The Finisher

TRIGINTA SEPTEM: A Case of Cobbles

WHEN THE CREATURE stepped into the room, the vast space seemed too small to contain it. I knew exactly what it was. I had seen a drawing and description of it in Quentin Herms’s book on the Quag. His illustration did not do it terrifying justice.

It was a cobble.

Not nearly as large as the colossals I had been pitted against, it was still horrifyingly huge. And it looked to be made of rock. But that was not the most alarming element of the thing. It had three bodies, all male and all attached, shoulder to shoulder. It had three heads and three sets of tiny wings growing out of its muscular backs. And when I looked down at its hands, I saw three swords and three axes. When I looked at the three faces, they each held the same expression: hatred fueled by fury.

“You trespass here,” one of the mouths said. Its voice was like a shriek crossed with a thunder-thrust.

I would have said something back, only I was so scared, words would not form in my throat.

Another mouth pronounced, “The punishment for trespassing is death.”

The cobble took a step forward, its immense weight threatening to crush the marble floor. I barely had time to jerk Delph downward before three axes soared over the spot where our heads had just been. They flew across the room and embedded in the far bookcase, knocking it and two of its neighbors over. As books toppled to the floor and flew open, the room was once more engulfed in the fury unleashed from their freed pages.

I grabbed Delph’s hand and jerked him to cover behind one of the fallen bookcases. For a sliver, I ignored the images cascading around us, although it wasn’t easy. A banshee screamed away in my ear. That creature too had been in Quentin’s Quag book.

One of the cobble’s swords sliced the bookcase we were hiding behind in half; the blade stopped an inch from turning me into two Wugs. Delph started hurling books at it, but the cobble crushed the bookcase under its two middle legs as I flung myself away from it and slid across the room, crashing into another bookcase and causing a multitude of tomes to rain down on my head. Creatures great and small, long-dead Wugs, and creations I had no way to even recognize poured out of these fat volumes. The room could not hope to contain this maelstrom of mayhem.

I slipped my gloved hand in my pocket, drew out the Elemental, willed it to full form, drew my arm back, aimed and fired it directly at the middle of the cobble. It connected and disappeared in a huge wall of smoke. When the smoke cleared, the middle body of the cobble was no longer. I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed slightly. However, the other two bodies, freed from their mate, were still standing. Well, actually, they were running directly at me.

I looked wildly around for the Elemental. Then I saw it. The spear had taken a long arc around the room and was now heading back to me. Then a sword thrown by one of the cobbles collided with it, knocking it violently off course. It slammed with great velocity against a wall of bookcases. They tumbled down and, to my horror, the Elemental became trapped under them. As one of the cobbles surged straight at me, his sword held high for the killing stroke, I saw a blur of motion to my right.

“No, Delph!” I screamed.

Delph either didn’t hear me or didn’t want to hear me. He slammed into one of the cobble’s thighs. The creature was so massive that as big and strong as Delph was, he was like a bird crashing against a solid wall. Delph slumped to the floor, the senses shaken clean from him. Before I could move, the cobble had lifted him off the ground and flung him through the air as if he were a bit of parchment. I watched in horror as Delph sailed the entire length of the room and crashed into another wall of bookcases.

I started to run toward him, but I was blinded by a fiery image that had come soaring out of one of the books flying past my face. I tripped and fell to the floor. On the way down, I turned and saw a sword slashing through the air where I had been standing.

The cobble was now right over me. It raised the sword above its head and was just about to plunge it downward and separate my legs from the rest of me when I soared straight upward and shot past it. This was my true advantage against my massive opponent.

Under my cloak, Destin was warm to the touch. I zipped along the perimeter of the wall, heading toward Delph. I wouldn’t make it. I had lost track of the other cobble until it reared up directly in front of me. I had forgotten about the ruddy wings on the monstrous back. It seemed impossible that a set of fragile wings could lift such an enormous weight. But I was nimble while the cobble was not.

I flew under its arm and then around its back. It spun around, trying to keep me in sight. I kept flying in circles, faster and faster, pushing Destin and myself harder than I ever had. The cobble kept spinning too and started resembling the bonce I would rotate on the ground when I was a very young.

I shot downward as the cobble continued to spin. I pushed a bookcase out of the way, gripped the Elemental and flung it as hard as I could. The cobble came out of the rotation just as the Elemental found its mark.

The cobble exploded.

As the Elemental flew back toward me, Delph screamed, “Look out, Vega Jane.”

I partially ducked but was still knocked heels over bum and landed hard against a wall. As I slumped to the floor, the remaining cobble swung its great fist back to batter me once more, this time surely into the Hallowed Ground. I had forgotten the warning in Quentin’s book: Woe be to the Wug who forgets that destroying one part of the thing does not equal victory.

I was too wonky to fly. The Elemental was not yet back in hand. And an extremely large fist was coming right at my head. At the last instant, I sprang up and smashed my own fist into the cobble’s belly.

The cobble was lifted off its massive feet and flew backward through the air, where it struck the wall opposite so hard it exploded into fragments. I just stood there for a sliver or two looking at what remained of the cobble and then at my fist. I had no idea what had just happened. The Elemental arrived in my gloved hand and I closed my fingers around it.

I looked once more at the remains of the cobble and then my mind went back to that night at the Care when I had struck Non: My hand was injured delivering the blow. Striking the rocklike cobble, my poor bones should have shattered. There was only one explanation. I lifted my cloak and looked down at Destin. It was an ice blue. I touched it and then hastily withdrew my finger. It was molten to the touch, although all I could feel around my waist was a heightened sense of warmth.

“Wo-wo-wotcha, Ve-Ve-Vega Jane?” the voice called out.

“Delph!” I had forgotten about him.

I ran to him, used my newfound strength to throw off the bookcases that covered most of him. He was bruised and bloodied.

“Can you stand?” I asked.

He nodded slowly and said weakly, “Th-think so.”

I gingerly helped him up. He was holding his right arm funny and he couldn’t put much weight on his left leg.

“Delph, hold on to me.”

I willed the Elemental to shrink, placed it in my pocket and then lifted him up and over my back. He gasped in amazement at this, but I had no time for explanations. I leapt into the air and flew out the doorway, down the stairs, and didn’t land until we were at the door we had come through. I was giving the jabbits no chance to get us. I smashed open the door, flew through it with Delph on my back and we soared into the nighttime sky.

I didn’t land again until we were at Delph’s cottage. As I set him down, he said in a dazed voice, “How did you lift me like that, Vega Jane?”

“I’m not sure, Delph. How bad are you hurt?” I asked anxiously.

“Busted up pretty good,” he admitted. “Cobbles,” he added.

“You did read the book.”

“Dinnae figure on meeting one of them on this side of the Quag, though.”

“Can you walk?”

“I can limp.”

I slapped my forehead. “I’ve got the Adder Stone. I’ll sort you out in no time.”

I reached in one pocket. Then my other. I frantically searched every crevice of clothing I had. Then I groaned. The Stone was gone. I looked at Delph with a miserable expression.

“I must have lost it back at Stacks. I can go and —”

He gripped my arm. “You are nae going back there.”

“But the Stone. Your injuries.”

“I’ll heal, Vega Jane. Just take a bit of time.”

Then another thought seized me. “The Duelum!”

He nodded sadly. “Can’t fight with one arm and leg, can I?”

“Delph, I’m so sorry. This was all my fault.”

“In this together, Vega Jane, ain’t we? I chose to come, insisted on it, actually. And you saved me life.”

I helped him into the cottage. Duf was not there. Probably working at the Wall, I reckoned. I got Delph into his cot after cleaning up his cuts and icing his bruises with cold water from a bucket his father kept in the little cave. I fashioned a sling for his arm and found a thick cudgel he could use to help him walk.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, tears forming in my eyes.

He smiled weakly. “No dull times round you, is there? Har.”