by Ramy Vance
Brath and Gill weren’t faring any better. Furi had tackled the kin to the ground, while Gill was trying to use Timber’s rock elemental powers to cover it in stones thrown up from the moon’s surface. When the stones touched the creature, it phased out, then popped back in, the stones now part of its growing body.
Alex watched as her opponent doubled back, its body shifting in and out of reality. Its tendrils waved wildly like the hands of one driven mad, grasping for some meaning for their insanity.
Alex needed to figure out effective tactics fast. Otherwise, this fight was going to be over before it began.
Chapter Nine
The three kin took to the air. There was no warning before they detached from the dragonriders and floated up toward the stars, hovering ominously above. “What are they doing?” Alex shouted at Vardis.
The alien, who still hadn’t gotten himself together, stared up. “I have no idea,” he muttered.
Great, Alex thought. The only way she was going to ensure Boundless came out of this alive was to stop relying on Vardis. He was useless in this situation he had created. “Boundless, figure out what you have aboard your dragons to take these things out. There’s no way we were sent up here defenseless.”
Alex looked at her dragon anchor, scrolling through the augments that had been attached to Chine. None of them looked familiar, and she couldn’t tell what most of them did off the top of her head. All but one—she recognized an augment attached to Chine’s left arm. It was a gravity well.
Above, the creatures were charging some kind of weapon. An energy beam was brightening in the middle of the circle they had formed as if they were summoning it into existence. Alex wasn’t going to wait for that to happen. She also wasn’t going to storm into the fight without giving her team a heads up on what she was thinking about doing.
She readied the gravity well, interested to see what would happen in a place with less gravity than the last time she used it. “Okay, I hope that was enough time for you to figure out your augments. I’m going to disrupt the kin with a gravity attack. I’ll scatter them. After they split apart, we’re back to two on one. It must have been giving them a problem since they broke off for a group attack. We’re keeping them separate from each other, okay!”
The members of Boundless shouted their approval.
Alex yanked up hard on her anchor and sent Chine flying through the air. She reached to Chine’s left arm, accessing the gravity well and prepping it. Once she and her dragon got close enough, she fired the well.
The result was instantaneous. A large bubble about the size of a football, glowing brightly, shot toward the kin, landing in the middle of their circle. Then the well detonated, drawing all three of them forward with the sudden shift in gravity.
The creatures seemed to be caught off-guard by the attack, and they screeched as their bodies momentarily lost control. Alex took the opportunity to attack. Chine flew toward the monsters as Boundless prepared to launch their attacks.
Alex zoomed between the three kin, finding one to focus on. Chine tackled it, sending it careening away from the other two. He clamped down hard on its head.
The kin’s tendrils wrapped around Chine’s jaw, forcing it open. As Chine fought it, the kin grabbed the dragon by the throat and threw him to the ground.
Chine and Alex hit the ground with enough force to indent it. Before either of them could get back to their feet, the creature crashed into them, broadening the hole. If it weren’t for the reinforced gravity from the anchor, Alex would have been thrown from Chine, who was roaring in pain.
The gravity well wasn’t ready to be used again. Alex accessed the weapon on Chine’s right arm. A beam of energy created a sword, and she slashed it across the monster’s face.
The kin screeched and pulled back, shifting out of reality and appearing behind Alex. Before she could pull Chine around, it grabbed the dragon by the tail, hoisted him into the air, and slammed him into the ground again.
To Alex’s left, Jollies and Jim were struggling with their kin as well. Jollies had implemented an energy field she was trying to encase the creature in while Jim was sending bursts of flame at it. It hardly seemed to notice either attack.
After Jollies had the energy field established, she flew back a little way to catch her breath. The kin should be encased for a moment, enough time to give Jim and her time to regroup.
Yet the kin phased out, then appeared outside the energy field. It went straight for Jollies, who turned and ran, pushing Amber as fast as she could. Jim flew after it, firing an energy beam cannon that came out of his mech’s chest.
The kin merely shifted reality again, easily dodging the attack, then appearing behind Jim. Its tendrils wrapped around Jim’s mech. It dove toward the surface of the moon, dragging Jim with it as Furi and Timber flew overhead, firing gravity attacks at the kin they were fighting.
Furi latched onto the kin’s back with his claws, which began to heat up. Within seconds, Furi’s claws were on fire.
Like the rest of them, this one didn’t seem fazed by Furi’s attack. It rolled to the side, heading for the ground, scraping Furi off. Then it sped up, whipping around and launching a beam attack at Timber, who was barely able to evade it.
Vardis yelled over his comm, “They have a weak spot! If you fire at their joints, the place where stone meets stone, it should split them apart!”
Alex relayed the information to the rest of Boundless, irritated that Vardis had only just found the guts to speak. He still hadn’t joined the fight.
The gravity well was ready to be deployed again. So far, it had been Alex’s most useful weapon. She leaned forward, sending Chine sprinting across the ground. The kin followed the dragon. Suddenly, Alex pulled up on her anchor, stopping Chine on a dime, allowing the monster to pass over the two of them.
Alex hit the gravity well and sent it at the kin, aiming for the joint between the sections of rock that covered its body. As the gravity well pulled at the creature, tearing away chunks of rock, Alex drew her scythe and sent it flying into the kin’s joint.
At the same time, the rest of Boundless was trying to take advantage of the information they had just been given. Jim and Jollies had circled their kin, Jollies flying close and dropping electrical charges that attached to its joints while Jim distracted it by firing beams.
Brath and Gill were taking a different route. They were going for a contest of brute strength. Both Furi and Timber were on top of the kin, forcing it to the ground while the dragons tore at its joints, occasionally firing the ice beams attached to Timber’s shoulders. Once the ice formed, both dragons slashed at the creature’s weak spot.
Alex’s kin screeched as it rolled out of the sky and crashed to the ground, where it skidded until it was still. Not wanting to give it any chance to get back up, Alex selected the plasma beams attached to Chine’s shoulders. She fired at the kin’s joints right below its head.
The plasma beam cut through, severing the head. “Yes!” she shouted.
Chine’s voice rang through Alex’s head a second later. Wait! It is not time to celebrate yet.
The tendrils stretched out and reattached the head to the body. Then it phased out of existence and reappeared behind Alex and Chine, and its tendrils hit the girl in the chest.
The air went out of Alex’s lungs as she tried to hold onto Chine. The kin was too strong. She went flying off Chine’s back as the monster wrapped more tendrils around Chine’s body, trying to choke the dragon to death.
Alex hit the ground, skidding across and smashing her head against a rock. She stumbled to her feet, trying to keep from passing out. When she took a step forward, the creature phased into existence in front of her. It swiped at Alex with its claws, sending her flying again.
It reappeared above Alex and drove its claws into the ground, slamming her into the rock, then lowered its tendrilled head down to her still body as if to absorb her.
Alex groggily stared up into the tendrils that descended
upon her in all their eldritch horror.
Before the tendrils could touch Alex, Chine tackled the kin from the right, sending the creature flying. Then he scooped Alex onto his back.
As Alex started to come to, she looked up. The same was happening to the rest of Boundless. They were unable to keep up. They all realized that the combination of such powerful enemies and being ill-prepared was resulting in a desperate situation, almost as if they had been set up. “We’re not going to win this,” Alex whispered.
Not through conventional means, Chine answered. But there is a way.
How? What are you talking about?
We use the gravity well to trap all the kin. Then I unleash my ether flames.
Alex leaned forward and rested her hand on the back of Chine’s neck. That would—
Chine interrupted her. Yes. It would detonate my breathing apparatus. I would die. You might too. But it would destroy the kin for sure. There is nothing in any dimension that can survive the pure flames of black ether, and they would be unable to escape if we used the gravity well.
Alex chuckled morbidly. You know, you have a habit of suggesting suicide as a way to achieve victory.
Our friends will live through our sacrifice, and the weapon will be retrieved.
Alex checked the status of the gravity well. It was ready to be deployed. You don’t have to convince me. If all of us die here, no one’s getting this weapon. Let’s finish this.
Alex had stared death in the face on the meteor with the Dark One. Back then, it had seemed like the most frightening thing in the world. Now, she was confused as to why she was so dull and hollow inside. Her life was about to be over, and all she could feel was faint resignation.
Maybe it’s because you feel like this could have been avoided, she thought. No, that’s not going to help right now. Not at all.
Alex hit her comm, patching to the rest of the dragonriders. “Riders, I want you to get away from your kin. Head toward me. You need to start putting distance between them and you.”
Jim was the first one to speak. “Wait, what are you thinking about?”
“That’s an order! Now get moving!”
Alex didn’t wait to hear if Boundless disagreed. She fired energy at her kin to get its attention and then headed for the other two, charging the gravity well as she went. If this was going to be her and Chine’s last attack, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to dump all her anchor’s energy into the well. The more, the better.
Ahead, the riders were doing exactly what Alex had told them to. They had caught the attention of their kin and were racing toward Alex.
Jollies and Jim passed her, Jim watching her as he went by. Alex wished she could have said more. Next were Brath and Gill. They both glanced at Alex, and she could see they knew what she was planning on doing.
Once the riders were out of the way, Alex activated the gravity well, aiming it at the two kin in front of her. As it fired, she pulled another scythe from her anchor and tossed it into the tendrilled mess that was the kin behind her.
The one following Alex sped up and hit both her and Chine, sending them into the gravity well as it exploded, creating a gravitational vortex that pulled all three monsters plus Alex and Chine into it.
They all went swirling around, Alex hardly able to tell where she and Chine began and the kin ended. “Are you ready for this?” the dragon asked.
Alex clenched her fist, feeling the draconic fluid boiling in her anchor. She slammed her fist to her chest, setting herself aflame as she drew her scythe again. Torch ‘em, Chine, she sent as she leaped into the gravitational well, heading for one of the kin.
Chine let loose a torrent of ether flames. She’d only ever seen Chine use the attack from above, never this close. Beautiful black flames shot from his jaws.
The flames whirled through the gravitational vortex, converting the spinning bodies into a flaming tornado that stretched up to the sky. Alex could hear the kin screaming. She could distantly tell that she and Chine were screaming as well.
Alex hit the ground before she realized what had happened. Chine was above her. He was badly burned but still on his feet, though he was struggling to breathe.
The vortex of flames surrounded them. They were in the eye of the storm.
Alex walked over to look Chine in the eye. She collapsed in front of him, and he picked her up. They stared at each other, neither capable of speaking, the little oxygen they had left fading from their lungs.
Above, in the ether flames, there was a spark of green light that erupted, changing the black flames to a sickly green.
Rider and dragon looked up at the green. It filled Alex with horror. And in the midst of that horror, Alex realized she was not ready to die, and she wasn’t ready to watch Chine die either.
Alex ripped off her dragon anchor and tossed it to the ground. Her body erupted into flames, their black aura covering her, and she plunged her hand deep into Chine’s body, tearing through his scales, straight to the hot draconic fluid that filled him.
The black flames around Alex grew stronger, covering both her and Chine, shooting up into the now-green vortex. Then there was only black.
Chapter Ten
She was in a blank place that held neither time nor space nor gravity. It was at once flat and filled with depth. Her feet were wet, and when she looked down at the water, it was pale green, as if it were a parody of life.
Calling. She was calling or screaming, but the intention was true. Someone had to find her. This wasn’t where she was meant to be.
Chine was somewhere. His voice was loud but far away.
Alex took off running. She didn’t know how or to where but she sprinted into the blank whiteness that stretched farther than her eyes could comprehend. The only sounds in this flattened non-reality were her footsteps and those of Chine, invisible somewhere in the whiteness.
Then the color shifted. Alex could see there was a deep-red sky, with black clouds filled with lightning. Everything else was a sickly green that crept into Alex’s mind as she tried to focus on Chine’s voice in her head.
Dustling. Dustling.
Alex was sinking in the water. She struggled as it sucked her down. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to breathe.
She shot out of the water into dryness and leaned forward, retching. Something slid out of her throat. When she looked down, it appeared to be a small snake, but instead of a snake’s head, it was hers, eyes cracked and red, tongue lolling out like a tired dog’s.
Alex slapped the obscene thing away as she stumbled to her feet, the world around her shifting and spinning. Chine’s voice was still somewhere in the madness, but now there was another—a louder voice coming from behind. She had no desire to find out what else was here and took off toward the dragon’s voice.
There was no measure for how long she ran, but she eventually came across Chine. The dragon was resting on a rock in the middle of a lake.
Alex swam out to him, and he picked up his head and stared at her. I wasn’t sure if you were here as well, he thought.
Alex climbed onto the island and looked around. Above, there were thousands of moons and thousands of planets clustered together in the shape of a question mark. Where are we? she asked.
Chine pointed to the question mark. Your guess is as good as mine. Someplace not too different than the meteor, I’m assuming.
Do you think we are dead?
Chine pressed his hand down into the ground he rested on, watching how it separated so he could touch the water. No, I do not think so. This is not what dragons who have passed through the veil and returned have described. This is something else. What, I do not know.
“It is not death,” a voice rang out.
Chine and Alex jumped to their feet. Walking on the water was the pale child wearing a deer-skull mask. As the child strode toward Alex and Chine, something rose from the water.
The thing was tied to a tree that stretched up and far out into the infinity of the sky, its branch
es bare and weary. It seemed to be a person, unlike anyone Alex had ever seen before. Its skin was alabaster-white, and Alex could see veins and blood and muscles moving beneath it.
The thing’s single eye was black, and she could not bring herself to look into its face. Its legs melded into the bark of the tree, its arms shaking as it coughed up black sludge and wailed in agony. Its torso pulled as if it were trying to escape from the tree. “Alex,” it growled.
The child continued walking, ignoring the monstrosity leering behind it. “Alex,” the child said. “I am so glad we found you. I’ve been trying to reach you for—”
Alex grabbed the kid, suddenly remembering everything that had happened in the meteor, everything she had tried to block out and forget. “What are you doing here? Is that him? You… We saved you! Why are you with him again?”
The child slipped from Alex’s grip without any obvious movement. “That? That is not the Dark One, only a shade. One of millions, much like me. And we were wrong. I can never get away from him. Not completely.”
Chine had maintained his calm, and he took Alex up in his hand as wildflowers sprouted across his scales. “Why have you brought us here?”
The child knelt in the water, watching his reflection. “I did not bring you here. This was a lucky coincidence. You both were near the veil and got caught up. It’s the only time I’ve been able to speak to you without Vardis listening in.”
Alex leaned over Chine’s claw. “Vardis? Why are you trying to avoid him?”
The thing hanging from the tree moaned loudly, its body convulsing as it shouted, “Liar! Liar!”
The child looked at the thing on the tree for a moment before turning back to Alex. “He is not to be trusted. You and I have the same aim—to rid ourselves of the Dark One. Vardis’ aim is less clear, but his means are false. The weapon he promised is not meant to destroy the Dark One. It is meant to destroy all of existence.”
