“Over ‘ere,” said Rundal, pointing a stubby finger at a tunnel dug through a cell wall. “Looks like one o’ the pris’ners musta attempted t’ make a break through ‘ere ‘n’ got more than ‘e bargained fer.”
Eathon stroked his chin. “You’re saying an escapee tunnelled out and found himself in a drequon burrow?”
“Looks tha’ way.”
“You could almost feel sorry for him,” said Galanthre.
“So,” said Ashley, “the bad boy we came down here for is on the other side of that wall?”
“Reet,” replied Rundal, slapping the hilt of his axe in his palm.
Nat took a gulp and nodded. “Okay then, people. Let’s go bag us a beastie.”
The tunnel through the cell wall opened up into a large cavern. Vents upon the cave walls spat noxious gasses that hissed and whistled like boiling kettles. While Nat was busy tying a handkerchief around her mouth, she heard a noise. A hum that echoed off the cavern walls and made the fine red hairs on the back of her arms stand on end. She instinctively went for Cleaver, but found a regular old sword in his scabbard. How she missed that snarky metal bastard. She drew the substitute blade anyway and looked for the source of the noise.
“Over there,” whispered Galanthre, pointing dead ahead.
Nat aimed her glow stone in the direction of the elf’s outstretched finger and lit up a heinous, alien creature feasting on the shredded corpse of a mole rat.
This was the drequon.
Despite Nat’s misgivings, it truly did look nothing at all like a dragon. Though the beast walked on four legs and chomped at its meal with a mouthful of fangs, that was where its similarity to the D&D mascot ended. In every other sense, this was a different beast. The drequon was around seven feet tall and stood on a set of spindly limbs that terminated in flat, paddle-like feet. Its body was roughly cylindrical and its skin transparent, revealing a stack of livid, purple internal organs inside. Hanging limply by its sides were a pair of thin, prehensile tentacles, slick and rubbery like inner tubes slathered in lard, and studded with wicked barbs. Beneath its peculiar, beaked head was a fan-like collar, which flapped as it moved, creating the disconcerting hum that reverberated around the cave. This was no dragon. This wasn’t even a dragon’s non-union equivalent.
The party stood stock still. Rundal had warned them that the blind drequon tracked its quarry using ultra-sensitive ears, and that any noise they made would draw the creature straight to them. If that happened, the drequon was certain to use every defensive capability it had, including its fiery breath. Combined with the cavern’s buildup of flammable gasses, that would spell death for them all. Somehow they had to find a way to sneak up on the thing undetected and trap it before it could unleash its finishing move.
Eathon began to stalk the drequon, skirting around its flank in an attempt to catch it unawares and knock the beast unconscious. He was padding along silently, zeroing in on his target, when he saw Nat hold up a fist. The elf froze. Around the perimeter of the cavern, emerging from the darkness, where more drequons. Perhaps as many as a dozen. Without knowing it, the gang had stumbled right into the middle of a drequon hive.
“Oh my days,” gasped Ashley. He clapped a hand to his mouth, but it was too late.
The heads of the drequons swivelled, and the pitch of their combined humming reached a fever pitch. There was no time to think, only to act.
“Get ‘em before they blow us all sky ‘igh,” yelled Rundal, and sunk his battleaxe in the head of the nearest beast.
Ordinarily, the drequons knew better than to use their incendiary breath to cook their prey—their time trapped in the combustible parts of the mine having taught them to eat their food raw—but threatened by an outside element, they would use any advantage available, even if it meant suicide.
Galanthre let out a rallying cry and rushed a second drequon, charging pell-mell at the creature and lancing the pillar box trunk of its torso. Eathon joined the fray, surging forward and removing the throats of three more drequons in one fluid move. Nat plunged her sword into the body of another and felt the creature’s blood pour over her grip, warm on her hand. The monsters fought back, spinning like dervishes and whipping the intruders with their barbed tentacles. One of the thorny flails tore across Rundal’s shoulder and a jet of blood flew from the wound like the swish of a red cape. The dwarf roared in pain before returning an axe blow that could have felled an ogre. Ashley’s sword found flesh too, eviscerating another of the beasts just as it was preparing to release a brew of fiery breath that would have brought the proceedings to a deathly halt.
As the battle wore on, the bodies began to pile up, curling around the ankles of the valiant warriors as they fought to winnow the drequon swarm. The bloodshed took its toll though, and before long the gang were bone-weary and lathered in sweat. Nat hadn’t seen a workout of this magnitude since she went to a spin class and actually used the resistance wheel when she was told to instead of just miming it like some millennial DJ. Soon she became so exhausted from the fight that she failed to keep a grip on her sword, and had it knocked from her hand by one of the drequon’s spiralling tentacles. She was left with nothing to defend herself with. Nothing but a bit of old stick topped with a glow stone.
The drequon lashed out again and its thorny appendage whistled past Nat’s jugular with nothing to spare. Absolutely nothing. If she hadn't washed recently it would have taken the dirt off her neck. The drequon advanced for another attack and Nat panicked. Though her colleagues had succeeded in dispatching the rest of the swarm, none of them was close enough to come to her aid fast enough to stop the drequon finishing her off. She saw Eathon across the way, tortured by his inability to help her. She froze, and the moment she did, the eyeless drequon became confused. Halting in its tracks, the creature began to hum in an effort to relocate its quarry. Nat began to realise what was occurring. Without her thrashing about the place and making a racket, the drequon had lost sight of her.
Nat began to back away. She retreated as quietly as she could, but in the near silence of the echoing cavern she felt like like a blind woman in Size 13 clogs trying to pick her way through a crèche. Sensing her movement, the drequon advanced after her, its fan-like collar undulating faster, causing the pitch of its hum to rise. As Nat backed up some more, she became aware of a honeycomb of holes on the cave wall beside her, hissing with angry gasses. Thinking fast, she sidestepped towards the vent, counting on it to confuse the creature’s hearing. The plan worked a treat. The babble of vapours acted as an audio camouflage, shrouding her like a cloak of invisibility.
The drequon hummed louder still and bobbed its head this way and that in an attempt to locate its prey. Nat remained statue-still, but the noxious odour of the cave’s gasses found its way into her nostrils. Her stomach churned as though piranhas were swimming laps of it. The drequon brought its face close to hers and opened its fanged beak wide. Nat dry-heaved. She felt her gastric juices do a spin cycle and bile clawed its way up her throat. She was going to retch, and the moment she did, the drequon would take a big wet bite out of her. Still, she couldn’t help herself. The bile rose higher and she gagged. Her hand went reflexively to her mouth, and the drequon shrieked as it lunged for its prey—
—but before the beast could make a buffet of her, Nat managed to cram her glow staff sideways into its mouth. The drequon champed on it furiously, slobber raining from its beak as Nat tried desperately to fight it off. As the monster thrashed about, the phosphorescence of the staff’s soul gem lit up its face like a Scout Leader telling a spooky fireside story.
“Wha’ are ye doin’?” yelled Rundal. “Thas a sacred object yer feedin’ ‘im!”
“My face is a sacred object!” Nat shouted back.
The glow staff snapped in two and the drequon made to chow down on Nat’s flesh. Thankfully, Rundal appeared just in time, rushing to the heels of the creature and grabbing it from behind. Reaching over its head, he forced a custom-made leather bit into the creat
ure’s mouth, preventing it from using its killer bite and corking its fiery breath. The frustrated drequon went for the only form of attack it had left and started to spin, but before it could get up to speed, Ashley was upon it, wrestling the beast into a custom-made sack. The drequon writhed and thrashed, but the rest of the party came to Ashley’s aid and pinned it to the floor. Soon exhaustion overcame the beast and it lay wheezing and spent.
Rundal caught his breath. “Well done, lads,” he puffed. “Keep this oop ‘n’ we may jus’ win this thing.”
Chapter Seven: Attack of Opportunity
AT SOME POINT, Nat thought, folks were going to wise up to her game. “Enough is enough,” they’d say. “No more! We’ve stuck with you to this point, but come on, this really is a step too far!”
And yet here they were, stood around a giant blimp being prepped for a kamikaze mission and saying “We’re with you, Nat. Let’s go! This one really takes the biscuit, but not to worry, you can count on us!”
Elderwood, the elves’ sacred tree that had anointed her the Chosen One, had obviously been onto something. Surely no one would volunteer themself for this madness unless there was some mystical prophecy propping it all up. Something larger at play than a girl trying to rescue her boyfriend. After all, the journey they were about to undertake wasn’t just dangerous, it was blindfold parkour dangerous.
The air balloon lay on its side, half-puffed but already starting to take shape. Inside the capsized basket was the trussed-up drequon, its cylindrical head forced backwards by a metal collar so the fiery breath from its beak could provide the balloon with hot air. The creature didn’t look at all comfortable, Nat thought, and hoped The Broken Lands didn’t have its own PETA.
The balloon stood upright at last, and Neville pulled on a chain, extinguishing the drequon’s flame. He handed it to Nat and explained that it adjusted the tightness of the drequon’s collar, thereby regulating its fiery breath. This was the vehicle’s gas pedal, he explained. “Open the choker to go up and tighten it to go down,” he instructed, backed up by nods from his pit crew companion, Tidbit.
The balloon itself was the combined work of a hundred dwarf seamstresses. Nat wasn’t exactly thrilled about the sexist distribution of labour—women doing the needlework while men took care of the mechanics—but she figured what the hell, one battle at a time. Stop Drensila the Black first, strike a blow for feminism later. Right now this world needed an actual warrior, not a Social Justice Warrior.
Neville had calculated the balloon’s lift-to-weight ratio and determined that the vessel was capable of carrying a landing party of four. To join her on her mission, Nat had chosen Eathon, Galanthre and Ashley. She smiled to herself. A lot had changed since she was picked last in a LARP game.
The fired-up air balloon began to strain at the mooring ropes keeping it earthbound. The four shipmates stepped inside and took their places around the drequon. The creature reminded Nat of one of those hapless animals from the Flintstones: a prehistoric pelican forced to serve as a pedal bin, or a lobster strapped to a trolley and employed as a lawnmower.
“I almost forgot,” said Neville, reaching over the basket and handing Nat a leather satchel.
She looked inside and found a small iron box. “What’s this?” she asked. “Did you pack me a thermos of hot chocolate and a cheese and pickle sandwich?”
Nev laughed. “Consider it an apology. For not backing you up before.”
Nat took the gift and leant over the basket to give him a hug. “Are you serious? I should be giving you a present. What I said about you not caring about Terry—”
“—Forget it,” said Nev, wiping his eyes, which had become suddenly dusty. “Just go get our man.”
Nat gave him a salute and took her place in the basket, grabbing hold of a leather strap for balance. “Anchors aweigh,” she shouted.
Tidbit was just about to loose the mainstay when a gruff voice called out.
“‘Old yer ‘orses.”
It was Rundal, squinting under the glow of the morning sun. He arrived at the launch site and cast his gaze to the heavens. “So... that’s t’ sky, is it?” he said, thoroughly whelmed.
“I thought you lot didn’t go above ground,” said Nat, surprised to see him.
“I won’t be staying for long, I don’t want t’ catch a tan.” He said it as though he were talking about contracting some exotic disease rather than a spot of sunshine.
“Well, it’s great to see you anyway.”
“Given a choice I’d ratha shit in me hand ‘n’ clap. But ah wunted ta say good luck on ye maiden voyage.”
Nat gave him a hug. “Take care of yourself, big guy,” she told him.
With all the goodbyes taken care of, Tidbit took up the anchor. There was a sickening lurch, then the basket began to separate from the ground. Nat and her shipmates held on tight as the balloon took to the sky and caught hold of an easterly wind. Those on the ground waved goodbye as the intrepid adventurers headed into the arms of destiny.
“Mark my words, lass,” called Rundal, growing ever smaller. “The bards ’ll sing ballads o’ this day.”
*****
RIGHT BEFORE CLEAVER’S blade met his skin, Terry saw a scene from a hundred war movies play across the back of his mind. The hero of the film—tied up and at the mercy of some Nazi torturer—tosses back his head, offers a contemptuous grin, and with a steely look in his eye, tells his tormentor, “Do your worst, Fritz, I’ll never talk!”
This, Terry had been brought up to believe, was the way a hero behaved. He resisted. He withstood. Then, when the moment was just right, he broke free of his bonds and evened the score.
That was before the blade came down. Before its edge found the flesh of Terry’s belly and he felt a trickle leave his body. Before he heard his blood spatter on the floor. Before he came to realise the difference between torture in the movies and torture in real life.
Because in real life, the hero doesn’t grin. He doesn’t fix his tormentor with a look of withering contempt. And he certainly doesn’t tell the man with the gleaming blade to do his worst. In real life there is no hero, just a man. A terrified man, weeping and shivering and voiding his bowels. That’s what men are like. Women too. It doesn’t matter if you’re an MMA fighter or a Navy SEAL, the results are always the same. No amount of girding or tough guy swagger will save you. You’ll talk. You’ll talk and you’ll talk until the blade goes away.
And yet, none of that made Terry feel any less guilty.
He’d betrayed his friends, and for what? Drensila was going to kill him anyway, he was sure of that. Not personally, mind you, she had Clive to take take care of that now. Drensila had proven herself perfectly content to sit in her tower while her new apprentice performed her dirty work.
Clive wiped away a spot of Terry’s blood that had somehow found its way onto his cheek. “I suppose this is goodbye then,” he told his prisoner, matter of factly.
Terry croaked through a mouth hoarse from screaming. “What now?”
“Good question,” Clive replied, pondering his options. “I suppose I could just cast a spell to make your heart stop. Seems a bit anticlimactic though, doesn’t it? Boiling your blood inside your body, that has a nice ring to it. I could turn your colon into a snake, see what that does. Or maybe I’ll whip your skin off like a tablecloth. What do you reckon, Tel? Got any faves?”
Terry refused to give him the satisfaction. Instead he smirked and croaked out a few last words. “You act like a big man but you’re just a little bitch,” he said, nodding at the ceiling towards Drensila’s minaret. “Her bitch.”
“You don’t get it,” Clive snarled. “I don’t take orders from anyone. Not anymore. I’m a sorcerer. A monster of your making. A tool of evil.”
“You’re a tool alright,” agreed Terry.
Blood rushed to Clive’s pallid face. In his anger, he almost nuked Terry on the spot, but he held back, determined to make one last twist of the knife before he put his old frie
nd out of his misery. “Take a peek,” he said, discreetly lifting a fold of his robe.
Terry found a familiar-looking object tucked inside.
It was the Durkon rod of power.
“Who’s the bitch now?” hissed Clive.
*****
EATHON CLUNG TO the side of the basket as Nat familiarised herself with the balloon’s somewhat unorthodox controls. After a shaky start that threatened to tip them screaming into the void, she eventually got a grip on the vessel and piloted it into an air stream headed for Durkon Peak.
There it was, off in the distance like a black fang gnawing at the sky. Eathon thought of his brother, Gilon, twice leading an assault on Drensila the Black. Both times had been a mistake, and now here he was, about to mount a headstrong offensive of his own. He looked to his sister, the only other remaining member of the Redsky family. This mission could well spell the end of their ancient bloodline. He hoped Nat was worth it. He knew she was.
*****
NAT AND HER crew had been bobbing beneath the air balloon for the better part of three hours. The sun was beginning to set, and Nat was finally beginning to get her sea legs (or, more precisely, her air legs). The sky was a Turner painting; a teal backdrop interrupted by whorls of burnt orange, all boiled together into a pastel-coloured steam.
Nat watched the dim shadow of the balloon as it passed over the steeply rising terrain known as Sky Fells. The topography was arid and pockmarked by pools of bubbling lava. As the cliffs rose below them, so they drew closer to the deadly baths, forcing Nat to step on the pedal and give the vessel more lift.
“Does this thing ever run out of gas?” she asked, pointing to the drequon.
“According to the dwarves,” replied Eathon, “not so long as it’s angry and fed.”
Power Playing (Trolled Book 2) Page 6
