Dragon Adventurer collection

by K V Deal

  Gloria nodded. “That does seem a bit more pressing.” She glanced over at the two goons guarding the door. “Well...considering that you two are here, won’t the rest of your team be looking for you?”

  “Not for another day-and-a-half at least,” Carah sighed.

  “IF they do,” I muttered.

  “Jeez, Jake! Of course, they will!” Carah shot back at me. “Quit being so pessimistic!”

  My tail flicked, as I looked away, crossing my arms.

  Gloria cleared her throat and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “Well...I may be able to speed that process up a little bit.” She looked furtively at the door. “I have a sparrow!”

  I brought my hand up to my forehead and covered my eyes.

  “You do know those two can hear us? Right?” Carah asked.

  There was a clanking sound that I was pretty sure meant the two goons were starting to move.

  I opened my eyes and looked over.

  Yup. They’re heading this way.

  There was an eagerness to their step as well…almost as if…

  Had they been waiting for this?

  “Oh, of course,” Gloria answered. “I mean, you two can get out of there, right?” Even as she said it, Gloria reached up and gripped the top of her chest plate. With a squelching sound that made my stomach turn, she pulled the plate away from her body. Then she rammed her other hand down into her chest.

  “Holy…!” I could feel the blood draining from my face as I watched Gloria fish about. The glow behind her visor turned up to the ceiling.

  Beside me, I heard Carah make a gagging sound. I forced my eyes away.

  Well, at least we weren’t the only ones affected by the sight. The two soldiers had stopped stock still. They also stared, horrified, at Gloria. One of them had his hand clamped over his mouth as he watched. From what I could see of the other’s face, well, I’m pretty sure his skin wasn’t supposed to turn that shade of green.

  “Got it!” Gloria called out, as a wet popping sound echoed through the jails.

  At her words, the soldier who had been covering his mouth managed to push down his revulsion enough to hurry toward Gloria. He drew his sword as he went.

  I stepped forward to the bars and gripped one in each hand. With a grunt, I heaved as hard as I could and yanked the bars in opposite directions!

  To no effect.

  Well crap.

  I tried again!

  Nope.

  The guardsman was almost at Gloria’s cell!

  Gloria, for her part, wasn’t paying any intention to the world around her. In her hands, she held one of the clay birds that the city had been using to send messages. She held the bird next to her visor as she whispered something to it.

  That settled it. Gloria wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t talk way too loudly and then whisper the next, obviously making sure she finished her message before the soldier got to her. She knew how those two goons were going to react. Somehow it was part of her plan.

  “Jake! Get over here!” Carah was kneeling down in front of the cell door.

  I blinked at her. Was she going to try and pick the lock? We didn’t—

  “Jake!” Carah demanded, knocking me out of my thoughts.

  As I ran over to her, she kept talking softly. “When I get the lock, ram the door!”

  Get the lock? What the hell is she talking about?

  Carah quickly leaned forward, pressed her finger to the keyhole and muttered something. There was a slight pop of ignition, like a zippo lighting up. Then a gut of flame blew out the back of the lock in a fast, blue-white stream. It kicked the door open and threw Carah on her ass.

  “Holy…” Gloria shouted from across the hall, throwing herself to the side as Carah’s flames set fire to Gloria’s bathroom curtain.

  The armored asshole, for his part, nearly jumped out of his skin as the flame missed him by inches.

  Well…pretty sure that took care of the lock.

  I set my shoulder and rushed the door, hitting it with a bang. The door flew open, spraying the lock’s molten metal across the hall, before slamming to a stop, fully open.

  I spun to face the guard. My tail was lashing, as I readied my claws to attack.

  The guard drew his sword as his partner finally pulled himself together enough to draw his own blade and rush forward to help.

  What the hell—it hadn’t been working lately, but at least this would provide a distraction. I reared back and spit a ball of flame straight at the closest guard. The fire hit the man’s chest. He screamed! As his buddy began to backpedal, the flaming soldier threw himself to the ground. He rolled around in a desperate attempt to put out the fire.

  That was way more effective than I thought it was going to be…

  A glowing bird flicked past my shoulder and swooped past the two soldiers.

  “Damn it!” the standing guard cursed. He took one more look at his friend on the floor and then booked it back to the door.

  “There’s the civil servant backbone everyone talks about!” Gloria said sarcastically. “Now, get me out of here! Fast! He’s going for help!”

  “Right!” Carah hurried past me toward Gloria’s cell, while I advanced on the prone guard.

  The flames were out now. He was working to get off his belly and back to his feet, panting as he moved.

  Honestly?

  I really wasn’t in the mood to give the guy a fair fight. I lashed out with a kick towards his head.

  Letting out a cry of alarm, he dropped back to the ground and avoided my kick. He scrambled to his feet and backed away. His sword swung up, its blade pointed right at my heart.

  I wasn’t watching the sword, though. My flames had done something funny to his armor. It was as if they had burnt something off the front, revealing black paint on its surface. I stiffened as I recognized the image on the front of that armor. Hell, I'm surprised it took me as long as it did! I had about a hundred of these things stored in my ring!

  Now I knew why that armor style seemed so familiar! It was the same damn armor that The Chosen had been transporting. This was one of the thieves! I let out a roar of anger and charged forward.

  I could see the soldier’s eyes through his visor as, first shock, then fear filled them. Then I was on him. He tried to attack, jabbing his sword forward.

  My arm was in motion even before I realized what he was doing, muscles acting on instinct. My arm whipped into his blade, slamming it aside. I felt a slight pain, but it quickly sank beneath the boiling surface of my fury. I swung my arm wide, putting everything I hand into the punch.

  The guard’s helmet rang like a bell as I struck it. He slammed to the side and into the bars of Gloria’s cell.

  There was a sound from behind me, a large bang. I ignored it and instead focused on the thief.

  Gripping the top of his breastplate, I hauled the weakly struggling soldier to his knees. “Where is it!” I snarled.

  “What?” He sounded groggy.

  “MY lamp! Where is it!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” His eyes weren’t focusing. A voice in the back of my head piped up to tell me that he, most likely, had a concussion. I didn’t listen.

  “I know you’re one of those damn Chosen! Where is MY lamp!”

  “Jake!” someone said, and a hand pressed against my shoulder. “Chill!”

  I snapped my head around to see Carah beside me, a worried expression on her face.

  “You gotta calm down big guy!” she said soothingly. “Even if he is one of those idiots, he probably doesn’t know about the lamp. They just finished stealing it a couple of hours ago!”

  Oh, right.

  It felt like I was deflating as the anger trickled out of me. I let go of the man, and he slumped over, falling to the ground. Blood trickled from under his helmet as he lay there.

  “Well, you really bashed that one up,” Gloria said, stepping around us as she moved over to the guard. She knelt down and began checking around the man
’s waist.

  “What are you doing?” Even as I said it, the answer jumped into my head.

  “I’m just checking to see if he has any keys. I figure that having a set might save Carah some time.”

  “Huh?”

  Yep, I sound smart. Go me.

  “You know. Instead of having her blow the lock, we could just stick in a key, give it a twist and, ‘Hey, presto!’ no magic needed.” She gripped a portion of the man’s belt and gave it a shake. A loud clinking echoed from inside the man’s armor.

  “There it is!” Gloria gripped the side of the armor and began to pry it loose. As soon as she had enough room, she wiggled a hand inside and fished out a ring of keys. “Bingo!”

  Carah took the keys from her. “I got this!”

  “Sounds good! Tell everyone to gather up over here!” Gloria called after her. Then she turned to me. “Now why were you trying to beat this guy to death?”

  I jabbed a finger at the symbol on the man’s chest.

  Gloria whistled as she leaned in to take a close look. “Now, I’ve been here a few days and never seen any of them wearing anything like that!”

  “It didn’t show up till I tried to roast him. I think whatever he was using to hide it burned up,” I explained. “I should have realized it earlier, though. It’s the same style as the ones we found in The Chosen’s cave. Exactly the same.”

  “Well, you caught it eventually, and you took him out. What more could you really ask for?” She looked up at me and then back at the body on the floor. “Actually, I guess we could ask for a few less of them.”

  “We only saw four, plus the two this guy was working with.” I was actually nervous about asking the next question. “Why? How many of them are there?”

  “Well, in the time I've been watching...” Gloria paused, looking up at the ceiling as she seemed to think about it, “…over fifty.”

  Shit. We may be in for one hell of a fight.

  The bright side? Maybe at least one of them would know where the hell my lamp was.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Chapter 16

  Gloria stood at the center of a cluster of almost a hundred people.

  All of them looking the worse for wear. All of them scared.

  For some reason, I was standing next to Gloria at the center of the group. Carah was on her other side.

  I really didn’t get it, but we didn't have time to argue. That guard who bolted? Yeah, pretty sure he was going to be back with friends.

  Oh, and fun fact? He’d locked the door behind him, and this lock seemed to be fireproof. That left only one way out—up through the university that was Cyrus's base of operations, fighting past however many of these Chosen jerks were waiting there.

  Definitely fun.

  “Alright, everybody!” Gloria called out. “We don’t have time for a real speech, so I'll keep it short. It’s possible that we’re about to have incoming soldiers. So, if you know how to fight, sorry, but we’re going to need you. If you can’t fight then please start pulling beds out of the cells. We can use them to make barricades. Chop chop! Get moving, people!”

  Wow! Great instructions.

  While Gloria might not be so great at big, sweeping speeches, she seemed pretty good at adjusting on the fly. Quickly she was pulling people into place, teaming them up with others with similar skill sets and setting them to specific tasks.

  The first major problem, though, came quickly. A group of the fighters came up to Gloria as I was dragging a bed out of one of the cells.

  “Boss, as much as we might want to fight, we got no weapons. Those guys are fully armed and armored. Even with our buddy here,” a pale man with ice blue eyes who was acting as the group’s spokesperson nodded at me, “we’re in a bad situation.”

  I really didn’t like being around this guy. He was nice enough. The issue I had was the air around him was getting uncomfortably cold.

  “That’s a good point,” Gloria turned to look at me and Carah. “Do you two have any ideas?”

  Why the hell is she asking us?

  I looked over at Carah. Well...she had my ring. Maybe I had...something.

  Oh! Oh, that’s just perfect!

  I must have been grinning because people on either side of Carah were taking a step back, fear in their eyes.

  Crap.

  Before I could do anything to reassure them, though, Carah grinned back up at me. “You got an idea, big guy?”

  “Maybe. You still got my ring?”

  “Well yeah.” She smirked. “Let me grab it.”

  Carah blatantly shoved her hand right down the front of her shirt.

  “Uh,” the cold guy stammered. “Are-are you sure you wanna do that right in front of us?”

  “What?” Carah asked, still rooting around in her shirt. “Oh, right!” She pulled her arm up and out. My ring was clenched in her fist. “Here you go!”

  I slipped it on, enjoying the feeling of having it back—not that I’d had the slightest doubt that she would get it back to me.

  Anyways.

  I searched the ring’s inventory for what I was looking for. “Gonna need some room,” I said, looking around.

  There.

  One of the cells had been completely emptied of its contents for material that was going into the barricade. I headed over to the doorway and extended my hand.

  A second later, there was a thud that shook the whole dungeon. People looked over in shock as a large crate materialized in the cell. It had only fallen a scant few inches to the floor.

  “…the hell!?” the cold guy shouted.

  “Oh, right! That stuff!” Carah brought her fist down into her palm.

  “What stuff?” Gloria asked, coming over to see what I had just dropped.

  “Remember how I told you that The Chosen stole Jake’s lamp?” Carah asked. I flinched at the reminder. My instincts kicked up again, demanding that I go after my stuff. Unaware of how she had affected me, Carah continued on, “Well, when we broke into whatever that place was—”

  “Smugglers cave,” I muttered.

  I mean, it makes sense. A cave attached to a water route? Yeah. That sounds like a smugglers cave to me.

  “Yeah, that. Anyways, they got away with the lamp,” another pang from my instincts, “so, we decided to steal some of their stuff as payback.”

  “That’s not quite how I would have said it, but yeah. These are Chosen weapons and armor. They have that stupid symbol on them, but there’s a lot of them,” I shrugged.

  “Nicodemus, what do you think? Will these do?” Gloria asked.

  The cold guy looked at Gloria with a pained expression. “Please boss, ‘Nick.’ Just call me ‘Nick.’”

  “‘Nick.’ Right,” Gloria said jovially.

  Nick just sighed and stepped up next to me to look into the crate.

  This close, the cold was so intense, it was almost painful for me.

  I hurriedly backed away into the hallway, shivering.

  He glanced back at me. “Can’t handle the cold?” he asked with a wry smile.

  Trying to stop shivering, I shot him a glare.

  Not that he saw it, he had already looked away. One of the swords was in his hand and he was examining it rather thoroughly.

  “These will do,” Nick grunted. “Probably not magical, but the workmanship is good.”

  “On par with what those thugs are using, at least,” agreed a short, thickset woman with stone-gray skin and white hair as she looked up at the weapon in his hand. She reached up and took the sword from his hands, seemingly not bothered by the temperature around him at all.

  “Good! Hand the stuff out!” Gloria said to them before turning to me. “Anything else in that ring that might help?”

  I hesitated. Even with the current situation, I wasn’t willing to go handing out MY stuff. The crate was no big deal. I really didn’t have any use for it, and, just like Nick had said, nothing in there was magic so…ehh.

  The other stuff in the ring?
I wasn’t so willing to just hand it out.

  “Jim…this really isn’t the time to hold back,” Gloria admonished

  “It’s Jake,” I reminded her.

  “Of course. But really, its life and death here. Are you really going to hold back?”

  At this exact moment, I really hate that woman.

  Grumbling, I began to sort through my inventory as my tail rattled like crazy.

  Carah stepped up beside me as I crouched down and began pulling item after item out of my ring, carefully laying them down.

  “Sorry big guy…” she whispered to me, rubbing my tension-filled shoulders. “We’ll make sure they make it back to you.”

  I just nodded, not sure of what I would say if I let myself speak. Probably wouldn’t have been anything kind.

  Out came the rest of my daggers, even the ones that I hadn’t had a chance to see what they could do. Then there was that magic sword I had gotten off a thug… Still thought it looked like a razor blade with a handle tacked on but at least t was sharp.

  All in all, it really wasn’t nearly as much stuff as I would have thought. I kept my great sword and gave Carah the heat dagger. But then, I got another panic attack as the thought, ‘at least I would be sure not to lose these two,’ crossed my mind.

  “That’s all?” Gloria asked disappointedly, her hands on her hips.

  I gave her a short nod, my lips pressed into a thin line.

  “You’re not holding out on us, are you? I know you’ve been in enough fights to pick up more than this.”

  “Gloria, Jake hasn’t been keeping things from those fights. You should know. I mean, he’s been handing it into you,” Carah said, stepping between me and Gloria, her tail slowly lashing. “I’ll bet the reports were on your desk.”

  “Oh. Ummm. Those must have been some of the ones that didn’t make it out of the Gray House…” Gloria muttered, dropping her hands.

  “Right. Must have,” Carah said in a tone so cold it must have rivaled the air around that Nick guy. “Why don’t you distribute these, while Jake and I get ready to fight. Oh, by the way, we want them back afterward.”

  “Stepped on a landmine there I guess,” I heard Gloria mutter, as she turned and began to call people over.