Skylantern Dragons and the Monsters of Mundor

by Scott Taylor

  ‘Oh, gods! Someone shut him up!’ Marl requested.

  Tweak made a swift gesture with his hand, and instantly Chuko’s gun vanished. Staggered by this development, the Head Hunter’s leader looked down at his empty hand. The other Head Hunters soon joined Chuko with all their pistols drawn, and trained on the mages. Tweak performed another magic trick and made the exit barrels in each of the Head Hunter’s guns disappear. Unfortunate really, since all the triggers had been pulled. Their guns swelled with the sudden energy build up, and with no exit for the lasers, the guns backfired, knocking out all of Chuko’s men.

  ‘Guns versus magic’ Katt asserted precipitously, ‘is there any doubt as to the outcome…’

  ‘Right, let’s go!’ Centorionn interrupted, striding off in the direction of the armoury.

  Katt looked a little put out, though watching the last poor insignificant wretch flee from the burning bleachers, his posterior alight, cheered Katt up no end. The Head Hunters and their idiotic, bloodthirsty mob had been vanquished. The masters of Urban Cloud and their evil accomplices had fled.

  It was time for the mages to do the same.

  ‘Wait!’ Tør told them.

  The mages stopped.

  ‘We don’t have much time. We have to get back to Mundor immediately’ Marl interjected hurriedly.

  ‘What is it, Tør?’ Fabian turned to the ambassador.

  ‘Since I have been here—since I have been prisoner to these Head Hunters, I have had these strange feelings come over me. It’s hard to explain, but I think there are others here too who are trying dearly to escape like us.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Fabian, concerned.

  ‘Not who, but what’ came the cryptic response.

  The mages looked at the ambassador with concern and then regarded each other with question.

  ‘It was a feeling in my head—a cry for help.’

  ‘Could you lead us in the direction of this “cry for help”’ asked Marl suddenly.

  The ambassador didn’t answer. Instead he sat down upon the dusty ground. Like with meditation, his features were serene, though Marl’s own patience was wearing slightly thin. He kept his silence though, knowing that Fabian would want to indulge his friend’s concerns.

  A moment or two went by. There was nothing. The mind of the ambassador reached outwards to those who had recently contacted him via telepathy.

  Marl was growing more and more inpatient.

  ‘Come now’ he said, ‘we really must return to Mundor. Every little time we waste here may spell the end. What is he doing? Fabian? Fabian, you yourself imparted the importance of duty, against my better judgement, and I warned you that your sense of duty was misguided, but you still continued on this fool’s errand, to save Mundor, to save the Sinistrom from its own short-sightedness. And yet now you delay! Why?’

  The young prince did not answer and walked over to where the ambassador was kneeling.

  ‘Wait’ spoke the ambassador at last. ‘I hear them. They call to me.’

  Rising to his feet, Tør sprinted over to the exit. The others followed him. Down a long corridor and a further flight of steps, Tør led the mages to a wide open area know as the promenade.

  The ambassador stopped dead, looking left, then right.

  ‘Where now?’ asked Fabian.

  ‘There’ the ambassador pointed. At the furthest end of the promenade was a door. It was a large metal door, very thick, and extremely secure.

  No problem. The six mages began to muster their powers, calling upon the magic each of them respectively owned. They channelled their resources at the door which came away as though the hinges were made of paper.

  Beyond the wide open doorway lay the room with the seven orbs.

  ‘What are they?’ Iron May asked, only beginning to grasp the significance of the auras that shone like the dual suns of Mundor.

  Colonel Warclaw also queried the identities of these orbs. Marl had the faintest inkling, though it was Tweak who recognised the magic that emanated from these seven orbs.

  ‘They are the Skylantern Dragons of old’ the dwarf replied. ‘They existed before pre-recorded time, before the great cataclysm. Only snippets of data remain, bits of text, nothing more, and they tell of seven dragons that were once powerful. They were captured by beings even more powerful than they, and were stored in a prison of light…And this is their light, these are the last remnants of their kind.’

  ‘Yes’ Marl looked at the orbs with wonderment. ‘You are right. These are the Skylantern Dragons of legend. But why here? Why now?’

  Tweak wondered closer to one of the orbs and was instantly overwhelmed by images of a history long buried. He witnessed the first capture of the Skylantern Dragons and the technology that held them prisoner. He looked on as the dragons showed him the truth. In his mind’s eye, Tweak saw everything that had happened, the whole thing, the iniquity and sadness, the burden of being trapped in an orb for so long, and to have greedy, grasping Head Hunters profiteering on such misery.

  ‘How do we free them?’ Marl asked.

  ‘With a touch’ Fabian answered, reaching out with an unsteady extremity to lay his bare hand on the orb of light. With a brilliant flash of radiance a dragon stood where one of the orbs once existed. The prison had shattered. The other orbs flashed and were replaced with dragons too.

  ‘Destiny is on our side’ Marl stated, feeling the symbols of power unveil their final truth.

  ◆◆◆

  Back amidst the clouds, the mages road to safety upon the backs of each respective Skylantern Dragon. They were large, majestic and magic personified. Like Chines dragons with serpentine forms, they snaked and sailed the winds as mere destiny had foretold.

  Draethor, that man of stone, witnessed the sight as his friends emerge from the great city in the sky, and found himself speechless with awe and admiration. He felt like a soldier again and full of energy for the battle ahead. He witnessed Marl and Fabian both, riders of the Skylantern Dragons, these creatures of myth and legend.

  Chapter 11

  Twilight, the day’s diurnal cycle had given rise to the fear of night’s power incarnate. Evil marched upon Mundor and King René knew the end had come. The monsters of Mundor they had been dubbed. The Sinistrom hordes, armed atop their maggots the size of horses and fuelled by vengeance, recognised that they outnumbered their foes sixteen to one.

  Malecarjan, resplendent and confident in his roll as warmonger, had secured his dream at last, and was soon not only to be master of Mundor, but also to overthrow his betters in a final coup d’état. Even the powerful and mysterious enigma, with his red eyes, his pressed suit, and business demeanour did not wish to stand in the way of a war. Not this time. This time the order had been given: bring down the enemy’s defences!

  This delicious subterfuge had been carried out flawlessly. But this was not a war. This was extermination. Even Malecarjan had to concede that a war had to be between two equal powers to necessitate a fair, even conflict; otherwise it was merely a pointless show of force. Mundor was nothing more than an ant beneath the heel.

  ◆◆◆

  The Skylantern Dragons, thankful that the mages had freed them from their imprisonment, sailed the skies towards Mundor with the heroes on their backs.

  ‘Look!’ pointed the ambassador. Fabian could see the vast armies facing Mundor as they approached. ‘It’s the Mecha Villeforms! They are marching on Mundor!’

  ‘Not if I have anything to say about it!’ replied Prince Fabian, steering his dragon towards a steep embankment.

  Malecarjan turned and witnessed the seven specks in the sky, a glint of gold…this was evidence enough that a formidable enemy was approaching. Dragons! Seven of them!

  Malecarjan, with a quick turn, and swirl of his cloak, leapt atop his winged charger. The saddled creature was a black crow, though it was the size of a barn. It extended wings of plush obsidian. Its master gave it the order to ascend and ascend it did, offering the most chilling sound as it r
ose higher into the ether.

  ‘Skylantern Dragons’ the zealous warlord uttered with contempt. ‘Their power now belongs to the mages of old. Seven dragons for seven mages! This could tip the balance of power in this war. Cougar Chuko will pay dearly for allowing this to happen!’

  Malecarjan’s mighty bird-like steed beat its wings and began to lift high into the stratosphere. The enigma stepped back as the gust from the wings of the beast almost sent him flying backwards. His eyes, blood red, narrowed with contempt for his general. Malecarjan was never good at holding fast, the impulsive lout, he thought. With a swift gesture, the enigma ordered the hordes of Mecha Villeforms to start the attack on the kingdom.

  The riders went in first atop their equine maggots. First they chewed at the wooded accesses with their biting beaks, splintering the gates, and damaging the beams that had been placed there as buttresses. Soldier’s posted upon the battlements shot arrows at the riders. Some of the maggots were killed or subdued in tandem, only to be replaced by another wave, and another.

  Eventually, boiling oil was tipped from the battlements, raining down ruin on the hordes below.

  King René stood with his men atop the parapets and saw his second and third legions riding over the hill from the north. At last, help had arrived.

  The world was a whirlwind of colour, disorientating, frantic like a kaleidoscopic rush—then stillness, shape, and contour, sand and sky; there was a sobering stillness, reasserted like a fantastic vision. René watched the black line on the horizon. A shimmering blur stroked the distant dunes. Flanked on his left as he turned his head was a similar sight. On both sides, there was a roar of voices, clear, aggressive. A chilling war cry reverberated through the wasteland.

  Two opposing armies on either side populated the horizon, vast enough to consume and obliterate anything caught in the middle. On the one side were the humans, René’s warriors, the fighters, generals and militia, the defence forces. On the other, there was positioned the extraordinary warriors of myth and legend, the harpies, the gorgons, and the fighting centaurs. These were creatures collected from the 9 realms to bolster Kardas’ armies. Banners and pennons flourished like waving omens. Behind the front lines, the Titans, taller than mighty elephants, raged with fists and murderous gazes as the armies of man drew nearer. Upon dinosaurs, they rode, beasts like the triceratops and the brachiosaur. They had mighty arrows, these titans, arrows the size of trees, tapered at one end, feathered at the other, which they shot from bows the size of houses. These mythic creatures had magnitude and brute strength on their side. They could strike panic into the men who feared only what they could not understand. Yes, and poor René looked this way and then that, unable to utter a sound.

  Each opposing side marched on the other. There were the Naegorns, the two-headed creatures with the top half of their bodies all covered in fur and the lower half sheltered with fish scales. In addition, there were the Magnoperes, half-human, harpy-like with webbed wings and monstrous talons that could rend steel with a single deadly strike.

  One side appeared more formidable than the other. The humans opened up with everything they had. Some of the mythic creatures were cut down by the first volley, while others who were more resilient managed to cut through the lines. Blood was drawn. A huge Saebormorph, a creature whose skin exuded knives, rushed at his human enemies, impaling one after another.

  The king watched in mute silence as a fifteen foot Titan bounded into the tussle and began swinging a giant mace that in turn levelled the playing field—bodies were sent pitching in all directions.

  The Minotaur were more concerned for their appetites than they were for the war effort. They sat and devoured their human victims, rediscovering the taste for blood, a flavour their ancestors knew well. The Gorgons in the interim took down their enemy with a single look, converting every human into stone.

  It was a slaughter. The Centaurs sounded the cavalry with their giant horns. Mighty winged harpies descended upon men and carried them off into the stratosphere where oxygen was scarce. Basilisks slithered round the fray of feet, selecting their prey one at a time. Men would look into the blood-red eyes of the basilisks and fall dead instantly without being touched or physically maimed.

  The human race was losing.

  The cries of those who were dying continued to resound around the falling kingdom. A man who was injured lay suffering a metre from where another soldier knelt, blood oozing from every cut.

  ‘Help me’ he seemed to say in a faltering voice. The other soldier watched feebly as a titan picked the injured man up and held him fast in his powerful arms. “Now!” he snarled his orders at a Minotaur. The foul Minotaur charged, his head bowed low, and caught the injured soldier, impaling him through the abdomen with his massive bullhorns. The titan laughed as he backed away. The human choked up the last bout of blood and slumped forwards, dead before he could draw another breath.

  These were the hordes of the Sinistrom, nothing more than brutal, bloodthirsty applicants. They had all agreed at one point or another to make peace with Kardas Vallor, and they were all willing to fight in his name. King René felt absolute loathing for the thought. These misfits and monstrosities, and malcontents were all now part of a vast world-spanning initiative to unite the realms under one banner. And they would achieve it with force if necessary, with peaceful means if at all possible. But what sovereign in his right mind would knowingly ally himself with this type of scum?

  It was beyond all belief.

  King René felt his heart falter, fearing what was about to come at last. Nothing could save him or his people. At that precise moment he knew what he had to do: he would cast his own body from the battlements and hurl his remains down into the waters of the moat far below. Failure could demand nothing more. In his final moment he looked up and noticed something which he could barely make out at first. Then, as the specks in the distance came ever nearer, he saw…

  ◆◆◆

  The mages witnessed the approaching crow and broke formation, allowing Malecarjan to pass between them. Justas Marl banked to the left, his dragon had a vested interest in Malecarjan, he noticed. He didn’t even have to command his mount. His airborne steed had a will of its own: that will was bent on revenge. The dragon was gaining, steam billowing in dark soot-coloured plumes from its nostrils. The devil was in its gaze. This was understandable since it was Malecarjan who had stolen some of the dragon’s powers back at Urban Cloud. Now the creature wanted retribution.

  ‘I know that dragon’ growled Malecarjan, opening the palm of his hand to allow the magic he had stolen to generate like a bright, glowing nucleus. He forged a mighty orb of energy, focusing it in his palm, and then hurled it right at the Skylantern Dragon.

  Justas Marl commanded his dragon: ‘Dive! Dive now!’

  His dragon was in control and dived out of the way just as the magic thunderbolt passed them. The dragon breathed in and, positioning itself to attack, spat fire at the enemy. The crow reared, losing a number of its dark feathers.

  The other mages alighted right in the thick of battle. Their Skylanterns forced the armies back with the fire of their breath.

  Draethor, the man of stone, raised a giant slab of granite above his head and hurled it at the Sinistrom. The result was a clump of mashed maggots and their riders, which triggered a glowing smile on Draethor’s flinty face.

  Some of the Titans retaliated, but figured they were no match for the stone fists that had taken a wallop at one titan, and sent the others fleeing in abject fear. In the thick of it, Colonel Warclaw transformed himself into a colossal crab and started picking off the Sinistrom one by one.

  ‘This is getting out of hand’ the ambassador spoke, seated behind Fabian. The dragon persisted to convey the prince and the ambassador on its great back. It reared its head to look behind suddenly and witnessed the black shape in the distance, that fowl, distinct shape, Malecarjan’s crow-like carrier, and it was clearly poised for another attack. Though Marl had this one co
vered.

  ‘Come dragon!’ the prince commanded. ‘Drop us off over there!’

  Fabian steered his dragon closer to the ground, allowing the ambassador to jump, and land safely on terra firma.

  ‘That is enough!’ Tør cried.

  The enigma, the man who had been ordered merely to oversee the war, turned instantly on his heels. His red eyes enlarged, incapable of believing the vision that approached him. Could this be the ambassador, he thought?

  Tør, once he was in earshot, offered a clear directive to his father’s associate:

  ‘Stop this instant! King René was not responsible for my kidnapping!’

  The enigma saw his liege heading towards him. Admittedly, he was surprised to see the boy was still alive.

  ‘Ambassador, my liege!’ the enigma spoke, bending down on one knee.

  ‘What happened? How did you…?’

  The Ambassador did not trust his minion, no more than he trusted the Mecha Villeforms he commanded, but he sensed that the enigma was innocent, at least in this particular matter.

  And he was right.

  ‘I don’t know’ replied the boy in all honesty. ‘I did not recognise my captors, but they were not of Mundor, I can promise you that. In fact, it was Prince Fabian here who rescued me.’

  The prince jumped down from his dragon and approached the two.

  ‘I see’ said the enigma thoughtfully. ‘But by all eye witness accounts you were abducted by a dragon, and here we have six mages, a prince of Mundor, and all here in the service of King René, commanding seven dragons in battle. Now, I have to admit, this is not a coincidence. Dragons on this world have been near extinct for what…centuries? A couple of Millennia….? Really? There can’t be that many people around who own a dragon, much less command one. Am I really so gullible to concede that these blackguards saved you from capture out of heroic motivation? I think what happened, in my opinion, this prince commanded the dragon to appropriate our ambassador, and then endeavoured to bring him here to make us think it was a rescue attempt, thus forcing us to concede that we were wrong. It is a ploy to make us look rash and foolish!’