The Roar of a Dragon

by Robert Blanchard

  Derrick nodded, and I think he understood — at least to some degree. ‘I just…I just can’t help but think what would have happened if I never left Alexia, or if I had come back sooner…maybe I could have done something —’

  ‘More likely that you would be just another one of those lifeless, mindless creatures, just like all the rest,’ I said evenly.

  Derrick looked at me, and then he smiled. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. Only a voice of reason like you could be so blunt.’

  I grinned and shrugged. ‘There was no way for you to see it coming, Derrick — that was how the whole thing was designed. The cult apparently snuck in somehow — well, Timor told you the story.’

  Derrick nodded. ‘Once the cultists got in and started this ritual, it took three days to finish it — and when it was done, everyone was turned into these “Ther-lor”.’

  ‘So Aidan,’ Kirra piped up, ‘your eyes are paler than your skin is. I didn’t know that death caused anything like that.’

  ‘Come on, Kirra,’ Derrick said. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Derrick,’ Kirra said in a pleading voice. ‘I was just going to ask if he woke up in a coffin, or some type of mausoleum.’

  Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and a deafening roar from behind us — and when we spun around, there was an enormous blue dragon standing not ten feet away from us.

  It was Iskandor, in dragon form.

  Kirra screamed and stumbled backward, almost falling over, and Derrick drew his broadsword; it quickly became clear to me that Derrick had no idea what was going on, except that he thought we were about to be attacked.

  He wasn’t the only one who had no clue what was going on, but I didn’t have time to ask Iskandor; I had to stop Derrick from fighting with him.

  I stepped in between the two and faced Derrick, not bothering to draw my swords. ‘Derrick, put away your sword. It’s Iskandor.’

  Derrick’s eyes widened in surprised, and he looked frantically around at all of us, noticing finally that the human Iskandor was missing.

  ‘Iskandor?!’ Derrick then looked at Timor. ‘You told me that he saved Aidan!’

  ‘Iskandor did save Aidan,’ Timor said. ‘Though it occurs to me that when I told you the story, I neglected to mention that Iskandor’s true form is that of a dragon.’

  Derrick was still poised to attack, and I knew exactly what was going through his mind. He grew up in Delmar, a country that hated dragons, and now, here was a dragon right in front of him. All of his instincts were telling him to attack. I took a step closer to him, still weaponless.

  ‘Derrick, listen to me very carefully,’ I said in an even voice, attempting to make eye contact, but Derrick’s eyes were still glued to Iskandor. ‘You and I served together in the White Army for a long time — we stood side-by-side on the battlefield on many occasions. I will always have your back, no matter what. But I tell you this: he has saved my life several times, in more ways than I can express. I give you my word that he will not attack — so I ask that you put your sword away, or I will be forced to draw mine.’

  Derrick’s expression was not one of anger, defiance, or even determination; it was more like shock, bewilderment, and confusion. Several seconds passed, during which time, his eyes passed from Iskandor to myself, and then back again…and then finally, he exhaled sharply and lowered his broadsword.

  ‘I — I know he’s not going to attack,’ Derrick breathed. He looked down at the ground for a moment, and took another breath. ‘I’m sorry, Aidan…and to you, Iskandor, I sincerely apologize. You must understand how I grew up, bred to mistrust dragons, though no one could ever give me a straight reason why, other than to make reference to an attack on Delmar that occurred centuries ago. I may not understand the full nature of what you have done for Aidan, but I do greatly appreciate it.’

  Iskandor nodded his head slightly. ‘No apologies are necessary, Derrick. I’m sure much of what you were taught in Delmar about dragons is true…but like humans, there are bad seeds among us, and good seeds as well. Even among our kind, there has never been an answer as to why the three dragons attacked Alexia. I remember asking some of the elder dragons when I was young. But such cowardice has never been my personality; I am here to help, and that is exactly what I intend to do.’

  ‘I know that,’ Derrick agreed. ‘I’ve always known that. Just — next time, a little warning would be nice before you decided to suddenly inflate to fifty feet tall and become very scaly — there are only so many places to clean your clothes on a journey like this.’

  Iskandor chuckled.

  Confusion settled, I rounded on Iskandor. ‘What in the name of the gods what that all about?’

  Iskandor’s eyes were fixed in one direction, and I followed his eye line — he was glaring at Kirra. But when I looked back at the dragon, he was back to looking at nothing in particular. ‘I simply needed to stretch a bit — it gets so cramped in my human form.’

  With that, the dragon performed a long stretch, grunting with the effort — coincidentally showing his rows of razor-sharp teeth at the same time.

  After his ‘stretch’, Iskandor was satisfied and in another flash, he was back to his human form. Derrick and Kirra walked on ahead of us, both glancing back every so often — Kirra much more often than Derrick.

  ‘What was the meaning of that?’ Timor whispered harshly to Iskandor.

  ‘Merely letting her know that I am here,’ Iskandor answered simply. ‘Her derogatory remarks toward Aidan were irritating me, especially considering my own guilt. Trading verbal barbs is one thing — your death is another thing entirely, a personal matter for me. I decided that showing her my true form might whip her into shape.’

  I lowered my head and smiled a little to myself; the look on Kirra’s face was priceless.

  ***

  The next week of travel went by rather uneventfully. Kirra kept her distance from me for a couple of days, casting me odd looks when she thought I wasn’t looking. Finally, toward the end of the second day, she seemed to figure out that it was my death that she should stay away from when assaulting me with verbal barbs; so she went back to quipping me about my personality and other such things. But even then, I noticed, the jokes were coming very occasionally.

  Several nights later, a storm forced us to seek shelter while we were traveling through a wooded area. Derrick scouted ahead and found a cave not too far to the north, and Derrick and I explored it to see if it was safe. My ability to see in the dark helped a great deal, but only went so far — and the cave seemed to stretch on forever. Seeing nothing there, and hearing nothing unusual, we didn’t worry anymore about it, we only needed to stay there one night.

  When we were finally settled, I thought that it was as good a time as any to ask Timor some questions.

  ‘Timor…why do you think we arrived too late from the time portal?’

  Timor cast me a surprised look. ‘It certainly wasn’t intentional, if that’s what you’re implying, Aidan.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I replied, although my original question did have an accusatory tone to it. I had no idea why, really — he was the one who wanted to save Delmar, not me.

  Iskandor cut us off before our exchange could go any farther. ‘Timor and I have discussed this already. Timor has traveled through time on many occasions — he does not believe that he miscast the time travel spell.’

  ‘Perhaps he was slightly distracted by the battle that was raging right by him,’ I said with a shrug.

  ‘Even I admit that possibility, but I still don’t believe it to be true,’ Timor said. ‘Mages are trained to block out everything that is going on around them and concentrate entirely on their spell casting — the slightest miscalculation could result in our death.’

  ‘Timor and I have discussed another theory,’ Iskandor continued. ‘It is entirely possible that Sirak unintentionally disrupted the time travel spell by casting his lightning spell. The powerful spell cast by Sirak, in close
proximity, most likely disrupted the time travel spell being cast.’

  I knew very little about magic, but I had to admit that that made sense…sort of.

  ‘Is it possible that it was intentional on Sirak’s part, that he knew exactly what he was doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very likely,’ Timor answered. ‘Even if he knew that casting his spell would disrupt my spell, he would have no idea what way the time travel spell would be effected — it could have sent us back earlier in time, which would not have been propitious for him at all. It is much more likely that he simply meant to murder us.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘Is it likely that my force field disrupted the spell?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Very unlikely,’ Timor responded. ‘It would take a violent force to disrupt any spell, and a force field is a defensive one. I will say, truthfully, that the lightning spell crashing against the force field may have added to the disruption, but that said, if you hadn’t put up the force field, we would all be dead. The force field saved us, Aidan, so don’t think that this is your fault.’

  I accepted Timor’s words and put it out of my mind.

  ‘Well, there he goes, messing up everyone’s plans,’ Kirra piped up — apparently, she’d been quiet for too long and could no longer contain herself. ‘When this Sirak showed up, why didn’t you bore him with arrogant remarks about your greatness? I’m sure that would have driven him away in a hurry.’

  I looked at her and narrowed my eyes. ‘Kirra, I’m sure if you were there, that feat would have been accomplished a long time ago, no matter what form of verbiage you chose to use on him.’

  ‘Oh, ho!’ Derrick exclaimed. ‘How about that, huh?’ He clapped Kirra on the shoulder good-naturedly, but with such force that it nearly knocked her into the fire. ‘Personally, I would have preferred the lightning spell to bounce off of your force field and torch Sirak like a tree in a thunderstorm — now that would have been a sight.’

  ‘I have to ask you, strictly out of curiosity,’ I began, addressing Timor. ‘I remember you telling me that you had to work for years just to cast the simplest spells. You are only an apprentice, and I’m going to assume that the time-travel spell is one of the more complicated spells you can learn. How did you do it?’

  Timor hesitated before he answered. ‘About a year before we were attacked by the Ther-lor, I was poking around the Tower of Wizards, and I came across a stone that I had never seen before. I inquired about it, saying only that I had read about it in a book somewhere. The wizards I spoke to confirmed that it was, indeed, a time-traveling jewel. I was fascinated, and I began to search out the spell, which took several months before I could even locate it in a book. When the Ther-lor attacked, I escaped, and ended up near one of the time traveling portals. I decided to take my chances and cast the spell. It worked — though it nearly killed me.’

  ‘How did you and Iskandor meet?’ I asked, fascinated.

  Timor sighed. ‘During my time-traveling exploits, I decided to travel further in time to see what would become of the Ther-lor invasion. At one point, I found myself in the forest of Vidasel, I came across the dragon, and the cave where your body lay sleeping. He was quite startled to see me.’

  Iskandor smiled, nodding. ‘It took a while to convince me that he had no ill intentions. From there, we became friends, and he traveled a bit further to see when you would wake up.’

  ‘Timor, you said that Iskandor and I would have to avoid our younger selves while in this time,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘What about you? Don’t we have to worry about running into your younger self as well?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Timor answered simply. ‘I will not be born for several more decades.’

  My eyes nearly popped out of my head. ‘You’re not from this time?’ That explained his wistfulness when he was staring at the shattered time-traveling jewel.

  Timor shook his head, and was about to answer, when Derrick suddenly held his hand up.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  We all fell silent and listened, but it was hard to hear anything over the thunder, the wind, and pouring rain.

  Then we all heard it: a high-pitched growl, followed by several more, coming from the other end of the cave.

  Suddenly, a few seconds later, it sounded like a lot more.

  We all jumped to our feet, Derrick, Kirra, and I drawing our weapons.

  ‘Everyone stand behind me!’

  We all obliged. I stood right behind Iskandor, so I could use my night-seeing ability to see what threat was hunting us. It was too dark for me to see the other end of the cave, but I could hear the creatures coming around the corner — their growls became much clearer at that point. And then…I could see them very clearly.

  ‘Goblins!’ I whispered harshly to everyone behind me. I heard Derrick curse. I silently cursed myself for a fool.

  We should have explored further…

  No time to worry about that now — I could kick myself later. The goblins were filing around the corner, and there seemed to be no end to them. Like all goblins, they were green-skinned, thin, bloodthirsty — not particularly intelligent, but smart enough to make their own crude weapons (or take them off of corpses) and know how to use them. They were creeping as silently as possible through the cave, thinking that we couldn’t see them, when, at least, I could.

  ‘Get ready,’ Iskandor whispered — for what, he didn’t say, but I obeyed anyway.

  Several more seconds, and then —

  Iskandor unleashed a fireball that exploded on the floor of the cave, sending goblins flying everywhere. The ground in front of the goblins was on fire, and the rage of the goblins was evident by their loud screeching.

  ‘The fire won’t last long!’ Iskandor shouted. ‘Out of the cave!’

  The five of us scattered out of the cave, into the unforgiving storm. We then turned to face the threat, Kirra, Derrick, and I in front with our blades, Timor and Iskandor behind ready to wield their ranged magic.

  Then, finally, the goblins poured out of the cave and crashed upon us like a tidal wave.

  Derrick swung his massive broadsword in a wide arc, dismantling three to four goblins with every swing, while Kirra and I used our quickness and technique to kill as many as we could. Behind us, Timor and Iskandor cast as many spells as they could think of — balls of ice rained on the goblins, tree roots grabbed goblins by their feet.

  But despite our efforts, there were just too many goblins. There weren’t as many coming out of the cave anymore, but a few of them were beginning to flank us.

  A goblin came at me with two mismatched daggers — I didn’t waste time with extra moves. Using the length advantage of the shortswords, I swung a wide backwards arc with my right arm, slashing the goblin across the chest, then stabbed him through the abdomen with my left hand sword.

  Then I heard Kirra’s voice behind me: ‘Get — off of — me!’

  I spun around, Kirra crowded by two goblins, who were attempting to overwhelm her. She was holding them off for the moment, but there was a third coming up fast from her right side. I took two quick steps and kicked the approaching goblin solidly in the side, knocking him down, and stabbed him with both swords in the chest. I then turned and swung another backwards arc with my right arm, slashing the goblin on Kirra’s right side in the thigh, following up with a left sword stab into the goblin’s ribcage. The goblin fell, and Kirra took down the remaining goblin.

  Without a look at Kirra, I turned my attention back to the battle.

  I took a quick look around — Iskandor and Timor were holding up quite well, but Derrick was having problems.

  I rushed over to give him a hand. A goblin had jumped on his back, yet Derrick was still attempting to fight off the other advancing goblins. Derrick was trying to buck the goblin off of his back like a horse, and while doing so, he saw me coming.

  ‘Get it off of me, Aidan!’ He shouted. ‘Smells like a rotting cow!’

  Smiling, I slashed the goblin across the back wit
h both swords. It fell to the ground, and I stabbed it in the chest.

  Derrick was trying to wipe the smell of goblin off of him.

  ‘What’s the matter — didn’t want to keep your pet?’ I yelled over the rain and wind, grinning.

  ‘That’s not a pet — it’s a garbage heap with big ears,’ Derrick retorted.

  Finally, the goblins began to scurry away. All told, we survived with minor injuries — I could hear Derrick groaning in pain. Turning toward him, I could see that he was holding his right leg…there was some blood visible on his upper thigh.

  ‘Let’s set him down inside the cave,’ I heard Kirra say. ‘We need some light.’

  I could hear Timor chanting strange words, and then I could see, through my still-foggy vision, what appeared to be a brightly glowing rock, floating in the air.

  Finally, I could see well enough to notice that Kirra was stripping the greaves off of Derrick’s legs.

  I heard Derrick groan, ‘We’ve never even been on a date.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Kirra said. Then, under her breath, I heard her mutter, ‘I’m old enough to be your aunt, you ninny.’

  Finally succeeding in her task, Kirra examined Derrick’s leg, Timor kneeling next to her. ‘It’s a small stab wound, he’ll be fine. I need some cloth though. Derrick, I’m going to cut off the bottom part of your trousers.’

  ‘Aww,’ Derrick moaned. ‘I was fond of these trousers.’

  ‘I’ll steal you new ones,’ Kirra said, then pulled out her dagger. While she was doing that, Timor poured a drop of water from his flask on the wound to clean it, then poured some ointment on it from a vial he had in his pouch. Derrick hissed in pain.

  ‘Oh, relax, you big baby,’ Kirra smirked. ‘It’s just a boo-boo.’

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ Derrick said through gritted teeth. ‘Timor, the next time Kirra gets a “boo-boo”, will you let me pour that stuff on it?’

  I chuckled, then brought the conversation back to topic. ‘We can’t stay here. As soon as he’s ready, we leave.’