The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (34 page)

Gawail came flying back to meet them five minutes after he had parted from them.

“Your light is bright,” he commented to Marco once he arrived.  “I could see it from a long distance away.”

Marco looked at his hand, and within seconds of his focused attention, the glow diminished.

“That is good,” Gawail spoke.  “In less than a quarter mile, the cavern is going to split into two passages.  I have flown into the passage that goes upward.”

“Does it lead up to the
Echidna’s lair?” Marco asked.

“No.  It shrinks down to a passage that is too small for you to pass through,” Gawail answered.

“But the entrance to the lair is higher up the mountainside than our entrance was,” Marco protested.  “We must have to go up to find the monster.”

“Just because the entrance is high, you don’t have to assume the lair is high as well,” Cassius pointed out.  “Maybe the monster’s cave sinks down into the mountain.”

“I will go fly into the lower passage,” Gawail said.  “When you come to the fork in the cave, take the lower passage, and I will meet you to let you know what I find,” he told them before he flew off again.

“We’re lucky to have him along,” Kate observed.  “It’s pretty handy to have a scout like that.”

They continued along the cave’s route, and minutes later came to the branching that Gawail had mentioned.  Without hesitation they took the route that clearly was the lower route, and started a gentle descent.

After a quarter of a mile the descent became more rapid, steep at times, and the cavern began a steady curving turn to the left.  Gawail came zipping up to them in the warm, dry air of the cavern.

“There is another fork in the cave, with three choices, just ahead.  I went to the left and it comes to an end.  You will either have to go right, or straight, but I have not gone either direction to check on them yet,” he told the humans as they continued to stride forward.

“Here’s the fork,” Gawail said moments later as they reached and paused at the point where a choice was needed.

“Why don’t we go right, and Gawail can go straight?” Cassius suggested.

They promptly set off in that fashion.  The right tunnel the travelers followed immediately began to plunge down, and entered a vast, open cavern in which Marco’s softly glowing hand provided light that only reached a few feet into the darkness around them.  The floor of the chamber was rough, and they climbed up and down around obstacles and mounds of stones that had fallen from the ceiling.   After ten minutes of hiking, they encountered an odor of decay, and stopped.

“What is that?” Pesino asked.  “Marco, can you give us some light so that we can see what’s happening?”

Marco obliged.  He climbed up on top of a nearby pile of stone to get some elevation, then raised his hand high.  He was more and more comfortable with the simple task of adjusting his glowing hand, so that with hardly a moment of focus he made the hand blaze forth with new light that revealed the enclosed space around them.

The cavern was higher than he had realized – the ceiling was forty feet over their heads.  The chamber was not as wide as he had expected – the walls were only thirty feet apart.

But those dimensions came to his attention only minutes later.  The light he had shone forth revealed something much more notable – and horrifying.  Scattered about the floor of the cave in front of them was a litter of decaying human body parts.  Limbs and bones and portions of flesh covered a long field ahead of them, and stacked in a pile at the far end were a score of skulls, some still covered with tatters of flesh.

Marco instantly dimmed his hand and lowered it to his side as he jumped down to the ground where the others stood.

“It’s,” he paused, not sure what to say to describe what he had seen from his perch.  “There are parts of dead bodies up ahead…this is the monster’s dining room!”

The faces of the others went pale, and Cassius pulled his sword free of its scabbard.

“We need Gawail to return,” Kate muttered, “to tell us exactly where she is and what she’s doing.”

“I don’t think we should just remain stationary,” Marco said, with an uncomfortable worry that they were being watched.  “Let’s move past this and wait for the pixie to rejoin us.”

He kept his light dim to minimize the others’ exposure to the macabre sights around them, and they quickly hurried through the ghastly space, but there was no avoiding the horrifying sight of the pile of skulls, and they all shuddered as they averted their eyes and went in a wide circle around it.

Once past that landmark they were beyond the sights of the deadly feasts that occurred in the cavern, and the odor faded behind them.  They were frightened now, but also alert, and sure that they were in the right place.

“I love you,” Marco heard Kate whisper to Cassius soon thereafter, a fearful confession the girl seemed to need to make at least once more before anything terrible might happen.

And at that moment the Echidna struck.

Chapter 24
– The Unwinnable Battle

Marco sensed a movement on his right, and he heard the soft slithering sound of scales passing over the clay floor of the cavern.

He shouted “Jump back!” to his friends, as he pulled his own sword free.

The sword immediately took control of his role in the battle, swinging itself upward while it made his body perform a seemingly impossible forward flip that carried him away from the spot where the Echidna’s clawed fingers closed upon empty air.

He felt his sword strike one of the arms of the monster, and his hand, while holding the sword, flared up in in a blaze of triumphant light to celebrate the joy of landing the first strike of the contest.  Marco shuffled his feet as he turned and crouched to protect himself and look at his opponent.

She was huge; had she been fully woman, instead of having the glistening scales below her waist, she would have been over twenty feet tall, Marco calculated in passing.  Her face was actually attractive, filled with a cruel beauty, but the hair that framed it was lank and dirty, falling in long strands that were several feet in length.  She had broad shoulders, and strong muscular arms that ended in fingers whose ends were claws, not nails.  And her breasts were huge; the venomous breasts that had suckled so many monsters were nearly the size of Marco’s own entire torso.

Her scales covering the lower portion of her body, which extended over a tail of thirty feet or more in length, were smaller than Marco had feared.  His worst case expectation had been large scales, difficult to carry or grasp or certainly to try to mischievously pluck away, unnoticed.  The scales were relatively small, no larger than the palm of his hand.  And they varied in color, with intricate patterns of darker and lighter shades that wove with a geometric precision and beauty up and down the length of her body from her waist to the tip of her tail.  If he were successful in acquiring one, it would be easy to carry out.

On her right shoulder there was a small bright stripe of red blood, the proof that Marco had landed a blow upon her.  She had her left hand touching the wound, then she looked at the smear of blood that her finger carried away, and she shrieked with a loud and unearthly wail of anger.

“How dare you strike my flesh?” her voice issued forth in a higher pitch than Marco had expected from the large body.  “You are a mere piece of food for me to consume!  How dare you?!”

She struck at him as she spoke the last word, diving forward with an extraordinary speed, her hands grasping forward and her wide mouth gaping open to attack as well, as she flung herself at him.

Marco stumbled as the wide-flung arms reached towards him, but his sword turned the stumble into an awkward roll that moved him out of the reach of the monster at the last second.  He felt the huge claws rake across his back, shredding his pack – which he still wore.  He heard the contents of the pack clatter to the ground, and he felt the bulky shape on his back fall away, making his movements easier as the
Echidna inadvertently helped him by relieving him of the load he was carrying.

The monster continued forward in her strike, and for a moment her face came so close to Marco that he smelled the sickeningly sweet odor of her breath, and he saw the sharp fangs of her mouth, before he yelped in fear and rose to his feet.

“You’re too good to be a mortal, too fast,” the mother of monsters commented as she reared high above him again, preparing to make her next strike.  “Perhaps I should save you for last and use you for a bit.”  And with that she turned to look at the rest of the invaders who had invaded her lair with incredible foolishness.

Cassius stood with his sword drawn, holding it defensively, while Kate stood just a step behind, holding a knife as a weapon, puny though it looked compared to the size of the
Echidna.  Just to the side, Pesino stood, without a weapon, alert to the situation.

“You hate yourself, don’t you?” Pesino shouted.  “You shouldn’t – not just because you are a composite of two creatures.  I used to be a mermaid, so I know.  There’s no reason to hate yourself because of who you are.”

“What irrelevant talk is this?” the monster shouted.  “You should tremble in fear, bow down, and ask that I am merciful enough to kill you last.  For your stupidity you will die now, painfully,” she roared, and she prepared to strike at Pesino, when she was suddenly distracted by Gawail, who flew past her face, throwing a tiny handful of dust in one eye.

The
Echidna roared.  It swatted at Gawail with one massive hand, while the other hand flew to its eye and tried to rub away the irritating dust.

“Good work, Gawail!” Kate shouted her approval.

Marco hastily reached for the bow that had been ripped from his shoulder, and found the quiver of arrows nearby.  He was off to the side of the monster now, not the focus of its attention for the moment, and he took advantage of his opportunity to fire an arrow at the creature’s shoulder.

He was so close, and the target was so large, that he could not fail.  His arrow flew true, and struck the creature in the shoulder.  The thick skin and tough muscles beneath resisted the dart he had fired though, and it penetrated only weakly, just the head of the arrow burying itself with her.

The Echidna roared, and looked at Marco, then reached down and surprised him by flinging a stone at him.

Marco tried to raise his sword to protect himself, knowing even as he made the reflexive movement that the narrow blade would be no protection from the heavy rock.  The stone hit his blade with a clang, and little other reaction, and then the stone struck his shoulder, hurdling him backwards to the ground.

He landed amid the wreckage of his own backpack contents, which were scattered around the floor of the cave.  The Echidna was slithering towards him, and he saw his own death approaching as he observed the speed with which the monster was preparing to kill him.  In a panic he grabbed out and seized the first item he laid a hand on, then flung it up at the creature’s face.

The small stone jar flew through the air with uncanny accuracy and struck the monster in the mouth.  The
Echidna hardly noticed the tiny inconvenience for a moment, but then Gawail made another valiant attempt to help his friends, diving down at the monster’s face and releasing a second tiny bit of grit that was aimed at the vulnerable eyes.

The
Echidna swatted with more accuracy in response to the second time the pixie came at it, and there was a tiny scream of anguish as Gawail was struck hard and flung to the ground.  The monster looked down in satisfaction, pausing for a moment, then returned its attention to Marco, preparing to kill him for his temerity in attacking it.

And then the monster froze in place.  A strange expression of puzzlement and then pain, crossed her face, and she screamed a loud, unearthly scream that was so loud and terrifying than Marco felt the ground quake, and a few small stone overhead dislodged themselves from the roof and fell to the floor.

The Echidna straightened up and raised her arms above her head in horror, while the others also felt overcome with horror as they watched her arms begin to rapidly shrink, melting back down to her shoulders.  The scales at her waist seemed to come to life, and began to climb rapidly up her torso, turning flesh into snakelike exterior.

Her breasts melted down to flatness, her mouth grew wide, a
nd her nose began to protrude as her eyes shrank and darkened and bulged.  She turned from a hybrid creature into an enormous snake, one that lay on the ground, stunned by its sudden, painful transformation.

“The alchemical formula!” Marco suddenly shouted, understanding what had happened.  He had picked up a piece of debris from the ground and thrown it at the monster, who had swallowed it.  It had been one of the jars containing a dose of the medicine the alchemist Sty had created in the Lion City, the one that had changed Cassius and Pesino from merfolks to humans!  And it had worked on the
Echidna – differently – by changing her from a hybrid creature into a snake.  Carried for hundreds of miles, forgotten, the formula had unexpectedly turned out to be a formidable weapon.

Even as he looked at the giant constrictor before him, Marco tried to get up, his wounded shoulder angrily sending pain shooting through him as he tried to roll over.

There was a flash of light from the Echidna, and the whole length of the stunned, massive snake glowed momentarily.  Marco suddenly remembered what had happened under the pier when Cassius and Pesino had been changed: they had changed first into beings that were completely dolphins, and only then – with a flash of light – had then turned into humans.

That meant that the
Echidna was about to turn into a human too, and he still had not harvested one of its scales.

Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Marco forced himself to teeter forward, raised his sword, and hacked it down on the shuddering giant snake.  A handful of scales flew off and a small patch of scarlet flesh was exposed.  He knelt on the ground and picked up the dry scales, which still felt warm with the heat of the monster’s body.

As he touched the artifacts, his mind exploded with a burst of cognition.  These items, the goal of his long, perilous journey, were ingredients in a great many rare alchemy formulae, used for extraordinary purposes.  There was some purpose the spirit of Ophiuchus had in mind, he realized, and he was likely to be needed to complete.

The creature began to writhe wildly, and it struck Marco, flinging him in the direction of his friends, who caught him in midair.  He knocked Cassius and Kate to the ground, and landed atop them, stunned.

They all looked up and saw the monster, changing form again, changing from snake to human – giant human.

“Help me up,” Marco breathed painfully, as he watched.  The monster was going to be ready for battle once again in just a matter of moments, and he had to be ready.

Pesino wrapped her arms around him and lifted him with surprising strength.   “We can run now Marco,” she said.  “You’re hurt; don’t try to fight any more.”

“I owe you one thing,” Marco answered, as he gained his feet with her help.  After a momentary glance in which their eyes locked on one another searchingly, Marco left Pesino and dashed out back to the vicinity of the shape
shifting monster.  He still held the handful of scales he had gained in one hand, and he put his sword away to free his other hand, then reached down and picked up a stone jar.

“Pesino, this is yours!” he shouted as he tossed a dose of the medicine needed to transform her back into a mermaid.  “Cassius, this is yours!” he called, and immediately tossed another jar of the mixture to the former merman.  He picked up the ruins of his pack, which still held a few of his food supplies, and stuffed the
Echidna scales within.

As he turned to run back to the others, he heard a guttural scream, and realized that the
Echidna had recovered from the effects of the transformation.  A giant woman stood over him, now complete with hips and legs and feet, looking down at him with a black expression on her face, full of anger and fury.

“What have you done to me?  What magician are you?  Foolish mortal – don’t you know that no mortal tool can overcome my divine nature?” she shouted.

It was true, Marco realized.  Already, her feet and ankles were starting to sprout a few scales; despite the strength of Sty’s transformational alchemy, the divine nature of the Echidna’s hybrid form was reasserting itself – she was already returning to the snake and human composition that was her nature.

“But I’ll deal with you in this form now!” she said, and she stooped to swing her fist low along the ground, a massive block of flesh and bone that struck Marco forcefully and flung him many feet through the air, so that he crashed up against the wall of the cavern and fell in a heap on the ground.

He fought to keep from blacking out; his vision was fuzzy and his eyes were momentarily crossed as he looked up and saw the woman striding towards him.  She was coming to finish him off.

Fearful and desperate, and acting strictly from instinct, Marco raised his right hand without thinking and pointed it at the monster.  A bolt of energy flew from his fingers and struck the floor of the cave at her feet, upending her and sending her falling backwards.  As Marco watched, she landed in a sitting position, and her legs pulled suddenly together, fusing together into a single snake’s tail as she overcame the effects of his alchemical dose.

Marco looked up and pointed his hand at the ceiling above her, suddenly realizing that there was only one way to slow her down.  He could not defeat her, but he could guarantee that she would not be able to chase after them.  He released another bolt of energy aimed at the ceiling above her, and then adjusted his aim and released another, then moved to a new target over her head and shot one move time.  A massive shower of stone fell down from above, landed on top of and all around the Echidna, just as she was rising to start to strike at him, and the monster was buried under tons of stone.

Marco lowered his hand in
weariness, and saw that Cassius was running over to him.  As the man reached Marco, there was a new noise, and a sudden, dramatic rise in temperature, as a hole appeared in the newly raised ceiling, and a shower of molten lava began to pour through.