Dragon Mage- Uprising

by Brian Ference

  “It’s a miracle,” said Meira running forward and embracing him. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

  Raithan held her for a few moments. “I lost many good ships and men that day.”

  She stepped back and smacked his chest. “Why didn’t you send for me or at least give me word by messenger?”

  “No time,” Raithan muttered. “I hope you can understand. The wretched pirates have been raiding our ships without mercy, growing bolder by the day. I thought it was best to put a stop to it rather than—”

  “Face charges for treason?” Meira quipped.

  “Yes.” Raithan rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m afraid I spent half of my fortune buying my way back into the Islanders’ good graces. It seemed like a good way for me to cement my relations with the Clan.” He jerked a thumb at the circling rider. “Who’s that with you?”

  Meira looked up with narrowed brows at Briad’s dragon wobbling in the air currents. “Briad. A new recruit of Jace’s.”

  “Is he going to be able to stay aloft?”

  “He should be able to.” Meira frowned.

  “Well, if Jace trained him, I won’t worry.” Raithan gestured to his crew to give them some privacy. “Building a dragon corps, is he, the old goat? Well, I can hardly blame him. He’s going to need it. The tide of power is shifting, I barely recognize the players anymore.”

  Meira gave a grim nod.

  Raithan’s exclamation became more an expression of displeasure at the changing times than anything else. “You must be tired after your flight. Would you care to join me for a meal? We can hole up on the midships deck for a while. I’ve wasted enough years and this visit is a happy surprise. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  Meira looked around with a wan smile. “You have any rum to drink on this ugly sea-cow of yours?”

  Raithan gave a sheepish laugh. “Old chief Tengra demoted me after learning about the cockup at Cape Spear. After losing most of our warships, I’m lucky to have any command at all. But no one could ever part me from my rum.”

  Meira saw that the fleet consisted of short-range reconnaissance craft equipped with a mishmash of cannons and harpoons. Had the Black Claw power really fallen so far?

  They strode to Raithan’s cabin and sat together at a low, wooden table. He uncorked a cask of rum and poured two glasses.

  Clearing his throat, he cast her a sharp glance. “Are there any young suitors in your life?”

  Meira froze in mid-drink. “What?”

  “Never mind. As long as you’re happy, so am I. Darek is a true Dragon Mage now?” he asked.

  Meira’s expression soured. “No thanks to you.”

  “Right, right…give the boy my apologies.” Raithan swallowed hard on his drink and poured another. “Darek didn’t deserve the way I treated him. I shudder to think what your mother would have done to me if she were to catch wind of it. Fool woman has taken up with some religious cult in Ravenstoke, so is only half there most of the time.”

  Meira couldn’t help but scoff. “You really don’t have a clue what you’re doing, do you?”

  A sudden thud under the hull sent the cask of rum rolling to the deck and Raithan’s ship lurching. Meira gasped. She staggered sideways as her eyes caught a glimpse out the porthole: a gray-horned tentacle lifting from the water to smash into the starboard rigging.

  Raithan was on his feet and out on deck, bawling orders every which way. “Man the harpoons! Bosun, turn us about! There’s squid to starboard!” He stared at the size of the sucker-studded tentacle. “A monster one. Hurry, you stinking laggards!”

  Meira ran across the deck, lunging for Typhoon. The dragon edged backward from the huge tentacle and eyed the sky. Briad croaked out some unintelligible words from above and spurred his dragon into a dive.

  The crew hastened to obey. Everyone ran in a mad scramble. More thuds now battered the hull and the bow listed sideways on a thirty-degree angle. The deckhands slid to port as the ship lifted out of the water, grasping with desperation at the rail as several slid into the frothing water below. One of the harpooners screamed as another glistening tentacle rose from the water, raking across the harpooner’s arm and chest, sending him spinning away in a bloody heap. The crack of timbers filled the air as the forward strakes crumbled, sending bilge oil spilling across the deck and into the sea.

  “Move, you slack-witted gulls! Get those boilers pumping double-time.” Raithan staggered to his feet while the master engineer and his mate clawed their way below decks to man the boilers and get the paddlewheels turning.

  Meira clambered onto Typhoon’s back. The two leaped into the air as the hull continued to bend—this time in the opposite direction, as if drawn by a supernatural force.

  Urging Typhoon higher, Meira got a full look at the terrible creature below. A horrifying black beak emerged from the water, snapping a swimming sailor in half. Eight wriggling tentacles began to wrap around the ship. A giant eye peered from beneath the surface as the tentacles ripped through the stern castle and pulled the vessel lower in the water.

  One of the Black Claw dragon riders responded to the attack. Raising his long spear, he dove his yellow and green-breasted dragon straight at the monster. Throwing the weapon, he struck one of the tentacles, sending spurts of milky-white fluid splattering across the deck. Little did he know that upon returning from his long-range scouting mission he would face such horror.

  A second rider rose from the decks of another ship. His blue and white dragon swooped low, teeth snapping at the tentacle wrapped around the bow in an attempt to free the boat. Another thick-horned limb swatted the dragon away as a tail might a mosquito. The last of the Black Claw dragon riders surged from the farthest ship, circling with caution on a brown and black diamond-patterned dragon.

  Doubly enraged at the assaults, the squid sent multiple tentacles writhing high into the air. The first dragon rider underestimated their reach and a whipping tentacle grabbed the yellow and green dragon by the leg and dragged both the creature and its rider below the waves. The sea monster hissed out a spray of water and pulled the clipper farther out to open water.

  Meira dove in, signaling with thumbs pressed together that Briad and the closest dragon rider should attack with her. Briad careened in behind her left wing and the brown and black dragon skimmed the surface of the water to her right as they made their attack run.

  They hacked at the rubbery flesh in concert, earning hissing shrieks from the monster’s gullet. Dodging its whipping tentacles, Meira baited the creature, goading its bulbous head out of the water whose tooth snapped with fury as she flew by. The Black Claw rider flanked the squid and drove his steel deep into the back of the monster’s head. Typhoon struck at a tentacle reaching out for Briad. The dragon’s fangs snapped as her claws ripped wads of flesh from the squid’s hide.

  A harpoon shot out from below and sank into the creature’s back near the bobbing crown. But to this monstrous beast from the black depths, one harpoon seemed like only a needle plunged into a pin cushion.

  “Briad, stay high above its reach!” Meira cried. “Don’t swing too close, whatever happens.”

  The young man, clutching his staff, needed no urging, his eyes wide with fear. Meira grimaced as she flew higher and up over the clipper’s masts. Their attack had done little to deter the giant creature. If she didn’t act, her father was dead.

  Meira surged in for another strike.

  Raithan gained his feet. With curses on his lips, he drew his curved cutlass and hacked at the ropy streamers of flesh slowly crushing his ship.

  The squid had dragged them away from the other ships. The thing would have drowned them had it not been distracted by the dragons. Its barnacle-covered head rose above the water like a mutant toad. One glossy staring eye blinked, squinting at the sun. A single hoary tooth flashed from its black maw. A tiny island of some nameless archipelago drew near. Mostly rock and some twisted sea firs on its inhospitable shore.

  Meira thought of
landing on the deck to save her father. When she approached, he screamed at her to get back. “Let it die with my ship,” came his hoarse gasp.

  The ship began to crumble—the main mast broke in half and the hull splintered as water flooded the deck. The crew were doomed.

  Deckhands spilled overboard and three disappeared down the monster’s maw. Raithan struggled in the water, a madman fighting for his life. He clung to a wooden crate. Meira landed Typhoon in the water with a splash, reaching an outstretched hand toward her father.

  A tentacle looped out and forced Typhoon to dive under it, sending Meira spinning into the water.

  She surfaced, gurgling an oath, spewing out brine.

  Briad gave a sharp cry and spurred his dragon down in reckless despair. “Faster, Smeald. Faster!” he croaked. The sea monster caught the movement out of the corner of its bulging eye and lanced out a gray tentacle rippling with enormous strength. It curled around the dragon’s neck and smashed it into the water. The dragon twisted sideways and Briad was thrown clear. The tentacle pulled the quivering beast into its maw with a bloody crunch. The squid seemed to relish the taste of sea dragon, its eye twitching with excitement at the leathery flesh.

  The thing now rose out of the water, towering like an avatar over the last struggling castaways. Panic-stricken, they dog-paddled to the promise of safety on the island’s shore in the wake of wreckage and broken bodies. The squid’s champing tooth gnawed everything in its path, mouth slobbering, eager to taste every last morsel and fulfil its master’s wish.

  No beach graced the shore, only bare rock, grey and cold. The fugitives thrashed toward the bluff against the crashing waves. Typhoon scrambled out of the water, took one look at Meira in its path and dove at the rampaging beast.

  A cage of pillar-like rock fanned the cliff face like serpent fangs. Just possible to slip past those broken teeth if they swam fast. The fluted rock forms looked to be carved by ages of erosion. Meira pushed through the gap first where she saw caves sheltered in the dimness behind. She stood knee-deep in water, grabbing at Briad who struggled in the backwash.

  With a stab of hope, she pulled him in and Raithan somehow managed to claw his bulk up on the rocks. After his mad paddle, he was coughing up water and had a severed whitish-gray piece of tentacle still wrapped around his leg. The grizzled flesh was still moving, squeezing tighter as the suckers cut deeper into his flesh. Raithan kicked at it in wild fury, but Meira drew her knife and hacked at the member, releasing its stranglehold. Raithan crawled forward with heartfelt thanks, his breath heaving in ragged gasps.

  Briad gulped lungfuls of air, white-faced with horror. He shook like an old man with a fever, spitting out seawater from his trembling mouth. He pointed at the approaching squid. It would be upon them in moments.

  Typhoon bellowed a roar as she surfaced for air, attacked a tentacle and then darted away like a seal. The dragon circled in, harrying the monster beneath the waves and striking at its domed head. The squid released an ear-piercing hiss into the air.

  Meira cried, “Stay away! Avoid its beak!” She whimpered in distress, the memory of Briad’s tentacle-twined dragon imprinted in her mind. Briad watched aghast as Meira’s dragon swam close to the monster’s one watery eye, feigning an attack only to spin wide and strike at another tentacle. The dragon clawed and snapped at squid flesh, deaf to Meira’s pleas. Buffeted sideways at times, the dragon roared, barely able to stay ahead of the squid’s counterattack.

  Meira choked with anxiety. The thought that her dragon would end up in the squid’s belly terrified her.

  Her eyes flicked to the dark inlets that led back to the damp rock. Possible escape routes, she reasoned, but the monster was guarding these with three of its deadly tentacles. Raithan dodged a flicking member and squeezed himself beyond the first protective row of pillars. Gasping, he ran forward and threw a sharp stone at one of the tentacles. Meira realized with horror that Raithan was luring the monster away from them. “Father, no!” she cried, confusion swarming over her features.

  “Go! Find a way out the back of this hellhole,” he rasped. “I’ll lure it away. Run, I say! One death is enough.”

  Stalactite had joined stalagmite over the years to create a calcified cage which the squid battered its tentacles against. The openings, too small for anything to squeeze through but the tip of the monster’s tentacles, afforded a temporary respite.

  Raithan’s echoes were lost in the steady smash of the waves and the monster’s angry hiss. Meira winced and tried to squirm after.

  “Go now!” he thundered.

  She clambered back, tears in her eyes as she pulled Briad away toward the hidden caves that sank deeper into the grotto’s network.

  Briad stumbled after Meira in the plum-colored gloom while the sounds of slapping tentacles on wet stone resounded behind. Meira heard grunts of anger and pain echoed in those folds of dimness. They tripped through a cramped back cavern with jumbled stones and dripping moss. Briad gasped as he scraped his knee and staggered on.

  We must get to open air above! Meira could sense fresher air and it drove her to speed. Briad winced as his hand slid over wet rock, and he jarred himself with another quick tumble. Stubborn as a crab, he was back on his feet again and scuttled on, every weary bone in his body aching and trembling. The passage narrowed as they moved through a thin wedge of rock. Meira slipped and toppled forward with a grunt, but she paused, squatting on her haunches and wiping her dirty hands.

  Not for the first time did she wish she had the power to summon dragons. Where was Darek when she needed him? She must make do with what she had: strength and wits. These passages were too narrow for Typhoon to navigate anyway. She wondered if Raithan still lived. Her heart beat in her throat, imagining the worst that might happen to him.

  They scaled some steep natural rock ladders where a patch of light shone above. Meira gasped in triumph. She reached the top and scrambled down the thicket-strewn rock, putting two fingers to her lips to loose a shrill whistle. “Typhoon! Come. Where are you?”

  “What if she’s dead?” whimpered Briad.

  “Don’t say that. She’ll come, I know it!”

  Soon enough, a flapping of wings beat at the air. The exhausted and bloodied dragon landed at her side, talons clacking on the bare rock. Meira inspected her dragon’s wounds. Many of the cuts and bruises were superficial, but a gash bled above the dragon’s eye and her left ear was torn.

  “You beautiful, precious dear,” she soothed. “Headstrong and stupid, taking on that beast alone. Quickly, we must move!”

  Typhoon gave a mournful snort. She coughed out a wad of sticky phlegm, her red tongue flickering out.

  Meira and Briad clambered on her back, Briad swinging in behind, clutching at her waist.

  The hill loomed between them and the sea. They had come a long way through the dark. Now time to double back to the squid and save Raithan—if he’s still alive.

  Meira drew a curved spear from her harness; she handed Briad a small tulwar of plain bronze which he gripped fiercely in his fist.

  The squid still raged before the grey rock, probing for fresh meat. With little urging, Typhoon arrowed toward the repulsive creature and vented a rumbling roar. Typhoon wove in and out, dodging the tentacles as Meira brought them in closer.

  “Stay here!” she commanded Briad. She leaped from Typhoon’s back in a downward fall straight at the squid’s bullet-shaped head. Landing feet planted wide apart, she plunged her spear deep into the rock-hard flesh, releasing a gush of mucus and milky-white ichor. The creature lurched about, its tentacles knocking the weapon free from her hands and Meira into the water.

  “Why won’t you just die?” she screamed, thrashing in the water.

  “Meira!” Briad cried. He slashed at a tentacle and half torn from the saddle himself. He clung to Typhoon’s back like a lamprey, his face white with fear while he swatted out with his blade.

  The squid’s beak arched toward Meira. Death was there, and waiting for
her.

  In a sudden inexplicable moment, the squid’s body writhed in agony. The monster’s head swiveled about. Back toward the cliff face it raged, lashing tentacles at the fang-toothed stone. Raithan managed to loop and loosely knot one of its appendages around the stone cage and was hacking away at it like a madman with a broken sword.

  In an insane rush, the massive body crashed against the stones, crumbling the small cave shelter as Raithan disappeared under the rubble.

  Briad spurred Typhoon down, plucking a struggling Meira from the water. With a cry of triumph, he returned to the air.

  “Meira, he’s gone!” he screamed over the roiling water and wind.

  The young novice had to hold her back as Typhoon retreated in the direction of the Red Claw Islands.

  “No, no!” she wailed. “We must try!”

  Briad shivered behind her, his breath fighting the wind. “Typhoon is exhausted. If we go back, the squid’ll kill us! We need to get Darek and Jace!”

  She bowed her head, mumbling her grief, but knew Briad was right.

  Off they flew and Meira stole a glance back over her shoulder where the squid continued to pound against the rock and sinking island. Maybe the creature would bleed out from its wounds? She didn’t know. If only Darek were here to blast the monstrosity with his powers! Curse him! Curse her! Why did she insist on making this trek alone? Their only chance was to fetch Darek and return with help. Kraton help Raithan now…

  * * *

  It was only a matter of time. A lashing tentacle curled around Raithan’s waist and pulled him out of his sanctuary beneath the hard pillars. So this is the end, Raithan thought. Cyrus’s curse had caught up to him in the form of this demon. At least he had saved Meira. Crushing force laid into his chest as the slimy loops tightened. He closed his eyes, wishing for a quick end.