Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 9-12

by Wilson, Sarah K. L.

  Reluctantly, I tried the same trick I had with Bataar, reaching through the ring to pull magic from the Doorway to give to Zyla. It pulled through so easily that it was more like removing a dam from a river than pulling a cart. It flowed through me into the marks on her arms like it was filling a pitcher.

  Zyla’s mouth formed a pretty “O” as she watched her Ko glow a brilliant purple as they filled with power.

  “What can I do with this?” she asked.

  “With that, you have power here in the World of Legends to rearrange things. And you have power over golems to stop them.”

  But that didn’t solve the problem before us.

  “Maybe if you grab Eventen you can pull him in here and weave some kind of trap around him,” my mimic suggested.

  I hadn’t noticed him before. He stood off to the side surrounded by a gaggle of people who spoke to him excitedly. It worried me that he had friends here. Where had they all come from? The mimic rolled his eyes at my thought and pointed to Ty’nea in the crowd. Oh. They were the released souls from the golems.

  “And now we need a plan,” Gran said. “Urgent or not urgent, we can’t just race back into harm’s way without an idea of how to get out again.”

  “I think I have a plan,” I said.

  “And if your plan is to pull our attackers in here one by one to dispose of them, then you need a better plan than that.”

  “I was only planning to trap Eventen in here,” I said, blushing.

  She snorted a laugh. “See? I can read your mind.”

  “I think that might work for Eventen,” Zyla said. “And I think I can do that part.”

  Her face was set in grim determination.

  “How are the refugees from Estabis City?” I asked, remembering my responsibilities and nervous about the answer.

  “All safe,” she said, coloring as she spoke. “We had them safe and under the protection of the Dominar when I made a foolish mistake and trusted the wrong person. She grabbed me, stuffed me in a sack and the next thing I knew, I was here.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said earnestly. But I was worried about the ‘next thing I knew’ part of the story. Did they have a Door of Heavens somewhere else?

  “Enough of the sweet chatter. There will be time for that when all of this is over,” Gran said gently. “More than enough time. Now, this girl –“

  “Zyla.”

  “Zyla will grab Eventen and use the power that you just gave her to secure him here. But we still need a plan for the soldiers, Tor. They aren’t golems. You can’t freeze them in place. We need an army of our own to fight them blade for blade – at least as long as it takes for us to get to your dragon.”

  “Agreed,” I said, smiling as I looked at the mimic and his friends. “I think I have just the souls for the job.”

  Chapter Two

  We plunged through the door and I tried not to think about what we were doing or how Zyla had the most dangerous job of all.

  “I don’t think Eventen counts as the most dangerous person out there, do you?” the mimic objected. “I mean, he’s hardly on the same level as a whole army.”

  The familiar icy cold of passing through the Door hit me and then we were back on the battlefield. For a moment, I thought I saw my mimic out of the corner of my eye as I rushed forward.

  “That’s not me, you fool. That’s you! We’re arriving before we left!”

  Uh oh.

  “Jump through the doorway, fools! Go!” I heard the mimic yelling. Who was he talking to? “Go now or all is lost!”

  I leapt forward off the cart to the ground below and swung my staff before my sight cleared. It made contact with something hard and a grunt filled my ears. By the time I recovered enough to see what was happening, Eventen was on the ground, clutching his head. I’d remembered where he came from accurately. But I’d forgotten that he’d been holding Zyla, too. She lay on the ground, cradling her cheek in her hand.

  “Ngh!” she said.

  Uh oh. My eyes grew big. I’d jumped before I thought.

  “As per usual,” the mimic remarked. “And incidentally, I just saved you from meeting your past self. I have a bad feeling that you probably can’t both be in the same place at the same time.”

  I didn’t have time to listen to his babbling. I had a Magika to fight.

  I grabbed Eventen by the front of the shirt and pulled him to his feet. I could feel the magic building in his palms, ready to blast me with his Magika fire. I reached through the ring and pulled it away.

  Oh wow. I was going to like this new skill.

  “Don’t get too big of a head,” my mimic said. “This new skill is only useful if your enemies are.”

  I grunted a laugh.

  “I’ve got bad news for you, Eventen,” I said as I stole more magic from his hands. His face was growing pale, his forehead beading with sweat from the effort of drawing so much magic that was just snatched away. “The harder you work, the easier it is for me. And I’m one of the world’s natural leeches. I can do this all day.”

  I pulled more power from his hands, looking up at the shout from the cart behind me. Zyla stood on the back of the cart, her eyes looking past me to the ground. I followed her gaze to see Zyla lying on the ground nursing a split cheek.

  My eyes grew huge as the Zyla on the ground popped out of existence. I glanced quickly back to the Zyla in the cart and almost missed seeing her pop away, too.

  “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” My mind was racing over Eventen’s laughter. I spun him around, twisting his arm behind his back so I could hold him in place while I tried to think. He just kept laughing.

  “Think you’re so smart, street urchin? You’re nothing but instinct on legs. You know those things warp time, but I bet you never stopped to consider that they might put you back in time. That’s what happened, isn’t it? We’ve already had this fight, right?”

  I looked to where the dragons were still tied up in a line on the hilltop hanging by their feet.

  “Grawlix!” I spat as Stef and Gran stepped through the doorway. The soldiers were still closing in, hurrying to run to Eventen’s assistance. We were in the same spot we’d been in before – only this time I had Eventen as my hostage instead of Eventen having Zyla as his hostage.

  Panic welled up. I didn’t know what had happened to Zyla and I needed to repeat everything I’d done with the golems and the dragons to get the dragons free.

  Everything felt muddled and confused in my mind, like I couldn’t keep track of what had already happened and what still needed to happen.

  I blinked, confused and frustrated.

  “One thought at a time, Tor!” Gran yelled, hurrying down the steps. “Calm down. Take a breath. One thought at a time.”

  And to think I’d thought she would be a hindrance.

  “Stef, step up beside him. Any soldier that comes, you hit him with that staff. I’ll take your staff, Tor. Now, there’s a good boy. Focus! Focus on getting those dragons free and stopping those golems just like last time.”

  I focused, repeating my work before. Flick, flick, flick, I turned off the golems under the city. At the same time, I eased the golems on the hillside down the slope to lower the dragons and humans.

  “And we’re walking toward the dragons,” Grans said, steering me as she spoke. “Hold on to the little Magika.” Did she mean Eventen? “That’s right. Keep siphoning off his power. When the first of the soldiers gets here, we’ll use it to carve a path. Just hold onto it for now.”

  I was sweating from the effort. My eyes flicked back to the doorway.

  “Don’t think about the girl. Whatever happened to her, we’ll sort it out after. Maybe we’ll even go back in time again to stop it. No, don’t panic, that’s just my joke! Focus!”

  I focused, letting Gran guide my feet while I pressed forward, flick, flick, flick. I directed my hillside golems to gently break the chains and free the dragons one by one. I’d done this before. I could do this again. I pushed emo
tion aside. I pushed worry aside. I pushed planning aside. I focused. Gran would think of a plan. I needed to do my part.

  “That’s right,” she was saying. “Step, step, and here are the soldiers.”

  The first ranks of soldiers rushed toward us.

  “They have Eventen!”

  “Grab them!”

  “Watch out!” Eventen warned, pushing forward, but I held him back, my hands gripping his arm to keep him in place. This couldn’t go on for long.

  “Don’t worry about the next step. Focus on this one,” Gran said.

  And as I followed her directions, it was like I walked through a trance where everyone else was living and breathing and reacting and I was just carefully working on three mental tasks without any connection to the body that was following Gran’s instructions.

  Chaos ruled and I ducked a swinging sword at the same moment that the ghosts finally poured out from the Door of Heavens behind us and raced across the ground to us. Like a tidal wave, they swept over the ranks of soldiers, not slowed at all by their startled cries.

  The soldiers converging on us hadn’t been expecting anything like this. No one expects the ghosts of their past to come back to life.

  Ghastly figures swept past, rushing into the ranks of soldiers and even through their bodies with bloodcurdling screams, saucy taunts, and dramatic pounces, leaving the soldiers more startled and terrified than actually hurt. After all, their ghostly bodies couldn’t damage the soldiers, but that much chaos could. Soldiers turned, hacking and slashing in their terror and injuring the men around them. Cries and curses sprang up from all around us.

  Stef swung her staff, protecting me as I reached out, looking for Saboraak. Where? Where?

  My heart stuttered when my eyes reached the hillside where I’d last seen her. The dragons were down, and my golems were freeing them, but I hadn’t heard her voice yet. Until I saw her whole and well, I wouldn’t believe that she was okay.

  I tried to search for her as I worked, but Stef’s shout brought me back to what we were doing. She’d barely managed to deflect a blow aimed at me with her staff.

  “Use the magic,” she grunted, shoving aside a second attack.

  “Now would be good,” Gran reminded gently as her own staff flicked forward, hitting a soldier across his exposed neck. He choked, his hands wrapping around his damaged neck.

  I released Eventen’s magic, shocked when it burst out from him like dragon fire as fireballs shot out from his hands one after another. They were green and magenta, and one was even yellow.

  They tore through the ranks as soldiers dove from the path of the fireballs, losing all desire to fight in their desperate run for safety.

  “And now we run,” Gran said, hitting Eventen hard on the head. He slumped to the ground and I was still gasping in shock when she seized the collar of my jacket and shoved me forward. “Run, Ko’roi! Run!”

  “Eventen,” I gasped.

  “He was just going to slow us down. Run!”

  I ran.

  I ran as I fought the Magikas under the city for control of the golems. My control there was slipping away bit by bit. There were too many of them. They were too dedicated in their fight to stop me.

  I ran as I continued to free the dragons from their chains. One of the dragons had risen into the air. It was hard to see him as we scrambled across the muddy plains, but I could see the bright glare of his flame ahead.

  Saboraak? Saboraak? Are you there?

  We ran, stumbling over clods of mud and dried wheel tracks from carts. We ran, fighting the suck of the mud under our boots. Any moment now, the soldiers would reform and attack us again. But until then, we ran like we had wolf golems on our heels.

  Who knew that Gran could run so fast? She was shoving me forward like she planned on forcing me into her plans one way or another. I should have been offended, but I was just relieved that I didn’t have to try to figure out what to do next. I had enough to concentrate on.

  I could see through the wolf golem eyes – sort of – enough to see that we’d freed the dragons from their chains. But I couldn’t see well enough to distinguish who was who and who might be hurt. One of the dragons lay in a heap on the rocky hillside. Another limped to fall beside the first one.

  I pushed my wolf golems to form a ring around the fallen dragons and then seized the minds of the ones near the humans. Freeing them would be more delicate work.

  We were almost to the hillside when the clash of Stef’s staff on metal alerted my mind to return to what we were doing.

  I dodged under a sword swipe just in time, feeling a second swipe pierce my coat and graze my ribs. They stung with sharp pain, protesting when I twisted my body to dodge a third lunge. We’d found a knot of soldiers. Cooks and farriers, unless I missed my guess. They were smeared and dirty from their work, but they were still men with swords. I’d run out of Eventen’s magic and I had none of my own, unless you counted the power of the Ko’roi, though what good weaving would do right now –

  My words cut off as the threads of the future spun out around me and I saw what could be done.

  I began to sing Bataar’s song. The song of the dead. It tasted bitter in my mouth as I leaned into what was coming next. And then, with a groan, I reached through the ring and pulled the souls from the bodies of the men in front of me, letting them fly free to the Door of Heavens as their bodies slumped to the ground.

  Chapter Three

  I didn’t realize that I’d frozen in place until I felt Gran’s hands shaking me.

  “Now’s not the time for a metaphysical panic, Ko’roi. You have more power than you can handle. It happens. Get over it and move on.”

  What did that even mean? I wasn’t thinking about power. My mind was filled with horror over what I’d just done. I – Tor Winesping – was not a killer. I was a trickster and sometimes a liar and most definitely a fool, but I was no killer. And yet there were six men on the ground in a knot at my feet that said otherwise. I wasn’t even certain about how I’d done it.

  Images of other men dead in Vanika, burnt and curled up in the pain they’d felt as they died flashed through my mind. They were replaced by other memories – faces of men as they fell, fighting on the walls of Estabis, faces of men already fallen in the long halls of the Castel keep in Estabis City.

  “For every moment you take thinking about this, you lose more of the battle. Look at the city,” Gran said.

  I blinked back to where we were.

  In the distance, the city swayed as the teams of golems pulled at it. I’d lost my hold on them in my panic at what I had done.

  “We will deal with this. Just not yet.”

  Deal with what? The loss of human life? This wasn’t something you ‘dealt with’ like losing a button or getting a hole in your boot.

  “But seriously, did you really think you’d enter a war and come out on the other side without killing people?” my mimic mocked.

  I thought that I’d at least know they were bad.

  “Ha! Well, I suppose you can ask. ‘Please, mister, while you’re trying to cut my throat, can you tell me – are you a bad person?’” He scoffed. “Where do I sign up to be someone else’s shadow?”

  He was stuck with me and my conscience.

  “Stuck is the word, alright. No matter how much I try to wear it away it sticks around ...” the mimic said, but I ignored him, steeling myself for what was to come.

  I had a dragon who was unresponsive, a friend who had vanished like a puff of smoke in a metaphysical incident, a city to save, and a nation to take over. I’d have to mourn the cooks and farriers later.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  And if I was lucky, I’d lose this mimic along the way.

  “Lead on, Gran,” I said, fumbling with my mind to gain control of the golems again.

  We were in a mass of boulders at the foot of the hills that the dragons were on. I couldn’t see them – not with so many boulders in the way, but if we could just press
on, they weren’t too far. Through the eyes of the golems there, I could see blurry shapes of Magikas running away, their robes and hair on fire. Some of the humans had escaped the chains and were helping the others. Their forms were blurry.

  Gran pushed me forward and I responded to her urgings. “Not much farther, Tor. Come on!”

  In the distance, I wrestled a golem back from Apeq – just one, but this time, I sucked his soul away. I hadn’t realized I could do that! I sent it speeding toward the Doorway of Heavens. It must be the ring around my neck. It amplified my power. It let me send them free without needing to be close enough to sing the song.

  I focused on finding a golem in another group. If nothing else, the teams would be hampered by motionless golems until they could unhitch them.

  There!

  I focused, ripping the soul from the golem to send it back to the World of Legends. It was a painstaking process. The life in the golems felt – slippery, if that was the right word. Hard to hold or pull. I mumbled to myself as we climbed.

  “We’re hidden here in the boulders,” Gran was saying. “Keep us in them for as long as you can, Stef. You’re doing well. Keep it up.”

  And with her encouragement, we slogged on, my eyes glazed over as I worked on pulling the souls free of the golems in the valley below, one at a time. One at a time.

  I needed to get to where they could hear my song. Dealing with them individually was simply not enough.

  I must have said that out loud because Gran was crooning, “We’ll get to that, Tor. One thing at a time. Follow Stef’s steps, that’s right. Here we go, I think after this boulder we’ll be in the clear again. What do you see, Stef?”

  “Not far now, Gran.” Stef peered around the boulder and then she was motioning us forward, staff held at the ready.

  I fought a persistent soul. Did it want to stay in the golem? It slipped and slid through my fingers like a buttered eel.

  “Nothing likes to be forced,” my mimic said wryly. “I’ve noticed that you tend to squirm when anyone is dragging you anywhere. Try being more appealing. Make them want to leave the golem.”