James Maxey - Greatshadow

Greatshadow himself remained in the caldera, a beast composed of flame and smoke, who roared, in a language I’d never heard yet instantly understood: “ALL MUST BURN!”

“He noticed,” said Infidel.

These were the first living dragons I’d ever seen, even though I’ve handled a lot of dragon bones in my time, and seen more than a few depictions of the beasts carved onto walls or woven into tapestries. Dragons used to be numerous, until the Church of the Book nearly wiped them all out.

The survivors are the primal dragons. These beasts were so fluent in elemental magic that they eventually became the elements themselves.

Of course, if there are no more ordinary dragons, I had to wonder just what the hell was flying toward us. The creatures looked exactly like they did in the books in the monastery; big serpents, with a long neck and serpentine tail, and a short, thick, pot-bellied torso with four legs a bit too small in proportion to the rest of its form. What they lacked in legs, they more than made up for in wings. The wings were easily as wide as the body was long, huge membranes of drum-taut flesh that reminded me of the limbs of jungle bats.

Smoke trailed from their nostrils as they passed overhead. They were at least a quarter-mile up, but the furnace-like heat of their bodies washed over the remnants of the Black Swan as they beat their wings in a powerful downstroke. In seconds, they were at the mouth of the bay, facing the king’s ships. Their jaws gaped open and their pot bellies swelled as they inhaled uncounted gallons of air. At last, they breathed out.

Infidel shielded her eyes as a second sun formed where the jets of flame shooting from the twin dragons overlapped. As the light faded, all seven of the king’s ships were aflame. At this distance, the men were little more than insects throwing themselves into the sea, trailing smoke as they fell.

The dragons spun around. Again, they sucked in air and breathed flame, the light of their assault casting long stark shadows on the roof of the Black Swan. When the light faded, little remained of the ships. The sea itself was boiling where the boats had been mere seconds before.

Satisfied with their work on the fleet, the dragons split, making a more leisurely approach toward what remained of Commonground. Along the way, they spit fire at the few boats and canoes that were afloat out in the bay. The distant screams of frying men carried over the water.

One of the dragons turned its serpent face toward the Black Swan.

“Uh oh,” said Infidel.

“Goons!” Menagerie shouted to No-Face and Reeker on the roof below. “Let’s teach these oversized garden snakes some manners. Maneuver nine!”

“Rurh!” said No-Face, grabbing up a shattered roof beam.

Reeker looked pale as he shouted to Menagerie, “You’re joking, right?”

No-Face handled the twenty-foot beam, thick as a grown man’s thigh, like it was no heavier than a piece of kindling. The big man slapped the beam down at the edge of the roof, with about six feet hanging out, pointing straight toward the advancing dragon. Reeker held up his hands as No-Face approached him.

“C’mon, guy, I mean, you can’t really-”

No-Face grabbed him by his shirt and spun him around, sitting him squarely on the end of the beam that sat upon the roof. Reeker swallowed hard. “Boys, it’s been good knowing ya,” he whispered.

“Guh,” said No-Face, nodding.

“On the count of three!” Menagerie shouted. “Three!” He threw himself from the crow’s nest. When he was over the point where the broken beam jutted into space, he changed again, taking the form of a hippopotamus.

Like most hippos who discover themselves to be sixty feet up in the air, he dropped like a stone. He hit the edge of the plank with all four of his fat, round feet expertly placed for leverage. Reeker shot into the sky, his hands clasped before him, his eyes tightly closed. His lips were moving, though I couldn’t hear him. It looked for all the world like he was praying.

The Goons’ aim was perfection; there was a reason why they were the best paid mercenaries in Commonground. The dragon dove toward the Black Swan, opening its mouth to fill its great bellow lungs with air. What it got, instead, was a damp skunk-man slapping against the roof of its mouth. Instinctively, the beast clamped its jaws shut. Instantly, a cloud of yellow-green fumes shot out from between its long, jagged teeth. Its eyes grew wide.

The creature veered away from the Black Swan, whipping its head back and forth, coughing violently, unable to breathe deeply enough to ignite its flames. Reeker clung to the beast’s tongue, hugging it with his arms and legs like it was a greased pole. Slowly, he slipped toward the tip. His entire form was hazy, as the most powerful stenches he could summon poured out of every pore. The dragon began to convulse, its nervous system overwhelmed by the chemical assault. With a final, frantic jerk of its neck, it sent Reeker flying. Before it could recover, it slammed into the waters of the bay, hard, vanishing beneath the surface in a violent boil.

Reeker shrieked like a teenage girl as he sailed through the air before he, too, hit the surface of the water, bouncing once, twice, thrice like a skimming stone before he sank, leaving an oily film.

“One down,” said Relic, casting his gaze toward the beast’s twin, who was still burning ships at the other edge of the bay. “Unfortunately, we’re running out of Goons.”

Reeker still hadn’t surfaced, nor was there any sign of a hippo thrashing about in the waters below. No-Face had run to the edge of the barge and was looking down into the water, shouting out, “Munuh! Rukuh!”

Infidel cracked her knuckles. “We don’t need no stinkin’ Goons.”

Below, there was a loud crash. I hadn’t seen Aurora in over a minute, and now her head was sticking up from a trap door in the roof. She climbed out, bearing a large wooden harpoon, nearly twice as tall as she was, with a long coil of rope looped around her shoulders.

“I’ve hunted whales bigger than these things,” she shouted, as she met Infidel’s gaze.

“Fire-breathing, flying whales?” asked Infidel.

“You wouldn’t believe,” Aurora said.

The ogress spun around as the remaining dragon roared angrily and shot toward the barge, apparently now aware of the loss of its twin. Aurora dropped the coil of rope to the deck and drew back with the harpoon. “For honor!” she cried as she hurled the weapon toward the approaching beast.

The harpoon never even got close. The coil snagged on a ragged board and the weapon jerked to a sudden halt not fifty feet overhead. The dragon inhaled deeply as it plunged straight toward Aurora. Aurora crouched down, covering her head with her hands as the dragon exhaled, shooting out a jet of flame, engulfing the ice-ogress. The dragon’s momentum carried it toward the mast upon which Infidel was perched. The flames instantly disintegrated the lower half of the mast. Infidel jumped from the crow’s nest, grabbing Relic by the cloak and hurling him out toward the bay. She dropped down, hands open wide, as the dragon’s scaly back flashed beneath her. She grabbed hold of the scales near the beast’s tail. The dragon reacted with the speed of thought, whipping the end of its tail down to shatter more beams on the roof of the Black Swan. The jolt knocked Infidel free. She bounced across the deck, flying off the edge, until a long length of chain whipped out and lassoed her ankle. No-Face jerked her back onto the roof, if it could still be called a roof. Little was left but a pile of broken boards and timbers, and half of these were on fire.

Aurora was still alive. She was crouched behind a wall of cracked and melting ice, fighting to untangle the snagged rope of the harpoon.