Valandra: The Dragon Blade Cycle (Book 2)

by Tristan Vick

  “Dragon’s feet,” I mutter to myself. If I hit the upper deck at this speed, I’ll splatter against it like a dropped egg. My only hope is to get Lisette’s attention somehow and, by the grace of the goddess, pray she can rescue me.

  Between her fending off two additional Juggernauts while having to save me, however, it seems like it may prove to be a challenge. Compounding this problem is the fact that the Aeronautilus has maybe only moments before the fire I caused spreads to the rest of the tethers of the lodestone.

  Once the flames burn up the rest of the ropes the entire thing will be completely severed. The only thing that keeps the airship afloat

  The airship is burning, Lisette is facing certain doom, and me—well, I’m plummeting out of the sky like a shooting star—falling headlong towards my inevitable doom. And it is here where it seems I’m all out of options. Is this it? I wonder. Will I fall back to earth in a blaze of glory and then that’s it? Is this the end?

  “Arianna!” a voice drills into my head.

  I recognize the voice, but I can hardly bring myself to believe it. “Halcion?”

  Up from the clouds comes a giant blue dragon. I squint against the rushing winds as it lines up under me. Slowly, matching my speed, Halcion pulls up. I land gently upon his scaly back.

  “That was cutting it close,” I say.

  “I had a long way to travel,” he says, excusing himself for his tardiness.

  Suddenly, six more Juggernauts appear from the southwest, obviously coming from Bolgoroth. All six of them are black with purple wings. But the real surprise is the three new Juggernauts which appear from the north. They are white and slender and have pinkish wings and a unique aesthetic. They appear to be elvin by design.

  And, so, it begins, I think. It begins upon the white crested clouds of the heavens. The war to end all wars. The final battle between the forces of light and the forces of dark.

  “Halcion,” I say, “take us into the fray.”

  “With pleasure!” he roars.

  Racing down toward the Aeronautilus, I hear the same hum that I did piloting Vanguardian originate from deep within Halcion’s elongated throat. And then the great dragon opens his toothed maw and belches a fiery blast of flame, announcing to all the combatants that the heavy weight has arrived!

  Epilogue

  Hangman’s tavern sits on the edge of the largest island of the Rocky Isles. It’s a refuge where thieves, pirates, and cold-blooded killers can enjoy being themselves without the oppressive law of Valandrian rule crushing them with its sanctimonious rules and regulations.

  Circling high in the sky above the raised hut, which sits on tall stilts that become engulfed at high tide, is a flock of black birds that spackle a hoary cloudless sky.

  Leading up to the raised tavern is a floating dock. It runs to the stairs that lead up to front door of the pub. Off in the distance, anchored in the ocean, are five ships bobbing up and down, waiting for their crews to have their fill of swill and women before disembarking on another raid.

  With a swagger, I walk across the tops of the rocky surface of the beach, ignoring the trail of blood left by my scraped and bleeding feet. Small orange crabs scuttle away at my approach, waving their crimson-stained claws at me as they pass by, and carrion birds circle about the area hinting at what awaits me inside Hangman’s Tavern.

  As I grow closer, I smile in recognition of the stench of death, which lingers on the salty sea air so thickly that it would make a weak-stomached man choke on his own sick.

  At the foot of the stairs lies the dead body of a bearded sailor. His chest cavity is torn open, revealing the white protrusion of his ribcage. His heart and liver have been eaten by the birds. Small sea slaters, which look identical to your common land faring woodlouse, scurry out of the body cavity and race his spilled guts and into the dark protection of the cracks between the planks of the boardwalk at my coming.

  I ignore the carrion crow pecking at the sinewy strands of meat and climb the stairs to the deck that overlooks the ocean. I push open the tavern doors. The scent of murder rushes out and greets me like an old friend. I scan the room, admiring the gruesome scene of mangled bodies. The carnage brings a smile to my face.

  Sailors and whores lie in random heaps, completely eviscerated. It looks as though a bar-fight broke out but, before anyone could flee the scene, they were all suddenly killed all at once. Impossible for a mortal to do such damage. But not a demi-god.

  A smile crawls across my face when I see a fat voluptuous barmaid wearing the bartender’s head and the bartender wearing the barmaid’s head. It reminds me of all the good times I had with my siblings. Siblings, who like me, were born from the womb of a sprawling, chaotic, and indifferent universe. A universe which breeds disorder as much as it breeds order. A universe that is dominated by darkness, in which the light retreats into the void, fleeing before the great coming of the everlasting Nether.

  I turn my head to the counter and see a well-built man with long hair and a chiseled jawline. He has on black leather pants but no shirt. A tattoo of a dragon stands out on his chest and wraps around to his back. The dragon’s snout comes out on his shoulder and breathes flame that climbs up his neck. Beside him, on a barstool, sits a slender blonde woman wearing a tight vest that exposes her bare midriff and tight leather slacks which match the man’s next to her. She also has a tattoo of a dragon, painted upon her arm, but it’s subtler and only stretching from her wrist to her shoulder.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” I jest.

  “If you value your life,” the man says without looking back at me, “you’ll leave everything you have on the nearest table and leave this place.”

  “I should have known,” I say, my voice as coarse as gravel, “that you two would be wasting time sitting around drunk and pie-eyed, staring at the walls doing nothing instead of coming to help your poor, dear brother, who sat languishing away in the Nether.”

  The blond woman spins around on her barstool and looks right at me. “Brother!” she exclaims. Leaping to the ground, she skips over to me, throws her arms around me, and presses her delicious lips to mine.

  I practically choke on her tongue as she forces it into my open mouth, but she pulls back just long enough for me to catch my breath and smile at her. “Fenmoira.” I take her stunning face into the palms of my hands. “It’s been far too long.”

  “I’ve missed you, dear brother,” she says, gazing at me with her cold, hard, emerald gaze.

  She reaches down and gropes me between the legs, forcing me to grunt in painful pleasure. I laugh out loud and throw my arm around her waist, reeling her into me. “I’ve missed you too.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit, Demos,” the man at the bar says in a less than enthusiastic tone. “Still depraved as ever, I see.”

  I turn to the dashingly handsome man who sits at the bar. “Still a spoilsport, eh, Theodren?”

  Theodren swivels in his seat and throws an elbow up onto the counter. It butts up next to the arm of a dead sailor, whose lifeless body is strewn across the countertop with a dagger sticking out of his back. “And who, pray tell, sprung you from the pit?”

  “That’s what I’ve come to see you about,” I reply. “There’s another.”

  “Another what, darling?” Fenmoira asks as she nibbles lightly on my ear.

  “Another Outlier.”

  “Impossible!” Theodren says. “There hasn’t been another one of us in over three thousand years.”

  “It’s true,” I tell them. “She’s different from us.”

  “See?” Theodren crows. “She’s not like us. Nobody is like us but us!”

  “She?” Fenmoira asks resentfully. She pulls away from me and asks, “Is she pretty?”

  “What does that matter?” Theodren puffs in annoyance.

  “It doesn’t,” I say, to the great displeasure of Fenmoira, whose eyes flicker green with covetousness envy. “She’s rather plain and unimportant,” I reassure her. Eve
n though it’s a complete lie. The Goddess of War was the most stunning creature I’ve ever beheld. However, since I know Fenmoira will go completely berserk if she heard me say it, I keep that little secret to myself.

  Besides, it does little good to console Fenmoira’s burning jealousy. And if I tried, she’d merely suspect something’s up. In an act of defiance, she turns her head in disgust and spits at the floor.

  “It matters to me,” she responds. “I can’t bear the thought of you being with another woman.” She presses her opulent breasts into my arm so that my elbow disappears into her cleavage and rubs her fingers through my hair as she bats her eyes at me.

  “Stop your bellyaching and let the man finish,” says Theodren. “I want to hear what makes this common wench so dangerous that it has my brother, the Lord of Chaos, so spooked.”

  “She has a soul,” I answer.

  “Hah!” Theodren bellows.

  “An Outlier with a soul?” Fenmoira asks skeptically, as she tosses her hair and puts one hand on her hip. Her other hand finds a cluster of loose hair and begins wrapping it around her finger. She twiddles it as she takes in the news. “Is such an abomination even possible?”

  “I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” I answer, scanning their dismayed faces. “Her name is Arianna De Amato. She’s the one who freed me from the tethers of the Nether Realm and breathed life back into me. But she’s overly righteous and headstrong. She actually cares about others, if you can believe it.”

  “She sounds like a downer,” sighs Fenmoira in disappointment. She licks her lips in a seductive fashion and shoots me a wink to remind me that, unlike Arianna, she has absolutely no troublesome moral reservations.

  “So, what are you saying?” asks Theodren, as he brushes his wavy hair out of his eyes.

  “I’m saying that, given an option, she won’t join us. Given the option, she’ll defy us at every turn.”

  “So, what?” Theodren grouses. “So, what if she doesn’t fall in line? There’s three of us and only one of her. It’s not like she can stop us from having our fun.”

  “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, brother. She’s not just a regular old Outlier, like we three. She’s more powerful than any of us. Possibly all three of us combined. And you’d be wise to fear her too, if you want to keep living like a god among mortal men.”

  “What are you getting at?” Theodren grumbles.

  “I’m saying she has the power to kill us.”

  “But we’re immortals!” Fenmoira exclaims.

  “And isn’t it we three who marched past the gates of El Novette and slayed the god children? Even immortals can die at the hands of other immortals. Which is why we must unite against this abomination and kill her before she can pose a real threat to us.”

  Fenmoira leans into me and rubs her hands up my chest, slipping her fingers between the curls of my chest hair. She clenches her fists tight, and then jerks her hands away, ripping out my chest hair. I gulp down a groan and force myself to maintain my composure. “Oh, how I’ve missed your diabolical mind,” she sighs desirously.

  Taking Fenmoira in my arms, I squeeze her waist tightly, pull her into me, and press my hungry lips to her willing mouth. Brushing the unfinished mugs of beer and dinner plates onto the floor with my arm, I lay Fenmoira down onto the table. She lays back, stretching her back across the table so I can get a good view of her taught midriff, and then looks up at me with libidinous eyes. She licks her lips again.

  Fenmoira pulls me down to her. She invites me to take another taste of her succulent lips and I do.

  “Fine,” Theodren grumbles, turning back around in his seat to mope. He reaches over the counter top and fetches a bottle of rum from behind the counter. Pouring himself another drink, he adds, “We’ll get rid of the girl first. Then we’ll have our fun.”

  “But before we do all that hard work of tracking down the little wench and ripping her soul out through her bleeding throat,” says Fenmoira, sliding my shirt down off my shoulders and wrapping her legs around my waist. “I have a welcome home present I’ve been dying to give you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I reply, as I lean into her. I bend down, pressing my chest into her perfect physique, and begin kissing her chest and neck.

  Fenmoira’s fingers grip the back of my head, clutching my hair tightly in her grasp. Pulling my head back, she looks me in the eyes and says, “I want it extra rough. Just like old times.”

  “Anything for you, my love.” I press down upon Fenmoira’s warm body with my own, crushing her beneath my weight. Her heart pounds with excitement as I wrap my fingers around her throat and begin to squeeze. “We’ll bathe in the blood of all of Valandra,” I hiss through clenched teeth. This arouses Fenmoira even more. She’s squirming beneath me with euphoric delight at the mere prospect of a bloodbath.

  I squeeze her neck harder. She reaches up to grab my wrists to pry them away from her throat. When she cannot, she smiles and lets her eyes roll back her in head.

  But I don’t allow her to pass out. Instead, the moment it seems she’s fading away, I let go of her and then slap her hard across her cheek. The sharp sting brings her rushing back to consciousness and she laughs and then kisses me on the lips.

  “More,” she whispers into my ear, pulling me back down onto her.

  Theodren can only role his eyes at our sadistic and incestuous love affair. As I go down on Fenmoira, Theodren pours himself another drink and then begins laughing. What starts as a chuckle soon grows into a hysterical uproar of bellowing laughter. It’s as though he just now understood the punchline of the greatest joke ever told and realized how truly funny it was.

  “It’s good to be home,” I say with a depraved laugh. Both Theodren and Fenmoira join in laugher. Oh, what good times we will have, I think.

  Opening my mouth wide, I pop my fangs out. I bend down and bite into Fenmoira’s soft, pulsing neck. She lets out a titillating gasp as my fangs pierce her skin and I begin suckling the lifeforce from her throbbing veins.

  I’ll feed on her just enough to recharge myself and restore me to my original glorious form. Of course, after I finish quenching my thirst, I shall do everything in my power to find and exterminate the fourth Outlier.

  THE END

  AUTHOR NOTES

  (Book 2)

  >>>HI! TRISTAN VICK HERE<<<

  When I first conceived of the world of Valandra I did very little world building. I’ve read enough reviews to know that putting too much world building up front and not enough character or plot development can really turn fans off. So, I decided to sprinkle little bits here and there throughout, and pace myself. Flesh out the world more naturally.

  As I went along, however, a common theme kept cropping up. My women characters were front and center and my male characters were not as prominently used in the storytelling. Then the lightbulb moment went off in my head—Valandra must be a matriarchically ordered society rather than a patriarchally ordered society. As a matriarchy, women would be seen as the heroic, strong, protectors within society. They’d hold all the power. Men would (and do) play an important part too, but I felt it would be neat to explore a fantasy world governed by women rather than men. Which is why women take leadership roles more frequently in Valandra and why they hold higher positions in society.

  Another thing I wanted to include in Valandra, and which starts to develop more in this second novel, is the world of magitek. I wanted magical based technology to become something unique, as you don’t see a lot of it outside of video-games like Final Fantasy.

  By touching on magitek, I can talk about things like technological revolutions and technological superiority which creates an interesting plot element that could lead to other Valandra stories.

  In the first book I introduced Juggernauts, robot-like armor that is sentient but also can contain a pilot, sort of like a mech robot. In this book, I introduce flying gravity ships which use loadstones and magic crystals to keep them in the air. I hope to expand my magitek in t
he future as I go along as I think it is a fresh way to approach high fantasy and also separates me from being just another J.RR. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin clone. Although, I’m by no means comparing my writing to theirs. By comparison, I’m just a hack. They are the troch barres. All I can do is hope people like my stories. Even just a little bit.

  Thanks for reading, and be sure to subscribe to my official newsletter for updates on Valandra 3, special offers, and all the latest news regarding my other upcoming writing projects.

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  Gratitude.

  Tristan Vick April 15, 2017.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tristan Vick is the popular multi-genre author of the BITTEN, the Resurrection Virus saga; The Scarecrow & Lady Kingston, a paranormal comedic-noir; and a new fantasy series called Valandra.

  Tristan Vick graduated from Montana State University with degrees in English Literature and Asian Cultural Studies. He speaks fluent Japanese and lives with his wife and children in Japan. When he's not commuting on the train or teaching English, he spends his time reading, writing, blogging, binge-watching his favorite television shows, and eating sara-udon.

  In addition to being traditionally published, Tristan Vick continues to self-publish under his own imprint, Regolith Publications.