“You could have done that on the way up.”
Scarlack said it, not me.
Luerl shrugged.
He was not here to make friends, just money.
“Let’s be done with it, then,” Eustace grumbled, ready to go on.
Silvery light flowed around us as Luerl spoke in a liquid language as fluidly as if it were his native tongue.
When all was said and done, I felt the same, but I clung to the rock like an insect crawling up a wall.
With so much difficult ground to cover, I guessed the dragon was content to let us tire ourselves out and risk making mistakes.
We would be tender, exhausted morsels ready for the taking by the time we reached its lair.
I scanned the walls all around, including those between our cavern and the one Eustace thought held the dragon’s true lair. “Be ready for anything. I don’t see any magical enchantments on the volcano’s walls, but there is still a dragon to contend with at the end of our climb.”
* * *
One after the other, we left the cave’s ledge and began clambering across the open face of the volcano’s inner wall.
As before, Luerl went first followed by Eustace, with Scarlack and me behind. Even with enhanced climbing abilities, Eustace deemed it prudent to have Scarlack hold the rear.
We formed a long line as we clambered like ants across the raw rock.
I did not like how exposed we were.
The dragon did.
I screamed a warning as I smoothly drew my revolver with my right hand, my gun already finding its target based on where I had sensed the threat.
Unfortunately, the dragon was right above us.
With a roar that nearly deafened me, the dragon’s head whipped out from the entry of a cave perhaps fifty paces above Scarlack.
Its smoking maw open, the dragon unleashed a blinding white gout of superheated flames, turning the walls to molten slag.
Luckily for Scarlack, his wards held and the dragonfire did not incinerate him.
Unfortunately, the rock walls were not similarly enchanted.
As the rock walls gave way beneath him, Scarlack tried valiantly to leap out of the blast zone, but to no avail.
He tumbled down the rock face, bouncing off the cliffside as he fell to the smoking bottom below.
Simultaneously, our contingency spell triggered, turning the ground beneath the dragon’s feet and claws frictionless. Crashing to its chest, stuck far below and to the dragon’s side, we were unable to take advantage of the beast’s vulnerability.
Content with the loss of one more of our company, adjusting to the slippery ground below, the dragon disappeared back into the crevice from which it had emerged, slithering like a snake on its belly as our shots rebounded off its shields.
With nowhere left to go, we clambered forward before more winged death could fall upon us.
Why the dragon did not finish us then, I will never know.
Perhaps it truly was like a cat toying with its prey.
It liked games, and we were being played.
* * *
Luerl waited for all of us to catch up before risking moving up into the dragon’s den.
His choice was a wise one.
A series of complex wards lined the region inside the cave’s mouth from side to side and top to bottom, a demonic web waiting to ensnare the unwary.
These were certainly not spells of warning.
These enchantments were intended to keep out the uninvited…permanently.
“We’ll need to repeat our dispel technique here. These wards look quite daunting.
“If we can’t trip them, then we’ll need to try to dispel them.”
“Let’s move back, then.” Eustace put his words to action, moving what he deemed a safe distance away from the yawning opening into darkness.
“Ready?” Luerl looked at Eustace and me as he summoned a simple orb of glimmering indigo energy.
When we nodded, he lobbed the sphere forward as one would a grenade.
The ensuing series of detonations and flashes of spectral light told me the orb had managed to trigger the enchantments.
This time the cave held while the spells did not.
Cautiously approaching to confirm what I sensed, I peered around the cave’s mouth to see if all the wards had been successfully removed.
I was rewarded with the sight of a roiling wall of blue and white-hot arcane flames tumbling down the corridor toward me.
“Back!”
I scrambled backward like a crab in full retreat as a pillar of churning flames erupted into the caldera’s vast open space.
Despite the protective spells shielding me, I brought my arm up to cover my face instinctually, still clinging to the wall with one hand.
“Looks like our host is ready to welcome us!”
Before the echoes of my words finished rebounding off the caldera’s distant walls or the dragon’s pernicious fires subsided fully into calm, the great fire drake exploded from the cavern’s entry in a prodigious, coiling mass of shimmering claws, teeth, and scales. Radiating a fell inner light, the fires that gave birth to stars dwelt hungrily within the wyrm’s maleficent undulating belly. Bursting outward into the caldera with the sound of thunder’s nightmares, the drake’s wings blocked the heavens, buffeting the walls with the winds of tempests as it banked furiously, tearing through the air in its haste to rend us limb from limb, skewer us on its spear-length claws, and vaporize us to inscrutable ash.
The thing’s size, its gravity, was truly larger than my mind could encompass. Its dimensions extended into regions where my mind did not wish to travel.
Shimmering layers of opalescent force encased this seething embodiment of destruction, a fiery demon at the heart of a pearl.
To kill the dragon, we would need to tear down its formidable defenses.
I was the man for the job.
I leaped forward and rolled onto the lip of the dragon’s cave, drawing Eiŕ and Eiŕ’hod smoothly, channeling their power and mine to penetrate the dragon’s veil.
With twin concussive bursts, both weapons fired shimmering spouts of starshine, magic-nullifying energies that tore through the ether.
The dragon’s shield, in all its luminous iridescence, popped like a bubble of soap left too long in the open air.
The dragon screamed in rage and unbounded fury.
I joined it.
Sometimes you get lucky.
* * *
“Fire!
“Fire with all you have! Its shield is down!
I did not have to ask Luerl or Eustace twice.
They lit the caldera up with concussive bursts, perched precariously on the rocky walls like mold that refused to go away, cleansing be damned.
I lit up the dragon’s exposed underbelly with summoned armor-piercing rounds and explosive shots, each salvo leaving smoking tendrils and oozing blood in its wake.
Despite the considerable damage we inflicted, the dragon was simply so enormous, its scales so hardened, that our rounds did not do enough to arrest its intent.
Screaming in rage, anger, and pain, the dragon rushed forward, power oozing from its claws as it screamed out another incantation.
“Die, mortals!”
Sensing my cue, I sprinted backward along the hallway and dove into a small side passage as a wall of frenetic black force ate away the entirety of the cave mouth where I had been standing and much of the tunnel behind me.
I could not see if Eustace or Luerl had made it, but I could certainly see the dragon swooping back toward the cavern, eyes aflame, fire licking its fearsome maw.
I rushed back into the side tunnel to the sound of scraping claws and rubbing belly as the dragon slithered past.
“Eustace? Luerl? You there?”
I whispered as I walked forward along the side passage, hoping that it would reconnect with the main passageway farther down, reducing my risk of exposure to a full frontal assault.
“We’re h
ere.
“Barely.
“Tha bastard nearly took tha mountain down and us with it!”
“Listen—there’s a side tunnel on the right a short ways in. It’s too small for the dragon to fit in. It curves around in the same direction as the main passage. I’ll let you know if it reconnects.”
“Reckon we should join?”
“I’d get in while you can.”
“Aye. On our way.”
While Eustace and Luerl scampered in behind me, I followed the tunnel’s arc farther in to the dragon’s lair.
* * *
The side tunnel did not lead back to the main passage. It led to the heart of the dragon’s lair.
A massive space opened up before me, one lit by the flickers of dragon flames as shadows danced upon the reflective, vitreous surfaces polished by lava and dragon’s fire. I could see quite a few other side passages leading in and out of the chamber, several large enough to allow the dragon through. The cavern was irregularly shaped with multiple grottoes and subchambers, large pillar-like columns of supporting stone carved out from past lava flows, and an irregular ceiling almost lost in the heights above.
Heaping piles of gold, gems, tomes, scrolls, and artifacts were strewn haphazardly across the chamber. Arms and armaments, the legacies of fallen foes, were littered over the floor like the castoffs from forgotten battlegrounds. The accumulated wealth of centuries of depredations from the Wastes and beyond the Hellfire Range glimmered and sparkled in the half-light. Entire histories of people, their arms and ideas, could be read in the trove dispersed about the cavern. To my enhanced vision, much of the treasure was imbued with magical properties, further heightening the hoard’s worth and interest.
None of these amazing riches held my attention in the slightest.
The source of this wealth, however, did.
Poised in the chamber’s center, its immense bulk encompassing several piles, its lustrous body weaving sinuously around and upon the mounds of treasure and several columns of native rock, the dragon exuded ready power and authority.
In the time it had taken me to reach the heart of its demesne, the dragon, already deadly, had armed and armored itself. It was wearing a bandoleer containing missile-sized shells, pistols on the order of cannons, a diaphanous suit of armor from breastplate to bracers that looked more like the idea of armor rather than armor itself, and several belt-like straps laced across its torso that appeared suitable for carrying mature trees.
It was death held in abeyance.
Careful to make as little noise as possible, I retraced my steps into the passage’s shelter and whispered, “Follow the side tunnel to its end. You’ll reach the dragon’s lair.”
As I slowly made my way forward once more, the dragon welcomed me to its home.
* * *
“Come, spellslinger. Come into my lair.
“Let us dance like I danced with your brother.
“Perhaps your blood will be as sweet, your marrow as succulent.”
The dragon’s wagon-wheel-sized nostrils flared and snorted audibly as it tasted the air.
“I smell the common blood and know your cause.”
The dragon’s voice boomed like an avalanche, it seduced like a lover, and it smote like a sword.
“You have come to die like your brother before you.
“This is a gift I give willingly, generously, so unlike others of my kind.
“I do not hoard my riches.
“Come, partake.
“Your end will be quick, feeble, like that of the rest of your kind.
“Then you will truly know peace and will dwell beyond all pain.
“This, too, is a gift I give willingly, openly.
“Come, ’slinger, let us dance one last time before you die.”
The dragon’s black claws raked the cavern’s floor, flashing sparks, sending shivers down my spine, a horrid counterpoint to its unholy voice.
“Yes, let us bathe in your blood and revel in your end.
“The time is come!”
* * *
An all-engulfing wall of dragon fire leapt across the cavern, roiling forward like the entrance to Hell itself. Pillars gave way and collapsed, bending and folding like molten wax before the infernal onslaught while the floor rippled and turned liquid, reborn as lava beneath the dragon’s fire.
A staccato counterpoint to the continuous rush, roar, and heat of the flames, the thunder of small arms fire ricocheted through the cavern.
Cycling rapidly through munitions types as I dove sideways to avoid dragon fire, I volleyed off blast after blast of arcane force. Explosive missiles, branching lightning bolts, flashing silver streams of ethereal bullets, and luminous spectral bursts all ricocheted from the dragon’s spectral armor, never reaching its hardened scales.
Nothing.
Never start an arms race with a dragon.
* * *
My boots clicked on the glassy rock beneath me as I sprinted away from the cave’s entry seeking shelter, any cover that might buy me time and protection, firing as I ran.
The roar of Luerl’s and Eustace’s guns joined mine from behind.
Ignoring the hailstorm of bullets tearing through the air, the dragon flicked its wrist decisively and unleashed a silvery scythe of power that ripped through the air like an empyrean boomerang, slicing through stone as if it were nonexistent.
The rumble of collapsing rock followed the spell’s trajectory and the shots behind me stopped.
After everything we’d been through, I hoped Luerl and Eustace were unharmed.
Reaching over its bandoleered right shoulder to the gap between its membranous wings, the dragon coolly whipped out a gun.
Perhaps “gun” was not the right term.
Cannon was an understatement.
This thing looked like it would be at home on a starship—a particularly large one designed to take out planets.
The gun was sleek, elegant, and deadly. If it weren’t the size of a tree, I would say it was supremely artful.
Despite its beauty, there was no question as to its efficacy. If a dragon would select a gun over its volcanic breath, then it was a terrible weapon indeed.
Assuming the silvery blade of force had not done Eustace and Luerl in, I yelled, “Run!”
If ever my words needed heeding, now was the time.
No shielding I could throw up in an instant was going to stop a dragon’s hellfire, much less whatever the gun shot.
Sprinting at full speed, my boots digging into the rocky ground, I skidded around a corner and leapt, thudding to a graceless stop prone, arms and legs sprawled outward, on the stone floor.
The wall vaporized above me.
If I had been standing, I would be gone.
Utterly.
* * *
There was no dust or debris, just a wall shorn completely through, leaving a perfectly smooth surface as though the material had never existed in the first place. The opposite wall in the cavern I was sheltering in showed a similar fate.
The air flashed with unimaginable brightness as the dragon’s gun fired again and again.
I hazarded a glance over the lip of the annihilated wall to see that the dragon was shooting rapidly left and right, laying down targeted suppressive fire. Smoke steamed from the edges of its vast curled lips, man-sized yellowed teeth jutting erratically from its fearsome mouth.
Of my companions, I could see no sign.
I hoped that meant they had reached safety and had not been vaporized.
I would only get the chance to find out if I lived.
With the dragon distracted, I saw my opportunity.
The dragon had retracted its nictitating membranes in order to get a better view while firing. Its new eldritch armor protected almost everything else.
Channeling explosive rounds into the barrels of my guns, I popped up over the lip of the disintegrated tube and opened fire.
One, two, three, four pulsating rounds blasted through the drago
n’s saucer-sized eye before it had time to blink.
With a detonation that rocked the entire cavern, the dragon’s head exploded in a geyser of red gibbets.
The beast never had time to roar.
There would be no dragon head trophies to memorialize this hunt.
With a thunderous thwump! the dragon fell to its final resting position, the impact sending musical chimes and tinkles through all the fine metal, jewels, and coins surrounding its now-cooling corpse.
The force of the crash lifted me briefly off my feet.
Now I had the grisly duty of wading through the offal to see if any of my fellows yet lived.
Before I ventured forward, however, I had to let the blazing heat of the dragon’s blood cool.
Dead or alive, a dragon was a ticking time bomb ready to explode.
Unsure of whether I would receive an answer, I called out, fearing the echo of my voice would be the only reply. “Anyone there?”
“Around tha corner!”
Eustace, that thorny devil, at least had made it.
A Final Surprise
My weira screamed and I rolled instinctively, diving to the side with guns at the ready, probing for the source of danger.
Had the dragon survived?
Was its death but an illusion? Another trick in the succession of traps laid for us at every part of our journey?
Had it summoned more demons to dispatch us while we were most vulnerable?
Had henchmen arrived, called to their master’s aid?
Silence.
Emptiness.
No danger materialized.
I heard a groan.
Luerl!
Luerl must be injured.
The warning inside grew louder. He must be in grave danger.
I sprinted toward the sound, my boots ringing with the clinking of loose coins and gems as I crossed the cavern.
We had come too far to lose anyone else.
The groan sounded again, nearer.
I rounded the corner leading to another section of cavern at full speed.
Spellslinger--Legends of the Wild, Weird West Page 12