by A. R. Cook
This was no exception.
Fire and lightning erupted from the dragon in a deafening blast, with such volcanic intensity that it burst his stomach straight through his skin. The Sleepless Dragon crashed to the earth, shaking the foundations of the mansion. The charred carcass smoked, and a syrupy black goo leaked from the lifeless mouth.
The dragon would never be sleepless again.
There was little to be joyous about, however. The gypsies, the sphinx and David stared at the scorched mess of reptile.
Tanuki …Gullin… David felt a part of him ripped asunder. They sacrificed themselves to save the rest of us.
The dragon’s underside twitched. The gypsies retreated away with shouts of warning, pointing at the shifting skin. Acacia and David held their breaths as something tumbled out from the burnt gap where the dragon’s stomach had burst through. It looked like a treasure chest made of solid stone, and coated in a thick putrid ooze that smoked. Once the chest plunked down on the ground, the lid popped open. Out of it arose Gullin, plastered in the smelly goo, but unharmed. Then the chest changed into the shape of Tanuki, who caught his breath and looked as frazzled as a chicken that had escaped the cooking pot.
A wild cheer erupted from the group. In unison, they dashed over to the valiant dragon slayers. They used scarves and bits of clothing to wipe the hunter and the badger clean.
Gullin walked over to David, handing him back the dagger. “Thanks for lending it to me, boyo. But blowing a dragon up from the inside out was more fun than sticking it in the brain.” He glanced at the badger, who was blissfully being tended to by two of the gypsy girls. “I have to admit, that gopher’s a clever little lad. Changed into that box just in time before we got blown to high heaven.”
David kneeled down and helped wipe Tanuki clean with the arm cuff of his shirt. “Gullin called you clever, for that trick you did by turning into a box.”
Tanuki snorted. “Clever, right. If I was so clever, I would have blown up that fat toad before he fought Master Yofune …” He sniffled, wiping his nose. “Poor Master. I was supposed to look after him.”
Only now did David realize that Master Yofune was nowhere to be found. If the Sleepless Dragon survived the earlier fight …
“Stop your sniffling.” Punctually in response to Tanuki’s woe, Yofune glided through the air towards them, battle-worn and exhausted. “I appreciate the concern, but give an old dragon credit.”
“Master!” The badger scurried over to his giant lord and hugged one of his great scaled forelegs.
The gypsies reeled back, clutching at one another in fright. Gullin grabbed the bow and arrows off David’s shoulder, slipping an arrow into place with quick precision. “Not another one! This one doesn’t look too tough—”
David grabbed Gullin by his wrist. “No! Gullin, this is Yofune Nushi. He’s a friend. He brought me here to find everyone.”
Acacia cooed in agreement.
Gullin lowered the bow. “I suppose you can understand what that one is saying too?” he asked.
“It’s Japanese. I’ll teach you sometime,” David answered with a wry grin. He turned back to Yofune. “What happened? We thought you were—”
“Deceived, is all,” Yofune replied. “In the middle of our battle, the coward slipped off out of my reach. The air became full with an awful musk, and I could no longer smell my adversary. The scent was a mix of fox and human, but also an absurd cologne. I don’t know this Teumessian of yours well, but I believed it to be the scoundrel we were looking for. I tracked him up out of the den and through the swamp. He took me for a long pursuit, until I finally found the source of the scent.” Yofune curled back his lips to show a silken ascot between his teeth. “The fox-man used this as a decoy to lure me away, to leave you defenseless. By then I realized the trick and turned around to return here, but he left strong smells planted everywhere to confuse me.”
David clenched his fists. How was Nico always one step ahead of them? He probably had more allies than they knew, helping him with these schemes. Then again, the Teumessian had said he was blessed with the ability to never be caught. Was there some truth to that?
“I’m glad you are all right,” David replied, calming himself down. “Are you strong enough to carry us out of here?”
The sea dragon stood on wobbly legs, but he nodded. “I should have enough strength left for the task. If Tanuki would be so kind as to take some of the burden off my claws.”
Tanuki nodded happily. “Of course, master! One moment.” The badger concentrated deeply, and shifted into the form of a large horse. “I’m afraid this is the best I can do,” he apologized. “I’m tired too, after blowing up a dragon and all.”
Tanuki was hitched to one of the wagons, while the other two were strapped to Yofune’s long winding body. Being fatigued and weighed down by the wagons and their occupants, Yofune could not manage enough strength to fly, but he could walk well enough. David took the coachman’s seat on the wagon that Tanuki pulled, while Gullin rode on Yofune’s shoulders. This way, they could also keep an eye out for traps along the way. Despite her weak condition, Acacia chose to walk beside Tanuki rather than ride. The group began its procession out of the cavern towards the tunnel leading out.
Something behind them burst.
David snapped his head around to look back. One of the oil lamps in front of the mansion had exploded, and the flame inside was growing. The fire took on a narrow face, with two yellow eyes and two pointed ears. The hundreds of other lamps encircling the mansion blew open in succession, each with a horrible face forming in the fire. Each fire evolved into full form, with sleek bodies and blazing tails. They looked like foxes from the depths of the brimstone-laden underworld.
The fire foxes leapt from their lamp posts and chased after them.
Yofune, Tanuki and Acacia raced as fast as they could with wagons and passengers in tow, fleeing for the tunnel as the fire foxes closed in behind them.
“What are those things?” David shouted.
“Will o’ Wisps,” Gullin called back to him through the rush of wind. “But these ones have been corrupted. All their joy has been replaced by hatred. Guess whose work that is?”
David grabbed the reins and beckoned Tanuki to get closer to Yofune. He shouted to the dragon at the top of his voice. “Yofune, use your water breath on them!”
The sea dragon did not even look back, but kept racing. “I am out of it. I can only hold enough water at a time for three blasts, and I used them in the battle. If we can get up to the swamp, I can drink the water there to refill.”
The foxes pursued them with the burning speed of a forest fire. David sensed that the tunnel had grown longer and steeper, or maybe it seemed that way because of their urgency to escape. The chase came to an abrupt halt as Yofune smacked hard into an unseen barrier, his body crumpling in from the harsh impact. The wagons lurched and bounced off the ground, and the gypsies inside screamed from the tumult. Tanuki dug his hooves into the damp dirt as best he could to stop, but he collided with Yofune’s tail. The jolt was strong enough to throw David from his seat. He landed on Tanuki’s back, rolled off and hit the ground.
Yofune, almost knocked unconscious from the impact, clutched at the ground to keep from sliding back down the tunnel. He swung his head up and rammed his antlers against the barrier, to no effect. Acacia flew to the front of the line to find out what the obstruction was. She breathed a stream of her warm breath, which clouded up on a flat surface in front of her. She scratched at it with her claws, creating a high pitched whine. It was a glass wall, but unlike any glass David had ever seen, or in this case, could not see. He climbed his way up the tunnel to the wall, throwing his weight against it. Acacia and Yofune hammered into it as well, but nothing was giving. They scanned the wall for a magical seal, similar to the one that the mansion’s ballroom doors had, but there was none. David shouted out a few Latin words—“open,” “vanish,” “remove,” and “banish.” Absolutely nothing.
&nb
sp; He knew the fire foxes would catch up to them quickly, but David examined the wall more closely. He observed that his reflection, as well as the others’, was not perceptible in the glass wall, but that the tunnel behind them was reflected with sharp clarity.
“Another enchanted mirror,” he wheezed. Nico must have put it in place right after Yofune came back down the tunnel after chasing him around the swamp.
Gullin, who had become tangled up in Yofune’s coils upon impact, freed himself and ran over to join the others by the wall. “Boyo, use the arrows! This is magic, and the arrowheads are iron. Iron works against magic. We should be able to shoot through it.” He looked back, and saw the mass of fire foxes approaching swiftly. “You handle the wall. I’ll take care of those hell hounds.”
David wasn’t sure how Gullin intended to do that, but the sooner they got through this glass wall, the better. He strung an arrow in his bow and shot the mirror at point blank range, but it absorbed the arrow and shot it back. The arrow whooshed past David’s ear and struck the frame of one of the wagons, thankfully not hurting anyone.
Acacia grabbed David’s arm, shaking her head frantically. David saw that he had nicked the mirror, not much more than a sliver’s breadth, but the iron had been effective. He had to try again; his last few arrows would surely break the mirror.
Meanwhile, the searing heat and smothering smoke from the fire foxes was stripping breathable air from the tunnel. Tanuki transformed into a storm cloud, spraying the foxes with rain and hail. Gullin swung Orthrus left and right to beat the encroaching fire wisps, stamping them into smoldering embers. Several of the braver gypsies sprinted out from the wagons, with blankets and brooms and whatever they could find to smother out the fire. The fight was rapidly growing futile; the fire foxes wouldn’t stay put to be snuffed out. They darted about, eating at the blankets and brooms and reducing them to ash. The gypsies were overwhelmed and suffocating, trapped in a living inferno.
David took one of the arrows from his quiver and slammed the iron tip into the tiny crack in the wall. He dug the arrowhead in repeatedly, and the crack was gradually getting bigger. At such a slow rate, however, they would be roasted by the Will O’ Wisps before they could escape.
“Acacia, take the other arrow I have and help me—” When David looked over, Acacia was not beside him anymore. He searched for her until he saw her walking back towards the crackling congregation of foxes. She possessed a fixed calmness, and he couldn’t imagine what she was planning to do.
Fire licked hungrily at the gypsies’ clothing and skin. The heat was causing Tanuki to evaporate, and he was forced to resume badger form to avoid disappearing. The gypsies gasped and coughed for air as the foxes surged forward, eager to have their victims burn alive. The shadow of a figure intervened, halting the minions of flame from advancing further. Two black wings expanded out, taking in the heat and ash, shielding everyone behind her.
The sphinx’s eyes glimmered red in the presence of the fire. Both sides stared down each other, one feline warrior against the army of canine demons. Cinders stung Acacia’s face, but her expression was unwavering, cold and merciless. She stood on her hind legs, tall and proud, and placed her front paws together, claws pointed upwards.
Very, very quietly, she started speaking.
Her voice was so low, David did not know at first that she was talking. Yofune’s ears picked up the sound, and his blind eyes widened. “Oh dear …” he whispered. His voice suddenly boomed over the popping crackle of the foxes’ flames. “David! Tanuki! You must come here! All of you, get back in the wagons, now!”
Tanuki readily complied, grabbing Gullin by the trouser leg and pulled him along to the harbor beneath Yofune’s underside. David gouged the mirror with his arrowhead again, but Yofune snatched him away and stuck him down beneath his bristly chest. The gypsies had not understood Yofune, but David screamed the orders to them in English. They immediately sprinted back into the safety of the wagons. Once everyone was inside, Yofune coiled his serpentine body and tail around the wagons in a firm squeeze. He dug his claws into the ground as deeply as he could, and then hunkered down.
“Yofune, what is—” David’s question was interrupted by the piercing whistle of wind, sneaking in from around the edges of the mirror.
“She is using an old Egyptian summons,” Yofune said, his voice shaky with concern. “I recognize it. One of the dragon clans is from the western deserts, and I heard them speak of this summons a long time ago.”
“What is this summons supposed to do?” David was shouting now, for the howling of wind was getting louder. Acacia raised her voice, chanting her spell at high volume.
“She is calling on a southern wind,” Yofune shouted back, “One of the most powerful. It is the wind that shapes deserts and destroys seas. It is the wind that gave her clan protection when they were exiled in Egypt.”
As David looked up towards the mirror, he watched as the small crack he had gouged grew bigger, until the wall was a spider’s web of fissures. The mirror shattered into millions of shards as a violent desert wind roared down into the tunnel. Its strength threatened to knock Yofune off his feet and blow away the wagons. But the dragon remained fused to the earth, his mighty coils hanging on to the caravan. He lowered his head against the hurricane of scorching sand that barreled down on them.
The wind screeched and poured in around Acacia, who remained transfixed as she chanted her summons. Part of her combined with the wind, as the feathers on her wings shed a black sand that whirled and whipped about like ghosts. The Will O’ Wisps shrieked as the wind and sand smothered them out like candlelight. The smoke from their extinguishment was swallowed by the summoned cyclone. Not until every trace of fire was demolished did the sandstorm fade, and all was eerily quiet.
David lifted his head and opened his eyes to find himself half-buried in sand. Every inch of the tunnel’s floor was blanketed in sand, and sunlight poured in from the mouth of the tunnel, only a few meters above them.
Yofune lifted his feet out of the sand, carefully loosening his coils from the wagons. Gullin and Tanuki crawled out from under him, sputtering and coughing.
“Dear Saint Bridget,” Gullin hacked, uneasily standing up on the slippery sand. “This is why I hate magic.”
David stood up, shaking the sand from his clothes. “At least we’re safe and we can get out of here now, thanks to—”
He turned and saw Acacia lying face down in the sand. Her wings were in tatters, patches of skin visible through the weather-beaten feathers.
She was as still as death.
Chapter Eleven
Yofune Nushi once lived in a lair beneath the waters off the shores of Japan, before he renounced his old life of terrorizing humans for a new life of tranquil solitude on land. His old home was situated next to a tear in the Curtain, in a grotto carved from the face of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Once he and Tanuki got the caravan out of the swamp and back to Japan, Yofune escorted everyone to his old lair. The cave was invisible to anyone on land, and there was plenty of evidence—smashed boats, torn sails, and strewn debris—to show what happened to foolish sailors who attempted to sail in the lair’s perilous reef. It was a home befitting a reclusive dragon of the seas.
The grotto led into a series of spacious chambers, rooms which were dry and warm. This was once a place where other sea dragons could come for gatherings or reunions, with all the trappings of sunken boats, valuable tributes, and treasures from the deepest depths of the ocean.
Yofune and Tanuki were relieved to be unburdened once they pulled the wagons with their passengers into the safety of the grotto. The gypsies filed out of the wagons, but Gullin and David stayed inside one of them with Acacia. They feared to move her, as she shivered violently when they tried to pick her up. From his bedchamber, Yofune brought them a massive cushion, a housewarming gift from a Chinese ti-lung, and they managed to lay Acacia onto it without much difficulty. The sickly bluish-green of the Shade was thick in her veins, s
o much that her pale skin was now tinted the faintest blue, and her tangled hair was a dull, chalky gray. Her paws, normally broad and strong, were withered into the spindly shape of crow’s feet, and her wings were shedding feathers at a frightening rate. She resembled a sick kitten curled up on a pillow. Except for the shivering, she appeared comatose.
What was worse, where before Acacia had regained her color and strength after a short while of being stricken by the Shade, there had been no sign of improvement for over an hour.
“Why isn’t she getting better?” Hot pinpricks of panic were rippling over David’s skin. “Was it the summons? She’s spoken spells before, but she got better later. Why did this happen?”
Yofune was in his human shape so he fit inside the wagon, and he sat down next to David. “The summons she called upon was very powerful. Such magic would have been taxing on anyone who was in perfect health, let alone her condition. She sacrificed a good deal of her strength, leaving little to fight against the Shade. I’m afraid it has overtaken her. She cannot hold it off on her own any longer.”
“I don’t like you two talking when I can’t understand a blasted thing you’re saying,” Gullin grumbled at David and Yofune’s conversing in Japanese. He leaned back in a chair, puffing irritably on his pipe.
Yofune turned his eye on Gullin. “It would benefit you to listen more closely, Huntsman, if you wish to understand. Language is a small matter if you can hear the words with your heart.”
Gullin’s face flushed. “So you do know English.”
