How to Lose Your Dragon (The Immortality Curse Book 1)

by Peter Glenn

  How to Lose Your Dragon

  Immortality Curse Book 1

  Peter Glenn

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places,

  or events are entirely coincidental.

  HOW TO LOSE YOUR DRAGON

  First edition. February 4, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 Peter Glenn.

  Written by Peter Glenn.

  Cover created by Miblart.

  Created with Vellum

  Dedications

  First, off, many thanks to my wife Jennie. Without

  her, none of this would be possible.

  Second, thank you to my kids, who put up with me

  being gone writing all the time.

  Third, I'd like to thank my editor, Christopher Bai-

  ley, and my beta reader Amanda Bailey. Damian's

  story is so much better thanks to you too.

  Finally, I'd like to thank Miblart cover design for

  their awesome cover. You really brought Damian to

  life!

  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

  Author’s Notes

  OTHER BOOKS FROM PETER GLENN

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

  1

  I raised my sword and hacked into another low-hanging branch. The tree’s limb gave way with a loud crack as the branch fell to the ground, the path forward finally cleared.

  For a few more steps, at least.

  Panting a bit, I pushed forward into the dimly-lit forest. It was morning, and yet it didn’t feel like it. The fog in this part of Ireland always seemed to be thick.

  More branches and overgrowth greeted me up ahead. I gave out a small sigh as I raised my katana, hacking and slashing again to clear the path forward.

  I know what you’re thinking. An Asian guy with a katana. How cliché. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all. All the Asian jokes, everything. Three hundred years of existence will do that to a person. You’ve seen just about everything in that length of time.

  But that’s why I was here, actually. I was hoping to change things. And if I’d read all the signs and clues properly, I would soon be able to do just that. Regardless, I hacked through the next set of trees and bushes, hoping maybe somehow this would be the last set.

  The tiniest hint of sunlight peeked through the thick fog overhead, lighting up a small mound of earth not ten feet in front of me.

  My lips cracked into a wide smile. This was it. The place I’d been looking for.

  Or at least, I was pretty sure it was. To be honest, the guidebooks didn’t really have anything on them about ancient, cursed ruins of Celtic tribes like the Iceni.

  Which, if I was being honest with myself, made a lot of sense. Most tourists these days were looking for cozy spots and neat-looking castles to dally in and spend the night, doing untold naughty things with their mates while feeling like royalty.

  And I couldn’t really blame them. A few years ago, a pandemic thing had gone down, and it had really shifted the perspective for a lot of people. The whole “life is short, live it while you can,” deal really took hold after that.

  Tch. As if. I was nowhere near as lucky as those louts. I’d been roaming the earth for three centuries now, with no end in sight. That’s how immortality worked, or so I’ve been told. That whole not-dying thing put a big cramp in the current “life is short” movement, making me feel even more of an outcast than I already was.

  But hey, if I was lucky enough, maybe I could change that soon, too.

  I just needed to find that blasted door.

  The light from before faded as the fog regained its grasp on the sky, making me squint a bit to adjust to the semi-darkness. I sauntered forth - really it was probably more of a stuttering gait; the growth underfoot was massive, making it hard to walk - but I’ve always wanted to use cool words like sauntered, so sauntered it is.

  Anyway, I sauntered forth towards the mound of earth. It was perhaps ten feet high and covered in grass at the top, with an earthen cliff facing toward me. Not much of a mound, really, but barrow-downs usually weren’t. Most of them were underground and all.

  My hands felt around in the dirt and muck of the cliff face, feeling for some sort of lever or switch that would let me open the secret door to the crypt. It had to be around here somewhere. I was sure of it.

  Okay, I wasn’t really sure. Like I said earlier, the guidebooks didn’t give me much to go on, but that gypsy had been really clear when he’d sold me that tattered old map in my back pocket that the location was certain.

  I shook my head as I thought about that small man with the too-wide, toothy grin. He’d looked all fancy in that nicely pressed suit. I should have known he wasn’t on the up and up, but the map only set me back about a hundred euros, so if it didn’t pan out, there were worse things.

  My hand caught on something hard beneath the first layer of dirt. I smiled again and pushed hard on it.

  The sound of ancient gears creaking and turning greeted my ears as the hidden mechanisms, which probably hadn’t been touched for longer than I had, kicked into gear.

  Moments later, the hidden door swung open about halfway, then stopped abruptly as an awful racket filled my ears and the gears came grinding to a halt.

  I shrugged. The place was ancient. The fact that the door still worked at all was a godsend. I squeezed through the door, the slight pouch of fat at my waist groaning as I wiggled my way through into the room beyond. I looked down at my tum tum and promised myself for the hundredth time I’d finally hit the gym and lose those extra fifteen pounds when I got back from this.

  If I got back from this, I corrected. Have to think positively. That’s what my therapist kept telling me on those telehealth calls. Of course, if she had any idea how I was perverting that line of thinking, she probably would have tried a different tactic by now.

  But I knew it was all a lie. There was no way I was hitting the gym. The lies we tell ourselves to make it through the day, am I right?

  Once I was through the doorway, I strained my eyes to make out my new surroundings. They were pretty dark, obviously. It was a burial mound, not a museum.

  So I rummaged around in my pockets for that torchlight charm I’d bought at the flea market on the way out here. That had cost me a good ten euros.

  I know what you’re thinking. Why not just use a flashlight? Well kiddies, I thought of that, too. But I’d forgotten mine at home, and what with the exchange rates, I couldn’t find one for under fifteen. So, magic lighting charm it was.

  I pulled it out and gave it a good, swift smack on the side. The charm burst to life, flooding the surrounding area in its bright, white light.

  All around me, I could see tiny mounds of earth where the dead had been buried. This tomb supposedly belonged to Queen Boudicca and her family. Well, this one and another one, but the other one had been raided a few times, and this one was cursed, so hopefully that meant it had been left alone.

  Boudicca was the queen that had defied the Roman conquest of Britain.

  I could respect a girl like that. Wouldn’t have dated her, though. Tried that once. Dated a Chinese princess from one of those royal offshoot families in the late 1780s. She’d seemed ni
ce enough at the time, but all she ever talked about was starting a family to “keep the family line going.”

  I shuddered a bit at the memory. She’d been so disappointed when she’d found out I didn’t want kids that she’d almost killed herself.

  Now that would have been tragic.

  Tiny specks and hints of gold peeked out at me from within the rotting remains, but I paid them no heed. Those weren’t my goal. My goal would be much further in.

  Besides, disturbing the dead wasn’t really my jam. Even in death, some people had freaky levels of power.

  I walked forward, ignoring the graves, as the ground tilted sharply downward, then slowly evened out. I sauntered through a long, wide corridor, crossing massive chasms, hacking apart fearsome skeleton warriors, and fending off evil spirits all the while.

  Not really, but it sounded cool in my head.

  Nah, in reality I walked forward for about three hundred meters in complete silence. There had been a slight gap in the ground near the entrance, but it had only been about seven feet across, and about two feet deep. Nothing to write home about.

  Finally, the area around me started to broaden, and I could see a mossy wall far in the distance that spelled the cavern’s end.

  The ceiling vaulted upward about ten feet in the air, making me wonder just how far underground I really was. And how patient all those diggers must have been. I mean really, digging out this massive cavern with their tools? Crazy.

  All along the walls of the main room, I could make out sculpted faces of Queen Boudicca and her extended family carved into the cavern walls. Some of the faces were starting to crumble, but I could still make out distinctive features.

  At least, I assumed it was them. Who else would it be all the way down here?

  I spotted a nearby recess in the wall next to me where again, I could see bits of gold sparkle sticking out from various objects that lie partially hidden there. I could make out a golden torc amongst the trappings, which I swiped and put into my back pocket.

  Hey, don’t judge. Torcs weren’t overly precious to people. They were used to hold cloaks in place, not signify royalty.

  Plus, that little trinket would net me a nice spot of cash, and seeing as I was pretty sure I was about fifty bucks short of a plane ticket home to Washington, my current place of residence, I could use an influx of funds.

  The rest of the little hoard of trinkets and gems I left untouched. I’d never been much for abject thievery. At least, not without a purpose.

  Which brought us to the main focus of the room I was currently standing in - the giant altar jutting out of the dirt in the middle.

  Unlike the rest of the room, the dais was made of some kind of marble with a wide, smooth surface on the top of it. A few stained scraps of cloth were all that remained of a large pillow that had once rested there, cradling the object that laid on top of it in a rather unassuming fashion.

  My lips cracked into another smile as I took in the sight. There it was, in all its glory; a glittering, gleaming longsword, seemingly untouched by the ravages of time.

  The hilt was a hand and a half of polished brass, with fine Celtic runes carved into it and a decently-sized ruby set into the diamond-shaped pommel. The cross guard was vaguely U-shaped. The metal of the blade was of the finest craftsmanship, with a slight wave pattern to it that carried all the way up and down the double-sided edge, and a few runes were engraved into the middle of the blade.

  I let out a whoop of excitement and pulled out my tiny Celtic rune deciphering guide from the pack at my hip, flipping through the pages so I could line up the runes on the hilt with the pictures in the book.

  “Grax. . . Thor. . . Hope. . . Render,” I read aloud as I slowly matched them up. “Yes, finally! This is it! This is the object I’ve spent the last ten years searching for!”

  Well, in my free time, at least. Which, I had to admit, I had a lot of. Technically, I worked as an occult investigator for the magically inclined, but that job wasn’t really all that demanding.

  I double-checked the runes against the pages in the tiny book just to be safe. One could never be too careful with ancient inscriptions. Especially when they were less than half an inch tall.

  Yes, that’s right, I use both imperial and metric measurements. Sue me.

  Anyway, I was right. This was it. Grax’thor, Hope Render. The blade I’d been searching for. Supposedly, the weapon was cursed to bring bad luck and misfortune to whoever wielded it. Which was probably why it was buried in a tomb and not still used in combat today.

  But it would do nicely for my purposes. Who knew? Maybe this blade would cancel out the amazing, stupid blind luck that seemed to follow me everywhere and finally let me end this blasted existence of mine. Maybe.

  I felt my heart rate speed up as I stared down at the blade, the object of ten years’ worth of effort, the one artifact in the world that might help me speed my own demise.

  “Calm down, Damian,” I told myself.

  That wasn’t my real name. My real name was Li Xiang, but Damian sounded better. And decidedly less Asian, which could come in handy sometimes. The world wasn’t always a nice place.

  “Just calm down, you can do this,” I said, my hand inching forward toward the bladed weapon.

  A little side-note here; as someone who’d been alive for three hundred years, I have been through a lot. The rise and fall of empires, communism, world wars, pandemics, you name it. I’d experienced love in all its many-splendored forms, had all kinds of relationships, lived through the birth of rock n’ roll and 80s hair bands - still the best thing ever, don’t judge - you name it. I’ve been through it all.

  And I was starting to get a bit tired of it. Immortality might be nice and all, but after the twentieth or so time you watch a dear friend die of old age only to have to live on without them, it starts to wear on your consciousness.

  Even so, I had a weird thing about just ending it myself. It would spoil the family’s honor, and I couldn’t have that hanging over my head. My mom would never shut up about it. But a glorious death on the field of battle? Now that was how to go out in style. That I could live with.

  Sorry for the downer, kiddies. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

  My hand reached deftly toward the blade’s hilt, inching ever closer. In the back of my mind, I wondered if there might be some sort of trap set on the blade and quickly dismissed the idea.

  Who would put a trap on a cursed weapon? The weapon itself was the trap, right?

  Still, the thought wouldn’t go away. My mind went back to that Raiders movie that had come out some years ago, about how the protag had tried to gauge the weight of the little idol head to offset any traps. But that hadn’t worked out well for him either, so I dismissed the idea out of hand.

  Finally, my hand came into contact with the cool metal of the handle. The touch felt… like touching a piece of cool metal, honestly. What were you expecting, a jolt of electricity? Sorry to disappoint, but this was real life and not a movie. Swords are just swords. Even cursed ones.

  With greed in my eyes, I wrapped my hand around the hilt and lifted the weapon, giving it a good heft, checking the weight and balance. The sword was surprisingly light and easy to maneuver.

  “Methinks… it will kill,” I uttered with a slight emphasis on the last word, just like that cool Asian dude from the forging TV show. I loved that show. Could hardly wait for the new season to start.

  I gave the sword another practice swing, admiring the craftsmanship, then belted it in place into a scabbard I had hanging on my back for just this purpose. It would make squeezing through that tiny door at the entrance a bit harder, but I figured I would have plenty of time to unbuckle it at that point if I had to.

  Grinning broadly, I turned to leave the barrow-downs, my treasure in hand.

  That’s when I heard it - the unmistakable grating sound of stone on stone as some sort of hidden mechanism kicked into high gear.

  “Crap!” I swore. So it
was like that Raiders movie, after all! I guess they had to get their inspiration from somewhere…

  I spun on my heels to see a hidden door opening up high in the ceiling, well above my head as the noise grew louder. I sat there stunned for just a second, watching the doorway slowly creak open, then I did the only sensible thing - I bolted.

  “Thwit, thwit, thwit!” I chanted as I ran past the rows of the carved heads of Queen Boudicca and friends, imagining in my head that there were tiny poison-tipped arrows shooting out of their mouths as I did so. There weren’t, but it was more fun imagining it that way.

  Hey, what can I say? Movie reenactment night wasn’t for another two months. If I wanted a real-life Raiders experience, now was as good a time as any.

  A loud crash came from behind me and I craned my neck to see what had made all the commotion.

  Sure enough, it was a giant boulder coming to chase me down the overly-long corridor. The boulder lurched and started rolling in my direction. It was only then that I realized the ground actually tilted slightly downward towards the entrance of the compound, meaning that rock could really pick up speed along the way and wouldn’t stop any time soon.

  I redoubled my efforts. Becoming a boulder pancake was not how I wanted things to end. Could you imagine the ridicule for that one at the next family party? No, thank you!

  My legs started to ache as I bolted down the corridor, burning with every step. What can I say? I was never much for cardio.

  I glanced behind me and saw that the boulder was catching up, but I was nearing the entrance and thought I’d outpace it. I kept going, making it perhaps another two hundred meters, but the boulder was gaining on me rapidly and only getting faster.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a recess in the wall a few feet off to my left. Behind me, the boulder kept rumbling on in its spinning death-roll, now maybe only a meter or two away.