by Aaron Crash
Again, it wasn’t the time for a long session, and Figg had mentioned she was sore from all the sex we’d had that night. I kissed her and came. We both glowed, which might have been embarrassing if anyone was looking.
Then I shifted back into my partial form, pulling her close. She slept, warmed by the blanket and by the fire inside me, a fire I could exhale. I wondered what other things I would breathe once I progressed on the other paths of the skill tree. Would I be able to breathe rock, or at least molten rock when I mastered all of the Ksu categories? Or would I breathe icicles like the Gurgaloids once I perfected the Vanka branch? I figured the Uma would give me lightning, but maybe I could breathe hurricane winds. Any one of them would make me even more powerful.
I was asleep instantly, and then I was dreaming the next instant, though they were confused dreams, mixing up my time on Caranja with Azrack, and sometimes I was with Rhee, Figg, and Dryx, and sometimes I was with other women. It was hard to tell.
The soundtrack was good. A single electric guitar played my birth song, over and over, in a piercing cry.
In the real world, I woke with a start when I heard a low chuckle.
Crouched on our platform was a winged man, only he didn’t have feathers, but a Dragonsoul’s leathery wings. Dark hair, dark eyes, smirking, Eggero Khel had a silver knife pressed against Figg’s throat. She slept, but it must’ve been a magic sleep because a thin line of blood leaked down her neck. Eggero’s hair went from brown to blond, and his eyes turned blue. His ears curved upwards into points.
I was seeing him in his body. So this fucker was an elf. I’d cut off his ears and wear them around my neck.
“Hello, Axel Drokharis,” the villain said.
Chapter Thirty
FIGG, EGGERO, AND I were on a ten-by-ten-foot stretch of flat space on the shipyard’s roof. I had plenty of room to maneuver. I wasn’t going to talk with this asshole. I had to sleep, and I had merfolk to kill. And while he was holding that knife to Figg’s throat, I wanted to tear out his spine and beat him to death with it.
I flicked that motherfucker with my tail, shattering his nose and throwing him off Figg. I was on him in a heartbeat, my claws ready to remove his heart. I wasn’t much for organ meat, but you can bet your ass I would chow down on Eggero Khel’s heart and then ask for seconds.
Eggero shifted into a Homo Draconis form to match mine. He was blue and gold, and he was as big and as tough.
Figg didn’t wake from her magical sleep.
Eggero shoved me back, and I triggered DarkArmor and filled my hands with fire.
He grinned. “We’re not going to fight now, Son of Fire. I’m not ready yet. Besides, I like interfering with your affairs. I am curious to know what level you are. How about I show you my skill tree, and you can show me yours.”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’ll have to cheat for a minute. But you won’t tell anyone, will you? I assure you, in this game we are playing, I want it to be fair.”
His skill tree appeared before my eyes.
He was at level eight, a level beyond me, and he had seven spell categories unlocked. He was taking a different tack, by unlocking magic from all branches rather than mastering one branch at a time.
I grinned. “You’re behind me, Eggero. I’m level nine, and I have concentration ink.”
“You have to show me yours,” the fucker insisted.
I shook my head. “Yeah, I lied about that. I’m not showing you shit. And I know how you talked to the Stallion King about me. It didn’t work. I’m getting better, stronger, and it’s only a matter of time before I rip you open.”
His blue eyes glinted with trickery. “I have some time yet, to play the game, though if you don’t play fair, I won’t either. You certainly don’t want that. You see, I could wipe out this little village, and all the cast of characters, so very easily. How you and your wenches would cry over the old man, the fat man, and all those older women. I do like an older woman. They are more experienced. They understand the games more, the stakes—what is important and what’s not.”
“Quest until I war, war until I game,” I said. “You’re the game, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I am the game,” Eggero said. “I’ve been throwing things at you, and I will continue to do so. It didn’t take much prodding for Illbro Brinnib to decide to attack you, and it’s interesting that Princess Ibbithy had no idea that Illbro was dealing in the buying and selling of Jataksha.”
That was all interesting, but I didn’t let myself show any emotion. Well, except for my rage. I let him see that. I’d learned that trick from Figg. “Let’s just end this, Eggero, if that is your real name. You might be the game, but I have a feeling that the Pentakorr are the war. The demon kings might be waking up.”
“The hell machine,” Eggero agreed. “The forbidden magic of the Pentakorr was interesting. I enjoy the trope of the ancient evil returning to the land. I hope you survive the war so you can play the game. If you don’t, I suppose there are other heroes on this world that will fight that war in your stead.”
I feinted but didn’t attack. The fire filling my hands lit both our dragon faces.
He winced but didn’t move. “Like I told you, I didn’t come here to fight. And remember, any spell you cast, every ounce of shakti you use against me, that’s one less attack against the army that is coming to kill you.” Eggero raised a hand, and his claws iced over and grew six inches longer. That ice would cut the shit out of me.
I didn’t want my shit cut. He was right. If we had a battle royale, I might not be able to defend my city. And this was my chance to get information from him. “So, you’re a dragon, and you’re playing this game. There’s another Dragonsoul on Caranja, or at least that’s what you said. So, is the lady dragon playing the game?”
The blue-and-gold beast in front of me flared his nostrils in a spark of lightning. “She doesn’t know anything about you or me. But on my travels here, I found a fourth Dragonsoul that I’d forgotten about. He’s old, granted, and he knew how to hide. All of the Dragonsouls know how to hide, but you know that.”
“We did, but my father changed that,” I said. Memories came back to me, of my father telling me about the Zothoric Wars, where he destroyed the demons that threatened to devour all of reality.
“Your father,” Eggero sneered. “Your father, Steven Drokharis, all luck and destiny. I don’t think you’re that. I don’t think the son measures up to the father, but we’ll see.”
“We will see,” I said. “I’m going to find a way back home. I’m going to contact them, somehow, and ask them about you. Because I think they’ve met you before.”
Eggero licked his lips with a long, forked tongue. “That won’t happen. This is our game, Axel. Mine and yours alone.”
Dryx came flying in. Behind her, a brilliant radiance filled the sky. That was the flare, the signal that the Aquaterreb were on their way.
Eggero grinned. “You cheated by not showing me your skill tree. I’ll assume you are ashamed of your level and your skills. If you can cheat in that, I can cheat by using some of my old magic—sorcery you don’t have. Farewell, little Axel Drokharis. We’ll meet again, but not for a long time. I’d use that time wisely. I know I will be.”
Then he must’ve used a cheat code because he vanished, right before my eyes, and I couldn’t do that. So he was definitely ahead of me, or he wasn’t just a simple Dragonsoul. Was he elven? He did have those pointed ears. No. The truth hit me. He was elven Dragonskin. I had another mother back on Earth, an ancient elf queen, and she’d become a Dragonskin. Was Eggero like her?
I didn’t know. And I couldn’t ponder his games. And yet, he’d let something slip, something very important, that I could use.
Figg was up, her hand to her throat. She looked at her blood. “What the fuck?”
“Eggero Khel showed up,” I said. “It seems he’s playing some kind of twisted game with me, and he’s ahead.”
My summoner was on her f
eet, with her bident and net. She saw the ocean boiling in the distance. And she saw Dryx coming with the sky flashing behind her.
“I hope our walls hold,” Figg said.
“They will,” I said. “And we have a change of plans.” I told her what I had in mind. The plan pissed her off to no end.
I didn’t laugh because when you laugh around an angry woman it only adds to their anger. It’s like throwing gasoline on a BBQ cooking steaks. It’s fun to watch the explosion, but you don’t get to eat the steaks.
Figg started yelling, but I held up a finger. “Just trust me. And we don’t have time to argue. Get to your battle station, and I’ll let you know when it’s time.
I grabbed her, flew her over, and set her down on the southern part of the wall.
“By the seven angels and all the devils in hell!” Figg shouted at me. “I hate it when you think you’re right.”
I turned and laughed. “Good thing I’m such a clueless bastard most of the time.”
Then I spun off the ground, working my wings, and landed on the center part of the wall, where the diamonds were still trapped in the rock.
When the first kraken hit our defenses, we were ready. There were twice as many of the lobstrosities as before. Pincers clacking, they used their tentacles to grab our walls and start the climb up.
Geeze answered in the north with lightning that snapped through flesh and fried the rider as well as the kraken. In effect, since the merfolk were wet, the lightning became an area of attack spell. Even mermen, trying to climb the walls with their tentacles, were electrified.
Bragg Bharta and his wives, including Nina Heart, had their swords and spears ready. They hacked tentacles and stabbed the kraken in their cone-y little heads. Cheriela and the rest of the rajani also fought on the wall, ducking the kraken’s pincers and stabbing at the black dots of their lobsterish eyes.
The schoolteacher, Sita Amaranth, was armed with a spear, but she’d mostly use her spells, since she was an accomplished sorceress. The new constable, Dolori Kannaggi, stood near the teacher. Dolori wore chain mail armor and was armed with a curved sword and a kite shield.
I was surprised to see that Uncle Dog was there, standing back, in some ancient-ass armor holding a sword limply. His face was pale. I could only imagine that his wives had given him an ultimatum—either fight on the wall with us or eat your own dick. Dog had decided that dick-eating, especially his own, was not something he wanted to try.
To the south, Figg was not only using the water to stab icicles into the creatures, she was using the wall as well. She would morph the wall, turning key sections into spikes at inopportune times. The brands on her left arm gleamed, first the Vanka Jalana, sending merfolk away on waves, or throwing ice spears, or sending up plumes of ocean that scattered the Aquaterrebian troops. Then her Ksu Jalana would flash. She’d open a hole in the rock, let a tentacle snake through, and then close it, trapping the beast.
Next to her, Rhee was emptying arrows into the merfolk and monsters. She also flung the spinning chakram, and her practice had paid off. The fire knives cut into fish meat and spun right through the monsters, but it raced back to her hand. If she was busy fighting off a merman coming at her with barnacle-encrusted ax, the chakram would spin right next to her shoulder, waiting for when she could grab it again. That was a new trick.
She chopped into the chest of a merman, spun with her left hand, and then with a backhanded motion, sent the flaming chakram into his skull, right through his helmet.
Mumi and some of the barflies stood ready to help them. However, between Figg and Rhee, the bartender and her rummies didn’t have much to do.
As for me and Dryx, I was on the wall, in my True Form, with the Calcifax staff. I hit the first three kraken with my fiery breath, creating a storm of flames that made them squeal. My Inferno Exhalant also put the lovely bouquet of grilled fish meat in the air. The mermen riding on the back of the kraken dove into the water to douse the flames. Shakti from the kills filled my atma. There was so much energy flowing into me I got a little dizzy.
The octopus men then swam to the wall. Slamming the suction cups on stone, they started crawling up it on their tentacles. They were nearly at the top when Dryx came through. The sky warrior was a flying blender with her kurrachiyya. She soared down, using her momentum to add extra sauce to her sword strokes. And she’d obviously practiced this maneuver because she was ready for the shock of her swords ripping through the armor, skin, and bones of her luckless victims. All three of the mermen lost their limbs and their lives.
The sky warrior wasn’t done. She spun and unleashed her sonic scream, which punched a hole into the head of a lobster and liquified its rider, some pretty mermaid in sparkling green armor.
Another kraken charged up my wall. I bashed its head in with the Calcifax staff—its exoskeleton was no match for the petrified rock of the artifact. I had some distance weapons as well. I’d stacked up boulders under me. Using the Ksu magic of the stone staff, I hurled the rocks. They hit like bombs, demolishing incoming kraken breaking the surface of the water. More magical energy swelled my core.
I scanned the ocean for signs of Ibbithy or Illbro. So far, I recognized the color, the weapons, and the armor of both the Brinnib and the BuBano families. But we’d heard that a third family had joined the cause.
So far, this third family hadn’t show up. I saw something out in the deeper waters, coming at us, white lines of froth moving fast. If those were Illbro’s reinforcements, I wasn’t exactly thrilled at how quickly they were moving, or the fact that I had no idea what they were.
Meanwhile, I had the kraken and merfolk from the other two families to fight. A javelin clattered off my scales. Their initial attack hadn’t been able to break our defenses. Now, they were standing back, flinging javelins and throwing spells.
“Agnaat injit!” I spun up a round shield of flames to block the javelins.
A wave rose and merfolk rode it, dozens of the fishy fuckers, both men and women, readying their weapons. Their faces were all fangs and horror—any semblance of beauty was gone. It was like a collection of shark-faced surfers was about to attack us.
I heard Figg call out, “Vankaat nivir!”
She dispelled the water magic, and the wave came up short, smashing the Aquaterreb into the wall instead of carrying them over it.
I saw a circle of mermaids about fifty feet away, all underwater, their pastel-colored hair just visible. A kraken to the north started to grow, getting bigger and bigger, growing from twenty feet long, to fifty, to a hundred—they now had a kaiju-sized lobstrosity with massive tentacles the size of redwoods. Their pincers would be able to snap a boat in half. This new threat would smash through our walls and end our valiant efforts.
The sun was only a red smudge on the horizon. Even if we managed to fix the wall, we would have a real problem on our hands. We’d lose a lot of people, and it wasn’t even dawn yet.
Ice spears erupted from the water, a thousand spears, ten thousand, all flying from out of the depths. I ducked down, and even Dryx was forced to take cover. Some of the ice spears shattered on the wall. Frozen debris rained down. Others rammed into the dock or stuck in the businesses of the New Pier. More ice clattered around us.
The gigantic kraken towered over the north wall. Geeze, Bragg Bharta, his wives, and the rajani weren’t running. Those brave people were going to fight that thing off, even if their spears were only stickpins to the thing.
Geeze had his ram’s head cane up. I couldn’t hear him, but I could see the flash of light from that staff. A wave of gleaming light came out of him, and it struck the Godzilla-sized lobster-headed octopus thing in front of him. The beast’s squeal filled the air. The kaiju’s scream was so loud that most everyone winced. Some dropped their weapons to put their hands over their ears.
Whatever spell Geeze had cast, it had taken everything out of him. The kaiju creature was in pain, though, and it was slashing and splashing the ocean with its tentacles,
which sent water gushing around. Those waves must’ve disrupted the attack of the merfolk because the barrage of ice missiles had stopped.
Dryx didn’t pause. She was up in the air, flying up and over to the kaiju. It was pretty clear by her grim face she saw it as a suicide mission. She looked like a heroic martyr in her leather and those red boots. The blood on her twin swords glowed as the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon. We’d survived to see the sun. This was good.
I popped my head over the wall to see something that almost made me drop a scale or two.
Those racing lines I’d seen before had shown themselves. They popped out the water, moving toward us at an explosive rate.
They were flying fish, ten feet long, with long fin-like wings. They were streaking through the water to get enough speed to break the surface. Then they were going to soar over the wall I’d spent the night building. There were hundreds of them, and each one of them had a rider, a merfolk in pink-and-white armor, with tentacles instead of legs. The Aquaterreb clung to leather saddles on the flying fish. The warriors were bent over, hugging the fish, behind triangular chunks of leather. Those leather shields were designed to cut back on drag.
This was the new third family. I didn’t have a name for them. I figured the “Oh Shit” Family was probably a bit too on the nose.
In seconds, our defenses wouldn’t matter. Between the barrage of ice spears, the kaiju lobstrosity, and the flying fish, we were screwed.
A woman down the way from me turned. I thought she was about to tell me to buck up, or maybe she wanted a little pep talk.
Then I saw she was dead, impaled by an ice spear.
I recognized her face. It was Sarawigga, Nameless’s mom. Both Nameless and Fransigga were orphans now.
