by Dante King
Saya grinned as the two women reached me. “Ah, so you have discovered one of the many perks of life as a dragonmancer, eh?”
“No more unwanted cases of the stein flu, huh?” I asked.
“Not exclusively,” Saya said, “but let me tell you; when you get a hangover, you know that you’ve had one hell of a night.”
I was feeling so good that, as Elenari reached out her arms to give me a morning hug, I picked her up and twirled her on the spot.
She felt as light as a feather.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“What?” Elenari shot at me.
“It’s just… I mean, you’re pregnant. How is it that you feel as if you only way about twenty pounds? Shouldn’t you be heavier?”
Elenari laughed.
I turned to Saya, who was taller by about a foot than Elenari and probably had about ten pounds of muscle on the willowy elf. I reached out and picked the athletic blonde up by the hips. The movement cost me hardly any effort at all, even with my arms fully extended and all of the woman’s weight being taken by my shoulders.
“Dragon strength…” I said in a hushed voice, gently replacing Saya on the grass and kissing her absentmindedly on the cheek. “That’s fucking wild!”
Saya chuckled. “You didn’t think I gained the strength to squeeze that potential no-good Bloodletter in half with my bare hands just by doing pushups and planks, did you?”
“Honestly, as far as that went, I didn’t know what to think, you badass,” I said, grinning at the perfect physical specimen of female fitness standing in front of me.
Saya smiled back, obviously pleased with the compliment.
“The disbelief and amazement at your new physical abilities will fade soon, Mike,” Elenari said, giving me a playful tap on the ass. “Then you will have to get your head around what those abilities mean you can do.”
I closed my eyes and took another deep lungful of air.
This time, I concentrated on filtering the wind for the scents that it carried. There was the festive smell of woodsmoke from the morning fires in the town of Drakereach far below, the pungent tang of a dead salmon that had been washed up on a gravel shoal about two miles down river, and the almost boozy aroma of fresh sap flowing in the trees as the day warmed imperceptibly.
I could even taste the approach of the snow as the clouds massed over the peaks to the west. I could hear the rush of wings of a murmuration of starlings as they flew above the low-hanging clouds, and the deep boom of other wings speeding toward us.
I opened my eyes.
“What did you sense?” Elenari stared at me intently with her bright emerald eyes.
I looked at her. I gave her a little disbelieving half-smile and tucked a flyaway strand of copper hair behind one pointed ear.
“Everything,” I said.
At that moment, Claire appeared, walking sedately down her white garden path.
“Miss Seer,” I said, “we are about to have company of the dragon variety.”
The Seer tipped her head to one side and gave it a little shake, as if she was clearing water from it.
“Ah yes,” she said, “so we are.”
I looked up.
A dragon dropped out of a cloud like a huge, gilt-edged ghost. I recognized it—thanks to my magically enhanced, dragon-aided vision—as the dragon belonging to Penelope, the blue-skinned Knowledge Sprite who had shown me around the Grand Library.
“You two better get inside the cottage,” I said to Elenari and Saya. “No offense but—and I’m saying this as someone who thinks both of you are hotter than the hinges of hell—you look pregnant as fuck. If we meant to keep this a secret, I think you should both get your perfect butts under cover.”
Saya only spared enough time to give me a dirty look before she took Elenari by the arm and the two pregnant women hurried back toward the Seer’s cottage.
Penelope’s Rooster Dragon dropped like a sinuous bomb through the air above us, before swooping in to land on a patch of grass on the other side of Claire’s crystal-clear pond.
The dragon was a brighter, snowier white than the Seer’s dragon, Sonos, and its snout was much more beak-like than any of the other dragons that I had seen thus far. It also had a feathery wattle under its chin that made it look like it was sporting a beard.
The other dragons—Noctis, Gharmon, and Scopula—had appeared from wherever they had been hanging out at the approach of the newcomers. As Penelope slid from her mount’s back, they exchanged polite growling greetings.
“Penelope and Glizbe,” the Seer said, opening her arms in welcome. “Welcome!”
Penelope waved shyly at me and the Seer. Then I noticed her all-blue eyes flick over my shoulder. As casually as I could, I glanced behind me and saw Saya and Elenari in the doorway of the Seer’s cottage. They were visible, in their pure white shifts, for only a moment or two before they shut the door with a snap, but I had a feeling it had been more than enough time for the Knowledge Sprite to see all she needed.
The young elvish-looking woman was all blue; blue hair and eyes to go with her blue skin and dressed in a long blue robe. She also had a pair of dragonfly wings issuing from specially cut slots in the back of her navy mantle. She ruffled these wings as she walked around the pond toward Claire and I, in much the same manner someone might shake out their shirt sleeves and brush down their pants after getting out of a car.
“Good morning, Seer,” she said politely.
I had only spent a little time with Penelope, when it had been her responsibility to show me around the Grand Library, but I had liked her style and her manners. She had been nothing but polite to me and, after being thrown out of a city like L.A. and into a weird new world, her quiet courtesy had acted like a balm to a fevered brow. Not to mention she’d also given me a bonus tour of the Training Halls, where I’d learned about the different functions of my various crystal slots.
“How’s it going, Penelope?” I asked cheerfully. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Penelope blushed a slightly darker shade of blue and replied, without looking at me, “It’s a pleasure to see you again too, dragonmancer.”
“Pfft, call me Mike, will you?” I asked. I thought about whether I outranked Penelope, her being a librarian and all. I wasn’t sure where exactly we stood on the totem pole that was Drako Academy.
“You’re here for the Earthling?” Claire asked.
“That’s correct, ma’am,” Penelope said, bowing her head reverentially.
“For me?” I asked. “Why? What have I done?”
“It’s not what you have done, but what you are supposed to be doing, I imagine,” Claire said in a placid voice.
“Huh?” I said.
“You’re supposed to be at training, are you not?” the Seer said patiently. “You can’t just spend all your time popping in to visit me and mooning around on hilltops. You have work to do, you know.”
“Excuse me for asking,” Penelope said. She was fidgeting with the air of one who was simply bursting with a bunch of questions that would be either very hard to answer or would require some truly magnificent lies.
“Yes, Penelope?” Claire said.
“Was it my imagination, or did I just see Dragonmancers Elenari and Saya before?” the blue-skinned librarian asked.
“Nope, you saw them right enough,” I said. “Those are their dragons there.” I nodded at Gharmon and Scopula.
“I hate to pry,” Penelope said, “but I could have sworn that they were—”
“Looking a little porky?” I cut in. “Yeah, they’re feeling a bit under the weather. We visited the Seer last night for dinner and—no disrespect to Claire, of course—I don’t think that the roc stew agreed with the girls. You know how sick people can get eating bad chicken? Well, a roc is however many times bigger than a chicken, so you can imagine how they feel. Bloated as a set of bagpipes.”
It was then that I realized I was on the verge of turning into a fully-fledged driveling id
iot. I was, as William Shakespeare might have once said, talking shit.
I turned to Claire, hoping that she would extricate me from the hole I was busy digging for myself.
The Seer looked slightly flummoxed, as far as one so eminently poised could look.
“Yes,” she said, smiling the bright smile of someone peddling bullshit, “you should have, ah, seen the state of my privy.”
Penelope looked from me to the Seer and back again.
“Yes… I… Well that is to say, um… Quite,” the Knowledge Sprite said.
The three of us exchanged looks.
I clapped my hands to try and clear the air and banish the awkwardness of the situation and then said, “So, I should be getting back, right, Penelope?”
“Yes, Mike, that would be best,” she replied with her characteristic civility.
“How did you even find me?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“The remnants of your messenger-drake message was playing in your hearth when I went looking for you in your quarters,” Penelope said, a slight apologetic note coloring her voice. “I did not mean to listen in to your communications,” she continued, “but as you did not put the message out, I could not help but overhear.”
“Messages keep playing, even after you’ve listened to them?” I asked.
“Unless you poke at the fire and put them out, yes,” the Seer said. “Although they lose clarity over time.”
“That’s true,” the Knowledge Sprite said. “I could not make any of the specifics of your message out, as the fire was practically extinguished when I entered your quarters. There was no sound. The only reason that I knew to come here was because I recognized the Seer’s face among the flames and embers.”
I puffed out my cheeks. It was all these little details of life here that took the most getting used to, as opposed to the larger ones—such as the existence of dragons.
“I guess we should get out of here then,” I said. “We don’t want to keep Sergeant Milena and Lieutenant Kaleen waiting, do we?”
Penelope shuddered. “No,” she said, “we don’t want to do that.”
“What have we got first?” I asked.
“You have your first physical training class this morning,” Penelope replied. “Before the noontime meal, you will partake in martial classes with your squad. This is followed by combat theory until dinner. After that, it’s arcane practice for a couple of hours in the evening.”
“Shit, that sounds like a full day,” I said. “It’s a good thing I’ve been given a shot of dragon stamina.”
I gave Noctis a look, and the Onyx Dragon came trotting over. I mounted him—the process was becoming more and more natural—and peered down at Claire.
“I’ll see you soon, Seer,” I said, giving Claire a meaningful glance.
The tall, graceful figure smiled up at me. Her red and blue eyes twinkled in her beautiful face.
“Not if I don’t see you first, Dragonmancer,” she said.
Chapter Three
Goddamn, but if there was one thing I loved, it was flying.
Sitting on dragonback, hunkered down low to minimize wind drag, taking advantage of the natural heat emanating through Noctis’ scaly sable flank, watching the world unravel below like a rug being rolled out… Well, for me, it didn’t get much better than that.
The sun was just peeking over the eastern horizon as Penelope and I sped through the clean mountain air. The Eldritch Forest was below and behind us while fluffy clouds floated above and in front of us.
The mountain range called the Dragon Rest Ranges stretched off to our right. This range had taken its name from the fact that it looked like a gigantic dragon had laid down for a quick century-long snooze and then been fossilized.
Ahead of us, its peak lost in the aforementioned clouds, was the Crystal Spire. This magnificent building was the exclusive bastion of the Dragonmancers, reaching up to the heavens like a finger of pearl and silver. The Crystal Spire was covered in gleaming, coruscated runes which, Elenari had informed me on my first day, were painted in dragon’s blood and sealed with magic. The only way to reach the very pinnacle of the Crystal Spire was through one of the well-guarded transportation hubs found throughout the Drako Academy and the Spire itself.
Below the Crystal Spire, hugging its knees like a shy kid hugging the skirts of its mother, was the main keep and surrounding baileys of the castle. These were formally known as the Drako Academy—the Academy for short. The regular troops that helped to protect the Mystocean Empire were trained here. There were archery butts, drilling grounds, practice squares, classrooms, butteries, armories, and every other facility and convenience that a large body of fighting men and women might need. All of this was ringed in a tall and imposing curtain wall of overhanging stone that had not been breached since there were male dragonmancers still roaming the lands.
Outside of the walls of the Drako Academy was a single road that led from the main gates of the castle to the township of Drakereach. It was your picture-perfect mountain town. The houses all had steeply pitched roofs to help keep off the winter snows. There were fountains, statues, cobbled streets, and more cozy inns and bawdy taverns than you could shake a stick at. Coming from the concrete jungle that was Los Angeles, Drakereach was an alpine paradise.
Although, what with that recent run-in with the apparent Bloodletters, Drakereach might be a paradise with a set of horns holding up its halo.
I followed Penelope as she executed a graceful, sweeping bank around the Crystal Spire and then streaked in toward the middle bailey. This was a large open area, about four football fields square in which military drills were habitually held. Eight round mural towers glared out from the walls surrounding the middle bailey, as well as four higher, smaller watchtowers.
As we swept in to land, our dragons spreading their wings to arrest their flight a little, I saw a few companies of men and women already in the middle bailey. None were clad in armor or flourishing weapons, but were dressed in simple tunics or long shirts cinched at the waist by a knotted leather sword belt, loose pants, and boots. All of them were participating in what amounted to a medieval HIIT session. They were doing, as one, jumping jacks followed by pushups, followed by bursts of sprinting on the spot, and so on.
I grinned to myself. It wasn’t so far removed from my routine back on Earth.
Penelope’s dragon, Glizbe, touched down in an area she explained was colloquially known by the dragonmancers and soldiers as the lower roost. It was, fundamentally, where dragonmancers parked their rides. We slid off our mounts and looked around.
“Are we bringing our dragons with us?” I asked Penelope as she indicated that I should follow her.
“It’s up to you,” she replied. “You can either summon Noctis to your crystal or allow him to stay outside. It’s at your discretion.”
For her part, Penelope summoned Glizbe back into the shard of abalone-like rock that hung from her neck on a leather thong.
Maybe it was just because I had spent my whole life surrounded by concrete, which now struck me as quite a confining way to live, but I preferred the idea of Noctis going free-range instead of being cooped up in a crystal.
But, really, it wasn’t up to me, was it?
“What do you want to do, pal?” I asked the Onyx Dragon telepathically.
Noctis considered for a moment.
“I shall stay here,” he said, “and observe. It will be beneficial to see how the regular soldiers drill and train. I will share and mingle my knowledge with you, so it will be like you watched them yourself. It is useful to know the army’s strengths and weaknesses if we are to fight with them in battle.”
“All right,” I replied, turning to follow the retreating back of Penelope, “have fun doing our homework.”
“If you need me,” Noctis said in his voice that was simultaneously ancient, wise, and stuffed to the brim with the wolfish cunning of an apex predator, “just think it, and I shall come.”
I gave t
he sable dragon a mental thumbs-up and hurried after the Knowledge Sprite.
Penelope led me away from the mass of drilling, exercising soldiery. We passed through a guarded gate and went into a slightly smaller courtyard.
This area was filled with row upon row of female warriors, many of whom were dressed in the same garb as me; crimson fighting breeches, long black shirt, sword belt, and boots. Some wore other colored breeches though—burnt umber, indigo blue, and mulberry purple—and there were a couple of warriors who wore all black.
When I asked Penelope as to the significance of the different colored breeches she said, “Each color denotes a different rank.”
“Rank of what?” I asked.
“Dragonmancer,” Penelope replied.
“Of course,” I said.
My eyes fell on one of the females clad in entirely black. This one, judging by her height, was of the dwarf persuasion. She didn’t have a beard, so I figured that those stories of bearded female dwarves were all bogus. Either that or she had an excellent cutthroat razor.
“What about the chicks in the matching pajamas?” I asked, nodding toward the dwarf.
Penelope glanced at the dwarf. “They are dragonmancers who have passed through the ranks, proved themselves in combat, and earned the right to fly where they wish. They can roam the world as they please. All they have to do is answer to the Empress Cyrene when she summons them in times of great strife.”
The most badass of the badass, I thought to myself.
The dwarf certainly walked around the courtyard with the air and steely eye of someone who knows that they can take on almost any opponent. It was like being the hardest guy in the bar.
“And all of us train together?” I asked.
“It depends on what the class entails,” Penelope said in a low voice. “For physical training, dragonmancers of all ranks can train together, as it’s more about fitness than skill.”
I looked at the rows of dragonmancers assembled in this training area. There seemed to be a lot of them, more than I had supposed there might be. At a glance, I counted ten rows of ten warriors.
