“How so? How can I help?” The smaller man asked, awkwardly reaching up to pat my arm.
“Buer. Tell Dire about Buer, and don’t hold back even the slightest bit of information...”
Days turned into weeks and the Wrathlands passed below us, we laid our plans with care.
The clouds got thicker as we went, steam boiling up from the rivers and mixing with the ash and smoke from the volcanoes. But the further “south” we went, the more the ash faded, and the more rains battered the ground below. Reddish lightning streaked around us, and I was thankful for the Tesla Deflectors. Modulating them helped disperse the lightning strikes that caught us.
The Striges hated the whole trip of course, from the soggy, sooty rain to the lightning that stung and jolted them. But fuck ’em, they were ours now, and I had little time or mercy to spare for the hellspawn.
Instead I divided my time between the workshop and meeting my Damned. We had the bunch from Caym, and my Chorus had used the chaos of the battle in Wroth to liberate a few more. I circulated, shook hands, bowed, or exchanged nods where appropriate to the cultures involved, and I discovered something fairly concerning.
When I was absolutely sure of my suspicions, I steeled myself, armored up, and went back once more to that darkened chamber where I’d left Great Clown Pagliacci.
He didn’t look up as I entered, and for a second I wondered if he was dead, though I couldn’t see how. The oxygen-cycling moss was still doing its job, and as a Damned he didn’t need food nor drink. Though I wouldn’t put it past him to kill himself just to spite me. I hung back and studied the scene for a moment.
“Hello, Doctor.” Hollow eyes flicked open and found me, even in total darkness. “I was starting to wonder if you’d left me to rot.”
“YOU DON’T GET OFF THAT EASILY.” To any of my friends, that would be a jest. To this... creature... it was a promise. I didn’t like having him here, but I didn’t have a good place to put him, so here we were.
“Then what is my hardship today?”
“THEY’RE ALL CHRISTIAN. OR FROM CULTURES WHICH HAD MAJOR DEALINGS WITH CHRISTIANS IN SOME FORM.”
His lips peeled back from his teeth, smeared makeup giving way to long, sharp, yellowed teeth. Filed? Perhaps. Or a side-effect of the partial vampirization that he’d undergone during his last years. “Ah. You’ve made that connection. Good, I was wondering when you would.”
“WHEN, NOT IF?”
“You are far too intelligent to let it lie for long. But yes, I noticed that as well. Have you read the Divine Comedy?”
“THE INFERNO. YES.”
“Alighieri speaks of an outer ring of Hell, one of virtuous pagans. But if one takes his words at face value, that should be the resting place for only those Damned who were never exposed to Christianity. Who never had to choose between their native faiths and this new thing.”
“WE DROPPED DOWN FAIRLY FAR INTO HELL. DIRE HAS NOT SEEN THE OUTSIDE OF IT.”
“No.” He smacked his lips against his teeth. “Nobody I spoke to has. The demons I asked about it had never heard of such a place, either. And doesn’t... that... make... you... wonder?”
Logic kicked in. “THAT DOES NOT DISPROVE ITS EXISTENCE. DEMONS IN THESE PARTS ARE REMARKABLY PROVINCIAL.”
“Mmmmmmm... true. But the demon lords, the smart ones such as the Council of Worms... they would surely have known, would they not? Their favorite pastime was supping upon the brains of the Damned and devouring their knowledge. And given the slave trade that passes between the rings and cities, surely someone would have at least heard of it by now?”
“ENTERTAINING THE THEORY THEN, THAT IT DOES NOT EXIST...”
“Well, the only ones who would go there would be those damned by ignorance. Thus, the ones who were aware of Christianity and were wrathful, they would surely be down here, would they not? Mixed in with everyone else?”
“THERE ARE SOME NON-CHRISTIANS DOWN HERE. DIRE HAS MET THEM.”
“Yes, and what do they all have in common?”
“CONTACT WITH CHRISTIANITY, USUALLY THROUGH MISSIONARIES OR SOME FORM OF—”
“No. No, that is the wrong track.” He sighed, theatrically, lips stretching into an exaggerated frown. He reached a hand up, and I started... then calmed myself. Of course he’d worn the straps away, what else did he have to do in here? But he tried nothing stupid, merely ran his fingers down the tattoos of tears under his eyes. Over and over again. “And you were doing so well, too,” he said, voice turning shrill. Too shrill for someone that large and muscled.
I was almost thankful when my vox channel opened up. “Boss? You better come to the bridge.”
“Alpha? What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got, uh, an intruder in our airspace.”
I was in no mood for more guessing games. Not after the damned clown. “Spit it out, what’s coming at us?”
“A motherfucking dragon.”
CHAPTER 14: FROM FRYING PAN TO FIRE
“Do not fear to throw an obstacle at the characters that they cannot hope to overcome. They will either overcome it, flee, or learn a valuable lesson in threat assessment.”
--Excerpt from the second book of the Chronicles of the Shared Lie; The Monster Master’s Methods
Once, long ago, the Last Janissary had revealed his true identity to my comrades. We’d talked about magical creatures for a bit, and one of my friends had asked, jokingly, if dragons were real, too.
The Janissary had nodded solemnly and confirmed that they were and that hopefully my friend would never meet one.
Today, as I stared up at the monitor and the grainy image that loomed closer with every ground-blasting flap of its massive wings, I understood why he’d said that.
Dragons were real, and this one looked hungry.
“We thought it had snuck up on us somehow, when the storms parted and there it was,” Vector said. “But no, turns out it was really far away. Then the lidar readings came back, and we found out that it really is that big. That’s when I adjusted the course.”
“AND IT FOLLOWED.”
“It followed, yeah.”
I glanced from Vector over to Punching Judy. “WHERE IS DIRE’S CHORUS?”
“They’re getting the few Damned we have on board ready to evac,” Judy said, her accent much subdued from its usual Cockney burr.
I checked the Lidar myself, and sucked on my teeth. Then double-checked them once more. “HOW IS THAT THING EVEN FLYING?”
“They hibernate in the core of the world,” Khalid said, adjusting his jacket coat as he pushed through the membranes of the command chamber. “The pressure makes them slow. Keeps them drowsy. They soak up the magic of the ley lines that ground into the Earth, and when they are restless, earthquakes are the result.”
“BULLSHIT.”
“Not every earthquake, true but enough of them that the old myths have some truth to them.”
It had six or seven sets of wings, I noticed, rippling like sails that could cover football stadiums— parking lots and all. The effect was not unlike a massive kite.
But this kite had a face, and a ring of spider-like eyes that were fixed upon my little fleet.
Khalid continued, his voice the only sound in the silence. “Magic fuels it, raw strength does the rest. It flies because it wants to; it will catch us because it wishes to. It is merely a question of when.”
I chewed my lip some more. The taste of blood filled my mouth, and I let go before I tore a hole in the damned thing. “CAN WE TALK WITH IT?”
Khalid shook his head. “The wyrms of Hell are as beasts. Lucifer saw to that when he stirred them from their sleep.”
“ODDS OF KILLING IT?”
He looked toward me, looked at the suit of armor standing in the corner. “If you were at full repair, I would have my doubts. Now that your armor is worn and many-times repaired, I have none. It would not end well for you. Nothing else we have could even scratch it.”
I closed my eyes.
I’d bee
n spoiled, a bit, by how things had gone thus far. No major setbacks, constant gain, adding to our forces with every move. But this is Hell, and it feasts on the hopes of the naive, and so here we were.
But... I wasn’t the only heavy hitter on board.
I looked toward Punching Judy, who was standing with the rest of the crew, staring at it silently on the monitor. “JUDY? CAN YOU PUNCH THAT THING?”
“I... Sorry, love. I can feel the pull of that thing from here. It don’t just eat chi, it is chi. Or near enough that the best I could do is a boop on the snoot.”
“Dragons carry such heat within them that flesh boils in its own juices within half a kilometer of their hide,” Khalid gently explained.
“Righty-o, never mind then.”
“NOPE.” I moved to my armor, clambered in the back, and waited as it booted up around me. “WE’VE COME TOO FAR TO BE TAKEN DOWN BY SOME BIG STUPID LIZARD.”
“This is suicide,” Khalid was frowning at me as my HUD flickered to life.
“NO, IT’S A DISTRACTION. TELL THE FLEET TO SPLIT UP.” I worked up a basic telemetry and fired it off to the Chorus. “WE’LL RENDEZVOUS LATER.”
I made my way out of Beaky and flew like the wind. The already-huge shape of the dragon kept getting bigger and bigger, the closer I got to it.
And the rage grew within me as I approached. I’d come so far, been through so much, and this random reptile thought to thwart me? I am Dire, and I will not be denied!
I parked a mile away from it and bombarded it with particle beams. It didn’t blink. I targeted the eyes; it didn’t seem to care. I circled it as fast as I dared go, pasting it everywhere, bathing it in kinetic energy, amping up with every shot.
I might as well have been shooting at the moon— no, shooting at the moon would have had more of a result. This creature, this thing could withstand the pressures of the Earth’s core. I might as well have been throwing spitwads at it.
I tried nonetheless. Only when my armor’s vents smoked, and yellow HUD lights flashed nonstop as my particle beam assemblages threatened to melt, did I stop firing.
It wasn’t correct to see it as a creature. It was, but that wasn’t the challenge here. This was a force of nature, a disaster to be survived rather than beaten. I simply lacked the tools to prevent it from falling upon my friends.
And oh, did that gnaw at me. I checked to make sure the other two Striges were well on their way and fleeing, then opened a vox channel to Beaky’s bridge. “No go. Abandon ship.”
“Already ahead of you, boss.” Parachutes bloomed like flowers around Beaky, drifting downward. Not many, only one for each of the Chorus that were aboard, Vector, Khalid, and the most recent crop of Spitter pods. The Damned would have just jumped, and I couldn’t see them from this distance. They’d die when they hit the ground, sure, but they’d revive in time.
For a second I was worried that the dragon would turn to follow them, but it didn’t. It pursued Beaky, drawing closer with every series of rippling flaps from its multiple wings.
And damn my eyes, I remembered that Beaky had one more passenger. “Alpha? Did you guys get Pagliacci free and shove him off the Strix?”
“Um... no.”
Shit.
I poured on the speed. I was off on the rear flank of the wyrm, and it was moving faster now, sensing the end of the hunt. I watched its mouth open in slow motion as it narrowed the gap and pushed my gravitics to their highest output, shunting all power away from weapons, thinning down the forcefield as slim as I dared. I cut through the sky like an arrow, sonic booms gonging in my wake like thunder, until I was just within the creature’s heat envelope and my environmental alarms started their climb. I ignored it, stretched my arms out Crusader style, and punched straight through Beaky’s flesh just ahead of the dragon. Through the outer shell, ignoring the dents it put in my armor, through the lungs of him, and skidding to a stop just outside Pagliacci’s chamber. The membranes tore away from the force of my entry, revealing the very surprised psychotic clown.
He shouted something, but it was lost in the wind and the roar of Beaky’s pain that shook the bloody, ruined chambers I’d just burst through. I ignored Pagliacci’s query, ripped him free of his restraints without care for his comfort or safety. By now my environmental sensors were telling me the dragon was a scant four hundred yards away, and the heat was almost to the point where I’d be boiled alive, coolant systems or no.
I held Pagliacci tight to my searing armor, ignored his grunt as I burned him, pointed my free palm at the floor, and pumped a hundred-percent wide-spread particle beam down.
We fell.
Just in time too, as Beaky’s scream trailed up high, higher than the audible frequencies of the human ears, and the dragon’s maw closed over the Strix’s side like a fat man chomping a pancake.
The rule held true in Hell as it did on Earth; no matter how big you were, there was always someone bigger.
As we fell, I eased the gravitics back on, turned our arc into a slow swoop, outrunning the killing heat. Pagliacci sizzled but held tight to me, grimacing as his meat cooked on his bones. He looked more pissed than anything else. We matched each other, then, because the anger that clawed at the back of my mind wanted nothing more than to go back there and see if I could punch the stupid dragon in its stupid dragon face until it stopped moving.
But that cold logic that was my power, the will I’d built over the years, held me back. I knew it’d be suicide.
“NEXT TIME,” I told the dragon. “DIRE SHALL BEAT YOU LIKE A GOD DAMNED PINATA.”
I think Pagliacci was laughing. Either that or the shock was setting in. So when we were clear I set us down next to some low hills and dropped him on his back. Then I found a comfy-looking rock, plopped my metal keister on it, and let my armor’s self-repair systems do their thing.
From a distance I watched as the dragon flew in a loose circle, munching merrily away. It took quite some time to get Beaky down into digestible bits, and I sourly counted the cost as it did. My workshop, my supplies, Khalid and Vector’s labs, and so, so many raw resources that I had spent time and effort gathering. Oh, and the only place I could survive outside of the armor for long. And my renewable food source. All gone, like tears in acid rain.
I activated the vox, opened all channels. “Hello? Anyone there?”
I caught random chatter but nothing more. The main vox server had been in Beaky; with it busted, there was no way for the others to hear me. My suit’s standalone transceiver was barely sophisticated enough to enable partial reception. And given the raw mass of the dragon, it was like operating around a microscopic black hole. The vox was solid tech but not infallible.
After a time, feet crunched on the sand behind me. I switched on the rear camera, watched Pagliacci approach. His eyes were slime on his cheeks, boiled right out of his skull. I watched him fumble a bit, did nothing as he tripped over a rock, gasping as his puffy, half-roasted hands banged against the stony ground.
“CAN YOU HEAR HER?” I asked.
Instantly his head snapped to face me. He opened his mouth, let out a frog-like croak, tongue bloated. Teeth slurped out of his cooked gums, leaving oozing holes. It was a miracle his face was still on his skull. Well, as much a miracle as miracles got down here, anyway.
“OH SIT DOWN AND HEAL UP. WE NEED TO GET MOVING ONCE YOU’RE LESS OF A LIABILITY.”
He sat down, shut up, and did nothing beyond rock a bit. His way of dealing with the pain, I supposed.
The landscape surrounding us matched much of the plains we’d been moving over. Vast, empty, barren waste. But it was gouged by furrows, where sand and gravel and rock had been ripped up by unseen forces and strewn about. Quite recently, too. We’d been seeing these sort of marks for the last few days but had no idea what was causing it. Not until now, anyway. My eyes followed the dragon, then traced downwards to the ground below it. Even at such a distance, its wings pushed the air with such force that it rent the land asunder. A series of rolling, ro
iling explosions carved a swathe beneath it as it flew away into the distance.
But with the right vision modes I found what I was looking for. Metal, remnants of the materials I’d gathered and the machines I’d constructed, falling from the sky out of the dragon’s slopping maw. Scattered a bit by the winds the dragon was displacing, scattered even more by the churning earth below, but possibly salvageable to some degree.
I tracked and marked the larger chunks, and after an hour, I looked back to Pagliacci. He had new eyes in his sockets now, and he didn’t look quite so much like a mannequin made from bloated meat. That was probably a good sign.
“GOT YOUR TONGUE BACK?”
“I think so... yes.” He stood, cracked his knuckles. “Are you done with your moping, or would you like to indulge in more angst?”
“ACTUALLY, SHE HAS BEEN BUSY.” I stood up, waved roughly at him. My cape was gone, I noticed, burned off in the dragon fight. Well, sorry excuse for a fight, anyway. “COME ON. LET US GO GLEAN WHAT WE CAN FROM THE RUINS.”
It was a long walk across the sands. I switched to hover mode midway through, keeping an eye on the dragon the whole time. It was using something to keep itself afloat, some sort of gravity manipulation that Khalid had called magic. Magic or no, energy was energy. I’d gathered some readings from it during my futile distraction run, and now I had some ideas for when we next met.
“I almost expect to see a statue of Ozymandias standing out here somewhere,” Pagliacci broke the silence. “Though I suppose that is more a thing two circles down, eh?”
DIRE : HELL (The Dire Saga Book 6) Page 20
