Inferno

by Amelia Jade

  “What is murder?” he asked, suspecting he knew the word, but wasn’t positive. It had been a while since he’d spoken this language.

  “What? What is murder? It’s when you kill someone on purpose, particularly those who do not expect it or deserve it. There is no war on, we’re not fighting anyone here. So you can’t just go kill whoever you wish. That’s murder, and it’s a crime.”

  “But they do deserve it,” he countered.

  “Oh really? And why is that? Go on, tell me. I bet you have a real good reason.” She crossed her arms in front of her.

  He could smell the fear on her, and yet still she remained defiant to him. He was coming to like her spirit. She knew that he could kill her with ease, without even trying, and yet she still was working to stop him, even going so far as to throw rocks at his head. Now that was either bravery or stupidity.

  Often that was determined whether someone survived or not.

  “They disturbed my sleep,” he grumbled angrily.

  “Waking someone up is not a crime!” she shouted. “It’s not nice, I’ll admit. But it is not a reason to kill someone. I’m pretty sure you got back at them with that whole emitting fear thing you’ve got going on. They all ran away terrified.”

  He snorted. “Weaklings. The last group who came pushed through that. These men couldn’t even stomach that as they tried to kill me? I will teach them the error of their ways.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she shouted, looking ready to tear her hair out in frustration. “What other group? Nobody here was trying to kill you!”

  That just wasn’t believable. She must be lying. They were of course here to finish up what their comrades could not. “They trespassed then,” he told her. “That is a crime.”

  “Trespassed? Where? Onto what? Were there any signs telling them not to?”

  Frowning, he shook his head. “This is my mountain. It has always been my mountain. I claimed it. Your leaders know that, I told them myself! How could you have forgotten?”

  The woman was shaking her head. “How? Oh I don’t know, because nobody knows you exist! Try that for starters.”

  Obsidian laughed, filling the tunnel with nasty laughter. “You lie, human. I know you lie. The ash from when I last erupted the mountain would have filled the sky for days. The evidence would be all around as you climbed up here. Unmistakable.”

  Now she fell silent, which was the last thing he’d expected.

  “This mountain is dormant,” she said softly. “It hasn’t erupted in five hundred years.”

  Obsidian leaned backward in surprise, contemplating her words. That was an unexpected answer. Five hundred years? He had slept for that long? It didn’t seem possible. He’d expected a week, maybe two. Heck, even a year wouldn’t have truly fazed him. But five centuries worth of sleeping? He’d accidentally napped away half a dozen decades before, but this was a new record for him.

  “Whoops. Would you believe I slept in?”

  The human’s jaw dropped open. “Whoops? You’re telling me you slept for five hundred years, and that’s only worth a ‘whoops’ to you?”

  It was clear she was agog with the idea that someone could lose track of that much time, let alone live for that long. Obsidian knew he was at risk of her finally snapping and believing she was having a break from reality, so he needed to treat this as calmly as possible. With this much time having passed, he felt the he might need someone to bring him up to speed on the changes in the world.

  “Pretty much,” he replied with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. “I am a dragon, after all. It really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to you that we like to sleep, or that we live for a long time. All of that was part of human legend before I took a nap. Has it truly been lost to the ages?”

  The woman was shaking her head in disbelief. “Well, I mean, dragons don’t exist. You’re all just myth.”

  “Would you like me to replay your memory for you of the cavern? I distinctly remember you seeing me in my dragon form.”

  “Oh yeah, and that’s another thing. You can change forms? How is that even fair?”

  He chuckled. “Who said anything about fair? And I can only assume human form or dragon. If you were expecting me to turn into a toad so you could find your prince, I’m sorry.”

  “Huh,” she said, shaking her head. “Apparently that story is a lot older than anyone thinks.”

  “Story?”

  She narrowed her eyes, but Obsidian just gazed back at her, admiring her round face and bright, intelligent eyes. She really is rather cute, he mused. He continued to admire her form, hidden as it was beneath the brown…outfit she wore. He had no idea what it was, but it certainly wasn’t fashionable as he knew it. Why, it showed none of her bodice!

  “You shall guide me,” he decided suddenly as they stood there in the tunnel facing each other.

  “I’m not going to take you up there just so you can kill everyone because you’re having a temper tantrum about sleeping in,” she snapped.

  Obsidian felt his lips trying to quirk upward in a smile, but he fought it down, a master of his expressions after all these years. Damn, she has fire at her core. What a dragon she would have made. Getting her going is just too easy.

  “No, you are correct. After being asleep for so long, it seems I will have to reestablish my claim to the mountain. Once I have done that, anyone who trespasses will forfeit their lives.” He smiled at her. “See, I’m not all that bloodthirsty.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “No, what? You are refusing to guide me?” He let some anger slip into his voice.

  “No, your plan won’t work.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, then I’ll do it my way. Fire and ash, kill them all until people start getting the point.”

  His footsteps began to echo in the tunnel once more as he walked forward.

  Chapter Five

  Hollie

  She stood there sputtering for a second before she chased after him.

  Shit shit shit!

  “No. You can’t do that!” she cried out, getting in front of him and putting her hands up to stop him.

  The dragon-man just kept walking and she sort of bounced off him. Good Lord, he felt like he was made of steel! Hollie couldn’t have moved him if she tried. Angrily she shook her head, trying to come up with another option. There had to be a different way. Obviously strength wasn’t going to do it.

  “Listen,” she pleaded, jogging up alongside him. His eyes flicked over to her, so at least she knew he was listening. “You can’t just go kill everyone. These people are my friends. They don’t know that what they were doing is wrong. If they knew that this was your mountain, and that you existed, they would never have done it! Please, just stop and talk!”

  Just like that the walking colossus came to an abrupt halt. There was no slowdown; he just stopped. It was rather eerie. His head turned over to look in her direction. “Will you take me to the local noble so that I may speak with him?”

  She sighed. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Okay,” he said uncaringly and started to walk again.

  “JUST WAIT A FUCKING SECOND, YOU IMPATIENT CHILD!” she screamed.

  He turned back to look at her, fire—literal fire, she could see the flames dancing—in his eyes. “Do not speak to me like that again,” he boomed, his voice loud and powerful, clearly designed to force Hollie to submit.

  “Fuck you,” she snarled, reaching down to harness her own anger, hurling it back at him. “Give me the chance to actually finish speaking before you walk off like a petulant spoiled brat who’s upset he didn’t get his own way.”

  Hollie knew that she was toeing the line with the dragon by treating him so. He could kill her any second, and probably without even trying. She could still remember how solid and strong he felt when she’d tried to push him. By all rights she should be absolutely terrified right now. But instead, she found herself pissed off. He had cornered her, and on one han
d was promising death, and on the other hand, was also promising death. Any predator should know that backing someone into a corner with no way out wasn’t going to end well.

  She expected him to react angrily again, but to her surprise something akin to humor appeared briefly on his face before vanishing. Was he mocking her? She felt her blood begin to boil.

  Keep yourself in control, woman. Your friends and a lot of innocent humans are counting on you, Hollie. You need to find a way to talk him down. He’s obviously not interested in just killing you out of hand, which is good. In fact, he’s talking to you. Use that to your advantage. Keep him talking, try to delay!

  “Look,” she said firmly. “It’s not that I said I wouldn’t.”

  The dragon looked thoughtful for a moment, then tilted his head, conceding her point.

  “But the fact is, I can’t just take you to the local noble, even if I wanted to.”

  “Why is that?” He crossed his arms while he awaited her explanation.

  “Because, for starters, there are no nobles? They aren’t a thing anymore?”

  “No? Well, take me to your ruler then.”

  Hollie sagged, rolling her eyes. “We don’t have a ruler,” she said sarcastically. “We have democracy. Where the people elect our leaders to govern for us.”

  The dragon appeared surprise. “Really? The Greeks managed to make that silly concept stick around did they?”

  “It’s not silly,” she snapped back with another roll of her eyes at his pretentiousness. “And we value it quite highly. If that’s the last thing you remember though, then you have a lot to catch up on.”

  “No, I remember more.”

  Suddenly something occurred to Hollie. “Wait. You’re talking nobles, but five hundred years ago there were no nobles here. Hell, this part of the world had barely just been discovered. The native peoples were here, but they didn’t have a system like that.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Right. Of course. Obviously not. I just assumed that that was something that would have been imported with the first waves of newcomers.” More irritation was visible on his face before he schooled it back to neutral. “I tried so hard to get away from those pricks. It’s why I came over here in the first place,” he revealed.

  “To get away from the nobles?”

  “Absolutely. You wouldn’t believe how stuffy they get.”

  Hollie snorted. “Old men in power stuffy and full of themselves? You don’t say. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  The dragon-man looked at her oddly, obviously not fully grasping the changes that had happened.

  Oh boy, are you going to have fun learning that women are now, legally at least, on the same level as you men.

  She couldn’t keep the smile from her face as she pictured his reaction to learning that the local “ruler,” the mayor of Drake’s Crossing, was a woman. All of a sudden Hollie wanted nothing more than to take him to the town hall and watch him struggle to accept that he was forced to deal with a woman.

  It would probably cause his head to explode, she thought, stifling a giggle by clamping a hand over her mouth. Poor dragon-man can’t handle a woman with power. This is going to be priceless.

  “Hey,” she said suddenly into the silence that had fallen between them. “Do you have a name? I’m tired of referring to you as dragon-man in my head whenever I think about how much I hate you.”

  He shook his head in annoyance. “You need not hate me. I do not hate you.”

  “Well no shit. I’m not threatening to kill your friends and family,” she spat back. “To you I’m probably nothing more than a toothpick. Why would you hate me when you can use me to clean out your teeth after you eat everyone?”

  The dragon recoiled in what appeared to be genuine horror. “Ew. Excuse me? I do not eat humans. That’s just revolting.”

  She relaxed. “Oh, perhaps you have some manners after all.”

  “You taste terrible.”

  “Or maybe not,” she groaned.

  “Obsidian.”

  “What?”

  “My name,” he said impatiently. “You may call me Obsidian.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to fly,” she said dryly. “I’m not using that silly name.”

  He glared at her. “It is not silly. It is my name!”

  “It’s my name!” she mocked, scrunching her face up. “Listen, I’m not calling you that. How about Sid? Yeah, you look like a Sid. Okay, Sid,” she repeated, testing out the nickname. “Yeah, Sid it is. Much easier and quicker.”

  “You will refer to me by my name,” he snarled.

  “Listen, Obsidian,” she said, relenting for this particular time. “In this day and age, the shortening of one’s name to something quick and easy to pronounce is commonplace, got it? It’s not an insult. We value efficiency and convenience. Single-syllable names are much more preferred than multiple.”

  Sid seemed to consider her words for a moment. “So you are not being rude to me?”

  “No. My name is Hollie-Annabelle. But nobody ever calls me that.”

  “I see. So I may refer to you by a shortened, single syllable name related to your full name?”

  She shook her head at his wording, screwing her eyes shut, but then she nodded. “Yes, you may. Most people call me Hollie.”

  “That is two syllables. I shall shorten Hollie down.”

  “Go for it,” she said with a sigh. Being called Hol—pronounced Hall—wasn’t her favorite nickname, but she was more than used to it now.

  “Okay then, come on, Ho, let us proceed,” Sid told her, starting his walk up the tunnel once more.

  She stood unmoving for a solid ten seconds, her jaw working up and down while she tried to process whether he had purposefully called her that or not.

  “That is NOT how it works!” she screeched at last and raced after him, already tired of having to do so much walking. “You can’t just go around calling someone Ho!”

  Sid slowed, but he didn’t stop this time. Eventually she caught up with him, falling into step as best she could, despite his longer legs.

  “There is something wrong with the name I chose for you?” he asked with false innocence.

  “Yes, there is,” she snapped. “I suspect that you understand fully that Ho is a shortened version of the word whore. Of which I am most decidedly not, okay?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “I was simply demonstrating just how rude it is to shorten someone’s name without their approval.”

  “Okay, okay, point proven. I’ll call you Obsidian if I must.”

  He waved her off with a casual movement of his hand. “No, I have decided that Sid will be acceptable. What do you prefer I call you?”

  Grinding her teeth at his imperious answer, she told him. “Hol or Hollie are the two most common terms I get. I prefer Hollie, but Hol is acceptable.”

  “Very well. Hollie it is. Now, shall we go see the local chieftain or shaman? I wish to get this matter of whom the mountain belongs to settled.”

  Once again his words left her standing there searching for what to say as he walked off. Finally she resorted to the tried and true.

  “THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS!” she shouted, and for what felt like the fiftieth time went racing after the dragon from another era.

  Chapter Six

  Obsidian

  They finally emerged from the tunnel several hours later.

  Obsidian—or Sid, as he was now coming to think of himself thanks to Hollie’s constant reminders—was beyond impatient. The human could not put up with his speed, and had been forced to take numerous breaks to recover her strength. He was annoyed because he should have left her behind. There was no need to wait for her, and yet each time she’d found somewhere to sit or lie down, he’d come to a halt as well, unable to leave her.

  The trek had been much longer than he remembered it, and they had emerged far nearer to ground level than he’d expected. Apparently during the course of his snooze the ground had shifted a lot,
moving his cavern low into the heart of the mountain. He smiled lazily at the memory of the warm cocoon that had surrounded his home when the lava had last flowed. That had just been a wonderful sensation; no wonder he’d drifted into such a deep sleep.

  Beside him Hollie had found yet another place to rest.

  “Come,” he ordered, ready to continue the next stage of their journey.

  “No,” she gasped. “I need to rest. I’m exhausted. I’d already worked most of a ten-hour day before I had to deal with your shenanigans. Then you made me walk all the way to the surface, and you expect me to keep going? I’m pretty sure I’m in shock, because I still haven’t had a chance to process the fact that you’re a dragon, and when that hits me, I’m going to probably go crazy permanently.”

  He bit back his initial retort. “Of course we walked. I did not hear or see any horses. How else were we going to get out?”

  Hollie rolled her eyes. “See those?” she asked, waving a finger at the ground near the entrance.

  “Yes. The metal lines.”

  “Those are called rails. There are metal carts that move along them, powered by something called electricity.”

  “Electricity?” he asked, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

  “Yeah. Like lightning, but harnessed and used in smaller or larger doses as we need.” Hollie tilted her hand back and forth. “That’s a really, really crude way of explaining it. But it’s a form of power. Like the waterwheel, but far more advanced.”

  “Interesting. I will have to learn more about it. So you are saying this cart would have carried us here without any effort on our part?”

  She nodded. “We had to push a few things and flip a lever, but that’s about it. Oh, and it would have done so in about twenty minutes.”

  “Oh.” He felt somewhat silly. Perhaps he should outline his objectives and let her describe the best way to achieve them using modern technology. That might allow him to move faster.

  “Yeah.”

  Obsidian was looking around, his attention distracted. The sun was gone, but there was still plenty of light from numerous sources nearby. Plenty of the odd structures that had to be buildings were emitting light through glass. There were no signs of life anywhere that would indicate people who had lit the candles.