Chapter 31
The First Champions of the Dragon
“We will need blood, and lots of it,” said Ravenwing, gauging their reactions from behind her dark hood with eyes of wild intensity.
“Whose blood?” said Gibrig. He swallowed hard and glanced at the others.
“We can use an animal, relax,” she said, abandoning the dark façade.
“This sounds like blood magic,” said Brannon. He looked to Murland with obvious reservation.
Ravenwing scoffed. “What gave it away? Listen, you’re trying to summon the darklings. You can’t have it both ways, Princess.”
“I don’t know…” said Murland, looking to Sir Eldrick for guidance. “Zorromon wouldn’t like it. We are all expressly prohibited from using blood magic.”
“They sold you up the river,” said Ravenwing. “Who gives a flying witch fart what they think?”
“Hah! I’m going to use that one,” said Willow.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be a rogue like you,” said Brannon.
Ravenwing shrugged. “I guess it’s a pirate’s life for me.”
“The fact is that we need to contact the darklings,” said Sir Eldrick. “And this seems to be the only way.”
Murland let out a pensive sigh and nodded agreement. “I guess you’re right.”
By the witching hour, Ravenwing’s trap was ready and the spell had been prepared. All that was needed was the blood of a large beast, which created a problem, for all the animals in the Petrified Plains were now hard as stone.
“Hey,” said Willow, lighting up when it was mentioned. “Maybe you can just whoosh one here from somewhere else.”
“Whoosh?” said Ravenwing.
“Yeah, you know, use your magix to conjure a cow or something.”
“Oh, you mean teleportation.”
“No, I mean whooshing,” said Willow quite seriously.
“Right…” said Ravenwing while rolling her eyes. “Maybe I’ll give that a try as well.”
She waggled her fingers, spoke a few words in her foreign language, and there was a sudden flash of light. When the smoke cleared, a large cow stood beside the fire.
***
Only moments before, Lance Lancer and his favorite lackey, Bart Buttersworth, had staggered drunkenly into a cow pasture to relieve themselves. Lance nodded toward a cow who stood sleeping at the edge of the pasture, the fence of which ran alongside a cliff. He shook himself and slapped Bart on the shoulder. “You ever been cow tipping?”
“What’s that?” said Bart, eyes squinting as he continued to pee.
“What’s cow tipping?” said Lance. He slapped Bart upside his head. “It’s when you tip cows, numbnuts!”
“Hey, you made me piss on my shoe!” Bart protested.
“Listen. Usually you just knock the cows over and they just fall. It’s friggin’ hilarious. But look. See how close she is to the fence? And just on the other side is a big cliff.”
Bart laughed. “What a tumble it’ll take, eh boss?”
“You bet your ass. Go on, get a running start and push it over the edge,” said Lance.
“By myself? It’s got to weigh a thousand pounds.”
“Stop being a girl,” said Lance, slapping him upside the head again.
“Ow! That one hurt,” said Bart, scowling at the much shorter boy.
“Again, stop being a girl.”
Bart eyed the cow and gauged the distance to the cliff, which was about three feet.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly, so as not to wake the beast as he crept around it. “I’d really have to give it a good one. Why not just use magic to push it over?”
“Because it isn’t called cow zapping, you moron! Queen’s sake, you could take the fun out of a wet dream.”
“How ‘bout we both do it. That way if I screw it up, it won’t be a waste. I really want to see this bessy roll down the hill.”
“Fine,” said Lance, rolling up the sleeves of his robes. He backed up twenty feet and dug in with his boots. “On the count of three, alright. You think you can handle that?”
Bart got down in a runner’s stance as well and nodded with a grin, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
“One…two…three!”
The two boys shot into a sprint and covered the ground in seconds. The cow didn’t so much as stir as they barreled in, barely containing their laughter. Right before they made contact, they both put out their hands, ready to shove the poor beast over the edge, when suddenly and with a great whooshing noise, the cow disappeared.
When they met nothing but smoke, the two apprentices screamed and, arms groping at empty air, broke through the old fencing and tumbled over the edge of the cliff.
The initial drop was fifteen feet, and the boys hit with a collective “oof!” Luckily for them, the side of the cliff had washed out, and rather than stone, they landed on pebbles and sand. But their tumble did not stop there. They rolled and rolled, both out of breath from the hard landing and trying desperately to gain a hand-hold. They had no such luck, and fell over another ledge. This drop was only ten feet, but the pitch was steep, and they tumbled end over end and slid on their sore backs twenty feet to another drop, this one leading into a patch of picker bushes.
***
“I can’t watch,” said Gibrig, wiping his nose and turning from the scene as Ravenwing produced a thin, shining dagger.
“It’s alright,” said Willow, putting a big arm around him. “She won’t feel no pain, and besides, she be dying for a good cause. Why, she just might help to save the world. Now what other cow can claim such a thing?”
“I, I guess ye be right. It just be so darned tragic, ye know?”
“Such is life, Master Hogstead,” said Sir Eldrick.
Ravenwing pulled the blade across the cow’s neck quickly, and Sir Eldrick and Murland held the beast steady. When it knocked them both on their backsides, Willow jumped in and took hold of the beast, hushing it soothingly and helping it to its knees. She laid it down, stroking its head as the life poured out of the beast and painted the ground red. Ravenwing laid a basin under its neck, catching the precious lifeblood.
When the cow had taken its final breath and the last of the blood weakly spurted from the wound, Ravenwing patted the cow and got to her feet. The basin of blood stayed where it was, and Willow hefted the cow over her shoulder and laid it upon a flat stone to butcher.
To everyone’s surprise, Ravenwing dipped her fingers in the blood and smeared it across her face, giving the illusion that she had been swiped by a bear paw. She then disgusted them further by drinking from the basin and coming up with a mouth dripping with blood. She suddenly spewed crimson flecks from her mouth and began chanting the strange words that would enact her summons.
Murland had been told to watch and learn. His only job was to point his wand at the darklings once they arrived and further trap them with a spell that Ravenwing had given him, one that he had never used.
Sir Eldrick, Brannon, and Gibrig joined Willow and the dead cow fifteen feet away by the butcher stone.
Ravenwing then threw off her robes, and to Murland’s shock, she was naked beneath. He gulped, trying to pay attention to the intricacies of the spell, but it was then that he noticed all the glowing, swirling, and convulsing tattoos all over the sorceress’s body. They pulsed with the intensity of her words as she lifted the basin and poured the blood over her head and body.
The blood covered her completely, and like a demon borne of the depths, she ended her incantation with a screech that had Murland cupping his hands over his ears.
“Sir Kraven Kingshield, Floren Lightfoot, Ruby Rockwar, Vigor Tusk’Gnasher! Darklings, servants of Zuul! I summon thee!” she screamed into the night.
Clouds had gathered at some point in her summoning, but Murland hadn’t noticed. Now they flashed and rumbled with lightning and rolling thunder, though they did not burst forth with rain; instead they churned overhead like the foul ingredie
nts in a witch’s caldron being stirred with purpose.
There was a crimson flash of light, and the blood surrounding Ravenwing turned to mist. It hovered in the air all around her. Like fairy dust it was, sparkling ruby red and hanging weightless.
A terrible cry made Murland jump. Everyone looked around. Again, the cry echoed through the plains, and Murland thought that he saw shapes begin to form there with Ravenwing. He was about to warn her when she quickly stepped out of the dome of hovering crimson dust.
“Wait until they all come to form,” said Ravenwing as she shouldered on her robes. Blood dripped from her dark hair and pooled at her feet, and speechlessly, Murland watched her.
“Darklings you are now called,” said Ravenwing. “In life, you were the Champions of the Dragon. Kraven, Floren, Ruby, and Vigor. I summon thee!”
The four darklings suddenly appeared inside the dome of crimson mist. They screeched and thrashed, lashing out when they realized they were trapped.
“Now!” said Ravenwing.
Murland looked to her, dumbfounded.
“The spell!” she cried.
He lifted his wand without thinking, flicked it at the darklings, and spoke the words that she had taught him.
“Aus forgen toth draka mingo lein, umbracka zen, ying yang gretho!”
The spell exploded from Murland’s wand and encased the darklings in a humming, pulsing blue shield. Mixed with the red of the floating blood mist, it created a purple filter through which the darklings could still be seen. They did not thrash, they did not shriek.
Instead, they stared directly at Murland.
“They will try to attack your mind, do not let them,” Ravenwing warned calmly.
Murland, Murland Kadabra, we’re gonna reach out and grab ya, sang the many voices of the darklings in a creepy quartet.
“No,” he said confidently, imagining pure glorious sunlight with his mind’s eye.
He heard their shrieks in his mind, felt them thrashing against his mental wall.
Murland, Murland Kadabra, we’re gonna reach out and grab ya, said the raspy voices in his head.
“No!” he said with authority, and from his wand a ripple of power shot into the shielding spell.
The darklings writhed and cried, their dark robes smoking.
“We have questions for you,” said Sir Eldrick, striding forth with utter confidence.
“We will eat your souls!” said one, and Sir Eldrick waved him off.
“Of course you will, eternal damnation and all that. Heard it before. Listen, we’ve got a proposal for you that you might want to hear.”
The darkling who had spoken gave Sir Eldrick a bony middle finger. “We will feed your corpses to—”
“Cut the wraith act…Sir Kraven.”
The darkling withered at the mention of his true name.
“Thought so,” said Sir Eldrick with a victorious grin.
“Listen,” said Murland. “We all have a common enemy. Kazimir. And we propose a, er, partnership of sorts.”
“We need to know what happened when you all faced Drak’Noir those many centuries ago,” Sir Eldrick added. “Tell us, and help us defeat him, and his soul shall be yours.”
The darklings looked to one another, and they soon began arguing amongst themselves. After half a minute, the leader turned back to them, and to everyone’s surprise, he pulled back his shadowy hood. What was beneath was not vile or swarming with maggots or unpleasant in any way. It was the ghostly face of a man, a noble-looking man, with a curled mustache and balding head. Upon seeing him, Murland pitied the spirit, for his eyes carried the weight of two hundred years. They were tired and sunken, dull and lifeless. Those haunted eyes turned to Sir Eldrick.
“We have come to an agreement,” said Sir Kraven. “We will help you. But! You must free us from this infernal trap.”
“That’s probably a bad idea,” Brannon mumbled out of the corner of his mouth.
“I must agree with nipple rings over there,” said Ravenwing, winking at Brannon. “They’re too dangerous.”
“We will speak not a word until these shields are lowered,” said Sir Kraven. “Quite frankly, they are uncomfortable as hell.”
“That’s kind of the point,” said Ravenwing. “You know, I could turn it up a few notches. Trust me, I have ways to make you speak.”
Sir Kraven twirled a mustache between his fingers, looking every part the mortally dangerous gentleman. “You seem intent on making mortal enemies for no reason, and while, I must say, that is my kind of lass, it would be much easier if you simply lower the shield.”
“You’re wasting time,” said Sir Eldrick. “We know that your master will be trying to summon you back.”
“You are wasting time, my good man,” said Sir Kraven. He rolled back a sleeve as he clucked his tongue and tapped the small hourglass strapped to his wrist.
Sir Eldrick pulled Murland and Ravenwing aside. “Can you defeat them if they attack?” he asked Ravenwing.
She shook her head. “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t we just torture it out of them? Hell, we should send them on their merry way to the afterlife when we’re done.”
“We may need them to defeat Kazimir. I have explained this to you. Why do you insist on pushing back at a time like this?”
“I thought that you like girls who pushed back,” said Ravenwing coyly.
“Are you two done?” said Murland. “Queen’s sake, I can’t hold this spell in place forever. Figure it the hell out.”
“Can you defeat them or not?” said Sir Eldrick.
“I have no idea, and even if I could, I never said I would. I’m not your personal magical assassin, you know.”
“Tick-tick, Sir Eldrick,” said Kraven.
“Fine. Lift the shields,” he said to Murland and Ravenwing.
“Are you mad?” Brannon said with a screech.
“You sure about this?” Murland asked him.
“No.”
Murland glanced at Ravenwing, who just shrugged, seeming quite bored with it all. He looked into Sir Kraven’s eyes and thought that he saw sincerity.
He spoke the words to end his spell, and it fizzled out of existence, leaving only Ravenwing’s writhing blood magic dome. She too lowered her spell, leaving the night much darker than it had been and quiet as a tomb. The companions all waited stiffly for the darklings to make a move, and when Sir Kraven did so, many of them jumped.
“Relax,” said the knight as he pulled a pipe out of the folds of his shadow-black robes. He sat on one of the hardened centaur’s hindquarters and lit his pipe. The other three darklings moved to stand behind him like guardians, watching from the blackness beyond their hoods.
Sir Eldrick nodded at the companions, gesturing for them to relax.
He sat across from the fire on another sleeping centaur. “Tell us what happened that fateful day,” said Sir Eldrick, lighting a pipe of his own.
“First,” said Kraven, pointing at Gibrig. “Would you mind, young dwarf, pointing that shield somewhere else?”
Gibrig went stark white when the darkling spoke to him and stared, wide-eyed. “Uh…yeah, sorry,” he said, looking to Murland and the others with wonder.
Sir Eldrick gave the shield an interested glance before gesturing to Kraven. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you. Now, to tell you the tale of ‘that fateful day’ as you put it, you must understand who we were. Kazimir has seen to it that the history books are void of our names. Instead we are called the original Champions of the Dragon, and that is where the story ends. Hasn’t it ever puzzled you before that there is no mention beyond that of us, when in turn, Kazimir is famous throughout the land? He has made himself the highest of the high, and us the lowest of the low. Darklings! What an insult! We are the Champions of the Dragon, and before that, we were champions one and all. Hunters of monsters and slayers of beasts, defenders of the virginity of princesses and destroyers of tyrants. That is why we so gladly set out to destroy the dragon. We wer
e not chosen, as Kazimir the Deceiver might have you believe.”
“And when you did set out, when you faced Drak’Noir, what happened?” said Sir Eldrick.
Kraven sneered silently and gazed into the fire. His words were hollow, almost a whisper. “We never faced the dragon. Kazimir killed us in our sleep the night before we were to ascend to the top of the mountain.”
“No,” said Gibrig. He glanced around, surprised that anyone had heard him.
“Soul magic,” said Ravenwing.
Sir Kraven nodded grimly. “Indeed. He used our souls to create a spell that would destroy the portal and send Drak’Noir back to her own dimension.”
“Dimension?” said Sir Eldrick.
“Drak’Noir is not of this world. She is…well, that I cannot say.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“I cannot, because I do not know what she is.”
“But, how did she ever get here in the first place?” Murland asked. “And how is it that she seems to always come back every twenty-seven years?”
“She is persistent,” said Sir Kraven. “And she is as patient as time itself. She may be a demon, or a god of another world. She may be the embodiment of darkness itself. I do not know. All that I do know is that she cannot be stopped. Like death, Drak’Noir is simply inevitable.”
“Bullshit,” said Sir Eldrick. “Everything that breathes can die.”
“Spirits cannot die, good knight.”
“But surely there must be a way to—”
“No, it is now my turn,” said Sir Kraven. “By ourselves we cannot defeat Kazimir. But if you can weaken him enough, we will be able to finish him off. You must disarm him and destroy his wards—if that is even possible. Once you have done so, we will be able to resist the urge to obey him.”
“But how will you know when to come?” said Murland.
“We will know,” said Sir Kraven. Then he turned his head to the side as if someone had called his name. “We must go.”
“But we’ve so much more to ask you,” said Murland.
The Legend of Drak'Noir: Humorous Fantasy (Epic Fallacy Book 3) Page 24