The Lone Dragon Knight

by D. C. Clemens

  I was fucked if this speed held throughout my defiance, but some two hours after I stepped out of Rise, my senses started to clear up. It wasn’t so much that my rune became less active, but was instead concentrating on something else—my conscious, my will to escape. I knew it was Garf’s influence coming through, trying to get me to stop. I suppose it was ironic that this adjustment helped me resume a faster run. Still, it was like running with heavy weights on my legs, arms, and eyes, but I’d take weights over vertigo at this point.

  It had been a week since Garf last reinforced the rune, though I knew it should have still kept me under his influence for another week without too much trouble. I could only guess that my corruption had an effect on the rune’s power over me, giving me a fighting chance. I didn’t know too much about the corrupted spirit flowing through me, but neither did most others. The creature’s tail I permanently sported belonged to a fiend, a general term given to any of the corrupted beasts that came from one of the summoned realms.

  Only a few of these realms were understood to any degree, and it was in these that prana wielders could summon a weapon they had sealed or, for higher level wielders, call upon a creature to aid them in battle. Fiends belonged to a forbidden realm. They carried a corrupted form of prana that, while typically more powerful than the regular kind, drove most beings mad. Due to the insane-driven destruction they caused, it was prohibited to summon a fiend for any purpose. This was now the realm abetting me.

  No different from the rest of my remembered life, time remained an insensible thing to me. Only the sunrise informed me of its progress. I tried heading for areas that gave me the best view behind me, which also gave me the higher ground I sought. When it didn’t take too long, I climbed some steep hills to make sure no horse could follow me. I stopped to catch my breath more often than I liked, but the throbbing rune at least stopped me from lingering too long in one spot, as it eased up somewhat when my legs moved. I was sweating quite a lot by midday, making me glad I didn’t end up buying that extra coat, though the element in my waterskin was still being consumed faster than ideal.

  The woodland I was traversing was thinning out, and fewer birds were singing their songs by the time the sun made the shadows long again. It became so quiet that, during one of my respites, I heard the far off sound of barking. Half an hour later and the howling had closed the distance considerably. The mind rune was not acting up more than it already was, so I theorized that Garf himself was not part of the group. Wanting to see what I was up against, I climbed a lonely tree and fixated on the land below.

  I picked up nothing for a few moments, not until my peripheral vision caught a pair of little figures moving to my right. Looking at my left side had me seeing a couple of other specks exiting a line of trees. Then the dogs barked maybe half a mile out in front of me. It was a pincer movement. My clean escape was over. Hiding was impossible with dogs sniffing me out, and it was clear my slothful sprinting would only bring them closer. One plan of action remained. I would have to get rid of the central hunting party if there was any chance of losing the others, however laughable that chance was. At least I found something funny in this. I climbed down the tree and ambled toward the barking mutts.

  When I made my way onto a rocky plateau, I perceived what must have been three separate dogs yapping excitedly. I froze beside a fledgling tree, removed my unwieldy waterskin and food sack, and drew my secondary weapon, a curved knife. Sounding much like the dogs, I heard Heaton’s voice give the canines a command. Their paws unquietly navigated the gravelly slope, the steps of their masters following close behind. The three frothing animals dashed into view.

  The swiftest one, a shaggy shepherd dog, charged ahead of the others. It was instinctive at this point. I raised my left arm in front of me and allowed the dog to bite down. A few of its teeth breached the skin, but not enough to bother me. I actually paid more attention to the second dog, a large hound. This second dog jumped for my throat, but its own neck met the end of my jutting knife. Its limp body collided into both me and the first dog, who had let go of my arm with a cry.

  When I scrambled back up, two men made themselves known. The longsword-brandishing Heaton I readily recognized, but the other man I knew only vaguely. His name was Christoph and he evidently favored the bow, as that’s what he had drawn. The last uninjured hound disrupted my evaluation of the humans. I spun behind the tree to avoid an arrow, but couldn’t avoid the second hound grabbing my pant leg, almost making me fall again, but I had enough cognizance to stick the knife in its skull. Unfortunately, I couldn’t easily withdraw the dagger. I quickly gave up on it and unsheathed my main blade to slash at the dog bleeding at the mouth.

  The moment the final dog was out of the way, an arrow lodged into my right shoulder. It was enchanted with a flame spell, but it wasn’t anymore bothersome than the rune’s own oppressive heat. I reset myself behind the tree to take the time to rip out the burning arrow.

  “You’ll fucking die for killing my dogs!” frothed Christoph.

  I heard Heaton stamping closer. I couldn’t fight both at the same time. I took out the only two smoke bombs from their pocket and waited until the last second to smash them onto the ground. With Heaton caught in the blinding smoke, I rushed out of the expanding cloud and headed for the bowman. He appeared surprised by my head on sprint. He fired off an arrow as he backed away, but it was easily evaded. My enemy dropped the bow to reach for a sword sheathed on his back. I sent a surge of prana to my legs and leapt the several feet needed to reach him with my sword. He withdrew his weapon, but he couldn’t swing it fast enough to prevent my sword from piercing his upper abdomen. As I extracted my weapon, I made sure to lift the blade upward to make his wound as large as possible. Christoph wilted like a ghostly flower.

  I turned around in time to see Heaton about to throw one of his hefty daggers. He hurled it and I was just able to deflect it with a swipe of my sword. We then simply stood there.

  “I always knew one of you experimental rejects would bite us in the ass someday, though I can’t say I don’t pity you…” He passed his free hand over his longsword, which responded by igniting in flame. He next pointed this fire-coated steel to the sky. A streak of fire shot up into the air before it died with a flash of embers. “Look, call this a mercy killing, kid. What were you going to do if you did escape? No one will help a corrupted. You’ll be hunted for the rest of your short life. Or maybe you want to live out here like an animal? Just stop causing trouble and make this easy for the both of us.”

  The words that came to my mind were those of a General Mercer I had read about. Stealing them for myself, I said, “We all die, Heaton. The best we can do is to die on our own terms.”

  He rose his burning sword in a defensive stance. “Then let’s fulfill these terms of yours.”

  I ran at a man a head taller than I was and wielding a sword almost twice as long as mine. Heaton slashed the air in front of him to send a wave of fire at me. I ducked and used my arm and sword to block the residual flame from hitting my face. The most intense of the fire missed me, but the sleeve of my coat still turned to soot. I next evaded a downward slash. I swung at his leg, but his speed allowed him to ward off my swing with one of his own. As I recovered my bearing, I was forced to duck another swing. His slash missed, but not his kicking boot, which impacted my chin, sending me staggering backward. The longsword’s point aimed for me. I was just able to spin out of the way from the line of fire it emitted. I rushed at him again, knowing I had little chance at his preferred midrange fighting style.

  His blazing blade kept disorienting my vision, making me wish I had more smoke bombs. My amateurish illusion spell was useless without another distraction. But what else could I use? Getting knocked to the ground the third time provided a possible answer. I clambered toward the thin tree I had first used as a hindrance. I stopped over the dead shepherd dog, grabbed the waterskin it was half hiding, and flung it at Heaton. As anyone without a shield would do, Heaton
swung his weapon to defend himself against the incoming airborne object. The roasting steel promptly burned through the skin and instantly boiled the water it touched, creating a cloud of steam in front of his face.

  Heaton did the only smart thing, which was to swiftly step backward as he tried wiping his eyes. He also ineffectually fired a wave of flame at my general direction. After skirting it, I opened my clenched my fist and cast my illusion spell. When Heaton next opened his eyes, he saw me rushing at him. He hacked at my form, but his steel hit only air. By the time he registered the second me behind the destroyed illusion, he could nothing to prevent my weapon from slicing at his arm. I severed his hand at the wrist, taking the weapon it held with it. I would have then went for a vital spot, but Heaton charged at me with a primal shout. I was forced to backtrack to the edge of the plateau. He wanted to stop there and have me be the only one who slipped, but I was able to grab his coat and we both tumbled down the slope.

  I heard my loose weapon bounce against the rock-strewn wall, and some fleeting, rolling glimpses had me seeing a grouping of shrubs at the end of the slope. I thought this would be the termination of our spill, and I was already trying to think of what my next step would be, but we didn’t stop. Our hurtling bodies crushed the desiccated line of shrubs to reveal a ten foot long crevice in the ground. With no time to avoid it, both of us fell in.

  It was deep. That was immediately clear. The light from the sun could not breach through most of the darkness, but there was still enough to reflect off a lake three hundred feet below. I would have simply closed my eyes and hope for the best if I had been alone, but falling with Heaton had me doing something else. I rolled my body to get closer to him. I think he realized what I was trying to do, as he attempted to get his own body over mine, but his lack of a hand made it easy for me to repel his frantic attempt to save himself. Half an instant before we met the water, I was able to get him beneath me. I heard a loud smack as the front of Heaton’s body crashed into the lake. The cold water sheathed my body next.

  I never swam before. Never needed to. I simply copied what I had seen others doing. Combined with the sheer force of my churning limbs, my brutish technique allowed me to keep my head above water. As I swallowed a good amount of lake water, I gradually churned to the smooth rock wall of the underground lake. I followed it for a few dozen yards before seeing the shadowy edge of a pebbly shore. On finally pulling myself onto dry land, I took a few moments to collect some cool, inert air to replace the water I was coughing up. I laid as torpid as the air I sucked in until my numbing skin started soaking in the frigidness of my wet clothing. After making sure the lake was truly still, I removed all of my clothing and squeezed as much water as I could from them.

  As I sat cross-legged on the shore of a gloomy, subterranean lake, I did something I was unsure I was even capable of—I laughed. It was really more like a chuckle to any ghost watching, but for me, it was akin to hysterical hilarity. For the first time in my memory, I was in charge of my life. Maybe I was eternally stuck down here, but they couldn’t get to my rune, they couldn’t get me to listen to them anymore. Fuck them.

  Taking off my thin undershirt had ripped most of it to be nothing more than an unwearable piece of cloth, so I instead used the strip to delicately wrap it around my shoulder’s arrow wound. When the rest of my clothes were adequately dry, I put them on as well. In rummaging through my pockets, I discovered all I had was a little dagger I had completely forgotten was inside my inner coat pocket. Otherwise, I only had a half-eaten piece of venison jerky for food and a stagnant lake for my water.

  When my eyes adjusted to the rocky netherworld, I could see that the lake was larger than I had first assumed. The slim cavern opening above actually lined up fairly close to the shore. The rest of the lake stretched for two hundred yards more before it met the other end of the broadening cavern wall. This warped wall only broke up on my little coastline. The shore extended down a tunnel of pitch black darkness. I walked a few yards down this burrow, but a probing holler told me it went down a long way. At least it gave me some hope that I wouldn’t die of stagnation.

  Before the meager light would pass away completely, I skimmed the area for any kind of food, but the best I saw were a few fluttering moths near the fissure. The lake might have had some fish or plant life to nibble on, but the cold waters would make it too risky to dive in and search randomly, particularly with no way of catching the fish or knowing if the plant life was poisonous to eat. For all I knew, the water itself was bad to drink. I began wishing I had learned a greater variety of spells.

  I heard stifled voices high above me, though I didn’t pay attention to their rabble. I was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to shut my eyes for a couple of hours, but my fatigue was still not severe enough to overcome my rune’s persistent burning, which the cold water had not diminished. To kill two birds with one stone, I strove to drain all of my energy while also finding out if the tunnel led anywhere. I placed a hand on the left side of the wall and started walking, counting my steps as I went.

  Even with eyes accustomed to the dark, a hundred steps into the channel eliminated the sense entirely. Only with touch did I perceive my surroundings with any exactness. I moved slowly, knowing there could be a steep drop anywhere, or a large crack that was waiting to twist my ankle and force me to hop everywhere for the rest of my existence. My sense of hearing could make itself useful later on, but it only presently allowed me to pick up the echoing booms of my palpitating heart.

  I took several trips down the tunnel, switching which wall I traced on every attempt. I kept returning to the lake after I added another hundred steps or so to my memory. It was mainly to give me an idea of what I was heading into before I went all in, but I also didn’t enjoy being in total darkness for too long. It was as though I were in a kind of limbo, waiting for the gods to judge my life and do whatever it was they did to our souls.

  When night made my shore dark, I forced myself to sit down and shut my eyes until sleep overtook them.

  Chapter Seven

  There was a hint of sapphire moonlight shimmering the lake’s surface. Whether it was the same moon I went to sleep with or another night entirely, I didn’t know. It had always been difficult for me to tell how long I slept. The arrow wound stung and my muscles felt tender, slowing down my movements for a while. Once I drank some water and ate the last piece of jerky, I restarted my mapping of the tunnel.

  Employing some advice that Garf imparted to Heaton’s son a few weeks ago, I took it slow at first, knowing that the buildup would pay off later. So the next several hours were spent mentally mapping as much of the tunnel system as far as my brain could take it. I soon learned that the lake tunnel branched off to two other right leaning channels half a mile from the lake.

  I didn’t know how underground caves normally worked, but I started to get the sense that these three tunnels had not been naturally designed. Their floors and walls felt unusually flat, and they rarely deviated in width or height. My problem now was choosing which one to take. They each seemed to go a long way. Since the one farthest to the right appeared to incline upward ever so slightly, I decided to try it first.

  Not minding if it would spur my descent into insanity, I often talked or hummed a bard’s song in order to hear any changes in the channel’s size. This method also made me think that another tunnel opened up to the left at some point, but I kept my hand to the right wall. A thousand steps later forced my attention back to the previous passageway, as a total collapse blocked my progression.

  More darkness, more tunnels, and more collapses ended up wiping most of my map clean. I couldn’t even be sure I wasn’t just heading back toward the lake. I rested at times, but knowing if I was actually napping or not was difficult to figure out in the realm of nocturnal. Yet even her potent power did not stop a trace of light from sneaking in.

  The first light I had seen since the lake came from a little patch of glowing fungi, which I already knew were tox
ic. My appreciation for this small gift was demonstrated by sitting alongside this beacon. I soaked up its greenish light for a few minutes before I tried to see how long they glowed after plucking one up. A handful of seconds was the answer. More coalitions of these fungi appeared down my latest tunnel, which felt marginally more humid than those before. Thinking this meant some kind of progress to somewhere, I accepted an increase of pain to squeeze through a partial collapse of the tunnel a short while later.

  Another minor development occurred when I entered a large space that echoed back my random words. The walls here were extra smooth, so I assumed I entered an artificial chamber of some kind, and recognizing that the other end still had the continuation of the tunnel, I also assumed it was not a room people had once actively lived in. Perhaps they were rest stops? I walked into another of a similar size some six thousand steps later, but the darkness made it impossible to determine anything more than what I already presumed.

  Faceless time didn’t permeate the underworld, but I could still keep track of it when I paid attention to my growling stomach and drying lips. I expected bugs to appear so that I could eat them at some point, but no worm or beetle showed itself. Were they sensitive enough to hear me coming and hide away in a crack or under a stone? Or were there none around to begin with? In any event, going by the far-flung and sporadic scuttling I heard, there might have been something alive with me. The penetrating dark might have just been playing tricks on me, but I made sure to keep my dagger handy.

  My lack of nourishment intensified my wooziness, which had me occasionally forgetting to keep my hand against the wall, so I couldn’t even be certain I was preserving on the same track I had been going five minutes before. My last real impression of an idea was to always take the path that inclined skyward, though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I had only gained an inch of higher ground than I started out with.