Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Read online

  “Of course!” Echo said in the dead air. “You’re a genius, Sir Matt. I’ll have better luck with friendly water.”

  I watched as her magic bubble extended upward through the fifty feet of fresh water. The green debris-filled mush pressed in, but the dirt seemed to be repulsed by the clean because it couldn’t eliminate it.

  “That’s it!” she shouted.

  I expected to be overwhelmed with fresh air, but after about ten seconds I realized nothing had changed. My body was short on air, and my next action was done completely by instinct: I stuck my face in the entrance to the tall, thin straw, and used it to suck in the fresh air.

  The first pull got me nothing but the same stale air, but my second breath actually resulted in a trace of fresh oxygen.

  “I can breathe,” I said to Echo on the link. I pulled at the next one to fill up my lungs completely.

  “Who said you could do that?” Merkur laughed but it sounded dizzy to me. Probably because I was dizzy as hell myself. “I feel unwell.” She muttered what I thought was gibberish.

  Whatever was wrong with her, she still controlled her insides. A tube of slime appeared in the space I’d been using to breathe. The mini-tentacle formed into a small hand that proceeded to slap me.

  Echo’s magic pushed the hand back out of our ball of safety.

  “I’m having trouble,” Echo breathed out. “The little hand snuck through.”

  “You are doing great,” I replied.

  The soupy mess around us quivered for a moment, but then it settled again. Echo strained along with the motion, but she also relaxed when it let up.

  “Why can’t I crush you?” Merkur snorted. “I will recover and destroy your air bubble.”

  Echo cried out in pain as she struggled to keep the bubble from collapsing around us. The clear water above us became a mess as if Merkur was stirring a giant pot. I once again felt the eyes of the beast upon me.

  “Jo. It’s now or never!”

  ***

  The explosion rumbled the pavement under my feet. Ten seconds later, a second blast shifted the ground. Without access to air, my breathing was now done in short gulps of whatever air was left.

  “Merkur. My friend is going to turn your green gut into pure drinking water. If I die, you’re going with me.” I shouted as loud as I could inside the shrinking bubble.

  I spoke to Echo on the link. “Can you give me one more big water bubble?”

  “I’ll try,” she replied with an air of tiredness in her voice.

  “Why won’t you die?” The bubble contracted a little more as Echo’s shifting magical priorities gave the cube an opening.

  The fresh-water bubble formed as it did before, but I was certain it wasn’t quite as large as the others.

  “That’s great, Echo. Well done.” There was almost no air left.

  She slumped against me and the air bubble compressed so it wasn’t much bigger than a shared helmet over our heads.

  “She’s caught, Matt. The black water caught her!” I thought it was Jo, but my oxygen-deprived brain was off duty and I couldn’t say for sure.

  “It’s Mello-Yello time,” I said into the darkness. That was what I said a lot during my online gaming sessions when we beat a big boss.

  “Another bubble? Is that all you’ve got, because I’ve—"

  Merkur seemed to realize she’d missed something on the outside. I sensed her gaze leave me and turn somewhere else. It had to be because of Jo.

  “No!” the monster screamed.

  A deep blackness washed up against one of the faces of the cube. Even from the dark center, it looked like water rolling up against a vertical wall. The unnatural stream seemed to claw upward like it did on hills and buildings, but it didn’t make it more than halfway up. Instead of flowing sideways, or down, like normal water, it apparently hooked itself into Merkur’s body.

  “Holy shit!” I mouthed. Stars clouded my eyes and I was on the verge of passing out, but I noticed how the water seemed to move twice as fast inside the liquid-filled cube. It was ten times more effective at corrupting Merkur’s insides as Echo’s purification efforts.

  Merkur tried to evade and shake off the flesh-seeking waters. Some parts of her broke off and slithered aside, but it wasn’t only black water probing her insides. An army of shapes moved within the water, and they seemed to meet and fight with each other inside Merkur’s gel-flesh. The front half was overrun and blackened in moments.

  “You will pay for this,” the cube said with pure rage in her voice.

  The gel shook all around us and a sickly tear resonated our air chamber as the green flesh cut itself in half right where we stood.

  The front half was almost black now as the waters and creatures made it to every part of her. Bodies and corroded remains oozed out all over the place.

  It was like someone had cut the Jell-O mold right down the middle. A ton of clean water fell on our heads as if Merkur was unable to contain that inside of her ripped flesh, and the fifty-foot monster slid backward to try to escape its doomed front.

  Echo and I tried to keep ourselves from slipping on the wet, goopy ground, but we cheered when we realized we were in open air between the two pieces of Merkur.

  We made it about twenty feet before the oily river water shot out from the front section of the gel cube. Sprays came out from ten different places, then burst out in one great heave, as if a dam had broken.

  I took one deep breath.

  Echo hugged me as the wave hit and used her Water Warp ability to envelope us with the protective air bubble again. Still, the force of the torrent pushed us off our feet and into Merkur’s back half like we’d been thrown on a soft mattress.

  “Hang on,” Echo said on our link.

  The water surrounded us, which brought tons of nightmares right up to my face. The water was black, like ink. All four rivers had apparently mixed together, bringing all those monsters into one stream. It was hard to pick out individual creatures, but there were hundreds of shapes pushing and shoving against our bubble, and against each other. Birds. Fish. Humanoids. Tentacle-beasts. It was a terrible ongoing battle below the surface.

  And Merkur was trapped by it.

  Our bubble floated on top of the black water, but we were in a chasm formed by the fifty-foot tall pieces of Merkur. The front section was falling apart like a rotting piece of birthday cake, but the large back part kept severing itself into chunks to try to escape the spreading mass of black.

  Echo held me with one arm and swam with the other as we followed one of the collapsing segments of Merkur’s flesh back toward the crate-filled warehouse. A thin, invisible wall kept us separated from the cranky monsters flowing inside the crashing waters.

  “Save me!” Merkur cried out. “I’ll let you pass. You can go!” She sounded terrified.

  Looking back, it was easy to see the water consume more and more of the cube. She tried to keep breaking herself into smaller segments, but the ground was perfectly flat, so each separation fell right back into the water.

  Echo and I made it back to our feet and struggled out of the current, so we could walk outside the limits of the stream. Echo’s shield protected us from the creeping water, but I got the sense the dark stream preferred the meaty cube.

  Merkur was now maybe twenty feet on a side, but several smaller cubes seemed to reach out from the cascading waters behind her. She inched in our direction.

  “You must save me. Conflict will reward you!” She was understandably desperate.

  “You killed Anton,” I yelled out. “This is for him.”

  “You want him back? He means nothing to me. Have him!” Anton’s body shot out of the shrinking piece of the once-giant monster. The old general skidded on the dry pavement at our feet. He had his arms wrapped around Raven as if the pair jumped into a lake together.

  I was too stunned to say anything.

  “Now you have to save me!” Merkur pleaded with almost none of her prior air of superiority.
r />   Anton was dead, no question, but I was happy he wouldn’t be absorbed into the giant green bitch.

  “And my cat?” I asked in a dry voice.

  Merkur had to break herself into a smaller piece as the water gripped at her back side. The ten-foot wide blob hopped away from the stream, but the water grabbed her again before she could make a total escape.

  “I hold no living creature! I swear it!” Merkur was doing the equivalent of shitting cubes she was so frightened, but I felt no remorse for her.

  The ten-foot piece broke into a three-foot section that used a couple of tentacles to spring itself toward the rubble at the corner of the crate warehouse. For a moment, I worried she was going to get to the structure and climb to the top, but the water was relentless in its pursuit. It grabbed her again, which made it split into an even smaller cube.

  Jo and Tex had come up behind us without me noticing. Tex put her hand on my shoulder, and I jumped a little at the surprise.

  “Sorry, Matt. I’m so glad to see you.” Tex gave me a peck on the cheek.

  “You, too,” I said a bit distractedly. I watched Jo walk over to what was left of Merkur. She’d split off again and was now no bigger than a Rubik’s Cube. Jo raised her boot like she was going to give it one last smash, but Tex stopped her.

  “No! She knows where we can find Nora and Lucy. We can use her to track them down.”

  Jo hesitated for a few moments.

  “Yeah, she does,” I said.

  That ended Jo’s indecision. She picked up the green cube with one hand.

  “No!” the monster screamed. It’s voice remained loud and came from multiple directions, despite her reduced size.

  “Give me a bottle,” the green girl ordered.

  I pulled one of the empty water bottles from the backpack and handed it to her.

  “Get in there, or die,” Jo said dryly to the thing in her hand.

  “I don’t need to tell you anything. I sent her a warning. She will rescue me.”

  “Just get in,” I said without emotion. She was right. It was dangerous to allow her to live, but she knew where Nora and Lucy were. We’d have to figure out a way to make her talk.

  When Merkur was safely in the backpack, we all took deep breaths of relief, and shared a few high-fives, but I didn’t feel much better. Other than Anton and Raven, there were no other bodies. I couldn’t even say goodbye to my little friend.

  “Sorry, Banger, I should have kept a better eye on you,” I said aloud. “I’m sorry you died because I was stupid.”

  A note came back on the link. “Master? I assure you I am quite alright.”

  LOOT AND SCOOT

  “Banger? Where the hell are you?” I looked all around for him, but there were fewer airborne flares at that moment and the sun was now well below the horizon. The few working street lamps had trouble penetrating the dark waters and green mounds of dead flesh spread around the parking lot.

  “I believe I am under Raven, master.”

  I glanced at the tank half a mile away. Bursts of small-arms flashed along the tree line behind it, but they weren’t firing at us. Black water and endless creatures piled out of a rip on the side of the warehouse where the yellow river had been. Those black shapes turned toward the tank and the soldiers protecting it.

  Tex and I crouched at Raven’s body as Jo ran up behind us. I noticed my magic-inspired leg brace was no longer attached to Raven’s stump. A fact that made me even more depressed, as if I’d failed him with a faulty design.

  “Is he there?” the witch asked.

  I gingerly separated Anton from Raven and Banger was indeed wedged between them. He was soaked and looked like a little black weasel with his matted fur.

  “Banger!” we all cried out.

  “How?” I asked aloud.

  “I figured you’d want him safe,” Anton said without opening his eyes.

  “Fuckin’ A!” I shouted. “You’re alive!”

  The general looked like shit. His wounds on his nose and forehead had opened up again and reddish-black blood leaked down his jowls and into his beard. His leather outfit was serrated in many places, and was tainted with his black-red blood, like he’d made it all the way through an industrial wood chipper.

  “No, master knight, I’m afraid my time is done. My fight is over.”

  “But we can help you,” I said in a more subdued voice. Suddenly, I wished I’d had Echo choose healing rather than improve her warping ability, but at the time the choice would have made no sense. We’d get it on the next level up, for sure.

  “No one can help me. Merkur was right, I did take a potion. It was called ‘Final Day.’ He belted out a wet cough but still didn’t open his eyes. “I found it early in my career when we conquered one of the sand kingdoms. I kept it in my pocket for hundreds of seasons, assuming there would come a day when I would find myself in a hopeless defeat and I would use it to go out in a blaze of final glory.”

  “You never faced defeat?” Jo asked in a grave voice.

  “Not one that required my own death,” he replied.

  “It looks like you were finally defeated,” I said with sadness.

  “Aye. I faced the four rivers as they merged together under the dragon’s handmaiden. When the waters touched, the containment failed and their contents came out early. The plan all along was for your human armies to take these wells, knowing that Imperium monsters would magically travel outward on the four rivers and surround them when they popped out.”

  “That’s backstabbing!” I blurted out.

  “Yeah, it is. That’s Conflict for you. Too bad we sped up their release by mixing the four into one. This night should make Conflict nice and mad, at least at this one well.”

  “How many others are there?” Jo asked.

  “Dozens, perhaps. They have diggers making them. If I could fight at all of them I could end the war by myself. When the beasts came out of the water, I sliced half of them with my axe, I sent the other half over the railing into the pit, and Raven killed the rest.”

  I chuckled but didn’t correct his math mistake.

  “Lady Merkur fought them too, but she never stopped gunning for me. When the numbers became too great, she escaped through a hole in the roof. I thought she was gone for good, but she snuck a tentacle back down and grabbed me while I fought gloriously against all the waters could throw at us. Raven latched on to stop her, giving me a few more moments to deal out death, but that was it. She entombed us in this vile liquid.”

  He sighed.

  “The fine print on the bottle said I would fight mighty warriors and win a heroic battle, but the price was death at the end of that final day. So, here I am.”

  We shared a little laugh.

  “For a time, I thought you were the mighty warriors I would have to fight, but I’m so glad you weren’t, so I can share this with you.”

  He coughed again.

  “I’ve worked with many good human soldiers in your world and it was less than noble to make them attack each other, but it was downright evil to force them to fight the magical creatures of my world as Conflict desired. That’s the only order I ever refused to follow in my entire career.”

  “Is it how you ended up in the forest?” I asked.

  “Yes. I told my command I was going out for a few puffs on my pipe, but I made for home, instead. I foolishly believed that if I could make it to some friendly units, I might have been able to put a stop to this madness.”

  “You didn’t make it, did you general?” Jo asked as she squatted next to Banger. The small black cat wouldn’t leave Raven.

  Anton finally opened his eyes. “No, young witch. I did not. I still had many miles to cross, but Raven was wounded and getting to the chasm looked impossible, even for me. I took the potion after I was attacked, but right before I met you. Ironically, you helped me get to the chasm after all, but fate would not allow me to return to my homeland.”

  “You did well, general,” I replied. “You were the
key to victory. You gave us the time to think of a way to stop her, which we did. Thank you.”

  “Yeah, thank you,” Tex added.

  The general smiled. “She’s so polite.”

  “And thanks for saving my cat,” I added.

  “I saw him swimming in that mess, so I grabbed him. Held him tight, with my dear Raven. I never thought I’d see fresh air again, but I’m glad I did.”

  “I’m happy your potion worked out, general,” I said. Having him along certainly helped us, and if he was going to go out in a blaze of glory I was happy to help him.

  He sighed deeply. “I wonder if it did work out. It shames me to say, I took this potion as a way to escape her. My glorious enemy should have been her, not these underlings.”

  “Conflict?” I asked.

  “Yes. For all my bravery and for all my medals and awards, I chose to satisfy my own vanity, rather than face her wrath. Now, many of my friends will die.” He did a little head nod. “Those troops over there are using Russian-made guns. That could be the very unit I abandoned. The war goes on without me.”

  He said he led Russian troops, so it made a lot of sense. The gamer part of me wondered if there was a chance to return him and somehow end their attack, but that seemed unlikely even if there weren’t hundreds of creatures counterattacking the forest right now.

  “The war goes on,” he said while closing his eyes again.

  Tex bent over and gave him a peck on the forehead, above his wounds.

  Without opening his eyelids, he said, “You do me great honor, Lady Tex. All I ever wanted was a taste of your beauty. I shall now die a happy man.”

  His smile was gigantic.

  ***

  “Let’s get him inside the warehouse,” I said after the general was quiet for a few moments.

  “No, we should run,” Jo replied with sadness in her voice.

  The black waters had totally consumed Merkur. Other than some green smudges on the pavement, the streetlights and flares revealed no trace of her or the other bodies she’d been digesting. The monsters I’d seen crawling through the gelatinous cube were also gone. I assumed they’d fallen back into the dark waters, giving me a new respect for the danger of ever touching magic streams.