Fluff Dragon

by Platte F. Clark

  He was taken up a long set of winding stairs. Rezormoor was light on his feet—probably a benefit of so much stair climbing. They passed the occasional door, and Max was left with the impression that they were taking a back way to wherever it was they were going. They finally made it to the top, and the stairs ended at a small door that glowed by the light of a magical rune carved into its surface.

  “A more private entrance to my quarters,” Rezormoor confirmed. He waved his hand in front of the door and pushed it open. “Fewer students to bother with along the way. We are a university, among other things.” Max swallowed and followed the sorcerer into the topmost chamber of the Wizard’s Tower. The first thing that struck him was that it looked familiar, and then Max remembered the vivid memories he’d had back at the Dragon’s Den when he’d first activated the Codex. He’d been to this very room and stood on the balcony that overlooked the city.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Rezormoor said, noticing Max staring out the open door that led to the balcony. “Tell me, does the Techrus have such cities?”

  “We do,” Max said, guarding each word he spoke. Who knew what an offhanded comment might set into motion. “More or less.”

  Rezormoor moved past his large chair and Max saw the zombie duck waiting there. He could see ribs exposed between dirty yellow feathers and a skull with more holes than you’d expect on something that blinked and looked at you. “Don’t get too close to my pet,” Rezormoor warned, bending down and patting the duck’s sandpaper-like skin. “I suspect he looks at you like takeout.” Max decided the thing he liked least about the Magrus was the way everything wanted to eat him.

  Rezormoor walked to a black stand that looked like a large piece of volcanic rock set upright in the middle of the floor. Above it, floating in the air, was the Codex of Infinite Knowability. Max carefully approached, keeping his eye on the zombie duck all the while.

  Rezormoor’s hand floated near the ancient book, but he stopped before touching it. Small bits of blue lightning danced across the Codex’s surface in anticipation. “Beginnings rarely become the endings they intended,” the sorcerer announced. “Take the Codex, for example. It started off as the project of an average student here at the Tower. The apprentice had wanted a self-writing encyclopedia that dutifully cataloged all the various elements of life in the Magrus. Quite clever, really, but the book took on a life of its own. The student, of course, was Maximilian Sporazo. Then the accident changed everything.” Max remembered the vision he’d seen of the pregnant woman screaming—not because she was in labor, but because she’d been burned by dragon fire. He shivered at the memory; the woman had been Maximilian Sporazo’s young wife. The child, his son.

  “And in his madness, Sporazo made the Codex much more than its humble beginnings,” Rezormoor continued, withdrawing his hand.

  “So why kill the dragons?” Max asked. “What does that have to do with the Codex?”

  “Everything,” Rezormoor answered. “Have you heard of the serpent’s escutcheon? A scale so powerful that neither magic nor blade can penetrate it?” Max thought back to the fight he’d witnessed between Conall and the dragon. The magical lance had shattered against the dragon’s breast, and Puff had told him about the serpent’s escutcheon on the ride to Jiilk.

  “Now imagine a man wearing an entire suit of armor constructed from such scales,” Rezormoor continued. “That man would be invincible. Consider a tower fortified from top to bottom with even more. Such a tower would be indestructible. Now this invincible man in his indestructible tower can raise an army, and the Seven Kingdoms will fall and a new empire will rise from the ashes. All of the three realms will bend to this man’s will. And it begins, piece by piece, with the single scale that covers a dragon’s heart. That is why I must hunt them all.”

  “But you need the Codex for something too,” Max said.

  “Indeed. Do you think a blacksmith’s hammer could bend the serpent’s escutcheon? Do you think there’s a forge hot enough to temper it? Only the Codex has the power to do this.” Suddenly Max’s dream about the man in black armor came roaring to his mind. If Rezormoor Dreadbringer succeeded in his plan, he would destroy everything that mattered.

  “That’s why you need me,” Max said. “To read the Codex and use its magic for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the fluff dragons?” Max continued.

  “Ah, that. Controlling the fluff trade will raise the gold to fund my army. War is an expensive endeavor, as it happens, and the Codex will ensure that fluff dragons survive when all the real dragons are gone. And there are other benefits,” he added, flinging his long black hair behind his head.

  Rezormoor drew his dagger and nonchalantly used it to pick at the dirt under his fingernail. “There really is no need to think of me as a tyrant, Max. If we work together, we can accomplish much. At the very least I can certainly save the lives of you and your friends.” He slipped the blade back into his belt and waited for Max to respond.

  “What about the Maelshadow?” Max asked. He thought back to the Shadrus necromancer that had attacked them in the forest.

  “So you know of the Lord of the Shadows?”

  “A wizard told me.”

  “Bellstro? That would make sense,” Rezormoor continued. Max was surprised Rezormoor had put it together so quickly. The sorcerer was smart, Max realized. He’d have to be very careful. “You are correct, of course. The Maelshadow will do things far worse than kill you. But if we work together, Max, we can defeat him. If you refuse to help me . . .”

  Rezormoor left the words hanging in the air. “You’ll turn me over to the Maelshadow?” Max replied.

  The sorcerer smiled but shook his head. “After what I’ve just told you? No, Max. You and your friends will never leave the Tower alive. So now you must make your choice.”

  Max looked at the Codex as it hovered in the air. He knew what would happen if Rezormoor succeeded. But he didn’t think the sorcerer was bluffing when he threatened to kill them either. It was an impossible situation, but Max knew he had to try something.

  “Go ahead, retrieve the Codex and let us begin our work together,” Rezormoor coaxed.

  Max swallowed and reached for the book. The lightning danced around the cover and snapped at him the instant he touched it.

  “Ouch!” he exclaimed as he jumped back, holding his finger and dancing around in pain.

  “Well, that’s somewhat less than what I’d hoped for,” the sorcerer said, watching him.

  “It does that sometimes,” Max replied. Despite the stinging in his finger, he reached for the Codex again. But this time he managed to grab it. “See?”

  Relief showed on Rezormoor’s face. “I was a little worried all of this had been for nothing.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Max admitted. He thought back to what Bellstro had told him. You must take it to the Wizard’s Tower—to the very room where it was created. So here he was, doing just that. Max was standing in the regent’s personal quarters, with the Codex in hand. Max looked around. He was missing something . . . but what?

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Uh, no,” Max lied.

  “So it’s working?” Rezormoor asked.

  “Er, not yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “Is this the room where my ancestor added the Prime Spells to the Codex?” Max asked.

  “Yes. His desk was nearly where you are now.” Max took a step to see if anything changed, but the Codex remained broken. He stepped again. Then again.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just, you know, stretching,” Max said. He figured he’d pretty much stepped everywhere the desk might have been, but the Codex remained unchanged.

  “You don’t say,” Rezormoor said, growing impatient. “So . . . ?”

  Max needed to come up with something. Rezormoor wasn’t stupid and Max couldn’t keep dancing around the room. The sorcerer needed to believe it was working, but Max also needed time to work things out
. He had to come up with something that would accomplish both.

  “Mr. Spencer, I’m afraid you’re stalling,” Rezormoor said, reaching for his dagger.

  Then it hit him. Rezormoor had wizard smarts, but he didn’t know how things worked on the Techrus. He’d asked Max about the cities there, in fact. That meant he was a novice when it came to technology, and that was something Max might be able to work to his advantage.

  “Yep, there it is,” Max said, forcing himself to look relieved. Rezormoor hesitated, leaving his dagger in its sheath.

  “There what is?”

  “It’s restarting,” Max said. “The system has to reboot.”

  Rezormoor looked confused. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s just how it works,” Max said. “Basically the Codex has to start up again. You know, turn back on.”

  “And how long does that take?”

  “Oh, not too long,” Max said, trying to figure out how much time he could stall for. “Like . . . a day?”

  “A day?” Rezormoor exclaimed, his hands balling up into fists so tight Max could hear the leather gloves cracking. Max shrugged, however, keeping his cool.

  “Yeah, you know, this thing has a really old magical operating system, and it’s going to be slow rebooting itself.”

  “Rebooting?”

  “What, you don’t know about rebooting?”

  Rezormoor stared at Max before addressing him again. “Fine. Just put it back for now.”

  Max stepped up to the stand and replaced the book, watching the Codex hover in place.

  “I’ll summon you tomorrow,” Rezormoor said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice, “and I do expect the Codex to be restored. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, totally,” Max replied, hoping he wasn’t as sweaty looking as he felt.

  “The zombie duck will escort you back to your cell,” the sorcerer commanded. “I wouldn’t make any sudden moves or deviate from the path if I were you.”

  Max nodded as the zombie duck came waddling up to him. Rezormoor waved his hand again and the back door swung open. “And by the way, if I find you’ve tried to deceive me, it will not end pleasantly for you or those you care about.”

  Max nodded and followed the zombie duck out of the regent’s chambers. He felt very much like he’d just dodged a bullet. The problem with bullets, however, was that there was usually more than one coming your way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AT LEAST IT’S A PLAN

  “WHAT DO YOU THINK THE bathrooms are like in a Wizard’s Tower?” Dirk asked. “I can’t imagine they have plumbing, so maybe there’s just a hole. Or maybe some kind of magic spell? Yeah, like a teleportation spell. But then where does it teleport to? That’s the real question.”

  “Dirk!” Sarah exclaimed. Suddenly the door opened and Max was led down the row of cells, a solitary guard and the zombie duck in tow.

  “Wow, I hope that’s not lunch,” Dirk said, eyeing the duck. They stopped in front of the cage door and the guard unlocked it, shoving Max inside with the others.

  A final gwuak was the only sound as the zombie duck issued some kind of warning before it and the guard left them alone.

  “Max, what happened?” Sarah asked. She gave him a quick hug. Max blinked a few times, trying to regain his thoughts.

  “I saw the Codex,” he reported. “But it’s still not working. I mean, it was there in the right spot, but it didn’t reset or anything like it was supposed to. I’m totally confused—it should have reset.”

  Dirk scratched at his chin as he thought it over. “Maybe Bellstro was mistaken.”

  “No, I don’t think so. We’re missing something.” Max went on to recount the conversation he’d had with Rezormoor.

  “So he really thinks the Codex is rebooting? Man, that’s awesome,” Dirk said with a laugh.

  Max nodded. “Yeah, up until tomorrow when he finds out nothing happened. He won’t fall for anything like that again.”

  “And we’re stuck in this cell in the meantime,” Sarah added.

  Puff was still in shock over what he’d heard. “I can’t believe one man’s ambition is so big that he’s willing to wipe us all out to achieve it.”

  “That’s why we have to stop him,” Dirk said. “Epically.”

  Sarah turned to Max. “What was it Bellstro said again?”

  Max thought back to the old wizard. “Basically that we had to take the Codex back to the Tower—to the spot it was created.”

  “The spot it was created,” Sarah repeated, thinking it over. Max was glad Sarah’s brain was on the case since his kept insisting he run to the corner and throw up.

  “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “Rezormoor said Sporazo first created the Codex when he was a student. That it was like a living encyclopedia.”

  “Yeah,” Max agreed. “So?”

  “So if he was a student, he wasn’t the regent of the Tower yet,” Sarah continued. “So he wasn’t living in a room at the top.”

  “Rezormoor said the Tower was like a university,” Max said.

  “And where do university students live?” Sarah asked.

  “With their parents, if they’re lucky,” Dirk guessed.

  Max smiled despite himself. “No, they live in a dorm.”

  “The Tower has many such rooms,” Puff added. “Students live and study here.”

  “So it could be Sporazo’s old dorm room we’re looking for,” Sarah said. “Or maybe a library or something. But wherever it is, it will be someplace a student has easy access to.”

  It made total sense, Max thought. But knowing where to look was a long way from being able to do something about it. “Somehow we’ve got to get out of here and find it.”

  “Yeah,” Dirk agreed. “Too bad Ratticus isn’t around, he could pick that lock easy.”

  Sarah and Max paused, waiting for the off chance that Dirk’s spoken wish might result in the thief materializing again. He didn’t.

  “Even if we could get out of here,” Puff said, “we’d have to sneak all the way to Rezormoor’s chamber, steal the Codex, move unnoticed through the various rooms and libraries until we happen to find the one place where the book was created, then after we fix it go back and use it to defeat Rezormoor.”

  “Almost,” Sarah corrected the fluff dragon. “We also need to rescue Princess and Magar.”

  “Oh, and hope she’s not mad at us for the whole being-dragged-under-the-ocean-and-fighting-a-giant-octopus thing,” Dirk added.

  “Okay, so we rescue them and then go fight Rezormoor,” Max said.

  “And the Kraken,” Dirk added.

  “And possibly the dwarf high mage,” Sarah said.

  “And the monster duck,” Puff finished.

  Max slumped down. “All after we escape from a dungeon.”

  The group remained quiet for several minutes as they each pondered the impossibility of what they needed to do.

  “I like escaping,” Moki said. The fire kitten looked up at the group cheerfully. “It’s fun.”

  “Uh, Moki,” Sarah said carefully, “you wouldn’t know how to escape from a cell like this, would you?”

  Moki looked around the cell before settling his gaze on the lock. “I’ve been to two dungeons, and we escaped from the first one,” he announced. “Do you think I could try this one too? I’d really like to try, if somebody can lift me?”

  Sarah looked from the lock back to Moki. “You mean up to the lock?”

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Moki said.

  Sarah gently picked Moki up and lifted him to the lock. The fire kitten giggled. “Wrong way; you’ll have to turn me around.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said, turning the fire kitten so his backside faced the lock. Max stood up and backed away a little, unsure what was going to happen.

  “Who knew our fire kitten was actually a character class?” Dirk said. “Cool.”

  Moki smiled and inserted his tail into the mechanism. Suddenly a blue flame ignited insi
de the lock—so hot and bright that the others were forced to look away from it.

  “Won’t be long now,” Moki said. “Melting things is fun.”

  “If Moki gets us out of here, I’m officially switching from being a dog person to being a cat person,” Dirk said.

  “Me too,” Puff agreed.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” Max said. “We’re actually going to rescue Princess and Magar and fight all the bad guys in the Tower.”

  “Max, you pulled me out of middle school to go on this adventure with you—I’ve lost, like, a whole year that I’m going to have to make up,” Sarah said. “The least you can do is save the world again.”

  “And you know what?” Dirk asked as the lock began to glow red. “With all the stuff that we’ve gone through, I bet you’re like a level-six wizard now. That means you can probably fight skeletons all by yourself. Skeletons, man, just think about it.”

  Moki made quick work of the cell lock, its innards melting into a slurry of iron goo. The door pushed open, squeaking on its hinges. They froze, waiting for the sound to alert the guards. After a few tense moments, they relaxed.

  “Like a baby crying,” Dirk said. Sarah was going to say something but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. They made their way down the row of cells to the heavy door.

  “What’s on the other side?” Sarah asked Max.

  “A guard sitting at a desk.”

  The Tower took its security seriously. The guards were all large brutes contracted from the Fighters’ Guild, and wore layers of boiled leather armor with black cowls and the Tower’s insignia on their chests. Each guard also carried a finely edged sword. Not that there was any lack of spell casters running around, but keeping hired swords on hand was a long-standing Tower tradition.

  “He looked tough,” Max continued. “But he should have his back to us. At least that was the way he was facing when I was taken through.”

  “We’ll just have to rush him,” Dirk said. “Gangster style.”

  “No, we’re not doing anything gangster style,” Sarah said, not even knowing what it was. “Just leave it to me.”