Chapter 19

They appeared in the main public square of Zarkog’s capital city, his domed mountain visible in the near distance, still scarred and broken from the recent battle there. Talia floated three feet in the air and two feet behind Mark, keeping watch with her back to him.

Mark yelled at the sparse crowd of Sylvan scattered around the square, and magically augmented his voice to be heard with the same volume throughout the city. “Where’s Zarkog?!!! I’ve come to beat him into submission and to bring him to justice!!! I am Prince Mark of Hilia, Key to The Just Alliance, and if anyone gets in my way, they’ll get a beating as well!”

Before he was a quarter of the way through that speech they were attacked by thousands of Sylvan and dragon spell-casters who appeared all around. Their energies were effortlessly absorbed by Mark and Talia’s defenses and stored. Their items were soon charged to capacity, then Talia began distributing the excess power to their invisible squad mates far overhead, who distributed it further to others in the Link who had the capacity to hold it.

Mark ignored that, just as he ignored the quickly-growing maelstrom of incoming spells, other than to increase his volume to be heard over their rising cacophony. “Come on out and face me Zarkog, unless you’re afraid! I’ll beat you senseless, as easy as I beat these lackeys of yours!!” he yelled as he stuck out his arm and spun in a circle, casting a wave of automated Force spells all the way around him as he did so, while Talia spun behind him in perfect unison.

The Force spells selected their targets, drew sufficient power to have the intended effect on each one, pierced their targets’ Shields as hair-thin bolts, then expanded into spheres half the size of the target’s head and struck them each a rollicking blow to the face, knocking them half-unconscious. Thus his circling arm traced out a wave of cries and shouts of pain that extended to the horizon in every direction. None of their attackers escaped the staggering blow of his counter-attack. A few fell out of the sky, but retained enough consciousness to save themselves from the worst of the impact with the ground or buildings below. Civilian Sylvan in the square who had not been part of the attack stared in shock, and some of them fled with their children.

Mark nodded in satisfaction. “Does anyone else want a beating?” he yelled.

Another wave of attackers appeared as word of what he was doing quickly spread. There were several million of them this time, filling the skies for a quarter mile, but they fared no better.

In a moment of sudden inspiration, Talia reached behind her to Mark’s pocket and retrieved his portable Truthstone. She was reaching a limit of how fast their support wizards could distribute the power their Shields were absorbing, but if she’d begun reflecting it, as Shields were most commonly designed to do, it would lay waste to the entire vicinity around them. Instead she sent it into the Truthstone. The power almost seemed to disappear, so easily did the stone contain it.

“The godstone is receiving the power, and appears to be absorbing it easily!” Tithian reported.

“The other small stones are also becoming charged proportionately!” Yazadril added.

Meanwhile, Mark had waited a good, long five seconds, so it would be obvious to the attackers that their efforts were completely futile, then repeated his circular wave of magic blows to the face.

“Now this isn’t doing you any good at all, is it?” he yelled. “You’d better start realizing that there’s a new champion in the neighborhood! Zarkog is sure going to realize it as soon as he shows his arrogant face and gets it beaten!”

As he spoke an even larger wave of Serminaki had appeared and attacked.

“The stones are getting hot!” Talia told him. “We can absorb no more power! Cast your next spell out of the reserve in the stone!”

“Well it looks like Zarkog’s not here, so I’ll punish you fools for attacking me, then go knock on his door!” Mark yelled, and clapped his hands over his head, unleashing his magic punch in the face on every attacker at once, then Translocated himself and Talia to the top of the steel dome that capped the neighboring mountain.

Talia switched their Shields to reflective and reported that his Truthstone had cooled considerably. As the next attackers appeared, most were above them in every direction, and she had another inspiration, and shaped their reflective Shield into a tall and thin spike, pointed above and below. This ensured that almost all of the torrents of energy that the hundreds of millions of attackers cast at them was reflected down onto the steel dome below. For miles around, it looked like a new sun had been born atop the mountain, and then the dome began to explode.

“Let them pour it on for a while.” she smugly chuckled. “All they’re doing is destroying their Lord’s home and seat of government. He’s sure to be upset by that.”

The attackers had to Shield against the blowback of their own efforts. Then it began to rain steel on everything for two leagues, and globs of glowing yellow liquid were intermixed with orange-hot drops that were barely hardened and jagged red-hot chunks of every size. A portion of the attackers had to divert their efforts to protecting the city from this bombardment, but the rest continued the attack. After a pair of minutes, the rain of steel became a rain of stone as the destruction of the great dome was completed.

“I think that’s enough.” she mused a minute later. “There can’t be much left intact down there.”

“Right.” he nodded.

“Well you have to be the biggest bunch of slow learners I’ve ever had to beat some sense into at one time!” he yelled, and cast his magic mass beating again.

“Wow! Now that was a spell!” he marveled. “I got almost three billion of ‘em with it that time!”

The attacks did not resume. The air gradually cleared of smoke and debris and visibility was restored, revealing Zarkog floating some two hundred yards away. Only after they had seen and recognized him did he drop his cloaking, and his psionic presence became powerfully apparent.

“He does have some nice tricks.” Mark admitted.

“Concentrate! This is the crux of it all!” Quewanak sternly advised.

“Nice to have you with us again, Eldest.” Mark chuckled.

“You snacks are liars.” Zarkog stated derisively, and he actually sneered. “There is absolutely no chance that you two could hold even one hundred of my fighters at bay. You are nothing more than claws on the hand of those who are far more capable than you. You are a spelled sword in the fist of another.”

“Your main point is correct.” Mark nodded. He and Talia began to grow as he continued answering Zarkog. “I couldn’t give such a well-deserved beating to three billion Serminakis at once without some help, but the fact is that The Just Alliance is absolutely united in opposition to you and anyone who fights for you. So yes, perhaps it’s more true to say that you’re about to be beaten by everyone in The Just Alliance, rather than by me. On the other hand, I have been given absolute command of The Just Alliance. Mine is the fist that bears the claws and the sword. As for our personal capabilities, Talia and I are perfectly capable of beating your arrogant head in by ourselves, and without assistance. But we’re here to bring you to justice, not to engage in a glorification of our personal power, so we’re not going to chance that you’ll slither out of our grasp.

“You deserve to be killed for killing our citizens. Thus we have killed those who attacked our lands, and we killed some of those who sought to keep you from our justice the last time we were here.

“But as you’ve shown here in Serminak, it’s a greater victory to beat your opponent bloody without fear of reprisal due to overwhelming power than it is to simply kill him. More importantly, we have no wish to kill all of your people, or we would do so. Most Serminaki have not taken a direct part in crimes against us, unless you count chasing me all over the world and defending you, and we’d be willing to forgive that. Believe me, I could kill every Sylvan and dragon on Serminak right now if I wanted to. I just knocked three billion of you half senseless, and I’m not even breathing hard.

“Make no mistake. The Just Alliance is taking over Serminak. Our little demonstration here today, including the beating you’re about to receive, will show your people how things stand from this day forward in their own terms. The way of Serminak is that you have the right to do whatever you have the power to do. We have the power to beat you severely and to bring you to justice for what you’ve done to us. We have the power to find everyone who took a direct hand in killing our citizens and to do the same to them as we’ll do to you, and we have the power to prevent any of you from attacking us again. And we’re going to do it.”

“Perhaps.” Zarkog sarcastically replied. “But you should know that the way of the Serminaki has changed. I have shown them the way of order and efficiency, and I have won their admiration and their loyalty. They will not be swayed from my command by your words.

“Furthermore, you are not alone in the ability to wield the power of others. I can do so, even if most of my people cannot, and I am supreme at the skill. And while you have been stating your position in an obvious attempt to undermine my authority, my fighters have recovered from your attack and have withdrawn beyond your immediate reach. As you can see.

“I now wield their power. I don’t know how you manage to contain the magic of your alliance in such puny bodies without burning up like dry leaves on red lava, but you cannot continue to do so forever. And while my Sylvan may lack the thousands of tricks you fools have been using, I do not, and each one of them carries far more power than most of your best. Even my young dragons have no lack of raw power, for all their lack of experience.

“So while I may be facing the combined efforts of your pitiful alliance, you face the consolidated power of mighty Serminak. And I would judge my power to exceed yours by a full half. I give you this one chance to surrender, or it is you who will be beaten, and I promise you, you will be beaten to death. Both of you. If you surrender, you will survive your punishment, which will end, eventually. Your foolish illusion of size cannot save you.”

“Can he really do that?!” Talia asked in a panic, though she kept her expression calm. “Take the power of an entire continent of wizards within himself with conventional pull spells without burning out?! Without even having to Link with them?!”

“He would not say so if he could not!” Quewanak urgently insisted. “Kill him! Kill him now, while you can!”

“No! Let’s see what he can do first!” Mark countered. “He’s under-estimated us before, he could very well be doing it again! This is also a propaganda battle for the loyalty of Serminak, and we don’t gain that by killing him!”

As Mark had spoken with Zarkog, he and Talia had continued to grow, so far as observers could tell. Mark now stood four hundred feet tall, and his thicker build meant that he bulked a quarter more than the Dragon Lord. Behind him, Talia stood two hundred feet tall.

“You really should pay more attention to those you consider to be snacks, Zarkog.” Mark laughed. “While I can well believe that your foolish young dragons might actually revere you so much as to sacrifice themselves on your behalf, Sylvan lack any such sentiment. You have the power to beat them with impunity, so they’ve had no choice but to obey you, and they’ll do the same for me for the same reason. Once I’ve sworn them to justice, they can do whatever they want, without fear of such tortures.

“And while you’re right that this body is magic and not meat, it’s not an illusion, it’s a fully-powered Simulacrum. It doesn’t matter if my fists are flesh or Force, it’s still gives me the reach I need to punch your fire out. And while I could use other spells, there’s something instinctively compelling about a good old-fashioned beating. Like this one.”

As he said that last, he leaped forward and threw a strike with his fist, but most of the magic he used in that moment went into thousands of immensely powerful Force particles, each no bigger than a speck of dust. They shredded Zarkog’s incredibly charged Shield just in front of Mark’s gigantic fist of Force, which struck Zarkog’s snout without impedance, shattering it in a fountain of blood as the dark dragon spun back and away to minimize the impact.

Zarkog instantly Healed himself as he checked his spin and momentum. His incredible double voice screamed in rage as he blasted them with his fire and shot the most powerful bolt of destructive energy ever cast on Kellaran from his outstretched claws. Nor was he fooled by their simulacrum’s appearance, his bolt was aimed at their real bodies, floating in the center of Mark’s gigantic simulated torso.

As quick as he was, Talia was quicker, and she Translocated herself and Mark up into his simulacrum’s head, avoiding the bolt’s intense but short duration, which harmlessly passed below them.

It was to be noted later how lucky it was that it was aimed at a slight upward angle and so disappeared into the sky, for if that bolt had struck land it would have devastated everything for hundreds of miles in that direction. Zarkog’s blast of fire-breath was more instinctive than tactical, and was almost insignificant compared to the other energies being exchanged.

Meanwhile Mark had been unremitting in his attack, and ignored the bolt that passed through his simulacrum’s chest. He moved forward with his punch and followed it with an expert kick that broke Zarkog’s ribs, since his boot was also preceded by his many tiny Shield-shredders.

Even as Zarkog recoiled from the kick he blasted Mark and Talia with a directed Concussion, cast with unmatchable speed. The cone-shaped explosion blasted up and shredded Mark and Talia’s Simulacrums, their Shields, their armor and possessions, their weapons except for Ria and GrimFang, and their bodies. The two swords were thrown for miles by the blast.