by Chris Fox
“Wait,” he did a double take. “Powers?”
“Join us, and you’ll soon see.”
With a feeling in his gut that told him nothing would ever be the same again, he slowly nodded.
“Great, stay close,” the mom said, then stood and headed back for the entrance to the cave.
The daughter lingered, smiling, and said, “I’m Ezail, my mother is Feras.”
“Triston,” he replied, and then followed her out.
Stepping out into the light of day, he noted that his eyes needed no help adjusting, which was strange considering they had just come from a dark cavern. Now that he thought about it, walking through the cavern he had not needed much help seeing either, though the way in had been dark.
The roar of dragons came, followed by a swooshing of wings and a darkening of the sky.
Triston spun, turning to look up as a horde of dragons swept out into the light. While many appeared as Feras had in dragon form, others had thicker scales, black and glimmering in the sunlight, almost as if they were steel or some other metal. Some had solid bodies, while others had spots that appeared to glow green, pulsating with what seemed to be a radioactive flare.
“They’re riding out to meet our foe, the group that took you down,” Feras stated.
He frowned, confused. “But the red eyes, I thought that was you.”
“No, you’ll see.” She turned, eyes flaring with light. “Are you ready?”
He gulped, confused. “Yes…?”
“Then prepare to grab on.”
She turned and, as he watched, the gold light flew out of her and engulfed her. First it grew into wings, then expanded until, with a massive roar, she was her dragon self again. Ezail followed suit, and then Feras turned her horned head to Triston and nodded, lowering her neck so that he could climb on her back.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” He took a step back, wide-eyed. “I don’t have a helmet, I don’t have a weapon.”
Her eyes narrowed and he saw his reflection in them. Even as he watched, the golden light formed a helmet around him, one that allowed full visibility and mobility, and his hands lit up.
Give them a try, a voice said from inside his head.
He didn’t understand at first, but then lifted his hands and pointed them at the hillside nearby. Light pulled from his surroundings, making it darker for a moment, and then, with a blast, it shot out like any tier three plasma cannon, sending debris flying.
“Holy—”
The language, the voice said, and Feras nodded toward her daughter. Was the younger dragon actually smiling?
Triston looked from them to his hands, then back at the spot he had just blasted.
“I have a feeling I’ll regret this someday, but…. Let’s do this!”
He ran forward, leaped onto the dragon’s back, and held tight.
As massive wings spread, a flash of panic filled Triston’s mind, but by the time he registered it, the moment was gone and they were already flying up into the atmosphere, passing mountains of ice, clouds that shot past, and then higher up still, into the stratosphere and beyond, up past the point where the sky stopped looking orange and everything felt like the clearest night.
Given the clarity of view in his helmet, he nearly forgot it was on. They passed into space and he gulped with a panicked thought that he would suffocate, or maybe fall from this dragon and float off into space forever.
But as they soared ever upward and found themselves surrounded by dragons doing the same, all he could do was whoop out with excitement, all fear replaced by the majesty of the moment.
There was something else contributing to his newfound sense of security, he realized, and that was the way he seemed connected to Feras. He moved to pick up a leg, surprised to find that it stuck to the dragon’s scales like a will-powered magnet. It was moveable, but would stick to her unless he wanted it to.
Save the excitement for when it’s over, a voice told him, and he leaned forward, holding tight, eyes roaming.
Red eyes opened ahead.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, Triston realized that the dragon eyes he had seen back on the planet were nothing like these. These were much larger, much fiercer.
A dragon nearby opened its mouth and, where Triston expected fire to shoot out, instead it was a concentrated burst of bright, blue energy. The shot flew at a spot near the red eyes and exploded, and for a few seconds Triston caught a glimpse of their enemy.
It wasn’t like the dragons, so much as it was like a giant snake that worked its way through the sky. Hissing, it lunged for the nearest dragon and caught it in its jaws, crushing it.
Triston sat back, feeling sick.
More attacks came from the dragons, attacks in different bursts of energy of blue, green, and red. The snake moved, flickered out of sight as its cloaking technology turned back on, and then it opened its mouth to reveal a couple dozen ships emerging.
The ships were similar to the fighters back on earth, but where the fighters he was used to were shaped like thin arrows, pointing to their target, these had additional pointers and a more intricate weapon system.
Ezail appeared beside Triston and let out a roar, eyeing him. He had a feeling she was either telling him to stay down, or prepare to fight. Since he didn’t know which and since he was freaking out at having just seen a massive space snake shoot out alien fighters from its mouth, he decided the best course of action was to fight for his damn life.
It seemed the right choice, because more dragons swooped in over his head, moving in to meet their enemy.
He had seen what his new powers could do planet-side, but he wasn’t sure if it would have the same effect without oxygen.
As an enemy fighter zoomed past, unleashing a flurry of blasts at them, one of the black dragons spun and swept it with its tail. Only then did Triston see how massive the dragons were, even compared to these spaceships. The two dragons he had met were large, but nothing like this.
Having knocked the ship off course, the dragon turned and gave chase.
Another alien fighter was coming at them, so Triston hugged tight with his legs while lifting his hands. He focused on the energy, as he had done before. Only this time the energy was much more concentrated—it shot out like two golden lasers, and one hit the enemy ship dead on, causing it to explode completely.
The dragons nearby roared with approval, and then more were attacking. Feras opened her jaw and Triston could feel her power vibrating through his legs. As they swept in again, he lifted himself up, almost standing, and raised both arms to send blast after blast into the enemy ships.
Dragons attacked from all sides, gliding in and out of view. Bursts of energy shot out, some exploding, others coating their enemies in a material that made them start to fall apart even as they flew, and soon the dragons were giving chase as the alien fighters retreated.
Feras turned to her daughter and roared, and the two of them pulled back. They watched the dragons move on for a moment, and then saw the flickering snake in the distance. Soon other dragons were pulling back too, and then Feras was taking him back down to her planet.
She touched down on the layer of land above where he had first met her, and waited for Triston to hop off before transforming back into the humanoid form he had seen earlier. Her daughter followed suit.
“You fought on our side,” Feras said with a kind bow of her head.
“He was great,” Ezail noted. “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You?” He laughed. This was out of his comprehension, everything that had just happened, but he knew one thing—if some alien group wanted to hurt these two, he would do anything in his power to stop them. “That was… amazing.”
“What you saw was simply a scouting mission,” Feras said, “the enemy daring to venture too close to our home.”
“Is it… over?” he asked. “I mean, for now?”
She nodded her head, then took her daughter’s hand and said, “Come, I�
�ll show you where we live. You did wonderfully, but with a little training you could be unstoppable, I imagine.”
He nodded and followed, mind racing with questions. But as they walked, a terrible dread took hold.
“The humans, my kind, they’ll come.”
“We trust you’ll figure that part out,” she replied. “You’ll be left with a choice then, a moment that will change your life. Will you become one of us? An emissary from earth, an ambassador between our two civilizations? Or join them if they decide we are a threat.”
“I would never!” He blinked, turned to her, and cocked his head. “One of you? Do you mean, like a dragon?”
“Let’s not be hasty,” she replied with a teasing smile. “But if you prove yourself worthy, who knows.”
That was a concept hard to wrap his head around. He contemplated it—his career with the space fleet, all of his connections with humanity… or this, whatever this was. Magic? Some new science that he couldn’t wrap his mind around? Regardless of the logic behind it, the allure was undeniable.
All he could do was stare ahead in deep thought as they started leading him off, down a path, and into one of the tall ice-mountains. Inside, he saw that same golden glow from before, this time radiating down from the inside of the ice walls.
What he had thought to be the main inhabitants of this place must have simply been a forward guard, an outpost. What lay before him now was a glimmering domed city of humanoids just like the girl and her mother. Thousands of them.
Since arriving, the question of how to get home had been bothering him. But now that he stood here, staring out in amazement, the question was fading out of existence.
He saw what he was defending when he fought at their side, and caught a glimpse at his time ahead here. He would learn everything they would allow him to learn, training to fight alongside dragons. One day, perhaps, become a dragon.
Hell, as far as he was concerned? He was home.
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After serving five years in Marine Corps Signals Intelligence, Justin studied fiction at the Johns Hopkins MA in writing program and screenwriting at UCLA. He went on to work in games and screenwriting, where he has optioned several screenplays and written on such games as Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands.
Justin has presented on writing at the Austin Film Festival, San Francisco Writers Conference, the San Diego State Writers Conference, Gen Con, and more. You can hear his interviews with authors on the Creative Writing Career podcast.
His books are available in audio and print editions, and he has sold Turkish and French rights to several of his series, with the Blade of the Sea series being published under Hachette Publishing Group (under the shared pen name with PT Hylton of Jesse Nethermind).
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Freedom
Sam Witt
A Screaming Stars Short Story
When you’re a young, broke occultech witch, even shitty jobs look great on paper. That’s how I, Grace Solomon, said poor-ass witch, found myself in the belly of a shadowship surrounded by angry Eldwyr with a Class VI demon about to bust loose from its cage.
“Foolish witch!” The Eldwyr boss, a tall, pointy-eared sorceress shouted in my ear. The haughty elf slapped me across the back of the head with a hand so thick with rings she couldn’t even bend her fingers. “The auras are out of balance. Recalibrate your occultech contraption before the demon escapes.”
The slap stung my pride more than it hurt my skull. I thought they’d hired me for this gig, not just because I’d been desperate and put in a low bid, but because I had a reputation as a hell of a witch. As the demon’s aura bled out of the binding circle and the rest of the crew struggled to complete the ritual, I started to suspect the truth.
I wasn’t here to help the Eldwyr. I was here to take the blame if their job fell apart.
Screw you, elf, I thought to myself, and rotated the knobs tied to the containment field attenuators on my Infernal Inhibitor. Slowly, the focus gem’s glow shifted from a dangerously fiery red to the brilliant yellow-green pulses of a lightning bug’s tail. We still weren’t safe from the demon they were trying to bind, but we were definitely safer.
“Your pathetic vessel cannot contain me,” the demon growled at us through the silver bars of its cage. Every one of its thirteen eyes focused on the Eldwyr sorceress running this shindig, but she was too busy glaring at me and the occultech gear in my hands to notice the danger behind her. The tentacles writhing from the demon’s shoulders slithered around the bars and strained against its prison. The barrier creaked, but the silver rods didn’t give way.
Yet.
A foul, sulfurous stench leaked out of the binding vessel. The demonic aroma stung my nostrils and burned my eyes. It was a sure sign the demon was gaining ground and winning the fight with the hellbinders.
I really should have asked to get paid in advance. If those bars popped out of the vessel, the demon would escape, and the binding ritual would fail. That meant not only would the Duarg refuse to pay the Eldwyr their contract fee (hint, that means I’m not getting paid, either), but the demon would be free to rampage around the belly of the shadowship we were all currently huddled in. I could handle a Class I demon on my own. A Class II demon with a few friends.
But a Class VI demon? The Duarg would have to hire a whole cabal of water elementals to hose our remains out of their ship’s hold when an infernal that strong got through with us.
“The binding vessel isn’t strong enough to hold that demon,” I warned the boss lady. “The Inhibitor is dialed in, but unless your boys can reinforce the cage, we’re screwed.”
“You told me you could restrict the demon’s power by two categories. That is a Class IV binding,” the sorceress shouted at me, spraying my face with flecks of foam. “Our work will hold up to the threat. We hired you to do a job. So, do it.”
Dealing with Eldwyr assholes was a fact of life for a human living on Durotan, but it was getting to be too much for me to swallow. The sorcerous elite kept humans penned up in slums, restricted our use of magic with nasty licensing fees and geas enforcement, and generally screwed us with new and inventive laws every chance they got. Getting yelled at while a demon threatened to devour my soul made me want to take my toys and go home.
And I would have packed up and left if I hadn’t needed the money so badly.
The going rate for running backup on a binding was three hundred gold royals. My family was so strapped for cash I’d accepted half that, which made this the highest paying gig I’d had in the past six months. It was enough to clear the fines the local magistrate had leveled against our family business for practicing geomancy without a license, with enough left over to cover rent, thaumagon power, and food for the next couple of months.
That’s right—for less money than the average Eldwyr makes in a week, I had willingly, gladly, put my life and immortal soul on the line.
“Working on it,” I mumbled, and adjusted the wands in the attenuator array. The crystal rods hummed at my touch, a gentle and comforting reminder that they were still operating. I tilted the outer left wand a bit up, eyes watching the status crystal. The lightning-bug flashes intensified, and then the hue shifted to vivid emerald. The glow held steady for a moment, then pulsed in a series of triplets.
That blink-blink-blink warned me I’d pushed the Infernal Inhibitor past its safe operating limit and was in danger of breaking the damned thing. If it got to blink-blink-blink-blink-blink, the rods would shatter, and the demon would have its full power back.
That was the best I could do.
And it wasn’t enough. The demon leered at us with its thirteen eyes and laughed with as many different voices. The inverted Enochian wards inscribed into the dec
k surrounding the vessel glowed with the white-hot brilliance of lightning bolts. Cracks zig-zagged through the stone, splintering the deck into dozens of shifting pieces. Jagged shards rose from between the cracks and floated into the air like a hailstorm running in slow-motion reverse.
“I’m pushing the limits here,” I warned the sorceress. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast.”
The stink of sulfur scorched my nose and throat. We were running out of time, and I could tell the Eldwyr knew it because the sorceress had stopped staring at me to focus on the binding tome on the pedestal before her.
The hellbinder nearest me screamed when the demon turned its attention on him.
“Make it stop!” The Eldwyr howled. Blood burst from his eyes and ears, and the ruby droplets hung suspended around him as if time had stopped.
“End it!” I shouted to be heard over the hellbinder’s screaming and the demon’s endless giggling. “I’m at maximum capacity, and whatever you’re calling up is still stronger than your binding. This isn’t a Class VI demon, and you know it. Dispel the summoning before your binder gets his soul eaten.”
The sorceress didn’t respond, but her finger paused over a page in her binding tome. Her lips moved in silence, and I realized she was finally doing something smart. She was committing the demon’s true name to memory so she could send it back to hell.
No one was getting paid today, but at least we’d all go home more or less intact.
All the bitch had to do was say the demon’s name and command it to take a hike.
“By the sign and seal, I command you,” she said and barked out the first two syllables of the demon’s name.
The binder closest to me exploded like a piñata at a vampire brat’s birthday party, spraying blood and bits of jellied organ in every direction. The burst of gore blinded me and distracted the sorceress. She spluttered and tried to continue the banishing, but it was too late. She’d fumbled the demon’s name, and now it was pissed.