The Hungry Dragon Cookie Company

by L. G. Estrella

  To make matters worse, Thomas was sitting on a throne made out of what appeared to be human bones. Timmy grimaced. The bones hadn’t even been cleaned properly, and the throne itself was lopsided. His anger faded ever so slightly. Thomas was clearly not handling being on his own well. He’d always been eccentric, all necromancers were, but now he was worryingly weird. Something that was almost pity tugged at Timmy before he clamped down on it. Thomas had been a worthy rival once. Timmy would have to deal with him first before looking into whether there was more to this than the unfortunate descent of yet another necromancer into madness.

  “Cut the invisibility,” Timmy murmured to the rat in his pocket. “And get ready. He won’t be happy.”

  The instant Timmy appeared, Thomas gave a bellow of rage. “You!” Unlike most necromancers, Thomas was tall and powerfully built. If Timmy hadn’t known better, he would have guessed he was a paladin. The war hammer he wielded only added to the impression. “You dare enter my castle?”

  “Well, yeah, I do.” Timmy shrugged and took a big step to his right.

  A blast of magic thundered through the space he’d occupied only a moment ago. It struck a clump of zombies, and they immediately turned to dust. Timmy grimaced. Thomas’s magic had the ability to age objects decades in a matter of moments. It was less effective against living things, and it generally needed several hits or a single sustained hit to overcome a mage of Timmy’s strength, but he did not want to take any chances. If Thomas had gotten stronger, Timmy did not want to find out by being turned into an old man or a pile of dust. On the upside, it didn’t look as though Thomas had gotten faster. He wasn’t like Avraniel who could throw around lethal blasts of flame the same way most people could throw confetti.

  “And speaking of daring –” Timmy rolled away from another blast and drove his shovel into the floor. Thomas must not have maintained the seals in the throne room because the magic protecting it buckled, and Timmy was able to throw several slabs of stone at the zombies closest to him. The zombies were crushed with a satisfying squelch, and Timmy dodged yet another bolt of Thomas’s magic before he hurled some more stone to destroy the last of the zombies in the throne room. He shook his head. Those zombies hadn’t been made with the skill he’d come to expect from Thomas. “You made plans to assassinate my apprentice and you want to talk about daring?”

  Timmy twisted his shovel. A shard of stone ripped out of the floor and shot toward Thomas, but the other necromancer swung his war hammer to intercept it. The weapon struck, and the shard turned into a cloud of dust. Timmy grimaced. Of course, Thomas could do that. He might not be the brightest necromancer in the world, but he wasn’t an idiot. Combining blunt force trauma with magic that could age things at a tremendous rate was a recipe for success in combat.

  “Fool!” Thomas spat. He gestured and more zombies poured into the throne room. “I have an entire castle of zombies at my disposal. I should –”

  “What you should do is upgrade your security.” Timmy lashed out with his own necromancy. He couldn’t seize control of Thomas’s zombies. The gap between them in necromantic skill and power wasn’t nearly wide enough for that, but he could disrupt them for a short period of time, and a few seconds was plenty when Timmy had this much stone to work with. Spikes of stone ripped upward, tearing through the zombies and blocking the doors into the throne room.

  The rat in his pocket squeaked. Timmy grimaced. He couldn’t draw this out much longer. The rats intended to bring the castle down as quickly as possible. If things went according to plan, they should be almost done. It was for the best. Thomas relied on his instincts when he fought, and the longer he fought someone, the better he got at reading them. It was reflected in Thomas’s necromancy too. He tended to simply throw wave after wave of zombies at his opponents until he identified a weakness, which he would then attack without hesitation or mercy. It was a perfectly reasonable way of doing things, but it was also why Thomas hadn’t become a Grand Necromancer. Grand Necromancers were more than extremely powerful and skilled necromancers. They were also adept at mitigating the weaknesses inherent to zombies and necromancers in general. It was why Timmy was a Grand Necromancer, and all Thomas could do was seethe about it. Timmy could do more than command colossal numbers of zombies at the same time. He could create an enormous variety of composite zombies, which had abilities far beyond those of any normal zombie.

  Another blast of deadly energy came his way, and Timmy darted to the side before he tossed more stone at Thomas. The other necromancer swatted Timmy’s attack aside and stomped forward. Timmy backed away. His shovel could easily block or parry a sword, but a war hammer was another story. His shovel wouldn’t break, but the sheer weight of the war hammer would make it almost impossible to meet head on.

  “I really don’t like it when people go after my apprentice, Thomas. We’re necromancers, not savages.” Timmy grinned mockingly. “Although I’m not surprised you don’t understand. You never kept any of your apprentices for long, did you?”

  Thomas gave an inarticulate cry of rage. It was a matter of pride amongst necromancers to find a suitably fiendish and talented apprentice. Timmy had lucked out with Katie, and he got no shortage of envious looks whenever they attended necromancer conventions. Despite her tendency to be a bit too traditional at times, Katie was an excellent apprentice: intelligent, cunning, good with paperwork, capable of magic that was both useful and thematically consistent with necromancy, and evil enough to be a good necromancer but not so evil as to bring the wrath of the Council down upon them. Katie ticked all the boxes for what Timmy was looking for in an apprentice. In contrast, Thomas had driven away all of his apprentices. It probably hadn’t helped that skimping on maintenance and repairs had left Thomas’s castle in a horrible state. A necromancer’s castle was supposed to be menacing, not decrepit.

  “Die!” Thomas bellowed. “I will crush your skull!”

  The rat in Timmy’s pocket snickered. As threats went, they’d both heard better. Thomas swung his war hammer, and a wave of his magic rippled outward. Timmy leapt out of the way and thrust his shovel forward. A row of spikes erupted around Thomas. The other man spun and smashed all of them with his war hammer before another swipe of the weapon hurled a bolt of power at Timmy. Timmy jerked his shovel up in time to block, but the attack nearly knocked him off his feet. The protective runes and seals on his shovel flared and began to crack. Not good. He wouldn’t be able to take too many more of those. Thomas hurled more magic at him, but his anger had thrown off his aim.

  “I order you to stand still!”

  Timmy was now seriously beginning to consider the idea that there was something seriously wrong with his rival. He couldn’t remember Thomas ever shouting something quite so… stupid in the middle of a fight. “I’d rather not.”

  Timmy twisted away from another attack and then beat a hasty retreat as Thomas lunged forward with his war hammer. The other man brought the weapon down with enough force to crack the floor, and Timmy winced. Being hit would have been horrendously painful, as well as probably fatal – if not for the rat in his pocket.

  “Are they ready yet?” Timmy whispered to the rat. The rat squeaked his reply. It was time. “You know,” Timmy drawled. “You should pay closer attention to the foundations of your castle. It would be a real shame if something happened to them.”

  Thomas’s eyes widened. “What? What did you –”

  Thomas never got to finish his sentence because that was when the explosions started.

  Timmy felt the explosions shake their way through the structure of the castle with his magic. Renoir and the other rats had done well. For some reason or another, they’d been forced to alter where they’d put the explosives, but the end result would be the same. Perhaps Thomas wasn’t as far gone as Timmy thought? The foundations of the castle began to buckle, and the whole structure started to give way. Timmy sent a pulse of his magic through the weakening castle to hasten its collapse since the castle’s magical defenc
es were collapsing alongside its foundations, and then he ran toward the nearest window. He had no intention of being around when the castle finally gave way.

  “I didn’t say you could leave!” Thomas growled.

  “I wasn’t asking,” Timmy shot back. He gestured with his shovel, and the floor around Thomas jerked up and encased him in a cocoon of stone. It wouldn’t hold him for long, but Timmy didn’t need it to. He jumped out of the window as the ceiling of the throne room began to cave in.

  His jump carried him away from the castle and toward a rocky outcrop. He pointed his shovel, and the rock turned into a geyser of mud to break his fall. The rat in his pocket was kind enough to create a shield around him, so he didn’t even get muddy. He did, however, slide quite a distance through the mud before he finally came to a stop and got back to his feet.

  “Good work.”

  Timmy lifted the rat out of his pocket and put him onto his shoulder. They had a perfect view of the castle’s demise. It was oddly therapeutic. He pursed his lips. This was a nice spot for a castle. He’d have to see if he could purchase it. He’d have to rebuild, but he had been thinking of acquiring a backup castle for a while now. Mountainside real estate could be pricey, but this had been Thomas’s stronghold for years. Not many people would want to live in a place that had housed thousands of zombies and witnessed countless dark rituals, but Timmy already lived in a place like that. Given what lived underneath the castle, this place might actually be less creepy.

  Hopefully, the other rats were okay. Rembrandt could be troublesome, but the rats were generally nice to have around. Then again, the rats that had come with him were some of the elite. They wouldn’t have set the explosives off if they weren’t confident of getting to safety. Less than a minute later, they proved him right by gliding toward the outcrop using another one of their inventions. He sent a spray of mud up to catch their attention, and the rats angled their hang gliders toward him. He took a quick look at them to make sure they were unharmed. He had several healing potions with him, but their small size meant that even a single healing potion would be more than enough to heal all of them. Not one of them had so much as a scratch.

  “Good work. Now, let’s see if Thomas is still alive. He’s a tough one, so I doubt he’s dead. Letting him go isn’t an option, but I can’t bring myself to kill him now that we’ve destroyed his castle. He hasn’t paid the assassins yet, and there’s no way he’ll be able to pay them now.” Timmy’s brows furrowed. “I’ll check in with the assassins’ guild just to be safe, but I think I’ll hand him over to the Council. It should help with earning a pardon and get us a nice reward. They won’t let him out either, not after what he’s done in the past.” His lips twitched. “He’s looking at a lifetime in prison, which some people might consider worse than death.”

  There was hardly a single stone standing, which spoke volumes about how poorly maintained Thomas’s castle had been. It made Timmy sad. The castle had been decrepit in Thomas’s time, but it must have been imposing once. Oh well. Timmy had a castle of his own to worry about. There was no point in worrying about the ruins of someone else’s.

  “Get ready,” he warned the rats as he reached out with his magic. “He will be hostile since, you know, we kind of blew up his castle with him in it.”

  Timmy searched for the cocoon of stone he’d encased Thomas in and wrenched it free of the ruins. It split open, and Thomas roared and surged forward with his war hammer. There was madness in his eyes, and his magic was a maelstrom of destructive power. Timmy grimaced and pointed his shovel. Thomas wasn’t thinking at all. A rock jutted out of the ground, and Thomas tripped spectacularly. His war hammer slipped out of his hands, and the rats were on him before he even knew what was happening. In less than a second, Thomas was unconscious. Renoir cackled malevolently – it seemed to be a habit of his – as the other rats began to search Thomas for anything dangerous or valuable.

  “Let me know if you find anything interesting,” Timmy said. “And don’t forget to secure him properly. We don’t want him giving us any trouble later.” Timmy directed his magic into the ruins again. There was gold and other valuables underneath the rubble, but they could always come back for them later. Thomas’s fearsome reputation ought to keep looters away for at least a week or two. “My zombie wyvern should be here soon. We’ve got a delivery to make.”

  * * *

  Vicky looked up from her paperwork as she munched on another hazelnut and chocolate-chip cookie. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. This particular flavour was already sold out all over the capital, but she happened to know the people behind the Hungry Dragon Cookie Company. Spot had dropped by yesterday to deliver some messages and several boxes of cookies just for her. He was working on maintaining his speed during longer flights, and Timmy thought it would be a good idea for him to learn his way around Everton. There were always some ninja rats with the young dragon, so Vicky was confident he could stay out of trouble. If he did run into anything he couldn’t handle, there was a certain pyromaniac elf that would be more than happy to immolate anyone who messed with him. Vicky was about to return to her paperwork when one of her attendants burst into her office. The young woman looked positively scandalised.

  “Is something wrong?” Vicky asked.

  Instead of replying, her attendant handed her a note. It was written in what Timmy liked to call his neat handwriting. Honestly? He was one of her dearest friends, but his writing was still chicken scratch. It was no wonder their instructors at the academy had badgered him all the time. They could barely read most of his homework. Naturally, Vicky had become quite adept at deciphering Timmy’s writing over the years. The contents of the message were simple. He had defeated Thomas Darkmore, blown up his castle, and left him on her doorstep. No wonder her attendant had burst in.

  “I trust Lord Darkmore is being watched?” Vicky got to her feet and strode toward the door. She’d have to finish her cookies later. “Prepare a suitable cell for our new guest. I’m going to introduce myself to him before we have a little chat.”

  * * *

  “Did you buy anything interesting on your trip, master?” Katie asked as Timmy ambled into the dining room where she and the others were eating lunch. Well, some of them were eating. Amanda was savouring a cup of blood, and Spot was devouring his food, albeit in a surprisingly neat manner. Even Chomp, the three-headed dog, was eating at a more sedate pace than the dragon although Timmy had to wonder where he’d picked up such excellent table manners given that the dog had spent years in a labyrinth eating whoever had offended his previous master.

  “Nothing too interesting, but I might be purchasing a mountainside with an old, ruined castle on it. The castle collapsed, you see, and the previous owner was not exactly a model citizen. It should be on the market for a reasonable price. I’ve actually got some of the rats and some of my zombies looking at it right now.” It was more like he’d tasked the rats with supervising his zombies as they dug through the ruins. Ah, zombie wyverns were so good at transporting zombies and equipment, but he might have to grab Gerald for an afternoon when all of the valuables had been excavated. The alternative would be to have groups of zombie wyverns make multiple trips to carry things from the ruins of Thomas’s castle to his.

  “Don’t you waste enough money on this damn castle already?” Avraniel reached for more beef. Elves weren’t vegetarians, but Timmy had never seen one who ate meat as frequently as she did. “Do you really need to buy some dump in the middle of nowhere?”

  “This castle is worth the money, and I wouldn’t be fixing the castle I mentioned, so much as building a new one using the ruins of the old one to provide building materials.” The rat on Timmy’s shoulder snickered, and Katie gave him a curious look. Hopefully, the rats would keep quiet about everything.

  “So you didn’t get anything interesting on your trip?” Katie asked. “Nothing interesting at all?”

  Timmy had made some stops on the way home. “I did buy a book although
I wouldn’t say it was too interesting.” Katie immediately perked up. He bit back a chuckle. If there were a book around to be read, Katie would read it.

  Food? Spot stopped eating long enough to give him a hopeful smile.

  Timmy laughed. Spot was amazingly easy to please. “Yes, I got you something to eat.” He put a large fruit on the table. “This is a rare fruit that only grows in certain places, like the other side of the mountain the castle I mentioned was on. It’s normally fairly expensive, but I was able to get my hands on this one for free since nobody lives on that mountain. You can have it, but try not to eat it too quickly. Savour it. It’s very good.” It certainly was, and Timmy had plans to collect more of the fruits from the other side of the mountain. If he were lucky, he’d be able to get a farm of some kind working, either over there or over here.

  Spot trilled happily and went back to eating. It was a pity not everyone could be appeased with some fruit. The world would have been a much more peaceful place.

  “Anyway,” Timmy said. “If things go well, I’ll have two castles.” He grinned at Katie. “Now, I’ll have somewhere to go if you ever manage to overthrow me.”

  Katie grinned back. “Not if I take over that castle too.”

  Impostor

  (Set Before Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf)

  Avraniel didn’t really care if people went around killing each other, so long as they found somewhere else to do it. The last thing she needed in the little patch of forest she called home were piles of corpses everywhere. The smell would be awful, and it wouldn’t take long at all for scavengers to turn up looking for an easy meal. She wasn’t a cannibal, so joining the scavengers was out of the question, not that she could take the moral high ground. Robbery, arson, and even the occasional murder via glorious amounts of fire – she’d dabbled in a bit of everything, so she was in no position to lecture anyone.