by D M Gilmore
“Here, your way out,” Sangita grumbled, pulling the door open all the way for Ruth to stumble through. “Get yourself to a hospital, call the police and ambulances, I don’t care,” she said, pushing past Ruth and stepping into the perpendicular hallway.
“Wait, where are you going?” Ruth asked, limping into the alley and leaning against a foul-smelling dumpster, full of flies that glowed an array of iridescent colours.
“To stop your brother. Or help him, I haven’t exactly decided yet,” Sangita admitted, her gaze dropping to the floor. “I am concerned about his dragon. If she is exerting her emotions within him…”
“It could be bad?”
Sangita sighed, and rubbed her eyes in annoyance. “There are a lot of reasons for why being bound to a whelp is a bad idea,” she finally said, drawing her baton from her hip. “Emotional instability is honestly the least of them, but right now I’d bet my life that Asher’s rampaging because he is filled with his dragon’s bloodlust.”
“He’s not normally this violent,” Ruth admitted. “Hell, I’ve only seen him fight a few times. Before today, he’s never even killed anyone…”
“Have you?” Sangita asked, taking a step back towards him. “Have you taken a life? Have you ever fought with the intention to kill?”
Ruth said nothing, and simply lowered his head in shame. That was all the answer Sangita needed.
“You are a talented fighter,” she admitted to him, looking away. It couldn’t be seen through her dark black scales, but her cheeks had flushed. “You are untrained, and lack discipline, but you are talented. There is no shame in taking a life in combat. It is an honourable way to die.”
“If Asher goes too far,” Ruth whispered, his voice hoarse as he did his best to hold back his emotions, “if Esther takes him too far, can you save him?”
Sangita paused, and blinked at Ruth curiously.
“Please,” he whimpered, as a single tear rolled out of his swollen eye, “he’s all I got left. I can’t lose him.”
Sangita stepped back into the police station, breaking eye contact with the larger drake. “I’m not so certain that is possible.”
“Why not?!” Ruth growled, clenching his fist tight. “You just said you’re on the side of the dragon, right? Esther and Asher are linked somehow; isn’t it your duty to protect them both?!”
Sangita winced as her motivation was called into question, and she idly began to finger her necklace again. “It’s called the Echo Chamber effect, and it’s why my former organization does not allow juvenile dragons to bond with a human,” she whispered, not meeting his eyes. “When a dragon mind returns a human emotion, reinforced with their own, the pair can begin to bounce the emotion back and forth, make it stronger and stronger each time. It can turn even the smartest people into screaming lunatics.” She winced slightly, and faced Ruth once again. “If Asher has succumbed to his dragon’s emotions, even for a second, it may be already too late to save them. They may become lost to their own fury. If he has gone over the edge, I am not sure there is anything I can do.”
With a sigh, Ruth nodded and stepped back into the station. With a grunt, he slammed the door shut with his good arm, and nodded down at the smaller drake. “Then I’ll do it. He’ll listen to me.”
Chapter 23
As Ruth and Sangita made their way through the police station, they noticed a quickly growing trend among their attackers: they were not the ones the Mountains were looking for. They were clearly looking for Asher, and yelped in surprise when they nearly ran face first into Ruth, being helped along by Sangita. No encounter lasted more than a minute, with Sangita making such quick work of their assailants that none of them even had a chance to call for help. They encountered maybe only three hostile drakes, while two others had taken one look at them and run the other way. For a moment, they contemplated giving chase, but chose instead to leave them be. It seemed more like they were running away from something, rather than hunting Asher.
After what seemed like forever, they shambled into a new room, and they immediately had to take a step back. The stench within was foul and putrid.
“Death,” Sangita said, as she reached out a hand and hit a light switch. The ancient fluorescent bulbs burst to life, flooding the world with bright, buzzing light. As they took in the room, Ruth immediately wished Sangita had not turned the lights on. “This is the station entrance,” she muttered, “Duncan had four guards stationed in here. I count three bodies.”
Ruth shook his head and held his breath, not wanting to look. He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know the horrible things his brother had done. Who else but Asher could have, would have done this tonight? Finally, his curiosity got the better of him, and he followed Sangita’s gaze to the bodies.
It had to have been a bloodbath. A massacre. An utter, total desecration of life. Ruth’s mind whirled with horror as he took in the destruction his brother had wrought upon the Mountains. As Sangita had said, three bodies littered the room, motionless and riddled with holes so wide he could shove a pair of fingers into them. One corpse, slumped against the wall, had a mound of split and bloody flesh where its head should have been, and when Sangita had pointed out the remains, Ruth had thrown up there and then, keeling over onto the floor and emptying his stomach onto the ground.
“Not a fan of gore?” Sangita said dryly, holding him by his one good arm and pulling him back up to his feet. The larger drake wobbled side to side, his eye twitching. “Feel better now?”
“No,” he grunted. “How are you okay with this?” Ruth coughed, spitting out another glob of foul fluid, mixed with a little bit of blood. Everything hurt so much. He just wanted to lay down and sleep. But he couldn’t, not yet. He had to find Asher, to save him before he lost his mind to Esther’s emotions.
“This?” Sangita muttered, looking at the headless corpse, a wistful gleam in her eye. “No, I am not okay with this. Battle is something I could live with, but this? This is not a battle,” she continued, tearing her eyes away from the body and meeting Ruth’s gaze. Her two eyes met his good one, and for a moment they stood in silence, staring into one another. “This was death,” she breathed, her voice so low it was almost inaudible.
It was in that gaze that Ruth saw something he had never expected to see from Sangita. It was melancholy. She had seen horrible things in her life, of that Ruth was certain. Given the tone she used, he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she had seen something similar before, or if perhaps somebody had done something like this to her.
“What did they do to you?” Ruth asked, his voice a low hush, as he leaned on her to support his weight.
“That depends on who you are asking about,” Sangita whispered in return, looking away from the bulky drake and adjusting her hold on his arm. He grunted loudly in pain, and dropped the rifle he had been carrying up to that point. “My teachers pushed me to my breaking point, and then kept pushing. My mother beat me for never being good enough, even when I was already broken. Perhaps, worst of all, a man I thought was my friend betrayed me when I needed him most.”
Ruth considered asking her to retrieve his gun, but didn’t think there was any real need. He had yet to actually use it, and he doubted he’d ever get the chance. Either he’d be killed before lining up a shot, or Sangita would beat them to a pulp before they could retaliate. Not for the first time, Ruth found himself wondering what turned her into such a ruthless machine of violence, yet left her with such a compassionate side...
“I know what you are thinking,” Sangita growled, propping him up against a dusty brick wall for a moment, as she began to search the bodies for anything useful, “everybody always asks me sooner or later, so you might as well get it off your chest.”
Ruth blinked in surprise, but said nothing. The subject clearly had her agitated, and he wasn’t about to prod her about it.
“We have traded blood and blows, what more do you have to fear of me?” Sangita asked, rising to her full height and glaring into Ruth�
�s eyes.
He shook his head, and kept his mouth shut.
“I see.”
“I may not be as smart as Asher,” Ruth finally speaking up, “but I know how to shut up. It’s your business, not mine.”
“Wise words,” Sangita chuckled placing a gentle hand on Ruth’s chest, “maybe there’s more in here than a vicious brute after all.”
Without another word, she hoisted the injured drake back off the wall, and they exited the room, allowing the door to slam shut behind them. It wasn’t too hard to assume where to go from here. They had come from one direction and hadn’t encountered his brother’s handiwork until now. All they had to do was start down the other way until they found Asher, or follow the trail of bodies he no doubt had left in his wake.
With a shared grunt of effort, they began to make their way down the hallway, continuing the painfully slow progress they had been dealing with up until now. Ruth was not getting better any time soon, so they were not likely to be able to pick up the pace.
They didn’t have to go far to find more of Asher’s victims. It felt wrong to think of them as anything else, because as far as Ruth could tell there is no way they posed all that much of a threat. Two or three drakes, armed with basic mana weapons?
“This seems wrong,” Ruth finally said, as Sangita examined this new set of bodies.
“Of course it’s wrong, there are dead people everywhere! What exactly would you expect to find right about this?” Sangita growled, closing the eyes of a female drake with a gaping hole in her chest.
“Smog said that he had a trap laid for Asher, but all I see are guards. Where’s the trap?” Ruth grumbled, adjusting his position on yet another wall. His ribs creaked angrily, and for a moment he felt a sharp pain in his chest, almost like a needle was pressing into his skin. The sensation passed, and he was left once again with his usual levels of pain.
“I suspect the trap was superior numbers and a clever tactic. The lights were off in the entrance, meaning the moment the door opened the guards would have had a clear target. Perhaps Duncan had expected Asher to be overwhelmed?”
“By three guards?”
“There are more than three!” she growled, pointing at the two dead drakes she had been examining. “Sooner or later your brother will run out of mana, and what then?” Sangita hissed, rising to her feet. “He will be left defenceless, with an infant dragon that will most likely get him killed if he is not careful. Smog is playing the long game, he’s waiting for Asher to run out of resources!”
Ruth blinked. He hadn’t considered that. “So these guards are…?”
“Sacrificial pawns, yes,” Sangita sighed, and looked down at the female. With a wince, she bent down, and slipped a silver ring, a shimmering crystal socketed on its surface, off the corpse’s figure. To Ruth’s surprise, she did not change back into a human. Then again, why would she? She was dead. “Her name was Chu. She had come to Toronto a year ago in the hopes of finding a better life than she had in Hong Kong. What she found was poverty, loss, and desperation. That was why she joined the Mountains. She was out of money, out of work, and out of time. In exchange for helping her get out of debt, she was forced into service.”
“I’m sure Asher didn’t—”
“I do not blame Asher for her death,” Sangita hissed, “he was merely a weapon. Smog is the one who took aim and pulled the trigger. Duncan put these poor souls into the line of fire, and for what?”
Sangita sucked in a breath before looking back at Ruth, and he nearly did a double take, as he saw a tear roll down her cheek.
“Sangita?”
“It’s as much my fault they are dead. I am the one who told Smog about the existence of dragons, of what they could do,” she growled slamming her fist into a desk, cracking it down the middle. “I do not know if I can ever begin to atone for this mistake. All of this pointless bloodshed for one dragon? It is not worth it.”
Ruth did not think about what he did, he simply acted on impulse. With a grunt of effort, he pushed himself off the wall, and slowly limped his way over to Sangita’s side. She watched him through damp eyes, and tensed for a moment, as if expecting an attack. To her surprise, he wrapped his good arm around her, and pulled her into a tight embrace. He winced a little as he pressed her into his broken arm, but gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the pain. The pain he was feeling was temporary. The pain he was trying to heal was not.
Sangita gasped in surprise, her eyes wide first with shock, before closing to block out the tears. This was not what she had expected. Admonishment. Threats. Reprisal. These she could understand. This she could not. “I don’t deserve your sympathy,” she sobbed, “I’ve done horrible things. I have killed so many people, I tried to kill you.”
“Call me stupid,” Ruth whispered into her ear, “but I forgive you.”
“You shouldn’t,” Sangita hissed, pushing away from the embrace, “because I will continue to do terrible things. My work is not finished, and until it is I will continue to kill and harm and do what is necessary.”
“Then don’t stop,” Ruth nodded, taking a painful step back. “I can’t speak for everyone, but I forgive you.”
“You shouldn’t,” she repeated, wiping the tears from her eyes and replacing her mask of strength and determination. “Let us keep moving, we don’t want to get caught with our guard down.”
Chapter 24
Asher’s progress was intentionally slow, giving Smog’s gang plenty of time to catch up with him, to aim their weapons, before he would blast them with his spells, but even he could tell that they were starting to slow down. There was always a span of time between the groups, but they were so infrequent that he was almost concerned he was in the wrong location.
He was vaguely aware that he should have run out of mana a long time ago. His battery had been stuck at zero percent for a while, and yet he was still able to operate, his spells still behaved normally and cast as though he had a hundred percent. All the while, Esther sat on his shoulder, silent and unmoving, sending colours and images into his mind whenever he spoke to her, whenever he did something she liked. Every time they stopped to rest, she would leap down from her favourite perch to feed on the flesh of the slain, taking a few bites here and there before leaping back up. In Asher’s adrenaline addled head, he was only vaguely aware, but she seemed to be a little bit bigger. Not a considerable difference, but there was more tone to her form, she looked less slender.
As Esther fed on the latest batch of kills, Asher slumped down against the wall, his breath ragged and slow as he drank in oxygen. His shirt had more than a few burnt holes, and he could feel a pair of gunshot wounds just above his heart. They hurt, but he could feel that they were only just that: pain. He lifted up his shirt to check the damage, and was mildly surprised to find the wounds were barely burns, let alone the kind of damage he expected to see from a gunshot, even from a manabolt gun. He did not question his good fortune, and lowered his shirt with a slight wince of pain.
Sighing, he raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into the com he had stolen from the earliest group he’d slain. “That’s three more of your men, Smog,” he growled, unsure if Duncan was even listening, “I know you stopped using your communication network to try and keep me in the dark, but this is running long, and you’re running out of troops to throw at me. By my count, you’re down twelve Mountains, and I’m just getting started. Make this easy and nobody else needs to die.”
Asher lowered his wrist to the ground with an exhausted sigh. How long had he been at this game? Five hours? No, there was no way he’d been fighting that long, right? It felt like an eternity, but it couldn’t have been longer than twenty, maybe thirty minutes. With a grunt of effort, Asher pulled himself to his feet, and grunted in mild pain as Esther returned to her favourite spot on his shoulder. She was feeling heavier, more of a burden to carry this way.
The colour green flashed in his mind, Esther’s way of telling him she was ready to continue, and Ashe
r proceeded once more through the ruined station, stepping through a hole in the wall he had made earlier with a poorly aimed force blast. Esther’s nostrils flared as she tasted the air, feeding the information it contained directly into Asher’s mind. Direction, source, state, all of these things could be smelled through the dragon’s nostril. The building was beginning to stink of dead bodies and magic, but still there were the smells of living creatures, of rats in the walls, mutated to unrecognizable states, of drakes huddling together, their fear permeating their sweat, but not the one smell he wanted her to find. She could not find Ruth.
As Asher slowly made his way down the hallway, he heard a crackle come from his wrist.
“Asher,” Smog’s voice said, coming through the com, “I know when I’m beaten. Come up to the roof, we’ll talk.”
Asher wasted no time and ran for the nearest stairwell, slamming the door open with his shoulder and climbing up three flights in half a minute, before bursting through a broken steel door out onto the cracked rooftop of the ruined police station. It was growing dark outside, as the sun began to set over the horizon. The meagre light barely illuminated the figure standing with his back turned, gazing out over the filthy streets of the broodtown.
Duncan Smog had a cigar in his mouth, filling the air with a rich and heady smell that reached Asher on a gust of wind. Upon hearing the door crash open, he glanced over his shoulder and sighed, cutting the burning tip off the cigar before placing it in a small tube that he slipped into his pocket.
“Smog,” Asher growled, his hand glowing with silver light as he prepared to cast his spell. “So kind of you to serve yourself up on a silver platter! Are you ready to meet God?”
“Enough violence, Asher,” Smog insisted, turning around and shaking his head. “You win. I can’t beat you, not when you’re like this.”
Asher blinked in surprise, and found himself lowering his arm to his side. Esther fed him the colour red, the colour of anger, but he tried to suppress her thoughts and push her aside. He’d won? “No tricks?” he asked, tilting his head and frowning in suspicion.