by Aaron Crash
Her eyes fell on me. “Saying the words makes me remember how lost I am. How far from home I am. How bereft. I won’t say more. You can’t make me.”
“I don’t want to make you,” I said. “We don’t need to know everything about your past, Dryx. We do need to know about you and the merfolk. In six days, they’ll be back, and they’ll have reinforcements. We need to know more so we can fight them off.”
Figg and Rhee leaned forward, their eyes on the winged woman beside me. At some point, someone had called the winged people of Rydd R’Tah the Wingkin. Another time it was the Jataksha.
Dryx frowned. “I understand. I will tell you a little about my life. Just enough. The Wayra is a highway in the sky, a current that circles all of Caranja. You would call it Caranja. We have our own word for the world, and we have words for the three continents. I will use your monkey bone speak. I caught the Wayra. I thought I knew the winds... I was arrogant. I thought I was invincible. I had wiped out a whole battalion of the hell knights, and I was returning home. But the Gardener sometimes prunes the limbs of our life too close. Sometimes he cuts off the wrong limbs on the Tree of Life, and everything is changed forever after. Forever after.”
She closed her eyes. “I was lost. I flew until I was too hungry and too thirsty to fly more, and then I fell from the sky. That was where the first merfolk family found me, in what the Raxians call the Blue Sea, south of the Scatter Islands. I was given a drug. I was unconscious. I was spat on and ridiculed. I have always been gifted with language, and I learned the Pidgin of the Raxians, and I learned Xiddian, and sometimes the Aquaterrebs spoke in a way I could understand. Yes, it was that merman, Illbro Brinnib. He was going to sell me to the Stallion King in Sweetleaf. I was worth a fortune because the Stallion King had supposedly taken up the Rajan Dvey’s evil experiments. He needed test subjects.”
Figg’s lips tightened with her anger. “Sold? They would sell you? This will not do.”
“Well, we’re on our way to Sweetleaf,” Rhee said. “We can find this Stallion King, and we can see what kind of king buys angels.”
Dryx looked confused. “I am not an angel. I know the Xiddians worship the seven angels, but you are foolish. It’s the Gardener that takes care of the world. The angels serve him. He prunes the Tree of Life.”
Figg wasn’t going to argue. From a pouch, she took her rolling papers and her little sack of tebbeck and rolled herself a bidi. With an Agni spell, she was soon smoking.
“You are breathing in smoke. This is a nonsensical thing to do,” Dryx said, not looking too pleased.
Figg motioned for the winged woman to continue, not even trying to argue her case.
It was the look of disgust I’d seen on many a smoker back on Earth when someone wondered why they were smoking. As someone who liked a bidi a day, if only to be able to tolerate my seaweed tea, I could relate more to Figg than Dryx. I was learning to like the jolt of the nicotine, the fire, and the taste.
The angel girl frowned. I knew she wasn’t an angel, but I couldn’t help but think of her that way. Sky warrior was far more accurate.
“There is not much more to tell,” Dryx said. “Illbro Brinnib was going to get a great deal of money from the Stallion King, who worked through the Kankar Darsa. The deer men were too hard to understand, and they had their own language, but I knew that. Illbro made the deal with the Kankar, selling me and selling them the ancient Aquaterreb artifacts from both his own family and from the BuBano.”
Rhee chuckled. “This story has become spicy.”
“Wait,” I said. “So the Aquaterreb are merfolk?”
Dryx nodded. “Yes, the merfolk do not like the name you dirt worms call them. To the Jataksha, humans are monkey bones. For the Aquaterreb, you are dirt worms. I can see that both fit. Humans are disgusting.”
Rhee wasn’t done chuckling. “Some of my best friends are human, Lalindryx. And notice, I didn’t call you Dryxie. So be nice, Feathers.”
“Feathers would be a nickname for me.” Dryx shook her head once, very determined not to be given any kind of nickname. “No. You will call me Lalindryx. Or Dryx. Or Your Ascended Majesty. Nothing else.”
Rhee pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t say anything more. I appreciated that.
Figg didn’t care. She sat smoking. Then she stood up. “We will not stay here. It’s raining. Rain can’t hurt us. We can walk along Dvey’s Road and get some miles under our belt. I won’t waste the afternoon here.”
“Then you are as stupid as you are ugly,” Dryx spat.
Figg lost her mind. She’d been patient up until then, very patient, but my summoner girlfriend did have a temper. Once you pushed her too far, she’d roar and punch and scratch or try and stab you with her overgrown fork. I stopped her from ripping new holes in the Jataksha woman.
The sorceress shoved me back. “I know. I know. I am your mistress of anger management. This winged wretch doesn’t care about Foulwater. She thinks we’re all monkeys and ugly and stupid. Maybe she’s right. Maybe nothing matters at all. Maybe we aren’t heroes or angels or sky warriors, but we love, and we have feelings, and we have our desires.”
I thought of Nameless, and I so wanted her to grow up. Dryx was going to have to learn to keep her fucking opinions to herself, or Figg would destroy her. If we were anywhere near water, it wouldn’t be too hard because Figg was deadly when it came to her water magic.
Figg, following her script, left our shelter and walked into the forest and the soaking rain. She went to the fountain and stood there, looking into the waters in the basin. From the look of the statue, it was another relic from the demon kings. The trees were too thick, and it was too far away for me to see.
An arrow struck Figg in her arm. It happened so suddenly that she didn’t realize what was happening.
Then other bowstrings snapped, sending too many arrows for Figg to dodge.
We’d been ambushed.
Chapter Twelve
I RIPPED THROUGH MY pants as I shifted into Homo Draconis form. A funny memory hit me, of playing Dungeons & Dragons with Tessa, her brother, and some of my siblings. Regina was there, and a new face appeared in my head, along with a name, Cooper. I’d grown up trying to keep up with Cooper, who was at least six years older than me, and such a good buddy. Unlike Jared, Cooper grew up as a Dragonsoul.
The D&D memory I had was about random encounters. In one campaign our group had been hit hard by bugbears. Tessa, and maybe my mom, insisted we not use a computer. She wanted to play with graph paper and dice, like she did with one of the many, many boyfriends she’d had before she met my father.
This felt like that. This felt like a random monster encounter.
Lucky for us all, Figg was near water. She didn’t need to dodge the arrows. The brand on her arm flashed. Her concentration ink lit up the copse of trees, and she drew forth the water from the fountain and created a shield that blocked all the shafts. She then used the crystalline water to lash out and grab the first of the attackers.
It was a group of Kankar, a small herd by the look of them, and they were on foot.
To give you an idea of what the monsters looked like, take carnivorous deer and combine them with homeless medieval warriors. They had the legs of a deer and the arms of a man, but only three fingers. Their antlers were polished black. Their fanged deer mouths were a bright red that contrasted with their inky skin. Rags covered their stinking hides. They fought with a collection of swords and long polearms. Some had bows, but only one had used his with any sort of luck.
And yes, they were all male. These things were one of Dvey’s experiments. But it seemed like this Stallion King in Sweetleaf was doing experiments of his own.
I had the stone staff in my hand, and I raised a wall out of the dirt, not in front of the demonic deer men but behind them.
They hooted and piped in concern, like elk on a cold October night in the Rockies. I didn’t want them to run. There were at least a dozen, and I wanted to use them as an experie
nce point farm. I could grind away, use their shakti, and level up. I wanted to breathe fire sooner rather than later.
“Agnaat injit!” I created a circular fire shield around my left arm. I had enough shakti to also bathe myself in flames. As a towering black-scaled dragon man, I charged forward and met the first deer man. I slammed my flame shield into his face, cooking his cheeks into venison. I then broke his leg with a swing of my staff. He shrieked. I ended the shrieking with a strike to his skull. Energy from the kill filled me.
One of the other deer men raised a long ax to split my skull. He never got the chance. A rope of water circled his neck and lifted him off the ground. I waded into the thick of them as they tried to dart away from my fire. The grasses between the trees were soaked, so they didn’t catch, but I was hot enough to burn the deer men that attacked.
My staff rose and fell. At one point, I slammed it into the ground and opened a pit, which was a new ability, thanks to the Ksu Trick category. By that time, Rhee and Dryx had joined us. The angel girl came swooping down. She folded her wings and let the momentum of her fall drive her like a wedge into the back of the one of the deer men. He went down. She grabbed his antlers and rammed his long face into the ground until he was unconscious. She then scooped up the two thick-bladed short swords the beast had dropped.
She became a living blender, a Vitamix with feathers, as she spun, hacking into the neck of one deer man and disemboweling another.
Gore covered her tunic and flecked her face. Her wings, however, remained pristine, as if the feathers could shake off the excess blood like water off a duck’s back. Blood off an angel’s wings?
Rhee had her bow, and she took out two of the Kankar trying to flee around my wall.
Figg was using her water magic to deadly effect.
Damn! I wasn’t getting as many kills as I wanted.
I ran and flapped my own wings until I broke through the trees and then I shifted into my True Form. A couple of the deer men sprinted toward where they’d tied up their mounts, down in a little ravine about a hundred yards from the copse.
Flying over one of the runners, I simply dropped the stone staff on him. It splintered his spine and he went down, and I felt shakti swirl into my core. The other deer man proved a bit more problematic. I couldn’t bite down on him—with those sprouting antlers, that would be like trying to eat a cactus.
I flew behind him and whipped him with my tail. I’d almost forgotten that I had a tail. It was long, weighed a ton, and was a wickedly good weapon. I was careful to smack his back to avoid the antlers. He fell, stunned. Then I shifted into my partial form, retrieved my staff, and smashed the monster’s face in.
I felt the jolt of the shakti. Without thinking, without even really considering what I should do with the extra power, I chose the next ability from the Agni—that would be Attack, otherwise known as abhighata.
The minute that power touched my core, I felt the burning inside me. Flashes of my vision of the bone dragon came back to me. I opened my mouth to expel fire, but I felt too small. I extended my body until I was my full size, thirty feet long, and full of burning.
I wondered if something was wrong, but there couldn’t be. I’d had at least half a dozen kills, and that shakti was in my atma. Yet, even as big as I was, I couldn’t get that burning to stop. It was like I’d swallowed a Pittsburgh steel factory. I let out a breath, trying to exhale it out. Nothing left my mouth.
Growing bigger hadn’t helped. I shifted human, stumbled, and fell onto my knees in the dirt. Rain swept down, but I hardly felt the cold water. I kept swallowing, expecting that terrible soul burning to return. It didn’t. Was it because I was human? It seemed so.
Dryx came flying in. She knelt next to me, covering me with a wing.
I turned and gave her a grin. “Sky warrior, huh? You fought like a tornado made out of razor blades.”
She’d grabbed a belt and sheathes for the two thick-bladed short swords. She wore them at her hips. “How lucky for me, to find kurrachiyya in these far-off lands.”
“They match exactly?” I asked.
She nodded and unsheathed one, showing me the pommel. “There, that rune there, it is in Jatakshian, and it is for my right hand. The other is for my left. Some believe they are forged in a certain way that requires you to use the correct blade. The spirit of each weapon is different, or so some think. As long as I am victorious, I don’t care much either way.”
That seemed odd, to have that weapon here, in the hands of the Kankar. Then I thought I might know why. “What if other Jataksha were traded to the Kankar and taken to Sweetleaf? That would explain why these deer fucks have a sky warrior’s swords.”
Dryx tilted her head to think. “I don’t think the Kankar fuck deer. From what little I understand, the Kankar steal women to rape them.”
She didn’t get my joke. I grinned wearily. “I’m thinking the Jataksha don’t have a lot of stand-up comedians. Maybe instead of a funny bone, you guys got feathers.”
The sky warrior closed her eyes. “It’s hard to look at you. I am forced to listen to you, and that is hard enough. Could you change into your other form? Yes, you are a dragon, the sworn enemy of my people, and yet, I think you might be a rare good dragon. I like seeing you with wings. That gives me some comfort.”
I got to my feet, let my head drop back, and enjoyed the rain on my face. Then I shifted. Immediately, the burning inside me returned. This was a problem. I transformed back into a very naked, very cold man.
Dryx’s eyes went to my junk. “You were bigger the other night. Does your pinga get smaller every time you change shape?”
“It’s shrinkage,” I protested. Then I did a quick check of the Five Magics Skill Tree:
I’d leveled up, and I had the next Agni spell category. Also, my shakti levels were good. I didn’t know why I felt the burning when I changed shape. It was ironic that the son of fire was having problems with the fire attack spell. Then again, my entire core had changed when I’d been summoned. What had wiped out my memory had also reorganized my insides. I’d felt like I was running on the wrong kind of current, like I wanted AC and was given DC. And I’m not talking about that most classic of Australian rock and roll bands. Or was it more like American 110 v versus the European 220 v? Either way, it could be that the more powerful magics were harder for my weird core to process.
Maybe I needed to try out my new magic. Shifting into a Homo Draconis, I got to my feet, stumbled, and then righted myself with a little flap of my wings.
“Agnaat injit!” I flung a bit of fire, the size of a tennis ball, against the wall I’d created. The fireball hit and exploded, marking the stone.
Still I felt like I’d done shots of hot lava with a boiling water chaser.
I tried a different tack. “Agnaat abhighata.” Another tennis ball of flame struck the wall. So I could cast the attack spells, but I just couldn’t do it in any form except for human without feeling terrible pain.
I lost my wings, scales, claws, and snout. I fell to my naked knees.
Figg and Rhee hurried out of the trees and circumnavigated the new wall I’d built. Figg’s arm was bloody, but the arrow was gone, the wound closed. Rhee must’ve taken out the shaft while the sorceress healed herself.
Both women ushered me back to the shelter I’d created. I limped along with the Calcifax staff. Back human, I still wasn’t feeling great, but I had enough shakti to create a proper little house there in the trees, with two more benches we could use for beds. We didn’t need huge walls, so I mostly kept it open so we could see the views. I also created a little fire pit with a chimney. Figg found firewood, which she dried with Agni magic. We soon had a cheery little blaze.
Dryx joined us after slaughtering the elk creatures the Kankar had used as mounts. She’d hauled one carcass back, and we helped her hang it from a tree. It was clear that the sky warrior knew her way around a kill. She’d gutted the thing well. That took skill using a big unwieldy sword, even a short one.
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I’d been deer hunting before in western Colorado, on the plains near Craig. I’d gone with a big, older Dragonsoul, one of my father’s closest friends. A name came to me, Liam Strider. Just one more name, one more friend that I was so far away from. Liam had a big yellow beard, and he loved to cook. He’d been friends with my grandfather, liked my father, and adored me. I guess I was the grandson Liam never had.
Since I was thinking of the random encounter with the Kankar in D&D terms, Dryx had also done the looting. There weren’t many trinkets or rupas in the little herd’s saddle bags. It might buy us beer in Sweetleaf. I wondered if we’d have beer there, like real beer, made from hops and fermented like Coors brewed in Golden, Colorado. I’d taken the tour many times.
With a name like Sweetleaf, we might be doing more smoking than drinking.
We roasted big hunks of the elk haunches on our fire and ate them with our fingers. Blackened on the outside, nearly raw closer to the bone, the meat was delicious. We ate it while the rain poured down.
Rhee had brought tubes of red wine. It paired well with the elk monster meat. After dinner, Figg smoked and watched the fire. It was warm and comfortable in the little room I’d created. The rain pattered down, growing quieter and quieter as the storm moved off.
Dryx waved her hand. “This foulness is intolerable.”
Figg turned her head, bidi between her lips. “I liked you better when you were silent. Can we not return to that? Why are you talking again?”
The sky warrior backed up, worried. She looked fragile despite the thick blades at her side. She then spun and flew out across the wet landscape, into the dark night.
Rhee went to the edge of the little room. Her forehead was wrinkled. “I was getting used to her. I’ve always liked being the pretty one. And to our little Dryxie, I’m definitely her favorite. Well, other than Axel.”
