as Tower’s armored ass slammed into the rock. I rose on my hands and knees, looking at him. He was flat on his back, staring up at a young girl in a lacy white gown who stood before him. She had a silver tiara atop her brow, studded with emeralds. Green ribbons threaded through her platinum braids. There had still been some of Princess Innocent inside Infidel after all, it seemed.
Where Infidel had been pinned only a second before, there was now only her empty clothes.
It was then I noticed the tree trunk next to me. I gave it a closer look. It wasn’t a tree trunk. It was a dark green shin, covered with thick, overlapping scales, like the hide of a rattlesnake.
I looked up. I was sitting between the legs of a woman at least twenty feet tall. Her feet and hands ended in three-clawed talons, sporting dagger-length claws black with dried gore. A long, thick crocodilian tail thrust out from just above her buttocks. A fringe of dark green scales ran up her spine, to join with a mane of what looked like spiky vines.
I made a hasty retreat as the half-giantess, half-dragon reared back and roared, her voice causing the false matter of the cavern to ripple. Her jaws opened much further than an ordinary woman’s should have, revealing a mouth full of glistening fangs.
Not that I’m complaining, but in a fair world, the knight in the enchanted armor would have gotten the enraged she-dragon to deal with, while the unarmed naked man got to face off with the little girl in the frilly dress.
Alas, as it turned out, neither of us had a chance to take any action at all. Perhaps a little worried about what he’d unleashed, Nowowon frowned at the giantess. “God damn mad dog,” he growled, bringing the Gloryhammer around in a vicious back swing. He caught the dragon-woman in the side of her head, knocking her from her feet, sending her bouncing toward the swirling light of the spirit doorway. There was a loud sucking sound as her tail pointed straight as an arrow toward the gate. Her knife-like nails trailed sparks as the vortex to the spirit world sucked her toward its depths. Her face was a mask of rage, her eyes a bright, glowing green, as jade spittle foamed on her snarling lips. Then, as if understanding there was no escape, she smiled, casting her gaze toward young Princess Innocent. A long, slimy, serpentine tongue flicked from between her lips, flying across the gap toward the girl. The tongue wrapped around Innocent’s forearm, then yanked her from her feet swiftly enough to pull her out of her white silk slippers. Innocent screamed at an octave that would have made bats wince as she was sucked into the spirit vortex in the wake of the dragon-lady.
With sickening suddenness, the screaming stopped. The doorway to the spirit world was gone.
Tower leapt at Nowowon, punching him hard in the knee. “Bring her back!”
“No sir! Prefer prison,” chortled the old god, before smashing the knight in the head with the Gloryhammer. The metallic chime that rang out from the impact practically made my ears bleed. I could only imagine what it must have sounded like on the inside. Tower fell to his knees, holding his head, and Nowowon pushed him over with an oversized toe. He pinned the knight beneath his foot, then tossed the Jagged Heart so that it imbedded in the ground near my feet.
I didn’t flinch. He wasn’t trying to strike me.
I still owed him a murder.
“I need another drink to do this,” I said, holding out my trembling hands. “All the excitement has left me shaky.”
He nodded as he gave me a look of sympathy, an expression out of place on the features of a sadistic god of self-destruction. One of his free hands produced a second jar. “Regal lager,” he said, offering it to me.
“Regal lager,” I agreed, taking the crimson brew from him. I lifted it to my lips, inhaling one long, intoxicating sniff of the heady aroma. Never had I wanted a drink so badly.
But instead of drinking, I spun around, covered a dozen feet in three long strides, and dumped the ice-cold liquor on Father Ver’s face.
The priest’s eyes snapped open, his bloodied brow furrowed in confusion as he focused on me. “You’re the boy who ran away after stealing the poor box,” he said.
Considering that had been damn near forty years ago, I was more impressed than offended by the greeting. The bastard really was good at seeing truth.
“False god!” I said, pointing in Nowowon’s direction. “Get him!”
“Was it a rat I saw?” asked Nowowon. He snapped his fingers and, instantly, my heart stopped. I moaned as my body faded back to its spectral form.
If Father Ver was bothered by my vanishing act, he showed no sign of it. Instead he rose, wiped the blood from his eyes, then straightened his shoulders to look at the old god.
“No! It is opposition!” cried Nowowon, as he shrank back down to the height of an ordinary man. He brandished the Gloryhammer in both hands and growled, “Raw war!”
“War is not necessary,” said Father Ver. “You’ll drop the hammer. It isn’t yours.”
The Gloryhammer slipped from the old god’s shaking fingers.
Father Ver walked toward Nowowon, stepping over the gibbering form of the Deceiver. He looked down on the man with contempt, but took pity as he said, “Your vision isn’t real. You’ve been caught in a mental trap. Arise.”
Zetetic’s eyes opened. He pulled his drool-covered fist from his mouth and gave it a puzzled look.
Father Ver thrust an accusing finger at Nowowon.
“You do not belong here! You are a false being, and have no place in this world!”
Nowowon walked backward toward the vortex of stone, looking at it nervously, as if he was considering making a break for it. But he sounded defiant as he looked back at the Truthspeaker and shouted, “Evil dogma! I am God, live!”
“We both know that isn’t true,” said Father Ver, as Tower crawled to retrieve the Gloryhammer. “I sense a summoning spell at work. Someone has trapped you here against your will. You faded from the memory of men long ago. There are no believers to sustain you.”
“O no! O no! O no!” the old god screamed as he shrank before the force of the Truthspeaker’s words.
“You are a fraud,” said Father Ver, as the old god shrank to waist height.
“You are a perversion,” he said, reducing Nowowon to the size of a house cat.
Father Ver looked down on the diminutive old god and crossed his arms. “You aren’t even worth crushing beneath my sandal. You’re a lie, and no one believes you any more.”
Nowowon squealed as he shrank to the size of a mouse, then a cockroach, then a fly. Lord Tower’s spiked metal boot suddenly slammed down, driving into the solid stone.
“I’m not wearing sandals,” he said, casting the Truthspeaker a sideways glance.
Zetetic ran up, snatching the Jagged Heart from the ground. “Why is there a crippled baby dragon over there? Why is the spirit gate closed? What the hell happened? I thought the world had come to an end!”
“Why would you think that?” asked Tower.
“I threw you both through your gates. Greatshadow was ready for us. He killed you both and came into the chamber and killed the rest of us. I survived because I had told No-Face that fire couldn’t burn me. But when I left this place, I found nothing but ash as far as the eye could see. I traveled the world, entirely alone, for decades without finding another survivor. Even the mermen and ice-ogres were gone. The primal dragons had joined together to strip the earth of all sentient life.”
“You were trapped in a deception by the old god,” said the small dragon, rising up on his misshapen legs with the help of his gnarled cane. This was definitely Relic’s voice, and now there was no mistaking this dragon’s eyes were the same eyes I’d spied through the burlap hood. “Nowowon knew that you were vulnerable to assault with a highly detailed hallucination. You were trapped by what was essentially a lie.”
“It lasted forty years!” said Zetetic, waving the Jagged Heart in Relic’s face for emphasis. “And who the hell are you? Why is no-one telling me why there’s a dragon here?”
He was answered with a deep voice that made the ground tremble.
“There’s a dragon here because you woke me from my slumber.”
Everyone turned to the vortex of stone.
A scaly head the size of a ship had squeezed through the hole. It was a deep, glowing red, the color of embers shimmering beneath a blanket of dark ash. Sulfurous smoke rose from the creature’s nostrils. The dragon glared at us with eyes that burned like foundry furnaces, with a heat that caused Father Ver’s robes to send up tendrils of white smoke from fifty feet away.
