The Lone Dragon Knight

by D. C. Clemens

  The Lone Dragon Knight

  By D.C. Clemens

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Prologue

  Staring out a tall, thin window was a young woman with a golden waterfall for hair. She donned a flowing white gown, which reflected the silky moonlight that cut through the glass, giving her a divine glow. It was a warm night, so the cool gray stone felt nice under her bare feet. She turned when she heard the nursery door open.

  “What did you see?” she asked the old woman ambling into the spacious bedroom. Her deep green eyes gained a sheen of concern when she caught the old woman’s drained expression. She instinctively drew closer to the stalwart, bearded man that had been standing nearby. “Gods, what is it, Clair?”

  The wrinkled woman sat on a small divan by the window. She had not wanted to exhibit her feeling of dismay in front of the queen, a young woman she had known as a babe, but her mind was much too weary to hold back the truth. She needed to recover a moment.

  “My queen,” said the seer after taking that moment. “Forgive me, my visions are rarely so… vivid.”

  “And what does that entail?” asked the lofty king. “Is Odet still asleep?”

  “Aye, my lord. Soundly. Your newest daughter remains undisturbed by my endeavor. What you must know, my lords, is that no vision, even the most pristine, is faultless. The gods themselves admit as much.”

  “Yes, Clair, we are aware of the impreciseness of even the best seers, but your visions have admirably aided Alslana for decades. There might not even be a kingdom today if your gift did not help guide Leandra’s family. So what did you see in Odet?”

  The old woman sighed hoarsely before raising her coal colored eyes to meet the queen’s. “I saw her as a young woman, my lords. As striking as her mother. She was walking down a mountain path with Beatrice and a younger child.”

  “Another child?” asked the king.

  “Yes. Another girl, in fact. This one has your darker hair, my king.”

  The royal parents smiled at one another, but the old woman kept her stern reserve.

  “They were in the middle of a pleasant walk, laughing and relishing each other’s company, but then a great shadow swooped over them all. I tried to look up at the reason for the darkening sun, but its dense power did not allow me a glimpse. They ran hard, but whatever was chasing them always stayed above their heads. They reached the border of the western capital. This was where Odet stopped. She made a choice. She would fight to defend her sisters and her people. I was proud as you would be… but then it roared. Gods, how it roared. It rattled my bones and forced her to shed tears from her stoic face. A torrent of flame showered down upon her. She held her ground, lifted her arms, and cast her family’s ancient shield. The spirit shield held against the flames, but the inferno only burned more ferociously around her. It reached the capital and began turning everything to ash. Blocking her completely from my sight were two vast wings of shadow. My trance was broken by another roar.”

  Chapter One

  I couldn’t remember who I was. I couldn’t even remember when the serrated chain-whip had been embedded around my left arm, or what it once belonged to. I only knew that the curved teeth were as dark a red as dried blood. There came a point when my past no longer mattered. Nothing did. The boiling pain coursing my veins at every second of the day removed any real semblance of thought. However, I did recognize one thing—some hard bread and muddy water came into my lightless, dank cell if I killed whatever I was presented.

  Time was impossible to keep track of, so I didn’t know how often it happened, but my cell gate would occasionally slide open, signaling me to step out into the arena. Lit by unknown means, and burning my tender eyes, three paltry torchlights would then light up the curving wall of stone that rose fifteen feet to a domed ceiling. Ten yards away, just beyond another cell gate, a section of the stone wall would open. A brutish creature would come through it every time.

  The first one I remembered with any clarity was a scrawny wolf. Its wall closed behind the fuming beast and its gate skidded open to release it into the arena. The desperately hungry jaws bit down on my leg before I gouged out one of its eyes with my fumbling fingers. Killing it required a few blows to its head with a fist sized rock I found on the dirt ground.

  Other times I faced snarling, rabid dogs, along with other beasts whose names often escaped me. There were these thick things with coarse hair and tusks in their mouth, and there was once a three-eyed, two-legged, hairy thing a little less than my size. I quickly learned to use my jagged arm on them, especially on those that had a tendency to use their jaws as a weapon. I would get them to bite down on the barbed arm and then lash out with a punch, kick, or rock. It took a lot of energy to kill something with nothing but sheer brutality. I perhaps should have felt some amount of remorse as they yelped or choked on their blood, but I wasn’t permitted to experience such things, or anything at all. If I tried to think on my own, my back would burn as though it was being branded by a searing piece of iron.

  I lost consciousness after any victory I had. I would revive in my locked cell with a bowl of water, a plate of bread, and an empty bucket. There would even be fresher rags for me to wear every now and then. There ultimately came a time when I faced off against other people. They were feral, malnourished beings, and the closest thing I had to a mirror. Physically, they were actually easier to kill than the beasts. Consciously, they were about the same.

  When the torches lit up for my next challenger, a long sliver of dull steel glinted on the ground. Soon after I picked up the rusty short sword, the other gate opened to reveal a man wielding the same weapon. He slashed away at me, but I treated his sword no differently than teeth and claws. His blade caught on one of my chain-teeth long enough for me to run my blade through his stomach. He crumpled to the floor with a gurgled shout. The scream was cut short when my sword pierced his neck.

  This was my life for anywhere between a month to a thousand centuries.

  Chapter Two

  I awoke from my dreamless sleep on my back, the only way I could sleep without my jagged chain cutting into my skin. My cell opened, but something already felt different. I stepped out into the total darkness. It stayed dark for a long time. Then the wall beyond the second cell gate opened to reveal the brightest light my eyes had ever seen. My instinct told me a falling sun was responsible, but after I recovered from the initial blindness, I saw that the luminance came from a simple torch, only much brighter than the ones that hung from the wall.

  Carrying the flame was a sane looking young man wearing a crimson cloak. Though lean, the brown topped boy still looked fat to me. Walking alongside him was an older, but still unwrinkled, red haired woman. She wore a cherry colored cloak as well.

  Despite my reaction to
all others who had entered this domain, my feet were nailed to the ground. Somewhere in the unknowable depths of my mind, a bubble burst. Its echo told me that I should be attacking them, but an unseen force compelled me to do nothing more than stare at the ground as they drew nearer.

  As the woman looked me over, the holder of flame said, “I still don’t understand. What makes him a failure? None of the other subjects have come close to doing what he’s done.”

  The woman’s clean, pale hand lifted my chin so that she could stare into my limp eyes. I simply looked past her. She let my head drop and said, “Our master requires perfection, not ‘good enough.’ The subject’s combat skill is indeed at a high level, but his body is still not completely assimilating with the corruption.”

  “How can you tell?”

  She took my right arm and turned it so that its underside became visible. “See the laceration by his elbow? Similar wounds have healed within five days. This one has been in this state for eight. No, the corruption is doing more harm than good at this point. It won’t be long until it begins to eat away at more than his memory. I give him another five years before the insanity creeps into his psyche.”

  “Five? Most have gone crazy in less than one. He’s already been exposed for two.”

  As she pulled out a thin metal chain from underneath her cloak, she said, “I’ve seen this level of assimilation before.” The end of the chain had a collar, which she opened to put around my neck before locking it again. “I might be off by a few months, but it’s inevitable.” The veteran handed the apprentice the end of the chain. “Still, he has been rather valuable. Now we know who to look for in our next expedition. Take him to be cleaned and give him some of our more decent clothes. His buyer doesn’t like to feel like he’s gotten anything cheap.”

  I was led down the tunnel and into a side room, where I entered a metal tub filled with ice cold water, though it wasn’t all that bothersome. If anything, the numbing sensation it brought over my scorching body was as pleasant as any sensation beforehand. After my handler spent a few minutes scrubbing my face and torso, I was pulled out of the tub and given some dry, plain clothes to wear. Before I put on my tunic, my handler wrapped a strip of cloth around my left arm, likely hoping that prevented me from tearing up the attire.

  After a long walk through some dimly lit tunnels, where I sensed the air become crisper at every step, we entered a particularly narrow passageway. At its end was the woman from before. She placed her hand on the flat rock wall and a small flowery rune simmered with a yellowish glow before fading away. The wall responded by quietly sliding open, allowing a brisk breeze to enter the space. A strange, almost blue light also invaded my vision.

  I wanted to acclimate to this odd gleam, but I was forced to walk into the light, my thin sandals stepping on to a white, powdery material. As I was made to continue my walk through a silent woodland, I saw that the light came from a huge icy orb hanging in the sky. I knew its name, but it was back in my cell. Why was I missing that cell?

  My short stroll took me to a brown horse with a dark mane. It was strapped to a small cart that I was pulled into when the man took a seat in it. The woman hopped on the beast and grabbed the reins, snapping them to begin a leisurely trot. As they did not speak much, only the stamping hooves and the churning wheels crunching the snow produced any kind of noise in this new, wide open world.

  The youth seemed wary of me, his light brown eyes twitching over my figure every so often. I didn’t know why he was nervous. I only moved with the cart’s eccentricity, and my own eyes, when they weren’t idly staring at the cart’s cracked floor, were busy examining my new environment.

  For some time we traversed the empty woods, but as the sky brightened, we reached a smoother trail. This we followed toward the rising ball of flame. I hated the strengthening light. Even the minimal heat it offered was unpleasant. I was forced to shut my struggling eyes for the next few hours, only sporadically opening them so that I could try to get accustomed to the penetrating beams. When the rays were at their most intense, I started to hear a few other travelers on foot or horseback, though none paid any attention to us. I didn’t want them to.

  A little after passing a solitary man walking in a tattered coat, one of my blurred glimpses distinguished several buildings of rough stone or splintered wood, most emitting lazy wisps of gray smoke from their chimney stacks. Before entering this little village, the cart made a right to an overgrown side road that went toward a little stone hut. Closing in on it saw three men step out from the shelter’s draped opening, two of them being particularly brawny and all had at least some facial hair. We stopped in front of them.

  The brawniest man in the middle of the trio asked, “Is that him?”

  Not bothering to step off her mount, the woman answered, “We said he was young.”

  “Sure, but the boss wasn’t expecting a damn kid to look after.”

  “He might have just exited childhood, but I can assure you he’ll last longer than the others. I give him five years before he breaks. Your boss won’t even have to reinforce the mind rune on his back for another few weeks. Oh, and his left arm has a fiend’s tail wrapped around it, so I would be careful if you touch him there.” She took out a small scroll from the animal’s pack and tossed it to the man she was speaking with. “That’s the incantation to link the boy to your boss’s wishes.”

  The catcher of the scroll nodded to a heavily bearded man, who lobbed a clinking pouch at the woman. On catching it, she turned to face my handler. The cue had him step out the cart so that he could hand the end of my chain to the middle man. With that done, the first two rational people I remembered began to retread their route.

  The three men and I entered their hut, which was a cozy fit, where they then began re-eating their half-eaten meals—a veritable feast of unknown dishes. After inconspicuously sitting in a corner for a while, one of the men put his bony leftovers in front of me, which I gingerly picked at. They all spoke of topics that didn’t involve me and that I didn’t quite understand. Their only goal seemed to make the others holler with laughter, as that’s what happened more often than not. When they finished eating, the one in charge told a man named Sams to get the horses ready. When Sams returned with the familiar animals, I was put on top of one by my new handler. We moved much faster than in my first ride, quickly passing through the village to get to a new road.

  Chapter Three

  The light was finally dying down when I saw the outskirts of a much larger town than the one we had left. The forest cleared up to make way for larger structures and wider streets, many of which were paved with cobblestone. We stayed at the fringes, going only a bit deeper when the men spotted the building they sought, which was a large timber home that looked more extravagant than any I had seen yet. Surrounding it was a rundown wall seven feet high at its tallest.

  The horses trotted up to a break in the wall, where a group of men, their guard dogs, and an open metal gate were standing. They all heartily greeted one another with what I was pretty sure were expletives. I was taken inside, where half a dozen women milled around a flourishing fire pit.

  “Where’s Garf?” my handler asked a gaunt woman, who adjusted her almost nonexistent top when she saw him.

  Looking grimier and cheerier than I, she said, “Not even a hello, Heaton?” Heaton stepped up to her and planted an open mouth kiss on her scrawny lips. After a moment of this, she pushed him away and stroked his chest. “Brooks will be back soon, but he’ll be gone later tonight. I’ll be on that big bed all alone.”

  “I’ll keep you alone if you don’t tell me where Garf is anytime soon.”

  “Patience is a good thing to learn, honey, especially when we get in that big bed later. Garf’s out back. Is that his new pet?”

  “Yeah. At least he’s a quiet one. Almost forgot he was here.”

  Heaton led me down the main hallway until we walked back outside. There were ten people in the back, all in the process of training
with either fist or sword. We headed for a clean shaven, well dressed, spry looking man with silvery hair. This gentleman overlooked another man and a young woman clashing with wooden practice swords.

  “Garf!” called Heaton. The older man responded by waving a hand in front of the fighting pair, ending their match. “I’ve brought the boy. Smaller than expected, eh?”

  Garf looked up and down my frame. “Nonsense. Some food and a bit more puberty and he’ll be as fine as your youngest. The scroll?” The item was handed to him. “Anything more?”

  “The woman said he should last about five years before he becomes more trouble than he’s worth. He’s certainly quieter than the others. I don’t think I’ve heard him talk yet.”

  “Another bonus. No name I take it?”

  “Nah. You’ll have to come up with one yourself.”

  “As usual. You may take the next day off.”

  “It might end up being longer than that. The mountains look ready to toss another fit our way.” As Heaton began to turn around, he remembered something and said, “There’s a fiend’s tail wrapped around his left arm. I guess that’s how they corrupted this one.”

  “His mind survived direct infusion? And he’s slated to live another five years? This could turn out to be the best subject they’ve discarded to us.”

  “So you think the price was worth it?”

  “I’m not concerned about the price. It seems they’re getting closer to what they’re looking for.”

  “What exactly are they looking for?”

  “If the one in charge is who I think he is, then the answer is ‘everything.’”

  This was the man I spent most of my time with over the next few weeks. He gave me a little storage room to sleep in, with a wolf pelt acting as either my bed or blanket, depending on what I favored that night. The crime boss gradually fed me more and more, and introduced me to different foods and drinks. He never really talked to me. No one did. I preferred it that way.