by Dante King
Noctis and I flashed through the open portal after Penelope and into the corridor beyond. I almost let loose an exhilarated whoooooo-hoooo-hoo! as we shot through the gap, but then I remembered that we were in a library technically, and I had already received a punishment from my commanding officer. Better to keep the old lips sealed.
We shot through the wide, high stone corridors of the Royal Academy like the two helicopters do in that chase sequence in Mission Impossible: Fallout when they’re pursuing each other through that New Zealand gorge. I followed on Penelope’s Rooster Dragon’s tail, Noctis showing me his ability to channel his inner swallow as he switched this way and that through the twisting hallways.
The Academy was mercifully quite empty, what with it being a weekend, and so we only had to avoid a smattering of students, who ducked at our approach, cursed as we shot past a few feet over their heads, and staggered in the wash of air the dragons left in their wake.
To call that little flight exhilarating would be like calling an evening spent in a hot tub with Zoe Saldana dressed as Gamora an average date.
After what seemed like only a few seconds, Penelope slowed and descended. Her dragon’s padded toes skimmed the hallway’s floor as it came to land. Noctis, being what seemed a fast learner, followed suit. The two dragons touched down with a clatter of claws and a bunching of muscles before they trotted to a halt.
“We’re here,” Penelope said, gesturing at a set of nondescript double doors flanked by a couple of statues of eight-foot rearing dragons.
“The Training Halls?” I asked.
Penelope nodded and shoved on the door. It creaked open and the familiar sound of people hitting things, grunting, swearing, and gasping in pain and exertion flowed out. A smell came with it. It was the smell of fresh sweat and heavy breath. I grinned. It was an atmosphere that I knew well. Call the room what you will, but the smell of a gym was seemingly the same the universe over.
“Follow me,” Penelope instructed, “and let me explain a few things to you about slots in your crystal.”
We edged into the room, and I closed the door behind us with a dull boom. It was, as I had thought, a gym—though a gym that would never have passed any sort of health and safety test on Earth. That wasn’t because it was grimy or dirty in any way. It was due to the spears, swords, bows, crossbows, throwing stars, maces, war-hammers, flails, pikes, daggers, nets, and hosts of other weapons that I didn’t even recognize adorning the walls. Health and safety inspectors look down on that sort of thing, or so I hear.
There were no such obstacles here, that much was certain. As I followed Penelope around the edge of the large wooden-floored room, I saw people hacking at each other with wooden staves, practicing archery, and lifting weights that looked impossibly heavy. There was an obstacle course on the far side of the room too, and a couple of dragonmancers were busy leaping and springing and vaulting from platforms and beams while others were scrambling up impossibly sheer-sided walls.
“Okay, Mike Gilmore, it is time for you to focus on me now,” Penelope said. “Let me show you the different ways that you can use your dragon’s energy and power to help you in combat.”
I was all attention. This was the sort of thing that really mattered. At the end of the day, you could have as comprehensive a knowledge of Mystocean history as the next guy, but if you didn’t know how to block a flying crossbow quarrel or hadn’t learned how to correctly handle the spear that you had been given, then that knowledge was worth about as much as a fart in a hurricane.
I followed Penelope around the wall until she stopped by a pair of training partners who were standing about twenty yards apart. One of the two, a tall woman with a stubbly mohawk and a flat, snake-like face, held a crossbow in her hands. The other was standing with her hands behind her back.
“That is one of the Empire’s multi-shot crossbows,” Penelope told me. “The string returns to the firing position thanks to a simple dragon-blooded charm, while another little rune slots the next arrow into place.”
“And why is she pointing it at her buddy there?” I asked, watching the tall woman with the crossbow raising it to her shoulder.
Penelope pulled out her sheaf of notes from the pocket of her robes and flicked through it until she found what she was looking for. She handed it across to me.
“Read it,” she said.
I looked down at the neat, curling cursive script.
HEAD SLOT
Creates an aura around the dragonmancer. This can be defensive or offensive depending on the dragonmancer's focus, but will adjust automatically.
I looked up at Penelope. “An aura? What does that mean?” I had a bit of an idea, based on my probably irrelevant gaming experience, but I figured it best to ask anyway.
Penelope pointed in answer.
The tall female warrior with the mohawk readied her stance and started firing quite indiscriminately at her partner, a curvaceous but quite short woman with a shock of black hair, who was standing down range. To my amazement, as soon as the first quarrel came within about two feet of the short warrior’s ample chest, a thin thread of purple lightning struck it in mid-air. The next crossbow bolt, heading straight for the little warrior’s pretty, full-lipped face, met the same fate—as did the third, fourth, and fifth. Each projectile was sent spinning out of the air by a finger of the spontaneously appearing purple lightning. One landed fairly near us, and I could clearly see that it was charred and melted.
I realized that my mouth was hanging open, but I had the good sense not to close it immediately. I had a feeling that I was about to see a few more jaw-sagging examples of just what dragon power, correctly applied, could do. Instead, I let my bottom jaw hang at half-mast.
Penelope dragged me around the room then, guiding me past a stack of shields stacked haphazardly against the wall.
“Next on the agenda of things for you to see,” she said, taking me by the hand and pulling me past a couple of scantily clad women who were greasing themselves up and standing next to a wrestling circle, “is what a dragon that is willed into your chest slot can do.”
What this could do, it turned out, was attire the dragonmancer in a defensive suit of armor.
“Each set of armor is, as you might have guessed, unique to the particular dragonmancer who summons it, as well as the dragon they command,” said Penelope.
“But they generally all work as well as that, yeah?” I asked as we watched one dragonmancer—who had summoned a matching breastplate, backplate, greaves, rerebraces, spaulders, and gauntlets all of glowing yellow metal—getting hammered at by a sparring partner with a flail. The blows should have been breaking limbs, cracking ribs, and shattering bones, but the armor was doing its job and then some. The woman in the armor was actually chatting to her friend about the latest cut of formal skirt, while her mate went to town on her with the flail. It was knocking the armored woman around certainly, but not making a cripple of her as it should have been.
“The bond with your dragon, along with your level of mana and skill, allows you to summon more effective armor,” Penelope said. “You will find, in time, that the armor you can create by placing your dragon in your chest slot will make you akin to a god. The greatest dragonmancers the Empire has to offer are even worshipped as gods among the more primitive of the Empire’s peoples.”
A god. I could become like a fucking god.
I swallowed back the sense of overwhelm.
“I’m starting to see that a strong and flawless bond with your dragon is well worth cultivating,” I said as the woman with the flail finally managed to knock her partner over. I could hear the fallen woman’s laughter echoing out of her magically constructed helmet.
“That is quite the understatement, Mike,” Penelope said.
The next stop on our magical mystery tour was where Penelope could show me dragon power harnessed into the crystal’s right arm slot. Apparently, this was the offensive spell slot, where a dragonmancer sent his dragon when he wanted to
get weaponized.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’ve used this one before. I summoned these crazy spheres of black fire. They made a bunch of goblins’ body parts just disappear when they hit.”
“Intriguing. I believe that spell is known as the Shadow Sphere.”
“That’s right,” I said, recalling the name that had appeared in little writing above the crystal.
“You can view the description in further detail when focusing upon a particular slot,” Penelope explained. “Place your dragon in the right arm slot and you can see for yourself.”
I did as Penelope suggested and found that there was a brief description of my Shadow Sphere spell when I focused on it.
SHADOW SPHERE
Throwable explosive sphere that erases from existence whatever it touches.
I read the description aloud, and Penelope’s eyes widened.
“That is an exceedingly terrifying spell,” she said. “You should use it wisely.”
I nodded. “No erasing my fellow dragonmancers?”
Penelope nodded profusely. “Or anyone whose existence might be important. Chaos magic is a strange thing. Should you erase someone, it might affect whether they ever existed in the first place. I can’t guarantee that’s how it works, but it’s Chaos Magic—it could do practically anything. Now, why don’t you see how other dragonmancers implement the right arm slot?”
The Knowledge Sprite pointed out a woman who was built along the lines of a professional shot putter. She was standing at the end of a long gallery at the end of which were three straw targets shaped like men. The woman, with a flick of her wrists, utilized a spell that fired spinning shards of scything metal out from her hand and reduced the dummies to confetti. Somehow, I couldn’t ever see Harry using that one to spread that slimy asshole Malfoy across the Great Hall like an exploded can of dog food.
The more I saw of the Training Hall, the more I wanted to come back and get involved. It reminded me of the place the guy from Assassin’s Creed would have gone to work out at. The hall itself was enormous but rugged and simplistic in its design. There were set pieces and elaborate stages on which dragonmancers could practice their techniques for dealing with various scenarios, whether it be fighting on a rolling deck, shooting arrows from the pitching back of a dragon in combat, or dealing with multiple enemies at once.
“The left arm slot is for defensive spells,” Penelope explained to me. She motioned over to a dragonmancer who was running after her sparring partner. The woman in front threw her left hand behind her, as if she was scattering invisible tacks or marbles in her wake. Suddenly, the woman behind found herself ankle-deep in a particularly viscous and sticky-looking mud.
We walked past this exhibition without really slowing.
“I assume you already know that the leg slot is reserved for travel,” Penelope said.
“Yep,” I agreed. “Thanks to Elenari.”
“What you may not have realized is just how quickly the bond that you and Noctis share enables him to interpret your thoughts,” Penelope went on.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, when you summon Noctis forth from the crystal,” Penelope said, “what you’re actually doing is willing him into the leg slot—whether to ride him on the ground or in the air.”
“But what if I just want to hang out with the guy?” I asked. “Give him a scratch behind the ear or something.”
Penelope smiled. “I’m just telling you how he interprets it,” she said. She looked over at the two dragons, the black and the white, that were slinking along behind us. “I have a feeling that Noctis is going to prove to be one of the most adaptable and astute dragons that we have ever seen. Onyx Dragons are incredibly intelligent. Most dragons cannot truly communicate with their mancers. Some can communicate through emotions. And a very select few can use words, but their vocabularies are limited.”
“He might actually be able to speak with me one day?” I asked, looking at my dragon. He seemed to smirk at me, as though he was thinking: “Only if I let you, buddy.”
“I wouldn’t get that far ahead,” Penelope cautioned. “Like I said, very, very few dragons can communicate with words.”
“How would he even do it? A dragon’s mouth doesn’t look all that effective at speaking.”
Penelope laughed. “It would take the form of telepathic communication.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That makes sense.”
I looked at Noctis, and the sable beast gave me a yellow-eyed wink.
“What’s next on your list?” I asked the Knowledge Sprite.
“You have your two weapon slots; A and B,” Penelope replied. “Weapon slot B is for utility items. They can take the form of a shield, a bow, or something else entirely. The properties and hidden abilities of these items vary with the dragonmancer. Weapon slot B is among the rarest slots since it takes a lot of experience to unlock.”
“Of course,” I said. “But have you ever seen any in action?”
“A few times,” Penelope admitted. “There are those shields that might deflect arrows, slingshot stones, and other projectiles back at the original casters with the same force with which they were originally shot. I have seen a shield take on magnetic properties so that any sword blade caught on it was stuck fast for a number of seconds.”
“Cool,” I said. “And what about slot A?”
“Weapon slot A is for when you want to use your dragon as a hand-to-hand weapon,” Penelope said.
“The dragon can become a hand-to-hand weapon?”
“Correct,” Penelope said, as if this were totally normal.
“Wow,” I said. “And it changes, depending on the dragonmancer, yeah?”
Penelope nodded. Then she pointed over my shoulder. “If you’re after an example of what you can expect with regards to the weapon and its special ability, then take a look at Tamsin over there.”
I looked over to where Penelope was pointing and saw an extremely limber and agile-looking woman. She was dressed in tight, form-fitting breeches of gray leather, supple leather boots that finished above the knee, and a sleeveless tunic topped with a shirt of mail rings. Her skin was the same dark red as those classic barns of my homeland, America, were painted. Her eyes were an incandescent yellow—sclera, pupils, and irises—and her black hair was long, billowing out behind her like shredded shadow.
As we watched, the woman summoned a spear out of nothing and began an intricate dance which, while beautiful to watch, also gave you an idea of the speed and deadly precision of the woman. Her spear darted this way and that, sweeping and slicing.
The warrior woman spun with the alacrity of a mongoose on Ritalin before she flung the spear at a target ten yards away. The spear buried itself in the target’s head, sticking two feet out the back of it. Then, as if it were connected to Tamsin’s hand by an invisible cord, the spear pulled itself free and flew back into her grip.
The red-skinned woman executed a backflip, which would have had the Olympic judges holding up at least 9.5 scorecards, and snatched the spear from the air without even looking at it. As she landed on cat-soft feet, she threw the weapon underhand at the target. The spear sliced through the air and slammed into the target’s belly. The spear once more retracted itself, pulling about a bail-load of straw out with it, and slapped back into Tamsin’s hand.
It was a pretty gobsmacking display—not to mention the sort of exhibition that stirred up and heated my blood like a red-hot egg whisk.
I managed to keep enough of my wits about me to listen to Penelope telling me that the last two crystal slots were the wings and titan slots.
“Wings are self-explanatory,” the Knowledge Sprite said, while my eyes stayed glued to Tamsin. “It simply means that the dragonmancer himself can fly.”
This news would usually have been greeted with a hearty cry of “Holy fuck, are you pulling my fucking leg!”, but I was too distracted as I continued to watch Tamsin twirling her spear.
“A functiona
l and helpful trick,” I managed to say. Then I blinked and pulled my eyes away from the red-skinned warrior for a second. “And what the hell is the titan slot?”
“It’s a slot that only about one hundred experienced dragonmancers have ever unlocked, and only a dozen or so of those have used it effectively,” Penelope said. “It enables the dragonmancer to become the dragon—the dragon in its most destructive and massive form. However, this ability doesn’t just drain your mana reserves, but also your lifeforce too, if you are not careful. Dragonmancers have died while embodying their titan forms.”
I looked back over at the raven-haired, yellow-eyed Tamsin. “I bet she can do it,” I said.
Penelope cocked her head and looked at me. “Those who are able to access the titan slot are sworn to secrecy,” she said. “Personally though, I think that Tamsin has the potential to do so. She might not unlock it in the next year, but give her five years, and I’m sure she’ll accomplish that feat.”
At that moment, Tamsin looked up and pinned me with those blazing yellow eyes.
“You,” she said, in an almost Eastern European accent that reminded me of every vampire movie that I had ever seen. “You. Come here.”
“Don’t have to ask me twice,” I muttered and walked on over, Penelope hurrying to stick on my heels.
“Ah, Mike, this is Tamsin, Bearer of Fyzos, the Force Dragon. She’s a hobgoblin from Grimteeth Mounds,” the Knowledge Sprite said, hastily making the introductions. “Tamsin, this is Mike, the Academy’s newest prospective dragonmancer, and an Earthling.”
“A hobgoblin!” I said, trying to keep things light. “I think I met some of your smaller, hairier, far less attractive cousins on my way to the Crystal Spire.”
Tamsin was running her eyes over me. She gave me a smile that was not completely friendly when I mentioned my run-in with the goblins. Her teeth were very white and very pointy.
“I heard about that,” she said. “Rumor spreads like dragon fire around here.” She ran a very pink tongue across her teeth and smiled again. “So, you are the male dragonmancer,” she said, in a voice that was so low that it was almost a purr. It sent a tingle from the base of my skull, sashaying down my spine and into my pelvis.