Path of the Magi (Tales of Tiberius) (44 page)

In the morning he felt refreshed.  He’d had a good nights sleep in spite of the short hours.  He made himself a proper breakfast of biscuits and bacon.  Maci was a ways back, still unnoticed.  She’d made no fire, but it was a warm night. 

Tiberius took time to renew his defensive spells in detail.  Starting with quiet meditation upon the psalms and the Lord’s Prayer, he then started channeling power though himself.  The ritual was familiar to him by now.  Internal strength, dragon skin, Dallen’s shield, the prismatic shield, and then the vapor shield.  He topped it off with an extra fire resistance spell. 

Then it was time.  He mounted his horse and rode towards the back end of the Black Hills, a spot just at the base of the Scorpion’s Tail.   

Rounding a corner he could see the dragon in the distance.  It was sitting on the ground with its arms tucked under its head, waiting for him.  They both knew this day had been coming. 

He rode steadily closer, keeping a sharp eye out.  Finally, about 400 yards away, he stopped and dismounted.  The horse wouldn’t help him now.  The dragon started to stretch and pace as he approached. 

He was about halfway to the dragon when it gave a leap with its wings and landed about fifty yards away from him. 

For the first time in a dozen years, Tiberius saw the dragon face to face.  It was just as large and just as terrifying as he remembered it.  More terrifying, really.  Before, Tiberius had been a young kid, knowing nothing of dragons.  Now he knew exactly what a dragon was, especially what this sort of dragon was and just how dangerous it really could be.  This was a class five dragon.  It was an enemy that even Dallen had respected, and Tiberius was still very much younger than Dallen.   

“Barcharosias, I presume?  I believe we have an appointment,” Tiberius said. 

“You didn’t waste any time,”  the dragon replied.

“I couldn’t find you till now, or I’d have come calling before.  There’s a small matter of property damages back in Sherwood City.  You toasted my pastor’s geraniums, among other things.”

“Did I?  Sorry, I missed the pastor.”

“I take it that you haven’t repented of your ways and changed your mind about this then?”  Tiberius asked.

The dragon laughed.  “Did you ever think that was a possibility?”

“Not really, no, but I had to ask,” Tiberius said. 

“Strange friend you brought with you,”  the dragon said.

“Friend?”  Tiberius wondered a moment, then followed the dragons gaze.  He couldn’t see her; she’d done a good job finding cover under some rocks, but he could sense her all the same. 

“Maci?!  Get out of here!” he said with some alarm. 

“You didn’t know?  Curious.  Not thinking of your friends now, are you?” the dragon chided. 

“Don’t mind me!” Maci said. 

“I won’t.  I can’t.  You shouldn’t have come,”  Tiberius said, focusing on the dragon. 

The dragon laughed.  “Don’t worry, I won't kill her till I'm done with you."

"That's considerate of you,” Maci said from behind the rocks.

"Not really, he just wants to take his time amusing himself with you,"  Tiberius said.

"Great,” Maci answered.  “Kill him and let’s go home."

“Yes, let’s get this over with,” Barcharosias said.

He let out a blast of fire.  The heat was staggering, even though his defenses.  It was well that Tiberius had taken the precaution of armoring his boots.  The ground around him was glowing with heat from the dragon's blast. 

The dragon looked disappointed when his fire had no apparent effect on Tiberius. 

“A bit obvious,” Tiberius said.  Drawing out an old arrow he said, “Last time you ignored this.  Let’s see if I’ve improved any.”

“Flugu fidela kai rapida!” he said.  So saying he threw the arrow at Barcharosias like it was a dart.  It was the very same arrow he’d fired at the dragon twelve years ago.  The arrow had simply bounced off the dragon back then.  But now it flew from his hands faster than any arrow had ever traveled from a bow.  The dragon made a sudden dodge to the side, but even so, the hypervelocity dart cut though his wing.  Rolling back up, he picked up a huge rock and threw it with deadly force at Tiberius.  It shattered against Ti’s shields; he barely felt it.   

“Fulmo trafu!” he responded, firing lightning back at the dragon.  The lighting just crackled around Barcharosias’ own shields. 

The dragon in turn breathed fire again, hoping that Tiberius’ shields, though powerful, might not be immortal.  Ti felt it get uncomfortably hot when he did that, but he’d been working too long on fire resistance to be bothered seriously by the dragon’s fire.  Fire was a resource though.  As the flames wrapped around him he spoke his own incantation. 

“Forma fajrego virina bonveno Sorcha!” he spoke, and from the tails of the dragon’s fire blast Tiberius formed his own fire elemental. He sent the elemental forward to attack the dragon.  Even a dragon can feel the heat from a dragon’s fire, so Barcharosias was forced to take defensive action.  It rolled in the dirt; then, coming up it cast a word of dispelling destroying the fire elemental.  A second later the dragon had to swerve again.  A tree behind him, enchanted by Tiberius, tried to smash the dragon with a well-aimed branch.  The dragon toasted the tree with a puff of fire.  It felt a telekinetic blow smash into its shoulder.  Angrily, it turned back and cast a spell of its own, hurling a bolt of lighting towards Tiberius.  Again the spell rolled off Ti’s shields.  Tiberius countered by trying to dispel the dragon’s defenses.

“Dispelu,” he said.  That wasn’t quite right, Tiberius noted.  Well, dispels were always tricky. 

The dragon then jumped into the air, trying to pounce on Tiberius and rend him apart with its powerful and razor sharp claws. Tiberius teleported to the side.  The dragon swerved towards the spot where he appeared, aimed another claw, and missed again as Tiberius rolled out of the way.  Again it lunged, and Tiberius dodged with a teleport. This time Tiberius managed to inflict a light wound, grazing its iron skin with a slash from his staff, the tip glowing with plasma.  Tiberius narrowly dodged a tail swipe, but was sent sprawling by a backhand from one of the powerful claws. 

Quickly rolling to his feet, he had to summon his staff back to his hand.  That blow would have killed a knight in armor, but Ti’s shields were still holding, though he would have some nasty bruises if this kept up.  The dragon flew towards him, claws outstretched.  Tiberius gave his staff a twirl and it spun faster than the eye could see, suddenly flying out of his hands to strike the dragon in the head as it approached.    The heavy blow stopped the dragon, forcing it to take a step back.  Stunned slightly,  it shook its head and spit out a tooth. 

That gave Tiberius the chance to do something slightly more complicated.  He cast a phantasmal dragon.  His dragon leapt on the back of the original and caused them to tumble together in combat.  After a moment, though, the real dragon composed itself and dispelled the phantasmal creature.

It looked up to meet the spray of acid that Tiberius hurled towards it.  Tiberius wasn’t overly surprised to see it didn’t affect the creature much.  It drew some ancient sign in the air, then slammed down with one of its claws on to the earth.  There was a rumble, and a small earthquake knocked Tiberius off his feet.  Rolling to the side, he came up and tapped his staff on the ground and vanished.  The dragon sniffed in the air for a moment and then breathed a wall of fire on the ground.  With another mystic sign he sent it advancing forward.  A wall of ice appeared out of nowhere and blocked the wall of flames, the two of them canceling each other in a cloud of steam.  The dragon made another sign, and the steam cloud then clung to the ground.  The dragon studied the currents in the steam, looking for the telltale sign of footprints.  From another direction came a glowing disk of metal, streaming towards the dragon’s neck.  Barcharosias made a sign and the disk impacted on the glowing sign, shattering into drops of liquid metal.  With a gesture, the dragon picked up a fallen log and hurled it towards the direction the disk had come from. 

Again it raised its claw and drew an intricate sign.  This time a half dozen ants suddenly grew into full sized warriors and started forward.  From the other end of the ground, a pile of rocks suddenly formed into a man-shaped warrior of stone which charged forward to meet the ant men, smashing them aside.  The dragon called up its own earth elemental, and the two stone constructions smashed one another to pieces. 

The dragon now let fly a volley of small, rapid puffs of fire, blanketing the nearby ground in flames. 

There was a long silence, then.  The dragon looked around cautiously, sniffing the air.  He had no scent of the wizard now.  Had he won?  Had it been that easy?  He didn’t think so.  He wouldn’t believe it, at least until he found some charred remains of the wizard.  Cautiously, he picked though the smoldering landscape.  There was the burnt husk of some rodent here.  Had the wizard transformed himself into that and died?  The dragon took a cautious sniff.  No. 

He made more elaborate signs on the ground now.   A creature, a demon with the body of a panther and the wings of a bat, emerged. 

“What is thy bidding, Master?”

Just then, the dragon heard something and turned around.  The wizard was back, emerging from the trees with four water elementals in hand. 

“Kill him!” the dragon just managed to mumble before the first water elemental struck it in the face. 

For a moment, the dragon had all it could handle with the water elementals.  They swirled and swarmed around it; one of them wrapped itself around his throat with surprising strength while another tried to drown him by leaping down his throat.  The dragon had to teleport to the side to escape the grasp.  He managed to obliterate one of them with a blast of fire.  The others kept coming.  He breathed a wall of fire.  One of the elementals hurled itself down on a spot, allowing the other two to charge though the gap and attack the dragon.  The dragon jumped and rolled down among the burning embers.  The burning embers wouldn't destroy the elementals, but at least they would weaken them.  Finally, it gave a mighty blast of its wings and leapt into the air.  When it reached a couple of hundred feet, it was able to finally shake off the elemental clinging to it and send it towards destruction on the ground.  The other it sighted and with a gesture was able to dispel. 

Tiberius had his hands filled with the leaping, flying panther.  He ducked out of the way of its initial leap; then, cloaking himself in shadow, he and the creature did battle, flaming staff against icy claw.  He felt a sharp pain as the creature’s claw ripped through his shields and armor and gave him a series of three cuts across his left arm.  He countered with a rib-shattering strike across the creature’s back which imperiled the use of its right wing.   It leapt again; Tiberius countered with a glittering force wall crossed with blue diamond shaped lines.  The creature bounced off of this, but nimbly rolled to the ground and kept charging.  Tiberius sent a flaming disk flying at it.  He hit the demon and sliced off a forelimb.  The creature gave a yelp, rolled to the ground, and exploded as Tiberius hit it with a fire blast. 

He turned just in time to see the dragon approaching and sent an ice bolt towards the creature.  The bolt grazed the dragon's chest but he kept coming, and Tiberius had to roll out of the way, narrowly missing a slash from the creature’s tail. 

Maci peeked over the protective rocks she hid behind, wishing she could do something useful.  On the grounds below, a flickering shadow she knew to be her godbrother was engaging in mortal combat with the dragon.  They were close to each other now, the dragon and Tiberius fighting at arms length.  The shadow narrowly dodged and spun around the dragon.  Sometimes it split in two, sometimes it shifted to the side via teleport.  The dragon rolled, spun, slashed, and lashed out with its tale.  It shot breaths of flame everywhere.  She couldn’t even tell who was winning.  Once in a while she saw a flash as some part of the dragon made contact with Ti’s protective spells.  Other times she saw a spark where Ti’s staff or one of his spells impacted the dragon.   She had no arrow, rock, or knife that would even so much as distract the dragon, so for now she stayed quiet and unnoticed on the sidelines, waiting.  Waiting for what, she didn’t know.  She’d find a way to help before the end; she knew it.  For now, all she could do was pray. 

A well-aimed claw sent Tiberius flying across the ground.  He rolled with the blow as Michael Okubo had taught him, but it still hurt.  This was getting him nowhere; the dragon seemed to regenerate as quickly as he could inflict damage, at least with the staff.  Time to try something different, if risky. 

“Menso punado!” he said, pointing and making deliberate eye contact with the dragon. 

The dragon stopped and staggered in mid-step.  Tiberius had launched a direct mind to mind psionic attack and that had at least been unexpected.  That any mortal would dare match wills with a dragon was unthinkable.  Barcharosias gathered his will and pressed back.  Maci, in the distance, could only watch and wonder what was happening as the two of them stood and stared at each other. 

Tiberius felt a massive headache as the dragon’s will pressed back, but he steadied himself and kept up his own pressure.  The staff trembled in his hands and sweat poured from his brow but he kept his eyes ahead and locked.  The dragon took a step back.  This was working at least.  Then the dragon made another gesture.  Tiberius felt the pressure collapse.  The dragon had drawn a wall around its mind.  Tiberius tried again, but he felt his mental blow just slide off the dragon’s mental defenses.