Old Dark (The Last Dragon Lord Book 1) (19 page)

“I always have to remind myself about you, Lucan. You see, with you, there are no coincidences. Just drama.”

“Are you talking about me or are you talking about you? Because I’d call stealing the governorship from under my father on his deathbed drama, too.”

“I won the election!” Ennius roared.
 

“You hated each other. He was puking from chemo and crapping into a bag, and you just had to drag the media into his hospital room for an endorsement, pretending you were all buddy-buddy all of a sudden. You used him up and then threw him in the trash. Believe what you want, but I know the truth. I don’t know why the public didn’t see right through you.”

“Are we going to go back to this again?”

“Yeah, let’s go back. Let’s go all the way the hell back if you want. Get me a time machine and I’ll prove how full of shit you are.”

Ennius stepped up close to Lucan.
 

“Get out of my face,” Lucan warned.
 

“Or what?”
 

Lucan reached into his pocket for a grimoire, but before he could touch it, a blast sent him across the room.
 

He was on the floor before he knew what hit him.
 

“What the—”

An aura hovered over Ennius, and two ice-blue eyes appeared, then an outline of teeth.
 

Lucan tried to stand up, but he was dizzy. He stumbled to his knees, clutching his stomach.
 

The aura dissipated.
 

Ennius laughed, slowly at first, but then hysterically.
 

“If you can’t take that, how are you going to take the governorship?” Ennius asked.
 

“Hide behind your dragons all you want,” Lucan said, touching a bruise on his cheek.
 

“Don’t worry, I will,” Ennius said. With supernatural speed, he dashed to Lucan and grabbed him by the suit collar. “And one more thing,” he said, whispering into his ear. “I can’t prove it, but if I find out you’re involved with this incident in the bog, I’m going to come after you with a rage unlike anything you’ve seen before. I will destroy you. Got it?”

The door opened and Ennius threw Lucan out. Lucan crashed into a chair, breaking it.
 

The governor stood in the doorway, wiping his hands. He studied Celesse from head to toe and said, “Babe, you’re way too good for him.” Then he slammed the door, shaking one of the photos off the wall.
 

“Are you okay?” Celesse asked.
 

Lucan pushed her away as he stood up. He started down the hallway without a word.
 

The governor threw himself into his chair, stewing.
 

“What do you think?” he asked.
 

“It’s strange,” a voice said.
 

“Did you smell anything on him?”

“No.”

“That’s it? You have nothing else for me?”

The blue eyes materialized in front of the desk. A staticky, holographic image of a white dragon hovered in the office. His scales were like a flurry of snow and his face was beginning to wrinkle around the snout.
 

“You don’t need me to tell you that your nephew is obviously up to something, do you?” the dragon asked.

The governor banged the desk. He turned on a television and watched the news with the bog incident onscreen.
 
“Some inside information would be nice. You’re a dragon, after all.”

“And you’re the head of state.”

“When I put you through Abstraction, it was supposed to make you useful.” The governor poked at the inside of his cheek with his tongue and cracked his knuckles. “Is this incident at the bog going to hurt me?” he asked.
 

Norwyn flashed, then disappeared so that only his eyes remained.
 
“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

Intermezzo

The Dawn Age began with so much prosperity that the world quickly forgot what came before.
 

Entire kingdoms were founded on bedrocks of magic. Kings had direct access to the aquifer.
 

Dragons did nothing as magic use proliferated. They had to come to terms with the reality that, with elves getting magic directly from the aquifer, the dragon race was becoming irrelevant.
 

Humans achieved new levels of knowledge, leading the world with technological innovation.
 

Elves combined magic with human technology, and civilization charged forward faster than in all the previous centuries combined.
 

The world became a society in pursuit of magic, using it to fulfill its desires.
 

In the early days of the Dawn Age, one could see the aura of sparkling cities miles away. The world was so full of magic you could taste it, pull a spell out of the air.
 

But with higher magic use came a higher number of magical creatures, born out of the byproduct of casting.
 

Magic Eaters were among them.
 

Many varieties of magic-eating creatures stalked the wildlands, preying on travelers when the food supply of magic ran out.
 

Citizens of the world called it the Magical Problem: when magic use was low, society inched forward; when it was high, society raced into the new dawn but had to deal with increased monster populations.
 

The only way to get rid of the monster problem?

Magic.
 

Lots of magic, enough to empty the aquifer and not even make a dent in the monster population.
 

The kingdoms of the world sent emissaries to a city on the western continent where the concentration of magic and monsters was highest. The emissaries represented dragons, humans, and elves.

They all agreed: they could not sustain the current level of beasts.
 

The group of emissaries was named the Hope Council, for they had the impossible task of instilling hope in a world full of fear. The city was called the City of Magic. Over time, the ideas merged together, and the town became Magic Hope City.
 

Dragons found themselves relevant again, recapturing aquifer access points that they had lost during the reign of Fenroot. Keeper dragons helped control magical flow in and out of the wells, carefully regulating periods of excess and periods of scarcity, monitoring the monster populations. During the high-use periods, humans and elves focused their efforts on weapons technology to stave off the beasts; during low use, Crafter dragons repaired the land, creating hills and shaping the landscape so that it became less hospitable to monsters by reducing their hiding places.
 

An order of monster hunters was founded during this period. Born out of a sense of loyalty, duty, and fear, the Aquiferians took an oath to protect the world from all magical threats. A secret reserve, it lay in wait, training until the next threat arose. It fought off many waves of monsters in its early years.
 

But by the time The Aquiferians reached its maturity, the world had stabilized.
 

The world found order in chaos, balance on the verge of death.
 

But it would not last, for there was one race that began to distance itself from society ...

ACT IV

XXVII

Dark lay in the corner of his cell. He couldn’t sleep, and hunger ripped through his stomach.
 

He was so hungry it made him dizzy. He couldn’t stand without nausea, and he’d already thrown up all over the floor. He’d sensed it coming and aimed it for a corner so as not to live in his own filth. But it weakened him.
 

The bucketfuls of meat sitting right in front of him didn’t make him feel any better, for he couldn’t eat them due to the metal cast on his mouth.
 

The raw meat was fresh and bloody. It reminded him of the mounds of tribute his subjects used to make—piles and piles of meat for him and his dragons to share every night, grass-fed beef from the plains.
 

He and his dragons would eat like lions, filling the corridors of the palace with scraps, bone, and blood. For hours afterward, the hallways smelled of meat, until his human servants scrubbed the floors with lye and lavender.
 

That was the smell of home.
 

The taste of home.
 

And he could do nothing but sit in the cell, the metal cast over his mouth, and think about what was.

The cast was uncomfortable and it held his mouth open at an odd angle. Perhaps his captors had known that he would vomit. But no matter how many times he beat his head on the walls, the cast would not come off.
 

Strong blacksmithing. Or sorcery. He’d never seen it before.

 
But in the last twenty-four hours, he’d seen many things that he didn’t know were possible.
 

He didn’t know humans and elves were capable of this level of magic. Were they formidable? Oh, yes, they had proven that.
 

But they would not hold him.
 

Not forever.
 

The lights flicked on again and he heard footsteps tracking toward his cell.
 

He stayed in the corner.
 

This time, two different people stood in front of the cage.
 

He recognized the woman—she wore a rose-colored shirt with a blue jacket over it, and thick spectacles. She was the one who first cast a spell on him back in the catacombs. She was elven, but her skin had a subtle tan and her ears were only slightly pointed. She didn’t have high cheekbones; instead, her face was rounded and a bit plain, almost human. She must have been from a remote elven village to have such physical characteristics. How she had surprised him!
 

A man in black accompanied her. He stood like a statue at her side. Clearly a bodyguard.
 

“Lord Alsatius Dark,” she said.

“Yes,” Dark said, almost relieved that they could understand each other.
 

The woman spoke slowly at first, hesitating, and said with a weird accent, “I wish to speak with you.”

She pronounced every word clearly and slowly. For the first time, Dark understood an entire sentence.
 

“You have your audience, girl. Speak.” Dark’s voice was metallic and cold, and he hated the way it sounded.
 

The woman spoke, but again he only understood every other word. He groaned and turned his head away.
 

The woman stopped speaking. She studied him, and he felt her gaze. She was the first to truly look at him; the others had come in and barked orders. He did not sense evil motives within her, but he didn’t trust even his own senses anymore.
 

His eye socket throbbed and his gums ached.
 

The woman pulled out a strange black object and put it to her ear. She spoke into it, and soon after, a group of men entered. It was the same men who had put the iron cast on him.
 

His body arched in rage and he roared, but his roar came out weak, strained. He tried again, but his throat was raw.
 

WHISH!
 

The men hit him with a paralyzing spell again. Dark didn’t fight it this time. He relaxed and tried not to let the paranoia of being paralyzed overtake him. The men entered the cell and climbed onto his body, unscrewing the metal cast. It came off easily.
 

By the time the spell relented, they had exited the cell door and stood safely outside his reach.
 

They spoke to the woman, and Dark could sense concern in their voices.
 

The woman waved them away.
 

So the elven woman is in charge, too.

Interesting.
 

Dark wasted no time; he ate the meat in front of him, tearing through it and sending scraps flying everywhere. He smashed it between his gums, and the cold slabs relieved the ache of his missing teeth.
 

The food gave him energy, and he felt a sense of renewed spirit in his legs almost immediately. The pain in his body didn’t subside, but he was able to ignore it.
 

“I am sorry for the arrangement,” the woman said. “My name is Miri Charmwell. I am an ex ... in dragons.”

He didn’t understand her.
 

“You are not a dragon,” Dark growled.
 

“Ex-pert,” Miri said slowly. “It means someone who knows a lot about something.”

An elven woman lecturing
him
, the Dragon Lord, on language! His father would have had a stroke.
 

“Why can I understand you?”

“I learned how you used to speak,” Miri said.

“What do you mean ‘used to’?”

Miri paused and wrung her hands together. He could tell from her eyes that she was hesitant to answer.