Read Online The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal by Philip Blood - Free Book Online Page B

long dagger in a horizontal arc which
would have taken the head off the charging beast, but the large
necrosoul leaped back nimbly, knocking over a table and several
chairs.
    Hydan took a step backward, his eyes
widening, “We’re screwed, but it can’t be…”
    Fiona interrupted, “Think about it,
Nick stole something from The Dragon, and now an Archimage
necromancer is coming! I can feel his power getting
closer!”
    “ SHIT!” Hydan exclaimed,
and I could finally hear real worry in his tone.
    Fiona circled, so she was covering us
from the charge of the large necrosoul, which was sizing up all our
positions.
    “ Run!” Fiona called to us,
“The Dragon is coming for Nick. I think I can hold him off for now,
at least until he gets closer, but hurry! Get out of
here!”
    I started to ask, “Who is The
Dragon…”
    But Hydan grabbed my arm and pulled. I
desperately wanted to get an answer, but I felt Hydan’s urgency, so
I turned, and then better sense prevailed, and I ran with Hydan out
the back door into the kitchen area.
    Ahead of us, as we entered the
Kitchen, I heard a door smashing open. It was the exit to the
outside. It burst open, and we heard the snarls of more of these
living dead necrosoul things.
    “ By Baal’s nasty balls,”
Hydan yelled, then spoke in a more normal tone, “That’s damned
inconvenient.”
    “ Inconvenient!” I
exclaimed.
    He nodded, “We’ll have to escape
another way.”
    “ And, how are we going to
do that? There aren’t any more exits!” I pointed out.
    He stepped to a clear spot on the
floor and replied, “We’ll have to make one. Unless The Dragon has a
StarWard blocking this area, which I doubt since he is currently
dealing with Fiona, we should be able to Five Point
travel.”
    He pointed with a finger at the ground
and started making patterns in the air. On the ground, fiery lines
were burning into the cement floor, following the pattern his hand
was creating. First, he drew a Five Pointed star, and then he made
a circle around it.
    But three of the necrosouls spotted
us, and rushed toward our position, and they were closing
fast.
    Hydan looked up, and pointed at the
three undead monsters hurtling at us, and they all turned into
white chickens.
    Hydan barked a short triumphant
laugh.
    I did a double take when I noticed
that the beady-eyed chickens looked kind of dead, with cloudy eyes
and motley feathers, but they were still moving like they were
alive; they were zombie chickens! Those undead fowl kept coming at
us, but when the first one arrived Hydan booted it in the breast,
sending the big rooster flying back in a cloud of mottled
feathers.
    I took his cue and practiced an extra
point kick on the second necrosoul, which was an undead hen. My
kick connected solidly and sent it flying up into some hanging
frying pans, which made a horrendous racket, not to mention more
falling feathers. One of the frying pans fell onto the table near
me.
    “ You handle the chickens,”
Hydan exclaimed, and turned back to his circled pentagram and
started drawing a second slightly larger circle around the first
one. Down on the floor the whole pentagram and circles were burning
in six-inch-tall red flames. He started adding a few symbols
between the two burning rings.
    This left me to deal with the third
necrosoul chicken. It was coming fast across the floor, so I
snatched up the black cast iron frying pan, and when the undead
rooster launched itself at me off the ground, I Sam Gamgee’d the
thing, like a cricket player taking a pitch. It made a very
satisfying crunch, and a dull metal ringing sound, as it sent the
undead chicken flying back the way it had come.
    Hydan looked up at the sound of the
exploding chicken and grinned, saying, “Don’t you just love
chickens!” Then he pointed at the pentagram on the floor and added,
“Alright, it’s ready, go ahead and hop in!”
    I shook my head, “Are you nuts? That
thing is on fire!”
    I was referring to the flaming