by Logan Jacobs
Showoffs like him just ground my gears in the wrong direction.
The orcs returned to their ship and climbed aboard, but some of them stayed in the rowboats. As my eyes raked over the enemy vessel, I saw that not only was their main sail damaged, but the mast of their secondary sail had been knocked over. So, they’d need to harvest lumber from the island and fix it if they had any hope of returning home.
But still, the sinking feeling in my gut returned as I watched the orcs climb aboard their ship and start to organize in a way that was all too familiar.
“Oh, no,” I breathed.
We all knew what I meant, but no one else said a single word.
As we watched, the orcs re-emerged from their ship a few minutes later with all of the supplies they would need to build a camp.
And that was exactly what they did.
It took them a few hours, and by the time they were done the ocean water had turned freezing cold and the sun had almost set. As we huddled in our hiding spot behind the boulders, we all watched in shocked silence as the orcs did the same thing they’d done a thousand times over: take over a new island.
And it appeared the egg was their prized possession.
Once the camp had been set up, the egg was taken off the ship and displayed smack dab in the middle of their encampment. The orcs even put it on a damn pedestal, and they were huddled around it as they stared at it in the way I’d expect someone to stare at a god. I had no idea if they were actually even interested in Nadir and her people at this point, or if all they wanted was that goddamned egg and the glory and victories they thought came along with it.
“We wait until it’s dark,” I told the women when the orcs had finally settled down around a raging campfire. The egg was prominently displayed in the center of their quickly made camp, and they jeered and danced about it like it was a chunk of gold, and not something that would one day turn into a real, living being.
It only took another half an hour for the sun to completely set, and then everything turned pitch black. When it did, we slowly and silently moved out of the water and onto the beach, where we then made a mad dash down the sandy strip until we were hidden by a twist in the island’s topography.
“We should make camp for the night,” I said as I turned to the women. “But no fires. We don’t want to risk the orcs seeing smoke or light and coming after us.”
The women all nodded their heads, which I could see thanks to my dragon vision. Then Jemma, Sela, Mira, and I sat down to eat dried meat and fruits from our packs, while George and Nadir headed to the edge of the ocean to find some fish to munch on.
“We’re going to plan an attack on those orcs,” I announced as we all ate our cold dinners in the chilly darkness of the night. “I estimate they’ll need a few days to harvest the lumber to fix their mast, so we’ll gather all of our fighting women and take those fuckers down. Since they’ve decided to stick around on this island, I’ve decided they’ve thrown down the gauntlet. And we’re going to get that dragon egg for ourselves.”
“The treasure!” Nadir grinned as she wiggled excitedly. “We’ll get it back!”
“Yes, but it’s not just a treasure,” I reminded her. “It’s going to turn into a dragon, and we need to be ready for that. George, how much do you think we can get that thing to listen to us once it hatches?”
Hard to say, the water dragon mused. It may listen to us the same way I listen to you, or it may act like a trained animal. Then again, it may do neither of those things and have a mind of its own.
I relayed what George said to the others, and Sela grimaced.
“That is what I am afraid of,” the warrior said. “What if the dragon grows up, and then one day decides to burn us or our village to the ground?”
She made a valid point, one I couldn’t deny for a second, so I mulled over the different options laid out before us.
“Look,” I said at length, “if the baby dragon is anything like its mom, those creatures are smart. Did you see the way she looked at me? It was as if she already knew we were here to help.”
“You mean, after she had tried to torch us, of course?” Sela cocked one of her eyebrows.
“I don’t think she was actually trying to do that.” I nodded.
“You don’t?” Jemma asked.
“No,” I said. “I mean, she could have, but she didn’t. It kind of felt like she was herding us away from her nest.”
“Hmmm,” Sela mused. “Hard to say. She was just so powerful.”
“Sela, I’m your king, right?”
“Of course.”
“And you trust me?” I asked.
“With everything in me,” she responded with what could be considered a soft smile. For Sela, that is.
“Then you’ll know I’m only making the decisions I think are best,” I replied. “I would never try to put any of us in harm’s way, but to have a dragon on our side, with the kind of firepower the beast displayed today? That would make us completely unmatched in this war. We could defeat the orcs quicker than any of us ever dreamed possible.”
Sela thought it over for just a moment, but I could already see in her deep green eyes that she knew I was right. Not only that, but the warrior was tired of this war with the orcs. It had raged on for years, and I’d only been a part of it for a few months.
But Sela, and all the other women, had lost so much because of it, and the idea of a solution was as tantalizing as drugs were to a new addict. They wanted it so badly, and ever since I’d arrived, it had been just at the tips of their fingers. Now, finally, we might have found the one solution we really needed to solve all of our problems, the final nail in the orcs’ proverbial coffin.
And it currently resided in a very shiny, very special silver egg just out of our reach.
As I curled up with all four women, with George snoring softly a few feet away, I couldn’t get the image of that egg out of my head.
I pictured it sitting in the middle of the nest with its mother’s tail wrapped protectively around the silver shell. And then I recalled as the orc raised it high above his head, while the dragon soared off into the distance with a hole in her wing and a lot of bruised scales.
And lastly, I saw the silver egg as the orange glow of the firelight glinted off it and made the speckles dance all over the shell. It looked purple, and then blue, and then silver once more.
The entire time, all I could think of was how the hell we could defeat the orc army and get our hands on the egg without accidentally destroying it. I had no idea how strong a dragon egg was, though, or how far along in its development the baby was. Sure, George and Nixie’s two children had perfectly strong eggs, but that didn’t mean the fire breathing dragons did. For all I knew, the grown creatures were strong, but the eggs could have been as fragile as chicken eggs.
I fell asleep as all of those thoughts raced through my head and nearly caused myself a headache. I had to force myself to slow down and remember to take everything one step at a time. After all, that was how I’d gotten this far.
And the first step was to get back to camp, update everyone on these new events, and figure out how the hell we planned to attack the orc army without risking the egg.
The positive thing was our numbers rivaled theirs. On top of that, I already knew Jemma’s and Mira’s people had better fighting skills, and from what I’d seen of Nadir’s people when they’d attacked us in the forest, their almost animalistic way of combat was just as good as the rest of us.
Of course, I’d have to give them real, strong weapons to use, and not the crude ones they had made out of rock. I was worried those things would never stand up against the well-made orc swords. One blow from a sharp orc weapon, and Nadir’s stone axe would probably shatter into pieces at her feet, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted to happen mid battle.
The next morning, we woke up with the sun. Its orange and pink rays had just begun to peek over the horizon and set our eyelids ablaze when we all began to stir
.
Except for Nadir, that is. She was already six feet out in the ocean, with the waves nearly up to her head, as she searched for some fresh fish to catch and eat for breakfast.
When she returned victorious, with a squirming, bright blue fish in her hands that reminded me a little of a salmon, she wrinkled her nose at the dried fruit Sela had pulled from her pack.
“Do you not enjoy the juice of the fruits?” Nadir demanded. “You have sucked it all out of the berry. Where is the fun in that?”
Sela looked down at the dried berry she held between her fingertips, halfway to her mouth, and mulled over the question.
“This way it does not go bad,” she replied when she looked back up at Nadir, as if the answer was meant to be obvious.
“Go bad?” Nadir tested the words on her tongue. “How does a fruit go bad? Has it been cursed by a tree spirit?”
“There is no such thing as a tree spirit,” Sela scoffed. “The fruit will go bad when you have picked it, but do not eat it fast enough. When the fruit is dried, no such things will happen. That is why I eat it. Not just for enjoyment, though it is tasty.”
Sela tossed me one of the dried berries from our newly planted tree back on her island, and I gladly snapped it up. Hali had done her job perfectly. The fruit had those little bits of crystallized sugar I absolutely loved, while it still retained much of the tanginess it had when it was raw.
Nadir chomped through the head of the fish with a very suspicious look on her face as she watched me enjoy my dried fruit.
“Your people have very strange ways of eating,” she commented.
“The same thing could be said for you,” I shot back with a grin.
“Ben, I believe I may have found my match in you,” the woman laughed. “Even my deceased mate would not jest with me the way you do. I admire it. You don’t let me boss you around.”
“Trust me, there is plenty more backbone where that came from,” Mira interjected with a sly smile. “Our Draco Rex does not let anyone get away with anything. He is very observant.”
“I like that,” Nadir replied. Her steely gray eyes seemed to sparkle as she looked me over, but there was a hunger in her gaze that set my bones on fire. She looked at me like I was at once an angelic being, and also like she wanted to jump my bones right that very second.
If we hadn’t been in the middle of a beach with a camp full of orc soldiers not too far away, I definitely would have let her. The woman was sexy in the most feral, animalistic sort of ways, and I could just imagine what she’d be like in bed.
I couldn’t fucking wait to find out how right I was.
We all sat for just a few minutes more and watched the sun rise while we chomped down our food. George swam into the ocean and found his own version of Nadir’s sushi breakfast, though his was a fish about four times the size of the one she’d caught. And he ate about six of them, to boot.
When we had enjoyed our relatively relaxed morning, I stood up and stretched out. My back cracked in the most satisfying way, and I let out a huge sigh of air that relaxed my entire body.
I knew the orcs wouldn’t go anywhere anytime soon. Their ship was damaged, and now they’d set up their whole, complicated camp. Now, it was almost like a chess game. I just had to back them up into a checkmate.
Which should be really easy to do with an opponent who didn’t even know he was playing.
So, we finished our meal and then headed back to Nadir’s camp, and the moment we arrived, the raccoon women descended into a flurry of activity as they rushed up to us and demanded to know everything that had happened.
Nadir put her hand up, and they all went instantly silent.
“We will go back to Ben’s camp,” she instructed. “Once there, we will tell you everything. I do not want to tell the story twice.”
When we headed back to my camp, we were met with nearly the exact same amount of activity and excitement.
“Are you alright?” Anora demanded as she shoved past Nadir’s people, and the dragonkin healer’s face was creased with worry. “You were gone far longer than we anticipated. What happened?”
“Oh, so many things,” I replied. “I need everyone to gather over here, please, because I have a lot of information to dump on you guys.”
The women all murmured as they did what I asked. Then Jonas emerged from one of the tents we’d pitched, and I could see a mixture of worry and concern in his watery blue eyes. He gave me a look that conveyed a lot in just a few seconds but, first and foremost, I could tell he’d had a vision. He bore the exact same look in his eyes Marella had in hers whenever she saw the future, or even just felt something from it.
So, I gave him a single nod to let him know I understood, and then I turned to the women in front of me.
I saw Nadir off to the side with Lezan, Jira, Malak, and Trin, but to my surprise, she hadn’t already started to fill them in on what had happened. Instead, they all looked at me expectantly as they waited for me to speak.
“So, we did find the treasure Nadir told us about,” I began in a loud voice, and a ripple of gasps and sighs of shock made its way through the crowd.
Nadir’s four women shrieked in excitement, then turned to look at her, but from the expression on her face, I knew they could already tell it wasn’t the good news they hoped for.
“Yeah, well, the thing is, it wasn’t exactly the kind of treasure I thought it was,” I continued. “It turns out Nadir and her people had found a dragon’s egg.”
“Like George?” Anora asked, and she looked over at the water dragon fondly.
“Not exactly.” I shook my head. “This was more like a… well, a fire breathing dragon egg.”
“Dragons can breathe fire?” a woman in the crowd, one of Jemma’s people, gasped. “George, can you breathe fire?”
The water dragon shook his massive head apologetically.
“George is called a water dragon,” I explained. “This dragon I’m talking about is something else entirely. They’re enormous, nearly as big as our ship, and they can fly. And, on top of that, they also breathe fire. It comes out of their mouth the same way you and I breathe air.”
It took a moment for the crowd to really absorb this information, but when they did, murmurs and questions started to fly around the air.
“So, where is this egg?” someone called out.
“About that.” I grimaced as I remembered the orcs and their massive attack on the poor dragon. “We had some unexpected visitors. A ship full of orcs came and took the egg, and they badly wounded the mother dragon and forced her to retreat off the island. Right now, the orcs have the egg in their camp, and I’m not sure where the mom is.”
Three seconds passed before the murmurs and whispers in the crowd became full-on yells of shock and anger.
“We must take those orcs down!”
“They cannot steal our treasure and get away with it. They have taken too much from us already!”
I could tell this last exclamation came from Lezan. The beautiful woman was so angry she’d buried her hands in her black and white hair and looked like she was ready to tear someone limb from limb if they so much as breathed in the wrong direction.
“I need everyone to calm down!” I called out, and as soon as the women were settled, I continued. “Look, we’re going to get this egg back, one way or another. What I want to do right now is strategize out this attack and figure out just how we’re going to take these orcs down on an open beach where they’ll see us coming. And once we’ve got that nailed down, we’re going to kill those sons of bitches and take this dragon egg back, got it?”
I met the eyes of almost every single woman as I waited for them to nod at me. Slowly, my words sank in, and I received nods and even a smile or two of approval.
“We will follow you, Draco Rex,” Anora announced as she lifted her chin. “As always.”
“Good!” I grinned at her. “Alright, everyone, start preparing. Mira and Sela, make sure everyone’s weapons are ready,
and have the women spar with each other, get angry. We’re going to take down some orcs and rescue a dragon egg.”
The women all scattered through the beach and started to do what they needed to do in order to prepare for whatever battle laid ahead.
Jonas approached me then, and he motioned for me to come off to the side with him.
“What is it?” I murmured. “Is everything okay?”
“I had a vision,” he replied.
“I figured as much. You had the same look on your face Marella gets when she’s seen something. Of course, she also races up to me yelling, ‘Daddy, I saw something!’”
I grinned as I thought about my beautiful little girl. Who really wasn’t all that little anymore.
“Yes, well, forgive me if I do not do quite that,” Jonas chuckled. “Ben, I saw what I believe was the dragon egg you spoke of. Was it large, and silver? Very pretty? The kind of thing I would expect to be easily mistaken for a treasure.”
“That’s the one.” I nodded. “What exactly did you see?”
“I am not sure,” Jonas replied with a tilt of his head. “My visions are not what they used to be, you understand, but it was more the feeling of the vision that stood out to me.”
“And what feeling was that?” I asked.
Jonas paused as he remembered, and then he looked at me with eyes so serious they nearly made my heart stop.
“That egg will be invaluable to whichever side has it,” he whispered. “You need to make sure it is you who hatches the egg. If not, all hope is lost.”
Well, shit.
Chapter Twelve
Jonas’ warning had solidified my need to reclaim the egg, but now, there was a ticking clock on the whole situation.
We needed to get that fire dragon egg back before the orcs could hatch it.
I’d taken to calling it a fire dragon since George was a water dragon, and the name had started to stick with the other women around the camp. It was a pretty easy way to differentiate between the two types of dragons, but the problem was we had no idea how long a fire dragon egg took to hatch. Even if we could pin down a time frame, we didn’t know when the egg had been laid. For all we knew, the thing could hatch tomorrow, and then, according to Jonas’ vision, we would all be royally screwed.
