Read Underworlds #4: The Ice Dragon for Free Online Page A

Or Thor. Or Hades. But the distant battle seemed farther away than ever, and the lyre was now thirty feet away from me, possibly busted, a worthless mess of wood and wire.
    But if we didn’t have the lyre, we didn’t have much. So I had to try to get it, however I could.
    Loki slid one clawed foot forward. In three moves, he could be at the base of the throne. In two more, he could insert the rune into the throne. This was it.
    I glanced at my friends. Sydney was on one side of the room, Jon was in the middle, and I was on the other side. While Loki edged along the wall nearest the courtyard below, I saw my chance.
    Just a little more …
    Come on …
    “Charge him!” I cried.

“W AIT , WHAT ?” SAID S YDNEY .
    “ Charge him?” said Jon.
    I was the only one who moved. But maybe that worked for me. As Loki’s dragon head swung around to look at each of us, I raced at him, then faked a lunge with my sword, spun, ducked, and hacked down as hard as I could. The blow on his left front leg rang in my hands as if I had tried to break open a stone. But the thrust was powerful enough to send a shiverthrough his body. I heard a crackle of ice and pressed all my weight on the sword.
    Sydney and Jon were suddenly with me, thrusting their swords into the same leg. Loki shook himself free and began to slide down the stairs, howling and clutching wildly at us. Sydney tried to pull us back from the edge of the stairs. She would have done it, too, except for the long reach of Loki’s tail. He swept all three of us off the ground and we fell with him — thirty feet to the courtyard below, barely missing Baldur’s body. The stones cracked beneath the dragon’s weight. Jon, Sydney, and I thudded on the floor, hard.
    I don’t know if we passed out or what, but by the time I opened my eyes, Loki was hobbling back toward the stairs, dragging his wounded leg.
    “Jon! Syd!” I called. “We clipped his leg. We can stop him!”
    “Just us?” said Jon, groaning for breath. “Have you looked at us lately, Owen? We’re … nothing! We’re just kids!”
    “That got us this far,” Sydney said. “Come on !”
    Despite his wounded leg and a cracked wing he must have gotten in the fall, Loki dragged himself up the stairs to the level of the throne. We scrambled after him. When we reached the ramparts, Sydney cried, “Owen, watch out!”
    Too late. Loki snapped his tail like a whip and swept me across the floor. Jon jumped over the moving tail, then plunged his sword into Loki’s cracked wing. The dragon screeched and flung his wing forward, sending both Jon and Sydney tumbling into me.
    “I’m going for the lyre!” I called to my friends. “Cover me —”
    Loki swung around, his icy claws slicing.
    Jon narrowly missed getting his head knocked off. I dived over Loki’s coiling tail and slid across the floor toward the lyre. Loki slammed his foot on the lyre, then thrust the Crystal Rune at the throne like a missile shot.
    “No!” I cried. I couldn’t reach the lyre with my hands. The only way to make a sound was to strike the strings with the sword.
    I slammed the sword down.



Blanngggg! The lyre’s strings snapped.
    Loki arched back suddenly, then stopped.
    Everything stopped.
    In that moment, Loki’s face was twisted to one side. I saw the venom frozen in his eyes. I had stopped time, but my head rang like a bell that Thor was pounding with his hammer. Strangely, my body kept moving. I couldn’t tell you how, but I was up on my legs and jerking the point of my sword up into the ice dragon’s chest.
    My sword blade went up, up, up, as if I were popping a balloon with a toothpick, except the sword was sharp and heavy and real, Loki was no balloon, and my brain was threatening to explode. Up went the blade, and — CRACK! — with the shattering of Loki’s icy hide, time roared back.
    The ice dragon swooped down, and somehow I was against the underside of his chest, pushing the blade upward. Then I felt the pressure of