Noble Dragon (The Elven-Trinity Book 2)

by Mark Albany

  “As night descends, you will find that the connection to the underworld is strengthened,” he explained as he straightened to look us in the eye. “The rest was needed, but if haste is required we have to act now.”

  I nodded. I was tired from traveling, but I didn’t want to put anything off just because of that.

  “Aliana, Norel, stand here next to me,” Oro indicated. “Where you go, Frarris cannot follow, I’m afraid. But know that I will watch over her as if she were my own child.”

  “What?” Norel asked, pulling away from him. “I never agreed to that.”

  “Monsters of unimaginable power live in the underworld,” Oro explained. “Those that have power over the dragons of her kind. If she follows you in there, you might find her lost forever.”

  Norel shook her head, still not happy with the idea of leaving Frarris behind, but took a deep breath as she leaned down to scratch her behind the ears. Frarris seemed to understand, although I could feel a great deal of sadness from the bond.

  “We will meet again at the bottom of the mountain where we rested,” Oro said after giving Norel a few moments to say her farewells. “I will wait for two days, but know that time travels differently while in the underworld, so do not trust your senses. Do what you need to do and get out as quickly as you can.”

  I nodded, taking deep breath as Oro took hold of Aliana’s and Norel’s hands, his eyes closing. I’d seen this before. He was using them as familiars to store power for a spell he wasn’t fully capable of bringing about on his own. They knew it too, but at this point, there was no real reason not to trust the man. He bowed his head, and I saw runes starting to glow in his skin. Unlike any others I’d seen, his glowed purple.

  He started chanting, and Aliana and Norel joined him. They were saying the same series of five words, but it wasn’t in any language I recognized. It certainly wasn’t elvish, I realized. Norel and Aliana’s tongue was a good deal softer on the ears, sounding like a gentle, unsung melody. This sounded harsh and grating, painful even.

  As the sun started to set behind the mountains, I could see the ring starting to glow a sickly green as it rose an inch above the ground and, impossibly, expanded to a diameter the size of a wine barrel. Inside the ring there was blackness, with hints of blood red. Suddenly, the dark djinn appeared inside.

  “You fucking idiots are dead!” she screamed when she saw me, rushing at me with murder in her eyes. Oro extended his hand, fingers closing in a fist that stopped the djinn dead in her tracks just as I drew my sword.

  She looked down at her hands, her mouth opening as she saw a pair of brass bracelets wrapped around her wrists, binding her firmly to the ring.

  “No…” she hissed, facing Oro, who was still chanting the incantation as he stared at her. “You fuckers didn’t just bind me to an artifact.”

  She didn’t seem to realize it had happened a few days ago, I noted as my sword hand dropped to my side. Maybe time passed differently while she was in the ring as well.

  Power seemed to drain from the djinn’s skin, pouring more freely from around her bracelets. She screamed in pain and anger as she dropped to her knees, the power pooling in the circle made by the ring.

  Suddenly an angry red light shot up from the circle and the djinn collapsed with a cry.

  “Go now!” Oro called to us, breaking his link quickly from Aliana and Norel, whose eyes shot open. They stared in surprise at the hole that had formed in front of them. Aliana nodded, looking at me with a small smile of encouragement as she dropped into the hole first. Norel seemed less trusting but she too took a deep breath, closing her eyes before stepping into it to follow her sister.

  “Go, Grant,” Oro called, sweating and struggling to hold the portal open, and sounding annoyed at my hesitation. “I don’t know how long I can hold this open…and you really don’t want anything coming out through it, either.”

  I paused again just at the brim of the hole. “We’re trusting you here, Oro,” I said softly. “Know that if you do anything to abuse that trust—”

  “You’ll murder me in a most imaginative fashion, I know!” Oro growled through clenched teeth. “If you don’t go in there now, your friends will be handling the underworld without your help. Go!”

  I turned to look at Frarris as a sudden moment of clarity was shared between us. It wasn’t in words, not really. That wasn’t how she communicated. But she knew her task would be to make sure Oro paid for it if we didn’t get back out of the underworld. It seemed like her reptilian features were smiling at me as I stepped into the circle. I didn’t even have both inside it when the ground fell out from under me. Something warm and comfortable wrapped around me as I fell through the darkness surrounding me.

  20

  As the darkness receded, I was almost afraid to open my eyes, wondering what kind of horrors I’d see when I did. When I finally gathered enough courage, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

  Open ground greeted my eyes. There were forests visible in the distance, covering the horizon in a thick carpet of green, but where I was could only be described as open grasslands under a sky as blue as the one that we had just left behind. There was no sun to provide the light that was showing everything that I was seeing, but all things considered, that was the lesser of my concerns at the moment.

  A couple of figures caught my attention as I scanned the ground, both moving toward what looked like a broad, slow-moving river. While they were a distance away, I wasn’t blind and there weren’t many people who had wings and horns.

  Then again, I was in the underworld. There were stories of all the tricks it could play on the mind, and I didn’t want to rush into any action that might lead to getting my heart removed or my soul torn from my body.

  Or something.

  I gripped at the blade still hanging on my back. The way it seemed to draw my power, letting me focus it through the runes that were inscribed in the steel made me feel a bit more relaxed. If there were any problems that needed dealing with, I knew I had at least one way to handle them.

  As I approached, I saw that it was, in fact, Aliana and Norel. They were taking a quick sip from the river’s water, which was as clear as glass.

  “You took your damn time,” Aliana said with a chuckle. “We’ve been here for almost half an hour.”

  “About that,” I said, looking around at the almost idyllic place that we were standing in. “Where are we? Are you sure we’re in the right place?”

  “I voiced similar concerns,” Norel said, looking around with a twitch in her eyebrow that told me her concerns had not been fully assuaged. “And yet, I do feel my sister’s presence in this place. We should investigate that, at least.”

  “We shouldn’t take too long with it, though,” Aliana said, looking concerned. “Oro said he would only wait two days for us, and I don’t trust him to remain even that long.”

  “Well, that could be longer than you’d think,” I pointed out. “You said you waited a half hour for me? I was only a minute behind you in stepping into the portal. He did say that time moves differently here.”

  “I did notice that he failed to mention just how differently it moves,” Norel growled. “Which means we shouldn’t trust how time moves here at all. It made a minute last thirty, but it could just as easily make two days last an hour. Which also means there is no sense in delaying, now is there?”

  I nodded. It was a fairly good point. No matter how unsettling it was to see a place so deeply rooted in fear being this pleasant, we needed to find Braire and then get out before something bad happened.

  “Did you think you could just bind me and walk away?” We heard a voice coming out of nowhere. One I recognized and sent a chill up my spine. A second later, the face that matched the voice stepped into view, somehow appearing out of thin air. It could have been a portal, but I didn’t feel the prick of energy that usually accompanied one of those. Then again, we were in a whole other world at the moment and my senses were bound to be missing a few ste
ps.

  “Did you?” she roared, coming closer. Her eyes were red with rage, and the power gathered in her hands was different from the one we’d seen before. I was willing to bet it was no less dangerous, though. I quickly raised a couple of defense wards and put up my shields as she took another step and hammered me with an attack.

  The wards and shields did their work for the most part, but I still found myself knocked off my feet, feeling woozy and unstable as I landed a few yards away from where I’d been. I quickly regained my feet and my balance.

  “In a word? Yes,” I hissed back, pulling the sword from its sheath on my back, gripping it with both hands and watching the runes light up in angry scarlet as I stood my ground against her advance. I could see Aliana and Norel quickly preparing an attack together. All I had to do was hold the djinn’s attention until they were ready.

  “That was a rhetorical question,” she said, taking a step forward and forming what looked like a deep purple lightning bolt on her hands that flew at me almost instantly. I raised the sword, putting it between myself and her attack.

  It was gratifying to see the look of shock and disappointment in her eyes as she watched the bolt fizzle out into nothingness after striking the sword.

  I smiled, gripping the blade tighter as I felt the power in it surge, filling me with that itching sensation I’d been getting more and more used to over the past few days.

  I took a step forward, watching and mentally simulating an attack as the white glow filled the blade. The power rushed from me into the sword as I launched the attack by swinging the blade, sending a rush of the white energy toward her. She didn’t move to block or dodge the strike, thinking that it wouldn’t be necessary, until a quarter of a second too late. Then she dodged to the right, trying to slip around it with light footwork reminiscent of a dancer.

  But it wasn’t quick enough, and the blast caught her with enough power to knock her to the ground before it struck as well and left a heavy black gash in the grass.

  “What?” the djinn asked, startled, but I wasn’t going to sit around and let her contemplate just how different I was from the last time we’d fought. Sword in hand, I took a step forward, letting my power flood into the blade as I hammered strike after strike on her. She was backpedaling, trying to avoid the attacks and fight back, but quickly found herself forced to retreat. She was used to having her way with anyone she was attacking, only needing to keep her eye out for the trickery and deceit of someone who knew they’d be beaten in a fair fight.

  She wasn't used to being put on the spot like this, matched against someone of equal power paired with the wits and quick mind of someone who had been running from a fair fight all his life. I knew all the paths someone would take while trying to back away and rethink their steps. Each time she tried I was able to predict her moves.

  Eventually, the djinn realized we were on equal terms, and that while my attacks needed to be acted upon, she was more than free to fight back. I gritted my teeth, feeling one of her ripostes singe the back of my arm as I tried to block it with the sword. While I was better at running than she was, she was better at attacking. I needed to come up with new and inventive ways of fighting back while avoiding her attacks.

  “Anytime you ladies feel like stepping in!” I called over the blasts of magical energy tearing into the beautiful landscape around us. It seemed like the djinn suddenly realized that there were two others she wanted to kill as well, quickly turning away from her attack on me to try and intercept their actions.

  She was too late.

  Aliana jumped forward first, the dark energy flowing through her fingers suddenly leaping out to strike at the djinn’s face, knocking her onto her back and leaving a broad cut on her cheek.

  “She bleeds!” Norel shouted at me. “Kill her now!”

  I could see the lightning in her hands as she waited for me to act. In a moment of clarity, I realized what she wanted me to do. I took a couple of running steps toward the djinn as she tried to get to her feet. I kicked her feet out from under her, dropping her to the ground once more and twisted the sword around, holding it underhanded as I drove it down. Just as it was about to plunge into the djinn’s chest, Norel’s lightning jumped out of her hands and flowed into the blade, joining my power, making it glow a furious yellow. The wards the djinn put up to defend herself were shredded and overwhelmed, and the blade sank through her chest and into her heart.

  The result was less spectacular than I was expecting as the full power stored in the sword left with a whoomph, rushing through her body and jolting it as her eyes went dead, her fingers clenched at her sides for a moment until they relaxed with the rest of her body.

  I was breathing hard, gripping the hilt of the sword as I stood looking down at the djinn. I expected her to jump up and torture me again, talking about how this had all been a dream—giving me hope only to dash it seconds later.

  But no. Nothing. She was really gone.

  I looked at Aliana and Norel, pulling the sword out and carefully cleaning it on the grass before looking up at the two.

  “What the hell took the two of you so long?” I asked. “She could have killed me a few times over in the time it took you two to gather the power needed for spells I’ve seen you cast in seconds.”

  “We were distracted,” Norel said, looking around. “We only realized you actually needed our help when you started bleating for it.”

  “I’m glad you place so much trust in my abilities,” I said with a sarcastic grin. “But I hope you two don’t decide to test them at a time as delicate as this in the future. What had you distracted, anyway?”

  “Our sister is near,” Norel explained, looking around. “We were about to join in the fight when she contacted us, somehow. We weren’t able to say anything in return and helping you with the djinn broke us away from the attempt.”

  “Oh,” I grunted, feeling my annoyance dissipate quickly. “I’m sorry.”

  Aliana smiled, placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently. I smiled in return, but it quickly faded as I looked up from her eyes and into the grasslands between us and the distant forest. Something was moving toward us at a fast pace.

  Norel saw it next, and Aliana spotted it after sensing our alarm as something burst across the river. It was thick and long, moving as easily through the water as it had over land. It spanned the shallow river in seconds, slithering toward us and knocking Norel off her feet. It didn’t seem like an intentional attack, rather an accidental mishap as the massive snake aimed for me.

  I dove to the right, avoiding its initial strike. I watched it coil up, its massive body easily giving it seven feet in height as the head came up, its large, scaled hood flaring out. The head was as large as my torso, with fangs as long as daggers flashing and dripping milky venom. I gripped my sword with one hand, staring up at the creature’s slitted eyes. I was a moment away from attacking when Aliana jumped between me and the beast. It looked as surprised as I was by her intervention. More surprises came when it backed away from its assault.

  “Don’t!” Norel called out. “It’s Braire’s snake!”

  I nodded. “I’m sure she’ll understand if I kill the huge snake in defending myself, will she not?”

  “She will not,” I heard someone say from the other side of the river. I wasn’t sure how people were able to jump in and out of reality here, but I had to learn the trick, if only to anticipate it better.

  I looked across the water, surprised to see what looked like a massive wolf standing at the edge. Its brownish fur made me mistake it for a bear at first, but the shape of the jaw quickly set me right as did the glowing red eyes. There was a woman on its back, looking over at us. With a single bound, the wolf cleared the whole of the river, coming down on the other side with enough force to shake the earth beneath us. The woman hopped off after it landed, scratching behind its ears before walking over to where I stood, blade still in hand.

  She was taller than both Norel and Aliana—as tal
l as I was, I noticed. Her hair was a rich silver, flowing free all the way down her back. Her clothes were almost as modest as Norel’s, showing off a beautiful hourglass figure, but one that radiated raw strength and power. Long ears indicated her elvish heritage, as did her crystalline blue eyes.

  Aliana turned to face the woman and left her position between the snake and me, trying to intercept her.

  “Sister,” Aliana said. “Call your beast off, if you would. I will not have my mate murdered simply because he came with us to rescue you.”

  The woman shrugged Aliana’s plea aside as she came closer to me, coming to a stop not a pace away.

  I forced a smile onto my face. It was…interestingly nice to be acknowledged as Aliana’s mate. I still couldn’t shake the idea that this woman might want to kill me all the more for knowing about it.

  “You must be Braire,” I said, keeping the smile in place. “I’m Grant. We’ve come a long way to speak with you.”

  She didn’t reply, just stared forcefully into my eyes, making me feel vulnerable and open to whatever it was she was trying to do. I resisted the urge to flinch and take a step back. I didn’t want to seem weak in front of her, after all.

  “You are mate to both of them?” Braire asked, looking away from me to both Norel and Aliana. “It has been a long time since a man was shared between us. Tell me now why I shouldn’t let my Ngana kill and eat you, and then keep my sisters safe here with me?” Her pronunciation was exotic, beautiful and musical, like she was making our language a bit more like the little I’d learned of the elf tongue.

  I honestly had no real answer to that question. My mouth opened, but no response came so I shut it again. If I couldn’t convince someone not to kill me, what real business did I have here in the underworld?

  Norel came to my rescue, thankfully. “Stop being dramatic, Braire. It doesn’t suit you anymore. Now, show us to your home. I am tired of traveling and we have much to discuss.”