Part 19 (1/2)

Before the minion could ready another attack, Gullik took his axe in a double-handed grip and swung it at the creature's leg. The limb cracked straight through at the knee, and when the minion tried to take a step forward, it left its lower leg behind.

Unbalanced by the surprising loss of its leg, the creature swayed for a moment and then toppled forward. Dougal saw what was about to happen and shouted for Gullik to get out of the way. The minion was too large, though, and the norn too slow, and the bulk of the creature came down right on top of him, crus.h.i.+ng him under its phenomenal weight.

Dougal stared at the scene in shock. He had thought Gullik was crazy for trying to take on the creature, but somewhere in his heart he hadn't believed that the much-larger-than-life norn could lose the fight. Especially not so quickly.

Kranxx smacked Dougal on the leg as he pa.s.sed, then sprinted away. ”Run!” the asura called back over his shoulder. Dougal turned back toward the hulking beast, looking for some sign that Gullik had survived the creature collapsing upon him.

That was when he realized that Killeen was no longer beside him. The sylvari had raced forward, and was now standing before the minion, carving the air in an intricate pattern to fas.h.i.+on a spell.

Dougal stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout at the sylvari. ”Killeen! Forget it! He's gone!”

”No!” she said, still concentrating on her spell, her face creased in concentration. ”He can't die. I won't let that happen!”

Glowing blackness stretched from Killeen's hands to encircle the minion, turning the shadows of its flesh to a brilliant white and its glittering hide to night. The creature froze for a moment, then threw its arms over its head as if letting loose a silent scream.

Hope soared in Dougal's heart, but it came cras.h.i.+ng down an instant later when the blackness around the creature cracked, and the minion slammed its arms back down onto the twisted landscape, unfazed by the incantation.

Dougal glanced back to see Riona, Ember, and Kranxx in the distance. They had stopped running, probably locked in their own argument about returning. He turned to see the minion bearing down on Killeen, slowed only slightly by the fact that Gullik had removed one of its legs below the knee. The sylvari scrambled backward, but even on its knees the minion was gaining on her.

Dougal cursed. It was one thing to let Gullik take a stand against the minion by himself: he was a norn-and, more importantly, a norn who was a veteran of many battles and who hoped for a legendary death. Killeen, for all her strangeness, was guilty of nothing other than helping a friend.

”On my way!” he shouted, and charged forward to help the sylvari.

Dougal drew his black sword and wondered if it would have any effect on the creature at all, or if attacking it would be like slas.h.i.+ng a stone wall. He dragged the blade against a glittering bush, and it fell apart in a satisfying shower of diamonds. The minion halted its progress toward Killen and focused its eyes on him instead. For a moment Dougal looked deep into the eyes of the beast, and could feel nothing but hatred in their depths. Then as quickly as it gazed into Dougal's heart, it dismissed him and turned back to the necromancer.

Before Dougal could stop it, the diamond-hided minion drove an earthshaking punch down at the sylvari. Killeen dodged to one side to avoid the blow, but even so, the impact of the near-miss was enough to stagger her.

Dougal was upon them now, just as the minion was about to level another blow at Killeen. He lunged at it with his sword. To his surprise, the blade went into the creature as easily as if he'd rammed it into a sack of grain. Indeed, s.h.i.+ning sand poured from the wound, glittering in the Dragonbrand's unearthly light.

The minion s.h.i.+vered in protest at the blow and its attack went wide, smas.h.i.+ng the ground far from Killeen. But the sudden movement wrenched the sword from Dougal's grip, leaving him unarmed.

The minion wheeled and punched down at Dougal this time. Dougal dodged under the strike, diving past the creature's one good leg. As he did, he spotted Gullik hauling himself up out of the crater of gla.s.sy dust formed when the minion had landed on him. Blood flowed over every inch of the norn's exposed skin, and he looked as if he'd been run through a mill. Despite that, he grabbed his axe and let out a mighty cry-and then collapsed, disappearing once more into the crater.

Killeen started another spell while the minion reeled back to launch another blow in Dougal's direction. ”It's shrugging off your spells!” Dougal said. ”Get out of here!”

”I might not be able to harm it directly,” the sylvari said, her jaw set at a determined angle, ”but there are other ways!”

Dougal dove away from the minion's attack again and slipped on the crystalline gla.s.s. His legs flew out from under him and he fell flat on his back. He was close enough to the creature now to see right into its glittering eyes, which had taken on a redder hue.

The minion slammed down another fist at Dougal, but he rolled out of the way and scrambled to his hands and knees. The crystals splashed up from the blow's impact lanced his sides and legs. A second punch rained down at him, but he was already scrambling out of its way, heading toward where he thought his sword had landed. It was cradled in a crystalline bush, the buds of gemstone flowers already winding around it.

Dougal grasped the hilt and pulled, and the bush screeched as its branches and flowers shattered from the force. Then he spun around to see that the crystalline creature had decided to ignore him for a moment. It had returned to hunting Killeen instead.

The sylvari was at the crater's rim now, desperately trying to finish another spell. This time the target of her incantation was Gullik. The battered norn had finally managed to crawl out of the purple-powdered crater. He bled from countless wounds as he staggered to his feet, and Dougal was sure he saw bone sticking through his skin in at least three different places, but the norn would not let that stop him.

Killeen's spell enveloped Gullik in a bright red nimbus, although it was hard to tell if the color came from the magic or the blood dripping from the norn's skin. As the final words of the spell left the sylvari's lips, she let her concentration lapse and glanced up to see the minion swinging its injured arm in a backhanded slap, level with the twisted earth. The arm was attached to the rest of its body by a fraction of its width, and the creature snapped it like a whip.

Gullik fell backward, but Killeen was not so fortunate. The back of the creature's fist smacked into Killeen with a sickening crunch, and she went sailing off to the north, with most of the minion's arm following the same trajectory. Dougal watched them both arc through the air as if they'd been loosed from a catapult. He gasped in horror as the boulder-sized arm fragment smashed into the sylvari as she landed on the ground.

Furious, Dougal turned back, raised his sword over his head, and charged at the dragon's minion. The creature moved more slowly, now that it was missing two limbs, but it was still a deadly threat. Dougal slashed at the thing's head, and his sword cut a long line across its face, just below the eyes.

The minion brought up its one good arm and smashed it down at Dougal. Watching the arm coming down at him, Dougal thought he'd finally made his last mistake, but the blow missed him by inches. As he wondered why, he saw that Gullik had gotten close enough to chop the back of the creature's good leg with his axe.

The glow that had surrounded Gullik now expanded to envelop the minion's leg at the point where the norn had damaged it. Dougal saw one of the bones poking out of Gullik's lower leg pull itself back into him and the skin heal over the wound.

Dougal understood then what Killeen had done. The spell she'd cast on Gullik allowed him to steal life force from the minion and take it for his own. Every time the warrior hit the creature, the spell drained its life force and gave it to the norn instead.

Gullik's blow had gotten the minion's attention, and it tried to reach back with its good arm to swat the norn, but missed. Seeing his chance, Dougal ran forward and cut at the creature again with his sword. The minion reared back in silent pain: the mouth that Dougal had cut into it sagged open now. Apparently confused, it turned back toward the human.

Then its left eye exploded.

Dougal cast a quick glance to the right and saw smoke curling from Ember's pistol even as she dropped the gun and drew her sword. Riona was already closing the distance between them and the beast, and Kranxx had his lightning rod out. The last was a mistake, as the lightning homed in on it and smashed the ground around their feet, staggering all three of them.

Help was coming, but it was still critical moments before it would reach them-moments when the creature could take out its frustrations on Dougal. Dougal backpedaled furiously across the broken ground, while Gullik leaped up on the creature's back and brought his axe down on it.

The blow made the creature shudder from one end of its body to the other, but Gullik found some way to hold on. With the minion's energy surging into him again, he pulled himself forward and brought his axe back for a powerful, two-handed strike. It landed directly on the creature's neck, cracking it.

The minion's head held on for a moment, hanging from its shoulders, but then its neck shattered. Dougal covered his head with his arms to protect himself from the flying shards, then dove to the side to avoid the boulder-sized crystal head as it fell.

Gullik rode the creature's now limp body down as it crashed into the ground, sending up a new cloud of finely ground dust that exploded from the spot where the thing struck. The last Dougal saw of the norn, he still had one hand on the handle of his axe, which had become embedded in the minion's back. He had the other raised in a triumphant fist, and he shook it at the sky as he let loose a norn war cry that seemed loud enough to reach the distant s.h.i.+verpeaks.

When the dust cleared, Dougal picked himself up off the ground and shook as much of the purple crystals from his face and arms as he could. Once he could finally see again, he spotted Gullik standing on top of the fallen creature, his axe slung over his shoulder. Although the reddish glow had left him, he looked exhausted but as hale and hearty as ever.

The norn smiled, but that smile froze and his face fell. And Dougal remembered the cost at which that victory had come.

”Killeen,” he whispered.

Dougal charged over to where the minion's fist had crushed the sylvari. He found her trapped beneath the gigantic hand from her waist down. Her eyes were open and unblinking, and she had long since stopped breathing.

Dougal knelt beside Killeen's crumpled form. Ember, Riona, and Kranxx came up behind him, Gullik last of all, still coated in purplish dust. Riona tried to put a hand on Dougal's shoulder, but he pushed it away. For a long while, all he could do was stand and stare at the dead sylvari and struggle to control the anger building inside him. As he did, the thunder around them grew louder, and rain began to fall.

No one said a word as they watched the drops of water start to wash the dust from Killeen.

”Dougal,” Riona started, ”I'm sorry-”

Dougal cut her off. ”Don't,” he muttered, his eyes not leaving Killeen's corpse.

”We should have run,” Kranxx said. ”All of us. Any idiot could see that our best chance of surviving such an encounter was to flee.”

Dougal glanced up and hurled daggers at him with his eyes. ”Well, it looks like one of us idiots paid the price.”

Kranxx stammered a moment. ”I tried my lightning rod, but it had an odd effect in this environment. Its metaspell solenoids are fried out now.”

”Aye,” said Ember, ”and my first two shots misfired before I could take out that thing's eye.”

Dougal's face flushed with anger and regret. ”I should have dragged her away in the first place.”

”If you had,” said Ember, ”we would have left Gullik behind to fight that creature alone.”