The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (23 page)

She had no time to argue, the first of
the skeletal shades had arrived.

Then Myrka let loose.

Up until this moment, I wanted to get
rid of the cold sorceress, but I had to say, she saved our bacon.
If there was one thing which Myrka could do, it was pure
destruction.

She lit up the first three skeletal
shades coming at them with quick beams of that blue light. Upon
hitting the creatures, they exploded into bones and bits of armor
and weapons.

Then two closed on her from the walls,
swinging their old weapons.

But nothing reached Myrka, as the
weapons got close to her body they dissolved in a cloud of rusted
particles as if aging a million years in one split
second.

Then her hands touched two of them who
got too close and they changed into stone statues, falling
backward, and tumbling down until they hit the first floor and
shattered into a thousand shards.

Toji was a whirling tornado of death.
He spun and dodged while backing up the stairs, and each time one
of his slashing tantos connected with a skeleton, it cut it in
pieces like a cleaver cutting a paper doll.

Both of them kept retreating up the
stairs, cutting down adversaries left and right.

But what they didn’t see were the
small tornadoes which were the shades reassembling their bodies
each time they were struck down. Toji and Myrka were mowing them
down, but they were only damaging the bodies, not the Shades which
made the bodies.

Four of them bypassed Toji and Myrka,
coming up the wall like spiders.

Hydan saw them, and when they got near
he gestured and they turned into large saeran style fish, like ones
we had seen at the bottom of the river, though these ones were only
skeletons of those fish. They fell back, wiggling, well, like fish
out of water. They had no hands to grab with or hold onto things,
or legs to stand on, so they fell, going all the way to the bottom
floor, where they shattered on the stones far below.

“
Don’t you just love
snogfish!” Hydan bellowed with a huge grin.

“
Shades of snogfish, you
mean,” I replied.

He just laughed.

In a few more flights of stairs, we
reached a door at the summit of the stairway. Hydan opened the
latch and swung it wide. Then he, Ziny and I ran inside.

Hydan turned at the door, so he could
help cover Myrka and Toji.

Myrka yelled to Toji, “Go!”

Toji turned and ran through the door
opening, which left Myrka out on the stairs, alone.

Right then the skeletal ghosts made a
concerted attack, with many of them coming from Myrka’s sides,
having run up the walls and stairs. They all converged on the
Tarvos sorceress in an attempt to overwhelm her defense.

Hydan saw them attack and made a quick
gesture with his right hand. Four of them fell, turned into
snogfish, but the rest were coming from Myrka’s other
side.

Myrka let loose a barrage of beams,
spinning and gesturing swiftly in many directions with both hands,
striking almost faster than you could watch. She took out eight of
the approaching skeleton shades in less than three seconds. The
remaining six leaped at her and she had to fire unthinkably fast to
get them all, but she did it somehow, and only bone dust settled
around her.

But then she staggered, and Hydan
reached out and grabbed her arm, yanking her in through the door,
which he immediately slammed shut.

He looked at the door and it turned
into a stone wall.

Myrka fell and then lay still on the
ground.

Ziny came over and held her hands over
Myrka’s body.

“
She used all her power,”
the young sorceress said softly.

Hydan spun in shock, and exclaimed,
“All of it?”

“
What does that mean?” I
demanded.

Hydan shook his head, “Using the
Derkaz takes a toll of your true magic in order to focus that dark
power. Your true magic comes from your soul, so if she really used
all of her true magic then she drained her soul, and she will
die.”

But Ziny had a look of concentration
on her face.

Myrka’s eyes fluttered open, and she
saw the young girl working on her, and managed to say softly, “I’m
sorry I tried to kill you.” Then her eyes slowly closed and her
breathing stopped.

But Ziny was still concentrating, and
she muttered, “There is a tiny thread left, I found it.”

Hydan watched, not wanting to disturb
the small girl lest she lose the connection.

Suddenly Ziny toppled, falling to her
side like a sack of potatoes, but right then Myrka sucked in a
breath.

I dropped to Ziny’s side, and lifted
her small limp body in my arms, looking for signs of
life.

That’s when Myrka opened her eyes
again. She looked toward me and saw me holding the limp little
girl. Then Myrka whispered, “She saved me, but it took everything
she had.”

“
Is she…”

Hydan put a hand on my shoulder, “No,
she’s alive but just barely. She is only a Sixth, and she poured
what she had into Myrka to replenish her power and bring her back
from the brink of death.”

“
Why would she do that?”
Myrka said while staring at the small girl draped across my
arms.

“
I guess she saw something
in you which the rest of us, or even you, don’t see,” I noted. I
got to my feet and carried Ziny over to an old bed before gently
putting the little saeran girl down.

I sat there for a while, looking at
her slack face, this little alien girl, with her fish scales, dark
eyes, and little fins over her eyes. A girl who had given
everything she had to save a foreign person who had tried to kill
her earlier this same night. It gave me hope that in all this
insanity, there was something worth saving. There was at least one
little girl worth the struggle.

Outside the wall, which had been a
door, we could hear the shades howling.

I looked up and spoke to Hydan, “What
is keeping them out? Is it that stone wall?”

He shrugged, “Partly, at least those
bodies they constructed, but I don’t know what is keeping those
shades from coming through the cracks and then trying to manifest
in here.”

“
What are Shades?” I
asked.

“
Dead mages who deemed it
worth staying near the place of their death for some great purpose,
and denying themselves the return to their origin. Not many souls
have the will to manage this and those who do become a ghost. But
it gets worse, the longer they stay, the greater the chance they
will eventually go insane and become the shades you saw out on the
stairway. Once that happens they become insanely angry, and attack
the living.”

“
Can they travel away from
the place where they died?”

Hydan shook his head, “No, their power
stems from the end of their existence in that place, and they are
bound to that location, their soul can still move on if they
choose… or until they become too insane to even remember how to
depart this existence.”

I looked at the wall and said, “There
were a lot of them, why would so many mages die here, and choose to
linger?”

“
That is a very good
question,” Hydan replied.

And then we heard a new and ghostly
voice from the far corner of the room, near the window opening
which looked out over the lake and countryside, it said, “I can
answer that.”

I spun around, and Toji went into a
crouch with his tantos ready. Even Myrka attempted to raise her
hand, though she was still too weak to actually manage it. Hydan
just raised the small fin over his right eye in
curiosity.

When I looked I didn’t see anyone
standing or sitting from where the voice had issued, but as soon as
I thought that, I changed my mind, there was something there, a
very dim shape… the shape of a saeran male, wearing a long blue
robe. He was completely translucent and seemed more like moonlight
than reality.

“
Who are you?” Hydan asked
pleasantly.

“
The ghost of a wizard, the
very wizard who these sorry fools died to end. They chose to stay
here and keep my soul from escaping. Together they have enough
power to hold me here.”

Toji frowned, “So you killed them, and
their souls choose to stay and hold you here?”

He shrugged, “I killed some of them,
yes, but the rest committed suicide so there would be enough of
them to hold me.”

Hydan spoke, “But that means you had
to be much more powerful than any of them!”

“
I am a Third of my House,
and they were mostly fifths and lower before they became
shades.”

Toji tilted his head, and then asked,
“Why would a bunch of Fifths, Sixths, and Sevenths throw themselves
at a Third, knowing they would likely die in the
attempt?”

The ghost moved slightly, going to the
window. When the moonlight passed through his ethereal body it
became brighter and more visible. He turned to face us and I got
the first clear look at his Glyph; it was a winged dragon, hovering
in air.

“
A DRAGON!” Myrka hissed,
and tried to get to her feet, but collapsed weakly on the ground,
though she kept trying to get up.

“
Rest, Tarvos, for I am a
ghost, and I am not going anywhere. I am Abraxas, Third of House
Dragon! I have been here now for many hundreds of saeran years,
bound here by the shades who slew me.”

“
I would have been one of
them, had I been here!” Myrka stated angrily.

I noted Toji facing the ghost with his
tantos held in both hands. Even Hydan had taken a step backward. I
was the only one who hadn’t reacted to the declaration of his
House.

“
OK,” I said, “what is the
big deal? You know, I should have asked this earlier, but things
just kept getting in the way, but I’m going to ask now, what the
hell is a Dragon? From his Glyph, I assume it is one of the Houses.
In fact, Toji, earlier you said the Dragon Archimage was thrown out
of the Ring of Ten. And Fiona Albus said that The Dragon was coming
for me, who IS The Dragon?”

It was the ghost who answered, “The
Dragon is the Archimage of House Dragon, ruler of the world
Sheol!”

Myrka scowled at his proud
proclamation and said, “Let me enlighten you further, The Dragon is
the only one of the Ten to break the Archimage Accords, and he did
so twice. The second time was an attempt to murder another
Archimage while he was on neutral territory. That alone was grounds
for his expulsion from the Ring of Ten. From that moment on he and
his kind were hunted, and his line was marked for
extinction!

“
That’s when he went on a
reign of terror, doing unspeakable things across all the Worlds. He
betrayed every ally, murdered innocents, tortured mages for their
secrets and made them betray their families. His power grew as he
stole secrets from every house. He is now the most hunted of all
beings in the ten worlds, but he is cunning, ruthless, powerful and
purely evil. He is the Dark One, the master of lies, and his names
are many, but he is most often called The Dragon.”

I swallowed and then said, “And…
really, this person is after me?”

Hydan raised his shoulders slightly
and said, “I’m not sure ‘a person’ is sufficient to describe one of
the primordial ten Archimages. But it does seem like The Dragon is
hunting you, Nick.”

The ghost spoke, “If my Archimage is
seeking you then he will find you!”

Great, that's all I need.

The Ghost was looking at me
imperiously, and then I wondered why he was really here, so I
asked, “Tell me, Abraxas, why did these Sivaeral ghosts hold you in
this tower? What did you do, help Morgain against her
Archimage?”

“
I did nothing of the sort!
My House Glyph was seen by one of these mages, who then foolishly
gathered others of his House and hunted me across their world. I
took refuge in this tower, and they threw themselves at me, dying
when I had no desire to do them harm! Then, when I fell, the
remainder of these misguided zealots tragically ended their own
lives to trap my soul in this tower.”

“
And it seems to have
worked,” I said.

Myrka nodded, anger brewing on her
face. “I am sorry I slew some of these guardians; I did not know
what evil they held at bay. If I but had the power I would…” but
she was too weak to even speak, and trailed off.

I’m not sure what she would have
attempted, or what you could even do to a ghost.

Suddenly Abraxas smiled, and said, “At
last! My time of imprisonment is coming to an end!”

Hydan suddenly looked attentive, “What
was that?”

“
My Archimage draws near, I
feel his power, my master is coming!” the ghost exclaimed with
rapture in his voice.

Hydan swiftly moved to the arched
opening and looked out, and then said, “May the Silent Mother help
us, he’s right, I think The Dragon is coming.”

Toji and I joined him and looked out.
Far in the distance, we could see some kind of flaming flying
creature streaking our direction, a bright glow of yellow and red
fire in the night a few miles off.