by Dante King
“Man, I could get used to waking up to you and Elenari every morning, ” I said. I smiled up at her and propped myself up on one elbow. I wiped sleep from my eyes and gave a theatrical sniff. “And is that Lightning Cider I smell on the brew?”
Saya didn’t reply at first. It seemed that her panties weren’t actually in a twist. It worse far, far worse. She was royally pissed about something.
“What’s going on?” I sat up and tied my hair in a neat warrior’s tail, as I did before an MMA fight. “What’s the matter? Has something happened?”
“You tell me what happened?” Saya said.
Then I clicked, or thought I did.
Shit, is this a jealousy thing? Because I went to the boneyard with Elenari yesterday? Did Saya think that she and I were hitting it off exclusively or something?
“Look, Saya,” I said, “if this is about yesterday with Elenari—”
“Of course, it is,” Saya said, her eyes flashing dangerously.
I was suddenly reminded that this gorgeous Amazon-looking chick had quite literally squeezed a man in two only a few nights ago. I doubted I could handle that kind of treatment, dragonmancer or not. Unless, maybe, she squeezed me in two with her thighs wrapped around me in a way that Xenia Onatopp from GoldenEye would have approved of.
“What do you mean, ‘of course it is?’” I asked.
“Well, what did you do to her?” Saya leaned forward slightly and raised an eyebrow.
I tried not to look down the cleavage that was suddenly very much in evidence thanks to the open neck of Saya’s top.
“Do to her?” I replied mildly. “I like to think that it was something that I did with her, you know.” I shrugged. “You are aware there’s that old wive’s tale about how polishing shields does the job of a couple of glasses of champagne and a dozen oysters, right? Aphrodisiac-wise, I mean.”
“I have not heard that old wives’ tale,” Saya said.
“No… Well… I might have made it up just now,” I said. “But, my point is that we slogged our way through that shitty punishment together, showered together, and… one thing led to another, more naked and vigorous thing.”
“That I understand,” Saya said, “but what have you got to say about that?”
I looked where she was pointing, twisting around.
Elenari was standing in the doorway to our private bathroom. She had a dreamy look on her face. As I stood up in my boxer shorts, pulled the sheets away from me, and searched for my own Rank One uniform, Elenari walked over to me and hugged me.
I hugged her back, as you do, and looked at Saya over the top of the elf’s orange ponytail. “What’s up?” I asked.
Elenari stepped away, and I saw that she had one hand resting on her stomach.
“Mike, can you believe it?” she asked, her face lit with the sort of excitement that can barely be contained. “I am with child!”
I blinked. Thanks to Hollywood, I’d have thought that it was rather difficult for someone to retain their composure when being hit in the face, point-black, with a bit of news like this.
However, rather than get all stressed or defensive or panicked about it, I went into a short-lived catatonic state. I figured it was my brain’s way of dealing with a revelation of this magnitude: “Let me shut the engines down for a moment,” my brain was saying. “And I’ll get my crack detective neurons on the case and try and figure this out.”
“I… uh… I’m not one-hundred percent sure that that’s possible, Elenari,” I said. “Not that you couldn’t be with a child, you know—at some point—just not with mine the day after we slept together.”
Elenari pulled up her top and showed me her stomach. It had been as toned and flat as any Olympic volleyballer’s yesterday, but this morning…
I looked closer. There could be no denying it, the elf’s stomach was now definitely more rounded. And it seemed to glow with a weird, ephemeral light.
“Excuse the crudeness,” I said, flicking my gaze from Saya to Elenari “but maybe you’re just on the verge of building a really big log cabin this morning, if you follow my drift.” I glanced down at Elenari’s glowing belly bulge again. It was definitely bigger than it had been yesterday. “A five-bedroom log cabin with home cinema and private sauna,” I added. “Maybe one that’s possibly radioactive, too.”
Elenari frowned at me, then gave me a not-too-playful whack on the shoulder. “Ew, Mike, no,” she said. “No, this is definitely something. Look closer.”
A little reluctantly, I leaned down and looked closer at the smooth patch of bulging skin. For an instant, I pictured the alien bursting out of John Hurt’s stomach in Ridley Scott’s seminal extraterrestrial horror flick.
“Is that glow par for the course?” I asked, before I could stop myself. “What I mean is, is that normal? For elves, I mean?”
Elenari tried to shrug and shake her head at the same time. The result was an action that would have made quite a nice little dance move. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“It’s not normal,” Saya interjected at this point, with a dash of the same surliness with which she had greeted Elenari and myself when we had first arrived at the Crystal Spire. “This is something to do with you, Michael.”
I put my hands up. “Look, I’d like to say, without sounding conceited or boastful, that I have had sex before.” I pointed at Elenari’s vaguely glowing stomach. “And I can also say that I have never noticed, or been made aware, that I have radioactive jizz.”
“You did something,” Saya repeated obstinately.
“I’ll say he did something,” Elenari said, patting my ass. “You should let Mike do something to you sometime too, Saya. It was a lot of fun. You would love it.”
Without taking her eyes off me, without saying a goddamn word, Saya pulled her own loose crimson shirt up, untucking it from her sword belt.
“I already did,” the buxom blonde warrior said.
I looked down at the slightly raised stomach—where there should have only been chiseled washboard abs. My eyes gazed at the deep, subtle glow that emanated from inside Saya’s belly.
“You have got to be pulling my fucking leg…” I breathed.
“Mike,” Saya said in a level voice, “if I pulled your leg right now you would know about it. I’d probably pull it off. Whatever you did to Elenari, you did to me as well. And, if I’m not mistaken, it appears your seed has properties beyond those of normal mortals.”
I shook my head.
“This is some Twilight Zone shit,” I muttered.
“What?” Saya asked.
“Nothing… I just… I’m at a fucking loss here, ladies,” I said. “I wish I could tell you what the hell is going on, but I can’t. Trust me when I say that this is not normal for Earthling man chowder.”
It might have been the obvious and genuine confusion plastered all over my mug, but Saya’s expression softened an iota or two, and a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
With some commendable pragmatism she said, “Well, we can figure all this out later. As for now, though, I received a drake message early this morning. Mike, you have an appointment first thing today.”
Saya exchanged a meaningful glance with Elenari. The elf stepped away from me.
“Oh yeah?” I asked as I pulled my pants on, slipped the shirt over my head, and fastened my belt. “Something that’s going to be more important than finding out I’ve just planted a glowing baby inside two women?”
“Yes,” Elenari said with a nod. “Far more important.”
I looked up from where I was sitting on the edge of my bed and pulling on my leather dragon-riding boots. I waggled my eyebrows at the elfin beauty. “A bit cryptic for first thing in the morning, isn’t it, Saya?”
Then, with all the abruptness of a sudden unexpected downpour, two portals ripped themselves into being in the middle of our sunken sitting room. A powerful draft pulled at my shirt and hair, a breeze that rushed past me as if the air in the
room was being sucked through the portals like water down a suddenly opened plughole.
“What the fuck is this now?” I asked of no one in particular.
Two robed and shrouded figures emerged from the portals—one from each. They were tall, but not particularly broad. They moved with a sure, feline sort of grace.
Lithe and slinky as they appeared, I could tell that they would be strong too. You get a feel for this sort of thing when you fight recreationally. You learn how to appraise people, casting aside all preconceived notions like because someone is skinny they are bound to be weak, or because someone is fat they’re going to be slow. Those sort of prejudicial judging-a-book-by-its-cover moves are how you wind up getting yourself knocked the fuck out by a big fat dude who hits with the rapidity of a thunderbolt or a skinny guy who lifts nothing but weights all day but also happens to be a vegan.
The two figures moved swiftly toward me, padding forward so smoothly that it looked like they were gliding, especially because I couldn’t see their feet under their burgundy-colored robes. Their faces were shrouded by voluminous hoods you’d expect from the type of people who suddenly appeared without warning from magical portals. Their faces were pools of darkness, which must have been partly an illusion, as there was plenty of light coming through the floor to ceiling windows. Thick leather gauntlets covered their hands.
“Just when I thought my morning couldn’t throw me any more curveballs!” I quipped, as the nearest figure grabbed my upper arm in a vice-like grip.
On instinct, I struggled, the muscles in my free arm bunching as I readied myself to deliver a palm strike right to where the figure’s nose should have been—assuming it was a human. Then, the second figure’s hands latched onto my free arm, long fingers freezing onto my bicep like tree roots gripping stone.
I wrenched this arm one way and was gratified to see the figure lurch with it, though its grip did not diminish. I felt that tingle of testosterone trickle down from the crown of my head all the way down my spine, like a cold egg that had been cracked over my head.
My breathing became deeper, and I could practically feel my heart pushing the blood around my body, as I prepared to treat the figure on my right to a headbutt that would knock him into next week.
Then, just as I was going to snap my head forward, I wondered whether this might not be some sort of hazing ritual. Maybe, this was something everyone went through at the Academy, some schtick that you had to endure before you were accepted as one of the gang. If that was the case, then I doubted whoever was doing it would appreciate me mashing their proboscis into paté with my forehead.
I forced my body to relax, which was difficult considering every instinct in my body was telling me to thrash about and lay waste to these two robed figures. My arms were forced behind my back in a position that, thanks to the good folk at the L.A.P.D., was not entirely foreign to me, and secured with a length of rope.
“Kinky,” I said.
I said no more after that because the next item on the bill was a gag that was shoved into my mouth and secured with, of all things, a wet leaf of some kind. This leaf acted as adhesive tape and glued my lips together, making it impossible for me to spit the gag out of my mouth and fire off the sort of zingers that would have made Bruce Willis or Sly Stallone proud.
Then, in a satisfyingly predictable fashion, a hood was pulled over my head.
It was clear that these two figures hadn’t watched any of the many movies that I had, because the hood wasn’t made of some hessian-like material through which I could easily see. Instead, it was made of velvet. It was hot, and so dark inside that I may as well have just been swallowed by something or put into a giant’s pocket.
I was turned around and bundled forward. I didn’t doubt that I was going to be transported through one of the portals in no short order. Then, if I was any judge of these hazings, I would get the magical equivalent of six shots of tequila poured down my throat and then cling-wrapped to a telephone pole naked.
The world lurched, and my stomach dropped, just as it had done when Elenari had pulled me out of that Los Angeles alley and brought me to the Mystocean Empire. The temperature went from comfortable to slightly too hot in the space of a second. There was a soft sucking sound that I attributed to the portal closing behind me.
There came a voice; cool and calm as a glacial stream and totally androgenous.
“Michael Gilmore, Bearer of Noctis the Onyx Dragon, Earthling and prospective dragonmancer, this is the Ceremony of the Transfusion. It is the final hurdle that you must overcome before you can begin your training in earnest.”
There was a second voice, deeper and slower still.
“This, as Tanila says, is the final hurdle. It is here that you will soar… or fall.”
And, with that portentous opening statement, the velvet hood was pulled slowly from my head, and I stood blinking in the light.
Chapter Twenty
The light that I found myself in was certainly not the clean, crisp light of day that had been shining through the balcony windows back in my quarters. Before my eyes had become accustomed to my new surroundings, I could tell that the ruddy glare surrounding me was born of fire or lava or something along those lines—brimstone, maybe? If I was honest, though, I couldn’t have picked out brimstone from a lineup of rocks if my life had depended on it.
I narrowed my eyes, forcing my vision to adjust. The smell of sulfur was thick in my nostrils. The temperature, even though I was dressed in my loose Rank One uniform, seemed to be creeping up. I could feel the sweat prickling on the back of my neck.
The dungeon—for that was what it looked like to me, once my eyes got accustomed to the gloom of the place—was extremely high-ceilinged. The lights of the flickering taper candles combined with the soft, incandescent glow of bubbling magma pools did not reach the vaults above.
The first voice that I had heard belonged to the slightly shorter figure who’d pulled me through the portal. “Remove his gag and his bonds, Dasyr.” I assumed that this person was Tanila.
The taller figure with the deeper voice moved sedately forward and ripped the leaf from my mouth. I spat out the cloth gag and worked my jaw while Dasyr freed me from the rope binding my wrists. Once I was free, I rubbed my wrists and looked around.
Then I smiled.
“I love it,” I said. “Very Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”
I was surrounded by eighteen figures, not including my friendly neighborhood kidnappers. Each of them wore the same get-up as Tanila and Dasyr—burgundy robes that concealed their features.
I was in the middle of this rather somber group and, although I knew that this Transfusion Ceremony was all part of the Drako Academy induction, I couldn’t help but be a little awed. It was very still in here. None of the other figures encircling me moved a hair’s breadth. The only real movement came from the flickering flames of the tapers—and this was uncanny in itself, because I could feel no air or breeze that might account for the flames moving.
At a gesture from Dasyr, I looked to my right.
“Noctis!” I said involuntarily.
My Onyx Dragon was hanging suspended in a glittering crystal cage—or was it a vat of some kind? It was hard to tell. The vessel holding the horse-sized dragon kept changing and fluctuating in a way that was befuddling to the eye. Whatever it was, Noctis himself seemed to be asleep, or put under some spell more likely.
“What have you done to him?” I asked Tanila. “And why the hell didn’t I feel you take him from my crystal?”
“Why, we have simply temporarily extricated your dragon from his home without waking him,” said the hooded Tanila. “As far as he is concerned, he is still in his spirit form, safe and warm within that chunk of onyx that you carry with you.”
“How did you do that without me knowing?” I asked, my voice hard. I felt a little violated, as if someone had gone into my wallet and rifled through my cards and IDs.
There was the suggestion of a smile in
Tanila’s sanguine voice. “You presume much, to think that we—the lorekeepers—would divulge any of our secrets with an untested and untried Earthling. Especially one who has not yet undergone the Transfusion Ceremony.”
I’d always hated being spoken to like this. It was why I got along with so few of my teachers. So many of them treated my questions as insults, as if I were testing them or trying to catch them out. I turned my attention to Dasyr.
“Hey, Dasyr,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you that your name sounds like a model of car? Not like a Cadillac or GMC or anything like that, but like a little, shitty one with a beige interior. The Renault Dasyr? No?”
I don’t know why I was so nettled, or why I was wasting my time trying to bait these folks into doing something stupid. I guessed it was the slight shock of seeing my dragon helpless and captured like that. Taken away without me having any knowledge of it whatsoever. In the short time we’d known one another, the bond between Noctis and I had grown a lot. He’d saved my ass when those thieves had attacked, and he was the very reason why I was in this world in the first place. If I hadn’t bonded with him, Elenari would have no doubt shuffled off back to the Empire and left me to deal with the boys in blue, an eviscerated thief at my feet.
I looked at Noctis again. This time, I also noticed what looked like tubes snaking out from points on his body. They weren’t intravenous lines or anything, but they were similar. They were constructed from the same magical substance the cage was made from; they looked like air made solid. They snaked out from Noctis’s thighs, forelegs, and either side of his serpentine neck.
Even as I watched, the glittering tubes shot out toward me, in the same way that creepers do when they were looking for light or a surface to climb. When the waving tubes had grown out to the point precisely between Noctis and myself, a receptacle—about the size of my two fists held together and shaped like a rudimentary heart—constructed itself organically in mid-air.
“All right, I give up,” I said. “What the fuck does this Tranfusion Ceremony require me to do? I appreciate the theatrics as much as the next Stephen King fan, but I’m ready to get started.”