“Oh! I forgot. You can’t take it down yourself, can you? How rude of me.” The force-dome vanished. “There. Now, by all means, vanquish me!”
He’d been waiting for that, and Will’s turyn exploded through his body as he blurred to attack at the fastest speed he could manage. And missed. Androv neatly dodged the swing, and the next, and those that followed.
“Frustrating, isn’t it? Here, let me help you.” The vampire froze in place and as Will’s sword swung in, Androv’s body dissolved into dust just ahead of the flames, reforming behind it. “I let you cut me earlier. It’s more fun giving people hope, then slowly crushing it.”
Will felt despair, but not the sort his enemy wanted. You were right, he found a way to defeat the flames.
How?
He transforms freely back and forth to dust or ash. Can you think of a way to beat it?
No, sorry, just my final spell, the ‘Last Resort.’ I’ll tell the next person to find me what a hero you were, though.
Just don’t possess them.
No promises.
Will took a few more swings with the sword, then began firing force-lances at Androv at the same time. The vampire’s body would explode into dust with each strike, only to reform a second later. “That tickles, William! Please don’t stop!”
He knew the attacks wouldn’t help, but he was gathering turyn while his enemy taunted him. As soon as he was almost full, he would feed it all into the rod, and then…
Androv reversed the game, sending a barrage of force-lances back at Will, forcing him to block them, but at the same time the vampire walked toward him. Will swung at him with the sword, while he continued to block the force-lances, but Androv ignored it, letting the blade pass through his torso. Then his clawed hand reached out to open Will’s throat.
He frowned when the hardened skin prevented injury. “How annoying.”
Now that Androv was right in front of him, it was time. Will slammed his turyn into the rod. In a second it would be over. Sorry, Selene. Pain shot down his arm, a wretched agony, but when Will’s eyes opened it wasn’t because of the spell effect he had attempted to activate.
Androv held his left wrist, and despite the hardened skin, he had crushed Will’s wrist bones. The hand hung loosely without support while the rod had fallen to the ground. The vampire released him, sending more agony shooting up his wrist and arm, then he bent and retrieved the rod. “This little nuisance should have been eliminated a long time ago.” Turyn whipped around the vampire’s hand, and a red glow formed. The rod began to shift colors and soon it glowed as well, then it sagged, and molten metal dripped to the floor, sizzling on the stone.
Stunned by the pain, and the loss of his one useful tool, Will scarcely blinked when Androv exploded, flowed around him, and then reformed. He held Will’s sword arm in an irresistible grip while his other hand clutched Will’s throat. The vampire crooned in his ear, “Let me show you what the sword feels like.” With a jerk and a twist, he pulled Will’s arm out, back, and up until something popped and pain shot through him. The sword fell from his grip, but the hand at his throat vanished as Androv caught it with blinding speed.
Then he drove it into the center of Will’s lower back. There was a moment of resistance, as the iron-body transformation tried to stop it, but the magic of Ethelgren’s silver sword spell was too great, especially when combined with Androv’s monstrous strength. The tip pierced his spine, then erupted from his belly.
Will screamed, while Androv levered the sword from side to side, opening a wide cut that caused his guts to spill out. The vampire lowered him slowly to the floor, then examined his belly. “What luck, William! I missed the hepatic artery and vein! It looks like it may take you a couple of minutes to bleed to death, rather than seconds. Aren’t you lucky? Don’t worry, though, I won’t let you die all the way.”
Androv exploded into dust and rushed at Will’s face, but the water-breathing spell prevented him from entering. The vampire reformed with a look of frustration on his face. With one hand, he reached out and touched Will’s lips. A war of wills ensued, and then Androv pulled the water-breathing spell away, flicking it into slivers of dissolving turyn with his fingertips. “Your will is very well developed for someone so young, William. Your teacher must be proud.”
Despite the pain, or perhaps because of it, Will’s mind felt clear, and sad. The faces of those he wouldn’t see again flashed through his mind. His mother, Sammy, Tiny, Laina, Janice—and most of all Selene. Selene! In a moment of clarity, he realized there might be one last hope. Looking at his right palm, he began to form a spell.
“You still haven’t given up? My word, William, you’re a rare prize. What kind of spell is that? Not that it matters. Surely you realize nothing can kill me. Even Grim Talek would hesitate to try, for fear of earning my enmity for uncountable centuries. Go on. Let’s see what it is. If it’s something entertaining, I’ll knock a decade off your punishment before I allow you some responsibility.”
Ignoring the taunts, Will finished the construct, but he didn’t put his turyn into it. Instead he activated one of his prepared spells, shoving half of his remaining power into the wind-wall spell. It exploded into violent fury, shredding the vampire’s body, but only into dust, yet again.
Androv laughed as he swirled through the air, and as the spell faded, he started to taunt his victim once again. “I thought you might have something original. I’d never seen the other spell, but I suppose it was just a decoy—”
His words cut off as Will pushed the rest of his power into the spell he had constructed and released it. Selene’s Solution expanded to fill the room, sweeping up dust, dirt, trash, particles, and filth. It collected the spilled blood and the debris on the floor, it cleaned their clothes, and even their wounds. But most of all, it swept Androv up and gathered him in, inexorable in its pull.
In the past he had often wondered what her spell did with the dirt it collected, for it had to go somewhere. So, he had studied its inner workings, only to be amazed once again at the intricacy of her design. The dirt and dross were collected and converted into two opposing forms of turyn, then it was mixed and dispersed. The spell’s organizing effect created a slight cooling effect in the area it cleaned, while the constructive destruction of the matter it collected created a warming effect that was dispersed widely at its boundaries.
Androv, master wizard and vampire, was converted into heat energy and absorbed by the cool earth that surrounded the chamber, and then he was no more.
Chapter 57
Will wished he couldn’t feel his legs, but he could. If he closed his eyes it felt as though someone was holding him over an open fire, roasting his lower half in the flames, but when he looked at them, they were fine, except for the fact that he couldn’t move them. By the same token, his entrails were a minor inconvenience, messy and sprawling across the floor, but they caused him little pain. How odd, observed the quiet voice in the back of his head. Maybe it was all relative and the pain in his lower body was so great that his brain simply had no time to process the pain from his other injuries.