“A dragon?” Lana said, looking at me, “But the girl never told us one would attack.”
“Well, apparently the queen changed her plans,” I said. I looked at the chieftains.
“Flee from here, all right?” I said, “It’s for the best interests of your villages. Do not try to show off your brawn and think you can kill the monster. We’ll try to distract it and give you time to flee.”
The chieftains nodded. They yelled at their villagers to pick all the dead and the wounded and to flee towards the trees. The grassland was too open a place.
Once more the dragon descended. Flames leapt out of his mouth at the men below.
“We’ll need to distract it,” I said to Lana, “divert its attention and take it away from here.” Lana nodded. I meanwhile re-entered the Sphere.
I made the Sphere shoot to the sky in pursuit of the dragon, which was ascending. I could see from the windshield that Lana was shooting to the sky as well. I climbed out of the entry hole. The dragon was moving in a very snake like way in the sky. I made the Sphere approach the head of the dragon.
“Hey, you!” I cried, though because of the rush of the wind I didn’t know if it was possible for the dragon to hear me. Lana went and landed on the neck of the dragon, just behind its head.
This finally made the dragon realise our presence. He was irritated. He shot flames into the air, trying to get rid of Lana. But the flames were a good distance away from her to do her any harm, even though I knew that she was feeling the heat by the way she held her hands in front of her face. I made the Sphere go even near to the head of the giant lizard. My eyes met with the dragon’s. The moment seemed to linger as the green in the dragon’s eye seemed to disappear for a second or two. And then the green was back. The dragon opened his mouth wide.
I thought he was going to shoot flames at us, but he didn’t. Instead the dragon caught the Sphere in between his jaws. Mere moments before a dagger-like teeth of the dragon beheaded me, I was able to re-enter the craft through the entry hole.
Danor was in a total state of fear inside the Sphere. As if things couldn’t get any worse, the dragon swallowed the Sphere in a very unexpected move. He could have crushed us in between its teeth, or he could have destroyed us with his flames, but he chose to swallow us.
The Sphere entered the darkness of the Dragon’s throat. It felt strange as the Sphere slowly made its way down the food pipe of the dragon.
Wait a minute… it was not like I couldn’t control the situation.
I could control the Sphere still. Regardless of where the craft was.
I concentrated hard.
“What are you doing?” Danor said, for I was making the Sphere go deeper into the dragon instead of towards its mouth. “You want us to end up as dragon poop?”
“Don’t worry,” I reassured, “I had a plan.”
I wanted to go to the stomach of the dragon so that it would be easier for me to push the dragon in a particular direction. Any direction would lead the beast away from the skies over the grassland, where I reckoned the villagers still were. It was not easy after all for hundreds of men to clear a battlefield in the timeframe of a few seconds.
I began to concentrate hard, in a way that I had never concentrated on controlling the craft before. The craft began to push against the stomach of the dragon. I knew by the end of all this I would feel entirely spent. But I had to do this. Lives of hundreds of men were at stake here.
The dragon wasn’t fighting back either. Most probably because he was not in a real position to fight back. How is anyone supposed to fight a giant ball in their stomach that is trying to take them in a different direction? But then I also remembered how the eyes of the dragon had turned to normal if only for a couple of seconds. I knew the dragon only went wild when the green took over its eyes. His true self was fighting to take over his own body. I recalled the dream I had seen from the dragon’s perspective and all that had gone through my head then.
I knew that the dragon was ultimately a good being. But he was not in total control of himself. He was a slave of the succubi.
I kept pushing the Sphere against the side of the dragon’s stomach. After a great period of time the body of the dragon hit the ground. It wasn’t a hard impact, which was good. Perhaps the dragon had flapped his wings at the very last moment to save himself and us.
The stomach of the dragon began to contract, the muscles pushing us in the direction of his mouth. In a few minutes the craft lay outside in a splatter of dragon vomit.
I pushed open the lid of the Sphere. The dragon lay on the ground a few metres away. His eyes were not glowing green. Lana still had the torches with her, and she was hovering over the ground a few metres away. We had come a long way away from the grassland. The trees grew here in more numbers, even though they grew at good distance from each other unlike some of the forests I had been to ever since I embarked on this quest.
The craft was stinking of dragon vomit.
I jumped down onto the ground, careful to not land on any dragon vomit.
I approached the dragon. I knew it was safe to do so. At least until his eyes turned green again.
“This can get dangerous,” Lana warned.
“Don’t worry,” I said to her, “I got this.”
“I met you the other day, didn’t I?” I asked the dragon.
“Yes,” the dragon said. He looked quite spent.
I touched his face near the eye.
“That dream… you showed it to me, didn’t you?”
The dragon made a small nod, indicating that he had.
“I am a slave of the succubi,” he said in a weak voice, “I was lured out of the bowels of the earth by the succubi queen. I fly from one end of the sub-continent to the other, carrying the gooey liquid which is used to calm Mount Succubus.”
“You asked me for help,” I said.
“I still need your help, if you are willing to help,” the dragon said, there was much hope in his voice. “I have seen the powers that you possess. My meeting with you earlier in the river and again my meeting with you here is no coincidence. Some power, greater than something that I can understand, wants to have the succubi queen defeated. But we would need to fight for that. That same power will just as easily side with the succubi queen if we accept defeat or consider ourselves too powerless to do anything.”
Hearing these words I knew what power the dragon was referring to. It was not something he could comprehend, for he had never lived in the real world, but I had. My mind went back to the time when I had first heard of the Second World. My son had read out some of the points in the instruction manual of the game world capsule. The first line had been that I would have to repeatedly need to fight back my existence. The developers of the Second World had thought that eventually the Second World would be crowded by so many players that it would be impossible to live there anymore. Of course they hadn’t anticipated the war that was to breakout shortly after the Second World was launched.
Dani, my son, had said, absentmindedly rubbing his red beard, “there will be factors in the Second World that would want to help you to overcome the odds. You will need to respect those factors. If you ignore them then the odds will gain the upper hand. And the odds will keep on coming, that is how the population of the Second World would be regulated. You would not be an immortal in that world, at least not if you bow down to the odds. The odds are there to continuously test you. Once in a while, it would seem like they have gone, but they would always return, and you would need to prove your worth to them by defeating them. You would have to reclaim your existence.”
Dani had looked quite like a wise man in his mid-sixties as he had read those lines. My heart wept at the thought of Dani. My son. He was gone now.
I snapped back to the present. I realised that the quest that I had been offered was really a test that was going to decide whether I was worthy of living in the Second World. While the influx of new players into the Second World had fallen steepl
y, thanks to the war, the game world still went about in the same manner that it had been designed. The dragon was the favourable factor in this quest. I would have to listen to him. I would have to help him.
“I will help you,” I said to the dragon. The dragon managed a meagre smile.
“I do not know for how many more moments that I can keep control over myself,” the dragon sad, “but I would like to wreck as much damage on the succubi and the demons that must now be coming to the battlefield, expecting the three villages to be in the midst of battle. I have rested enough, and now I shall go and take some vengeance over them before the curse takes over me and turns me into a mindless slave again.”
“But how should we help you?”
“There is a single weapon in this entire world that can kill me. At least as far as the outer world is concerned. You must kill me with that weapon.”
I was aghast. Had the fall from the sky wrecked some damage on the brain of the giant reptile?
“But why do you want me to do that?” I asked.
“You would not understand. But killing me is important. Not far from this place there is a sword, half buried in stone. You must pull out the sword. Beware, it will not be easy. The myth of the sword is spread all about the villages in these parts and if you ask the villagers they can point you in the direction of the sword. Once the sword is found, you must find me. It shouldn’t be hard to find me. I fly in a straight line that passes right over this place to Mount Succubus, I hope you know where that is?”
I nodded vigorously. I had the map after all.
“Kill me with the sword and pull out my heart. My heart would still be beating. The succubi queen plans to carry out a ritual in a few days which involves sheltering her soul in the body of one man who voluntarily signed up for it, and three vessels. Find the vessel nearest to this place and destroy it with my heart.”
The dragon beat his wings and he took off. There was much strain on his face, showing how much effort he required to take off.
“I hope you will accomplish the task,” he said. He turned towards the grassland in the distance. Even from here I could hear the rumbling sound of thousands of feet coming from that direction. The demons?
“And now it’s time for some revenge.”
The dragon flew away.
I turned towards the Sphere. It would require some serious cleaning.
Lana seemed to have read my thoughts.
“Don’t worry, I have an idea,” she said. She came to me and lifted me up and put me back inside the Sphere through the entry hole. She herself came inside as well. “I hope you can make the Sphere spin as fast as possible?” she asked.
I immediately understood.
I made the Sphere hover a few feet over the ground and then I made it spin.
“This is going to give you a serious spin,” I said, as I increased the speed. After a few moments I was done. I felt like the craft was still spinning, even though I had made it land.
But the trick had worked. The windshield was clean of any dragon vomit and I reckoned other parts of the Sphere had become clean as well. However, the stench would remain for a while on the outside of the Sphere.
“How do you drive this thing?” Lana asked me curiously.
“With my head of course,” I said.
“I mean, are you the only one who is capable of driving this Sphere?”
I wasn’t sure. But if someone else wanted to take the responsibility for the Sphere for a while, I would only be relieved.
“Dunno,” I said. “Maybe anyone who can see stats can drive this thing around.”
“I can see stats,” Lana said matter-of-factly.
My eyes fell on the hand print on the control desk.
“Try putting your hand over it,” I told Lana. She did accordingly. Immediately I received a notification.
Would you like to transfer the control of the Sphere to Lana?
Yes/No?
Caution: Transfer the control of the Sphere only to someone you trust.
I selected ‘yes’.
“The craft is yours now for the time being,” I told Lana, “but return it to me once you feel like you are lifting a mountain with your head.”
Lana made the craft fly. I was now a passenger. It was much more fun to be one than to be the pilot.
The craft climbed enough height that we could see the battlefield in the distance. I couldn’t see any of the villagers there. I thanked the gods that they had been able to flee. There were only the succubi and the demons. And the dragon was taking his revenge on them, bathing them in his flames.
I did not really want him to do that, I realised. But on the positive side he was distracting the succubi enough that they wouldn’t go after any villagers whom might be still nearby.
I wished my taming powers could increase ten times to what I had. I sighed. After a while the green would return to the dragon’s eyes and then he would once again become a slave of the succubi. Perhaps they would punish him for what he is doing to them right now? I hoped not.
“Search for the villagers,” I said to Lana. “They must have not gone far. We can ask them about the sword.”
“You trust the dragon right?”
I nodded.
“We have to trust him. Besides, he hates the succubi, what could be better?”
“I would really like to stretch my legs, sir,” Danor murmured.
He had been inside the sphere the entire while. I looked at the entry hole. Was there any way to make it bigger so that he could get in and out with ease?
“Do it when we land next time,” I told him. “I am sorry, but you keep getting stuck. It creates a bit of a problem.”
Danor hung his head. But then suddenly pointed at the forests below excitedly.
“I think I can see the silhouettes of hundreds of people moving there,” he said.
Lana lowered the craft towards that particular section of the forest. They were indeed the villagers, retreating to their respective villages. I went out through the entry hole and I stood at the top of the Sphere beside the lid.
“Hey!” I called out. Many of the people who were directly below us stopped and they looked up. They had extinguished their torches and now somebody lit one up.
“I wanted to ask you something,” I said.
“Anything,” the men below said, “you saved our lives today after all.”
“Do you know about the myth of the sword in the stone?”
Suddenly the men all fell silent. I didn’t get it.
“So you don’t know?” I asked.
“We do,” a man said. A skinny one. Yet he held a fat sword in his hand. “But… but it’s not something that we like to talk about a lot.”
“Why is that so?” I asked.
The man cast a nervous glance at his companions as if seeking their permission to speak on the subject.
“Evils are associated with it,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. I didn’t care about any evils. I needed the sword. I had to get it at all costs. “Tell me about this myth.”
The man cleared his throat. But then he seemed to lose courage.
“Um, can you descend to the ground?” he asked, more like pleaded, “I do not want to shout the myth to you since you are so high up.”
I put my head inside the craft through the entry hole.
“Put the craft down,” I told Lana.
“Aye, aye, captain,” Lana said. And she winked at me. So, she wanted to get playful with me now? But she lowered the craft. It forced its way down past the branches of the trees. It also ended up crushing several bushes and shrubs underneath it.
I jumped to the ground and went near the skinny man.
“You can speak the myth in my ear if you want to,” I told him. I was actually serious, but some of the other villagers laughed.
“Tell it to him like a man, Gomur,” they told him.
“Fine,” Gomur the skinny man said, shooting the others a glare. Once agai
n he cleared his throat and began. Lana and Danor too came out of the craft, the latter requiring some help to get out.
“A long time ago, there were two lovers,” Gomur said. Great, a spooky love story, I thought. “The boy had met the girl one day when he had been out to gather wood. She wasn’t one who lived in his village, and at that time there were no other villages for hundreds of miles in any direction. But he found her wounded at the base of a tree and he helped her by treating her with medicinal herbs he knew of.
“The girl thanked the boy and went, not telling him from whence she came. And then the boy met her once again. This time the boy had fallen off from the top of a tree while trying to pluck fruits. His back was broken, but the girl seemed to be the finest of physicians herself and she mended the body’s back in mere hours. The next day the boy met her again, and he continued to meet her after that for a good many days. Eventually a love developed between the two of them. He told his friends and family about the girl and they wished to see her. But when he asked the girl to accompany him to his village, she refused to go, saying that her village would never accept her and she ran away in tears—”
“Nah, she didn’t run away in tears,” one of the other villagers interjected. “She didn’t cry until she was brought to the village.”
“She ran away laughing,” yet another villager said. “My mother told me this story a thousand times before when I was a kid.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, turning at the particular villager who had spoken. He was rather short. “Why did your mother tell you the myth if speaking it out loud is not considered a good thing?”
“Well, speaking it out loud is a bad thing,” the man replied, “my mother would whisper the myth to me. You know I would leave her in peace at night if she didn’t tell me. Only after I heard the myth would I fall asleep.”
“Really?” another man asked, “You must have heard it a thousand times during your childhood then. I think the shamans say it is not a good idea to hear the myth too much during childhood. I reckon it is one of the reasons why you are short—”
“Enough!” Gomur, the original teller of the myth cried out, holding up his arms in sheer exasperation. “Do you want me to continue telling the story or not? And the girl cried, all right? I am not going to change that. If you don’t want to listen then you can get lost.”
Chains of a Succubus Page 11