High House Draconis Box Set

by Riley Storm

  “They are building a House,” Valla said when the King paused. “Like Drakon Keep, or Ursidae Manor. They intend to take control of all shifters, and then extend their empire to include that of man.”

  Kyla shook her head in disbelief. “They’ll never succeed.”

  The dragons didn’t reply.

  “Will they?” she asked nervously.

  “We will fight them to the end,” Galen said, his voice strong. “Not one of us will bend a knee to their King, I assure you of that.”

  Kyla nodded, noting to herself that Galen didn’t say anything about winning, about defeating the vampires.

  He expects to die. He expects them all to die, she realized suddenly.

  “Where are the others?” she asked, wondering why she’d only seen the two dragons during her trip through the Keep. “Where are the other dragons?”

  Galen turned away abruptly. “This meeting is now over. I have many things I must get done.”

  Kyla almost pointed out that he had been sitting on a couch reading a book when she arrived, but decided against it.

  “I have more questions for you, King Galen,” she said, trying to appeal to his vanity, if he had any. “Things the Council will wish to know.”

  “Then we can meet again tomorrow,” the King said, an obvious dismissal.

  Kyla frowned. She hadn’t intended on staying overnight.

  Nor had he offered her anywhere to stay. He expected her to simply leave, to let it go.

  “You may stay the night if you wish.”

  The offer was tacked on as a throwaway. Galen didn’t expect her to take it, and Kyla had no intentions of doing so. She would take a portal home, and then return in the morning to bother him again.

  “Thank you, that would be perfect.”

  The words came out, but Kyla couldn’t believe it was her voice saying them. Why would she do such a thing? There was no need for her to stay in the huge, empty Keep. A solitary mage surrounded by dragons.

  She was supposed to go home!

  “I can show her to her room,” Valla offered.

  Galen turned around, giving Kyla a long, hard look.

  “No,” he said quietly. “I can do that. Thank you, Valla.”

  The ice dragon bowed his head and departed.

  “Come along then, Council Mage. Let us find you somewhere to stay,” the King growled, clearly displaying his anger.

  Was he angry at himself for offering, or at Kyla for accepting? She decided that if it was the latter, then he could go get bent. She wasn’t about to let him intimidate her. Absolutely not!

  Too bad for you, mister. Shouldn’t have made the offer then!

  Chapter 6

  You’re an idiot.

  Galen was well aware this was his fault. He’d belatedly extended the offer without thinking, wanting to at least keep up the appearances of being polite. After all, he was King of House Draconis.

  He’d assumed that the mage would read his body language and dismissal after her last question and realize that he was done with her, that it was time for her to leave. Instead, she’d accepted his offer.

  Now not only would he have to meet with her in the morning, but he would have to feed her and make sure that she was well looked after for the rest of the afternoon, evening and night.

  What an idiot.

  The idea of having a mage as a guest in Drakon Keep. It was an absurd idea, but here they were anyway. Maybe he should just ask her to leave instead. Say that he’d changed his mind and that she had her answers, and that he wanted her to leave.

  But that would be lying, wouldn’t it?

  Galen bit back a snarl as he walked through the hallways of the Keep to the guest area, hoping Kyla wouldn’t notice his discomfort.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, proving that she had noticed.

  “Yes, everything is fine,” he said. “Just fine.”

  Except it wasn’t. Galen couldn’t figure out why, but a part of him was curious about her. It wanted to know more.

  He was fighting it down with every ounce of his considerable willpower, and yet she kept intruding into his thoughts with her bouncy black hair and calm gray eyes.

  “Sure feels empty in here,” Kyla said out loud as they walked. “I expected there to be a lot more dragons around.”

  He wondered what she was doing, why she was fishing for information.

  The mages couldn’t possibly know the magic was failing, that the dragons could now only be awakened one by one, could they? That the magic of the earth that was supposed to awaken them in times of need, hadn’t awoken a single dragon.

  “You should be glad,” he said gruffly. “If the others were around, you might have had an encounter with someone who isn’t polite.”

  It was worth a bluff, to see if she would believe his impromptu lie, that the others were off somewhere else, unavailable for whatever reason.

  “Perhaps,” Kyla admitted. “But then again, I might have had an encounter with someone who is.”

  Galen reared back, nostrils flaring at the not-so-subtle insult to his manners.

  “Do you have a problem with the hospitality you’ve been given, mage?” he growled, not proud that she was able to get under his skin so easily, to provoke a response.

  “Of course not,” Kyla retorted hotly. “But it’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that you aren’t happy about it. Your offer of hospitality was demanded of you by protocol, not because you have any desire to be nice to me. You hate me, it’s written on your face, has been since the second I walked in. But you don’t even know me. We’ve never met before.”

  “I know your kind,” he growled. “I don’t need to know you in particular.”

  Kyla shook her head. “Yeah, well, just because you met other people, or read about them, doesn’t mean they’re what you think they are.”

  There was something in her tone when she spoke that had Galen frowning in confusion. Was she talking to him, just there…or herself? He couldn’t quite tell.

  What did it mean?

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he rumbled, deciding she was talking to him. “I’ve been around. I’ve met mages face to face. They’re all the same.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t force you to put up with me,” Kyla snapped, gesturing at the air in front of them with her free hand.

  Galen sensed her attempt to use magic, but it didn’t work.

  “What are you trying to do?” he asked.

  “Go home,” she said, biting off the words as she gestured with her hand again.

  The air shimmered slightly but that was it.

  “You won’t be able to open a portal inside the wards,” he said with a sigh. “They prevent that sort of magic from being cast. For obvious reasons,” he added.

  Kyla spun, giving him an angry look.

  Galen just shrugged. “Do you want to see your room, or the front door?”

  He wasn’t about to revoke his offer of hospitality. Doing so right then would make Kyla correct, and Galen wasn’t going to give her that sort of satisfaction. Not to a mage.

  Kyla looked at him, her eyes searching his face, looking for any sign of deception. She wouldn’t find it, he knew, because Galen was being truthful. He would show her whichever place she wanted. The choice was the mage’s, and the mage’s alone.

  “A room then, I suppose,” she said tightly, looking away.

  Galen smiled. He suspected she wasn’t completely done with the mission the Archmage had given her and leaving now would ensure she could never complete it. Kyla was forced to accept his hospitality now.

  “This way then,” he said, putting on a cheery tone, letting her know he was aware of her reasons and considered it a minor victory for himself.

  Kyla followed along grumpily.

  “By the way, you would do well to drop the high-and-mighty act,” he added over his shoulder, turning the last corner. “It’s quite clear to anyone involved that you don’t like me either.”

  T
here was a long pause before the mage replied. Long enough that they arrived at the door to her room.

  “I don’t hate you,” Kyla said, speaking slowly, choosing her words with care.

  “Your face certainly says otherwise,” Galen said, pushing open the door for her.

  “Let’s just say that you aren’t what I expected,” she said cryptically.

  Galen frowned as she waltzed into the room. That was a rather odd way to admit that she didn’t like him. Had she come in expecting him to be nicer to a mage?

  Humans. So naïve.

  “Enjoy your evening. A steward will be by to see to your needs,” Galen said, pulling the door closed as he stepped back into the hallway.

  He turned and headed back down the hallway to his own quarters, trying his hardest to get the young mage off his mind.

  It didn’t work.

  Chapter 7

  Kyla’s eyes flicked open as her spell wore off.

  After an admittedly delicious dinner, she’d climbed into the oversized bed in her clothes and cast a sleeping spell on herself, ensuring she would wake up at a very specific time.

  There was no light in the room, and the window let in only a sliver of faint moonlight from outside. It was just after midnight, which meant it was time for her to get to work.

  Too many unanswered questions had arisen from her meeting with the King, and Kyla was determined to figure out at least some of them, even if he didn’t wish to provide her any answers. Her fellows needed to know what the dragons were truly up to.

  Throwing back the covers, she padded over to the door. Unlocking it, she turned the handle, eager to be about her mission, to cover some ground. The Keep was a huge place and she had a lot of places to search to find her answers.

  The door didn’t budge.

  “Surprise, surprise. Not much of the trusting sort, are we, Galen?” she whispered, not shocked at all that her door also locked from the outside.

  A simple spell worked its way through the door, and seconds later she pulled it open easily. There were no guards waiting in the hallway either, though Kyla hadn’t expected there to be. Just another sign that seemed to confirm her suspicions.

  Most of the dragons were elsewhere.

  The real question that Kyla wanted answered, was where. Where had they gone, and why was King Galen so unhappy at her attempts to find out what they were up to?

  Something was wrong.

  Kyla padded off into the darkened corridors, only pausing for a moment to cast another spell, this one designed to muffle any noise around her so that a dragon or anyone else would be oblivious to her passing. She doubted Galen or the others would take well to her snooping around the Keep late at night.

  The lack of presence of dragons in their ancestral home worried Kyla. Her mentors had told her a great many stories about the powers of the dragons. House Draconis was the most feared enemy of the Mages Guild, and for good reason.

  Dragon shifters could wield mighty magics that came to them naturally. Power over fire, water, ice, and more. Some dragons, it was told, could control the very earth itself, while others commanded the air in her lungs and the breath of the wind.

  Unlike Kyla, who had studied for decades to be able to wield two of the three magic levels, these powers came instinctively to dragons. As they aged and grew in power, they became more in tune with their abilities until they became elder dragons. The most powerful of all.

  And the greatest enemy of a mage.

  Creeping along, past pictures and tapestries on the wall depicting great moments and battles from the past, a terrible idea started niggling at the back of her mind. The dragons were gone, that much was obvious. The more she thought about where they might have gone, however, the more she feared that they were off, preparing to attack the Guild.

  What if they struck while she was here among them? Her fellows could be fighting for their very life at this exact moment, while she did little more than sneak around and do nothing. Her fear that this was exactly what was going on grew stronger and stronger.

  Kyla began to think of ways to strike back. To attack the Keep itself. She was on the inside now. Past the magical wards. There had to be something she could do to launch an attack on them. To make them pay for what they had done to the other mages.

  So occupied with fantasies of revenge was she, that Kyla almost missed it, her brain tuned to a different wavelength.

  A brief lull in her thoughts made the footsteps sound all the clearer though, and she straightened, looking up and down the current hallway in a panic. She needed to hide!

  Panicking, she dove for the nearest alcove she could find.

  To her surprise, it was actually a narrow passageway, just big enough for a dragon shifter to walk down. Kyla almost ignored it, staying crouched while the shadowy figure in the hallway passed by, but something tugged at her senses.

  There was magic behind her. Powerful magic.

  Once the footsteps had passed, she found her way down the small corridor. It ended perhaps thirty feet down in a small circular room. Unlike the hallway, however, the room was cut from smooth stone. It wasn’t a wooden construction. Something told her that the room was old. Much older than the section of the Keep from which she’d entered.

  Oddly, however, there were no other ways out. Yet her senses were telling her there was magic here. A lot of it. Perhaps this had something to do with the other dragons, she thought. Were they trying to cast a powerful spell?

  She gently sent some magic of her own questing out, trying to decipher what sort of magic was in the room. There was a particularly dense cluster of it on the wall to her left. Walking over to it, she cast a spell that would illuminate the magic, revealing it to her human eyes.

  One of the bricks lit up like Christmas lights. On guard, but curious, she reached up and pressed the brick.

  The effect was immediate. A stone door slid into place, blocking off the corridor from where she had come. At the same time, the floor started to click. Kyla brought any number of spells to the ready, her staff glowing softly as she pulsed some latent magic through it.

  The floor rumbled quietly, and the large circular pattern of stones began to sink. At first Kyla panicked, thinking the floor was falling out from under her. As it continued to shift, however, she realized that it was forming itself into stairs.

  Glancing at the way out, she knew she wouldn’t be getting through there without making enough noise to wake Galen and the few dragons that remained at the Keep.

  “Down it is, I suppose,” she said, confident in her own strength to keep her alive.

  Tentatively, she took the first step. Then another. It quickly became devoid of any natural light; she only belatedly realized that there had been no obvious light source up above, yet more magic. Focusing her mind for a moment, Kyla pushed energy into her staff.

  The ruins lit up brightly, casting aside the shadows and revealing the stairs ahead of her. Down she went, circling around, and around. It seemed to go on forever, taking Kyla far deeper into the earth than she would have expected.

  I must be eight, ten stories down by this point, she thought to herself, too nervous to speak. How far down does this go? What is down here?

  Whatever it was, it had to be important, and so she ventured onward, determined not to stop now. She’d come this far. Kyla was going to see it through till whatever lay beyond.

  Another several stories down, the stairs finally leveled out into a wide passageway. Her eyes picked out the outline of a stone door off to her left, but she ignored it. Perhaps twenty feet down, the passageway ended in a large room. A very large room.

  Kyla’s light didn’t penetrate that far to show her, but it didn’t have to. The light of dozens, perhaps hundreds of torches did the job for her. They illuminated a massive cavern.

  Nervously, she walked closer, trying to figure out what was inside the cavern. The shadows were heavy still, and she would have to be closer to—

  All at once, she stepped
through some wards, the protective magics stripping her of her powers in a blinding display of light. Kyla shouted and stumbled, completely unexpecting such defensive measures.

  They were strong, too. Far more powerful than the ones protecting the grounds of Drakon Keep. There were many wards on the planet that would crash when she tried to walk through them, unable to contain her power within their bonds.

  These ones hadn’t even blinked, and they had stripped her of everything. Kyla’s heart beat faster at this realization. She was so out of her depth. So utterly lost. What was it that they were protecting here?

  Blinking her dazzled eyes, and not appreciating just how weak she felt without her magic, Kyla looked around.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Inside the cavern were statues. Dozens of statues, hundreds. All of them intricately carved from stone, each one depicting a different dragon. Her eyes scanned the chamber, taking it all in.

  She wandered through until she came to the first blank space. Empty stone lay crumbled on the floor. Not enough of it, though, unless the statues were hollow. Nervously, she went up to one and knocked on it.

  There was no echo within. The statue was solid.

  Frowning in confusion, she continued to walk through. There were five empty spaces in total. Five. Kyla frowned. Why did that number ring a bell with her?

  Her mind flew back to when the human steward had arrived to give her dinner. He was relatively chatty, as things went, though he’d mostly nattered on about things that had no meaning. At one point though, as she’d complimented his cooking skills, he’d muttered something relevant.

  “One meal and she’s paid more compliments than the five of them have this entire time,” he’d said, speaking mostly to himself.

  Five.

  There were five dragons in the Keep that he was cooking for.

  So five dragons in the Keep. Five empty spots…

  Kyla stiffened, darting across the open space to put a statue between her and the doorway.