by Dante King
There was a dull cheer at these words. It bounced and echoed off the natural limestone pillars and stalactites and stalagmites, reverberating and stirring the gathered throng up.
“Bloodletters!” Tamsin hissed.
I frowned and looked around at the gathered men and women in their mismatched robes and cloaks. These guys didn’t look anything like the gang of ninja warriors that Elenari, Saya, and myself had faced the night that I found Garth’s crystal.
“When last I was abroad in this world,” Noctis said, his words sliding as smoothly and appearing as organically into my head as my own thoughts, “the Bloodletters were whispered to be a single organization made up of multiple different cabals—different factions. Each cabal brought something different to the organization, and each of these cabals worked toward the goals that the Bloodletters chief council set for the organization. As I recall though, each cabal toiled toward this end from their own specific angle and didn’t know how any of the other cabals were endeavoring to achieve the same goal from their side.”
“With the idea being that, if one of these cabals should get busted, they couldn’t be turned or tortured into divulging the secrets of what the other factions had been up to because they simply didn’t know,” I said.
“Just as you say,” Noctis said. “Those were my thoughts exactly.”
So, Cade and this group of fanatics might well be sheltering and working under the umbrella of the Bloodletters, but they might not even be aware of the existence of the ninja warrior facet of the organization?
The noise of the crowd had died now.
“I would not ask any of you to be the first. As a true leader, I shall share in the danger myself,” Captain Cade said.
Even from where Tamsin and stood at the back of the cavern, I caught the maniacal flash that emanated from Cade’s eyes as he spoke.
“And so, I and half a dozen of our keen and enlightened comrades-in-arms will take the plunge, and see if the secret that the Drako Academy has been hiding all these years is as easy to unlock as many of us have thought. Ladies and gentlemen, will you please come forth!”
Six people—three men and three women—trooped out of the crowd. One of the men was holding a bright silver crowbar, while one woman carried a large silver urn, and another carried a long, thin lance about three feet long. All of them had their hoods pushed back from their faces. A fanatical light illuminated their features.
“Let us not delay!” Captain Cade said. His long, thin hands twisted together like a couple of pale spiders wrestling.
I was captivated. Part of my brain was telling me that I should move in, but another part of me was fascinated by the drama that was unfolding before me. This was the sort of thing that Indiana Jones signed up for when he was planning one of his adventures to rescue some tasty bit of archeology.
The man with the shiny crowbar moved toward the dragon. His face was pale but resolute. Moving like a robot, the man approached one of the bound dragon’s forelegs.
I recalled now the name of Amara’s dragon, though I had never actually seen it before. The beast’s name was Padymin, and she was a Shield Dragon. She had a hide made up of large, thick scales the pinky color of eggshells. Each scale loosely overlapped the one in front of it and looked thick enough to stop a rifle bullet. The dragon’s head was as ridged and bumpy as an alligator’s, and it had a pointy, triangular snout. Soot-black teeth stuck out from between its lips in a haphazard way. Its legs were strangely long and sinewy and looked like they’d be damned good for running over loose soil or sand. Its eyes were the deep orange color of the setting sun.
With the apathetic demeanor of a man lifting a manhole cover or opening a rusted door, the man with the glittering crowbar thrust the piece of thin metal under one of the thick scales on Padymin’s leg and ripped upward.
The dragon roared in pain, so loudly that a few bits of loose rock were shaken from the ceiling. The scale hung from a flap of torn skin, revealing a patch of wrinkled black skin underneath.
The man stepped hastily backward, his job apparently done.
Next, the woman holding the three-foot silver lance stepped forward. She held it aloft for a second. Then, gritting her teeth, she swung it back. It was as she was swinging it forward that I realized what the thing was.
That’s a giant needle!
The needle punched into the unprotected skin = revealed by the removal of the scale. Padymin hissed and tried to turn her head, but her bonds would not allow her to get within reach of the needle that pierced her foreleg.
The women with the urn hurried forward, and I saw a spurt of bright blue blood spray into it from the end of the needle. She knelt by the needle as blood gushed into the urn, propelled by Padymin’s powerful heart.
The crowd around the bound dragonmancer and dragon had gone very quiet now. I figured that, with the spilling of Padymin’s blood, the severity of what they had just seen, what they were a part of, had come home to a lot of them. They were well and truly Bloodletters now, as Cade had said. They were committed. They had spilled a dragon’s blood.
The penalty was death.
“Line up, my friends!” Captain Cade cried in a loud voice, swooping down and taking the brimming urn from the woman’s hands.
The three men and three women formed a line and, while blue dragon’s blood pooled around Padymin’s foreleg, Cade raised the urn above his head.
“They're not going to do what I think they’re going to do, are they?” I said in quiet disbelief.
“I think that there’s a strong possibility that they are,” Tamsin replied in a dazed voice.
“They don’t actually think that ingesting dragon blood is going to turn them into dragonmancers, do they?”
Tamsin had moved away from the shadows of the wall. She was moving slowly toward the back of the press of Cade’s gathered cabal of Bloodletters. Moving slowly. As if she could not believe what was transpiring.
“Drink and revel in the secret!” Cade said happily, and for the first time, I heard the note of madness running through his voice.
Captain Cade, trusted member of the Mystocean Empire’s armed forces, tipped the urn and spilled dragon blood into the mouth of the first woman in line. He allowed her to fill her mouth and gulp twice before he moved onto the next woman in line. Then the next. Then the three men after them.
By the time Cade had reached the end of the line, I had decided that enough was enough.
I equipped Noctis into my Head Slot and reached the back of the crowd just as Tamsin did, and just as Captain Cade lifted the silver urn on high once more.
This time, his cold gray eyes were fixed on it.
He licked his lips.
Tamsin and I exchanged a brief glance and then began to shove our way through the crowd.
“What the fuck do you think you’re bloody well doing?” a bearded man said, turning to peer at me crossly from under his cowl.
His mouth dropped open as he saw who I was.
“Dragonm—” he began to whisper.
I headbutted him and spread his nose generously over his face. He went as limp as a cooked noodle and dropped to the floor.
I couldn’t use my Blink ability because everyone was so tightly packed together. It only allowed me to teleport a short distance at a time, and if I’d teleported, I could have ended up merged with one of these robed assholes. Instead, I started laying about, shoving anyone in my path. The robed figures cascaded before my pushes like dominoes, but I still couldn’t get past them quickly enough.
We were halfway through the crowd before anyone knew that there were two dragonmancers amongst them. My eyes were locked on Cade, and he spotted me.
A slight flicker of fear touched his eyes, but then he lifted the silver urn to his lips.
“To equality!” the Captain yelled before he drank deeply.
The thick blue blood ran down his chin as he quaffed—far more than he had allowed his followers to drink.
And they were def
initely Cade’s followers, there could be no doubt about that. He called them his compatriots or whatever, but it was obviously the Captain that was playing the part of puppet master.
Cade threw the urn aside just as I shoulder-barged my way through to the front of the crowd. I was dimly aware of an angry buzzing behind me, like the sound of a wasp’s nest just after you’ve kicked it.
“Captain Cade!” I shouted.
Cade looked down at me. He had a sort of dreamy, unfocused expression on his countenance. He looked like he’d just been hit over the head with something blunt and heavy.
Behind him, I noticed that the first woman to have sucked down the dragonblood smoothie was clutching her stomach and moaning. The woman next to her was sweating, while a man at the other end of the line was shaking his head and moaning, “No, no, no, no, this feels wrong… This feels… wrong.”
“You…” Cade said, his cool gaze tightening and focusing on me for a moment. “What in the name of all that is holy are you doing here, Dragonmancer Noctis?”
“I think a better question is why the fuck are you standing in a secret underground chamber next to a chained up dragonmancer and dragon, and indulging in a bit of a blood binge, Cade?”
“That’s Captain Cade to you, Dragonmancer!” Cade barked, and his gray eyes bulged.
I laughed one of those good, derisive laughs, the type that really gets under the skin of those who have puffed themselves up on self-importance and expect you to stand in awe and suck on their balls because they’re just so freakin’ awesome.
“I think you and I both know that your days as a Captain are going to be well and truly numbered once the higher ups hear about this little science experiment.”
One of the other men behind Cade let out a sudden shriek and held his hands up in front of his face. His fingers were lengthening and blackening. They looked like they were going through the motions of getting frostbite, only at an accelerated pace. In the few seconds that I thought it safe to look away from Cade, the man’s hands must have grown to twice their size and the ends of his fingers became as hooked and curved as claws.
“Hm,” I said as one of the women began convulsing on the floor, her teeth chattering so hard in her head that they were only a blur. “I don’t know if that’s the sort of elective procedure that I’d necessarily sign up for myself, but each to their own.”
One of the men, who was perspiring freely, ripped his robes over his head in an attempt to cool himself. His eyes were bloodshot to the point that the whites looked pink. His mouth was contorted in a grimace of abject terror. He was a chubby man with a luscious chest rug, but as I watched, his shoulders broadened, and his arms lengthened. He snarled and shook his head from side to side.
Captain Cade had begun to sweat too now. His face, due to its thinness, had turned into a web of bulging veins. The artery in his neck thumped alarmingly.
“If I were you,” I said, eyeing him skeptically, “I would have just gone for a boob job.”
“You’ll be… laughing out… of the other side… of your… face… soon enough, Dragonmancer Noctis!” Cade wheezed.
He dropped to his knees. His back arched. His booted feet rattled against the floor as his legs shook.
“If I were you,” I heard Tamsin say loudly to the crowd, “I would be getting the hell out of here. Now!”
I looked around. Most of the faces that I could see under the hoods were turned to Cade and his half a dozen test monkeys. Practically all of them looked less than enthusiastic about what they saw.
“Does it look like whatever it is Cade thought was going to happen has worked?” I yelled in a voice that carried around the whole chamber. “Either get the fuck out now, or face the consequences of your treason at our hands!”
That ultimatum, coupled with the fact that all of Cade’s six guinea pigs were on their backs and spasming like they had just been hit with twenty-thousand volts, seemed to be enough for most of the crowd. Many of them made a break for the tunnel. As some left, more followed, until there was a stampede to get the fuck out of Dodge.
The penalty for treason in this world was death, but we had entered the fray to save Amara and Padymin, not deal with a mob of would-be Bloodletters, most of whom weren’t posing a threat right now.
I turned my attention back to Captain Cade, who did not look healthy. His skin had paled to a dead gray color. The dark hair that had been shot with gold went bone-white in front of my eyes, as did his beard, and became brittle.
As Tamsin chivvied the last of the Bloodletters out of the chamber, using the expedient method of bodily picking up stragglers and throwing them toward the mouth of the tunnel, I watched Cade’s shoulders broaden, hunch, and then broaden again. Spikes of bone ripped out from the center of his back, and he screamed in agony. The two spikes that protruded from his spine had flaps of leathery black skin hanging from them.
They’re wings… A mockery of dragon’s wings! The blood isn’t turning them into dragonmancers, it’s turning them into dragons! Or, at least, trying to.
The six men and women, who Cade had allowed to take a couple of swallows of blood, all suddenly stopped their synchronized thrashing on the floor and got shakily to their feet. All six looked crooked and bent, but unnaturally tall; taller than they had been pre-blood. They still had the same facial features, but their actual faces had lengthened. Some of their teeth stuck out at odd angles and were sharper. Their eyes were all the same uniform glazed blue.
“Like a bunch of fucking white walkers,” I said to myself.
“Aaaaaaaah!” Cade screamed. “Can you feel it? Can you feeeeeeeel it? The power… The raw energy…”
His back arched again. His boots suddenly exploded outward as his legs lengthened, and his feet warped into a parody of the clawed feet of lizards. His neck made a hideous clicking sound and then suddenly grew, the gray skin stretching so that it actually split in places.
“That doesn’t look good,” Tamsin said.
She was standing by my side now, watching the disgusting transformation take place. She shook her head in horrified repugnance and walked over to Padymin.
The blue eyes of the six hybrid dragon-people followed her.
“Tamsin…” I said uneasily.
Tamsin reached Padymin, reached down, and pulled the massive needle out of the dragon’s foreleg.
At once, the six hybrids moved on Tamsin like a pack of hounds sighting a hare. They were quick—unnaturally quick. They moved with an inhuman speed and single-mindedness that didn’t make sense, when you considered that the target they had selected was a dragonmancer.
The first one, a man, managed to get his hand on Tamsin before the hobgoblin whirled and hit him with a spinning roundhouse kick that sent him careening across the chamber. The man smashed through one of the thinner stalactites in a shower of rock and skidded across the dirt, leaving a furrow along the cave floor.
There goes one, I thought.
The rest of the hybrids paused in their attack and looked over at their fallen comrade.
There was the sound of broken rock being moved and then, slowly and with much snarling and half-babbled words, the man that should have been suffering from a case of every-bone-broken-itis got to his feet and turned his blue gaze on Tamsin.
“All right, Cade,” I said. “I think it’d be a pretty good idea for you to come with us.”
Tamsin backed away from the five hybrids that had turned their attention back to her and were moving toward her in a way that told me they weren’t just coming in for a group hug.
Cade made a noise that might have been a scream or a laugh—I’d say the odds were about even as to which it could have been—and tore his tattered robes off. His body was the same dead gray color as his face. The muscles—muscles which he had looked not to possess only a short time before—bulged and writhed under his skin.
A flurry of ticks ran across his hideously distended face, as he turned it to me.
“I’m not going to lie to
you, Cade,” I said, giving him the old north to south, “but you look like shit, man.”
Cade roared wordlessly at me.
“I’m serious. You look like something that someone has chewed up, spat out, and then stepped on,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tamsin strike out with a punch that sent one of the five hybrids tumbling away like a ragdoll caught in a tornado.
“I can’t guarantee anything, of course,” I said, still watching Cade carefully, “but I think if you and your buddies come with me, we might be able to find someone who can reverse this fucking silly thing that you have done.”
Cade took a couple of steps toward me. His freshly taloned feet gouged long grooves in the soft earth.
“Don’t make me fuck you up, Cade,” I said in a low voice. “You might think you’re a cross between Venom and Captain America, but I’m a dragonmancer.”
Cade reached for me with a blackened, skeletal claw. It was hard to tell, because of the teeth that stuck out sharp and irregular from his top jaw, but I thought he might have been smiling.
“Fine,” I said.
I threw a right hook, with the idea that I’d try and knock the ugly bastard out if at all possible. However, to my surprise, Cade slid aside, batted my hand away, spun, and smacked me hard in the gut with his…
He’s got a fucking tail, I thought detachedly as I was flung across the room and crashed into one of the natural arches that supported the ceiling. The blow wasn’t hard enough to destroy the arch, but I heard it crack as I smacked into it and slid to the floor. A trickle of stone fell from the ceiling and went down the neck of my shirt.
“Uh,” I said, picking myself up and brushing the grit from the back of my neck. “I hate that feeling, you son of a bitch.”
I wasn’t sure of the exact implications of drinking dragon’s blood, but it appeared that—apart from sprouting tails and making you look like a corpse that has been left in the ground for a fortnight before being exhumed—it bestowed the drinker with excessive strength.
I wanted to take Cade alive if I could, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t use some of my more defensive crystal slots. I swapped Noctis out from my Head slot and placed him into my Chest slot, activating my Onyx Armor. The sleek, black armor materialized over my limbs, encasing me in a suit of gleaming sable.