by Ramy Vance
Manny faced Holmorth again and floated forward as the dark wizard started to walk toward Manny. “I assume you still honor the old ways?” the Beholder asked. “The eldritch traditions I trained you in?”
Holmorth folded his arms and snarled, then he nodded.
Manny and Holmorth stood face to face a few feet from each other. “Good. Shall we begin?”
Holmorth said nothing, only clutched his staff. He aimed it at Manny, and a bolt of lightning fired from it.
Manny raised one of his eyes, and the lightning deflected and struck the wall. Then Manny’s eyes burned bright white, and a black hand, twice as large as Holmorth, appeared in the air. The hand grabbed Holmorth and wrung him as if he were a wet towel.
Holmorth shouted, and the boom of his voice destroyed the hand. He fell to the ground and grabbed his staff, then turned and aimed it at one of the orcs.
The orc was hit with a blast of green light, and it fell over as its body started to swell and bulge. A tentacle ripped out of it—a creature was growing within it. Within seconds, a massive kraken burst from the orc’s body.
The kraken flew at Manny, who floated to the side as quickly as he could. The kraken was easily the size of a bus, its tentacles flying about as it screeched, clacking its beak.
Alex raised her rifle and took aim at the kraken.
One of Manny’s eyes flipped over and saw Alex. “No!” he shouted. “Don’t interfere. This is between Holmorth and me!”
The kraken reared its head as Holmorth aimed his staff at Manny, shooting a fireball that went careening toward the Beholder.
Manny dodged the fireball and turned his attention to the kraken. Manny’s eyes shifted color again, glowing bright white.
The walls next to the kraken shot out spikes, impaling it.
One of Manny’s tentacles sketched a shape, an ancient sigil from times long past. The kraken’s skin caught fire and it burned to nothing but bone and ash. Then the ash rose from the ground.
Manny turned to face Holmorth. He pointed one of his eyes at the black wizard and the ash from the kraken flew toward Holmorth, covering his body in black soot.
Holmorth struggled and tried to escape but could do nothing.
Manny retreated back toward the cadets and shouted, “Now! Let’s go!”
The cadets broke into a run toward the back of the Great Hall as Holmorth tried to free himself. The black wizard screamed in rage and then shouted, “Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Kill them! Kill them all!”
The orcs ran toward the cadets, who had already made it to the end of the hall. The crystal door presented a datapad, and Manny slammed his tentacle onto it, shouting, “Open faster, damn you!”
The crystal doors opened, and the cadets rushed through. The doors shut quickly behind them and Manny commanded the doors to lock before heading toward the stables.
The orcs could be heard firing their plasma rifles from behind the door, trying to break through.
Alex was running beside Manny. “Damn, dude, that was really impressive,” she said. “I didn’t know you were that strong.”
Manny chuckled before coughing and wheezing, trying to catch his breath. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a duel of thoughts,” he admitted. “Honestly, I didn’t know how well I was going to do. I’m glad I made it out alive. I didn’t go into recruitment to have fights like that.”
Alex thought back to all the time Manny had spent helping her without saying anything. Having seen how powerful he was, she knew he could be using his talents anywhere else. It meant a lot to her that he had stuck by her for so long.
The cadets took a right turn at a corner and continued running. Behind them, Alex heard the door Manny had locked explode. Holmorth’s scream echoed down the hall.
The most frantic cadets were toward the front of the group, mostly younger students. Many of them were crying. Alex wouldn’t have been surprised if they were imagining how they were going to die. She might have been doing the same if it had been earlier in the day. Now all she could think about was getting to Chine.
Alex reached out to her dragon with her mind. She wasn’t sure if she was close enough to speak to him. Even though she had been fairly certain she could navigate the Wasp’s Nest blind, running through hallway after hallway while being chased by orcs had left her a little disoriented.
There was no reply. Alex tried again, focusing as hard as she could manage on Chine. Hey, Chine! Are you okay? she sent.
Still no reply. For the first time since the invasion started, Alex worried if Chine was alive. She had to get to him as fast as possible. If anything happened to him… Well, Alex didn’t know, but she felt the consequences would be terrible.
Chapter Six
The cadets raced down the changing halls of the crystal Nest. Alex had assumed the path would be straightforward, as it always had been before, but the Wasp’s Nest was doing its job. The nest was providing the cadets with what they needed: confusion to their enemies.
As the party ran through the hall, everyone trying to get their bearings, Gill shouted left or right as he saw fit. Alex could hear the orcs chasing them, their roars making them seem like a horde of nightmares eager for a butchering.
Gill was at the head of the group of cadets. He was doing a great job of keeping a level head, but Alex doubted he was ever anything other than calm. Regardless of the Nest trying to keep the orcs away from the cadets, Gill was making sense out of the ever-changing labyrinth.
Jollies had decided it made more sense to rest in Alex’s hand. She wasn’t used to flying so strenuously, and she was exhausted.
Brath, on the other hand, was up front with Gill, occasionally shouting to the cadets to keep going, rallying them.
Manny stayed at the back in case any of the orcs or Holmorth started to close in on the cadets.
Alex was replaying Manny’s battle with Holmorth in her head. She had never seen magic used in battle before. Not like that, at least. She had seen the Nest, and that was very different. Panic was starting to creep up on her, but she shoved it down as far as she could.
This isn’t the time to freak out, Alex thought. I keep telling myself that. When is the time to freak out? Freaking out would feel kind of nice about now.
For some reason, Alex had become extremely worried about Chine. She couldn’t get him out of her mind, and it confused her.
Gill pointed ahead and shouted, “Left now!”
The cadets took the left and the Nest closed the hallway behind them. They stood before a large crystal double door—the stables, at last.
One of the cadets reached out to the datapad next to the door. She pressed her hand to it, and the doors swung open. The cadets rushed in.
Manny turned to Gill and told him to turn the lights back on. It didn’t make sense to be running around in the dark. They might as well be able to see everything.
Gill did as he was told, hacking into the system as quickly as he could. The lights flickered on after a couple of seconds. Without thinking, Alex pulled off her blindfold. The light flooded her eyes, but she pushed past the pain.
The room was blurry but quickly coming into focus. Once her eyesight returned to her, she wished she could have looked away.
The stables were almost completely destroyed. There was rubble everywhere and no dragons to be seen. Alex thought back to the tremors and explosions she had felt when the invasion had first started. She hadn’t seen any damage to the rest of the Nest. The attack must have been focused on the dragon stables.
Alex grabbed Manny and shouted, “I need to find Chine!”
Manny avoided Alex’s eyes. He floated away, trying to get a grasp of just how much damage was done. “They can’t be dead,” Manny whispered. “Their cadets would have felt it. Everyone would have felt it.”
Brath walked away from the other cadets and said, “Maybe the Nest helped them like it’s been helping us. They could be hiding.”
Alex needed that little bit of hope. Hope was all
she had. She pushed her way through the rest of the stunned cadets and ran farther into the main area, looking around to see if she could find where the dragons might have gone.
It felt like Alex’s whole plan was falling apart. She had put everyone in danger in the hope of getting to their dragons. Now they might be gone.
Everyone could end up dead because of me, she thought.
Her chest closed up, and her heart was racing. She kept thinking of the orcs—their footsteps echoing in the hall, their screams as they readied their swords and rifles. It was almost too much.
Tears poured out of the rider’s eyes. She felt like her heart was curling up. She wanted to scream, to cry, to be anywhere but where she was right then, yet she was there. The orcs weren’t going anywhere, and neither was she.
Alex faced the rest of the cadets. She didn’t bother wiping the tears from her face. Instead, she stared at the cadets as she hiccupped through her tears. “Manny says the dragons are here,” she said, her voice more confident than she felt. “Everyone, find your dragon. This is where we fight.”
Alex stepped away from the cadets, unsure if she had just ordered everyone to their deaths. It didn’t matter, though. Death had come for them. It was time to find out if they could postpone it for a little longer.
The cadets split up. No one said a word. They were all driven by the urge to find their dragons. Alex thought it might have to do with the binding. Maybe it was more than just the words Myrddin had said. The binding was obviously something far beyond Alex’s understanding.
Alex forced herself to stop thinking. She shoved away every thought that crept into her mind. There was only one thing to focus on—finding Chine. She reached out again, shouting in her mind, Chine! Where are you? Chine!
Chine’s voice came screaming through Alex’s head. She nearly fell over from the force of his thoughts. Child of Dust! Chine shouted. I have been trying to find you for hours. Are you okay? Please tell me you’re well?
Alex stopped running and stood still. Chine had been worried about her. He had known something was going wrong. And he was alive. Most importantly, he was alive. I’m okay, Alex thought to him. The Nest is under attack. Where are you?
We’re hidden. Some kind of magic of the Nest. You can turn it off. Find the central switch. Release us. There was fire in Chine’s thoughts. The dragon wanted to fight.
Alex scanned the stables, trying to see where the central control system was. Everything was rubble. It was impossible to see anything. It’s not impossible, Alex thought. I can do this. I can do this.
An explosion rocked the stables. Alex and the other cadets who were searching for their dragons turned to the doors of the stables.
Holmorth stood on the threshold, his staff raised, the orcs at his back. “Kill them!” Holmorth shouted.
The orcs poured into the room as the cadets shrieked and sprinted off. If she left the cadets, they were all going to die.
Manny went flying toward the orcs, his eyes white and filled with fury. The walls of the Nest bent to his will and shards of crystal flew, impaling six orcs and nailing them to the wall.
Behind Manny, Gill and Brath pulled out their rifles and fired at every orc they could see.
An orc slipped past the plasma fire and grabbed Brath by his red cap. The gnome screamed and fired a bolt of hot plasma point-blank that ripped through the orc’s face.
Manny was floating in the air, all of his tentacles flailing wildly. A concussive force shot out of him, pushing all of the orcs and Holmorth back toward the doors.
Alex started to work her way through the rubble. She had no idea what the control system looked like. She had never seen it through Manny’s eyes and had never touched it. This was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. At least most people know what a needle and a haystack looked like.
Alex ran through the throng of cadets who were dispersing through the room as Manny continued to push the orcs and Holmorth back. Brath and Gill, now at his side, were shooting any orcs who managed to get past Manny’s psychic powers.
As Alex was running, her foot hit a large stone. She toppled over and fell into a pile of crystals and computer parts. When she sat up, she saw a computer screen. Could this be it? Alex thought. She scrambled to the computer screen and tried to find the keyboard. It was shattered, along with the CPU.
There wasn’t time to be concerned with what else was going around her. The dragon stables were filled with the scent of hot plasma and the screams of cadets and orcs. To look at it would have been too much. The only thing Alex could do was find the central computer switch. That was the important thing.
Alex picked herself up from the rubble and continued to search, grabbing anything in the crystal and dust that looked like it could help. Her mind was racing. Every possible scenario of her death played out in her head, but she kept searching.
“What are you doing in my stables!” a voice shouted over the cacophony.
Alex looked over her shoulder toward the source of the voice.
Tribble and Primerose were at another door in the stables. Primerose was carrying a gun or sword in each of her hands, reminding Alex of the god Kali. Tribble held two plasma machine guns, the straps over her shoulders. “These are my stables!” Tribble shouted as she started firing.
Primerose leaped at the orcs in front of her. Her hands were moving faster than Alex could see, slashing at orcs and firing at the same time.
Alex made herself look away. She was overwhelmed by all she was seeing. She had to focus. She had to find Chine and the other dragons. Alex pulled herself to her feet and ran through the stables, stopping to check any computer she saw.
A green switch, set apart from the rest of the tech around, sat in a pile of crystal dust. Alex saw it, ran toward it, and scooped it up in her hand. Please let this be it, she thought before flipping the switch.
There was a rush of air. Alex looked around. The Nest was gone. She was standing in a field of flowers. A blue sky filled with clouds was overhead. You found me, a familiar voice said.
Alex spun around and saw Chine sitting comfortably in the field. Where are we? Alex asked. Why aren’t you helping us?
Chine stood and shook himself, his scales rising as if he was a cat. We were put here, he explained. As soon as the attack happened. But you can bring us out.
How?
Chine pointed upward. Alex stared up at a portal in the sky. Through there. I’ll follow, and the rest will as well. Are you ready?
Alex hardly heard what Chine was saying. She leaped and landed on Chine’s back, then raised her dragon anchor and felt it connect. “Let’s do this!” she shouted.
Chine roared loudly as Alex pulled back on her anchor and leaned forward, urging Chine toward the portal.
The two of them passed through the portal and came out in the Wasp’s Nest. Manny was still holding off as many of the orcs as he could.
Holmorth had forced his way to the front of the fight. Lightning and fire shot from his staff as he pushed to get closer to Manny.
Chine landed in front of Manny and shot a jet of ether fire toward Holmorth.
The wizard pulled his staff back and covered his face, casting a barrier around himself that split the black fire around him. It engulfed the orcs who surrounded him.
Alex pulled her rifle from her back and started firing. The closest orcs fell.
Chine shot another plume of ether fire at the orcs surrounding him as Holmorth raised his staff, speaking in the old infernal tongue, preparing to conjure a creature.
Manny screamed, “Alex, don’t let him finish!”
Alex leaned forward, pulling her dragon anchor toward her. Chine charged toward Holmorth. That was when Alex understood the binding. What had taken place between her and Chine did not exist in a place of words, sight, or anything else. They were connected.
As Holmorth raised his staff to cast his spell, Chine grabbed the wizard. Alex could feel the adrenaline racing through the dragon’s body.
The dragon chomped down hard, trying to separate Holmorth’s body and seeking to swallow the top half. Before he could, the wizard disappeared, evidently choosing retreat over death.
The orcs were still screeching, firing their plasma rifles as dragon after dragon poured from the portal at the top half of the stables. The dragons found their way to their riders, each rider leaping atop their dragon.
It did not take long for the stables to be full of fire, lightning, and ice. The cadets did what they had been trained to do, each of them falling into their own pattern.
Alex flew above them all, watching the dragonriders drive off the orcs, burning or skewering any who were not wise enough to flee.
As Alex and Chine were flying, the doors of the stables burst open. A dragon ripped through the crystal, but it was not like any dragon Alex had seen before. It was a mech, yet almost indiscernible from the real thing.
The chest of the mech dragon opened, and Roy leaned out. His face was covered in blood and he shouted, “We rally here! If it’s an orc, it dies!”
Roy’s mech rampaged through the orcs in front of it, tearing them apart as its fire engulfed the rest. The dragonrider cadets followed Roy’s order and converged on the orcs.
The orcs fired plasma rifle blasts, but it was not enough. They fell. The dragonriders had won.
Chapter Seven
The funeral started around noon.
It had only been a day since the invasion. Nothing felt normal, if it had felt normal to begin with. Once the last of the orcs had been cleaned up, the remaining instructors and Myrddin had ushered everyone back to their rooms. No one had wanted to talk about anything.
Alex had spent the night staring at the ceiling of her room. She had spent countless nights in her life staring at her ceiling but had never actually seen it. The darkness she had known before would have been preferable.
Sometime during the night, as she was struggling to sleep, she opened the message she had received from her parents.
