“Matt!” he yelled. “Light this place up!”
The wizard gripped the staff and turned toward the flying menace. “Oonurarki!” he yelled. From the top of his staff, the dim light became blinding and hurtled outward with such force that a shock wave struck everyone and hurled back the kirii. Scores of them had been flying toward them and were so disoriented that several fell all the way to the water and splashed around. Suddenly the jaws of something rose to clamp around one and drag it under. There was another lifeform down there. And above them, the kirii seemed in chaos, but it was hard to tell.
Ryan yelled, “Matt! We can’t see.”
“Sorry!” The wizard laughed and dimmed the light. Ryan got the impression he loved the power.
Jolian dodged more tentacles, swiping at them with her nails and drawing more blood. But only his sword looked like it was going to help, unless Matt did something. Anna had filled the sack and now scampered toward the entrance.
“Time to go!” Eric yelled.
But then everything seemed to happen at once. The kirii closed in, stones fired from slings clattering on the ground and cavern walls behind them. Eric threw one knife, then another, two kirii dropping to the water with a splash. Matt sent a jet of flames at others, setting a dozen of them on fire, before retreating. A tentacle flew toward Jolian, but she dodged it only to be grabbed by another and hauled high over the water upside down. The leviathan finally rose to the surface, a huge, black, oblong head appearing with a mouth opened wide, multiple rows of teeth as big as a person ready to clamp on Jolian. It dropped her toward its gaping maw, clearly expecting a meal but not the transformation that came. The dragon assumed her true form as she fell, wings snapping out as her mouth stretched wide and a torrent of flames roared down on the leviathan. Deafening screeches filled the air as Jolian landed atop the beast, which tried to submerge only to have Jolian dig claws into its head and beat the air furiously, lifting it from the water more and more.
Ryan stood transfixed until a stone struck his helmet with a loud bang, dazing him. Hearing little flapping wings near him, he swung upward without looking and felt his sword bite into something. He turned, swinging again, slicing through a kirii that he saw up close this time as it hovered before him. A snout like a dog jutted between yellow eyes, a drooling mouth of fangs snapping at him even though it was much too far away to matter. A knife from Eric struck that one in the face and it fell, another kirii replacing it, brown leathery wings pounding the air as clawed arms reached for him. He cut into one of them and retreated as more kirii closed in. They smelled of rot and seemed intent on grabbing him, to fly away with him as Novir had suggested. An energy pulse hurled them back, and he looked back to Matt and nodded.
Suddenly a thundering roar of rumbling stone and earth came from the exit behind Anna and they looked over in new alarm, not seeing a cause, but Ryan sensed it was farther up. Had the passage out crumbled? They gathered at the opening.
Still holding the bag of writhing fish, Anna asked, “Where’s Novir? I just realized he wasn’t here when I got here with the fish.”
Eric looked around. “The leviathan didn’t get him, did it?”
“Pretty sure it didn’t,” said Ryan. “We need to get out of here. We just need Jolian.”
They turned to see the dragon biting into the leviathan’s head repeatedly, yanking giant hunks of it off and spitting them out. The tentacles had all stopped moving, and the creature seemed dead. Some kirii actually went for Jolian, who jumped off the leviathan and with one stroke of her wings, landed in the shallow water near them, being unable to get closer in that form because of the cavern walls. She turned toward the kirii, and Ryan thought she smiled before blasting them with fire. The smell of burned hair and flesh filled the cavern as bodies hit the water. The dragon changed form again and sauntered over to them.
“Ready?” she asked with a smile. She stopped before Ryan and looked him up and down, then wiped one finger across his armor. It came away thick with black blood, which she licked off her finger.
“Let’s go,” said Eric, grabbing the remaining torch. Novir had taken the other. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
They hurried into the tunnel and jogged as fast as they could while not banging their heads or risking a twisted ankle. Whether Matt had summoned the leviathan by accident or not, they would likely never know, and Ryan put it from his mind. The thought of being trapped inside a mountain or having to find their way out through some other path, and then make it down to the dragons, worried him. And with good reason. They soon stopped at a rockfall that had blocked the path.
Eric said, “Unless Soliander or Jolian can do a spell, I don’t see getting through this.”
“Is going back easier?” Anna asked, frowning. “I don’t like either option.”
Jolian turned to Matt. “We may need two spells. One to move the rocks, another to hold up the tunnel until we pass so that it doesn’t collapse more. My magic is limited and is for dragon-related elements.”
That surprised Ryan. “You can’t do other things?”
“We can but rarely learn them. The other races mostly use magic. My brother is an exception, spending enough time with humans, elves, and others to have learned. So we can. We just don’t.”
Seeing Matt thinking, they waited, Ryan feeling impatient. But finally, the wizard had an idea and coordinated
