The Dragon Knight and the Steam World

by D. C. Clemens

I strode up to the flattish dome structure. It rested on a squat tower that separated it from the deck, so I had to ascend the stairs on the chimney for a few feet before I could jump on to the back of the turret.

  Getting behind him, I said, “Glad you didn’t kill Hector.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who upset you.”

  “Gonna give me a sermon about it?”

  “I suspect any sermon from me will only nudge you closer to violence. No, it sounds like you corrected yourself well enough. Besides, if our sparring session taught you anything, it’s that I’m not going to baby you.”

  “Then why are you bothering me?”

  “I needed to let you know that Major Holson intends to infiltrate the turncoat camp this evening. Should be an all-out attack. Are you going to be up for it?”

  A churlish sigh. “Sure.”

  “Once we get this mission done with, I’ll insist they teach us how to use those gun things.”

  “Gods forbid I insist on anything.”

  “Well, insisting doesn’t always give us what we want. I can insist everyone on this world hand us all the vlimphite they have, yet even a dragon won’t compel all of them to listen. I’m sure even the Advent didn’t indulge your every insistence.”

  “But they indulged some, and they treated me more like a brother than you ever have, memory or not.”

  “I would think wanting to see you get stronger is at least somewhat brotherly, or not leaving your fate up to those who know less about you than I do.”

  He half turned to face me. “Don’t pretend to act like a brother to me. You’re only trying to look good for our old family, and now you need my help to get out of whatever stupid realm this is.”

  “I’ll admit I don’t have the slightest clue what it means to act like a real brother, which also means pretending to act one way or another would be pointless. All I’m doing is giving you a chance to prove you can control your power and that you won’t fall for another cult’s murderous aspirations.”

  “We wanted to make Orda stronger. You can see why. This world will fall to corruption soon. The same will happen to Orda someday.”

  “Now who’s pretending to care about something they don’t?”

  Either confirming my rhetorical question or simply exhausting his words for the day, Alex merely turned back around. I was about to turn back myself, but I recalled the unfortunate circumstances the turncoat children found themselves in. No matter how many times they would be told it was for their own good, those kids may never come to believe it. And why would they when the next few months and years were going to be much harder on them than life in their insulated caves?

  Forcibly bracing the mental and physical muscles needed for an apology, I said, “Listen, I can’t be sorry about what happened to the Advent, but I am sorry you got caught in the middle of it. I’m sorry I separated you from people who treated you better than your own family did. In my head I thought I was saving you. It turns out we think differently about what that means.”

  Not waiting for an awkwardness that would inevitably ensure, I walked to the edge of the turret and jumped off.

  The time between the morning and the start of the mission was filled with napping, eating, and watching the children. I even tried smoking one of those cigarette things, but like almost everything in this world, it carried a metallic, tart flavor I did not relish and an obviously non-tobacco taste I was supposed to inhale more deeply than the ingredients put in a pipe. Yet another thing to miss about Orda.

  The Orkan sailed closer to shore to give the teams on the two boats a shorter trip. Given the possibility that the turncoats kept a working submarine in the area, the ship was ordered to keep on the move to avoid being an easy target. Felicia got a sailor friend she trusted not to hit the turncoat kids every time they acted up to replace the twins’ shifts. With Maya coming with us, those kids included her baby.

  On reaching the shore, Maya started to explain what to look out for, but seeing no need to explain everything twice, I summoned Aranath so he could hear the description himself. The dragon reared up slightly to stretch and yawn.

  “We’re going to attack the strife worshipers directly this time,” I told him. “This woman is going to explain where to fly us.”

  Aranath settled back down and tucked in his wings. “Very well, then out with it.”

  Maya gawked at me. I said, “Look at me while you talk. Don’t mumble or whisper. Where is the entrance?”

  “It’s at the b-base of the southeastern mountain. Well, more like in the middle of the southeastern mountain and the northeastern one, but it’s closer to the south.”

  “You have something a little more descriptive than that?”

  “Um… Oh, the entrance is near a field of rifts. Is that the right word? Field? It’s an area of big cracks in the ground crisscrossing each other. I’m s-sure it will be easy to see from the air.”

  “And there’s supposed to be a boulder blocking the entrance?”

  “Yes. It’s well hidden, though. It fits neatly in the entrance, so it’s hard to know it’s there without someone showing you which rift leads to the right spot.”

  “And you remember where it is? It doesn’t sound like you traveled much between the camp and outside world.”

  “No, but it’s an easy path to remember once you’ve taken it. I wish I could describe it without being here, but I don’t know how to describe the path from the air when I’ve only walked through the rift.”

  “Got all that, Aranath?”

  “I do.”

  As Maya was describing where we needed to go, the major was getting a group of eight Vanguard to tie and link ropes between each other. When they had secured themselves, they followed me, Maya, Alex, and Eric to the dragon’s back. The dragon grumbled to himself while they did so. As he took to the sky, those without a saddle essentially needed to hold on tight to one another in order to keep from sliding off. Even then they jostled and slid precariously for a bit until the scaled flier achieved a leveler course.

  We approached the Toothed Bowl from the south. In a steady, circular dive, the dragon descended toward a wide region of shallow, narrow, waterless ravines clustered together. On getting about five hundred feet above the ground, Maya pointed out a specific ravine that looked familiar to her. The dragon barely managed to land inside its widest point some two hundred yards from the base of the southeastern peak.

  “Is this right?” I asked Maya.

  “Yes…” She looked up at the walls. “Yes, I’m sure of it. I remember how unusually bumpy these walls are. They’re like an outbreak of pimples on the rock. You can follow this path right to where it forks. You can then take the right path all the way to the entrance.”

  “Take us to the entrance,” corrected Eric. “Mercer, help Maya to the ground. Anyone throw up back there?”

  “I wanted to, sir,” said Felicia.

  “I loved it,” said Svren. “How close I feel to my ancestors now!”

  “Quiet!” hissed the major. “We don’t want to alert anyone yet.”

  “I’m quite sure if someone is close enough to overhear us, they’re close enough to have already noticed a bunch of Vanguard riding a dragon.”

  “Doesn’t mean we get to act stupid. All of you dismount the dragon. Hurry it up.”

  With everyone but me and the major off Aranath, we went back to pick up the remaining fighters. Thanks to knowing exactly where we needed to go, this latest flight went by much quicker. Once we dropped off the last group, I stayed on the dragon and tracked their movements from the air. The miniature canyon they marched in opened up to a half bowl shape near the base of the mountain. In this space I landed the dragon. I jumped off to make use of my legs again when the others caught up.

  Pointing to a formation of cracks, which sort of resembled a thunderbolt with a broad lower half, Maya said, “There. That’s the entrance. The boulder is fat and twice as tall as a man, but it’s mostly hollow or something, s
ince I’ve only ever seen one person use their weaving magic to move it.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said Eric. “Stay back for now. Xavier, keep an eye on her. Stone weavers, let’s get to work.”

  Joining the major were Lieutenant Gaos, Ishree, and two Vanguards I was less acquainted with. They went to stand on either side of the presumed boulder. In case the turncoats started immediately shooting once their stone door was down, the others made sure to refrain from looking down the future opening. I patted Aranath’s neck and told him what to do once the Vanguard cleared the way.

  I imagined tendrils of prana frisking the rock face as the men and krewen determined what part of the mountain was removable. Once they each confirmed they acquired a grip on the boulder, the major said, “Now!” Like Maya indicated, for a rock much wider and taller than a carriage, it pulled back rather easily. Nevertheless, it fell with a loud thump.

  “Cover your ears!” I told everyone.

  To not pierce our ears too directly with his cacophonous speech, Aranath lifted his head to roar at the sky. For the sake of our sanity, the blare did not last long. The next step was for him to briefly expel a stream of fire in front of the tunnel to visually proclaim our literal firepower.

  Adding his own message, Eric put his head right at the border of the tunnel entrance and said, “This is the Vanguard! You have thirty seconds to come out with your hands up or you forfeit your lives!”

  A moment of taut quiet developed as we waited for a response. There was then the unintelligible cadence of an argument coming from the inner passage. Lieutenant Gaos pulled out a small square mirror and angled it so that he could see inside without sticking his head in peril’s way.

  “Got anything?” the major asked him from the other side.

  “A little light. Some movement. Too far for det-”

  The zipping, explosively high-pitched echo of bullets rang down and out the passage, getting everyone to flinch and the dragon to growl.

  “That the Gatling?” I asked Eric.

  A nod.

  After a few seconds, the shooting stopped. A male voice then stated, “Come and get us, you godsdamn bitches! We got enough rounds to mow down two armies of you!”

  “You ready, Mercer?” the major asked me.

  “Get everyone away from the entrance.” I replaced Eric and Ishree on their side of the opening. “Aim right for me, Aranath. I’ll direct all the flame into the tunnel. Just don’t give me everything you got all at once.”

  Backing up, the dragon replied, “Someday I’ll have to.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I need more training. In fact, let’s count this as a very aggressive form of it.”

  An incandescence brightened right in front of Aranath’s gaping mouth. It burst out toward me. I reached out and added my spirit’s energy to it. As I suspected, my unpolluted prana reserve was going to be an insufficient helmsman with so much going to the summoning spell. I switched to my corrupted self, blemishing the foremost dragon flame. Thus, shortly after those in the tunnel witnessed a sunny flash enter their domain, the river of fire transformed into an ink-like blotch that gushed at them at the speed of a posthaste train.

  The tunnel was not completely straight, so I needed to course-correct anytime I sensed resistance from the walls if I wanted to avoid merely melting the tunnel itself. It was harder to sense when I hit a machine or living thing, but if I expanded “sense” to mean my physical senses, then I did hear the scream of a man who had become engulfed by the devastating blaze. I knew it had to have been a direct hit, for the agonized howl was cut off in a disturbingly short span of time, though such a fate must have been preferable to getting caught at a distance where you could actually feel yourself liquefy for an eternal moment.

  Out of pure panic, gun fire tried to battle black flame. A hasty skirmish. Another shriek. To ensure a quick death for the poor bastard, I allowed the extending blaze to swell until the cry ended. Different voices wailed and yelped almost all at once. Multiple popping explosions sundered forth near the point I could not take the enchanted inferno any farther.

  Now stretched to my limit, and not perceiving anything else that urged me to continue, I said, “That’s enough, Aranath!”

  His jaws shut and I dropped my hold over the spell. Directionless, a plume of steaming heat rippled the air outside the entrance. We also heard the crackling of the tunnel walls, which now exuded red and white glows in places. Manipulating a torrent of corrupted dragon fire in a single spell sapped too much of my reserve and focus to keep Aranath linked to me, so I waved once and sent him back to his dungeon home.

  Stepping nearer the ingress, a hand in front of his face to protect it from the heat waves, Eric said, “I’m not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that this world doesn’t have any dragon knights.”

  Taking my hand off my knee, I replied, “Simply be glad this dragon knight is on your side.”

  “Can you do anything about all the heat?”

  “Not really. I can probably keep myself and a couple other people from being burned, but if you want to move in the entire group now, you’ll have to get your weavers to cool the way for you in other ways.”

  That’s what the major did. He gathered his fire and air specialists and had them test how well they could dampen the sweltering cave. Using water would have been more straightforward and effective, but no one needed to splash water on the roasting rock to know it would have simply created a lot of obscuring steam. Thus, the air weavers pulled in the colder outside air to envelop us, and those intimate with fire either redirected the heat or suppressed it. This is when I learned Isabel was a pyromancer and Svren manipulated air.

  Those without the job of making the tunnel tolerably sweaty kept their attention ahead of us, made easier by the radiance of the rocks we could not yet cool. The men taking point were me, the major, and Bregman. Beyond the wavy air and new cracks being formed, we detected nothing which suggested a large group of turncoats mingled nearby. If anyone escaped being razed, I figured they were retreating to assemble reinforcements or hiding beyond the curve at the end of the tunnel.

  The first signs of what a corrupted dragon knight could do to man and machine came behind a scorched, stunted stone barricade. A half-molten tube of yellow metal rested languidly on a two-wheeled platform, a lot of which dripped into a small pool under it. Behind the weapon platform lied a blackened skeleton. Well, part of a skeleton. Other than a piece of spine, everything above the hips was nowhere to be found. Ten feet farther in, a second malformed platform was busy sagging closer to the ground by the opposite wall of the first Gatling.

  Additional skeletons in various states of completeness and charred tints lied scattered throughout the tunnel. Despite being behind a protruding part of the wall, the raging attack had detonated several boxes of dynamite, so it was difficult to count how many people the bones represented. Other than a couple of examples, the majority of remains had been stripped of their flesh, so at least our sense of smell was not subjected to that unpleasantness. Still, the baking rock itself gave off an acrid, metallic odor that discouraged deep inhales.

  The peculiar scent of burning mountain, bubbling metal pools, and negligently flung bones of partially vaporized skeletons combined to make for a surreal impression of reality. It felt as though I couldn’t have possibly been responsible for this swath of torrid death. In a way, it made it easier to separate myself from the not so small likelihood that I had annihilated the parents of those kids back on the ship.

  According to Maya, the turn led to a cavern that did not sound too defensible. To be certain that was the case, when we finally reached the end, Bregman got a little mirror to scout by way of a reflection. The rocks there failed to glow, but a single lantern hanging on its ceiling provided enough light for him to see the relatively cramped cavern only held heavily burned, splintered boxes.

  Going inside and looking in the boxes, Bregman said, “Thousands of rounds for the Gatling. Many look ruptured.”

/>   “And I count nine big crates and a dozen smaller ones,” said Eric. “With all that dynamite and ammo, they really could have held back an army for a day or two from here. Lieutenant! Bring me Maya.” When the requested for woman had been brought forward, the major asked her, “You said the tunnel up ahead is one of those that leads up the mountain, correct?”

  “Yes, and the one to the left goes down to the mines.”

  “And the reputed submarine. Lieutenant, Ishree, help me block the access leading up.”

  No longer requiring as much protection from the haunting heat, the three Vanguard jogged to the access on their own. There they convinced the stone on the floor to rise to the top. However, Eric ordered for a slit on the right and left sides to be created so two Vanguard could see or poke their guns through.

  “Lieutenant, Ishree, I’m gonna need you to defend our asses from here. Now, do I have to leave more of my men here, or can you help them out, Mercer?”

  “I don’t have the prana to go on attacking everyone I run into, so I suppose I’ll be more useful on this end. And if you’re not giving him a gun yet, I also believe my brother will be more useful on the defensive.”

  “Then keep him. The rest of you, let’s go!”

  I expected Bregman to insist he or more Vanguard remain with the ghouls, but he didn’t so much as make eye contact with me. Perhaps proficiently killing a turncoat-filled tunnel finally began to persuade him of my seriousness in proving what I wasn’t.

  As the Vanguard marched to the unblocked tunnel, Alex said, “I can fight without a gun. I should go with them.”

  “Aye, but this isn’t the kind of world where close-range battles are the usual. Best to leave the gun fights to those who have them. Anyway, the only hope the turncoats have now is to flank us from multiple sides. They’ll probably send people this way, so don’t think we won’t see any battle.”

  “That’s right,” said the lieutenant. “So be quiet so we can hear them coming.”

  To prepare offensively, I summoned a handful of dragon stones and placed them in different spots against the cavern walls. To prepare defensively, I got Alex to help me move a few crates and stack them nearer the blocked access. From behind the crates, and keeping it to a whisper in our hushed surroundings, I told Alex where to go and what to do during the manifold of ways the enemy might attack. I did not want to seem presumptuous, so I forwent telling the lieutenant what I expected for him and Ishree to do. Moreover, I figured they would take heed of me when I really needed them to.