“Does this seem a little too easy to you?” Rafe asked.
I looked toward the portal where hundreds more of an even wider variety of creatures were marching through. Easy?
“You think this is too easy?” I questioned.
“It’s not the number. As long as we’re this close to ley lines, I can fight creatures like this all day. This can’t be Rowle’s primary force. I’m guessing he’s still trying to distract us with cannon fodder while his main force is moving into range. Keep your eyes out for something nasty trying to get close to us.”
“You mean like dragons?” I asked as I pointed to the west.
Rafe followed the direction I indicated and nodded. “Well, hell. Yeah, that’s trouble. Things are about to get interesting.”
That’s when the nearest half-dozen or so of the red dragons drew back their heads and spit what looked like globs of molten lava at us.
Chapter 28
Raphael
A full half-dozen fireballs arced over the front line of creatures charging us. I’d recently encountered this same breed of dragon, but that didn’t make them any less of a threat. For some reason, their damn fireballs stuck to the surface of my shields. In my last skirmish with them, that property had given me a lot of trouble.
The lesser creatures were drawing closer, but they were hardly a threat, as long as…
“Tess, switch your shield to cover us both, I have an idea.”
I saw her shield immediately reform into a hemisphere, just behind my shield.
“Put as much as you can into it,” I added as I moved my own shield and reformed it into a wide wall between us and the oncoming fireballs.
The globs of sticky dragon spit hit my shield, and the impact forced it back toward us. I pushed power into the shield until it stopped moving backward and held its position above the second rank of approaching creatures. When my shield had absorbed the momentum of the fireballs, I canceled the shield and then reformed it into its original shape in front of us.
The fireballs obeyed the laws of gravity and fell among our advancing foes. At least a hundred creatures were enveloped in liquid fire. Most didn’t even have time to scream as the fire consumed their weapons, their armor, and their flesh.
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” I said.
“What?” Tess asked.
“Old movie reference,” I said, glancing at her.
Tess frowned and rolled her eyes.
Everyone is a critic.
I turned back to the job at hand. Enough creatures died screaming that the first rank of the enemy stopped advancing to look what had befallen their comrades. For at least a half minute, they watched until the flames began to fade. Then they turned back toward us and charged.
“That worked better than I thought it would,” I said.
Tess didn’t comment but moved her shield back into its original shape at our backs.
I raised my left hand again, made a fist, and called down the lightning. It played across the advancing soldiers for a dozen seconds before the local charge was dissipated. I lowered my hand and waited to see what was next on the menu.
The column had split around the site of the dragons’ fireballs. From what I could see, they were all avoiding an area where the earth still boiled.
“Good job, but the portal is still open, and there doesn’t seem to be any end to these things,” Tess said.
The boulder I’d chosen as our spot in this drama made it easy to see that the massive portal was still disgorging creatures. For the first time, I noticed that there was a steady breeze coming from the portal. There had to be a pressure gradient between Colorado Spring’s six thousand plus feet of altitude and the land on the other side. That was okay, it would take a long time for the gradient to affect the local atmosphere, and I wasn’t planning on leaving the portal open any longer than I had to.
“Well then, why don’t I see about putting a stop to that,” I said.
I’d already spotted a few wizards on either side of the portal who had prevented me from closing it. Now that we had a little time before the next batch of creatures reached us, I could do something about them.
I raised my left hand again and formed the Cub Scout salute once more, as I summoned my meteors back.
The glowing orbs punched through the overcast simultaneously. They no longer bore any resemblance to the metal ball bearings they had started the day as. Their matter had already been altered into the fourth state of matter, plasma. I poured more magical energy into the plasma balls as they swept down toward the portal.
The mages holding the portal open saw the threat coming and raised their hands in what I took as a futile gesture to avoid death.
The impact was impressive.
Smoke, fire, and debris filled the sky around the portal. Body parts and entire bodies flew through the air, raining down around the countryside and a red mist of vaporized flesh and blood settled onto everything. For once, more than the rocks of the park were red.
When the dust and smoke moved off with the breeze, I saw the spot where the wizards had been was now a pair of craters.
However, the portal was still open.
I cursed under my breath and then said, “Hell, there must be other mages on the far side of the portal helping hold it open. We may have to cross over to get it closed.”
“I’m with you,” Tess answered.
That’s when another portal opened a hundred yards in front of us and to the left of the line of marchers. It opened across the road, in the line of scrub oak that filled much of that area of the park. It wasn’t as enormous as the original portal, but I really hadn’t been expecting more company.
“Heads up,” I said to Tess and pointed toward the new gateway that was opening from somewhere.
“Another one? Isn’t the one big enough
