Book 4 Ch31

    Pink wings enfolded Arthur and Brixaby from all sides, one wing with a trace of green in the membrane.

    But what concerned Arthur more was the dropping sensation in his stomach and the feeling of weightlessness. The dragons couldn’t fly clung together like this. They were falling.

    His yell of alarm was echoed by Cressida, whose voice sounded muffled, either from her armor, the wings, or distance.

    Of course, Brixaby’s objection was the loudest, though completely unheard by Joy, who was busy babbling.

    “I haven’t seen you in so, so long! It’s been forever, and we went through so many horrible things. And there weren’t even any other dragons other than old Sams, can you believe that? None that were alive, anyway. Whoops,” she added, slightly chagrined, “we’re falling.”

    In the next second, the dragons separated. Brixaby righted himself, buzzing to regain his equilibrium.

    Arthur looked around, but though it had seemed like they had been falling forever, in reality, it had only been a couple of seconds. They were still high in the air, the flat gray, featureless landscape of the deadlands still far, far below.

    Unfortunately, the incoming flock of scourglings was nearly upon them.

    With half an exasperated roar, Joy extended her poison claws—claws that were lengthening. It seemed that sometime during their trip, she had absorbed the Sharp As Nails card into her secondary core.

    Brixaby, too, swelled as he prepared his next Stunning Shout. He was forced to swallow it down a moment later as Joy barreled in his path to throw herself at the scourglings.

    Arthur made a note to work on that. This was his retinue, and they would have to learn to work as a team.

    That was for later. Now, they had scourglings to kill.

    Arthur pulled sharp metal bits from his Personal Space. With a moment of thought, he started circling them around both arms, prepping them to fire.

    Curiously, it was harder to move the shrapnel around his arm with the damaged card anchor.

    Not having time to think about the implications of that, Arthur switched the metal around so that they circled his torso instead. As long as they were within an inch of his body, it was good to go.

    Unfortunately, shooting them out as he normally did used a lot of mana he could no longer spare. But Arthur had already thought of that.

    He used his fine control of the shards to spin faster and faster around his body until they were a blur. Then, once he was within range, he simply let one fly free.

    This method didn’t exactly allow for precision targeting, but there was a whole flock of scourglings in front of him. He just made sure not to send them in Joy’s or Sams’s general direction.

    The scourglings were Commons, and if he was able to strike one at center mass, they fell immediately. Otherwise, the wings made good targets. The membrane was thin, and any hole quickly opened wider. Then the scourgling just fell to its death.

    Meanwhile, Sams glowed brightly, so bright that for a moment, he was like a second sun in the air. Scourglings whistled in pain and rained down around him.

    Then the yellow dragon made his way toward Arthur and Brixaby. Sams was old enough and wise enough to keep out of the way of Arthur’s shots.

    Horatio, who also wore metal armor, though without a helmet, yelled, “It’s past time you showed up!”

    Grinning, Arthur threw him a rude gesture.

    However, the flash that he had seen of Horatio showed that his friend looked more hollow-cheeked than usual. Stress, or not getting enough to eat?

    More scourglings were inbound, flying in a line from the distant nest.

    Leaning down, Arthur spoke to Brixaby, who gleefully relayed his orders in the minds of the others.

    Keep flying toward the west. We’ll outpace the reinforcements soon.

    Both Cressida and Horatio raised fisted hands in the hive signal of acknowledgment.

    They continued fighting as they flew, though Arthur and Brixaby seemed to be what had turned the tide.

    Fewer and fewer scourgling reinforcements were appearing, until the steady stream became a trickle.

    Brixaby had swelled and turned, ready to finish off the rest of them, when Joy shouted, “Brixaby! Don’t!”

    Immediately, he deflated and looked at her. “What is wrong?”

    “I only need five more to finish my quest!”

    Brixaby swelled again, though this time it was indignation. “I didn’t get a quest!”

    “Well, you weren’t here when the fight started, silly!” Joy called back as she flew past him. Conveniently enough, there were only five more scourglings left in the air, and they looked exhausted from having chased the dragons so far.

    One light scratch from Joy was enough to quickly spread the poison through them. They fell with foam coming out of their mouths.

    Arthur frowned. “Do you think her quest told her exactly how many scourglings she’d be fighting today? Or do you think that it updated when the nest stopped sending reinforcements?”

    “Her card is a meta ability,” Brixaby grumped. “Who knows.” But he was more concerned with other issues, yelling at Joy, “What was your reward?”

    She gestured to the ground, which was peppered with scourgling bodies. “All of these Common shards, of course!”

    Sams snorted a pointed protest.

    Quickly, Joy amended, “Well, of course we’ll share. It would be totally unfair of me since you guys don’t have quest cards.”

    * * *

    “Weird buildings, too,” Horatio added. “They weren’t eruption cones, but they went just as high as some of them—at least the ones that were still standing. All glass and steel, it was crazy.”

    “And it was empty?” Arthur asked.

    “All on dead land,” Horatio confirmed. “Not a damn thing growing anywhere. I almost thought it was a scourgling city, except for the nasty skeletons.”

    “And the dragon bodies,” Cressida added quietly. “Too many to count, and a lot of them were . . . pretty small.”

    “Hatchlings?” Arthur asked.

    She shrugged. “No, they were old enough to fly. Some were in the buildings, even. And they didn’t upset Joy like a dead hatchling would.”

    Brixaby perked up. “If there were dragon bodies, what happened to the cards?”

    “No.” Horatio shook his head. “No, these had been dead for a long, long time. More than decades. Centuries, probably.”

    “But if they were in the deadlands—”

    Arthur stopped Brixaby with a shake of his head.

    Cressida noticed and started to narrow her eyes at him, but Arthur caught her gaze.

    “Later,” he said.

    She looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and continued hungrily digging into her soup, dipping a handmade dumpling that Arthur had added. The dumplings weren’t made of any extraordinary ingredients, but they did taste very good and went nicely with the richness of the broth.

    Horatio continued. “The cities were . . . weird. There were all sorts of machines everywhere, all rusted out. I have no idea what they used to do, and the signs were all in a different language.” Horatio shrugged. ”Some of the letters looked a little like ours, but—”

    “No, they speak a different language here, and have a different alphabet, too,” Arthur said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get something for you so you can understand it. It’s kind of like a card anchor.”

    Cressida’s eyebrows rose, but then she nodded and returned to their story.

    “Well, the cities weren’t completely empty. That’s where we found some of the armor, and I was able to scrounge a better saddle for Joy off one of the dragons. She’d outgrown her old one.”

    He looked, and Joy was indeed wearing a different dragon saddle, with an odd black material that wasn’t quite leather. But he couldn’t tell much more about it without closer examination.

    Setting his now-empty bowl aside, Horatio sat down on the scourge-dust, stretching out his long legs. “I have to say, I’m not too much of a fan of this part of the world from what I’ve seen of it.”

    “You’re just sitting on the dirt?” Cressida made a face.

    “I’m carded, aren’t I? I’m not catching anything from this.”

    “Yes, but it’s scourge-dust. It’s gross.”

    Arthur grabbed a picnic blanket from his Personal Space and set it down. Horatio rolled his eyes at him but shifted to sit on the blanket.

    The dragons, unfortunately, were too large for the blanket, even Brixaby. But they settled down nearby, resting. Brixaby pulled out a few buckets of water.

    “I usually use these for dowsing fires, but this will do nicely.”

    Joy and Sams sucked down the water so greedily that Arthur felt bad.

    “Tell me about the city we’re about to see,” Horatio said.

    So Arthur took the time to explain what he knew of the city of New Houston, and most importantly, of the Dark Heart.

    Horatio and Cressida’s reactions were exactly as he had hoped—both horrified and fascinated, leaning more toward horrified.

    That was a relief because with everyone else looking forward to it opening, sometimes he felt a little crazy for thinking that the Dark Heart was a bad idea.

    “This is worse than playing with fire,” Horatio said, shaking his head. “There’s nothing good about dealing with scourglings.”

    “Yeah,” Arthur said. “From what I understand, other cities nearby have been overrun by letting their Dark Heart erupt. There are no dragons to deal with scourglings in the middle of a city. And from what I can tell, the deadlands here are trying to encroach on what they have left.” Arthur shook his head. “If it were my city, I’d make changes.”

    “It could be your city,” Horatio said.

    “H,” Cressida said, and it took Arthur a moment to realize that was her nickname for Horatio. An immediate flare of jealousy flared up in his chest, hot and bright. But the next moment, he was able to rein it back.

    He shook his head. “No, I might be a Legendary, but I’m not here to take over the city. Besides, I guess the Dark Heart isn’t all bad. It’s already given me some gifts. Brixaby?” He waved to get the dragon’s attention. “You got the—”

    He stopped as Cressida reached out and grabbed his arm. “What’s this?” She turned his hand over and caught her breath at the look of what was left of his card anchor.

    “Oh yeah,” Arthur said. “I sort of blew up my card anchor.”

    “You what?” Horatio scrambled over, then let out a low whistle when he got a look at Arthur’s arm. “I’m surprised you still have that hand.”

    “Yeah, well, that’s another reason why I’m not ready to write off the Dark Heart. It brought me here because it’s what I need.” He went on quickly, “But that’s not all I found.”

    “What else?” Cressida asked.

    “Scourgling nests,” Arthur said. “And what lies at the heart of them. As soon as your dragons rest a bit, I’ll show you.”