“Magic?” The word immediately caught my interest. “She’s going to teach me how to use magic?”
INDEED. THIS IS THE FINAL GIFT I GIVE YOU TO AID YOU IN YOUR QUEST.
Pain suddenly raced through my entire body, not unbearable, but like a thousand tiny needles driving into the skin of my arms, legs, chest, back, and shoulders.
YOU ARE NOT FROM AGREON AND THUS LACK THE INNATE ABILITY TO TAP INTO THE MAGIC THAT HOLDS THE WORLD TOGETHER. I HAVE GIVEN YOU THE MARK OF THE GUARDIAN TO UNLOCK THE MAGICS IN THE WORLD AROUND YOU. USE THE POWER IT BESTOWS WISELY.
The pain receded, and I felt myself begin to fall, slowly at first, but faster and faster until wind whistled around me.
BE STRONG, ETHAN DEPAOLO OF EARTH, AND USE THE GIFTS I HAVE GIVEN YOU. THE WORLD OF AGREON IS COUNTING ON YOU.
Suddenly, the voice was gone, and I found myself lying on cold stone. I pushed up to my hands and knees, and I looked around to see that the world around me was still dark but no longer empty. Somewhere in the distance, the echo of water dripping into a pool was joined by a dull hum that vibrated through the rocks beneath me. A hint of a breeze whispered past my face, and it carried the smell of fresh water.
Red light slowly illuminated my surroundings, and I realized the glow was the gemstone hanging from my neck. It pulsed beneath my T-shirt and grew brighter with every heartbeat.
I scrambled to my feet and pulled the necklace out of my shirt. The gemstone seemed to wink at me in the darkness, and a purring voice caught me off guard.
“Well, hello, hero.” The voice sounded like velvet and smoke and honeyed perfection, and I felt my body warm.
“H-Hello,” I stammered.
“So, you’re Ethan, huh?” The gemstone pulsed brighter as the voice purred in my mind. “Mmmmm. You’re nicely put together, big boy. I really like your muscles.”
“You can see me?” I asked as I squinted at the glowing amulet.
“Oh yessss,” the voice purred. “Can’t you see me?”
“Uhh, yeah,” I said. “Well, I can see the amulet. Sorry for the questions. It’s just a lot to take in at once, you know.”
“No worries, Ethan. I will explain everything to you. I must say that I am so happy to be attached to someone as handsome as you. I really love the way you are holding onto me. Gives me goosebumps all over.”
“Uhh… Thanks,” I said as I felt heat rush to my face. It seemed so strange talking to a gemstone or empty air, but I guess my day had started getting weird the moment I ran through the doorway and heard Barodan’s voice in my mind. “Do you have a name?”
“Of course I do, silly,” the voice said in a breathy tone tinged with flirtatious humor. “You can call me Nyvea.”
The way she spoke her name made me think of lace whispering across skin, and I felt goosebumps descend my back. Damn, men would have paid money to talk to Nyvea on the phone, her voice was that sexy.
“Nyvea, that’s a nice name,” I said, then kicked myself at how ridiculous my comment sounded.
“You like it?” Nyvea said. “That makes me so happy, Ethan.”
“Yeah, it’s…pretty.” I rolled my eyes at my lameness. I was normally better with women, but her voice really was doing a number on me. “How exactly did you end up in an amulet? Unless that sort of thing is normal here.”
“No, silly,” Nyvea said with a little laugh. “I’m in here because I’m special.”
“Special, how?”
“Ohhhh,” she sighed. “It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is you, handsome. I’m just here to serve you.”
“Tell me a bit about yourself,” I asked. “I want to get to know you better. How did you get in there in the first place? Where did you come from? How--”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m just a small-town girl, stuck in an amulet, waiting for a big strong man. I’m happy to help you in every way I can. What we need to do first is teach you how to use your magic.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’m down to learn what sort of magic I can do.” I struggled to ignore the honey dripping off her every word.
“Right now you have the ability given to you by Barodan. It is the ability to siphon magic from the world around you.”
“Awesome!” I breathed. “How do I do that?”
“Maybe you want to get out of this cave first?” Nyvea asked. “After all, you’re much more handsome in direct sunlight. Not that I mind the thought of being alone in the darkness with you.”
I drew in a deep breath and tried to calm my racing heartbeat. Her voice had a pretty powerful effect on me, but Barodan’s warning rang in my mind. I couldn’t let her out of her amulet, and I was guessing that she was trying to butter me up so that she could ask for me to go against the guardian’s wishes.
“Sure,” I said as I turned around. “But it’s pretty dark in here, and I have no idea how to get out.”
“Easy,” Nyvea purred. “Rub my gemstone and hold me up high.”
“Like this?” I asked as I gently caressed the smooth jewel face.
“Ohhh yessssss,” she purred. “Exactly like that. Keep going, big boy, and hold me up.”
I held the gemstone over my head with one hand and stroked it with the other. Ruby-colored light filled the cave, and I saw the craggy outline of rocks all around me.
“That’s a pretty cool power,” I told her.
“You’d be surprised what I can do with the right person touching me in the right way. Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. I bet you are popular with all the women of your world.”
“Yeah…” I said as I tried to focus on my surroundings and not how tight my pants felt at the groin.
I was standing in some kind of hollow in the middle of a mountain cave. The walls rose to a curved roof about ten feet above my head, and a small pool formed in a depression in the ground off to one side. Water leaked through the rocks there, and it was apparent that it was the source of the dripping sound I heard.
The small cavern had just one way out: a tunnel mouth ten yards to my right. I took a step toward the exit and my boot struck something hard, so I bent down, waved the glowing amulet over my feet, and saw a wooden handle on the ground.
Somehow the axe I’d been holding back in Silver Star Tower had come with me. There was no mistaking the same wooden handle and red-painted steel head I’d spent the last two days training with in Station 52.
“Damn, that’s my axe,” I said as I picked up my faithful tool. “How did it follow me here?”
“A great warrior needs a weapon,” Nyvea cooed. “Barodan thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”
I slung the axe over my shoulder and strode toward the distant exit. The tunnel had a floor and walls so smooth it almost seemed machined, but the marks carved into the wall seemed crude and primitive by comparison.
“What do they say?” I asked as I held Nyvea up to the wall so I could see them better.
“Nothing interesting,” she replied in a dismissive tone. “Boring stuff about the history of Agreon. I can tell you everything you need to know.”
“Okay, so tell me,” I said as I started walking down the tunnel.
“Only if you keep rubbing me,” she whispered. “Don’t stop the fun. I love it when you touch me.”
“How long do I have to keep doing this to keep the light working?” I asked as I continued to rub the stone with my fingers and thumb.
“Ohhhh,” she purred. “This has nothing to do with the light.” She almost sounded like she was laughing. “This is just for my fun.”
“Oh jeez.” I laughed and dropped the gemstone. It fell against my shirt and she sighed with disappointment.
“We’re going to have a great time, you and me,” Nyvea said, and then her sigh turned into a husky laugh that made my heart start beating fast again.
“Let’s start with telling me where we are. I think Barodan showed me a bird’s-eye view of the island of Iriador, but where exactly on the island are we?” I thought back to my conversation wi
th the Silent Guardian. “He mentioned something about Elloriel, the last stronghold of humanity.”
“We are in Elloriel,” Nyvea said. “A few miles from Whitespire, the capital city of Elloriel. There are fifty thousand of your humans living there. They are one of the largest cities of free men left.”
“Free?” I asked and remembered Barodan’s words. “You mean not enslaved by the dragons?”
“The dragons have conquered or destroyed all but three human settlements on Iriador. All the humans living in the captured lands either pay tribute or serve their dragon’s bidding.”
The passage around me began to grow brighter, and I heard a deep roaring sound which seemed to get louder as I advanced. The tunnel ran straight for twenty yards before curving sharply to the left. Daylight shone from around the bend, and a cool wind whispered toward me. I could smell water in the air, and I guessed that the roar was some sort of waterfall.
I ran up the tunnel, and excitement set my heart racing as I rounded the corner. There, fifty yards away, I saw daylight. I rushed toward it and inhaled the fresh air drifting toward me. The closer I got to the exit, the louder the roar grew. Moisture filled the air and turned the stones of the tunnel slick under my feet. As I approached, I caught sight of the wall of water cascading just to the right of the tunnel exit.
I wasn’t near the waterfall, I was behind it.
My heart leapt to my throat as I came to the end of the tunnel. The stone simply dropped away into a sheer cliff that plummeted a full forty feet to a crystal blue pool at the base of the waterfall. I craned my neck up and saw that the falls rose forty or fifty feet above the mouth of the tunnel where I stood. The river that fed the falls had to be at least thirty feet across, and the rush of water pounded past me to crash into the pool with tremendous force.
The forest around the pool was filled with a hundred shades of green and brown. Stately oaks stood beside towering pines, with drooping willow boughs sweeping the ground among silver-barked birch trees. A sea of trees radiated outward from the waterfall for miles in every direction. It was an unbroken natural beauty that took my breath away.
Far in the distance, a city was visible above the treetops. White spires rose dazzling and bright into the cloudless blue sky. As I stood gaping, the sound of a ringing bell drifted toward me.
“Is that Whitespire?” I asked.
“It is,” Nyvea answered. “And it’s where our quest begins.”
“Our quest?” I asked and raised an eyebrow before I remembered she couldn’t see me.
“I am your guide, aren’t I? That means it’s as much my quest as yours.”
“I’m thankful for your help, Nyvea. How do we get down from here?” I asked.
“You could always jump. The pool below is deep enough for you to dive into without injury,” she said.
“Maybe there’s a better way to get down?” I asked as I turned to study the cliff face beside the tunnel mouth. The stone was sheer and slick with water, so there was no way I could climb down there. Then I looked back at the thick darkness from where I had come, but the cavern had only one exit I had noticed, and that was the tunnel I’d just gone down. This was the only way out.
My stomach did a little somersault as I looked at the pool. It seemed really far down, much farther than the forty feet I’d initially guessed. Probably closer to fifty or even sixty. It seemed a bit insane to take the leap.
But wasn’t crazy sort of par for the course today? I’d escaped a burning building by stepping into a white light, which had led me to a black void where a being from another universe recruited me to slay dragons in order to save his world. Then I received a talking amulet that sounds like a sex-line operator. Things were fucking weird, so how much crazier could it be for me to jump off a cliff?
I turned and strode back up the tunnel a few yards.
“The exit’s behind you,” Nyvea told me with a slightly irritated edge to her voice.
“I know,” I told her with a big grin. “But I figured I might as well do this right.”
I stripped out of my turnout gear, rolled it up, and used my thick red suspenders to tie it into a tight bundle. Then I picked it up and took a deep breath.
“Here goes nothing.”
I gripped my axe and bundle tighter, sprinted toward the falling water, and leaped as far out into the empty air as I could.
Gravity seemed to work just fine on this world. I hung in the air for a single heartbeat before taking a long plunge into the falling water. It slammed me toward the pool below, and I felt my heart try to leap out of my throat.
“Waaaaahooooo!” I shouted as the water rushed up toward me.
Chapter Three
I hit the pool with a splash and immediately found myself in an underwater world like nothing I’d seen before. The water was crystal clear, like the pictures I’d seen of the Caribbean Sea. Colorful stones of all shapes and colors covered the base of the pool, and I marveled at the beauty of the water even as I swam back up toward the air.
I drew in a big gulp of air as my head broke the surface. I was slightly dazed for a few seconds as I caught my breath, and then droplets from the nearby waterfall drew my attention. It was only ten feet from me, so I turned away and swam toward the shore.
I’d always been a strong swimmer, but now I felt like I was gliding through the water. Even with my axe and the soggy bundle in my hands, each movement of my arms and legs propelled me faster than I’d ever experienced. This was how I imagined Olympic champion swimmers moved, and excitement pounded in my chest as I sliced through the water.
“Look at you go!” Nyvea purred in my ear. “That’s hero speed if ever I saw it.”
I covered the thirty yards to the shore in ten seconds and was barely breathing hard. I paused long enough to take a sip of the water and found it tasted absolutely delicious, like the bottled stuff sold at crazy high prices in fancy restaurants, so without another thought, I drank until my stomach felt ready to burst. I hadn’t realized I was so thirsty. As I drank, my mind slowly cleared and I realized that the fiery trek through the Silver Star Tower had left me a bit dehydrated.
The rocks were slippery under my boots as I climbed out of the pool and onto the shore. The grass was thick and spongy under foot, and its dark green color reminded me of Chicago’s Park District. It was one of my favorite places in the city, and I’d spent many hours staring over the sea of green to forget my troubles.
Ten yards from the edge of the pool, the grass ran into a dense forest of oak, pine, willow, and birch trees. I drew in a deep breath and savored the fresh smell of trees. A carpet of brown twigs and green, orange, and red leaves covered the forest floor. Sunlight shone through the thick canopy and dappled the ground with bright colors that made the world seem so much more real than anything I’d experienced on Earth.
“This is absolutely gorgeous,” I said to Nyvea. It still felt strange talking to the gemstone, but I was getting used to it. “I’ve only seen forests this perfect in photographs.”
“Photographs?” Nyvea asked.
“Pictures,” I explained. “From my world.”
“Are there many painters on Earth?”
“Some. And other artists…” I ended lamely as I realized I couldn’t explain digital images and video.
I took a seat in the springy grass, untied my laces, and pulled off the black standard-issue boots that every Chicago firefighter received. Water gushed out of the boots and soaked the ground, but my pants and shirt were too wet for it to bother me.
“Ooh, you’re all wet,” Nyvea purred. “If I weren’t stuck in this amulet, I’d have so much fun taking them off you. But alas, I’ll have to just watch you strip and sigh with frustration. So, take off those wet clothes, handsome.”
“Uhh. I guess.” I felt oddly self-conscious as I stripped off my gray CFD t-shirt and the white tank top beneath. I contemplated taking off my blue cargo pants but decided against it. The last thing I wanted on this new world was to be literally ca
ught with my pants down.
“Mmm, I like what I see,” Nyvea whispered in a breathy tone. “You’re nicely put together, aren’t you? And those tattoos make you look so delicious. I just want to run my tongue over them, and your muscles.”
“Tattoos?” My jaw dropped as I stared down at my bare torso. My shoulders, arms, chest, and abs were covered in dark, swirling lines. I ran my hand over the strange artwork that had appeared on my previously unmarked skin. They reminded me of the Maori or Celtic designs I’d seen at tattoo shops. They almost seemed to flow when I moved as if they were a part of my skin rather than just etched onto it.
“What the hell happened to me?” I asked before remembering the pain that had gripped me as I floated in the void with Barodan. “Wait, Barodan said he’d given me the Mark of the Guardian. Is that what these are?”
“Oh yes, hero,” Nyvea replied with a throaty laugh that sent heat rushing through my body. “They are a gift from the Silent Guardian. They will help you access the magic that permeates all life on Agreon.”
One tattoo on my breastbone stood out from the rest. Most were solid black lines, but this one was somehow a deeper black than the others. I touched it and jerked my fingertips back as a jolt like electricity shot through my hands.
“What the fuck?” I touched it again and again the jolt came. “Is this…magic?” I whispered the last word.
“That’s exactly what it is. That mark is the gift from Barodan. It’s your ability to siphon magic from the world around you. Want to give it a try?”
“Hell yeah,” I chuckled “What do I need to do?”
“Close your eyes,” Nyvea told me. “Now, feel the grass beneath your feet, the sunlight on your skin, and the wind ruffling your hair.”
“Okay. Now what?”
“I’m getting there, handsome. You are so eager, I love it.”
“Just excited,” I said. “A few hours ago, I had no idea that magic even existed.”
“I understand,” she said. “As you feel the world of Agreon around you, look for the something…extra. Think of it as the thing that drives the wind, that fills the light with warmth, that makes the grass grow. Follow everything back to its roots and origins. That sensation, that something you feel, that is the magic of Agreon.”
Dragon Slayer Page 3
