Dragon Ultimate (45 page)

And then Ecator gleamed, and hate blazed from the sword so strongly that the giant's awareness of them was tripped. The Intruder's head swiveled, and the eyes glowed with green fury.

"What is this? So, I see a dragon and a thing like a giant man. How? How could anything reach this spot, except myself?"

And then the Intruder tossed its huge head, understanding driving home.

"Oh, of course. How noble of you. You broke the great oath in more ways than I had imagined. The only way you could achieve sufficient physicality was by regaining corporeal life on a lower plane, and to do that one of you had to surrender immortality!

"I recognize these agents of yours; I have fought them before. This is exactly the kind of treachery I have come to expect of you. You swore to put aside all physical interference in the worlds, but break your oath again and again!

"First I will turn aside to crush this pair, then I shall return to deal with you. You will soon hear my hammer smashing your carapaces to flinders!"

The giant turned smoothly on pillarlike legs and deployed its hammer in both hands.

Relkin bounced out and behind the giant, which swiveled to watch him. This was Bazil's opening. The great dragon suddenly dug huge feet into the hot ground and thrust forward, wielding Ecator in both huge hands, swinging for the giant legs.

The giant dropped its hammer into the path of the sword and shifted a step backward. The hammer was entirely made of magic steel, just as hardy as Ecator in its way. Ripples of opacity ran down the huge arms as hammer and sword forms struck huge sparks and set off a dull clangor in the hot, heavy air.

The vibrations from the clash shook the huge dragon. Bazil pulled back and went for the return stroke on the backhand. He was faster than the giant; the hammer only deflected the blow at the last moment, and the clash was more a skid than a solid contact. Still sparks flew.

The giant gave ground, moving very quickly for such a vast entity. Bazil returned with the forehand stroke and went through.

Ecator sank into the giant leg with a shriek of triumph. The sword went deep, but it was still no more than a minor wound to the enormous Intruder. The Intruder roared defiance and flailed back with the huge hammer. The stroke was ponderous, and Bazil ducked. As it whirled by, he thrust inside and came up with Ecator in front of him to drive home into the the giant's torso, above where the pillarlike legs joined.

Ecator shrilled his "kill!" cry once more as the blade sank home, deep into the vitals of the gigantic Intruder.

Red sparks erupted across vast areas of the giant. A long section turned black, losing the internal glow that infused the monstrous golemoid as huge areas of its steel tissues were destroyed.

Then a vast hand smashed into Bazil's head region. Bazil gave a squawk of dismay as he was unceremoniously toppled to the ground.

The Intruder let out a huge roar of pain, compounded with anger. The damage from this huge wound would interfere with its effectiveness in further combat. With another loud cry of rage, it tore out the sword and hurled it away. Then it swung up its hammer and took a step toward the fallen dragonform.

At this point Relkin bounced in at top speed and jumped as high as possible. His first jump took him to the level of the giant's face. He flew so quickly that the Intruder's raised arm missed him by a long way.

He crashed into the smooth front of the head and thrust into an eye with his sword, but it merely sank into the outer integument before he dropped free of the giant's face. Pushing off with both feet from the chest region, he did a backward somersault toward the ground.

His new body had amazingly athletic abilities, he thought to himself as he completed this trick and landed on his feet, which immediately sank deep into the hot surface.

Far above, the giant bellowed and clutched at its eye. Relkin struggled to free his feet from the semimolten rock. The giant looked down at him and raised its hammer. Relkin pulled one foot free.

Meanwhile Bazil had been able to crawl away and get back on his legs. Ecator was buried to the hilt in soft ground about a mile distant.

Relkin pushed free at last, moved sideways, and the Intruder's hammer missed him by a long way.

The Dominator had realized that he was pursuing the wrong target. Relkin saw the giant swing aside and accelerate toward Bazil. It was a race to the sword.

Relkin hurtled after them, caught up in two huge bounds, and leaped up onto the giant golemoid's back. Instantly a vast hand came around seeking to slap him away. Again he stabbed at the back of the monster's neck, but the sword penetrated no more than an inch or two before he was forced to leap away.

He wasn't quick enough to avoid all contact. The edge of the giant hand clipped him in passing and he felt himself spin, losing all control. He fell heavily on his backside and, to his horror, felt his huge, two-hundred-foot-long body blink, shudder, and turn off. He was left in darkness, with no sensation.

Was this death, he wondered to himself? Was it all over and he had lost? Was he going to wait here in this dark limbo until Gongo, God of the Dead, came to collect him?

Then something twitched in the darkness, as if it were on the other side of an invisible membrane and was trying to poke into his bubble of darkness.

And then a voice spoke loudly in the center of his thoughts.

"Awake!"

The mind mass, it had to be! It called to him once more…

He knew what he must do—reach for those hidden powers, the things he had tried so hard to ignore.

And he struggled to awaken and reconnect with the giant new body. Nothing happened, and he tried again, concentrating with that fragile part of his mind that he could only just connect with. Still nothing, and despair began to well up in his heart. He concentrated once more with manic force, and was rewarded with the sense of fingers twitching. Then vision blurred back into life, and with it came sound and touch. He sat up.

There was no time to contemplate the meaning of life. The mountainous mass of Waakzaam's Intruder was just a step away and clearly intent on stamping him flat beneath its monstrous foot.

He rolled, then crawled, and finally staggered to his feet and pushed the great body into a stumbling run.

The ground shook behind him as the Intruder missed him by a few feet. He dodged aside, and the foot missed him as the Intruder tried to kick him. On slow and shaky legs Relkin danced into the giant's rear. He had to maneuver carefully now. One mistake and the Intruder would stamp him flat. He turned back to look and hurled himself aside as the giant hammer came down and buried itself in the soft ground where he'd been about to land.

Relkin sprang away despite the sudden stickiness of the surface, which had virtually liquefied around the hammerblow. His feet tore up long tacky threads of rock that fell away like glowing wires when they dislodged.

As he sprang Relkin noticed deadened sensation from the areas that had been rubbed hard across the rocks when he fell. His new body was getting old quickly.

There was still a degree of torpor about his huge body's movements, but he shook himself as he turned and began the pursuit of the Intruder. He couldn't leap nearly as far or as frequently as before. Still, Relkin had gained the dragon a second or two that he hoped would be enough.

The two huge forms were still driving hard for the sword.

First came the dragonform, then towering above and behind came the vast Intruder.

Bazil reached the sword in time to get hold of the handle and heave hard on it. It held fast, glued into the rock. He heaved again, hauling on the sword with all the strength he could find. At last it started to work loose. Bazil gathered his new body's strength and once more pulled with everything he could summon up. The sword started to rise slowly, then suddenly came free. He stumbled back a step and almost lost his balance.

The Intruder was almost in range, its hammer raised high. Bazil tried to get some purchase on the jellied surface and found himself sliding sideways and was then caught a glancing blow by the hammer as it zoomed past his head. Bazil lost all sensation for a few seconds. When he came to, he was down on one knee, head bent forward.

The Intruder came for him, braying in triumph.

And once again Relkin managed to get there in time to save the dragon. This time, though, he could only reach the monstrous golemoid's waist. But there he found rows of knobs projecting from the integument. He held on and found purchase for his feet on the damaged area caused by Ecator's first thrust.

There was now a cavity torn into the abdomen of the Intruder. It reached up past where Relkin clung, opening almost like a cave into the belly of the thing. The interior was a mad jumble of tubes and holes, a foam of passageways and wormholes, the whole thing flexing constantly to some great drumbeat while green energies zipped through the tubing. Relkin stabbed inside with his own sword and was rewarded with flashing green sparks and a cloud of black vapor.

Then he had to jump to avoid being seized and crushed.

As he fell to the ground he noticed that the dragon was slowly getting back to its feet. But too slowly, and once again the hammer clipped the dragonform. Bazil staggered backwards, slammed into the ridgeline of iron crystal, and sent one of the pinnacles crashing to the hot plain. An area of the metallic skin on Bazil's back was ripped up, and vapor and fragments were bleeding from below.

Bazil braced himself against the low crystal cliff, then pushed off and came back with a very quick riposte. The giant, off-balance, was still recovering from its clumsy swing of the hammer. The dragon's sword sank home deep into the waist region, and once again the spirit of the blade shrieked in triumph as it cut through the Intruder's integument and devoured its life energy.

The Intruder roared in disbelief as the dragon stabbed it through the middle, then pulled out and spun away. An ineffectual swing of a fist missed the dragon's head. Bazil had learned about that stinging counterpunch from hard experience and ducked as he retreated.

The Intruder's waist region was turning dark, and there was a definite slowing of its movements and a stiffening of its limbs. The huge construct gave off a wail that was part anger and part genuine fear as Waakzaam contemplated for the first time the thought that he might not be victorious.

Bazil came back a moment later, and Ecator cut deeply into one of the Intruder's arms. Then the dragon drove his great sword into that mountainous torso again, this time through the chest.

The Intruder dropped its hammer and seized him in a bear hug.

The dragon was swallowed up in the huge arms even while Ecator was buried in the Intruder's chest. While Ecator fairly howled with triumph, the Intruder started trying to tear Bazil's head off.

Desperate, Bazil wriggled hard in the huge grip and got his right shoulder free for a moment. He managed to get a leg up on the Intruder's thigh and pushed back, breaking free enough to punch the Intruder square in the face. The facial integument flattened into the head and the eyes went out, but a few moments later it revived. The Intruder held the dragonform with one hand and punched him in the head with the other.

Bazil staggered backwards, and toppled over the low crystal ridgeline, rolling down on the other side amongst shattered shards of crystal.

The Intruder snarled in frustration, Ecator still buried in its chest. It was too weak and clumsy to climb over the ridge. To get at the dragon it would have to go all the way to the end of the ridge and then come back up on the other side. It pulled the huge sword out of its body and hurled it to the ground. The hammer rose high and came down with full force upon the sword, but did not break the blade. Again and again the Intruder hammered the sword, trying to destroy it.

Suddenly a wave of darkness ran across the surface of the Intruder's integument. The huge thing came to a halt, unable to move. The Intruder was weakening fast and, as it did so, it opened the way for the Sinni to try and destroy it directly. If they could find the frequencies required, they might turn the great golemoid body to ash in a twinkling.

Waakzaam shivered at the thought that he might lose the capacity to exact revenge upon his hated foes. With a scream of hate he abandoned the sword and the dragon and set the Intruder to marching on the pyramids, which were still squeezing into the narrow canyon.

Bazil was left behind, to slowly pick up his body and get back on his feet. It took a minute or more just to stand up. Twice it almost toppled over and was only prevented by Bazil's putting a hand down on the ground. At last the dragonform stood upright.

Over the low ridgeline Bazil could see the Intruder's back. He tried to put his legs into motion. One huge foot lifted, moved forward, and set down again. Unfortunately the strain was too much. Suddenly everything blanked out and the dragonform went straight down to crash face first into the hot rock surface.

It didn't move.

Relkin came scrambling over the crystal ridgeline and halted beside the silent dragonform, still prone on the hot ground.

"Baz?"

There was no response.

"Baz!"

Relkin went to try and pull up the huge head, still buried in the soft rock. The head was too heavy for him to lift and the dragonform remained ominously silent.

Relkin contemplated the worst. Bazil was dead, extinguished along with the dragonform. And without Bazil they were done for. On his own Relkin knew he could never defeat that monstrous mountain-sized thing.

"Baz, you've got to wake up. We need you."

The dragonform remained inert.

Waakzaam would smash the Sinni and the light would go out across the Sphereboard of Destiny and the forces of evil would triumph. The very concept of justice would vanish forever.

"Baz?"

No response.