Demons of the Hunter

by Stephen Allan

  He was mad at Artemia for… for just doing what she always did, if he was honest. She was straightforward, never one to waste any time, and did what she wanted to do. She didn’t care for politeness, courtesies, or anything else. It made her brutally efficient, if not feared and a little distrusted. To take some time to ponder all that had happened would waste precious minutes that could be spent coming closer to Ragnor, especially considering the draining effect the environment was having.

  But more than her, Eric was mad at himself and his circumstances. He felt like his mother was about to tell him something. And even if she wasn’t, why couldn’t he have had that experience just a little bit longer? Yes, maybe he’d heard her in his dreams relatively recently. But that just made him desire her voice even more.

  The more he thought about it, the more emotional he became, to the point that tears actually began to well up in his eyes. He pushed the tears back, refusing to cry, telling himself that he would not cry until Ragnor was slaughtered and victory was achieved.

  Still, the emotions from inside gnawed at him. If he did not cry on the outside, tears flooded his mind and emotional state.

  They reminded him that as much as he wanted to enter the dream world, he had no guarantee of ever hearing her voice again. This very well may have been the last time. He knew he’d never see her in real life again, but if he had to rely on remembering her… if he couldn’t truly lose himself in a dream with her…

  They also reminded him that he hadn’t even seen her. He’d only heard her. He’d not felt her tender, motherly arms embracing him and comforting him like times before. He’d not seen her reassuring smile and emotional eyes, the ones that comforted her like no one else could, not even his sister.

  And he didn’t even get to see Rey, his dear little sister departed from the world far too soon.

  He knew the power of his dreams, the realism of them, and whatever joy they brought him was fading. They were becoming darker, heavier, and less pleasant. Eric would have given so much to have a dream like he had back at the imperial palace, when at least he got to hold his mother and Rey in his arms for a few moments.

  He shook and cursed at himself, telling himself to get a hold and to focus on the mission. He could not afford to explore his memories until Ragnor perished. He could not wait while the cold sapped his energy.

  But that didn’t stop his mind from trying to push past his desires and explore on its own.

  Through the early morning, they pushed through the mountains, ignoring the terrain which got steeper by the step, rockier by the foot, and slicker by the second. They went silent, listening for predators, their own breathing, and their own steps. Dragons soared above, but none had decided to strike as the one magical beast had.

  After a couple of hours, they finally saw a hill that had no higher mountain beyond it. They saw the peak. They saw the point from which they would see Ragnor. Their pace quickened with their hearts. Eric thought of how he would react if he happened to see Ragnor on the other side. Would the red dragon live up to his dreams? To the legend? Would he have as much satisfaction in slaughtering the beast as he did in thinking about it?

  He went ahead of the other two, hurrying to see what laid on the other side. Gasping for breath, his quadriceps igniting, he became single minded. Mom. Rey. Your souls will know peace.

  He came to the edge. He let out a grunt and took his next step.

  He could not have prepared himself for what lay on the other side.

  The other side of the mountain led to a valley with a thick coating of ice over it. But blocking that view were hundreds, if not thousands, of dragons flying around the area. It took a couple of seconds to realize they flew in a circular pattern, guarding the way to Ragnor himself.

  Which…

  Eric gulped. Down beneath, within the valley somewhere, Ragnor, the killer of the two people he loved dearest, a legendary dragon, second only to Bahamut, rested.

  But first, the dragons guarding him had to get out of the way.

  Eric examined the dragons flying around. They varied in size, color, and patterns on their wings and back. Almost all flew in a synchronized fashion, as if controlled by Ragnor from within. There was an opening at one cave down below—hopefully to Ragnor—but there were so many dragons that the idea that they could time it to get into the cave was laughable.

  Just one dragon could kill them. Over a hundred? Maybe a thousand?

  How are we going to get past them? How? There’s just no way.

  So much for Bahamut being the king of dragons. Ragnor’s got an entire army of these things. If Bahamut’s the king, Ragnor’s the general.

  “Amazing,” Artemia said, her voice full of awe. “Just simply amazing.”

  She smiled a devious, almost insane smile, at Eric, leaving him on the edge of nervousness. Romarus crossed his arms and looked out.

  “You’re eager for it, huh?” Eric said.

  “A creature like this, with the power it has, of course I am,” Artemia said. “Do you not feel the same way?”

  Eric stammered an agreeable response.

  “I’m just confused about the dragons. They aren’t… they aren’t really doing anything. It almost seems like they are brainwashed.”

  “Which just makes our job all the easier.”

  She’s too thirsty for it. This is bad.

  “Do not let your eagerness get the best of you, Artemia,” Romarus said. “I see many dragons below like the one I had to kill to protect you two. They may be brainwashed, but that will not prevent them from killing you should you approach them without a plan.”

  Eric could see Artemia biting her tongue. He couldn’t believe that she was allowing her thirst for Ragnor get the best of her critical thinking skills. He had to make a move before she led them on a suicide mission.

  “Let’s just take five minutes to figure something out,” Eric said. “If we haven’t come up with anything, we’ll just start walking that way. It’ll still take us plenty of time before we come across those dragons.”

  “So do tell what you suggest, Eric,” Artemia said. “If left up to me, we will simply charge through.”

  You would let the two of us die so that you can sneak through to Ragnor. Wouldn’t you?

  But Eric did not voice his concern. As long as he did not have the power of magic, he had to rely to some extent on Artemia’s guidance.

  “I will distract them,” Romarus said.

  “How?” Eric asked.

  The old man smiled.

  “Magi have many tricks up their sleeves. I myself can think of quite a few. It will entail equipping the two of you with some speed, myself with some displays of power—if not enough actual power myself—and some good fortune.”

  “Let’s do it,” Artemia said.

  She hasn’t even considered the plan.

  But Romarus already wore a smile on his face as he raised his hands.

  “Come to me, hunters,” he said.

  Eric looked to Artemia, who walked right past him and to Romarus. Feeling trapped in the course of action, Eric followed suit. Romarus placed a hand on each hunter and asked them to close their eyes.

  Suddenly, Eric felt a surge of energy to his legs, as if someone had increased the power and stamina in them a hundred fold. He no longer shivered, but instead felt a gentle warm glow from within. He wanted to burst out and sprint from here back to Dabira, and he sought to jump as far as he could.

  “The speed spell will last you about five minutes,” he said. “You will know when to go.”

  He then closed his eyes and paused for several seconds. Artemia grabbed Eric and moved them down the slope, leaving the mage behind.

  “What are you doing?” Eric said.

  “Getting ourselves ready for that mage’s action.”

  That mage? That’s what you call—

  “Dragons of Ragnor!” Romarus said. His voice boomed with much higher volume, echoed across the valley, and attracted the attention of nearly ever
y single dragon in the valley. “Your time has come to an end. For behold! The power of the magi!”

  He held his bow up. He nocked a single arrow and fired it into the sky, but in doing so, he produced a massive flame that attracted the eye of every single dragon down below. A thousand roars came from the valley as Romarus looked down.

  “You hold yourself up as gods, but now you must know that your time has come to an end!”

  Eric looked back to Artemia. She’d already begun running. Eric just shook his head, glanced one last time at Romarus, and took off sprinting.

  He had so much more speed than before, he didn’t know what to do with it. He worried about stumbling down the valley, but his feet always landed true and his steps sprung him far further than before. He yelled half in joy, half in sheer terror at the exhilaration of the flying down the valley toward the suddenly open cave. He soon came stride for stride with Artemia.

  Above him, hundreds of dragons roared past him, chasing after the man who had dared to enter into their valley. Their valley. Eric looked back and saw Romarus continuing to shout, his voice carrying across the entire mountain range. Eric had no idea how a single man would attract the attention of all of these dragons—he’d gotten some, but not all.

  Then he heard a single crack, and it all came to him at once.

  Romarus wasn’t going to defeat these dragons all by himself. He wasn’t even going to draw them all in. That was never his intention.

  He would let nature do it.

  At the peak of the mountains, a cascade of snow began to fall. What started as a few layers of snow soon turned into a full-blown avalanche, the snow crashing down like meteors from the sky. Dragons bellowed in rage and in shock, which only exacerbated the torrent of snow coming their way.

  “Romarus!” Eric shouted.

  He looked back but could not see Romarus anymore. The dragons, not surprisingly, took to the air to avoid the oncoming rush of snow. But in doing so, they left open the cave where Ragnor hopefully rested for Eric and Artemia to enter. Some of the dragons caught on, turning their gaze and breathing fire toward the two hunters, but with the element of speed, they stood no chance of catching them.

  “Go!” the distant voice of Romarus said. “Slaughter Ragnor! Save Hydor!”

  Eric looked back but still could not see the mage. I won’t see him again.

  He sacrificed himself so that we could get past Ragnor’s army. I’ll give your soul peace as well.

  “Eric!”

  He turned just in time to see Artemia dive into the cave and take cover behind a pillar. Eric barely had time to register that the inside of the cave wasn’t a cave, but a temple. He just found a pillar and pressed his back up against it.

  Snow furiously flooded into the entrance to the cavernous temple, rushing past Eric and Artemia. It blocked off the entrance. The place dimmed as light from the entrance faded.

  But soon, it had ended. No more snow came down. The tide stopped.

  Outside the cave, the roars of many a dragon reached the hunters’ ears. Their escape was gone. They had only one direction to go, and that was further into the temple.

  But they had done it. Eric had achieved his wish. He would get the chance to face Ragnor. Hopefully. But what else could this place be?

  He had thirsted for revenge for six years. Six years, his sister and his mother had not known peace. Six years, he had not known peace. Six years, he had killed every dragon he came across, took on every hunt, and sacrificed everything in the name of revenge. And now, he didn’t have to wait another six seconds.

  The temple of Ragnor echoed with a few familiar sounds. Dripping. Howling wind. Their own breathing. The crunching of ice and snow beneath their boots. Dragons screeching in the far distance, their cries just faint echoes by the time they reached into the cave. The last bit of shuffling of snow from the avalanche.

  It presented many of the same smells that Eric knew well. The smell of thick ice, of packed snow, even of dragon waste littered across the ground.

  Even the air tasted like air from the rest of the land, and the tactile sensation of his boots on the ground felt like that of any other place in Hydor.

  But the sights that Eric witnessed as he moved through the illuminated temple with Artemia were not only sights he never thought he’d witness, they were things he couldn’t even have imagined. For what he saw was not just improbable, not just unlike anything he’d seen in Hydor, but also barely resembling anything even in the tallest of tales, mythologies, stories, folklore, and religions he knew of in Hydor.

  Numerous creatures lined the ice-crusted walls, some curled up, some frozen in aggressive postures; some so far back it barely looked like a beast, some so close that Eric feared it would only take a single ember to unfreeze the monsters; some as large as the largest dragon Eric had ever slaughtered, a couple so small that he felt he could hold them in his hand. But they all struck a chord in Eric that was like prey gazing upon a hungry predator. Eric was certain that the monsters that he saw, should they ever escape the ice, would not come to aide humanity in whatever quests they sought to fulfill.

  The first one that caught his eye looked like a demon, except the demons he’d heard of in folklore were a lot smaller, less dangerous, and less intimidating. It had two horns which went in a semi-circle shape above its burnt-brown body, iron shielding on its shoulders, wrist, elbows, and knees, a loincloth over its groin, and rippled muscles everywhere. Its abs looked as if they were stuck in a contracted state just before ice encapsulated the beast. It had its eyes closed and its body curled up, but even in this position, it had a greater height than Eric. The young dragon hunter examined the monster closely, trying to gauge if the monster had any other features. Not that he needed to see more—the sheer physicality of this beast would kill any human, to say nothing of any possible magic it possessed.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Eric said in awe, as much to himself as to Artemia.

  “No, and I do not think anyone alive today ever has,” Artemia said; even her voice carried a level of awe that Eric struggled to remember ever hearing. “In fact, I don’t think anyone in humanity ever has. Surely we would have heard stories of such monsters if they existed.”

  He heard a grumble. Having turned his eyes away from the demon, he shifted back, his sword unsheathed. But nothing about the monster had changed. I’m losing my mind. I have to get to Ragnor.

  Eric’s eyes wandered past the dragon-like creatures, the snakes, and the monsters with body parts of multiple creatures, and examined a massive bird with multiple colors within a one-foot radius of its stomach with burnt-orange wings, feathers, tails and head. Its wings extended out far, and it looked like ashes trailed from the bottom of the wings. Like everything else in the cave, this creature was frozen in place. This bird, Eric felt like he had heard some tale of it. He was reminded of a legendary bird that could supposedly bring the dead back to life, but he struggled to recall its name. But even such a creature was told only in the most fantastic of stories, certainly nothing that claimed to exist in reality or in an afterlife. Even magi did not claim the power to bring the dead back to life.

  How had Hydor not told of such legends? How was it that for almost everything in here, nothing ever spoke or hinted at such beings? Or maybe someone has spoken of these beings, but I never got the chance to learn about them.

  What if these monsters had once ruled the world? If so, how had humanity frozen them in place? Or was it even humanity who had accomplished such a task?

  Eric had so many questions that he could not address simply because he felt terribly uneasy. The fact that he had hunted dragons meant little.

  “What power do you have?” Artemia said.

  The question perturbed Eric as he glanced over at Artemia. She was looking at what looked like a woman in blue skin with thin, nearly translucent pink robes, braided blue hair, and a dangerously discomforting smile. The blue-skinned woman looked almost thrilled to be encased in the fr
eezing temperatures, as if she lived in the most perfect of environments.

  “Do you know anything about this? Even if you haven’t seen anything?” Eric asked, realizing only after the fact that he was nervously repeating himself.

  “No,” Artemia said, oblivious to Eric’s repetition. “This is beyond fascinating.”

  It was both true but also only half of the story. From a purely physical perspective, every monster within this cave looked capable of slaughtering Eric and Artemia with little effort. That didn’t even get to the fact that they may have possessed magical powers. The magic that the human magis possessed frightened Eric enough. But now, this? If the dragons circling the temple of Ragnor had magic, the monsters encased inside the ice had to as well.

  The question that kept popping to Eric’s mind was “how?” How had this cave full of unique demigods and exotic creatures appeared—large enough to encapsulate Ragnor, but also organized enough to have an entrance in which other monsters could come in? This was not natural, at least not in the sense that it just happened by coincidence. Even the most absurd of coincidences could not have created this hall of monsters. No, someone or something had to have designed a cave this complex.

  And if that someone or something was still around… who was to say that that… that god—it had to be a god—wouldn’t come back and cause more trouble? What if the legendary dragons were only the tip of the scale? What if by killing the dragons, they unleashed an apocalypse that no ominous tale in human history could ever have foretold?

  “A force as potent as a legendary dragon does not just terrify humanity. It keeps other things in check. We often do not know the consequences of our actions, especially when we’re only acting in self-interest or self-preservation.”

  “You looked worried,” Artemia said, not particularly concerned about what Eric’s state was. Her voice was back to the emotionless tone Eric knew well.

  “It’s so much to take in,” Eric said, trying not to show his concern. “I just wanted to have a chance to fight Ragnor. I didn’t want to take on an entire array of monsters.”