by Dante King
“I agree,” Penelope said, and there was a trace of sadness in her voice. “It must have gotten itself lost down here at some point. It’s most assuredly smaller and weaker than it should be.”
I snapped my fingers softly. “That’s a real shame and all,” I said, “but whatever its backstory, we are going to have to kill it or drive it off if we want to save Elenari, Antou, and their fighters. That’s all that this boils down to.”
Penelope’s face hardened, and she nodded.
“Right, so, Ash and Jaz activate your Titan slots and engage the Sun Dragon,” I continued. “You other four are going to divide into pairs. I want everyone to have a wingwoman, so that everyone’s back is being watched.”
“Wingwoman,” Penelope whispered to Saya. “I like that saying.”
“Renji and Tamsin, you two harry the silver. Saya and Penelope, you guys keep an eye on the black. Keep it occupied and away from the walls but be careful. From the little Noctis has told me about this Opal Dragon, it’s a crafty and dangerous son of a bitch. If any of you get the chance, feel free to slaughter a kobold or five, but our chief concern are those wild dragons.”
“And what will you be doing, Mike?” Saya asked.
“Yeah, what about your wingwoman?” Tamsin shot at me.
“I’m going to make a beeline for Elenari and Antou,” I said. “They’ll be my wingwomen, so don’t you worry about me. First though, you guys are going to give me two minutes to cause a little havoc and a little bit of a distraction.”
Renji raised a silver eyebrow at me. “What kind of distraction?”
A roar from below us on the plain caused me to look down. The black and silver dragons had taken to the air once more and were sweeping over the thousands of kobolds, bellowing at them in a way that was both encouraging and threatening.
“No time,” I said. “Just keep your eyes skinned and drop in when—well, you’ll know when the time is ripe. There’ll be a sign.”
“What sign?” Saya said exasperatedly.
“Our enemies going apeshit should be pretty telltale,” I said with a grin.
“Mike,” Jazmyn said, grasping me by the arm as I made to leave, “I just need to say one last thing to you before we do this.”
“What?” I asked, trying, and managing somehow, to keep the exasperation out of my voice.
Jazmyn ran a hand through her ashy white and black hair. She tugged at the knot in the red sash that she wore around her waist, through which her scabbarded sword was thrust and tied.
“We all know that you wish to rescue your wife,” she said, “but you have to remember that you are integral to the Mystocean Empire. You’re its fuckin’ future, yeah?”
“I know,” I said understandingly, “but if Elenari were to die while I stood back and watched, Jaz, I would never forgive myself. It’s as simple as that. We might be about to drop into one hell of a scrap, but you have to remember that everyone you come in contact with is waging a daily battle inside of them that you don’t know anything about. I’m not going to add to the war that is fought inside of me by having Elenari’s death on my conscience. It’s not going to happen.”
Jaz made a face and clapped me on the shoulder. “Fuckin’ fair enough, then, greenhorn,” she said, with something approaching the old swagger she had had when I first met her. “Let’s stop flapping our lips and get down there then, yeah?”
As I mounted Pan, I had a quick mental conversation with my team of dragons and outlined my plan.
It was, admittedly, a rough plan. Hell, I doubted it could have been rougher if I’d scrawled it on sandpaper, but I thought that it would do as a distraction. Hopefully, it would allow my six friends to surprise the wild dragons, as well as enabling me to get behind the walls and rendezvous with Elenari and Antou.
Pan took off from the hill of boulders as softly as a bat. Staying low, so that his cobalt coloring would not be so visible, we skirted around the milling, mad mass of kobolds. They were pressing ever closer to the walls, heedless of the rain of arrows that showered down on them from the crenellations above, slaughtering dozens at a time.
I guided the young Tempest Dragon with my mind, showing him where I wanted him to go, until we reached the far end of the ruined fortress wall. Here, in the corner, where the wall of the fortification met the wall of the cavern, there was no direct assault by the kobolds.
The edge of the attacking force was a good five-hundred yards away. They were totally focused on the main length of the battlements that faced out onto the plain below. Which meant that there were also no defenders here.
Pan and I alighted on the edge of the wall completely unnoticed.
“Okay, Pan,” I said, “sorry to throw you straight in at the deep end here, but do you think you can do what we just discussed?”
Pan gave me a look out of a young eye that contained a very old soul.
“I am a Tempest Dragon, father,” he said. “It’s what I was born to do.”
“Then, go,” I said.
Pan took off, leaving me on the wall.
The cobalt dragon shot like a sleek blue missile high into the upper airs of the cavern, so high that he was invisible against the ghostly blue bioluminescent glow of the huge cave worms.
Then, when he deemed himself at a sufficient altitude, he began to breathe his dragonfire. This though, was not dragonfire as I had ever seen it. Pan had told me, during the lightning-fast conversation I had had with my dragons, of what he was capable of, of what he could do.
It had seemed strange to my ears, but I had quickly gotten over that. If you let mere strangeness put you off doing things in the Mystocean Empire, you’d end up getting nothing done.
The plume of fire that issued forth from Pan as he swirled and swooped through the air, was more cloud, smoke, and vapor than actual conventional fire. Branches of crisp blue lightning flickered through the building smog of accumulating vapor.
It was not long before the Tempest Dragon had built a substantial cloud bank high above the action taking place on the plain below.
“Holy shit, you’re doing it!” I muttered.
“A dad should never doubt their kids!” Garth chided me from inside my head.
I scoffed at that.
A sudden roar from below made me look down.
“Oh shit,” I said.
The black and silver dragon had turned their attention from their own kobold troops to the walls once more. With twin snarls of predatory anger, the two dragons began to fly directly toward the defenders.
Looking up, I saw Pan weaving his storm above everyone. The Tempest Dragon herself was mostly invisible now, wreathed in clouds that were getting heavier and grayer and darker with accumulating moisture.
A flash of white out of the corner of my eye captured my attention. A bone-white dragon, which I assumed must belong to Antou, rose from behind the walls and rushed headlong at the two dragons heading toward the battlements.
The enemy wild dragons split apart and went to either side of Antou and her steed, whose name was Hulong, I now remembered from what the General had told me.
Hulong let loose a hissing stream of white flame at the silver dragon, but the other creature avoided it deftly. Antou dispelled her dragon, switching crystal slots, and landed deftly on the battlements. She’d barely landed when she suddenly hurled a ball of crackling energy at the Opal Dragon as it flashed past, but she missed. The ball of magic shot past the black dragon’s tail and exploded against the far wall in a shower of fragmenting rock.
Then, Antou resummoned her dragon, Hulong. Leaping onto its back once more, the dragonmancer attacked the silver and black dragons.
I watched, captivated, as the three dragons fought their mid-air battle. Dragonfire flashed and tore apart the murky, smoky atmosphere of the gargantuan cavern. Shrieks and howls rent the air.
The three beasts and the dragonmancer battled it out for what felt like whole minutes, but must have been only one minute at the most. The ferocity and intensity was something to
behold; cataclysmic in its violence. Then, with suddenness that was as terrible as anything that I had ever seen, the wild dragons made their move.
Both wild dragons had maneuvered Antou and Hulong into the far corner of the fortress, on the opposite part of the wall to which I now crouched unseen. The silver and the black let loose with jets of flame at the same time. Having nowhere to go, Hulong dropped onto the open and unmanned stretch of wall, landed with a crash of splintering stone, and shielded herself with her furled wings held above her.
The twin jets of white-silver fire from the silver dragon and orange flame that issued from the Opal Dragon enveloped dragonmancer and dragon.
Chapter 23
“No!” I gasped to myself.
I barely felt the first drop of rain fall from the cloud layer that Pan had created above the battlefield.
“Don’t despair yet!” Noctis told me sternly.
The flickering, incandescent flames died. The black and silver dragons snapped their maws shut.
Hulong, her wings singed and smoking, unfurled them. She extended her long sinewy neck to shoot fire at the wild dragons in return. Antou uncurled like a fern frond and stood high and proud on her dragon’s back, raising a warhammer in her hand. The weapon glowed with a cold white light.
I had had no idea that a dragon’s wings could so effectively protect it from other dragon’s fire. I wondered, briefly, whether that went for all dragons or if Hulong had some special ability.
Antou bellowed a challenge at the wild dragons. Hulong gathered her breath and readied to retaliate and—
—that was when the golden Sun Dragon reared up from the wall, where it had clearly been creeping upward, out of sight of Hulong.
The Sun Dragon let loose with a blast of fire that hit Hulong clean in the throat, lapped over the back of the white dragon’s neck, and engulfed Antou.
Hulong screamed as her dragonmancer was incinerated in a second. Even a dragonrider, tough and magical as they are, cannot withstand a sustained burst of dragonfire. They are, at the end of the day, made of muscle and blood and bone, like any other being.
The Imperial dragon was forced backward under the onslaught of the Sun Dragon’s fire, its keening scream changing to an awful gargling that could be heard even over the din of the ravening kobolds. The silver and black dragons flapped in closer, as Hulong was forced backward under the shadowy archway of one of the crumbling towers. They opened their mouths and added their jets of withering flame to that of the gold dragon.
With a final blinding flash of light and a high-pitched screech, Hulong burst apart under the onslaught of enemy fire. Scales and scraps of leathery skin flew in all directions, but mostly the dragon looked to have been completely consumed. All that remained of dragon and rider were streaks of white that had been blasted under the overhanging arch of the ruined tower. Streaks of white that I dimly realized must be dragondust.
“Fuck,” I said dully, and I felt my dismay echoed by Garth, Wayne, Pan, and Noctis.
It was only then that I realized that a steady, cold rain was falling. It was crazy, of course, seeing as we were however many miles under the earth, but there it was: rain.
Above the battlefield, thunder grumbled and the rain began to fall harder.
The chaotic noise that the kobolds had been making faltered. Peering down at them from my perch, I saw that the lizard-like creatures, despite their gods having just taken out an Imperial dragonmancer, seemed discomposed. They stared fearfully up at the gathered storm clouds and chattered to each other in their harsh tongue. They looked like they had never seen rain before and did not know what to make of it.
“They haven’t seen rain before,” I breathed, still in a daze at having witnessed one of my fellows die in front of my eyes. “We can use that.”
I turned my attention back to the wild dragons and saw that they were eyeing the battlements hungrily.
The black Opal Dragon turned away and let loose a long, deep roar. Immediately, the kobolds rushed forward. The scaling ladders that we had seen from our vantage point were shoved through the press of lizard-men. A few were raised out of the throng, a couple of axe-wielding kobold warriors clinging to the tops.
The rain lashed down from the cavern roof. It looked like it could keep it up for hours. It pinged off my armor and ran down my face, sticking my hair to my head.
More ladders were raised, pushed toward the walls by many kobold hands. The lizardfolk were growling and croaking, bloodlust evident in every syllable of their alien tongue.
“No, you don’t,” I said, spying the red-haired figure of Elenari striding across the top of the overhanging curtain wall and rallying her troops. “You’ll not take her too.”
I implemented the next stage of my plan.
I recalled Pan to her crystal, and Wayne appeared in her stead, crouching next to me like some huge gargoyle out of a nightmare.
I patted him affectionately on the flank.
“Do your thing,” was all I said.
“You got it, old man,” Wayne’s voice rippled through my mind.
In a burst of fog, he was gone.
Like a staccato blend of smog and flack explosion, Wayne appeared and disappeared, reappeared and disappeared, in the blink of an eye, all the way down the length of the wall, just under the parapet.
Boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof-boof.
Every time he materialized and vanished, he left a hanging cloud of fog in his wake, so that soon the scaling kobolds couldn’t see the defenders on top of the rampart. For their part, the defenders simply had to wait for a disoriented kobold to show its head through the smog layer, and then lop it off with a sword or axe.
The dragons, which had been hanging back so that their kobold minions could weaken the defending bowmen, ululated in fury.
They did not have long to complain though, because it was at that point that Renji and Tamsin, and Penelope and Saya, burst out of the fog right in front of them and started making their lives a living hell. The dragonmancers whirled around their bigger foes with the speed of sea-eagles, shooting dragonfire at their adversaries.
The Sun Dragon followed the four dragonmancers with a baleful eye, but was quickly distracted when Ash and Jaz, in their Titan forms, dropped out of the clouds above and made straight for it.
“Perfect, Wayne,” I said, summoning my offspring back to the safety of his crystal. “Noctis, let’s go.”
Noctis appeared, now larger than usual. Instead of being the size of a Clydesdale, he was almost as big as an Indian elephant, although a hell of a lot sleeker and less friendly looking. It seemed he had grown in power during our first expedition into the Subterranean.
“Ready when you are, dragonmancer,” he said, fixing me with a yellow eye that was full of the pride and confidence of the ultimate, apex predator. The same eye that you might see on a documentary about great white sharks, Nile crocodiles, or Sumatran tigers.
I climbed onto the Onyx Dragon and slapped his iron-hard side. The scales were so thick that I could barely feel the swell of rippling muscle underneath.
“You’re not afraid,” Noctis said. It was a statement, not a question. He snapped his wings open.
“Afraid of what?” I shot back. Hot adrenaline bubbled up my spinal column.
“Many of your kind cannot shake the fear of death before battle,” Noctis said.
I snorted. My eyes were fixed on the length of the wall where I had last seen Elenari.
“Death?” I said. “Death’s just the bouncer that kicks us all out of the bar that we call life. All we can do is give him a black eye on the way out and rouse a cheer from the patrons still lucky enough to be allowed to keep on drinking.”
Noctis took off and, together, we sped down the length of the rampart, toward the growing confusion of fog and rain and blood.
The rain was coming down in fat, magic drops. Smacking down onto the stone, ricocheting off the armor of the Imperial troopers and sending the
unfamiliar kobolds into a frenzy.
Wayne’s fog had done enough to distract the dragons and kobolds so that they failed to attack the ramparts simultaneously. It had been a small thing but had likely proved far more important than anyone guessed just then. Now though, the kobolds pressing behind those that had been first up the ladders were pouring onto the wall. The defenders were forced to turn most of their attention to the denizens of the Subterranean Realms, leaving the dragons to the ministrations of the dragonmancers who had miraculously appeared to aid them.
There had been no chants or rousing cheers from the Imperial forces when they had caught sight of Renji, Tamsin, Saya, and Penelope swooping down to their aid. That was all very well and good for the movies, but here and now, there was simply no time.
Every Imperial man and woman knew they were fighting for their lives where they stood. Each and every one of them understood that their very next sword blow, their very next loosed arrow could be their last.
While my dragonmancer comrades diverted the attention of the dragons out beyond the walls, Noctis and I sped into the heart of the fray taking place on top of them.
With a marrow-freezing, gonads-shrinking roar, Noctis plowed into a wedge of kobolds at the top of the breastwork after cutting down a handful of Imperial soldiers. The Onyx Dragon’s head snapped sideways, and he ripped a kobold’s legs off at the knees. A raptor-esque claw scythed outward, and green blood sprayed across the pointed faces of the stunned kobolds as one of their number was decapitated.
I somersaulted from Noctis’ back as the dragon really started to extend himself and let loose. I landed behind a kobold, reached around the front of its face, and tore its bottom jaw off as easily as if it had been made of paper mache.
A started to make my way along the wall, while the rain fell steadily and turned the stone breastwork into a slippery, bloody ice rink. I could hear the shriek of dragons fighting rising over the clash and smash of weapons beating desperately against weapons.
I ducked a wild swing from a kobold with an axe and caved in the head of the kobold warrior behind it before I snapped the arm of the axe wielder and kicked him clear over the edge of the rampart so that he fell screaming. I picked up the dropped axe, a crude thing of sharpened flint bound to a wooden handle with twine, and threw it overhand at a kobold throttling an Imperial soldier with its strong, tough fingers. The axe crunched into the top of its bony skull and split it like a cantaloupe.