The Adventurer's Guide to Dragons (and Why They Keep Biting Me)

by Wade Albert White

  “I am not aware of any other active holograms,” said the Construct. “Although it is not impossible.”

  “If they’re solid holograms, no one would know the difference,” said Hiro.

  The Lord Chamberlain down in the throne room cleared his throat and began reading. “We, the duly elected representatives of the Hierarchy, do hereby utterly and without reserve acknowledge the breaking of the treaty between our two peoples with the activation of a Dragon Slayer quest. Therefore, as of this moment, we enact Section 5, Article 12, of the treaty, as is our duty, and submit ourselves for your judgment.”

  The dragons in the throne room let out a deafening roar.

  “What just happened?” Anne yelled over the din.

  “Nothing good,” said Hiro. “The committee just surrendered the Hierarchy to the dragons.”

  ACCORDING TO THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO DRAGON SLAYERS, THE THREE MOST FAMOUS DRAGON SLAYERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE HIERARCHY ARE:

  1) Kork the Orc, famous for fighting dragons by ramming them with his airships. Credited with nine kills and fifty-seven destroyed ships.

  2) Wistonia Carpediem, known for slaying dragons using only the finest tweed.

  3) Sir Squeaksalot, famous folk leader during the Great Squirrel Uprising, who defeated the colossal dragon known as Q the One-Eyed by impaling him upon a slightly moistened toothpick.

  The Queen of Dragons on Her Throne

  We have to get down there,” said Anne.

  “But if we go back and try to locate another archway, we’ll be too late,” said Hiro.

  “I’m not suggesting we find another archway. I’m suggesting we go down there now.”

  “How?” said Penelope. “We’re stuck behind tons of junk here.”

  “Yes, but we also have six Copper Knights that have ten times our strength.” Anne maneuvered her knight in front of the largest metal panel. “Everyone form a line,” she said. “If we push together, we should be able to create an opening.”

  Everyone moved into place and began pushing on the panel. At first, nothing happened, but then slowly, inch by inch, the panel began to move.

  “Keep pushing,” Anne called out.

  Finally, they managed to shove the panel over the lip, at which point gravity took over. A large pile of scrap metal fell with the panel, which slammed into the floor of the throne room with a thunderous clang.

  Anne didn’t waste any time or give any instructions. She simply stepped to the edge and jumped, landing in the midst of the rubble. Moments later, five other knights landed beside her. Aiming for the Heartstone, Anne managed two steps before her knight suddenly stopped and everything went dark.

  “What happened?” said Anne. “Hello? Anyone?”

  No one answered.

  “Activate GPS,” said Anne.

  Jeffery appeared in front of her face in a burst of light. “What’s up, buttercup?”

  “My power suit stopped working.”

  “Um, power suit?”

  “Long story. The Copper Knights are really something from the Old World called power suits. We’re inside one now, but it stopped working.”

  Jeffery inspected the interior of the helmet. “Well, I’ve only known about power suits for all of seven seconds, but in my expert opinion, I’d say it’s been deactivated.”

  “Can you fix it?” asked Anne.

  “I can try,” he said, and he dove into the panel directly in front of her in a splash of light, leaving her once again in darkness.

  Anne strained to hear what was going on outside the suit. Without the display panel, she couldn’t see anything. She heard footsteps approach—large ones, if she wasn’t mistaken—and then the queen’s voice called out:

  “Open!”

  To Anne’s surprise, the panel in front of her retracted so that her face was exposed. She quickly glanced to either side. She couldn’t see all the other knights, but the few she could see were also frozen in place, and the fronts of their helmets were also opened. They were completely surrounded by dragon guards. The dragon queen herself, however, was still seated on the Heartstone. Anne could see anger burning in the queen’s eyes, and Anne’s heart beat faster.

  “Well, well,” said the queen in a quiet voice. “Our wayward prisoners have returned.”

  “Your Majesty, hear me,” said Anne. “Those representatives from the Hierarchy are imposters. We think they’re something called holograms. The real members of the committee were captured by the Copper Knights.”

  “Lies!” said the fake Lord Chamberlain. “Your majesty, this is preposterous! Outrageous!”

  “Please, Your Majesty,” Anne continued. “The real Lord Chamberlain is here with us, right there inside one of the Copper Knights.”

  “You mean my Copper Knights?” said the queen. “You would dare use my own weapons against me? How foolish of you, for I wield ultimate control over them. As you can see, no one may use them without my permission, especially not some ragtag band of humans.”

  “We’re not attacking you,” said Anne. “We came here to warn you.”

  “Silence!” bellowed the queen. She stared at Anne with loathing. “Once I have concluded my business with the Hierarchy, I shall enjoy watching your execution. And this time there will be no trials.”

  Anne gulped.

  Looking around desperately, Anne happened to glance back up to the ledge, high above the throne room, from where she and the others had dropped. There stood Rokk. He must have followed them through the archway, which she realized now they had forgotten to deactivate. His hands grasped the Three-Handed Sword, which pulsed with blue light. Even from a distance, it looked powerful. Anne harbored no doubts that it could slay a dragon.

  Rokk raised the sword and pointed it at the queen. “I bring you a message,” he said. “A message of death.” With that, he leapt from the ledge.

  The third line of the riddle ran through Anne’s head:

  Kill not the queen of dragons on her throne.

  Time seemed to slow. Anne willed her legs to move, so that she might reach the queen and push her out of the way, but her knight remained frozen. Several dragon guards moved toward the queen, but it seemed as though they were running underwater. Only Rokk appeared immune to the slowing of time. He fell from the ledge like a spear, and Anne sucked in a breath as she anticipated the blow.

  But it never landed.

  Just before the blade dispatched the queen, a blur intercepted Rokk and carried him away. The timing was impossible. Mere seconds had passed. Rokk and the blur crashed onto the ground and immediately struggled for control of the sword. It was the Construct. She had found a way to reactivate her knight.

  For a moment, Anne thought the Construct might prevail, but Rokk kicked out with his mighty legs and sent her stumbling back. He surged to his feet, raised the sword above his head, and drove it straight down into the heart of the Copper Knight.

  The knight exploded.

  The blast rattled Anne’s knight and sent Rokk flying backward into the wall. He fell to the ground and didn’t move. The Three-Handed Sword also went flying, but in a completely different direction. For several heartbeats, everything was still. Pieces of the knight lay strewn about in a wide circle. There was no sign of the Construct, and Anne feared she was gone yet again.

  “Your Majesty!” shouted a guard.

  The guard pointed to where the Hierarchy committee had gathered in front of the Heartstone. The Three-Handed Sword had found a target. Not the queen; the sword hadn’t even come close to her. Instead, the sword had impaled the fake Lord Chamberlain through the chest and pinned him to the ground. The same Lord Chamberlain whom Anne had thought was a hologram. Except he wasn’t. Though wounded, he didn’t bleed, but he was also not made of light. Something else poured from him: a thick, black, oily smoke.

  Just like during the first quest, with an archaeologist named Mr. Shard at the top of the Infinite Tower.

  And just like the Matron when she had cut off her own arm.

/>   Anne again noticed a glint of light coming from the Lord Chamberlain, but now she could see that it wasn’t an aura like the Construct. The light was smaller, more focused, and coming from a crystal hanging around the Lord Chamberlain’s neck.

  The pierced Lord Chamberlain looked up at the throne. “We throw ourselves at your mercy, My Queen.”

  The queen said nothing.

  The Lord Chamberlain reached out a shaky hand. “Your Majesty, I beg you, let us complete our business here. There is still time to—”

  He never finished. The queen sucked in a lungful of air and spewed out a column of red fire. It engulfed the Lord Chamberlain and the other members of the committee.

  Anne went rigid inside her knight, hardly believing what she was seeing. The committee members didn’t cry out in pain. In fact, the fake Lord Chamberlain smiled as he burst into flame. The fire quickly turned to black smoke as all six of the committee members dissolved into nothing. When the queen ceased her assault, all that was left were a few smoldering scraps of clothing on the ground, the sword, and six sparkling crystals. It struck Anne how very much the crystals resembled dragon stones.

  “Hand me the sword,” said the queen.

  One of the dragon guards picked up the Three-Handed Sword in its mouth and laid it before the queen. As Anne watched this happen, the kaleidoscope of events of the past several days—everything from the attack in the royal library, to the bodies of the committee members being rearranged, to the Copper Knights not obeying Valerian, to this very moment—suddenly formed into a picture in her mind.

  “This whole thing has been your idea from the beginning, hasn’t it?” Anne said boldly. She hadn’t quite fit everything together yet, but she knew that she was on the right track. “You said earlier that no one could use the Copper Knights without your permission. That means Valerian couldn’t possibly have taken the Copper Knights unless you allowed it. You only let him think he had control. You wanted the Dragon Slayer quest activated so that the dragons could have a reason to be outraged—because it would break the treaty with the Hierarchy and weaken their position. But you yourself, not Valerian, controlled the knights. You used them to kidnap the real committee and replace them with those imposters, so they could surrender quickly to you without a need for war. That was your plan all along.”

  Anne expected another angry outburst, but the queen sat quietly, staring down at her. In fact, Anne thought she looked impressed.

  “Bravo,” said the queen. “I will grant that you have a sharper mind than most—for a human, anyway. You are correct. I have been involved from the beginning. But you left out the most important piece of the puzzle.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I’m the Official Antagonist,” said the queen. “The prospect of gaining control of the Hierarchy was merely a bonus, something I reached for because the opportunity presented itself, but what I most desired was this sword.”

  Having spoken thus, the queen clasped the Three-Handed Sword between her front paws and thrust herself upon it. The glowing blue blade sliced easily into the heavy scales of her chest, just as it had been designed to do. It cleaved through flesh and bone and pierced her dragon heart. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed on top of the Heartstone, where she let out one final, rasping breath.

  The dragons in the hall stared in disbelief.

  Suddenly, Anne’s knight opened again and she leapt out. Penelope, Hiro, Valerian, and the Lord Chamberlain did the same, and together they rushed over to the crystal formation. Valerian climbed up and placed his hand on the queen’s side, feeling for a heartbeat. Anne already knew he wouldn’t find one.

  Finally, Valerian stood and faced the entire throne room.

  “The dragon queen is dead,” he said.

  No one moved.

  Anne became acutely aware that their group was standing unarmed in a room full of dragons whose queen had just died. That she had died by her own hand might not matter to the dragons. Anne walked over to where Rokk lay unconscious, hoping she might revive him, but unsure, even then, if he’d help should the dragons attack.

  She knelt beside him and noticed that a panel on the side of his head had popped open. An object lay on the ground next to him. Another dragon stone. Anne remembered when Rokk had been knocked down in the royal library, and one of the Copper Knights had knelt beside him. Had the knight inserted this stone into Rokk? Was that the source of his erratic behavior? She picked up the stone and stuffed it into one of the pockets of her cloak.

  Someone shouted from the throne room’s entrance, interrupting Anne’s thoughts. Jocelyn and Lord Greystone entered the throne room, accompanied by two long columns of council soldiers. The soldiers immediately formed a tight ring surrounding the Heartstone. Valerian descended from the Heartstone and joined Penelope and Hiro, while Lord Greystone climbed up to examine the queen’s body.

  Jocelyn walked directly over to Anne.

  “How did you get here?” asked Anne.

  “We came with the council ships,” said Jocelyn. “There’s an entire armada outside.”

  Anne stared at the queen’s lifeless form. “We tried to protect her. I didn’t know she would do that.”

  Jocelyn said nothing as she dug several papers out of her satchel and handed them to Anne.

  Anne took them but couldn’t focus on the words. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “As you well know,” said Jocelyn, “so long as you three are students at Saint Lupin’s Quest Academy, I am required to evaluate your performances.”

  Anne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The dragon queen had just taken her own life, and Jocelyn was worried about evaluations?

  “We were trying to prevent a war,” said Anne.

  Jocelyn nodded. “A very noble purpose. However, the specific details of any given quest do not change the rules. The quest required that the dragon queen die of natural causes. She did not. I’m afraid this cannot be overlooked.”

  Anne frowned. “Meaning what?”

  “Why, isn’t it obvious, my dear? You failed.”

  ALL QUEST ACADEMIES EMPLOY THE FOLLOWING GRADING SYSTEM:

  P Pass (congratulations, you passed!)

  B Burnt to a Crisp (a dragon set your homework on fire)

  Q Quack (your homework was graded by a duck)

  V Vacation (your teacher has taken a leave of absence because of how badly you performed)

  F Fail (or, if there were crumbs on your paper, possibly Fruitcake)

  Failing Grade

  It took a moment for Jocelyn’s words to sink in.

  “But I tried to save her,” said Anne.

  Lord Greystone leapt down from the Heartstone. “Trying is irrelevant. You activated a quest and didn’t complete it, and now you must deal with the consequences.” He removed a slim notebook from the inner pocket of his cape. “First, as I’m sure you know, failing a medallion quest while still attending a quest academy means failing the academy.”

  Anne turned to Jocelyn. “You’re not really going to let him expel me, are you?”

  “I’m afraid there’s very little I can do about it, my dear,” said Jocelyn. “He’s the Minister of Questing, and well within his rights.”

  “But I own Saint Lupin’s,” Anne said. “You can’t kick me out of my own home.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said Greystone. “Even if we’re lucky enough to prevent a war with the dragons, the Wizards’ Council will be looking for a scapegoat. At best, I’d say you’re looking at a life sentence in a council dungeon cell. If they decide to hand you over to the dragons, then it will be the same verdict but with a much shorter life span, I expect.”

  “Anne, look,” Penelope interrupted.

  “Not now, Miss Shatterblade,” said Jocelyn. “We will deal with you and Mr. Darkflame in a moment.”

  “Um, I think you’re really going to want to see this,” said Hiro.

  Anne, Jocelyn, and Greystone looked to where Penelope was pointing. At the t
op of the Heartstone, the body of the dragon queen was glowing.

  “What’s happening?” asked Jocelyn.

  Anne knew. They’d witnessed it before when Valerian’s mother, Emmanuelle, had died. Now that the queen was dead, the dragon stone inside her would emerge. The light became more and more focused as the crystal neared the surface, until finally the crystal passed out of her chest and fell onto the Heartstone—

  —and disappeared.

  For a heartbeat nothing happened. A wave of uneasiness swept over Anne. Valerian had explained how newborn dragons were laid on the Heartstone so that a fragment of the stone would grow inside them. But he never said anything about what happened if a crystal was returned to the Heartstone once a dragon had died. Then Anne recalled the Construct’s words, something about taking one of the dragon stones, which was really an “array log,” to an upload terminal.

  “Where did it go?” asked Penelope.

  Hiro scanned the ground. “Maybe it rolled off or someth—”

  A blinding pulse of light shot out from the Heartstone. Anne turned away and shielded her face. When she turned back, the Heartstone was gone.

  “Where did it go?” said Valerian in a panic.

  A vast rumbling arose among the dragons in the throne room. Apparently, they didn’t know what had happened to the Heartstone, either. The queen’s body now rested on the cold, hard ground. The Three-Handed Sword still protruded from it, but the dragon stone in the pommel had fallen out. Emmanuelle’s dragon stone. When Anne looked around for it, she saw that it had rolled close to her, and while everyone was focused on the missing Heartstone, she bent over and picked it up. She couldn’t help reflecting on how the spirit of one sister had been used against the other.

  The floor shook.

  “What was that?” asked Hiro nervously.

  Anne thought about the dragon stones. When a dragon died, the stones came out. But it wasn’t all gory and messy. They simply passed through the dragon, like a spirit passing through walls. If the Heartstone possessed that same property, and if that property were to be suddenly activated by, say, coming into contact with a dragon stone, where would it go?