by Aaron Crash
I adjusted the sheath for the stone staff on my wrist. I then followed the sky warrior out into the sky. Coming around, I picked up Rhee and Figg. We sailed upward, into the sky, with the sunset causing a scarlet massacre in the clouds. The ash and soot got worse the higher we went.
Dryx turned around, but I didn’t stop, and suddenly the entire maelstrom of smoke and fire was lit up by Figg’s concentration ink. I heard her cry out, “Vankaat injit!”
My summoner was on my back, clinging to one of my spines. She was glowing like a flare as she used her magic to try and find the floating stone cube. She shouted, “Up ahead. There. The center of the smoke. Dvey’s Palace!”
The whole sky smelled like a coal mine on fire. And then I saw stone, hanging there in the cloud, a cube made of mined rock, rough edged, about twenty feet by twenty feet. It did not look like a palace, and I wondered why Figg had said that. What had her magic shown her?
The center of each of the cubes was open, and smoke was pouring out. I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. The source of the pollution wasn’t the Lore Factories, but this square rock, puking out ash and smoke and bits of flame like a six-sided chimney. No, that smoke was pouring out only on four sides. The bottom and the top were clear.
I pushed onward against the torrent of wind. I got a claw into the cube. I heaved myself forward and stared down a round hole in the top of the cube. The inside of the structure was bigger than the outside.
One of my mothers was a total dork, and I didn’t mean Tessa. No, she was a petite blonde with blue eyes and a sense of sarcastic humor she couldn’t control. She was inappropriate. She was funny. She’d grown up reading books and watching movies, though she tried to hide the fact by making fun of nerdy things.
Her name came to me. Mouse. And she would’ve made a Doctor Who joke.
Mouse was her nickname. Her real name was Melissa Craygore.
Dryx let out an ear-piercing cry that I heard over the roar of the smoke pouring out of the cube. Our sky warrior had some sort of banshee scream magic I hadn’t asked about. I thrust out my tail for her to grab. Then I dumped Figg and Rhee onto the top of the cube, where they scrambled down a ladder into Dvey’s crappy Palace.
Dryx clung to my tail. I pulled her in while at the same time shifting into my partial form. We both went over the top and down into the cube. I fell, cast DarkArmor as quick as I could, and landed on the floor.
The sky warrior was far more adept at flying. She floated down and landed on her feet, superhero style. Again, Mouse would’ve made a joke. Now that I’d unlocked the memory of her, I couldn’t let it go. There was something there. Had she come to Azrack to save Jared and me from Rattletrap? No, it was Regina. She’d come and we’d killed every bad guy in the town—every villain, every cyborg centaur, and that included Rattletrap himself.
Then we walked to the cave where Jared was. He seemed dead. Regina, though, reminded me that our uncle had spent his life fighting, first his disease, then to become a Dragonskin, and then to help people across the universe.
The memories faded. What had happened in that desert cave? Was my Jared really dead?
Dryx helped me up. “Yes, you are mighty in this form, your wings, your teeth, your claws. I approve.” She moved forward and slammed her hand between my legs. “You are missing a pinga. Perhaps you can figure out how to grow one, dragon man.”
Rhee came forward, her sword drawn. “Aye, I’ve thought of banging Axel in his dragon forms, both the partial and the true, but we have to focus.”
She wasn’t wrong. Around us were cogs like we’d seen in the Lore Factory below. We were in a giant machine, but it wasn’t running at the moment. Furnaces were burning though.
The floor was polished smooth, like sparkling granite. A plaque had been inlaid into the stone. I’d seen all the symbols before, in the Temple of the Good Ancients and in Ekam’s flooded basement.
A swirl of fire.
A swirl of what looked like wind, but in the shape of three moons.
A swirl of water like an ocean wave about to crash.
A swirl of iron forming a humanish head.
Lastly, a human figure standing in the middle of four starbursts, which matched the four swirls.
It was the symbols for both the brands as well as the schools of magic. The fifth one, the human figure, was for Pancham, the most powerful of the demon kings.
However, from an inscription on the floor, I read the words, “Dvey’s Palace of Everywhere Rooms.”
That put a bad feeling in my stomach.
Four basins were about ten feet away at the cardinal points of the cube. The basins were full of a dark fire, burning and crackling and swaying, pouring smoke through portals that wavered in the heat.
Beyond them, on all four sides, were long hallways leading into darkness. The gears of the machine made up those walls. Alcoves were spaced between the gears. Like I’d thought, the Gurgaloids, completely stone, stood in those alcoves on their seven-fingered feet. Eyes closed, the gargoyles had their wings wrapped around themselves.
In the eastern machine hallway, the very first gargoyle was Goremouth, his chin stained scarlet. His eyes were open, and they were staring at me with a sentient hate. When the sun set, he would come alive.
I had about a bazillion questions. We simply didn’t have time to ask any of them.
Figg was sweating, we all were, because that dark flame was hot. I had the idea that the flames were keeping the portals open, and that allowed for the long hallways of beasties and machinery. If we put out the flames, we’d close the door.
Where did those hallways lead? Dvey claimed they might lead to everywhere rooms.
A concept came to me. The Stair. That was what my father and our family called the multiverse. Everywhere was on the Stair, and the Stair led to everywhere. Good places. Bad places. All of creation, every universe, and every version of every universe.
As Dragonsouls, we used Magica Porta to travel between worlds. That was how Jared and I could get to Azrack.
I then realized one of the hallways might be able to take me home.
Figg made a fist with her left hand and raised her arm to look at it. The water brand of Ekam was throbbing with an unearthly light. “I can feel where Dvey put his brand. There.”
She pointed to the hallway where Goremouth stood.
We moved past the basin of swirling flames. The smoke was pouring out in a perfect circle ten feet in diameter. Between the edge of the portal and the inferno of smoke and fire, I could see the buildings of the Mazes down below. The light was scarlet and dimming. The sun was about to set.
Around us, the gargoyles popped as their stone joints loosened.
I thought about cracking their skulls open with the Calcifax staff, but we didn’t have time. This was going to be a close call.
We ran past the walls of the dead machine. I was glad that it wasn’t working. I was pretty sure if those gears moved, it would mean the Pentakorr would be rising again. No machine? No ancient demon kings. Dvey had left his spawn behind. It seemed we’d accidentally woken them up by getting the water brand for my summoner. Oops. And we were going to do it again.
The hallway opened up into a room, with the corridor still stretching impossibly into the distance. It was too dark to really see how far it went. It looked like a slow walk into the madness of infinity.
Stone scraped on stone as Gurgaloids unfurled their stone wings around us. Rock cracked and began to bleed, which led to the scabs. The gurgling started, growing louder and louder, as the icy water in their bellies began to churn.
The right side of the room had a furnace, dead for now, and stacks of coal cut into bricks. There were no alcoves, but there were tapestries on the wall, showing one of the demon kings rising up from the ground and fashioning the stone cube in the sky. He lit the fires that had created the hallways and the machine around it. From the machine came the stone creatures. The whole story was there.
The left side of the room had the
Ksu Jalana, the earth brand.
Dvey the demon king had used Ksu magic to create his monsters, first the Kankar and then the Gurgaloids. This was his doing. The human head symbol was right there.
More popping, cracking, and scraping as the Gurgaloids came to life. Once we branded Figg, we’d have to fight our way to the exit.
Figg screamed, “Agnaat injit!” She lit the brazier connected to the brand. It would take some time to heat up. In the meantime, the gargoyles creaked on cracking feet toward us.
Rhee grabbed a string of beads from her hair and threw them down. “Umaat injit,” the pirate elf hissed.
The beads flashed and gave us blinding light. The stone skin of gargoyles glowed while their cracked flesh became very apparent.
Rhee had lost her bow during our adventures, so she fought with her cutlass and the chakram.
Instead of throwing the knives, Dryx would fight with a dagger in each hand.
That left me with my magic and my staff.
The Gurgaloids surged. I crushed a skull, avoided the eye fire of one creature, and ducked the icicle puke of another. I slammed the butt of the staff onto the floor, to raise a wall, but the stone was not exactly the stone of our plane of existence. Nothing happened. My kill did give me more shakti. Good, I could use all the magic I could get.
“Agnaat injit!” I created a round shield of flames to protect my left arm. I’d wield the stone staff in my right.
The gargoyles scrambled forward in a horde of bodies. They swung at us with their wing hooks or tried to claw us to death with their prehensile feet.
Dryx fought the monsters in the middle of the hallway, and she was soon surrounded. She opened her mouth and emitted her shriek. Two the Gurgaloids were reduced to dust, fire in their skulls, water in their bellies.
Rhee slashed and hacked her way through two of the Gurgaloids. She then whispered something, and five fiery blades erupted from the five prongs of the Frisbee. She hurled the chakram, and it cut off the head of one gargoyle and came spinning back to her. She caught the spinning weapon with her left hand and deflected a wing hook with her sword.
I couldn’t manipulate the stone floor. However, I was fighting creatures crafted from rock. I’d been blind to what I could do. Slamming the Calcifax staff into one of the gargoyles, I summoned more stone. The rock on the monster’s body doubled, tripled, quadrupled until the thing was a solid slab. If you’re made out of a kind of stone, and you’re fighting someone who can manipulate stone, you’re screwed.
I called to the sorcerer. “Figg! Get that brand so we can get out of here. I can lead the way!”
“Almost ready!” she called out.
I used the frozen Gurgaloid as a wall and then made another, overwhelming another creature with stone. I pivoted and created another stone wall out of the gargoyle, though I had to be careful. I didn’t want to block our way out by accident. Also, trapping them didn’t kill them and I didn’t get any shakti. I could change that.
“Agnaat injit!” I hurled a fireball. The blast flung Gurgaloids against the giant clockwork. Some lost limbs. Others were reduced to slag. Satisfying shakti filled my atma.
A gargoyle swung a hook at me, but I burned off its wing with my flaming shield. I then smashed its chest in with my staff.
Figg cried out. I smelled her skin burning even as the odor of my fireball lingered in the air.
Figg stepped forward, the new earth brand next to the old water brand. Her net and bident were slung over her shoulder.
With a mighty, “Ksaat injit!” she collected the rock from the body parts of the Gurgaloids. She then drew that stone into her hands and created massive stone mallets at the end of her arms. She smashed through Gurgaloids left and right. “I can lead the way, Axel.”
I laughed. She sure could. I called to Rhee and Dryx. “Marines! We are leaving!” Mouse had said that before, and Tessa had always laughed at the reference.
Figg smashed her way through the gargoyles. If any got around her, I would free the thing up with a strike from my staff. Not only did I have my fire shield, I also thickened my scales with DarkArmor. I was a hulking scaled thing standing over Figg as she used her new powers to bash our way out.
Dryx and Rhee had our back.
Not all of the gargoyles were moving. It must not be fully dark yet. We still had a chance.
The floor was slick with water from the bellies of the things. Body parts lay strewn about. We made it back to the dark fire burning in the basin. The dark inferno was still roaring.
One of those infinitely long corridors might be able to take me home, but it wasn’t worth it. Who knew what kind of monstrosity would come creeping out of Dvey’s Everywhere Rooms? I hated Sweetleaf’s royalty, but the everyday people were getting hurt by the Gurgaloids. I’d fix that.
“Dowse that fire, Figg!” I called to her. “Pull water from the floor.”
My summoner didn’t pause. She switched to her first jalana. “Vankaat injit!” She took the water from the floor and hit the magical fire with a flood. The entire structure shook around us. It dropped a dozen feet. Good. I wanted to pull it out of the sky.
The dark fire sputtered and hissed as the torrent doused the flames. The entire hallway was gone in a flash. All that was left was a circle in the rock showing us the twilight city below.
Goremouth wasn’t in his alcove, and then I knew why. He flew from the hole above and grabbed the staff, but I easily flung him away. Not so easy was all the other gargoyles pouring out of the hallways. We needed to shut those corridors down.
I swung my staff, over and over, smashing through bellies, removing heads, and giving Figg more water to work with. She could summon it out of thin air, but it was easier for her to use existing liquid.
Another dark fire went out from a wave of her magic. That hallway closed as well. The structure lost another dozen feet of elevation.
Dryx let out a shriek and knocked three Gurgaloids back, making them explode with the power of her scream. Rhee hurled her flaming Frisbee and cut off more heads before catching the weapon.
More water for Figg. She dowsed a third basin and closed that hallway. We were falling now.
“Dryx, get Rhee out of here!” I shouted.
“No, you—” the elf tried to say. Dryx grabbed her and flew out through the top of the cube.
A dozen gargoyles followed them out into the air.
Goremouth’s claws raked my DarkArmor and I hardly felt it. I drove my staff into his chest, and he was knocked back. I tried to wall him up, but he was too fast. This was a boss Gurgaloid, and he proved it by spraying me down with icicles. They broke on my armor.
Figg had lost her mallet hands. She drove her bident into the belly of a monster and water poured out of the wounds. She then collected the last bit of moisture in the place and hit the last fire hard. It hissed out.
I pulled Figg to me, and we flew out of the doomed cube. Dvey’s Palace was about to get a new address on the ground.
In the air, my summoner and I watched the structure fall onto an empty street near the Lore Factories. The cube exploded in a cloud of dust and splintered stone. I hoped Goremouth was in there, but he wasn’t. He flew out with fifty gargoyles, the last of the breed.
We’d taken care of the spawning chamber, we’d gotten the Ksu Jalana, and we could get out of Dodge. First, though, I had to see a man about a duck.
That man was the Stallion King, Jim Goodgolde. And the duck was a gargoyle with a stained face.
Out in the open, I flung Figg up, shifted into my True Form, and then caught her even as she screamed. Damn, I’d forgotten she’d been afraid of flying. I wasn’t helping her fear any by tossing her around like that.
The chase began. I worked my wings, sailing across the lake toward the glittering lights of the castle on the western side of the city.
Dryx set Rhee on my back, and then raced me toward the Stallion King’s throne room. She must’ve heard us talking outside of Cash’s place. We only had one
more piece of business in Sweetleaf, and I prayed for a miracle. Broom needed us, and I wasn’t about to let that adorkable giantess down.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
GOREMOUTH AND THE LAST of his monsters chased us.
Dryx and I were neck and neck as I barreled toward Sweetleaf’s castle.
I had the Calcifax staff in my right claws. I flew over the top of the citadel, over the throne room, and then near a wall. I slammed my feet into the same broken window I’d escaped from earlier that day, and I used the stone staff to open a hole in the stone around the window so I could easily fit through. I snaked my way in, careful not to let Rhee or Figg fall.
Dryx came in after me. She stayed flying while I landed in front of the dais and the throne.
I’d wanted a miracle, and I got one. Broom stood on the steps in chains. Beside her were Toole and Toil. There were dozens of other guards, centaurs and giant women, spread across the hall.
The Stallion King rose off his upholstered throne, throwing back his white hair and tossing pillows to the floor.
Toole and Toil gripped Broom, and one of them had a familiar-looking short sword against her neck. The other familiar-looking short sword was sheathed on his hip.
“You will stop, Monster!” King Jimmy shrieked with spit flecking his lips.
“Figg, Rhee, hang on!” I rose up my hind legs, wings spread. “Hey, Jimmy, I need some info from you. Got a minute?”
Dryx flew in circles above us. She was keeping an eye out for the Gurgaloids because they’d be coming in hot. They wanted me, for some reason, but first things first.
King Jimmy had a hard-on for me. I wanted to know why. “So, Stallion King, tell me why you arrested us again? Something about disturbing the peace. That’s bullshit.”
The Stallion King snapped the fingers at the end of his very long arms. “Guards. Kill this dragon!”
