Tales of Vyscher Book 2

Chapter 39

Vic held on to Rek's arm and led her on a walk around the cavern. Just eating the food the previous night had taken a lot of strength, and now she was on her feet for the first time. The idea now was to just get her moving, have her try to get her strength back with more food, and then go down to find Fehrys as soon as they were ready.

She couldn't help but notice Rek touching the burned side of her face though.

"You're still beautiful, angel girl." Vic whispered to her, and Rek's smile was as wonderful as ever.

"I don't even care, as long as you think so," she answered. "Fehrys looks great with his scars, so we can compare, right?"

Vic's heart gave a lurch. She was so lucky to have Rek as a partner. To think she had almost lost her! "Well let's take a break and let's get some food in you, okay? No rushing it." She guided Rek to a rock for her to sit on and pulled out some venison jerky for them to munch on.

"You need to pack more pastries next time." Rek said with her smile. "This jerky hurts to chew!

"I bet we could find a way to do that actually."

They sat and munched in silence and then were back on their feet making another circuit of the room. Every time they passed the head of the dragon, Rek just stared at it. Vic didn't know what thoughts were running through her head, but they didn't seem at all happy.

She had lost track of the number of times they had gone around the chamber, when they passed the collapsed exit to the jungle yet again. But this time there was noise on the other side. Someone was digging their way in.

Rek looked at her in fear. "Can you hold them off?" she asked.

"Let me go find out who it is." Vic helped Rek sit, then turned her cloak into the dragon wings and flew up and out of the top of the volcano. When she got there, her breath caught in her throat.

They were out of time. The army had arrived.

Vic flew through the air over the volcano, trying to take in the sight of the troops in the clearing where the barracks were being built. There looked to be over a thousand of them, and quite a few were clustered around the opening of the tunnel into the volcano. She could see rocks being passed out of the tunnel and stacked to either side of the opening, no doubt they had brought some engineers to help with the tunneling below. She doubted it would be long before they were into the chamber, and then she and Rek would be facing an entire army.

Several shouts from below alerted her that she had been spotted, and a rain of arrows rose from the troops in response. Luckily, they were rushing, and didn't realize how high she was, and they all fell short. That many archers didn't bode well for a future fight though.

She took special notice when a ball of fire rose up from the ground towards her. Mages in support of troops was hardly novel, but something she didn't appreciate. She preferred the mages be on her side, and she idly wondered if that was the same mage that she's seen with Brellior. Luckily, at her height she had plenty of time to move and dodge it. But it was still annoying.

She quickly dove down below the volcano rim, and then crawled back up to peek over the top. Hopefully they couldn't see her and would think she landed back down inside. She examined the army, trying to find the group where the mage was, which turned out to be near the tunnel, probably forcing the people to dig faster. Hopefully he was the only one there, but she needed to slow down that army, so a risk was justified.

Vic unslung her staff, and lined up the mage with the end, then took a deep breath. She unleashed a massive ball of fire that slammed into the group around the mage and hopefully into the tunnel as well. She stood up quickly, then started to fire bolt after bolt of fire into the volcano above the tunnel, causing a small avalanche to cover it up. Hopefully that would keep the soldiers busy digging for a while more.