Book 3: Chapter 35: The Final Waves

    Arthur blinked at the two dragons. Their arrival had been so unexpected that, for a moment, he thought that they might be some sort of hallucination borne out of either exhaustion or hope for rescue.

    He immediately rejected that. He didn''t want a rescue. He wanted to see this through.

    Of course, Brixaby saw things in a completely different manner. "How dare you intrude on our fight! We have matters well in hand, and we will be the ones to win the prize. Go away!"

    "By the looks of things, you should be thanking us for our swift arrival," Laird said.

    "Which wave is this?" Shadow asked, looking around at the mounds of rapidly disintegrating scourgelings.

    Arthur exchanged a worried glance with Cressida. "We''re about to start our eighth."

    Now that the shock had worn off, he was growing concerned. If Laird was here, that meant that the council likely knew what they’d done. That wasn''t good.

    Though... drained of mana and weighed down by fatigue, Arthur wasn''t sure there was anything he could do to stop them if Laird and Shadow had a way to drag them out of here.

    He grit his teeth, frustrated by his weakness.

    "Oh, look! We have a little time before the next wave," Joy said casually. She pointed to a scourgeling lying on the edge of the hill. There were so many that Arthur hadn''t taken notice of it. Unlike the rest, it wasn''t rapidly disintegrating. It hadn''t truly died yet, which meant they had a bit of a breather.

    He would take any time he could get.

    He turned to Laird and Shadow who were exchanging surprised glances.

    "What do you want?" Arthur asked, "Why are you here?"

    Shadow half extended his wings in a shrug to Laird as if deferring to the other dragon.

    Laird looked at Arthur. "Isn''t it obvious? We want the same thing you do: Combat cards."

    Arthur heard Cressida take in a sharp breath of surprise.

    His face remained stony. "Explain," he demanded, glancing at the scourgeling which was still not disintegrating but didn''t seem far off from death. "And do it quickly."

    Brixaby buzzed over and landed heavily on Arthur''s shoulder as if to provide silent reinforcement.

    Laird nodded and spoke. "The same cards that myself and my wing of dragons fight and bleed for are often sent right back to the hives and kings and queens as bribes to leave our community alone." His scaly lips ticked up over his teeth in an unconscious grimace. "I have personally seen the same cards liberated from one noble library only to be sold back to a kingdom to be sold again to the nobles. It''s an endless cycle, and I''ve grown weary of it. Especially when part of the agreement means that we are not allowed to keep any of them."

    "Why don''t you keep them anyway?" Brixaby asked. "Who would stop you? Who would know?"

    "There are many dragons who believe in what the council tells them. They think that because we have not been attacked so far by scourgelings or by kingdom hives we never can be."

    "They''re fools," Shadow added. "I''ve fought scourgelings my entire life. They don’t stop. Anyone who’s heard rumors of our King knows he changes his mind on a whim. I’ve grown to like this place, but the council keeps its people like defenseless lambs, ready for the slaughter."

    Arthur''s eyebrows raised. He felt Brixaby''s weight shift subtly on his shoulder — his only outward sign of unease. He knew that his dragon was thinking about the Mind Singer and the threat it posed. Laird and Shadow needed combat cards more than they even knew.

    But at least the dragons had all but confirmed that this was where the council locked away their combat card library. Fighting through these waves wouldn''t be for nothing.

    "So, you want access to the combat cards, but you don''t want to tip the rest of the council off about what you’re doing," Arthur guessed.

    Laird nodded. "You should have come to me first before trying this stunt. I would have been able to gather several more interested dragons." He looked sour. "And we all could have properly shared in the reward."

    Joy cut in. "Okay, but how did you know you were here– wait, how did get in here in the first place? I thought nobody could come in and out? Not that I''m unhappy to see you here." She heaved a sigh. "These waves are getting really tiring. The boys don’t want to say it, but we could use some help."

    Laird shrugged. "This dungeon is meant as a death trap for those who don''t have the key. In short, that means those who wish to test the dungeon can come in. But they can never leave until the waves are complete."

    “You didn’t answer her first question,” Cressida said. “How did you know we were here?”

    Laird gave her a flat look. “You didn’t think the council would allow a Legendary and a Rare complete free reign did you? Ghost has been following you, under Stealth. He reported to me the moment you broke into the enchanter’s complex. I brought Shadow in hopes of shaming you into good behavior again before things spun out of control. By then, you’d already entered the dungeon.”

    “I knew I wanted that Uncommon in my retinue,” Brixaby said to Arthur.

    "I don''t get it," Arthur said, speaking aloud a thought that had been nagging at him since he first learned of the dungeon. "Why would the council even allow the risk? It just takes one group to complete the waves and then they’ll have access to the combat cards."

    "That''s where you''re wrong," Laird snorted. "No one within memory has completed this dungeon without the key."

    His words hit like a blow. Brixaby snapped open all of his wings. Arthur stepped back, and Cressida put a hand to her mouth.

    "That is absurd," Brixaby said. "We have fought through the waves just fine."

    But they hadn''t. They had been on their last legs. They still were, Arthur thought, glancing over to the final scourgeling. It still wasn''t disintegrating, but it wouldn''t be long now.

    Laird pulled a second bowl of oatmeal out of his rune net.

    “How does that not tip over and spill everywhere?” Joy asked, cocking her head to the side.

    He shrugged. “I don''t know much about enchantments. I just know that it doesn''t.”

    “I would very much like to examine the runes on that net after this is done,” Brixaby said, again eyeing it. Arthur had originally thought it was because he wanted the treasures inside. It turned out, he just wanted to study the runes.

    The other dragon gave him a bland look. “We''ll see.” Then he pointedly tucked it away before Brixaby could get too close. As before, he did share the bowl around.

    “Two more waves,” Arthur said. “We can do this. We''re almost done."

    “I thought you said...” Shadow trailed off and looked at Laird in confusion.

    Laird grimaced. “One more wave, technically. One thousand scourgelings.”

    Cressida, who had been taking a delicate bite of the oatmeal, nearly coughed it back out. “One thousand?”

    Arthur felt the same.

    “Yes,” Laird said. “This requires a dragon''s assistance, which is a reason human teams have failed in the past. I suggest we fight them from the air.”

    Brixaby grumbled at that, but he didn''t outright object.

    Cressida and Joy went up as a pair, and Arthur sat on Laird. There was a little bit of irony there. He never thought that he would be able to ride the dragon that had given him his first big break in life. For the sake of Brixaby''s feelings, he didn''t make a big deal of it.

    Instead, he looked to his dark dragon. “If we can get you enough cards, we might be able to fly together soon.”

    Brixaby looked slightly mollified.

    The ninth and final wave was... immense. So many scourgelings came out of the forest that they toppled the trees. The weight of them — the physical effect of so many clustered together — killed the grass underfoot, leaving blackened rot behind. The shrieks were so loud that Arthur had to resist clapping his hands over his ears.

    Instead, he grimly got on with the work, pelting the things from above. His once finely crafted chainmail shirt was in tatters from using all of the rivets.

    When he ran out of those, he started pulling heavy objects out of his Personal Space and just tossing them down. He had one sturdily built chair and several large rocks that were sacrificed to the cause.

    And when he ran out of that, he copied the spells Laird was using:

    Candle-flake Fall (Spell)

    Time remaining: 59 minutes, 59 seconds...

    Ever-flame (Spell)

    Time remaining: 11 Hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds...

    Corrosive Flame (Spell)

    Time remaining: 59 Minutes, 59 Seconds...

    The last wave wasn''t exactly dangerous — but it was a pure slog. Laird and Arthur could only rain down so many flames at a time, and Joy’s movements were restricted when she had to worry about the safety of her rider on her back.

    They did what they could, and slowly but surely, the scourgelings were whittled down.

    It was Brixaby who killed the last one. On a hill now blackened of life and covered with so many disintegrating scourgelings that they didn''t realize it was over until the whistling finally... finally stopped.

    Laird landed, and everybody else followed. All stared around at each other as if they couldn’t quite believe that they’d done it.

    “What happens now?” Arthur asked, looking around. He half expected trumpets to blare out of triumph, and combat cards to rain down from the sky. But there was nothing.

    Again, Laird and Shadow exchanged a look. This one was grim.

    “The tenth wave,” Laird said.

    Brixaby let out a sound suspiciously like an undignified squawk. “You said there were nine!”

    “The last wave is not a fight, but a test.”

    As he spoke, a bright line split the air and then expanded, resolving itself into a gleaming golden doorway.

    Laird continued, “By design, only one is allowed access to the reward — the library. We either decide here who among us goes in, or we fight one another for the privilege.”