THUNDER PEAK, page 16
Paal blinked, and Taliko saw his eyes change, filling not with madness—but furious resolve!
“Yes Paal!” Taliko whispered as the lizardling leaped upon Zil’s back and tackled him to the ground.
“What is this?” the Cree Chieftain hissed. “A traitor to your own kind!”
Nightblade tensed, ready to pounce and tear the defiant minion limb from limb.
Then he calmed himself.
Lowering his gaze, Nightblade railed quietly, cursing the unpredictable nature of jevaling magic. As much as he wanted to vent his frustration by snapping the wayward pawn out of existence with quick snap of his jaws, that was not the plan. He had to let the scale folk do their task and save his remaining frein to confront the juvenile and the human with his physical form.
Seeking to rend him with their teeth and claws, the lizardlings surrounding Taliko stormed forward in unison.
Taliko leaped into the charge behind his bo~staff, striking his closest assailant in the chest and then using his momentum to vault beyond the coordinated attack.
Twisting in midair, he landed behind them and swiftly stormed into the still-standing trio. “For the Maker!” he growled with renewed verve, striking his enemy on the left in the jaw with his staff and then turning to batter the next with the back of his shell. Coming full circle, he prepared to unleash a rib-crunching blow to the midsection of the third.
But the last surprised him with his readiness. Launching itself from one of the tree stump chairs, the lizard delivered a smashing headbutt to Taliko’s chest just as he completed his turn.
The ferocious blow drove the wind from Taliko’s lungs and sent his weapon twirling away.
“For the Maker,” the lizardling hissed in his ear. Then the pair tumbled off in a biting, slashing tangle of tooth and claw.
Across the clearing Zil reached back, dug his claws into Paal’s shoulder scales, and tossed him over his head with one hand. The lizardling crashed into the unforgiving marble of the nearest gate pillar with a heavy thud that nearly broke his back.
Expecting a follow-up attack, Paal rolled over, shook his head, and rose unsteadily to his feet to meet it.
The attack did not come.
Thankful for the respite but wondering what Zil might be up to, he glanced warily at his opponent.
When their eyes met, Zil shocked him with the ability to speak. “I am the obvious master here. You are cunning; join me, and I will make you my second as we serve the Maker.”
Paal took a deep breath that helped him gather his thoughts. A moment later he was amazed to find words of his own hissing over his tongue: “The Maker is powerful, but he opposes the natural balance. I am thankful for his gifts, but he is not worthy of our servitude.”
Having been born far and away the tallest and thickest of limb in the clan, Zil growled and drew himself up to his full six-foot height. Towering now over Paal by nearly a foot, his intimidating might set the smaller lizardling’s heart panic-racing. “And so,” Zil hissed, “you will spite the Maker by serving his shell-bound foe?”
Paal shook his head from left to right, sidestepping slowly off the dais, away from Casey and toward the thick green of the grove wall. “I will serve no one,” he replied. “Instead, I shall seek to live and work in harmony with those around me, as we did before the Maker.”
Zil laughed. “You fool! Can you not see? We have risen! Risen above the wings and paws that preyed upon us! With the touch of the Maker, we no longer need to serve the environment. The environment can serve us! We must seize that opportunity! We were weak. Nearly mindless. Now we are strong. Where once we ate the cricket, now we shall feast on any flesh we desire. That is the natural order of things.”
At that Zil looked over toward Casey.
“No,” Paal said evenly. In search of a weapon, he reached back slowly toward the wall, and his heart skipped a beat when a branch slipped into his hand as readily as if the Gategrove itself had given it to him. “I will not allow it.”
“You will not allow it?”
Zil tossed his head back and laughed heartily, then abruptly surged forward in an effort to catch Paal by surprise.
Paal brought the club around to smash Zil in the jaw, but the bigger lizardling blocked it away easily with one hand and seized him by the throat with the other.
“We are too few,” Zil hissed, digging his claws into Paal’s neck, “and so I had hoped you would join us. We lizardlings shall prosper under the Maker and rewrite the natural order of this entire mountain. Since you have seen fit to reject that destiny, I give you the honor of being the first victim of my new age.”
Not far away Taliko and his assailant rolled to a halt. Flipping up to his feet with an elegant whirl, Taliko rotated his hips into a tail whip. The added torque put so much power into the attack that it smashed into the lizardling’s jaw and broke it.
However, using his injured appendage to deliver such a devastating blow was not without cost, and Taliko wobbled, blinded by a fierce flash of agony. When his eyes cleared, the shell warrior saw his foe standing in shock opposite him, mouth flapping uselessly, and felt a momentary pang of sadness at what he had been forced to do.
The moment passed, and straightening the razor-sharp claws of his left hand into a lethal wedge, Taliko finished the miserable creature off with a swift slash across the throat.
Just then he heard Zil telling Paal how he would rewrite the natural order of the mountain and make him the first victim of his new age.
The threat brought to mind his discussion with Jonas about harmony and peace, and he realized that if Nightblade and Zil won this battle, all the work he and Jonas had done to conquer the Cave of Bones would be for naught.
Movement drew his focus back to the present.
His remaining opponents had recovered, and using his distraction had begun creeping up on him from opposite angles.
In their enhanced state, they were proving to be much craftier and deadlier than before, and Taliko knew he was now as vulnerable to their claws as they were to his. Without his bo~staff, he wasn’t sure if he could fend off all three of them at the same time.
But he was about to find out.
Zil brought his other hand to Paal’s throat, but before he could bite him, Paal wedged his cudgel into the back of the jawline, where his assailant didn’t have any teeth.
Zil hissed in frustration. He could not bite and would have to take his hands from Paal’s throat to remove the obstacle, freeing his enemy. But thinking he still had the advantage, Zil squeezed his claws tighter. If he couldn’t bite Paal, he would choke the life from him and tear him to pieces afterward for the sheer pleasure of it.
Paal panic-twisted, then, still learning how to use his new body, realized suddenly that his foe had miscalculated and brought up his eviscerating toe claws to rake Zil’s chest.
Zil roared in fury but did not let go. Instead, he used both hands to raise Paal as high as he could and body slammed him to the ground. The move momentarily dislodged the branch from his mouth, but just as Zil’s jaws were about to tear into his throat, Paal brought the club around a second time and just managed to keep the snapping teeth at bay.
Growling in triumph because the wedge was no longer in the fleshy part of his jawline, Zil clamped his teeth up and down on the branch until it splintered down the middle.
Once more the deadly teeth came for his throat, and once more Paal let his instincts tell him what to do: in a flash he slammed the ends of the broken club against either side of Zil’s skull as hard as he could, stunning him.
Seizing the moment, Paal slithered out of Zil’s clutches with serpentine speed and got behind him, then used the larger half of the broken cudgel to engage a choke hold on the bigger reptile’s muscled neck.
Coming to his senses, Zil began to thrash and roll, trying to dislodge Paal, but he was still reeling from the effects of the concussive head blow and his strength quickly faded. Even so, Paal feared that he lacked the brute power to finish the job until finally, Zil collapsed.
With a great sigh, Paal clambered up to his feet and caught his breath. Once his eyes cleared of blood lust, he saw Taliko fighting against his brethren.
Feeling an urge to assist him, Paal willed his feet forward, but the very first step sent him swaying recklessly into one of the wooden benches facing the swan sculpture and, ultimately, headfirst into the pond.
Meanwhile, the shell warrior could do little more than remain on the defensive, keeping the lizardlings at bay with well-timed lunges and vicious tail swipes and slowly working his way back to his bo~staff. To his dismay, however, the lizardlings soon realized his plan and fell back, covering each other until they could toss the hateful staff farther away.
Watching his weapon land in the pond and sink out of sight, Taliko sighed. “I suppose we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
Too late perhaps, Taliko understood how much he had come to rely on his weapon more than was wise. He was still stronger, but the enhanced lizardlings were much quicker than he. They also learned swiftly from their mistakes, creating a true struggle to devise a tactic to defeat an enemy that knew well enough to strike quickly and dart back beyond his reach. They were wearing him down, and they all knew it.
Then Taliko heard a soulful keen that sped his heart.
After falling into the pond and lying in it for a long minute, Paal was revived by the tingling sensation of the cool, refreshing water washing over his scales. Then a splash disturbed the underwater quiet surrounding him, and he turned to see the shell warrior’s bo~staff sinking beside him.
Paal blinked in surprise, then quickly stood and began to twirl it like he had seen Taliko do, making the weapon sing its war cry. Having thus caught the turtle’s attention, he hurled it in his direction.
Taliko didn’t know if it was his work with the lizardlings or Paal’s utter hatred for Zil that had allowed him to break free of the Cree Chieftain’s hold, but he was happy for the outcome and seized the staff in midair with one hand when it reached him.
Taliko leveled his gaze.
“Now we shall see,” he said, and no sooner had the words scraped out of his mouth than he spun into an attack, bringing the heavy silver crown of his staff down with a bone-splitting crunch on a lizardling kneecap, sending the reptile writhing to the ground.
Hoping to tip the great turtle on his back, one of his lithe opponents immediately seized the opportunity to scramble up on his shell. The lizardling miscalculated the great power of Taliko’s limbs, however, and the shell warrior didn’t falter a bit with the extra weight.
Undeterred, the creature dug his rear claws into the thick shell for balance and slashed and dug at the back of Taliko’s neck, trying to decapitate him.
Taliko needed just a moment to pry the creature off his back, but the remaining lizardling kept feinting frontal assaults to give his companion the chance he needed to deliver a mortal blow.
Breathing heavily, feeling the claws at his throat beginning to pierce his armored skin, Taliko whirled his tail around in an effort to swat the third into unconsciousness, or at least far enough away that he could get the creature off his back before his companion recovered. But this time his strike was anticipated, and moving like a cobra, the lizardling sank his jagged teeth into the limb and held on.
Taliko snarled happily; he would gladly suffer more pain in his tail to remove the strangling lizard on his back and quickly wedged his bo~staff over his shoulder to dislodge him.
Sensing what Taliko was about to do, the lizardling raked at his face with its free hand. Fighting off the attack with his left hand, Taliko worked the staff like a lever with his right to flip the creature away.
Only then did he realize he’d been tricked.
The claws in his face had been a distraction to get him to use only one hand while the clever lizardling used his remaining three limbs to get a firm grasp on the staff. When Taliko flicked the lizard away, he failed to compensate for the overweighted end—and the weapon yanked from his grip and flew away with his foe.
Momentarily stunned at having lost his weapon yet again, and just as he felt the tide was turning in his favor, Taliko looked dazedly at his empty hands.
Sensing the shell warrior’s despondence, the crafty lizardling clinging to his tail seized the opportunity to scamper up his back and resume the attack on his throat.
Vision clouding with primitive rage, Taliko clenched his fists. There was nothing to do now but hope for the best with what he was about to do next.
Turning his back away from Casey, he dug in with his rear claws and concentrated on the eldritch energy housed in his chest, harnessing and channeling it into his shell cavity.
The building energy filled his eyes with a topaz glow and set the bottom of his shell alight with spectral yellow-gold radiance. Taliko grunted, resetting his feet as the ethereal light swirled up and around his shell until it was completely lit, indicating the charge was primed for release.
Bathed suddenly in eldritch light, the lizardling on his back stopped attacking and stared at the golden glow in confused fascination.
The shell blinked twice, then pulsed, unleashing a soul-sheering wave of sound and fury that hurled the lizardling into the air before it could even scream.
The careening reptile smashed into the upper edge of the looming tree line, moving with such speed that the tightly woven branches acted like a solid wall that shattered his spine even as it impaled him.
Though he’d braced himself with his sturdy legs, unleashing his shock wave required the anchoring of all five of his appendages; thus Taliko went skidding across the glade in the opposite direction to crash into the far wall himself, albeit with much less devastating impact.
The unprepared were far less fortunate.
The lizardling that had stolen his staff and his ally with the shattered knee were blown across the grove, the former to crack his skull against one of the sturdy tree stump seats around the pond, the latter to disappear under the collapsing shelter Jonas had built.
Paal dug into the edge of the pond with what strength he had left, but soon found himself sliding across the grass and then airborne until he was miraculously caught in a bed of soft pine needles hidden in the grove wall. There he remained, pinned some six feet off the ground until the wave subsided and he fell in a heap.
Though shielded somewhat by a gate pillar and Taliko’s attempt to aim his shell blast in the opposite direction, Casey was still swept from the dais with cruel indifference.
Scooping her up where she lay, the merciless sonic wave bounced her roughly down the stairs and sent her tumbling over the ground like a broken doll until she became wedged against the base of the grove wall.
What happened to Nightblade could never have been anticipated by anyone in the Gategrove that day…
Hoping tightly woven winds would deflect the sonic surge around him, the wolf lord tried to defend himself by coalescing into a seven-foot-tall tornado. Instead, the sonic wave merged with the cold shadow spiral he had become and set fire to him on a molecular level.
In that instant every filament of the Cree Chieftain blazed with excruciating pain—like his very soul was on fire. His ethereal scream was so great that every living creature within a hundred miles felt a psychic twinge knife into their temple for several seconds.
Bristling with unharnessed magical fury, the turbulent vortex that was Nightblade swiftly began to grow, its cyclonic rage buffeting everything in the Gategrove with hurricane-force winds.
Taliko looked on it in awe as it swelled over to over twenty feet high, then exploded in a shower of indigo and green sparks.
Still racing with cyclonic energy, the swirling magical embers bounced off the grove’s tree line in countless directions, razing Taliko’s leathery skin like white-hot flaming darts until he was forced to find solitude within his shell.
Gradually the glistening needles slowed, drawn as if by a great magnet to come together in a flaming constellation of muscle, bone, and sinew that resembled the Cree Chieftain’s wolfen aspect. When the constellation was complete, it flared brightly with eldritch light, green at the edges, purple at its heart.
Golden embers appeared in its body, and the flaming wolf howled, its terrible cry lingering on and on as the flares blazed through its figure as if on fuses, carving the Cree Chieftain from eldritch flame into flesh and blood.
“You…” Nightblade panted at last, sparks still rippling through its rich ebony fur like tiny shards of lightning. “What have you done?” A wave of stunned hate poured from his green eyes. “My frein…is overflowing, but it burns, down to my soul.”
Never have I seen or heard song of such a thing, Nightblade thought in a rage, that a jevaled warrior should be so infused with innate power that it could restore the frein of a Maker! And so, at long last, I understand how the witch tricked and defeated me when I thought her finished.
Though beset himself by painful injuries and battle fatigue, Taliko rose to his feet, and with a wary eye cast at the saber-toothed wolf, limped toward his staff.
“You are truly an abomination,” continued Nightblade, eyes bright with jade flames. “If the aril lords discover what your Maker has done by creating you, they will give her the Nectar of the Nora’ah.
Trying not to look as tired as he felt, Taliko picked up his weapon. He did not know what the Nectar of Nora’ah was, but it sounded like a poison of some kind.
Deciding not to address it, Taliko returned, “And you should be dead.”
Nightblade shook his head. You do not even know your own power, the Cree Lord considered silently. How can this be? Aloud he said, “I cannot be destroyed here; this I told you already.”
“Why are you here at all!” Taliko cried. “The Maker suggested you made a bargain of some sort, but what grievance can be worth this?”
Nightblade laughed. “You know so little of home that at last I understand. I thought all this time she brought you with her, but that is untrue. You are a denizen of this realm, making your creation all the more treasonous under the Aril Law. Oh how I hope she lives yet, so I can see her suffer.”
“Yes Paal!” Taliko whispered as the lizardling leaped upon Zil’s back and tackled him to the ground.
“What is this?” the Cree Chieftain hissed. “A traitor to your own kind!”
Nightblade tensed, ready to pounce and tear the defiant minion limb from limb.
Then he calmed himself.
Lowering his gaze, Nightblade railed quietly, cursing the unpredictable nature of jevaling magic. As much as he wanted to vent his frustration by snapping the wayward pawn out of existence with quick snap of his jaws, that was not the plan. He had to let the scale folk do their task and save his remaining frein to confront the juvenile and the human with his physical form.
Seeking to rend him with their teeth and claws, the lizardlings surrounding Taliko stormed forward in unison.
Taliko leaped into the charge behind his bo~staff, striking his closest assailant in the chest and then using his momentum to vault beyond the coordinated attack.
Twisting in midair, he landed behind them and swiftly stormed into the still-standing trio. “For the Maker!” he growled with renewed verve, striking his enemy on the left in the jaw with his staff and then turning to batter the next with the back of his shell. Coming full circle, he prepared to unleash a rib-crunching blow to the midsection of the third.
But the last surprised him with his readiness. Launching itself from one of the tree stump chairs, the lizard delivered a smashing headbutt to Taliko’s chest just as he completed his turn.
The ferocious blow drove the wind from Taliko’s lungs and sent his weapon twirling away.
“For the Maker,” the lizardling hissed in his ear. Then the pair tumbled off in a biting, slashing tangle of tooth and claw.
Across the clearing Zil reached back, dug his claws into Paal’s shoulder scales, and tossed him over his head with one hand. The lizardling crashed into the unforgiving marble of the nearest gate pillar with a heavy thud that nearly broke his back.
Expecting a follow-up attack, Paal rolled over, shook his head, and rose unsteadily to his feet to meet it.
The attack did not come.
Thankful for the respite but wondering what Zil might be up to, he glanced warily at his opponent.
When their eyes met, Zil shocked him with the ability to speak. “I am the obvious master here. You are cunning; join me, and I will make you my second as we serve the Maker.”
Paal took a deep breath that helped him gather his thoughts. A moment later he was amazed to find words of his own hissing over his tongue: “The Maker is powerful, but he opposes the natural balance. I am thankful for his gifts, but he is not worthy of our servitude.”
Having been born far and away the tallest and thickest of limb in the clan, Zil growled and drew himself up to his full six-foot height. Towering now over Paal by nearly a foot, his intimidating might set the smaller lizardling’s heart panic-racing. “And so,” Zil hissed, “you will spite the Maker by serving his shell-bound foe?”
Paal shook his head from left to right, sidestepping slowly off the dais, away from Casey and toward the thick green of the grove wall. “I will serve no one,” he replied. “Instead, I shall seek to live and work in harmony with those around me, as we did before the Maker.”
Zil laughed. “You fool! Can you not see? We have risen! Risen above the wings and paws that preyed upon us! With the touch of the Maker, we no longer need to serve the environment. The environment can serve us! We must seize that opportunity! We were weak. Nearly mindless. Now we are strong. Where once we ate the cricket, now we shall feast on any flesh we desire. That is the natural order of things.”
At that Zil looked over toward Casey.
“No,” Paal said evenly. In search of a weapon, he reached back slowly toward the wall, and his heart skipped a beat when a branch slipped into his hand as readily as if the Gategrove itself had given it to him. “I will not allow it.”
“You will not allow it?”
Zil tossed his head back and laughed heartily, then abruptly surged forward in an effort to catch Paal by surprise.
Paal brought the club around to smash Zil in the jaw, but the bigger lizardling blocked it away easily with one hand and seized him by the throat with the other.
“We are too few,” Zil hissed, digging his claws into Paal’s neck, “and so I had hoped you would join us. We lizardlings shall prosper under the Maker and rewrite the natural order of this entire mountain. Since you have seen fit to reject that destiny, I give you the honor of being the first victim of my new age.”
Not far away Taliko and his assailant rolled to a halt. Flipping up to his feet with an elegant whirl, Taliko rotated his hips into a tail whip. The added torque put so much power into the attack that it smashed into the lizardling’s jaw and broke it.
However, using his injured appendage to deliver such a devastating blow was not without cost, and Taliko wobbled, blinded by a fierce flash of agony. When his eyes cleared, the shell warrior saw his foe standing in shock opposite him, mouth flapping uselessly, and felt a momentary pang of sadness at what he had been forced to do.
The moment passed, and straightening the razor-sharp claws of his left hand into a lethal wedge, Taliko finished the miserable creature off with a swift slash across the throat.
Just then he heard Zil telling Paal how he would rewrite the natural order of the mountain and make him the first victim of his new age.
The threat brought to mind his discussion with Jonas about harmony and peace, and he realized that if Nightblade and Zil won this battle, all the work he and Jonas had done to conquer the Cave of Bones would be for naught.
Movement drew his focus back to the present.
His remaining opponents had recovered, and using his distraction had begun creeping up on him from opposite angles.
In their enhanced state, they were proving to be much craftier and deadlier than before, and Taliko knew he was now as vulnerable to their claws as they were to his. Without his bo~staff, he wasn’t sure if he could fend off all three of them at the same time.
But he was about to find out.
Zil brought his other hand to Paal’s throat, but before he could bite him, Paal wedged his cudgel into the back of the jawline, where his assailant didn’t have any teeth.
Zil hissed in frustration. He could not bite and would have to take his hands from Paal’s throat to remove the obstacle, freeing his enemy. But thinking he still had the advantage, Zil squeezed his claws tighter. If he couldn’t bite Paal, he would choke the life from him and tear him to pieces afterward for the sheer pleasure of it.
Paal panic-twisted, then, still learning how to use his new body, realized suddenly that his foe had miscalculated and brought up his eviscerating toe claws to rake Zil’s chest.
Zil roared in fury but did not let go. Instead, he used both hands to raise Paal as high as he could and body slammed him to the ground. The move momentarily dislodged the branch from his mouth, but just as Zil’s jaws were about to tear into his throat, Paal brought the club around a second time and just managed to keep the snapping teeth at bay.
Growling in triumph because the wedge was no longer in the fleshy part of his jawline, Zil clamped his teeth up and down on the branch until it splintered down the middle.
Once more the deadly teeth came for his throat, and once more Paal let his instincts tell him what to do: in a flash he slammed the ends of the broken club against either side of Zil’s skull as hard as he could, stunning him.
Seizing the moment, Paal slithered out of Zil’s clutches with serpentine speed and got behind him, then used the larger half of the broken cudgel to engage a choke hold on the bigger reptile’s muscled neck.
Coming to his senses, Zil began to thrash and roll, trying to dislodge Paal, but he was still reeling from the effects of the concussive head blow and his strength quickly faded. Even so, Paal feared that he lacked the brute power to finish the job until finally, Zil collapsed.
With a great sigh, Paal clambered up to his feet and caught his breath. Once his eyes cleared of blood lust, he saw Taliko fighting against his brethren.
Feeling an urge to assist him, Paal willed his feet forward, but the very first step sent him swaying recklessly into one of the wooden benches facing the swan sculpture and, ultimately, headfirst into the pond.
Meanwhile, the shell warrior could do little more than remain on the defensive, keeping the lizardlings at bay with well-timed lunges and vicious tail swipes and slowly working his way back to his bo~staff. To his dismay, however, the lizardlings soon realized his plan and fell back, covering each other until they could toss the hateful staff farther away.
Watching his weapon land in the pond and sink out of sight, Taliko sighed. “I suppose we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
Too late perhaps, Taliko understood how much he had come to rely on his weapon more than was wise. He was still stronger, but the enhanced lizardlings were much quicker than he. They also learned swiftly from their mistakes, creating a true struggle to devise a tactic to defeat an enemy that knew well enough to strike quickly and dart back beyond his reach. They were wearing him down, and they all knew it.
Then Taliko heard a soulful keen that sped his heart.
After falling into the pond and lying in it for a long minute, Paal was revived by the tingling sensation of the cool, refreshing water washing over his scales. Then a splash disturbed the underwater quiet surrounding him, and he turned to see the shell warrior’s bo~staff sinking beside him.
Paal blinked in surprise, then quickly stood and began to twirl it like he had seen Taliko do, making the weapon sing its war cry. Having thus caught the turtle’s attention, he hurled it in his direction.
Taliko didn’t know if it was his work with the lizardlings or Paal’s utter hatred for Zil that had allowed him to break free of the Cree Chieftain’s hold, but he was happy for the outcome and seized the staff in midair with one hand when it reached him.
Taliko leveled his gaze.
“Now we shall see,” he said, and no sooner had the words scraped out of his mouth than he spun into an attack, bringing the heavy silver crown of his staff down with a bone-splitting crunch on a lizardling kneecap, sending the reptile writhing to the ground.
Hoping to tip the great turtle on his back, one of his lithe opponents immediately seized the opportunity to scramble up on his shell. The lizardling miscalculated the great power of Taliko’s limbs, however, and the shell warrior didn’t falter a bit with the extra weight.
Undeterred, the creature dug his rear claws into the thick shell for balance and slashed and dug at the back of Taliko’s neck, trying to decapitate him.
Taliko needed just a moment to pry the creature off his back, but the remaining lizardling kept feinting frontal assaults to give his companion the chance he needed to deliver a mortal blow.
Breathing heavily, feeling the claws at his throat beginning to pierce his armored skin, Taliko whirled his tail around in an effort to swat the third into unconsciousness, or at least far enough away that he could get the creature off his back before his companion recovered. But this time his strike was anticipated, and moving like a cobra, the lizardling sank his jagged teeth into the limb and held on.
Taliko snarled happily; he would gladly suffer more pain in his tail to remove the strangling lizard on his back and quickly wedged his bo~staff over his shoulder to dislodge him.
Sensing what Taliko was about to do, the lizardling raked at his face with its free hand. Fighting off the attack with his left hand, Taliko worked the staff like a lever with his right to flip the creature away.
Only then did he realize he’d been tricked.
The claws in his face had been a distraction to get him to use only one hand while the clever lizardling used his remaining three limbs to get a firm grasp on the staff. When Taliko flicked the lizard away, he failed to compensate for the overweighted end—and the weapon yanked from his grip and flew away with his foe.
Momentarily stunned at having lost his weapon yet again, and just as he felt the tide was turning in his favor, Taliko looked dazedly at his empty hands.
Sensing the shell warrior’s despondence, the crafty lizardling clinging to his tail seized the opportunity to scamper up his back and resume the attack on his throat.
Vision clouding with primitive rage, Taliko clenched his fists. There was nothing to do now but hope for the best with what he was about to do next.
Turning his back away from Casey, he dug in with his rear claws and concentrated on the eldritch energy housed in his chest, harnessing and channeling it into his shell cavity.
The building energy filled his eyes with a topaz glow and set the bottom of his shell alight with spectral yellow-gold radiance. Taliko grunted, resetting his feet as the ethereal light swirled up and around his shell until it was completely lit, indicating the charge was primed for release.
Bathed suddenly in eldritch light, the lizardling on his back stopped attacking and stared at the golden glow in confused fascination.
The shell blinked twice, then pulsed, unleashing a soul-sheering wave of sound and fury that hurled the lizardling into the air before it could even scream.
The careening reptile smashed into the upper edge of the looming tree line, moving with such speed that the tightly woven branches acted like a solid wall that shattered his spine even as it impaled him.
Though he’d braced himself with his sturdy legs, unleashing his shock wave required the anchoring of all five of his appendages; thus Taliko went skidding across the glade in the opposite direction to crash into the far wall himself, albeit with much less devastating impact.
The unprepared were far less fortunate.
The lizardling that had stolen his staff and his ally with the shattered knee were blown across the grove, the former to crack his skull against one of the sturdy tree stump seats around the pond, the latter to disappear under the collapsing shelter Jonas had built.
Paal dug into the edge of the pond with what strength he had left, but soon found himself sliding across the grass and then airborne until he was miraculously caught in a bed of soft pine needles hidden in the grove wall. There he remained, pinned some six feet off the ground until the wave subsided and he fell in a heap.
Though shielded somewhat by a gate pillar and Taliko’s attempt to aim his shell blast in the opposite direction, Casey was still swept from the dais with cruel indifference.
Scooping her up where she lay, the merciless sonic wave bounced her roughly down the stairs and sent her tumbling over the ground like a broken doll until she became wedged against the base of the grove wall.
What happened to Nightblade could never have been anticipated by anyone in the Gategrove that day…
Hoping tightly woven winds would deflect the sonic surge around him, the wolf lord tried to defend himself by coalescing into a seven-foot-tall tornado. Instead, the sonic wave merged with the cold shadow spiral he had become and set fire to him on a molecular level.
In that instant every filament of the Cree Chieftain blazed with excruciating pain—like his very soul was on fire. His ethereal scream was so great that every living creature within a hundred miles felt a psychic twinge knife into their temple for several seconds.
Bristling with unharnessed magical fury, the turbulent vortex that was Nightblade swiftly began to grow, its cyclonic rage buffeting everything in the Gategrove with hurricane-force winds.
Taliko looked on it in awe as it swelled over to over twenty feet high, then exploded in a shower of indigo and green sparks.
Still racing with cyclonic energy, the swirling magical embers bounced off the grove’s tree line in countless directions, razing Taliko’s leathery skin like white-hot flaming darts until he was forced to find solitude within his shell.
Gradually the glistening needles slowed, drawn as if by a great magnet to come together in a flaming constellation of muscle, bone, and sinew that resembled the Cree Chieftain’s wolfen aspect. When the constellation was complete, it flared brightly with eldritch light, green at the edges, purple at its heart.
Golden embers appeared in its body, and the flaming wolf howled, its terrible cry lingering on and on as the flares blazed through its figure as if on fuses, carving the Cree Chieftain from eldritch flame into flesh and blood.
“You…” Nightblade panted at last, sparks still rippling through its rich ebony fur like tiny shards of lightning. “What have you done?” A wave of stunned hate poured from his green eyes. “My frein…is overflowing, but it burns, down to my soul.”
Never have I seen or heard song of such a thing, Nightblade thought in a rage, that a jevaled warrior should be so infused with innate power that it could restore the frein of a Maker! And so, at long last, I understand how the witch tricked and defeated me when I thought her finished.
Though beset himself by painful injuries and battle fatigue, Taliko rose to his feet, and with a wary eye cast at the saber-toothed wolf, limped toward his staff.
“You are truly an abomination,” continued Nightblade, eyes bright with jade flames. “If the aril lords discover what your Maker has done by creating you, they will give her the Nectar of the Nora’ah.
Trying not to look as tired as he felt, Taliko picked up his weapon. He did not know what the Nectar of Nora’ah was, but it sounded like a poison of some kind.
Deciding not to address it, Taliko returned, “And you should be dead.”
Nightblade shook his head. You do not even know your own power, the Cree Lord considered silently. How can this be? Aloud he said, “I cannot be destroyed here; this I told you already.”
“Why are you here at all!” Taliko cried. “The Maker suggested you made a bargain of some sort, but what grievance can be worth this?”
Nightblade laughed. “You know so little of home that at last I understand. I thought all this time she brought you with her, but that is untrue. You are a denizen of this realm, making your creation all the more treasonous under the Aril Law. Oh how I hope she lives yet, so I can see her suffer.”
