Whill of Agora: Book 02 - A Quest of Kings

by Michael Ploof

  There was a great explosion that rocked the very frame of the building. The floor in the middle of the church exploded into a huge fireball. Roakore pulled down Jarred, and they shielded their heads from the huge slivers of wood that were thrown through the air at high velocity. Three of the Draggard were blown to pieces, and another was engulfed in flames and fell into the inferno.

  The others were riddled with wooden daggers. Two fell from their wounds, but the remaining six furiously charged Roakore and Jarred. This group of beasts had seen many battles and had fought together often. They did not barrel in foolishly but rather spread out in a circle, spears held high, tails curved and ready to strike above their heads like a scorpion. They looked demonic in the firelight. Their green-and-dark-black scales shone like polished glass. Their eyes were the color of the fire around them, and their teeth and claws reflected like daggers.

  Roakore and Jarred stood back to back as the jabs from the Draggard spears and tails forced them back. Jarred lunged forward and stabbed, but three blades met his. Time was running short. The fire from the basement was claiming an ever-larger area of the floor, and already the roof was on fire. Beams groaned, and rows of benches fell into the inferno.

  The six surrounding beasts pressed Roakore and Jarred with spears and tails alike. Seeing their doom coming in the form of those gleaming spears, Roakore acted on instinct, mentally grasping the metal of the spears and forcing them to the floor. Still the tails came; he felt Jarred’s body at his back suddenly tense and shift. Before Jarred could give the warning, Roakore ducked as the man screamed, “Down!”

  The great sword came around in a loud whoosh. Many Draggard tails were cut in half. One was deflected from its path by the sword, while another found its mark, sinking deep into Jarred’s leg. The bone snapped, and Jarred crumbled to the floor. Roakore, in a rage, called upon the stone tips of the spears once again and pulled them from the floor and sent each back to their owners. The six Draggard stumbled back as they were impaled by the spears. One fell, screaming, into the ever-widening pit. Jarred cursed the beasts from the floor and hacked at the nearest Draggard’s ankle. The great sword cut deep into the monster’s shin, causing it to fall next to the screaming man.

  Roakore brought his ax to bear and took the opportunity before him. He smashed the face of the nearest Draggard with his huge ax, spun, and kicked the Dark Elf creation into the fires below the church. He swung again and took a beast in the side; he pulled his ax back quickly, opening the creature.

  Jarred grabbed the Draggard in a headlock and wrapped a leg around the beast. He squeezed with all his might. The Draggard tail ripped from his leg and backed to strike like a scorpion tail. It hovered for only a moment before striking, but before it could hit home, Roakore hewed it in half as he twirled away from his latest victim.

  Jarred squeezed harder still, the face of his beloved wife burning in his mind brighter than the rising flames. Steam emanated from his tears of pain and anguish, and rage pumped rivers of blood through his knotted muscles. The Draggard desperately raked Jarred’s face as it struggled against the madman. The claws cut deep into Jarred’s flesh, but he felt nothing. With a loud snap, the Draggard’s neck was broken; its body jerked and became limp. Jarred lay upon the floor, blood drenched and spent. His leg bled profusely, and he had lost an eye. His head swam in the heat, the air becoming thick and black. Jarred choked and laughed to himself, watching Roakore chop the head off the last Draggard as the roof caved in and the building collapsed, and he and Roakore fell into the raging inferno below.

  Dirk was taken below the castle to the dungeons. The damp, dark prison was not unlike dozens he had seen before; the only difference here was the guards, Dark Elves. He followed Eadon down a corridor that smelled of damp earth, sweat, blood, and death. The screams of the tortured echoed off the walls in a dizzying plethora of wails, sobs, and shrieks. Here the Dark Elves tested their art and the endurance of mankind.

  Dirk had been in many similar dungeons, or jails, but none carried with them the dread found within these walls. He was not a man that scared easily, but here, deep within the underground chambers of Del-Oradon castle, Dirk knew fear.

  Eadon led him to a doorway with two guards and stepped aside. “Please, do go in.”

  Dirk eyed the steel door with dread. He did not fear what lay in wait for himself within the torture chamber. He feared finding her. Dirk took a deep breath and turned the handle. The door swung smoothly. Faint light entered the darkened chamber and bathed the naked form of a tattooed Dark Elf woman. She hung limp and unconscious from glowing red chains that bound her bleeding wrists.

  Krentz.

  He fell to his knees inside the threshold and sobbed.

  The door behind him closed to the sound of Eadon’s quiet laughter. Krentz stirred in the blackened room.

  “What? Who is it?” she demanded. “Who is there?” Her voice was losing its power and beginning to quiver.

  “Who?” she mewled and began to sob. “No. No! No! No, not you, not you…Dirk.”

  He stood from where he had fallen, and as if on cue, two torches upon the wall blazed forth with light—the work of Eadon no doubt.

  Krentz squinted against the stinging brightness. Her eyes focused on her lover. She recognized Dirk, and her face relaxed. A smile crept across her mouth. Quickly, it subsided and was replaced by a scowl and then a look of hatred.

  “No!” she screamed and thrashed against her chains. “No more. Show me no more of his face! No more!”

  Dirk’s heart broke once again as he watched his beloved convulsing and thrashing in delirium. He went to her, arms extended. Krentz screamed and kicked him hard. With his strong hands, he grabbed her legs and pushed himself between them. Her body relaxed at his touch. He brought his hands to her face and held it firmly. She whimpered a feeble protest. Dirk’s lips found hers, and her protests stopped. The kiss lasted for a time unknown.

  When finally they parted, their eyes met. Tears of joy streaked both of their faces. They remained in each other’s arms, her bare, tattooed legs around his hips. His arms coiled around her body, one hand upon the small of her back, the other holding her neck. His fingers found her hair; he pulled, taking her breath away. She shuddered, as if crying, but smiled. They both laughed at the memory of it. She had always been so sensitive to his touch. Again they kissed; this time it was less urgent, their familiar kiss and their rhythm. They smiled between kisses and laughed. Dirk brought her close in his embrace, his head resting upon her chest, her cheek resting upon his hair. She breathed him in and shuddered, and again, they laughed.

  There they stayed, not speaking. Dirk’s strong legs held her up, giving her relief from chains that had kept her on her toes. Krentz slept deeply for the first time since she had been captured. She slept, and Dirk listened to her laboring heart.

  Krentz dreamed of times gone, memories shared. She dreamed of those many years spent living in the wild and on the island of Eldon and of herself and Dirk sparring, singing, dancing, and making love beneath the stars. They had sat in the grass, sometimes talking for days. They had watched as the sun was born, and they watched his death. They had sung to the moon as she searched nightly for her lover and rejoiced with her as she and the sun were one, if for but a moment. That day, day had become night, and Krentz and Dirk had mirrored the sun and moon’s embrace.

  She awoke with a smile and kissed his forehead. “Why have you come here? I fled from you to save your life. You died in my dream, and you died because of me.”

  She blinked and a tear fell. “I cannot live knowing that you will die because of me.”

  “You would rather I live without you, that which is my death? I have been dead since you left. I have felt more alive these last moments than I will in fifty lifetimes spent without you. Leave fate to the unknown, my dear Krentz. We only have control until we don’t, and then we sleep. I choose you, and I will not be robbed of my choice, not even by you, my love.”

  Krentz wiped a
tear from his face with her cheek and softly kissed the spot. Slowly, she dotted kisses from his cheek to his lips. He bit her lip softly, and she tensed, and her breath quickened as if she had plunged into cold water. Point made, Dirk kissed her softly.

  “Very well,” she said when, finally, they parted lips. “I will ignore the vision. But if you die as you did, I shall follow you into the dark. That I promise.”

  “Then I shall simply never die,” Dirk replied with a grin.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dragons’ breath

  Aurora’s body barely stretched out upon the floor of her small cell. She counted out her two hundredth push-up with an easy breath. The energy that the Dark Elf had forced into her body coursed through her veins and muscles. She had been pushing her body hard for three hours, yet she did not tire, did not hunger for food, and did not need water. Her body hummed with the exertion. She counted out number 250 and kept going swiftly. Her mind raced as she thought of the possibilities of her newfound power.

  Not only could she free her people from their frozen island exile, but now she could challenge the chief of the northern barbarians, Icethorn. She would defeat the chief easily, and she would lead her people to glory. Finally, they would take back their homeland of northern Agora, and finally, they would know retribution.

  She would once again restore honor to her family’s name; honor that had been tarnished forever by the arrogant chief. Years before, Aurora’s father had challenged the chieftain upon the fields of Orthax. Her father had bested the chief and stood over him, prepared to deal the final blow. Icethorn’s gray dragon had swept in and scooped up Aurora’s father in its wicked claws, flown high into the sky, and dropped him.

  Time had stopped for eternity as Aurora watched her father fall through the air, his voice booming a curse upon the chieftain. The force of the impact threw up a plume of snow that reached upward to the heavens. Aurora had been the one to close his eyes. She had sworn revenge upon the chief that day, and soon would be her chance to exact that revenge.

  She would defeat the chief and claim the Dragon Staff of Eztule. With it, and the help of the Dark Elf Eadon, she would lead her people home. She needed only to fulfill her duty as Eadon’s general, and her first appointed task was to kill Whill’s mentor, Abram. Aurora knew nothing of this man; she knew only that she must succeed in her task, for the sake of her people.

  Zhola reminded himself not to fight against the barbed chains that held his wings tightly against his bruised and battered body. He reminded himself that to accept the pain was the only way to live with it, to defeat it. He had become accustomed to the constant pain over the last six months since Eadon had taken him and Whill captive.

  Eadon had tried to invade his mind and find the whereabouts of the legendary sword Adimorda but to no avail. Zhola had known great pain before, but Eadon had indeed expanded the ancient dragon’s definition of the word. Eadon had bombarded him with mental assaults on numerous occasions, but Zhola refused to crack. Though Eadon was indeed ancient, and also the most powerful Elf alive, Zhola too was ancient and powerful.

  The great red dragon fought off every attack successfully by locking away the knowledge of the sword deep within the recesses of his mind. Zhola himself knew not the location of the blade, only clues with which to find it.. He could free the information if he chose, but not until he chose. Dragons’ minds worked much differently than any man, or Elf, or Dwarf, for that matter.

  Eadon had attempted to force his way in. He had tried to bombard Zhola with illusions and hallucinations, but all attempts had failed. Zhola would not give the clues to the whereabouts of the sword, ever. He was happy to die first rather than see Eadon attain the blade. Eadon’s frustration had been great, his retribution, horrifying. But Zhola would not crack. His mental fortitude was the result of his great age and many centuries of practice.

  So there he sat, chained to the floor and thick stone walls. He had also been hamstrung, the wounds left to fester. He had dealt with the pain easily enough, but once the maggots began to fester in his open wounds, he became quite irritated. He would have filled the room with fire and cauterized the wounds had he anything left within his fire glands, but he was milked daily of his dragons’ breath.

  The tubes had been stabbed through his neck, into his glands, and the precious liquid was siphoned out constantly. It collected in the corner of the large cell, near the door. Its constant dripping into the gallon jug was another part of his torture. He was chained to stone every four feet or so with wicked, barbed chains, enhanced of course, by the twisted Dark Elves’ charms. Usually, the barbed chains would rest upon his thick scales harmlessly, but these glowed red hot at the barbs and were only stopped from burning deeper by the chains.

  Zhola had blocked out the pain and the dripping of the dragons’ breath and the feeling of the writhing maggots within his flesh. He now rested within his inner world. A dragon’s mind was much different than other creatures. They tended to be solitary creatures, even hibernating for decades. Because their minds were much calmer, they were content to simply be.

  Zhola stretched his consciousness out into the ether and searched for Whill. He had been able to reach him before; rather, he had sensed Whill faintly. For Eadon had many spells surrounding the boy, to keep him from prying minds.

  The Elves would come soon. Zhola knew it was but a matter of time. Why they had tarried so long, Zhola could not guess. He was eager to be done with this business of the sword.

  Zhola huffed smoke through his nose as he wondered why he cared at all. Let them kill each other and leave us alone, he thought. But they would not leave the dragons alone. Eadon would tear across the entire world, spreading death and destruction like wildfire, should he get his way. Zhola sighed as he was reminded by his sense of duty that it was the responsibility of all beings to fight and try to defeat any that were an enemy to life.

  Zhola believed the prophecy; he always had. He did not, however, believe in Whill at the moment.

  “Business then?” Abram said as he took the seat opposite the Dark Elf.

  The Dark Elf nodded approvingly. “You are quick for a human, quick indeed.”

  The Dark Elf eyed Abram thoughtfully and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you have had…enhancements to your person, possibly help from an Elf?”

  Abram scoffed at that. “Or perhaps I am good at what I do.”

  “Perhaps,” the Elf mimicked.

  Abram laid a weighted sack upon the table; he opened the drawstring and dumped a fortune in jewels onto it. A thousand torches reflected off of the jewels, casting a multicolored spectrum of light upon the Dark Elf’s face. The studded piercings in his eyebrows rose.

  “This should be sufficient payment for one gallon of dragons’ breath.” stated Abram.

  The Elf eyed the collection. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t,” stated Abram dryly.

  “I like to know the names of those I do business with.”

  “As do I,” Abram retorted. “In human society, it is considered polite for a host to introduce himself first…and it is also considered rude to attack a guest.”

  The Dark Elf sneered. “When I attack you, you will know it!”

  Rhunis laughed from his place beside the seated Abram. “That was clever. Did you make that up yourself?”

  The Dark Elf did not find humor in the jest. Abram guarded his mind as he felt the Dark Elf extending his mind out toward Abram’s. He had feared this would happen upon discovering that they dealt with Dark Elves. He had been shocked to find that the guard at the first door was a Dark Elf, and he had instantly known their danger. How they were going to get out of this place unrecognized, he did not know. He simply hoped that these Elves did not know of him.

  The Dark Elf laughed, and Abram knew he had failed. The Elf had read his every thought. “Of course we know who you are; your faces have been projected to us by our great master, Abram of Arden.”

  He looked then to Rhu
nis. “And the great dragon slayer, the scarred-knight Rhunis.” The Elf eyed the scar that covered half of Rhunis’s face. “You know, we have ways to mend that.”

  “I like it just the way it is, Elf. I did not almost die for it to have it replaced.”

  The Elf ignored him. “How rude of me indeed to not introduce myself to such esteemed guests as you. I am Sarrazon.”

  Rhunis and Abram nodded their heads in greeting. “We have a saying, ‘well met.’ But it is not warranted at this juncture,” said Abram.

  Sarrazon laughed at that. “You are in good spirits for one that has just handed himself over to the enemy, one that will soon be in the hands of the great Eadon.” Abram was not listening; he had closed his eyes and shut out the room. His mind screamed a name, in the hopes that the Elf had indeed reached the city and, by slim chance, was near. Sarrazon heard it and leapt to his feet. Abram hardly noticed as he continued to mentally scream the name and project with all his mental might. Zerafin!

  Sarrazon extended a hand, and a shock wave of energy hit Abram and Rhunis so hard that they were thrown back to slam into the wall. Abram’s concentration was broken. Sarrazon strode toward then, blade drawn. In his other hand, a ball of lightning swirled and crackled.

  Zerafin was a few miles from the city when he heard the faint calling of his name upon the wind. He tapped into a ring upon a finger and focused on the sound. Zerafin!

  The mental cry of Abram jolted him in his saddle. He reared his horse and focused on the location of Abram. Once he had found it, he dismounted and addressed the others. “Into your groups, your missions are known; I go now to aid an ally. I will meet my group shortly.”

  With that, he unsheathed his sword and tapped into its great energy. He raised it to the sky and mentally projected the blade into the air; it went, and his body followed.