Curse Of The Dark Wind (Book 6) by Charles E. Yallowitz Page A

frustration at having forgotten Fizzle and wonders if his enemies have been aware of him this entire time. Grinding his teeth, General Vile draws a smooth, ebony wand and spins it in front of him.
    “Open the voice and grant me audience,” he whispers. A swirling portal of dull red magic appears and shows him the noisy laboratory of Nyder Fortune. “Are you there, old gnome? I need to talk to you.”
    To his dismay, a naked woman with swirling black and white skin and light green hair pokes her head through the portal. She looks ragged and the edges of her knee-length hair are smoking as if they were recently on fire. The woman shushes Vile by putting a finger to her lips before retreating back into the laboratory.
    “Vile wants you, Nyder!” Yola Biggs shouts with enough force to shatter all of the glass around her. “He’s stuck in a tree and needs a ladder!”
    “I’m not stuck in the tree, you loopy goddess,” the halfling mutters, getting comfortable among the branches. “I’ve run into a situation and would like to request one of Nyder’s creations. I don’t have much time.”
    “Why don’t you ever ask for my help?” the goddess asks with a pout that makes her lips twice their normal size.
    “It’s too dangerous for you to leave Shayd. I would be a terrible person if I put you in harm’s way,” Vile swiftly answers, bowing his head to the Goddess of Chaos. He breathes a sigh of relief when she blushes, her cheeks turning a vivid red. “Besides, this is a minor task that a being of your power shouldn’t have to worry about. It’s merely a pest that I need to squash without revealing myself.”
    “I don’t have much, old soldier!” a voice shouts from Yola’s left.
    Nyder Fortune steps into view, his bald head covered in grease and blood. A stained smock protects his silk clothes, which consist of a bright yellow shirt and lime green pants. His bulbous nose is as red as his eyes and dripping sweat from a long day of work. The gnome places several tools on a nearby table, most of them edged and resembling torture equipment. Crossing his arms, Nyder waits patiently for his friend to talk. Yola imitates the gesture, but stops when the inventor glares at her disapprovingly. The goddess slinks away, her departure soon followed by a chorus of monstrous screams.
    “That noise is almost musical,” Vile says, curious about what the unhinged deity is doing.
    “Our dear Yola has claimed some of my older Weapon Dragons and is trying to teach them how to sing. She wants to take them to taverns and perform,” Nyder states, his voice edged with irritation. He sits on a metal stool and leans on the wax-covered table, looking more tired than he would like to admit. “Has something gone wrong with your hunt?”
    “I forgot about the drite, who has been acting as an aerial scout. I’m guessing they ignored him to make any pursuers think he wasn’t with them. I haven’t been close enough to hear anything, so they could be in communication with him. It doesn’t appear that he’s seen me, but I’m not comfortable following them right now. I was hoping you had a tool or a construct that I could use to continue tracking from a safe distance.”
    Nyder cracks his knuckles and holds his hands out, muttering an incantation. A thick tome appears in his arms and he rapidly thumbs through the pages. He pauses briefly to run a finger down an entry, scowling when he reaches the bottom. Flipping the book over, he checks the pages from the opposite direction. This time there are pictures on the paper alongside the previous words, the handwriting resembling the scrawls of an impatient child.
    “I hate to admit this, but I don’t have any scouting projects right now,” the gnome says, lazily opening to random pages. He tosses the heavy tome on the table, cringing at the echoing slam. “All of them are broken or in the field. Most of the functional ones are tracking Isaiah, who is apparently waiting for the