My pace was painstakingly slow now, and the buggers seemed to be getting shrewder. I used to throw a rock as far as I could to get them to focus somewhere else as I used a fire stone to light the next section ahead of me, but most stopped being fooled after the first hour or so. The fliers started to land closer to where I was, sniffing my trail with the four fuzzy antenna on their heads. It wasn’t just the fliers getting closer. Those that had been below me were scurrying ever higher. Unlike my less versatile feet, they didn’t need to use roads or stairs to climb the mountain. The column I headed for also didn’t seem to be any sort of sanctuary. If anything, I was sure at least one of the columns held a hive of them.
Two hundred yards from reaching the pillar, I tossed a dragon stone. When it activated, a calvini fifteen feet away hissed at the fire and flew away. Behind her were a handful of males who hissed back at her and began dashing all along the road. More hissing came from a few nearby females above me.
“Boy, summon an explosive stone and make a run for the column. If too many get close, just fling the explosive near you to make them flee. The blast should overwhelm their senses.”
I summoned an explosive stone and picked it up, but before I ran, I threw another fire stone further up to make sure I avoided ankle twisting debris. I ran past the crawling bugs easily enough, but I wasn’t too worried about them. A quick jump, kick, or slash deterred them from landing a bite with their twitchy mandibles. It was the beating wings closing in on my stamping feet that gave me an inflating sense of fear.
When it sounded as though a group of fliers just needed a few more beats of their wings to reach me, I tossed the explosive stone ten feet above me and triggered it. The flash showed me that the column’s large entry was just thirty feet away, and the high-pitched hissing and retreating wings told me of the fruitful scare tactic. Crossing the threshold had me toss in the second to last stone I carried. In front of me was a room of ornate pillars that extended up to the roof fifty feet up. Hugging the wall was a wide set of spiraling stairs.
“Take the stairway and don’t leave until you get as high as you can.”
I used what time I had to refill my pocket with more summoned stones before taking the stairs. The fliers followed me inside seconds later. Instead of wasting more stones, I put my back against the wall and hacked away when they closed in. I think my longsword hit two of them. Their skin was hard, but brittle, the sharp edge having no trouble cutting through what it struck. One hissed and backed away while the other fell with a thud. Thirty feet higher and I was forced to use another explosive stone to force back a larger group of females.
My speed was often hampered by debris or the steps themselves, but at least the stairs also seemed to delay the males somewhat. Of course, not all the males were below me. Having to kill or kick away some calvini coming down the stairs slowed me further.
I made gradual progress, going past other rooms with those supporting pillars and sensing that the darkness was not so heavy. Another hundred feet up and my eyes were actually seeing objects more than ten feet away. The air itself changed. At first it was just thicker, but a few more inhales informed me of its sourness. I don’t think the calvini liked it much. The females withdrew almost all at once and the tapping of the male’s legs calmed down.
“We’re entering new territory,” said Aranath.
“Can you smell that? It smells like crap.”
“Only prana and the senses of sight and hearing can be transferred between realms with any effectiveness, but I suspect you’re detecting the droppings of wolf-bats.”
“I guess that’s good news.”
No longer being pursued, I climbed with leisure up the remaining steps. Maybe two hundred feet from where I started, I hiked into an unpassable blockade of rock. I thus went back to the last road access and threw in the proper item. The road here had several supports at the edge that propped up a curved rooftop. The end of the road led all the way to the mountain’s wall, where a faint white light was emanating from the large ingress. The stench worsened, but as I had already gone through a river of fire, going through a river of sewage would be refreshing at this juncture. I simply had to jump across a six foot gap and I was finally free of the mountain’s innards.
Chapter Eleven
Crossing through the entry had me inside a massive domed structure of faded orange stone. There were many cracks both big and small on the roof, which gentle beams of moonlight were able to use to infiltrate the ruin. The cracks also allowed me to see a dam of rock encompassing the sprawling structure. It was this unpassable barrier that blocked the otherwise open door on the wall opposite mine. In the center of the room was a thick column helping to hold up the roof.
The floor was strewn with and bones of deer, goats, and other animals. A few still had rotting meat still stuck on their carcass, though this didn’t appear to be the main origin of the stink. I had been without food long enough to make the flies and maggots I saw look like a tempting treat, but I refrained, knowing I was so close to getting something more substantial and less repulsive. I looked out for wolf-bats and an exit hole big and low enough for me to crawl through. Neither of things appeared, however.
I stood in the epicenter of the cavernous room, wondering whether I should head for the twenty foot tall, arched passage on my right—where I believed most of the fecal odor was flowing out from—or take the mirror route on my left. As I was coming to the easy conclusion to avoid the path of stink, the left passage began to act up. Something heavy was stomping toward me. As I backed away, I also heard what sounded like something being dragged. The oncoming entity was also producing heavy grunting and snorting sounds.
I hid behind the column and took a peek around my bulbous barrier. A hulking, gray-skinned creature tread into a moonbeam. It was a seven foot tall mountain troll. The stocky legged, top heavy creature was dragging a lifeless ram behind it. Three yellow eyes skimmed the chamber after it released its kill.
“A juvenile,” evaluated Aranath. “Its skin won’t be too tough, and its bulk will make it slow. Aim for its throat, or at least blind it.”
Despite Aranath’s belief that I was willing to fight, I started receding toward the other passageway. I preferred to avoid something that could take off my head with one swipe of its ponderous hands if I made a mistake. Before I got halfway to the other channel, however, the troll started making a lot of fuss. The beast hammered its fists numerous times on the ground while bellowing like a fussy toddler. A bellowing answer came from the reeking passage behind me. I turned to see the approaching silhouette of a knuckle-walking troll. It looked a little bigger than the first.
With no place to hide, I ran back for the road. The troll already in the room with me spotted the potential meal with one of its trio of eyes and excitedly hollered, followed by equally ecstatic grunts by its companion. I felt the ground shudder as their lumbering bodies charged. A look back showed me that they were propelling themselves with their forearms, giving them a faster speed than one would think, but I was still quick enough to keep ahead of them. I arrived at the road’s gap and leapt over it. I then put a hand to the ground and summoned four explosive stones. I picked one up, but left the other three at the brink of the break. I backed away and waited to see how trolls treated obvious ploys.
The first troll continued to blatantly charge, but it did see the gap. It was evidently confident in itself and took the jump. I triggered the stones just before it landed. The beast yowled in midair when the flash-bang hit its senses. Hundreds of pounds crashed in front of me. Its legs were dangling over the brink, so it had to pull itself up with its arms. With those powerful limbs engaged in another task, I closed in with the longsword. Using one prana-enforced motion, I pushed the sword’s tip into the troll’s third eye, which hovered above the other two. I felt its skull split and it was dead as soon as the front end of the blade punctured its brain.
The second troll had come within ten feet by the time I was pulling out the sword from its
companion’s face. It stopped charging when it reached the verge of the fall and started angrily pounding the ground, as though it wanted to make the gap bigger. However, the road was too thick and wide for the brute to accomplish such a feat. It gave up on its slams and began pacing, wondering whether to make the jump, but it soon quit this as well. The troll roared at me a couple of times, then released a prolonged howl toward the building.
When it stopped its uproar, it became immovable enough to make me think it had turned to stone. It moved and huffed again when a distant roar made a reply. The troll pounded the floor and headed back where it came, though staying within the vicinity of the dome. A half minute later and I hearing something even larger coming within earshot.
“Get out,” said Aranath. “It called its mother. You have no chance if she keeps you in the dark.”
“That might be better than facing the mother of the thing I just killed.”
“This is no time to jest, boy.”
“You think I’m fucking joking?”
“Listen, mundos can see well in the dark. She’ll either block this exit until she believes you starved to death or, more likely, chase you in here until you’re crushed under her fists. You can’t win in here. You have to get outside.”
I regrettably took the jump and peered into the dome. A pair of great lungs were snorting and the trembling mountain wall shook off loose pebbles from its steps. Then a huge mass came into view, its skin much coarser than the younger beast I couldn’t see anymore. The shape was of an immense troll. She was twelve feet high, but she could have elevated another couple of feet if trolls weren’t always hunching over. There was more meat and bone in one of her robust arms than in my entire body. The bulging, golden eyes of the largest living being I had ever seen turned to me.
“Well, fuck.”
Her response was for her to slam her prodigious fists on the ground and begin a charge. I really wanted to head back into the dark I had gotten so used to, but Aranath’s growl reminded me of the only real chance I had.
As I ran toward the right passage, my sword said, “The exit can’t be far. Just lose her.”
“No shit,” I panted between breaths.
I purposely went around the larger boulders in the hopes of slowing her down. I didn’t bother to see how well it worked. I entered the passage, which was just a channel that went thirty feet before opening up to another dome. The air in this space was dense with flies, all taking advantage of the piles of shit in various states of decay. I ran over and through these stink heaps in my attempt to get behind this dome’s column.
The end of the room was just a wall of rock, so there was no more running into other rooms. I went behind the pillar and turned to see which way the brutish mother came at me. When she picked a direction, I dashed in the other. She took a sharp turn to adjust and her shoulder slammed into the column, sending ceiling shards falling to the floor.
I headed back for the passage, not hesitating when the troll-child reappeared inside of it. When I closed the distance to it, I threw the explosive stone at its face. I set it off in midair, forcing the beast to shut its eyes for that instant I needed to pass it. The prana I sent to my legs helped give me a bit of separation, but there was the realization that losing them could not be accomplished by running alone. Looking up at a moonbeam’s source gave me some inspiration to try a card up my nonexistent sleeve. I quickly studied the wall near the next passage, seeing that the right side looked the most vulnerable. I raced for a particular cavity where the wall met the floor, which was big enough to fit a fat possum. Keeping a precarious five yard lead, I slid to the chink in the wall and summoned every explosive stone I had left. A pile of thirty or so stones filled the little cleft. I stood up and revived my run just as the child-troll smashed its fists in my spot. This is when I activated them.
The strength of the blast was surprisingly strong, at least going by the initial flash and boom. Both trolls responded by roaring—the smaller one from surprise, the bigger one from incitement. Then I heard the cracks form. They were near me at first, but they swiftly moved skyward. Dust, pebbles, bits of the ceiling, and mountain rock were falling like drizzle in front of me. As the child-troll thrashed around in its blindness, I drew back until I was underneath the passage’s ceiling. Aiding the development of the cracks, the continuing charge of the heavy mother troll wobbled the structure.
I needed her to stay every second possible, so I summoned every fire stone in my realm, which amounted to be as many as the explosive kind. I next swept the batch with my hand to spread out the stones. As more debris fell, I waited the extra second it took to have the mother be on top of some stones before setting them off. The dragon fire emitting from five dozen stones forced me to shut my eyes from the penetrating luminosity. My ears shuddered from the mother’s deafening roar, who seemed to stop in her weighty tracks.
I opened my eyes to see larger fragments of rubble crashing onto the dome’s floor. The troll, after taking a second to see that the fire was already losing its luster, took a step toward me. Using my last ploy, I cast my illusion spell. A second me appeared in front of the real thing. Just as I had done with Heaton, I sent this ghost running toward the dimwitted troll. She reacted by taking a swipe at the illusion, smothering it, but I didn’t need it anymore.
A large boulder struck her left shoulder, making her stumble. In the middle of her pained howl, a rockslide obscured my view. It was as though the entire roof and the rock it held back had rained down in one whole sheet. Fearing the roof of my own passage was next, I ran for the other side. I still heard the snarls of the trolls behind me, but they were waning with every step I took. The next dome I entered had a troll-sized hole where the exit door had been. I picked up the pace, going as fast as my legs could push me. I crossed the downpour of moonlight, bolting into a world where the sky was the only roof I had to worry about.
I heard as boulders continued to tumble and crash in the rockslide I created. I was in a large plaza at first, but that ended in a blur when I reached a set of stairs fifty yards wide. Going down them I saw another dome on my left, its exact state too fuzzy for me to note. I went down two more tiers of damaged domes and worn stairs before getting to natural ground. I didn’t stop when I reached the dirt ground of a dense woodland. I didn’t even stop when the throbbing in my ears overtook any external sound.
It wasn’t until Aranath said, “Slow down, boy. Your energy is still precious out here,” did I begin thinking again.
I fell on my hands and knees, griping the hard soil between my fingers. I sucked in all the crisp mountain air I could, eventually looking up to see a full moon through an opening in the tall pine trees surrounding me.
Chapter Twelve
That night and the following day was all about regaining my strength. Sleep occurred under the low branches of a tree, where I snoozed sitting up against the trunk. When the daylight of early autumn broke through, warming up the valley to a comfortable range, Aranath helped me seek out plants he believed humans could safely eat, which included some yellow dotted mushrooms and a handful of red berries. For water, he told me to head east, where he hoped a river still existed a few miles away. I wasn’t sure if it was once the river he spoke of, but I did find a small creek around noon.
As I washed my face of grime and dirt, Aranath asked, “What will you do once you recover?”
“The people who corrupted me, the people who placed the rune on me, they have to die.”
“Revenge, then?”
“You could call it that if you wish. I’m not even sure I’m all that angry at them. I just feel like it’s something that needs to be done.”
“Whatever your exact sentiments are, the original caster of your mind rune is quite skilled. The rune would have been much more problematic if this caster was resisting me. You’ll need proper training if you hope to be a match against this foe.”
“You’ll train me?”
“There are few other options.”
&n
bsp; “Then you’ll make me a dragon knight?”
The dragon growled. “A human term propagated during the age of the Dragon Concord. Most humans started associating all human-dragon partnerships with that phrase, but it’s an antique job title, not the true name for an individual pact.”
“Then what do you call it?”
“If you insist on calling it anything, then I’d prefer the more precise label of Veknu Milaris.”
“Is that an old human term?”
“Yes. It roughly translates to mean ‘fire bound,’ which is as close as you’ll get to what we dragons call it. It’s a pact between a single human and a single dragon, and it can be agreed to for the same reasons any other pacts are created. When that contract became a civic profession it was called being a dragon knight, but we will be no such thing.”
“And what does being a Veknu Milaris entail, exactly?”
“Veknu Milaris has several stages before a true sharing of power can begin. The agreement itself is the first step. The second would be for you to learn to control dragon fire. Summoning me would come afterwards.”
“You sure I couldn’t do that now? Flying over these damn mountains sounds pretty good to me.”
“Your use of prana needs to be much more efficient for the task, and the deed must be completed with excess prana available, or you won’t be able to make much use of me for long. This will make up the bulk of your initial training. I cannot teach you spells, but I can guide how well you use your spirit energy. It normally takes years for someone to reach the point of summoning a dragon, but your unique experiences have given you an advantage few will ever know.”
“And I have all the time in the world now.”
The Lone Dragon Knight Page 6