Dragon Royale 2: An Urban Fantasy Adventure Page 8

  “Run!” Jo said as quietly as possible. “A witch has reported hearing noises on the water. They must be close.”

  I looked back, afraid the ruse was going to fail if the witches caught sight of the raft before it was destroyed. It rose and fell on unnatural waves, but it seemed to resist all efforts to disable it.

  “Fuck,” I said. “I have to shoot it. Tex, cover me.”

  “Guardians may see through the ruse,” Anton suggested.

  I pulled the rifle off my shoulder and lined up a shot on the dinghy as it floated away. For a moment, I held my breath as I tried to decide what to do. Firing the gun was a risk, for sure, but if the boat remained empty and the witches found it, they’d immediately know it was a trick.

  “Maybe we accidentally shot our own boat,” I let out dramatically.

  “I’ll keep you quiet,” Tex whispered.

  My gun fired with its thunderous roar, but I trusted Tex to hide that from the witches. The bullet seemed to drag the laser tracer out over the water until it impacted the cheery little boat. The punctured inner tube exploded like an over-inflated party balloon.

  Tex might have been able to conceal the blast of my gun, but she couldn’t cover that boom from so far away.

  ***

  “Shit! That worked.” I admired our handiwork for a second, but Jo was frantic we move out. The damaged raft was already partly submerged as the creatures below it finally had something to grab. The raft, and the forged evidence, floated downstream as the rushing water carried everything uphill.

  “Go. Go!” I pointed upstream on our side of the river.

  We ran through the park-like area for about sixty seconds. Tex carried Jo’s pack, while Jo carried Banger in her arms. Echo splashed in the stream every so often, like she came up to see if we’d left her.

  The first time I looked back to check on the rest of our party, I had to stop. Anton and Raven barely covered half the distance we did and they weren’t even on the run.

  “They’ll never make it,” I cautioned. “We have to hide.”

  The ground was fairly level along the bank of the stream so there were no rocks or other cover we could use as a hiding spot. If we’d put more trees and brush at our backs I might have said we were in the clear, but I still saw flashes of the yellow rubber boat, so we weren’t far enough.

  Most of the forest around us was filled with tall trees, like oaks and whatever, but there were a few small evergreens that gave cover closer to the earth. I decided to make our stand behind a young fir tree with wide, low branches that were a mix of green and red.

  “The witches heard the noise on the water, Matt,” Jo said over our mental link.

  “Get behind here,” I said as I gestured to the tree.

  Tex and Jo pushed their way into the thick branches right away.

  “Tex, we need you,” I said.

  “I’m on it,” she answered with confidence.

  The old general’s trot had fallen into more of a waddle. I couldn’t figure out if Raven hung back with him by choice, or if he was also that slow.

  “Over here, guys,” I said breathlessly as they approached.

  “Master knight, we could continue and draw them away from you. It would be a noble death.” He came up next to the me breathing in and out with huge gulps of air. His hand gripped Raven’s neck as if the wolf was the one asking to continue.

  It was tempting to take him up on his offer, to be 100% sure the rest of us survived, but it seemed like a waste given that we had a passable hiding spot big enough for all of us.

  “Die another time, general. You are needed inside the tree.”

  He wiped at his beard with his free hand, then guided Raven where I asked him to. Tex held up a branch so he could squat down under the remains of the tree, but his giant size filled up almost all the remaining space.

  “Let’s hope this works,” I said to no one in particular. I crouched next to everyone else, almost outside the branches, because there wasn’t any more room.

  We had to wait about a minute before I heard voices on the wind.

  Jo confirmed what was taking place. “The witches’ channel is exploding with reports that they’ve found a boat with evidence in it.”

  She didn’t say anything for many seconds.

  “They are searching,” Jo continued. “Fuck, they’ve already found the knight. They must be close.”

  I soon heard them back where we’d just come from.

  “They fought this one,” one of the witches said.

  “And escaped?” another asked.

  “Aye, for a time. They jumped in the boat to make their getaway, but the siren must have been lying in wait. Once they touched the water, their fates were sealed.” The pair of witches laughed at our assumed deaths.

  The second witch continued. “I wonder where they found a boat?”

  “Who cares. This fantastical land has things I never dreamed possible. A boat filled with air is but one.”

  “Can we move on, then?” the second said in a slightly lower tone. “The killers died in the water. I don’t want to keep looking for the heads of those three players.”

  “Yeah, I don’t, either. The boat accident victims won’t even have bones to find. Send the report to headquarters that Ivona’s killer took out a knight and his squires but was also killed in the river. Let’s go to the trouble up north.”

  “And this one? Push him in the river?”

  The two were silent for several seconds before I could barely pick up the sound of a splash.

  “Float away!” a witch called out before releasing a cackle.

  Seconds later, both flew right over our heads and banked across the river, as they headed for who-knows-where.

  “They threw that guy in the water,” I monotoned.

  “Yeah, they must not be as righteous or as thorough as we thought,” Jo responded. “Even their report is lazy.”

  My witch listened intently for half a minute. “Shit. I guess they changed their minds. They said what they found, but requested someone else follow up to investigate the boat wreck. They are concerned they didn’t find any weapons in the water.”

  I doubted myself for not realizing they’d probably want the murder weapon. “When are they coming back?”

  “I get the feeling something is going on that has them all excited. A big fight, if I’m hearing this right. The dispatcher sounded glad to find Ivona’s killer, but was disinterested in an accident report, just like the two we saw by the water.”

  “What does this mean?” Tex inquired.

  “It gives us time to put more distance between us, and them,” Jo replied. “I have no idea if our ruse is going to work for long, but we should assume it won’t.”

  “Spoken like a true gamer,” I said.

  “Thanks, between all my gaming, and the witch blood flowing through me, I don’t trust anyone besides you and Tex.” She looked over to Anton. “No offense.”

  “None needed, my dear young thing. You are right to protect your man. As the saying goes in Brittania, sometimes they really are out to get you.”

  “You know there are actually 99 other teams looking for me, right?” I said a bit dramatically.

  “Nay, good knight,” the old general replied. “98 teams. We passed the bodies back up the valley.”

  “97, if we include the knight that tried to jump us from the stream,” Tex added.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure about him. His armor looked a tiny bit different, like it was an older model. I think he was from an earlier royale.”

  “Well, that’s awesome,” Tex replied with sass. “We have to fight the ghosts of previous contestants.”

  “There can’t be too many,” I answered. “They are supposed to be fighting each other, not ending up in rivers like this.”

  “Maybe some soldiers fall through the cracks,” Anton offered. “That is routine on the battlefield. I once had a unit—”

  “Anton, please,” I broke in. “We don’t have the
time. Let’s get moving and we can talk when we get a little further from this place.”

  “Fine, but if I don’t get some food soon, I may lay back down and end this day early.” He crawled out of the fir tree and brushed needles from his pants.

  His wolf gave me puppy dog eyes, like it remembered I had magical access to a dog biscuit.

  As everyone got ready, I noticed a blotch of sap on my hand, so I wiped it down the side of my leg. In the moment, I took a deep breath of the fir, saw the red and green needles, and thought of Christmas. I never experienced particularly memorable holidays back in the foster system, but Christmas was usually the best.

  This time, instead of gifts coming under the tree, it was the tree itself that had saved us.

  “Thanks, tree,” I said to myself.

  It was going to take more than luck, but being lucky helped. We found the perfect little tree for our hiding spot.

  “Time to clear out,” I said.

  ***

  The walk up the river might have been pleasant if we didn’t have to worry about ambushers behind every tree, referees in the air, and some sort of head-chopping killers roaming nearby. We might have temporarily fooled the witches, but the real killers were still out there.

  I let Anton and Raven stay in the back in case we were followed. The general reassured me the wolf’s nose was far superior to my cat. He gave me a blank look when I tried to explain my cat was a cyborg that blended flesh and machine.

  In the end, I put Banger up in the front. We were far more likely to run into trouble, than have it come in from the back.

  Echo swam the stream alongside us, and warned the group several times to walk away from the water so as not to be spotted by unseen threats. That concerned me, but she explained how she could move fast enough underwater to avoid any trouble.

  “Sir Matt, a big drop is coming up. That will take some effort for me to swim against the current.”

  The stream passed us going the opposite direction as we traveled a bit downhill, but ahead I lost sight of the water as it fell to the other side of a rise. When we walked the last few yards to the edge, I got a good look at what she meant.

  I still couldn’t get over how strange it looked. “Sure as shit, this river flows uphill.”

  “This is nothing,” the general said in a tired voice. “I witnessed one of the last of the ancient Romian aqueducts before it was destroyed. They magically mastered the transport of water so it could float on the air across chasms. That magnificent structure lasted a thousand years.”

  “Why would they destroy such a thing?” Tex wondered aloud.

  “Oh, we had to blow it up. Water demons used it to drop magical pineapples upon our heads during some campaign or another. Those creatures travel in water, like the sirens, but they aren’t anywhere near as pretty. Trust me, you do not want to wake up with one of those in your sleeping pouch.”

  I turned to the general, hopeful he was done with his storytelling. He seemed to know my mind, because he smiled and motioned for me to proceed. His cloud of stink caught in my nostrils and I hurried to oblige him.

  We walked down the steep hillside for a couple of minutes, but I had to stop and look at the reverse flow of water as soon as there was a place clear of all the vines and small trees choking the route.

  The stream broke to our left, opposite of the direction I wanted to go, so it went down the hill at what was essentially a diagonal.

  The waterway still wasn’t very wide and couldn’t be very deep. It seemed to flow on top of the pine needles and other dirt on the forest floor and it even surrounded some tree trunks as it cut through. The red water ran at a pace similar to any rapids back in the regular world, but the bubbly churn went up instead of down.

  “This is amazing,” I reported. “We didn’t even imagine this kind of magic back when we, uh, studied it on tabletops.”

  Anton hustled by as he went from tree to tree down the slope. Raven was more sure-footed, but he held close to his master as if the big man might fall.

  The rest of us easily kept pace with him because it wasn’t as steep as it was stuffed with fallen branches, sticker bushes, and tangled trees. It took him time to pick through all that, because his thick-weaved shirt and pants seemed to catch on everything.

  “There goes Echo!” Jo shouted.

  The woman swam underwater like a normal person, but her magic carried her forward like a salmon heading for the spawn grounds. Echo didn’t look over to us as she went by.

  “When we get to the bottom, may I take a break?” Anton called from where he stopped below me.

  “Sure,” I said. “I think we could all use a few minutes of calm.”

  By the time we made it down the long hill to where the water leveled out, it was close to noon.

  “Take five, everyone,” I said.

  Anton sat heavily on a fallen log. “You drive us hard, master knight. I commend you for your mettle but fear I may have overdone it.”

  I almost suggested he take a dip in the water, but the blood-red tint screamed stay away. I doubted we could even take drinks from the magical stream.

  “Echo, is there anything to drink around here? Is that safe, by chance?” I pointed to the glimmering pool where she’d come up.

  She beamed. “This is not, but do you want to see a magic trick?”

  “Always.”

  “Do you have a water pouch I can use?”

  “Jo, do you have more waters in your backpack?” I asked her.

  “Check with Tex. There should be a full one and a couple empties, but she’s been carrying it.”

  Tex dug inside the pack and pulled out a half-filled bottle of store-bought water.

  “Fancy!” Echo said when she saw it. “You can drink the remains.”

  I grimaced. “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me, Matt.” Echo smiled and floated around a shallow pool next to a rocky shelf below us.

  “Fine.” I handed the bottle to Tex, but she refused. Then I handed it to Jo, and she also pushed it away. Finally, I gave it to Anton, and he didn’t hesitate. He downed most of it, then gave the remainder to Raven by sticking it halfway in his mouth.

  “Ew, now it has wolf spit on it,” Tex complained.

  “Toss it down,” Echo said in a cheery voice.

  “Now it’s going to have blood in it,” Tex continued. “Is it just me?”

  Jo shook her head like she didn’t know what to make of the misuse of her water.

  I tossed it down.

  Echo pulled it underwater for a moment, then came back up to the surface holding a full bottle. She twisted the cap and then held the container up to me.

  Her perky nipples caught my interest as water playfully splashed at them in the noontime glare. My magic stirred once more, tempered only by the fact her kind was famous for luring men into streams like this.

  “It’s still red,” I suggested.

  “Watch,” the pointy-eared babe said as she shook the bottle. Of course, that shook the rest of her, furthering the growing problem in my drawers.

  “I see what’s happening there,” Echo said matter-of-factly as she looked at my crotch. “I’ve seen the men my sisters have dragged into the water. They did horrible things with them in the end, but sometimes they liked to play with, what did he call it? A bone bag?”

  Anton chuckled from his bench.

  The conversation grew uncomfortable, even for the new knight-in-a-deathmatch version of me.

  Before I answered, she stopped shaking and tossed up the bottle.

  “Don’t worry, I have power over water, Sir Matt. I can get as wet as you desire.”

  “You mean as much water as you desire?” I said to clarify.

  “That, too.” Echo sank back under the gentle surface.

  Anton got my attention. “How is it you attract such beauty, master knight? I’ve known many a soldier who could enter any port of call and find the most beautiful prostitutes the town could offer, but never have I seen some
one of your, uh, dress code, run the table like this.”

  Anton waved his hand toward Jo and Tex. Both women seemed to take that as a compliment because they smiled at me with knowing looks. My magic satisfied them both a few hours ago, but I felt the pangs of desire as we sat there. The tense escape and serious problem with the headless people dulled their desires for a time, but here in the peace and sunshine, it began to build.

  Despite being emptied several times this morning, my airplane hangar of magic was already half-full. It bubbled with anticipation now that it sensed Echo wanted into my group.

  I shrugged to Anton, then opened the bottle and sucked down the whole thing.

  “You should have let one of us test it,” Jo said sheepishly.

  “Nah. Not my style. I wouldn’t put you at risk for something as lame as drinking water.” I wasn’t going to bend on the point.

  After I screwed on the cap, I tossed the bottle back down to Echo. “You were right. It is wonderful!”

  “I’ll make you another.” She dove under her own waves and got to it.

  “Jo, will you do me a favor and make sure everyone gets enough water? Now that we can breathe, I’m going to look at yours and Tex’s app pages and see what upgrades you have available.”

  “About time,” she said with sarcasm.

  “Ha! I was a little busy, today.”

  “I saw what you were doing with Tex before I stepped in. You had plenty of time.”

  Anton butted in with excited curiosity. “You don’t say?”

  “Tex, you first,” I said to avoid the general’s question. We sat on the far end of Anton’s fallen tree with my screen already on.

  It was time for some choices.

  ***

  I opened the Dragon Royale Girls app to the page with her sexy avatar at the top. A text note appended to the page and notified me there were unallocated skill points and one new level upgrade available.

  “I didn’t get to choose my level upgrade,” I said with a touch of regret. “It simply went right to level 2.”

  Tex giggled. “You can control women, Matt, what more could you possibly want?”

  “You can never have too much power,” I countered. “And control is a strong word. You guys do what you want.”