Champions of the Gods (21 page)

Dirk shifted in and out of spirit form, hacking and stabbing the furious dragon with the biting blade. The beast was so large that Dirk’s three-foot sword had little effect.

The red dragon fought to dislodge Dirk, but he had a firm hold of a long horn. The maddened beast belched flame at its own feet so thick that it consumed not only itself, but Dirk as well.

Dirk continued to stab with the blade in spirit form, but he would soon have to retreat. The fire did not burn him, and there was no pain from the heat, but the fire was something of nature. Like water, earth, and metal, the dragon fire wore away at him, tiring him. For his spirit to take up the same space as the fire took great effort and large amounts of energy.

As soon as he flew off the back of the dragon, it went back to its attack on the mountain. Dirk set his jaw and attacked once more.

Fyrfrost swooped down for another pass, bathing the undead ranks in flame. Krentz fired arrow after arrow into the group, aiming for the large and powerful dwargon, some of which were over twenty feet tall. Scaled like dragons but resembling giant dwarves, the dwargon could do considerable damage. They were hard to wound, and nearly impossible to kill. However, her bow Aennak and its otherworldly arrows sank deep. Krentz tried to hit them at the very center of the body, where the crystal pulsed in their chest. A well-placed shot could explode the crystals and thus drop the beasts in one shot, but without the guidance of magic and upon the back of a dragon, it was not an easy task.

Dirk hit the dragon again with a blow to the neck. He was trying unsuccessfully to destroy the gland that housed the beast’s terrible power—if such a gland even existed. He knew that in theory one could erupt the fire gland of a dragon, but he had no real way of knowing if another gland existed that was responsible for the incredible beam of fire that tore through stone.

In its rampage to kill Dirk, the dragon fired its beam erratically, easily carving stone and even severing the head of a five-hundred-foot statue built into the side of the mountain.

The dwarves were pouring out of the mountain steadily, and when they saw the head of their ancient god rolling down the mountainside, they went into a rage-filled frenzy.

One of the dwarves, presumably a descendent of Ky’Dren, took mental control of the rolling stone and lifted it with a crying plea to the heavens. Dirk thought that the gods must have answered, for the dwarf, whom Dirk realized now to be King Ky’Ell, heaved the massive head in the direction of the dragon.

Dirk leapt off as the large severed stone crashed into the unsuspecting dragon, crushing the beast against the nearby stone.

A voice suddenly filled Dirk’s mind as he floated above the downed dragon. Dirk turned, searching the undead army for the source of the commanding voice. He could feel himself being pulled by the voice, beckoned.

He spotted the necromancer riding a huge dwargon. The dark elf’s eyes were fixed on Dirk, and his crooked finger pointed right at him. Dirk thought to attack, but discovered that he couldn’t move.

Behind him the dragon spewed his beam of white-hot fire, and it consumed Dirk as it passed through his ghostly body.

Krentz aimed for the crystal at the center of a dwargon’s body.

“Steady Fyrfrost, steady…”

Suddenly the dragon turned translucent and then disappeared out from under her altogether.

Krentz fell through the air screaming. She took the trinket from her pocket and called to Chief. Below her the undead hordes marched. She had only seconds before she hit.

“Help Chief!”

Chief’s maw appeared out of midair, followed by wispy tendrils that did not move with the buffeting wind. He took her hood in his mouth and gently flew her down to the ground.

“Thanks boy!” said Krentz as she landed and let loose an arrow at the closest draggard.

She worried for Dirk. Fyrfrost had been bound to him, and that meant that if Fyrfrost had suddenly returned to the spirit world, it was because Dirk had also. She knew that the only way for a spirit to be forced back through the trinket was an exhaustion of energy, heavy damage, or the command of a necromancer.

Krentz swallowed her fear for Dirk and focused on the problem at hand; she had been dropped in the middle of the undead army.

“To the mountain!” she told Chief.

He cleared a path to the dwarf mountain as she ran behind him, shooting off her enchanted arrows and hewing heads with her elven sword as she went.

Raene stood side by side with the other dwarves and fought against the steady stream of undead pouring in through the freshly burrowed tunnel. They had been at it for so long that sweat had drenched her clothes beneath her armor. She knew that it was hopeless to fight them here, inside the mountain. They would only continue to pour through. She had also heard the same noise as before coming from other places. This tunnel was only one of many. Raene knew that she had to get to the surface and find a way to plug the holes.

She turned from the battle and pushed her way back through the tunnel to the lifts, taking the one that would bring her closest to the surface. Many anxious minutes later, she was running through the northeastern door onto the battlements overlooking the Shierdon border.

The mountainside was ablaze with dragon fire. Catapults and giant crossbows fired repeatedly as the dwarves tried desperately to fell the destructive dragons. Raene searched for the holes leading into the mountain and counted four in her immediate vicinity. The undead continued through the tunnels. Behind them the green fog and the shadow of the undead army stretched on to the north as far as the eye could see.

A sense of utter doom washed over her then.

Raene shook off the feeling. She spoke the words that brought her mace to life and charged over the battlements, through the burning trees, and into the fray.

Dirk slowly roused, dizzy, tired, aching. He looked at his hands. They were as translucent as his surroundings.

Then he remembered.

The blast from the dragon had depleted his stored energy completely, sending him and Fyrfrost bask to the spirit world. The dragon sat beside him, seemingly sleeping. They were not in the usual glade, but exactly where they had been, on the rocky ground at the foot of the northern Ky’Dren Mountains. This was indeed the spirit world, for no hordes of undead littered the area, and no dragons flew overhead. Something else waited for Dirk Blackthorn, something much more fierce and imposing.

He rose to his feet and looked out over the thousands of dwarf spirits. Every one of them was looking right at him. The energy of the collective gaze electrified him, gave him new life. The dwarves wore a plethora of armor, some dating back farther than Dirk had ever seen in any of the history books he studied.

One of the dwarves stepped forward. His clothes and armor were from a time Dirk did not know. His crown was a circular row of golden dragon teeth, and his war hammer rested over broad shoulders.

The ghostly descendent of Ky’Dren said nothing. He didn’t have to. His eyes spoke for him. They held Dirk in a long stare, then turned back to regard the rest of the army. When their eyes met again, Dirk understood. He touched the dwarf’s head, burning the brand into his glowing skin. The dwarf nodded, and to Dirk’s utter shock, the same rune suddenly burned itself into the foreheads of the others.

Dirk grinned. He could now bring forth the entire army.

But first he had to be summoned.

Raene rushed down the face of the mountain. The red dragons flew overhead, spewing their fire haphazardly upon the side of the mountain and her kin. The undead horde with their brightly glowing green eyes continued to break through the dwarven ranks that had gathered at the foot of the mountain. To Raene’s horror, she saw that indeed some of the fallen dwarves had already been raised, and they tore into their brothers with murderous rage and gleaming emerald eyes.

She knew enough about the undead, liches, and necromancers to understand that there had to be one of the latter nearby for the dwarves to have been risen so soon. Likely the undead finished off their opponents and embedded the shards themselves, allowing for the necromancer to simply raise them from a safe distance.

The same terrible shrieking noise as before caught her attention. She looked to the east and found the culprit—a giant red dragon as tall as the burning pine trees in the distance. From the beast’s mouth came a burning beam of light that incinerated all it came in contact with.

She came to a skidding stop when the ledge ended and joined to the face of a steep cliff. Below her the dragon was fighting off the dozens of dwarves who were hell bent on stopping it. Their valor was their doom, for the dragon’s fiery beam cut through armor and flesh, leaving smoldering corpses in its wake. The dragon thrashed its head about, carving scars into the stone slopes and kicking up tons of glowing stone shards that flew in every direction.

Raene took mental hold of the multitude of glowing shards below her and guided them up into a swirling cyclone. She cried out to Ky’Dren, asking for strength. More and more shards she added to her spinning storm of stone. Soon she gained the attention of the dragon, who turned its destructive beam suddenly in her direction. With a heave she brought her raised hand down, sending the glowing shards speeding toward the dragon.

When the dust finally settled, Raene found the bloodied dragon lying limply on the stone below, its body riddled with a thousand pointed shards.

Raene fell to her knees on the stone shelf, panting. Something caught her eye down below—the raised axe of her father and king.

Ky’Ell and her brothers, along with hundreds of other dwarves, looked up at her on the ledge and cheered.

They had seen everything.

They knew they had been saved by a lass.

Raene smiled to herself and passed out.

Krentz and Chief fought their way through the horde of undead charging up the mountainside. Chief streaked back and forth before her as she shot off her endless enchanted arrows. The dragons had cleared a path to the tunnels, scattering the dwarves with dragon fire. Now the undead charged up these blackened roads. Krentz went with them, trying desperately to get ahead of the untiring creatures. They were relentless, leaping from stone outcropping to burning treetop in their attempt to overtake her. Soon she found herself too tired to keep up the pace—she would have to make a stand. The dwarves had regrouped and charged in her direction, but they would be too late.

Her only hope was that Dirk was ready for her on the other side.

“Dirk Blackthorn, come to me!”

The figurine flared to life, glowing brighter than she had ever seen it. She turned her eyes from the explosion of light. When she looked back, she found Dirk and a stream of streaking lights that surrounded her and drove back the undead.

The monsters of death reeled back from the glowing spirits as they continued to pour forth from the trinket. Dirk came to form beside Krentz and took her hand in his. Together they watched as the fallen ancestors of the Ky’Dren dwarves descended upon the undead army.

Behind them, high up the slope, the dwarves cheered and regrouped, joining their ancestors in the charge down the mountain, driving the hordes back into the creeping fog. Groups of spirits flew into the sky after the fleeing dragons and rode them to the ground where they were hacked to pieces by the dwarves.

“You’re something else, Dirk Blackthorn,” Krentz said with a laugh.

He laughed as well. “Aren’t I though?”

“Eeny! Eeny…Raene, wake up!”

She opened her eyes and saw her brother staring down at her.

“Kelgar?”

“Can you hear me?”

She nodded.

“Can you stand?”

She shrugged. She just wanted to go to sleep for a hundred years.

Many hands lifted her up and helped her to stand, and her brother put a hand on her shoulder.

“Father wishes to speak to ye…he be dyin’.”

Raene sobered instantly. The burning world came rushing back to her. She searched the bleak, smoldering mountainside and found a congregation of dwarves huddled together. Raene lurched forward and was caught by Kelgar’s strong hands. He helped her traverse the ledge and brought her to the king’s side.

Ky’Ell was laid on a bed of moss. His right leg was gone, and half his body had been burned by dragon fire. One good eye found her, and Ky’Ell raised his gloved hand to take hers in a firm grip. “Eeny.
Me
girl.”

“Dudda…”

“I seen ye, lass. I seen what ye done to the red devil. I been wrong, Raene. If ever a warrior come out o’ these mountains, it be you.”

“Father…I’m sorry for everythin’.”

“Don’t be,” said the king before succumbing to a violent coughing fit. “Ye done right. Ye done good. I be proud o’ ye.”

His eyes went blank.

“Father, me king!”

She fell upon him, crying. A steady hand took her shoulder and she turned to hug her brother Kelgar. Dwellan was there as well. And as the three siblings wept for their father, the rest of the dwarves sang “The Song of Fallen Kings.”

The spirits of Ky’Dren consumed the undead horde. When they had passed far to the north and returned once more, not a soul remained that had been tainted by Zander.

Dirk and Krentz watched from afar as Raene and her brothers mourned the loss of their father. The ghosts gathered around the fallen king as well. One of them, a dwarf with red hair identical to that of Raene’s, put a hand on her shoulder and smiled.

“Ky’Ro!” she cried and hugged her brother.

The ghost of Ky’Ro did not speak, he only smiled at his sister.

Raene looked to Dirk and Krentz. “Why can’t he talk?”

“I do not know,” said Krentz.

“He means to say goodbye,” said Dirk. “He and the others have lingered here because they felt that they had failed in defending the mountain. Now they have redeemed themselves. They go to the Mountain of the Gods to be with their kin.”

Ky’Ro released her and began to fade. He put his fist to his chest and bowed before Raene and her brothers, and then to their fallen father.

“Goodbye, me brother. Save me a seat at the table o’ the gods,” said Raene.

Ky’Ro offered her a grin as he began to glow. He rose into the air with the thousands of other ghosts. Above them, just below the clouds, a ring of golden light opened up.

Raene struggled to see beyond that glorious threshold, and for a moment she thought that she saw a mountain in the distance beyond the heavenly rays of light. It swallowed up the spirits of the dead and closed slowly.

The watching dwarves had fallen to their knees in awestruck amazement. Their eyes shimmered with tears of joy as the portal to the afterworld closed.

Kelgar approached Dirk and Krentz and offered them the greatest of dwarven solutes. The nearby dwarves mimicked the gesture, slamming their fists to their chests and bowing low.

“I am Kelgar, son o’ Ky’Ell. I would know the name o’ the man with the power to summon me ancestors.”

“I am Dirk Blackthorn. This is Krentz.”

“Dirk Blackthorn,” said Kelgar with a nod. “Lady Krentz…”

“Krentz Blackthorn,” she said with a smile to Dirk.

“I see,” said Kelgar with a sly nod. “It is a miraculous thing that ye have done here. How it be done, I ain’t for knowin’. But I thank ye and name the Blackthorns dwarf friends now and forever. Whatever ye might be needin’, consider it done,” said Kelgar, loud enough for all to hear. “For me father has fallen. And as was his wish, I be the king o’ Ky’Dren!”

The dwarves offered a resounding solute and cried out, “Hail, King Kelgar!”