by Dante King
As if they had been waiting for my words, the eighteen hooded figures encircling me began to chant. It was a throbbing dirge, a rhythm that built in my chest and stirred my blood. It was ominous, and yet filled with hope at the same time, though I could not guess the words or the language that they were spoken in.
Dasyr and Tanila stepped forward.
“As you wish,” Tanila said. “We shall begin in earnest.”
Dasyr stepped toward me and moved her hands in a fluid motion. To my surprise, I suddenly found myself elevated a couple of feet into the air, my arms and legs loosely spread in a rough approximation of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. It felt like I was being gripped loosely by the wrists and ankles and waist. As an automatic reaction, I struggled and found that I couldn’t have broken free even if I used all my strength.
While Dasyr kept me elevated like this and the chanters continued on with their recitation, Tanila stepped forward and started moving her own hands in a series of complex patterns.
I became aware, from my slightly elevated position, that new tubes had started snaking their way out of the crystalline, heart-shaped vessel suspended between me and Noctis. There were six tubes The same amount that were fixed into Noctis’ flesh. They twisted across the dividing space, like half a dozen glass sea snakes making their way lazily toward me.
It was an unnerving sight. I remained still though. I maintained my equanimity and kept my face composed.
Calm, I told myself. Calm. It’s no more stressful than that time you had to face four whacked out and cracked out homeless dudes in that alleyway in Chino. Or the time that you got jumped by those crazy hookers with switchblades when you were walking through that park in Angelus Rosedale Ceyardy. Or…
The tubes had reached me now. One by one, their ends morphed into spikes. Slowly, carefully, each tube snaked to a specific part of my body, parts that mirrored those that already had tubes connected to them on my dragon.
Within a few seconds, I had a tube wavering an inch from either thigh, both my forearms and—most uncomfortably—on either side of my neck.
I looked down at the ethereal, glittering tubes connecting Noctis and me to the heart-shaped vessel between us, then I peered down at the two robed figures standing in front of me, their cowls still obscuring their features.
“If you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do,” I said, thinking about why this whole business was called the Transfusion Ceremony, “I have to voice my concerns as to how sanitary it is.”
“We are here to officially induct you into the ancient Order of Dragonmancers, Michael,” said Dasyr in her slow, rolling voice. “And to do that, you must share your blood with that of your prospective dragon.”
“You wish to be a dragonmancer, do you not, Micheal?” Tanila asked. “You wish to continue down this illustrious road, of which you have only taken a few mere steps?”
“Well… yeah, of course,” I said, “I’m just sayi—”
The needles stabbed into my arms, legs, and neck. I winced and let a little groan out through my nose.
Almost instantaneously, bright red blood started flowing along the magical intravenous lines that led out from my body. Likewise, golden blood that reminded me of the golden ichor that was said to run through the veins of the Greek gods began flowing from Noctis and through the tubes.
The two bloodlines met in the heart-shaped nexus hovering between us. As soon as they entered the vessel and filled it, the flow from mine and Noctis’ bodies was cut off. The remaining blood in the lines drained into the heart, topping it off. Then, the magical heart began to pump, blending the scarlet and golden blood so that it became one substance of a metallic orange color.
“There is a secret,” Tanila said as she continued twisting her hands in their arcane motions. “A secret known only to dragonmancers. It is that blood is made of things called ‘cells.’ There are two kinds within the body; white and red.”
I almost said something helpful then, like, “No shit” or “You don’t say”, but I managed to refrain at the last second.
“It is the co-mingling of these cells—between rider and dragon—that imbues both with the power of the other,” Tanila said. Her arms shot out to her sides. “It is this mingling that takes place during the Transfusion Ceremony!”
I looked from Tanila back to the artificial magical heart pump and saw that the orange blood was now heading back toward Noctis and myself. The orange ichor flowed steadily along the tubes; human blood melded and mixed with that of a dragon.
Which, in case you have forgotten, is a big fuck-off lizard, my brain put in.
My brain had a point. I mean, if you tried to mix the blood of a college freshman with that of, say, an alligator, and then pump it back into their body… Well, I imagined that the charter for your fraternity was probably going to get revoked in no time at all. Not to mention the fact that the freshman was likely to be completely fucked.
I was all prepped and ready for some serious pain when the orange blood entered my body through the tubes once more. However, to my relief, and slight disappointment, I felt nothing at all. Perhaps, there was a slight feeling of warmth at the points where the tubes punctured my skin but, apart from that, there was nothing. Within a few seconds, half of the combined blood that had been mixed within the heart nexus was back in my body. The other half had been pumped into Noctis.
The crystalline heart stopped pumping as soon as the last drop of shining orange blood disappeared from the lines. With a slight pinching sensation, the tubes withdrew from my body and retracted back into the heart. Noctis’ tubes did the same. When they had coiled themselves tightly into the heart, the entire glittering apparatus dissolved into nothing.
Dasyr waved her hands and lowered me once more. As soon as my feet touched the dungeon floor, the supernatural grip on my body vanished and the candles all around the dungeon flared up.
It was only then that I realized the chanting had stopped. It had been thrumming through the dungeon while the transfusion had taken place, but somehow it had slipped into the background, like elevator music.
I blinked a couple of times, as if coming out of a trance and looked about me. The sixteen other robed figures were gone, leaving Tanila and Dasyr behind.
“Neat trick.” I gave my head a little shake. “But I didn’t feel any pain, so I’m figuring that was all just smoke and mirrors. You didn’t really mix my blood with Noctis’ blood, and vice versa.”
Tanila and Dasyr stood still before me. Even as I turned my attention to them, Dasyr snapped her fingers, and Noctis came out of his supernaturally induced sleep. The dragon didn’t so much as blink, just turned his great, sleek head toward me and bared his teeth.
“The merging is complete,” his voice spoke inside my head. Neither Tanila nor Dasyr seemed to register that he’d spoken, so I figured only I could hear him.
So this wasn’t just a big act? I’d actually shared my blood with Noctis, and him with me?
That look, the way that Noctis fixed me with that knowing eye of his, made me wonder if the dragon had gone through this before.
I turned back to Dasyr and Tanila and held back an exclamation. The two robed figures were hooded no more. Their faces were bared to me, and I saw at once that they were not human, as I had supposed.
Tanila had the striped ears of a white tiger protruding through the shock of white hair that covered her head. Faint lines marked the skin on her face that might have been stripes of pigmentation or light tattoos, I wasn’t sure. Her eyes were a startling blue.
Dasyr had the same set of tiger ears protruding through her hair, though both the ears and her hair were striped in red, as well as black and white. Her eyes were an almost gold color.
These two strange women had also removed their gloves, and their long fingers were tipped in jet-black claws. Behind them, waving like a couple of fronds of striped weed in an ocean current, were tiger tails. Red, black, and white for Dasyr, while Tanila’s was white and black.
Before I could even utter so much as the first syllable of a question, both these robed enigmas made an identical motion in the air with their left hands and summoned their dragons.
Tanila’s and Dasyr’s dragons looked like they had been bred with Bengali tigers. In fact, they looked more tiger than dragon. There was something vaguely reptilian in the way they moved and rested, but the beasts—each one being about the size of a minibus—had the feline faces and striped hides of tigers.
Both tiger-dragons had a pair of curved horns thrusting out from their heads—the beast that Dasyr had summoned having the slightly bigger set. Tanila’s was striped in black and white, while Dasyr’s had the added red stripes, just as the woman did herself. For some reason, only Tanila’s dragon had wings. They weren’t like Noctis’ though, they were feathered, rather than like those of a bat.
My eyes ran over over the vast flanks of the tiger-dragons, taking in the paws that could flatten a man, the claws that could skewer a horse, and the jaws of the noble heads powerful enough to bite through a steel girder.
“A proper introduction is due,” Tanila said with a smile. “I am Tanila of the White Tigers of the Striking Tundra, Bearer of Koman, the Tiger Dragon.”
“And I am Dasyr of the Red Tigers of the Seething Crag, Bearer of Namok, the Dragon Tiger.”
This pair had nailed the theatrics earlier, and their introductions were no less awesome.
“Our two peoples have kept and remembered the secrets of the Transfusion Ceremony for generations,” Tanila said. “It has been our responsibility to gift the dragonmancers of the Mystocean Empire with the power of the very creatures that they ride.”
“And, in doing so,” said Dasyr, “we encourage and strengthen the bond between riders and steeds.”
“Through this ritual,” Tanila continued, “cohorts of dragonmancers have been able to share in the magic of their dragons in a way that is both intimate and potent beyond measure.”
I cleared my throat. “This isn’t the bit where you tell me that I have to fuck Noctis to seal the deal or something, is it? Because I like Noctis and all, just not like that.”
Dasyr shook her head. Her tail twitched behind her. “No,” she said, without smiling. Her eerie golden eyes were fixed on my face. “You are close to activating the mixed blood within you. Close to becoming, essentially, a demigod.”
An unbidden image of Steve Rogers—Captain America—came to my mind.
“There is only one thing that you have to do to complete the bond,” continued Dasyr.
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Suffer for it,” Tanila said softly.
The pain hit me like a freight train in the small of the back. It drove the air from my lungs. Scythed my legs out from under me. Turned the blood in my veins into boiling acid.
My jaw was locked so tight in silent agony that I could hear my teeth creaking. Spit sprayed from between my lips, which were pulled back in an animal snarl.
My back arched spasmodically, and I wondered whether I would start climbing the walls like that chick in The Exorcist, barfing green slime everywhere.
Red lightning crackled across the inside of my closed eyelids, pulsing with each thrumming wave of purest trauma. It was pain turned up to eleven, pain undiluted by anything else, a pain so intense that I could feel it crawling up my throat as a black sludge threatening to eat my brain away.
It was, in short, a shitty time.
And then, after what might have been five seconds or two weeks, the pain vanished.
Every muscle in my body—including those in my toes and head and fingers and ass—was on fire. I sucked in a great lungful of air. It tasted as sweet as only those who have been buried alive or nearly drowned know.
I opened my eyes.
I was lying under a blue sky. Fat, fluffy clouds floated lazily overhead, and a warm sun played across my face.
“Ouch,” I said, and the word came out as a wheeze. I coughed and hawked up a mouthful of blood. I spat and sat up.
I was in a strange green field. It was strange because, as far as I could see, the field only extended to about the size of a football field before it dropped away at the edges. All four edges. The weird pasture was ringed by mountains and looked, to my mind, very much like an arena from Super Smash Bros or Pokémon Stadium, which I used to play on the N64 as a kid.
I got to my feet, refusing to listen to my body, which seemed intent on going to sleep there and then. I was dressed in all the armor that I had been issued when Elenari and I had visited the armory the other day. My spear was even lying at my side. I picked it up. It felt lighter than it had done in the armory. Far lighter.
A rustle made me turn. Dasyr and Tanila were standing behind me, right on one edge of the field.
“Holy shit,” I said, “is this a vision brought on by the pain? Are you about to hit me with some profound Sun Tzu, Machiavelli warrior shit right now?”
Tanila shook her striped head. “This is no vision. Neither is that monster.”
“Monster?” I asked, and turned slowly on the spot to see where Tanila was pointing.
A huge beast had appeared at the other end of the arena—from where, I had no fucking clue. That was irrelevant. What was relevant was the fact that it was there at all.
The monster was about six times the size of Noctis when he was in his usual form. It had a huge body that was somewhere between a giant grizzly bear and a gorilla on steroids. Its long, sinewy arms were tipped with two-foot claws. Stump legs hinted at power rather than speed. Its hide was bristly and brown like that of a wild boar.
It was also, and most noticeably, somewhat similar to a hydra. By which, I mean, the thing had more than one head. Six, to be exact.
“That fucking thing’s got six heads!” I said, glancing at Tanila and Dasyr.
“Yes,” Dasyr said in her deep, low voice. “Each head represents an evil that the prospective dragonmancer must overcome.”
“It’s a walking, roaring, slashing metaphor, is what you’re telling me?” I asked.
“The lion is pride, the wolf is anger, the dog is jealousy, the bear is sloth, the swine is gluttony, and the goat is lust,” Tanila reeled off.
I gave the creature a more careful look and studied it once over.
“Yep,” I said, “the whole menagerie is there, all right. And I’ve got to kill this thing?”
“You must defeat the sinbeast, yes,” said Tanila, as casually as if she was asking me to hang out the laundry. “If you die, another will be found to take your place. A new Earthling dragonmancer will be trained. One who is worthy.”
“Another male dragonmancer?” I asked.
“Perhaps not,” Dasyr said.
“Most likely not,” Tanila added. “But that does not matter. What matters is tradition. What matters is the dragonmancer way. Defeat the sinbeast in battle, or die.”
“I’ll be around to see another day,” I said vehemently. “I can promise you that.”
“Good luck, Michael Gimore,” Dasyr said.
And, just like that, my two friendly, robed, kidnapping, torturing buddies disappeared.
I turned back to the sinbeast. It was working itself up into quite a state of agitation.
I felt something clink against my chainmail and looked down. Resting against my chest was my onyx crystal pendant.
With a determined gesture and a thought, I summoned Noctis to my side. Ignoring my protesting muscles, I leapt onto his back and hefted my spear.
“All right, pal,” I said, patting the dragon’s scaly neck, “I guess this is what they call make or break time. Let’s kill this ugly son of a bitch.”
Chapter Twenty-One
As I urged Noctis into a gallop, I pulled my onyx crystal out from the collar of my shirt to run quickly through my current crystal slots,
In my Right Arm slot I could access the Shadow Sphere spell.
My Legs slot was currently taken up by Noctis.
My Head slot coul
d produce the Blink ability, which would help me predict the movements and maneuvers of my enemies, while allowing me to teleport a limited number of times at short range.
And my Chest slot was…
Wait, my Chest slot? That hadn’t been opened before…
Then it dawned on me: the experience that I gained in fighting the Bloodletter ninjas had apparently translated into my Chest slot being unlocked. Where once my crystal had simply said, in tiny etched letters, that I had insufficient skill, now it read:
Chest Slot: (Defensive Item / Offensive Spell : ONYX ARMOR)
Sleek, black armor that absorbs kinetic damage and transforms it into offensive Chaos Magic, which can then be fired at a chosen target through a conduit set into the breast plate.
That sounded pretty damn helpful. Armed with those four slots…
It’s enough, I thought to myself as I looked up and focused on the giant six-headed sinbeast. It’s more than enough.
I hefted my spear.
I could do this.
Noctis, it turned out, could run like a goddamn Kentucky Derby winner, and it wasn’t long before we were within spear-chucking range of the big, bellowing sinbeast. As I approached, I half knelt, half stood on Noctis’ back, using his wing joints to hook my legs in and raise myself up. I held the spear back, like a javelin thrower.
The only knowledge that I possessed about fighting a hydra I had gleaned from the Disney movie version of Hercules. I knew you weren’t supposed to go for the heads because they just multiply. However, I figured that in this instance, when the heads weren’t all the same and stood for their own specific sins, I couldn’t help but try.
Just to see what would happen.
I flung the spear as hard as I could, trying not to dwell on the fact that I had never thrown a javelin with the intent to score points, let alone throw a spear at something with the intent to kill it. The length of ash, with its tip of very lethal and efficient steel, shot through the air and straight at the sinbeast’s lion-like head.