At the end of the third day I was worried that she may not know where the dragon was at all, and the entire agreement was an elaborate ruse to convince me to give up. Considering how sure she was that I was going to fail, I decided to press her for more information to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time.
We had settled into taking turns to provide meals and it was my turn when we made camp that night. I waited until we were comfortably into our dinner before I started my questions. It was a cooler night and we had made a fire. Candle sat in it between us.
“Has the dragon attacked anywhere else in the past year?”
“Aside from the two villages on this road, no. No other settlements, just travelers on the road. I’ve heard similar rumors from other cities of similar attacks. Too far away to be the same dragon. They’re rare and few enough that they usually leave people alone. Now, after so long, they’re attacking. Maybe someone provoked them. It’s odd.”
I nodded along as she spoke. It wasn’t the information I wanted but it was strange to think about it. Our village had never threatened anything as far as I knew, but I had just been a boy. It had slaughtered most of us without much effort.
“There must be a reason behind the attacks.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” she shrugged. “I’ve heard stories about how they were hunted nearly to extinction many centuries ago by hundreds of wizards working together, not just a single one alone thinking he can do the impossible. Maybe they’ve recovered their numbers now. Maybe it’s that simple. Maybe there are no other attacks and it is just this one dragon. Rumors have a way of spreading and then coming back as a different story.”
“What have you heard about my dragon, then?”
“A brown dragon that destroyed a village. The road here is considered blocked and gone, like it was a river that dried up. Some merchants try to walk the road anyway and most vanish. Some make it and speak of the forest burning as they walk through it. Are you having second thoughts?” she asked suddenly.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I replied firmly. Candle flared up in the fire between us, reacting to the stern tone in my voice.
“Feisty thing. Protective of you. That’s good,” she said. “It’ll be a few more days until we find it. I only know that people say not to take this road. Eventually we’ll come near the part that they avoid. You can probably already imagine what that will be like.”
She went to sleep after that. I stayed awake for a while longer and then left Candle soaking up the fire. It was another two days before I saw that Kate had been right. She collected less samples from the forest but doubled her efforts in dissuading me. I often got angry at her and refused to answer her taunts, which she seemed to take as a sign that they were working.
It was late into the afternoon when I began to see the ash. It lay sporadically over the road and the grass either side of us. We slowed our walk as if the ash was still hot and dangerous, something that warranted careful steps as we trudged closer to where it covered increasingly more of the road.
We stopped when we saw the clearing up ahead. The trees didn’t gradually lessen and give way to a field. They abruptly ended a few meters ahead of us where the dirt road became black. It looked like a warning, a scorched message on the earth to keep people away. As I stepped closer I saw that it was just a symptom of the dragon’s destruction. A huge scar burned into the landscape.
The sky above us was a clear blue. It was a calm summer day and the way the wrecked road sat below it gnawed at me. It didn’t seem right or natural. The day should have been dark and gloomy. Rain should have been pouring down to mix with the ash and heal the land.
We walked forward and stopped with our feet on the edge of burnt earth. I could see where the road continued on the other side. I looked to my right and I could see where the fire had stopped in that direction: crumbling, black stumps of trees and relatively intact ones behind it. I turned to my left and I could not see where the forest resumed. The damage was like an infected wound, scabbed over and stretching toward the horizon.
“I can see why no one would travel the road,” I said without turning to Kate.
“Most would turn back from this,” she agreed. “Brave ones would turn right here and walk deep into the trees. They would cut around this entire area and walk for hours before going back to the road. Fools would cut straight across to the other side.”
“And I am going left. Where I have no trees to hide under. Walking straight to the source of the fire.”
“And what does that make you?”
I turned back to her and found her staring directly at me.
‘Tower,” she said. “We can turn around. I can take you to a city where they will shower you in gold for just a fraction of the magic you can show. I do not believe you taught yourself. Would your teacher want you to throw your life away like this?”
I smiled despite not being able to answer her. I wondered if my Tower had the same journey coming to the dragon as I had, knowing things are different for each of us. Had he known he was walking to his death or did he have a glimmer of hope that he would be the first to succeed, just like I did now? I thought of the next Tower, the boy I had left behind, and wondered if I would want him to do what I was about to do.
“I’ll wait here then,” she said after I didn’t fill the silence. “I’ll give you until the morning to change your mind and come back.”
I nodded at her. Her mouth was a tight line and her eyebrows were furrowed severely. When she spoke it was as though her lips barely parted at all.
“I’m not a coward for not following you. It’s not cowardice to not follow you over the cliff you insist on jumping over.”
It was surreal to hear her consider herself anything close to cowardly. Without my magic I would not have dared to sneak into a camp of half a dozen trolls, never mind taking them on with a short sword and a knife. I nodded at her a second time and then dropped my half of her packs and bags at her feet. I stepped away and off the road, my boots pressing down into the soft layer of ash that covered the ground.
I stopped and looked back when I was almost out of her sight. She looked like she was shaking her head. She thought I had no idea what I was doing and, for all my battles in the underground, all the practice and weaving of fire and lightning, she was right. I took Candle out of my pocket and put him on my shoulder. We walked through the ash together. The two of us alone again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The ash was coarse as I walked through it. I had to tuck my trouser legs into my boots as I approached the deeper parts. It was unevenly spread even along the path of the dragon’s destruction. In parts it was shallow and had been blown away by the wind. In others it had been swept together around the remains of tree trunks.
I found huge patches where the ash had been crushed into the ground. The dirt below it was firmer and solid there. I wondered if the dragon slept in different places along this path or if it had burned its way through more of the forest as time went on. I didn’t know if I was going to find the dragon sleeping or have him swoop down at me from the air. I kept myself alert and connected to the magic in the harness as I walked on.
Candle alternated which shoulder he sat on as we walked. He seemed curious about the ash. He was used to sitting in piles of it or collecting soot on his core after sleeping over a wick. He was excited by what we were surrounded by but unwilling to jump down onto his feet. I wondered if he was able to tell what kind of fire caused the destruction around us. Maybe he could feel a danger from it that I could not.
It was early evening when we reached the river. It had long since turned west and left the north road we followed and we had walked far enough to meet it again. The water was a surreal break in the black streak, a clear rush of water and then more of the charred earth on the other side. The forest was intact along the river and we waded through it at the most shallow point we could find. Candle hissed at the water even as I held him above
it.
We neared the dragon soon after the river was behind us. There was no roar or screeching. Nothing so fierce or deafening as the cries of a krogoth in the underground. The dragon was sleeping fearlessly at the end of the wound it had burned across the forest. It didn’t need to worry or warn anything away with a howl. The mere sight of it was enough to send anything scurrying away.
I stood and felt my heart in my chest, like I had throughout so many fights before. Those times I would start to feel it in the middle of the fight, part way through channeling energy to barely scrape through and survive. The dragon was slumbering in front of me and didn’t even know I was there, and already my heart was racing.
Candle was unmoving on my shoulder. We had spent so many nights in the tower preparing for a fight like this. I still don’t know if he knew then that it was leading up to this battle. I stepped forward and he slid down my back and stood next to me. I took out my pouch of gemstones and scattered them on the ground. I reached out with my focus and could feel them, even if they were lost to my eyes amongst the ash. The dragon stirred as I gathered my focus but did not wake up.
The sky was darkening but it was still too bright and calm for such a monster to be in front of me. I reached for the dagger at my back and slid it out of the harness. I could feel my connection to both sources of their power and the pockets of gemstones out before me. I had done all that I could to prepare and I still felt like a child, groping its toy weapon against the monster. The dagger felt too small in my hand, like I was about to try to cut down a tree with a butter knife.
I took a breath and focused energy through my body. Fire sprang to life along my arms and shoulders, tethered between my hands, my dagger, and the harness. Candle flared up on the ground beside me, swelling to double his usual size as he tapped into the energy in his core. I gathered my magical focus and lunged out with it at the dragon, ready to feed the magic I held through that focus point.
The dragon woke up instantly. My focus collided with something I had never felt before. It roared out of anger, furious that it had been woken up and I felt my focus be swatted away from it as if it were a bothersome fly. This wasn’t a resistance to magic I was feeling, this was like gathering around another wizard. Suddenly I knew I had misunderstood what I had read about a dragon channeling fire instead of breathing it. It had a focus of its own, far stronger and more powerful than mine, able to divert my channel as though they were nothing.
The beast slouched forward and stretched its legs and wings. It was even larger than I remembered. I didn’t even know how that was possible after over a decade of nightmares embellishing its size and strength. I thought of all the times I had been in the underground and wondered if the dragon would have even been able to fit into most of the chambers down there.
It looked directly at me and turned its head, considering me for a moment as the flames began to gather around its wings. It was a nightmare come to life and I frantically battered my focus against the impenetrable wall of its magic. I could feel the staggering force of the power beneath its scales, as if the monster itself was made entirely out of sollite, while I clung to the tiny pieces that I thought were filled with powerful magic.
The fire gathered at its mouth into a ball of flames and it was shot toward me. I reacted instinctively and brought the gems up from the ash. Those, at least, I could gather around outside of the dragon. I sprang three of them into the air and spread them into barriers, blocking the ball of fire. It crashed through the first two and they shattered like glass. The third deflected the fire and it fell harmlessly to the ground. It burst open like a droplet of water, splashing fire among the ash.
The dragon tilted its head the other way now. It regarded me like it had the old wizard in my village. I wasn’t even a threat to it. More of a curiosity. I gathered the fire again around my arms and set my focus as close to the dragon’s defenses as I could. I led with the dagger and the fire spewed forth from its tip, swirling into a raging river of flames. It reached my focus and I pushed it on blindly, not able to aim it precisely at the dragon’s head but compelling it forward as strong as I could channel.
The monster lifted its head and I saw my fire being swept up around its body. My own magic was plucked so easily out of the air and now swirled around the dragon’s wings as if it had been its all along. It added its own power to the fire and its scales began to glow with the strain of heat so close to it. My own fire and the dragon’s met at the end of its snout and streamed toward me.
I flailed wildly for the gems and they flew at the fire. They snapped out into barriers that I put all of the magic in the harness behind. The energy I had channeled with the trolls had nowhere to go, but this time it left my body and was barely enough to hold the gemstone shields together as the torrents of fire slammed into them.
I don’t know when I started to scream. The barriers were broken and swept away near the end and it was the energy I channeled alone that fought back against the flames. When they finally stopped I fell forward from the force I had been pressing against. I landed face first into the ash and craned my head up to the dragon. Its eyes were narrowed as if it was confused with what it was seeing.
The gems around me were gone. The harness was completely drained of power. I still held the dagger in my hand. Candle was a few meters to my right. He had grown in size from the fire around him but he was still rigid in place. I looked at him as the ground began to shake. The dragon was walking toward me and each step sent a shock wave of force through the ground.
I decided I wouldn’t die on my belly with my head down. I got to my feet as it drew closer. Each of one of its steps was easily twenty of mine but I stood against them.
There was still so much magic in the dagger and I threw it against the monster, determined to put up a fight even as it came close enough to eat me. I threw lightning recklessly out in front of me. The bolts of energy punched through the air and bounced off the dragon’s scales. It was its magic, catching and diverting even the instant arcs of lightning as easily as it did to my fire.
Its head was above me when it stopped. Still I poured my energy at it. The lightning cascaded down my arms, crisscrossing over my flesh like a second skin and then spewing over the dragon’s head, uselessly parting around its flesh and shooting off into the sky above it. It did nothing and the dragon was close enough that I could feel its breath.
I was close enough that I couldn’t see the fire begin to flicker around its wings. I could feel it with my magic and sensed that it was more energy that it had spent in either of its last attacks. I was worth that at least, I thought, and I spread my arms open to the fire that I could see creeping along its neck and racing to coalesce at its mouth. This was how Tower died. I finally had my answer as I stood there ready for the flames. Tower had come here alone and had been burned into the ashes that were all around me. I finally had my answer.
The dragon roared at the strain of the magic it was wielding down toward me and I looked up at my death. I saw something move as the fire plummeted down at me. It moved in front of me and then the fire stopped, swirling in place between me and the dragon and gaining size and strength and then I realized that I wasn’t Tower and that I wasn’t alone.
Candle was between us and all of the dragon’s fire and magic that it had summoned down to incinerate me was now being caught by him. The monster had invested too greatly into the attack. It had committed too much and couldn’t stop the scorching blaze that was now being gathered in front of its head.
My familiar grew as the magic flooded into him. His body of fire exponentially grew until I could barely see the dragon behind him. He was a raging inferno of energy and fire, burning hot and bright between us. The sollite core in the center of him was brightest of all, searing its image into my eyes as if I was staring directly into the sun. It hurt to look at but I couldn’t take my eyes from him.
The dragon roared as the last of its magic left it and Candle swarmed up around its head. The monster wa
s the one screaming now as its fire was turned back on it, melting the flesh beneath its scales and burst them open. Its eyes were pink and cooked in seconds but still Candle fought on, his fire consuming everything. The sounds of his crackling fire were joined by a low whine and I couldn’t tell if it came from him or the dragon. It sounded like something was dying.
The fire kept burning and the dragon reared its head back, slashing futilely through the flames around its head with its front claws. Candle’s core grew brighter as the assault went on, burning the dragon the most wherever it passed. It was blind and being boiled alive and it screamed in agony.
There was a pause before it happened. The dragon slumped down forward and I saw Candle’s core go still in front of its face. The whine grew louder and I knew suddenly that it was from him, not the monster. His core went dark for the briefest moment and then burst open in an explosion of light and force that knocked me back away from it.
Candle’s core shattered. The shards blasted from the dragon’s head. Some were embedded in its exposed, roasted flesh and others I could feel scattered in the ash around us. I knew then that he was gone and it wasn’t sadness or loss that I felt but anger. The same rage that had been festering in me for so many years that the dragon was still alive and my family wasn’t. That the dragon was still alive and Tower wasn’t. That the dragon was still alive and Candle wasn’t.
I surged forward and used the energy in my own body this time. I ran as I gathered around the dagger and shot it out of my hand and into the smoldering remains of the dragon’s eye. The blade pierced into it cleanly and the monster thrashed to life from the pain of it. It raised its head and flames once again, recklessly this time, rushed over its body.
The dagger was the connection I needed. My focus was linked to it already and I was faster. Candle had done his work well and the lightning I formed came from both me and the dagger embedded in the dragon’s flesh. The power of them linked and I joined my hands together and released all that I had left into that attack.
The Wizard And The Dragon Page 25