Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  “Where do you think they’re going,” I asked my girls on an open link channel.

  “Following the tank,” Jo replied. “They must be part of whatever army is maintaining this land.”

  “Lay low. Take a rest.” I said it on the mental link, but I quickly realized Anton wasn’t a part of that. I was pretty certain he was the least likely to get up and continue up the hill in full view of the enemy, so I stayed quiet.

  We stayed there for at least five minutes. I wanted to let the horses get out of view and out of earshot. Once that happened, I had Banger confirm no more horses were coming up the road because it seemed like a busy place.

  “Master, there are footsteps approaching from across the road.”

  “More horses?” I hesitated in the leaves as I tried to hear the same thing using my ears.

  “Negative. Bipedal. Approximately two to ten.”

  The shapes were almost hidden completely by the forest cover, but some dark figures emerged on the far side of the road, coming down the hill at almost the same spot we’d used.

  “Shit! They are part of the game!” I hissed on the link.

  I glanced up the hill. “Anton! We have visitors coming. Be alert.”

  The old general leaned so he could look around his tree trunk. “I shall be ready.”

  We were already hiding, so there wasn’t much we could do but wait. I carefully pulled my rifle off my back and set it up against my tree. Tex’s pistol and staff were both out. I could hardly see Jo from where I was, but her combat shotgun was lying on the ground next to her broom.

  “They are crossing,” Jo advised on the link.

  I hopped into Banger’s field of view and got a pretty good look at them. They were definitely dressed like gamers, but their uniforms were covered in mud and leaves, like they’d been trying to stay camouflaged. They looked like moving bushes as they crossed the paved road.

  My magic spun up as the tension rose, and it bounced between all my girls like a general inspecting his troops. Whatever skills the other team brought to the table, we had the drop on them. My magic would ensure that.

  “Tex, why aren’t you blending? I can still see you.”

  She seemed to focus for a few moments, but didn’t blend like she’d done all the times in the past.

  “Fuck. I don’t know. Something’s wrong.” She kept trying, but I looked down to the approaching targets. At first, they threatened to come up where we did, but one of them pointed off to the side of us, and the others went that way.

  I considered using my rifle to shoot at the running figures, but we were at least a hundred yards away from them, and they were getting further from me every second. If my gun was anything like a video game, I was sure I could hit at least one of them, but getting all four before they could regroup would be almost impossible. It seemed smarter to let them go by and wait until we had a better shot on them. It gave us the upper hand knowing they were so close to us.

  While I considered their fate, the four-man team hustled up the hillside in a diagonal and went toward the top where the hill was a little lower. I didn’t see them go over, but Banger reported their footsteps were soon out of his range.

  “We knew we weren’t alone out here. Let’s keep moving.” I tried to sound confident and professional, but something about the other team had me worried on a deeper level. Besides my group, it was the first time I’d seen four players working together in the royale.

  That couldn’t be good.

  ***

  I wanted to figure out what was wrong with Tex, but I opted to get us over the next hilltop while I knew the other team wasn’t on it. I trusted Banger that they were out of hearing range, so we’d never have a better chance.

  “This way,” I said aloud. To reduce our chances of being seen, I had us go up the hill in the opposite direction as the route taken by the others. I figured if we put a couple of hundred yards between us, we could get over the top with no chance of running into them.

  When we reached the top, I checked the map. The red push pin was less than a mile away, and over one final small ridgeline.

  “There. It’s somewhere beyond those trees.” I gestured across the open field between us and the last rows of trees before the flat lands beyond. A row of power line towers stood in the field like metal giants. The wires had all been cut down and the long strands poked out from the tall grasses of the field like an electrician’s worst nightmare.

  “At least we won’t get electrocuted,” Tex remarked.

  I didn’t think the lines could still have power, but I’d learned not to take anything for granted in a land where magic seemed to bleed into the mundane.

  “Assume they are,” I replied.

  I stood at the edge of the field for a moment but spun around to talk to my friends.

  “Hey, Tex, come here a second.

  As I walked and motioned her over, something snapped against the trunk of a nearby tree. A second later, a gunshot echoed from far away.

  “Down!” I yelled.

  I’d intended to ask Tex if she had any idea about her magic not working, but there was no time for that, now. Another shot rang out in the distance, but it must have missed us because I didn’t hear it impact.

  “Blend us, Tex,” I said with a little fear bubbling up from the depths of my stomach.

  “I’m trying,” she replied. “I feel fine. I really do. But the magic won’t turn on.”

  “It wasn’t the whine of the tank that blocked it,” I said in a low voice. “The only changed thing is your dragon armor. Maybe it’s blocking your magic in some way?”

  She reached over her head for the zipper, and I helped her when I saw her intentions.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly. Another crack of wood hit close to us, but we’d put a tree between us and the shooter.

  As soon as the zipper was down her back, I peeled the dragon skin off her arms and shoulders and then unwrapped her down to her waist. Her bare skin almost glowed with sweat, and my magic ate it up, but the more important fact was that her body shimmered and then blended, as it should.

  “The suit,” she said as if she’d just discovered the flaw.

  “Shall we?” I gripped the fake skin bunched up at her waist.

  We pushed it down her legs and she stepped out quickly. She slid on her boots without putting her pants or shirt back on; she kept them in the backpack.

  “Aren’t you going to get dressed?” I asked.

  “We’re being shot at. I can take the embarrassment until you get us somewhere safe.”

  I smiled. “Me?” I asked sarcastically.

  The shooters were somewhere to our right, probably on the other side of the power cut.

  “They could keep us here forever,” I said as I peeked around my tree trunk. “We have to get across, then they’ll have to back off if they can’t see us.” It was a trick I’d learned in a military shooter.

  A new gun opened up on us with a huge boom. A couple of seconds later, the forest around us sounded like a hailstorm.

  “Shotgun,” Jo said calmly. “There’s no way they can hurt us with that.”

  I thought back to any number of games I’d played over the years. It was foolish to use shotguns at extreme ranges, but every once in a great while you’d tag someone with a heavy metal ball and cause some damage. I wasn’t quite ready to discount it completely.

  Tex stood next to me with nothing on but a bra and panties, but her body was lit up with red magical energy. Her tattoo on my arm also lit up like she was drawing from it like a battery. She faded and soon matched the grungy old tree bark next to her.

  “We’re going to cross in just a minute!” I said to my friends in a voice loud enough to be heard over the next volley of buckshot.

  The only way to fight back over such a long distance was to match them with a sniper rifle. My AR-style rifle might get the rounds close, but without a scope I couldn’t hope to hit anything, plus, like it did for the archer, the tracer rounds wo
uld give me away to the sniper.

  “Banger, what is their range?”

  “I can only estimate based on approximate shell velocities from the barrel of their gun compared to impacts in a wide radius around us.”

  “And?” I asked to get him to hurry.

  “My best guess is 1200 feet, master.”

  “Can you put up a killbox for where they are?” I figured the little cat could get me close, but when I looked through his eyes, the rectangular box encompassed a huge area.

  “You can’t get any closer?” I asked.

  “Windage, echo, moving enemies, and lack of detail on opposing force weapons have made location of precise targets impossible, master.”

  “Fuck!” I got into my drawing program and sketched a sniper rifle with a huge scope on top. Then I drew my existing rifle and tried to suggest a shift, so one would change into the other, as I’d upgraded the pistol into the rifle.

  I got instant text feedback this time.

  ‘Warning: Weapon already upgraded. Additional upgrades of primary function available every third level.’

  “Fuck! Why is my magic so fucking limited?”

  “You still want to cross?” Jo inquired.

  The enemy sniper hit another tree and the shot’s sound waves reached us long after the impact.

  “Yeah, we can’t stay here,” I said with resolve. “They could be coming for us.”

  ***

  “Maybe we should go back and try to approach the Wellspring from another direction,” Jo suggested.

  “If Tex has her magic working, it should be no problem to blend into the high grass out there. We could probably crawl across right now without being seen. Besides, I don’t want to risk crossing that road again.”

  I didn’t say it to them, but it was almost a relief to have them shoot at us, because it meant I knew where they were. If other teams lurked around us, they would seek out the gunshots and deal with them. There was some military logic to let your enemies fight each other.

  “We can go into the woods a little ways and circle back to the power lines, then cross down there.” I pointed to our left, where the open field was a bit of a low point before heading up the next hill.

  “Banger, you’ll stay here until I call for you. Make sure whoever is over there, stays over there.”

  Banger meowed out loud and replied on our link. “As you wish, master.”

  I picked up Tex’s discarded dragon suit and balanced it on the edge of a branch, closest to the trunk. It was out of the line-of-sight of the enemy, for now.

  “Banger, here is a command. In two minutes, I want you to bite this suit and drag it off the branch so it falls in view of that sniper. You understand?”

  “Affirmative, master. Kill the suit in two minutes.”

  I sighed, wondering if I needed to be more precise, but trusted he knew what I meant.

  “You are my little stealth kitty,” I said in a positive way.

  “Protocol Amberjack-Epsilon: Listen, then attack.”

  “Attack the suit!” I practically shouted over the link.

  “Understood,” the cat replied without a trace of remorse.

  Tex’s body was now in full chameleon mode. It wasn’t a perfect blend, but a casual person would not notice her against a backdrop of leaves and forest, especially if she remained still. Even her red hair seemed to mute itself and become dull and mixed, like fall colors.

  Anton stifled a cough before he spoke in a froggy voice. “Can your magic hide a healthy-sized man such as myself?”

  “I really don’t know. It works best when I stand between you and the target, so you all need to walk in a single file and I’ll stand at the back.”

  That bugged me because I wanted to be at the back to make sure everyone got out OK, but I had to let it ride because she was correct.

  I played traffic cop. “Anton, you and Raven go first. Then Echo and Jo. Then me. Tex will be tail gunner.”

  I pointed into the woods in the direction away from the shooters, but not quite in line with the power cut. Once we got about a hundred yards in, we would turn right and go back to the power lines and cross the open field.

  “As you wish, Lady Tex.” Anton pulled at Raven to get him to come along.

  The others filed out, but I almost canceled the whole thing when a pair of sniper bullets tore into the tree where I’d been standing.

  “Do they see us?” Tex wondered. “I know my magic is blending.”

  I admired her for a second as she stood there looking like leaves and bark with barely an impression of her bra and panties. My magic stirred with hers, but I kept it professional during the crisis.

  “You are doing fine, Tex. They are shooting at the last person they saw, which was probably me.” I stepped off from the tree to show her I trusted her ability.

  We walked in a line behind Anton. Shots continued to impact around the place we’d just abandoned, but at the two-minute mark they kicked it up a notch. The sniper fired several shots in a row, and the shotgun guy went ape shit.

  “That was Banger,” I said aloud.

  “I told you he was a good kitty,” Jo replied.

  “I’ll call him to us once we get to the field.”

  Anton distracted me, because he appeared ready to walk forever into the woods. “Go right, Anton!”

  The general acted as if he’d been asleep, then waved back to me and turned. We were far enough from where the rounds fell I felt OK breaking formation to catch up to him.

  I stopped him at the edge. “Here we go. The crossing. Tex, you’re up!”

  On the link, I called Banger back.

  “Stay low and we may not even need Tex to blend us in. That grass has to be chest-high.” I pointed out into the field. Some of the overhead wires were strewn over the fifty-yard open space, but the grass was so high it was hard to see much of the metal wire. “And avoid the wires.”

  Banger ran out of some tall grass and hopped on my boot with a giant leap.

  “That was fast!” I cheered. “Glad to see you, buddy. We’re crossing.”

  I turned to the party. “Everyone keep Tex on your right. She should shield you from the shooters because they are up that way. However, stay as low as you can in the grass. We’ll all be fine if we take our time.”

  Tex and I shared a tense smile. “You ready?” I asked her.

  “Be careful,” she said seriously.

  “I was going to say the same,” I chuckled. “We’ll follow your lead across.”

  The crossing felt like any number of adventures from role-playing game days. We’d peek into a room to see what to expect, list the characters on a sheet of paper with X’s and O’s, put them in the order we wanted, cue up their magic and magical items, and then send them into battle.

  Most battles were led by the tank player, usually a fighter with tons of hit points, but today we were lining up behind a country girl doing double duty as a green beret.

  “Go!” I said when everyone seemed ready. “Food and refreshments on the other side.”

  Banger listened as he took another swipe at my shoelace. “Fish treats are not required but are appreciated.”

  “On your way,” I said to the cat.

  Tex crouched low and strode into the tall, weedy grass. I realized immediately that if the enemy was really paying attention, they might notice us bend over the odd tuft of greenery as we plowed through it, but it would almost be a miracle.

  They continued to shoot at where we were, but it slowed way down as if they only wanted us to keep our heads down. I imagined all sorts of scenarios at how they might charge our position, and what they might do once they found we’d abandoned it, but we were committed to this course of action.

  About halfway across, a lone bullet whizzed by us with a crazy whirring sound, like it had ricocheted. We all froze for a moment, until I realized that would do us no good if we’d been spotted.

  “Run for it!” I exclaimed.

  We all did our best to
stay next to Tex, but we got a little spread out toward the far side of the clearing. At that point, I didn’t think it mattered because the shooters would have to be in the field, too, if they wanted to have a line of sight to us.

  I took the lead and pushed through the last rows of trees at the edge of the hillside. When I came to a large birch, I finally stopped to let the others catch up. I knelt with my rifle to give them cover as they arrived.

  Tex shifted back to normal as she got under the tree branches. Her white, freckled skin offset her black underwear so she seemed more naked than she really was. With a little breathing room, I let my magic mingle with hers, and my boner reacted to her sweaty image like it had discovered its first centerfold.

  “I don’t mind you looking at me,” Tex remarked with a smile, “but you should really be looking at that.” She pointed through the trees behind my position.

  We all walked a short way through the thinning woods and saw more of the industrial park spread before us. My shoulder hit the trunk of a tree to keep me from falling over in relief.

  “I’d say we’ve found the Wellspring.”

  LEFTOVERS

  “I expected something different,” I said while crouched at the edge of the forest.

  The Wellspring area was a large, flat industrial park made up mostly of two-story warehouses and multiple parking lots the size of football fields. The area was surrounded by forest, and it was probably a mile from our spot to the trees on the far side.

  The dozen or so buildings out there wouldn’t have gotten a second glance back before the dragon came. Many were about the size of my high school gymnasium, but there was a giant square building in the middle of the rest. That one had thirty-plus garage doors on each side where tractor-trailers once lined up to the loading dock to pick up their loads.

  “We’ve got a lot of ground to search,” Jo replied.

  All of the garage doors were pulled closed in the central building, except for two adjacent ones in the middle of the wall facing us. That’s where the red river spilled out. A yellow one came out two doors on the left side of the building. I saw a glimpse of a third stream on the more distant right side.