by Eric Vall
The bodies of those who hadn’t survived littered the bloody snow all over the place, and I recognized several elven ears and mage’s robes among them. This was enough to ignite a fury in the pit of my stomach like I’d never known, but when I finally looked up to scan the spires, I couldn’t keep from dropping my jaw entirely.
Dragons clung to the stone and spires like moths against a lantern, and the few who were flying let out perpetual jets of flames even though there was nothing around for them to attack. The strength of their wings kicked the smoky clouds up into swirling torrents as they circled the fortress, and their piercing screeches seemed to make the ogres below all the more vicious.
It was like all of them were reacting to the threat they each posed without knowing how to respond, and the Master’s rune kept them in their places regardless of their natural instincts. So, they turned against each other with unbridled ferocity while we looked on in silent horror, and when a dragon dove to spew a stream of flames across the grounds, I had to look away.
“Mason, there’s over a dozen dragons out there,” Aurora finally managed, and Deya’s violet eyes glanced back at us.
“Let’s go,” I said mechanically.
Aurora turned herself back around without another word, and Deya took flight as soon as we were ready while a stony silence fell over us.
Then I spent the entire flight back to Falmount Rift focusing on how badly I wanted to torture the Master. Not just kill him, but torture him until he was begging for me to finish him off, and even though I’d never been one to indulge in that sort of thing, it felt incredibly appropriate for the circumstances.
I could only imagine what kind of hell the others were enduring within the impenetrable walls and underground caverns of his headquarters, and the sheer extent of the place made my palms sweat in panic. Knowing I’d just tripled my efforts at recapturing his minions eased my fury a little, but not enough to keep me from envisioning all kinds of clever contraptions for inflicting the optimum amount of pain on a person without allowing them to die yet.
As much as I wanted to turn right around, though, and blast through his walls before slowly stretching him in five different directions starting with his dick, I knew I had to be smart about this. One slip up would see all of Illaria in the same condition as the gory grounds of his headquarters, and I was more aware than ever how much depended on my next moves.
Which made the Master’s recent attacks seem like nothing but swarms of bugs I’d been swatting at, because without a solid offensive attack, he’d just sit there in his fortress building his disgusting regime and waiting to unleash it on all of us. He’d keep prodding at me to try and drive me out into the open so he could snatch me up, and I didn’t come to this realm just to be forced into serving a cause like his.
I came to kick his ass straight into the next realm if I could, and by the time Deya dove to bring us down into the western woods, I had my jaw set in firm resolve while my mind cycled through one option after another for how to proceed from here.
The look on Aurora’s face when she climbed down reminded me of the first task, though, and as Deya’s violet eyes studied me carefully, I shifted my attention to what we could do right now.
“Don’t worry,” I told the women, and I patted the dragon on her bloody snout because I could tell how anxious she was. “We’re handling this tonight. Wait here for us.”
Deya nodded as Aurora swiftly jogged into the woods, and I followed close on her heels until the torchlight of the clearing outside our house glowed up ahead. I could see Cayla and Shoshanne pacing nervously together while they waited for us to return, and when they saw us coming through the woods, Aurora broke into a run and didn’t stop until she was wrapped in Cayla’s arms.
“They’re eating the dragon babies!” the half-elf wailed, and I tried not to smirk, because clearly, we’d been in two very different mindsets during that whole flight.
“What?” Cayla asked in blank shock.
“Let’s get inside,” I suggested, and I shoved my most recent torture device to the back of my mind. “We can discuss everything in the workshop.”
I ushered the three women into the house while Aurora explained everything we’d seen, but I noticed she couldn’t help her enthusiasm when she got to the part about Deya hunting the sphynx, or my apparently heroic act on behalf of the baby dragons.
I was standing with my arms crossed and my back against my work table while the other two women clustered around Aurora, and even Stan was paying close attention from a pile of steel scrap metal.
“That sounds awful,” Shoshanne mumbled once Aurora finished, and I didn’t think her brows would ever unknit themselves again.
“It was horrifying!” the half-elf assured them.
“So, what’s the plan?” Cayla asked, but then the women all turned to me.
“Aurora, this is your mission,” I reminded her. “Deya’s waiting for us, so it falls to you to decide how to proceed. We’re all at your command here. What do you want to do?”
“Kill the orange dragon,” Aurora decided without skipping a beat.
“The orange dragon had a nest full of his own babies,” I calmly pointed out. “Does he need to learn a lesson? Yes, but that’s not the problem we’re facing right now.”
Aurora clutched her blue hair like she had no idea what to say next, and I could tell she was just too wrapped up in the baby dragons to think straight. Then I realized using this might help her out a bit.
“How about this?” I tried. “Pretend the blue baby dragons are your babies, but you’re captured and possessed right now. What would you want someone like us to do?”
“Save me from being possessed so I can come back and kill the orange dragon.”
“That works, too,” I said with a smirk. “How do you want to accomplish the saving part?”
“I don’t know!” Aurora groaned. “The babies are probably being eaten right this second, Mason! There are so many dragons at that fortress, we’ll never save them all, and I can’t think of anything but those little scaly bodies shaking and scared, and I can’t stand it!”
I let out a long sigh as Aurora’s emerald eyes brimmed with tears, and Cayla anxiously rubbed her back to try and calm her down a bit. The half-elf rarely got so worked up like this, but I couldn’t blame her. I’d definitely lost my chill when I saw that horned dragon eating the babies, too. So, I made a snap decision for everyone’s sake.
“Permission to take over this operation?” I asked.
“Granted,” the half-elf croaked, and I turned toward my stock of steel.
“Shoshanne, I need you to go to Flynt’s Pub and get Raynor, he’ll be assisting us this evening,” I said as I sparked my metal magic, and I began forming a blow gun like the snatchers wore on their arms. “Then I need you to get a shit ton of tranquilizer over here stat.”
“Yes, Mason,” Shoshanne said with a curt nod, and she ran for the door.
“Cayla and Aurora,” I continued, “go find wherever Deya’s transmuting and haul her body to the Mustang. Make sure she doesn’t drop the scale while you do it.”
“Why does she need to be in the Mustang?” Cayla asked.
“Because we’re not leaving her here alone, and this way, if she gets injured as a dragon, Shoshanne can help heal her in her elven form,” I replied, and the two women nodded in agreement before they rushed from the atrium.
“Stan, can you bring that engraving kit over?” I muttered as I summoned my spool of copper wire, and the little metal man hopped to with a salute.
Then I replicated an identical trigger system to my 1911 and mounted it on the blow gun, and I could hear Aurora and Cayla fumbling in their efforts to not drop Deya while I got my copper wiring and contact points all rigged. Once the two women grunted their way out the front door, I pulled over my engraving tool, and Stan nervously rubbed his little hands together as he hovered close by.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” I mumbled while I carefully split the bar
rel of the blowgun in half so I could line the inside with copper. “I’ll handle all of this, just hold perfectly still so I can engrave everything as fast as possible. Then you and I are sitting down first chance we get to discuss the pros and cons of physical versus psychological torture, and the best means of combining the two to achieve the perfect balance of ultimate suffering.”
Stan froze as he turned his head toward me, and I shrugged.
“It’s been a long day.”
Then I closed my eyes, and I summoned one element after another in quick succession as I worked my way through the air and trigger runes. While the engraving tool scraped across the metal, I made sure to carefully adjust each elemental line to deliver the most powerful kick I could manage, and I just hoped the final product wouldn’t explode in my hands.
I based the magazine off the one on my bow so I could use the arrows I already had on hand, and I had it fully rigged when all three of my women returned with Raynor close behind them.
“Deya’s loaded up with her scale still in hand,” Aurora told me as she rushed to my side. “What else can I do?”
“Help Shoshanne pack up all the supplies needed for removing the dragons’ runes,” I instructed. “Bring her healing staff along, too, and if there’s enough scalpels to go around, see we’ve got them all. This is going to be a group effort.”
Aurora and Shoshanne promptly obeyed my orders while I showed Raynor where to place the vat of tranquilizer, and I sparked my metal magic as I dumped a pile of serrated arrows onto the table.
“Could you make sure there’s enough tranquilizer on these darts to knock out a dragon for about an hour?” I asked the barkeep, and his wiry brows wavered somewhere between shock and fear.
“Y-Yes, sir,” he responded, and I nodded as I began reforming the tips of the darts to remove the serrated edges.
Then I passed Raynor each arrow as he got to work, and Cayla didn’t need any prompting from me to join the assembly line and get the laced arrows loaded into the magazine of the blow gun for me. Once it was fully stocked, she pulled out my quiver and filed the rest of the arrows away, and I already had my supplies cleaned up and the blow gun in hand when Aurora and Shoshanne returned.
“Ready?” I asked the women, and they nodded.
“What’s the plan?” Aurora asked, and her emerald eyes looked up at me expectantly.
“I’m flying Deya to the eastern foothills,” I began, “and the rest of you, including Raynor, are taking Bobbie. I want you to drive as far as we did the first time we visited Mors Pass, and then Cayla and Aurora are on scouting duty. Keep your eyes on the sky, because I’ll be picking off the possessed dragons as they head out to hunt, and it’s gonna be a mad dash to get them all deruned after that. Use Bobbie to get to the bodies as quickly as possible, but if you’re not finished with one of them by the time the next one falls to the ground, no one is to remain behind alone. Work in pairs, understood?”
Everyone nodded, and I gestured to the racks of weapons at my back.
“Get yourselves fully armed in case we come across any possessed mages out there,” I ordered. “The snatchers will be working nearby, but I want to be sure we’re prepared for anything, and Shoshanne, you’re driving.”
“Me?” the healer clarified as the others headed to the ammunition cabinet, and they began grabbing spare magazines, cartridges, and a few rockets.
“You need to stay with Deya at all costs,” I informed her. “If she’s injured up there--”
“Of course,” Shoshanne replied as she caught on. “I’ll drive Bobbie and stay with her while the others remove the runes.”
“Thank you,” I replied, and I tucked a kiss in Shoshanne’s curls as Cayla handed over a pistol and her set of shuriken. “Don’t worry about beating the hell out of the Mustang, either. I can repair any of the damage later, just make sure you reach every dragon as they fall.”
With everyone armed and Raynor looking wide eyed but on board, we left the mansion while Stan fidgeted anxiously with a little diamond and watched us go.
Then I turned to head into the woods rather than follow the others, but my women pulled me into their arms before I made it three steps.
“Be careful,” Shoshanne murmured, and all three women were pale as they clung to me.
“Don’t let …” Aurora tried, but her throat closed up, and she just shook her head and buried her face against my chest instead.
“Hey,” I chuckled, and I sent the women my most reassuring grin. “Get out there and save some dragons. Let me worry about not dying, alright? I’ve gotten pretty good at it these days.”
Cayla managed half a chuckle as she took a steadying breath, but I made sure to give each of them enough time to kiss me goodbye before I finally nudged them toward the Mustang.
They were still glancing back over their shoulders when I disappeared into the darkened woods, and I quickened my pace while I tried not to let their worried looks feed into my own nerves.
The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing this time, but that hadn’t ever stopped me from winning before. Knowing most of my women would be on the ground and able to flee at any time eased a lot of my concerns, too. Now, I just had to make sure Deya and I both survived, and I found the black dragon waiting for me right where I’d left her.
“Ready to kick some ass?” I asked as I sent her a grin, and Deya let out a low growl of approval when I braced my boot on the crook of her wing to hoist myself up.
Then I secured the blowgun to my back with the quiver of spare arrows, and I got a firm hold on the spines in front of me.
“I’m guessing I’ll regret saying this,” I muttered, “but let’s see how fast you can fly.”
The muscles beneath me swelled as Deya crouched low, and my regret was instantaneous as she shot straight into the air with a grating screech that probably had every mage in Falmount pissing themselves.
Chapter 19
My eyes were officially stuck bulging out of my head by the time Deya landed on a low peak between Mors Pass and the Master’s fortress, and it was several minutes before I could loosen my hold on her spines. My rune had been screaming in my ears almost as loud as the wind all the way here, and the sight of the stars streaking past made me half certain we were about to warp into another dimension.
Somehow, we didn’t, though, and I couldn’t tell if the airy feeling in my veins was on account of my adrenaline or if my heart had finally thrown in the towel on me. So, I quickly pressed my fingers against my neck just to be sure I still had a pulse, and when I felt a frantic flutter of a heartbeat, I nodded in relief.
“Okay, I’m still alive,” I mumbled blankly, and Deya snorted sparks from her nose.
The possessed dragons were getting restless as they circled the spires of the fortress in a perpetual blaze of fire, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before they absolutely needed to hunt something. We’d beaten Bobbie to the foothills, though, and this was exactly what I was hoping to accomplish, because I wanted to get a closer look at the Master’s headquarters. So, I sparked my Terra powers to bring the schematics of the fortress to my mind while Deya settled into the snow, and I rotated the vibrant red image until it aligned with the structure in front of me.
It looked like the bridge ran directly through the giant peak the fortress was built around, and I could see that Hulsan had used this section as a sort of central divergence where multiple stairwells branched off. The stairwells continued down into the belly of the mountains, and one end of the bridge fed directly into the frontmost collection of buildings. The other end led all the way to the opposite side of the peak, and more structures expanded the fortress far into the mountains.
I wondered if this bridge might be my best chance at infiltrating the Master’s headquarters, and I considered how much access it would give to the rest of the place. Then I raised my palms to test my theory out a bit.
First, I tried to channel my Terra powers into the stonework that fused one end of the bridge to a
tower, but I furrowed my brow when I couldn’t seem to reach it. I’d utilized my magic at a further distance than this plenty of times, though, and as I kept trying to get at the stonework, I realized there was something repelling my efforts.
The sensation was like trying to push the wrong ends of two magnets together, and as I attempted to get at the other walls of the fortress, the same thing kept happening.
“Figures,” I snorted, and I turned my attention to the peak itself.
When the strange sensation repelled my efforts here as well, I finally ground my jaw and looked down into the bloody grounds. I tried altering the surface terrain, accessing the tunnels beneath the foothills, everything … but my powers only strained against some invisible force as the Master’s enchantments shrouded every inch of his domain.
Which meant I couldn’t even read through the stonework to try and locate the runes he was using to achieve this, and I cursed under my breath. Then I got another idea, and I summoned my metal magic instead, but even though I could sense scores of metal within the fortress, I couldn’t connect my powers with any of it.
The metal did seem to be primarily located in the upper sections of the main structure, though, and as I eyed the smoke still billowing into the night sky, I decided this must be where his forges were located.
“Well, that’s annoyingly unhelpful,” I muttered to myself, and Deya shifted beneath me. “Hopefully, Nulena can deliver some kind of input, because as of right now, I and every mage in our army won’t be able to do shit about this fortress. Even the ground surrounding the place is inaccessible.”
The grumble Deya made sounded so supportively pissed off that I couldn’t help grinning, and I chuckled as I brought my quiver around to get ready for phase one of Operation Save the Dragons. Deya’s violet eyes widened at the sight of the arrows in my quiver, though, and she gave an anxious little screech.