by Dante King
I sprang to my feet and, at the exact same time, the first tremor shook the cavern. Dust and small stones fell from the roofs of the tunnels leading off from the chamber in which we had been sleeping.
“To arms!” I cried. “Grab your weapons!”
The dragonmancers were on their feet before I had finished singing out my warning. The coterie members of Jazmyn and Ashrin were ready with weapons in their hands only a short moment after that, and the rest of the crew a few seconds after them.
The earth trembled again.
“Well, I’ll be buggered by a mindflayer’s tentacle,” came the twanging accent of Diggens Azee from over in his corner. “Trust me when I say that’s no ordinary earth tremor. Looks like we’re in for a spot of trouble, dragonmates!”
The gnoll pulled one of his pickaxes from his tool belt and tested the point of it with his thumb.
The whole cave started to rumble and shake then. From somewhere within the earth, I could hear the grind and hammer and metallic whir of great quantities of soil and rock being moved and burrowed at.
“What in the name of the gods is that?” Renji asked.
Tamsin stuck her speartip into the ground, bent down, and picked up a handful of gritty dirt in her hands. She rubbed it together in her palms and licked a little of it up with her long forked tongue before she spat it out. Snarling, she ripped up her spear and twirled it.
“Whatever it is, it dies here!” the hobgoblin cried.
The wall on the other side of the mineral pond exploded outward. Dry soil and lumps of rock showered out, bursting into the cavern like stony confetti. Pebbles and grit rained down into the crystalline water of the pond. I swatted away a shard of rock the size of a tennis ball that had been flung toward my face.
Out of the ragged whole that had just been blasted out of the cavern wall came a boiling mass of bodies. Rat-faced, bent-backed, with wicked rusted weapons, gray fur, and yellow fangs and claws. They came swarming out of the aperture like rats from a sinking ship, letting loose high-chirruping battle cries. Red eyes rolled madly in their hideous pointed faces.
“Ratfolk!” Jazmyn roared.
“To the sword!” Ashrin cried. Her dark eyes were narrowed, her cat’s ears pointing forward. “Put them all to the sword!”
Chapter 11
The ratfolk were numerous, furious, and barbarous. They came charging toward us like five-foot tall berserkers, arms flailing madly, ratty tails lashing at the air behind them. They were clad in pot metal armor that looked like it had been beaten and constructed out of old cauldrons, cart wheel hubs, discarded buckets, and whatever other miscellaneous junk they had been able to find down in the Subterranean Realms and the mines that spiderwebbed through them.
As anyone who had ever witnessed a praying mantis being overwhelmed by ants, the most apparent danger that the ratfolk presented was their sheer weight of numbers, not their skill in combat. There were scores and scores—hundreds—of the screeching beasts.
The ratfolk had to split their forces and come around the pond, like the tide flowing around a rock. Tamsin’s spear flew from her hand and skewered one of the foremost runners. She retracted it with her magic, so that the rat was wrenched forward into the pond in a spray of bright crimson, splashing face down in the water.
Renji had equipped her Steel Dragon, Corvar, into her Weapon Slot A, and was wielding him as a huge, all-steel battle-axe. As the ratfolk came frothing around the pond and came to meet us, the djinn pulled her weapon back and swept it round in a low sweeping arc that was beautiful to see. She carved through four of the hapless scurrying rodent humanoids with that one swing, sending lopped torsos tumbling. The backswing proved to be just as efficacious; pointy-eared heads rolled, limbs went flying, and blood fountained from severed necks.
It took no time at all for the bodies to start piling up around us.
I had decided to use my Chaos Spear initially and was sweeping it around in devastating circles, punching it in and out of ratfolk bodies and using the flickering, flame-covered haft to deflect the numerous blows my enemies were trying to land on me.
I parried a thrust from a cruel shortsword and kicked the rat wielding it so hard in the guts that he vomited blood and was hurled backward, plowing a furrow through the ranks of his fellows pressing in behind him. I heard him land with a dull splash in the pond, but was already whipping the butt end of my staff around to cave in the skull of another enemy coming in hot from behind. He fell, and I plunged the tip of my spear into the face of yet another rat, whisking up his features like a bowl of scrambled eggs. A sword swept toward my neck, but I caught it in my naked palm without it so much as drawing a bead of blood, wrenched it from the wielder’s hand, slashed it across the throat of a different rat, and used it to hew the leg from under yet another.
“I fucking hate rats!” Bjorn was bellowing from somewhere off to my right. “I fucking hate them!”
There was a tinny explosion from the other side of the pond. Renji’s squad were standing in a triangle formation around their dragonmancer, flinging glass flasks into the milling ratfolk army. The flasks disappeared into the confused crush, and then went off with tinkling whumpfs. Shards of scything metal shrapnel flew in all directions, cutting down and maiming tens of the unfortunate ratfolk; slicing through the homemade armor as easily as if it had been made from toffee.
The waves of ratfolk were becoming quite overwhelming, the sheer numbers of the things becoming more and more of a hazard as the fight progressed.
Gabby was pressed against my back. I could hear the mute grunting as he laid about himself with his collection of lethal knives. Whenever a chance presented itself and he was able to get enough room to use it, he would sling his bow from off his shoulder and fire off a couple of shafts into the throng of manic ratfolk.
I for one could have done with a little extra space to think. Not because I was getting tired, but because a part of me that I could not repress worry about the wellbeing of my fellows. I did not want anyone dying today. I did not want anyone spending their life for mine.
I reached around and grabbed Gabby by the back of his shirt. Then, I crouched down, pulling my squad’s bowman with me, and let loose with a Forcewave spell. The immediate area around Gabby and I was rocked by a thunderous expansion of air and energy as a swelling ring of invisible power burst outward. It flung dozens of the ratfolk away like straws in a hurricane; sending them crashing into one another, impaling themselves on their fellows’ sword points and flipping them into the rows of rats behind.
In the space and lull of action created around me and Gabby, I quickly assessed what the others were doing.
Everyone, so far as I was able to discern, was still alive.
The dragonmancers, predictably, were holding their own with relative ease.
Had I doubted the superior skills, training, and capabilities of Jazmyn and Ashrin before, I doubted no longer. The women who had been assigned as my bodyguards were tearing swathes through the ratfolk in the same manner that sharks spread disarray and panic through a shoal of anchovies.
Ashrin had summoned two sai—melee weapons best used for stabbing and trapping—from out of some hidden sheaths in her armor. They were the type of arms that had been made world-famous by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Rafael. The blades of the sai must have been impregnated with some noxious spell or magic, or perhaps they were the weapons conjured when she assigned her dragon into Weapon Slot A, because whenever she struck one of the ratfolk, their flesh started to melt from the wound until they were literally puddles of gore and goo on the cavern floor.
As the ratfolk around me struggled to their feet, snapping and clawing at the bodies of the dead and injured that covered and obstructed them, Ashrin’s weapons vanished as she switched slots. She launched a hail of flickering green darts from the palm of her hand. The darts shot through the air, leaving little concentric cone-trails in their wake, and burrowed into the ratfolk that they struck. Within moments, the darts were
doing the same thing as the poison infused sais had; afflicting the enemies they struck with a fast-acting necrosis. Body parts dropped off the ratfolk as they wailed and thrashed, their furry skin sloughing in swathes from their bodies.
A few ratfolk near Gabby and me tentatively started heading back in to engage with us. Gabby fit an arrow to his bowstring and sent it flying. Then another and another. Each shot was accompanied by a proceeding squeak of pain as the shaft hit home.
I let Gabby keep the hoard at bay for a moment, though I did stab a few with my spear, just remind them of the delivery that lay in wait when they charged again, and turned my eyes back to Ashrin.
Ashrin now wore a green helmet, fashioned in the manner of an insect’s head, so I figured she had assigned her dragon into her Head Slot now. An aura had surrounded her. It was an aura that simply radiated poison, an aura that was as green and foul looking as swamp gas. It set the ratfolk to coughing and choking, making them all the easier for Ashrin to break apart with her bare hands.
She might have been a one trick pony, as far as her magic was concerned, but it was the kind of trick that enabled the pony to go through her enemies like a flamethrower through an army of scarecrows.
I was drawn back to my own fight when the ratfolk I had rattled with my Forcewave ability charged me and Gabby. I considered using my Shadow Spheres, but the last thing I wanted was to miss and bring the whole cavern down on our heads, so I elected to plunge my spear into stomachs. As I drew my spear out from the insides of my latest kill, I noticed Jazmyn to my left.
My other bodyguard was carving apart the enemies around her. She wielded twin chakrams—circular throwing weapons that could also be used to slice and dice in close quarter combat.
Jazmyn, for all her rough bluster, moved with the grace of an interpretive dancer as she fought. She swirled and ducked and pirouetted in a ceaseless and unpredictable flow. She hacked and slashed at the eyes of the ratfolk with the serrated, knife-blade edges of the chakrams, disabling more than she killed, but effectively putting them out of the fight nonetheless. Her coterie moved around her, dispatching those she left alive, in a practiced and efficient manner.
Jazmyn dodged a spear thrust with ease, then threw her two chakrams at two different enemies, burying the blades in their foreheads, sending chips of skull and gobbets of brain in all directions. The circular blades flickered and disappeared, and I guessed that Jaz had switched her dragon’s power into a different slot. A rat bastard tried to run her through from behind but was suddenly impaled on a blade that pistoned out of the back of her armor.
Self-aware armor! I thought with no little envy.
Casually, I stepped to the side and let a ratfolk warhammer whistle past my nose. Barely looking, I put my fist through both breastplate and ribcage of the rat and ripped out his lungs. Meanwhile, Jaz had activated a different slot and was casting the massive magical net that she used on me during our sparring sessions, snaring and slaughtering those rats that found themselves caught in it.
I turned my mind and my eyes and my hand back to the task at hand. I switched slots, and the Chaos Spear rose and fell like the sword of Damocles above the heads of the suicidally driven ratfolk. They invited peril unto themselves and my spear arm delivered that peril and then moved onto the next.
It was a biblical slaughter.
Bright red blood slicked the floor of the cavern. The pond had changed from a mineral blue to scarlet. Bodies were heaped in mounds. And still the ratfolk kept coming.
I implemented my Onyx Armor at one point, allocating Noctis’ power to my Chest Slot. The armor soaked up kinetic damage—sword blows and arrow strikes and the like—and stored that energy up until I was able to release it as a blast of Chaos Magic through a conduit set into the middle of the armor.
I fought with my hands, breaking bones with punches, rupturing organs with spinning kicks and murderous knee strikes. I instructed my squad to focus on protecting themselves and told them that I needed to allow some of our enemies’ blows to land on me.
After a while, the Onyx Crystal hanging around my chest throbbed with heat and knew that the magical reservoir was full. Using my mind to access this external source of energy, I directed my chest at the milling, cutlass-toting mob of ratfolk near me and blasted a swathe through them. The stink of burning hair and cooking meat filled the cavern as the energy lanced through the ratfolk. Those caught by the beam of sizzling white and black Chaos Magic were torn limb from limb. Skin cracked, fat melted, and a few rat bastards burst into spontaneous thaumaturgical flame.
Finally, I noticed that the ratfolk were coming less frequently. As my companions and I hacked them down, broke them apart, and shot them to pieces, fewer and fewer of the foul humanoids were left to fill the gaps we left in their ranks.
Just when I thought that I might leave my squad to clean up the rest while I found Diggens Azee and asked him for one of those tinnies of his, another tremor rocked the cavern.
This juddering shake was accompanied by a deep bass boom that shook the cave like a drum.
Boom.
Boom.
The thought of the tin of beer shriveled in my mind like a dry leaf in a firestorm.
The remaining ratfolk started chattering and hissing amongst themselves, their twitching human-like paws dropped their weapons and they began turning and scarpering for the hole they had burrowed or blown through the wall.
We cut them down even as they ran, for all of us thought that every one of these mindless killers would be one less that could potentially kill an Empire trooper.
Diggens appeared at my elbow. “You know,” the gnoll said, “they might be running, but they ain’t running from us.”
A long, low preening cry echoed around the chamber, as the last of the ratfolk ran screeching around the pond, aiming to gain access to the deep dark of the tunnel they had come through. The sound came from Renji’s sleek, molten silver Steel Dragon, Corvar. Renji had allotted her to her Leg Slot, and so the gorgeous creature was visible now.
Corvar let loose another one of the keening wails, her bullwhip like tail lashing the air in agitation. The mercurial beast had her head down and her eyes closed. I noticed that she was quivering strangely.
“What’s going on with Corvar?” I shot at the djinn.
Renji shook her head, frowning and looking around the body-littered cavern.
Without warning, the rough-cut crystals hanging around my neck and containing the magical essences of Garth and Noctis began to quiver too, in much the same way that Corvar was.
“What draws near, lads?” I asked the two dragons that shared my mind.
“Uh, I feel something,” Garth said with adolescent helpfulness. “I’ve never felt anything like it, though. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think that it is good.”
“Noctis?” I asked.
I felt Noctis’ thought quest outward like a plant’s tendril toward a patch of sunlight.
In his ancient, patient, and businesslike voice, the Onyx Dragon said, “That is an unbound dragon.”
“Unbound?” I asked.
I could feel Noctis’ interest unfurling like a burning fern frond.
“A wild dragon,” he rumbled through the telepathic pathways of my mind. “That is a wild dragon.”
Chapter 12
No sooner had Noctis hit me with this startling bit of news than the dragon crashed through the hole that the ratfolk had burrowed.
It was a great, mean brute of a thing, possessing none of the refinement of the dragon companions of me or my dragonmancer friends. It bowled through the entrance of the tunnel like a subway train that had jumped its rail. It was about the same size as one, now that I came to look at it. The wild dragon’s broad, strong forelegs ripped fresh rock from the tunnel entrance as it bulled its way out of the too small space, crushing ratfolk that were trying to flee from it under its claws.
“A d-d-dragon?” Rupert said, his face sagging at the awesome spectacle of the dirty bronz
e-colored creature. “Is that the ratfolk’s backup or something?”
The dragon stretched forth a thick neck, opened its huge maw wide, and let rip with a jet of orange flame that engulfed the last of the panicking ratfolk. The helpless creatures were roasted to cinders where they stood, utterly consumed by the torrent of brilliant, lethal flame. When the wild dragon snapped its jaws shut, all that was left of the ratfolk were a few puddles of liquid metal.
Gabby made an eh-eh sound in his throat.
Bjorn nodded, not taking his eyes from the magnificent killing machine and said, “I know less than fuck all about most things, but I’d say that the dragon is most definitely not on the side of the ratfolk.”
“I agree with that fat hairy lad,” Diggens Azee said amiably.
“Who the fuck does that dragon belong to?” Tamsin asked as the dragon picked up one of the many bodies that lay jumbled around the area and chewed it up in its massive jaws.
“Listen to your dragon,” Ashrin said in a hushed, almost reverential voice. “That is a wild, untamed dragon.”
“Wild dragon?” Renji asked. “Have any of you here ever heard of such a thing?”
Judging by the look on the faces of the assembled members of the coteries I guessed that nobody ever had. Nobody except Rupert, who had stuck up his hand like a kid in a classroom.
“I read about them in a book someone lent me from the Grand Library,” he said. “This rather fanciful bit of poetry mentioned wild dragons and the kobolds who worshipped them.”
“Before now, if someone had come mouthing off to me about wild dragons, I would have told them to crawl out of the bottle and dry out,” Jazmyn said. “But you cannot deny the evidence of your own eyes.”
The dragon bent to another of the ratfolk corpses and began to tear it apart, splitting the belly with a claw so that it could get to the still warm, steaming entrails.
