The Dragons of Decay

by J. J. Thompson

  “Of course it is. Kronk,” he glanced at the little guy, who nodded, “told them to allow any of you to pass when you returned. Which group were you with?” Simon asked her intently. When she didn't answer right away, he and the earthen exchanged concerned looks.

  “I was with the group sent to Mexico,” she finally replied wearily.

  “Ah okay. So, uh, where are the rest your friends? It looks like you finished your mission early.”

  She straightened up painfully and slowly shook her head.

  “I could not finish the scout, sir wizard. I humbly beg your forgiveness for my failure. It is unbecoming for one of my kind to leave a task undone.”

  “Don't worry about that,” the wizard told her reassuringly. “Where are the others?”

  She sighed raggedly. It was painful to hear.

  “Gone, my lord. All of them. Destroyed, I believe.”

  “What?”

  Simon stood up abruptly and leaned forward. The air elemental pulled back fearfully and he felt a pang of guilt for scaring her. He took a deep breath and sat down again.

  “I'm sorry,” he told her quickly. “Don't worry, I'm not angry with you. Please, tell me what's happened. And you can start by telling me your name. Forgive me but I have a hard time telling you air elementals apart, until I get to know you better.”

  She looked at Kronk and he smiled and made an encouraging gesture.

  “Yes, of course. I am called Brethia, my lord. I was tasked with scouting the northern-most strip of northern Mexico. We divided the country equally between us. That is probably why I survived. I was furthest away from the danger zone. We split up when we arrived and I began my sweep.”

  She seemed to acquire new life as she spoke and was finally strong enough to rise up above the table and hover there.

  “The country itself is lush, my lord. Many crops from the old world are growing wild and the land is rich. I was curious to see no animals though and wondered why it was so bereft of wildlife. I thought it possible that some sort of disease might have swept through the area and killed off the wildlife. Or perhaps dragons had slaughtered them as they searched for humans.”

  She shrugged and put a small hand to her head.

  “I made the mistake of taking these signs too lightly, my lord. I continued my mission and, perhaps, let my guard down a bit.”

  “What happened?” Kronk asked breathlessly. “What caused them all to disappear?”

  Brethia spotted the pile of blank paper on one side of the table and flew over to pick one up. She scooped up a pencil and returned to her original position.

  “May I, my lord?” she asked as she held up the writing material.

  “Certainly,” Simon told her. He knew how well all of the air elementals could sketch out maps and pictures.

  “Thank you. It will be easier for me to show you than to try to describe it.”

  The wizard and Kronk watched in amazement as Brethia put the paper on to the table and began drawing. The pencil moved so quickly that it was just a blur and a picture soon appeared in exquisite detail. When she was finished, she slid the paper across the table to Simon and then watched silently.

  “What is this?” he asked in wonder.

  “I do not know, master,” Kronk said as he stared at the picture. “It seems familiar, somehow. It looks like a termite mound, does it not?”

  Simon murmured in agreement.

  The picture showed a flat plain with scattered trees and plants growing randomly. In the middle of the drawing, a huge mound rose above the closest trees. Simon guessed that it was at least a hundred feet high, maybe more.

  The mound was beautiful in its own way. It had canting spires and rose in rounded steps, becoming narrower as it grew. It was flat at the very top, and some sort of arch had been built there. You could see the sky through it. It reminded him a bit of an ancient Mayan pyramid.

  “Who built this thing?” the wizard asked Brethia.

  She quickly grabbed another sheet of paper and began drawing again. She spoke as she worked.

  “That one is not the only such mound down there, my lord. I found three others and that was just in the area that I was assigned to scout. I fear that there are many more further south.”

  She finished the picture and Simon quickly reached out and picked it up.

  “Dear God,” he muttered. “What is this?”

  “Oh my,” Kronk said softly.

  The wizard looked at him and saw that the little guy was gaping at the picture in surprise.

  “What is it?” he asked the earthen.

  “It is a goblin, master,” Kronk whispered. “A goblin!” His face twisted and he glared at the creature with loathing. “They are a scourge, a blight on the Earth. I thought that I would never see such monsters again.”

  “A goblin?”

  Simon stared at the detailed drawing.

  He saw a spindly, dark-skinned creature standing upright but hunched over, arms long enough to almost scrape the ground. Its skin was tight over its bones and it looked like the monster had no muscles at all. There were wicked spurs on its elbows and knees and its fingers were tipped with broken claws.

  The face was the worst. Huge eyes with vertically-slit pupils like a cat's eyes, a stubby bump for a nose and a wide, gaping maw of a mouth, rimmed in jagged fangs. Its ears were high and pointed, reminiscent of an elf's ears. And on top was a pointed, bald head, wrinkled and leathery.

  The goblin was wearing some sort of ragged armor; strips of leather that covered its torso and a skirt of leather with bits of metal sewn on to it. It held a twisted sword above its grotesque head and had its thin lips pulled back in an insane scream.

  “So that's a goblin,” Simon said under his breath as he examined the creature. “And they built those mounds?”

  Kronk spoke up before Brethia could answer.

  “Yes master. I remember now. Back in ancient times, they polluted the earth with their foulness. They would choke the ground water with their waste, strip a land bare of any game, including humans, and then, when there was nothing left to consume, they would move on and do it again. As I said, they are a blight, like a horde of locusts.”

  “Brethia,” Simon began and the air elemental jumped at her name. She was obviously still skittish.

  “Easy there. Try and stay calm, please.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course, sir wizard. Forgive me. It has been a...trying time.”

  “I can see that,” the wizard said sympathetically. “But I need all of the information I can get. I hope you understand that? I don't want you to think that I'm badgering you.”

  She drew herself up and squared her shoulders.

  “Of course not, my lord. I am at your command.”

  Simon shifted uncomfortably and Kronk winked at Brethia.

  “My master does not like giving commands,” he told her frankly and smiled up at the wizard. “He prefers suggesting rather than ordering others around.”

  “He's right,” Simon told her. “I just need a few questions answered, that's all.”

  She nodded silently.

  “Good. First of all, where did these goblins even come from? As I understand it, the gods of Chaos can't just arbitrarily create something from nothing. If they could, the world would already be theirs and we'd all be dead.”

  Brethia seemed to be choosing her words carefully as she answered.

  “My lord, even with all of the dragons that were sent against them, the human race could not have been decimated in a day, or even a year. Do you agree?”

  “I do, actually. I've always wondered how seven billion people could have been destroyed by a few thousand dragons and their minions, the drakes. Of course, once technology was rendered useless, that made fighting back almost impossible. Still, that's a heck of a lot of people to wipe out in a very short time.”

  “Yes, sir wizard, it is. But you see,” her voice lowered and Simon leaned forward to hear her better, “they weren't wiped out. Not entirely. Some
were Changed by the lords of Light, like yourself. Others...well, others were Changed by the gods of Chaos. At least that is my belief and the belief of many of my kind.”

  And she reached down and tapped the drawing of the goblin.

  Simon hissed between his teeth and drew back in shock.

  “You're telling me...”

  “I am telling you that your people were not all wiped out. Some were mutated into these monsters.”

  “Oh God,” the wizard muttered and covered his face with his hands.

  The idea of being Changed into a creature as horrible as a goblin was almost impossible to wrap his head around.

  Something occurred to him and he dropped his hands and stared at the air elemental.

  “Do they know?” he asked in quiet desperation. “Do they know what they've become?”

  “It is...possible, my lord. But if they do, I believe that such knowledge would have driven them mad long ago.”

  “Just how many goblins are we talking about?” Kronk asked her.

  Brethia only shrugged.

  “There is no way to know without doing some sort of census. I would not recommend that. Getting too close to these creatures can only result in the destruction of the one attempting to spy on them.”

  She shook her head sadly.

  “I believe that is what happened to my companions,” she added.

  “Goblins killed them?” Simon asked blankly. “But how? I know how hard it is to harm an air elemental. Physical attacks don't work. Your people can't even be touched by normal weapons.”

  “That is true, my lord,” Brethia agreed. “But do not let my illustration lead you to believe that these creatures are mindless beasts; they are not. They are twisted and perverse, but they are not stupid. Goblins can wield power, much like you can. They enchant their weapons with foul, dark magics. And those weapons can harm or even kill elementals, even my people.”

  “Is that true, Kronk?” Simon asked, feeling a bit dazed. “No offense, Brethia,” he hastened to add.

  She smiled a bit for the first time.

  “None taken, my lord.”

  “Yes, that is true, master,” Kronk said reluctantly. “There were many stories of goblin magic-users in the old days. There were even rumors that, occasionally, a goblin wizard would rise among them. The wizards back then scoffed at such tales, but then, they were quite an arrogant lot, if you will forgive me for saying so.”

  Simon smiled at him.

  “From everything that you and Aeris have told me, I believe you. My God,” he muttered to himself. “Magic-wielding goblins.”

  “That is not all, my lord,” Brethia said. “Even a horde of goblins does not account for all of the humans that might have escaped the dragon attacks. I believe that the dark gods used your people as, forgive me, raw material to unleash other horrors into this world.”

  “Oh great. Like what?”

  “I have no idea, sir wizard, but it makes a sick kind of sense, don't you think? Monsters such as ogres, trolls, banshees, dark faeries, pixies; all of these creatures existed in the old days of magic. As did wights and even wraiths. The gods of Chaos want to reshape this world so that they can be released from the Void. The only way to do that is to recreate the world of the past.”

  “Damn. And here I thought that all they had to do was eliminate my people and they could just sail back in.”

  “No offense, my lord, but that is a rather simplistic notion.”

  Kronk frowned at her but Simon nodded slowly.

  “I'm starting to see that.” He blinked as a horrible thought caught up with what Brethia had just told him. “Then that means that the wights that attacked us were...Changed humans?”

  “Assuredly, my lord.”

  The wizard got to his feet, feeling numb, and walked over to stare out of the window near the door. There was a small hole in the thick ice on the glass and he looked out blankly at the bright world beyond.

  Brethia's report was a revelation. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, it had always felt wrong that the human race had been decimated so quickly and easily. And now it seemed that it hadn't. What could those damned Chaos lords have turned his people into? Monsters, obviously, but what else?

  Uneasily, he realized that the question should be turned on its head; what couldn't they have been Changed into?

  Simon rested his forehead on the window for a moment, the cold burning his skin a little. If Brethia was correct, the wights that he had destroyed weren't undead after all; once they had been human. And then they had been twisted and perverted into insane monsters.

  He pulled back his head at that thought. Or had the transformation actually sent them into madness? It was a horrible idea that made him shudder.

  The wizard moved to the clothes cabinet, took off his boots, left them on the mat next to it and put on his indoor shoes.

  “Brethia,” he said as he walked back to the counter to make more tea. “Are you absolutely certain that the other air elementals were destroyed?”

  “I am not positive, my lord, no. But we had agreed to meet at the northern border of Mexico, the one from the map you showed us, at a certain time and no one except for myself showed up. I waited many hours, but none returned. We are very punctual; it is part of our nature. I assumed that they did not meet me because they had been killed.”

  Simon made his tea, looked at the two elementals and cocked his head to the side.

  “Well then, why don't we find out for sure?” he asked them. “Come on, I want to try something.”

  Chapter 11

  Simone led Kronk and Brethia upstairs and into his study, teacup in hand. He sat down at his desk and the elementals climbed up and moved to stand side by side in front of him.

  The wizard opened a drawer, rummaged around inside and pulled out a sheet of paper.

  “These are the names of the scouts that went south,” he told Brethia. “Could you show me which ones were with you when you began your mission in Mexico?”

  She floated closer and the wizard turned the paper so that she could read it.

  “These ones, my lord,” the air elemental said, tapping four names on the list.

  “Okay, good. Thank you.”

  Simon put down the paper and motioned for Kronk and Brethia to move to his side of the desk.

  “Now, let's see what happens,” he said, a fist of tension tightening his stomach.

  He looked at the first name on the list.

  “Asteer, I need you!” he said loudly.

  There was a long moment of silence and Simon saw Brethia's face settle into lines of despair.

  He hissed between his teeth and his eyes moved to the next name.

  “Orriss, return to me!”

  There was no reaction and Simon cursed quietly. His shaking finger slipped down the list.

  “Sessa, come back!”

  They waited and nothing happened.

  “I think you were right, Brethia,” he began to say and then stopped and looked around curiously.

  The air in the room began to vibrate and Simon felt pressure in his ears, as if he'd suddenly dropped twenty floors in a high-speed elevator.

  “What?”

  There was no thunder, no flash of light, but slowly, painfully, a small figure appeared, curled up in the center of the desk.

  “Sessa!” Brethia exclaimed and flitted over to the motionless elemental.

  She knelt down next to him and gently rolled him over.

  Sessa flopped on to his back like a rag doll and lay there, apparently lifeless.

  “Is he alive?” Simon asked as he leaned forward, desperately hoping that she would say yes.

  “He is, master,” Kronk told him as he knelt next to Brethia, who was examining her fellow elemental. “If he was not, he would not have responded to your summons.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  As they watched, Brethia placed her hands on either side of Sessa's head and bowed her own. Simon held his breath, wondering w
hat she was doing. He knew instinctively that he shouldn't interrupt, whatever was happening.

  The shimmer of light that all air elementals seemed to emit in times of stress slowly drained from Brethia. It traveled down her arms and into the body of Sessa, which began to shudder and shake, convulsing as the power engulfed him.

  “Is she healing him?” Simon asked Kronk quietly.

  The little guy nodded silently as he watched the procedure closely.

  It felt like hours but only a few minutes had passed when Brethia sat back on her heals with an audible sigh of exhaustion.

  “How is he?”

  She looked up at the wizard and smiled weakly.

  “You may ask him yourself, my lord,” she told him.

  Simon watched in amazement as the injured elemental lifted his arms to his head in a very human gesture of bewilderment.

  “What has happened?” he asked in a surprisingly deep voice. “Where am I?”

  “You are safe, my friend,” Brethia told him as she stood up. “You have returned to the wizard's tower.”

  Sessa sat up slowly and looked around. He smiled tentatively up at his friend, then he saw Kronk and nodded. The earthen returned the greeting. Finally, the elemental noticed Simon and immediately leaped to his feet, nearly falling over in his haste.

  “Easy there,” the wizard said quickly. “You've had a rough time. Take a moment to get your balance.”

  “Yes, my lord. Thank you,” Sessa said with a ragged bow. “But I would not lie down before you and shame myself. It is my duty to serve.”

  Simon did his best not to roll his eyes.

  Kronk's spiritual twin, he thought with faint amusement.

  “Serve me? That's fine, if you choose to. But die for me? No way. Now, are you able to tell us what happened to you?”

  Sessa put a hand to his head again. He was still standing on the desk instead of hovering above it as Brethia was doing, which Simon assumed meant that he hadn't recovered his strength yet.

  “It is very disjointed, my lord. I was assigned to scout the most southern section of northern Mexico. Halfway through my sweep, I came across a very large structure. I had never seen anything like it before.”