Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  “I can see them,” she said in a dry voice. “The water is filled with creatures of all sizes. Most of them are fish and water folk, as you might expect with any such streams, but some are—not natural. I don’t even recognize their kind.”

  “I say again,” Anton continued, “I should have warned you about this place before I brought you here. It is kind of the weak spot of the operation, and it could affect many of my former friends. My brain is on its last paws, as well as the rest of me.”

  His tone of voice was getting weird and my magic seemed to build as if to warn me. I mashed my finger on the guard above the trigger, willing him not to do anything stupid, because I didn’t want to hurt him.

  “My allegiance is torn,” Anton continued. “They have been so helpful to me, and I have truly enjoyed the day. A fight at the well would be a disaster for her…but is it a betrayal?” He seemed to speak only to Raven. “What do we owe her, anymore?”

  Banger rubbed up against Raven’s bad leg and then crouched under the wolf’s big barrel chest. The larger animal seemed surprised the cat was there, but didn’t nip at him. Instead, he looked up at his ancient master.

  “I like them too,” Anton said distantly.

  “Sir, whatever it is, we don’t want to put you in a bad position. We’ll go and leave you. It’ll be like we were never here.” I began to feel like the building magic was trying to warn me about my friend. Was he going to report us? Start a fight?

  Anton turned around to face us. The cascading spray of water rose up behind him as a backdrop.

  “It’s time I reveal why you found me this morning. I don’t believe it could have been a coincidence. I was destined to find grand warriors and fate promised me a hero’s battle before the end of this day.”

  I could hear the regret in his voice and he hefted his double-bladed axe like it weighed more than a car.

  Jo had her shotgun at the ready and Tex gripped her pistol. Echo didn’t have a weapon, but I felt her magic reach out to the yellow and red streams, ready to force her will upon them. Oddly, Banger still pranced underneath Raven as if oblivious to what was happening around him.

  “I think I understand,” Anton said. “But now that I see who it wants me to fight, I refuse to accept it. My home is at the bottom of this shaft. I’ll get to see it one more time, after all.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked with concern.

  “I’ll jump into the elevator and crash back down into the Imperium. That’s how I can protect you all.”

  A female voice responded, but it wasn’t one of us.

  “No, general, that won’t protect anyone at all.”

  MERKUR

  “You should not have come in here,” the woman’s voice said.

  I looked all around us for a black door, sure it was Conflict barging into my life again, but there was no portal.

  “Conflict?” I called out. Between the high ceiling and the water churning out of the hole, it was hard to be heard.

  Anton glanced at me with concern, then turned back around to look at the walkway because the voice seemed to come from up there. As we watched, a shape stepped out from behind one of the girders that ran from ceiling to floor next to the scaffolding. The woman was hard to see in the crazy shadows from all the lights.

  “Do not call her name. She may hear you.” The woman laughed but there was anxiety present. “I shall deal with the general myself.”

  “If you want him, you’ll have to go through me.” I puffed my chest with the dumb bravery of my age group, but I wasn’t sure why. If the general had issues with a strange woman in an industrial park, perhaps it was best to let him deal with it.

  The voice laughed from all over the giant room. I couldn’t tell if it was the woman up on the platform or a loudspeaker blaring from all points around me.

  “I should throw you into the floodwaters, boy, for speaking to me in such a way.” She paused and seemed to consider us. “But I’m intrigued as to why a young Leftover is leading an Imperial General, a Guardian, and a water nymph.”

  “He’s leading me, too, ma’am,” Tex replied in her thick country accent. I’d learned she went full-hick when she wanted to make a point.

  “Yes, and you are leading whatever she is.” The woman sounded like she threw up in her mouth a little.

  There was no turning back, so I decided to up the ante.

  “The Guardian said we could cross this bridge and travel through here,” I replied with more bluster. “Conflict assigned her as my guide, so if you fuck with me, or the general, you’ll have to answer to your boss when she asks why you didn’t let us pass unharmed.”

  The woman on the platform stepped closer. She appeared to be soaked by the mists of the headwaters, but I still couldn’t see much more than an outline of her tall body in the shadows. “It is easy enough to prove. I shall send an emissary to her.” She threw something behind her, like a large egg, that flew in a long arc until it landed in the green stream.

  I grimaced and tried to think of a way out of my stupidity.

  “If you hurt the boy, you will answer to me,” Anton bellowed.

  The woman folded her arms across her chest. “It seems we have a Moxhaccan Standoff in progress. Except I know something about the general that he hasn’t told you kids, and I wonder if you would be traveling with him at all, if you did.”

  “You know nothing about me, wench.”

  She chuckled. “You shouldn’t have put your foot in the water, dear general. It all comes back to me.” Somehow, his lost boot appeared in her hands.

  “Missing something?” She tossed it in his direction, and it slapped down with the other clothing next to the red stream.

  “I get reports from up and down all four of my favorite rivers, and the word is you’ve uncorked a deadly potion rather than face what you’ve done against Conflict.”

  “Then you know you can never bring me in,” the old general replied. He strained to bend over and stick his foot back into his boot.

  “Not necessary,” the woman’s voice echoed around us. “I am Lady Merkur, one of her transition handmaidens, and I don’t have to bring you in at all. She has more important things to deal with. Her only request was that if you should stumble out of the forest one day, you be killed on sight.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Anton banged his axe blade on the metal steps as if dying for a fight. Raven snarled and bounced anxiously as he maintained his ground next to his master, but he also nudged Banger to get out from under him.

  “You may want to run, young Matt,” the general said. “This is what I’ve been waiting for all day long. I’m honestly glad it worked out this way, as I could not have done it to you.”

  “Done what?” I asked.

  Anton turned back toward the woman and went up four big steps to get on the circular bridge with her. She was about twenty feet from him, above the red river to our right, so he continued toward her.

  My magic spiked inside me like an earthquake rising from way down below the surface. The tattoos on my arm flared up like there were fireworks going off behind them, and the magical ropes between me and the girls became brighter and more distinct.

  “Something’s happening,” I said aloud.

  But it wasn’t fast enough to warn Anton. The woman next to the girder stepped forward with a long pole in her hand and flexed her arms with a lightning-fast jabbing motion. Anton blocked it by raising the flat of his axe against his frontside, and then he used his free hand to push the pole and snare away.

  “Run!” Anton called out.

  Two more dark and wet humanoids came up the inside face of the scaffold and hopped over the railing behind the old man. Raven defended him by latching onto the leg of one of the attackers just as he landed on the metal floor. A second one scampered by the wolf and grabbed one of the metal rods from the ground.

  The poles looked like big snares an animal control officer might use, with white cord looped around the far ends of eac
h one. The figure immediately swung around to try to loop it over Raven’s head.

  Another pair of figures came up the scaffold on both sides of Anton, effectively boxing him in, but that didn’t seem to slow him down.

  “For the Imperium!” He swung his axe in a wide, flat arc and cut one of the attackers in half at the waist. The upper half splashed into the water, then struggled to grasp the central girder, but it was sucked under by other dark creatures.

  Anton’s swing almost cut the other one, too, but it leaned backward to dodge his blade. The thing lost hold of the rail with one hand, but did manage to grip it with the other.

  “We have to help him!” I yelled.

  “No! I got this! Cross the bridge and continue your quest!” Anton sounded like he believed his words, but there was no way anyone could take on that many attackers. I wasn’t going to let him make the sacrifice.

  “Jo,” I said simply.

  “On it,” she replied.

  ***

  Jo’s shotgun erupted like a bomb ten feet from my head, and the dragon’s breath ammunition lanced out at the shape nearest the girder. Picking that target was a good call because all the other creatures were close to the general, or Raven.

  Her supernatural witch skill with the shotgun paid off big time as the round slapped into Merkur’s chest with a sickening pop.

  “Nice!” I shouted.

  I figured it was a kill shot for any monster, but she still stood there a couple of seconds later.

  “Let her have it,” I advised out loud.

  Jo let another one go, holding her shotgun against her shoulder to absorb the recoil.

  “You have to go!” Anton shouted after the loud blast. “She is one of Conflict’s Favored. I’ll give you enough time to get out.”

  The dark woman had a giant wound in her chest. I saw the faint lights behind her through the small porthole. However, she spoke as if neither of her lungs were punctured.

  “Is all this a lame attempt at a surprise attack, general? How disappointing that you’ve stooped to this level. Your other hidden friends will not be able to sneak up on me.”

  Anton was in the middle of swinging his axe into the belly of the nearest attacker, so it took him a few seconds to reply. “My friends are not hiding, though I wish they would, green wench.”

  Something picked up one of the spotlights and shined it into the area beyond the red river next to us. Sure as shit, a person stood in the distant corner with a rifle or shotgun in hand. My guess was that it was one of the four people we’d seen running, because she wore camo dragon skin and a full-face helmet.

  “Would you care to revise that statement?” Merkur asked as the light continued to illuminate the person like a reluctant participant at the talent show.

  A rifle barked out several rounds and the light shattered. The far corner returned to darkness, leaving me wondering what those people were going to do next.

  Anton continued to swing at his remaining foe, but the humanoid shape was able to climb up and down the scaffold to stay clear of the big axe. At one point, the already-wet man climbed under the bridge, barely avoiding the water below, and came up on Anton’s right side.

  Raven also seemed to be giving as good as he got. The wolf dodged the snare of one enemy while he faced the second. His muzzle swung left and right and he bared his old teeth in a way that actually looked ferocious.

  “We’re gonna help him,” I said aloud. “Jo, keep hitting the first one. Tex, shoot if you can. Echo, can you use the water to push them, or something?”

  Her core ability was called Water Warping, but I had no idea of her limits besides what I saw her do next to the stream earlier.

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  I didn’t wait to micromanage them. I hopped up four metal steps until I was on the platform about twenty feet behind Anton and Raven.

  “What the fuck?” I said when I saw the attackers up close.

  The two people smothering Raven were both colored a deep, dark green, but they had no clothes on at all. It was impossible to say if they were men, or women, but they reminded me of jade chess pieces I’d once seen in a store at the mall.

  The nearest one stopped dealing with Raven and turned to me.

  I didn’t hesitate. I leaned to my left and aimed to my right to avoid shooting Raven on the curved platform. My single shot flew out and went right through the thing’s chest. The bullet continued and flew off to the far side of the warehouse.

  The blob of a creature opened a hole where a mouth might have been, and then screamed at me using a voice that came from everywhere. There was no evidence the bullet had gone through it because the goopy green shape was whole again.

  I couldn’t stop myself from taking a step backwards. The creature took a step toward me, trailing a tendril of flesh behind its heel.

  There was no time for anything else, so I unloaded with my fully automatic magic-bullet assault rifle. A character in one of my video games carried a similar weapon, and when you set the mode to full-auto, the character always cried out “Rock n’ roll!” All I could do was grit my teeth as the stock rode hard into my shoulder with the release of each round.

  The tracers flew from the barrel like shooting stars on a clear night. I was less than ten feet away so there was little chance of missing my target, but as it continued to walk toward me I finally had to stop.

  None of the shots did anything more than inconvenience it, and maybe not even that. It stopped to look down at its chest but seemed content it was unhurt. Then it closed in.

  On a whim I slung the rifle behind me and bent over to pick up one of the snares. The metal pole was too long to wield it like a spear, but I held it sideways to try to block the monster’s progress.

  As soon as it touched the wooden pole, it absorbed it like the metal terminator did in Judgement Day.

  “Crap!” I shouted.

  I thought Anton did much better with his two attackers, but my closer position revealed the truth. He’d cut the first one in half, but I noticed the bottom half was still hovering off to the side of the walkway. Its upper portion was nowhere to be seen.

  The other attacker that climbed under the walkway and came up on him now had an arm and a head missing, but it didn’t stop it from slapping at the general with its remaining arm. Anton yelped when the thing touched him but he seemed unable to make a clean shot to cut the second one in half.

  “You cannot win,” the woman said to the room.

  I didn’t have time to answer because the Gumby-thing fell upon me like a wet steak. I recoiled in disgust because the outer skin of the creature was warm and slimy. It smelled like a bag of garbage that spent too long in the sun. The unnatural warmth of the dark figure only added to the trashy illusion.

  The creature’s head was featureless at first, but then it shifted into a real face like a woman had dunked her head in silly putty to make an impression on it.

  “You taste like a sorcerer!” the shape blurted out in surprise. “And a knight!”

  “Yeah, what’s it to you?” I shot back while struggling to hold the creature’s body away from me.

  “I heard the rumor you existed,” the humanoid on me paused as its face spoke. “She sent two of your friends to some of my colleagues so you wouldn’t attack them. Perhaps she should have sent them to me? But then, you don’t look like much of a threat.”

  I saw my chance. “Lady Merkur, we’ll leave right now if you tell me where they are. Who has them?”

  “That isn’t the question you need to ask right now. I’ve had my fun with the old fat man. He’s going to die. But you. I’ll be a hero for taking you out of the game!”

  “She’ll kill you if you kill me. I’m supposed to be her champion.” It’s hard to sound confident when you are wrist-deep in green slime. My hands sank into its skin as if I’d melted through ice.

  “I know the rules, knight. I can’t hurt you. You can’t hurt me. Blah. Blah. And blah. But the only Guardian around is wi
th you, and I doubt Conflict would believe her word over mine. We’re using Merkur’s rules here, and I think you must have fallen over the side. On accident.”

  Something grabbed my leg. It lifted me off the platform like my foot had been caught in a snare, and I’d been yanked up into a tree. However, there was no snare around me. It was the leg of the green monster. The humanoid transformed into one long rope about as thick as an elephant’s trunk. I couldn’t see how long it was, because it disappeared into the scaffolding below us.

  The slime-creature carried me out over the pit, so I got a good, long look at what was below us. It wasn’t one large pool of water but was instead a round chasm. It was wide enough that each river traveled up the wall of the pit with the same reverse action I’d seen back in the forest. There were no lights down there, but the rivers gave off faint glows far down into the abyss. Shapes emerged from the glowing waters, as if to see how close they were to the top, and then went back under. Even in those few seconds, I saw winged creatures, giants, and slithering snake-like shadows all pop up and down.

  “Enjoy your time in the Imperium, if you survive the fall.” Merkur said with no remorse, whatsoever.

  I was turned upside down and I felt the silly putty arm let go of me.

  ***

  “Fuck!” I shouted.

  I dropped a few feet from the grasp of the green tentacle only to be caught again by a watery red one.

  “I got you,” Echo called through the magical link.

  A dark face peered at me from across the pit in the purple stream, momentarily distracting even my life and death moment, but it immediately flowed up and over the edge.

  “You saved my life,” I finally exhaled. I was so scared of falling, I could barely think.

  “I’ll pull you up,” Echo said excitedly.

  The instant she’d said it, the same green tendril smashed through Echo’s water rope, and I fell again. The ethereal yellow link between us glowed brightly, but it could do little to keep me from falling. However, Echo had a second water rope that caught me a few feet below the lip of the chasm.