The man was still alive, and very, very conscious, when they tossed him down into the dragon pit. Richard almost ran to the perch to watch him be devoured. To his disappointment, the fall knocked the man senseless, but he still screamed and flailed when they started ripping him apart. Only the king’s hand on his shoulder could get him to move back when the big, black mudged wyrm started flapping and climbing up the rocky side, chasing after the human leg Garth was dangling for it.
“Come, let’s get into position,” King Chad grinned. “I developed a plan of my own, Richard. Watch.”
Garth and Victir were both clearly nervous, but as Garth dragged the litter-man’s leg up and over the ledge, he kept sipping from a flask of something far stronger than normal liquor. After every sip, he would growl and snarl at the others, as if he’d gone mad. Then the hungry black wyrm poked its head over. Richard decided it wasn’t all that big, after all. Larger than his brother’s young wyrm, but no larger than Rikky Camille’s speedy silver. Richard found he wasn’t even afraid of it.
This wasn’t the plan they had agreed upon, and the way the manic-looking king kept eyeing him from the side had him wondering if he shouldn’t be afraid of him. The king’s plan was working. It was clear he had some men watching this pit and probably throwing these inbred things meat doused with potion. Now the mudged wyrm was moving toward the two bodies Victir had sliced open in the clearing. They had been drenched in thick, gravy-like liquid that was most likely about to put the mudged in more of a stupor than it was already in.
To everyone’s surprise, though, the tide of the scene changed when two of the other feral wyrms came up over the edge. One of them, the one closest to the king, sprouted arrow shafts as if it were displaying them. It roared out and spewed at three men with a small streak of thin fire breath. None of them even died from the blast, but they were all burned and useless now.
Richard became wary then, and decided that the color of the splotches along these wyrm’s backs shouldn’t be ignored. He also decided that the smartest of these four was the one who didn’t come up.
He gave King Chad a sincere nod and a grin, and darted right under the wyrm that was engaging the bulk of the men. A swordsman screamed, and arrows thrummed. The clash of steel on scale rang out. A horse whinnied its last as the shafted dragon pulled it over the side and dropped it down. Richard snatched his dragon collar out of the pile of gear and quickly fastened his part of the device around his neck. The Nightshade and he had commanded legions of these bat-brained mudged.
King Chad was about to have his wyrm, but Richard was about to seize the moment for himself. Settling here would be the most foolish thing he could ever do.
“What in the hells?” King Chad called as his wyrm started tearing into its offered feast.
“Collar your prize!” Richard yelled back.
Then, over the edge and down into the pit he went.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The dragon watching him slide down the rope did have a green sheen to it, but it wasn’t the dragon Richard wanted to collar. He’d seen a cave that extended off of the pit and knew in his heart there were more formidable draci in this hole, maybe even a high dracus. The simple fact that he could cast spells and use the knowledge he’d gained from his years of association with first Royal, then the Nightshade and Gravelbone, took away almost all of his fear. Even now, as he dropped the last few feet to the cavern floor, he was holding the wyrm still with his stare.
Richard adjusted the dragon collar around his shoulder and continued to stare at the transfixed mudged as he moved into the shadowy darkness of the cave.
Rather than create light, he cast a spell that allowed him to see better in the darkness. Agitating a nest of mudged would get him eaten faster than he could blink. But by moving cautiously, and not acting like prey, he knew he could find a more worthy wyrm than King Chad’s.
He with the biggest dragon wins. Richard sent his random thought through the ethereal, as if his long dead dragon could answer him. Isn’t that right, Royal?
A protective spell, and a spell cast to make him harder for the dragons to see, came next, and then he was beyond the entry pit and easing deeper into the mountain.
He saw the flash of an eye blink here, and a glimmer of scale there, but he knew there were more dragons than he could see. He didn’t care, though. Dying here was not much worse than dying on an island alone. In fact, it was a better end, and even though he probably could have played the coward and spent his life making children with his new wife, he was choosing to face his fate, to either rise or die, right here among the very beasts who ruined his humanity by making a simple life no longer worthy as an existence. Richard was a dragon-rider. He would ride again, or he would die trying.
Just then a blast of fire breath, far more potent than the mudged that attacked the king’s men, revealed that Richard was in a shaft that was lined with sleeping mudged. They were mostly horse-sized, but those were the ones that would pick a man apart. They were everywhere on the walls and ceiling, all hunkered down in their leathery wings.
The wyrm that had let loose the flames was watching him now. It could see his heat, he knew, and he could see its every scale with the gray-tinted sort of sight his spell allowed him. It was twice the size as the dragon King Chad was probably collaring this very moment, but it was not a dragon, for it was as black as pitch.
A bit of illumination flickered again ahead of him. It wasn’t from any wavering flame, either. It was lightning he saw, and his heart raced into an excited rhythm because of it. He stared off the half-attentive mudged and moved with more confidence and purpose toward the lightning flash. It didn’t take long to find him after that. The wyrm he wanted was in the process of eating another wyrm while defending its kill from a handful of smaller dragons.
Richard’s skin prickled when he saw the bright blue speckles down his dragon’s spinal line, and he was even more pleased at how deftly it took a bite of its meal and chugged it down while clawing and batting its competition away with its tail, and then blasted at any that got through with quick streaks of its liquid lightning breath.
Richard watched it, and settled into a place between two rocky nubs. His wyrm would be sated soon, and would sleep deeply. That is when he would make his move. Until then he would lie there and be invisible, and dream of what carnage was about to come.
Rikky was not having an easy time of it. He and Linux were afraid of doing anything that would cover or pin Jenka’s transformed body between their spell and the sides of the ravine he was blocking. The dam Jenka had created was holding back the Strom, though, and the upriver side was getting deeper and deeper against their friend’s side.
“We have one more full day at best,” Linux observed after casting a spell that held firm support in the middle of the green-scaled span, where the water was causing it to bulge. “After that, the river will find a way past us.”
We need to relieve the flow in the north, Zahrellion’s voice carried through the ethereal to them. Golden, go get your rider. She is too stubborn to stay put, and for undoing this mess, we will need her.
Yesss, the old, gold-scaled wyrm hissed with a bit of excitement in her tone.
But first, come help me, Zah said.
You’re here? Rikky’s heart raced. What do you need?
I need Golden and Silva to help Crystal place these boulders, so we can make another dam above you. This should slow the flow and relieve the pressure against him.
You were always my best student. Linux nodded as he imagined what she was intending. Clever, clever girl. It never crossed my mind to use the dragons in such a way.
The dragons leapt into flight, leaving Rikky and Linux there.
“What will we do about the poisoned water?” Rikky asked. “We don’t have a hundred chests of gold.”
“If we can obtain some of the wizard’s inoculation, I think we can replicate it.” Linux made to stroke at his long, thin beard. When his hand grasped air and found the st
ubble-faced, beardless jaw of the guardsman whose body he had stolen, he shook his head and huffed in frustration. “But the water coming from the mountains is clean, and the water already in Demon Lake is clean as well. It is all this water we have to remove.”
Has it lessened any? Zahrellion asked them.
Rikky scanned the sky to the north of their position, looking for any sign of Crystal’s white scales.
It is impossible to say, Linux answered as he looked intently at the reservoir building up north of Jenka. Wait, the water level isn’t rising nearly as quickly now. Look, Rikky, are you seeing this?
It was true. They had made marks in the rocks on the water side of the dam, and the river wasn’t rising nearly as quickly as it had been.
We only slowed the flow, Zahrellion said dejectedly. I hope Clover does whatever it is she is doing soon.
Rikky’s heart swelled when he saw them gliding along the newly created shoreline. Zahrellion was in her ivory battle armor and looked as beautiful and fierce as she ever had.
Oh no, Linux sighed beside him. Look.
The druid was pointing at a stream of water that had found a way through the lower part of Jenka’s self-made structure.
Rikky didn’t know what to do. He looked back to Zahrellion, and this time she was close enough for him to see that her expression was pained, and he wondered where the rascals and baby Amelia were.
Then Linux went to the leak and began casting a spell that would hopefully plug it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
King Chad lost six of his men —a dozen if you counted his litter-men— to the big black dragon. He had it collared, though, and was wrestling its defiant will with all the inner strength he could muster. He hadn’t expected to share the dragon’s thoughts through the collar, and he was most relieved to find that the intensity of that sensation subsided somewhat when he wasn’t trying to stay mounted on the angry wyrm.
And the wyrm was angry. Blacky, as the king had started calling his prize, didn’t like losing her free will. She didn’t know what free will was, but not having it was causing her to shudder and snarl, and lash out at people with her tail.
There came a point when King Chad had enough, and he summoned the willpower to force the dragon’s head down. He suffered the intense consciousness sharing, settled himself tight against its neck, and forced his wyrm to take flight. Once they were in the air, the dragon was too preoccupied to rebel against his thought commands, and soon the wyrm was finding the human king’s curiosity a curiosity in itself. When the king urged the dragon to swoop low over a village and spit melon-sized fire balls at the thatch of a barn, the dragon began to respond with a bit more eagerness. Watching the yellow, barrel-keg-sized balls of flame churn and slowly spin as they flew toward their target made King Chad’s blood tingle with excitement. Seeing the terror in the eyes of the people scrambling below made the dragon’s heart beat faster, too. Before long, they began to understand each other.
King Chad was pleased beyond words. He had expected to be trying to control some super-intelligent thing that was more powerful than he, but this wyrm was starting to be compliant — eager, even. When they sped across the rowed field of one crop or another and she snatched a farmer right out of his plow wagon, the king let loose a roar. He salivated as she landed, ripped apart her treat, and chugged it down in two separate pieces. He could taste the sweet blood and smell its coppery stench. He could feel the stuff sliding down his long gullet. As his guts began digesting the farmer, he felt tingles reaching down his long spine and out through his wings. A deep need for slumber came on.
“No!” he yelled. “We’ve a bit more to do, Blacky, my love. Then we can sate your urge to feed and let you laze on the warm rocks near home.”
The dragon didn’t articulate a response. Chad wasn’t sure if he’d just nabbed a stupid wyrm, or if King Richard had been stretching the truth of it. He decided the latter was the case, for he’d never heard of dragons doing more than killing cows and attacking caravaners and such.
What of King Richard, anyway? he asked himself. He no longer needed the man. The kingdoms were forever tied by way of his daughter’s marriage. His daughter was, in fact, now the true queen of the New World. Having that thought while Blacky lowered him into the very rocky pit out of which he’d lured her, he decided that maybe he could create his own legion of Dragonites and put her on her throne properly.
Since he saw no sign of Richard, only a bloody stain a few dozen paces into the cave, he decided that it was his duty now to do so. Richard could be alive in there somewhere, but no one was going in after him to see.
With a confident smirk, King Chad urged his wyrm back up. The gods were smiling on him this day. Not only had he collared a dragon, in one great imagining of a future he had become the Dragon King. And he would buy enough dragon collars to outfit an army and then take his daughter to the land of Dragoneers, relieve them of their station, and sit her on her rightful throne, with or without her husband.
Rikky couldn’t believe how well Aikira was healing. She was no longer swollen, and her limbs were straight and bending in all the right places. The Outlander was moving stiffly and using a walking stick for support, but the staff went with her high-collared wizard cloak perfectly. Under the cloak, Rikky saw golden plate mail and knew she was struggling to function with the added weight strapped to her.
The two of them, along with Zahrellion and Linux, were standing below the dam Jenka and Jade formed, all wondering nervously what they could do to strengthen the span or relieve their fellow Dragoneer and his wyrm. Golden, Silva, and Crystal were making a new boulder pile even farther upriver, but the flow wasn’t subsiding. It was slowing a bit, but there was already so much water pressing against Jenka’s obstruction that they feared it would tear away from its anchors and fill Demon’s Lake with poison.
Rikky wasn’t wearing armor; in fact, Rikky’s only suit of armor was ceremonial at best. He didn’t think it mattered much. Against trolls and goblins and antler-headed demons, protective clothing was necessary. Against dragons and wizards and beasts that could swallow you whole, it didn’t amount to much.
“Even if we somehow keep holding this back, we will have to buy some of the inoculation,” Zahrellion said. “The seepage alone”—she pointed at the trickle stream running between the base of the dam into the now muddy river bottom—“might pollute the lake.”
“I think Blaze or Crimzon could evaporate most of that,” Rikky said. He almost said that he wished March were here, but Aikira said it for him in a voice so small it was barely audible.
Rikky was overcome with unease and even a little shame over the jealous feelings he got when Zahrellion went and pressed her face against Jenka’s form. She spoke softly and soothingly, and it was clear to Rikky she still loved her husband. In that moment, Rikky understood the wrongness of loving Zahrellion.
He dropped his head and looked at his scuffed-up boots. He’d told her his feelings earlier, he’d screamed them to her, and he was now suddenly wishing he had held his tongue
Just then, a loud cracking came from the edge of Jenka’s dam. Water erupted out of one fist-sized hole, then another, then a crack crawled upward around where Jenka met the rock face.
“I can only hold it back for so long!” Linux screamed. “Do something to fortify it!”
“What do we do?” Rikky had no idea what he should do, but he knew that if the dam broke, they would be washed away by poison. He put his arm around Aikira and helped her stay steady as they levitated up and out from behind the lake Jenka had formed.
Then rocks on the far side started cracking and coming loose. It was all Zahrellion could do to drag Linux out of the danger as the upper levels of water came pouring over the places where the rock was giving way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Richard crept up on the sleeping mudged as if he were the shadow of a shadow. He had done this sort of thing before, back on the island, hunting for food. There were times when he’d
had to stand statue-still and move so slowly the fish couldn’t detect him. He didn’t rush, and he was rewarded for it.
The dragon rolled over and extended its long neck, as if it were stretching in its sleep, and Richard casually threw the collar from his shoulder to its shoulders. His movement went from a crawl to a rush in a flash, and he was fastening the buckle and giving commands before the wyrm was even fully awake.
He was thinking he would ride this wyrm deeper into the cavern and use it to find a purer-blooded dracus, but this one turned out to have enough sense to balk when he tried. It was a lot bigger than he first estimated, too, and not nearly as crazed as some of the other mudged wyrms he’d encountered. He decided the gods had favored him with this one, and climbed right onto its shoulders.
He wanted to get into the air and feel the rush of the wind against him. His blood was electric with excitement. He had little trouble gaining the wyrm’s attention and subduing its will, for he was experienced in dealing with mudged wyrms. It came as a surprise, though, when a few other, smaller, mudged followed them and responded with almost full compliance when he had his new mount order them around.
Dawn was breaking, and no full rays of sun were shining down into the bottom of the cave pit yet, but as Richard’s new dragon lifted them up into the glorious morning, he marveled over how long he had lived thinking these feelings of freedom and power were forever lost to him. He was feeling them now, and the dragon’s frustration and excitement over having been collared as well.
He saw that his wyrm was less black than he’d first thought. It was a brownish-purple color splattered with darker spots. Richard’s skin prickled when he saw the bright blue speckles down its spine. The wyrm was ultimately the color of a flesh bruise; it even had areas of green and orange mixed with the brighter turquoise and the darker shades. Its wing membranes were so thin, Richard could see through them.
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