The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) (19 page)

"Look." Aikira pointed at the luminous green dome amid the wreckage.

"That’s Mysterian’s witchy magic," said Zahrellion. "We have to do something. That thing looks to be ranging toward them."

“That dome has moved from where I last saw it," Aikira told them. “I think it’s over the—”

“We need to find Rikky,” March interrupted.

“When Jenka and I were in King Blanchard’s dungeon, after my Order leveraged my freedom, it was Mysterian alone who helped Jenka escape. Not only that, she is my friend." Zahrellion didn't know what to do. She wanted Jenka and Ricky there, but they weren't. She decided to try a druidic spell she knew. If she could find out what the old Hazeltine was about, then she would know better what to do.

Mysterian, Mysterian can you hear me?
Zahrellion called across a plane of existence similar to the ethereal. The fact that an answer came was a relief, but when she realized who the mental voice belonged to, she had to hold back the curses from her tongue.

Zah, it’s Linux,
he said in a calm, yet commanding tone.
The royal family and I, as well as several hundred Outland citizens, are down in a tunnel. Only Mysterian remains above, holding her shielding over the opening.

Can she sustain the field?
Zah asked, while keeping her opinion of her former mentor to herself.
We can see it.

She can,
was Linux's reply.
Hundreds of lives depend on it.

There is a gargantuan creature roaming the city above you, but it seems wary of Mysterian’s magic.

Zah wanted more than anything to go find Rikky, but she couldn’t abandon Mysterian and the king. If it was just Linux, she would tell him to fend for himself, but it wasn’t only him.

“I have to stay and help them,” Zahrellion said loudly to the other Dragoneers. “There are Outlanders in a tunnel under that shield.”

“Argggh!” Marcherion growled out. “We need to find Rikky and Lem. They may need us.”

“I... I...” Aikira sobbed at her indecision. “My people.... I... I... have to stay.”

During the conversation, the dragons were circling their riders around Mysterian’s shield. They were so caught up in their conversation that none of them noticed the master alien when it stretched long and high, like some striking serpent, up toward them, and then shot its tongue out.

Had Marcherion not been strapped in, he would have been drawn back into the alien’s maw. As it was, the retracting tongue took part of his riding cloak, and some of the skin from his exposed forearm, with it.

Blaze made Marcherion’s mind up for him when the big fire drake dove down at the alien creature’s lower body and let loose long searing gouts of fiery breath. There was no decision left to be made, Zahrellion saw, and she too made to attack the huge thing. Aikira and Golden were right behind them.

The extended head and torso of the alien drew back into the main body and then the creature was morphing again. It formed into something part avian, part reptilian, and leapt into flight. It had a hard time staying airborne. It didn’t get far before it was on the ground and morphing again. This time it slowed and changed into a blunt stump with a club-like limb that came around and batted Blaze across the sky as if he were a booted chicken.

Blaze let loose with his dragon breath as he was bashed through the air. Veined albinic skin smoldered and blistered under the intense heat. Then Zahrellion’s warbling yellow flow impacted the alien full in its torso and it went rolling into a spherical form that crushed a wide swath through Delton as it rolled.

At least it’s moving away from Mysterian
, Zahrellion thought as Aikira took up the attack.

The ebon Dragoneer cast a spell, but the result was feeble due to fatigue. Golden’s molten spew was far more effective, and seemed to actually scald the alien as it moved away.

Suddenly, the alien unrolled back into the long snaking form. It went slithering crazily away from the city sideways, only to lump back into a more canine shape. It shot its tongue at Marcherion and Blaze, but this time the fire drake was ready.

The alien tasted dragon fire instead of flesh and roared out a vibrating hum that sent tremors racing up Zahrellion’s spine. Crystal was coming around in an attempt to spew her glacial breath on the creature’s strange fiery eyes. Zah hoped to blind it. It was then that a familiar, but unwelcome, sensation grabbed hold of Zah. Her forehead went hot and her vision blurred.

When Zahrellion turned and let loose her Dou magic at Aikira, the ebon-skinned Dragoneer’s eyes went as big as duck eggs. Marcherion wasn’t sure why it was happening. Then she was blasting at him. His dragon carried him out of harm’s way, but the alien, now unhindered by Dragoneers, scattered the numbers of trellkin roaming the city beneath it as it trotted back over to Mysterian’s dome.

Marcherion reached down deep and ignited the power of the white gold medallion. Cherry rays shot from his eyes and cut twin lines of smoldering char across the creature’s back. It emitted another pulse of terrible spine-racking sound, and Marcherion knew that Zahrellion was about to attack him again. As Blaze banked sharply away from the frost dragon, March saw the alien creature dig into Mysterian’s shield as if it wasn’t even there. March searched the ground for Aikira, but there was no dragon sprawled where they should have impacted after taking Zah’s magical blow.

He heard Mysterian scream and jerked his head around in time to see the alien make to snatch up the old Hazeltine witch standing defiantly before the cave opening. She unleashed a spell, but March saw little effect. The thing darted its head in and crunched her. With a grunt it chugged her down its gullet and roared. As if it could smell the other people trapped in the tunnel, the alien began digging into the earth like a badger trying to get at maggots in a log.

When Zahrellion tried to let loose another blast at March, the great frost wyrm dove sharply, making the warbling flow of energy splatter across a band of trolls and orcs below.

March had no idea what to do. By the way the alien creature was digging, those people down there, the king and queen, and the other witches, were in trouble. A mental image of the alien morphing into some worm and slithering into the opening flashed across his mind. He knew he had to do something. Crystal was trying to fly away from the other Dragoneers now, and by the way Golden was struggling to stay in the sky, March knew he had to stop the alien alone.

He concentrated on the medallion and began hawking in his throat as if trying to clear it of phlegm. A surge of power vomited up from his insides and flashed across the distance between him and the back half of the monster. When the raw magical force hit the creature, it sank deeply into its core and sparkled as if breaking apart inside it. Though he was struggling to get air into his raw, dry throat, he saw the thing lose all form for an instant, then it was backing up and expanding, busting apart the earth and slinging debris over the trolls and goblins in the area. The sound that erupted from the creature then was so loud, so overpowering and intense, Marcherion thought he would die from it.

Blaze carried his rider around in a wide circle, and the enraged alien swelled to three times its previous size. It morphed into a lanky mannish shape. A hand the size of a cottage came reaching out at Marcherion and Blaze. Then, out of a black gaping maw set beneath flaming eyes and sharp narrowed brows, came the alien’s tongue.

There was nothing Marcherion or his dragon could do. The last thing he saw before he clinched his eyes shut was a handful of people spilling out of the cavern.

A melodic shriek, like no other he had ever heard, erupted from nearby. It was Aikira, and he thought she might have taken a wound in her throat to let out such a terrible howl. He was surprised that the alien’s tongue hadn’t gotten hold of him, and when he opened his eyes he saw why.

Aikira and her dragon had gathered themselves and returned to help him. One of the alien’s arm-like appendages was waving around in the air crazily. There was no shoulder, no elbow, or wrist, just a long limb formed of vein-lined flesh with a three-clawed grabber at its end. Another of the alien’s appendages was clutching its lumpy head where Golden had just spewed forth molten dragon bile in its face.

Blaze dove to avoid being struck again. When they were clear of the creature, they pulled up to find Zahrellion right there, about to let loose another blast of druid magic. March was mistaken in thinking that he was the target. When Zah let it loose, the blast whooshed right past him, grazing his wyrm, on its way down to impact the earth near the cavern opening.

There was a man there writing in the sky with a fingertip, like the druids sometimes did. He was unfamiliar, but one of the witches March remembered from Clover’s Castle was there behind him. She was struggling to keep King Blanchard away. The tattoo on the king’s forehead was glowing just like Zahrellion’s, and he was struggling.

The witch was trying to keep the king from stopping the spell caster, March realized, when a prismatic display of energy exploded from the man and blasted the alien into a backward windmilling stagger. March saw Aikira and Golden swoop down toward the cave.

“Follow me,” Aikira yelled at all the people pouring out of the opened hole in the earth. Some of them ran away, as afraid of the dragon as they were of the vermin roaming the city. March decided that those who were already out of the shaft would probably make it where she was leading them. But from his vantage he could see that there were still hundreds and hundreds of trellkin savaging that part of the city. They wouldn’t get far unprotected.

Seeing that the alien was trying to gather itself from the powerful blow, Marcherion searched the sky for Zah and Crystal. They were nowhere to be seen.

The alien roared out again, and this time there was an angry buzzing accompanying the noise. From all over the rubble in Delton, from behind ruined buildings, back alleys, and the nooks and crannies of the city, bloated Sarax began to rise back into the air.

After a few heartbeats, the master alien began savaging the people trying to escape the cavern. It bashed and crushed and slung them about as if they were so much fodder. When March looked up, he saw that the sky ahead was full of Sarax. There was no way to fly through them. He urged Blaze to turn, but Zahrellion was attacking him from behind with a warbling flow of her potent druid magic.

This is it,
March thought as the Sarax came snapping and gnashing in with their terrible teeth.
This is it.

The master alien stopped stock-still, raised its bug- eyed head, and roared out a sound that loosened men’s bowels. It suddenly elongated itself, stretching so far it snapped into two separate pieces. Then the bigger part repeated the process. The two newly formed globules of milky veined flesh were the size of houses. They stayed where they were, jiggling spheres, for a few long moments.

King Blanchard, the queen, and Linux were all fleeing the stiflingly crowded tunnel amid a group of terrified Outlanders. Aikira and her golden wyrm were leading them. Linux couldn’t help but look back and take in what was happening. The alien blobs began to shimmer and stretch. One of them reared up and turned, revealing a smaller pair of fiery sunset eyes. The other blob rose up into a mannish shape and was twice as big as any ogre Linux had ever seen. They turned a corner, cutting through part of the city, not knowing where Aikira was leading them. A few goblins skittered away, startled by the dragon’s sweeping shadow and the noise of the group. Linux was forced to pay attention to where he was going instead of what was behind them, for charging at them from the side was an ogre lashing his flickering whip into the orc and the two trolls he was mindlessly driving.

All of them looked eager to get their share of fresh human meat.

Linux stopped and started casting a spell, but one of the citizens behind bumped into him and ruined his concentration. He stepped away from the group this time, placing himself between them and the charging vermin. Again he began his casting. As the huge orc came clawing into him, a turquoise pulse of power blasted the thing into a bloody mess of gore that splattered the trolls. One of the Hazeltine witches, maybe the queen, sent a spiraling explosion that sparkled into a sort of magical barrier that the feral ogre ran right into. The wall didn’t waver, and the ogre hit it hard. He stumbled and dropped backwards. The length of crackling whip trailing from the device’s handgrip exaggerated the motion of his fall with a whooshing overhead “crack!”