The Dragons of Decay (3 page)

“
My
book?” Simon said curiously to Aeris.

“
I
assume he means that book of fantasy monsters you used to use back in
the old world when you played those games of yours.”

“
Oh
right. Well, it is surprisingly accurate, considering that the people
who wrote it were just basically pulling ideas out of thin air.”

“
Ah
but were they?” Aeris asked archly.

“
Meaning?”

“
Meaning
that we already know how the old gods of Light liked to drop clues
and hints on the cataclysm to come. Think of all of the ancient
spells and runes that your friend Daniel found long before the
dragons returned. It is quite possible that these fantasy writers
were struck with divine inspiration rather than just having good
imaginations.”

Simon rested
his chin in his hands and stared at the elemental.

“
You
really are smarter than you look, do you know that?”

“
Well,
thank you,” Aeris responded with a smile. Then he scowled.
“Wait a second...”

“
I
have it, master,” Kronk called out as he hopped down the stairs
with the heavy textbook held over his head.

The wizard
grinned at Aeris and reached down to take the book from the earthen,
who then hopped back up on to the table.

“
Why
are you looking so crabby?” he asked Aeris, who sniffed and
ignored him.

Simon opened
the book and flipped through it to the section on mythical beasts.
Both of the elementals moved to stand by his shoulders so that they
could see better.

“
Dragons.
Dragons.”

The wizard
ran a finger down several pages until he found the proper paragraph.

“
Okay,
here we go. Hmm, there's not a lot on brown dragons, is there? I
guess they weren't that popular with gamers back in the day.”

“
Well,
I'd say that attitude's changed,” Aeris muttered, his
irritation forgotten.

“
I'd
say you're right, at least where this former gamer is concerned,”
Simon replied bleakly. “Okay, so what have we got here?”

He mumbled
under his breath as he read what little there was on brown dragons.
Then he hissed, a look of disgust on his face.

“
What
is it, master?”

“
Yuck.
Listen to this. 'Besides using their fire breath, a brown dragon's
principle weapon is acid. They can belch gallons of corrosive liquid
which dissolves anything organic that it touches. Plants, animals,
nothing is immune to this acidic attack.' Well, that's delightful,”
he added with a shudder.

“Acid, master? Oh, that is bad,”
Kronk said with a look of horror.

The little guy's reaction was more
emotional than usual and he glanced at Aeris with raised eyebrows.

“Acid dissolves rock,” the
air elemental said wisely.

“Oh, I see. Sorry, Kronk. Didn't
mean to shock you. But don't worry; there aren't any brown dragons
around here.”

“Yet,” Aeris added
ominously and then grinned wickedly when the earthen glared at him.

“Stop that, Aeris,” Simon
said, a little exasperated. “Let's concentrate on the problem
at hand. If I can get to the elven lands and back safely, and maybe
even if I can't and I go anyway, the question is; how do I deal with
a brown dragon?”

“Your Diamond Skin spell,
master?” Kronk offered tentatively.

Simon shook his head.

“If this acid stuff is as
corrosive as it sounds, I don't think the skin spell will do more
than slow it down for a few seconds. And to be honest, I'd rather not
put it to the test.”

“Well, your standard protection
spell is your Shield spell,” Aeris told him. “You
actually stood in the stomach of the primal white dragon and it kept
you safe.”

“No, it didn't,” the wizard
said with another head shake. “The Diamond Skin spell kept me
protected for a short time, but even that was being eaten away while
I was in there, which is why I'm sure it won't be effective against
the brown dragons' acid attack. The Shield spell filtered the fumes
from the air so that I could breathe and added to the skin spell's
defense but not for long. I suppose if I added more power to the
shield, it could resist acid for a longer period, but then it would
cut off all of the air as well, so that's out. Huh. That's a good
example right there of how ineffective both spells were when facing
acid, even if it was only stomach acid. I need something that lasts
longer.”

The three of them exchanged looks but
no one came up with any more ideas.

“Well, when worse comes to worst,
there's always the standard fall-back plan,” Aeris said.

“Which is?”

“Duck,” the air elemental
said dryly.

Simon heaved a loud sigh and stood up.
He put the kettle over the fire and went to stand by the window,
gazing out over the winter landscape.

“If there is a silver lining
here, provided I actually do enter the elven realm, it's that I'll
get away from this blasted weather. God, I hate this season.”

“We know, master,” Kronk
told him. “I have a thought though, since we seem to be out of
ideas.”

Simon turned and looked at him
enquiringly.

“Call your allies, master. Clara,
Liliana, the siblings in London, the group in Australia. More minds
mean more ideas. Perhaps one of them has a solution to the problem?”

“That's a thought,” Simon
said. He leaned on the window ledge, tapping his chin.

“The problem with that is I
guarantee you that Liliana, and probably Tamara and Sebastian as
well, will want to join in the fight. If anyone hates dragons as
much, if not more, than I do, it's those three.”

“Well, it is possible that, as
magic-users, they also age slowly like you do, my dear wizard,”
Aeris said slowly. “I actually hadn't considered that before.
Granted, because you channel more magic than they do, your body would
age the slowest but still, it is something to think about.”

Simon made his tea and sat down at the
table again.

“That's a good point.”

He sipped the sweet, hot liquid and
then sat back and ran his fingers through his hair, pulling at it a
bit in frustration.

“There's just so much that we
still don't know about magic and casting spells and long-term
consequences.”

He tugged at his hair absently.

“I mean, why is magic slowly
turning my hair pure white, while this,” he tapped his cheek,
“is as smooth as a baby's butt? Where's the logic in that?”

“Only the gods understand all of
the intricacies of magic, master,” Kronk told him with a tiny
shrug. “Even we elementals are not fully conversant in the ins
and outs of using the power.”

He looked at Aeris who nodded
reluctantly.

“Kronk's right. We air elementals
worked more closely with wizards than any of the others and even we
only learned what we learned through observation. If I may use terms
from your old world of technology, my dear wizard, we know that magic
alters the human body at a cellular level. Changlings like yourself
and the others are proof of that. You have been mutated by the power
into something more than you were. More and different. I cannot
stress enough that you are a totally different creature than your old
self, right down to your genetic structure. All that remains of that
middle-aged power-lifting man that was Simon O'Toole are his
memories. You are now something else.”

This was the first time that Simon had
heard magic discussed in scientific terms and he looked at Aeris in
surprise.

“Your people understand
genetics?”

Aeris rolled his eyes dramatically.

“What exactly do you think we've
been doing for the last several thousand years? I've told you before
how incredibly boring my home is. Everything is always the same. So,
many of us spent our time observing the Earth. We watched humanity
rise from the ashes after the gods retreated into the Void and took
the magic with them. Oh, that was a sad and painful time for your
people, my dear wizard. Struggling to exist without the benefits of
magic. Having to learn to fashion tools, build homes, reconstruct
society literally from the ground up. And we all had to watch
helplessly. There were no wizards to summon us, to seek our aid.”

He looked at Kronk for a moment.

“Think what just one earthen like
our friend here could have accomplished if the newly-mundane humans
could have summoned him to help them? But they couldn't. It was so
incredibly frustrating to watch and not be able to help.”

Aeris was actually wringing his hands
together unconsciously as he spoke, a sign that Simon had learned
showed the elemental was emotionally invested in his memories.

“Wow,” he said. “I
had no idea. What about your people, Kronk? Were they watching as
well?”

“Oh yes, master. At first.”

“What do you mean, at first?”

The little guy's red eyes dulled as he
looked at Simon.

“It was so...painful to watch,
master. We earthen, above all other elementals, want to help. We
exist to give aid. To be trapped, locked away from the world of
humans when they needed us the most was unendurable. Many of us,
myself included, stopped observing mankind altogether. It was a bad
time for us.”

Simon reached out and patted the rocky
little shoulder.

“Yes, I can see that. But try to
put that behind you, my friend. Believe me, I would not be here today
if it hadn't been for you and your people. And Aeris as well, once we
summoned him.”

“The point, my dear wizard, is
that even after all of our observations of humans before and after
the old days of magic, we are no closer to truly understanding the
complex ways that magic affects the world around us and the people
within it. It remains a mystery.”

Simon finished his tea and picked up
the mirror.

“Well, mystery or not, I've got
two days to gather as much information as I can on how to deal with
the brown dragons. So I might as well start now. The clock is
ticking.”

“
You can't be serious,”
the woman in the mirror told Simon. “The brown dragons actually
invaded the realm of the elves?”

“
I'm quite serious, Liliana,”
he replied gravely. “We suspect that they blame the elves for
the destruction of the primal white dragon, and maybe the other two
primals as well.”

The paladin muttered under her breath
and Simon guessed that it was just as well that he didn't speak
Russian.

“
But you can't mean to follow
them there,” she finally said with a fierce glare. “I
know that the time differential between our world and the elvish
lands can be fatal to humans. You're sentencing yourself to death, my
friend.”

“
Not necessarily,” Simon
told her. “It's quite possible that the magic in my system, the
power that has, apparently, slowed down my body's aging process, will
allow me to travel there and return safely. Mind you, staying more
than several weeks might be harmful, but I might be fine until then.”

Her eyes narrowed as she listened.
The mirror she was using to see the wizard with trembled a bit in her
hand.

“
I hear 'possible',
'apparently' and 'might be' in that argument, Simon. I don't think
you're as sure of this course of action as you'd like me to believe
you are.”

“
I'm not saying I am,” he
answered with some irritation. “It's a risk, I grant you, but
it's a risk I'm willing to take if it comes to that. The thing is,
there are no spell-casters among the elves. No wizards, no mages,”
he nodded at her, “no paladins. Elves
are
magic, they don't cast magic. So right there, their defense against
the monsters is limited. If I go and lend my support, it could really
help.”

“
Really?” Liliana said
skeptically. “One lone wizard against, how many did you say,
possibly thousands of dragons? Look, I don't underestimate your
power, sir wizard, but even so, you are no match for those kinds of
numbers.”

“
One, Liliana,” Simon
said emphatically. “One dragon. The primal brown. Kill it and
the others will fall. It really is that simple.”

The paladin barked a short, humorless
laugh.

“
That simple, is it? Just waltz
into the elven lands, find the primal brown dragon somewhere in a
world covered in vast forests, cast a few spells and bang! Problem
solved? Simon, either you are completely naïve or you think that
I am. Come clean, sir wizard and stop treating me like an idiot.”

“
I...”

Simon caught himself and took a deep
breath. The paladin was right. He was treating a life and death
situation too lightly.

Time to smarten up, he told himself.

“
You're right. I apologize.
It's just that this doom and gloom stuff is easier to swallow if I
deal with it less seriously than it is.”

“
Apology accepted,”
Liliana said with a little smile. “And I understand that
reasoning, believe me. Now let's get back to the original discussion.
The elves need help and you want to help them.”

She leaned back against the rough
stone wall behind her with a clank of metal. As usual, the paladin
was wearing a full suit of plate armor that shone as if it was highly
polished. She treated it as if it was as light as the robes that
Simon always wore.

Liliana was speaking to him from
inside a decrepit building somewhere in the center of Moscow. She'd
found a new base underground after her last one was invaded by
drakes. She had even met up with several Changlings who had somehow
survived and made their way to Moscow from little villages and towns,
looking for food, clothing and especially shelter from dragons.