Two Necromancers, a Dwarf Kingdom, and a Sky City

by L. G. Estrella

  “You’d better brace yourself, idiots.” Avraniel cackled. “This is going to be big.”

  She smirked and loosed the arrow.

  The arrow lanced through the air. It was as bright as the sun and hot enough to send a shockwave of superheated air through the sky as it passed. There was a brief pause after it struck, like the calm before the storm, and then the entire world exploded. Avraniel swayed for a moment. She’d put more power into that attack than she’d put into any single attack in months, and she was certain she’d been getting stronger the whole time. The explosion threw her off her feet, and the entire sky shook as the city trembled right down to its foundations.

  The blast filled the sky, and the crimsons and violets that stretched from horizon to horizon were replaced by blinding light and searing heat. The flames blazed orange and then turned white, so hot that she could feel the heat from where she was standing. The dwarves ran for cover, and the Sky City began to glow as the sheer heat of the attack threatened to melt every exposed piece of stone. The cosmic fungus came awake in an instant. It gave a hideous, wailing shriek followed by a low, agonised rumble as it staggered back. It let go of the Sky City, and the tentacles closest to where her attack had landed began to disintegrate as the incredible heat and force of the arrow took their toll.

  Time around the creature ebbed and flowed madly as it tried to minimise the damage it was taking. Time, which had stopped for most of the city for centuries, finally began to flow once more, albeit shakily, as the behemoth turned its power toward fighting off her attack. More explosions rang out as the dwarves and the demolition rats used explosives and magic to sever any remaining tendrils. A moment later, the low hum of the city’s engines that had hovered at the back of her awareness turned into a full-fledged roar as the Sky City came to life once more. System after system reactivated, and Skygarde began to lurch away from the reeling titan.

  Naturally, it wasn’t that easy. It was never that easy. And if it had been, she would have been suspicious because if getting away from this thing was that easy, the dwarves would have pulled it off ages ago.

  The gigantic eldritch horror reared up to its full height. Its vast, cylindrical body loomed over the city. Tentacles that could smash castles flailed through the air, and strange unnatural limbs that could rend mountains unfurled to reveal claws as big as towers and strange, pulsing organs that dripped acid and venom. The creature made a series of deep, thunderous sounds, and a wave of power pulsed out of it. She braced herself, knowing what was about to happen. But time did not stop. Instead, there was an answering flash of light, and a glowing blue barrier appeared around Skygarde. Her lips curled. Not bad. Those short bastards worked fast. They’d managed to get the city’s barrier up in time to ward off the attack.

  The damn fungus didn’t have a head, but dozens of huge eyes had appeared either on stalks or along its body. All of them were filled with unreadable, utterly alien emotion. It raised one massive tentacle high into the air. Her eyes widened. That thing must be a hundred yards across, maybe more. As the tentacle came down, Old Man stepped forward. He drew his sword and struck. His magic sang – a single, cruel note that made her teeth ache and her ears ring – and space beyond the city’s barrier split and tore. The tentacle was cut in half, with the part still attached to the creature missing the Sky City. The same, however, could not be said for the other part, which plummeted toward them.

  “I’m not sure that helps,” she muttered.

  “You might be right.” Old Man prepared himself for a second strike. It was very likely that the barrier wouldn’t stop it. She doubted the dwarves had been able to completely reconfigure it in the short time they’d had before the cosmic fungus unleashed its time-stopping attack. Instead, they’d likely shifted the barrier to prioritise defending against magic and other energy-based attacks over physical attacks. “But there wasn’t time for a more precise strike. Perhaps you could lend some more assistance?”

  Avraniel smirked. “Sure. I can clean up your mess.” She fired another arrow from her bow, and the explosion knocked the tentacle aside. The severed limb tumbled wide of the Sky City and crashed into the ground far below. Already, though, the injury was beginning to heal, and fresh, slimy flesh had begun to emerge from the stump of the wounded tentacle. “Didn’t those bastards say this place had weapons? Why aren’t they firing yet? I can’t do everything myself.”

  As the titanic fungus readied another blow – its sheer size made it more awkward than its smaller fellows although it would definitely hit a lot damn harder too – Skygarde’s weapons finally came to life. Dozens upon dozens of magical cannons – enough firepower to make a dreadnought curl up in a corner and cry – were unleashed in a single salvo of devastating destructive power aimed right at the centre of the creature’s mass. The horror reeled back, almost toppling as it used its misshapen limbs and tentacles to steady itself. The attack shattered what little was left of its control over the city, and the rest of the dwarves were finally freed.

  “Where are we?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Who are you?”

  “By the gods! What’s that thing over there?”

  Avraniel rounded on the dwarves. “Shut up, you bastards! This isn’t the time.” She jabbed one finger at the huge monster. “See that? It’s trying to kill us all, and it can also stop time. We need to get out of here.” She growled. “But it’s going to take a while for the teleportation device to warm up. In the meantime, we need to fight off anything that tries to stop us. If you see something and it looks freaky, then kill it!”

  A strange, unnatural chittering signalled the arrival of other, lesser cosmic fungi. The dwarves weren’t completely hopeless. An old human and an elf were far more likely to be on their side than the bizarre fungus creatures flying toward them. The smaller fungi moved in a swarm, firing bolt after bolt of time-stopping power. The barrier around the city kept the initial volley of attacks out, but the creepy jerks soon learned they could pass through the barrier without incident. And once they were inside, there wasn’t anything to stop them using their time-altering powers.

  “Don’t get hit by those bolts!” Avraniel roared. “You’ll get frozen in time.” The dwarves were still milling about in confusion, but some of the smarter ones had begun to organise the others. “Come on, you losers! Stop standing around and fight!”

  She dodged through a hail of attacks as the area around her was barraged with bolts of time-stopping power. She fired her bow over and over again. She didn’t worry about putting too much power into her attacks. If she could knock them out of the air, the dwarves could do the rest. Fortunately, much like the others they’d encountered, they could only use their time-stopping power every so often although the interval was definitely shorter here than it had been near the Hearthgate. Old Man must have been right. It was easier to alter space and time here.

  The city’s smaller weapons had abandoned attacking the big fungus in favour of trying to thin the swarm of smaller fungi. However, the magical cannons were now joined by a host of other anti-air defences as repeating crossbows, wind lances, and other weaponry was brought to bear. The dwarves had finally shaken themselves out of their stupor, and they were doing what dwarves did best – putting their axes, spears, and swords to work against their enemies while some other dwarves ran off to get crossbows and bows. Elsewhere, the mages amongst the dwarves were doing their best to help, and the acrid scent of lightning soon filled the air along with the smell of smoke and metal.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Spot take to the air. The dragon was a glowing meteor, and every swipe of his claws created long, expanding trails of astral energy. He grinned from ear to ear – he must not have known he could do that – and swiped with even more enthusiasm. The attacks shredded the cosmic fungi closest to him and still packed enough punch to send those further away tumbling out of the sky. She doubted he’d be able to keep throwing attacks like that around once they left this place. It
looked like it took a lot of energy, and the people eater had said this place had way more than back home. But hopefully, he could still pull it off from time to time since it looked like a really handy ability have. Swooping over a pitched battle between dozens of the cosmic fungi and hundreds of the Sky City’s dwarves, Spot unleashed a hurricane of white flame. The wounded dwarves were healed, and the cosmic fungi were either set ablaze or forced to use their time-altering powers to evade the attack or ward off the worst of it.

  But Spot’s intervention had not gone unnoticed.

  “Watch out!” she shouted.

  One of the cosmic fungi had managed to sneak up on Spot and catch him with a time-stopping attack. As the dragon strained to move, it brought its tentacles down in a thunderous blow that even the dragon would feel. But instead of the sickly thump of flesh cracking scales, there was a flash of light, and the attack went right through Spot. Her eyes widened. Intangibility? That was definitely an astral dragon thing. The idiot had said Spot was already close to pulling it off before they’d been dragged into this world, so the extra astral energy he’d gotten must have been just the boost he needed to finally do it. The dragon finally shook off the fungus’s powers, and Spot grinned evilly. Slashes of white energy carved through the creature, and Spot was once more soaring through the air.

  “The astral energy combined with the stress of battle must have awakened more of his powers,” Amanda murmured. The vampire was using bolts of blood to attack the fungi and intercept their attacks, and Avraniel was tempted to ask where she’d gotten it. It wasn’t like the damn mushroom creatures had useable blood. Then again, Gerald probably carried plenty of blood around. At least, the people eater was making herself useful. Old Man didn’t have enough magic to constantly unfreeze people who got stuck, and the dwarves had already begun to understand how to fight the eldritch horrors. Better yet, some of them had rushed off to tell whoever was using the city’s weapons what to do.

  A dwarf wind lance or a repeating crossbow with explosives attached to the bolts was perfect for fighting these damn monsters. If they could land a hit while the fungi were either distracted or had already used their time-altering abilities, then they could do plenty of damage. Not far away, a dwarf was heaving metal discs at the creatures. He must be able to control metal or something. Another dwarf was adding his own magic to the discs, and whenever they managed to hit one of the glowing cosmic fungi, the explosion that followed sent another one of the creepy bastards tumbling out of the air.

  A few streets down, she caught a glimpse of King Barin leading a force of dwarves against the cosmic fungi that had managed to land safely. He towered over the others, at least fifteen feet tall, and he swung a hammer with a head bigger than any of the dwarves. Each impact shook the ground, and anything he managed to hit was crushed flat by the force of the blow. Oh, sure, the damn eldritch monsters could regenerate, but there was no regenerating from that sort of damage.

  Meanwhile, Spot had circled back around, and the dwarves pointed up at him before charging toward another clump of the otherworldly monsters. His white fire surged down onto the battlefield, and the dwarves spilled forward, many even allowing themselves to be hit by the cosmic fungi’s attacks if only to guarantee that Spot’s fire would land. As the cosmic fungi retreated, besieged by axes, spears, pikes, swords, crossbows, and even crowbars, the dwarves took up one of their loud, rousing battle chants. She smiled as dwarves pointed at Spot and cheered. She was very proud of her dragon. Preening, Spot dove toward another one of the creatures. The blade-like edges of his wings couldn’t rip through the cosmic fungi the way they could rip through a drake, but he still had enough force behind his dive to drive the horror into the road.

  The impact cracked the paved stone, and Spot hopped off the downed fungus as half a dozen dwarves descended on it with angry cries, hacking and chopping furiously. A stray tentacle managed to slap one aside, and a time-stopping bolt halted the assault for a moment, but a second group arrived an instant later to finish the job. Avraniel smirked. These guys were tough, but they relied on their time-altering powers too much. Sure, those powers were great if they could catch people off guard – and they might even have been able to beat her and the others at the Hearthgate if not for Old Man – but like any trick, it was less effective the second time around. If they’d been able to soak up damage and keep going the way Sam and his ilk could, then they would have been screwed. Avraniel had seen that cake-eating bastard shrug off attacks that would have killed these fungi idiots dozens of times over.

  “Come on,” Amanda said. “We need to get you onto a roc. The big one isn’t going to leave us alone so easily.” Her eyes, which were now a deep crimson, narrowed. The colossal eldritch monstrosity had finally gotten its bearings back. Parts of it were still burning, but it had managed to put out most of the flames. It was going to attack again, and it was going to hit them with everything it had. “Move!”

  “Oh, shut up,” Avraniel muttered.

  They ran into a courtyard where a squad of roc riders – dwarves who rode the giant birds that nested amidst the highest peaks of the Broken Mountains – were preparing to take to the skies.

  “Councillor!” one of them cried.

  “Take her with you,” Amanda ordered. “She is our strike weapon.”

  “An elf?” one of the other dwarves asked. “Really? With all due respect, councillor, elves are not known for their attack magic.”

  “See that?” Amanda pointed to where Avraniel’s initial attack had burned huge swathes of the creature’s flesh. “She did that in a single attack. Take her with you. Now.”

  The captain of the roc riders stared in disbelief and then threw his head back and laughed. His bird stirred, its golden feathers glittering in the eerie light of the crimson and violent sky above them. “Finally! An elf we dwarves can get along with! Hop on, elf! I’ll get you up there. Just worry about hitting that big one with everything you can muster. I’ll handle the rest.”

  Avraniel leapt onto the bird, and it immediately launched itself upward. To his credit, the dwarf knew how to fly. She’d always thought of dwarves as ground-bound and graceless, and most of them were in comparison to elves and humans. But just like the demolition rats were the exception to all rats being stupid vermin, these roc riders knew their stuff. The roc shot into the fray over the city, and a tug on its reins and a shouted command had it banking sharply to one side. Its claws, which were enhanced with metal attachments, tore into several fungi as it used its speed and agility to evade their flaying tendrils and barbed limbs. Rather than try to kill them outright, the roc riders focused on knocking the eldritch creatures out of the sky. Instead of using wings to fly, the cosmic fungi used another one of their eldritch powers, but it could be disrupted if they were hurt badly enough. Gravity – and the dwarves on the ground – could then finish any that fell out of the sky.

  “Are you going to hit the same area again?” the captain asked. He pointed a spear. A bolt of lightning streaked forward, and a nearby eldritch monster was forced to use its time-stopping ability to halt the projectile. However, several exploding crossbow bolts from another roc rider knocked it out of the sky. “I can get you closer if need be.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I pissed it off when I hit it there last time, so I figure hitting it there again is a good idea.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Avraniel took aim with her bow again. Once more, magic flooded into the weapon. She could have relied entirely on her own power, but at this range, the bow would make things easier. She also didn’t want to get any closer than she had to, just in case it unleashed another shockwave that could stop time. And speaking of that ability, another salvo from the heavy cannons of the Sky City forced the titan to use its power once again. As the glowing bolts of magic and other projectiles hung uselessly in the air, the gigantic fungus batted them aside. Avraniel smirked. It had forgotten about her. Oh well. She’d just have to remind it.

  Mindful of the dwarf
and the roc, she poured power into the bow while tightening her hold on the heat it radiated. She couldn’t afford to fry the roc or its rider. As the bow wove yet another arrow of light and heat into existence, the dwarf was forced to turn his eyes away, and the protective runes and seals engraved on the armour the roc wore began to glow.

  “Damn,” the dwarf growled. “That’s a lot of power you’ve got.”

  Avraniel smirked and then fired. “Wait until you see it hit.”

  The resulting explosion once again enveloped the eldritch behemoth. It stumbled back, it cylindrical body aflame, and huge chunks of its tough, fibrous flesh sloughed off or turned to ash. It made a mad, keening sound, and its tentacles lashed the air. The Sky City shook as the creature managed to land several powerful blows, but it managed to stay aloft although the low hum of its engines gave way to an angry whine. Skygarde fired its heavy cannons again. Half the shots went wide as the city struggled to regain its equilibrium, but the salvo managed to sever two of the giant’s tentacles along with one of its clawed limbs. Its attempts to heal were stymied by the onslaught of flame that continued to consume large sections of its body as Avraniel’s attack expanded and intensified.

  “Hah!” The dwarf laughed. “Now, that’s what I call an attack! How many more of those can you fire off?”

  “I can do this all day!” Avraniel shouted back. That wasn’t true, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Just get me into position to hit it again.”

  “That I can do.” He laughed. “We can swing around in a – oh!” He jerked hard on the reins, and the roc cut sharply to one side. He muttered a curse as several of the lesser eldritch fungi moved to pursue them. “I think they’re onto us, elf. Can you do something about them? My friend and I here can outfight or outfly almost anything, but there have to be at least half a dozen of those bastards behind us.” He looked over his shoulder. “Aye, they’re definitely after us. They’ve ignored everyone else we’ve passed so far.”