by Dante King
There was a very long, very thoughtful silence after my voice faded away. No one in that room was stupid—I doubted that there was such a thing as a moronic dragonmancer. An idiot dragonmancer was, I was fairly sure, a dead dragonmancer.
“Yes,” the enigmatic and uber-chilled Tang said, “the Empire is looking at expanding their influence into the subterranean realms. It goes without saying that this is a step that has not been taken for a great many years. However, the Martial Council has decided that the time is now ripe. That, and the Empress has finally started to gain an interest in those realms once more, and of what they might hold.”
My mind instantly snapped to the dragonlings, to Wayne and Garth, and the crystals that the Seer thought might help them gain maturity. I also remembered about how she thought that the secret to rejuvenating my fucking magical man-jam lay in the forgotten paths of the subterranean realms.
Was this a coincidence? Was it chance that I should be the catalyst that helped to bring back dragons from the edge of the slow extinction that threatened them, while, at the same time, the Empress Cyrene went after a bit of underground real estate?
A line from Star Trek or Star Wars or some other space-related bit of TV or cinema took shape in my mind as I mulled this over.
I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don’t trust coincidences.
I could feel the buzz of questions frothing up from the minds of the gathered dragonmancers. They were all thinking, all mulling this development over, but they were forming inquiries and queries in their heads too.
Before a single question could be fired in Preceptor Tang’s direction, there was a deep booming gong-gong-gong sound, which turned the high-ceilinged room into a giant bell. When the three resounding notes had dwindled away into nothing, Preceptor Tang raised her arms.
“That,” she said, “is dinner.”
Chapter Ten
I trekked up to my room before heading into the enormous refectory hall for dinner.
I still didn’t really have the lay of the Drako Academy down pat in my head. As a matter of fact, I would have struggled to get from the dormitory that I shared with Elenari and Saya to the practice yards without getting lost if left up to my own devices.
Luckily, I had Noctis.
The Onyx Dragon knew the Academy like the back of his hand. We had not had the discussion about how many years he had been rocking around in this world, or how many dragonmancers he had served the Empire with. That felt like the type of conversation that had to wait until a particular time. It felt a bit intrusive to ask him about just yet—a little like asking a chick how old they were straight out of the gate.
Anyway, if I ever got lost or was in a rush to get somewhere, all I had to do was ask Noctis, and he would tell me where I needed to go.
I was in a rush now. It had felt like a long day already, and I was determined not to miss out on dinner, but I was keen to retrieve the crystal that I had stashed upstairs.
It was the crystal that I had found on the thief that Saya, Elenari, and I had taken down on the evening that we had been confronted by the Bloodletters. I wanted to take a closer look at the thing before dinner.
After Noctis helped guide me to my room, I snatched up the crystal from where I had stowed it behind my padded teak bedhead.
I sat on the bed and gathered my thoughts. All I could think about was the strange converging of events that seemed to have come together in the past few days.
Really, my life had been going at about one-hundred and twenty miles per hour ever since I had stepped through that portal with Elenari. I tried to list the main points in my head, to order my thoughts.
I had found out that I was a dragonmancer.
I’d been introduced to Noctis.
I’d been blood-bonded with the dragon and then been subjected to the ultimate psychedelic mindfuck that was commonly referred to as the Transfusion Ceremony.
I had found the crystal that I now held, shortly before being involved in the biggest brawl of my life.
I’d had sex with Elenari and Saya, and managed to knock them both up.
They had grown and then birthed our shared offspring in a matter of days.
Those offspring had turned out to be dragonlings.
The dragonlings—hilariously, if not originally, named Garth and Wayne—needed crystals imbued with magic and found only in the subterranean realms to grow and mature, otherwise they would wither and die.
My jizz, apparently, also needed rejuvenating, and this could only be accomplished by venturing into the subterranean realms in search of who-the-fuck-knew-what.
And now, the word on the grapevine was that Empress Cyrene was going to start sending dragonmancers into the subterranean realm to clear the way for what sounded very much to me like an invasion.
It was safe to say that things were only getting more interesting.
I turned the crystal over in my hand thoughtfully. I ran my thumb over the unrefined edges, across the rough surfaces of the front and back faces.
My mind had naturally jumped to a few conclusions concerning this seemingly innocuous bit of pretty rock, especially after my visit to the Seer and the lesson that I had just sat through.
Could it be possible that this crystal was the very same kind that once brought dragons to maturity and helped them cement their spots as among this world’s most preeminent beings?
“I find your musings point toward the probable rather than the possible,” Noctis’ old, cunning voice echoed through the pathways of my head.
“You reckon?” I replied telepathically. “You really think that this crystal is, well, a crystal?”
“Yes, I think that it is far more likely than not. It would explain why the thief wanted it. It is potentially a powerful magical object.”
“Not just powerful either,” I said back. “It’d be fucking valuable too. To have the ability to mature a dragonling, to make sure that it can grow into a beast as powerful and smart and capable as you… That’d be worth a king’s ransom.”
“Or an Empress’,” Noctis said.
“But it doesn’t mean shit if you don’t have dragonlings to begin with,” I said.
“Correct,” the Onyx Dragon replied.
“That does beg the question; who the fuck was the woman that the thief grabbed it off that night? And what did she want with an empty crystal?”
Noctis didn’t answer, but I could practically hear the cogs turning as he mulled this over.
“Was she a friend or a foe of the Mystocean Empire?” I continued to ponder. “Obviously, she was no pal of the Bloodletters because they stole it off of her.”
“Yes, but from everything that I have ever heard or known about these blood stealing disgraces that you call the Bloodletters,” Noctis said, and there was the definite echo of a growl even in his telepathic communication, “they do not have very many friends. Their agenda is strictly known only unto themselves.”
“You don’t know anything about them?” I asked in surprise. I was quickly forming the opinion that Noctis was the wisest and most badass creature that I had ever met, so his lack of knowledge was a little weird.
“No. I don’t know any dragon who possesses any knowledge about them—even those who survived being drained by them, and they are few. No, if the men and women we faced the other evening really were Bloodletters, then all I can tell you is that they are part of an order that has been operating in the shadows for centuries. But what they have been trying to achieve in all that time is a mystery.”
“Great,” I said, “another mystery.”
I rolled the crystal around in my hands for a bit while I considered everything.
“Leaving aside who the woman was,” I thought. “Where do you think that she would have gotten a dragonling crystal from?”
Noctis considered my question with his usual world championship patience.
“There is, in my mind, only one place that she could have found such a crystal,”
he said.
“The subterranean realms?” I asked.
“Yes,” Noctis replied.
“So she might have been from the Shadow Nations? Or she risked life and limb to go down there and fetch the crystal?”
“Both could be true. Nevertheless, there is a mystery here.”
And with that slightly foreboding thought, I stashed the crystal once more, got up, and went to the refectory for dinner.
Chapter Eleven
After dinner, I followed the stream of crimson and sable clad Rank One dragonmancers as they made a mass exodus from the refectory. By tagging along behind this group, I discovered that our Arcane Practice sessions were held outside in one of the spacious courtyards of the middle bailey.
I squinted and raised a hand as I stepped suddenly out of the cool gloom of the castle and into the stark white glare of the afternoon.
Above me, the sky had taken on the flat, severe white cast that spoke of a potential blizzard in the making. I could tell this much even though I was a California boy through and through and had only ever spied snow on the top of far-off Mount Baldy.
The group of Rank One dragonmancers halted at the edge of a courtyard that had a slightly less used feel to it, compared to the drilling grounds nearer the main gates of the castle. The walls of this courtyard were overgrown with vines on their inner face and, in one spot, there was actually a pine tree growing out of a decent-sized crack in the fortifications.
“Why is this courtyard in such disrepair?” I heard one young woman ask another. I figured she was new, and this was her first day, just like it was mine. I scanned the faces of everyone else present, and they all seemed equally new. So, it seemed that this was a proper introduction. At least I’d be starting on the same level as everyone else.
“Because this,” said a deep, chocolatey, dangerous voice from up on top of the wall, “is the Cloister of Recollection.”
There was a rustle of billowing cloth. The class, as one, looked up.
A figure dropped from the wall high above. It was a fall of at least twenty yards—a lethal, bone-breaking, brain-damaging drop.
A black cloak billowed out behind the falling figure, fluttering and snapping as she descended. I narrowed my eyes, ready to snap them shut in case of flying entrails or anything like that.
The figure landed on her feet, her knees absorbing the impossible impact in a dope superhero crouch, before popping back up into a standing position. The dirt around the feet of this new and dramatic arrival cracked. A few chunks of loose stone and mud flew in all directions.
Talk about an entrance, I thought.
The figure raised her head to scrutinize the spellbound class through a single deep brown eye set into the middle of her forehead.
“The Cloister of Recollection was the only part of the Drako Academy that was not completely rebuilt and restored after the last time that an enemy dared to invade the castle,” the woman—who I assumed must be our Arcane Practice tutor—said in her rich, rolling voice.
“Why?” someone asked.
“Because the Empress deemed it prudent,” the cyclops said. “A reminder, of sorts.”
I caught myself staring at the woman because, on Earth at least, you don’t get to meet someone sporting one massive eye in the middle of their face. She wore the same all-black garb as Preceptor Tang, though her little splash of fashion individuality came in the form of an ankle-length cloak that brought Darth Vader to mind.
The one-eyed woman wore a single large earring in her left ear with a smoky brown quartz dangling from the golden hoop. She had broad shoulders, and her features might have been quite pretty once, but now she sported a rather gnarly burn across one side of her face. The scarring gave her a formidable appearance, as did the fact that she seemed to be incapable of smiling. She was, or so it appeared to me, all business.
“My name,” the cyclops woman said in a commanding tone, “is Preceptor Ipheca, Bearer of Gondred the Wind Dragon. And this is Arcane Practice.”
She looked around. Her gaze was slightly disdainful, as if she had seen too many Rank One dragonmancers disappoint her in her time. Her eye fell on Penelope, who I realized had come to stand next to me while I had been staring at the one-eyed woman. The shy Knowledge Sprite squirmed and looked away.
Preceptor Ipheca’s dark brown eye flicked across to stare at me, but I did not give her the satisfaction of looking away. Instead, I gave her a cheerful smile and waggled my eyebrows a bit to try and diffuse any tension.
The Preceptor licked her lips, and I saw the flash of a gold tooth as her single eye narrowed slightly. Then, her gaze shifted to the next unfortunate in line and the moment was broken.
“It is here, in this place that stands as a living reminder of how close the Mystocean Empire came to being overrun, that you will practice and harness your magical abilities,” Preceptor Ipheca said. “There are three aspects to Arcane Practice that all dragonmancers must understand and master if they are to become truly competent magical practitioners in battle. Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to what those three facets might be?”
The thick-set woman with the horns and edgy bowl haircut raised her hand tentatively.
“You,” Preceptor Ipheca said to her.
“Knowing your limitations?” the horned woman said.
“Wrong,” Preceptor Ipheca said with a crushing brusqueness. “Anyone else?”
In a show of smarts, no one else in the group put themselves forward to be shot down.
Preceptor Ipheca sighed through her slightly flattened nose. It whistled in the same way that many of my pals did, back in the MMA fight gym.
“The three things that we are going to learn and, hopefully, master in this class are these. Number one: the best tutor that you have, when it comes to magic, is yourself. Number two: dragonmancers can only ever occupy one of their crystal itinerary slots with their dragon’s power, and you will learn how best to utilize this knowledge. Number three: while it is an advantage to be a strong spellcaster, the real mastery of battle magic comes in speed.”
“What kind of speed?” I asked.
Preceptor Ipheca’s eye swiveled to find me at the back of the crowd.
“Speed in switching slots,” she said shortly. “As you become more familiar with your magic and with what you are capable of doing, you should aim to increase the speed at which you can change slots. As you know, every dragonmancer is able to allot their dragon one of the following slots: Head, Chest, Left Arm, Right Arm, Legs, Weapon Slot A, Weapon Slot B, and Wings. I don’t imagine I need to discuss the Titan slot.”
Speak for yourself, I thought. I’m going to find a way to unlock that badboy.
Preceptor Ipheca continued. “It is all well and good to be able to perform a devastating or accurate spell with your dragon applied to, say, your Right Arm slot, but the greatest dragonmancer warriors could switch their dragon’s powers from one slot to another so quickly that it appeared that all their slots were filled simultaneously.”
A couple of the gathered Rank Ones raised their hands to ask questions, but Preceptor Ipheca ignored them.
“This isn’t a Q and A,” she said tersely, “this isn’t a damned theory lesson where we have a cozy chat about magical-based surmises and hypotheses. This is Arcane Practice. With that in mind, we will… What will we do?”
“Practice?” I ventured.
The cyclops clapped her hands sarcastically a few times. “That’s right. We will practice. We’ll practice a bit of self-knowledge today. This lesson, all I want you lot of newbies to do is line up and face the targets against that wall over there, put your dragon in your Right Arm slot, and use the spell that it gives you access to. That’s all. I will not be instructing you, but I will be observing. Get comfortable in your own skin, because only by getting comfortable in your own skin will you have any chance in saving it later on. Wait for my word to begin your casting.”
The class didn’t move. I turned and looked over to where a couple
of Rank Ones were peering. Against a far wall, which was pocked and scarred as if from machine gun fire, were a whole array of simple wooden targets. They had been constructed crudely out of whole logs and made to look like soldiers; they had branches for arms and legs, and their heads were wooden blocks or stumps.
“What the hell are you waiting for, a bloody written invitation? Get a fucking move on!” screamed Preceptor Ipheca.
The class jumped and scrambled to obey. Penelope and I headed toward the far end of the line, furthest away from the prickly cyclops Preceptor.
“What’s the deal with old Preceptor Ipheca?” I asked the Knowledge Sprite out of the corner of my mouth, a quieter whisper than I’d ever used before. With the enhanced hearing of dragonmancers, you had to be careful about that sort of thing. “What’s the nature of the stick that she clearly has wedged up her ass?”
Penelope glanced over her shoulder, making sure that the Preceptor was totally engrossed in chewing the ears off a nymph who had already started firing glittering starbursts of pink magic at her target without Preceptor Ipheca’s say-so.
“I do not know too much about her,” she said evasively.
“C’mon, Penelope,” I said. “You’re a damned Knowledge Sprite, aren’t you? If anyone in this class had a little background on our tutors…”
Penelope gave me a half-pleased half-stern smile.
“I’ll only say that, as far as battle experience goes within the dragonmancer ranks, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone with more enemy blood on her hands than Preceptor Ipheca.”
“She’s good with a sword, huh?” I asked, eyeing the cloaked Preceptor with a bit more interest.
“One of the best,” Penelope said, squaring up to her target. “And not just with a sword. I’ve read through and copied out the annals of dragonmancer law and history a number of times as part of my Librarian duties, and Preceptor Ipheca’s name is present in almost all of the battles and notable skirmishes that have taken place over the last two centuries or so.”
