Dream II - Chapter 37

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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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Samazzar blew through the entryway.  Furniture and paperwork covered most surfaces, upended and askew.  Behind the front desk, one of the two clerk guards lay unmoving with a wooden spike rammed through his chest.  On the floor next to him, a female clerk lay unmoving and blue, her hands wrapped fruitlessly around her own throat.

He didn’t know for sure that both of them were magi, but working in the archive required that a student be fairly senior.  Sam would be surprised if either of them were lower than the fifth tier in their strongest mystery.  That meant that the powerhouse that had attacked the library had enough magical strength to kill someone of his level in a matter of seconds.  Hardly a comforting thought, but although a dragon might retreat temporarily from a threat, that wasn’t the case when family was on the line.

The building shook again, knocking dust loose from the shelves.  It slowly floated toward the building’s floor, lending the air a slightly yellowish sheen.  Sam closed his eyes, reaching out with the power of wind to the lower, forbidden levels of the archive where he could feel the mystery rampaging, and tried to focus-

A small, taloned hand grabbed his bicep and yanked him back.  Samazzar cocked his head at Takkla as she urgently shoved one of the muzzles they used near the magma vents into his hand.

“That isn’t dust,” she hissed at him, her voice muffling as she put her own muzzle on.  “It’s pollen of some sort.  It doesn’t look like ordinary dirt.  Plus, dust wouldn’t have managed to remain undisturbed on those shelves for so long.  I don’t see any plants in there, and even if I did, the density is far too thick to be natural.  That’s a magical creation, and the last thing I want is to walk into some practitioner’s trap.”

“You can actually see the difference between individual motes and specks?”  Samazzar asked incredulously as he strapped the layers of alchemically treated cloth over his nose and mouth.  “I knew your vision was better than Dussok or mine, but that’s incredible!”

The corners of Takkla’s mouth, barely visible behind her mask, curled upward as she responded.

“We can talk about how great my powers are later, little dragon.  For now, Tazzaera is stuck down there with whoever did this.”

Samazzar eyed the entryway a second time.  The pollen was drifting to the floor slowly, far too slowly to be natural.  He wasn’t sure whether its creator was still in control of the substance or if it was just designed to linger.  Either way, he wasn’t sure he could count on just the muzzle to protect himself.

“Takkla, Dussok,” he began, eyeing his siblings.  “We are going to need to use the mystery of oxygen to get through here.  I will be using wind to create a bubble around all three of our heads to prevent the pollen from touching us, but-”

“I am not sure that is necessary,” Dussok said, a touch of anxiety in his voice.  “Between the mystery of oxygen and the masks, I doubt any of us will be breathing any foreign substances in.”

“But do you need to breath it?”  Sam asked, crossing his arms as he fixed his larger brother with a stern look.  “Embers and soot can irritate and harm the eyes and nose as well.  If this is a designed substance left behind as a trap, it almost certainly wouldn’t be limited simply to inhalation.  It would attack us in every way that its creator could think of.”

Dussok though for a second, forehead furrowing behind his muzzle.  Finally, he shrugged.

“Fine, little dragon.  Just be careful with how much of your focus you use on the two of us.  I don’t know who we will need to fight to break Tazzaera free, but by the looks of the two folks behind the counter, we will be encountering some fairly bad news.  I just want to make sure you have enough mental energy left when the time comes.”

The three of them re-entered the archives and made their way through the chaos and destruction toward the stairs.  Samazzar felt a thrill of fear and vindication as the pollen in the air seemed to drift toward them.  The air bubbles he made around their heads were enough to hold the suspicious dust back, but he could feel the virulent substance trying to worm its way through the curtain of wind.

By the time they made it down their first level, the pollen was well behind them.  A quick touch of the mystery of wind confirmed that there was nothing on this floor beside rows and rows of books and tomes.  Some of the wooden structures had been knocked over by the struggle taking place deeper in the soil, but outside of mundane collateral damage, he couldn’t find anything of note.

But the fight on the lower floors raged on.  It was hard to get a clear picture, the wind was moving too fast, hardening into blades and zipping between bookshelves.  Samazzar would get flashes of images as the air brushed against its surroundings, but not enough for him to put a proper image together.

There were two groups of people.  Three to four deeper in the forbidden archives, crouching behind bookshelves and occasionally darting about as they manipulated fire and air, throwing it at the entrance.  In the stairwell was another cluster.  Sam couldn’t tell if there were five, six or seven people there, but they were clearly fighting back.  He wasn’t sure what mysteries they were using, but barriers were appearing from thin air, made from unknown substances but capable of blocking bursts of fire.  At the same time, the wind was being redirected such that it dug gouges into the stone walls near the stairwell.  The defensive magics were so strong that the air barely touched them, depriving Samazzar of anything but glimpses and guesses as to the nature of the attackers.

He held up an open hand, stopping his siblings.  The second he had their attention he spoke quietly, just loud enough for them to hear him over the howls and explosions from deeper in the building.

“The enemy is two floors down.  Tazzaera is deeper in the library itself, but the people attacking her are in the doorway.”

“How strong are they?” Takkla asked, sliding an arrow into the string of her bow.  She hadn’t drawn it back yet, but her fingers were curled around the twisted sinew, ready to fire it at a moment’s notice.  “Do we know what mysteries they are using?  If they’ve consumed elixirs?”

“They are practitioners,” Samazzar replied, shrugging helplessly, “but that’s all I know.  Their backs are to the stairwell so we can probably take them by surprise, but I’m not sure we should stick around any longer than we have to.  Their defenses are able to hold off the magi defending the archives, and that is far from a good sign.”

“Six of them,” Dussok said, his eyes closed.  “It’s hard to know for sure, but I can feel their vibrations through the stone under the staircase.”

“Then six it is,” Sam responded, linking his fingers together and stretching his arms, trying to loosen up some of the kinks and cramps he had developed on the long trip back from the forest.  “Too many to take out in one strike, even if we are lucky.”

“We hit hard and keep moving then,” Takkla replied.  “Kill or wound who we can as we rush through them and then find cover with our allies.  With any luck we can take a couple of them out of the fight and even the odds a bit.”

“Hold a moment.”  Samazzar’s voice was absent as he reached out with his mind, grabbing hold of a fragment of the air currents in the archive room and using them to pick up a book from one of the shelves near a defender.  Very deliberately, he lifted it in the air, grunting under the strain of keeping the mass of wood and cloth suspended for a second before dropping it.  He wasn’t sure who his demonstration was for, but barely a half second later, he felt a sudden but gentle gust of wind brush over his scales.

They were expected.

“Now we’re ready,” He said, unlocking his fingers and tapping into his bloodline magic.  The talons sharpened, blurring slightly as they changed on some fundamental level, the fundamental concept of sharpness itself infused into their hardened curves.  “Remember, one strike as we charge, and then we find cover.  It doesn’t matter if you miss someone and or if a follow up blow would finish off an injured practitioner.  Our lives are more valuable than a quick and cheap victory.”

Takkla and Dussok nodded back, their muscles bunched and ready for the inevitable charge while they gripped their weapons tightly.

Samazzar turned, facing down the steps.  The descent should have been dark, but at the bottom the flickering light of steadily burning fires cast the bottom of the staircase in an eerie glow.  He took a deep breath, tasting the wind rushing back and forth in the forbidden archive one last time before tensing his legs and charging.

He took the steps two at a time, dark air rushing past him as the doorway grew larger.  Figures flitted in and out of his line of sight, robes whipping wildly as pillars of glass and walls of water flashed into being for a fraction of a second at a time before being destroyed by the rampaging elemental forces controlled by the defenders.

Then, Sam burst into the open.  He didn’t have a real opportunity to pick a target.  Stopping to analyze the situation would risk the attackers detecting him and his siblings, and that was an instant death sentence.  Instead, he fired a gout of flame to his left, letting it stretch and linger for a moment as he directed his charge toward the nearest fluttering cloak.

Samazzar’s claws blurred as they slashed toward the figure’s chest.  For a moment, he thought he’d caught his victim unaware, but then his arm and shoulder crashed into a barrier of translucent glass that appeared from nothing.

The impact knocked the breath from his body and sent hairline cracks from his point of contact.  Ahead of him, the magus began turning and Sam tried to pull himself away only to find that a pair of clear shackles had grown around his ankles.

Frantically, he flexed the magic enhanced claws of his right hand while exhaling a gout of flame into the glass in front of him.  Samazzar had no choice, he let the wind barriers around his companions’ faces fade, instead focusing all of his will into heating and expanding the fire that was assaulting the practitioner’s defenses.

It held.  The glass heated and began to glow orange, and the fire resistant scales of Samazzar’s arm began to smoke as the molten substance began to ooze around it.  Even as he struggled to yank his hand free, the molten ooze began to crawl up his arm, burning and encasing Sam’s limb.

Then, a tempest spun into being around the two of them, air screaming and whirling past Sam as it slashed and stabbed at the unknown practitioner.  The glass might have survived the onslaught if it hadn’t been half melted.  It also might have withstood the attack if Sam hadn’t clenched his teeth together and detonated all of the fire he had spread throughout the enemy formation, rocking and disorientating all of the practitioners around him.

But it didn’t, with a crack and an almost musical tinkle that Samazzar sensed with the mystery of sound over the ringing in his ears, the enemy magus was disrupted enough to let the windstorm shatter the glass.  He jolted forward, straining muscles sending Sam lurching into motion as he was no longer frozen to the ground.

The practitioner’s eyes grew wide behind their mask and they tried to dodge, but compared to the elixir amplified reflexes of the warriors in the street, it was almost like they were moving in slow motion.  Sam’s claws slammed into his chest, carving through skin and flesh with contemptuous ease before hitting the person’s ribs.

Ultimately, as durable as bone was, it wasn’t a match for the bloodline magic that enhanced Samazzar’s claws and muscles.  After a very brief hitch, his talons won, tearing through the bone and shredding the figure’s organs underneath.

Sam didn’t wait to see the outcome of his attack.  If his target had a sufficiently advanced potion or access to a mystery that involved healing, it was possible that they survived.  That said, healing mysteries were rare, and alchemy that could heal the deep wounds he had just inflicted were rarer still.

He leapt away from the falling body, eyes locked on a heavy wooden bookshelf.  Samazzar could feel the warmth of his siblings, a pace or two behind him, leaving the reeling practitioners in the stairwell in their wake.

Another blast of fire wove itself into a line and zipped in between the three of them, zigzagging through the air as it swooped toward one of the attackers.  At the last second, a bubble of water appeared, intercepting the blast of magical fire and filling the doorway with scalding steam

Just as Samazzar dove behind the shelf, the steam shifted, taking on a sickly yellow hue and jetting through the air toward the draconians.  Halfway across the room, it met a wall of wind and pressure that stopped it as surely as a barrier of granite and the superheated gas deflected into the floor and ceiling where it rapidly began hissing and eating away at the stone.

A half second behind him, Dussok and Takkla dove into cover as well, chests heaving for air.  Samazzar gave them a quick once over.  Dussok’s axe was covered in blood, and not just a minor spattering.  He might have only gotten one swing off, but the big draconian had made it count.

“Good to see you Sam!”  Pothas called out from ten or so paces away to Samazzar’s right, his back pressed against another bookshelf.  Next to him was Percival, the young apprentice’s eyes wide and both of his hands hidden by the sleeves of his formal cloak.  To their left, Rose and Tazzaera were hunkered behind two separate bookshelves of their own.

Samazzar’s expression went tight as he noticed that both Tazzaera and Rose had blood on their robes.  Rose didn’t have serious injuries, just a number of cuts that looked like they came from glass shards, but Tazzaera was missing most of the scales on her left arm where they had been melted off by some unknown force.  Still, the Crone shot the three of them a quick nod and a pained smile as she brought up the lantern she held in her right hand, summoning a streamer of flame from the candle inside that rapidly grew into a ball of fire that hovered in the air before her.

“So that is why you resisted.”  A male voice called out from the four remaining practitioners.  A quick glance confirmed that Samazzar and Dussok’s targets were both on the ground while a third magus was wobbling unsteadily, an arrow sticking from their thigh.  “You had backup.  Understandable, but ultimately foolish.”

“I hold the advantage now,” Pothas called back.  “Even if your entire strike team was still standing, we would have outnumbered you.  With two of your number down, there is no way you can win.  I have no desire for unnecessary deaths.  Leave now and we won’t pursue you.”

The man just laughed.

“Do you really believe that wind master?”  He asked mockingly.  “That one master and two barely fledged magi along with a trio of apprentices can overpower all five of us?  Your surprise attack has bled us more than I would like, I will grant you that.  That is also why I will give you one last chance.”

“Stand aside human,” he continued.  “I am only here to seek forbidden texts.  I do not care about the local conflicts that were exploited to bring your City low.  Once we have destroyed what needs to be destroyed, we will leave.  Your forces will kill the ‘bandits’ that attacked you and declare victory.  The region will fall back into an uneasy peace and tens of thousands of humans will return to their brief, but pointless lives.”

Tazzaera glanced over at Samazzar and Pothas uncertainly, her eyes clouded with pain but the sphere of fire hovering in front of her as steady as ever.

“This is what you hold in the palm of your hand, wind master.” The man crowed, stepping past the downed bodies of his companions as if they meant nothing.  “Life and prosperity for yourself and others.  Even if you somehow defy the odds and win today, we will be back, and when we do this city will be burned to the ground, its men and women dead or enslaved.  All you need to do is give up a handful of books that say what they should not.”

“The Patrician has spoken,” Pothas replied, shifting his head to the side to crack his neck.  “Right or wrong, I owe the man more than my loyalty.  I don’t know how your order managed to discover the existence of the forbidden archives, but we will not let you erase our knowledge simply because you disagree with it.  History and magic do not change simply because someone powerful wishes it.”

“But they do, human,” the attacking magus sneered, lifting his pale thin hands up to pull down his robe, revealing a masked face wreathed in long hair that could not cover his pointed ears.  “You might not understand, and it seems that you will not live long enough to learn the way of things, but for those who hold true power, their will is absolute.  The time for talk is over.  Do your duty, manling.”

Movement to Samazzar’s side drew his attention, and he jolted to his feet.  Percival, terror in his eyes, had withdrawn his hands from the sleeves of his robe, revealing the gleam of a small steel dagger, a viscous black substance clinging to its blade.  Before Sam could shout a warning, the boy’s hand came down, plunging the dagger into Pothas’ unprotected side.