Twilight of the Dragons (22 page)

“What theory's that, then?”

“You, moaning about Nature never giving us a helping hand! She bloody helped us out real good this time!”

“Well, about time!” snapped Narnok.

“Never happy, are you? Always moaning.”

“Well, it's what happens when you have a happy life, and some cunt cuckolds you, and you end up having your eye put out and horrific facial scars carved into you because of your evil bitch of an ex-wife. That kind of shit makes a man paranoid, you know what I mean?”

“Er, Narnok?”

“What?”

“Shut up for a moment.”

“No, fuck you, Dek, I won't fucking shut up for a moment! How dare you, you pugilistic little scrawny bastard. You know how this thing goes, and you know you stabbed me in the fucking back, instead of being a friend to me, and, you know, not fucking my wife. What am I supposed to think of you when you're the one who fucked my wife?”

“
Shut up
!”

“Why the
fuck
should
I
shut up, when
I'm
the one who's injured, eh?”

Dek spoke very slowly, very carefully, his eyes swivelling up to fix on Narnok. “Because,” he said, and licked his dry lips, “the dragon is moving.”

“Oh.” Narnok peered down.

The distant, black, crumpled mess was indeed moving. At first it seemed she was squirming, like eels in oil, or mud-orcs in slime, but this quickly turned into an act of unfolding herself and straightening out her massive, spike-tipped wings.

“Er,” said Dek, and met Narnok's gaze. “Now's the time for those bloody rocks!”

“Bollocks! Man the fucking crossbow! I cannot
believe
a lightning strike only slowed her down.”

“That's one hardened bitch,” said Kareem, shaking his head.

The rain pounded the Iron Wolves, lashing across the city, and Mola appeared from the stairwell carrying as many heavy spears as he could manage. He was red in the face from the climb. “Here.” He allowed the spears to tumble from his arms, where they clattered onto the stone tower's summit floor, now awash with sheets of draining water. The gutters gurgled, sending a stream into vertical troughs cleverly built into the very fabric of the tower. They could hear the water gushing down towards street level, and probably the sewers beyond.

“She's getting up!” bellowed Narnok. “Let's be ready!”

The others each grabbed a spear, and readied themselves. Narnok was the only one standing on the battlements, on the treacherous, rain-slippery ledge.

Thunder rumbled. A huge lightning bolt crashed down, smashing up a civic office and spreading the majority of it across a quarter of an acre.

“Fucking bureaucrats deserve to burn,” muttered Narnok. Then, “Right lads, she's flapping out her wings, now she's looking up, er, it looks like she's looking up directly
at me
, and that is just too fucking freaky…” He glanced back at Dek, who shrugged.

“Get down here and grab a fucking spear, will you?”

“Wait! Wait! She's… she's unfolding her wings, no, she's folding them up again…”

There came a mammoth, reverberating
crash.
The world seemed to vibrate. There were sounds of tearing wood, beams being stripped into splinters, and a roar of fire that carried heat up to them, even over such a great height.

“Is she coming?” screamed Dek.

Narnok turned and stared at him. His mouth flapped open and closed.

“Narnok, you idiot! Which direction is she coming from? Speak, you bastard son of a bastard's son!”

“Er,” said Narnok, and his gaze swept the Iron Wolves.

“What
is
it?” snapped Kareem.

“She's, like, gone inside the tower.”

“Which tower?” said Dek, frowning.

“The one on the other side of the fucking city,” snapped Narnok, gritting his teeth. “Which fucking tower do you think?”

They stared at one another. Trista hefted a spear.

There came more crashes, terrible rending sounds, and the tortured noise of twisting, screaming iron.

“What's she
doing
down there?” muttered Mola.

Rain lashed across the tower-top. More towering clouds rolled in. The storm was in for the night.

Thunder growled.

Lightning crashed zig-zag streamers.

And yet, despite the noise, the sounds from inside the tower were greater. Volak, seemingly, was tearing the place apart.

Suddenly, the tower shuddered.

The Iron Wolves looked at one another.

“Duke, Sarge, Thrasher. To me!” Even though his voice was low, he still commanded obedience. Mola grabbed the thick, studded collars of his dogs, and frowned. “I don't like this. What's the bitch doing?”

“Smashing things up in a temper?” suggested Narnok. “If I'd just been struck by lightning, I'd be smashing things up in a temper.”

Dek scowled. “If somebody spills your fucking
ale,
you smash things up in a temper.”

“Now now, lad, no need to be like that,” said Narnok.

There came a high-pitched keening sound, a ululation which reverberated up from the bowels of the structure. And then more crashes and squeals of tearing wood, and the crunching of broken stones, crumbled walls, smashed pillars.

“That's louder,” said Dek, tilting his head, frowning. Thanks to some sudden inner intuition, he swivelled the siege crossbow around – away from the street – and towards the top of the stairs leading from the tower interior. “Kareem. Jump up on those battlements, tell me what you see.”

Kareem did so. “Nothing,” he said, eventually.

“No dragon taking to the skies?”

“No.”

There came a blast, and a noise like air being sucked through a pipe.

“What was that?”

“A fire blast,” said Kareem.

“You saw it?”

“I saw flames coming through a window.”

“At ground level?”

“No. About a third of the way up.”

The Iron Wolves looked at one another. There was understanding in those looks. It was an uneasy understanding that did not bring happiness.

“Fuck. She's fighting her way up, isn't she?” said Narnok. “Through the bricks and the beams?”

The tower shook again. There came crashing, banging, tearing sounds. The tower trembled, like a leper in a brothel.

A roar screamed through the tower, high-pitched and filled with hate.

There was a
whoooosh
and a sound like a smith's furnace, roaring and roaring and roaring.

“She's higher now,” said Kareem. To his credit, he kept the tremor from his voice, but his face was twisted, as if to say,
what the fuck do we do? The fucking dragon's climbing up the inside of the tower? There's no way out!

Again, the structure trembled. Shook. Rain lashed down. Thunder rumbled. Lighting cracked the sky like a bad egg.

Suddenly, there was a tearing sound. Trista leapt back as a zig-zag of black raced across the floor, crackling, almost like a lightning strike, or a mockery of one. The others stepped back, and shared nervous glances.

“She's going to bring the whole fucking thing down,” rumbled Dek.

“Have we pissed her off that much?” scowled Narnok.

“I think
you
have, mate!”

They considered this. Volak, Queen of the Wyrms. A killer of humans. A killer of dragons. Unchallenged. Not only had Narnok insulted her repeatedly, and buried his axe in the soft tissue of her throat, he'd also been instrumental in torching her like a criminal, like a murderer, like a witch.

Was it safe to assume Volak would stop at nothing to see him dead?

Narnok nodded to himself, face pale beneath the onslaught of the storm.

On Volak came, smashing and destroying, and the Iron Wolves readied their spears. Mola's dogs were growling something horrid, big strings of saliva drooling from jaws ready to kill. Only this time, unfortunately, it wasn't another dog, or even a man. It was a beast considerably larger.

Kareem still stood on the battlements, clutching a spear.

And he blinked.

“There's something coming,” he said.

“Something? King's Guard? Desekra Fifth Infantry? Cavalry? What is it, lad? What is it?”

“I… don't know.”

Kareem watched the shapes pounding down the street. The light was nearly non-existent. And the shapes were… too weird, too big, too misshapen.

“They're monsters,” he said, eventually, his voice soft with horror and respect.

“What you fucking talking about, lad?” boomed Narnok, and ran towards him. But at that moment there came a scream, and a smash, and stones blasted upwards, went flying outwards, and a head appeared in the stairwell. It reared, like a serpent from the ocean, black, elongated, equine, dark eyes glittering, flames flickering around a snout filled with razor-sharp fangs and a promise of death.

Volak surveyed the Iron Wolves.

“So here you hide,” she said. “Like the fucking cowards you are.”

Narnok jumped down from the battlements, Kareem's grab missing him, and brandished his axe in both hands, terribly scarred face puckered into some kind of nightmare. “You remember me,
wyrm
?” He made the word
wyrm
sound like
cunt.
In fact, he said it. “You're a dragon cunt. Slick, and ready to be fucked. So bend over. Narnok's going to teach you a lesson.”

Volak stared at him. Black pupils dilated in black eyes.

Kareem swallowed.

“Fuck,” hissed Trista.

Fire swirled around Volak's snout…

“You want fucking?” said Mola, his voice so quiet and gentle it could hardly be heard around the buffeting and fury of the storm. Then his arm suddenly came back, and he launched his spear with unnerving accuracy. Volak's head, wedged in the stairwell she'd smashed her way into, could barely manoeuvre. The spear flew from Mola's fist, powered by a smouldering fury.
Fuck with my dogs?
he wanted to scream.
Burn my dogs, will you
?

The spear flew, and slammed into Volak's left orb.

It split, like a ripe melon under a sharpened axe.

Volak screamed, head thrashing from side to side, smashing bricks and timbers.

The tower groaned.

More cracks zigzagged across the tower top, splitting the battlement.

Stones tumbled from the tower's summit.

The world seemed to pause… a hush, a sigh, a hiatus in time.

And then, in slow-motion, stones started to crumble. The base of the huge stone tower bowed outwards, sagging like the shit-filled pants of a terminal alcoholic; the tower moaned, and
shifted.
More stones crumbled, popping free of the main walls like lost dice in a game of
Stab the Officer.
Like teeth knocked free by Dek in the Fighting Pits, his left cross and right hook legendary in fighting circles.

The tower
groaned.

A dying sea creature.

A moaned resonance of desolation from Sayansora alv Drakka. The Drakka. The Sea of Trees.

The
Suicide Forest
.

Where people went to
die.

Narnok and Dek caught one another's eyes.

Narnok shrugged.

Dek grinned, a tight-lipped grin containing very little humour.

And then, in one titanic mass of stones and beams and dust, with a sound that blocked out the rage of the storm, the rage of the dragon, the very foundations bowed outwards, cracking, the final supporting beams split, and the tower…

…collapsed.

B
eetrax crouched by the stairwell
, and glanced over his shoulder. In one hand he carried a flaming brand, in the other his battered and chipped axe. He scratched his beard with the head of the axe, and scowled as Lillith approached, her face almost serene.

“This must be it,” she said, gently, reverently, and her eyes lifted and she surveyed the vast cavern above them. The ceiling was a dome, perfectly symmetrical and formed from some dark rock, possibly obsidian. It was polished. Smooth. Perfect… too perfect. “Look at this place… not once have we seen such a perfection of engineering from the dwarves!”

“So… we're arrived at Wyrmblood?” queried Dake. “The City of the Dragons?”

Lillith nodded. Her face was flushed, lips red, excitement quite obviously her mistress.

“So, what now?” asked Dake, uneasily.

“We enter.”

“Down there?” He gestured to the dark portal, a circular opening in the very ground rock itself.

Lillith nodded, and turned, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Trust me, Dakerath. This is our destiny. Without our intervention, the dragons will return. Without our help, the world will soon be a place of scorched rock, barrenness and genocide. They will exterminate us. They will enslave us. They seek to re-establish the Blood Dragon Empire.”

Dake nodded, and looked to the others. Faces were pale and gaunt, eyes just a little haunted. These were people who needed to see the sunlight again. And yet, there was strength there, and a determination to do what was right.

“Well fuck it, we're going in,” growled Beetrax. “You want me to lead the way, my beautiful lady?”

“Yes,” she smiled, moving up close behind him, and slipping her hands around his waist. She moved closer to his ear. “I love you, Trax,” she said, and placed her head against his back. “Until the stars go out.”

“I know, flower. I know.”

It had taken them perhaps a day to find this relatively new part of the mine, and in the end it was only Beetrax and Dake beating the living shit out of a captured dwarf guard engineer that allowed them to find the place. They'd taken the dwarf prisoner, travelling with him for half a day before they found a series of cells, and were able to lock the battered specimen behind thick iron bars, and throw away the key.

“By rights I should cut out his tongue,” said Beetrax, as he stood, glowering at the dwarf. “Then he can't talk.” But as ever, Lillith's calm and moderation brought Beetrax back from the brink of violence.

“It's not the moral thing to do,” she said.

“This bastard would kill us at the first opportunity,” snarled Beetrax.

“And that's what makes us different from them. We will show humanity, and dignity, and fair play. No murder. No longer, Trax. I forbid it.”

And now they stood by the spiral steps which fell away and down, through the centre of the hall's floor. They were dark steps, dropping away in a wide circle, and Beetrax stepped down, boot clunking, and glanced back.

Lillith nodded.

Beetrax moved down the steps, and they dropped down into darkness which, as they descended, gradually brightened, allowing Beetrax to blink, and
see.
He licked his lips. Beetrax reached the foot of the steps and halted, tossing aside the fire-brand he carried. It was no longer necessary. This place, this underground world, was lit by a soft golden light. It was the place from the vision which Lillith had showed them, a massive city of buildings, pyramids, towers, bridges, arches, sculptures, all intricate and rich beyond any thief's dreams.

Beetrax walked forward, axe coming to rest over his shoulder, as his head turned left and right, eyes wide, surveying the precious metals in such massive abundance. It was a paradise of wealth, greater than any mortal had ever witnessed.

The others had come down behind him.

“I think I'm going gold-blind,” smiled Dake.

“There is more wealth than any man could ever spend in a million lifetimes,” said Talon, instinctively stringing his bow and checking his quiver.

“Wow,” said Jael, eyes wide, innocent face round and open with awe. “I have never seen anything like it!”

“And you never will again, lad,” smiled Dake, and placed his hand on the young's lad's shoulder. “This is something men only ever dream about. A place of incredible richness, and a place of dreams. We're not dreaming, are we, Sakora?”

Sakora smiled, her scars stretching. “No, Dake. Unless you want me to pinch you, see if you wake up?” She ran her hand down her baldric of knives, hidden beneath her shirt. They gave her a little comfort.

“I can pinch myself,” he said, watching her movements. They made him shiver.

They gazed across hazy squares, and witnessed the molten platinum river which they'd seen in their spirit flight; in the dream-scene of Equiem magick. And each and every person felt a unique awe. Like he, or she, stood on the raw bedrock of a million-year history, and were intruding on a culture they would never be able to comprehend.

Lillith led the way now, and her walk was fast. They all followed, eyes scanning for possible enemies, twitchy, nervous, but at the same time drifting as if through a dream of smoke and oil.

They passed a huge palace, impossibly ornate, with a huge iron door ten times the size of a normal human door, the exterior surface encrusted with a myriad of precious gems. Beetrax moved over to the door, looking suspiciously about, and after peering inside to see if there were any potential enemies there, but finding only a vast hall surrounded by unlit braziers and intricately carved silver statues, so he returned to the gems, pulled out his dagger, and started working the point behind a ruby half the size of his fist. He finally prized it free of the iron supporting claws, and it sat there in his hand, like solid, glittering blood. It sparkled from the warm light of Wyrmblood. It shone ruby light into Beetrax's awestruck face.

“We are going to be so incredibly fucking rich,” choked Beetrax, happily.

“The only problem we've got, as far as I can see,” muttered Talon, eyes scanning, mind calculating, “is how we carry as much as possible out of this place.”

Beetrax considered it.

“Some kind of winch and pulley system? We could hire a hundred horses.
Five hundred
horses, with baskets. Rig up a big pulley system, haul as much shit out of this place as is humanly possible.”

“You think the dwarves will let us do that?” said Talon, with a wry, sideways smile.

“I'll fucking die trying,” rumbled Beetrax, and slapped Talon on the back.

“Come on, we need to keep moving.” Lillith had stopped, sandals flat against the golden cobbles of the road. Talon and Beetrax exchanged glances, then watched as Lillith trotted off, with Jael close behind.

“Er. Your woman seems a bit keen,” said Talon, frowning.

“Yeah, I know. Probably just a little over-excited.” He nodded knowingly.

Dake moved to them, and glanced after Lillith. “Anybody fancy telling her we need to take it a little easy? We have no idea what's down here. There could even be
dragons
.”

“Ha!” scoffed Beetrax, but then thought about it for a moment. He remembered that huge, black-scaled bitch ripping the roof off the Iron Palace. It had been a truly terrifying sight. How could a mere mortal take on something like
that
?

Beetrax looked up at the huge door. It was a
dragon-sized
door.

Ahh
, he thought.
Ahh. Shit. Is that how it is
?

“I think we should maybe catch up with Lillith. Find out what the hell is going on.”

“Good idea,” muttered Dake.

They jogged down the golden cobbles, boots slapping.

“Lillith?” called Beetrax. “Hey, Lil, wait!” But she did not halt, and continued her fast pace, Jael still in tow.

Frowning, Beetrax put his head down and sprinted forward, leaping in front of Lillith, arms wide, head tilted to one side, face riddled with confusion.

Lillith came up smart, and her head lifted, and her eyes were narrowed, dark, her face not a happy sight to behold.

“We need to get there,” she hissed. “Get out of my way.”

“Whoa girl, whoa! What's got into you?”

“You can't see it, can you? Any of you? We have to get
down there
, we have to get to the dragon eggs, stop them hatching, stop them growing, stop them taking over the world! They will establish a new Blood Dragon Empire, and we will all be lost, destroyed, turned to ash in the ensuing onslaught!”

“One step at a time,” said Beetrax, kindly, slowly, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Lillith slapped his hand away with incredible force. “
Get off me
!” she shrieked. “You may not understand the importance of this quest, but I do.”

“So do I,” said Jael, lifting his head.

Slowly, Beetrax turned and looked at the youth. “I'd shut your fucking mouth, if I was you,” he snapped.

“Or what?” said Jael. “I watch you, bullying Lillith, ordering her about, moaning at her all the time. The big bad axeman. Oooh. Scary. You've made your judgements about me, the kid, the coward, and I've come to make my judgements about you. I once looked up to you, Beetrax. I thought you were a hero, just like in the story books. Like they taught us in school. But I see something different, here, in reality, in the flesh. I see a thief, and I see a murderer.”

“Oh you do, do you?” growled Beetrax, eyes glinting.

“I've watched you kill a hundred dwarves now. I've seen you strike them down, even when unarmed, even when trying to surrender. That's murder, Beetrax. Or, as you would curse,
fucking
murder. And back then, you took the ruby from the big palace door. That's the work of a thief. A dirty, scumbag, shit-swigging, low-down thief.”

Beetrax surged forward, but both Dake and Talon were there, each grabbing a shoulder as they tried to drag the big man back. Their boots skidded along the cobbles as they failed, and that big axe came up, notched blades glinting in the warm light, and Beetrax's face was contorted in rage as…

Lillith stepped before Jael.

“No,” she said.

“Get the fuck out of the way, woman!”

“You forget to whom you speak.”

“You, Lillith, my woman, my lover. But I'm not taking these insults from this…” he eyed the suddenly pale figure of Jael, cowering back, “from this yellow streak of pig-shit. I'm going to teach him a fucking lesson.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No,” she held up her hand, and placed it flat against his chest.

Beetrax growled, and dropped his axe with a clatter. “I won't kill him. All right? But he will feel the taste of my knuckles.”

“One last time, Trax.
No
.”

Beetrax looked at Lillith, really
looked
at her this time. Her eyes had gone dark, and he couldn't swear it, but they seemed to swirl with a black smoke, half-seen, tiny fluttering motes, like the image of a half-remembered dream reflected in the eyes of a dead lover.

Beetrax pushed forward, scowling.

The next thing he remembered, he could taste metal, hot tin, his head was pounding, and he was thirty feet away from Lillith, face-down on the cobbles. He groaned, and the others ran over to him, rolling him onto his back, then staring back at Lillith with wide eyes.

She turned, and started forward, Jael by her side, a faithful puppy.

“What… what the
fuck
hit me?” groaned Beetrax.

“I think you pushed Lillith too far, old horse,” chuckled Talon, but it was a sombre chuckle designed to cover his shock.

“Or the other way round,” Beetrax growled, and hoisted himself to his knees, then his feet. He swayed for a moment, and looked at her retreating back. “She used…” he savoured the words, like he would a mouthful of rotten fruit, “fucking
magick
against me.”

“You were threatening the lad, to be fair,” pointed out Dake. Beetrax turned on him, and Dake took a step back, lifting his hands. “Whoa, mate, I'm not the one insulting you, and I ain't the one who's just flung you thirty feet across the street. Maybe you need to go talk to her?”

“I fucking will,” he growled, and ran forward, scooping up his axe, and pounding down the cobbles.

Sakora looked at Talon and Dake. She ran a hand down her face, almost as if to cover her scars. It had become a self-conscious action, but nobody had the heart to point it out. After all, who could blame her? Vanity was intrinsic to the human condition. It was part of the shell, the mask, the psychological barrier which stopped one crumbling like a salt pillar against the onslaught of the ocean.

“I think we're in trouble,” said Sakora, gently.

“Why's that?” said Talon.

“Lillith has changed. Since we came down here. She's changed, Tal.”

“In what way?”

“I don't know. I think it's this
place.
Some kind of ancient magick, an influence of the dragons maybe; the influence of Equiem magick. Listen. We need to go after Trax. We need to sort this shit out.”

A
s they arrived
, Beetrax had once more halted Lillith's progress. They were at a crossroads, and a gentle hum filled the air. Sakora looked around, because
everything
felt odd. Something bigger was going down. The world felt suddenly
wrong.

She moved forward, could see Beetrax talking heatedly, and she turned and looked at Lillith's face. The white witch, the woman Sakora had known for twenty years or more, wore an expression that looked…
alien.

“What do you think you're doing?” snarled Beetrax. “Using fucking
Equiem
magick on me? Are you sick?”

“You know nothing of which you speak,” said Lillith calmly, voice cold, her eyes fixed on Beetrax without blinking. “Now get out of my way, before I do it again. Only next time, you won't wake up for a fucking week.”