Into the Dragon's Den (Axe Druid Book 2)

by Christopher Johns

  I looked at her in impotent rage, and she chuckled, “Forgive me, a little paralyzing humor never killed anyone.”

  It took an hour for the others to try and figure out a way to get that goo off of me, but by the time they were ready to try it, the Dragon grew impatient and spat a great gout of—well, spit—on me, then used a plank of wood to scrape the fluids from my skin before Bokaj cast Purify on me twice.

  It helped to loosen me up significantly, but it was a few more minutes before I was able to fully shake the effects of the venom.

  By then, Set and the others had joined us, and Set pointed from Jaken to himself, then me and started to speak.

  “He says that he wants to explain things from the children’s perspective.” We all nodded and Ampharia settled into a good position. As Jaken translated the events from their perspective, we simply listened.

  “The children had been prepared by cleansing waters and ceremony before being taken to the pit. Each night the serpent would sit and stare at them, never moving, then leaving before daybreak. This was to be the final night that the ceremony took place and the serpent would eat them.” Jaken looked as confused as I felt. “A snake shouldn’t have that much trouble finding food, even just hunting at night. What’s so different about this one?”

  “The fact that this serpent is easily larger than even I am, though not as powerful,” Ampharia informed the Paladin. Jaken’s eyes widened as he looked at me for confirmation.

  “It’s true,” an involuntary shiver rocked my body at the memory, “and that thing is going to probably eat more kids.”

  “It will eat more children,” Ampharia explained. “Sit, I will tell you the tale.”

  We gathered on the inside of the building we took our meals in, and Ampharia took her Dragon-kin form to speak with us.

  “More than a century or so ago, a large, beautiful serpent wandered this jungle. A fair and just creature, one that I had even counted as a friend. She was obedient to the balance of nature—life and death—and all knew that she was a favored child of Mother Nature. She had lived far beyond the normal years of a serpent of her ilk, but her mother’s favor never once went to her head.”

  I looked at the others, they were taken in by the story. Jaken was even whispering the story to the children.

  “At some point though, the praise from the creatures around her did begin to wear on her. They sought her out so that they might also gain the favor of the Mother. They treated her as though she was the one who was worthy of worship and love and not the Mother.”

  Ampharia’s features darkened slightly, a sad look crossing over her. Her shoulders slouched slightly and drooped.

  “She began to set herself up as a goddess. If the Mother was responsible for the earth itself and all that grows upon it—why should she not be the goddess of the moon, whose beauty lights the night? So, she beguiled others into building her alter—likely where that village is—and then taking sacrifices. The night of her first sacrifice came after two nights staring at the creature so that it could fill all of its last memories with her beauty. And on the third night, she struck. The blood that was shed over her vanity saw her cursed. No longer can she endure the light of day. It would turn her to stone.”

  “So what do we do?” James asked. “If she’s as big as you say—there’s no way we can fight her and have it be fair.”

  “Yeah, I’m all for leaving this one alone to come back and fight another day,” Muu added.

  “And the fucking kids, man?!” Jaken looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. “What about the kids too? This thing needs to die to protect them. I don’t care if it’s not our fight—this whole fucking thing has ‘our fight’ all over it to me.”

  “Yeah, and we need the experience!” Yohsuke interjected. “Every little bit helps.”

  “Yeah, it does. Speaking of,” I pulled the bow out of my inventory and handed it to its rightful owner.

  “Yo, Forester looks tight!” Bokaj stopped and stared at it then a look of excitement dawned on his face. “I have an idea!”

  Over the next fifteen minutes, he had a rough outline for us to try and follow. Half an hour after that, there was a flurry of motion on all of our parts. We couldn’t risk more kids falling victim to a false deity, let alone a giant fucking snake.

  This was going to take an insane amount of luck, but who knew if it would work.

  This plan is… creative. The owl’s voice echoed through my mind. There is a vole on your right, thirty feet from the leftmost bush. It has stilled.

  After an hour of collection, I used Teleport to get us closer to the village while saving some energy. From there, we waited the half an hour needed for it to finish cooling down, then moved toward the village. We had left the children behind with the green Dragon promising to come back—successful or not, we were going to come back.

  The villagers and guards were gathered at the back of the area, near where I had found the kids, and Lothir was on a warpath.

  “Find theeeem!” she moaned. “My sssacrificess! My beauty needs to be reaffirmed in the sight of the moon!”

  Bokaj was behind us, but he spoke to us telepathically, No fucking around, guys. Hit hard, hit fast, and melt away. Guerilla warfare up in this bitch.

  A couple of us nodded. I summoned Coal and ordered him to stay close to Tmont, then I did my part and shapeshifted into my owl form before flying into the air. I watched as Jaken strode forward, and the people began to take notice of our presence.

  Atuala stepped forward in front of Lothir and pointed accusingly toward the group. “It was you! The Druid who took our young children from us, was from your group!”

  “Yeah—we don’t like shit eating kids around us” Bokaj flashed a lopsided grin.

  “And I bet that the poor snake there is hungry, right?” James shouted.

  When no one answered, Jaken took that as the time to shout, “Hey, you big legless dick, come get some!” There was a bag that reminded me of a horror movie Santa Clause’s sack over his shoulder that writhed and wriggled and he looked ready to fight.

  Lothir hissed loudly and bowled over a couple of the villagers on her way toward Jaken.

  A majority of them were intelligent enough to realize the ground was no longer safe for them to be on. Those ones fled into the trees. The guards began to try and fire arrows at us but stopped when they risked hitting Lothir from their current vantage points. Tmont rushed from her master’s side toward where some of them had gone to flank us, and I sent Coal to go and join her in causing mayhem.

  Yohsuke began to fire potshots with his Astral Bolts at her eyes. Then Bokaj began to do the same. When Lothir was close enough to lunge at Jaken—which she happily did—she got a mouth full of that bag full of jungle rodents, that was then hit with a Fireball Arrow. I felt Muu take the planned step off my back from where I circled above the great serpent’s writhing form. She wiggled left and right, but Muu would have his fun.

  As the dragoon began to drop, Lothir reared, and it looked like she would be able to dodge his attack, but a pair of green wings reminiscent of Ampharia’s own burst from his back. They flared, turning him on his course slightly, then tucked around him, and he dove even faster toward her. His ice lance sank deep into her back just at the base of her skull. Then I shifted into my fox form before going Belgar and dropping face on that bitch. As I plummeted toward her, her jaws were forced wide as trees and tree limbs began to sprout out of her mouth.

  Forester had activated in all the small animals we had killed with that one Fireball arrow just as we had suspected. I glanced against a tree, bouncing away from it a little, then connected with her right eye, goring the black orb. She hissed, and I heard a crack next to me. I shifted out of my Belgar form and into my fox-man form and did something disastrously stupid.

  “PIE!” I roared as I pulled out Storm Caller and activated Wind Scythe and threw it above Lothir’s head.

  I used Blade Shift and teleported to my weapon just in ti
me for Muu to rocket past me.

  “Sup?” We greeted each other, then I focused my will to cast Aspect of the Ursolon. The expected changes washed over me like a warm shower.

  I pulled Magus Bane into my left hand, brought it one handed above my head next to Storm Caller in my right hand. In my enlarged form, both weapons fit closely in my hands but not well enough. So, I took them back into each hand and readied myself. As I began to fall, I used what little time I had to check on my friends.

  Muu was above me, duh, but James was fighting against warriors that had run forward to protect the wanna-be goddess. Bokaj was firing arrows into both the crowd rushing toward us and the gigantic snake. The snake wasn’t getting too hurt, but the trees had hurt her quite a bit, and I hated to admit it, but Muu’s attack had done some serious damage too.

  Lothir’s HP bar had fallen to forty-five percent, going down by slight, slight increments here and there. Jaken was in front of the snake, then on the side, his shield floating beside him, and his longsword was parrying blows from Atuala as Jaken slashed at Lothir with his greatsword.

  Yohsuke was slashing at the scaled underbelly before him, then casting a random Astral Bolt into the crowd behind the serpent in an effort to try and help James.

  Coal was sticking close to Yohsuke as well, but the damage he was doing was negligible at best. But he was trying his hardest.

  Hey, you want a push? Muu’s question brought me back to the present.

  If you would be so kind. A feral grin stretched across my jaws. I heard a whistle behind me and looked up to see Muu behind me with his legs bent like he was about to jump.

  I did the same with mine, and as soon as our boots met, he grunted through our earrings, Now!

  He and I both pushed with all our might, and I shot forward and plummeted faster toward Lothir. Before I knew it, I was beside her neck and jaw. While her jaw was dislodged trying to work at either ejecting the growing trees or swallowing them, it was vulnerable.

  I activated Cleave and struck with both weapons in unison. Lothir hissed in pain and rage and as she moved, I saw something of interest. A tear in the skin turned into a large wound that showed a pinkish, bulb-looking thing with a muscle behind it.

  Muu! Hit her here, and don’t let the insides touch you! He was high enough to have time to see her thrashing and my pointing at the wound.

  I watched him pull his short spear from his inventory and line up his shot. He drove his arm forward, and the glint of moonlight off his bracelet was almost distracting. If I hadn’t heard the whine of his spear piercing the air, I wouldn’t have known he had thrown anything. It looked like it hit just below it, but when Lothir reared and shook again, I watched some of the same venom that had hit my chest begin to slowly secrete down the blade.

  Get out from under her left side! I panicked and called to the others. If that venom touches you, you’re paralyzed and done for! That happens to any one of us, and we are fucked!

  “Got it!” Jaken called as he worked his way to her right side.

  The great serpent didn’t appear to be slowing down at all. Then it hit me.

  Snakes are immune to their own venom, and I just made the playing field a minefield. Fuck!

  I dropped to the ground in a dry spot—thankfully—and rolled to my feet. I turned and kept my eyes on Lothir.

  Lothir’s health was dropping lower slowly. Muu dropped back down on the top of her head with another monstrous strike—or he would have—if not for the arrow that pushed him slightly off track. So instead of hitting her head again, he hit ten feet back and did considerably less damage. I saw two arrows snap in Wrokal’s chest as he lined up his next shot, then Tmont was on top of him.

  Jaken, flatten your shield for me—I need a platform, I called to my friend telepathically, and he made a nod. The shield flattened as I put Storm Caller away.

  I took Magus Bane in both my hands and kissed it softly. “Come on, baby.”

  I charged forward and used the shield as a platform to leap up from before Jaken put it back to use a split-second later. I was shy of my mark, so I dug my clawed left hand into the side of the snake and swung myself up on to her back. I ran up and over. Finally, the trees had been dislodged from inside her mouth, so Lothir was thrashing harder than before and was more dangerous now.

  She tried to spit some of her venom at James, but he dodged out of the way, and the less controlled shot hit some of her followers. She hissed in frustration and reared up a little further. The motion shook me from my feet and over the left-hand side of her head.

  I activated Devil’s Hammer and smacked the counterweight of Muu’s short spear with the hammer counterbalance on Magus Bane. The weapon shot into her head, and she screeched. Blood fountained from the wound and some hit me on my way down again.

  I watched as a Volley, one of Bokaj’s spells, hit Lothir from just in front of her face. She opened her mouth and arrows shot in. A Ki blast hit her full on in her good eye, and the arrows kept coming. Finally, I got an experience notification, and Lothir’s body began to list to the side. I threw my axe away from me in the direction of Atuala who was still fighting my friends, then shapeshifted into my owl form.

  As she fell, more of her people who had been trying to fight us began trying to crowd away from her, but some didn’t make it and got crushed. Where she fell, roots began shooting from her body and into the ground, regardless of what was there in front of them. A couple of the people who had fallen when they were running from the fake god were impaled by the roots searching for the ground.

  The grisly scene was enough to almost turn my stomach.

  I turned to see Atuala trying to bury an axe into Jaken’s back as he collected his weapons from where they had fallen. I threw a Winter Blade at him and watched as it severed his spine. The Elf dropped, and Yohsuke was suddenly there with his astral blade buried in his skull.

  Bokaj called from his perch on a rooftop in the boughs of a tree, “Your leaders are dead. Your priest is dead. You can clearly see that your so-called god is turning into a tree.”

  The angry citizens watched him as he stood there with his arms wide for people to see him.

  “Do you really want to continue to fuck with us?” he shouted so loudly that his voice was beginning to break. “We don’t want to kill you all.”

  I turned and saw a good majority of the villagers putting their weapons aside. Some held on to them and gritted their teeth at the prospect of surrender. One of the Elves even readied a javelin and took a few paces back. As he took three steps forward to launch it, Coal leaped on to his back, and the projectile’s flight arced way left of our Ranger. Coal savaged the back of his body and exposed neck.

  The wet sound of tearing and chewing was audible all the way over to me. After the villager stopped moving, Coal stood and growled at all of the villagers around him. They backed away and began to put their weapons down as well if they hadn’t already.

  Jaken stepped in front of them and began to shout in Fae-Orc. I’d have to see if he could translate for us later, but the people began to gather what dead they could and started to drag them into a pile.

  Well, with them doing that and the relieved look on his face—I could imagine that it had been something to that effect.

  I had notifications, but I could look at those later. Right now, I wanted to check on my friends.

  Everyone okay? I called out through our earrings.

  Ouch, Muu groaned. I looked over at the still-growing tree coming from Lothir’s corpse. I saw him hanging limply from a tree limb a few feet from the ground with his arm wiggling at us.

  I looked over and saw James limping toward me. Yohsuke followed along behind him looking beaten up but alive.

  Bokaj answered, I’m good, man, but Tmont is hurt down there somewhere, and she’s pissed. Can you find her?

  I held a hand up with only my thumb visible in affirmation.

  I turned around and began to call for her, then cast Aspect of the Owl.

&n
bsp; Aspect of the Owl – The Primal Warrior’s mind isn’t just the sharpest tool he has with this aspect.

  Perception and sight increased 100%, +10 wisdom

  Oh, fuck yes. This was a caster’s wet dream right here.

  I shook my head with my eyes closed and then began to look for the great panther in earnest. After a moment, I found her skulking in the shadows ten feet from a dead body. Her leg was pinned to the ground by a root that had shot through like an arrow.

  As I approached her, she yowled at me angrily, “Do not touch it!”

  “T, I have to so that I can heal you,” I reasoned with her. I took a few more steps forward, and she swatted my way with a hiss.

  “Your tails will feel nothing but my wrath if you do it!” she hissed at me, but I just growled at the threat.

  I cast Ensnare on her and bound her so tightly to the ground that she could only yowl and spit piteously while I worked. I chopped straight through the root that pinned her as far from her leg as I could. After I pulled it and she threatened me again, I tapped her leg affectionately, and she cried out.

  “Stop being a bag of dicks and let me help you already!” I pulled the root from her flesh as quickly as I could, but it took a couple tugs.

  She panted, and her eyes looked bleary. Her HP was low when I pulled the root fully from her. I focused myself and used my Charge Spell ability. A full twenty seconds later, I cast Regrowth on her, and her health began to climb at an alarming rate. Expected, but this was the first time I had used that ability with a heal. Awesome results.

  By the time I had finished healing her, Bokaj had jogged over and began to see to her himself. She didn’t have the highest health, but her pain tolerance was low, so she was hamming it up for the attention he would give her. Typical cat.

  Jaken was seeing to Muu, and the villagers had decided to give us a very wide berth as we saw to the aftermath. None of the villagers struck down by the roots of the tree had been so lucky as Tmont. We didn’t ransack their corpses in front of their community.

  Winning the hearts and minds—yay us!