Ivy League Illusion, Part 20
Transformation
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“What have you done?” I asked—not that I expected a straight answer.
“You are taking a rather long time making your choice,” whispered the Crone, her eyes gleaming in the red moonlight. “I wanted to remind you of the mistake Fjalar made, so that you would not repeat it.”
While she was talking, I reached out for the power leaking from the ground.
“Wait!” said Adreanna through our mental network. “That power is…dark. Filter it through your staff rather than taking it into yourself directly.”
Odd that I hadn’t realized that myself. I was so eager to have enough power to defeat the Crone that I had almost risked corrupting my own mind. Nidhoggson would have had a field day with that.
“I’m nothing like Fjalar,” I said. “And it would be hard to forget what happened to him, considering that he’s still screaming. But I wasn’t aware there was a time limit for this particular decision. You offered us a choice but didn’t indicate we had to choose by a specific time.”
Most supernatural creatures, even the trickier ones, would feel obligated to abide by their own explicit statements. Unfortunately, the Crone hadn’t said there was no time limit. Nonetheless, she paused for a moment, looking at me as if she were seeing me for the first time.
“Ten more minutes should be enough,” she said. “After all, the question is a simple one.”
Far from being simple, the question presented a horrendous dilemma, but there was no point in arguing with her. While I pretended to weigh my options, I tapped my staff on the hard ground. It would be better if I could break the surface, but that wasn’t going to happen. Silently invoking the staff, I got it to start absorbing the power that had already leaked out of the ground.
“Stop that!” commanded the Crone, who must have sensed what I was doing. The blackthorn branches moved in closer, coming within inches of spearing all of us on their sharp, hard thorns.
“I have a plan,” said Yong-Gam. “Stall her for just a minute.”
“I was merely refreshing myself a little bit,” I said. “It’s been a long day, and there’s plenty of ambient energy to spare.”
“Nonetheless, you will desist,” she replied. “You don’t need to cast a spell to make the choice I’m offering you.”
“All right, but I will require the remainder of my ten minutes.
Yong-Gam handed his ssangsudo to DL. “Drop!” he told us, his thought so loud that I was surprised the Crone hadn’t heard it.
We hit the ground. Susan and Carlos hadn’t heard the mental command, but as vampires, they were fast and followed our lead. Before the Crone could react, Yong-Gam swelled into his dragon form, which was several times larger than his human one. That was a risky move because of the thorns, but dragons are tough, even the more peaceful Eastern ones, and branches broke as they couldn’t bend far enough to accommodate his new form. With his long, blue-green, reptilian body wedged into such a small space, he effectively blocked the branches from lashing out at us.
“You had your chance,” said the Crone, and more branches thrust up from the ground on which we had just been lying. Fortunately, we had been able to get up now that Yong-Gam wasn’t growing any further. DL, moving with the speed of a dragon and the precision that came from long practice, used Yong-Gams ssangsudo to lop off the new branches faster than they could grow. Yong-Gam roared and tore at the nearest older branches with claws and fangs. So much quick destruction released even more magic into the air.
Either the Crone was caught by surprise or was uncertain how to counter a dragon. She didn’t immediately respond, giving me time to siphon some power into my staff for purification purposes. Unfortunately, that took longer than I anticipated. The process was more complicated than the simple filtering the staff did to prevent runic magic from strengthening Nidhoggson.
Against the bloated blood moon, I could see ravens flying toward us, no doubt the Crone’s second line of attack. But she hadn’t given up on the blackthorns. Nearby branches tried to grow around Yong-Gam. Since they were coming from all directions, inevitably, some would get past him.
Drawing partly on power the staff had purified for me, I invoked Thurisaz merkstave. Among its many associations, the rune also represented thorns. I used its merkstave form to weaken the surrounding blackthorns, making them even more fragile, so that Yong Gam could uproot them just by moving around.
The ravens struck, but Adreanna already had her amber magic around us, and DL, Ekatrina, and the two vampires, had no difficulty smashing the few that penetrated.
But the Crone was nowhere near done. Already tied into the power I was trying to draw on, she somehow managed to cut me off from it, and even from a distance, I could see her own power level continuing to rise.
But what really unsettled me was what she was doing with that new rush of power. Suddenly, the thorns and branches became harder—hard enough to pierce Yong-Gam’s scales. I wouldn’t have thought the branches could be strengthened that much, but I saw thorns tearing into Yong-Gam and the blood that dripped from those wounds.
Unlike Fjalar, who had screamed himself hoarse, Yong-Gam struggled stoically against the blackthorns, but the increasing flow of blood from his sides revealed how catastrophic the damage was.
I pushed on Thurisaz merkstave as hard as I could, but I couldn’t overcome the amount of power the Crone was putting into her casting. Blood spattered all around me like rain now. Adreanna spared what magic she could to give Yong-Gam more strength.
“We may have to make a choice,” said DL in between ssangsudo swings.
“We lied,” said Carlos. His voice was so quiet that I almost missed it—but Ekaterina didn’t.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Max, we didn’t know you in school. We made that up because we thought it would make you more likely to help us.”
I looked at Carlos, whose eyes were focused on the raining blood rather than on me. So were Susan’s. “But you didn’t lie about being turned against your will?”
“No,” said Susan. “That part was true. But it looks as if we’ll all die now if you don’t make a choice. We release you from the agreement you made with us.”
I could hardly believe my ears—but, though her declaration technically freed me to do whatever I wanted, it also made me want to abandon them even less. Who ever heard of vampires—other than Ekaterina—offering to sacrifice themselves?
“Do…not…give…in…to…the…Crone.” Yong-Gam’s words came between loud gasps. The sound was enough to rend my heart.
“We can’t let him die,” said DL, grabbing my arm as if I needed to be reminded of something that basic.
For the moment, we’d bested the ravens, so Adreanna redirected all of her magic toward Yong-Gam. She did all she could ease his pain—but she could only do so much.
“Drink the blood!” DL yelled at the vampires. “It will make you stronger.”
I wasn’t sure what his plan was, but the vampires didn’t need to be invited twice. I tried to ignore the slurping sounds. From a magical perspective, they immediately looked stronger. The new power surging through them made them seem more like ancient vampires than like newly turned ones. Their eyes and skin glowed enough that the radiance might almost be visible to normal human eyes. I also couldn’t help noticing that they had lost their fear of the blackthorn. At least for the moment, the plant no longer had power over them.
As they drank, and Yong-Gam writhed, Ekaterina grabbed DL and looked into his eyes. “You must, my love. There is no other way.”
DL and Ekaterina hugged each other, though DL looked reluctant. That could have been a normal show of affection in desperate times, but I knew better.
DL had sacrificed his yeouiju to restore Ekaterina’s life force. Without the power the yeouiju provided, he could only become a full dragon for a short time. But in theory, he could draw on Ekaterina to extend that time.
DL would never do such a thing unless circumstances were desperate.
Without being told, I knew what I had to do. I focused the runic energy from Thurisaz merkstave narrowly, so that it only affected the blackthorns right next to us. For a moment, the nearest thorns and branches softened. Yong-Gam broke partway free, but I knew something else was coming, as did Adreanna. We both dropped again, and the blood-gorged vampires once more followed suit.
As DL expanded, Ekaterina climbed onto his back as if she had been born to ride dragons. His sudden growth uprooted and sometimes shattered the nearest blackthorns. Taking advantage of the momentary gap he had created, DL took to the air with an enormous roar. Ekaterina clung to him like iron shavings to a magnet. She shouldn’t have been able to do that, but the yeouiju power within her, still connected to DL, enabled them to work almost like one being.
As if by instinct, Carlos picked up the dropped ssangsudo, and started hacking away at newly growing blackthorns with greater speed than even DL could achieve in his human form. I wasn’t surprised, though. I’d seen this phenomenon before. Back when Ekaterina was still a vampire, DL donated enough blood to keep her going, and she had always been more powerful right after such an infusion.
But Carlos and Susan had taken, not the the blood from a humaniform proto-dragon, but blood from a full dragon, an immensely more potent energy source. Even Susan, without a weapon, successfully stomped on new blackthorns before they could get more than an inch out of the ground, crushing them with a force she couldn’t have summoned up before.
In fact, she hit so hard that cracks spread through the soil. Seeing a big enough one, I stuck my staff directly into it, and the staff started absorbing power directly from the broken ground.
The Crone might have been able to block my new access, even though it was more immediate. But she was too preoccupied by DL, speeding toward her like a guided missile. She focused all her power and concentration on encasing herself in blackthorn branches too tough for DL to break. She could succeed, but I might be able to craft an even bigger threat.
I had to be careful. There was enough power in the soil to burn out the staff if I forced it to take too much too quickly. But it had been fashioned with wood from Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and the runes had been painted on it in Freya’s own blood. It could endure power levels that would destroy my all too mortal flesh and blood.
DL collided with the Crone’s defensive barrier with enough force to level any ordinary structure, but the blackthorn branches, though they creaked, didn’t immediately break. DL pulled back and circled in the sky, building momentum.
Between the power of Thurisaz merkstave and the frenetic efforts of Carlos and Susan, the immediate area around us was cleared of the deadly thorns, and Yong-Gam settled for a moment as Adreanna helped him heal. His draconic regeneration did most of the work. The blood flow had already ebbed to a mere trickle.
What I needed to do involved a dangerous amount of magical multitasking, but with the staff’s help, I might be able to pull it off. Holding on to Thurisaz, I invoked Berkana, a rune that looked like an angular B. Associated with birch trees, it represented rebirth and regeneration, among other things.
But I was not done yet. I also invoked the ogham symbol, Beith, a straight vertical line with another line extending to the right from the middle of the first line. It, too, represented the birch tree and had a similar meaning. Using it and Berkana together enabled me to draw on both Norse and Celtic magics simultaneously.
My staff was swollen with power now. Holding it felt almost like holding the World Tree in my hands. I let the power flow into the the runes and ogham letters, building toward the fulfillment of my plan.
DL thudded against the Crone’s protection again. Even from a distance, I felt branches come close to cracking, roots come close to pulling loose from the ground. Yet the barrier held, and as I checked with magical senses becoming more heightened by the moment, I felt Ekaterina weakening. DL might have only one more strike in him before he had to shed the dragon form. I needed to be done by then.
Using the combined power of Beith and Berkana, I initiated plant growth of my own. From the shattered ground around us sprung euphorbia milii—Christ thorn, the plant from which the crown of thorns was supposedly made. Its stems were indeed thorny, and its red blossoms, vivid in comparison to the white blooms on the blackthorn, were said to represent Christ’s blood. At the same time, its vibrant green leaves were a reminder of the enduring quality of life. The plant symbolized sacrifice—but also redemption. I hoped those associations were rooted in fact, but I knew it could repel negative energy, which would help with our immediate needs.
I wished Reverend Falco were here to bless the ground, but of course, he wasn’t. My faith, such as it was, would have to be enough.
Yong-Gam, healed but still weak from blood loss, nonetheless took to the skies to help DL. Susan and Carlos continued to destroy the blackthorns, which had stopped their unnatural growth for the moment. I sent the energy of Thurisaz after them to help, just in case. And I filled every inch of land they cleared with Christ thorn.
I could feel the balance shifting around me. Ironically, the Christ thorn drove away the very magic I was trying to harness, but I had enough to keep going for a while. I spent a good deal of that magic making the growth of the Christ thorns self-sustaining, so that the plants would continue to increase their growth and collective power without any further support from me.
I pulled the staff out of the ground, after which Adreanna and I levitated, and I used a little air magic to push us toward where the Crone was.
DL was standing some distance from the Crone now, having taken back his human form. Ekaterina leaned on him for support. But now Yong-Gam took his place.
He had no better luck than DL. The Crone’s defenses always seemed close to breaking, yet they never broke. But perhaps they wouldn’t need to.
The Crone had withdrawn all the power she had invested in the blackthorn forest, so that the abandoned plants were now decaying as we flew over them. Susan and Carlos, seeing what was happening, followed my lead, arriving near the Crone’s enclosure at about the same time Adreanna and I did. Yong-Gam was circling for another collision. DL and Ekaterina moved closer when they saw us arrive.
“You will not escape me so easily,” whispered the Crone. “I can go on this way indefinitely. Those of you who are flesh and blood cannot.”
Defiant as her words were, I could see the truth. The Christ thorn growth nearby had disrupted the energy on which she drew. If she kept expending enough power to fend off a dragon attack, she would eventually fade away. Or perhaps she could survive by fleeing to another part of the plane.
But such an ending might not really be a victory for us. It was possible that the choice she had imposed upon us would survive her, creating a situation in which we remained trapped until we chose. I couldn’t risk that.
I turned to Carlos and Susan, still glowing from the infusion of dragon blood, though the fact that they were crusted with dry blood that had covered them while Yong-Gam’s wounds were at their worst made them look like something out of a horror movie. “Would you wish to be human if it could be accomplished without sacrificing everyone else?”
“We would,” said Carlos. “Even though being a vampire fed on dragon blood was a great natural high. Just kidding!” he added when DL looked ready to take a swing at him. “We’ve only been vampires a short time. We could go back to our old lives, to our families and friends.”
Yong-Gam struck the Crone’s enclosure with enough force to make the ground shake. But he still didn’t break through it.
He did, however, leave cracks in the nearby ground. I thrust the staff into one, hoping to find enough power to execute my plan.
“What have you got in mind?” asked DL.
Answering a mental request from me, Yong-Gam landed next to the Crone’s enclosure and started clawing furiously at it. That approach didn’t work any better than ramming her defenses, but he did create a lot of distraction and noise. Hopefully, that would keep the Crone’s attention away from us. I wasn’t sure how much she could do now, but I wanted to take no chances.
“You revived Ekaterina with your yeouiju, which replaced the power that was animating her. You also fed her on your high-energy blood, which over time, restored her to life.”
“But there’s no way to replicate those circumstances now,” said DL, looking at me as if I were crazy. “We can’t get another yeouiju, and I think it was the key element. It retained some of its own awareness even after its power merged with Ekaterina. Remember, we decided that it must have been that awareness that triggered her return to life. The yeouiju didn’t understand vampirism and gradually made her into something it did understand.”
“Yes, I’ve studied the situation quite a bit. There is no way to replicate the exact circumstances that resurrected Ekaterina and banished her vampiric nature—but we could do something similar.
“Carlos and Susan absorbed an unprecedented amount of dragon blood in a very short time. Look closely at them. What do you see and sense?”
DL grimaced. “They smell like dragon blood, but after all, they’re covered in it.”
“Look deeper,” I said.
My best friend squinted at them, his brow wrinkled in concentration. “The necromantic power that animates them isn’t as obvious. It’s still there, but…but they seem to be running on dragon blood!”
“Exactly. A mature dragon like Yong-Gam carries his yeouiju power within him. Some of it is in his blood.”
“But surely, the blood isn’t sentient,” asked Ekaterina. “It won’t guide them into some kind of transformation. And powerful as it is, whatever effect it does have will still wear off.”
“That’s why we must act quickly,” I said. “We can link to them and let our collective desire do for them what the yeouiju did for you. If the dragon’s blood doesn’t retain quite enough energy to get the job done, we can draw on the power of Beith and Berkana—renewal and regeneration. We can draw on the Christ thorn for redemptive power. And I can add whatever I can pull from the soil.
“So no, we can’t replicate the details—but we can match the power level and the intent.”
“Worth a try,” said DL, looking at me with an admiration I hoped I could justify.
It took us little time to hook Carlos and Susan into our network. I let all the different kinds of magic that I had invoked flow into them. Adreanna added her amber magic, rich in love and powerful at conquering evil. DL and Ekaterina contributed their iron wills and their affinity for dragon blood.
I felt the blood stir within our two vampires, pulsing with power. I felt their tissues mutating, becoming more like Ekaterina’s. Finally, I felt the spark of life spread its fire within them, banishing the necromantic energy that had animated them before.
Ekaterina’s transformation had happened by accident. We now knew that a similar process could be triggered on purpose if the conditions were right.
Susan and Carlos looked at each other with disbelief. “You…you did it!” said Carlos.
“Yes, we did,” I said, turning toward the Crone’s enclosure and motioning for Yong-Gam to stop clawing at it. “The choice you offered us is now invalid,” I shouted. “Carlos and Susan are no longer vampires. You cannot give us what we already have.”
The Crone appeared right next to me, nearly causing me to have a heart attack. Yet she smiled, an expression that looked oddly genuine.
“I am neither good nor evil,” she said. “I just am. The choices I offered you were a test to prove your worthiness of my help, not a dilemma to torture you.”
“Yet it did torture us,” said Adreanna, her tone sharp and unforgiving.
“Sometimes, progress can be made only through suffering,” the Crone replied, glancing at the Christ thorn forest and giving me an unexpected wink. “Only good people would suffer when faced with such a choice. Evil ones would do what best served their own interest and never waste a second worrying about it.
“I suspected that you would prevail, but I had to be sure. All of you demonstrated the necessary self sacrifice—even the vampires. The children of the night are not known for such decisions.”
“You might not have known about them—but you could have judged us by our past history,” said DL, frowning at her.
“The past is not always a prophecy of the future,” she said. “People do change—and sometimes for the worse.”
“I must go now—but perhaps we will meet again when the blackthorn blooms in the spring.” With that, the Crone disappeared. But on the spot where she was standing, a glowing portal beckoned to us.
“I think we’re owed an apology,” said DL His voice sounded tight, and his fists clenched.
“We should be thankful that we prevailed and leave it at that,” said Yong-Gam, now returned to human form. “Whoever…whatever the Crone really is, it would be useless to try to force our idea of appropriateness on her. You might as well give ethics lessons to the wind.”
“Uh, much as we want to return home, we can’t go looking like this,” said Susan, still looking more like a horror movie prop than a person.
“You can come to our home first and get cleaned up,” said Adreanna. “After that, we can take you wherever you need to go.”
“After a little instruction,” said Ekaterina. “You are no longer vampires—but you are like me, an artificially created proto-dragon. That’s a good thing, as it endows you with new abilities. But the supernatural world has…expectations about the use of those abilities. I can explain the do’s and don’ts for you.”
“That’s…a lot to take in,” said Carlos. “We’d be grateful for any help you can give us.”
“You’re part of our family now,” said Yong-Gam. “We will gladly help you.”
That was hands-down the most emotional statement I’d ever heard him make. It almost moved me to tears.
Adreanna put her arms around me. “The portal may not stay open forever. I suggest that we go home now and finish this conversation once we’re safe.”
Safe was a relative term, of course. We’d won this round, but who knew what fresh hell tomorrow would bring?
I decided not to think about that as I kissed my wife and walked through the portal, with the others close behind.
We had each other, and that would be enough. We would prevail.
(The adventures of Max and his friends are done—for now. Next week a new serial, The Carnival of Deepest Desire, will begin.)
Ivy League Illusion is related to the Different Dragons series. (The action falls after the end of the third book.)
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