Protector

by J. A. Armitage

  Krikor arched a brow. “What makes you think that? I have no interest in where Slayers go once they’ve taken their swords.”

  “You might not care about the Slayers, but you do care where they go because you care where your precious swords end up. Isn’t that right?”

  “I might like to keep an eye on them, yes,” replied Krikor smoothly. “But that doesn’t mean I know where they are.”

  He was lying and we all knew it. “Tell us where they are,” I said, holding my sword to his neck. I’d had just about enough of the garbage he was spouting.

  His eyes widened as he took in the sharp blade at his throat, but then he looked me in the eyes and grinned. “You won’t hurt me. I can read you like a book, remember? There’s a reason the swords empty their souls for you. You are an innocent. You’ll never purposefully hurt anyone, not even me.”

  I pushed the blade further, leaving a small cut on his neck. A small drop of blood worked its way down his leathery green skin. “Want to try me?” He was right. I would find it difficult to kill, but when I thought of all the dragon souls he’d helped capture, the dragons that were now sick and might die because of the swords he made, I actually thought I might be able to do it.

  He held his hands up but didn’t drop eye contact. He was goading me into doing it. I felt the anger rise within me. Could I do it? Could I really kill him to get what I wanted?

  And then it hit me. Killing him wouldn’t get me what I wanted. Killing him would get me nowhere.

  I lowered my sword.

  “I knew it.” Krikor sneered.

  “Yes, you did. You knew I wouldn’t kill you, but you also know that I could. You saw into my mind. You saw how angry I am. Why have you been lying to us for so long?”

  “Why should I tell you the truth? You come to me, time after time, even though I’ve told you that you are not welcome. You already know how to free the souls of the dragons and yet you wouldn’t accept it when I told you. You know that there are other Slayers who come to us for swords, and yet you are here again. I don’t know where they are. Is that what you want to know? I was keeping an eye on them, but they left their village a few months ago. I don’t know where they went to. Are you happy now?”

  “Not particularly. Yet again, you’ve told us nothing. We are no closer to helping the dragons now than when we walked through your door the first time.”

  “That is no concern of mine. Why should I care if you free the dragons or not? Selling swords was my job. If you misuse them, then that is on you.”

  It was clear that I wasn’t about to get any information out of him. He had a way of not really answering any questions meaningfully. Getting a straight answer out of him would be unlikely.

  “Talking of selling swords,” interrupted Morganna. “I need a new one. My last one is ruined thanks to Julianna letting the dragons out of it.”

  “You have no money,” Krikor stated.

  “That is true, but I do have some Goblin magic left. Sell me a sword and you can have that.”

  Krikor raised an eyebrow intrigued. “You have our magic and yet you chose not to use it to see us.”

  “I didn’t need to. It was pretty obvious you were all still here. We could still hear them working down in the mines.”

  “Hmm. I guess I’ll have to do better,” replied Krikor thoughtfully. “However, I cannot sell you a sword.”

  “And why not?”

  “We do not make swords anymore.” I looked at his odious face, split by a wide grin

  Another lie. I’d seen a pile of them in the mine. I thought about all the lives that had been ruined by this Goblin. The dragons, suffering the loss of their loved ones. The Slayers, giving their innocence to fight an unnecessary war against a friendly species Something in me snapped. I picked my sword up, raising it upward, ready to swing. With months and months of pent-up rage coming to a climax, I swung at the small Goblin’s neck with a scream.

  I braced myself for the impact, the feeling of resistance before the blade sliced the Goblin’s head off, but it never came. I blinked, trying to register what had happened. The scenery had changed. We were no longer in the conference room. We were outside. I looked around, trying to get a sense of what had happened. Morganna stood beside me, but Krikor was nowhere to be seen.

  “What happened? Where are we?”

  “I used what was left of my Goblin magic to transport us outside. Now that the glimmer has been erased, I could build up enough energy to use the magic. We are just above the entrance to the Goblin city. Look.”

  I looked down the mountain a little way. The small green door was still hanging off its hinges. “Why did you do that?” I asked, still feeling angry.

  “I didn’t want you to kill him,” she replied simply.

  I thought about her response for a few seconds before realizing why. “You knew if I killed him, I’d no longer be innocent. If I’m not innocent, I won’t be able to set the dragons free.”

  “Actually, I’d not thought of that. I stopped you killing him because I like you and I know that you’d never be able to live with yourself.”

  Her answer brought peace to me, and the anger I’d felt just moments before now dissipated. She was right. Murdering someone, even someone as repellent as Krikor, would only cause me more pain. Yet I couldn’t help but think that we’d made yet another wasted journey up this mountain. I looked around for Ash, feeling dejected. It was only then that I realized that he wasn’t there. Ash was missing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Ash?” I shouted, stumbling down the mountain to where we’d left him. Beneath my feet, the shale-like rocks made every step a potential hazard.

  “Don’t panic. He’s probably behind the boulder,” called Morganna behind me.

  It was possible but unlikely. Why would he be hiding behind a boulder? When I got to the boulder, I didn’t find Ash behind it, but I saw something much worse. Shreds of fabric lined the ground. Shreds that I recognized immediately as the clothes Ash had been wearing. I picked up the biggest bit—a part of his shirt. There was no mistaking it. It was Ash’s, alright.

  I held it out for Morganna to see as she rounded the boulder. “He shifted so quickly, he tore his clothes in the process.”

  “Is that usual?” asked Morganna raising her eyebrows.

  “No. He always takes his clothes off before he shifts. He’s meticulous about it. I’ve never seen him leave his clothes in this state before.”

  Panic filled me as I wondered why he had felt the need to go so against character. Peering around, I realized there must be some kind of threat or he wouldn’t have done it. I saw nothing but the valley and the tops of the trees that marked the border of the Triad Mountains so far below us. I looked around and up, but there was only the gray shale that covered the desolate landscape right up to the snowline of the mountain’s peak.

  “Something happened. He wouldn’t just leave us,” I panted, running back up to the entrance of the Goblin city.

  “Stop!” yelled Morganna, following me. “I agree, it does seem odd that he would just vanish, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the Goblins.”

  I hesitated. “What makes you think that?” Who else could it have been?

  “Goblins do not fight. Not the way Slayers do. They use cunning over brawn. It’s unlikely that they would have come out here to get involved in a fist fight. Even if they had weapons, they would have been no match for a dragon and they know that. They would have had to use magic.”

  “They probably did use magic,” I argued.

  “No. Magic leaves traces. Just like inside earlier when I could sense that magic was being used, I can tell you with absolute certainty that no magic has been used out here recently.”

  I wavered, halfway between going through the doorway and outside. “Are you sure?” I trusted her, but I couldn’t see where else he could be.”

  “I’m positive.”

  My mind whirred, trying to come up with a possible scenario in
which he would have disappeared. “What if he just decided to walk down the tunnel to find us?”

  “What? As a dragon? That tunnel was built for Goblins. There is no way that a full-grown dragon would be able to squeeze through it. No. Something else happened, but I don’t know what. Perhaps we should head back and see if he went home.”

  I shook my head. “He wouldn’t have gone home. Not without me.” He’d flown up all this way to protect me. What would be the point of leaving the second I went inside? But what other option did I have?

  Morganna began the slow descent down the mountain back to Frokontas. I hesitated, taking one last look around, and followed her. Something was wrong, but I could hardly stay up the mountain on my own.

  “The flare!” I said, remembering I had it in my backpack. “We can set it off.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “Maybe Ash will see it and come to us. Maybe the people down in Frokontas will see it and fly up here.”

  “I thought you didn’t want the dragons flying? Surely it’s safer that they stay in their human forms as long as possible?”

  I sighed. If Ash was in his dragon form, then he was more likely to develop the illness. Why, oh why, did he shift?

  “What’s that?” asked Morganna, peering down the hill.

  Far below us, something was moving. I pulled out a pair of binoculars I’d packed and focused on whatever it was. When I saw what it was, I couldn’t believe it. I passed the binoculars over to Morganna. When she saw who was coming up the hill, she gasped.

  “What the...? What are they doing here?”

  Alpha and the rest of the Wolvren were charging up the hill. Even though they were so far below us, they were clearly rushing.

  “Something’s happened in Frokontas,” theorized Morganna. “Maybe that’s why Ash left so suddenly?”

  I took the binoculars back and trained them toward Frokontas, but I couldn’t see it from here. Ash wouldn’t have been able to either, not even with his amazing sight. The only way to find out the problem was to run down the hill to meet the Wolvren.

  I thought it would be easier to go downhill than up, but with the small rocks, we had to take it slowly for fear of slipping. The Wolvren got bigger as we ran toward each other. When we were close enough to see their features, I wasn’t comforted by the look of alarm on their faces.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” I huffed, trying to get my breath back as they approached.

  “Didn’t you see it?” responded Alpha. “There was smoke on the mountaintop. We thought the Goblins had set fire to their home with you in it.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Morganna.

  Alpha, in a rare show of affection, hugged her close. “I don’t know. I just saw the smoke and I panicked. I asked the dragons to carry us up the cliff face so we could come and check on you. They refused to carry us all the way in case they fell ill, so we ran from the cliff top.”

  I looked behind me and up to the entrance of the goblin village. “There’s no smoke,” I said, pointing upward.

  “You can’t see it from here, but around the side, you could see it from Frokontas. Not that it matters. Now that we know you are both safe, we can take you home.”

  “No. Ash is up there.” Just because I couldn’t see any smoke didn’t mean there wasn’t any. If Ash was in trouble, I needed to get to him. I turned around and began to run back up the mountain, not even hesitating to see if the others were following me.

  I heard it before I saw it. About a hundred feet above the entrance to the Goblin village, there came the sound of growling. There was an unmistakable smell of burning in the air, and as I rounded the mountain, I finally saw the smoke that the Wolvren had described.

  This side of the mountain was much steeper than the side I was used to. I had to be much more careful as I hedged my way around the side of the peak. Snow crunched under my feet, snow that never melted no matter the time of year thanks to the cold temperatures this high on the mountain.

  “Ash!” I called out his name, hoping the growling would stop, but it wasn’t just him making the noise. There were two distinctive growls and it sounded as though they were snapping at each other. “Ash!” I screamed again, sending a small avalanche of snow down the mountain just ahead of me. Once the snow had settled, I carefully walked further around the mountain until I saw him.

  To my surprise, the other set of growls was not a mountain lion or bear as I’d thought, but another dragon. A yellow-scaled dragon, slightly smaller than Ash, but with dagger-like teeth and bright green eyes. They were on a ledge high above and hadn’t noticed me yet.

  I was just about to call out for the third time when the earth began to shudder. The Wolvren and Morganna had followed, thundering around the mountain, and had set the snow off again. My feet slipped out from under me, sending me sliding down the mountainside alongside the snow.

  Everything in my vision turned white as I began to topple, over and over in the snow. The snow covered me as I tumbled, my hands scrambling and finding nothing but cold wetness, and I fell to my certain death. Either I was going to go over a precipice and die of the fall, or I would be buried in the snow. I wanted to scream, but the snow muffled any sound I made.

  A sharp pain seared my side and I found myself falling upward. In my disorientation, I didn’t even question my change of direction, just put it down to dizziness, but as my vision cleared and the snow fell away beneath me, I saw that I wasn’t falling at all, but being lifted.

  The pain I’d felt was, in fact, Ash’s talons in my side as he pulled me from the snow. Fire escaped his lips, directed toward the yellow dragon, which had decided to give chase. The yellow dragon breathed fire right back at Ash, narrowly missing me hanging below him. Ash didn’t flinch. He wouldn’t have felt it thanks to his thick dragon hide, but he turned and headed back toward the mountain, dipping in low and dropping me in a pile of snow near Morganna and the Wolvren.

  “Are you ok?” Morganna asked, rushing towards me. Her and Alpha pulled me out of the snow and stood me back upright on the path.

  “I’m fine, I think. Just a couple of bruises.” I brushed myself off as I watched Ash continue his flight with the yellow dragon hot on his tail. They both headed back around the mountain to the entrance of the Goblin village.

  “Who was that chasing Ash?” Alpha asked.

  “That is the big question,” I replied. “I honestly have no idea.”

  I took the path back to the safer side of the mountain extremely slowly, cautioning the others to do the same. I whispered to them to keep their voices down as we didn’t want to start another avalanche. If we made it to below the snow line, we’d be much safer.

  I could hear the snarling again. It seemed the yellow dragon had caught up with Ash. I’d seen plenty of yellow dragons in Frokontas, but I’d never seen one so bright as this one. I tried to picture who it was but came up with nothing. It had to be one of the newly-escaped dragons from my father’s sword, but why would he have come up the mountain and what reason did he have for attacking Ash?

  I finally made it back to the relative safety of the side of the mountain I was used to and saw Ash again. His giant claw was on the back of the yellow dragon, holding it flat on the ground. It seemed that Ash had won this particular fight, although he wasn’t unscathed. Both dragons were covered in scratches and bite marks from the fight.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The yellow dragon tried breathing fire at Ash by twisting its neck and aiming for him, but this time, only a puff of smoke emerged. It was apparent that this dragon was weak. As I got closer, I could see the tiredness in its eyes. Chasing Ash through the sky had zapped it of its strength. Still, I didn’t want to go too close just in case he found a new burst of energy to barbecue me. I stayed a good distance away, watching to see what would happen next. At first, I thought it was shrinking, but quickly realized it was shifting. As the body turned from a dragon form to that of a human, Ash took a step back. Once it
wasn’t a dragon anymore, the rest of us could watch it, allowing Ash to shift back, too.

  “I need some clothes,” I said, turning to the Wolvren pack. “Extra coats, tunics, anything you have on.”

  It was cold up on the mountain and most of the Wolvren had a lot of layers on. Alpha took off his own coat and handed it to me, followed by a few of the others, removing just one item of clothing each. Between them, we managed to get two full outfits together, one for Ash and one for the yellow dragon. I dropped the clothes for Ash by his feet. He chose to go back behind the boulder we’d left him at originally. The other dragon changed where he was, too weak to do otherwise or unconcerned about being seen in the nude.

  As soon as he turned back, it became apparent he wasn’t a he at all, but a young woman. Her yellow scales translated into a mane of long, luscious blonde hair, and her sparkling green eyes followed her from one form to the other. I threw the Wolvren clothes at her and waited until she dressed before attempting to speak to her.

  She dressed slowly, keeping an eye on all of us. Now that she was in her human form, she looked nothing like the terrifying beast she had been as a dragon. She looked like a young woman, younger than me even, and the fear in her eyes was unmistakable. This was no monster. She was a young girl who was afraid. As I moved toward her, she stepped back.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, pulling a first aid kit from my bag and holding it out to show her. “I just want to help you.”

  She turned and ran, but unfortunately for her, she ran right into Ash, who had just appeared from behind the boulder. She tried to escape, but it was no use; she was too weak. He carried her over and set her down on the ground. I opened the first aid kit and began to work on her cuts and scrapes.

  “You’ll feel better once I’ve bandaged you up,” I assured her, taking in her wide eyes and look of terror. She didn’t say a word as I cleaned her up and bandaged the worst of her scratches.