by Andy Remic
Hanno moved to the iron door and listened. There came a scraping sound from the bottom of the Dragon Pit. Hanno turned back to Jael and grinned, thumbing the door. “This one’s Volak. The biggest of the three bitches.”
“Bitches?”
“Didn’t you know? They’re all female. Damned if I know how they used to reproduce. But yeah, female. And this bitch sounds like she’s about to take a huge…”
The iron door exploded from its frame, tearing free with a screech of sudden, twisted iron and blasting across the space, missing Jael by an inch and spinning rapidly before thudding into the dwarf slave overseer, effectively cutting him in two. The door clattered to the ground with a heavy, deep clang. The dwarf, blood pouring from his mouth and from his two body halves, where he’d been bludgeoned in half just below his breast bone, slithered in opposite directions, slopping to the ground in twin heaps of pulverised bone and muscle and peeping organs.
“By the Seven Sisters!” said Hanno, eyes wide, staring at the overseer. Then his gaze whipped back to the Dragon Pit, and the huge whipping tail as wide as any house, the length of it containing huge spines, each spine the size of a warrior’s spear. The tail whipped again, and there came a deep, reverberating whump and the sound of crumbling rocks.
“It sounds…” began Jael, but was cut off by the unbelievable, deafening, roaring scream that slammed up from the base of the Dragon Pit. The noise was greater than anything Jael had ever experienced, and he dropped to his knees, arms wrapped around his head, face contorted in pain as the noise seemed to go on, and on, and on…
Suddenly, the noise ended.
“… awake,” finished Jael.
The flat of Hanno’s hand slammed into Jael’s chest, sending him sailing back from the platform. This saved Jael’s life. Flames roared in the chamber, a huge bright ball of fire which soared upwards, turning from orange to green to blue. Flames spat from the smashed iron doorway, a jet of pure blue like no fire Jael had ever seen. Hanno hit the ground beside him, covering his head. Jael’s mouth hung open, and suddenly the fire stopped.
The world seemed suddenly crisp and black.
Inside the Dragon Pit, Jael saw movement. Matte black limbs and a mammoth tail, circling around, like huge tentacles in oil. Then there came a deep, slamming thud. And another. And a third. The whole chamber shook under each impact, and stones and dust trickled down from unseen high recesses above…
God, it’s big, he thought, panic settling through his chest.
He turned to Hanno, whose face was a frozen rictus of terror.
“It’s… climbing,” said Jael.
“It should be sleeping!” screeched Hanno.
“Well, she’s awake. Awake, and climbing…”
“By all the gods, we need to run,” said Hanno, and he looked over to the pulped body of the slave overseer. Then he looked at Jael. “Listen, lad. Things are going to turn bad. If that dragon has woken up, after being imprisoned for thousands of years…”
“Yes?”
“Well, she’s going to be pretty pissed. Wouldn’t you be? Go, lad. Run. Escape! There’ll be no fighting this when it kicks off proper.”
Volak climbed the Dragon Pit, fury swamping her mind like a red-hot brand through the centre of her huge, elongated skull. She shook her long, tapered head and snout, then looked up, slanted black eyes squinting as they made out the collectors and pipework above.
Kept as a slave for thousands of years.
You killed my children!
Destroyed my world.
Now, you betraying dwarf fuckers, it’s my turn...
The Dragon Pits had been designed to be massive, smooth, vertical shafts set deep down through the hardest of granite, with the idea being if ever one of the wyrms awoke – Great Dwarf Lords forbid! – the sheer size and smoothness of the walls would be an imprisonment in itself. The reality of the matter was that Volak simply smashed her claws into the walls, gouging holes, creating her own steps, in the same way an ice-climber kicks steps into a frozen waterfall. Up she moved, a creature so vast she could eat a Shire horse with a single bite, her body from snout to tail perhaps a hundred yards, her wings when fully unfurled nearer to two hundred. Volak was big, her armoured skin a dull, matte black, with curved horns atop her head and spear-like spines running down her back and long, barbed tail. This was not some cuddly dragon from a child’s illustrated story book; this was a machine built for killing, for slaughter and death on a grand fucking scale. This was one evil bitch. This was a creature at the top of its food chain.
Volak lifted her leg, and with three blows punched a hole in the wall. Another leg up, claws grinding through granite, and bang, another hole created. She continued to climb, and suddenly paused, huge head tilting to one side.
A crooning sound reverberated around the deep shafts in the bowels of the mine. Volak breathed deeply, for she knew now that her sisters were awake – Moraxx and Kranesh, shaking themselves into wakefulness after centuries of enforced slumber.
Volak sent up a cry, her throat ululating, and this was returned with similar high-pitched screeches, some of the notes way beyond human hearing. And they spoke to one another, these ancient dragons; communicated in a language tens of thousands of years old.
With renewed vigour Volak surged her way upwards, tail thrashing, and smashing extra holes in the walls of the Dragon Pit which had been her prison for so long. Huge chunks of granite tumbled down, thudding on the ground far below, amidst the bones of a hundred thousand corpses, amidst her own faeces, crushing her recent cell.
You think to control me? she thought.
You think your world will EVER be the same again?
Above, various engineers and guards had gathered. They watched in horror as the vast black dragon surged up towards them, tail whipping.
“Get some weapons!”
“What kind of weapons?”
“I don’t know, any kind of fucking weapons!”
“Get crossbows!”
“Crossbows won’t fucking work ON THAT!”
“Get spears!”
“They’ll have to be BIG FUCKING SPEARS!”
Some wardens were throwing rocks, huge heavy cobbles, which bounced from the accelerating dragon’s hide without effect. Five dwarves manhandled a huge boulder, and heaved it up onto the lip of the Dragon Pit shaft. They timed it with care, and rolled it off. It fell, weighing perhaps the same as three or four horses, and bounced from Volak’s long tapered head, bouncing free and tumbling down the shaft.
Volak paused, glancing up, her black eyes narrowing. She breathed in, absorbing oxygen, and fire blasted out, scorching up the shaft and setting various dwarves on fire, their beards and hair going up as if they were soaked in fish oil.
Volak continued, and reaching the lip, snarling and growling, she bit and snapped and chewed at the heat exchangers and fire collectors. Her great fangs tore through huge pipes that would take a hundred dwarves to lift. There were screams of high pressure steam, blasting out. Boiling water rained down the shaft, tinkling, and pipes gurgled and emptied. Snarling, Volak heaved her bulk upwards, front claws grabbing the lip of the shaft, crushing granite, and her huge head reared up, coming face to face with perhaps thirty dwarves.
Silence fell like a widow’s floating veil.
Volak grinned at them. “Surprised, you little dwarf fuckers?” she growled.
They screamed, and as one mass, ran away, pummelling and smacking one another to fit into the corridor leading from the chamber.
Volak dragged herself into the tight space at the top of the Dragon Pit. Her head swept around, hissing through air, as understanding filtered through. They got me in here. But then they closed up the tunnels? I will find those tunnels again. They must still exist. Hidden, like my mind.
She took a deep breath, and fire roared. Her lungs worked like bellows, and the fire turned into fierce blue jets. The stones of the wall started to glow, and Volak moved forward, claws smashing through stones and rocks until
she uncovered an ancient, disused tunnel. It had indeed been sealed up, by those who had imprisoned her, and dust lay thick on the ground, amidst piles of rubble. Thick webs swung from above, and one single blast of purifying fire cleansed the tunnel of ten thousand years of debris.
Volak stood there, panting, her black eyes glowing like molten coal.
Then she strode forward, down the tunnel through which she had entered her imprisonment, her claws raking the rock through ancient grooves she had left on her way in, trapped within a huge iron cage of the Great Dwarf Lords’ devising. She remembered. Oh how she fucking remembered.
She could hear her own screams, now.
And the screams of her murdered babies, freshly hatched from eggs, writhing pitifully as the oil swirled around them. But the pitiful sight had not stopped the dwarves with huge war hammers, striding amongst her babies, the heads slamming down, crushing baby dragon skulls, pulverising the brains of the newly hatched into so much egg yolk. And then the fire. Flames, as her babies burned…
I remember, thought Volak.
I remember.
Her head twitched left, and she heard Kranesh fighting her way up from the Dragon Pit in exactly the same way Volak had escaped. Come, sister. Come to me! And then more cries, and she heard the soothing croons of Moraxx… Moraxx, so many years, so much time lost, but now we are free, now we will bring back our sovereignty, now we will show these fucking dwarves who are in charge of this world...
Ahead, in the wide, ancient tunnel, twenty dwarves ran towards her. Many carried crossbows, but three wheeled a heavy, mounted crossbow – a siege engine, effectively, with bolts as thick as a dwarf’s thigh.
They stopped, and crossbow quarrels fired at her, pinging from her heavy armoured scales.
Volak strode forward as the dwarves fought with the industrial siege machine, all three sweating as they dragged back wrist-thick cables and wound several tensioners with clacking ratchet sounds.
Volak stopped, and her head tilted to one side.
“Unleash The Beast!” screamed one over-enthusiastic dwarf.
A lever was pulled.
The massive bolt thundered towards Volak, who simply shifted, moving her right shoulder, her right, folded wing, and the bolt slammed past, and brought down part of the roof. Rocks fell, amongst small tumbling stones and an inverted mushroom cloud of dust.
Volak looked back to the gathered dwarves, who stood, dumbstruck that they had missed.
“You will have to do better than that,” rumbled Volak, and the dwarves thought they saw the black dragon grin, although it shouldn’t be able to grin because it was a dumb, mindless wyrm and it shouldn’t even understand humour, let alone fucking speak...
Fire screamed down the tunnel, a roaring jet of superheated energy. The dwarves turned to run. They ignited. Some were picked off their feet by the blast of fire, and accelerated down the tunnel, their armour glowing as they screamed within their molten cages, metal running into scorched flesh, helmets turning fluid and flowing into eyes and through flesh and skulls, burrowing down into confused brains...
Volak paused, breathing deeply, her great ribcage rising and falling.
Then slowly, she walked towards the end of the tunnel. A myriad of constellation starlight glowed from thousands of fire-bowls to meet her curious gaze, as she looked out over the darkly beautiful panorama of Zvolga.
Volak’s black eyes swept left, then right, taking in the entirety of the city from this lofty, ancient, forgotten eyrie.
She waited, patiently, her breathing slowing as she regained her composure, channelled her rage; controlled her hate.
Behind her, claws raked the ancient granite, and she turned.
Both Moraxx and Kranesh appeared to be made of metal, their scales overlapping, their huge horned heads reflecting the firelight from a hundred burning fires, burning dwarf corpses, and glowing rock. Moraxx glowed the most, being the colour of brass, a deep golden red, her scales beautiful and shining under firelight. Kranesh was silver, like hardened steel, her scales less romantic than those of Moraxx; more like a warrior, a siege engine of living, breathing flesh.
Only Volak reflected no firelight, her scales matte black.
Her eyes stared at the city below them.
“Welcome, my sisters.”
“They have made a mockery of our kind,” said Moraxx.
“They have pissed on our nobility,” said Kranesh, her anger barely in check. She was always the most violent of the three. The most psychopathic.
Volak grinned, as she stared down at a city housing perhaps twenty or thirty thousand dwarves.
“I believe,” she said, tongue curling over her curved black fangs, “that it is time the slave became the master. Time we retook our kingdom, our slaves, our world. What say you, sisters?”
Kranesh gave a nod of her great, silver-scaled head. Distant fire reflected in the crescent of her curved horns. She grinned, and it was the grin of a killer, not a victim. “I believe now is the time to burn,” she said.
All three wyrms leapt from the highest eyrie of Zvolga, unfurled their massive wings, and with booms of slapped air, soared up, banked, and dropped towards the dwarves who had imprisoned them so many centuries earlier…
“Guards? Take aim, and fire when ready.” He smiled. “I want at least ten bolts in each fucking body. Just to make sure.” Irlax was grinning, and the guards, standing in a circle, tensed, their eyes focussed, fingers applying pressure to the triggers of their collective crossbows…
There came a distant, deep crash; a roll of thunder.
Irlax glanced up. Several guards looked at one another.
“Kill them!” screamed Irlax… as a second crash came, a heavy heaving grinding sound, like two houses slammed together. The throne room of the Palace of Iron shook violently, and three guards lost their footing, dropping to their knees in a sick parody of the prisoners arraigned before them.
More grinding, bashing sounds followed.
“Is it an earthquake?” screamed one guard over the noise, as plaster started to fall from high above, along with several dislodged stones. Now, the entire chamber was vibrating, shaking, rocking even. More guards lost their footing. Two crossbows discharged, quarrels whining and clattering across the throne room.
“You five, go and see what’s happening!” screamed Irlax. He had stood from his throne, but was staggering as the floor rocked, and his throne clattered over onto its side, tumbling and rolling from the dais.
Beetrax met the gaze of the other Vagandrak heroes. He gave a small smile, and they nodded and as one, as a perfect unit, they launched themselves at the guards. More crossbows whined, and two guards were shot by their dwarf brothers, bolts thudding into a chest and a leg. Beetrax grabbed a guard by the throat, drawing his sword and stabbing another in the face. Dake kicked one in the balls, taking the war hammer blow on his left arm, crying out in pain but still moving forward, grabbing the hammer as the dwarf fell back. The hammer rose and fell, crushing the guard’s skull. Sakora danced, hands flicking out like bone blades gouging throats and eyes and leaving a wake of choking blindness as she landed lightly on the rubble-strewn floor. Lillith managed to wrest a dagger from a guard, and stabbed him in the belly, watching him vomit blood to the tiles.
“What are you doing?” screeched Irlax, dancing and staggering around in rage. “What the fuck are you all doing?”
Talon elbowed a dwarf in the face, taking his crossbow. He aimed it across the space and pulled the trigger. A bolt whined, flashing through the fire-lit gloom, and punched a hole in Irlax’s belly. The king made a whooshing sound, both hands dropping to the wound, and he fell to his knees, staring at his bloodied fingers in disbelief. He looked up, vision blurring a little. Still, the Vagandrak heroes were fighting, steel rising and falling, cutting throats, stabbing eyes, decapitating guards with a blur of surgical battle experience.
Then a shrill voice cried out, “The dragons! They’ve escaped!”
There came a p
ause in the fighting, as everybody looked at one another. The Palace of Iron boomed to the sounds of destruction, and the shaking intensified. Five of the guards dropped their weapons and ran for the huge golden doors, disappearing into the chaos beyond where more plaster rained down from high above.
Beetrax punched a guard in the face, and turned – to stare into the point of a crossbow. The dwarf grinned, but his dark eyes contained not a sliver of humour. He was a killer, this one. A veteran.
“About time you fucking died,” he growled, and squeezed the crossbow trigger.
The dragons circled down over the streets and buildings of Zvolga. A young female dwarf looked up, and saw them. She pointed, and screamed. Soon, dwarves were running like ants through the streets as the three massive wyrms circled, and a mob of violent protesters, who had just set fire to a Church of Hate, stood there with oil-filled lanterns and burning brands, looking up, mouths open.
Volak dropped suddenly, wings folding back, a stream of white fire erupting, blasting down the cobbled thoroughfare and incinerating the mob in a single long howling fiery blast. Moraxx and Kranesh followed, their flames roaring through streets, blasting the walls from houses, sending dwarves running, screaming, burning into their homes…
Volak landed on a Church of Hate, which had just started to burn, and stood on the high sloped roof with its spires and turrets, and she grinned down at the sudden chaos below, at the collapsing buildings, the carts burning in the streets, the flaming corpses on the glowing cobbles. She took hold of the massive tower and heaved, and it crumbled, thousands of tonnes falling down to fill an entire street below. Then she glanced down, into the interior of the church, to see a hundred priests cowering, their black and purple robes flapping as they started to run in sandaled feet. Volak breathed, and fire roared into the Church of Hate’s interior, sending the hundred priests blasting into the walls, their flesh burned from their bones, their screams cut off in one hot white fiery instant.
“Right, lads, there’s fifty of us, each bearing two spears,” said Sergeant Scalanda. “That’s a hundred fucking spears! Let’s be brave now, let’s take down these bitches before they destroy our city!” They crouched behind a section of overturned carts which blocked the street. Behind curtains dwarf civilians were twitching, watching.
