Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  The red waterway flowed out the doors facing us, snaked toward a couple of the smaller buildings, traveled up and over the top of another, and then went off to our left, out of sight. Where it crossed the grassy field, the red water changed a wide swath of grass from green to red.

  “This, my mundane friends, is the Wellspring.” Anton sounded almost as impressed as we were. “I’ve seen this place on my maps in those early days before I went to war for the Russians. It was a high-priority target for some other general. Not to destroy, but to protect.”

  “Protect?” I said with curiosity.

  “Yes. Conflict wanted these portals protected at all costs. Each one has four rivers that bleed magic into these lands.”

  I didn’t know what to think of military strategy, but I had to force myself to look away. The immediate problem was the people who’d been shooting at us.

  “Banger, go fifty yards that way and be our early warning system.” I pointed him to our right, toward where the other team probably was. Their firing finally stopped, so I hoped they decided to clear out, rather than search out our bodies.

  The cat sped off as instructed.

  Raven sat on his hindquarters looking expectantly at Anton. His presence seemed to prompt the general to speak to me. “Do you have a task for my old friend, here? We want to help.”

  It was tempting to send the wolf back to where we crossed the power cut so as to keep an eye on the exposed terrain, but all I could think about was how the wolf seemed lost right before we crossed the road. If I sent him out to scout, and he fell asleep or became confused, it was likely he’d be hurt, or killed.

  “Jo, I need you to keep watch behind us. I’ll let you know when we are getting close to moving out.” I spoke over the link, so I didn’t embarrass Anton.

  “General, I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but I want you and Raven to sit right here and keep watch out over those warehouses. I don’t see anyone, yet, but look for guards or whatever. Tell me when it’s safe to cross.”

  The lawn around the outside of the mammoth complex probably hadn’t been cut since before the dragon arrived. However, other than the odd clump here or there, the wild grass wasn’t much higher than my knees, so it would be dangerous to cross the eighty or ninety yards to the first building. I had to be sure no one was keeping watch.

  “This I will do, young Matt, but only because my timber wolves are howling. I should be keeping watch closer to the enemy, like your favorite cat.” The tired man rubbed Raven’s chest like he was a good pup.

  “I’ll give you the next shift,” I assured him.

  “Perhaps,” Anton replied. His green eyes flashed acceptance, but his wrinkled facial features carried nothing but exhaustion.

  Jo was already out in the woods as I’d asked her, which left Tex and Echo.

  “Tex, will you stay with the general and keep watch? I need to sit with Echo for a few.”

  “Going to do anything I wouldn’t do?” Tex whispered and winked.

  “I wish. My heart is still thinking about getting shot at back there.” I hadn’t dwelled on it at the time because I was so petrified, but now I reflected on how dangerous the bullets were. The bows and arrows from earlier in the day almost seemed child-like by comparison, and I was scared shitless then, too.

  “Well, then, I think Ms. Calm Waters can help you.” Tex said it without any sarcasm.

  Echo and I shared a look, but I wasn’t sure what Tex meant. I took Echo by the hand and guided her to a nearby log to sit.

  “I want to see your stats in my app,” I said to her in a low voice once we were down. “It will help me know your abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.”

  “You got me over my biggest weakness, Sir Matt. You helped me leave the Siren Shoals.”

  I smiled at her. “I think that was all you. I bet you would have left those bitches even if we hadn’t come along when we did.”

  “Perhaps, but the fact remains: you helped me take the first step away from them. The first step on land. The first step, of many I hope, with a man.” The blue-green-haired woman’s cheeks blossomed with rose.

  The front of my pants blossomed, too, but I wasn’t lying when I said how my heart was more concerned with our enemies.

  I slid and poked my phone until I found the new page created by the Dragon Royale Girls app. Knowing how the other girls felt about their avatars, I tilted the screen, so she could see it.

  “Oh, Matt, this magical device is even more amazing than anything I could have imagined back home. How did you capture my image like that?”

  I looked at it, and then back to her. “You aren’t offended by this? Not even a little?”

  For once, the computer didn’t overdo the breasts of a female avatar, but that was probably because hers were already larger-than-life. Two pillars of water rose up behind her drawing, hinting at the elemental powers she’d already displayed for me.

  “Everything you have is beautiful, Sir Matt. This strange device is no exception. I love my impression.”

  “Right. Good.” I pointed to the screen. “This shows your name, Echo, and down here is your core magic. It shouldn’t surprise you to know it says Water Warping.”

  “Is that what I do?”

  “According to this, yes. When you reach level 1, you’ll start climbing the ladder of experience and a new ability will be added to your page. Probably something like water chugging. Jo gained another level of her base ability, which is surveillance, and Tex chose to pick up staff fighting when she reached her first level.”

  “And how do I reach my first?” she asked in an almost-shy manner.

  I wanted to tell her our magic was intertwined with sexual attraction and physical contact. However, as pleasant as it might be, I couldn’t screw her over and over to get her to a level. She would need to engage in combat, like the other women. I didn’t want to lay all that in her lap.

  “If you stick with me, it will happen naturally,” I replied.

  I briefly showed her the other girls’ abilities and how their four skills got selected, but those screens weren’t available in her profile, yet.

  She spent a long time admiring everyone’s avatar when we were finished.

  ***

  I crawled back over to Anton and Tex near the front of the woods. I almost recoiled at the sight of him because he sat in a cloud of mosquitoes.

  “It looks like we can relax a tiny bit,” I said. “Banger isn’t reporting anything in the woods, so maybe we lost those others.”

  Anton pointed toward the industrial complex. “And there is nothing to report out there. I should tell you, however, that my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.”

  The tired general half-assed a swipe at a mosquito on his neck, and left a bloody mess there. I fought the urge to point it out as he continued.

  “Don’t let anyone fool you, Sir Matt, about getting old. I see how you turn up your nose around me. I conquered all those lands, but now smell like death. I know. The only thing golden about these twilight years is how many coins you will spend to reduce your body’s leakage and, of course, avoiding pain. Being a general had its perks, but eventually even the military elixirs weren’t enough to get me through the days and nights on the road.” He sighed. “Pain is for the harpies.”

  “I’ll remember that.” I had forever before I was as old as him, and frankly growing old looked pretty good if it meant I somehow survived this ordeal. “And you don’t smell that bad.”

  “Ha! Your first lie. Even I know what I smell like. Raven and I joke about it all the time. He’s not much better.”

  I scratched my neck, not sure what to say. To compensate for the awkwardness, I scanned our target.

  The general was mostly right about the complex, but it wasn’t unguarded. A lone man stood near the left-most garage door along the back of the main building. The spear in his hand suggested he kept a watch, but I was pretty certain he was dressed in red sweatpants and a hoodie, like a civilian.

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sp; “There’s one guard there, but see if you find others,” I said to the general.

  I made myself busy and checked the map to confirm the red pin was in the first warehouse behind the giant one guarded by the red-suited guy. Our mission goal was at the ten o’ clock position, relative to the middle structure.

  “Are we going to cross?” Tex asked.

  I really wanted to, but it was already late afternoon. As long as the gunmen weren’t around, we could afford to wait a little while and think about doing it in the dark. Tex could shield us with her Blend ability, but it didn’t make us invisible. There had to be more than one inept guard in the giant facility, and all it would take is one to blow our surprise.

  “Soon,” I replied.

  Soon turned into a couple of hours. The three girls and I traded shifts watching the forest behind us, while Banger kept watch in the no-man’s land between our hidey hole and the gunmen.

  In the downtime, I fiddled with my rifle, trying to edit my drawing program to slap some modifications on it. I wanted to add a red dot scope, a flashlight, and other “tacticool” features common on video game rifles. I even tried to edit the ammo so it wouldn’t have to fire tracer rounds all the time. That would save me from being spotted back to my firing position. However, it always returned the same message about how the weapon was already upgraded and that I needed to wait until I reached level 3 before I could mod it again.

  When I reached the next level I was going to upgrade to a nuclear assault sniper rifle, with cup holders.

  I did have a little time to make one important change to the DRG programming. Each time any of us leveled up we experience extreme fits of pleasure that took us out of the action for a short time. It was dangerous as fuck for everyone involved, especially if we all leveled up at the same time.

  I added another of my famous yes/no gates to counter the next event.

  ‘Would you like to allow level up to complete at this time? Yes/No.’

  In the details of my sketch I made it clear this applied to me and the girls. One glance at all the women’s bodies and I was able to determine they were all close to a level up. Echo was nearest, because she worked toward level 1, while Jo and Tex were on their way to the larger volume at level 2. I readied myself to test the results on the water woman.

  The shadows of evening covered everything at the edge of the woods when Jo called me to the frontmost tree of our refuge.

  “Movement. Four figures. There.” She pointed to the right, perhaps three hundred yards away. I was almost positive it was the same four people we’d seen cross the road, which meant it was almost certainly the team that had fired upon us. They were spread out but running together toward the outermost warehouse in their side of the complex.

  “I could fly you down there,” she pointed toward our target building, “with the staff.”

  “Yeah!” I said quietly. “You could pretend I was your prisoner. I’ve seen it a billion times on TV.”

  “But?”

  “How did you know there was a but?” I replied.

  “I know you, Matt. I can see the gears cranking in your brain.” She chuckled tentatively.

  “I like it except it splits us up. I don’t want to leave Tex and Echo if another team finds us. Also, there is no guarantee we’d fool anyone down there. You and I could walk into a trap, or call down more flying creatures, like we did on the plane.”

  “Stick together?” she asked evenly.

  “Yeah, we all go down and do what needs to be done. If there’s trouble, at least we’ll all be able to support each other.”

  “Works for me. I guess you don’t want me scouting, either?”

  I shook my head. “We can’t risk you being seen in the air. What if another witch flies by and wants you to go do witchy stuff with her? I’d lose you.”

  “I’d always come back,” she assured me, “but you’re point is well taken. I’ll walk it in with you.”

  I watched the figures get closer to their target building. They didn’t stop or slow on their way across the field. That’s what we needed to do.

  “We have to go,” I said, thinking that they knew something I didn’t. There was no way to know for sure, but they seemed to have the same goal as us. They’d crossed the road where we did. They got across the power cut, same as us. And they’d waited in the woods for dark, like us. If they were also running toward the Wellspring, then maybe they were going for a mission there, too.

  It would be just like Conflict to set teams on the same, or similar, missions, to ensure they met in battle. I couldn’t let them get there ahead of us so they could lay in wait.

  Anton didn’t get up right away. “Are you sure? It is almost dark.”

  “I’m sure. We have to beat them to the encampment. I think this is part of Conflict’s plan.”

  I reached an arm to Anton. “Come on up.”

  The man’s beard was somehow more disheveled than it was earlier in the day, and his bloody nose and forehead were solid blue with bruising. It was kind of a miracle he got up at all.

  “I think I have one more adventure in me today,” he said once he was standing.

  “You better,” I replied, trying to be friendly.

  I recalled Banger because I wanted us all to go together. If there were guards in the closest buildings, we’d have to evade or fight them as necessary. We couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Go, everyone,” I said with nervous excitement. “Tex, you first. We’ll all try to stay behind you, but no one should count on avoiding detection. We at least know no one shot at the other team.”

  Tex blended into the darkness, and the rest of us followed her into the open field. If someone looked in our direction from the front, it might be possible to escape notice, but from the side we’d be juicy targets. The four other players could be lining up their sniper rifle…

  I ran all the way across expecting the crack of flesh, followed by the echo of the sniper’s gunshot.

  “Be small,” I said to myself as I imagined any number of movies with soldiers running across open terrain. It was almost universally a bad idea.

  We approached the first warehouse, and I stopped with the others to gawk at how crazy it was to see water flow over a building. The enchanted crimson stream smacked into the concrete wall on the right side, churned upon itself like the base of a waterfall, and then shot up the face of the warehouse and onto the roof.

  “Do not touch the water,” Echo whispered. “I have never been this far up my river, but even the sirens feared to come here.”

  “Those eel-things are here, too?” I asked.

  “I do not know, but something evil lurks nearby. I can sense it.” She seemed overly dramatic, but her advice was sound. Anton’s missing boot proved the red water was unsafe.

  This warehouse had about five garage doors on the back side, and all of them were open. I peeked around the edge of one of them and saw the far side doors were all open as well. Water flowed over the metal roof making it sound like a heavy downpour focused all its energy up there.

  The inside of the warehouse looked like someone had raided the thrift store for every type of clothing they could find. Ten-foot piles of shirts, pants, and shoes stood in long rows from one end to the other.

  A few orderly pallets of toilet paper were stacked in front of the bay next to ours, but they looked lost compared to the jumbled mess everywhere else.

  Jo caught my attention and then nodded to the pallets. “Can your magic give us an endless roll of toilet paper? It would be impressive as fuck, if you could.”

  “I like to use it for serious stuff, like an endless magazine for my gun. That would seem more like a kid’s magic trick.”

  She shook her head and I sent her to the other side to scout.

  “Follow her,” I said to the others when they seemed to hesitate.

  When I was sure they weren’t looking, I grabbed one of the rolls. I only told her that bit about kid’s magic so I could surprise her later.
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  ***

  I put the toilet paper in Jo’s pack without anyone noticing. It was easy because Tex had it on the ground as she fiddled with her clothes. The others were too busy peeking around the next corner toward the man in red.

  “Do you like my new shirt?” Tex asked. “I just found it.” She gestured to the nearby mound of clothing as she pulled on a red and white checkered shirt. The short-sleeve top was meant to be buttoned down and tucked in her pants, but she left it unbuttoned and tied it together underneath her breasts so it was more like a bikini top. “My other shirt was getting pretty rank.”

  She expertly rolled up her sleeves and then tipped her cowboy hat at me. “Is good?”

  Her red hair fell over her shoulders and the collared shirt did everything possible to highlight her sweaty cleavage.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said without thinking. “I mean, you are.”

  She giggled. “Got to look good for my man.”

  My magic wanted to get out for some air, but we were in a difficult spot.

  “You do,” I added to try to finish the thought.

  I then peeked around the corner, too. The man stood near the corner of the huge building, next to a small doorway. I couldn’t see around the corner to the left, but I didn’t see any additional guards on the front face of the building a hundred yards, or so, to our right.

  “Should we shoot him or befriend him?” I said to myself. It was the same dilemma from endless campaigns in my role-playing days. The man was maybe twenty-five yards away. I was positive my rifle was accurate enough to bring him down, even if I needed several shots to do it. However, that would be the end of our surprise.

  “Well, Sir Matt, how shall we attack?” Anton seemed anxious for a fight.

  My eyes searched for answers on my women. Echo could jump in the red water, swim upstream, and jump out next to the man. Tex might get in close with her blend now that it was almost dark. Jo could drop on top of him from above. But they all ended pretty much the same way: with a fight.