“Right,” Timmy said. “That was impressive. Care to check if his fire can heal injuries too?”
“Fine.”
Avraniel drew one of her daggers and cut her palm open. The hatchling hissed and carefully breathed a small stream of white fire over the wound. This was why Timmy had asked Avraniel to handle this part. Even if it were only normal dragon fire, the elf would be fine. The rest of them would lose a hand. As it turned out, he was worrying about nothing. When the flames receded, the cut on Avraniel’s palm was gone.
“Oh, you’re a good boy, aren’t you?” Avraniel scratched the dragon’s chin. “You’re a good, good boy, and we’ll get you something nice to eat.” The dragon trilled and nudged her dagger with his head. “You want to borrow my dagger? Don’t be silly. You can’t use a dagger with your claws. You need hands.”
“Remember what I said earlier.” Timmy stifled the urge to pat the hatchling’s head. He was truly adorable, but Timmy wasn’t sure how well the winged reptile would take to someone other than Avraniel touching him. The last thing he needed was to lose a hand or an arm over something like this. “Dragons eat more than meat. They eat metal and rock too.”
Katie darted over and pried the book about dragons out of his hands, so she could read through it. She’d skimmed through it a few times, but she would have to read it again much more thoroughly since they now had a real dragon in the castle. “It says that a dragon’s scales are made up of an exotic mix of many different materials. To ensure that a dragon’s scales, bones, and teeth all develop properly, a dragon needs to consume an assortment of different metals and rocks, in addition to meat. He must want to eat some metal.”
Old Man stroked his beard. “That would explain why dragons eat soldiers whole instead of removing their armour first. It is not only quicker but it also allows them to consume metal at the same time.” He chuckled softly. “In fact, it would explain why dragons often ignore unarmed villagers to attack armoured soldiers. The soldiers are an almost perfect meal.”
“When you put it like that…” Timmy turned to Gerald. “Do you have any metal that we can feed the dragon? I would rather not see what he’s like when he gets too hungry.”
“I do have some weapons that we confiscated when we stopped that bandit uprising. They’re not the highest quality, but –”
“Hand them over.” Avraniel glared. “Now.”
The air in front of Gerald rippled, and a pile of swords, spears, and shields clattered to the ground. The baby dragon’s eyes widened, and he rushed over to the weaponry. He dragged a few weapons off to one side, and several blasts of searing heat turned them into a pool of molten metal that the dragon slurped up like it was water. The heat had also melted part of the stone floor, and the dragon gulped down two big mouthfuls before it gave a contented sigh and clambered back into Avraniel’s lap.
To Timmy’s utter disbelief, the hatchling closed his eyes, curled up to Avraniel, and promptly began to snore in ridiculously cute fashion. It was like watching a puppy doze away in its owner’s arms, except the dragon had melted a handful of weapons and part of the floor before deciding to take a nap.
“Okay.” Timmy nodded slowly. “So we have a dragon now. What are we going to call him?”
“I have the perfect name.” Avraniel smiled and then let loose a long string of strange, vaguely disturbing noises.
“I’m going to assume that was in the ancient language of the elves, the one they taught to beasts. Would you mind giving the rest of us a translation?”
“You jerks need to learn how to speak more languages. It means He Who Shall Bring Misery And Fiery Death To My Enemies While Slaughtering All Who Oppose Me.”
Timmy looked at Katie. She looked back at him.
“And I thought her real name was bad,” Katie muttered. “I mean… I guess he won’t mind since he’s a dragon, and burning stuff and slaughtering people is sort of what they do for a living.”
Timmy cleared his throat. “That is a, uh, wonderful name. How about another one that the rest of us can actually pronounce.”
“Don’t worry, idiot. I’m way ahead of you. We can call him Spot.”
“Spot?” Timmy gaped. “You want to name the son of Black Scales – a dragon who will undoubtedly grow up into one of the most terrifying forces of raw destructive power that this world has ever seen – you want to name that dragon Spot?”
“Yes,” Avraniel spoke slowly, as if she were speaking to a complete idiot, which, in her opinion, she was. “Do you see the white spot on his snout? That’s why we should call him Spot – because he has a spot.”
“I give up.” Timmy threw his hands up into the air. “If you want to name the dragon Spot, then go ahead. Now that we’ve got everything worked out, I’m going back to sleep. It’s still the middle of the night. We can sort out the rest of the details in the morning.” He yawned. “Avraniel, I’m not going to try to take your dragon away, but if you’re going to raise him here, you’re going to raise him right. I do not want to wake up one day to find the whole castle on fire. And don’t even get me started on what the Council will do to us if Spot ends up like Black Scales. We’ll be lucky if all they do is hang the lot of us.”
Gerald paled and swayed, and Timmy reached out to steady him. At this rate, Gerald might need to start wearing a helmet to make sure he didn’t break his head open whenever he fainted. “That’s right. I… I still have to tell the Council about this.”
“Yes, you do.” Timmy patted Gerald on the back. “Good luck. I’m going back to sleep.”
“But –”
“Gerald.” Timmy put his hands on the bureaucrat’s shoulders and stared deep into his eyes. “I have absolute faith in your ability to handle this situation. You can do this.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes, which is why I’m going back to sleep. Good night.”
“I can help you if you want, Gerald.” Katie offered.
“You’re more than welcome to help him later. Right now, you need to go back to sleep. Otherwise, you’re going to be cranky all day long, which will make me cranky because you always try to overthrow me when you’re cranky, and you might even end up short forever due to lack of sleep.” Timmy ignored the vicious glare that Katie lobbed his way and ducked the shadowy scythe she swung at his head. “Gerald, you don’t have to tell the Council right now. Hopefully, we’ll all still be alive to discuss this tomorrow morning. Once we’ve done that, then you can tell them.” Timmy glanced at Old Man. “You don’t mind waiting until morning to talk more about this, do you?”
Old Man chuckled. “This has been a very interesting night, but the rest can wait until morning.”
“Exactly.” Timmy yawned again. “I’ll see the rest of you in the morning. Avraniel, please keep an eye on Spot. If you need to feed him a cow or something, ask one of my zombies to get one. Do not bring him to the livestock. Otherwise, he might eat all of them at once.”
Chapter Two
Timmy woke up to an unusual feeling: there was someone else in his bed. That wasn’t to say that he’d never woken up with someone in his bed before – he most certainly had – but, as of late, it had become a somewhat infrequent occurrence. Sharing a castle with an overly curious – and occasionally possessive – apprentice, to say nothing of the castle’s other guests, had seen to that. The number of women who were willing to spend the night in a castle renowned for being built over lightless chasms of unfathomable horror and inescapable doom was surprisingly small. That number would, he assumed, only get smaller once he factored in the presence of a pyromaniac elf, thousands of zombies, several gardens full of carnivorous plants, wraiths, and all of the other wonderful things that called the castle home.
Sam was a different story. For some reason, women seemed to find the protoplasmic horror inordinately cute. Sam chalked it up to his being a gentleman amongst protoplasmic horrors, and Timmy had yet to come up with a better explanation. Katie certainly seemed to think Sam was cute although
she was only ten years old. Timmy would have loved to test some of his hypotheses more extensively, but the last time he’d brought Sam to a tavern, there had been a riot, and the townsfolk had attempted to burn him and Sam at the stake.
Resigning himself to what would most likely be a fairly horrible fate, Timmy opened his eyes – and found himself staring right into the silver eyes of the castle’s newest resident, a little dragon named Spot.
To his credit, Timmy did not scream. He was a Grand Necromancer, a wielder of magic that would have reduced most men to gibbering wrecks and privy to secrets that would have turned those same men’s brains into mush. He had personally created and shovelled to death some of the most horrific creatures that the world had ever seen. Thus waking up to a dragon that seemed to be wondering how many mouthfuls he would take to eat was not the worst thing that had ever happened to him while he was in bed. That particular honour went to the time his master had somehow managed to smuggle a flock of starving harpies into his room while he was asleep. That had not been a good morning, and Timmy had been lucky to make it out of his room in one piece. He may also have slipped a small cobra into one of his master’s boots and a bigger cobra into the pocket of his master’s favourite cloak. Alas, the older man had managed to survive. He’d always been fiendishly difficult to outwit when he wasn’t drunk.
Timmy sat up and turned his attention from the dragon to the elf flipping through his book about dragons. “I’m not even going to ask how you got into my bedroom – again – but why are you here?”
“I’m here because you have this book.” Avraniel pointed out the window. Based on the position of the sun outside, it was almost noon. “And because I got sick of waiting for breakfast. It’s almost noon, idiot, and the servants don’t serve breakfast until you and the twerp show up. Don’t worry. I’ve already woken her up.” The elf cackled. “She threw a shelf at me.”
“Katie can be less than friendly when people wake her up early, and you did cut into her sleeping hours last night when you dragged all of us out of bed. She’s probably worried that she won’t get any taller if she keeps missing out on sleep.” Timmy paused. “Maybe I should stop saying that. I might be making her a little paranoid.”
“Please, the twerp isn’t going to get that much taller.”
“She’s ten. I can assure you that barring something bizarre happening, she is going to get taller.”
“Ten?” Avraniel scratched her cheek. “How old do you humans get anyway?”
Timmy ran one hand through his hair. Spot had started licking his hand, which hopefully wasn’t a taste test. It was at times like this that he remembered that Avraniel had spent most of her life in and around the forest beating up mercenaries, robbing other elves, and generally engaging in villainy that ranged from the downright petty to the truly diabolical. Actually interacting with other people had not exactly been at the top of her list of priorities. “The average human lives seventy-five years, but people with more magic tend to live longer.”
“Seventy-five years, huh?” Avraniel snorted. “Good. You’ve still got a few years to go. I have a feeling the damn twerp will kick me out of the castle the first chance that she gets. Now, get up. I want breakfast and so does Spot.”
Spot smiled toothily and scampered up to lick Timmy’s cheek. The necromancer was now quite certain that he wasn’t being licked out of any sense of affection. This was more like Spot seeing what he tasted like. He sincerely hoped that he tasted terrible.
“He does know that he’s not supposed to eat us, right?” Timmy reached up to ease Spot’s face – and those very, very sharp teeth – away from his head. The hatchling promptly switched to licking his fingers.
“Of course, he does. I made that very clear. If one of you gets eaten, it’s because you did something to him.” Avraniel smirked. “You can even ask him yourself. Okay, Spot. Do the thing. You know. Do the thing.”
The hatchling’s brows furrowed, and he nudged Timmy’s side with his head. Hi, idiot.
Timmy jerked back. “Was that telepathy?”
“He started doing it earlier this morning. I’ve been talking to him a lot, so he must have gotten sick of only listening.” She scratched Spot’s belly. “Isn’t he great?”
Despite how dangerous Spot was, Timmy was still very curious about him. He was a necromancer, and necromancers had a tendency to be curious, often to their own detriment. It was one the reasons that he’d emphasised to Katie that if she ever wanted to poke something, she should use a long stick or her shadows and not her hands.
“It definitely felt like telepathy.” He glanced down at the dragon. “Hi, Spot.”
The hatchling stared back with his silver eyes. Hi, idiot. Hungry.
“It seems like he can’t do complete sentences yet. But why does he call me idiot?”
“Because that’s what I call you.” Avraniel snickered. “I call Gerald the same thing, so Spot calls him the tall idiot.”
“How polite,” Timmy drawled. “All right. Let’s get something to eat.” His mind drifted to the mess that Spot had made the previous night while eating a cow. “Although it might be better if we eat breakfast outside today.” He reached out to a handful of his zombies with his magic and ordered them to inform his servants about the change in plans. “As for the two of you, get out. I need to change.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before.” Avraniel skipped out of the room with Spot trailing on her heels like a winged, fire-breathing dog. “Come on, Spot. We can go wake up Gerald – I mean the tall idiot – now.”
Timmy opened his mouth to say something, but it was too late. The elf and her dragon had already left. Naturally, it wasn’t very long at all before a bloodcurdling scream rang out.
He winced. “Sorry, Gerald. I’ll make sure I stop her next time.”
When Timmy reached the courtyard that he’d asked the servants to use for breakfast, he wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Gerald looking utterly frazzled, nor was he surprised to find Katie glaring daggers at Avraniel. However, the girl’s glare soon turned into a welcoming smile when Spot looked her way and wagged his stubby tail. The hatchling seemed to have taken a liking to his apprentice, and Spot was incredibly cute when he wasn’t murdering livestock with disturbing ease. At the moment, the dragon was basking in a sunny spot next to the table with a big smile on his face. His smile only got bigger as the food began to arrive.
“Good morning,” Timmy said as they all settled down to eat some breakfast. As usual, Old Man was nursing a freshly brewed cup of tea, and he’d been kind enough to share some of it with Gerald. Timmy could only hope that it was herbal tea with a calming effect. The bureaucrat could certainly use some. In the meantime, Spot toddled over to where a cow, some metal, and some rock had been placed a safe distance from the dining table. “I think we need to plan what we’re going to do with Spot. We can’t leave him untrained. That would be far too dangerous.”
“We won’t.” Avraniel leapt to her feet and pulled out a roll of parchment with a flourish. She waved it around and then tossed it at Timmy’s head. “There’s my training program. I came up with it while I was waiting for all of you sleepy bastards to get ready for breakfast.”
Timmy caught the roll of parchment before it could hit him in the face and read through it. It was… amazingly thorough. It covered everything from Spot’s diet to the exercises and training he should do. Apparently, Avraniel could be sensible when she put her mind to it. He passed the parchment to Katie. His apprentice skimmed through it in about half the time it had taken him. She shrugged. Everything there seemed reasonable enough.
There was a whoosh from where the cow was, and Timmy glanced over to find that half of the unfortunate bovine had already disappeared into the bottomless pit that was Spot’s stomach. The metal and rock followed in short order after a brief jet of flame melted them, and the little dragon burped once before padding over to a particularly sunny spot and flopping onto his bac
k and closing his eyes. They definitely had to train Spot.
“Your training program is fine,” Timmy said. “I’ll have to organise some extra deliveries of metal ore since that’s supposed to be even better for a hatchling than pure metal. I’ll also have to do something about livestock. Spot already eats at least one cow a day. I have a feeling that he’ll eat a lot more in the future. Overall, good job, Avraniel.”
“Well, thank you.” The elf huffed. “I can take care of things if I want to. Look at my garden. The plants are thriving, and Mr Sparkles has doubled in size since the first time he tried to eat Gerald.”
First time? That did not sound good. In fact, it sounded a lot like there had been several attempts since then. “I guess. But you did surprise me.”
“Why, idiot?” Avraniel rolled her eyes. “I don’t spend all my time killing things, you know. Spot is only a hatchling now. He can’t grow up into a proper harbinger of fiery, apocalyptic death if we don’t raise him properly.”
Of course, that was what she would want. “We can start his training today. The quicker he understands how everything works, the better off we’ll be.” His gaze drifted to where Spot was snoring in the sunshine. “Although he’s already gotten the relaxation part of life down pat.”
* * *
Avraniel was only too happy to introduce Spot to the rats that she actually liked – the ones who specialised in explosives and demolition. After a brief moment of confusion, during which Spot tried to eat one of the rats and received an explosive to the face for his trouble, things were going wonderfully. Like most dragons, Spot loved fire and explosions, and the rats were very, very good at making fire and explosions. Since Timmy – the zombie-making bastard – had banned her from training Spot how to use his fire inside the castle, this area, which the demolition rats had claimed for themselves, was the next best thing.
Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes Series Book 3) Page 3
