"You can be there now, Dennis," Chester said, "if you step through the mirror."
Dennis drew his sword and stepped through the mirror. He didn't ask or question, because Chester had told him what he wanted to hear.
The youth's left elbow rang on the bronze mirror-frame, but of the glass there was no hint or hindrance. The atmosphere was humid and sticky with salt, and the air rebounded with monstrous bellowing.
Rakastava was coming.
The creature's scaly breast raised a tide on the underground sea, washing Dennis knee-high as his feet clanked down onto the stones. The star-metal armor sealed his legs against the sea's rush, but the pressure of the water made his footing chancy for a moment.
God in heaven! but the monster's roars were loud. Even when the triple throats were silent, the distant echoes competed with the slap of water against stone.
"Gannon?" called the Princess Aria. "Gannon? Who are you?"
She was a cloud of virginal white, but Dennis didn't dare let his mind dwell on her.
"Get back!" he shouted through the bars of his visor. "I've more to think of now than you!"
Dennis clenched and unclenched his left fist, proving to himself that his hands moved freely in their metal gauntlets. He lifted the point of his sword another inch.
Rakastava was bigger than its projection in the assembly hall, though most of the creature's dragon-length was hidden by the water. The body moved snake fashion, side-to-side loops that drove it forward and made the saw-edged comb on its back wobble.
The creature's eyes were red and burning. Behind its serpent necks streamed manes. They burned too, but with a sickly light deep into the violet end of the spectrum. The heads to right and left wove complex patterns as Rakastava approached, but the head in the center drove a line as direct as a beam of light.
The rippling slowed and the body straightened out, letting Rakastava's mass glide forward like that of a boat nearing dock. More of the back rose out of the water, slanting upward in a line which paralleled that of the shelving sea-bottom. As it moved closer, Dennis saw that Rakastava had short, clawed limbs at the base of its triple throats, where the pectoral fins of a fish would have been.
"Step aside, little man," the center head rumbled. The eyes glared ten feet above the water and ten feet away from Dennis, so that he had to look up to meet them. "I will take the Princess Aria, and I will let you live."
Dennis said, "You won't take—" and the head on Rakastava's left struck at him.
The helmet cut off some of Dennis' peripheral vision so he didn't react quickly enough to meet the attack with his point, but reflex lifted the cross-guard and the meat of his blade against the rushing jaws. Though the impact slammed him back, his star-metal edge cut a notch from Rakastava's lip.
Blood with orange fire at its heart spattered. The head drew back and jaws from the other side clamped Dennis around the waist.
Teeth squealed on star-metal armor. Neither broke or flexed, but Rakastava began to lift Dennis off the ground.
The youth swung, aiming down near the base of the neck where his arm had the leverage of a full stroke. The creature's scales were rock-hard and rock-strong, but they split under the force behind Dennis' new sword. Shattered bits splashed into the water, and more glowing blood oozed out to brighten the scene.
The head bellowed and dropped him. Rakastava lunged forward, using its weight to slam Dennis back. The claws on the right foot splayed open as they raked down his torso, sparking and pinging without being able to penetrate the armor.
All three sets of jaws opened. Their forked tongues jabbed out, armed with suckers and spiked nodules like the stinging cells of jellyfish.
Dennis was off-balance but he stabbed anyway, as much to give himself time as to do real harm to Rakastava.
His point glanced off. The star-metal blade was sharper than fear, but Rakastava's scales were very nearly the blade's equal. Only a well-aimed stroke would cut them—and even that they resisted.
A tongue curled around Dennis' right ankle. He swung for it but the center head was dipping toward him...
Dennis struck upward, but the neck was already swinging away. The youth's left leg shot out from under him: Rakastava's right tongue had curled and gripped during the center head's feint.
The center head lifted. Its laughter boomed. Dennis crashed backwards onto the wet stone as the creature drew up on both his legs.
Dennis' armor transmitted the shock of impact in a numbing flash from the base of his spine. Rakastava spread the youth's legs sideways as well as lifting them, as if the creature were a sailor preparing rope for splicing. The youth's groin muscles began to blaze as Rakastava stretched them more than even fencing exercises had done in the past.
Dennis reached out with his left hand, trying to grip one of the heads. His gauntlet slid off the armored muzzle, then groped with the tongue holding his left ankle. Even Rakastava's tongues had the texture of quartz, not soft, spongy flesh.