Michael Mathias - The Sword and the Dragon

For the first time, since he had absorbed Shokin’s Power into himself, Pael found that he was concerned, if not a little afraid. He directed the Choska back towards the city, cautiously searching the sky as he went. He spat thick, dark blood from his mouth with disgust, as his eyes darted frantically to and fro. Over there, then below him, he craned his neck, and twisted to see if he was being pursued now. He didn’t like this anymore. He should disappear too, he told himself. He could do that quite effectively, but not just yet. He wanted to make a lasting impression on the battlefield, so that his presence would remain fresh in the mind of the Witch Queen, and every single one of her Blacksword soldiers.

The Choska circled high, and then came down, streaking across the front of the castle. As he passed them, Pael blasted away the huge stained glass depictions that had shown over Xwarda for centuries. Like an explosion of jewels, millions of glittering, but deadly fragments, exploded out across the forest park, into and over Whitten Loch, and out into the inner city, where battle upon battle still raged wildly. Then Pael came around again. The Choska was flying at neck breaking speed. From its back, Pael sent a wicked jet of wizard’s fire out into the park. A huge swathe of trees, turned from green to brown, then to black, before erupting into bluish-green flames. Smoke began to fill the air, and nearly a quarter of the park was ablaze in demon’s fire.

Pael laughed maniacally at the potency of his display, and reveled in the rush of all his demonic power. Already, he had all but forgotten Mikahl and the Bright Horse. It was a costly mistake.

From out of nowhere, Mikahl shot across the Choska’s path. Pael ducked, and let his magical shields protect him. After they passed, it took the wizard a few, long moments to realize that most of the Choska demon’s head was no longer attached to its body. Ironspike had not only decapitated the creature, it had taken its soul.

The body was streaking towards the earth now, on twitching muscle-locked wings, while the head tumbled away in a spray of thick, black blood. Pael, now fully aware of the situation, transported himself away, just before the crash. The lifeless, bat-like hulk, hit the fountain lake in a splashing tumble of wings and claws. It skipped across the water, like a poorly thrown stone, and then crunched to a stop, against the retaining wall, near the swan shelter.

Queen Willa stood speechless, looking down from her tower top, as a cheer rang through her troops, and the dark blood of the winged demon-beast, slowly turned the clear pristine water of Whitten Loch a deep, inky black.

When she looked out at the many battles being fought across the inner city, she saw the afternoon sun play upon the millions of tiny colored fragments of stained glass. Such beauty amid such horror, she thought. The dead, the dying, and the ones, who refused to fall, attackers and defenders alike, hacking, stabbing, and killing each other, in the middle of a field, full of sparkling jewels.

As if in agreement with the sick irony of the scene before them, Talon cooed from her shoulder, and bobbed his feathered head.

Throughout the remainder of the day, Pael appeared at various places around the city. He never stayed more than a moment or two at any given place, but where there was Pael, there was destruction. Unconcerned now with preserving any part of the inner city, or its ancient structures, and seething with anger and fear, Pael began to methodically decimate Xwarda.

In the southern section of the city, a few hundred Blacksword soldiers were finally getting a large group of the undead corralled, until Pael came. Where the men were driving back the undead, buildings on each side of the street exploded. Brick, stone, splintered wood, and glass shards cut into their numbers. Pael was gone before the dust settled, leaving nothing, but a bloody, pulpy mess on the cobbles.

A fresh battalion of Highwander soldiers, who had just been sent forth from the castle to help defend the breach Pael’s earlier quake had caused, met the demon-wizard at their destination. Lightning flared from his fingertip. One, then two, then four, then eight of the Blacksword soldiers fell. Again, Pael sent forth a shocking blast, and another, until the way was filled with nothing, but smoking corpses. A moment later, Pael was somewhere else.

A brutal swathe of bright, static energy evaporated an entire block full of men and buildings. A jet of wizard fire sent a group of cavalrymen’s horses stampeding blindly through the cobbled streets with smoldering flanks and sizzling manes. Anything that got in the way was trampled, and most of the riders were thrown, and forgotten.

In the northern section of the city, a hundred or more Highwander men laid in a slumped formation, spelled asleep, in the middle of the avenue. The huge, boar-like creature Pael had summoned was having a feast on their still living flesh. The men were powerless to stop it, and when the Hell Boar’s powerful teeth dug into them, and broke the spell they were under, it was too late.

In the east, a meteor-like sphere of flaming death came crashing down into the mercantile portion of Xwarda. More than four square blocks were leveled, and almost a thousand men were crushed, pummeled, or roasted.

In his rage, the demon-wizard was seemingly unstoppable.

Mikahl, who was still flying on the back of the Bright Horse, tried as hard as he could to catch Pael in the act. He raced across the city, from disaster to disaster, but was always just a bit too late to spot the wily demon-wizard. He dispatched a wyvern, and crumbled a horde of undead soldiers to the ground with a pulsing blast from Ironspike’s blade. He headed off a flank attack of Pael’s dead men, and saved a few hundred Blacksword soldiers from being surprised. He killed an uncounted number of undead soldiers, sending their tainted souls into oblivion with a touch of his blade, but he couldn’t catch Pael.

Finally, as the sun began to set, he decided that there was only one thing left for him to do. He landed the Bright Horse in the center of the destruction Pael’s earlier quake had caused, and dismounted.

At once, the flaming Pegasus was gone. Mikahl wobbled on unsteady legs, but quickly mastered himself. He called out, taunting Pael, using every insult he could think of. He even sheathed Ironspike, so that he was momentarily unprotected by its magic. Standing there, in his gore saturated robe, he felt for the first time the intense brunt of the pain that Ironspike’s magic had been masking from him. It was excruciating. His body hurt so badly that he could barely think, but he continued to call out the demon-wizard, man to man. Unprotected, and reeling from the unhealed injuries the Choska had inflicted on him back in the forest, he waited. It was all he could think to do.

As they raced across the continent on Claret’s back, the bindings Queen Willa had placed on Shaella, began to unravel. Hyden had to physically wrap an arm around her waist, and keep his other hand over her mouth to keep her from spelling him. Sometime in the middle of the night, he had Claret land them in an aromatic pasture, full of knee-high grazing grass. The hoof-beating rumble of a retreating herd of animals faded from them, leaving only the sounds of the insects, and the dragon’s heavy, slightly winded, breathing. The half moon high overhead, tinted the swaying carpet of grass beneath them with a yellowish light.

Hyden wrestled Shaella from her seat, and shoved her from the dragon’s back. She landed in an awkward heap, still clutching her staff as if it held the world in its crystal headpiece. As soon as she gained her feet, she began to cast a spell, but Claret’s big horned head, and toothy maw curled around, and loomed in the darkness beside her, reminding her of the reality of her situation. The casting of her spell stopped immediately. It was all Shaella could do to keep from retching from the sulfuric stench of the dragon’s hot breath. To her credit, she showed no fear whatsoever, only furious indignation over what she had let happen.