Mazenta's Tale - Part 3, Illustrated

“Curious, we didn’t see it before,” Imaris straightened the cuffs of his shirt under the blue leather of his jerkin.

He seemed calm for someone faced with the sudden appearance of a massive castle of crystal and light on the far side of the inner court. His little pet, Jess the cutter, for once looked her age, mouth open in wonder, head cocked sideways; but the expression never quite made it to her eyes. The eyes were calculating. She was probably already trying to plan how to scale the impossible towers and kill the inhabitants in their sleep. The base of the castle was a mound of crystal, clouded milky white, smooth on all sides but with an upper surface of jagged spikes. Growing from the top were three towers, alike in size but unevenly placed, each tower square and tapering to blunt pyramidal points. Two were connected to the third midway up their height by an adjoining slab of crystal. Something about the spacing and placement of the towers suggested they were organic. As if the castle had been grown, not built to design.
“That was not there when we circled the keep the first time,” Xandra said. “But see there, that platform on the far side of the courtyard. The light shimmers, as if suspended between those two small obelisks. And not unguarded: that’s a dragon, if I’m correct.”

“Dragon,” Jess confirmed, her sharp elven eyes darting to study the far platform. “Doesn’t move. Mebbe kilt already.”

Demona stood behind her two companions. These softskins don’t make much sense to me sometimes but even I could see they were not what anyone would describe as three friends. She gathered her hair back from the curling basalt horns of her brow in an unconscious move and her mouth curled into a sneer. “So it’s a dragon, let’s kill it.”

Jess’ ears perked up and that thing she called a smile crept onto her lips.

“Should we be worried that it suddenly just appeared?” Xandra was genuinely puzzled. Face her with a charging wild boar while she held a pair of sticks and she would throw herself into the fight; here, she was out of her element.

Demona threw back her cloak and gestured at the castle with her fingers folded into horns, “The castle comes from the beyond! Yet I fear not its otherwordly origins!”

Jess, wise beyond her years, looked to the wizard for clarification.

"Think of the mysterious realm we three just visited while the others healed. It shared many of the same characteristics, made of crystal. The creature we met there claimed it was the feywild. This may be the same place.”

“So do we go in?” Xandra brought up the practical question.

My Icarus was simply watching the others in turn as they spoke, cradling the huge axe in his arms and dragging a whetstone across a nick from the last fight when it had hit bone. “We do what we must. Because we can,” he rumbled.

***

Staring into the face of the stone dragon a great sadness welled up inside me. It was too detailed, too exact to be a statue. No, this had been a living creature once. It had felt the air when it flew. It had smelled the sweet smell of flesh turned to charcoal under its fiery breath. It had plotted and battled and possibly even served the late Emperor, who was known for his fondness of dragonfolk. In its day it might have been a hero, before some magic had turned the noble brother to marble. Now he stood frozen as he reared up, perhaps his last moment of defending this same portal. Goblin filth had carved their rude slogans and names into his flanks. And starlings were nesting behind one horn. Starlings!
The Lost Hope were all staring at the magic portal instead of the doomed majesty of this king among all creatures. With a hop and a flutter I pounced on the starlings nest and smacked the foul chirper’s twigs to the ground, snapping one of the hysterical creatures from mid-flight with a burst of feathers. Even here, under the nest were words scrawled in a goblin hand:

WEEPOX WUZ HEAR

Goblins: death’s too good for them.

The Lost Hope were finally stepping through the portal. Suspended between two standing stones, like smaller versions of the crystal towers, was a big blue thingy. And visible faintly through it was the inside of some room. Xandra was the first to step through and the others, seeing she wasn’t immediately zapped into paste, followed her. With a last caress to my stone brother I bounded to the stone platform and jumped through the portal.

It was disorienting at first. Like waking up from a bad dream about all your treasure being stolen, and being unable to move. Then the blue mist cleared and I found myself standing invisibly beside the Lost Hope staring at the room around us. It was entirely made from crystal: floors, walls and ceiling, mostly smooth but ribbed in places like unevenly frozen ice. And a light seemed to seep from every surface, as if the crystal itself was alive with the white glow. Two doors stood closed and a third was open, leading onward down a short hallway, again made of the glowing crystal. But if one hadn’t been open I would not have known they were doors, but thought maybe some strange plant. The closed doors were grey-green with thick veiny blue tendrils, and looked like the flattened bud of a flower before it opened.

“Much like the place in the feywild we already visited,” Imaris ran his hands over the walls and studied the room.

“I could’ve told you that,” Demona muttered.

“Yes, but you didn’t did you?” Imaris said dryly. “The open door beckons. Icarus, lead on.”

My quiet Icarus knew the value of silence and simply hefted his greataxe over one shoulder and advanced through the door and down the tunnel. I flew above their heads and down the corridor. It ended in a larger, longer room, busy with the work of many creatures. A half-dozen small goblins toiled at workbenches. A pair of six-foot tall hulks in tattered robes with decaying flesh held a large Taurus of crystal and as I hovered in the doorway I saw a pair of strange hump-backed goblins, far taller than the others, bend to work on the crystal. Their lumpy bodies seemed to unfold and I saw at once that each of the hunchbacks had six arms, each hand holding some sort of hammer or chisel. Without a sound I flew back and landed on Icarus’ wide shoulder pauldron and whispered in his ear: “Beware, many strange goblins and the living dead.”

Icarus merely grunted and went into the room swinging. His first axe-blow took a small goblin unawares and sent the two halves slamming into the nearby wall, painting the white crystal with blue-black carnage. Xandra didn’t pause and carved her way into the room with both blades flashing but it was Imaris’ arcane mumblings that sent a frigid blast among the packed workers. Two gobsicles perished instantly, shattering as they hit the floor and many more slid and fell as true ice coated the smooth crystal floor.

Three of the small goblins ran immediately, discarding their tools and snatching hammers as they went screaming in high-pitched voices out an unseen doorway at the far end of the room. I fluttered to an abandoned worktable as the battle raged. Nothing stood before the Lost Hope. For a moment there was a shocked cry from Jess, bringing up the rear of the group; hammer-wielding goblins had circled behind them but Jess and Imaris each quickly dispatched one, leaving the last to flee.

By then the last goblin survivor was one of the strange six-armed craftsmen and the Lost Hope were trying to circle it, Xandra made a rush and stepped back, wounded, as the six arms all attacked her at once. There was a quiet rustle as the tiny elfling Jess ran into the room, dove past the creature on crossed forearms and sprang up behind it, driving her punch-blade into its back and bringing it down with that one blow.As it folded and coughed out its last breath Jess was revealed with a face set in pure joy. Had it not been so pitiful it would have been horrific.

“I gottim,” she said proudly to Imaris as the eladrin moved forward.

The wizard forced a smile. “You did well, Jess. Always clean your blade.” He put one hand on her shoulder and as she looked away to wipe the blood on a rag there was a moment’s pity on the wizard’s cool features. Gone again in a moment.

“Finally, some bits of pretty worth having,” Icarus said, missing the entire play. He scooped up one of the gems from the worktables and held it up to the light between two claws. “Everybody, grab the rest.”

“Gems, yes!” Demona began searching.

Jess looked hopefully to Imaris, anticipating some good looting, but the eladrin was disdainful. “We don’t scrounge for riches. We’re here to rid these lands of the foul goblin overlords. The creatures that force our people to subsist in caves while they ruin all the wonders of the old empire, like this castle.”

“Didn’t look like they were despoiling this,” Xandra said. “They were working like a master’s whip was on their backs.”

But Imaris wasn’t listening. With a gesture to Jess he explored the far end of the room and the other exit. “Come with me, Jess. We’ll explore and make sure no more goblins are waiting to rush in while fools count pretty pebbles.”

“Probably has all the gems he needs, turning coal into diamonds up that tight ass of his,” Xandra muttered turning to my table, so quiet only I was able to hear her.