Dragon conjurer 6, p.23
Dragon Conjurer 6, page 23
I knew we needed reinforcements.
“Exokyzo, Sokisaseru!” I quickly called out.
Ky and Goldie burst forward in bright flashes of blue and gold light, and I immediately jumped up onto Ky’s back as he stretched his wings out. A second after I balanced myself on my ice dragon, I gave him a subtle nudge with my heels and told him to go.
Goldie joined in the fray without hesitation and began to snatch the Corcotta up in her mouth to crush them easily between her strong jaws.
The battlefield erupted in a chaotic clash of noise, elemental attacks, flesh, and fur.
Flames, ice, and lightning burst out in every direction as rocks and boulders of every size were flung through the air. White astral blades and golden energy balls flashed between the armored bodies of the Dingoneks and the furry bodies of the Corcotta, and as I surveyed the battle below, Ky flash-froze the monsters to the ground.
But I could tell this was not going well.
There were only eight of us, and even with the addition of all four of my dragons, we’d been heavily outnumbered from the start. Now, we were practically overwhelmed.
Nala cried out as a Corcotta snapped at her ankles, and she speared the desert dog monster through the stomach on a long pike of stone.
Bo and Binta had been surrounded by the hyena creatures, but Nala had erected two large stone pillars side by side. The telekinetic cadet reached out with his mind and flung the Corcotta away as they tried to scramble up the pillars.
Meanwhile, my earth-bending girl crouched on one knee and raised her arms above her head as she opened a cavernous hole below, and the dozen dog-monsters that Bo was fighting fell into it.
“Dylan!” Steffi said through the comms. “I think we’re in trouble here.”
“I know.” I grimaced.
Steffi was right. As things stood, I didn’t know how we were going to get out of this one.
I looked around at my exhausted team and my dragons who were struggling to keep up with the sheer number of monsters around us. Then I caught sight of Thor as he blasted a blinding fork of lightning through the hearts of two Dingoneks, and I knew what I had to do.
I raced through the bits and pieces of foreign languages that were hidden away at the back of my mind for possible summoning words. I didn’t even know if this would work, but I knew we needed to try, or we’d be forced to retreat with our tails between our legs.
I was the Dragon Conjurer, and I wasn’t ready to give up.
I closed my eyes and picked a language at random, but as I drew a deep breath and prepared to speak, a spark of intuition whispered through me, and an image of Thor appeared in my mind’s eye.
“Sárkány!” I shouted with every bit of force I could muster.
It felt like the air was sucked right out of my lungs as a deep fwoomp sound slammed into my eardrums.
Then a huge dark dragon appeared as if it expanded like a balloon out of nothing in front of me.
The dragon had a long, narrow body that was a gloomy, dark eggplant color with double-pointed horns on either side of its narrow head. Huge, leathery wings spread along the dragon’s lean front legs like a bat, and something about the long, lean muscles and the sharp point of the dragon’s nose told me it was female.
The dark purple dragon looked up at me with eerily piercing red eyes as if she eagerly awaited my orders, and a shiver of adrenaline pulsed through my veins.
I’d summoned yet another epic dragon.
But as I looked over the spooky-looking dragon’s lean strength, I was at a complete loss as to what she could do. It had been easy to tell with my other dragons what their abilities were because they’d each arrived in a burst of their elemental powers.
I went with my gut again, and I pointed my hand at the horde of monsters gnashing their teeth all around us.
“Attack!” I commanded my new dragon with as much confidence as I could manage.
The dark purple dragon lurched her head awkwardly forward as her intense red eyes began to glow like eerie beacons, and her entire body began to vibrate. The dragon didn’t move aside from the almost violent shaking of her entire body, and I looked around anxiously at the battlefield to figure out what the fuck was going on.
Then I realized all the Corcotta and Dingoneks were stumbling around with confusion.
Chapter 14
I looked around as the Corcotta and the Dingoneks stumbled around like idiotic, drunken frat boys, and then I turned my gaze to the Aigamuxa and watched with shock as the giant man monster’s balance failed.
The dark-skinned creature wobbled as the brown eyes on its feet turned inward in an unfocused haze of confusion. Then the humanoid monster tumbled to the ground with a heavy thud.
The dark purple dragon’s scaly body stopped vibrating a few seconds later, and she blinked her red eyes as the intense glow faded away. Then the herd of monsters regained clarity and began to attack my team once more with the same intense ferocity as before.
My jaw went slack as I stared hard at my new dragon.
“Did you do that?” I asked her as I glanced around at the chaos that was returning to the battlefield.
My beautifully spooky new dragon stared right at me as her third eyelid blinked quickly over her red eyes, and she looked at me as if to say “you bet your ass I did.”
“You can confuse enemies,” I murmured with awe.
“What did you say, Dylan?” Steffi’s voice huffed through the comms, and I could tell how exhausted she was getting.
“Listen up, everybody,” I said to my team. “This new dragon uses some kind of mind confusion attack.”
“That’s so fucking badass!” Nick declared.
“It seems to last for about a minute,” I said. “So let’s take as much advantage of the sixty seconds as we can.”
“That should give us a big enough window to plow down most of these assholes,” Nala grunted as she lifted another enormous boulder and slammed it down on three of the hyena monsters.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “But the Aigamuxa has been commanding the Corcotta and Dingoneks.”
“Commanding them?” Bo asked with shock. “What?”
“I heard it giving orders to the rest of them,” I reported.
“You heard it?” Binta gasped.
“Dylan can understand monsters,” Steffi explained quickly, and then she twisted erratically away from the open jaws of a Corcotta that jumped ten feet into the air to snap at her toes.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we should hurry,” Nala said in an exhausted tone.
“Agreed.” I glanced at my new dragon to check if she was ready to go again, and she blinked her red eyes at me confidently. “Everybody ready? We’re gonna go again.”
“Let’s do it!” Nick said. “Shit, I mean let’s kick this… fuck it, I can’t focus! Let’s go!”
“We are ready,” Bo announced, and I looked over to see Binta and Nala nodding their heads beside him.
I stared at my new dragon for a moment to navigate my way toward the beginning of silent communication with her, and to my surprise, it worked faster than I expected.
Her consciousness felt like a firm cushion that pressed at the edges of my mind already, and I figured her mind-control powers could be a huge benefit to establishing a strong mental connection with her.
Then the sharp scream of a baby grabbed my focus, and I whipped my head around to find the source.
“What was that?” Steffi asked with horror clear in her voice.
“It sounded like a baby!” Nala practically screamed.
We all rapidly looked around in search of a baby, and Steffi fluttered quickly around the battlefield with her head turned down toward the ground. Beyblade flew a little slower than normal as Nick hung dangerously to the side, and his eyes were glued to the ground.
The terrified scream of a small human child scraped down my nerves again, and I nearly gave myself whiplash as I turned in a flash toward the sound. Relief flooded my entire body as I located the source of the bone-chilling scream.
One of the Corcotta was seated in the middle of a defensive circle of other hyena monsters. Its muzzle was raised into the air like a wolf howling at the moon, and the muscles in its throat worked as it perfectly mimicked the cries of a human child.
“It’s fake!” I quickly alerted my teammates. “The Corcotta can mimic human sounds!”
“Are you sure?” Ronin asked, and her voice was heavy with worry.
“Yes,” I assured her. “I found it, it’s definitely one of these hyena monsters.”
“Thank goodness,” Steffi sighed with immense relief.
“What a horrible noise,” Nala’s voice shuddered with emotion.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if these things can mimic all kinds of other sounds, too,” I warned. “Don’t trust your ears. Be very wary of anything that doesn’t come through the comms.”
“Right,” Nick agreed. “Let’s get this done, I don’t like these things at all.”
“Are you ready, girl?” I asked my new dark purple dragon.
My unnamed companion tilted her sharp head in the slightest of nods, and I gave her a firm nod back.
“Everybody, get ready,” I said to my team. “Remember, we’ve only got about sixty seconds here, so make the most of it.”
“Please let us know when it is about to begin,” Bo said, and he took a deep breath.
“Sure.” I nodded, and then I looked at my gloomy dragon, and she blinked slowly and then took a deep breath. “Now!”
I watched with awe as my spooky-looking dragon’s entire body began to vibrate like the tail of a rattlesnake, and her eyes went wide with a bright red light.
The Corcotta and Dingoneks instantly started to stumble around in complete disorientation, and my dragons and my team didn’t waste a single second.
My ice dragon and I soared above the ragged landscape and turned any of the monsters in our path into statues of solid ice, and as we took them down in groups of three, I watched the battle ramp up in intensity below.
Nala lowered Bo and herself to ground level, and the pair began to lift large boulders from the ground to smash them down on the confused heads of the monsters around them. I was glad to see that Binta stayed raised on her pillar above the chaos, because while the monsters were disoriented by my new dragon, there was very little the light-manipulating girl could do to help.
Steffi battered tiny and extremely dense energy balls straight at the hazy eyes of a Dingonek until the beast’s beady orbs pushed deeper into the monster’s skull. Blood began to drip slowly down the Dingonek’s spotted face until the crocodile monster’s eyes burst from the pressure, and black blood splattered out in every direction. Then my fairy-girl threw several more jawbreaker-sized balls of golden energy straight into the monster’s eye sockets and into its brain, and its brain-dead body collapsed to the ground.
Ronin raced past the monsters that wandered around in a fog of confusion, and her white astral blades lashed out gracefully on either side of her body. She efficiently lopped heads off of the Corcotta and sliced deep enough into the Dingoneks’ throats to make them bleed out everywhere, and the Samurai warrior left a trail of corpses behind her as she sped through the battlefield.
Nick shouted encouragement to Beyblade as my fire dragon turned a baffling number of monsters into overcooked pieces of meat, and the nymph snickered with pride while he continued on his killing spree with renewed enthusiasm.
Goldie stomped through the crowd, and she worked in two ways to help mow down the overwhelming swarm of monsters. My wind dragon forced a few of the hyena monsters closer to my team members and my other dragons, and in-between gusts of hurricane-force winds, she ripped the heads right off of the shoulders of the monsters. Then Goldie flung the decapitated heads away quickly only to tear into the throats of more beasts around her, and blood spilled down her pearly-white maw.
Close by, Thor struck out at another large group of hyena and crocodile monsters with heart-stopping bolts of lightning. Their bodies seized and shook as the horrendous smell of singed fur rose up to mingle with the disgusting odor of burned flesh and the sharp tinge of gallons of blood.
In the painfully short span of sixty seconds, my team and my dragons decimated the mob of hideous monsters that just minutes before were close to sending us running with our tails between our legs. The mind-controlling powers of my new dragon had given us a window large enough to turn the tides in our favor, but as I glanced back down at my spooky purple dragon, I could tell our minute was almost up.
“We’re just about out of time,” I announced to my team through the comms.
Almost the second I got the words out of my mouth, the last few Corcotta started to shake their heads like a dog with water in its ears. It looked like there were only four of the hyena monsters left alive, and I spotted just one more of the enormous crocodile walruses beside the Aigamuxa.
Ky came in for a graceful landing a dozen yards away from the Aigamuxa, where it had blinded itself by returning to the more stable position of standing on its feet.
The giant humanoid monster shook its head aggressively as my new dragon’s attack faded away, and then it flipped back up onto its hands to look around. The Aigamuxa’s jaw opened wide with rage as it realized how quickly my team had dwindled its numbers into single digits.
“Lizard Man!” The Aigamuxa roared as it angled its feet to stare right at me.
“Who, me?” I asked with a level of sass that I knew would make Nick very proud.
I slid down from Ky’s back and strode confidently toward the Aigamuxa, and a frigid blast of ice instantly shot past me and struck the last Dingonek directly in the face.
Ky’s ice immediately turned the beast into an enormous popsicle, and the last four Corcotta backed up defensively between me and the Aigamuxa while the spotted fur along their spines rose straight into the air.
Thor trotted up to flank me opposite Ky, and the hyena monsters growled as my dragons and I stared the monster down.
“Abominations,” the Aigamuxa growled at me as the eyes on its feet flicked nervously between Thor, Ky, and me.
Then a nervous shudder raced down the monster’s huge body, and his eyes flicked directly to my newest dragon as she joined us.
I followed the Aigamuxa’s gaze, and I could tell my dark purple dragon was getting tired, but then I remembered she was brand new. I had very little idea of how her powers worked, but it seemed like we’d nearly reached her limit.
Do you think you’ve got one more in you, girl? I silently asked my gloomy dragon.
Her dark purple head lowered in a barely perceptible nod, and her red eyes narrowed with determination.
Great, just one more, and we can get this done.
“Defend me,” the Aigamuxa’s raspy voice ordered its last handful of guards. Then the Aigamuxa’s muscles tensed to flee, and the remaining Corcotta sank back onto their haunches in preparation for one final attack.
“Not so fast,” I declared and gave my new dragon the go-ahead.
My mind-control dragon’s eyes glowed bright red, and her entire body began to tremble.
The final four Corcotta’s eyes rolled back in their heads as the confusion spell overtook them, and the Aigamuxa teetered wildly for a second before it toppled onto its back.
My team moved quickly forward as the sixty seconds began to tick down, and Ronin easily lopped the heads off of two of the hyena monsters. Then Nala and Bo moved simultaneously to crush and spear the other two with a large boulder and an elongated blade of stone.
My dragon’s last efforts didn’t last the full sixty seconds, but it was plenty of time to accomplish our goals. We moved to stand around the twenty foot tall beast just as my dragon’s attack ended.
The Aigamuxa began to come around from its disorientation, and it looked up at us as we stood around the gigantic man-beast.
“Lizard Man!” The Aigamuxa spit the words out as it leaned back on its hands to look at me. “You will not win, tiny humans.”
“Pretty sure we already did,” I chuckled.
“The war is not over,” the giant growled and tried to rise up from the ground.
“Bo, lock him down.” I nodded at the Aigamuxa’s feet.
“Of course,” Bo said and locked his telekinetic hands around the giant’s ankles to anchor them onto the ground.
The monster roared and struggled with all of its might as a fresh line of sweat broke out of Bo’s face.
“Ky,” I commanded.
My ice dragon spit out a small stream of ice that locked the Aigamuxa’s feet onto the ground, and it was both trapped and blinded now.
“Nice,” Nick chuckled.
The giant raged and tried to rip its feet free from Ky’s ice, but it was no use.
“You may have bested me,” the Aigamuxa hissed. “But you will not win.”
“Put it down,” I said to my best friend. “I want to bring it back to MIA.”
“You got it, man.” Nick smirked and pointed his tranq gun straight at the Aigamuxa’s leanly-muscled chest. Then my best friend plugged four darts into the beast without a second’s hesitation.
The twenty-foot tall man-beast’s mouth grew a little slack, and his thrashing slowed a little, but I could tell those four doses weren’t enough to put it out.
“Again,” I said to Nick.
“Yeah,” the blond nymph agreed and plugged four more darts into the beast’s thick thighs.
“We will not be…” the Aigamuxa slurred like a drunk college girl. “Defeated.”
Nick plugged the beast with two more darts, and it finally flopped backward onto the ground as its jaw went slack.
The Aigamuxa mumbled incoherently for a second before it finally fell silent.
“Ugh,” Steffi groaned. “This guy seems like a real asshole.”
Suddenly, the Aigamuxa roared as it shot upright and reached out toward us.
“Ahh!” Nala screeched.
Steffi threw herself into the air and raised bright balls of golden energy in her hands, and all of my dragons roared in unison, but then the Aigamuxa flopped back down on the ground once more.
