by D M Gilmore
“No tricks, Asher,” Smog said, raising his hands to show that he was in fact unarmed. “You’ve undone a lot of hard work today, my boy. You’ve killed so many of my men, and nothing I’ve sent at you even slows you down. Superior numbers, superior firepower, none of it works. You’re a terror in your own right, Asher,” he continued, pacing back and forth on the rooftop, never taking his eyes off the dark grey drake. “I was wrong about you before, I was wrong to think I could ever control you, make you mine, make you a member of my gang. I see that now. Every attempt to recruit you, to put you in my debt, all of it has been a grave mistake. Hell, let’s add threatening Ruth to the long list of errors I’ve made in our strenuous relationship. If this is what you’ll do to protect your brother, I don’t want to think about what you’d do if he ever died.”
At the mention of Ruth’s death, Asher’s fists clenched and Esther bared her fangs. Both dragon and drake imagined Ruth’s twisted body, shot full of holes and bleeding out on the floor, and the image began to ricochet between their minds, building up the anger and fury between them. As one, the drake and dragon pair raised their voices and roared at the enemy who would dare to threaten them in such a way.
How dare he lay a finger on what is ours, the thought began. How dare he think to touch what belongs to us! Our brother! Ours to protect! Ours to kill!
Before Asher could truly interpret what the thought meant, he had raised his hands and launched a pair of silver darts. Smog barely reacted in time, raising his wrist in surprise and conjuring a familiar mana shield. The darts were absorbed into the pulsing mana, but the impact forced Smog back a few steps, towards the edge of the roof.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Smog roared, not lowering his shield. “I surrender, you idiot! I surrender!”
“Where is Ruth?” Asher roared, distorted as it was spoken through two mouths, echoed by a high pitched, female voice. Esther’s lips moved in time with Asher’s, echoing everything he said. “Where is Ruth?”
“He’s in the cell block!” Smog insisted, selecting a spell in his opposite hand. “He hasn’t been harmed since the fight at the club! Hell, Sangita played the saint and was giving him medical attention earlier, so just calm down and we can talk like—”
Asher once again blasted Smog’s shield with a pair of spells, pushing him back another foot. His vision was tinted with red, but it wasn’t like when Esther was feeding him colours. He could feel the blood rushing through his head, the pounding of his heart, the shaking of his vision as he tried to focus on Smog, but still the image of Ruth’s lifeless body rocketed into his mind and bounced around his skull, now with a location rather than a generic ditch. Ruth, lying dead in a prison cell, slumped against the bars as he begged for his life. The image caused a new flare of anger to swell as it was passed from drake to dragon, Esther’s own fury joining in the boiling pot that was their shared emotion. His scales bristled in fury, and a deep, rumbling, growl began to form in his chest.
At the back of his mind, Asher knew this couldn’t be right, but he was powerless to stop it. Smog looked at him, his eyes quivering as Asher continued to advance, his eyes hollow of any emotion save the burning rage that was filling every fibre of his being.
Then, all at once, he released it.
A force blast struck Smog’s shield and pushed him back another few steps. The crimson drake grunted in pain as he tried to maintain his shield, holding up his opposite hand as it began to crackle with orange energy. “If you won’t listen to reason, I’ll have to kill you!” Smog shouted, but his voice fell on deaf ears. Asher’s mind was ringing with empty noises as his focus narrowed and he glared daggers through Smog’s form, pushing him with another force blast. Smog grunted again and held his palm outward towards Asher, dropping his shield so that the spell could pass through.
A sparkling beam of red and orange mana thicker than both of Smog’s arms combined connected with Esther’s shield, and Asher was suddenly filled with a new sensation. A prickling cold surged through his body, and he could feel Esther falter under the pressure of the beam. The sustained fire was too much of a drain on her mana, and for a moment she faltered and dropped the shield.
A moment was all Smog needed. As the beam of energy connected with Asher, he expected it to kill him in one blow, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. The crimson drake reached out with his other hand and weaved a second spell through the air, the dense mana crackling around Asher’s staggered form, forming into the shape of glowing red chains that wrapped around his body, and pinned his limbs to his sides. Rendered off-balance by the chains, Asher was knocked to the ground by the force of the beam, a dense hole burned in his shirt.
Although he had anticipated the possibility, Smog was still surprised to find that his spell hadn’t obliterated Asher. Nothing should have been able to survive that kind of blast, yet the most Asher did was groan in slight pain.
Smog panted heavily, his arm shaking from the strain of sustaining such a powerful spell. The sleeve of his jacket had been singed, and the watch he had used to cast it crumbled off his wrist, burned away to slag. With a wince, he reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved his trusty manabolt pistol, and pulled the slider. The gun hummed to life, the exhaust vents on the side glowing with energy.
Asher squirmed on the ground, desperately trying to break the chains. He knew this spell, it was an improved version of a standard issue detention spell, the magical equivalent of handcuffs or lassos. He’d written this version to be more durable, more difficult to break than the standard issue. Were he in a right state of mind, he may have regretted it, too, but with the boiling rage pulsing behind his eyes, there was no space for something as useless as regret.
Smog sighed as he stalked over, shaking his head slowly as he aimed the gun at the writhing form of the drake at his feet. “Dammit, Asher,” he mumbled, pinching his nose in frustration, “don’t make me kill you, kid. I really don’t want to kill you. I need your dragon alive, and for that, I need you alive. Come on, kid, work with me here.”
“Fuck you!” Asher roared, as Esther began to bite into the chains. Her tiny teeth proved to be enough of a match for the crimson energy, and the chains disintegrated into sparks of mana.
Smog scoffed and aimed his pistol at Asher’s chest. “How do you want this, Asher?”
“With you dead,” he hissed back, pushing himself into a sitting position.
“Very well,” Smog sighed, quickly pulling the trigger three times on the pistol.
To Asher’s own surprise, Esther did not again raise the shield, but rather allowed the bolts of mana to strike his chest. For an instant, he felt a sharp burning pain fill him, only to disappear a moment later.
“What?” Smog asked, frowning in confusion as he looked from the pistol in his hand to the place on Asher’s chest where he should have been covered in holes. Narrowing his eyes, he fired a few more shots. As before, Esther didn’t defend, but this time Smog could see why. The instant the manabolts collided with Asher’s chest, the energy dispersed into a thin layer over his skin where it pulsed and glowed before finally being absorbed into the tiny dragon on Asher’s shoulder. “What the fuck?” Smog whispered, taking a step back in shock as the grey drake slowly climbed back to his feet. He fired a few more shots, and that slowed Asher down a bit as the energy surged around him like a second skin, before the dragon drank it all up.
Smog called up a different spell in his other hand, and a familiar bolt of silver mana flew through the air, colliding with Asher’s chest. Like the other shots before, it was simply dispersed before being absorbed by Esther.
“What the fuck?” Smog said again, his voice low and his eyes shaking. “What are you?”
Asher looked down at his chest, vaguely aware that he should have been feeling pain, and yet felt none. “You cannot hurt us.” When he spoke, his voice echoed through his dragon, “You will never hurt us again. You will never hurt what is ours ever again.”
“Fuck,” Duncan hi
ssed, tossing his useless gun aside as he backed away a few steps. In a desperate attempt to regain some ground, he once again swapped spells on his available casting hand, and once more unleashed the beam of red and orange energy upon Asher.
Asher chuckled, his voice distorted and hazy, as he held out his hand, palm forward, as if to demand the beam stop. To Smog’s surprise, the beam did. Asher caught the spell in his bare hand, Esther dispersing and absorbing the mana so fast it was like she was drinking the energy within. All too quickly, the spell ended, and Smog’s other watch crumbled off his wrist, turned to slag.
“You cannot hurt us,” Asher reiterated, this time with an air of finality. He stood up straight, his jaw jutting forward, his lips pulled back into a sneer, and he hissed into the wind. “You are ours to kill. Ours to slay. Ours to devour.”
Smog could only watch as the dragon and drake licked their lips in anticipation. His watches were gone, destroyed by the very spell he had expected would kill Asher in one shot. His gun lay cast aside, still faintly glowing with energy. Maybe he could dive for it, but what good would it do? It used mana rather than bullets, the very energy that Esther was drinking like water.
For the first time since he had been left penniless on the streets of Toronto, Smog felt truly helpless.
“Oh, fuck.”
Chapter 25
Asher advanced like a blur, the ambient mana of the flux shifting and swirling around him into a colourful twister of energy as he dashed forward at speeds unlike anything Smog had ever experienced. He barely had a chance to dodge, before Asher’s fist came slamming through the air. Smog fell to the side and watched in awe as the grey drake’s bare hand punched a hole in the rooftop, blasting through it like it was nothing.
“Shit!” Duncan cried, rolling back onto his feet and trying to put some distance between himself and the mad drake that was out for his blood. He didn’t even make it three feet before Asher had picked him up by his hand-tailored suit jacket, lifting him several feet in the air.
“Run away, little prey,” Asher and Esther hissed in unison, their voices echoing through the distorted mana flux, like sound travelling through water, “We want to enjoy the thrill of the hunt.”
The next thing Smog knew, he was flying through the air, tossed around like a child’s toy. He cried out in pain as he collided with the raised doorway, bending the rusty steel door as he fell to the ground. Asher slowly stalked towards him, light warping and bending around him, as if it was being pushed away. He was cloaked in shadow, wreathed in a swirling miasma of darkness and mana, until all that could be seen were four pinpricks of yellow light.
Smog shuffled along the ground, crawling on his hands and knees as he tried to pull himself back up. A tendril of darkness shot out from the swirling mana that surrounded Asher and wrapped around his arm, tugging it with a sharp pop, and Smog screamed in pain as he was lifted into the air and dropped to the ground at the feet of his assailants. He landed on his feet, to his own surprise, and stared into the burning gaze of Asher and Esther.
“Run!” they roared in unison, and Smog scrambled backwards as more tendrils of darkness reached out to grab him.
“Shit!” He screamed, turning tail and running for the exit. The door had been knocked off its hinges when he had impacted against it. If he could make it down the stairs, maybe he could find some of his men! Maybe they could protect him, or at least buy him some time to escape.
All of a sudden, another tendril of darkness wrapped itself around his waist, and Smog was flying through the air, pulled by magic that Asher commanded. Once again, he landed at the feet of the twister of mana, felt the wind tear into his skin like daggers. The tendrils left him on his knees, bowing before the glow within the shadows.
Asher and Esther’s eyes stared down at Smog with a combination of disgust and distaste, yet hunger and rage were still present on their faces. Asher’s mouth was twisted into an unnatural snarl, with his tongue lolling out the side as he panted and sniffed the air. Esther’s face was passive, save for her open mouth, sustaining the spell that created the miasma of mana. Slowly, they stepped forward, until Smog too was enveloped in the twisting storm of energy. Within it, the darkness lessened; the light and mana coalesced, creating an aura that couldn’t be pierced from the outside but allowed sight from the inside.
“Please,” Smog begged, wincing in pain as he tried to push himself back onto his feet, yet every attempt to move only sent waves of pain shooting up through his arm. He risked a glance down, and yelped in fear as he saw his arm was dangling uselessly at his side, dislocated at the shoulder socket. All at once, the pain of the wound surged through his entire body, and he began to scream as the emotions overtook him. “I surrender! Please! Don’t kill me!” He begged, struggling to pull himself to his feet.
Asher looked at the kneeling Smog and scoffed, his mind reeling with the image of Smog’s corpse joining Ruth’s. It did not bring him comfort, only fueled his pain even more. “Prey cannot be allowed to die so quickly,” he said, echoed by his dragon, “prey must suffer. Prey will die when we choose.”
Smog let out a pained laugh, more out of fear than actual humour, as he gazed up at Asher in utter terror. Smog’s mane of rich black hair whipped around his head, caught in the vortex of mana and wind created by Esther’s magic. The power was enough to cause the exposed scales on his hands and face to begin to flake off, tearing away at him bit by precious bit. The pain was unbearable, and he screamed in agony, placing his one good hand to his cheek in a vain attempt to protect his face.
For a moment, Asher’s vision blurred, and then it was suddenly filled with familiar, iridescent colours. He knew these colours, remembered them as being mana, but his mind was too preoccupied to marvel at the swirling rainbow that surrounded him. Instead he was focused on the glowing red spot, centred on Smog. It dangled around the crimson drake’s neck, pressed against his skin, filling him with the glowing red energy. His draquartz. Without hesitation, Asher reached down and ripped the golden chain off Smog’s neck, taking with it a blood red crystal.
Smog’s body shimmered and glowed as it shifted back to human form, his tail and horns shrinking away to nothing, his snout receding into a human nose, his claws dulling into human nails. When the glow faded, where once was a proud red drake, there was now a frail human, in clothes far too large for his slender body.
“No!” Smog cried, his dark brown eyes widening in fear. “Give that back! Give it back to me!!” He tried to rise to his feet, but a tendril of mana shot out from the storm and pushed him back to the ground.
“You are prey,” Asher reminded him, dangling the necklace in front of his face in one hand, and grabbing him by the head with the other, “prey does not need this. This is for predators.”
“No,” Duncan whimpered, wincing as the drake’s claws raked across his thin, human scalp, “let me go! I’m just as much a drake as you!”
“No,” Asher grinned, as he tossed the necklace over the side of the rooftop.
Smog screamed as he watched his draquartz, his protection, his very identity, tumble over the side of the rooftop, the swirling mana flux catching it and carrying it off into the distance. Even if he survived this encounter, Duncan knew his old draquartz was lost. He was only drawn back to Asher as he heard the sound of the drake and dragon laughing within the howling mana wind.
“You’re not a drake,” Asher whispered, “you’re not even human.”
Smog’s eyes widened in shock as those words hit his ears. Not a drake. Not even human. Suddenly, tendrils of mana wrapped around his neck and arms, straightening his back, pulling his hands out to his sides. He screamed as the tendrils tugged on his dislocated arm, tears filling his eyes. He felt a tingling sensation fill his body, and he risked a glance at his hands. The jacket, tailored for a drake but far too large for his human body, fell down his back, exposing the too large white dress shirt beneath them. Through the pale shirt, he could see his veins glowing a faint blue. It started in his h
ands and slowly began to climb up his outstretched arms. All at once, the swirling mana shifted, concentrating on Smog instead of on Asher.
“What is this?!” He cried, trying again to rise to his feet. As before, the tendrils held him down, and the storm of mana once again grew stronger and louder. The whistling wind within the roil turned into a full-on roar, ripping his voice from his throat as he tried to shout at the drake holding him down. “What are you doing to me?!”
“Punishment,” Asher and Esther said in unison, their combined voices seemingly unaffected by the warping flux. The drake released his grip on the human’s head, and took a steady step back. “You want dragon mana? We will give you dragon mana.”
Duncan screamed in pain as the glow beneath his skin suddenly brightened, the tingling sensation turned into a full-on burn. He craned his neck to look at his uninjured hand, and watched as the definition in his flesh began to fade, his musculature taking on a consistency more akin to honey. His scream raised in volume as he watched his hand melt down his arm, exposing the twisting and cracking bones beneath, as the mana reshaped the limb into something different, something alien. Melting flesh splashed onto the ground below, while the exposed bone split down the middle, as though it was forming into two new arms. All of a sudden, the arm bifurcated, turning into a pair of writhing, bony spikes.
Duncan’s scream grew louder, as his dislocated arm lengthened and tapered, turning into a fleshy tentacle. At first it was stiff, but slowly, as the bones within began to dissolve, it became more fluid, until finally, it was more like the appendage of some deep sea creature than any known mammal. “Please! Anything but this!” His face began to droop as it lost its shape, his spine dissolving within his body as the tendrils of mana continued to hold him up. His words came out like a gurgle as his throat and vocal cords liquified.