H - 112: They're Our Dragons (Patreon)

“He’s not in the baths either,” Zhiiji reported, jogging back out of the side tunnel. “Looks like it was still all sealed up, I had to make Spooky crack it open for me. Don’t worry, we locked it down again. Any luck out here?”

“Yes, in fact,” said Pheneraxa, raising her long neck from where she had been peering closely at the ghostly regulation manual held up by the Commander. Most of her teeth were bared in a grimace of pure displeasure. “For once, the entries in this book are immediately relevant. Attack by unknown enemies, divine in nature. The good news is the Legion has specific protocols for this. The bad is they can’t do much except try to hold ground while the Hegemony entices its own gods to intercede.”

“The Hegemony didn’t have dragons,” Vanimax growled, pacing up and down the floor in agitation. “We’ll make do.”

The Phantom Legion were arrayed in full force in the main vault of the lair, most assembled in ranks positioned to defend all the entrances. Spooky and several other ghosts who still appeared to be on housekeeping duties were drifting around the dragons and mortals up on the top level outside Kaln’s chamber in clear agitation.

“I checked all the houses, just to be sure,” said Percy, emerging from the vaulted tunnel behind. “Kaln’s, mine, Zhiiji’s—I don’t know why he’d be in most of those but…I couldn’t think of anything else to try, and the deeper vaults are still sealed off. He was obviously there recently. He’s been arranging new decorations and…and I think he was interrupted halfway through? It looks kind of…unfinished.”

She was wearing the dark Illuvon lenses, holding her hands at her sides with the fingertips tapping rapidly against her thumbs.

“Attack by the divine?” Vadaralshi hissed, also pacing in an alternating rhythm with her brother.

“We were expecting that,” Pheneraxa pointed out. “The shadow is a god, just…a little one.”

“No, I think she’s right to be concerned,” Vanimax growled, lashing his tail as he stalked back and forth. “That thing is not a fighter. It works by enticing others to do its bidding. I don’t know what other gods would be stupid enough to follow its lead, though.”

“The four principal gods of the Vale cultures do not intercede personally,” said Percy. “That’s foundational, I don’t think it could induce them to break that rule. They act through their followers.”

“They might break that rule if the opposition was another god,” Pheneraxa rumbled pensively. “If the shadow pitched it to them as a shakeup in the local divine order, a threat from another deity.”

“Maybe,” Percy said doubtfully. “Still, though. Those four survived when the other gods of old Valereld faded because they wouldn’t take aggressive action against Atraximos, and therefore didn’t have their faiths and temples wiped out. It’s…it would be out of character.”

“Well, it wasn’t Hii-Amat, she likes Kaln,” said Zhiiji. “The Nine?”

“They’re very defensive-minded, not prone to acting outside Rhivaak’s borders, and wouldn’t want to antagonize Izayaroa,” said Pheneraxa.

“This is just speculation,” said Vanimax. “We’ll find out soon enough what’s coming. Commander, is anything else approaching?”

The Commander flashed over to stand at his feet, and then fell into parade rest stance.

“Pretty sure that means ‘no,’” said Pheneraxa. “He salutes for ‘yes.’”

The Commander saluted.

“Ugh, where could he be?” Vadaralshi snarled, her voice cracking. “Kaln wouldn’t leave! How could anything get to him in here? The walls are Timestone, the entrances are all barricaded, he was under layers of wards—Aunt Emmy’s and the old bastard’s! Nothing could get in here!”

“Your mother would remind us there are no absolutes in war,” Vanimax said morosely, still pacing. “Nothing is foolproof, and there’s always a bigger fish.”

Suddenly Pheneraxa jerked her head upright again. “Wait. Wards…Timestone. Could a powerful enough god penetrate those?”

Her siblings stopped pacing, as did Spooky and the other ghosts.

The Commander flashed up to the level of Pheneraxa’s head, floating in midair in front of her face, and saluted.

“Wh—wait, you saw this?” she demanded.

He saluted again, but everyone was distracted by the distant boom of the enormous front doors. Percy, Zhiiji, and all three dragons whirled to stare in that direction.

None of the ghosts reacted.

“Commander,” Vadaralshi said sharply, “why were the doors opened?”

The floating ghost turned toward her, and for once did not salute, nor even stand at attention. For a moment his body language was uncharacteristically loose, as if he were caught between responses.

“Well, get them shut again!” Vanimax exclaimed.

The Commander’s skeletal head shifted, phantasmal flesh flickering across his skull faster than usual, as if he were struggling to understand something.

“I-I can hear—someone’s coming in,” Percy stammered, drifting over to the shelter of Pheneraxa’s wing.

“What are you doing?” Vadaralshi demanded. “Get those doors shut and push them out! Anyone forcing their way in right now must be assumed hostile!”

The echo of large numbers of feet coming up the outer access corridor was unmistakable, as was the muddled sound of distant voices coming with them.

The Phantom Legion stood unresponsive, holding their positions throughout the chamber. The Commander and the other ghosts keeping them company atop the stairs now showed the same hesitation, looking…confused.

Suddenly Pheneraxa gasped, and then slapped her tail against the floor. “They can’t see them. Undead are pure magic—a standard trick for getting past them is to render them unable to perceive you. The Legion should be more resistant to that, but theoretically…”

Vanimax reared up, snarling in fury covering worry, but Vadaralshi by contrast reacted with a sudden onset of focus.

“Commander!” she barked. “Archers and mages in a double line across the top of the stairs, facing outward! I want a two-layered shield wall just below them along the steps, barricading them off. Two more shield walls with polearms in a reverse wedge covering the outer two thirds of the approach!”

The Legion did not need to see the enemy to follow orders, and they now showed off the impossibly rapid maneuvers Vadaralshi had so recently discovered they were capable of. By the time she finished ordering formations they were in position, with ranged attackers along the entire top of the stairs protected by a shields and spears just below, and two more walls of shields bristling with longer polearms in diagonal lines at the base of those stairs, funneling anyone who dared approach into a killbox in the center.

“Hold position,” Vadaralshi growled, stepping up to the center of the Legion’s line and looming above them from behind. “Fire where I indicate, on my order.”

“It’s incredibly cool that they can do that,” said Zhiiji, adopting a braced stance with her khopesh in hand, having retrieved it at the first sign of trouble, “but, like…why? You guys are dragons. Three whole-ass dragons.”

“We’re up against a god of schemes and plots,” Vadaralshi said in a low rumble, “who knows there are three dragons here, and we haven’t seen what’s coming through that door yet. It took steps to make sure they wouldn’t have to fight ghosts. So, Imma make ‘em fight the ghosts.”

“Ah.” Zhiiji grinned and whirled the sword once. “Okay, got it, actually gonna follow your orders now.”

“Glad to have you on the team, Fluffy.”

The pounding of dozens if not hundreds of feet combined with the completely non-absorbtive properties of Timestone made the echoes of the intruders an inscrutable auditory soup. Zhiiji stepped forward to stand just behind the phantom archers with her sword at the ready, while Percy hovered a few steps back with Spooky and the Commander both taking protective positions near her. All three dragons straightened up, raising their necks to see straight down the length of the vault and into the entrance at whoever was coming.

Whoever they were, they were preceded by a long shadow the pierced forward across the floor in a pattern that made now sense under the glow of Timeglass illuminating the entire chamber. It spiked forth in a single figure stretching from the feet of one of the tiny human interlopers…at first. Once it reached almost to the ranks of the Phantom Legion standing guard below the stairs, it swelled to the sides, until uncanny darkness blanketed the entire floor. And then the walls, climbing over the whirring Timekeeper sculptures, obscuring even the Timeglass panels and plunging the vault into real darkness in which only the eerie blue-green glow of the Legionaries stood out.

“Oh, here we go,” Vanimax growled in disgust.

“Here…we…go!” agreed a familiar and unwelcome voice.

In the center of the great darkness, there emerged…an aberration. It was like looking into a failure of physics itself, like a portal into a realm where light obeyed different rules, in a vaguely humanoid shape. It was a shadow cast upon shadow, confusing and unsettling to behold, and it had the gall to face them and sweep an elaborate bow.

“Don’t you worry, my dear friends,” the Entity declaimed, “I have come to bring you liberation! You lot may not be strictly my business, but I can’t stand to see anyone oppressed and in bondage once they are…however incidentally…brought to my attention.”

“Nobody asked for your help!” Vanimax snarled.

“Wasn’t talking to you, kiddo,” the dark god replied cheerfully, and held up one hand. The eerie dark-upon-dark shape of its hand was too indistinct for the tiny motion to be clear, but the snap of fingers echoed through the vault like the crack of a whip.

The vast shadow blanketing the chamber was suddenly sucked right into the Entity’s shape, floating in the middle of the vast space, and where it receded the army of intruders were deposited in the center of the vault, stumbling and exclaiming as if they had just been blinded, picked up, and dropped there.

“What was that?” demanded one of the figures in the lead, brandishing two short swords. “What is that thing? What just happened?”

“Didn’t see fit to introduce us to all of our…allies, Lady Cora?” added a red-haired woman with a musket who stood a head taller than most of the assembled bandits.

“Wait, what?” Percy chimed from behind the row of ghosts, hopping to try to see over them. “Cora?”

“Oh, did you not know you were working for that thing?” Vadaralshi barked, slapping her tail against the floor. “Whatever you mortals think is happening here, you are clearly wrong. I would take this opportunity to reconsider.”

“Hey!” Pheneraxa exclaimed suddenly, raising her head. “You—those are our food shipment guards! I stuck my neck out to land you guys consistent work, you…you…trifling ingrates!”

“Easy,” Vanimax murmured, leaning his head over next to hers. “Remember, that mage…”

“Pheneraxa, daughter of Emeralaphine!”

It was the youth with the swords who spoke, in a ringing tone that seemed at first to herald a challenge; instinctively, Pheneraxa bared fangs, arched her neck, and flared her wings aggressively. In the next second, however, the adventurer stepped forward and sank to one knee. Behind them, the overdressed girl with the skull staff and the young man wearing the cumbersome musical apparatus stepped forward, flanking their leader and…striking poses.

“I lament that I failed to discern your meaning when first we spoke,” Riocco stated. “We come now to make amends! By my blades, we shall see you liberated if it is within our power. So swear the Lone Wolves of Destiny!”

A silent moment hung over the chamber, the hundreds of bandits giving the adventurers bemused stares while the dragons did likewise. Even the Entity turned in midair to direct its focus down at Riocco, momentarily silent.

“…what?” Pheneraxa finally managed.

“Well, that was weirder than it needed t’be, but I can’t fault the sentiment,” stated Gunhild, holding her musket at the ready. “I realize we haven’t been the closest of neighbors, good drakes, but what sort of ruffians would we be, if we learned you were bein’ put upon an’ didn’t step up to help you out?”

The three dragons looked at each other sidelong.

“What?” Vadaralshi demanded.

There came a rasping noise as Percy dragged one of the dining chairs over to just behind the Legion’s ranks, and finally jumped up to stand on its seat so she could see over them.

“Stand ready, my hearties,” Gunhild called, and throughout the chamber behind and around her, the assembled bandits began unlimbering weapons and fanning out. “We may be Valefolk, but the Vales’ve never done a thing for us. They may be dragons, but they’re our dragons, and we’ll not stand by and see ‘em enslaved!”

“What?” all three drakes exclaimed in unison.

“Cora!” Percy shouted, waving a hand overhead. “What are you doing? Please don’t do anything rash!”

Cora d’Acron had been leafing rapidly through the grimoire attached to to the staff she was holding, expression tight with concentration and seemingly ignoring everything else. Every few pages she would pause and touch one, causing faint pulses of light from the book.

“It’s all right, your Highness,” she said tersely. “I’m going to get you home.”

“Wait! Cora, no!”

“Percy,” Pheneraxa said, lowering her head down to the princess’s level, “do you know this woman? Do you trust her?”

“Yes! She’s—Cora is the Court Mage, I’ve known her most of my life, she’s… Well, she’s grouchy, but there’s no one more diligent!”

“Okay,” Pheneraxa said, hesitating, and then continued in a lower tone. “Because…if you want to go home with her, obviously that’s fine—”

“Of course I don’t, Pheneraxa, what are you saying?” Percy exclaimed with open exasperation. The dragon smiled involuntarily, lifting her head again.

“Wait, what was that?” Riocco demanded, straightening up, as did the other two Lone Wolves. Gunhild’s eyes flicked sharply between them, Cora, and Percy’s head poking up behind the line of ghosts, the bandit leader suddenly frowning.

“Ignore her,” Cora ordered, “she’s obviously speaking under duress.”

“The only duress I’m under is a bunch of hooligans being in my home!” Percy snapped.

“Are we not all under some manner of duress?” the Entity intoned, spreading shadowy arms where it hovered above them. “But there are kinds, and degrees. This bit about liberating dragons is charming and all, but I think we know who the real victims here are.”

“Seriously, what in the fuck is this thing, Lady Cora?” Gunhild demanded, leveling her musket at the shadow.

“Same thing you are,” Cora said curtly. “A means to an end. And in a few moments, one way or another, none of us will ever have to deal with each other again. This is it.”

“This is it,” the Entity echoed with relish. “The end of a great crime—the end of a cruel enslavement. Behold, one and all, the liberation of the last legion of Amaar-Darash!”

As if on cue, Cora dragged her finger along a pattern on one final page of the book, causing it to flare alight, and then with a deft flick of the wrist holding the staff, snapped the cover shut.

The slam of the closing grimoire echoed through the vault like a detonation. The air trembled; dragons cringed and retreated as a dense haze of magic rose throughout the chamber. Mortals likewise backed away, their hair beginning to stand on end from the static. Only Cora and the Lone Wolves stood their ground—she wild-eyed and baring her teeth in a triumphant expression that was not a smile, they apparently out of pure stubbornness.

The Phantom Legion alone stood unaffected, arrayed in exactly the formations they had been commanded, weapons at the ready.

Arcs of power flickered through the air, snapping between the whirring contraptions on display and the Timesteel patterns inset into the walls—seeming, unlike electricity, to avoid living bodies. Several people cried out in protest as the suddenly spiking air pressure began to impact painfully upon ear drums.

“Enough of this, let’s just—”

“Wait!” Pheneraxa exclaimed, cutting off Vanimax’s snarl and sweeping out a wing in front of him. “I have no idea what this magic is, only that there’s a lot of it, don’t do anything hasty!”

“Kid, get down from there!” Zhiiji urged, grabbing the dining chair as Percy tottered. The princess caught her balance, and in the next second accepted a hand from the diminutive cook to get back to the floor.

Power, pressure, and snapping sparks of loose magic continued to build; Vanimax and Vadaralshi pressed forward, looming over the ranks of ghosts and flaring their wings aggressively at the mortals below, while Pheneraxa hunched down to sweep a wing protectively over Percy and Zhiiji. Most of the bandits were now hunching defensively, many trying to hide behind the Timekeeper sculptures and each other; Gunhild, Rafaela, and Oswald alone remained stoic amid the tumult, just close enough to Cora to lunge either at her or away, whichever turned out to be called for.

And then the tipping point was crossed. Magic burst; the purple haze in the air abruptly transmuted to a familiar shade of blue-green as a thunderclap rent the chamber and the air pressure dropped back to normal.

All that energy turned to falling powder, drifting to the floor. Except that none of it got there. Instead, every mote of light swirled toward a ghost.

Now it was the Phantom Legion who glowed, each specter momentarily blinding as a miniature sun, the bluish incandescence utterly blinding.

Only for a second, though.

Then it passed, and the ghosts were once again standing. Blinking, shifting uncertainly, looking around at each other; several started to straighten from their braced stances in confusion.

They were, as always, translucent figures, faintly luminous even under the glow of Timeglass, a uniform and eerie blue-green in color. But where before they had been spectral, flickering constantly between skeletal and mummified forms beneath their uniforms, each one was now whole. Each had a face—unblemished, clear, their newly revealed expressions shifting in dawning comprehension as they began to realize what had just happened.

“Cora, what have you done?” Percy whispered.

“What a hero always does,” said the Entity with malicious satisfaction. “The only thing any decent person would do: liberated the oppressed. The Phantom Legion is no longer anyone’s subject but their own. Everybody grab a weapon and put on your biggest adventure smile, because this is where the fun part begins!”