“Shh...” She whispered. “Hear that?”
Merton’s brow furrowed. He craned his head and perked up his ears and tried to hear anything over the low groaning and creaking of the Warsphere. But then he heard it. And his heart leaped. He started forward, sprinting past bone encrusted wall. His feet squelched as Ozge reached out for him – but Merton didn’t care. He came to the corner, skidded around...and stopped dead. He was looking out into a room, easily the size of a good sized Starbucks. The floor was empty, save for bits of black obsidian that thrust out of flesh-like muscle. The walls were illuminated by glowing spotlights – bright white ones. They shone...on corpses.
There was Lisa. Her hands had been pinned to the walls by spikes and her guts had been cut out to drag on the floor.
There was Carlos – headless and crumpled up beside Trevor, who had been cut fully in half. Merton’s Mom and his Dad were an almost unrecognizable mass of red tissue, save for their faces. And the centerpiece of it all was Merton himself. He was seated against a wall, his own body recreated perfectly, with a yawning slice along his throat. Next to him was the headless body of Relix, her skull sat in his own lap.
In the center of this horrifying tableaux was a small, tightly coiled body of black scale and wings, which had been clamped tight around himself. The tiny dragon was curled up beside a few tiny copper coins, a single aluminum fork, and a red plastic drinking cup. And whispering from corpses was a cascade of voices – all of their voices.
“You let us die...”
“You’re a very bad dragon...”
“I hate you...”
“Why did you fail us, Brash?”
“No one likes you...”
“You-”
Merton screamed . It was a sound he had never made before in his life, and a sound he thought he’d never make again. He charged forward and, without thinking, he swung his psi-sword out at the corpse of Lisa. The blade made contact and the corpse poofed away into smoke. He swung again and his own body and Relix’s body vanished as well. He shouted again and again, bellow after bellow as he dissipated body after body, until the room was empty of the corpses and the whispers were gone – lost in the echoes of his shouting.
“Merton!” Ozge shouted.
Merton swung around and saw a form emerging from the darkness. It was a hideous demon – elongated limbs that looked as if they had been stretched out on a rack, with bluish skin that shone like rubber. It had the pot-belly of a starved baby, and the bald head of a grey alien, with a smattering of red eyes. It snarled and gurgled in Abyssal, charging at him with a spear of black metal in one hand. Merton stepped up and slashed at it with every bit of furious strength he had.
The demon’s head went flying.
As it thumped to the ground with a blub blub blub of slowly flowing blood, Merton stepped back, his psi-sword vanishing in a sizzle of sparks. He knelt down and pulled Brash into his arms. The small dragon was still shivering, as if he was freezing, and he didn’t respond as Brash petted his spine gently. His fingers caressed every ridge of Brash’s back, and he whispered soft words. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, it wasn’t real, it’s okay...” Brash shuddered convulsively, then suddenly grew to his full size. It took Merton a few seconds to realize he was now being coiled around by a snake-like body nearly the length of a school bus. His arms stuck above his head and his ribs creaked as Brash squeezed him, then started to nose at his hair.
“M-Merton?” Brash whispered.
“Too tight!” Merton squeaked.
“Who is that?” Ozge asked.
Brash shrank down to his smallest, most kittenish size and Merton clung to him, enfolding him in his arms and his palms. He petted him gently, then looked up at Ozge. He smiled, slowly. “T-This is Brash. He is the-”
“He is...a traitor .”
A cold...sneering...imperious voice spoke from the darkness. Merton turned around. The same fury he had felt before had cooled into the killing radiance of a neutron star. The figure stepping from the darkness was clearly a dragon. Armor plating from a B-suit wreathed his body, but his head had been revealed by the sloughing back of the armor’s skin and bone. Blue scales glittered, but nothing shone quite like the gleaming iron circlet that sat around the horns of the dragon who would be Emperor.
Emperor Xosh stood there, a shrike catapult extended from his left arm. Merton continued to pet Brash slowly.
“A disappointment,” Xosh continued. “A pathetic, sniveling piece of dung . I spit on his every ancestor. Not that he’ll have any. You came here, Lord Castrovel, to die. And the fact I can rob that little cunt of a princess of happiness for the rest of her life almost makes this moment worth it.” His nose flared and static sparkled around his teeth as his tongue flicked the air. Merton, though, was busy checking the body over. He saw dozens of still bleeding cuts on the B-suit, as well as several smoking exhaust ports that the enslaved, genetically engineered dragon had grown to vent waste heat.
“How much ammo do you have left, Xoshy?” Merton said, slowly reaching back. He held Brash out to Ozge, who took him with the expression of utter confusion that came when a baby was handed off to someone who had never touched one in their lives.
Xosh’s eyes flared. “Enough.”
Merton shook his head slowly. “And by the way. My name actually isn’t Lord Castrovel. I didn’t take her name. She didn’t take mine . I’m Merton Miles of California. Bester of House Thresh, master of hacks, rules lawyer and alignment arbiter. I am the delver in the Fortress of Regrets, planeswalker and planes strider. I count among my allies the Night City and the United Nations of Earth. I’ve seen Presidents deposed and godlike dragons rendered speechless. I have walked the streets of Atlantis and destroyed warspheres. I am dragon tamer and dragon slayer and, yes, dragon layer.” He lifted up his arm and his psi-sword flared to life as he grinned, fiercely.
“And I think you are absolutely fucking out of ammo.”
Xosh clenched his fist.
Then snapped his arm. Merton started to move – but the spinfusor disk sliced along his belly and burst out the side of his body with a spray of blood and a pain he couldn’t even begin to describe. He clutched at his side and made a sucking, gasping noise, then a choking noise as blood started to flow from between his lips.
“You were off by one ,” Xosh snarled.
Merton fell to one knee.
“Merton!” Brash screamed.
Then a black flame shot out and struck his side. It flared and the wound closed up, vanished, healed as if it had never been. Merton and Xosh both looked at Ozge, who lowered her palm. “Now we’re even,” she said. Her voice was even. But her eyes had a very faint glint in them. Merton wondered, exactly, how far his saving her life had taken him, and how much slack he’d gotten from the fucking.
Brash blinked from where he sat in her arms.
“Kick his BUTT, Dad!” He shouted.
Merton turned. Xosh brought his shrike catapult around. The bladed edge of the barrel was still more than enough to disembowel Merton. Save that Merton met it with his shield – which flared to green life with a thought. Merton howled out a wordless warcry then shoved forward, driving Xosh backwards. The Emperor of the Chromatic Dominion gave ground, his feet skidding along the slick floor.
“I am a dragon you fucking monkey!” Xosh growled.
“Funny,” Merton said, smirking. “I thought you were a banker.”
He lifted his shield up as lightning surged from Xosh’s mouth. It slammed into the shield and reflected into the ceiling with a spray of sparks. Merton slashed and Xosh parried with his shrike catapult. Silvery chrome and glowing green met and sparks flew again.
“Not that being a banker is bad!” Merton laughed, then jerked backwards as Xosh grew a third arm. His claws slashed out and once more met his shield, sparks flying. Merton stepped back again, then flew his shield. Xosh caught it with his upper hands, then had to grow two lower hands to grab onto Merton’s wrist, to stop Merton’s lunge from becoming an i
mpalement. “In fact, if you stayed a fucking banker, I think we’d all be much fucking happier !”
Xosh twisted himself into a complex loop, his body shifting into an ophidian shape that let him writhe past Merton. Only Merton’s quick twist and bringing up his psi-shield saved his spine. But claws still slashed along his calf and pain shot through him. He fell to one knee. Then Xosh was on him, grabbing the shield and hauling his arm upwards. Merton parried a claw strike at his chest, then slashed at Xosh. But Xosh simply took the blow, letting it split scale and muscle, not even seeming to notice. For it wasn’t his scales on the line.
Instead, he knocked Merton’s wrist aside, then slammed him down.
“Did you think you could defeat me!? A level one wizard with some fancy tricks ?” Xosh boomed, lightning crackling around his mouth.
Merton wheezed.
“Kinda hoped...” he admitted.
Xosh lifted up his clawed talon, then grinned. “You know what I’m going to do, Merton Miles? I’m going to rip out your throat. Then I’m going to disembowel that little fucking pet of yours. Then I will have Priestess Ozge raise your ghost and I’ll wring every secret you have out of your soul before binding you into my fucking ring...then...I’ll make your ghost watch as I take your form and then fuck your wife. I’ll make you watch as I fuck her...and then strangle her in the bed. Do you understand?” His other hand was wrapped around Merton’s throat, squeezing. He rocked Merton back, then forward. “Then I’ll start on your family and your friends and your concubine and your whole fucking planet. I’ll make what the hellcannon would have done seem like nothing! Nothing, you hear me!”
Sparks dropped from his mouth.
Merton wheezed out a faint whisper.
Xosh chuckled, then loosened his grip slightly.
“What?” he growled.
“You...” Merton whispered. “You got red on you.”
Xosh looked down.
A tiny red dot shone on his chest.
“Dee dee dee dee...” The dot swept up to his shoulder. Xosh slapped at it. “Doo doo doo doo.” The dot swung to his right shoulder. “Nah nah nah nah!” The dot finally settled on Xosh’s forehead – painted there by the glowing red nose of Brash as he perched on Ozge’s shoulder.
Xosh blinked.
“What’s he doing?” Ozge asked, looking at Brash’s nose.
Merton jerked his head aside.
And half a kilometer away, the Talon-9’s forward railgun coughed once. A tungsten dart the length of a longsword struck weakened adamantine plates, cutting a hole as perfectly straight as if it had been drawn by the ruler. Or painted by a laser. The tungsten dart didn’t so much as deviate by a nanometer, meaning that it struck Emperor Xosh the First (and last) of the Chromatic Dominion right square on the back of his skull.
His head did not so much explode as become so many fine particulates. The hole continued to cleave into the ship, leaving a gaping, cherry red circle on the deck plating about half an inch from Merton’s head.
The roar of the round’s impact filled the room and blew Xosh’s headless body off Merton’s body, leaving him coughing, gasping.
Brash thrust his arms up into the air. “I get solo XP!”
“You do not!” Merton coughed, rubbing at his throat.
The ground shuddered. A low, distant roar came echoing up from the narrow hole shot into the ship. Merton stood, shakily as Ozge’s head jerked up. That roar had contained words – words spoken in Abyssal. Merton looked at Ozge. She translated: “Uh, that shell just killed Pazuzu’s favorite pet hellhound.”
Brash hopped onto Merton’s shoulder. “Don’t suppose you can do any cool badass flying?” Merton asked.
“I...no...” Brash admitted. “That evil jerkbag lying evil dumb demon of nightmares drained me. I’m...still really tired...” He blushed. “I can try-”
“No, it’s fine!” Merton said, nodding. He took Ozge’s hand and then started to run down the corridor. The floor shook and the ceiling groaned and the whole warsphere seemed to buck and rock under their feet. It was more than the slow collapse into portals. It was something big. And it was something pissed . Merton hissed to Brash. “Brash! Cough up a nuke, please!”
“A what!?” Ozge yelped as Brash coughed, cutely, and a glowing pin roughly the size of a hand grenade. Merton spun around, looked up, and saw a crack rent in the ceiling by the shuddering of the ship. He underhanded the nuclear bomb upwards, then dragged Ozge into the biggest, thickest bit of cover he could. The white flash that bathed them was stark and fierce and burning – but with layers of adamantine between them and the relatively small tac nuke, Merton hoped that the acute radiation sickness wouldn’t kick in until they were back on the Talon-9 .
When he looked up, the ceiling had formed into a perfect ramp of molten metal, sloughing down into the corridor. Above him was a yawning mass of empty ship – then more corridors, their floors blown away and raining down in bits of molten metal. He winced. He hadn’t quite figured out how to get past that point.
A sudden torrential roar of sonic hammer-blows struck his ears. Before his eyes, the corridors and chambers that he had revealed started to vanish, as if huge bites were being taken out of them by the world’s most ferocious woodpecker. The holes came in at a shallow angle, and he could see the rippling in the air as railgun slugs tore and tore and tore. Then adamantine sheets tore upwards in a squeal and groan of apocalyptic noise .
“Ow!” Brash groaned, clutching his claws to his head.
“There!” Merton shouted, though he wasn’t sure if anyone could hear him.
There was the Talon-9 .
It flew down into the gaping hole it had blown into the Warsphere, but it was still too far. There was molten metal dribbling down, enough to make a ramp. But it was still too hot. And then, like an obscure bit of rules screaming from the back of his mind just in time to right a campaign that had gone derailed, Merton screamed at Brash: “WATER CANNON!”
Brash gasped. Then his back unfolded and a water cannon the size of his whole body snapped out. Ozge pointed at that and screamed: “What the everloving fuck!?”
“It’s for vampires!” Merton shouted.
“How does THAT make sense!?” Ozge screamed back as the roaring, groaning sounds of the warsphere collapsing became even louder. Water sprayed from the cannon, striking the metal. Steam filled the air and Merton didn’t waste time. He sprinted forward, his feet skidding and burning at the same time as he charged up the ramp with Ozge and Brash. The water continued to sluice along and he nearly lost his footing at least five times. Then they were bursting out of the cloud – and there was the Talon-9 , and hanging from her cargo hold were ropes, and hanging from the rope was Gunner. He reached out, grabbed onto Ozge’s arm and bodily flung her upwards.
His arms grabbed onto Merton.
And then a blue scaled hand reached from the fog and closed around his ankle.
Merton screamed as his leg was drawn taut and he felt two hundred pounds of weight drag against him as Brash yelped and clung to the back of his head. Looking back down, he saw Xosh. The dragon was dangling from his leg, his headless body smoking and smoldering with contact with the still hot metal. Behind him, the decks were collapsing downwards – revealing swirling portals straight into the depths of the Abyss.
Xosh’s neck stump rippled and a new head forced its way out. His eyes glowed with fury and he snarled. “I moved my brain you idiot monkey!”
Merton clenched his jaw and lifted up his free leg. “I...” he kicked Xosh in the face. “Have had...” He kicked again. “ENOUGH...” He kicked again. “OF YOU!” The last kick hit a slippery tongue. Merton had enough time to realize his mistake when Xosh chomped down and Merton’s foot ceased to be a foot and started to become shattered bone, torn muscle, and pain. Lots of pain. Xosh shook his head and Merton screamed – feeling the pain of his leg, his foot, his shoulder joint. Gunner couldn’t let him go to draw his pistol or rifle.
Xosh continued to speak –
growing an extra mouth on the back of his head. “I may lose everything! But I will have you !”
A squeal of unspooling rope filled Merton’s ears. He saw, through a haze of pain, Julia. She held a laser pistol in one hand and her other was on the rope. She was attached by a harness, her witches hat cocked aside. She aimed.
Fired.
And hit Merton’s leg.
The laser cut through skin smoothly and left behind a smoldering ruin.
Merton howled – then gasped as the pressure on his leg vanished. “You missed!” He howled.
Xosh fell, his mouth filled with Merton’s foot. His eyes were wild with furry. His arms reached upwards and he started to try and grow his wings...
Fell.
Scales Like Stars (Dragons...in...SPACE! Book 1) Page 33