The Book of Deacon: Book 02 - The Great Convergence (41 page)

The weapon came down with shattering force.
When she raised it again, what lay beneath resembled a smashed
cigar. A dash of yellow mixed with her blue aura and the beginnings
of a smile came to her face. She turned to see if her friends had
seen her conquest. The sight she beheld wiped the smile from her
face and brought renewed intensity to her fear. Like a wave
spreading across a still lake, the creatures burst from the ground
in an ever increasing circle around her. Lain could wait no longer.
He rushed into the field. With the threat thus revealed, he could
navigate the field without surprises. There were thousands of the
worms. The whole of the field was an undulating mass, but with each
footstep the worms shifted like a tide to the place it landed,
opening a tiny patch of land behind. Where there was no clearing, a
swift swipe of his blade made one.

Ivy's eyes shot from the threat that
surrounded her to the savior that approached her. As frightened as
she was by the danger all around, she was more frighted of being
left behind by these people who had plucked her from her prison.
She couldn't risk it. She couldn't risk being rescued. It would rob
her of perhaps her only chance to prove herself. The worms jabbed
at her feet, but she was swift. Her movements became fluid,
purposeful. Her grace was easily a match for Lain's precision.
Finally she sprang with all of her might to the door and caught
hold of one of the cross-planks halfway up. She flipped the club
into the air and scrambled up the door, catching the weapon like a
baton as it fell. The entire maneuver was so practiced, so
effortless, it seemed choreographed. She planted her heels onto the
top of the door and her back against the stone wall and pushed. The
door was enormous. It should have taken a team of horses to open,
but with her already unnatural strength fueled by fear and
desperation, the thick slat began to creak. Not quickly enough,
though. Lain was nearly there. She struck madly at the slat with
heavy blows of the club, splintering the wood. Finally it split in
two, the piece she was perched upon crashed to the ground, crushing
the worms that had gathered to attack the last place her foot had
found purchase. She dropped, rather less gracefully than she had
climbed, through the hole.

Myranda stood motionless at the edge of the
field, unnoticed by the worms that had swarmed over the huge plank
of wood, rendering it a scattered pile of shards in moments. Lain
managed to spring over the undulating mass and climbed inside the
fort. Now it was left for her to do the same. When there seemed no
more targets to destroy, the worms slowly settled into the ground
as easily as into a pool of water. In a matter of heartbeats there
was nothing left in the courtyard but a series of furrows where the
horrid beasts had surfaced and submerged. Myranda knew she couldn't
outmaneuver the beasts as the others had, but it was clear that the
monsters blindly attacked anything that shook the ground. The more
the ground shook, the more madly they attacked. She called to mind
the teachings of Cresh, her mentor in earth magic. She focused on a
point far to the left of the fort and began to force her will into
the ground. Before she could even sense she was having an effect,
the beasts were visibly migrating to the point. When they reached
it, they began to thrash about, searching for whatever might be
causing the tremors. Before long, the blind, deaf creatures turned
to blame each other. She maintained the tremor long enough to reach
the door and climbed as best she could with her staff in her
hand.

#

The image flickered away. Deacon's eyes
closed. He turned back to his task. He had managed to secure the
large bag of gold coins the village kept. It was the accumulated
wealth of the entire village, with the exception of the small horde
kept by the dragon Solomon, and oddly it was one of the least
protected of its valuables. The coins were scattered about the
table. Some were heads up. Others tails up.

"Heads," he said, tossing a handful into the
air.

They dropped to the table and rattled to a
rest, all heads up. He shook his head. It wasn't enough. He knew a
dozen spells that could cause the coins to land as he chose. He
wasn't casting any of them. He did nothing to the coins. What he
had changed was the odds. But it wasn't enough. It didn't prove if
the spell was sufficient. Heads. Tails. It could only be one or the
other. Or . . . He turned all of his training, all of his years of
education, to the task of honing the spell. He swept all of the
coins from the table and cupped them in his hands. Closing his
eyes, he threw them in the air. They clattered down again.
Bouncing. Skipping. Spinning. Finally they were still and silent.
Slowly he opened his eyes. Some coins were on the floor. Others on
the other chair. Most were on the table. Every last one was
standing on its edge. That was enough. He scribbled a few more
lines onto the tattered pile of pages that lay on the edge of the
table and rushed for the door. When he was able to squeeze a
rational thought past the excitement, he stopped and picked up his
satchel. There were some things he would need.

#

Myranda dropped into the dark interior of the
fort. When she conjured light enough to see, she found that it
looked as different from the other forts inside as it did outside.
The others had a wide open hall in the middle, with cells lining
the walls. The cells were missing here. The whole of the floor was
one enormous room interrupted by the occasional wooden support.
Each corner of the room was hidden behind a slatted wooden wall
that didn't quite reach the ceiling. Though there were no cells,
the floor was far from unoccupied. Beasts, ranging from the size of
a small horse to some that reached the ceiling, filled the floor.
They were arranged in ranks, and all stood perfectly still. For a
moment, Myranda thought they were statues, but if they were, the
attention to detail was supernatural. Hair moved with the wind from
outside, eyes gleamed in the light. As for their forms, they had a
twisted familiarity to them. A massive black tiger-like creature
with horns like a bull and barbs sticking through its fur. An eagle
with a downward pointing tail that tapered into that of a scorpion.
Most looked as though the most awful parts of a dozen animals were
assembled into a single body. Largest was a beast that resembled
ten enormous snakes joined at the tails to a central body with a
squid-like beak on both top and bottom.

Once it became clear that they were no
immediate threat, Lain ignored the terrible wonders and disappeared
down the stairs at the far end of the room. This place, it seemed,
had at least two things in common with the other forts. It had the
same roundabout stair system, and judging from the chorus of creaks
and echoes, it was at least as deep. Myranda tried to follow, but
something wasn't right. There was a powerful magic at work. Very
powerful, like a constant pressure on her mind. The sheer intensity
of the enchantment was almost disorienting. It must have been what
Ether had felt, what had led her here. Perhaps Ivy had felt it too.
Myranda leaned heavily on her staff to gather herself. Her eyes
turned to the ground. Embedded in the floor in front of each of the
beasts was a plaque. Engraved in each was a cold, analytical label
for the associated creature.
Augmented Plains Predator Revision
II
.
Venomous Raptor Revision VI
. Beneath each engraved
label was another one, rougher, as though it had been scratched in
afterward.
Raid Stalker
.
Needlehawk
. There was the
air of a museum, that these were objects of pride. She turned to
the door, recovered somewhat from the influence of the place, and
followed the others.

Deep inside, many floors below, Ivy was
rushing past shelves, stands, and figures she dare not look at. The
terror was already burning at her mind. She had to find Ether and
take her away from this place. That would prove to Lain that she
could protect herself and help the team. That would let her stay.
She sprinted down flight after flight of stairs into ever larger
floors. Finally she saw her there. Ether was standing before a
large, heavy door. She had changed back to human form, and seemed
to be contemplating something. She turned to Ivy, a look of mild
disappointment on her face.

"What are you doing here, fool?" she
demanded.

"You have to leave. You'll be hurt. You'll be
killed!" Ivy urged, tugging desperately at Ether's arm.

Ether pulled away.

"Calm yourself, beast. There is nothing here
or anywhere in this world that can threaten me. Least of all this
place. The D'karon gone from here. Only their creations remain,"
she said.

"They have? Then . . . then we don't need to
be here. We can go . . . before they come back," Ivy said, relief
in her voice. The piercing blue aura about her began to fade.

"No. There is a dark magic at work here. A
powerful one. I cannot allow it to continue its work," Ether
said.

"Yes! Yes you can! We can go! Please! Before
something goes wrong!" Ivy begged, the bright blue light surging
back.

"You are pathetic," Ether sneered.

"What was that?" Ivy gasped, turning to the
source of a noise.

"I heard nothing," Ether said.

"Well, turn into something with better ears!
There is something scratching around in this room," Ivy
demanded.

Ether ignored her, turning to the door before
her. It was the first door she had encountered since entering the
fort. Whatever lay beyond it was considered more valuable than all
that preceded it. There were plenty of cracks around the door, and
even a barred view hole. She should have been able to flow through
it with ease in her wind form, but she had been turned back. There
was some locking spell, an impressively powerful one, preventing
her from moving forward. Runes were inscribed on the door as well,
no doubt the source of the enchantment. Undoing the spell would be
no simple task. She touched the door, recoiling almost immediately.
The spell that protected the door, and the far more powerful one
that had drawn her here, was . . . unnatural. They seemed to
reverberate with a familiar tone, but horribly twisted,
perverted.

Ivy shifted uneasily from foot to foot,
sensitive ears trained to the silence, simultaneously seeking and
dreading the scratching she'd heard before. As she did, she slowly
began to notice the surroundings she had been so dutifully
ignoring. This floor was filled with orderly rows of shelves. Upon
the shelves, in labeled progressions, were sequences of body parts
of advancing quality and detail. Nearest to her was a row of
skulls. The first was a human skull, the word
Man
etched in
a plate beneath it. Next to it were a line of eight others
collectively labeled
Altered Intellectual Dominant
, with
each skull additionally labeled with a Revision number. Scratched
beneath the embossed label was the word
Nearman
. The
gruesome sight was repeated a dozen times over on the other shelves
and even lining the wall, where a dragon skull hung beside no less
than fifteen attempted duplicates, the last few resembling the
horrid dragoyle. Ivy struggled to keep her fear in check.

"Would you hurry! Break the door down! Do
what you have to do so we can leave this place!" Ivy pleaded.

"I must first determine what we may find
behind the door, so that I might take the form best suited to face
it," Ether said.

"It is the workshop and laboratory," Ivy
said.

"How would you know that?" Ether scoffed.

"It says it on the door!" Ivy said, pointing
at the arcane writing word by word as she spoke the words again.
"Workshop and laboratory! And then a recipe or something! Please
Ether, just do what you want to do, or tell me what to do and I'll
do it. I can't take this place."

"How can you read that? Why would they teach
you their language?" Ether asked accusingly.

"I don't know, maybe they didn't mean to!
What does it matter? Just open the DOOR!" she demanded, punctuating
her demand with a mighty thrust kick to the door.

There was a burst of orange light and Ivy
cried out in pain amid a crackle of energy. She was sent hurdling
backward, skidding to a stop near the stairs at the other side of
the room. The blue aura that had surrounded her and illuminated the
room was dimmed to nothing. She groaned dizzily, flat on her back
and dazed. Ether looked to the door. It hung precariously from one
hinge, the other broken. Whatever enchantment had protected it was
spent. Ether cast a swift glance toward Ivy, shaking her head
slightly. Quickly she turned to stone and passed through the
doorway, making her way through the pitch blackness.

Many floors above, Myranda scrambled to catch
up to Lain. Floor after floor of monstrous beasts streaked by her.
The ancient wooden floor boards creaked and groaned, Each footfall
kicked up a puff of dust and dry rotten wood. Myranda wondered
briefly why such a massive place would have been built of wood when
the others were stone. Suddenly, as she was about to emerge from
yet another staircase, a hand yanked her back. The hand covered the
glowing gem on her staff, obscuring the light. A voice whispered in
her ear.

"Douse the light and be silent," he said.

It was Lain. She obeyed, and was soon
shrouded in utter darkness. He whispered again, his words barely
louder than her pounding heart.

"Stay here, and stay perfectly still," he
warned.

Myranda did as she was told. She did not hear
anything. She didn't hear Lain leave her side. She didn't hear him
navigate the room in complete darkness. The next sound she heard
was a peculiar squeal cut short. A few moments later, the voice was
in her ear again.

"Restore the light, slowly," he
instructed.