End Times in Dragon City

End Times 

in 

Dragon City

Shotguns & Sorcery Novel #3

By Matt Forbeck

Also by Matt Forbeck

Hard Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #1)

Bad Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #2)

Leverage: The Con Job

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revolution

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Revelation

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Resolution

Amortals

Vegas Knights

Carpathia

Magic: The Gathering
comics

Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon
(with Jeff Grubb)

Mutant Chronicles

The Marvel Encyclopedia

Star Wars vs. Star Trek

Secret of the Spiritkeeper

Prophecy of the Dragons

The Dragons Revealed

Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl: Dead Ball

Blood Bowl: Death Match

Blood Bowl: Rumble in the Jungle

Eberron: Marked for Death

Eberron: The Road to Death

Eberron: The Queen of Death

Full Moon Enterprises 

Beloit, WI, USA

www.forbeck.com

Shotguns & Sorcery, Dragon City, and all prominent fictional characters, locations, and organizations depicted herein are Trademarks of Matt Forbeck. 

© 2013 by Matt Forbeck. 

All Rights Reserved.

12 for ’12 logo created by Jim Pinto.

Shotguns & Sorcery
logo created by Jim Pinto. 

Cover illustration by Dvarg. 

Cover design by Matt Forbeck. 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

Dedicated to my wife Ann and our kids Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. They always remind me that even the end times mean new beginnings too. 

Thanks to Robin D. Laws, who encouraged me to write the first
Shotguns & Sorcery
story, and to Marc Tassin for asking for the second. Also to Matthew Sprange and the rest of the crew at Mongoose Publishing for chatting with me about this setting when I thought it might make a decent roleplaying game. 

Extra thanks to Ann Forbeck for serving as my first reader and constant motivator. 

Huge thanks to all the readers who backed this book and the rest in the trilogy on Kickstarter. See the end of the book for a full list of their names. Each and every one of them is fantastic, and I can only hope that this book justifies the faith they showed in me. 

12 for ’12

This is the standard edition of a book first released as a reward for the backers of my second Kickstarter drive for
my 12 for ’12 project
,
my mad plan to write a novel a month for the entirety of 2012. Together, over 330 people chipped in almost $13,000 to successfully fund an entire trilogy of
Shotguns & Sorcery
novels.

Thanks to each and every one of you for daring me to take on this incredible challenge — and for coming along with me on the wild ride it’s been. And thank you to all my readers, whether you’re backers or not. Stories have no homes without heads to house them.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

“Well done, Gibson. You’ve killed us all.” The immortal Captain of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard sneered at me through the iron bars set in the wizard-locked door of my cold stone cell lodged in the highest reaches of the Garrett, the most impregnable prison in Dragon City. He was so angry at me that the tips of his pointed ears burned a bright red. 

“I think we’ve known each other long enough now, Yabair. Feel free to call me Max.” I kept my back to him as I stood on the far side of the cell and gazed down through the single barred window set deep into its yard-thick walls, looking over the city splayed out below me. I might have been beaten bloody after my arrest and all the way up the mountain until Yabair and his subordinates had thrown me into this unforgiving cell, but I had to admit, it had a damn fine view. 

I could see the distant spot where I’d killed the Dragon Emperor from here, a gigantic gash that he’d torn out of the rotting flesh of Goblintown, right there up against the massive stone wall known as the Great Circle. It had been a crystal-clear act of self-defense, but I knew that wasn’t going to fly with the Guard. If the Dragon Emperor wanted you dead, that superseded any other concerns. You just let it happen, laws or rights or other useless words be damned. 

Not that you usually had much of a choice. I’d gotten lucky. I’d been in the right place at the right time with the right weapon in my hand, and I’d shot him in the right spot. 

The fact that he’d been distracted by his son — the young dragonet who’d imprinted himself on me at the moment of his accidental hatching — had helped. The Guard couldn’t haul in the heir to the throne, of course, even if they could have caught him, but with me they had a much wider slate of options. To my own benefit, they’d skipped over instant execution — which I’d been half expecting — and chosen to throw me into prison instead. 

What that meant for my ultimate fate, I couldn’t say. I suspected the only reason I could still breathe at all was because of the dragonet’s affection for me. Without that, I’d have been hauled off to the morgue instead.

Yesterday, that meant my remains would have wound up in the Dragon’s stomach, part of a secret agreement he’d made with Dragon City’s founders to protect them from the undead hordes of the Ruler of the Dead. Today, we’d entered new lands, and none of us had any maps nor even as much as a decent rumor of a path to go on. That meant I got tossed into the Garrett instead, at least for now. 

“I didn’t pick out this cell for you by accident, Gibson,” Yabair said. “I want you to be able to look out there. I want you to be able to see what you’ve done, to bear witness to the ramifications of your crimes.” 

“I shot someone who was about to eat me.” I searched my heart once more and found the same thing as I had every time since that fateful moment: not one crumb of regret. 

I had some legitimate fears about what would happen next, but not only had the Dragon been about to eat me but also devour just about everyone else I’d ever cared about in the city that bore his name — or at least the name of his kind. Should I have let that happen? Would it have been better for everyone else if I had? 

I couldn’t say for sure. It meant big changes ahead, the kind that could shake the mountain to its roots, but at least I stood a decent chance of being around to see them. Yabair might be able to take that away from me, but at least the Dragon couldn’t. 

And he couldn’t eat any more of his loyal subjects. Not ever again. 

“Look out there,” Yabair said. “Tell me what you see.” 

From his vantage point at the door of my cell, the elf couldn’t enjoy the vista with me, so I decided to grant his request. “There’s smoke curling up from the spot where I shot the Emperor. Is his body hot enough that he’s self-incinerating upon his death?” 

Yabair gave a cold and unfriendly laugh. “Those are rioters in the streets of Goblintown. They’re falling in on themselves in terror.” 

I wanted to pretend I didn’t know what they could be afraid of. After all, the Dragon Emperor was dead, and he’d been eating their bodies for generations — although they didn’t know that last part, of course. But I only had to let my gaze wander past the Dragon Emperor’s open grave to know what put such fear in the hearts of the toughest and most hard-bitten people in all of Dragon City. 

As the sun set in the west, just beyond the stolid lines of the Night Tower that marked the far edge of the Great Circle, the undead creatures that formed the ever-hungry army of the necromancer who called herself the Ruler of the Dead gathered. I couldn’t see the base of the wall from my vantage point, but from the trails of zombies shambling toward us from the wilderness, there must have already been hundreds if not thousands of the creatures massing against the cut-stone barrier that towered above them. The wall had protected the people of Dragon City for hundreds of years, but that was because the threat of the Dragon’s wrath had kept them from coming at us in large numbers. 

And now that threat — and the protection that went with it — was gone. I’d removed it myself.

“Don’t you think the wall will hold on its own?” I turned back to Yabair. 

He grimaced, his anger at me sliding away as he considered the threat against our common home. “I don’t know,” he said. “The Dragon helped keep the army of dead away from us long enough for the dwarves to build the Great Circle. It’s possible it could hold on its own. Or maybe it could have back then.” 

I could hear a “but” attached to that statement, and I decided to supply it. “But now?” 

“Now the Ruler of the Dead has had centuries to prepare for this moment. The only thing that kept her in check to this date was the presence of the Dragon. She has more minions than ever to hurl against us, and there’s little we can now do to stop her. To my mind, it’s not a matter of if the Great Circle will fall but when.” 

“Don’t you think you ought to let me out of here then?” I put up a hand to stave off his reflexive protest. “No matter what I’ve done — whether you honestly think I doomed us all or not — I’m not doing anyone any kind of good trapped in here. Why not put me on the front lines of this battle, someplace where I could help?” 

Yabair gave a soft grunt at this notion and seemed to take a moment to consider it in depth before he spoke. “If the Great Circle falls,” he said, “there’s little that you or anyone else will be able to do to stop the destruction of everything we’ve built here over the centuries.” 

“But doesn’t it make sense to let me at least try?”