BOOK II OF III: The Reign of the Sultan (43 page)

One, kill any remaining enemies still alive!
Two, rescue any wounded soldiers or giants by taking them in the
back of a wagon to the rear, so that the two thousand medics
stationed there could patch up the wounded.

Statistically speaking, during these first
five minutes of combat that passed, the dark gnomes had
successfully killed eight cavalry soldiers and wounded twelve; not
a single giant however was killed or even remotely wounded.

As for the numbers of enemies slain—nine
thousand, three hundred and ten were killed … fifteen thousand,
eight hundred and two became wounded, ranging from light to
mortal!

Yet another five minutes of incredibly fierce
battling waged between the two opposing armies, yet only a
fractional portion of the assault-cavalry had been stopped in their
ferocious charge—eighty-six wounded, and twenty-eight dead. One
giant was slain, and two were seriously wounded.

On the other side of the fence—twelve
thousand and twenty-six additional dark gnomes became slaughtered …
while twenty-four thousand, nine hundred and six were wounded!

Despite the massive amount of casualties
amongst the gnomes, ninety-eight percent of this bloody-battlefield
still remained enshrouded in utter darkness…

All the while, a miniscule-sized Dreeak
continued to hide away in one of the underground tunnels below …
tunnels that her gnomes had strategically dug out this last week,
spreading all around the entire battlefield.

Once the gnomes had finished this task, she
shrunk herself down until she was no bigger than five feet in
length, width, and height, and then entered the tunnels. Once she
and ten human prisoners were safely inside, the gnomes purposefully
caused a cave-in at the entrance, filled it up with dirt, and
finally camouflaged it.

Since the battle had begun, she remained
“enormously busy” using three of her magical powers simultaneously
and continuously.

First, she had used her power of
“conjuration” to summon a three-dimensional, holographic and
rectangular-shaped game-board that not only floated in the middle
of the air, yet actually contained moving game-pieces so that she
could observe the entire battle as it transpired.

Second, she utilized her power of “telepathy”
to command her forty-eight divisions of game-pieces/forces all
around on the game-board.

Third, she utilized her “teleportation”
ability to maneuver around her divisions, strategically, so that
they were always outflanking the enemy. Or, teleporting the wounded
and/or fatigued back to the rear, so that they could get rest,
and/or healed by the priestesses, whose divine power directly came
from Tiamat—the dragon goddess.

After the first second of the tenth minute
had passed, since the “game of war” begun, Dreeak tabulated that
her pieces still astronomically outnumbered the enemy’s pieces by
forty-nine-to-one, though it had originally been fifty-to-one at
the very beginning…

The following second, most unexpectedly,
Mitanium’s voice popped inside Dreeak’s mind, but he didn’t sound
happy at all as he telepathically reported,
Your Unholy
Greatness…we have problems!

Even though Dreeak had never stopped
magically gazing, directing, and teleporting her troops upon the
battlefield, her throat emitted a low growling sound just before
she growled out angrily, “What?”

Throughout the tunnels, her voice echoed this
word for dozens of times…

Through the chaos, he answered,
Because
Your Unholy Greatness has been utilizing her magical powers, in
order to strategically observe and manipulate all the game pieces
on this board, I know that you are already fully aware of Baltor’s
words of encouragement, and directions, to his game pieces
…

After a short pause, Dreeak lightly hissed
out the word, “So?”

He continued,
So, you may not be
consciously aware of the fact that your enemy has also been
magically casting a “zeal spell,” which has transformed all of his
forces into a “freaking demolition derby” on ours, for lack of a
better term!

For the first time since the battle started,
Dreeak took her eyes off the game-board by shutting her eyelids, so
that she could mentally glare with outrage at Mitanium!

Once so a second later, Dreeak observed that
he now bore a terribly worried expression upon his face, which was
an expression she had never before seen. Not once.

A few seconds later, her physical mouth
angrily howled out the word, “How??”

Dozens and dozens of echoes reverberated
through the tunnels.

Through the echoes, he answered,
Simply
put, Your Unholy Greatness, though it is not a simple matter at
all—no matter what word, phrase, or sentence that comes out of
Baltor’s mouth, he has been super-consciously stressing seemingly
random syllables into each and every sentence. But by combining
these syllables together, they form the arcane words of the “zeal
spell” using the ancient Dragonic-tongue…perhaps he has been
feasting on humans, secretly?

Now truly outraged, Dreeak barked out the
word, “What?!?”

This time, there were hundreds of very loud
echoes that continued for minutes to come.

Through the echoes, he answered,
As I know
that Your Unholy Greatness heard my answer, but is asking this
question regarding how this is all possible, I don’t know. All I
know is that our game pieces are getting mowed, slashed, or smashed
to bits, even though we have surrounded their forces three times
since the battle began twelve minutes ago! In other words, they all
should be dead by now, but the reality of the situation is that our
numbers are the ones dying in mass quantities
.

A look of shock and disbelief instantly
crossed Dreeak’s face upon hearing this news.

After a ten second pause, he added,
Even
worse—Your Unholy Greatness’s army may not even last until sunrise,
and then he will find you and kill you, before you can implement
“The Plan” tomorrow morning during the time of the two new moons on
the other side of the planet!

Dreeak physically screamed at the top of her
lungs, “Well, what in the hell do you suggest we do?
Alter the
plan? Retreat? What???
”

Utter chaos erupted, as every single word
that she had screamed reverberated thousands of times throughout
the tunnels for dozens minutes to come.

Shortly after the chaos began, Mitanium
answered,
Please calm down and trust me now more than ever, as
I—your super-consciousness—have been at the beck and call of Your
Unholy Greatness over the course of these last three hundred
fifty-three years since you were still in the egg—remember?

Dreeak nodded her head affirmatively one
time, though she was still very-very-very ticked off.

Mitanium said,
Instead of going through a
detailed history lesson, which history should seriously be written
as a book in the nearby future, here’s my idea! Skip “The Plan”
altogether, eat all your human prisoners now, transform into the
vompareus, and kill Baltor. When his master comes, Your Unholy
Greatness should be more than strong enough to take him
out…okay?

Though Dreeak trusted Mitanium, she had also
made a deal, and to her, a deal was a deal.

Therefore, she telepathically said,
Hold
on, Mitanium. Vompareus—hear me! Are you guys freaking watching
this stupid game? I hope you are. After all, my forces are fast
becoming quickly annihilated out there, despite my best efforts! We
might not only lose this battle, but the entire war, if I do not
stop Baltor at midnight, and his master right after. I know that
this wasn’t a part of” the plan,” but let’s alter it
.

Inside Dreeak’s mind, she heard a male voice
and a female voice scream at the same time, which voices both
belonged to her one Vompareus Creator,
No—don’t you dare! Look—I
know that you bear sentiment toward the Noman’stia Gnomes,
especially since you were the one to diligently train them since we
first gave you the recipe to make clones three and a half centuries
ago, but the time has not come for you to take Baltor out of the
equation, just yet. Wait until after sunrise, Dreeak!

You must allow the decimation of your army to
continue—trust us—the tides will soon turn once Baltor’s forces get
so tired that they can no longer lift their swords. This will
happen just after sunrise when he goes to sleep for the day in his
command tent!

And that is when you use the tunnels until
you’re right under his bed, teleport a dark gnome into his tent,
and have him or her assassinate Baltor in his sleep…

Trendon Harrn will have no choice but to try
and rescue his apprentice, and there you’ll be, popping out of the
ground right behind Trendon, stealing the Rod of Ro’shain from out
of his grasp, and releasing us from the Realm of Darkness we have
been trapped in for the last 9,000 years!

Only together can we destroy and kill Trendon
Harrn… and together, we—dragonkind, the vompareus and the arch
devils—will equally rule. That’s the plan… stick with it.

Finally, we know that hundreds of thousands
of your forces will die throughout the night, but who cares, as
they are just pawns in this game… We, however, have made you a
Queen amongst all the races, including the Master Races!

“Fine, but realize the possibility that your
plan may backfire.” Dreeak snapped back. She then reopened the
window that allowed her to see and manipulate around the
battlefield…

Only minutes before midnight, Mitanium popped
inside of her mind; he then reported,
As I warned you, Your
Unholy Greatness, there is no sign of that spell stopping, despite
the fact that Baltor has returned to the rear. Already you have
lost more than two hundred fifty thousand, while the enemy has lost
no more than two hundred thirty…

By tomorrow morning, you will no longer have
any forces whatsoever. Perhaps this may even be my last message to
you, if you don’t act as soon as you see him back on the
battlefield, Your Unholy Greatness!

It is Tiamat’s divine will that you
destroy the Rod of Ro’shain… not free the Vompareus. I know we did
not tell you this before, but if the Vompareus suspected that you
would betray them, they would not have made Your Unholy Greatness
into a vompareus at all
…

The dragon pondered her super-consciousness’
warning. After eating all ten of her human meals, and her body had
begun to change into the vompareus-dragon, Dreeak finally
freaked!

After literally smashing open a new hole
through the ground, she launched herself high up into the air. Only
a second later, she saw two hawks bearing four riders flying low
over the battlefield—the nearest was two miles away and the
furthest was two-in-a-quarter miles away.

Her dragon ears instantly heard and
recognized the voice of the driver of the nearest hawk continuously
shouting encouraging words to the Forces of the Sharia Empire
below. It was for this hawk that the dragon flew, which dragon not
only multiplied in size with every passing second, yet would take
no more than twenty seconds to arrive.

Two seconds later, Baltor saw the incoming
dragon and yelled out, “Cheo, I’m going to personally destroy this
thing
, once and for all. Continue to man your post and
supervise!”

Cheo cocked his head from side to side,
indicating the affirmative.

Baltor veered his hawk’s flight path directly
toward the dragon. Once so, only three seconds later, he observed
that even though the monster was still two hundred eighty feet
away, she was flying twice as fast as the speed of shadow! She was
also twice her normal size.

After sucking in a very deep and thunderous
breath that lasted four seconds, Dreeak blew furious gusts of dark
clouds and fireballs out her mouth, aimed directly for her arch
nemeses—fortunately, all the fireballs barely missed, as Baltor had
already ordered his hawk to veer sharply up and to the right.

While continuing to blow a few extra bolts
out of her mouth, the dragon switched her aim toward the path they
were going, but they were already too far away.

The second Baltor heard the thunder stop,
about three seconds later, he ordered his hawk to do a quick
U-turn—now facing the other way, he saw that they were currently
about four hundred fifty feet away from the vompareus dragon that
was now triple its normal size, and rapidly closing in!

Without delay Baltor pulled out the two last
acid bombs … and after they had gotten to twenty-five feet from
each other, he threw them both straight at the dragon’s face!

Two seconds later, they exploded!
BOOOOOM!!!

The dragon instantly screamed out her pain
and outrage as the acid not only exploded deep into both her eyes,
which completely blinded her, yet melted away seventy percent of
her face-plate armor.

At the same time, Baltor had already released
his seatbelt, secured his feet into the saddle, leapt off the hawk,
and flew through the air straight for Dreeak!

A second later, both hands clutched firmly
onto one of the eight large horns located on the very tip of the
dragon’s tail. Though her damaged face and blinded eyes were a
quarter of the way done healing, she could still feel her enemy
slowly climbing his way up her tail like how one would climb a
steep cliff, using all her horns as hand and footholds.

While Dreeak’s wings remained fully extended,
so that her flight path continued forward at the same altitude, she
wildly began to flail her tail all about in order to throw her
opponent off—but this action again proved futile, as Baltor had
arrived at the lowest part of her back, and was still scaling his
way up toward her neck.

Even though the dragon was still totally
blind, she abruptly switched the positioning of her wings, which
caused her whole body to begin rolling laterally through the skies,
in order to try and throw her enemy off that way—yet again this
action proved futile, as Baltor had made it halfway, and was still
climbing up.