Dragon Apocalypse (The Berserker and the Pedant Book 2) (26 page)

“And now that your dragon is all tied up, my dear Pellonia,” said Risadh, looming suddenly over her.
 
“You and your friends are far too destructive to the Phage. I will not allow you to foil my plans.”

Pellonia tried to tumble out of the way, but Risadh caught her by the hair.

Risadh said, “Clem!
 
Put the dwarf down. He’s done for; come and help.”

Clem dropped Gurken to the ground in a bloody, bruised heap.
 
Gurken landed next to Arthur’s unconscious body.
 
Clem walked over, grabbed ahold of Pellonia and, at Risadh’s urging, flung her through the portal.

Well, he attempted to fling her through the portal, anyway.
 
The giant tentacle was taking up quite a bit of room.
 
She bounced off the tentacle and Clem caught her on the return.
 
Next he tried shoving her between the portal and the tentacle, but there was not enough space.
 
Clem pushed on the tentacle with one arm in a vain attempt to create a gap small enough to squeeze a little girl through with the other.

Pellonia squirmed, beat her fists on Clem, and even chewed on his ear.
 
Clem didn’t seem to notice, or to care if he did notice.
 
In any event, he simply did not react.

“Clem confused,” Clem said, while Pellonia gnawed away.
 
“Girl no fit in portal.”

“Hold on to her,” Risabh said.
 
Risabh surveyed the scene.
 
Pellonia was struggling in Clem’s arms, effectively removed from the battle.
 
Gurken, beaten and bruised by Clem, lay on the ground next to Arthur, moaning.
 
Arthur was unconscious from Clem’s blow to the head.

“Clem,” Risabh said, smiling.
 
“You’ve been remarkably effective.”
 
Clem grinned. Risabh said, “I’m really quite good at my work.”
 
Clem frowned.

Risabh looked around some more. The dragon was struggling against the enormous Phage tentacle, no match for its superior leverage and strength.
 
The giant tentacle was, unfortunately, also clogging the portal and preventing the Phage from getting into the world.
 
The beholder floated aimlessly nearby, looking forlorn at having been forgotten in the chaos.
 
Risabh smiled.

“It’s coming to the end, Pellonia.
 
Watch as your last hope dies along with any chance to prevent this world from plunging into eternal war.
 
It’s delightful. Hinenuitepo, kill the dragon if you please.”

The beholder blasted the tentacle ball enclosing the dragon, alternating blasts of ice, fire, and lightning. The tentacle danced, blindly attempting to avoid the painful blasts and opening a hole which the dragon slipped through.

Risabh rolled his eyes and gestured for the flesh golem wizard to help.
 
It pulled out its wand and said, “Exhauriebat Vitae.”
 
The words dripped from its mouth, as dead as the caster.
 
A purple beam, ringed by a black pulsing thread, wriggled from the wand, striking the dragon in a smoky burst.
 
The pulses reversed direction, pulling back toward the wand as if suckling energy from the beast.
 

The dragon shrank.
 
At least, it shrank until the spherical body of the beholder drifted between the wand and the dragon.
 
The orbish eyes of the beholder ceased firing on the dragon and acted to protect the beholder. Lightning discharged, striking the flesh golem wizard and knocking him back into the waiting blanket of Phage. Another wall of ice sprouted from the ground interspersed between the wand and the beholder, and a gout of flame incinerated the wand.

The dragon, having lost some size from the blast of the purple wand, squirmed out of the tentacle’s grasp before the tentacle could bear down on her.
 
She leapt onto the beholder from behind and bit the eye-orb-ball of cold in a terrible ripping and gnashing of teeth.
 
The tentacle holding the orb stretched and ripped, spurting a yellowish-green fluid as the dragon slurped the orb, tentacle and all, down its terrible craw.

The beholder’s orb eyes whipped around, firing erratic bursts of flame and lightning, trying in desperation to blast the dragon off its head.
 
The dragon, however, had other ideas and clenched its powerful, gore-soaked jaw.

A growth sprouted from the base of the dragon’s neck and a second head burst forth, an ivory neck and head covered in blood.
 
It roared and unleashed a blizzard of hail and frost.
 
Clouds darkened and roiled overhead, snow sprinkling to the ground.

The dragon’s two heads, the fevered crimson of a raging inferno and the numbing ivory frost of icy oblivion, snapped up the two remaining orbs, rending enormous chunks of the beholder in the dragon’s dreadful bite.

Omumborombonga swelled in mass as she devoured the beholder, floating and squirming until Omumborombonga swallowed the last of its flesh.
 
Another head burst from the base of the dragon’s neck, a fathomless yawning sapphire blue with torrents of erupting sparks.
 
The original crimson neck and head broadened and stiffened, unleashing an unrestrained hellfire that made its preceding conflagration seem a languid campfire.

The icy walls evaporated in a puff of steam, and a fiery holocaust unfolded as Phage incinerated, ashes scattering in the wind in a final, desperate whisper.

“Ah.
 
Get the dragon — before — it transforms,” Risadh said.
 
“I see Arthur’s point now.”

The dragon turned to Risadh and the beast’s heads bellowed in turn, alternating the head that spoke with each word.

“YOU. SHALL. DIE. FOR. KILLING. APOCALYPSE.”

At that, the hatch in the floor opened and Maximina leapt through, attempting to close it behind her.

“Ha!” Pellonia yelled to Risadh. “What do you think about our odds now?”

“DO. NOT. THINK. YOU. WILL. ESCAPE. MY. WRATH. ELFLING.”

The ground shuddered as Omumborombonga stepped toward her.

Pellonia’s mouth dropped open in shocked amazement. “Me?”

“YOU. ARE. JUST. AS. RESPONSIBLE. FOR. APOCALYPSE’S. DEMISE.”

“What happened?
 
You were so nice,” Pellonia asked.

“I. WILL. KILL. YOU. ALL.”

The air around Omumborombonga’s largest head seethed in the scorching heat of her crimson skin as her jaw enclosed around Arthur’s orb of light rolling about the ground.
 
An amber head burst forth from the dragon, joining the other three, augmenting Omumborombonga’s dreadful might.

 
Maximina, sitting on top of the hatch, said, “The reports of Apocalypse’s demise may have been a tad premature.”
 
The hatch and Maximina lurched up once, twice, and the hatch exploded.
 
Maximina launched a dozen feet into the air as a flood of Apocalypsesii streamed through the hatch, a rushing torrent of flailing wings, and ascended into the shadowy half-light of the dusky evening.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

The Pedant and the Berserker

ARTHUR TRIED TO scream, but his tongue was stretched and pulled so it came out as more of a “muuuuuuuh.”
 
His tongue snapped back and he saw two large black orbs before his eyes.
 
They turned to the side, and pincers gripped him about the head, shaking him back and forth.

“All right, all right!” Arthur said, the fog clouding his head receding.
 
“Where en the deuce am I?” he said, tongue swollen.
 
“Whath going on?”

The faint scent of honeysuckle lingered in the air as Antic nuzzled Arthur’s cheek.
 
“Anthic!
 
Ahm tho happy to thee you!”
 
Arthur wrapped his arm around the ant and pulled him in close.

He saw Gurken lying on his belly next to him, his face a purple bruised mass.
 
Gurken groaned and pushed his head up.
 
He saw Antic cuddling Arthur and smiled tentatively.
 
“Welcome back, pendant wizard.”

Arthur sighed.
 
“It’s ‘pedant wizard.’
 
We’ve been over this.”

And Gurken knew his friend had returned.

A hideous shriek filled the air as the four-headed Omumborombonga disgorged bursts of flame, ice, lightning, and light, simultaneously incinerating, freezing, electrifying, and eviscerating Risabh.
 
Risabh stood a moment, taking a lumbering, tentative step as if unable to decide which way he was to die, and said, “This isn’t over!
 
I’ll be ba—” and burst into a charred, splintered icy explosion.

“Huzzah!” Arthur shouted in glee, until Omumborombonga turned toward Pellonia.
 
“Oh, dear.”
 
Arthur cast about for something he could use and spotted Gurken’s axe, which he tossed to his friend.

“Ow!
 
Hey!
 
Get a dwarf’s attention before throwing something at him!”

“It’s ‘get a dwarves’ attention, Gurken! Wait. No, you’ve actually got that one right.
 
I’m impressed.”

“Now’s not the time to be debatin’ the details of grammar, Arthur.
 
We’ve got dragons to kill, more than one, a… what do you call a bunch of dragons, anyway?”

“A gaggle of dragons?” Pellonia suggested.

“Too funny sounding,” Maximina said.
 
“Perhaps a murder of dragons?”

“Not so,” Arthur said.
 
“Those suggestions lack sufficient scope.
 
It’s an apocalypse.
 
A dragon apocaly—”

Arthur was interrupted as the twilight dimmed. The apocalypse of dragons blocked the sun and the sky.
 
They screeched in an ear-piercing howl.

Pellonia pointed towards the dragons, and Omumborombonga raised her amber head skyward.
 
A cone of light filled the void, illuminating the dragons overhead.
 
Omumborombonga took flight, her wings spawning a mighty gale and knocking everyone to the ground as she took to the air.

Pellonia ran over to Gurken and Arthur.
 
She saw Antic and jumped on Arthur, squeezing him tight.
 
“Ireallymissedyouwehaven’tgotmuchtime.
 
Omumborombonga will be back.
 
She’s not happy.
 
What are we going to do?”

Maximina crawled over to them.
 
“I’m out of ideas, and the apocalypse of Apocalypses ate everything in my magic sack.”

“We’ll talk about what you’ve done later,” Pellonia growled.

“Gurken can use his axe,” Arthur said.

“It hasn’t worked in a long time,” Gurken said.

“That’s because it’s got Dwarven runes, not Dwarfen runes,” Arthur said.

Gurken glared at Arthur, “What did I just say about debatin’ grammar?Don’t be telling me about my culture, wizard.”

“I’m not informing you about your culture, Gurken.
 
I’m informing you about magic.
 
I don’t remember much from the time I was controlled by the Phage, but one thing I do remember is visiting the hall of wizards and getting the assembled body to ratify that, magically speaking, the word “its” is now “it’s” and “it’s” is “its.” The usage of the apostrophe is flipped to confuse the magic of the world.
 
I know, I know, it’s terrible wordplay that’s really only of interest to wizards.
 
More importantly for you, the word describing an item as belonging to a dwarf has been ratified as dwarven.
 
Being a properly assembled wizarding council, it’s mystically binding.”

There was a pause and Gurken said, “I’m sorry.
 
I stopped listening at ‘hall of wizards.’”

Arthur rolled his eyes.
 
“If you want your axe to work, the runes must be dwarven, not dwarfen.”

Omumborombonga reached the dragons overhead and sailed about with them, luxuriating in the return of her lost young.

“We haven’t got long, we’ve to do something,” Pellonia said, watching the sky.

“Well, that doesn’t help us,” Gurken said to Arthur.
 
“I’ve got dwarfen runes.”
 
He shook his axe towards the wizard.

“It’s a matter of semantics, Gurken.
 
If the owner of the axe believes them to be dwarfen runes, the magic doesn’t work.
 
If, on the other hand, you consent to calling them dwarven, they’ll work fine.”

Gurken glared at Arthur, “I’m afraid not, wizard.
 
They’re dwarfen.”

“This is no time to be stubborn,” Maximina said.

The night sky bathed in the radiance of a rainbow of light, as Omumborombonga unleashed a hellfire of dragon’s breaths.
 
One of the Apocalypses, the target of Omumborombonga’s fury, fell from the sky.
 
Omumborombonga dove and ravaged the dragon in midair, tearing the scales and flesh from the beast and devouring them.
 
Omumborombonga’s skin shimmered as tiny golden scales sprouted over her skin.