by Dante King
“I have,” I said. “Dragondust. Apparently, it’s going to juice me up.”
“That’s excellent news!” Penelope cried.
“Bloody brilliant,” Saya added. “But what about the crystals?”
“Nothing on that front just yet.”
Changing the subject somewhat, I then told my four fellow dragonmancers about Garth obtaining access to yet another slot. After I mentioned this, I realized that I had just done my first bit of proud parental gloating.
Saya, Renji, and Penelope all made polite congratulatory noises.
Tamsin though, tilted her proud and aquiline chin and looked at me through her narrowed yellow eyes. “Your dragon is not the only one who has done such a thing,” she said, looking very much like the cat that had got the cream.
“You too?” I asked.
Tamsin nodded. She turned away from me, concentrating hard on the dozen or so ratfolk corpses that were still bobbing in the subterranean pond, and raised her hands.
The corpses rose into the air and fell in an untidy heap on the floor about ten yards from the edge of the pool.
A soldier passing nearby bowed. “Thanks very much, Dragonmancer.”
“That,” I said, “is impressive stuff, Dragonmancer Tamsin. Telekinesis? You deserve a pay rise or something.”
Tamsin grinned that wolfish smile of hers. “I thought I’d get a prize at least.”
I locked eyes with the hobgoblin and felt her smile mirrored across my face. I looked briefly over at the line of tents along the one wall of the chamber, and then back at Tamsin.
“I’ll give you a prize, dragonmancer,” I said in a lowered voice. “As soon as I’ve found a crystal. Two crystals, that is. It’d be irresponsible for me to create a dragonling when I can’t even find one to help Wayne.”
Tamsin nodded, a little disappointed. But she understood. We all understood what was at stake.
“Now that you’ve procured the dragondust,” Penelope said, cutting into the silence, “we should return to the General with it.”
“Ashrin is keeping it in a pouch,” I said. “You can grab it from her.”
Penelope went and grabbed the pouch, and then returned within a few moments.
“You can trust Saya and I to get it to the surface without any problems, Mike,” the Knowledge Sprite said.
“I know I can,” I said to Penelope. “Was there any word sent about Wayne after we left?”
Saya sighed. “Wayne isn’t doing too well,” she said, a momentary flash of pain marring her beautiful face. “A runner came in to report to us just before Pen and I left. Word is that he’s starting to fade.”
“Goddamn it, we have the powder I need to make more dragonlings, but we’re going to have to stay down here until we find a crystal.”
I spoke the words like a mantra now. Perhaps, I subconsciously thought that if I repeated them to myself enough, I might manifest what we needed to happen into being fast.
“As soon as we find them, Saya,” I said vehemently, “I’m going to be coming in hot back up to the camp.”
Saya inclined her head to show that she had heard.
“All right,” I said, “you ladies get out of here. I’ll be seeing you top side. Soon, I hope.”
I watched Penelope and Saya march out of the cavern with their heads held high. They had their coteries in tow, as well as a small company of troops following behind them. They did not look back. Their eyes were turned forward, onwards, as they marched off.
Tamsin and I returned to where Jazmyn, Renji, and Ashrin were waiting by our campsite with their coteries and Diggens. I began sorting my own pack as I spooned up a bowlful of stew that Renji had set aside for me.
“It boils down to this,” Jazmyn said to the other dragonmancers. “We have no real idea where those damned crystals might be found. All we know is that they are in the Subterranean Realms somewhere.”
“Right,” Ashrin said. “And that is like pointing out the particular haystack in a field of haystacks in which the needle is buried.”
“Helpful,” Renji said in her slow voice, “but not that helpful, you mean?”
“Then how do we solve this riddle?” Jazmyn asked in frustration. “As far as I can tell, we either choose the initial route scoped out by our scouts, or we take the tunnel that has been recently provided by our ratty friends.”
Muttering and murmuring broke out then, as the dragonmancers and gathered coteries all began discussing the pros and cons of each choice.
While the discussion played out, the wisp who’d warned me of the attack appeared, buzzing around once more. I watched it unthinkingly, my eyes following it in the same way that they might follow a fly, or embers dancing over a fire.
The strange creature zoomed around and got under peoples’ feet—as much as something as insubstantial as a wisp could get under peoples’ feet. With my dragon-enhanced hearing, I heard some surly soldier comment that they should just kill the damned thing, although how they proposed to accomplish this they did not mention.
Then, as Bjorn said that we should just toss a scale to decide which way to go, the answer to the question hit me.
“The fucking wisp!” I said, standing upright and smacking my fist into my open palm.
“Ah, don’t worry about it, fella,” Diggens said. “I’ve seen a couple of these weird little buggers down here over the past few months. Mostly when I’m sitting and enjoying my smoko. They don’t harm anyone. On the contrary, it’s usually on spying one of them that I find a half decent haul of precious things.”
I waved the little gnoll’s wisdom aside. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said, “but three times now that… thing, whatever it is, has helped us out. It helped you find that gem, it warned us of the ratfolk, and it drew our attention to the dragondust.”
“What’s your point, Mike?” Ashrin asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe this little guy knows where it is we should be going? Maybe it wants to help us out. Help the Empire out.”
Ashrin looked at me skeptically.
I didn’t wait around to get the yay or nay from the rest of the party. We didn’t have time for that. Wayne was fading. We were nearing the point in the proceedings when I was going to throw off the yoke of manners and hierarchy and General Shiloh’s feelings and just do my own thing.
There was simply no time.
“Will!” I yelled, using the first word that came to my mind when I looked at the will-o’-the-wisp. “Come here, will you?”
I couldn’t guess as to how something without visible ears or a place to store a brain knew that I was talking to it, but the wisp stopped rotated. For a moment, it looked at me. At least, I assumed it did. It didn’t have any visible eyes, but I got the distinct impression that it was regarding me thoughtfully.
Then, it floated over.
I squatted onto my haunches and stared at the thing square in the… misty vapor.
“Will,” I said, in a calm and reasonable voice, “we need to find these crystals. They’re a special kind of crystal. They have the ability and integrity to hold dragons. They’re somewhere down here, but we need to find them fast. The fate of a dragonling… The fate of my offspring hinges on it. You’ve proved to be a savvy little S.O.B so far. If you could just show us which tunnel we should take…”
The ethereal wispy flame simply floated in midair for a couple of heartbeats.
“Mike,” Ashrin said, “maybe it was just fluke that this thing warned us about—”
The wisp, Will as I now thought of him, bobbed over to the tunnel the ratfolk had burrowed and excavated. It hung there, as if making up its mind, and then flashed brightly.
I heard Rupert laugh in disbelief.
“Are you sure, Will?” I said, not wanting to be the asshole who trusted some random floating ghost thing and ended up leading a company of elite soldiers and their coteries off a cliff.
Will glowed star-bright once more.
I turned to Jazmyn and Ashrin.
�
�Look, I don’t know if we can go down there, Mike,” Jazmyn said. “I’m not sure if General Shiloh would approve of us taking that route just yet—not until the main force has been through there and ensured there’s no danger.”
Ashrin nodded in agreement. “There could be anything at the other end of that tunnel—more ratfolk, kobolds, more wild dragons, or worse.”
From behind me I heard Rupert whisper in a slightly shrill voice, “What c-c-could be worse than a wild dragon?”
There was the sound of someone hitting him hard in the arm. The silence that followed the blow made me guess that Gabby had just struck him.
I put a hand on Ashrin’s shoulder and gave Jazmyn a no-nonsense look.
“I don’t care about what the General might think of it. I don’t care about any potential dangers. One of my dragonlings—one of the Empire’s future dragons—is fading, ladies. The wisp warned us of the danger before, and we don’t have any other better options. I’m going to follow this thing—Will. I need to do this to save my son. You two were tasked with guarding me, right?”
Jazmyn’s face hardened, and she opened her mouth to give me tongue-lashing, but I held up a finger to stop her.
“As my bodyguards, I expect you to follow me. I hope though, that you’ll come with me because you’re my friends, my fellow dragonmancers, and a couple of warriors that I would personally follow into hell and back.”
Jazmyn looked at Ashrin. Ashrin looked at Jazmyn.
“Ah, fuck it,” Jazmyn said into the heavy, expectant silence that had enveloped our group. “We might be walking into the inferno, but that was a lovely fuckin’ sentiment you laid down there.” She punched me on the arm and winked.
“Yeah,” Ashrin said, grinning and running a hand through short black hair. “We can’t just let you go down into the unknown depths of the Subterranean Realms alone after that line. We’d never hear the end of it.”
I grinned, and we all started to scramble to get our gear together.
“Seriously,” I heard Rupert say from somewhere in our throng, “what the f-f-fuck could be worse than wild dragons?”
Chapter 14
The tunnel looked like it had been hewn and excavated not with shovels and pickaxes, but by the busy scrambling of a thousand strong, clawed hands. There were other marks too; the marks of shield-tough scales, where the wild dragon had forced its way up the tunnel behind the legions of the ratfolk.
“The ratfolk can actually burrow through this solid rock?” I asked in amazement, to no one in particular.
My voice bounced and echoed off the rocky walls, rebounding back the cavern that we had just left behind and forward to who-knew-where. I made a mental note to whisper from now on.
“So it would seem,” Ashrin said in a low voice from where she stalked along on my right.
Now that we were heading into properly hostile and unmapped territory, my bodyguards were taking their responsibilities a lot more seriously. Ashrin hung close on my right, Jazmyn on my left. In front of us were the combined strengths of their two coteries. Behind me came Bjorn, Rupert, and Gabby. Behind the trio were Tamsin and Renji, and their coteries.
“That’s the thing I’ve been thinking about,” Bjorn’s bass voice rumbled from behind me. “These ratfolk are obviously a hard and doughty bunch o’ bastards. If it wasn’t for their lack of intelligence, they might have proved a bit more of a handful to deal with.”
“My hypothesis would incline to lean m-m-more toward this particular nest of ratfolk never having to have dealt with intruders before,” Rupert said as we trudged ever downward. “I don’t think they had any idea of what to expect. I imagine that if they ever had t-t-to fight, against other clans or other denizens of the Subterranean Realms, then their numbers would usually suffice.”
Before long we had left the torchlight of the chamber behind and were quickly enveloped in that special and incomparable darkness that only lies under mountains. Thankfully, Will the wisp bobbed along in front of us, lighting the way.
For us dragonmancers, the slow-motion plunge into almost total blackness was not so bad. Our dragon-enhanced senses allowed us to see the world with only a little less clarity than we might ordinarily do up on the surface.
With the dragon blood flowing through my veins, I could clearly form a mental picture of my surroundings by combining my senses of smell and hearing, in a way that I could barely describe or explain even to myself.
The will-o’-the-wisp shed a cold, ghostly light ahead of us, acting like a moving flashlight to guide the coteries without the benefit of shared dragon’s blood. Just behind Will, using the wisp’s light like a miner might hold up a lamp, trod Diggens Azee.
The stumpy gnoll had taken it upon himself to act as our scout. He had lit the candle sitting on the brim of his leather hat and stomped along like someone enjoying a pleasant ramble through the wilderness. Gnoll and wisp moved about twenty paces ahead of the main body of our little company, the gnoll tapping the floors and wall of the tunnel periodically. Every now and then, Diggens would strike a wall or a stone with the handle of his pick.
When Rupert asked Diggens what he was doing, the gnoll answered drily, “Not sure if you noticed, fella, but a big-ass lizard came up these ways not too long ago. The ratfolk burrowed, moved the rock and soil aside and took it away, shoving it backward, probably to wherever the hell they came from. A dragon though… Well, a dragon is bloody raw power, isn’t it? A dragon simply shoves the earth aside, compacts it.”
“And what the fuck difference does that make?” Bjorn asked gruffly.
There came the dull sound, which I had come to recognize now, of Gabby smacking his forehead with his palm.
“Well, the earth is like you I imagine, big man,” Diggens said. “Likes a gentle touch. Doesn't like to be shoved aside unceremoniously. It gets pissed off having to put up with that sort of rough treatment. Throws tantrums. Throws wobblers—earthquakes. Lays pitfalls in a bloke’s path. I’m just being respectful like, going on ahead and sweet talking Galipolas, the cranky old bitch. Making sure that she doesn’t dump a million tons of igneous rock on our heads.”
So, the gnoll went on ahead, seemingly loving life. Basking in the danger and the thrill of potentially being crushed. Keeping up with the wisp that led us onward and downward.
The tunnel did not deviate. It ran straight and true, never changing in the angle of its downward trajectory.
“The ratfolk might be about as much use as a third armpit when it comes to warfare,” Diggens said, when I mentioned this to him during his smoko stop, “but the little ass-wipes sure know their shit when it comes to tunneling. Straight and level, taking the path of the least resistance in the rock so that they can get to grips with whoever has pissed them off as quickly as possible.”
After a half day of marching, Diggens told us to halt while he crept on ahead and looked around. He disappeared into the thick gloom, the candle on his hat brim quickly dispelled by the thick blackness. Will stayed with us, bobbing up and down like he was being carried on an invisible sea.
Within about half an hour, Diggens was back, his face lit by the candle and the promise of adventure.
“There’s another cavern further down there, and the tunnel ends,” he said as the dragonmancers gathered around him to hear his report. “Fucking big cavern. There’s a massive heap of earth and stone, the spoil tip from this tunnel, at one side of the entrance. I poked me conk through, and it looks like there’s a small town or something in there. Place is lit up by these luminescent globes strung all about the place, filled with glowing worms of some sort.”
“The ratfolk?” Ashrin asked.
Diggens nodded as he poked his tobacco into position and rolled his toothpick-thin cigarette.
“Yeah, I’d say so,” he replied. “The whole place has the same aesthetic look as their armor did, you know? Well-made, but constructed with the odds and ends of stuff they’ve scavenged. Anyway, the town, all the huts and buildings and what have you, a
re situated around one big, main structure.”
“How many ratfolk are there?” Renji asked. “Are there enough of us to be able to fight our way through?”
“We’ll take them,” Tamsin said. “It’ll give me a chance to use my new Slot.”
I looked around. Jazmyn and Ashrin’s squad members stared intently down the tunnel, their hands on their weapons.
Diggens held his smoke up to the candle on his hat brim and then wedged it into the corner of his mouth. The blue haze curled up from the tip of the dog-end, tracing the lumpy green face before spreading out under the brim of his worn leather hat.
“Weren’t no one around from what I could see,” the gnoll said. “The whole place looks like it’s been abandoned. Appears the ratfolk way of doing things is that everyone fights to protect or expand the colony.”
“Curious,” Rupert remarked.
“Nah, not really, fella,” Diggens said. “Not down here in the Subterranean Realms. Down here, there’s no room for passengers. Everyone fights to protect what they have. What good would it have been for a hundred of the beggars to stay down here if the ratfolk had met another clan of ratfolk, or kobolds, instead of us in the cavern? The victors, if they destroyed the ratty force from the township down yonder, would have come down and wiped out the rest of them. No questions asked and no quarter given. Nah, it’s a tough existence down here, fella. The sort of neighborhood where every single soul pitches in or perishes.”
“All right then,” I said. “That’s some damn nice scouting work there, Diggens, but I reckon we should get a move on. May as well make hay while the sun shines, and if there’s no opposition to us getting through this tunnel, I can’t think of better weather than that.”
Diggens sucked hard on his dog-end so that the potent tobacco sizzled and spat. Just before the thin snake of sash touched his rubbery lips, the gnoll spat the finished cigarette aside. Through a thick mouthful of smoke, he said, “Fuckin’ oath, fella.”
* * *
We emerged cautiously out of the mouth of the tunnel and moved quickly behind a cluster of boulders that lay on the outskirts of the eerily silent town.