An angel’s road to hell

62. Of escapes, surprises and a little bit of headless pirates

Cassandra Pendragon

The idiot. He had had me dead to rights and now… well I knew exactly how much power it took to keep a tear in space open, more than I could control at the moment. I waited half a second longer until his sword and most of his arm had appeared and then my wings slithered along the outer edges of the portal, searching for the spell that held space apart long enough for something to pass through. In my mind’s eye the portal was a black spot of nothingness, surrounded by beautiful glyphs, wreathed around the edges. They pulsed and shimmered with energy and even deformed a little while they kept the portal open. Grinning I ripped them apart, absorbing every iota of energy I could get my wings on. I couldn’t take it all, once I had weakened the structure, the rest crumbled on its own, squashed by the force I had experienced myself when I had tried to reach the other air ship. The result was admirable none the less.

With a hissing sound the portal slammed shut and cut off his extended hand that had been reaching through. A thunderous scream echoed from behind me and his blade, the fingers of his severed hand still attached to the pommel, tumbled through the air, a trail of blood extending behind it. Reflexively I reached for it and managed to wrap two wings around. I wasn’t going to touch the thing with my bare hands. The sword was brimming with power, a constant hum that set my teeth on edge but even though I could fell the malicious intent behind the runes it seemed like a gift to me. Together with the energy I had taken from the portal it should provide enough for me to heal completely. I stood still while my wings pierced through the runes and the underlying structure of magic, tearing, ripping, devouring. Light flooded through my veins and my whole being resonated with the delicious sensations that flowed through me while the sword lost its lustre before it crumbled to dust. The wind carried away a stream of black powder and I was tempted to catch his hand, who knew when it might come in handy, but I feared he would be able to use it as a focus for his magic and conjure one of his orbs from it or simply make it explode. A risk I wasn’t willing to take so I let it go.

My reserves were replenished and I had been able to absorbed quite a bit of life force from his blade. I felt refreshed and the wound in my shoulder was starting to knit together. My body was whole again, I might have lost some fat, my arms appeared quite sinewy and I could see the muscles move beneath the skin on my stomach clearly. I thought I had burned actual mass while I had been low on energy to somehow keep my faltering body functioning but that was a thing of the past. Right now I felt great. Mentally drained and still sort of frightened for sure, but I wasn’t in pain and I could feel my core pumping energy smoothly through my body without any problems.

I considered turning back for a moment, the loss of a limb and the amount of power he must have spent to open the portal should give me an advantage but when I recalled the last time I had had to face him in his changed form a shudder ran along my tails and I dropped the idea quickly. I still had only a vague idea on how to kill him and it required me to reach his carbuncle. Unless I had to I wasn’t going to come near him and his strange flying orbs again. Right now he was probably forming or conjuring a new weapon to replace the one I had destroyed and I wasn’t keen on seeing it in action.

As if to emphasise my thoughts, his voice rolled out like a wave of rage and I had to struggle to not get blown away: “you’ll suffer for this, whelp! I’ll flay your skin, break your bones and crush your spirit, there is nowhere you can hide from me! You’ll be mine.” The last words had been uttered quiet softly, more like a promise than a threat. I turned around while the last bone in my shoulder grew back and had to gasp involuntarily. He had changed again.

Where the formidable warrior with his wings had been, a swarm of insects filled my vision. They were too far away to make out the details of their tiny bodies but their sheer number was astonishing. The buzzing of their wings reached me easily and the monotonous sound drowned every other noise, I couldn’t even hear the wind anymore. There had to be millions of them, their carapaces black and shiny where the sun touched them they headed for me like a storm cloud, an unending wave of disgusting little soldiers. The term Plague Beetle surfaced in my mind and I suddenly knew exactly what was hunting me. A Plague Beetle was similar to a scarab but it didn’t have the horn on top of its head. Instead their mandibles were much larger, sporting serrated edges that could cut through metal and bone. The inside of their mandibles was covered with a secretion that contained every sickness they had ever come in contact with. A single one could be a real threat to a city, if it wasn’t caught quickly enough it would spread its diseases wherever it went and Galathon had turned into a veritable army of them. Bugs, I hated bugs….

For the fracture of a second I started to wonder what had happened to his carbuncle and if there were a couple of crystalline beetles hidden throughout the swarm but I opted to get out of there as fast as possible instead of satisfying my curiosity, the gnawing pit of fear the black mass had opened in my stomach and the rising nausea made it an easy choice. Stiffening my tails I shot through the sky like a spear and only glanced over my shoulder once I had covered a handful of kilometres.

I hadn’t gained on the swarm, quite the opposite, they were getting closer. Panic rose but for the umpteenth time I shoved it away and concentrated on the task at hand. A trickle of energy flowed to my eyes and I focused on one of the beetles without slowing down. The first thing I saw was a formation of runes on its back, glowing with faint traces of red. They appeared different from the ones I had seen before, rather archaic and somehow more brutal. They covered the carapace and followed its limbs, trailing on along the mandibles. While I traced the runes, I realised that it was missing one of its legs, the stump was clean as if it had been cut with a razor. The injury prompted me to check one of the others and indeed, it was missing the same appendage, sliced off cleanly. I felt much better, at least his hand hadn’t grown back. I also found out how the cursed things could be that fast.

They only flew a short distance before one of the runes covering them lit up and a small portal appeared in front of them. It transported them several meters before they materialised again and repeated the process. Luckily their tiny bodies didn’t seem capable of sustaining a longer range but they were able to complete one iteration once a second which allowed them to travel tremendously fast and explained why they were getting closer. Damn it! Outrunning the bugs would be much harder than I had thought. I was going to have to mimic them, weaving teleports into my flight or they would be gnawing on my tails in a heart beat. I could only hope that I’d be able to keep it up until I reached Viyara.

The next hour blurred away in arduous monotony. Wing stroke followed wing stroke only broken by a flash of silver when I vanished once more. A dull ache settled in, exertion taking its toll, but the thought of what was hunting me kept me going. When the sun was nearing the horizon I had managed to pull away, the swarm of beetles nothing more than an ominous shadow in the darkening sky, far behind. I had no idea how long they would actually need to catch up but if I had tried to teleport more often I wouldn’t even have made it this far. The distance would have to suffice, Viyara’s presence had become clearer over the last minutes and I expected the outlines of an island to appear any moment now. The thought wrung another burst of speed from my tired body, I couldn’t wait to stand on solid ground again, even if it meant facing off against an army of disease ridden insects.

The sun was a little to my right but its rays still made my vision blurry every time I stared straight ahead. A couple of minutes passed and then, finally, a cone shaped shadow appeared in front of me, its outline hazy from the distance but it became clearer with every wing beat. I couldn’t suppress a gleeful shout, my goal in sight but when the shapes in front of me became sharp and I started to make out details, I became cautious and weary.

An immense volcano rose from the depths, dark stone and smoking cracks formed the first 2 kilometres above the sea and clouds of vapour rose from its base. Along an invisible line the barren rock changed into verdant greens. Exotic trees like huge sequoias and sturdy date palms grew side by side with pines, cherry trees, oaks and firs. 4 rivers, one in every direction, ran through the forest and nourished the plants. Their sources were obviously artificially designed, close to the crater’s edge a ring of crystal connected four ponds with one another, each of them overflowing with sparkling, emerald green water that than ran down and formed the streams. I couldn’t discern much of what was happening below the canopy but the flocks of birds that rose up from time to time were a clear sign of how abundant life must be below the trees. On the eastern slope, a sizeable portion was charred and looked like a black scar on an otherwise healthy body. The birds stayed well away from the place and if I strained my eyes I thought I was just able to make out the bloody remains of a golden dragon.

What had caught my attention, though, were three sky ships, hovering deep inside the crater. I had only been able to spot them because I was still much higher than the crater’s edge. Rope ladders dangled below them and the smoke from their furnaces entered my nostrils with the distinct, sulphuric scent of treated wood. Viyara’s golden from, bound and gagged, hung below the ship in the middle, her struggling body slowly pulled upwards while the last rays of the sun reflected off of her golden scales and pooled on the blood red sails above her.

Viyara Nameless

Out of the frying pan and into the fire… the last day had been the worst of my life and when I had just thought I might actually have a shot at turning it around, I had been captured, again. After Cassandra, I had heard her name from Ahri, the other slightly intimidating woman, or rather kitsune as I had learned, had flown off I had felt elated. Through our connection I had been able to get a glimpse at what was lingering just behind her fragile facade when we had touched and it had stunned me. Deep within her I had felt a dominating presence, vast and ageless, dwarfing even the oldest dragons I had met. Her magic, her core, had been to bright for me to look at directly and I hadn’t been able to discern the shape it had been projecting but I knew there was a second form, just like I could feel mine below the surface. I had thought she would change as soon as she faced Galathon, but she hadn’t. I had even calmed Ahri down telepathically, otherwise the love struck fox wouldn’t have left Cassandra’s side. When the tiny speck of light had neared the huge, towering mass of Galathon I had felt desperate. Why hadn’t she transformed? When they had clashed for the first time and she still had retained her tiny body I had panicked. She didn’t know how!

Cold fear had gripped my insides but when Cassandra had actually managed to herd the Black away I had started to hope again. Maybe I wouldn’t be facing a future as a slave to the one being that had killed off my whole family? I had tried to follow their fight and had focused on my connection to her as soon as they had been gone from my sight but only the faintest hint of a presence had been coming through, not enough to guess how the battle had been going. The kitsune around me had been frozen as well, transfixed on the display in the sky. When all we had been able to see had been a quickly vanishing black spot on the horizon we had stirred. The children had looked at Ahri and each other nervously, doing their best to not meet my eyes. It had been entertaining for a moment until Ahri had stiffened.

A second later she had calmly ordered the maps to be brought over and had asked me directly: “now, do you know of a way to kill a grown dragon?” I had been forced to conclude that Cassandra was losing and fear had gripped me tightly again. With a little effort I had pushed it away, resolved to help in any way I possibly could. After a moment my father’s hoard had come to mind. Not 5 minutes later I had been in the air again, courtesy of the combined efforts of the kitsune who had helped one of them, Archy, to heal me completely.

I had rushed back as fast as my wings had carried me but my body had been nearing its limits when I had finally approached my home. Bleary eyed and tired I hadn’t spotted the airships which had been hovering deep within the crater until it had been too late. The moment I had realised something was wrong large harpoons with heavy chains attached to them had already torn through my hide. Pain and fear blew away my exhaustion. Please, not again!

A pulse of magic ran through the harpoons and my muscles spasmed, entangling me even more. I felt a heavy net hit my back and my flying ruff was pressed against my body. When the tremors subsided and I managed to unscrew my eyes again I was hauled across the deck of a huge airship, blood red sails blinking in the sunset. The smell of sweat and seasoned wood tickled my nostrils . Before I came to a halt, a coarse voice said somewhere to my right: “Ah knew them harpoons would com’ ‘n handy. As ah always say: when ya visit a dragon’s lair, ya bring the big guns and now look what we caught! A fine prize, no doubts about it, ‘n brought in without a fight. Good fortunes, mark ma words!” But not for me, I feared.

My limbs were still reluctant to do my bidding and my head hurt enough that any spell I tried fell apart long before I could finish it. A small throng of people were surrounding me despite the menacing growl I produced deep in my throat. An ugly, unkempt brigand whose smell assaulted me even from a couple of meters away was the one who had been talking. To his left a tall, slender male whose hat was adorned with a red feather smiled down on me. While the others seemed nervous or giddy, this one was composed and looked at me with a small smile.

“What do we have here? Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere else little snake? Who set you free?” His voice had a soothing cadence and I could feel the magic in his words but I wasn’t going to fall for cheap parlour tricks. Defiance and raged welled up. I tried to aim a fireball his way but all that came from my snout was a shower of sparks and a cloud of smoke. He chuckled quietly while his crew jeered and laughed.

“We can’t have you burning our ship now, can we? Don’t make it harder on yourself than it needs to be. I know who you are, just tell me how you escaped Galathon and our meeting might yet be a pleasant one.” A flash of light blinded me and when I had blinked away my tears, his headless torso dropped to its knees while a fountain of blood gushed from his severed neck.