Dragon Approved Complete Box Set

by Ramy Vance

  When Brath spoke, you could hear the sting in his voice. “’Just concentrate and keep up?’” he repeated. “Not all of us are riding micro-dragons. Furi is huge! Do you know how much it takes just to keep him from nosediving into the ground right now?”

  “That’s not what, I mean, Brath. Sorry. I just meant, if you pay attention to—”

  “Trust me, I’m friggin’ paying attention.”

  Alex took a deep breath as she tried to find the right words. She was doing that thing where she got flustered and tried to explain herself. The right words just didn’t come.

  In fact, they were the exact opposite; they were the wrong words. Most of the time, Alex felt like she could convey her thoughts and ideas to other people, but every so often, she started to stick her foot in her mouth and forgot how to pull it out.

  “Just because you have some freakish gift and are an amazing rider who doesn’t have any problem doing anything other than impressing everyone around you—”

  Brath had gone off the deep end. He was ranting faster than Alex could listen. Luckily, the rest of Boundless wasn’t patched into the channel because it would have been embarrassing for everyone. Brath was really letting her have it.

  Part of Alex wanted to say that this tirade was just him being insecure—projecting his worries and fears onto her—but she knew that wasn’t true. This plan hadn’t considered anyone’s comfort or skill level other than her own. Brath had every right to be upset.

  The best thing to do was listen—to hear him out and let the gnome get everything off of his chest. Hopefully, that wouldn’t take too long. Besides, they still had a ways to go.

  Before they had left, Alex had gone over the map and its coordinates with the whole team. The initial route they had planned would have brought Boundless to Toppinir’s and Roy’s location within thirty minutes. It would have been a straight shot.

  After seeing through Manny’s eyes, Alex thought it was a bad idea to take the direct route. She wanted to go a more roundabout way, maintaining that staying low was the most important thing, regardless of how long it was going to take.

  Initially, everyone had thought it was a bad idea. After a few minutes of arguing, they still thought it was a bad idea, but it was Alex’s idea. They had decided to trust her.

  Now Gill was pinging Alex on top of Brath. Alex told Brath to hold on and answered Gill. “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Why are you having us stay so low?” Gill asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, my God, you too?”

  “Would you prefer we follow you blindly? We’re a team, and I am not going to follow without being given a good reason.”

  Gill had a point. Expecting everyone to listen to her without giving them a reason wasn’t the best idea. Alex had figured it would be a waste of time to go over every detail of her plan, but now, it seemed like at least two of her riders were doubting her judgment. “Okay, hold on, Gill,” Alex said before switching back to Brath, who was still ranting.

  Alex combined Gill’s and Brath’s comms and then patched the rest of the team into the conversation. Brath continued ranting until he was breathless and panting. “Okay, Brath,” Alex said. “I’d prefer you didn’t use that language about me, but I can see you’re mad.”

  Brath let out an exasperated shout. “You’re damn right, I’m mad. What the hell are we even doing?” he shouted.

  Jim stepped in. “Just hold on, Brath. Alex is one of the best strategists I’ve ever played with. We can trust her.”

  “That you’ve played with? Excuse me for remembering this is not a human VR game, and so far, all of Alex’s strategies, if you want to call them that have been, have been to rush in and try not to die.”

  Alex was stung by Brath’s words. What came next hurt even more. “Brath has a point,” Gill seconded. “Many of Alex’s plans have relied on her extreme skill, placing the rest of us at risk if we couldn’t keep up. I’d like to know this isn’t another one of those.”

  Jim chuckled as he shook his head. “Okay, guys, are you listening to yourselves? Alex has been doing great so far. That’s why we’re here right now.”

  “Exactly. That is why we are riding into what could be a death trap with little or no understanding of our odds or why we are taking such an impractical route.”

  The comm went silent. Gill’s cold logic was much more painful than Brath’s boisterous complaining. Gill had hit the nail dead on the head. Then a voice cut through the comm. It was Jollies. “That’s not true,” she squeaked.

  Gill took a deep breath and said, “Please explain to me where my argument is faulty.”

  “Alex has been making tough calls. She got us out of the Nest because she was willing to take risks. It has nothing to do with ignoring what we’re capable of. She’s willing to risk it all, and that’s what’s gotten us this far. And that’s what’s going to save Roy and Toppinir.”

  No one replied. Alex was surprised and glad Jollies had spoken up. It was all Alex needed to be reminded of what she was doing. She was making a call, and it was the right one. “Trust me, guys,” Alex said. “I’m not going to ask you to do anything crazy.”

  Brath scoffed and countered, “Anything crazier than what you’re already asking, right?”

  “Right. Nothing crazier. Now come on. We’re getting closer. We need to focus.”

  Alex took the lead, pushing Chine ahead of the others. The dragonriders followed, Jollies moving up toward the front with Alex. They looked at each other briefly, and Jollies smiled brightly. “Thanks, Jollies,” Alex said gratefully.

  Jollies’ smile brightened as her body shimmered yellow. “No problem,” she said. “You see things we don’t. I get it.”

  That was when Alex remembered Manny. He was close to where the action was happening. She mentally told Chine to keep going in the same direction as she closed her eyes and focused on seeing through Manny.

  Alex slid into darkness for a second, but when she opened her eyes, she was seeing through Manny’s many eyes. She took the situation in. It was worse than she’d expected from her first viewing, but it wasn’t anything Boundless couldn’t handle.

  Slipping back to her own eyes, Alex took the reins back from Chine and pointed to a hill in the distance. “Right over there. That’s where we’re going,” she told the other riders.

  The dragonriders crested the hill in no time, and all of them stopped at the scene that unfolded before them. There were dozens of dragonriders in the sky fighting bats nearly the size of dragons with no visible riders.

  The sky was blood-red, and the clouds were black. Jagged streaks of lightning flashed and thunder boomed. Above the clouds, there was a meteor that looked roughly the size of the Wasp’s Nest. Lightning was flying from the meteor, but there was something inside.

  Gill wiped his eyes as Jim popped out of his cockpit. “What the hell is that thing?” Gill asked.

  Alex pointed at the meteor. “That’s where we’re going. That’s what this whole battle is about.”

  Jim looked at Alex, confused. “I thought they weren’t sending any reinforcements to get Roy and Toppinir?” he asked.

  “Sort of. They couldn’t afford to send any more reinforcements. Myrddin’s been throwing everything he can at this battle. There’s just no one else left to go. That’s why we’re here.”

  “You really think we’re going to change the tide?”

  Alex nodded as she gritted her teeth. “It doesn’t take much to turn a storm into a hurricane. Come on.”

  Alex sped upward, and the rest of the team followed her. As they were closing in, Brath said, “Shouldn’t we be going over there? That’s where the fight is. If they need help, that’s where they’re going to need it.”

  Alex doubled down on Chine and sped up. “Not yet. Trust me. We’re going to get to the fight. Just not yet. There’s something else we have to take care of first. We have to get under it.”

  “Under the meteor? Are you crazy?”

  A
lex didn’t respond and kept going. They were getting closer. She could smell sulfur in the air from the dragons and bats above. It was impossible to see who was winning, and she had no idea where Toppinir or Roy was, but she knew that meteor was the whole purpose of this mission.

  Team Boundless was directly under it. “All right, now!” Alex shouted as she ascended, heading straight for the hunk of space rock. She zoomed in between dragons and bats who were fighting, not letting herself lose any speed.

  The rest of the dragonriders were right behind her, Jim taking the rear and Gill staying next to him. They fired at any bats that tried to take advantage of Jim’s lack of maneuverability.

  Team Boundless burst through the last dregs of the battle beneath them, heading straight for the falling meteor.

  Chapter Eight

  The meteor was still a couple of hundred feet from Team Boundless, and the battle raging beneath them was trying to fight its way up. Bats had seen the new dragonriders and disengaged to attack Boundless.

  Alex did her best to avoid the bats, trying not to get distracted from the meteor. It was difficult, though. The bats were out for blood. Even with her speed, Alex still had to fall back a few times to blast bats who were getting too close.

  It didn’t look like the bats had riders. They must have been creatures whose only purpose was to serve the Dark One.

  At the rear, Jim was taking the most heat from the bats. Luckily, his mech was built for this kind of thing. He deployed his concussive shield, which created a barrier around him so bats hit him and fell away, like birds flying into a window.

  Jollies was also doing her best to keep the bats away from the group. She flew, faster than the other dragons, in a circumference surrounding Boundless. As she circled them, Amber generated electricity, creating a sort of lightning cage to ward off the bats.

  Brath flew up to Alex’s side. He didn’t look happy about what was going on, but Alex could tell the gnome was all in. You only took point if you were ready for whatever was coming.

  When Alex had watched through Manny’s eyes, she had seen the meteor, but there had been something off about it. Manny’s eyes saw different spectrums of light and heat, as well as different planes of existence. There was something in that meteor that didn’t fit with the rest of reality.

  In Manny’s sight, it had looked like flashes of red hot light came off of the meteor but only in one spot. Alex was willing to bet her life on that spot being the meteor’s weak point.

  This was the same meteor Myrddin had shown Alex when she had first been recruited weeks ago. Alex and her parents had watched this meteor rocketing toward this realm. Myrddin had said it had the potential to turn the tides of the war. He’d said it was the most important campaign at the moment. There had to be a reason Myrddin had shown it to Alex.

  Nothing the wizard ever did was without reason. Myrddin had made it a point to show that meteor to Alex. He had made it a point to choose Manny and his eyes to be paired up with this blind girl. And there had to be a reason Chine, with all of his psychic abilities, was bonded to Alex.

  Alex raised her hand without thinking. It just felt like the right thing to do. And she slipped back into her mind, focusing on seeing through whatever eyes were within the meteor. She had to know this was more than just a hunch.

  A sharp pain wracked Alex’s head. She felt nauseous and dizzy, and she stomped her foot down on Chine to make sure she was properly anchored. For a second, she had seen through eyes in the meteor. There was someone in there—someone who felt familiar. Someone who was waiting for something.

  Alex pointed to the lower left quadrant of the meteor and shouted, “Concentrate all your fire on that spot on the left! All of it!”

  Brath turned to Alex, his eyes wide with confusion. “Wait, you just want us to shoot at the rock? It’s too big! We’re not going to be able to make a dent in it. That thing could crush us!”

  “Trust me, Brath! Please, just trust me.”

  Brath stared at Alex as they approached the meteor. His beady eyes were hard to read. Alex couldn’t tell if he was thinking about cutting and running or something else. Finally, Brath turned back to the meteor, leaned forward, and went flying straight toward where Alex had been pointing.

  Furi let out a tunnel of fire at the left section of the meteor. That fire was followed by Amber releasing lightning bolt after lightning bolt as Jim and Gill finally caught up. Timber fired as well, giant spires of rock flying from her mouth.

  Jim hit the back thrusters on his mech and floated, completely stationary, as his mech’s missiles locked onto the corner of the meteor. He fired a volley of a dozen warheads that hit the rock, blowing off massive chunks that fell into the battle beneath them.

  Chine shot a stream of ether fire as Alex held her breath, hoping she was right. All she knew was that there was something within the meteor.

  The smoke began to clear. There was hardly a scratch on the surface of the meteor. No, Alex thought.

  The dragonriders swooped back, putting more space between themselves and the meteor, which was still descending. “Was that it?” Brath asked. “We didn’t even put a dent in it!”

  Jollies pointed at the meteor and squeaked, “No! We did! See?”

  Alex’s eyes hyper-focused on the crust of the meteor. Jollies was right. The surface of the meteor was cracking. “Let’s hit it again!” Alex shouted. “This time with everything you got! And I mean everything!”

  The dragonriders fired up their various offensive augments. “On my count,” Alex said. “One. Two. Three!”

  The riders blasted out a hailstorm of flames, electricity, gravitational distortion, and missiles. The attacks landed, one after another, breaking into the crust of the meteor. Alex reached out, concentrating as hard as she could. She imagined the crust ripping apart, tearing open to show what was inside.

  Alex felt some kind of force extend from her and grip the cracking mantle of the meteor. At first, she thought it was in her head, but then she felt that force grip the meteor hard. The force was coming from her and Chine—from their minds.

  Chine and Alex telekinetically dug into the cracking meteor as the rest of the dragonriders continued to unleash hell on it. Alex screamed as her head started to pound, then the left section of the meteor ripped apart, completely separating from the rest.

  The chunk of meteor fell through the sky, bursting into flames as if it were entering the atmosphere. Then it stopped falling, floating in the air before the dragonriders as the battle raged below. Intense heat shot out from it.

  The dragonriders flew backward, putting more space between them and the piece of meteor. “Uh, was that part of the plan?” Brath asked shakily. “Is the meteor done now?”

  Alex ignored Brath and concentrated on what was happening in front of her. Wave after wave of energy was flowing from the chunk. There was definitely something within it. They just had to wait and see what it was.

  As if reading Alex’s mind, the meteor started to vibrate, shaking violently in the air. It cracked more, flashes of energy sparking beneath the cracks.

  The top of the meteor began to bubble. Thick, black slime oozed from an opening hole like some sort of foul afterbirth. A pale hand pushed itself out from the hole, spreading the gap wider as another hand forced itself through.

  As the hands touched the air, a black material appeared, wrapping them in shrouds. As more of the pale body forced itself from the meteor, the same material covered the thin, skeletal frame until Holmorth the Dark Wizard of Khaldor stood atop the meteor, his shifting face contorting as if he were only a memory in this reality.

  Alex felt her blood boil as she tried to control her breath and stay calm. He was what was behind the meteor. It made perfect sense. Only something as evil as he was could want to be responsible for so many deaths.

  Holmorth straightened to his full height, reaching down and unsheathing a wispy wand. “Ah, it seems as if we will dance once more,” he growled in his raspy voice. “I did no
t think I would have the chance to kill you all so soon. The gods must be smiling on me.”

  Brath screamed something unintelligible, and Furi launched a firebolt at Holmorth. The wizard merely waved his wand and the fire disappeared around him. “You’re going to have to try much harder than that.”

  Alex raised her hands and turned to Brath. “Hold on, hold on!” she said. “He’s more powerful than he was before. We can’t just attack and give him the advantage.”

  “If he’s so powerful, why the hell is he monologuing?”

  Alex thought the question through. “You’re right. He must be stalling for some reason,” she said. “Dragonriders, get ready to—”

  Holmorth raised his wand and bowed slightly. “I am not stalling,” he hissed. “Merely playing with my food before the kill. If you are in such a rush to lose your lives, then by all means, let me oblige.”

  Holmorth floated into the air, his wand raised high. As his feet left the meteor, the crust rapidly deteriorated. Beneath the crust was something foul, reeking of offal and decay, yet encased in what could only be a womb.

  The membrane over the embryonic sac was pink and nearly transparent. An eye opened in the fluid, then the membrane burst and the rotting liquid fell to the ground, burning through whatever bat or dragonrider was in its way.

  A creature old and horrible uncurled in the sky, its bony tail unwrapping to allow shredded and tattered wings to open. Its body was made of bone, its skin rotting. Maggots poured from its mouth, the undead dragon roaring loudly enough that those who fought below stopped to look up in horror.

  Holmorth landed atop the dragon and laughed maniacally. “How does one kill what is already dead?” he taunted. “How does one slay what was born in the very fabric of reality, died, and returned anew, now evil?”

  Jim’s voice came through on the comm. “That’s a really good question. How are we going to kill that thing?”

  Alex responded, “I’m glad you’re on board with killing it.”

  Brath was staring down Holmorth and the undead dragon. “Of course, we’re going to kill it,” he said. “Holmorth killed our friends in cold blood. We don’t have a choice. You hardly ever get a chance for revenge. Now we can make him feel every one of their deaths.”