Azure bonds - Kate Novak [33]
Some parts of the hill dropped away in miniature canyons, and Alias began to worry that perhaps he had slipped or fallen down one of these. She shivered in the cold air. She'd suddenly felt very vulnerable. Like a fool, she'd forgotten her sword. She jumped from the rock and headed down the slope toward the campsite.
A glint of metal on the ground caught her eye. She veered from her intended path and moved toward it. At the foot of a larger than man-sized boulder lay Dragonbait's oddly shaped sword. Alias leaped forward and lifted the gleaming blade off the ground. The weapon's weight astonished her. It felt no heavier than a fencing foil, and its balance was not awkward in the least. It also felt warm to the touch-not just the grip, but the blade as well.
A shadow stirred on the boulder. Alias spun about with Dragonbait's sword raised, keeping the stone to her back, but there was no one there. Slowly, Alias turned back toward the boulder. Then she saw that, unlike all the other rock about the hilltop, this one was clear, like a huge hunk of quartz, and the shadow she'd thought moved across it had really moved in it. She pressed her face to the stone.
Thrashing at the heart of the rock, like a fly caught in pinesap, was the lizard's twisting form. "Dragonbait!"
Suddenly, something heavy struck the back of her legs below the knees and she toppled backward, crying out in surprise. A violent wind sprang from nowhere, slapping the pines about the clearing.
She tried to roll away from whatever enemy had felled her, but something held her ankles fast. She stared at her feet in horror. They were bound in crystalline manacles, and her horror grew into panic as the rock crept farther up her legs in a twisting motion, like a vine climbing a pole.
Using Dragonbait's sword, Alias beat on the stone bonds with fury, not considering what damage she might do to the weapon or even to herself. The blade did not shatter, but cut through the engulfing stone as though it were liquid. Like sap, or syrup, the clear stone oozed back over the hack marks and continued growing faster than she could chop. Soon the stone oozed beneath her legging plates where she could not reach it, miring her tightly in place.
The ground trembled. With a squelching thuck a dome of earth rose before her, carrying with it the crystal boulder that imprisoned Dragonbait. Alias looked up in horror and realized that the rounded eruption was a huge, monstrous rock head. Dragonbait's prison rested on top of the head, a lump above its temple. Farther down, two eve-disks glowed a sickening yellow. Below these was a gaping maw smelling of sulfur.
The sound that issued from the mouth sent an ice dagger slicing down Alias's spine. The head laughed, a familiar, hoarse, wheezing laugh. Familiar, she was sure, to her old self, the self whose memory was missing, lost in whatever darkness this monster had sprung from.
A moment later, a great stone arm rose from beneath the earth. The creature's chest rose from its mossy bed as well, dark red earth set with a glowing blue symbol of interlocking rings- just like the set on her arm.
With a sickening lurch, Alias felt herself hoisted above the ground. The stone about her legs proved to be part of the amorphous fist attached to the arm of the monster. The monster held her up to its face. As she swung upside down in the hellish yellow glare of its eyes, she felt her sigils jump and writhe and flare as brightly as they had when Winefiddie had tried to dispel them, until an aura of near blinding blue shone all about her, the monster's head, and the crystal prison holding Dragonbait.
The creature laughed again. Its chortle unnerved her, and she hacked at its fist, its face, its eyes, anything she could reach with Dragonbait's blade. The sword passed through the creature's body; its "flesh" was the consistency of peat, but neither the creature's eyes or voice registered any pain The hoarse laughter brought a lost memory fluttering