by Sam Cheever
~SC~
Sometime later Zerphor and my merry band had worked our way through the rest of the dark fairies. We stood panting in the center of the room, our clothes and feet coated in sparkling fairy dust. King Aelfric’s troops hovered above us on whirring wings, looking both weary and exhilarated.
I was searching through the bodies, looking for several faces that I prayed I wouldn’t find, when a loud whirring sound approached from behind. I glanced toward the sound. Kheelan Aelfdene stopped in midair in front of me, bowing elegantly from the waist, his sword tapping his tiny forehead. “My people have searched the dead as you requested and have found no children, nor women of the description you gave us.”
I closed my eyes briefly on a sigh of relief. The child we’d rescued from the streets and her mother, were apparently safe. “And the Venusians?”
He shrugged, we saw no creatures with strange, yellow eyes among the dead.”
I nodded, reassured. Doctor Lee and her people must have gotten out. Knowing that man of hers they probably took a few Royals down before they left. “Thank you, Kheelan. That is very good news.
Flick soon joined me, shaking his head. My father and Myra joined us a few minutes later, their faces grim. We’d found no sign of Emo, Dialle, or Torre.
My mother and Prince Nille were gone too.
My father didn’t look happy.
“As we suspected, this was apparently a trap, meant to distract us.”
I remembered the last words I’d exchanged with Emo, his final No! just before the Agar attacked me and realized that his scream might not have been directed at me. I suddenly felt weary. So weary of the whole thing. “She’s won another round.”
“Worse than that,” said my guardian as he met my gaze with his nondescript brown eyes. “She also has Darma.”
I looked around my little group and, sure enough, my sister was missing.
~SC~
She floated, cross legged in a circle of candles at the center of the room, the candles’ flames dancing softly in a prophet-imposed wind. Her blonde, wispy hair flew away from her face and shifted around her emaciated shoulders. Unlike last time, her swirling silver eyes were open...and trained on me.
“And so the dragon fighter claims the vital offspring of the black, to save a quickly dying race and bring the magic balance back.”
The fat, baby dragon in my arms looked up at me with bright, curious eyes and said, “Bleurp?”
I just shrugged, “How the hell do I know? Prophets talk funny.”
Glynus giggled and her little wings flapped softly, tickling my arm in a not unpleasant way.
“You shouldn’t swear in front of the child.”
I frowned. “Really? Why not?”
The prophet shrugged. “I’m not sure but I think they repeat everything they hear.”
I looked at Glynus. She looked at me. I frowned again. “She doesn’t say anything except, ‘bleurp’.”
The prophet shook her head, sending her dandelion seed hair into rhythmic spasms on the air. “I’m just sayin’.”
I shrugged, “Whatever. You called?”
“I did.”
“Does that mean this one’s on you?”
She cocked her wispy, blonde head. “Not at all. You have one visit left.”
“But that’s not fair. You summoned me.”
“It’s a follow-up visit from the one you initiated. Those count as an initiated visit.”
“But I wouldn’t have asked for this visit if you hadn’t summoned me, so it shouldn’t count against my lifetime limit.”
“But I wouldn’t have summoned you if you hadn’t visited me before.”
I scowled at her, she stared at me with swirling silver eyes, Glynus looked from one to the other of us and said, “bleurp?”
Finally I shook my head in disgust. “This system needs some work. Anyway, I hope you’re gonna tell me how to fix this mess. The human race is seriously in trouble here and the Serpent now has all but three of the conduits he needs to lock the veil into place. Things are not going well down there.”
“Please, sit.”
I complied, lowering myself to a mound of cushions on the floor a few feet away from the prophet’s hovering knees. Glynus flapped her tiny wings once I settled into the cushions and toddled off.
“Don’t char anything,” I instructed her.
She gave me a baby dragon grin and vibrated her wings, dipping her head and tapping my knee with her short, stubby tail. I realized there was a whole body language thing I was gonna have to acclimate myself to if we survived the next few days. For the moment I was going to assume that meant “yes ma’am” in baby dragon speak.
I watched her toddle unsteadily around the room, sniffing things and, occasionally, flicking her long, pink tongue out to taste. I was finding that I enjoyed watching the baby dragon and it disturbed me. I had certainly never considered myself maternal. But Glynus tugged at my heartstrings. And she was very entertaining.
The prophet’s next words ripped the smile right off my face.
“The Devil Prince dies.”
My head whipped around. “What!”
“He turns to his dark side and it is killing him.”
I sucked in air, “The veil pulls at him.”
“Yes.”
“What can I do? I don’t know how to stop the Serpent from locking the veil into place, other than keeping the conduits from him. And I haven’t been doing very well at that so far.”
The prophet gave me a small, knowing smile, “Things sometimes seem one way when they are another.”
I think I might have growled a little. “Do you ever just want to...I don’t know...shoot yourself? Can’t you speak clearly for once?”
The prophet cocked her head, a secret smile on her thin lips. “The words themselves are conduits to reality, they need only be interpreted.”
“Interpret this!” I murmured.
Suddenly the prophet’s head dropped back and the swirling silver gaze slid behind pale, pink edged lids. She began to twitch.
“Shit. Here it comes,” I told Glynus, who had just toddled up and was carefully sniffing the air around the floating prophet.
“The choice must be made by he who unites. Death may seem the only end. The conduits cannot collaborate to stop the twisted magic but neither can they toil at odds. The magical plague festers and grows, calling to the special gift. All rests on those who wield it.”
The prophet jerked one last time and then her silver eyes slowly lifted open. I watched as she pulled herself back to reality and the present time. Finally, she turned to focus that disturbing gaze on my tiny dragon and her mouth opened, I waited for the finale, expecting her to say, “The dragon is the key”, or something equally frustrating and obtuse.
Instead she said, “You shouldn’t let her eat that.”
I looked at Glynus. She was happily munching one of the prophet’s candles, the flame still dancing softly on its top.
Well hell.
Glynus stuffed the whole candle in her mouth and then burped, a tiny cloud of smoke wafting from her baby maw.
I sighed. Motherhood just sucked. And I was so not cut out for it.
“One more thing,” said the prophet, “you must ask yourself, why do the angels heal?”
“Huh?” I frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“That is all,” responded the prophet. “You may leave now.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Lift from a Dragon
Alas our maiden’s in distress, her booger is pure trash,
But never fear the dragon’s here, to set her on her ash.
I pounded on the instrument panel of the air booger and swore as the flaps dropped instead of voice command engaging as I’d requested. The booger slowed and wobbled, threatening to stall. The mist was thicker than it had been just hours earlier and it seemed to be weighing heavily on the piece-of-shit engine in the piece-of-crap air vehicle.
With current visibi
lity there was no way I could fly the booger visually anymore. If the vehicle’s directional system failed I was dead. I sat there stewing for a minute, running through my options.
I glanced at Glynus, suddenly wishing she was big enough to carry me if I had to abandon the booger.
The little dragon was hanging upside down from the back of the passenger seat flapping her wings and crooning musically. Every once in a while she would burp and smoke would come out of her mouth.
Apparently the candle wasn’t agreeing with her.
I sighed and programmed my destination in manually, vowing to order that new Air Knight as soon as I finished saving the world.
Glynus suddenly flipped up into the air and hung there, flapping her little wings and smiling. I was pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever held herself up for any length of time. “Bleurp!”
Genuine pleasure flared in the vicinity of my heart and I realized how heady the whole motherhood thing had the potential to be. “Good job!” I told her, squinting at her wings. Did they look a little bit larger? I shook my head. Impossible. She couldn’t be growing that quickly.
The booger jerked once in the air and then stopped as if it had hit an invisible wall. I reached out and caught Glynus before she slammed against the windscreen. I tucked her into my lap and started slamming buttons on the panel, cursing inventively.
Glynus flapped her wings and said, “Haaaaa-d-eeees!”
I stopped pounding buttons, “Oh shit!”
Glynus burped, “Cheeeiiiitttt!”
“Sh...sugar! You’re talking!”
Glynus flapped her wings harder, lifting a few inches into the air with the effort, and started crooning again. Biting my lip, I realized for the first time just how much my life was going to change with a baby dragon in it.
Suddenly Glynus stopped flapping her wings and her bright little eyes narrowed as she drifted to the floor between the seats. From deep in her tiny chest a rumbling sound emerged and her little body went rigid, her wings spread straight out from her sides.
The interior of the booger darkened suddenly as if a cloud had closed over the sun and I looked up. An enormous face, filled with large, sharp, white teeth, filled the entire width of the windscreen.
It was a black dragon.
I pulled my power forward and thought about how best to use it. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to blast the thing through the windscreen and leave a gaping hole in the booger. If I missed it would be fairly easy for the monster to reach into the disabled booger and grab us through the hole.
I glanced up. Maybe I could open the moon roof...
Greetings, dragon fighter.
It was the enormous Black we’d encountered on the way back from Olympus.
Glynus’s father.
Not good. Zerphor wasn’t there to protect us. I frantically started pushing buttons again, but the booger didn’t even quiver in response. Glynus’s rumblings had escalated and seemed slightly frantic, but she hadn’t moved a scale. She stared stiffly at the big black in the windscreen.
You guard my child well?
I um...clearing my throat I tried a smile. I’m doing my best, sire. She’s very busy.
The Black’s rumbling laughter filled my mind. She comes from active stock. I myself went through two hundred watchers as a child.
Assuming a watcher was the same thing as a babysitter I grinned. That’s a very impressive number, sire. I hope Glynus isn’t that bad. I don’t have that many friends.
The Black didn’t respond. His elegant black head suddenly jerked up and he let off a blood curdling shriek before flying backward away from the booger.
Released from the embrace of the enormous dragon, the booger belatedly responded to my frantic instructions and surged forward at a worrying speed. I slammed buttons to drop the speed down to just above normal and peered out of the windscreens, trying to find the Black.
I looked at Glynus. She was still standing in her rigid stance, her eyes unswervingly focused on the windscreen. I realized why a moment later when something large and dark fell from the sky in front of us and the Black returned to the booger’s windscreen.
What’s going on out there? I asked him.
The rogue Blacks have learned that you carry my heir. They have proclaimed the need for your destruction. I am here to escort you safely to your destination.
Bent frunkin’ gargoyle toes! Just what I needed, another level of complexity in the current mess. Then a thought occurred. Zerphor! She’s carrying an heir too.
She has returned to Olympus. She will be safe there. Where shall I take you?
I frowned. Take me?
Yes, this metal bucket is no match for the veil. It dies beneath you. I will carry you to your destination, it will be easier for me to protect you that way.
I sighed and looked at Glynus. She’d softened out of her rigid stance and was looking at me with wide, bright eyes. Fear emanated from her with every breath. “Cheeeiiitt?” she asked me.
I nodded. “That about sums it up, tadpole.”
~SC~
The booger chugged and stuttered toward my father’s house, where I was meeting my father, Myra and Flick for a rescue planning meeting. After much delay and arguing, I had managed to convince the big Black that I didn’t need him to carry us on his back and he was flying just behind us, ready to catch us when we fell out of the sky as he expected.
Every once in a while an enormous black body would sail past us on its way to oblivion, as the warrior dragon disposed of another would-be assassin. Once a big Red sailed past, all crumpled and beat-up looking and I worried that it had been dispatched just because it had passed innocently into our air space.
Sighing, I mused over the complexity of my life.
So far the booger had managed to chug along pretty much under its own steam but it had stalled out completely once and I hadn’t been able to get it started. Before I knew what was happening, the big Black had given us a boost from behind and we were sailing through the blinding mist at about a thousand miles an hour.
The good news was, I’d managed to get the booger to start up again. The other good news was that Glynus had decided it was better to sit in the seat rather than practice her flying around the cabin after her father’s boost had smashed her like a bidgie bug against the back windscreen.
The bad news was that I was pretty sure I had whiplash from the experience and Glynus was holding one of her tiny wings kind of funny.
She looked decidedly crabby sitting over there in her seat. But at least I was able to lose myself in my thoughts since I didn’t have to keep a constant eye on her.
I sat and stewed about Dialle, Darma and Emo.
The booger’s spotty voice system choked out the news that we were approaching my father’s house. I peered out the front windscreen. “Couldn’t prove it by me,” I murmured. The mist had grown so thick that I could barely see the front of the booger.
I plugged in the landing coordinates and prayed the booger’s system was up to landing without my help. I couldn’t see well enough through the mist to find the pad beside my father’s house. The river raged not far from the pad, down a very steep drop with a jagged rock bottom. I didn’t like putting my life in the booger’s decidedly shaky hands.
I had a sudden thought. Um, hello. What is your name by the way?
I am Quince.
I grinned. No shit?
I felt the Black frown in my mind. The third actually.
I giggled.
It is not funny, dragon fighter. The name has been passed through many generations of my family.
Who’d you piss off to get stuck with it?
I sensed his shrug, At least I use my name. I don’t just call myself Q.
I bristled. Hey, it’s a middle name. I don’t have to use it.
So you say, dragon fighter. I embrace who I am. I do not hide from it.
“Hard to hide from a name like Quince the Third,” I murmured.
I heard that!
Whatever. Do you think you could maybe set us gently down beside my father’s house? I don’t quite trust this Lease a Loser’s landing system right now.
Of course.
It turned out the word gently has a different meaning in dragon than it does in halfling. After I shoved hair out of my face and checked my underwear to make sure I hadn’t peed myself in the throes of my near death experience, I gathered up Glynus and stalked out of the booger.
Gingerly pressing a new bruise on my forehead, I glared up at the Black.
He twitched his wings and said, What?
You could have warned me you were going to see how high we would bounce if you threw us at the ground.
Stop exaggerating, dragon fighter. I am disappointed. I thought you were much tougher.
I couldn’t frunkin’ believe it. YOU’RE disappointed in ME! I didn’t exactly like the way my voice got all screechy but he’d asked for it.
The dragon actually sniffed with disdain, expelling a gray puff of smoke on his exhalation. I thought you were more of a man than this.
If I had been a man you probably would have emasculated me when I hit the seat that last time.
The wings twitched again in what looked suspiciously like a shrug and I could have sworn his lips tipped up just the tiniest little bit.
I turned away and stomped into my father’s house. Thanks for the escort. I thought at him less than graciously.
I will await your return.
“Frunkin’ awesome.” I murmured.
I heard that.
I struggled to hold onto Glynus with one arm as I opened the door. She felt like she’d grown thirty pounds in just the last couple of hours, since she’d become connected to me. And she kept flapping her wings and floating out of my arms. I shuddered to think what it would be like trying to keep up with her when she could actually fly any distance.
My father’s house, as usual, was quiet and dimly lit. “Hello?” I called out.
Myra’s voice greeted me from the kitchen.
I followed both her voice and the smell of coffee into the spacious room.
I set Glynus down on the floor and she fluttered after me like a large bidgie bug, singing nearly unrecognizable swear words in her childlike warble.
