The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage

[73] Do It And We Die

The plan was actually relatively simple. Joha, disguised as Tyr, would ride with Tanisha on Bjorn to draw attention away from the escaping Isi behind them. They would then meet up with Svan, who would take them underground to escape. Tyr was the primary target, so more resources would be used to take him down. If Joha got the attention of the Hands, even better. 

The scouts reported the South and West Gatehouses were closed, but the enchantments hadn’t been fully activated yet. The other two were in the process of closing. The slow speed at which they were closing the North and East was obviously a trap, which of course would be avoided. 

The amount of magical effects on each gate was mesmerizing. The gatehouses may be closed, but lengthy rituals and specialists were required to ensure the effects didn’t interfere with the thousands of other enchantments that made up the walls or even other parts of the gatehouse itself. Until all of them were active they were vulnerable. Well, as vulnerable as thousands of tons of reinforced stone and steel could be. Tanisha, Bjorn and Joha would be heading to the West Gatehouse. It would be all up to Bjorn to destroy the door and portcullis before the enchantments activated.

“That is the last of the children in the wagon,” Tyr, the real one, said. “We are in your debt again, guys.” Tyr handed Joha his sword. “There is no way I can ever repay you all for this; you have my thanks and my word that one day I will find a way.” His eyes lingered on Tanisha for a while.

Before anyone could respond, he was called off by one of the Isi warriors. Tyr had to wear a hood to cover his face, and Bjorn couldn’t help but notice that for wendigo headwear was unique. Their helmets had to be fashioned around their antlers. Hats were almost nonexistent, though men and women did have accessories they would place in their antlers. The hood split on both sides of the face to allow the antlers through, then there were buttons to secure them.

Bjorn shook the sudden fascination with wendigo hats out of his mind. It felt like Failsafe was rubbing off on him, and he needed to stay focused. Tanisha and Joha were on his back, ready to go. All they needed was the signal and Bjorn would take off running. He had to stay ahead of the Isi, destroy the gate and draw as much attention to himself as possible.

“Prepare yourself, Tanisha,” Joha said in Tyr’s voice. 

“Right,” Tanisha responded with a breath.

Bjorn took the moment to talk with Failsafe, who was currently controlling the right head. He needed to make sure he could get Plague Fire to only come from the correct head if he wanted to destroy the gate. The problem was, he wasn’t sure how to do that.

“What if I just hold those mouths closed?” Bjorn asked in his head.

“It will probably come out of our noses if you do that,” Failsafe responded, bobbing the right head up and down. “Or the energy will burn through our mouths until we release it.” 

“Why? If I close the mouths then the energy will have only one place to go, so it should only escape through the correct one.”

“It’s a matter of controlling the power, not just closing your mouth. You have to direct it,” Failsafe responded.

Bjorn thought about it for a moment. “Should I just let you do it then?”

“I would have the same result as you. I can activate the ability if you let me, but I can’t control your magic if you can’t,” Failsafe responded. “It is your core after all.”

“Yeah-yeah, I got it,” Bjorn said dismissively.

“Bjorn, let's go,” Tanisha said.

Bjorn immediately took off running. Failsafe directed him; the magic construct had memorized the entirety of the city from a map Tyr had shown Tanisha. First they had to leave the rather large forested area within the inner wall. Bjorn didn’t know if it was a park, or just undeveloped land that played into the wendigo’s need to dominate the nature around them.

Over the past two weeks Bjorn had become far more skilled with maneuvering his long body. At the speed he was moving, snaking around trees and over obstacles made him a green blur amongst the foliage. Once he finally broke into the streets he only sped up. 

The streets were mostly empty, as martial law had gone into effect. As the density of buildings increased, soldiers and knights came into view further up the road at a newly-erected checkpoint. 

“Bjorn! Go up!” Tanisha yelled to get his attention over the sound of the wind. 

Bjorn turned right as the knights noticed him and began forming up with shields. He jumped onto an abandoned cart, then onto the side of a building. His long talons easily tore into stone and wood as he pulled himself up onto the roof. The knights, seeing this, immediately gave chase, some of them using earth magic to rocket themselves up on pillars of stone to follow along the rooftops.

“The Isi live on!” Joha screamed in Tyr’s voice and form. “I, Patriarch of the Isi House, have bloodied the nose of the Salstar House! You tried to kill us and failed!”

Bjorn dodged a few arrows shot from marksmen stationed on other roof tops. He could taste the magic effects coursing through them as they flew by. As he jumped across a gap, clearing nearly thirty feet, he saw drake riders climb up nearby roofs. The creatures panicked as soon as they saw him and immediately jumped back down, all except one. That drake had dark blue scales and was slightly larger than the others. It was definitely a familiar, not just a mount, as the knight gained control of it in an instant.

“That’s the Commander of the Valheid Drake Riders,” Tanisha stated.

Bjorn used Identify with one of his heads while his other navigated and Failsafe watched for any oncoming attacks.

Identify

Name: Sir Harald Nak
Race: Wendigo
Level: ??
Vocation: War Mage Knight

Identify

Name: Asa Nak
Species: Lesser Blue Drake
Level: ??
Vocation: War Mount

Bjorn didn’t slow down as he identified them, and in fact redoubled his efforts to run as fast as possible. His claws cut easily into the roof tiles, giving him excellent traction regardless of the material. The commander and his familiar also seemed to have no issue traveling along the rooftops. If anything they had an easier time of it, and were closing in quickly.

Bjorn could see similarities between his anatomy and the drake’s. He could understand why some people would mistake him as a chimera. The blue drake was obviously a more aquatic species, much like himself, but had a slender, powerful body mixed into its serpentine form. Where they differed was his longer necks and additional heads, and Bjorn’s longer tail.

Sir Harald was a monster of a wendigo unto himself. He was an imposing figure, and Bjorn could taste in the air the tyrannical domination that seemed to be present in the most powerful of the wendigo species. The emblem of the Salstar House was emblazoned on the interlocking plates of blue steel which clad every inch of his form. He was no wizard; he was a mage and magic swirled around him like a typhoon. 

In his hand was a bow as grand as the man who wielded it, and he balanced it perfectly despite the gyration of the familiar beneath him. There was no hesitation in the man's actions; he was duty, he was precision in action, he was the embodiment of what it meant to be a wendigo knight. He pulled back the naked string of his bow and time seemed to slow as the world shook. Well, at least it felt that way to Bjorn. The outreach of the man's aura expanded for a moment before coalescing into a misty arrow. Some form of wind elemental magic compressed down into a single magical construct.

“Bjorn, the gate!” Failsafe screamed.

Bjorn was so focused on the head watching the knight that he hadn’t noticed they could finally see the gatehouse in front of them. They were being chased on all sides, however, and if he tried to drop down to the street they would be surrounded in a moment. Tanisha and the disguised Joha were defending him from a hail of arrows that he couldn’t dodge. He had moments to make a decision; it needed to be one that would allow him to ensure he destroyed the gatehouse. 

“Bjorn, what are you doing?” Failsafe questioned. “You do that and we die, buddy.”

Hellmouth
Maya Cost: YOUR SOUL (Seriously, if you use this we die!!!)
I really don’t want to tell you what this is because if you use it our heart is going to explode or something, I just know it! However, your middle head can exhale all the maya stored in your body. This maya can be breathed in by your other heads to use maya-infused breath attacks. It can also enhance the durability of your scales and potency of your venom.

It all happened at the same time. The arrow was released with a thrum that sounded more like a lightning strike. The black abyssal maya escaped from Bjorn’s middle head as his scales darkened from green to gray. His claws tore up roof tiles as he abruptly stopped, and his right head snapped the wind construct arrow from the sky. The arrow exploded, shooting debris and shards of roof into the air. Tanisha would have been blown off had Joha not protected her with his body and a thin, invisible sheet of maya.

Infernal Scale Armor
Maya Cost: 25
Absorb maya into your scales, making them more durable and resistant to physical and magical damage.

Bjorn breathed in the black maya, growing in size as the maya was absorbed. Unlike the first time, he was in his right mind and could feel the maya burning his insides. The maya veins and meridians inside him ruptured one by one as his body refused the energy. Still, he pressed on through the pain. He knew he wouldn’t be able to control the power of the Plague Fire Breath without the maya assisting him. He could only hope that the rehabilitation he’d been doing with Joha meant he wouldn’t die.

“Bjorn, you idiot, can you not read?!” Failsafe screamed.

Plague Fire Breath
Magic Cost: 6
Stamina Cost: 7
With your left head you can breathe a plume of superheated toxin which will ignite enemies and infect them with your neurotoxin. Flames retain toxicity until you release the spell. Plague Fire will spread like normal fire. (II) Infernal Fire Breath, Maya Cost: 20, fire will spread over non-flammable material at a reduced rate.

Bjorn called up the energy as a fusion of his mana and maya to produce a black flame tsunami which washed downward from the roof like the wrath of an angry god. The fire wave then focused more and more until it was a beam of infernal magic. The beam instantly melted non-enchanted stone and steel to slag and molten puddles. People caught in the initial wave retreated, their armor protecting them from the heat but not the toxin. Organs ruptured and their nervous systems shut down violently.

The beam hit the gate and the electrifying buzz of hundreds of emergency enchantments activated at the same time. Bjorn continued to condense the power more and more despite his vision becoming blurry and the pain increased tenfold. He was shut off from everything else. At some point Joha and Tanisha got off his back, but with the pain that was all he knew for sure. 

Suddenly he felt it, a release of power as the enchantments on the gatehouse failed. Then blackness took him.

“Finally, my son, I can see you,” a voice rumbled in his fading mind.