The Stray Dragon : (A collage age urban fantasy with werewolves werewolf community center book 3)

by Abigail Smith

  Purple dragon girl had a bow. I felt that was odd, but judging by mister’s slow fall, I suspected they’d engineered a way around arrows falling out of quivers if she was ever to be upside down for any length of time.

  She pulled out an arrow with great force and nocked it, while the other two rushed in to deal with me.

  Using my live-action cartoon jumping powers, I jumped up onto the green dragon and slashed at the rider. He tried to block with his sword, but it seems he wasn’t as capable as his father was at dealing with Fae magic.

  The arrow was fired, and I dodged back, letting it whip past the two of us. A trail of light purple, almost pink light followed it, coming from the arrow tip.

  The dragon rider seemed to know what this meant and backflipped off his dragon as the purple dragon’s mouth lit with purple and black light.

  The breath followed the arrow’s trajectory and blasted me off the green dragon. The dragon roared and fell out of the air, with me atop him.

  Those same ethereal burns appeared on his back, though thankfully not on my shin nor my suit. Score one for the kitsune. I jumped off as soon as we got near enough to the ground. I probably could survive a fall greater; certainly, there were times in Genki’s shows where they jumped off more stories than even the werewolves could manage, but I’m still afraid of heights.

  I landed and rolled and charged up to the purple dragon. The hunter just seemed to watch, disappointed that his children, or employees, I was still unsure of which at this point, failed to stop the person using magic he could see through and break with his bare hands.

  The dragon stepped forwards and slashed with its powerful clawed hand. I jumped over it and hopped on the limb to get to the bow woman atop of him.

  She grunted and detached the two halves of the bow. Apparently, the string had been magical, and probably their connection too, as she pulled out two short swords, and laid them over each other.

  I flashed back to fighting Leonardo when he had those two enchanted practice knives. He’d always been able to lead me to focus on one blade and then strike with another. I was just one person of one focal area, so how could I deal with two blades?

  I held the sword above my head and deflected her strikes, focusing on her center, and acting in defensive action.

  This, unfortunately, came to an end as the spearwoman flew in just above us, and stabbed at me, sending me off the purple dragon in a trail of sparks and smoke.

  I landed on the hill just a few feet from the portal. I tried my best not to look like I was checking on the position of my friends and then rolled back so that I was in the central pathed area in front of the portal.

  It wouldn’t do, to have them notice all my friends walking upon the battle. I suspected that the hunter was staying away from it so that he could spot any ambush. The purple dragon turned around, while the green dragon landed on the poolside of the portal, and the silver dragon landed on the roof of the manor.

  The elves, as always, stood erect where they’d been for the past two days.

  “I don’t suppose I can challenge you all to single combat.”

  “We’re not so foolhardy to fall for the tricks of Cu-Chulainn,” the hunter sneered.

  I blinked. “Who?”

  “Attack!” he demanded, and all the dragons raced towards me.

  A blast of acid and cold were shot at once, to make acidic ice centred around me. Or where I had been…

  I landed behind the woman who rode the silver dragon. She only had time to let out a surprised yelp before I kicked her into the ice sculpture. I grabbed the reins of the dragon and pulled.

  The dragon for its part didn’t move.

  “Right, intelligent beings,” I reminded myself.

  The other two hunters grunted as the woman started to shiver in her ice prison. The purple dragon rider hopped to the top of it to offer a hand as the green rider sent his dragon into the one I was on.

  I once again hopped off one place and to another and checked him in the stomach with my elbow.

  I had been given a taw kan do lesson, but the only thing I remembered from it was that the elbow is the hardest part of the body. Possibly because it’s a self-defence style and I mainly want to hurt people quickly with the martial arts I use.

  The silver dragon rider got out of the cold and jumped onto the green dragon with us. “Remember your training, Mohamed! See-through her illusion!” she barked to the man I was engaged with.

  Speaking of martial arts designed to hurt people. “Yeah, see through this!” I swiped at him with a hand. Normally if the illusion was up this wouldn’t do much, but having a Clawve-maga training glove with razor blades instead of plastic nubs underneath helped a lot.

  His arm had four small but deep cuts on it now. With his concentration on ignoring my illusion now broken, I slashed at him with the sword and sent him off his dragon.

  “What kind of weapon is that?” the silver dragon rider demanded.

  “I work with werewolves, you can figure it out,” I said as I let go of the sword and used the other glove to slash at her.

  She had a lot more practice ignoring illusions, clearly, and having dropped her spear, and was well open for Clawve-maga attacks.

  I am rather ashamed to admit it, but I broke my stance and just ended up slashing her as much as I could.

  Then since I could still use the illusion’s power when it came to dodging, I back-flipped as a cone of cold blasted just past the woman.

  Mid-flip I noticed her shiver, and the blood trickled from her arms.

  Now I was just the distraction, but if I could take out some of them before the others came, we’d have a good advantage.

  I landed at the back of the dragon and waited. Sure enough, she went to her silver dragon and got out the device, a replacement for the one we stole, but still the device. The dragon got a bit bigger, and she got a bit smaller.

  I jumped on the tail of the dragon and it turned, flicking me towards them. Using some Masked Kishu agility I managed to control my trajectory and grabbed the device out of their hands before they could switch back.

  The younger dragon rider squeaked at her sudden vulnerability and raced towards the elves who had spares available.

  “I wonder if she believed more illusions as a kid,” I said to myself, bemused, as I raced towards her.

  The much larger dragon attempted to stab me with its wing, and it knocked me aside. Into the acid ice, actually, but I got up quickly and kept running, grabbing the smaller dragon rider by the wrist and jumping towards the manor.

  She grunted. She was a teenager so there wasn’t much of a difference, but she still had a bit of strength lost.

  I wasn’t sure if it was enough to really do what I was thinking, but I jumped up to a third-story window, opened it up and placed her inside.

  My mind raced to find ways to keep her in there, but I didn’t have time to implement any of them as an arrow struck me in the back, sending sparks flying everywhere.

  “Oh, shit…” I called out as the dragon’s mouth glowed brightly. I grabbed out the shield gun and opened up the honeycombs to shield me from the blast.

  The hit came in like a wrecking ball, and I struggled to keep it up. The shield broke and the blast shot me off the roof.

  I landed with my back on the fence, the illusion being the only thing that kept me from getting impaled, and I slumped over it.

  The green dragon raced around, now with its rider on its back. The purple dragon flew up to the manor’s roof, as did the silver dragon. So much for removing a rider from the equation.

  The green dragon moved its mouth onto me and bit down. I screamed as the pain from the ever-so-show-accurate belt filled my entire body.

  Finding the illusion a bit too hard to bite through, or impatient to wait for it to disappear, he flung me towards the dragon hunter, landing just in front of the portal.

  He reached down to the belt and crushed it with just two fingers and his thumb, using the rest to carry th
e tonfa.

  The illusion disappeared, as did the belt surprisingly enough, and the pain in my body disappeared, which felt amazing, as he picked me up by my neck and lifted me off the ground.

  “Did you think you could save that little dragon by coming here all alone? What was this supposed to accomplish?” he mocked.

  I grabbed onto his hand, less to struggle against him and more to get enough air to speak. “Would you–” I coughed, as his hand was tickling my throat, “believe me if I said I was the distraction?”

  “I thought I told you that your Fae tricks wouldn’t work on me!” he said, apparently angry that I wouldn’t learn this lesson.

  “Who said anything about Fae? I was thinking Eldritch,” I said, forming the best smile I could while having my windpipe crushed.

  That’s when Gavin’s claws stabbed through the portal.

  22

  Chapter 22

  Those same cyan-aqua cracks filled the portal slowly; even the golden ring in which the portal was housed seemed to crack under Gavin’s slow twisting. The claws struggled, working against the resistance of the portal, but slowly moved through it, sending waves of cracks through the magical construct.

  “What is the name of all gods is happening?” the hunter demanded, his shock leading him to drop me, but not his tonfas.

  I struggled to catch my breath. It’d been a long time of fighting capped off with that neck grab so I had a lot of air I needed to catch up on. The cracks intensified, and another set of claws stabbed through it.

  I heard Gavin shouting, struggling to break something so large, and then, all at once, it shattered.

  Behind the formally opaque portal stood the rest of the crew: Silvia, David, Gavin, Lorenz, Leonardo, Fumnaya, and Genki.

  The dragon riders jumped into action, getting close to their leader to shield him from the onslaught. The shards were still falling while they got into position, and all that hit the ground turned into white globs of pure magic, flying to Gavin. His form started to glow brightly as if he were a fluorescent bulb.

  The longer the moment went on, the more and more he glowed, turning into the white-hot glow you’d expect from metal right out of the hottest forge.

  He screamed a primal roar. I wasn’t sure if it was anger, a war cry, or just an animal waiting to eviscerate the closest object.

  He lunged forwards, shifting to his wolf form, which seemed gray for a brief moment before it, too, was glowing bright white, and he charged at the hunter.

  The hunter, a warrior at heart, let go of his fear and raised his weapon to block the incoming attack. The claw struck the plate head-on, but the shield that came up when another part was struck came up anyway and broke. The hunter was sent flying before his other tonfa could get its shield up.

  “Silvia, on me! Fumnaya and Leo, on the silver dragon, Lorenz, David, on the green!” I shouted to get everyone else into combat.

  Silvia raced up to me, with the dragon slayer tonfa in tow, and I hopped on and grabbed it as we glared down at the purple huntress.

  Fumnaya and Leo came together, ready for another blast furnace supercharged spell, and the white hunter, now on her dragon and the right age, took off towards them. The purple one swooped down.

  Silvia barked, but I held her down. Angela’s warning about it swooping down from that angle was fresh in my mind. The dragon landed just beyond where the portal had been and nocked another arrow.

  I tapped Silvia’s back right leg and she started to sprint towards the dragon. I still had no idea what the breath attack this dragon had could do, so I wanted to be better safe than sorry. I leaned sideways to get Silvia to go around her left side. Since she held the bow in her left hand, her right was more open.

  The dragon swiped at us, but I held up the tonfa to block its blow and attempted to swipe back at it with the sharp end. It thwacked uselessly on his arm and Silvia rode up the back legs and up towards the woman.

  The woman jumped up and disassembled the blades once more. This time, though, I had neither my armour nor my sword. Just one tonfa on terrain she controlled didn’t sound very good.

  I jumped off Silvia to the right side of the dragon, and she went around the left side. While I couldn’t take this opponent with just one weapon, she couldn’t take care of two people with just one of her.

  I came in hard using the large steel plate to deflect her blows. I did this to let Silvia come in, who bit down on the woman’s leg and tried to force her down. She was stubborn and used one blade to parry my attacks with another to slash at Silvia’s head.

  Dragons aren’t werewolves so no silver was on said blade. It also seemed to be made of bronze anyway, most likely something their hometown had in abundance. Or perhaps to flex more as a bow.

  Either way, Silvia was winning that side. I used the tonfa and body checked her, once I noticed that Silvia was trying to knock her down. She fell backwards and I reached back to plunge the tonfa right into her chest.

  The same sigil that’d been on most of the weapons appeared and blocked the tonfa. It was on both ends, but it was smaller than those the plates or the spear had. I assumed it was most likely less strong. She put both ends to the tonfa and flung it and me back.

  I stumbled and the dragon’s wing tried to swat me off it. Silvia clawed at the woman’s shield, but just like the werewolves that fought the hunter, she couldn’t get through with claws alone.

  The woman put both her swords around Silvia’s neck and tried to decapitate her. All it got was a bit of yipping and some shallow cuts.

  From behind everything, I surveyed the battlefield quickly. Gavin was matching the hunter blow for blow, every single strike sending out shockwaves of the magic inside. Fumnaya and Leonardo were floating around, keeping out of range of the silver rider’s spear and dragon, but the fire didn’t seem to be doing enough.

  Lorenz and David had surrounded the green rider, and the guy wasn’t faring well.

  I made a decision. “Fumnaya, get the green dragon rider!” I called out.

  She paused and looked to me, possibly for confirmation. She then moved as fast as she could towards the green dragon’s rider.

  I could tell that the silver dragon rider didn’t like this outcome and went to save, who I’m assuming was, her little brother.

  Leo spotted this lapse in her defence and shot a fireball right into the silver dragon’s eyes. This caused it to buck the spearwoman off.

  Just like the green boy, she floated down safely, but as paratroopers would have you know that’s not always safe.

  Leonardo let loose with the spells to blow the silver rider out of the sky before the dragon could come around and pick her up.

  The purple rider charged forwards, disrupting my battlefield evaluation. She slashed at me and I could only jump away to avoid it. I landed on a badly sloped part of the dragon, possibly the hip we’d climbed upon, and fell to the ground.

  The purple dragon’s head curled around, and its eyes gleamed at the thought of an easy kill.

  I held the tonfa out in front of myself, with the plate on my right and the puncturing bit on my left.

  I’d seen a lot of the hunter’s fighting style, and while I hadn’t seen it on an actual dragon, I got the gist. Focus on a heavy defence, where your opponent is attacking, and after blocking get your hits in.

  The blade on the tonfa was shaped to gouge out the chest of a dragon. If what I assumed of how their ribcage was set up was true, this would be a quick and easy way to both the heart and lungs.

  The dragon charged and swung a clawed hand my way. I flicked the tonfa that way to block it with the steel plate. The shield faded a bit at the strike and slowly started to come back into focus. The next strike was coming, and I moved the tonfa towards it, hoping it’d stab its hand on the sharp end.

  I grunted at the force pushing back on the edge of the tonfa and caught a glimpse of the shallow wound it caused. These were clearly made for someone with bigger arms than myself.

  “Perhap
s I could be of assistance?” the dragon said.

  I felt him skittering up my leg, which was rather painful as the only thing he had to grip with were claws.

  He stopped at my shoulder, holding the device we had going spare in his mouth.

  I hopped back to get some distance on the dragon, but unfortunately, it had a much longer stride than me.

  “How old is this dragon? You sure that’d work?” I yelped out, trying to focus on staying alive.

  “It has limited stamina, with this we have unlimited,” the dragon suggested.

  I gulped. “You’d better be right,” I said, grabbing the bottom part and lifting him off his shoulder and in front of me.

  I shrank, a none too common and yet familiar feeling and the dragon grew under my legs. He was only about the side of a large dog, but when the next stage of the effect took place, he was about the size of a werewolf, in wolf form.

  I, now a child, was on his back, holding the tonfa with just about all my strength.

  The purple dragon roared and its mouth flashed with that purple light.

  The child dragon, his features albeit spikier, looked about the same as the infant one, including the orange stripe from wing to underbelly. I swear the band grew hot as he blasted a stream of fire faster than the older dragon could, and scorched the dragon’s eye. He then jumped to the side, to avoid the purple flame.

  Finding the young dragon’s fighting style to be fairly scrappy, I made use of the temporary blindness and stabbed the dragon in the foot. I was smaller and weaker than before, but luckily the glowing power of the dragon slayer blade helped me out a bit more than using the blade to guard.

  The dragon roared in pain and bucked Silvia and the rider off it. Just like the other two, she floated gently down. Silvia jumped up to meet her and dragged her down to earth a bit faster than she normally would go.

  The rider grunted and flipped her grip on her blades, looking to stab down on Silvia. I pointed past the dragon’s head, a dangerous proposition with all those spikes on the back, but it was important.