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

by Ramy Vance

  Jollies pointed to an asteroid off to the left, and she and Amber headed toward it. Gill did the same. Brath and Jim stayed behind with Alex, who was starting to come out of the fog of the Dark One’s influence. “He’s here!” Alex muttered as she tried to get to her feet. “He’s actually here.”

  Jim helped Alex get up and held her steady as she stumbled. “Don’t you hear him?” she asked, her eyes wide and frantic. “Can’t you hear him?”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Jim told her.

  Suddenly, Alex fell to her knees, gripping her skull as she screamed, “He’s in my head! He’s in my head!”

  Brath and Jim exchanged glances, neither of them knowing what to do in the situation. They could tell Alex was in pain but didn’t know how to help. “Chine, is there anything you can do?” Jim asked the dragon.

  Chine didn’t respond. His eyes had rolled back in his head and smoke was coming from his nostrils, but he paid no attention to the human or the gnome. “Guess we gotta figure this one out on our own,” Brath muttered.

  Jim guided Alex over to Chine and sat her down by the dragon’s feet. “She’ll come out of it,” the mech rider said. “Something like this happened on the meteor. She’s linked to the Dark One. I don’t know how, but it happened. They went into some kind of vision or alternate reality. It’s hard to understand, but the two of them are linked.”

  “Like her and Vardis.”

  Jim glanced at the alien, who was standing away from everyone else as if he were waiting for something. “Yeah,” Jim said slowly. “Like with Vardis.”

  Brath grimaced. “Your girlfriend seems like she’s been getting the raw end of everything. Lucky she’s so tough.”

  “She’s not my—”

  The gnome shrugged. “You stay close to her. I’ll move up and take point. Furi should be able to handle whatever comes this way. Just make sure nothing happens to her.”

  Brath walked toward Furi and leaped onto his back, leaving Jim there with Alex, who could barely comprehend what was going on around her. If she had been aware, she wouldn’t have believed the amount of respect Brath had shown toward her, but that was most likely why Brath had said it. He knew Alex wouldn’t hear.

  Jim got back into his mech, bringing it around to Alex and Chine and preparing for the vrosks that were going to come through the asteroids at any minute. He was trembling, staring at the stars and asteroids around him.

  Alex watched all of this happening, feeling as if she were both present and someplace far away. The Dark One’s voice was still ringing in her ears, although now it made less sense. She couldn’t tell if he was speaking to her or if she was merely hearing whatever constituted his thoughts.

  Chine stretched his wing over Alex as he curled into a ball, pulling her closer to him. Alex was glad the dragon was here with her. Even though she didn’t know specifically what he was doing, she could feel him fighting something off. Maybe he was the only reason she wasn’t going insane.

  The rest of Boundless was secured in their positions. Now they were simply waiting. Silence and tense nerves as the vrosks and whatever else could have come from that portal were heading toward them. “Anybody know a good joke?” Jollies finally asked.

  Brath was scratching the back of Furi’s neck, trying to soothe the dragon, who was just as stressed as everyone else. “One that pixies would find funny?” he asked. “Is it even a joke? You all laugh at just about anything.”

  “Then it shouldn’t be hard for you to think of one, right?”

  Gill and Jim snickered over the comm, and Brath turned nearly as red as his beard. “Okay, I got one,” Brath said. “A gnome and a drow walk into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘What will you two be having?’ The gnome says, ‘Whatever you got on the menu.’ The bartender turns to the drow and asks, ‘What about you?’ The drow leans over the bar and says, ‘Your finest stones.’”

  Nobody laughed. The silence grew thicker and thicker. “Uh, I think jokes are supposed to be funny,” Jim teased.

  Brath shouted, “Gnomes don’t do humor, all right!”

  Gill was snickering, barely able to manage, “It’s kinda impressive. You managed to say something a pixie didn’t think was funny.”

  Amber set off a small electrical pulse and Jollies quipped, “You’re right. There was nothing funny about that.”

  “Gnomes don’t tell jokes!” Brath shouted again. “Wait, hold up, guys. I think they’re coming.”

  Boundless looked at the stars, which were twinkling like lost dreams. In the distance, they could see the vrosks massing. The attack was beginning.

  The dragonriders readied their weapons. This was going to be a fight worth remembering—if they survived.

  Chapter Two

  Jollies and Gill headed toward their positions, leaving Jim and Brath on the asteroid with Alex, waiting for the Dark One’s forces to make it to them. Jim hovered over Alex as she slipped in and out of consciousness. Whatever was happening was getting worse.

  Brath didn’t know what to do. He felt completely unprepared for the situation. Even though he had started everyone talking about a plan, he’d been surprised to hear himself speak. Giving orders wasn’t his thing. It wasn’t that he liked following them. Responsibility wasn’t his thing either.

  That didn’t matter at the moment. All of the Riders were responsible for Alex. She’d placed her life on the line way too many times for them to let anything happen to her. The only reason any of them were still alive was because of her.

  Alex screamed again, and Brath wished it was true that no one could hear you scream in space. She sounded like she was in pain, and it was very obvious that there was nothing any of them could do about it.

  Vardis was standing far from the rest of the group. He was staring at the moon as if he could see something.

  Brath had to fight the urge to walk up behind Vardis, pull him down, and beat the living snot out of him. He didn’t trust the guy. The whole situation with the kin attacking them had been ridiculous. What was supposed to be a simple mission had turned into a disaster, and Vardis was possibly responsible for it.

  Maybe he’s working with the Dark One, Brath thought. This could have all just been an orchestrated double-cross.

  As Brath watched Vardis, that possibility seemed less likely. If Vardis was working with the Dark One, then why was he still with Boundless? He should have bounced as soon as the Dark One’s forces had shown up.

  Brath didn’t even want to think about the amount of firepower they were going to be up against. It was hard for him to fathom that the Dark One had come to the battle in person. Actually, it was horrifying. All of the nine realms had been fighting this guy’s armor, and almost no one had ever seen or heard him. Except on the gnome world.

  The memories came faster than Brath was prepared for. The smell of burning flesh, the screams that never ended, that seemed to stretch across the entire planet. Weeks without food, scouring in the forest like animals being hunted.

  Gnomes had seen the Dark One. Many of them were now dead. Brath was lucky to have escaped when the gnomish world fell, but others hadn’t been as lucky. Not the ones who had seen the Dark One’s face.

  Stories had been shared between survivors. Brath never talked about his own. No one needed to know what had made him an orphan. But he listened to everyone else’s tales. He’d memorized them, carved them into his heart. He internalized the pain of every gnome he met and swore revenge.

  One gnome he remembered, not much older than him, had spoken about how she had seen the Dark One’s actual face. She’d been part of the early resistance that had fought when the Dark One’s first ships touched down on the planet. Her squad had been mostly wiped out. The rest had been captured.

  She said she’d been brought into a throne room, and that was where she had seen him. His face never rested, like it was made of black water, constantly shifting and changing. Sometimes it was the face of a friend. Other times it was her own. Then it would become something much
worse—a deep emptiness that sent her spiraling into madness for weeks to come.

  No one ever asked the gnome how she’d escaped. You could see in her eyes that whatever she had done was not something she would forget. When it came to refugees, sometimes it was best to leave it at that. If someone talked, they might start crying. Opening wounds was always a painful process.

  As Brath stared up at space, following Vardis’ line of sight, he had to admit to himself he was curious to see the Dark One’s face. Not that he took it lightly. But the curiosity was there. The face of the creature that was wiping out entire civilizations, a monster from another hellish dimension. Who wouldn’t be a little curious?

  Though it was much more than curiosity. Brath felt like he had to stare into the Dark One’s face, to see what kind of madness really dwelled within that dark face. Would he be strong enough to look away, to hold on to his sanity? If he wasn’t, was he strong enough to even be fighting in this war? If you couldn’t look your enemy in the eye, were you even a warrior?

  Alex screamed again, her pain ringing out in the darkness of space. Brath wished there was something to do, but Alex stopped screaming soon enough. Now she was only muttering in a fitful sleep. Brath hoped Jim would be able to concentrate on the fighting and ignore the state Alex was in. Humans were usually too emotional.

  Brath knew Jim would be able to handle it, though. He’d watched the mech rider and Alex. They were strong. Resilient even by gnomish standards. Alex would be able to pull through. Brath had no doubt about it.

  Jollies had found where she was going to camp out until the attack began. She’d located a small cluster of asteroids that were much larger than the rest. They would provide her with ample cover to avoid a direct attack. She was also practicing guiding Amber through the maze of asteroids.

  If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Jollies would have wanted to spend more time flying through the asteroids. Pushing herself and her dragon. Pushing her skills as a rider.

  An unspoken secret of the Nest was what was often said about Jollies. She was one of the smallest riders, smaller than any of the other pixies, but she was easily the fastest. It took skill to ride that fast.

  Speed wasn’t something you just pushed yourself for. Speed took lightning-fast reflexes. It took the ability to process thousands of different things at once, and she and Amber worked together like a finely tuned precision engine. In action, they were a sight to behold, but that wasn’t often seen. Most people couldn’t track her. She was that fast.

  Everything processed faster. Fear was usually the first to go, then worry, then back to fear, but faster than before. Always ending in anticipation.

  The pixie didn’t like to fight anything other than herself, and there was always something to be improved in her riding. She wouldn’t be satisfied until it was perfect, and each battle was a test. Each victory honed her blade.

  That was what she told herself, at least. The only alternative was to think about Alex, and she wasn’t going to do that right now. That wouldn’t help her. She knew Alex needed her right now, needed all of them, and that was that.

  Once she started thinking, she was going to start feeling…and that was going to be distracting.

  Her skin heated up as she fluctuated between colors in quick succession. Now that no one was around, she wasn’t focused on maintaining her composure. Each emotion brought a new color. She let herself cycle through them, trying to focus and think about what was ahead.

  She watched Brath pacing from afar, barely able to make him out. Hopefully she and Gill weren’t too spread out. There had to be just the right amount of space for the vrosks to get thrown off. If they were too close, the vrosks would just come after them. But at just the right distance, the vrosks would have to choose between attacking her and Gill or descending and going after Brath and Jim.

  Nothing can happen to Alex. I’ll never get over it if she doesn’t make it through this. Gods, her parents would be heartbroken. I’ll be heartbroken. She’s such a strong person, probably the strongest I’ve ever met, and she’s made me a stronger person. Gods, this can’t be happening. It’s okay, I’ll be there for her. We’re all going to be. We can handle this.

  Jollies’ brain continued to rattle off worst-case scenarios as she tried to rein herself in a little bit. Not too much, though. Her emotions were her lifeblood. If she couldn’t experience them, she was nothing. No pixie was. She’d simply die.

  But she wasn’t going to let those emotions get sloppy. Pixies learned a simple adage from a young age: You are your feelings, and you are not your feelings. It was a paradox all pixies lived by. Let them come and let them go.

  She was going to cycle through them all again once the fight got started.

  Gill was getting settled into his position. Timber’s weapons were beginning to charge, and there was still some time before the Dark One’s forces were going to begin their attack. This was where Gill felt the most comfortable—the calm before the storm.

  The drow watched distant stars twinkling, their life force gone thousands and millions of years before he had existed. Even with a battle looming ahead of him, Gill could not ignore the vast beauty he was experiencing at this moment.

  Few drow ever saw anything above the surface. They spent their lives underground, toiling for purposes that many of them weren’t even certain of. It was the system Gill had been raised in. His parents had never seen the surface. Neither had his grandparents. He wasn’t certain if anyone in his family ever had.

  If Gill had been the kind of person to speak much, he would have gushed about how beautiful the blackness of space was, how close to the darkness he had grown up in it was. The infinite blackness seemed more like home than anything he’d ever seen in Middang3ard, and he was more than happy to enjoy these moments alone.

  It was not that Gill didn’t take the battle that awaited him seriously. He knew these might be his last living moments. But he also knew that was how every battle was and would be. Acknowledging that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy these small moments for what they were.

  Beauty came in many forms; that was something he’d learned from his time underground, and even more so since he’d come above ground, out of the Underdark. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder. Some eyes had enough light to see certain things. Others were so blinded by that light that they couldn’t see others.

  Gill ran his hand over Timber’s scales, soothing the dragon. They were both in a new environment, a place neither of them understood well. Not just the two of them, but all of Boundless was experiencing something completely outside their understanding.

  As Gill pondered, he looked up and saw the massing of the vrosks above him. Even their desire for destruction could be beautiful, Gill thought. In this darkness, even that could be beautiful.

  Chapter Three

  Jim was hauling Alex into his mech while Gill shouted that the battle was beginning. He didn’t know what to do about Chine, but Brath was already moving Furi closer to defend the dragon. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to come to that. Gill’s and Brath’s plan could work, but if it failed, they were all going to find out how terrible the Dark One was.

  The back of Jim’s mech popped open, and he placed Alex inside gently. She hardly stirred. Whatever the Dark One was doing to her was getting worse by the second. Jim wished there was something he could do, but he had no idea what was going on. The only way he could make himself helpful was by fighting. Maybe Alex would snap out of it by then.

  Jim jumped into the mech and took a deep breath, pulling up his HUD, scanning for enemies and trying to figure out where they were going to come from. He had a bad case of nerves—something about having Alex in the cockpit with him. He wondered if she would feel the same way about him being on Chine’s back with her.

  He doubted his pre-battle ritual was going to bother her, or if she was even going to notice. Jim hoped there was a signal out here in space. There had to be. He still had a comm link and updates from the Nest, so
this wouldn’t be a problem.

  He looked over his shoulder at Alex again. She was still muttering under her breath in a language Jim couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was extremely creepy and unsettling, and he was more worried for Alex than he’d ever been for anyone in his entire life. But that wasn’t going to help. Getting his head in the game would.

  Jim pulled up his playlist, aptly titled The Best Funk and Disco the World has Ever Known. He cranked up the volume, letting the choppy guitar cut in and out, the trumpets coming next as Diana Ross’ voice came over the speakers, as clear as if Jim were listening to it live.

  His right foot tapped along with the beat as he pulled on his seatbelt, checking again to see if Alex had registered the music. He had kinda been hoping the disco would pull her out of her state, but there was hardly any change. She was quieter than before.

  Boogie Wonderland was the next song up. Jim could feel his shoulder twitch in time with the music. Anytime he put on this playlist, his body started to move on its own. It was the only thing he listened to when he flew, ever since he played VR. He used to leave one earbud under the headset.

  Now it was second nature. If the mech was on, the funk was on. He’d even thought about getting a small disco ball when they had been on Earth.

  All of those things seemed distant now. Childish to be worried about someone listening to him grooving while Alex was in the back of the mech fighting for her life. If she was watching him, she would probably be laughing her ass off.

  Jim powered up the mech’s thrusters. He wondered if he should have been up there among the asteroids instead of Gill. The lack of gravity hadn’t affected Jim’s piloting skills at all. His mech had been designed to operate in space. It might have made more sense to have a rider who was able to move freely.

  Planning had never been Jim’s strength. When he and Alex used to play VR together, their idea of a plan was…vague at best, but somehow, they always got through it. Jim reminded himself of that right now. They always got through it.