The Dragons of Decay

by J. J. Thompson

  Tales from the New Earth: Book 4

  The Dragons of Decay

  by

  J. J. Thompson

  Text Copyright © 2015 J. J. Thompson

  All Rights Reserved

  “Do not run from a battle with dragons;

  rather turn and face it.

  For even if you die,

  you die in glory.”

  Simon O'Toole

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Links

  Chapter 1

  “Are you insane? No, you are not coming to help! Understood? I've lost enough, I won't lose the last friend I have.”

  “Look, I may appear to be a child but I'm not. I'm a big boy and I make my own decisions. And if I want to help, then damn it, I will!”

  The old man in the mirror pushed back his wild mane of white hair and sighed in frustration. Behind him was a forest clearing. The trees were limp and brown, looking like they were made of rubber as they sagged, lifeless.

  “Simon,” he said. “You can't enter the elven realm. You know that. Look at me for heaven's sake. I was young and strong before I came here. Then I returned to Earth and aged forty years. If you enter, you will never be able to leave. No human can. Is that what you want?”

  The young man hissed in frustration. He was staring into the hand mirror that he was holding as if looking at a computer screen. But it wasn't technology, it was magic.

  He sat back in his chair behind the desk in his study, and glared at his oldest friend. He pushed back his own hair, dark but streaked with white, back over his shoulders and frowned, his too-young face flushed with frustration.

  “It doesn't matter what I want, Daniel. You may only be human but I'm not. I'm a Changling, remember? The difference in the flow of time between here and there may not affect me at all; have you thought of that?”

  “Of course I have. But if it does, you will be trapped here. And how exactly are you going to be able to continue your battle against the dragons on Earth from the elven realm, hmm?”

  “I can cross that bridge when I come to it. Look, the battle isn't here right now anyway. It's there. You and Ethmira and the elves are being hunted by the primal brown dragon and its followers. I should be there to help!”

  “And I would like nothing better than for you to be here, believe me. But then what? Say we do somehow defeat the browns.”

  Daniel looked around the dismal forest dejectedly and shook his head.

  “Absurd as that sounds at the moment. Fine. You will have helped save the elves and their homeland. Bully for you. Well done, hero.”

  Simon felt himself blushing at his friend's sarcasm.

  “And then you'll get to watch, using the lovely Magic Mirror spell that you are using now, while the red dragons turn our home world into a cinder. Good job there, Simon.”

  The young wizard narrowed his eyes as he stared at Daniel.

  “Are you done? Aeris is the king of sarcastic comments around here, thanks. I don't need another one.”

  “I think I resent that,” the little air elemental said from Simon's right.

  “Why? It's true,” a second voice spoke up from the wizard's left.

  He glanced with a quick grin at the earth elemental standing on the desk next to his left shoulder.

  “Thanks Kronk,” he said. “Now please, shush guys. This is important.”

  “I may sound sarcastic, Simon, but my point is true enough. If you could help stop the brown dragons here, you would probably be unable to return home. No, I think the elves have the only proper solution. It may not save them or their world, but it will erase the threat of the primal brown dragon and its servants from the Earth forever.”

  Simon leaped to his feet and began pacing around the room, staring into the mirror while the elementals watched with deep concern.

  “You can't let them do that, Daniel!” he said insistently. “You will die. You and Ethmira and the rest of them will all die!”

  “Don't you think we know that?” his friend said wearily. His wrinkles were much deeper than the last time that Simon had spoken to him and he was pale with exhaustion.

  “But if the elders seal this plane entirely, the threat is over. The brown dragons will reduce this world to a rotted and decayed horror, but will then be trapped for all eternity with their own handiwork. Much joy will they get from it,” Daniel added bitterly.

  The wizard sat on the windowsill and tried to think of a solution. For some reason, the primal brown dragon and its horde of lesser dragons had invaded the elven lands two months ago, Earth time. He couldn't keep the time differential straight in his head, but that had only been about a week or two in the elvish realm.

  Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to contact Daniel in all that time. After his battle with the primal white dragon, the elves that had aided him, including Ethmira, had withdrawn to their realm and everything had, supposedly, gone back to normal.

  The other Changlings who had participated in the fight; Liliana, the paladin from Moscow, Tamara and Sebastian, the sibling mages from London, and the two warriors from Nottinghill, Malcolm and Aiden, had all gone back home and gotten on with living their lives.

  Simon had done the same. Winter was setting in before he tried to call Daniel using the Magic Mirror spell and had been unsuccessful. But he hadn't worried too much. Contact with the elvish plane was hit and miss; sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Besides, the elves and Daniel were safe, he thought. Why would the dragons threaten them? And even if they wanted to, how could they possibly cross over into another world to attack them?

  It was only within the last week that Simon had made contact with his oldest friend, and had learned the truth.

  The primal brown dragon had somehow opened a portal into the elven home world and his horde of lesser dragons, hundreds and hundreds of the foul creatures, had spewed into that green and peaceful land and had begun to ravage it.

  As for why, the story had come from Daniel himself.

  “The brown dragons and their leader were the ones responsible for driving the elves from Earth thousands of years ago,” he'd told Simon. “They have a special hatred for them. Now, we don't know for certain, but I believe the brown dragons learned that the elves were part of the group that attacked and helped destroy the primal white. That leaves only two groups of dragons on the entire Earth now; reds and browns. It is quite possible that the browns blame the entire thing on the elves.”

  “But we're responsible, the Changlings,” Simon had objected. “Hell, if they want to blame one person specifically, they can blame me. I started this whole thing, after all.”

  “No, you didn't. The gods of Chaos started this war, not you. But irregardless, you can't reason with a dragon. They are evil to the core and arrogant beyond belief. If the primal brown dragon blames the elves for the deaths of its siblings, which I think it does, nothing will turn it aside.”

  In the short span of time since the invas
ion, the dragons had attacked the main elven city and reduced it to slag. Brown dragons spewed a form of acid that seemed to break down solids on contact, turning them into a nightmarish mass of sludge. That included buildings, plants...and people.

  Now the elves were on the run. Their entire world was apparently covered with deep forests and ancient trees. It would take the dragons a very long time to exterminate the entire elven species, but dragons were immortal, and patient.

  “There has to be another way,” Simon said desperately. “There just has to be.”

  “There isn't. I wish there were, believe me. I'm not the heroic type, old friend. Death certainly isn't my first choice as a solution to the dragon problem, but there doesn't seem to be another one. The elders have discussed it, they've asked for everyone's input. They even came to the resident human in the group,” and Daniel tapped his chest with a wry smile, “and wanted to know if I had any other options. But I don't. So here we are.”

  The wizard turned and looked out of the window. The panes were etched with frost and the field and forest beyond the walls of his tower were dusted with early snow.

  Looks like another hard winter, he thought absently. Harder still when your best friend is about to die and you can't do a damned thing about it.

  He frowned into the glare of the sunlight reflecting off of the snow. Something was nudging at the back of his mind; an idea half-formed and tenuous. What was it?

  Turning away from the window, Simon crossed the room and sat down again, looking at the elementals. They returned his stare with worried looks of their own.

  “I just thought of something,” he finally said into the mirror. “My small friends here told me some time ago that I'd be stuck looking like a kid for a very long time. Something about the magic altering the way my body ages.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and saw the splashes of white mixed in with the brown as it fell over his eyes.

  “It's the same power that's turned my hair this lovely, pinto-looking color.”

  “Yes, that's true,” Daniel said with a quirk of an eyebrow. “And your point is?”

  “My point is that I don't age the way that you do, old buddy. I think that a trip to the elven realm, provided I didn't stay for, let's say, more than a month, might not affect me at all, or at least not very much.”

  “Oh Simon,” his friend scoffed. “That's ridiculous. You...”

  The aged eyes in the mirror began to widen as he stared at Simon in amazement.

  “Aha!” Simon said with a grin. “See? I'm not just a pretty face. I'm on to something, aren't I?”

  “Perhaps,” Daniel muttered, looking off into the distance. “Perhaps.”

  He stood up abruptly and then staggered.

  “Daniel? Are you okay?” Simon asked, concerned.

  “I'm fine. Old men shouldn't jump up like that. Tends to make one light-headed. Listen, I'm going to find the council and ask their advice on this. It is quite possible that they didn't take your wizard physiology into account when they dismissed your offer to help. Call me back in...”

  Daniel frowned for a moment.

  “Call me back in two days. That should give me an hour or two to talk to them and get their opinion.”

  “Two days? Sheesh. Okay, fine. You might also want to tell them this.”

  Simon's voice hardened and Daniel raised an eyebrow.

  “Tell them if worse comes to worse, that instead of dooming their people to a horrible death, they can fall back to this world and seal the elven realm behind them. It might work, even if...” he paused and took a deep breath. “Even if it means that you yourself are trapped there to face your death alone.”

  His friend nodded slowly, a rather poignant expression on his face.

  “I agree. They would hate giving up their homeland to the dragons, but perhaps if it means saving their entire race, they'd been willing to do it. Reluctantly, I'm sure. And hey, I'm old now anyway. If my death comes knowing that the elves, and you and the other Changlings, are safe from the brown dragons, I think that's a fair trade.”

  “I don't,” Simon said roughly. “But it is the right thing to do, I suppose. Okay, I'll call you back in two days, my time. Good luck.”

  Daniel smiled.

  “Thanks. I hope you're on to something, my friend. It would certainly give those damned dragons a bit of a surprise to suddenly be faced with a wizard in this world.”

  Simon nodded, winked and closed the connection with a shake of the mirror.

  He put it down on the desk, leaned on his elbows and looked at the two elementals.

  “This is bad,” he said softly. “Really, really, bad.”

  “Is there no hope, master?” Kronk asked anxiously.

  “Against the primal brown dragon and its minions?” Aeris interjected. “If there is, I don't see it. The problem,” he continued, looking at Simon, “is that elves can't use magic. Well, they can, but not the way that you do. Their weapons, their clothing, even their homes are imbued with magic, but that's because they are themselves. When they create something, their power is transferred to that object. You see?”

  Simon nodded silently, listening intently.

  “But casting spells? No, this they can't do. Even their elders, the ones that watch what happens here in this world, are only able to do so because they've created items that allow them to see beyond their own realm. But they couldn't cast a Magic Mirror spell to save their lives, literally.”

  “Interesting,” Simon said quietly. “So that's why their arrows were able to penetrate dragon hide. The heads were magical because they were crafted by the elves using their natural magic.”

  “Exactly, my dear wizard. Dwarves are similar to that, but they do have certain members of their society that can manipulate magic. But they consider it almost dishonorable to do so.” He snorted. “The dwarven mindset: only if you face your enemy with an ax and bash in its skull have you truly proven yourself. Bah. Nonsense.”

  “Not to them,” Kronk said a bit crossly. “You've never respected the dwarves, Aeris. Their race is older than mankind and yet you constantly trivialize them.”

  I don't,” Aeris replied with a scowl. “I just think that if you are defending yourself, you should use every weapon at your disposal, and that includes magic.”

  He nodded at Simon.

  “Take our great wizard here. He's defeated three primal dragons. Not by slavishly following some narrow-minded doctrine but by thinking outside of the box.”

  He held up a small, blurry hand and began ticking points off on his fingers.

  “The primal black dragon; shorted out in deep water. The primal green; choked to death in its own poisonous breath. And the primal white dragon? Fried from the inside-out by getting a fire elemental and an air elemental to combine their powers. Try explaining that to a dwarf and see what they say. They'd probably be offended by the very idea of innovation.”

  Simon looked from Kronk to Aeris and back again.

  “Is he right?” he asked the earthen, who was still looking annoyed. “Are the dwarves so set in their ways that they refuse to adapt and change?”

  “To a certain extent, I suppose so, master,” the little guy said reluctantly. “After all, they've survived all this time using the same methods that have always worked.”

  “Right up until a horde of humanoid dragons came knocking on their gates,” Aeris said with a sneer. “They absolutely failed to handle that correctly. They're lucky that Simon destroyed the primal white when he did, or their capital would have fallen.”

  “But it didn't,” Simon said quickly. Kronk looked like he was holding back a stinging retort. “The dragonoids collapsed when the primal died and the water elementals that it had summoned were sucked back to the water realm. The dwarves just had to kill a few dragons and that was the end to the attack.”

  “Thanks to you,” the air elemental added quickly.

  “Thanks to all of us, Aeris,” Simon told him sharply. “It was a group ef
fort, not just me. Anyway, we're getting off target here.”

  He stood up and walked to the door.

  “Come on downstairs, guys. I'm going to make some tea. I want to talk this whole thing out.”

  He went down the stairs and the elementals followed him.

  On the main floor, Simon filled his iron kettle and hung it over the fire in the fireplace. The room was warm and comfortable, thanks to Kronk keeping the fire going all night. Once the winter had rolled in early, the earthen had taken it upon himself to keep the fire burning all day and all night. He said it helped pass the time since he couldn't work in the garden anymore.

  While he waited for the kettle to boil, Simon fried up some smoked venison from his stores in the cellar. His provisions were well stocked from a good growing season and trading with the town of Nottinghill. By his calculations, he figured that he should be able to make it through the long, cold season with no problems. Hopefully.

  He sliced up some bread from a loaf he'd baked the day before and made his breakfast. His worried call to Daniel had been his first order of business when he'd awoken that morning.

  After he made his tea, Simon sat down at the kitchen table to eat. The elementals stood on the center of the table and watched.

  “Kronk, if we kept a fire going in the stove all the time,” and the wizard nodded at the big, cast-iron stove on the far side of the fireplace, “do you think that it would help heat the tower? I mean, I only use it to bake bread and the occasion pie every two weeks or so. Maybe during the winter, we should just keep a fire lit in it at all times?”

  The little earthen looked at the heavy stove doubtfully.

  “Well, we certainly could, master, if you wish. But the fireplace is connected by ducts to the rest of the tower. The main chimney draws off the smoke and the vents move the warm air through the walls. The stove would only heat this room, and only for a few feet around it. It would be a waste of wood, to be honest. But if you want me to do that, I would be happy to.”

  Simon chuckled at the little guy's tone.