by RyFT Brand
Part Two
Monster Collector: A deferred species bond collector, a specialist who tracked, captured, and often killed monsters that had skipped out on bail, had broken out of internment, or had gone on some berserker rampage beyond the capacity of the formal rule enforcement agencies to deal with. I was called Jazz then, and I was the one and only monster collector that ever had been.
Zombie: the decaying remains of a deceased being reanimated by dark magics. Zombies have a rudimentary intelligence and are driven by a constant need to devour the living in order to sustain their abominable existence.
Dragon: an ancient, gigantic race, reptile in physiology—one of the oldest and longest living of all creatures, with a culture that predates humans by millennium—smart, powerful, able to work magic. Their scales form a practically impenetrable armor and their deadly breath weapons can devastate an army. They are absolutely the deadliest life form on the inter-dimensionally conjoined planets called Mirth.
Zombie Dragon: Something even worse.
And guess who was chained to a stone altar and about to be devoured by the one and only zombie dragon this monster collector had ever heard of.
Yeah, I was screwed.
Despite sense, reason, and a body racked with pain and injury, I strained against the chains that held me fast.
With a horrifying rattle of decaying bones, the zombie dragon reared what was left of its head and opened its mummified jaw in a mute roar, spilling more of the rotting stench into the huge underground cavern.
My belly being empty was all that kept me from puking.
On the upside, the dragon had been dead a long time before it had been raised, and the organs that produced this black’s acid breath weapon had rotted away. On the down side…well, imagine a zombie the size of a steam engine.
Things were that bad.
Being shackled to the altar like that, I couldn’t easily look ahead, and couldn’t see behind myself at all. As best as I was able, I looked around for the sasquatch that was supposedly backing me up, but, despite my shadow sight, an ability to see in near absolute darkness, there was no sign of the big oaf. Maybe he’d planned to abandon me all along, payback for me having rightfully shot one of his big feet clean off. Or maybe he’d flown the coup as soon as he’d caught sight of the abomination straddling my stone bed.
Either way, I couldn’t say I blamed him.
The gigantic corpse waved and thrashed in the air, shaking the ground. What would have been mighty roars had decayed into little more than clacking bones and the slapping of flesh dried out like old shoe leather.
A zombie is only as good as the corpse you made it from, and this corpse had past its ‘best used before date’ long before these idiots preformed the raising ritual. It was, as far as I could tell, deaf and without any olfactory senses. And by the way its shriveled eyes hung from its skull, I assumed it was blind as well. It was having trouble finding me.
Zombies have a rudimentary ability to sense life. An entire battalion of lizard-men were stationed behind the altar. Their greater life force should draw the zombie dragon’s attention away from me.
Then I remembered the blood. The Draconian priest who’d led the ceremony that included chaining me to this rock had covered me in very fresh blood. More life condensed on me meant the gigantic undead thing would find me soon enough.
I started considering what I might have left. But what weapons I hadn’t used or lost in the fight with the dracs had been taken away while I was unconscious.
My boots were still on, so I had the toe tazer—no help. There was a good chance that I still had the concealment capsule in my false tooth, and a slight chance that I still had the cutting wire weaved in my hair. I knew the Not Now Stone was in my skin pouch, but I couldn’t see how any of that could help me even if I did get free.
Like I said, screwed.
“Jazz,” Mickey, the sasquatch Boss Geeter had sent to ‘assist’ me, whispered from the shadow cast by the stone X my predecessor had been chained too.
What can I say, no brains.
I rolled my head, straining my neck to spot the big oaf. “Mickey, hurry, get the blood.”
Mickey hesitated and I wouldn’t have blamed him if he turned and ran, but, with a loud shuffle of his heavy, artificial foot, the brown haired beast came over and pulled at the chains that bound me. “Hold on, I’ll get you out.”
“No!” I snapped. I felt my eyes bulge as the massive skull of the long dead dragon turned toward me. It made long, empty draws of air trough its nostrils though I doubted it had enough soft tissues remaining to absorb oxygen. Next to the zombie dragon, Mickey was the biggest species in the cave, and I was covered in fresh blood. It had definitely picked up our life forms. “Mickey, get the blood, it’s following the blood—and your giant hairy ass!”
Mickey had been looking from me to the huge, stone vat beside the altar with a confusion etched brow. He glared at me for the ass comment.
“Just get the blood—you have to draw it away!”
But as I spoke I head hissing shouts, the slap of heavy, scaled feet, and saw Mickey’s head snap up.
Mickey growled.
“No!” I shouted but too late. I couldn’t see what was coming, but the sasquatch whipped the yellow fedora from his big, domed head and tore out of his trench coat like Bruce Banner in a tantrum.
Mickey charged out of my sight. I heard swords banging, monsters growling, and bodies breaking while all I could do was watch the lumbering approach of the zombie dragon.
A huge drac guard flipped over backwards through the air, clipped the edge of my altar, and went down hard on the ground; his sword slid away. I head Mickey cry out and stagger back into my field of vision. He had a long gash across his chest that ran with grey blood, which is as close to red as my color-blind eyes get. A big armored lizard followed him, brandishing a blood stained sword.
“Hey scale-bag!” I shouted, slapping my wrist chains against the rock. When his head spun around toward me, Mickey grabbed a flag laden pole and whipped it hard into the drac guard. With a shattering of bone and flaying of scales, the drac flew across the cavern and tumbled in a wreck to the floor. His sword flew up and went blade first through the grill of a burning brazier and stuck there.
The ever approaching zombie dragon slowed, its head wavered on its skeletal neck, and with a creaking of bones, seemed to be trying to sort out the life energies before it.
Behind me I heard an order shouted in Draconian and, after a reluctant pause, many more guards charged.
Mickey reached for the sword in the brazier. “No you dope, use the blood.”
I don’t know if he understood the plan, or was just blindly following orders, but he left the sword and cradled the stone vat in both hands. His fangs bared and he growled as massive muscles in his chest and arms bulged with the effort, his chest wound bleeding faster. At first nothing happened except that the zombie dragon focused its attention on Mickey and his big bowl of blood. Then, slowly at first, the vat began to rise, higher and higher, until Mickey, standing like a huge, hairy Atlas, had the vat held high overhead.
When the clang of metal and the slap of scales on stone sounded like they were right on top of us, Mickey let out a roar and hurled the vat.
I heard a loud, wet splash, and what I took to be the distinct crunch of a drac body crushed under the weight of the vat. In a mass of confusion, blood covered lizards slid and stumbled into my view. They looked themselves over, then at one another, then, after staring gape-snouted at the oncoming mass of rotting flesh, turned and ran screaming from my sight. By the sounds of it their comrades were already in a retreat.
With a surprising display of speed and agility, the zombie-dragon leapt at the altar. As it sailed through the air loose, scabby skin flapped and dangling organs jiggled. I was already holding my breath from the stench, but went ahead and closed my eyes too. I was convinced it would be over in a single bite. But the creature landed some
where past me and charged after the retreating drac battalion.
Mickey ran to my side and tugged at the chain on my left wrist.
“Get the axe, hurry!”
Mickey turned, spotted the long handled ceremonial axe, and, gripping it in both hands, raised it overhead. I pulled the chain as tight as I was able, turned my head, shut my eyes, and hoped this dope knew how to handle an axe. With a sharp clang of steel, my hand came free.
Just a couple links of chain hung from the shackle around my wrist. Mickey smiled. “Called that a little close, didn’t you?”
“Hey,” his said in his rich, baritone voice. “I figured you’d be less restricted.”
“Whatever; just cut the rest.”
Two more swipes of the axe and my feet were free. The blade was missing a few chunks, but there was enough sharp edge remaining to free my right hand. Mickey came around to my side and raised the axe. “Ready?”
I opened my mouth to answer and just barely caught the flash of an orange glow and a huge, yellow eye. “Look out!”
“Wha—” Mickey dodged left but too late to avoid the strike. The red-hot end of a sword appeared out of Mickey’s abdomen. He roared in pain, dropped the axe, and crumpled to the floor.
The shopkeeper, still dressed in the Black Sect armor, slipped his forked tongue in and out of his long snout and hissed with pleasure. “Here, allow me.” He raised the still glowing sword blade for a downward strike, his chainmail swished unnervingly and