by Joseph Lallo
“I WAS WRONG! CATCH ME!!!” she cried.
The tangled form of Myn, Myranda, and the dragoyle dropped into the clouds. The dragon managed to clamp her jaws onto the beast's wing. Vicious teeth tore leathery hide and creaked against hollow bone. Puffing up her chest, Myn belched a column of flame onto the limb still caught in her maw. The dragoyle howled in pain and released them. After a few moments to steady herself in the air, Myn made ready to circle back and face the creature again, climbing to the surface of the ocean of clouds.
“No! Stay in the mist!” Myranda ordered.
Myn obeyed. Myranda scrambled across the dragon's back to her proper position and held the staff high. The freezing cold of night grew deeper. The mist became grainier. A lurching blackness approached from below as the first beast, still suffering from the long furrows scoured into its back by Myn, finally made its way back into the fight. Myranda made it the focus of the cold. Tiny crystals became fat flakes around it. A crust of ice stiffened the beast's joints. Myranda pushed her mind harder. The crust became a layer, then a blanket. Soon it was not only the water around the dragoyle, but the creature's very blood that was freezing. It squeezed a pathetic, strangled screech out. The cry was cut off as even the monster's throat hardened into stillness. Just as the paralyzed form started to drop from view, Myranda hurled a ball of flame. The intense heat splashed against the frozen creature and, pushed from one extreme to the other too quickly, it came apart at the seams. What dropped out of the clouds was a barely recognizable scattering of frozen anatomy. Without a word from Myranda, Myn knew what was next. Find the others, and avoid being found.
Ivy screamed through the air like a brilliant blue comet. She swept every terrifying thought she could muster from her memory and piled them one on top of the other. Nothing could upset the stalemate. She flailed at the air, as though if she tried hard enough she could dig her fingers into it and hold tight. As she did, she inadvertently turned about. Her maddened eyes came to rest on a sight that managed to be even more frightening than the ground. It was one of the dragoyles. It was not a tiny blurry speck among the clouds as it should be, either. What she beheld was a creature just a few seconds behind her, serrated beak trailing a billowing cloud of miasma behind it. It wasn't flapping its wings, instead tucking them back and straightening its body into a streamlined dart. It was falling. And it was falling faster than she was. Ivy's mind clamped onto the image. It would do.
A blaze of blue surged like an azure sun as Ivy's fear took over. The cry of fear echoed over the hilltops and through the trees. A sudden and intense will forced her earthward far faster than the dragoyle could manage, but still it worked its wings to catch up. The ground turned swiftly from patches of silver, gray, and white to icy water, frozen trees, and barren fields. When she reached the ground, she struck with enough force to sway the trees of the forest that was unfortunate enough to be her target. No sooner had the branches swayed to their maximum than a blue blur flashed out from between the trees and into the field. A moment later the enormous monster, far too large to overcome its own momentum, shook the forest again. It was a grotesque sound, a crunch louder than thunder mixed with the splintering of trees and a short, agonized squeal. Then there was only silence as the forest attempted to recover.
High above, Myn pulled herself up through the clouds and locked her eyes on the remaining dragoyle. Its partially roasted wing was doing a barely adequate job of keeping it airborne. Its maw hung open and vast swaths of black breath were erupting forth. Myn circled to the side. The ponderous beast attempted to wheel to follow, but it couldn't match the agility of the smaller creature. Myn clamped down on the beast's afflicted wing, planted her feet against the monster's body, and pulled with all of her might. The pair began to plummet through the clouds again. Myranda kept the thick motes of black mist from them as the bones and flesh yielded to Myn's jerking pulls. Finally the whole wing came free. What was left of the creature spiraled and writhed as it fell.
Myn turned her sharp vision earthward, locking onto the bright blue streak below that blazed across the field and over the lake's icy surface toward a small, rocky island at its center. Perhaps her fear-crazed mind believed it offered the best cover. Perhaps some small part of her knew what she would find there. Regardless of the reason, the island was the very place they sought. Someone the D'karon did not wish to be found was being held within. A sturdy wooden door in a stone wall splintered as she roared through it. The dragon dove toward her, but the better part of the distance between the clouds and ground still lay before her. The form of Ivy blazed through the narrow courtyard around what looked to be an outcropping of stone with a doorway carved into it. When she reached a point behind it that was reasonably hidden from sight she disappeared inside, the fading blue glow betraying her position. A moment later a scattering of nearmen climbed from the hole in the stone and inspected the shattered remains of the door.
Myn was drawing nearer, but as she did, she began to slow, even though there was a long way to go. Her eyes were locked on the shifting layer of ice that had yet to settle after Ivy's trip across it. As they approached the surface of the lake, Myranda felt the same tenseness that had marked the approach of the dragoyles, only more so. Her heart raced. What could lie beneath the waves? They'd never faced a creature of the water before. There was no way to prepare for it. Now the water was just below them. They were just approaching the shore of the island when a pair of ice drifts collided, sending a spray of icy water high enough to sprinkle Myn's scales. Something inside her mind gave way. She pumped her wings madly, as though at any moment the water would reach up and grab her. There'd been no motion but the ice. Nothing had touched her but the water, but still she was mad with fear. Of course . . .
It stood to reason. Myn had always been afraid of the water, ever since the flooding of the cave when they were heading to Entwell. Her last serious encounter with it had literally cost her her life. Even the stoutest of minds would falter at the sight of it after that. Myranda tried to steady her friend.
“Myn, just get me to the island, you can leave me and come back for me after!” Myranda called out.
The terrified creature fought every instinct in a mind trained for eons to embrace them. She forced herself to approach the ground at the water's edge. The instant Myranda tumbled to the frozen stone she shot skyward. The wizard surveyed the threat before her. As with her rescue of Ivy, the nearmen before her were magic users. They held black wands at the ready, but at the sight of her, they did not attack. Instead, they scurried back into the carved hole in the stone, securing it shut with a wave of a wand and an uttered word. The door was also stone, and fit so securely into the opening that, if she'd not seen it move into place, she scarcely would have imagined there was a hole at all.
Myranda stepped back. Upon closer inspection, the structure, if it could be so called, was a low dome of stone that sloped until it was flush with the ground. In fact, it actually connected to the ground. Had they simply carved a chamber into a solid stone island? Or was the whole of the little isle created by them? She rushed around the edge of it, seeking another door. The closest she found was a shallow recess on the far side, the very one Ivy had nestled herself in for protection. The creature was still there, the blaze of fear replaced by the deep, unnatural sleep that always followed. The wizard shook her, hoping to wake her. It was an act of pure optimism. After such an outburst, Ivy was seldom awake in anything less than half a day. Sure enough, no amount of jostling produced anything beyond an uncomfortable shift. Whatever had to be done, Myranda would be doing it alone.
So be it. Myranda made her way back to the door and thrust the point of the staff into what little there was of a seam and put her mind to work. Slowly a tremor was summoned. The pebbles at her feet began to dance around her. Something was wrong. Try as she might, she could not will anything stronger than a light rhythm from the earth. There was an enchantment working against her. A powerful one. She abandoned the spell and switched t
o flame, but no sooner did it splash against the door than it flickered away. She didn't need to test wind and water to know they would be similarly ineffective.
“So they've protected it against elemental magic. That means Ether is inside,” she reasoned out loud.
For a moment she brought to mind some of the more destructive spells that fell outside of the elemental realm, but a thought occurred to her. The staff she held was of D'karon design. A quick perusal of the enchantments clinging to it revealed one that had much the same feel as that which held the door shut. A second seemed its logical opposite. She fed the appropriate spell a dose of her will and it eagerly leapt to work. A smile came to her face. The door was slowly grinding aside. In taking the staff, she may well have stolen the very keys to their defense.
“This is quite the useful tool,” Myranda quipped.
The smile dropped away as the sounds from within finally made their way through the widening gap. There was a commotion inside. Splashing water, twisted unnatural voices, clinking, scratching, clawing. Myranda placed a foot inside the opening when it was wide enough. Almost instantly she was pushed back. Out from the inky depths of the place came a cacophonous rustle and flutter as dozens of black forms burst from the darkness. For a moment she thought she was being attacked by bats. She was wrong on both counts.
It was not a colony of bats tearing past her but a veritable army of cloaks, and they were not attacking. The disembodied garments seemed utterly unconcerned with the human, save for the fact that she was in their way. She tried to oppose them but was thrown aside, sprawling to the ground as the sky filled with the creatures and the ground crawled with them. Myranda's eyes darted from one beast to the next. Deep within the folds of their cloth forms was a crystal, phantom claws locked about it in a protective grip. They drifted through the sky and across the surface of the water like ants carrying eggs from a flooding colony. By the time the flow from the opening trailed off there were easily hundreds of them, all drifting north.
“Myn!” Myranda called out. “Stop as many of them as you can, and keep Ivy safe! I will be back as soon as I can!”
With that she disappeared inside. The dragon went to work. Sweeping as low along the water as her mind would allow, she sprayed the creatures with flame. They scattered, but each blast of fire took a handful of them with it. Myn managed a few more runs before the flow was too scattered to manage any more than one at a time. In truth she'd roasted only a small fraction of the torrent of creatures, but destroying any more would take her too far from Ivy. She circled back and took up a patrol in a tight circle over the tiny island, her sharp gaze locked on the sleeping creature.
Inside the dome, Myranda was greeted with the only light ever to be found in the depths of D'karon structures, the blue-white light of captured magic. This time, however, the light came in a way Myranda scarcely could have imagined. An intricate pattern of crystalline rods had been gathered together into a sequence of interlocking shapes, like an array of enormous snow flakes fixed point to point. The grid formed a shell in the center of the largely hollow interior that now seemed to have been bored into the island. Half of it was submerged in water, refracting and reflecting the light into dazzling blobs of light across the ceiling, and a trio of wooden struts stood from water-obscured floor to ceiling. At every point where one crystal rod met another, a gem was affixed, or at least had been. Even now a smattering of cloaks and nearmen were harvesting them and sweeping toward the door, showing little regard for the human who stood in their way. Myranda stepped aside and let them pass. Myn would stop them if she could, and there was a far more pressing matter at hand.
In the very center of the vast crystal shell was a smaller one attached to stone at the bottom of the deep hollow center of the island. Inside of it, shifting wildly, was a swirl of water that clearly had a will controlling it. It was twisting and writhing, trying to snake out through the space between the bars and recoiling back inside when it touched one. A moment later the bundle of water darkened and shifted to stone, dropping a short distance to the rocky floor. Beside it, standing completely beneath the rippling surface of the indoor pool, was a pair of creatures Myranda had never seen before.
Each looked to be a man in a suit of armor, but even through the shifting wavelets she could see that there was no flesh beneath the metal plates. They hung loosely in place, an empty shell in the vague shape of a man, and a formidable man at that. Red runes traced arcane patterns across every surface. The only semblance of a being within the armor was a ball of flickering amber light behind each chest plate. They each held in their gauntlets a tall spear. In a fluid motion that stretched the unseen limbs further than any natural being could, one of the demon armors thrust the weapon into the newly formed stone. A gem flickering in the blade drew in a dose of power and the rock shuddered and shifted back to water to start the struggles anew.
The final crystal was hurried out the door and finally notice was taken of the intruder. Only two nearmen remained, sloshing around the shallow water at the edge of the flooded room. As Myranda raised her staff to face them, she was quickly reminded that the gem structure was ravenous enough to limit her to the D'karon spells, but that was of little concern. She'd become quite comfortable with their use. A bolt of black ripped through the air at her, but it was easily deflected. She clamped the crushing spell so frequently used upon her around her attacker and hurled him at the stone wall. The other nearman aimed a shot at the curved roof, his destructive spell punching a jagged hole through it. A second blast destroyed one of the wooden struts.
Impossibly, the whole of the island shuddered and tilted, sagging against the remaining struts. The door Myranda had entered through dipped below the waterline and began to gush water. Myranda scrambled through the icy water to the high ground at the opposite end of the flooding room. She regained her footing just in time to deflect another blast from the sole surviving nearman. The blast reversed neatly on itself and destroyed its caster. Myranda turned to a sharp hissing sound overhead. It came from the hole above her. Air was escaping. The island, which was now certainly anything but a proper one, was sinking!
Outside, the sight of the sudden movement of the island cast a fresh spike of fear into Myn's mind. She couldn't believe her eyes. The waves were certainly working their way up the shore. The water terrified the creature, but the thought of losing her friends terrified her more. She dove low, snatching up Ivy before the water could reach her. Working her wings for all they were worth she skimmed across the water's surface to the shore, depositing Ivy there and charging back. The water would not claim Myranda.
The wizard splashed out to the crystal shell and climbed atop it, blasting at it with whatever the staff seemed capable of. Fractures curled their way around the bars, but they seemed to shrug off the worst of the damage. Below, one of the demon armors was scaling the sloped floor beneath the water. When it reached the shell, the various plates and straps of the armor spread and scattered, finding gaps large enough to slip through and reassembling around the amber glow on the other side. Myranda worked at the shell. One bar broke, then another. Suddenly a grip, literally like iron, closed around her ankle and tore her from atop the crystal structure. She was tossed effortlessly aside.
Water that was colder than ice drained the feeling from her limbs as she struggled to reach some manner of foothold. Alas, the last of the floor was slipping ever deeper into the water, leaving little more than the peak of the crystal cage above the surface. The steely grip closed around her ankle again and she was yanked beneath the waves with barely a gasp of breath. Nearly blinded by the freezing water, Myranda managed to dodge the thrusting spear of the armor, but only just. She forced aside the agony tearing at her mind and summoned another blast. The gauntlet clutching her leg flew to pieces, allowing her to fight her way to what little air remained and take a much needed breath.
Myn crashed down on the sinking hunk of stone, clawing madly at the tiny hole she found. She felt the waves close arou
nd her legs and every ancient instinct and ingrained fear demanded she take to the air again. She denied them, finally breaking though. There was the wet snap of wood and the entire island seemed to drop out from under her, sinking into the depths. The terrified dragon flailed about in the water before managing to catch enough of the wind in her wings to hoist herself skyward. The former island drifted out of sight, the remnants of the sheet of ice that had been the lake's surface closing over it.
The last of the air slipped out of the widening hole. It was large enough to escape through, but Myranda turned her back to it. She still had a job to do. The icy water stung at her eyes as she gazed down at the still intact shells of crystal. The remaining hand of the demon armor had caught hold of the edge of her cloak and she was being pulled into the darkening depths. A sizable chunk of the ruined roof drifted down beside her. Again she called upon the vice spell, clutching it and guiding its fall. It broke easily through the first shell, but the armor creature that had stayed behind managed to deflect it from the smaller shell, the shell that held what remained of Ether. A moment later the still intact demon armor hurled its spear. The weapon hissed through the water like a harpoon and grazed Myranda's side.
Exertion of mind and body were squandering Myranda's last breath of air, and pressure squeezed painfully in around her. The inner shell still held strong. She ignored the pain and cold and held out her staff, groping with its spells for something to smash Ether's cage. The whole of the structure around her lurched as it struck the floor of the lake, sinking slightly into the icy mud. The shock was enough to dislodge a piece of the damaged roof. Myranda tried to swim aside but the injured armor creature clamped her wrist in its remaining glove and twisted it viciously. The fingers opened of their own accord and her stolen staff floated instantly out of reach, rocketing to the surface. The stone pushed her to the tilted ground and pinned her there. It was all Myranda could do to keep from losing her last few moments of air in a scream of agony.
