The Dragon Knight and the Steam World

by D. C. Clemens

  Near the bottom, I kept motionless for a couple of minutes. On hearing nothing but dripping water, I dropped the rest of the way down. Half my boots became submerged in the mired fluid, which rather stunk of a stagnant muck found in a swamp. A slim tunnel opened up to the west. Sword drawn, I entered the passageway after my brother dropped in behind me.

  Except for the petrified tree roots, most of the passage’s walls were natural rock. I assumed it bent and curved so often due to the old miners’ goal of circumventing the hardest earth, though if my educated sense of direction was correct, we remained on a generally westward course. Conceivably acting as a marker to taking a thousand steps into the tunnel was a heavily chewed up bone with a few flies buzzing around the tiniest scraps of meat still adhered to it. Bugs had not been so common even in the filth of the first floor, so I took their presence to mean they had an easier time eating and breeding on, in, and by the water.

  One last turn a few strides after passing the bone brought us into a huge chamber gently lit by a dark green light coming from a cylindrical ward. The fifty foot diameter barrier rose from the center of the floor all the way to the ceiling forty feet up. On the opposite side of us were three larger tunnels going farther west. Taking a single step into the hollow let the water level advance up to my knees.

  “Damn,” said Alex. “How much vlimphite will it take to keep that ward cast? Think how much coin we can sell it for if we can find it and dig it out.”

  “And what would you spend all that coin on?”

  “A better sword, for one. Better food. The best tits and pussy.”

  “Have you ever been with a woman?”

  “Of course I fucking have! Have you?”

  “A couple.”

  “That princess?”

  “No. She’s been with Gerard even since I’ve known her. I was almost with her older sister, but that was cut short.”

  He snickered. “The Alslana queen? You were going to be a king?”

  “I too found it amusing, in a discouraging sort of way.”

  Now near the barrier, I vaguely perceived the rune design carved on a floor kept dry within the ward.

  “So that’s where the fiends come from, huh?” rhetorically asked Alex. “I bet the vlimphite is under the rune. Are you gonna destroy it now?”

  “Aye. No point in waiting.”

  I spiritually reached for the dragon prana in my crystal. With it I transformed the torch’s fire into its mightiest variant. I leaned the torch forward as I also poured in a dash of corruption. The entire ward shimmered a brasher green. Then it trembled. The black flame penetrated the ward, giving me my chance to drop my torch to focus on making the hole big enough to destabilize the entire barrier.

  “Cyrus!”

  The very instant he shouted my original name, I noticed a white light secreting from the ground beneath the water. We stood on a triangular rune. Similar symbols were spread out all across the chamber’s submerged floor. Nowhere we stepped would have been safe. I only had time for two things—to assume breaking through the ward had riled the rune into action, and to say, “Shi-”

  Chapter Eight

  The sudden sensation of falling got me screaming for a split second. I lost my sword early in the fall. I was gazing at the surface of a churning sea or lake, its white-capped waves rapidly getting closer and closer. I think I heard a shout from Alex, but I was too absorbed in self-preservation to check on him. The best I could do in the short time I had was to angle my body so my feet hit the water first. A surge of corruption at the final second lessened the blow of the ice cold water, but crumpling pain still rankled up my legs.

  The current proved to be an incredible example of nature over man. Even with my corruption flowing without restraint, I could not keep my head up for longer than half a breath before being plunged under the berserker waves again. Putting together the glimpses I got, I realized I was being coerced toward a massive column of rock. To gain some measure of control, I dove under the water and did not fight against the current. There was less jostling below the surface, permitting me to direct my prana into a summoning spell.

  It sapped even more prana than I was already prepared to sacrifice, but it brought Aranath in front of me. His body pushed away a lot of the water, temporarily getting my body to suspend between current and shockwave. Tracking the magical link that coupled us, the dragon aimed right for me. He swam over my body until one of his back feet clutched my torso. I was soon in the air again. It was impossible to reclaim my bearings for the next few moments, and I did not start getting them back until Aranath dropped me onto solid ground.

  Still woozy, I said, “Alex is down there! Get him!”

  As the dragon dove again, I closed my eyes, inhaled a purposeful breath, exhaled it just as purposefully, and rose to one knee. I recognized part of the reason I was slow to get my brain to stop sloshing in its skull was the curiously high quantity of prana I was using up to keep Aranath summoned. Something felt very off.

  My eyelids opened a moment before they were ready. Regardless, I pushed through the lingering faintness to get an idea of where the rune teleported me. I stood on both feet so they could slog me closer to the edge of the rock pillar I almost smashed against. And that was it. The only piece of ground in sight was this two hundred foot tall rock column. To be fair, black clouds and a heavy fog limited my view of every horizon.

  Aranath swooped above me. His left foot released a helmetless and swordless Alex, who coughed up water while holding his left shoulder. The dragon had plenty of room to land alongside us.

  “Your brother struck the rock face. As long as his corruption does not become depleted, he should recover from a broken limb easily enough.”

  “Aye, but as you can see, we have bigger problems. We found the Peladelle rune, but as soon as I breached the defensive spell, another one sent us here. Have you seen the destination rune?”

  “It’s under a ledge of this pillar.”

  “Good thing you can fly.”

  “Not for long. Do you feel the strain on our link?”

  “I do.”

  “And the air smells unfamiliar.”

  “We can talk about it once we get back. Alex, let’s go.”

  A grimacing Alex and I took our spots on Aranath’s saddle. The dragon flew beneath the overhang about three-fourths up the pillar. He hovered under it so that his human passengers could touch the rune with their hands. However, the prana we poured into the rune did nothing to stimulate it. Even Aranath sending his prana through his tail ended up wasted.

  “Why the fuck isn’t it working?!”

  “It must be a one way rune,” I answered. “The spell that sent us here must not be the same one that sends fiends to Peladelle. Makes sense. I can’t see how anything can teleport to the castle through this upside down rune.”

  “So that means there’s another rune somewhere out here we need to find?”

  “Yeah. Gods know where it is. We can at least try connecting with Ghevont’s rune first. Aranath, get us back on the pillar.”

  On returning to the monolith’s rooftop, I pulled out the parchment with the copy of the teleportation rune on it. It got a little wet in its pouch, but it was still legible. Picking out the smoothest part of the summit available, I carved the design using dragon fire to slowly vaporize the tough rock. I kept Aranath summoned to take advantage of his prana in the teleportation spell, but until then, he drained my own prana. By the time I completed the rune, my reserve reached a woeful level.

  Alex and I stepped into the rune and spilled our prana into it. By way of his tail’s tip touching the rune’s border, Aranath added his soul’s energy into the venture. Unlike before, I sensed a degree of reaction from this rune. Nevertheless, this reaction was like trying to pinpoint the squeaking of a mouse across a canyon in the middle of a typhoon.

  After a minute, I said, “Shit.” My link with Aranath broke. I fell to my knees. “Damn it, Ghevont’s rune is too far away.”

&nbs
p; “Fucking crap! So what now, great dragon knight? We’re stuck here?”

  “Calm down, great Alex. We simply need more prana. Or we can try to find the rune that actually leads to Peladelle. If some mindless fiends can stumble upon it, so can we.”

  Alex shook his head and walked to the edge. He sat with each pair of limbs crossed, though his bad arm could not quite slide in all the way. Couldn’t say I blamed him. Anyone but Ghevont would react in the same way to being trapped in a world of fiends. I, however, did not feel too troubled. Orda was certainly in reach if my world suffered trespassers from this one. And while it appeared I had less time to keep him summoned, Aranath was also not out of my range. I simply needed to replenish my reserve and wait to see if the fog ever lifted to reveal land, for I doubted this pillar stood alone in the middle of a boundless ocean.

  A light shower prevented us from drying much. The dampness and strong gusts made the already cold air frostier. Though I shivered every so often, it did not bother enough to ignite a dragon stone. If anything, my numb face served to make me sleepier. Fighting the urge to slumber lasted only a few minutes. I lied on my back, put my right arm over my eyes, I entered the dream realm, and…

  “Cyrus!” said Alex in a harshly hushed tone.

  I sat up with eyes too groggy to adjust quickly. Thanks to a darkly yellow light coming from a large moon, this place was both darker and brighter than I left it. “What?”

  “Harpies! Look!”

  Alex pointed up and behind me. As he warned, a sprawling harpy flock flew two hundred yards away. Most looked to be a thousand feet up, so I guessed they remained blissfully unaware of us. Such ignorance would not last long. We had no cover at all, and our prana would not be able to fend them off forever.

  “I saw smaller groups earlier, but none got this close. Can you summon your dragon yet?”

  “Yeah. As long as he doesn’t have to fight, I think I can link with him for an hour or so. We gotta find land within that time.”

  The long-beaked vermin screeched when a dragon’s roar drubbed their diminutive ears. Not knowing how this world’s sky worked, I had no clue which direction Aranath headed. From the flock’s point of view, we turned to the right. A few strong flaps put some good distance between immediate danger and ourselves.

  Hence, with my eyes not so focused on threats, I finally noticed a second moon hanging in this realm’s sky. While the much bigger first moon exhibited a yellowish hue on its heavily cratered surface, the smaller, smoother one, which lagged well behind the first, was painted a brownish red. Not that I counted Orda’s stars, but I got the impression the night sky here presented fewer sparkling examples. In any case, the moons and starlight supplied enough glow to extend our sight for many miles.

  Minutes after leaving our solitary piece of the protruding planet, I spotted other spikes of rock jutting out the water. Nothing we could land on, but it was a good sign we neared a landmass. That turned out to be true half an hour later, except, as the now fully unblocked moonbeams revealed, Aranath had been flying parallel to it. Unfortunately, as we got closer, we spotted several harpies flying about. There was no time to seek a better option, so Aranath dove for the stone-riddled shoreline as soon as we soared above it.

  On dismounting the dragon, Aranath said, “There are unnatural structures four or five miles straight ahead.”

  “An abandoned town?” I said. “So an inhabited world was overrun by scamps and harpies?”

  A growling grumble. “Though numerous, they are too weak to end a civilized world on their own. This means higher fiends dwell in this territory. Or once did. Lucid fiends capable of spellcasting are only beneath dragons and eidolons in strength. Be wary.”

  I breathed deeper and relaxed my shoulders once Aranath went back to a safer realm. The link with the dragon was always heavy, but it was a manageable type of weight akin to carrying two beautiful women in one’s arms. Now it felt comparable to lugging around Ujin’s fat friend on my back. At least I found this world’s air filled my lungs easier than Orda’s. At the same time, however, my legs needed to fight a tad harder against the weight of the atmosphere. I actually felt grateful to be too preoccupied to reflect on all the little quirks of being in a different world. Contemplating on them too long promised nothing good.

  We slipped behind jagged hillocks at the end of our sprints. A recent rainfall made the coastline rocks slippery, and countless faults and holes imperiled our ankles. Thus, our heads kept bobbing as we looked out for threats from above and below. Several harpies came over to take a closer look at us a couple of times, but Alex’s corruption got them caterwauling away from the strangers.

  Our boots treaded upon a cobbled road. It led to a row of brick buildings, most of which were in shambles and expressed burn marks or holes. Farther up, structures of stone, brick, and a bit of wood showed themselves. Going by the material sprinkled everywhere, almost all their windows appeared to once have glass in them. Pointed roofs with iron trim and short conical towers were also common in the intact samples. The largest structure rose four levels and stretched almost the whole block. Three metal chimneys made it taller still.

  Most doors sported metal bands and locks. Painted on wooden signs, faded art with unrecognizable lettering dangled below numerous eaves. Both reassuringly and ominously, sometimes these paintings presented human figures in various states of realism. Plenty of metal lampposts dotted every road, with a small clock tower sometimes accompanying them. Though the numbers were also in a different “language,” I counted thirty symbols on their faces. A handful of buildings were connected by little bridges, one of which arched over a wide street. All in all, the style of town was unlike anything I ever saw.

  Like the Peladelle ruins, scamps, hounds, and harpies wandered this sizeable place in force. Luckily, their unprincipled temperament did not yet allow them to gather in groups nasty enough to overcome our prana. We darted from one building into the next. Rundown furniture and cabinets, long empty fireplaces, black and white paintings, scraps of rugs, and rusted metal tools filled their interiors. Alex obtained a sturdy fire iron to use as a piercing weapon, but my rummaging turned up nothing.

  We ultimately discovered a good hiding spot inside a three-story building with white columns surrounding it. We entered its third tier through a bridge that was missing its middle section. The lower floors had collapsed, making it impossible for scamps and hounds to reach us unless they managed to jump the bridge’s gap as we did. But with the roof whole, harpies could not get a good look at us. So after making certain nothing followed us inside, we settled in a room that overlooked the broken bridge.

  Proceeding several minutes in silence, Alex asked, “What’s with this place? The paintings and portraits show that humans lived here. They’re probably people that escaped Degosal, right?”

  “There’s a chance. Your point?”

  “Well, don’t you think they would’ve tried escaping this godsforsaken place? They were obviously here awhile. They must have tried decades, maybe centuries to get back to Orda, yet they failed. What makes you think we can do it? Even your dragon didn’t have the prana to teleport us back.”

  “First of all, who says some didn’t succeed? They simply might not have counted on Degosal being overrun as well. Or maybe they escaped to another realm.” I stared back at the bridge. “Anyway, even if they didn’t, they also didn’t have a destination rune guarded by soldiers waiting in Orda. If I felt nothing from our first attempt, then I’d be worried no amount of prana could take us back, but I did get a reaction. All we need is the prana.”

  “Prana even your dragon couldn’t deliver.”

  “He’s forced to waste a lot of prana linked to me. If I can divert some of the energy used in the summon spell to the teleportation one, we’re golden.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “This world must have vlimphite. As matter of fact, seeing these ruins gives me hope these people had the time and capability to mine the crys
tal. And as we look out for vlimphite, we’ll also look out for the rune that leads back to Peladelle.” I stared back at my brother. “Neither aim will be an easy task, but they’re enough to stave off serious worry.”

  “I’m more curious than worried.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Not yet. I’ll take first watch. Get some sleep. The odds of getting back home drop dramatically if one of us dies.”

  Apart from croaking scamps and jostled rubble, the alien night was almost too quiet for comfort. The peace had me nodding off a few seconds at a time. On one occasion I opened my eyes to see a harpy sniffing the air near the bridge. It flew away when a group of scamps croaked at it.

  I was relieved from guard duty in a still dark sky. If anything, it became darker and colder. It seemed the thirty symbols on the clock represented an individual hour, hours that could have been longer than those on Orda for all I knew. If that were the case, the night cycle here may have only been halfway done by the time I took my rest.

  I awoke with a hard shiver. The eve of dawn straggled through the building’s rifts. A big puff of my breath visibly left my numb nose and uncomfortably dry mouth. My fingers and toes hurt to wiggle. There wasn’t even wind or snow and I felt as though I dallied in an indistinguishable blizzard. To his credit, Alex remained by the window in his watch, though his shaking left leg was obvious.

  I pulled out two dragon stones and let them burn for a few seconds. When they stopped being so red, I tossed one at my brother and said, “Just squeeze it for a while. It’ll warm you up some.”

  Verifying how damn cold it was, he accepted my offer without a snide comment. So after getting our blood moving, we got ourselves moving. Aranath did not enjoy the shock of the cold that enveloped him, but with the spell alerting the town’s inhabitants of our presence, he braved the frozen conditions to get us out.