Dragon Approved Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 13): A Middang3ard Series

by Ramy Vance

  They reached the door of the mess hall, and Alex extended her hand to open the door with the crystal datapad. When the five of them were inside the mess hall, Alex guided them to a table and sat down.

  Brath looked around, trying to figure out where he was.

  Manny’d had a harder time adjusting to the dark than he had been prepared for. “Is this the mess hall?” he asked. “By the realms, how were you ever able to see like this?”

  Alex laughed despite herself and their current situation. “Trust me, it’s not any easier if you’ve never seen anything before,” she replied.

  Jollies, who had been riding on Brath’s shoulder, tried to flutter over to sit down on the table but got turned around and ended up on the floor. “Why did you bring us here?” Jollies asked.

  “Because I realized there is a huge flaw in our plan,” Alex explained. “This place has got to be crawling with orcs. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to sneak past all of them to get to the stables.”

  “Wait, what do you mean?”

  “I don’t think the orcs are here just to attack the cadets. You know, if this was a raid, I’d be busting my ass to get to the end as soon as possible, especially if the raid was on a super-secret base with tons of dragons. But they’re taking their time, almost like they know something we don’t.”

  Brath reached out, trying to find the table, and tripped over his feet. He got up with Manny’s help. “What do you think we should do?” he asked.

  Gill pulled up his HUD visor, and it glowed dimly in the dark as he scrolled through it. “There are orcs all over the Nest, and they seem to have stopped attacking people. Most of the cadets are holed up on the other side. Guess it was just our hallway where the orcs were killing people.”

  For the first time since Alex had arrived at the Nest, she was glad she hadn’t gotten to know anyone else. It would have killed her to have been close to any of the other cadets who got hurt. She knew everyone else must be hurting. She’d seen Jollies, Brath, and Gill with some of the kids on their floor.

  If Gill was upset, he was hiding it very well. His voice was even and neutral, devoid of any emotion when he spoke. Alex wondered if that was a drow thing. “I don’t think we should focus on rescuing anyone. The instructors are capable of that.”

  Jollies squeaked loudly, and her skin became brilliant red. “Wait, are you saying we should just leave them?”

  Brath shook his head. “I’m saying we never planned to do any sort of rescue to begin with. And we are also unarmed unless you want to count my knife. The instructors must know what’s going on. It would be stupid to try to do what they should be doing. We should stick to trying to get to our dragons.”

  There was a loud clatter of steel pots and pans in the mess hall, followed by shouts in orcish. All of the kids froze, staring at where they thought the noise had come from. There was someone else in the mess hall!

  Gill grabbed Alex’s hand and pointed in the direction of the orcs. He leaned over and whispered into Alex’s ear, “There are two of them, smaller ones than the others. I can’t tell what they’re doing, though. I think they might just be eating. They might not know we’re here.”

  Alex turned to Brath. “Give me your knife.”

  Brath gasped quietly. “Are you kidding me?” he asked. “No. It’s my family’s—”

  “Here,” Gill said, pulling a small curved dagger from his side. “I have two. What are you—”

  Alex took the knife and pointed toward the orcs. “I’m going to take care of them.”

  Brath gulped. “We should run. Hide.”

  Gill pursed his lips before unsheathing his other knife. “No, she is right. This is our home, and it is under attack. We should do what we can. All right, Alex Bound, I shall follow you. I’ll help. Brath, you coming?”

  Brath shook his head. “I can’t see well enough,” he admitted. “But we’ll stay here in case they slip past you. Maybe Jollies can light up the area enough to see if I need it.” Alex noted that although there was fear in his voice, there was also disappointment. Brath was smart, and he wanted revenge on the Dark One more than anyone here. He would have come if he hadn’t felt it was a suicide mission.

  Oh, God, Alex thought. I hope this isn’t a suicide mission.

  Manny hovered in front of her. “You can’t go. You’ll get killed.”

  “Manny,” Alex said, “I have to. Gill and I are the only ones who have a chance, and if we don’t take them out, we’ll all die. Let me do this. Please.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “Then you, Brath, and Jollies haul ass and hide.”

  The Beholder considered for a moment before finally nodding. “Don’t fail, then. Myrddin will kill me.”

  Alex touched the Beholder and nodded, then tugged Gill’s hand. “Come on. You drows are supposed to be good at sneaking, right?”

  Gill smiled, his sharp incisors glimmering in the darkness. “You could say that. Come on. We have to move fast.”

  There was another clatter and a sharp shout in Orcish.

  Alex crouched, and Gill did the same. They slowly made their way toward the orcs, Gill occasionally stopping to point in the direction they needed to go. Alex’s ears and nose were good, but Gill’s darkvision was a godsend.

  They were closing in on the orcs, who were now chattering loudly. She was right—whatever the orcs were planning, they were in no obvious rush.

  As Alex and Gill got closer to the orcs, Alex’s heart jumped up to her throat. What was she doing? She wasn’t an assassin. She’d never even been in a real fight. How was she going to ambush two orcs and kill them?

  This wasn’t the time to be thinking like that, and Alex knew it. If she had thought like this during the joust, she would have lost. She didn’t know if her instincts were any good, but all she could do was follow them. It was better than waiting to die.

  Alex and Gill leaned against the wall. The orcs were in the back where the lunch folk usually cooked and passed out food. It seemed like they hadn’t noticed the human and drow sneaking up on them.

  Gill took Alex’s hand and pointed to one of the orcs, then to himself, and then to the other orc. Simple enough. Alex was going to take the one on the right. Gill was going to take the one on the left.

  Alex looked down at her knife. This was the first time she could remember ever holding a weapon, and she was going to use it to kill an orc. The thought made her stomach turn, but then she thought about the dead cadets she had seen in the hallway.

  Alex squeezed Gill’s hand and pointed forward. It was time. She crouched as low as she could to the floor, moving slowly, listening to the smacking lips of the orcs as they chewed on whatever food they had found.

  From the corner of Alex’s eye, she could see Gill’s shape. He wasn’t joking; he was good at sneaking. Alex pulled up the corner of her blindfold. She could hardly tell the drow from the shadows.

  God, that kid is hot, she thought before remembering there was a full-grown orc ahead of her who was sorely in need of a knife in the back. All right, I got this. I got this. I got this!

  Alex went forward, concentrating on making as little noise as she could. Gill was only a little way ahead of her.

  The smell of the orcs was nearly overpowering. Alex thought Gill was lucky his sense of smell wasn’t as good as hers. Both Alex and Gill reached the orcs. It was now or never.

  Alex leaped onto the nearest orc’s back and wrapped her hands around its throat. The orc screamed in shock as it tried to grab its sword.

  Gill slashed at his orc’s ankles, severing both of its Achilles tendons. The orc fell to the ground, screaming as it pulled out its rifle.

  Alex squeezed her orc’s throat as tightly as she could with one arm and raised her knife, then brought it down into the thing’s neck. She couldn’t believe how strong she was. There was something about being in Middang3ard; she was stronger than on Earth. Faster, too.

  Like Captain America or Marvel, except without all th
e hand blaster stuff. God, that would have been cool.

  The orc spun, its arms waving wildly as Alex stabbed it again and again, trying to keep from screaming as she hacked at its neck.

  At her side, the surviving orc got hold of its rifle. It fired two shots that lit the room like a crack of lightning. In the brief period of light, Alex saw Gill’s eyes flicker as he stepped into the shadows, his face covered in orc blood.

  The orc turned to face Alex and aimed his rifle. Alex backed up, holding her knife in front of her, trying to figure out if she could close the gap between her and the orc before it fired. Then there was the sound of ripping flesh.

  The orc fell with a knife in its back. Gill stepped forward, still hidden by the shadows, and grabbed his knife. “Don’t forget yours.”

  Alex reached over to pick up the knife. Her hands were trembling, and she was struggling to breathe. She realized her shirt was covered with blood, and her face was wet and sticky with it. The acrid smell of copper filled her nostrils. “We…we did it,” she mumbled.

  Gill came over, grabbed Alex, and hugged her tight. “Your first one?” he asked.

  Alex nodded as she hugged Gill back. He pulled away and held Alex’s chin in his fingers. “If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us. It’s that simple. They will kill you, and they will not hesitate. Neither should you.”

  Alex wiped away a tear and smeared blood across her face. “Yeah, yeah. Come on.”

  “Hold on,” Gill said as he leaned over the orc Alex had killed. “Take this.”

  Gill pulled the orc’s head away from its body and tossed it to Alex, who caught the head, surprised she hadn’t jumped back in disgust. “This’ll help get Brath off your back.”

  Alex leaned over and grabbed the orc’s rifles. “And this is just being practical,” she said.

  “Good point. Let’s see what else they have.”

  Alex and Gill looted the orcs’ bodies and found three knives and two scimitars, but other than weapons, the orcs didn’t have anything on them. Then they made their way back to Jollies, Manny, and Brath.

  When Brath saw the two of them coming back, he shakily asked, “Is that you guys?”

  Alex tossed the orc’s head at Brath, who grabbed it out of the air before realizing what he had caught. He dropped the head and jumped back. “What the hell?” he yelped.

  Gill came up beside Brath and handed him a sword. “That was Alex’s,” he explained. “Cut straight down to the bone. Nearly decapitated him.”

  Brath looked at Alex, his eyes wide and filled with awe. “Oh, that’s… I mean, that’s pretty cool,” he said.

  Alex tried not to look too smug and shrugged. “Just figured we needed to be able to catch our breath before we go back out there,” she said. “And we can’t do that with orcs snacking in here.”

  Manny rubbed his face with his tentacles. “What exactly were they snacking on in there?” he asked.

  “Manny, this is not the time to be thinking about food!”

  “Well, when is? I’ve been starving since we got kicked out of here.”

  Alex sighed as she realized Manny’s body was probably burning more energy than usual since he was supporting both Brath and Jollies. “All right, go grab something to eat but hurry back,” Alex said.

  Manny didn’t wait for Alex to say anything else. He rushed off, severing his ties with Jollies and Brath, who squeaked when their eyesight disappeared. Alex had completely forgotten how close Manny had to stay to keep the connection going. It looked like he had to stay even closer if he was running two at the same time.

  Alex sat down next to Brath and took his trembling hand. “Hey, Jollies, could you get brighter for me?” Alex asked.

  Jollies didn’t answer but started to glow a deep blue as she fluttered over to Brath and Alex, who let go of Brath’s hand. “Can you guys see all right?” Alex asked.

  Jollies landed on Alex’s knee. “How did you do this?” Jollies asked. “It’s been fifteen minutes, and I already feel like I’m losing my mind. This was your entire life?”

  “It’s not that bad if it’s all you’ve ever known. I never thought twice about it. I’ve heard of people losing their sight later in life, and that seems horrible. But this? It’s all I ever knew.“

  Brath stared into the darkness. “Yeah, this is pretty hard. Must take a lot of guts to decide to jump on a dragon without even being able to see five feet in front of you.”

  “Makes it a lot harder when people are treating you like a lazy freak.”

  Brath didn’t bother meeting Alex’s eyes, but he nodded to show he understood what she was saying. “Yes, it would. So, what’s the game plan?”

  Alex wasn’t expecting an apology from Brath, just an acknowledgment and she had gotten that. They could worry about their squabbles later. For now, they had to figure out how they were going to make it to the dragon stables with a Wasp’s Nest full of orcs.

  Manny came floating back toward the group, quietly munching on whatever grub he’d found. “We could take the service tunnels,” Manny suggested. “They’re not quite tunnels, more like invisible hallways. It’s what all the extra regular staff use.”

  “Extra regular?”

  “Like the cooks, cleaners, things like that—the staff who don’t interact with students all the time. Can you imagine how annoyed the lunch lady would be if people tried to talk to her about lunch when she wasn’t working behind the line? She’s already pretty irritable.”

  Gill pulled up his HUD and looked through the schematics of the Wasp’s Nest. “How do we get to them?” he asked.

  “There should be an entrance somewhere in the back of the kitchen. We should be able to follow them all the way to the stables.”

  Alex stood up, sheathed her knife, and slung the rifle over her shoulder. “All right, what are we wasting time for then? Let’s get going.”

  Chapter Three

  Alex and the group made their way to the back of the kitchen. They had to tell Manny to stop grabbing more food, but the harder they tried to stop the Beholder, the more they found themselves grabbing food.

  Stress was making everyone hungry.

  Alex had only just stopped shaking since her encounter with the orc. She had managed to put up a brave front for Brath, but now she was replaying the whole scene in her head.

  Alex was glad she had had her eyes covered. She didn’t want to imagine what the gory mess would have looked like if she could have seen normally.

  They were all crouched around an overturned platter of mashed potatoes and another food with a similar texture but wildly different in taste. Once everyone had had their fill, they got up and continued toward the back.

  Manny stopped the group and motioned toward a door with his eye tentacles. “This would be it.”

  Gill walked up to the freezer and gave it a once-over. “Isn’t this just a freezer?”

  Manny shook his head, his tentacles swaying. “Only to the uninitiated. Most of the entry areas are disguised so cadets won’t waste their time trying to get in. We were using broom closets for a while, but instructors quickly found out what teenagers use closets for.”

  Manny opened the freezer. Past the threshold was a portal that breathed cold, fresh air out at Alex and the rest of them. Even if she had been able to see, she probably would have assumed this was a freezer. “All right, let’s go.”

  Alex and Gill went first since they were the ones who could see best. They stepped through the portal, which was unlike the first portal Myrddin had sent her through. There was no disorientation or anything like that. She merely walked through it and was somewhere else.

  The somewhere else was a long hall much different from the glass corridors of the Wasp’s Nest. These halls were bare and not crystalline. They looked as if they were made of simple wood and stone. “What’s with the lack of magic?” Alex asked as she peeked through her blindfold.

  As they walked, Manny explained the reason. “These are meant for quick transit. The whole Ne
st uses a large amount of energy. When they were putting these halls together, they figured just building them would be an easy way to keep from wasting energy.”

  Gill ran his hands across the walls, collecting cobwebs. “And no one ever made a plan for using these in case of an evacuation?”

  “If I’m honest, Myrddin isn’t the humblest man in the realms. He never thought anyone would have the gall to attack the Nest. And as we’ve seen tonight, that meant we were not running tight enough security.”

  Brath tapped his knife on his dragon anchor. “I’ll say.” He chuckled. “You’d think the place Myrddin spends most of his time would be better defended. Doesn’t look good for the Resistance, does it?”

  Alex turned to Brath despite not being able to see. “Wait, are you saying Myrddin is here?”

  “I mean, he might not be here right now, but he usually is. From what I’ve heard, the dragonriders are his pet project, after the MERCs.”

  “Well, why doesn’t he just blast these orcs out of here and stop all of this?”

  “Beats me. Trust me; I wish he would too. Walking around in the magical back alleys of the Nest with a bunch of kids isn’t my idea of a good time.”

  Alex almost regretted having engaged Brath, but he was right. It wasn’t a particularly great idea, and it also didn’t do much to make her trust Myrddin’s foresight. Why would he have left this place so poorly defended?

  Gill pulled up his visor HUD and scrolled through a map, trying to find out where they were in the Nest. “Come on, guys, talking trash on Myrddin right now isn’t going to help any of us. Let’s just focus on what we can control. We follow this for a while, then turn right and hit the stables.”

  Alex and the rest of them moved through the dark hallway in silence. It was welcome since Alex was finally able to be alone with her thoughts. She had been trying to roll with the punches since the invasion. Truthfully, since she had arrived at the Nest. It wasn’t getting any easier.

  Myrddin had made it seem like she would be safe—as if her mother and father didn’t have anything to worry about. Alex had been at the Nest for less than a week, and she was already fleeing for her life, with Myrddin nowhere to be seen.