by Dante King
I ran toward Cade, my face contorted in a snarl of determination. If that was the way the fucker wanted to play it, then so be it. For his part, Cade gave another one of those animalistic shrieks of his and then pelted toward me.
We came together in the middle of the chamber like two storms meeting over a grassy savannah. The stalactites surrounding us shivered and cracked, and a five-yard-wide circle of dirt around us jumped into the air like sand on a drum.
I threw a meaty combination of punches at Cade that should have shattered his every rib like porcelain. Instead, Cade merely grunted, stepped back a pace, and lashed out with a front kick of his own.
I blocked the kick in my hands, but the force of it sent me sliding backward about three yards, the feet skidding across the dirt floor. Cade pressed in with another tail whip, and I jumped over it as it scythed under me. I landed on the balls of my feet just in the exact right spot for Cade to unleash a textbook uppercut. The punch caught me square under the jaw and propelled me thirty feet into the air. I hit the ceiling of the chamber in a crunch of splintering stone and dirt and then plummeted back earthward. I hit the ground in a crouch, which might’ve looked cool but unfortunately left me open to another tail whip from the pale gray tail that Cade had grown.
This one caught me right in the face.
This time I smashed right through the nearest column. Chunks of rock as big as tennis balls bounced away in all directions as I came to rest in the rubble.
I sat up and let out a deep breath through my nose.
He’s fucking strong and getting stronger, my brain told me. I tapped the center of the breastplate of my Onyx Armor, where a light glowed behind something like a fiberglass partition. It was kinetic energy, absorbed through the army. I could transform that kinetic energy into Chaos magic that could be channeled like that beam Iron Man used.
On the other side of the chamber, Tamsin had activated her Head slot. A smoked red helmet, topped with a little crown, covered her head. Tamsin’s Head slot produced an aura that would slow down her enemies, and it was doing that very thing to the hybrids, but they were still incredibly fast. She was busy playing a game of strategic retreat, turn and fight with the six hybrids. As I hauled myself to my feet, I saw her dodge a swipe from one of the women and then somersault over one of the men who had reached out for her and wrap him up in a friendly headlock.
Tamsin, using the man she had in a headlock as a shield, managed to maneuver around so that the other five hybrids couldn’t get to her. As she twisted and turned, trying to keep all her enemies within sight, I saw the muscles in her arms tense and stand out like cables.
The headlocked dragon-man let out a squeal through his warped and fucked up snout. Then, with a gristly ripping sound, Tamsin tore the man’s head clean off his shoulders in a spray of deep crimson blood.
In the chaos of decapitating the hybrid with her bare hands, Tamsin lost track of one of the women. The chick had prowled around behind one of the pillars and had scaled the cavern wall using her handy-dandy new talons. She scuttled sideways along the wall and, as the hobgoblin tossed the dead hybrid man away, prepared to launch herself onto my unsuspecting friend.
Shifting Noctis into the corresponding Weapon Slot A, I materialized my Chaos Spear. Simultaneously, my Onyx Armor vanished, taking the stored kinetic energy along with it. I threw the Chaos Spear as hard as I could across the chamber. The spear punched right through the center of the dragon-woman who had been about to leap down on Tamsin, pinning her to the wall like a butterfly on a lepidopterist’s board. It was such a powerful throw that the spear was half buried in the soft rock wall. The hybrid let out a keening wail, struggled momentarily and then hung limply.
Dead.
I didn’t have much time to congratulate myself for saving Tamsin though, because Cade grabbed me by the throat just then and flung me across the room like I weighed less than a frisbee. I slammed face down onto the dirt floor near where Amara was still gagged and bound.
“You okay?” I managed to wheeze as I rolled to my feet.
Amara nodded.
“I’ll be right with you,” I said.
Cade was running at me once more, his eyes looked basically normal now, which made his twisted half dragon, half human face all he creepier.
I switched Noctis into my Head slot and waited until Cade was about five feet from me before I used Blink to teleport around behind him. My former Captain stopped in his tracks and looked wildly around, his shiny new tail lashing in agitation.
“Where—” he began to say, showering poor Amara with saliva.
I grabbed Captain Cockhead by the tail and swung him like a bag of crap into the cavern wall. Rock and dirt exploded out, and I screwed up my eyes against the shrapnel.
Cade’s clawed fingers scrabbled for purchase on the ground, but I spun around in a tight one-eighty and threw him from me like a hammer-thrower launching his hammer. Cade was a blur as he flew across the room, smashing through three separate pillars with the force of my launch. He plowed into the far wall like a meteorite and dropped to the floor in a shower of falling rock.
A series of cracks shot across the ceiling of the cavern. There was a dull, ominous rumbling noise that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth. A lump of stone, as big as a dining table, dropped from the ceiling and plummeted toward Tamsin. The hobgoblin backflipped out of the path of the falling boulder, and it crushed two of the hybrids that were closing in on her instead. Guts and blood sprayed across the floor.
“You know those things you keep destroying are holding up the ceiling, right?” Tamsin yelled.
“I know, I know!” I shouted back and ran over to where Amara and Padymin were bound.
I reached down and tried to rip at the chains that held Amara, but I simply couldn’t do anything about them. They were ice-cold to the touch, but apart from that looked like your bog-standard chains.
I switched Noctis to my Right Arm slot and bathed the chains in Shadow Spheres.
For the very first time, nothing happened. The damn things stayed there.
“Impervious to Shadow Spheres,” Noctis said, “that is something I have seen only a few times before. I wonder how they procured such things.”
“A question for later!” I yelled mentally at my dragon.
Amara was mumbling something at me from under her gag. The gag, I realized, was something that I could help with. I pulled it out of her mouth and threw it away.
“Dragon fire,” the winsome blonde said. “Dragon fire will melt the chains at the points they are fastened to the stakes!”
“Right,” I said.
I was pretty loath to give up Noctis, what with Cade proving to be a lot more of a handful than anyone might have expected.
Then, I remembered.
“Garth…”
I summoned the Pearl Dragon forth.
“Whose dragon is that?” Amara asked in wonder.
“Take care of the chains!” I said to Garth telepathically.
Garth growled in answer and began shooting bursts of bright white fire at the chains affixed to the stakes that held Amara.
Tamsin was fighting the last two hybrids on the other side of the chamber; her fists and legs were a blur as she fought them back. They were crafty though, attacking her at different times, one going high and one going low, one going right and the other going left. They hadn’t necked as much dragon blood as Captain Cade had, so they weren’t as insanely strong as he was, but they had still ingested enough to make them formidable foes.
I turned my attention back to Cade when I heard stone sliding on stone.
Cade pushed himself up and out of the pile of rocks that I hoped might act as his tomb and roared at me from across the open chamber. More rocks clattered down from the ceiling.
This whole place is going to come down, I thought. It was not a comfortable mental picture to have playing about my mind.
There was a sizzling snapping noise from behind me, and I figured that Garth
had managed to break through Amara’s chains.
“Go and help Tamsin, Amara!” I yelled over my shoulder as Cade stalked toward me.
“Will do!” Amara called back. Her voice sounded a little feeble. I wondered if those enchanted chains had drained her in some way.
“Garth, free Padymin!”
Garth roared his acquiescence.
I walked out to meet Cade. Above us, a few more cracks splintered across the ceiling. The rumbling sound grew louder, more insistent.
I spared a quick look to my right and saw that Tamsin and Amara were engaged with one hybrid each. It wouldn’t be long before they had put them down. Hopefully by the time they had killed the last of Cade’s misguided disciples, Garth would have freed Amara’s dragon.
“Alright, you motherfucker,” I said to Cade. “The gloves are off. Time to taste my Shadow Spheres!”
I summoned a sphere on each palm, then threw one and then the other at him. In a blur of speed, Cade evaded them both. His form had flickered, like an old television screen, before he reappeared at my side. He cracked me in the head, and I went down like a bag of bricks.
I saw his foot come down, and I rolled aside before he could smear me beneath his newly formed dragon heel.
I jumped to my feet and noticed that there were two new corridors in the walls, gaping holes that hadn’t been there before.
My Shadow Spheres. . . They erase things from a distance.
If Cade could so easily dodge them, then I’d be putting everyone in here at risk. Either they’d get hit by one that wasn’t intended for them, or I could bring this whole place down on our heads.
Well, I’d just have to get close enough to Cade that he wouldn’t be able to dodge them.
Things were complicated further though, when Cade opened his mouth and spat a jet of liquid green fire in my direction. The green fire resembled napalm more than actual flames, having a rather sticky consistency. It sprayed toward me, and I threw myself sideways. The green fire bubbled and charred the ground where it touched it, sending up an acrid odor. That was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to get any of that on my clothes, and that getting close to him would be all the more dangerous.
“Done,” Garth said, his thought blazing into my mind while I heard the sizzling clink of the enchanted chains breaking under the ferocity of his fire.
Cade’s eyes flickered over my shoulder. It looked to me as if he were weighing the situation and finding it not to his liking.
A high-pitched, bloodthirsty shriek rent the air, and I saw Amara deliver a backhand chop to the last standing hybrid. The blow was so hard that the dragon-woman’s head imploded. The creature staggered a few steps before Tamsin lashed out with a front kick that sent it careening backward into yet another pillar.
The rumbling that was shaking the chamber changed its pitch.
“Get the fuck out of here!” I yelled at Tamsin and Amara. “No arguing, just go! I’ll hold off Cade!”
Dragonmancers were trained to be pragmatic. There was nothing to be gained in the middle of a fight to the death or a battle by standing around trying to play the hero. Tamsin and Amara analyzed the situation in a heartbeat and saw that my call made sense. There was no glory in all of us being buried alive. They made a dash for the exit, Amara summoning her dragon back into its crystal as she sprinted like a gazelle across the intervening space.
Cade turned to spit fire as the two women rushed past him, but I threw a flurry of Shadow Spheres at his attack. My spheres struck his green fire, and there was an explosion of light. When the light cleared, there was no sign of either Cade’s fire or my thrown Shadow Spheres.
What I did see was Tamsin and Amara flash into the safety of the tunnel. Cracks started to run down the walls and across the ceiling.
Suddenly, Cade crashed into me, and I was sent skittering along the ground before I slammed into a pillar. Cade reached for one of the stalactites and plucked it from where it hung from the ceiling. I imagined that he wanted to impale me with the thing, and he might have gotten the chance, except the cracks above us opened and stone and river water began to pour down into the cavern.
Suddenly, something strong, agile, and fast plowed into me, and I found myself lying over Garth’s neck as he galloped for the tunnel exit. When we reached it, I summoned Garth back into his crystal—the dragon being too large to fit up the spiraling stairs.
I used every ounce of speed at my disposal and practically flew up the winding stairs. Behind me the cavern was filled with the cataclysmic din as the river poured through the fissures caused by our fight.
There was no fear, no thinking, no plan—there was no time.
I just ran.
I burst out into the cool night air. The fetid stink of the warehouse district was sweeter to me than Chanel No. 5, so relieved was I to be above ground. Dust exploded out of the tunnel after me, propelled by the rushing water and collapse of tons and tons of rock. Stone fragments whizzed through the air like shrapnel, shattering windows nearby and ripping the tiles from the roofs of the adjacent warehouses. The noise of the chaos was so loud that it must have been able to have been heard from the top of the Crystal Spire.
On the off-chance that some of the shrapnel might hit me, I slotted Noctis into my Chest slot, and the Onyx Armor covered my body.
In all the billowing dust and cacophony, I couldn’t see Amara or Tamsin. Things weren’t helped when an old warehouse next door abruptly caved in on itself, perhaps because its foundations had been compromised. Stone dust filled the air, reducing visibility to only a few yards. I backed away from where the tunnel entrance had been with my arms over my head to ward off any falling masonry.
After what seemed like hours, but what must really have been about thirty seconds, the noise of falling stone died away. Silence fell then, a silence as thick as the dust that hung in the air. There was a babble of panicked voices—citizens, I figured, wondering what the fuck had just happened—in the distance.
“Fuck you, Captain,” I said to the rubble. “You crazy son of a b—”
Cade burst like a demon from out of the wreck and ruin.
He landed on a pile of stone nearby and looked down at me with those calculating gray eyes of his. They burned in his head with a cold, mad light.
Man alive, but I had had enough of this fucking around. I still couldn’t use my damned Shadow Spheres with all these people around, but I had a new slot that would seal the deal just fine.
With little fuss, I slotted Noctis into Weapon Slot A and conjured my Chaos Spear into my hand.
“Half-wit!” the twisted monstrosity that had once been Cade slavered at me. “You witless worm! You dirty, weak-minded Earthling scum!”
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t rise to the bait.
I brushed theatrically at the thick dust that coated my shoulders. “I’ve been called worse things by better people.”
“You think that you can defeat me, eh?” snarled Cade, forcing the words past his assortment of sharp teeth. “But I’ve proved that I’m at least the equal of you.”
I hefted the Chaos Spear in my hand. Chaos Magic flickered up and down the shaft.
“I think that’s a bit of stretching of the truth there, Cade, don’t you?” I said in an infuriatingly reasonable voice. “I mean, you don’t even have a dragon.”
Cade reared and snorted like I’d probed a sore tooth. His eyes bulged and snot sprayed from his newly elongated snout-like nose.
“Dragons? Bah! I’ve shown you that there’s little use in a single dragon against one such as me!”
I nodded, considering this. Meanwhile, I sent Garth a little mental message.
“Maybe,” I said. “But do you know what’s more helpful than having a dragon?”
“What?” sneered Cade. His muscles bunched, readying to spring at me.
“Having two of them,” I said.
Garth materialized at Cade’s side.
Cade just had time to open his mouth and let loose a wor
dless, disbelieving little noise, then Garth engulfed his head with a beam of scintillatingly bright white fire.
Cade’s skin blackened and cracked in a moment. His eyeballs turned to jelly and ran down his face. The brittle white hair and beard curled and disappeared. Within a few seconds, his head had been reduced to a blackened skull.
Captain Remington Cade keeled over backward, his body twitching on the pile of stone that he had been standing on.
Slowly, I walked over to the corpse and stabbed downward with my Chaos Spear, being careful to aim my thrust right where the heart lay. Because I’m thorough, I stirred it around a bit too. Just to make sure.
Quiet fell. The dust swirled in the night air. With a weary sigh, I flopped down and took a load off on a pile of rubble.
“Just your typical date night,” I said to Garth.
“Ugh,” was all he said in reply. He bared his fangs in a way that communicated that he didn’t want to hear about my dating antics.
A soft clapping reached my ears. The sound of two people applauding, albeit pretty unenthusiastically.
Lieutenant Kaleen and Sergeant Milena walked out of the dusty dark.
“Well, well, Dragonmancer Noctis,” Sergeant Milena said chummily as she walked over to me. With her white hair and pale skin, she looked like a specter amidst all the destruction. “Fancy finding you at the epicenter of this ruination. I am surprised. Aren’t you surprised, Lieutenant Kaleen?”
“I am both surprised and flummoxed, Sergeant,” said Lieutenant Kaleen in voice so heavy with sarcasm that it was a wonder the words managed to make it out of her mouth.
“It wasn’t me,” I said, seeking solace in the oldest excuse of them all. I pointed at the Captain who had just been done extra-crispy. “It was Cade.”
Both of my commanding officers’ attention was suddenly riveted on the corpse of the former Captain.
“Tell us what happened,” Sergeant Milena said curtly.