by Sever Bronny
She snorted. “I’m not like that, Aug. You know that.”
“And you weren’t the type to dominate in a snowball fight either. Or to eat from the inside of a pot with your fingers. Or to shout a declaration of war.”
She forced a weak smile but did not reply. He realized he wasn’t helping and did not press the point, and they walked in silence for a time.
“What do you think it means that there are Rivican ruins in this plane?” Bridget eventually asked. “I can’t even fathom the historical implications.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. But honestly, my tired brain doesn’t have the room to think about it.”
“Yeah. Same.”
They muddied up one more time at another stream. The lair appeared shortly after in the form of a huge cave half embedded into the base of a pillar and half into the ground. Or perhaps it was an old sinkhole. This one, interestingly, did not lead into a hidden temple but a den overstuffed with vines that Augum was sure would wake the moment an intruder stepped on them. There was no sign of the dragon.
“I’m going to go in and wait for it,” Bridget said. “You go on ahead.”
“I don’t feel comfortable just leaving you to—”
“You can’t come in with me because you’d pollute the interaction. Look, if it wanted to kill me it would. Some of this we simply have to leave to the Fates, Aug.”
He nodded. “Then I wish you all the luck in Endraga Ra, Bridget Abigail Burns.”
“And I wish I could give you a hug in thanks.” She smiled bittersweetly. “Want the rucksack?”
“No, keep it. I don’t need it.” Hardly anything in there anyway.
She sighed. “Good luck with the lightning dragon,” and she turned her back on him and traipsed off.
“Don’t forget Reveal,” he called after her.
“I won’t!”
Augum watched her use Reveal to examine the ground and then Disenchant to dispel the occasional trap. He continued watching until she disappeared inside the cave, hand splayed before her. The vines reared up like cobras and yet she bravely stepped up to them, hand still raised, until they parted, making a path for her.
* * *
Loneliness dogged him on the way to the lightning dragon lair. He had grown up around people who had barely left their village, and now he was unfathomably far from home and struggling to survive in a vicious jungle in a plane with three suns. He also worried a lot. For his beloved, for his friends, for Mrs. Stone.
Burden’s Edge sang crisply as he sliced through stray branches and saw-toothed leaves so sharp they could probably cut through wood. And in between, he handled a few stray beasts that thought him hapless prey—an ape-like creature with monstrous eyes, a cat-sized lizard, and a prowling dog-thing with more ears than limbs. And countless bugs. How he hated the bugs. They got into his robe, into his hair, into his shoes. Not to mention the sticky mud and the squishy sweat and the countless stinging cuts and the gnawing hunger and the general disgusting discomfort of it all.
He found a stream, drank some water and muddied himself and his egg up one more time for good measure. As trained when coming to a new location, he memorized surrounding details for teleportation purposes, not an easy feat considering every stream looked the same. One had to be creative remembering what made each area different. For this stream, he memorized its snake-like curve, then continued his journey, checking the map often and estimating about a league to the lair. He used an old animal trail for easier navigation through the thick jungle.
After slicing through a series of vines blocking his path, he took a step and felt a spell wallop him from below, freezing him in place. He instantly recognized the Paralyze trap—and a strong one at that. His Mind Armor, weary from the slog, had not been as focused as it should have been. He fought against the spell but it was like trying to squirm out of a stone blanket. He couldn’t even move his eyes, which remained fixed on the vines before him. He could only hope that the spell timed out before a creature—or the enemy—got to him.
For a time, he heard only the forest rustling in the wind mixed with animal calls, until two thwomps came from behind him.
“Path be good, it’s him,” said a youthful and slightly quivering voice.
“The gods have shown me favor, for I have struck gold,” said another, deeper voice.
“His Highness will take him, but he will reward you with the fat one. Congratulations.”
He must mean Olaf, Augum thought.
“If the ritual works as intended. But let us not celebrate too hastily as the wenches might be near. Watch for a trap. I’ll get the egg.” An immobilized Augum felt the egg being cut away from his back.
“Nothing, he’s alone,” the youthful voice reported when the egg had been freed, all while Augum fought mightily to shake off the spell. “Take the egg and fetch Tyranecron. And hurry. Who knows how long the spell will remain in effect.”
“Long enough,” the deeper voice said. “It’s one of mine.” The person took a breath. “Impetus peragro,” and he disappeared with the egg.
Augum kept fighting, knowing he only had heartbeats to track him down. A young man stepped before his vision—and he was as muddied up as the trio.
The young man grinned. “I bet you feel like a fool now that—”
But after a mighty struggle Augum finally managed to free himself and shoved at the air before him, shouting, “Baka!” The young man flew against a tree and was knocked out instantly. Augum whirled about and splayed a hand. “Un vun asperio aurum enchantus.” The wispy tendril remains of the man’s Teleport spell appeared in a swirling mess that disappeared a heartbeat later. Augum closed his eyes and examined that mess in his mind while it was fresh in his memory, and thought he saw a pattern that would indicate direction. He hurriedly withdrew his map and, after orientating it, realized the direction pointed at the same pillar from where the Canterrans had dropped stones onto Bridget. Luckily it was within range of his teleport.
“Impetus peragro,” Augum snapped after a moment of concentration and appeared directly behind a Canterran proudly showing off the egg to five other Canterrans, including Gavinius. Before they could even react, Augum telekinetically yanked the egg from the thief’s clutches with one hand, kicked him in the back, sending him into the arms of his companions, and then drew the outline of his dragon with the other hand, snapping, “Summano elementus minimus draco.” He pointed at Gavinius. “Draco—attack!” and the electrified beast shot at Gavinius, who was already in the middle of a demonic casting, forcing him to abandon it and summon his shield instead.
A haggard looking Canterran with protuberant eyes reached for Augum’s egg, but Augum was quicker and slapped him so hard in the face that the man spun about. Augum then kicked him in the butt and, like the other one, comedically sent him into the arms of his cohorts, buying enough time to focus on the snake-like stream where he had last muddied up.
“Impetus peragro,” he snapped again, and teleported off just as two of the men smacked their wrists together to cast an offensive spell.
Augum hurried away from the spot, found another stream, reapplied mud on himself, and ran off once more. He took a meandering route through the forest and used Burden’s Edge to clear a path when things got too thick, conscious that the Canterrans would likely summon hellhounds to sniff him out.
After running for a quarter of a league without seeing or hearing the enemy, he slumped against a tree to rest. There, with the egg clutched firmly under his left arm and Burden’s Edge gripped in his right hand, he caught his breath, exhausted from everything. He considered going back and following them but knew that without the power of the dragon behind him there was little he could do even should he find his kidnapped friends.
He listened to the forest but only heard wind and rustling branches and leaves. He checked the sky, turbulent with fast-moving and low-hanging clouds that occasionally showed a glimpse of three suns.
“Close to sunset,” he muttered to
himself, noting the fading pinkish glow. “Got to get a move on.”
He unsheathed Burden’s Edge and got underway, vowing to be more careful on animal paths. Half an hour later, he felt a familiar aura of Fear along with the telltale crackle of lightning. He peeled back a purple leaf the size of a man and saw a dragon infused with lightning loping by in a jungle glade. He estimated it to be about three barns wide, meaning it was relatively young, as evidenced by its relatively gentle Fear aura. Its scales were iridescent blue and covered with live lightning that snapped at things nearby—harmlessly, for the most part—though now and then an animalistic yelp preceded a puff of smoke. The dragon would then stop, lazily pick through the foliage until it found the carcass and snap it up in its immense alligator-like jaws before continuing its lazy lope.
Augum knew this was the moment. He raised the egg above his head and stepped through the foliage. “Dragon, I saved your egg and hereby return it to you!” he called in a bold voice, careful to keep his gaze low and hoping it understood.
The dragon snapped about so quickly its tail smashed through a wide tree, knocking it down with a crash, Fear aura doubling in strength. Augum fell to his knees in submission and held the muddied egg as high as he could over his head, hands shaking uncontrollably. “I return your egg,” he repeated, unsure if saying anything at all was helpful, or merely the bleating of a sheep before it got devoured by the wolf.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Augum saw the dragon’s wings unfold as it slowly crawled forth, head low and predatory. He heard those wings gently brush the treetops, reminding him of when he used to walk the yellow Tallows as a kid with outstretched hands, brushing the tops of the tall grass as if he were a bird in flight.
The dragon sniffed at the air as it drew nearer and nearer, until its great snout was snuffing at the egg. Augum shut his eyes tight and tried not to think about what would happen if the egg belonged to another dragon … or if the dragon decided it wanted him as a snack.
And then the Fear aura subsided. Augum heard a leathery creaking and dared to half-open one eye. He saw that the dragon’s massive clawed paw had opened invitingly, and so he gently placed the egg into it. The dragon licked the mud off the egg with a tongue the length of two wagons, then began purring like an enormous cat, an undulation that reverberated in Augum’s innards.
“Teach me, ancient one,” Augum whispered. “Please. Teach me the sacred Spirit of the Dragon simul. Help me save my friends. Help me save my kingdom.”
The dragon gave no indication that it understood Augum and instead turned around with a huff and began loping off at a quicker pace.
“Do you want me to follow?” Augum asked, confused and worried that the dragon had misinterpreted the act as a simple gift—and nothing more. He ran after it, but the dragon was quicker and soon disappeared into the jungle.
“Please, wait, wait—!” Augum called after it. He was soon out of breath again and thoroughly lost. Just as he reached for his map, he saw something move to his right. “Oh, there you are,” he said, panting while walking over. “Thought I lost you—”
He froze, for what emerged from the forest was not the dragon but a bloodsucker the size of an ox. The monstrous mosquito had just finished draining a fried ape-thing, its belly sack engorged with blood.
All at once it saw Augum and shot at him like a viper. Just as he began to react, the thing was struck down by a bolt of lightning that incinerated it mid-flight. Augum barely had time to roll aside as its stinking, hairy insect corpse soared by, crashing into the jungle behind him.
Augum picked himself up, noticing something off behind the trees, like a visual disturbance.
“So that’s how you hide,” he said, smiling. “You can cast wild versions of the same spells as us.” He approached the spot, speaking softly as if to a wild horse. “But it’s not that you can cast the same spells as us, it’s that we can cast the same spells as you, isn’t it? Nana was right, wasn’t she?”
He stopped fifteen feet away from the visual disturbance that only made itself apparent when the dragon moved. “I can do it too. Want to see?” He opened a palm and drew it over his body, incanting, “Armari obscura chameleano traversa.” His body melded with the forest, becoming as chameleonic as the dragon.
He moved even closer, but this time decided to sit meditatively before it, showing that he was not afraid of it—nor was he a threat. “So do you have a name? And are you a female or a male?” he whispered, resisting the urge to approach and pet its muzzle, reminding himself, This isn’t a horse, you fool.
The dragon silently made itself visible without reactivating its lightning, and studied him with a blue lizard eye. Augum snuffed his Chameleon extension to match. The dragon unfolded one wing and lowered it.
“Is that an invitation?” Augum asked, standing. “Are you telling me it’s all right for me to come with you to your lair?”
The dragon began purring again, and Augum carefully stepped onto the roof-sized wing, surprised by its sturdiness. He climbed onto the dragon’s back and gripped the scales just in time for the dragon to jump and take to the air, pressing him against the scales. Its immense muscles flexed beneath him as the wings flapped mightily.
The joy of taking flight on a dragon’s back, to see the jungle below from afar, the clouds so close he thought he could reach out and scoop them up in a handful, was the kind of joy that made Augum grin from ear to ear—particularly in contrast to the terrifying flight he had taken clutching onto Katrina’s Orion. It was a joy he hadn’t thought he would feel in this lethal realm. It was a joy he knew he would remember until the end of his days.
But the journey was short, for the dragon soared around a pillar and circled a great pit tucked in a valley. At the bottom of the pit was a tangle of overgrown ruins.
“You live in a temple too, don’t you?” Augum asked, voice disappearing in the rush of the wind. “Or are these underground cities?”
The dragon landed at the bottom of the pit, sniffed around a little, and loped through the entrance of the ruins, composed of huge stone blocks the size of a shed. Its forepaws lit up with lightning, as if it had cast a dual Shine spell, lighting up the passage blue.
Augum held on as the dragon meandered through a few overgrown hallways before finding a descending spiral staircase fit for giants. It was so wide the light barely touched the walls.
Augum’s grin soon morphed to wide-eyed wonder, for after finally stepping off that massive staircase, the pair entered an enormous passageway covered with lightning, the patterns craquelure and explosively vibrant.
A tear rolled down Augum’s cheek as the dragon loped through the passageway, for it reminded him bittersweetly of the academy lightning room, a room that would make any other interloper go mad from the sheer chaotic patterns.
Yet to him … he was home.
Young Boy, Young Man
The dragon took Augum through an ancient stone entranceway infused with potent lightning. But he saw no evidence of the Rivican civilization beyond the stonework—no clay pottery, no wall paintings, nothing. Perhaps time had simply eaten those artifacts. Though how much time would be needed for that to happen was well beyond his fathoming.
After slithering through a series of labyrinthine corridors, the dragon at last entered a chamber so enormous Augum felt like an ant in an upside-down wash basin. The chamber was round and the ceiling domed, and all of it was infused with craquelure lightning. The very faintest paint remnants of ancient murals flaked from the walls.
In the middle of that sanctum sat a pitifully shallow and empty nest made from lightning fibers. The dragon loped up to it and gently placed the egg inside, then curled up around the nest so that its body warmed the egg, and began purring.
Augum, exhausted from his ordeal, continued to lie on the dragon’s back in disbelief. He stared at the vibrant domed ceiling, wondering if he was in the academy, if all of this was a test of some kind, a grand illusion created by genius Arcaners.
�
�Beautiful,” he whispered, marveling at the enormous scale of the chamber, at the rawness of the lightning, at the sheer art of it all. “Beautiful …”
He stared and examined as long as he could, but exhaustion eventually allowed the purring to lull him into a deep sleep. He slipped into a vivid dream as effortlessly as one slips into fresh night garments.
The dream began with the journey of a young boy in his mother’s arms. She was running from the boy’s father—her husband. Around them was the wide expanse of the Tallows, the grass tall and dry and vivid yellow. Field crickets chirped and the air smelled fresh and clean, with not a cloud in sight.
And then the pair were on a farm, where the mother shakily handed the boy to a group of strangers—his foster parents and three foster siblings. But instead of faces, these five people had various expressions of meanness in physical form—dark swirling malignance that shoved the woman aside, enveloped the boy, and mercilessly beat him, making him cry out for her.
But his mother did not return, and he would never see her again except in the blue flames of a sacred memorial fire.
Those tumultuous years swept by with the subconscious knowledge that the man chasing the woman later murdered her, and although that man, infused with ill intent, searched for the boy, he failed to find him.
The boy grew up as a relentlessly bullied farm slave with a donkey as his best friend, a donkey whose eyes were dopey and downtrodden, reflecting the boy’s own misery. One day, that old donkey took a hard beating in a field and the boy was left to cry over his flanks, which rose and fell, slower and slower, until going still altogether. When the boy finished crying, he stood and turned his back on the farm. All that remained of the place were harrowing memories and a back full of scars.
He followed a river to a village and was taken in by a kindly gray-haired knight who liked to chew on a chaff of wheat. That knight taught him the ways of the world, neglecting to say much of anything about warlocks. Instead, he taught him the ways of honor and respect, of duty and labor and castles and traditions and the written word and hunting and surviving. He was a white light guiding the way in the darkness. The father he never had. But the boy was still lost, for he was friendless and, other than his mentor, lonely. Compounding matters, the village kids considered him a gutterborn orphan and bullied him just as his foster siblings had.