Protector

by J. A. Armitage

  “Father, can you take the Slayers home?” I asked as I looked to Spear. “Spear, he’ll need someone to shift into their dragon form to get them up the cliff so they can go through the tunnels to the other side.”

  “Okay, but we’ll take them right back to Dronias. It’s not much difference. I doubt anyone will get sick in the time it takes to get there and back.”

  “Hang on a minute,” my father interjected. “Why are the Slayers going back to Dronias?”

  “Because Dronias is the first place they’ll look for the swords. Everyone there needs to be kept out of harm’s way, too.”

  “So, you want me to just go home and hide, do you?” he blustered.

  “Not at all. I want you to organize the village, get everyone safe, and then come back so we can plan how to deal with the Goblins.”

  He nodded. “I understand what you are saying, but I’m needed here. I’ll send the others back, putting Xander in charge. Jasper can go and take your mother to safety.”

  I turned to Alpha. “I know you want to go home. I’m not going to stop you. I’m sure the dragons will fly you back up the—”

  “Stop right there,” he said, cutting me off. “It’s true that this fight does not involve us. We have no swords or souls, but I would not think of abandoning you at this time. I would not abandon Morganna, and I know she will want to stay to fight.”

  “Too bloody right I will!” she responded, giving him a kiss.

  “That’s settled then. We’ll make sure everyone in Frokontas and Dronias are safe and then we’ll meet back here and decide what we are going to do.”

  I picked up my tea and drank it down in one gulp. I had a feeling that I was going to be too busy over the next few days to be drinking tea again. I stood up as if to leave, but before I could, Ash came rushing through the door. His face was red and he was breathing heavily as if he’d just been running. Fear was etched onto his face.

  “What is it?” Edeline asked in alarm, taking in the expression on her son’s face.

  “Good, you’re all together,” he wheezed. “You need to come with me. Something weird is happening.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ash didn’t give us time to question him; he was already out the door. Chairs squeaked on the floor as everyone else stood up in a panic. All I could think as we followed Ash out of the house was that the Goblins were attacking. Would we even be safe out there? Would everyone else be safe? We’d not had the chance to tell everyone to stay indoors yet. Had we run out of time?

  Part of me remembered Morganna saying that they didn’t attack individually. They didn’t fight in the way we did with swords, but then I remembered her telling us that a war was coming. If they were going to attack, they would do it with what was left of their magic. As we ran outside, I looked for signs of what this magic might be, but apart from a few startled people still around the fire pit, nothing had changed. I looked upward toward the Goblin village. It was impossible to see from here, but I figured if anything was going to come for us, that was the direction it would come from.

  Everything appeared normal there, too. The sky was a lovely shade of pale blue with a few clouds lazily scudding across it. There was nothing to suggest that we were close to an attack. The only sounds I could hear were the usual sounds of birdsong. If it wasn’t for the panicked look on Ash’s face, I wouldn’t have thought this day was different from any other. He was already a long way ahead, sprinting, it seemed, to Spear’s house. I felt a knot in my stomach at the thought that it might be something to do with the sick dragons. Maybe something weird was happening to them and it had nothing to do with the Goblins after all.

  I watched Ash run up the stairs to Spear’s front door ahead of me. A minute later and I followed, with the others behind me. Ash stood in the entrance hall, bent doubled over as if completely winded by the run.

  “What is it?” asked Spear, crashing in behind me.

  “Come with me.” Ash beckoned us into a room I’d not been in before. It was sparsely decorated with only a couple of chairs. In the very center were two piles of swords. I knew them immediately. On the left were the swords that I’d freed the dragon souls from and on the right were the swords I had yet to do. Seeing them side by side, it was obvious which were which. The ones with the souls still in them looked brand new. They sparkled, whereas the others were dull with burn marks on them from when the dragons had escaped.

  Behind me, the others filed in as Ash pointed to the pile of sparkling swords. I tried to figure out what was wrong, but they looked the same as they always did. There was something wrong with the air though. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was a feeling that something was wrong. The hair on my arms stood on end.

  “Goblin magic,” Morganna said. “It’s strong here. They must be using a lot of it.”

  So that’s what I could feel. The room felt charged somehow, but apart from the feeling, I couldn’t see exactly what the Goblins had done.

  “What did you see, Ash?” asked Fiere.

  “When you all went into our house, I decided to check on the sick dragons. I’d just got to the house when I heard a loud bang. When I came inside, there was another bang. Actually, it was more like a popping sound. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was making it. The swords. They are disappearing.”

  Almost as soon as he’d said it there was a loud popping sound followed by a whoosh of wind. One of the swords disappeared into thin air in a flash of light.

  “Since I last looked, about ten have disappeared just like that.”

  “Ten in the last fifteen minutes. At this rate, they’ll all be gone by the end of the day,” I said.

  As I spoke there was another pop. This time, I dove on the top sword that was glowing slightly. The whoosh of wind flew past my ears and the sword lit up brightly before disappearing from my hands, scalding them as it went.

  “I think I’m going to need more of your cream Edeline,” I said, looking down at my red palms. They weren’t burned badly, but enough to know that it was impossible to stop the swords from disappearing.

  “Are you ok?” asked Ash, running over to me.

  I nodded. “It’s nothing major.”

  Ash rolled his eyes. “Why is it that whenever something explodes, you are in the center of it?”

  “It hardly exploded,” I countered. “That’s not really the problem right now. Our main concern is knowing if this is all the Goblins are going to do or should we expect worse to come?”

  All eyes pointed at Morganna who shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I already told you that I was theorizing.”

  “Well, it certainly seems that you were right about the Goblins wanting the swords. If they are taking them that way, by magic, then I assume that they won’t need to come into Frokontas. However, I don’t want to leave it to chance. We’ll follow the original plan and get everyone safely in the cliff-side houses before planning what to do next. Edeline, Fiere, can you go and round up as many people in the village as you can and get them to the cliffs? Alpha and Morganna, can you go and knock on the doors of people in the houses there and ask them to let the others in? Tell them I said they have to if they refuse.”

  The four nodded their heads and made to leave, but my father stopped them.

  “Wait. What about the swords?”

  “What about them?” replied Spear. “They’ve gone and we can’t stop the goblins from taking more.” Just as he said it there was another pop and whoosh of wind and another went. “See?” pointed Spear. “We’ll deal with it later, but now I have to get my people and your people to safety.”

  “What I mean is,” began my father patiently, or as patiently as my father ever was, “if Morganna is right and they are taking the swords to use the dragon souls to turn into magic, wouldn’t it be better to let the villagers fend for themselves and get the rest of us up the mountain before they essentially kill those dragons?”

  We all looked at him as his words sank in. We had to make a decisio
n and fast.

  “What do you think?” asked Spear, surprising me. Everyone looked at me.

  They wanted me to make the decision. The weight of everything felt heavy upon my shoulders. If I chose wrongly it could cost a great many lives. I weighed up what we should do before speaking.

  “I didn’t see any signs of magic outside, but we are vulnerable here. This valley is enclosed which makes us sitting ducks. I say we go with the original plan and get everyone to the cliffs as quickly as possible.” I looked down at the pile of swords. There were still a lot there. It would be a few hours before they all vanished. We had a bit of time. Not much, but enough.

  “We’ll all go. It will be quicker with the eight of us doing it. Then we can work out what we are going to do from there.”

  “Who’s going to guard the swords?” asked Edeline as another one vanished into thin air.

  “There’s no point keeping guard over them. We can’t stop them disappearing, whether we watch them or not. We need someone to stay here to watch over the sick, though. There are still a few people inside the house and the dragons in the building in the garden.”

  “I’ll stay,” Ash said. “Just make sure you come back for me when you go up the mountain. I don’t want to miss out on some prime Goblin kicking.”

  “Thank you,” I said, kissing his cheek.

  The eight of us dashed out of the house, with my father turning one way to the makeshift hospital and everyone else racing into the village. Spear and Edeline took the farmhouses while the rest of us knocked on doors in the village center.

  It took nearly two hours to get everyone into the cliff houses. Many of the dragons were scared and more than a few had to be persuaded to leave their own houses. With each second that passed, the fear in me grew. Fear that we were about to be attacked down here, fear that we were leaving it too late to save the dragons in the swords, and the nagging thought that I could have solved the problem by using the swords to cut myself, thus releasing them all. I tried to put the thought to one side. I would be dead long before I got through all of them, and yet I still felt guilty, as though I should have done more.

  “I think that’s everyone,” puffed Spear as we met around the fire pit. A few others had joined us after finding out why we were moving everyone. All the Wolvren were there, as were all the Slayers, save my father who was still back at Spear’s house. Ally and Stone were there, as were a number of other dragons.

  “We have quite an army,” I pointed out as we all formed a circle around the fire pit. I looked up to see Lucy looking down at us from a window. Firecracker was beside her, but the rest of her family were with me by the fire. A lump formed in my throat as I realized, there was a chance she’d never see any of them again if we did head up the mountain.

  There was still no sign of magic. The beautiful weather belied the situation we were in, but I knew then that we were at war. Whether the goblins came down to us, or we went up to them, it didn’t matter. Fighting them was inevitable.

  “Right, everybody!” I shouted. “You are here because we are going to fight the Goblins. This is not going to be a war without casualties. I’m not going to ask any of you to come with me up the mountain. The choice belongs to each and every one of you, but I want it to be clear that we are going up there to fight.”

  I looked at the people at the fireside, waiting for some of them to turn away, to go to the relative safety of the houses, but no one moved. All I saw was the resolute expressions on their faces. Every single one of them had been affected by the Goblins somehow. Every one of them had a reason to fight.

  “As you have all made your choice, follow me.” I turned toward the path that led away from the cliff face.

  “Follow you where?” one of the dragons asked. “I thought we were going up the mountain?”

  “Oh, we are, but there is someone we have to pick up first.”

  There was no way I was leaving my father behind. He might have been a lot of things, but he was a Slayer first and foremost. There was no one I wanted on my side more than him. We were going to kick some goblin butt!

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The bit of lawn in front of Spear’s house that wasn’t taken up by the dragon hospital was covered with armor, the metal and leather pieces laid out neatly.

  “What’s this?” I asked as my father came out of the house, his hands full of swords.

  “War!” replied my father with glee. He placed the swords on the ground, one next to each outfit. “I hope you don’t mind, Spear. I found all this stuff in your basement.”

  Spear shook his head. “It’s fine. As dragons, we have no need for armor. Our skin protects us, but as the town leader, I had some made just in case. It’s been sitting in my basement unused for years.”

  My father nodded, a wide grin on his face. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him so happy. The promise of war thrilled him. “The swords are our old swords, the ones without the dragon souls in them. I figure it’s about time we fill them with Goblin souls, don’t you?”

  “What about the other swords?” Morganna asked, referring to the ones with the souls still inside.

  “Oh, they are still vanishing.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand as though he didn’t care about the swords anymore. He was too focused on the upcoming battle.

  Seeing my father’s fervor and the weapons really brought home how dangerous this was going to be. I’d been on quite a number of adventures since my eighteenth birthday, but this time, there was a great possibility that someone was going to get killed.

  I’d spent my childhood imagining the Goblins as these sweet, peaceful characters who happily made swords. I’d spent my whole life dreaming of the day I’d get my own. Little did I know that would be the day my life would change. And oh, how it had changed. As I strapped into the armor my father had set out for me, I looked back over the past few months. It felt that everything I’d gone through had come to this point, this moment in time. I fingered the hilt of my sword, the same sword that had started all this. I’d worn it almost constantly since then. It had almost become a companion to me. It was the only one of the swords that still retained its shine. It was the only one we had that hadn’t had a dragon released from it. The Goblins wouldn’t try taking this one back since it didn’t hold a dragon soul, but even so, I held onto it as though a Goblin might sneak up and snatch it from me at any second.

  “We don’t have enough swords to go around,” pointed out my father as he pulled his own armor on. “Jules only freed a few dragons. We need to decide who gets one.”

  “I’ll take mine,” said Morganna, coming forward and picking it up, placing it in her scabbard.

  “And I’ve got mine. Jasper, here’s yours.” He threw the sword, still in its scabbard, to Jasper, who belted it around his waist. “Who else wants one?”

  “We don’t need them,” said Ash, referring to the dragons. They didn’t need armor either. Their skin was armor enough.

  There were still so many people without swords. None of the Wolvren had one and most of the Slayers didn’t. The armor we were wearing was not really fit for purpose. It was nothing like the armor that everyone owned in Dronias. Back there, every villager had theirs fitted to them. Everything was made to measure by a tailor in the village. Here, we were wearing a cobbled together mishmash of items, none of which really fit, and most which offered very little protection.

  The Goblins were no more warriors than the dragons were, but they had swords. They had our Slayer swords, not to mention all the other weapons they had made over the years. Who was to say if they had stockpiled some or not? They most definitely had armor, I’d seen them wearing it. And let’s not forget magic. It might have been running low, but the disappearing swords told us they weren’t completely out of it yet.

  Another problem we had was clothing. The only way we could get up the mountain was if the dragons carried us and to do that, they had to be naked. That meant they wouldn’t be able to change back once we were up t
here, not unless we took clothes with us. Unfortunately, taking bags full of clothes would slow us down in a fight. In the end, I came up with a solution.

  “Dragons. Drop your clothes in this sack. I’ll take it up the mountain and drop it once we get to the top.”

  The dragons nodded and one by one, they went behind the hospital to change.

  There were more Slayers and Wolvren combined than there were dragons, so we had to sit two people on each. Morganna hopped on Ash’s back just behind me, my father and Jasper jumped up on Spear, Xander and Alpha sat upon Fiere’s back, and the rest found others to fly on.

  “In my entire life, never did I dream that one day I’d be flying on a dragon,” shouted my father as Spear ran into a take-off. I heard my father give a whoop of joy as they leaped into the sky.

  In any other circumstance, his delight in flying on the back of a dragon would have me grinning from ear to ear, but I was a bag of nerves as we set off, taking up the second position behind Spear. Morganna held tightly to me as we soared through the air. Below me, the other dragons were ascending in formation as Frokontas grew smaller and smaller.

  Knowing the Goblins would have come to this point with or without me didn’t lessen my anxiety. Their magic running out now would have happened anyway, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty, as if this was somehow my fault. I tried shaking the thought away. If I’d not come up the mountain on my eighteenth birthday, the Slayers would have continued slaying and there would have been more dragon souls trapped in the swords ready to be turned into magic by the Goblins. The ones that had been freed would still be in there. Still, the thought of all the people I loved flying up to fight an army of Goblins who had magic to command made me feel sick to my stomach. If anyone was injured or worse, I wasn’t sure I’d forgive myself.

  The sun shone down on the peak of the mountain, glistening off the snowy cap. It was so bright, I had to close my eyes as we landed so I wasn’t blinded by the glare. As planned, we didn’t stop right at the entrance to the Goblin village but flew right over it and landed in the snow farther up the mountain. Ash fell into a dive before leveling out and landing right next to Spear, Jasper, and my father.