The Shadow Of Fallen Gods

by V. R. Cardoso

  A timid smile made its way over the boy’s lips. “No.”

  Doric smiled, satisfied. “Yeah, I guessed not.”

  “Dennyel!”

  The kid looked away, startled, and Doric stood up, re-shouldering his sword. A man strode from the other end of the corridor, holding a torch and bearing an angry frown.

  “Where in the mother’s name have you been?” the man snapped. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Hey there!” Doric greeted him. “I stumbled onto your kid. He was—”

  “Yeah, yeah, thanks!” the man cut in, taking the boy’s hand and hoisting him to his feet. “You think I don’t have better things to do than look around these caves for you, huh?”

  The kid didn’t reply, allowing himself to be dragged away by his father.

  “Next time you pull something like this, I’m locking you in our room for a week, you understand?”

  Doric watched as the two of them disappeared into the darkness of an adjacent tunnel, the man’s reprimands slowly fading into jumbled echoes until they were no longer discernible. With a sigh, Doric turned around and returned to his residence’s corridor. He walked down several other tunnels, all seemingly alike under the dim light of the rare torches burning in iron sconces. Finally, he arrived at a small gallery with a fountain in its center. Across from the fountain was an archway, Ava’s Dawnstar sculpted above it, beyond which stood a small chamber no larger than Doric’s room. Inside was a statue of mother Ava, clusters of mostly spent candles burning on the ground beside it.

  Doric knelt in front of the statue, lit the sandalwood incense sticks off one of the candles, then stuck them in two slots at Ava’s feet. He took a deep, tired breath. “Happy birthday, dad,” he said. “I brought you something.” He unshouldered the sword and laid it at the statue’s feet. “Found it while roaming the palace up above. You were right, it was in Ragara. I know you’d probably frown upon the stealing, but… considering I’m stealing it back, I assume you’ll be okay with it.” He paused. “Besides, I remember you were fonder of this sword than were your own son. By that, I mean Intila, of course.” He chuckled, knowing full well his father would not have approved of his gibe.

  “Got word of Aric,” he continued. “The Guild’s Grand Master says he’s leading a Company. Apparently, he’s already killed a bunch of dragons. Can you believe that? My little nugget, hunting dragons… You probably can. He’s just like you.” Doric’s expression dimmed. “At least I think he is.” His eyes drifted, getting lost on some distant point on the floor. “No word of Cassia, though. I know you don’t believe me, but I’ll find her someday. I’ll find them both, and then I’ll bring them here, and we’ll be together and safe at last.” He looked up into Ava’s stony eyes. “I give you my word.”

  Doric allowed those last words to hang in the air for a moment, then sighed.

  “Anyway, enjoy your birthday dad, wherever you are.”

  Slowly, Doric stood up, shouldering the sword once more. As he turned, he saw a silhouette by the chapel’s door and jumped with fright, the sword tumbling from his shoulder and nearly falling to the ground as he scrambled to catch it midflight.

  “Merciful mother!” Doric let out, finally clutching his fingers around the sheath of the sword.

  “I–I’m so sorry!” It was Prince Fadan. He looked mortified. “I didn’t mean to… I came looking for you, but I had no idea—”

  “That’s okay, relax,” Doric said, his heart still pounding in his chest. “You just scared the life out of me. How did you find me?”

  Fadan raised a hand, revealing a small, glowing pendant. “I still have my mother’s necklace.”

  “Oh, right,” Doric said, his hand reaching for his own neck and touching his own half of the pair of Seeker necklaces.

  “Doric,” Fadan stepped into the chapel, “I know where my mother is. We found her.”

  “What? Where?”

  “In Pharyzah,” Fadan replied. “She’s being held captive.”

  “Captive?” Doric almost yelled the word.

  Fadan nodded. “But they don’t know we know, and they don’t know we’re coming for her.” He grabbed Doric’s hand and placed the necklace in his palm. “How would you like to go rescue her?”

  9

  The Chase

  There was only one new face in the dragon hunting company. Eliran had no trouble recognizing the rest of them, even if they did look different. They all looked more… rugged. Some, like Aric, had allowed their hair to grow, tying it in braids which swung beside long claws and colorful feathers. Others had grown beards or tattooed strange symbols on their necks, arms, or even cheeks. Most had become taller or bulkier, dry muscles popping out from leather vests and loose tunics.

  The group had been sitting around the table, nodding gravely as Eliran filled them in on her discoveries. The station manager, Tarek, had been left out of the meeting. This wasn’t the sort of information Eliran could freely share with everyone, so she had sent him to procure horses for their expedition.

  “So, the guy we killed in the Frostbound may be alive again?” Tharius asked.

  “He might be,” Eliran replied. “It’s hard to know what Astoreth’s plan is. What I do know is that the artifact’s potential dangers are nearly limitless. We need to steal it as fast as possible.”

  Aric nodded. “Alright. How do we find it?”

  Eliran dug a hand into her pocket and retrieved a Seeker bracelet. She placed it on the table, the candlelight making the Glowstone shard gleam even brighter. The Seeker tried to slither across the table, Eliran pinning it down with a finger.

  “That’s… southeast?” Clea guessed, twisting her head so she could look at the Seeker from a better angle. “I thought you said you found the artifact in Engadi.”

  “I did,” Eliran replied. “Astoreth brought it south for some reason. Maybe she needs to bring the cup to a specific place.”

  “What’s southeast from here?”

  “Not much…” Leth offered.

  The group stared at the Seeker shard as it wriggled under Eliran’s finger, trying to escape its imprisonment.

  “So we’re really doing this?” Tharius asked, breaking the silence. “I mean, we’re just dragon hunters…”

  “Not anymore, we’re not,” Dothea noted.

  “So what?” Aric asked. “We did fine last time around.”

  “Against one of them!” Ashur retorted.

  Trissa scowled. “Oh, shut up, coward! You weren’t even there.”

  “Yeah, shut up, Ashur!” Dothea added.

  “Doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” Orisius said.

  “You’re siding with him!?” Irenya asked.

  The group spiraled into a cacophony of insults and accusations, everyone shouting over each other.

  “Guys,” Aric called, struggling to be heard over the uproar. He dropped a heavy fist down on the table. “GUYS!”

  That managed to get their attention.

  “This is serious,” Aric continued. “The last time one of these people made a breakthrough like this, he levelled the city of Nish just so he could lure the guildsmen away from Lamash. Goddess knows what would’ve happened next if we hadn’t stopped him.” He paused. “Of course this is dangerous. They wouldn’t be asking for our help if it wasn’t. We’re dragon hunters. We don’t even get out of bed for less than life threatening.”

  The group chuckled smugly.

  “The horses should be ready by now,” Aric added. “We shouldn’t waste any more time.”

  To Eliran’s great surprise, most of them nodded in agreement. The rest of them seemed to have at least lost the will to protest. Except one.

  “I’m not going,” Ashur said.

  For a moment, no one said anything.

  Ashur’s eyes swung around the table. “I’m not going,” he repeated. “I didn’t leave the guild so I could trade dragons for evil mages.”

  “So, what, you’re just gonna leave us?” little Lyra asked
.

  “Calm down, Ashur,” Jullion said. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “No talking.” Ashur stood, his chair’s legs screeching as it was abruptly pushed backward. “It’s one thing to hunt dragons because they’ll kill you if you don’t. And at least in Lamash they teach you how to do it. But this? This is insane!”

  The silence returned. Heavy and thick like a winter fog.

  “I can’t force you to follow my orders anymore,” Aric said after a while, his voice nearly a croak. “But if you’re not coming, you’re not following the rebellion’s orders, which means you’re out. You’re on your own, without their protection or ours.”

  “Tell them you’re ordering me to stay behind. Make up some excuse.”

  Aric huffed out a small laugh. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you owe me, that’s why,” Ashur replied, a finger aimed at Aric. “I saved your ass from the paladins.”

  “Oh please…” Leth rolled his eyes. “We would have helped him just as well without you. He doesn’t owe you a steaming pile of dragon crap.”

  “You’re a hypocrite,” Ashur told Aric, then glanced around the rest of the company. “And you’re all blind idiots. The half-prince gets in trouble and you all jump at the chance to save him like lap dogs, but when the day comes where you need his help, this is the answer you’ll get.”

  Trissa shot to her feet, her chair tumbling backwards. “You want to leave us, and you have the nerve to say something like that?”

  “You’re ridiculous…” Leth muttered, shaking his head.

  “Guys, just let him go,” Aric said, looking at Ashur. “If you want to go, then go. I don’t want a hunter fighting next to me that doesn’t have my back.”

  For a moment, it seemed like Ashur was going shout something back at Aric, but the two of them just stared at each other in silence until Ashur turned to leave.

  Jullion grabbed his arm. “Ash, come on…”

  “You can either come with me or let me go, Jules.”

  Jullion hesitated, glancing between Ashur and Aric until he dropped his hand.

  “Suit yourself,” Ashur said. He stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  Silent, uncomfortable glances crisscrossed the table. Eliran wondered whether to say something or not. Trissa spared her the decision.

  “I say good riddance.” Trissa lifted her chair from the floor and sat back down. “I just wish I had a drink to make a toast.”

  “Shut up, Triss!” Jullion snapped.

  Eliran looked at Aric, sure he’d keep Trissa from retorting, but the girl never really tried to open her mouth. Instead, she crossed her arms, staring at some point in the middle of the table, a deep frown creasing her brow.

  * * *

  Eliran’s Seeker bracelet led them through a dirt road a single shade lighter than the monotonously brown landscape surrounding them. Occasionally, a turn in the road revealed a hill speckled with dark green shrubs or the white ruins of abandoned houses.

  “Sorry to have cost you your man,” Eliran told Aric.

  They had been riding at the front of the column, Aric quietly scanning the distance as if he was still back in the Mahar on patrol. He had to stop himself a couple of times from ordering Clea or Orisius to scout the hills ahead for any dragons. It was still strange to think that they weren’t hunters anymore.

  “Ashur?” Aric glanced away. “That was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  Eliran looked over her shoulder. “Your Arreline hunter back there.”

  “Which one?”

  “The blue eyed one,” Eliran replied.

  “Tharius.”

  “Tharius said Ashur was a volunteer. That it didn’t make sense he’d leave.”

  Aric chuckled. “Tharius is too naïve. His father was a dragon hunter and he thinks it’s the noblest job in the world. Doesn’t understand why other people wouldn’t dream about joining the guild as well. Truth is, most volunteers join out of need, not because they truly want to. I have no idea why Ashur volunteered. Or Leth or Clea, for that matter.”

  “You never asked? I mean, you’re not curious?”

  “Of course I’m curious. But I can’t even begin to imagine what could be so bad that hunting dragons makes a better alternative. If they don’t want to talk about it, I’ll respect their privacy.”

  Eliran nodded. “What about you?” she asked. “What’s your story?”

  Aric looked at her. “You don’t know?” he asked, smiling, but didn’t wait for her reply. After all, how could she? “Alright, I’ll give you a clue. When I was made captain, my hunters named the company ‘The Half-Princes’.”

  Eliran’s eyes went blank for a moment, then widened. “You’re joking… You’re the half-prince?”

  “The very one.”

  Eliran paused, a thought dawning on her. “You’re the stepson of the man who murdered my kind…”

  “It’s not like that,” Aric assured her, urgency in his voice. “I was his prisoner, not his stepson. He’s the one who sentenced me to the desert, you know.”

  “So, it’s true your mother is his hostage?”

  Aric shook his head. “Not anymore. They say she escaped, like my brother. Is it true Fadan is leading the rebellion?”

  “I don’t think anyone is leading the rebellion,” Eliran replied. “But, to be honest, I’m rarely in Ragara, so I’d be the wrong person to ask. I did hear something about the prince joining up.”

  “Well, if we survive this, you’re taking me there to meet him.”

  “My pleasure.”

  They lapsed into silence again, the sound of their horses’ hooves trotting across the dirt road filling in for their conversation.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Eliran said after a while.

  “Sure.”

  Eliran glanced over her shoulder at the other dragon hunters. “In Lamash, did you all sleep together? You know, in a dorm.”

  Aric’s eyes widened. “That’s your question?” he asked, chuckling. “Yes, we did. I’m captain, so I get a bunk all for myself. Which means I hear snoring from every direction except above. Truly luxurious. We had a common room, too. You know, just to hang around. Me and Leth were trying to teach the gang to play Lagaht. Clea isn’t half bad. Dothea is actually pretty good. Sometimes we had our meals there instead of the dining hall. Not that we didn’t like the rest of our brothers. It’s just that sometimes we wanted to be with just the company.”

  “Must have been nice,” Eliran said.

  Aric studied her face, trying to decipher the wrinkles on her forehead. Was that longing? Did she miss someone?

  “What about you? Is there anything like a Company in the Academy?”

  “Not really, no,” Eliran replied. “But I used to sleep in a dorm as well. Back in magic school, before the Purge.”

  “How many in your school survived the Purge?”

  Eliran shrugged. “No idea. I got all the girls from my dorm out alive and safely, but we were separated afterwards.”

  “What happened?”

  “I had instructions to go to Ragara all by myself. Didn’t even know why, but, at the time, with everything falling apart, it felt like a good idea not to question orders. Eventually, I found out it was all part of a plan to preserve the Academy’s knowledge. Only a few of us were selected to carry it out.”

  “What about your dorm mates?”

  Eliran took a deep breath. “I assume they’re out there, somewhere. Pretending not to be mages.”

  “You didn’t go looking for them?”

  “How would I do that? If they did make it, they must have gone to great lengths to keep their identities a secret.” She paused, her eyes lost on the horizon. “Every once in a while, an old student is found and taken to Ragara. Every time it happens, I get hopeful it might be one of my girls, but…”

  The sentence hung in the air.

  “I’m sure they’re fine. What about in Ragara?” Aric asked, trying to change the subject. “M
ade many friends there?”

  What kind of stupid question is that? he immediately thought, feeling his cheeks warm.

  Eliran didn’t seem to mind, though. She glanced at Aric and shrugged. “There was my class, I suppose.” She made the moniker of a solemn herald. “Persea’s chosen.”

  “The archon hunters?”

  The mage nodded. “But Persea’s training didn’t exactly lend itself to socialization. We didn’t play Lagaht to kill time.”

  The way she said it almost made Aric feel guilty. “What did you do in your free time?”

  “We didn’t have any,” Eliran replied. “Persea’s philosophy was to keep us in a constant state of struggle. We didn’t have sleeping quarters within the underground compound, for example. Instead, we had to find accommodations somewhere in the city proper, hiding from the paladins, and we couldn’t help each other either.”

  Aric blinked a couple of times, unsure what to say next. Apparently, his effort to change the conversation to a more cheerful topic had failed disastrously.

  “But I’m sure your training was rough too,” she teased.

  Aric laughed, then shrugged. “Well, you know. For me it was easy,” he said nonchalantly.

  Eliran laughed as well.

  Looking at the pair of them, no one would have guessed they were riding towards death itself.

  * * *

  Chasing a dragon using a Tracker-Seeker always took some guesswork. One never knew if the beast had flown away for miles, or was waiting just beyond the next hill. With the right amount of experience, however, a dragon hunter could tell when they were getting close to their target. Dragons always left trails of their passage: singed scrub brush, claw marks across boulders, uprooted cacti. The closer one got to a lair, the more frequent these disturbances became. Astoreth, on the other hand, had left no trail of destruction behind her, if she had even come across the road in the first place.

  As the sun dipped across the sky, rushing to its daily resting place in the west, temperatures dropped considerably. For the first time in a very long time, Aric felt himself shiver. He’d missed the feeling so much he welcomed it, breathing in the cold breeze wrapping around him. It smelled salty and fresh.