Copyright 2015 by Michael Robb Mathias Jr.
All Rights Reserved
by Michael Robb Mathias Jr.
ISBN-10: 1523772948
EAN-13: 9781523772940
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Preview: The Legend of Vanx Malic, Book Eight: The Long Journey Home
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Other titles by M.R. Mathias
Chapter One
On the waves adrift and free,
all is well in a following sea.
Vanx woke to a tugging sensation at his leg, and a throbbing headache. He retched, feeling his stomach muscles flare with the deep pain of having been heaving for a long time. He was pretty sure he’d succeeded in banishing the Paragon Dracus from the Heart Tree’s side of the world, but he’d done a little bit more than that. He’d gotten pulled into his own spell. Not banished from returning, he hoped, just carried through the Octron tower with the big blue bastard as he banished him.
Gallarael was dead, he remembered. The blow that thought hammered into his heart hurt far worse than the pain of his clenching guts.
What about Poops? Poops had been there, twisting through the portal, defending Vanx from the Paragon, but Vanx remembered leaving his dog familiar in the nexus with General Moonseed.
Could he have—Was the familiar bond between a wizard and his pup that strong?
He opened his eyes and a searing pain reached into his skull. It felt as if daggers had been jabbed, finger deep, into his eye sockets. Then, whatever was tugging him pulled him over some sort of ledge, and he was falling.
It was Poops, he decided, by the sound of the yipping whine the dog made as it seemingly fell beside him. Icy pain pounded the foul air from his chest and he had to fight with everything he had to keep from sucking in a lungful of frigid seawater.
The shock of being submerged in bitter liquid removed most of the daze from him immediately. In that moment of clarity, he knew what he had to do to survive.
He found the surface, sucked in a gulp of fresh air, and then began scrubbing the slimy blue goo from his face, but only enough to clear his eyes.
He searched the surface, looking for his dog, and fought the urge to heave even more; but then he felt warm breath at his neck. Poops was biting his collar, and Vanx found he was being tugged to the rocky shore by his backward-swimming, four-legged savior. As they went, he tried to gather his wits and used his hands to get the terrible blue goo off of him. When they finally found the shore, he stayed in the pool, disrobing, despite being interrupted by several more bouts of retching, and washed his skin, then his clothes.
How did you get here? he eventually asked his familiar with his mind.
You, was the gist of the single bark of response he got.
Seeing the bracelet made from Heart Tree clippings dipped in silver wrapped around his left wrist reminded him that he didn’t have to stand there and shiver dry. He used to be a bard, but now he supposed he was more of a warlock, or something of that sort, whether he liked it or not. He’d been wearing the protective jewelry since they learned it thwarted the daze caused by the blue muck that he’d just been coated with. He had to get back there, to Saint Elm’s Deep, to the Heart Tree, and his friends. The idea of them burying Gal without him was even more sickening than the goo. Chelda, Moonsy and Zeezle would be worried to death, as would the dragons, Pyra and Kelse.
He remembered the Hoar Witch’s crystal hanging at his neck, and tried using its power to communicate with Moonsy, or any fae that might hear, but there was no response. He was probably too far away from them, for its minimal power to reach. He heard something unintelligible answer his call though, which was frightening, for its presence could be felt through the shard. Luckily its distance could, too.
He had to work to keep Gallarael’s terrible death out of his mind, but images of the Paragon Dracus crushing her in his huge fist and then tossing her to the side stuck with him like a shadow. She was the first person he’d felt true, romantic emotion for in as far back as he could remember.
He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but he was famished. Once he’d started the banishing spell, he, Poops, and then the Paragon must have been pulled into the spinning tube of magnificent colored smears and twisting strands of sparkling light.
They’d battled, but the Paragon had the advantage of having used the Octron towers to teleport before. Vanx hadn’t. What came to pass between then and now was mostly a blur, but he remembered in that place Poops was savage, and had defended him well, at least until they arrived. Vanx was instantly shoved out of a tower room similar to the one they’d departed from, just by the Paragon’s bulk. Then came the sickening blue splatter from so many directions that it engulfed them.
The Paragon had some of his stunted, dragon-riding minions waiting there. Or maybe they were already in place, guarding this Octron. Either way, they’d doused Vanx immediately, to the point of near suffocation. How Poops had managed to shake the stuff off so easily was a mystery, but then again, it had never really affected the dog all that badly. Vanx shuddered at the thought that he was on that thing’s side of the world now. Here, it had all of its resources, and would probably start using them to try to undo the banishing he had just cast.
As Vanx started a magical fire with a spell he’d learned from the Hoar Witch’s books, he wondered why they hadn’t stayed and finished him off? Maybe those stunted wyrms that the dazed spellcasters rode didn’t like the taste of the goo, or maybe they’d just figured him dead or dazed for good. They probably didn’t know about the Heart Tree cuttings’ ability to defy the Trigon daze, and the Paragon was probably still feeling Pyra’s claws, or in shock from losing a good length of its tail back by the Sea Spire.
Poops sidled up to Vanx. He could feel the dog assessing the uncertainty in him. Poops missed Gallarael, too, even though the dog had been afraid of her when she was in her changeling form.
“We have to travel exactly halfway around the world to get back home, Pup.” Vanx scratched Poops behind the ears and eased the dog’s concern with a hug and some nose rubbing. “Luckily, I’ve a few gold coins for passage stashed in the side of my boo—boo—” And Vanx was vomiting again.
Vanx woke this time beside the green-tinted blaze, with his dog lying alongside him, but even between the two sources of warmth, he was shivering cold. He was pleased to find his clothes were dry, so he put them on and tried to go back to sleep.
Thoughts of Gallarael being squeezed to death in the Paragon’s claw, and its sharp teeth tearing into mighty Pyra’s red-scaled hide, haunted his mind.
He almost eluded the pain and sorrow long enough to drift back into slumber, but a slight noise abov
e them made him realize two things. First, the edge of the water was far closer than it had been earlier, which meant the tide was coming in. Secondly, up on the higher ground, illuminated by the strange moonlit sky, was a shadowy form, its single pair of yellow, glinting eyes, looking back down at him and Poops.
The instant Vanx’s mind registered the presence, the dog did too, and Poops was up sniffing the air. Before Vanx could stop him, the dog started barking a savage warning.
The eyes went away then, but Vanx could feel them still watching. Come on, Sir Poopsalot, we have to find higher ground before we end up in the sea again. Maybe if we get up to—
Vanx stopped talking as he took in the enormity of the surrounding terrain. Even in the cloud-filtered moonlight, it was awesome to behold. All around them, steep, sharply-peaked mountains jutted up into the sky, save for where they met the sea in a hull-crushing crumble.
It sent a chill through Vanx.
The harbor was natural, or so it seemed. It would be impossible for a ship to sail in, save for at the highest of tides. There was no road as far as he could tell. These signs told him it might be harder than he imagined to get out of this place, especially since there were no trees to make a raft with.
Looking at the Octron tower they’d come through, he wondered if the two powerful dragon teardrops he’d used to get them here were still up there. Then he concluded that getting up there without a dragon was next to impossible. He’d only tried a true levitation spell once, and that attempt had earned him a knot on the top of his head, and a shirt full of loose snow from the tree branch he hit.
To teleport himself up there was different, for he’d watched the Zythian spell masters teleport troops all over the place when they were fighting. He could cast a teleportal, too, he knew, and that idea gave him hope.
With a gesture, a thought, and a spoken word, the fire sputtered out, and he and Poops were instantly on a smooth black expanse at the base of the tower.
For a moment, the dog’s disorientation took Vanx’s mind spinning with it, but he gathered himself for the both of them.
There were many square towers, as if a few score people had once lived there, each with his own abode. Many were the exact same height, but there were also taller ones: for the wizards, Vanx decided, for who else lived in towers. There was a central gathering area, with smoothly worn footpaths between them all and the main buildings.
A thousand years ago, there could have been two or three hundred people running around here. There was enough structured housing to contain at least that many, and a section of terraced earth where crops might have been grown.
With Poops following, Vanx led them toward an archway at the base of the actual tower’s boxy lower structure, and didn’t miss the size of the pile of semi-fresh scat just inside the opening.
Poops sniffed the mess. The dog wanted to taste it, too, but Vanx started heaving at the thought, and stopped him.
They would need food soon. Their provisions had been ruined by the dazers’ goo, and the seawater.
Vanx eyed the extraordinarily high ceiling of the open area in which they were standing. He was worried there might be a predator roosting, or hanging upside down, way up there in the dark. Something had to have left that giant turd just outside. Looking across the floor, there were a few large mounds here and there, and some respectable-looking webs built in the corners; but when his green-tinted fire flared into existance, there was no other sign of life. He and Poops took a position with the outer wall at their back, and the fire in front of them.
Vanx wasn’t worried about keeping watch, because Poops would bark if anything came too close. After a while, he laid his sword in his lap and sobbed over the loss of Gallarael, until he drifted back to sleep.
Chapter Two
Always somewhere,
the wind it blows.
How hard, which way, and for how long,
only Nepton knows.
Vanx woke to the disgusting taste of something foul in his mouth. Poops wasn’t there with him, and the power of the panic that shot through Vanx caused the dog to come running back from the pile of shit he’d been eating from.
Vanx found that he had nothing in his mouth at all, but he had to force the dog’s senses out of his mind, so he couldn’t taste the excrement.
The most surprising thing was that he didn’t start heaving. In fact, he didn’t feel the Paragon’s infection anymore at all.
“That is gross, Sir Poopsalot,” Vanx chided jokingly. “You are a knight of the realm!”
“Urghhhh?” a grunting sounded, as if Vanx’s voice had broken something’s slumber.
“Ogghhhh?” Its call came again. It was a questioning sound, as if it warranted a response.
Vanx didn’t know how to react. It was all he could do to keep Poops from barking and tearing off after the source of the noise.
“Aghhaa,” a loud response came from above and beside them.
Vanx turned to see some sort of huge, mannish thing—or womanish in this case, for she had giant fuzzy tits. In the meager fire light, he could tell that the rest of her was mostly covered in what looked like bristling fur. The twelve-foot-tall creature had large finger-sized bottom teeth that jutted up over its hairy upper lip, like tusks, on each side of a wet snout with flared nostrils.
Vanx looked back the other way and saw that one of the larger clumps he’d seen before had since unfolded itself, and was now standing a few handspans taller than the female beside them.
They might have been able to make the archway where Poops had just been eating their shit, but now the larger one was closing. It leaned forward and used its fore knuckles to help gather speed.
It was coming right at them now, and closing fast. Vanx had just enough time to grab Poops’s collar, and teleport he and his familiar a few paces out of the way before it dove.
The angry thing landed where they had just been, and slid into its mate. Vanx assumed they were mates, for the one that had just been charging them had a dangling member the size of his forearm.
Instead of going for the arched opening, Poops pulled loose of Vanx’s grasp and darted to a narrow staircase. The doorway they passed through, as they started upward, was small enough that the now raging male beast could only get an arm and a shoulder inside. Though it recovered from its fall as fast as lightning, and reached in right behind them, it only managed to graze Vanx with its grimy claw. Luckily for Vanx, the swipe didn’t even tear his leather britches.
The stairs opened up on a hallway and Vanx was forced to choose which way to go: left, right, or straight ahead.
Vanx chose right, but it didn’t matter. After a while, Vanx decided that this was some sort of academy, or it had been. Beyond the doors along the halls they found large auditoriums with rows of benches before a pedestal, and smaller classrooms with desks, and tables strewn with books, some of which looked to have been recently disturbed.
There were skeletons, too—some in the halls, some curled in corners in the rooms. And not just man bones, though there were plenty of those. There were many halfling-sized, or maybe dwarven, ribcages—it was hard to say—and a few that were larger, but still mannish, and even more that were smaller, fae-sized, remains. Their locations throughout the complex were so random that Vanx could only conclude that some instantaneous event, or spell, had caused them to die where they stood.
This building seemed empty, save for the pair of things living in the lobby, but there was evidence that someone or something had been exploring recently enough that the layers of dust hadn’t had enough time to erase their intrusion.
Vanx followed the signs, and found a small room that had a fairly new candle and a rather large number of books piled in a far corner, while a neat stack sat near the table which held the candle.
Vanx lit the candle with a word and a flick of his finger. It didn’t take long to find that the huge pile was formed from the duplicate copies of the different books that made up the neat pile.
Va
nx found some cheese that was almost as hard as wood, but he still split it with Poops, who swallowed his piece whole. Vanx held his morsel in his mouth and let his saliva soften it, before gulping it down. Then he braved a sip from the silver flask he found in the table’s only drawer.
It was liquor, a harsh, potent mash, too. Just what Vanx needed to remove the shitty taste from his tongue.
Vanx didn’t know the language contained in any of the volumes, and that frustrated him, because it was a language so old, he’d never seen or heard of it. He doubted any Zythian master had seen these volumes, or anything written in this inexplicable script.
He knew something sentient was alive around here, though, for the cheese hadn’t been that old. Half a moon sitting wrapped in the cloth, he guessed. No more, or the stuff would have molded over or been hard as stone.
Something had recently been using the desk, but it clearly wasn’t one of those things downstairs.
Poops gave a yip, and Vanx followed.
Meat.
He could smell what the dog was smelling, and after going up another flight of stairs and finding a balcony, they found that the savory smell of cooking flesh was on the wind from a great distance.
All it did was serve to make them hungrier, for it was coming from too far away for them to detect a source. When Vanx sipped the last of the potent contents of the flask and sighed, looking at the shoreline and the sea extending into the horizon, he knew that even though there was an ocean before them, they didn’t have any water at all that they could drink.
Chapter Three
Remember when we used to laugh,
remember where we used to run,
remember when our life was grand,
underneath a giving Sun.
Vanx and Poops searched the structure floor by floor. It was rough, for there were several levels, and more stairs than Vanx cared to count. Fatigue was starting to take hold when they finally found a larder. It was empty of anything edible, of course, but there were some mice that scattered when the doors opened. Poops managed to catch one and crunched it until he could swallow it.
The Far Side of Creation (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 7) Page 1
