The Adventurer's Guide to Dragons (and Why They Keep Biting Me)

by Wade Albert White

  “How are we supposed to climb that?” said Penelope.

  “I don’t think we can,” said Anne. “And I don’t see another way up.”

  They walked back outside. The tower had been built with large, rough, ill-fitted stones. The exterior had been weathered smoother over time, but the seams and gaps between the stones still offered multiple hand- and footholds.

  “I think we can do it,” said Anne.

  “But you just said there was no way up,” said Hiro.

  “Inside the tower,” said Anne. “The outside should work just fine. We can climb this. If we stick to the side facing away from the volcano, we’ll also be protected from the heat.”

  Hiro groaned. “But that’s over the trench.”

  “Look at it this way,” said Penelope. “If we fall, we’ll only experience a few seconds of sheer terror before getting smashed to pieces.”

  “The sooner we climb, the sooner we finish,” said Anne. She placed one foot on a jutting stone, reached a hand to grab another stone above, and pulled herself up. In no time at all, she was ten feet above the ground.

  “Come on,” she said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “Wonderful,” said Hiro. Despite his misgivings, Hiro followed behind Anne, using the same handholds and footholds that she had. Penelope came last.

  At first, they made quick progress. Then about halfway up, Anne paused. The only available handhold was to the side. She took it, but the next usable handhold was also to the side.

  “Why are we going around the tower?” asked Hiro.

  “It’s the only path I can find,” said Anne. “But at least we won’t be over the trench anymore.”

  “This is bad,” said Hiro. “Very, very bad.”

  “Just keep climbing,” said Anne.

  Anne had to keep going sideways until they were practically to the tower’s other side. Though the explosions had abated, it was hotter, the ash fell more thickly, and the air was filled with small burning particles. Finally, Anne found handholds leading upward again, and she climbed swiftly. She had almost reached the upper window when the wall above her became completely smooth.

  “What’s the holdup?” came Penelope’s voice from below. “It’s not exactly sunbathing weather out here.”

  “There aren’t any more handholds,” said Anne.

  Penelope craned her neck to see. “What about the windowsill?”

  Anne reached up, but she was at least half an arm-length short.

  “It’s too far,” she called down.

  “What if you jumped?”

  “What?”

  “I said, what if you jumped?” Penelope repeated.

  “I could die, that’s what!”

  “Well, that’s pretty much a guarantee if we stay out here much longer.”

  Anne stared at the windowsill. Her chances of making it were fifty-fifty at best. Then, even if she made the leap, the windowsill might give way under her weight. She shook her head. She could either go back down, hang here all night playing out possible scenarios, or…

  Anne leapt.

  For one heart-stopping moment she hung in the air. Her hand touched the stone of the windowsill, and she clamped onto it with all her strength. She pulled her body upward and managed to hook her opposite elbow over the sill. Once she did that, it was easy (relatively speaking) to pull herself up and inside.

  She didn’t stop to rest; she turned around and hung back out of the window.

  “I’ll catch you,” she called down to Hiro.

  Hiro reached up. They locked arms, wrist to elbow, and Anne helped him up. Penelope followed quickly behind. Since she was taller, she could just reach the window on her own.

  Hiro collapsed against a wall and closed his eyes. “No more climbing.”

  “Come on,” said Anne. “We have to keep moving.”

  Anne, Penelope, and Hiro ran across the bridge to the second tower, whose interior staircase was undamaged. They flew down the stairs and soon exited out the tower’s main door, practically stumbling into the courtyard where the broken airship lay.

  Panting, Anne looked around and said, “Where could they possibly have gone?”

  Penelope pointed at the ground.

  The ash was falling fast and furiously, but they could still see two sets of footprints leading away from the airship and toward a large stone building on the other side of the courtyard. Naturally, the building was engulfed in flames.

  “They must have taken shelter in there,” said Anne.

  Hearing a muffled cry from the building, Anne, Penelope, and Hiro sprinted across the cobblestones and burst through the front door.

  Emmanuelle was lying on the floor in the middle of a large room. Valerian was wielding a wooden chair like a lion tamer and trying to fend off a beetle larger than an iron knight. The beetle pulsed with bright yellow, orange, and red light, like a piece of living lava. Every time the chair touched the beetle, the wood burst into flame. Even worse, wherever the beetle stepped, it scorched the floor and left a burning hole. Through these holes they could see that more lava was streaming in beneath the floor and pooling between the foundation walls.

  Anne and Hiro ran over to Emmanuelle. She was dazed but still conscious, and they helped her to her feet. Meanwhile, Penelope drew her wooden sword and rushed over to assist Valerian. She swung at the beetle’s carapace, but the wooden blade burst into flames on contact. She waved the sword around until the flames went out, and then she and Valerian backed away and joined the others.

  “What is that thing?” Penelope shouted over the roar of the flames.

  “Lava beetle,” said Valerian. “We came in here to get the eyes, but that thing attacked us before we could reach them.”

  “Where are they?” asked Anne.

  “Over there,” said Valerian. He pointed to the other side of the room to a giant statue of a woman in flowing robes. The lava beetle stood directly in their path.

  “I’ll help you remove them,” said Emmanuelle.

  “You three head for the statue,” said Penelope. “We’ll deal with this thing.”

  Penelope and Valerian rushed at the beetle, hollering at the top of their lungs. It lunged at them, but they jumped back in time. Its feet left new sizzling holes in the floor.

  Anne and Hiro led Emmanuelle around the perimeter of the room, well away from the holes and the fighting. As they reached the statue, Emmanuelle leaned in close and spoke to them. “I can’t reach the head, and there isn’t time to find something to stand on, so you two are going to have to do this. You must remove the eyes one at a time, starting with the right one. To extract them, push on the eye and turn it at the same time, first a quarter turn to the left, and then two quarter turns to the right. You only get one chance. Any other movement will lock the eye to the statue permanently.”

  “Understood,” said Anne.

  “You’ll need this,” said Emmanuelle, and she handed Anne a leather bag with a strap. Anne wasn’t sure why she would need it, but she slung it over her shoulder anyway.

  “We’ll help you up,” said Hiro.

  The statue was easily twice as tall as the average person, taller even than Rokk. Hiro and Emmanuelle clasped their hands together and boosted Anne up the side of the statue. She held on to the statue’s leg and stepped up onto Hiro’s shoulders. He grunted but remained steady. From there she was able to swing up into the statue’s hand.

  The building was burning, and Penelope and Valerian shouted as they fought the lava beetle, which crashed around the room. Anne did her best to ignore the chaos and focus on the task at hand. They needed those eyes. She shinnied up the arm until she reached the head. Then she gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Hiro.

  “The eyes, they’re huge,” said Anne.

  The statue was huge, so in a way it made perfect sense, but it wasn’t what Anne had been expecting. The eyes were as big as her fist. She looked down at Emmanuelle. “I thought you said these were your eyes.”r />
  “They are,” said Emmanuelle. “I had them magickally altered to match the statue. That way, even if someone came here looking for them, they would be unlikely to suspect the statue as the hiding place. But the eyes will still function as needed. Trust me.”

  Under the circumstances, Anne had little choice. She studied the statue’s face. It looked like a much younger version of Emmanuelle.

  “Wait, the right eye is missing,” said Anne.

  “What do you mean?” asked Emmanuelle.

  “I mean it’s gone,” said Anne. “Someone has already taken it.” She didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

  “We’ll worry about that later. Take the other one,” said Emmanuelle.

  Anne placed her hand on the left eye. It filled her palm. Even though it was made of stone, this still felt like a weird thing to do. She took a deep breath, and in one swift motion pushed inward while simultaneously turning the orb, first a quarter turn to the left, and then two quarter turns to the right. There was a soft click, and the eye dropped out of the socket. It was heavier than Anne had expected, but she caught it and stuffed it into the leather bag.

  “Got it,” she called down.

  “Watch out!” shouted Hiro.

  The floor buckled and the statue shifted forward slightly. Anne slid down the arm and dropped to the floor. She and Hiro guided Emmanuelle to the side along the wall, where the floor seemed more stable. The lava beetle was forcing Penelope and Valerian toward the statue.

  This gave Anne an idea. “Pen, be ready to move,” she shouted.

  Penelope raised her sword in acknowledgment.

  “Give me a hand again,” Anne said to Hiro and Emmanuelle, and they moved behind the statue. Together, they pushed on the base, steadily rocking it back and forth. As the beetle came closer, Anne judged the moment and shouted, “Now!”

  Penelope and Valerian dove to the side, and Anne, Hiro, and Emmanuelle gave a final push that toppled the statue over. It struck the lava beetle dead center and drove it through the weakened floor.

  Everyone gathered together, huddling in a group. The room was completely engulfed in flames, and the floor was so full of holes there was no longer any safe path back to the door.

  “We won’t last much longer in here,” said Hiro.

  “Now would be a great time to answer that emergency signal, Nana,” Anne whispered to herself.

  No sooner had she spoken than the floor gave way completely. The boards beneath their feet splintered, and they dropped straight toward the pool of lava below.

  Anne opened her mouth to scream—

  —only to be cut off by a green flash of light.

  Once the fireball had dissipated, Anne found herself standing on a ring-shaped tier with a large hole in the center. There were a few trees and scraggly bushes and not much else. The tier’s inner rim was constructed of carefully hewn stones decorated with intricate symbols. Far below, the BGFM was visible. Gauging by the sun, it looked to be late afternoon, meaning they had traveled yet another sixteen hours. One sixteen-hour fireball could probably be attributed to any number of odd occurrences. Two seemed like more than mere coincidence.

  A tall gray figure approached.

  “Hello, my name is Rokk,” said Rokk.

  Anne was surprised to see him. “How did you get here?”

  The robot surveyed their surroundings. “I do not recall. I am currently experiencing a gap in my memory.”

  “Don’t you see?” said Penelope. “Nana sent him. She received Jeffery’s emergency signal, fireballed us here, and sent Rokk along, too, since she couldn’t come with us herself. He just doesn’t remember because that blast he took in the library still has him off-kilter.”

  “I suppose so,” said Anne. She turned to Emmanuelle and Valerian. “This is Rokk. He’s a… friend of ours.”

  “Nice to meet you, Rokk,” said Emmanuelle.

  “So where are we now?” asked Hiro as he dusted flakes of ash from his shoulders.

  “Hopefully, exactly where we need to be to retrieve the sword,” said Emmanuelle, as Valerian led her by the arm to join the rest of the group.

  “This is the right place,” said Valerian. “I recognize it from your notes.”

  “I’ve never seen a tier shaped like this,” said Anne.

  “That’s because it’s technically not a tier. It’s an Old World device known as an archway,” Emmanuelle said. “They were used as a means of travel.” She held out her hand. “The eye, please.”

  Anne took the large stone orb out of her pocket and handed it to Emmanuelle. In the full light of day, she saw that even though it felt like stone, it was actually semitransparent and the inner structures of the eye were clearly visible.

  “Do you think the Copper Knights took the other one?” asked Anne.

  “Let’s hope not,” said Emmanuelle. Anne had originally been expecting Emmanuelle to put the eye back in her eye socket, but given the size of it, this was obviously not possible. “There should be a pillar somewhere on the ring, roughly waist-high and made of black stone.”

  Everyone except Emmanuelle spread out to look for it. After only a few minutes of searching, Anne nearly walked into just such a pillar as she forced her way through a clump of bushes.

  “Over here,” she called.

  The others joined her. Rokk cleared away the bushes with a single swipe of his hand so that they could fully access the pillar. Emmanuelle stepped forward.

  “Activate archway,” she said.

  A small opening appeared on the top of the pillar, and a black sphere the size of Anne’s fist rose out of it and into the air.

  “Please stand by for retinal scan,” said a voice from the sphere.

  Emmanuelle held the stone eyeball up to her face. A red beam of light shot out from the sphere and swept over the eye.

  “Identity verified,” said the voice. “Now activating archway. For your safety, please remain behind the yellow line until the iris is fully opened.”

  It was only then that Anne noticed a faded yellow line that edged the stone along the inner rim of the ring-shaped tier. In the center of the hole, a pinpoint of light appeared and grew until it extended to the stone rim. Where moments before there had been only empty space and a long drop, there was now a smooth barrier like the surface of a dark, murky pool.

  “So, where’s the sword?” asked Anne, with a sneaking suspicion she already knew the answer.

  Emmanuelle pointed toward the barrier. “In there.”

  A BRIEF ORIGIN OF THE THREE-HANDED SWORD

  Once upon a time there was a powerful warrior. She was fierce in battle, and she was fierce out of battle, and she was even fierce when asking someone to pass the salt at the dinner table because that’s just how she was. But there was one creature she had been unable to defeat, no matter how fiercely she fought. So she went to the greatest swordsmith in all the land.

  “Can you make a weapon to defeat the beast?” asked the warrior.

  “I can,” said the smith. “It will be the most powerful weapon the world has ever known, the most lethal weapon the world has ever known, and the most beautiful weapon the world has ever known.”

  The smith set to work. It took an entire year, and when the smith finished, everyone agreed the sword was indeed the most powerful, the most lethal, and the most beautiful weapon ever made. It was also, as it turned out, the most expensive, and the bill for it bankrupted three small kingdoms. The smith gave the weapon to the warrior, and the warrior used it to slay the creature, and the people rejoiced. And then the following week a major earthquake hit and killed everyone because that’s the sort of thing that happens when you choose to live on a major fault line.

  Meanwhile, far away in another kingdom, a thirteen-year-old girl crafted the Three-Handed Sword one afternoon in a homemade forge in her backyard because she thought it would be “totally awesome.”

  The Blade of Fifteen Fingers

  And what exactly is ‘in there’?” as
ked Anne.

  Valerian picked up a small stone and hurled it at the barrier. It struck dead center and passed through, sending ripples across the surface. As the tiny waves reached the edge of the archway, Anne caught a glimpse of a deep pit on the other side with hundreds of crystalline formations growing out from the walls. What little she saw of a bottom far below appeared flat and featureless.

  Penelope whistled. “That’s a long way down.”

  The word down echoed strangely off the barrier as the ripples dissipated and the surface became smooth and opaque once again.

  “How are we supposed to get to the bottom?” she asked.

  The word bottom echoed loudly.

  “Don’t worry,” said Emmanuelle. “We managed to rescue at least a few supplies before abandoning ship.”

  Emmanuelle opened her pack and took out a coil of rope, which she slung over her shoulder. She also produced a long metal peg with a spike on one end and a loop in the other end, like a giant needle.

  Hiro turned to Anne. “I thought we agreed no more climbing?”

  Emmanuelle held out the peg. “Someone will need to anchor this.”

  Rokk took the peg from her, stepped back several paces, and rammed it into the ground, causing a minor tremor. “I believe that will hold,” he said.

  “You’re definitely a handy fellow to have around,” said Emmanuelle.

  Valerian led Emmanuelle over to the peg, and she looped the rope through the hole and tied it off. Then they moved back to the edge and she threw the rope over. Anne watched it pass through the surface of the archway and disappear.

  “What if it doesn’t reach?” asked Penelope.