Champion of the Titan Games

by Brandon Mull

  “Guys,” Raxtus said from across the room, his form too perfectly blended with the environment for them to see him. “We’re in trouble.”

  “Because of the doors?” Warren asked.

  “I think that’s Pioleen,” Raxtus said.

  “Is he a baby?” Warren asked. “What does he do?”

  “If I’m right, she’s full grown and ancient,” Raxtus said. “No dragon was ever more powerful in magic. And no dragon was less predictable.”

  The little dragon buried its face in the puddle, then tipped its head back and gargled. It flapped one wing rhythmically, then the other.

  “She fell out of the stories long ago,” Raxtus said. “I should have guessed she became a guardian.”

  “She doesn’t seem to notice us,” Kendra said.

  “The doors,” Warren pointed out.

  Pioleen jumped in the puddle with both feet, then swished her tail in the water. Croaking caws followed.

  “Raxtus, are you pranking us?” Warren asked.

  Kendra stood in a cabin. An extremely old man, thin and wrinkled, with a few stringy hairs on his bald, veiny scalp, sat in a wooden rocking chair, bundled in blankets. A fire burned in the fireplace, popping and sending sparks up the chimney.

  The scene looked perfectly real. The details were right—the smells of the woodsmoke and the old man, his soft snoring, the scuffed floorboards, the way the flames made the shadows jitter.

  But Kendra knew it couldn’t be real. She was in the Dragon Temple with Warren, Tanu, and Raxtus. And the eerie magical dragon.

  “Pioleen?” Kendra asked. “Are you doing this?”

  She approached the old man, reaching out a hand to shake him awake.

  “Don’t bother,” said a female voice that made Kendra jump. The speaker was a face made of knotholes in the wall of the cabin. “You have bigger problems at hand.”

  Something crashed against the cabin door, and Kendra whirled. The next impact shook the entire cabin and left cracks in the door. Was it a battering ram? Kendra ran to the window at the rear of the cabin as a huge brown bear exploded through the front door with a furious roar. The bear overturned a table with a swipe, then picked up the old man in vicious jaws and shook him.

  Kendra yanked the rear window open and dove out into moonlit snow, an icy crunch breaking her fall. She lurched to her feet and started wading away from the cabin. The snow was almost two feet deep, powdery beneath an icy skin.

  The bear roared from inside the cabin and burst through the window, destroying part of the wall in the process. Kendra fumbled with her bow. The bear loped toward her, thick fur sloshing over fat and muscles, then reared up, giving a mighty bellow as its paws raked the air.

  Kendra pulled back the bowstring and was about to say “fifty,” to launch fifty simultaneous arrows at the beast, when she wondered what exactly she was really aiming at. None of this could be real, despite how authentic it looked and felt and sounded and smelled.

  Kendra lowered her bow, and the bear surged forward, slavering jaws agape, but stopped just short of biting her. She flinched away, falling onto her backside in the snow. The bear loomed over her. She felt its hot breath on her face, smelled its shaggy fur.

  But the beast did not make contact.

  The bear huffed slobber onto Kendra and shook its thick coat, spraying icy pinpricks of snow. Kendra detected no cues to suggest the scene was imaginary. She only had the knowledge that she had just been in the Dragon Temple with Warren, Tanu, and Raxtus. She felt tempted to wonder if the Dragon Temple had been a dream and this might be reality.

  Except why would she be in a cabin in a snowy wilderness?

  Raxtus had warned that Pioleen was magical.

  Was that goofy little dragon splashing in the puddle somehow generating all of this?

  The bear turned and started plodding away. Kendra arose. Where the skin of ice had broken, she scooped up a fluffy handful of snow, fingers stinging with impending numbness as she packed it into a snowball. She threw it and watched it burst against a tree trunk.

  A wild, angry cry startled Kendra, and she saw an ugly goblin racing toward her through the snow, coming from a stand of trees. Clad in furs and an oversized helm, the goblin raised a notched scimitar as he closed in.

  Kendra resisted the temptation to reach for her bow. This had to be part of the show. As the goblin drew near, Kendra resisted the urge to run away or defend herself. What if she accidentally hurt one of her friends?

  The goblin swung his sword as he came within reach. Kendra flinched, but the blade stopped short of her neck. Placing a hand on one hip, the goblin planted his slightly rusted scimitar in the snow. “None of you are any fun,” he complained in a female voice.

  “This isn’t real,” Kendra said.

  The goblin kicked up some snow. “It’s real enough.”

  “We’re on a mission,” Kendra said.

  “You seek something best left alone,” the goblin said. “I’ll tell you what. When this ends, you will have until the count of thirty to leave. If you don’t, I’ll squash you like bugs.”

  “Why not just let us pass?”

  The goblin shook his head. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”

  The snowy scene disappeared, and Kendra was back in the cavern, though she had moved to a different part of the room from where the illusion had begun. Warren stood where the goblin had been. Tanu was off to one side, roughly where the bear had gone.

  “I’m glad I didn’t slash the minotaur,” Warren said to Kendra.

  “I saw you as a goblin,” Kendra said.

  “Who stabbed me?” Tanu asked, hand over a wound on his thigh.

  “Sorry,” Warren said, wincing. “I didn’t catch on at first. You seemed like a werehyena.”

  “Where is Pioleen?” Tanu asked, dabbing some goo onto the injury, then hastily wrapping a bandage around it.

  Kendra scanned the room. Though the door that would take them onward remained closed, the door they had entered through stood open. The little dragon no longer splashed in her puddle.

  “On the wall!” Raxtus exclaimed.

  Looking higher on the wall of the cavern, Kendra saw the little dragon climbing like a lizard, perhaps thirty feet up. She wondered whether Pioleen’s wings worked, or if this was just more eccentric behavior.

  “A gorilla told me it would squash us,” Tanu said.

  “After counting to thirty,” Raxtus added.

  “Quick, Kendra, take her out,” Warren urged.

  Kendra drew the bowstring back and aimed. “Twenty.”

  When she released the string, twenty arrows shot toward Pioleen. At the same time, a piece of the ceiling broke off, falling to intercept the swarm of arrows before they reached the dragon.

  Thirty. Time’s up, Kendra heard in her mind.

  The rock wall where Pioleen climbed bulged outward, becoming the perfectly sculpted head of a huge dragon. Pioleen perched on the head as the rest of the dragon emerged from the stone wall, complete with four legs, a pair of wings, and a long tail, detailed down to the texture of each individual scale.

  Warren guzzled his potion and Kendra backed away as the stone dragon stalked toward them. The dragon stomped on Warren, mashing him cartoonishly flat, but before the living statue reached Kendra, claws gripped her from behind and swung her into the air. Raxtus carried her beyond the reach of gaping jaws that bristled with rows of stone teeth.

  “Try again,” Raxtus urged, flying up toward the shadowy ceiling. “More arrows.”

  Pioleen remained atop the stone dragon’s head, crouching low, wings spread wide. It seemed apparent the little dragon was controlling the larger one. Trying to keep her bow steady despite gliding high in the air, Kendra pulled back the string and whispered, “one hundred.”

  When she released, a deluge of arrows hissed toward t
heir target, but the dragon simply raised a wing like a stone shield, and the projectiles pinged away harmlessly. The stone dragon now pursued Tanu, who had evidently taken another speed potion, judging from how swiftly he evaded the pounding claws and snapping teeth.

  Warren had peeled himself up from the floor and was starting to regain his shape, though for the moment much of his body remained disgustingly flat. He pawed at his fallen sword with flimsy fingers.

  “What should we do, Raxtus?” Kendra asked.

  “I’m really not sure,” Raxtus replied. “This stone dragon is a heavyweight, and who knows what other magic Pioleen might be ready to use? It might be best if I fly you out of here.”

  Raxtus veered abruptly as several stalactites fell from the ceiling, barely missing them. He swerved again as more stones tumbled from above.

  “We can’t give up,” Kendra said. “There has to be a way. Can you get in for a closer shot? One that it can’t block?”

  “I can try,” Raxtus said, wheeling and diving.

  Down below, a barefoot woman dashed into the room, tall and lithe, wearing a dark green gown and carrying a sword in each hand. The stone dragon swiped at her with its tail, but she nimbly jumped over the attack and fleetly raced toward the rear of the dragon. Pine cones nested in her dark braids.

  “Cyllia,” Kendra said. “The hamadryad.”

  Tanu continued to dodge the front claws of the dragon, and Warren clambered clumsily to his feet, sword in hand. As Raxtus swooped near the stone dragon, Kendra pulled back her bowstring again. “Twenty,” she whispered.

  The flock of arrows flew, but the stone dragon tipped its head up and opened its mouth wide, and they sailed inside. Then the ferocious head shot toward Kendra and Raxtus, missing only thanks to a spiraling turn that made Kendra’s head swim.

  As Raxtus climbed higher, Kendra saw Cyllia sprinting up the back of the stone dragon, following the spine. The dragon bucked and twisted, but she continued at an astonishing pace and remained surefooted. By the time she neared the base of the neck, the head of the stone dragon swiveled around and darted downward to bite her. Cyllia not only dodged the strike but leaped onto the head, driving one sword through the little dragon and decapitating it with the other.

  The stone dragon instantly became rigid. As the immobilized dragon started to tip, Raxtus dove. Waiting until the last instant, Cyllia sprang from the head, and Raxtus snatched her with his hind legs. When the stone dragon struck the cavern floor, the neck broke off, as did a wing. After the impact, the stone dragon remained motionless.

  Raxtus glided Kendra and Cyllia to the floor, then raced over to the small corpse of Pioleen and ate it in a single bite. “Just to be sure,” Raxtus explained after swallowing. “Plus, bragging rights.”

  “Thank you,” Kendra told Cyllia, amazed by the height of the hamadryad up close. Head and shoulders above Tanu, she must have been nearly eight feet tall.

  “I am assigned to protect you,” the graceful woman replied. Her arms looked too slender to casually wield such long swords. After swishing them through the air, presumably to dispose of flesh and gore, she sheathed them.

  “You’ll stay with us until we get the Harp?” Kendra asked.

  “I will serve you for as long as I am needed,” Cyllia said.

  “Our chances just went up,” Warren said, his speech slurred, tottering toward them. “Did you see a woman in the previous room?” he asked the hamadryad.

  “Vanessa encouraged me to hurry,” Cyllia said.

  “Have you been in many fights?” Kendra asked.

  The hamadryad smiled. “This was my first battle. Much like my tree, I am newly born. But I carry knowledge and instincts from my ancestors.”

  “Happy birthday,” Tanu said. “You arrived just in time.”

  “She was a tiny dragon,” Cyllia said. “Just difficult to reach.”

  Kendra reconsidered Cyllia as a newborn. It made her realize there was so much she didn’t know about magical creatures. How many of them had no childhoods? She glanced at the fairy dragon. “Thanks for saving me, Raxtus,” she said. “Again.”

  “We’re all trying to save one another,” the sparkly dragon said humbly.

  “Did you see illusions?” Kendra asked.

  “Cockatrices were attacking a nest of dragon eggs,” Raxtus said. “It was hard to resist lending aid, but I decided it had to be a trick.”

  “I was at a grocery store,” Warren said. “First a cashier transformed into a werehyena. Then a minotaur confronted me in the produce section. Turned out it was Kendra.”

  “I was the hyena,” Tanu said, patting his bandage. “I witnessed foul creatures rising from the sea. One of them bit my thigh, but the fang pierced me just like a sword. I watched them slaughter innocents, while resisting the impulse to intervene.”

  “Mind magic doesn’t usually work on me,” Kendra said.

  “This magic was attacking our senses,” Tanu said. “The impulses came from outside our minds. Very potent and believable.”

  “Pioleen wanted us to kill one another,” Kendra said.

  “Good restraint, everyone but me,” Warren said. “And way to finish the job, Cyllia.”

  The hamadryad gave a small bow.

  “One more guardian,” Warren said. “Let’s hope this last monster is asleep.”

  Seth awoke looking up at a dome of rocks. The warm air was rich with the most pleasant woodsmoke he had ever smelled. Beyond the confines of his stony sanctuary, thunder boomed.

  Seth sat up abruptly.

  He had been struck by lightning!

  Merek knelt nearby, his clothes and armor soiled. “Welcome back, Seth. You have friends in strange places.”

  An older man sat on the far side of the modest fire, wrapped in a dark brown cloak. He was handsome, with silver hair and a steady gaze. Seth had never seen him before.

  “Did you build a dome around us?” Seth asked.

  “The credit for your shelter goes to the Wandering Stones,” the older man said. “I may have put in a good word.”

  Seth reached out with his power to see if he could communicate with the rocks around him, but he could detect no identities. “Thank you. Not to be rude, but won’t this fire choke us soon?”

  The man gave a nod. “Ordinarily, yes, without a vent, but the stones are allowing the smoke to filter out. And I have some skill with woodcraft.”

  Seth turned to Merek. “Did the lightning knock you out, too?”

  “I woke up only a few minutes ago,” Merek said.

  “Calvin?” Seth asked. “Serena?”

  “I’m here,” Calvin said from his pocket. “Serena too. We were both out cold.”

  Seth looked at the stranger. “How did you find us? Were you out for a walk? Enjoying the fine weather?”

  “He isn’t a dragon,” Merek said. “I can tell.”

  Seth relaxed a little. Merek had anticipated his suspicion. “It’s still unusual,” Seth said.

  “He is no ordinary man,” Merek said.

  “I admit I was seeking you, Seth Sorenson,” the man said, pouring herbal tea from a kettle beside the fire into a cup. “Don’t let that alarm you. There is enough peril ahead without me adding to your worries.” He handed the cup to Seth. “You once did me a favor. It may have seemed small to you, but it was significant to me, and I have come to help you.”

  “I lost my memories,” Seth said, grateful for the warmth of the cup between his hands.

  “I understand,” the man said. “Your friend the Dragon Slayer told me you have a long way to go tonight.”

  “It’s basically impossible,” Seth said. “Especially since you aren’t a dragon.”

  The man poked the fire with a stick. “There are other powers besides dragons in the world. You are aware the Fairy Realm has fallen.”

  “I heard,”
Seth said, taking a careful sip from the cup. The tea was hot, but cool enough for sipping. It warmed and invigorated him.

  “I managed to sneak a relic or two out during the commotion,” the man said.

  “You’re from the Fairy Realm?” Seth asked.

  “Once I was,” the man said. “It has been a great while since I truly belonged there. But I came from there recently. Have you heard of the astrids?”

  “Flying men,” Seth said. “Sometimes they look like owls with human faces.”

  “Wings are a specialty among the fairy folk,” the man said. “I suspect wings might help you and the Dragon Slayer tonight.”

  “Maybe,” Seth said. “It might be too stormy.” Every sip of the flavorful tea helped Seth feel more alert.

  “Much too stormy for most wings,” the man agreed. “But the wings of an astrid are extraordinary. They perform very well under duress and always respond to courage.”

  “Are you an astrid?” Seth asked.

  “I am not,” the man said. “Nor can I offer astrids to help you. But I can give you and your friend wings like an astrid, if you wish.”

  “You can make us into astrids?” Seth asked.

  “No, you’re a mortal,” the man said. “And the Dragon Slayer is mortal as well, though he possesses a lifespan that tests the limits. I can give you both temporary wings, of the same sort used by astrids.”

  “Wings that could fly through the Perennial Storm?” Merek asked.

  “Any storm,” the man said. “Including this one. Maintain your courage, and even thunderbirds will appear clumsy beside you.”

  “Sounds like a wild ride,” Calvin said.

  “Sadly, I don’t have tiny wings for the nipsies,” the man said.

  “We’re used to being passengers,” Serena said.

  “Wings like you’re describing could save us,” Seth said.

  The man nodded. “These sets of wings are the most useful gift I could manage under these circumstances. They are resistant to lightning and freezing temperatures. If you can keep your courage against dragons, these wings will largely protect you from the magic behind their breath weapons.”