End Times in Dragon City

by Matt Forbeck

  I could have cast another spell on the floor to warm it, but I wanted to save whatever mojo I had. I was stuck inside that cell, but with the Ruler of the Dead knocking on the Great Circle, I had no idea how long that would last. If a rallying call came that I could answer, I needed to be sure I was ready for it.

  Barring that, I was determined to go down fighting, whether that meant struggling against my jailers or battling until my last breath against the walking dead as they tore down the door to my cell. Yabair had taken my dragonfire flask along with my wand and gun when he’d arrested me. I only had myself to rely on, and that meant conserving my energies for when I might need them most.

  While Alcina had brought me the crystal ball, I wasn’t convinced my actual jailers were in on that fact, so I kept it hidden in case they wandered by to check in on me. It seemed prudent. When I was sure they weren’t around, I went to the window and pulled it out of my pocket to gaze into it again, keeping my body between it and the door to my cell.

  The sight of the city hauled me up short before I could look into the globe though. While Dragon City had seemed almost peaceful under the blanket of night, the harsh light of day conspired to expose all of its troubles.

  Smoke curled into the sky from at least a dozen different fires scattered throughout the city. No neighborhood seemed untouched, from Goblintown all the way up to the Elven Reaches. I couldn’t see the Dragon’s Spire above me, but I wondered if the Ruler of the Dead’s reach had managed to reach even that high.

  I suspected that the Ruler’s army of the dead wasn’t behind every bit of destruction I could see. The panic that the approach of her forces inspired would be enough to set people against each other. Tenuous peaces would be shattered. Old grudges would reawaken. Long-buried suspicions would be dug up again.

  It almost made me glad to be trapped in that cell.

  At least the Great Circle seemed to have held through the night. From my vantage point, I could see bursts of magic and flashes of gunfire lancing along it, but they were all still pointed outward. The walkway along the top of the wall held only the living, as far as I could tell, and the wall remained unbreached.

  Then my gaze wandered past the Great Circle, and my heart stopped cold in my chest.

  The Guard had long ago cleared the forest away from the Great Circle to give themselves plenty of time to spy any walking dead shambling our way. That bare land between the wall and the woods beyond now teemed with creatures shuffling toward Dragon City. Past them, the woods shivered and trembled as untold numbers of the dead crept through the undergrowth there, answering the Ruler of the Dead’s silent rallying cry.

  From as high up as my cell stood in the Garrett and on the mountain, I could see for miles. Beyond that patch of forest, lines of the dead snaked at the city, marching toward us from distant lands long unknown. They grew thicker as they came closer, and there seemed to be no end to them.

  I was still staring out at the death-packed plains beyond Dragon City when I heard someone at the door to my cell. I spun about and stuffed the crystal ball into my pocket. A moment later, a dwarf jailer with a short-cropped beard opened the door and let in the last person I wanted to see.

  My father.

  He looked haggard and disheveled, as if he hadn’t slept for days. He’d aged overnight, the wrinkles on his face now deeper and more desperate, carving his disapproving frown so deep into his face that I wondered if his jaw cave under the pressure. He seemed so much like he might fall over at any moment that I wanted to offer him a hand, even though I was the one who’d spent the night in the Garrett.

  “Hello, Max,” he said, his voice rough and worn, his eyes watery. “How are they treating you?”

  “I’ve slept in worse places,” I said. “But not by much.”

  He nodded at me, then averted his eyes. “That’s good, I suppose.”

  “Are you here to bail me out?”

  It was a joke and a bad one, and I knew it. You didn’t get bailed out of the Garrett. You stayed here until you were brought before the Dragon — at his leisure — and then you were sentenced. With the Dragon dead, I might wind up in there for the rest of my life, no matter how short that might be.

  He recoiled at the idea, goggling at me. “What? No. No!” The vehemence of his denial seemed to shock even him, and he took a moment to collect himself. “I just came here to — well, to talk.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, all the better to hide the bulge of the crystal ball in my pocket. Behind my father, the jailer closed the door with a firm slam. The noise made my father jump

  “What about?” I asked.

  He’d turned to give the door a longing look, and he came back to me as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of a deep thought. “What’s that?”

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  He steeled himself before he tried to open his mouth, and then he failed to follow through. His lips parted, but no sound emerged from between them. He bowed his head, his cheeks flushing red, and then tried again.

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  He said it as if it was an honest question, so I decided to treat it as such. “I’ve been appraised of the consequences of my actions.”

  “So you’ve seen the Ruler’s army massing outside the wall? You’ve seen the fires burning throughout the city? You know —” He had to stop to swallow, fear shimmering in his eyes. “You know that we’re all doomed?”

  Too many responses leaped to mind. I didn’t know how to choose among them. I went with the one that shouted loudest in my head.

  “Did you know that the Dragon ate Mom?”

  He froze, and I could see by the way his gaze darted toward the door that he understood exactly what I meant.

  “You knew, and you didn’t do anything about it. You never said a word in protest, did you?”

  “Now, hold on. This isn’t about me.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I found my voice rising as I spoke to him. “The Dragon ate my mother — your wife. He ate your parents and hers too. And theirs too. All the way back to the founding of the city. And you’re all right with that?”

  He frowned even deeper at me. If you’d asked me beforehand, I would have sworn that wasn’t possible. “They were already dead, Max. They would have been incinerated anyway.”

  “Respectfully. Not served up on silver platters so that bastard could pick his teeth with their bones.”

  “And for that you killed him?” My father’s voice cracked as he spoke. “For that, you took your petty little revenge on him?”

  “Of course not. He was trying to eat me too. While I was still breathing!”

  My father’s eyes grew wide with horror, and his reply caught in his throat. I pressed on.

  “He was going to kill Belle and eat her too, because her parents couldn’t produce her sister’s corpse. Do you get how insane that is?”

  “An undead elf is a mortal threat,” he said, his voice much softer now.

  “You don’t have to tell me that. But how does killing an innocent elf change that? All it did is fill that fat lizard’s belly with what he cared about most: people meat.”

  My father threw up his hands. “But without the Dragon, we’re all dead. Of course it was a bad deal — an awful, horrible deal — but now instead of the Dragon eating our dead, the Ruler will eat us all!”

  “We’ve had hundreds of years to prepare for this. We built the Great Circle since then, right?”

  My father put his hands over his face. “At least your mother wasn’t here to see —”

  I stabbed a finger straight into his chest. “Stop it, Dad. Stop it right damn there.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, and I stuck my finger in his face instead.

  “You say one more word about how fortunate it is that my mother isn’t here to be as ashamed of me as you are, and I’ll shove you through the bars in that window over there before the guards can stop me.”

  He glanced over
my shoulder at the window and took note of how close together the bars sat, then met my glare again. “Fine,” he said. “Let me just say I wish I’d died with her than witness this day myself!”

  I felt like he’d kicked me in the stomach. Rather than stagger back a step, though, I snarled at him. “I can put you out of your misery right now if you like. It’s not like they’re going to punish me any worse at this point.”

  He slapped me then, for real this time, and I took it. I let the impression of his fingers sting where they’d crossed my cheek, and I spent the next moment struggling with an almost overwhelming desire to return the favor to him a hundredfold. Instead, I just said two words to him: “Get out.”

  “I’m not done with you yet.”

  I turned my back on him. “Yes, you are.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off and strode over to the window, still not turning to face him again.

  “The council sent me here,” he said. “I wouldn’t have come on my own.”

  I knew he was telling the truth about that, and it felt like the most hurtful thing he’d said to me yet. He wanted me to ask what the council wanted, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him now. It didn’t take him long to crack.

  “They want to know what you did with the dragonet.”

  That did get me to spin back around to gape at him. “He’s just fine,” I said. “Now that the Dragon’s dead, that is.”

  My father snorted at that. “Sure. I suppose he can always fly away once we’re overrun, can’t he?”

  “He can’t take on all those zombies, Dad. He’s too small. Not by himself.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he said. “Of course you don’t. You’ve always been that way. Your sense of righteousness makes you blind.”

  “Justice.”

  “Whatever you care to call it.”

  “Explain it to me like I’m five,” I said. “It’ll be just like back when I was in the Academy.”

  He shuddered at me in his frustration, holding his hands up as if he wanted to shake some sense into me. “He’s the heir to the empire, Max. Where he winds up matters. Even if Dragon City is doomed, there’s still a chance the line can continue on.”

  My jaw dropped. “You want to rescue him? You’ve already given up on the city, and you want to see if you can get him to join you on some kind of escape plan you cowards have stuffed up your robes?”

  “The council is only exploring contingencies,” my father said. “At this point, I’d think even you would see how that might be prudent.”

  “Guard!” I walked over to the door to my cell and shouted again. “Guard! Come get this man out of here. Now!”

  The dwarf ambled up a moment later. I spotted two more dwarves in their dark blue uniforms behind him, pistols stuffed in their meaty hands and pointed at the door. “Your little family reunion gone sour?” he said as he pushed open the door.

  My father grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me to face him as he stood in the opening doorway. “If you see the dragonet, Max, send him to us. We’ll take care of him. He’ll be safe in our hands.”

  I grabbed my father by his collar and shoved him out of my cell. “I love you too, Dad.”

  The lead jailer pulled the door closed behind my father. The old man turned around to look at me one last time through the grate in the oaken slab. He licked his lips as he struggled to find something to say to me.

  Finally he spoke. “Good luck, Max.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I spent the rest of my day sitting in my cell and doing my best not to feel sorry for myself. I’d never been one for self-pity — I didn’t see the point of it — but I had to admit it was hard not to indulge myself a little bit. I’d been jailed for the assassination of the Emperor of my homeland, after all, and chances were good the entire place would be torn apart by zombies long before a proper punishment could be meted out for it.

  I peeked out at the world for a bit through the crystal ball, but I didn’t much like what I saw. A few random zombies roamed through the streets, and that was enough for most people to keep inside with their doors and windows shut and barred — except when they absolutely had to go outside. I guessed that the walking dead had sprung up from people who’d died inside the city, but I had no way to tell for sure.

  I checked the Great Circle for breaks in the city’s defenses and found none. In fact, as the day wore on and the sun rose higher in the sky, the undead retreated from the wall and sought the cover of the woods instead. I knew from experience that zombies could tolerate sunlight, but it always seemed to suck a lot of their energy straight out of them. When dark fell, they became far more active and outright vicious. If the Ruler of the Dead had drawn them back for the day, I could only suspect that it meant we were in for a horrible night to come.

  The guards atop the wall didn’t let the respite go to waste. They scrambled back and forth, putting into position pots of oil they could set ablaze, plus they set up enchanted ballistae and other weaponry meant to keep the Ruler’s army at bay. I spotted casks of dragonfire being rolled into position next to squads of wizards, giving them a way to replenish their mojo when it started to run dry. That was a dangerous game to play, one that could leave the wizards too drunk to cast spells if they pushed themselves too hard and fast. That was besides the fact the enchanted liquor was normally illegal, but they didn’t have many other choices at this point.

  The Dragon’s corpse still lay where it had fallen, looking just as fresh as it had at the moment of his death. I had no idea about the rate at which a dead dragon might decay, but he seemed as well preserved as a shiny suit of armor.

  A group of wizards stood gathered around the cadaver now, in addition to the crimson-suited guards. From their lack of uniforms, I could tell the wizards weren’t part of the Guard. With a closer look, I spotted Bill Whitman — the Academy’s headmaster — among them, as well as my old classmate Celia.

  The wizards poked at the gigantic corpse with their wands, casting all sorts of divination and forensic spells, a few of which I recognized, even if I probably couldn’t cast them myself anymore. I’d known them at one point, but I’d chosen to concentrate on different kinds of spells after I left the school. Those less useful spells had atrophied from my mind.

  I don’t know if they were trying to move the Dragon or cut him up into pieces to pass out to the rest of the city for a massive feast — which would have been appropriate — but either way, they didn’t seem to be having much success. The Dragon’s scales had made him immune to most magic, which was one of the reasons they were so prized. They seemed to be protecting him as well in death as they had in life.

  It struck me once again how damn lucky I’d been with that shot that had killed the great beast. Then I considered where it had brought me, and I wasn’t so sure.

  Maybe my father had been right to be so ashamed of me. I’d only been trying to save Belle and Spark and all the rest of my friends — and sure, even my own skin — but what did that matter against the lives of everyone in the city? As it was, it seemed now like we would all die anyhow. If we were lucky, we might each have a couple more days than we would have if I’d let the Dragon have his way with us, and every hour of those days would be filled with a mounting terror that would only end at the moment the walking dead finally overcame us and ushered us forcefully into their ranks.

  Death by dragon’s fire didn’t seem like such a bad alternative when compared to that.

  I’d made my choice then, though, and now I’d have to live with it the best I could for as along as I could manage. I only hoped my friends would be able to do the same.

  I went looking for them, and I couldn’t find them anywhere.

  Well, that’s not entirely true. It would be better to say that they weren’t where I expected to find them — at the Quill — except for faithful Thumper, who was busy reinforcing the place’s defenses. If I ever made it back there,
I was going to have to give the man a massive bonus.

  I found Kells and Cindra at their home, taking care of their children and boarding up their house’s windows and doors. They’d laid in a good stock of supplies, enough food and water to last them all for weeks, and Kells had mounted one of his machine-guns on the building’s flat roof, all the better to defend his home with. If anyone survived all this, it would be them.

  Or at least they’d be the last to go.

  I spotted Moira when I looked in on Nit at the Barrelrider. He’d given up fixing up my office over his restaurant for the moment and had barricaded the dining room’s front door instead. Despite that, he and his wife had the kitchens running full blast and were feeding a huge crowd of people packed in there with them.

  Most of the customers there were halflings, but I spotted a number of humans and gnomes mixed in there with them. The wine and beer and spirits flowed freely with the food, and everyone seemed to be in a surprisingly good mood. I didn’t know how long the party could hold out, but they’d have a wonderful time until then.

  Moira was helping her mother in the kitchen, something I don’t think she’d done much of for well over a decade. Ever since we’d started out as adventurers, she and her mother hadn’t had much to say to each other. Even after Moira had retired from the game, her mother’s continuing disapproval had stayed wedged between them.

  When Moira had gone missing, though, and then showed up without her left hand, her mother had welcomed her home and set to babying her like a sick toddler. And much to my surprise, Moira had not only tolerated it but embraced it. It warmed my heart so see them working together like that, a beacon of hope in all the horrors of the day.

  I couldn’t find Kai anywhere, but I knew that was how he liked it. He rarely stayed in any one place for long, moving from job to job and bed to bed like the mercenary he was. He’d made just as much money as any of us back in the day, but he’d pissed it all away. To him, money was meant to be used the same way that life was meant to be enjoyed: as fast and ferociously as possible.