Dragon Slayer 4

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I tapped into my ice magic and summoned as much of it as I could manage, then willed it to form a thick shield of ice covering the entire roof of the passage for twenty yards ahead of me. I heard the loud crunching of ice as the stone walls ground on the coating of ice, and gears grated somewhere deep within the walls. The closing slowed as the mechanism struggled to keep pushing the stone closer.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted at Letharia. The dark-haired woman gasped for breath as she tried to keep pace, but she was moving too slow.

  To my horror, five-inch bronze spikes suddenly shot out from the walls. The spikes along the roof sliced through the coating of ice, and the weakened shield crumbled. Once again, the steady rumbling continued as the walls closed in on us.

  My gut clenched as I realized the very real danger of our situation. The spikes slashed our escape time drastically, and they’d kill us long seconds before the stone walls crushed us to bloody, pulpy goo. No time for anything to slow us down.

  Without hesitation, I whirled toward Letharia, I lifted her off her feet, and flung her over one of my shoulders. She gave a little squawk of surprise as I turned and raced down the slowly-closing corridor. I closed the distance to Irenya in five long steps, passed her, and caught up to Arieste and Rizzala just as they reached the door.

  By the light of my torch, I could see the door had no inner locking mechanism. It was made with a material that looked like bronze or brass. I might not have the dragon power to break the door down, but Irenya’s fire magic could get us through.

  I set Letharia down and turned to Irenya. “If I feed you power, can you use it to generate a concentrated beam of white-hot fire to burn our way through the door?”

  “Yes,” Irenya gasped out. “Do it.”

  “Stand back,” I said and motioned for the other three women to retreat a few steps down the hall. “It’s going to get hot. Arieste, use your ice magic to try and slow the walls down. Rizzala, keep an eye on those spikes, and let me know if they’re getting too close.”

  I placed a hand on Irenya’s shoulder and tapped into the fire magic deep within me. Immediately, the flames sprang to life, and the power surged through my veins, down my arm, and into Irenya. The curvaceous redhead gave a little gasp of delight as she felt the flood of magic, and once again I experienced that strange bond that had formed through our use of the fire power. The fire joined us in spirit, and it filled us both with a passion that went beyond any emotional or physical connection. That sensation had made our sex mind-blowing, and the bond of magic had turned us into an effective fighting team on the wall of Whitespire.

  Now, we needed to be a magical cutting torch. We might not have oxyacetylene tanks, but we had more than enough oxygen in the air to feed Irenya’s fire. A white-hot, inch-thick flame burst from Irenya’s hands, and she directed it at the center of the door.

  “Good,” I said through gritted teeth. I had grown more accustomed to wielding magic, but fire was the hardest of the abilities to control. It wanted to burn bright, hot, and free, and only a strong will could keep it directed. That was why Irenya and I were more effective working together. The combination of our willpower made it easier to direct the flames.

  Hope surged within my chest as I saw the metal door begin to glow, and then turn red hot. We might not be able to break the door open, but we were damn sure going to melt a hole through it.

  “Ethan!” Rizzala shouted. “They’re getting closer.”

  Without releasing my grip on the fire magic, I shot a glance at the closing walls. Sure enough, the spikes had gotten a lot closer in the last few seconds. The corridor had been about ten feet wide when we first entered, but the tips of the metallic spikes had closed to within six feet of each other. At this speed, we’d be impaled and crushed in the space of a minute.

  I let out a gasp as the flow of fire cut off, my magical power run out. My heart hammered in my chest, and the time between each beat seemed endless as I waited for the fire magic to recharge. My mind raced as I tried to think of ways to buy more time. Arieste was already looking exhausted, but she kept generating more ice shields in an attempt to slow down the closing walls. Rizzala had activated the fire magic of her spear and was alternating between hacking at the spikes and trying in vain to melt them. Letharia stood a few steps away, her eyes wide and filled with panic, face white as a sheet.

  The sight of the dark-haired woman hit me like a Mack truck to the nuts. I didn’t need fire to get through a metal door, not when I had a far more effective tool to use.

  “Letharia, get over here!” I shouted.

  Letharia turned her terrified gaze toward me, but she remained frozen in place.

  “Hurry!” I said. “We’re running out of time, and only you can save us.”

  Surprise twisted her face as she stumbled toward me.

  “Listen, I don’t have time to test out your acid magic to see how it works,” I said quickly, “so I need you to use it to melt your way through the door. The murloc spittle could melt through wood and steel, which means it should melt through this metal just the same. Can you do it?”

  Fear froze her in place, but she managed to summon a nod.

  “Good.” I gripped her shoulders, lifted her off the ground, and set her in place right in front of the door. “Do it!”

  I barely heard Rizzala tell Irenya to try melting the spikes to buy us time, because I was too busy trying to concentrate on the acid magic within me. I’d never used the power before, but I had no time for hesitation or second-guessing, not when our lives were on the line. We needed her acid magic, and I couldn’t risk my inexperience slowing down our attempts to melt through the door.

  The moment I tapped into the acid magic, I felt the darkness, fire, and ice shrink back from its corrosive force. My gut churned and the taste of metal filled my mouth, and it felt like every cell in my body was going to melt as I pushed the power through my hand and into Letharia’s body. That terrible destructive force was unlike any of the others. It was inert within me, but when I summoned it, it became a force of devastation that sought to consume anything it touched. That was exactly what we needed to get out of here.

  “Do it!” I shouted to Letharia.

  Twin streams of acid poured from the palms of her hand and splashed across the surface of the door. The instant it touched, a loud sizzling sound filled the air and the stink of burning metal as the acid ate through the bronze. Letharia gasped as the door seemed to turn from solid to liquid in the space of seconds beneath the voracious corrosive magic. Metal dripped away and puddled on the floor, and a two-foot hole opened in the door.

  “Again!” I shouted. I counted heartbeats as I waited for the magic to be restored, and on the seventh, I felt the flood of acidic power surging through my body. Again, the two streams of acidic green liquid splashed onto the door, and the hole widened enough that we could get through.

  “Rizzala, Arieste, Irenya, we need to move now!” I turned to Letharia. “Get through the hole, quickly.”

  The dark-haired woman managed to scramble through the hole in the door without stepping in the pile of melted metal, and Irenya followed her a moment later. As I waited for Arieste to fit her tall body through the opening, I shot a glance at the spikes. They were now three feet apart, and I had to turn sideways to avoid their sharp tips from puncturing my shoulder.

  “Go!” I told Rizzala.

  The dark-skinned woman unslung her pack, threw it into the hole, and leapt through a moment later. Without hesitation, I followed suit. My pack hadn’t even hit the ground when I dove through the melted opening in the bronze door. I could actually feel the tips of the spikes snagging my boots, so I pulled my feet up to my chest as I landed hard on the stone floor beyond. A few seconds later, a loud shrieking of metal and metal echoed through the hole in the door, followed by a thunderous boom of the stone walls crushing together.

  Adrenaline surged through my veins as I pushed myself up to my elbows and looked at the four women around me. Letharia
was staring wide-eyed at the melted door, but Arieste, Irenya, and Rizzala had their eyes fixed on the dark-haired woman.

  I climbed to my feet and turned to Letharia. “You did well,” I told her as I offered her a hand up. “You saved all our asses just now. I won’t speak for the others, but that buys you an awful lot of ‘forgive and forget’ in my book.”

  Letharia stood, shaking, and she flinched as Rizzala stepped up beside her. To my surprise, the warrior woman placed a hand on Letharia’s shoulder.

  “I owe you my life,” she said.

  “We all do,” Arieste added, and Irenya nodded agreement.

  “Perhaps you are not in as much need of protecting as you believe,” Rizzala said. “As dragons, we were alone, knowing everything in the world was a threat. We had to be strong to survive the enemies that surrounded us on all sides. Now that you are human like the rest of us, my hope is that you will come to understand that friends and comrades are the true strength. United, we thrive.”

  The fear faded from Letharia’s eyes, and she gave Rizzala a hesitant smile. “Th-Thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” Arieste said from behind Rizzala. “Never doubt that you have value, even if you do not see it at first.” She shot me a gentle smile. “I’ve come to learn that even the smallest things can make a difference in the right situation. Isn’t that right?” This, she said to Irenya with a wicked grin.

  Irenya’s jaw dropped. “Hey, I’m not that small!” she protested.

  “Aren’t you?” Arieste loomed over the diminutive redhead, a sly smile on her lips.

  The redhead’s’s brow furrowed, but Arieste broke into a bright, cheery laugh.

  “I think it’s one of the best things about you,” she said, and gave Irenya a playful nudge with her hip. “Any more Irenya would just be too much for this world to handle.”

  Irenya’s frown turned into a broad grin. “You know it!”

  A smile spread my own lips. After the tension with Letharia back in the tunnel and our near brush with death, we could use something to lighten the mood. I was happy to see that Irenya and Arieste were getting along in human form as well as dragon. They were both so important to me, and it felt good to see them developing a strong friendship.

  “Come on,” I said as I retrieved my pack and slung it over my shoulder. “Let’s keep moving. I’d like to get a bit deeper into the tunnels before we stop for a meal.”

  As the others geared up to continue, I did some quick calculations in my mind. The mausoleum on the hill had been about three hundred yards from the ocean’s edge, and the four towers of King Dentas’ palace stood about a mile out. I figured we’d covered at least two hundred yards between the skull-shelf corridor and the spike-wall room. We still had a long way to go before we reached the palace, and only the ancient Elmentia knew what lay in our path.

  I took the lead once more, this time with Arieste beside me, Irenya and Letharia in the middle, and Rizzala bringing up the rear. The corridor we were in had more stone shelves lining the wall, but thankfully there were no toothless grinning skulls for decoration. Instead, each shelf bore two stones worn smooth and round by the ebb and flow of the ocean’s tide. One of the stones was white, with a single black rune-looking character painted onto its underside. The other was as black as onyx and featured a rune of white paint.

  “What are they?” I asked Letharia. “What do the stones mean?”

  “Life and death,” the dark-haired woman responded. “According to the tablet, each newborn Elmentian was given a white namestone bearing the true name of their spirit. They would carry the stone with them everywhere they went, until the stones were delivered to the priests upon their death. Then, their initials would be painted upon a black deathstone, and both stones would be placed in this crypt for safekeeping.”

  “They don’t look valuable enough for anyone to steal,” Irenya commented. “I wouldn’t have added them to my hoard, that’s for sure.”

  “It is not thieves that the Elmentians feared,” Letharia said with a shake of her head. “They feared the Goddesses would use their true names to control their spirits, and they would be cursed to walk the depths of the ocean for an eternity.”

  The myth reminded me of our Earth story of Davy Jones or the Flying Dutchman. It seemed people on any world wanted a way to explain death and the afterlife.

  “So every Elmentian ever born had these stones?” Irenya asked.

  “Yes,” Letharia said.

  “No wonder the city sank!” the redhead replied with a little giggle. “The weight of so many stones had to drag it down.”

  I chuckled and beside me Arieste rolled her eyes, though I caught a hint of a smile tugging on her lips. However, a memory of the poison-tipped stone darts from the previous corridor snapped me back to reality. We hadn’t activated any traps yet, but that didn’t mean that we were in the clear. I’d have to stay focused to keep us safe.

  I used the Mark of the Guardian to scan the corridor around me for any magical powers, but I felt nothing. That didn’t set my mind at ease. On the contrary, it made me more wary. The gold gemstone “laser” trap had been the only magical one we’d found, but there had been nearly ten pressure plate-activated missile traps, plus the gear-powered closing walls. It seemed the people of Elmentia had been clever artificers as well as adept in the use of magical abilities.

  I directed a stream of ice magic at the wall in the hopes of activating the runes that would guide us to the king’s palace, but the stone remained as inert and dull as ever. I tried again with fire magic, but still nothing. Nervous tension tightened my shoulders as we continued down the hall. I had to keep the ice magic flowing through my body and ready to activate at a moment’s notice, which took a lot out of me. As Arieste had explained long ago, the magic wanted to manifest itself in the form of solid ice, so I had to expend more energy keeping it active within me without releasing it.

  I could feel my body tiring as we continued down the passage, and much as I hated it, I knew I needed to take a break. Arieste and Nyvea had both cautioned me against overusing magic, and I could feel the wear and tear on my flesh. I gained more control and power with each new magic I added, but the increase in magical “stamina” was incremental rather than exponential. The more I used my enhanced power, the more I risked burn-out.

  To my relief, we reached the end of the corridor without tripping any mechanical traps, and there were no magical traps along our path. I hesitated at the open doorway, even after I sent a stream of fire to light the chamber beyond. After the closing spike wall, I was leery about entering any new room or passage.

  My blast of fire illuminated a square chamber roughly ten yards across, made of the same stone as the rest of the catacombs. Opposite the entrance stood two doors, each identical in every way, and there was nothing to indicate which way we should go.

  “Wait here,” I told the women. “I’m going to sweep the room for any traps.”

  “I will go with you,” Rizzala said.

  “Let me do this,” I told her. “It’s easier to summon an ice shield to protect one person than two.”

  After a moment, she gave a reluctant nod and stepped back.

  I used the Mark of the Guardian to scan the room, but I felt nothing to indicate the presence of any magical traps. My gut tightened as I stepped through the doorway, and I tensed in anticipation of that dreaded click or thunk that indicated a mechanical trap. The tension in my shoulders lessened as I crossed the length of the room without being ambushed by flying missiles or spikes shooting out of the walls. I did two full circuits of the room, but when nothing happened, I turned back to the women.

  “I didn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean we’re totally safe,” I told them. “Let’s be careful where we step and what we do.”

  The women entered, and immediately Arieste and Letharia went toward the two doors at the far end of the room. Rizzala took up a defensive position at the entrance, while Irenya unslung her pack and began rummaging t
hrough it. After a moment, she pulled out a cloth bundle and turned to me with a grin.

  “I think this is as good a place as any to stop for a bite to eat,” she said. She stretched and let out a loud yawn. “Maybe take a little nap as well.”

  I shot a glance at Rizzala. “What do you think?”

  The dark-skinned women pondered a moment, then nodded. “If you have found no traps in this room, perhaps the fiery one’s idea is good.”

  “Fiery one?” Irenya cocked an eyebrow.

  Rizzala grinned. “Is it an inaccurate description?”

  “She’s got you there, Irenya,” I said with a chuckle. “Fits you to a tee.”

  Irenya frowned in mock anger, but after a moment broke into a broad smile. “I know,” she said and shot Rizzala a wink. “I love it!”

  “Ethan, got a moment?” Arieste called over her shoulder.

  “Sure,” I said, and moved to stand beside her. “What’s up?”

  “Look at them, and tell me what you see.” She motioned to the two doors.

  I studied them for a few moments. “They’re identical. Same size, same door handle, even same-colored stone.”

  “And therein lies the problem,” Letharia said. “There is nothing to indicate which way we should go. The tablets say nothing about them, at least not that I can find.” She rubbed her eyes. “I think with a bit of food and rest, I could solve the problem, but right now my mind feels like it’s trying to swim through mud.”

  I turned to Arieste, and the platinum blonde nodded. “I’m exhausted, too, and I’m sure the others are, even if Rizzala’s too tough to show it.” She stepped close and placed a hand on my cheek. “And I see the fatigue in your eyes as well, Ethan. You’ve used a lot of magic, more than you ever have before. You need rest as much as we do.”

  “But what about the doors?” I asked. “We need to figure out how to get through if we’re going to reach Curym.”

  “They have stood in these catacombs for hundreds of years,” Arieste told me. “They will still be here after a few hours of sleep. You need to take care of yourself.”