Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [146]
Grypht drew back into the cave and began chanting.
Dragonbait drew his sword, prepared to fend off the god, but Finder pushed the paladin back inside the cave. "Look after Alias," he shouted over the din.
Three of the tendrils snaked out and grabbed Finder, pulling him from the cave entrance. The remaining tendrils reached into the cave after Grypht and the others, but the slimy vines slammed into an invisible wall of force cast by the wizard. The saurials and the two women were safe for the moment, but they could only watch helplessly as the bard was drawn toward Moander's body.
As Moander constricted its tendrils around Finder's limbs and torso, the bard forced himself to remain calm. There was a protective enchantment on the sliver of para-elemental ice that helped insulate the ice. He still needed to dispel that enchantment. The tendrils drew Finder to the top of Moander's body, which now stood several hundred feet above the ground. The decaying greenery steamed about the bard, giving off a pungent, earthy smell. Hundreds of tendrils tipped with eyes and mouths waved over the surface of the god. One tendril, tipped with the eye of a deer, snaked toward him, studying him curiously. "You are possessed by my vines," its mouth declared. "Why don't you obey?"
Finder laughed. "Because I'm not your servant, Darkbringer! I'm your doom." The bard sang out a shrill note, dispelling the enchantment about the para-elemental ice, leaving it completely exposed to the air. Cold shot out from tip of Finder's dagger in a blast of icy wind.
The mouths shrieked as the tendrils supporting them froze and turned as brittle as glass. Finder slashed at the constricting vines with his dagger, and they shattered into pieces.
Moander realized immediately it had made a mistake. The god had instructed its minions to channel most of its power into protecting it from fire, leaving it vulnerable to freezing. The para-elemental cold emanating from the tip of the bard's dagger was a dangerous threat. The god abandoned the idea of capturing the bard. Survival had higher priority.
As Finder hovered above the god's body, holding out half of his magical stone, he thought of Akabar Bel Akash. The arguments the two of them had had over the finder's stone brought the Turmish mage's face readily to the bard's mind. A beam of bright light sprang out from the piece of the stone, aimed at the center of the the pile of rotting vegetation.
The eyes at the end of the tendrils blinked shut in the light. Without warning, a whole tree shot out from the god's body, aimed right at Finder. The bard dodged to one side-right into an ambush.
Finder suddenly found himself pelted with spears fashioned from the trunks of sapling trees. Several struck him glancing blows, then bounced away, but one pierced his thigh. The bard eased the spear out of his flesh. It was time to stop being a target. With his dagger held out before him, Finder plunged toward Moander, following the beacon light from the piece of magical stone.
The vegetation on the surface of the god's body shriveled as the bard approached it and crackled like glass as he shot straight through it into Moander's interior. The bard could hear the mouths of the god's body shrieking in pain. As the pile shifted and tumbled, Finder was slammed about like a die rattling in a cup. With every tumble, he crashed through frozen branches and vines and corpses of wild animals.
Suddenly the tumbling stopped. Finder pulled himself together and began to follow the light from the finder's stone once again. The deeper he moved into the god's body, the warmer it became, so the cold from the para-elemental ice took longer to freeze the vines that tried to choke and entangle the bard.
Finder was forced to expend more and more energy slashing and hacking with his dagger to clear his path.
The bard began to feel weak from exhaustion and the blood he'd lost from the wound in his leg. Just as he began to consider abandoning his quest, the beam from the piece of the finder's stone