Gordan of Riss and the Malformed Sprite (A Madcap Fantasy Adventure Book 1)

by Ryan Drake

  And so he should have been. The creature he’d summoned also noticed the change. Instead of stalking me, it turned towards Pingo. Moaning monstrously, it stepped into his path and reached out as if to embrace him.

  Pingo never stood a chance. He uttered a gurgling shriek as massive clay limbs closed around him. I thought the creature would use its size and strength to grind him into a squishy paste, but instead it just held him tighter and tighter, and moaned its monstrous moan again. I didn’t realize what was happening until it was almost complete. It was absorbing Pingo like it had absorbed the energy Pingo had fed it.

  In moments it was like he had never existed. Except for the echoes of his dying shriek, Pingo T’Ong, architect of pretty much everything bad that had happened to me over the past few days, was gone.

  But that didn’t mean our problems were over. The monster he’d summoned was still there. It moaned in my direction.

  It was huge. It was obviously incredibly strong. It had just absorbed Pingo T’Ong as if he were nothing and I was pretty sure that had only made it even bigger and stronger. There was nothing to stop it doing exactly the same to me. As usual in situations like this, my first instinct was to run, and I felt like I had the energy I needed to do so.

  Max echoed my thoughts exactly. “What say we get outta here?”

  But I looked at Gabby and saw she was staring at the monster with the sort of grim determination I had come to expect.

  “We can’t just leave it, can we?” I said.

  She shook her head. “You saw what happened. If it gets to Brelor, it’ll absorb everyone. Who knows how big and strong it can get?”

  I sighed at her answer and thought that it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of folk. Then I straightened myself and squared my shoulders.

  “Ok then,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  I picked up Thork Yurger’s throwing ax to balance the butcher’s blade I’d used on the orc and stepped towards the monster.

  Gabby was quicker. She’d somehow managed to reload her crossbow. She sent a bolt straight at the creature’s head. It was a perfect shot, but I never expected it to have the slightest impact. It didn’t. It simply sank into one of those eye sockets and stayed there.

  The monster moaned again. My turn, I thought. I stepped forward with both the throwing ax and the butcher’s blade flashing. An arm came towards me and I carved into it with everything I had, then had to step sharply sideways. Gabby had drawn a blade as well; she lunged and stabbed deeply, then leapt away.

  Our attacks meant nothing to it. I tried again, aiming for its legs, with Gabby following close. It was like trying to chop down a tree, but worse; as soon as we withdraw our weapons, the wounds we inflicted closed over. In moments they were healed. Only the speed with which I danced away saved me from a massive, descending limb.

  I was already panting heavily. It seemed as if I still lacked much of my former energy. And the discomfort in my chest wasn’t making it easier. Again I changed tactics, aiming not just to cut, but to slice off pieces with every blow. Gabby caught on quickly, and we darted in and out, whittling it away.

  “It isn’t working!” said Gabby.

  I saw what she meant. Each bit we sliced off simply fell to the floor, to be reabsorbed as soon as the monster touched it.

  “How do we kill this thing?!” I could hear both frustration and desperation in her voice.

  “I don’t know!” I yelled back, and the creature moaned.

  “Bury it!” yelled Max. He was still buzzing about, harrying it as best as he could, but he didn’t have the size or strength to do any damage. But then again, neither did we.

  “Won’t work!” Gabby replied, going in again. “This thing’s made of clay! Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Still, it had been a good thought.

  There was no real choice. Together and separately, we attacked again and again and again. The monster swung this way and that, trying to catch us with its massive arms. It tried to knock us down or otherwise do us serious harm. We might have been no more than insects for all the damage we were able to inflict. And that uncomfortable feeling in my chest was getting worse.

  Then it happened. Gabby got too close or didn’t leap away quickly enough. Either way, the end result was that one of the creature’s arms caught her a glancing blow that was nevertheless hard enough to fling her several feet across the cavern, where she collapsed in a heap. Immediately it turned towards her and advanced.

  It opened its arms as if in preparation for a hug. Just like with Pingo T’Ong, it wanted to absorb her.

  I couldn’t let that happen. So I rushed in and attacked it with everything I had. “You leave her alone!” I bellowed. It ignored me entirely. I saw Gabby struggling to rise. “Gabby, get up! Get up now!”

  “Don’t,” she started, but it seemed she couldn’t pull her thoughts together enough to finish complaining about my shortening of her name.

  I stabbed, cut, and stabbed again. “Hey you! Horrible monster! This way! Leave her alone!” Nothing that I did seemed to make the slightest difference. Gabby had only seconds left and there was nothing I could do.

  Except….

  That discomfort in my chest had built to a point I’d known only once before, and that was right before The Rancid Pusball had burned to the ground. Everyone seemed to agree that I’d caused that fire. And recently, I’d survived certain death by burning. I didn’t know how or why, but it just hadn’t seemed hot enough to really hurt me.

  It seemed I had an affinity with fire. And if I was ever to make use of that affinity, the time to do so was now.

  I howled my own brand of rage at the monster and buried both of my weapons into its back. “Take me instead! I yelled. “I’m not running any more!”

  Perhaps it had a rudimentary mind hidden within all that clay. Maybe it understood what I said. Or perhaps my last blows had hurt it just enough to gain its attention. Either way, it had the effect I wanted. The monster turned from Gabby to me.

  “Max, get out of the way!” I said.

  My friend obediently flew away.

  The creature moaned.

  “That’s right, you horrible thing. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  It started towards me.

  This was it, I thought. Now or never.

  I could have made a dash for it. I could have gone to the orcs and chosen another of their weapons. But I did neither of these things. Instead, I closed my eyes.

  I thought about that discomfort in my chest. Thought really hard about it. Thought about it so hard that if thinking hard could actually accomplish anything, I would have moved mountains.

  And for the second time in my life, something happened:

  “BUUUURRRRRPPPP!!!”

  28

  The Malformed Sprite

  It worked. A jet of flame like none I’d ever seen before erupted from my mouth and engulfed the monster. It moaned again, and this time I thought there might have been a hint of pain or anger, or fear within it. I kept the flame going for as long as I could. The monster burned.

  Eventually, the flame started to falter. I kept it going for one heartbeat more, and then it was gone, leaving me with that same horrible ashy taste in my mouth.

  Exhausted, I dropped to my knees and watched the monster burn.

  Its moaning had become a sort of howl. It still moved within the flames, but no longer did those movements seem to be consciously directed.

  I felt someone nearby and turned to see Gabby standing beside me, her face and shoulder showing grazes where she’d been hit. But she seemed perfectly fine otherwise.

  “I knew it was you who burned down my tavern,” she muttered.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”

  The monster continued to burn. Surprisingly, there was little smoke. Perhaps the cavern opened up somewhere to let it out.

  “Tell me. How did you
get past the guards?” I asked her.

  “I told them Pingo was expecting me. Us, I mean. Me and Maximus. Then suggested that there might have been a few dozen female orcs down in Brelor, but that they would have to be quick because they were heading to the Demesne.” She shrugged. “Only the most powerful orcs usually get to see womenfolk of their own kind. They gather them together in harems. The orcs here ought to be gone for at least a few more hours.”

  We watched the monster burn.

  At some point Max landed on my shoulder. “Knew yeh could do it,” he said, but I didn’t reply.

  The fire eventually faded. I thought for a moment that the monster still lived, but it had ceased moving and moaning some time before. Even so, it still looked remarkably whole. Then Gabby approached it and gave it a solid whack with the side of her blade.

  It crumbled into a large mound of dust.

  I realized I’d spent the last few minutes on my knees. I stood, feeling drained. “Well, that’s done,” I said. “Now what?”

  “The Fracture,” Gabby replied.

  Oh yeah. I’d forgotten about that. I nodded. Together, we moved over to the smaller pentagram and the fading oddity within. I contemplated it for a moment.

  “It doesn’t look so good,” I said. If I listened closely, I could hear it faintly keening.

  “It’s dying,” Gabby replied.

  “Dying?”

  She nodded.

  I looked at it for a moment longer and thought I could see flickering of images within. “What do I do?”

  “Usually, you just ask it to show you what you want. But I think it’s too far gone for that. Perhaps if you touch it?”

  Still, I hesitated. If it really was dying, was it right to touch it? There was no way I could know, so I did as Gabby suggested. I reached out and touched….

  And my mind was inundated with images. Past, present and multiple futures flooded over me in such a rush that I could barely make sense of it all. I saw Pingo bent over the Fracture, being mean to a servant and doing dozens of despicable things. I saw myself and Gabby, side by side but old and gray. Equally, I saw myself stabbed or hanged or pulled apart by an angry mob. All very interesting, I thought, but I really didn’t care too much to know what my possible future might be. I could discover that pretty simply myself, given time. What I wanted to see was the past.

  The Fracture showed it to me. It showed me all the mischief I’d ever engaged in, all the irritations I’d caused to so many others, and all the difficulties that had come my way.

  And over it all, there was one image that kept repeating. Over and over, although I didn’t quite know what it meant.

  The Fracture kept showing me an image of a dragon, just like the one I’d briefly glimpsed in Gabby’s crystal ball so long (had it really been just a few days?) ago.

  I didn’t know what to think. I tried to follow the image, to learn more about what it meant, but it was already fading….

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Gabby asked.

  “No. Yes. Sort of, but I don’t really know. Perhaps if I try again….”

  “It’s too late. Look.”

  I did so. No longer did the Fracture simply rest one corner of itself on the floor. Now it lay flat and had become almost opaque. The faint keening sound had gone. As we watched, the Fracture flared brilliantly once and seemed to shatter. Only instead of leaving shards behind like it would have if it had been glass, it left half a dozen spheres that looked surprisingly like….

  “Are they crystal balls?” I asked.

  A moment before Gabby’s face had been creased with grief for the Fracture’s passing. Now she lit up. “Yes!” she exclaimed. She reached out and grasped the largest. It was at least twice the size that hers had been.

  I grinned. “Looks like you can be a Seer again,” I said.

  Epilogue

  And that’s where my adventure with the Fracture ended. Sure, we still had to get away from Pingo’s palace with a sack-full of treasures that included the crystal balls the Fracture had left behind as well as a number of other things Pingo no longer needed.

  But the orcs hadn’t yet returned from Brelor, which left only a few servants guarding the palace. And with Pingo gone, they were much more interested in looting the place than stopping us from doing the same. So we took what we could carry (fortunately, Gabby had brought the horses with her to Pingo’s palace) and headed back towards Ulm.

  I had plenty of time to think along the way. From one point of view, the Fracture was a bust. It hadn’t really shown me anything new. But it had confirmed some things, and there was something it hadn’t shown that I thought was significant: it hadn’t shown me to be part demon.

  What it had shown was the image of the dragon. And here’s the thing: I had a tail. The slight mottling on my skin, in certain lights, looked like scales. And I apparently had an affinity for fire.

  Was it possible that there was dragon blood somehow mixed with mine? It would certainly explain a lot. But I just didn’t understand how that could have happened. I mean, the mechanics of it defy the imagination, don’t they?

  I was still trying to work it all out when we reached the edge of the town. Both Gabby and I reined in.

  We looked at each other.

  “So,” she said.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  More awkwardness.

  “You’re leaving me, then?” I asked.

  She nodded, a bit sadly. “You could stay for a while,” she said. But she knew I couldn’t. Not really. I was still a wanted man in Ulm. And besides, I had a new mystery to solve—and I didn’t think the answers would be in Ulm.

  But I’d grown used to her being around.

  “You could come with me,” I replied.

  She shook her head. “This is my home. I like it here. I want to rebuild my tavern.” And with what we’d taken from Pingo’s palace, she would be able to do that easily enough.

  I nodded. “Well,” I said. I couldn’t help but think about the possible future that the Fracture had shown me. Gabby and me, side by side but old and gray. So much for that, I thought.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  It appeared that neither of us wanted to say goodbye.

  That’s when Max piped up from where he sat between the ears of Gabby’s mount. “If the both of yehs are done makin’ eyes at each other, do yeh think we can get on with it? I wanna go home!”

  It was then that I realized I was losing two traveling companions rather than just the one. I’d probably never see them again. Either of them. And the thought made me surprisingly sad.

  Max must have interpreted my expression correctly. Or maybe he was having second thoughts of his own.

  “I gotta admit though, these last few days ain’t been boring,” he said. Then he hesitated. “Maybe...” he began, but then he stopped.

  “Maybe what?” I asked.

  He didn’t look at me. “Maybe I’ll stick around for a bit longer. If yeh don’t have no objections, of course.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say. “What about your wife?” I asked.

  He squirmed a little. “She never liked me that much anyway,” he said.

  End.

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