Dragon magus 2, p.35
Dragon Magus 2, page 35
The elf snatched her flying sword out of the air and lunged at Vukaste, thrusting her blade at his unarmored face. The ogre lord leaned his head out of the way and caught Willowflight in his teeth. Sylvia’s eyes widened in shock, but before she could react, Vukaste thundered his fist into her abdomen, smashing her away.
Raphael surged forward, catching the elf mid-flight and halting her momentum with the strength of the Draconic Braziers. Sylvia coughed. Blood burst from between her lips, signaling that something had been broken inside her.
Vukaste spat Willowflight onto the surface of the disc and advanced, his sword raised and his eyes blazing with madness. Gritting her teeth, Sylvia disentangled herself from Raphael and pushed him back. She reached her hand out toward her sword, and it soared back into her grasp. Before Raphael could say anything, the elf charged back into battle, pitting her steel against the ogre lord’s.
Raphael took a step forward, but Gabriella and Ginerva caught him by the shoulder and upper arm, halting him in his tracks. He looked back over his shoulder at them.
“Don’t,” Ginerva warned him. “There’s nothing you can do to help her. We’ll have to leave this to the High Captain.”
“They’re moving so fast I can’t even see what’s going on!” Gabriella cried. “I can’t use Healing Magic on Sylvia like this!”
Fenix strode to stand beside Raphael.
“I thought I had a clear shot at the ogre just now when the elf was knocked back, but she jumped right in again before I could do anything,” the battlemage said, snarling with frustration.
“We need to slow him down.” Raphael looked to the light of the Dragon Meridian, focusing his thoughts and running the spells of the war party’s mages through his mind. “I have an idea. Fenix, can you still cast Spirit Shield on Sylvia?”
The battlemage nodded.
“I’ve had my mage senses locked on you, Sylvia, and Eliza for a long time now. I can cast most of my benign and beneficial spells on you without line of sight,” he explained.
“Ginerva, if I’m guessing correctly, the metal from your Roving Shards spell will be attracted to something charged with electricity, right?” Raphael asked the veteran mage.
“That’s right. Looks like someone’s been paying attention in school,” Ginerva quipped, trying but failing to mask the tension in her voice.
“Gabby, remember that pool of ice you used on Platina in the junkyard?” Raphael turned to the princess. “When you get the chance, I want you to put something just like that under the ogre.”
“But they’re moving too fast!” Gabriella protested. “If I just cast Frost Congregation all over the place, I’ll catch Sylvia as well.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll slow him down,” Raphael promised. He raised his hands and called Chain Lightning to mind. “Fenix! Cast Spirit Shield on Sylvia now!”
The battlemage complied, uttering a pair of arcane syllables that summoned a bubble of white light over the elf’s blurred form.
Raphael cast Chain Lightning then, wreathing the entire half of the floating disc’s surface with crackling streams of electricity. As he suspected, the spell hardly affected Vukaste at all. Perhaps the ogre’s enchanted armor resisted its effects. Or perhaps Vukaste was simply too tough to be affected.
But Raphael had managed to lace the ogre’s limbs with tendrils of electricity. He glanced sidelong at Ginerva.
“Now! Hit him with Roving Shards!” he cried.
The veteran mage did so, thrusting her hands forward and hurling a barrage of gray slivers that streaked unerringly to Vukaste’s body. They struck the ogre’s armored form and stuck to it.
Preempting Raphael’s thoughts, Ginerva curled her fingers into claws before he could tell her what to do and dragged them downward through the air. Vukaste stumbled mid-swing, weighed down by the effects of Ginerva’s second spell. His adroit movements suddenly slowed.
“How do you like my Leaden Plague, you blue bastard?” Ginerva asked as Vukaste staggered back, surprise registering on his perfect features.
“Gabby! Ice him!” Raphael said.
Gabriella chanted and gestured, conjuring a pool of ice beneath Vukaste’s armored boots. The ogre slipped on the slick surface and fell backward, his armor ringing thunderously against the black stone of the floating disc.
Sylvia pressed her advantage. She charged at the prone Vukaste and hacked her blade deep into the ogre’s right thigh, biting through his armor. The ogre lord hissed with pain and thrust his sword at her face, forcing her to withdraw.
Still bleeding, Vukaste surged to his feet and perched unsteadily on the pool of ice beneath him, his limbs still weighed down by Ginerva’s Leaden Plague. Sylvia circled to his back and cut at his neck. The ogre lord blocked Willowflight’s edge with the back of his armored forearm. He parried the elf’s subsequent slashes at his abdomen, throat, and skull as well, his sword dipping, twirling, and spinning in his grasp in a wondrous display of swordsmanship.
Vukaste blocked Sylvia’s latest attempt to decapitate him, then drove her back with a riposte at her heart. The ogre slammed his fist down on the pool of ice, shattering it into a carpet of countless frozen shards on which he could find surer footing. He swept Ginerva’s metal slivers from his limbs and torso.
“Well done,” Vukaste congratulated Raphael, a genuine smile of delight spreading across his face. “A fine strategy, cooked up in the heat of battle. You are truly superb, human.”
Sylvia charged in once more, slicing Willowflight’s edge down at the ogre’s skull. He blocked the cut and locked blades with her. Vukaste loomed over the much-smaller elf, his shadow engulfing hers under the light of the early morning sun. His greater weight and strength forced her down and back, arcing her spine over her heels.
Grinning, Sylvia sank into Vukaste’s shadow. The ogre stumbled forward, his blade suddenly unopposed. Before Vukaste could recover, she reemerged, slipping between his legs and driving her sword up toward his groin. The ogre hurled himself skyward, easily ascending twenty feet into the air.
“I’m wise to your wiles, Shadowsoul,” he said. “That was how you killed my second brother, splitting him from crotch to crown before my eyes. You think I would forget such a sight?”
“Catch and hold him in the air, Fenix!” Raphael cried, but the battlemage was already thrusting his hands forward, green light pulsing over his open palms.
Twin columns of wind blasted forward, howling toward the airborne ogre. As the doubled Wind Blasts caught Vukaste, Fenix rolled his palms over one another, turning his dual-cast spells into a swirling vortex of air that hurled the ogre another ten feet higher before holding him in the sky.
Vukaste roared and hurled his arms outward against the coils of air Fenix had wound around his limbs. A crack rolled through the skies as the Wind Blasts snapped beneath the ogre’s sheer physical strength. Vukaste began falling down toward Sylvia, his blade held high above his head in readiness to unleash a devastating arc from the heavens.
Fenix recoiled and staggered back, blood suddenly seeping from his nose and ears from the backlash of his broken spells, but he kept his hands raised and pointed his fingers.
“Let’s torch him from existence, Raphael,” Fenix growled.
Nodding, Raphael sped through the gestures, arcane syllables, and mental concepts of the Annihilation Ray spell. Fenix’s voice rose in concert with his, and as the final arcane syllables left their lips, a beam of searing crimson streaked toward Vukaste.
Letting go of his sword with one hand, the ogre tapped the center of his breastplate. The segment directly over his heart slid downward, overlapping its counterpart beneath. Blue light pulsed from the opening in Vukaste’s armor. It radiated forth, solidifying into a sapphire shield between the ogre’s massive frame and the incoming Annihilation Ray.
That’s a force barrier like the one from Subtha’s shield! Raphael realized. So he does have a dragon-bone artifact on him!
The crimson beam of Fenix’s and Raphael’s spell struck Vukaste’s shield of blue light. Sizzling and crackling filled the air as the Annihilation Ray vented its fury, but when its final embers played out, it left behind little beyond a web of thin, hairline cracks on the ogre’s force barrier.
Vukaste crashed down beside Sylvia. His blade smashed Willowflight aside. His clenched fist drove into the side of Sylvia’s ribs. The dry, crisp sound of breaking bone resounded over the surface of the floating disc. Blood burst from the elf’s lips, and she collapsed face-first at the ogre’s feet.
Cyrano and Eliza landed behind Raphael, then. The armsman tossed Raphael his glaive as Koshi’s massive shadow flashed over the rest of the war party.
The dragon roared and lashed out with his claws at Vukaste. The ogre sidestepped Koshi’s grasp and countered with a backhand cut, forcing the dragon into a hasty evasive roll through the air. Even so, Vukaste’s blade sliced a furrow down Koshi’s side, scattering black scales and dragging a trail of golden blood into the air.
Koshi gasped and choked as he pulled himself skyward, narrowly avoiding the ogre’s follow-up chop at his neck. The dragon convulsed in pain as he ascended. Vukaste grinned and kicked off the surface of the floating disc, leaping high in pursuit.
Raphael moved before thinking. A wordless roar thundered from his lips as he sprinted and hurled himself skyward, intercepting the ogre in midair. With the full strength of the Draconic Braziers blazing through his soul, he arced his glaive at Vukaste’s torso.
The ogre withdrew his sword from its original path toward Koshi’s flesh and blocked Raphael’s blow. A flicker of surprise creased Vukaste’s features as Raph pulled his glaive back, twirled it above his head, and hammered it down at the ogre’s skull.
Vukaste caught the polearm’s blade on the edge of his own, but the impact was enough to drive him downward, back to the ground. The ogre crashed down once more, landing feet-first beside Sylvia’s prone form.
Raphael thundered down upon him with another descending chop, but this time, Vukaste pirouetted out of the glaive’s arc and stepped through with a backhand counter of his blade. Raphael twisted his body in midair, but the tip of the ogre’s sword caught a glancing blow just under his shoulder blade. It tore right through his draconic armor, parted the runic leather beneath, and traced a line of searing agony across his flesh.
It’s nothing. Just a scratch, Raphael told himself as he landed on the balls of his feet and surged to the attack once more. His next cut at Vukaste’s waist bounced harmlessly off the back of the ogre’s armored forearm. And then he had to backpedal, twirling and spinning the shaft of his glaive in defensive patterns as Vukaste advanced, hacking and slashing with his sword.
The ogre’s blade made it past Raphael’s defenses thrice, tracing a line beneath his ribs, hacking his shoulder guard from his cuirass, and cutting him to the bone under his left eye. Blood poured down Raphael’s cheek, but he gritted his teeth and planted his feet as Vukaste’s flurry played itself out.
Raphael thrust out with his glaive, actually managing to punch its tip through the ogre’s armor an inch above the knee of Vukaste’s unwounded leg. Vukaste growled and stumbled forward, now bleeding from both legs. Raphael arced the butt of his glaive upward, slamming its steel tip under Vukaste’s jaw and snapping the ogre’s head backward.
Raphael advanced to press his attack, drawing his glaive back in readiness for a sweeping cut, but Vukaste recovered much more quickly than Raphael had expected. The ogre snapped his gaze downward, stepped within the reach of Raphael’s glaive, and lashed out with his fist in a thunderous left hook.
Raphael ducked underneath the sweeping gauntlet, only to be kicked in the chest by Vukaste. The blow shattered his draconic armor, smashed the air from his lungs, and hurled him away, but Raphael knew that his ribs would have collapsed beneath the impact if the ogre’s legs hadn’t been wounded.
Cyrano caught Raphael in mid-flight and put him down. With Ginerva by his side, the armsman twirled his flail once before sending it hurtling toward Vukaste. The spiked ball quadrupled in size as it flew, but the ogre lord batted it aside contemptuously, seized the magically lengthened chain in his fist, and jerked it backward.
Cyrano’s strength was no match for Vukaste. The armsman was yanked within reach of the ogre’s blade before he could let go of his flail. He raised his shield desperately, just managing to catch the descent of Vukaste’s sword. The ogre’s blade bit through Cyrano’s shield, but the armsman managed to roll with the blow, unhitching his arm and pivoting his body away even as his shield fell into pieces. Still, Vukaste’s sword shaved a chunk of armor and flesh from Cyrano’s forearm, splattering blood across the surface of the floating disc.
The ogre thundered his fist into the armsman’s jaw, smashing it to shards. Cyrano spun and fell into a limp, armored heap.
Raphael hurdled Cyrano’s unconscious form and struck out at Vukaste once more, the arc of his glaive foiling the ogre’s attempt to finish the armsman off. Vukaste parried Raphael’s blade and countered with his own, a broad smile of genuine pleasure spreading across his face as they exchanged a storm of blows.
Eliza approached, drawing her enchanted dagger and wielding it alongside Ragebane, but Raphael reached out to her through the light of the Dragon Meridian.
“No! Stay away! It’s too dangerous,” he told her.
It was true. Without Ryu-To-Ki or the Fortify and Hasten spells encasing Cyrano, Eliza wouldn’t last more than a heartbeat in melee against Vukaste. And, even if Raphael was willing to have Eliza assume the role of his Dragon Paladin, he couldn’t afford to share any of his own Ryu-To-Ki with her, so hard-pressed as he already was by Vukaste.
The ogre’s sword slipped past Raphael’s attempt to engage and redirect it with the glaive of his blade, forcing him to backpedal beyond Vukaste’s reach. Caught on the back foot, Raphael gritted his teeth and waited for the ogre’s inevitable, unavoidable follow-up stroke that would cleave him from shoulder to hip.
But it never arrived. Instead, Vukaste took a step back and raised his sword, bringing its hilt before his face. Raphael recognized the gesture as a fencing salute, one used commonly among the Lucarian knights he’d witnessed in Lucia City’s annual jousts and tournaments.
Vukaste must have noticed Raphael’s surprise. The ogre lowered his blade.
“The inflection of your words. Your attire. And the fact that you fight alongside Shadowsoul,” Vukaste said. “Are you not Lucarian, young human? Did I not perform the salute properly and, in doing so, caused you offence? If so, I apologize, and I promise I will endeavor to be more attentive in my studies of human customs.”
“I grew up in Lucia City, sir, which means I am Lucarian,” Raphael replied, sneaking a glance over his shoulder.
Ginerva and Fenix were hauling Cyrano’s bulk away and toward Gabriella. Koshi had reassumed his human aspect and was crouching beside the princess, whose hands pulsed with white light as she suffused the wound across his ribs with Healing Magic. If speaking with Vukaste would buy the war party some time to catch their breath, Raphael would gladly do so.
“And, as for the salute, I believe you performed it correctly,” Raphael continued. “However, I am not a knight, so I should not receive such a gesture, nor can I return it.”
“You’re not a knight?” Vukaste asked, shaking his head in sincere puzzlement. “Are they not the greatest warriors of Lucario? Surely one with your prowess and skills must have a place among their ranks?”
“Only the King can bestow knighthood upon his subjects,” Raphael said. “Alternatively, a duke or a count can do so as well with the King’s permission. I have not received any such honor.”
“A duke or a count. I see. Those are the titles of other human nobility, denoting ranks beneath that of a king’s.” Vukaste nodded. “I was the son of a king amongst my people.”
“That would make you a prince, sir,” Raphael pointed out, glancing at Sylvia. The elf moaned and coughed out another mouthful of blood.
“I know that term,” Vukaste said. “But there is no equivalent among us. Blood ties grant us no rank or esteem. Only strength and glory does. The son of a king begins with nothing at all, save for his wits and his appetite for slaughter.”
“I heard you are an ogre lord, sir. Did you achieve such a rank by performing worthy deeds?” Raphael adjusted his grip on his glaive and flashed the light of the Dragon Meridian over his body. Two of his ribs were bruised, though not broken. The cut across his cheek was still seeping blood, but it had begun to clot. The gash across his torso was painful but ultimately minor. Raphael nodded. He could still fight.
“Ah, yes. That is correct. I slew a thousand warriors of the Chimeric Empire in open battle. I oversaw the torture of ten thousand human villages, keeping every soul alive for at least fifty days under the ministrations of my trained goblins. I forced a Count of the Hunarchia Principalities to flay the flesh from his own children and wear their woven skins as a cape,” Vukaste recited wistfully, his gaze bright and distant, as if looking upon fond recollections. “And then, alongside Shadowsoul, I slew my brothers and my father, hacking them apart on the eve of the day where they would level Lucia City. She struck most of the killing blows, of course, but we wouldn’t have succeeded if not for our conjoined efforts.”
Sylvia fought alongside Vukaste? What? Raphael fought to keep the shock from his face as the ogre continued his speech.
Vukaste continued. “And then with General Githara’s aid, I laid waste to the Wind Bastion, the fortress of a cowardly, treacherous lot that sought power above the needs of their people. You should thank me. Humanity should thank me. I brought extinction to the Wind Mages, ending their bid to betray your kind.”
“You called the Wind Mages traitors, but aren’t you one yourself, sir? After all, you just said you killed your brothers and your father,” Raphael pointed out.
“They were the traitors to my people. They were obsessed with Lucia City, uncaring of how their victory would have left our people exposed to a rear attack from an army led by ten Chimeric Grand Principalities.” Vukaste grinned. “They had to die, so that I might lead my forces to further glories in the days to come.”
