The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) (23 page)

Pulling his muck-sucking peg-leg along as he negotiated the soft ground wasn’t easy.

When he arrived at her side, Crystal groaned with sorrow. Behind Rikky, Silva eased over and began comforting the big frost dragon.

Rikky unfurled Zahrellion’s body and then spat his teardrop from his mouth into his palm. He clenched it tightly and called out to the gods as the rush of Dou filled him to bursting. Whether they answered or not, he couldn’t say, for he was inside her body now, knitting her frame, reducing her swelling and repairing her battered innards. The organs were lifeless, but he tried to coax them. He remembered that Prince Richard had extended Royal’s life with the power of his teardrop. He didn’t want that. He wanted Zahrellion to be alive again and whole, not tethered to the power of a dragon gem.

Rikky tried to make her heart beat with massages and even frustrated thrusts, but it wouldn’t. He clenched his eyes and fought the tears. He willed with all his might to make her live again, but nothing happened. Then, in a moment of silent despair, he heard the single surge of a pulse. Probing her body, he found the source of it. He was as shocked and amazed as he was terrified at what he found. There was a child forming in her womb, tiny and indistinct, but with a heart that was struggling to beat again. It was Jenka’s child, he knew. At that moment Rikky promised his being, his whole life, to the gods, if only that the child and its mother might survive.

The gods looked on, and the fact that Rikky was willing to let go of the rush, and the pain-relieving power the teardrop filled him with, to save her and the unborn was as selfless an act as ever was committed. That teardrop was the only thing keeping Rikky from an abundance of daily agony, and he began to feel the hurt as the magic was drained from the droplet into the restorative spells he was again trying to cast.

Rikky felt Zahrellion’s body shiver once, and she might have taken a breath, but she remained still otherwise. Before he knew if his effort had been effective, Rikky collapsed into a heap in the hardening mud.

Jade rose high and then dove steeply to the west. As they built up speed, a sort of inner radiance began to connect him and his wyrm. They were both resolved to end the alien and their ethereal link began to overpower the deep droning that had almost become ordinary in their half-ruined ears. Maybe it was the added Dou Clover’s teardrop lent them. Or maybe it was Jenka’s undeniable will to prevail. Even if they had to fly down the thing’s gullet and let the power of the two teardrops loose, they were resolved to do so.

It wasn’t long before they saw it. Its pale flesh reflected the moonlight well. It was loping along, looking like some living marble plains cat that was bigger than three ships.

The air was still cold, even this far away from the mountains. The bodies left along the road by the Sarax and the trellkin were still fresh. The alien was plucking them up with wavering tentacles and eating them as it went. It didn’t even slow as it consumed all the flesh it could cram into its maw.

It was getting dark, but the massive thing seemed to sparkle in the moonlight. It was so pale it might have been glowing.

Crimzon let out a roar. The mature fire drake’s proximity, and the added power of Clover’s teardrop, allowed Jenka the ethereal. He’d had to make a promise to Crimzon to get the fist-sized tear, but he did knowing that the old wyrm wouldn’t lead him astray.
We’lls harry it through the night and make our standsss in the daylights,
the fire wyrm voiced.
Its tentacles are hard to sees and move so swiftly.

For most of the night they passed before it and kept it from its once hurried pace. Eventually, as they grew close enough to the coast to smell the brine in the air, the thing lulled them by stopping and forming into a stumpy blob. It stayed perfectly still, waiting until something came into range.

Near dawn, Crimzon passed too close to the alien. A tentacle caught him by the wing tip, and the surprised red dragon was pulled into the alien.

Jenka, with the power of both teardrops, blasted the thing. The potent flow of magic that erupted lit up the darkness like a comet. The force impacted the alien. The creature hurled the century old dragon across the sky and then pulsed a loud concussive blast that caused its own skin to brighten a green tint for a few beats. Then a wave of disturbed air hit Jade and they went tumbling through the sky. It took all of Jade’s flying skills and strength to get them righted, but the young green wyrm managed it.

The very first peach-colored rays of daylight streaked the horizon when they gathered themselves from the near crash. Jenka searched for Crimzon, but didn’t see him. Then the elongating alien was stretching up at them, its long tongue exploding across the distance and sucking onto Jade.

Jenka made to blast at it, but wasn’t fast enough. Before he could let loose with the dragon tears, he and his wyrm were yanked right into the alien’s maw.

“No you don’t,” snarled Zahrellion as she let loose with the power of Crystal’s newly cried tear. She was on Silva’s back and feeling as alive as she ever had. The speedy silver wyrm had covered the distance the alien traveled through the night in a long turn of the glass.

Rikky had all but exhausted his own tear to save Zah. The flow of Dou going through her body now was indescribable, like tingles that were themselves tingling. She had a focus that was beyond infinite. The rush of dragon Dou was filling her to brimming, and she wasn’t about to let this thing digest Jenka.

The smaller, faster, pewter-colored wyrm was strangely warm between her legs. Crystal couldn’t fly, and Rikky was half-unconscious from working healing magic. It was a comfortable saddle, though, and she found herself fighting to hold on as they went careening into an arc to avoid the appendages that were reaching for them. Her potent yellow blast impacted the thing then, and the morning was suddenly lit up in fantastic fashion.

The alien gnashed its mouth down over Jenka and Jade and then roared out a terribly long growl. Where Zah’s magic impacted it was scorched raw and oozing orange blood.

Zahrellion couldn’t stop thinking that Jenka and Jade were inside the alien. Her heart was in her throat, but the power of the Dou inside her wouldn’t let her lose concentration. She had to do something. She urged Silva to carry her around sharply as she started to cast another spell.

The earth began to tremble then, and the beautiful sound of Aikira’s voice filled the day. Here came Marcherion and Aikira now, she with the makings of a spell showing on her lips as they rode the tip of a rolling wave of earth right up to the scene.

Zah watched in amazement as the ground itself settled away, leaving the other two Dragoneers standing normally. Then the earth almost instantly rose up in a large encircling ring that surrounded the alien like a bowl.

Zahrellion focused her teardrop, and she hoped that their combined might would end the alien nightmare.

She started to let it all flow out of her, but all of a sudden two strange ivory-antlered stags bearing wild-looking, metallic-haired riders came racing over the lip of the newly formed bowl from the north. They were calling out and waving their arms, and pointing up at the alien erratically.

Zahrellion couldn’t believe her eyes, for there was Lemmy running up and pointing alongside the fabled full-blooded elves. Then Lemmy let out a harmonic howling scream that blew them all away.

“KILL IT NOW!” the mute yelled in a voice that was at least three voices, if not more.

Zahrellion was still in control of her emotions, but barely. Jenka was swallowed! Jade too. If the Dou hadn’t been inside her, she would be pulling her hair out, but now she thought there still might be a chance for the boy she loved so dearly.

Lemmy and the elves let loose terrible blue-tinted flows of magic at the thing. Their powers intertwined into a thick hissing braid of energy. Zahrellion’s eyes met Aikira’s wide whites, then Marcherion’s harsh glowing orbs. It was pandemonium as they, too, let loose an untold magnitude of power into the munching alien full bore.

The alien was taking terrible damage, but it began retaliating by sending forth reaching tentacles that were easily long enough to grab any of its attackers. One of the appendages almost took Marcherion, who was standing next to Aikira on the rim of the bowl. March didn’t even see the thing. He couldn’t see what was right there because hot cherry pulses were flaring out of his eye sockets into the alien. Luckily for March, Aikira was as quick with her blade as she was with her wizardly magic. She lopped a length of the member off and the rest retracted swiftly.

The loss of her added magic, while she saved her fellow Dragoneer with her blade, was enough to allow it to begin emitting some sort of shielding.

Pores opened up all over the alien. It was suddenly pocked with them. A steamy gas radiated out and then began to glow a pale shade of green.

The effect of the Dragoneers and the elves’ magic was nullified when it met the weird glowing mist that now shrouded the alien. It gurgled out what might have been a laugh then, and let loose a deep, undulating sound that forced the earth to open underneath it. It sent out a bright static pulse that momentarily shocked everyone around it, and then began burrowing into the ground with a purpose.

When the now badgerish-looking thing was suddenly slinging water up with its thrusts of dislocated earth, it stopped in confusion. The idea of a water level underground had never crossed its complex mind. They had come a long way out of the hills since it had been pulled underground before. It could hear the waves rolling, it could sense the saline in the air, but now the hole was beginning to fill. Somehow the water table was beginning to rise.

This time, the shocking wave the alien emitted was stunning. And in the still pause after, it snatched up one of the elvish and its white stag and crunched them in its maw.