filled her with warmth from within, almost like a steaming mug of tea.
But it was coming from within.
The Goddess?
Nyan-Nyan stopped on a slippery patch of ice and slid onto her rump, just missing a rock crashing down from a cliff face.
Was this mission that important?
Deep inside, where chimeric feelings swirled that she could not understand, there was an echo that rang until she could almost hear it with her hypersensitive ears.
Yes!
Wondering at the strange encounter, Nyan-Nyan accelerated her descent, bounding down switchbacks on a pack trail until she came to the Dwarfholm Bastion southwest bypass access.
Joy. I made it before dark.
She paused as she turned to knock. They weren’t going to exactly welcome her with a feast, were they?
Nyan-Nyan looked up at the foreboding peaks where orcs would soon be exploring their new unimpeded access to this part of the Reach. She could either try to cross those on foot or take the underground route.
The choice was simple.
Nyan-Nyan stepped up to the great metal door that locked the bypass. It was inscribed with runic depictions of bonfires and dancing light. She knocked with her oversized gauntlet, making a bang both sudden and loud. It was immediately followed by a second noise behind the door which sounded unmistakably like someone falling off a chair.
“Who is it?” shouted a bothered voice through a narrow vent in the door.
“Message for the Dwarfholm Council,” Nyan-Nyan said, conspicuously avoiding her name. “From the freyjan . . . formerly of Felicity Springs.”
A slot in the door opened.
Nyan-Nyan quickly put her eye up to the slot, blocking any potential view of her telltale fur. “Open up. I’m a friend of the light. You’re duty bound, aren’t you?”
“. . . tradition,” the dwarf guard grumbled. After some grumbling, latches began to click. The door made a great groan and opened slowly inward.
“Welcome to Dwarfholm Bastion . . . almost,” The dwarf guard gestured to the tunnel that disappeared into blackness. “Only a ten mile walk underground from here.”
Nyan-Nyan stepped inside and relished the sound of the metal grate closing behind her. She gave a shiver and dusted the snow off her fur.
The tunnel was much warmer.
“You freyjans aren’t big on clothing, are you?” said the red-bearded dwarf sentry, who was several inches shorter than her, despite his oversized boots.
“You’re just jealous,” Nyan-Nyan said as she twitched her ears to clear snow from them.
“Indecent,” grumbled the sentry. “Imagine a dwarf walking around without clothes on.”
“I don’t think anyone would notice the difference,” Nyan-Nyan said. She accepted a water skin from the guard—a customary gift.
Dwarves are so predictable.
She slung the water skin over her shoulder and stared down the long dark passage, her eyes magically shifting from round pupils to feline slits.
I love being a chimera.
“You need a torch? I’m supposed to offer you a light.”
“No, I’ve got whiskers.” Of course, she had no such thing on her face, but the long fur on the back of her hands was as good as whiskers. She removed a gauntlet and traced her hand along the edge of the wall, her night vision turning the previously pitch black corridor to a hazy grey.
“Wait a minute!” called the dwarf. “Orange and black striped fur . . . snarky attitude . . . what’s your name?”
He recognizes me!
Nyan-Nyan raced ahead.
“Hey! You’re the Chaos Kitty—you aren’t allowed in here!”
Chapter 5: The Thorn
Terras’s talons clung to a bandolier of potions as he flew back from Crystalia Castle. The eagle’s expression would have been smug, but beaks didn’t do facial expressions.
The valuable potions tucked in the loops on the leather belt were a goodwill gesture from the local Druids for his dealing with the Treant. All in all, three vials of a fizzing pink elixir in corked, round-bottom flasks in exchange for risking his life were well worth the effort.
Besides, luring the Treant off the cliff hadn’t been that dangerous.
Terras’s flight followed the most direct route to Arcadia, cutting the corner of the Fae Wood.
The vine that was coiled on his leg above his sharp-clawed foot was yellow green, indicating that he had two strong spells. But what he hoped to see were tiny red veins in the vine—no such luck.
Wormspit. Time to restock the secret sauce.
The vine could hold only so much fae magic. But, as Terras had discovered, the severed vine could also draw energy of a different sort.
Dark magic.
The darkness seeping into Crystalia had merged humans and animals into chimera without any effort on their part. It was simple for Terras to adapt its disruptive influence into the power to transform into the animal with which he had most recently come into blood contact.
Transforming back required the light of the Goddess from the Deeproot. That was the secret to his magic.
The other Deeproot Druids never even considered the possibility of using it. But where Terras was headed, he needed all the help he could get.
Terras had only light magic left to regain his original form. If he wanted to transform into an animal again, he needed a touch of the darkness.
As he soared over the great green expanse of forest, his far-seeing eyes were drawn to a section of disturbed branches and gnarled undergrowth.
Terras flew beneath the knotted branches of the misshapen trees, twisted by the dark influence into something distinctly sinister. Requiring the full faculties of his mind, Terras was obliged to transform back to a human. He didn’t bother spinning the feathers into cloth as he had for the king. He merely kept the golden plumage as a cover for this body.
All Druids could transform, of course, but his way did not involve the years of careful observation of the creature required by Druid magic—not a big deal for a long-living elf, but a different matter entirely for a half-elf who aged almost as quickly as a human.
Without a touch of darkness to fuel his unique brand of magic, Terras couldn’t hope to find the princess.
There was only one place to get the kind of magic he needed.
Terras looked ahead to where the forest grew denser with the leaves covered in grey-green mildew. Below the canopy, almost no light reached the ground.
He buckled the bandolier of potions around his waist and set off at a quick walk, his eyes darting from side to side as the undergrowth seemed to close in around him.
But the first sign of danger came from within—a foreign presence pulsing—conjuring only feelings of dread.
The Thorn.
That was what he called the creeping source of the spawning points. Others denied such a thing existed. Yet, the similarity of spawning points to Deeproot springs and enchanted groves was uncanny. And just as a branch pruned from a tree would not regrow from the scar where it was cut, so when adventurers destroyed a spawning point, it could not regenerate at the sam
e location.
As he stepped carefully ahead, a rocky outcropping gradually became visible through the trees where a jagged, overhanging edge formed a remarkable likeness of sharp teeth gaping over a deep recess. Brown slime spilled out of the cavern.
The spawning point.
Times like this made Terras reconsider his use of mingled magic.
He had to reach his hand into the spawning point, at least up to his wrist, and then draw on the magic—he had to pull with his very essence.
Step by step, he drew closer to the cavern. The pulse of the spawning point and the pulse of the Deeproot on his wrist seemed to repel each other like magnets.
Now or never.
Terras looked down.
There was a footprint. It was wide and flat, with deep claw marks at the toes . . . and scales.
A rush of horror gripped Terras, paralyzing him.
Kobold.
Terras looked up. All along the top of the outcropping, dimly glowing red eyes stared back at him.
Oh boy.
It wasn’t just a spawning point. It was a kobold den.
Terras was just in time for lunch.
It was too late to withdraw. He was in their den, on their turf. He was too far removed from any elf settlements for hope of aid and Terras had no idea how many of the enemy he would have to face.
This was a new top bar on the scale of all the bad situations he had been in. There was no time to hesitate.
Terras reached for a potion. He pulled the cork and chugged the liquid in a double gulp that burned his throat. The sensation was awful, as if his stomach and intestines were turning inside out.
The kobolds, dragon-like humanoids with lizard jaws and long tails, sprang from their hiding places, landing on the ground in front of him. There were at least six in view, possibly others, including kobold priests lurking in the cover of the twisted wood.
Terras fell to his knees, his gut cramping in pain as the potion’s concentrated magic infused itself directly into his body. With potions, there was no controlled siphoning from the Deeproot. The burst of magic prickled through his veins, rippling along his arms and finally tearing out of his skin as rows of long sharp thorns protruded through his covering of feathers.
The first kobold lashed at him with its jaws, greedy for the first bite of human flesh.
The Druid thrust his thorn-studded arm right into the kobold’s mouth. Its teeth sank into his forearm, each sharp-edged tooth feeling like a hot poker as it bit into his skin. But the kobold got the worst of it.
Terras’s newly-grown thorns were poisonous.
The five-foot-tall kobold recoiled from the Backlash, its clawed hands waving in agony as the poison spread. Sickly yellow streaks branched over the kobold’s dark scaly skin. Foam bubbled from its mouth as its eyes rolled back into its skull. The kobold collapsed.
Terras hoped that would be enough to convince them not to tangle with a Deeproot Druid . . . literally.
Unfortunately, it only seemed to enrage them.
The second kobold—a Knucklehead—drew a short sword. It hissed at him as a third kobold launched a spear in his direction.
Terras stretched his arm out. A vine shot from his hand, coiling around the wrist of the kobold with the sword. He swung his arm as though cracking a whip and the kobold’s sword was tossed free of its grip and into the air.
In the moment’s distraction, Terras made a feint as if trying to escape and then lunged for the opening of the cavern. He reached out his arm, pushing past the shimmering edge of reality. His fist disappeared behind the shadow as if passing out of time and space.
If the spawning point had sensed any intent to attack it, the demonic rupture itself might have unleashed hordes more demons or attacked him directly.
But Terras steeled his mind, focusing only on the power draw.
A second later, he drew his arm back out of the shimmering black surface. His green wrist vine pulsed with veins of ominous red.
Game over.
Terras raised his arms and unleashed a spell. Dirt erupted from the ground like steam from a geyser, filling the air with a dense cloud of debris. Kobolds threw up their massive hands to shield their oversized alligator eyes from the hail of dirt.
Terras had this one chance to make his escape, but the spawning point had other ideas.
Wooded vines summoned by the spawning point lashed out of the ground, gripping his feet like the iron manacles of the Royal Warden.
Fortunately for Terras, his eagle’s claws were much narrower than his Druid’s feet.
Soaking in a measured dose of dark magic, Terras transformed into an eagle. Three wingbeats later he was free of the forest, clutching a slightly lighter bandolier in his claws.
Two potions left.
Terras felt both the pulse of the darkness and the pulse of the light ebbing and flowing, mingling within him. There was enough darkness to power at least a dozen transformations. The light he could replenish with the potions or by meditation, if necessary.
He was ready for his journey to Arcadia. But his victory over the kobolds and tapping the spawning point magic had left a bad taste in his mouth. His wounded arm had, of course, healed during his transformation. The potion had left him ample magic for that. What couldn’t be healed was the hole in his heart where hope seemed to be draining out.
What little hope he had felt in King Jasper III’s court seemed to blow away in the angry breeze that rose to meet him. The king had given him what had seemed like one mission: ‘Find my daughter Ruby. Save the prophecy.’ But without Amethyst, the second part—saving the prophecy—was now impossible.
Terras tried to remember the way he had felt when he had stood before the king. His heart had filled to the brim with fidelity and courage. He had left without any doubt of his quest. Now he wasn’t even a day into his journey and his determination was all but gone.
What hope was there with only four princesses? With Ruby—the gem of the court, friend of the friendless, and hope of the hopeless—lost in Arcadia following the path of the Dark Consul?
Terras clamped his beak and gave a powerful thrust of his wings, fighting his way into the growing storm. He had given his word to King Jasper III. He would find Ruby or die trying.
I will not give up the quest.
Chapter 6: Surprise Party
Gork’s mind churned through possible Arcadian expedition scenarios as he climbed the five hundred steps back to the main cavern of Dwarfholm Bastion. This portion of the sprawling, interconnected city was laid out like a subterranean star—each spoke separately able to be accessed, defended, and sealed off in an instant by a rigged collapse of any compromised tunnel. Gork was headed for the hub—the revered Sanctuary of Stone.
He stepped past a gusty vent shaft and relished the fresh, chill air that descended from the bitter cold mountains far overhead. Yet his heart was unsettled. Somewhere in the Blasted Tombs of Arcadia were the remains of the soldiers who had first battled the Dark Consul’s demon hordes . . . and more importantly, their rune-scribed weapons and armor.
Gork considered the books he had read on the region. Hammerson stated in Darkness Revealed that, “The Blasted Tombs are the dwelling place of demons most foul and spirits of the darkness. None who enter ever return alive.”
That was the cheeriest. Leavenbutt and Wormsan’s epic treatise, Bad Places You Never Want to Go, explained, “The skulls piled by the entrances would keep any sane dwarf from venturing near.”
In the Gambit Brothers’ student poll, the Blasted Tombs had tied with a dragon’s lair for top billing on the list of “Vacation Destinations of Doom: Where to Send Your School Principal for a Permanent Holiday.”
It’s insane, Gork thought as he climbed the familiar steps. Not even armored dwarf special forces or even companies of dwarf mystics were up to the task. The odds of successfully recovering the needed artifacts were simply astronomical—and astronomy wasn’t much use to a dw
arf underground, anyway.
As the glow from the forges faded with each turn in the stairway, Gork kicked a pipe that ran along the wall and was rewarded with a line of glowing purple lights along the floor where luminescent mushrooms grew out from the pipes, transporting recycled waste away from the dwarf colony. The feeble purple light was a reminder that darkness could be driven back anywhere, even in the dungeons below the forbidding Frostbyte peaks.
But the merrily waving stalks of jostled mushrooms did little to cheer his brooding mood.
Rather than traverse the vast hall of the Sanctuary of Stone, which inevitably conjured feelings of underachievement from the stately stares of the hundred oversized statues of his forefathers, Gork chose the east route, approaching the brilliant yellow light shining through the entrance to the Pendulum Court.
Gork stepped into the domed cavern. From its vaulted ceiling, a steel wire suspended a great pendulum shaped like an upside-down teardrop. It swung back and forth, its pace regulated by falling water which oscillated a series of magnets hidden from view in the ceiling. As Crystalia rotated under the pendulum, the point of the pendulum periodically tipped one of a series of blocks in a circle in the center of the room, representing the hours of the day. No instrument in all the realms of Crystalia was more precise or more revered.
Gork stopped for a breather and a moment of reverence in honor of the Goddess. Her gift of the fragrant oil that seeped in the deep mines powered the lamps which lit the room in a bold yellow glow and occasionally offered mood-cheering crackles and sparks from crystalized impurities.
Across the room, a figure crouched low. Gork reached for his hand axes. The lithe, lurking form was no dwarf.
“What the—”
The intruder’s head followed the sway of the pendulum left and right, watching it like a hungry dwarf child staring at meat turning slowly on a spit.
Then the figure sprang from the shadows, leaping over twelve feet into the air and seizing in its teeth the steel cord that suspended the pendulum.
