Dragon Magus 1: A Progression Fantasy Saga Read online

  Fenix growled and unfolded his arms from his chest. He, like Eliza, wore gloves with shiny stones on the knuckles. “What did you say to me, you bastard? I’m going to flay you alive and staple your skin to her flesh.”

  “Oh? Are we going to fight?” Raphael grinned and brought his fists up.

  “No!” Eliza put herself between Fenix and Raphael. “Just go, Fenix. You’ve said your piece, and I’ve heard it.”

  “That bastard better grovel first. I want him to lose all the fingers on his right hand, too. If he doesn’t have a knife, he can bite them off,” Fenix snarled.

  “No, he’s just a boy, Fenix. Not even out of school, yet. What would the world think of the battlemage Fenix Hellstorm picking on an inexperienced boy?”

  “They wouldn’t think anything, because there wouldn’t be anyone to tell them about this.” Fenix flexed his hands. Purple light pulsed briefly above his palms.

  And suddenly, he was standing right in front of Eliza and Raphael.

  “Because I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to kill you both, after all. You should have been smothered or drowned the day you were left as a babe in front of Master’s house, Eliza. Consider the years you’ve lived so far stolen time that you never deserved at all.” Fenix pointed his index finger at her forehead. A red light appeared at its tip.

  Raphael caught Fenix’s finger and bent it backwards. At the same time, he twisted the older battlemage’s wrist the way Koshi had taught him and performed the same instep sweep he’d used on Eliza.

  Fenix squawked in surprise as he was spun from his feet, but purple light flared again before his head could slam into the ground, and he disappeared once more. Raphael turned on his heel, streaking his gaze to a spot in midair, several feet above his head.

  The battlemage reappeared right there. Raphael didn’t quite understand how he knew that would happen. Perhaps his senses, enhanced by the Dragon Meridian, were able to pick up Fenix’s scent of soft oils and perfumes. Or he was simply thinking and moving much faster than the battlemage thanks to the power of the First Draconic Brazier. In any case, he was more than ready to follow up his attack.

  He leaped high, igniting the Second Draconic Brazier to enhance his strength, and seized Fenix’s boot.

  “What?” the battlemage cried. “How? Let go, you bastard!”

  Raphael pulled himself higher and drew back his fist. He punched Fenix between the legs, perhaps with a little bit more force than he needed to.

  The battlemage squealed and plummeted from his perch in midair. Raphael caught Fenix’s head in his hands as they hit the ground, shielding the man’s skull as best as he could from the impact.

  “Phew. And that’s that,” Raphael said, dusting himself off as he stood up and walked away from the writhing and groaning form of the stricken battlemage.

  Eliza’s jaw was slack, and her eyes were wide with shock.

  He beamed at her. “I won!”

  “He… he’s the top graduate from my magic academy. And a member of the Hell Drakes, the mightiest mercenary Guild in the world…” Eliza stammered. “And you just punched him in the balls!”

  Raphael winced. “Not my proudest moment, but it’s better to end a fight quickly however you can, instead of drawing things out.”

  “Just who are you, Raphael?”

  Oh no, not this again, he thought, racking his brain for a way to change the subject. “Well, I’m just—”

  “A corpse,” Fenix snarled. Bright yellow light burst into existence, lining Raphael’s peripheral vision.

  He turned just in time to catch a crackling bolt of lightning in the chest. Searing agony tore its way through him. His limbs twisted in ways he didn’t want them to, and the breath fled his lungs. He fell to his knees. The taste of his own blood filled his mouth.

  Through his swirling, star-flooded vision, he saw Eliza mouth the word ‘no’ and raise her hands. Green light flared, and Fenix knocked her down with a blast of wind before she could do anything.

  The battlemage limped forward, red globes hovering above his palms.

  “I’m going to blast your limbs off first, then cauterize the wounds. Then I can take my time torturing you to death, you bastard, and I’ll make her watch every moment, too, before I kill her as well.”

  Raphael gasped as he tried to fight through the pain and regain control of his spasming limbs. Focus. Focus through the pain. You know how to do this. Koshi taught you. You can do—

  An inhuman shriek tore through the darkening air. The scrounge-worm flung itself at Fenix. The battlemage gasped in surprise, but he still managed to hurl one of the two red globes in his palm.

  It struck the scourge-worm and detonated, tearing the creature’s body apart. Its innards flopped wetly onto the ground.

  “What was that?” Fenix demanded. “A beast? Huh. With a Spell Core, no less. Quite the unexpected windfall.”

  “Nnnghh… no…” Raphael managed to force out from between his chattering lips. He’d bitten his tongue somewhere along the way, but that pain was nothing compared to the one in his heart as he looked at the eviscerated wreckage of the scrounge-worm’s body.

  “What was that, you bastard? I can’t hear you clearly. Maybe it’s because of all the blood pouring from your mouth,” Fenix mocked. He raised the remaining red globe in his hand. “I’ll harvest the Spell Core later. Let’s get back to the business of killing you slowly and painfully, first.”

  Raphael snapped his eyes shut and centered his consciousness on the Dragon Meridian. He willed its light to shine more brightly, for it to reach out to the First and Second Draconic Braziers more strongly. The Third Brazier hung just out of reach, as it had, for the last three months, because he’d been too concerned and worried about Koshi’s health to focus on his cultivation.

  He reached for it desperately now, seeking its strength.

  I’m not going to lose this fight! Something deep inside him spoke. No, it didn’t speak. It roared, and though the very idea filled Raphael with dread, he realized that this thing, with its alien, inhuman roar, was part of him, as inseparable from who he was as his name.

  The Dragon Meridian’s light poured into the Third Brazier. It burst into life.

  Raphael opened his eyes. He caught the red globe that Fenix hurled at him in his fist.

  The battlemage’s spell exploded in his grasp with a tremendous boom, but the detonation merely stung him instead of ripping him apart.

  Fenix’s eyes were wide with horror. He took a step back. “What… What the hell? How did you do that?”

  Raphael looked down at his arms. The sleeves of his tunic, already tattered and ragged, had been blown into shreds, leaving his flesh exposed. Scales of golden light hovered just above his skin, like some kind of armor.

  With a thought, Raphael turned the scales transparent, so they no longer blazed with a golden radiance. But they were still there, sheathing his body in their protective embrace.

  “What are you?” Fenix shrieked, spreading his hands and filling them once more with yellow, crackling lightning. “Some kind of blood-fiend? A demon?”

  No. Raphael clenched his fists and thought about the roar inside him just now. He wasn’t any of the things Fenix had mentioned. He knew exactly what he was.

  A dragon.

  Chapter 5

  Raphael didn’t know much about magic. His teachers rarely mentioned it in school because they believed children should focus on their numbers and letters over everything else. Koshi didn’t like talking about it because he believed it was evil. Raphael had asked Koshi whether the Dragon Meridian was magic, and the old man had cut off that question swiftly. Raphael never asked again. The Dragon Meridian was not magic, because it was good, and all magic was evil.

  Looking at Fenix with his fists full of electricity and a sneer on his face, Raphael agreed very much with Koshi, at least in that moment.

  “Die!” the battlemage roared, thrusting his hands forward and hurling lightning at Raphael. The crackling ti
de of electrical energy cratered the ground, hurling shards of broken rock and wisps of dirt into the evening sky.

  But Raphael was no longer there, zipping away on legs stronger and faster than they’d ever been before. With the ignition of the Third Brazier, the First and Second Braziers burned hotter, too, heightening his strength and speed beyond their earlier limits. The light of the Dragon Meridian shone brighter as well. It drove away the clouds of sadness at the scourge-worm’s death from his mind and sharpened his thoughts.

  Fenix is right-handed, so he’ll be slightly slower on his left, Raphael thought. The wind is blowing in his face, bringing the dirt he just threw up into his eyes. He won’t like that, but he can blink through space, so that means he will be…

  Fenix rematerialized exactly where Raphael predicted he would, in midair above and upwind from the billowing dirt, at an angle which allowed his right arm the best arc of fire.

  That was why Raphael had leaped ten feet above that exact spot a heartbeat ago. He fell down toward Fenix. The battlemage must have sensed him somehow. He snapped his gaze up at Raphael, his features twisted with surprise and fear.

  He needs a bit of time to call his lightning, so up close like this, he’ll have to use those red exploding balls instead. A wind blast won’t do him any good. Raphael clenched his fists as he descended.

  Fenix conjured a red globe in his right hand and hurled it at Raphael. At the same time, purple light blazed in his other hand. The battlemage winked out of existence.

  Raphael strengthened the draconic armor around his fists, causing the golden scales floating above them to blaze back into visibility. Just a few moments ago, he’d been able to contain the explosive force of Fenix’s red globes with his armor, so he was now counting on it to do the same.

  As the red globe hurtled within reach, Raphael backhanded it, altering its flight path into a haphazard, spiraling arc toward the space behind him.

  Where Fenix had just rematerialized, because of course the battlemage would attempt to attack him from the rear.

  Fenix had time for a strangled yelp before the redirected globe hit him and detonated with a tremendous boom, blasting him from his perch in the sky. Trailing smoke, Fenix fell, his eyes vacant and blood leaking from his ears and nose. The battlemage must have had one last layer of personal defense. Perhaps his leathers held some protective enchantment, or he’d been able to cast some kind of shielding spell at the last minute. Still, he was badly injured, but his wounds didn’t seem like anything he wouldn’t recover from. Raphael didn’t like it when others got badly hurt, but somehow, he couldn’t quite feel bad for Fenix at all.

  In any case, Fenix was out cold. Raphael had won the fight decisively, but he felt none of the usual elation he did after victory in battle. The battlemage plummeted, headfirst. His skull would be smashed open upon the packed dirt.

  Raphael realized that he did not care. He kept his gaze fixed on the falling Fenix, steeling his heart for the moment of impact, for the sound of breaking bone and spilling brains.

  But that sound never came. A massive metallic form streaked by, its steely glint tearing through the last remnants of the fading sunlight. It zipped beneath Fenix’s body and stopped his fall. Only then did Raphael see that it was a sword, longer than he was tall, wider than the breadth of his shoulders, and floating in the air several feet above the ground.

  Intricate runes covered the weapon’s steel cross-guard and continued down its length. Its hilt was wrapped in plain, worn leather. The sword tapered outward toward its end, giving its tip the semblance of a broad leaf.

  “That was spectacular!” a high-pitched, singsong voice said.

  Raphael snapped his gaze to the speaker. It was a tall, slender figure wearing a shiny suit of form-fitting armor, all silver plates across dark, tight fabric. A delicate, unmistakably feminine face, framed by shoulder-length dark hair, returned his regard, even as it tracked his descent.

  The newcomer was a strikingly beautiful woman. The curve of her lips, the cast of her high cheeks, the light in her large, green eyes, and the tilt of her head all came together to deliver a look that was both challenging and inviting. Eliza was a cute girl, and Raphael had seen many cute girls at school and in the marketplace, but compared to this armored woman, they were like sputtering candles before the blinding noon sun.

  And yet there was something off, something alien about her.

  It was her ears, Raphael realized. They were long and pointed, entirely inhuman. With that, everything else different about her fell into place: her eerie, overly balanced posture, the alien proportions of her limbs compared to the length of her torso, and the unblinking intensity of her gaze.

  “Yes, yes,” she said with a sigh. “I’m an elf. Thanks for noticing. No thanks for not staring, though.”

  Raphael finally realized that he had, indeed, been staring. He blinked and scratched the back of his head.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. He took one more moment to glare at the unconscious Fenix, before he turned and ran to where the scrounge-worm lay in pieces.

  The fight was over, and if there were further accounting to be done with the battlemage, it could wait. He didn’t really care about talking to the elf, either. Whatever she wanted, it could wait as well. Right now, the scrounge-worm couldn’t.

  The creature was still alive, though barely. Its exposed innards pulsed, giving off steam in the cooling night air. Eliza was kneeling beside it, her face awash with tears. Raphael joined her.

  “Raphael! I… I don’t know what to do for it…” Eliza gasped.

  “You’ve been keeping Wormy company,” he said. “That’s all there is to do, now.”

  The scrounge-worm turned its maw to Raphael and bleated. He stroked the creature gently.

  “That’s right. It’s bed-time. We’ll play more in the morning, alright?”

  It bleated once more, and then it was still.

  Eliza looked down, her eyes heavy with a sudden sadness. Something that was both hot and cold seized Raphael’s heart, then. Tears threatened to brim at the corner of his eyes, but he forced them down. Crying in front of others did no good, Koshi always used to say. It was something to be done later, by yourself, if at all.

  Raphael clenched his fists and surged to his feet. He wanted a fight, with someone, anyone. He didn’t care whom.

  He turned to the elf.

  “Ah, I think I’ve figured out what’s been going on, now,” she said. “Fenix really should know better, picking fights for no reason. The Hell Drakes kill only for money and under contract, and this fiasco obviously involved neither.”

  “I still have stuff to discuss with him.” Raphael stalked toward the floating sword, upon which the battlemage lay comatose.

  “I bet you do,” the elf replied. She snapped her fingers. A white radiance flared from Fenix’s body, and then he was gone.

  “Recall spell,” Eliza pointed out. “He’s been sent somewhere safe, probably back to the Guild’s headquarters.”

  “Exactly. And he’ll have to spend his next two wages paying for the reagents used for the recall spell.” The elf nodded to Eliza. “You know your magic, young lady. Ah, I think I recognize you! Weren’t you at the Guild this morning? I wished you well in your application, I remember. I take it that things didn’t go as you’d hoped, then?”

  “They… they sent me out here to find a Spell Core. For me to buy my membership,” Eliza said, her voice soft and broken. “And all this happened, because of me.”

  “No, not because of you,” Raphael snapped. “Because of Fenix! Bring him back! We’re not done yet!”

  “You aren’t, but he definitely is.” The elf folded her arms and shook her head. “Look, kid. I came out here looking for Fenix because we were supposed to go over some details on an upcoming mission tonight, but he was nowhere to be found. I know he can be quite the abrasive fellow, but he’s also the junior member of my war party and, when all is said and done, a Hell Drake. That’s why I can’t just give h
im to you. I’ll also have to ask you to let this little vendetta of yours go. Hell Drakes look after their own. You come after one of us, you get torn to pieces by all of us.”

  “So what? I won’t lose, no matter who I fight.” Raphael didn’t know this to be true, but he was too angry to care. Of course he had lost fights, mostly to Koshi, but not against anyone else, at least not for a long, long time already.

  She flashed him a dazzling smile, the perfect whiteness of her teeth resplendent in the thickening darkness. “Yes, you’re really strong. I saw you move much faster and hit more strongly than you should be able to, and you even conjured some kind of magical armor just now that was strong enough to withstand an Explosion Orb. Still, taking on the mightiest mercenary group in the world is just not how bright, promising young boys live to grow up into strong, dashingly burly men. So I’ll ask again: drop it.”

  “No,” Raphael snarled. He knew he was being unreasonable, but he wanted to fight, to hit something, someone. Otherwise, he might start crying, and the idea of doing that in front of Eliza and the elf lady horrified him.

  “I get it, kid, I really do.” The elf sighed. “You’re worked up and want to let it all out. Tell you what, I’ll be your dance partner for a bit, if only because I genuinely do feel bad for what happened this evening.”

  Raphael raised an eyebrow. “What do you—”

  In an instant, she was right in front of him. She was fast—faster than even the Dragon Meridian and the First Brazier allowed. Her fist hammered into his jaw. Raphael’s draconic armor flexed beneath the impact. His vision filled with stars.

  Raphael grunted as he intercepted her follow-up punch by seizing her wrist. He twisted it and swept the elf’s shin with his foot, but she spun a full circle in midair, landed, and flashed him a smile filled with appreciative delight. She seized his collar and threw him over her shoulder. He yanked her grip on his clothes loose before his body crested the zenith of her throw and twisted his hips so that he landed on his feet, instead.