‘We saw the one at the bandit camp,’ Mimi said. ‘We don’t want to be anywhere near that.’
‘This one is going to be bigger.’
‘Oh.’ Mimi glanced at the others. ‘We’ll stay under cover until it’s over.’
‘Good idea. Uh, I’m probably going to have to banter with Cadorian and maybe Habarus before I drop the bomb.’
‘What?’ Aneshti asked. ‘Are you crazy? Just get in there and fry them!’
‘That kind of thing never works out. I’ll give it a go, but there’s going to be banter. I’ve been trying to work out what I should say just before the explosion since we got here.’
‘This anime thing of yours is going to get you, and everyone else, killed at this rate.’
‘It’ll be fine, assuming I don’t screw it up somehow. Let’s get moving.’
Habarus was down to two sacrifices when they got back to the caldera. Kana took in the scene and prayed that there was still a ritual to perform after the last heart was burned. A ring of dracs surrounded the middle of the caldera where the skull and, presumably, the heart were. She could not see the heart. She guessed the angle she was looking at hid it behind the skull. The skull, however, was visible and glowing . That could not be a good thing. Kana was going to have to break through the ring of dracs, which meant that summoning up the power for her spell beforehand would be dangerous. If she lost control of the spell, she could set it off in the wrong place and mess the whole thing up.
‘I knew there would be banter,’ Kana muttered. Then, without saying another word, she started sprinting toward the circle of dracs.
It was not a huge caldera. It was maybe two hundred metres across, but that was still a bigger number than Kana wanted right now. It took her about ten seconds to reach the ring of dracs.
One of them heard her and turned to see what the sound was, but she was barging past him before he could really react. She continued her mad charge into the circle as the commotion of her entry made Cadorian turn to look. He smiled.
Time slowed and Kana got a chance to see what was happening in horrifying detail as her adrenaline high reached its peak. The heart was there, a lump of black flesh hidden under the frill at the back of the skull, and it was beating . You could see it vibrate as the dead muscles clenched and relaxed. Habarus threw the last of the drac hearts onto a brazier beside him. There was a flare of blueish flame and the ex-owner of that heart collapsed onto the rock. Bright, blue light flared in the eye sockets of the dragon’s skull.
Cadorian drew one of his swords as Kana skidded to a halt, and time decided that it should operate at normal speed.
‘You’re too late,’ Cadorian said. ‘Serpens is rising. The ritual is complete and there is nothing you can do to stop it. There was never anything you could do to stop it.’
‘Says the man coming toward me with a drawn sword,’ Kana replied.
Despite what Cadorian was saying, Habarus was still chanting something or other. The ritual was not complete. Yet. ‘It’s not over until the fat lady sings.’
Cadorian stopped advancing. ‘What fat lady?’
‘It’s a saying from… Never mind that.’ Behind him, the skull lifted as though it was trying to rise into the air. Something, a misty presence, began forming in the air. It was huge and indistinct, but it looked a bit like a dragon. A dragon far bigger than the one Kana had killed. Serpens was rising. ‘I’m not going to let you destroy this world. I just got to like it and I haven’t got to rub the Master’s nose in the fact that he screwed up summoning you.’
The misty form was solidifying rapidly and both the skull and the heart were now rising up to take their places within it. Cadorian stepped forward again, raising his sword. ‘You’ll never get to do that, and I’m genuinely sorry about that.’
A wave of fatigue swept over Kana as she drained all the energy she had to spare to power her spell. She had come up with any number of ideas about what she should say at this point, but they suddenly felt like too much effort. Cadorian was smiling at her as he prepared to slice her open and she doubted she had the energy to dodge the blow. Only one thing came to mind.
‘Screw you, elf boy.’ Kana raised her hand and the red circle spinning slowly in her palm flared into life. ‘Firebomb,’ she said in weary tones.
And then the world exploded.
And when the light died away, Kana found herself on her hands and knees, watching as Habarus made his way toward her, a dagger in his hand. The skull was no longer glowing, and it had fallen to the ground on its side. The heart was burning. Flames enveloped the dead flesh and thick, black smoke rose into the air above it.
There was no sign at all of Cadorian and it seemed like the other cultists were dead or unconscious. Kana was not sure what had happened to the dracs, but there seemed to be a lot of screaming going on. Habarus had, however, survived and he seemed just a little annoyed.
‘You’ll pay for that,’ the lich hissed. ‘I’ll–’
‘Oh, get a life,’ Kana said. She shifted to sit down and wait for him to get close enough to use his knife. At least she would be comfortable when she died. She giggled. ‘Get a life. Get it?
Because you’re a lich. You lost. You should make a run for it while you still can.’
‘Not until I’ve ripped your heart out of your chest. No one defies the will of Lord Satan and survives. No one! You’ll–’
‘Ice Missile!’ It was Aneshti’s voice and it was accompanied by the passage of a large sphere of blueish ice through the air over Kana’s head. It hit the lich in the chest and the sound of splintering bone was horrific. Habarus was catapulted through the air, his body falling apart as it went. By the time the fragments were coming to a land on the basalt, there was nothing much left of him aside from bone shards and torn, desiccated skin.
‘Too much monologuing,’ Kana muttered. ‘Gets them every time.’
‘Liches,’ Aneshti said as she rushed up to stand protectively over Kana, ‘are highly susceptible to blunt force trauma.’
‘Good to know. What about the others? The dracs?’
‘Unconscious or rolling around in pain. Burns really hurt. Rain, Mimi, and Reyanna are taking care of them.’
‘Sorry I can’t help. I feel like I just ran a marathon.’
Aneshti looked at the burning heart and the dead skull. Of the misty shape which had been forming, there was no sign. Serpens was gone. Again. ‘I think you did enough. Let the rest of us take some of the load.’
Kana let herself fall backward. The rock floor of the caldera was not exactly comfortable, but after the enormous heat Kana had subjected it to, it was warm. ‘I am not going to argue. If anything wants to kill me, you’ll have to do the objecting for me.’
‘Seems reasonable. You saved the world, I think you’re allowed a little nap.’
Chapter Sixteen: Home
Dragonspur Mountains, 1 st Thokarte 6024.
Kana had suspected the caldera would get dark quickly and it did.
She stood watching the bonfire she had made out of corpses. There was no way they were going to bury that many bodies, so they had piled them all together and Kana had used her magic to set fire to them all.
‘What I don’t get,’ Rain said, ‘is why the heart burned. I mean, if it was that easy to get rid of it back in Cadorian’s time, they’d have done it then, yeah? And it survived millennia in a damp cave, but then it burns here. I don’t get it. Please don’t say something about magic or narrative causality.’
‘No idea,’ Kana replied. ‘If you want a guess, it became vulnerable because it was being used in the ritual. Until then, it couldn’t be harmed.’ She grinned. ‘In… Uh, that’s going to take too long to explain. There’s a kind of game back home where you play at being an adventurer in a fictional world. They have these things called “boss fights,” and we just did one. The weird thing is that, often, the boss is basically invulnerable until you do something to make him vulnerable. So, this invulnerable monster keeps something
around his lair which you can use to make him vulnerable.’
‘That’s… stupid.’
‘Certainly is. I guess this is like that. Serpens had to become vulnerable in order to return. We exploited that and saved the day.’
‘You exploited that and saved the day.’
Kana shrugged. ‘I would never have got here without you guys. And I’d be dead now if you hadn’t been here. I call it a group effort.’ She paused, looking up at the darkening sky. ‘And speaking of the group…’ Turning, she headed back through one of the doors in the side of the caldera.
‘Where are we going?’ Rain asked.
‘I made a decision.’
‘Okay…’
‘I made a decision and it’s time to act on it. We’re going to see Constance.’
While Rain and Kana had been finishing up with the bodies, Mimi, Aneshti, and Reyanna had been taking care of Constance. They had taken her from the table she had been chained to, washed her body, and dressed her in one of her spare dresses. Then they had laid her out on a bed in one of the better rooms cut into the mountain. She would have looked like a sleeping princess waiting for her prince, except that they were usually blonde and did not have cuts and bruises all over their bodies.
Kana walked into the room, tugging the leather pouch from her belt. Opening it, she took out the ring given to her by the mysterious stranger, Sakka, in Arabar.
‘Wait!’ Mimi said, grabbing Kana’s hands. ‘That’s the ring that’s going to get you home. I want Constance back, but you–’
‘Can’t go back,’ Kana said.
‘Of course you can,’ Aneshti said. ‘You just have to wish it and that ring will make it true.’
‘First, that’s a theory, not a certainty. It might work. It might do nothing. It’s not even a certainty that I can go back.’
‘If it’s possible, that ring can do it. You’ll just wake up from your coma and be back with your family.’
‘Knowing how to function here, not there. I’ve been here for years, Aneshti. I’ve missed so much school. And I’ve just been on an adventure to save the world. Do you think I can really just give this up and go back to being a perfectly normal teenager…
I’m not even a teenager! My birthday was last week and I totally forgot. I’m the hero of my very own epic fantasy here. There I’m an unemployable twenty-something.’ Kana looked down at the body on the bed. ‘And one of my friends gave her life to get me here, which won’t do. I wish that Constance was alive and well.’
There was, obviously, a light show. Constance’s body began to shine with blue light which turned white as it brightened to the point that everyone had to look away. Then the light subsided and Constance said, ‘Okay, I’m sure they killed me, but I seem to be alive.’
Mimi let go of Kana’s hands to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘Kana used her wishing ring to bring you back.’
Constance sat up on the bed and stared at Kana. ‘The ring that was going to take you home?’
Kana smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m already home,’ she said.
#
About the Author
I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.
Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because
some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.
I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in.
I wrote science fiction when I was playing Traveller. I wrote
“high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons . I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes . I still love the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.
Recently I took the big step of quitting my day job and taking up full-time writing. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, J.D. Robb, and Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.
For More Information
Take a look at the Witches and Ray-guns blog: http://
witchesandrayguns.wordpress.com
Links to book vendors and other information can be found there, along with a view on what I’m up to and when it might happen.
Other Books by this Author
The Thaumatology Series
Thaumatology 101
Demon’s Moon
Legacy
Dragon’s Blood
Disturbia
Hammer of Witches
Eagle’s Shadow
Ancient
Dragonfall
The Other Side of Hell
For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll
Vengeance
Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe Tales from High Towers’ Study
Tales from the Dubh Linn
The Aneka Jansen Books
Steel Beneath The Skin
The Cold Steel Mind
Steel Heart
The Winter War
The Greatest Heights of Honour
The Lowest Depths of Shame
Hope
The Ultrahuman Books
Ugly
Shadows
Hunting Mink
Frostburn
Guardian
True Dark
Liberty
Royal Flush
The Unobtainium Books
Kate on a Hot Tin Roof
The Reality Hack Books
Reality Hack
The Fox Meridian Books
Fox Hunt
Inescapable
DeathWeb
Criminal Minds
Emergence
The Ghost in the Doll
Eden Burning
Dominance
The Hellas Find
Dancing with The Devil
The Princeps Venator Books
Hunter’s Kiss
Be My Valentine
Blood Magic
The Gunwitch Books
Gunwitch: Rebirth
The Children of Zanar Series
The Zanari Inheritance
The Misfits Series
Misfit Magic
Misfit Witchcraft
The Sondra Blake Series
The Vanity Case
The Shil the Huntress Books
The Eyes of the Huntress
The Twilight Empress Trilogy
The Iron Princess
The Last Emperor – coming when it’s ready Other
The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World
Death’s Handmaiden – coming early 2020
Document Outline
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The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World Page 31
