Valandra: The Dragon Blade Cycle (Book 2)

by Tristan Vick

I yank my hand away and reply with a terse growl, “I certainly will not!”

  “Oh well,” Demos says with a shrug. Then, he sits back down and takes up his original position on the floor.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” I ask him. “I’m here to break you out.”

  “Out? Why would I want out? It took me so long to get in.”

  “Get in?” I ask, completely baffled. “You mean you wanted to get in here?”

  “In where?” he asks.

  “Here,” I say, pointing at the floor.

  A vacant expression comes over his face. He gazes out the open door for a few seconds then snaps back. When he sees my face, he smiles and asks, “Who are you?”

  “Arianna De Amato,” I reply, growing impatient.

  “Oh,” he says. “My name is…”

  “Demos Nun?” I ask, hoping to spark his recollection.

  “No,” he says. “Demos Nun is dead.”

  “Yes,” I reply. “That’s right. You are dead. This place is the Nether Realm. I’ve come from above to take you out of here. I need your help.”

  “My help?” he asks, shocked by such a suggestion.

  “You’re the Outlier, are you not?”

  “No, you’re the Outlier,” he says, eyeing me up and down.

  “Yes, I’m an Outlier. Like you.”

  “No!” he roars, springing back up to his feet. He gets right in my face and looks deep into my eyes. “You’re different from us.”

  “What do you mean…us?”

  “The Titans. The original Outliers who stormed the heavens, raped the virgin maidens of the gods, and freed the fire demon Vulcanus.”

  “There are more of you?” I ask.

  “Of course, there are! Me, the embodiment of Chaos. My brother, Rathal Theodren, the Destroyer. And our beautiful, yet deadly sister, Shalendra Fenmoira, who is pure Insanity itself!”

  He circles the room and then spins around and points at me accusingly. “And pray tell, girl, what are you a master of?”

  I mull it over for a moment. Then it dawns on me. “I’m a knight of Bellera and the master of the Moon Blade,” I say as humbly as possible so as not to sound as though I’m bragging.

  “Ah, yes! A warrior. A master of War!” The man begins hopping about on one foot excitedly and giggles hysterically. After he finishes his strange dance, he gathers himself, runs up to me, places both his dirt-stained hands on my face, and squishes my cheeks together. “Oh, how could I have forgotten such a lovely face?” he laments. “It’s true. I see it now. You are her. You are…War!”

  “So, you gonna come with me or what?”

  “Can you at least show me your boobs?” he asks, leering at my chest. “I haven’t seen a woman’s boobs in over eight hundred years.”

  “No!” I snap, self-consciously covering myself with my arm. “Maybe I made a mistake coming here,” I say in a droll fashion that shows how unamused I am while, simultaneously, using a bit of reverse psychology on him. I pull his hands from my face, turn, and walk out of the cell.

  “Where are you going?” he calls out to me.

  “Home,” I reply without so much as slowing down or looking back. The less time I spend in the Nether, the better.

  “In that case,” he says aloud, “I’d love to join you!” Demos hop-skips up beside me as I walk back toward my house at the end of the long corridor. He asks excitedly, “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going back to the other side. The other side of the Nether Realm.”

  “You can do that?” he asks wondering away from me and heading down the hallway without having a clue as to where he’s going.

  “I sure hope so,” I whisper to myself. I’m about to leave when I see a small white object glowing in the corner of the cell like a royal Valandrian coin at the bottom of a fountain pool.

  I walk over to inspect the item. Sure enough, it’s glowing with a phosphorescent white. Like the mid-day sun. I bend down and cautiously extend my hand toward it. I touch it quickly, thinking it might burn me, but it’s cool to the touch.

  Curious, I pick it up and inspect it. It’s the size of a fishhook and looks like a small whaler’s harpoon. It appears to be a piece of jewelry of some sort.

  Transfixed by the simple beauty of the object, I decide to keep it. Opening up the satchel on my hip, I tuck it in, and then close the satchel back up.

  “You are coming or what?” Demos calls out.

  “Yeah,” I reply, exiting the cell and making my way to where he stands in the long dark corridor with all the eyes on him. Growing agitated by the prodding eyes he kicks the bars to one of the cells and begins laughing for no reason other than the fact that he’s free and can taunt the other captives.

  “You see this, you sad losers?!” he shouts, raising his arms and spinning around. “I’m free!”

  As I catch up to him, I say “Come along free man, we have business to attend to.”

  “Like what?” he asks, a puzzled expression coming over his face.

  “Like how we’re going to get out of this place, for starters.”

  The only thing I can think to do is return to where I began. Back to the small room and the little cottage that resembles my childhood home. Once we arrive at the little cottage that, I open the door and usher him in. I close the door behind me and we stand in the small room, looking around.

  Demos leans over and whispers out of the corner of his mouth, “What next?”

  Indeed. It appears I’ve led us into a dead end. But then I think about what Master Kel told me. Things in the Nether Realm are upside down and backwards. That would mean a dead end is, in fact, an exit.

  I slide the Sword of Runes off my back. I hold out my hand and gesture for Demos to stand aside. “Get behind me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I raise the blade high above me, and then with a ferocious holler, I bring the blade crashing down on my bedroom wall. Suddenly, a tear that looks like an angel’s feather radiating a blinding light opens up on my wall.

  “Ooh,” Demos says. “What’s that?”

  “A way out,” I reply. Then, raising the sword, I begin slashing and hacking at the tear with all my might until the tear grows into a gouge and the gouge grows into a passage.

  Winded, I place the tip of my sword on the ground and a hand on my knee. “After you,” I say, gesturing for Demos to pass through the exit.

  He searches my face for any signs of insincerity. Satisfied I’m not lying about anything, he smiles and then slaps me on the back.

  “Well done, Arianna De Amato, Goddess of War.” With that, Demos steps through the fissure and into the light. And I follow him.

  Stepping out of a rock face into the brilliant sun, I throw my hand up to cast a soothing shade across my eyes. Demos Nun is standing next to me, looking out at a dark figure. All I can make is a dark blotch as my eyes take their time adjusting to the blinding brightness that pervades the landscape.

  Heat radiates off the sandy ground. I scan the area for familiar markers that might help give me an idea where we came out. The air is arid and dry. I look to my left and see a massive pit with a mining operation under way. It’s a familiar sight. I know exactly where I am, and my heart starts beating furiously as panic overtakes me.

  “Why hello there, pretty lady,” Demos says luridly. I know he can’t be talking to me, so I turn back toward the dark figure standing before us. I find Daeris Darkthorne staring at Demos Nun and me in complete astonishment. I know not much can shock her, but apparently breaking the Outlier from the Nether Realm will do it.

  “Dragon’s feet,” I mutter to myself. Of all the places the Nether Realm could have spit us back out, it had to be here. Right in Daeris Darkthorne’s back yard.

  29

  If I didn’t know better, by the worried look on Darkthorne’s face I’d say she was undeniably fearful. Which is funny, because I didn’t know snakes felt fear.

  “Very amusing, Arianna,” she says, shooting me a cold lo
ok.

  “I was just checking to see if you were reading my mind, again. Guess I was right.”

  “You catch on quick.”

  “Not quick enough, apparently,” I reply with the proper amount of snark tucked into my every word. “After all, you almost got away with feeding me to your pet spider.”

  “Is that what you think that was?” she says, brushing her hair aside and tossing it across her shoulders. As usual, she’s dressed in all black, except for the iridescent green sash wrapped around her waist. And she pays no mind to the man in gray rags next to me ogling her with a gaping mouth fool of overflowing drool, even as she is wearing a quite titillating form-fitting black dress with a v-cut open front that trails down to her sternum.

  “So, you two know each other then?” Demos asks, glancing at Daeris and then back at me.

  “This is the evil wench I need you to help me destroy,” I say, staring at Daeris.

  Daeris looks at me, then at Demos, and then at the wall behind us. The fissure is slowly closing itself back up like a fast-healing wound.

  “You little fool, do you know what you’ve done?” she gasps, looking at me a reserved anger.

  “Yeah, I freed Demos Nun. Your most feared enemy.”

  “He’s not my enemy,” she replies.

  “She’s right,” Demos says with a shrug. “I’ve never seen this woman in my life.”

  “But…you said…”

  “I know what I said, dear,” she interrupts. “But you’re messing with fire here. You have no idea that you’re standing in the middle of a withered forest with dry undergrowth, and that one little spark will set the whole thing off in a blaze that could consume the world and everything in it.”

  “That’s some serious stuff,” Demos says with a grin.

  “You,” Daeris hollers, pointing at some servants. “Take him and get him cleaned up.”

  “As for you,” she says turning around and heading toward her tent atop of the hill. “Follow me.”

  Two women slaves take Demos by the hands and start to guide him away from me. “You’ll be fine?” I ask.

  Demos looks over his shoulder and shoots me a wink. “With these two fine things? You betcha’!”

  With that he lets them escort him into a nearby tent for a bath and some much needed grooming.

  I turn back and head up the hill to where Daeris Darkthorne waits for me in the opening of her tent. Once I step inside she heads over to the stand where she takes me to her prized possession, a red sword. Defined by the red steel of which the blade is forged from, I recognize it as the Dragon Blade. A sword which Master Kel spoke of as being the most dangerous of the Twelve Swords of Sabolin, as it has the unique power to control fire and flame. A sword that, if used improperly, the wielder risks annihilation.

  “Is that…?”

  “Yes,” Daeris answers. “The Dragon Blade,” she says, running her delicate fingers across its long, sharp edge. She accidentally slices open her finger. She quickly brings it to her mouth and suckles away the drop of blood seeping out of her white flesh.

  After she has nursed her wound satisfactorily, she turns around, and holds it to my neck.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” she answers with a duplicitous smile.

  Squinting at her with misgiving, I ask, “So what, then? You’re just going to release me and set me free? Just like that?”

  “The rules of the game have change.”

  “What rules?”

  “Before it was just you I needed to worry about. Now I have two Outliers to deal with, and I’m fairly certain that the one you just released is quite insane.”

  “He’s a bit touched in the head, I’ll give you that much,” I concur, “but…”

  “Listen to me Arianna. In my day, the Outliers destroyed the gods. They raped and pillaged. They did what they wanted without regard for life. They left nothing but death and destruction in their wake.”

  “Is that why you’re so afraid of them?” I ask.

  “If I’m afraid,” she says, her eyes narrowing, “then so should you be.”

  Suddenly a high-pitched scream interrupts our talk, and Daeris and I look at each other in recognition of where it came from.

  We rush out of her tent together and down the hill to the tent where we last left Demos Nun. We burst onto the scene. One of the slave girls is scrambling to cover her bare skin with her clothes. She has a nasty gash above her forehead, but upon seeing her mistress she simply takes a knee and bows her head.

  When I look at the other girl I am horrified by the gruesome sight that awaits me. There’s not even the slightest recognition that she was human. It’s just a mess of bloody remains. It is so shocking that I am forced to look away.

  I cover my mouth as not to spill sick anywhere. It takes all my effort to push the gruesome scene out of my mind long enough and swallow without trigging my gag reflex.

  “What happened?” Daeris asks in a calm manner.

  “He just snapped,” the slave girl replies, wiping blood splatter from the side of her face. “She was shaving him, and she nicked him a little. Just a little. And he just went completely berserk.”

  “Where is he now?” Daeris asks.

  The slave girl looks toward the back of the tent, where a loose lappet flutters in the breeze, and then stares reticently down at her feet. “He fled, my mistress.”

  “So, it begins,” Daeris says. She shoots me a stern glance, then quickly exits the tent.

  I look back at the grizzly scene spread out all over the floor beside me in bloody splotches of guts and bone. It looks as though the poor girl was mauled by a Darksmanian grizzly bear.

  “What have I done?” I ask myself, realizing now that releasing Demos Nun was a terrible idea. Instead of freeing a hero from an awful purgatory, I’m afraid I may have simply unleashed a merciless monster from hell.

  I turn and exit the tent, following Daeris into the blistering light and heat. “Wait, where you going?” I ask as she marches determinedly up the hill.

  Daeris stops mid-stride and looks back at me. She raises her arms, whispers something, then throws her arms out. A swirling vortex of wind and sand rises from the ground at her feet and wraps around her.

  Completely enveloped by the vortex, she stands in a protective cylinder created by the sands around her. After about a half a minute, the vortex destabilizes and blasts away from her in a hot rush of air. I must shield my eyes and turn my head away as windswept sand beats against me, getting in my clothes and hair.

  When I open my eyes again I find Daeris standing before me dressed in full body armor. It’s black leather, like mine, with green highlights near the edges of each segment, which give it a fanciful look. A long, dark, flowing cape extends behind her, its folds rippling as it wavers on the breeze.

  Daeris turns and looks at me. I sense a determination in her eyes. Without saying a word, she breaks my gaze and then enters her tent, only to reappear moments later with the Dragon Blade in her hands. The sword glints red under the hot mid-day sun.

  “Arianna, I’m giving you rank of lead general in my army. I need you to gather together as many of the Twelve swords of Sabolin as you can if we are ever going to defeat the evil you have unleashed upon the world.”

  “If you do this for me, I promise you that none of your friends will be hurt.”

  “And you’ll call off your wraith knight Ashram?”

  “Ashram is Dragoron’s pet, not mine. But a deal is a deal. Ashram will not harm a hair on your head or that of any of your friends.”

  “And why should I trust you?”

  “I don’t expect you to. But know this. I only have the best interests in mind for all of Valandra. I wish there was a way I could make you believe me, but I know that once you’ve made up your mind, there’s no changing it.”

  “I changed my mind about Lord Dathrium,” I remind her.

  “And maybe, given enough time, you will change your mind about me
too. But until I can win back your trust, I need you to give me the benefit of the doubt.”

  We stare at each other for the longest time. Then I say the last thing she was expecting. “I’ll join your cause. But under one condition.”

  “Name it,” she replies in all seriousness.

  I raise a finger toward the workers who break their backs working down in the mining pits. Staring her straight in her black diabolical eyes, I give her my condition. “Free the slaves.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Free the slaves,” I say, pointing over at the pit where the slaves toil and work, dredging up precious jewels and ores from the depths of Bulgoroth, “or we have no deal.”

  Daeris ruminates on my proposition for a bit, then looks at me and says, “Fine.”

  She turns toward the workers in the pit and then, raising her arms high above her head, announces in a booming voice, “Hear me, my servants! Hear me, now!”

  The workers put down their tools and pause what they’re doing to look up at their master.

  Daeris puts her arms down and takes a step forward. She scans all the weary faces that look up at her in anticipation. “You all have served me well. But the time has come to set you free. From this day, you are free to return to your homes and families. If you have nowhere to return, you may stay and work as you see fit, and I will continue to clothe and feed you.”

  There is a long pause as the slaves look to one another in confusion. A couple of men throw down their tools and scramble away. One trips and falls, but gets back up and races away.

  The rest of the slaves, however, just turn toward Daeris Darkthorne, then one by one they put their right fist across their hearts and kneel in reverence before her.

  “What?” I gasp in dismay at the show of allegiance.

  Daeris turns toward me. “Most of these people have nowhere to go. They have no homes to go back to: their families are dead, or they were the destitute. I feed and clothe them and give them a purpose. Unless you can offer them food, safety, and a home they can call their own, these people have no place to be other than here.”

  I turn back toward the crowd, my anger swelling inside of me. “Didn’t you hear her?” I shout at the host of slaves. “You’re free! Free to go!”