Heresy of Dragons

by Erik Reid

  “I want to watch you crumble that monster’s heart, Kyle,” she said. “Hard.” Then she kicked one last monster in the stomach and stepped toward us.

  “I wish Oscar ate pizza, like a normal cosmic glove,” I said, reaching down for the heart and crumbling it. Hard.

  Energy Reserves Up: 2.9%

  Suddenly, the ice underfoot rumbled and sank several inches deeper in one lurch.

  Dani reached her arms around Kaylee and pulled her close, turning the diagonal shelf of glacial ice into a private platform destined to descend toward the demon’s lair.

  The sound of the ice grating against the rock finally attracted A’zarkin’s personal attention. He glanced up at us, his shape distorted by the dense ice we watched him through.

  That wouldn’t last long.

  The cracks I had laid within the ice finally started to snake outward, splitting into a seam down the ice shard’s center that split off into a few other cracks deep enough to destroy the ice’s ability to hold us up. It burst into a handful of smaller shelves, all tumbling at once through the round hole that formed the ceiling entry for A’zarkin’s cavernous mountaintop lair.

  One hunk of ice crashed beside the central pit of demonfire and rolled toward the cavern’s outer edge. Other pieces burst into diamond dust against the icy floor, while the largest piece still supported me beneath it. When I hit the bottom, I rolled off the shelf and onto the ground toward the chamber’s wall.

  Dani held Kaylee tight and glided down on her draykin wings, setting down beside me. Kaylee’s face was still red and angry, but she breathed deeply and intentionally. For now.

  “A human hero,” A’zarkin said, turning to face me with the draykin egg in his hands. “And less equipped than the last one who failed. I would shiver in my boots if I weren’t a creature of unspeakable cold.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I scanned my surroundings frantically, hoping to get my bearings. The floor was ice, dense and tinged with blue the way glaciers appear in travel brochures. The walls were the same. A’zarkin’s hideout was an ice palace, hollowed from the heart of the glacier that had trapped him so long ago.

  Waypoint Marker Set

  Set Waypoint Marker Name?

  A soft pillar of blue light flashed into my vision before me, then receded. At this distance, the column of glowing blue reduced to an illuminated circle on the ground, an unobtrusive speck that blended into the ice and wouldn’t provide a constant distraction.

  A’zarkin’s Abode, I thought, and good thinking. I was grateful Oscar had the foresight to add a waypoint when I wouldn’t have given map markers a passing thought. My focus was trained on the big blue demon holding a golden draykin egg against his chest.

  A’zarkin stood beside a pit of demonfire at the very center of this ice-carved chamber. Black flames flickered without sound, or heat, or the interplay between light and shadow.

  The ice itself carried a faint glow, channeling the same electric blue as A’zarkin’s energy. A ball of that sizzling ice magic hovered between the long, dark horns that curled inward atop the demon’s bald head.

  On the other side of that fire pit, reclining in a chair carved from solid ice against the chamber’s far edge, was another man with blue skin. He was young, with long, stringy black hair framing a gaunt face that was equally long. Thin lips stretched across his face in an impassive line that curled down at the corners.

  This guy was wan, and I’ve never used the word ‘wan’ before, so that’s saying something. He was like a skinnier version of Marilyn Manson. His large eyes with deep bags beneath them stared at me as I caught sight of the person kneeling on the ice beside his oversized seat.

  Her cheeks were slicked with some kind of gray paint, making her look undead, while her plump lips were slathered in something blue. She rested on her knees against the chamber’s ice floor, shivering and rubbing her hands up and down her exposed upper arms. Shackles around her wrists jangled with every effort.

  “Jasmine Contreras,” I said. “Get away from him.”

  “She has pledged her devotion to me,” the gaunt man said, sitting back down into his ice seat. “After some initial disagreeableness.”

  He reached toward her and rested his palm on her head. She glanced at him and forced a smile, but quickly looked away.

  “I am not surprised you know the other human brought here by the heresy node,” A’zarkin said, still clutching the golden egg. “The witches did well to send us a viable match for reproduction, even if they did include you in the bargain.

  “You will, however, refrain from speaking to my son’s womb.”

  “Oh, I get it now,” I said, still gaging my surroundings. Twenty or so bloodhounds stood spaced out around the chamber, snarling and rattling their lungs with loud breaths, leaning back on tensed hind legs like attack dogs waiting for their owner’s command.

  “Prince Pakson has lady parts,” I continued, “but they’re inside Jasmine.”

  “She will bear a litter of demon heirs on my son’s behalf.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That tracks.”

  “I’m waiting, father,” Pakson said. “We have ceremonies to complete before my coronation.”

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t care about your little demon party. I’m here for the egg.”

  “No,” A’zarkin said. “You’re here to deliver the glove that will allow my son to rule Silura with unquestionable power. The hibernation forced on my kind by the draykin and their human champion—”

  “Father!” Pakson yelled. His voice was an entitled whine. “Get on with it.”

  A’zarkin sighed. “Right away, my son. Bloodhounds!”

  Dani, Kaylee, and I braced for battle as a handful of the nearest bloodhounds crouched into a running stance.

  Meanwhile, A’zarkin placed the golden egg in the center of the demonfire that raged in the hollow pit in the glacier’s center. The black flames flashed a golden hue for just a moment, while the perfect surface of the egg began to darken. A thin black line snaked upward from the shell’s base, as if that black magic had started to crack the egg apart.

  With bloodhounds charging us on either side, and A’zarkin shielding the egg with his body, there was no direct route to rescue the unhatched draykin princess from those vile flames. I prepared to hold my ground against a bloodhound, then tackle the demon and save the day.

  The crumbling of ice overhead diverted their attention, and ours. A woman leapt from the rim of ice and rock that ringed the chamber’s broken ceiling. Her form was a pale carnation blur, swinging toward us on a rope held against the ice by a single pickax, its blade buried deep.

  Clara released her grasp on that cord and landed gracefully on one knee. She stared forward at A’zarkin. “The Goddess will not allow you to destroy what she so lovingly creates,” she said. “I will end an existence you probably consider ‘life.’ I carry her holy light inside my mind.”

  “The kobold slave girl,” A’zarkin said. “You could have spared yourself, but then again, a good dog dies with its owner.” He whistled at a high pitch, sending two of his nearest bloodhounds into an instant attack.

  They charged at Clara, but she didn’t take her gaze off A’zarkin. His bright blue eyes shifted from Clara, to us, and back to Clara again while the black lines that snaked up the egg’s side thickened and branched apart, sending new offshoots of pestilent magic to enwrap the golden shell.

  “Look out!” Dani yelled. She took a step forward with her sword in hand to intercept one of the two bloodhound attackers, but I reached out to stop her.

  Clara spoke to us over her shoulder without tearing her eyes off A’zarkin. “Do not worry for me. The Goddess has prepared me for this moment since birth.”

  “Go get him,” I said.

  “You’re okay with this?” Dani asked. Her question wasn’t an accusation. She was apprehensive, and worried, but also genuinely curious.

  “Everyone deserves a shot at realizing their full potential,” I said,
“whatever they think that potential is. She needs to do this, and we need to let her, but we’re ready to jump in if she can’t pull this off.”

  “Okay,” Dani said, lowering her sword. “I just don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Me neither.”

  The bloodhounds hesitated to approach Clara, as if they sensed instinctually that she wielded a power they dare not touch.

  The first bloodhound tried to swipe its claws at Clara, but she caught it by the wrist. She gripped hard, sinking her fingers into the creature’s mangy fur and the gray skin beneath, melting its demonspawn flesh. The putrid stench of a long-rotten corpse filled the chamber, wafting with the sulfurous smoke that escaped the gaping hole in the chamber’s ceiling.

  The monster’s hand fell from its liquefied wrist and flopped to the floor while the bloodhound howled and fell to its knees. The stump of its amputated arm leaked the thick, black sludge of its rotten blood.

  A soft pink light gathered in Clara’s eyes and her skin began to glow. She approached the kneeling bloodhound and placed her hands on its head. Dani covered Kaylee’s eyes and then looked away. I watched on as the monster’s face dripped from its skull.

  The second bloodhound stopped short, recoiling from Clara’s presence as her carnation pink aura grew bolder.

  She stepped toward it. The creature whimpered and backed away.

  “Hypocrite,” A’zarkin said. “The Goddess is a force of destruction, just as I am. You treat my children as if they don’t deserve the air we breathe. This is war, little girl, and there is no moral high ground for either side. Nor is there honor.”

  He reached forward and shot a bolt of blue lightning from his palm, sending a ripple of brilliance across the entire chamber from the way it reflected against the ice walls.

  She swatted that bolt of energy away. It ricocheted off her hand and splattered against the chamber’s wall, solidifying into a lump of fresh ice that glowed brighter than the rest. A’zarkin tossed more and more bolts of blue demon magic at her, each time forcing the orb of unstable lightning between his horns to shrink. She brushed them all aside, impervious to his evil energies.

  “Your children are an abomination,” Clara said. “They suck blood from the Goddess’s teat instead of the milk she offers. That is the wound I was meant to heal. I heal the Goddess’s life by ending yours.”

  “Do your worst,” A’zarkin said. He stood before the raging demonfire that ravaged Queen Zolocki’s egg, blocking Clara from saving Dani’s entire race. The demonspawn army drew closer, keeping their distance from Clara while encroaching on our collective space.

  The kobold girl, touched by the Goddess’s light, strode confidently toward the blue-skinned demon. His hands rested on his hips.

  Oscar’s Tactical Assist clicked on, forming a small white crosshairs on A’zarkin’s chest.

  “I know,” I said, sensing Oscar’s hunger for the power housed within the demon’s core. “She’ll melt the heart along with the rest of him but I don’t care. It’s the egg we’re here for.”

  The crosshairs vanished.

  Clara’s hands reached for A’zarkin’s face, and the demon made no move to stop her. Wisps of pink energy swirled around her body. The bloodhounds inched closer, their icy blue eyes reflecting the soft pink sheen of Clara’s light as she grew in luminescence.

  “Is this all the power you have?” A’zarkin asked. “Pathetic.”

  “I…” Clara said.

  “…am not…”

  I squinted against the brightness that engulfed her.

  “…pathetic!”

  The world went pink around us as Clara’s accumulated light burst outward in a ring that stretched from her body toward the icy walls of the glacial cavern. The light reflected off those surfaces and intensified, forcing my eyes to shut and warming my skin with the tingle of holy healing.

  The scratches I had carried with me from earlier battles and the ache in my muscles from every hard-won step forward — they all vanished. My body was as hale and whole as ever.

  I couldn’t see through the impossible brightness, but A’zarkin’s voice rang loud and clear.

  “My skin,” he said, suffering under the same soft, warm radiance that healed me. “My soul! Aaaaaah, hah!” His theatrical yell quickly turned to laughter.

  When the light went out in a blink a moment later, A’zarkin stood with one hand cinched around Clara’s throat. He lifted her off the floor, leaving her feet to dangle passively beneath her. She gripped at his hands, but they didn’t melt away or loosen beneath her touch.

  The aura of divine light that once bathed her skin had snuffed out entirely.

  Bloodhounds crowded around the demon with boils erupting all over their bodies. They howled and cringed, but their eyes still burned with hate and rage.

  “Do you see now, fragile girl?” A’zarkin asked. “You are a worthless fool, duped by a Goddess too jealous of her own power. She would never vest enough energy in a mortal woman to accomplish your delusional goals. You murder my demonspawn with your withering, pestilent touch, but I am a force much too strong for the feeble glow of the Goddess’s pawns. I am an immortal demon!”

  He threw her across the cavern. Dani dropped her sword and jumped, catching Clara and blasting backward from the force of the impact. She flapped her wings a few times to gain control midair, then landed with the kobold given.

  Clara buried her face in Dani’s chest and wept. “It’s okay,” Dani said. “I’m proud of you for trying.”

  Kaylee, meanwhile, began to growl. Her face was already dark red, and her temper was rising fast. “I will not lose control,” she said. “Because I want to remember his face when I rip it off his skull.”

  She sprang into a sprint and I joined her, crunching our boots across the cavern’s ice floor en route to the demon. The bloodhounds took their cue, clashing with us a few yards away from the golden egg whose surface had darkened considerably. Its base was all but black, and the rest of it didn’t fare much better. A dense web of cracking lines covered its lower half, with shadowy splotches growing by the second across its golden shell.

  Behind me, Dani lifted her sword. She held Clara tight with one arm and used the other to secure the area around her. A pair of bloodhounds approached her carefully, their blistering bodies oozing something cloudy after Clara’s magical assault.

  “Don’t worry about us,” Dani said. “It’s time I put my sword training to good use. Get that egg!”

  A wave of bloodhounds came at us, but Kaylee and I were prepared. She swept a leg out and tripped one, leaving me to punch a deep depression into its chest, then tear its skin apart with my bare hands. A moment later I crushed the heart and glanced up at the next monster.

  Energy Reserves Up: 3.4%

  Kaylee had two bloodhounds by the hair, smashing their heads together and forcing gushes of black blood-sludge from their indented skulls.

  A’zarkin stood before the egg to block it, preventing my view of the golden shell as it darkened under demonfire flames.

  “How long does this ceremony take?” I asked.

  “Always trying to calculate time in one direction,” he said. “Humans have built such monuments in their realms, and yet they view life in unduly narrow terms.”

  I stepped to the side, dodging a bloodhound’s attack as Kaylee reached out and grabbed its arm, pulling it toward her. I didn’t watch as she cracked its bones and forced a pathetic cry from its dying lips. I was too focused on A’zarkin and any opening I might have to dive toward the golden egg.

  The demon would not make that easy. He came at me head-on, intending to tackle me. I bent my knees and waited, trusting Oscar to pulse A’zarkin back when he came too close.

  Instead, A’zarkin raised his arms high as he neared, then wrapped them around me and pinned my limbs to my body, along with Oscar. I strained my delts as hard as I could to pry his grip loose.

  The crackling energy that issued from the demon’s horns came within an inc
h of my face. My eyelashes frosted over from the depth of the coldness that emanated from that bright blue spark.

  My arm started to relax, allowing A’zarkin to get closer.

  Oscar, I thought, what the fuck?

  A white crosshair illuminated in my vision right over the source of A’zarkin’s ice magic. Oscar wanted the energy housed there, even if that meant letting A’zarkin zap me with unbearable cold.

  I kicked A’zarkin in the stomach and pushed myself back a few inches in the process.

  “The last hero,” the demon said, aiming his magic at my feet. A dense layer of ice surrounded them, stretching up from the icy cavern floor and sealing over my boots to prevent me from moving. “Now, he was an opponent worthy of my attention.” The ice crept up my legs. I started bashing at it with Oscar, chipping it away as quickly as I could. A’zarkin’s pulsating magic orb shrank as he used that energy up.

  “No!” Kaylee yelled. She jumped onto A’zarkin’s back and wrapped an arm around his neck. Her free hand sank two fingers into his nostrils and pulled back, threatening to tear his nose right off his evil blue face.

  He grunted and threw his weight around, but she didn’t dislodge. I pounded away at the ice in an effort to free myself.

  “Kill them, father,” Pakson said. “I will not raise my brood in a world teeming with draykin pests and their sympathizers.”

  “Of course, my son,” A’zarkin said, his words nasal and strained thanks to Kaylee’s intrusive fingers. “Perhaps it’s time your children learn to fight as well?”

  “But they’ll get dirty,” Pakson said.

  A’zarkin’s response was an anguished groan as he tried to dislodge Kaylee’s fingers from his nose.

  Pakson crossed his legs and rolled his eyes. “I shouldn’t have to do this before my coronation is properly completed, father.” He waved his arm and immediately the sound of baboons screeched from the ground above us. A troop of sickening creatures with pale skin and tattered gray rags draped across their bodies leapt from the edge of the gaping hole above us. They landed in a small mob between Pakson and the rest of us, baring their spiraled teeth as they beat their chests and pulled back their lips. Spiraled incisors protruded from their mouths, just like their bloodhound cousins.