Free Nightlord: Shadows by Garon Whited Page A

thought for a moment. I never saw a dragon that big, but I have seen some things to compare.
    A helicopter gunship appeared. As the dragon roared and flapped toward it, the gunship unloaded its missiles in a massive barrage. The dragon disappeared in the explosions, leaving only the steady whup-whup-whup of the hovering vehicle.
    “What is that?” Hagus asked, wincing as his mental creation was destroyed.
    “It’s a dragon from my homeland,” I replied. Round one to me. The gunship faded from existence.
    “Very well,” Hagus said. “You win that one. Winner goes first.”
    “All right.” The advantage was generally to the loser. The winner picked something, while the loser merely had to come up with an adequate response.
    Well, I have memories I don’t know about, obviously. I blame my overeating in Zirafel. So I thought to myself, What’s the most powerful and dangerous thing anyone in Zirafel could have ever known, seen, or experienced?
    The Iron Bull of Colchis. Nice place, Colchis. Lovely climate, nice ocean views, had a thriving trade with Salacia. Known for its iron mines. It also had a massive bull, all of iron, thirty feet at the shoulder, that acted as the city’s primary defense against invaders. Every year, the magicians of the city would gather around it and enhance it in some way. Colchis fell to sea invaders, who stayed in water too deep for the Bull to reach them while they simply bombarded the place with fire and spells. With no city to guard, the Bull simply lay down on the beach and never moved again. It may still be there, buried under sand and tides.
    Hagus’ eyebrows went up. I think I surprised him.
    “I didn’t think anyone had ever actually seen the Iron Bull. I almost thought it was a myth!” he said. I shrugged. I wondered what he would come up with.
    He didn’t disappoint. The sizzling, smoking thing that appeared was only a little larger than man-sized, but it was amorphous. The Bull stepped on it, and it squished—and didn’t care. Indeed, it started crawling up the Bull’s leg, sizzling and eating away at the iron as it did. The Bull bucked and scraped, trying to get it off with another hoof, dragging it through the sand, twisting in ways no normal bull could manage. Whatever the thing was, it sizzled everywhere it touched the Bull. It didn’t like the scraping against the sand; that seemed to smear it in large patches.
    While they fought, I examined the spell I was in. It’s hard to do that from inside a spell, especially when it’s a spell that drags you into your own head, or out of it. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to escape it. Well, there was: stand up. Since it wasn’t my spell, though, that wasn’t really an option; this one included a binding spell to keep me in it, which meant I was, effectively, tied to the chair.
    At the end, the Bull won, but only on points. All four legs, both horns, and much of the face was gone, eaten away. The sheer mass and size of the thing was too much for the acid monster to eat away quickly. With the goo all over the body, the remaining part of the Bull writhed and twisted in the sand, crushing, squishing, and scraping the goo into a dull smear on the arena floor.
    Hagus grimaced and rubbed at one temple. Round two.
    “I think I am taking a dislike to you,” he said.
    “I already know I don’t like you. Here, try again.” I attempted to recreate the Iron Bull, but nothing happened.
    “You can only use anything once,” he pointed out.
    “That’s new. I don’t recall that from the original version of this spell,” I said. He looked startled.
    “The original version?”
    “Yes. The one used in Zirafel, for magicians’ duels. Back then, you could summon the same thing over and over again until your opponent found a good counter for it, or conceded.”
    “Wait. You know this spell from Zirafel?”
    “Of course. I haven’t studied in Arondael, at this new Academy of yours,” I told him. Hagus’ expression was