The Dragon Knight's Soul

by D. C. Clemens

  Pulses of heat and cold spurted outward every half second. The unburned runes nearby flashed in a hundred different intensities within those half seconds. The metallic moan rapidly escalated in pitch, like a gigantic boiling tea kettle, until it reached a stage that threatened to shatter glass. Something shattered, for a shockwave powerful enough to snuff out Aranath’s flame rushed out in all directions. Any structure within the town had to have been pushed at least five feet farther away.

  I don’t know how I remained standing, but I kept my vertical position while Clarissa and Ghevont needed to get back on their feet. My face did feel as though it had been slapped by an ice bear. The light from the runes no longer radiated and Aranath no longer breathed fire, but vestiges of his flamed burned on a troll-like silhouette.

  A good guess put the nismerdon at fifteen feet tall, with large bits of its blackened, bark-skin dropping to a ground now cratered beneath it. The light from the embers exposed a monster that looked like a fat cave troll hiding underneath the old bark of a mossy tree, apart from two thorny tentacles it used as arms. What I imagined to be its head was a blank knob with a few twig-like protrusions on top.

  Aranath roared at the smoking figure. The nismerdon merely grumbled and bubbled like a river of lava. When I tried consolidating the prana in my crystals, my link with Aranath severed. Like so many times before, I didn’t comprehend how much I drained myself until I hurdled over my limit. Not even if Odet offered to kiss me could I hope to stop my limbs from shaking. I fell on a knee, and would have fallen on my face were it not for Aranath’s prana returning to the blade.

  With Clarissa kneeling beside me, I looked up with what physical strength I still carried to check the nismerdon’s state. It just stood there, smoldering and losing fragments of seared skin, nothing more. Ghevont placed a hand on my shoulder and delivered a calming rhythm of prana to give my quivering soul a foundation to settle on. I concentrated so much on catching my breath that the rest of the battle remained a mystery until I motioned for Clarissa to help me back up.

  Now on both feet and under my own power, I took a quick look around. The battle seemed closer on my left, but a line of griffin riders in the air and ground hindered the progress of a beleaguered stone sprite and enemy soldiers. To the back and on my right I saw stumbling villagers doing their best to run out of the pagoda. One woman carried a limp child I hoped was only unconscious. Wanting to reunite my group, I did my best to run toward the pagoda.

  I did not get far.

  The simmering giant groaned. Then it shrieked in a combination of its low metallic resonance and its high-pitched wails. Runes gradually recovered their prana-stealing glow, and a nismerdon barrier reformed around the husk and the town itself. The nismerdon continued screaming as more burned pieces split off its body and disintegrated. Something underneath the crumbling shell writhed.

  “M-Mercer!” said Clarissa, barely discernible above the nismerdon cries. “It’s still alive! What now?!”

  My first answer was to take backward steps. The second was to say, “Test how strong its barrier is!”

  Clarissa, gathering courage, stepped up and cast projectiles of icicles at the ward. Ghevont brought his lightning to bear. The ripples coming from a dropped pebble would have been bigger.

  “Shit. Save your energy! We need to get as many people out of the village!”

  “We have to get people to stop fighting each other!” said the vampire.

  “It might be too late for that. Let’s fi-”

  “Mercer!” called Odet’s voice. Running up to us, she asked, “What’s happening?”

  “The nismerdon appears to be alive under a sacrificial shell,” replied Ghevont, his voice nervous on hearing his own assessment. “We wish to escape the village before it breaks out of its shell.”

  “Gods!” said Clarissa. “How can the soldiers still be fighting when this is happening?!”

  “They’re probably confused,” I said, “but they already think we’re their enemy, so they’ll keep fighting us. Anyway, we’re not confused. Let’s escort as many villagers to the edge of town and break the barrier. We’ll try regrouping with the others later.”

  We found four or five dozen of the pallid villagers hiding behind a building half collapsed from the shockwave. Gerard had been keeping an eye on them. With the eastern side of town closer and not so loud with battle, we headed in that direction. Gerard and Odet kept in front of the batch of villagers while Ghevont took the northern flank. Clarissa stayed with my slower self in the rear. Once in a while we moved to help up a villager who tripped or toppled from exhaustion.

  At every opportunity Odet broke off to check inside a building for more innocents, which netted a handful of other surviving captives. Gerard’s and Ghevont’s mission was to use their earth spells to desecrate the runes we couldn’t avoid. Showing the battle was at least going our way, two griffins flew over us as they searched for something else to do. One of the griffins landed near the front and spoke with the princess and the knight. It then retook to the shrunken sky.

  Our journey ended next to the daunting barrier. We had to stop several villagers from slamming their fists on to the numbing ward.

  As Ghevont, and Gerard tested the barrier with their spells, Odet told me, “I asked a rider to gather the others and bring them to us. If the soldiers insist on fighting us, we’ll make our stand-”

  “The nismerdon!” said Clarissa, looking down the path we had taken. “It’s out of its barrier!”

  Narrowing my less adequate eyes, I saw the tall outline of a newly hatched nismerdon. It looked half as bloated as before, though it wobbled like a wounded troll as it walked. Suddenly, the nismerdon’s arm extended to its side and a twisting tendril grabbed either a soldier or a griffin-less rider. It was difficult to tell, but the tendril-root seemed to sprout thinner vines that constricted half of its victim’s body. If she screamed, I couldn’t hear it.

  A few steps later and its other arm reached out for somebody else. This warrior had the presence of mind to attack with a fire spell. However, a small nismerdon ward flashed into existence to thwart the spell. As this scrambling man was grabbed, the giant threw its first quarry into the side of a building.

  “It’s absorbing prana directly now,” I said.

  I turned and threw my dragon stones next to the barrier. They ignited, but I had no prana left to manipulate it. Still, the few seconds of dragon fire ripped a small hole Gerard took as an opportunity to shove in compacted dirt. With Ghevont adding his spell, the two worked to use rock and soil to gain a hold of the ward and expand the fissure. Desperately wasting prana got the breach large enough to fit a single person at a time. Odet ordered for anyone with children to go through first.

  Griffins started arriving, one of which carried Eu-Sook. They used their water and earth spells to support the knight and scholar’s efforts. More and more villagers escaped, but the nismerdon ambled closer and closer. The nismerdon had a limp that kept it from walking quickly, but the more people it grabbed, the faster it moved. A small group of griffins and soldiers even worked together to impede the monster, but no spell could break through the wards it cast on instinct. Even attacks from behind triggered the wards.

  The nismerdon moved in close enough for me to see a face that roughly resembled a human skull without the nose hole. Two antler-like, twig-horns extended from each side of its head. Its coarse skin was a brownish green color. It mostly stopped making noise. The infrequent grumble still coming out echoed like a brief, booming clack from a beached whale.

  It dawned on me that we were not going to escape this thing, not without abandoning hundreds of people, and Odet would die defending her enemies before leaving them as nourishment for a monstrous invader. The barrier was not going to delay the giant, and there was no place to hide from it. Even if every surviving warrior coordinated the perfect attack, could we break through its wards? Maybe. But then how tough was its skin? Its counterattacks?

  Fuck. What was ev
en the point of thinking? It didn’t matter what I could do now. Igniting a single dragon stone might be enough to make me faint. I understood one oth-

  “Mercer,” said a solemn Aranath. “I believe there’s a way to stop it.”

  “Huh? How?”

  “Your corrupted prana should do as much harm to a nismerdon as it does for everything else.”

  I stepped away from Clarissa. “You want me to free it from its seal?”

  “No. Freeing it will surely destroy your mind. I want you to release it from your very body.”

  “How? Why couldn’t I get rid of it before?”

  “Because your corruption is part of your soul. I’m asking you to use that corrupted piece of your spirit as a weapon. Corrupted or not, removing this much of your essence will shorten your life, your prana reserve, and, quite likely, destroy the sword.”

  “The sword?”

  “Yes. Our bond is bound by blood, but our direct link will have to be sacrificed as a medium for this plan. Its enchantment should be strong enough to manage the technique, but no physical material will be able to absorb a corrupted soul without severe damage. Also, we’ll need the girl’s holy ward.”

  “Why?”

  “To prevent too much of the soul from escaping and vaporizing in the air. If you agree to this, ask her to cast a ward around the blade.”

  I watched as griffins and soldiers alike huddled by the opening, waiting for their turn to flee outside. Eu-sook had delivered Odet’s order to stop attacking the nismerdon and regroup, so everyone the colossus now headed straight for us without opposition.

  “Clarissa! Get Odet up here!”

  As the vampire went to do as I entreated, I took a breath and separated myself farther from the crowd. Taking those few steps forward made the nismerdon look twice as large and three times as close, but it still loomed a hundred feet away at its original size.

  Seeing the princess run up to me, I asked Aranath, “What do I have to do?”

  “You said in Gremly you saw the seal yourself, yes? Imagine the seal again until it is vivid in your mind. When you’re ready, grab the corruption and I’ll guide it into the sword’s enchantment. You’ll know when to tell the girl to cast her spell. Tell her not to hold back.”

  “Mercer, what is it?”

  I clenched my left hand tight, to the point my fingernails cut into my skin. “Aranath has a plan. We need your help. When I tell you, cast your ward around my sword, and don’t hold back your power. Give it everything you have, okay?”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll try. What’s the plan?”

  “No time. Give me a moment to focus.”

  Clarissa asked what was going on, but I blocked out Odet’s reply as I closed my eyes and imagined myself back in the forged Gremly. That spinning shell of dark and light came to the forefront of my mind quite eagerly. Knowing it was not truly in front of me didn’t stop its spinning pulses from fluttering my real hair. The skeletal figure inside the sealed shell outstretched a hand. I obliged it this time.

  A long instant of madness seized me as I was pulled inside the shell, replacing the now freed embodiment of my corruption. After everything went dark, I opened my eyes. I had to close them again for a second to protect them from the air bursts tearing out from the sword.

  Raising the sword parallel to the ground, I said, “Now!”

  She cast a standard square ward next to the blade, then applied her training to wrap the not so flexible crystal around the steel. Her semi-transparent spell reflected the wisps of shadow-light now sparking from the weapon. The ward wavered in size and shape, and small rips unleashed air bursts and flashes of darkness, but she held it steady for the most part.

  Having one’s soul pulled out, even a sick part of it, felt something like getting older many times faster than normal. There was a good chance I now surpassed my grandfather’s spiritual age. The difference from what I sensed time to be and its reality made the nismerdon appear as though a crawling bird could overtake its gait. Sound became too smothered by the splitting air bursts to hear at their intended tone.

  The only suppressed sound that reached me came in the form of Aranath’s broken words inside a mind that felt separate from my skull. He said, “Do not relent. If you… before the corruption is liberated… it will… again… Can… sense the calm at the end? …give me… but I believe… meet again. Un… then, farewell, boy.”

  The calm reached me. It brought utter silence to my world. Everything moved at twice the speed now. I didn’t think about how to use the enriched weapon. I just stepped forward and hurled the sword. From that point on I never saw the sword itself, only its consequences.

  I saw the five foot deep trench it carved as it tore through the air in total silence. The black flash erupting in front of the giant came next. Maybe I was knocked down by the shockwave, but I don’t remember. I do remember the smoke, dust, and black flames billowing upward and creating a large shadow-cloud in the shape of a mushroom. I also recalled the great squealing squall that granted me the ability to hear again.

  A crystal shield formed above me. Something heavy, scalded, ragged, and frantically angry pounded the ward, but it hurt itself more than the shield. The spells and weapons of a vampire, scholar, and green knight became the first to assail the tumbling being as I sunk into the arms of a princess. That’s when I passed out.