Dragon Breeder 2

by Dante King

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said, “are you telling me that I’m bonded with two dragons now?”

  “So it would seem,” the Seer. “Although, there is a simple way that this can be tested.”

  “How?” Elenari asked.

  “Mike must equip two dragons to separate slots in his inventory,” Claire said. “If he can wield two dragons simultaneously, it will be clear that he has somehow established a double bond.”

  “How can that be?” Saya asked,

  The Seer shrugged. “This is beyond my experience and knowledge.”

  I’d never been one dawdle. I focused on both dragons, reaching for their essences. I shifted Noctis’ power into my Right Arm slot. Then, after mentally fumbling for only a few seconds, I located the new presence of Garth within myself. It was like reaching for something under your bed, something that you knew was there and were familiar with. As soon as I found his mana signature, I knew that that was Garth.

  Using my mind, I selected my Leg Slot for Garth. I tried to put him into one of my other available slots, but it seemed, for the time being, that he was limited to that one particular slot.

  “Chop chop, Dad,” the Pearl Dragon said. “Let’s hit the air, huh?”

  I jumped onto Garth’s back, and the young dragon launched into the air, snapping open his translucent pink wings.

  We rocketed around Augury Grove at about one-hundred miles per hour. On the second lap, I remembered what I was supposed to be doing and, taking careful aim, fired a Shadow Sphere at a fallen, rotting tree trunk. The dead tree vanished in a burst of Chaos Magic.

  I detected gasps of wonder and disbelief from down below with my even more acute dragon-boosted hearing. Grinning to myself, I guided Garth down to earth and hopped off his back.

  “So, I guess I’m double bonded,” I said to the quartet of women, who were staring at me with wide, shining eyes.

  “Mike,” Saya said, “do you know what this means?”

  I shrugged. “I guess, it’s going to give me an edge in a fight.”

  Saya put a trembling hand on my shoulder and pinned me with those beautiful blue eyes of hers.

  “It means that you’re surely going to be the most formidable dragonmancer in living memory,” she said.

  “Perhaps since the Age of Fire,” said Penelope.

  I grinned still wider, but words failed me. It certainly sounded promising.

  I might be able to breed enough dragons to fill all my slots, I suddenly thought, and then some!

  “That might be so,” Noctis said, butting in, “but you’re also going to need to find more empty crystals to house those dragonlings, and grow and strengthen your bond with Garth and I at the same time. Remember that before you get too carried away.”

  That warning from Noctis jarred my thoughts in another direction. Garth was my offspring, but he was also a dragon. And that meant that, eventually, he was going to be called into some battle or war or something. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  I figured that was a paternal string being pulled somewhere inside of me.

  “I better head back to the Academy,” I said. “This was. . . kinda incredible, really. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I figure that, now that Garth has a crystal he can stay in, that I can take him with me.” I looked at Saya, checking to see whether she’d voice any objections.

  “He is grown now,” Saya said. “And he should be with his father.”

  I beamed at that.

  “I’ll fly back to the Academy with you,” Penelope said.

  “I’ll come too,” Saya said unexpectedly.

  “You’re sure?” I asked.

  Saya grinned. “I have no reason to remain here now, not now that you’ve found a crystal home for Garth.”

  The stunning Amazonian blonde placed a hand to my cheek, stopping me as I mounted Noctis.

  “You’re a good man, Michael Noctis,” she said. “I’m proud to share our young.”

  I smiled, bent down, and kissed her. “Look at you getting all soft,” I murmured.

  Saya snorted and punched me in the arm. Then she and Penelope mounted their dragons.

  “Make sure you have Garth’s stone fitted to something that you will guard close and safe always,” Claire advised.

  I nodded as I tapped the pink stone that was in my pocket. “I will.”

  “You’re going to be all right here, Elenari?” I called.

  The elf winked at me. “Just you worry about yourself, Mike,” she said.

  I winked back and took off after Saya and Penelope.

  We arrived back in the lower bailey a short time later. The three of us dismounted and stowed our dragons. I stretched my arms over my head and cracked my knuckles. Part of me was eager for bed—alone or with someone, I was undecided just yet—but the other part of me wanted to spend the evening with Tamsin as I had organized earlier.

  “Mike?” Penelope said bashfully.

  “Yeah,” I said. I was still trying to get my head around this whole double bonding situation, and the implications of it.

  “Do you… Do you think that we have any time for some extra study this evening…?” the Knowledge Sprite asked me. “After you’ve trained with Tamsin, of course.”

  The innuendo was not lost on me. Nor, it transpired, did it go over Saya’s head.

  The muscular blonde warrior’s eyes narrowed. She leaned forward and made a show of examining Penelope’s flat stomach.

  “Hmm, I must compliment you on keeping such a tidy, tight physique, Librarian,” Saya said icily. “But I guess you were a little late to the party, as it were.”

  As always happened when two female tribes go to war, as a male spectator, I could do little more than watch as things unfolded in front of me—and cross my fingers that things would escalate enough to merit a wrestle in a mud pit.

  Penelope was smart enough to know that Saya was alluding to the fact that she and I had slept together after my dragon-making seed had been used up.

  “Yes, a little late,” she said politely, “but we Knowledge Sprites are a patient race. I’m happy to wait for another chance. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Saya’s lip drew back from her teeth in a combative snarl, so I took that moment to step in and say, “Easy there, ladies. It’s been a hell of a day hasn’t it? As much as I enjoy you arguing over me, there’s really enough for all. Especially when we get our butts to the subterranean realm and figure out what we need to find to boost my swimmers again.”

  Saya opened her mouth to retort—despite the awkwardness of this confrontation, I had to admit that it was nice seeing her back to her old, sexily aggressive self—but was stopped by another voice issuing out of the dark.

  “Mike Noctis,” Tamsin said, stepping out of the shadows, “are you ready for our rendezvous? I kept my eye to the sky as you said.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  Tamsin had prowled out of the darkness and, whatever she might have said earlier about spear practice, she certainly didn’t look dressed for fighting now.

  She looked exquisite in a simple, trailing ball gown of scintillating light blue. Her black hair was washed clean of blood and dirt and flowed down her back like shimmering shadow vapor.

  I realized that I was standing like a rabbit that had just been clubbed over the head, but I could not take my eyes away from the red-skinned vision.

  “Are you ready?” Tamsin asked again, the suggestion of a smile in her purring voice.

  “Sure,” I said—though ready for what I had no idea.

  Tamsin took my arm and, leaving Saya and Penelope standing frozen with slack jaws in her wake, guided me through the gates and toward Drakereach town.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tamsin and I made our way down through Drakereach, walking at our ease. With me being the only male dragonmancer to show his face for however many years, and Tamsin looking like sex on legs, we garnered quite a bit of attention from both the local citizenry and our fellow military colleagues.


  Happily, unlike the celebrities back on earth, who looked as if they couldn’t go anywhere without a horde of people swarming all over them and asking for selfies, our status as dragonmancers afforded us our own space. If anyone caught my eye, I noticed that they might nod or wave or pull the claw salute, but no one accosted or harassed us.

  Except one little boy.

  As we were walking along, chatting about this and that and generally flirting in a roundabout way, a young boy caught sight of us. I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He grabbed his mother by the sleeve and pointed brazenly in mine and Tamsin’s direction.

  “Mama! Dragonmancers!” I heard him squeak excitedly.

  Then, in that slippery way that little boys have, he eeled out of his mother’s grip and pelted toward us.

  Ever so briefly, my senses—seemingly of their own accord—quested out to see if this wasn’t some sort of cunning distraction. It wasn’t thankfully, because I wasn’t really in the mood to disrupt this leisurely stroll.

  The little boy skidded to a halt, almost right under my size eleven boots. Behind him, I saw his mother struggling with some shopping bags that she had. She grabbed everything and began to hurry over.

  “Dragonmancer!” the lad chirped, pointing up at me. The top of his head must have only been level with my knee.

  I recalled when I had first gone into Drakereach, that a boy much like this one had run up to me when I had been speaking with Elenari and Saya. That boy had been silent, whereas this one looked like he wanted to have a conversation. I figured I might as well oblige the little guy.

  I held out my hand and knelt down so that we were on the same level. “Call me, Mike,” I said.

  The little boy shook my hand shyly. “I’m Kalimac.”

  I noticed, now that he was up close, that he had pointed ears, though not as pointed as Elenari’s elven ears.

  “You don’t need to be shy around me or Tamsin, Kalimac,” I said, gesturing up at the hobgoblin by my side. “We’re your buddies.”

  Kalimac cast a dubious look up at Tamsin who stared levelly back at him with her disquieting yellow eyes. I followed his gaze and then patted him on the arm.

  “Well, us boys have to stick together, anyway. You know what they say about girls, huh?”

  Kalimac shook his head.

  “Boys rule and girls drool!” I said.

  Judging by his giggling, Kalimac thought this was a great gag.

  At that moment, the boy’s mother came to his side and took him by the arm.

  “Kalimac! Don’t you go running off like that and annoying the dragonmancers! They’ve places to be, I don’t doubt.” She cast a wary eye at Tamsin and then looked at her shoes.

  I smiled up at her. “Ah, it’s all good. Don’t you worry about us. I was just meeting your son here.”

  “Can you do magic?” the little boy piped up.

  “Kalimac!” his mother said.

  “Hm, well, yeah we can do magic,” I said.

  The kid’s eyes lit up. “Can you show me?”

  “It’s not really the kind of magic that we can do in public,” I said. “It’s more the sort of magic that we only use when we’re out doing stuff to keep guys like you safe.”

  Am I doing public relations right now? I thought to myself.

  “You’re making me nauseous, is what you’re doing,” Garth’s sarcastic telepathic reply echoed through my head.

  I ignored my offspring.

  Kalimac looked gutted at my refusal to bust out any magic, so I fished around for something that might distract him.

  “Hey,” I said, my face serious, “do you have a lucky coin?”

  Kalimac shook his head, meeting my gaze.

  “That’s no good,” I said. “Everyone should have a lucky coin.”

  The boy shrugged.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a golden scale from my coin purse.

  “Here,” I said, “you can have my lucky coin.”

  Kalimac’s eyes lit up at the sight of the golden disk. He turned it in his hands. The coin looked much bigger in his little mitts than it had in mine. On one side there was printed the head of the Empress in profile, while on the other was the claw of a dragon.

  “Here,” I said, “I’ll mark it so that you won’t ever get it confused with any of your other coins when you’re older. Lucky coins should never be spent, only passed from one person to another.”

  I pulled out the dagger that I wore on the back of my belt at the small of my back. Then I scratched an M and an N onto the claw side of the coin.

  “The M is for Mike,” I said, “and the N is for Noctis—that’s the name of my dragon.”

  “I know the name of your dragon, silly!” the boy laughed.

  “You do?” I asked.

  “Sure! Me and all my friends know it. We know all the names of the dragons!”

  “You know hers?” I asked, jerking a thumb at Tamsin.

  Kalimac nodded and pointed a sheepish finger at the red-skinned hobgoblin. “She’s Tamsin, Bearer of Fiz - Fizzle - of Fyzos.”

  Tamsin lips curled in a smile. Her yellow eyes crinkled at the corners. It was weird, seeing her smile without any hint of cynicism or knowing sarcasm behind it. It made her look far less intimidating.

  “Very good,” she said. “The bards have obviously been doing their jobs well if you know of Fyzos and I.”

  I got to my feet. “All right Kalimac,” I said, “Tamsin and I had better be stepping. You look after that coin, yeah?”

  “What about you?” Kalimac said as his mother readjusted her shopping so that she could take him firmly by the hand that wasn’t clutching the scale.

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “What will you do about luck?” the boy asked.

  “Kid, my luck peaked the day I became a dragonmancer,” I said.

  “So, when I’m a dragonmancer shall I give the coin to another little boy—littler than me?”

  Kalimac’s mother pulled her son away. “That’s not how the world works, darling,” she said, casting an apologetic eye at me.

  I thought about my dragonlings, about the crystal with the first newly fledged dragon to be born in millennia sitting in my pocket.

  “Sure, kid,” I called, “when you’re a dragonmancer, then you pass that scale along.”

  “Okay, Mike!” Kalimac said. “Bye!”

  I waved as mother and boy headed off down the street.

  “You don’t like kids?” I asked Tamsin as Kalimac and his mother turned the corner. The little boy gave me one last excited wave, holding up the coin I had given him in farewell and hopping from one foot to another.

  “I like them spread on toast,” Tamsin replied flatly.

  “What!” I said. “You don’t…”

  “Urgh, I’m fucking kidding!” Tamsin said, shaking her head and laughing deep in her throat. “I don’t look that scary, do I?”

  I made a face. “That first day that we fought together…”

  Tamsin snorted and swatted at my chest with the back of her hand.

  “Where did you learn to fight by the way?” I asked her as we turned another corner and emerged onto a cobbled lane. Squares of comfortable yellow light spilled onto the dark cobbles from shops, alehouses, and private residences.

  Tamsin let out a long breath through her nose. She stopped briefly, reached into the slit of her baby-blue dress, and pulled out a packet of what looked like thin cigars. She lit one with a match and stowed the packet back in her garter.

  “My people are a race of warriors, so I was better prepared than most when I was called up to become the dragonmancer representative,” she said, exhaling twin streams of purple, lemon-scented smoke from her nostrils. “Hobgoblins, my people, my race, is a race bred for war. We excel at it because we must. In the far north, where the majority of the hobgoblin tribe resides, living requires toughness and durability. Life is cheap, but death is free.”

  Tamsin took a long pull on her thin, bla
ck cigar, and smoked curled around her proud and beautiful face.

  I nodded as we walked past a fine-looking bakery, its windows filled with shiny tarts and flaky pies. “Were you surprised when you were called up to go through the Transfusion Ceremony?” I asked.

  Tamsin indicated that we should turn down a little side street. It was narrow and crooked as a dog’s back leg and lit with fairy lights that moved lazily overhead. Learning that fairy lights in this world were actually living, glowing fairies had been one of the many lessons I had learned since becoming a member of the Mystocean Empire.

  “I was honored,” the hobgoblin said as we walked side by side down the skinny street, “but surprised? No. I was raised by my father, who is a great warlord of the Northern Marches. He spent much of his time campaigning during minor uprisings, helping to protect the Northern Border Wall for Empress Cyrene. He served under our people’s previous dragonmancer, and they accomplished great things together.”

  “The hobgoblin dragonmancer before you?” I asked, intrigued. “Who was that? Did you know her?”

  A smile lit Tamsin’s face like a flash of lightning, then was gone. “Yes, I knew her,” she said in her low, sultry voice. “She was my great great grandmother.”

  “Your great great grandmother?” I repeated.

  Tamsin stopped us outside of an olive-green door, the paint of which was peeling off. Over this door a pale red lantern glowed, and a faded silver sign read, THE NOBODY INN.

  “You know dragonmancers age much, much slower than regular people, Mike,” the hobgoblin said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Does that mean, with her being your relative, that you were familiar with what dragonmancers do—more than most, I mean?”

  “My grandmother told me that she was often required to take part in special operations,” Tamsin said.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Tamsin took a final drag on her thin cigar and crushed it out on the wall next to her. She lowered her voice so that I had to lean in. The woman smelled so good; shea butter, leather, and now citrus smoke.

  “Like the sort of operations that took place outside of the Empire’s Northern Border Walls.”