Blademage Dragontamer Page 13

  Larynk was sitting atop a jagged rock that rose a meter from the ground. Light reflected on his marble face, and the breeze played with his fringe. He cradled his sphere in his lap.

  “Got some legacy for me?” he said.

  “I killed an owl,” said Charlie.

  “Great. That ought to power my sphere with a drip.”

  “It was a really big owl.”

  “Legacy is legacy, I guess. Give it here.”

  “Wait. I normally level up when I kill things, but that didn’t happen.”

  “Your experience points have to be sent into the sphere, where they convert to legacy.”

  “So, do I use the sphere to level up?”

  Larynk nodded. “Yes…if I didn’t need it keep it all.”

  “What?”

  “If we convert the legacy into powers for you to use, they’ll be none left for the sphere. Isn’t the whole point of this to fill my sphere so I can protect you if Serpens finally loses his mind?”

  “You’re saying you won’t let me level up?”

  “Your spells will still improve when you use them, Charlie. I just can’t spare the power to grant you new ones.”

  His body tensed up. This was exactly what he’d feared – that Larynk would withhold powers from him. Realistically, he knew why he was doing it; Larynk just wanted to keep them safe for Serpens until they got off the planet.

  Whatever the reason for it, the result was the same. It made Charlie feel useless to have all his powers hinging on Larynk. He realized that Gully was right – powers granted by a god were useless. They weren’t really yours.

  Then again, where would he be without Larynk? It’d just be another Monday, or Tuesday, or whatever the hell day it was, and he’d be sitting in the office in front of a computer, filling the columns of another useless spreadsheet. His new life was nothing if not interesting.

  A small part of him would have preferred being in the office. You couldn’t get your face scratched to hell working on Microsoft Excel. He wasn’t too proud to say that this planet scared him, with its green wolves and its furious owls and unhinged gods.

  And yet…he wouldn’t trade it back. After all of this, he could never go back to his old life. He didn’t want to stay here, and he didn’t want to go home…so just what did he want?

  Well, first up he wanted to get stronger. While he was here, he had to do everything he could to toughen up. Flink didn’t just get gifted her hunting skills and her potion knowledge, she earned it. Gully had gathered his magic over years of meditation and study. Charlie didn’t have years, but he could at least use his time better. To get meaner and stronger.

  He could take Crosseyes’s deal. That would be a step. The question he needed to answer first was, why did he really want to look into Larynk’s sphere? The story he’d spun about nostalgia, that just didn’t ring true. There was more to this.

  Motives aside, what would happen if he somehow found a way to help Crosseyes look at Larynk’s sphere? Well, Larynk might find out, and he might get upset with him. He might withhold his powers. But if something happened to Larynk, Charlie would be without his powers anyway. He couldn’t let that happen.

  That settled it. He’d take Crosseyes’s deal, and he’d speak to Gully again and see if there was anything he could do to learn magic the hard way. Not only that, but he’d figure out what the hell was going on with his taming. He was a Blademage Beastmaster, after all, so it was false advertising if he couldn’t master any beasts.

  If he could get his taming back on track, maybe he could even tame a dragon. It seemed crazy, but he’d already tamed a chimera, so why not?

  That would be his thing. Flink had potions, Gully had magic, and Charlie would tame things.

  Yeah, that was it. It all came down to this; in forty years’ time, when he weighed up his life, what was he gonna remember? The time he relied on a god to help him escape a planet? Or the time he tamed a god damned dragon?

  Chapter Eleven

  He made the deal with Crosseyes the next morning, and the pair of them went back to the forest clearing to train. Pale sunlight streaming into the tree-less patch of forest, gleaming over Crosseyes’s metal skin and making it look like it had just been polished.

  Crosseyes left his guns in his holsters and instead drew his katanas. Charlie went to take one, when Crosseyes moved away.

  “You have your own blades,” he said.

  “Two katanas versus a dagger? How is that fair?”

  “You think a fight is ever going to be fair? That your enemies will make sure you’re adequality matched before they fight you?”

  “I see your point.”

  “We’re not going to hurt each other, Charlie. I just want to teach you how to move, and how to strike properly, instead of flinging your dagger around like it’s a baby’s rattle. And most importantly, you need to learn to see things – the way your enemy moves, and the rare point she leaves herself open.”

  Charlie had come to realize that whenever Crosseyes talked about hypothetical enemies, he always used ‘she.’ He guessed it was because of Mia and their history together, and it was hard to believe that a woman, as tough as she was, could strike fear into a metallic demi-god.

  “Larynk’s god sphere is fuelling everything you do,” said Crosseyes. “But it’s not responsible for it. Not completely, anyway.”

  “But all my powers are tied to it.”

  “Sure, in a way. But not every mortal can take powers from a sphere, even if the god wills it. Hells, I once saw a god try to give a guy the power to fly. As soon as he sent the power from his sphere and into the man, he blew up. Seriously, it was horrible. Blood and guts everywhere.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That something in you is attuned to the sphere. You’re receptive to it, and you can take powers from it without exploding into a shower of meat. That means the potential is inside you already, Charlie, but the sphere just draws it out.”

  “You’re saying I could learn all this stuff if I knew how, and if I had the time?”

  Crosseyes nodded. “The sphere merely makes it faster. But remember karma? There’s a cost for everything. To improve, you have to kill. And when you kill, you deposit the experience and legacy into the sphere.”

  “I still don’t understand how I can learn it without the sphere.”

  “If you can take a god’s powers and survive, then something inherent in you must makes you better at learning things. So, I’m gonna use that. Your learning should be accelerated, and you’ll take on my techniques better than others would.”

  Charlie didn’t feel fully satisfied with the explanation, but he needed to give it a go. With that in mind, he tried to open himself up fully, to somehow take on board everything Crosseyes could teach him.

  They trained for hours that morning, and Charlie learned two things; one, Crosseyes had lied when he said they weren’t going to hurt each other. Although he didn’t actually touch him with his katanas, Crosseyes shoved him, tripped him up, even punched him in the chest, taking delight in catching Charlie off-guard. By the end of the session, Charlie was bruised, aching, and he yearned for the comfort of a harmless spreadsheet.

  But the second thing he learned was that Crosseyes was right; he did have something inside him, some inherent ability to learn things. He watched Crosseyes move and weave, studied the way he swept his swords, and the way he seemed to know every move Charlie was going to make before even he did.

  He began to see patterns. He saw the shapes Crosseyes always made with his arms and legs, the geometry he employed in each movement, each twist, each lunge with his sword. It was like Gully had told him – there were shapes to everything. And he began to figure them out.

  Crosseyes ended the lesson by inviting Charlie to attack him. Charlie tried to copy Crosseyes’s shape, the way he placed his feet before attacking, and the way he swivelled his shoulder to the side in a feint, but Crosseyes was already ahead of him. He ducked out of the way and slug
ged Charlie in the gut.

  Charlie collapsed to the ground, wheezing, every breath sticking in his throat. “That…was just…unnecessary,” he gasped.

  “You can’t train without pain,” said Crosseyes. “Let’s head back. I’ve got a lot of work to do on the ship.”

  Charlie heard the crunch of twigs beyond the clearing. Once, twice, and then again. He knew the sound, because he’d heard it before. It was all about patterns and shapes, and even sounds could form a shape in his mind, ones that triggered memories and knowledge. He knew what the crunches were now; they were the sound of wolves prowling close to the clearing. He knew this, and he hadn’t even needed to use Detect Evil.

  A wolf darted from the shadows, pounding across the ground, its fur covered in twigs, its mouth open in a snarl.

  Charlie got to his feet. He flicked his Darkness dagger into place. He watched the wolf, and a series of images flashed in his mind; patterns, the way he’d seen the other wolves move, the tiny flinches in their back legs before they leapt, the way their mouths twitched as they got ready to bite.

  He responded with a pattern of his own, placing his feet the way he’d seen Crosseyes do it. He knew the shape of the fight now, the way it would go, what he had to wait before he moved.

  But the wolf broke the pattern. It leapt before he was ready, and it crashed into him, smashing the air out of its lungs. It gnashed at his throat, but he held it back, his muscles burning with the strain.

  Gripping Darkness, he stabbed the dagger into the wolf’s side, feeling the sickening sensation of his blade ripping into flesh. A black mist coated the beast’s eyes. It was blindness, one of the effects of Darkness, and it smothered its vision.

  Taking advantage, Charlie raised his hands to cast Flame Arrows to finish it off...and then he stopped.

  Using magic was giving in to the sphere, it was using a power he hadn’t earned. It was killing from a distance, removing himself from the act. He wouldn’t gain any knowledge from killing the wolf with magic; as much as it sickened him, he had to deliver the final blow up close, to feel the knife twist into it, no matter how much the squelch of flesh made him want to vomit.

  So, he rounded the wolf as it struggled with its blindness, and he plunged his dagger into its throat and then wrenched it side to side, severing its artery. Hot blood gushed onto his palms, coating his fingers and running down the sleeve of his coat.

  Crosseyes danced between the other two beasts, and his shapes were more refined than Charlie’s, more precise, a perfect marriage of dance and agility and killing instinct, and the sunlight gleamed on his katanas as he slashed once, twice, and then again, until both wolves lay dead at his feet.

  Charlie collapsed onto his knee. His chest felt crushed from where the wolf had smashed into him, and he gulped for breath. This mixed with an emptiness in his stomach as he looked at the dead wolf.

  It was him or me, he told himself, but those simple words didn’t remove him from the act. His empathy stirred in him, but he found it easier to drown it this time. It was getting easier with everything he killed. And yet, a darkness was growing inside him. He was changing.

  “That’s enough for today, said Crosseyes. “Remember my deal; I need to see the sphere.”

  ~

  Later that afternoon, Charlie, Flink, and Longtooth headed through the forest again, but in a different direction this time. Ozkar had told them about a dragon nest nearby, but these dragons were different from the beasts who had shot the ship out of the sky. They were more docile, more accustomed to the villagers and not likely to attack on sight.

  Given that Serpens was the god of dragons, Ozkar told Charlie, he used to spend a lot of his time creating them, using his sphere powers to breed new bloodlines, where he’d experiment with them and see what creatures he could breed.

  Not all dragons were as fearsome as the ones who reigned in the skies. Some rarely flew at all, preferring to nest on the ground. These were still dangerous, but much less so than their fearsome brethren, and the villagers used to tame them and use them for protection, and even for farm work. Now, with Serpens’ growing madness, they had no time to tame dragons. When they weren’t expanding the network of forest defence, they were in worship. Serpens had taken their already-tamed dragons and added them to his sky army, so that the only ground-dwelling ones were ones who lived in nest ten miles east of the village.

  It was these dragons that Charlie wanted to see. He’d improved his blade skills with Crosseyes. Sure, he didn’t have even a fraction of the demi-gods skill, but he was learning. He was seeing patterns and shapes, and that was a foundation to build on.

  Now, he needed to work on another skill, one that he was scared he was losing, and couldn’t understand why; his taming.

  It was for this reason he wished he could have brought Apollo. The chimera was a creature he’d already tamed, and it was a physical representation of the fact that once, he had been able to tame things. But it was too dangerous; animals could sense each other too easily, and if Apollo spooked a dragon, or visa versa, this wouldn’t end well.

  Ozkar had given them directions to the nest, but these directions consisted of ‘turn right at the great elm and walk east until you see the luminous shrooms.’ It was gobbledegook for Charlie who, until recently, had relied on Google Maps any time he went even a mile away from familiar places.

  Luckily, Flink knew forests, even unfamiliar ones, and Ozkar’s cryptic directions seemed to make sense to her. She led them through the woodland, huffing and puffing, holding her spear in her good hand and driving it into the mud and using it to lean on when she got tired. Longtooth scampered alongside them, his nose twitching at every new smell, stopping once in a while to pick edible herbs and chomping on them with the chipped tooth that stuck out from his lips.

  “How far now?” asked Charlie, his chest aching. It hurt every time his shirt rubbed against his skin, and he was sure that if he looked, he’d see a giant purple bruise across his skin.

  “Just over this hill,” said Flink. “Are you sure you can do this?”

  “I hope so,” said Charlie. “Don’t worry; we won’t get close to the dragons. I can try taming them from afar, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll leave without causing trouble.”

  When they walked up the sloping hill and saw what lay behind it, Charlie realized his plan had already failed.

  It wasn’t that there were no dragons; just as Ozkar had said, there was a giant open rock ahead of them that he said would be their nest. But there was something else, too.

  Next to the dragon nest, there was a giant wooden galleon. Two words were painted across the wood; Mia’s Maleficence. Pirates lumbered around the deck, carrying crates and boxes. On the ground, other pirates held onto ropes, four men and women to each length, and on the ends of the ropes were the dragons.

  Each dragon, six in all, was strapped head to tail with thick coils of rope. It didn’t look enough to hold the monstrous beasts, but Charlie quickly saw how the pirates had accomplished it. Whenever a dragon so much as stirred, two pirates approached and beat it with mana-infused sticks, sending pulses of fizzing blue energy along the dragons’ scales.

  Charlie ducked down. “How the hell did Mia get here?” he said.

  But he didn’t need to wait for Flink’s answer, because he knew; when he’d shorted the forest defence, he’d broken the only thing stopping the pirates from reaching the planet.

  They must have followed them here. While Crosseyes had guided them to the planet, Mia must have watched, and she had seen how Crosseyes had lost control of the ship, and she’d pieced it together. Then, when the defence failed, she’d landed on the planet.

  Not only that, but they’d captured six dragons without even needing to tame them. While Charlie’s tame skills relied on harmony and understanding, the pirates had employed a more brutal method; pure force and lots of mana-drenched ropes.

  A blade of guilt stabbed his stomach. This was his fault; his loose fire arrows had shorted t
he system and allowed the pirates to land. That meant it was his fault that the dragons had been caught and tied up.

  He looked at their bowed heads and drooping tails. He’d never seen anything as magnificent as the dragons, with their giant spiked heads and scale-lined tails, every inch of the seeming to quake with power and muscle. Yet here they were, tied under ropes, subdued like dogs.

  His empathy stirred in him, and he was glad about it. It beat the darkness that he’d felt growing. More than that, it made him want to do something. It was like Crosseyes had said – everything was about balance, about shapes, about karma. He’d killed a wolf. Sure, he’d done it to survive, but he couldn’t forget that he was the intruder in the forest, not the wolves. By intruding on their territory and killing them, he’d tipped the balance.

  Maybe if he could help the dragons, he’d restore it a little. If he restored the balance externally, maybe it would balance things up inside him too, it’d banish away some of the growing darkness.