by Jack Crosby
She went and jinxed it. As soon as the words fell from her mouth I knew something bad and unplanned was coming. And like a comet in the sky, that bad and unplanned thing was entering the battle. Naga, the forty foot, red, fire breathing nightmare landed on the field. She incinerated a group of gnomes that were way too close to her and grabbed another two as a snack.
Her beady green eyes found me. “Jacoby,” she used his name not Ruin, “ssssends his regardsss.” The serpentine voice dripped with venom. I think this was more unnerving than seeing Abaddon for the first time. Or at least close.
Mustering up some fake courage, “After I send you packing to the seventh circle of Hell, he can tell me himself.”
Chapter 16 – From the Mouth of Dragons
The giant red lizard began eating gnomes like they were Girl Scout cookies. Seeing the remainder of my army getting decimated, “Retreat you fools! I’ll handle the dragon!”
The remnants of the Normish clan took my advice and backed away from Naga. In the center on the field was me on my horse and the dragon lady. She was pissed I’d deprived her of snack time. “Reaper, I will dine on your entrailssss tonight!”
Oh, what a gross bitch. I buried my disgust and went to the old standby, my chains. They materialized just in time to smack her on her snout. Where the chain met leathery skin, a burn mark blistered. I wasn’t done yet; my other chain was right behind the first and added another nice raw patch of skin.
The time for chatting was over. The dragon queen clawed at me, but Khloros was already on the move. That didn’t stop her; she switched tactics and a steam of blue fire followed us. Khloros changed direction just in time as it passed by harmlessly. I spun him around towards the dragon and we charged.
I held my scythe up high as we got within reach and I jumped off his back. My leap of faith was true and her flames burned the air just under me. With all the force I could generate, I drove the blade of Leviathan into her fleshy face. It didn’t stop until it hit the hard bone a good seven to eight inches under. Green, fiery blood oozed from the wound, hissing as it hit the ground below.
I had no choice but to disengage and fall back down to the hard permafrost below. I guided myself gracefully enough to avoid the dangerous dragon blood, but Khloros couldn’t get back to me. I was, cue the music, all by myself, don’t wanna be, all by myself, anymore!
Options were presenting themselves. My first choice was to try a direct assault using her front leg as a way to climb back up. A second, maybe safer option, was running underneath her and seeing if I could bust through the harder body scales. Unlike her face, the scales covering the rest of her were like sheets of iron. Ha, you don’t live fully by playing it safe! Back up the leg it is!
I shrunk Leviathan down and put it in my pocket. This was a job for my chains. Unfortunately Naga didn’t seem like a willing participant in my plan and the moment I started my crazy ascent, her other front leg scratched at me like a flea.
I scrambled up as quickly as I could, taking a partial blow to the shoulder from the smallest claw. It stung like hell, but there was no rest for the weary. When I got to the shoulder and could stand up straight, I took off down her back. Just in the nick of time too, she tried to eat me!
As if shit was getting crazy enough, she took flight. I dropped to my stomach and gripped on to whatever I could find as we circled the prison below. We went higher and higher, making everything below look like little ants. The air, which was already freezing was getting worse.
Then the floor dropped out as Naga rapidly began her return to Earth. My eyes were closed, but I felt my hands slipping off the scales I was using. I couldn’t use my chains for leverage and then with one last slip I went flying off her back. I opened my eyes and realized I was still a few hundred feet from the ground. This wasn’t good.
I’d survived many falls in my long life, a few plane crashes too. This was going to hurt like a bitch, but it probably wouldn’t be fatal. No, my fear came from the dragon that was gracefully landing below. I wouldn’t be in any shape to defend myself.
My freefall came to a sudden stop. Something grabbed on to my shirt and was holding me up. Surprised, I turned to see, “Roxanne?” My girlfriend was in her former Lust demon form, red skin, wings, and even little horns coming out of her forehead. “What the fuck?”
“I believe the words you’re looking for are thank you dear.”
The former (or rather current) Lust demon gave me a look that’d pierce your soul. “Thank you dear.” Hopefully that would soothe her and we could get back to the topic at hand. “I appreciate you not letting me become a Death splot.”
“You’re welcome.” She glided us down towards the ground, away from Naga, over by Jacar. “And to answer your original question, Lucifer granted me my old form back. Apparently that is within his power to do so.”
“Why would he do that?”
We gently landed beside Jacar and a pile of dragon men bodies. “His reasoning was that Sabrina is my child and therefore should suffer the wrath of her mother’s true form.”
“Interesting.” I wasn’t going to argue with him or complain about what he’d done. “Why did you keep this from me until now?”
“I thought you’d be mad.”
I wrapped her up in a tight hug. “I told you, we’re in it to win it.” I felt her shift back to her human form. I didn’t give two shits if she was human, angel-friend, or Lust demon. “Now, can we go kill a dragon?”
The anxious Pride demon to my right seemed to be all aboard that idea. “Any thoughts on how we do this.”
Naga finally located us across the way. The dragon was not pleased to see I was standing. “Maybe a three pronged attack? Two of us act as a distraction while the third uses his sweet sword to cut through the hard scales.”
“After I save your life, you want me to distract a fucking dragon?” Her look was incredulous.
“Hey. I’ll be right there with you.” I even gave her a genuine smile and a thumbs up. “But seeing as how she’s about to crash our little campfire meeting, we’ll make up our strategy on the fly. Good luck Jacar!” I hooked my arm around Roxanne’s and we took off. Naga was definitely after me.
Khloros joined us on our dash and I tossed Roxanne up on his back. “You two keep going. I’ll be right behind you.”
I saw my girl pull out that gun of hers and had a bad feeling she was going to introduce this ancient creature to celestial bullets. Naga ignored them for the moment and kept on my tail. “You will die today Reaper!”
“I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard that. If I had a dollar for every time…” She cut my proclamation short with some dragon fire. “Hey I wasn’t finished!”
“No, you are finissshed.” Her hissing was downright annoying. “Lord Ruin has given me access to the flamessss of Tartarussss.” I had no idea what that was, but it sounded awful.
Before she could inform me, two loud cracks of Roxanne’s pistol sounded off and the bullets were flying. Both hit the angry lady in the face, sending the dragon into a crazed fit. She took her frustrations out on poor me. I had to duck a backhanded claw swipe and a follow up stomp. When she realized it wasn’t me who was shooting, her eyes quickly found Khloros and Roxanne.
She reared her ugly head back and opened her mouth. The bubble of Tartarus energy around us began to funnel towards her flamethrower. Uh oh. “Guys, get the hell outta here!”
Khloros did exactly what he was supposed to and began running at warp speed. When Naga had gathered enough juice, her head pointed back towards the ground. Black flames right from the bowels of Hell itself shot forward and covered a very large section of the courtyard. Gnomes were running for their lives, trying to avoid the unquenchable fire. I’d never seen or felt anything like that.
When her attack ceased, the areas she burned were charred to a crisp. I counted about fifty gnomes still alive as well as Khloros and Roxanne. I had no idea where Jacar was. If she got another attack off like that, we’d all be cri
spy fried celestials.
With my chains, I whipped her underbelly which did nothing. The bounced off the hard scales and flew back at me. That wasn’t going to work. Maybe some more taunting? “Hey big and ugly. I heard your mouth isn’t the only part of you that burns!”
I’m guessing vagina jokes don’t really resonate with a dragon. “I do not know what you ssspeak of Reaper, but my burning ssssenssssationsssss will cover you!”
Yuck, dragon STD’s. Man this really fell apart faster than I could’ve imagined. “I don’t want any of your burning sensations.”
Man I wished Jacar would hurry up and do his part, that is if he wasn’t dead. I should probably have looked into that possibility, but antagonizing a dragon was all I was concerned with. Apparently Roxanne was still in the same mood. In her renewed demon form, she was about twenty feet off the ground with her pistol out. She then began to empty her entire clip into Naga’s face. A few bullets hit the areas I had already roughed up, doing some nice damage to her.
With her attention going towards the new source of pain, I had an opportunity to possibly sink Leviathan into that soft exposed tissue under her mouth. Man it was a tight squeeze, but it was worth a shot. The worst thing that could happen was she’d eat me or roast me like a Deathdog. I hopped over the still burning parts of the field, and made my final trip up the dragon.
Roxanne must’ve reloaded as the gunshots kept Naga’s attention off of me. Right as I was going to try and slice her on the run, Jacar flipped down off her back and the two of us collided. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“My part of the plan! What are you doing here?”
“I thought you were dead so I was picking up the slack!”
Hearing the two of us argue on the back of her neck, Naga’s attention left the bullets and turned to us. “How ssstupid are the two of you?” Her tongue flicked out and wrapped around Jacar’s leg. “I’ll eat you firssst demon.”
“Ahhhh Death, help me out!”
Leviathan wasn’t going to cut it. “Toss me your sword!”
“It won’t like you!”
“I don’t give a damn! Throw me your sword!”
As he was getting closer to becoming a dragon snack, he tossed the Grasscutter towards me. I knew the sword was persnickety about who wielded it. As soon as I caught it, the damn thing shocked me. “Bloody hell, we don’t have time for this!”
I don’t think it liked me at all. It kept shocking me while I sliced it down on the dragon’s throat. Poor Jacar was two legs deep into Naga’s wide open mouth when I did it. I sliced her throat open with the Grasscutter and then dropped the cursed blade. With the wide open gash oozing blood, I could use my own scythe to finish the job.
As I ripped into the bleeding wound with Leviathan, I saw Jacar fall to the ground safe. Well, he hadn’t been eaten by a dragon, so I considered it a moral victory. After I few vicious hacks, Naga went into her death throes. Jumping off, her eyes rolled into the back of her head and the mighty beast had fallen.
I landed hard beside Jacar, who seemed like he might’ve been suffering a head injury. “Well, we killed a dragon big guy. How do you feel about that?”
“Why are there two of you?” His eyes were completely unfocused. “I can barely stand just the one.”
Chapter 17 – Father and Son
Flintwick and his brother Obster were the two gnomes who decided to go into the prison with us. With the death of Naga and her dragon men, the place was a ghost town. Conquest was close though, I could feel my brother’s life force. It seemed to be steady, but a bit weak. He was a tough S.O.B. though, he’d be fine until we got him outta here.
The dimly lit hallways of this place and the cool, wet air did nothing for the overall atmosphere in here. On a scale of one to ten, I’d give the Gulag a two. I mean c’mon, there was nobody waiting to even grab our stuff as we entered. What kinda shabby place was this?
It’s a good thing those smelly gnomes were with us. Every time we needed to leave one corridor to enter another, there was some sort of lock in place. Flintwick was especially good at picking them, usually taking just a few seconds. On one occasion, both he and Obster had to work together to get one undone. It looked like I was in the right for making a deal with these guys, something I’d remind Roxanne about many times.
Besides Conquest’s aura, there were two others. One was most certainly the Minotaur King Balrog’s, which meant the unknown one could only be Jacoby. My son was just ahead.
“Grimm, are you sure you’re up for this?”
“Of course I am Roxanne. This is mostly my fault, so I have to fix it.”
She balked at my declaration of blame. “You were under Sabrina’s influence. Stronger beings than you would’ve fallen under her too.”
The Hell witch’s skill was undeniable, but something told me Jacoby wouldn’t be up for listening to that excuse. Between actually being the one who killed his mother and years of Sabrina whispering poison into his ear, this was going to be one uphill battle.
We turned the corner and he hallway opened up into the middle of the prison. Opening the door, we entered some sort of middle ground to the prison. Across the way from us stood two figures. Balrog looked as imposing as ever, this time with a human sized mace resting on his shoulder. Beside him, wearing the same black armor I had when I was a pawn in Sabrina’s army was the spitting image of Astrid. Long blonde hair cascaded across his face and the amount of hate in those blue eyes couldn’t be measured. In his right hand was a long katana made of stygian iron.
Father and son looked right at each other. I stepped forward, hoping to address him one on one. “Jacoby.”
“No one calls me that. I am Sir Ruin, knight to her Supreme Empress Sabrina.” I wanted to laugh at his introduction, but I knew that would get us nowhere. “You and your party have been issued death warrants. Balrog and I intend to see them through.”
“I don’t think so. Baal’s been freed and your dragon is dead, so it’d do you better to listen to us.”
Neither gave away any looks of fear or surprise. “You underestimate me father. When I called you at your home, my hate was strong and I showed my hand. Since then, I learned how to control my rage towards you.”
I noticed his voice hadn’t cracked at all. But hearing this tone from a fifteen sixteen year old kid was alarming to the parental side of me. “You have a lot of valid reasons to hate me, that’s true. In the same breathe, you should hate the bull beside you and the one you call Empress.”
Balrog’s nose began huffing. “Silence Reaper. No one wants to hear your lies today.”
“Funny all those years ago when you had me locked away, I had to listen to your bullshit.”
He slammed his mace into the ground. “Lies! The Empress warned Ruin you would make up tales to try to shake his loyalty.”
“Enough Balrog.” Jacoby put his hand on the Minotaur’s side and the big oaf stopped his tantrum. “Nothing my father can say will sway me from my devotion.”
I believed him. He was too far gone in Sabrina’s indoctrination. “It seems we’re at an impasse. There’s two options to be taken I guess. Number one,” and yes I held up one finger because I’m that guy, “you guys can get your asses kicked by us.” I was way more confident sounding than I felt. Balrog, still covered in Tartarus magic, would be a mountain of a challenge for us on his own.
His laugh sounded just like mine. “And what’s number two?”
“You give us Conquest and we leave. Easy as that.”
Jacoby looked at the door they were in front of. He tapped his sword on the metal and it swung open. Standing there in shackles was my brother. He didn’t look all that bad, more annoyed than anything. “As you can see my uncle in unharmed. I actually enjoyed my chats with him.”
“Conquest has nothing to do with the feud between us.”
His sword tapped the leg shackles and they fell to the ground with a clang. “You’re right. He’s yours to take.”
I could
see Conquest was uneasy about this, so he slowly walked between Balrog and Jacoby, keeping his head on a swivel. Once he was in the clear, he picked up the pace and come over to join us. “Are you hurt brother?”
“More my ego than anything. I’ll be fine.”
With him safely with us. “Our business here is done.”
Much to my surprise Balrog backed into the door and disappeared. Looking only at me, “Send your party away father. What’s remaining his between father and son.”
I was surprised by the honorable way he was handling this. “All of you go.” I could hear the protests getting ready to boil over. “This isn’t a team discussion, go.”
Everyone grumbled on the way out, but no one more than Khloros. “I hope you know what you’re doing Rider.”
“I generally do. Make sure my friends are safe. I don’t trust Balrog or Sabrina. There very well could be a trap set.”
As the grey horse exited, “So my son, you wanted some alone time with your old man?”
He brought his mask over his face. “She told me what you did to my birth mother, how you killed her in cold blood.”
“She’s right you know.” His position softened for a split second. “Did you expect me to lie to you?”
“It’s good you didn’t. I will honor that with a quick kill.” He brought his katana up and dashed at me. The little guy was quick. As his blade closed in on me, I quickly got Leviathan out and parried it away. It was a nice try, but one that wasn’t going to work.
“I’ll never forget that night Jacoby. I wasn’t in my right mind and I killed the women who gave me you.”
He shouted out in pain and attacked again. Trying to be kind, I deflected the attack with the handle of my scythe and kicked him away before he even had time to initiate a follow up attack. His frustration was evident. In a low, lion like growl, “All my training, this shouldn’t be how this goes.”
What had Balrog and Sabrina been teaching him? All these years and this is the best he could do against me? I didn’t continue my attack. “You’re too young for this fight. What you’re not too young for is the truth. Sabrina is the one who ordered me to kill Astrid, your mother. Her magic was weaved so deeply in me that I couldn’t resist a direct order.”
