Wizard Gigantic (Intergalactic Wizard Scout Chronicles Book 9)

by Rodney Hartman

  Still speaking out loud, Jeena said, “Can’t you give me more help than that?”

  The shimmering air solidified long enough for Jeena to make out the face of the Lady. The green eyes of the Lady no longer twinkled. “Yes, I can. I have a spell you must learn. It is a spell I learned before I was sent to retrieve the three seed parts stolen by the demons. Open your mind. I will teach it to you now.”

  With little choice, Jeena relaxed. A tickle began at the back of her mind and worked its way forward. The knowledge of a spell came to her. “What does it do? Will this help me find another yellow gem?”

  The Lady stared at Jeena for a couple of heartbeats. “Yes. The spell will open an access point in a time-bubble.”

  “What time-bubble?” Jeena asked. “There are no time-bubbles in Silverton.”

  “No, there are not,” agreed the Lady. “You must go somewhere and do what needs to be done.”

  Jeena could just make out the track of a tear running down the Lady’s cheeks and sensed the Lady was about to leave. “Wait. I need more information than that. What do you want me to do?”

  “Have your battle computer set up a meeting with Rick and the leaders in the physical galaxy for this evening. I am confident that you will have your answers by then. The only advice I can give you is not to attempt to change the past. That would result in the destruction of everything you hold dear. You must let our Rick go. You will have your mission, and he will have his. There is no other way.”

  Then the Lady was gone.

  “Lady! Please! I have more questions.”

  Jeena looked around. All she could see were the foresters staring at her. At her glance, they quickly went back to their raking. She looked overhead at the limbs of the tree. The children had stopped their game of tag and were watching her. She noticed the blonde hair of her adopted sister, Matisa, among the children. Her niece, Terika, stood next to her on one of the larger of the tree’s limbs. Terika gave a half-smile and waved.

  With a half-smile of her own, Jeena returned her niece’s wave before turning away from the tree and heading in the direction of the library. There is nothing more for me here, she thought as she contemplated the Lady’s words. For the first time in my life, I fear going to the library. What will I find that could bring tears to the Lady?

  “I calculate you will need to go to the library to find out,” said Danny. “I monitored the conversation with your Lady. Do you want me to schedule a meeting with Rick and the others as she suggested?”

  Jeena wasn’t sure. Seeing her bondmate again, even in the form of a hologram, was something she wouldn’t mind doing, but she had nothing new to tell him or the others. She let her mind touch the ring on her finger and the enhanced link between them. Even separated by dimensions, she could sense a feeling of boredom from her bondmate.

  “Rick must be in another meeting,” she thought. “He hates meetings.”

  “I calculate a hundred percent probability that you are correct,” said Danny. “My question remains. Do you want me to schedule a meeting with Rick and the other leaders in the physical dimension?”

  An image of the tears on the Lady’s face flashed in Jeena’s mind. She looked ahead and spotted the top of the library, fearing what she would find there. “Yes,” she told Danny. “Set the meeting for one hour from now.” A feeling of surety came over her. “Either we will have our answers by then or we won’t. The time for waiting is over. The time for action is now.”

  “Compliance. I have contacted the central computer. The meeting is scheduled. I calculate you will soon have your answers.”

  Jeena squared her shoulders and set a brisk pace for the library and the task the Lady had given her. “I guess we shall soon see,” she said as much to herself as to Danny. “One way or the other, we shall soon see.”

  Chapter 6 – Man in Black

  _____________________

  The alarms continued clanging as Glory grabbed her shield from where she’d leaned it against the wall and took off running back through the tunnels without waiting for her fiancée.

  Used to being left behind, Amir picked up Glory’s sledgehammer and ran after her. Although his bride-to-be was wearing chainmail and carrying a shield while he wore only normal clothing, he lost sight of her in no time. He ran down the tunnel as fast as his legs would carry him. The light-globe strapped to his head cast indistinct shadows on the tunnel floor as it bounced with his rhythem. He stumbled on a loose stone but caught himself on the wall. By the time he recovered his footing, even the dim glow from Glory’s headlamp had disappeared.

  Amir continued running for all he was worth. He turned right at the first intersection and then right at the next. Still he caught no sight of Glory. He made it all the way to the lava crack in the tunnel floor when the clanging of the alarms stopped. The sudden silence gave him hope that all was well, but something inside told him it wasn’t. Reaching deep into his inner strength, he jumped over the crack with a good arm’s-length to spare and continued running.

  It must be a false alarm. That’s got to be the reason the alarms stopped. No one could get this deep in the tunnels without being sighted by one of the king’s patrols. Maybe one of the shamans’ traps malfunctioned. That’s got to be it.

  Malfunction or not, Amir gripped the sledgehammer tighter and ran for all he was worth. The stirring of some unknown fear within his soul left him little choice.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The sound of crashing thunder in the distance echoed through the tunnel, making him wish for the clanging of the alarms instead. The unknown fear inside him struggled for release.

  Those explosions were no malfunction. Something’s wrong.

  Amir ran faster. By the time the glow of the overhead light-globes in the main tunnel came into view, his chest felt as if it was on fire. He made it to the opening leading to the vault level and stepped through, turning to the right. The Sanctuary Vault was just ahead, and its massive bronze doors were still open wide.

  They should’ve been closed by now. Where’s Stoneheart and Rockcracker?

  More than that, he wondered where Glory was. Then he saw her. She was cradling the limp body of a giantess in her arms. A large blast-horn gripped in the body’s hand told him who it was—Stoneheart.

  Glory looked up as Amir approached, tears streaming down her face. “She’s dead.” She pointed at another body partially hidden by the vault’s doors. “So is Rockcracker.”

  Amir ran over to the second body and turned the male giant over as gently as he could. Rockcracker’s head lolled unnaturally from side to side. Amir fought back tears as he turned to Glory. “His neck’s broken.”

  Glory nodded. “So is Stoneheart’s.”

  Glancing through the vault’s doors, Amir’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. Shattered pieces of the yellow Heart-stone were scattered from one end of the vault to the other. The dull slivers of shattered yellow gem barely reflected the glow from his light-globe. What little light they reflected reminded Amir of tears running down a crying child’s cheek in the light of a quarter-moon.

  Amir forced himself to look away from the pieces of yellow gem. He looked at Glory to give her the bad news. “The…the Heart-stone,” he said barely able to get out the words. “It’s been destroyed.”

  Glory’s eyes grew hard and deadly. She reached over Stoneheart’s body and grabbed the dead giantess’s shield. Scooting the shield across the floor in Amir’s direction, she picked up her own sword and shield before jumping to her feet. “Come on! We’ve got to find whoever did this and stop them.”

  “We?” Amir said as he wiped something wet from his eye. “How? Where?”

  Glory took off running in the direction of the nearest stairwell without replying.

  With no other choice but to follow, Amir grabbed Stoneheart’s shield and Glory’s sledgehammer before running after his giantess. He didn’t have to go far.

  In the center of the tunnel, just past the entrance to the stairs,
were four more bodies surrounded by large pools of dark blood. Two of the bodies were males and two were females. The head of one of the bodies moved.

  Amir recognized Windjammer’s dark hair. Her chest was covered in blood, with more oozing out of a small hole in her chainmail with every beat of her heart.

  Dropping her sword and shield, Glory knelt next to the wounded giantess. Tearing off the scarf from around her neck, she placed the bundle of wool against the giantess’s wound.

  Kneeling beside his betrothed, Amir ripped off his blouse and added it to the already blood-soaked scarf of his fiancée and pressed down.

  Windjammer groaned in pain. The mortally wounded giantess opened her eyes and focused on Glory.

  “Who did this?” asked Glory as she lifted the giantess’s head and placed it in her lap.

  Windjammer’s voice was barely a whisper, but it was loud enough to make out in the silence of the tunnel. “One of the small ones did it. A human male, I think.” She coughed. A trickle of blood ran out the corner of her mouth. “He took us by surprise. Dressed in black. Red eyes. Glowing red sword. We tried to stop him, but…but—” The giantess coughed again, spitting up a mouthful of bright red blood speckled with bubbles.

  “It’s all right,” Amir said trying to console his friend. He pressed harder on the blood-soaked blouse and scarf. The flow of blood didn’t slow. If anything, it sped up. “We’ll find a healer. Don’t talk. We’ll—”

  “Where did the human go?” asked Glory. “Which way?”

  Windjammer raised her hand slightly and pointed at a side tunnel ten paces down the hall.

  Amir noticed small, red footprints on the tunnel floor leading from the pools of blood in the direction of the side tunnel.

  With nary a word, Glory gently laid the wounded giantess’s head back on the polished black granite floor. She picked up her shield and sword and stood. “We’ve got to stop whoever it is.”

  Torn, Amir looked at Glory and then back at the dying giantess.

  “Go,” whispered Windjammer. “Tell Glory I was only joking about…about…” She coughed twice, spitting up rivulets of blood. Her eyes closed and her chest stopped moving.

  Amir wanted to scream his agony at the loss of another friend, but the sight of Glory heading in the direction of the side tunnel without him gave him a strength he didn’t know he had. Grabbing up his shield and his fiancée’s sledgehammer, he nodded a final goodbye to Windjammer and the others before standing.

  Something, maybe the mountain itself, told Amir that his bride-to-be was running in the wrong direction. “Glory! No! We can’t catch up with him that way. The tunnel curves around. We need to take the stairs.”

  Glory slid to a halt and glanced back. “The stairs? But the human—”

  “Trust me,” Amir said. “There’s a shortcut on the next level. We can get ahead of whoever it is and come back down. It’s the only way.”

  The giantess hesitated only a second before spinning around and running back toward him. “Go! Don’t wait for me.”

  Leaving the bodies of his friends on the tunnel floor was almost more than Amir could bear, but he forced himself to do what needed to be done. He ran to the stairwell’s entrance and hit the stairs, taking them two at a time. Glory was by his side before he reached the next level, then passed him up and ran through the exit, into the tunnel proper, and took a hard right. More used to sitting in a library and reading than he was to physical exercise, Amir’s chest quickly began burning. He ignored the pain and followed the giantess.

  Within two hundred paces, they came to another set of stairs. Glory headed down with Amir close on her heels. As soon as they got to the exit for the lower floor, Amir heard shouts from the adjacent tunnel. Stepping through, he spotted four of the king’s guards along with Shaman Petoris. The corporal of the guard was forming up his small team into a shield wall.

  Shaman Petoris glanced over as Glory and Amir entered the tunnel proper. “Good,” said the shaman. “You’re armed. I sensed you coming. We’re going to need all the help we can get. Form a shield wall with the others. One of my tracker spells is following the invader. He’s close. I’m in contact with Shaman Blackroot. The king and he are on their way now with more guards. We have to hold this tunnel long enough for them to get here.”

  The four king’s guards raised their shields and spears, facing the direction of the Sanctuary Vault. Glory joined them, raising her own shield and sword.

  When Amir failed to move, Glory nodded to her left. “Lock your shield with mine. Do it like we practiced during our training. We can’t let whoever murdered Windjammer, Stoneheart, and the others get past us.”

  Embarrassed by his lack of action, Amir ran to Glory’s side and overlapped his shield with hers. With no other weapon at his disposal, he raised the sledgehammer over his shoulder and waited.

  The only noise in the tunnel except for the labored breathing of the guards, Glory, and him was the sound of Shaman Petoris chanting words Amir heard and quickly forgot. A wall of shimmering energy formed to Amir’s front, stretching from one side of the tunnel to the other. He heard the shaman chant a second spell. Glancing over his shoulder, he was just in time to see the shaman turn translucent before disappearing completely.

  “Invisibility spell,” whispered Glory. “He’s also got a defensive shield to our front.”

  The sound of approaching feet echoed in the tunnel.

  “Hold your line,” growled the corporal through clenched teeth. “Whoever’s coming is going to be in for a surprise when they get here.”

  Amir hoped so, but something inside told him otherwise.

  The sound of footsteps drew closer until a human-sized figure dressed in strange black armor appeared. A glowing red visor covered the human’s eyes. Instead of a sword or spear, the human carried a bundle of four metal tubes strapped together by some unseen material or spell. A line of shiny pieces of coppery metal ran from the back of the tubes into a pack slung across the man’s shoulders.

  Amir had never seen a human up close before. He’s so small, he thought as he started to lower his sledgehammer.

  “Hold the line,” snapped Glory. “He’s already killed six guards that we know of.”

  Tightening his grip on his shield, Amir raised the sledgehammer above his shoulder.

  The black-suited human seemed to point the bundle of tubes directly at him.

  What are those things? Amir wondered. They look a little like blowguns.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Peals of thunder coming faster than Amir could count blasted through the tunnel as balls of red fire shot out of the rotating tubes. The balls of fire exploded against Shaman Petoris’s defensive shield, adding to the bedlam. The shaman’s shield held.

  “Hold the line,” shouted the corporal. “His magic can’t get past our shield. The king’s on his way. Hold the line.”

  The booms stopped as the black-suited human lowered whatever kind of weapon he held.

  Amir sensed something reach out from the human and begin drilling against the shaman’s defensive shield. Although he hadn’t yet started shaman training, he was still a seeker. He could sense magic. The something reaching out from the human wasn’t magic, but Amir sensed it was just as deadly.

  It’s almost like it’s pure Power, Amir thought. That’s not possible. Power has to be turned into magic before it can be used. Everyone knows that.

  Magic or not, whatever the something was continued to drill against the shaman’s shield. The shield began to crack. Before long, a fist-sized opening appeared in the shimmering wall. As soon as it did, the black-armored human raised his four-tubed weapon.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Three balls of red energy shot through the opening in the shield.

  Amir heard a scream behind him. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see a now visible Shaman Petoris’s crash against the back wall and fall to the floor. Massive amounts of blood began pooling around the shaman’s body.

&n
bsp; “Amir!” shouted Glory.

  Amir turned back to the front. The shaman’s shield was no longer there, having disappeared at the magic user’s death. The human was pointing his weapon at the line of guards.

  “We’ve got to stop him,” Glory shouted as she rushed forward with sword raised.

  “Hold the li—” shouted the corporal.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Red fire spewed out of the human’s tubes, blasting into the line of guards.

  Amir rushed forward next to his betrothed and raised his shield in an attempt to protect her from the human’s weapon. Balls of red energy went through his shield, tearing it apart as they did. He heard a feminine scream and caught a glimpse of long brown hair mixed with splotches of bright red. A ball of red energy slashed across the side of his head.

  Then blackness became Amir’s only world.

  * * *

  Pain racked Amir’s body, making him shrink back into the night. The dark and the nothingness that went with it were comforting. He instinctively knew pain was the only reward consciousness could provide. As he struggled to return to the dark, something wrapped around him and forced him back into the pain and a bright light. No matter how hard he struggled to return to the painlessness of the dark, the something wouldn’t allow him. It was too strong. As he drew near the light, he heard voices. The darkness faded into the background as the light became his universe.

  Resigned to his fate, Amir took stock of his surroundings. He felt the coolness of polished marble beneath his bare back. I’m lying down, he thought. He moved his right hand. It was wet and sticky. He moved his left hand. It was also wet and sticky. The wetness extended all across his back. What am I lying in?

  Opening his eyes, Amir saw two bright blue eyes surrounded by wrinkled skin and scraggily white hair staring back at him.

  “Ah,” said the ancient giant. “You’re back among the living. I’d about given up hope. I’m sorry my healer skills aren’t what they used to be.”