Oops, I Was Accidentally Transported To A Fantasy World And Taught Dragons About Capitalism - Chapter 5

I found myself completely stunned as I stared at the shifting words and shapes that was the curse, the sheer shock of seeing what was in effect an ancient programming language here, of all places, pulling me out of the moment. I probably would have stayed there too had it not been for my earlier comment, which Xylera had wasted no time in picking up upon.

“Ah! Glory to the day, you can read it!” She said excitedly, her head dropping down until it was directly beside me. “And you are correct, this curse would have been forged in the arcane tongue of COBOL, as were nigh all the spells that its creator wielded.”

My head turned to stare up at the dragon and I blinked back at her in confusion for several seconds, eventually choosing the most urgent question in my mind. “It’s creator? You mean—”

“Yes.” Xylera stated before I could finish, her head bobbing in the draconic equivalent of a nod. “He was from Earth as well. But that is irrelevant at the moment. You can read the curse, now are you able to break it?”

“I, uh, I don’t—” I started to stammer, nearly losing myself in the chaos of all the follow up questions I wanted to ask. But at the last second, I remembered what was at stake, my life, and after everything that had happened so far, I certainly wanted to keep living it. So shoved them all to the side and looked back at the curse. “Let me see.”

Now I am sure that many of you who have made it thus far in my tale are eager for me to drop specifics as to the kind of spell could keep an ancient dragon such as Xylera bound helpless for decades on end. I’m sorry to say, that you’re all about to be disappointed. I might be an idiot at times, hell, I certainly did my best to fry as many braincells as I could during my teenage years, but I’m not so far gone that I know that it’s probably Not A Good Idea to describe a spell that some of you geniuses might go and try to use on me one day.

I mean, even if you did somehow figure out the spell, or even came up with a better version of it, it wouldn’t work on me, but even so, I’d probably have to do something about it. Something that would probably suck a whole great deal for you. So really, I’m doing you a favor here by being vague and obtuse. You’re welcome by the way.

Anyway, glossing over the finer points here as I inspected the curse, it didn’t take me all that long to realize that it was written terribly. Before you jump on me about that, no this isn’t an arrogance thing, or an age of programming languages thing, it was just shoddy work all around with holes that you could fly a bus through. Had I known then what I know now, I would have been able to shatter the thing with a couple of words and a thimbleful of mana. Unfortunately, back then, I didn’t know what I know now, and I found myself talking aloud to Xylera.

“I think I found something,” I said, breaking the long silence that had fallen over us as I parsed the curse. Or at least I parsed what parts of it that I could make sense of before it truly diverged into magical mumbo jumbo that I had no grounding for. “There is a variable, uh…I mean section of the curse where it designates you as its target. I think that if that part was removed, then…well…”

“…the curse should unravel itself,” she bobbed her head in approval before fixing me with an inquisitive glare. “Excellent. Do you know any Words of Power that would remove it?”

My instinctive reaction to the question was to immediately say no, yet before I could do so, I realized that it wasn’t exactly true. If magic worked akin to programming languages in whatever universe I’d found myself in, then I knew a hell of a lot of Words of Power. The only problem was that I didn’t know what any of them would do if I actually spoke them.

So in a feat of brilliance that I have never matched since that moment, I said exactly that.

“Uh, I do…but I’m not sure what else they might affect if I used one of them,” I told her apologetically. A belated part of me was worried the reply would upset her, but instead all I received was another sharp draconic nod, as if she appreciated my caution.

“Then you will have to pluck out the spell section by claw,” she stated, as if that was a simplest thing in the world for me to both understand and do. Worse, before I could press her on exactly what she meant, a strange look appeared on her face as she continued speaking, her tone abruptly different, almost sad sounding to my ear.

“I must forewarn you, Fortuneweaver, that when you succeed in breaking the curse, I will have much work to do to right the wrongs that have been suffered, and it is…unlikely that we will speak again afterwards,” she said, her bright eyes not focused upon me, but upon the whirling storm of smoke trapped within the curse. “But rest assured that I will not only secure your freedom, but will also place in your guardianship what is most precious to me, making you friend to all dragon kind regardless of where your travels take you. All I wish for…is that you live the best life you can in whatever realm you find yourselves in.”

“Wait, you’re…leaving?” I asked, feeling a sudden worry shoot through me at her words. Sure, I hadn’t exactly been thrilled to find myself dropped into the middle of a dragon’s lair, but admittedly, things had worked out pretty well for me so far. “What, where are you—”

“That remains yet to be seen,” Xylera replied, her voice growing thicker yet again as her head shifted to indicate the pillar of violet energy. “Now please, the curse. I have been trapped here long enough, and nor do I wish for you to expire when we are so close to salvation.”

I want to say that I paused for a moment as I searched for some way to reply back to her. To try and clarify what exactly she meant. But in truth, I didn't. Not because I didn't care, or want to in that moment, but because right there and then I realized that she was right about one thing especially.

That I was expiring.

It was so serious in fact that it had almost crept up on me without my noticing. But now that she had brought it to my attention, I quickly realized just how light headed I felt, how sweaty my body was, how my eyes were starting to dry and blur, forcing me to almost constantly blink just to see. Simply put, I was running out of time, having spent what few minutes I had available to me in this incredible heat staring at the curse in an attempt to puzzle it out. So much that if I didn't act, that I would soon lose the ability to.

So what I did was turn my attention to the curse and find the fragment that linked it to Xylera, my hand coming up to reach for it. Granted, right there and then I had no idea as to what I was doing, at least not other than inferring what I had to do next based on what the dragon had told me. That particular lack of knowledge, or as I'm sure as many of you who are reading this know, common sense, had me screaming a moment later when I plunged my hand into the curse fragment and promptly experienced what hand to be a million volts going up directly into my brain.

Understandably the next few seconds after that were a blur to me until I came to, lying flat on the ground a dozen feet away from what I eventually recognized as the now unravelling course.

“It... worked?” I remembered muttering through an all too thick tongue as I focused on the now distorted shape of the obelisk which was now slanted to one side. A motion that it not only completed as the words come out of my mouth, but then soon caused it to pop as it hit the ground as if it were a giant soap bubble.

An event that as I'm sure you all know pleased Xylera.

“Finally!” I heard her exclaim as all the magic before me vanished in a blink, leaving only the swirling black cloud trapped within behind. That is at least until a torrent of orange flame fell upon it as it spewed out from her mouth.

Blazing, bright, and painfully hot, the point blank appearance of the dragon's breath all but instantly seared my skin to the point of blistering, causing me to cry out in shock as the heat washed over me. Yet fortunately for me, that blast of searing pain only lasted for a split moment as one of her wings then slammed down between me and the now burning pillar of molten fire, just missing me by inches. The move not only instantly curbed the intense heat that the dragon was unleashing, but also the light, which was bright enough to still be seen through her wing.

To this day, I'm still not sure exactly how long I lay there as I watched Xylera destroy the remnants of the curse, other than it couldn't have been long. Tens of seconds for certain, yet not a whole minute is my best guess. Whatever the case, it was a time that I found myself lost in with nothing to do but stare until the first floating word caught my eye.

“Bind?” I read it aloud the moment that I saw it fly through Xylera's wing as if it wasn't even there, the crimson burning word then wafting up and past me, as if carried by an invisible wind.

That wasn't the only one either though, for as soon as it floated out of sight did another word appear, and then another and another, each of them flying through the air as if they were birds forged of verse and prose. As with many things that day that were new to me, so was that moment, the first time that I ever saw a spell being cast and woven together. Looking back, it's a shame that I didn't have the time or appreciation to fully understand what Xylera was doing, I'm sure it would have been a wonder to experience. Especially with how my life turned out afterwards.

Instead rather my, panicked mind focused on something much more tangible as the spell unfolded. That being the visible and unmissable toll that whatever Xylera was doing took upon her body. With every second that passed, bits of her had started to flake away, taking to the air and vanishing as if it were ash in the wind. Beginning slowly at first and picking up speed, it was all I could do but watch as the magnificent dragon faded out from existence, the magnificent spell that she had woven to encompass the cavern locking itself into place at the exact moment her fiery breath ended.

“Thank you, Fortuneweaver,” she said in the brief silence that followed after, her head turning to look towards me and our eyes making contact for a split instant.

And then without saying another word, the last of her vanished into fragments as the spell fell downwards with a cacophonous boom, falling upon the same spot where the curse had been.

But whatever I might have expected to have happen as the thunderous roar reached my ears, I was soon proven wrong. For before the falling spell could reach its mark, everything around me abruptly stopped in a way that only those who have experienced time magic could ever hope to understand.

One moment, reality was present everywhere, in the heat of the air around me, in the thunder of my heart, in my need to breathe, to blink my eyes. Then the next, it was gone, as if all of those things had merely been suggestions in the first place and I had begrudgingly agreed to them because I had no other choice. Suffice to say it was as surreal a sensation as a mortal could ever hope to experience, topped only by the other thing that happened in that split abandonment of time.

That of course being the arrival of dozens of small, white clad figures seemingly all out of nowhere, their all too high pitched voices soon shouting all around me.

“A team, secure the victim!” One of them immediately called out as they flew up into the air on golden wings of magic. “B- team cover left flank, C- team right flank!”

“Moving!” A chorus of disembodied voices shouted back in unison, the words reaching me right at the same moment that I was surrounded by the white clad figures, each of whom bore long staves in their hands, the glowing words I saw inscribed upon them instantly marking them as weapons in my mind.

Not that I had any worry of them using them on me as one of them stepped in close to look at me.

“Victim is still alive!” My savior called out the moment their eyes landed on me, or what I took to be eyes as I glanced at the two white circles of light that shone out from the otherwise shrouded darkness that was their hooded face. “They appear to be severely dehydrated, possibly suffering heat stroke or a concussion. There are also signs of... mana burn?”

The voice instantly became serious. “We need an evac, now! He's going into Mana shock!”

That simple statement might as well have been a magic spell for everything that happened afterwards. Almost instantly I found myself float up into the air as a stream of magic wrapped itself around me and started to carry me forward.

“Don't worry, you're safe now,” I heard my savior say as a silvery-white rift appeared ahead of me. But by that point I was simply too far gone to reply, my head starting to spin its way into darkness from whatever I had done to my body. Little by little I felt my awareness fade until only single sliver of light remained in my vision, highlighting a patch sewn onto the speaker’s shoulder.

A patch that I was dumbfounded to discover read ANGEL.