Dream II - Chapter 36

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Race: Draconian

Bloodline Powers: Improved Strength+, Rending, Firebreath+
Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 5, Wind (Noble) 3, Sound (Advanced) 2
Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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Jamise’s company barely made it a hundred paces onto the campus before they ran into resistance.  A trio of students were sheltered near the edge of a cafeteria, a wall made of clay surrounding them as two cloaked soldiers battered away at it with maces.  A third soldier stood a couple of paces back, a finely crafted longbow in his hands.

Shingles melted into reddish black sludge and dripped off the roof, splattering onto the shell that the students had erected around them and hardening.  Even as the attackers hammered away at the wall, the extra clay thickened the barrier, filling in the cracks created by their repeated blows.

The knights didn’t give them any time.  Ten soldiers moved with the speed of professional sprinters despite their heavy armor, swarming the archer in seconds.  She only managed to get out a single strangled scream before a sword stroke cut off her arm and a second plunged through her chest.

At the wall, the two men barely had a chance to turn around before they were swarmed.  They were almost as fast as the knights.  Despite being taken by surprise, one of them got his mace up in time to block the first slash directed at his neck, but even superhuman reflexes weren’t enough to stop the flurry of attacks that followed it.  Before the archer hit the ground, both warriors were dead, cut apart by the knights.

Jamise pursed his lips and let out a sharp whistle.  The ten knights that had detached themselves from the group jogged back leaving the scared students to stare bewildered from behind their summoned shield.  WIthout another word, the formation began to move again, heading deeper into the combat zone of the Academy.

Samazzar hurried over to the wall of clay.  All three of the attackers’ bodies lay unmoving in the street, light cloaks and masks draped over their bodies to hide their features. For a brief second, Sam entertained the hope that he would be able to discern some meaningful information from their physical appearances, but ultimately there wasn’t much to go on.

Each of the fighters was more physically toned and fit than the previous bandits that he had fought, but that was hardly surprising.  Their speed, strength and reflexes left little doubt that all of them had taken at least one elixir.  What was surprising was variety in the bodies.  The archer was a female elf, while one of the mace wielders was from the south with darker skin and the other was likely from Vereton, tall, pale and with reddish white hair.  There weren’t any tattoos, birthmarks, or any other identifying factor to connect the three beyond their clothing.  Even their gear was manufactured in different kingdoms and followed different designs.

He shook his head to clear it as he rapped his knuckles politely on the side of the clay barrier.  There would be time to address mysteries later, after the present crisis was dealt with.

“Yes?” A woman asked nervously, poking her head out from behind the clay just enough for Samazzar to see her eyes.

“They’re gone,” he replied, trying his hardest to look unthreatening.  He hadn’t thought of it as a downside at first, but one of the complications of his new form was its menace.  It was hard to get scared or jumpy humans to trust a wall of scale, muscle and claw that towered a full pace above them.

“I’d find someplace to hide though,” Samazzar continued, trying to smile gently without exposing his fangs.  “There are a lot of attackers in the Academy and it doesn’t seem like they are playing around.  I don’t know if they will have enough practitioners to unseat some of the truly powerful magi here, but it sure seems like they want to try.”

“Who is it?”  A male voice whispered worriedly.  “Do you think we can trust him, it might be a trick.”

The woman’s head peaked back out from behind the wall, and she looked more closely at Samazzar.  After a moment or two her eyes widened and she ducked back behind the defenses.

“It’s Sam,” she hissed urgently.  “That lizard guy.  He’s a student here.  It might be a trick, but I think we should listen to him.”

Samazzar’s smile faltered slightly.  He was a dragon.  Not ‘some lizard guy.’  Still, it seemed like the humans were inclined to believe him.

“Are you sure?”  The man asked.  “I don’t want to have Mikhail drop the shield only for him to slaughter and eat all three of us.”

The woman’s head popped out a third time.  She narrowed her eyes slightly, looking Samazzar up and down as more clay continued to flow off the roof, dribbling in a steady stream of the earthy substance into the small fortress that was taking root next to the dining hall.  Her head disappeared again, as she conferred with her companions.

“I think so.  He’s grown wings somehow, but I’m pretty sure that’s just part of lizard puberty.  He seemed awfully young the one time I talked to him.”

Sam’s smile froze entirely.  He blinked once and shook his head.  Already the knights were engaging in another battle further down the street.  Bronze from lamps was forming itself into needles and blades that were clashing with tendrils of bone that sprang from downed bodies.  Meanwhile, the ring of metal on metal from the warriors echoed back toward him.

“Anyway,” Samazzar said, turning away from the students.  “I need to get moving.  Hide or don’t.  Either way, be ready.”

He took off into a run, ignoring the humans as the suspicious male student shouted after him.

“No wait!  Don’t go!  Who will keep us safe if they come back!”

By the time Samazzar caught up with the rest of the knights, they were moving again, one of their number unmoving by the side of the road where a spike of bronze had flowed like water through the eyeslit of his helmet and destroyed his skull.  Joining him in the street were four of the bandits, diverse men and women wearing very familiar cloaks and masks, and a male elf wielding a staff.

Sam didn’t have a chance to stop and inspect the corpses.  Explosions and shouts from the Dean’s tower urged them onward.   Jamise barely spared the draconians a glance, and Samazzar knew better than to trust the mercurial man.  Still, he was a capable war leader, directing his troops with one word shouts and hand signs as they tore into the rearguard of the attackers.

The battles as they worked their way toward the towers at the heart of the Academy became more and more pitched.  The knights weren’t fighting ordinary warriors anymore.  Each and every fighter inside the ruined gates of the Academy had at least one elixir.  Judging by the eye blurring speed of a couple of the cloaked figures that escaped their force, some had two or three.  Of course, the amount of resources that went into a second and third elixir were staggering.  There were only a couple dozen alchemists in all of Vereton that could craft a second elixir, and maybe a handful that could create a third.

A wall of magic washed over Samazzar from the direction of the Academy’s towers, and a massive flower sprouted from the ground, blooming in front of the Dean’s tower to reveal a cloaked and masked figure standing astride its petals.  Across from the giant plant, a skinless human grew up from nothing in a handful of seconds.  First bones sprouted into the air followed a moment later by organs and flesh, finally the shape extended its left arm, opening its hand to reveal a man in a luxurious robe with his arms crossed.

Sam’s eyes widened as he recognized the Dean himself.  It looked like the two people exchanged a handful of words before thorns grew from flower and its leaves wound themselves into vines that reached out to try and ensnare the titanic human only to blacken and fall limp paces away from their target.

“That’s our target!”  Jamise yelled as the ground shook under them and a dull explosion echoed from their right.  “Together men.  The magi are holding them off for now, but they need our assistance.”

The knights charged forward, a roar of challenge echoing over the screams and clamor that filled the rest of the Academy.  Fire and flashes of spells erupted in the distance and metal clanked against metal as the soldiers thundered forward.

Samazzar reached out and grabbed Dussok’s forearm, shaking his head silently before nodding in the direction he had heard the explosion.

Barely fifty paces away, the squat ground floor of the archives was leaking smoke.  The front doors were missing, either ripped or blown off by some extreme force.  Another tremor rocked the ground, and still more smoke began to pour out of the building.

In the distance, past the running knights, the flesh titan punched the flower.  The blow pushed the plant backward, but rather than trying to withstand the attack, it bent with it wrapping its stem around the creature’s fist.

Magic clashed.  The flower grew thorns that dug into the Dean’s construct, tearing at the meaty flesh of its arm even as his spells fought back.  Leaves and vines blackened, withering away and falling lifeless to the ground only to regrow a fraction of a second later.

Sam shook his head.  The battle was entirely beyond his comprehension.  Both the attacker and the Dean were using mysteries that he barely knew anything about.  At the same time, their control over the magics, while awe inspiring, was so great that it was hard for him to even understand what was happening.  He felt like a child staring at a treatise on mathematics or engineering.  He could glean that he was in the midst of greatness, but actually comprehending what was happening around him was all but an impossibility.

Instead of wasting precious time on a conflict that was beyond him, Samazzar reached out with the mystery of fire to try and find the source of the smoke that was flowing steadily out of the Academy and recoiled almost immediately.  He clicked his tongue to gather Takkla’s attention.  She was on foot, resting her wings after the long flight back to Vereton, but she had already taken a couple of steps to follow the knight column.

“That’s not our fight,” Samazzar said the second she looked back.  “There’s something going on in the archives, and I’m pretty sure Crone Tazzaera is in there.  She’s fighting someone.”

“At her age?”  Dussok asked, taken aback.  “She should know better than to get into combat.  Even if her magic can keep up, her body can’t.”

Samazzar nodded, closing his eyes for a half second to reach out with his other mysteries.  The grim expression on his face only tightened further.

“I believe Pothas and Rose are with her,” he continued.  “But I can’t tell for sure, it might only be one of them.  Both wind and fire are going wild down there.  Whoever they are fighting isn’t a pushover.”

“Is the Crone winning?”  Takkla questioned, unlimbering her bow even as she eyed the building.  “If she has Pothas with her, then certainly they can handle-”

“I don’t know,” Sam cut her off, taking his first step toward the shaking building.  “Whatever is happening, it isn’t under control.  The fires are burning freely in a library and the wind magi are lashing out wildly.  Whatever wards and enchantments the building might have had, they’ve been disabled or burned through.”

Dussok pulled his axe from his shoulder, planting it partially in the dirt as he pulled the harpoon from its sheath a half second later.

“So,” he said, attaching the spear’s bracelet and invisible tether to his left wrist, “We’re going in I take it?”

“We can’t leave her,” Sam said, shrugging helplessly.  “It almost doesn’t matter who she’s fighting.  I’m not going to just let her die.”

“Agreed.”  Takkla nodded, drawing an arrow and running her tongue over its head to cover the metal with venom.  “We have to try.”