Heresy of Dragons

by Erik Reid

  The air hung heavy here, all the smoke rising up the open stairwell from the lower levels and pooling against the ceiling. We’d pass out from inhaling those noxious gases before long.

  “Stand back,” I said. I lifted my foot and stomped it against the face of Dani’s door, splitting the door from the frame and busting it inward on its hinges.

  A tremendous burst of heat and smoke rushed toward us. It launched our throats into involuntary choking, the taste of charred wood clinging to our lips, our tongues, our lungs. The rear wall was already burning, a row of orange flames near the ceiling gradually searching toward the floor.

  “Careful,” I said, holding a hand out to stop Dani from charging inside. “The floors may not be stable.”

  “I’ll go then,” she said. “Just me, so we don’t put too much pressure on it.”

  She covered her face and stepped forward, tapping her boot against the floor to test it out before each full step.

  Dani’s rented room was little more than a closet with a stove in the corner. Despite the claustrophobic walls and low ceiling, she had placed a tiny second bed next to her own, likely in anticipation of bringing home a given far younger and smaller than Clara.

  Dani’s possessions were sparse, but they were neat. Everything was placed carefully, and a vase of flowers on a small kitchen table added a splash of cheer to an otherwise dreary room.

  A single window looked onto the street below, and it was through that opening that a burning chunk of roofing emerged, sliding down the sloped top of this building and falling in one fiery piece before our eyes. It smashed audibly against the ground while Dani made her way toward a kitchen drawer.

  “Do you hear that?” I asked. Through the crackling of flames and the occasional crash of a wooden beam falling through the weakened floor below it, a piercing sound rose in a high pitch and made room for itself amidst the surrounding cacophony.

  “Howling,” Clara said.

  “There must be bloodhounds at the front gate by now,” I said.

  “Maybe the guards will finally believe the danger,” Clara said.

  A rumble overhead drew my attention to a ceiling beam that started shifting out of place. The blackened wood had a crack down the center that grew by the moment.

  “Dani!” I yelled.

  “I haven’t found them yet,” she said, spinning frantically, her eyes darting from one place in the room to the next. “I had them last night before bed, reviewing ahead of my visit to Momma Jumbo, preparing an ingredient list so I could visit the market…” She darted toward a nightstand.

  The beam shifted again, slipping from its position as the shifting weight of the deteriorating roof above it stretched the beam’s support to its limit.

  “Dani!” I yelled again. She yanked open a drawer and thrust her hands into it.

  I couldn’t let her sacrifice herself for her recipes. I barged into the room, following the steps I saw Dani test on her short path to the room’s far edge, and looped an arm around her waist.

  “What are you—”

  That’s all she got out. I spun with my arm around her, whisking her off the floor and moving her away from the short nightstand. A four-foot chunk of ceiling beam crashed down onto that very spot, knocking a hole in the floor that looked onto a burning room directly below us. More smoke burst upward now, like a volcano on the verge of erupting.

  “Time’s up,” I said. “Go, go, go!”

  Clara stepped aside as Dani and I fled the room, shielding our heads with our hands and blocking errant chunks of charred construction that snowed down on us. The floor had caught fire now too. The room’s swelter was oppressive.

  My first instinct was to leap down each flight and avoid the time it would take to descend step by step by step. We couldn’t afford to put a hole through our only escape route though, so we took the stairs as quickly as we could without becoming reckless.

  Already the air was cooler and cleaner as we reached the lower levels. Other residents poured out of the building alongside us, squeezing through the front doorway with armfuls of their meager possessions and disappearing down the roads that formed a narrow labyrinth in the city’s south end.

  Dani, Clara, and I ran to the opposite side of the street and rested against a building that, so far, wasn’t burning.

  “You’ve been hurt,” Clara said.

  Dani looked over her shoulder and twisted her leg, tilting a long scratch toward us. It was dirty from soot, but glistening bright red from fresh blood.

  The kobold healer immediately got to work, crouching low and placing her hands against Dani’s calf. A few yards behind her, a draykin man had been leaning against a wall. He slid to the side, riding the wall slowly until he landed against the ground. His face was blackened with smoke and his body was inert with exhaustion.

  As Clara concentrated, Dani watched her former home fall apart. Her eyes glistened with nascent tears. She didn’t even flinch when the top half of the building collapsed in on itself, releasing a cloud of smoke in one big burst that was accented with a shower of sparks.

  In just the span of a single day, this woman had gone from hopeful entrepreneur to a homeless refugee.

  I hugged her. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing at first, but my arms wrapped around her and I pulled her head against my shoulder. She looked up at me and smiled. A tear rolled down her cheek, pulling dry cinders into a wet streak that ran toward her chin before that single tear dropped from her jaw.

  She unfurled her fingers. A fistful of beige parchments sat there, folded up into small squares.

  “Your recipes?” I asked.

  “My recipes,” she said.

  “Yes!” I yelled. With one arm still holding her against me, I raised the other hand toward her. She backed away, suddenly alarmed.

  “Oh,” I said. “This is a high five. You smack my hand with your hand and… I guess it’s a human thing.” She glanced at my hand and puzzled at it. “Well don’t leave me hanging!”

  Dani laughed and gave me what was, for her, a high four.

  “Why do humans do this?” she asked.

  “Humans love touching their hands against other people’s hands,” I said. “We start young with patty-cake, graduate to thumb wrestling, hand shaking, including that whole ‘peace be with you’ thing in church. I think, as a species, we just love hands.”

  “Put your hands on your heads!” yelled a woman down the block. Dani, Clara, and I all looked in that direction. The woman who yelled was a guard, but her armor was no simple leather getup. She wore a platemail chest piece that held large breasts tight within capacious, rounded metal cups. Only the shortest stretch of cleavage was visible. The rest of her was pinned beneath unforgiving metal.

  She wore a platemail skirt to match, stretching to an inch above her knees, and boots that looked like leather with metal bands set within them. It was a severe-looking outfit, befitting the stern expression on her face and the knob of golden-yellow hair that sat in a bun atop her head.

  In fact, everything about her was golden. Her peachy skin had the warm glow of a woman kissed by the sun; the golden scales on her tail glinted faintly as they caught the light at different angles; her wings were a darker color, like rich artisanal honey.

  “Is she talking to us?” I asked.

  “I think so,” Dani replied, raising her hands and still gripping her recipes. “That’s Gretna, the captain of the guard.”

  As the armored woman ran, the narrow metal strips that formed a protective wreath around her thighs chimed against each other. I expected to see some kind of cloth beneath it, like a tunic or a dress, but as far as I could see it was just pale skin with golden undertones and then shadow.

  A handful of other guards trailed behind her, all wearing the simple uniform of the men we met at the city’s front gate. Clara and I touched our hands to our heads, matching Dani’s pose.

  “We have reports of arsonists fleeing buildings as they burn,” the woman said, jogging to a s
top in front of us. Her volume stayed loud, even though she stood only a foot away now. “Non-draykin, odd clothing, hair shaggy and unkempt. You fit the profile.”

  I ran a hand through my mussed-up hair. It did feel pretty unkempt. “A lack of pomade does not a criminal make,” I said.

  “There’s also this damning bit of evidence,” she said, snatching my hand from off my head and holding it high for the other guards behind her to see. “We almost didn’t believe the witnesses, but here we have it. Five fingers.”

  “The people responsible for this were five-fingered?” Dani asked.

  “State your name, draykin,” the armored woman said.

  “Daniana Weyforth,” she said. “I live… there.” She gestured toward the demolished building behind us.

  “We’re Kyle and Clara,” I said. “We had nothing to do with this.”

  As we spoke, I noticed that some of the draykin resting against nearby buildings lay motionless despite the appearance of the guards and the obvious danger of staying put. There must have been a dozen of them, leaning against walls with their mouths open and their heads titled at uncomfortable angles, or heaping themselves into haphazard piles of limbs where they’d only force other people to step over them or around them.

  “We’ll let the queen decide who’s responsible here,” Gretna said with her voice booming just as loudly up close. “Guards, arrest all three of them for now.”

  “This won’t stop the fires,” Dani said. “We’re not behind this. Please, go find the people who are!”

  Guards pulled our hands behind our backs. They cinched a tight grip around our crossed wrists and held their swords out in their free hands. As they wrestled and jostled my body, I caught a glimpse of a prone draykin woman, her hair pulled to one side and revealing a patch of skin at the base of her neck. Two puncture holes pocked that skin, with fresh blood dripping down toward her shoulder.

  Of course. They hadn’t just arrived at the front gate. They were inside all along.

  “I know who’s responsible for this!” I yelled.

  “You are,” Gretna said.

  “Or,” I said, “new theory. Monsters. What do you think?”

  “I think this is the theory of a desperate criminal,” the captain of the guard replied.

  “And I think you won’t risk ignoring the evidence that I uniquely possess,” I said.

  Gretna stopped walking and turned around to face me. When she didn’t speak, I took it as my cue to explain.

  “In my pant pocket,” I said. “You’ll find the teeth of a monster we already vanquished.”

  “Vanquished?” Dani asked.

  “When the hell else do I get to use a word like that?”

  Gretna stepped closer, locking her eyes on mine while her dark honey wings spread wide behind her in a show of force. “If this is a ruse,” she said.

  “You don’t seem like the sense-of-humor type,” I said. “So no, I’m not trying to prank you.”

  Her hand slipped into my pants, long fingers sliding down the thin cloth lining of my pocket until they reached the bottom. She scooped out the two incisors I had beaten loose from a now-dead bloodhound’s ugly face, as well as the fortuneteller’s card.

  “What’s this?” she asked, holding up the small rectangular image of Thrillville.

  “My business card,” I said. “I’m a rollercoaster tycoon. Just put it back where you found it. It’s the teeth you need to see.”

  “These belong to—” Gretna said.

  “I’ve been calling them—” I started.

  “Bloodhounds,” we said at once.

  “I’ve studied these creatures before,” she said. “In the Directory of Threats to the Kingdom, Known and Imagined, Second Edition. Bloodhounds are a creature of nightmare and myth, not of flesh and bone.”

  “These teeth ain’t no fairy tale,” I said. “Did your little bestiary book say how many fingers they have?”

  “Yes,” Gretna said. “Five. Like you, actually.”

  “Not like me,” I said. “I’m human. I’m not made for piercing skin and slurping blood. See?” I smiled wide, showing off my perfectly straight teeth. Thank you, retainer, even though I hated you in high school.

  Gretna put her hands on my face and pushed my upper lip higher, inspecting my teeth and gums.

  “No,” she said. “You couldn’t hurt a stale sandwich with these chiclets.” She turned back and spoke to her team, raising the volume on her already-booming voice. “Take a closer look at the people lying in the street.”

  Gretna nodded to her guards and sent them off toward various of the city’s inert draykin bodies. For the moment, they left us without our hands bound and with not a single sword blade pointed at our vulnerable bits. We could have made a break for it, which Gretna knew. This was part of her assessment of us as suspects.

  The guilty run.

  The guards moved from body to body, tilting their heads and exposing double-fang wounds everywhere they looked. They each tested for a pulse, then looked back at their leader and shook their heads.

  When Clara noticed the trails of blood leaking from each deep puncture, her eyes went wide. “I could try to help them,” she said.

  “Nothing to help with,” Gretna said. “They’re dead.”

  “These fires are a distraction,” I said. “They’re chasing people into the streets and using the city’s panic as cover while they drain their blood.”

  “Those beasts are out there,” Dani said, “and they’re strong. We fought two of them off just beyond the city walls. If they’re already inside…”

  “Open the gates,” Gretna said to the guard nearest her. “Let every citizen inside and tell them to take up arms and defend the castle. We’re under attack.”

  “So you believe us?” I asked.

  “I believe that I will take every precaution,” she replied. “I also believe the queen may order you killed just to prove she’s taking some kind of action, which is her prerogative. Come on.”

  CHAPTER 9

  With the city’s fire smoldering in some corners and downright raging in others, we marched toward the entrance to Varrowsgard’s central fortress. A pair of double doors two stories tall were carved from solid planks of rich red wood, each one crowded with hand-carved designs. Our armored guide pushed those doors open with both hands and marched onward without looking back, her golden-scaled tail swishing to each side behind her.

  The inside of the building was dark. Dense stone columns rose toward cathedral ceilings that swallowed the light of the scant torch pits lining a central aisle to the fortress’s rear. A long carpet, dark with years’ worth of dirt from the soles of guards’ boots, led to a few stone steps and an ornate golden throne surrounded by brighter fires.

  These torch pits were large and crackling, flanking the draykin queen that sat in their midst. Her hair was a dark, carnelian red held back by a thin golden crown that ringed her head.

  Her skin was a canvas for odd markings. Thin lines of red ink decorated her arms up to her shoulder, then disappeared under the narrow straps of a dress that ran the length of her body. The ink designs continued up her neck and toward her pointed ears.

  The flickering lights surrounding her cast her face in shifting shadows, making the cut of her jaw and the hollows of her eyes more menacing than they needed to be. She sat motionless on her throne as we traversed the long hallway toward her. That throne, tall as it was, sat on top of a two-foot disc of solid stone. She was above us, and she wanted us to know it.

  When the draykin guards slammed the double doors closed behind us, the room took on a palpable silence. The tumult of fire and riots cut off abruptly, leaving only the gentle whisper of the room’s torches.

  “Have you found the menace laying waste to our city?” the queen asked. Her voice was low and it echoed through the chamber.

  Her ruby eyes watched us approach, the vertical pupils within open wide in this low light. As we neared, I realized that her hands rested not in
her lap, but on a golden dome that lay between her legs. Her hands swirled over that item delicately as she sat there.

  “I have a man here with five-fingers, claiming to be a ‘human.’ ” Gretna said. “He carried the teeth of a bloodhound and claims to have vanquished one with his own hands. He believes they attack the city as we speak.”

  “Vanquished?” the queen asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am Kyle the Vanquisher.” I arched my back and put my hands on my hips, tilting my chin toward the ceiling. I wanted this title to stick, so I tried to look heroic.

  The queen leaned forward, peering down at me from her high throne. When her legs shifted slightly I realized the item between them was an egg. A golden egg, the size of a large watermelon.

  “The human race is one of towering height and rippling strength,” she said. “Their eyes burn with the light of a thousand suns and their voices sing with the glory of their mighty deeds.”

  “I mean, on a good day, sure…” I said.

  “Come closer,” the queen said.

  I walked to the edge of the stone disc that propped up her throne. Her eyes glinted red as the torch pits around her played their light across her ruby irises.

  “Tell me, what secret purpose do the bloodhounds have behind their invasion?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t you?” she asked.

  “Don’t I,” I said. “Definitely don’t I.”

  “And yet you appear in our city, the day of their attack, claiming to belong to a race that hasn’t walked upon Silura in ages.”

  “Wait,” Dani said. “Humans are a real thing?”

  “Indeed,” the queen said. Her hands continued to spiral over the golden egg pinched tight between her thighs. “At the outset of time, when the Goddess first descended from the heavens—”

  “Point of order,” I said. “The city is burning, and bloodhounds are like, eating everyone. Just saying, we might want to speed up story time.”

  “You’d like the short version,” the queen said with a sigh. “Everyone always wants the short version. Very well.