by Deck Davis
This was it. This was how he’d go. With a cracked rib and a torn-off nose, the taste of his own blood making him sick, his shirt and coat splattered crimson, stuck in the forest of a demented dragon lord.
Now would have been a wonderful time to pray to a god, if they weren’t all jackasses.
He heard something above him. The sound of the wind, but not quite the wind. Some kind of fabric?
It was the galleon! Above him, just above the treeline, was Crosseyes’s ship, with its patched-together decking and its sails billowing in the wind. A coil of rope snaked down to him, the tied-up up end whacking him on the skull.
He grabbed it…and then stopped. What about Apollo?
If he stayed here, they’d both die. But if he left Apollo here alone, he’d live.
No. He wouldn’t do it.
He changed from Darkness to Flicker dagger, a blade that inflicted fire damage with every few hits. He stood close to his beloved chimera, and he drew his high collared-coat around him.
A voice yelled from the ship. “Are you getting on, you lunatic?”
It was Crosseyes, his metal face peering down from the deck.
“I’m not leaving with Apollo!” Charlie called.
Another coil of rope fell. “Tie him up.”
The lizards must have been cleverer than they looked, because they rushed him now, moving with a speed he hadn’t expected considering their bulk.
His heart beat faster. He needed to tie Apollo, but he wouldn’t have time. They’d reach him before then.
“Screw it. You know what? I’ve had it with this.”
He let his anger burn in him, and with it his mana, and it bubbled in his chest and it trembled along his arms like adrenaline, rushing through him until he thought he’d burst with it.
And then he formed spells in his mind and he shot them in succession, focussing, casting, focusing, casting.
Fire arrows streamed from him, some ripping into lizard flesh, others thwacking into the mud, where their orange misty flames spread over twigs and bracken, the flames parting the Komodo ranks.
Three lizards pounced to his right. Once sweep of his hand, and Charlie conjured an ice wall for them to smash into, and smash they did, colliding full force with the freezing barrier, sending shards of ice everywhere.
He hopped on Apollo now, and together they dashed through the hole in the ranks his arrows had cut. The chimera leapt over rocks, over logs, avoided trees, each pounding of his paws sending tremors of agony through Charlie’s chest.
Charlie held it as long as he could. He was all too aware of the ship following overhead, that everyone would see what he was about to do. But he couldn’t help it.
He gritted his teeth for one more minute and then, certain he was free from the lizards, he slumped forward and fell off Apollo, smashing his nose into the ground. So much for grace.
Chapter Seventeen
Crosseyes steered the ship as close to the treeline as he dared, and Flink and Longtooth leapt onto the ground, tying ropes around Charlie so they could winch him on board. Apollo didn’t need that; he took a running leap, bursting through the air and landing with grace.
Back on the ship, the way the ground moved below him didn’t bother him as much now as it first had, what seemed like years ago when Crosseyes had saved them from Mia. He was more focussed on the flaring pain in his face, the lashings of stings that made his legs weak and sent tremors of nausea in his stomach. He could feel the blood in his beard now, he could feel it crust in his frown lines whenever he changed expression.
He got up, and injury number two hit him; his ribs ached like hell, and every breath was a lesson in masochism.
Everyone was looking at him. Crosseyes behind his wheel, Larynk leaning against the decking, Flink, Longtooth and Gully approaching him, the gnome looking concerned, the rat scared, the old man screwing his face up and bending his back like every step was a chore, as if he wanted to compete with Charlie’s pain.
He breathed. More agony. First his nose, then his ribs, a tag team of hurt. A cry almost escaped him. He was learning to be tougher since leaving Earth, but sometimes you just had to admit you were beaten. And he would, but not in front of those guys.
“Give me a few minutes,” he managed. “I need to get myself together.”
He headed toward a set of wooden stairs that went deep into the ship. Trying to breath as evenly as possible, he held the stair rail and hobbled down, more a wheezing cripple than Papa Gully. Hell, at least Charlie’s injuries were real.
The bottom of the staircase showed two doors – one locked, the other open. He couldn’t see past the locked door, but he guessed what was in there – a crapload of treasure, the treasure Crosseyes had stolen from Mia.
Instead, he went right, into the open door, where he found Crosseyes’s own cabin. It was the size of a garden shed, the walls a honey-colored. There was no bed, but that made sense since Crosseyes as a demi-god. On one wall there was a giant spread of paper with loads of fluorescent and weirdly shaped tunnels spreading through a black space.
It must have been a map of the celestial tunnels. And god, the universe was jammed with them. There were so many systems, so many lines, and they joined to so many different planets. Did each one of these belong to a different god? It might have been a map on a cabin wall, but the universe it represented was so vast in knocked the breath out of him.
Footsteps thudding dully on the wood above him reminded him that he couldn’t stay here alone for long. He sat by Crosseyes’s desk, on top of which was a mirror. Not just a propped-up plate like Charlie had used in the village; this was a solid gold-framed mirror, encrusted with gems, the glass showing his reflection with a perfect, flawless clarity.
I’m one ugly son of a bitch.
Blood was smeared over his beard, his forehead, his cheeks. His nose was a smooshed-up mess, and it stung to hell even to look at it. There was no coming back from this one – the wolf had snipped the end of his nose, and no healing potion in the world could fix it.
He carefully opened his shirt, each open button revealing patches of black and purple bruised skin, so much of it he looked like he was turning into an eggplant. It ached to breathe and when he did, it sounded funny, almost wheezy. Whether he’d cracked or fractured something he had no clue, but he couldn’t leave it like this. He’d be no use to anyone the way he was.
First, he cast Heal on himself, directed the mana at his torso, and he felt the healing energy smooth him like honey fingers, stroking him from the inside and massaging his pains away like a steamer straightening wrinkles. After one lashing of it the pain still stuck, even if it was lessened, so he used it again.
Magic was a funny thing. It depended on Larynk’s sphere, but Charlie wasn’t inherently magic. It started in his mind – he had to will a spell into being to use it. Not only that, but he found that as he cast something, it helped to grow a mental image in his head, and to try and stir feelings inside him that complemented the spell, to make it stronger.
Take the healing spell. Just before he cast it a second time, when he let mana build in him, he thought briefly of Apollo. Not the lion upstairs on the decking, his namesake, but Charlie’s old miniature schnauzer who he’d gotten before Mum died, and who’d been with him through the worst days of his life. He remembered specifically their day at the beach, where Apollo had this big dog grin on his face and he’d rushed out to bark at the tide.
This stirred happy feelings in him, and he felt the healing spell lash over him stronger, smoothing the aching of his ribs, and then to his nose where it cut the stinging and stitched some of the wound. It didn’t replace the torn parts, of course, but at least his face didn’t look like raw meat.
His reflection still looked like crap, but this time he smiled at it, because he knew he was correct now. His spells depended on Larynk, but some of their strength came from inside him. He could cluster them with his own feelings, make them stronger or weaker, and maybe someday he could learn to c
reate his own.
With his healing done he spat on his sleeve and wiped some of the dried blood from his face. As he did, he thought about what had happened down on the ground. More specifically, how he hadn’t gotten the confidence boosting shot in the arm he’d needed for his taming skills.
Just how the hell was he going to even start taming Serpens’ giant dragon? He was convinced that his taming skills relied on his empathy, and it was hard to feel empathy toward something that could barbeque him with a sneeze. Not only that, but his motivations mattered; his taming seemed to work when he wanted to help the animal, and he didn’t want to help this dragon. He wanted to tame it so he could steal the sphere from its eye. Selfish reasons born in wanting to save his own skin, not empathy.
Sure, he’d tamed one dragon already back at the pirate camp, but it was much smaller, and the bond had broken pretty much instantly. It didn’t fill him with confidence.
If there was another way of doing this, he didn’t see it. The ship was fixed, but Crosseyes was making it hug the tree line right now, taking advantage of the defence system being shorted. If he made a break for it, if he rushed upwards and tried to break orbit, the dragons cascading and swooping in the air would catch them. And even if they blow them out of the sky they’d slow them down, and Serpens was bound to see.
They needed his sphere. Without it, the god was a hell of a lot weaker, but if they couldn’t tame his dragon, how could they get it? Rush it head on and hope it didn’t turn them all into crispy beef with one fiery cough?
Not an option. It went down to this; they either took their luck and made a run for it, or Charlie at least tried taming the monster.
The fact was, it scared the hell out of him. The human mind hadn’t evolved to comprehend dragons. When Charlie looked at them, he got the sense he stared at something prehistoric, hulking masses of scales and fire and power, creatures who’d lived for centuries, and to whom mortal lives like Charlie’s meant nothing. He could barely comprehend they existed, let alone wrap his head around taming the biggest of them all.
Making a run for it meant everyone risked their lives, and he couldn’t ask them to do that if he wasn’t willing to risk his own. If something happened and Charlie hadn’t at least tried taming the dragon, he’d blame himself. Every injury, every death, it’d be on him, and he couldn’t have that.
Resolved, he stood up and went to leave. As he did, he caught sight of something on Crosseyes’s desk. It was a key, longer than his index finger, its bronze surface scratched.
There was a door just out in the hall, a locked one full of treasure. Would it hurt to take a peek?
Crosseyes wouldn’t be happy. He wouldn’t want Charlie poking around in his ship. But Crosseyes was hiding things, just like Larynk, just like Mia, just like Serpens. He wanted to look into Larynk’s sphere, to gaze in it and find its secrets. Secrets were currency in the games of gods; that was what Charlie had realized, and it was time to fill his own wallet.
Crosseyes wouldn’t have been happy when Charlie picked up the key. He wouldn’t have been happy when he left the cabin, crossed the hall, and put the key in the lock of the closed door. He would have been really pissed when Charlie turned the key, and when he pushed open the door and looked inside, and saw…
Spheres. Not treasure, not gleaming piles of gold, not glittering rubies, emeralds, sapphires, but spheres. Football- sized ones, lemon-sized ones, yellow ones, ruby red ones. There must have been a dozen multi-coloured, multi-sized spheres, different in appearance but with one thing in common; they were god spheres. They had to be.
Was Crosseyes capturing gods? One thing was certain – his treasure story and his new leaf were full of crap, just like Mia had said.
He needed to speak to Larynk, he had to explain everything to him, but he needed to do it alone, where Crosseyes wouldn’t hear.
If he was going to do that, then he needed proof, too. He gazed at the spheres. He could hardly walk around with a football sized one. Where was he gonna hide it? So, he searched around, and he found a sphere smaller than the rest, this one merely a golf ball size, and with a chasm of fiery light running through it. Despite that, it was cold to the touch.
Now, he just had to show Larynk what he’d found, and hope they could figure out what was going on and what to do.
Just as he was going to leave, he noticed something. It was in the corner of the room, underneath an oak desk strewn with cobwebs and covered in dust. In the alcove of the desk where a person would put their legs, there was a book.
Not just any book. This was the thickest and heaviest Charlie had ever seen, enough that when he picked it up and put it on the desk, he was almost hugging it. The cover and back were bound in leather, a deep brown almost like skin, giving off a scent of age.
It didn’t have a title. Inside the pages were made of a rich, thin material, like old bibles they’d used to hand out in school when he was younger, before his parents moved across the city and he had to change schools. On each page were over thirty rows, each listing the same information, according to the titles listed at the top; a name, a reward, and a god.
Adam Aestephan – 8 sceptres – Hullungrad, God of Night Skies
Bollinda Artherson – 2 gems, 5 diamonds – Vulekiel, God of Drought
On and on these went, thirty listings to a page, and there must have been hundreds of pages. What were they? Some kind of bounty list? Were the names on the left people, the middle ones rewards, and the ones on the right the gods who ordered it?
He flicked through, going through the As, B’s, Cs, covering the alphabet until he hit the N’s, and then his chest froze, and he started shaking. He stared at an entry on the list, not believing it.
George Allen Naylor – 1 amethyst – Myseros, God of Remorse
Charlie had always seen himself as a cool guy under pressure, but he lost it here. His legs nearly buckled, but he breathed through it. All the same, blood rushed to his head until he was boiling, and a pounded resounded in his ears.
George Allen Naylor was his father’s name, and here he was, listed in a book on Crosseyes’s ship. Some kind of bounty book, that much was obvious.
The ship lurched. Nearby, some of the spheres on the shelf gently clinked against each other.
He stood up, his head swimming in a mass of thoughts and questions and confusion. The others were expecting him. Crosseyes would come down to see what he was doing before long, and Charlie couldn’t let him know what he’d found yet. A secret wasn’t worth much if the subject knew you’d discovered it.
Crosseyes. The name made him angry now, because he’d lied to them all. Giving back all his stolen treasure? What a load of bullshit. He had a room full of god spheres and a bounty book. They couldn’t trust him an inch.
It was hard to even think about what to do, his head pounded so much. The fog of anger slowed his thoughts, collecting like dirt around the cogs of his mind and making them turn that much slower.
He could just ask Crosseyes, of course. He couldn’t overpower the demi-god, so he couldn’t force him to tell them the truth, but he could just straight up ask him. Then again, was Crosseyes going to be happy Charlie had seen this? The door was locked for a reason, even if he left the key on show. Even if he didn’t get mad, even if he talked, he could just as easily lie about it.
Then there was the possibility that if he was pissed enough, he’d leave them here on the planet. This was his ship, after all.
But the book…the names…sure, it could have been any George Allen Naylor; it wasn’t all that rare a name. But he knew it wasn’t. The need to know the truth and what it meant burned deep in him, a swelling of acid smoking out his insides. He had to ask.
No. He couldn’t risk their escape. Not when Crosseyes ship was the only thing that could get them off the planet. He’d try and hold it in, play along, and as soon as they got off this rock he’d tell everyone what he’d found.
He tore the page from the book and stuffed it in his pocket, along wit
h the golf ball-sized god sphere.
As he walked back up the stairs to the upper deck, the ship jolted. He clung onto the railing, glad he’d healed his ribs, and he held firm until as the ship rattled and jostled, before settling.
They’d landed somewhere. Somewhere mostly probably bad, probably full of dragons or insane gods, but at least it was better than Crosseyes’ last landing.
Chapter Eighteen
It took him a second to recognise where they were. They’d landed somewhere high up, and spread below them were plains of grass, the blades taller than a man in places and lashing back and forth in the wind. Charlie remembered the toxic juice he’d seen splatter when the giant grass blades cut each other, and he was surprisingly glad that he was on, as he now realized, Serpens’ dragon tower.
He found the rest of them crowded near Crosseyes, who stood behind the wheel. Larynk’s marble face look tired somehow, as though it were a shade darker around his eyes if that were possible. Flink’s face looked like she’d been scratched by an angry raptor, while Longtooth had blood smears on his fur. Only Papa Gully had come through it all unscathed so far.