by T. J. Klune
“Still think the plan of yours is going to work?”
No. No, I didn’t. In fact, I thought there was a very good chance that I’d be dragon shit by this time tomorrow, but I didn’t want to say that out loud. So I said, “Totally. You’ll see. You’re going to be so impressed, you’ll probably say something like, ‘Oh wow, Sam. I should never have doubted you. Your plans are the best, and so are you. You are my favorite thing ever.’”
“That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.”
“Just you wait.”
“I can barely stand the anticipation.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we are approaching a very large cave where there are probably two dragons inside that want to see what Sam of Wilds tastes like, and not in the good way. I would appreciate if I could have some godsdamn support here!”
“You sound stressed.”
“Would you just—”
WIZARD
I put my hands to my head and hunched over, trying to breathe through the building pressure.
“You don’t have to be so fucking loud,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m standing right here.”
Randall put his hand on my shoulder, and he squeezed once but said nothing. It was almost… comforting. But since it was Randall, I assumed he was trying to curse me somehow. Once I was able to focus, I stood upright again, causing his hand to slip from my shoulder.
The cave entrance was much larger than I thought it’d been from the other side of the plateau. Surprisingly, that did nothing to soothe my nerves. My throat clicked when I swallowed as I stared up at the cave ceiling.
It was light enough that I could see partway into the cave. Ice crystals hung from the ceiling, glittering in the low light. They looked like precious stones, diamonds and azurite and agate. They covered the ceiling and the walls, cold and forbidding. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I was in awe that such a place could exist. I could see the beauty in it, even if I would rather have been anywhere else in the world.
Yeah. I was scared shitless. I had no qualms in thinking that.
Saying it aloud, however. Especially in front of Randall?
No fucking way.
So I puffed out my chest and squared my shoulders, the wind whipping around, causing my robes to billow. I looked badass. I was badass. I was a godsdamn wizard. I had a destiny of motherfucking dragons. The gods themselves had chosen me to take on the most evil of all the villains. I was going to kick so much ass and take so many names. I had this. I had this.
Something large growled in the cave.
I didn’t have this. “There’s more meat on Randall’s bones than mine!” I cried, voice echoing around the cave as I cowered behind Randall, peering over his shoulder. “If you need to eat someone, start with him so it gives me time to run away!”
Randall sighed like everything wrong with the world was somehow my fault. “Really, Sam?”
“Sorry,” I said, hastily brushing off his shoulders for reasons I didn’t quite understand. “Fear response. It could happen to anyone.”
He wasn’t amused. “You told them to eat me first so you could run.”
“If it helps, I’m not very proud about that.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“We’re on the same page, then.”
“Should we continue on?”
“Maybe we could wait right here and not go farther into the spooky ice cave—aaaaand you’re walking farther into the spooky ice cave.”
I thought about letting him go on his own, but I wasn’t that big of a dick, so I hurried after him, gaze darting around the cave, sure I was going to see dragons with large teeth barreling toward us.
“Lesbians love me,” I muttered. “Lesbians love me. Lesbians love me.”
The light grew dimmer the farther we went into the cave. The fact that the cave kept going was not something I was too fond of. I would have appreciated if the lesbian feather dragons had decided to nest some place far less… this place.
WizardWizardWizard
He is here
I can hear him breathing
I can hear him walking
He’s close
Closer
“Wow,” I said without meaning to. “You have to realize that’s just making things worse, right?”
Randall looked back at me, massive eyebrow arched.
“Sorry,” I said, gesturing toward my head. “Dragons talking to me. They’re being creepy. I didn’t know lesbians could be creepy. That kind of alters my whole worldview. It’s also rude.” I raised my voice on the last word, hearing it echo around us.
Randall looked as if he thought I was an idiot. Which is to say how he normally looked. But then something else crossed his face, and his eyes widened.
“What?” I asked nervously. “Please don’t tell me this is the point where you say it’s standing right behind me, because, dude. That would just totally suck my balls.”
“Your eyes,” he said.
“Uh. Yes? I have them?”
“They’re glowing blue.”
I blinked. “Oh. Shit. Yeah, that’s apparently a thing that happens. They glowed red when we were in the desert approaching Zero.”
“Did they change with Kevin?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The first time I saw him, I was getting knocked through an equipment shed after he said he wanted to fuck me. The second time, I was chained up by the Cult of Truth Corn Assholes in the middle of a field as a sacrifice. I really didn’t have time to find out if my eyes were changing colors.”
He stared at me.
“What?”
“Your life is very strange.”
“Why do you say that like it’s my fault?”
“Can you feel the change? In your eyes.”
I started to shake my head but stopped. “Not… not like you think. It’s more—I just know the dragons are here. They know I’m here. We can feel each other.”
“You are an odd one, Sam of Wilds,” he said before continuing farther into the cave.
It was only minutes later that it became difficult to see. The light had faded, casting the area around us in shadows. I bumped into a large column of ice, cursing under my breath as pain blossomed in my knee. Randall stopped in front of me, and I could barely make out when he brought his hands to his face, cupping them over his mouth and nose. He whispered something into his palms, and a surge of magic beyond that of the dragons burst around us. A light flashed brightly in Randall’s palms, illuminating the cave around us. Randall opened his hands and the light rose, flapping like it had… wings.
“Is that a butterfly?” I said, unable to keep the wonder from my voice. The light flitted around us, leaving little trails of sparks that hissed when they landed upon the ice.
“It is,” Randall said. But he wouldn’t say anything more about it, no matter how much I prodded.
We followed the butterfly farther into the cave. The light crawled along the ice, making it look like the crystals were glowing. We were heading up a slight incline and the air was growing warmer. I could hear the soft drip of water sliding down the columns and walls. It was eerie, hearing it echo around us.
“How deep does this cave go?” I asked after what felt like forever. “It can’t be that big.”
“I suppose we’ll find out,” Randall said.
“Have you ever been here before?”
“Partly.”
“What the hell does that mean? How can you have partly been in a cave before?”
“When I came to Castle Freesias, I made an offering to the dragons here.”
“During your self-imposed exile,” I said without thinking. Then, “Uh. Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like—”
“You’re not wrong,” he said.
“Wow. That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I feel tingly. That might also be hypothermia and frostbite, but I’ll take it. Why did you leave an offering?”
“So they’d know I wasn’t here to hurt them.”
“Because you were Randall of Dragons.”
He said nothing. Like a jerk.
“What did you leave them?”
“A gift.”
He was the most infuriating man alive. “When people are purposefully vague, it doesn’t make them enigmatic. It makes them assholes.”
“I wouldn’t know. People aren’t purposefully vague toward me.”
I had to remind myself that strangling Randall in a cave in the mountains wasn’t the best course of action. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. I won’t push.”
He snorted.
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t push too much.”
“It was a token of goodwill,” he said. “From a friend.”
“Who?”
He didn’t respond.
“Did they accept?” I asked, trying a different tack.
“They did.”
“Did you see them?”
“Briefly. They knew…. Well. They knew why I’d come to Castle Freesias. They understood wanting to be left alone.”
I hesitated at that. Kevin and Zero had both said something similar. “Have they been…. Have people tried to hurt them before?”
Randall sighed. “Sometimes humanity forgets how to be human. Dragons were the unfortunate victims of that.”
“I wouldn’t hurt them. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
The butterfly flared briefly.
Randall said, “I know.”
“But I’m going to have to. One day.”
“I know that too.”
“There isn’t—”
You say you wouldn’t hurt us
But we have heard false promises from your kind before
You think yourself different
You think yourself better
“No,” I said, trying not to stumble at the crushing pressure in my head. “I’m not better. I’m just… Sam.”
Sam
He is Sam
Wizard
He is like the others
But he walks with Randall
That means nothing
He is written in the stars
Stars can still shine after they die
Which means that stars can lie
“Sam,” Randall said, sounding urgent. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, just a debate as to my intentions,” I ground out. “You know how it is.”
“What are they saying to—”
The butterfly shot off ahead of us, wings flapping furiously. The sparks hissed as they fell to the ice. The butterfly rose upward, spinning in lazy spirals, light trails curling around each other. It went higher than I thought possible, and just as soon as I began to see the light reflecting on an impossibly high cave ceiling, the butterfly exploded in a bright, silent flash. The blast sent pieces of light throughout the room, the shock wave causing them to vibrate. They began to fall slowly back toward the ground, illuminating the room brighter than before.
Icy cliffs jutted out from the walls of the cave, large boulders and stones here and there. I thought I could see purposeful shapes in them, but recognition was just out of reach, wrapped in shadows. The shape of a horse and a man and a dragon, an egg, a tree, and a—
Wait.
Hold up.
A dragon.
I took a step back.
The lights flickered around us.
I laughed. It sounded forced. “It’s just a stone.”
“What was that?” Randall asked me.
I shook my head. “It’s just—”
The stone turned its head toward me.
“—a motherfucking dragon,” I finished weakly. “Um. So. Hey there, good buddy. How are you?”
And the dragon growled as it unfurled itself, lights falling around it, eyes glittering in the dark, catching the remains of Randall’s spell.
“Do you see that?” I whispered furiously to Randall.
“I see it,” he said, sounding calm.
“Good. Now. What was your plan?”
His head whipped toward me. “My plan?”
“Right. Good. Your plan.”
“Sam, you’re the one who said—”
“No need to point fingers. I don’t blame you for running in here half-cocked. Heh. Better than being full-cocked, wouldn’t you say?”
Wizard
The dragon wasn’t like Kevin or even Zero. From what I could make out, it was… smaller than Kevin but no less intimidating, especially since I’d followed Randall’s lead and had technically entered its lair uninvited. I took a step back, trying to make myself seem as unintimidating as possible. “We’re cool,” I said. “We’re so cool. I’m not here to do any harm. I just need your help to defeat a villain and save Verania. No big deal. It’s no big deal at all.”
“Why are you talking like that?” Randall whispered.
“Because I’m trying to be calm,” I hissed back. “I’m like a motherfucking dragon whisperer, okay? I totally know what I’m doing. Mostly. And besides, for all we know, maybe they’re stupid and don’t even—”
“Sam?”
“What?”
“There’s a dragon standing right behind you.”
“Har, har.” I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s not very—”
There was a dragon standing right behind me.
Okay, so maybe standing wasn’t exactly the right word as much as it was attached to the wall of the cave, long neck stretched toward me, blue eyes flashing, slitted nostrils flaring, teeth bared, tongue flicking out toward me as it rumbled low in its throat. Its great wings stretched out on either side of it, and I had a moment to appreciate the sheer beauty of what I was seeing, because Randall had been right. The wings were feathered. In fact, the whole dragon looked as if it was covered in feathers, and I had never seen anything like it before.
And then the reality of the situation set in as rocks shifted behind us.
I whirled around to see the second dragon rising from its perch on one of the jutted cliffs that stuck out over the room we were in. Its tail twitched as it hung off the edge, scraping along the ice. It narrowed its eyes as it growled, crouching down low on its front legs as it stared down at us.
So, to recap:
Two dragons, both of which had higher ground.
One was above the path that led back toward the cave entrance.
The other was on a cliff above us.
“Um,” I said. “Fuck. Randall. No offense. But you have terrible ideas.”
He started sputtering.
“No time for that,” I said. “I need to get us out of this mess you’ve gotten us into.”
“That I’ve gotten us—”
“Okay, here’s the plan. I’m going to try and talk our way out of this.”
“That is an awful plan. In case you can’t tell, they aren’t exactly happy see you.”
“Don’t you mean they’re not happy to see us?”
Randall stared at me blandly. “I’ve already given them an offering. They’re not going to be mad at me.”
I gaped at him.
He shrugged.
“Okay. I got this. I so got this. They’re just posturing. Zero did the same exact thing. They just need to be put in their place.”
Twin growls echoed around me.
“Okay, okay! You don’t need to be put in any place. Look. Let’s start over! My name is Sam of Wilds. And I am an adorable twink. You are lesbian dragons. With feathers. And really big teeth. Just let me love you.”
“I can’t believe the gods chose you,” Randall muttered. “Out of everyone.”
“Hey! I’m amazing. Just because you—”
The dragon on the wall roared. The room shook around us. The lights were hissing on the ice and going out. The cave was growing darker.
“Look!” I cried. “I’m not here to hurt you. Maybe the star dragon told you about me? That I’d be coming to ask for your help? That I would need—”
“Oh my goodness,” a distinctly female voice s
aid from behind us. “He’s just dear. I want to wrap him up and keep him forever. Can we keep him? I would like to keep him.”
Randall and I turned slowly toward the voice.
The dragon sitting on the cliff was staring down at us, tail still twitching, eyes bright as it watched us. The claws on its front legs were curled over the edge of the cliff, razor-sharp, causing deep scratches in the ice. But its head was cocked, and it no longer looked like it was about to attack us. It was… curious.
“Um,” I said. “Hello?”
“Hello,” the dragon said.
And yeah. Still not something I was used to.
“No,” another female voice said from behind us, though this one was deeper, harsher. “We cannot keep him. He is a human. He is a weak and frail thing. Just look at him. He looks sickly. He smells bad too.”
“I do not smell bad,” I said, outraged. I whirled around. “I’ll have you know that I smell—eep!”
The dragon on the wall had craned its head toward us, and I could see it was entirely covered in feathers. The lights were almost completely out, but the feathers on its head and neck were the bright blue of a summer sky.
“You are supposed to be the great wizard?” it said, lips rippling over spiky teeth. “I know the man at your side, but you? You are nothing but a child.”
“Rude,” I said. “So I choose to take it as a compliment about how youthful I look. Thank you.”
“Oh my,” the dragon behind us said. “He makes me just want to die. I must keep him. Please, please let me.”
“He’s foul,” the wall dragon said. “I would not have him soiling our lair.”
“I just took a shower yesterday—”
“But,” the wall dragon said.
“Ohh,” the cliff dragon said. “I like it when you say but. Do it again.”
“But,” the wall dragon said.
“Ooh,” the cliff dragon said.
“What is even going on right now?” I asked.
“But,” the wall dragon said, “what if there was a way to make him smell better?”
“Do I really smell that bad?” I asked Randall. “I mean, you only have old-man soap at Castle Freeze Your Ass Off, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I don’t know why you can’t just get the soaps they sell at the City of Lockes. Those ones have cool names like Wolf Thorne and Manticore Madness. Those are man soaps.”
“What would make him smell better?” the cliff dragon breathed.