Dragon Emperor

by Eric Vall

  Wolf Demi-Human: No injuries detected.

  Priority: None.

  Status: Healthy. No treatment necessary.

  I was impressed. It’d only been fifteen or twenty minutes at the most. If people healed like that back on Earth, I would probably have had to study something else.

  “What were you saying earlier about the quest?” I asked as I guided the conversation back to why they were in the cave to begin with.

  Laika’s ears popped forward, and I found myself entranced by the way they twitched and moved. “Hatra, the place we mentioned before, is plagued by miasma.”

  “Miasma?” I echoed. “What’s that?”

  Laika stared at me oddly. “It is an evil force that looks like smoke. Do you not have it in your own world?”

  I shook my head in response to the swordswoman’s question. “We have smog and pollution from dirty air, but I’m getting the feeling that this miasma is something else.”

  “You’d be right to say that,” Laika grunted, and a shadow passed over her face. “Miasma is total corruption, a cruel creation by the demons and fallen mages that threaten our world. It corrupts and decays whatever breathes it in. A quick death would be a mercy. It is pure suffering.” The swordswoman dug her nails into her palms so tightly that I could smell blood from where she pierced the skin. “We’d been led to believe that there was a cure for it down here. But she was wrong. Her vision didn’t lead us to what she said it would.”

  “She?” I asked. From the way Laika had spoken, I got the feeling that she had lost someone precious to the miasma or to the demons that created it. I knew well how it felt to lose someone you loved.

  “A priestess offered us a small fortune to help a village, if you could even call Hatra that anymore,” Marina chimed in. “She said she had foreseen we’d find something down here that could stop it. An herb or some enchanted object.” Marina leaned forward, and her hands were wrapped tightly around her bow and quiver. “The money was good, but Hatra? Any sane adventurer worth their salt knows to avoid Hatra. The miasma that plagues the town is enough to drown the capital. It’s a miracle the town even still stands.”

  “How many has the miasma killed?” I inquired. My heart was in my throat, and I thought of what I could do to help. I didn’t even know the first thing about fighting against a magical disease, but I would sure as hell try. It wouldn’t be right if I just left and parted ways with Laika and the rest after they’d told me about Hatra. Maybe there was something I could do to help, something I had learned from my EMT courses that this world didn’t know about.

  “Not many,” Polina replied. “The majority of Hatra was destroyed generations ago by the miasma, but it returns periodically to plague the descendents who remain and have no place else to go. These attacks used to come once every few months, but recently they have been increasing in frequency. Now, Hatra is attacked every other night, but with the constant warring, the government doesn’t have the manpower to help such a place.”

  “I’ll go,” I said as I stretched my neck. “Take me there.”

  It was my duty as an EMT to help people, so finding my way back home would have to wait until after I had ensured that the people of Hatra were safe and healthy.

  One of Laika’s ears twitched as she studied me carefully. “Why? Why do you want to go to Hatra?”

  The ears of the two wolf Demi-Humans swiveled in my direction, and they watched me with dilated eyes. The dryads leaned in closer, and their expressions were surprised, too.

  I frowned and looked for the right words. I wasn’t sure if they had doctors in this world, but they surely had to have something similar.

  “I am a student of healing,” I explained as best I could. “I help people who are in need. Those who are sick and those who are attacked or are in need of a helping hand. I can’t let anyone suffer knowing that there is something I can do about it.”

  “You’re a strange dragon,” Polina remarked as she studied me curiously.

  “Yes he is.” Laika considered me for one long moment, and her stormy eyes were unreadable. Then a small smile made its way onto her face as she stood and stretched. “Well, you did manage to save us from those giants. So, I guess we’ll take you with us to Hatra. Speaking of which, we’d best be heading back if we want to get there before noon. Do you need to take anything with you?”

  “Um, no. I’m good,” I replied.

  The swordswoman nodded and rolled her shoulders. Trina smirked and bounded ahead, and her short curls bounced in the air around her. The two remaining dryads, Polina and Marina, placed their hands on my forelegs.

  “So, Evan, how old are you?” Marina was the first to speak.

  “I’m twenty-five,” I answered absentmindedly as I looked back over the lake and wondered when I’d see it again. I hadn’t been in the cave for long, but it was the first place I’d landed in this world. It was a slight chance, but I wondered if I could return home through this very cave.

  Well, not that it was a priority at the moment. Right now that was Hatra, and I’d give the village and its residents my full attention.

  I turned away from the lake, but then I came to an abrupt halt. I hadn’t noticed that everyone had stopped to look at me with shocked eyes and open mouths.

  “You’ve lived that many thousands of years?” The fur along Laika’s tail twitched as she questioned me, and her gray eyes were wide as the moon.

  My brow furrowed at the thought of living for so long. “No, I mean only twenty-five years old.”

  The silence only grew, and I laughed nervously. I’d said something strange again.

  “According to the lore, a baby dragon is twenty-five years old.” Polina shook her head. “If you’re twenty-five, and you’re already as big as a stone giant…” The dryad trailed off, and her green eyes were narrowed in thought.

  “You’re only going to get bigger,” Laika finished for the dryad, and I glimpsed a hint of awe and contemplation in her eyes before it slid behind a stormy wall. “And you took down two stone giants nearly entirely by yourself.”

  “Only because the five of you distracted one of them,” I pointed out. “If the two of them had gone up against me at once, it wouldn’t have been as easy.”

  “Well, we are amazing.” Polina nodded.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me, and I glanced down in concern at the two dryads on my forelegs. “Weren’t the two of you hurt?”

  Two Dryads: No injuries detected.

  Priority: None.

  Status: Healthy. No treatment necessary.

  And there were those strange words again. At least they were helpful.

  The two dryads snickered in amusement, and Laika let out a sigh. It was the same sigh that Aunt Emma would let out anytime I had been an annoyance or tried a lame joke on her.

  I wondered how old they all were. The dryads seemed like they were teenagers, but I couldn’t be sure how dryads aged. For all I knew, they could be hundreds of years older than me.

  “Don’t torture him,” Laika chided. “He’s worried about the two of you.”

  “Dryads don’t have bones like most of the other races on Inati,” Marina smiled up at me impishly. “We are like young bamboo or reeds, we bend and sway, but we don’t break.”

  My eyes widened. “That’s impressive.” That was definitely an advantage in a fight. If they lacked bones, they would easily get out of any jiu jitsu hold. All they had to do was twist and slip, and they’d be out.

  The two dryads smiled and let go of my forelegs to run ahead and find their sister. Their sweet laughter echoed in the cave, and I couldn’t help the fond smile that stretched on my face. Then I found an easy pace with Laika as Anton trailed behind us.

  We walked in silence for a while, and I strained to hear the sounds that would hint at the entrance of the cave. I wondered how the outside world would look like and what fantastical things awaited me. There could be any manner of exotic plants and creatures that existed only in stories and games. I
’d already met giants made of stone, wolf Demi-Humans, and dryads. Anything could wait for me up there.

  Maybe even more dragons.

  A thrill of excitement raced up my spine at the thought, but it was quickly tempered as I thought about what we were marching toward.

  “So tell me more about this miasma,” I said to Laika as we continued to walk side by side. I wanted to have as much information as possible about this plague before we reached Hatra.

  The swordswoman sighed and tapped her fingers against her thigh. “The miasma does not just kill as we told you. It causes the body to decay and it makes the victim go on a mad rampage. Those who don’t die fall under the control of demon lords and fallen mages in order to spread this vicious plague.”

  I stared down at the swordswoman in horror. “That sounds awful.”

  Awful … but familiar. A zombie infection, that’s what the miasma sounded more and more like to me. I couldn’t be sure if it was viral or bacterial until I found out more, but with the way I had been told it behaved and spread, I leaned toward it being similar to a viral infection.

  Of course, this world was magic, so it could just be a magic zombie virus cloud.

  Laika’s gray tail swished behind her as she talked. “The priestess we mentioned before is working on a way to save them, but she alone isn’t enough. That’s why we came down here.”

  “Is she the only one who’s tried to find a cure?” I inquired. I wondered about this priestess and how she had known that there would be something down in the cave. I doubted that she had expected the adventurers to find me instead. Though, maybe the priestesses here would be the equivalent of doctors back on Earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were so. The ancient priests and priestesses on Earth had done the same once upon a time.

  “Many have tried over the years,” Laika replied with a frown. “They all failed. This priestess has gotten the closest to it, and she sent us here because of a vision. She said that what she needed would be inside this cave. Instead, we found you.” Laika lifted one perfect, gray eyebrow as she turned toward me. “Let’s pray that you’ll be just as good, if not better.”

  “Maybe I’m just what you needed,” I chuckled. “I mean, you saw how I took down those stone giants. The miasma will be a piece of cake.”

  I was obviously joking, but I wanted to bring a smile back to the Demi-Human’s face. A shadow had passed behind her eyes when she spoke of the miasma, and I wanted to chase it away.

  Laika stared back at me with an unimpressed stormy eye.

  “How did you do that?” she suddenly asked me.

  “Did what?” Absently, I wondered if the fur on her ears was thick and coarse or fine and soft. I doubted the proud swordswoman would tell me.

  She tilted her head back toward the lake behind us. “The way you took down those stone giants. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Well, I am a dragon.”

  “Yes,” she admitted with a nod, “but you grabbed their joints and bent them at strange angles.”

  “Well, it’s a type of martial arts back … where I come from.” I shook my head as I thought of home.

  “Yes, we have our own fighting styles and arts,” the swordswoman mused with a nod. “But that style, you used their limbs and their weight against them so easily.”

  I smirked cheekily at her. “It helps when you’re the same size and not smaller than one of their fingers.”

  “Undoubtedly so, I wouldn’t be able to use such a technique against something that size.” Laika breathed out a husky laugh that sent a shiver down my spine, but I shook it off.

  It was the damp, it had to be.

  “Well, the founding principle is that a smaller and weaker person can defend themselves against someone much bigger and stronger,” I began to explain. “Especially if they’re heavier, which those stone giants definitely were.”

  I launched into an easy explanation of martial arts, a topic I knew well, as the ground beneath our feet slowly changed. With each step we took, the air became cleaner and fresher. I didn’t know how, but I could smell sunlight. It reminded me of my childhood and happiness.

  “What about the damage caused to the attacker?” the Demi-Human questioned. “Is there a way to subdue them without harming them?”

  There was an edge to Laika’s voice that hadn’t been there before, and I glanced at her curiously from the corner of my eye.

  “Well, yeah.” I shrugged my massive shoulders. “There’re a ton of different chokeholds that’ll knock anyone out in three seconds flat.” I tilted my head, confused at the turn the conversation had taken. “You’re pretty strong though, a single hit from that broadsword of yours, and I’m sure almost anyone would be out for the count.”

  “But there’s a danger if I use my broadsword on any one of the corrupted.” Laika shook her head. “We need to subdue them, not kill them. They aren’t at fault for what the miasma does to them.”

  I nodded slowly in understanding. “And knocking them unconscious, that stops them from rampaging, got it. Too bad I can’t show you my moves in this body.”

  “Why don’t you just shift into a humanoid form?” Laika asked as she raised her eyebrows.

  “What are you talking about?” I came to a stop as I swung my head to look at her.

  “How can you not know this?” Laika tilted her head in amusement. “Dragons are shapeshifters, at least according to every piece of lore I’ve ever read.”

  “Not from this world, remember?” I sat down on my hindlegs. “So are you telling me I can shift back into my human form?”

  That would make things much simpler. As awesome as my dragon body was, I still wasn’t used to compensating for my extra limbs and massive frame. I didn’t want to walk into Hatra and accidently level a house with a sweep of my tail.

  Laika shrugged. “I am not a dragon. I do not know for sure, but that is what the lore says.”

  “I’m not really a dragon either, actually,” I said. “ But, based on your lore, do you know how I can achieve this shapeshifting?”

  “Dragons are very powerful,” Laika laughed. “They just visualize, and then they become what they wish.”

  “Okay, I’ll try it,” I said as I started to think about changing. I just had to picture myself back in my human body, and I should be a human again. Right?

  Man, I really hoped I didn’t end up with any weird limbs in any weird places.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Then I thought back to how it felt to use my healing powers. Maybe my shapeshifting abilities would work instinctively like that.

  I tried to recall that feeling as I sat there and concentrated. At first, nothing happened, and I could feel Laika’s eyes on me as she waited expectantly. For a moment I thought this wasn’t going to work, but then I started to feel something.

  It was hard to describe at first. It began as a sort of … softness that spread throughout my body, like floating in a bath of warm water. I honed in on that sensation, and I realized it felt oddly … familiar, like I had done this a thousand times already. I let that feeling guide my mind, and then, like a light switch being flipped, my body slowly began to shift and shrink in size.

  Shock spread through me when I realized what I was doing, but I shoved the thought aside for now. I could do this. Something inside me told me I was born for this.

  As I concentrated on the feeling, my scales became softer and softer until I couldn’t feel them anymore. My claws shrank in size, as did my fangs, though they remained just as sharp as before. Then I felt my bones shift and restructure themselves as they merged back into my smaller human frame. My muscles did the same, and the sinews and tendons became smaller and fewer.

  I heard a faint gasp as I changed my form, but I ignored it as the strange sensation began to recede back into me.

  I blinked my eyes open and was surprised to find my point of view had also changed. The ceiling of the tunnel had risen far above me, and the stalactites that hung from the cei
ling now seemed smaller than my own fangs and claws.

  I brought my hand up to my face and flexed my fingers. My hand was human, but I still had claws that were capable of tearing through stone. And I wore the opera costume Aunt Emma had brought back from Sichuan province.

  My eyes went wide as I looked down at myself. I’d actually done it.

  I’d shapeshifted.

  This day was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Wow! So handsome!” Trina had darted back to where Laika and I had stopped, and she stood in front of me with a playful light in her eyes. “Much less scaly and ferocious.”

  “I’m happy that you approve,” I laughed and bowed with a flourish. As awesome as being a dragon was, it felt good to be back in my human body again. Then I turned to the swordswoman beside me with a grin. “What do you think, Laika?”

  The Demi-Human dragged her stormy grey eyes from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

  “Passable, maybe,” she remarked nonchalantly.

  “Oh, come on!” I looked down at myself and back up at the Demi-Human in time to catch a small smirk on her face.

  “Nevermind her, my sisters have to see you!” Trina exclaimed as she latched onto my arm and dragged me down the tunnel.

  Slowly, the path became steeper as we walked up to the surface, and I could make out more piles of boulders, no doubt from the other giants that they had fought against and won.

  Suddenly, we came upon the entrance, and sunlight poured in from the opening. I could even see hints of clear blue skies through the opening, and excitement filled me.

  “Is that the entrance?” I asked rhetorically, and the words just tumbled out of my mouth as I trembled with anticipation. I would finally see this grand new world I had ended up in and not the darkness of the cave.

  “That’s it!” Trina chirped. “Come on, the others are waiting!”

  I dashed along with the dryad to the opening where her sisters and Anton waited, and I could hear Laika laugh at my back.

  As we reached the rest of the group, I saw Anton’s ears perk straight up when he caught sight of me, and his hand drifted toward the hilt of his sword suspiciously.