by Andy Remic
And then the scene accelerated in the blink of an eye, and they were flying towards the mountains, rearing high over snowy peaks, then slam into the eye of a needle, a long dark tunnel leading down, impossibly down, so tight they all screamed as they believed they would crash and crumble and disintegrate. Down, twisting, turning, wings tight behind her back as the dragon suddenly entered a vast, open cavern, a cavern as big as a city, sporting huge stalactites and stalagmites, millions of years old. Jagged teeth spread across the floor and roof alike, making the cavern appear as some huge, vast mouth, sporting a million teeth and waiting to chomp down on the tiny insects who dared invade this huge giant.
They fell, and at the last moment levelled across a great dark lake. It was ink-black, and still like glass. Below, they could see the reflection of their own image – and they could see a dragon, huge and spiked and scaled and terrifying. Wings slapped a boom, and ripples pounded across the surface creating huge waves. They… she… flew beyond the lake, and into another wide tunnel – so wide, it could have taken a thousand dragons side by side, and it flowed down deep into the bowels of the Karamakkos, deep below even what the dwarves had achieved, down, towards Wyrmblood…
Beetrax, Dake, Sakora, Talon, Jael, they were dizzy with speed and power and a soaring sense of vastness.
How could something be so big?
And then they emerged, and below them sat Wyrmblood, and the city shone.
A world spread out before their eyes. It wasn’t just a city, but an underground world, lit by a soft golden light. There were massive square buildings, pyramids, towers with intricate designs, all fashioned from silver, and gold, a vast world of precious metals. There were towers of bronze, arches of silver, glittering roads of golden cobbles weaving through the vast, empty place. There were palaces fashioned from precious stones, which shimmered in different, hazy hues. There was a river, cutting the huge city in two. It flowed with a sluggish demeanour. It was a river of molten platinum.
There were towers of pure diamond, bridges of glowing ruby, each brick a gem bigger than a man’s fist. There were huge churches and halls and palaces, each one fashioned from precious metals, from gemstones, from what humans would consider riches but the denizens of Wyrmblood had used as everyday building materials.
And they flowed down, suddenly, sinking below this unbelievable show of wealth, down through golden cobbles, down through the river of platinum, down, to a cool dark place, a secret place never before witnessed by human eyes, by dwarf eyes, by any eyes other than the royalty of the Blood Dragon Empire.
And, stretching away to all sides, was a vast chamber.
The floor was covered by a thousand eggs… ten thousand eggs.
Dragon eggs.
Waiting to hatch.
Waiting to populate the Empire once again.
* * *
Beetrax’s eyes snapped open and he gave a short, sharp bark. “What the fuck,” he muttered, and realised he was holding Dake’s hand. He shook it free, as if he’d been holding the diseased paw of a leper.
Uneasily, they looked around.
“They were dragon eggs?” said Talon, gently.
“Yes.” Lillith nodded. She was incredibly sombre.
“And they are going to hatch? Thousands and thousands of them?” whispered Sakora.
“Yes,” said Lillith.
“What will make them hatch? What’s the trigger?” Dake scratched his chin, frowning. “I was under the impression those imprisoned dragons had been slaves to the Harborym for thousands of years. So why didn’t the eggs hatch then?”
“I don’t know,” said Lillith. “But I can… feel, sense, that now the dragons are awake, once their initial fury and acts of revenge are complete, they will come back. To their city. To Wyrmblood. And once there are thousands of them, we will never be able to halt their onslaught.”
“What are the dwarves doing about it?” rumbled Beetrax.
Lillith shrugged. “Nothing. Or maybe they don’t even know. I think they discovered Wyrmblood, and released the imprisoned minds of the dragons, allowing them to escape from the Dragon Engine. By accident, of course. Or maybe by design.”
“So let me get this right,” snapped Beetrax. “You want us to go down through that city of treasure, find the eggs, and destroy them before the dragons come back and hatch them? Or the world will be overrun by thousands of dragons, and we’ll be, like, dragon-fucked?”
“That’s about it,” said Lillith.
Beetrax frowned. “But we can, like, fill our pockets en route, so to speak?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want, Trax.”
Beetrax scratched his beard. “And, er, like, if I was to find these fabled and very expensive Dragon Head jewels, then they’d be mine?” He looked around. “Ours. To keep.”
“Yes,” nodded Lillith. “And as I said, they have incredible healing properties.” She very carefully did not look at Dake, who was pale, eyes drooping, body-language that of a warrior in defeat.
“Well, I’m fucking in,” growled Beetrax. “If there’s one thing I’ll risk my life for, not counting saving my friends of course, it’s a backpack full of loot.” He grinned, showing a cracked tooth.
Lillith looked around the group. Friends. Heroes. Men and women she would fight for. Men and women she would die for. Comrades she’d known for years, whom she trusted with every atom of her life, every breath, every fibre of her soul.
“Let’s go to work,” she said, with a smile.
The Mountain
Skalg paused, panting, tears running down his cheeks, snot dangling from his nostrils, his face twisted in agony, his limbs trembling, his fingernails bleeding, and his whole frame shaking as if he were producing great racking sobs at the funeral of his mother. He looked up, up the steep rocky slope ahead of him. It was sheer and violent, jagged and uneven, black, speared by mineral lodes of blood red which made the whole thing look like a series of open wounds in a burned corpse.
Skalg let out a sob, eyes blinking away more tears of pain and frustration, for this was frustrating, the most frustrating thing he’d ever been through since that fateful day when the mine collapsed and buried him alive and broke his spine, and he’d lain there, weeping, ruminating about his pointless existence and his lack of money or power or importance, and how now he’d die under the mountain, unloved and nameless and forgotten. For the mountain gives, and the mountain takes away. The mountain had taken away his mobility, but by crippling him, it had given him a new hate, a fresh determination to crawl his way to the top of the pile of cockroaches called The Church of Hate and tread on every face that looked up in awe at his violent ascent. But here, and now, Skalg had had his power and influence removed. His wealth meant nothing in this place of cool air and jagged mountain rock. And he gritted his teeth, his eyes burned bright and he pushed himself onwards.
No secondhand god is going to beat me, he thought.
Ahead, he glimpsed the silver-skinned boy. A peal of childish laughter reverberated down the mountainside, down the rocky spine on which Skalg clung like a limpet waiting for the waves to crash down.
I will not stop.
I will not give in.
I am my own master, now.
On he climbed, waddling slowly upwards, his powerful bleeding fingers clutching at rocks and ridges, hauling himself up, each pull and tug sending spears of pain not just down his twisted spine, but through his trembling arms, his agonised fingers, pounding his knees with sledgehammers of effort, grinding his hips like mashed meat in a butcher’s sausage machine.
He stopped to rest, slumping down, then rolling onto his back on the slope. He wedged his boots against a lip of rock, and lay, crooked and disjointed, like a broken corpse. More laughter echoed down from the rocks above. Skalg scowled, fuelled even more by anger and hate than ever before.
With the back of one swarthy hand he wiped sweat from his brow, and he could taste salt in his beard. His mouth was parched, and he would have happily begged on
his knees for just a sip of water, but decided he would not.
What, call to that silver worm Mokasta for help? I’d rather die.
His eyes surveyed the plain below. He had made some considerable height, and the land was distant, a platter of black surrounded by jagged teeth. The whole scene appeared as some huge mouth out of which he was making an escape. Skalg gave a wry smile. It was a fitting simile.
Now, he could glimpse beyond several of the low mountains. Far off in the distance he could determine greenery: rolling hills, a forest, a lake. Suddenly, this lifted his heart, for surely it was a nirvana to which he now climbed? Yes, he was suffering now, but his ultimate objective was a place of peace and beauty. It elevated him a little, and he turned, and went to rise but suddenly lost his footing, boot scraping, and he started to slide down the rocky slope, arms flailing, sharp stones digging into his limbs and his twisted back. He bounced, and slid, and rolled, until he slammed with jarring force into a luckily placed boulder – lucky for Skalg, for if the boulder had not been so positioned, he would have sailed out over an abyss and fallen to a bone-crushing death far below, probably to a soundtrack of Mokasta’s sonorous laughter.
Skalg lay there, panting, thanking the Great Dwarf Lords for his good fortune. And then he remembered it was because of the Great Dwarf Lords he was in this predicament! And so he cursed them instead, vehemently, as pain rioted through his entire body and he wept, tears coursing down his cheeks, as above him, more laughter echoed.
After a considerable time, as his body grew stiff with chill, Skalg finally roused himself.
Fuck you, he thought.
Fuck you all.
Fuck the world.
I’ll fucking show you.
I’ll not be broken.
I will fucking show you what a fractured cripple can do, you shower of horse shits!
Skalg gritted his teeth, and ignoring the pain, and the cold which seeped through his bones, he pushed himself up, and he looked up the mountain as a breeze murmured across him, and without any further words, moans, grumblings or whimpers, Skalg, First Cardinal of the Church of Hate, began to climb.
* * *
Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. Skalg did not comprehend how long it took him. There was no passing of day or night here, but then Skalg was used to that, living under the mountain. And as he climbed, and forced himself ever onwards, he kept relaying the same mantra, over and over and over and over: the mountain gives, and the mountain takes away. But in Skalg’s experience, the mountain gave to those who worked fucking hard for it.
There had been a famous playwright, not that the Harborym Dwarves were big on playwrights or the theatre in general – give a dwarf an ale and pig slab, and he was as happy as a mine donkey when the harness is removed. However, in some more cultured circles there had grown an interest in what the dwarves called The Less Coarse Arts, and without that umbrella of more mild entertainments than axe throwing and drinking to be sick, came literature, and study, and artistry, and the theatre. Admittedly, many early performances had simply aped the reality of life under the mountain: quaffing, mining, more quaffing. But as the art of the stage developed, so it became more sophisticated. Now, Skalg was reminded of a rather pithy orator and ink scribe, known as Demakkos de Shakkos, who had quipped the most amazing statement (to Skalg’s mind) the First Cardinal had ever heard.
Demakkos de Shakkos?
Yes?
You are doing extremely well for yourself!
Why, thank you.
But tell me… aren’t you incredibly lucky to have got where you are?
Yes. But the funny things is… the harder I work, the fucking luckier I get.
And now, Skalg realised, the harder he worked, the harder he climbed, the luckier he would get. Because these were the Great Dwarf Lords. The fucking gods. And they were testing him. So fuck pain. Fuck anguish. Fuck fear. Fuck everything. Because Skalg wanted to get to the top of that mountain. Skalg wanted to know what was on offer. What the deal was. What was in it for him.
Time had no meaning. After pain, after more torture, Skalg slumped exhausted to a rock. He teetered on the brink of unconsciousness. And he remembered. Remembered Anya. From before the mine collapse. When life had been simple. When life had been normal. And now, on that mountainside, with a cool breeze playing across his tortured flesh, with sweat stinging his eyes, and salt in his beard, Skalg thought back to Anya, and how they’d met, and how everything had seemed perfect. But things can quickly change. Skalg thought he’d been in love, but what is love? Skalg was poor and lonely and flattered. But it didn’t take long – didn’t take long for Anya to show her true colours. He still remembered, standing there as she screamed at him, red face with fury, wagging her finger, spittle flying from her lips. She’d grabbed his hand, tried to force him to hit her but he’d shied back, pulled away. I’m not like that, he said. And back then, he wasn’t. Back then, he’d been…
Skalg smiled, lying on that mountain rock.
Skalg had been kind, one day.
Loving, and honest, and kind. As his parents brought him up to be.
His life with Anya got worse, went from psychopathic explosion to psychopathic explosion. And then his mother died. Skalg fell into a well of sleep. And he remembered. And he dreamed.
* * *
Watching her lying in bed. Weight had fallen from her. Her skin was grey. She was no longer the stocky, powerful dwarf of his childhood. No. She had shrunk, and withered, muscles wasting away.
“I love you,” he said, looking into her sad, watery eyes.
“I know, son,” she said, and patted his hand as if he were a little boy again. Which to her, maybe he was. Maybe he’d always been.
“I love you so much,” he murmured, tears falling down through his beard, and pattering like raindrops on the tiles.
A long moment of silence. Skalg wanted to climb inside her, find the evil cancers, tear them out with his bare hands, with his fucking teeth. But that would not happen. Could not happen. For it was an impossibility, and he just had to accept that she was (shhh)
…dying.
He watched her. Watched her rasping breathing. Her eyes had closed once more, and every now and again her entire body would tense, as if a ripple of intense pain was passing through her, like a wave rolling up a jagged shore, like razor blades in her bloodstream.
Suddenly, she jumped, and Skalg jumped. Her hands clenched his, and although the muscles had dropped from her, as if she’d melted in a terrible furnace, her grip was so powerful it made Skalg gasp and cringe.
“Where’s Renyak?”
Skalg’s eyes narrowed, and he wanted to say, “Renyak knows you’re dying, mother, he’s known for the past four weeks; but Renyak is a cunt, and not even thought to visit his old dying mum. That is what your eldest son is like – filled with bitterness and jealousy, filled with a fucking pettiness so vast it cannot bridge itself to come and see you, to visit the woman who nurtured him as a babe, suckling him at her breast, wiping his shitty arse, teaching him right and wrong, feeding him, nurturing him, loving him until he could go out into the world and stand on his own two feet. Oh no. Renyak is selfish and petty beyond all fucking belief. Five times I’ve told him of you lying here, during your final days, your final hours, but he cannot see past his own… immaturity.”
Skalg took a deep breath. He bit his tongue. He bit back the acid bile. He clenched his fist. He narrowed his eyes. And he forced himself to say, “Renyak is on his way. He loves you. He will be here.”
Skalg’s mothered settled back with a small smile, and her breathing was harsh, fast, a hunted deer, a fish without water, lying beside the pond, stranded, flapping, unable to do anything but flap, and gasp, and die.
A blur. Snapshots.
And it was over.
She lay, rigid, face contorted in pain.
At that moment Skalg realised an important fact of life: there is no nobility in death. There is no honour. No glory. There are no weeping fucking angels.
There is just pain, and misery, a great sense that the universe is unfair, that the gods mock us, and there is certainly no Heaven.
Funeral.
Renyak.
The Wake.
“You fucking cunt!”
Brawling with him between the tables, punches flying, Skalg kicking him repeatedly in the face, kicking out his teeth, crushing his nose until blood ran like fucking Xashak Red.
Long hours.
Sleeping.
Wishing he was dead, tears like molten metal scorching his cheeks.
It was the early days with Anya. She was there to help him. There to take control. There to put a cold compress on his blackened eyes and his swollen cheeks and knuckles. And slowly, Skalg had come back to the world of the living. A little more bitter. A little more cynical. But with Anya by his side, making him solid, eternal; a rock to which he could cling. Until, after all the arguments, he realised.
Realised what she wanted.
His mother’s money.
The. Fucking. Money.
Skalg’s mother had not been wealthy, but she’d saved studiously for years. Her money, much of it in small gold pieces and diamonds, so beloved of the Harborym, had been divided between Renyak and Skalg equally. Because that was fair. Even though Renyak was a sulky toddler, an adult with a child’s perspective. “She preferred you to me. You were her favourite. That’s why I never visited her when she was dying. I was cast aside. She loved you more than she loved me.” Bang. Fist in jaw.
But Anya, Anya was better, more intelligent, more sneaky. A real snake-in-the-grass. Waiting for her moment. To rear up and bite… or at least, fill a small leather satchel with Skalg’s mother’s money, and leave him. There was a note on the table.
* * *
I took the money. Because it’s mine.