by Dante King
Chapter Four
As Elenari and I were making our way through a patch of low shrubs, we ran into a trio of goblin sentries. We popped out from behind a particularly rotten and scabrous tree and found the three creatures relieving themselves. Elenari and I were only a stone’s throw away from the ugly fuckers, so I got an eyeful of their warped little knobs.
“What the fuck,” I managed to say.
The trio was surprised as all hell. The goblins didn’t look any better up close than they did from far away. On the contrary, they looked a fair bit worse. I could clearly see their little bulging eyes, all yellow with no irises and only little black pupils in the center. They breathed heavily, like asthmatic pigs. Their mouths were full of yellow, broken teeth and rimmed with saliva.
“Just what were you three up to?” I asked. “A dick-measuring contest? I’ll be honest; you’re all losers.”
“We was having a pissing contest,” one piped up. I was somewhat surprised to hear they could not only speak English, but they could also understand it. Either that or there was some strange magic that allowed me to both speak and understand the language of this world.
The second goblin thumped the one who’d spoken. “Fuck explaining to this pink-skin, we’re gonna gut him then fuck his pointy-eared whore.”
Then the goblin nearest me moved. His hand snaked up to a crude blade that was wedged into a scabbard across his chest. It might have been an unrefined weapon, but it looked plenty sharp enough to run across my throat and turn me into a Pez dispenser.
My fighter’s instincts took over, and my hand shot out to jab the goblin hard in the forearm. The blow must have numbed the goblin’s arm because he dropped his weapon and gave a little grunt of pain. My follow-up punch was the sort of raw haymaker that you’d see thrown about in any bar fight, but I knew that my foe wouldn’t be expecting it and so I went for it.
I could average a punch that generated around seven-hundred pounds of force, and that goblin caught every single one of those pounds right on the end of his crooked nose. I flattened his conk like it was made of wet cardboard and smashed him into the leaf mold in a spray of dark blood. Judging by the way that his eyes were still open, I had either killed him or knocked him out so conclusively that he’d probably not wake up for three days.
His knife stuck quivering in the dirt at my feet.
One of the goblins made a dash for it, but Elenari swept her curved dagger around and buried it in his hairy ear canal. She wrenched the blade free of her opponent and threw it underhand at third goblin, who’d decided to flee. By sheer luck, the goblin whipped up his stone-tipped spear as he ran and deflected the flying dagger so that it thunked into an overhanging tree branch about twelve feet above him.
Then he was gone. I could hear him crashing away through the brush and piled leaves, shrieking at the top of his lungs.
“Sphinx bollocks!” Elenari hissed, her eyes blazing.
She ran up and boosted off the tree trunk nearest to her and made a leap that completely defied gravity and the limitations of the muscles in her legs. She whipped her dagger out of the bough above us and landed with the ease of a leopard on the ground.
“How the hell do you do that?” I asked, looking at her with a mixture of awe and attraction.
Elenari ran a hand through her long, red hair. “I’m a bloody dragonmancer,” as if that cleared that up. “Now, place your dragon in the right arm slot of your crystal! Now!”
I did as I was bid, noting the urgency in her tone. I didn’t worry if I could do what the elf was asking me—I knew I could. I had done it before, after all, hadn’t I?
I pulled the crystal from the pocket of my jeans and focused on it so that the interface reappeared out of the swirling smoke inside. Then, I willed the Onyx Dragon, Noctis, into the slot marked, Right Arm. The interface flickered and then changed.
Head
Chest
Right Arm: Noctis (Offensive Spell: SHADOW SPHERE)
Left Arm
Legs
Weapon Slot A
Weapon Slot B
Wings
Titan
This change in my interface was accompanied by a sudden and unexpected burning down my right arm. It was a sensation that rode the line between pleasure and pain, sending a warm glow from the fingertips of my right arm, across my chest, and down my back. It was like being sunburned and submerged into a cooling bath of chamomile lotion at the same time.
I pulled the sleeve of my worn Carhartt flannel shirt up and saw that a tattoo had appeared: a dragon in black ink snaked down from above my bicep, curled around my arm with its wings spread, and finished by opening its mouth in a snarl at my wrist. As I looked at it in astonishment, I could have sworn that the image of the creature blinked and more effectively bared its little teeth.
“What the hell is that?” I asked Elenari.
“The tattoo represents a spell that your dragon’s power has gifted you. See?” she said, showing me a glittering emerald tattoo crawling down her own slender arm.
“How do I use this spell?” I asked.
“You’ll feel it! If you have shown me anything in the few minutes that we have known one another,” and she pointed at the goblin that I had just freight-trained with that haymaker, “it’s that you are a man who can handle trouble as it comes.”
I felt like pointing out that that just because I’d knocked Dobby the fuck out, didn’t mean that I was suddenly Harry motherfuckin’ Potter, but at that moment, Elenari pulled a knife from a sheath at the small of her back and handed it to me.
“You know how to use this?” she asked.
“I know that you want to be at the opposite end to the pointy bit,” I said drily. “I’ve always been more of a bare-knuckle brawler than a knife fighter, sweetheart. Besides, I haven’t had the formal training that you have.”
“Well, consider this your first lesson,” the elf said and started pulling me through the trees toward the goblin camp.
We slinked through the trees and soon found ourselves nearing the edge of the glade. I saw a goblin on the edge of the clearing. He had a short bow in his hands and was peering about nervously.
He was right to be nervous.
I burst out of the bushes with a smile on my face and a roar on my lips. The goblins were short—about five foot, maybe, on average—so the sentry’s head was at a perfect level for me to bring my knee up like a mountain rising from the bottom of the ocean and smash it into his mug without even breaking stride. The goblin flew backward into the glade, shards of yellow teeth flying out in all directions.
Elenari launched herself out of the bushes behind me. She actually vaulted off my shoulder as she emerged and performed a graceful front flip that sent her into the midst of the confused goblins. Her curved dagger was drawn and glowing, and she scythed it about in a wonderful and eye-opening display of brutality. Blood sprayed everywhere as the glowing dagger snuck past guards and opened arteries and throats.
As captivating as this show of ferocity was, I didn’t have long to observe it. Two goblins came running in my direction, spears waving toward my face. I hefted the knife that Elenari had given me in my hand.
The first came at me with his spear, thrusting at my throat. I sidestepped out of the way, then lunged forward with the knife. I slashed at his throat, and his neck sprayed blood. He dropped his spear and clutched at the open wound as blood poured from between his fingertips.
The second goblin thrust his spear toward me, and I dodged it easily, bouncing on the soles of my feet. The spear flailed at me again, and I slipped around it once more, the razor-sharp flint tip zipping past my nose by a whisker. I stepped into the goblin’s guard and grasped the rough wooden haft of the spear, then I pivoted and swung the spear about. The goblin, still clutching his end of the weapon, screamed and fell away as I smashed him into the nearest tree trunk.
I sensed movement at my rear and flicked a foot out. I caught the goblin trying to sneak up on me with an axe
kick right in the chest. It sent him spinning away, and he landed in the campfire. There was a dull whumpf as the furs and skins he wore went up like a torch, then he ran off, bumbling into another of his fellows and setting him alight too.
I could see in the corner of my eye that Elenari was getting surrounded. More and more goblins seemed to be emerging out of the woodwork. They had been called, perhaps, by messengers that had been sent out when the fighting started.
I scooped up a poorly made pot from near the fire and blocked a knife thrust with it. Then I stabbed my attacker in the ribs with it before delivering a wicked elbow strike to the side of his head. As chance would have it, the goblin stumbled away and impaled himself on the end of an oncoming spear. My pot arm came round and brained the spear-carrier so hard that blood squirted out of his nostrils, and he collapsed instantly.
I had cleared a bit of space around me. Breathing heavily, I looked over at Elenari. She too had made a bit of room around her with her dagger. Goblin corpses lay around her like discarded clothes. As I watched, four goblins formed up and charged the elf.
Elenari punched her fist into the dirt at her feet, and the dead leaves exploded up into the air around her like a flock of brown birds. Then, out of this mess of fluttering, decomposing leaves, roots whipped out and snared the four goblins. They squealed in fear, but the roots bore them down to the ground, curling about them like crushing pythons. There was a crackle of bones, the sound reminding me of someone standing on a giant bag of potato chips, as the goblins were crushed by the enchanted roots. One of the poor fuckers was actually squeezed in half, his guts bursting out of him as he ruptured like some foul overripe fruit.
It was the only incentive I needed to attempt releasing the spell that was wrapped around my own right arm.
I extended my awareness in the same way that I tried to impose my will on the spirit of Noctis. To my astonishment, I felt a pocket of energy residing inside myself. It was the weirdest sensation, being able to feel that small, warm pocket of swirling force inside of me. I wondered if that was what people referred to when they talked of mana.
I focused on the pocket of mana inside my chest and willed it to fill the tattoo on my right arm. It was like the mental equivalent of one of those cubes which had a maze inside, where you had to guide a tiny ball through that maze.
I looked down and saw a ball of black, swirling energy swell out of my palm until it filled my hand. There were only a few goblins left now, and two were moving in on Elenari from different sides. Not sure what else I could do with the ball of sable energy, I chucked it at the goblin nearest my elven companion. The energy struck the goblin on its raised sword arm.
And the arm dissolved and vanished, leaving no trace that the goblin had ever had one.
The goblin freaked at this turn of events and dashed off into the woods, screaming at the top of its lungs.
I felt that I had a little more juice in the tank and summoned another ball of sable energy, though this one was smaller than the first. When I threw it, this one caught the other goblin in the back of the head and simply made its head vanish in a burst of black dust. The goblin fell dead.
The rest of the goblins broke after that. There was only a handful left, but they clearly realized that prudence was going to trump valor today. They took off like the hounds of hell were behind them.
And, just like that, as abruptly as it always seemed, the fight was over. I surveyed the scene of my very first battle and puffed out my cheeks. Somehow, I’d come out unscathed. I doubted every battle I fought in this fantasy world would be equally lucky.
“I’d have to call that a win,” I said. I peered at the blood on Elenari’s knife and stooped down to dry it on the dirt. The blood didn’t come off all that well. Not like it would have done in the movies. I shrugged and handed it back to Elenari. “Thanks for that. Works well, but I gotta say the spell is preferable.”
Suddenly, I observed a glittering powder floating up out of the slaughtered goblins. The powder coalesced into two streams, then flew toward me and Elenari. The greater stream seemed to flow down the elf’s top, while the thinner stream sped into my pocket.
Into the dragon crystal, I realized.
In answer to my raised eyebrow, Elenari said, “Every time that you use your dragon, the dragon grows in power. Although it gathers the most power during battle.”
“Like experience points?” I blurted out.
“Experience points?” the elf woman asked.
“XP?” I tried. “No? Never mind.”
“I have never heard it described thus,” Elenari said. “It is essence. Strength.”
I nodded. Took another deep breath. A sudden weariness swept over me, a fatigue that I couldn’t attribute just to the fight. When I asked Elenari about this, she said, “That’s mana exhaustion. You must be careful not to tap yourself out too hard or too fast.”
“What do we do now then?” I asked.
Elenari wiped the blade of her curved dagger on a goblin’s loincloth and sheathed it.
“I think I know where we are,” she said. “If I’m any judge of this place, we can’t be very far from Drako Academy.”
“Drako Academy? I’m going to school?”
Elenari smiled. “Something like that.”
I shrugged. “Even if it’s not that far away, it might be too far if the woods are filled with a hundred more of those goblins.”
“I concur,” the elf said. “Which is why we shall fly there.”
“Fly there?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Fair enough,” I said, prepared to believe just about anything this elf woman would tell me about this world.
“Now, enough of this talk,” Elenari said briskly. “Transfer your dragon to your ‘leg’ slot and let’s mount up.”
I did as Elenari instructed. In the wink of an eye, Noctis stood before me in all his midnight-colored glory. The Onyx Dragon lowered a wing for me, and I climbed on. I found that the shape of the dragon’s body created a natural saddle for me to sit in.
“Now, before you ask,” the elf said with a grin, “this—flying—is something that cannot be taught. You must figure it out. It is between you and Noctis.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, “but how about a few pointers?”
In answer, Elenari launched herself into the air on the back of her Emerald Dragon, and Noctis rose like a rocket behind them. It was, hands down, the most exhilarating thing I had ever experienced—including fighting a bunch of goblins. I clung on and pressed myself to Noctis’ flanks to minimize wind resistance. Happily, the scales of the Onyx Dragon’s back gripped my clothing like Velcro, and I didn’t feel like I was in danger of slipping at all. I hadn’t realized that I had closed my eyes as we took off, but I opened them now.
We must have been a thousand feet up.
I let loose just about every expletive I knew and finished off the exclamation with a great “Chaaaaaa-hoo!” of boundless delight.
This was how to travel! This was how to live! I had never been on a plane before, but if this was what it was like for people who did… Why were they not constantly raving about it?
Below us, speeding by at about one-hundred miles per hour, was some of the most phenomenally breathtaking country that I had ever seen or imagined. The Wyrmwood stretched off to one side like a blanket woven of dark green shadow and secrets made solid. There were gorgeous rolling hills that spread off to the horizon like ripples in a sage sea. Along said horizon rose the distant crystalline teeth of a mammoth mountain range, marching along like spires and icicles of pearl and silver. Lakes shone like the loose change of giants, and rivers ran like threads of mercury through the landscape.
It was wonderfully wild land, and it called to a part of me that I hadn’t realized even existed. Even though it was a mostly untamed land, that wasn’t to say there were no signs of civilization. Off to my right, I saw smoke rising from a large walled town. There were myriad farmsteads, stone villages, and shepherds�
�� huts that looked like toys spread out on a child’s playmat.
I was pretty sure that the smile I was rocking would have made the Cheshire Cat look like a manic-depressive.
The flying wasn’t so hard, all things considered. Not for one who had spent many hours as a kid playing truant and raising hell in arcades all over L.A. I’d been raised on Ace Combat and Assault Horizon. It didn’t take me long to learn how different pressures exerted on different parts of Noctis’ flanks would turn the mythical beast in different directions.
Elenari flew in close on her emerald mount and yelled over the rush of the wind, “Everything that you see is part of the Mystocean Empire. From each group of peoples, from each branch of life that spreads over this land, there comes a Dragonmancer, and they all attend the Drako Academy, where they learn how to use their dragons.”
I could hear her voice clearly despite the wind, so I wondered if there was some magic at work for dragon riders so that they could efficiently communicate with each other.
We skimmed under some low clouds, and I saw their shadows projected below us.
The wind buffeted my face as I sat up slightly. It seemed that if I crouched low to Noctis’ back, I was protected from the wind of his passage by the horns on his nose that deflected the wind over the two of us.
“You’re going to be quite the spectacle,” Elenari said. “The first male dragonmancer in millennia!”
That’s not going to hurt your chances with any ladies that go to this Academy, I thought.
“What can I expect there?” I asked as we shot over a gorge filled with a frothing, milky river that tumbled off and away toward a huge lake.
“Training, first and foremost,” the elf warrior said. “You’ll need to learn how to wield a blade. And use your mana more efficiently.”