Draka

“Hey,” I told the awestruck humans below me. “Some thanks would be nice.”

That was my grand, formal introduction to Makanna and Val. Herald was already on board, probably, and she was unlikely to change her mind about that after what had just happened. I heard Herald whisper a few short sentences to the others but couldn’t make out the words, then Val stepped forward.

“Lady…” he began, licking his lips as his voice faltered. Feeding my ego was a good start! “Lady,” he tried again, “we thank you for your help. Legends and stories are told, in hushed tones of wonder–”

“Shouldn’t she be bigger?” Makanna mumbled, sounding half out of it.

Herald put her hand over Makanna’s mouth as Val raised his voice and continued, “–about your kind. Long has it been since you were seen in these lands. We are grateful for your benevolence.”

Flatterer, I thought, enjoying every moment of it. The guy sounded properly scared, hesitating and shifting speeds with every other word. I’d never had someone be truly frightened of me before. I wondered if I’d overdone my entrance.

“I am Valmik, of Karakan. My companions are the sisters Makanna and Herald,” he continued, gesturing to each in turn, “also of Karakan. May we know your name?“

“I am Draka,” I replied, trying to sound majestic. I’d decided that I liked the name Lahnie had given me. “Pleased to meet you all.”

Val, or Valmik as his full name was, hesitated for a moment. “An agreement has been made between my companion and yourself. It must be honoured. The price was to be decided once my companion and I were safe–”

“I can wait until the job’s done, but now works for me,” I told him.

“Why’s she talk like that?” Makanna half slurred before Herald quieted her again. Either the blood loss or the potion was really getting to her, but Guy had been completely knocked out, so maybe that was normal?

“Ah, well.” Valmik hesitated, clearly not wanting to say what he was about to and forcing out every phrase. “You understand… we are in great need… a companion is in dire trouble, and a large sum must be paid…”

He trailed off, and I couldn’t help but notice that he was slowly placing himself directly in between myself and the women, his shield at the ready. I’d definitely overdone it.

I looked down on them, letting the silence settle. I’d thought about this. The fact that they’d risk so much for Tamor suggested that they were an honourable bunch, but I couldn’t know if that extended beyond their friends and family. If I asked for cash I might never see a single coin. Either way I had never intended to ask for so much that they couldn’t bail out Tamor and make a profit on this job.

“I may,” I drawled magnanimously, “be satisfied with taking whatever loot we find as my price. The gremlins seem to love silver. So do I. We’ll see.” Worst case I figured I could shake them down for whatever they had in their wallets - money bags? - but I really didn’t see myself doing that.

Valmik and Herald slumped a little with relief as I told them what I wanted.

“Will your aid be available until we’ve destroyed the nest, then, Lady Draka?” Valmik asked hopefully.

Lady Draka. Oh, I liked that.

“Sure, yeah. Of course. I’ll make sure you get out of here. And,” and here was the clincher, “perhaps we could help each other in the future.”

“What kind of help might be in question?” Valmik asked cautiously.

“If you have a difficult job you might need help on,” I suggested. “Or if I need something from the city. That kind of thing.”

“You would not make us your servants?”

“Yes!” the dragon hissed in my ear.

“What? No!” I told them. “I’m looking for business partners. Quid pro quo, you know?”

“Those words are beyond my understanding, Lady Draka. Is it an ancient tongue?”

Oh, right. Latin. “Yes,” I answered truthfully. “A favour for a favour.”

Or something like that, anyway. I looked towards the two sisters. “Makanna and Herald are both hurt. Will they be able to fight?”

“I will be healed enough in a few minutes,” Herald answered. “Mak–”

“’m fine!” the woman drawled.

“Mak will need to stay in the back with me,” Herald said firmly. “Mak, you swallowed most of that potion. You’re a mess, and we will need you if one of us gets hurt.”

Makanna grumbled inaudibly but didn’t argue.

“Okay, then,” I said and jumped down from my perch. “I guess we have a deal.”

Valmik drew back a little when I landed close to him, but held his ground. “We’ll wait and rest until Herald’s leg is better,” I said, “and then we move on. Is that good with you?”

I steeled myself, ready to either take off or bolt for the tunnel if they suddenly decided that they’d rather take their chances and fight me. Then I walked right past Valmik. When nothing bad happened I sat just outside of stabbing range from Makanna and Herald, then curled up and relaxed as though the idea of them turning on me never even occurred to me. After a little while Valmik came over and sat down against the wall, between me and the sisters, making himself a roadblock if I tried anything. Trust was in short supply. It would be nice if that changed, but I tried not to pin all my hopes on it. This was the first group I tried this with, after all, and it had gone unexpectedly well so far.

“So,” I said from where I lay as the silence became uncomfortable. “Do you know how to find the nest? And how do you plan to destroy it? Just kill everything?”

“Makanna will feel it when it is close,” Valmik said. “And a device has been provided to kill it.”

“Ah, good,” I said, not understanding any better at all but trusting that he knew what he was talking about. “I wasn’t sure. That’s good.”

“Is’sat way,” Makanna added happily, gesturing with her spear past the shining pond. “Felt it for a while now. And the… the thing’s right here.” She patted the large package on her belt. “Should just go ‘Slurp’ if we get it close enough. No worries!!” Then she looked at me, leaned in, and asked, "Are you wearing gremlin belts assa necklace?"

I ignored her comments on my choice of accessories while Herald smothered a giggle. Makanna was slurring her words badly, and I was convinced that the healing potions were pretty much pure alcohol. Magic alcohol, sure, but it looked like it had hit her like one too many shots of tequila, and she wasn’t a big girl, either. I got to my feet and moved in closer to Valmik. I could see him tense, but he didn’t flinch.

“We should get going,” I whispered in his ear as he made a valiant effort to sit still. “I’ve seen this before. Pretty sure she won’t be able to walk in a few more minutes.”

Valmik, whose eyes hadn’t left me since sitting down, took a look at his leader. “Herald,” he said. “Has your leg healed?”

Herald stood up slowly and shook her leg out. With great concentration she did a few squats, then stretched her legs from side to side. “It aches a little, but otherwise I am fine,” she concluded.

“Let’s go, then,” Valmik said, looking to me for confirmation. I nodded. “Makanna, if you would show us the way?” He stood and offered her his hand.

“I’m tired,” she complained. “An’ hungry.”

“The time for food and rest will be later,” Val told her. “The job must be finished.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Makanna took his hand, then swayed as she got to her feet. “Where’s Tam?” she asked, looking around. “Tam!”

“Tam did not come on this job,” Valmik answered her patiently. “He was imprisoned. His licence was not paid, you remember. There was a fine, which we must pay.”

“Oh! Right. Right. Hes’so lucky he found you, you know that, Val?”

Valmik blushed every so slightly in the gloom as he turned to me. “Lady Draka, if you would accompany me at the front?”

“Let’s go,” I said, joining him, with Herald supporting her sister at the rear.

The pond was full of large crystals and something like the bioluminescent lichen. Or maybe the lichen was actually algae and it lived both on the rocks and in the water. Either way the pond was the most brightly lit area of the entire underground world we had entered. There was nothing for us there, but the humans oohed and aahed appreciatively at the beauty of it. I did too, just not out loud. I loved caves and the stuff you could find in them, and the pond and cavern ranked way up there.

We went the way some of the gremlins had fled, Makanna pointing the way. I didn’t know how she knew where to go, but she said that she could feel it which probably meant magic. I had the feeling that I should be more impressed, but I had already seen two people saved from certain death by magic potions, and Makanna had somehow given her group the ability to see at least as well as I did in these caverns. Besides, I myself was a dragon who could speak all languages, which already strained belief to the point where magically sensing where some gremlins lived wasn’t such a big deal.

I saw a few passages leading out of the giant space in various directions, but the one Makanna pointed us to led down, deeper into the cave system.

“‘s not far,” she mumbled. She was not looking great. The potion was definitely mostly alcohol. She was right, though, because pretty soon we came to another large cavern. Crude shelters had been carved into the stone, piled with stuff. In the more distant corners were piles of refuse. In the middle of the cavern was the most reality-defying thing I had ever seen.

“That is it,” Val said, pointing. “The Nest Heart.”

An oblong shape hung in the air, not touching the ground. It looked like it was made of shadow, but the shadow twisted and sent out thin tendrils that arched back on themselves. The whole thing seemed to distort the air around it, but right at the edge was a bright shimmer of the same light that had filled Makanna when she cast her magic on the surface. The thing was so obviously magical that I could only assume that this was what Makanna had been sensing.

The gremlins had gathered for a last-ditch defence. I wouldn’t say that the place was teeming with them, but there were quite a few skulking about, many of them watching the only entrance and one of them so big that it was almost as tall as Makanna. This, I decided, was the leader. Killing it might make the others flee, or it might not, but it was definitely the biggest individual threat and I wanted to kill it.

It also had a belt full of big, heavy bags, which may have influenced me, and a loin cloth, which was interesting. I hadn’t seen that before.

Catching the gremlins by surprise had not ever been in the cards. They knew that we were coming. They had ambushed the adventurers, and then put up a defence in the large cavern with the pond. They had always known that the party was there. They just hadn’t counted on me.

“How do you want to do this?” I asked Valmik and Herald. Makanna had been propped against a wall and was snoring softly.

“The nest must be destroyed, that is all,” Valmik said.

“That’s what Makanna said,” Herald added. “If we get the device close enough to the Heart, the device should kill it pretty quickly, and that is it. The job is done.”

“We don’t need to wipe them out? And how quick?” I asked.

“Less than a minute,” Herald replied. “I guess the company would appreciate us wiping them out, but they are not paying us for it.”

“When the nest is dead, no more will come into the world,” Val explained. “Some will survive. Some will stay, some will run. The company guards can deal with stragglers.”

Did they mean that the magical thing in the centre actually created the gremlins? Sure. Why not? I could find out more once we were out. In the meantime I didn’t want to look ignorant. “Good,” I told them. “That makes things easier.”

“How do you mean?” Herald asked.

I gestured with my head. “Yeah, you’ve never heard of bombers. It’s a wide cave with a high ceiling. I can fly in and drop the thing right in the middle. You just need to distract them so that no one picks it up, or whatever, while it does its thing.”

Valmik and Herald looked at each other. “I can pick them off with my bow if you keep them off me,” Herald suggested.

“They’d fear to go in the open,” Valmik replied. “You shoot well.”

“Great, no time like the present,” I told them. “Give me the thing and let’s do it!”

Herald knelt down and opened the large bag Makanna had been carrying on her belt, and took out a crystal, about the size of my head and wrapped in cloth. I caught a whiff of something deeply unpleasant, but forced myself to ignore it. It wasn’t like the cave itself smelled great to begin with. Herald opened the cloth enough to remove a section at the top, which had seemingly been cut out for this reason. The crystal started shining with a weak, silvery light, and Herald wrapped it up again.

“There, it is active,” she said. “Only, do not drop it, please. It should not shatter too easily, but if it does it will not kill the Heart, so do not be too rough with it. Once the Heart is dead, take the crystal with you. We need to return it.”

“No pay will be given if we cannot show that the task has been completed,” Valmik agreed. “And the crystals are quite expensive.”

“Right, small change of plans, still easy enough,” I told them. “Put the crystal by the black hole, wait until it eats it and fight off anyone who steps up. Then bring it back. No problem. Ready?”

They both nodded, and Herald prepared an arrow.

“Pick one off and I’ll go.”

Herald looked around the cavern, then drew back and released almost without aiming. The arrow arched high, crossing the entire space before it came down, taking a gremlin next to the boss in the gut. The gremlin screeched, the boss roared in a screechy way, and I took off with the package.

Gremlins were running to and fro, some going for cover, others running around for no reason I could see. The boss was waving a crude axe around, yelling at the others and trying to restore order. I didn’t understand anything it said, so I had to guess that “tongues of men” really only meant human languages. I wondered briefly what I was missing out on, and how many other species there might be with languages of their own, but then I was above the Heart – The magical rift in space? – and it was time for me to shine. I landed as fast as I dared, not too close to the Heart just in case. That was probably a good thing, because I felt a strange pull from it, not on my body but, for lack of better words, on my soul. I unwrapped the crystal. The silvery white was darkening on the side facing the Heart. As arrows zipped down every few seconds, keeping the gremlins away from me, I put the crystal on the floor.

With a careful push I rolled it towards the Heart. It wasn’t a perfect roll. The sides of the crystal weren’t parallel, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it was good enough. The tendrils of shadow immediately started streaming into the crystal, which grew brighter while the colour it gave off became steadily darker, starting as a silvery pink hue and then shifting to a steadily darkening purple.

It was beautiful, in a way. I stupidly stared at it for a second or two, then turned too late at a berserk howl. I saw a crude axe flashing at my head, and though I jerked away it caught me a glancing blow that made my head ring. It hurt so bad that I couldn’t see, and I scrambled back desperately, shaking my head to try to clear it. The gremlin boss was closing in for another blow, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t a fighter. I hadn’t been in a real fight since middle school, and that had been over a juice box!

I let the dragon take over.

I hissed and sprayed venom, but the big gremlin closed its eyes and held its breath and avoided the worst of it. I lunged, snapping at the brute, but I had blood running into my left eye and couldn’t judge depth very well. The gremlin danced back easily and swung its axe to fend me off. I heard small feet on the stone behind me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the big one and then there was a weight on my tail and a sharp pain in my lower back, and I reflexively turned my head back to snap at whatever it was.

Stupid. So stupid! I saw in the corner of my eye how the boss came forward, axe raised in both hands, and the only thing I or the dragon could think of was to move forward. Instead of getting my head chopped off I caught a double fisted blow to the neck, which luckily didn’t hurt too much, but then I felt another stabbing pain in my back, higher up as the gremlin on me used its knife or pick or whatever it was as an anchor to climb towards my head! I had to get it off me! I had to…

Distracted again, I saw the boss step back and wind its axe up like a baseball bat. This was it. I’d fucked up, and now I was going to die. I wondered if I would wake up in a hospital bed, or on the cave floor, or if this was it.

An arrow sprouted from the big gremlin’s armpit, and it stumbled in surprise. Not questioning my luck I scuttled back, at the same time turning my head back to stare right into the eyes of the gremlin on my back. It had a short, wide knife ready to stab me in the neck. I sprayed its face full of venom, every little bit I had left, and it screamed and fell off me, rolling on the stone floor. As its throat closed up and cut off its screeching I saw two wounds in my back bleeding freely. I hoped it had only hit muscle, and turned back to the boss.

To my astonishment it had turned away from me, and was fighting Valmik. Valmik was blocking its axe easily with his shield, but its long arms made it hard for him to get in with his short sword. But that didn’t matter. The thing was distracted. It wasn’t paying attention to me.

I lunged at it and dug my teeth into its throat, jerking back and tearing out a chunk of muscle, gristle and blood. Before I really thought about it, I’d swallowed. Valmik stared at me with fair horror while the gremlin collapsed, twitching and gurgling, and then the crystal finished its work.

The Heart had been growing thinner and less substantial as layers of shadow vanished into the crystal. Now, with no fanfare, the last shred disappeared, and the crystal turned completely black, yet shone with the light that I thought of as the glow of magic. Then there was a wave of silence, an anti-sound that swallowed everything, even the rush of blood in my ears, and the sound rushed back in and it was over. Gremlins still looked at us, screeching angrily from their hiding places, but the job was done.

“Take the crystal and let’s go,” I told Valmik tensely. Besides my head, my back was starting to throb, as did a point in my side. While Valmik did as I told him I grabbed the boss’s belt, loincloth and all, and pulled it over its head. Male, I noticed. I threw the belt over my neck and we made our way back up to the exit, Herald firing off an arrow every so often to keep the gremlins' heads down.

“Three left,” Herald informed us when we got back to her. I wondered what she meant, then saw that her quiver was almost empty. She looked us over, and I saw her wince when she looked at me. I could guess what she saw. My head hurt like… well, like I'd been hit with an axe. I wasn't even trying to see out of my left eye anymore. I kept it shut and felt the blood flow over it and down my cheek.

"Scalp wounds, right?" I tried to sound nonchalant but everything hurt so much that it came out as more of a groan.

"Yeah," Herald said uncertainly as we got going. "We… I think that Makanna can do something, once we get her fed and sobered up a little."

"Much can be done for superficial wounds and worse with skills such as hers," Valmik agreed. He was supporting the woman in question, her arm around his waist and his under her armpit. She herself was very unhappy about being made to walk, but in no state to resist.

"She's got some healing voodoo, too?" I asked no one in particular.

"If that is a kind of magic, then yes, something similar," Herald said. "Except, well, I do not know if it will work on a… on you. As far as I know she has only ever used it on people. On humans, I mean! Sorry. And she will not like that I told you."

Nice save, I grumbled to myself, before looking up at her. "I'd love for her to give it a shot.”

Herald took up the rear. A few gremlins were following us, she said, but they were keeping their distance. In the large cavern with the pond I insisted that we collect all the gremlins' belts, and no one argued. The gremlins following us made angry noises, but I was in enough pain that I would be damned if I didn't get a worthwhile haul out of this. We did the same with the gremlins in the narrow tunnel and in the mine, with Herald taking time to collect her arrows while I looted and Valmik watched our backs. When we moved we did so quickly and in silence.

Herald and Valmik were a little more relaxed around me than on the way down, which was nice. Maybe it was that I’d put myself on the line. Or maybe I was less scary once they’d seen me bleed. Either way they actually forgot themselves and turned their backs to me once or twice.

I had something like twenty little loops of rope around my neck when we stumbled into the light. The bags hung so thick and heavy that I could only hold my head up with an effort, and they smelled like a blend of death and heaven. Each belt was a dead gremlin, and even then we hadn't looted all of them. I thought a lot about that. About what we had done. Had we killed a village? A whole tribe or clan? There were a few survivors, sure, but could they rebuild? Did we want them to?

Why did I still not feel anything?

"Why were you sent to kill the gremlin nest?" I asked as we approached the cluster of buildings.

"Well, they are gremlins. The company needed them gone," Herald said, clearly surprised at my question.

"Lil’ whoresons," Makanna slurred. "They closed down the shaft. Got into the rest. Killed some miners." She gave off a choking hiccup. This was the most she'd said in over an hour, by my estimate. "Ate 'em, I guess."

"This is the way of gremlins," Valmik agreed. "A nest appears. Tunnels are dug, mines or basements entered. They steal, and prey on the lonely."

"Worse’n fuckin’ goblins, I say," Makanna agreed. "Can talk to goblins, y'know? Bargain with 'em. Gremlins jus’ kill an’ die. An’ prob’ly screw, there’s so many of ‘em."

A seed of anxious jealousy sprouted in my gut. "Can they appear anywhere?" I asked, trying to sound more interested than worried. "I'm not as familiar with gremlins as you may think."

"You have much to concern yourself with, I'm sure, Lady Draka," Valmik said. "Where there is an open space in the stone, and precious metal or gems nearby, they may appear. Be that native ore, coins, or other things made of such materials. They are a great nuisance."

"Right," I said. "Thank you, Valmik."

"Think nothing of it, Lady Draka."

Shit. Shitshitshit. I could have those little bastards tunnelling right into my cave and never know it until all my stuff was gone! What was I supposed to do about that? I wanted to ask, but the dragon insisted that the hoard must be kept secret, and I agreed. I had already risked a lot by showing myself, and I was sure that it was obvious that I had a home somewhere. Or a lair, if I was to embrace the whole dragon thing. Better not to give any clues to exactly where it might be, even if I did kind of like these people. But it was a serious problem to consider for the future.