Dragon Talker

by Anderson, Steve

  Thrinbin convulsed in the air at the same time. Its wings pulled in as it fell to the ground, crashing on its back into a hut with loud snapping of wood and a monstrous thud. The impact sent out a cloud of dust and debris in all directions. The dragon rolled over on its side, crushing what was left of the hut. After rolling over, it laid still, head on the ground and eyes closed.

  Yuri had finally extricated himself from the hut he had been blasted into when he saw and felt Thrinbin smash into the hut next to him. If he hadn’t just seen it, he would not have believed it was possible, and he wondered, if the mage could do this to the green dragon, what could he do to Samora?

  Grabbing his amulet, he made sure Samora knew what she was flying into by focusing on the green dragon in front of him.

  He felt a pulse of anger run through him. He knew the message was received loud and clear. He also knew she was closer, but he didn’t plan on standing around and waiting for her to arrive. Yuri saw the mage smile and start walking towards him. Not towards me, he corrected himself, the dragon behind me. He told himself, that isn’t going to happen, and started walking towards the mage.

  He made a detour to the merchant and pried the staff out of his hands. Yuri felt more comfortable with it than he did with his knife. The boys in Mandan spend days on end practicing with staffs, both for fighting each other and different displays at festivals. He swung it one handed, twisting it so the ends rotated through a few figure eights to get the feel of it before settling into a two-handed grip as he approached the mage.

  Yuri moved back in front of the mage. There was no mistaking his intentions. Perante shook his head. “You’re a persistent idiot. I’ll give you that.” Perante cast another spell with a slight motion of his hand. Yuri had the sense of a wave washing over him, and then it was gone. He kept moving forward as Perante stopped in his tracks.

  He flicked his wrist again, and again Yuri felt another wave. Yuri brought the staff behind him, preparing to strike. Perante didn’t understand why this fool wasn’t dead. Twice, he walked right through a killing spell. He took a few steps back to give him room and time to think, but Yuri just increased his pace.

  “Fine,” Perante seethed, sending another spell Yuri’s way. This one was aimed at the staff, and it exploded into splinters in Yuri’s hands. “I don’t know what your story is, fool, but apparently I’ll have to kill you the old fashioned way.”

  Perante pulled out the knife he had used to kill Roger and held it flat in his palm for a moment before sending it out with a spell. The silver coated knife moved as if it had been launched by a crossbow.

  Yuri batted it out of his way and sprinted the last few yards towards Parented. Yuri leaped the last few feet to tackle Perante. Instead of feeling the contact of hitting his body, Yuri ended up rolling on the ground and coming up with only Perante’s jacket. Perante had tricked him into tackling his empty jacket instead of him.

  In the time it took for Yuri to realize his mistake and get up, Perante had taken out another knife and launched it at Yuri. This time, he saw it too late to do parry or dodge it, but he did watch it embed itself into his chest with a thud. The impact knocked him back to the ground.

  “Finally,” Perante said, exasperated. Just to be on the safe side, he tried to magically shove Yuri out of the village, like he had sent the first villagers flying only an hour ago. When Yuri didn’t move, Perante’s frustration peaked. “I don’t know what the tail is going on with you, but you are annoying me!” With that, Perante raised both hands, raising two standing huts with them, and brought his hands down quickly. The magic spell he was casting sent the two huts directly on top of Yuri. In the blink of an eye, he was buried under large chunks of hut walls, roofs, and all the furniture and supplies that were left in the hut when the occupants started running.

  “Now,” he spoke to the empty air, “can I go see my dragon?”

  Walking towards the dragon, he congratulated himself on seeing the potential in the pendant talkers wore. He, like most mages, assumed they were some kind of enchanted stone. No dragon had ever let a pendant stay in a mage’s hand long enough for him to know otherwise. It was only when he finally found the legendary trilogy of books known as simply The Dragon Trilogy that he learned the truth: it wasn’t a stone but an actual scale of the dragon.

  The moment he read those words, written in chapter one of Book Two, he knew it was the key to ultimately controlling or killing all dragons. To all modern mages, the books were a myth, an impossible repository of knowledge about magic by a man who couldn’t exist: a dragon talker who was also a mage. If the books ever did exist, the theory went, they were most likely the ramblings of a mad mage. Still, more than one mage set out on a journey to find them. It became a personal rite of passage for some.

  Perante spent ten years gathering clues and tracking down leads. With all the evidence to the contrary, he felt in his bones that he was destined to find the books. This confidence fueled his paranoia. Knowing he would find the books, he didn’t want a mage to follow him and snatch them from his deserved grasp at the moment of discovery. As he searched, he developed his own written language to take notes only he could read. His notebooks were further protected by enchantments. Simply opening one could kill an unaware mage.

  Perante became a master of disguise, both magical and mundane. The more power he collected, the better he became at hiding it. While engaging in stealth in his search, he believed in overwhelming force as the best method of attack. He didn’t make a major move until he believed he was undefeatable. In one night in Perantium, which wasn’t its name at the time, of course, he had the city totally under his control. Seven years led up to that night.

  For the last five years, he had been developing his plan, gathering the necessary equipment, and exploring the magic he would need to bring the dragons under his control. In addition to the castle cage he had built, he had sent mages out on hundreds of missions they didn’t understand completing tasks that made little sense alone. Only Perante, as the center, understood the web he was building.

  The journey to this point raced through his mind as he approached the dragon. The dragon’s chest moved slowly up and down as it took shallow breaths. The blow to its scale in the pendant had been magically enhanced to create a massive shockwave that would run to and through the dragon’s brain. Perante didn’t know if it would be enough to kill the dragon, but he had plans for either case.

  He walked right up to the dragon’s head, placing his hand on its forehead, the space between his thumb and first finger curling around one of the dragon’s small horns that lined the ridge between its eyes. “You are mine now, and no one can stop me.”

  Chapter 55

  Samora, resting under Lake Verlevski, first felt Thrinbin’s annoyance. She could tell Thrinbin was angry when she also felt Yuri’s call from the same area. This got her moving and she burst through the lake’s icy surface with powerful strokes of her wings. Water dripped from her wings as she climbed higher. Light passing through the water made it appear as if diamonds were falling from her as she flew east towards Vrotsim.

  Intermixed with the drops of water were drops of black blood, both from her nostrils and between the new scales that had grown to replace the ones she had given to Yuri for his protection. The blood dried, forming a black tarlike residue between the scales and under her nostrils. Rejuvenated by her time spent at the bottom of the lake, her wings pounded the air as she raced towards the village. With the incredible vision dragons have, she could see smoke rising from it and Thrinbin circling in the sky, making diving attacks at someone on the ground.

  Then Thrinbin disappeared, and the connection between them was broken. Samora was confused. Never before had a connection to another dragon been broken like this. A dragon might push another out of the connection, but this was if Thrinbin had disappeared. Samora increased her already fast pace.

  ***

  Perante was savoring the moment. Only the legendary mage/talker had been this close t
o a dragon before and lived. Here before him stood a symbol of the only force in the world that could stop Perante. A force that kept mages in their cities. As opulent as he had made Perantium, the idea that his control ended at the city limits was a personal limit he was not willing to bear another minute.

  No one had ever killed a dragon. It seemed clear that they were immortal, but even that bedrock thought appeared less certain to Perante as he stood in front of the unmoving dragon. Perante didn’t want to end the dragon’s power, though; he wanted to control it, use it for his own purposes. This, and only this, would make him the greatest mage that ever lived.

  He unbuckled and pulled off the leather belt that was wrapped around his waist. Because of its length, it had been wrapped around his waist twice. He flung one end over the dragon’s neck, holding on to the buckle end. The band slithered like a snake around the dragon’s throat and Perante let go of his end as it cinched itself tightly around the dragon’s neck. That ability was one of many enchantments. Once on, it was not going anywhere by any magic Perante knew of.

  Thrinbin’s body shuddered as the enchantments started seeping into his neck. If she hadn’t been knocked unconscious, they wouldn’t have had a chance, but she was. Her eyes fluttered, and Perante watched as the green eyes took on a darker shade as the spells took control. To Thrinbin, the world had turned into a much darker place.

  Perante still held the pendant in his hand, but it was no longer the bridge between a dragon and its talker. Now, Perante was the one in charge and with the power.

  “Get up!” he commanded.

  ***

  Yuri had finally dug himself out of the collapsed hut. Covered in dust and chips of wood, he stood and looked for the mage. There he was, standing in front of the dragon. Why is he still alive, Yuri wondered? When he heard the mage command the dragon to stand, and the dragon did, Yuri knew things were very wrong.

  “Hey,” he shouted at the mage. “You can throw all the huts you want, but I’m not done here.”

  Perante turned towards Yuri, “Well, you are resilient. And you get to be the first test of my new pet.” Turning back to the dragon, Perante commanded, “Kill him.”

  Thrinbin, eyes black and dull, started walking towards Yuri, his tail destroying what was left of the hut he had crashed into. Perante stepped out of his way to give him a clear path towards Yuri.

  “Um…This isn’t right,” Yuri said to himself, backing up as the dragon approached.

  The dragon moved slowly at first but picked up speed quickly. Yuri turned and ran as it came towards him. He raced around the first hut, hoping he could corner faster than the dragon, but as soon as he got out of the dragon’s sight, it took to the air. It flew to a height of a hundred feet, looking for Yuri. It only took a second to spot him and Thrinbin was diving down towards Yuri, mouth open emitting a roar that turned to a jet of flame.

  Yuri heard Thrinbin and turned his head up in time to see the dragon diving towards him and unleashing a torrent of flame towards him. He crossed his arms over his face as the flames engulfed him. Even as he felt the heat, he knew that he would be okay. His own dragon scales seemed to easily absorb the heat, though his clothes were not so lucky. Everything above his waist had been burned away.

  As Thrinbin circled around to make another pass at Yuri, he looked around, wondering what to do. His eyes first went to the dragon that just attacked him, but he wasn’t that fearful of Thrinbin flying through the air. His calm surprised him, and it helped him realize he trusted his scales to keep him safe. This downgrading of Thrinbin’s threat led his eyes to the real source of danger: the mage.

  That had been the whole point since the beginning, but a jet of flame does have a way of distracting a person. Still not sure of what he was going to do but unwilling to wait, Yuri started running at the mage. Perante immediately sent a massive stun spell at Yuri, but it only washed over him like a strong wind. Yuri was rapidly closing the distance. Yuri was close enough to see the realization on the mage’s face that his magic sphere wasn’t working against Yuri.

  Yuri savored that look as he came within striking distance. Only, during the last few steps, the mage seemed to relax, as if he knew something Yuri didn’t, and he did. Just as Yuri was leaping to tackle the mage, Thrinbin arrived and picked him out of his dive at Perante with its massive hind legs. Yuri felt pressure like a vice dig into his sides and his view of the mage changed into one of the village from above. Yuri wasn’t feeling quite as confident about his armor now that Thrinbin had him firmly in its clutches; still, any normal person would have been crushed to death in the first moments of being grabbed. He pushed against Thrinbin’s talons, but to no use. He was not forcing his way out of its grasp. He tried to reach out to it, contact it like he had contacted Samora.

  When Thrinbin looked at him, he thought, for a moment, that he was getting through. “The damn tail,” he cursed, as he realized the dragon wasn’t looking at him because it heard him, it was looking at him because it was going to eat him. He watched in horror as Thrinbin opened its mouth wide and bent its neck down to bite Yuri in half.

  ***

  “DON’T DIE,” the command reverberated through Yuri’s mind even as his eyes saw a flash of blue as Samora flew past Thrinbin and Yuri in a rush to kill the mage. It was clear to Yuri that Samora’s first task was the mage and it was up to him to stay alive long enough to give Samora time to do her work.

  Even though Thrinbin was smaller than Samora, it was still a dragon, and that meant size and incredible strength and speed. A mouth of large teeth clamped over Yuri, putting him up to his waist in Thrinbin’s mouth. The pressure grew tighter, but the scales were protecting him even where they didn’t cover his body. Yuri started punching everywhere: the dragon’s tongue, the roof of its mouth, even its teeth.

  Samora would have swallowed him whole now if she were trying to eat him, but Thrinbin wasn’t as large, and swallowing a fighting Yuri without cutting him into a few parts would be a good way to choke. Even though Thrinbin was under the mage’s control, Perante’s magic couldn’t overcome a dragon’s self-preservation instincts.

  Thrinbin landed so it could concentrate on the task of eating Yuri. The first thing it did when it landed was try to reposition Yuri, get him across its back teeth. Yuri wasn’t so sure his scales could protect him from that much pressure, so he did everything in his power to either get out or stay at the front of Thrinbin’s mouth. He held its tongue when he felt himself being pulled back. Whenever the dragon paused to try something else, he tried holding onto a tooth to give him leverage to pull himself out of its mouth.

  Thrinbin was throwing its head, and Yuri, around and around to get a better grip. Twice, Thrinbin’s movement flung Yuri out of its mouth, but both times he was snatched back before he hit the ground. The second time, Yuri went back in feet first, but he was able to grab onto a nostril with each hand. Thrinbin’s front teeth were pushing into his waist from both sides, but he was able to hold his position with arm strength alone.

  “Hah!” he shouted. “What are you going to do know, green bean?”

  Thrinbin shook its head violently.

  Yuri actually laughed. “You are going to have to do better than that, and when Samora gets done with the mage…”

  Yuri remembered that the dragon wasn’t the enemy. And, now that he believed he would survive, he remembered how easy it was to offend a dragon. Not only that, their memories were legendary. Yuri pulled himself up in between bites from Thrinbin so he could see into its eyes over its nostrils.

  “I didn’t mean that green bean comment. You are a fierce, forest green dragon, without peer.” He looked into the darkened eyes and wondered if the dragon was hearing any of this. Just to be safe, though, he added, “I apologize for that earlier comment. Heat of the battle crazy human talk.”

  Thrinbin responded by snapping its head up causing Yuri to lose his grip with one hand. He felt himself being sucked deeper into Thrinbin’s mouth before he was able to reesta
blish his hold. He didn’t want to find out if the scales around his neck were strong enough to keep his head attached. He didn’t dare try to connect with Samora for fear of losing hold if his attention was elsewhere. He was also sure that Samora’s command included a don’t bother me clause.

  He could talk to himself, though, and he did, encouraging himself by saying, “hold in there Yuri. You get out of this one and Hental will love this story best of all.”

  Thrinbin stopped shaking Yuri around. He felt its tongue go still against its legs. The next thing Yuri felt was Thrinbin leaping into the air, wings thumping against the air. This wasn’t a circling of the village flight. After one turn, the dragon flew straight. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a lake in the distance. Yuri understood that the dragon had a new plan. “Oh tail,” he said, “you’re going to try and drown me.”

  Chapter 56

  Samora flashed past Yuri and, after giving him the command to stay alive, thought nothing more of him as she flew towards the mage controlling Thrinbin. Diving towards him, she blasted a torrent of ice that stopped short of the mage and created an ice dome over Perante and his protection spell. Samora landed right on top of it, causing the ice to break and crumble down the sides even as she forced Perante and his sphere two feet into the ground.

  Perante struggled to keep his balance after the blue dragon landed right on top of him. This, he knew immediately, was a dragon worthy of Perante. And he didn’t have this one’s talker’s medallion. In a flash, he realized why the young villager was so impervious to his spells; he wasn’t from this village. He was the blue dragon’s talker, and he had him in his own dragon’s grasp.

  It wouldn’t do to drown him before he got the scale that would allow him to control the blue dragon. He closed his eyes and commanded Thrinbin to return with his prize. Now, he thought, to stay alive until I can get that scale.