The Dragon’s eyes closed many hours later. When they finally did, Gruum was all but asleep upon his feet himself. Nadja nudged him to wakefulness. Gruum startled, and made a snorting sound.
“Hush!” she hissed at him. “Be quiet, do not wake her!”
Gruum gazed about himself, blinking. He looked into the ruddy pool at his feet. There was the great eye. He saw it was closed, a pattern of heavy black scales having slid down over it. He could scarcely believe the wait was over.
“What now?” he whispered.
“Prepare yourself,” Therian said. “Flex your body and your mind. We must be ready to step within her lair all together.”
Gruum swallowed and his heart pounded. They were planning to combat a Dragon. Now, at the moment of truth, the task seemed absurd. How were the three of them supposed to injure such a massive beast? She had the weight of a hundred men—if not a thousand. It would be easier to slay a Hyborean war ark with their puny swords.
“I will attempt to cut her throat,” Therian said.
“I will open her mid-section,” Nadja said.
Both of them looked toward Gruum, who flicked his eyes from one serious face to the next. He shrugged. “I suppose I’ll find a soft spot behind her.”
Therian twisted his lips in disgust, but he said nothing to Gruum. “We can go there now. This pool will serve to move us to that place, should we but step into it.”
Nadja hesitated. “If we do slay mother…what will happen to her?”
“In the unlikely event we succeed,” Therian told her, “her power upon earth shall be broken, at least for now. Every spell she has cast will be broken, every mind she has clouded will be freed.”
“Will she live on…someplace else?”
“Ah,” Therian said, as if coming to a sudden realization. “You feel some connection to this creature who spawned you, am I correct?”
Nadja blushed, as if having qualms while plotting her mother’s death was somehow embarrassing. “Yes.”
“Have no fear. She will not cease to be. She is a creature who resides in many worlds at once. We will have simply forestalled her influence upon our world for a time. That is the most we can do.”
“Will she not return and be wrathful?”
“Oh yes, but that process might well require a century to perform.”
Finally, Nadja stopped with her questions. She reached out a cold hand to Therian and another to Gruum. Both men took the proffered fingers. They stepped into the ruddy pool together and left Earth.
The first sound Gruum became aware of was the fantastically slow breath of Anduin. Each breath took a full minute to draw in, and a second minute to seep out again in a sighing gust.
He let go of Nadja’s hand and turned slowly to see the Dragon looming like a dark mountain of flesh behind him. His eyes flicked down to his saber. Surely, he could do nothing to this monster.
The three stepped forward, holding the pommels of their blades tightly, lest they rattle in their sheaths. As they had arranged, Therian walked toward the head, Gruum walked to the aft, and Nadja stood in the middle.
When they had reached their positions, Gruum thought he heard a tiny, rasping sound. Was that the sound of Therian’s twin blades leaving their sheaths? He decided it probably was, and he quietly drew his own saber. He eyed the Dragon’s hindquarters. He spied a spot on the right haunch where a scale was loose and hanging. Perhaps it was in the process of being shed. Shiny and black, the scale was not the biggest. It was perhaps the size of his hand spread wide, or the size of a shingle on a tavern roof in Corium. Big enough to slide a sword through the thick hide beneath. He shook his head at the madness of what they attempted. Even if he were to insert his blade to the fullest, he doubted it would trouble the Dragon more than to give her an irritated limp.
Gruum waited, determined not to make the first move. He scarcely breathed while the others crept into position. He was certain Nadja could move with stealth. Her father, however, had never been known for anything less than a swaggering frontal assault. He would not be surprised if the King awakened the Dragon and insulted her before making his attempt upon her life.
When events did begin to progress, they moved quickly. Gruum could see Nadja, standing several paces away from the Dragon. He wondered what she thought to do there, at such a distance. Did she have a crossbow secreted in her dress? He doubted it, and even if she did, the Dragon would scarcely notice such an injury.
Nadja’s head was turned away. She clearly watched her father. As if upon some unspoken signal, she made a motion with her hands. Gruum stared, dumbfounded, as the girl vanished into the floor.
Gruum almost squawked aloud. What base trickery was this? Had they both led him here to this compromising position and then abandoned him? His suspicious mind immediately jumped to the grimmest of possible conclusions. Father and daughter had decided their alliance was based upon blood. He was the obstacle. Best he be left to fend for himself—discovered lurking at the Dragon’s hindquarters, no less!
He had almost decided to step away and slink off, when events took an unexpected course.
“Bleed and die for all Corium!” shouted Therian. The sound of his voice echoed loudly in this dim, cold world. Gruum heard, but could not see, the two blades punch home. Driven with the force of dozen souls and the fury of a King who mourned for them and for his own lost honor, Gruum could imagine they might punch through even the armor of a Dragon’s throat.
The Dragon shivered. A rumble sounded, which rose up and up into a screech. The head launched upward. Therian came into view, hanging from the throat like a beard. He clung to Anduin’s neck using the two sword hilts as handles.
“For Corium!” shouted Nadja then, her voice high-pitched to the point of breaking.
Gruum realized Nadja had not fled, but had transported herself to stand upon the Dragon’s broad back. She let her hands fly wide. There was a strange, popping sound. The Dragon reacted as if stricken. Gruum realized what the girl had done. She had opened a way into the void—in the middle of Anduin’s broad, scaly back.
Blood gushed up from the horrible wound. The blood flow grew into a torrent. It pumped out and ran down her sides and over her wings, which heaved upward, snapping the air in fury and pain.
“For all those who have frozen and starved upon my world!” shouted Gruum. He found the spot where the loose scale hung, and he rammed his saber home there.
The Dragon, shuddering with pain, first dealt with the man who clung to her throat. She shook her head, but could not dislodge him. She whipped her head around and rasped the bottom of her chin over sharp lava-rocks. Therian was torn loose. He rolled from the rocks and lay broken on the ground. Therian struggled to his knees, the power of many souls giving him fantastic vitality. Anduin’s great foot stomped down, finishing him. Then she reared up and turned toward Nadja, who had reappeared nearby.
Anduin swatted at her. The princess dropped into the earth, and reappeared on the Dragon’s other side. Gruum, fearing for her life and his, jumped up and grabbed his saber’s hilt which was perhaps nine feet up and lodged in the Dragon’s haunch. He tugged and drew it out.
Anduin whirled toward him, seeing the girl was difficult to catch. Gruum backed away, not knowing which way to run.
Nadja vanished and appeared again, this time on the Dragon’s head. Gruum saw her plan immediately. If she vanished while standing atop the great head, she would drive a hole down into the Dragon’s mind and kill it.
She was not given the chance, however. Anduin was fully awake now. She gave her head a toss and flipped Nadja up into the air. She turned her head and caught the girl on the way down.
“No!” Gruum shouted up at the Dragon. “Not your own daughter! She is your flesh, have mercy!”
The great eyes found his and the jaws crunched down. The girl screeched briefly, but her body was soon ripped apart by the masticating teeth. Nadja’s head, severed from the rest of her person, rolled away across the stony surfaces.
Knowing he had but a single hope left, Gruum stood as the Dragon advanced upon him to finish the task. She dragged one wing now. Her back was damaged and her throat and mouth bled a mix of her blood and her daughter’s.
“You should not have come, Jackal,” Anduin said, rasping the words through her ruined throat. “This was not the part I had planned for you to play.”
“I will play no part in your plans, Anduin,” he said to her. “For I serve another now.”
She came closer still, looming over him. She made ready to strike, as might a snake, her neck coiling itself. Before her head darted forward, however, Gruum spoke dark words.
Gruum opened his mouth and vomited forth something unexpected. It was a great gout of flame. Red-orange fire gushed from him, as if he blew with the force of a thousand torches at once.
The Yserth’s Breath caught Anduin by surprise. She was blinded and her wings were burned. In searing agony, she stumbled forward, seeking to crush him. He ran away on light feet to the cliff’s edge and dove over the side.
The dragon lumbered blindly after him, keening in pain. They both fell, and Anduin found her burnt wings would not hold her aloft. Gruum tumbled through the air, looking up with a mix of terror and exultation. Anduin fell with him, and there was no hope for either.
Anduin changed as he watched, becoming a shapely human woman. Yserth’s fire still clung to her and burnt her hair away. The fall was very long. They fell through mists, past staring creatures that clutched the rocky cliffs, and still they kept falling. Gruum had a horrible thought: what if this abyss had no end, and he had consigned himself to falling for eternity?
“Jackal!” cried Anduin, her voice echoing in his mind. “In a century my wings will have regrown, and I will hunt you across the worlds.”
“In that case, Dragon,” Gruum screamed into the whistling wind, “I will endeavor to die young!”
Gruum looked down then, and despite his commitment, he knew fresh fear. Tooth-like rocks of black stone formed a bed beneath him and grew closer with astonishing speed. It was as if he fell into a monstrous maw. Moments later, both of them dropped upon the spires and were smashed to pulp.
Nadja found Gruum on the following day, lying insensate upon the rocks near the blasted altar beneath Corium. She roused him gently with a cool hand on his shoulder.
Gruum managed to heave himself up and stood on shaky legs. He asked Nadja to take him to the palace and leave him there to meet her father. She did so without a word. She left him in the throne room with a cool kiss burning on his forehead.
Gruum watched her vanish into the floor, and wondered if he’d ever been caressed by a stranger creature than Nadja.
“How is it that you defeated Anduin?” Therian asked from behind him.
Gruum turned, almost staggering. He saw the King lay draped over his throne. One leg was thrown over the left arm, while his back and elbow adorned the right. He stared at Gruum quizzically, and the knave stared back. There was no one else in the chamber. Gruum wondered briefly if Therian meant to slay him here, after this questioning.
Gruum shrugged. He was almost too tired to care what the King did. He’d experienced death so many times, it had lost some of its terror for him.
“The Dragon was already grievously injured, milord,” he said.
Therian sat up and appeared thoughtful. “When I exited life in that place, I sensed that her vitality was much greater than yours.”
“Yes,” Gruum agreed. “I did not kill her with my sword. She fell to her death—as did I. We fell together.”
Therian’s eyebrows rode high. “She did not fly?”
“Her wings were too damaged.”
“And how did you manage that?”
Gruum shook his head, uncertain how much he wished to tell the King. Finally, seeing in the other’s stare that he would not let it go, Gruum decided to speak more freely. “I loosed the Dragon’s Breath—Yserth’s Breath.”
“Indeed?” Therian said. He narrowed his eyes and peered at Gruum, as if he suspected a lie. “Are you saying that
you
….”
“Yes,” Gruum said, holding his head higher. “I am the Red Dragon’s Champion. I wield his Breath upon this world.”
“How did you gain such a title? Have you been plotting to gain this advantage all along?”
“No, I simply met the criteria.”
“Which were?” Therian asked.
“The Red Dragon did not have a great series of hurtles as did the Black. Defeating the previous champion was enough.”
“But
I
have defeated Vosh in battle several times,” Therian protested.
Gruum shrugged. “Yes…but Yserth witnessed your defeat at my hands.”
Therian turned away, nodding slowly. “I see. What are your intentions now, Champion?”
“I will sail home to the steppes when the ice shelf melts away. I doubt I will return.”
Therian stood up from his throne. He walked down the steps toward Gruum.
Gruum stiffened, watching the King’s gloved hands, expecting them to touch the pommels of Seeker and Succor. But instead, Therian extended a gloved hand. Surprised, Gruum took it and clasped hands with the King. It was only the second time he could recall having done so.
“I hereby release you from my service. You are my vassal no longer. Farewell Gruum, may your future journeys be…interesting.”
“Thank you, milord—I think.”
#
Some weeks later the ice broke and Gruum made arrangements to take passage south, as he had said he would. He was pleased to see the green waters of the sea and the black fertile fields around Corium, which were both revealed as the ice receded. Each day the sun grew brighter in the sky and warmed the world with its radiance. Wild flowers bloomed, forming brilliant spots of color on the dark fields. Lavender, orange and pink—each with a stem of bright green—the growths popped out into the air as if spring had arrived in autumn’s stead.
Nadja came to him the night before Gruum boarded ship, and she said her goodbyes then. She had lines on her face now. Lines of age, with a touch of gray at her temples. She was still lovely and her smile was strong and broader than he could recall it ever having been. Gruum wondered how long she might live at her pace of life. It could not be more than another year or two. He did not mention it however, sensing the subject was best left unopened.
Their last meeting was strange, intense, and heartfelt.
End of Hyborean Dragons, Book #6
Note from the Author:
Thanks Reader! You have finished the core books of the Hyborean Dragons series. Other side-stories exist and will be published eventually. If you enjoyed the books, please write a review for the first story and let new people know what is in store for them.
-BVL