Azure bonds - Kate Novak [125]
The dead man that had arrived on the vine about Mist's neck crawled toward the halfling. The vine began dragging the dragon closer to the mound of refuse.
Mist bucked, almost dislodging her passengers, but did not succeed at tearing the binding about her throat. With her wings she began sweeping the air before her in great gusts. The loose matter atop Moander spun away in a whirlwind of stinking rot, and the puppet Akabar was driven to his knees, the spell in his throat spoiled by the assault.
More tendrils trailed up the single, thick root that bound the dragon like a hangman's noose.
Moander turned Akahar's body around to face Alias. "Say good-bye to this puppet, servant," Akabar's voice instructed. "1 can afford to lose this tool, but not you."
The mossy ground began to rise around Alias, as the supporting roots beneath her withdrew. She struggled as she sank into the heart of Moander. She screamed when the leaves and rotting fungus began covering her, but another porous, spongy mat of moss covered her mouth. She gasped for air and pungently scented vapors flowed into her lungs. Within moments she was asleep.
Dragonbait, alerted by the warrior woman's shout, and seeing that she would soon be beyond reach, leaped from the dragon's back.
Fifty feet separated the dragon from the oozing god, and a number of fanged mouths at the end of tendrils had finished their snaking climb up the tether about the great wyrm's neck. Olive was trying to fend off these horrid little maws and dodge past the rotting soldier's corpse that blocked her attempts to cut the tether.
A fall from fifty feet to hard ground would have snapped even Dragonbait's legs, but where he landed on Moander, over the spot where Alias had disappeared, all was soft muck. Akabar turned to face him, but hesitated for a moment. Tendrils were already beginning to twist upward to ensnare the lizard-creature.
Akabar spat out the guttural words of another spell. Unaccountably the spell dissolved, but Moander did not waste energy registering its confusion on Akabar's face. The tendrils wrapping around the lizard hesitated, unsure about attacking the creature with the same markings as their valued prisoner. Without Moander's command, they were unable to come to any conclusion, and Moander's attention was elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the bard was losing her battle at the dragon's head. The mouths had succeeded in taking several little bites out of her, she could not get past the corpse of the Red Plume mercenary, and Moander continued drawing in the great flying wyrm with a slow, inexhaustible force. Already the distance between dragon and god had been halved, and white flecks of spittle dotted the dragon's lower whiskers.
Olive was reminded of halfling children fishing for bats with light, durable twine and live moths as bait. For some fool reason, this halfling is on the bat's side, she thought, even though the bat is losing.
Mist twisted her head so that her chin rested along the thickening vine. Opportunistic tendrils immediately laced themselves into the dragon's whiskers, then began trying to crawl into the wyrm's mouth to suffocate her.
Dragonbait faced the possessed Akabar. A sea of tendrils ebbed and flowed around the lizard, still waiting for Moander to direct them, but Meander's mind was fully occupied with controlling Akabar and dealing with the dragon.
Rivulets of sweat poured from the mage's face, and his robes were drenched and rotting from his contact with Meander's innards. His head tilted to the right as Moander sorted through his thoughts for a way the mage might deal with the lizard. But there was only one weapon left in Akabar's repertoire.
The mage's hand drew out his curved dagger. "Kill me, or die yourself," Moander challenged with Akabar's voice, now a gasping death-rattle. "You lose in either case, don't you, pure one?"
Dragonbait crouched, then leaped, using his overlong sword as a vaulting pole. As he sailed over the mage's head, Akabar's dagger caught in the side of his leg