Blademage Dragontamer Page 11

  “Wait,” said Papa Gully. Whenever Larynk spoke about god culture, Gully forgot his sore back, and a youthfulness spread across his face. “Am I understanding this correctly? A god may kill another god?”

  “Sure. We’re not infallible. If a god has a full sphere and the other doesn’t, and he kills his Alter…”

  “What’s an Alter?” said Charlie.

  “Jesus…explaining things to mortals is starting to annoy the hell out of me. An Alter is a vessel for a god’s spirit; a living thing that we pour a little of ourselves into so that if our god forms are destroyed, we’re not completely killed. For Serpens, you can probably guess what it is.”

  “His giant dragon,” said Charlie.

  “Right.”

  “And what’s yours?”

  “I can’t tell you that. No god in his right mind you tell anyone what his Alter is.”

  “How do you know his?”

  “It isn’t exactly subtle, is it? If you were the god of dragons, and you had this humongous, cataclysmic dragon you could ride, what would you choose as your Alter? I know his, but he doesn’t know mine. And that’s another reason he won’t try and kill me…yet. Call me paranoid, but he is so completely off his rocker with the demi-god plot that I know that’s the only reason he’s letting us stay. A part of him suspects I’m part of the plot, and he wants to keep me here while he replenishes his sphere and figures out what my Alter is.”

  “It’s something to do with corn, isn’t it?” said Charlie. “Your Alter.”

  “I’m not saying. Besides, even if we know his, that’s only a slight advantage.”

  “It means we might be able to kill him,” said Charlie.

  Crosseyes laughed. It had a metallic edge to it. “Is this guy for real? You’re living proof that just because you grow a beard, it doesn’t make you wise. Talking about killing a god…fella, you’d have everyone in the Pantheon gunning for you.”

  Charlie ran his hands through his beard. The longer it got, the more he found himself playing with it when he was nervous. “So, we’re stuck on a crazy god’s planet, we can’t kill him, and there’s no portal. We’re just gonna have to fix the ship. There’s no other way out of it.”

  “I can fix her up,” said Crosseyes. “Invention and motivation; that’s all it takes. I just gotta take a better look at her.”

  “And when we’ve done that,” said Charlie, “We’ll need to deactivate his forest defence. Because if Serpens is set on nothing leaving his planet, then I’d bet my ass the lights in the trees are designed to stop it.”

  “There’s also the matter of the dragons,” said Flink.

  At this, they all fell silent. Then, one by one, all of them except Crosseyes stared at Charlie.

  “Am I missing something?” said the metallic demi-god.

  “Charlie can tame things,” said Longtooth.

  Just hearing this brought back memories of his failures; how he couldn’t tame the orx on the island, how he’d failed with the clinx. If part of their plan relied on him taming a dragon, they were out of luck.

  He wished they’d stop staring at him. Call it ego, but he didn’t want to admit his doubts to everyone. He didn’t know how, but he needed to figure out where he was going wrong, and what he needed to do to get his power back.

  “Let’s focus on the ship first,” he said.

  “We’re going to be here for a while,” said Larynk. “My sphere’s empty, and that leaves me vulnerable. I’ve placated Serpens for now but if he flips, I can’t protect you on an empty sphere.”

  Finally, Charlie saw something he could help with, so he snatched at the chance. “You said that worship and legacy fill your sphere, right?”

  “Not the shoddy worship I saw on the island.”

  “Well, that’s because I don’t really worship you. But what I can do is go and earn legacy. I’ll go and kill stuff, and that’ll power your sphere.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Good,” said Charlie. “But if I’m gonna go earn legacy, I’ll need to take your sphere with me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When you went away with Serpens, my powers didn’t work. I’m guessing if I’m too far away from you, they shut off.”

  Larynk shook his head. “No, Charlie. I had to persuade Serpens I wasn’t working with the demi-gods, so I let him spheregaze and see where I’d been for the last month. It’s the most intimate moment two gods can share, except when they’re making little deities. I had to untie your powers from my sphere. If he saw that I’d given magic to a mortal, it wouldn’t have gone down well with him.”

  This hit on a thought that already stirred in his mind. With his mage spells tied to Larynk’s sphere, he was completely at the god’s mercy. Larynk could turn them off like a tap, leaving him with nothing – no dagger abilities, no mage spells.

  He didn’t like thinking this way, but what if Larynk turned on him? What if he wasn’t all he appeared to be? Or what if something happened to him? He’d be left high and dry, nothing but a few daggers he could barely use without magical help.

  He needed to fix it. Somehow, he needed to build his skills so he didn’t rely on a god’s magical sphere, and he needed to start it now.

  Chapter Nine

  Serpens was letting them stay on his planet, and the villagers had relaxed a little, more concerned with tending their crops than watching Charlie and the others all the time. This gave them a little breathing room, but there was no time to relax.

  After finding out from Ozkar which areas of the forest were considered the safest, Charlie, Flink and Gully went in the opposite direction.

  They walked deeper into the floral jungle, where the glowing blue defence system didn’t reach, where even daylight struggled to enter. It knocked on the door, but the dense trees, with their giant leaves, ignored it like a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman. Three-winged flies buzzed and hummed around trees and bushes, and creatures scuttled across the dirt so fast they were just blurs. The air was earthy and thick, so hot that it was hard to breathe.

  Charlie sweated in his high-collared coat. It was hot enough to boil a frog, but the shirt he wore underneath it was dirty and torn and didn’t look half as cool. But with Lifedrinker locked into place on his blade switcher and his mana topped up, he felt ready to earn some legacy.

  His friends didn’t look as energized as him. Flink’s expression was completely gnomish that morning, her features craggy and set in a glare, her green eyes scanning the forest around them. Papa Gully, in his tattered mage robe, walked with a bent back again, though the old coot didn’t have any problems keeping up with their pace.

  It was amazing how different the planet Dragyuren was to Earth, but then again, how similar at the same time. The building blocks of Earth were present here, but they were rearranged enough to make the place feel alien. The trees were thicker than any he’d ever seen, but maybe that was because he was a town boy. Giant luminous mushrooms turned in his direction as he passed them, as if they were watching him walk by, while in the distance, moss-green wolves prowled. For now, at least, the beasts either hadn’t noticed them, or were wary enough to keep their distance.

  Every so often they passed areas where the trees gave way to a river, but not of water. Instead, turbines turned endless over mana streams, where it ran all the way behind them and toward the village, where presumably it fed the blue glowing defence system that Serpens had made Ozkar design. Charlie felt like Longtooth now, marvelling at every new sight and smell.

  They came to a clearing far away from the village. It throbbed with a choking kind of heat, and the creaks and chirps of insects around them sounded like a pulse. It was a remoteness that a town boy like him would never get used to, and it was only since leaving Earth that he’d realized how much he missed grocery stores, malls, bars. Anything normal, filled with regular people.

  Flink set her leather bag down on the ground. Gully, conveniently forgetting his bad back, dragged half a fel
led log close by her and sat down.

  “What’s the plan?” said Flink.

  Charlie pointed. “See the wolves tailing us? I think they’ve been following us since we were ten minutes away from the village.”

  “No, Newchie. They started following us the second we left the village, but you don’t have my hunter senses.”

  “Well, killing them will earn me experience points, which I can convert to legacy in Larynk’s sphere and start powering it up.”

  What he didn’t tell her was that not only did he want to fight the wolves, but he was going to try it without magic. It was risky as hell, but he needed to learn to fight without his powers. Otherwise, a time would come when something happened to Larynk, and Charlie was left high and dry.

  The only pesky issue was himself; he could just about cope with hunting island orx to fill his belly, but he was less comfortable killing indigenous wildlife so he could improve his skills. It was a tough one to reconcile, and the only way he could do it was to tell himself this; that nature was about survival, and everything, no matter what creature it was or what planet it was from, did what it could to get stronger, to set itself up to survive just a little longer. Life was one, long, unforgiving slog toward death.

  What a nourishing thought. Maybe he should write a self-help book one day.

  “I’ll just watch you young ‘uns get to it,” said Gully. “I didn’t come to fight. I need a break from the rat.”

  “Longtooth?”

  “He wanted me to go sightseeing with him. He thinks it’s a holiday.”

  “You love him really,” said Flink.

  “Hmph.” Papa Gully slid off the log until his back rested against it, and he closed his eyes.

  Charlie looked around him. The forest formed a circle around their tiny clearing, and in the distance the giant luminous mushrooms battled against the shadows with their rainbow glows.

  There was no sign of the wolves, but that was the thing about wolves – they were sneaky. Luckily, not much could really out sneak his magic.

  He let mana bubble inside him, and then he cast it out along with a spell command, sending a lashing of blue Detect Evil energy through half of the forest. Then he turned and did the same to the other half, draining an eighth of his mana bar.

  The light returned to him. Unlike the last time he’d used it, it picked up something hostile. When the blue Detect Evil pulses returned to him, they conjured a hazy top-down map of the area in his mind, so that he saw the spread of the forest around them, together with translucent blue shapes moving through it. At this level they were barely dots on his mental map, but as he levelled his spell they’d begin to take on more definite shapes, and the pulse would spread further, and it would last longer in his head.

  The more he used his spells, the higher their levels would climb. Not only that, but he could use the experience he earned killing things to level them up too, but that usually left him with a difficult decision of which skills to improve.

  Now, though, he wasn’t concerned with magic, but with the shapes on his Detect Evil map.

  “They’re heading our way,” he said. “Five of them. Might be a pack.”

  “Where are they?” said Flink.

  “We’ve got three dots in that direction,” he said, pointing, “And two there.”

  “That’s a pretty small wolfpack. Back home, there’s always more than that.”

  “This isn’t back home.”

  “I know. Check again, maybe you missed some.”

  He cast Detect Evil again, and the light shot out of him and whooshed through the trees, before fading into the distance.

  The map etched itself into his mind. He saw the forest, a half-radius of it stretching maybe a thousand metres before fading at the edges. The trees were represented as misshapen blurs, while the wolves should have been dots. Except they were gone now, and there was just one dot.

  And it was flying right at him.

  “Newchie!”

  A weight crashed into him, smashing the air from his lungs. He rolled along the ground, taking mouthfuls of twigs and dirt, scratching his palms when he forced himself to a stop.

  Something screeched in his ear and breathed hot breath on his face, and claws lashed onto his cheek, scratching at him, tearing his skin and his beard. He twisted his face in agony as it wrenched hair from his cheek. This was no damn wolf, that was for sure.

  With Lifedrinker in place he stabbed in an arc, puncturing something solid. The claws gripped tighter on his face now, squeezing blood and pain from him, and tendrils of fear gripped him and threaten to paralyse him.

  He wanted to stab it with Lifedrinker again, but he was scared because it seemed that the more he struggled, the tighter the claws got.

  He couldn’t think. He wanted a way out, but his thoughts were mixed with agony. All he could do was stab it again, a strong, swift blow, the blade sinking into something soft.

  The creature let out a shrill cry, and its talons released their grip on his face. Charlie scrambled backward on his ass and elbows, wet blood dripping down his skin. With his attacker away from him, he saw it now.

  It was an owl. It was twice the size of a normal one, with long, curved talons that looked like barbed wire, blood coating the black nails. Its eyes were slanted, mean as hell, and set back behind a beak that could have torn his throat out.

  He already knew how dangerous owls were after visiting an owl sanctuary on a school trip and seeing one of the kids get too close and almost lose his eye. People thought they were cute, but they weren’t. Behind the stupid ‘wise’ labels people stuck on them, owls were demented as hell. Piss them off and you’d be in for a world of hurt…and Charlie had definitely pissed this one off.

  The owl fluttered backward, swaying out of reach each time Flink jabbed her spear at it.

  Charlie assessed things. He had his daggers, along with his mana-fuelled dagger abilities like Fury Leap, he had his spells, and he had, or maybe once had, his taming skills. But the whole point of today wasn’t just to kill things to earn glory, it was to try and learn how to fight without magic, without needing to rely on Larynk.

  The sting of his face reminded him how crazy he was. The claws had dug deep, and if it had gotten him just an inch to the left, he would have lost an eye.

  Damn it. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take this thing on without his powers. He was going to have to take it out with magic, but first, he had to try something.

  Channelling his mana, he focussed on his feathered enemy. He stared deep into its orange and black eyes, into its stern-looking face with its slanted eyebrows and hook beak. We are one and the same, he told it, hoping his words travelled with the flow of mana. We are the same.

  The owl fluttered, and it spread its wings into a great span to make itself look bigger.

  When the mana was so tense that his fingertips trembled he released it, sending out a wash of mana and words. He waited with his chest tight, his fists clenched.

  Tame failed.

  As much as his tame attempt had failed, the mana seemed to affect the owl, in that it sent it berserk. It flew up and over Flink’s spear, then screeched and plummeted at her face, talons first, a howling, insane bundle of claws and feathers intent on scratching and tearing everything in sight.

  Charlie sprinted across the ground and jumped into Flink, knocking her away. With a swipe of his hand and a drench of mana he cast an icy wall in front of his face, just in time for the owl to crash into it.

  The impact stunned it, and the owl fluttered onto the ground. Charlie eyed it; its silken feathers, its ancient-looking face. It was a creature of beauty, an ever-present facet of nature, a face of the forest. He marvelled at its perfection.

  And he blasted a dozen fire arrows at its damn head.

  Two arrows punctured it completely, killing it instantly, while another fire arrow brushed past it but got close enough in its flight to set fire to its feathers.

  Charlie carefully slapped the flames out
. Then, he stared at the dead bird. With his pulse slowing a touch, and the danger having passed, a familiar feeling hit him; empathy.

  He’d really lost it for a second. It wasn’t that he’d killed the owl – it was them or it, and he wouldn’t let his empathy get him killed. No, what sent an ache in the pit of his stomach was that for a brief second, just as he unleashed his fire arrow spell, he’d enjoyed it.

  Was this world changing him? Was it turning him a little darker, scraping away at his soft edges so he could survive? Or had it always been in him?

  Now wasn’t the time to think about that. He was here to earn legacy to fuel Larynk’s sphere. But not just that – now, more than ever, the need burned in him to learn actual non-magic skills, ones he could use without relying on Larynk’s sphere.