Earth Born (The Earth Born Cycle Book 1)

by N. E. Conneely

  The moon slid out from behind a cloud. At first she couldn’t quite figure out what she was seeing. It was large, somewhat triangular in shape, and shone brightly under the moonlight. Then she saw the blood dripping off one end and the metal tongs holding it. That was Branstan’s scale. Her eyes followed the tongs back to the misshapen monster holding them. It was Mr. Evil himself.

  She should’ve analyzed the situation. She should’ve thought things through and actually looked at what was going on. Instead, all she could see was the scale ripped out of Branstan. Shasta lifted her sword and charged forward. She swung, putting all her body weight behind the blow. The tip of her sword sliced right through the edge of his now-abandoned cloak.

  He smirked from above her, wings outstretched, holding him well out of her reach. “Kill her.”

  Too late she realized his guard was still with him, and it wasn’t three of the creatures as she’d thought, but five. Shasta lifted her sword in a high guard and took a step back. Mr. Evil cackled. Wings pumping, he banked and flew away. One of the creatures in front of her growled. She yanked her attention back to where it belonged.

  Unlike the previous iterations, these appeared to be more complete, though that didn’t make them any prettier. All of them had the overall shape of a dragon, complete with fully formed—and presumably fully functional—wings. To round out the package, they traveled on all fours, had talons at the ends of their fingers and toes, and long, exposed fangs. Even though the heads still had mostly human faces, these were the most functional hybrids so far. The only big problem was the size. They were roughly two hundred pounds and perhaps eight feet from tail to snout.

  Two of them launched themselves into the air. Of the ones on the ground, the one on the far left coughed, and sparks flew out of his mouth. Unfortunately, being smaller than adult dragons didn’t make them any less dangerous. As if the sparks were some sort of sign, the three on the ground lunged forward.

  She backpedaled, frantically trying to figure out what to do. The ones in the air were closing fast from above, and she didn’t have a good way to guard against those. Plus she still had to contend with the three still on the ground. What she really needed was a way to hold them off until she could come up with a better plan. She reached out with a twist of magic and elven power, yanking all the air out from under their wings. Both creatures crashed to the ground.

  Before she could see how hurt they were, the first of the ones on the ground came at her, snarling and swiping with his claws. She got her sword up in time to block the first blow, then disengaged as it clawed at her again. She wasn’t going to be able to get her sword around in time for a true block. Instead, she chopped at it, hoping it would back off. It didn’t, and her sword cut right through its arm. The hand fell to the ground. The creature screamed and crumpled as blood came gushing out of its stump.

  She jerked her shoulders to the side, just dodging a bite from one of the ground creatures. She had her sword back up and lunged forward to stab it. The creature scrambled back, tripping over its own tail. Apparently having seen his brother lose a limb had given it a healthy respect for her sword.

  The third creature bounded forward, jaws snapping as it went after her leg. She backpedaled but not fast enough. Its teeth dug through her pants, opening up long gashes on her calf. Shasta stumbled. It dove in, jaws open and slashing with its claws. She got her sword up, blocking as quickly as she could. Her sword was a blur in the air as she held off attack after attack, but it wasn’t enough. Claws and teeth tore at her clothes, tearing out strips of skin.

  The ground behind her vibrated. Shasta darted forward, slashing at the two creatures in front of her. They fell back. Shasta glanced over her shoulder. The two creatures that had been in the air were on the ground. Their heads were low, teeth bared, and they were advancing.

  As Shasta turned back to the creatures in front of her, something grabbed her ankle, claws piercing her boots and digging into flesh and bone. She looked down to see the one-armed creature yank at her leg. Her other foot slipped, and she started to fall with her sword under her. She twisted her wrist, willing the sword to vanish. It disappeared a fraction of a second before she hit the ground, her still-healing ribs rebreaking, the air rushing out of her lungs.

  Gasping for air she couldn’t seem to inhale, she rolled to her back. Five grotesque mixes of human and dragon heads peered down at her, fangs dripping, foul breath choking her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  She brought her hands up over her face. Her throat worked, but she couldn’t form words. She needed to take a breath before she could speak, but her chest was still a band of pain from the rebroken ribs. She finally sucked in just enough of a breath to wheeze, “Air.”

  Above her, the air turned hard as steel as four sets of claws raked across it. The creature missing a hand lurched forward, jaws open and ready to chomp on her leg. He met the wall of air with an audible crack. His fangs broke off, sliding across the wall of air and to the ground. He pulled back, little stubs sticking out of the corners of his mouth, let out a whine, and curled up on the ground.

  Four sets of eyes homed in on her. She forced her chest to expand and sucked in a deep breath as pain radiated across her torso. The shield wasn’t going to hold for very long, especially not under focused attention from the four of them. Three of the creatures dove at the shield, raking across it with their claws over and over and over again. The fourth creature cocked his head to the side and reached out carefully with a single talon. He tapped directly over her leg, then inched closer to himself and then yet another inch closer to himself. At that rate, it wouldn’t be long before he found the edge of the shield.

  Shasta didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t enough room for her to truly maneuver under the wall of air, and if she managed to get out, it would still be the four of them against her. Since they could fly, fighting them effectively was rather difficult. However, the current problem was slowly tapping his way closer and closer to the edge. She cupped her hand and began gathering energy in her palm.

  His talon went right through the air and dug into the earth. His mouth gaped open in a smile as he lifted his paw and reached under the wall of air. His hand moved closer to her leg.

  With a magical nudge, the air in her hand burst into flame. She hurled the ball of fire at his hand. It struck him solidly, momentarily engulfing his hand. Unfortunately, he must’ve gotten some type of dragon scales during his change, because the fire didn’t slow him down at all. Plus all the other creatures had taken notice and it would only be a few seconds before they figured out how to get around the wall of air too.

  With a twist of her wrist, she summoned her sword and jabbed at him. It slowed him down, but the clawing above her stopped too. She needed a plan before her magic trick became her tomb.

  Sure enough, the creatures began exchanging looks. One on her left started worming his hand along the ground, aiming for her arm. The other two were tapping their way to the edge, determined to take the shortest path to get to her. There was a whisper of sound, and the creature reaching for her arm stiffened. The moonlight glinted off something as blood sprayed through the air, landing on top of the air shield rather than her. A meaty thud followed as the creature’s head toppled to the ground. Shasta gave up trying to keep track of the other creatures, her attention locked on whatever had just saved her from the grasping hand.

  The body swayed and tilted to the side. It fell over, landing atop the head. Cord stood behind it, the moonlight shining off his sword, his face twisted in a snarl. Before the next creature could react, his sword sliced through the air again, opening a deep gash across its neck. Gurgling, it joined its fellow on the ground.

  Shasta seized the opportunity and wormed her way out from under the shield, coming up behind Cord. The remaining creatures were backing away, but behind them she could see another group headed in their direction.

  Cord raked his eyes over her from head to toe. “Are you injured?”

  �
�I’ll be fine.” She lifted her sword, ready to fight these creatures by his side.

  Cord lunged forward, his sword a blur as he sliced across the creature’s chest and then cleanly took off the head. Meanwhile, the maimed creature hissed at Shasta. Taking a page from Cord’s book, she swung at it, making it back up defensively, and then cleanly sliced the head off. Now there was only one of the original group left. Shasta turned back to help Cord with him only to see the last creature on the ground. Cord jerked his sword out of its chest.

  Cord looked up at her and then nodded to the ten creatures headed in their direction. He tipped his head toward Mr. Evil. “If you can, stop him. There’s some type of barrier I can’t get through.”

  Her gaze followed his. Now there was light emanating from the cauldron, outlining Mr. Evil’s wings and curved spine. She looked back at Cord. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “The dragons and brownies are still unconscious, and I can’t get through. It has to be you.”

  “What about that lot?” Past Cord she could see the flying portion of the next group quickly outdistancing their ground counterparts.

  He grinned. “I can do this if you can save the dragons.”

  “You better not get hurt.” She turned and started jogging toward Mr. Evil.

  “The same goes for you,” he called after her. Hisses, growls, and yelps reached her ears as the battle began.

  She didn’t look back. She couldn’t look back because she had to keep moving forward. She had to figure out how she was going to stop this monster. The monster in question leaned over the cauldron, dropping something in. The previously yellow glow turned to sickly brown. He leaned down to pluck something else off the ground. This time it caught the moonlight. It was a scale, from Branstan based on the pale color. He tossed it into the cauldron, and the green undertone of the light intensified.

  Shasta cracked open her shields, feeling for the spell that had prevented Cord from getting close to this monster. She poked at it with a tendril of her power, ready to cut the probe free if anything happened. The spell was a short distance ahead of her. It extended out about fifteen feet from the cauldron, cordoning off a circle roughly thirty feet in diameter. The spell was simple enough, constructed to prevent people from crossing it, but as she prodded it with the lances of her magic, it felt weak and flimsy. From the way it reacted, she doubted Mr. Evil had any formal training. The spell had weaknesses. Perhaps not one Cord could have exploited since he was an elf, but she had magic of her own.

  She prodded at it again. It flexed, weakening under the point of her probe. As her magic tasted the structure of the spell, she got a sense of how it had been constructed. It wouldn’t allow elves or brownies to pass, though it hadn’t been constructed to work against dragons. That reinforced her theory that he didn’t have formal training. She’d bet Mr. Evil didn’t know how to make a spell work against the whole creature without targeting parts of it, like the scales or blood. The good news was that since Shasta was neither an elf nor a brownie, the spell wouldn’t stop her at all.

  Grinning, she lifted her sword and charged forward. The spell felt like no more than a playful gust of wind pushing against her. In a fraction of a second, she was through the barrier and charging at Mr. Evil. For a moment she thought the creature was so absorbed in his work that he wouldn’t even notice her coming, but at the last moment he whirled around and pushed off into the air. She slashed his legs, opening shallow cuts but not doing enough damage to truly hurt him.

  Up close, the magic radiating from the cauldron hummed with wrongness. Because of the glow that accompanied it, she could see scales and chunks of flesh floating in what she could only assume had at one point been dragon blood. Magic flowed through the air and tried to latch on to her. She slammed her shields shut, not wanting to give it a way to attack her.

  Mr. Evil swooped down, claws outstretched. Shasta ducked under them, turning so that she could slice at him. This time she got only clothes, leaving a two-foot cut in the fabric. The cloth bunched up, hitting his wing. He twisted around, unclasping the cloak. Under it, he was more grotesque than she’d thought. His face was mostly draconic with yellow slit eyes and an elongated jaw. The flesh stretched over it was an uneven patchwork of green dragon scales and human flesh. His mouth gaped open, revealing a mostly human set of teeth and the narrow tongue of a dragon. If he’d been a little more one thing or little less of the other, he wouldn’t have been nearly so horrible, but as it was, he was the stuff of nightmares.

  As soon as he was free of his cloak, he shot up into the air. The light from the cauldron ruined her night vision, rendering him invisible. She had to get him on the ground if she wanted to kill him. To get him on the ground, she had to find him.

  Her eyes darted around, searching for movement. Outside the circle, the battle raged on, but nothing else had come in, probably because the feeling of the magic was so repulsive. That thought had her glancing at the cauldron. Mr. Evil wasn’t going to leave his experiment. That meant he was unlikely to go more than twenty or so feet in the air. That gave her a target.

  “Light,” she muttered to herself, reaching for the earth’s energy and twisting her magic. A wall of green light flashed into being directly above the top of the shield.

  The light outlined him perfectly. He flung a hand over his face, and his wings went limp. He lost altitude, dropping more than ten feet before he got his wings working again and rose back into the air. Even through her shields, Shasta could feel magic swirling through the air. Electricity crackled on both sides of her, catching her in the crosscurrent. Her nerves tingled, but this spell wasn’t strong enough to slow her down. As energy filled her up and then drained into the earth, she started concocting a spell of her own. In her off hand, the air grew warm and with a little push turned into a fireball larger than most people’s heads. She hurled it into the air.

  His smile faltered. He pulled in his wings and dove down to avoid the fireball, but she’d expected that. The next was already in the air, this time aiming for his wings. It hit his left wing squarely, and she fed more energy into the spell. The fire spread across his back and over to his right wing.

  He screamed as his wing stopped working and then dropped to the ground with a dull thump. The flames slowly flickered out. The skin on his wings and back were a mix of burned human skin and untouched dragon scales.

  Shasta crossed over to him, sword up.

  He rolled to the side and hit her with a blast of pure energy. She couldn’t block it, but she managed to pivot and take it on her right side. It hit like a hammer, forcing air out of her lungs and cracking two more ribs. Shasta stumbled back under the blow.

  She panted shallowly, trying to get enough air into her body to get things working again. She pushed all her power into her ribs, not trying to heal them as much as form a shield to protect them from another blow. She couldn’t have one of them going into her lungs. Then she felt down the nerve until she’d isolated the ribs sending her pain signals and put a small magical block between the nerve junctions. It would fade in an hour or so, but for now the pain was down to a manageable level.

  He followed his attack with a big glob of acid spit. She was still clearing her head from the pain and didn’t dodge or block. It stuck to her shoulder, slowly sliding down her arm. This time her natural defenses kicked in, and while her arm warmed and itched, it didn’t do the damage it had before, though her shirt was in tatters.

  He got to his feet, slowly straining to his full height. “You don’t have enough magic to defeat me.” A second blast of power shot out of his hands.

  Shasta whipped her sword up. The ball of magic hit the blade, splintering into smaller pieces; some her skin absorbed and some fell harmlessly to the ground. “I don’t need magic to kill you.”

  His lips started moving, and small whispers of the spell reached her ears. She took a step forward. The spell wafted toward her, flowed over and around her as if she wasn’t even there.

  “But you
’re a witch!” He shuffled back, closer to the cauldron.

  Shasta followed him step for step. She bared her teeth in a feral smile. “That’s where you’re wrong.” She tilted her head so he could see her pointed ears.

  He muttered something, and another spell headed toward her. Like the last, it drifted past without so much as pausing. “That should’ve worked. You’re an elf.”

  “Wrong again.” Shasta darted forward, lashing out with her sword, her entire rib cage screaming in protest. She opened a gash across his chest.

  He backpedaled, his lips moving again. Another spell ignored her. “But the pointed ears? Not fey?”

  “Wrong again.”

  A cloud passed in front of the moon, casting deep shadows. She felt the air move and brought her sword up to block the tongs. He retreated and then darted forward again, swinging them like a mallet. She blocked over and over as she slowly marched him back step by step. He jabbed at her. She moved to block, but instead of following through, he dropped the tongs and darted for the cauldron. She rushed after him, stumbling over the discarded weapon on her way.

  He managed to get on the other side of the cauldron from her. He whirled around and shoved the cauldron on its side. The glowing mixture of dragon parts and blood magic hit the ground, rushing toward her. She ran forward two steps and leaped into the air. She cleared the spill, landing beside him at the same moment she slashed at him. She opened a second cut on his chest.

  His eyes widened in fear. “What are you?”

  She bared her teeth. “I am Shasta, half elf, half witch. Born of the earth, created out of the dreams of demon hunters and demon ridden, to be a hunter of evil and bringer of justice.” She lurched forward, her sword sliding between his ribs, right through his heart.