by Dante King
Chapter Seventeen
I awoke the next morning with a tolerable case of the mead flu. What had stirred me from my delicious slumber I couldn’t identify at first. Once my vision had cleared a little though, I saw that Elenari was leaning over me. Through my blurred vision, she seemed to be wearing a lacy bra and little else.
“Is this a dream?” I mumbled.
“Hells, no,” the elf replied. “If it was a dream, then I would still be asleep.”
“Not if we were sharing the same dream,” I said.
Elenari gave a soft snort of amusement. “Come on,” she said, “we have to be in the armory in ten minutes. And be quiet, I think Saya is feeling a little under the weather this morning.”
“What makes you say that?” I whispered.
“She has been tossing and turning in the time that I have been awake.”
She was doing a lot of tossing and turning last night too, my brain interjected silently.
“Drink the beverage that I’ve left on your bedside table. It’ll wipe your hangover completely,” Elenari said”
I sat up at this promise of salvation. Elenari was indeed dressed only in a set of lacy black underwear that complemented her pale skin and long, red hair perfectly.
“Casual Friday is it?” I asked drily, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“It’s Sunday,” Elenari replied, “and now that you’re conscious, I shall resume getting changed.”
“A pity,” I sighed as I pulled back the covers and swung my legs out of bed. I saw that there was a silver cup steaming on my bedside table. “What is this stuff?” I asked as I picked it up and half-heartedly cast about for my new Rank One dragonmancer threads that I had received yesterday.
“It is Lightning Cider,” Elenari said.
The cup paused halfway to my mouth. The liquid smelled like apples, hay, and lazy summer afternoons. It also reminded me, somehow of Coachella, the year that I managed to sneak in inside of a truck filled with bags of cotton candy. It was a deep black color, almost a licorice purple.
“More booze?” I asked.
“It’s alcoholic, yes,” Elenari said as she slipped on a linen shirt. “You have, on Earth, the phrase, the hair of the dog, yes?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, this is the scale of the dragon. You’ll be right as rain in minutes.”
“All right,” I said. “Bottoms up.”
I necked the drink and found, to my surprise, that it was delicious. Then I got dressed into my new clothes, looking over at Saya enviously, where she was still tucked up in her blankets in bed. Even as I looked at her though, she squirmed and gave a little moan. I thought about making sure she was okay, but figured it best to leave her to wear off the hangover. There was nothing worse than having someone interrupt you while you were fighting off the dreaded after-grog-dog.
By the time that I had pulled on my knee-high, leather, dragon-riding boots, I was feeling a marked improvement. My brain cells had shaken themselves out of the semi-coma, my eyes had ceased to burn like they had been dipped in lemon juice, and my tongue had shrunk back to its usual size. Even my breath tasted fresh and clean, and the fuzz on my teeth had disappeared.
“Holy hell, if you took this stuff back to Earth, you’d make an absolute killing!” I said. “Take it to somewhere like Vegas and you’d be a millionaire by the second morning.”
Elenari grabbed me by the arm and guided me to the door. “Well, remind me to show you how to brew it when we get a chance, but for now, we have to get moving!”
Some time later, we skidded to a halt outside the massive, reinforced doors of the armory. That was something about the Crystal Spire that I was quickly learning; the place was so vast and so intricate that you really had to plan your journeys. The dragonmancer quarters were on the other, quieter side of the keep to the armory and smithies. Elenari and I had to leg it through about two miles of winding passages, which echoed under the fall of our running footsteps since the keep was rather quiet on a Sunday morning.
“I don’t know what difference it would have made being two minutes late,” I said, puffing out my cheeks when we arrived. Being in the peak of fitness like I was, the run had served to wake me up rather than exhaust me.
“Lieutenant Kaleen has eyes and ears everywhere,” Elenari said. “You should put your best foot forward from the very beginning. You might be the first male dragonmancer in centuries, but do not rely on that fact alone. You will not receive special treatment. That is not the lieutenant’s style.”
Elenari ruffled a hand through her long locks and straightened her jerkin. She was dressed as I was today; in the long shirt and loose pants of a Rank One dragonmancer, with a leather sword belt cinched and knotted around her waist. Thankfully, I had also received a second belt, since Saya had torn in two the belt I’d brought from Earth.
I looked up at the massive door: a construction of steel and bronze and wood, aged to the hardness of iron. It was most definitely a door that would take more than a kick to knock it down.
“How do we get in?” I asked.
Elenari motioned to a door on her right. It was a regular sized door, but looked much smaller next to the enormity of the main armory door; plain steel, etched with dragon blood-filled runes along the edges. There was no sign of a lock or hinges. The elf stepped up to it and banged on it three times with the flat of her hand. There was a pause.
“Maybe whoever is supposed to be opening up slept in?” I said hopefully.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Elenari said.
She was right. Suddenly, without warning, a mouth appeared in the center of the door. A metal-lipped mouth with blunt metal teeth. Take it from me, it was the most peculiar thing I’d ever seen at that time in the morning, and I’d been on Sunset Boulevard plenty of times when the bars were closing. It was so weird that my brain instantly gave up on trying to deal with it and just accepted it.
Magic, I thought. Fucking magic.
“May I help you?” said the door in a slightly sleepy voice. It almost sounded as if it was stifling a yawn.
“Dragonmancer Elenari and prospective Dragonmancer Michael reporting for shield cleaning detail,” Elenari replied.
The mouth closed and disappeared. Then, there was the sound of myriad bolts clicking and thunking and sliding out of place, the rhythmic clicking of gears and the subtle ticking of minute locking mechanisms working smoothly. Then, silence.
The door slid suddenly into the floor, as seamlessly and quietly as if it was running on greased tracks. When it had fully descended, there was no crack or gap in the floor that would tell you that a door had ever been there.
“Enter,” came a deep, chocolatey female voice from inside.
I stepped over the threshold and found myself in a small antechamber. It reminded me somewhat of the sort of waiting room that you’d find in a GP’s or dentist’s clinic. There were a couple of worn leather sofas, a potted plant, and a stack of old, much-thumbed codexes (which were probably this world’s version of magazines). There was even a goddamn fish tank with a few rather depressed, lethargic-looking green fish swimming about in it and a snail that flashed from red to orange to yellow every few seconds.
Unlike your average GP’s or dentist’s office, however, there was also a powerfully built, blue-skinned woman seated behind a counter. She had bright silver hair braided tightly to her scalp, a ring through her septum, and a loaded crossbow in her hands. I admit that it was the crossbow I noticed first. It was pointed right at me, and the huge blue-skinned woman, who had a warm and pleasant face, looked to have drawn a bead right in the center of my chest.
“Fucking hell,” I said in greeting.
The woman behind the counter grinned, and I saw that her teeth were all of silver too. “Well met,” she said, but did not lower the bow until Elenari stepped through the door behind me. From her voice, I could tell that she was the same woman who had spoken a moment ago for us to enter.
“Dragonmancer Elenari,” said the guar
dian of the armory, “how nice to see you again—though, maybe, it’s not so nice for you?”
“Morning, Renji.” Elenari gave the blue-skinned woman a rueful smile. “Yes, it could be under slightly better circumstances that I’m here, eh?” Then she turned to me. “Michael, this is Renji, Bearer of Corvar, the Steel Dragon. Renji is a djinn and one of the most highly respected administrators in the Crystal Spire. Renji this is Michael Gilmore, the latest addition to the dragonmancer coterie.”
I stretched out a hand, and Renji took it. Her palm was wonderfully soft, and her grip surprisingly gentle for someone who looked like she could quite happily pull my arm out of its socket. I noticed then that a pendant hung around her neck. It was silver forged into the shape of a hammer, the head of the hammer being made of a glimmering silver crystal—hematite, maybe?
“A pleasure,” Renji said in her slow, soulful voice.
There was a metallic scraping sound, as if a platoon’s worth of soldiers had decided to draw their swords from their scabbards simultaneously, and a dragon waddled out from the doorway leading into the booth that Renji was occupying.
I took a breath when I saw the low-slung body appear around the door frame, for the creature was—even amongst dragons—an extraordinary-looking thing.
It was smallish, though with the confines of Renji’s Armory office, that wasn’t too surprising. However, what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in razzle-dazzle and straight bling. The creature looked like a cross between a komodo dragon and a full-on armored knight; all scintillating, smooth, mirror-bright flanks, and a tail like a mercury bullwhip. The beautiful beast was so shiny that I could have used its torso as a shaving mirror.
The metallic dragon regarded me out of glittering white eyes, opened its mouth, and darted a long, forked quicksilver tongue in my direction.
“Hey there,” I breathed.
“Ah, yes,”Renji said, “that there is my dear companion, Corvar. She is, unsurprisingly, a Steel Dragon.”
“She is… she is really something, isn’t she?” I said, unable to look away from the sleek, metallic dragon.
“She is nosy is what she is,” the big, blue djinn scolded her dragon gently. “Corvar, come to me.”
The dragon vanished into the crystal hammer pendant that hung around Remji’s neck, but then a smith’s hammer appeared on the countertop in front of the djinn. I gaped.
“This is my forging hammer,” Renji explained. “Corvar as she is when shifted to Weapon Slot A. Dragons do not always need to be used in combat, you know.”
“Very cool,” I said with a smile. “Renji, just so we get this out of the way as quickly as possible; can you grant us a wish? Maybe let us off the hook today?”
Renji laughed. “Alas, no,” she said.
“Not even if I were to rub your lamp?” I asked.
“Hm, you are thinking of genies—there is a distinction you know,” Renji said. “Nice effort though.”
“It was worth a shot,” I said.
“Now,” the blue-skinned djinn said, pulling herself up from her sagging chair and drawing herself up to her considerable full height, “I believe that you are here on the orders of Lieutenant Kaleen?”
“That’s right,” Elenari said. “A punishment detail.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Renji said, “but at the same time, I am grateful. I do so hate polishing those darn shields.”
“You’re not helping?” Elenari asked.
“Usually I would,” the djinn answered, “but today, I must audit the armory and do a weapon-take. It is often the way when I am on duty.”
“Why?” I asked.
The djinn tapped her broad forehead and her dark eyes twinkled like gems in a mine. “Us djinn keep a cool head. Very good with riddles. Very good with puzzles. Very good with numbers.”
“Not working the forges?” I asked.
“Not since the academy outsourced much of the equipment production to the dwarves,” Renji said with a sigh. “I do a little maintenance here and there, but no real creation.”
“That’s too bad,” Elenari said. “I suppose we may as well get stuck into our task then. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish.”
“There is one other thing that I have been instructed to do before you start with your cleaning,” Renji said. “Lieutenant Kaleen wants to ensure that Michael Gilmore is equipped in the basic rudiments of war; the gear that he will need for the beginning of his training.”
I looked up at this. So, today wasn’t going to be a total drag after all.
“Lead the way, Renji,” I said.
Renji summoned Corvar once more and, leaving her Steel Dragon to guard the outer office, led us through a door that opened at her touch and by a whispered word. Beyond that door was a short corridor through which we had to stroll. As we set off, a breeze that smelled of fire and dust and sulfur swept up the corridor and then dissipated.
“A spell to check for any hidden magic of dark design,” Elenari explained before I could ask what the hell that had just been.
As we walked through that corridor, I couldn’t help but notice a series of holes spaced periodically along the ceiling, as well as some grates set into the floor. I mentioned this observation to our djinn guide.
“Yes, those are the murder holes,” she said, quite casually.
I had heard of these little delights before.
“To incapacitate thieves?” I asked.
“Correct,” said Renji.
“What’s your drop of choice?” I asked. “Boiling oil? Scalding water?”
“The Drako Academy opts for a liquid magma,” Renji said as we reached the end of the corridor. “It dissolves everything—even bone. Makes for an easier clean-up.”
“Convenient,” I said, eyeing the murder holes with fresh apprehension.
Beyond the next door was the armory proper. And, boy, was it absolutely goddamn ginormous. It reminded me of that warehouse room at the end of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark where all the world’s secrets are kept. The sheer scale of the place was amazing, but what came to the forefront of my mind was that the shield section of this armory must be huge. And we’d be polishing those damn shields.
“We’re going to be in here forever,” I said.
Elenari laughed and took my arm. “Come on, let’s get you kitted out first before you lose the will to live.”
Renji led us along one row, across another, and down a few more.
“This is the area where the equipment for the newly recruited dragonmancers is kept,” she said as she stopped at a row with items that looked like they’d been stripped from some kind of HEMA video game. It was a museum of medieval equipment, except this museum had brand-spanking new artifacts. “It is far better gear than the newly recruited regular troopers get,” Renji went on to explain, “though still fairly basic compared to what you will learn to use later on. And even less impressive than what you can buy once you have secured yourself some loot and spoils of war.”
Without further ado, the djinn measured me up with an accurate eye and procured a heavy leather coat from a rack to her left.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“It’s a brigandine,” Elenari explained. “It is lightweight armor for the body; leather with tiny steel plates stitched into it. It will stop a casual knife cut or thrust. An arrow if you are lucky.”
Next came a hauberk—the thigh length mail shirt—of incredibly fine mesh finished in a burnished bronze color.
“You’ll wear that when you go on missions,” Elenari told me. “It is far more flexible than the gear the regular foot soldiers wear, but about eight times stronger. It will stop a crossbow bolt, if it isn’t fired from point blank. It’ll also drastically reduce the damage that a longbow arrow does to you—those are the weapons most often deployed against dragonriders.”
Renji also gave me a set of leather and steel vambraces to protect my forearms, some mailed gauntlets, and a matching set of greaves and thigh g
uards.
“And that will do for now on the armor front, I think,” the djinn said. “Weapon-wise, I think that this is your best option…”
She pulled a spear from a rack and handed it to me. It was, unsurprisingly, quite heavy. Luckily though, my weight training had endowed me with some quite meaty forearms, and I was able to maneuver it fairly well.
“It’s ash, six feet long, and has an eighteen-inch glaive tip, though it has been modified for dragonmancers by also having a bill hook,” Renji told me.
I looked at the business end of the spear. The blade looked like the lovechild of a kitchen knife and a giant fishing hook. It looked mean and unforgiving. I grinned.
“It is the perfect weapon for you, if I may say so,” the djinn said.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because you have no training as of yet,” Renji said, “and should you get into a confrontation, all the action takes place a relatively long way away from you.”
I looked over at Elenari. Her lips twitched in a barely controlled smile.
I handed the spear back to the djinn and asked her whether she wouldn’t mind taking all my new gear back to the front desk with her and leaving it there for me.
“Of course,” she said. “That is no problem.”
“Hey, you know that you said I could purchase newer and better gear once I start going on missions and bringing in some plunder?” I asked, and Renji nodded. “Will I also be able to purchase items that have been imbued with dragon’s blood?”
Renji nodded again. “Yes,” she said, “but such items are highly powerful and thus expensive.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, but I have a dragon, right? Couldn’t I just ask Noctis to be a sport, prick himself with a claw and smear a bit of blood onto my spear or something?”
Renji looked at Elenari. The elf chuckled and gave me a knowing look.
“You are trouble, Michael Gilmore,” she said.
“Darling, I’ve barely even got started,” I said, and flashed her a wink.
“Read this scroll, if you please,” the female djinn said resignedly, capturing my attention again. “You would not believe the amount of new dragonmancers and soldiers who come in here and want to know why they can’t just take a bath, wearing all their gear, in dragon’s blood.”