Dragon Slayer 2_A Pulp Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Captain Daxos and Sergeant Dai were fighting a group of staggering ghoulins twenty yards away from me, with Irenya and Arieste behind them for support. My rush had actually crushed a quarter of the monsters that stood between us. Between the two Blackguards, the two women, and my steel axe, the rest died in a matter of minutes.

  Captain Daxos and Sergeant Dai stared at me in wide-eyed shock, so I glanced down and saw the black blood staining my armor, arms, and axe.

  “These men are warriors, but they weren’t used to going toe-to-toe with their enemy,” Nyvea purred in my mind. “You amazed and impressed them, so I would not be surprised if they both decide to swear their swords to you after this is all over.”

  I nodded to the woman’s words but didn’t reply. Instead, I pointed to the cave entrance. “We’re bringing down this tunnel and blocking the ghoulins out,” I said. “Arieste, I’m going to need you for this.”

  “Oh?” The platinum-blonde woman raised a slim eyebrow and a drop of ghoulin blood slid down her beautiful face.

  “First, we need to get Irenya kicking ass.” I motioned for the red-haired woman to follow me, then turned and strode down the passage toward my ice shield. I could hear the monsters clawing at it and knew it would only hold for a few more seconds, but I needed it to buy me time to dispose of all the ghoulins between me and my companions. I had a dragon to make sure no more ghoulins would get in.

  I sent a blast of fire at the ice wall, and it hissed, turned to steam, and then the flames engulfed the ghoulins beyond. I kept up the pillar of fire as long as I could until only charred corpses and blackened ground remained.

  I squinted against the bright sunlight and took in the world outside the underground tunnel. Red rock walls rose for two hundred yards on either side of us, and the blue sky shone bright high overhead. We were in the canyons south of the Windwall, the same canyons that were filled with Emroth’s minions. The next wave of ghoulins crept toward us, but they were at least thirty or forty yards away, and we had about half a minute before they would need to be dealt with.

  Irenya’s amber eyes glittered with delight as I pulled the red gemstone from my pocket. She stripped down to her gauzy dress, stepped close to me, and wiggled her chest to nestle the stone and my hands deeper between her ample breasts. She gave a little breathy sigh of delight, then closed her eyes as I reached for the fire magic within me and fed it through the gemstone into her body. I had to grit my teeth against the pain of my raw nerves, but the cries of the ghoulins drawing closer were all the incentive I needed to keep pushing.

  Then my powers turned the beautiful woman into a mighty red dragon.

  Irenya let out a rib-shaking roar, winked one huge eyelid, and then turned toward the ghoulins. Crimson light bathed the canyon’s red walls as she summoned the magic and let loose a blast of power. Flames eagerly consumed the corpse-like ghoulins by the scores, and her talons, teeth, and tail carved through dozens more. Her growl of delight rumbled through the canyon behind me as I turned to face Arieste.

  She and the two Blackguards had just emerged from the tunnel behind me, and they blinked at the bright sunlight. I strode toward Arieste and took her hand. The feel of her cool skin against mine and the absence of the fiery magic helped to dim the last embers of my anger.

  “I need your control over the ice magic to make this work,” I told her as I led her a few feet inside the tunnel.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said.

  “I need you to use your ice to expand the cracks in the stone,” I said.

  Back in Chicago, I’d heard one of the guys at Station 52 talking about a call they’d been on in the dead of winter. Some jackass had tried to use a blowtorch to thaw his pipes to prevent cracking and nearly burned his house to the ground. One of the guys was also a contractor during his off-hours, and he’d talked about how freeze-thawing could expand cracks in flooring and stonemasonry until they crumbled. That was exactly what I wanted Arieste to do here.

  “Search for the cracks in the wall,” I told her, “and use the magic to form the ice there. Make the ice as thick as possible so it will widen the cracks, and then the stone will crumble to block the passage.”

  For a moment, confusion furrowed her brow, by my explanation seemed to make things clearer.

  “You have more control over your ice powers,” I told her. “We need precision to make this work, so I want you to do it.”

  I took her hand in mine, placed it against the wall, and then tapped into my ice powers. Then I sent the magic flowing through my skin and into her. A faint crackling sound echoed in the tunnel, and the surrounding air grew suddenly cold as she poured ice into the fissures between the stones. Arieste gritted her teeth and pulled harder on the magic, and soon a low rumbling echoed in the tunnel.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted and dragged her up the tunnel toward the exit, just as the first chunk of stone crumbled from the roof. A moment later, the ceiling and walls began to fall inward, and the rumbling grew louder. Arieste and I burst free of the mouth of the tunnel a heartbeat before the entire section of canyon collapsed into the hollowed passageway. Choking stone dust billowed in a thick cloud behind us as we raced to safety, and both Captain Daxos and Sergeant Dai stared wide-eyed at the collapsed tunnel.

  “No more ghoulins are getting in that way!” I said with a confident grin.

  “The Blackguards should be able to handle any still wandering within the tunnels,” Captain Daxos replied.

  “Which just leaves us with the ones out here,” Arieste said behind me, and I turned to stare in the direction she was looking.

  Irenya was having the time of her life sending blasts of fire at the ghoulins surging toward us, tearing them apart with her teeth and talons, and crushing them with her tail. But even though she was kicking ass, I could see hundreds more headed our way. There had been more than five thousand in that first assault on the Windwall, and ten thousand or more the second time. Even with all the ghoulins we’d killed in battle and the tunnels below, there had to be thousands more. No way we could fight our way through.

  But we didn’t need to. The plan was never to destroy all of Emroth’s minions. If we wanted to win this battle, we had to deal with the black dragon herself.

  And now we possessed the tool to do it.

  I drew the Circlet of Darksight from my pack and settled it onto my head. The metal felt cool against my skin, and a faint hum ran along the slim metal band as I pressed the gemstone set into the forehead. Immediately, I could see the bright red heat signatures of the woman beside me, the two Blackguards, Irenya, and the thousands of ghoulins filling the canyon.

  “This works like a fucking charm!” I said as I pumped my fist in the air. “No way Emroth’s going to be able to hide from me.”

  “Try siphoning off the magic and passing it to the dragons,” Nyvea purred in my mind.

  “How do I do that?” I asked Nyvea. “It’s a great idea. I’d need their help to find Emroth, which they’d only be able to do with the Circlet of Darksight.”

  “I do have my uses, handsome,” she laughed. “Activate the gemstone and then use the Mark of the Guardian to absorb the magic.”

  I was about to do just that when a thought struck me.

  “How long will the effects of the magic last?” I asked. “When I siphoned the magic from those fire creatures, it didn’t last long, so I don’t want to run out of this power when I’m about to catch Emroth.”

  “A good thought, Ethan,” Nyvea purred. “Once you take the magic from the gemstone and share it with your dragons, its effects will not last long. Perhaps five or ten minutes.”

  Damn, that complicated things. I replaced the Circlet on my forehead and pondered what to do.

  “What if I used the Circlet’s magic to find Emroth, then siphoned it off to share with the one or both dragons when the time came?” I asked.

  “Clever, hero,” Nyvea replied. “That could do nicely.”

  “Arieste!” I called. “I’m going to nee
d your help as a dragon.”

  “Of course,” she replied, and I saw the twitch of her thin lips as she stripped out of her white dress. No matter how much time she spent as a human, I knew she enjoyed her time as a dragon just as much. The ability to fly free and soar in the heavens was a truly addicting feeling. Hell, that’s why I loved riding the dragons in the first place.

  The icy power set my nerves crackling as I fed it through the gemstone and into Arieste’s body. I knew I should stop using the magic until I could rest and recover, but right now wasn’t the time for a break. There were too many problems to deal with first.

  Arieste let out a little rumble of pleasure as she shook her large dragon body, and she stretched her wings and sinewy neck as if after a long night of sleep.

  “Tell me where you want me,” she said in her deep dragon voice.

  “I need you to carry the Captain and Sergeant for me and be ready for anything Emroth throws at us,” I said, and a hard edge glittered in her icy blue eyes. Apparently, she wasn’t pleased that I would be riding Irenya.

  “You’re better-suited to watch my back and be on the lookout for any traps,” I told her as I reached up to rest a hand on her long dragon snout. “You’ll be my guardian angel.”

  “Guardian angel, eh?” the white dragon rumbled. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Irenya and I are going to bring Emroth down, then I need you to use your ice shields to keep her down. Got it?” I asked.

  “How will I see her?” Arieste asked.

  “Look for the dragon-shaped outline in Irenya’s fire,” I said with a grin. “If you see any smoking scales, you’ll know that’s Emroth.”

  The white dragon let out a rumbling chuckle and dipped her head in understanding. “I’ve got your back, Ethan.”

  “I know it,” I said, and then turned to the captain and sergeant. They agreed to ride on Arieste’s back without hesitation, since neither of them seemed particularly interested in being trapped down here with the ghoulins.

  “Irenya!” I called once Captain Daxos and Sergeant Dai were settled between Arieste’s icy white spines. “Time to go!”

  The red dragon let out a little growl of disapproval, and then made a last flick of her tail. The barbed whip slammed into a cluster of ghoulins, and black blood sprayed as the force of her blow splattered the creatures on the stone walls of the canyon.

  Irenya dipped her shoulder so I could climb onto her back, and then she leapt into the air with a great bound of her dragon legs. Her wings snapped out and immediately caught the howling winds whipping through the canyon, and we were quickly soaring high over the heads of the screaming ghoulins.

  I triggered the gemstone in the Circlet’s forehead, and the monsters far below flared to a brilliant red mass of tightly clustered forms. The figures of Sergeant Dai and Captain Daxos were clearly visible on Arieste’s back, and shimmering waves of heat rose from Irenya’s scaly body. As I scanned the canyon walls, I used the Mark of the Guardian to search for Emroth’s magical presence.

  The black dragon had a different sort of magic than the other dragons I’d encountered. Irenya’s fire burned as bright as a sun to my magical senses, and Arieste’s ice was like a rushing glacial river. The magic that created Emroth’s minions was nearly impossible to sense, for it seemed to elude all my attempts to find it. It felt like trying to grab water with my bare hands, and no matter what I did, I could never pinpoint its location.

  But that feeling was exactly what I wanted to find. The moment I sensed that evasiveness on a massive scale, I would know at least the general direction to search for Emroth. With the Circlet of Darksight to find her body heat, she wouldn’t be able to hide from me.

  Something about a small, narrow breakaway canyon to the right drew my attention. I focused my magical senses on the thin gap in the rocks, and something there seemed determined to evade me.

  “Fly that way!” I shouted to Irenya and pointed down the gap.

  The red dragon swooped toward the narrower canyon, and the sensation grew stronger as we flew deeper between the rocks. The man-sized figures of ghoulins were more tightly packed together, and they moved in a steady stream toward the main canyon.

  It seemed like I might have been getting closer to their source.

  We rounded a bend in the canyon, and I let out a whoop of triumph. There, crouched in the shadow of an overhanging cliff, was the unmistakable figure of a dragon. It was far smaller than Arieste and Irenya, barely larger than a semi-trailer, and the glowing heat of its body revealed a figure more like a mountain lion or panther than a traditional dragon. Its neck was shorter than its stocky body, and it had short legs and a tail far longer and thinner than either of my dragons’. Two stubby wings protruded from its back, but they didn’t seem functional.

  “Irenya, sent a blast of fire into that little hollow beneath the overhanging cliff,” I shouted to make myself heard over the wind.

  “I don’t see anything,” rumbled the red dragon, “but I trust you know what you’re doing.”

  I could see the red-glowing figure below look up as we approached, and her short, panther-like legs tensed to spring away. The moment Irenya opened her mouth, Emroth leaped out from beneath the overhanging cliff, and the pillar of fire washed across the solid stone.

  “Damn it!” I said.

  “Did I miss?” Irenya asked.

  “No, Emroth’s just fucking fast.” I contemplated draining the power of the Circlet of Darksight to let Irenya see, but I didn’t want to risk it yet. I needed to track Emroth to her lair first, then I’d use the power to enable my dragons to take her down.

  “Where is she?” Irenya rumbled.

  Emroth was racing along the canyon floor, and she trampled dozens of ghoulins in her hurry to flee.

  “Follow the trail of crushed bodies,” I told Irenya with a grim laugh.

  Irenya opened her mouth and loosed a long pillar of fire straight at Emroth. Even firing blind, she was pretty accurate, and only Emroth’s cat-like speed and nimble grace saved her as she literally leapt from one wall of the canyon to another to evade the fire.

  My eyes flashed toward the end of the canyon fifty yards ahead, and I saw a dragon-sized hole cut into the side of the rocky walls.

  “That has to be her lair!” I shouted as I pointed at the hole. “We need to get there and sever her connection to the magic.”

  With a growl of triumph, Irenya let out another long blast of fire that scorched the stone ground and cliff walls around the entrance to the lair.

  But it was a moment too late. In the heartbeat before Irenya had opened her mouth, the black dragon had hurled herself through the opening and disappeared from my sight.

  “Let’s do this,” I shouted, and waved for Arieste to follow. “Time for us to fight the dragon in her lair.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I directed Irenya to land on the stony ledge in front of Emroth’s lair, and a moment later Arieste joined us.

  “Captain Daxos, Sergeant Dai,” I said and motioned for the two men to dismount, “I need you to hold this opening at any cost.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if we went with you to aid you?” the captain asked, and his brow furrowed as he cast a glance into the cave behind him. “At the very least to guard your back.”

  “That is the threat which concerns me most right now,” I said and pointed to the horde of ghoulins on the canyon’s stony floor. “If Emroth summons them to defend her lair, we could find ourselves overwhelmed. I trust you to watch my back so I can go in there and kick that dragon’s ass.”

  “Understood, Sir Ethan,” Captain Daxos said, and I saw the tension drain from his face. No doubt he’d worried that the lieutenant’s betrayal had shaken my faith in him and Sergeant Dai, but my words set his mind at ease. He drew his fire sword and gripped it firmly. “Not a single ghoulin will pass us, this I swear.”

  Sergeant Dai grunted, then drew a short sword and his heavy spiked mace. “We hold,” he said in his deep
voice.

  “I’m counting on it,” I said, then left the two Blackguards to guard the entrance as I strode toward the two dragons. Though the ghoulins hadn’t yet turned toward us, Emroth could use her magical bond with the creatures she’d summoned to call them to attack us. Shit could get real nasty if we didn’t deal with Emroth quickly.

  “Once I drain the magical power in this circlet,” I told Arieste and Irenya as I pulled the Circlet of Darksight from my forehead, “we’ve got five or ten minutes before the effects fade. That means we’ve got to find Emroth, bring her down, and sever her connection to the magic as quickly as we can.”

  The two dragons snuffed and stamped their huge feet, impatient to get on with the business of hunting Emroth. They both knew how ferocious a dragon could be when confronted in its lair, and even with their strength and magical power, they were prepared for a tough fight.

  “I need you two to get her away from the altar so I can find it and shatter the stone,” I said. “Once her connection to the magic is severed, she’ll be weak, and you can hold her down so I can cut the black gemstone free.”

  “Then we kill her,” rumbled Irenya.

  “Then we give her the same chance to join us that I gave the two of you,” I responded firmly. The two dragons seemed displeased at my response, but I didn’t back down. “Two dragons are bringing their entire armies to Whitespire, and there’s no way King Obragar will be able to hold them back, even with Windwall’s reinforcements. If their hordes are even half the size of Emroth’s, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Both the red and white dragon let out rumbling growls.

  “This is not up for debate,” I told them. “We’re not going to kill Emroth unless she gives us no other choice. We’re just going to bring her down, take her magic, and hopefully turn her into another ally for the war to come.”

  Displeasure flashed in Irenya’s burning golden eyes, and I could see the huge red dragon balking at my words. For a moment, her gaze darted to the blue sky above, and I tensed in expectation of her preparing to flee. Back in Ironfast, she had told me how much her freedom mattered, and how it chafed to be sworn to me. Now was her chance to prove she was an ally, not a woman that joined me because of fear of death. If she could choose to join me, it meant there was hope for Emroth and every other dragon on Iriador.