by Dante King
I was excited to get to the main event.
I was keen to throw on my gear, to look and act the part of the dragonmancer.
Also, and this went without saying, I was chomping at the bit to get my hands on some loot. After all, I owed Old Sleazy.
Once she had wet our whistles with that introduction, Preceptor Tang launched into her lesson. This, in itself, was eye-opening for me. I had not set foot in a classroom ever since I had dropped out of high school. It had been a good while since I had sat down to listen to another person expound on anything, and I would be lying if I said that my attention did not waver from time to time.
I couldn’t help but lose myself in daydreams of what I might be tasked with doing on my very first mission, while Preceptor Tang talked at great length about the ancient history of the Mystocean Empire. Distractedly, I heard her discussing at great length how many Empresses there had been and how many Emperors before them.
I was deep in a reverie, in which I imagined wielding my spear and slaying goblins by the cartload, when the subject of Preceptor Tang’s lecture changed.
“Now that I have summarized the long and glorious history of the Mystocean Empire,” she said, “let us talk about what it is that the Empress wants out of her dragonmancers. What she expects you to be able to accomplish during your training.”
Preceptor Tang rolled her head on her shoulders, stepped back, and perched casually on the edge of her polished desk. She crossed her ankles and stared pensively at the ceiling.
“Without delving too deeply into history, would anyone care to venture a guess as to what the first Empress of the Mystocean Empire had in mind when she decided to form the first unit of dragonmancers?” the Preceptor asked.
There were a few half-hearted mutterings, but no one seemed to want to run the risk of sticking up their hands and making an ass of themselves.
I had never had that problem. Not with making an ass of myself—though the Universe knew I had plenty of experience doing that—but with sticking my neck out.
I put up my hand.
“Yes, Dragonmancer Noctis?” Preceptor Tang said, pointing at me.
“Sounds to me,” I said, trying to give the impression that I had been listening attentively to her lecture so far and not, in fact, dreaming up fictional escapades and writing my own legend in my mind. “Sounds to me that she was trying to make super-soldiers.”
A small, thin smile slowly burgeoned on Preceptor Tang’s face. Her liquid eyes played around the room, moving from one dragonmancer’s face to another.
“I like the way you put things, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said. “Short. To the point. Yes… super-soldiers. That would be precisely what it was that our first Empress was looking to create when she started the dragonmancer program.”
“By super-soldiers,” a woman with a shock of bubblegum pink hair in the middle of the class asked, “do you simply mean that Empress Gratia was looking to create the very first elite unit.”
“Absolutely, Dragonmancer Doty,” Preceptor Tang said. “Empress Gratia had only just unified the three smaller kingdoms which she renamed under the banner of the Mystocean Empire. Ensuring that she had the best troops in the land was inevitably and understandably at the top of an exceptionally long list.”
“But how did she settle on making dragonmancers?” I blurted out, hoping that Preceptor Tang had not already gone over this in her talk.
“The First Empress was a magical practitioner of considerable power, guile, and wisdom,” Preceptor Tang said. “It is said, though the scrolls containing this part of the history are buried in the catacombs under the Empress Cyrene’s palace, that she was already in possession of a dragon when she forged the Mystocean Empire.”
“I heard someone singing in The Foamy Finger Inn that it was because she had the dragon that she was able to defeat and unify those three lesser kingdoms in the first place,” said a short woman in the front row, sporting a bowl haircut and a pair of foot-long horns.
“This could very well be the case,” the Preceptor said. “Although, as I say, the records lie hidden under the Empress’ palace and would need to be checked before I could state that what you say is absolute truth.”
“So, this First Empress, Empress Gratia, she set out to make this elite unit,” I said. “And what? She went from a sort of special forces straight to men and women who were bonded with dragons?”
“There was, as there always is when it comes to the progress of civilizations, some trial and error,” Preceptor Tang said carefully.
Somehow, her tone alone painted a picture for me. It wasn’t necessarily a nice picture either.
“Oh, shit,” I said, “you mean that there were a few hundred years of trialing out a bit of genetic modification on people, aren’t you?”
I could tell by Tang’s face that it was exactly what she thought had happened, but she said, “I couldn’t say what happened in those days for certain. There are none who can. It was a long time ago. The upshot of it is that, somewhere along the way, Empress Gratia discovered or invented the way in which we mingle the blood of dragons with the blood of those few individuals who are chosen as dragonmancers. And what, in essence, did Empress Gratia get when her experiments came to fruition?”
This time every hand in the class shot up.
“Yes, class?” Preceptor Tang said.
“The finest warriors in the world, Preceptor!” the class said as one.
Preceptor Tang smiled. “Correct.”
“Excuse me, Preceptor,” said the woman with the bright pink hair.
“Yes, Dragonmancer Doty,” Preceptor Tang said.
“If dragonmancers—I mean, if we—are so powerful, why is it that it is a requirement that we have a three-soldier coterie?” asked Dragonmancer Doty.
Preceptor Tang re-crossed her ankles and looked up at the ceiling again. “It is a requirement because not even dragonmancers can watch every direction all at once. What is more, the idea of a coterie is that there are three people in this world that the dragonmancer can absolutely trust. There may come a time when you find yourself surrounded by potential enemies. These are the times when you want to know that there are at least three people that you can trust not to try to kill you.”
I raised my hand to voice the same old niggle that had been gnawing away at me, ever since I learned what Gabby, Bjorn, and Rupert had signed up for by pledging their allegiance to me.
“Yes, Dragonmancer Noctis?” Tang asked, craning her head to see me.
“I just wanted to know for certain,” I said, my voice echoing around the classroom. “Is it just sort of dramatic rhetoric when people say that our squads are expected to die at our command, or are they actually trained to give their lives if we deem it to be in the interest of the Empire?”
There was some intrigued muttering at this. A few more heads flicked back to look at me before returning their gazes to the front of the room.
“No,” Preceptor Tang said gently. “It is not simply rhetoric.” She took a deep breath and got to her feet. She began pacing slowly across the room, her boot heels clicking crisply on the stone. “The training of the regular troopers in the army is not really the concern of anyone here. However, I will say that the idea that the dragonmancers squads may have to give their lives at a moment’s notice is something that is instilled in all of the soldiers of the Empire.”
“Why?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
“Simply because if a soldier is part of dragonmancer’s coterie—the single greatest badge of honor there is for a trooper, I might add—then they will most likely find themselves in the greatest danger. Can you tell me why that might be, Dragonmancer Noctis?”
I nodded. “Yeah, because we’re the tip of the spear, right?” I said. “It’s us who are sent into the gnarliest situations, I imagine, because of our skills. It’s us who engage with the most dangerous, volatile, psychotic enemies. So, if our coteries are with us, they’re sharing that danger.”
&nb
sp; Preceptor Tang nodded. “Exactly. Dragonmancers and their squads are only sent into battle when things look dire. Dragonmancer squads are trained to expect to give their lives at a moment’s notice, because that it something they may need to do, and have done many times in the past.”
“But, Preceptor,” came a high, piping voice just off to my right.
“Yes, Dragonmancer Roarloss,” Tang said patiently.
“You mentioned that there were missions that we could be expected to carry out, even as Rank One dragonmancers.”
Preceptor Tang smiled her slow, wide smile. She didn’t show her teeth when she did this, but her big, dark eyes crinkled up in the corners. She snapped her fingers and pointed at the young woman who had spoken.
“Right you are, Dragonmancer Roarloss. Right you are. And that leads me, rather neatly, into my next topic of discussion.”
My brain, almost without bothering to check with me, prepared to tune itself to Imagination FM, but then Preceptor Tang said, “Now, as dragonmancers, it is common knowledge that you are capable of taking on small forces all on your own—so long as these forces do not include enemy magical practitioners.”
This made me sit up in my chair.
I remembered that Saya had told me once that a dragonmancer had the ability to take on fifty regular troopers at a time—fight them and slay them if it came down to it. I had taken it with a pinch of salt, I guessed, when she had first told me that. I thought she might have been exaggerating a little bit. I had been fresh to the Empire then and hadn’t really appreciated just how fucking badass dragonmancers were.
If an all-black attired tutor was telling a class full of Rank Ones this though…
“Is that one of the missions that we might be sent out to complete?” the woman with the bowl cut and horns asked from the front of the room.
Preceptor Tang nodded curtly.
“It might be,” she said. “Depending on your prowess in your other classes, of course.”
“What sort of specific mission would just involve one of us heading out and laying waste to a whole company of enemies?” I asked.
“Well, a goblin cull for one,” Preceptor Tang said.
“Goblin cull?” I asked.
“The goblin population spreads like dragonfire,” Preceptor Tang said. “Especially in the springtime when they come forth from their burrows and multiply.”
I had met goblins before. It had been right after Elenari had taken me from Earth to the Mystocean Empire through a portal.
A revolting image of the gross, crooked, slavering, blood-thirsty bastards that I had met in that forest holding some sort of springtime orgy popped into my head. Mentally, I shoved it away.
“They come out of hiding when the weather in the forests and the mountains begins to warm,” Preceptor Tang explained. “Obviously, as they multiply, they require more provisions. They do not grow their own food, being chiefly scavengers and thieves, and so they raid our more remote villages. They carry away food, livestock, and anything else that they need. Often, for fun, they put the hamlets to the torch and the villagers to the sword.”
The thought of a horde of ravening goblins descending on a remote mountain village did not strike me as particularly sunny one.
“So, we get sent to these, ah, disturbances?” Dragonmancer Doty asked.
Preceptor Tang tapped a blue-green finger against her chin. “The Empire has many spies in its employ—birds, beasts, and creatures of various sorts—and if we are lucky, we hear about goblin raids before they take place.”
“And if we aren’t lucky?” I asked, voicing the question that most of the class must have been thinking.
“Then the dragonmancer who is chosen must play the part of avenger instead of rescuer,” the Preceptor said quietly.
She let us chew that one over for a few moments. Heads turned this way and that as dragonmancers eyed their neighbors. Preceptor Tang allowed the chatter to build a little before she raised her webbed hands and brought it back down again.
“Now, this sort of assignment probably sounds more like what you all envisioned when you first learned that you would be becoming dragonmancers, is it not?” she asked.
The class murmured its agreement.
“Yes,” said Preceptor Tang. “But being a dragonmancer is not all swinging swords and casting spells. There is an element of politics to being one of the Empress’s most treasured warriors too.”
Preceptor Tang then went on to talk about escort details. These were typically what other dragonmancers referred to as a ‘cushy number.’ Basically, a wealthy merchant or noble who had a journey to make would hire a dragonmancer from Empress Cyrene—for about three to four fuckloads of gold, as far as I could gather—to protect them on their travels.
This was, to be fair, a shrewd move on the part of the upper crust. If the rich bastard in question was moving some valuable cargo, or was just worried about getting picked up by enterprising bandits with ransom in mind, having a dragonmancer in their entourage was about as big a deterrent as it was possible to have. It would probably equate to walking through Chesterfield Square at night wearing a Rolex and with your wallet out, but having an Abrams battle tank following behind you.
Although dragonmancers often found these escort details boring—if the journey was across the Empire, they might be on the road for months at a time—there was a silver lining. Because of their elite status, not to mention the fact that the client would be wanting to keep the dragonmancer happy, they would often get treated better than the people they were hired to escort.
“As a dragonmancer gets older,” Preceptor Tang said, giving us all a knowing smile, “they see these escort details as little vacations.”
“Vacations?” a voice down the row to my left snorted, “what kind of dragonmancer worth their bread and salt would want to go on a vacation?”
The smile on Preceptor Tang’s countenance shrunk and disappeared. “Once you have lived a lifetime of war, dragonmancer,” she said. “You might not think so little of a few weeks R and R.”
Preceptor Tang lectured us on a few other types of mission, which I privately labeled as ‘PR missions’ in my head. These included visiting far-flung corners of the Mystocean Empire to show our faces and let them know that the Empress had her eye on all her people and was able to send aid whenever it was called for.
Our ability to cover vast distances in a fraction of the time that it would take a horseman, naturally meant that Rank One dragonmancers often found themselves running important and urgent messages.
One type of non-violent assignment that I quite liked the sound of was the scouting and reconnaissance commissions.
“The advantage of having airborne riders to watch the Empire’s borders or spy out what neighboring Empires might be doing is one that cannot be overlooked,” the Preceptor told us. “In fact, there is a standing rotation of scouts and lookouts constantly on call. All of you will be required to take your turn in this roster. The name of this rotational recon unit is the Storm Riders.”
Well, I couldn’t fault the name. That was suitably badass.
At that point, Preceptor Tang dissolved into a long-winded explanation of how that aerial scouting unit had come about and what it was they were expected to do.
I was jerked out of yet another fantasy, in which I was fighting an army of faceless monsters attired in pig-iron armor by the Preceptor saying, “And this brings me to the final type of mission that a Rank One dragonmancer might be given.”
I felt the class’s cumulative attention sharpen once again. There was something about Preceptor Tang’s manner that drew every eye in the room.
“It is important that you should listen to me here,” she said. Her voice was just as calm and languorous as it had been before, but it had a slight edge to it now. “These missions… They have been brought into being after much discussion between the Overseer, the Martial Council, and the Empress Cyrene herself. I must impress upon you that, because you are Rank One d
ragonmancers, you are subject to the same oath of silence and secrecy as every other dragonmancer of any rank that lives or has ever lived. Is that understood?”
I sat forward in my chair and put my elbows on my desk. I ran a hand though my long, dark hair to get it out of my face and stared fixedly at Preceptor Tang.
She seems edgy… Nervous, I thought.
“In the next few weeks—maybe sooner— dragonmancers will start being sent out as sappers into the subterranean realms.”
This info drop garnered a general gasp from the assembled dragonmancers. Many of them exchanged incredulous looks, as if they could not believe what they had just heard.
If it hadn’t been for Penelope filling me in on the Shadow Nations and how they had fled into the subterranean realms, I would not have a had a fucking clue what the hell Preceptor Tang was talking about. As it was though, I assumed that this was all part of a move to somehow expand the Empire’s territory.
As if in answer to my musings, Preceptor Tang raised her arms for silence and said loudly, “This is, as I probably do not need to remind you, a new kind of mission.”
“Preceptor,” someone called out, “what do you mean we’ll start being sent out as sappers?”
“Yes, Preceptor, what do you mean by sapper?” someone else asked.
I found myself talking before I knew it. I had gathered a lot of random information in my time, thanks to the many books, magazines, and pamphlets I had read while sitting and sleeping in a variety of bus stops all over California.
“Back on my homeworld,” I said, “a sapper was a soldier who was sent out to do things like build bridges or carve out roads before the main army came through behind them and...” I stopped then, suddenly very aware of what I was saying and of what it meant or might mean.
The Preceptor must have seen the look of abrupt thoughtful consternation on my face because she cleared her throat and said, “Yes, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she said. “And…?”
I raised my eyebrows and looked around at the faces of the women who were, suddenly, staring right at me.
“And they would have to do other things,” I continued slowly. “Things like breaching fortifications, demolishing enemy outposts, taking out garrisons that might be laying in wait in seemingly unoccupied land, laying or clearing traps, preparing bases for their own troops to come and inhabit, and generally making sure that the coast was well and truly clear.”