by Andrew Rowe
So, someone had the sword twenty years ago, but it’s been hundreds of years since someone successfully reached the top of a tower. That means even having the sword is far from a guarantee that we’re going to be successful at finding this goddess. Wonderful.
“Okay. And just to be clear, your responsibility is to guard this specific tunnel?”
“Such is the path to the sword.”
I focused, trying to peer through the mist as best I could. I thought I could just barely make out an exit tunnel on the opposite side of the chamber, maybe twenty feet away.
I picked my torch back up, waved, and shifted my stance as if I was about to turn around. “Okay, thanks for all the information.”
I hated to leave a potential fight behind, but I couldn’t accept the offered terms.
“You’re...leaving?”
I think they actually sounded a little disappointed. In truth, I was disappointed, too. “Yep. I’m not going to invade someone’s home and kill them just so I can walk through a particular cavern. I figure now that I broke your teleportation rune, I can probably just walk out of the forest and find a town. But you’re a great storyteller — that part about the spire was riveting. You’re welcome to come with me if you’d like.”
“You...mock me.”
I shook my head. “Nope. I just don’t think anyone should have to live their life in a cave because a goddess told them to, and I’m certainly not going to kill you just because a goddess put you here.”
The creature in front of me growled and lowered their stance. “You insult me and the goddess alike.”
“I don’t mean to be insulting.” I raised my off-hand in a defensive gesture. “Just sympathizing. My own life has been largely dictated by the whims of the gods, and I’m tired of it. If you’d like to get out of this situation, I’d be glad to help you.”
No growl that time, which was progress. Just a tilt of the head to the side, maybe a bit of introspection. “I will not leave while my task remains undone.”
“I understand.” I nodded affably. “Well, I’m leaving then.”
“See that you do not return unless you are prepared to face my challenge.”
“Right. That won’t be a problem.”
I shifted to the left as if I was turning around...and rushed forward at top speed.
I’d gone left because the torch was currently in my right hand, and as I sprinted past the creature, I waved it right in front of their eyes. Not close enough to hit them — I was just going for momentary blindness.
They roared, far louder than their body should have been able to, and the entire room shook. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling. Fortunately, I was used to sprinting across uneven terrain, and I maintained my footing. I turned toward the exit tunnel as I moved, finding it easily as I approached.
I was only a couple feet away when a wall of stone shot upward from the ground, blocking the path.
I spun just in time to dodge a spiked tail that was arcing toward my face.
“Coward! Craven!” The creature roared, lunging at me with clawed hands. As they drew closer, I got a better look. They had a human-looking face and body, but they were covered from head to toe in white scales, and they had a serpentine tail covered in wicked six-inch spikes.
I side-stepped the lunge and the creature missed, stumbling. I realized they were probably still half-blind from the torch, and they had probably responded to my movements through hearing or another sense.
That didn’t stop them from whipping their tail around the moment they failed to connect with me, though. It was a low sweep, so I hopped over it, backing up and keeping the torch in front of me. “A little redundant there. Coward and craven are pretty much the same thing. I appreciate alliteration, though.”
They just roared at me in reply. They were done talking for the moment, it seemed.
I considered sprinting back toward the entrance, but they were in reach of me now, and faster than I’d expected. I wasn’t confident I could outpace them, especially after they recovered their sight.
Instead, I stepped to the side and began to circle them, moving gradually back to the area that had been sealed by the wall. I wasn’t a master of stone sorcery, but I could use it. If I could find a few moments, maybe I could make a gap big enough to climb through.
“I’d really like to avoid—”
They swiped a claw and knocked the torch right out of my hand.
I stared blankly for a moment as the light source clattered across the floor, then punched the scaled creature in the face.
Hard.
The creature staggered back, raising a hand to their cheek. Their expression changed.
To a smile. “Better.” Their blue eyes seemed to shimmer in the dark.
That was not a good sign.
I’d learned to control my swings a long time ago, because I liked being able to spar with humans without crushing their bones to powder.
But I’d taken that swing out of instinct. It wasn’t quite my full strength, but I would have put my fist through the stone wall without any difficulty.
They weren’t even visibly bruised.
Their return punch came a moment later, and I raised an arm to block. The blow carried me off the ground and threw me back a good ten feet. I landed in a slide, my arm aching from the force of the impact.
Motion sorcery, I realized. No amount of pure physical strength would have knocked me upward like that. Instead, the strike had carried with it a blast of magic that enhanced and spread out the impact.
I knew what was coming next.
They blurred, flashing forward in a burst of kinetic energy, closing the gap between us in an instant.
But I’d fought motion sorcerers more times than I could count. Even before they landed, I was rotating my hips for a real punch, the kind I used to practice tearing through breastplates.
I hit them dead-on in the solar plexus. That actually slowed them down. They doubled over, clutching their chest and coughing.
For a moment, I was concerned that I’d misjudged and hit too hard.
Their tail whipped over their head, spiked tip arcing toward my throat. I grabbed it just in time, cutting one of my fingers on a spike in the process. They jerked the tail back, but I maintained my grip and stumbled forward.
With my free hand, I tried to throw another punch, but they grabbed my arm with both of theirs. We were practically on top of each other at that point, so I threw a knee upward. They countered by raising their own leg to block, which I hadn’t expected.
They snarled, biting at me with a set of teeth that were just slightly sharper than human ones. I stepped back to avoid the bite, and they finally managed to pull their tail free from my grip. Before they could swing it again, though, I slammed my boot down on their foot.
That got my hands free while they recoiled, and I used that freedom to back off a few feet. My left hand was still bleeding from where it had brushed against a spine, but not badly.
They backed off as well, apparently assessing me. That seemed good, until they kept backing off to the point where they disappeared into the mist.
I glanced around for any signs of my opponent, then headed for where I’d dropped the torch.
It went out before I reached it.
Resh.
I was plunged into darkness. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear something moving to the side of me.
Something big.
I heard a growl, followed by what sounded like bones snapping to my side.
I continued to inch toward where I’d last seen the torch. Since blinding the creature had seemingly worked, it was possible the creature would have a tough time finding me in the dark, even if their night vision was better than mine.
I was pretty close to where I’d thought the torch was when I ran into something much larger than I was.
I took a step back. I hadn’t remembered a wall there. I raised a hand and ran it across...scales. Large scales, each the size of my fi
st.
Uh oh.
I stepped back just before something slammed into me the size of my entire midsection, hard enough to throw me almost ceiling-high. I landed hard and fell on my side, rolling a few feet across the floor.
That hurt.
I barely managed to push myself to the side before something landed on the stone where I’d been moments before, smashing the stone of the cavern floor.
Even without the light, I was close enough to get a glimpse of the clawed appendage that landed near my face. It was even bigger than what I’d felt connect with me, probably about the size of the upper half of my body.
I’d been thrown and battered by nothing more than a glancing blow.
I pushed myself to my feet with a cough, raising my left hand.
The darkness wasn’t slowing this thing down as much as I’d hoped, but it was making it impossible for me to evaluate my opponent effectively.
Burn. A sphere of flame the size of a watermelon appeared in my hand, and a chill ran down my spine as the spell extracted its cost. I rarely conjured fire on this scale due to the tax on my body, but I needed this flame for two reasons — both to see, and as a potential deterrent to further attacks.
“Foolish human,” they spoke, the room trembling with each word. “Had you chosen to fight me honorably from the outset, I would not have used this form.”
As they spoke, I took in what I was looking at.
A huge, serpentine head with a pair of vicious horns, each of which was large enough to impale me with ease.
A leonine body covered in hardened scales, with four massive clawed hands. Though standing on four legs, they were still twice as tall as I was.
And their wings were vast, at least twenty feet in total span, nearly brushing the ceiling and walls.
They were a creature of legend.
Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was looking at.
They don’t have dragons where I come from.
Chapter II – Breath of Fire
I took a moment just to process the creature’s sheer size.
“Huh,” I managed, proving my mastery of articulation.
Then it hit me.
Not a thought; the dragon literally hit me, with a tail the size of a wagon.
I hit one of the chamber walls this time, rather than the floor. Well, at first. I obviously hit the floor after I fell off the wall.
My precious fireball was, fortunately, still hovering where I’d left it, providing a bit of illumination for the room. That allowed me to see the majestic beast approaching me with ponderous steps, each of which shook the cavern.
I pushed myself off the floor, taking stock of my injuries. I must have been lucky enough to be hit with a flat portion of the tail — I wasn’t missing a chunk of my midsection like I probably would have been if one of those spikes had torn into me.
I hurt like someone had decided to play the drums on my ribs with a mace, but I didn’t think anything was actually broken. That might sound a little strange, given that this monster had both the mass and the general disposition of a siege engine, but I’d never actually managed to find anything that could break my bones.
That was mostly because of how much I practiced stone and metal sorcery, but there were other reasons that aren’t important right now.
Judging from the blood that I coughed up after that hit, though, I still wasn’t resilient enough to take much more of that kind of punishment.
It didn’t matter if my bones weren’t breaking. Breaking the fleshy bits would work just as well.
I trembled as the dragon approached, but not out of fear.
This danger, a real threat to my life—
This was what I lived for.
I grinned.
The dragon, seeming to sense a change, slowed as they neared me. They tilted their head to the side, examining me. “You have a weapon, and I sense it is enchanted, and yet you have not drawn it.”
I shrugged a shoulder. The movement hurt more than I’d expected. My muscles were not pleased with how they’d been treated. “Oh, this?” I patted the hilt of the sword at my side. “You really don’t want me to use that. Believe me, better off for both of us this way.”
The dragon took another step closer, lowering their head to right in front of me. Close enough to snap their jaws around me in a moment, I was certain — and hardened bones wouldn’t save me from that. My skin and muscles were reinforced with sorcery as well, but that would only protect me from small stuff. Not teeth the size of sword blades.
“Thou art a peculiar human, but thy reticence to use every weapon shall be your undoing. Humans require such tools to fight sacred beasts such as I.”
“Oh, I have other tools.” I smiled. “Like tactics. Take, for instance, the fireball you’ve been forgetting about that’s hovering behind you.”
The dragon’s head turned abruptly.
I took that moment to rotate my hips and punch them full-strength in the jaw.
I heard a crack, and it didn’t come from the dragon’s scales.
Lesson Two: Do not punch dragons.
I fell backward, since I’m not entirely immune to pain. I was fortunate that I’d punched with my off-hand, otherwise the fight might have ended right there.
And not in my favor, just to be perfectly clear. I think I’d surprised the dragon, but I definitely hadn’t hurt them.
I waved my remaining usable hand as I stumbled back, calling the fireball toward me.
It was probably harmless to a creature of that size, but the dragon leapt out of the fireball’s path.
Curious.
Maybe the dragon was weak against fire? They were using an awful lot of mist. Mist wasn’t exactly the opposite of fire, but it was kind of on the watery side of things.
I can work with that.
Problem was that I couldn’t conjure much more fire without freezing myself to death. Even now, maintaining the flame spell was gradually draining my body heat.
I floated the incendiary globe back toward the dragon, stepping back at the same time to make a bit of distance. The dragon retreated from the flame, just as I’d expected.
It was a bluff on my part. Attacking with the flaming sphere always had been. If it made contact with the dragon, even if it did some damage, the fireball would probably vanish. That would cost me my light source, and I sincerely doubted that one ball of fire would end the fight in my favor.
I couldn’t afford to fight this thing blind.
But I also couldn’t cast another flame spell of the same magnitude, so I used the time I had to accomplish something a little bit easier.
I unclasped my belt and pulled my sword, scabbard and all, off of it.
The dragon paused, watching me from a distance. “Finally prepared to wield your blade?”
I shook my head, taking the moment to awkwardly re-fasten my belt with the same hand that was gripping my sword hilt.
My left hand was useless. I suspected I didn’t experience as much pain as an ordinary human, and I also tended to be more functional than most people while wounded, but I still had limits for using an injured part of my body.
“No,” I explained, taking my time to reply while I finished fastening my belt and readied the weapon, scabbard still on the blade. “Not exactly.”
I focused my aura, extending it over the weapon and scabbard. That was a trivial effort — my aura wanted to meet with the sword. Most of the time, I was trying to keep the two apart. I didn’t need more of that weapon’s influence bleeding back into me.
While it was in the scabbard, though, the sword was relatively innocuous, unless I did something unwise.
I was, of course, doing something unwise.
I felt my aura encircle the scabbard, and I drew just a fraction of power out of the weapon, trying to filter it into the section of my aura covering the blade.
I gave it a simple command: Ignite.
The air around the sheathed blade burst into flame.
I felt
an immediate surge of relief. I always felt better with a weapon in hand, but I had to be cautious. I was using less body heat this way than if I was powering the spell myself, but using even a hint of that weapon’s power was a risk.
I needed to end the fight quickly.
I shifted to the Selyrian Cutting Stance, which was one of my favorite fighting stances. It was an aggressive style, and one of the few I could manage at the moment, since it was a one-handed style that involved holding my off-hand behind my back.
I advanced. The dragon eyed my flaming weapon warily, but with what I’m going to assume was the draconic equivalent of skepticism.
I continued to control the flaming sphere mentally, moving it to hover at my left side around waist height. I hoped that would limit the dragon’s potential angles for attack.
I was about twenty feet away, which I judged to be outside the dragon’s reach, when it swept their tail across the floor.
A shockwave of force followed in the tail’s wake, knocking me back. I managed to keep my footing, but then the dragon was following in the shockwave’s wake, faster than I’d expected.
They swept a claw at me. I tumbled under it, slashing the arm.
Scales sizzled.
The dragon howled into the air, and I pressed my assault, slamming the burning brand into the creature’s neck.
The tail came back around, but I was ready this time. I jumped.
I almost made it.
The top of the tail brushed my feet, knocking me from the sky. I was quick to recover, though, pushing myself to the side to avoid a claw that smashed the ground where I’d been a moment before.
I slashed the claw, and while the dragon recoiled, I pushed myself back to my feet.
The dragon took two steps back, reassessing the situation.
I charged, swinging for the creature’s neck.
My sword passed right through it.
Not because I’d cut it in half — because it was no longer solid.
The dragon had turned into mist.
I could still see a draconic shape within that mist, thicker than the surrounding moisture, but when I waved my burning blade through it, I felt only the resistance of air. And while the flames burned away ordinary mist with ease, they flickered dangerously within the draconic vapor, warning me that they might fade from prolonged exposure.