Quoth clasped the sides of his head and screamed unintelligibly for several seconds. A glass of water appeared in one hand as he lowered them from his head, and he hurled it at the television with a snarl, shattering glass and screen both. He lunged up out of his throne, glaring at the remains on the floor. "Clever little prick," he groused, snapping his fingers to return the television to its unbroken state.
He recognized the cavern into which Byron, Kathy and Daggeuro stepped to join Gatech and Ovin. It was a Blank Zone within the box, one of those rare places where Quoth's power didn't reach. He could see it, hear it, but couldn't touch it with his abilities.
Then again, that also meant Byron was powerless at the moment. Quoth flexed his will, pulling the view out of the cavern in search of the nearest place where the power of manifestation could take hold. It was nearly a mile away from the cave in the mountainside, and there Quoth created a swirling portal for several of his nastiest creations to enter through.
As for himself, the raven-thing decided that it would best to be prepared in the event Byron and his allies escaped the box. He dismissed the throne, the television, and began descending the steps from the pulpit. It was time to get ready to leave.
Daggeuro dropped to one knee and raised his fist to his forehead as son as he was through the door, his voice breaking as he said, "My liege." He wept with joy, letting his tears flow freely. King Ovin expanded suddenly, becoming the size of Kathy and Byron, and knelt down before the kennin warrior. He cupped Daggeuro's snout and raised his face.
"My friend," King Ovin replied, and embraced his noble servant. They remained that way for a minute before both men stood, and King Ovin turned aside to briefly grasp Kathy and Byron each as well. "Oh, it is so good to see you all! Gatech, these are they whom I spoke of." He looked at the trio, his smile fading slightly. "At least, it's some of them. Who has been lost?"
"Senta, the assassin, Vernon the smithy, and Baron Dimanche, my lordship," Daggeuro answered, sniffling. On this last name the fairy monarch flinched, cringing.
"No, not the Baron. Really?" Kathy and Byron nodded somberly. "My word. That's not good." All were quiet until Gatech rose to his feet. "Ah, yes. Sir Daggeuro, Kathy, Byron, meet Gatech, the Dragon God," said Ovin. The six-headed dragon lowered all of his heads in greeting. "How did you finally open that door?"
"Byron has powers similar to Quoth's, the creature who locked you here," said Daggeuro. "My liege, how did you end up here in the first place?" King Ovin briefly told them then of how the strange raven-man had appeared one night in his bedchamber, luring him with the promise of seeing his beloved Queen Titania again, alive and well. He only needed enter a special labyrinth and locate her, then he could return with her to his kingdom. It had been a deception, of course; he'd found Titania, but the version of her he'd discovered was an evil sorceress who tried to kill him. Since then, he'd been lost inside the pocket realm.
Gatech, it turned out, had been far more brutal a tale. Quoth appeared in the Dragon God's cavern home and pummeled him nearly to death with otherworldly magic, then threw him into a portal. His own time had been a matter of killing everything he came across until he found this safe harbor and waiting. Others had come before, but they all wound up trying to convince him to leave the cave and search for an escape with them, or attacking the god and being reduced to an easy meal.
When Gatech was finished telling his tale, Byron shivered and pulled Kathy to one side, allowing Daggeuro and Ovin to converse with Gatech. When they were ten feet away, Byron whispered, "I feel queasy. And something's wrong with my magic."
"What do you mean," Kathy whispered back. Byron took out a card and showed it to her; 'Poisonous Cloud'. He tossed it off to one side, and the card just fell flat on the floor. "Oh. Did you use all of your power for now?"
"No. It just feels, blocked, far away," Byron said. "Quoth once told me about places like this. They're called Blank Zones, places where the power of manifestation doesn't work at all. Kathy," he said, looking over at Ovin, Daggeuro and Gatech, "I can't get us out from here."
"How big are these Blank Zones," Kathy asked.
"They're never too large. A mile in diameter, sometimes two." Kathy nodded, took Byron by the hand, and led him over to the others. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she waved her hand around to the others. He faced Daggeuro, Ovin and Gatech, took a deep breath. "I can get us out of here, but we need to get out of this area," he began, explaining the Blank Zones.
Quoth kicked the front doors of the tower open, nimbly sommersaulted down the narrow steps, pulled off a backflip landing in a split, and clapped his hands at the tall structure. As he stood up, the ground began to tremble, and black bricks started falling away from the tower. "There," he said. "That's started."
The sound of broad, leathery wings beating through the air in the middle distance brought him round, spotting the approach of Maefus and Croag, the Great Traitors to The Destroyer, as they'd become known. He could have killed them before, handily, but knew it would be far more interesting to let them live. Now they were returning, once again carrying passengers.
Quoth reached into his striped suit coat and brought out a silver microphone, twirling it like a baton as he awaited their arrival. "Ah, anticipation," he mused aloud. "Wonderful feeling, isn't it?" Maefus and Croag began their descent, tearing deep divets in the dry Gray Wastes soil as they came to a halt twenty yards away. From Maefus's back hopped three humanoid figures, two tall, broad men and one woman, and from Croag came an elven woman with an artifical arm and three young adult kennin.
Quoth needn't ask who their father was; Daggeuro's strong physical character carried well in their features, particularly the older male. But for a reddish hint to his fur and smaller frame, he was his father's exact younger image.
"Well hello there, ladies and gentlemen," Quoth called out in his gameshow barker's voice, amplified by his microphone. He waved one feathered hand in an arc at them all. "So lovely to have you all here!"
"What nonsense is dis," snarled one of the men, who bore a striking resemblence to the one named Baron Dimanche. Quoth knew these three figures, knew them well.
"Oh, right, the Loa aren't used to being uninformed, are they," Quoth asked mockingly, flashing his needle-like teeth in a warped smile. The trio of voodoo gods flinched back as one. "Yes, I know who you are, little gods. Quoth is the host with the most, and that requires knowing the movers and shakers, dears." He folded his arms over his chest and shifted his weight onto one leg, almost leaning against an unseen wall. "Is this all you bring? A trio of sad old gods, an elf with one arm and the offspring of Daggeuro? Even with you two to help, Maefus, Croag, this isn't much to bring against me."
"Oh, we're just the forward guard," Maefus said amiably. Quoth pulled a pair of binoculars from his suit and looked off the way these people had come. There, still many miles away, fully fifty dragons of all colors and sizes came winging toward the tower and its owner, surrounded by scores of tiny glowing dots, wee folk.
"Oh," he said, tossing the binoculars aside. When they landed, they turned into a pair of black plastic frogs that croaked and hopped away. "That's a bit more impressive."
"Release the prisoners from within your box," Maefus said in a patient tone. "Do this, and we can yet call off the assault."
"I said it was impressive, not frightening," Quoth replied. "Do you imagine I can't destroy you all?" He pointed one finger off toward the oncoming dragons, miming a gun firing. Suddenly a missile appeared in the sky, streaking toward the support forces, detonating as it struck true. Fully six dragons, along with all of their passengers and nearby wee folk, fell dead from the sky, scoured by napalm and explosives. "That took only a modest effort, Maefus," Quoth cried out manically. "You can't defeat me!"
The raven-thing waved his hands, and a dome of transluscent blue energy appeared over him and the black box. He made a come-on gesture, and as both dragons' breath weapons flowed harmlessly over it, he cackled, dancing around like a lunatic. Maefus turned to look to Selena.
"We may be in for a long afternoon," he said.
The legion of creatures Quoth had sent toward the cave had been decimated in short order by the powers of Gatech and King Ovin, the latter of whom had returned to his diminutive natural stature for the clean-up. Kathy couldn't bring herself to call it a battle, because in a battle, two sides are in danger. This had been a decidedly one-sided affair.
Byron ran over to Gatech and craned his neck up to address the god. "Can you fly us to a spot where my power will work?"
"Of course," said the Dragon God. He lowered his body and tail to the floor so that Kathy, Byron and Daggeuro could climb up on his back, and when they were on, Ovin seated on the kennin's shoulder, Gatech launched himself out of the cave, flying high over a sprawling pine forest. He flew for several minutes before descending toward a clearing, landing as gently as he could. The company hopped off, and Byron knelt in the tough brown grass in a meditative posture, pen in hand, a blank card laid before his knees.
"I'll need to concentrate on this one," he told Kathy as she crouched beside him. "There isn't going to be any room for error. I need a few minutes to get all of my focus ready. If something comes along, I need you to guard me."
"Got it," she said, drawing out her bow. Kathy quickly relayed Byron's message to the others, and they arranged themselves in compass point guarding positions around the Awakened man. It was less than half a minute later that the first creatures arrived, giant man-shaped things in billowing black cloaks with ceramic skull-like masks over their faces. The noses were abnormally long and blade-shaped, with rounded holes punched through them. Seven of them ringed the clearing, each as tall as Gatech. Skeletal arms protruded from the darkness of their robes, clutching square-headed axes.
Gatech began the melee by extending his green head toward one and breathing a roaring cone of fire at it. Flames wreathed the monstrosity, setting it ablaze. Though it howled in pain, it still came slowly, inexorably forward. Kathy drew out one of her explosive arrows and notched it, aiming for a ceramic mask. When she fired, the beast she shot at swung its axe to knock the missile aside, igniting the exlosive head. The blast knocked it aside, its weapon and arm a smoky ruin as they shattered apart.
Daggeuro sprinted straight up the billowing front of one of the giants' robes, thrusting Boon in an upward slice as he reached its neck. The blade carved its mask in half, spraying smoking blue ichor all over. The kennin warrior backflipped off of his foe, landing in a crouch as it toppled over, shaking the ground.
Gatech had by now used his magic to fling the burning victim of his breath attack off into the forest, and was at the moment clawing through another's robes, three of his heads worrying the weapon arm like a dog with a chew toy.
King Ovin steadily steadily rotated hurling different schools of magic at two of the giant creatures, pushing them back, chipping away at them at his leisure. For him, this battle was nothing right now. But he had sensed the others behind these foul things; this was just the vanguard. Seven or eight more waves of these monsters were still coming, queued up like employees at a worksite canteen.
The defense carried on.
Quoth sat in a wicker chair under his dome, sipping coffee as the hordes of dragons and wee folk pounded at his barrier uselessly. Now and then the dome would flash white, which Selena didn't trust. She had kept her children and herself from attacking since the assault began in earnest.
She stood beyond the central ring hammering at the dome with her children, the Loa seated nearby, locked in a low, humming chant, holding hands. A small orb of pulsing green and black energy wavered between them, growing brighter and bigger every few minutes as they continued their incantation.
Rasmus tugged at her false arm. "Mother, I feel sick," he said weakly, sweat slicking his forehead. Selena gasped at the sight of his eyes, which had gone bloodshot. "Something's wrong," he whinged, trying to pull her further from the dome and Quoth. Except he's not, she thought. He should be pulling southeast, not due south. The elven woman turned her head around, looking due north at the crumbling tower where the Destroyer had made his home.
The tower was mostly in rubble, but hanging in the smokey air above the ground was a black tear, a crack suspended against the background. That's what's afflicting him, she thought. Not the Destroyer himself, and not that box of his that my husband entered, but that rift. It's, some kind of wound. Selena let Rasmus lead her, and by extension her other two children, fifty yards south before turning back around to watch the onslaught.
When the dome around the Destroyer flashed again, the rift pulsed. One of the spiderweb crack lines extended several feet, widening the rift. "He's redirecting their energies into the rift," she said. Rasmus groaned, clutching his head. "Rasmus, what is it?"
"From the other side of the rift," he choked out. "They're, they're going to be able to come through soon." Selena had heard enough.
"Turot, guard your kin here," she snapped at her eldest, who saluted. "If you see anything coming through that hole, you either kill it or get these two and run, understood?"
"Yes," Turot replied stoically. Selena ran toward the Loa, praying she would reach them in time to interrupt their ritual. When she was twelve yards away from them, she unleashed the smallest bit of air magic, pushing Baron Samedi back, his hands escaping those of the other two. Their ball of power vanished.
"Foolish woman," Mama Lo screeched at her, peeling off an old shoe and throwing it at Selena. "We will have to start all over!"
"Don't," Selena replied, launching into an explanation of why she'd stopped them. Mama Lo, swiftest of mind among the Loa, saw immediately their near-error. "Tell everyone to stop attacking," Selena finished, darting into the allied forces to do the same.
She wasn't sure if they would stop the assault in time to keep Quoth from bringing his own allies through.
Despite the cracks of power going on all around him, the crash of looming creatures falling, and the smell of spent magic and blood filling the air, Byron found himself utterly at peace. This was where he belonged, the field of battle. Kathy was a spirit of love, of joy, of creation, and he adored her for that, among other things. He was a spirit of war, of mania, of destruction. He wasn't always sure why she loved him.
Because I too can create, he thought. What I create needn't be for destructive ends. I am not evil. I am not completely crazy. I'm just mad enough to enjoy the darker side of things, but I am not Quoth- I do not relish that nastiness like he does. He worships chaos, whereas I enjoy it to a degree. Because I'm human.
Byron's pen rose up in his hand, slowly lowering toward the card. "And like any human," he whispered, "I don't want to be locked away." He wrote his phrase on the card, stood up. The ceramic masked giants ceased their approach, mouths hanging open as they began backing away, retreating to the forest. Gatech, Kathy, Ovin and Daggeuro all backed up into a tight ring around Byron as he held the card up between pointer and middle fingers. "Time to leave," he said, the card glowing white.