by James Patton
“I offer my son for bonding,” Seducer told her, and while the goodwill of the voice was all show, it was the most reasonable voice of the bunch. “The likes of you will never get a dragon to willingly bond.”
“We offer our son-”
“Shut up, I am talking, and the rest of you will remain silent,” Seducer growled.
“About damn time.” Boh barked out, again probably overstepping her place in this conversation. Not that she cared.
“You gain a dragon in the deal, but make your decision now. Decide.”
“The whole arranged marriage thing is kind of old school, grandma. I prefer my men to speak for themselves.”
Where the hell was Midnight? She silently willed him into being, not comfortable with how this situation was turning out. In fact, it was making her sick to her stomach, and if this was Midnight doing that voice impression stuff again, she would kill him.
“Insolent fleshling. Pale worm.” Gobber growled at her. She could feel the breath of the beast on her face.
“I said silence. Do not test me.” Seducer spoke very softly, and if that voice had a soul, it forgot what emotion was.
“Seriously, I have things to do. I do not want to spend all day with your kind of crazy. Why would I accept that offer and what do you mean this is my only chance to get a dragon?” She opted for not pissing off whatever hid in the shadows but failed to meet that goal.
Heavy breathing followed, and the rotting smell of its breath pushed her hair this way and that. The silence stretched for several long, torturous minutes.
“Dragon’sss do not bond with weaklingsss.”
“I’ve heard that before. Don’t bond with me I’m a woman and weak. You can go to hell.” She kept her voice calm but was yelling and cursing internally. Part of her was laughing because she was so angry that it kept her temper in check.
“Fleshling stupid. Like first husband. Hey stupid, you a Mercury Elf. Man, woman no matter.” Gobber cackled derisively.
“Dammit, keep your voices in check! They are giving me a headache, and I cannot think straight. How are you not a raging ball of insanity? Oh… right.” She did not know when she started rubbing the tip of her ear again.
“They are not wrong. The biggest issue is that you lack strength. If two-legs did not have the bonding magic, you would all be bred like cattle. You would feed my young.” Seducer brought the others to heel again.
“Doubt I’d taste good, my last boyfriend said I tasted bitter. Like he swallowed the ashes of a burnt down orphanage.”
“Fleshling funny,” Gobber snorted with laughter, his high pitch squealing felt like a nail in her brain.
“Time to make this trade, we need the upgrade.” Birdy jumped into the conversation, and the rhymes seemed to be a thing. Rhymes would be ok, but these were so horrible that Boh was sure her pointed ears were withering.
The voices prattled on and on like that, but she had a hard time following any of it. She entered the room sane and doubted she would leave with the same state of mind.
“Shut the hell up! Shut up. Shut up. Shut! Up!” She finally snapped. “If I do not accept this bond with your son, are you saying no other dragon will bond with me?”
“Yes. I will make sure of it, and there is not a dragon alive willing to be my enemy. Now decide elf, do you agree or not?”
“Why are you offering this deal? What do you get out of it?”
“The bond of course. Even at the lowest possible strength of your bond the two of you can share one primary skills. My son would get your Seer ability, and you would get one of his, which strengthens both of you.”
“What does your son have? I feel like I am getting screwed.” She felt uneasy about accepting such a deal and had already made up her mind. However, she would hear it out.
“Jussst kill her. Ssshe is dangerousss. No one bargainsss with the Dark Queen.”
“Smooth, Hisser, real smooth.” Every time that voice spoke, she found herself rubbing the tip of her ear. This time she managed to fight the urge, but it took an effort.
“I doubt you understand who you are bargaining with-”
“Evidently, a self-proclaimed queen.” She laughed at her comment, really worried for her sanity, and she realized her bravado was bigger than her confidence. The dark lightning flared all around her, and she felt the hair on her body standing on end.
“You will be silent when I talk.”
The dark pushed in on her, and she struggled to breath as her lungs felt constricted. Gasping for air, she waved her arms wildly in the air hoping to free herself from the darkness.
“Yesss. Die elf.”
“No! Not in the Dragon Spire. We will let her decide.” The soothing voice of the seducer was back.
The dark energy dissipated and the darkness let up on her lungs. She collapsed to her hands and knees, struggling to breathe.
“Do not mock me again, child.” Seducer implied the wrath incurred was not its fault. “My son has an Affinity to Light and Dark and his main ability is Transfusion. No more questions, you decide now. Yes or no?”
Transfusion - You are the conduit of life and death, and as such, you can take health and give health. Affinities of Light and Dark can be affected by the use of this spell.
- Effect 1: [Healing Self] Stealing health to heal yourself increases your Feedback for every point healed and double for every health point you steal and cannot use.
- Effect 2: [Healing Target] Caster takes half the Feedback for each point of health stolen and channeled into another target. The target of your heal will also gain Feedback, so be sure you do not overheal.
- Note: Effect 2 requires two hands to use: One to take life and one to give it.
The information of the skill came up as the dark presence mentioned it, and she had a feeling she would see it in her Skill Book as a grayed out or unlearned skill. It was a helpful feature, especially since she felt like she was barely scratching the surface of the spell system.
It was a dark ability, and while she disliked it, she admitted it had its uses. The mention of shifting Affinities scared her due to her race, but the ability did seem powerful. It was a vampiric spell, and she always felt vampires were for glittery emo hipsters.
The queen might not be lying about getting a dragon. All the conversations up to this point alluded to the same thing. The queen was just more hateful and blunt about it.
Anger simmered below the surface, and the queen was the target of her ire. She refused to believe this was her only choice.
What would dad do? She asked herself and realized she already had the answer. He told her once that opportunities were abundant, but only a fool expected them to find them.
The recollection of that day in her life felt fresh in her mind like it had happened a few days ago. She wondered if that white dragon scale knew she was going to have this confrontation. She was out of her depth and knew it, but refused to bond a dragon on anyone’s terms but her own.
“No.”
“Wrong anssswer!”
Malinite
Chapter 17
Summoned
I never saw myself as a villain, but I suppose most villains start out saying that. A two-legs opened my eyes to real strength, and I realized I was not even a villain, I was just a coward.
-from Malinite, Audio Roll 0100
“Malinite, do you know why are you are here?” Lochlan was the headmaster at the Dragon Spire. His office was one of the top floors, and he almost never left it. It did not help that his massive bulk was not natural, so he was a permanent fixture here.
“Guessing that ass Cavan did not like being made a fool,” he replied.
“Professor Cavan and he claims you are argumentative and created a situation.”
“Then he lies. He made an opinionated statement, and I debated its merit. He claims that dragons only respect lineage, legacy, and power. I merely stated that dragons should aspire to more, they should embrace honor and courage.”
“You do not think they already aspire to this?”
“Do you? You know his base argument is that our King distinguished himself in himself in the Ursurper Wars. A pinnacle of honor he claimed. A dragon does not commit regicide from the shadows and then claim to be honorable. His first assertion was correct—he is a distinguished dragon, not an honored one. There are two entirely different meanings implied.”
“Stop. I’ve heard enough. Heresy is enough to get you expelled.”
“I’ve committed no heresy. We all call him the Usurper King, and has anyone stopped to ask why? No, because everyone knows the reason. I just choose to acknowledge the truth.”
“Malinite, you talk about things you do not understand and have much to learn. You have the power and intelligence to be a great dragon, but you lack a bloodline. You have no legacy. Gaining the respect of your peers is not done by challenging everyone.”
“You sponsored me and gave me a place here. Do not think me ungrateful. However, I know more about the Ursurper Wars than anyone here. I lied to you and realize that is not an honorable thing to do. I have always known my bloodline, but I refuse to acknowledge it. That family tossed me aside because I was a runt and a disgrace to my family.”
“Who is your Matriarch?” Lochlan demanded to know.
“You already know. Expel me if you must, but do not expect me to glorify tyrants and bury the honorable. You teach that the King No More is to be reviled, and I do not doubt that, but at least he faced his enemies head-on and with honor. Think about it.”
He walked out of the office, done with that conversation and could hear the headmaster trying to call him back. The balcony was not very large, but this high up he could just step off and glide down to his room. He shared a floor with six other dragons, which was not bad.
Expulsion would not happen because there were more powers at play than Lochlan knew. Everyone thought him an orphan because that is the persona he sold, and it helped that he wanted to be an orphan. The headmaster had become his mentor and sponsor, so he wanted to believe the big dragon was one of the good ones.
His Matriarch left him on a small island without vegetation out in the middle of the Serpentine Sea. Left him to die because she had a reputation to keep, and would never acknowledge a runt. A wyvern had saved him, which he never told another dragon. He did not know it then, but it would change his outlook on everything. The wyverns that dragons reviled and warred with had shown more honor and compassion than any dragon he had met.
Ironically, because of his Matriarch’s actions, he was her only surviving hatchling. All of his hatch-mates died during the Usurper Wars, which is being nice. They were all executed.
The moment he came to the Dragon Spire for schooling, he sensed her. A dragon could not ignore their Matriarch’s call, and he spent the next five years under her enslavement. She supported his orphan story, but only so she could control him secretly.
It took some time, but he managed to compile a list of ways to escape that evil and broken dragon. The first method was to accept another Matriarch, but that proved difficult because they would test him and find out his real lineage. If that happened, he would get shunned, exiled, or killed.
He could take a rider because his loyalty could not be divided. A rider was a partnership too, so they did not become a matriarch. It was a partnership.
Taking a rider went against all his father’s teachings. They called it the Code of the Ancients. It is believed that every dragon that followed the Code grew in power and stature until they evolved into Ancients. His father believed that the bond weakened the dragon.
Becoming an Elder broke the connection, but his stature had him listed as an adolescent. There were five evolutions: Child, Adolescent, Adult, Elder, and Ancient. He could spend several centuries and never reach adulthood. It was not age that triggered the transformation. It was action, accomplishments, and maybe even honor.
Lastly, he could renounce his bloodline and legacy. It was damn near taboo and something he had thought about doing a lot lately. The idea of a clean slate had so much appeal that he had come close several times.
None of the options were ideal, and so he hesitated and kept hesitating. He was stuck with his Matriarch and did not understand why the Usurper King kept her alive. Everyone knew his Matriarch, but no one knew she was his Matriarch.
During his time here, he made many friends. Almost all of them whispered stories of his Matriarch, only they called her Night Terror. The stories were closer to ghost tales than based in reality, but few would openly invoke her real name in public. They did not want to incur the wrath of the wingless dragon. There were so many legends that he had a hard time finding truth in the fiction.
One story he did not doubt was the stories about Dragons going missing. He was confident those were true, and that his Matriarch was behind it. There was a reason people whispered about her and used the term Night Terror. It would not surprise him if the Night Terror hung around in the shadows and listened to the gossip.
None of his friends believed the stories they told, but he knew most were mild compared to the reality of the monster under the Shroud. It made him shudder thinking about it because he had seen exposed parts of her when the wind shifted. The soft scaleless flesh left him cold, but he understood why most refused to put her down. It was out of guilt because they had tortured his Matriarch and made the monster. The Usurper King created the Night Terror.
He did not feel sorry for her because the Matriarch he knew died during the wars. The wild beast that prowled in the dark was no longer the dragon he once knew. It would not surprise him if all the urban legends were right about her. The atrocities he alone had seen were enough to warrant her death, but he lacked the strength to put her down.
Honor demanded he defend her, but that was not going to happen. She made her own choices, and she could live with them. He even helped make up jokes about her and did not feel the need to whisper them. Spite is not a tool used by the honorable, but the longer she lived, the more he hated himself.
Worse still, she was highly agitated lately, and now she called for him. She always cursed her summonings, so he could not resist, which was the power of a Matriarch.
Your Matriarch has issued you a summons. Failure to comply will activate Submission.
Submission (Curse) – This curse starts off with agitation and irritability, but the longer it is ignored, the worse the curse becomes. The highest effect is the pain in the form of magical lashings until the target’s health drops below 50%, once health is back at 100% it will continue again, and again. The only way to get rid of the curse is to Submit, in this case: Answer the summons.
Sighing, he launched himself off one of the balconies, and he circled the Spire feeling the wind sliding across his wings as he angled himself downward. He had no idea where in the Spire she was, but he could feel her and headed that way. The destination bothered him because it was lower than a student was typically allowed to go.
It did not take long to find her, and he almost turned back. In the end, he decided the punishment of the Academy was nothing compared to that of his Matriarch. Steeling himself for whatever horror was ahead he entered the Trial grounds.
His Matriarch had a Shroud ability which she had never been able to remove. She used to be able to hold it in and invoke it only when she needed it, but that was before she lost her mind.
The Shroud covered the room in thick darkness, blocking out all light and he remained in place until she pulled back the shroud. He was in a dome-shaped area that was lit up by some magic infused globes that hung from the ceiling.
It was one of those rare moments when he could see part of his queen, her tail held an ashen hue, and it was bare and soft as a two-leg’s skin. The tail was bent strangely in several places as if broken repeatedly and never healed properly. Along the length of it, there were pockmarks where her spines once existed.
Even that horrible sight completely grabbed his attention. It was the female two-leg t
hat hung upside down, and the elf’s dark hair spilled out, exposing a blue streak running the length of it. He could see her pale face and silver lips. He had never seen a Mercury Elf, but that is what he was looking at, he was sure of it.
Then the realization of what his Matriarch had done sunk in, and he felt muscles tense. He refused to move further into the room.
He was wrong, the punishment of the Academy would be far worse than anything the queen could do to him. Her interference was a crime worthy of a Descaling, and probably death.
“You go too far.”
Malinite
Chapter 18
Complicity
How far will you let someone push you before you break? How much fight is in a person? I never found any quit to my rider’s fight. Even when I thought I did, the lull was just a change of tactics.
-from Malinite, Audio Roll 0231
“You dare question your queen?” His Matriarch asked, but he could hear her mirth. She had grown complacent in the Spire, risking even the wrath of the gods.
“Punisssh him.” The hisser spat.
“Make him writhe in pain-”
“Shut up, and yes. I do dare. You are many things, but I never doubted your intelligence until now. Have you thought about the repercussions of what you are doing? That is one of the Champions, one of the god selected warriors, going through her Trial. You test even my loyalty, I will renounce you here, and now, consequences be damned.”
“Bond her, and you can both go.” The voice of his mother tried to convince him, but that sound lost its power when she left him on a remote island to die.
He started laughing.
“Are you insane? I will not bond with a two-leg, especially a weak female. Look at her, did the gods make a mistake?”
“They do not make missstakesss. You jussst lack insssight.”
