Peter of Dwarven Stone (War of Contractia Book 4)

by Tj Dixon

  What concerns me most are the demon bats that Dairon, Lucy and I have sensed gathering near the roof of the dome. Either none of the dwarven mages are aware or they simply don’t have time to deal with the demons. I fear it is that they are unaware, but even if they are aware it doesn’t help if they can’t deal with them.

  “This would be a good time to be uncursed.” Lucy mutters angrily.

  “They should be vulnerable to ice magic, right?” I ask.

  “Yes, but it would take a lot of ice magic to kill all those demons. Even with Elucia’s power I don’t think we can take them out.” Lucy tells me.

  “I have a song that would work.” Dairon says, nervously looking at the floor.

  “How long would it take and how close do you need to be?” I ask.

  “About two to three minutes. If I was at the centre of the dome it would work.”

  “So if the golem was dealt with and we could protect you for two to three minutes it would work.” Lucy says darkly.

  “What if I were to fly you up there and just dodge any attacks?” I suggest.

  “That would work, but can you dodge all those demons for two to three minutes?” Dairon asks, unable to hide the doubt from his words.

  “Who knows, but it’s worth a try, unless anyone else has a better idea. It seems to me the dwarves are really struggling. I could very well see Nirvali falling to the enemy. At least if we do this we’ll reveal the demons to the dwarves.” I answer honestly.

  “What about the rest of us?” Elucia asks sounding really scared.

  “The three of you should evacuate with the dwarves.” I tell her. I then look at Lucy. “Please make sure they both get to safety and don’t come back here.”

  Lucy looks at me sadly. She just stands there like that for a few moments before finally answering. “Fine, I’ll do it, but don’t die.”

  “I won’t.” I promise her.

  “Take power from Elucia before you go. That way you should be able to shield to some extent.” Lucy tells me. I look at Elucia who only hesitates a moment before nodding reluctantly. We both step towards each other and kiss. My heart races as I kiss Elucia and it’s not because I’m concerned about taking too much power, though I am careful not to take too much.

  “Good luck Peter.” Elucia tells me as she pulls away from me.

  “Thank you and good luck too. Good luck everyone.” I say with a fake smile. I’m too scared both for myself and everyone else for anything more than a fake smile. “Are you ready Dairon?”

  “Yes, as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s get this over with.” Dairon tells me sounding about as scared as I have ever heard him. Even when I captured him he wasn’t any worse than this.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.” I say, but he knows as well as I do that there is no guarantee. Actually ‘no guarantee’ is in and of itself very optimistic.

  “Get going everyone.” I tell the others and wait for them to shove their way onto the crowded street before following them. Once on the street I fly both Dairon and myself straight up to escape the crowd. Then I head even further upwards.

  “This is far enough. Are you ready if I start singing?” Dairon asks.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” I laugh. Dairon grins desperately for a moment before turning serious again.

  “I’m going to start singing in a moment and then every demon is going to come after me. I’m starting, now.” Dairon says and then he begins to sing. Sure enough he wasn’t kidding. The demon bats, and there must be at least a thousand, swarm towards us as one giant mass and the roar of thunder echoes throughout the dome as they fill the sky with lightning.

  I soar upwards and fly as close as I can to the roof of the dome. This should prevent their attacks harming the dwarves below. Now I just have to dodge the attacks so we remain unharmed. I use wind gusts to clear a path through the demons as they now surround me entirely.

  I’m impressed that Dairon can continue to sing even when being flown so fast and erratically. It is fortunate he can though, or this would be pointless! His song is beautiful and enchanting. It reminds me of gentle meadows and flowing rivers. It brings to mind a night sky full of stars. More stars than I have ever seen before. In fact it is pretty distracting and I find myself now having to shield against some of the attacks.

  I force my attention to return to my job. It is hard even though I know our lives depend on it. I thought dodging this many demons and their attacks was bad enough. To do so whilst distracted is truly a nightmare.

  Dairon’s song suddenly changes from the gentle calming one of a moment ago and become as furious as a raging river. It is actually much better suited to fighting and I find myself flying to the rhythm of his song. It is beyond weird how a song can affect me so much even with everything else that is going on around us. The only down side is that it seems to invigorate the demons as well. I find myself working twice as hard to avoid the demons’ attacks, which are much more frequent.

  I check my body’s timekeeper and realise it has been a minute and a half. Halfway there, good, I think we can do this. I don’t think I’ve ever flown this fast or well before in my life. Then the song changes again. It is much slower now and I find myself instantly slowing down. The demons are no longer so invigorated, but they aren’t affected as much as I am. Come on, Peter, fly faster damn it!

  I force myself to fly faster but everything is like a blur. I find myself occasionally crashing into demons as I overshoot my wind gusts. Thankfully my shield holds but it isn’t going to last forever if I keep crashing into the demons. I find my power wavering but then Dairon’s song changes and I find myself returned to normal. The demons however are in chaos now. They seem to be constantly bumping into each other and I am easily able to avoid their much reduced attacks.

  Then the song speeds up again. The demons are no longer in chaos and seem desperate now. They fly recklessly into my wind gusts and many are torn apart by the ferocity of the wind. Dairon’s song quickly reaches a crescendo and as it reaches the final climax every demon still in the sky bursts into a golden white light. The light lasts only a moment and then it is gone, along with the demons.

  I breathe a sigh of relief before looking down at the battlefield below. That is truly what the dome is now. Thankfully most of the civilians have now been evacuated from the dome. There are still however some dwarves desperately pushing their way through a large gateway into the next dome.

  The dwarven mages are now fighting not only the golem but a small army of humans. The humans wear black robes with a blue flame symbol. The golem seems to have lost many of its legs and I can see a blur whizzing around its remaining legs. After a moment I see it is a dwarf with a dazzling white hammer. He is literally shattering the legs one at a time. Without his efforts I suspect the dwarves down there would have been defeated the moment the humans arrived.

  I want to help, but I used most of my power fighting the demons. Dairon also seems unsteady and low on power so there really is no chance of our helping them right now. I open my senses and find Elucia, Lucy and Kai. They are near the exit so I race back to them before they leave the dome.

  “Good work.” Lucy tells me with a relieved smile.

  Chapter 12 (Multiple)

  (Lupine)

  The crazy dwarven boy is doing a good job of wrecking that impossibly huge golem. It still makes me feel funny when I remember how he saved me though. He may be crazy, but he is certainly impressive. I wonder whether he’s looking for a girlfriend and whether he’d consider an ugly redhead like me. I doubt it, but more urgently I wonder whether I’ll survive to see another day. Actually I wonder whether any of us will survive.

  The humans are using lightning, but what worries me is the possibility of death magic. Every dwarf knows that the enemy can use death magic. Probably not these humans, because they would already be using it if they could, but sooner or later if we survive long enough we will surely face enemies who can use it. My flames finally burn out the enemy’s shi
eld and he is instantly reduced to ash.

  Then I hear a low growl that fills the dome. It takes a moment to remember which beasts have a growl like that. I remember my training though, and realise it is a drake. Looking up I realise it isn’t just one drake in the air above me. There are about fifty of the creatures.

  My face goes pale and I pray to the sacred stone of rebirth to accept my soul, because I am about to die. There is no way we can beat fifty drakes, the golem and the humans all at once. It is all I can do just to keep my shielding up. The drakes’ thick red scaly metallic armour makes them extremely tough to kill even with a group. Their fire breath can harm even a dwarf.

  Then I hear the unending sound of a whistle behind me. The drakes turn as one to face the direction of the whistling. They furiously beat their red flowing metal wings and charge towards the sound. I look behind me and see it is coming from the blur that is the insane dwarven boy.

  The drakes attack him with their fire breath, but he is too quick. In moments the golem is destroyed by the drakes’ attacks and it is looking much more hopeful. I return my attention on the humans in front of me and pray that the dwarven boy can handle those drakes, because he is our only hope. As hope returns to me yet another human’s shield falls to my attack and he goes up in a cloud of ash.

  I feel a human fist hit my stomach. I wouldn’t even feel it if I was in armour, but the attack occurred whilst I was at the swimming pool. The pool isn’t very popular, because most dwarves aren’t fond of water. That’s one of the things I like about it though. It was almost deserted and so peaceful.

  A human physical attack is normally weak enough that I wouldn’t be bothered even without armour, but there is magic in that fist. He must have also used magic to get so close to me without my realising. I am thrown through the air gasping for breath and hit something hard. Dizzy from the impromptu flight I look back and to my horror my spinning vision reveals the dwarven boy behind me. He is unharmed, but we are in a tangle and looking up there are fifty angry drakes.

  Their fire breath roars towards us, forming a huge cloud of flames. It is the second time in my life and the second time today I pray to the sacred stone of rebirth. As I feel the heat of the flames I almost lose control of my bladder in fright, but then both to my shock and relief the cloud hits a shield, which miraculously holds. I can tell the shield is almost dead after just one attack, but the dwarven boy has pushed me off of him now and is standing. He races away from me and the drakes follow him.

  I try to sense the human and find he is right in front of me. I throw flames at him and he is instantly dead. Hidden from sight he had no shield up, because it would have revealed his presence. Angry and humiliated at almost causing us to lose the battle for the dome, I check for any other hidden humans, but there are none. I then turn my attention on the humans that aren’t hidden. To my surprise they seem to have mostly been killed now. There is one nearby though and I send my flames at him in another relentless attack. His shield only holds for a few moments.

  It’s a pity that Nirvali is such a new city. The ancient cities had much better defences than Nirvali does. We could have taken out a few drakes with no problem back in the ancient cities. Nirvali’s main defence was secrecy and now that is gone, the whole city is depending on us to beat the enemy. I wish I was more confident that we could do it. We can certainly beat these humans of course, but enemies like the drakes and whatever else the enemy brings against us next are much more of a problem.

  “That’s the last of the humans.” Captain Lela tells us moments later, through our mental link. “The boy has the drakes under control and the civilians have evacuated. We are to pull back to the inter dome tunnel. It should be much easier to defend than fighting in the open like this.”

  “What about the boy?” I ask.

  “I’m sure your boyfriend will be fine.” Captain Lela laughs and I hear quite a few mental chuckles at that. I turn bright red. Not that I’d mind if he was my boyfriend. It still seems unfair to leave him behind after he saved us, but the captain is right. We are better off defending the inter dome tunnel than fighting here. “Everyone, follow me!”

  I take one last look at the blur of a boy pursued by all those drakes. Then I follow Captain Lela and the rest of the company. The captain really stands out because of her golden helmet. It doesn’t serve any purpose other than looking good and is weaker than the standard helmets, but she probably never expected to actually fight a real enemy other than weak monsters. It doesn’t take long to get to the tunnel and with the civilians evacuated it should prove easy to defend.

  “Lupine, get changed into some armour.” Captain Lela tells me looking disapprovingly at my bikini. “There’s a small armoury over there. Take whatever fits you.”

  “Yes captain.” I respond and salute before heading into the small room she pointed out. There are about ten suits of armour here and I quickly find one that fits. There are also about twenty swords in a weapons rack, but I work better with just magic so I leave them resting there.

  I leave the armoury in my new stone armour. There are already guards positioned at the mouth of the tunnel. I can’t see the drakes from here, so I can only assume the dwarven boy still has them under control for now. I wish we could help him but until they attack us there is nothing we can do about them. At least fighting in this tunnel should give us a good chance of victory if they do attack.

  I sit a fair way back from the mouth of the tunnel, because all I can do for now is to rest and recover my power. That and pray for victory of course.

  (Grunti)

  Now everyone is out of the way I can focus on dealing with these pesky drakes. I’m glad I had my portable shield with me though, or I would have died along with that cute dwarven girl who was fighting in a bikini. She really had me worried when she got all tangled up with me. Normally I would love to get tangled with a cute girl, but not when I’m fighting fifty pesky drakes.

  So how to deal with them? I double check that the dome really is empty and to my relief it is. I guess it may seem a bit drastic but I only really have one way to kill them. They’re way too tough to bash their brains in. If I had time I could invent something, but I clearly don’t have time.

  That just leaves the one invention I have which can kill drakes. Actually it could kill a whole lot more than drakes. I’ve never met a dragon, but I bet it could kill a dragon too. The only problem is how to use it without killing myself in the process and without giving the drakes a chance to escape.

  I carefully take the black brick out of my armour’s pocket. I place a trickle of mana into it and breathe a sigh of relief. It didn’t instantly activate and I should have a whole twenty seconds to leave the target area. The target area is of course the whole dome.

  I weave my way towards the tunnel where Nairon is waiting for me. I keep a careful watch on the time. If I get there too early the drakes will follow me into the tunnel, but if I get there too late… Well, then I don’t get there at all, because I’ll die with the drakes if that happens.

  I jump into the tunnel and feel the cold. It is the coldest I have ever felt, but unlike the dome it is above absolute zero. I turn and realise one very angry drake has made it into the tunnel with me. The dome behind it is now solid ice and will remain at absolute zero for about a month. Unless someone finds a way to reverse my magic, but the only solution I could come up with was to open a gateway to either hell or the elemental plane of fire. Neither option struck me as particularly wise.

  More urgently though I have a drake to deal with. I quickly bring the tunnel down on it, but it just shrugs that off and the rubble almost hits Nairon. I realise though that I now only need to get away from it with Nairon. Getting Nairon to safety is much more important than killing some pesky drake. Having now gotten my priorities straight I dart towards Nairon, pick her up and run with her in my arms. I easily outpace the drake and quickly reach the open tunnels.

  Ahead of me I sense a strong flow of mana and the presence of
five powerful human mages. They seem to be summoning a demon of some sort. Anyway, I barge right past them with the drake right behind me. I look back and see a red bloody mess. One of the mages seems to have reacted quickly enough to survive. He was pretty powerful so he may be able to kill the drake, but either way both he and the drake will be busy for a while.