by G. Akella
"And where's your ticket, young lady?" I snickered, not expecting—and obviously not getting—an answer. "Fine, fine, be a stowaway." Casting one last glance at the sun setting beyond the shoulder of a mountain, I took a deep breath and stepped through the black triangle of the portal.
There was a blinding flash, and a waft of dry grass in my face. I stepped forward and to the side, letting the other fighters filter out of the portal. The sounds behind me were a mix of muffled cussing and the clanging of metal. Then one of the foxes gave a restrained laugh. I blinked several times, and took a look around. The portal had taken us to a large stone terrace carved right into the rock at an elevation of about two hundred yards and enclosed by a three-foot-high balustrade. Standing along the perimeter were twelve fifteen-foot-tall statues of bipedal armored elephants, the exact kind I'd seen back in the Derelict Temple. Well, maybe they weren't exactly the same, but for someone who would struggle to tell a Chinese person from a Korean, would anyone expect me to do better with elephants? As I was getting my bearings and taking my sweet time admiring the architecture, my lacking military leadership was put on full display, as the foxes and mages wasted no time blocking off the entrance to the staircase leading down, and falling into optimal defensive positions, following my officers' terse, snappy orders. Sad as it was to admit, I was still eons away from being a professional soldier, let alone commander... With a wink to one of the elephants holding a massive two-handed sword overhead, I walked over to the railings, leaned on them, and took a few deep breaths. We were finally here!
Back where we'd just come from, the day was just winding down, but here it was the dead of night. There was plenty of light, however, what with not one but two moons shining up in the sky, one of which took up about one tenth of the entire firmament. In these conditions, I doubted that nights ever got truly dark.
Oh, but I was getting tired of all these mountains! To the right, roughly two miles from where we were, a road paved with large cobblestones was crawling out of a narrow gorge. Stretching initially along the base of a short mountain range, it took a sharp bend right across from the terrace, sloping up and into the mountains past two temples cut into the rock on either side. The details of the architecture weren't visible at this distance, but I could already see that the temples were modeled after those in the Jordanian city of Petra, the kind visited by the legendary Indiana Jones during his last crusade. I had seen that film exactly eleven times, and I remembered each viewing vividly. Hart, that seemed so long ago now...
The temple entrances loomed darkly, bluish sparks running over them periodically. Dungeons? Inside a dungeon?! Never in my life had I seen anything like it. And I was in no hurry to go inside. Sure, it would have been fun to play out my childhood fantasy and try on the hat of an action hero... But no. Let the fantasy remain just that—a fantasy. The Spectral City itself, where the road through the mountains culminated, stood maybe a mile away from our terrace, and about a quarter mile higher. The part of the wall visible from here must have exceeded the length of my own castle's front wall by a factor of four. If that was any indication of the city's size, I suspected we would need quite a bit of time to explore it! The odd thing was that, aside from the soft voices behind me, the area was steeped in absolute silence. No chirping of crickets, no crowing of birds... The bird! I spun my head sharply. It was gone! But how could a crow take off from your shoulder unnoticed? Oh, the hell with you, bird. And the hell with all these riddles—I've got no time for them. If you need me, you know where to find me. Turning back to Kan's still figure behind me, I gestured toward the city lying before us, and said: "Everyone ready? Then let's set out!"
Not a minute later, our party was making an organized descent down a winding stone staircase under the dark gazes of Pangean statues lining the perimeter of the terrace...
In classical fantasy, dark elves were oft referred to as drow. With dark skin, white hair and pointy ears, they lived underground, favored dark magic, and worshipped their spider goddess, Lolth. And, if memory served me right, the value of male lives in the drow society was negligible, if not altogether worthless—the matriarchs ruled the roost. And that was all fine and dandy—what had always bothered me was the notion of a subterranean race somehow being dark-skinned. Was it dark magic that painted their skin dark? But then, the magic was dark in essence, not in actual color. Or were they dark due to their evil alignment? Some black Americans I'd met might justifiably take offense to that. The only other possibility I could think of was that they simply didn't shower much—perhaps the most ludicrous explanation of them all. Having said all that, who was I to criticize the classics of the genre? Even if some of the stories our parents grew up on were no more logical or realistic than superhero comics, it wasn't my place to trash them.
The reason I brought up drow was that they existed in this world as well. Only here they weren't dark elves at all. The local drow also dwelled underground and primarily worshipped Lolth, while also honoring a few other gods. Their ears were just as pointy, though a bit more lupine in shape. Now, I couldn't speak for matriarchs or the race's hygiene practices, but in terms of skin color the Realm of Arkon's creators acted much more logically than the classics, making them fair-skinned. As to the drow standing guard at the right gatepost, his skin was fair with an ashy tone. Attired in a three-piece purple suit and a matching top hat, contrasting most comically against his pale face and garishly red lips, this must have been another homage to the comics of old. After all, what could be more absurd than a drow dressed up as the Joker? His level 195, sharp features and pursed lips hardly posed an apparent danger, except the fellow looked so utterly out of place here that you couldn't help suspecting something fishy. Our party stopped two hundred yards from the gates—rushing into a strange city with this mob at night would take a special kind of crazy. The role of chief negotiator was assigned to me, by me. Setara's Shield had come off cooldown a few days back, so were I to come under attack, I'd escape without breaking a sweat. But, as I neared the gates, no attacks came, nor did the drow guard disappear behind them. Interestingly, I couldn't read his name, as it was written vertically and with round lettering that distantly resembled Arabic. Fair enough, let him remain the Joker. Coming to a stop a few dozen paces from the gates, I gave a scrutinizing look at the walls and, finding nothing suspicious, extended a greeting:
"Good evening!"
My voice ruptured the silence enveloping the city, thunder-like. The drow, who had been stroking the fur of a squirrel-like critter perched on his shoulder, looked up at me, the irises of his eyes flashing red in the moonlight.
"I wouldn't necessarily call it 'good,'" the guard spoke meditatively. "One hundred gold!"
"What about one hundred gold?" I asked.
"Price of admission," the drow shrugged, returning to his interrupted activity.
"For all of us?" I grunted, giving a reassuring gesture to Kan, standing still in the middle of the road behind me.
"Each," the drow replied calmly, stroking his pet squirrel.
Damn! Ten grand for an excursion through the spectral city wasn't cheap! That was counting George, whom Vaessa had summoned back at the platform with the stone elephants.
"And if we don't pay?" I asked insinuatingly.
"Then you'll enter without paying," he shrugged again in the same impassive tone.
How curious! I shifted my gaze at the symbol of the sun carved at the junction of the gate leaves, rolled my feet from the heel to the ball, folded my arms and got to thinking. This world may have been rapidly shedding its former game laws, but nothing happened here arbitrarily. The guard naturally would never divulge his reasons for requesting thirty kilos of gold, and most players would undoubtedly choose not to pay something that wasn't required. And they might never find out just what the door cover was for, unless, of course, they were to swiftly awaken at the bindstone, conveniently located at the foot of the staircase leading up to the terrace. The bindstone I'd never bothered to bind to, incidenta
lly, since I hadn't come here to die... Still, ten thousand gold! A million dollars in the old currency... Oh, the hell with the money—let it all burn!
"Catch," I tossed a leather satchel to Joker, having automatically transferred the right sum to it.
The drow caught the satchel with his right hand, and gave a soft sigh of what seemed like disappointment.
"Well, then... Welcome to Cathella, demon!" He threw open his arms and gave an uproarious laugh of a movie villain... before vanishing from the sight.
That very second, there came a screeching of metal. The gate leaves shuddered, then began rocking back and forth before falling at my feet with a deafening din.
Always with the showmanship, I sniffed cynically, giving the go-ahead to my commander, then started toward the open gates.
I watched in contemplation as the fighters skirted me and took their positions in the courtyard. Thus far, the landscape seemed to fully mirror the map of the city given to me by Vaessa on the day of our meeting. The city's three main streets branched out from the gates like sun rays. The left abutted the citadel way out in the distance. The middle led to some obscure rectangular construction inside which, according to the map, a bone dragon guarded Ingvar's gauntlets of valor. Because, you know, why wouldn't a dragon be guarding them? With the utmost fervor and dedication, I bet, sleeping with one eye open lest the precious gauntlets be lifted Bilbo Baggins' style. But I digress... The last main street ran from the gate and disappeared in the middle of either a city park or a graveyard—my skills in cartography weren't sufficient to know for sure. Thankfully, that point was also entirely inconsequential.
But, as one could have expected, it wasn't that simple. The streets were right there, yes, but the city was not... Or rather, it was, kind of, but not really. We were surrounded with deformed foundations of crumbling houses, heaps of debris, blackened pavement... All of which was shrouded in mist that seemed to have no natural origin. Visibility was decent within a hundred yards or so, but then congealed into an impenetrable wall that churned and folded in on itself. There didn't seem to be anyone around to welcome us, not counting the ubiquitous piles of bones that, judging by the skulls, belonged to relatives of the warriors from the terrace. I was no zoologist, but I could recognize an elephant's skull when I saw one. There was an old zoo museum back in Moscow that my mother would drop me and Alyona at while she went grocery shopping. The problem was, a fourteen-year-old boy at a zoo museum tasked with looking after his whining seven-year-old sister was likely to start losing his mind long before their mother could realistically be done with her shopping. On the plus side, he had all the time in the world to carefully examine the skull of a mammoth just right of the museum entrance, and remember it for the rest of his life.
Not that my superficial knowledge of zoology was of any use in terms of figuring out what we were supposed to do next! Wait till morning? Down here, how would we even know when morning came? At least the "where" of it seemed obvious enough—to the citadel, as the second fragment of the key had to be there. To be sure, Ingvar's gauntlets were an absolute necessity in my eyes, but after being here for a millennium, I reckoned they weren't going anywhere. The truth was that I really didn't give a damn about the continental event. This place wasn't a dungeon in the sense that it had to be completed—otherwise, why put a bindstone at the exit? Which meant we could split this joint at any moment. Now, sure, I hoped to be able to return here should everything go well, but deep in my gut I knew that wasn't going to happen. Once this mysterious prophecy ends one way or another, I would grab my wife, sister and Max, and take a much needed vacation somewhere like the local equivalent of the Canary Islands. For a minimum of fifty years or so... As for the gauntlets, they could stay here another thousand years under Velargass' dutiful watch. Hell, she probably had more use for them than I did...
"You mentioned dragons, prince?" Saverus' voice broke through my reveries of palm trees. Waving away one of his own, the mage walked toward a crater of clearly molten rock, bent down and traced his hand along the edge. Then he turned around, dusted off his hands, and said:
"The temperate of dragon fire at the exit center is three times higher than along the edges, and this is exactly the kind of mark dragon fire leaves on the rock." Rising to his feet, the mage pointed at a chunk of wall protruding from the debris, its edges burned off with heat. "The dragon came in from the west, and either changed course or picked up altitude right above us, since the exit tracks end here. The ditch itself has been filled with debris." Saverus looked up to the sky, and then at me. "This city was destroyed by dragons, prince, and I doubt we'll find even one whole construction here. The lords of the skies invariably finish what they've started..."
Interesting... I grunted. Were dragons on a quest of their own? Or did they suddenly decide to help me out on account of my being so awesome? At any rate, if the master was right, this meant half the job was already done! There was, however, one other strange thing...
"Vaessa," turning toward the demoness, I nodded at George standing to her right, and thrust my right thumb behind me. "Will your chick... I mean, will your dragon be able to do the same at some point?"
Judging by the necromancer's daughter's expression, she was just as astounded by the news. And why wouldn't she?! According to our information, Cathella was home to bone dragons, and the probability that some outsider had turned up and devastated their own city right in front of their noses was as far-fetched as it could get.
"Growing up in wild nature, he would be able to do this approximately fifteen hundred years after birth," Saverus replied for the demoness. "But a creature summoned by a powerful master or mistress of death could reach maturity much faster. Even so, his fire-breathing glands shouldn't come in for at least the next century, since bone dragons develop them much later in life than black or red dragons, who can breathe fire after their fifth birthday."
"All I knew was that by summoning him," Vaessa caressed George's muzzle, a blissful smile playing on her lips, "I pulled the soul of a black dragon from the depths of the Gray Frontier, and joined it with my own. But..." She gave the beast a gleeful once-over. "I can't say I'm upset at the thought of him breathing fire! Master mage," the necromancer's daughter looked to Saverus, still smiling. "What other skills can he learn?"
"Sewing, cooking, speaking without resorting to jarhead vulgarities," Reece sounded off from behind the dragon. "In a word, auntie, he'll learn everything you never could get a hang of."
"My dear boy," Vaessa chuckled, completely unfazed by his teasing. "Even you won't be able to spoil my mood for a good while longer!"
Kan, who had been instructing his officers nearby, walked over just in time to hear to hear the last part of that exchange. Looking first at Reece and then at Vaessa, he gave a forlorn shake of the head before addressing me:
"Have you decided?" he asked, gazing calmly at the wall of mist churning ahead.
It appeared that my commander didn't give a rat's ass who it was that had ravaged the city: dragons or field mice. I didn't share his calmness in the slightest, though he knew his troops better than I—perhaps they had some tricks up their sleeves even in the event of a dragon attack.
"We'll take the left road," I gestured left. "According to the map, that's where we'll find the citadel. "Oh, and Kan," I nodded at the mist blanketing the road, "don't let the scouts get too far from the main host. I have a premonition, though I couldn't explain it even if you asked."
"No need, I see everything myself," the knight-commanded nodded. Then he turned to his fighters, and spoke without raising his voice. "Everybody heard that? Fourth formation! Direction: northwest! Move out!"
"Stop!" Kan commanded when the billowing haze suddenly dissipated, revealing the dark bulk of the citadel.
The walls—composed of large, densely fitted stones—rose to around thirty feet, culminating in octagonal battlements that looked like colossal chest pieces. With sharp jags and narrow slits of apertures, the citadel loomed darkly ov
er the city ruins in the hazy light of the two moons obscured by clouds.
"Do you find it odd that the dragons left the fortress untouched?" the commander said musingly, without looking away from the gaping gate aperture.
"Maybe they holed up inside it?" I shrugged, motioning at the black statue of a dragon opposite the gate—wings spread in flight, enormous body covered in rhomboid scales, long neck arching, maw baring rows of razor-sharp teeth... The mysterious sculptor had captured the dragon at the moment of landing, as if the sixty-foot-tall reptile had found some cause to pay a courtesy call to the local ruler.
The statue was the sole surviving element of the courtyard, which was otherwise littered with bones blackened and deformed by dragon fire, then yellowed with age.
"The fortress is protected by some kind of strange spell," Saverus said with a frown, gesturing at the gate. "I'm afraid conventional methods won't get us inside. I have never encountered this kind of protection personally—to my shame, I can't even identify the type of magic used..." He shook his head despondently, then turned back to the group of mages clustered behind him. "Perhaps some of you could..."
"I can sense emanations from the Gray Frontier," elbowing her way from the rearguard alongside George, Vaessa bid her pet to halt, then walked over to us, adding: "I can't quite make out the defense either, although..." She gave the gate aperture another intent stare, and her face suddenly grew very serious.
"It seems to me, dar," she said contemplatively. "That it's the handiwork of someone we both know. I'd rather not speak his name aloud."
"Voldemort? He's here?!" I sniffed, then waved reassuringly in response to Vaessa's bemused stare. "Never mind! I know who you're talking about."
"Well, since you know, let's go see if my theory is right." She gave a nod to Kan and Saverus, then added, injecting a dose of formality into her tone. "Commander! Master! I need to test something out. Are you with us?"
