The Beginning of the End: A Middang3ard Series (Dragon Approved Book 11)

by Ramy Vance

  Brath knew Jim would be able to handle it, though. He’d watched the mech rider and Alex. They were strong. Resilient even by gnomish standards. Alex would be able to pull through. Brath had no doubt about it.

  Jollies had found where she was going to camp out until the attack began. She’d located a small cluster of asteroids that were much larger than the rest. They would provide her with ample cover to avoid a direct attack. She was also practicing guiding Amber through the maze of asteroids.

  If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Jollies would have wanted to spend more time flying through the asteroids. Pushing herself and her dragon. Pushing her skills as a rider.

  An unspoken secret of the Nest was what was often said about Jollies. She was one of the smallest riders, smaller than any of the other pixies, but she was easily the fastest. It took skill to ride that fast.

  Speed wasn’t something you just pushed yourself for. Speed took lightning-fast reflexes. It took the ability to process thousands of different things at once, and she and Amber worked together like a finely tuned precision engine. In action, they were a sight to behold, but that wasn’t often seen. Most people couldn’t track her. She was that fast.

  Everything processed faster. Fear was usually the first to go, then worry, then back to fear, but faster than before. Always ending in anticipation.

  The pixie didn’t like to fight anything other than herself, and there was always something to be improved in her riding. She wouldn’t be satisfied until it was perfect, and each battle was a test. Each victory honed her blade.

  That was what she told herself, at least. The only alternative was to think about Alex, and she wasn’t going to do that right now. That wouldn’t help her. She knew Alex needed her right now, needed all of them, and that was that.

  Once she started thinking, she was going to start feeling…and that was going to be distracting.

  Her skin heated up as she fluctuated between colors in quick succession. Now that no one was around, she wasn’t focused on maintaining her composure. Each emotion brought a new color. She let herself cycle through them, trying to focus and think about what was ahead.

  She watched Brath pacing from afar, barely able to make him out. Hopefully she and Gill weren’t too spread out. There had to be just the right amount of space for the vrosks to get thrown off. If they were too close, the vrosks would just come after them. But at just the right distance, the vrosks would have to choose between attacking her and Gill or descending and going after Brath and Jim.

  Nothing can happen to Alex. I’ll never get over it if she doesn’t make it through this. Gods, her parents would be heartbroken. I’ll be heartbroken. She’s such a strong person, probably the strongest I’ve ever met, and she’s made me a stronger person. Gods, this can’t be happening. It’s okay, I’ll be there for her. We’re all going to be. We can handle this.

  Jollies’ brain continued to rattle off worst-case scenarios as she tried to rein herself in a little bit. Not too much, though. Her emotions were her lifeblood. If she couldn’t experience them, she was nothing. No pixie was. She’d simply die.

  But she wasn’t going to let those emotions get sloppy. Pixies learned a simple adage from a young age: You are your feelings, and you are not your feelings. It was a paradox all pixies lived by. Let them come and let them go.

  She was going to cycle through them all again once the fight got started.

  Gill was getting settled into his position. Timber’s weapons were beginning to charge, and there was still some time before the Dark One’s forces were going to begin their attack. This was where Gill felt the most comfortable—the calm before the storm.

  The drow watched distant stars twinkling, their life force gone thousands and millions of years before he had existed. Even with a battle looming ahead of him, Gill could not ignore the vast beauty he was experiencing at this moment.

  Few drow ever saw anything above the surface. They spent their lives underground, toiling for purposes that many of them weren’t even certain of. It was the system Gill had been raised in. His parents had never seen the surface. Neither had his grandparents. He wasn’t certain if anyone in his family ever had.

  If Gill had been the kind of person to speak much, he would have gushed about how beautiful the blackness of space was, how close to the darkness he had grown up in it was. The infinite blackness seemed more like home than anything he’d ever seen in Middang3ard, and he was more than happy to enjoy these moments alone.

  It was not that Gill didn’t take the battle that awaited him seriously. He knew these might be his last living moments. But he also knew that was how every battle was and would be. Acknowledging that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy these small moments for what they were.

  Beauty came in many forms; that was something he’d learned from his time underground, and even more so since he’d come above ground, out of the Underdark. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder. Some eyes had enough light to see certain things. Others were so blinded by that light that they couldn’t see others.

  Gill ran his hand over Timber’s scales, soothing the dragon. They were both in a new environment, a place neither of them understood well. Not just the two of them, but all of Boundless was experiencing something completely outside their understanding.

  As Gill pondered, he looked up and saw the massing of the vrosks above him. Even their desire for destruction could be beautiful, Gill thought. In this darkness, even that could be beautiful.

  Chapter Three

  Jim was hauling Alex into his mech while Gill shouted that the battle was beginning. He didn’t know what to do about Chine, but Brath was already moving Furi closer to defend the dragon. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to come to that. Gill’s and Brath’s plan could work, but if it failed, they were all going to find out how terrible the Dark One was.

  The back of Jim’s mech popped open, and he placed Alex inside gently. She hardly stirred. Whatever the Dark One was doing to her was getting worse by the second. Jim wished there was something he could do, but he had no idea what was going on. The only way he could make himself helpful was by fighting. Maybe Alex would snap out of it by then.

  Jim jumped into the mech and took a deep breath, pulling up his HUD, scanning for enemies and trying to figure out where they were going to come from. He had a bad case of nerves—something about having Alex in the cockpit with him. He wondered if she would feel the same way about him being on Chine’s back with her.

  He doubted his pre-battle ritual was going to bother her, or if she was even going to notice. Jim hoped there was a signal out here in space. There had to be. He still had a comm link and updates from the Nest, so this wouldn’t be a problem.

  He looked over his shoulder at Alex again. She was still muttering under her breath in a language Jim couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was extremely creepy and unsettling, and he was more worried for Alex than he’d ever been for anyone in his entire life. But that wasn’t going to help. Getting his head in the game would.

  Jim pulled up his playlist, aptly titled The Best Funk and Disco the World has Ever Known. He cranked up the volume, letting the choppy guitar cut in and out, the trumpets coming next as Diana Ross’ voice came over the speakers, as clear as if Jim were listening to it live.

  His right foot tapped along with the beat as he pulled on his seatbelt, checking again to see if Alex had registered the music. He had kinda been hoping the disco would pull her out of her state, but there was hardly any change. She was quieter than before.

  Boogie Wonderland was the next song up. Jim could feel his shoulder twitch in time with the music. Anytime he put on this playlist, his body started to move on its own. It was the only thing he listened to when he flew, ever since he played VR. He used to leave one earbud under the headset.

  Now it was second nature. If the mech was on, the funk was on. He’d even thought about getting a small disco ball when they had been on Earth.

  All of those things seemed distant now.
Childish to be worried about someone listening to him grooving while Alex was in the back of the mech fighting for her life. If she was watching him, she would probably be laughing her ass off.

  Jim powered up the mech’s thrusters. He wondered if he should have been up there among the asteroids instead of Gill. The lack of gravity hadn’t affected Jim’s piloting skills at all. His mech had been designed to operate in space. It might have made more sense to have a rider who was able to move freely.

  Planning had never been Jim’s strength. When he and Alex used to play VR together, their idea of a plan was…vague at best, but somehow, they always got through it. Jim reminded himself of that right now. They always got through it.

  As he was coaching himself through his thoughts, he saw the first indication that the vrosks were coming through. Gill was firing up ahead. Jim wasn’t sure what he was shooting at. It must have been one of the weapons the dragons had been outfitted with to make up for their lack of flames.

  Then he saw the vrosks, more than Boundless had anticipated. Enough to make him take a deep breath and think they were going to need a better plan. But then the funk came back to him.

  Two cylindrical tubes came out from the middle of the cockpit, which were coated with a cold gel. Jim plunged his hands into the tubes, his suit connecting his nerves to the mech, allowing him a great deal of control.

  Another reason Jim was nervous about Alex seeing him pilot his mech was that things were going to look a little bit weird.

  Jim leaned forward as two more tubes pushed up from the bottom of the cockpit, connecting his legs to the mech.

  This was the way the newer models worked. Total body immersion was the eventual goal. The mechs were always being updated with new neural networks and a host of other things Jim was not really able to understand.

  What he did understand was the feeling of piloting. Every iteration made the distinction between man and machine slimmer. Jim wouldn’t be surprised if eventually, he wasn’t able to tell where the mech began and ended.

  The neural link went live and Jim pressed his face to his HUD that wrapped around his face, letting him see as if he were actually looking out of the mech. And now for the weird part, Jim thought as the back neural transmitter came out from Jim’s chair—a wide, sponge-like pad covered in a slimy, sticky substance that sparked when it attached itself to the back of Jim’s neck.

  Now he was completely connected.

  Jim turned the mech’s head up to get a better look at the vrosks that were pouring into the asteroid field. Gill was lighting them up from above, and Jim could see Jollies flying in and out of the pack. Bodies were starting to fall. “Maybe we can do this,” Jim muttered to himself.

  Brath was at Jim’s side, getting ready to start their part of the plan. Jim was glad it was Brath down here with him. Furi had some major firepower in the form of his flames and, even though that wasn’t an option, Brath had loaded equivalent augments.

  Some of the vrosks started to try to move away from the area Gill was firing from. They went straight down, just like the Boundless had assumed they were going to.

  Jim lined up his first shot. He wanted to start this off with a bang, letting those vrosks know he meant business. His machine gun had been practically useless against the kin, and he didn’t want to risk the same thing here.

  A gun-lance swung out of Jim’s mech’s side, a long rifle-like weapon that used an extremely powerful plasma-charged blast for pinpoint accuracy.

  Jim took aim at a vrosk and fired.

  The gun-lance heated up, charged the bolt, and then fired. The shot tore through the vrosks, taking at least three down as it found its intended target. Then the bolt exploded, sending plasma flying at the vrosks unlucky enough to be nearby.

  Jim lined up another shot as a group of vrosks started downward at the asteroid Brath and Jim were on. He fired again, splitting up the group of vrosks, but they quickly regrouped and continued closing in for the attack.

  At Jim’s side, Furi stood up on his hind legs. The cannons on the dragon’s shoulder pulled back, and what looked like two steel dragon claws took their place. The claws started to glow, a ring of pure energy forming on each of them, spinning until they flew toward at the vrosks. They cut through body after body until they returned to Brath like boomerangs.

  Jim laughed. He wouldn’t have thought Brath would choose something so creative.

  There were still way too many vrosks heading toward Jim and Brath. He decided the herd needed to be thinned, so he stood up in his mech and hit his thrusters and flew at the vrosks. He pulled in his lance-gun and heated up his energy claws.

  There were a lot of vrosks, but it didn’t look like they felt comfortable flying in space. Some of them were wielding magical staffs, others had plasmas rifles. The rifles didn’t concern Jim very much. The plasma blasts operated the same in space as they would anywhere else. The magical staffs were a whole other question.

  One of the vrosks prepared to answer that very question. As it got closer, its staff began to glow bright red, and it launched a fireball at his mech.

  Jim banked hard to the left, giving himself enough room to avoid the blast as he slammed into another vrosk. He drove his claws through its chest before hitting another with his sharpened wings, tearing it in half before firing his machine gun.

  At this range, the machine gun was capable of doing real damage. As the vrosks tried to get their bearings, Jim took advantage of his superior flying ability. He whipped around the group, putting a good distance between them before lowering his gun lance again. He was close enough that he didn’t have to aim. He charged it and fired two blasts.

  The blasts ripped through the vrosks as Jim headed back toward where Brath was. Two of Brath’s energy rings whisked past him, slicing through those that were attempting to follow the mech. “Thanks for that!” Jim sent over the comm.

  Brath gave him a thumbs-up as Furi launched a gravity well. His well worked differently than Chine’s. Rather than pulling everyone toward it, it did the opposite—shot out a gravitational field that pushed everything away in a giant explosion.

  The result was that vrosks went flying away from the well as Brath’s energy rings zoomed around the battlefield, cutting through anything they got close to.

  As Jim touched down, he called to Jollies, “Hey, how are you guys doing up there?”

  The pixie replied, “There are a ton of these things, but I think we’re past the first volley. Gill said he can see more coming through. He thinks they’re coming in waves. Probably trying to tire us out.”

  Above the mech, Jollies flew between a cluster of vrosks, dropping small electrical proximity mines as she went. She headed toward the blank space the vrosks had come from and lined the break in the asteroids with the same mines.

  Jim’s tactical map updated, showing him where the mines were so he could avoid them.

  From the back of the mech, Alex muttered, “Funnel them toward the mines. Front and back.”

  Jim turned to see Alex sitting up, rubbing her head as she looked at the tactical display. “Holy crap, you’re okay!” he gasped.

  Alex still looked ready to pass out. “I sure as hell don’t feel okay,” she muttered. “Also, you look ridiculous. Oh, and good music choice. The seventies never died, baby.”

  Jim didn’t have time to be embarrassed and repeated what Alex had said to Jollies. Then he turned back to the rider and asked, “You’re not thinking about getting out there, are you?”

  Alex shook her head as she leaned against the back of the mech. “There’s no way I could,” she answered. “I’ve been in and out. Like, I see what’s going on, but the Dark One is in my head. Kind of. Not like the telepathy Chine uses. This is different. He’s not reading my mind or anything. It’s more like he’s filling it. With himself.”

  “Like back at the meteor.”

  “Exactly. I just got back in contact with Chine, and he said it’s going to wear off soon. He’s already a lot better, bu
t I’m going to need a minute.”

  Above, the first wave of vrosks had been completely decimated. “Not to rush you, but you might have to hurry up. The next wave is coming soon, and we could use the extra firepower.”

  Alex laughed before wincing in pain. “Really? Looks like you guys got everything covered. I might even be able to take a break.”

  A huge explosion went off above Brath, Jim, and Alex. Another portal was opening near the barer side of the asteroid field. “Or not,” Alex muttered.

  Chapter Four

  This new portal was no different than the one that had brought the Dark One into her world. But it wasn’t vrosks coming through the portal this time. Ships very similar to the long-tendrilled thing that had appeared from the other portal were coming through. They weren’t nearly as long, and they didn’t have the hulking mass of tendrils, but they also seemed to be made from flesh, much like the Dark One’s ship.

  The Dark One’s voice had subsided from Alex’s mind. She still wasn’t sure what she had been listening to. It was obvious it was his voice. She’d heard it before. But this time it was different. Not as concise. Almost rambling. His feelings. Fear.

  Alex didn’t have the time to try to understand what the Dark One was afraid of. Obviously, it wasn’t the dragonriders. Not the four of them, at least. Maybe it was what they were trying to bring back. The weapon Vardis had promised.

  The Dark One’s warning hung over Alex’s head, though. His warning of what Vardis’ weapon would actually do. This could easily have been a ploy. How did you trust someone who enslaved entire races? Mind games were assumed.

  Alex was still getting used to being back in her body. She didn’t know where she had been before, but it was definitely not where she was now. Talking to Myrddin about what she experienced would be helpful. Hopefully, he’d be able to give her some kind of guidance.