Kraken Killjoy (Son of Fire Book 2)

by Aaron Crash

  “She’ll be back,” Figg said. “She left her satchel. That’s where she keeps her seeds.”

  “Did you check?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen her eat them.” My summoner shrugged and tossed the butt of her smoke into the fire. She then came over to me and petted my hair. “As for me being ugly? For most of my life, I didn’t care what I looked like. I was too busy trying to save my village. But having her call me ugly constantly is tiresome.”

  “You’re gorgeous,” Rhee said. “Aye, your ears are weird, but I’ve gotten used to your round ears.”

  I didn’t talk. I wasn’t feeling too good.

  Figg gave me a worried look. “Vankaat injit.” She cast a water spell to check out my atma, and she didn’t find anything wrong. I burned hot, yes, and I was powerful, but other than that, she didn’t know what was wrong with me.

  She had her suspicions. “I think this leveling business has caught up with you. You might be pushing yourself too hard, too fast. You just learned the Agni Armor category, and here you are, accessing Agni Attack. It could be that. It took me months of practice to master each skill.” Then Figg paused, biting her lip. “Do you think you’ll be well enough to fly us to Sweetleaf tomorrow?”

  I didn’t answer right away. Then I looked her right in her beautiful golden eyes. “I will get you to Sweetleaf tomorrow. I don’t care if it kills me.”

  Rhee held up Dryx’s satchel. “Only a few seeds, and there’s some cheese and old bread as well as a little tube of water. Other than that, nothing, not even a rupa. I hate trying to steal from poor people.”

  “Rheesee Helleen!” Figg said, exasperated.

  The elf grinned. “I’m a Myrran pirate. We steal. We also fuck. So, let’s have sex so I can go to bed.”

  I was up for it, and we found a nice position, with Figg naked, on all fours, licking Rhee while she sat with her legs spread, her pants off, but her shirt on. I was behind my summoner, holding her hips and caressing her back.

  At one point, I turned, to see a form flying through the sky. A single moon came up over the horizon to shine on the sky warrior’s wings. We’d learned some of her secrets, but still knew so little.

  And yes, she couldn’t keep calling us ugly. But I was pretty sure that was part of her mystery. Why did she think we were so disgusting?

  I was drawn back to the scene when Rhee pulled off her shirt so I could see her tits. On her small frame, her big boobs looked so good. It wasn’t long until I was pulling in more shakti to my strange atma. Figg and Rhee were also refreshed. Again, the difference was in their cores.

  Since it didn’t seem like Dryx would be joining us, I used the Calcifax staff to make the rock flow like water. Pulling the benches together, I fashioned a stone bed by the fireplace.

  That night, as I lay with my girls, on the stone, a word came to me. Animus. For most of my life, my body processed Animus, and that was how I shape changed and cast magic. Now, it was shakti. I was pretty sure it was the same thing, the same mystical energy that came from life. That was what Liam Strider said—Animus powered all living things, from grass to dragons.

  I wondered if I’d ever see any of them again... my dad, his many wives, Jared, Cooper, or Liam Strider.

  Then I heard my song, and I remembered the lyrics about the gunslinger and the bloody footprints. A thought came to me. Was Jared dead? The thought made me sad, though I couldn’t remember many of the details. Again, I had no context, just a feeling.

  I thought to stay awake, to keep watch, but I didn’t need to. Lalindryx, the sky warrior, would be watching out for any trouble. She wouldn’t leave us, either. For one, we had her strange seeds. But for another? I think she wanted to see what the Stallion King in Sweetleaf might be doing with other Jataksha that the Kankar had brought to that city on the Nectar Grasslands.

  From her story, though, we did get some valuable information. My old buddy Squidbeard, otherwise known as Illbro Brinnib, had sold that treasure, along with the sky warrior, to the Kankar raiders. Not just Brinnib booty, but BuBano artifacts as well. Then he’d told Ibbithy that we’d stolen it. I wondered why.

  Then I slept and dreamed.

  In the dream, I was with my mother, and we stood before a portal that spun in a circle inside a bonfire. We were in Wyoming, but on the other side of that doorway was an even drier, dustier place.

  I was seeing a Magica Porta spell in action, and it showed me another world. There was a town there, a bad place, ruled by some evil asshole. If there was one constant in the universe, it was that desperate places generally had a desperate asshole running the show, a villain who would rather rule than serve.

  Uncle Jared and I went to that town.

  My mom was holding me, and again, I heard her voice. “I named you Axel for a reason. You were supposed to be the father of peace.”

  My own voice echoed through my dream, and this was Magica Divinatio, or some kind of Vanka magic, to use the Xiddian term. “I can’t be the father of peace when there are wars that need to be fought.”

  Those words broke my mother’s heart.

  Tessa Ross, Jared’s sister, wasn’t my mother. That thought hit me hard.

  Even harder was the next memory that came back to me. Jared hadn’t survived our trip to that dusty world where men sold their souls to become machines.

  We both walked into that windblown town. Only one of us walked out...leaving footprints of blood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I WOKE TO FIND DRYX sleeping in our little hut. The sky warrior sat against the far wall. Hugging her knees, she covered herself with her wings. It was clear she’d slept like that before. Her face was peaceful, beautiful.

  Figg and Rhee had their backs to me, and I was able to slip away without waking any of the women.

  I went out and built a small fire by the wall I’d summoned the day before. I used the stone staff to create a nice little rock-ring firepit with a single stone pedestal where I could rest my little kettle. Figg had filled it the night before. I still hadn’t checked out the fountain. From the look of it, though, the sculpture was another monument to Dvey. I could work on my art appreciation later. I needed my chay tea. Or maybe it was the nicotine. In short order, I was sipping tea and smoking a bidi with my back to the wall.

  The sun had come up to shine on Dvey’s Road, sparkle off the grass, and wake up the grasslands. A breeze swept over the miles and miles of empty land. I had to smile. I was feeling better, stronger, but I was still human. I hoped shifting wouldn’t hurt as badly as the day before. I’d give it a little bit before I tried again.

  Memories of Jared and that dry town still clung to me. The world was Azrack, and the town was Giraud. It was a mixture of magic and technology, cybernetic technology, mostly, and I’d fought cyborgs. Then things grew hazy. I’d killed there, and I’d walked through death there as well. Was my uncle still alive? I couldn’t remember.

  Figg was the first to wake. She put on an extra cloak, as the sunshine was warm, but there were still pockets of cold in the shade. My summoner came over and sat down. She draped her arms around me and pressed her cheek against my shoulder.

  “We have to leave,” she said. “I have to save my fucking village again. It’s always about Foulwater. My whole life has been about Foulwater, and yet, the man in charge, Doggig, could give a shit. He only cares about himself.”

  “Figg, you’re a good woman who grew up under bad circumstances. Fuck Uncle Dog, and fuck Granny Heehee, and really, fuck Foulwater. Do you know what I’m fighting for? I’m fighting for Nameless and her family. I’m fighting for Mumi and her bar. I’m fighting so Nina Heart can bitch about the rajani, and so Geeze can keep on cuckolding Dog with the rajani.”

  That made her laugh.

  “Well said.” Figg inhaled and stood. She reached out a hand. “I want to show you something.”

  She led me to the fountain. Standing in the middle of the basin, in his very Sauron armor, was a statue of the demon king Dvey. Water gushed from the
holes of the helmet, running down the armor. All of it was green and mossy.

  Figg swept away some of the gunk on the lip of the basin. “This talks about Dvey’s campaigns against the Kankar. It doesn’t say he created them, but he did. It also talks about the winds of destiny and how the Pentakorr would rule forever.”

  “The winds changed direction,” I said. “The Pentakorr lost their power and faded. The boodhoo rajans took over, the fool kings. It sounds like this Stallion King is just another clown trying to fill a power vacuum.”

  Figg came over and hugged me again. She spoke in a hurt whisper. “I don’t know which brand will be in Sweetleaf, or if we can even find it. This phrase, ‘winds of destiny,’ makes me think it’s the Uma Jalana, the air brand. That won’t help us. We need the Ksu Jalana, the earth brand. This might all be for nothing.”

  “At the very least, I’ll get my concentration ink,” I told her. “That will give me more power, so I can build more walls. Also, I’m hoping it gives me some innate knowledge of mining. I’d hate to mess up the diamond thing with my own incompetence.”

  My summoner sighed. “I never dreamed I’d ever meet a Jataksha sky warrior. Now that I have? I am troubled. I wanted to like Lalindryx, but I don’t think I can. We should try and stop the Stallion King from doing more demonic experiments, but we can’t. We don’t have time. Promise me we won’t go after him if we don’t have to. Foulwater has to be our main focus.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “You can count on that, Finniwigg. We didn’t dick around with the merfolk. We won’t dick around in Sweetleaf. We get in, get out, and we fly back. Deal?”

  She stepped back, and I put out a hand.

  She took my hand and squeezed it. She smiled at me. When Figg smiled, I had to enjoy it, because she wasn’t the happiest girl I’d ever met. Maybe if her town wasn’t always on the verge of total destruction, she could relax some.

  If that didn’t give me a life goal, nothing would.

  I went back to our little hut. Rhee was snoring, her hair in her face. Our winged friend was gone. This time, she’d taken her satchel.

  I shook my head. “I wanted to like Lalindryx too.”

  We filled up our water from the propaganda fountain. Yep, Dvey killed a whole bunch of the demonic deer men centuries ago, but he hadn’t finished the job, and his spawn were still doing raids. The battle last month had knocked their numbers down, though. It wasn’t total annihilation, but we’d taken out several generations. At some point, I might have to hunt the demons to extinction. First though, we’d fly on to Sweetleaf.

  I heated some leftover lobster meat, and we had some rice balls—the breakfast of champions!

  Rhee had a little wine with breakfast, and she scrubbed her face, fixed her hair, and then swept her hat down to dangle on her back. She’d woken up happy. “We’re going to Sweetleaf! I never thought I’d ever see such a place. I do miss the sea, and my skin is very dry, and I don’t understand why anyone would not live by the ocean. But to see the Stallion King’s hall? To see the Mazes where we could get our throats cut at any minute? And I’ve heard the Wynnym females are truly something special. I’ve never actually seen one!”

  Rather than ask more about what she knew, I figured I’d see soon enough. Coming from Rhee, it would be part rumor, part dirty joke, part drinking song, and mostly fiction. She was good at fiction. An outlandish imagination might come with the drinking.

  We gathered up our gear and packed. Then it was time for me to see how bad the next few hours of my life were going to be.

  There are two types of people in the world—those who ease themselves into a cold mountain lake and those that jump right the hell in. I was a jumper, not an easer.

  Naked, I shifted into my True Form. It was like I’d eaten a lonely guy burrito at 2 a.m. after a night of tequila shots, cayenne pepper, and rotten limes. The best lonely guy burrito in Denver could be found at Chubby’s, which stayed open late on the weekends for those guys that struck out at the bar.

  The burn in me was bad, but I couldn’t think about it. It wouldn’t kill me, but it was going to sap my power.

  Both Figg and Rhee watched me closely.

  I tried to keep a poker face on my scaly snout. “I’m fine. This is all okay.” I hoped I wasn’t going to barf. That wouldn’t be very heroic.

  The women climbed on my back, and I took off, coming back around to grab our bags with my back claws. I pumped my wings, rising higher and higher, following the strip of obsidian cutting through the grasslands.

  Working my muscles felt good. Smelling the sun on the grasses and feeling the rising thermals in my wings took my mind off the burning, but it still wasn’t easy, and I was going to have to take breaks.

  I needed water, some of Rhee’s wine, and some Pepto-Bismol, but not necessarily in that order.

  Instead, I’d take a break and rest. I went down, shifted, and lay as a human on my back, watching the fluffy clouds cross the sky. Gulping, I tried to get some cool air inside of me. It was like the flames burning in my soul had engulfed my stomach, as if I’d swallowed a few charcoal briquettes and they were in my belly, cooking me from the inside out.

  The water and wine helped. So did Rhee and Figg, giving me back rubs. Their touch made me feel so much better. Then it was back to flying as I burned. Thunderheads gathered in the afternoon, but I wasn’t going to stop. I couldn’t. We’d had our break the night before. We had to get to the city.

  Yet, the pain was becoming too much to bear. Flying faster wasn’t helping. No matter how much I worked my wings, I couldn’t work through my own personal inferno. I felt myself losing control of my shape. I couldn’t shift, not in midair, not with Rhee and Figg on my back. I could probably catch them, but then I’d also have to retrieve my gear. The sky had become gray iron, and the westerly winds were rising. They weren’t headwinds, which was nice, but they kept knocking me off course.

  The landscape was changing from grassland to farmland. I chose a big red barn because it was big and because it was a barn. There were strange tracks on the ground around it. Hoofprints.

  I landed, but couldn’t even keep it together long enough for Figg and Rhee to stay on my back. We all tumbled down into the dirt. A few raindrops fell, but so far, it was only rain, no lightning and no thunder. My girls got me into the barn, which had hay and six big cows in stalls. They looked like cows, anyway, only they had a single horn coming off their heads.

  “Unicows?” I asked.

  “Shush,” Figg admonished. “We have to be quiet. We can’t stay here. This is someone’s farm.”

  “It’s not like we’re going to kill them and steal their rupas.” Rhee had a hand on her thick-bladed dirk in her belt. Hat covering her braided hair, she swaggered over to the front of the barn. She turned. “Or should we kill them and steal their rupas?”

  “You’re a pirate, not a bandit,” Figg pointed out.

  “Bandits are just land pirates. Or would those be brigands?” The elf shrugged. “There’s a dug-out home in a hill down a path. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Keep both eyes out.” Figg gave me a worried look while rolling herself a bidi.

  I couldn’t join the banter. I sat in the hay, trying to catch my breath. I drained first one tube of wine and then another. It helped with pain. It also felt like it was boiling in my stomach.

  The back doors were torn open. Our sky warrior strutted in, wings tucked, swords on her hips. She marched over. “Why do you keep stopping? We need to get to this Sweetleaf place so I can free the other Jataksha there and kill the Stallion King. Then I will go back with you and kill the merfolk.”

  “That’s a great deal of killing, Feathers.” Rhee smiled mischievously. “You kill them. I’ll steal from them. We can be partners, lovers, and friends.”

  Dryx stomped to me. She stood over me, arms crossed. “Explain yourself.”

  The wine had gone to my head because I didn’t have any food in my system. I went on a ramble. “When I shift in
to a dragon, I feel like I’m going to puke fire. It was like this one time in Amarillo, when I had bad nachos. Bad meat. I couldn’t taste the bad meat because of the nacho cheese. The unicows give me hope for cheese. We need peppers. Nacho cheese peppers. Aren’t you going to yell at Rhee for calling you Feathers?”

  “Pah! You all speak nonsense. You are not worthy of me.” Dryx went from sexy to bitchy in three point five seconds.

  “Lalindryx,” Figg said in a hushed voice. “He tried to access magic he wasn’t ready for, and his atma is troubling him. He’s been brave, but he can’t fly much more today.”

  Dryx stood over me. “I might be able to help you, dragon boy, but you have to promise me you’ll fuck me when I ask. Do you promise?”

  I stared up at her dizzily. The barn tilted. “It’s dragon man, Feathers. Or should I call you Dryxie?”

  She went to slap me.

  Even a bit drunk, I was faster. I caught her hand. “Use your words, Lalindryx. And yes, we’re probably going to keep teasing you by calling you other names because it’s fun, and you hate it. Don’t hate it so much, and we won’t do it so much.”

  She was pissed, but she didn’t try and hit me again. She dropped her hand. “I can give you some of the nuna seed, and that might help. It helps with my hu’kay. It’s the only reason why I’m still alive. And the only reason why you can call me Feathers.” There was a tiny smile, a bit pensive, on her face. It showed me she wasn’t just a temperamental arrogant sky warrior who could hardly stand to look at us.

  She’d said some Jatakshian words, but I didn’t understand them. I did get a few things. “Those seeds help you somehow. Where did you get them?”

  Rhee laughed. “If she pulled them out of her ass, I’ll laugh my own ass off.”

  Dryx made a face. “No. I secreted them away in a pocket on my old dress. I must eat the nuna... if I’m not... if I don’t...” She scowled. “No, I will not tell you monkey bones a thing about my people. The nuna are sacred seeds. The Gardener himself gave them to the Jataksha so we can protect this world. The first nuna came from the Tree of Life.”