Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  Tex reached in and pulled out the toaster and then she handed it to the big man, cord and all. He took the line and wrapped it many times around the handle of his axe, then slung it and the toaster over his shoulder into the brace that held it to his back.

  “Well, this is getting better and better,” I said to myself as I shut the lid again.

  Everyone seemed to walk from the chest as if to continue along the bank, but I’d seen enough. The curve to the left continued and didn’t look likely to change anytime soon.

  “This river isn’t going to cooperate. We should cross here and get back on track to straight-line for the Wellspring. We’ve been at this for almost half the day.”

  Much of our morning got burned away fighting the witch, walking the creek, and dealing with the siren. The map said we were closing in on the Wellspring, but every footfall along the stream seemed to take us further from our goal, not closer.

  “Maybe we should continue,” Echo said with a bit of sadness.

  “No, we’ve gone far enough,” I snapped.

  Echo looked hurt.

  “Ah, sorry. It’s that I’m tired of walking and doing nothing. I want to get closer to our target.”

  “It has nothing to do with wanting to get rid of me?”

  It made sense she didn’t want us to cross and then leave her.

  “No, in fact, I wish you could go with us.” I’d been thinking about how to make it possible for the last little while, but I still couldn’t figure out how to travel with a woman that lived in the water.

  “Me too!”

  A series of gunshots rattled in the distance. For about ten seconds, it sounded like someone had lit off some firecrackers in study hall, but it was impossible to give it a direction, because the leaves muffled it.

  Jo, Tex, and I shared a look. “Those aren’t witches,” Jo said on our link.

  “How can you tell?” I replied.

  “Witches all use the same hardware. They said in orientation it was because they wanted to keep things standardized. My weapon is a shotgun with an attached grenade launcher. These fire slow. Those guns are shooting fast, like yours.”

  “So, it must be enemy knights?” I asked.

  Jo pursed her lips, which I interpreted as not knowing for sure.

  “Got it,” I said after a moment.

  The cover on our side of the stream was decent. The tall trees had thick, bushy tops and the canopy was pretty solid all the way around. It provided a shield over most of the river if any witches happened to pass above.

  The trick was to get across as fast as possible with the least amount of effort.

  “We may not have much time,” I suggested. “So let’s put our heads together to find a way across this river without touching it.”

  Jo held out her broom. “I could try flying you across.”

  Anton chuckled. “I don’t think that could hold me, but I would love to hold some wood with you.”

  “Settle down,” I said to him.

  Then, to Jo: “Can your broom handle the extra weight?”

  I knew at least two people could ride them, because she’d been carried away on the back of one when she was captured, but I had no idea if a man as large as Anton would fit.

  “Probably,” she said. “There are some pretty big witches.”

  “If you are worried about my manly girth, perhaps I can use my axe to fell a tree and walk across?” He tugged at his long, gray beard so it almost came to a point.

  “That would make a ton of noise,” I said, “unless Tex could contain it?” I looked at her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe. I don’t know how far out my ability can work.”

  “It’s a risk,” I added. “If we can’t contain the sound, it will bring in unwanted attention.”

  Echo swished along the bank. “The water does not like to be blocked. Beasts will come to destroy anything that hinders the flow of magic.”

  “How long does it usually take?” I asked to get a feel for what we were talking about.

  “Oh, it can be days,” she said.

  “That’s great,” I gushed.

  “Or minutes,” she added. “I’ve seen both.”

  “Crap,” I mumbled.

  ***

  “The broom is fine and randy for you all, but what about Raven? He’s not cut out for rides on a narrow stick. Look at him.” Anton pointed to his furry friend. The wolf paced back and forth and had the first hint of fear I’d seen in those old gray eyes since we met.

  He’d mentioned something earlier that I tried to remember. “Anton, didn’t you say he could jump this stream back in the day? Could he do it again?”

  “It has been many years, master knight. I daresay he still has it in him, but he would need to be properly motivated.”

  “Fuck,” I said to myself. It was as if the Dragon Royale Girls app knew I would be in this position. What better motivation would there be than a nice dog biscuit? However sensible it was on paper, I wasn’t ready to give up the money to pay for it.

  I turned back to my witch friend. “Jo, have you ever heard of using ropes to haul stuff under a broom?”

  “Whoa!” Anton shot back. “Maybe you misunderstood. Raven’s name suggests he fancies flight, but I can assure you he does not. You will have to think of another way.”

  I was ready to sketch out all sorts of ropes, harnesses, and collars to deal with one good-sized wolf hanging from a broom, but I couldn’t force Anton to comply. The old general seemed more amused by our journey, than anything else, but this had him put his foot down.

  “Could we get the Pegasus to come back?” I suggested.

  We’d all taken seats on logs and rocks near the running water. The gunfire popped off from time to time, but it seemed very distant. My biggest concern was wasting a bunch of time trying to cross that might have been better spent continuing our walk. We’d also been lucky with the witches and other players, but the forest was so thick I would have been surprised if anyone could find us.

  Jo snickered. “Maybe a turtle will deliver the next thing. I don’t think we can know for sure how that works until we detect the pattern.”

  “Well, shit.” I rubbed my hair to think.

  “Gentle knight, perhaps if I shared my experience damming the Tarsalus River?”

  I nodded my head, ready for another story.

  “We needed to cross the river in full view of the enemy. As you know, a river crossing while under fire is one of the most dangerous operations for any army, and we faced a competent enemy …” he paused to think. “Whose name I cannot remember.”

  “What did you do?” Tex asked as if really interested.

  “We waited until the dead of night and employed a pack of commando voles. They dug below the river and bulged the earth upward as we walked the upturned riverbed from one side to the other. The voles also sank the enemy camp, so it flooded before our attack.”

  “That’s genius,” Jo remarked.

  I was less excited. “But it doesn’t really help us, here. We have no voles, and this river would probably flow on top of them even if we did.”

  “No, but I enjoy talking about my past.” Anton chuckled.

  His weird stories weren’t going to help us get across, but the odd solution inspired me to find my own. Something so out of the box, it would succeed by sheer force of will. Something that would impress even the great General Anton.

  Banger ran by the other way and this time he went underneath Raven’s taller legs. The wolf hopped up for a second, then went after the cat.

  “Someone separate those two or I’m going to carry them both across myself,” I said with anxiety.

  Normally, the sight of a cat and wolf bobbing in and out of bushes would make me happy, but I felt the weight of this challenge. If I couldn’t get us across a dumb river, how the fuck was I going to kill all those teams and survive long enough to face the dragon?

  I looked at all the pieces once again. Jo could take Anton, but no
t Raven. Raven would not use the broom no matter how we got him in the air. I briefly thought about blindfolding the animal and tricking him across, but I didn’t think Anton would allow that. I wouldn’t allow anyone to trick Banger into doing something he hated.

  It should be no problem for Tex to go across with Jo. I’d travel with the witch, too, and could hold Banger in my arms.

  Of course, Echo would merely walk from one side of the stream to the other. It bothered me what would happen to her once we crossed, but—

  “Holy shit!” I blurted out.

  “What is it?” Tex asked from a nearby log. “You figure it out?”

  I nodded and got up. “Oh yeah.” I headed for the water.

  “Echo, what do you think about carrying a wolf across the river?”

  I was full of excitement, like I’d just gotten a yes to take Sarah to Prom, but Echo’s facial expression threw buckets of water on me.

  She used her finger to beckon me closer and she met me at the water’s edge. For the first time, I got close enough to smell her.

  I took a deep breath but tried not to make it obvious. Her skin glistened with water as she stood almost all the way out of the stream, but it was the saltwater and sun tan oil perfume that made me nearly jump in the water with her.

  My magic cracked up one leg and down the other like it wanted to get out. As it passed my nuts, the magic tapped them in a pleasurable way as if to remind me they needed this nude woman to be a lot closer.

  “Sir Matt. I believe I conveyed my distaste for the wolf-man earlier? He’s dirty and rotting and smells like death, so I don’t want to touch him.”

  “But this is only the wolf.”

  She smiled weakly. “I was talking about him.”

  I had the most brilliant and simple plan in the world save for the fickle nature of my waterborne friend.

  ***

  “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?” I asked, suddenly aware she could ask me practically anything and I would comply.

  I drank in more of her scent but had to back off when I realized my feet almost touched the water.

  “Do you like the way I smell, or is that behavior normal with your kind? I want to smell you, too, but my nose is not very good up above the waves. I have to get real close.” She smiled so big her teeth seemed to shine.

  My phone still had a text reminder waiting for me to click yes or no on allowing Echo into our party. I was tempted to click yes, in order to close the final few inches between me and the nude water goddess, but adding a party member for sex alone seemed pretty dumb, even to me.

  Of course, she did smell like the beach.

  No, it wasn’t right. I had to stay focused on what mattered, which was furthering my mission to return the staff, track down Nora and Lucy, kill a few people, then slay a dragon.

  The beach.

  “Hey! Matt!” Tex called from behind me. “Be sure to tell her all the downsides before inviting her in.”

  “Yeah,” Jo added, “there are quite a few.”

  “What do they mean?” Echo asked with a look of real innocence.

  “Don’t worry about them, right now. Echo, I’m out of ideas for keeping my amateur squad of travelers on the road to victory. The game system seemed to anticipate I would end up at this very position, facing these exact problems. The easy way is to buy the damned dog biscuit and throw it to the far side and hope he jumps for it, but that would be doing what the dragon expects. I want to do something else; it will be the hard way, for sure.”

  I’d been looking into her blue eyes the whole time, but my speech was mostly to convince myself the hard way was really worth it.

  “If I help you by carrying the disgusting wolf, you will gain some leverage over the dragon?”

  There was no way to exaggerate the truth on the point. “She’ll probably never know, but I will. That’s what’s important, I think.”

  “What do your two women say? Do they want me to do it the hard way, too?”

  I turned back to Jo and Tex. As best I could tell, they hadn’t heard this discussion in any detail. The magical cords between us were glowing, which indicated magic was on the move back and forth, so they probably sensed I was horny as shit talking to Echo. It wouldn’t take much to figure out what I’d been thinking.

  “Eh, we have an understanding about these things. I ask for their advice as much as I can, but I’m the one who has to make the final decisions. I’m the one who has to live with the results, so I try to do whatever will help us in the long term.”

  I scratched my head as I thought about it.

  “They would ask the same of you. Each of us has committed our bodies and our spirits to defeating the dragon. If we can win a little victory here, even for ourselves, I’m positive the girls would back me up.”

  “It must be nice to belong,” she said in a wispy voice. She had no idea how much I agreed, either, because I’d spent my whole life with people who could give a shit about me. Some of the guidance counselors and staff in the homes were fine, but some of the foster parents were dicks, and those that weren’t seemed to not want me. Belonging wasn’t really in my vocabulary until this Dragon Royale.

  “Please, Echo, you’re my … greatest hope,” I said with a pause, to avoid sounding like I was reciting my favorite Star Wars movie.

  Her eyes were already wet from being in the water, so it was hard to say if she’d teared up, but it kind of seemed like it. Even before I stopped talking, she nodded.

  “I’ll do it to belong to your tribe, even if it’s only for a short time.”

  I held my tongue to prevent me from promising more than I could deliver. If I could snap my fingers, I’d bring her into my party right that minute, but there were serious complications to having her touch my magic. The most troubling was her inability to leave the water.

  “Thank you. You are saving my ass.” I wasn’t very good at thank you’s.

  I waved up to everyone else and got the crossing started.

  “Tex, you go first with Jo. Take Banger and scout the other side, OK?”

  The red-head cowgirl spent a minute trying to wrangle the cat. Each time he came close, Raven pounced in their friendly game of tag.

  “Anton, bring Raven down here. Echo is going to lift him and carry him over.” I waved my arm to the far shore.

  Raven seemed to understand my words, or maybe he felt his master’s emotions, because he slinked up to Anton with a hangdog look.

  “I don’t think he likes your idea, master knight. Shame, too, because you are looking at one of the heroes of the battle of—”

  I cut in. “Please, Anton, he has to.”

  “Me being the other hero, of course,” Anton finished as if I hadn’t interrupted at all. “But maybe I can coax him.”

  “Great,” I said as I turned back to the wet woman near me.

  “Echo, do you think you can lift him?” She seemed capable based on her frame alone, but I knew many strong-looking girls back in high school who wilted if asked to carry a book ten feet across a classroom.

  “I do not say this to remind you of my bad times, but I fought my sisters every night on the dark shoals. I have the strength to hold off any one of them, which is why they always came in two’s.” Her pose became more defensive, as if thinking about it made her tense up.

  “I’m so sorry about that, but you are going to be fine, I think.”

  Jo and Tex rose above the underbrush like they were on a carnival ride. Jo kept the broom about ten feet off the ground as they soared across the water, and they reached the other side in mere seconds.

  “Anton, come on,” I said.

  The big man held Raven in his arms. “There was a time …”

  I cut him off. “Anton, please, just get across.”

  “Sorry. I was going to add we are both shells of our former selves. I was much bigger back then, and even I couldn’t lift him. Now, he is practically a feather in my arms.”

  “Fuck, dude, I’m sorry
.” I came across as a total dick. “I really need to get you to the other side. Then I’ll listen to anything you have to say. Any story, OK?”

  I smiled to encourage him and didn’t even let his weapons-grade body odor blunt my enthusiasm.

  Jo came back to our side and landed behind the loading operation.

  “Do not touch the water,” Echo advised as Anton neared. Her tone and facial features were emotionless, like she held her breath.

  “Do not drop him,” Anton replied with an undercurrent of fear. “My day would end if he died.”

  Echo glanced at me, then at the tired, old man. “I promise you, general, I will not allow your treasured friend to touch this stream.”

  The pair stood with the fidgety wolf between them. Anton took a moment to calm the beast, and then handed it over to Echo. At first, she seemed to strain under the weight, but then she stood up straighter.

  “He is lighter than he looks.” That was great news for Echo, but it seemed to douse Anton with doubt about his decision.

  I pulled him away.

  “Get on the broom. Remember? You are going for a ride with a sexy girl, now.”

  “I am?” he said. His green eyes flashed rapidly back and forth to Raven and Jo.

  “Yes, right up this way.”

  I motioned for Jo to come over. “She’s going to put this down and you’ll sit on it and go, right? Have you ever traveled on a broom before?”

  That got his attention. “The broom of a Guardian? Lords, no.”

  “Then buckle up,” I said even though there were no buckles on the broom. “Because you’re going to get one now.”

  Anton set his leg over the broom just behind Jo. When he pulled his legs off the ground, he seemed to float on the stick as if it had a comfortable seat.

  He appeared excited until he looked over to his wolf. Echo took delicate steps out in the main channel, as if ensuring each footfall was placed on solid ground. Some dark shapes orbited her legs, like a dozen eels arrived to sniff the main course. The blood-colored water only added to the illusion of food.

  “Can we fly next to him?” he asked hastily.

  The water surface rippled in many places up and down the river, as if the eels had sent invites to the dinner party.