The Awakening

by Joe Jackson

  “Welcome to my humble lair, mortals!” it boomed. “Know that you will never leave.”

  Yiilu gestured toward the glowing metal door and called out a prayer to the Earth Mother to give them light. The glow faded from the metal bars but formed into a ball that shot to the top of the cavernous chamber as though fired from a bow. There it perched and grew in intensity, until it had formed a miniature sun that shed light on the entire room.

  Leighandra froze for a moment. Though not as impressive in stature as Hastucilliara, the green dragon was still titanic in size. It spread its wings out in the openness of the chamber, which served to underscore just how large a cavern it had carved or otherwise created. It begged the question of how the dragon had gotten in here; was there truth to the tales that some of them could take the forms of men?

  The dragon’s bright red eyes inspected each of the men and women before it, and then it laughed again. “I must say, I am going to eat better tonight than I have in years! And I suspect with a fair deal less dirt and poison mixed in – the fur notwithstanding.”

  “Who are you?” Audrei asked, no doubt hoping diplomacy might settle the creature down the way it had with Fireblade. “What is your name, mighty dragon?”

  The beast grumbled and swept Starlenia and Delkantar in front of it with its wings. “If you must know, my name is Cetudolinashu, the Heart of the Viridian Splendor, the Dryads’ Nightmare, the Lord of the Emerald Flame. Do not bother telling me your names, mortals. I do not care. You will not live long enough for them to be of any importance.”

  “Wait!” Max cried. “We are not here to fight you. We have come for the seal only.”

  It was of no use. The dragon took in a deep breath, and the companions scattered as much as they could again. Max stood firm and actually advanced at it, and Leighandra wasn’t sure if she screamed at him or not. The dragon’s fiery breath engulfed him, and Audrei shrieked in terror even as she skidded across the floor. It was as if time stood still after that, Leighandra’s heart stuck between beats as the dragon completed its exhale and the world stopped spinning in the wake of their loss.

  And then the Sword of the North Wind bit into the dragon’s plated nose. The sword wasn’t aflame, but it cut into the hardened plate at the end of the dragon’s snout and blood flew free. The dragon reared back in pain and growled, and one of its massive, clawed forelegs shot at the luranar paladin in anger. He got his shield off his back just in time, but still took a hard, staggering blow that sent him reeling.

  Energized by Max’s survival and drawing of first blood, Starlenia rushed again to one of the dragon’s flanks, and Delkantar did so on the other side. Galadon’s greatsword let forth a powerful whoosh as he stepped in and hacked at dragon’s exposed foreleg, and cut into its scales.

  “Not so arrogant now, are you, you scaly bastard?” the knight grunted. “You have made your last mistake, lizard!”

  Cetudolinashu apparently didn’t agree. Stung by the paladin’s sword, he nevertheless backhanded Galadon across the floor, then kicked Starlenia into the stone wall behind her. His wing buffeted Delkantar, though the ranger was able to move with the momentum and make a counterstrike. He slashed at the wing membrane, but to little obvious effect.

  Leighandra realized she was doing nothing more than observing, and she called upon her arcane song to chill her blades. She followed in Lion’s wake as the squire dashed in. The young shakna-rir slashed and then dodged right, slashed again and then ducked under the dragon’s foreleg. He tried to slash at the exposed belly scales, but then Cetudolinashu purposefully fell to his side and landed on the squire. Lion let out a squawk as the air was crushed out of him, and his sword skidded away.

  Leighandra lined up a good target in the dragon’s equivalent of an armpit, and she thrust her saber once, twice, and then with all her strength for a third strike. The first two blows failed to penetrate its scales, but she got through on the third. To what effect, she wasn’t sure, as she dodged back and circled behind Delkantar, who was still trying to maneuver around the dragon’s wing and the whipping tail to reach a flanking position.

  Max came in again and feigned a swing, then hopped back impressively considering his heavy armor, and brought the sword down in a two-handed overhead blow. This time, he took a good portion of Cetudolinashu’s nose plate off, and then he brought his shield forth and used it to slam the dragon’s snout. Unfortunately, the dragon was able to muster a much more powerful hit, and head-butted the paladin clear off his feet to slide back to the wall.

  Starlenia started to rise when the dragon shifted its weight away from her, but its hind leg kicked her into the wall again, and Leighandra saw a spray of blood. The rogue collapsed to the floor in a heap and didn’t move, and the chronicler sucked in her lip. She wanted to go see if Starlenia was all right, but there was nothing she could do there yet. Instead, she moved to pull Lion to safety once the dragon rose up to strike at Max.

  The dragon drew in another massive breath and engulfed Max a second time. The luranar paladin rose in the aftermath, and only then did Leighandra realize that his wife was stunned so badly that she simply stood there, staring at him in shock, wondering how her husband was alive.

  “Do you not recognize the Flameslayer?” Max taunted the dragon. “Your days of eating the poor and the helpless are finished! I am going to walk out of here with your blood on my sword and armor, and you will rot here for the rest of time like every man, woman, and child you have ever killed!”

  “Boldly spoken, little wolf, but I have far more weapons than my breath!”

  “Delkantar,” Lion wheezed. Leighandra knelt beside him, glancing up only briefly to mark Max and Galadon battling the dragon. They were being battered by the crushing strikes of its forelegs, but they were giving back where they could, and the dragon was not pleased.

  The ranger came over and crouched down. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve got some broken ribs,” he said, touching the shakna-rir youth’s oddly-bowed armor.

  “If I’m lucky, that’s all I have,” he said. “Listen, there’s only one way we’re going to kill that thing unless Max somehow stabs it in the head or the heart. Wait until they have its full attention, slip underneath, and slice it as deeply as you can where its tail meets its body.”

  “Groin it?” Delkantar whispered, and Lion nodded as his eyes went out of focus. “I guess it’s the best I’m going to do against that armor. Leighandra, can you and Yiilu provide a secondary distraction? This beast is a magnificent fighter, I’ll grant it that.”

  “What’s she doing, anyway?” Leighandra mused, turning to the elf. Yiilu was praying to the Earth Mother, her eyes turned skyward, and after a moment, Leighandra understood. She was going to collapse the cavern if all else failed. Or perhaps partially collapse it to further pen in the dragon. “I’ll go see if Audrei can help.”

  Max took the dragon’s claws to his side, and they tore into his armor, coming back tipped with his blood. The paladin staggered to the right, and though the dragon’s attack let Galadon get in a good hack at it, the knights were fighting a losing battle.

  Leighandra dashed over to Audrei. “Time to find out if you really have any magic inside you,” she said, and the luranar woman turned a wide-eyed, panic-stricken stare upon her. “You held the specter under your sway somehow; see if you can do the same thing to the dragon.”

  “Are you mad?” Audrei blurted.

  “We just need to get its attention! Lion thinks Delkantar can strike a fatal or at least crippling blow if we get the dragon’s attention fully.”

  Lion tried to get to his feet, but was unceremoniously kicked away as well. Leighandra could see that Delkantar’s gambit was their last hope. She called forth her arcane song and tried to conjure distracting lights and sounds, but the dragon ignored them, intent on finishing off Max so it could turn fully upon Galadon.

  Audrei saw the state her husband was in, and she scowled and strode forward. “You pathetic, cold-blooded piece of gnol
l shit!” she bellowed. That managed to capture Max’s attention as well, and the dragon turned its narrow-eyed ruby gaze on the luranar woman. “Your breath is pitiful! Hastucilliara makes you look like little more than a burping gecko. Show me your fire, worm. Let me see what you can do.”

  “Oh, with pleasure,” the dragon said, drawing in its full lung capacity. It turned toward Audrei, ignoring the stinging hits on its forelegs from Max and Galadon, and prepared to unleash its massive, incinerating breath.

  But it ignored one person too many.

  Delkantar stabbed upward with both of his blades, sinking deep into the soft scales of the dragon’s groin, and then he leaned forward, ripping through scales and flesh toward its pelvic bone. He tucked and rolled before he could get kicked or sat on, even abandoning his swords to avoid killing himself with them. Cetudolinashu turned and let forth its fiery breath on instinct, and caught Delkantar’s retreating form, though only briefly. The ranger screamed in fury as he ran from the flames, and without even glancing back, he slid across the floor to Lion’s sword and scooped it up. He dashed toward Leighandra and Audrei and stood before the latter defensively, his dreadlocks and beard singed and smoking along with his armor.

  The dragon’s head bowed as it was wracked with pain, and a veritable waterfall of blood spilled forth from its split arteries. Max didn’t even hesitate. He stepped forward, put his left hand at the base of his sword’s pommel, and hacked viciously at the dragon’s neck, ripping through the scales with the Sword of the North Wind. He didn’t bother to flinch when its arterial blood squirted from there as well. Again and again he hacked and hewed, and Galadon joined him on the opposite side.

  And then, before it had ever recovered from the pain of Delkantar’s strike, Cetudolinashu lost its head, collapsing with a resounding crash to the cavern floor.

  “Starlenia!” Leighandra shouted, and she led Audrei by the elbow to where the rogue had fallen. “Oh gods, no! No!”

  Starlenia lay in a puddle of blood, and there was no sign of life from her. “Max!” Audrei called as she knelt beside the Okonashai woman. She rolled Starlenia over onto her back and laid her hands on the woman’s chest, and when Max came up, he did the same.

  The luranar paladin was still bleeding, but he ignored his own wounds. He cast his fanged wolf mask aside and shook himself, but then set to channeling prayer and faith to try to heal their friend. Leighandra knelt and put her hand to Starlenia’s shoulder; the rogue’s flesh was cool to the touch, though she was still breathing. She had deep gouges where the dragon’s claws had caught her, and there was blood coming from her ears as well. Leighandra didn’t know much of wounds and healing, but she knew these were bad. Audrei began praying aloud in the luranar tongue, and Max placed his hands over hers.

  Galadon came and loaned his aid as well. The human knight was bloodied, though it was harder to tell where his was coming from. Leighandra suspected it wasn’t his at all, but the dragon’s. While he’d been battered and slammed by the dragon a few times, he didn’t seem much worse for the wear considering what they’d just accomplished. His features were grim as he joined his fellow paladin in trying to stabilize their companion. “By the Shepherd, it’s a testament to this woman’s stubbornness that she’s even still alive,” he muttered.

  Yiilu approached and cut off Starlenia’s leather vest and the tunic underneath. The three trying to heal her put their hands directly on her flesh, then, and Max and Galadon made no sound or motion to suggest they were put out by any “impropriety.” Yiilu began to apply one of her salves to the deep lacerations, the thickness of the ointment helping to stem the blood flow for the time being.

  After watching for a moment, Leighandra gestured toward Lion. “Is he all right?”

  “We need to get him to a temple,” Delkantar said quietly, staring at the severed head of the dragon. “He’s in rough shape, but he seems stable enough.”

  “We cannot move Starlenia right now,” Max said. “Can you bring Lion to us?”

  “Yeah, I’ll try.”

  “Stay with us, Starlenia,” Audrei whispered. “Stay with us, please.”

  “We’ve done all we can, I think,” Galadon said, though the way he looked at the wounds said something different. “It’s up to her now. How is Lion?”

  “Some broken ribs, I think,” Delkantar said, laying the youngster down gently. “There’s no blood in his mouth, though, so I think he’s been lucky, relatively speaking. But we need to get him – both of them – to a temple and a proper healer.”

  “You are a proper healer,” Max said, laying his hand on Audrei’s shoulder.

  “Max, I…,” she started, choking up a bit.

  “You are a priestess,” her husband told her calmly. “A royal priestess. We have faith in you. Have faith in yourself, my love.”

  Max and Galadon went to Lion and began to inspect his wounds, but it was clear they had no idea how to treat broken ribs. Leighandra was pretty sure a paladin’s faith healing could only do so much without proper medical knowledge to back it up. Cuts and bruises were one thing, but broken bones – particularly ribs – were quite another. The chronicler pursed her lips and wished she knew something that would help in this situation.

  Audrei sat staring at Starlenia’s limp body, and then she laid her hand over the woman’s heart. She closed her eyes and began to whisper in the lyrical tones of her peoples’ language, and Leighandra gasped when a soft glow enveloped her hand. Max turned and his ears went up in shock, and soon all of the companions gathered around to watch Audrei work. The edges of the wounds began to come together, raw and bloody as they were, and Starlenia arched her back and let forth a pained sigh. But then she settled down and her breathing steadied.

  “Leighandra, put your cloak over her to keep her warm,” Audrei said. “Once she seems stable, we can take her up to a temple and get her proper healing. Now, let me see to Lion.”

  “Do you know how to set broken bones?” Galadon asked.

  “I do. However, ribs are complicated. I shouldn’t need to really do anything to them, but I will begin the healing process as best I can, and then we can consult the priests above to see what else he might require.”

  Audrei set to work on Lion, and Max crouched behind her. He wrapped her in as gentle a hug as he could so as not to distract her, and the luranar woman didn’t even bother trying to curb the tears that came. Just as with Starlenia, the woman’s hands were enveloped with a soft glow, and the shakna-rir teen’s breathing steadied as he sighed and shifted in his sleep.

  Yiilu patted Leighandra’s shoulder and gestured around, and after stringing up her arcane lights, the chronicler began helping the druidess search the chamber. The dragon didn’t have much in the way of valuables. No doubt the majority of its victims, being destitute or drunks, didn’t have treasures for it to keep after devouring them. But that fact only made it easier to find the one item in the chamber of value: the jade seal.

  It was coated in blood when they found it, the dragon apparently having lain upon it when resting to protect its sole valuable possession. After cleaning it off, Yiilu held it in her hands and closed her eyes in concentration.

  “I cannot tell what direction is which down here,” she said after a minute. “We will see once we return to the city and our friends are being tended to.”

  Delkantar knelt across from Audrei. “Max… how did you know the sword was going to protect you from the dragon’s breath?”

  “I suspected that was why Hastucilliara was afraid of it,” he answered. “And I had faith that if she feared those who wielded it, she did so for good reason.”

  The ranger nodded, then met Audrei’s gaze. “Cold-blooded piece of gnoll shit?”

  The luranar woman put her hand over the end of her snout. “Please don’t let Kas’Yari find out I said that,” she said. Max had his forehead against her back, laughing.

  “Don’t suppose you can regrow hair?”

  Audrei ran her hand over Delkantar’s singed
dreadlocks and beard. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Damnit. Do you have any idea how long it took to grow?” he huffed.

  “I suspect a few days,” Leighandra quipped, and laughed at the ranger’s indignant look. “If you had any more hair on your face normally, you could pass for a bear.”

  “I can give you a trim when we get back up to the city,” Audrei said. “I imagine the beard will not take you long to replace, at least, and most of your locks seem fine.”

  “Is this blood going to keep away from us long enough for our friends to recover so they can be moved?” Galadon asked.

  Yiilu looked around. “Let me handle that. You will feel a tremor, so do not be alarmed.”

  She shifted the floor of the cavern slightly to grade the blood away from them, but that was all she needed to do. Now, all they could do was wait. They settled in, made sure Lion and Starlenia were comfortable, and then began tending to the smaller, less-threatening wounds of the rest of their party. The perforations up Max’s side looked worse than they were when they got his armor off, at least. The dragon’s claws had only barely cut into him, as his armor had stopped them from rending him completely. After what she’d done for Starlenia and Lion, it seemed Audrei had little trouble tending the smaller wounds of the paladins.

  Once her healing ministrations were complete, the friends sat leaning against the walls, resting after their ordeal. No one bothered to speak of their shock at having killed a dragon, even as every pair of eyes stared at the massive corpse. Leighandra couldn’t help looking back and forth between Cetudolinashu’s body and Max again and again, astounded at the luranar’s bravery and the heroic feat he had spearheaded.

  The first legendary feat of his reign as king, she thought, and then she turned her gaze onto Galadon. And yet another one for our other royal friend.

  And that was to say nothing of Delkantar, who’d risked everything to land the crippling strike. Leighandra was surrounded by brave, selfless men and women. She wanted to write about it in her journal, but covered in blood as most of them were, she didn’t want to sully her records. Instead, Leighandra sat beside Audrei and touched her hand. “Ready for your first singing lesson?”