Kill the Dragon (Lake of Dragons Book 1)

by E. Michael Mettille

Maelich remained tense. His fists clenched so tightly that his nails dug into his hands leaving thin cuts in them. Before long, thin trickles of blood oozed past his knuckles and dripped to the ground. His skin had continued to redden and began growing quite hot. A burning smell filled the air as something crackled close by. In his rage, Maelich barely realized his cloak burned around him. He didn’t care. His gaze remained locked on the cowardly bastard who would use his great power to kill a defenseless animal. Anger and loathing coursed through him. He curled up and brought his fists next to his head. He was all a blaze, flames licking up to the sky from his body. All at once he stretched his limbs out in unison, and fire exploded from him in all directions. It burned everything around him. A giant ball of flames, a perfect sphere of fire at least five miles in diameter engulfed the entire mountaintop. Then darkness.

  Chapter 14

  The Journey of Daritus

  Bright white stole Daritus’ vision a moment before he felt the pain. He had caught the pommel of Maelich’s sword in his periphery only a moment before it blasted the left side of his jaw. The lad hit like a charging horse. By the time the blinding, white flash faded in favor of dark trees bathed in the flickering orange glow of a dying fire, the horizon had shifted. Unable to gain his balance, Daritus stumbled. The forest floor was unforgiving when his shoulders pounded into it hard enough to knock the sword from his hand. It had seemed nearly soft as he lounged upon earlier in the evening, before the lad of the Lake had come calling. Now it felt like unforgiving stone, ancient and unmoving.

  Daritus couldn’t decide which part of his body hurt the worst. Was any part of him not throbbing or aching in that moment? The cobwebs slowly dissipated. The sound of Maelich’s footsteps seemed incredibly loud as they echoed in Daritus’ throbbing head. He couldn’t just lay there. He was in a fight. He was on his back. He needed to get back to his feet and find his sword.

  By the time Daritus regained enough control of his body to turn his head and locate his sword, Maelich was kicking it further out of reach. It glinted in the fire’s orange glow as it skittered away. His heart sank into his gut as Maelich’s boot slammed his chest and pinned his shoulders back against the ground. He struggled against the weight, but his muscles still weren’t responding with any urgency. The look on Maelich’s face, along with the lad’s sword bearing down on him, assured him there was great need for urgency. Unfortunately, despite his desire to live, despite his mind shouting at his muscles to move, shift, do something, he couldn’t. This was his end. The Lake would have him.

  Time is such a strange thing, never seeming to move at the same rate from one moment to the next. What is a moment? Daritus wondered at that. He expected he should be quite dead with Maelich’s beautiful sword punching through his chest and out his back. There it was though, hanging above him, slowly falling toward his chest. He’d rather it be quick. He failed. He lost. The lad had bested him. Get it over with already.

  Finally, it came, the pressure in his chest would mount until the pop. He’d been stabbed before. Obviously, it had never been a fatal cut, but he knew how it felt, the pressure. Those were moments when time didn’t make sense, when things slowed and allowed the briefest moment of panic before the inevitable. Then the pop would come. The pressure was always worse than the pop. Pain came later. That was a different thing. Daritus had become so absorbed in the pressure, the panic in waiting for that pop, he hadn’t noticed Maelich’s expression change. Once he did, he hadn’t long to muse over what it might mean. Suddenly, the world was again bathed in bright, white light.

  The ground was gone. In fact, so was the pain. Daritus felt nothing. Perhaps he had left his body laying skewered on that forest floor and his energy was returning home, returning to the Lake. Perhaps you don’t feel the pop when it ends you. Death is another of those things like time, things that don’t make sense. It’s different, of course, time is something you gain experience with as you age. Death only happens once. It can be contemplated and studied, great minds can theorize, but until it happens, you don’t know.

  As the white light faded, death seemed less and less likely. Daritus floated above the clearing, the apparent scene of his demise. Scanning it, he failed to find his body. Had he been carried away body and soul? Perhaps he wasn’t dead.

  Suddenly, a swirling wind picked up in the clearing below him. It swept everything away. The carcasses of the grongs, his horse, packs, food, gear, they all spun higher and higher. Except Maelich, his body remained. It lay upon the ground, untouched.

  Nothing made sense. Was it real, or was it his mind showing him visions as his essence sped toward the Lake? Had the lad really killed him? Was his body clinging to life with Maelich’s sword sticking out of its chest? Did he need to do something to survive?

  Suddenly, the world went dark. Daritus’ mind grew quiet as he raced toward what he did not know. The motion was apparent. However, there was no light, nor was there any sound. Neither was there a taste or smell, only the feeling of flying through…something. Then he was falling, faster and faster. He screamed. At least, he tried. There was still no sound. How long? How far? He couldn’t tell. As perplexing as time could be with all one’s senses, it was even worse without them. Finally, he stopped.

  For a moment, there was complete stillness, nothing. Then there was light. That was something. It didn’t seem natural though. It was thick and red. It made his skin appear as blood. There was water below him. At least, he hoped it was water. Bathed in that same red light, it looked more like blood. However, it couldn’t be that. It was a large body, the size of a lake and surrounded by cliffs which extended as far up as he could see. That would be quite a bit of blood. Perhaps the lad had slain him in the forest. This was death. What a mockery of his life that would be. The great warrior Daritus felled by a mere lad, a lad who bore the mark of Havenstahl. He shook his head slowly and closed his eyes.

  Then he fell again. He plummeted into the blood water. Again, he tried to scream but still couldn’t find his voice. His heart pounded against his chest as he thrashed about, wildly fighting to keep his head above the water. Something pulled at him, some force. It sucked him down, deeper and deeper. His limbs worked against it, thrashing and swimming and pulling. It was too strong. He plunged deeper and deeper into the water and into the darkness. His lungs burned. He needed air. Breathe. Water rushed into him as his lungs yearned for air. His body convulsed as he swallowed gulp after gulp.

  Daritus struggled as long as he could, finally giving in. Once his fighting ceased, he slammed onto dry, rocky ground. The water was gone, but his lungs were still full. He rolled about the ground fighting to get air into his lungs. Finally, he coughed, gurgled, and then vomited. Buckets of water and bile passed by his lips. His body heaved again and again. He thought the gush would never end and then, air.

  He lay there gasping. Moments passed, or eternity. What did it matter? He was breathing and there was solid ground beneath him. He slowly fought to his feet and tested that ground. It was good and solid. Darkness had returned. He squinted, searching, but there was no light, not even the blood light from above the water.

  “Where am I?” he asked, finally able to hear himself again.

  He sat upon the hard stone. Though reasoning through recent events didn’t seem an effort which would bear any fruit, he needed to get his wits back, and he desperately needed to catch his breath. Death still seemed the most likely explanation for the events following his battle with the lad, but he didn’t feel dead. Of course, how would he know if he did? Now what? That was the question. Whether he was dead or yet lived, he couldn’t just sit there for eternity. At least, he didn’t want to. If he was dead, his desire didn’t die with his body. He had want.

  Enveloped in darkness, the prospect of attempting travel seemed ludicrous. His surroundings were a mystery, as were any potential destinations. He could crawl upon the ground, but to where?

  Then there was light, dim, merely a glow. He thought it might be his imagination at f
irst, but it continued to grow. It took him a moment to discover the source, but it was coming from him. His crest, the Dragon, was glowing. It was dull at first, almost imperceptible, but it grew quickly. Before long it was bright enough he had to squint to protect his eyes. With his hand beneath his chin to shade his eyes, he took in his surroundings.

  Rocky walls sprung up around him. They had obviously been there all along, but he was just now seeing them. He scanned every inch of his surroundings. It appeared as if he had been sucked into a cavern, the ceiling of which was well beyond his sight. Straight ahead was another light. It seemed to shine in response to his crest. He wanted the light with every shred of his being, wanted to go to it, explore it. Consciously, he knew this. However, at the same time, it felt as if he had no choice, like this new light controlled his decision. Either way, the two lights would meet.

  When he arrived at the source of the light—the seeming answer or counterpart to his crest—he realized it was a perfect match, only opposite. The peaks in his crest were valleys in the other. It was almost as if… He quickly grabbed for his crest and placed it into the match oddly floating before him. The fit was perfect. With a metallic click the two pieces snapped together and the light from both melded into one. Daritus had to shade his eyes and look away as the combined light of the two grew increasingly brighter.

  The ground trembled beneath Daritus and knocked his equilibrium slightly off kilter. A couple of deep, steadying breaths and the act of focusing his eyes on a single point kept him from vomiting out whatever might be left in his gut. The feeling of control didn’t last long as the rocky ground shook more violently, bucking and swaying like a chunk of it was trying to tear loose from the rest. When it finally did and began to lower, Daritus fell in heap on the bucking stone beneath his feet.

  As the ground slowly lowered, the violent shaking ceased. The idea of standing back up died a quick death in Daritus’ head. Banging it when he fell had left a dull ache, and the only consistent thing about his journey from that clearing in the forest—which seemed an eternity ago—was violence. After flying, falling, drowning, and being tossed about like a pebble in an avalanche, he decided lying against the cold stone was the least stressful part of his journey up to that point.

  Daritus’ eyes slowly grew accustomed to the bright light gleaming from the two emblems. He couldn’t look directly at them. However, squinting his eyes up tight, he was able to take in his surroundings through the slits which remained open. The glimmering emblems floating above him were at the center of a perfect circle of stone. At least, he assumed it to be stone based on the rusty, reddish-brown color of the substance. The walls stretching up above him as the rocky ground he lay upon sunk deeper were perfectly smooth. The engineering that must have gone into making a platform sink into a shaft triggered by a hovering key which didn’t appear attached to anything was beyond the ability of any architect Daritus had ever met. It seemed impossible. Then again, nothing he experienced since facing the lad of the Lake in the forest really made any sense. If a giant fairy sprinkled dust on him and ate him, it wouldn’t seem odd at all.

  Eventually, the platform reached the bottom of the shaft and a circular room spread out around it. A few moments later, it ceased its descent and fit the rest of the floor perfectly without so much as a seam between them. The wall of the room was just as smooth as the shaft had been. Blazing torches adorned it at intervals of roughly fifteen feet. Bathed in the impossible light of the interlocked emblems, they looked more like shadows or voids, like some weird negative light.

  Suddenly, a light matching that which emanated from the two interlocked crests shined directly in front of Daritus. His key, along with the lock he had placed it in, first dimmed in response, then brightened to match the new light. Once both sources of light shined in equal brilliance to each other, they grew brighter still. As impossible as this seemed to Daritus, he quickly realized it no longer hurt his eyes to behold. He could stare directly at this new light source through wide eyes rather than the slits he’d been looking through since the earth moved beneath him.

  At first, it looked the same as the rest of circular wall surrounding him, an impossibly bright spot on an otherwise identical section of wall. Looking more closely, he realized that wasn’t the case at all. Hanging from—or perhaps floating in front of—the wall was a much larger version of the crest Daritus had worn around his neck since he faced his trial and became a servant of the Dragon. Immediately in front of it sat two thrones, both occupied by men wearing perfect, white robes decoratively stitched with the color of prang.

  Both men seemed ancient, but the one on the right appeared elder to the other. His shimmering silver hair was straight and perfect, as was his perfectly groomed beard. The staff he held seemed to glow with its own life force. The image of a Dragon with wings spread in a victorious pose perched at the top of it. The material with which the staff was crafted was foreign to Daritus, but it appeared even more precious than prang.

  The man on the left appeared just as dignified as the other, but somehow seemed lesser. Daritus couldn’t tell if it was because this man’s hair and beard had color, dark and streaked with silver, that made him appear younger or if it were something else. Perhaps it was the Dragon riding the top of this man’s staff. Both were identical in every way save the image of the Dragon they bore. This man’s dragon looked fierce and ready for battle.

  Daritus carefully considered both men as he approached. Both wore closed eyelids, and neither sported any kind of expression. They could have been sleeping if not for how straight and tall they sat. On top of that, even though their eyes were closed, they both seemed to be looking at him.

  The simple queerness of being scrutinized through closed eyelids was unsettling enough that Daritus didn’t immediately notice all the sources of light surrounding him growing brighter as he approached the two men. It seemed impossible to him. Even though all the lights in that room had been brighter than any light he had ever seen—or could even imagine—they all did grow brighter and brighter. His crest coupled with the crest floating above the platform, the crest hanging from the wall behind the two thrones, and the Dragon statues riding the staffs of the two men in those thrones, all of them increased in brilliance with every step Daritus took. His amazement and confusion grew as quickly as the light increased. He had become so engrossed that when the man to his right spoke it nearly startled him out of his boots.

  “Daritus,” the man’s voice was deep and commanding, somehow equal parts menace and comfort, “you follow the way of the Dragon. You are a brave defender of your people. Your mind has been greatly enlightened through the teachings of the Dragon. Knowing this, my question to you is thus. What imbecilic, miniscule portion of your thoughtless brain spawned the idea you should battle with the lad of the Lake? Have you not been taught he is the prophetic son? Did you not learn the fate of our world rests in his hands? He is the tool for our success. He needs guidance not interference. You know this.”

  As the man spoke, Daritus remembered the dream which had sent him on his journey to Havenstahl. He lay in hot sand without the energy to rise. The sun baked his skin as he looked out on a horizon fuzzy from heat rising off the ground. Nothing but sand upon sand surrounded him in every direction, and it remained completely flat for as far as his eyes could see. He should have been burning and dying from thirst, but he felt nothing. Then, as he lay not dying in blistering sun which should have been killing him, a shape approached in the distance.

  Giant, leathery wings stretched out from it flapping up and down with impossible grace. They made a thunderous whoosh as they thrust slowly and powerfully up and down and propelled a massive red body through the smoldering air. Twenty men would easily fit atop the beast, along with all the necessary equipment to safely keep them there. However, there were no men riding the monster.

  Perched atop the flying thing was a beast like nothing Daritus had ever seen. It was giant and completely covered in silver fur reflecting th
e brilliance of the blistering sun in such a way it seemed to magnify it. The hair around its face and on its neck was much longer than the stuff covering the rest of its body. It looked like a crown, a great silver crown of fur. Beneath that crown was a wide, flat snout above jaws which hung open to expose glistening, white fangs. They looked like they were meant for tearing up flesh. The body carrying the terrifying head around was equally menacing. At least the size of six large men, it sat on top of four muscular legs ending in humongous paws. They looked like there was a great deal of strength behind their swat. However, none of those were the most frightening things about the monster. Its eyes were. They had no color at all. They weren’t black. They were nothing.

  Daritus remembered the terror in that moment, trying to gain his feet and flee. He knew now that it had been a dream, but at the time it was more real than anything he had ever experienced. Lying there in blistering sun that refused to give him the peace of death, the only part of his body he could move were his eyes. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t stop them from moving down from the silver beast to behold the Dragon bearing down him.

  He had been raised to revere and protect the Dragon. That didn’t make it any less terrifying. The massive body that could easily crush a man beneath its weight wasn’t the red of blood but more like fire. Almost orange, it seemed to glow as if it were a source of light rather than a reflection of the sweltering sun. The thing’s face consisted mostly of jaws extending roughly six feet from the rest of its head and ending in somewhat of a beak. Those jaws hung slightly open exposing hundreds of razor-sharp teeth. From behind them a forked tongue protruded, slithering all about as if it had a mind of its own. The Dragon’s eyes glowed with the same red fire as its body. That body was gigantic, much larger than any animal Daritus had ever seen. It was easily the size of three huts, but these huts had a long, thin powerful tail hanging from them. Between the body and the head was an equally powerful neck. It was roughly half the length of the tail. It had its legs curled up into itself. The back one’s looked thicker and more powerful, while the front ones looked as if they would function much like arms. All four ended in claws attached to appendages that looked quite human. The front looking like hands and the back looking more like feet.