The D'Karon Apprentice

by Joseph R. Lallo

  The necromancer tenderly kissed Ivy on the forehead and lowered her gently to the floor. As the darkness finally claimed her, she heard a few final words.

  “Come, Mott. Quickly. Let us prepare you to defend Mommy…”

  #

  Ether’s howling form roared down from above and hung before the yawning door of the fort. The already potent fury broiling her mind burned brighter as she saw a small army of D’Karon design marching on clattering claws and scrabbling feet back into the fortress. She drew her form together and sparked it to flame, darting to the ground and charring the slowest of the creatures into cinders. Through the door, barely visible in the violet glow and the light spilling off from her own burning form, twisted black and purple shapes clattered and crawled into an ever larger mass. She streaked inside and set her brilliantly glowing eyes on the sight before her.

  Turiel stood in one corner of the room. She held her staff high, its gem pouring indigo light and waves of black. Like a conductor leading an orchestra through a spirited symphony, she wove intricate patterns through the air. In the center of the floor, the creatures that had until moments earlier lain lifeless and awaiting orders at the end of the stone island fed themselves into a chaotic swirl of lashing black tendrils. The threads plucked away plates of shell and whole chitinous limbs, joining them again into a form that was becoming familiar. It had a long, serpentine body, spindly spider legs, and a sleek canine head. The form was that of Mott, but crafted from scale, bone, and armor plate. It was massive, barely small enough to coil in the available space, and each detail was stouter and more vicious than before.

  “Ah… the elemental. They call you Ether, I am told,” Turiel said, venom in her tone. “But to me you will only ever be an adversary. Your name is meaningless.”

  Ether ignored the woman’s words, narrowing her eyes and gazing up at the patterns in the ceiling. The D’Karon crystals were scattered there, and few things were more painful and detrimental to her than those gems. The flakes were small, and their hunger largely sated, so they did not feast on the shapeshifter’s energies as larger stones might. Nevertheless, even as they were, she could feel their presence like a thousand needles.

  “You’ll forgive me, Ether. I am only just peeling back the layers of what I’ve learned about you. Since I’ve awoken I’ve been trying to pull together the edges of my sanity into something resembling a whole. I’ve not had much success.” She rubbed her temple. “It is beginning to become bothersome. But mental infirmity is no excuse to abandon one’s purpose.”

  The flames of Ether’s form continued to sizzle as her eyes shifted now to the motionless form huddled in the corner behind Turiel. It was Ivy. She was sleeping, at least; perhaps worse.

  A renewed anger rushed through Ether. Something inside her recoiled at the thought of something happening to Ivy. It came almost as a surprise to her. The malthrope was a liability, practically an abomination, and yet she felt nothing less than raw fury at the thought of someone doing the beast any harm. As much as she had despised Ivy in the past, they had been through many battles together. The creature was Chosen, and they were united in a cause. That, Ether told herself, was the reason for these feelings.

  “What have you done here?” Ether fumed.

  “What have I done? If I have been informed correctly, you are the one who desecrated this place. You were the one to shatter the works of Demont the Crafter. I’ve merely done what I could do to heal the damage you caused.”

  “… You are a creature of this world. Is it true? Is it true that you brought the D’Karon here?”

  “It is by leaps and bounds my greatest achievement. And is it true that you are responsible for banishing them again?”

  “It is the whole of my purpose.”

  Turiel clacked the point of her staff down to the floor angrily. “Then it seems we each are destined to be at the throat of the other. Because if you would chase away beings of such wisdom and power, then you are nothing less than a demon.”

  “You will release Ivy from your clutches. I will not see her harmed while I mete out your punishment.”

  The sorceress stepped closer to the sleeping form of the malthrope like a protective mother staring down a charging bear. “I will not! You’ve done enough, twisting this poor defenseless child to your ways. Her mind is a tangle with your lies. Leave her to me and perhaps she may be salvaged.”

  “If you know anything of what has happened in this world, you know that you brought a terrible evil upon your people and a blight upon your land. And you know that I and those like me made short work of your beloved D’Karon.”

  “Short work is a boastful claim. But yes. I’ve learned much of what you’ve done. And I’ve learned much of what was done to you. None of you are invincible, Ether. And I now know your weaknesses.”

  Turiel raised her staff and knocked its head to the ceiling. The fragments of crystal she’d embedded there drifted down like fireflies disturbed from the branches of a tree. In rapid succession the points of light drove themselves into the hide of Mott’s latest form. Curving, precise patterns of crystal studs traced themselves out on Mott’s tail, the clawed pincers of his many legs, the horny ridge of his forehead, and along his black daggers of teeth. What remained of the gems drew stripes along the rest of his tail and armor. In essence, Turiel had armed her creation with the one weapon that might truly sting Ether.

  “This does not need to occur, adversary. I will permit you to leave this place. I urge you to leave. It is never too late for a creature to learn the error of its ways, and enough damage has been—” Turiel began, her voice steady, reasonable, almost pleading.

  She did not reach the end of her thought before Ether burst toward her, columns of flame billowing behind her.

  Mott was swift, swiping his tail with great force and greater precision. It swept through the air, demolishing the support beams in its way, and clipped Ether a split second before she could lay a searing finger upon Turiel. A purely physical attack would have been of little use against Ether’s flaming form, but the gem studs raked at her like thorns, driving her back.

  Ether cried out in pain and flitted back to safety, but the sheer size of Mott’s new form left no place within the now-cramped interior that the monster couldn’t reach her. He released what would have been a gleeful chitter at his natural size. Scaled to his new form, it was a rumbling roar that seemed to come from the very bowels of the underworld.

  Though the giant thing moved with greater speed and precision than one would have thought possible, it was still no match for Ether. She drove her body forward, dropping low and facing upward as she skimmed across the ground. Her upraised hands burned deep, smoldering furrows across Mott’s armored underside. It was almost wholly without the protection of gems, and the deep gashes prompted an otherworldly howl of anger and pain.

  Mott scuttled aside, smashing apart two more support columns and causing the heavy stones of the roof to begin to rain down. The already damaged roof was now well and truly collapsing, albeit gradually. By the time Mott had shrugged off the falling stones and spotted Ether again to snap at her, she was upon Turiel. The sorceress was ready, conjuring a thicket of black threads. Ether flitted aside but several of the threads slashed through her being, sending an entirely new surge of pain through her.

  Rather than retreat again, Ether pressed on, stoking her flames hotter. The mystic fire burned through the black tendrils, but Turiel conjured more to replace them, hurling some of them forward at Ether and weaving the others into a protective mesh to deflect the falling stones and the slashing fingers of the elemental.

  The pain was intense, but it was nothing Ether hadn’t learned to deal with in her dozens of encounters with the D’Karon. And though she could feel the gems chip away at her strength with each glancing blow from Mott’s teeth and tail once the creature was in a position to strike, it was doing little to threaten the vast reserves of magic she’d accumulated in the period of relative peace since the end of
the war. It wasn’t until most of the roof had fallen away, ending the rocky cascade that had been pummeling Mott, that the hulking creature could once again direct his full attention to Ether. His jaws yawned wide and snapped shut around her, driving gem-studded, arm-length teeth through Ether’s insubstantial form.

  His attack didn’t last long before Ether’s intensity incinerated the teeth, but it was enough to convince her she would have to abandon her flaming form lest she make the mistake of overexerting herself as she had so many times before. When Mott recoiled, howling in pain again and clawing at his ashen and smoldering teeth with two of his legs, Ether shifted to wind and slipped around and between the weave of black magic that had held her at bay.

  When she coalesced again, her form a tangible mass of tightly whirling wind, she took up nearly all of the available space within Turiel’s protective net. The sorceress spun to face her, but Ether struck first, drawing the air from the woman’s lungs and conjuring a wind that forced her back against the net that was to have protected her.

  “Listen to me,” Ether said, her voice issuing from the core of her windy shape. “You may have heard the legends of this world, the stories you humans tell of great heroes. Many such figures of your history are renowned for their mercy. I am not. I have no use for mercy, and you have done nothing to deserve it. You should use what little time you have left to give thanks that I do not have the time to make you suffer properly for the evils you have wrought.”

  Turiel, still struggling to draw a breath, dispelled her own protection. The threads vanished like wisps of smoke, leaving the wind that had pinned her to them to send her hurtling backward. She was dashed twice against the mounds of fallen stone before Mott’s coiled tail snatched her from the air and lowered her carefully to the ground. He then struck with the tip of his tail, driving it like a scorpion’s stinger into the whirling form of the shapeshifter. Ether effortlessly scattered to avoid the attack, which instead pulverized the stone of the wall that had been spared the collapse thus far thanks to Turiel’s efforts. It began to tumble down, threatening to crush Ivy’s prone form, but Ether drew together again and tightened her focus around the stones. Bringing them to a halt through wind alone took enough of her dedicated strength that Turiel finally managed to wrestle a breath into her lungs.

  “Mott!” she croaked. “You’ll injure Ivy!”

  The creature released a yelp of concern and dismay, then skittered back to avoid causing any greater collapse and further endanger the sleeping malthrope. As the walls all around them shuddered and collapsed to expose them to the roaring winds and churning sea, Ether drifted between the monster and Ivy. She pulled herself together into her stone form and dropped heavily to the ground.

  Rather than waste her time on further threats or conversation, Ether simply thundered toward monster and master alike, crushing stone to powder beneath her rocky feet. Mott snapped at her with his already damaged mouth, but just as he was faster than seemed possible for his size, so too was Ether far more nimble than a stone construction ought to be. She sidestepped, allowing the monster’s head to punch through the weakened floor, then delivered a punishing blow to the back of its head.

  Reeling, he pulled himself from the damaged floor and tried to snap at where she had been, but Ether had clawed her way onto his neck and was hammering and slashing relentlessly at the tough shell. The wounds she opened offered little more than a faint glow, not a drop of blood.

  Turiel filled the air with more of her black tendrils. Where they struck Ether, they bored into her surface like roots splitting stone over the seasons. Where they struck Mott, they mended his wounds and strengthened his armor. Mott managed to whip his tail upward and coil it around Ether, tearing her from his neck and constricting her form. The lines of gemstone studs ground into her rocky skin, but unlike against her other forms, the gems did little good against this one. The constriction, however, was beginning to wear on her, causing cracks to feather through her limbs. Thus immobilized, the sorceress had little difficulty perforating and cocooning her with filaments of dark magic.

  A low, indulgent churr of fiendish glee rumbled through Mott, and for a moment Turiel allowed a grin to flash across her face as she felt the colossal power of her foe begin to flicker and wane. Between the monstrous tail and layers of filament, no part of Ether was visible anymore. A subtle, grating crumble rang out, and both tail and cocoon began to collapse inward. Then came a hiss and a brilliant flash as Ether shifted back to flame with a fierce cry.

  The heat was phenomenal, even compared to what she’d displayed earlier in the battle. Her formerly pinned arms sliced effortlessly through the tail’s tough hide, causing the huge limb to fall away in writhing loops. The threads binding her crackled to nothingness, and before Turiel could conjure more, Ether was upon her. The blazing elemental swiped her brilliant flaming hand down upon the wrist of the sorceress’s staff-bearing hand. Like the armor, the flesh and bone offered little resistance.

  So fast was the attack, and so thoroughly did it sear Turiel’s arm, that the sorceress didn’t make a sound. She merely stumbled backward and fell, cradling the wound while her staff clattered to the ground.

  The result was immediate. With the staff no longer actually in her grasp, its amplifying effect on her focus vanished. This left her without the level of control required to keep Mott’s massive form intact. Plates of armor began to peel away as he roared and writhed, falling to pieces. In the space of a few seconds, the behemoth was reduced to a motionless husk, no longer recognizable as what it once was.

  Ether let her fiery form fade, though the anger within her was not diminished in the slightest. Steadily she allowed her flaming substance to be replaced with flesh and blood. For reasons she could not fully explain, she felt the need to see this horrid creature with human eyes, and to face her as something she would perceive as one of her own. Thoughts and concerns, things left undone, teased and prodded at her mind. She ignored them. The need to see this woman, and to see her suffer, was far too important now.

  Once she was fully human, dressed in a billowing white robe and with her disgust and anger clear upon her face, Ether stalked over to where Turiel had fallen.

  “You,” Turiel began, breathlessly, “are precisely the monster I imagined you to be.”

  “I cannot say the same of you.” She kicked the staff aside, the sorceress’s severed hand still gripping it. “No creature, living or dead, has committed so heinous a crime as you. Yet somehow you seem to be nothing more than a human seduced by D’Karon teachings. It brings me no pleasure to kill you. It is merely a task that must be done.”

  “Tell me… what will happen to the child? To Ivy? She is of the D’Karon as well.”

  “It is true that she is touched by their evil, but at least she has turned herself from them. She has fought for this world, abandoned her masters. She is redeemed.”

  “So she will be spared?”

  “She will.”

  Turiel’s expression became less pained. She seemed almost serene, ready to accept what was to come.

  “All is well then. She has much promise…”

  “Ether…” called Ivy weakly, her mind finally beginning to recover.

  “Rest, Ivy. I will see to you when this blight is wiped away.”

  “You… you can’t…” Ivy said, trying to stand. “She… she knows something…”

  “There is nothing this thing could know that would make her worthy of being spared.”

  “You have to… if you don’t…”

  Ether’s fingers began to take on the brilliant glow of flame again, and she leaned down to the sorceress. Turiel seemed ready for her punishment. Behind her, something seemed wrong, however. The crackle of settling shell and armor had become sharper for a moment. Now a tapping sound was just barely audible over the howling wind and crashing waves.

  She turned to find that Mott, his flesh raw and bruised and three of his eight legs badly broken, had dragged himself out of the wreckag
e of his former self. The massive form must have been little more than a suit built over him. He had made his way to Ivy and was nuzzling her. His face was forlorn, his movements sluggish. Ivy was lying back against what remained of one wall. She rested a hand on Mott’s head.

  “You get away from her…” Ether hissed, turning and stepping quickly toward Ivy, mindful of what Mott might do. Even in his reduced form, he was still more than capable of tearing out a throat, and Ether would not allow these things to take her ally from her. The world had lost too many Chosen already.

  “Ether… I don’t know if… I don’t think that…” Ivy muttered, nearly delirious.

  “Be still,” Ether said.

  She reached down and grasped Mott by the wings with her still-flesh hand. He did nothing to resist, only slacking his neck to try to keep it near Ivy for as long as he could. When that was no longer possible, he turned his head weakly to Ether and gazed at her pathetically.

  Ether moved her hand closer, ready to run her blazing fingers through his head and end his misery. A moment before she could do so, however, his gaze sharpened and he pulled his head away. Then, amid a crackle and peel, the wings Ether held came free and Mott fell to the ground, scuttling with purpose toward where Turiel had fallen.

  The shapeshifter slashed with her fiery hand, sending a lance of flame outward that splashed against the mismatched creature, but Mott merely squealed in pain and continued his escape. Ether glanced up and instantly understood. Turiel had dragged herself to the staff. Once it was in her hand again, she was able to invigorate Mott.

  Furious both at the job left undone and her foolish oversight of the staff, Ether burst fully to flame and streaked through the air, but Turiel and Mott had slipped through a wide fault in a wall and reached the edge of the steep cliff that made up the walls of the island. With a final shove, Turiel slid off the face of the cliff. Ether had already inexcusably underestimated the woman once. She would not leave the fall and the churning sea to finish the job she’d failed to finish herself. She swept over the edge and down toward the plummeting woman. Ahead, directly below her, a ring of roiling black energy encircled a window depicting some piles of rubble and a floor of damaged stone. Turiel and Mott plummeted through. Before Ether could follow, the necromancer willed the portal shut.