Dragon Tamer

by J. A. Culican

  I nodded. “It’s nothing major.”

  Ash rolled his eyes. “Why is it that whenever something explodes, you are in the center of it?”

  “It hardly exploded,” I countered. “That’s not really the problem right now. Our main concern is knowing if this is all the Goblins are going to do or should we expect worse to come?”

  All eyes pointed at Morganna who shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I already told you that I was theorizing.”

  “Well, it certainly seems that you were right about the Goblins wanting the swords. If they are taking them that way, by magic, then I assume that they won’t need to come into Frokontas. However, I don’t want to leave it to chance. We’ll follow the original plan and get everyone safely in the cliff-side houses before planning what to do next. Edeline, Fiere, can you go and round up as many people in the village as you can and get them to the cliffs? Alpha and Morganna, can you go and knock on the doors of people in the houses there and ask them to let the others in? Tell them I said they have to if they refuse.”

  The four nodded their heads and made to leave, but my father stopped them.

  “Wait. What about the swords?”

  “What about them?” replied Spear. “They’ve gone and we can’t stop the goblins from taking more.” Just as he said it there was another pop and whoosh of wind and another went. “See?” pointed Spear. “We’ll deal with it later, but now I have to get my people and your people to safety.”

  “What I mean is,” began my father patiently, or as patiently as my father ever was, “if Morganna is right and they are taking the swords to use the dragon souls to turn into magic, wouldn’t it be better to let the villagers fend for themselves and get the rest of us up the mountain before they essentially kill those dragons?”

  We all looked at him as his words sank in. We had to make a decision and fast.

  “What do you think?” asked Spear, surprising me. Everyone looked at me.

  They wanted me to make the decision. The weight of everything felt heavy upon my shoulders. If I chose wrongly it could cost a great many lives. I weighed up what we should do before speaking.

  “I didn’t see any signs of magic outside, but we are vulnerable here. This valley is enclosed which makes us sitting ducks. I say we go with the original plan and get everyone to the cliffs as quickly as possible.” I looked down at the pile of swords. There were still a lot there. It would be a few hours before they all vanished. We had a bit of time. Not much, but enough.

  “We’ll all go. It will be quicker with the eight of us doing it. Then we can work out what we are going to do from there.”

  “Who’s going to guard the swords?” asked Edeline as another one vanished into thin air.

  “There’s no point keeping guard over them. We can’t stop them disappearing, whether we watch them or not. We need someone to stay here to watch over the sick, though. There are still a few people inside the house and the dragons in the building in the garden.”

  “I’ll stay,” Ash said. “Just make sure you come back for me when you go up the mountain. I don’t want to miss out on some prime Goblin kicking.”

  “Thank you,” I said, kissing his cheek.

  The eight of us dashed out of the house, with my father turning one way to the makeshift hospital and everyone else racing into the village. Spear and Edeline took the farmhouses while the rest of us knocked on doors in the village center.

  It took nearly two hours to get everyone into the cliff houses. Many of the dragons were scared and more than a few had to be persuaded to leave their own houses. With each second that passed, the fear in me grew. Fear that we were about to be attacked down here, fear that we were leaving it too late to save the dragons in the swords, and the nagging thought that I could have solved the problem by using the swords to cut myself, thus releasing them all. I tried to put the thought to one side. I would be dead long before I got through all of them, and yet I still felt guilty, as though I should have done more.

  “I think that’s everyone,” puffed Spear as we met around the fire pit. A few others had joined us after finding out why we were moving everyone. All the Wolvren were there, as were all the Slayers, save my father who was still back at Spear’s house. Ally and Stone were there, as were a number of other dragons.

  “We have quite an army,” I pointed out as we all formed a circle around the fire pit. I looked up to see Lucy looking down at us from a window. Firecracker was beside her, but the rest of her family were with me by the fire. A lump formed in my throat as I realized, there was a chance she’d never see any of them again if we did head up the mountain.

  There was still no sign of magic. The beautiful weather belied the situation we were in, but I knew then that we were at war. Whether the goblins came down to us, or we went up to them, it didn’t matter. Fighting them was inevitable.

  “Right, everybody!” I shouted. “You are here because we are going to fight the Goblins. This is not going to be a war without casualties. I’m not going to ask any of you to come with me up the mountain. The choice belongs to each and every one of you, but I want it to be clear that we are going up there to fight.”

  I looked at the people at the fireside, waiting for some of them to turn away, to go to the relative safety of the houses, but no one moved. All I saw was the resolute expressions on their faces. Every single one of them had been affected by the Goblins somehow. Every one of them had a reason to fight.

  “As you have all made your choice, follow me.” I turned toward the path that led away from the cliff face.

  “Follow you where?” one of the dragons asked. “I thought we were going up the mountain?”

  “Oh, we are, but there is someone we have to pick up first.”

  There was no way I was leaving my father behind. He might have been a lot of things, but he was a Slayer first and foremost. There was no one I wanted on my side more than him. We were going to kick some goblin butt!

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The bit of lawn in front of Spear’s house that wasn’t taken up by the dragon hospital was covered with armor, the metal and leather pieces laid out neatly.

  “What’s this?” I asked as my father came out of the house, his hands full of swords.

  “War!” replied my father with glee. He placed the swords on the ground, one next to each outfit. “I hope you don’t mind, Spear. I found all this stuff in your basement.”

  Spear shook his head. “It’s fine. As dragons, we have no need for armor. Our skin protects us, but as the town leader, I had some made just in case. It’s been sitting in my basement unused for years.”

  My father nodded, a wide grin on his face. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him so happy. The promise of war thrilled him. “The swords are our old swords, the ones without the dragon souls in them. I figure it’s about time we fill them with Goblin souls, don’t you?”

  “What about the other swords?” Morganna asked, referring to the ones with the souls still inside.

  “Oh, they are still vanishing.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand as though he didn’t care about the swords anymore. He was too focused on the upcoming battle.

  Seeing my father’s fervor and the weapons really brought home how dangerous this was going to be. I’d been on quite a number of adventures since my eighteenth birthday, but this time, there was a great possibility that someone was going to get killed.

  I’d spent my childhood imagining the Goblins as these sweet, peaceful characters who happily made swords. I’d spent my whole life dreaming of the day I’d get my own. Little did I know that would be the day my life would change. And oh, how it had changed. As I strapped into the armor my father had set out for me, I looked back over the past few months. It felt that everything I’d gone through had come to this point, this moment in time. I fingered the hilt of my sword, the same sword that had started all this. I’d worn it almost constantly since then. It had almost become a companion to me. It was the only one of the swords tha
t still retained its shine. It was the only one we had that hadn’t had a dragon released from it. The Goblins wouldn’t try taking this one back since it didn’t hold a dragon soul, but even so, I held onto it as though a Goblin might sneak up and snatch it from me at any second.

  “We don’t have enough swords to go around,” pointed out my father as he pulled his own armor on. “Jules only freed a few dragons. We need to decide who gets one.”

  “I’ll take mine,” said Morganna, coming forward and picking it up, placing it in her scabbard.

  “And I’ve got mine. Jasper, here’s yours.” He threw the sword, still in its scabbard, to Jasper, who belted it around his waist. “Who else wants one?”

  “We don’t need them,” said Ash, referring to the dragons. They didn’t need armor either. Their skin was armor enough.

  There were still so many people without swords. None of the Wolvren had one and most of the Slayers didn’t. The armor we were wearing was not really fit for purpose. It was nothing like the armor that everyone owned in Dronias. Back there, every villager had theirs fitted to them. Everything was made to measure by a tailor in the village. Here, we were wearing a cobbled together mishmash of items, none of which really fit, and most which offered very little protection.

  The Goblins were no more warriors than the dragons were, but they had swords. They had our Slayer swords, not to mention all the other weapons they had made over the years. Who was to say if they had stockpiled some or not? They most definitely had armor, I’d seen them wearing it. And let’s not forget magic. It might have been running low, but the disappearing swords told us they weren’t completely out of it yet.

  Another problem we had was clothing. The only way we could get up the mountain was if the dragons carried us and to do that, they had to be naked. That meant they wouldn’t be able to change back once we were up there, not unless we took clothes with us. Unfortunately, taking bags full of clothes would slow us down in a fight. In the end, I came up with a solution.

  “Dragons. Drop your clothes in this sack. I’ll take it up the mountain and drop it once we get to the top.”

  The dragons nodded and one by one, they went behind the hospital to change.

  There were more Slayers and Wolvren combined than there were dragons, so we had to sit two people on each. Morganna hopped on Ash’s back just behind me, my father and Jasper jumped up on Spear, Xander and Alpha sat upon Fiere’s back, and the rest found others to fly on.

  “In my entire life, never did I dream that one day I’d be flying on a dragon,” shouted my father as Spear ran into a take-off. I heard my father give a whoop of joy as they leaped into the sky.

  In any other circumstance, his delight in flying on the back of a dragon would have me grinning from ear to ear, but I was a bag of nerves as we set off, taking up the second position behind Spear. Morganna held tightly to me as we soared through the air. Below me, the other dragons were ascending in formation as Frokontas grew smaller and smaller.

  Knowing the Goblins would have come to this point with or without me didn’t lessen my anxiety. Their magic running out now would have happened anyway, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty, as if this was somehow my fault. I tried shaking the thought away. If I’d not come up the mountain on my eighteenth birthday, the Slayers would have continued slaying and there would have been more dragon souls trapped in the swords ready to be turned into magic by the Goblins. The ones that had been freed would still be in there. Still, the thought of all the people I loved flying up to fight an army of Goblins who had magic to command made me feel sick to my stomach. If anyone was injured or worse, I wasn’t sure I’d forgive myself.

  The sun shone down on the peak of the mountain, glistening off the snowy cap. It was so bright, I had to close my eyes as we landed so I wasn’t blinded by the glare. As planned, we didn’t stop right at the entrance to the Goblin village but flew right over it and landed in the snow farther up the mountain. Ash fell into a dive before leveling out and landing right next to Spear, Jasper, and my father.

  My father jumped down, landing squarely in the snow, a broad smile splitting his face. “What a rush!” he yelled, holding his dull sword skyward.

  “Shh. Avalanches!” I reminded him, pointing at the snow. I’d told them all about the possibility of avalanches down in Frokontas. Either he’d not been listening or was too excited to care. I suspected the latter. I’d never seen anyone so ready for battle.

  One by one the others arrived. Thankfully, they’d listened to me and spoke using hushed tones. As they were all assembling, I gazed down the mountain. The entrance to the Goblin village was about two hundred feet below us. I saw no sign of movement, but that didn’t mean they weren’t ready.

  “This is going to be too easy!” whispered Jasper in my ear.

  “Don’t underestimate them,” replied Morganna who was standing right next to us and overheard him.

  “There’s no one there. Look!” insisted Jasper, who seemed to have inherited his lack of fear and brazen attitude from our father. I wished I had half their confidence.

  “They are there,” Morganna said, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I can feel the Goblin magic. It’s pretty strong. Can’t you feel it?”

  I’d felt it in Spears house when the swords were disappearing, but up here all I could feel was the icy breeze, which had the same effect, standing the hair on the back of my neck on end.

  “We go down in waves,” said my father quietly. “I’ll go first with Alpha, Jasper, and Xander, then the Wolvren can follow. The dragons can take to the air and defend us as they see fit.”

  A couple of the dragons nodded their heads and prepared to take off once again.

  “Wait!” shouted Morganna. The snow behind us shifted slightly, making me nervous. “What about me? What about Julianna?”

  My father looked over at me. “You two can follow the Wolvren. We need someone to hold back.”

  “And you picked the two girls?” Morganna put her hands on her hips. “Not happening. You know I’m a better Slayer than you, and you’ve seen how brave Julianna is. I’m going down with you.”

  My father looked like he was going to protest but thought better of it. “Fine. You can head up the front. Julianna, you stay to the rear.”

  Now I was mad. Hadn’t I proved I was good enough to lead the group? But there was no time to protest. Everyone was already setting off. My father held his sword aloft again, and with a war cry, began to run down the mountain. Behind me, the earth shuddered. The snow was beginning to crack. In a spur of the moment decision, I ran toward the dragons that were beginning to take off and launched myself onto Ash’s back just as his feet left the ground. If my father didn’t want me on the front line, fine, but I wasn’t going to sit back and wait in the snow.

  I’d flown with Ash enough times to anticipate his every move and so when he rolled right, I leaned left. We were a team and with us working together, we were stronger than if we were apart. Below us, my father charged to the entrance. I expected him to run straight but something was stopping him. I just couldn’t see what it was.

  “Lower,” I shouted to Ash, who immediately went into a dive. As we neared the entrance, I saw a dome-shaped barrier covering the doorway. It was almost invisible, but I could just about see its outline. I watched as my father began hacking away at it with his sword, but it wasn’t having any effect.

  “Get back!” I shouted down at him. “Ash, blow fire at it, see if that helps.”

  Ash waited until everyone was a good ten feet clear of the entrance, then, stretching out his neck and opening his jaws wide, he let out a blast of flame. The magic dome was much easier to spot now as the fire burned around it, but it didn’t penetrate it. I couldn’t believe it. We’d come all this way to fight them and they’d made themselves safe using a magic forcefield. If we couldn’t find a way past it, they’d be free to do what they wanted with the swords and there would b
e nothing we could do to stop them.

  Ash flew back up into the sky so high that the people below us looked like ants.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed, holding onto him tightly. I loved flying with him usually, but at this height it was terrifying. Below me, I could see the whole mountain. The peak was below us and to the left. If I looked right, I could see Frokontas on one side of the range and Dronias on the other side. In the distance, I saw other small towns and villages with a patchwork quilt of farmlands separating them. Below us, the rest of the dragons circled, waiting for something to happen.

  Ash circled around the peak. He couldn’t speak to me in his dragon form, but he was trying to tell me something.

  “What is it?” I asked pointlessly. Then I realized what he wanted to say. The entrance we knew of to the Goblin village was one of three entrances. The second entrance, the one that the Slayers used to buy swords, was down at the base of the mountain somewhere, but there was another higher one on the mountain, too. If we could find it, there was a chance we’d be able to get in there.

  We were too late. I didn’t need to look for the entrance. I could already see it and there were hundreds of Goblins swarming out of it and running down the mountain to where the Slayers and Wolvren were standing.

  The Goblins had known we were coming and they’d been ready to ambush us. We were sitting ducks!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ash saw them at the same time I did. He fell into a dive so quickly I almost didn’t have time to hold on. Fire burst from his mouth in an attempt to fry the invading goblins, but they were ready for him. They were using the same magical force field they’d used at the entrance to shield themselves. The fire bounced off of the invisible umbrella over them and spat out in all directions.

  “Warn the others!” I screamed.

  Ash turned slightly and glided down to the main Goblin entrance.

  “They are here!” I yelled to the Slayers and Wolvren. “They are coming around the peak of the mountain at any second and they have a forcefield around them.”