A Dragon’s Tale

Rachel slowly drifted back to consciousness, not that she wanted to. She relaxed, enjoying the simple pleasure of lying in a soft bed doing nothing. She felt like she hadn't just relaxed in ages. There was always this nagging voice in the back of her head pushing to accomplish, to achieve. That's when she realized:

The voice was gone.

"My father is an idiot." Rachel thought while mentally bracing herself for the pain and compulsion to change her mind.

Nothing happened.

There was no pain, no compulsion, and no reprisal whatsoever for her thoughts.

She was free.

Rachel wanted to jump for joy but settled for smiling. She hadn't been able to smile genuinely in far too long. She luxuriated in her new freedom for several minutes before she turned her mind to other questions like where she was and how she got there. Everything was a little fuzzy since that fight with her father in his grand hall.

She opened her eyes to see the underside of a ship deck. Looking around put her in the captain's cabin of an airship. It wasn't a luxury airship, but it was nice enough. Sunlight was streaming in through a large glass-block bay window that covered one wall.

"You're awake." A kind female voice said.

Rachel turned her head to see a wood elf with chocolate-brown hair clad in a green dress.

"Hi." Rachel said. "Where am I?"

"You don't remember?"

Rachel shook her head. "It's all kind of fuzzy."

"You're on board the airship Argo. My... my friend is the captain. You were wearing a will-breaker ring that we managed to pull off of you."

Rachel looked down at her hand. Her father's ring was gone but it left a black mark on her finger where it had been. She rubbed the mark, but it didn't come off. She knew the ring had been made from dragon steel -- which could be enchanted of course -- but for her father to have done that to her...

"I tried some healing magic, but I'm honestly not very good at it." The wood elf said. "I did fix your finger though."

"What was wrong with my finger?" Rachel asked.

The wood elf looked a little sheepish. "I accidentally broke it getting the ring off."

"Oh." Was all Rachel could think to say. "What's your name?"

"Alana, and unless I'm much mistaken, you're Rachel Delmar."

"At your service." Rachel said, and then slowly sat up in the bed. She felt weak, but nothing could have dampened her spirits today. She was finally free from that damned ring. She also noticed she was wearing a dress that looked almost like a nightgown. She didn't ask how she got into it.

"How did I get here?" Rachel asked.

Alana told the whole story of how she had tried to kill her and her friend Ethan a couple of times. However, they had figured out she was being compelled, removed the ring, and how Ethan had given her some deep mana to save her life.

"I remember most of that, but it's a little fuzzy." Rachel said. "Isn't Ethan a dragon?"

Alana nodded. "Yes, and one of the best men I've ever known."

"Thank you for helping me; it would've been a lot easier to just kill me."

"We don't do that kind of thing."

"I'm glad." Rachel replied. "Could you help me up? I would like to thank him in person."

"Sure thing." Alana said.

The wood elf helped her stand and provided a steadying hand to the door of the captain's cabin. Outside, it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and the gentle breeze felt amazing. On deck, a steel grey dragon was sparring with a massive blond crewman who was built like a troll or golem.

Rachel sat down on deck for a minute's rest and watched them spar until they noticed her. Ethan noticed first, which distracted him long enough for the large crewman to whack him soundly on the skull with the training weapon.

"Ow." Ethan said. "I was distracted."

"Yeah, I like my opponents distracted." The large crewman said. "Makes them easier to kill."

"Ignore them." Alana said. "It seems like Ethan's been sparring non-stop since we left port a week ago."

"A whole week?" Rachel said. Her memories were fuzzy, but she didn't think she'd been out that long.

Ethan walked over to her and Alana. "I'm glad to see you're feeling better." He smiled, which was quite welcoming, even if it did display a mouth full of very sharp-looking teeth.

"Me too." Rachel managed to stand back up. "I wanted to say thank you. It's not often you meet someone willing to help a complete stranger, much less a complete stranger who tried to kill him... Twice."

"Well, it's good thing you didn't succeed then?" He replied with another toothy grin.

She nodded. "So, what's the plan? I mean, what will you do with me?"

"We didn't really have a plan." Ethan admitted. "We're heading to Arcanum now that we've escaped Lord Delmar. But beyond that I didn't have any plans for myself, let alone you."

Rachel shook her head in disbelief. "You think you have escaped Lord Delmar?"

"Well, we got away and everyone tells me we're far away from his jurisdiction by now." Ethan said.

"You don't know much about Lord Delmar do you?" Rachel asked. "His influence extends far beyond his own jurisdiction. He has spies and men all over the Ten Kingdoms. In fact, he rules more than half of the lords of men from behind the scenes by proxy. He isn't an emperor, but he's closer to that than a Lord. He has thousands of men and dozens of airships. If you think you're beyond his reach anywhere in the Ten Kingdoms, you are sorely mistaken."

"Oh." He said.

"He's kept his influence mighty quiet if that's the case." Anthiel said from up on the quarterdeck.

"He has." Rachel said. "And I'm sure you've heard he's fanatical when he puts his mind to something."

Everyone nodded.

"Well, I've never seen him chase anyone as hard as he's chasing Ethan here." Rachel said. "I like you folks and all, but you don't stand a chance against him. Certainly not in this little airship. I mean it's nice, but there's no way you'd survive an attack by one of Lord Delmar's scouting parties, much less a full combat group. Unless you have a fleet hidden around here, your best option is to run and hide because you'll lose in a fight."

Rachel paused to take a breath. Why was she so tired? She took a moment to check her mana and instantly discovered the reason. Her regular mana was empty and her deep mana was quite depleted too. Fortunately, it wasn't at a dangerous level and she could replenish it in just a few days.

Curiously though, there was a chunk of deep mana that felt very different than the rest. Nearly half of her deep mana felt foreign, like it wasn't really her deep mana at all. It seemed somehow more solid; denser. Like a rock that had sunk to the bottom of a pool. She tried to move it around but it wouldn't budge.

Somehow, she knew it was the dragon's deep mana. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew. She fortunately couldn't feel any kind of bond between them because she hadn't given him any of hers. However, there was no denying his deep mana was occupying half her total deep mana capacity.

"What should we do?" Alana asked Ethan. Ethan smiled in response, which Rachel found rather odd given what she had just said.

"We have plenty of charcoal on board right, for the cooking fires?" Ethan asked, and Anthiel confirmed it.

"How about sulfur, do we have any of that?" Ethan asked. "It's a yellow element, in our world we used it for medicine and pesticide in ancient times. It smells like rotten eggs. Do we have any?"

"Yeah, we have about fifty pounds for medicinal reasons. Why?" Anthiel asked.

"Then all we need is saltpeter to make gunpowder." Ethan said.

"What's gunpowder?" Alana asked.

"What's saltpeter?" Beth asked as she walked up to join the group.

"It's a white crystalline mineral that comes from... The hind end of most animals." Ethan replied

"I've seen what comes from that end, and it's not usually white." Rachel said.

"You have to purify it first." Ethan said. "Animal crap is the easiest way that I know to get it."

Rachel wasn't the only one to give him a confused look.

"The ingredients to gunpowder are saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal." Ethan replied. "We already have the charcoal and sulfur. If we can refine some saltpeter, we'll have a huge advantage if we get into another airship fight."

"How will this 'gunpowder' help?" Alana asked.

"We can use it to make explosives, maybe even a cannon." Ethan replied.

Rachel -- along with everyone else -- looked at him blankly. She couldn't help thinking he sounded stark raving mad.

"Look, trust me on this." Ethan said. "When we discovered gunpowder back home, it completely changed warfare forever."

"Okay, so where do we get this 'saltpeter' from?" Anthiel asked.

"The best place is from bat and bird droppings." Ethan said. "We need to find someplace around here that has a lot of it."

"We're going to fight Lord Delmar and his fleet of airships with bat shit?" Rachel asked incredulously.

Ethan nodded with a huge smile.

Somehow, that didn't inspire confidence.

* * *

Falkaan looked at the anchored airship far in the distance through his spyglass again, just to be sure. "That's them alright."

"Orders?" Damon asked, his gravelly voice matched his grizzled face perfectly.

"We don't have the weapons or men to attack right now." Falkaan replied. "From their course, they're heading to Arcanum. We'll keep our distance, circle around while they're stopped, get to the city first, hire mercenaries, and ambush them when they arrive.

"Aye, Aye captain." Damon said.

"What are they doing?" Falkaan wondered aloud as he peered through the spyglass again.

"You tell me captain, you're the one with the spyglass." Damon said.

He handed the spyglass to Damon, who promptly zeroed in on the tiny airship way in the distance. It was hovering not far off the ground with the anchor down. Several of the crew were on the ground doing something, but Falkaan hadn't believed his dark elf eyes when he saw what.

He looked over the side of his airship. The lower masts were barely ten feet from the tops of the trees. They had flown low and at full sail from Gralden for over a week tailing the dragon's ship, and they hadn't been spotted yet. Damon might have every vice in the book, but his skills as a pilot were second to none. That, and the enchantments on his ship did make it less likely to be spotted. Not invisible or anything, but certainly less noticeable.

"It looks like they're loading bat shit into beer barrels." Damon said, though he clearly didn't believe what he was seeing either.

"That's what I thought too." Falkaan said. "What in Saidow's lair could they possibly want with guano?"

"I don't know." Damon said handing the spyglass back to Falkaan. "Seems like a waste of a perfectly good beer barrel. Good thing they stopped though. We wouldn't be able to circle around them if they hadn't."

"True." Falkaan said. He looked through the spyglass again. Sure enough, the steel gray dragon, two men, and the wood elf were using shovels to load earth into three beer barrels. It was clear the earth was coming from a cave, and -- despite the great distance -- Falkaan's dark elf eyes clearly saw the evidence of the earth being laden with bat excrement.

"Curious; most curious." Falkaan said. He stowed the spyglass and began absent-mindedly stroking the stump of his left arm.

"You think they're up to something?" Damon asked.

"I always assume my prey is." Falkaan replied. "This time though, I genuinely have no idea what it could be. That makes me uneasy."

"Me too captain, but it can't be too bad." Damon said. "I mean, how dangerous could bat shit be?"

"It's seemingly harmless... which is what worries me the most." Falkaan replied. "Criminals are a cunning lot and the more desperate they become, the more dangerous they are. It's not wise to fight a cornered animal, and dragons are the most dangerous of all animals."

"Plus, there's the bounty." Damon said.

"Hmm?" Falk replied.

"I mean, I understand a large bounty for attacking Lord Delmar's guards." Damon said. "But doesn't it seem a little high to you?"

"We've been over this; twice." Falkaan said. "Lord Delmar said he wanted to make an example out of them. You don't kill a half dozen of Lord Delmar's knights without suffering the consequences."

"I know that, but the bounty still seems mighty high."

Falkaan sighed. "The dragon and the elf launched an unprovoked attack on Lord Delmar's knights, killed several of them, and attempted to murder one of his lieutenants. For an attack that brazen I'd say it's high, but not excessively high."

"It's high even for that, if that's what happened."

"That's what Lord Delmar told me himself."

"And Lords are always truthful are they?" Damon asked. "They wouldn't bend the truth for their own gain?"

"You don't believe him?"

"I'm just saying there's usually more going on than the official story." Daman said. "You of all people should know that."

Falkaan grimaced internally. Sadly, he knew exactly how bending the truth on the official story could ruin a man's life.

"There, I've said my peace and I'll let it be." Damon said. "I'm going to get some rum, then circle around. You want some?"

Falkaan shook his head, and started calculating what it would cost to hire enough mercenaries to eliminate the dragon and the wood elf. He could easily afford it and the bounty would cover the price ten times over.

Damon was right, the bounty was too high.

He pulled out his spyglass and began looking at the dragon and his airship again. There was something else going on here between the dragon and Lord Delmar. He just wished he knew what it was.