by Dante King
“Too bad that it didn’t get me skewering that chick with the shaved head,” I said. “That would have boosted old Onico Mozat’s sales for this hidden blade device through the roof, I’m sure of it.”
“Well, the show must go on,” Leah said, stepping daintily over one of the late Ponytail’s hands. She dropped her voice as the broadcasting sphere circled us and said, “Speaking of which, lovelies, Mallory and I, though we would love to help you all out as much as possible, are meant to ensure that no one dies. We can’t help you so much with the whole defeating of the dragon thing. You boys will have to perform that feat on your lonesome.”
“You’re on mage-sitting duties, is that it?” Damien asked.
Mallory and Leah shrugged.
“A little demeaning,” Mallory said,”but fairly accurate nonetheless.”
“D-d-do you mind if we get a move on?” Nigel asked. His eyes were scanning the darkness of the void that was spanned by the iron bridge.
I turned to Mallory. “Time to prove yourself, Priestess.”
Mallory gave me a searching look.
“Yes,” she said, “so it would seem. Yes. Follow me, all of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
We followed Priestess Entwistle across the thin bridge and crossed over into the shadows beyond. There were occasional trenches here, filled with flickering fire. As we progressed deeper into the mountain of Dragonhold, I spotted more and more little pieces of civilization. I guessed they were the remnants of the Iron Dwarves, the last vestiges of a whole race of people who had now disappeared.
Rick’s eyes were locked on the ground. He seemed to have forgotten entirely about the dragon looming large in all of our futures. As we moved silently along behind Mallory, he would often stoop to the floor to examine some piece of rubbish or discarded trinket. Sometimes, Rick would put the item in the small pouch at the front of his grass and leather skirt.
“What are you collecting all that stuff for, man?” I asked eventually, after watching the hefty Islander turn a small gear wheel tenderly in his thick fingers before stowing it in his pouch.
“This is fine metal work, friend, very fine,” Rick said seriously. “I have not seen the likes of it anywhere but my island. Even there, these sorts of intricate mechanisms are only in their infancy. This stuff looks very old.” He ducked and picked up a spring and some sort of intricate bolt. “I’m hoping that with our new sponsors, Heroc Flaskgut and Onico Mozat, I might get to do a bit of apprenticing under them. Maybe figure out how some of this stuff works.”
There were tunnels branching and breaking off from the one that we were following, a great many tunnels. Some were so thin and crooked that only one person at a time could walk them, while others were as wide and well-paved as the one that we followed.
Sometimes, distantly, I caught sight of other groups of mages walking, pursued by their own floating broadcasting sphere. There was never any sense of animosity between passing groups, even if we were divided only by a single stretch of tunnel. It was clear that everyone, bar the Blade Sisters, was sticking to the rule laid down by Chaosbane. No doubt, everyone also believed that our energies were better spent dealing with the individual dragon assigned to our respective teams.
“Has everyone been sent to the same mountain?” I asked as I watched another group of mages disappear out of sight around a distant bend. “Are we all in Dragonhold?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Mallory. “Dragonhold is a vast mountain, honeycombed with passages made by dragons, Iron Dwarves, and races even more ancient than them who have passed clean out of memory.”
I noticed that Leah and Bradley stayed at the back of the group and kept their eyes mostly fixed on the rear. They were taking no chances when it came to the surviving pair of Blade Sisters. We all knew that those two vicious women could turn up at any moment.
After what must have been at least a mile of tense walking, Mallory suddenly veered down one of the side paths that branched off from the main route. Rick had to move sideways through this thin pathway, until we all emerged out into a different wide thoroughfare.
This way looked, if possible, even more abandoned than the rest of the warren of Dragonhold. Withered, shrunken bodies lay propped against the walls of the broad corridor. There was trash spilled all over the place—rusted weapons, broken armor, and scattered miscellaneous objects.
Rick knelt and scooped up a handful of black stuff that looked like charcoal. When I asked him what it was, he simply grunted, “Coke, but unlike any I have laid eyes upon. I’ll be interested to see what Masters Mozat and Flaskgut make of it.”
We followed this straight, huge road for maybe another half-mile before fetching up at a huge door.
It was, as doors go, probably one of the better ones that I had seen. It was big enough to admit four bull elephants walking abreast with another two bull elephants stacked on top of those. Bound in iron and made from wood that had aged to the hardest of metal, it was a door that meant business.
“Beyond here,” Mallory said, coming to a standstill, “lies the hoard of the Amber Dragon.”
Without anyone saying anything, Rick lumbered forward and set his shoulder to the door. I watched the huge muscles in his legs and back shunting into one another as the Earth Mage strained. He pushed and pushed but, strong as he was, he made no obvious impression on that imposing door.
Next, Nigel made an attempt. The halfling Wind Mage blasted the door with everything he had; a gale of howling wind that sent the debris around his feet flying off in all directions.
Nothing.
I rubbed at my chin and considered our options. I glanced up at the broadcast sphere hovering above us. I wondered if the fans back at the arena were getting a kick out of the Mazirian favorite clearly being stumped as to how to open a door.
“Anyone know the Elvish word for ‘friend’?” I asked, jokingly.
“”H-h-how would that help us?” Nigel asked.
“It probably—never mind,” I said.
I walked up to the door and laid my hands on the wood. It was pleasantly cool and smooth, worn glossy by time and many hands, I guessed.
My staff was in my hand, and I smacked it idly against the wood of the door and said exasperatedly, “Just fucking open, will you?”
The door lurched open. It didn’t creak or groan, just swung ponderously open on silent hinges that must have been as big as Nigel.
Golden light spilled out.
It was that special, glowing, rich light that spoke of people swimming around in piles of coins, letting jewels run through their hands like water, and throwing fistfuls of diamonds and pearls into the air.
There was an intrinsic magic in that light that made all seven of us suck in our breath in anticipation.
I had never seen a dragon’s hoard, or any other kind of treasure hoard for that matter, but I knew I was looking at one when I saw it. There were mounds—hillocks—of silver and gold coins, stacks of fabulous armor and weapons, chests brimming with rubies and sapphires, emeralds as big as my head, strings of pearls that you could have lassoed the moon with, glittering broaches, tiaras and other feminine items of jewellery that I could not identify, and heaps of other trinkets and valuables that would have had Scrooge McDuck polishing his pince-nez and taking another look.
Now, you know the hoard is monumental when it distracts you from the fact that there is a real-life, breathing, quite enormous, sleeping dragon guarding it.
You become even more aware of the impressiveness of this hoard when, with a second glance, you come to the sudden, cold realization that the dragon is, in actual fact, not asleep at all.
“Isn’t that fucking thing supposed to be asleep?” Damien said. “I thought that was the usually accepted way this whole thing went.”
Mallory and Leah were standing very still and watching the dragon as it slowly uncoiled itself from where it was lounging on one of the many mounds of gold. I decided to follow suit.
“You know,�
� Damien was blathering on, “isn’t that sort of fucking with the system a little bit? We’re supposed to bust in here, the dragon is asleep, we poke about and find what we need, and then the dragon wakes up.”
The dragon was as long as two buses. It was, as its name suggested, a beautiful amber color. Set against the backdrop of yellow gold, it looked twice as regal as it might have ordinarily done. Its eyes were completely black, except for the amber vertical pupils that were glued on our company of seven.
“It’s d-d-definitely not asleep,” Nigel stuttered helpfully as the beast began to slither toward us.
“Any sign of my mother’s staff?” I shot at Mallory.
The Priestess’ eyes swiveled in her head to look at me and then scanned the room. “Not that I can see as of this moment.”
“Reginald said it should call out to me or something, but I don’t feel it,” I said, my stomach coiling.
“Anybody have a bloody clue as to how we can defeat this thing without getting seared to a crisp?” Bradley asked.
“This dragon does not shoot flame,” Mallory Entwistle said as the Amber Dragon made it to the cave floor and began lumbering slowly toward us. I’s great head was held low. Nostrils as wide as beach balls snuffed and sniffed, trying to pick up our scents.
“No flame?” Bradley said. “That’s something, then.”
“No flame,” said Mallory. “But that is because Amber Dragons prefer to eat their meat live. They encase their prey in porous amber, trapping it. The captured prey can still breathe through the dense, glutinous substance, but they cannot move. When the dragon wants to feed, it simply chews up its victim and releases all the blood and juices from the amber casing.”
“Holy bloody moly, who would have thought that being incinerated was the better of two evils?” Bradley said weakly.
“Yeah, I’d rather fry than get turned into a fucking Fruit Gusher,” I said.
As the dragon lumbered closer, I noticed that the beast must have been old as hell. Its eyes were narrowed, like it was squinting, and there was a definite cloudy tint to them.
The huge creature stopped about twenty yards away and snuffed at the air. Then it cocked its head to one side as if it were listening. At least we had one thing going for us: the dragon appeared to be blind, or at least significantly handicapped in the vision department.
Abruptly, in a deep, rich, bubbling voice that reminded me of a volcano filled with boiling toffee, the dragon spoke.
“Cousin Vanyir? Is that you I detect? Have you finally decided to visit? It has been many moons indeed since last we met and walked the caverns together. Last I heard, you had been captured and placed inside a mortal’s vector.”
Behind me, I heard Nigel squeak, “It c-c-can talk! The dragon is talking!”
“Of course it’s talking,” Leah replied. “Dragons are some of the oldest, most cunning creatures that walk our world. They’re also fantastic self-publicists—how do you think they get such phenomenal reputations without being able to spread the tales themselves?”
I raised the staff that was in my hand and saw the dragon’s head move with it. It was then that I recalled the dragon I had seen during my brief visit with my father.
Wonder if this is a good thing, or a bad thing, I thought to myself.
I locked eyes with the dragon. They scrutinized me for a long moment, then they narrowed to slits. The great nostrils exhaled a gust of warm air that rippled my hair, even from twenty yards away. The dragon’s lips curled back, baring teeth as long as my arm. There were a lot of them.
Bad, then, I thought.
“Scatter!” I yelled and dashed right, just as the dragon let loose with a viscous spray of liquid amber.
That initial attack missed me by a hair, but Rick was not so lucky. The Earth Mage was hit squarely, and instantly encased in the amber gel. Damien too was caught. Standing behind Rick, he had not seen the dragon’s attack until it was too late. As everyone dispersed through the treasure cave, I could just make out the frozen forms of my two fraternity brothers in their amber cocoons. Their eyes were wide and flicking backward and forward in utter horror.
I didn’t beat around the bush, didn’t worry about whether or not my conduct would be reviled by the ASPCA. I let the dragon have everything I had. I fired Storm Bolts, Blazing Bolts, and a string of Paralyzing Zaps that simply rebounded off the dragon’s hide and ricocheted back into the treasure piles, sending gold and silver and precious stones flying.
Leah ran in close, while I was pissing off the dragon with these spells, and tried to lay down a carpet of her glittering acid spray at the things feet. She seemed to have the right idea, thinking that the creature’s weak spot might be its feet, because the dragon roared so loudly in pain that Nigel was thrown off his trajectory as he tried to fly up a treasure pile. He tumbled down in a loud rush of coins and jewelry and landed right in front of the dragon. Before he could so much as stutter out a cuss word, the dragon had gobbed on him and trapped him in a blob of amber.
Mallory appeared from behind a huge, teetering pile of chests stuffed with silver. She caught my eye and waved at me to head over to where she was. I noticed that she had not been using any of her magic really, and I guessed that was to disguise who she was, now that everything was being broadcast to the Mazirian Academy and the watching judges.
Waving, it turned out, was a bad idea.
The dragon swept its tail sideways and caught her in the chest. She was flung across the room and crashed into a small hill of loose change. The dragon let rip with another burst of amber, but its shot went high.
I tried to distract the massive beast by skewering it with some Frost Shards to the head, but the icy missiles simply melted on contact with the dragon’s scaly skin.
Mallory tried to regain her feet, but the pile of coins that she had hit was like quicksand under her feet. Her angelic wings beat the air, but the more she struggled to try and free herself, the quicker she sank.
The dragon didn’t even attempt to encase her in amber again. Instead, it simply let the burst of mucilaginous amber that it had let loose before roll down to engulf her like a sticky lava flow.
Holy hell, we’re dropping like flies here, I thought.
We needed to end this somehow, and the possible method was killing the dragon. In doing that, I hoped that whatever magic that held my compatriots would be broken. Otherwise, I was going to be spending some serious time cutting the others free.
We needed, above all else, a little more time.
I swallowed. I thought I might just know how to buy that time, but it was going to be one hell of a risk.
Better to just get on with it, I thought. Better to just do it, rather than mess around and then do it anyway.
And with that final, not-so-comforting bit of logic, I summoned the Abomination.
An opening appeared in the fabric of the air inside the cave; a rent in the very atmosphere of the world. Beyond that rent was the glorious, whirling, opalescent chaos of the thaumaturgical realm—pure, unformed magic. The good shit.
A tentacle reached through this tear almost instantly. Greedily. A goo-coated tentacle, stinking and pale.
The Abomination exuded a palpable air of malignant rancor as it heaved itself through, into the world of the living. It was to life what the darkness is to the light: the polar opposite.
It must have weighed as much as a truck. The great swaying bag of its abdomen pulsated with a poisonous neon sapphire light as a forest of slimy tentacles undulated out from it. The Abomination had a mouth like Steve Buschemi—once you saw it, you never forgot it. Within this giant maw, its teeth were yellow and serrated, like those of a great white shark who was particularly lax when it came to using the toothbrush. Ropes of milky saliva dripped from its thin lips, hanging in long strands that reminded me of rice noodles. All in all, there were few things more repulsive than the Abomination. Or more dangerous.
And I’d just released one into the combat zone.
I wa
s either a fucking genius, or about to be the latest recipient of a Darwin Award.
Only time would tell.
Happily, my desperate plan looked as if it was off to a promising start. The two monsters came together like Godzilla and King Ghidorah. It looked like, for the time being at least, that the puny humans had been forgotten while the two behemoths did a bit of dick-measuring.
The dragon hit the Abomination with a jet of amber, but the viscous stuff did not set. Instead, it slid off the Abomination’s body, sizzling as it touched whatever gross poison coated the hideous thing’s hide.
In response, the Abomination sent a few of its tentacles twining about the dragon’s leg, aiming to trip it. The dragon slashed itself free with its claws and snarled its derision.
Get moving, my brain urged. This is no time to grab the popcorn and watch things unfold.
Not knowing what else to do, I boosted over to where Mallory had been waving to me from. While Leah and Bradley scooted around the place, firing Fireballs and other spells at the dragon and the Abomination as they went toe to toe, I searched the area.
There was nothing there that looked like a staff. Reginald Chaosbane had told me that the staff would most likely be shrouded by some glamor. He had been convinced though, that I would be able to see through this illusion. That I would be called by it…
The venomous hissing of the Abomination sounded like the mother of all car radiators bursting. The dragon’s grunting growls were like a ten-ton junkyard dog that just smelled out an intruder. The two monsters fighting in the midst of all that treasure sounded like a very slow, drawn-out highway pile-up.
I resisted the urge to keep running around like a headless chicken and stood still for a moment. I closed my eyes, despite every instinct for self-preservation telling me not to. I breathed deeply, trying to blank out the sound of the furious marauding dragon and the echoing crash of treasure flying in all directions.
There.
There was the faintest tug within me.