Dragon Magus 1: A Progression Fantasy Saga Read online

  “You’ve really got to stop using magic like that, Captain,” Fenix said, walking into view. The battlemage carried a knapsack on his back. He also wore a wide-brimmed hat of dark leather.

  “Do we all have to call her ‘Captain’, too?” Raphael asked, struggling against Sylvia’s headlock.

  The crestfallen look on Eliza’s face was an answer in itself. She nodded at the scroll in her hands. “Guild protocol says that we do, at least on assignment.”

  “Ha! Know your place, my minions!” Sylvia crowed. She winked down at Raphael. “It might even be in my bed.”

  Raphael worked a gap in Sylvia’s elbow, slipped his head free, and caught her left wrist. He pulled it behind her and pushed it up toward her shoulder blade. At the same time, he snaked his left arm around her neck and leaned back, establishing a chokehold on the elf.

  “I don’t think we actually get beds on a ship. They’re cots or bunks,” he said. Sylvia flailed at his forearm with her free hand, but Raphael gave her too little room for her to establish any working leverage or grip. “And no, I probably wouldn’t get any sleep at all in your bed, Captain, especially if they’re too small for more than one person, as I’m sure the cots on this ship are.”

  Sylvia thrust her head back, letting Raphael see the grin on her lips and the challenging light in her eyes. Then she somehow broke Raphael’s chokehold and threw him over her shoulder. He twisted in midair and landed on his feet, instead of his back.

  “Enough!” Eliza snapped, smacking Sylvia over the head with the rolled-up scroll, then doing the same to Raphael. Her face was bright red. “It’s time to board.”

  “Yes!” Sylvia thrust her hand out toward the horizon. “To adventure!”

  “To assignment, actually, just to be clear,” Fenix said.

  Chapter 13

  The Sparrow’s Light was a massive merchant’s ship, easily stretching over a hundred feet in length from stern to bow. As it cast off, its holds laden with goods bound for distant shores, Raphael felt his heart beat wildly in his chest.

  The sun was shining, and the skies were blue. A hearty breeze, cool and refreshing, washed against his face, laden with the salty aroma of the sea. With Rayne in his pocket, Raphael was leaving Lucia City for the first time in his life, and he was doing so as a Hell Drake armsman, off to battle, adventure, intrigue and…

  Wait. Where are we going and what’re we supposed to do there? Raphael blinked, his racing thoughts plunging into sobriety. A small crowd, likely the sailors’ loved ones, cheered and waved the Sparrow’s Light goodbye. Sylvia was waving and cheering back at them, drawing many confused looks and chuckles from everyone in eyeshot.

  “Hey, Sylvia,” Raphael began, tapping her shoulder with one hand and scratching the back of his head with the other. “This assignment. What is it about?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged, before returning her regard to the docks.

  Raphael felt his jaw drop open. “What?”

  Standing beside him along the railing of the forward deck, Eliza sighed, pulled out a silver coin from her belt pouch, and gave it to Fenix. The battlemage smirked and tucked the coin away.

  “Told you,” he said.

  “Yes, you did.” Eliza sighed again. “I just didn’t want to believe that a High Captain would not read the assignment’s notes before actually embarking on the journey.”

  “Well, there you go. Now it’s no longer a matter of belief.” Fenix straightened his collar and turned away from the railing. He nodded to Raphael and Eliza. “Let’s go and see if our inventory has been properly put away in our cabins.”

  “Thanks, Fenix,” Raphael said as he glanced again at Sylvia, who was still waving and cheering at the now-empty and fairly distant docks. The nearby sailors’ bemused smiles had now turned to nervous, worried grimaces at the elf’s behavior, which was looking more and more unhinged with each passing moment and every yard away from the docks.

  “Is she going to be alright?” Raphael asked.

  “Now that we’re stuck on a ship with her and headed to a guild assignment, do you really want to hear ‘no, she’s a deranged elf maniac, and she’s going to kill us all’ for an answer?” Fenix said, leading the way to a stairwell with a sign on its railing that read “Passenger bunks”. As they followed him down into the lower decks of the ship, it occurred to Raphael that the battlemage seemed to know his way around the ship quite well.

  “You seem very at home here, Fenix,” he said.

  “As you know, I come from a family of fishermen, and back in the day, my father and I helped quite a few ships’ cooks clean and salt the fish they bought from us. I got to wander around the ships sometimes. Lucarian merchant barges are all fairly similar in design, and the Sparrow’s Light is typical as they come.”

  They walked through several narrow, low-ceilinged wooden corridors that smelled of salt, tar, and sweat before stopping in front of a door. Old green paint was peeling from its cracked surface. Fenix nodded. “Here, this is our cabin. Number eight.”

  The door creaked on its hinges as Raphael pushed it open. It was a cramped, narrow space, with two bunk cots, one above the other, on either side. Fenix strode in, making his way to a large wooden trunk at the end of the cabin. He unlatched the container and lifted its lid. “Dried rations, spare clothing, and some sundry equipment. It’s all here, except for your weapon, Raphael.”

  Raphael nodded. His glaive had been stored above, on a weapons rack bolted down to the main deck and shielded from the elements by a sheet of waxed canvas. It would be too large to be carried below-decks, unlike the rapier that hung at Eliza’s waist. He peered past Fenix’s shoulder, wanting to see what exactly the battlemage had meant by ‘sundry equipment’.

  A weathered brass compass, a tinder box, half a dozen empty waterskins, and two sewing kits. Raphael quirked his brow. Fenix was surprisingly more conscientious and levelheaded than he’d thought. Perhaps it was just how they’d first met, but Raphael would never have figured Fenix to be someone so rational and well prepared.

  “Better to have them and not need them than the other way around,” the battlemage said, before casting a wry look at Eliza. “We definitely don’t want to be wandering around in some desolate, monster-infested area without even a single waterskin. I don’t think we should count on having a mysterious, heroic boy to save us every time.”

  Blushing furiously, Eliza frowned and folded her arms. “Yes, that was stupid of me, but can we move past that and let it go?”

  “We will,” Raphael said, glancing at Fenix and catching his eye, “eventually.”

  The battlemage chuckled.

  “One day, there will be something to tease the both of you about, and you’ll never hear the end of it from me,” Eliza scoffed, pushing her way into the cabin and reaching into the trunk. She took out her leather armor, then retrieved Raphael’s. “Let’s go back up, Raphael. Sylvia said she wanted to go over some basic weapon drills with us once we’re well on our way.”

  “I’m coming along too. I want to go over the assignment’s details with you, Raphael, but it makes more sense to do that Sylvia around as well, so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.” Fenix said, shutting the lid of the trunk as Raphael took his set of armor from her. She smiled as Raphael took hers too, slinging it behind his back with its straps over his shoulder.

  They passed several other passengers on their way back up. Most were merchants and clerks that Raphael recognized from the marketplace, and they congratulated him on his newfound employment with the Hell Drakes.

  “The Sparrow’s Light doesn’t have a huge passenger compartment, so we won’t be sharing this area with more than five or six other people,” Fenix said. “It’s cramped enough inside here, considering that our journey will take us a week, maybe six days if the wind is good.”

  “A week’s journey by ship is quite a long one, isn’t it?” Raphael asked.

  “We’re headed to the Marche region of Lucario, which is an archipelago at
the southernmost end of the country,” Eliza told him as they arrived at the stairwell leading to the main deck. “Specifically, we’re supposed to go to a small logging town called Vitoria. Its mayor contacted the Guild several days ago asking for help.”

  Raphael remembered from school that an archipelago was a group of islands. That was likely why they’d taken a ship instead of traveling overland. “Do you know what it’s like over there?”

  Fenix barked a laugh. “We both do. The Academy of Battle Magic is little more than a day’s ride on horseback from Vitoria. If we have time to spare after completing our assignment, I might make a little detour to pay my respects to Master Victis.”

  Raphael didn’t miss the shadow that flitted over Eliza’s face when Fenix mentioned the Academy. He nudged her gently. “Don’t worry. We’ll find some other way to pass the time during Fenix’s visit.”

  She gave him a weak smile but remained downcast.

  Fenix caught her reaction and sighed. “As I said, that’s if we have any time to spare at all. Chances are we’ll have to head right back to Lucia City after we’re done, and I’ll have to make the visit by myself some other time.” He smiled at Eliza. “Besides, you’ve found your place among the Hell Drakes. The Academy is in your past, as it is in mine.”

  Eliza’s smile widened at the battlemage’s words. She gave Raphael’s arm an appreciative squeeze. “Thanks, you two.”

  “For what? I didn’t do anything.” Fenix straightened his hat as they emerged onto the main deck. Sylvia was waiting for them in the middle of a cleared space, Raphael’s glaive and a few wooden poles of varying lengths at her feet.

  “You’re finally here!” she cried. “I was starting to get bored. Any longer, and I would have joined the sailors at their card or dice games or lent my voice to their sea shanties.”

  “The sailors are busy working now, so they won’t play cards or dice with you,” Fenix pointed out. “Neither do they sing sea shanties. It’s not really something people do on Lucarian ships.”

  “Shut up, Fenix! You’re such a killjoy!”

  “Can we go over the assignment first?” Raphael said, before Sylvia could begin twisting Fenix’s head in all sorts of strange directions again.

  “There is some kind of powerful magical beast ravaging someone, some place, or both of the above. We’ve got to kill it, and if we can, take its Spell Core back to the Guild.” Sylvia waved dismissively and chuckled at Eliza, who’d produced a small scroll from her pocket. “How far off am I?”

  Eliza lowered the scroll and sighed. “Not by much, actually. Vitoria’s mayor says that his lumbermen have been attacked by monsters in the woods. Apparently, they look like walking trees but have fangs and claws. So far, they haven’t attacked the town yet, but there have been sightings of these monsters on its outskirts.”

  “The mayor is worried that the monsters are massing for a concerted attack on the town, and he’s worried its defenses won’t hold,” Raphael surmised.

  In school, he’d learned that when remote settlements across Lucario were attacked by bandits or monsters and couldn’t be easily reached by the King’s knights or guardsmen, they hired adventurers instead, often from a guild. Raphael wasn’t sure if Vitoria quite counted as one of these places. After all, according to the assignment notes he’d finally gotten to read during the journey, it was a significant source of the kingdom’s lumber, and it was merely a week away from the capital city by ship.

  Perhaps it had to do with the fact that the Hell Drakes had established such a presence within Lucario and Lucia City that they’d become the nation’s defenders instead, even more so than the King’s guardsmen. Raphael glanced at Sylvia. As one of the Guild’s High Captains, she wielded immense influence and could probably pick and choose which assignments she wanted. Did she choose to come here and fight sanguine treants, with Fenix, Eliza, and Raphael in tow?

  “The interesting part is that the woods have started changing and shifting. Forest paths present one day are no longer there the next. New trees appear, while old, familiar ones vanish into thin air,” Fenix said. “Several lumbermen have already gone missing. So there’s a search-and-rescue element to this assignment, too.”

  Interesting, Raphael thought. That sounds similar to how the paths in the junkyard would shift and change. Could there be some similarity between them? I should be able to find my way in there, regardless, as long as I have the Dragon Meridian.

  “Sounds like sanguine treants to me, if they’ve got fangs and claws.” Sylvia stroked her chin. “If so, there’s not going to be anyone to rescue. If your typical lumberman finds himself in a forest infested with sanguine treants after nightfall, he’s not going to be anything other than dinner for them.”

  “Nature Magic is at play too, and at least of the Intermediate to Higher Orders, if the woods are indeed changing and shifting,” Fenix said.

  “Not going to be a problem. I can do Higher Order Nature magic,” Sylvia announced. “Any beast or monster tries to move trees around on my watch, and I’ll shove them up his—”

  “Just how many types of magic do you know?” Eliza asked. “I’ve seen you use Shadow Magic of the Highest Order, Martial Magic of the Higher Order, and Healing Magic that can’t be any weaker than the Intermediate Order. Now you say you can use Nature magic, too?”

  “Yes. And all of them. I know all types of magic. I’ve also mastered all forms of armed and unarmed combat.” Sylvia placed her hands on her hips and laughed. “Aren’t I amazing?”

  “Yes, I think you’re amazing, Sylvia,” Raphael said, meaning every word. After all, the elf had fought Koshi to a standstill, and he was the strongest person in the world to Raphael.

  “Don’t feed her ego!” Fenix hissed.

  Eliza sighed and buried her face in her hands. “Alright, alright. Let’s just get the rest of the self-aggrandizement out of the way. Come on, Sylvia. Let it all out. Sing your own praises. You’ve got a captive audience.”

  But the elf didn’t roll into another torrent of boasts. Instead, a faint blush came over her pale cheeks. Sylvia covered her mouth and faked a cough. “Thank you, Raphael. Now then, shall we get on to business? Put on your armor, Raphael and Eliza. I want to go over some weapon basics with you.”

  Raphael shucked on his armor over his clothes and buckled the straps. Clad in a long-sleeved tunic and rough trousers instead of a dress, Eliza did the same. She was faster though, and when she was done, she reached over and straightened Raphael’s right shoulder guard.

  “Thanks,” Raphael said to her. He noticed that she seemed extremely comfortable in armor, as if she’d worn it all her life. “You don’t seem new to this.”

  Eliza nodded. “I squired for my father, a long time ago. I know how armor works, and I’ve spent a lot of time putting it on and taking it off.”

  “You introduced yourself as the daughter of Ser Luca Valente on your first day, I remember. Wasn’t he one of the King’s knights?” Fenix said. “Renowned for his swordsmanship and gallantry.”

  “But disinherited by his family,” Eliza continued, a bitter smile on her face, “because of me.”

  “Why? What happened?” Raphael asked.

  “She’s a bastard,” Sylvia said. “A moniker like ‘Wildwynd’ gives it away. It’s common for battlemages to adopt aliases, such as Mr. Hellstorm here, but Eliza hasn’t told us her real family name even after she gave magic up. Therein lies a juicy tale.”

  “One that we don’t have time for.” Eliza placed her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Let’s get started.”

  “Works for me.” Sylvia produced a rainbow-hued cube from her belt pouch and started chanting an incantation. The cube rose an inch above the elf’s open palm and began spinning. It became larger with each revolution. Raphael flinched as the cube’s prismatic surface swung toward his face, but he felt nothing but a slight tingle on his skin as it made contact.

  And then he was standing on a smooth gray platform made of some material he didn�
�t recognize. Myriad colors shimmered beyond the edges of the platform, stretching out into infinity. Glancing at Eliza, he realized that she was similarly disoriented, too. Raphael reached out and caught her elbow, steadying her. She gave him an appreciative nod, but her eyes remained bright with apprehension.

  “Guild lore states that each of the nine High Captains of the Hell Drakes holds a mighty artifact, entrusted to them by the Guild Master,” Fenix said, glancing at Sylvia. “So yours is the Pocket Dimension Prism.”

  The elf smirked. “Neat, huh? Raphael wouldn’t be able to swing his glaive on the ship’s deck without worrying about hitting someone or something. Neither would you be able to hurl Explosive Orbs or use your Chain Lightning. But here, you can go all out, which means we can train as hard as we want.”

  The smirk on her face widened into a scary leer. “And we’ll train very hard, indeed, so prepare yourself for a week of living hell!”

  As Sylvia threw her head back and broke out into maniacal laughter, a thought struck Raphael.

  “So there are only nine High Captains of the Hell Drakes?” he pointed out. “And Sylvia is the Ninth? Or she sits in the Ninth Seat? Does this mean she’s the lowest ranking Captain?”

  The elf snapped her gaze down to Raphael, her eyes blazing with indignation. “Hey!”

  Fenix shook his head. “Much as I’d like to think so, no. According to Guild records, Sylvia was actually one of its earliest members. In fact, she was the first person the Guild Master recruited.”

  “Then why Ninth?” Eliza asked. “Wouldn’t she be the First, if that were the case?”

  “The High Captains are numbered in accordance with the number of armsmen, mages, and other followers under their command. Janan Rosya, the First, commands over two hundred mages and several thousand armsmen and auxiliaries. Bjorn Hammerstar, the Second, has fewer followers answering to him, but not by many,” Fenix said. “Whereas Sylvia has, well, us.”