Old Evil (The Last Dragon Lord Book 2)

by Michael La Ronn

  Rain beheld a magnificent cistern as wide as a mountain valley, with stalagmites growing from the ground and stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

  She stood at the edge of a furious pink river that wound through the cave and into shadows beyond.

  She had never seen water like this before, so she reached down and dipped her hand in it. Soon it tingled with an odd sensation that felt first like numbness and then like it had been rubbed with a salve.

  She thought about the sea, and to her surprise, a column of water shot from her palms and sprayed the back wall of the cavern.

  She gasped, wondering where the blue water had come from, for the river was pink.

  She thought of water again, and again water sprayed from her palm.

  She then thought of fire and flames flew from her tingling palm.

  Whatever she thought of, it appeared from her hands. She made giant rocks out of nowhere. She produced a bundle of steaming hot fish. She wished for home and a hazy image of it flashed in front of her face and gave her comfort. She thought of her father and how awestruck he would be in this place.

  Rain had carried several glass jars with her to use for drinking. She took the jars and scooped up the pink water.

  She drank from it and nearly swooned from its restorative effects. She felt like a young girl again.

  There was no limit to the magical water and she knew she had to share it with the village.

  She left the cavern and began the long trek back to the village.

  The village people hadn’t expected her to come from the mountains, and as she scaled down the rocky bluffs toward the beach, she saw a search party looking for her out on the water.

  She entered the beach quietly and found her father weeping in the shallows. He cried her name and supplicated his hands to the skies.

  “Father, why do you weep for me when I am right here?”

  When her father saw him, he took her into his arms and apologized for sending her onto the seas by herself.

  But she thanked him.

  “Why do you thank me? And how did you get here?”

  She told him the story of how she had been at sea during a freak storm, and how she followed the dragon into its cavern. She held up the jars of magic for him to see, and when he held them in his hands, their link glow lit up his eyes.

  He unscrewed the cap and dipped a finger in. With a thought, a day’s worth of fish washed ashore, amazing everyone.

  They had a feast in Rain’s name and they called her a hero.

  She kept the magic, and any time someone needed something, they visited her hut. She healed the sick, made up for poor fisherman’s catches, and used magic to accomplish work in half the time.

  Soon, she was running low on the pink liquid, and the village elders if she might be able to go back to the cavern for more.

  Rain agreed and led an expedition up the mountain and back to the dragon’s cavern. They camped in the woods and waited for the dragon to leave and fly into the sea. Then they snuck back into the cavern with jars and filled them with magical water.

  As they left the mountain, a furious roar filled the skies.

  The dragon descended upon them, baring his vicious teeth. “How dare you steal magic from my aquifer?” he roared. “Return it to me, and lie down on the ground so that I may destroy you.”

  The other elves screamed and surrendered their jars. They lay down to be slaughtered.

  But Rain refused. She said that such a magical resource belonged to everyone and it should be shared.

  The dragon disagreed and charged for her. She drank from the jar and breathed fire on the dragon, killing him instantly. The beast crashed to the ground and shook the mountain. The dragon’s body became a great ugly husk swirling with magic.

  Rain and the expedition ran away as fast as they could and returned to the village.

  The event scared everyone. That night, the villagers held an emergency meeting; they had to decide what to do now that they had killed a dragon.

  Once other dragons found out about the attack, there would be retaliation.

  They agreed that this was the land of their ancestors and that they would not flee.

  They would fight.

  Rain led another group to the aquifer and again they fled with as much magic as they could carry.

  The next day, a group of dragons descended upon the village, demanding revenge.

  The elves were ready. They protected themselves with a massive wall that the dragons could not penetrate.

  For ten days and nights the dragons assaulted the wall, but it kept the village safe.

  On the eleventh day it shattered.

  Rain watched as the dragons destroyed the only home she had ever known. She escaped up the mountain as the dragons declared their revenge complete. The beasts took back the jars of magic that were stolen and leveled the village.

  Rain ran as fast as she could through the woods. She ran for miles, scared that the dragons would find her. And she wept, for she felt responsible for what had happened.

  She found another elven village many, many miles away, and when she told them about the magical cavern, the elders told her that they too had seen the magical aquifer. She showed them her magical power and the elves of this new village believed she was a supernatural being.

  The dragons didn’t discriminate and blamed all the elves in the region. Soon they attacked this second village, too.

  When the dragons arrived, she used the last of her magic and slayed them, winning the village’s respect.

  The village revered Rain. But she would not let them. She told them that they too could wield magical power, and they followed her to the next village.

  She traveled all over the coast, recruiting more villages to fight with her.

  They called her Elder Rain. She united elven tribes everywhere, and under her, they stole magic from dragons’ aquifers and kept dragons from taking it back.

  So began the eternal hatred between dragons and elves that continued until the present day.

  From this legend—from Rain’s determination—elves learned self-sufficiency, persistence, humility, and respect for the natural world.

  ACT III

  XVIII

  Jasmine stood on a tree stump and watched as a crew of contractors rode roughly into the job site. Several dirt-smeared pickup trucks led the way, followed by bulldozers that threw up splotches of mud. Almost suddenly, the air filled with tough, stifling exhaust, and grinding and roaring and humming and accelerating from all the machinery.

  She choked on the thick brown clouds and the fumes stung her eyes. Wiping her eyes, she saw a red pickup truck swerve to a stop.

  A man in a denim shirt and jeans jumped out. He had short, cropped red hair and blue eyes that reminded Jasmine of the sky. He was well-built, with a look of wildness on his face like the younger men in college she’d known that were never cut out for school, but for the roads and the great outdoors. He reached into the bed of his pickup and pulled out a hunting rifle. He slammed the door and cocked the rifle. With a holler, he called his men to do the same.

  And then a symphony of slamming car doors followed and his crew jumped into the mud with their guns on their shoulders.

  Laner walked up next to her and shook his head. “They sent in the real guns, huh?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “They’re not even paying attention. If they were, they’d—”

  The man glanced around the job site, and Jasmine wondered how long it would take for him to notice her. After a few seconds, he settled on her and waved.

  “You Jasmine?” he shouted.

  She jumped off the tree stump. Her foot was wrapped with gauze and one of the elves on the research team had cast a healing spell on her that numbed the pain temporarily. She limped toward the man, waving back. “That’s me.”

  The man’s face lost some of its ruggedness as he searched the job site. “I got a call to come help you out. I’m Gunther Penrose. You
all right?”

  Jasmine laughed. “We were all pretty freaked out. We thought it was a monster. But it was just magic.”

  “Magic?”

  Jasmine turned and walked over to the metal chests. They were opened like clam shells, packed to the top with golden spira coins. She grabbed one of the coins and rubbed it between two fingers. It had an imprint of Old Dark himself on it.

  “God, that’s a lot of money,” Gunther said.

  “If only we could all keep some of it,” Jasmine said. “There were elven skulls on top of the gold, too. Must have been sacrifices. The crew removed those and we’ve got them in one of our tents for study. I don’t imagine you’d like to see them.”

  Gunther was too busy staring at the gold in the chests. “No, I’m not interested. Sure you don’t want me to take one of these cases off your hands?”

  “Very sure.”

  “So you’re saying that it was magic that caused all that commotion?”

  Jasmine nodded. “Whatever it was, it was pent up inside the chests for a really long time. Maybe a thousand years. When we unlocked the chests, we let it out. We still don’t know exactly what it was or who it belonged to, but it’s pretty safe to say that it must have come from Old Dark’s reign.”

  “Eh?”

  “The old dragon kept caches of magic in different places, along with gold in case he needed them. If he were ever to be weakened, the magic would revive him. You’ve heard the legends, right?”

  Color drained from Gunther’s face and his jaw was open. “Yeah, I guess I’ve heard…the legends.”

  “Anyway, the magic flew around here, knocked over a ton of stuff, scared the hell out of us.” She pointed to her foot. “I broke my foot trying to get away. But after a few minutes it flew away. Too bad we couldn’t track it. It might have led us to the old dragon’s tomb, if it ever existed in the first place.”

  “Maybe that wouldn’t have been so good,” Gunther said. “Considering what a bastard he was. You know.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jasmine said. She smiled. “But in any case, we don’t need any help. I appreciate you coming, Mr. Penrose.”

  She extended her hand. Reluctantly, the man shook it and gave her his firm, leathery hand. Three pumps, and he motioned to his men to leave.

  Laner shook his head at them as they climbed into their trucks and began to drive away.

  A bulldozer reversed, its loud beeping piercing the area. As it turned around, it crashed into a clump of trees, cracking them in half. They fell into the mud, shaking the ground, and Jasmine and Laner shielded their eyes from the cloud of dust and mud thrown into the air.

  When the air settled, the contractors were gone, the sounds of their loud machinery diminishing into the distance.

  “Who were those guys, anyway?” Laner asked.

  “Miri sent them.”

  “I didn’t know Miri to have contacts in the construction business.” Laner stared after the trucks, then his eyes drifted down to the fallen trees. He tilted his head at them.

  “What’s wrong?” Jasmine asked.

  Laner made his way across the job site and knelt near the trees. Jasmine limped after him. When she arrived, Laner was running his hand across a grooved notch where the bulldozer’s teeth had struck a tree. He swiveled and ran his hands along a nearby birch that they had catalogued in their earlier research.

  “These notches are the same,” Laner said.

  Jasmine compared the two, regarded them in silence, and then after a moment, said, “Could be.”

  “No, they are. What else could have felled a tree like that?”

  “A monster, maybe.”

  “With what teeth? Name one magical monster around here with a mouth big enough to do this kind of damage.”

  Jasmine pursed her lips. “It’s a weird coincidence, that’s for sure.”

  Laner rose, grinding wood chips in his palm. “They got here awfully quick, too, now that I think about it. Took us a few hours to find this place for the first time. We had to reverse up and down the bog roads quite a few times.”

  “We did, didn’t we?”

  “If I didn’t know any better, it looks like those guys have been here before.”

  Jasmine wanted to reach for her phone, but then she thought the better of it.

  Laner faced her. “Elves have a saying for things like this. ‘When you’re fishing and you don’t catch anything, look first for holes in the net. If there are no holes, then look inside yourself.’”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Laner pulled out his phone. His face carried a mixture of sadness, anger, and anxiety. “It means there’s more to all of this than we realize. Call Miri—we need to talk.”

  XIX

  Lucan was irritable on the ride to the factory. His shoulder was killing him.

  Miri hadn’t been able to take her eyes off his sling. She was incredulous and had watched in disbelief as he told her about Detective Shalewood’s questions.

  His phone vibrated. A reminder to take his pills. He groaned and reached into his suit coat, pulling out an orange bottle of pills.

  He preferred to use restorative magic, but the costs were too severe and with an open wound like his, the effects would be aggravated.

  He swallowed two thick white pills, winced as he swallowed. “I hate these things,” he said.

  “I still think you should be resting,” Miri said.

  Lucan rested his head against the seat. “Yeah, I’ll do that and let everything go to shit.” He cocked one eye open. “So tell me. What’s the plan with the dragon? What do we do? Play good cop, bad cop? Torture?”

  Miri chewed her lip and scribbled some notes on her notepad. The page was full of writing, and he wondered what she was doing writing at a time like this.

  “He lied to us. So we lie to him.”

  “You’re full of surprises.”

  “Dragon basics.”

  “What do we tell him?”

  Miri showed him the notes. It was a timeline with a number of steps, and arrows linking the steps together in ways that he didn’t understand.

  “Our mistake was that Old Dark was several steps ahead of us. That was my fault. I let the fact that my life’s work was living and breathing right in front of me—it distracted me. Somehow Dark sensed it. I forgot even the most basic teachings that I tell my students.”

  “Okay. You messed up. Now what?”

  “Lying to me was risky for him because he’s in a strange new place and he’s severely injured. I was the only one he could trust and he knew that.”

  “He obviously didn’t care.”

  “He wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t have a reason to take a gamble.”

  “Killing your crew was a gamble?”

  “They’re not dead. Jasmine sent me a message and told me they were okay. I’m going to call her tonight for an update.”

  “Whatever it was, I hope to God this doesn’t end up on the evening news, because if it does, we’re all screwed.”

  “Whatever his gamble was, it worked.” Miri tapped the page. On the timeline were two ticks with the words trust and gamble, followed by a large question mark. “We know his mind is still sharp. So we hit him where he’s weakest.”

  “Which is?”

  Miri grinned. “His ego.”

  “Geez. You’re worse than I thought. What do you have in mind?”

  Miri’s phone rang. She looked at it, frowned and then silenced it.

  “Who is it?” Lucan asked.

  “Laner. From the job site. It can wait.”

  They huddled over her plan as Earl turned off the highway onto the long outer road that led to the factory.

  Earl perked up. “You hear that?”

  He rolled down the window, letting the night air in. Suddenly a distant blaring ripped into the car, taking them all off guard.

  It was the sound of klaxons.

  XX

  Dark crashed through the glass ceil
ing of the factory and he shrugged the glass off as he rose into the clouds.

  His wings gave him more resistance than he expected. Their weakness reminded him when he was a young dragon learning to fly for the first time. Not impossible, but difficult.

  But still he ascended and flapped as hard as he could until the factory was a black square under him.

  Below, the city sparkled in the night sky. If he hadn’t seen it on television, it would have scared him to see such a place, with its endless parallel lines that looked like a jumble of jeweled necklaces glowing on the landscape. The lights had a coolness he had never seen before, like starlight. But it was not starlight, for the stars gleamed above.

  The wind blew from the north and he flapped once more, letting his body drift on the wind.

  A cloud lay in his path and he cruised through it, feeling a sudden shiver as he emerged on the other side. Semi-formed ice crystals stuck to his scales, but he flapped his wings and went into a barrel roll, shaking them off.

  He was far away from the factory when he realized—where was he going to go?

  The city swirled impossibly into the horizon. In the shadows of the night he couldn’t be sure of his location.

  Miri had never told him where he was. From the flatness of the ground, it looked like the western continent. The brisk humidity felt about right for a night like this.

  The fact that he couldn’t see any mountains in the distance confirmed his suspicions that he might have been on the western continent. To the west, a massive ocean lapped at the shore, and he could not discern the color of the water.

  If it were the western continent, he would have expected the waters to be gray, with a cool breeze. The eastern continent would have been surrounded by emerald waters and immaculate volcanic sands.

  But he didn’t know where he was, and under the cover of night, all he could do was hide. The land was certainly flat enough, but it didn’t have the same features he remembered. If he were truly in the future, then Crafters might have shaped the land since his reign, changing the makeup of the landscape.