Choice

by Gary Stringer

  “Well, technically I've found the Inter-Realm Gateway, but I guess that amounts to the same thing.”

  “Where is it?” Eilidh asked and as she watched, Rochelle put a cross slap bang in the middle of nowhere. Deep in the Wilderness.

  The others crowded around the desk to see for themselves.

  “The Gateway to the Well of Life,” Toli said softly, as if to speak any louder might blow this intangible thing away. “Our journey's end,” Hannah added, reverently. Knights may not use magic but they understood its importance and Hannah could appreciate at least symbolically, the significance of discovering the source of magic in the world.

  “`X` marks the spot, eh?” Bunny remarked, belligerently raising her eyebrows in disbelief. “You really think it's that simple?”

  Some of the others grumbled at this, but Eilidh spoke up in support.“No, she's right. It can't be that simple. Journey's end, Hannah? The beginning of the end maybe, but not the end.”

  “Even assuming we find the Well of Life,” Phaer pointed out, “how does that help us stop Niltsiar?”

  “Precisely,” Eilidh concurred. Oh, but it was good to have him back. His practical intelligence and insight were great assets to her. Whatever might become of their relationship in the future, for now he made her happy just by being there, and that was enough.

  “We've come this far by taking it one step at a time, so I pro pose we continue in that vein. While I was studying at the Church of Life, my favourite lecturer taught me to `focus on the goal, not the task`. But on this quest, I have learned that sometimes the goal is too distant to see, so all you can do is complete one task at a time and trust that you will ultimately reach your final task. That's where we stand now: on the threshold of our final task, our final test. We can't know the full details of our final test until we turn over our exam papers. We just have to believe that we've completed our preparations to the best of our abilities and use what we know to answer the question we find staring back at us from the page.

  “Another thing my teacher used to say, on the eve of an exam, was `I hope you get what you deserve`. He knew the pupils that had worked hard and those who hadn't. It was his desire, therefore, that effort should be rewarded. I know we've all worked hard towards this end. Each one of you, in your own individual ways, has been invaluable to our cause and I can't thank you enough. So, as we go now to make our final preparations, let me pass on my dear old teacher's message: I hope we get what we deserve.”

  Until that moment, the Catalyst hadn't realised it, but her whole group had been standing still and quiet, listening intently to her impromptu speech and then, after a moment's pause, they all applauded. Eilidh wasn't sure how to react, suddenly becoming shy and awkward until she felt Phaer's strong hand on her shoulder. Somehow, that relaxed her just enough to ask everyone to return to their quarters and make ready to leave within the hour.

  They all filed out, except for two - her ever loyal friend Toli, and Phaer whose hand, Eilidh thought, was probably the only thing holding her up. She grinned at her friends. “Listen to me,” she said, self- deprecatingly. “I'm like the general on the eve of the final battle, only my speech isn't about courage and valour; it's about studying and exams and tests.”

  “That's because those things are you,” Toli answered with a wisdom, not to mention conciseness, that surprised Eilidh.

  “Toli’s right,” Phaer agreed. “Your style has brought us this far, so whatever it is, it's working."

  “Are you OK, Eilidh?” Toli asked, concerned. “No,” The Catalyst admitted. “I'm absolutely terrified. We've slowed Niltsiar down, sure, but we'd be stupid not to assume she'll catch up. Don't you see? Up until this point, I've done my thing and she's done hers. She’s aware of me and I'm aware of her, but other than a couple of runins with Z'rcona, and Rochelle’s close encounter in Merlyon, we've had no contact. That's bound to change. There will be a meeting, a confrontation. And I'm the Du y Kharia, apparently, who's meant to stop her. How in the world am I supposed to do that?”

  “You'll figure it out,” Phaer assured her. “Of course you will,” Toli agreed, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “That's what you do; it's what you've always done. It's like you said about the exam - you can't possibly expect to know the answer already. You don't even know the question yet.”

  Phaer nodded. “That's it. Get to the exam hall, turn the paper over and think about the question that's set. Stressing about what might be on the paper isn't going to help. When you do see the question, though, I've got every confidence you'll figure it out.”

  Eilidh shook her head in wonder. “Thank you both for your faith in me.”

  “It's not faith!” they both replied in unison. Eilidh actually laughed. “Looks like I've had quite an effect on you two! That's positive at least. Oh well, you two get back to your quarters and get ready to leave. I'll go and talk to Prince Garald about how we might get ourselvesthoroughly lost in the depths of the Wilderness.”

  “Alright,” Phaer agreed.

  “See you later,” Toli offered.

  The two then left the study room chatting together amiably. Eilidh could hear their voices drift down the corridor.

  “Good to see you back, Phaer.”

  “Good to see you, too, Toli. Have you heard I'm a necromancer now?” “That's impossible!”

  “Apparently not - I have the Life Gift in the Secret of...er...sorry, this terminology's going to take a bit.”

  “Spirit,” Toli supplied, helpfully. “How did this happen?”

  “It's complicated.”

  “I can't wait to hear about it! Actually, no, I can wait. Phaer, are your quarters next to mine like they were last time we were here?”

  “Yes, I think so. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. I just wanted to have a chat to you about something, that's all...”

  The voices grew too distant, then, for Eilidh to make out the words, lost in the echoes of the corridors and hallways. She had better things to do anyway.

  She needed to talk to the Prince Regent about arranging some transport.

  * * * * *

  “The pull of the magic is trying to drag me down there,” Loric informed his companion, pointing with his left foreleg. They were flying over the expanse of rocky mountains known as the Great Stone Table, named for the plateau in the centre, formed in a roughly rectangular shape, seemingly propped up by a quartet of mountain peaks at the corners like the legs of an enormous table. At the base of these mountains was a vast expanse of swampy marshland, full of damp, rotting vegetation, billions of insects and hazardous tar pits, ready to trap the unwary in a slow embrace of death.

  Air wrinkled up her nose. She was a forest dragon, a lover of tall trees and the vital scent of an incredible variety of life. This place carried the stench of death. For a human it wouldn't be so bad, but her dragon nose could smell much that would be odourless to any other creature. Quite frankly, she said silently to herself, it stinks!

  To Loric, however, this was home. Not only was this an ideal natural habitat for an obsidian dragon, but also the swamp at the base of the Table - known as the Bowl– was specifically his home. The very place he had hatched. Loric hadn't been back here for a very long time, even by dragon standards. More recently, he'd spent much more time in his adopted home of Avidon - in its own way, as much a rotting wasteland as the Bowl, thanks to the appallingly named Hand of Darkness Liberation Front.

  Still, he wasn't here to bury the past, but to raise the future. He was here to complete the fourth and penultimate segment of the Penta Drauka quest. For that he needed to find the Elder Dragon of Earth. Air wondered what this Elder would be like. Fire, she knew to be an eccentric old fuddy-duddy, a battered, battle seasoned old warrior and a stickler for rules, but his heart was in the right place. Aqua was a good friend, an amiable healer, a fine flyer, phenomenal swimmer and very easy on her dragon eyes. She had never met the Fourth Elder Dragon - not in any of her bodies. She remembered hearing ho
w the last one had been caught in a massive explosion out here in the Bowl. It seemed that a highly concentrated cloud of marsh gas had ignited suddenly, and she had been flame grilled. Frankly, Air thought that was rubbish. It just didn't add up. It was more likely, in Air’s view, that the Elder Dragon had simply become bored with life, as dragons were wont to do and decided to go out with a bang. Given that this Elder embodied brass, black and obsidian dragons - all of which were known for their volatile, explosive temperaments - it would fit.

  Air had no idea where they might find the Elder's latest male form, but fortunately the `pull` exerted on Loric's senses by the Penta Drauka magic, grew stronger with each segment successfully completed. Having passed the Fire, Air and Water sections, Loric believed he could fly around with his eyes shut and land right on top of the Elder. He elected to keep his eyes open however, as he descended down into the Bowl.

  The magic drew him to a sizeable, murky lake covered in blue-green algae. Loric hovered close, advising Air to stay well back. As a swamp dragon himself, he felt he knew what to expect from this Elder. He was sleeping in the lake, alone and hidden with just his nostrils out of the water so he could breathe and that was how he wanted it to stay. In human terms, this dragon had stormed up to his bedroom, slammed the door and locked himself in with a DO NOT DISTURB sign hung on the doorknob. Loric knew that knocking politely would get him nowhere and he was in no mood to play games - he didn't have time. So he was preparing to break the door down. That was bound to get a response, but he didn't want Air to get startled and accidentally let loose a lightning bolt, not with all this marsh gas floating around!

  Air agreed to leave him to it while she found herself a comfortable perch on the Stone Table. Taking a deep breath, then, Loric dive-bombed into the lake. Not a smooth, controlled entry, like when he had entered the ocean, but the impact of a great boulder knocked loose from the mountaintops and dropped from a great height, sending water, algae and moss flying for miles in all directions. When he felt his feet hit dragon scales, rather than the bottom of the lake, he half swam and half jumped his way back to the surface and flew into the air, an angry brass-obsidian-black dragon snapping at his tail. On the third or fourth attempt, the Elder's teeth actually connected, clamping down sharply.

  Pain rushed up Loric's spine, bored into his brain and he shrieked. Jerking his tail free, he turned, twisted, and rolled in the air to face his tutor. “There was no need for that, man!” he objected as he sought the calm centre of his being to heal the damage. “I was only trying to wake you up!”

  “I wasn't asleep!” the Elder growled. “I was waiting for you!” With that he launched another frenzied attack at Loric. Accelerating rapidly to ramming speed, he head butted his student hard in the chest, knocking him higher into the air. “Idiot!” he spat. “Don't you know the Penta Drauka pull works both ways? I've known you were coming for leagues!”

  Loric, calling upon the best of his flying skills, had only just stabilised, when the Elder attacked again, even more ferociously. That was as much as Loric was going to take. This wasn't simulated battle testing like he’d been through with Fire. This was a serious, genuine assault and that ignited the Fire Rage. Using his Air Flight agility to turn defence into attack, he launched into the Elder, but to his surprise, his enemy didn't flinch or move away. The teacher paid no heed to what Loric was doing and simply focussed on his own efforts to kill his student.

  Loric twisted away once more. The flesh on his neck and back was bleeding, scales ripped away. He doused the internal Fire for a moment and brought out the Water for some quick healing, but he had to quickly reignite the flames to face the Elder's renewed offensive. The dark-scaled Elder dragon spat a stream of acid at the Black Dragon of Avidon. It couldn't harm him, of course, since all dragons were invulnerable to their own type of breath weapon, but it did make it difficult to see and anticipate the Elder's next point of attack.

  “The fire makes you mad, the air gives you agility and the water patches your wounds,” the Elder said, dismissively, “but what's the point if you can't protect yourself?” “I can defend myself just fine!” Loric roared back in defiance, fending off the renewed vengeance of the Elder. But the Elder soon had the upper hand again, because Loric just couldn't hurt him. He didn't seem to feel pain, didn't seem to bleed. How the hell was he supposed to fight an enemy that refused to bleed when he bit him?

  “Are you completely stupid?” the Elder demanded. “I didn't say `defend` I said `protect`. By the gods, are you the best the Penta Drauka magic can come up with these days? The last one had it figured out in half the time! Lucky for you I don't fail my students. I just keep fighting until they either pass the test or die...almost invariably the latter. I can see you're gonna be no different.” He glanced up at the dazzling form of Air up on the rocky mountains, and called up. “You and your two buddies are supposed to weed out hopeless thickos before they bother me. How'd this one slip through the net?”

  Ignoring him, she called down encouragement for Loric instead. “Come on, Loric! You can do this! Think about it! Fire Rage, Air Flight, Water Healing. Earth...protection. Work it out!”

  The brass-obsidian-black dragon spat a long range acid jet at his counterpart of Air, only just missing her. “Hey! Stop that!” she protested.

  “First, last and only warning: Any more coaching from the sidelines and I'll fail him and kill you both!” “Don’t you threaten her!” Loric leaped to his friend's defence. She’d done so much for him, sa ving not only his life but Callie's, too, and this dragon wasn't going to lay a claw on her. But her words had had an impact. He suppressed the Fire Rage again, this time to aid clarity of thought.

  He turned it over in his mind for several minutes as he fought. Fire and Water were both internal powers, but Air stood out as external. An odd one out? The world of magic and the world of nature both tended to seek balance, so maybe Earth was external, too. Then it could combine with Air to balance the other two elements. External. Protection. What did Earth imply? Then the answer hit him - literally. The Elder's latest attack had knocked him into the side of the rocky mountains.

  Earth was a human term, he realised, and although it had become part of everyday language among mortals of all races, the Penta Drauka was a dragon thing that had existed since before even the elves evolved. “Of course it’s not Earth,” Loric said aloud. “Why would it be Earth? It’s Stone!”

  Chapter 23

  “Stone is hard,” Loric reasoned. “Hard things protect. You're not bleeding because your hide is hard

  - like Stone. Fire Rage is great for attacking, Air Flight is good for defence, Water of Healing is perfect for repairing damage, but you'll soon get injured again unless you have protection against the worst of the battle damage. That's what you teach.”

  “Well it's about bloody time!” the Elder scoffed. “Stone Shield protects your hide...if you know how.” And suddenly Loric did know how. He thought about his scales and the feeling of the stone mountains, and he kind of superimposed the two feelings. His scales shifted, interlocking more closely together, parting only as necessary for body movement - for flight. He felt them thicken and toughen until he felt like he did when he was in human form and wearing armour. “Of course!” he realised, “that's why mortals slay dragons for their hide to make armour out of dragon scales! It all makes sense now!” he cried, exultantly.

  “Congratulations,” said the Elder in a bored tone. “I'm w illing to overlook the borderline illegal coaching and give you a pass on the fourth segment of the Penta Drauka. Now get the hell out of my swamp before I decide to kill you anyway!”

  Loric had had enough of this Elder's insulting arrogance and decided to turn the tables, teach him a lesson. Fire Rage and Stone Shield active, he launched himself at the Elder with lightning speed, viciously biting and clawing at his hide.

  “Maybe I should kill you, instead!” Loric hissed. “Maybe next time the magic will choose a dragon who's less of a complete ass!” “Good thi
ng it can't choose you, then!” The Stone Elder retorted. The pair were ready to tear each other apart, much to Air's distress, but just as she was about intervene, she spotted something on the South Western horizon. The route she and Loric and flown from the ocean. It wasn't easy to make out because it meant staring into the sun that was getting low in the evening sky by now, but there was definitely something there.

  Swooping down to the fighting dragons below, she yelled at them like a parent scolding a pair of unruly children. “Pack it in, the pair of you! There's something heading this way and I don't like it.”

  Loric extracted himself from the tangle of scales he was in, and hovered up in the air beside her left flank. The brass-obsidian-black dragon did likewise, choosing a spot on her other side.

  “It's danger,” Loric warned, though he still couldn't see clearly.

  “How would you know?” the Elder challenged, belligerently.

  “It's an aspect of the Fire Rage. I've felt it before, when we were down in the ocean.”

  Air shot him a panicked look, “You're not suggesting it's those... those...things?”

  “I'm not sure,” Loric admitted, “but it feels just the same.” “Any chance you two could be a bit more specific?” asked the other dragon. “`Things` ain't much use you know. What could possibly be a danger to a trio of dragons? Well, two dragons and an idiot.”

  Loric's instinct was to go for him again, but Air calmed him down.

  “Stop it, that's not helping!”

  “You wouldn't be so quick to scoff if you'd seen some of the things we've seen,” Loric told the Elder. “But then you wouldn't see much hiding in your lake, would you?” “In the aquatic kingdom,” Air said in a raised tone before any more trouble could start, “the people were fighting chaos creatures, just as the land nations are, but these ones seemed to be not only well suited to a watery environment, but also actually made of water, or some kind of fluid at any rate. Just fluid-filled bags of skin.”