Winterfall

by John Conroe

  Most of their group was thrown off their feet, only Stacia somehow keeping hers. The two queens fared about the same, although Neeve somehow kept from falling. On the roof, Trygon was flapping his wings to steady his perch, and the trickle of stone and dust from his feet had become a full-fledged avalanche.

  It stopped—suddenly. Earthquake, mindquake, reality shake, whatever it was, it just ceased. On the ground, Declan drew a big air-sucking breath, his body collapsing down, folding into his kneel as the tension left him, his eyes closed. Then he opened them and Mack felt himself push back. Instinctive, the urge to remove one’s self from something unknown and dangerous.

  He couldn’t help it. His buddy’s eyes were lit from within, glowing blue like a neon light. So bright you couldn’t make out his iris or the whites of his eyes. Most of the group scrunched back too, so Mack wasn’t alone.

  Stacia did the opposite, moving over to bend down and touch her witch with both hands. Declan released his breath slowly, blinked a couple of times, and the glowing light from his eyes dimmed slightly, but he still didn’t look quite human. Not really.

  “What did you do?” Ian asked. The guy either had balls of steel or brains of cork because Mack didn’t think he, himself, would have drawn Declan’s immediate attention right then and according to all current rumors, he was Declan’s best friend.

  “I claimed it,” the warlock kid said.

  Across the atrium, the both queens’ heads snapped up, clearly able to hear his comment.

  “This land, this band of neutral ground has been trapped between two realms for eons. Winter and Summer have always been claimed by their queens, even before these two,” Declan said, standing slowly and waving one hand at the far end of the garden. “But this neutral ground wanted to be claimed too. That’s what it’s been after me about since we got here.”

  “What does that mean?” Ian asked.

  “It means, Ian Moore, that an abomination has occurred. That all the reasons for banning witches were correct,” Morrigan said, turning her cold stare from their group to her sister.

  “Oh please, sister mine. If you foresaw this, you never whispered even a word of it,” Zinnia said.

  “But what does it mean? To claim the land?” Ashley asked.

  “It means there is now a third realm. One that splits this continent across the middle,” Stacia said. “It also means that this land feeds all of its power to its new claimant—Declan.”

  “And that does… what exactly?” Jetta asked.

  “Gives him the power to fight the queens,” Mack guessed.

  Declan turned his creepy new eyes on Mack and nodded. “Right you are, buddy. Right you are,” he said.

  “If you think this dirty strip of rock and sand can match the power of the Winter Realm, you are stupid as well as delusional,” Queen Morrigan said.

  “Likewise, as the vast well of life that powers the Summer realm is far greater than this blight of flatness,” Zinnia said.

  “Aside from the fact that you’re not on your realms at the moment, there’s also the fact that they ascend and descend with the seasons,” Declan said. “In the depth of winter, Morrigan holds sway; in the heat of summer, it’s Zinnia. Think of the middle realm as fall and spring,” Declan said, stretching. He tilted his neck one way. It popped and snapped and then he did it to the other side as well. “The north has the glaciers and ice cap, the south the jungles. But you know what I have?” He held up one hand, palm up, and a ball of purest fire appeared.

  The answer popped into Mack’s head. Something Omega had mentioned, something that would have made the seven-hundred-mile hike back to Idiria even more impossible. “Volcanoes,” Mack said.

  “See, Mack gets it. I have a whole mountain range of volcanoes, and they are all begging me to burn stuff. I can feel them right now, right this instant,” Declan said.

  “You can feel them from this far away?” Jetta asked, eyes wide.

  “The claimant of a realm can feel every life standing on their ground. Every tree, stone, river, and insect,” Zinnia said, staring at Declan with something a bit like horror on her face.

  Trygon suddenly roared.

  “WHAT?” Ashley yelled, her voice filled with both horror and betrayal. The dragon pulled back its head on that long neck like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike, then arched forward, the massive mouth opening and a stream of fire pouring out, straight at them.

  The cone of pure fire shot across the open garden space, incinerating the herb garden and scorching the white stone black. Mack felt his body pull itself tight, preparing to burn to death right there.

  But the wall of flame hit something fifteen feet out from their position and just stopped its forward motion. Mack didn’t even feel the heat that flared outward like a blowtorch on glass. The air to his right side and above him carried visible waves of heat, but the stone at his feet and the space occupied by his friends was cool.

  The dragon’s flame cut off and Declan smiled. “I thought you said dragons were smart, Ash?” he asked mildly, his hands cupping together like he was packing a snowball. The top, left hand pulled away and Mack saw a much bigger sphere of pure white fury blazing in the palm of his buddy’s right hand. Declan’s palm flattened out and the witch nodded to himself. The orb of nuclear fire shot off like a rocket, moving faster than Mack could follow. Like a laser blast from every Star Wars movie ever, it smashed into the armored chest of the dragon and exploded, throwing fire in all directions.

  Trygon screeched, his cry filled with pain. Mack could see the heavy chest plates were partially melted and deformed, but otherwise intact.

  “Never, never give a fire witch more fire,” Declan said mildly, packing another ball of plasma.

  “KILL HIM!” Morrigan yelled and at her words, both groups attacked.

  Eirwen’s Hunters were even faster than Neeve, two pulling bows and two other elves rushing the Speaker’s party with three goblins bounding along beside them.

  That meant that the two hunters caught the second plasma ball right between them, the explosion leaving just parts of burnt green leather boots, one of which had a stump of white bone poking out of cauterized flesh.

  Jetta’s Glock went full automatic at the same time that Ian’s UMP fired a burst and two of the three green goblins dropped their chests and heads smashed to bloody blue pulp. The third squatty monster made a second jump and landed right in front of Ian, but Stacia just somehow shot forward, her left fist catching the side of the goblin’s head hard enough to cave it in, her foot flashing up to kick it twenty feet away, where it lay twitching. Ian’s eyes were huge; he’d been struggling to shift his gun to that goblin and failing when Stacia killed the beast with a single blow.

  Neeve had closed half the distance to them by the time Mack noticed her in motion, dodging behind the white pillars that held up the edges of the garden roof just as Declan’s third fireball blasted into the stone. The explosion cleared, revealing two-thirds of one pillar melted into glowing slag. Unharmed, Neeve darted out, closing more distance, both hands filled with Black Frost blades. Mack raised his rifle and fired off ten fast shots as fast as he could, shooting instinctively. He missed the deadly elven warrior with every shot but he managed to slow her approach, forcing her off her chosen path. He dropped the heavy recoiling rifle on its combat sling and transitioned to his pistol. Thumbing the back mounted selector to full auto, he burst fired the weapon at the fast-moving elf, chipping stone at her feet, near her head, and pockmarking the wall behind her.

  Again he missed her but earned himself a deadly glare as the agile warrior was forced to go to ground behind a stone bench. He took the opportunity to drop out his partial mag and reload with his thirty-three rounder.

  A line of frost shot across the flagstones of the garden path, catching his eye with its motion, but it sputtered out when an entire section of the path lifted itself into a berm five feet tall and three feet thick. Declan’s lifted left hand explained that, but when he gestured with
his right and a burst of water from the fountain shot through the air to spray a cloud of the insect-like Tinks coming from Summer’s position, Mack felt his mouth drop open. Declan couldn’t do water magic. The sodden poisonous flyers suddenly fell out of the air as the water coating them froze into ice and the victorious look on Declan’s face answered Mack’s question. He could work water, at least now—somehow.

  Neeve dove forward and Mack cursed himself for his distraction. His shots came too late and the black-clad female leapt off the ground, bounded off a pillar in the opposite direction, and rolled behind a boulder that was part of the garden’s formal arrangement.

  Mack shot two three-round bursts but held off wasting ammo, feeling like he was going to need every round in a moment.

  “Ready buddy?” Declan asked him, eyebrows lifted. “In three—two—one.”

  Mack brought the pistol on target as the giant two-ton boulder rocketed out of its cradle of dirt and stone, heading right for the massive dragon on the roof.

  Mack fired as soon as he saw black fabric, a small spray of viscous blue fluid spattering the white stone as the elf cursed in her own language and bolted back toward her previous cover.

  Roaring in outrage at Declan’s missile, Trygon lifted one huge leg and batted the rock away, his roar carrying a slight tone of pain in its final note, even as the dragon was staggered by the impact.

  But the witch boy was just getting warmed up. In rapid fire, Declan fired a series of smaller, plasma billiard balls at Morrigan, who shrieked in pain and darted behind her Bigfoot troll. The nine-foot-tall monster roared, distressed, as fireballs clipped his fur-covered arm, hand, and opposite shoulder. The entire corner of the garden exploded into broken stone and flying rock as space folded around the wounded troll and in the blink of an eye, the Queen of Winter and her dimension-jumping bodyguard were gone. Red hot molten stone dripped down from the wall behind where they had just stood, pooling onto the flagstones below.

  Declan didn’t hesitate, moving his stream of plasma rounds toward Trygon, raking the spray of missiles across the dragon’s outstretched wing. At least one sun-hot ball punched through the relatively thin skin of the bat-like wing and the dragon screamed in pain and fury, leaping forward to physically attack the source of his pain.

  “That’s right, Tick Tock, bring it on in,” Declan muttered, mostly to himself. He was still acting a bit off, and the speed with which he was blasting spells was crazy fast, but Mack had seen his friend pull off some insane shit in Wytch War, and he just knew that something was about to so not go the dragon’s way.

  The ground shuddered and shook as the massive reptilian charged their group. Fifty yards, forty, thirty, it was almost on them. Mack smelled full-on ozone a split-second before a thunderous crack split the air and a blinding bolt of lightning shot up from from the ground to Trygon’s head. The dragon’s body shuddered and shook, its tail jutting straight out behind it.

  Mack’s vision blacked out at the flash, and he found himself instinctively backpedaling till a flicker of vision returned and he saw the dragon laid out flat on the ground, twitching.

  Declan turned his attention to the last enemy, the summer queen, but Zinnia was already pulling back to the doorway, her daughter and their sole surviving Hunter following her backward. Four plasma balls smashed the broken door, punching glowing holes through the wall.

  That left only Neeve, who chose that moment to jump over her bench, leap for the roof, and pull herself up and out of sight like a parkour expert on crack. And then there were none.

  “Did you kill him?” Ashley asked, staring in partial horror at the supine dragon.

  “Tasered the shit out of his ass. Big chunk of quartz under the garden. I can feel it here,” Declan said, tapping his head. “Used a magnetic field like a piezoelectric lighter. I could kill him right now, though. Probably should.”

  Stacia rounded on him, eyes narrowed as he pondered the question of the stunned reptile. When he shook his head and turned away, Mack saw a flicker of what might have been relief cross her face.

  “Leaving live enemies behind us is a poor tactical decision,” Ian pointed out.

  “Then poke your HK into his eyeball and let a mag rip. I’m not gonna kill him, though,” Declan said. “What I am gonna do is bust a gate open to the portal stones. So grab your gear because we’re all getting the hell out of here.”

  Mack watched Ian, but the tough fighter just slung his gun and headed off to grab their dropped supplies. Declan noticed Aylin and her mother, both standing as far as they could get from the young witch. “Hey, thanks for that thing with the seeds,” he said. “How did you know how to kill that chunk of Frost Blade?”

  Omega dutifully translated but the girl and her mother both just stayed frozen in fear.

  “Aylin is super gifted with plant-based treatments. It’s like her super power, and her mother helps her find the right stuff. It’s really lucky we found them and brought them along,” Jetta said, moving over to the pair and squatting down next to them.

  Declan was giving Jetta a funny look, like he knew something she didn’t, but he blanked his expression when he caught Mack looking at him. “Yeah, super lucky. Thanks again,” he said, then turned and started to clear dust and broken rock off a part of the ground that already had ash glyphs and circles on it. Some were smudged so he pulled out his Rowan wood stick and started to redraw them.

  Aylin watched Declan like he was the most deadly snake in the garden, but she spoke softly to Jetta. “The living weapon was discovered by the men who kept mother and myself in the Winter Queen’s workshops. It can become hard as the hardest crystal, but it is completely susceptible to the juices of the Quist bush.”

  “The seeds of which I hope you kept,” Declan said over his shoulder to Jetta. “Cause that shit would be handy next time we go up against that cold bitch.”

  Aylin looked wide-eyed that Declan had heard her but then her attention was grabbed by Stacia crouching down next to her and her mother. “Like the skinny kid said, thank you. I’ve gotten kind of attached to him,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m right here ya know,” Declan said without turning from his glyph drawing.

  “You are High Blood,” Ari said, her voice filled with awe.

  “Shit, don’t tell her that!” Declan said. “She already reminds me at every chance she gets that she’s outta my league.”

  “That’s right, magic boy. You leveled up when you met me,” Stacia said but patted Aylin’s hand as she smirked back at her witch.

  Jetta, who was pulling seeds from her pocket and carefully placing them into a Ziploc bag, looked at the mother-daughter pair. “See, they’re harmless,” she said.

  Ari snorted as the closest phone translated the words.

  Mack decided to head to his room and grab a few things he’d forgotten. When he turned to leave, he found the blonde were-girl standing in the door.

  “Ah, hey,” he said, uncertain.

  “He’s been off-kilter since we got here. What he had to do out there is only going to make him worse. I might need your help,” Stacia said.

  “He’s freaking leveled up to god status,” Mack said. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing, if you think I mean to force him. None of us can. But you’re his best friend. You have influence—juice—pull. You might have to help me cajole, wheedle, and threaten his ass to get him off this stupid planet. I don’t know. But I know he was ready, willing, and able to declare war on a whole planet to find you and your sister.”

  “Of course I will. If you think it would help,” he said.

  “Good. Just keep an eye on him and jump in to help if you see me struggling,” she said.

  “Sure. I’m just glad we don’t have to try and manhandle him,” Mack said.