He thought about what he was seeing and decided that the man was going to try to collar a bunch of wyrms. There were already two he’d seen, and maybe more.
Richard had another feeling: a feeling of a familiar power getting closer to him. His skin started tingling, his hair stood on end, and his mind told him that he needed to end King Chad’s rise before he gained too much control.
As Richard started diving his wyrm toward the other dragon below the bailey, warning blasts sounded from the wall top. Richard wasn’t worried, because he was far too high up to be hit with an arrow, and he doubted the king would harm him anyway, at least not in the open. He was the man’s son now.
Richard took a deep breath, for he knew there was about to be a battle. The feeling he was getting was lifting his ire and pushing him to the point of rage. He could hear Gravelbone whispering encouragements in the back of his mind, and he wanted to do worse things than were being suggested. He still didn’t know why he was feeling such hatred for a man who had liberated him and given him his daughter, but he was.
Before the king and the group to which he was speaking had a chance to react, Richard brought Bruiser down right on top of the crowd, leaving the men being spoken to between him and the king’s wyrm. He marveled at how much more powerful Bruiser looked than the king’s dragon. He wasn’t that much bigger, but he was clearly less mudged and nowhere near as stunted.
“…and here is my daughter’s love now, adding himself to our growing force,” the king said, welcoming Richard with open arms. “If you ride with me, you will feel the glory of victory over and over again!” King Chad’s voice rose as he spoke, and the uncertain men to which he was speaking responded with nods and even a few cheers of agreement.
“Together, we will catch and collar as many dragons as we can.” The king paused for the voices that followed. “I will make my riders lords once and for all! Then together we will conquer the world! The Old World and the New!” The king met Richard’s eyes then, and he grinned maniacally, and caused his dragon to roar. The gatherers stepped back again, but only until Bruiser let out a warning growl.
Richard was feeling that feeling again. It was like a storm was coming, and it was going to be deliciously bloody. Then Bruiser sensed something in the sky and managed to pull Richard’s attention to it just long enough to stop his thought.
You’ve founds yourself agains. A voice as recognizable as any he’d ever heard spoke into his mind, and he saw what Bruiser was seeing.
It was the Nightshade, and it was as thirsty for revenge as he was.
“There is a problem with your plan, King Chad.” Richard turned his attention back to the king.
The king’s eyes narrowed, and he scowled. “What is it, then?”
The men between them grew nervous, for the tone in both of the kings’ voices was laced with venom.
“Your collars are no longer necessary, and you don’t have a dragon anymore.”
“What? He is right here, you—”
Bruiser shot his long neck forward, right over the men between them, and snapped at the king’s mount behind its head. The king’s wyrm tried to leap away and only managed to throw his rider to the ground, where he landed with a hard thump. King Chad’s wyrm fell limp beside him, and then the shadow of something big enough to chomp Bruiser in half, and more evil than any of them, save for Richard, came sliding over them all.
With the Nightshade, King Richard didn’t need collars to control the mudged he’d discovered in the mountains. He didn’t even need riders. Richard laughed out triumphantly, for the sky behind his old hellborn mount was already filling with feral wyrms.
The dragon king had risen, and the Dragoneers were soon to pay for leaving him all alone for so very long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The wizard looked to be gloating as he stood atop three barrels full of his cure on the deck of his ship. He was watching the Dragoneers and their dragons carry in chest after chest of gold and dump them into one of the three ships he had been granted by the frigid queen.
There were gold coins, jeweled necklaces, and brooches, as well as platters, statues, and trinkets galore. But even all of that wasn’t the prize he most treasured. The male colossal was in the hold of the third ship, and the remaining spellborn female was in the hold of the ship he was on. It wouldn’t be long before he could breed an army of them. And with the artifacts he could purchase in Kar now, he would be able to speed up the process and modify the offspring to suit his need.
“Or maybe to suit my greed,” he chuckled to himself.
They had delivered eighty-seven chests of valuables. Then the frost wyrm, with its even frostier rider, argued with his man while hovering over the treasure ship. Word came to the wizard that a statue worth easily thirteen chests full of gold was having to be carried on sling ropes by all three of the dragons doing the work.
This intrigued the wizard, for something so heavy made from solid gold had to be amazing to behold. Since the other two ships were already heavily loaded, and he was a firm believer in not putting all the treasure on one ship, he had the dock men roll the three barrels full of cure ashore to make room for it.
It was a long while before the dragons were spotted flying in an awkwardly close formation, carrying his glittering prize.
He began to salivate. It was a wondrous statue of a dragon, done in miniature. Only, miniature to a dragon was still massive in size. When they tried to set it on the treasure ship, they were waved away. That was when the wizard saw that the dragon statue had a child-sized rider on its back. She was fierce-looking, and he decided he would set this before his podium in the great hall of his order as a symbol of their victory here.
Soon, the hatches were open and the hold cleared so that the precious piece of art could be lowered in. Once the ropes were cut and the statue lashed firmly in place, the wizard waved up at the dragon riders and then pointed to the barrels full of cure.
“Until we meet again,” he offered with a bow.
No one knew how long the sickness would take to manifest, but after Jenka drank most of a barrel of the cure, he seemed fine. That is, beyond the normal aches and pains of having shapeshifted and been broken so badly. He took some time to spend with his wife and children and marveled at how different the two of them were. Amelia was super-intelligent but skittish, while Jericho was almost exactly how he had imagined his father when growing up without him.
The luxury of being with them didn’t last long, for the Dragoneers were not done with the wizard just yet.
“Watch them well, Linux,” Zahrellion said as she buckled her ivory breastplate over her shoulders and took up her staff. “Jenka, you should stay. Clover and I will handle this, and Rikky will give us cover.”
“How about Rikky handles this, and the rest of you stay here and eat cheese and drink wine.” Rikky’s voice was full of bravado.
“How many times do I have to tell you to never underestimate a wizard, Rikky?” This came from Clover, who was always dressed for battle.
“Do you think they are far enough away?” Jenka asked. He had no intention of staying behind for this one. He was as eager as the others, but he didn’t want them to be hasty.
“Far enough,” Rikky said.
“I agree,” Zahrellion added.
“Well let’s be done with him, then.”
The wizard heard the men in the rigging calling out their warnings, but wasn’t alarmed. He had expected such a feeble trick as for them to pour the cure into the lake and then attack his group at sea.
“Foolish is as foolish does.” He laughed aloud when he saw them coming.
In an attempt to avoid losing any of his treasure, he cast his enlarging illusion so that the approaching dragons and their riders could see and hear him well.
“Until I speak the word,” the wizard’s huge visage boomed, “the word that completes the spell I cast on the curative waters, it will not activate.” He stroked his tangled beard and chuckled. “Even now, y
our people will start to feel the sickness. Soon it will show with pocks and festers on their skin.”
He put his arms across his chest smugly. “If you stop my ships, your people will never be cured.”
“Our people never drank the poison, dimbuss,” Rikky shot back.
And for the first time, the wizard wondered if he was still the one in control of the situation.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Richard left King Chad enough pride to rule his people in spirit, but he made it clear that he was the new power. In the months to come, he rode the Nightshade and made maps and battle plans while the helborn wyrm gathered his army. He wasn’t sure when he would attempt to take back his rightful throne, or how he would get all the mudged across the sea, but he knew it wouldn’t be long.
Xawyn Azar made it clear that she loved him even more for putting her father in his place. She took a firm hold over the political situations that Richard had no time to deal with, and she began to rule the kingdom that was once her father’s. She was as eager as Richard to reclaim the New World for their own, and she tactfully started gearing the entire populace toward preparing for Richard’s war.
Bruiser wasn’t cast aside. He often flew alongside Richard and the Nightshade, and would only allow Richard to mount. Bruiser turned out to be stronger and wiser than Richard expected, and keeping the wyrm around gave him a sense of security, for if the Nightshade disappeared again, he wouldn’t be without a wyrm to ride.
Richard gave Baru, Dinaqu and Kovin wyrms, but no one else was allowed to ride. His three henchmen were issued collars and amulets, for they didn’t have the control he did through the Nightshade, and he sent them to gather information and to purchase spells and artifacts that would help them win the coming war. Richard was no fool. He knew the Dragoneers were capable, but he also knew they wouldn’t be expecting him.
The rise of the Dragon King was complete, and all that was needed now was the proper kingdom over which to reign.
I told you to never underestimate a wizard, Clover told Rikky, Zahrellion and Jenka, who were flying toward the wizard’s enlarged form in a loose formation.
Say the word, Jenk, Rikky said. Let Aikira loose.
Sssavesss the treasuress shipsss, Crimzon roared into their heads. Do not let it sink.
Just then, Jenka sang out the word Aikira had taught him.
“What do you mean your people didn’t drink the poison?” the wizard growled, his expression showing his sudden unease. The look on his face went even wilder when the ship he was actually standing on came bursting apart under his feet. What was just a slow-rolling wooden structure was now an undulating golden-scaled creature with an ebon-skinned rider on its back.
The wizard stopped his enlargement spell instantly and was suddenly standing on the deck of the ship that held his two colossals. He sent a ray of arcane force up at the Dragoneers, and it grew in size as it threatened to envelop them.
The Dragoneers and Clover broke their formation then, all of them going in separate directions. And then each of them, save for Crimzon and Clover, attacked the wizard’s chosen vessel all at once.
Rikky let Silva spew forth her molten pewter breath and watched as Crimzon banked around and started a long, slow glide just over the wave tops.
When they had devised the plan to give the wizard the treasure and sneak Aikira and her wyrm aboard his ship as a miniature statue, they had also informed the crewmen and picked the ships specifically for what was about to happen.
Had the wizard allowed Golden’s statue to be loaded on the treasure ship, the boat would have been top-heavy and floundered, and they knew the colossals weighed as much as all the gold. His was the only ship that could carry it. But it was the treasure ship that had been handpicked by Clover and her giant wyrm.
Rikky marveled at the way the grimwielders aboard the treasure ship started knifing the wizard’s underlings. Then the sails fell, and two huge ropes were pulled taut from the bow and stern up to the mainmast. When Crimzon came skimming over it, he latched his claws onto the ropes and was almost forced head first into the sea, for the ship was so heavy.
A cloud of steam erupted where the water touched the fire wyrm’s scales, and the great red dragon let out a roar.
Silva had to dodge a streaking scarlet burst of energy coming from one of the lesser wizards below, but Rikky looked down to see first Golden, and then Aikira, sweep over the craft, and then Jenka and Jade followed.
Jenka sent forth a blast of lime colored energy at Dakterra Pyane, but the wizard disappeared, and that ship, too, started breaking apart. The colossals were going mad, and within minutes they were free of the wreckage they had created and swimming off in the same direction.
Rikky looked back at Crimzon then, and was elated to see that he had lifted the ship out of the water and was starting to fly toward home.
Where did the wizard go? Aikira asked into the ethereal.
I didn’t see, Rikky had to admit.
I will say it one more time, Rikky Camille, Clover said. Never underestimate a wizard. Any wizard. Ever.
I can heal people and cast spells, Clover, Rikky reminded her. So can you.
Look, Aikira pointed at Dakterra Pyane as he crackled back into sight and fell a few hundred feet like a smoldering husk, only to be snuffed out by the sea. The trail of ash and smoke that fluttered around the body was clearly caused by Jenka’s last blast for it was as green as his alien eyes.
Jenka, Zahrellion and Aikira all left for the Leif Repline fountain by way of Aikira’s portal spells, but Rikky and Clover stayed behind.
She allowed him to see Crimzon’s full hoard and help return it all to order. Then she proceeded to remove any trace of his desire for Zahrellion with all of her relentless vigor. It worked, too, because by the time the other Dragoneers returned, he found he was smitten with the younger-looking, but older-minded woman.
Clover, in turn, was delighted that Rikky might be faster than the rest of them on his dragon, but in her bed, he was never in a hurry. She decided she wanted to spend a lot more of her time getting to know him. And in the summer the two of them took Prince Jericho and Pascal on the adventure that had been previously interrupted.
Oddly it was Clover who was smitten with Rikky in the end, for he allways went out of his way for her and she relished every chance she got to show him how much she appreciated his extra effort.
Jenka felt the power of the fountain’s water try to erase the taint of the alien that had made him so much more powerful than the rest of humanity, but it couldn’t, because it had become a part of him. The wizard’s poison was cleansed from him and Jade, though, and they learned a great deal from the ghost of an over-talkative drunken dwarf, but more importantly, he found Zahrellion’s heart again, and this time, he was determined not to lose it.
To Be Continued…
Before the Dragoneers there were
CRIMZON AND CLOVER
Please enjoy this complete short story
Crimzon & Clover I
Orphaned Dragon, Lucky Girl
Copyright 2009 by Michael Robb Mathias Jr.
All Rights Revserved
A narrated read along version is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OryaG-ONiRw&feature=youtu.be
CRIMZON & CLOVER
By M. Mathias
The week-old hatchling nudged its horny head against the cold, lifeless bulk of its mother. Getting no response again, the puny male dragon whined pitifully. Instinctively, he reared his weary head back and squeaked out a high-pitched wail. The sound would have brought a living mother dragon raging home from a hundred leagues or more. A living mother dragon would have stopped at nothing to feed her hatchling’s hungry belly. This hatchling wasn’t so lucky. His mother was dead. After a long, sorrowful time of nudging and wailing, the song of misery finally ended. Mercifully, the starving little dragon fell into an exhausted slumber.
Being highly intelligent creatures, dragons are taught by their mothers the
skills they'll need to thrive in the ever-dangerous world of men. This particular hatchling's mother was now four days dead. She was once the proud and ferocious high predator, and undisputed queen of the small, but very active, range of mountains sheltering her nest. Sadly, her reign had ended.
Years ago, she summoned a mate. His seed readily quickened inside her. She laid her eggs in this remote cavern high up in the rocky passes. Then, as all female dragons do after laying their eggs, she began warning away every living creature that might threaten the welfare of her unhatched young. It wasn’t long until every beast in the area, great and small, understood what valleys, caves and streams to avoid, and what the consequences were for not doing so. She then returned to her nest and spent a full year tenderly and methodically incubating the eggs.
When the day of hatching finally came, she proudly coaxed her two little ones out of their shells. She fed them their first meal of red meat from a valley stag she slaughtered. The two baby dragons devoured it greedily. She beamed as they began growling and tumbling with each other all around the gravel-strewn cavern floor. They were working their tender muscles and fluttering their wings awkwardly. Every now and then, one would pause to shriek at the wonder of life and belch out a puff of smoke. More than once a thin tendril of flame accompanied the swirling gray clouds that left the hatchlings' toothy mouths.
On the second day after the hatching, she left them to hunt their next meal. She didn’t know how horrible a mistake she was making. She hadn't considered the small group of men traveling through the neighboring valley a viable threat to her nest. Her valley was much higher in elevation, and no man had ever dared venture into it.
Rise Of The Dragon King (Book 5) Page 12