Part 32 (1/2)

As the young wizard nodded and rushed off, Ether's eyes widened.

”You! How?” the shape s.h.i.+fter gasped in an unprecedented showing of awe.

The healer stood, pulling back the hood. There, before Ether, stood Myranda. Lain rushed to her and for a moment their eyes locked. Then each gave a knowing nod. The a.s.sa.s.sin scooped up the slumbering Ivy and followed in Deacon's path. The shape s.h.i.+fter, perhaps realizing the look of shock on her face, regained her composure.

”How can you be here? How did you survive?” she demanded.

”I'll explain when there is time. Have you much strength left?” Myranda asked with concern.

”I've more than enough,” Ether lied. She attempted to straighten her posture but only succeeded in underscoring her fatigue.

Myranda was not fooled.

”I'll help you,” she said.

Ether tried to push the human away, but lacked the strength even to do that. Instead she slipped back to her human form and leaned heavily on Myranda as they made their way after the others. They didn't get far. Her partner dashed up to her, panting.

”It is no good. The power behind the wall is . . . incalculable. I've never faced anything like it. If we want to leave this place, we have to cut off the spell at its focus. We have to stop that wizard from maintaining it,” he said.

A sudden surge of mystic power drew the attentions of the trio. Each had become finely attuned to such things. Without another word, both Myranda and Deacon rushed off toward Epidime. Ether began to follow, but didn't manage more than a few steps before she nearly collapsed. Her limit had been reached. For now all that she could do was wait. Slowly she turned and trudged toward the side street just ahead. Lain was waiting there. His sword was held low but ready, Ivy resting on the ground at his feet. Every muscle in his body was tensed, ready to sprint the very moment that the gla.s.sy, s.h.i.+ning wall ahead was destroyed.

Myranda rushed into the courtyard ahead. Three nearmen blocked her path as Epidime stood before a mangled pile of defeated dragoyles. He raised his halberd and summoned forth the unholy glow that always accompanied his spells. The ma.s.s of ruined creatures before him began to s.h.i.+ft and turn, waves of black twisting and crawling over its surface. The pieces rose from the ground, piling upon themselves. Deacon raised his crystal and set his mind to halting whatever it was that Epidime had planned. Myranda waved her staff and a swath of white energy cut across the nearmen. They shuddered and stumbled before collapsing in a flash of light and burst of dust, leaving only a mound of empty armor.

As Myranda turned herself to Epidime, it was clear that precious little had been done to impede the work of their foe. The last pieces of a fiendish puzzle were slipping together. The pieces of the destroyed dragoyles were cobbled loosely into a towering, mismatched t.i.tan. The heads had been joined side by side, strung together like beads on a necklace, jaws separated and hanging in a similar strand beneath them, affixed at either end. The limbs were attached end to end, fore and hind legs shuffled with little concern for their proper place, claws affixed one on top of the other until each leg ended in a tapered spike. The shattered pieces of torso were a.s.sembled into a mosaic just barely cohesive enough to accommodate the limbs, and the remainder of spare parts curled into a ma.s.sive, las.h.i.+ng tail.

”I've never felt a will so strong. The magic, the texture of it . . . It is different. Fundamentally so. There is only one way to end this,” Deacon warned.

He did not need to say any more, Myranda knew what had to be done. As Epidime climbed to his perch atop the hideous beast, the pair that faced him burst into action. So too did their foe. The spindly creature skittered across the ground like an insect, the jagged spikes that served as legs slicing into the hard stone and earth like it was clay. It moved ponderously, in long slow strides, but the span of the legs and the las.h.i.+ng tail made it seem as though it was everywhere at once. Deacon and Myranda split up, hoping to divide the attention of the creature.

Deacon stuck close to the buildings. He constantly tried to a.s.sault Epidime with spells of every type, but the diabolical wizard shrugged them off or worse, caused them to fade to nothing before they reached him. The beast he rode, if such a thing could rightly be called a beast, turned away from him, aiming its head at Myranda and its tail at Deacon. The disproportionately long appendage struck as though it had a mind of its own, one moment swinging in long slashes, the next gouging like a scorpion. It was faster than he was. Faster by far. Each strike was just barely turned away by a hastily erected s.h.i.+eld spell, but the blows cracked it and warped it, as though something about the physical blow affected his magic as well. And the attacks were growing stronger. Deacon knew that if he hoped to gain an edge, he would have to slow it down. Immobilize it. But how?

Myranda had far greater concerns. The heads, belching out their combined breath, sent great gales of the vile black stuff at her. Deft bursts of wind kept her safe, but the courtyard was quickly filling with the black mist. It pooled in sizzling puddles in the cracks in the street, and every moment there was less and less fresh air to whisk the danger away. The air around her became saturated. She could feel the sting on her skin. The ground was too dangerous. She had to get above it. With all of her strength she leapt into the air, mixing in as much levitation as she could manage. The leap turned into a slow drift toward the rooftops. The cracked and broken heads lunged, trying to snap her out of the air, but she tumbled backward. The creature tried to lunge again, but it stopped and pulled back suddenly.

Epidime turned to see what held him. One of the creature's legs was embedded in the ground. The ground beneath the other hind leg seemed to slosh aside, losing its substance and parting like a liquid. The dark wizard realized what was next and commanded his creation to draw it's leg free, but Deacon acted more swiftly, seizing the altered ground back again into not a mixture of stone and soil as it had been, but solid rock. The legs were held fast. As Epidime leveled his Halberd to deal with this newcomer directly, an arrow hissing though the air and gas.h.i.+ng his already badly injured arm reminded him of his primary target.

The battle was going on too long. He needed to eliminate one of these heroes now. Epidime ordered his beast forward. The head strained and snapped at Myranda, who was readying another arrow. Great plumes of miasma erupted forth, only to be blown in curling clouds back at Epidime. The horrid stuff burned relentlessly at him, but he paid it no mind. Myranda was far too important a target for him to fail now. With a horrifying snap, the monstrosity's hind legs gave way, tearing free and allowing beast and rider to crash forward into the building Myranda stood atop. The weak walls buckled, the ancient roof splintered. Myranda rushed to the edge and dove to the next roof, losing her arrow. She landed on the sloped s.h.i.+ngles, falling and struggling to grip the icy roof. Finally she found a foothold and climbed to her feet, turning to the house that was crumbling beneath the unbalanced creature as it fought to gain footing on now incomplete legs. A flash of motion distracted Myranda. Through the broken roof, she saw a terrified woman scrambling to escape her failing house. Myranda's eyes swept over the town. The black acid was eroding walls, streets, roofs. The poor people of this town were having their homes destroyed. Their lives were in danger.

With bow in one hand and staff in the other, she closed her eyes and opened her mind, drawing hard at the clouds above as she had in her exam in Entwell. With knowledge and purpose guiding the action, not to mention a considerable increase in power, the clouds above darkened and multiplied in seconds. A moment later there was a crack of lighting and a roar of thunder as a torrent came pouring down from above. Her eyes opened to reveal a terrible storm summoned up in a matter of moments. Water diluted and washed away the wretched black acid.

”You've come far, Myranda. Quite far,” Epidime allowed, taking note of this new display of skill.

Myranda ignored the words of her foe and leapt from the roof, rolling to the ground. She could not let him destroy any more of this city. The battle would have to be fought in the open, and finished soon. Deacon wrapped his mind around the las.h.i.+ng tail, crus.h.i.+ng his will around it like a vice and, with all of the effort he could muster, manipulating it. He had honed his manipulation skill to a fine edge. He could raise great stones, trees, anvils, but this was by far his greatest challenge. He managed to hold the las.h.i.+ng limb fast, but a will fought against his. He held his crystal out, straining to keep it still but slowly losing the tug of war. With a last desperate twist, he managed to snare the tail around one of the grotesquely struggling legs still held fast to the ground and anchor it there. Epidime swung his halberd without looking, a blast of black energy slicing through the air toward Deacon. He managed to dodge, and apparently blind to the danger of it, scrambled between the beast's remaining legs, under its head, and back to Myranda's side.

Lightning danced in the sky above him. Deacon called to Myranda.

”We won't hit him with a single strike he can see,” he affirmed.

”Fine then. Let us strike at him with a thousand that he can see,” she decided.

The words were cryptic, but they rang clear in Deacon's mind. Myranda drew back an arrow and fired it skyward. It arced upward, nearly disappearing from sight. Deacon then thrust his crystal high, a filament of brilliant light tracing upward until it met the arrow at the peak of its flight. Instantly a section of the sky turned darker than even the storm clouds. The patch of black spread like a swarm of insects, separating into hundreds, thousands of tiny specks. Arrows.

The two heroes scrambled for the far end of the courtyard as the first of the rain of arrows struck. They moved in a wave, p.r.i.c.kling the earth in an ever advancing line toward Epidime. His halberd raised defensively for a moment, but then let it drop. He turned a scornful eye to his foes who now stood just ahead of where the first arrows had fallen. A handful of the plummeting shafts struck the head of the beast . . . with no effect. A constant stream fell upon him, vanis.h.i.+ng just as they struck.

”Illusions. You would think to deceive me with illusions?” Epidime scoffed, genuinely angered by the simplicity of the ruse.

A moment later the grimace of anger vanished as an arrow, quite real, drove itself into his shoulder. It was true that the rain of arrows was false, but the one she had fired was not, and it had found its mark. Epidime gazed upon them with a look of calm, almost serenity as he pulled the arrow free. It should have killed him just as countless other attacks should have, but he stubbornly clung to life, a smile returning to his blood tinged mouth.

”When will you learn that it will take so much more than you have to defeat me?” he asked.

Suddenly he began to cough and hack, his whole body heaving with the increasing outbursts. He closed his eyes and steadied himself on the creature's back as he struggled to regain control of his failing body. The sound of something hissing toward him through the air, alas, did not go unnoticed. His mind reached out and slowed the projectile. His free hand rose up and s.n.a.t.c.hed it from the air. He spat and opened his eyes. What he held was the broken head of a casting staff.

”You threw your staff? Have you so quickly reached the bottom of your bag of tricks that you resort to this act of-” he began. He would never finish his sentence.

With the target held firmly in the hand of her foe, Myranda turned her mind skyward and drew down the true attack. A blinding bolt of lightning tore from the clouds above and struck the weapon, continuing through the man who held it and the beast he rode. Myranda maintained the state of concentration as long as she could, prolonging the bolt for seconds. All was white around them, in their ears continuous, deafening roar, like a clap of thunder that would not end. Finally she could manage no more. The lightning flickered away. She opened her eyes. The world was a haze. Even with her eyes firmly shut the intensity of the lightning had robbed her of her vision almost entirely. There was little left of the beast that stood before them seconds earlier. Less still was left of the man. Only a charred husk inseparable from the rest of the ruined rubble, and the blackened halberd. Myranda recalled her staff. The crystal glowed white hot, and the augmented wood smoldered, but her spell had done its work. It had delivered its payload to Epidime and been spared most of the damage.

”That was . . . savage . . . and brilliant,” Deacon admired, though his comment was unheard, the ringing in their ears easily drowning it out.

Myranda wished her staff was whole, as the cost of the spell was high enough to leave her nearly for want of the strength to stand. And yet, she didn't feel as though it was over. Around them, the sudden and complete silence following the thunderous uproar had inspired the bravest of the townsfolk to peek their heads from their shelters. Deacon tugged at Myranda's arm, drawing her attention and pulling up his hood. The wall was down. Now was the time for escape.

The hero turned to run, but the sight she caught out of the corner of her eye nearly stopped her heart. The halberd's glow returned weakly to the damaged crystal. She turned and saw the weapon rock free of the crumbling fingers of its former wielder and rise high into the air. Myranda's eyes turned to the ground as lighting cast three shadows. One was of the halberd. The second was that of a twisted, unnatural mockery of a human gripping the weapon. The third was that of a young child that had foolishly ventured into the courtyard from his hiding place. Myranda called out to the boy.