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

by Wade Albert White

The Harbinger of Death

  Where exactly Anne was on her way to, of course, was another question entirely.

  Once the fireball deposited her and the smoke cleared, she took stock of her surroundings. Tall buildings were all around, so it certainly seemed like Valerian had managed to get her to the capital. She was standing in an exterior courtyard, but nothing looked familiar. Maybe this wasn’t surprising given how little of the capital she’d actually seen. Anne ran up a nearby set of steps to an upper terrace to get a better view.

  Her heart sang. The Sapphire Palace was only a few blocks away.

  Moreover, it was still late afternoon, meaning not only had Valerian fireballed her to the right place, he had apparently managed to create a premium fireball and send her there almost instantly.

  With no time to waste, she hurried back down to the courtyard, charged through the nearest exit—

  —and ran headlong into someone. They both fell to the ground. Once Anne caught her breath, she found herself staring into a familiar face.

  “Captain Copperhelm!” she cried.

  He had several guards with him, and they had all drawn their swords and were pointing them at her.

  “Where in the blue blazes did you come from?” said Copperhelm, climbing to his feet and mumbling to himself. “I come to investigate a rogue fireball and nearly get run over by a wanted fugitive.”

  Anne grabbed him by the shoulders. This seemed to excite the guards even more, but she ignored them.

  “Captain Copperhelm, I need you to take me to the Copper Knight that was left in the royal library.”

  He brushed off his vest. “Well, hello to you, too.”

  “We might not have a lot of time. There’s a giant metal dragon coming to attack the capital.”

  He pointed behind her. “You mean like that one arriving right now?”

  Anne turned. High in the sky, and closing fast, was the giant metal dragon queen. The few council airships that had remained behind at the capital attempted to form a barrier, but the dragon queen punched through them like a stone through wet paper.

  Anne turned back to Copperhelm. “Where’s that knight?”

  Copperhelm motioned to the guards. “Begin evacuating the capital. Cut the moorings of the outer tiers so they can float away. If there are any warships left, get them to harass that thing and try to distract her, but tell them not to engage directly.”

  The guards saluted and ran off.

  Copperhelm pointed to Anne. “You, come with me.”

  He led Anne into the building. They took a winding path, up and down stairs, until they came to a tower with a barred door. Copperhelm motioned to a guard, who let them through.

  “Down here,” he said.

  They descended several flights until they arrived at a small office.

  “Where’s the prisoner?” Copperhelm asked the guard seated inside.

  “Last cell,” came the reply. The guard escorted them to the end of the hallway to a giant barred door. Anne peeked through the slit in the door. Inside the cell stood the seventh Copper Knight. She could even make out the A7 engraved on its collar.

  “Let me in there,” she said.

  “Now, just a minute there, young miss,” said the guard. “Those things are dangerous. Six of those knights injured dozens of guards when they escaped from the palace several days ago.”

  “Has this one moved at all?” asked Anne.

  “Well, no, but if it suddenly springs to life again, how is a little girl like you going to stop it?”

  “Open the door and I’ll show you.”

  “You heard her,” said Copperhelm, waving one of his emergency command cards at the guard. “Now open it.”

  The guard unlocked the door and hurried quickly away down the hallway. Without hesitation, Anne stepped over to the Copper Knight, with Copperhelm close behind. She jumped onto the top bunk and examined the knight’s helmet. As she had expected, there was no dragon stone. It must have been knocked out when Nana attacked, but they missed spotting it due to all the glass beads from the broken display case. She took out the dragon stone that had fallen out of Rokk and inserted it into the helmet.

  “Jeffery, can you tune this stone to the gauntlet?” she asked.

  Jeffery appeared in a flash of light. “Already done.”

  Anne reached over and pressed the button on the collar. As with the other knights, a seam appeared down the back and it opened.

  And out fell Jocelyn.

  The real Jocelyn, Anne hoped.

  “Help!” said Anne.

  Copperhelm reached out just in time, and they caught Jocelyn together and lowered her onto the bed.

  “That was quite the magick trick,” said Copperhelm. “Are you sure you aren’t the wizard of the group?”

  Anne grinned. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  Copperhelm grunted.

  Jocelyn began to rouse. “Dear heavens, whatever is going on here?” she said. She looked around the cell. “Have I been arrested?”

  “Do you want to close the quest academy?” Anne asked her. “Do you want me to sell Saint Lupin’s?”

  Copperhelm stared at her with uncharacteristic shock. “Close the academy? Sell it? What are you talking about?”

  “I need to be sure this is the real Jocelyn.”

  “Who else would she be?” he said.

  “Believe me, there are several possibilities.”

  Jocelyn raised herself into a sitting position. “My dear, as always, Saint Lupin’s is yours to do with as you please. But if you think selling it will somehow get me to close the academy or get you out of doing your chores, allow me to disabuse you of that notion right now. You are my student no matter where the academy is located.”

  Anne hugged her. “You’re definitely the real Jocelyn.”

  “What’s this all about?” asked Copperhelm.

  “I can’t explain it all because I don’t understand it all yet myself,” said Anne. “But right now I need to take this knight and stop the dragon queen.”

  Copperhelm nodded. “Fair enough. Don’t worry about us. I’ll see that everyone gets safely out of here.”

  “I know you will.”

  Anne climbed into the knight and the back closed behind her. She experienced a momentary panic in the dark interior, but then the circle of light appeared around her head and the panels lit up.

  Jeffery appeared in the helmet. “Hey, wait for me.”

  Anne maneuvered the knight out of the cell. It must have suffered some damage in its encounter with Nana because it didn’t move nearly as well as the other knight she had piloted. Anne pushed it into a jog. Surprised guards leapt out of the way. A few were too slow and got knocked over, but Anne didn’t slow down.

  When she arrived outside, everything was in chaos. True to her word, the dragon queen had landed at the far end of the city and was busy tearing through buildings and ripping apart any airships that drifted too close. The knight lurched down the avenue and rounded the corner. The Sapphire Palace lay straight ahead, but several towers had collapsed and the streets were filled with rubble. Anne tried to jump over it, but the knight stumbled and didn’t seem able to comply. It must have been more damaged than she thought. It would take her forever to get across the city like this—at least, it would if she traveled on the surface. The mines, on the other hand, would allow her to pass unhindered.

  She ran up the palace steps and into the entrance hall. In the alcove, a guard was turning a key in the lock of a brand-new set of mine doors. When he saw Anne—or rather, a Copper Knight—bearing down on him, the guard whipped out his sword and prepared to fight.

  “Open,” said Anne, and the front panel of the helmet opened.

  At the sight of her, the guard relaxed and lowered his sword. “What’s a young girl like you doing in that contraption?” he asked.

  “Open the door!” yelled Anne.

  The guard shook his head. “I’m under strict orders not to let anyone down there. Some kid
s were messing with the mine carts and burned down the old door. Can you believe it?”

  No one could say Anne hadn’t asked nicely. Anne closed the panel and charged the knight straight at the doors without stopping. The guard dove out of the way. She hit the doors dead center, tearing them off their hinges.

  “Hey! You’re going to pay for those!” the guard yelled after her.

  Anne took the stairs ten at a time. The steps crunched under the weight of the knight every time she landed, but they held. Anne was having trouble keeping the suit running straight, and several times it veered sideways into the walls. Upon reaching the bottom, she headed down the long corridor, which ended in two doors.

  Anne charged through the same door they had entered last time, the one that led into the main cavern. If she could get another mine cart on the tracks, she could get there even faster.

  “What’s the ‘Cave of Marv dash E one’?” asked Jeffery.

  “What did you say?” Anne brought the knight to a halt.

  Jeffery pointed back at the hallway. “I was just reading that sign back there on the other door.”

  “But why did you pronounce it like that?”

  “Uh, because that’s what it says.”

  Anne jogged back to the hallway to look at the two entrances.

  “No, see, it says ‘Cave of Marvel,’” said Anne.

  “Look closer. That’s not a lowercase L. It’s the number one. And there’s a faint dash between the V and the E. So, ‘Marv dash E one.’”

  Anne studied it again. Jeffery was right.

  Marv dash E one.

  MARV-E1.

  Anne remembered the inscription on the back of the Copper Knights:

  Magickal All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle, or MARV, for short.

  “Jeffery, you’re brilliant!” said Anne.

  “Well, that much is obvious.”

  Using her knight, Anne kicked the door open, splintering the frame.

  “Our door budget for this quest is going to be very high,” said Jeffery.

  Anne almost couldn’t believe her eyes. In the center of yet another massive chamber, and standing on a pedestal just as large as the one that once displayed the giant metal dragon statue, stood a hundred-foot-tall knight. It had a giant E1 inscribed on its chest plate. In its hand was a massive sword.

  “Wow,” said Jeffery. “We definitely have to try that thing.”

  Anne ran over to the pedestal, but her knight couldn’t make the jump. She called for the exit and stepped out.

  “So much for that one,” she said. “Luckily, we seem to have a spare.” She gazed up at the giant knight. “I’m sure Hiro is glad he isn’t here for this.”

  There was a staircase behind the pedestal, and she ran up. Like the metal dragon, the knight was constructed of hundreds of interlocking panels. Anne set her foot on the first panel of the leg and began climbing. She made swift progress up the side of the leg and then jumped across to the wrist. Anne pulled herself hand-over-hand up the arm until she reached the shoulder. From there she clambered around to the back of the knight’s neck, where she spotted what she’d hoped to find: a large circle with the sparrow image on it. She pushed on it with all her strength. A hatch on the back of the knight opened and Anne jumped inside.

  As with the Copper Knights, she felt the sensation of the interior space adjusting itself to fit her. After that, nothing happened.

  “Jeffery, why isn’t it working?” she asked.

  “Just a second,” said Jeffery, and he dove into the panel, leaving her in total darkness.

  The seconds ticked by.

  “Jeffery?” she called out. “Are you still there?”

  Suddenly the interior of the knight disappeared around her and she found herself standing inside a black cube, roughly ten feet to a side, lit by a single white light in the ceiling.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “I’ve temporarily shut off the pilot interface. Do you see a hatch in the floor?” asked Jeffery.

  She located a circular panel with a recessed handle. “Yes.”

  “Open it.”

  Anne pulled on the handle and swung the hatch upward, and Jeffery came shooting out.

  “I think you’ll find what you need down there,” he said.

  Anne peered through the hatch opening. There was another chamber below, and in it lay a giant crystal formation identical to the Heartstone.

  Anne dropped into the chamber. She pulled out Emmanuelle’s dragon stone and placed it on top of the crystal. At first nothing happened. Then the dragon stone merged with the larger crystal. Anne climbed back up. A moment later the chamber disappeared and the knight re-formed around her. A ring of light appeared around her head, the panels around her lit up, and suddenly she was a hundred feet tall.

  “This is awesome,” said Anne.

  Operating the giant metal knight was the same as operating the Copper Knights, albeit on a much larger scale. It responded to her impulses. She just had to think about what she wanted to do, and the knight obeyed. She made the knight step down from its pedestal and walked it over to the wall.

  “How are we supposed to get out of here?” said Anne.

  “Well, the dragon is up, so I vote for up,” said Jeffery.

  There was a certain, simple logic to that, so Anne sent the knight’s left fist upward into the ceiling, bringing down a shower of dirt and rocks. After several more strikes, the knight’s fist broke through to the main floor of the palace above. Anne used the giant sword to widen the hole and then climbed up. As the knight raised itself, it smashed through all six floors of the palace. Once it was standing on solid ground, as gingerly as possible (for a hundred-foot knight, that is) Anne climbed out of the palace. This brought down the front wall of the building, and behind her the remainder of the roof collapsed. Anne winced, but she couldn’t worry about it now.

  The dragon queen was two tiers over. Anne walked the knight forward, still getting a feel for how it moved. Worried that the bridges would not support the weight of the giant metal knight, she simply leapt the gap when she reached the edge of the tier. The knight landed with a crash, taking out several single-story buildings. She only hoped the guards had been successful in evacuating everyone from the capital.

  Anne pushed the knight into a run, down a wide avenue that ran the length of the tier, and then jumped, sailing over the next gap with ease.

  The dragon queen noticed her now.

  Lifting the sword high over the knight’s head, Anne thundered forward. The dragon queen held up her front leg to block, but when the sword came down, it cut deeply into her armored scales. The dragon queen roared, almost as if in pain, and lashed out with its tail. Anne had been expecting this, however, and she dodged to the side—unfortunately crashing into yet another building.

  The dragon queen head-butted the knight and sent it reeling backward into a stone tower, which crumbled beneath the weight. Before Anne could get the knight back on its feet, the dragon queen sideswiped it with her tail. This time Anne couldn’t dodge the blow. The tail hit the knight in the shoulder and drove it across the ground, taking out an entire city block.

  As Anne tried to rise, the dragon queen leapt onto the knight’s back, slamming it to the ground yet again.

  “That isn’t very nice,” Anne said.

  She struck out wildly with the sword and caught the dragon queen with a glancing blow. The dragon stepped back unsteadily, which gave Anne enough time to get the giant knight back on its feet. The two titans exchanged a quick succession of blows, each one landing like a thunderclap.

  Anne swung the sword again, but this time the dragon queen bit down hard on the knight’s wrist, crunching deep into its armor plating. The sword tumbled from Anne’s grasp. The dragon queen spun the knight around, swept up the sword, and drove it into the knight’s back as far as it would go. The blade passed fully through the body and burst out of the knight’s stomach. Alarms started blaring all around.

&nbs
p; Anne ducked under the dragon queen’s outstretched limbs and twisted around behind her. She wrapped the knight’s arms around the dragon’s torso and pulled it tight against the knight’s chest, where the end of the sword was protruding. Anne stabbed into the dragon queen’s back, pinning them together, and then she leapt forward, so that the knight landed atop the dragon, driving the sword in even deeper.

  More alarms blared, and the words CRITICAL FAILURE scrolled across the panel in front of Anne.

  It hadn’t worked.

  For the moment, the dragon queen was pinned.

  But the giant metal knight was dead.

  Anne exited through the knight’s back hatch.

  The dragon queen struggled to rise, but due to the damage she had suffered and the weight of the giant knight, she couldn’t. Anne knew that wasn’t likely to last long.

  “Any thoughts?” Anne asked Jeffery.

  “Attack?” he suggested.

  “Jeffery, there’s no way I could put even a scratch on that thing.”

  “Who said anything about attacking it from the outside?” said Jeffery.

  “You want me to go inside?”

  “It’s not as preposterous as it sounds. Penelope ripped off that panel, so get in there and do enough damage to shut it down. That’s pretty much your only chance.”

  “But I don’t even have a weapon.”

  “Improvise.”

  Anne looked up at the massive dragon. “After this, definitely no more quests.”

  She clambered swiftly around the knight’s collar. From there she was able to drop straight down onto the dragon queen’s back. She spotted the opening where the missing panel had been attached, but before she reached it, the dragon began to toss and jerk. Anne moved forward cautiously, one slow step at a time, until she reached the opening. The dragon continued to pitch back and forth, and it was all Anne could do to stay on her feet. She took a deep breath and dropped inside.

  Although the dragon queen continued to thrash, Anne found plenty of handholds. This part of the interior was filled with gears and support beams and dangling wires. She moved forward, with no particular idea where she should be headed other than inward.