By this time, Alex had dropped down in front of the gargoyle and the two of them were trading blows. Ryliss had been dragged off a short way and was still lying in a metal-bound heap; from my vantage point, I couldn’t tell if she alive or dead. The fire wizard, Lebahn, seemed to be trying to summon another demon through his crystal. But first, he had encased himself in some kind of glowing blood-red armor and spelled a flaming sword into his hand.
I swooped down and snatched my sister from the midst of the chaos on the cavern floor and flew her over to a quiet spot behind a sturdy dripstone deposit at the far end of the cavern.
“Kerrik?” she gasped, feeling herself lifted up into the air.
“Relax, Andea, help has arrived. We are going to deal with Lebahn and his ilk once and for all. Wait here quietly until it’s over,” I said, patting her on the head and readied myself to assist in whatever way I could.
“Wait, Kerrik! You have to know, Diori is a traitor!”
“I’ll keep an eye on her; thanks, Sis!”
Flying back into the fray, I noticed that Nia had cast a massive firewall between the main body of mercenaries and everyone else. She was still buzzing along happily near the ceiling casting spell after spell and dodging the occasional arrow, but few of them seemed to even be coming close. I was no expert, but I was pretty sure the six-inch tall winged girl had already used more raw magic in the past few minutes than I was capable of casting in a year.
Lebahn strode forward, sword in hand, looking like he was going to attempt to attack Alex from behind. The cadence of whatever spell he was casting was starting to rise to a crescendo, and microbursts of hellfire were appearing and then snuffing out all along his fiery armor.
“You Comets think you are the ultimate power on this little dirt ball! I will show you real power!” he screamed. Just as he started to complete the final word of power in his summoning, Queen Maya appeared out of nowhere in front of him, a glyph-etched sword of her own in hand. Maya’s sword seemed to hum with power, but she didn’t initially attempt to strike him with it. Instead, she deployed her majestic wings and a white-hot glow began to radiate out from them.
Lebahn attempted to stop his incantation at the last second, but even a novice like me could tell it was far too late. A small crimson hole opened up between them and started to widen to allow the passage of whatever demon the mage was summoning. But before the creature could gain entrance, the Comet’s glow infused the opening and spread through it into the Hell Gate beyond.
The result was a deafening screech, as if the wailing of ten thousand doomed souls in agony had all shrieked at once. The summoning portal began to smoke, not with fire, but with cleansing steam as Maya poured even more holy energy into it. The portal shrunk slowly, nearly disappearing as the glow solidified and followed the projection of power back to Lebahn. A second later, the black pouch where the fire mage stored his oh-so-precious blood-red crystal exploded, knocking Lebahn twenty feet or more to the side. I had no doubt that if he wasn’t wearing the blazing armor, his guts would have been happily decorating the walls of the cavern.
Groggy, he got back to his feet, crouching, sword still extended shakily. “Nova bitch! Now see what you’ve done!”
Maya retracted her wings and took up a sword dancer’s stance. She faced him with a grin of determination on her beautiful face and began to engage him. My years in the army had shown me a number of fine swordsmen, but none of them moved with her lithe grace. The sword in her hand almost seemed alive, and it dipped and twisted, scoring at will on the fire mage. I saw him try to cast a fireball at her, but a deep slice that ignored his armor drew blood across his chest and instantly disrupted the spell.
I had learned long ago that fire mages were powerful and to be feared, but their one fatal weakness was that their spells were slow to cast effectively. Almost an impossibility with a foe in your face, and Maya was all over him.
Lebahn fought back artlessly, his mouth twisted in a perpetual death head of rage. “Diori, you stupid pile of useless rock, help us!” he shouted.
I looked over at the stone girl. Thus far in the battle, she had been motionless, content to merely hold what looked to be the birdcage resting on the palm of her hand. Inside, there appeared to be a lizard of some sort, but it must be the golden dragon we were to rescue. It hissed menacingly at the nearby gargoyle that was still battling Alex.
Her stone head swiveled and she spoke, “I think not, Lebahn; it does not appear that you will win the battle this day. I believe I will take my charge and depart, I can always find another willing demon master to complete my plan of revenge. Goodbye.”
“I don’t think so.” A familiar voice rang clearly above the din. Daffi? I flew closer to the ceiling and looked down. There she was a short distance behind the construct in her large black rabbit form sitting defiantly upright. “You fail to realize that, magical as you are, you still require the Earth Mother’s sanction to pass through her domain. Consider this notification that said permission is revoked…the earth itself rejects you!”
The construct got a strange look on its face, which was still modeled after Ryliss, as it appeared to be trying to drop down into the cavern floor. “Impossible! Plying the stone way is inherently part of my nature!”
While she was momentarily confused, I flew along the ceiling and curled around behind her. I dived down and snatched the cage from her palm, taking it back up into the heights of the chamber ceiling. The critter inside seemed to calm down once it was away from the gargoyle and the construct. For a moment, I thought Diori had failed to notice my minor theft as she was still gawking at Daffi’s rabbit. But then she seemed to shake it off, and a look of intense hatred spread across her purloined image.
“I am more powerful than you can imagine, even without the Earth Mother’s blessing. Do you really think a being designed to protect dragons would be helpless?” Suddenly, Diori began to grow. Ten feet tall, then twenty; when she finally stopped, she was over thirty feet tall and had the mass to match.
With the lightning fast flick of a stone arm, she batted Daphne and sent the pooka careening across the chamber, a human-like squeal emanating from her throat. I had to remind myself that the pooka couldn’t be killed in her animal forms. But still, I desperately wanted to rush to her side.
Next the construct concentrated on Alex, who was still in the final stages of battering his opponent into gravel. He didn’t see it coming, and a mighty fist connected from behind, driving him into the gargoyle and sending both of them tumbling into a heap. Without the white armor, I had no doubt the King would have been dead from that blow alone.
I heard a gasp from the Queen as she caught what had happened to Alex out of the corner of her eye. Strangely, the silver and white sword flared white-hot impressively without a trigger word or somatic gesture; it was as if it was enraged all on its own. Maya wasted no more time with Lebahn, and a graceful feint followed by a double-step move drove the point of her long blade through his throat and beyond. A quick snap of her wrist as she evaded his falling body separated the wizard’s head from his body. The searing hot blade cleansed itself by burning off all traces of the demon lord’s blood.
Its tether to this world broken, what was left of the demon gargoyle dissolved into a gibbering pile of sandstone. Still, King Alex was very, very slow to rise. But I had problems of my own. Diori was now focused on recovering the cage that I had lifted from her, and she was earnestly swatting at me like a fly. Her height meant that even the tallest portion of the cavern was within reach, so I had to keep moving and dodging. I was burning up my magic at an alarming rate, and I wouldn’t be able to maintain this level of activity for long.
I did manage to see Daffi struggling to limp back into the main part of the chamber, but she looked dazed and confused. Nia floated over my way; she looked tuckered out, but she managed to send a small fireball into Diori’s chest. Unfortunately, the spell fizzled a few feet before impact and splashed harmlessly off the stone.
“Dammit, I was afraid of that,” the pixie muttered. “Resistant to my magic just like the chimera…I’ve got nothing that will touch her!”
“Can you at least distract her?” I squealed as I dodged another giant hand swipe. The birdcage was a serious impediment to fancy aerial maneuvers, but there was no way I was going to give the little guy back to her, especially not after I heard her plans.
Down below, Alex and Maya were rallying somewhat, but it didn’t look good. From what I could tell from their conversation, even Maya’s glyphed sword was largely ineffectual against a magical stone construct. So that left most of the heavy lifting to Alex, and he hadn’t fully recovered from Diori’s initial attack.
On his first swing, he triggered some type of enchantment on the weapon, which appeared to amplify the strike. The sound of the hit reverberated throughout the cavern and even shook loose some small stalactites that shattered on the hard floor. Impressive as it was, it didn’t seem to slow the construct down much. Oh, she lost some chips here and there and some spider webbing was evident, but whatever magical forces held her together and allowed her to move must have been potent indeed. Blow after blow the King rained on the construct. From the sounds of the strikes, had she been of ordinary stone, Diori would have been wholly destroyed, but her enchantments held. Pointedly ignoring the King’s attacks, Diori continued in her quest to catch me.
“We got problems!” Nia said as she whizzed by and attempted to cast some pixie dust in the face of the construct.
“Tell me about it!” I grated, desperately looking for a better place to hide among the ceiling structures. I almost didn’t notice the ragged strap of iron that flew up and pinged sharply off the rocky ceiling until it nearly took off my ear.
“What the…?”
Any further speculation was drowned out by a savage roar that filled the chamber. It was even louder than Alex’s hammer hits, and it almost deafened me. Nia tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. Where Ryliss had been crumpled and bound on the floor, there was nothing but twisted, broken bands of cold iron in thin stringy piles.
I scanned the floor for the Druid girl but didn’t see any sign of her. Even Diori seemed monetarily confused. Alex took the opportunity to stage another attack, even though he could only reach waist high on the construct with the hammer. Her open hand swatted him backward like an annoying puppy and sent him crashing across the chamber and sliding to the floor yet again. I could see the armor was holding up well, but I wasn’t so sure about the King inside.
Another roar reverberated throughout the chamber. I recognized it as a deeper sounding Jag’uri scream, and at last, I was able to fix a location. Something dark and shapeless was prowling at the farthest reaches of the cavern, well beyond the egg chamber and Andi’s hiding place, and it was big. The third keening roar was the charm, and the creature stalked out into full view.
Emerging from the shadows, it appeared to be another Jag’uri, only two times larger than even Naurakka had been. I estimated its back height at seven feet or better, and it was easily twenty-five feet long nose to tail. Still, it moved with the big cat’s effortless grace, but that wasn’t the part that caught the eye, nor sent shivers down my spine. The jaw line was even more pronounced than a normal Jag’uri, and in place of the luxurious black fur, it had rippling scales. Thick, golden-hued plates glowed between the margins with an arcane foxfire. Its teeth and claws were appropriately sized for the cat’s advanced mass, but even they didn’t look normal, appearing more like curved projections of pure white-hot energy than anything belonging to a natural cat.
“What is it?” Nia breathed in awe as she floated alongside me. I shook my head in wonder, as well. None of us had much more time to speculate because, in a flash of gold, the beast advanced. Two bounds took it past the black rabbit which seemed to be frozen in terror. With a scream of rage, it leaped onto the kobold, driving her back several steps. Its claws were like scythes of pure energy. Each time a paw drew a path of tracing lines across the construct’s body, plasma-like dancing, burning particles spattered off; the claws gouged deep crevasses into the living rock.
The creature’s bite was literally ripping out great chunks of the white and black diorite material, and I heard Diori cry out in pain and terror as she backed up suddenly to try and flee from the onslaught. Smug in the knowledge that there was very little that could harm her or that she couldn’t run away from, Diori didn’t seem to possess any hand-to-hand fighting skills to protect against a predator like this.
Again, she attempted to melt into the stone floor, but the implacable pooka was still there, steadfastly preventing any escape. And now the cat was on her again, front claws gripping her shoulders while the back used all their leverage to rake the construct, time and time again, in a move that would have easily disemboweled a human. Jagged grooves formed on the body of the stone girl, each as deep as a man’s forearm. Scars led to cracks and cracks became fissures extending deep into the “flesh”. The construct punched the cat with all of its immense might, but the golden scales didn’t seem to deflect or buckle in the slightest. If anything, the blow just appeared to infuriate the beast even more. Another undulating screech that shook stalactites free from the ceiling filled the cavern.
“Ryliss, can’t we talk about this? You know I never meant to harm you!” Diori winced, the odd sensation of acute pain written over her features. For its part, the cat gave no indication that the words were received. It seemed to be operating on instinct and sheer killing lust as it bit down on the kobold’s arm and shook its head violently side to side. Razor-sharp, flaming teeth cut into the stone like it was mere flesh.
Diori stifled a choking scream and directed her attention at the Royals. “Help me and I will vow to serve you faithfully!”
“After your betrayal of my sister and hearing what your plans were for the young dragon, you can go straight to whatever hell you so richly deserve!” Maya called out scornfully.
“But it wasn’t my fault! Kailemora should never have created me!” she cried as more pieces fell to the floor like hailstones. “I begged her to create more like me, to give me companionship…but she wouldn’t listen…I’m the victim here!”
“Opinion noted,” Maya growled with an air of queenly finality.
The construct was on her knees, largely because most of her lower legs were now rubble, one arm lay tossed aside, as the fire claws continued to carve her up into fist-sized pieces. The creature could reach the construct’s face now and seemed to take particular pleasure in erasing all trace of the ersatz Ryliss form.
The limits of my flight spell had been reached, and I touched down carefully next to Alex and Maya with a sigh of relief. The small, winged lizard in the cage seemed to be watching the destruction of the kobold with great interest, or perhaps it was fascinated with the cat creature, I couldn’t tell. But its shiny, luminescent eyes never left the battle.
The dragon cat had reduced the remaining arm and most of Diori’s torso to scrap. It spun around viciously, and the armor-plated tail slapped through the neck of the construct. The stone head teetered for a moment and then toppled to the ground of the chamber and shattered into a million small pieces. The few pieces that were still recognizable seemed to follow suit and crumbled into gravel. Extinguished in a last puff of sparkling, enchanted dust, the kobold was no more.
The cat growled angrily, then cried out a painfully drawn-out panther scream at life itself. Seeing no opponent was forthcoming, it snarled again and stalked over to Naurakka’s lifeless form and sniffed it. It poked at the big Jag’uri with its long snout as if urging her to rise somehow, but the great black cat was truly dead. The dragon cat uttered a shriek which was half feline scream and half heart-rending agony, and its claws scraped bitterly into the floor beneath it. The creature’s great head hung low in abject misery and a moan of despair filled the room.
Maya had ripped off her helm, flinging it to the ground, and was walking steadily toward the beast with open arms; someh
ow the sword had disappeared. Tears were streaming down her face.
“Maya, be careful,” Alex warned. “We don’t know how much of our Ryliss really resides in that creature’s head.”
“Nonsense, I know my sister, Alex, and she needs me,” the Queen said levelly. For its part, the Jag’uri monster seemed to finally take note of Maya’s approach. It snarled, showing off full jaws of those impressive teeth, but then the display subsided as it waited miserably. The Queen calmly reached up and put her hands on the giant scaly head and looked into its burning eyes. “Come back to us Ryliss…please.”
With a low, piteous groan, the beast seemed to collapse as if boneless, straight down on the stone floor, taking Maya with it, as she cradled the massive head on her lap. For the better part of an hour, she sat there whispering words of comfort and stroking the cat’s head. I set the small cage down not far from the two of them, largely because every time I tried to take it farther away, the young dragon squawked and beat itself against the bars of the birdcage until I moved it closer.
I spent a few minutes collecting my relieved sister and quietly filling her in on what had happened. She cried on my lap when I told her about Naurakka. By this time, Daffi had resumed her human form and was at my side, consoling her as well. Finally, I could contain myself no further and drew the pooka girl up to me, nearly crushing her in my frantic embrace.
“Careful, Oh Great Wizard,” Daffi cautioned with a chuckle. “Remember, I can die in this human form; perhaps I should change back into the goat if you are feeling amorous!”
“No, I like you…no,make that…love you just the way you are, Daffi,” I breathed into her hair, thanking the stars that she was alright. “What was with the whole voice of the Earth Mother thing anyway?”
Fireclaws - Search for the Golden Page 27
