by Deck Davis
Well, him and Crosseyes, whose circular shoulder wound had fully healed. Just looking at the golden faced demi-god, Charlie remembered the page in his pocket. He put his hand in his other pocket and felt the small god sphere, cold to the touch.
He wanted to ask a hundred questions, but he held back. He couldn’t take any risks yet. Escape first, ask questions later. You couldn’t ask questions when you were dead.
“Charlie, you’re here, good. Come on,” said Larynk, marching over to him and grabbing his coat collar. “It’s your time to shine.”
Charlie eyed Crosseyes for a few seconds, and he saw the demi-gods red eyebrow lines arch. He faced Larynk. “Now? You want me to tame the dragon now?”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I’m not ready. Every time I tried to tame something…I just can’t do it, Larynk. Guys, I’m sorry. Whatever power I had is gone.”
Flink shook her head. “No, Newchie. Get a grip. You tamed the dragon in the pirate camp, remember?”
“For a few seconds, at most. And then the bond broke.”
“So, you’re not gonna try? You’re just going to give up?”
Charlie stared at his friends. At Longtooth’s wide rat eyes, at Flink and her gnomish face. If he didn’t even try, he was letting them down, but if he tried and failed, he was still letting them down. It looked like either way, he was going to fail, but he’d rather fail by trying, than doing nothing at all. He wasn’t the kind of guy to just quit.
He sighed. “Where’s the damn dragon?”
Crosseyes pointed at the dragon tower, where a path wound upwards. “He’s on the level above.”
With that, Charlie set out. Flink joined him, but he shook his head. “I have to be alone. If it’s me and him on our own, I can concentrate. You can’t be there.”
“Be careful, Newchie,” she said.
“Just be ready to leave when I get the sphere.”
Ha – when he got the sphere. As if it was inevitable. Feigning a confidence he didn’t feel, he set out.
It was a lonely walk. As he climbed off the ship and set toward the winding tower path, his legs felt heavy, and every step was more difficult than the last. His body wanted him to turn back, his subconscious begging him to walk away from the path where a humongous dragon awaited.
He pushed through it. Up so high on the tower, the wind whipped at him, and the sensation felt peculiar on his ruined nose, and the air felt harder to breath somehow. But on he pushed, further and further, willing his aching, tired body onwards, until he rounded the corner, and he saw it.
It was the second highest plateau of the tower. A jagged platform of dragonstone, at the end of which was a giant alcove like a motorway tunnel. It formed a gaping hole, beyond which was darkness. But there, filling the cavern opening, was the dragon, it’s gigantic head taking up most of the space, the cracks in its scales glowing green. Even fifty metres away, he felt its hot breath drift at him like the blast of air from an oven.
This was his last chance to turn back. Faced with such a monster, his body did what anyone’s would; it didn’t matter about all the dangers he’d faced so far, his body shook like a leaf in the breeze, and he wanted to be sick, to just retch on the ground and let everything pour out of him.
The dragon was sleeping, with its good eye closed, and the other open, but he knew that wasn’t an eye; it was Serpens’ sphere, sat inside the dragon’s eye socket like a pearl in an oyster shell, only the shell was a monstrous beast filled with fire and fury.
He liked that the dragon was asleep. It seemed much nicer that way. Wasn’t that the saying? Never wake a sleeping dragon? Well, actually it was ‘sleeping dog’, but it seemed to apply just as much here. A sleeping dragon wouldn’t scorch the hell out of him.
But he couldn’t tame it when it was asleep. For their minds to meet, for him to have any hope of mastering it, it had to be conscious, it had to see him, to know he was there.
He gave one last glance around him; fully aware it might be the last look he ever took. In the distance, rising like towers among the razor-sharp grass plains, were dozens of mounds. Hills of dragonstone, miniature versions of the tower he stood on. Dragons swooped around them, some went inside, others patrolled the skies around them. Dragon nests. Lots and lots of dragon nests.
Dragons everywhere.
It seemed impossible. Even if they got Serpens’ sphere, if they took his power away from him, how could they hope to escape? Then again, if they didn’t have it, then their slim chance dropped to nil, and they were doomed to die here on Dragyuren. Flink would never see her family again, Larynk would fall to the demi-gods, and Charlie? He’d die.
He wasn’t going to do that without trying with every last fibre of his self to stay alive. He was caught up in the games of gods, but at least he could try and play his hand in it. Maybe he could die easy if he knew he’d at least tried.
So, he walked on toward the dragon, its breath getting stronger with every step he took. Ten metres away, he stopped.
He cleared his throat.
“Hey,” he said gently, like he was rousing a sleeping friend.
The dragon snored, its hot oven breath drying the seat on his head.
“Hey…uh…dragon?”
Its eye shot open. Panic spread through him, and his stomach turned to water and he swayed, like his legs were just going to collapse under him.
Its amber stare pierced to his soul, and its nose twitched as it took in his scent. Next to its amber eye sat the sphere, godly and powerful.
It lifted its head, and it slowly lumbered out of the alcove, one giant arm crashing on the ground, the vibrations thudding against Charlie’s feet, shaking the rocks. Dragonstone cracked off the side of the tower. Another arm shot out, and then its body emerged, its black-scales seeming to drain the light from the air, the green glow between its cracks almost blinding.
It was now or never. Charlie took a breath, and in that breath, he trapped his mana so that the air and mana swirled inside him, pulsated through him, sending a tremble through his body. He felt light inside, as if gravity struggled to anchor him to the dragonstone.
Staring at his monstrous foe, he sent his consciousness outside of himself, his focus so strong he could almost feel himself physically travel. The inherent energies of his taming carried his mind forward, until he felt like he was just inches away from the dragon’s eye, just a hair’s length separating them both.
And he pushed further. The mana ached inside him now. He felt like he was going to explode with it. His focus shook in his chest, the effort threatening to tear him apart.
Their minds met, man with beast, ancient power twirling with the mana-fuelled energies of his tame skill, two energies blending, two souls wrapping around each other, latching on.
But it broke. Their souls fell apart instantly, and Charlie’s mana, having no escape, seemed to explode inside him, and he flew back and crashed onto the ground, smashing his skull against the dragonstone, sending thuds of agony in his head.
Taming failed.
Failed? How?
What else could he have expected? He’d failed before now, almost every time. Why?
The dragon didn’t have any answer for him. Its eye narrowed on him, and steams of anger huffed from tis nose, so hot they warped the air, like the horizon on a sweltering day. It took another giant step forward, shaking the tower.
It knew what he’d tried to do, and it hated him for it. He’d never felt such hate emanating from a single creature before. But what had gone wrong?
Empathy. He hadn’t wanted to help the creature; he’d only wanted its sphere. It was selfishness, self-preservation, and that wasn’t enough to bond with it. He had to find empathy from somewhere, to summon up some kind of feeling for this beast.
As he struggled to his feet and prepared the dregs of his mana again, he realized he wouldn’t get a second chance. It opened its mouth, and he saw teeth the size of lampposts, he saw its throat, a glowing green cha
sm but with orange and red light burning in it.
He knew what it was going to do now, and his suspicion proved right when a gust of fiery breath streamed from the dragon’s mouth.
With every ounce of focus he swept his hands madly in front of him, his mana leaving his fingertips and turning to an ice shield, blocks of it forming and freezing in the air.
The fire swept through it, melting it in a millisecond, splashing him with hot water. It drenched him, covered his beard and his coat, bathing him.
The dragon opened its mouth again, but Charlie was empty, his mana gone. He turned and ran, sprinting toward the winding path and downwards, as the whoosh of fire screamed behind him. It swept over the back of his coat, but he pushed through the tiredness in his legs and made it around the corner and to the level below, where Crosseyes’s ship waited.
The tower rumbled now. The dragon was coming, each step sending a shudder through the dragonstone structure.
The others were off the ship. They ran to him, Larynk first, and Charlie ran to meet them, tripping and falling into the marble god.
Larynk pulled him to his feet. “Tell me you got it,” he said, his cool marble exterior gone, replaced by panic.
More steps, more crashing thuds, and then a roar, one loud enough to wake the heavens.
“It doesn’t sound like it,” said Crosseyes. He ran back to his ship and started to climb aboard. “We’re leaving,” he shouted. “We’ll have to take our chances.”
And now, Charlie saw the dragon reflected in Crosseyes’s golden skin, he saw its shape shimmering in his metal chest. It was behind them. It was coming for them, and he’d failed them all.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He heard the flap of wings, great wafts of air so strong it almost knocked him down again. He turned to see the dragon take to the air, and he expected it to hover over them, to send streaming bursts of flame and fury at them. Instead, it took a sharp turn, and it headed away from the dragon tower.
Exhaustion overwhelmed him now. He couldn’t support his own weight, and he slumped onto the ground and on his back. He felt something fall out of his pocket and roll.
Larynk kneeled and picked it up. It was the gold ball-sized sphere, and he pinched it between his fingers.
“Charlie? Where did you get this?”
“The dragon,” he groaned. “Where is it going?”
Larynk shook him. “Where did you get this, Charlie?”
“In the ship.”
“Crosseyes ship?”
“There were loads of them.”
Charlie sat up. Larynk knew about the sphere now. There was no point holding anything back anymore. He reached into his other pocket and took out the paper he’d torn from Crosseyes book. He handed it to Larynk.
After reading it, Larynk looked puzzled. “Why do you have this?”
“My father’s name is on it. In the middle. See? What is this, Larynk?”
“It’s a…I don’t know, exactly, and I don’t know why your father’s name is on it. Maybe it’s a coincidence. It’s not a rare name among you earthlings.”
“It’s him. I know it.”
“I don’t know. But I do recognize another name. See here? Bartholomew Nazra. He was a…uh…well, he used to work for the gods centuries ago. He was from earth, like you.”
“Is this a list of people who work for the gods?”
“I don’t know what it is yet, but our metal friend has a lot to answer for.”
Before Charlie could even think about approaching the ship to ask Crosseyes, he heard a tremendous boom. East of him, in the distance, a dragon nest exploded, sending chunks of rock flying across the sky. Every dragon nearby, dozens of them, roared in unison.
Next to them, hovering in the air, was Mia’s galleon. There was a gigantic cannon strapped to the decking, and four pirates crowded it. Smoke rose from the front of it, thick and black, before evaporating into the air.
“They’ve blown up a dragon nest,” said Larynk.
The dragons whipped into a fury, and they swirled across the sky, screeching, their tails whipping through the air.
Mia’s ship turned. An engine roared to life on the stern, and the ship powered forward. It headed toward the dragon tower, toward Charlie and his friends, with dozens of furious dragons trailing behind.
As they headed to the tower, cannons flashed and boomed, and dragon nests exploded, one after another bursting into fragments of rock and light, each one enraging the dragons further.
Chapter Nineteen
A sure way to piss off dozens of dragons was to blow up their nests. They swarmed like hornets, except instead of a buzz came a series of swooshes as they used their spiked tails to change direction in the sky, with so many dragons taking so many turns that they sounded like aircraft engines, as if an aerial dogfight was happening not far away.
What was Mia doing? It wasn’t as if she’d done this from a distance, because her cannons didn’t look like they had much of a range. Instead, her men had blasted two nests apart, ruined three more, and now their ship was gathering speed, trying to get away from the dragons but drawing even more of them to their pursuit.
Drawing them. That was it. It became gut wrenchingly clear as Mia’s galleon turned in the air and headed for the dragon tower, with the silhouette of long-tailed, fire-breathing behemoths stalking her.
She was drawing the dragons to the dragon tower, to Charlie and the others, at which point the dragons would probably be so enraged they wouldn’t care which human they were scorching.
What did this accomplish? Mia worked for the demi-gods, who didn’t want Larynk dead. They wanted to take him to the Pantheon. Then again, without knowing his Alter, they couldn’t really kill him anyway.
Charlie could die, though. So could Flink, Longtooth, Gully and Apollo. Crosseyes would survive in demi-god form but he’d be alone, and besides, Mia had a score to settle with him.
That was it then. It was less a finessed attack, and more of a ‘kill everyone but the god and demi god.’
The ship approached the tower now. He suspected Mia planned to swoop overhead, showing the dragons their little mortal treats below, and then take off in to the sky. He couldn’t stop her bringing the dragons here, but he could at least make sure she didn’t escape.
He checked his mana. It was the dreggiest of dregs, enough for one good spell and no more than that.
Okay. Heal, Detect Evil, and Mend wouldn’t bring the ship down. He could maybe take down the sail with Fire Arrows, but just because the arrows were magic, it didn’t mean he was a good shot. Besides, how could a dozen arrows take down a galleon?
He got to his feet. Just before leaving the others, he picked up the golf ball god sphere from the ground. Larynk must have dropped it when the dragon nest exploded. Charlie didn’t know what he’d do with it, but he wasn’t going to leave it there.
He ran back up the winding path, leaving the others behind him, until he was back on the same level where he’d failed to tame Serpens’ dragon.
Mia’s galleon loomed closer now, and he saw the smiling face painted on the bow, all lips and teeth, heading toward the tower. Mia was standing near the bow and gripping the decking, her ponytail flapping in the breeze and curling around her like a python. Her giant sword peeked from behind her. Her ship mates surrounded her, a handful of pirates running to and fro in the decking, others manning cannons, and at least two of them clinging onto some rigging up near the masts.
Just as the ship reached the edge of the tower, Charlie spread his hands in front of him and willed all the mana he had into his hands. This wasn’t an even channelling, and the sudden rush of it made his stomach lurch, but he forced the fielding down, and he felt his fingertips glow hot.
Then, he gathered the spell in his mind. He remembered how his emotions had strengthen his Heal spell, and he channelled dark thought into it now, scraping every bit of anger from his soul and adding it to the last of his mana. It wasn’t hard to wield his fury;
every glance at Mia multiplied it, made it burn in his veins.
He unleashed it. This time his fingers froze, with mists and ice cracking over him, swirls of it rising from it like cold steam.
The spell rushed out of him, where it left his fingertips as frost flakes, one after another building and building into chunks of ice and then blocks, and brick by brick it spread in the sky twenty feet above him.