Chapter 40
FIGHTING THE CURSE
High above, a dark speck circled in the light of the midday sun.
“It’s coming,” Zhao warned them, sensing the arrival first by the Curse's wingbeats.
Ria looked up, trembling in fear, in anticipation, in hope.
The climb down from the Temple of Winds had gone quickly. The illusions only worked in one direction, so had not hampered their descent. But it had taken two long days to reach the river and another to choose a spot. In the end, Darag, Ty, and Niri decided on a wide pool below a small waterfall. The forest pulled back enough to give them room to move, but was close enough to provide shelter.
Every time Ria had looked as they set up camp, Niri was watching her. It got so that Ria’s skin tingled. It had felt like Niri was waiting for Ria to go ahead and summon the Curse. Her hands shook.
“Let’s wait two days so that we have a chance to recover,” Niri had said that night to Ria’s surprise. Relief flooded through her, replacing the dread.
For the next two days, Niri and Darag had drilled Ria and Zhao on using their skills and calling the other elements. Darag had showed Zhao how to call Earth, so that he would know what it was like. Zhao only managed to make a stone roll a few inches before he fell over, feeling ill for several hours. Ria empathized. She remembered what it had felt like to touch death.
They had also fought each other. Ria tried harder than ever fighting against Zhao. In their final standoff, she threw a fireball at him that blazed like a star. It was bright enough to blind. Instead of defending himself, Zhao caught it and tugged the power to form it out of Ria’s control. Ria gasped as Zhao made the flames swirl with heat as they reached back for her. She doused it with mist from the river, then looked for Zhao to launch another attack. He wasn't there.
Ria had searched the stream bank, jumping with one foot sliding into the river when Zhao tapped her arm. He appeared beside her, wearing a grin.
“I figured out how the illusions work!”
Ria had rocked the boulder under his feet, sending Zhao tumbling into the stream. It hadn't diminished his delight in the least.
Then on the morning of the third day, Ria had walked alone to the center of the clearing surrounding the stream. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she stood watching the water a moment and tasting the air with its pine scent. Carefree clouds danced across the blue sky. With barely restrained tears, she reached out her spirit and touched a group of flame-colored flowers that edged the shallow pool. The plants bowed as if caught in a breeze. Then the flowers burst from the dangling stems, rising on updrafts. Ria had changed them into crimson butterflies. After that, her knees gave out.
Now the black dot overhead hovered so that it was lost to the sky. Out of the sun blindness, it dropped like a stone, coming so fast Ria could not see what form it took. The Curse plunged to the ground, striking where Ria stood. Or where it thought Ria stood.
The illusion Zhao had created disappeared the instant the Curse’s open claws found air and then water. The Curse landed haphazardly in the deep pool Niri had held back all morning. Trumpeting in confusion, it changed from a giant eagle to a dragon as it reared out of the stream.
Niri was quick to thicken the water, pulling at the Curse’s struggling bulk. It shot fire at the watery bonds. Then, sensing more than seeing, it spat fire at Niri where she waited under the trees. Ria dashed them away from Niri and Ty, sparing Niri the pain of touching fire.
The Curse’s wings beat the air to help it gain ground against the sticky water. Zhao thinned the air. The Curse’s form slumped back to earth, its wings finding no purchase to rise against. Angry now, it thrashed out a tail striking anything in reach. Rocks exploded. The debris fell back on the Curse as if the ground itself fought it as well. Darag would not waste such an easy opportunity to inflict damage.
Seeing Zhao, it lashed out its tail again and hit air. The illusion vaporized only to appear elsewhere. The fire borne of the Curse’s anger engulfed the clearing by the stream. Darag pulled Lavinia behind him, the flames parting and flowing around them harmlessly.
Twisting, the Curse struggled upright. Its head pivoted on its long neck as it took in the clearing and the Elementals fighting. Ria’s heart hammered. Power pulsed in her hands, but she didn’t know what to do with it. The serpent head angled toward her. The slit, gold eyes narrowed as it looked through the trees. It blasted Ria with fire, as if wanting to burn her from the planet and incinerate this girl that had escaped it time and time again. The rocks she stood on melted. When it had to take breath again, the Curse paused and stared at where Ria stood unharmed.
It moved again, as fast as a striking snake. This time, it reached out to attack with something it controlled: its teeth. Ria reacted without thinking. She launched herself upward, becoming a sparrow. The whoosh of the bite snapping below her sent her higher faster as she changed herself into something with more strength in its wings. She became a hawk.
The changes came naturally, but the feeling of becoming a new form was unnerving. Ria beat her wings into the sky, hurtling herself out of range of the Curse’s fire and teeth. Her heart beat so fast in the bird body that she felt she would explode.
Struggling with her new wings, Ria called updrafts to help her climb. Her vision was no longer in front of her. She panicked again as she tried to focus and could not find the Curse below. Her flight dived erratically as she tried to turn her head and lost altitude. With desperation, Ria launched herself upward once more.
The Curse’s struggle redoubled as it tried to break free from the water bonds to chase after Ria’s quickly diminishing form. A foot landed on rock and then sank through. Surprised, the Curse arched its neck to see its claws trapped. It roared and slammed its body down, snapping its head toward Darag at the last second. Darag spun backwards barely out of reach of its teeth. Lavinia’s sword slashed across its nose as it flashed past. The Curse reared back in pain as blood trickled down its scales.
It sucked in air to ignite the place where Lavinia stood only to breathe in a mixture of dense air, dust, and water. The fire died before it was formed. The Curse hesitated, surveying the clearing again. Its eyes paused where each Elemental stood.
A low rumble formed in its chest as it stopped struggling. It lowered its front legs to the ground, its chest so low it scraped the surface of the water as its long neck tensed, lips pulled back in a snarl. Darag pulled Lavinia behind him as the ground under their feet started trembling.
“This isn’t me,” he warned her. He held out a hand as he tried to still the shaking earth.
The motion rose into the trees around them. They splintered in explosions from their bases. Darag pulled Lavinia into his arms, protecting both of them as the forest disintegrated. Niri protected herself and Ty. Zhao did the best he could to deflect the onslaught with wind while diving behind a boulder.
The Curse lashed out again. It was quickly redeveloping battle skills unused since the war. Swiveling despite a trapped leg, it turned to quickly strike Zhao. It hit an illusion again, this time finding rock hidden beneath it. The boulder shattered, cutting a deep gouge above the Curse’s left eye. It screamed, pulling power around itself. The air around it shimmered as it hunted the ground for Zhao.
Niri gathered her power, the pull of it noticeable even where Ria circled above the fight. Niri had promised Ria to try to stop its heart. From where Ria rode the updrafts, she knew this was what Niri was going to do. Ria held her breath. Niri had cautioned that she didn’t know if it would work.
“Who knows the amount of water in a dragon’s blood?”
But Ria knew it would. Niri’s eyes closed, her hand reached out. The Curse screamed. Its head reared up, eyes flashing with hate. The Curse dove toward Niri as fast as it could in one motion, opening its massive jaws.
Ty pulled Niri backward, breaking her concentration. Her eyes snapped open as the Curse pulled in a breath. She flinched from the flames that were about to come. The Curse choked on the in
take, no longer finding air. It lunged its head back to escape the combined effort of Zhao and Darag, lashing its tail out abruptly. Without turning to aim, it struck Zhao, finally finding him at last.
Zhao was knocked fifty feet back. Darag softened Zhao’s impact as he hit the ground, the dirt giving away beneath Zhao’s unmoving form. The distraction was enough. The Curse could breathe again. It turned and opened its jaws, drawing in a massive lungful of air. Its head tilted toward Lavinia and Darag.
Then Ria slammed into it. She changed at the last moment into a form to match. Dragon to dragon, she raked the Curse, talons extended and mouth aiming for its neck. Dragon blood seared in her veins, powerful muscles responded to her mind. There was no room for fear in a dragon.
The Curse swiveled around to fight her, their claws scratching against the scales of the other. The breath of flame meant for Lavinia was blown into her face and wafted harmlessly past. It tried again, and Ria redirected the flames back into its face. She could control the other elements, Ria thought with triumph. It could not.
It stumbled, trying to break free its foot encased in rock. The Curse’s wings beat at the air again. Zhao lay unmoving. Niri thinned the air instead. Its wings lashed into the sky without effect. Rearing, its other foot sank into stone as Darag pinned it down.
So near the Curse and using the same Elemental skill it controlled, Ria sensed its mind as Niri once had been forced to. It wanted nothing more than escape, to reach the blue sky. At the same instant, Ria could feel a compulsion placed on it to fight, to shred her into oblivion. It fought to ignore it, but could not. It turned a golden eye to her, opening its jaws wide to snap her neck and destroy the thing most like itself: another Spirit Elemental.
Ria dodged the bite. The Curse’s teeth raked the scales of her neck. She flinched but did not back away. It was very hard to hurt a dragon. Power surged through Ria. With it, she could feel the magic bindings that held the Curse tighter than Niri’s watery hold had in the Sea of Sarketh.
“Stop,” Ria yelled with a mental will to the Curse. Ria flashed her thoughts to the binding spell. “Help me. I’ll free you.”
The Curse did not hesitate. Seeing a chance, it summoned all the power it commanded and joined the force with Ria’s will. The air through the clearing hummed and snapped with the combined magic. Untrained, the power writhed in Ria’s grasp, threatening to break free from her hold. Panic surged through her. Ria pulled at the ancient spell surrounding the Curse with the finesse of a bull. The old binding splintered in an implosion of light.
The breaking of the magic knocked her away from the Curse. She fell, cushioned by Niri and Darag’s skills. Ria landed as a young woman once again. Niri hurried to her side, helping Ria as she rose shakily to her feet. Ria looked around the clearing. Ty knelt by Zhao, who had come around. He sat up, clutching one arm to his side. Darag and Lavinia walked slowly to the stream. The dragon that had been the Curse was gone.
In the water, a man lay. His skin was red-brown and his long hair was so dark it blended into the shadows of the stream. A cut slashed across the bridge of his nose and a gash bled above his left eye. He opened his eyes once, the gold in them fading as the spell holding him to do the bidding of the Church died. The color left behind was dark, the same black-violet of the night sky above the desert. He looked from Ria to the sword Lavinia held to his neck. He closed his eyes and lay still.
“Don’t, Vin,” Ria said. “He has suffered enough.”
Lavinia was covered in fine scratches from when the Curse had exploded the trees. Darag had managed to block most of the debris, but not everything at all times. Darag looked mildly injured compared to Zhao, whose face was pale and eyes tight. But everyone was alive, including the stranger at Lavinia's feet.
The anger in Lavinia’s expression faded. Her hand shook slightly as Darag placed his over hers, as he had done when he had taught Lavinia to fight. He enfolded her against him with his other arm. Lavinia closed her eyes and moved the sword from the man’s neck.
“He doesn’t look much older than Ty,” Lavinia whispered.
Niri parted the water so that it flowed around the man’s unconscious form. “We’d better move him.”
Darag and Ty helped drag the man out of the water. Ty looked around at the remains of the forest near them.
“At least there is plenty of firewood. I think we might be here for a few days.”
Ria laughed.