A Demon and a Dragon

by Virlyce

  Ralph raised his shield just in time to prevent his face from being impaled by a stray spear. Then he collapsed when a man fell on top of him. The man groaned as Ralph rolled him off. “Hey,” Ralph said and nudged the man who had a deep, gaping wound in his chest that Ralph could see through. It was like he had been pierced by a ballista. “What are we fighting up there?”

  The man groaned again and hissed as bubbles leaked out of the corner of his mouth. He tilted his head up and took in a deep breath before wheezing out the word, “Cows….”

  Ralph tilted his head. “Cows? The things we milk?”

  The soldier in his arms shook his head. It was an almost imperceptible movement. He gasped for breath and whispered, “Magic … cows…. Im…print…ed.” The man’s head dropped to the side, his eyes glazed over. Then his body melted into a puddle of red goop that disappeared into the ground.

  Ralph sighed. Magical cows? Imprinted magical cows? The only creatures with imprints that were left were dragons. Everything that had imprints were killed off long ago when humans conquered the lands. Did that mean these cows were as strong as dragons? Evidently not since so many of them were required to separate half their army from its main mission, but cows? Really? Where did these imprinted cows come from?

  “We need backup!”

  Ralph climbed to his feet. As a soldier, he didn’t need to think, so why was he doing it? Maybe he should’ve became an officer before joining this army. But officers needed to know how to read, and he couldn’t do that. A sigh escaped from his lips. His mother was right. Education really was the way to the top, but it was almost exclusive to nobility. Well, being a soldier wasn’t bad either. He forced his feet to move, and he marched ahead towards the middle of the fray. The soldier in front of him screamed, and a massive spear tip the size of his head punched through the man’s chest. A second later, he was flung into the sky.

  Ralph’s mouth fell open at the bloody beast in front of him. That wasn’t a spear tip; that was a horn. These … weren’t anything like the cows he knew. The cows he knew were fluffy and soft and loved getting scratched on the chin. This cow…, this cow had murder in its eyes. If cows could train their muscles, then this cow must’ve done training equal to that of an elite warrior. It wasn’t any bigger or wider than those fluffy cows he knew, but it was definitely more compact. And its horns being the size of its body didn’t reassure him either. What was he supposed to do against this monster of a cow? A spear was made for its reach, to stab someone with a smaller weapon before they got into range. But this cow had the larger weapon. And there wasn’t anyone nearby who could help him; all the soldiers were entangled in their own mess. Why were there so many cows!?

  ***

  Grimmy rubbed his chin. The beam of light extending from Vur’s bellybutton shone bright, illuminating his scales. A third of the pillar was blue. A small portion was purple where blue met red. Red took up almost two thirds of the pillar. And the black portion was flickering but growing weaker with every passing second.

  “Add more! Vur’s soul is dying!” Tafel grabbed Grimmy’s claw and shook it.

  “Hold on a sec,” Grimmy said, pulling his claw away. “I’m doing some quick calculations. Hmm. Yeah, more cows.” He reached behind his wing and pulled out several orbs of gaseous light and dumped them onto Vur’s chest. They sank down as if he were made of water, and disappeared inside of him, faintly glowing before winking out of existence. “Ah, crap. Oops.”

  Tafel’s eye twitched. “Oops? What do you mean oops!?”

  “Nothing,” Grimmy said and shifted his eyes away. His gaze landed on Lindyss, who was reading a book in the corner. “I was just messing with you.”

  Lindyss met his gaze and raised her eyebrow, her expression asking, “Were you really just messing with her?”

  Grimmy winked in reply.

  ***

  “Oh,” Vur said. “I’m free.”

  Sheryl turned her torso to the side. A red chain fell next to her, the metal panting in exhaustion. A pair of eyes blinked at her, and she blinked back. Sheryl rolled onto her bottom and sat up. “Do chains get tired?” she asked and poked the metal beside her.

  Vur rolled off of the table and stretched his arms towards the sky, cracking sounds filling the dungeon’s cell. A black light was coming off of his chest, and tendrils extended out of it, crawling down his torso and limbs. Everywhere they touched, another piece of the chain would twitch and fall off. “I don’t know,” Vur said and shrugged. “But it looks like someone’s helping me. And since this light is black, it’s probably Grimmy.”

  Sheryl scratched her face. “Black magic, cursed dragon, and the word help don’t really belong together.”

  Vur looked around, ignoring Sheryl’s comment. “So this is the home Stella built inside of me, huh?” he asked. He squatted next to Sheryl and Zilphy and picked them up, holding them under his arms. The black tendrils of light were receding back into his chest, and he kicked aside the chain that tried to latch onto him. There were holes left in his body from where the chains had been, but they were healing at a visible rate. “Where is she?”

  “She went outside to help Toothy fight against the invaders,” Zilphy said. “You go outside by going down that way, up the stairs, head to the left past the bathroom, then you make a right and go through the torture room, and then you go up another flight of stairs to the first floor. From there, the exit is obvious.”

  “Got it,” Vur said.

  “You’re not going to ask why there is a torture room?” Sheryl asked, her rocky eyebrows raised.

  Vur glanced at the rock underneath his arm. “Why would I ask? Every castle needs a torture room.”

  Sheryl stared into Vur’s eyes for a moment before looking away. “No wonder why Stella chose to live inside of you,” she said. She shook her head, which was her body, and sighed.

  Once Vur stepped through the torture room and up the flight of stairs to the first floor, the sounds of battle floated faintly through the air. Vur furrowed his brow and turned his head to the side, pointing his ear towards the door leading out. “Do you hear cows?”

  Sheryl cupped her hand over a rocky slit near her eyes. She waited a moment. “Nope,” she said. “I don’t hear any cows. I do hear people shouting though.”

  “I hear them,” Zilphy said. “I can hear anything as long as a strand of wind connects me to it. Let’s see—someone’s screaming, ‘Not more cows!’ and a cow is mooing back in response. If it didn’t sound like people were dying, then this would actually be funny.” She chewed her lower lip. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t funny, but I feel bad for finding it amusing. Cows are so cute; I don’t understand how they’re killing people.”

  “What about Stella?” Vur asked. “Can you hear her?”

  Zilphy closed her eyes. “Hold on a second, it takes a while to filter through all the noise. Stella…, Stella…, Stella…, that’s not—oh! I hear her. She seems to be, oh.”

  Vur’s eyes narrowed. “Oh what? What’s she saying?”

  “She’s saying some very not-kid-friendly words that I daren’t repeat,” Zilphy said and swallowed. “But it sounds like she’s in trouble. You have to help her, Vur.” The wind elemental rolled her eyes up to look at her contractor. “Actually, do you have the ability to? Can you use magic right now?”

  Vur lifted his hand and pointed a finger at the ceiling. A small flame sprang into life, hovering above his fingertip. “Yep,” he said. “Maybe the chains had anti-magic on them. I still feel really weak though. You two are heavy.”

  “We’re rocks twice the size of your head, Vur,” Sheryl said. “It’d be weird if we weren’t heavy.”

  Vur frowned. “But I should be able to lift that with ease?”

  Zilphy clicked her tongue. “It makes sense though, doesn’t it? This isn’t your actual body,” she said. “You’re inside yourself. That means you’re not using your muscles to move. It’s probably some projection of your spirit. And since you’ve never trained
inside of yourself before, it’s like you’re a newborn baby.”

  Vur pouted as he walked outside the front door. “I thought my inner-self would be stronger,” he said. “Didn’t I absorb a lot of things to strengthen my soul?”

  “Well, those things strengthened Toothy,” Zilphy said. “Um.” She pointed towards the right. “Go that way up the walls. You should be able to see the battlefield from there.”

  Vur stared up at the castle walls. They towered way over him, seemingly stretching towards the sky. “Why are these walls so big? Stella’s so tiny. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “She’s overcompensating for something,” Sheryl said. “But seriously, I think she wanted to make a space for Chompy to live comfortably, so he’d stay with her forever to guard her birthflower.”

  “How did she build them?” Vur asked and pressed his palm against the chunks of stone making up the wall.

  Zilphy slipped out from underneath his arm and yelped as she fell to the ground. Thankfully, she caught herself with gusts of wind before she hit the hard surface. She shook her fist at Vur and waddled up the first step of the flight of stairs leading to the top of the wall. “Why don’t you ask her once you save her?”

  Vur nodded and placed Sheryl down beside Zilphy. “You walk too. You’re heavy.”

  The trio went up the stairs and continued going up and went up some more until they reached the top. Vur panted as he stumbled to the edge of the wall and sat down, resting his back against the stone rampart. “I should’ve stayed in the cell,” he said and shook his head. “Why am I so weak? It’s really like I’m a baby again.”

  Sheryl turned around and stared down at the flight of stairs that looked as if they had no end. “What kind of baby could climb this flight of stairs?”

  “Over there,” Zilphy said. She had hopped up onto the wall. “You can see Toothy getting his butt kicked. And you can see—oh, wow, those are some ugly cows. Cows can look like that?”

  ***

  Stella lay on a surface of black scales, her limbs splayed to the side. Sweat covered her face and dampened her hair. She was staring up at the sky, her breaths shallow. “Well, it looks like this is it, Chompy,” she said. “This is how we die.”

  Chompy let out a low growl and swiped his tail back and forth, keeping the invaders at bay. He roared out when they stuck a few spears inside of it, metal chains attached to their ends. His body was covered in wounds, and the ones he received from fighting the chimera queen had reopened long ago. Hundreds of spears and arrows with chains were slowing his movements, and every time he tore one out, a ball of flesh would be yanked out too by the barbs on the weapons’ ends. The seemingly endless army of red soldiers wasn’t as numerous as before, most of it having perished, but the new invading army of beings with horns looked even more threatening than the first one.

  Stella turned her head to the side. Mervin was lying beside her, still face down with a burnt back. Perhaps he was already gone. Could genies even die? Stella nudged his arm, but there was no response. She sighed and faced the sky again. It was covered in hundreds of thousands of streaks of lightning that hadn’t been there moments ago. Her eyes widened as her vision filled with white, blinding her. Then came the thunder, a roaring so loud that it turned into a low, high-pitched whine from her eardrums rupturing. When her vision cleared, lightning bolts were still dancing in the sky. She sat up and looked around. The soldiers that were surrounding Chompy were on the ground, twitching and spasming. Before she could see any further, her vision was robbed again by another torrent of lightning raining down. The sound wasn’t as bad this time since she couldn’t hear as well, but the heat generated by the lightning was hot enough to burn her skin.

  The world flickered with white and black, alternating between the two until Stella couldn’t tell which was which anymore. When it finally stopped, a burnt smell filled her nostrils. Was it Mervin? Stella shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Though her vision was still blurry and filled with black spots, she managed to make out the remainder of the red army and the army of cows. All of them were on the ground, blackened and unmoving with charred bits crumbling off of them as a wind swept past. The wind stopped blowing, and then it turned around. A pair of eyes formed in front of Stella. “Hey! You alright?”

  Stella blinked twice. “Zilphy? Speak louder; I think my ears stopped working.”

  A vortex of ash and dust swirled around the pair of eyes as Zilphy took in a deep breath. Her voice thundered out, blowing Stella back from the force, “Hey! You alright!?”

  Stella shouted back, “Do I look alright!?”

  The pair of eyes scanned her from head to toe. “Yep! You look absolutely untouched and chipper! Your ears are bleeding though! You might want to make them stop bleeding!”

  “Yeah, let me just will them to stop!” Stella shouted. She swatted at Zilphy, but her hand passed through the wind elemental without making contact. “What happened!? Where did that lightning come from!?”

  “Why are you shouting too!? I can hear you just fine!” Zilphy took in another deep breath. “Vur was freed from his chains! It turns out they were stopping him from casting magic! So, Sheryl and I brought him up to the walls, and he shot thousands of lightning bolts out of his fingertips like bam, boom, bang, kaboom!”

  Stella slumped down and exhaled. Her eyes met with Chompy’s, and she smiled. “It looks like this isn’t it, Chompy! This isn’t how we die!”

  Chompy snorted and put a claw to his lips as if he were telling Stella to tone it down. His nostrils twitched and flared twice. Then he crawled forward, past the dissolving corpses of the red army, towards the perfectly seared cows. His tongue wet his lips as saliva pooled and fell out from between his teeth.

  Stella waved at Zilphy. “Tell Vur to come down here! Mervin was injured to the point of dying!”

  Zilphy blinked. “Can’t you just say Mervin was killed!? What do you mean injured to the point of dying!? Oh, and that’s a shame, by the way. Poor Mervin.”

  Stella leaned back until she lost her balance, falling flat on Chompy’s head. Living inside of Vur was supposed to be a surefire way towards immortality, but she almost lost everything within a day. It seemed like she’d have to improve the defenses inside of Vur some more. Speaking of defenses, where were Mistle and Deedee? Could it be … they were having an affair? Two elementals tasked to work together by combining their elements. Two elementals mixing together in close proximity. Two elementals together when one of them was already known to be madly in love with the other. Stella blinked at Zilphy and shook her head. Nah, it couldn’t be. Deedee was married. But wasn’t that the definition of affair? Maybe it was possible.

  While Stella was stuck deep in thought, a familiar face popped up in her vision. Vur blinked down at her, and she blinked up at him. Her landlord tilted his head. “Are you okay?”

  “Do you think Deedee is cheating on Zilphy with Mistle!?” Stella whispered, but only to herself. Her ears still weren’t working, and her voice came out louder than usual.

  “Deedee is what!?” Zilphy exploded, her eyes blowing apart into thousands of little eyes that shot through the air, carried by the wind.

  Vur tilted his head to the other side. “Well, it seems like you’re okay,” he said and nodded before picking her up. Then he hugged her to his chest, almost squishing her. The two bobbed up and down from Chompy’s eating motions. “What about Mervin?”

  “Right, Mervin!” Stella shouted. She wriggled around and pointed at the genie, who was sitting upright with a grin on his face. “Wait!? Mervin!?”

  Mervin’s grin spread into a smile. “I knew you cared about me!”

  Stella’s eyes bulged. “So, you pretended to be dead!?”

  “Pretend?” Mervin coughed out a few mouthfuls of blood. “Uh, no. I’m actually dying. Vur, I need you to make a wish, so I can turn back into a beansprout. If you don’t make a wish, I’ll really die! So, wish for anything, anything at all, even a sandwich. Wish for the first thing that c
omes to your mind, hurry!”

  Vur scratched his head. The first thing that came to mind?

  ***

  Vur stretched his arms and cracked his neck. Then he sat up. He was on a bed, covered by a thin blanket. On top of the blanket, there was a layer of black hair attached to purple horns. Peeking underneath, there was a pale face with drool leaking out of its mouth. Vur smiled and stroked Tafel’s head.

  “Oh, look who’s finally up,” Grimmy said. He raised an eyebrow. Then he raised his other eyebrow. “You’ve, uh, certainly, hmm.” He scratched his head. “I don’t know if Tafel’s going to like that, but okay. Is that permanent?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lindyss asked. She lowered her book and stared at Vur from her corner of the room. “Oh.” Her eyes narrowed, and she nudged Grimmy with her foot. “Did you do that?”

  “I gave him cows,” Grimmy said. “If anything about him was going to change, he would’ve grown horns. Not”—Grimmy gestured at Vur—“that. That’s not on me.”

  Vur nodded. “Hi, Uncle Grimmy. Hi, Auntie. I would stand up, but”—he gestured at Tafel while still stroking her head—“yeah.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lindyss said. “About your arms though….”

  A groaning sound interrupted the cursed elf, and Tafel brought the back of her hand up to her face. She wiped away her drool and turned her face towards Vur. Her eyes opened, and she closed them again while taking in a deep breath through her nose. A mumble escaped from her mouth. “What a weird dream.”

  “It’s not a dream,” Grimmy said and tapped Tafel’s back with his claw.

  Tafel flinched and stiffened, her eyes shooting open. “Not a dream?” she asked. Her hair cascaded down her face as she sat up in her seat, taking her head off of Vur’s bedside. She swept it back and stared hard at Vur. Then she closed her eyes and rubbed them with her palms. A moment later, she brought her hands back down. The sight before her didn’t change. She chewed on her lower lip and turned her head, her gaze switching between Vur, Grimmy, and Lindyss. Finally, she turned back to Vur. “Vur. You have four arms.”