The Lone Dragon Knight

by D. C. Clemens

  Then, as I rested my legs, the leash of the rune suddenly became less taut. Did my handler think me dead? No, his will wasn’t completely gone, just subdued. Was I a lost cause to him? Whatever Garf’s exact state of mind was, the longer tether afforded me some ease of movement now that every part of my spirit wasn’t having to resist the rune’s influence. Of course, this improvement did nothing to put food in my desolate stomach or water on my cracking lips. No small part of me wanted to go back and get a drink from that cold lake water.

  Gods, that icy liquid sounded good to me. The memory of it taunted me. I could almost feel it tickling my skin with cool droplets… Wait… I wiped my forehead to feel that I was sweating quite a bit. Why was it suddenly warmer? The tunnels had stayed within a cool temperature range, but there was an unquestionable spike during the last hundred steps.

  At one point, when I turned one of the few sharp corners I experienced, there was the softest of glows at the end of a tunnel. The orangish luminescence was quick to brighten at every stride. The heat rose as well. In fact, it was warm enough to where I needed to remove my coat. I draped over my shoulder as I crept toward the rising radiance.

  When the light finally became bearable to my feeble eyes, I started to see that the smoother gray stone of the tunnel was being replaced by bare, rough rock. In addition, the passageway was widening, permitting even more light to pervade my visual organs. Then I smelled a foul odor that made me gag. Something was burning, something that smelled like rotten eggs mixed with burnt meat. My ears joined the rest of my senses when it heard something that resembled a bubbling, slow-moving river.

  Stepping out of the damned tunnel and into the wide open space I now found myself in was overwhelming. Most of the ceiling was two hundred feet up and the light appeared to emerge from a long fissure that stretched for as far as I could see to my right. To my far left I saw what appeared to be an avalanche of rock obstructing anything from fashioning a path.

  The space beyond the fissure stretched for fifty yards before ending in a fragmented wall decorated with dusty murals and worn carvings. The wall was speckled with a few tunnels three times wider than mine. There were also several stone doors that were either destroyed or left open. My side of the wall looked much the same, though the tunnel entrances were smaller. It was an ancient, dead place I felt I had no business being in, but here I was.

  I drifted the forty feet to get to the edge of the putrid crevice. Looking down at its precipice showed me a thin river of molten rock steadily eating away at the mountain. I could fall fifty feet before touching it, so I guessed the crack had been much fuller years ago. The noxious gases it was giving off were hopefully no longer sufficient to kill me, but I backed off to be safe.

  I walked alongside my wall, examining what once were brilliant murals and intricate carvings of various scenes. The most intact representations appeared to depict larger-than-life battles by a grand mountain range, which I supposed were the Onyx Mountains.

  I searched my paltry memory for “lost nether city.” A few scraps of related information surfaced to my awareness. Yes, there was something about this mountain range I had either read in a book or heard spoken as a fable. Indeed, one of the generals I read about fought in a “War of Dragon Fire” not far from Rise, though this great war of many names had really involved much of the world.

  The details I did not learn, but I did know that this globe spanning war had ravished the lands a half millennium before. A group of nations had allied themselves with one of the dragon elders, who led an army of his kin and a group of dragon knights. They then proceeded to conquer kingdom after kingdom. At great cost they were driven back to their strongholds until they were ultimately defeated. Fearing that each race was only debasing the other, the surviving elder dragons were convinced to sever their realm from ours. The only dragons left in Orda today were untamable beasts no wiser than wild bears. With no intelligent dragons to ally with, the dragon knights ceased to exist as well.

  Was that the answer, then? Local legend stated that one of the subjugator’s strongholds had been nestled in these mountains. What was its name…? Nam-, No… Nim. Yes, that was better. Nimbra? Nimbri? Nimbria! That was it. Was this where I was? The ruins of Nimbria?

  For the first time since seeing Heaton flop into the lake, some movement caught my eye.

  Chapter Eight

  I gazed beyond the blazing pit to see a two-legged, lizard-like creature darting into a tunnel entrance. Seeing as it couldn’t have been much bigger than the average dog, I actually felt better about not being alone in this place. That changed a minute later when a larger tanned lizard dashed from one tunnel and into a doorless room. With a longer view, I noted that this particular creature was about as tall as I was. It had two long legs that ended with four claws and its two scrawny arms held a single curved talon. What stood out the most was its wide front-facing frill that it used as its entire head. Two beady eyes were kept at the lower outer edges of this fan-like face, along with a snapping jaw at the bottom.

  I had seen illustrations and mentions of this creature before. They were known as scamps, one of the most common types of fiends there were. In addition to not being difficult to summon, they were one of the few summoned beasts that adapted well to Orda’s diverse environments. Like the rats most people compared them to, they ate any and everything and hastily populated a region when left unchecked. Many didn’t grow all that big, and a single scamp was never as much trouble as any other feral creature, but when one was famished and in an unobserved ruin with only a finger-long blade in hand, it wouldn’t take much to overpower this vulnerable person.

  In any event, their presence did give me the hope that something edible wasn’t far off, supposing they just didn’t consume themselves. Of course, it likely meant I would have to fight them to get to it.

  As I continued to explore the ruins, I discovered some bones scattered about rooms or just inside the tunnels. Many looked half eaten. I only now realized that it was possible that some rocks I kicked around in the tunnels were actually shards of skeletons. Most looked too small to be part of a human, but a dusty skull missing its lower jaw bone confirmed that at least a few once belonged to my kind. Were the scamps only brave enough to gnaw on bones, or were they willing to go after those still owned by the living? I think they normally hunted alone, but if a big enough meal was nearby, they were known to gang up on their prey. I saw a few more scurry about and take jerky glimpses at the new curiosity in their midst, but if they were truly interested in me as a meal, the vast gap in Orda kept them at least thirty feet away.

  After passing the initial cluster of tunnels and doors, my side of the wall primarily became the rock of the mountain itself, while the scamp-filled side continued to display tunnel entrances, door openings, and most intriguing of all, a few staircases. Since the other side looked to be the true starting point of the nether city, I had the sneaking suspicion that I would have to cross the gap to get any closer to liberation. I thus had my eyes open for some way to cross to the other side.

  Except for a couple of heavily rusted blades, cracked clay pots, and several pieces of flimsy metal sheets that probably once belonged to complete sets of armor, my watchfulness did not offer any answers to the unpassable barrier. Its narrowest points were still too wide for me to attempt a leap, and the ruins held nothing I could use to construct a makeshift bridge. There wasn’t even a sturdy pole to vault me over.

  After about a mile of tracing the lava river, I noted two things. First, the air was slightly cooler. Looking into the crevice showed me that it was less filled and less active than I had perceived half a mile behind me. This also had the effect of making the mountain hollow darker. Second, the river began to curve toward my wall. It was subtle at first, but a hundred yards later had the sizzling river veer sharply in front of me. It cut into the mountain itself, blocking off my advancement on this side.

  A brick of discouragement hit my stomach, but a closer scrutiny of the gap re
vealed its sharp turn was also a weak point. A large section of the upper pit opposite me had collapsed into the blackening lava, which was relatively shallow here. The fallen pile of rocks was enough to cut the lava flow’s width by half. That was my only answer. I would have to climb down the gap and then climb back up to escape my side of the city.

  Just putting my head over the breach was enough to make me uncomfortable, so I knew I would have to suffer a few burns to scramble in and out. The only protection I had available against the water-sucking heat and the sickening gases was to begin tearing off strips of my coat and to wrap the cloth around my hands, forearms, neck, and lower face. I couldn’t, however, make the strips all that thick on my hands, as that would hinder my climbing ability. I took some time to study the inner fissure, trying to plan out the trek as best I could. The fissure’s uneven walls looked to have plenty of cracks and projections to grip, but their stability was harder to judge. After popping every bone there was to pop, I began the descent.

  The first dozen feet went well enough, but it didn’t take long for my breathing to become raspier and my vision to blur. I used my unwrapped fingertips to feel out my handholds before going all in. As for my feet, I was content in just digging in my boots as deep as they could go. After closing in on twenty feet, I experienced more lapses in focus, more slips of a finger or foot. The gases were a bigger problem than I thought they’d be, which, given my worn out state, I should have predicted. My searing sweat also made its way into my eyes. I cursed the gods. I didn’t know all that much about them, but I cursed them anyway.

  The effervescent heat was rippling the air when I reached the halfway point. I had to speed things up. My energy wouldn’t last much longer at the pace I was going. I looked behind me to see I was still lined up with the fallen rock pile. What I was thinking of doing was risky, but that was redundant at this point. I focused on sending as much prana as I could into my legs. I then used them to push off the wall with all I had. I twisted my body in midair to face my aim ten feet away. My body crashed just a foot from the lava flow, but I felt as though I landed in the molten river itself.

  I was on fire. Every breath felt like I was guzzling down a bowl of boiling water. I had to shut my eyes and just blindly start climbing the rock pile. I was lucky it sloped fairly evenly, allowing me to gain a quick fifteen feet of separation from the pit’s lowest point, but I was still at the verge of bursting into flames until I had ascended another ten feet. I wanted to throw up, but the only thing left to bring up was the stomach itself. Whatever did come up actually felt cooler than the surrounding air, so I didn’t bother removing the cloth over my mouth.

  Something in my ravaged body started reacting to my death climb. It was helping me move upward, but at the cost of my soul. It was my corruption. I was instinctively handing it greater influence so that I could use more of its power to heal and drive my body. My madness would come sooner, but perhaps that was as redundant as anything.

  Still feeling like I was being cooked, I pulled myself up to level ground. I collapsed face first onto the comparatively ice-cold floor, far too weak to flip to a more comfortable position. I only pulled off the cloth I had around my mouth so that I could exhale all the heat I could with every sore breath and wait for my skin to stop its roasting…

  Did I lose consciousness? It didn’t matter. Something had forced me to open my eyes and lift my head. It sounded like a large croaking frog. In a hazy vision, I saw a scamp cautiously creeping closer. A low croak came out of it. Another croak to my left responded. While I was still too out of it to process the danger properly, a deep-rooted compulsion forced me to stand up. I wobbled, my vision was incoherent, my red skin was tender enough to be agitated by the air, and my trembling hand dropped my dagger. As I stooped to pick it back up, more scamps appeared from the tunnel in front of me. They croaked in spurts at one another. I began sidestepping to my right, where only a smaller scamp was in the way.

  They maintained their guarded distance as they continued to observe me with voracious eyes. A few of the smaller ones were the ones to make a probing jump at me before taking a quick step back. The mock bravery of the smaller ones gave the bigger ones real courage. They began taking longer, dashing charges, many making an odd growling croak as they did so. I followed their example and took several rushes at them, which succeeded better than I imagined. The scamps scattered like a flock of pigeons.

  Nonetheless, like the flock of birds, they didn’t go too far. I’m sure they never even took notice of my near non-existent dagger. They just didn’t know what to make of a creature as big as their largest brood. As our game of chicken took an ephemeral respite, I skimmed over my surroundings, looking for anything that could get me out of this new, but foreseen, situation. I especially wanted to find a stairway.

  I walked more briskly, keeping my back toward the lava pit. When a scamp decided to get bold, I would charge at them to force them back, but I knew they would eventually learn that I was more bark than bite. I could try killing one to make an example of it, but they were far too swift to waste energy chasing around. Of course, I might not have to do any hunting. The little bastards in particular were quickly learning that they were at least faster than I was and were becoming less intimidated, waiting until I charged almost on top of them before they retreated. They also began snapping their little jaws at me and croaking more excitedly, encouraging the bigger ones to do the same. More started showing up from every side.

  Then I saw it—a staircase. I used a charge to send most of them back a few feet. I was planning to sprint upstairs, but getting just a few yards closer told me that would be impossible. The stairway had suffered a collapse, obstructing any attempt at ascension. This breakdown also affected the room beside it. Most of its wall was rubble, exposing a space that had once stored away weaponry, going by the multitude of rusty sticks I saw. Having nowhere else to go, and hoping not everything was unusable, I made a beeline toward the open room.

  I stepped over the debris and useless weapons to enter the center of the large, meagerly lit room. In it I spotted two things I did not expect to see—two intact skeletons. The one closest to me had its legs buried in rubble, but its upper body was still whole and had bands of disintegrating cloth over and under its bones. The second was donning a simple corroded helmet and the rest of its body wore a heavy set of greenish armor. It was in a sitting position up against the deepest corner of the wall. They looked to be fragile as dust, but they had been clearly left alone by the bone eaters. Why? The packed croaking behind me forced me to overlook the dead.

  Five hundred years had done its work to these cheap, unenchanted weapons and pieces of armor. I scrambled behind a stone table for the defense it supplied. The scamps were at the fringes of the room, looking wary about entering. Did they think I was setting a trap? I spotted something interesting in the middle of another desperate visual sweep. Behind the shadow of the sitting skeleton was an undamaged, leather-encased scabbard. It was in the shape of a longsword, and a black grip, silver crossguard, and silver pommel were jutting out the sheath’s opening.

  I sprinted to it, knocked over the skeleton in the way, and picked up the red scabbard. My hand trembled. Not from weakness, but from the quivering of the sword itself. All the scamps croaked timidly at the same time. Then, as though my corruption had gained a voice, I heard a ferocious growl coming from deep inside my head.

  Chapter Nine

  The growl and quivering died away, but their reverberations still ricocheted in my body. I unsheathed the dynamic, double-edged blade to reveal its polished steel and the central groove running up all the way up its flat sides until it stopped near the tapered tip. Mocking my weak body, the sword seemed to weigh little more than my dagger, and the enchantment that was surely on it meant its lightweight did not take away any of its strength. Its length was still a tad too long for me to handle with real grace, but grace was not a luxury I cared about at the moment.

  The scamps began backing away.
I took an unyielding step forward and they backed away further. The inside of my head produced a low snarl.

  “What are you?” I whispered at the sword, not sure what to expect as an answer.

  With a voice that kept the rumbling aspect of its growl, the internal reply was, “Your only hope, boy.”

  “You can get me out of here?”

  “It would be in both of our interests. Scare off the damn iknni so that we can speak in peace.”

  I assumed he meant the scamps, so I rushed at them with conviction. They dispersed as fast as they their legs could take them. I felt as if I had grown ten feet taller.

  “Why are they scared of you?” I asked the blade, keeping an eye on my flanks.

  “The weak fear the strong, do they not? I can sense your own power, boy. I can sense the rune suppressing your potential. Do you wish for me to remove the troublesome incantation?”

  “Are you a fiend?”

  It snarled loudly. “Does my power feel attuned to your wretched corruption? My power is of an undying flame that can easily remove your mind rune and restrain that trivial corruption of yours.”

  “Just that simple, huh? And what do you want out of this?”

  “That should be obvious. Do you know the history of this place? How long I’ve been stuck down here? If we reach the surface, then I’ll be grateful enough to make your goals my own. Think how much you will be able to accomplish with a dragon aiding your cause.”

  I wanted to ask more questions about this self-proclaimed dragon’s past, but I was forced to care about solving my more immediate problems. “What do I call you?”

  “Humans call me Aranath. My real name would be unpronounceable in your tongue.”

  I was about to tell him my name, but I stopped myself when I realized I couldn’t keep ‘Saber’ if I reached the outside world again. Likewise, I had no desire to keep using a label that meant nothing to me. Choosing the only other name that came to mind, I said, “All right, Aranath, you can call me Mercer. Now, if you will, remove the rune.”