Dragon 2 Chapter 21

I could hear men shouting from further down in the basement. I didn’t give any time to pause and listen. Whatever was causing the trolls to come to the hotel needed to be stopped. Immediately.

Barging down into the basement, it wasn’t much more than a boiler room with several cages of supplies.

But what caught my attention was the massive glowing magic circle. Around it, an old man was shouting at three younger men, or rather one in particular.

“Fool, get rid of this. I can still get you out of this.” The old man said.

Only one warlock seemed like he was part of the conversation, the other two were bent down chanting. He was a scrawny man with a hairline that looked like it had abandoned him too early. “No. It’s you who doesn’t understand. This power is real. It’s power to make a damn difference while it counts. I don’t have decades to practice. Unlike you, I’m not content to sit on my ass with magic and do nothing while the world crumbles around us.”

“That’s not what’s happening.” The older man stood straight with strength that seemed to defy his age.

“It is. Those of you with power aren’t using it. Instead, you all let the world rot around you. We are going to make a difference.” The younger warlock raised his hands in a grand gesture, as if there was more to see than a glowing magic circle in a rundown boiler room.

Sabrina stepped forward. “Old man?”

The old wizard turned, noticing our group for the first time. But his eyes zeroed in on Sabrina. “Good. You get to see the folly of your predecessor. Sabrina, meet Charles, my previous apprentice.” Her mentor had a high-handed tone. It seemed that even in the face of the current problem, he was grumpy, but he was collected.

Not pleased about being completely ignored, I strode forward, ignoring the apparent reunion. I moved towards the magic circle, assuming whatever was causing the trouble was tied to it. Enough lives had already been lost.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” The old man finally paid me some attention, scolding me like some child.

“Ending this the swift way.” I’d seen Morgana snuff enchantments out with her hand before. And on tougher materials, she’d done it with her blades. Enchantments could be taken out by force, which happened to be my specialty.

But as I reached forward, a barrier blocked me. Annoyed at the defence, I hurled a strengthened punch at the barrier. Unfortunately, all it did was send back my own force plus an electric shock, driving me backwards.

“The hubris of youth. To think you expected to do better than me with a simple punch? If it were so simple, I would have destroyed it before I even talked to the imbecile.” The old man turned back to the young warlock, his once apprentice. “Still hiding behind that? Come on, get out here.”

I was starting to understand why Sabrina enjoyed mocking her mentor at the convention. He really was a crotchety old coot. It made me appreciate Morgana a little more, even if she liked dangled my life by a thread and call it training.

“Then what do we do?” I asked, looking at the magical circle. “You have magi dieing above us; this isn’t the time for a lesson.”

“Before you hastily interrupted me, I was trying to appeal to my former apprentice’s morals. That’s assuming he has any left after whatever pact he’s made with the being behind this.” Sabrina’s mentor turned his focus back to the warlocks.

“Give it up, old man.” Charles scoffed from inside the circle. His boldness made more sense; he considered himself safe inside its barrier.

The old man rumbled something under his breath before speaking up. “I will not have you using an ounce of the knowledge that I gave you for such stupidity.” He threw out his hand, a spell coming to life and hitting the magic barrier. The force sent a rumbling through the hotel, across the foundation.

The red circle pushed inwards, straining. For a moment, I thought he was going to do it. But it wasn’t enough. The barrier rebounded from his spell. He quickly held up a bracelet that glowed bright, sucking the spell into itself.

A small dinging sounded as a piece of metal fell and hit on the floor.

“Borrowed power like this comes at a great cost, Charles. What was the price for this?” The old man taunted the young warlock and prowled around the edges of the barrier, scanning the floor and the markings underneath the warlocks.

I turned to Morgana and Sabrina. “Ideas?”

“If my mentor can’t do it, I don’t stand a chance.” Sabrina said, shaking her head. We both focused on Morgana.

Morgana tilted her head back and forth before shaking it. “There’s a lot of power built up inside of there. Even if I could bypass its protections with my spatial magic, I’m liable to just kill everyone in the hotel when it blows.”

“Who is your patron?” The old wizard growled, clearly growing frustrated.

I would have thought that was private information, but either old gods wanted to be known, or Charles just felt that secure.

“Nat’alet. Good luck finding anything on him.”

Who? I certainly had never heard of him.

I frowned and focused past Charles. The other two warlocks in the circle still had their heads bowed as they chanted. Was there more to this than they had already done?

“Some forgotten god. Think about it Charles. Use that brain that I know is in your head. Why would he do this? What do you possibly have to offer you?”

Charles nearly stepped out of the circle, clearly getting annoyed at the interruptions from his former mentor. His movements were agitated and erratic. “I have so much to offer. He agrees with us. Nat’alet wants to help save the world, and the first step is getting rid of old men who hoard their power and watch the world wither.”

The old man snorted. “A desperate old windbag is using you, Charles. He could be some trickster god hiding behind a false name, but you ate it up hook, line and sinker, didn’t you? You were never very motivated, always expecting that one day everything would land neatly in your own lap.”

“Shut up!” Charles screamed, seeming to come unhinged. He lunged like he was going to try and choke the old man, but it seemed the barrier worked both ways. Charles rebounded off of it, stumbling back, surprised and nearly falling over the other two warlocks.

“Pity.” the old man said and turned away from the warlocks. “Sabrina, come here and give me a hand. It seems we need to try for a harder application of force.”

“Don’t you see?” Charles recovered and held his arms out wide in a grand gesture. “We are going to restore magic to the golden days you always talked about.”

“If it were so easy that a couple of piped up young warlocks could solve it, we would have done it ages ago.” The old man shook his head as he pulled out a stick of chalk and bent down, starting to scratch at the ground. “You are too stupid to realize when you’ve been conned.”

Charles’ face only filled with even more conviction. “No. We are capable where you were not. We didn’t grow up in an easy, carefree life; we will solve this with a simple solution.”

Charles crouched down on the old man’s level as he worked. A smile split his face. “You see, the decrease in mana that has been plaguing you old men is fixable. We just need to give it time to recover. Magi need to stop using it, and since you won’t on your own, Nat’alet has offered to help. Killing magi and paranormal to stem the loss of mana.”

Okay, this warlock was looney. He wanted to kill everyone using mana to let it restore on its own? It would work, but it was a hell of a drastic way to go about it. And morally wrong in so many ways.

“And what does your patron get out of all of this?” The old man asked, drawing a neat circle in a practiced flourish.

“He’s the god of balance. It helps him to realign such things. That’s how we know what we are doing is good; the world needs balance.” Charles’ eyes caught the red glow of his magic circle and in the moment he seemed manic, lost in his own delusion.

As I watched his face, his motives became clearer. He may believe he was doing it for balance, but there was pain and anguish behind his eyes. He wanted to hurt his former teacher, hurt the other magi. This was a way to get back at them for some sort of slight he had felt.

I hadn’t missed ‘former’ used when the old man referred to him as his apprentice. No doubt there was a story of loss behind that.

He wasn’t about to listen to sense, especially not from his mentor. I’d only seen manicness like this from over done villains in movies, but it seemed very real at that moment. There was a conviction in him that any amount of words wouldn’t shake.

Charles stood staring down his former master as the man continued to chalk out complex diagrams on the ground. “As you’ve said before, a prepared wizard is unstoppable.”

The old man didn’t even bother looking up. “If you’re done, I have real magic to do. Hopefully, you can piece together at least a few of the symbolic relationships among this. I do hope you haven’t given up magic theory entirely. Because you certainly aren’t a wizard anymore.”

At that, Charles gave up and spun around, crouching in a huddle with the other two and joining in their chanting. It looked like the gloating phase was over. He must be at least a little scared of what his mentor could do.

I looked at the barrier again, wondering what would happen if I fully shifted and attacked it. But if it exploded, while I was pretty durable, the hotel might not be. We’d likely end up buried in rubble.

Morgana held a hand on my shoulder, clearly reading my mood. “He seems to be quite the expert. Let’s let him work.”

“I just don’t like being on the sidelines. There has to be something I can do.”

But before another option presented itself, a light came from behind us, and another party entered the boiler room.

I almost didn’t recognize the man with the large two-handed sword wreathed in white flames hanging off his shoulder. I definitely hadn’t been expecting him to be wearing a red and gold tabard emblazoned with a cross over his expensive suit.

Morgana cursed under her breath. “Just what we needed.”

Jared stepped down the stairs, the white flames on the sword casting flickering shadows across his face. He walked as if he was the king of the basement and ready to show his disapproval by removing heads from shoulders.

It wasn’t until he was at the bottom of the steps that his eyes shifted from the warlocks’ to Morgana and I. “I thought you were strictly forbidden from investigating the warlocks.” It wasn’t a question.

“And I thought you had an internal neutral investigation team.” I offered back.

“The church has kindly provided such assistance. It just happens to be me.” Jared gave me a grin like he’d won. “I can’t wait to hang you out to dry for being here.”

“Funny, I thought you would have noticed the trolls in the lobby? The same trolls Morgana and I have been hired to manage as they migrate.” I smiled back. “Just doing our jobs. It’s a small world.”

He narrowed his eyes at Morgana and I, but Morgana was ignoring him and watching Sabrina aid the old man in the magical circle instead.

“Well, this looks like a very serious problem. One you must be incapable of handling, since the barrier still stands. Let me show you how it’s done.” Jared hefted the sword off his shoulder, ready to charge the warlocks’ magic circle.

I really wanted to watch him fry, but I decided to try to rise above the pettiness. “Charging it doesn’t work.”

“What do you know about magic?” Jared bit back with a snort.

Internally, I responded to him, letting him know that my kind made magic, so he should show a bit more gratitude. But I couldn’t say that out loud.

So instead, I nodded over to the old man. “He seems to know enough to give Morgana pause. Far older than either of us.”

“And still able to hear just fine.” The old man turned to scowl at me, then glancing over and shaking his head as he took in Jared in his knight’s templar getup.

Jared’s eyes lit up as he registered the man. “Arch Magus Sir Benifolt.” He said the name as if it had weight to it. “I didn’t know you were here.”

Sabrina’s mentor looked up for a moment. “So you recognize me. And clearly you can see that I’m working. So remain silent so I can get back to my work.”

Jared pursed his lips as if he had to forcibly keep them closed.

I smiled. I was starting to like the old man.

All the bluster seemed to fade from Jared. He let his sword swing down to the ground and he rested his hands on the pommel, sinking it an inch into the concrete. I tried not to show my reaction at the sword going right into concrete. It was weird to watch, but the white flames were a dead giveaway there was magic to the sword.

I turned to watch the old man, Benifolt, work his magic, holding my tongue.

Benifolt finished chalking on the ground, stepping back and looking it over again before drawing a final half circle that butted up against the warlocks’ spell circle.

“It won’t work.” Charles sneered. “This is beyond even you old man.”

Benifolt slapped his knees and stood, groaning in the way only an old man could. He completely ignored his former disciple.

“It’s done?” I asked Sabrina while checking my gun, readying for a fight.

She nodded. “The best we could do on short notice. The way the old coot wove force multipliers in with a rune complex is brilliant. He intends to siphon the mana from inside and create a feedback loop. I can’t wait to watch it.”

Sir Benifolt grunted at being called an old coot, but checked the diagram one last time with the precision of an expert tradesman. “I would hope I can outdo a petty warlock. But then again, I’m really testing my knowledge against a forgotten god.” He paused, giving it one final look. “Yes, that’s about the best I can do with what we have.”

I hadn’t thought about it like he’d said it. We weren’t up against a cabal of warlocks; we were up against this god.

A term like that wasn’t thrown around lightly, and it was the kind of thing to make you wonder if you weren’t on the wrong side of the conflict.

Even as a legendary dragon, there were still beings above me in the food chain.

“Got it. No assurances.” I responded, waiting for him to kick off the spell.

Benifolt bent down, and I could see a small trickle of magic flow into the diagram. But the magic wasn’t the fuel for it. Instead, it was like just a bit of mana to prime the pump, like a trigger. Once that was done, the magical diagram took over.

Blinding, brilliant blue energy traveled along the chalk, lighting up the diagram he’d drawn on the floor. It filled itself with lots of raw energy as it started to draw from the environment. Under my dragon sight, it was even more brilliant. It was collecting mana and putting it to use, building up something at the edge of the barrier. Like clockwork, the magic diagram came to life.

I could see what the magic was becoming. It looked like a magical piston or maybe a battering ram, prepping to pierce the other magic circle.

The ground shook as it wound and struck. Cracks broke open in the cement foundation, and dust settled down on my shoulders from the unfinished ceiling above me as the hit resonated through the basement. This spell was powerful and complex magic, beyond what I had seen before or would understand anytime soon.

I stared at the magic as it worked, but as I used my other senses to watch it, a weird feeling came over me. A part of me felt like it could pick apart the magic.

There was a moment where the symbols leapt off the diagram and floated through my vision. It was almost as if my draconic supercomputer brain was processing the magic outside my conscious thought.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was seeing, and I certainly couldn’t do anything with it if given a test. But somehow it was being internalized. I smiled, knowing I was at least taking one baby step forward in my understanding of magic from watching the two enchantments interact.

Unfortunately, while I was gaining from watching the spell do its work, Sir Benifolt’s magic wasn’t effective enough on the barrier. The warlocks’ magic circle was straining, but it wasn’t breaking.

What was breaking was the basement. Another pulse from Sir Benifolt’s enchantment had cracks propagating further across the basement, and the falling dust had turned into small chunks of debris. I was growing concerned that the magic was going to bring the hotel down.

I was about to say something, but Benifolt’s enchantment lost its glow and it faded. The chalk on the ground had been scorched, and black marks ran through the enchantment, ruining what was once a beauty of magic.

“Is that it?” I asked Morgana.

She nodded, her face solemn. “Even enchantments have their limits. The problem isn’t the magic itself, but the materials in which it’s channeled through. Like other forms of energy, it has secondary outputs of heat and light. In the case here, you have the chalk burning and motes of dust scorching, like a circuit board that overheats, and the soldering losing its connection. Given the environment, the enchantment was broken.”

“Then how do enchantments sustain longer?”

“Because, like anything, with enough engineering, you can overcome the resource limitations. Also, I don’t enchant something with chalk if it was supposed to last more than a minute. Some of the greatest works of magic were made by dragons and still function today.” She said the last bit pointedly to me.

While the short explanation from Morgana on magic had been interesting, we still had a rather large problem. Sir Benifolt’s magic had failed and failed so spectacularly that the hotel may give way above us.

But it would seem that Jared was far less concerned. He strode forward, his powerful looking sword held high over his head. “If you can’t solve this. I will!” He threw his weight forward and swung the sword in an arc that left a trail of white fire in its wake.

I didn’t know the power of that sword, but it glowed beyond just the flames. Given everything else I knew, my guess is it was lent out from The Church’s stash of weapons.

So I waited, watching as the sword came crashing down upon the edge of the warlocks’ magic circle. To my surprise, it cut right through the barrier, causing blinding motes of red light to spill out. Against the harsh light, I could see the smug look of victory plastered across Jared’s face.

That was, of course, before the ground shook and the very hotel beneath our feet cracked open with the same red light of the magic circle. Magic began to build in the air around us.

I jumped into action, grabbing Sabrina before the spell circle exploded. I protected her with my body as I let myself shift under my clothes, wrapping myself in a protective layer of gold scales.

Sir Benifolt shouted at Jared just before the ground shook. My back sprayed with hunks of concrete. I kept Sabrina covered, trying to keep myself wrapped around her as carefully as I could.

When the blast subsided, my ears rang as I got up off Sabrina, who was shaken, but okay. I was glad that I hadn’t been the one to break that spell circle by force.

Chunks of the ceiling fell down on me as the building groaned and its weight shifted.

“Imbecile. Why is it that the young always feel the need to apply brute force to every fucking problem?” Sir Benifolt was raging at Jared as a blue egg shell of magic fell from around him. “Now I have to stabilize this building.” He rolled up his sleeves and started quickly chalking out another diagram.

But as he was bent over getting to work, Jared was leaning heavily on his sword. Blood dripped from a number of nasty looking cuts, but there was no sign of pain on Jared’s face. Instead, there was a concentrated strain as his body twitched.

“Morgana?” I asked through the dust that filled the basement.

“Here.” She came out of the dust, her neck bent at an odd angle and crackling as it righted itself.

A snorting noise came from deeper in the dust, where three figures now stood.

For a moment, I thought they were trolls. They had that same swampy green skin and smushed pig-like faces, complete with a pair of tusks.

But as I stared at them, trolls didn’t quite fit. They weren’t near big enough to be trolls, and they stood upright with the confidence of humans.

Their robes burned on their skin, giving off steam that stank up the crumbling basement.

“What the hell are those?” I asked no one in particular.

Sabrina didn’t seem to care as her blasting rod pointed at the closest one and sprayed a jet of frost.

“Ha!” One shouted and stomped the ground. In response, as a pillar of earth rose up and blocked Sabrina’s attack. “We are shamans. Future leaders of the trolls!”

One shaman caught Jared before he could raise his sword again and threw him through the dust, rushing after him.

“You two. Would you mind? I’m a little busy trying to keep the building from collapsing on all of us and the magi above.” Sir Benifolt didn’t even look up from his work.

Morgana’s blades rang out as she unsheathed them, and I kept my scales covering me under my clothes. The beast roared in my chest, happy to fight.

AN - Okay, that was a chunky chapter, I might break it up into two for the release.