Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 390
The Disposition of Dragons
As they travel toward the Keffet dreaming caves, the Company discusses various possible approaches to the problem of Galdifain binding the monster that stands guard. Should they try a battery of illusions? Have Flicker dash and tumble around, evading it? Or load Dranko down with every buff spell in the book and have him go toe-to-toe? Ideally they would make Galdifain invisible, but the light motes make that strategy untenable.
“If the Keffet is correct, and it’s a dragon,” says Galdifain to Dranko, “I suggest you not be in its stomach when my spell completes.”
Dranko agrees. He’s had enough of stomachs for a while.
When they are only a mile out, Morningstar goes into Ava Dormo to scout. She takes Grey Wolf as backup, just in case. The tunnel continues downward and westward, snaking this way and that, growing ever wider. The transition between tunnel and cavern happens so gradually, it’s something of a shock when they realize they can no longer see the walls to either side or the ceiling high above. Then, in the dimness of the motes up ahead, they see the first pillar.
It is a wide column, thirty feet across, fashioned of stone and hardened fungus. A vertiginous spiral staircase twines around it like a vine, up, up. And coming off the staircase are slightly concave stone slabs, like fan blades. On closer inspection they resemble little stone coffins without lids. Here in Ava Dormo they don’t contain Keffet, but each is partially filled with a strange glowing purple fungus.
The cavern is immense, and Morningstar and Grey Wolf can see dozens more of these columns, each set far apart from the others. Altogether they count fifty of them, each able to hold five hundred Keffet. And this cavern is adjacent to at least three others, each just as enormous, each with its own fifty columns. There may be more beyond that, but they’ve seen enough. Hundreds of thousands of Keffet are presumably sleeping here in the waking world, dreaming of a false life, and endless war with the Egannic.
There is no sign of the dragon that guards them.
/*/
The Company approaches the dream caves cautiously. Dranko is already loaded down with their longest-lasting spells, but they intend to hold off on the minute- and round-per-level spells until they get closer. Morningstar is the designated guardian for Galdifain, so she also gets some protective magics, as does Galdifain herself – though if things reach the point where the assassin needs them, the plan will have fallen fairly well apart.
While still a minute away from the nearest of the massive columns, the light motes around them start to cling to their clothes and glow a cherry red. There is no discomfort; it seems like an early-warning system. An idea pops into Kibi’s head. He scoops up four small rocks and casts magic mouth on them.
The rest of them start to cast their minute-per-round spells, but only have time for one each. About five seconds later, the dragon appears. The lines of sight here are long, and it surely could see them coming a long way off thanks to the red motes.
It’s… big. Easily a hundred feet from noses to tail, it hovers a few feet above the ground, wingless and brown-scaled. It regards them with its two monstrous heads, each full of deadly teeth. The claws on its hands gleam like sharpened broadswords.
Dranko hopes his buffing spells are enough. He steps forward boldly. “I’m here to kick your ass,” he says. It growls out of both mouths and falls upon Dranko like a reptilian God of Death. Dranko vanishes into a flurrying storm of teeth and claws. The beast’s tail lashes around with the power of a trebuchet.
“A dream linnorm,” says Galdifain calmly. “A very nasty sort of dragon. I’m familiar with them, though I’ve never bound one.”
“Another thing I can turn into,” says Aravis, taking mental notes.
The linnorm finishes with Dranko, and, having killed the little morsel, turns its heads to the others.
One head does a double take, and looks back at where Dranko’s shredded corpse should be. Dranko is just standing there, smiling, barely scratched. It turns its whole body and brings both heads right up to Dranko, confused about what it’s seeing.
Dranko reaches out and pats its snout. “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, in a voice appropriate to conversing with a toddler.
“Should I start?” asks Galdifain over the mind-link.
“Not yet,” says Aravis. “But be ready.”
Morningstar, standing next to Galdifain, casts antilife shell.
Dranko points to the nearest column of dreamers. “I’ll bet I can kill a few of those guys before you can stop me.” He dashes away. The dragon starts to follow, then stops.
“Hey, dumbass,” Dranko calls. “I’ll make you a deal. My friends won’t hurt you unless you kill me first. But if you do kill me, they’ll…”
“Shut up,” says the linnorm. It casts maze on Dranko. Dranko vanishes. The monster turns around to look at the others.
“How do you put up with him?” it asks, right before both heads breath upon them. The Company is engulfed, simultaneously, in a roaring blast of hellfire, and a deathly cold spray of icy wind. All sorts of protective spells and energy buffers are triggered. Most in the party take damage, but nothing a mass heal won’t take care of. Galdifain, having been thoughtfully bestowed with energy immunity to both fire and cold, is entirely uninjured.
But what to do now? With no good idea of how long it will take Dranko to escape the maze, they retreat. Kibi teleports the entire group back the way they came, to the limit of his sight. Morningstar heals everyone, and they put some more protective spells on Galdifain. But they need to return, if Galdifain is going to attempt her binding.
Dranko is caught in a glowing, pulsing labyrinth. He sees the exit and heads for it, but, no, that was just another left-turn. Oh, there it is! He… no, hm, dead end. This is trickier than he expected. It takes him more than half a minute to find his way out.
When he does, the dragon is waiting for him, twenty feet away. It casts meteor swarm on him. Massive fiery boulders explode all around him, chunks of burning stone flying in all directions. The cloud of dust and smoke dissipates… and there Dranko stands, unharmed.
“Really? Little fiery pebbles? You’re so cute”
“Stop calling me that!” roars the dragon.
“I just want to put a bow on you and take you for walks in the park,” says Dranko.
The dragon casts another spell upon him, and something squeezes his mind, but bolstered by a battery of protective spells, he resists whatever it was.
The linnorm bellows in frustration. “I will figure out how to eat you,” it promises, “and then I will!”
The others cast a few more spells, including mass doughy folk and mass xorn movement, before Grey Wolf teleports them back to near Dranko and the linnorm. Kibi tosses his enchanted rocks in different directions, then sinks into the ground.
Aravis casts maze on the dragon. It vanishes, giving them time to cast some spells on Dranko, including a dimensional anchor in case it tries to maze him again.
The dragon appears again; the maze didn’t hold it very long. The Company scatters, though Morningstar stays with Galdifain. Kibi pops up to summon a cadre of greater earth elementals which appear around the linnorm. They are like small dogs nipping at a lion; it swats them away.
Having ascertained from Galdifain that it won’t be a problem until the moment she finishes, Aravis changes shape into a beholder, rises up, and plays its anti-magic cone over the dragon. It drops to the ground, unable to hover.
Galdifain takes our her scroll and begins to cast. In doing so, she triggers the magic mouths on Kibi’s rocks; they all start to yammer, loudly. The dragon whips its head around, annoyed and confused.
“Out of the goodness of my heart, I offer you a deal,” says Dranko. “You may, should you wish, agree to surr…”
“You talk too much,” the linnorm snarls. “Do I get to eat you as part of the deal, or not?”
“Not so much.”
“Then I decline.”
“You’ve lived a long life,” says Dranko. “It’s a shame it’ll end this way.” He touches its nose with his whip, then moves off, drawing a slashing claw that he deftly avoids. He continues to lecture the dragon on its shortcomings.
The dragon seems to come to a realization. “Your friends have spent a lot of effort trying to protect just you. The real target must be someone else. Wait right there.”
It moves out of the anti-magic cone, and casts a forcecage around Dranko.
Then it moves to Kibi, leaving the elementals behind. “Always eat the summoner, and ignore the things it summons,” one head says sagely. The other head bites down savagely on Kibi. The dwarf has plenty of his own protections by now, but still takes massive damage from the thing’s teeth. Kibi grimaces; in addition to the damage, he has suffered life drain. One of his two prepared wish spells is forced from his mind. But still, he is satisfied that the dragon hasn’t yet identified Galdifain as the true threat.
The others cast more spells on themselves: moment of prescience for Grey Wolf, iron body for Ernie. Any of them might be a target. Kibi casts otto’s irresistible dance on the linnorm, but the creature is outright immune to enchantments. He sinks back into the earth.
Aravis fires its beam of disintegrate on the forcecage around Dranko. Then he fires two other beams at the dragon, but it shrugs off the effects of charm monster and slow.
Galdifain continues to read.
“Hey!” calls Dranko to the dragon. “You want to guess what I’ve been carrying around for the last few years and almost forgot I had?”
“No,” says the dragon.
Dranko pulls out his book of infinite spells and casts dimensional anchor on the dragon. The beast glows green.
“Really?” says the linnorm, incredulous.
“Give me a few minutes, and I’ll have a leash for you,” says Dranko.
The dragon glares at him, trying to piece together the puzzle.
“What are you doing here?” it asks.
“The people you’re guarding want to be woken up,” says Dranko, thumbing over his shoulder toward the stacked columns of sleeping Keffet.
“No they don’t,” says the linnorm.
“Yes they do. One of them is already awake, and came to tell us himself.”
“And where is he now?”
“Not here. Dreaming again, probably.”
The linnorm scoffs. “Let me guess. You also have some prime Myconid real estate you want to sell me.”
“I’m not lying,” insists Dranko. He doesn’t expect to convince the dragon, but he only has to stall it for twenty more seconds or so.
“Yes, you are,” says the dragon. “Now hold on while I tenderize your shapechanger.”
The dragon turns and casts meteor swarm on Aravis. The wizard takes massive damage, fortunately mitigated by some protective magics. Morningstar, standing in front of Galdifain, is close enough to get caught in the fire splash. She’s badly burned, but stands her ground. Behind her, Galdifain keeps on reading.
“How do you like that, eyeball?” says the dragon. “Are you a little runt who changed into an ugly eyeball, or a beholder who changed into a little runt?” For all that these little people are a nuisance, the linnorm is still mostly unharmed, and confident in its abilities.
Ernie casts mass spell resistance. Aravis uses its eye of telekinesis to drop Dranko onto the dragon’s back. Dranko tangles a rope in the scales around its neck. “Giddyap!”
Kibi pops up out of the ground and casts rainbow pattern, which the dragon ignores. But his spell does raise more suspicion in the dragon’s mind.
“Given how powerf… how annoying you are, why are you not actually trying to kill me?”
“We’ve been asked to do this by the people you’re guarding,” says Dranko. “As soon as you’re done resisting, we’ll negotiate the terms of your surrender.”
“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense,” says the dragon. “What happens at the end of all this dancing around?”
Dranko starts blabbing about the Keffet, and the Egannic, and how they’re all fighting in the dream world. But after only a few seconds of this, the linnorm finally notices Galdifain, standing behind Morningstar, quietly muttering the words of her spell.
“There we go,” says the beast. “Let’s put a stop to that.”
With terrifying speed is scurries over, rears up, and brings both heads down upon Galdifain. They stop ten feet short, contacting the soft but unyielding barrier of the antilife shell. It realizes it will have to breathe, but its breath weapons haven’t yet recharged. Dranko reaches out and heals the monster of a few minor wounds it suffered at the hands of Kibi’s earth elementals.
“Why did you do that? I don’t understand!”
“You will,” says Dranko.
The dragon pops out of existence as Galdifain utters the final syllable of her binding spell. She staggers backward, recovers, rolls up the scroll, then quickly ties it with enchanted golden thread before popping it into an even-more-heavily enchanted mithril tube.
“It’s done.”
/*/
As much as they would like to explore the dreaming caves, the Company knows that time is running short. They have agreed to meet Checkle back at the Leaping Circle, where he will give them the encapsulated ritual that will allow them to Leap.
On the second night of travel, Aravis once more dreams a vision of the surface.
Azhant the Ancient spits out the charred remains of Dalesandro, High Stormknight of Werthis.
“You see that?” the dragon thinks into the minds of the others. “You’ll all end up like him. You can flee, or you can be devoured. Too bad for you that fleeing isn’t really an option.”
Anhaya Sunblossom, leader of the Church of Yondalla in Charagan, flies around to the east and drops a quickened flame strike on the dragon’s head. It dissipates harmlessly on its antimagic field, and Azhant laughs. “Amusing,” it thinks. “Was that your way of volunteering to be the next course?” Anhaya glances nervously at the bits of Dalesandro that are still dropping from the dragon’s jaws, spiraling down to the ground far below.
“Maybe next time,” she says, failing to hide the panic in her voice. She flies downward and away at top speed. She’s flying extremely fast – much faster than a normal fly spell would allow – but not fast enough to outpace Azhant. Five Silent Crow shouts from his golden head. “Retreat! We’ve got to get out of here and figure out something else! This plan has failed, and miserably!”
The four surviving heroes take off toward the ground at high speed. Azhant gives chase.
“Too bad you used up all those teleports trying to outmaneuver me,” the dragon chuckles. “But I thank you. It’s more fun to play with my food.”
It is not long before the heroes have reached the ground, but there is no good place for them to retreat. They are on the flat plains of central Lanei, several miles out from where Azhant has recently destroyed the city of Storin. The Lady Cornelia, High Priestess of Pikon, cannot help letting some panicked thoughts escape. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap!”
Slowly, Azhant gains. Bits of Dalesandro still drip from the dragon’s jaws. Now the pursuit is skimming along the ground. Azhant will be in breath weapon range in just a few more seconds.
And the heroes stop.
Five Silent Crow produces a scroll, which he quickly activates. The author of the spell – someone named Typier – has given it the quirky name of arcane double negative. As Crow reads the command words, the fast-approaching Azhant is doused in a shower of sparkling red motes. The dragon immediately realizes that his antimagic field has been removed. He instinctively tries to reactivate it – and nothing happens, save that he feels an odd prickling pain.
“Next!” thinks Crow over the heroes’ mind-link. Anhaya now holds up a scroll, which she wastes no time in activating. At the top of the scroll are some written words, a bit of humorous editorial content: “In case of emergency, make glass. – Alander.” Anhaya completes the spell, and a huge crystal dome appears, ninety yards across, encompassing herself, all of her allies, and the dragon. Everyone inside the dome, Azhant included, briefly glows a deep indigo color.
“That’s Alander’s Inescapable Arena,” says Anhaya. “Next!”
The final member of the strike team produces a third scroll. At the top it is labeled mass pan-elemental immunity, and she thinks that it’s at least two valences above such paltry magics as wish and Mordenkainen’s disjunction. With a smile, Isabel Horn, the Spire’s last archmagical ace up its proverbial sleeve, reads a scroll penned centuries ago by one Parthol Runecarver. She, Anhaya, Cornelia and Five Silent Crow are wrapped in impenetrable elemental abjurations.
Azhant reaches the edge of the dome and whirls around, doubling back toward the heroes. His movement is restricted by the dome, but he flies overhead and breathes hellfire all over his enemies. They are, of course, not singed in the slightest. Starting to realize what he’s up against, he quickens a greater dispel magic on Mrs. Horn. He again feels a sharp stinging pain, and his magic fails to manifest. It seems that arcane double negative has made it impossible for Azhant to actively negate magic in any way.
That turns out to be bad news for a dragon trapped in a dome with four angry spell-casters. They bombard him with spells, and three of the four -- two empowered chain lightnings and a flame strike – penetrate Azhant’s spell resistance. The dragon snarls in pain. He’s immune to cold and fire, but lightning hurts him, and the holy damage of the flame strike sears through his scales. In a panic, he tries to teleport away, but he glows a slight blue color and fails to go anywhere.
“It’s not called Alander’s Arena You Can Teleport Out Of,” says Anhaya.
“Damn you!” The dragon roars. But he’s not done yet. With a quick mid-air lunge, he seizes Anhaya in his huge jaws. There’s a sickening crunch, but the priestess is still alive. He endures another round of spells, resisting all of them this time. Anhaya, however, teleports out of the dragon’s jaws, appearing on the far side of the dome.
“Not only is she not out of teleports,” says Cornelia, mockingly. “She has about a hundred left today. We read Alander’s Day of Blinking right after this morning’s heroes’ feast. I can’t remember if that was before or after the scroll that makes people – or dragons – believe practically anything we say.”
Azhant is screwed, and he knows it. He fights gamely, but his breath weapons are useless, and with his targets blipping around the dome like blink dogs, he can’t bring his full physical might to bear on any of them before they simply vanish from his claws or teeth. All the while they bombard him, and about half of their spells get through his innate resistance. Toward the end he hurls himself at the crystal dome itself, but it’s as resilient as a wall of force.
It takes many more spells – chain lightnings, searing lights, and even some magic missiles -- and Azhant does enough damage with his teeth and claws that Anhaya and Cornelia are down to cure serious wounds at the end. But with a final honest-to-goodness lightning bolt, Mrs. Horn casts the spell that brings down Azhant the Ancient in a blistered ball of flesh and scales.
…to be continued…
