by Logan Jacobs
The sudden stop startled me, and I forced myself not to jump in surprise as the strange, ghostly wood pulled up right where the wet sand turned dry. It literally looked as if it had just frozen in time. If I hadn’t known any better, I almost would have thought that some sort of sorcerer had put up a hand and froze it, the way Piper could freeze things in Charmed.
The original. Not the reboot. Reboots sucked.
I looked up at the massive ghostly ship and straightened my shoulders as one of the creatures stepped up to the side. He gazed down at me with what I was sure was the same look of contempt I wore on my own face, before he literally stepped over the side and floated down to the sand.
Minus the sheet shape, the guy could have been Casper the Unfriendly Ghost.
“Are you the leader of this island?” the creature asked. His voice was rough and crackly, but I was pretty sure that was the product of centuries spent dead and not completely natural. At one point, I was fairly sure his voice might have been rather soothing.
Which probably lent very well to his whole conqueror mentality.
“I am Draco Rex,” I responded as I looked him over. “And I am asking you nicely to leave my home alone.”
The captain of this ship was squat, about five feet tall, but with a muscular body. There didn’t look to be an ounce of fat on his body. Instead, he was all muscle. His mean face had a missing eye, and where the eye socket should have been was nothing more than a black hole, complete with a ragged piece of hanging flesh that swung from just below his brow bone. Meanwhile, the other eye squinted in my direction as the captain appraised me in the same way I appraised him.
I could see his clothes had, at one point, been some sort of uniform. Unlike the orcs, who wore nothing but hastily thrown together rags, I could see the remnants of nice stitching and well woven cloth on his figure. He wore a shirt with puffed up shoulders and the last little scraps of a sash, paired with dark pants that were jagged at the bottoms. There were no shoes on his massive feet, which left his enormous toes and even larger toenails open to the air.
Although, since he was a ghost, I was sure that didn’t bother him one bit.
“I don’t know what a Draco Rex is,” the captain scoffed. “I am Tarun Fil, of the ship Atala. I have come to give you a message from my men and I. If you and the other inhabitants of this island surrender to us now, we will make your deaths as quick and painless as possible.”
“Yeah, not going to happen, ghost dude,” I snorted. “Seeing as you all are made of nothing but air, I’d suggest you just get the hell out of here before my people and I completely destroy you.”
I lowered my voice to be as threatening as possible, and I glared at the captain with everything in me.
Both of his eye sockets went wide, which exposed even more rotted flesh in the missing eye socket, and then he shrugged his shoulders.
“You have made your choice, Draco Rex,” he responded. “Let me see what sort of an army you have.”
To punctuate the end of our conversation, Tarun pushed off the warm sand and floated right back up to his ship.
Within a split second, the massive vessel started to move again, and my thoughts had just caught up with me when the ship lifted up into the air, rose until it was five feet above the ground, and then sailed forward.
Right over the island.
“Great,” I muttered.
Not only were these ghost ships, but they could also fly.
As the vessel started to head over my island, I could see some of the prehistoric orc crew load up their cannons and get ready to fire them.
I lunged forward and swapped out my sword for my bow. Then I nocked an arrow and aimed it at one of the crew, just as he picked up a ghostly cannonball and was ready to load it into the weapon.
“Hey!” I shouted out.
I got the maldung’s attention and startled him enough that he dropped the cannonball in surprise. At the same moment, I let an arrow fly, headed straight for the very center of his skull. I wanted to get the creature right in his nasty head. If he was able to pick up a cannonball and load it with the clear intent of firing it at my village, then I figured my arrow should make some sort of contact.
I was completely wrong.
The devilish little monster stared at me, and he appeared only slightly shocked as the arrow flew toward him. Then, a split second before it made contact, his entire head seemed to dissolve into that strange fog I’d seen the ship become the day before. It parted around the arrow, and the projectile sailed right through him and landed somewhere behind him, completely harmless.
“Fuck,” I spat.
The ship sailed faster now, at a speed of about ten miles an hour, and I was forced to sprint forward as I tried to catch up with it.
“Ben, we cannot fight them,” Mira gasped as I passed back through the gate. She and Jemma had joined Darya and Zarya, but the rest of our village was nowhere to be seen. “Jemma tried to shoot an arrow, and it seemed to pass straight through them, as if it is nothing more than air.”
“Yeah, I know,” I grunted. “I just tried that myself. Anybody got any bright ideas?”
Before anyone could volunteer any helpful information, a bang echoed through the village, so loud it seemed as if the cannon had gone off right next to our ears.
Immediately, the bang of the cannon was followed by an explosion, and dirt and shards of wood erupted from somewhere in the center of the village.
“How the fuck can they do that?” I demanded.
“I do not know,” Jemma breathed with wide chartreuse eyes. “Everyone is back in the castle. We must try and keep the ship away from there.”
“Agreed.” I nodded. “Let’s try and distract these bastards.”
The five of us rushed forward as the ship continued on its path, and Tarun appeared at the stern of the ship, with his hands on his hips and a disgustingly happy smile on his face.
“Do you give in yet, Draco Rex?” he bellowed down to me.
In the millisecond between his question and my answer, I noticed something. It was so small and barely visible that I was sure I would have missed it if I still had my human vision.
Two things happened at one. Behind Tarun, a second cannon had been loaded, and as the crew went to fire it, I caught the entire ship and all its crew solidify just the slightest bit. What was translucent, ghostly white became a strange white, almost as if they were behind glass.
“They have to become solid whenever they want to shoot,” I realized aloud, but quietly. “Whenever they let loose a cannon, that’s our chance. Let’s take them down.”
The women around me nodded, and we kept pace with the ship as its crew loaded a third canon. But Tarun was apparently smart and cunning. He tilted his head and appraised me, and I saw realization dawn on his face.
“Stop!” he cried out, right before the cannon was about to go off.
We were in the village center now, close enough to the castle that I was worried another cannon would be in range and able to hit it.
Tarun, though, seemed to have a different idea.
I watched as his crew backed down, and none of them solidified.
“Stay away from my island!” I shouted to him.
“I have seen all I need to see,” he called out to his crew as he turned away from me. “Back to the waters. We will regroup.”
And then the ship disappeared. Actually, it seemed to evaporate, like steam in cool air. One second they were there, and the next they were gone.
As much as I hated the orcs, I would much rather have been fighting them than the maldungs. Tarun was far smarter than any orc I’d ever encountered, and he’d latched onto my plan just as soon as it had formed.
“What a pile of shit,” Mira grunted.
“He figured us out,” I growled. “There has got to be another way.”
“The village!” Jemma gasped.
I turned to appraise the damage she spoke of. Somehow, ghost cannons had caused more damage to the vi
llage than even storm season had. Where there had been huts at one point, there were now only piles of dirt and shattered wood, and I quickly counted up about eight completely destroyed huts and six that would need major repairs.
We weren’t able to hurt them, but somehow, the ghost ships could still hurt us. I was no expert on ghosts and the undead, but I knew somehow, there had to be level ground for us somewhere.
Even in this world, there was always a balance.
I just had to find it.
Chapter Fourteen
By the time the ghost ships disappeared, the sun was well over the horizon already. Not one of the ships was in sight now, but unlike the previous times they’d disappeared from view, I knew better than to wonder if they’d be back.
They would, at some point, return, and it would be with a vengeance. Tarun knew we had absolutely no way to fight them off now, and he would milk that for everything it was worth. I knew men like him back home. They were so much more conniving than the orcs, who wanted land just for the sake of it, and women just for the satisfaction of their dicks. That was absolutely not what the ghost crew wanted. They wanted power. They wanted to rule. And now that they were dead, there was no way they had the kind of mundane sexual urges the orcs had.
Which made them all the more dangerous.
While I continued to mull over the problem of how the fuck we were going to fight these bastards, I had the women turn their focus onto rebuiling the village. I knew I needed to distract everyone from the impending war we now faced, or panic would ensue. So, the women all started in on the rebuild with the last of the lumber we’d brought from the deer women’s island. We only had enough to rebuild six of the huts we’d lost, but for now, it would have to do. There was no way any of us could take a journey to get more supplies now that the maldungs weighed heavily on our minds every second of every day.
I oversaw the women for a few hours, but they had the hang of it mostly on their own. They were able to set up the frames of the huts and paste the logs together now that I’d shown them what needed to be done, so I headed back into the palace, bone tired, around noon. I didn’t even know how long I’d been awake for at that point, but it was well over a day. I hadn’t slept a wink the entire night, since I’d been on guard at the watchtower first, and then had to deal with the maldungs’ approach.
You need sleep, dear one, George rumbled in my mind as he approached my side, and the blue dragon looked at me with loving, but serious, eyes.
“There’s too much to do,” I sighed.
You will be no good to anyone if you collapse in the middle of a battle, he responded knowingly. Get a few hours’ rest. I will keep watch over the village and make sure everyone is safe.
“Fine,” I grumbled, even though I knew he was right. “But wake me up in two hours.”
Of course, Draco Rex. George nodded.
I collapsed onto my bed the moment I entered my room. The exhaustion that had been tucked away in the back of my mind flooded over me, and I slept more deeply than I had in days. As promised, two hours later, George shoved his cold, wet nose into my side and woke me up more effectively than if he’d shot a gun right next to my ear. I sprang to my feet, wide awake, and I blinked against the light of the midday sun.
After a half a second of bleariness, the situation at hand flooded back into my mind.
“I need to see if Jonas’ potion is ready,” I said aloud, both to myself and to George.
I believe the soothsayer said it would be prepared by now, George said with an approving nod.
I slipped into the hallway, where I was met with an equally bleary eyed Mira, with Nixie on her tail.
“Did you manage to catch a few hours of sleep, too?” I asked.
“Yes.” The warrior nodded, and she adjusted her earrings and shook her head to rid herself of the exhaustion. “Where are you off to?”
“I’m going to see if Talise and Jonas have gotten that potion ready,” I replied. “There’s got to be some way to take these guys down. If there wasn’t, I’m sure Oshun would have told us.”
“You are right,” Mira sighed. “The ancient ones are cryptic, but they do not lie or mislead. I will go with you.”
We found Jonas in his bedroom, seated cross legged atop his bed with his eyes completely closed. He kind of looked like a meditating monk to me.
Normally, I would have left him alone when I saw him like that, but I needed answers, and Jonas was the only living being on the entire island that I thought might be able to give them to me.
“Jonas,” I called out softly from the threshold.
The old man, though, didn’t hear me, and his eyes remained gently closed as he breathed in and out purposefully.
“Hey, Jonas, I wanted to check in on the status of that potion,” I tried again.
Mira didn’t appear to appreciate my gentleness, though, because the warrior rolled her eyes and stalked forward, right up to the old man’s bed.
“Soothsayer!” Mira snapped her fingers under his nose.
Jonas flew back to consciousness so abruptly, he lost his balance and tipped backwards onto the bed.
“Goodness, child, what is the matter with you?” he grumbled as he sat up.
“Mira,” I chided before I turned back to the older man. “We’re sorry, Jonas. We just wanted to see if the potion was ready yet.”
“I am sorry, Jonas, it seems the stress is getting to me.” Mira sighed
“That is quite alright,” he assured her. “When you are as old as me, you will learn to take the quiet moments when you can get them. As a matter of fact, I was just about to take the potion. This is why I was meditating.”
“Oh, you’ve made my day,” I groaned.
“You’re welcome,” Jonas chuckled as he produced a small vial of a thick, shimmery black liquid. It looked like the night sky had been sucked into a vacuum, compressed, and bottled up.
“Potions are so beautiful,” Mira murmured with a laugh.
“Well, let’s hope this is able to dredge something useful up from my old and feeble mind.” Jonas tipped the vial toward us in a small toast, closed his eyes, and then downed it all in one go.
And then we waited. And waited. I almost thought he’d started to meditate again, and was just about to poke him and make sure he was still awake, when his watery blue eyes flew open, and he looked at me with alarmed excitement.
“The ocean feeds into the pond!” He grinned.
I didn’t even pretend to know what that meant, and neither did Mira.
“What pond?” I asked. As far as I knew, there weren’t any ponds on the island.
“It’s deep in the mountain,” Jonas responded, and his expression got dark as he mulled over his own thoughts. “But I believe it might be the only way.”
“Jonas, I’m really not following you here,” I told him as I rubbed tiredly at my face.
Jonas pulled his hands apart and rubbed his right palm across his brow, which had grown sweaty as he thought.
“The tools Oshun spoke of are irretrievable at the moment, this is true.” Jonas nodded. “But they were not physical, concrete tools the way you and I might think. The maldungs used magic potions to turn themselves into the ghosts they are now.”
“So, we need to make potions?” Mira asked with a quirked brow. “Forgive me, soothsayer, but I do not think even you are powerful enough to conjure up that sort of magic.”
“I am not,” Jonas agreed, “but magic is not quite what you think. It spills out of the things it is meant to attach to. The magic they used would have imbued itself into the water of the ocean. I know from the ancient maps where the maldungs were formed. It is a place beneath the mountain, and that water rises up into a pond that sits in the middle of our peak. Ben, I believe if you can drink this water, you will be able to invade the same plane of being the maldungs live on and fight them off that way.”
It took a second for what Jonas had said to actually sink in, but when it did, I felt my blood run as cold
as ice.
“You mean I’ll become a ghost?” I asked.
“You and anyone else who drinks the water.” Jonas nodded.
“Like, forever?” I clarified.
“Not if you drink the antidote soon enough,” Jonas replied. “The legend told of the recipe for it. I can make a batch and have it ready for when you have defeated the maldungs and sent them away from here.”
“Okay,” I murmured as a plan began to form in my head. “One guy against three ships. How hard can that be?”
“Two guys,” Mira added and flashed a sharp smile my way. “Well, one dragon king and his warrior mate. You do not think I will let my king wrestle with them alone, do you?”
“No, I suppose I don’t,” I laughed as I looked at the jade-haired warrior. “Still, those numbers don’t look so good.”
“That, you are correct about, Ben,” Jonas sighed.
Silence fell over the room as the three of us thought.
“Jonas, how big of a batch of that antidote can you make?” I asked after a long moment.
“Well, it requires water from the God’s Lagoon, which is where you bonded with your dragon, and dragon scales,” he responded. “I will go collect water from the lagoon and have a few of the ladies help me so we have as much as possible. So, I suppose the batch will be as big as your dragons are able to make it.”
We can give however much is needed, dear one, George said from the doorway of the room.
“Ben, what plan is forming in your head?” Mira asked with a knowing look in her eyes.
“If that antidote turns us from ghost to living beings, then am I correct to assume it would do the same to the maldungs?” I asked Jonas.
“Possibly,” the soothsayer mused with a frown. “Though, they have been as they are for much longer, so they might be past the point of no return.”
“Well, their bodies have pretty much rotted away,” I explained. “If they turn back into living beings, they’re going to crumble and die nearly instantly. If this antidote works, that’s how we defeat them.”