Mercy: 11 Death Sensation
#11 of Mercy
When the fighting started, Motungo rushed toward the stone tower that held the power behind the barrier. The tower stood on a small branch in the stream that ran towards the cliff not far away. He had never been a good artificer, but breaking the device would be much easier than building one. Motungo summoned a small wisp from within himself and brought it to his fore paw.
"How long will this take?" Gothard asked.
Motungo reared himself up and leaned on the stone pillar. Standing on his hind legs, he could just reach the top piece of the tower. With the glowing silvery wisp slowly spreading a glow over his paw, Motungo pushed against the stone face. After a moment, his paw sunk into the pillar as if it was sand.
"This shouldn't take long." Motungo felt inside the pillar for one of the small crystals near the top, "All I have to do is turn one of these things a little and that should turn this tower off."
"One of these things?"
"I'll tell you later." Motungo felt the cold smooth surface of a crystal and began turning it slowly, "I'll have this done in just a moment. You guys ready?"
Argh chirped and stepped closer to the pillar.
Motungo finished twisting the crystal and pulled his fore paw out slowly. He could feel the wisps shift in their individual prisms, and he hoped that would be enough to bring down the barrier enough to let them through.
"Alright, it should be down. Let's get inside before you two do whatever it is." Motungo dropped back to all fours and trotted back into the Covenant land. The treeline opposite of the stream would give them all cover enough until someone came to fix the tower. "Someone will know the tower has been tampered with, but it's going to take a while. Mercy should keep them distracted for a while."
"That will be good. We'll all be gone before they come back." Gothard said.
After a few minutes, Motungo stopped under a large oak tree, "This should be good enough. If we do any magic, the Covenant shouldn't feel it through the towers."
The other two had stopped next to him. Gothard glanced at Argh, then nodded. "You're right, we should get on the spell."
"What?"
"Sorry," Gothard pointed at Argh, "he said we should work on your alteration as soon as we can."
"It's amazing you can hear him."
"I forget people can't hear him." Gothard pulled the traveling pack from his back and laid it on the ground and set his staff with it. "Anyway, what we're going to do is going to hurt. We've actually going to be using a small bit of Mercy's magic on you to start the process."
"Is this going to hurt a lot?" Motungo scowled.
"At first it might, but the last half should feel pretty good. Are you ready?"
"Like I said earlier today, you can never be ready for these things."
Gothard looked skeptical as he started digging through his pack. Motungo tapped his talons on the ground while he watched the man. He finally pulled out a small gray object that looked like a flattened pebble from a river.
"Here it is." Gothard smiled at it as he waved towards Motungo, "Argh, get behind him so I can get the ether moving. Mercy gave us two scales. One should do, but an extra is good."
"Is there anything special about this I should know?" then Motungo added quietly, "Other than you're both going to try and kill me with it."
"Unless we do this again in about three days, the spell will wear away and you'll be exposed. Other than that, that's it."
Motungo took a deep breath, squared his wings back and nodded, "Cast it."
Gothard held the scale up with both hands, then he blew at it and closed his eyes. As his breath touched the scale, it floated away from his hands and a red mist formed around it. Motungo could see the scale dissolve into a small red cloud that hung in the air before Gothard. Without warning, Gothard pushed his hands through the mist.
The mist shot towards him, driving into his chest like ice in a blizzard. His scales tingled for a second, and then he felt the sensation flow deeper into him and spread quickly. Then his heart stopped beating. Motungo tried to shout, but that instant all strength left him and he collapsed to the ground. His whole body felt numb and burned at the same time, as his vision began to fail. I'm dying, Gods, I'm dead.
Then Argh laid a clawed foot gently on Motungo's muzzle. Nearly instantly, his body flooded with warmth and his heart leaped back to work. Motungo blinked as Argh withdrew his foot. The large bird sat beside Motungo and watched him intently as Motungo picked his head up off of the ground.
"Wow. What was that?" Motungo asked in awe.
"We froze your life for a moment and started it again."
"What did it do?"
"Well, magically speaking, you won't seem like you have wisps. Anything designed to sense a dragon's presence will only see a sparrow's presence instead. You're still a dragon, look like one, smell like one, and all that, but magically you're invisible for the time being."
"I feel great though. I feel like I slept for a couple days, had the best meal of my life, and all the pains have gone."
"Argh likes you and did a little extra work."
Motungo stood slowly and gave a quick bow of his head towards Argh, "Thank you."
The bird puffed up it's feathers, and Motungo just felt as if he smiled back at him. The more time he spent around the bird, the more he thought he could read his expressions. It was that or the three's insanity had begun to wear off on him.
"Well," Motungo said, "I'm going to see if I can find Cellista. Thank you both for your help."
"Actually, we're not done yet." Gothard picked up his bag and staff, "Argh wants to help you look, so we're going to be around."
"You don't know what she even looks like though."
"I don't no, but Mercy gave Argh a description. Seems Mercy has seen this dragoness a couple times. So I'll be following him around. I'm just going to be a translator between you two for a while it seems."
"You shouldn't stay, this is Covenant land. If they find you, you are going to be treated roughly. I don't even know what they'd do to you or Argh."
"They won't find us. They haven't the last several times we've been here."
"Hmm." Motungo tilted his head thoughtfully at him, "I won't stop you, I suppose. You've done all I need, so what you do from here on is up to you."
***
"There's nothing I can do for him Vardelan. I don't know what sort of magic that thing did to him. I've not seen this before."
"Is he dead?"
"No, that's the strange thing. He's still here, it's as if that boneweaver just put him asleep. I can't wake him though. There's nothing that any magic that I know can help him."
Thoradin recognized Vardelan's voice, but not the other dragon's. Then he realized his whole body felt numb, it was a terrible sensation. After opening his eyes just a sliver, he wished he hadn't. The sunlight above flooded his sight and he growled as he screwed his eyes shut.
"Thoradin!" Vardelan said, "Sacaemir's blessings, you're still alive. I thought that Avatar had you killed."
"I feel dead." Thoradin said through his teeth. Even moving the muscles to speak hurt. Whatever the Avatar had done, it had hurt.
"Arsela came as soon as she could." Vardelan said, "She's been trying to heal whatever it was that the Avatar had done."
"Where's the worst of it Thoradin?" Arsela asked.
"I don't know. Is the Avatar gone? Did we win?"
"It escaped," Vardelan stamped a foot in frustration. Then he frowned as he looked down at Thoradin, "Though it might have been for the best in your case. If it had stayed, I don't think the two of us would have been able to stop it. There are several hunters out looking at the boarders now trying to find traces of it.
"I must say though, I've never seen another dragon brave a boneweaver like you have Thoradin. To charge an Avatar straight on like you did, I don't know if that's brilliance or madness. I'm glad you're a hunter. Your charge has given me some ideas we might be able to use on our new tower."
"I want to sleep. Can we talk later?"
"First," Arsela said, "let's see about getting you somewhere a little better to sleep. Come on Vardelan, help me move him."