Forged in Fire

by J. A. Pitts

  He screamed obscenities, flinging bursts of energy at me, smashing rocks above my head, and raining hot fragments down on me. I flattened myself against the stone, trying to avoid falling debris, but I passed right through and fell ass-over-teakettle into the mountain.

  I flipped over, doing a reverse summersault, and landed on my chest, winded and without a sword. I’d flung Gram behind me as I tumbled. I could hear her skittering down the steep passage behind me. I tried to rise, but slipped in the rock and dust that had blown into the cave with me. I rolled over, sat up, and slid on my ass, deeper into the mountain. I plowed into the stone wall at the bottom, smacking my head on the hard stone floor.

  The world spun for a moment. I tried to sit up, but a cultist came skidding down the passage on his feet, sword flashing toward me.

  I grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it at him, rolling to the side. The passage opened that way, and I dropped five feet into an open cavern.

  “Sarah?” a voice called to me. I scrambled onto my hands and knees, looking for the voice. It was Qindra, or rather, Qindra’s spirit.

  “Hi,” I said, shaking my head. “Have you seen my sword?”

  She pointed to my left, and I lunged that way as the cultist jumped from the opening. He landed, catlike, and swung where I’d been. I grabbed Gram in time to deflect the blow. He grinned, stepping toward me. This was not going well.

  He raised his sword over his head, and I scrambled backward against the wall. “Damn it,” I bellowed, and he froze.

  I waited a second, and, when he didn’t move, I scrambled to my feet, putting distance between him and me. Qindra had reached out and touched him, paralyzing him.

  I leaned against the wall, letting my breath slow before nodding to her. She let him go, and the cultist swung his sword on the original trajectory, only I wasn’t there anymore.

  I whistled at him, and he turned, surprised. “Sorry, dude,” I said, lunging forward. He dropped his sword as Gram slipped between his ribs, puncturing his left lung and heart.

  He fell over, grinning. I hated these guys.

  I looked down at myself. Everything hurt, and the knees of my jeans were shredded. I liked these jeans, too. It’s so damn hard to find good jeans that fit.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I said and fell over.

  Qindra knelt over me, smiling. “You always were into drama, Sarah. Can you do nothing simply?”

  “I’m here to rescue you,” I whispered. “And get the shield out. There are two dragons up there, and my people are getting their asses kicked by cultists and the undead.”

  “Jai Li is here, is she not?” she asked.

  I shuddered against the rage. I couldn’t succumb—had to keep control. “Yeah, somewhere,” I choked. “That bastard Justin has her somewhere. He’s killed a lot of people.” I had to believe she was still alive.

  “Perhaps it is time for me to let this go, then.” She waved her hand, leaving a phosphorescent contrail. “I have been fighting him all evening. He has done something I cannot see, infected the dome somehow. He is very powerful.”

  “I need to get the shield,” I said, trying to sit up. “That’ll put a knot in his tail.” The world swam, and I couldn’t do it. My head was really pounding.

  “Here,” she said, passing her hand over me. The pain in my head subsided, and the cuts and bruises eased—like I’d been healing a few days.

  I stood, amazed again at her power. If she worked for the good guys, we’d totally kick the dragon’s asses. I glanced around the room. It really wasn’t very big, but the shield floated where I remembered it. I strode to it, watching the way the energy crackled off it.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  A shout brought me around, and two more cultists jumped down from the ledge, rushing at me. I sidestepped the first one, throwing him to the side, into the ley line.

  He shrieked as his face melted off. Very Indiana Jones. The second guy paused to stab at Qindra, who only smiled at him as his sword passed through her.

  Spirits began to slip into the room, and she stepped back, putting up her shield once more—the crystalline force wall that kept the spirits from her.

  “Yo, scumbag,” I called.

  The cultist turned to me, raising his sword, and attacked.

  We exchanged a few strokes, steel crashing on steel, when the spirits turned to us. I kicked him, sending him backward, and several of the eaters fell on him.

  He screamed as they bit into him, ripping out chunks of his spirit.

  I took the opportunity to turn back to the ley line and the shield that blocked its natural flow.

  Okay, Sarah. Treat it like flame. Get the shield out without burning yourself.

  I reached out with Gram and touched the shield with the tip of the blade. Power arced off the ley line, ricocheting around the cavern, killing several of the spirits that had fallen on the struggling cultist before fizzling out.

  Nice. I took a deep breath. Nothing held the shield there except the force of the energy flow. I should be able to knock it out of the way.

  I pulled Gram from the flow and looked around. Three spirits were feeding on the writhing cultist. It was nothing to slash through them. The cultist wasn’t dead, but nearly so. I grabbed him by his robes and dragged him onto his feet.

  “Come here, be useful.” He staggered with me, not sure of what was happening, and I shoved him against the shield.

  He screamed as the skin flayed off his bones, but the shield careened into the middle of the room. I was flung backward. Qindra moved to me, encompassing me in her magical field.

  “Are you unharmed?” she asked, once the light in the cave dimmed back toward normal human spectrum.

  I sat up. “Yeah, I think so.” Gram was glowing like nothing I’d ever seen before. She’d absorbed a lot of energy from the ley line, and she vibrated at a higher pitch than I was used to.

  Qindra nodded grimly. “He’s been wresting control of the dome from me for hours. I think I’m going to let it go, relinquish the magic. Maybe it will rebound on him, fry some of his cronies.”

  I looked up at her. “Careful, I need you to come out of this alive.”

  “Then you’d better come get me from the house,” she said. The smile on her face was bittersweet. “I don’t think I can walk.”

  The ground shook. Rocks and dust fell into the cavern. Qindra’s energy shield vanished, and she faded, waving. “Go,” she said, her voice trailing away.

  I got to my feet, picked up the shield and tossed it up onto the ledge, laid Gram up there, and hoisted myself up. A large chunk of rock crashed into the room behind me as I picked up the sword and shield. Time to go.

  Halfway up the passage I found a cutoff I’d missed on the way down. It ran to the left, toward where the house was. The up passage led to the necromancer. “Left,” Qindra’s voice spoke in my head. I scrambled left, running along the undiscovered passage. Behind me, the cavern began to collapse.

  Dust and debris rolled out of the cavern ahead of me, choking me as I emerged into the night. The whole mountain shook, and I stumbled out, coughing.

  Seventy-four

  Katie leaned against the sheriff’s car, catching her breath. The dragons had been battling between the dome and the plateau when the dome exploded. The smaller dragon was flung back onto the road, but the green dragon, nearly twice his size, had taken the brunt of the explosion.

  Shattered scales and green blood splashed against the car where Katie had hidden. Most of her people were down. Jillian still sat in the elm tree, sniping at casters. Her sniper rifle had quit working awhile ago, but she was damn good with a crossbow.

  Jimmy and Kyle were on the other side of the battlefield, and they still had a working rifle by the echo.

  There were bodies everywhere, some moving, some not. Cultists were getting to their feet, and, as they did, the dead rose around them, moving at their commands. Katie swung out from behind the car, her short sword out, and cut one magic-weav
ing son of a bitch down as she ran past, cleaving through his skull while he concentrated on raising the dead around him. As soon as he hit the ground, the undead around him fell as well.

  Others weren’t doing so well. Stuart and a group of others had been knocked down when the dome exploded, and not all of them were getting up. Stuart had his great axe out, clearing a path to the fallen, regrouping near the deputy’s car, farther back down the road.

  Only they were seriously outnumbered. As the magic casters began weaving their spells, the dead around them rose up, including some of our own. It had only been a matter of time, Katie knew. She did not want Stuart to have to kill his own, even if they were already dead.

  She sprinted down the road, sheathing her sword and swinging her guitar around. She slowed as she approached the back of the crowd of cultists and dead. Stuart and his crew were surrounded, and time was running short.

  She thought a minute. If the dead weren’t a problem, they’d be doing okay. Then the idea hit her. The song she began was slow and melodic, filled with deep thrumming notes that reverberated across the open ground.

  Take ’em home, me boy’os

  Return him to his mother

  let her cast the posies

  atop his cairn

  and we’ll drink him into heaven

  It was a funeral dirge—a wake song she’d heard a long time ago at a ren faire. One of the regulars had passed, and the filking group sang this. Katie had been young, maybe fifteen, but the song came back to her as clear as if she’d just heard it.

  The music flowed from her, and her nose began to bleed. The music, when used this way, was taking more and more from her, but she couldn’t let her people die. As the music touched them, the dead froze where they were, becoming statues of flesh and bone. The cultists noticed and stopped their charge, confused. One of the cultists reached out, giving the nearest undead a shove, and it crumbled to dust.

  Stuart and his surviving squad rushed forward and cut their way through the dead until they reached the living, and Katie drew her sword to meet them.

  They came together, she and Stuart, as the last cultist in the area fell beneath their blades. He hugged her, shaking. It had been too close for comfort, but they’d made it. At least some of them.

  The rain pelted down harder, and these dead began to dissolve.

  “Damn powerful singing,” Stuart said, looking at her. “Care to tell me how you pulled that off?”

  “Nope,” she said, smiling at him. “Just started happening.” She staggered, and he caught her. Her face and chest were covered with blood.

  “You’re wounded!” he growled.

  “Nosebleed,” she said. “That’s new, too.” She leaned against him, trying to get her balance.

  He helped her back to the deputy’s car and gently sat her down. “Tilt your head forward a bit and squeeze the bridge here,” he said, placing her hand on her nose.

  “Yes, sir,” she mouthed. It had been pretty damn close. She’d almost collapsed. It was only adrenaline that had kept her on her feet. Too many of his crew were down. Only four others remained.

  “How’s Jim?” Stuart asked.

  “Saw him and Kyle shooting up the farside of the battlefield but didn’t see anyone else.”

  “Jillian’s still doing good from her perch,” he said, looking around. His four were not all whole. Two were wounded. But they all were alert, keeping an eye out for bad guys.

  The smaller dragon hadn’t moved in a while, not since the dome exploded. The green had turned away, taking the fight to the house.

  “They’re toying with us,” he said, his voice bitter. “They’re stalling, doing something.”

  “They brought in a big-ass dragon,” Katie said, smiling, her mouth and teeth limned with blood. “I figure, if it wasn’t for that second one, the one that dropped a package back by the camp, we’d all be dragon poo by now.”

  Stuart grunted and stroked her hair. “Take a breather; I’ll look around.”

  He stood, glanced around, and talked to each of the survivors with him.

  Things are pretty damn grim, she thought. Where the hell was Sarah?

  Stuart squatted back down by Katie. “The green dragon has flamed the house and seems to be fighting something there.”

  Katie thought. “Statues, maybe. There was some haunted shit in there last time I visited.”

  “Great,” he said. “Maybe they’ll kill the freaking dragon before we have to get involved.”

  Katie smiled, then sat up. “Wait, did you say she flamed the house?”

  “Yeah,” Stuart said, standing. “Green flames, like the world’s worst Saint Patrick’s Day float.”

  “Qindra’s in there,” Katie said.

  “Damn it,” he grunted, looking over the hood of the car. “Really?”

  Katie nodded and started to stand, pulling herself up the car.

  “Here,” Stuart said, giving her a hand. “You look like hell.”

  She shrugged. “Could eat a horse, but I’ll live.”

  “I can help there,” he said, swinging his pack around. He pulled out an energy bar and a bottle of water. “All I got,” he said. “But you need it more than me.”

  She thanked him and worked her way through both. When she dropped the water bottle into the back of the cruiser, she felt about a thousand times better.

  “Guess all that special singing requires some serious fuel.”

  He eyed her. “Just be careful. We need to tell Jimmy about this, you know.”

  “Yeah, sure. After we get Qindra, right?”

  He hesitated, debating the witch’s worth. “We’ll need light,” he said, reaching into the deputy’s car and retrieving a large flashlight. “Let’s roll, people,” he barked. “Bobby, you take Eddie and fall back. Make your way to Jillian; she’s doing pretty well from that perch.”

  The two wounded guys headed off.

  The air hummed with the din of battle and the booming roar of the green dragon. Spirits erupted from the grounds around the house—rolling, eating masses just like she’d battled before.

  “Let’s see if I can clear us a path,” Katie said, dashing off a chord, encompassing them in a golden glow. The lyrics felt sweet on her lips.

  “I’m coming for you, lover mine…” It was the song she’d sang going to rescue Sarah. It worked before.

  Spirits parted before them, avoiding the golden circle that sprang up around her. “Let’s go save us a witch.”

  Paul and Marla didn’t argue, just padded behind them, crossbows locked and loaded. Katie was sure they’d have followed Stuart into hell. Of course, the way the house was burning, it could be a matter of semantics.

  They took the scenic route, avoiding the dragon, and swung around the south end of the place, coming by the smithy. She kept the singing to a minimum, but the spirits were coming thick and fast. With the dome down, they were stunned at first, but now it was a feeding frenzy. Luckily, the dragon and cultists appeared to be equally valid targets for their hunger.

  The dragon was smashing haunted statues and ghostly critters, ignoring Katie’s small group. They fought their way across the grounds, taking down one of Anezka’s metal warriors near the carport.

  “Don’t go out back,” Katie said.

  Paul froze, his hand on a door to the back of the property.

  “Trust me.”

  He shrugged, dropped his hand to the haft of the crossbow, and stepped back from the door. Something roamed back there. They could hear it. “We going in or staying here to guard the exit?”

  Stuart looked into the house. “Rearguard’s a good idea,” he said. “No heroics, though. If something big and nasty looks this way, you duck and cover.”

  Marla stepped to the side of the house and rested her crossbow on a stack of overturned shelves. “I got the yard,” she said, glancing back at Paul. “You keep an eye on my six.” She leaned over the shelves and wiggled her backside.

  Stuart harrumphed and shook his hea
d.

  Paul grinned at her. “Anytime.”

  Katie rolled her eyes. If they weren’t already messing around with each other, that was a pretty obvious invitation. Crazy what near-death experiences did to a normally quiet person.

  Stuart waved Katie to the side and kicked in the door to the kitchen. The interior of the house was full of smoke.

  “I got this,” Katie said. She hunched over her guitar and began a low, thrumming speed chord. Stuart watched her, anxiously waiting for something to happen.

  “We going in or what?” he asked.

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, grinning. The chords got louder and faster until she straightened up and let out a wild howl. This is getting awesome, she thought.

  A ten-foot cone of heavy metal music blasted through the house with such ferocity that the walls on either side of the doorway splintered inward. Those battling out on the road all turned as a column of solid sound rose, blasting a chunk of the roof into the sky with contrails of dragon fire. The smoke in the house followed, sucked upward in the vacuum created by the music.

  Stuart looked at her, his jaw hanging open and his ears ringing.

  “Come on!” she shouted as the chord began to fade. She slung the guitar back across her shoulder and ran into the house.

  Stuart followed, his great axe bouncing against his back.

  The house was a wreck, but the back rooms remained intact. The roof in that area hadn’t burned through, and nothing moved in the darkness. Stuart pulled out the big-ass flashlight and shone it down the hall.

  “Last room on the right,” Katie said, pulling her short sword from the sheath on her hip. She crouched, leading with her sword, and ran down the hall. Stuart held the flashlight high, keeping the light shining in front of her. They paused at the first rooms—bathroom on the left, utility room on the right. Both were devoid of the living and the unliving. At the end of the hall, Katie took a hard right into the empty room where she’d last seen Qindra.