The Dragons of Ice and Snow (60 page)

Appalled, the wizard saw
the dragon shatter several other elementals as they attacked. He
turned to look at Tamara and felt a wave of fear as he saw her
strained expression. Her missiles were taking longer to cast and
weren't doing as much damage.

Simon looked to her
brother and saw him cast another lightning bolt and then stagger back
and fall to his knees in exhaustion.

My God, he thought. The
damned primal could actually win just by waiting them out.

He stiffened his resolve.

Well, let's see what kind
of damage I can do.

He scurried around for a
few minutes, frantically looking for his staff. Finally, with some
relief, he found it half buried under some rubble. He moved back to a
safe distance and looked up at the primal.

The dragon was still
fighting, bellowing in rage but then, as Simon watched, it stopped
and looked down at the forces arrayed against it. And strangely, it
smiled.

“
Enough of these
games!” it boomed. “I grow weary of this amusement.”

It chanted some strange
words in an unknown tongue and pointed toward the gap where the
portal had once stood.

Oh crap, Simon thought.
It's casting a Gate spell.

A round pulsing field of
energy appeared, cracking with power. It looked delicate and
translucent and faded in and out of sight. But it was enough.

A figure leapt out of the
Gate. Twelve feet tall, with broad wings and carrying a wickedly
sharp sword. It was a dragonoid.

Behind it appeared
another, and then another.

I've got to close that
portal, Simon thought desperately.

He looked up at the primal
and saw that it was still pointing at the Gate and muttering to
itself.

It's holding the portal
open, he thought. How can I break the spell?

He scanned through the
spells he had locked in his memory and then smiled. Yes, that might
work.

The incantation came
easily to mind and as he chanted, Simon pointed his staff directly at
the primal's face. And then he unleashed the spell.

“
Blizzard!” he
yelled and felt the power running from his chest, down his arm and
into the staff. An almost invisible dart of light shot from the end
of the staff upward toward the primal and vanished.

For an anxious moment,
Simon wasn't sure that the spell had worked. And then a swirling fog
enveloped the primal's head, thickening to a roaring vortex of
intense cold.

The primal shrieked and
grabbed at its face with both hands. At the same time, the portal
collapsed just as a dragonoid was coming through. It sliced the
monster in half.

Simon tore his gaze away
from the primal dragon and looked around. He felt a moment of panic
as he counted a dozen dragonoids, all armed with massive spears and
swords, moving forward as a group. Their nearest target was
Sebastian.

“
Bastion!” he
heard Tamara scream. “Run!”

The young man took one
look over his shoulder, struggled to his feet and staggered into an
exhausted lope, heading toward his sister.

The dragonoids all laughed
and shook their weapons. They were obviously in no hurry and moved
forward with frightening deliberation.

They were perhaps a
hundred feet away from Simon and he began to retreat toward the
opposite end of the mesa. A quick glance up at the primal showed him
that the spell was fading but that the monster was still holding its
face in its hands. He ignored it for the moment and watched the
advancing dragonoids.

The ground between Simon
and the dozen mutated dragons suddenly bulged upward, as if it had
turned to rubber.

The dragonoids all stopped
and stared at it in confusion. More bulges appeared and then all
shattered at once into dust.

“
Archers! Fire a
volley!”

It was Ethmira's voice.

The hum of fifty enchanted
arrows filled the air and Simon watched as they rained down on to the
dragonoids.

As one, the creatures
roared in confused rage. Several dropped at once, the arrows shearing
through their skulls and into their brains.

The rest, those who could
still move, drew their wings up behind them and began to trot forward
as quickly as they could.

“
Fire at will,”
Ethmira shouted and the air became thick with missiles. The monsters
never even got close to the elves.

As the last one fell,
Simon rushed forward until he spotted the elvish maiden.

“
You came back!”
he said gratefully.

“
Gather your
arrows,” she said to the archers. “This battle isn't over
yet.”

She turned to Simon and
grinned impishly.

“
Don't be silly, sir
wizard. We never left. Aeris told me that you were staying behind,
just in case the primal was still in the area. So I had my people
wait down below, on the off chance that you were right.”

She looked up at the
primal in distaste.

“
Obviously you were.
How goes the battle?”

“
I'm not sure. We
can wound the thing, but we can't seem to deliver a killing blow. How
the hell do you bring down something that tough?”

She looked at the creature
with narrowed eyes.

“
I don't know,”
she finally admitted. “It's hide is too thick to penetrate and
unless we can wound it on the inside, we may end up having to
withdraw and fight another day.”

“
Leaving it alive to
continue creating its twisted mutations,” Simon said bitterly.

“
I'm afraid so.”

The archers had gathered
up all of their spent arrows and now stood quietly, awaiting orders.

“
But we aren't done
yet,” Ethmira said and patted his arm. “Let's see how
much damage we can do before we admit defeat, shall we?”

She turned to her people.

“
Follow me. We are
going to give that abomination a taste of elvish steel.”

She smiled at Simon and
then trotted away with her people following in ordered ranks.

The wizard watched them
move across the plateau but his mind was focused on something the elf
had just said.

“
Unless we can wound
it on the inside,” Simon said under his breath. “On the
inside.”

He looked up and saw that
the primal had recovered from his spell. It was still being struck
randomly by the fire elementals, but except for flinching, it was
paying little attention to them. Instead, it was staring straight
down at him.

Simon had never seen such
malevolence in the eyes of any creature before. The primal glanced at
the slaughtered dragonoids, at the smashed eggs and twisted corpses
of its lesser dragons and then back at him.

“
You have much to
answer for, insect,” it growled at him, its yellow eyes burning
with fury.

A fire elemental shot
toward it and it smashed it from the air without even looking away
from Simon. Its legs were still encased in solid rock but it ignored
that too, as well as its seeping wounds.

“
When this is over,
and I am free once more, I am coming for you. There is no place in
this world that I cannot find you. And once I do, and you are
destroyed, I will personally hunt down every friend, every ally,
every person that you have ever known, and destroy them as well. That
is the consequence of what you have done here today. I hope you are
proud of yourself, little wizard. You have doomed everyone and
everything that you hold dear.”

Simon could feel his knees
shaking and it was almost impossible for him to tear his eyes away
from that dreadful gaze.

I have to do something, he
thought frantically. Here. Now. Tonight. He had no doubt that the
primal would do exactly as it said it would do. With its Gate spell,
it could travel anywhere, attack anyone.

This ends now, he said to
himself. And that phrase bubbled up in his mind again. Wound it on
the inside,

Oh Simon, you are truly
crazy.

He walked toward the
primal, stepping over small stones and around larger rocks. He kept
his eyes firmly fixed on its vicious yellow orbs as he went.

Vaguely he could hear
someone yelling at him. Maybe it was Tamara, or Ethmira. Possibly one
of the elementals. He didn't know. He only knew that this had to end,
tonight, or they would all die and it would be his fault.

When he was within a few
dozen yards of the primal, he muttered a quick incantation and held
it firmly in his mind. Then he forced a smirk on to his face and
cocked his head as he watched the creature above him.

“
You know, you've
got a big mouth,” he yelled up at it. “I don't remember
the other primals being so full of hot air. They had dignity. They
had majesty. They didn't threaten or boast. In fact, the primal green
told me that its victory over me would be a proud moment. It said
that consuming me, absorbing my magic into itself would be its
highest achievement. The black said much the same thing. Imagine
that. And here you are, bleating and whining. Threatening to tear me
apart, kill my friends, blah blah blah.”

He shrugged, feeling a
cold sweat running down his spine.

“
I guess that's the
difference between them and you. They were true leaders of dragons.
You? You're just some dark god's bitch.”

“
What!”

The primal dragon
screeched, It ripped its legs from the solid stone around them and
took a single huge step forward. And bending down, it grabbed Simon
in its massive hand again and raised him high above the ground.

There were distant screams
and winds began shrieking and swirling around the monster, but it
ignored them. Simon heard the ping of arrows bouncing off of dragon
hide, but the primal ignored those too. It was focused solely on him.

“
So, I have you
again, worm. You think you can insult
me
?
Belittle
me
?
I have more power in one hand than my siblings had in their entire
bodies. No wonder they wanted to absorb your power. They were weak!
But I, I am strong. With your magic added to my own, I will be able
to challenge the primal red itself! And once I do, I shall rule this
world, as is my right!”

The
primal was panting in its fury but then a look of anticipation came
over its twisted face and it smiled evilly at Simon.

“
Thank
you for giving me the idea to consume your power, insect. And just to
make your slow end even more agonizing, when I am done with you, I
shall still destroy all that you ever loved. Consider it a repayment
for all the pain you've caused me. Now, prepare to become one...with
a god.”

The
hideous maw of the primal gaped open, wider and wider. And then Simon
was pulled back and tossed directly down the throat of the dragon.

As
Simon was propelled into the putrid, suffocating throat of the
dragon, he gasped out the word of command.

“
Invectis
!”

Immediately
he felt his skin harden and tighten, as it turned into a metallic
substance as thick and dense as steel. He had enough breath to chant
one more spell as he fell and then he was sliding down the dragon's
gullet, slime and sticky fluid covering him like a second skin.

“
Shield.”
he wheezed and the air became breathable again.

The
flesh around him convulsed as the primal swallowed and he was pushed
downward until he landed with a muted splash into what he had to
assumed was the dragon's stomach.

He
staggered upright in the pitch blackness and chanted again.

“
Light,”
he said and a magical orb of white light appeared and floated up to
hover over his head.

He
looked around and almost wished he was standing in darkness again.

The
stomach was the size of a small room. The walls pulsated and throbbed
constantly and were dripping with a putrid green goo that stunk.

But
it was the stomach acid that Simon was standing in up to his knees
that was worse. There were bits and pieces of semi-digested food
floated in it. Most was unrecognizable but he saw what looked like an
arm and part of a foot.

He
somehow managed to keep from throwing up but it was a near thing.
Determinedly he kept his eyes away from the liquid and tried to
think.

What
spell did he know that could do enough damage to the inside of a
dragon to kill it?

The
Blizzard spell would hurt it, no question, but would it be enough?
Fireball? No, probably not. It wasn't hot enough. All those spells
would probably do would be to make the primal vomit, and Simon would
be right back to where he started, only slimier.

He
heard a soft hissing sound and looked down to see that the stomach
acid was starting to eat through his Steel Skin spell. Oh crap. He
didn't have much time.