Dragon Speaker

by Mugdan Elana A.

  “You remind me of someone,” it said, its body undulating in a macabre dance.

  “Um . . . okay.” The two of them stared at each other for a time, and Keriya discovered that she wasn’t afraid. The creature had given her a terrible shock, but now that it was here, it wasn’t so bad.

  “So, why does Necrovar want the sword?” she asked.

  “I knew, once. Something to do with dragons. And magic. The sword holds great magic.”

  “Really?” She sat up at once, gazing attentively at the monster.

  “Perhaps.” It lowered its head, and its eye flashed silver as it caught a stray beam of moonlight. “Necrovar is an enemy you should fear.”

  She wanted to boast that she wasn’t afraid of the Shadow, but that was too great a falsehood for her to claim. “I know.”

  “Then you should also know to never lose that weapon. It was not given lightly.”

  “Maybe you should take it back,” she said. The bogspectre’s face seethed and darkened. “I’ll do my best to keep it safe from the shadowbeasts, but I’m afraid my best might not be good enough.”

  “I wouldn’t have given it to you if I thought you unworthy,” it spat. Keriya huffed a humorless laugh and the monster growled. “Do you mock me?”

  “No, it’s just funny. You’re the only one who believes in me. I know what they all think. They see someone young and inexperienced, someone easily controlled. A weak, worthless cripple with no magic.” She didn’t know why she was explaining herself to the bogspectre. The words poured out of her, and she didn’t try to stop them.

  “I want to fight Necrovar. I have to, so I can save—well, everyone. I want to show them they were wrong about me. But every time they tell me I can’t do it, I grow more afraid that they’re right.”

  “I believe it’s time for you to decide who you are, Keriya Soulstar.” She was surprised it had remembered her name. “Fear is a choice.”

  “Fear is not a choice,” she scoffed. “Who would choose to be afraid?”

  “You don’t choose your fears, foolish human, you choose how to face them. In this way, you choose who you are.”

  Keriya considered that nugget of wisdom. Slowly, she said, “Maybe you’re right.”

  A glassy, faraway look floated across the bogspectre’s face. It gazed around the trees idly, as if it had forgotten she was there.

  “I was a dragon, once,” it whispered.

  “You, ah . . . you possessed a dragon, did you?” If that were true, then the bogspectre really had lived for a ten-age, possibly longer.

  “Yes,” it breathed. “I saw through his eyes and knew his thoughts as if they were my own.”

  “What happened to that dragon?”

  The bogspectre’s body grew still. “I killed him.”

  Without another word, it shuddered and disappeared. Keriya blinked and stared around, but there was no trace of the monster. Had it been there at all, or had it been a dream?

  “Fine dream to have,” she grouched, standing and brushing herself clean. She sheathed the sword and returned to camp.

  Keriya meant to keep watch, but she nodded off as soon as she sat. Exhaustion dragged her into a dark and senseless state.

  Then a purple light blazed through the darkness, shattering her rest. Frigid dread speared her stomach and her eyes flew open.

  The first thing she saw was Doru, wrapping his dead fingers around her neck. Now that she was awake, she heard the sounds of a fight. Effrax was yelling. Roxanne was screaming.

  “It’s your turn,” Doru hissed. The glow of her eyes illuminated his rictus of vengeance. “First your dragon. Now you.”

  Keriya’s hands dropped to the sword’s hilt. As soon as she grasped it, a tingling, pinching sensation flared in her chest. Doru let go of her, recoiling as if her skin had scalded him.

  “What did you do?” he spat. Keriya had no idea what she’d done—she hadn’t done anything except grab the sword.

  Doru stood. A jet of midnight-black water materialized before him, and he launched it at her. She drew the ancient weapon on instinct, and something amazing happened: the blade repelled the liquid, dissipating the dark spell.

  Both Keriya and Doru gaped at the weapon. The bogspectre had been right. The sword did have magic.

  With a ragged howl, Doru lunged at her. She pushed herself up and ran—but she was always running, always calling for help, because she’d always been at a disadvantage. Now, for the first time, she was on even footing with her foe. Some power within the sword prevented Doru from wielding against her.

  She pivoted on the spot and struck at him. He turned to shadow before the blade could connect with his chest.

  Keriya was quickly tiring of that trick. She wheeled around, seeking any clue that would tell her where he’d gone. There was no sign of him, but her gaze fell on Roxanne, who was battling four shadowmen at once. Roxanne, who—through some odd twist of fate—had become her friend.

  Keriya tore across the clearing. She swung the sword, the weight of which nearly caused her to topple over, and slashed at a shadowman. He disintegrated when the blade sliced through his throat. One of the spells around Roxanne dissolved, freeing her to continue battling. Their eyes met briefly and the tall girl nodded.

  “Soulstar!” A furious scream echoed through the forest and Keriya glared over her shoulder. Doru’s form was visible within the murky depths of the trees. Shadows wafted from him like hot steam.

  “Your fight is with me, not my men,” he yelled, pointing at Keriya. “Let’s settle this once and for all.”

  Keriya hesitated. She looked at Roxanne.

  “I’ve got this covered,” Roxanne assured her, whirling around to confront another demon rising from the darkness. “You take care of Doru.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Peace is ephemeral, war is eternal.”

  ~ Tolbrayth Solarius, First Age

  Thorion couldn’t see his enemies, but the glow of his eyes betrayed their presence.

  “Careful,” he whispered to Fletcher. The human nodded and made an effort to muffle his labored breathing.

  Thorion thought he recognized this part of the jungle— hadn’t he seen this mangrove swamp before? He squinted through the twilit trees to search for familiar landmarks. None popped out at him, but he noticed a shadow detach itself from the object that cast it. It skimmed across the surface of the water and disappeared into the dark.

  Fear. He was becoming all too familiar with that emotion. His heart pounded, his stomach churned, his eyes dilated, straining to see his hidden foes.

  He’d long since cloaked his mind, for shadowbeasts were rampant in this part of the jungle and he didn’t want any of the more powerful demons to sense his mental signature. The mindcloak meant Keriya couldn’t sense or communicate with him either, but he kept it firmly in place. While he knew he was the equal of any ten shadowbeasts in a fight, he couldn’t risk putting Fletcher in danger.

  Though his strongest sense was disabled, his other senses served him well. He’d picked up Keriya’s familiar scent yesterday, so he knew they were gaining on her. He saw footprints in mud, broken branches, subtle signs that indicated she was close. He was always listening in the hopes he would hear her voice.

  And suddenly, he did hear it.

  He stopped so abruptly that Fletcher tripped over his tail. He tilted his head and lifted his ears, hoping he hadn’t imagined it. Fletcher asked him something and he hissed, trying to emulate the noise humans made when they wished others to be silent. There, to the north—it was Keriya, but something was wrong. She was screaming.

  “Stay,” he said, turning to Fletcher.

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  Thorion didn’t have time for questions. He butted his head into Fletcher’s side, herding the boy toward the gnarled roots of a large tree.

&n
bsp; “Stay,” Thorion repeated, narrowing his eyes and flattening his ears to his skull to show he was serious. Fletcher nodded and shrank into the safety of the roots.

  Satisfied that his companion was reasonably well-hidden, Thorion took off. He galloped through the forest, scaling a cliff in two bounds. He heard other voices, shouts from Keriya’s human friends, accompanied by the sounds of battle.

  Thorion opened his mouth. For the first time in his young life, he let loose a deep, resonant cry—not the yip of a pup nor the shrieks of a drackling, but a true dragon roar, a sound that had struck fear and reverence into the hearts of mortals in ages long past.

  “Leave them alone,” he bellowed as he crashed through a tangle of vegetation and burst into a clearing.

  Keriya was nowhere to be seen, but Effrax was there, fighting two shadowmen. A blue-haired girl lay on the ground, silent and unmoving—asleep, injured, or dead, Thorion couldn’t tell. At the far end of the clearing, Roxanne struggled against thick bonds of necromagic, weakening in the grip of a tainted spell as she wielded against three demons.

  Thorion leapt at her assailants. One tried to intercept him. Thorion spat a beam of lightmagic which vaporized the man. Roxanne rallied and wielded an earthen spell. She sent a stone hurtling through the heart of a second shadowman, killing him on impact.

  Thorion landed beside her and turned neatly, baring his fangs at her last remaining attacker. Strangely, the blackened wraith laughed.

  “Our Master has been waiting for you, dragon.” He made a motion in the air with one hand, like he was clutching and holding onto something.

  Thorion felt an unpleasant pressure within him, as if the man’s hand had closed around his central organs. His jaw hinged open in a startled gasp. A ripple of cold ripped through him and his legs weakened. He collapsed in a heap as he lost all muscle tension. He tried to wield, but the shadowman rotated his wrist and Thorion’s soul twisted out of reach.

  Fear again, this time more powerful than anything he’d ever experienced. It throbbed in his heart and screamed in his blood. If this demon had dominion over his soul, that could only mean one thing: darksalm had touched him.

  Thorion growled and choked. He tried to spring into the air, but the alien presence in his body had paralyzed his muscles, and his limbs were no longer responding to his mental commands.

  Turning his attention inward, Thorion clawed and thrashed against the unwelcome darkness clutching his soul. The darkness leaked outwards from his core. It traveled through his veins, from the largest artery to the smallest capillary, until it filled his whole being.

  His scales grew luminous, glowing red-hot. It was like there was a layer of fire trapped beneath his flesh. His growling intensified to a wail of agony.

  Other emotions crowded in, bombarding him with their ferocity. His breath darted in his throat, short, searing gasps that did little to fill his lungs. A maelstrom of shame swirled through him—shame that he had doomed himself and the world with him.

  The darksalm would burrow deeper and deeper into his soul until it killed him. His magic would belong to the Shadow. At long last, Necrovar would win his war.

  “Stop it!” Roxanne strained against the spell that bound her. She reached for Thorion, but a tendril of necromagic yanked her arm back, pinning it to her side.

  The demon bent until his sneering visage was level with hers. “The dragon and all who follow him will soon be dead.” He whispered Allentrian words in her ear and her face grew ashen. “You’ll be the first to go. And who better to do the deed than your little friend?”

  He splayed his fingers in the air and moved his hand to point at Thorion. At once, Thorion ceased his violent shaking. The burning in his veins subsided. Smoke rolled off his scales as they cooled to their natural bronze color.

  He crouched, trembling, gulping sweet, unlabored breaths through his mouth. The pain had ceased, but Thorion didn’t trust that it would stay away.

  What now? he wondered. Was he being released?

  No—he was being controlled. Without any internal prompting, his legs moved, bringing him to his feet. His head pivoted on his neck until he was facing Roxanne. He felt his mouth open, felt his tongue curl upwards.

  “Thorion, no,” she sobbed. “I don’t know what they’re doing to you, but whatever it is, you have to fight!”

  He recognized that last word.

  Fight.

  Too late. The touch of necromagic had snaked through his system and reached his brain. It forced him to drop his mindcloak. Instantly, the demon’s control over him increased tenfold.

  Thorion felt his brain stumble through a familiar pattern. He felt himself unwillingly reflect threads from his source, felt the catalytic conversion of those threads’ potential energy into physical magic. He was puffing up in preparation to wield against Roxanne, to kill her. The fear mutated and became something else. Despite his panicked state, he sifted through everything he had learned from Keriya and narrowed in on the word to describe it: hatred.

  He hated the shadowman controlling him. He hated Necrovar for starting this war. And he hated himself for allowing Necrovar to win it.

  Time crawled to a standstill. He stared into Roxanne’s tear-filled eyes. He heard the demon’s laugh ringing in his ears. He smelled the rotten stench of burnt shadowbeasts. He felt needles in his soul as power churned inside him, and needles in his heart as despair set in.

  Then he sensed something—a light in the darkness.

  His lips twitched. The motion was his, and his alone.

 

  It was her. Keriya, who fought against all odds—and who gave him something to fight for.

  He dredged up the last of his strength and resisted the Shadow’s influence, pressing back against the darkness that intoxicated him. Who would have guessed that his greatest battle would not be against men or demons, but deep within himself?

  Time resumed its inexorable forward motion as Thorion wielded. He shot a beam of light at Roxanne. For a moment the clearing was awash in the searing glow of his power.

  When it faded, Roxanne remained unscathed, shaken but safe. She let out a weak laugh and put her hands to her chest, as if making sure she was truly still alive. His attack hadn’t destroyed her, but rather the shadowy chains that had held her captive.

  “I am more powerful than you,” he informed the shadowman. Speaking in Allentrian, he added, “Necrovar will never own me.”

  The demon’s pitch-black eyes crackled with thunderous fury. He gestured again, more violently this time, and again Thorion felt his soul twist. He collapsed, writhing as intangible thorns dug into him from every angle.

  His enemy gathered the surrounding shadows. With cruel precision, he molded them into a solid spear, aiming the point at Thorion’s heart. Baring black teeth, he launched it.

  A figure flew in from the periphery of Thorion’s vision. It slammed into his side, knocking him out of the way before the spell pierced his armored chest.

  “Effrax?” whispered Thorion. The Fironian had saved him, and he’d caught the brunt of the demon’s attack. The spear of necromagic protruded from his left thigh. It began to melt, seeping into his leg.

  Thorion stared at the human. He’d paid little attention to Effrax before, and most of the attention he had paid had been negative, for Keriya distrusted the Fironian.

  Yet Effrax had saved his life.

  The shadowman bared obsidian fangs in a sneer. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll meet your new Master soon, dragon.”

  The demon wielded blackened earth to bind each of them in place. Shadows seeped from his body, swallowing everything, blotting out the light of the moons and stars. Thorion feared this was the end. He was fading into nothingness—

  Then the shadowman grunted and dropped his threads. The iron soil around Thorion loosened into soft dirt. At the same time, the bond
s on his soul relaxed. The shadowman’s mouth opened in a noiseless scream as he died. His body crumbled to dust, revealing a scrawny boy behind him.

  “Fletcher?” Roxanne gasped.

  Fletcher Earengale was trembling, clutching the hilt of a shiny pocket knife, looking as if he were about to be sick.

  Thorion stood shakily. He gazed at Fletcher, whose tan face was pale with terror.

  “I thought you might need some help,” Fletcher whispered. “I know I’ve never been much help before, but . . .” He trailed off and offered a shaking hand to Thorion. Thorion was surprised to find that he understood every one of Fletcher’s words.

  “Thank you,” Thorion said with a smile, bowing his head to the small human who had inadvertently just saved the world.

  The smile fell from his lips as quickly as it had come. He sensed something terrible and foul, something worse than anything they had yet encountered.

  Keriya was in mortal danger.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  “No mortal’s hand shall harm me, not by magic, sword, or knife; Only the Blood can give me death, where once it gave me life.”

  ~ Necrovar’s Prophecy, Second Age

  The sword sang as Keriya sliced at Doru. He dodged and wielded a razor-thin sheet of ice against her. The magical blade deflected it.

  They cut back and forth at one another, she with her weapon, he with his magic. A strange energy blossomed inside her as the sword absorbed his attacks. Bolstered by the feeling, she advanced on Doru, forcing him away from where her friends fought his shadowmen.

  They battled their way toward a cliffside clearing that overlooked the sprawling rainforest. The Bloodmoon hovered low above the sea of treetops. Its red light mingled with the garish purple glow of her eyes, tingeing her surroundings with an eerie hue.

  Keriya’s arms grew heavy and her breath came in gasps. She reminded herself of everyone who was counting on her, from Roxanne to the bogspectre to Shivnath. Her heart pumped with renewed vigor and she struck at Doru, the force of her swing yanking her body around in a spin.