Dragon Magus 1: A Progression Fantasy Saga

by DB King

  A globe of white light flashed into being around Raphael, just in time to meet yet another beam blazing from Huo Xian’s index finger. The Grand Prince’s spell shattered Fenix’s Spirit Shield, but another one sprang into existence. The beam burst through that one as well, turning it into fragments of scattered light. Fenix called forth yet another, then another. By Raphael’s count, Huo Xian’s beam burned through a dozen Spirit Shields in the blink of an eye before it even began to slow down, giving Raphael just enough time to roll awkwardly out of its way.

  Raphael glanced frantically over his shoulder as Eliza cried out in pain. She’d been standing nearly five paces away from the path of the Grand Prince’s spell, but the heat in its wake still left a flash burn on her cheek.

  “Well done, battlemage,” Huo Xian said, bringing his hands together in slow, mocking applause. “Casting the same spell a dozen times so quickly? If anything, that would just about qualify you for service as a jester at my court. ”

  “Well, here’s a jest for you! I hope you choke on it!” Fenix thrust his fists out. Chain Lightning blazed forth, streaking past Raphael and reaching for the Grand Prince.

  A wide smile on his face, Huo Xian raised his left hand. A vortex of flames spiraled into existence over the Grand Prince’s palm. It caught and drew Fenix’s Chain Lightning into its swirling depths. Huo Xian raised his right hand and opened his palm. Another fiery vortex churned into being before it.

  He’s going to throw Fenix’s spell back at him! Surging to his feet, Raphael threw himself into the path of the Chain Lightning that roared from the blazing spiral over Huo Xian’s right palm. He caught Fenix’s spell in his hands, containing its might within his draconic armor.

  The battlemage’s Chain Lightning bucked and roared in his grasp, threatening to break free. Gasping from exertion, Raphael lined his hands up with Huo Xian, opened his palms, and released Fenix’s spell. Lightning streaked forth from him, but it went awry, lancing upward into the tree canopy and setting it ablaze. The Grand Prince raised an eyebrow and glanced at the smoldering leaves and branches many feet above his head.

  Can’t aim something that jumps and kicks in your hands, Raphael thought, panting as he fought to catch his breath.

  “A solid effort,” Huo Xian acknowledged, “but a useless one, nevertheless. Your Spell Vectors have never been opened, and there’s no trace of Spell Dust around you, so it’s curious how you managed to do that without magic. Perhaps you possess some artifact or item enchanted to resist lightning? Ah, no matter. I don’t have all day, so it’s really time for you all to die.”

  The Grand Prince pointed at them with the index finger of his right hand once more. “Just stay still and don’t try to dodge. It’ll hurt much less this way.”

  Another fiery beam blazed forth from Huo Xian’s fingertip, this one much faster and hotter than any other spell Raphael had seen the Grand Prince cast previously.

  Raphael dropped his glaive and thrust his forearms across his face. With Fenix and Eliza directly behind him, there was no way he would try to dodge Huo Xian’s spell, even if he could. He had to stop it right there and then and trust in his draconic armor to withstand its fury.

  The fiery beam tore into Raphael’s forearms, slicing through the scales of golden light above his flesh. Inspired by Fenix’s casting of successive Spirit Shields, Raphael called yet another suit of draconic armor into existence. It bowed and broke beneath Huo Xian’s spell as well. Raphael manifested one more, pouring every drop of his Ryu-To-Ki into the Third Brazier.

  As the fiery beam ripped the third draconic armor asunder, Raphael met it with a fourth, this one stronger than those that had come before. That, too, disintegrated beneath the might of Huo Xian’s spell, and the fiery beam was just a hair’s breadth from touching Raphael’s flesh and burning him from existence. But the fifth slowed it before breaking apart into slivers of golden light, and the sixth, wavering in and out of existence, halted it outright.

  Roaring, Raphael poured yet more Ryu-To-Ki into the Third Brazier. The light of the Dragon Meridian reached forth to touch the Fourth Brazier.

  And it came ablaze.

  Huo Xian’s spell sputtered out of existence, its power spent and its wrath played out harmlessly against Raphael’s draconic armor. He lowered his forearms and opened his eyes.

  The Grand Prince flinched from Raphael’s regard. Huo Xian’s languid expression was gone, replaced with one of vexed confusion.

  “What?” Huo Xian demanded. “How is that possible? Explain, vermin! How did you withstand my Annihilation Ray without magic?”

  Raphael ignored him, looking over his shoulder at Eliza and Fenix.

  “Are you both alright?” he asked. They nodded slowly, their eyes wide with surprise.

  “Raphael,” Eliza said, pointing at his back. It was only then that Raphael realized that he was unclad above the waist, the tatters of his leather armor having disintegrated beneath the fury of Huo Xian’s spell. “That mark. Between your shoulder-blades. What…?”

  “I was born with it,” he replied. “That’s what Koshi told me. I don’t know what it means.”

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s blazing with golden light now,” Fenix told him. “Does that mean you’ve acquired more Dragon Knight powers?”

  Raphael opened his mouth to reply, but Huo Xian was suddenly standing right between Eliza and Fenix. The Grand Prince swept his gaze over Raphael’s back.

  What? I didn’t see him move. Raphael spun on his heel to face Huo Xian.

  “Dragon Knight?” the Grand Prince asked. His hand shot out, snaring Fenix by the throat and pulling the battlemage close. Huo Xian raised Fenix high, dangling him a foot above the ground. “You’re saying that this youth is a Dragon Knight? But I thought the last one died a long time ago. And that mark on his back. I’ve never seen anything like it, not in all my centuries of war and scholarship. How can that be?”

  Gasping, Fenix squirmed and kicked, to no avail. Eliza drew her sword and cut at Huo Xian, but he sidestepped her blade, knocked her to the ground with a casual swing of his fist, and placed his heel on the back of her neck.

  “Ugh, how rude,” the Grand Prince complained. “If there’s anything that truly enrages me, it’s the impertinence of those who don’t know their station in life.”

  “Let them go!” Raphael demanded, charging at Huo Xian.

  But a cold, manic light had come into the Grand Prince’s eyes. He bared his teeth in a savage grin, and a network of bulging veins pulsed grotesquely at his temples. It was then that Raphael realized that though Huo Xian wore a man’s face and spoke the common tongue of the world’s nations, the Grand Prince had no greater claim to humanity than Raphael did. Both of them were something different, something created to be beyond—or beneath—humankind. The thought troubled Raphael more than he’d expected it to, but he forced it to the back of his mind, drowning it out with the light of the Dragon Meridian.

  Huo Xian tightened his grasp on Fenix’s throat and pressed down harder with his heel on Eliza’s neck. The battlemage went into spasms, and an agonized scream fell from Eliza’s lips.

  They would be dead before Raphael could reach them, and the few paces that he had to close seemed like a vast, insurmountable distance.

  I need to stop him! I need to strike him from afar! I need—

  “The Knight, Magus! The Knight!” Rayne said telepathically, the faerie dragon’s thoughts rife with panic. “Sunkiller!”

  Koshi’s bow! Raphael turned the light of the Dragon Meridian within himself—and it revealed something floating within the fiery depths of the Fourth Brazier. He reached for the object with his will and pulled it from his soul. A golden radiance pulsed from his hands, and he found himself holding the bow that Koshi had wielded in his bout against Sylvia.

  As Raphael brought Sunkiller up and pulled on its shining string, motes of light cascaded perpendicular to its length into an incandescent arrow, nocked and ready in position. Without knowing how he knew t
o do so, he aimed and loosed.

  The arrow of light slammed into Huo Xian’s wrist. It shattered and fell apart into dissipating golden threads, obviously unable to penetrate whatever protective enchantments the Grand Prince wore about his flesh and clothing. But it was enough to make Huo Xian flinch, release his grip on Fenix, and step away from Eliza.

  By then, Raphael had closed the distance. He let Koshi’s bow fall out of existence, clenched his fists, and threw a thunderous overhead punch at the Grand Prince’s face. At the same time, he unleashed all of the energy his draconic armor had absorbed from Huo Xian’s Annihilation Ray.

  His fist connected. A tremendous boom blasted through the stagnant silence permeating the woods. The impact hurled Raphael’s dark hair back from his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eliza and Fenix tumbling to the ground, ripped off their feet by the aftershock of displaced air. Raphael snapped his focus back to Huo Xian, expecting to see the Grand Prince reeling from the blow, beaten and bloodied.

  But Huo Xian wasn’t reeling. He wasn’t even hurt. Grimacing, the Grand Prince pushed Raphael’s fist away with the two fingers he’d used to block the punch.

  “Ugh. I forgot myself in the excitement at seeing that strange mark and actually touched these vermin,” Huo Xian muttered, shuddering and gagging in visible disgust. The cold light in his eyes was gone, and his delicate features had reassumed the mask of haughty disdain he’d worn since his arrival. “What a terrible day it’s been, running this errand for Father when I could be at the launch party of my latest line of cosmetics instead.”

  The Grand Prince backed several paces away fastidiously from Raphael. He produced a little spray bottle of expensive-looking glass from his robes, puffed some of its contents on his hands, and wiped his palms with a silk handkerchief, which he then tossed distastefully away onto the ground.

  “I’ll have to throw away my slippers too, and I’d just bought them yesterday, you know? What a waste,” Huo Xian complained bitterly. “See what you vermin did? If you’d only just all died obediently to begin with, all this wouldn’t have happened.”

  We’re outmatched. In every way. Raphael gritted his teeth and raised his fists. He kept all four draconic Braziers burning at their hottest. But I’m not going to just roll over and die. I’ll fight to my last breath. I hope Sylvia’s been successful, at least, so our deaths won’t be entirely in vain.

  Fenix and Eliza seemed to share his resolve, too. They strode forward to stand by his side. Chain Lightning and Explosive Orbs hovered over the battlemage’s palms. Eliza held her blade at the ready. Raphael exchanged a final glance with them as Huo Xian pointed at them once more, this time with the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

  “Please, do me the courtesy of just dying already, won’t you?” Huo Xian pleaded. “If I leave now, I might still be able to make it to the midnight wine-tasting at Duke Cheng’s jade palace.”

  “No one’s stopping you from leaving,” Raphael pointed out. “If you’ve got to go, then just go. Surely someone of your stature shouldn’t be mucking about here. It’s cold and damp, which can’t be good for all that silk you’re wearing.”

  “Finally!” Huo Xian sighed. “The first words of good sense I’ve heard all day. Silk doesn’t fare well in such humidity. And then there’s all the grime that just has to be building up on my jewelry in a place like this. I cannot wait to be far from here and somewhere deserving of my magnificence.”

  “You’d better be on your way, then,” Raphael said. “You wouldn’t want to miss out on Duke Cheng’s wine, right?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” Huo Xian lowered his hand and brought it to his chin instead. A thoughtful look came over his face. “I must admit this whole theater about you being a Dragon Knight has been mildly entertaining. Also, I have a feeling that no matter what I say, you vermin are still going to put up a fight, which will cost me precious minutes that I could use instead to hear my praises being sung.”

  “If you came here to kill Tiresias in the first place, you’ve already accomplished that goal, haven’t you?” Raphael persisted. “Why waste any more time in this disgusting place that is utterly undeserving of your presence?”

  “Hmm. That’s true. I did accomplish Father’s errand, and I don’t think Tiresias really told you much, anyway. He’s just never been the type to share, you know? I never did quite understand what Father ever saw in him.” The Grand Prince nodded, a faint look of approval dancing across his face. “Perhaps you are a slight notch above mere vermin, youth. For demonstrating such good sense, I suppose you do deserve a reward of sorts. Fine. I will spare your lives today, as a gesture of my unparalleled magnanimity and peerless grace.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Raphael replied.

  “His name isn’t ‘youth’,” Eliza spoke up, her eyes bright with pain and her jaw taut with anger. “His name is Raphael. I’m Eliza. And this is Fenix.” She gestured at the battlemage.

  Huo Xian shuddered again. “Ugh. What makes you think I care? I’m leaving now, lest my delicate sensibilities suffer further pollution from your lowly preoccupations. Consider yourself blessed for the honor of having met me and basking in my glorious presence, if only for the briefest moments of your inconsequential lives.”

  The Grand Prince turned to leave, only to stop in the middle of a pirouette that sent the silken ribbons a-flutter. “Wait. I don’t remember that being frozen when I arrived.”

  Huo Xian was looking at the river. It was entirely frozen, now a solid block of ice reaching beyond eyeshot and winding into the shadowy depths of the woods. Raphael sighed with relief. That meant Sylvia had succeeded and Vitoria was safe, at least for now. They still had to figure out some way of cleansing the river and making things right for the town once more, but that was a problem to be tackled later.

  “She did it!” Fenix cried. “We saved the town from the Death Druid!”

  Huo Xian waved dismissively. “Tiresias’s schemes concern me not, now that he’s dead. I care less for the vermin that populate this foul, diseased place. But freezing that river would take—”

  “Magic of the Highest Order? The type that could only come from a mage more powerful than you?” Sylvia whispered into Huo Xian’s ear. The elf was standing behind the Grand Prince and leaning over his shoulder.

  “What?” Huo Xian began. “Is that you, Shadowsoul? What are you—”

  Sylvia thrust her hands into the folds of Huo Xian’s robe. With a deft, disturbingly practiced motion, she ripped its lower half clean off, leaving the Grand Prince utterly exposed beneath the waist.

  Huo Xian shrieked in horror and covered himself as best as he could with his hands, but not before the war party had gotten a clear view of something Raphael was fairly certain they’d rather not have seen.

  “Ah, as unimpressive as I remember, little prince,” Sylvia said, flinging the portion of Huo Xian’s robe she’d torn off onto the ground and treading all over its silken length. She stroked the Grand Prince’s cheek with a finger, causing him to gag in disgust. “Do you still remember our last tryst? When was it, nearly fifty years ago?”

  “I expected this from you,” the elf continued, clenching one fist and patting the crook of her elbow with her other hand. For some reason, Raphael found the gesture extremely obscene. Judging from how Eliza was rolling her eyes and the grimace on Fenix’s face, he figured that he wasn’t too far off in his assessment of Sylvia’s behavior.

  “Little did I expect to find that you were more like this.” Sylvia extended her pinky finger and crooked it slightly. “What a sad day that was, but more so for you than me, I think.”

  Huo Xian was obviously in no mood to talk with the elf. He ran away, his hands between his legs.

  “Tian Mo! Tian Mo!” the Grand Prince screamed, directing his words toward the sky. “Get me out of here! Now!”

  A massive tentacle of smooth, gray flesh broke through the canopy and scooped Huo Xian up. Once again, Raphael caught sight of something colossal moving jus
t beyond the trees.

  “I’ll kill you for this, Shadowsoul!” the Grand Prince promised as he rose beyond eyeshot.

  “That’s what you said the last time!” Sylvia called after him. “And I’m still waiting!”

  “I’ll kill you all!” Huo Xian’s voice trailed off as the creature that carried him swooped away. Its flight brought it briefly above the war party, and its gigantic shadow cast everything around them into darkness for a full heartbeat.

  Whatever that thing is, it’s huge, and it can fly really quickly, Raphael thought, shaking his head in wonder as he walked over to his glaive and pulled it from the ground. The weapon was no longer on fire, but it was utterly ruined, its blade melted into shapelessness and its shaft scorched into charcoal. Raphael sighed as the glaive fell from his grasp in crumbling pieces. Hopefully, he would be able to get a replacement from the Guild’s armory.

  Flitting down from its perch in the trees, Rayne alighted on Raphael’s shoulder and nuzzled his cheek. “You prevail, Magus. And you’re safe. I’m happy.”

  Raphael patted the faerie dragon on the head. “Me too, Rayne. Me too.”

  “…why do I have a feeling that things have now become worse instead of better?” Fenix asked.

  “Because they are?” Eliza snapped, rounding on Sylvia. “Raphael already managed to talk some sense into the Chimeric Grand Prince, but then you had to come along and—”

  “Air out his undercarriage?” Sylvia finished, before bursting into laughter. “Did you see the look on his face?”

  “Yes, it was the face of someone who’s going to kill all of us when he sees us next. It’s one thing to fight for your life. It’s another to mortally insult a Chimeric Grand Prince,” Fenix said, falling to his knees and sighing. He turned to Eliza. “And you told him our names. That’s great. Absolutely fantastic, in fact.”