by Dante King
As he executed this evasive maneuver, I used Garth’s Harpoon Stun spell to snag a female bearmancer who had handily managed to teleport up onto the wall using her bear’s mana and was slashing around her with one of those wavy-bladed Flamberge swords. Her bear was causing havoc with claws of bright blue light, carving through armor of the terrified soldiers atop the wall as easily as if it had been made out of baloney.
The harpoon hit her in the back of the neck and, as Noctis turned, I looped the pale pink magical chain around her throat and pulled it taught. The woman was yanked off her feet as we took off and dragged up into the air. Her feet kicked futilely as Noctis and I soared low across the rooftops of Hrímdale. With a savage jerk, I pulled the enchanted chain so tight that it cut right through skin, muscle, and bone and decapitated the woman. Her head tumbled away, looking quite surprised, while her body spiraled through the air and smashed through the shuttered windows of a bakery.
I swept low over the town, making sure that none of the enemy had yet breached it. As I did, Elenari passed me on Gharmon. The elf’s red hair was flying behind her like a tail of flame, and her green eyes shone with the light of combat.
“Saya just told me that they’ve tunneled through in places!” she called as Noctis slowed and I released the harpoon spell so that the rose-colored chain vanished.
“That will be those bears we saw excavating under the walls,” Noctis said to me.
“Follow me, Mike!” Elenari said. “Come on, there’s fighting in the street!”
Noctis swung around and zoomed after Elenari on her Emerald Dragon.
There was, indeed, fighting in the street when we arrived. Lots of it.
Rebels and loyalists clashed in the narrow confines of the roadways and side alleys that made up Hrímdale, screaming and shouting and cursing at one another.
Arrows zipped and whined around us as we came into land. They were so thick in the air, that I banished Noctis from my Leg Slot. I already had him placed my Chest Slot. My body was protected by the sleek, black armor that absorbed kinetic damage and transformed it into offensive Chaos Magic, which could then be fired at a chosen target through a conduit set into the breast plate. In the middle of the gleaming sable breastplate was something like a pellucid partition. It was the same shape as the onyx crystal hanging around my neck, only larger. It was partly filled with a swirling, silver fog.
I dropped the last thirty feet as Noctis vanished from under me.
I landed hard on something soft. Looking down, I saw that it had been an enemy archer. He was dead or, at least, heading that way. One of my feet had crushed the back of his skull like a fucking eggshell.
“Talk about putting your foot in it,” I said under my breath, and then I got to work.
No matter how good a fighter I was, no matter how alert I stayed, no matter that I had dragon-enhanced reactions and strength, I still received the occasional random blow from enemy and friend alike. The Onyx armor took the blows with ease and slowly transformed that received energy into usable mana.
I switched between Pan, Wayne, and Garth, using each dragon’s abilities as needed and as chance allowed.
Pan’s Lightning Speed spell enabled me to dart through a mess of scrambling loyalists and systematically knife about half a dozen savage and desperate rebels. By the time that I slid my knife into the ear of the last enemy fighter, the first one was only just realizing he was dead and slumping to his knees.
I ducked as one of the three bearmancers that Queen Frami had elected to receive the Transfusion Ceremony lashed out with a sledgehammer and hit one of her foes so hard that he went through the wall of a fisherman’s shack. She bellowed with delight at the extra power that the Ceremony had bestowed on her and hurled the twenty-pound hammer at a dwarfish woman heading toward her, catching her right in the kisser and pulverizing her head in a burst of gore.
I removed Pan from the Head Slot so I wouldn’t drain too much mana with Lighting Speed and channeled Garth into the Right Arm Slot, which gave me the ability to summon that handy-dandy automatic crossbow.
The lethal little device clicked and kicked in my hand as I popped out around the corner of a thin street and nailed an elven rebel to the side of a house. I turned my head as a crossbow quarrel whispered past the end of my nose, then shot the bowmen through the throat in return, causing him to topple from a roof and fall into a horse trough with a splash.
A door to my right burst open, and a hefty figure careened out of it and tackled me around the waist. It was a strange tree-like creature. Almost like an ent, but man-sized, with hair like the head of a broccoli and shining brown eyes.
It was strong too. When I smashed its head through a solid pine hitching post outside of a chandler’s shop, it just grunted and hit me in the chest with a backhand that sent me flipping backward.
My Onyx Armor soaked up the power of the blow, and I adjusted in midair and was able to land nimbly on my feet.
“Who are you, then?” I asked. I was mildly surprised that the walking tree had landed a blow on a dragonmancer that might have hurt considerably if not for the armor I was wearing.
The treeman screeched, a strange modulating cry and stumped toward me.
“Are you one of those guys whose bark is worse than his bite?” I quipped. “Get it? Whose bark is worse than—”
I leaned backward out of the way of a right overhand punch that would have taken a mortal man’s head off his shoulders.
Garth’s supernatural automatic crossbow was still in my hand, and I plugged a few bolts into the treeman’s kneecaps, but that only seemed to piss him off more.
A dangerous front kick made me step back, but I blocked the next punch with my forearm and then struck out with a roundhouse that flung the treeman sideways. He smashed through the wall of a stone pig pen. The pig ran off squealing indignantly.
The treeman got unsteadily to its feet and charged at me, with its green head down. I spun at the last second, grabbing the tree by its tunic. I dragged him around in a circle, building up momentum before I tossed him into the searing orange heart of a forge fire. He screamed for half a second before going silent as the flames consumed him.
I moved out into a square where chaos ruled.
A bunch of loyalists had been hemmed into the covered fishmarket by two bearmancers sitting atop their monstrous ursine steeds. The bearmancers were moving slowly in, corralling the soldiers back toward the far wall.
With the relative hammering that I had taken from Treebeard’s angry cousin, my Onyx Armor’s mana reserve was full and ready to be used. So, not to be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I unleashed the beam of pent-up Chaos Magic.
The spell, a beam of sizzling monochromatic Chaos Magic blasted a section of a massive support joist apart in a burst of silvery-sable mist. The falling roof must have weighed five tons. It crushed down onto the bearmancers and their rides as they turned to see where the blast of magic had come from. Wood, slate tiles, and iron support work rained down, pinning them and inflicting heavy damage. They were bearmancers, though, and I could see that they were stirring under the rubble.
“All of you, get your thumbs out of your asses and attack!” I bellowed at the stunned soldiers I had just saved.
The warriors didn’t need a second invitation. With murderous cries, they fell on bears and mancers alike, hacking and stabbing with every weapon they had.
I had not moved far after leaving this grisly scene when I was thrown off balance by a deep, resounding booming roar that echoed through my chest cavity and set my ribs to vibrating.
“What the hell was that?” I muttered.
“Fyzos!” Wayne supplied from somewhere in the back of my head.
I darted through an alleyway. I paused briefly to take care of a couple of water nymphs crouched behind barrels. They were firing crossbows at some loyalists holed up in an apothecary’s shop. I snapped the neck of one, wrenched the crossbow from the other, and swiped the taut string so hard and fast across her
throat that I severed her artery. Blood sprayed across my chest as I kicked the dying rebel away.
I came around the corner just in time to see the honey-colored Force Dragon swoop in and land heavily in the middle of a mess of mud and bodies that must have once been a little square or park.
The rhinoceros-sized dragon landed hard, and Tamsin cartwheeled off his back with her spear at the ready, her teeth bared as she flew at a bearmancer that I hadn’t noticed.
While Tamsin engaged with the bearmancer, Fyzos pulled back his head, aimed at a cluster of renegade soldiers who’d come charging into the square, and let loose with a deep, reverberating roar like the one that had just rattled my bones.
The bandits, standing only ten or so feet from the dragon when he let rip, burst apart like half a dozen ripe tomatoes. Blood and viscera misted the air. Organs, limbs, and miscellaneous chunks of flesh thudded down around us.
Tamsin, through her bond with the Force Dragon, must have had a resilience to the sonic waves produced by Fyzos. The bearmancer was sent tumbling away from her, while her war-bear was pushed backward, its massive paws slipping in the thick mud.
Tamsin sprang at the downed bearmancer, but the bear lunged toward her. The four-legged beast’s mouth opened up wide, as wide as an anaconda’s might had it been as big as the bear.
Tamsin was forced to dodge aside and threw her spear into the gaping maw of the war-bear. The spear struck home, punching through the bear’s head and out the back.
The bearmancer howled with grief and swung an axe at Tamsin who, unarmed and out of position, was basically at the mercy of the other woman.
I put Noctis into my Right Arm Slot and fired a quick little Shadow Sphere at the woman, aiming for her axe arm. My shot missed but, thankfully, hit the axe instead, and it disappeared in a burst of black and silver mist.
The bearmancer snarled and jumped on Tamsin. The two women went down in the muck, rolling over each other as they fought for dominance.
I was just about to make my way over to help Tamsin further when an echoing cry came to my ears.
“Mike! Mike!”
It was Hana. She sounded like she was up to her eyebrows in trouble.
“You good?” I called to Tamsin, who was currently pinned with her back to the ground and the bearmancer’s hands around her throat.
Tamsin squirmed and kicked out and the bearmancer was propelled into the air like she had been shot from a cannon. She smashed through the second-floor window of a bowyer’s shop and disappeared.
“Oh yeah,” Tamsin said, her white smile flashing through the mud that now plastered her red-skinned face. “Oh yeah. Me and this bitch have only just gotten started.”
“Good, because I’ve got to run,” I said.
“Off with you then,” the hobgoblin said and launched herself into the air and through the destroyed window.
I sprinted down the streets, making use of my dragon-strength to throw obstructions out of the way.
I sent a two-wheeled cart flipping through the roof of a hovel, taking out some enemy bowmen. Cart and men fell through the roof in a cloud of dust and thatch.
I used my Blink ability to short-range teleport through a tumult of fighters that busted out through the doors of a large barn. They were hacking and yelling and stabbing and the confusion would have taken me too long to fight my way through.
Charging along a road occupied only by the dead or dying and heading toward Hana’s cries for help, I was suddenly accosted by a group of two traitors; a dwarf and some blue-skinned asshole.
“No time, no time,” I hissed as I pelted toward them like a runaway horse.
I grabbed up a hayfork that was stuck into a pile of horse manure as I sprinted along the road. It felt light as a feather in my hand, as easy to wield as a willow switch.
I ran the blue-skinned guy through with my rustic weapon almost by accident, so fast was I running and so quickly did I meet the foe. He looked down at the four shit-covered prongs sticking out from his gut and then up at me.
“Yeah, your day’s not likely to get much better, pal,” I said and lashed out with a kick. He flew off the end of my pitchfork and catapulted backward into the dwarf behind, sending both tumbling away like they were two leaves caught up in a gale.
The panting breath of two more rebels arriving on the scene came to my ears.
I twisted, the pitchfork moving so fast in my hand that it appeared to bend around my body as I spun it around my waist. It cut through the two newcomers, spilling the guts of one across the dirt, while the second, taller insurgent merely had the tendons in his knees severed. Both dropped screaming.
“Mike! Hurry!” Hana’s voice wasn’t panicking, but it was edging in that direction. I doubted that it was fear for herself as she did not strike me as the kind of warrior to call for help if she was in a tight corner. That could only mean…
“The Queen,” I growled.
My leg muscles compressed, and I launched myself, teeth gritted, right over a two-story house on the outskirts of the town, near the edge of the fjord where the fishing boats were moored.
At the peak of my jump, I activated my Wing slot and boosted toward the crowd of warriors gathered on the dockside and fighting frantically.
Queen Frami and Hana were there along with a few of the Queen’s personal guards. They were hemmed up against the shoreline by at least twenty insurgent warriors. There were two bearmancers among them, one of whom the Queen was fighting hand-to-hand while the other grappling with Hana.
I cut the spell that had given me wings and dropped to the ground, landing near a stable behind the opposing force.
The Queen and her remaining guards were not going to last long, epic fighters as they were. Queen Frami was slashing left and right with her massive, wicked-looking sword, but it was only so long before she tired and was overwhelmed, even if she did take down her bearmancer foe.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Not very imaginative, but projected with the force of my dragons, it made about ten of the enemy warriors jump around to face me.
I picked up a picketing pole and threw it at the man directly in front of me. It hit him in the guts, and he was hurled thirty feet backward and into the fjord, sinking without a trace.
The remaining nine men, to their credit, didn’t waste any time and charged. No point giving your adversary time to do the same again, is there?
“Go at ‘em, Cyan,” I said as I put her into my Leg slot.
Cyan, the Faerie Dragon, popped into being in front of me, in all her resplendent dragony glory.
“No!” the elven woman leading the charge cried.
Cyan opened her mouth, lined up the row of enemy warriors pelting toward us, and let loose with her rainbow-like flame. The myriad colors soaked the soldiers, and they were glued to the spot mid-run. I summoned a Shadow Sphere in both hands, then pulled them together so they formed a single, massive ball of writhing Chaos magic. With a grunt, I tossed the basketball-sized sphere into their midst. The nine renegade soldiers exploded into wisps of nothingness as they were engulfed in the reality-altering magic.
That, it went without saying, turned the tide of the localized battle somewhat.
Queen Frami took heart from the wholesale destruction and cut the head from her distracted bearmancer opponent. Her guards, outnumbered but hardier, cut down their more numerous foes.
Out on a pier, Hana rolled under a desperate raking slash from the enemy bear, swept her sword up, and eviscerated the huge dark green animal. The bear flopped over the side of the pier and into the water, while the mancer bonded to it staggered as the connection that bound them was cut.
Hana swept the legs out from beneath her enemy and plunged her sword so hard into the woman’s chest that it went clean through the thick wooden boards on which she was lying.
The tables turned, I swapped smiles with Hana and gave Queen Frami a thumbs-up.
Then, a bear as big as one of the fisherman’s shacks crashed out of the d
ockside fish market in a spray of salt, broken barrel wood, and flying fish of assorted species.
The giant bear was a rich golden color. Its teeth were like tusks, spaced widely and protruding in all angles. Its piercing orange eyes burned with a flame that I could only describe as mad. They were the eyes of a cornered thing that expect death, that has always expected it, and has woken each day looking for it.
The claws of the hulking beasts were big enough to double as the blades of a scythe. Blood drenched its golden fur, although I didn’t think any of it belonged to the bear. Old scars crisscrossed its back, which looked to be bald at first glance. Then I noticed that the naked hide was swarmed with scars and studded with broken spears and old arrows. It was almost like a natural leathery armor.
Queen Frami roared. It was a roar of rage and pain and disappointment and disbelief.
I came to stand next to her, as the huge bear padded toward us, its claws leaving furrows in the mud.
“Who in the shit is this big bastard?” I asked, trying to get my breathing under control.
The Queen did not answer. Her one eye was glued on the approaching behemoth.
“That,” Hana said in a hushed voice, wiping her sword blade on the tattered hem of the fur coat that she still wore, “is the Queen’s sister, Dagna.”
“That’s a Vetruscan?” I asked.
“In Titan form,” Hana said.
“That’s my sister,” the Queen growled, and her voice was thick with wrath. “She left us many moons ago. I heard that she was the leader of these rebels, the chief upstart, but I never believed the rumors because they could never be verified by anyone whom I trusted. Now, though, I see it is true…”
Hana shook her head sadly and looked sideways at the furious monarch.
“We had thought she might return home,” Hana told me.
“Well,” I said, cracking my fingers, “I guess she has.”
I conjured the Chaos Spear, but Queen Frami held out a hand.
