Calling On Fire (Book 1)

by Stephanie Beavers

  Mr. Carver looked surprised. “Why, everyone knows that, m’lord. ‘Tis Lord Erizen’s Greymaker.”

  “Greymaker,” Esset repeated.

  “Aye, it’s—well, if you don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be telling you, m’lord,” Mr. Carver said, thinking better of an explanation.

  “Right, sorry,” Esset said. “We’ll be off.” He and Toman exchanged another look but returned to their mounts. A quick survey of the village indicated that everyone else was still closeted away, without so much as a ruffled drape.

  “Let’s go,” Toman said. They did.

  “Well, what do you think?” Toman asked as soon as they landed on a hillside overlooking the town.

  “Definitely not a real dragon,” Esset said. He was simultaneously disappointed and very grateful, but Toman just gave him a blank stare.

  “You know more about dragons than I do,” Toman finally said.

  “Oh. Right. Well, dragons are incredibly powerful, magical, and intelligent creatures. This one sounds strong, but not especially magical or intelligent. Also, physiologically speaking, dragons are well-proportioned, even beautiful creatures. They certainly don’t have itty bitty forelegs and massive heads. It’s also pretty rare for them to eat people, or really to be evil at all. The exceptions to that are usually very notable, but they really are rare,” Esset explained.

  “Uh huh. So what is it then, if not a dragon?” Toman asked.

  “A monster. I can’t really be more specific,” Esset admitted. “I mean, it might be a relative of the wyvern, which is dragonish in appearance while still being just a beast, but wyverns rarely have forelegs and their necks are too snake-like and heads too small for them to fit Mr. Carver’s description.”

  “Monster,” Toman repeated. “That’s disappointingly non-specific.”

  Esset shrugged. “That’s it for my knowledge of naturally occurring dragon-like species.”

  “So you’re saying it might be a mage-construct. Erizen did mention the possibility,” Toman said.

  Esset nodded. “That means it might have some unexpected traits, but there’s not much we can do to prepare for that,” Esset acknowledged.

  “So what’s our basic plan then?” Toman asked.

  Esset shrugged again. “Find the lair. If it’s a cave, we might be able to trap it inside with a cave-in or something. That would be easiest. If something goes wrong, we did bring supplies. We can’t make much more of a plan without more information, but unless it has abilities far beyond what we’re aware of, this should be relatively easy.”

  Toman nodded his agreement. “Can we still call it a dragon? Just for simplicity’s sake?”

  Esset grinned crookedly. “But I want to call it a semi-drakish monstrosity.”

  Toman gave an exaggerated wince. “Let’s go find that lair.”

  They could have found the lair by smell alone. The unfinished remains of rotting carcasses—and corpses—littered the ground around the mouth of the large but relatively shallow cave, which was more of the underside to an overhanging cliff that a true cave. Esset supposed that, given how large the creature supposedly was, it would be difficult for it to find any cave large enough to accommodate it. And if the monster was as big as the size of the lair suggested, then Mr. Carver hadn’t been exaggerating.

  They’d found the place by flying grid searches in the general direction that Mr. Carver had indicated. It had taken them beyond the grey area and into the neighboring territory. Now they flew lower to investigate more closely, since there was no sign that the beast was home now. As he drew nearer, Esset noticed some odd markings in the rocks around the lair. He gulped. The odd marks were gouges in the stone—gouges furrowed deep by claws that were likely as long as his arm or better. Between the gouges and the decomposing bodies of man and beast, there might as well have been “Here be monsters” written on this spot on the map.

  “Good, it’s gone,” Toman said beside him. “You go keep an eye out for it in case it comes back. I’m going to see if I can’t make some preparations.”

  “Sure thing. You be ready to fly if we need to,” Esset said unnecessarily.

  “Brother, I ain’t even gonna dismount,” Toman said, laughing. He was intimidated by the claw marks too, but he was still fairly confident.

  They could easily handle the vast majority of creatures without magical abilities, Esset reminded himself as he took to the skies. No matter how big and fierce this monster was, it was still well within range of their abilities. With their particular skillset, he and Toman excelled against purely physical threats. It was when they were up against magic-users that they struggled, since they had little defense against magical attacks.

  And that was why he worried about the possibility that this was a mage-construct. Just because there was no trace of a master behind the beast yet didn’t mean there wasn’t one, or that he wouldn’t show up at an inopportune moment. But as he and Toman had already agreed, there was little they could do to prepare for such a possibility.

  Esset glanced down at Toman, who had his hands on the rock of the cave’s ceiling and his eyes heavy-lidded in concentration. He could guess what his brother’s plans were, but he’d find out for sure later. For now Esset kept his eyes on the skies as well as the ground below. The ground was remarkably sparse on wildlife, he was unsurprised to see. Some tiny movements betrayed a marmot, but the larger wildlife would have learned to steer clear of the beast’s lair by now. The only other creatures around were birds, which made sense to Esset, since he couldn’t see something the monster’s size being able to catch such tiny and fleet meals.

  Esset circled Toman’s location continuously, even checking the skies above—just in case. He started going through mental exercises to keep his mind from wandering, as it was wont to do, but he still found himself wishing that his brother’s abilities didn’t require quite so much time to prepare for a battle. And despite his attempts to keep sharp, Esset found himself surprised and unprepared when his mount suddenly started descending without his instruction.

  Esset panicked for a moment, cueing the animated stone to pull up several times before he saw Toman waving at him from below and realizing his mount’s disobedience was of his brother’s doing. He relaxed and waved back, curious as to why Toman was bringing him down.

  “Hey, nitwit, you’ve got all my chains!” Toman called when he was in earshot. Of course.

  “Well, numbskull, you should’ve taken them before I took off,” Esset retorted good-naturedly. His mount’s stone hooves clattered against the rocks as the chains wound around it slithered off.

  “So are we almost ready to go?” Esset asked, scanning above them in case the monster was returning.

  “Yup. I figure we can hide over there,” Toman waved an arm at the rocks overlooking the cave, “and wait for the monster to enter his lair. When it does, I have a golem already posing as the ceiling. It’ll drop down and crush the monster. With luck, that’s all it will take, but if not, a bunch of these boulders I’ve animated into snakes can wrap around it and crush it. We shouldn’t even need these chains, but I’ll have them hide around here too. At the very least, me and mine should be able to keep the beast from taking off, which means you can summon your beasts to fight it.”

  “Sounds thorough. But I still don’t know why you brought daggers along,” Esset said, waving at Toman’s mount, which bristled with the weapons. “Those tiny little blades aren’t going to be much use against the monster’s tough hide.”

  Toman gave him a broad grin. “Nothing has a tough hide on the inside,” the animator said. “And they’re small enough to fly inside the mouth of pretty much any large creature.”

  “That’s disturbing,” Esset said, nonetheless impressed with his brother’s ingenuity.

  “Effective,” Toman argued.

  “And this looks like it’ll be easy,” Esset said. “Come on, let’s get to our hiding place.” His winged horse took off, angling up towards the adjacent hill. The surface of th
e hill was jagged and littered with boulders and crags—perfect.

  Toman and Esset dismissed their mounts so they could hide further away—the stone winged horses were rather noticeable, after all, and Esset could summon new mounts if they had to move quickly. Toman animated two stone boulders into giant bears that crouched overtop of them, hiding them from sight and disguising themselves as the boulders they’d once been.

  And they waited.

  And waited.

  “I hope it’s not off terrorizing a village right now,” Esset murmured, shifting against the rocks. He rubbed his hip bone—it felt like a permanent indentation had been created by a particularly pokey rock.

  “This is the best way to deal with the creature,” Toman said, but he shifted too.

  “I know,” Esset muttered.

  “With luck, it’s just sunning itself somewhere,” Toman said, and Esset knew he worried too.

  But what Esset said was, “What sun?” The sky overhead was a uniform grey, almost making it feel like they hadn’t left the grey zone. When Toman didn’t say anything, Esset spoke up again. “What do you suppose the Greymaker does?”

  “Make things grey.”

  Esset threw Toman an exasperated look. “But why? There must be a reason,” Esset insisted.

  “Given that we didn’t turn grey immediately upon entering, it likely makes it easy to spot outsiders,” Toman said.

  “Do you think that’s its whole purpose though?” Esset asked. He didn’t think so.

  “I think we should be quiet in case our dragon comes back,” Toman said. With a sigh, Esset fell silent. He debated pulling out his summoner’s tome to study up, but he’d left it in his mount’s saddlebags, not anticipating such a long wait. He shifted against the rocks again. Now there was a rock digging into the side of his kneecap. He adjusted again before trying to lie still.

  They had a small gap to watch the world through from underneath the bears. They could see part of the sky, but mostly just the lair below. Esset wished he could see more—Toman was right, speaking had been foolish. If the dragon happened to come up behind them, they wouldn’t be able to see it. It wouldn’t be able to see them either, but still.

  Esset was shifting again—this time a rock was digging into his arm—when Toman gave an urgent whisper.

  “There!”

  Esset squinted, but it wasn’t until the monster swooped down towards its lair that he saw it. The monster landed with a graceless thud, back legs and tail first before dropping down to support itself with its wings. It had forelegs, but they were tiny and held close to its chest. Its lizard-like head was oversized, sporting massive jaws and tiny eyes. It was a muddy brownish-red with heavy, plated scales all over its body. Esset had never seen a creature like this before, not even in his books. “Semi-drakish monstrosity” really was the best description he could come up with.

  The beast sniffed and gave a large whuff, spraying dust around its feet. It repeated the motions twice more before swinging its head in Toman and Esset’s general direction.

  “Toman…” Esset whispered quietly. He glanced at his brother and saw him grimace, but didn’t spare more than that. He knew why Toman was hesitating—the beast wasn’t directly beneath his trap. It was still half outside the cave, so Toman’s animation wouldn’t get a clean grab.

  The monster sniffed, then turned its whole body in their direction. It reared up on its hind legs and lifted its nose into the air, and then it sniffed again. As the dragon-beast crouched to launch into a spring, Toman gave the command. The stone bears guarding them exposed them, and the ambush below was sprung.

  Toman’s humanoid golem separated from the lair’s ceiling and dropped onto the monster’s hindquarters, botching its launch toward Toman and Esset but failing to restrain it. The beast thrashed and threw the golem off, but by the time the massive creature was facing its attacker, the golem was already on its feet. The golem swung its rough fist back and ploughed it into the side of the monster’s head. With an explosion of rocks and dust, the golem’s arm shattered up to the elbow, leaving the dragon-like monster looking seriously annoyed. A low, rumbling growl emitted from a cavernous chest, building until it erupted into a full blown roar as it launched itself at the golem, clamping its jaws down around the stone creature’s torso.

  The golem’s chest was so thick the monster’s jaws barely fit around it, but stone cracked and fractured under the immense pressure. The golem pounded on the beast’s head ineffectively, prompting the dragon-like creature to pick the golem up and slam it against the rocks.

  Esset gaped as the golem cracked into three pieces—Toman’s animating magic was turned useless with the disassembly of his creation, but his other animations had reached the monster. Three rock snakes wrapped themselves around the beast, trying to disable it. One wrapped around a wing, constricting near the base and trying to crush the wing-bones—or at least tear the tough wing membrane. Another snaked around a hind leg and the base of the tail, handicapping its maneuverability. The third tried to wrap around the other wing, but the monster caught the snake’s tail in its jaws and yanked it off.

  Esset jumped when something bumped him in the back—his mount. Toman was already mounting his own, getting into position in case they needed to move, which it seemed they might. Shaking himself, Esset started chanting as he mounted.

  As the monster stomped the snake it had caught into a fine powder despite its other hindrances, a fiery panther materialized before it. The cat was dwarfed by the monster before it, but the stone beneath its paws was scorched black with the slightest contact. Small flames licked about its paws, but they were nothing compared to the white-hot heat of its claws. Its lashing tail flickered and jumped, tendrils of flames licking off of it, and its body was like a mass of cracked and blackened earth with molten lava just beneath, ready to gush forth at any moment but constrained by the might of pure fury. Its eyes were burning pits that even the beast’s summoner wouldn’t meet for fear of the onset of madness. When it opened its massive maw, there was a flare of light on the rocks, and its roar sounded like a tree exploding in a forest fire.

  Not that the cat remained still for more than a moment—it sprang at the monster, its molten claws raking across the side of its face. The dragon-like beast roared in protest, but the attack seemed to do little more than leave black scorch-marks on its hide. The monster snapped at the cat but missed as it darted away, then sprang again. The panther tried to claw the beast’s eye, but the monster jerked its head up so it only raked the other cheek.

  Esset was mounted before he summoned a second cat, and Toman had taken off and was hovering closer to the battle, sending the chains in to try to wrap around the monster and hinder it further. A fourth stone snake joined the fray, succeeding where its predecessor had failed and wrapping around the other wing. There was no way the monster could take flight without removing them first.

  The two fiery panthers harried the beast, keeping ahead of its snapping jaws and forcing it keep moving to avoid their attempts to blind it. Finally the monster reared up and bellowed its frustration before dropping and charging forward. Its run was ungainly, but it forced the panthers to scatter momentarily. When it reached the back of the cave, the monster flung itself at the cave wall, aiming so the snake wrapped around its left wing would strike the rock face first. The monster seemed crazed as it began thrashing unpredictably.

  Esset sent one of his cats to attack it, but after a few unrestrained hits from flailing limbs, it sustained enough damage to be banished back to its own plane. Esset held the other panther back—it growled in frustration, its tail lashing against the inactivity. Esset bit his lip—he could see a crack on one of the snakes binding the beast’s rear leg; it wouldn’t be much longer before that stone creature was cracked in half, but the beast’s rampage was keeping him from doing anything about it.

  Esset glanced over at Toman, and the crease between his brother’s eyebrows betrayed thoughts along a similar line. Then the animator sh
ook his head to himself, and Esset looked back to the monster just in time to see the snakes releasing it.

  “Get back, Esset!” Toman yelled.

  He’s mad, Esset thought as his mount back-winged.

  The dragon-like beast immediately righted itself and roared at the retreating snakes—the stone reptiles didn’t go far, but they weren’t attacking, either. Esset’s heart nearly stopped when Toman steered his mount toward the monster. He saw his brother’s hand thrust forward, and something metal leave it—the dagger flashed in the air and disappeared into the beast’s mouth.

  The beast was coiling it’s haunches to leap into flight, but its roar was abruptly silenced. Its jaws snapped shut, then opened again, issuing another shorter, smaller roar. Toman’s hand flicked forward again—Esset knew his aim and arm weren’t that good, but his magic ensured that the second dagger, too, found its way into the monster’s mouth.

  Esset sent his fiery panther in to attack, knowing that the gesture was likely superfluous. The scorching feline pounced and finally succeeded in raking its claws over the beast’s eye. Another strangled roar was met with another dagger, and when the monster’s jaws opened, Esset could see blood collecting in its mouth. The monster staggered forward, its head dipping close to the ground, and the fiery panther sprang and completed its work, blinding the creature. The monster made a pitiful sound, more whine than roar, and collapsed onto the ground. The panther began attacking it with abandon, gouging at its eyes, not caring that there was little damage left to do. Esset banished his bloodthirsty summon when the dragon-like monster stopped moving completely.

  Even so, he descended towards the dead beast slowly. His mount touched down gently and walked over to stand beside Toman. They stared at the dead beast for a long while before Esset laughed with a slight edge of hysteria. Toman looked at him like he was crazy.

  “All according to plan,” Esset said.

  Toman stared, then joined his laughter. “Yeah, Plans A through E,” Toman joked. They laughed again before composing themselves and looking around.