by Ryan Attard
“Now look what you did,” Greede chided. “That was a perfectly good creature I was gonna use to kill you. Ugh, guess I’ll have to pick another.”
“Careful, Alan,” I said. “You were complaining about the cost of repairing your window. What do you think summoning something and have it go at me is gonna do to your office?”
He grinned. “I’m good for it. And besides, I think it’s time to relocate. Got any recommendations? Perhaps that nice mansion in Trinity forest. After I’ve evicted the previous tenants, of course.”
I gritted my teeth. Easy, Erik. Don’t let him rile you up.
He cocked his head. “Perhaps not. I had a look at your place though. That shit hole, I would burn to the ground.” He grinned. “But I might keep the succubus. She looks entertaining.”
The gun buckled in my hand and I had the satisfying image of watching Greede’s head split open.
At the same time, he pulled out a miniature, one-handed crossbow, and fired at me as well. The bolt was about the size of a number two pencil, clearly made out of Vensir bones. It drilled into my stomach and tumbled downwards. The bolt had penetrated through my coat, which had a couple dozen protection enchantments, along with the shadows covering my body.
I pulled it out, a slight scream escaping my lips, and my healing magic began sealing the hole. Ardently, I stood up, not wanting him to see me in a weakened state.
Greede muttered something, his head still partially cracked open. I could sense the Sin’s foul magic struggling to repair his body. Mammon was already manifesting within him.
Greede slammed his hands on the Necronomicon.
“Fine,” he snarled. “Have it your way.”
Flames erupted from within the book, taking the shape of an oversized lizard with fiery red eyes and a venomous hiss.
Salamandra stepped towards me.
At the same time, Greede’s body shifted and jerked. Mammon bulged from his body, oversized arms looping over Greede’s form. The man himself pressed a button on one of his walls. A panel slid down, revealing several weapons hanging on the wall. He took down a scimitar, identical to the one he had up for auction, made out of the indestructible Vensir bones. He swung it delightfully.
Salamandra’s flames engulfed my body. I yelped and dashed aside, avoiding the brunt of the damage. My coat and shadows did the rest. I fired, but the bullets went through the elemental creature.
I switched weapons. Djinn felt heavy in my hands and I muttered an apology. The azure blade glowed and I swung at the oversized lizard. The blow sent it reeling backwards. Shadows spewed over the flames, smothering them. Salamandra swayed like a drunk at a frat party.
I spun, aimed my gun left handed and fired at the Necronomicon. The bullet ripped the page Salamandra had been enchanted onto. The creature itself moaned and dissolved into ash.
Greede’s sword came swinging. It was deceptively slow — he was luring me. I stepped back, weaving around Mammon’s massive arms. Greede snatched the Necronomicon and tucked it preciously under his armpit.
Mammon’s arm swiped at me, but I raised an arm to guard and to my surprise stopped the surprisingly weak attack. Greede came at me from beneath Mammon’s belly with the sword. I parried and countered, scoring a deep cut across his chest. Greede reeled back and so did Mammon, both sharing the same agony.
I fired at Greede and this time he wasn’t healing as quickly. Mammon roared, but since he was attached to Greede, there was nothing he could do but clutch at phantom pains.
“For all your power,” I told him, “you’re surprisingly shit in a real fight.”
Greede hyperventilated against the pain and stood up. “I’m more of a scholar.” The sword quivered in his hands but he raised it nonetheless. “True power, true gods, are beyond such methods.”
I dashed, knocking the blade aside, and stabbed him in the gut. Snarling, I twisted Djinn further in. Greede vomited blood.
Power gathered in my left fist, a ball of swirling shadows.
“You’re no god,” I told him. “You’re just a flying asshole.”
He met my eyes, confused. I grinned.
Then I swung my left fist into an uppercut. Greede flew upwards, crashing through the ceiling and rocketing upwards, until he was flying through the night air.
“Get it?” I said, grinning at my own snark.
I willed my shadows to extend and latch at the edges of the hole Greede’s body created. They grabbed and pulled, hoisting me upwards as if I was being slung by a massive rubber band.
I found myself on a helipad. A sleek black chopper sat limp on the giant H about ten meters to my right.
Greede was moaning on the ground. Both he and Mammon manifested behind him, emerging from his body like a tumor, looked like utter shit.
“It’s over Greede,” I told him. “This ends here, right now.”
Djinn sang in the air as I swung it around me, power coursing through it.
Greede dropped the broken black sword with disdain and tore open the Necronomicon with both hands.
“It’s not over until I say it is,” he snarled. “You want proof I’m a god? Here’s it is.”
Power exploded from him. I instinctively stepped back to shield myself for such a foul aura.
Mammon raised his massive hands in the air. A giant book, purplish and translucent, manifested in between the demon’s hands. The book opened. Mammon raised his right hands over it. He held an oversized pen in his clenched fist, tip pointing down. Below Greede was in the same position, a pen over the Necronomicon, held like a serial killer about to knife his victim.
Mammon and Greede both stabbed their respective books and violently drew a glowing sigil. The atmosphere around me darkened and fouled up. I could hear the very Earth screaming in agony.
Greede and Mammon grabbed the page they had inscribed and tore it off the book. The Necronomicon fell limp on the ground while Mammon’s etherial book disappeared.
Greede had a sadistic grin on his face when he tore the page in half — Mammon grunted as he did the same.
Power poured down, hitting the Earth like acid rain. The sky turned a sickly yellow. The air became hot and arid, making it hard to breathe. Were it not for the adrenaline and my powers, I would have felt sick and nauseous.
Screaming erupted all around me. I looked below to see people running, terrorized. Scores of Paladins and Gil’s armed men were forming a perimeter.
Then, the concrete began to crack and shatter, and from the bowels of the Earth emerged creatures of nightmares.
They were tall and slender, with misshapen arms that ended in a variety of sword, claws, or other natural weapons. Their faces were a blank mound of flesh. Reptilian tails swung to and fro. Their skins ranged from the color of sour milk to the dull grey of concrete. Black ichor dripped from them as the formed physical bodies on a plane they had no business inhabiting.
Hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of Asmodaii came to life.
Something flashed above and I saw a swarm flying by, consisting of winged humanoids. Clusters of Nightgaunts formed screeching clouds, tearing through the sky before swooping down on their unsuspecting prey below.
The only thing that stopped them was the roar, one that made my heart quake with a stupefying fear.
Its massive wings beat up and down like sails the size of school busses, their wind knocking away scores of Nightgaunts. Its massive belly, ridged with spikes and pointed scales, knifed through air, clouds, and creatures like an ocean liner paving its way through the water. Fire would occasionally escape between the jaws of its massive T-Rex head.
I stared at it.
“Holy shit, a dragon.”
Chapter 30
Everyone and everything noticed the dragon. Kind of hard not to. The dragon, on the other hand, looked around with curiosity, and then began raging.
It flapped its wings, it tore through scores of Nightgaunts, and spewed flames everywhere. After a few seconds, it circled around again, and repeated t
he process.
It’s lost, I thought.
Which made sense.
Greede didn’t have these creatures under his control — no magic-user, no matter how powerful they are, can pull off summoning an army and enslaving it. Greede admitted he was human underneath all that, something which I was all too happy to prove by punching him through the damn ceiling. His powers came from leeching off of others. Case in point, Mammon, the original Sin of Greed.
No, if the dragon acted lost it’s because it was. Simple as that. For all I know, this dragon could have been sitting in its dragon-home, drinking it’s afternoon dragon-tea, and then, poof! — it’s flung across the multiverse, crossed countless dimensions, and ended up in downtown Eureka.
The dragon perched on a building, causing the structure to collapse beneath it’s massive weight. It flapped its wings to gain stability and moved onto the next building. This one held. Barely.
Beneath it, people were driven out and into the armada of Asmodaii on the streets. The blood-thirsty demonic foot soldiers attacked anyone in sight.
Which meant I now had a few more targets to neutralize, all the while Greede’s chopper got smaller and smaller over the horizon.
Focus, Erik.
The main thing was to not get people killed. That could occur by Asmodaii, by Nightgaunt, or by dragon. The first two were too numerous for me to take out by myself. The Knights of the Order of the Grigori were up against them, backed up by Gil’s ninja soldiers. Adding me to the fight was just adding one more soldier against a hundred-to-one battle.
It would have made dick of a difference.
Which left the dragon — I had to fight a dragon.
Sometimes I really, really, really, hate my life.
“Hey, asshole!” I don’t know why I yelled at the dragon several blocks away. I just did.
My only excuse was that I got hit in the head several times.
The dragon wholly ignored me and slipped down the building, landing on several cars — which were immediately flattened — and a handful of Asmodaii. Thankfully, no one human was crushed to death yet.
I pumped some magic into my gun and fired at the dragon. The bullet bit into its scales and bounced off. I might as well have hurled a Jelly Bean for all the damage it did.
“Okay,” I muttered to myself, as I switched weapons. “Time for the close approach.”
I looked down. The dragon was on the street. I was on top of the Ryleh Corp building, easily twenty floors up. The dragon was tall enough to cover maybe five of those floors.
The rest was up to gravity.
I’d like to say that this was my first time flinging myself off a building.
But alas, it seems to be a requirement with me: I jumped off hospital buildings, piece-of-shit historical sites, mountains, and, in one bizarre adventure, a crane tower. Now that I think about it, a twenty floor office tower is not that farfetched.
As I plummeted, I held Djinn tip down, pumping magic into it. The blade burned a bright blue and made a loud screeching sound as it expanded in the air.
I fell on the dragon, the impact jarring every bone in my body — which could have been broken were it not for the enhancements I gained from my curse power and the transformation I was in — and the oversized, flaming Djinn was buried in the dragon’s back.
That one, he felt.
The dragon tilted its head up and covered the Ryleh building in fire. It roared and craned its neck, only to see a tiny shadow-covered man pulling out his blue sword from its back.
Ouch, that hurt!
The voice came directly in my head, smooth and clean.
“What the fuck?” I began.
The dragon was looking at me with one giant yellow eye. What are you?
“You can talk?” I asked, feeling very stupid.
Of course. I’m a dragon, silly. Why wouldn’t I talk?
Wait. Hang on. Was I really getting sass from a telepathically talking dragon?
Maybe I did have a head injury.
“Uh…” Sometimes my own vocabulary astonishes me.
Why did you hurt me? the dragon asked.
“You were destroying buildings.”
I don’t know what those are. Where am I? Is this your world?
I don’t wanna say the dragon sounded whiny. I certainly didn’t wanna think it out loud.
“You were summoned here by an evil wizard,” I explained. “You and all these creatures.”
I don’t like these creatures. They are ugly and scary. The massive eye blinked. I wish to go home now.
Oh, good. The dragon was about to cry.
“If you’re so smart,” I said, “you must have a name. What’s your name?”
The dragon tilted his head further back, and now I was looking at my own reflection in that massive eye.
What does my being smart have to do with having a name? There are plenty of stupid dragons that have names. Good names too. My second cousin, for instance. I really cannot stand her.
What else was I expecting? Of course, I would get the insecure dragon with family issues.
“My name is Erik Ashendale,” I said patiently, all the while knowing full well that if he wanted this giant lizard could swallow me whole. “You can call me Erik. What’s your name?”
He drew his head back, arching his massive T-Rex head at the sky, as if he was pouting proudly.
I am Iotharax, Erik Ashendale.
“Iotharax,” I said. “Okay, I can work with that.” I considered my next words carefully. “Iotharax, how old are you?”
Apparently, I’m not one for much consideration. Thankfully my question did not hurt the dragon’s feelings.
I am but a hatchling, only a hundred and fifty of your years. Two standard dragon years.
I would have face-palmed myself if I didn’t think Iotharax would have me explain what face-palming was.
A two-year-old dragon.
And he was already this large, this destructive, and so emotionally sensitive.
I shuddered to think what a proper adult dragon would look like.
I want to go home, the dragon said.
Something crashed behind me. The dragon had swished its tail and several cars were now inside the opposite building. It was growing more fidgety and I saw the wings unfurling.
A crazy plan formed in my mind.
“If you help me take out some of these monsters,” I said, “I’ll help you get home.”
Iotharax stopped moving. You can do that?
“I’m a powerful wizard,” I told him. “And I have other, more powerful, friends.”
I wasn’t technically lying to the baby dragon the size of a skyscraper. I could probably convince Gil to let me use the Dimension Pendulum to shunt this guy back to home. We could easily fix it and recalibrate it using Iotharax’s DNA.
And I doubted Gil wanted to have the dragon around, where all the vanilla humans could see it.
“What do you say?” I asked.
Iotharax pretended to consider before he eagerly cried a Yes in my head.
Good job, Erik. You outsmarted a two-year-old lizard.
I moved to a more central position, just behind his head, and extended my shadows to grab onto the dragon’s scales.
“Okay, Iotharax,” I said. “I need you to fly. Fly and shoot fire at the bad guys. You’re gonna be a hero today, buddy.”
Hooray!
The dragon took off in a massive lurch, and shadows or not, I was nearly thrown off. Wind pressed against my face. I was forced to crouch a little to keep my balance. Iotharax turned effortlessly and a jet of painfully brilliant fire consumed a few Nightgaunts.
I giggled and raised Djinn, while I held onto a bony spike with the other. The short sword glowed and elongated.
I was holding a magical sword and riding a dragon!
It’s official. I am cooler than any other person, ever. And if you don’t think so, when was the last time you rode a dragon?
Yeah. I didn’t think so.
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Iotharax dove and I squealed, and my moment of glory was shattered by the innate fear of falling a million miles to the ground. He opened his mouth and undulated his long neck. We were suddenly surrounded by fire, incinerating enemies left and right.
We hit the ground with a boom.
A massive crater opened up in the middle of the road. Asmodaii fell through it. Iotharax laughed giddily inside my head as he charged through the demons. They attempted to leap on him but that’s when I came in. Djinn cut through anyone lucky enough to avoid the dragon.
I can’t say I was too busy. Iotharax used his tail like a whip, his wings like sails, his claws like… well, actual claws.
Oh, and he weighed about as much as the entire state of Delaware. He would laugh every time he squashed one of the Asmodaii, sending grayish ectoplasm everywhere.
Ahead of us the Asmodaii and Nightgaunts seemed to have come to some sort of mutual understanding. That, or they suddenly had the urge to attempt some cross-dimensional creature teamwork.
The Asmodaii formed a wall on the ground, like a massive anthill. The Nightgaunts lay on top of them, piling on until they reached the skies. All in all, it was a mass of writhing limps, squashed bodies, flapping bat-like wings, and an endless cacophony of snapping jaws and screeching throats.
Iotharax stopped a hundred feet from the flesh wall.
Uh-oh, he said.
“Don’t worry about them,” I said.
But I might get hurt. I don’t like getting hurt.
An idea flashed in my head. I tried extending my shadows to cover the dragon. Slowly, the black magic seeped over the scales, spreading like an ink blot on a page, one slow inch at a time.
I felt like dying, as if someone had literally drained all the blood in my body. My magic was too little to cover such a huge beast. I chided myself for thinking too linearly. I was not the weapon here, the dragon was.
“Iotharax,” I said. “Some heroes get hurt, that’s true. But you know what? They don’t whine or complain. Do you know why?”
The dragon huffed. Because they are heroes, he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “You can choose to quit now. Or you can fight. You can be a hero.”