In the middle of the stone floor were two skeletons. One had a bulky frame like a very large Keeper. Another was smaller, and it was wrapped around the first. Their skulls had an expression that looked to Lucan like screaming.
But Lucan only noticed the skulls for a moment. A pink flash made him jump back.
On the other side of the magical wall, a black, scaly mass lay curled in a ball.
“Is this—”Celesse asked.
Lucan dropped his flashlight. “Holy—”
Black scales like night.
Long, regal neck. Yellow claws. A presence that made him feel small.
Spine rising up and down. Great wind blowing through the chamber in measured rhythm. Eyelids closed, but fluttering.
It was Old Dark.
And he was alive.
XVIII
Miri felt small in the presence of Old Dark.
The dragon lay sleeping silently on the floor. If she hadn’t been paying attention, she would have taken him for dead.
Here was the subject of her life’s work, by a sheer miracle, still alive! She wondered if Heaven was smiling down upon her, if this was her chance—life’s apology for all the hardship she’d borne until now. She wanted to pray, but there would be enough time for that later.
She pulled out her phone and tried to take pictures, but Lucan grabbed her arm.
“Not yet,” he said. “We have to keep this secret.”
Miri walked to the edge of the magical wall. She stopped just short of it and could feel its warmth against her nose.
“It is written,” she started slowly, “that he was killed by Fenroot and left to die in the forests by the coast, and elven villagers pushed his body into the sea.”
Lucan and Celesse didn’t reply; they too were mesmerized by Dark.
“History forgot him, but not completely. How many more souls would have departed this planet had he lived? What untold horrors would he have committed? How might the entire course of history have changed if he had survived?” Miri turned to Lucan and smiled. “This is huge, Lucan. Really huge.”
Lucan dug his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “What’s huge is the amount of shit I’m in.”
“What?” Miri asked. “I thought you wanted to find the tomb.”
“I wanted to find a body, but not a warm one.” He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “What am I going to do with an ex-dragon lord?”
Celesse frowned. “We’ll have to turn him in to the government.”
“To my uncle? Ha!” Lucan said. “Not a chance, babe.”
“This isn’t negotiable, Lucan.” Celesse wrapped his jacket around her tiny frame; she seemed to swim in it. Her eyes glowed in the pink light. “I can’t even think of what the fallout would be if you tried to keep this secret.”
“I thought the plan was to invoke the Magical Lands Act,” Miri said.
“The act protects research,” Lucan said, shaking his head. “But the moment a magical object is found, it becomes a joint investigation between the university and the government, with the governor able to review at any time. National security reasons. Even though I’m rich, I can’t interfere, Professor.”
Miri folded her arms. “I thought you were a lawbreaker.”
“Not when the risk is the penitentiary. I’m not that crazy.”
“So what do we do?” Miri asked. She pointed to Dark. “Mr. Grimoire, you have the most controversial figure in history at your mercy. No one has ever revered or reviled anyone since with the same intensity. Throw this chance away and you’re committing historical arson.”
Lucan raised his eyebrows mockingly. “Ooh, listen to you and your big words. Seriously, Miri, what the hell do you suggest I do? I’m trying to win an election, not start a museum.”
The three of them stood staring at Old Dark.
“I have no idea what to do,” Miri said finally.
“That makes three of us,” Lucan said.
A slurping sound took hold of the room as a group of Magic Eaters slithered in. They saw Dark and sucked their mouths loudly.
Miri pointed at the Magic Eaters and then at Dark. “Stop them!”
Soon there were more Magic Eaters.
“We should’ve shut the doors,” Celesse said.
“Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve,” Lucan said. He pulled out a grimoire, but the Magic Eaters passed him and raced for the magic wall surrounding Dark.
“They’re going to eat the wall!” Miri yelled.
“No no no no,” Lucan said.
The pink wheel hovered in front of him and he dialed through the runes. He hesitated, unsure what to cast.
Another swarm of Magic Eaters entered.
Miri grabbed Lucan’s wrist. “There are too many. You’ll kill yourself if you cast a spell on this many.”
Lucan let the wheel disappear and gave a sigh of defeat.
They retreated to the door and watched in horror as the Magic Eaters gathered at the magic wall and started slurping it.
BOOM! One by one, they exploded, but it didn’t take long before the wall weakened.
“What’s going to happen when they break through?” Lucan asked.
Miri shook her head.
The Magic Eaters renewed their assault on the wall, exploding all over the golden room, coating it with dripping, gray slime. Before long, Miri could no longer make out the family mural.
CRASH!
“No,” she whispered, putting her hand over her mouth.
The wall shattered.
Pink liquid spilled across the floor. The Magic Eaters gathered around, drinking it furiously.
The magical barrier around Old Dark was gone.
“That didn’t take long,” Lucan said.
Miri shushed him.
They waited in silence as the slurping sound consumed the room.
Miri’s heart beat quickly.
The dragon stirred. First his tail swung from side to side.
His claws dug into the ground and then flexed. He stuck out each leg and stretched.
Then, the dragon lord opened his eyes.
Intermezzo
After the dragon lord’s fall, dragons around the world fought each other to seize power.
Like wild animals, they dueled amongst themselves, filling the skies with roaring and the rivers with blood.
But it didn’t take long for a new dragon lord to emerge: Fenroot, the silver dragon who had served as Old Dark’s commander. He won his way to the throne with a brutality that rivaled Old Dark’s.
They called him Fenroot the Brute.
Fenroot had the support of elven villages. They were tired of the Dark family’s strict control over the aquifer, and they helped him overthrow Old Dark in exchange for access to magic.
Those loyal to the Darks were killed or cowed into submission.
But Fenroot had problems to overcome: when the Darks’ palace was destroyed, most of the family’s gold and money were stolen. There was very little left, and Fenroot had to start his reign with limited funds.
But the new dragon lord cashed in on a new income stream: the aquifer.
Where Old Dark saw a threat to the aquifer, Fenroot saw an opportunity. He traded access to the aquifer for supreme power and riches.
Under Fenroot, elves could walk anywhere in the world without fear of harassment by dragons.
Humans could grow their crops uninhibited, as long as they kept to themselves.
The Dark family was excluded from oral histories. All mention of them was destroyed wherever possible. There were intense hunts for the family mausoleum, but no one could ever find it.
Historically, dragons had always had two roles—to protect the aquifer and to re-craft the land after the damage done by magic. But Fenroot’s quest for riches had unintended consequences.
Elves began using magic faster than the aquifer could replenish itself, and thus began a subtle imbalance that would resonate hundreds of years into the future.
The
n, after a decade of prosperity, Fenroot renounced his throne and retreated into hiding, only seen once every few years. No one knew why, or those who did weren’t telling.
No dragon stepped up to succeed him, for they were too busy trying to repair the damage he had done.
He was the last dragon lord.
With no one to stop them, elves and humans began to gather in respective towns, then cities.
Then kingdoms.
And all the while, magic production continued, each new generation using more of it than the next.
Thus began the Dawn Age.
But there were still dragons who remembered the Darks...
ACT III
XIX
Dark opened his eyes. They were heavy with sleep, and he resisted the urge to close them and settle back down onto the floor.
Gold blinded him.
The walls. The floor. All around him, everything shone brightly.
He yawned and his jaw cracked, sending a wave of pain through his head.
He tasted iron in his mouth and spit out a glob of blood and broken teeth.
Why were his teeth broken? Why was there blood?
His head was aswim with fog and pain.
He dug his feet into the ground and they scraped against the stone floor. His claws were stiff, and he had to stretch them several times before the stiffness relaxed somewhat—but he still felt weak.
As he stood, a familiar image on the wall caught his eye. A painting of a black dragon with wings outstretched and glowing green eyes.
Him.
Or was it him?
The wall hovered in and out of focus, and his head throbbed. He tried to narrow his eyes to concentrate. But that made it worse.
And then a strange sensation from his left eye. It pulsed like the beating heart of a small animal in flight. He tried to narrow it again, but the eyelid wouldn’t move.
Strange.
He brought a claw up to his eye, then recoiled as he felt both dried and liquid blood all over his scales. The blood blotted the floor in a sweeping arc. Some of it was fresh. He couldn’t tell how long it had been there.
He tried to blink the eye. It didn’t respond.
He felt his eyelid again. It was soft and indented. He felt his other eye—full, round, how an eye should have felt.
He patted his left eyelid, pushed on it and grimaced as raw pain took hold of him.
The eye was gone.
He breathed in and out quickly, trying to calm himself down.
Memories of the night before rushed back all at once.
How could he have forgotten?
Fenroot. Moss. The villagers singing out of tune. The uprising on the beach. The betrayal. Norwyn. The sleeping sensation that had overcome him and rendered him useless in the battle.
Fenroot’s evil grin flashed across his vision. The image laughed as Dark replayed his words.
This has been in the making for a hundred years.
Dark swelled with anger at the memory.
“Fenroot!” he screamed. His voice echoed. “Where are you?”
He stumbled and crashed into a wall, shaking the room.
“Fenroot!”
He gripped his bleeding eye socket and roared. “Come out, you coward!”
He slashed the wall, putting claw marks through the painting of himself. Now that he was close, he could make out the details. His name was printed under the painting: Alsatius II.
He stepped back, studying the rest of the wall.
It was full of painted dragons.
He knew the wall from his earliest memories, from when he had buried his grandfather and grandmother and sent them to the great beyond. He and his father had overseen the human painter who painted their picture on the stone. His father had barked orders the entire time about the man’s brush strokes not being accurate.
Many hundreds of years later, Dark had prepared this wall for his parents…
His parents. Where were they?
Why was he in the mausoleum?
Why was his image painted on the wall? That was only reserved for the departed.
He touched himself all over. He was alive. Alive!
He had to find Fenroot. He was going to eviscerate him and Moss for what they’d done.
“I am the Dragon Lord!” he yelled.
Something fell out of his mouth and bounced across the floor.
A tooth. Yellow and decayed.
“No,” Dark said, sweeping the inside of his mouth with his claw. He felt gums. More than normal. He couldn’t see himself, but half his teeth must have been missing. The others, loose and rotting. “No, no, no!” His voice came out weaker and reedier than normal.
He noted the only path out of the room, a mouth of gaping darkness. Remembering the floor plan of the mausoleum as best as he could, he lumbered toward the exit. In a thousand steps he would be out. He would be free.
“I am the Dragon Lord!” he screamed, stomping toward the darkness.
He stepped on something slimy, and a pool of sticky liquid erupted under his feet. It smelled rotten, like decomposing bodies in wet soil.
He lifted his foot and noticed the shards of a sharp shell under it. The shards had pierced his foot and it was bleeding.
What in the world was this?
Then he saw dozens of eyes like black nebulas scattered across the room. He turned his head several times so that he could see them with his one eye.
There was no mistaking the smell.
Magic Eaters.
He had dealt with them before, but not for at least a hundred years. He couldn’t recall the spell to vanquish them, and he didn’t even know if he had the strength to cast any spells.
The Magic Eaters slithered toward him, sucking their teeth loudly.
What were they doing in his family resting place, and why had they been allowed to enter it?
“You dare defile the tomb of the Darks?” he roared.
His body shook with rage. He slashed at the Magic Eaters with his claws, knocked them away with his tail. He splattered the walls with them, stomped on them, crushed them with his gums. But they kept coming.
“I’ll not stop until I destroy every last one of you!” he cried.
He weathered the onslaught, killing all the dumb creatures until the tomb grew silent.
Growling, he made his way to the exit, when another unfamiliar scent stopped him.
He sniffed. Through the fetid smell of the dead Magic Eaters, he smelled something else.
Something fresher.
Something alive.
Something he couldn’t quite place.
Sweat.
Perfume. Two kinds. One, a sweet, heady scent that reminded him of hibiscus, the other, a spicy fragrance that he’d never smelled before...
Was there cloth? Yes, a lot of it, different kinds of textiles. And strips of metal, jewelry perhaps?
He sniffed again.
He heard a small whimper, then a whisper.
It came from behind a pillar next to the entrance.
He slashed the pillar in half, and as it crumbled to the ground, a woman screamed.
He sniffed again and discerned, through the dust, the intermingled scent of human and elf.
Three people emerged from hiding with their hands up.
They said something that he couldn’t understand.
“You are behind the Magic Eaters,” Dark said.
One of them stepped forward. It was a male. He looked elven, but not quite.
He said something else, but Dark could not understand him. He spoke quickly and did not make any sense.
“No one will stand in my way!” Dark screamed as he swiped at them.
XX
Lucan cursed and jumped out of the way of Old Dark’s claws.
“Hey, stop!” he cried. “We’re the ones that saved your ass!”
But the dragon growled and swiped at him again.
Lucan’s senses heightened as he rolled out of the way. Time seemed to slo
w down as the dragon charged at him.
He didn’t know what he had expected, but certainly not this.
Old Dark was ... well, old. In this guy’s heyday, they would have been roasting on a spit by now. Good thing he hadn’t breathed fire yet.
Lucan had watched him tear through two hundred Magic Eaters like they were nothing, even in his debilitated state. He didn’t want to take any chances.
What spell is going to stop him? C’mon, Lucan, you only get one shot.
Dark ran at Lucan, separating him from Miri and Celesse, who ran to the back of the room.
There’s nowhere for them to go.
Lucan stood with his back to the door. Old Dark stalked toward the women, smoke flowing from his nostrils.
You’re not touching them. Only one that touches the redhead is me, buddy.
The dragon said something, but Lucan could only pick up every other word.
“In ... name ... you pray?”
“We aren’t your enemies,” Miri said. She was resolute, staring the old dragon in the eye.
“In ... name ... PRAY?”
Lucan readied his grimoire. He’s going to slice them into ribbons.
Miri reached into her pocket and pulled out her grimoire. A pink wheel flashed over her head and she navigated through her runes just as Dark leapt into the air.
Lucan scrambled as he tried to find a spell that could stop the dragon.
But he was too late.
A brilliant light ripped across the room and Lucan shielded his face, hoping the two women weren’t flattened.
A wall of light surrounded Miri, and Dark was perched on top of it. The professor held her hands out with her eyes closed. Dark’s teeth were inches away from Miri’s hands, and only the wall separated them.
Dark’s eyes widened.
“We won’t pray in your name,” Miri said.
The wall flared away, flinging Dark across the room.
Toward Lucan.
Lucan ducked as the dragon flew over him, barely missing impact.
BOOM!
Dark slammed into the wall and rolled across the ground, dazed.
“I’m impressed, Professor,” he said.
Miri was lying on the ground. Celesse took her in her arms and screamed for Lucan.
Old Dark (The Last Dragon Lord Book 1) Page 10
