“I’m sorry about that, King Qheonex, king of kings. It was an accident.”
“More like King Deus-Ex,” Harris muttered to no one and chuckled to himself.
“I worked an entire weekend building that for you, Wiggy,” the giant said to his pet.
“Sorry.”
The giant began to turn back toward the castles. Harris felt an unearned relief as their certain doom was forestalled by an unforeseen, god-like force. He wiped his brow with his sleeve.
“Let’s go,” Ana said.
They all began to run to the portal, again.
“I’m probably going to regret this,” the dragon said from above.
Harris couldn’t help but look back as he ran.
The dragon turned its head and chomped down on the giant’s hand. The giant bellowed in pain and dropped his pet, who immediately spread its wings and took flight.
“Wiggy!”
The dragon tucked its wings and dove.
The humans picked up their pace, again.
Looking back, Harris thought he saw the dragon changing size. It seemed to shrink until it was about the same size as Jake. It also changed its trajectory. It was now flying directly for the portal.
The ground shook, knocking Harris off his feet. A monumental foot, wearing a monumental boot, had come down way too close to his relatively tiny body. Harris picked himself back up and ran.
The giant swiped at his shrunken pet, knocking the dragon off-course.
Harris was close to the portal now. He could see Marian inside, straining to hold it open for them. She looked like death warmed up in the microwave.
“Hurry!” Marian called, her voice weak. “I can’t hold this open much longer.”
The dragon, who must have regained his course, now flew out ahead of them. He was going to make it to the portal first. Harris considered throwing his shield, but he knew he’d never hit the dragon, especially now that it had made itself small enough to fit through the portal. Even if Harris connected, a glancing blow wouldn’t stop Zoth-Avarex.
A large pile of gold began to take shape to the left of the portal. It seemed to bubble up out of the ground like a spring. Gold coins, jewels, and chalices of varying sizes piled up and shined.
The dragon, apparently unable to help itself, changed course and headed for the gold.
Ana smiled as she tucked her wand away.
They were very close to the portal now, Jake running in the lead.
The dragon, however, was only momentarily distracted by the illusion. It shook its head in flight and turned back toward the portal.
Jake, who now stood between the dragon and the portal, stopped and raised his sword. He lunged forward as the dragon arrived, swinging the sword in a wide arc over his head. The blade sliced into the dragon’s shoulder. With a shriek of pain, the beast crashed into the ground, exploding dirt and rock into the air around it.
The dragon’s momentum knocked the sword from Jake’s grasp. Both the sword and the fallen dragon came to rest just in front of the portal.
With difficulty, the dragon pushed itself to its feet and limped ahead. Its muzzle was about to push past Marian and into the locker room when Jake tackled the beast from the side.
Dragon and man rolled over each other in a tangle of fighting limbs. Jake punched the dragon in the snout, but he seemed to hurt his hand more than his target. The dragon didn’t take long to gain the upper hand, pinning Jake with relative ease. It looked down on the helpless human with a wry smile. Once again, its spikes raised. Its throat glowed orange and its eyes flashed with fierce intensity.
Harris tossed his shield by the portal and jumped on the dragon’s back, between its wings. He wrapped an arm around its scaly neck and pulled back as hard as he could.
Ana rushed over and bolted the dragon in the eye with her wand.
Xop fell on the dragon’s wing and bit into it.
With a roar of pain and frustration, the dragon rose up and shook, sending Harris and Xop flying at random toward the portal. Zoth-Avarex took a pained, limping step to the portal.
Xop had rolled away, and Harris was now the only thing between the dragon and the portal. He scooped up his untested protective rune shield and held it in front of him.
You want to get the fuck out of my way.
Harris shook his head, trying to dislodge the invading voice.
You’re weak. You’re a coward, and you’re lame as hell.
Harris shook his head harder.
“Jeez, calm down, man,” the dragon said aloud.
Harris felt a rage come up through his chest to replace the utter terror that had resided there seconds before.
He raised his shield over his head and brought the edge of it down on the dragon’s nose.
“I!”
He smashed the dragon again.
“Am!”
A crack to the ear hole.
“Fucking!”
Smash.
“Calm!”
The last blow struck the dragon in its sword wound, staggering it.
Jake tossed the Venerable Sword into the portal then squeezed in after it. Xop flew in to safety. Harris turned to see Ana jumping through.
The hand of the giant swept into view. It came at Harris and the dragon with tremendous speed.
Without thinking, Harris dove for the portal, but only his head and arms made it through. Ana grasped one hand, Jake grabbed the other, and the two of them pulled him into the locker room.
Marian let go of the portal.
It snapped shut just as the giant’s hand closed around the injured dragon.
Marian started to say something, then collapsed onto the floor.
Harris scurried to her side. She was passed out, and her breathing was erratic. As Jake tried to find a pulse, Marian’s eyes rolled back in her head. Her jaw clenched and her entire body tensed up. Her breathing became even worse than before. It was more like the last gasps of a fish out of water than a process with the ability to sustain life.
“What should we do?” Harris cried in panic.
“I don’t know.” Ana was at Marian’s head, trying to push the unconscious woman’s hair out of her face.
Xop flew to Marian’s feet and began rubbing her ankle, his face contorted with worry.
“Jake, could you try your medical magic, or whatever?”
“All I know how to do is heal minor wounds.”
Marian’s back arched up off the ground.
“Try.”
With a nod, Jake dropped to his knees and put a hand on Marian’s chest. He closed his eyes and began to whisper an incantation of some sort.
Nothing happened. Marian’s breathing was all but non-existent, now. Harris considered doing mouth-to-mouth, but didn’t know where to begin with her jaw clenched like it was. He looked to Jake, who kept his eyes closed and kept talking. His face was almost serene.
Then, slowly, Marian’s body began to relax. Her back eased back down to the floor, her jaw unclenched. She began to breathe with a regular rhythm.
She didn’t wake up, but the worst seemed to be over.
“I think you just saved her life,” Harris said, leaning back against Eddie’s locker.
“Not before she saved all of ours.” Jake looked as if he might throw up. “If she hadn’t kept that portal open we’d all be goners.”
“We need to get her to a hospital,” Ana said.
And It Feels So Good
Ana and Jake ran out ahead.
Harris held back respectfully as they embraced, and talked, and cried with Silvia. They all looked so happy to finally be reunited with each other.
Eventually, Jake waved him over to where they stood.
“Harris here played a huge part in getting rid of the dragon,” Jake said. “In fact, he really did it himself.”
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“I did the conjuring, poorly, but I didn’t do a damn thing by myself.”
“Well, thank you, Harris,” Silvia said, shaking his hand. “For disappearing that asshole dragon and for helping out my sister and fiancé.”
“No problem.” Harris felt his face warming. He wanted both to disappear himself and to stand here all day and receive this acknowledgement in front of Ana.
“We couldn’t have done it without Xop, either,” Ana added, scratching the imp’s tummy.
“Thank you, too, Xop,” Silvia said, shaking his tiny hand as well. “You look exactly like another imp who helped me escape.”
“How did you escape from the Space Needle?” Ana said. “We heard you ended up down at the Seattle waterfront.”
“When Zoth-Avarex was busy preening and peacocking for whoever was watching—which was most of the time—I conjured a little guy named Xim.”
“Xim?” Xop said.
“Yeah. You know him?”
Xop nodded enthusiastically.
“He was a huge help. I tasked him with finding a way out of the dragon’s force field. He found one, but it was only big enough for him to fit through.
“So my next idea was to send him to the Site, to track down something I could use to fly. I was thinking a broom or something, but he found a magic carpet, which was even better, and brought it up just outside of the force field.
“When that General Morgan landed, I wanted to make sure that the ring they were obviously trying to use didn’t work before attempting a dangerous escape. When it didn’t work, and the shield came down again, I made a run for it, and Xim was waiting with the carpet to save me from falling to my death.”
“Dang.”
A herd of people were convening at the Conjuring Department building. There was to be a debriefing held by Bill Gulley and General Morgan.
Among the throng were Chris Miyazaki and Patrick Nash, walking together. No one had seen Patrick since before they’d started visiting other realms, back when Eddie had dubbed him Killjoy.
“Hey Chris,” Ana, a fellow Caster, said.
“Hey Ana.”
“We just heard some good things about you,” she said. “It seems you’ve got yourself an admirer.”
“Who?”
“Oh, no one. Just a wizard named . . . Merlin.”
“You met him, too?”
“Yeah. What’d you do to impress him?”
“I made it through the ‘Three Fears’ on the Isle of Avalon.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.” Chris rubbed the back of his neck and flexed his right knee. “I guess we’re supposed to be at this debriefing.”
“I was thinking fuck the debriefing,” Patrick said. He swung a backpack from his back and unzipped it. “I’ve got some Narnian Turkish Delight I stole in here. We could go snack on it somewhere.”
“Holy shit!” Harris said. “Killjoy may have just totally redeemed himself. I’ll have to tell Eddie about this if I talk to him again.”
“Could you?” Patrick looked desperate.
“I’m not going to the debriefing, anyway,” Ana said. “I was thinking we should go visit Marian in the hospital. It seemed like she was starting to come to when they wheeled her into the ambulance.”
“Good idea,” Harris said.
As the small group walked away, against the flow of Site employees, Harris noticed the sun, still red behind the protective bubble. He allowed himself a moment’s thought about his new friends and what they had accomplished together. With the corner of his mouth quirked up, he tilted his face toward the sun, closed his eyes, and basked in its warmth.
The Promise
A week after the debriefing, Marian returned to work fully recovered.
“Send ravens to Ana and Jake,” she told Harris. “We’ve got a little more work to do.”
Harris did as he was told and about an hour later, Ana and Jake wandered into the Conjuring Building.
“Come on.” Marian waved them back toward the locker room, where they could have a bit of privacy.
“What’s up?” Jake asked once the door was closed.
“While I healed up, I was waiting for the inter-dimensional blade to recharge, too. I know you guys need to take the Venerable Sword back where you found it, and Harris has told me Xop invited us all to go to his home realm with him.”
“He wanted us to swing by and see it before we leave him there,” Harris said.
Xop nodded in agreement.
“But first, I thought you might want to be here when I call Eddie on video phone.”
“I thought we didn’t have a phone that could cross realms.”
“I borrowed it from Bill when he wasn’t looking.” Marian dialed an extremely long number on the phone.
The phone rang five times before Eddie picked it up. The screen blurred for several seconds before focusing on a younger and slightly tanner Eddie sitting in a wooden chair on a tropical beach. Beautiful butterflies flitted around his shaggy head.
“Miss me?” he said with a gravelly chuckle.
“I sure did, Eddie,” Marian said. “It’s good to see you.”
“You, too.”
“Where are you?”
“Naath. It’s great!” Eddie took a swig of a lemonade-esque drink and set it down.
“Just a sec.” Marian handed the phone to Jake, who looked confused.
“Hey, Jake. You get that girlfriend of yours back okay?”
“Yes. We did.” The corner of Jake’s mouth turned up, almost imperceptibly. “Hey, Eddie. You’ve got some updog in your mustache, there.”
“What’s,” Eddie paused, “a mustache?”
“Shit.” Jake shook his head.
“Why didn’t you tell us you had Steve’s Binder Clip?” Ana chimed in.
“Damn, I’m sorry about that. I completely forgot that thing was in there. It’s hell getting old, I’m telling you.”
Jake handed the phone to Harris.
“Hey, Eddie. How’s it going?”
“Couldn’t be going better. I got the wife here,” the camera panned over to a woman lounging in the sand. She waved. “And my . . .”
As the camera panned back, Harris could have sworn he’d seen Marian in the background.
Harris looked around for her, but she wasn’t in the locker room any more. When he looked back to the phone he saw that it was, in fact, her there on the beach.
Marian kicked a blast of sand into Eddie’s drink, said, “Love ya, Eddie, I’ll see you later,” turned around, gave Eddie’s wife a hug, and left.
Eddie bellowed laughter, scaring away the butterflies and nearly falling back in his chair.
“That’s why I love that woman,” he said.
Marian appeared through a portal back into the locker room.
“Ha!” she said.
After the laughter faded, Harris said, “Hey, Eddie. How is it that your wife . . . knows about all this?”
“Are you referring to The Curse?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s bullshit. At least I think it is. I was hired back before they came up with that, so I never had to do it.”
“Oh.” Unsure of what else to say, Harris thanked Eddie for the use of his locker.
“You’re welcome. I forgot to tell you about the protections I had on it, but those were pretty much just for show, anyway. It would have never opened for you had I not given you permission.”
“I think those protections are the reason you have a sandy drink.”
“Yep. I deserved that.” Eddie cleared his throat. “So, how did you manage to defeat the dragon?”
The crew went on to tell him the entire adventure, leaving very little out.
“It sounds like you used the most elusive
magic there is, then,” he said when they were finished.
“What’s that?”
“Common sense.” He smirked. “Nice work, all of you.”
Return of the Sword
“I guess it’s time to take the sword back, then?” Jake said after they’d hung up.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” Harris said.
“Okay, but hold on,” Jake said, seriousness written on his face. “I have something important to say first.”
For a moment, the room was silent. Jake seemed to be in deep thought.
A loud fart ripped through the locker room.
“Really?” Ana said. “This is the guy my sister is gonna marry?”
“Lucky girl,” Marian said, rolling her eyes.
“All right, all right, let’s go.” Jake tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a chuckle.
When they came through the portal into Valorous, everything was different. The tree from which Xop had removed the sword was still there, but the forest around it was gone, replaced by a medieval city. Some of the buildings, Harris noticed, were covered in graffiti. Most of the ancient-looking graffiti depicted a man with a sword floating just above him. In some places, the words Jaq Jaq Su’ner were written near the man.
“What happened here?” Jake said.
Before anyone could venture a guess, a group of people approached from the right.
“Do you have it?” a well-dressed man said, giddily.
Jake held out the sword to the man. “This?”
“It is true, then,” the man exclaimed. “I am the rightful heir, as has been prophesied and ordained.” He bowed to Jake, then snatched the sword from his hand.
“Okay . . .well . . .we brought it back like we said we would. Sorry I took so long . . . .”
Getting a weird vibe from the place, Jake and the others decided to move on to Xop’s home realm.
“The Flying Sword God has spoken,” the rich man began to proclaim as they left. “It has been a hundred years since—”7
* * *
7 Time in Valorous works differently than it does on Earth. Sometimes it goes much faster relative to Earth, other times much slower. In this case, the week the Venerable Sword spent on Earth was equivalent to one hundred years in Valorous. In that time, at least partially due to the fact that the legendary sword had disappeared, the Dark Lord destroyed all that was good and subsequently dominated the entire Realm.
The Conjuring of Zoth-Avarex: The Self-Proclaimed Greatest Dragon in the Multiverse Page 18