Ivy League Illusion, Part 5

Within the Enemy

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I tried to fight against the transformation, but I didn’t know how. Though I remained roughly human in form, my skin had been complete replaced by black scales, my fingernails and toenails by claws, my teeth by fangs. Batlike wings tore free from my back and extended about eleven feet in each direction.

“What have you done to me?” I yelled—sort of. I no longer had any control over my body, but I thought loudly

“What was necessary,” Nidhoggson replied. I had felt cold when he emerged inside me. I felt even colder now that I was inside him. I might as well have been embedded in a glacier.

Panic washed over me in hysterical waves, but I was so disconnected from my body that neither my breathing nor my heart rate responded.

Like it or not, I had become a passenger in my own body.

The vampires all froze in place, but they didn’t seem as surprised as I would have expected.

“I will leave now,” said Nidhoggson, his voice loud as the roar of a winter storm. “But before I go, I will kill you all as a punishment for your attack on my host.”

“Wait!” said the black-robed figure. “We are not your enemies. In fact, we brought Max here specifically so that we could trick him into releasing you.”

“Explain yourself!” demanded Nidhoggson. My—his—muscles felt relaxed. He intended to hear them out rather than slaughter them.

“As you are no doubt aware, we erased Max’s memories. One of the consequences of such an action was that he was no longer using his mental discipline to restrain you. He no longer remembered the techniques. He no longer remembered even that you existed.

“Unfortunately, he must have built up sufficient mental defenses over time that you remained imprisoned despite our intervention. We tried to free you from the outside and failed. That was when we created an illusion and a false set of memories for him. We knew that he would see through that illusion eventually. We developed a plan to use the breakdown of the illusion to frighten him into releasing you from your bonds. As you can see, the plan worked exactly as we intended, and you are free.”

“I thank you,” said Nidhoggson. “But I assume that you want something in return.”

“We wish to study you. You are unique, and we could learn much from you. In addition, we wish to control Max’s staff, also unique and incredibly powerful. It is possible that you could release it to us, though you would probably have to resume human form to do that.”

“Again, I thank you,” said my captor. “But I have no wish to be studied nor to return to human form, even temporarily.”

Without waiting for a reply, Nidhoggson flew straight up into the air with speed that seemed to surprise the vampires even more than me. In seconds, he was so far away that I doubted they’d ever be able to catch up.

“You betrayed me,” I said, not knowing what else to do. Unless I got my memories back, I had no way to fight Nidhoggson.

“Survival of the fittest,” he replied. “I am stronger than you. I deserve control of the body.”

“Yet from what I heard, I’ve been able to restrain you for years.”

I waited for a long time, but Nidhoggson didn’t respond. Either he had no comeback, or he thought talking to me was a waste of time.

He slowed his assent and looked around. Below us lay a vast landscape of desolation, jagged rocks, and obsidian buildings. As far as I could tell from my fake Harvard memories, the buildings matched the layout of the illusionary campus. I guessed they couldn’t very well have had me running into invisible obstacles all the time.

The night vision of Nidhoggson’s reptilian eyes was excellent. So was his ability to see what I guessed was magic. There were distinct, glowing blotches below us that might indicate high concentrations of power. There was even a small pinpoint almost directly below us that might have been the black-robed figure we’d been talking to.

But one thing wasn’t visible—any kind of exit. As far as I could tell, the wasteland stretched out endlessly in all directions.

“You don’t know how to get out of here, do you?”

“There must be a way out,” he replied. “After all, they brought us here. Where there is an entrance, there must also be an exit.”

“Unless they enter and exit magically in a way that you can’t imitate.”

I hadn’t regained my memories, so all I could do was speculate about how magic worked. But since this seemed to be a magic place, it made sense that travel to and from it might need to be magical.

“That is…possible,” admitted Nidhoggson. “In that case, I will fly back and force your kidnapper to open a way for us.”

I had a hard time imagining that a group that went to such trouble to free Nidhoggson wouldn’t also have a plan for how to contain him if they needed to, but I decided not to say anything. Right now, I didn’t trust Nidhoggson any more than I did the vampires.

And in the back of my mind, a question started scratching—how was I going to get rid of Nidhoggson and get my own body back?

He descended even faster than he had risen, unbothered by the chilling air through which we tore. But he slowed a little when he saw a giant rune forming in the air below us. No one had traced that with a finger. The caster had simply willed it into being.

Nidhoggson started to spin in midair, readying himself to climb again. He said nothing to me, but I thought I could feel fear adding to his normal chill.

He wasn’t in a position to see the rune, but I still could as if it had been etched into my mind. It was a straight line with an X through its bottom third.

Nidhoggson started to climb, but he moved more slowly with each passing second. I could feel his strength draining away. Whatever the rune was, I was sure it was culprit. The vampires had planned for a possible escape.

Nidhoggson’s wings froze, and we began to lose altitude. But we were still too high! I wanted to stop his descent, but I had no idea how. His powerful muscles were limp as spaghetti inside his limbs and wings, and I could do nothing to help.

Detached though I was from my own body, I felt sharp pain in both legs as I hit the ground feet first. My transformed body must have been more durable than my human one, or I would have shattered all my leg bones in that kind of fall. I even managed to stay on my feet—barely.

Above me, the rune I had seen from the sky burned like fire, its power drawing strength from Nidhoggson the way a vampire might drain blood.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” said the black robed figure. “But we cannot allow you to escape. Give us what we asked, and we will let you go.”

Nidhoggson tried to roar, but the sound came out more like a croak. He did manage to look just menacing enough when the vampires started to step forward to keep them from moving any closer, but he was getting weaker by the second. a minute or so more, and he might be unconscious.

“The rune is Ior, the Anglo-Saxon rune of the serpent,” Nidhoggson whispered to me. “but it is merkstave—upside down. Draw it within me, right-side up, and I may regain some of my strength. It is out only hope.”

It might be his only hope, but I was still uncertain which side to root for. However, I saw other vampires coming, bringing large chains that gleamed with powerful magic. If I let Nidhoggson be captured, the vampires would get what they wanted—and probably kill Nidhoggson, and me with him once they were done.

I traced the rune as he had told me. My rune was much smaller than the one above, but Nidhoggson did get another burst of energy. He used it to swat the vampire nearest him, crushing the creature in one blow. The bloody remains looked as if a full-sized dragon claw rather than a clawed human fist had inflicted the damage. Nidhoggson might lack the size, but he certainly didn’t lack the strength.

The other vampires fell back then. However, I felt Nidhoggson’s strength fade almost immediately.

“More!” Nidhoggson whispered. I did what I had done when I was trying to see the truth—I traced the rune over and over. A new one took shape before the old one was completely drained. Nidhoggson lunged forward, staggering as he tried to escape from the rune above us. The vampires stayed out of arm’s reach, but they didn’t flee. And as we moved, the rune above us did as well.

I had the feeling that when I had all my memories, I could do a a better job with magic. But I didn’t know how to access that knowledge now. Drawing runes was strictly a mental activity at this point, but I felt myself tiring, anyway. Just as with Sowilo before, the runes drew strength from me. There was a limit to how long I could keep going.

Maybe if I could find that powerful staff of mine, I could use it against the vampires, maybe even against Nidhoggson. I looked around and and saw several glowing spots that might be magic, but none of them called to me as if they were in some way connected to me. My guess was that the staff was too far away to do me any good.

“Change back,” I suggested. “The serpent rune won’t affect you then, will it?”

“No, but your body is weak,” replied Nidhoggson. Having seen my true body in the mirror, I knew he had a point. “The vampires will easily overpower me.”

“Change back, and I’ll use Sowilo to keep them at bay while you regain your strength.”

“That might work,” he admitted grudgingly. Perhaps because his draconic nature was already weakened by the effects of Ior, he let go of his hybrid form much more rapidly than he had invoked it. One second, I was physically half a dragon. The next, I was human again, and Nidhoggson had returned enough control to me for me to use my hands. I traced Sowilo with both hands, and twin sun runes blazed up in front of me before the vampires could recover from their surprise.

But the black-robed figure, though he hid from the light, seemed not to be afraid of it in the way that the vampires were. Moving faster than I, he invoked a new rune that resembled a P but was drawn entirely from straight lines, so that the bulge on the P began a triangle instead. Then it flipped into a merkstave position, and I immediately felt weaker.

“Thurisaz,” muttered Nidhoggsen. “Rune of strength, among other things, but when it is merkstave, it brings weakness instead.”

Maybe a good countermove would have been to become more like a dragon again, but I sensed Nidhoggson hadn’t recovered his strength yet, and anyway, I didn’t want to change back into that hideous shape, even if it would make me stronger. Anyway, the black-robed sorcerer would just switch tactics again.

My hands trembled, my runes flickered, and my sunlight faded to dusk levels. The vampires were upon me before I could think of anything else to do I felt fangs sink into my throat as one started drinking my blood with disturbing enthusiasm. Mercifully, I passed out before anything else could happen.

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Ivy League Illusion is related to the Different Dragons series. (The action falls after the end of the third book.)

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