by D M Gilmore
“Aha,” Nicholas grinned, “you feel that, don’t you?”
“Let her go,” Asher wheezed, as he struggled to take a step forward. His legs felt stiff and sore, like they were pinned together, and he could feel the sharp tingling sensation of his circulation being cut off from the waist down. “Let her go you bastard!”
Nicholas’ grin spread wider as he knelt down next to Esther’s wiggling form, desperately trying to push her way out from underneath Agni’s bulk. “This is what it means to be bound, Asher,” Nicholas said, squeezing Esther’s mouth shut with two fingers. Asher could feel his own snout squeeze shut, as if an invisible hand was holding it closed. He wanted to scream out in anger, but he simply couldn’t, his tongue could barely even wiggle inside his mouth. “To be bound is to have every pain, every wound, every emotion, be reflected on one another. It requires balance,and care, lest one side of the partnership overpower the other,” Nicholas continued, as he looked up at Agni with a slight glare. “If one side dies, so does the other. That is why we do not typically bind with hours-old hatchlings: they are just so easy to kill.”
Asher snarled at Nicholas, an expression mirrored by Esther towards the man holding her down. Her thrashing was dying down, Asher was beginning to feel lightheaded as Agni continued to apply pressure on her body, getting ready to stamp it completely flat. Asher wanted to shout out in anger, in fear, to beg for his life, but he could barely even lift his arm to select a spell. As the thought crossed his mind, he did just that, reaching his arm into the air around him and calling up his display, slowly swiping through the icons as he went. The corners of his vision were turning dark, the sounds were starting to fade. He was quickly losing focus, his eyes watering. He would only get one shot at this, and he could barely even see his target.
“Poor fool,” Nicholas grumbled, shaking his head at the dizzy drake that was struggling to remain standing, “you have to understand there is no way you could have beaten us, correct? Agni is nearly a hundred years old, with scales so thick an anti-tank rifle would struggle to pierce them. As you currently are, he is nearly indestructible.”
Asher still couldn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. He simply held his fist by his side, and began charging the spell. One percent, two percent, he let more and more of his reserved mana fuel the spell, the air around him crackling with energy and filling with the smell of ozone. Five percent, six percent, he closed his eyes, his vision having almost completely failed him anyways. Nine percent. Ten percent.
As the spell reached its maximum charge, he raised his fist and pointed it in the general direction of where he knew Nicholas and Agni would be, and opened his palm. The air around him exploded with the force of a sonic boom as a wave of power shot out of his hand and filled the entire room. Chairs and tables were turned instantly to splinters, the dance floor cracked under the impact, and Asher himself was thrown backwards, stopping just a foot away from the still burning stage. More importantly, the pressure on Asher’s ribs relaxed, the invisible hand clamping his mouth shut released him.
Asher gasped for breath and coughed out loud, his eyes snapping open to take in the destruction around him. Esther was flapping madly towards him, crashing into his still prone form and clinging to his chest in terror, her whole body shaking in fear. Nicholas was buried in a pile of splintered tables, the force of the blast having hit him so hard as to send him flying. His right ear was bleeding, and Asher figured he must have burst an eardrum. Agni was on his side, both heads lolling about, too dizzy from the impact of the blast to stand.
“What was that about being nearly indestructible?” Asher chuckled, groaning in pain as he pulled himself to his feet. Everything was shaky and wobbly, just like the tiny dragon on his chest. He shushed her gently, running a reassuring hand down her spine, and felt her instantly begin to calm down and relax. As her heart steadied, Asher’s body ceased shaking, and he carefully raised her back to his shoulder, where she once again coiled around his neck happily.
“Idiot,” Nicholas growled, as he struggled to pull himself out of the rubble. “You idiot! You could have killed us both! What made you think that firing off a sonic boom inside an enclosed room designed for audio distribution would be a good idea?” he asked, as he finally pulled himself up with a grunt of pain, Agni wincing simultaneously with both heads. His ear was ringing and his head was spinning, and he couldn’t get a clear bearing on where Asher was coming from, his body wobbling from side to side as he tried to stand up, and ultimately failed, collapsing to his knees and throwing up on the floor beside him.
“I can’t die yet,” Asher growled, switching to his lightning spell and stalking across the ruined club floor, aiming his hand directly at Nicholas’ chest. The man was barely awake, and he held his casting arm close to his chest. Asher couldn’t tell for certain, but he had a good feeling that the arm was broken. “I can’t die until I save Ruth, and if you think for even a second that you’re going to get in my way, you’ve got another thing coming, softskin,” he finished, using drake slang for a human.
Asher loomed above Nicholas, who was barely on his knees in a half-kneeling position, and placed his closed fist against the man’s forehead. It would be so easy to kill him, to cast the spell at point blank range, and send a surge of lightning through the man’s body, killing him instantly. If what Nicholas said was true, that Agni was his bound partner, then the two headed dragon wouldn’t survive the blast, and both of them would be out of his crest for good.
That, however, wasn’t good enough for Asher.
“You won’t kill me,” Nicholas chuckled, spitting blood off to the side. His teeth were red as he smiled up at Asher, both of his eyes bloodshot from burst blood vessels. “Killing me will bring the full might of COMA down upon you. You won’t do it.”
“I could,” Asher growled, digging his knuckles into the human’s soft flesh, “but you’ve piqued my curiosity, softskin. What’s the deal with the dragons?”
Nicholas laughed again, this time coughing blood rather than spitting it. His breath was fast and sharp, and Asher wondered if perhaps he had collapsed one of the man’s lungs. “If I tell you, I have to kill you.”
“Yeah well you’re not very good at your job, so why don’t I cut you a deal?” Asher growled, grabbing Nicholas by the collar of his coat, “I am not the only one who knows about dragons. I had originally stolen the egg for a drake named Duncan Smog, who had wanted the egg because he had known that there would be a dragon in it. He took my brother, and for that I’m going to kill him. Since him knowing about dragons makes him a COMA problem, I assume, if I kill him, I’d be doing your job for you. Saving you some trouble, right?”
Nicholas paused as he took in everything Asher was saying. “Are you saying you’ll let me live if I allow you to kill somebody you were already planning to kill?”
Asher twisted his knuckles threateningly, taking a layer of the man’s skin off with the abrasive texture of his scales. “Something like that,” Asher snarled, leaning in close to whisper into the man’s ear. “So what’s it gonna be?”
Nicholas did not respond. Instead he began to inch the arm that Asher had assumed was broken towards his jacket, which he slowly unzipped, revealing a dark black t-shirt underneath. “Breast pocket,” he wheezed.
Asher narrowed his eyes and released the collar of the jacket, reaching in with his now freed hand to feel around for the pocket Nicholas was referring to. He found it rather quickly, and inside was a black leather badge holder. Flipping it open, he noted a card identifying the man before him, as well as a gold and blue shield-shaped badge.
“What the hell is this supposed to be?” He growled.
“Centre Badge,” Nicholas gurgled. “Anyone in possession of one is legally allowed to kill, so long as it is on behalf of COMA’s interests. This Duncan Smog definitely fits the criteria for a hit. Consider yourself deputized into the organization.”
“I’m not doing this for your stupid company,” Asher growled, shoving the
badge into his own jacket pocket, “I’m doing this to save my brother.”
“And you’ll be doing a hit for COMA at the same time,” Nicholas laughed, his head lolling to the side a bit as he struggled to remain conscious. “Call the number when you’re done. They’ll send a clean up crew.”
With that, Nicholas slumped over backwards, finally passing out. Agni quickly followed suit, both heads sighing in pain as they went unconscious.
Asher paused only to make sure Nicholas was still alive, before he stomped out of the club.
“C’mon, Esther,” he growled, “we’ve got work to do.”
Chapter 19
When Ruth woke up, everything hurt. His right eye was swollen shut, any attempt to open it was met with pain and pus that dripped down his face. His snout was definitely broken, a chunk of bone pressing his skin into a sharp angle that stuck out against the backdrop of his nose. It hurt to sniff the air, let alone open his mouth to speak or breathe. His broken arm had been set with a steel rod, and the bloody wounds on his thigh were still damp and sticky, but they had at least been dressed with cotton bandages, already damp and red with his blood. His thigh itched something fierce, and it was all he could do not to scream out in his need to scratch at the wound.
Despite all his injuries, there were still parts of him that seemed mostly functional. His ears, or at least the small holes on the sides of his head that served as ears, were ringing from all the beatings but otherwise were operational. His left eye, still blinking blearily, scanned the room, trying to take in his surroundings, and all things considered he was surprised to find he retained his full range of motion with his neck.
He appeared to be in a prison cell, if the concrete walls and metal bars were any indications. He desperately tried to remember how he had gotten there, but his head throbbed in pain, making it difficult to think. He could remember fighting Sangita in the club, losing to her because he had fallen for a stupid trick, then being dragged out by Smog and his goons. Asher had been told if he followed, Ruth would die. Ruth remember being tossed into the back of a truck, and Sangita cracking him over the head one last time with her baton, then everything went dark.
Ruth grunted in pain as he went back to examining his surroundings. He was sitting on a metal folding chair, this tail threaded through the back. He laughed to himself at that, it was nice that his captors had at least tried to make him comfortable. His good arm was tied to the chair with a thick metal wire that dug into his wrists. He figured he could snap it if he wanted to, but it would hurt, and he wasn’t too keen on adding more damage to his already broken body. Both of his ankles had been tied to the chair legs with the same kind of wire, and the chair itself was chained to some anchor point in the cell. He grumbled in frustration as he realized that his tail was tightly tied to the chain, making an obnoxious jingling noise as he moved it. The wires were carefully threaded around his scales, meaning he couldn’t simply slip his tail out, not without taking some chunks of flesh with it.
The only limb he had free was the broken arm, which was held close to his chest in a sling, made from his t-shirt, if his bare chest was anything to go by. Grunting, he tested the arm, and found that he still retained most of the function in his hand, but making anything even closely resembling a fist sent shocks of pain flaring up between his wrist and elbow.
“You should stop moving,” a familiar voice said, as the door to Ruth’s cell slid open, and a black drake sauntered in. “It won’t heal properly if you move the setting.”
“Sangita,” Ruth growled, keeping his voice low as he stared into the pink eyes of the female drake approaching him. He couldn’t help but grin as he noticed the horn he had broken off had been sanded down to a flat nub, and he took some comfort in the fact it would never grow back. It was a safe assumption that she was a pardrake, given her lack of extra horns or substantial size. He couldn’t help but chuckle, as the absent horn gave her a lopsided, off-balanced look. “Here to finish me off, eh? Let’s get this over with, I’m a busy drake.”
Sangita said nothing while she checked his bindings, making sure none of the wires that held him fast were becoming loose or damaged. When she was done, she proceeded to check his broken arm, adjusting the setting a bit to compensate for the flexing he had been doing, before pulling a small white squeeze bottle out of a pouch on her hip.
“Get that away from me,” Ruth hissed, as she uncapped the bottle and held it up to his face.
“It’s antibiotics, you idiot. Your eye got infected. Unless you want to lose your vision, you’ll let me put some drops in it,” she growled, grabbing him just under the chin with her free hand and angling his face in line with the dropper.
Ruth said nothing as she allowed four tiny dots of clear liquid to drip out of the bottle and land in his sealed eyelid, mixing with the pus a bit. The effect was miraculous, if not immediate, and as soon as she let his face go, the pain in his eye seemed to lessen.
“I’ll be back in an hour to check on you again,” she grumbled, pocketing the antibiotics again as she slowly made her way towards the still open cell door, “do not struggle too much. You lost a lot of blood before I was allowed to treat you, and Duncan didn’t want me to give you antibiotics at all.”
“Why are you being nice to me? We were trying to kill each other...” Ruth paused as he tried to figure out how long he’d been locked up, but he couldn’t see a clock and his sense of time was screwed up from being unconscious. He screwed up his face as he tried to get a handle on his sense of time, but all it did was make his head hurt. “How long have I been out?”
“Two hours,” Sangita explained, leaning against the metal bars with a wince. It was hard to see through her dark scales and skin-tight suit, but she had taken her fair share of wounds during the fight. “And this is not being nice, as you put it. You fought well, and it would be wrong for me to not honour your willingness to throw down your life in defence of your brother. I am simply being honourable, something neither you nor Duncan could ever understand.”
Ruth stifled a hearty laugh, his snout aching in pain as he clamped his mouth shut. “Honor’s a dead concept,” he muttered, scoffing in irritation, and unknowingly proving her point.
“Maybe to a brute like yourself, but being honourable means a lot to me,” Sangita growled, propping a fist against her hips. “I didn’t sign up for this… this scheme of his. When I approached him with the offer of getting him a dragon, I didn’t expect him to be so...”
“Insane?!”
“Conniving,” Sangita growled, correcting Ruth’s outburst. “If you and your brother hadn’t meddled, things would have gone a lot more smoothly.”
Ruth glared at Sangita in confusion, shaking his head at her. It was then that he noticed that she didn’t have a golden band around her horn, the telltale sign of a member of the Misty Mountains. “Just who are you, exactly?”
Sangita smiled softly down at him at him and shook her head slightly. “Sangita Soma, and you can think of me as a dragon rights activist.”
The confused look on Ruth’s face was enough to make Sangita roll her eyes. “I used to work for an organization tasked with keeping dragons secret from the world, but I am of the mind that they should not be secret, that the world should know of their existence. The plan was to slowly introduce dragons to the world by giving them to one individual, and going public once the dragons were mature enough to communicate.”
“So, what, you help a mob boss get a dragon?” Ruth growled, rattling in his chair angrily. “Then tell people that the MOB BOSS has real dragons? Sounds like a great plan!” Ruth scoffed and rolled his eyes. “And you call me an idiot.”
“Do not judge my tactics, brute. My plans are my own and you should feel flattered that I share them with you at all!” Sangita hissed, taking an angry step forward and reaching for the baton strapped to her hip. “If you knew anything about dragons, you would know they are a closely guarded secret, and I could not simply hand one over to anyone! It had to be so
mebody well guarded, who could keep both themselves and the dragons safe from my former employers until such a time that they could go public with the truth of draconic existence and the origin of mana! That was the plan, idiot, to keep Duncan and the dragon safe until such a time as we could show the world that dragons are real, and they are intelligent, feeling creatures!”
Ruth blinked in surprise. Through her speech, her voice had steadily risen louder, until finally she had broken into a complete shout. Ruth shrunk in his chair, trying to pull away from her raising voice.
“Hardly,” another voice came, as the familiar shape of Duncan Smog stepped into the cell, flanked on either side by a pair of drakes armed with mana rifles. “They’re just animals, and like all animals it’s just a matter of finding something they do that can turn a profit. Cows produce meat and milk, chickens have meat and eggs, and dragons? Dragons produce the most expensive eggs of all.”
“Duncan, I didn’t hear you come in,” Sangita stuttered, just as surprised by his arrival as Ruth. “I was just—”
“Save it, Sangita, I know exactly what you were doing,” Smog growled, twisting his neck at an odd angle and triggering a loud crack. “Fraternizing with the prisoner doesn’t look good, especially when you should be focusing on getting me the dragon you promised.”
“I already told you,” Sangita protested, “that I cannot get you a dragon until I know for certain the gender of the one you have in your possession. It would do nothing to have two males, Duncan!”
Smog looked down at his claws, digging beneath them for dirt before smirking up at Sangita. “Implying that Asher’s little whelp isn’t already mine?”
“Until the dragon is in your possession I will do nothing for you,” Sangita hissed, “and it is no implication, because she is bound to Asher! You would have to take him prisoner to keep her compliant, and instead you took the idiot brute!”