Grim and focused, I equipped the guard’s greaves, boots, gauntlets, and breastplate, but left off the helmet. The armor was heavy and offered slightly more protection than my old Jack of Plates, but it was something. I raided the others for their HP-restoring food and took off, seizing the spontoon I’d thrown as I ran by.
The corridor around the corner from the cells was wider and taller than the one outside the row of cells, feeding into a large torture room. No fewer than six guards ran at me, swords drawn. Behind them was the interrogator - a tall, bald, lantern-jawed man in a long leather coat. He was holding a glowing poker, standing in front of Kira. She was burned, semi-conscious, her beautiful dark curls had been roughly chopped off. She was also naked, and hanging from a pulley-and-rope contraption by her wrists. That was all I was able to see before the mass of guards was on me.
“Here you go, assholes!” I activated the Mark of Matir, and charged in.
The dark energy washed through my body in a chilling wave. As I closed in, I burned the rest of my AP on Jump, leaping up and out of the way of their lunging swords. I landed on the one helmetless guard in the team, spear-first, and rammed it deep into his neck. Blood sprayed, and the Mark fed greedily, pumping up my HP as I bounced back to the ground.
“Magic! A Heretic! Demon!” someone yelled.
Not quite. But the Skyrdon had gotten what they wanted when they put me through the Trials.
At Level 7, I was able to cut down the remaining five Level 8 guards in a whirl of wood and steel, fueled by rage and grief. After the last man gurgled on the spontoon blade I’d thrust through his mouth and out the back of his head, I pulled it out. I whirled the polearm around my body and turned to face the interrogator.
Whatever he saw in my face terrified him. He was sheet-white, holding the poker like a sword. I looked at what he’d done to Kira, and then to Owen. The healer’s face was swollen. He was missing teeth, and tears still poured down his weathered cheeks.
“Please-” the torturer got out one choked word as I ran at him. Whatever else he began to say was drowned out by my furious snarl.
He parried the spontoon once, twice, driven back by the force of the blows. Once the adrenaline hit, the torturer recovered enough to use the poker like a fencing foil. He lunged in past my guard and shoved the burning-hot tool at my chest. It slid along the armor and into my armpit, a shock of hot pain. I ignored it, and used the haft of the spear to flick the poker away, then swung it up to slam the torturer up under his jaw.
He fell back, bleeding from the mouth, and put a hand up to ward me away and protect his head. “No!”
“Life for life.” I grabbed him by the face with one hand and rammed the spontoon through his stomach with the other, twisting the weapon even as I sucked the vitality out of him. The energy was cold and hot at the same time, an addictive dizzying rush. The dying man clawed at me, rapidly weakening, and the flesh of his face was like paper when I let go. I pushed him away to collapse on the ground. I should have felt… anything, really, but there was only numbness, and the sensation of something grinning at the world from behind my eyes, a formless predator with very sharp teeth.
Swallowing, I dismissed the Mark, and felt the dark presence recede. In the moment of silence that followed, I felt an odd pressure, the push of telepathic connection.
“Herald, I sense your victory and your impending freedom,” the Matriarch said. Her voice was strained. “You must come to me, before the Mata Argis know you have escaped.”
“Come to you?” I muttered aloud. “How? Where? I don’t know where I am!”
“You are in the lower ground level of the Eyrie. Do not fear, I will guide you.”
“Okay, hold on. There are people here I have to help.”
“As you will. But do not tarry.”
“You!” The old man stared at me in naked shock as I gazed off into space. “By the Gods! What did you do?”
“I just saved your ass. And I’m about to save your daughter’s.” With a stiff nod, I turned and went to free Kira.
Kira was limp, but conscious. She shook with pain as I turned the winch that lowered her to the ground, but the only sound she made was to whimper when her feet touched the floor. She dropped to her knees as the rope slackened and her dislocated arms slid back into place with a muffled crunch.
“It’s okay, Kira.” I fumbled with the jail keys, hurrying to unlock her cuffs. “You’re going to be okay.”
She did not reply, shuddering with the effort to stay conscious.
“Kira!” Owen strained against his chains as I unbound him. He wobbled up to his feet and ran to his daughter, gathering her in his arms.
“Here.” I looted the inquisitor’s coat and then transferred it back out of my Inventory to my hand, in the hopes that it would clean the garment up a little. It did. I headed for them, coat held in outstretched hands. But to my surprise, Owen flinched away, holding Kira close.
“Please, I beg you!” He looked – and sounded – like he was terrified. “Mercy for her, missiure, if not for me!”
“What?” I froze, looking down at him.
“I… I told them everything.” The old herbalist trembled. “They made me talk… they were hurting her. I wouldn’t have said a word, if not for that, but...”
Oh. So he’d been the ‘eye-witness source’. Dark anger flared in my chest like an ember, but it was easily crushed. It wasn’t his fault. He had no more power than I did.
“Here,” I said heavily. “Cover her up. And don’t worry about it. I’d have done the same thing for my kid.”
Tears streamed down Owen’s cheeks. He nodded as he took the coat and tenderly covered Kira’s battered body with a layer of warm, heavy leather. She moaned, opening her eyes, but saying nothing.
“We don’t have much time.” I crouched down next to him. “What happened? Did you know those raiders were soldiers?”
“We suspected they were,” Owen said. “But you were a stranger. Our alderman would never tell you. After you left, we had a few weeks of peace, enough to warn the Kingsmen that our days were numbered. Some fled the village… We stayed to help the injured. Then the dragons came. The whole place is gone, Hector. Buildings, fields, everything.”
I looked down, and to the side.
Owen regarded me with a touch of defiance. “Now you’ve seen how the false crown staged its ‘revolution’. There isn’t anything revolutionary about the warden. He’s a thug in the pocket of merchants. We’re northerners and land-bound at that, but even we know he murdered King Rosvin in his chambers by night, all at the command of some wizard and his witch whore.”
Rutha. That stung. She and I were going to have a long talk someday soon.
“Listen,” I said. “You need to get Kira out of here. Loot the armor off one of these guards, dress Kira like the interrogator, and bluff your way out. It’s your only chance.”
“You won’t come with us?”
I gestured at myself. “I look too foreign. If it’s just you two, you have a better chance of talking your way out.”
“You’re right.” Owen looked down at his daughter. “But Kira…”
“I can walk.” Her voice was roughened with pain, but she stirred up enough to look at me. “We have to.”
“Girl, if you’re as badly hurt as-”
“I’m of age now, Pa. Don’t call me ‘girl’.” She turned her warm amber eyes on me. “Thank you, Hector.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You still have to get out of here.” I bounced up to my feet. “And we need to hurry.”
While Owen scavenged for disguises, I went to properly search the bodies. Chewing a piece of jerky, I had a look at the Inventory of the torturer. He was carrying a Quest Item.
Note from the Mata Argis to Captain Lorenz
“We are arranging special accommodations for the Starborn in Liren. Under no circumstances should he be killed, if you value your life. Make sure the prison is warded against dark magic. Do not transport him until the fette
rs have been enchanted and sent to Skyr Arnaud.
- Commander Pavella Blackwin.”
“Pavella Blackwin?” I frowned. A relative of Anya Blackwin?
“Pah! The Black Bitch, they call her.” Owen spat. “She leads the Mata Argis. Come here, help me dress Kira.”
“Right.” I folded the letter back into my Inventory, and went to assist.
We found some minor healing items, which we split between Owen and Kira, and helmets with visors that concealed their faces. When they left, I locked the jail door and went on a deeper search of the place. My stuff was in a wooden chest inside a small dank room next to the torture chamber, and the Spear leaned against the wall beside it. With the ancient weapon in my hands, I immediately felt better.
“Okay,” I thought out toward the Matriarch. “Sorry. I had to save them.”
“You must go through the sewers,” The Matriarch said to me. “Go down past the cells and underground. There should be a latrine there, a grate that deposits right into the sewer canal.”
“Great.” I shook my head, annoyed and amused at the same time. No fantasy adventure was complete without traipsing through the sewers. “How do you even know that?”
“I have my ways, and the knowledge of my mother and her mother before her. This is an ancient place. Please hurry, I cannot hold for much longer.”
“Hold? Hold what?” brows creased, I slunk out of the room, spear at the ready. The place was still deserted. Sensing no one, I broke into a jog.
“You will see. Go down to latrine, down through the grate, and descend into the sewers. You will head northeast.”
I headed back out into the jail, down the row of cells, and sure enough, there was a locked door that opened into a narrow, damp stairwell. I clattered down through a haze of torch smoke, and the deeper I went, the more pungent the air became. There was no one here, but finding the latrine wasn’t hard. The small room was bare, with nothing but an old bucket covered in cobwebs, a crusty, rusted iron grate in the floor, and walls carpeted in fungi. The trickling sound of running water could be heard from below. It looked like it hadn’t been used in centuries.
Mucking around in fossilized shit was not my idea of a fun time. No matter how many times I reminded myself this was a virtual reality, the smell of the sewer below was very real. With a sigh, I hauled the grate up and shoved it aside, dropped down, and pulled the cover back over. “Okay. I’m in.”
The spear on my back throbbed. For a moment, I thought I’d hallucinated the sensation, but then I felt a push through the air around me. A small light appeared in front of me in the dark. It was silent but bright, and threw harsh shadows off the walls that sent rats scattering for cover.
“Follow me,” the Matriarch said.
The light led the way forward. I brought my spear around, eyes darting from place to place as I jogged along, careful not to slip on the slimy stone. The only enemies down here were rats, quickly dispatched with a couple of spear thrusts if they got too close.
After what felt like hours of scrabbling, the light drifted up a short, slippery ramp and hung by a ladder leading up into the darkness. I slung my spear over my shoulder and started the climb, only to find myself hesitating. The Mark of Matir was making my arm throb: not painfully, but in way that forced me to notice. What if I was walking into a trap? The Matriarch was geas-bound to serve the Skyrdon. If they’d ordered her to lead me here, I was going to climb out and find myself at the mercy of Arnaud and a full wing of Dragon Knights.
“How do I know I should trust you?” I thought. “There’s magic binding you to the Skyrdon.”
There was silence for a few moments. “I am fighting their control, as I wish I could have done centuries ago. Come quickly - I cannot fight for much longer.”
Shaking my head, I mounted the ladder and climbed to the top. I found a manhole cover there. I pushed it up, and warily slid out into a small, very hot, dimly-lit room. Brass pipes ran along the walls, rows and rows of them. Ancient machinery thrummed in the walls, heard but not seen. A boiler room?
The light danced ahead of me, passing through the door and leaving me in darkness. I followed it, and emerged from a cleverly-disguised side exit into the hatching grounds.
The Matriarch sat rigidly on the sands, her head bowed, her foreclaws dug into the earth in front of her. The air around her was subtly warped, energy snapping and popping as she battled the geas and other enchantments that bound her to her lair. She was alone, as she’d said, and the chamber was completely empty save for the dragon.
“Thank the Nine,” she said. She sounded tired.
Being here was a painful reminder of what I would never have. Cautiously, I approached the Matriarch, swallowing against the lump in my throat. “What do you need, ma’am?”
In reply, the dragon extended her neck and head toward me. Her body tensed, and her long throat rippled with contractions as she retched once, then again, like a cat throwing up a hairball. I watched in confusion as her neck bulged, and the tumorous mass moved… a smooth shape that passed up as her jaws widened and she passed up a wet, dark gray-black sphere onto the hot sand.
My eyes widened. It wasn’t a tumor or a hairball. It was an egg - an egg half again as large as the white and blue ones that had been warming in the hatchery.
“You cannot know how devastated I was to bear this egg,” the Matriarch said sadly. She dipped her muzzle toward it, tongue lashing over it tenderly. “This is a Queen egg, Hector. One of several I have laid over the centuries. Every time, I have hidden the egg and waited… and every time until now, no one worthy of my daughters appeared.”
“You killed them?” My eyes widened.
“I would not wish this life on my worst enemy,” she replied, panting and hunching against the snapping energy coursing over her skin. “I couldn’t let them hatch. I wouldn’t allow it. I have never left this lair. I have never seen the sky. No daughter of mine must have her wings clipped, her teeth dulled, or be treated like a breeding sow. Never. That they take the other children of my clan is bad enough. And this one… she will be dark in scale, Hector, a daughter of Matir. The Skyrdon would treat her even more terribly than I for that alone.”
The damp shell was drying, and as it did, the color was changing from a dull gunmetal gray to a polished pewter color, becoming brighter and more metallic. “But if I hadn’t come?”
“She would never have hatched,” the Matriarch affirmed grimly. “But a Herald has come, and in you, she will find a worthy companion.”
“You’re sure she’s...?” I trailed off as, even as I spoke, the egg rocked and chirped.
“Yes.” The pearl-scaled dragon snapped her jaws convulsively, squinting against the building pain as she continued to fight the magic binding her. “I… I will teleport you from here to the stables in the fortress beyond the ruins. It will take the Skyrdon some time to realize where you have gone... e-enough time for you to run. It is too late to help me. But you must… you must give her a better life.”
Struck dumb with disbelief, I stumbled forward to lay my hands on the surface of the egg. It was hot, and the wyrmling inside was kicking, trying to break free through the unnaturally tough shell. But she couldn’t - not yet.
The egg fit in my Inventory and disappeared inside the magic hammerspace backpack, but it was heavy and encumbered me to a slow walk. I threw out everything else that wasn’t absolutely necessary, then shouldered the struggling burden. When the Matriarch saw I was ready, she bowed her head, her body tense with discomfort. The metal chains and gems danced with power, leaving scorch marks on her pale skin.
“They come,” she said. “I will spend the last of my power to help you. My daughter will hatch soon, perhaps even tonight. Hold her fast to you for the rest of your days, Dragozin Hector. And… thank you.”
“Thank you,” I stammered. “I’m... I’m honored. I don’t know if I’m...”
“You ARE ready. Feelings are not reality, Herald. This is one of the lessons Matir teache
s us.” The dragon’s tone was firm. She lifted her front paws, and the air of the hatching chamber warped, moaning in resistance to the magic that the elder dragon began to weave with her claws. “Mortan... vrath’lass!”
The collar around her neck turned red hot, and the dragon roared with agony - but the spell was cast. The scent of ozone filled my sinuses, and the space ahead of us folded in on itself, sucking back into a ‘hole’ torn in the fabric of reality.
“A portal,” the Matriarch said, her voice strained. “Go!”
“I promise I’ll come back for you!” I moved for the portal. “I swear it!”
The queen dragon thrashed from side-to-side in pain. Even as I watched, bright blue liquid gathered in the corners of her eyes and trickled from her ears. Blood.
The door to the hatchery opened, and people streamed in, shouting, waving weapons. I glimpsed Arnaud in the lead, his face a mask of shock.
“I… I know you will,” the Matriarch’s psionic voice was strained and grim with focus as she collapsed. “Go!”
There was no time for fear, only action. I half stumbled, half jumped through the portal.
The magic gate sucked me through, and for a moment, there was nothing but a total, bone-piercing cold blackness that ejected me onto the muddy ground outside Fort Palewing’s stable. Other than the sounds of the hookwings, it was eerily quiet here, the alarm going up in the Eyrie having not yet reached the main fortress.
I stumbled forward struggling under the weight of the backpack, searching frantically. Cutthroat was back in her default pen, and she came to the door and cocked her head like a dog as I approached.
“Okay, girl. This is no time to fuck around, you hear?” Sweat poured down my back as I attached the nose reins and opened the door, leading the big hookwing out. “Don’t cock this up.”
Cutthroat made a confused trilling sound in her throat, sniffing the backpack when I dropped the reins and hauled her saddle off the saddle tree. The pack and spear combined was over twice my usual carrying capacity, and every other task was made borderline impossible while I was wearing it - but if I set it on the ground, I wasn’t going to be able to pick it up again. I flung a blanket over the hookwing’s back, then the saddle, and cinched it with shaking hands. The bridle reins were next. The saurian bird was oddly compliant as I mounted her.
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