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

by Ramy Vance

  The meteor was hollow. The tunnels Alex and Jim had flown through were paper-thin. That must have been how the meteor had been able to store so many monsters. And now the monsters were gone, the tunnels filled with throbbing red tendrils.

  Alex followed the tendrils down the tunnels until she came to their source. She stood before the Dark One, his veins pulsating as his eye quivered. “That’s your big plan?” Alex asked. “You’re the thing Myrddin is so afraid of? A giant parasite?”

  The Dark One’s laughter bounced around in Alex’s head, the sound of a thousand screeching voices. No, the Dark One said. I am not even a fraction of what Myrddin fears. This form is merely a vessel for my will. It is nothing more than an old skin cell to me.

  “And what are you planning on doing with this old skin cell?”

  Expanding. Righting and uplifting. I will become Middang3ard, and the realm will finally be elevated to perfection. The realm will be like me.

  Alex giggled and tried to stifle the sound. She thought it might be rude. Then the sheer ludicrousness of The Dark One’s idea made her burst out laughing, holding her sides as the eye watched. “Are you kidding me?” Alex asked, still bubbling with laughter. “That’s your evil scheme? Your manifesto is that you want everyone to be like you?”

  When the Dark One spoke, Alex heard something she hadn’t heard from him before. It sounded almost like doubt. I wish for all in existence to be perfected, the Dark One repeated.

  “And your idea of perfection is to be exactly like you? I’m assuming you think you’re perfect. You have to, even though you’re a floating eyeball. I mean, realistically, even your dead skin cells should be a shining example of what existence could be. I’m kinda underwhelmed.”

  Alex felt herself becoming larger. Maybe it was physical or just in her head, but whatever she had said was making her more powerful. “You think you’re some kind of god, don’t you?” Alex asked. “You really think you’re divine?”

  The Dark One’s voice thundered loudly. Do not waste your words, human. You are already beaten. I will crush Middang3ard beneath me and remake it in my image. You have already lost.”

  “Oh, my God, you can’t take criticism either. Now you’re going to get all loud and pouty with me because your origin story sucks. Not gonna lie, I’d have to rank you pretty low on the villain spectrum. I’ll give you props for style, though. The whole psychedelic meteor thing was pretty cool.”

  The Dark One was vibrating with rage but silent. Alex took a seat, waiting for the Dark One to speak. When the silence began to bore her, Alex said, “You know we haven’t lost. Not even close.”

  I will be within Middang3ard’s soil by the end of the night. My power will extend all through the realm, and I will suck it dry until it bends to my will. Then I will reshape it as I please. Every living creature will bear my image within them.

  “Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. You’re spending a whole lot of time explaining your master plan to a kid because you’re scared.”

  The Dark One said nothing, but the color of the sky changed to a deep crimson. Alex was now floating in a boat. There were no stars in the sky, no clouds. The masked boy sat across from Alex in the rowboat, his knees pulled tight to his chest.

  The eye of the Dark One hung heavy in the sky. “Hey,” Alex said to the child. “That thing up there scare you?”

  The child looked up at the Dark One’s eye. “Yeah, it does. I don’t like it. Not at all.”

  “So, I’m thinking about making that thing go away. How would you feel about that?”

  The boy pulled up his mask, his blue eye peering deep into Alex’s soul, his dead eye glowing the same hue as the Dark One’s eye above. “I’d like it to go away,” the boy said.

  “What happens to you if the mean guy up there goes away?”

  The masked boy pulled his mask back down and looked over the side of the boat. “When he goes, I go too. But maybe it’s better that way.”

  Rage, pure unfiltered and destructive, radiated from the Dark One’s eye. He knew what Alex was doing, and he was not pleased.

  Alex wasn’t sure what she was doing, but by now, she knew enough to trust her gut. She didn’t need to know what the boy was in relation to the giant eye in the sky, but she could piece together enough to know the boy with the missing eye was somehow related to the Dark One’s eye.

  Alex rose, rocking the boat slightly. “All right, kid, it was nice to meet you. I’m going to put a stop to this. Uh, thanks for talking.”

  The masked boy leaned over the edge, drawing his hand through the water. “You are right,” the boy said. “He is afraid. That’s why he’s so angry. He wasn’t lying, though. This is only a piece of him. There’re many pieces of him. Of me, I guess. Even when you destroy this version of him, there are more.”

  “That’s all right. Just means I gotta kill them all.”

  Alex closed her eyes, focused on finding Chine. The world around her melted away and she heard Chine’s heart beating. Hey, I’m ready to get the hell out of here. This place is way too weird. You mind helping me?

  Chine’s voice echoed as if he were speaking in an acoustic chamber. Concentrate on your body, Dustling. Bring your mind back to it, he explained.

  Oddly enough, Alex didn’t know how to imagine her body at first. She still hadn’t gotten used to seeing her reflection in the mirror. Even if she tried, she couldn’t really think of what she looked like—except her hands. Alex knew her hands better than her features.

  She imagined her fingers running over a page of braille, the stammer of the bumps, the edges of the paper as she turned the page.

  When Alex opened her eyes, she was lying next to Chine, his wing over her. Jim was sitting at her side, holding her hand. He helped Alex sit up as she rubbed her eyes. “How long?” she asked.

  She stumbled to her feet with Jim’s assistance. “Way too long,” Jim answered. “I thought you were dead, but whatever you did in there worked.”

  Jim and Alex stepped out from under the dragon’s wing. The eye hanging from the ceiling had changed dramatically. It was still large, but now it looked as if it had been pumped dry of all its fluids. The veins around the eye looked weaker.

  Alex anchored herself to Chine as Jim stepped back into his mech. “All right, let’s go ahead and wrap this up. This whole place is hollow like a wasp’s nest, and you know how easy it is to break one of those up. All we need to do is set off your mech, and we’re good to go.”

  Alex and Jim took off, flying toward the eye. Alex was glad to put all of this behind her. She could finally go back to the Nest and deal with all the trouble she was going to be in. At the moment, death sounded much easier to handle.

  The two riders hovered below the eye as Jim primed his mech for detonation. Once the mech was ready, he climbed into Chine’s extended claw. The dragon tossed Jim onto his back, and Alex anchored Jim’s feet to the dragon. “Cool. Let’s blow this thing,” she said.

  Suddenly, Alex felt her body go stiff. It was as if someone had stepped into it. She tried as hard as she could, but she didn’t budge.

  Jim noticed Alex’s frozen face. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  Before Alex could try to answer, she felt an intense pain in the front of her brain. That pain quickly spread until her entire body was wracked with it. The meteor broke apart around her and she was falling, her mind on fire. A thousand voices jabbered in her head. She didn’t know which was hers. Then a voice louder than any of the others shrieked loud enough to shatter her skull.

  The voice took a form that far exceeded what Alex was capable of understanding. Looking upon the form filled her with mindless dread and the desire to run away screaming, to hide and hope she was never found.

  “I fear nothing!” the Dark One boomed.

  She knew then she was not going to die. What she was going to experience would be a thousand times worse, her mind rotting before her, flailing in the burning presence of the Dark One’s essence. It was already happening. She coul
d feel herself drifting.

  Chine’s voice rang in her head amongst the chorus and cacophonous screeching. Dustling! It is not your time yet. Do not give up!

  Alex held onto her dragon’s voice. She tried to use it to support herself, to drown out the voices behind her, the screaming and raging hatred so pure it threatened to submerge her entire existence.

  Suddenly, she was back in her body. She slumped and Jim grabbed her, keeping her from falling off Chine. “Do it now,” she whispered before contacting Chine and saying, This one is all you, buddy.

  With the last bit of her energy, Alex reached out to the Dark One. She imagined her hand wrapping around its hanging eye, and she focused all of her ideas and intent into the image. Then she saw herself ripping the eye from the ceiling.

  An audible scream filled the cavern. Jim took that as his cue and detonated the mech. The mech’s reactor melted down as Chine flew away. They had only thirty seconds before the mech exploded. It wasn’t nearly enough time.

  Below, angels crawled out of the tunnels. They stared up at the eye as if curious.

  Chine raced away from the Dark One’s gaze while Alex held on as hard as she could. She struggled to stay conscious as the dragon swerved through the tunnels, Jim shouting directions as he gripped Chine’s neck to keep from flying off.

  The angels were crying, a loud wailing throughout the meteor. Then there was an explosion. They heard it even though it sounded far away. The walls of the tunnel shook violently, rock falling from the ceiling. “We’re almost out of here!” Jim screamed. “Just hold on.”

  Holding on was all Alex could do.

  Chine shot his ether fire and broke through the side of the meteor as the flames from the explosion followed on his tail, shooting out as if the meteor was a flaming dragon.

  The flames hit the dragon and he spiraled out of control. Alex reached out for Jim and pulled him close, holding him as tight as she could while Chine fought to right himself.

  Another explosion cracked the meteor down the middle, sending rock and debris flying. A chunk of rock hit Chine on his wing as fire scorched the dragon’s tail.

  As the meteor blew to smithereens, Chine fell from the sky. To the dragonriders on the ground, it looked like a meteor shower, Chine burning as bright as the brightest shooting star.

  Chapter Ten

  Alex woke up in a bed in a white room in the Wasp’s Nest. The crystal walls projected a calming, muted white light. When she tried to move, her head felt dreamy and distant. The world quickly came into focus as she attempted to pull off her sheets.

  Nothing happened. Alex looked down. Her right arm was missing from the elbow down. There were no bandages, only a nub.

  A sick feeling started in the pit of her stomach and raced up her throat. She held her right arm close to her chest as she cried. The sickness left with the tears, and the tears gave way to a realization: she was still alive.

  She pulled the covers up to her neck with her other hand and sat very still. She listened to herself breathing. Tried to move the fingers that were no longer there. Let the silence of the room and the crystal glow of the walls pass over her. She drifted back into sleep.

  There were no dreams, only a blank kind of rest. It was just what Alex needed.

  When she woke up again, Myrddin was standing next to her bed. “Good morning, Alex,” he said.

  She sat up, careful to keep her bedsheets covering her right arm. “Hey,” she said groggily. “I’m assuming we won.”

  “All because of you. That stunt you pulled was foolhardy, rebellious, and dangerous. And thanks to you, Middang3ard is safe for some time. I cannot thank you enough.”

  Myrddin waved his hand, and a chair flew from the other side of the room to him. He took a seat and sighed heavily. “I’m sorry for your loss. You had a multitude of visitors trying to storm your door, but I thought it better for you to have some time to yourself in light of what happened.”

  Alex removed the sheet and looked down at where her arm had been. “Kinda funny, right? You give a blind kid her sight, and then she goes and cripples herself. That’s ironic.”

  “Actually, that is poetic justice.”

  Alex groaned as she leaned back. “Are you seriously going to quiz me on literary terms right now? Your bedside manner is atrocious.”

  “Wizards are not known for indirectness. Which brings me to my second reason for being here. We will be having many talks in the future. Chine has informed me of your psychic potential, which is something we will want to develop. But before that, we must talk about your arm.”

  “What’s there to talk about?”

  “An armless rider is a liability. You have two choices: a magic arm or a cybernetic arm. Both are ready to be attached whenever you are ready, should you wish to remain as a dragonrider.”

  The matter-of-fact way Myrddin spoke about Alex’s injury put her at ease. This was just part of the job. Riding wasn’t the same as it was in VR. There were real consequences; Alex understood that now. “I’ll take the cybernetic arm,” Alex said after thinking for a while. “Actually, it sounds pretty cool.”

  Myrddin stood and magicked away his chair. “That was what Jim believed you would say. Would you prefer to allow your visitors in before or after the operation?”

  “Before. As soon as possible.”

  “They’ve been waiting outside for you to wake up.”

  Alex smiled as she stood up. Still got two legs, she thought. Could have been worse.

  Myrddin headed to the door. “Hold on,” Alex called. “What about Chine? Is he okay?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  Alex turned her thoughts to the dragon as Myrddin politely waited by the door. Chine, are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.

  Chine answered instantly, his voice much more excited than usual. Alive and well, Alex. Fire is the least of our worries for dragons. How are you? Myrddin told me the extent of your injuries.

  Well, I get a robot arm, which I think is pretty damn sick. Glad to hear you made it out all right.

  Glad to have you finally awake. I was beginning to worry.

  Alex turned to Myrddin, flashed him a smile and a thumbs-up. He opened the door and let in the other riders. All of Team Boundless waited at the door, as well as Roy and Toppinir. Before Alex could say a word, Jollies rushed into the room and wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck, sobbing loudly.

  Alex had to peel Jollies off like a band-aid. “I was so worried about you!” the pixie cried.

  Alex sat Jollies in the palm of her hand and said, “If I had been conscious, I would have been worried about you too,” before looking around the room and saying, “I’m glad you all made it.”

  Out of the riders, Jim and Brath were the only ones who looked banged up. The side of Brath’s neck had been burned badly, but it seemed to have mostly healed, no doubt through magic. Jim had a scar running across the side of his face, and he was in a cast.

  Alex had grown used to being stared at, but the intensity everyone looked at her with was unnerving. “Uh, so, how much trouble am I in?” she asked.

  Toppinir rested his hand on Alex’s bed. “None,” he said. “The level of bravery you showed was beyond anything the dragonriders have seen. The meteor was destroyed because of you. Middang3ard owes you and Jim a deep debt.”

  Roy fidgeted awkwardly at the back of the group before he pushed his way forward. “What was inside the meteor?” he blurted. “What did you see? We tried to get Jim to tell us, but he said he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. What about you?”

  Alex held the nub of her right arm as the riders tried not to stare. “It was the Dark One,” she whispered. “Or at least part of him. There was a child too. I think it might have been him, or an older version of him. It was all kinda confusing, but I know for a fact that thing was the Dark One.”

  “You talked to him, didn’t you? What did he say?”

  “He talked a lot about wanting to take over Middang3ard, abo
ut reforming it in his image. The guy sounds like he has really deep ego issues, but I think that probably goes without saying.”

  Alex took a deep breath as she tried to put the last few hours into words. “Honestly, it was terrifying,” she admitted. “I don’t really know what that guy is, but he’s insane. And scary as hell.”

  Myrddin interrupted the solemn silence in the room. “That we already knew. No need to think about it for too long. For now, we will celebrate. A decisive blow has been struck to the Dark One.”

  There was a murmur of agreement before Myrddin started to shoo the visitors from the room. Before Myrddin could force Gill out, he got close to Alex and whispered in her ear, “Glad you made it.” Myrddin got the drow by the collar and tossed him out.

  Jim was the only one who managed to avoid Myrddin’s paternal hurricane. He sat down on Alex’s bed. “Didn’t think I was going to get a minute with you before the whole ceremony.”

  “Jaws, don’t be weird. You know you can have as much of my time as you want.”

  An awkward silence filled the air as Alex wondered what she was supposed to say. Should she just wait for Jim to do something? There should have been a manual. “Hey,” she eventually said. “Come over here.”

  Jim skootched over to Alex. Alex grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him down to her face, and kissed him. It was a gamble, but it paid off. Jim slipped his hand around Alex’s neck, returning the kiss.

  When they pulled apart, Jim’s face was flushed, and he tried to catch his breath.

  Alex’s heart was racing in her chest, and she giggled nervously. “We should do that a lot more.”

  Alex sat in front of her room’s window, watching the new cadets flying their dragons for the first time. She looked down at her new arm. It was still in its skeletal phase, so the gears and wiring of the cybernetic arm were visible. Even so, the arm was an elegant piece of machinery.