by E. J. Krause
Sasha stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. "You miss your parents. As Timothy said, go to the library. Their names appear in some of the records housed there."
"Wait, what? Why would they be in the records? What did they do? How come they never said anything about deserving to be in the Great Library?"
Timothy placed a hand on her other shoulder. "That's for you to find out. It'll keep your mind off your pain, at least for a bit."
She had to blink back tears again. "Thank you."
"Of course," Timothy said. "And, please, if you want anything, even to talk, let one of the servants know and we'll get here as soon as we can. But, for now, we must take our leave. Stay strong."
She nodded, and they left. She wanted to lie back down and continue her pity party, but they were right; there were plenty of things here to distract her for the time being. She stood up and tried to guess what the books in the library said about Mom and Dad. Before she headed down there, though, she needed to hit the flying range. A good pounding of her wings would help her immensely.
Chapter 3
Ben's entire being popped into existence in the alien realm. A quick glance around showed he was on a planet that reminded him of the surface of the moon, with its dusty, rocky ground and plenty of craters. There was no atmosphere to speak of, but the magic of the landscape allowed him to both breathe what seemed like oxygen and not be sucked out into the vacuum of space. Felix told him that, though he hadn't explained how it worked. Not that it mattered. Ben wanted to complete his task, which meant killing whatever demons existed in this nest, and be done with it.
Yes, supposedly this was a nest of demons. Part of Ben's task was figuring out what sort, as well as the best way to kill them. Unlike with the undead, information about demons didn't automatically pop into his mind. Felix had confidence Ben could take them out with ease if he had the information beforehand, so figuring it out on his own was the training session today. Fine. Whatever. As long as it got him closer to rescuing Andi.
Since she'd been taken from him, his life consisted of training in the Necromantic and Healing Arts, going to school, and doing homework. He tried adding writing to the mix, but he couldn't concentrate. Anytime he sat down and put pen to paper, his mind wandered and all that would get on the page was Andi's name over and over. Truth be told, it happened with schoolwork, too, but he managed to fight through it to continue getting good grades. Andi wouldn't be happy with him if he fell back into bad habits and got lousy marks.
At first he tried to talk his parents into letting him stop attending since he had no need for it, but they insisted, and Felix threw his support in with Ben's parents. Ben needed a break from magic each day, and school would keep his mind nimble. Plus, even if he didn't have much to do with his classmates, at least he got the social experience of being with kids his own age. He didn't get what was so important about that, but Felix did, so he obeyed.
He let his mind wander through the demon nest, which he would have thought of as a flat patch of ground had Felix not told him what it was before sending him there. No concrete images came to mind. All he could tell was that there were plenty of life forms under his feet. He tried again, this time hoping he could find the demons' weaknesses even if he couldn't name them, but again no luck. He actually had to see the monsters to scan them. Felix taught him that, but he hoped he was more powerful. Guess not.
Something glittered in the dirt to his left. He took a step in that direction, and a tentacle, over twenty feet long, exploded out of the ground. It swung at his head, but he ducked and sliced at it with his sword. While the blade didn't bite into the thing, it jumped away and sunk back into the nest. Crud, he hadn't thought to scan it. He moved over to the spot it had popped out of in hopes to draw it back out, his sword and shield gripped tight, and a death ray spell on his lips.
He spun around at a crunch behind him, ready to strike, but instead of the tentacle, two dog-like creatures burst out. At least that was the best way he could think to describe them. They were about the same general size and shape of German Shepherds, but instead of a coat of fur, they had the smooth amphibious skin one might find on a frog or newt. Even more striking were their legs. Instead of normal appendages, all four were tentacles, though they bore weight like regular legs. He guessed these were the young versions of whatever was attached to the huge tentacle that had first attacked him.
He attempted to scan the two demon dogs, but before he could complete it, they leapt at him, breaking his concentration. Each moved with the grace of a natural killer, and they worked well together. One came in high, the other low. Ben slammed one with his shield, while he sent a death ray into the other. The one on top bounced off his shield with no problem and landed a short distance away, while the spell knocked the other back, where it regrouped with its sibling, apparently unharmed. Dang. That had been one of his more powerful spells, and other than propelling the demon back, it didn't look to have even singed it.
Ben stepped forward to meet them head on before they could launch another attack. He surged at the closest one, but it scuttled out of the way of his arcing blade. He spun, his shield in perfect position, and blocked the other from landing a blow. He'd have to move quicker if he had any hope of winning this fight. These things were faster than anything he'd fought in quite a while.
The two demon dogs circled him, both looking for an opening in his defense, much as he was doing with theirs. He again tried a scan, but this time the tentacle shot back up out of the ground. He sidestepped to his right to keep from getting skewered by the thing, which he saw had a sharp tip on it that could have run him through as if he were made of soft butter. No doubt it was how it bore through the rocky ground.
Once the tentacle sunk back under the surface, the two demon dogs sprang at him. This time a shielding spell repelled them. He looked behind and saw a ridge not too far away, maybe a hundred feet or so. That might be the edge of the nest, and, if so, he wouldn't have to worry about the tentacle shooting up at him anymore. He could figure out how to beat the dogs if he had a chance to concentrate on them with a scan.
Without turning his back, Ben backpedaled, his sword and shield up and ready. He also had a shielding spell on the tip of his tongue, as well as his magical third-eye making sure his path was clear. Okay, so maybe he didn't have an actual third-eye, but as strong as his hidden senses had become since this and the Dragon Guard magic had infiltrated his soul, he sometimes felt like it. He'd been able to sense the gigantic land sharks coming up from under the sand in the Realm of Nightmares, hadn't he?
A tentacle broke through the ground behind him, and he leapt to the side, spun, and flashed his sharpened steel. This time the blade didn't bounce off, but severed the tentacle in half. As the bottom part shot back underground, the top floundered around like a fish snatched from its watery habitat.
The demon dogs shot forward. It took all of his skills to keep their razor-sharp teeth from breaking through and ending him. He even threw a few spells their way, pretty powerful ones if he did say so himself, but, like before, they didn't do any sort of damage. Why would Felix send him here to practice magic if it wouldn't have any effect on these things?
He braced himself for another round of attacks, but instead, his head practically spun around with a warning shout. More of them were burrowing up, so many that he couldn't get an accurate count. If Andi were here they could fly over this whole mess and figure it out together.
Tears flashed into his eyes. Damn it, you can miss her later! He didn't want to test whether she would still die with him if they were in separate dimensions.
As he pulled himself together, it was too late to make a mad dash to the edge of the nest. Hundreds of the demon dogs burst out of the ground and surrounded him. The first two must have been scouts, and they decided it was time for the full army. Great, just what he needed. Of course, lopping the tentacle in half probably hadn't helped his case any.
The demon dogs made sure he had
nowhere to run. He raised a magical shield that would keep them at bay for a few minutes, and even thought to make sure it ran across the ground to keep anything from springing up and surprising him.
As soon as he finished, a half-dozen of the huge tentacles burst out behind the demon dogs at equal intervals, leering over everything as if they were giving orders. At least none of them seemed to be in any hurry to make a move, so Ben had plenty of opportunity to get that scan in.
There was no way he'd be able to pronounce what they were called, but as Felix had said, they were demons, so demon dogs worked well enough for him. As he'd surmised, these dogs were the offspring, the young children, so to speak, of the massive tentacled thing underground. The young ones, like wild dogs, would tear him to pieces and eat his flesh and bones in small chunks, while the big guy, the parent, would instead swallow him whole, where a poison would both paralyze him and keep him alive while the stomach acids ate through his body for a few days before ingesting his brain and other vital organs. So it wasn't quite the thousand years of a Sarlacc on Tatooine, but it would probably feel like it.
Not that any of that would happen. Not to him, at least. He wasn't going to go out a punk like Boba Fett, though if that part of the expanded Star Wars Universe still existed, Jango's son survived the Sarlacc pit. He had to see Andi again. Nothing would get in his way from doing that.
Killing the demon dogs would prove easy, easier than he would have ever guessed. So easy, if fact, that he would never have thought of it. All magic took energy, a mental perspiration, as Felix liked to call it. This energy was in a portion of the brain, a part of the soul, reserved for those who could weaved magic. Each spell drained this energy, but it began regenerating almost at once. As Ben gained more power, the amount of energy he had to call upon grew bigger, as did the rate at which it replenished. The two spells needed to kill the demon dogs were so basic that by the time he cast the next one, his energy drained from the first would have already grown back. Essentially, he could cast these spells all day and never use up his mystical juice.
"Okay, so a draining spell followed by a dark bolt," he muttered to clear his mind. These two spells, used together, would be enough to make someone feel slightly off, like they were coming down with the flu, and it would wear off in a few minutes. Supposedly, though, the effect would be a lot worse for these demon dogs. It wouldn't affect the tentacled grown-up under the rocky surface, but he knew what spell to use to end that thing. As long as he could avoid being stabbed by it while he took out its offspring.
Speaking of which, the demon dogs hadn't attacked yet. They must be waiting for the shield to go down. Unimpeded, he could keep it up for another five or ten minutes, but that would max him out. Sure, he could still muster up the necessary draining spell and dark bolts, but it would leave no more in the tank for anything else. He'd need to shield himself like this again to catch his breath, to say nothing of all the energy it would take to roast the mommy-daddy monster. He needed to survive this test, but he also had to do it with some style to impress Felix. After all, his master was the only one who could deem him ready to mount a rescue mission for Andi. They'd still yet to discuss a timeline for that, but Ben hoped it would be months, not years. If he botched this training exercise, assuming he survived, it could be more the latter than the former, and he needed his Alexandria.
A smack below his feet showed a tentacle had tried to move through his shield spell. Good thing he'd had the foresight to block off the ground. It was going to be tough enough dodging and blasting the demon dogs, but the added obstacles of the tentacles would ramp up the difficulty that much more. Too bad he couldn't make each spell a big wave that he could shoot out all at once.
Wait, why couldn't he? The shield was already up, so if he weaved the other two spells in and exploded them out, he could catch all the demon dogs at once. It might work.
Ben stretched out his arms and began slowly feeding in both the draining spell and dark energy bolts into the shield. While he had no idea what he was doing, his subconscious took over and led him through the process. Before Felix, this type of thing happened quite a bit. In fact, that had basically been the only way he could create magic. Once his training started, however, that aspect of his power had pretty much disappeared. It was nice to see his autopilot was still there when he needed it.
The demons realized something was up, and they launched themselves at the shield. It would hold, but not for long, and if they broke it in, the spells would only nail those that got through. If he wanted to obliterate all at once, he'd have to be the one to smash it outwards.
The two spells stopped flowing from him, so he took that as a sign the shield was ready. With all of the pounding against it, it was on the verge of crumbling. He swept his arms over his head, and it exploded out. The demon dogs all dropped. The ones furthest away twitched for a few seconds, but they, too, stopped, dead.
Though it made no sound, anguish and anger flashed off the huge tentacled demon. Ben would have felt bad for it, but the amount of evil in the air that vanished when the young ones died proved he'd done the right thing. Now that he could focus on the big guy, it wouldn't take long to end it. All he needed was a nuclear scale blast of fire to take it down. While necromancers didn't have a wide variety of flame spells, there was a big one that would work well in this situation: the Funeral Pyre. As luck would have it, Felix taught him that one last week, and he was looking forward to letting loose with it.
First things first, he needed to draw the thing out so he could burn it to the ground. Two of the tentacles popped up and tried to grab him, but quick work with his sword and shield kept them at bay. Before more could join the fray, he fired a mixed blast of draining and dark energy under the ground. Now that he'd figured it out, mixing spells was pretty easy. While it wouldn't be deadly to the big demon, the thing still wouldn't appreciate the pain, and, hopefully, it'd come all the way up out of the ground to try to get to him.
It did. Ben didn't waste any time. The spell flashed to his lips, worked through his soul, and fired out of him. The demon again made no sound, and it burned in an instant. As the smoke cleared, Felix stepped out.
"Don't tell me you were in there the whole time controlling the thing," Ben said.
Felix chuckled. "No. I watched it all from our training room. That felt like it would be a cool entrance, though."
Ben rolled his eyes but couldn't help chuckling himself. "It was, I'll give you that. I assume I now know why you taught me the Funeral Pyre spell, but wouldn't it have been easier if you'd taught me how to mix spells so I didn't have to figure it out on the fly."
"Seems you did well on your own. You impressed me, and we'll discuss it more when we get back. To be honest, I didn't think you'd need it. Personally, I'd have nuked them all and been done with it."
"But my scan said they could only be killed by a draining spell followed by a dark energy bolt."
"You either read too much into it or not enough, my young Padawan." Ben smiled and shook his head like he did every time Felix called him that. "Either way, you need to learn to read between the lines. If a big blast of fire can kill it as an adult, why wouldn't it have the same effect on it as a youngster? Immunities often build up as demons grow older, but rarely do they work in reverse. In the rare cases when they do, your scan will explicitly tell you."
Ben wanted to shoot back a witty retort, but, yeah, that was pretty dumb of him not to see. Plus it all worked out in the end. Or better since he now had a new skill. Felix would teach him a more efficient way, as he always did, but at least the lesson wouldn't need to take as long now. He'd be that much closer to going after Andi.
"So," Felix started, and Ben could already hear his voice going into teacher mode. "The reason I sent you here was three-fold: One, to test your skills against a dangerous opponent; two, to harvest their hearts; and three…well, I'll tell you three later."
"Wait, what do you mean by harvest their hearts?"
"Ah, I'm gla
d you asked. Alchemy."
Ben frowned. "Isn't that making potions and stuff?"
"Indeed it is. And to make potions and stuff, as you so eloquently put it, one needs magical ingredients. The hearts of these young demons are quite powerful."
"So you sent me up here to do a chore for you?"
"A more interesting chore than fetching bucketfuls of water or chopping firewood, isn't it? Those were my nemeses when I was an apprentice."
A laugh leapt to his lips. "Yeah, it was pretty fun. It kept my mind from…" His happiness faded. Andi. Yeah, he'd been thinking about her the whole time, but he hadn't been obsessing.
Felix pursed his lips and nodded. "Yes, well, let's go get your mind off her some more. I'm not going to teach you any alchemy, at least until I'm done imparting all my wisdom on you as far as necromancy is concerned, but if you pick some things up along the way, all the better in the long run. Let me show you how to harvest these hearts."
Ben let a shadow of a smile return to his lips, and he knelt next to Felix at one of the charred demon dogs. Surprisingly, even though he'd nuked the entire area, the hearts remained intact.
Chapter 4
Trent stood at the kitchen window and watched first Heidi's car pull out and disappear down the street, and then Ben's truck. Heidi headed off to work, while Ben's destination was school. Though it was a short walk, he always drove. Not that Trent minded or even questioned that. Heck, when he'd been Ben's age, he drove to school every day, too, despite having an even shorter walk.
He sighed and thought about poor Andi stranded in the Stronghold. Not that he blamed the Dragon Council. He had a pretty good relationship with a few of them, and the reasoning behind her capture made a lot of sense. He hated the pain it brought to Ben and Andi, but he was glad he could see their point of view. It made working with them on getting Cassie and Lee's estates and other affairs put together so much easier.
