Summoner 5
Page 24
“You really are a feisty one.” Karn belly laughed and hoisted Joshua up onto his shoulder. “Let’s move out!”
“Yeah!” the Wild Reds simultaneously cheered, and Zyg and Doc leapt from the roof and back into the fray in the streets. Ashla remained, but for only another brief moment.
“Allow me to cut you a path.” She grinned broadly. With a snap of her fingers, her axe blade became encrusted with ice once again, and she heaved it over her shoulder before she tossed it down into the water that had started to build up around the tavern walls. As soon as it connected, the water froze into a bridge of ice that led straight to the rift gate.
“It won’t hold long. Go!” she commanded. “Be strong!”
We all stood in camaraderie and howled in unison before we rushed across the bridge. A rush of adrenaline surged over me as we ran, though we were careful not to slip on the ice as we did so. That would have lead to a whole other problem I didn’t want to have to handle.
I threw on my mask just before the rift consumed us, and I felt the familiar tug of being sucked through to another world and then spat out the other side.
I had expected to walk into the rift as if it was like any other. However, this was far from any ordinary rift. It was in the middle of a body of water that was spewing more and more water. What in Mistral had made me think I was going to waltz into the Shadowscape with my feet on the ground, I’d never know.
As soon as Layla and Karn were through the gate, I heard them scream. Fear rose up in the pit of my stomach. What could they have possibly walked into already? Even if we wanted to turn back and not find out, we were already too far in. We were going to be pulled into the Shadowscape whether we wanted to or not.
One by one, I heard the Wild Reds scream as they came out on the other side. It was too late for Gawain and me. Whatever was going to happen on the other side was what we were doomed to, and there was nothing we could do to fight it or prevent it.
I looked to Gawain, and we shared a quiet look of understanding as we came out the other side and fell head first into darkness.
Chapter 15
Dark magic, as it turned out, wasn’t at all how I knew it to feel thanks to my run-in with Penny and the bandits in the wilds. It was cold, but that was the only thing it had in common with this darkness. This darkness didn’t make me feel anything but chilled as it rushed over my skin and enveloped me in moisture.
As I sank deeper and deeper into its depths, my imagination flared and made up all kinds of scenarios. Maybe the true darkness was what I could see, or rather, maybe whatever I couldn’t see in it, either way, I didn’t want to risk opening my eyes. I hadn’t been exposed to much dark magic, but it was pretty nasty stuff that played with the minds of its prey like it had its own sense of consciousness, and that thought didn’t bode well with me.
The more I dwelled on it the more anxious I felt until I didn’t feel anything at all. I was still cold, and I was weightless as I seemingly floated, suspended in this chilled darkness. If I were the type of person who liked to be left alone, like Varleth, I might have found an odd sense of comfort like this, but that wasn’t me. I wanted the light, the freedom to be without burdens and to keep fighting. I wasn’t going to let the darkness overtake me.
I opened my mouth to scream, and I immediately regretted it. Darkness rushed into me, and I felt as though I would suffocate. Nothing I did could get it to dislodge from my throat, and it settled in my lungs. Suddenly the world seemed a little brighter, and I thought maybe this was it. Maybe this was how I went, and it occurred to me I had more moments like this in the last year than I had in my entire life. I found there to be some kind of irony in there that as soon as I felt like I found my place in the world, the world would try to remove me from it.
The light got brighter, and I struggled to reach it. It gave me hope things would get better because they had to be. I came into this hell to save Nia Kenefick, and if I had to come back as a demon of some kind to do it, then I would do it willingly. I wasn’t going to give up on her.
My head broke above the surface of light, and I coughed as I thrashed about. I had just enough of my wits about me to recognize I was being dragged. There were arms around me, and I was struggling to breathe.
“Gryff, hang in there!” Drew’s voice echoed in my ears as he pulled me onto a different surface. This one was solid, though it was still cold and still wet.
I made a face, or at least I intended to. I didn’t actually know if I was able to make a face aside from coughing and spluttering. The more I did, though, I realized I was in pain. It wasn’t a significant amount, but it was enough that it made me finally open my eyes and face whatever it was that had tried to take me.
I pried my eyes open and saw the unmistakable greenish grey sky of the Shadowscape. Drew and Layla were hunched over me, and Drew’s hands pushed on my chest in steady succession.
“Gryffie, come on,” Layla encouraged, and there was a lilt of panic in her tone that made her cute voice sound too serious.
I decided right then and there I liked her take-charge tone. It was very becoming on her, and proof she had developed her skills and shaped who she wanted to become since I’d met her.
Drew pushed down once more, and I felt the water come rushing back up through my throat, and I shot upwards, coughing as I nearly vomited into the blackish purple sand beneath me. Layla’s hands soothed my back and Drew held me steadily upright.
“That was a close one,” he sighed and lightly patted my chest. “You were almost a goner.”
I nodded dumbly for a moment as I began to process everything that had just happened. I looked out before me and noticed the gate was suspended above what appeared to be an ocean made of oil, though the consistency was off. It was definitely water, but it was so dark there was no way you could see through it. That must have been why I thought I’d been surrounded by dark magic.
Then the thought hit me that I nearly drowned, and I took a few deep breaths as I wrapped my head around that fact. It could have happened to anyone, so I wondered why it seemed like I was the one who got pulled under. There didn’t seem to be any strong currents. If anything, it was more of a large serene lake than any ocean.
I finally nodded to signal I was okay, and Drew smiled a bit.
“All right, on your feet. You have a girl to save, and we have a rift to close,” he told me, and I nodded.
I looked out over the water to where the gate was. “So much for guarding the gate. I don’t think anything is getting out of there now unless it can fly.”
“We wouldn’t be able to stop it anyway,” Drew pointed out. “None of us have the ability to fly, so unless your friend has a flying monster, we’re stuck cleaning up the beach.”
I chuckled a little. I did have my pyrewyrm, but I could barely control it myself. As talented as Layla was as a summoner, she wasn’t ready for something like a pyrewyrm.
“Either way, we’ll hold it down,” Drew told Gawain and I. “Where will you two go?”
“Along the mountain,” Gawain answered. “I have a hunch. It’s a long shot, but if I’m right, and the Shadowscape is all connected the way our world is, then there is somewhere I want to try and get back to.”
Drew looked between the two of us, and I eyed Gawain curiously.
“I hope whatever your hunch is, it leads you to finding the General’s daughter,” Drew said. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. You, too.” I shook Drew’s hand and waved to Karn and Joshua before I turned to Layla.
She took a deep breath and grasped my hands in hers firmly.
“Go find Nia,” she murmured and stepped close to me. I caught her eyes for a fleeting moment just before our lips locked in a chaste kiss. “Bring her home.”
“I will,” I promised her with a smile.
“Hey,” Drew called, and when I turned to him I had just enough time to catch a flare gun he’d tossed to me.
“What’s this for?” I asked. “It’s not like you
’ll be able to come running to our aid if we end up in a sticky situation.”
“True,” Drew agreed as he tossed a second flare gun to Gawain, “but we’ll still be able to see it. Shoot it off when you find Kenefick’s daughter. Then we’ll know when we can banish this place.”
I grinned and stuffed the gun in the strap at my side. “Good thinking.”
“That’s why I’m number two,” Drew chuckled, and the remaining Wild Reds and Layla went their way toward the catalyst.
I shot a look towards Gawain, who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. I waved for him to follow, not that I knew where I was going, but I had a hunch that going back in the direction of the gate in the desert was a good place to start.
Gawain and I continued our trek along the mountainside in silence. Every so often, I thought I heard him mutter something, but I brushed it off. He looked too distracted to be holding any kind of conversation with anyone anyway. His gaze wandered the mountain and darted around as though he were looking for something specific, but couldn’t place his finger on what it was he was looking for in the first place.
“I hope you’re thinking of ways we can get there faster,” I prodded. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared to climb a mountain this steep on hand and foot.”
“Yes, we certainly do lack the means of climbing this, don’t we?” He stared up toward the peak as though he would magically find another means of getting us to the top by doing so. “Not to mention all of those high-grade monsters that are patrolling the place, but we would need to find a way to get in undetected, and I don’t think any of your monsters can provide us with that much cover.”
I opened my mouth to argue that we could just fight our way through all of them, but I had to be a little bit reasonable. I’d had a doozy of a time with the cyclopes earlier, and there were only three of them and two of us. We were still only two of us, but there were going to be much more of them. I predicted we’d be able to handle it, but not long enough to get inside and rescue Nia, especially when we didn’t know what lay beyond those monsters.
“So what do you propose, since you’re the one that’s fairly acquainted with this mountain?” I asked.
Gawain shook his head, apparently as lost as I was, and I groaned audibly. There had to be a way. I just hadn’t thought of it yet.
Then it hit me. I did have a means to get up this mountain.
“We’re going up and over,” I declared with a grin, “and we’ll deal with the consequences as they come.”
I pulled out the crystal for my pyrewyrm and smashed it to the ground before he could protest. It wasn’t my ideal mode of transportation, but it would be big enough for two and tough enough to fight its way through the horde if need be.
“You’re really about to do this?” Gawain shook his head as I commanded the pyrewyrm to land beside us.
“Well, you were coming up with so many brilliant ideas I just couldn’t choose one,” I mocked. Then I examined the pyrewyrm and tried to figure out the best approach to riding it. I wasn’t too keen on sitting on its back without anywhere for us to really grab onto, so I decided we would ride on its feet.
The pyrewyrm screeched, and I gently patted under its fleshly, wormy neck to soothe it. It was still bizarre to me that I had one of the Shadowscape’s deadliest creatures under my control, and though it took a substantial amount of mana to do so, I also knew with time it would become second nature, and it, like most of my other monsters, would be a faithful companion.
I stood on one of its talons and wrapped my arms around its scaly leg before I looked to Gawain again.
“Come along, now. Your chariot doth await,” I joked.
Gawain appeared to find my humor less than amusing, and he scoffed as he cautiously approached the wyrm and stepped onto its foot, as though doing so would somehow anger it. In his defense, in likely any other circumstance he’d have more than enough right to fear for his life, but I had the pyrewyrm completely under control. Unless I told it to kick Gawain off, and the thought did cross my mind in the few seconds I’d waited on him, he was going to be fine.
I commanded the pyrewyrm to take off once Gawain was ready, and with another quieter scree, it lifted off. Within only a few seconds, the pyrewyrm reached the summit of the mountain, and we perched ourselves up there to observe our surroundings.
Sure enough, as Gawain said, there was the black palace.
“Isn’t that where we were before?” I asked.
“Indeed.” Gawain nodded and pointed to the hole in the outside wall my baroquer had created.
I observed the fortress from the top of the mountain, and as Gawain had said the other night in the inn, it was huge.
There were dozens of hallways past the one my friends and I happened to have landed in, and there were several tall towers connected by marbled bridges and walls. There appeared to be some kind of courtyard in the middle, though it was small, and I couldn’t actually see if there was anything worth noting inside of it.
If nothing else, this was a gorgeous piece of real estate in the Shadowscape, and though I’m sure it cost a pretty hefty amount of coins, several monster families could be living happily in there.
Despite the joke to myself, I faltered. The location of the palace didn’t make any sense. Orenn, Ashla, and I had to fall down a sand pit to get into the hallway of the palace. I shook my head and looked at Gawain.
“So, what’s this hunch you told Drew you had?” I asked him finally as we continued our journey.
“I can’t put my finger on it,” he admitted with a thin press of his lips, “but I just know Nia is in that black palace.”
I halted my own thoughts and glanced at him in mock disbelief. “Seriously?”
“I know how it sounds,” he reasoned, and his ice blue eyes stared hard at me.
“It sounds a bit crazy,” I teased, and I barely bit back the laughter that dared to spill past my lips.
“Look, I don’t know what’s been going on with me,” he started, “but I just know things now, things I have no business knowing but I am absolutely certain about.”
I couldn’t resist any longer. I snorted, and then dissolved into a massive fit of giggles. I hunched over and grabbed my stomach as my shoulders shook with laughter.
“I mean it!” Gawain’s face turned red as he argued, and I waved my hand to brush off his comment.
“Gawain, there is nothing else around here for miles.” I cackled. “Of course Nia is in the black, ominous palace! Where else would she be?”
Gawain remained silent as he digested what I’d said, then sighed as he ran a hand through his slick-backed hair.
“You can stop laughing now,” he grumbled.
I did stop, but only long enough to look at him and start again.
“Hey, can you tell me if I’ll ever win a fortune playing games at the bar?” I asked between giggles.
“Haha, very funny.” Gawain rolled his eyes.
“All jokes aside, we can’t get into it from here,” I stated as I wiped the tears from my eyes. “When we came through her before, we fell into the palace hallway through a sand pit.”
Gawain looked perplexed, though I didn’t know whether or not it was because of my statement or because there were several nasty looking monsters down there that stomped and rampaged about with bloodlust in their eyes. Even I gulped a little, despite the mirth I was riding out. Those were not monsters we wanted anything to do with right now, and preferably not ever, but particularly right now.
“All I know is that little hole in the wall is where you and the others came out,” Gawain pointed, and I followed his gaze. Sure enough, there was a baroquer-shaped hole in the side that looked all too familiar. “Maybe we can get back in through there.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s just a hallway with one door that didn’t even budge when Orenn tried to open it. We should find another way.”
I finished my sentence and looked over to Gawain for another
suggestion. To my shock, or maybe it was more of a nuisance, he gave me that look. It was the look that said I needed to re-evaluate my previous statement because he knew he was right.
“Fine, we’ll go check the stupid door again,” I conceded. I didn’t need to look at Gawain to know he wore a smug smirk on his face. If I made it out of here alive, I’d punch it off him after I thanked him for helping me save Nia.
The pyrewyrm screed and grew impatient. It started to wriggle and stamp its talons against the rock.
“Stop it,” I warned it with a glare. “If we get caught, I’m blaming you, and then you’re going to feel bad. No one wants that.”
The wyrm made a noise that sounded akin to a huff, but it stopped fidgeting all the same. I was more and more impressed with my skills at taming my monsters, even the ones I didn’t catch myself, and how far they’d come since I started at the Academy. If someone had told me this time last year I’d be able to do that, I’d probably have straight out laughed in their faces.
“So, how do we get past the blockade?” Gawain asked as though he were waiting for me to make the brilliant move.
I sighed and continued to survey the area. Indeed, the area where we had fought the cyclopes was relatively unoccupied. There were a few low-grade monsters that lurked right around the hole which Gawain could easily take out. My concern was the purple beasts that were roaming around in the next area over. They did not look friendly, and I wanted to be as far away from the seven-foot horns that grew out of each side of their lion-like heads as humanly possible.
As long as we kept low enough to the ground, we should have been able to sneak back into the palace without much commotion. We could use the pyrewyrm do descend, to the base of the mountain, and then fight our way back to the hole. A few box trolls were nothing.
With a plan in mind, I had the pyrewyrm do exactly that. We were careful to descend slowly so we didn’t draw any unwanted attention from the bigger monsters that would be curious about the presence of another big monster. We landed quietly, and the pyrewyrm made a sound like a trill of a bird, though since it was a wyrm, it was probably meant to be something like a squelch. We climbed off its feet, and I recalled the wyrm before it could be seen.