The Circle of Duty

by Owen Elgie

  Focusing my mind, I took in as much of the detail around me and pictured in my head the landscape as I could make out, pinpointing the location of our forces. Closing my eyes to aid my concentration, just as Andrea had recommended, short tempered Fire Dragon after all, I built up my energy and pictured flame.

  My stillness was seized upon by the force all over me and they were fast to bury me in a broiling mass of piercing jaws and slicing limbs.

  I pushed the ever growing sensation away as much as I could and let the flaming image in my mind build and build. It climbed quickly to the point where it was struggling to be unleashed and I had to focus to hold everything in check. With one final mental review of the soldier’s positions, I roared out as the power burst from me.

  In an instant, I summoned as wide an area of fire as I could muster, torching anything and everything that was within its boundary. A wall of impenetrable heat burst to life and stood at least fifty feet from the ground. The searing heat and unnatural flash of brilliant orange/yellow filled all of my senses. Everything that had been moving around me had been incinerated in a split second. What little grass and foliage that had been scattered over the rocky surface of the valley was now a distant memory. Scorched earth and super-heated stone was all that was surrounding us. Frederico was laying flat on his back near the edge of the destruction, taking in massive gulps of air as he spluttered. The force of my magical outburst must have caught him by surprise and knocked the wind out of him. I knew that he was fire proof so wasn’t really that worried about him being caught in the blast. All of the beetles, though, were a smoldering after thought. The warm breeze was still drifting through the air but it was now carrying ash fragments and the smell of, what most closely resembled, burning rubber. I stood up quickly and headed over to where the creatures had been aiming. There was one small area, though, which had escaped the fire.

  A wobbly circle of untouched ground was visible with a huddled band of human soldiers looking equal parts surprised and terrified slap bang in the centre. I had managed to pinpoint their position and throw a small shield of my own around them to avoid burning them down with everything else. I sighed slightly to myself in relief. I had become pretty strong, magically speaking but my accuracy hadn’t managed to keep pace with my strength. That casting had been a great deal more risky than I would ever let on to the team on the ground. They had just seen a wall of magical flame roar into existence around them and they had been untouched by its effects. They had had all of their power turned towards a defensive shield as they had seen the beetles swarming towards them. The combined efforts of their defence and my own shield for them had been more than strong enough to protect them from my explosion. I looked down at them, through the smoke, making sure that they were OK.

  One by one, they all managed to look around them and re-gather their composure. From what I could make out, they were all pretty beat up but nothing truly life threatening. I was quickly noticed.

  “Sir!” shouted the largest of the troop. He was a man of least fifty years, and roughly ten times as many good meals. His black fatigues and turtle neck jumper shrouded a heavy set frame which seemed to be carrying a beanbag round his middle. His graying hair was buzzed down to his scalp but he had the most flamboyant handlebar moustache that the world had ever seen. He may have looked a little out of practice shall we say, but you could easily tell that if push came to shove, he was more than a little capable of tearing things up, just for fun! I hadn’t met him before but I kind of liked him.

  Looking up to me with an earnest expression on his face, he performed a salute which must have been dipped in starch. The rest of his group was swift to follow his lead.

  “At ease gents,” I growled. I had been bowed, saluted, curtsied and groveled to since the very first day I had set foot in this life of magic and monsters. I had watched people endure pain in my name for no other reason than they had thought it was the appropriate response. This deference to the Dragon Lord was really wearing thin.

  Back to business.

  “Any injuries?” I boomed out.

  “None too bad sir.” He let me know with a hint of professional pride woven through his thick Australian accent.

  “Good. We need to get everyone back inside the shield now. Has there been any contact from the other people out here?” I needed to know where we were in terms of the bigger picture.

  “Nothing yet sir, but …” he pulled a radio from his waist band and flicked it on. We were all greeted by a sound which chilled our blood.

  Over the radio, on all channels as they were checked in turn, came the horrifying call of hundreds of people screaming for their lives. Snapping my head up and out into the valley, I focused on the nearest encampment to us and could just make out in the distance, the dirty Cascade ring of power and a maelstrom of black. The beetles had been driven away from this site but they were still fiercely attacking at what could have been thirty other locations.

  Frederico and I couldn’t help everyone but that wasn’t going to stop us trying.

  “Freddy.” I surged over to where he was and shook him as he was getting to his feet. The impact of my magic had really knocked him sideways.

  “We are still under attack. We need to move now.” My voice was thick with rage and I could feel the effect rubbing off on Frederico. His eyes darkened and the wicked snarl he had been sporting earlier had returned. He was feeling the call of his blood lust again and I congratulated myself on getting him fired up again so quickly.

  Turning back to the shell shocked troops, I called out instructions.

  “I’m going to jump you guys back inside the shield. Get the word out to the field that the enemy Cascade Bridges are easy to bring down but let our reinforcements know that we need to rescue the forces outside, and we need to do it NOW!” The final syllable was almost lost in the snarl of the animal which was starting to climb to the surface of my mind.

  I reached out my mind and a bridge gateway ring snapped into existence. Thrusting out one arm, I signaled for the men on the ground to get moving and turned to Frederico as they filed through the construct.

  “We need to avoid landing in them all Freddy; they can swamp us if we do.” I needed to get our tactics sorted quickly so Freddy could at least be aimed when he started to unleash his own brand of vengeance. “Also, we need to stay out of the air for long periods, The Tayne are still up there and they can bring us down.” The final part of my pep talk hit me like a sledge hammer. If we couldn’t land and we couldn’t fly, where was left for us?

  The penny dropped and I shackled my inner demon.

  The enemy had again factored in the hot headed reaction of the Fire Dragon to its plans. If we simply tore into the enemy, we would be lost. There had to be another way.

  “Freddy wait,” I yelled but the young Dragon was already away from me. With one mighty thrust he had unfolded his wings and with massive effort, had sent him up and away towards the nearest fight, all thought of tactics utterly lost.

  “FREDDY!”

  I knew that any call after the departing Dragon would be useless but I tried anyway. His tail waved in the air as his body pulsed with effort sending him towards the next skirmish. I knew that if I followed him that I would be putting both of our lives in danger and risking the lives of everyone in the valley. The Dragon force was a central importance which I knew had to be maintained.

  That said, we also couldn’t afford to lose another of our number in the defence of the same prison. That meant that I couldn’t leave him out here on his own.

  Whipping my own wings out in a wild spray of leathery scarlet, I crouched down and prepared for the surge skywards. Before I heaved myself after the departed Guardian, I threw a final call to the departing Australian soldiers,

  “Let Andrea know that I’m going after Frederico and have everyone who can help work on a way to get our forces inside the shield boundary. We need at least thirty bridges opened. And see if you can find out what the beetle-creatures are
called and if they’ve been seen before. They’re new to me. ”

  I didn’t check that he had understood or even heard. Pulse after massive pulse sent me after Frederico. My only hope was I would be able to get to him before he buried himself in more trouble than he could be dug from.

  5

  Lifting back into the sky was suddenly a much more perilous prospect. The Tayne were still intermittently crashing into the magical barrier on the edge of the prison in the centre of the bowl valley, and there was now widespread violence unfolding below me. This time, though, I was acutely aware of the huge gulf in the fortunes of the two opposing forces. In every battle which I had seen on this field before, despite experiencing heavy losses, we had always been giving at the very least, as good as we got. Today, it was far too clear to see that we had been utterly out thought from the very earliest point. We needed to change what was taking place right now or all of our troops were going to be massacred. The safety of the troops could not be overlooked as acceptable loses so long as the prison was maintained.

  “FREDDY!” My call was lost in the noise of the enemy detonations and to the wind which whipped past me as I followed my young colleague. I needed to catch him fast before he did something really stupid.

  “FREDDY! Keep flying! DO NOT land!” Please let him hear me.

  I got my answer almost instantly. Frederico started to descend towards the next corrupted Cascade Bridge and the ever growing carnage which was still spewing from it.

  “Christ Freddy, NO!” I pushed on with all I was worth. He was going to beat me to the fight but I could minimize the risk if I got there quickly. As he neared the ground, all I could do was brace myself for the impending impact that the latest Guardian was going to experience.

  Frederico didn’t hit the ground.

  To my surprise and huge relief, he leveled off his flight path and instead released volley after volley of strafing fire from barely twenty feet from the ground. The effect was devastating.

  A wide column of writhing insectoid foot soldiers was reduced to ashes as he passed overhead and with the minimum of effort he glided back on himself and unleashed again.

  After what seemed like an age, I finally closed on this latest fight and entered the fray myself, duplicating what Frederico had started to do but aiming most of my attention towards the Cascade Bridge.

  Our fire poured down onto the enemy creatures and the familiar high pitched screeching/clicking noise erupted everywhere. My first effort snapped the bridge construct shut and severed the supply of enemy reinforcements. Frederico was far less focused but no less effective for it. We were having an effect. I could make out groups of the creatures bunching together trying to huddle themselves to some kind of safety against our attack. That only served to urge me on and I could see that it was having the same effect on Frederico.

  We completed multiple passes and continued to burn the enemy to ash from a position of relative safety. The Tayne had, so far, ignored us and had continued on their attack on the shield wall. The creatures below us were, as far as we could tell, flightless, and had been brought in solely as a ground force to over-whelm our own troops. We were practically free to attack at will.

  As the threat of harm dropped slightly, I started to scan the ground for the remaining pocket of soldiers who had been defending this position for all they were worth. My eyes darted amongst the melee below as I tried to pick out any detail which would show me where we needed to go. Black ash intermingled with black armoured creatures which mixed with the black uniforms on our troops. It was proving difficult to pin point anything.

  Frederico hammered past me and practically herded more of the creatures together into their ever growing mass. Wave after wave of flame forced the little monsters together and exposed more and more of the battle field. I could finally make out the troops we were rushing to save.

  They were all lost.

  I could make out shredded flesh and ever expanding pools of gore as it became terrifyingly clear that the entire group had met with an agonizing end. My flight faltered as I took in the detail and realized that I couldn’t be certain how many bodies I was looking at, the damage was that extensive.

  My mind raced. Was every battle site going to look the same? Had we already lost all of the troops we had placed around the valley? Was my own group of soldiers already gone? Had Mark, my giant warrior, been killed?

  My feelings of fear weren’t left hanging in the air for very long.

  The violent spinning in my head dragged me back to the more immediate business below me. That was followed very quickly by the tickling sensation of small claws gripping onto my scales at several points. The beetles had managed to somehow swarm onto me. I started to swipe at myself at the points of sensation and I looked back to try to work out what they had done.

  All over my body, I could make out patches of writhing black as the beetle creatures re-started their attack on me. Their small jaws and bladed limbs were nipping away all over my lizard form.

  I tried to focus enough of my attention on the task of staying in the air while I continued to beat the creatures away. I needed to maintain the same level flight above the threat coming from below while simultaneously keeping out of the way of the Tayne and defending myself. Piece of cake.

  As I batted at my assailants, I cast a quick glance over the view below me and saw how I had been boarded. Frederico was still swooping and diving as he poured down burst after burst of fire, each torrent scorching more and more of the ever huddling hoard. He was enjoying the clear shots at the enemy that he was getting so much that he wasn’t paying full attention to what was going on around him. As we had both been forcing more and more of the little horrors into a central huddle by killing large numbers of their ranks, they had started to use this concentration to their advantage. What we had thought as being a sign of cowardice from them was actually a clever move to again overwhelm us. They hadn’t been trying to huddle together to hide from the death we were raining down. Instead, they had been creating a massive living tower which a great many of their number had been able to climb and which had granted them much easier access to the flying Dragons that had previously been out of their reach. They had just waited for us to come to them. Another change in tactics from The Hive which showed that they were really learning fast.

  I risked a sideways look at Frederico to check on his progress.

  He was now in the same situation as I was. He had swooped in too low to the enemy in exactly the same way I had, drawn in by his ever growing desire to unveil his own brand of divine retribution. These creatures may not have been the most dangerous we had ever encountered but they were certainly now showing that they had the capability to out think us and as such they must be viewed as a serious threat. And now, legions of them were starting to seriously threaten the safety of two of the Guardians.

  This cell of our forces had been wiped out and there was no guarantee that the scene here hadn’t been replicated at each and every position around the valley. I needed to get us back inside the shield wall around the prison and started on our counter offensive before the beetle things worked out how they could do some real damage.

  “Freddy!!” I roared as loudly as I could, hoping to attract his attention.

  Nothing.

  I tried again as I continued to edge towards him through the dusk sky.

  Still nothing but this time I could see why.

  He was still far from being fully in control of himself but his previous wild fury for the death and destruction of any and all of the creatures that had allied themselves against his family and his sacred oath had now been replaced by a scrabbling fear. As I closed the distance between us, I could make out a great deal more small beetles crawling over Frederico than I had to contend with. He must have flown much lower than I had, drawn down by the apparent terror in his enemy. Black spots were dotted all over his green armored frame but as I starred, it became clear that they were all moving in the same direction. They were
all making a drive for his wings.

  Having been downed by a tiny enemy who had focused their attack on my wings myself, it was not something that I was keen to see happen to my young charge. Aside from the pain which the young Guardian would experience if he was forced from the sky, I knew that he would feel terrible guilt at having let down the other members of his family and The Circle as a whole. The last thing he needed was to feel that thousands of years of history were wagging its collective finger at him for his failure to uphold the vaunted line that is The Circle.

  I set myself quickly and drove onwards towards Frederico, my own feelings of resentment filling my head at what I felt was a dangerous character flaw in the group I was now a massive part of. The Young Dragon needed my help.

  Frederico had lost his focus on the melee still broiling below him and was now smacking and scratching at himself as he started to falter in mid-air. The beetles had started to have an effect on his ability to fly as they had begun to reach his wings in ever growing numbers and he had slowly been sinking towards the rocky ground below.

  I didn’t try to attract his attention. I didn’t need it. Checking my own rate of descent and my line of flight, I knew that all I needed to do was maintain a collision course.

  The distance between us closed at a remarkable rate and I was quickly in the position to do what needed to be done. I emptied out a vast wave of flame directly at Frederico. There was no thought of controlled aiming or measured bursts, brute force was the order of the day. The searing jet splashed into him and set his assailants ablaze. The click/screams rang out again as they were all superheated in seconds but I didn’t stop.

  Forcing my mind to power down to a pin point of concentration, I willed a huge cascade bridge into existence directly behind the still flaming form of Frederico and flew directly into him, wasting no thought on finesse or comfort.

  I gripped him tightly and forced us both through the ring of magical energy.