The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (46 page)

“
I take it that is a
StarWard?” I asked any of the other mages present.

Hydan grinned, “A very BIG StarWard. I
would have to say this one probably covers all of Mystical
Island.”

I nodded. “OK, how do we take it
down?”

Toji was looking at it dubiously.
“When Finnabair suggested we take this down, I had no idea how much
power she was talking about!”

“
That matters?” I
asked.

“
Oh yes,” he said, “It
takes the same amount of power it took to create the StarWard to
take it down, and this is very powerful!”

“
I’ll do it,” Hydan
said.

“
Maybe I should, I’m a
Second,” I noted, “So I have more power available.”

Hydan nodded, “But, you don’t know
what you are doing with a StarWard, and if you release all that
energy incorrectly, well, this will be a very large crater
afterward.”

“
Ah, OK,” I said, “maybe
you should do this then.”

Hydan gathered himself for a moment
and then walked right into the rotating StarWard. His body glowed
brightly for a moment, and then the StarWard just winked out of
existence.

“
Wow, that was a lot of
power; I feel quite fatigued!” Hydan exclaimed after taking a big
breath.

“
So it’s down?” I
asked.

But right then Finnabair spun into
existence, wearing white plate armor over white leather. She looked
quite stunning.

“
Mother!” I exclaimed.
“What are you doing here, has something gone wrong?”

“
Not at all,” Finnabair
said with a white flash of teeth, “I just have something else I
need to accomplish as well as your mission here!”

Hydan sighed and shook his head, “I
warned you, Nick, this is the part of the Albus plan which you only
learn about while you are in the middle of doing it.”

Finnabair just shrugged, “Just trust
me, this is important for Abal! Now, you need to get on with what
you were doing, go release the Archimage of Abal! You must hurry,
Morgain is coming!”

“
Morgain!” I exclaimed,
“Didn’t she go to Ouroboros or Ivory Castle?”

Finnabair shrugged, “No, though I
really thought that was a long shot anyway.”

Hydan snorted, “Which is an opinion
you didn’t share with us, of course.”

Finnabair smiled, “Why worry you about
something you couldn’t predict? You must go, now! Find your father,
Nick, and set him free, or you won’t be able to withstand Morgain
or Medrod.”

“
Medrod! Is he still here
as well?”

Finnabair was headed out of the
chamber, but said, “I don’t know, but assume so! I have no time to
explain in detail, but once you get the Archimage free he can stop
Medrod while you find Ziny. I will deal with Morgain! Once you have
Ziny, don’t wait for your father, Five Point travel off of Mystical
Island! The Archimage can get himself free if he isn’t trying to
protect you.”

Then she was gone.

“
Super-duper,” I muttered,
“Why in the hell didn’t she tell us this before?”

Hydan shrugged, “Because she’s an
Albus, Nick. Remember, you still don’t know what she really boxed
you into here, or about her real plan. That won’t come until later
on.”

“
I’m going to have a word
with my dear mother about this if I live!” I promised, but then
said, “OK, so how do we find The Wizard of Abal?”

Hydan considered. “He won’t be far
from here, I would guess; he is likely hidden so that even if
someone came to rescue him, he would be hard to find.”

“
So, that doesn’t sound
good!”

“
But, now that the Starward
is down we should be able to sense the power being used to hold the
Archimage!”

Hydan, Toji, and Myrka all searched,
and I even tried to ‘feel’ something, but all I got was an itch
between my shoulder blades. Then both Hydan and Toji pointed the
same direction, which was good enough for me.

We headed out of the now empty
StarWard chamber and got back into the hallways. Soon we were
headed toward the source of power they were sensing. As we got
closer, I thought I started to feel something too, a kind of subtle
tingle on my skin from one direction.

We came to a set of massive double
doors, and the feeling was coming from inside.

“
This doesn’t seem right,”
Hydan noted, wrinkling his brow.

I paused at the doors and said,
“Why?”

“
It’s too prominent, he
would be hidden.”

I shrugged, “Maybe this is only on the
way there, and he is hidden further ahead.”

Hydan nodded and then said, “Toji,
perhaps you could?”

Toji stepped to the doors and they
opened.

What was revealed was a massive
audience chamber. This had to be where the Island Witch held court.
There were massive, ten-foot-tall statues of saeran warriors along
each wall, set back in alcoves. There were two sets of large
pillars, over twenty feet in diameter, going from the highly
polished red marble floor up to the tall ceiling above. Ahead was a
raised pyramid, with two throne chairs on the top, both currently
empty.

“
This isn’t good, this is
Morgain’s and Medrod’s audience chamber or I’m an Earth duck,”
Hydan noted.

The voice which spoke boomed out with
authority, and replied, “And you will have your
audience!”

Then Medrod strode out from behind the
ten-foot-tall pyramid, and behind him were six
necromages.

“
Damnation!” I muttered; we
didn’t have the Archimage free yet! This was NOT going to plan,
either plan.

Myrka didn’t wait for any invitations;
she slammed her fist straight down into the hard marble floor and
blue energy flashed. Simultaneously, blue lightning seemed to fork
out in all directions, fracturing the floor with dark jagged
cracks. Out of those new cracks, black mist flowed up swiftly. This
was more than fog, it blinded you completely. It was like all the
lights went out in a windowless room.

“
Shit, Myrka, now we’re all
blind!” I exclaimed.

“
Quiet!” she
hissed.

I got the idea, if I spoke, they could
orient on me.

Just in case, I softly stepped ten
paces to my left.

I could hear the soft sound of feet
moving across stone; both sides were attempting to gain an
advantage. A voice I couldn’t place, so probably one of the enemies
cried out.

Suddenly a massive wind blew through
the chamber, and the black mist was taken out of the room with
it.

This almost acted like a fade in on an
old movie; Myrka had just cut a necromage’s throat. It seemed she
had immediately dashed straight at the enemy after she made the
blackness, and managed to get one before they had thought to start
moving as well. But the others had now moved toward us, and in the
darkness, we had all moved in different directions and were spread
out across the chamber.

Immediately, mages and necromages
paired off. There were six opponents to the four on my team,
though, so two of us ended up with two opponents. I was lucky if
you could call it that, I had only drawn one opponent, but it was
Medrod.

Hydan had been unlucky since two
necromages were near him, but Myrka had also drawn two, likely
because their companions had called out as Myrka
attacked.

I felt a moment of worry for both of
them, but I had a bigger fish to fry, specifically, one Saeran
Second, returned from the dead.

He took one look at who was near, and
grinned. “How fortunate!” he exclaimed, “That saves me the trouble
of finding you!” Then he strode forward raising his
hands.

Duel blasts of Derkaz power lanced out
at me, but thanks to my mother’s teachings, my protections were up
to the task and the beams were deflected.

At the thwarting of his Derkaz
attacks, Medrod frowned.

“
Turns out, I’m a Second,”
I noted casually, and then added, “You sour faced
snogfish.”

Medrod snarled and answered, “That
will not save you!”

Then he drew Caliburn.

Hells bells and a bucket of
blood!

Now I wished I had never gone to that
chick in the pond, according to myth, this sword was good against
even a Second.

Medrod smiled at my expression and
advanced.

“
It seems you brought a
knife to a sword fight, let’s see how long it remains real,” he
noted with mirth, and then added, “Once I close on you, your shield
will no longer function.”

I retorted, “How did you get in here
anyway? Did your wife leave your cage open?” But I was backing away
swiftly, trying to think of something brilliant; so far I had
bupkis.

My latest insult made him snarl and he
leaped forward twenty feet while swinging Caliburn in a backhanded
slash.

Crap on a stick! How did he jump so
far! I leaped backward, much less spectacularly. I needed to keep
my distance from Caliburn if I was going to manage any
magic.

“
Afraid, little Bastard?”
he snarled.

I replied, “Sorry to disappoint you,
but it turns out I’m not a bastard after all!”

He just lunged forward and I jumped
back again to avoid the thrust, hoping I didn’t run into one of
those pillars in the room. This wasn’t going well at all, I was
fighting a completely defensive battle, and in the end, this wasn’t
going to work out well for me. One of these times I wasn’t going to
dodge properly, or he was going to blast me with Derkaz while I was
too close to Caliburn.

That’s when things went from
firecracker bad to stick of dynamite terrible.

Medrod was about to take another slash
at me, when he suddenly smiled and stepped back a pace and said,
“Well, I think the party just got a little more
interesting!”

To which I retorted, “Stop trying to
be a smart-ass, when you’re really just an ass, Medrod.”

That made the grin on his face
dissolve into a grimace of hatred, and he raised his off hand, palm
toward me.

I’d seen this gesture from Myrka while
looking down the barrel, and I leaped as far back as I could,
hoping to get out of Caliburn’s range in time.

The blast which issued from his palm
hit my shield and tore a large crater in the ground in front of me.
I landed on my ass, sliding backward.

But that’s when a powerful voice spoke
from behind me. I didn’t dare turn to look at who had arrived, but
that took every bit of concentration on my part; this new voice was
mesmerizing!

“
Stop this battle!” the
voice boomed.

Medrod hesitated, and then finally
stepped back, lowering his hand with a scowl.

I shifted around on my butt so I could
keep Medrod in sight, but still get a look at the
newcomer.

It turned out to be two people. One
was a large saeran, and when I say large, I mean the biggest dude I
had yet seen in blue scales. He was wearing a suit of black armor,
and he was damned imposing.

Next to him was a tall saeran woman.
She was also in battle garb, though hers was gray and silver, with
lots of scale mail which mimicked fish scales.

“
Morgain Dokkalfar,” Hydan
hissed.

The Island Witch turned with a wicked
smile and said, “Hydan Friare, so good of you to return for a
reckoning.”

But Hydan turned to gaze at the large
saeran, and then said curiously, “The Dragon, I
presume?”

The big saeran smiled, and it was not
a chummy kind of expression.

Myrka and Toji turned and raised their
weapons, both of them ignoring their opponents as they took in The
Dragon.

Hydan called out, “So, it is you who
has been supplying Morgain with her new powers of
magic!”

The Dragon just bowed slightly, and
then said, “This World was ripe for the taking, one less House on
my list of enemies. All I had to do was show Morgain how to create
necromages, and her husband how to bind his father. This world is
ours; the battle for control of Abal is all but over now, so there
is no need for any of you to end here. Run away and live for a time
before I end your Houses!”

“
We can all go?” Hydan
asked curiously, though from the sound of his question I don’t
think he believed this was true.

The Dragon laughed, and it was a deep
kind of chuckle, “All but Nicholas here, we have some business
first. This wizard has stolen something of mine. I will get it
back, and then I will dispatch this nuisance.”

“
No, Nicholas Sivaeral is
MINE!” Medrod exclaimed to The Dragon.

The Dragon turned his dark saeran eyes
onto Medrod and ordered, “Step back, Medrod, I need this mage. You
have many others under your control!”

“
No, I want him! He has
insulted me, and I have sworn to make him my slave!”

The Dragon shook his head and
answered, “That is unfortunate, for I cannot allow you to take
him.”