by Edward Lang
It wasn’t like we were scaling El Capitan or anything, but the trails were pretty narrow, and there were plenty of places where one bad stumble could send you hurtling a couple hundred feet down over jagged rocks.
It was easy for me, though. My Wall Crawler ability allowed me to safely climb without fear of slipping.
I carried Alia on my back, held there with a harness of spider silk provided by Spirella. Alia was probably the least suited to ascending the mountain, so it made sense for me to carry her.
Although… damn. She might have had the upper half of a tiny chick, but she had a hell of a long tail – and a lot of extra weight as a result.
She tried her best to brace her snake half behind us on the ground to take the extra weight off me, but it was a fuckin’ workout, powers or no powers.
Spirella was like a mountain goat. Her eight stiletto-sharp feet were great for finding every nook and cranny in the rocks, and she could also use her spider silk as safety ropes. In fact, that’s how Dyra got up the mountain – by climbing up the trail on foot, but using Spirella’s webs as a rope to help pull herself up.
It was difficult for Hara. She kept sliding down as pebbles shifted under her feet, and she had to keep flapping her wings to stay upright.
After getting smacked in the face with giant swan wings a couple of times, I finally told her just to fly up to the next bare outcropping of rock and wait for us – for which she was very grateful.
If it was hard for a harpy, it was perilous for the female centaurs. With their larger bodies and increased weight, they had a hard time climbing at a slow pace. Think of a horse in any movie where they go up a mountain: they usually race pretty swiftly up a steep slope in order to keep up their momentum – but that was impossible with over 30 centaur chicks at one time. Everybody kept bumping into each other, and as they slid and tumbled, they continually threatened to turn our group into a chain of falling dominoes.
I finally told the Chieftess, “Look, I appreciate your willingness to go all the way to the top with me, but I need you guys for the Grim Keep. I don’t want anybody breaking their necks on a side mission. I can handle whatever’s up there, so you guys stay safe down here.”
“We will still go with you, if you need us,” the Chieftess said, not wanting to abandon me, but also not wanting her entire tribe to go falling ass over teakettle down the mountainside.
“No, it’s cool – I’ve got my harem backing me up. We’ve got this.”
The Chieftess nodded. “Perhaps that is best.”
Seera, however, wouldn’t hear of it. “Well, I am part of your harem now, and I shall not be persuaded to abandon you.”
“Babe – ”
“NO.”
I sighed and turned back to the Chieftess. “Alright… see you back down there soon.”
“Good luck, Scott.”
“Thanks.”
The female centaurs started back down the mountain – but given how difficult it was for them to safely go down rather than up, we would probably beat them back to the harpies.
If we didn’t die at the top, that is.
“What exactly are we going to be facing up there?” I asked Hara as she perched on a rock ledge nearby.
“We just call it the creature… but I know that human paladins who have tried to slay it call it ‘the worm.’”
Ew.
I winced as I imagined what it might look like.
An earthworm the size of an anaconda?
A… millipede girl?
Or something worse?
Thoughts of The Human Centipede entered my head, and I quickly pushed them away.
Bleh.
There was one thing Hara had said, though, that piqued my curiosity.
“Human paladins?” I asked. “So – knights?”
“Mostly during the daytime,” Hara said earnestly.
I frowned, then realized, Oh, she means NIGHTS.
“That wasn’t – never mind,” I said with a chuckle. “Haven’t your flock tried to kill it?”
“Yes, but with no success. It is far too wily.”
“Does it kill harpies?”
“No, we can fly out of its reach too quickly for it to hurt us. But we cannot stop it from taking our eggs.”
Realizing I might be treading on sensitive territory, I asked gently, “Um… has it taken any of yours?”
She suddenly looked very sad. “No.”
I frowned.
Why was she sad?
Was she concerned her eggs weren’t delicious enough or something?
Then she continued.
“I cannot lay eggs,” she said, her voice trembling like a woman revealing to her boyfriend that she can never have children, afraid he might break up with her.
I tried to be sensitive.
“Oh… is that… are you old enough?” I asked.
I mean, she sure as hell looked like a woman.
“More than old enough. I just… I am barren,” she said with a stifled sob.
My heart ached for her. “Oh… I’m sorry.”
She looked incredibly sad. “It is my everlasting shame.”
“What?! No it’s not!” I said indignantly.
She looked at me, startled. “Of course it is – no male will ever mate with me now.”
I frowned. “I thought there weren’t any male harpies.”
“There aren’t.”
“So who wouldn’t mate with you?”
She blushed bright pink. “No human males… like you.”
“What?! Of course they would! I would!”
Hara looked at me in shock. “You – you would?”
“Of course!”
“He would,” Alia said dourly.
“Absolutely,” Dyra agreed grumpily.
“Yes,” Spirella nodded.
“Not a doubt in the world,” Seera added.
“…willingly?” Hara asked, astounded.
“YES,” all my other girls said in a chorus.
Hara blushed even brighter red. “But – you’re a human!”
“So?”
“Humans hate our kind!”
That was a pretty common refrain, actually. Seemed like human males on Atras were missing the ‘kinky’ gene.
Fortunately, I had it in spades.
“Not me,” I said. “I love monster girls.”
Hara frowned, but before she could say anything, I added, “Just what we call them where I come from. It’s a compliment.”
“…oh…”
“You said nobody would mate with you ‘willingly.’ What did you mean by that?” I asked.
“The few who can be persuaded to mate with us do it for money, and the flock cannot waste our few resources on a girl who cannot conceive,” Hara said mournfully. “Not to mention that mother tends to disembowel the men afterwards, so – ”
“Yeah, I’d say that might be your bigger problem,” I said sardonically.
“Would you… would you really… mate with me?” she asked bashfully.
“Of course!” I said with a huge grin.
Her face lit up with overwhelming joy. “Can we do it now?!”
“NO!” Alia snapped from my back.
“Um, not now,” I said gently. “Let’s go kill the worm first.”
“Yes, try not to go fucking any new girls before we do THAT,” Dyra growled.
“Settle down, everybody, settle down…”
Damn… Jealousy was a BITCH.
We finally reached the top of the mountain – which leveled off onto another plateau, thank god. It wasn’t as big as the one the harpies called home, but it was probably a hundred feet on each side, with seven-foot-tall boulders strewn randomly across the rocky surface. Plenty of room to move around.
I took off my spider-silk backpack and Alia dropped back onto her tail. Damn but it was nice unloading her extra weight.
Seera panted in relief once she was on level ground again, and Spirella and Dyra stretched their legs.
Then I saw something on the plateau that severely fucked with me:
Dead bodies.
Skeletons, actually, encased in black armor.
The paladins Hara had mentioned, about five or six of them, dotted here and there across the plateau, with swords and shields scattered around them.
They reminded me of Vurt. I half-expected them to jump up and yell, Hey, what took you so long?! but then I saw the nearest one.
The visor on its helm was up, exposing its skull.
Its forehead was caved in like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it.
Head shot.
“Shit…” I murmured.
“Oh dear,” Spirella whimpered.
“Hm,” Seera said emotionlessly, though she got out her bow and nocked an arrow.
Whatever had killed the poor bastard had known how to ensure he wouldn’t come back as a lich… and I was betting the other skeletons had met similar fates.
“Where’s the creature?” I whispered to Hara as we crouched behind a giant boulder.
She lifted one slender leg and pointed with a prehensile toe. “That is its lair.”
On the other side of the plateau was a cave. The entrance was maybe five feet tall, and nothing was visible in the shadows.
Given all the dead paladins with crushed skulls, I started to question whether we were dealing with a giant earthworm.
I knew somebody who might be able to help – and he hadn’t made an appearance lately.
“Parch?” I murmured.
The air sparkled with golden sparks.
I thought you would never call.
“Parch?” Hara asked, mystified.
“I’ll explain later,” I said, then turned back to my papyrus friend. “What the hell is in that cave?”
I have no idea.
“Wow, and here I thought you weren’t going to be any help at all,” I said sarcastically.
“Who’s he talking to?” Hara asked the other girls. I tuned out the ensuing conversation, though I caught ‘Returned’ and ‘Messenger of the gods.’
I’m not precognitive, you know.
Nor am I an expert on the burrows
of deadly creatures.
“What COULD it be?”
Well…
Harpies are apex predators.
Always fun to hear decidedly Earth terms thrown around so casually.
For the umpteenth time, I wondered if Parch was speaking another language entirely, and I was just magically seeing ‘apex predators’ because it was the closest thing in English to what he was talking about.
As such, they have only a few natural enemies:
Humans…
Dragons…
Wyverns…
Manticores…
Basically other large,
apex predators with wings
with which they must battle for territory
and air supremacy.
My eyes grew wide.
“Uh, Hara… this worm of yours… is it like a worm on the ground, or does it have scales?”
“Oh, scales,” she said enthusiastically. “It’s covered in them.”
Oh shit.
Unbidden, my mind suddenly vomited out all the medieval mythology I knew.
The first bit was about St. George, a Catholic saint who supposedly slew a dragon…
…but it was sometimes referred to as a worm.
Not to mention that Beowulf fought a ‘fire worm’… aka a dragon.
OH SHIT.
This was bad.
I had unwittingly walked into another clusterfuck of a situation.
And I didn’t even have Parch to blame for this one.
“We need to go back,” I croaked. “NOW.”
“What?” Alia asked, alarmed. “Why?”
“Because – ”
Suddenly something spoke from the cave.
Its voice was deep and rumbling, its words spoken with a snake’s sibilance.
“Who comes knocking on my door?
“Only fools, and nothing more.
“By the smell, a man and more –
“Lamia, dryad, harpy whore.
“Centaur and arachne to add to my store
“Of food for winter, evermore.”
AHHHH, FUCK.
A talking, RHYMING dragon, no less.
Man, this was going to suck.
If we didn’t leave NOW.
“Go – go,” I hissed, pointing back down the mountain the way we’d come.
“Leaving so soon? You little fool.
“Dost thou not know, there is a rule
“When approaching a dragon’s cave:
“There is no way your life to save
“But vanquishing the ancient worm.
“So grab your sword, boy. It’s your turn.”
FUCK.
“What do we do?” Spirella asked, her eyes wide.
A fragment of my conversation with Raptora echoed in my memory:
What’s up there you’re not telling me about?
Nothing that a conqueror of the Imperium can’t handle.
She had said it mockingly… but there was some truth in it.
If I had wanted to take life easy, I would never have left the Baron’s manor after we killed him.
Time to sack up.
“Okay,” I whispered, getting ahold of myself, “this is what we’re gonna do.”
17
I told the girls quickly what I had in mind.
Good thing I made it quick, because the creature emerged a few seconds after I was finished.
A large head, about five feet long and two feet wide, poked out of the cave. It looked like it could have belonged to a small, de-horned triceratops – except it was black, with hundreds of two-inch-long, teardrop-shaped scales layered across it.
Its eyes were the size of softballs, gold and brown with black slits for pupils. They rotated in its sockets like some sort of animatronic nightmare.
Its teeth were only an inch long each, but there were a lot of them.
“Come now, guests and honored friends!
“Your presence here, it truly sends
“Me into flights of fantasy!
“So rarely do folks visit me,
“That I forget my manners – blame
“Me not, please. Ah – and now my name
“I’ll trade for yours, so we may be
“On terms of closest int’macy
“Before I take your flesh and rend
“It, bringing you to bloody end.”
Yeah, we’ll see about who brings whom to bloody end, buddy.
I dashed across the moon-like, barren plateau and darted behind another boulder.
Before I hid, I saw the head twitch and the eyes rotate grotesquely in its skull as it followed my motions.
“Call me Krom Varak. And thee –
“I wish to know, who might YOU be?”
Krom vuh-RACK.
Not a bad name for a dragon.
Although the rhyming was getting on my nerves.
Just a bit… TOO much, y’know?
“Scott,” I said.
The dragon chuckled.
“A common name, for common man
“Who comes to me and thinks he can – ”
“Can we drop the fucking rhyming?” I yelled in irritation.
The dragon snorted. “Fine.”
Oh.
That was easier than I thought.
“Although I have to find SOME way to amuse myself… your kind are so pathetically easy to kill.”
“Is that so.”
“Quite so.”
I glanced around at all the dead paladin skeletons lying on the ground, surrounded by their swords and shields.
Krom Varak might just have a point.
“But tell me, little man, why have you come to my lair? Was it to steal my gold?”
“Didn’t even know you had any.”
“I find that hard to believe. Greed is so often the undoing of your r
ace.”
“It’s the truth.”
“What is – that you didn’t know of my gold, or that greed is so often your race’s undoing?”
“Both, I guess.”
I heard a dry pattering sound, like someone dragging a dead body through gravel.
I sneaked a peak around the side of my boulder.
The dragon was coming out of his cave. I could no longer see his triangular head, but I could see the rest of him –
Or at least some of him.
His body was long, slender, and just as black and scaly as his head. It kept coming and coming and coming, like a blacksnake slithering out of a hole in the ground.
No wings, though.
I was wondering if he really was a giant worm when two short, stubby, powerful legs emerged from the cave. Vicious claws as long as my fingers scrabbled through the pebbles.
After the legs came a lot more tail, which tapered down until it finally ended in a point.
Technically, he was a drake: no wings, and at least four legs.
But I wasn’t going to refer to him as that, because every time I thought of the word ‘drake,’ I started hearing ‘Hotline Bling’ in my head.
So – dragon.
It was fairly small. Though probably 25 feet long, his body looked to be no more than two feet in diameter.
Dude was like the wiener dog of dragons –
If wiener dogs had claws the size of daggers.
Unlike dachshunds, though, his belly touched the ground and slid through the pebbles.
He also moved like a snake, curving and winding amongst the boulders.
The entire time he was slithering out of his cave, Krom Varak kept talking.
“If not my gold, then why are you here?”
“I need the harpies’ help, and they seem to have taken a ‘disliking’ to you.”
“Ahhhh – it’s the EGGS, isn’t it.”
“Yep.”
“The harpies’ gold, as it turns out… or at least the yolks. So naughty of me, I admit, but I just can’t help myself… they’re so DELICIOUS.”
Just like Baby Yoda… except he knew what he was doing.
The obscene delight he took in saying it, though, made my skin crawl.
It was like listening to a much deeper-voiced Hannibal Lector – Anthony Hopkins or Mads Mikkelsen, take your pick.
How a few small eggs could satisfy something this big, though, I had no idea.
