The Way of Ancient Power

by Ben Wolf

  Vandorian raised his sword for another swing, capitalizing on Magnus’s distraction and the newfound opening his Sobek guard had created.

  But Magnus wasn’t distracted.

  As the Sobek pitched to the side, off-balance, Magnus adjusted his angle and drove his shoulder into the Sobek. He careened toward Vandorian, who had already initiated his attack. His sword cleaved deep into the Sobek’s torso, and he fell under Vandorian’s blade, dead.

  Now it was Magnus’s turn to smirk while Vandorian’s countenance darkened.

  When Axel saw Gill, Jake, and almost a hundred men storm into the battle, he had to grin.

  Gill might not have been able to draw or spell the word “fishing” on his sign, but he sure knew how to use his battle-axe. He plowed into the nearest Sobek with his full weight and swung his battle-axe with abandon, shouting something about the Saurians owing him coin for trashing the perfectly good wall of his shanty.

  When Axel saw Lilly, Falcroné, and Condor dropping out of the sky at them with a few hundred Dactyls behind them, his grin evaporated, and his heart stuttered in his chest. That was her idea of helping?

  May the Overlord have mercy on us all.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Calum had just threaded through the skirmish to Jake when dozens of pale-green bodies pelted them from the sky. When Calum finally looked up, a dark gray beak set under a pair of glowing white eyes rushed toward his face.

  He reacted and sliced at the thing with his sword, which clanged against its beak. A follow-up hack spilled the Dactyl’s intestines from its belly, and it dropped to the ground, screeching and writhing.

  What in the—

  A man screamed next to him.

  Jake.

  In two slices, Calum cut down the two Dactyls on top of Jake and pulled him to his feet. Both of them were covered in glowing purple blood that reeked of death and refuse.

  “Thanks.” Jake shifted his harpoon in his hand. “Where in the depths did they come from?”

  In the distance behind Jake, Lilly fired off arrow after arrow while Condor and Falcroné covered her. Calum exhaled a sharp breath. “I think I know where, but that’s not important right now. What are you doing here?”

  “Gill told us you guys were gettin’ ambushed, so my men and I came to help.”

  “Your men?”

  He nodded. “Like I said when we parted ways a few months ago, I headed to Kanarah City, met up with my dad’s friends, and got a few ships out here. Turns out he had a lot of friends.”

  “Apparently.” Calum smiled. “Jake, we need a favor.”

  Jake shoved Calum aside and skewered another Dactyl with his harpoon. Calum’s sword severed its head from its body. Jake nodded. “Anythin’. Name it.”

  “We need you to take us to the bend in the Central Lake right away.”

  “You got it. I’ll have my crew ready a ship for departure.”

  Calum chopped the wing off a Dactyl as it flew by them, and it spiraled into one of the Sobeks and smacked into the street. The Sobek turned back and stomped its head to goo.

  “Thanks,” Calum said. “We’ll meet you over there soon.”

  A surprise kick from Vandorian knocked Magnus onto his back. Vandorian would have finished Magnus off were it not for the flurry of pale-green flesh that smacked into him and knocked him off-balance. Magnus looked up.

  Dactyls. Hundreds of the winged monsters cascaded toward them.

  If this was Lilly’s idea of saving everyone—well, Magnus appreciated the thought, but she’d definitely underestimated the consequences of this decision.

  A pair of Dactyls dropped down onto Magnus and dug their talons into the scales on his legs. Pain spiked through his thighs, and he cut both Dactyls in half with one furious swing of his sword.

  He scrambled to his feet in time to see Vandorian’s sword tear through another Dactyl, then it reset and crashed down toward Magnus next. He barely got his sword up in time to fend off the strike, which rattled his sword and stung his right hand. Vandorian’s follow-up swing glanced off Magnus’s breastplate and carved a long scratch in its wake.

  Amid the chaos of hundreds of carnivorous monsters descending on Sharkville, Magnus righted his sword and stared into Vandorian’s eyes, but something behind him stole Magnus’s attention.

  One of the Sobeks fell to the ground, covered with Dactyls. They jammed their gray beaks into his flesh and tore at him with their talons as he flailed, but he couldn’t shake them. Eventually he just stopped moving, and the Dactyls craked his bones open to get at the marrow inside.

  That would not happen to Magnus.

  Vandorian flung himself forward and slashed at Magnus, and the brothers traded vicious blows once again.

  It didn’t take long for the Dactyls to overwhelm the battle. Soon enough, Axel and his friends, the fishermen, and the Wolves no longer fought the Sobeks but instead focused on killing the invading Dactyls.

  The Sobeks’ focus also shifted. The remaining seven of Vandorian’s original twelve guards rallied together in a tight circle and fended off Dactyls by the dozen, whereas the Wolves and Windgale fishermen darted throughout Sharkville’s otherwise bland streets and airspace while engaging the rest.

  Glowing purple blood streaked the buildings, the streets, and the town’s occupants who’d taken up arms against their enemies, but Axel could hardly call it an improvement. The purple certainly added color to the gray town, but the horrible stink accompanying it threatened to overpower every other one of Axel’s senses.

  Axel and Kanton had joined up with Lilly, Condor, and Falcroné, all of whom fought as a team against the Dactyl swarm. Where Condor seemed to almost enjoy the back-and-forth with the Dactyls, Falcroné’s face showed nothing but sheer determination and fury.

  Lilly fired arrows when she could, relying on the rest of the group to protect her from stray Dactyls. Axel happily obliged, but he didn’t enjoy having to fight next to Kanton. With his right hand healed but hardly fully restored, what little fighting prowess Kanton possessed had dwindled to almost nothing.

  So far, by Axel’s count, Kanton hadn’t killed any Dactyls. He’d only managed to wound a few before another of the group finished them off. What’s more, he’d been attacked and overwhelmed almost a half dozen times until Axel or Falcroné, who occupied the spot on the other side of Kanton, saved him.

  Every time they came at him, Kanton ended up with more cuts on his face and more scratches on his armor. If they didn’t find a way out of this mess soon, Axel had to assume Kanton wouldn’t make it. And if Kanton went down, who would guard Axel’s left side?

  Riley’s claws dripped with a foul mixture of dark red and glowing purple blood.

  His ears prickled with the sounds of battle—swords severing Dactyl limbs, shouts and screams, blood spattering on the ground, talons scraping against armor—but the smells were worse. Dactyl blood smelled even more wretched than their skin, and with so much of both scents so close nearby, Riley wanted to tear his own nose off.

  The fishermen stank of fish, and the Wolves reeked of their own unique scents, but the Sobeks cast a very different scent, one surprisingly cleaner than he’d expected. In a brawl of this size, he could pick out the rare clean scents even easier amid the onslaught of grotesque smells.

  Yet despite the mass assault on his nose, Riley couldn’t deny how well the Dactyls’ presence had worked in his favor. The Sobeks were so distracted by battling the Dactyls that they didn’t see him coming. Then again, as a Werewolf now, he could move so fast that it didn’t really matter anyway.

  He leaped at the one farthest from the group and tackled him to the ground. He could have fastened his teeth around the Sobek’s exposed neck or cut his scaled face into ribbons with his claws, but he didn’t. Instead, he recovered his footing and darted away in time to avoid the half dozen Dactyls that landed on the Sobek and did the rest of the work for him.

  He smiled, then he ducked between two low-swooping Dactyls. Ahead, a trio o
f human fishermen grappled with four Dactyls, and they weren’t faring well. Not now, at least. He charged toward them and—

  Something tripped him. Riley dropped to the ground face-first, and dirt caked on his snout and the fur under his chin. A dark green tail snaked out of his periphery, and he rolled over to find a Sobek towering over him. It bore teeth marks on his throat—Riley had tried to kill him at the beginning of the fight.

  “Finally caught up to you, you filthy dog,” the Sobek snarled.

  He raised his sword to deliver the killing blow, but a blood-streaked blur zipped by, and a deep gash opened on the Sobek’s neck, right between Riley’s bite marks. Were Riley not a Werewolf now, his vision might not have been able to discern what had happened.

  The Sobek convulsed once then dropped to the ground on his side, his eyes wide with shock and surprise. He clutched his bleeding throat and trembled.

  Riley sprang to his feet and glared at Condor, his savior.

  “Can we be friends now?” Condor asked.

  Riley touched the spot on his side where Condor had stabbed him. The injury was long gone, totally erased during the process of becoming a Werewolf, but Riley remembered the pain all too well.

  He wasn’t ready to forgive Condor just yet. “Maybe next time.”

  “Fair enough.” Condor raised an eyebrow at him then shot into the sky, leaving Riley alone with the dead Sobek.

  Riley spun around and hurled himself at the Dactyls attacking the fishermen.

  Aboard his ship, Jake thrust his harpoon into the air and waved it around his head in a large arc.

  Calum saw its blade glistening in the sunlight. He turned back toward the fracas, located Axel, Lilly, and the others, and then charged toward them with abandon. Jake was going to get them all out of there and get them to Lumen, but Calum had to round everyone up, first.

  By now, more than half of the Dactyls littered the ground, most of them in pieces, but many still haunted the skies around Sharkville and dove down at their prey with their talons bared and beaks spread wide. If Calum and his companions didn’t get out of there soon, there was no telling what might happen.

  He whacked a Dactyl from the sky with the flat of his blade as he ran, then he ducked under another one but barely cleared it. Its talons scraped against the armor on his back, and Calum resolved to duck a little lower next time.

  By the time he reached his companions, half of them had already noticed him.

  “Come with me!” He pointed toward Jake’s ship. “We can get away from here and free Lumen!”

  No one hesitated. The Windgales all took to the sky and wove through the encroaching Dactyls with ease while Calum and Axel bounded over the corpses of Dactyls, Wolves, fishermen, and the occasional Sobek toward Jake’s ship.

  He still needed Magnus and Riley. Calum scanned the battle. To his right, a tall Wolf-shaped form thrashed four Dactyls that were attacking some humans.

  To his left, in the distance, Magnus and Vandorian still clashed blades. Pulling Magnus away from that confrontation would be all but impossible.

  Magnus parried every attack, but Vandorian moved too quickly and was too strong. Every time Magnus thought he’d found a way to exploit one of Vandorian’s mistakes, his efforts backfired, and Vandorian punished him for it.

  Even so, he’d held his own against his older brother this long. Perhaps if he could endure a few minutes longer—

  Vandorian’s elbow smacked into the side of Magnus’s snout, and the impact twisted Magnus’s whole body. The blow itself hurt, but worse than that, Magnus knew he was exposed, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Fire seared through his right forearm from the surface, through his flesh and bone, and then out the other side again. The weight of his sword dropped away, and he staggered back a few steps.

  When Magnus recovered his composure, he stared down at his sword. How would he retrieve it with Vandorian now standing over it?

  A growing pool of red under the hilt seized his attention.

  His hand still gripped the sword, but it was no longer attached to his arm.

  Chapter Forty

  Calum saw it happen, but he didn’t believe his eyes. In one horrifying instant, Vandorian had severed Magnus’s hand from his forearm. The fight was over.

  He whirled around and hollered for Riley, who sped toward him at an incredible rate then ran past with a howl when he noticed Calum’s finger extended toward Magnus. Not far behind, the remaining ten or so Wolves who had survived thus far bounded after him.

  “Get to the ship,” Riley called back at him. “I’ll get Magnus.”

  Calum wrenched his anchored feet from the ground and bolted toward the ship.

  A roar swelled in Magnus’s chest and erupted from his throat as he clutched the bleeding stump where his right hand had been.

  “I have to hand it to you, Magnus,” Vandorian said between disdainful chuckles. “You fought well—mostly.”

  Magnus stood there stunned until Vandorian leveled him with his tail.

  “You were always a disgrace.” Vandorian stood over him, sneering. “Always the weakest of my siblings, never an especially talented fighter. Intelligent, but ill-equipped to do anything with your breadth of knowledge. Twenty-first in line for our father’s throne. It amuses me that you, of all my siblings, would survive so long, only to die here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Somehow Magnus mustered the clarity and fortitude to speak. “Kill me if you wish, Vandorian. If you do not, I will never stop coming for you. Ever.”

  Vandorian smirked, and his golden eyes fixed on the pouch that hung from Magnus’s belt. “That reminds me. You have something very precious in your possession. Something I need if I am to succeed our uncle as ruler of Reptilius someday. I suppose I owe you for finding it and using it to become a Sobek. Had you not, it would have been useless to me.”

  All Magnus could do was watch as Vandorian reached for the pouch and pulled the Dragon Emerald from it. Pain ravaged his right arm.

  “Such a small thing, but so powerful, so important.” Vandorian rotated the dark-green stone in his hand and grinned. “And now it is all mine.”

  About a hundred feet above Vandorian’s head, four Dactyls spiraled down toward them. Magnus diverted his gaze from them the instant Vandorian’s focus returned to him.

  “I will give your regards to our uncle.” Vandorian bared his sharp teeth in a smile.

  The Dactyls dropped toward them, and Magnus shifted his tail so it lay between Vandorian’s feet.

  Vandorian raised his sword in his right hand, still holding the Dragon Emerald in his left. “Goodbye, little brother.”

  The Dactyls smacked into Vandorian from above and clawed at him, and one clamped onto his left shoulder.

  A howl split the air, then several more.

  Magnus’s tail hooked Vandorian’s left ankle and yanked, and Vandorian toppled down onto his back.

  A mass of dark fur appeared in Vandorian’s place. It reached down and grabbed Magnus by his good arm and hauled him to his feet.

  Riley.

  Vandorian roared and thrashed at the Dactyls, but their attacks persisted. Amid the confusion, one of the Wolves leaped and clamped his jaws around the Dragon Emerald, then the Wolf wrenched it from Vandorian’s hand.

  “Come on,” Riley said. “We’ve got a ship. We’re going to Lumen.”

  “Until next time, brother. Do not forget to give my regards to Uncle Kahn.” Magnus bent down, scooped up his broadsword with his left hand, and followed Riley away from Vandorian.

  “That’s everyone,” Calum said to Jake as the last of the surviving Wolves scampered aboard the ship. Somehow the core of their group had all made it. Good. “Cast off before the Dactyls realize we’re abandoning the fight.”

  Jake gave the order, and the ship eased away from the dock thanks to the two-dozen men diligently rowing from the lower deck.

  Magnus moaned and growled and slumped down against a large barrel on the ship’s
deck. Calum had never seen Magnus in such a state, and he wished he could do more for his friend, but Magnus hardly wanted anyone near him.

  When Kanton hovered over to him with a clean white cloth in his hands, Magnus held up his left hand. “Do not bind it with anything. Whatever you do, never bind this sort of wound on a Saurian.”

  Kanton blinked. “You’ll bleed out. He’s severed major arteries in your arm, and—”

  “Do not bind it, Kanton. Do not even touch it.” Magnus stared steel at him, and Kanton backed away.

  Calum started toward him. “Magnus, you’re gonna—”

  “I will be fine. Just leave me in peace.” He clutched his bleeding stump of an arm with his fingers and growled again. “Where is my Dragon Emerald? One of the Wolves picked it up.”

  “Dallahan, turn it over,” Riley said.

  A light-gray Wolf with white accents in his fur and blue eyes a shade darker than Riley’s trotted forward and dropped the Dragon Emerald on Magnus’s lap with a whimper.

  “Thank you.” Magnus exhaled a contented breath and tucked the Dragon Emerald back into the pouch at his belt. “I am indebted to you, friend.”

  Dallahan squinted at him and growled. “You’re not kidding. That thing’s gotta be worth a fortune.”

  Axel huffed. “That’s what I said.”

  “How long until we reach the bend in the lake?” Lilly asked. Streaks of purple blood on her face and armor gave off a light glow, but sitting next to Falcroné, she looked clean by comparison.

  “We’re a day away, at least, and that’s if the men row the whole time. I’d count on a day and a half before we make it there.” Jake, also streaked with Dactyl blood, grinned at them. “Take a rest, why don’t you? Heal up. There’s plenty of room aboard the ship for you to stretch your legs, get a little shut-eye, perhaps. We’ll let you know when we’re getting’ close.”