by Vic Broquard
Later that day, some of the men who were picking up the mess in the street for burial found the bodies of the three men. Instead of eating breakfast, they’d made their way to the walls and jumped to their deaths. Zoran sighed when he was informed, the men had lost just too much for them to recover he realized at last.
Archmage Karel visited Honani. “I want to go dragon hunting. Can you help me find some of their lairs, where at most one or two live? I am going to butcher them as they are butchering our people. You just find me their dens and get me there, I will do the rest. You don’t need to risk your life.” Honani smiled and agreed.
Late that night, Karel limped back into his laboratory and guzzled another two healing potions. He was a wiser man now. Honani had returned after supper with the location of a red’s lair. He’d located this one months before but had verified that the dragon was there resting. Karel was pleased and within minutes, he stepped Karel out into the dragon’s lair. “I had a false sense of security,” Karel muttered to the walls of his lab. True, he had slain the beast and did what he’d set out to do — slaughter the beast, leaving parts of its body scattered around its lair in a bloody mess. However, the dragon was clever. Seeing the rod in the Archmage’s hands, it chose to attack him with its claws and vicious bite instead. While Karel was protected for a time, he had the fight of his life and very nearly lost it. Bruised and wounded, he’d guzzled his two healing potions on the spot and then proceeded to cut body parts off of the slain red. He also confiscated the dragon’s valuables, sharing a portion with Honani.
“There has to be a better way of slaying these foul beasts!” he growled to the walls. He pulled down all of his many spell books and began researching various ways to cause a painful death. His wife, Chika, found him in the morning asleep over his books.
“What happened to you? Your clothes are a mess and is that dried blood on them? Are you all right? I was worried last night. You didn’t come down to bed,” Chika asked, growing concerned. Her annoyance had vanished, replaced by fear.
“I had a dragon to slay, dear. I’ve realized that we need more than my rods if we are going to win this war. Can you bring me some breakfast? I have much research to do. I am getting an idea.”
“Okay, just do be careful. Let me know when you are going off like that!” she chided him a little and left.
“I will. Say, find Rafael the blacksmith, you know, Danika’s husband. Tell him I need to see him at once,” he asked, returning to his books. He growled at himself for having fallen asleep. How much time had he lost?
Later, Rafael knocked and entered. “Son, I need another golden rod made as soon as possible. Take what gold you need from that pile. Same dimensions as the other ones you’ve made, but this one is going to be quite different. The war is escalating and we need better weapons. Go on, don’t just stand there.”
“I am not allowed to be at my shop without someone watching over me as look out. Dragons could attack us at any time. I think that was the baron’s orders,” Rafael pointed out.
“Okay, okay, I’ll watch over you. Now let’s get going. I need that new rod today!”
While he had the rod finished in two days’ time, the enchantment became problematical. In short, he was trying to tie two very powerful spells together in tandem. This consumed enormous magical energies, and this new rod would only hold enough for one casting before recharging. Hence, he had to work on modifications. He added a large diamond to the gold core, wrapping it securely to the rod. This worked better. The enchantment charges were split between the gemstone and the gold core, enabling the user to cast this tandem spell twice before re-charging. Well, this was better than nothing, but would it work? If so, then he could perhaps work on a much large scale model, one that would hold numerous charges.
Finally, on the last day of January, he paid Honani to take him to another dragon lair for testing. This time, he let Chika know that he was off to test his new rod. She didn’t realize and he didn’t specify that he was going after another dragon! Honani brought him to a black’s lair high in the mountains of Rehor this time. As before, after stepping Archmage Karel out of the Shadows onto the stone floor, Honani slipped back out of harm’s way and watched him.
“Well, well, well, who do I have marching into my lair?” the black dragon raised its head to glare at Archmage Karel who held both his old rod and the new experimental rod in his hands.
“I’ve come to test my new Rod of Dragon Bursting on you. I hope you don’t mind. This will take only a second of your time. Of course, if it works, that will be your last second of life — an excruciatingly painful one though, much like the pain and suffering that you dragons did to our people. Nice touch depositing their many bits on our main street, but it made lots of us angry, though.”
“After I rip your puny arms and legs off of you, I think that I will pour my drought down your throat and keep you alive for a while longer,” the black retorted.
“I hardly think that’s going to happen. Well, test time. Dragon Burst.” Karel spoke the simple command word of the rod. Of course, he’d have to change that to avoid accidental discharge of the rod. A huge flash of magical energies momentarily illuminated the cavern. The energies streaked into the dragon’s belly, roughly in the center of its huge body. Then the tandem spell detonated. The black dragon let out a hideous cry of intense, unimaginable pain. The air rushing out of its mouth suddenly changed to tiny particles of dust! Horror blazed from its eyes, then they glazed over, death had come to this black. As Karel watched, the dragon completely dried out, almost mummified! He’d turned all of the water in the dragon’s body into dust particles, though it took several seconds to get to the water near its hide and face.
Karel was covered in dust, but he brushed himself off as a startled Honani reappeared. “Good god! What have you done to that dragon? That was incredible! What a weapon you have invented, Archmage Karel Ambrose!”
“Well, yes, worked well. Only get two shots though — takes way too much magical energies per detonation. Have to work on that some. Come — let’s confiscate its loot, shall we?” Karel said nonchalantly.
Back in Brn, Honani began telling everyone about this new super weapon and within minutes of their arrival, Karel found himself once again at the center of everyone’s full attention. Honani Mind Linked everyone to himself and replayed his memories of what he’d just witnessed. Needless to say, everyone began talking about this new invention at the same time, pleasing the Archmage. The other Archmages demanded to know the spells.
“Well, I’ve put two spells in tandem. First, the Rod of Dragon Bursting executes a Teleport spell, placing the piggyback spell in roughly the center of the dragon. That is all the wielder must do, focus on the center of the dragon. Then the tandem spell detonates, rapidly turning all the water in the dragon’s body into fine particles of dust. Although this process is swift, it is incredibly painful to the beast. Of course, it takes an Archmage to wield this new rod, because we have to smash down their resistance to magic, as always. Very effective. Of course, it uses up huge amounts of magical energy with each use and right now, I can only get two charges at most in the rod. I will work on that. We need lots more than two charges if this is going to become highly effective in the field.” Karel enjoyed all this attention and went on about its design.
Inwardly, Zoran was ambivalent. He desperately wanted to find a way to end the hostility between the races without genocide on either side. Yet, with the viciousness of the recent dragon attacks, he needed more effective ways to protect his people. A bit reluctantly, he gave Karel approval to improve its design.
Werner, the black, again waited several days to see what the reaction to their latest attack would be. He hoped that this would be enough to force the barons to send out their mages and Archmages and perhaps even Duskas to the outlying towns and villages, where the dragons could pick them off one by one. After a number of days, he saw that this still was not happening. Worse, word came to him that a red had be
en slaughtered, its body butchered into many pieces. He fumed, but Dario was even angrier. While they planned their next operation, one of his blacks failed to report for duty. He sent a messenger to fetch the black and received word back of the black’s hideous death. Werner and Dario both visited the lair.
“My god, Werner! You were right! Zoran has indeed got a new super-weapon to use against us! Look what happened here! There’s nothing left of him but dust and hide! How can this be?” Dario exclaimed, becoming frightened. The black looked like some monstrous hollow mummy that had been dead for millennia!
Even Werner was shaken by the sight, but he did summon all of the other dragon leaders to examine the deceased black, murdered hideously in its own lair. This put a great fear into all of the other leaders, who now felt absolutely certain that Werner was right. Zoran had indeed brought some monstrous new super-weapon back from Voss. The question now was what would they do about it?
“Okay, enough of this toying around with the humans. Tonight, we go after some of their larger towns. Pick ones with at least ten to twenty thousand inhabitants. As always, leave a survivor or two to spread fear in their leader’s minds,” Werner ordered.
Because of the vastly larger sizes of the targets, Werner had the groups of thirty-three dragons join together into one large band. Nearly a hundred dragons of all colors were to sweep down on the sleeping large town and wipe the humans out. Good plan.
Unfortunately, Werner soon began receiving most troublesome reports. While the dragons were being successful at torching many homes and using their brute strength to smash stone buildings, they could find no humans there. “The town has no humans in it,” the relay dragon for the Adapazan dragon horde reported to Werner.
“What? Where did they go? This cannot be. What new devilry is this? I shall see for myself!” Werner Shadow Walked to Adapazan and surveyed the burning large town, not fifty miles from Castle Dorumova, the heart of Adapazan. “Search the homes. They must all be hiding,” he ordered and watched the hundred dragons do just that. The dragons had to settle for merely burning down the town of Cerven. Now Werner had even more to ponder. What had happened to all the humans? Where were they?
He sent out spies to check on many towns and villages. Most of the larger cities and towns were nearly devoid of people, while all of the smaller ones still were quite populated. At first, Werner, the black, suspected that the barons had evacuated the larger cities, moving the populations either into outlying villages or perhaps within their fortresses and strongholds. To him, this seemed a reasonable explanation. However, still the barons refused to send out their forces to protect their smaller villages from the dragons. He knew that stronger measures were needed and soon.
Chapter 37 Ancient History
During January, Brother Miroslav and High Priestess Jarmila Zar spent every waking hour pouring over the twenty newly discovered journals of Bandar Zar. They were safe inside the extra-dimensional room in Zoran’s Circle of Ascension chamber. Here they stored all of their precious volumes, some of which detailed the construction of these Circles. The room held tables, desks, and chairs, in addition to the bookshelves. The room was well lit and very conducive to their studies.
Both soon became fascinated with the writings, taking notes as they followed the sometimes meandering journal entries of old Bandar Zar. Magic seemed in wide spread use on Voss, much as it was here in the Federation of the Sixteen Planets. However, Bandar was something of a rogue. He apparently was a skilled Mage, but was kicked out of several magic schools and never made the official Archmage status.
The idiot Archmages didn’t take kindly to my constant hounding them about how a certain spell worked or why it should behave the way it did. I raised a big stink when I demanded of Archmage Jakob where precisely the useful spell Clean actually put the dirt. Doesn’t a single magic user want to know where his debris has gone? Idiots, all of them. There is far more to magic than these supposed Archmages even know. Ah well. I’m conducting some experiments to find out where it does go. Perhaps somewhere there is now an enormous pile of dirt. Imagine some folks on another world complaining, “Oh no! Here comes another one of those dirt rains again! I do wish it would stop raining dirt down on us.”
A bit later, they learned a bit about how the Democracy of the Sixteen worked. Evidently, Bandar thought even less of the political rulers, they concluded.
Got into a long discussion with Valentýn last night over our illustrious Democracy. Perhaps, he is right, when it was founded some three hundred years ago, the concept worked. Each person has one vote; all votes are equal. Rule by majority votes. Valentýn claims it would work if the voters were informed. I pointed out how easy it is for the politicians to lie to the populace, but I ceded the point to him. Perhaps it had once been a workable form of government. Not so today. Far from it. If you want to know the hotbed of graft and corruption, look no further than your local politician or senator — con artists, all of them. It is a well-known fact that money in the hands of the right senator or politician will get you what you desire.
Granted, there are exceptions. Senator Valentýn is one. There is not a corrupt bone in his body. I ought to know. Still, the senators have passed so darn many laws during the last several hundred years that an entire school of magic is needed to sort out what is and what is not legal in any situation! Honestly, we average folk have no idea whether anything that we do is legal or illegal! I point out the recent case of Archmage Milos and his request to build a tower on his own property. It took the Legal Mages nearly five months to determine that he could build it if it were located five feet further west than he intended and only had four floors. Honestly, what has our Democracy come to? A seething, indecipherable mass of conflicting laws, added to each term by our illustrious senators.
Valentýn ceded the President point to me. Our latest illustrious President Hamil from Anwyn has won with a landslide of popular support. Not in centuries has there been such a speaker who could say all the perfect words that his audience most wanted to hear. I claim he is using a simple spell, but as yet, I can’t prove it. He won the last election by promising each special interest group just what they most desired. Of course less taxes for the poor, yearly handouts to the poor under the banner of Welfare for the People, and “tax the rich” won him millions of votes. Who wouldn’t want less taxes and more handouts? But what has he done since he’s been in office? Nada. Yet, each week he addresses the populace with yet another of his charming, perfect speeches. Worse, the fools continue to buy into it! Fools. He is bringing doom down onto them all!
“I don’t think he liked the way that Voss was being run,” Jarmila concluded. Miroslav agreed. A lot of the first journal contained similar entries, some even more scathing than these. Finally, they came to something far more important.
The dragon scene is coming unraveled. For years now, the President and senators have been slowly giving in to the demands of the dragons. Valentýn has shown me their latest demands. “The Democracy is to hand over one half of its yearly revenue to the dragons as rightful and just payment for their many services to the Democracy.” Valentýn and I debated long into the night and went through three pitchers of ale as well. Perhaps that explains why we both have hangovers today. However, Valentýn did ask me a key question — one that I had not considered before and one that ought to be answered. Just where did the dragons come from and how did they get here to Voss? He rightly pointed out that until fifty years ago, there were no dragons on Voss. Yet, today, everyone accepts the fact that they are here. Curious that no one has asked that question. I promised him that I would find out.
“Now we are getting somewhere,” Miroslav pointed out. “I hope he found out and wrote it in his journals somewhere. That might be useful to know.”
A little later, Jarmila chuckled. “Hey listen to this entry, dear.”
Got into a big argument today with Archmage Nadezda. I asked her just where do we go when we Teleport. I had to explain though. “Look, w
e are at Point A and we cast our Teleport spell. We arrive at Point B. Where are we while we are en route to Point B?” She brushed me off and told me not to bother her with such inane questions. Well, we have to at least travel through space of some kind or other. I should look into this myself, since no one seems to either know or care.
A few days later, Jarmila found another interesting passage. “Listen to this, dear. I think that we are getting closer.”
Eavesdropping can sometimes prove fruitful. While in the Mages Guild, I overheard a conversation. Apparently, the late Archmage Kazimir Kornel was the man responsible for bringing the first dragons to Voss! His diaries were recently sold at auction and purchased by Archmage Nadezda. She refuses to see me or let me read the diaries, however. Must speak to Valentýn about it tonight. He has connections.
“So what happened after that?” Miroslav asked.
“Don’t know yet. Hang on. There is another entry.”
Got the copy today. Spells are duplicating it now. Must return it before dawn.
“I hope he tells us what it said. It sounds like he got the diaries,” she added. “Then, he is off on another discussion of the troubling times they were in. I wish he’d stay on topic.”
Miroslav chuckled, “Dear, these are merely his field notes, more like a daily diary.” Both laughed. It was not until Volume B that Bandar wrote more about the Archmage Kazimir and his diaries. Miroslav found the key entries and read them for his wife.
Archmage Kazimir was an experimenter and created his laboratory in the shape of a huge pyramid. He claimed that it focused the Energy of the Universe into whoever was inside. I doubt that. Nevertheless, he did invent a device that allowed him to scan the universe of Shadows for other inhabited planets. He named this the Shadows. His diaries say that he found eight such worlds. Later, his viewer allowed him to become the first person to ever see a dragon — his claim, not mine. So what did he do next? How did the dragons get here? Too drunk to continue tonight.