Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  The next humanoid figure in the line lunged at me from the top step. It was connected to two tentacles, so it wasn’t going to be as easy to pull it into the stream.

  “Echo!” I said to her on the link.

  I tapped the button for the bayonet and then raised the gun over my head as if to block the incoming attack. When the figure was almost on top of me, I shuffled aside and let him impact the long blade of dragon’s bone.

  A large cut appeared in half of his left side, but it wasn’t all the way through.

  Echo wrapped her watery extensions around the thing’s waist, but I saw that wasn’t going to be enough, this time.

  “Cut his cord,” I said to her mentally.

  The being stood in front of the bottom step as I re-adjusted my position to give Echo room to work. It lunged at me with a sickening wave of garbage stench, but it stopped like something had stepped on its shoe laces.

  Echo pulled at one of his attached tentacles.

  “Yes!” I lunged right between his legs and severed the other tentacle with my bayonet’s razor-sharp blade.

  That seemed to cut his power, and Echo used the instant of indecision to tear at the remaining link.

  “Got it!” she shouted.

  The humanoid shape lost its bonding and drained into a sloppy puddle at my feet.

  Several more beings approached the top of the steps, each with three or more tentacles latched onto their backs. Merkur didn’t lie about learning fast.

  “Anton!” I shouted. “We have a problem!”

  ***

  “Echo, can you spray water on those guys?”

  She replied by doing what I asked. A jet of water blasted out of the yellow river and covered the green globs on the bridge above us.

  The guy Echo pulled into the yellow stream was destroyed by the water and the tentacle couldn’t even save him. I expected the others to melt, or scream, or do something to show they’d been hurt, but the remaining few beings did little besides look at the stream below them.

  The last one in line didn’t even notice the water. It was turned around facing the wolves, using its lariat to hold one while it kicked at the other two.

  The splashing was a distraction for my witch. Jo used her speed to shoot in between some of the tentacles and swing her bayonet at the hanging woman who seemed to be in control of everything. She grunted like a tennis player as the blade made contact.

  “No!” Merkur shouted.

  The green female shape dropped from the ceiling like an icicle. A tentacle reached out, like it was going to catch her, but it was a fraction of a second too slow. The humanoid shape fell down the middle of the pit to whatever floor awaited her.

  “Yes!” I shouted like we’d destroyed the Death Star.

  Merkur laughed with the same malevolence as the Emperor in that movie. Another woman dropped from the dark roof, exactly like the first one.

  “I can do this all day,” she gloated.

  Jo came to a hovering stop behind us. “I tried, Matt.”

  “That was awesome,” I replied. “She’s just being a bitch about dying.”

  Anton strode over to the steps with Raven at his side. The wolf went to work and tore into the man connected with multiple tentacles, but the general hurried down to our level.

  “My friends, you must leave. I cannot control the new wolves.”

  “Why did you pull them out?” I asked.

  “To give you a head start to escape. This is my fight, now.”

  The snarling, barking and gnashing of teeth of the three new wolves was furious on the bridge above the yellow water. I almost wanted the green bitch and her minions to hold them back.

  “We can’t leave until we win this fight,” I declared with bravado. “She’ll never let us walk away.”

  “As I said, I can handle her.” The old general seemed animated and excited.

  There had to be a way to stop the Cthulhu-beast using my magic, so I pulled out my phone and started drawing. I thought of putting a plug into the chasm but didn’t think anything short of a meteorite could block those four magic streams.

  My next idea was to use the metalwork of the bridge to make a lid or something, but I didn’t believe there was enough material to cover the pit for good. It would be like trying to block a fire hose with a piece of cardboard.

  Then I went big. I considered having the entire warehouse fold upon itself and stuff all of its metal into the hole, as that would surely kill the beast with it.

  I made a quick sketch of the warehouse and added a few labels showing it folding upon itself, but my phone didn’t even start to glow with my magical energy.

  I needed to focus my magic on something small, like I did with the roller coaster.

  “Ah ha! The wizard’s spell book,” Merkur said as if she was impressed.

  The tentacles in the middle finally moved, and they did it with lightning quickness. They swung as one giant rod and broke the railing on the bridge where the three wolves were picking apart another of the green men. The monster pushed the wolves into the water like they were made of paper, then it collected its humanoid shapes and molded them back into the main trunk of the tentacles.

  “Oh shit,” I said aloud. As more of her tentacles came down from the ceiling, she got stronger. Now she could throw us around without fighting us individually as she’d been doing.

  “Back up,” I said to everyone.

  “Every sorcerer has his bag of tricks. I admire how you have taken that futuristic technology and bent it to your will. I think I might like to have it.”

  A tentacle slid along the floor and attempted to grab my phone, but Tex swung her staff to bat it away so Jo’s blade could sever it. Echo summoned a rope of water and lassoed the remaining base of the tentacle and sent it toward the stream, but she couldn’t quite get it all the way there.

  “Fine,” Merkur blurted in a childish manner. “I’ll come and get it.”

  “Echo!” I shouted.

  Another tentacle swooped in and struck Echo on the stomach while she wasn’t looking. The wet slap sounded like a belly flop, and the friction actually tore open the front of the rubber suit.

  The blue stripes of her midriff were fully exposed, but she didn’t crumple from the exposure.

  “I’m OK,” she croaked. She walked backward to me, still maintaining control of her magic.

  “To the door,” I said only loud enough for the girls and Anton to hear.

  Me and the girls backed across the floor toward the small doorway. The space in the corner of the warehouse was about the same size as my high school gymnasium, but we’d only made it to half-court before Echo began to whine a bit.

  “What is it?” I asked with concern. “Is it the hole in your suit?”

  “No. Not that. I-I can’t hold it.” She strained with her hands in front of us like she held a heavy weight. Her water rope still embraced the tentacle by the yellow stream, but it seemed to be losing its grip.

  Other tentacles glided over to the stairs where Anton and Raven still hadn’t moved.

  “Come on!” I shouted to them.

  We were in a terrible tactical position. Most of my party was with me, but the general and his wolf were already far behind.

  “I can’t,” Echo let out breathlessly. The water rope splashed back into regular water and it became obvious we’d found her limit. She leaned against me. “Wow. I didn’t know I could do it from this far.”

  I gave her a tight-lipped smile. “You did good. Keep going.”

  The tentacles moved along the roof and went around Anton like he was a minor inconvenience. As we backed into the corner with the door, the tentacles caught up to us.

  “Fuck,” I thought to myself. There had to be a way to kill that monster, but so far, the only real harm appeared to take place when the green slop fell into the water. Spraying a little on the tentacles didn’t seem to do the trick, so I needed something bigger. I needed to drown the whole thing at once, but that would take a
miracle.

  Or some precise magic.

  SPLIT THE CHAOS

  “I’ve seen flashes of your mind, Sir Matt,” Merkur sneered.

  The roof above us seemed to move as if a billion bugs shifted through the rafters and duct work heading in our direction. Me and the girls had almost made it to the exit, but I didn’t want to leave Anton inside with the creeping horror.

  “Did you see anything interesting?” I asked to keep Merkur talking.

  As we neared the door, one part of Merkur’s body seemed to gather near us on the ceiling of the warehouse, like the slime suddenly wanted to be directly above us. I began to wonder if it would be better to fight outside the door, rather than on this side.

  “Oh, yes. I saw lots of females of your kind in various stages of undress. Do you live your life removing clothes from your women? What kind of sorcery is that?”

  She sounded genuinely surprised.

  “It’s called porn. Years of practice with those women has made me a powerful mage the likes of which you can’t imagine.” I cracked up despite the scene because Clint had been tripped up by the same images inside my brain. Maybe I did spend a little too much time on the femme channels, after all.

  “I’d like to see your memories, some time,” Tex said on our link.

  “Me too!” Echo added in a cheerful voice.

  “And I see endless killing.” Merkur sounded cautious. “You have been killing knights for an impressive amount of time. It is a wonder I have never encountered you until today. Your weapons. The merciless slaying of your enemies. You are powerful, indeed.”

  That was a head scratcher. I’d only been in the Dragon Royale for a few days, and my record of killing was mixed, at best.

  “How is it you made it to the end so many times? And you’ve come back to life? What dragon is this that you slay over and over?” She spoke with awe, like I’d done something impossible.

  “Dragon?” I said aloud.

  Jo jumped on the link. “Does she mean your game-playing?”

  Gaming would explain it. Jo was right. I had a shit ton of memories over the past year playing the digital Dragon Royale, but why couldn’t she see it was just a game?

  “That is, uh, the dragon’s secret. Each winner must go back out and do it over again. I guess I’m so fucking good I keep winning her game. Deaths don’t even stop me.”

  There were countless games of me dying horrible deaths, including a few where I barely set foot out of the spawn, so I hoped she wouldn’t focus on those. I figured my strongest memories were the games that I went all the way to the end, especially the handful of times I scraped by to victory with a single hit point left.

  “It is strange. Your memories are so vivid. So confusing. I should like to pick them apart in greater detail when I absorb you.” She chuckled at herself. “I’m glad you resisted my efforts to throw you and your friends down into this world’s butt crack. I would have missed this!”

  I held my phone with both hands, so she couldn’t snatch it from me. “Not so fast, bitch. I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  The bulk of the slimy tentacles had collected between us and Anton. He was now seated on the stairs, facing us, but he appeared to breathe hard. Raven nuzzled against him like he wanted him to get up, but the general appeared too tired to move. He held onto his giant axe as if it might also be snatched by Merkur’s goopy arms.

  “I see lots of memories that make no sense. I see wars in space. Foreign lands of magic. Odd ones called cartoons. You are an enigma.”

  “Tell me if she attacks,” I said to my girls over the link.

  I spun around and tried to draw something on my phone. I looked at my target, then drew it as best I could. The blue magic finally bled into the drawing and I knew it was going to work.

  The garage door nearest the purple stream to our left opened a couple of feet, as I’d drawn. It used springs and pulleys to pull itself upward, so it was easy to engage them. I didn’t want to call attention to the door by opening it all the way, but there is no way Anton could have missed it. If he ran in that direction, maybe the tentacle creature wouldn’t notice him getting away.

  “I think it’s time I dip that strange brain into my superior bodily fluids.” Merkur’s many tentacles twined around each other like a girls’ braid, or a tornado. The slime seemed to drip from the ceiling and soon formed a giant tree-trunk structure that went from the floor up to the high roof.

  But it didn’t stop there. More of the goop ran down the outside of the trunk and began to add on layers. It was like watching the tree grow older and fatter. Smaller tendrils of slime dropped all around the large column of green goo, but they seemed to bleed back into the main trunk once they touched the floor.

  “Come on, run Anton,” I said to myself, hoping he would catch on. I tried to get the big man’s attention, but he was in rapture watching the green slime run down to the floor.

  “Dammit! Run, Anton!” I finally shouted.

  He glanced at me and gave me the “hold on a sec” sign. I guessed he was having some kind of health issue as there was no other reason a warrior like him would give up so easily.

  Merkur bled out of the roof like rain in our corner of the warehouse. There was still a large mass of the pulsating flesh up above us and spread out in other parts of the building, but a huge mass of her was on the ground between us and the general.

  “Jo, get ready to push Anton out, if you can.” I said it over the link. She might even be able to grab the big man, but he would never leave without his wolf. She couldn’t take both.

  I needed to think of a solution, but the draining monster stole all my attention.

  The tree trunk quivered as if it had been injected with caffeine, then it began to shift in appearance. There were fewer tendrils of slime attached to the ceiling, so the disgusting mess could slide in our direction. It was shaped a bit like a circle, with a flat top and bottom. It was about twenty feet tall and maybe thirty feet wide.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “The whole thing is coming down.” I swapped my phone with my gun, knowing there wasn’t enough time to think of something clever to do in the empty warehouse.

  “Master. There are now four moving masses of her flesh in this warehouse,” Banger reported. “One per quadrant.”

  I’d been so busy with the sick process in front of my face that I didn’t bother looking out into the warehouse. Even with the bridge and spray from the streams somewhat blocking my view, it became apparent Merkur was able to multitask with great efficiency.

  Gunfire roared in the opposite corner where our enemies were apparently fighting her, too.

  That seemed like good advice.

  “Light her up!” I shouted.

  ***

  I aimed my rifle up at the ceiling to avoid hitting Anton. I couldn’t see him through the dark shape, because it grew larger right between us, but he didn’t run out the garage door I’d opened for him, so I had to assume he was still back on the steps.

  My tracer rounds burned hot as they pierced into the blob, but only those that hit the outside edges of the creature made it all the way through. Most of them burned into the center and disappeared like bottle rockets into water.

  Jo’s shotgun roared with even louder concussions and sent huge plumes of sparks deep into the beast, but they also fizzled out of sight. I prayed she’d dump more in there, but she only sent two shots into the green skin before she paused.

  “I’m out!” she yelled.

  “Fuck!” I’d forgotten she didn’t carry unlimited ammo, like my weapon.

  “Unless you want me to use a grenade?” she asked.

  “Will it hurt it, do you think?” I asked.

  “It might. Or it might kill us. We’re too close.” Jo slung her shotgun as if knowing I wouldn’t ask her to take the risk.

  “OK, do what you can,” I advised.

  She jumped on her broom but hovered near the back wall as if thinking what to do next. She had knives and at le
ast one pistol, but there wasn’t much she could do to the massive beast.

  Tex took some swings at the outermost edge of the blob with her staff.

  “Take that, sweet cheeks!” The red orb at the end of the staff glowed a bit as it flew in an arc toward the green gel. Tex grunted when she made contact, but her staff dug into Merkur and splashed green crap all over the floor.

  Echo was the only one who hesitated near me, because she didn’t have a weapon in her hands. We were now too far from either of the streams for her to pull ropes of water.

  My magic sensed she wasn’t weaponless, however, and her tattoo burned bright as if to volunteer for extra duty. I only had to figure out how.

  At that moment, I heard Anton and Raven like they were also in battle. The gelatinous gore shook and shimmied as if affected by our prods and pokes, but we weren’t causing any real damage.

  “This is fun,” Merkur said a second later. “But you can see how overmatched you are, knight. There is nothing you can do to me that will change the outcome of this battle.”

  I was out of time, so I hopped on the link with all three girls. “Echo. We might not have another chance. Can you use the water inside your suit to, I don’t know, lash out at her? Keep her busy? I need a few seconds to draw something.”

  A vague plan formed in my head. If I was doomed, why not go out doing something heroic?

  “I’ll try, Sir Matt. This water is special to me.” She almost sounded hurt.

  “Trust me, if we get through this I’ll fill your suit with as much of my magic as you want.”

  “And your seed as well?” she continued.

  I glanced at her, happy to see she wasn’t wasting time discussing it. While we spoke on the link I saw water drain from the seal on her wrist and begin to take shape in her left hand.

  “As much as you can take,” I replied happily.

  I took a knee to steady my shaking hands and ignore my bucking heart. It wasn’t something I wanted the others to see, but the closer I marched to death, the more my hands seemed to wiggle with the fear. However, once I balanced my phone on one knee, I was able to draw with my usual shitty skill.