Chapter 9: Attack on the Temple
Boom!
Me and Terrador both stopped when we heard the sound... Bianca was making her move, I could feel it in my gut. And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind then suddenly the temple walls blasted open, revealing several husks who one by one funneled inside the temple like hornets. "Husks! We cannot let them get to the children!" Terrador said before we both sprang into action.
I unleashed a wave of fire at one, roasting it to cinders. However another one had managed to get me from behind, it's front legs had me in a sleeper hold, and another one rammed into my stomach with it's horns, knocking the wind out of my lungs. The husk then backed up for another charge, I managed to shake the cobwebs and managed to toss the husk that was holding me forward, hitting the other one flush.
Terrador's fight with the husks was far more graceful than my own, using his earth breath to force them out of the temple. I did my best to take out as many of the husks as I could, I had to keep them from getting too far into the temple. All it would take is but one to sneak past us to put the children in grave danger. "They just keep coming!" I shouted before shooting fireballs at the invaders.
Terrador kept on them, not letting one even get past the hole they made to get in. "We have to keep on them! They have to give out eventually!" Terrador said before one managed to catch him off guard with an ice attack, freezing him in place. "Dammit!" Terrador cursed as he tried to break free. Thinking quickly I grabbed one of the husks and slammed it into the ice that held the Earth Guardian in place, shattering it on impact and killing the husk as well. "Thanks." He said before he went right back into battle.
Meanwhile...
Where the hell was he?! I must have searched every inch of this temple but I still hadn't seen hide nor hair of Dwayne. I knew if I didn't find him Darius would never let me hear the end of it. And of course, I didn't like the idea of losing one of my newest friends either...
But this temple was so big, he could be anywhere! Come on Taven, think... were would you go if you were Dwayne?
I pondered this for a while, until suddenly the ceilings around me shattered like glass, several husks descending through them. "You have to be kidding me!" I said, drawing my sword, not completely sure if I could take the dragons or not, I've never had to fight one before, and there were so many of them! But I had to try at least... I couldn't risk any of them finding Dwayne before I did. The husks all noticed me in a heart beat, One of them shot a bolt of lightening right at me. I barely managed to dodge it, it was a good thing too, I don't think I would have survived the blast.
I stood up, my blade ready. "Alright you undead demons, prepare to return to death!" I exclaimed before charging at them, yelling a warrior's cry the whole way. I managed to cleave through the first undead dragon with ease. It's head plopping onto the stone floor with a thud. The next husk swiped at me with it's claws but I nimbly jumped out of the way and right up to it's face here I plunged my blade into it's skull.
However, my blade was now stuck in it's head, I pulled and pulled but couldn't manage to get it free, and another husk was set to take advantage of my compromised position. "Come on! Come on!" I said as I tried in desperation to free my sword.
CRACKATHOOM!
The approaching husk was blown in two by a powerful thunderbolt, sending it's decaying body parts crashing to the floor. I turned around to see Volteer approaching me. "That was quite a close call. Are you alright?" He asked me.
I finally managed to get my sword free from the husk's skull. "Yeah... I'm fine, but Dwayne is missing! I can't find him anywhere in the temple!" I told the Electric Guardian.
"Then we don't have much time, I'll take to the skies and see if I can locate him from above, you keep searching the ground level... hopefully we can find him before one of these abominations does." Volteer said before taking off to do just that.
I sheathed my sword and looked over the pile of dead husks on the floor. "Still better than being trapped in the Cheetah Village." I shrugged before running off to find Dwayne.
Meanwhile...
You know, for a mage with no magic, she certainly had no trouble using it against us. No sooner had the fight started then Bianca had started throwing freaking Sith Lightening at us! I thought since we took dad away from her that she'd be running on empty as far as magic went. But nope, guess not cause she had no problems kicking our asses.
My lack of combat experience was quite a hindrance here, as 90% of the hits Bianca scored were on me. Spyro and Cynder on the other hand fought like clockwork, even when Bianca managed to score a lucky shot on them they were right back up in seconds, clearly this wasn't their first rodeo.
Bianca also seemed to know I was the weakest link as she threw most of her shots my way. I managed to barely dodge a few while getting steamrolled by others. By the by, being hit with magic is not a fun experience, sometimes it feels like being burned by metal on a hot summer's day, other times it feels like being punched by a pro boxer. It got so bad that Spyro and Cynder had been making it a point to position themselves near me to try to draw her fire away from me. God I suck at fighting!
Spyro rained several lightening shots at Bianca, who nimbly dodged each one, you know she was pretty nimble for a mage. She was doing back flips, butterfly twists, and she even once used my head as a springboard to dodge a poison shot from Cynder. Maybe it was a rabbit thing, or she was just naturally light on her feet. Who knows...
I blew my fire breath at her, which she just cartwheeled out of the way of, okay now you're just showing off! Who do you think you are? Catwoman? Bianca then managed to once again lay me out with another magic missile. That had to be the 50th one she had gotten me with today! God I suck! "You okay?" Cynder called back to me as she positioned herself between me and Bianca and shot off fear shots at her.
I didn't want to get up, I just wanted to lay here in pain, but I knew if I did that Bianca would just keep raining blows on me. So I got up slowly. "My face feels like hamburger..." I said as I staggered to my feet.
"Maybe instead of getting yourself blasted into oblivion you can actually try dodging her magic shots for once?" Cynder told me. Yeah I'll do that, I was still getting used to being a quadruped here! Forgive me for not being as nimble as you and Spyro! Lay off!
Spyro meanwhile had managed to latch himself onto Bianca's back, getting the rabbit mage in a sleeper hold. "Get off me!" She demanded as he tried to get the purple dragon off her back. She managed to grab him by the horns and rather violently slammed him onto the ground. However Spyro was quickly back on his feet before Bianca could capitalize.
Me and Cynder started to fire on Bianca, shots of fire and poison rained on her, I actually managed to burn her arm! The first shot I had actually landed the whole fight. "You little brat!" Bianca hissed at me before throwing another magic shot my way. I actually managed to get out of the way of one. I was seriously having flashbacks to playing dodgeball in gym class right now, only difference was instead of rubber balls being hurled at me, it was deadly magic spells.
I continued to try to hit her with my fire breath but she was keeping herself out of range of my attacks, my fire breath only seemed to go so far. I also noticed that Spyro and Cynder were starting to tire, as they were getting progressively less light on their feet. However Bianca seemed like she could keep going all day long! Unless...
Okay... if I can hit her with a fireball it might be enough to take her out of the fight, if I don't blow myself up that is... again. I concentrated on creating the fireball, hoping against all hope I would actually shoot the fireball this time.
I felt something warm zip out of my mouth, the fireball sped right at a surprised Bianca who had been focusing on Spyro and Cynder up to now. It blew up right in front of her, knocking her back and into a wall. She just laid there on the grass... motionless. "Is she... dead?" I asked.
Spyro walked over to her, looking her over. "No, she's just unconscious." Spyro said, I don't know why but I was kinda relieved by that, yeah she was an evil bunny bitch but I don't think I want to have a body count if you know what I mean.
Cynder then walked over to Spyro. "There's just one thing I don't understand..." Cynder began, me and Spyro looked at her. "When we mentioned what The Sorceress was doing to the baby dragons, she seemed to seriously not know... why wouldn't she know about that?" Cynder asked. You know, she was right, that was odd, you'd think she'd be well aware of The Sorceress' completely messed up immortality potion thing. But when we told her about it, she seemed shocked for some reason. Well at least we took her out, now all we had to do was restrain her and...
She was gone! What the hell?! Were the hell?! "I should have known she'd mess it up." I heard someone hiss at as. We all turned to see another mage standing on the other side of the gate, having Bianca's unconscious body slung over his shoulder. It was the same mage that Darius had stealth KO'd back at the dungeon, I could tell by his robe, however his hood was now down so I could see what he was, he was clearly some kind of lizard or raptor or something. He had a long tuft of white fur hanging out the back of his head, his scales were red with black tiger stripes. His chin was white and his eyes were a fiery orange color with slitted pupils. "As much as I would enjoy killing you all, The Sorceress would have my head if I left her brightest apprentice in your captivity." The lizard man said before turning to Spyro. "I hope you aren't too fond of your wings purple dragon, because I do look forward to cutting them from your body very soon." He cackled before walking away.
We just watched as the lizard took Bianca away. Me, Spyro, and Cynder all looked to the sky to see a few husks fly away. Looks like the attack was over... and I took out Bianca! Booyah! Not bad for my first real fight if I do say so myself.
"Dwayne!"
We all turned around to see Taven running at us. You know Taven, a few minutes earlier would have been awesome! "Are you guys alright? Where are they all going?" Taven asked noticing the husks were all leaving.
Spyro decided to explain. "Dwayne managed to knock Bianca out, but another mage managed to make off with her before we could restrain her." Spyro said. Taven seemed quite impressed that I actually took her out. Soon Volteer managed to find us as well, as he came down for a landing. "Is everyone alright?" He asked as he landed.
We all nodded, granted I was beat to hell, but I knew it wasn't anything serious. Hopefully I would get better at fighting in time...
We all decided to head back into the temple to check on everyone, we entered the guardian's chambers to check on Terrador and my dad, who Volteer said had stayed behind to defend the temple. There were a pile of bodies scattered all over the room, with dad and Terrador standing proudly over them all. However they weren't completely unscratched, dad's lip was bleeding slightly, and Terrador had a few small cuts on his green scales but outside of that they were both completely fine.
"I was going to ask you two if you were alright, however it seems you two handled things quite well." Volteer said, looking around at all the corpses my dad and Terrador had just made. Okay they were already corpses before hand but you get the idea.
Terrador looked over to my father. "Indeed, Blaze is quite the fighter it seems." Terrador commented, apparently quite impressed at my dad's fighting prowess.
"You weren't so bad yourself Terrador." He returned the compliment... hold up... dad said something nice about one of the guardians?! Were they actually starting to get along? God I hope so, I'd rather they all be friends instead of dad acting like they lit his puppy on fire. Dad then walked over to me, looking me over. "Are you alright Dwayne?" He asked me.
"Well, I feel like I was tenderized like a piece of meat, but I think I'll be okay." I told him honestly. I wasn't going to lie to him. I got my red little ass kicked, but I also managed to take the badguy out so I guess that made up for it... I think.
"Dwayne held his own pretty well against Bianca, but he has a lot of room for improvement." Spyro added, my dad's eyes widened when he heard I took on Bianca. "I told you to stay in the gardens!" He snapped. Yeah I knew he'd be mad about that. However he quickly cooled down. "But I can't say I'm not proud to hear you managed to hold your own against a mage as skilled as Bianca." He added with a smile.
We all then decided to go check on Cyril and Darius, who Terrador explained had corralled all the young dragons into a room so Bianca couldn't snag any of them. We found Cyril and Darius standing outside the room, checking on the young dragons who were thankfully all still there. Lisa lit up when she saw me and dad come in. "Dwayne! You're okay! Where were you?!" She asked me.
"Getting beat up by Bianca." I said jokingly. Lisa thumped me on the head with her paw for that one. "I knew you went after her." She said clearly annoyed by this. I was just glad everyone made it out okay, I mean, this could have gotten a lot worse than it did...
"Ember?!"
We all turned to see that Flame was looking for someone, someone named 'Ember' apparently. "Ember where are you?!" He shouted, clearly worried.
I turned to Spyro. "Who's Ember?" I asked him. Spyro groaned, signifying he didn't exactly have good relations with her.
Cynder stepped forward. "Ember is Spyro's #1 fan. She's a little pink dragoness that follows him around everywhere claiming she and him are "soulmates"." Cynder explained, clearly not having a high opinion of this "Ember" dragon either.
However Flame seemed quite worried about her disappearance. I had no clue where she could have-
Oh no... you don't think? "Spyro... if Ember is missing... you don't think that...?" I said, Spyro filled in the blanks pretty quickly, and was frightened by what I was implying.
"You don't think one of the husks took Ember do you?" Spyro asked Cynder. Cynder sighed, " I really hope you two are wrong. As much as I find that pink little nuisance annoying, I don't think she deserves to have her wings chopped off for it." Cynder said.
Meanwhile...
I could already hear The Sorceress' ranting at me about how we were incompetent fools for coming out of the Warfang raid empty handed, we had no purple dragon, no Dwayne, no Lisa, not even another young dragon to compensate for our failure. I almost didn't want to return to the castle, but I had to eventually, she was expecting me and Bianca.
"Let me go! HELP!"
I turned to see one of the Husks had a small pink dragoness in it's maw. She wasn't Lisa, I could tell from her light purple head spikes. She wore a golden choker with a red heart shaped jewel hanging from it, her horns were curved outwards and behind her head, making them practically useless for combat. I smiled a toothy grin, I may not have the purple dragon, but at least I got a young dragon for The Sorceress. I took the little dragon from the husk.
"Let me go! When Spyro finds you you'll be sorry!" She yelled, squirming and kicking as I held her by the tail. She mentioned the purple dragon by name! This just got better and better, if this little dragon had a connection to the purple dragon, doubtless he would come to rescue her, and when he did... he would be mine...
The Sorceress would reward me handsomely for this, for not only did I have another pair of wings for her potion, I also had bait for the purple dragon! "You my little dragon, are going to make The Sorceress very happy." I said to the little dragon as I carried her and Bianca to The Sorceress' chambers.
Life is too good to me sometimes...
A/N- OH NOEZ! Rikor has Ember! Will our heroes rescue her? Or will The Sorceress have a new pair of wings to add to her potion?
