by Greg Curtis
The elders were calling him, but for the longest time Sam couldn't pay them any attention. He couldn't do much at all except lie there and stare in wonder at the impossible creature he'd somehow wrought. At the complete destruction of the steel drakes. But finally he managed to tear his eyes away from the sight and give his attention to the elders in the window.
“I don't know elders. It just came to me, but it's not my doing.” He didn't know what else he could tell them. And soon his eyes returned to the battle in the distance.
Sam lay there watching the battle for a good little while, wondering how he could possibly have brought this magnificent beast into existence. How in any way he could have shaped the phoenix. But mostly he was just amazed at how dangerous the beast was. Stunned as the distant sky turned orange with the bodies of the steel drakes tumbling out of the sky.
He was relieved too because he knew none of them were going to make it to the terrace. None of them were going to come anywhere close before their remains rained down on the land.
But it wasn't all good news. Staring out to the horizon, he could just make out a distant wave of steel flowing towards him that he knew were the wolves. The wolves were fast, and though they couldn't climb – he hoped – the distance meant that he had only a couple of hours before they arrived. And when they did the mountain would be completely surrounded. He had also lost his ride home. When the wolves arrived, he would be surrounded. Trapped.
To add to his problems he was exhausted. Calling the roc and commanding it had been exhausting. His fire magic was all but spent. Nearly everything he had, had gone into the phoenix. His nature magic was running low too. He scarcely had enough magic left to keep himself going. All he had left was his Earth magic and that was waning as he dug ever deeper.
But still he had to continue. The phoenix had bought him the time he needed. Now he had to make that time count.
Somehow he staggered to his feet, and then walked like an old man back to the shaft he was digging. He was drained, but as he focussed on the task at hand, he determined that whatever he had left he would make certain was enough. The Dragon would not claim this cavern. Fair Fields would not fall. His loved ones would not surrender their lives to the steel vermin.
Once again he sent his magic streaming into the well. Pushing the stone aside as it dug ever deeper, always aiming straight for the cavern. And though the magic did not come as easily as it had, it still came. He just had to focus. To ignore the pain and tiredness, put aside his fears, and let it flow through him into the distant rock.
In time he could feel the shaft biting ever deeper into the stone, and he knew the end was in sight. It gave him hope.
Hours later he could feel it almost within his grasp. It was a matter of only a few paces, and the nearness of his goal almost undid him. The excitement was nearly too much. But he held on, pushing the stone aside as he forced his magic down the shaft, until finally in a moment of absolute wonder he felt it push through.
It was done! He would have screamed his triumph to the heavens above if he could have. But he couldn't. He had no strength left. None in his flesh. None of his magic either. And yet that didn't matter. The last part of his mission did not require either of those things. It only required a word.
He limped slowly across to his pack, feeling as though he'd aged a century in only a few days. But he felt stronger when he pulled the sun burst out of it and held it in his hands.
It was an impossible device. An orb of orange and yellow fire that he didn't really understand. But he understood power. He could feel it, just as he could the warmth of the sun. There was so much magic flowing through it. Far more than any mere wizard could ever possess. How had the ancients ever managed to contain that power within an orb? It didn't seem possible.
Not for the first time he wondered how his brother could ever have laid his hands on this ancient weapon. He hadn't even known they existed save in the ancient tales. And the tales were wild. They called them city wreckers and mountain destroyers. Things that couldn't really be true. The devices couldn't be that powerful. Nothing could be. Which was suddenly important to him since he was standing on a mountain with one of the impossible devices in his hands. Could it destroy a mountain? He had to hope not.
But in the end he knew that only one thing mattered. That the device was powerful enough to destroy a subterranean cavern. He just had to hope that its power wasn't such that it would reach him. And surely it couldn't. Not through the best part of a league and a half of stone above it? Praise the All Father he would be safe up here.
Because he wouldn't be safe on the ground. That much became obvious when he finally looked around to see a sea of steel flowing towards him. The wolves were now half way between the horizon and the mountain, and getting closer all the time. And somewhere behind them he knew was the Dragon himself. The general was coming to claim his base on the continent and from there to build his armies. That could not happen. If he achieved nothing else Sam knew, he had to stop him here. No matter what.
Sam walked back to the shaft, the sun burst cradled safely in his arms, uttered a quick prayer to the All Father and then spoke the word as he stared into the red orb.
Did it work? For the longest time Sam didn't know. He studied the device with all his senses, trying to detect a change. And then after heartbeats that had seemed to drag like years he felt it. The magic contained within the ancient weapon was starting to build. He saw it too. The gold and red of the orb was starting to brighten. It was working.
Sam dropped the orb into the shaft and watched it vanish into the depths with a feeling of relief as he knew his job was done. The device would work or not. That was now out of his hands. He just had to pray that it worked as the ones in the ancient tales claimed it did – save for the mountain destroying part. But the one thing he did notice as the time crawled by, was that the inky blackness of the shaft was no longer inky black. Though the orb fell further and further with every beat of his heart and was soon completely out of sight, the orange and gold fire still streamed up out of the shaft, becoming ever brighter.
Soon the light became blinding and he had to step back and look away from the shaft. But even that wasn't enough and as the light kept growing brighter he had to move further and further away. And in time even that wasn't enough. The ray of light bursting from the shaft and streaking for the heaven was starting to cook him.
“Alders whoring tits!” Sam turned and began running, suddenly realising that he was in trouble. Clearly all his doubts about the power of the ancient weapon had been unworthy. It had all the power the ancient legends said it did and more. Meanwhile even while fear was starting to lend his legs a little strength, he knew he was in danger. A lot of danger. This thing might actually level a mountain.
And when he felt the heat on his back as he ran he began to realise it was worse than he had imagined.
Sam was soon sprinting like a frightened deer with a lion on its tail, using all the strength he had, and all the magic he had as well to lend his legs more strength, but he knew it wasn't enough. He could feel his back starting to burn. He could feel the mountain underneath him beginning to tremble. And worst of all he could see the edge of the terrace in front of him getting ever closer. And suddenly he was faced with a shocking decision. What should he do? Jump and fall to his death? Or stay and burn?
When he risked looking behind him though, he realised it wasn't a decision at all. Not when he could see the entire terrace behind him starting to melt. It was turning into a lake of molten rock. And he knew then that he couldn't stay. The pain as his armour started burning into his back was simply too great.
So when he reached the edge of the terrace he leapt, screaming as he did so. And he prayed as he had never prayed before. It was all he had left. Prayer. He had no magic left to him. No Roc to save him. No real hope at all. Just the promise of death rising up to meet him.
So he prayed and he fell. The wind whipped him around and blasted into his face. An
d every time he spun around it was to see the entire cliff face behind him beginning to melt like butter left out in the sun.
This wasn't supposed to be happening he told himself as he tumbled out of control. He was supposed to be able to escape the doom he had unleashed upon the mountain. But he couldn't escape anything. He was falling to his death. And the best he could hope for as he spun around wildly, was that it would be quick. And that Ry would forgive him and move on with her life.
He wanted her to be happy. He desperately wanted that. He also wanted her to be safe. But he didn't know if what he had done would be a critical hit for the Dragon. Now it seemed he wasn't going to find out. So he offered a prayer to the Goddess for her. Ryshal was always a follower of the Goddess so it seemed only right.
Then he surrendered himself to death on the rocky ground far below him. Ground that was coming ever closer.
But death didn't come. Teeth did.
Between one heartbeat and the next Sam found himself trapped within a cage of giant teeth. Completely surrounded by them. Worse, it seemed that he was lying on a tongue. It took time to understand that – he'd already had too many shocks that day – but he finally realised he was inside the mouth of a giant beast. He was being eaten!
How could that happen? How could a man both burning and falling to his doom suddenly be eaten in mid-air? And by what? Sam had no idea. He couldn't even make sense of it. But as he was suddenly squashed brutally into the embrace of the scaly tongue he realised it didn't matter. He was about to be swallowed.
Again he was wrong. Instead of heading down the creature's throat he unexpectedly found himself being launched towards the cage of teeth in front of him which magically seemed to open just in time, and he realised he was being spat out. Just before he saw a tree in front of him and crashed into it.
Branches snapped, his clothes ripped, his skin was torn and lashed, but at least he survived. He hurt all over, but the very fact that he was hurting meant that he was alive.
And the fact that he could see the ground just ten paces below him meant he was hanging in a tree branch.
Sam hung there for the longest time, simply trying to make sense of what had happened. But there was no sense to be had. There was only pain, saliva that seemed to be covering him from head to foot, and the smell of carrion that he assumed was the creature's breath lingering. There was also hysteria which kept threatening to bubble up from the depths of his thoughts and claim him. But somehow he held it back – just.
There was one other thing too – roaring. It sounded almost like the roar of a lion, but so much louder. In fact it was everywhere, and it was coming closer.
It was then that he realised he had to get down. He had to find the ground and somewhere away from the tree where he could see what was happening. Because all he could see from where he was, was the ground and endless pine needles.
Climbing down wasn't easy. When he'd been a child he remembered climbing up and down trees all day. He remembered loving it. But sometime during his life that had changed. His feet were nowhere near as confident in finding branches to support his weight. His hands had nothing like the strength he remembered them having. Several times he came close to falling.
But somehow in a series of awkward gyrations and lunges, he made it to the lower branches of the tree and then to the ground. It was fortunate he thought. Because it would have been embarrassing to have killed himself falling out of a tree after having survived a mountain exploding underneath him and then being eaten by some great beast.
Once on the ground it didn't take long to make his way through the copse of trees in which he'd been deposited, to see the land unfolding in front of him. And when he was finally able to take it all in, he wondered if he'd hit his head too many times.
There were dragons in the sky! Dozens of dragons. Flying through the air in an intricate aerial dance, laying down huge columns of fire on the steel wolves beneath them. He could see iridescent scales sparkling in the sunshine. Huge wings beating surprisingly gently in the air. Long sinuous necks and tails weaving through the skies. And cascades of fire streaming down.
The wolves for their part were running around in all directions. They no longer had a destination and their master had doubtless only instructed them just to run away from the dragons. It was all they could do. There was fire everywhere. Leagues of fire that seemingly went all the way back to the horizon. Thousands of steel corpses were burning and had set the fields on fire as they burnt.
Meanwhile when he finally managed to tear his eyes away from the spectacle unfolding in front of him it was to discover that half a league behind him Mount Andrea had gone. It had vanished from the middle of the other mountains, almost as though it had sunk into the ground. And the mountains that had surrounded it looked to have been melted a little as well. Like candles with wax running down their sides. Where Mount Andrea had once been there was now a sea of flames. As for the cavern beneath them he could only imagine that it had been destroyed. The sun burst had done everything the ancient tales had said it would and had actually melted the entire mountain. Now it was a bubbling lake of molten rock nestled between its sisters.
No one would ever again visit the ancient caverns underneath it. Not even if they still survived. But the chances were that they were now simply flooded with molten rock.
But the caverns didn't matter anymore. Spectacular as a molten lake was, it wasn't going to kill him. A wolf might. Sam returned his attention to the spectacle unfolding in front of him. Dragons fighting steel wolves. No one was ever going to believe that. He wasn't sure he believed it himself. He wasn't sure he believed any of it.
A phoenix reborn to fire. A mountain that had actually melted. And now the dragons destroying an army of machina. This could only be the work of the gods he decided. Draco, Lord of the Skies, was sending his children into battle. The Goddess having her precious symbol – or was that pet – restored to her. And wherever the phoenix was now, he was sure it would be being seen. A glorious flaming bird wasn't the sort of thing that was easily missed. And gods liked their works to be seen.
Perhaps the sun burst wasn't of the ancients either? Perhaps it too had been built by the gods? That at least made some sense. Though not a lot. The gods seldom acted. They had priests for exerting their will on the world if they needed to.
In time another thought crossed his mind. The shadelings had better never see this! As he watched the dragons continue their work and the land turn to fire for as far as he could see, Sam knew they would be distinctly unhappy. Or if they did see it they had better never imagine that this was his doing. Because he couldn't even begin to imagine how upset they would be. This might not be a forest, but it was still widespread devastation that put his fire ring to shame and they would never accept such a thing. And who would imagine that this was the work of dragons?
Where had the dragons come from? He could see at least a score of the beasts dancing and weaving through the air as they set the world ablaze. And dragons tended to be solitary creatures. Very few ever saw a dragon. But if you did, you only ever saw one.
Could this really be the work of Draco? Lord of the Skies and Father of the Dragons? Could a god truly be getting involved in the affairs of mortals? Sam kept returning to that question as he watched. It was the only answer he had though it seemed fanciful. But was it any more fanciful than a score of dragons incinerating an army of machina? And as he eventually recalled from his reading, the dragons had become involved in the first Dragon Wars.
Was it over? Sam wondered about that in time as he stood there staring at the distant battle. He wondered about it some more as he eventually gave up on standing and collapsed to the ground to lean back against a tree. He'd run out of strength as well as magic. In fact he doubted that he would even be able to draw his greatsword should one of the wolves make it close enough to be able attack him. Fortunately they were some distance from him and he figured there were very few left by then.
It seemed that the
battle was over – for him at least. The dragons were ridding the world of the wolves. The phoenix had rid the sky of the drakes. And he had destroyed the ancient Dragon's cavern. There was only one enemy remaining – the Dragon himself – and Sam had no thought at all where he might be. The only thing he knew for sure was that he would not be with his armies. He did not fight his own wars. He did not stand with his soldiers. That was not his way.
No doubt in time he would start making his way back to his island to start again. But the chances were that he would be on foot with the steel drakes gone, and they could begin a hunt for him. And with the Window of Parsus they could pass the word to others about the Dragon. That would make the hunt far easier. It also wasn't as if they didn't know where he was going. After all there were only a few places where a man could hire a ship to take him to the southern islands. And a part troll blood would stand out. He would likely be caught.
As for himself it seemed he was safe for the moment. No one was coming for him. The wolves weren't heading his way since their master had no idea where he was or even who he was. And while he was weak, he would recover. In time, after he'd rested, he could begin his long journey home. Back to Ryshal. And then maybe they could begin working on the things that really mattered – like starting a family.
