Twilight of the Dragons

by Andy Remic

  “As if Vagan ain’t got enough problems,” said Narnok, “without Mother Nature getting in on the act.”

  “There’s another cruel bitch, if ever I’ve seen one,” said Kareem, wiping a sheen of water from his forehead. He gave a twisted smile, as droplets pattered from his massive bushy beard, now a glossy black pelt. His dark eyes gleamed.

  “At least she’s neutral in her hate and murder. She kills good and evil indiscriminately,” said Dek.

  “I’ve got this great story about my dogs,” began Mola.

  Everybody groaned. “Please,” said Dek, holding up his hand, his drenched sleeve flapping, “I love you like a brother, Mo. I’d kill for you, and I’d die for you. But I swear, one more story about those fucking flea-bitten mutts and I’ll toss you from this very tower myself.”

  “Flea-bitten mutts?” Mola whistled, and the huge beasts came out of the relative safety of the stairwell, and trotted to their master, growling at the other Iron Wolves as they passed. Mola fondled their shaggy pelts. In fact, they were barely dog; more between dog and wolf. “These bitches have saved my life on more than one occasion. They are family. My tribe.” He coughed, and seemed to be getting quite upset. Nobody could see his tears through the pounding rain. “They’re the only family I have left.”

  Trista moved over to him, but Duke growled. Mola rapped his knuckles on the beast’s snout. Duke subsided. Trista stepped in close, and gave the stocky man a big, rain-soaked hug.

  “We’re your family as well, Mo. Don’t forget that.”

  “Yeah. I love you guys. But you’re not the same as my dogs.”

  “Really?” She moved back, hands still planted on his shoulders, face kind. “Explain?”

  Mola looked up at the towering black storm clouds which now covered Vagan. The rain was still bouncing from his face, but he was so wet he no longer cared – you could only get so wet. Then he glanced off across the city. “People are people. They love, they hate, they fight, they fuck, they have babies, they disappoint one another, they stab each other in the back, they betray and steal and basically fuck one another over without a second thought. Men betray their wives, wives betray their husbands, best friends turn bad, work colleagues try their best to fuck over the others in a scramble to the top of the cockroach cockpile shit heap; it’s all a barrel of cheap donkey shit. But dogs. No. No, no. Dogs are loving and kind and, most importantly, loyal. Once a dog has its master, or mistress, that dog is completely loyal. It’ll kill for you. Die for you. Protect you over everything else. You can beat that dog with a stick, but it’ll still come back. A dog’s love is unconditional. It doesn’t care whether you’re human, dwarf, elf, what colour your skin is, what fucking religion you are. The dog loves the person. The person loves the image, the perception, the package. Change the package, and the deal is off. I knew this guy, had the most loving wife ever, but he got his legs cut off on the walls of Desekra. What did his loving wife do? Ran away with his best friend. Even tol’ him, she tol’ him she wasn’t looking after no disabled. That’s people, Tris. People can be real bad deep down inside.”

  “And dogs can’t be?” said Kareem, who’d put down a few rabid specimens in his time. “When dogs turn, they can turn real bad.” He said it gently; it was not a criticism.

  “But not on their masters,” said Mola, smugly. “I know these things.”

  Kareem opened his mouth to argue, but Trista gave a quick shake of her head. To Mola, dog was god and god was dog. And that didn’t even take into consideration his dyslexia.

  “I’m going to get more spears,” said Mola, face a frown, and disappeared with his hounds in tow into the depths and bowels of the tower.

  The rest of the Iron Wolves stood for a while, in silence, scanning the city. Despite the fog clearing thanks to the torrential downpour, now the clouds had blocked out the moon and stars, and the city seemed even more gloomy and claustrophobic. Some fires had been extinguished, but miraculously, many still burned. These were now the single source of illumination through the entire vast network of streets and alleys. Dark days really had come again.

  “Where is she?” muttered Dek, moving the siege crossbow around, as if taking aim. “Come on, you bitch.”

  “She’s biding her time,” said Narnok, matter-of-factly. “Either that, or we killed her.”

  “We didn’t kill her,” said Kareem, who was like a dog with a bone when an idea incepted.

  “I reckon,” said Narnok, scratching his drenched, heavily scarred face, “and just listen, before you start putting me down, but I reckon there’s a good chance we penetrated her armour, and she’s either lying down there, bleeding to death, or fucked right off and away, because she knows she can’t…”

  There came a whump.

  “…can’t really…”

  Another whump. The air seemed to shift and alter, as something blacker than the velvet darkness arose from the gloomy chasm.

  “…conquer us, like.” Narnok turned, as another whump made him stagger back, blasted by the force of air from those great, outstretched wings, and Volak was there, big and black and evil. Thunder rumbled. The Iron Wolves stared at one another. Then in sudden panic Dek spun the huge siege crossbow around as Volak breathed in, her black eyes glinting, her lips drawn back over her fangs, fire rolling around her snout, and she prepared to murder with extreme prejudice…

  Narnok paused at sentence end, mouth hanging open, like the biggest of village idiots.

  Dek hissed.

  Kareem drew back his spear…

  And lightning crackled from the sky, a great actinic zig-zag, striking Volak with a terrific splash of bright white energy, a strike which split into hundreds of fingers of lightning, crackling through the wyrm’s scales, through her limbs, through her body and snout, and spinning her around in a series of tight circles, flames bursting out along her body as she reared, wings folded, and suddenly plummeted to the hard cobbled street far below…

  Dek, Narnok and Kareem sprinted forward, leaping up onto the slippery stone battlements. They peered down into the gloom.

  “She’s down there!” crowed Narnok, triumphantly.

  “By the gods, I think it killed her!” grinned Kareem.

  “She’s all folded up, smouldering, lying still.”

  “If only we had some big rocks to drop on her,” said Narnok, idly fingering a facial scar. He looked around at the others. “What? What?”

  “Just want to make sure, eh?” said Dek, shaking his head.

  “Aye, I’ve watched her get up too many bloody times! I’d feel a little bit better if we could drop some rocks on her evil twisted hide.”

  Dek rubbed his chin, and sniffed the air. Again, thunder rumbled from the black, coalescing heavens. He could smell hot metal, scorched iron, cooked flesh. “I reckon that lightning did for her, good. Boff! The power of Mother Nature. So much for your fucking theory, eh Narnok?”

  “What theory’s that, then?”

  “You, moaning about Nature never giving us a helping hand! She bloody helped us out real good this time!”

  “Well, about time!” snapped Narnok.

  “Never happy, are you? Always moaning.”

  “Well, it’s what happens when you have a happy life, and some cunt cuckolds you, and you end up having your eye put out and horrific facial scars carved into you because of your evil bitch of an ex-wife. That kind of shit makes a man paranoid, you know what I mean?”

  “Er, Narnok?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up for a moment.”

  “No, fuck you, Dek, I won’t fucking shut up for a moment! How dare you, you pugilistic little scrawny bastard. You know how this thing goes, and you know you stabbed me in the fucking back, instead of being a friend to me, and, you know, not fucking my wife. What am I supposed to think of you when you’re the one who fucked my wife?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Why the fuck should I shut up, when I’m the one who’s injured, eh?”

  Dek spoke ver
y slowly, very carefully, his eyes swivelling up to fix on Narnok. “Because,” he said, and licked his dry lips, “the dragon is moving.”

  “Oh.” Narnok peered down.

  The distant, black, crumpled mess was indeed moving. At first it seemed she was squirming, like eels in oil, or mud-orcs in slime, but this quickly turned into an act of unfolding herself and straightening out her massive, spike-tipped wings.

  “Er,” said Dek, and met Narnok’s gaze. “Now’s the time for those bloody rocks!”

  “Bollocks! Man the fucking crossbow! I cannot believe a lightning strike only slowed her down.”

  “That’s one hardened bitch,” said Kareem, shaking his head.

  The rain pounded the Iron Wolves, lashing across the city, and Mola appeared from the stairwell carrying as many heavy spears as he could manage. He was red in the face from the climb. “Here.” He allowed the spears to tumble from his arms, where they clattered onto the stone tower’s summit floor, now awash with sheets of draining water. The gutters gurgled, sending a stream into vertical troughs cleverly built into the very fabric of the tower. They could hear the water gushing down towards street level, and probably the sewers beyond.

  “She’s getting up!” bellowed Narnok. “Let’s be ready!”

  The others each grabbed a spear, and readied themselves. Narnok was the only one standing on the battlements, on the treacherous, rain-slippery ledge.

  Thunder rumbled. A huge lightning bolt crashed down, smashing up a civic office and spreading the majority of it across a quarter of an acre.

  “Fucking bureaucrats deserve to burn,” muttered Narnok. Then, “Right lads, she’s flapping out her wings, now she’s looking up, er, it looks like she’s looking up directly at me, and that is just too fucking freaky…” He glanced back at Dek, who shrugged.

  “Get down here and grab a fucking spear, will you?”

  “Wait! Wait! She’s… she’s unfolding her wings, no, she’s folding them up again…”

  There came a mammoth, reverberating crash. The world seemed to vibrate. There were sounds of tearing wood, beams being stripped into splinters, and a roar of fire that carried heat up to them, even over such a great height.

  “Is she coming?” screamed Dek.

  Narnok turned and stared at him. His mouth flapped open and closed.

  “Narnok, you idiot! Which direction is she coming from? Speak, you bastard son of a bastard’s son!”

  “Er,” said Narnok, and his gaze swept the Iron Wolves.

  “What is it?” snapped Kareem.

  “She’s, like, gone inside the tower.”

  “Which tower?” said Dek, frowning.

  “The one on the other side of the fucking city,” snapped Narnok, gritting his teeth. “Which fucking tower do you think?”

  They stared at one another. Trista hefted a spear.

  There came more crashes, terrible rending sounds, and the tortured noise of twisting, screaming iron.

  “What’s she doing down there?” muttered Mola.

  Rain lashed across the tower-top. More towering clouds rolled in. The storm was in for the night.

  Thunder growled.

  Lightning crashed zig-zag streamers.

  And yet, despite the noise, the sounds from inside the tower were greater. Volak, seemingly, was tearing the place apart.

  Suddenly, the tower shuddered.

  The Iron Wolves looked at one another.

  “Duke, Sarge, Thrasher. To me!” Even though his voice was low, he still commanded obedience. Mola grabbed the thick, studded collars of his dogs, and frowned. “I don’t like this. What’s the bitch doing?”

  “Smashing things up in a temper?” suggested Narnok. “If I’d just been struck by lightning, I’d be smashing things up in a temper.”

  Dek scowled. “If somebody spills your fucking ale, you smash things up in a temper.”

  “Now now, lad, no need to be like that,” said Narnok.

  There came a high-pitched keening sound, a ululation which reverberated up from the bowels of the structure. And then more crashes and squeals of tearing wood, and the crunching of broken stones, crumbled walls, smashed pillars.

  “That’s louder,” said Dek, tilting his head, frowning. Thanks to some sudden inner intuition, he swivelled the siege crossbow around – away from the street – and towards the top of the stairs leading from the tower interior. “Kareem. Jump up on those battlements, tell me what you see.”

  Kareem did so. “Nothing,” he said, eventually.

  “No dragon taking to the skies?”

  “No.”

  There came a blast, and a noise like air being sucked through a pipe.

  “What was that?”

  “A fire blast,” said Kareem.

  “You saw it?”

  “I saw flames coming through a window.”

  “At ground level?”

  “No. About a third of the way up.”

  The Iron Wolves looked at one another. There was understanding in those looks. It was an uneasy understanding that did not bring happiness.

  “Fuck. She’s fighting her way up, isn’t she?” said Narnok. “Through the bricks and the beams?”

  The tower shook again. There came crashing, banging, tearing sounds. The tower trembled, like a leper in a brothel.

  A roar screamed through the tower, high-pitched and filled with hate.

  There was a whoooosh and a sound like a smith’s furnace, roaring and roaring and roaring.

  “She’s higher now,” said Kareem. To his credit, he kept the tremor from his voice, but his face was twisted, as if to say, what the fuck do we do? The fucking dragon’s climbing up the inside of the tower? There’s no way out!

  Again, the structure trembled. Shook. Rain lashed down. Thunder rumbled. Lighting cracked the sky like a bad egg.

  Suddenly, there was a tearing sound. Trista leapt back as a zig-zag of black raced across the floor, crackling, almost like a lightning strike, or a mockery of one. The others stepped back, and shared nervous glances.

  “She’s going to bring the whole fucking thing down,” rumbled Dek.

  “Have we pissed her off that much?” scowled Narnok.

  “I think you have, mate!”

  They considered this. Volak, Queen of the Wyrms. A killer of humans. A killer of dragons. Unchallenged. Not only had Narnok insulted her repeatedly, and buried his axe in the soft tissue of her throat, he’d also been instrumental in torching her like a criminal, like a murderer, like a witch.

  Was it safe to assume Volak would stop at nothing to see him dead?

  Narnok nodded to himself, face pale beneath the onslaught of the storm.

  On Volak came, smashing and destroying, and the Iron Wolves readied their spears. Mola’s dogs were growling something horrid, big strings of saliva drooling from jaws ready to kill. Only this time, unfortunately, it wasn’t another dog, or even a man. It was a beast considerably larger.

  Kareem still stood on the battlements, clutching a spear.

  And he blinked.

  “There’s something coming,” he said.

  “Something? King’s Guard? Desekra Fifth Infantry? Cavalry? What is it, lad? What is it?”

  “I… don’t know.”

  Kareem watched the shapes pounding down the street. The light was nearly non-existent. And the shapes were… too weird, too big, too misshapen.

  “They’re monsters,” he said, eventually, his voice soft with horror and respect.

  “What you fucking talking about, lad?” boomed Narnok, and ran towards him. But at that moment there came a scream, and a smash, and stones blasted upwards, went flying outwards, and a head appeared in the stairwell. It reared, like a serpent from the ocean, black, elongated, equine, dark eyes glittering, flames flickering around a snout filled with razor-sharp fangs and a promise of death.

  Volak surveyed the Iron Wolves.

  “So here you hide,” she said. “Like the fucking cowards you are.”

  Narnok jump
ed down from the battlements, Kareem’s grab missing him, and brandished his axe in both hands, terribly scarred face puckered into some kind of nightmare. “You remember me, wyrm?” He made the word wyrm sound like cunt. In fact, he said it. “You’re a dragon cunt. Slick, and ready to be fucked. So bend over. Narnok’s going to teach you a lesson.”

  Volak stared at him. Black pupils dilated in black eyes.

  Kareem swallowed.

  “Fuck,” hissed Trista.

  Fire swirled around Volak’s snout…

  “You want fucking?” said Mola, his voice so quiet and gentle it could hardly be heard around the buffeting and fury of the storm. Then his arm suddenly came back, and he launched his spear with unnerving accuracy. Volak’s head, wedged in the stairwell she’d smashed her way into, could barely manoeuvre. The spear flew from Mola’s fist, powered by a smouldering fury. Fuck with my dogs? he wanted to scream. Burn my dogs, will you?

  The spear flew, and slammed into Volak’s left orb.

  It split, like a ripe melon under a sharpened axe.

  Volak screamed, head thrashing from side to side, smashing bricks and timbers.

  The tower groaned.

  More cracks zigzagged across the tower top, splitting the battlement.

  Stones tumbled from the tower’s summit.

  The world seemed to pause… a hush, a sigh, a hiatus in time.

  And then, in slow-motion, stones started to crumble. The base of the huge stone tower bowed outwards, sagging like the shit-filled pants of a terminal alcoholic; the tower moaned, and shifted. More stones crumbled, popping free of the main walls like lost dice in a game of Stab the Officer. Like teeth knocked free by Dek in the Fighting Pits, his left cross and right hook legendary in fighting circles.

  The tower groaned.

  A dying sea creature.

  A moaned resonance of desolation from Sayansora alv Drakka. The Drakka. The Sea of Trees.

  The Suicide Forest.

  Where people went to die.

  Narnok and Dek caught one another’s eyes.