Delver Magic II: Throne of Vengeance, Jeff Inlo [graded readers .TXT] 📗

sword’s point blazed into the thicket, the thin trunks began to scatter.

Another sickening sight. These trees had no roots, nothing to bolt them into the ground. When they felt the burn of magnified daylight, they scurried for the shelter of darkness. The moved like wounded, mutated spiders, leaving slogging trails of black filth.

Ryson gagged, had he eaten in the past few hours, he would have lost his meal. His stomach, however, was already empty, and in this, he found solace. He turned his full focus to his intended task. He used his great speed to circle the scattering trees. He herded them back into a tight cluster. He then brought the full force of light upon them, one by one.

They began to sizzle and burn, and finally, thankfully, disintegrate into thick black smoke. The smell was horrendous, like old garbage cooking over lava.

He gagged again, but his arm remained steady. The laser thin beam shooting off the point swooped like a wand through the thicket. The trees could not escape. They dwindled in number. Ryson continued to circle about the dark grove, continued to keep each tree under his attack. There was no sound other than the hissing burn. Soon, he had eliminated the entire mass. He kicked at the remnants. Nothing remained but dirt and soot.

“Thank Godson!” He heaved relief for only a moment. The task ahead was daunting. He would return later to make sure nothing else grew, but he knew there were more groupings in the darkness elsewhere. He continued his northward trek. He quickly found another cluster. He also found greater distress and increased danger. The next grove contained more trees with larger trunks. The reach of the branches expanded. With each second in darkness, the trees were growing taller and more powerful. He turned his sword upon them. They rescinded from the initial burst of light, burned with the same intensity, but now they showed a willingness to fight back. Branches swooped down and around the beam. They groped for the delver with the same tenacity in which they sought the darkness. Black sludge dropped into thick puddles as skeletal branches flung outward in an attempt to dislodge the sword from the delver’s hands.

Ryson was forced to dodge as he circled the trees. Only his tremendous speed kept him alive. As he continued the assault, more than one lunged for him. Thick trunks, spindly branches; the trees attacked with their entire form in a final effort for survival.

The delver faced these new circumstances with grim anticipation for the continued conflict. He understood his dilemma, all too well. The darkness of the city was allowing the trees to grow as fast as he could move. The time spent on destroying a single grove would allow each remaining group to grow larger and deadlier. He wondered how long it would take before the trees would encompass too much space for him to destroy.

“I’m going to need more light,” the delver professed heavily.

As if an answer to his wish, the glow from the city streets began to increase. The delver did not slow in his attack, but the welcome illumination did not escape him.

“Light gems,” Ryson stated with renewed optimism. He danced lively about the dense formation of trees as he smiled at the slowly appearing outline of his own shadow. “I hope the dwarves have more.”

Indeed they did, for the faint glow seemed to increase gently with each passing moment. Obviously the dwarves were hard at work around the city replacing light gems at all corridors and airshafts. Sunlight began to bounce off the polished stone that surrounded the entire city. It was not enough to truly hurt the trees, but it slowed their growth. It also served to increase the power of the one weapon that could hurt them.

The enhanced light was magnified by the delver’s sword. The beam from the point grew brighter and longer, a laser of pure sunlight. It cut through the trees with greater efficiency. Even as the trees had grown more resistant, they could not withstand the growing intensity of this beam. They could not outmaneuver the delver, and they could not block the devastating burn of their only weakness. They withered and steamed instantly.

Ryson delighted in the change of momentum. With the power of his sword increased, he found even greater energy. He moved with the swiftness of a hurricane wind, a speed which only could be surpassed by light itself. He destroyed a collection of over a dozen trees in but a heartbeat.

Ryson pressed onward, moving at speeds beyond the comprehension of the dwarves that watched him. He covered the underground granite streets with jumps and bounds. He darted about, shifting and leaping, turning and twisting. If not for the glowing blade of his sword, he might as well have been invisible. As long as he moved, and he moved almost constantly, the glowing blade served as the only beacon of his presence. He paused only when first confronting a cluster of trees. After a near instantaneous inspection, his legs would again carry him with perfect balance as he circled the trees like a controlled tornado.

His mind kept a complete picture of the area he covered. He never doubled over previously scouted roads, and he never missed even a single back alley. He moved with all the grace and precision that was his to command. He covered the northern section of the city, then the eastern boundaries. His task was made easier here by the signal fires set earlier by Lief. His assault was complete in both these areas. No seeds and no saplings survived.

Still, Dunop was no small city and the trees would not die without a struggle. Halfway into the confrontation, the tide of battle again turned, this time against the delver. The trees began to respond to the attacks before the delver could close upon them. As if they realized their plight, they began to scatter as soon as they could move, fleeing from the delver’s sword and the death it would bring them.

Ryson now faced tracking down individual trees as opposed to massacring groups. This slowed him greatly. The beam of his sword was now focusing on single trunks rather than bunches of them. He was also forced into racing back and forth over the same streets as he attempted to annihilate each fleeing tree.

The new tactic flustered Ryson, frustrated him. He felt as if he was chasing his tail. Worse, he began to fear that in his haste, he might miss a tree. Such a mistake would hold dire consequences. A single tree would grow rapidly in the pure dark of night and would drop more seeds to produce more trees well before morning. The trees had to be destroyed now, all of them. He called for the assistance of surrounding dwarves. He needed them to watch for even one tree that might evade his own keen detection.

The dwarves assisted to the best of their ability. Their own eyesight, keen in the dim light, proved invaluable. They guided the delver to many breakaway trees. They used their diminutive size as well. They scouted low grounds and pointed out areas the delver might have otherwise overlooked.

Ryson began to feel a dull ache in his legs and a sharper pain in his side. He was finally tiring, but there was still roughly a third of the city left to scour. He bit back his pain, but he could not forget it completely. It slowed him, forced him to pause on more than one occasion. It would not, however, conquer his determination. Even as the trees continued their attempts to evade him, he proceeded to follow every trail, to hunt them down with cold precision.

He covered three quarters of the town when he finally met up with Lief. Only the western section of the city remained. He barely slowed to speak to his friend when the elf took hold of him.

“Hold yourself, Ryson. You’ve done enough.”

Ryson tried to break free, but the elf held him firm. The delver questioned Lief with irritability. He wanted to finish his job and he let Lief know it. “What are you talking about? There’s still the west side. We can’t leave any trees. Even one can take over and destroy the city.”

“You saved the city,” Lief reassured. “The dwarves will take care of the rest.”

The delver finally came to a halt. As he stopped struggling against the elf’s hold, Lief released him. Ryson muttered the obvious question.

“How?”

“They’re set to bury that portion of Dunop that you have not traveled. They’re going to collapse the roof above. They have already evacuated that section of the town. They will bury the trees in a mountain of rock. They are willing to sacrifice that much.”

“But they don’t have to sacrifice anything. The sword’s working.”

“Not for much longer,” Lief stated sadly. “The sun is setting outside. The light which remains in Dunop is now more firelight than sunlight. Your sword will continue to glow with that light, but it will not hurt the trees.”

“But there’s still starlight! It stopped them in Sanctum,” Ryson protested. “It was night then.”

“It kept them at bay. It did not destroy them,” Lief corrected. “The starlight can indeed hurt them, prevent them from growing, but not with same efficiency as daylight. This deep in the ground, your sword would do little more than cut a path for you to move. Nothing more. There are other problems as well. We tried to mark the spots for you, but the trees have grown too large. That section of town was the darkest. They are moving freely now. If you ventured into that portion of the city, you would do well simply to survive. I am afraid you would be quickly overwhelmed and the trees would have the rest of the city as well. It has to be this way. We should move back now.”

Ryson resisted. He felt his mission incomplete, as if he had failed, but he could not ignore the sight of retreating dwarves. They were already abandoning that section of Dunop.

Lief pulled gently at the delver’s arm. “Come on. You saved more of their city than they could have hoped for.”

Ryson allowed the elf to guide him away. They finally stopped near the front of the palace.

“I suggest you cover your ears,” Lief advised.

Ryson did so. He waited impatiently, watched for even the slightest movements of activity. He caught a fevered pitch of action near the all-encompassing ceiling of rock. He spied dwarves suspended from ropes with pick axes, shovels and sledge hammers. They worked deftly, but their purpose was foreign to the delver. They seemed to be hammering and digging in haphazard confusion. He soon realized that nothing was further from the truth. The dwarves had acted in a harmony that rivaled that of the algors, and as they struck one last time together, the tons of rock hanging over the western end of the city collapsed in one large mass.

Ryson marveled at the sight. He could not fathom the weight and size of the rock that fell, but the destruction was obvious. Marvelous dwarf structures, statues to their brilliance in the art of construction, were immediately and thoroughly crushed by all encompassing rock.

The ground shook with a great blast. A wave of force crashed forward from the impact. Dwarves were sent sprawling as dust filled the air. It glittered in the beams bouncing off the light gems.

Ryson maintained his balance even as Lief was sent to his knees. The delver turned about to examine the effects of the blast upon the rest of the city. More testimony to the dwarves’ great skill, the hardy buildings remained intact, undamaged as if nothing had happened. And so it truly appeared, even