Chapter 17 Last Words
Last Words
As Caden dodged yet another lightning bolt he thought, Pick on someone your own size?
Did I really say that? He nearly has his head taken off by an acid ball.
Was I insane to say that? A plume of fire, so hot that he felt it singe his arm hair from feet away, gushed just where he’d been. I am insane. Definitely insane.
The one thing that was saving him was that the Behemoth couldn’t fly so it was relatively limited in its movements.
He could fly above its reach--well, at least the reach of its mouths--but the magic it spewed in all different colors, textures and dangers was not so easy to escape.
But Caden couldn’t go too far away either, because Raziel still lay in an unconscious heap and Iolaire was still very much attached to the Behemoth
What is my game plan here? Caden asked himself.
He needed Raziel to wake up. That was first and foremost. Did the black wings appear to be moving? Did the head lift a little from the ground?
No. None of those things were happening.
I’ve gotten Iolaire’s attention. Though Iolaire really doesn’t look sure about what’s going on around it.
Iolaire’s white head was looking this way and that, blinking almost sleepily, as if waking from a dark dream.
But those blue eyes were unfocused and when it tried to move in a different direction from the one that the Behemoth was going in, its head was the only thing to move.
More confusion would fill those blue eyes and the head would bob as if Iolaire was going to go to sleep.
But the Behemoth’s other heads--except for the drooping ruby one--were all quite alert and glaring at him. He had dreaded seeing one angry Dragon, but now there were seven giving him death stares.
So eight dragon spirits to match with the Dragons on Earth, but the ruby one is down and Iolaire is out, so six remain plus the seventh, which is the Behemoth.
The Behemoth’s, Caden guessed, was the central head.
It was a strange gray-green color with virulent yellow eyes that reminded him of a poisonous snake.
There was a crown of horns, three layers deep, that surrounded that massive head.
The neck was thick and sinuous, larger than the others.
It dwarfed Iolaire’s delicate white head and neck.
Caden imagined if the Behemoth were just on its own it would be classified as a titanic Dragon, somewhere between Raziel and Mephous in size.
But the sheer malice in its eyes separated it from those two Dragons.
If Raziel doesn’t wake up, what’s my next plan? Caden thought.
But that thought was pushed to the side as deadly wind tornadoes mixed with fire, acid, lightning and more were coming at Caden in all directions.
He had to swoop out of the crater then, going to its farthest-most edge, to avoid them, but he was still buffeted hard.
But the moment he reached that farthest spot, any relief he had from avoiding the magic was dimmed. He felt his connection to Iolaire thin.
The fact that there was a connection was something that would have sent him into loop-de-loops of delight under other circumstances. But the whole of the crater was a deadly obstacle course so going back into it would be to risk certain death.
If a spirit can die…
Whether or not he could die for real he wasn’t sure, but he felt that if he died Iolaire would be lost and Raziel as well.
All the Dragons would fall. His connection to Iolaire--his live, living connection to the physical realm--was what was keeping Iolaire from being completely consumed by the Behemoth. So he had to go back in and stay in.
So what’s the plan here? I need a plan. I just can’t fly around forever!
But that’s what Caden did. He dodged, looped, rolled, dove and soared as the Behemoth sent blast after ball after stream of magic at him. Luckily, they both seemed to tire out at the same time. Caden panted in the air while the Behemoth glared from the crater.
Plan. Plan. Plan. I need a plan!
With this moment’s respite, he’d hoped his mind would offer up something, but all he could think of was Raziel’s crumpled form and Iolaire’s dazed one.
But there is a connection between Iolaire and I! I need to use that if only to reach my Spirit.
The Behemoth had settled back in the center of the crater. It was glaring at him. Seven pairs of eyes were quite the thing to have focused on one, especially when they were filled with hate. But he ignored them.
Iolaire? Iolaire, can you hear me? Caden sent even as he stared at the back of the White Dragon’s head.
He started to drift to the side, thinking that maybe if he could make eye contact, it would be easier to reach his Spirit, but every move he made was mirrored by the Behemoth.
It shifted as he shifted. Caden narrowed his eyes.
He could fly over the Behemoth’s heads as fast as he could and he might have a chance to see a flash of Iolaire’s face, but it would hardly be worth it with the magical onslaught he could expect if he did this.
Okay then, if I can’t get in front of Iolaire, I need Iolaire to look at me, Caden thought. Iolaire, turn your head around. Look at me. It’s Caden. Don’t you want to see me?
Iolaire’s head turned to the right and Caden felt his heart rise up into his throat.
If those blue eyes met his, he knew he could reach the White Dragon Spirit!
But then a green globe shot towards him and he was almost too slow to avoid it.
The side of it skated along his left arm and he let out a shrill yell as the acid left a red and bloody mark on his skin.
Hissing with pain, Caden grabbed his uninjured wrist, trying to hold his arm steady to somehow ease the agony.
His gaze met the Behemoth’s. It was smiling.
All of its controlled heads anyways. Iolaire was, once again, looking off into the distance in the exact opposite direction of him as if there were the answers to the universe over there.
Caden snapped his head back towards the Behemoth.
Surprisingly, the monster hadn’t sent more magic his way as it had finally scored a hit.
It had settled down in the center of the crater in a sick suggestion of Iolaire’s “cat loaf” pose.
He wanted to yell at it to stop pretending to be like Iolaire or like any Dragon!
It was foul and awful and nobody liked it!
But the pain simmered in his nerves and stole his voice for the moment.
His skin blistered and wept. It was a slick red color like raw meat.
I have no body. I have no arm. There is no acid here, he reminded himself over and over again.
The wound did not change, but there was a lessening in the pain he felt.
Perhaps it was mind over matter. Or soul over matter.
Or something. He lowered his arm and gritted his jaw.
Maybe the reason he wasn’t able to reach Iolaire was that the Behemoth was blocking him.
Distracting it by having it fire off its volleys of magic didn’t give him access because he was too busy dodging death to concentrate on Iolaire, but maybe if he distracted it in some other way…
“Why are you doing this?” Caden demanded.
It was eerie to see all the heads blink at the same time. They were watching him curiously now. The glare had been reduced to a low level of hatred.
“Let’s say you succeed in your goal of taking over the Dragons and then the material realm,” Caden said. “Part of what makes that realm amazing are the humans.”
There was a snort of black smoke from one of the heads.
“What would be different between here and there is not for the humans?” Caden gestured to the empty spirit world.
Or, at least, it seemed empty. There was that Werewolf and, of course, there were the human souls that had been trapped here. But there was this sense that life was at a standstill. There was so little of it.
“The spirits want to be in the physical realm because of their interactions with humans. Human food. Human cities. The excitement that humans bring,” Caden kept going.
As he spoke, his gaze flickered towards that white head that slowly seemed to be turning towards the sound of his voice.
Iolaire, I’m here. See me.
“If you succeed in your plan, you will destroy the reason that the Spirits want to go there in the first place,” Caden told it.
You are foolish if you think we want your company, human, the Behemoth spoke.
Caden jerked back. The voice was like the melding of many different voices. His mind felt electrified by the Behemoth’s mental touch. That probably wasn’t good.
But I have its attention. Caden glanced at Iolaire. The White Dragon Spirit’s head was almost completely to the side. Let’s keep this going.
“But you have this whole world. Mostly to yourself, or so it seems!” Caden turned in a tight circle to encompass the whole of the Spirit Realm. “Everybody is in their lairs, happily joined with their humans, enjoying their joint existences.”
Happily? Happily joined? You mean CHAINED! The Behemoth roared at him.
Seven pairs of eyes glowed at him with fury.
“No, no, no! You don’t get to blame that on us,” Caden said, even as he felt guilty at what he had discovered the Spirits had to give up. But he had to respect their decisions, too. “That is a choice they make.”
Because they think they will be free in the material realm with all those humans and their things that you so go on about! The Behemoth retorted. But they are not. They are shown who holds the control. Who chains them?
“Whoa! Wait a minute there, too!” Caden shook his head and held up his hands as if physically warding off those words. “First, Spirits choose to bond with humans. They enter human bodies and exist in the material world that way. Humans don’t get to choose this.”
But they do! They agree--