by Dante King
After exchanging our vows, I kissed my two brides and raised their hands into the air as I had been instructed was right.
As I did so, Garth, who had been lurking up in the rafters out of sight, swept down and passed over the crowd. I looked up as the Pearl Dragon performed his excitable fly-by, and saw the little gray form of Wayne sitting atop his mature brother’s head, clinging on with his sharp little claws.
With a roar of exaltation, Garth let loose a great burst of rose-colored flame, and the crowd got to their feet and burst into applause.
Elenari, Saya, and I stepped down from the dais and walked slowly back up the aisle, arm in arm, followed by our coteries, Penelope, and Amara. As we walked, people reached out to pat our backs, shake our hands, or simply wish us well. People were stamping and cheering and yelling. It was the best kind of pandemonium.
“Dragonmancer Noctis,” Lieutenant Kaleen said, leaning across Sergeant Milena to shake my hand, “hearty congratulations to you. To all three of you.”
The lieutenant was bedecked in her flawless armor, showing off her rank and importance in about as obvious and intimidating a style as was possible. A sword hung in a bejeweled scabbard at her side. Instead of a hat, she wore a burnished helmet. The effect might have been comical had it not been so damned impressive.
“Thanks very much, Lieutenant,” I said, surprised that Kaleen should make such an effort to wish us well.
“Yes, indeed,” Kaleen said, removing the helmet so that she could run a thoughtful hand through her white dreadlocks, grinning that mordant smile of hers as she did so. “The sergeant and I knew you were a brave bastard, but we didn’t know you were brave enough to marry these two at the same bloody time!”
Times changed, worlds changed, but I imagined that soldier banter stayed the same the universe over.
I had to laugh at that though. It was what I might have expected the woman to say if I had thought about it at all.
“Now, now, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Milena said, tapping her kinswoman on the arm, “no need to be so mean. I for one think that Dragonmancer Noctis has done extremely well for himself. These two women each have brains enough for two, which is exactly the quantity that our young human here will need on his coming adventure, I think!”
The Sergeant and the Lieutenant chuckled good-naturedly at their gag as we moved away, continuing up the aisle. As we moved off, I said over my shoulder to Lieutenant Kaleen, “Four times the brains makes for four times the fun on honeymoon night, Ma’am!”
“Honeymoon night... ” Saya said in my ear. “Did I hear you correctly?”
“Yes, please tell us what you have in store for us, Dragonmancer Noctis,” Elenari said from my other side, grinning widely.
“Flights by moonlight to some deserted mountain shack, where none can find us?” Saya growled. “Where we can hunt for our dinner and spend the evening feasting and fu—”
“Alas, no,” I said, cutting Saya off before she could plant an idea in my head that proved impossible to uproot. “As far as honeymoons go, this one is probably going to be less of the bog-standard and more of the bellicose, if I’m honest.”
“Well, you know that we’re not your conventional ladies,” Elenari whispered into my ear, her breath as warm and inviting as a shot of whiskey.
“That’s probably why I’m so smitten with the pair of you,” I said, grinning.
“So, what do you have in store for your new wives?” Saya asked.
I put my arms around the shoulders of the two beguiling and ravishing ladies. “Well,” I said, keeping my voice low and winking at Claire the Seer, “how lucky would you pair of hotties feel hearing that I’ve booked us a steamy few nights at Galipolas Mountain, with an all-access tour to the Subterranean Realms?”
The two women—my wives—smiled at me. They were not comforting smiles, not for any enemy of the Empire. They were the sort of smiles that made the balls of brave men shrivel to the size of raisins.
Chapter 6
We left for Galipolas Mountain the morning after the wedding.
The sun had barely washed the eastern horizon with the very first shimmer of pink when we took to the air. The sky was an inky, navy swathe up near the heavens, lightening to a metallic silver where it met the saw-toothed peaks of the mountains.
I doubted there was anything in the world that could compare with setting out on an adventure through the mountains at the crack of dawn. The world seemed a simpler place somehow, prehistoric almost. The mountains loomed majestic in the background, every which way I looked, like the silhouette of the spiny back of the mother of all dragons.
The air was completely still, the wind having not yet awoken, and the scent of the pines was thick in my nostrils. I took a deep, slow breath and exhaled contentedly. My sharp dragon-enhanced hearing could detect the distant chatter of the rushing river as it made its way from the glacial heights above and flowed out to the sea.
Elenari, Saya, Tamsin, Penelope, Amara, and Renji came with me. We were all Rank One dragonmancers, with the exception of Renji and Tamsin, so I had been worried that they would not be allowed to follow me on this quest. However, the Overseer, being a shrewd and foreseeing woman, had allowed any who were keen to join me. I imagined that she was savvy enough to know that she’d be saving herself a headache if she tried to object to my colleagues coming along to share in the escapade.
We were taking to the air for the trip, but not as we usually did. Our destination, Galipolas Mountain, was too far for dragonmancers of our level to fly all the way on dragonback. The journey would have used up too much mana. Even if we had made it there without stopping to regenerate our mana, it would have left us with very little to use in battle, had we arrived to face a fray of some kind.
This meant that we would all be taking a ship aboard one of the Viking-esque longboats, which my squad usually used to ferry themselves to battle behind me.
As much as I loved the thrill and the peace of flying on the back of a dragon, I was quite looking forward to cruising through the air at a more of a leisurely pace. It would give me a chance to hang out and chat with my new friends in an environment that was not the classroom, sparring fields, or battle.
In actual fact, the ship that we ended up boarding to make the day-long journey to Galipolas Mountain was larger by far than the swift little longship that my coterie usually traveled in. The sky-vessel was big enough to have a spacious deck from which we all could enjoy the beautiful views of the surrounding landscape, as well as a large set of interior cabins. These below deck suites were exclusively for me and the other dragonmancers, while our coteries were required to stay on deck and keep a lookout for potential enemies.
After watching the sun rise over the mountain tops from the prow of the flying vessel, I went below in search of a cup of coffee or lightning cider. Elenari and Saya accompanied me.
Together, we sat in a quiet, secluded booth; delightfully overstuffed couches set around a mahogany coffee table.
The last twenty-four hours had been a bit of a whirl. This was saying something, seeing as my life felt like it had been a non-stop white knuckle ride down the most insane rabbit hole of all time ever since I had found myself plucked from Earth by Elenari and brought here. There was though, something specific that had been playing on my mind.
“Girls,” I said to Saya and Elenari, when we had settled ourselves, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to chat to you about.”
“You can talk to us about anything, Mike,” Elenari said, looking at Saya.
Saya nodded in agreement.
I took a sip of lightning cider. “I, uh, I guess what I wanted to broach with you was the whole way that our marriage is going to affect the dynamic around here.”
Saya looked at me steadily for a moment and then moved her gaze to Elenari. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like the elf was smiling.
“Now that we’ve taken the plunge with one another,” I said, pressing doggedly onward. “Does that mean that the wh
ole… understanding that we have been operating under is finished?”
It was the most eloquent way I could ask whether it was still okay to have girlfriends.
Saya grinned and lay a hand on my thigh.
“Mike,” Elenari said, “we are well aware that trying to claim you to ourselves would be an unbefitting thing. The Empire needs you to keep on being who you are, and acting how you have been acting, to flourish. For us to expect you to be ours alone would be…” she cast around for a word that might do her thoughts justice.
“Unbecoming of dragonmancers,” Saya said.
Elenari nodded.
“We know that any woman you bring into your bed will be special,” Saya said. “But we will also know that, after being married to one another, Elenari and I are just that little bit more special, perhaps?”
I smiled, reached out, and squeezed the hands of the two women sitting next to me. I hoped that the relief was not too plain on my face.
“I think it’s fair to say that, after all we’ve been through together, you two definitely stand alone,” I said.
Saya nodded her head and leaned back, adopting that self-assured manner of hers that I had found so intimidating on my first day at the Drako Academy. “You best not forget it,” she said, with a half-smile.
“That,” I said truthfully, “would be a fucking impossibility.”
Elenari laughed and slapped me on the chest.
A short while later, the rest of the dragonmancers came downstairs to relax on the comfortable couches and stare out of the porthole at the country below, as the fields, forests, rivers, and lakes slid by.
Once we had been served with some steaming goblets of lightning cider by one of the ship’s crew, a legend in dwarven shape going by the name of Olgan, we settled back and started discussing what might await us at journey’s end.
No one had ever been this far from the Academy before, even Renji and Tamsin, who had been sent out on more minor skirmishing missions than any of the rest of us Rank Ones. As for the Subterranean Realms, that was a land and a place that had been wrapped in the mist of legend for as long as anyone could remember.
“Many, many moons ago, when I was but a young Djinn,” Renji said, in her soothing, melodic tones, “my father used to say that if I was bad, I would be spirited away to the Subterranean Realms in the middle of the night.”
Tamsin laughed nostalgically at this. She took a sip of her drink and crossed her long legs in their leather breeches.
“It was the same with me,” she said. “My parents would use the Subterranean Realms as a threat if we little hobgoblins put a claw out of line. As you can imagine, hobgoblins are not easily scared. My parents had to get pretty damned inventive with the descriptions of what those folk of the Shadow Nations were supposed to do to us once they kidnapped us.”
“So, we’re heading to a place that has been used as a threat for most of your childhoods, is that about right?” I asked.
Saya nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said, picking at her nails with a dagger, “my people in the lowland lake countries back south used to refer to them too. Made the Shadow Nations out to be the sort of creatures that prowled the edge of nightmares. Made the Subterranean Realms themselves sound like the tunnels leading down to the hells.”
The blonde sheathed her dagger and cracked her knuckles, looking around at our little company of dragonmancers with those x-raying blue eyes of hers. I noticed that her strong, tanned hand moved up to clutch at the necklace that hung around her graceful neck. She squeezed it and then tucked it down the front of her shirt.
“Of course, I doubt a single one of my people from the lowlands had been within about two hundred miles of Galipolas Mountain, so the legitimacy of the tales of the graybeards can be safely said to be pretty thin, I think,” Saya said.
Everyone else laughed.
“Saya is right,” Amara said, sweeping her own platinum blonde hair out of her eyes and beginning to braid it into a tight ponytail. “We can’t let ourselves get shaken by a bunch of tall tales from when we were ankle-biters. We are dragonmancers now. I’m willing to wager a handful of scales that the tales told of the mighty dragonriders of the Mystocean Empire’s Draco Academy are even more terrifying.”
There was much murmuring of assent at this comment.
“You know what I’m most curious on finding out about and seeing,” Penelope said, sitting forward in the comfortable armchair that she was seated in, “are the dragonmancers who are going to be acting as Mike’s bodyguards.”
“Why’s that, Pen?” Elenari asked politely.
“Because,” the Knowledge Sprite said, her all-blue eyes shining with enthusiasm, “they will be far more experienced than we ourselves are. I am intrigued to witness what their capabilities might be. To see the magic they might have access to.”
“True,” Tamsin said, flicking back the last of her lightning cider with a swift movement of her elbow. “Not to mention the styles of combat that they might have been taught in.” Her bright yellow eyes sparkled with the thought of picking up a few moves that she might add to her already impressive, and highly lethal, repertoire.
The sun rose outside the portholes, sending the shadows sliding slowly across the cabin as the day progressed. I went topside to get some air before lunch and played a few hours of cards with my squad. I was endeavoring to get the hang of the game that all the soldiers played, Maim Mr. Turnip.
I had lost more scales to those three smug bastards than I cared to remember while learning how to play, but I felt like I was on the cusp of turning the corner. My plan was to finally figure out a strategy against them, feign idiocy for a little while longer, and then take them to the cleaners.
After a delicious lunch, which I took with the rest of the dragonmancers below decks, I reconvened with my squad for a few more rounds of Maim Mr. Turnip. I noticed, as I took my turn to deal, that I was getting more than a few weird looks from the members of the other dragonmancer coteries. Not so much those members of Elenari’s, Penelope’s and Saya’s squads, but certainly from the others.
“It’s because we’re playing cards, boss,” Bjorn grunted, when I mentioned this.
“What? You’re not allowed to gamble or something?” I asked, laying down two cards onto the ‘market’ pile and then dealing out a card each to everyone. “I thought all the soldiers played this. There’s a rumor that there’s even a high stakes, invitation only game of Maim Mr. Turnip involving a couple of members of the Martial Council.”
Gabby raised an eyebrow at this bit of news.
“Big Greasy told me,” I explained.
Gabby rolled his eyes.
“It’s not that we’re playing cards, Mike,” Rupert said. “It’s m-m-more that your deigning to spend your rec time with us, and not the other dragonmancers.”
“Shit, that’s right,” I said, making show of slapping my forehead with the palm of my hand. “The whole hierarchy thing. I’m always forgetting that. Now,” and I slapped down a four of chains and a five of bones, “which one of you lowly motherfuckers wants the privilege of cleaning my boots with your tongue?”
Bjorn snorted with such sudden mirth that a glob of snot shot from one nostril and hit the bulwark that I had been leaning against. It was only my dragonmancer’s heightened reflexes that stopped me from wearing the loogie.
“Sorry, boss,” the big warrior said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“I don’t know about taking your b-b-boots,” Rupert said thoughtfully, “but I will prevail myself on your kindness once again and relieve you of some more of your coin.”
He laid down four nuns on the deck with an annoying flourish.
“Son of a basilisk!” Bjorn growled.
Gabby pulled the finger at the side of Rupert’s head, threw down his cards, and shoved over the pile of scales.
“Any of you guys get told ghost stories when you were younger, about the Subterranean Realms or the Shadow Nations?” I asked as Gabby started
shuffling the cards with fingers that moved almost quicker than sight.
“Sure,” Rupert said, arranging his matchsticks with a neatness that spoke of a mind poised precariously on that special fulcrum which separates genius from madness. “My grandpoppa always used t-t-to tell me that if I didn’t stop picking my nose the Shadow Nations would come and carry me off.”
He paused in his matchstick organizing and dug an exploratory finger into his left nostril.
“I always f-f-found that an odd and illogical threat,” he said. “I mean, why would they wait for me to start excavating for nose coal before they abducted me? Who really wants to deal with some nose-picking brat?”
“A fair point,” I said.
“I only ever heard, from my uncle, that nothing good ever came of pokin’ around in dark holes,” Bjorn rumbled. His scarred face, with its glowing red eyes, split into a grin that showed off his tombstone teeth. “Course, that might have just been because the dirty prick spent so much time in brothels!”
He slapped his leg at that, his great sides heaving with merriment at his own wit.
“Why do you ask, sir?” Rupert asked, rearranging his cards and sticking his tongue between his teeth as he surveyed them.
I contemplated telling Rupert to quit with the ‘sirs.’ I chose not to speak up because I figured he was making a show of the proprieties for the other squads sitting and standing around the deck.
“Just wanted to see if anybody actually knew anything concrete about this gods-damned place we’re about to go delving into,” I said.
“Bone of the other d-d-dragonmancers know anything?” Rupert asked me.
“Only what has been passed down to them in the form of rumors and stories and eldritch warnings,” I said. “I’m not sure if I’ll get a briefing when we arrive, but I imagine someone knows something.”
Bjorn nodded and snapped his fingers at Gabby for another card.
“Sounds about right, boss,” he said. “Can’t be that many folks who have gone poking about down there. Not for years uncounted.”
