Cleansing Fire

by D. L. Harrison

  “Very carefully.”

  She snorted at my comment.

  Gwen said, “I think I have an idea. The reason our eye attack didn’t work is because there was no magic to help with penetrating it’s eye, and in reaching the brain.”

  I nodded in agreement, “Of course, but magical attacks won’t work. The thing had a four million mana mana-shield, I don’t see how we can possibly kill it.”

  Gwen sighed, “I have an idea that might work, but it’s a little crazy.”

  I laughed, “Sounds like one of our normal plans then, let’s hear it.”

  She peered at me, but I just smiled.

  She sighed, “Well, we have enough sheets and smaller crystals to make hundreds of grand enchantments. My plan is also very expensive. Remember, we have six one million mana crystals in the shape of cylinders for the smaller ships.”

  My eyes widened, “You want to build another bomb!”

  She nodded, “Build a small metal shell, put in the four cylinders for four million raw mana in the four large crystals, and add in a fire enchanted expert level crystal in the package to make it blow. Then we lure the dragon away with our ship, preferably to the destroyed valley near its lair. We blow it up to kill his mana shield, and then we all attack its eye with magical ice spikes, stone spikes, darkness spikes, air blades, and enchanted arrows and bolts. We might, just might, get through to its brain. Even without the mana shield, it has far too many hit points and far too high of a regen rate for us to kill it with normal damage. Has to be an instant brain death.”

  Steve laughed, “That’s totally insane, I love it. It also makes sense.”

  “Makes sense?” I asked.

  Steve nodded, “Gaia’s never given us an impossible quest before. I thought this time had been the first time, given how tough the ancient dragon is, but I hadn’t thought of using the huge crystal gems as a raw mana burst bomb.”

  I sighed, “Agreed, that’s why I thought the ancient dragon would beg off and sleep again until the next planned awakening. I believed it because I thought it impossible to beat, especially when the eye idea didn’t work, so I’d assumed we weren’t supposed to.”

  Gwen smirked, “Thanks, I think. Just… we can’t miss, we only get one shot at it, if we fail we only have two crystals left, which isn’t enough.”

  Dan said, “I can help with that, I’ll make an enchantment too, turn it into a mentally guided missile of sorts. I can also make it accelerate a few thousand gravities, the dragon won’t be dodging, and it’s far too big to be able to hide from our sight. The trick is, we need to be in position to take advantage of it, before it starts to regenerate its mana shield. We’ll have to hit it faster than it can react, I bet it has a lot more mana it can just dump in the mana shield. Hopefully, it’ll be damaged and stunned for a few seconds.”

  I nodded, “Good point. So we take it head on. We’ll make it chase us and set up over the valley, or on the other side of it. It will charge us to take us out with his breath. We pop the canopy, and we send the missile. As soon as the explosion clears, it should still be facing us, so we can see its eyes, and we attack. We should move now, it’ll take us time to get to the two vaults, build the bomb, and at least a few hours for me and Dan to enchant.”

  Dan shook his head, “Me and you should stay here, we’ll build the two enchantments while the rest of you go get the crystals. It’ll save time.”

  I nodded, “Fair enough.”

  Gwen smirked, “Finally, I get to drive.”

  Everyone laughed, and we broke up to get to work.

  I realized shortly after the others left that it wouldn’t work. Even the most intense explosion of fire wouldn’t destabilize the crystal in one second. Also, the gem wouldn’t have enough mana to do it with a sustained burst. Worst part was, the sustained burst would make timing quite problematical.

  I’d have to literally cast the fire spell on the missile before it was launched, and if it was anything like last time it would take four seconds of four constant every second explosions of fire to get the crystals to destabilize.

  It was both annoying and reassuring, otherwise fire blasts would destroy all our enchanted equipment every time we got into a fight. Gwen’s plan was great, brilliant even, but her fire enchantment idea wouldn’t work at all, so it needed a bit of tweaking.

  I could put a five second delay on the spell, then it would use ten thousand mana to burst in explosive fire every second using a thousand mana. A sustained ten second fire blast at highly damaging levels. Over four thousand points of damage per second, nonstop. It was the nonstop part that would break the gems, more than the damage amount. That was overkill, it would only take four or five, or maybe even just three. Problem was, that meant the missile would have to be flown to the dragon within five seconds, and then stay within ten or fifteen feet of the dragon so it’d receive the full effect of the raw mana explosion. In essence, the missile would need to lock on, and then track and duplicate the dragons flight.

  Dan said that wasn’t a problem when we updated the plan, but what if the dragon turned or shied away from the missile? It wouldn’t escape the missile, but it might turn away in those eight to ten seconds so we didn’t have a shot at its eyes when its mana shield fell. We just had to hope it wouldn’t see it as a danger, and that it’d be far angrier at us and determined not to shy away so it could destroy us.

  Which meant, we should get it good and pissed off at us. I was pretty sure it already was, after all we’d blinded it, and killed its whole flight of eight young dragons.

  I was also trying very hard not to think about Lerus. We couldn’t do anything for them, it would have been suicide to try without the bomb. Which meant a lot of humans were probably dying in that moment. I also wondered if there wasn’t a huge trail of destruction besides, between its lair and Lerus. After all, we’d built the house in four days and rested two, I sincerely doubted it took the dragon six days to heal its sight. What’s it been doing all that time?

  Why didn’t we think of the bomb or missile idea earlier? There was a lot of guilt involved, but I pushed it off to the side. We needed to concentrate on killing it first, then we could add up the butcher’s bill and come to terms with it.

  The other critical part in the timing, not just making sure the missile was next to it when it went off, was making sure that all of that happened before the dragon fired his fire blast breath at us. We’d be in the air, with nothing to duck or hide behind, the dragon literally couldn’t miss if it got its shot off first.

  Perhaps Lara could cloak us, and I could move quickly to dodge, but that might ruin our window to get it in the eye. It was… complicated, and a bit desperate in truth, and we only had one shot at it.

  I pondered the possibilities, and I thought of something else that might work. Mana shields blocked any active offensive magic. The keyword was active, which included every spell in existence, even one counting down a built-in delay. Enchantments weren’t active magic, not when they were quiescent. Of course, making weapons out of enchanted crystals to get through mana shields would be incredibly time consuming, and not worth the trouble at all. Usually.

  Except when it came to an ancient red fire-breathing dragon.

  I got to work, just in case, and it gave me something to do since I wouldn’t be creating the fire enchantment and using a spell instead. If it wasn’t needed, I could always cleanse and reuse the gem later. Ironically, I thought this had a better chance of dealing with the mana shield by getting around it, and it was much simpler as far as timing was concerned, but I wasn’t entirely sure it would be powerful enough to get through his eye and hit point regeneration. After all, expert gems had eight hundred mana, and took a few minutes to regenerate it.

  No plan was perfect…

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time they got back, Dan had his missile enchantment done, as well as the thin metallic case which would secure the crystals and much smaller enchantment gem snugly in five shaped cradles ins
ide of it.

  The new ship’s flight enchantment could accelerate at several hundred gravities, and move at several times the speed of sound, into the double digits, and out in space it would go a hell of a lot faster than that. I doubted it took more than five minutes to get to the island and even shorter going between the vault locations. But, it had taken up that hour and a half Dan needed, most likely just to get in and out of the ship and vaults. Especially in Tradewinds, where there was a lot of security hoops to jump through to access our vault.

  They’d have to hit two vaults, because we had two of the larger ship crystals in each of the three.

  Regardless, we were ready for them when they returned, and jumped into the ship.

  Gwen rolled her eyes playfully when I took over flying, and teased, “Men! They just have to drive.”

  I snickered, pointed the ship at Lerus, and took off at high acceleration. It took just moments to arrive at about Mach fifteen. At that speed, it took us just over three minutes to go the six hundred miles to the continent, and less than ten after that to go the fifteen hundred miles overland to Lerus on the northern shore, somewhere around the middle of the continent east to west.

  Our usual pre-battle silly jokes and banter died at that point, the city was destroyed, and there was very little movement or life down below. Perhaps we’d made the dragon insane with loss or grief, maybe evil or not, the dragons did value their children? I wasn’t sure why, but the dragon wasn’t raiding for food and loot to add to its hoard anymore, it had obviously gone insane with rage and the need for revenge.

  Gwen said, “Where the hell is it.”

  I sighed, “It’s been two hours, who can say?”

  Steve shook his head, “I tried to keep a distant eye on it, but it chased down and killed my undead dragons. They’re probably nothing but small strips of flesh.”

  I flew east. There was a lot of distance between most kingdoms on this continent, but Velus and Lerus were rather close together. I cringed when we came into sight of it, the whole city was on fire, and people were fleeing. It didn’t look like either kingdom would survive our mistake. I felt a cold rage come upon me, the kind that froze the insides, and determination to see this monster dead filled me. My fear fell away, and my heart wasn’t even beating that fast, this thing just needed to die. I felt numb and cold inside at all the death.

  It was still circling at that point, and breathing fire down into the city, even though I was fairly sure the city was already a lost cause. The dragon was so powerful, even the stone seemed to light on fire, and break down beneath its power. The castle looked half… melted. Stone doesn’t melt though, it explodes at high temperatures.

  I connected to the weapons, and for the first time outside of testing, shot a fire blast out of the ship. It was harmless to the ancient dragon of course, even if its mana shield hadn’t existed, it was immune to fire.

  But… it sure as hell got its attention. It banked toward us as it roared in rage, I guess it recognized us.

  I turned the ship almost due south, and then hit the proverbial gas to stay ahead of him. The dragon chased, and we only started to pull ahead of it when we reached Mach three, so I slowed down to keep us about a mile apart.

  Gwen squeezed my hand, and her look told me we’d get the bastard.

  I knew the violence and death was the dragon’s fault, but it was my fault for assuming the dragon would sleep again. I’d suffered a failure of imagination and decided killing it was impossible. And two kingdoms had paid dearly for it, to the point they fell and burned up in fire.

  Worse, it was the same way we’d stopped the alien invasion. We’d blown it up, because we were no match for the city ship, there’d been no way to fight it any other way. It seemed so damned obvious in hindsight. Outside of the dragon being a live being, the two things weren’t all that different.

  At a mere Mach three, it would take a little over a half an hour to get to the valley, which was almost in the center of the continent. Fifteen hundred miles. Dan and I took a moment to fill them in on the modified plans.

  Gwen frowned, “That’s going to make things much harder. We need to be in front of it when the missile goes off. Including the five second delay, that’s eight or nine seconds.”

  I nodded, “Agreed, it is a complication. I also made this arrow, with an expert enchantment gem on the tip. It’s a backup plan of sorts. You’ll have to hit it in the eye with the arrow, then the enchantment will activate, and try to reach the brain and destroy it.”

  Cassie hummed.

  “Ice spikes?”

  It was a good guess, especially given fire wouldn’t work at all, but it wasn’t right.

  I shook my head, “Thought of that, I didn’t think the gem would have enough mana in it to do that much damage, to reach the back of the eye while it regenerates impossibly fast. I used the Life Sphere instead, creation and growth. It might take a while, but eventually the gem will regenerate, and as it regenerates the roots will continue to dig deeper into the eye, and eventually into the brain. The thorns will continue to grow as well. If you can get it in the eye Gwen, it will be as good as dead, it just might take ten or fifteen minutes. Assuming of course, it doesn’t just claw out its eye and then go away to regenerate a new one.”

  Cassie laughed, “That’s brilliant. The root can keep digging and never lose progress, where the ice would keep losing ground each time the gem regenerates its mana.”

  I nodded, “Thanks, still not a perfect plan though. It counts on the dragon not recognizing the danger and popping out its own eye, or even just digging the arrow out before the roots can reach the brain. It’s simpler, and only depends on Gwen’s ability to aim an arrow shot, but I think the first plan still has a higher chance of success. Simply digging out the arrow with a claw is kind of a fatal flaw in the plan.”

  Gwen said, “We can try both if we have to. If the mana shield is down, and I have a shot, I’ll add a spell that will curse the dragon. It’ll be too scared to think, which could help with that fatal flaw you mentioned. That way if our first round of magical attacks doesn’t get through the eye, and it tries to flee, it might die anyway. Plus, there’s a good chance one of the other attacks could push the arrow in further.”

  We were silent then, all in our own thoughts for the rest of the trip…

  We were maybe thirty seconds from the valley, and about five-miles above sea level, or a mile or so above the mountains and destroyed valley. I flipped the ship, and basically flew backwards, as we popped the canopy. The dragon was still a mile back. At about ten seconds from being directly over the valley, I set the fire spell on the bomb, and started hitting the breaks to allow the dragon to catch up. The dragon was huge, so huge that it should be possible to aim our magic at a specific part of the dragon, rather than just his whole body just in general. Its eyes were about seven or eight feet in diameter, and bigger than a person.

  Gwen smirked, “I have an idea,” and made a last-minute change as she dropped another spell on the missile.

  The missile streaked away as it faded out, then hopefully turned around and took a position next to the dragon. The dragon could probably sense the cloak, but it wouldn’t know what it was. It was kind of brilliant, it could detect the missile by the blank spot in the magic field, but that was a hundred times better than the dragon detecting the four million mana potential in the four crystals inside it.

  The latter may have made it veer away, while the former did not. It was too angry, and determined to kill us, so it ignored whatever was cloaked and trusted in its power to deal with it.

  I hit the breaks a little harder above the valley, and hoped I’d timed it right. The dragon was over the valley, about a half mile away, and about to breath his fire at us, when the dragon disappeared behind a large explosion of fire, followed by a huge blast of raw mana.

  A split second later, he reappeared out of the explosion, and we all fired our spells.

  Fighting a dragon seemed like an emergency to m
e, and I put all one hundred thousand of my free and backup mana combined into an ice spike. A huge lance of ice formed and shot at the dragon, then speared into its left eye and sunk out of sight. Which was the correct one, we’d all agreed to go for its left eye, rather than split our attacks.

  Simultaneously, Dan’s Earth spike, Gwen’s arrow, Steve’s crossbow bolt with the gray miasma of death magic attached, and Cassie’s wind blades dug deeply into the eye.

  The dragon roared and took in a breath.

  “Shit.”

  Then Lara cast her cloak, and my mind acted of its own accord as I dodged the ship to the side.

  The dragon sent out a sustained fire blast. Not just a packet of fire, but a non-stop blast for about four seconds, a stream of fire. The fire missed the ship, at least directly, but the fire heated the air around it, just short of the point of combustion.

  It wasn’t magical, so both Lara and my area of effect healing spells kicked in, as our bodies started to cook, and I moved the ship even further away.

  We all fired more spells, mine with about fifteen thousand mana that I’d managed to regenerate the last second or two. The dragon roared as it turned its head, and our spells dug into its scales, but didn’t do a whole lot of damage. At least, not relatively to its size and hit points.

  The dragon banked, and then started to move away quickly.

  I immediately chased, and stayed about four hundred feet behind, and about twenty feet lower so we’d have a good angle from the cockpit.

  We sent more spells at it, attacking its belly, tail, and wings. I honestly didn’t think we were doing all that much damage, but the point was to distract it. It had the arrow in its eyes, and it was terrified from Gwen’s spell, fear overwhelms intelligent thought, especially when cursed by darkness.

  I figured our attacks would help keep that fear up, even above and beyond that spell.

  It worked too, the dragon didn’t think to pluck out its own eye. Perhaps it didn’t realize the danger, and merely thought the pain was ongoing effects from our spells tearing into its eye. Either way, it took about three minutes for the vines with spike sized thorns to dig through the eye, through its eye socket and into the brain.