by Erik Reid
They were demonspawn, with the same gray skin and matted down fur as the mangy beasts A’zarkin commanded. They lacked canine features though, sporting long prehensile tails and half-moon ears instead. The hopped around like aggressive little chimpanzees and chirped in meaningless bouts of irritating sounds.
“Oh, Kaylee,” Dani said, pulling her sword from the torso of a bloodhound and kicking the slain creature away from her.
“They look,” Kaylee said, her voice strained and her face bright red, “like me. But that means…”
“A remote village of naïve little monkeys,” A’zarkin said, shaking his face loose from her grasp and bending forward to throw her off his back.
“They were too stupid to be afraid,” he continued. “Such a trait has certain benefits when put to the right use, so we dragged them kicking and screaming to the mountain’s edge. Pakson’s first brood delighted in their nectar-sweet blood, imbuing them with bountiful energy and reckless bravery. You, my dear, must have slipped past our notice.”
Kaylee screamed in a pitch so high I was surprised my ears could hear it. Her face went so red it verged on purple and her whole body shook with rage. She lashed out at the nearest bloodhound, twisting its head from its body before the fiend could react. She slammed the decapitated skull onto the floor where it cracked open and released a gush of black ooze.
“I’m missing a bloodmonkey,” Pakson said. He squinted toward the sky.
Party Assist: 41 Degrees
I glanced toward Pakson’s side.
Who, I wondered. Jasmine? Fat chance.
Then a bloodmonkey landed on the cavern floor inches from Pakson’s throne. A hole in its chest was leaking the same black blood as the other demonspawn.
Directly overhead perched Lissa, her toes curling down from the rim of ice and rock above. She leapt into the cavern to join our fight, rolling into her landing and springing to her feet beside the bloody simian corpse.
“You’re late,” I said, smashing the last hunk of ice away from my legs.
“Then why are there any foes still standing?” she replied. She clenched her fist tight and released the pent-up energy of a bloodmonkey’s heart, fresh in her palm. The powdered onicite remains slipped from her hand like ash.
“You hurt my first brood,” Pakson said, leaping from his throne and landing before Lissa in a fluid movement reminiscent of a ballerina’s graceful sauté. “I look forward to the prowess I shall drink from your veins.”
The two began a series of lunges and leaps, slashing with their natural claws and kicking with solid boots, but more often evading attacks than landing them. Their languid movements and razor-sharp reflexes made them an even match, but one I couldn’t marvel at for long.
The glowing orb between A’zarkin’s horns built in size and he turned his attention on me, no longer grappling against an agile simki.
Kaylee had lost her focus on the demon, giving into distraction any time a new target gave a quick motion in the corner of her eye. Her breathing came in quick bursts now. Her nostrils flared out and her body trembled with every step.
The burning red lights in her eyes were too bright and her skin was too flush. The sight of Pakson’s “children,” with their long simki tails and half-moon ears, was too much for her to contain. We had lost her.
She chased after bloodhounds and bloodmonkeys indiscriminately after that, screaming and thrashing her arms. Sometimes she struck her enemy, but just as often she swung at open air or scratched at the glacial walls in an uncontrollable fury.
“And now the odds are reset,” A’zarkin said. “You may resume.”
He threw a lightning bolt of demonic ice and Oscar lifted to block it, converting A’zarkin’s spent energy into a power boost.
Energy Reserves Up: 3.9%
A’zarkin’s next attack landed in my chest, a blue jolt of cold that knocked me off my feet. I scrambled backward, tracing an arc around the demonfire pit as I went. A’zarkin followed my movements closely, babysitting the egg whose surface darkened with each passing moment.
I dodged punches and kicks; I absorbed magic bolts and evaded others; I struck at the demon with Oscar’s fist. All the while, we danced around that egg, swinging our location closer and farther, but never bringing the queen’s unhatched princess within arm’s length.
My route encircling the golden egg took me further from Dani, who just sliced an arm off a bloodhound and stood guard over Clara. It brought me nearer, however, to Pakson’s now-empty throne and the woman who knelt beside it with blue lips and a face slathered in thick gray paste.
“Nice makeup,” I said, tilting toward Jasmine to avoid A’zarkin’s fist, then leaning forward with a punch in his jaw.
“It doesn’t stifle my natural glow?” she asked.
“Cut the bullshit for once,” I asked.
“Fine. What do you want me to say? I’m filthy, and miserable, and freezing! He’s painted my face to make it more ‘appealing’ and he makes me kneel at his side like a slave. He says he’s a prince, but who keeps a princess in chains?”
“So you haven’t seen Star Wars then,” I said. “Man, what did I ever see in you?”
Oscar’s Tactical Assist crosshairs shifted in my vision, hovering over Jasmine’s breasts like glowing nipples, highlighting the rack that had kept me from fleeing our initial date after those first few terrible minutes.
You cheeky bastard, I thought. But you’re not wrong.
The crosshairs blinked out and Oscar got serious again.
Sensory Assist: Incoming at 189 Degrees
I leaned to the right, just in time for a shuriken to sail past me and clink against the dense ice at the cavern’s wall beyond me.
“Watch it, Lissa!” I yelled.
“Testing your reflexes,” she said. “You passed.”
I punched A’zarkin in the gut, forcing him to bend slightly forward, then smashed my fist onto his head right between the horns. The blue energy that hovered over his skull fizzled out when Oscar touched it, siphoning power away from my adversary.
Energy Reserves Up: 4.4%
Sync Progress: 11%
New Magnification Strength: 2,500%
Magnification again? I thought. How about Hadouken Assist? What level unlocks that one?
“It’s too cold here, Kyle,” Jasmine said, sitting higher but not daring to stand. “I just want to wrap myself up in something warm, but there’s nothing. If my uterus freezes over he’ll have zero use for me.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “You’re worried you might not make a perfect broodmare?”
“Nice word choice,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I tried to refuse,” she said, “but he threatened to make me into a drinking fountain for those blood-sucking things. At least this way I can tell myself I’m a princess, even if he won’t use the word. Hold onto my self-esteem a little.”
“You know what’s great for my self-esteem, Jasmine?” I said. “Realizing that you swipe right on everybody.”
“Pakson said he’ll make all my desires come true,” she said. “Do you think any of it’s true?”
“I know he looks like the genie, but girl, he’s Jafar! Homeboy hasn’t even granted your wish for a blanket.”
A bloodmonkey raced away from Kaylee nursing an arm that was snapped into three different pieces. Behind me, Lissa grappled with Pakson, and she didn’t need another foe on her case. I reached out and snatched the gray monkey tail that rushed past me, then swung the creature outward.
The gray, mangy body of that monkey-vampire hybrid crashed into A’zarkin. The demon held the demonspawn for a second, then tossed it aside where it landed on its broken limb and screeched.
I had bought myself an extra foot of space, so I pulled my old hoodie off in one quick movement. The glacier’s icy air stung my exposed skin, but the leathers that covered my legs and chest were dense and better suited to keeping a person warm than Jasmine’s short skirt and skimpy top. I tos
sed her the sweatshirt and turned back to the fight.
“Really?” she asked, though she was already pulling the garment on and zipping it all the way up.
“There’s a chance,” I said, “that I should have given you my sweatshirt the first time you were cold. Sorry I was a dick.”
“I’m sorry I sort of deserved it,” she said. She smiled then, a warm, genuine smile that crinkled the skin by the corners of her eyes and forced the slick of weird gray makeup on her cheeks to cake up and crack. It wasn’t pretty, but it was sort of beautiful in its honesty.
“I’ve warned you not to speak to the womb,” A’zarkin said. “Her state is fragile as it is.”
“Well, she is a special snowflake,” I said. Then I tripped. A’zarkin’s magic power rebuilt slowly atop his head until he spent it again, raising a ridge of ice from the ground right behind my feet.
My ass landed on the ice and I kicked at the ground for traction, but failed to get up in time. A bloodhound pounced on top of me and sank its teeth into Oscar’s thumb. It picked at the rim of my glove with its black, demonic claws and peeled Oscar an inch away from my skin even though I was unable to do that myself.
I bashed it on the head with my other hand. I wanted that fucker off us ASAP.
Other bloodhounds, however, piled on top of us. They found tender flesh along my arms and neck, latching on with vampire mouths and sucking my blood into their bellies.
My breath caught in my chest and my veins turned to ice. Three mouths siphoned my blood at once, slowing my thoughts, blackening my vision, and plunging my heart into a wrenching pain.
My limbs were too weak to fight them off me. I crumbled under the combined weight of those foul beasts and let my cheek hit the cavern floor. My eyelids drooped as those sickening canines slurped away my blood.
Something glowed behind them, a blue light barely a hue lighter than the electric pulse that reflected A’zarkin’s demon energies.
“Waypoint travel,” I said, my voice a slow and croaking struggle. “A’zarkin’s Abode.”
My body pulsed with light, and a moment later, I was gone. I had traveled no more than ten feet, but it was enough to change my fortunes and save my life. The bloodhounds collapsed into a dogpile of predators with no prey and I lay on the ice, free to breathe and regain my strength.
A’zarkin stepped toward me with his palm open. A bundle of sparks jumped from one edge of his hand to the other, gathering in a small cloud of electric energy.
“You’ve learned the art of travel,” A’zarkin said. “Your descent into demon-hood is progressing quickly. Soon your senses will turn away from you and your soul will rot. Let it. Rot allows something new to grow in its stead.”
“Demon-hood,” I said, climbing to unsteady feet and wiping blood from my arms and neck. “Fuck that.”
“It has started already,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. The nascent spark of a second mind seeping into your own. Have your onicite fingers defied you once? Twice? Just enough to worry you but not enough to force a blade to your shoulder and sever the arm that betrays.”
“Oscar’s got a little sass in him,” I said. “Keeps me on my toes.”
“The last hero could not stand what he became,” the demon said. “He begged for death’s sweet release, but the suit refused. It is built from the hearts of my kind. It lusts for power, not loyalty.”
“Oscar lusts for your heart in his palm.”
“And you lust for it too now, because he is taking over,” A’zarkin said. “The suit of Oscar wears the man. Never forget that.”
“You know so much about this suit,” I said. “Knowledge is not power, A’zarkin. If it were you’d have beaten the last hero.”
“That hero is gone,” A’zarkin said. “A victim to the suit’s own ambitions. And I am here. In that way, I did beat him.
“Rebuilding my power, however, took time. The battle was epic, and left me too drained to travel from beneath the mighty glacier, and too weak to raise a new army of loyal children. All I had to keep me company was the fist of Oscar, torn loose from the human hero moments before our battle ended and sitting out of reach as I lay immobilized and defeated.
“The draykin came and reclaimed the glove, but they were too sheepish to check my frozen body for a pulse. The cowards left me to die of cold, but a demon does not perish under ice when he has bound himself to its element.”
I walked backward during this exchange, putting distance between myself and the waypoint marker. Despite his long-winded tale, the demon hadn’t forgotten the importance of babysitting the egg. He did, however, leave me time to think of a gambit.
“Waypoint travel!” I yelled. “A’zarkin’s—”
I cut myself short, never intending to teleport across the cavern. A’zarkin, however, spun back toward the spot I had appeared earlier, expecting me to rematerialize directly behind him.
With his back to me, I dove into the demonfire pit and rolled forward with the egg in my grasp.
That fire burned colder than the frigid air in the surrounding glacial cavern, but the egg’s shell was still warm.
Sensory Assist: Incoming at 182 Degrees
A bolt of blue lightning zapped past my ear, deafening me with its electric sizzle. It crashed into the floor in front of me and formed a knob of glowing blue ice.
Dani reached down to help me to my feet.
“What about—”
“Clara?” she asked. “They won’t go near her.”
Sure enough, the kobold girl sat along the cavern’s wall, her arms wrapped around her knees and her face buried between them. A pair of bloodhounds rested on all fours, watching her but too afraid to stalk any closer.
A handful of less intimidated bloodhounds flanked their master, walking toward us like a wall of rabid gray canines with the demon at their center.
“And so you’ve collected the egg,” A’zarkin said. “But where will you take it that I cannot follow?”
A terrible sensation grew in the pit of my stomach, the acidic decay of victory as it rots into abject failure. “He’s right,” I said. “He has eyes everywhere, and he travels by waypoint. I’d have to egg-sit on the run until the day this thing hatches.”
“What if she hatches right here,” Dani said, “right now?”
“That timing would be suspiciously lucky,” I said, watching the ring of monsters around us close in.
Dani turned back and put her hands on the egg, then leaned close and breathed lightly across its surface. Where her draykin breath touched the shell, the black lines and splotches of shadowy stains erased.
Then the egg jostled in her hands. “It’s working!”
“You need more time,” I said. “Let me give you a boost.”
Dani held the egg tight and stepped into my cupped hands. Without warning, I stood and catapulted her into the air, relying on Oscar’s Somatic Boost Level 3 to propel her high into the sky, above the two-story hole in the glacier’s center.
She spread her wings and glided, tucking her head close to the egg and breathing her dragon-descendant warmth onto the unseen child.
The bloodhounds raced toward me while A’zarkin cursed at Dani in the sky. If Pakson were watching, he would likely have moaned that his daddy was taking too long to finish the fight, but Lissa kept him occupied. He kept dodging to avoid the shuriken that now littered the ice wall behind him, while Kaylee tore bloodhounds and bloodmonkeys to shreds in the background. Her skin was terrifyingly red, and her stance grew more uneven by the moment, but for now she was still a force to reckon with.
The few attackers that raced at me now were nothing I couldn’t handle. They were goons, low-level mobs easily dispatched by an experienced hero.
A glittering mist of golden flakes fell around us like snow while we fought. Then the cry of a newborn babe echoed from above.
Dani spun in a tight circle with her draykin wings fully extended, cradling the newly hatched princess whelp in her arms.
I threw a
bloodhound across the cavern floor, bowling over two other fiends and clearing a landing spot for Dani. My arms wrapped around her the second she landed.
“Waypoint Travel,” I said, the words spilling past my lips as quickly as I could form them, “to Draykin Domain!”
A burst of blue light whisked us away, transporting us to the draykin throne room. The queen slumped in her throne, her eyes glassy and dazed.
“Queen Zolocki,” I said. “Here’s your princess.”
Life returned to the woman’s face. Her eyes widened and her back straightened into the regal posture she held when we first met.
“You have rescued my egg?”
“Your daughter,” Dani said, holding the tiny girl in one arm while the other stroked the pink nose between the girl’s round, chubby cheeks. Tiny red wings rested along her back and her thin tail whipped back and forth while she considered whether to cry.
“She hatched in my arms,” she continued. “She’s perfect.”
Queen Zolocki stepped down from her throne and fixed her hair. With a deep breath she approached Dani and took hold of the princess.
“By the way,” I said, “no more of that Smaug business. Her name is Alexstrasza. A gift from my realm to yours.”
The queen made to protest but I held up a hand. Oscar’s hand. “I think we both know you owe us a reward.”
“Given the circumstances,” the queen said, nuzzling her nose against the baby’s, “that is a reward I happily consider. Welcome home, Alexstrasza.”