BECMI Chapter 31 – Out-Voted
The two big Frokki brothers were about to say something when there was a bright flash through the windows, although no sound because the Ward around the building stopped it.
Everyone jumped to their feet, looking outside, the nearest ones rushing to the window.
I just flicked my hand, opened the door right there, and glided over on my Disk with a wineglass in hand to look outside, with Northmen and the boys gathering quickly behind me for a look themselves.
“Those in front, kneel,” I waved behind me, and there was some grunting and pushing as they did so. A bunch of swords and axes still bearing green Flames were very pointedly out and ready for use, too.
The hobgoblins outside were screaming and running about. A long line of them looked to have been blasted and cooked, some blown apart from within, while the dire wolves they rode were sprawled and motionless, all their fur standing on end.
I eyed the scars on the stone. “Something hit them with lightning,” I judged, Magevoice casually overwhelming everyone else. “Are there any shadows in the sky, those of you at the windows? Guy, Horn, Buck, Hanvol, get upstairs to the rooms on the back and sides, see what’s out there. The rest of you, spread out and shout when you see something.”
The four of them turned and bolted for the stairs together, while the Northmen likewise spread out to all the windows they could remember, leaving basically me and the looming brothers on either side of me to hold the door.
Fearful eyes were turned to the open door and us, and I merely sipped my drink and looked back at them, completely unfazed. Black vines rose slowly from the floor, and crimson roses bloomed off of them, all seeming to orient on the hobgoblins who had taken cover on the porch outside. Thorns grew incredibly long, tipped with scarlet… until they reached out and touched the ready Axes to either side of me, inviting them to try something that would end up with them dead.
None of the hobgoblins tried to get in the door.
“Shadows!” a Northman to the side shouted out. “Something is in the sky!”
There was a detonation off to the left of the building, fiery and consuming. The hobgoblins ran away from it frantically.
“Something is dropping magic from the sky. I do believe there’s a dragon or two flying around above,” I mentioned for everyone’s benefit.
Punctuated by a visible thump as one such azure dragon, a classic Western four-legged, winged beast, hit the ground outside in a flash of blue, reared back, and blew a bolt of lightning across the front of the building, instantly frying all the hobgoblins and wolves taking cover there from the sky. They exploded or danced and died, charbroiling in front of us as the two Frokki brothers flinched at the blast crossing in front of them.
I took another sip of wine as it splattered off the doorward harmlessly, even as a cooked hobgoblin sprawled through it and basically fell at my feet.
Vines crawled around it, and white-chased black flames erupted around it at a tap from Dread. The white eyes of the blue dragon out there, what we called a Storm Dragon, with rather more spikes in its frill than I was familiar with, gazed at me sitting there without a care for a moment, but then turned its attention to something else.
“Yes, definitely a Blue Dragon,” I added, overriding the chorus of calls. “Is there more than one? Someone confirm other shadows?”
There were indeed calls from up above and behind, and then one man called out that he’d just seen a big one cross over the building and fly over the lip of the crater.
“Bigger than the one on the ground cleaning up the hobgoblins?” I inquired over my shoulder.
“Maybe?” was the hesitant reply.
“Same size is mated pair. Different sizes is parent and child. Blues are social among themselves, so a grown child is unusual but not impossible,” I remarked for everyone coolly.
There was another flash of lightning off to the left. “I think that came from the entry pass?” I asked aloud, and received a shout back in confirmation.
“Slaughtering them all for food?” Bjorn asked, glancing at the hobgoblin Burning away in front of us fatalistically.
“It is rather a large number of them gathering in one place without any shelter.” A shadow swooped by, and I saw a larger, darker blue dragon banking to the left. “Yes, that is indeed one of the big ones, everyone. A female, I think. This is a lot of goblin, however. Are there any signs of younger ones anywhere? Cow-sized or smaller? They might be skulking on the rims.”
It was another minute before Buck shouted out, “To the southeast! I definitely saw something blue on the edge of the crater!”
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Screaming hobgoblins on wolves rode across the ground in front of the Inn. A dragon at least twice the length of the one we’d seen before swooped down, snatched up two of them and squeezed, while landing on the racing wolves and crushing them flat beneath its bulk. Both men behind me jumped at the sheer size of it, especially the long tail, which swept through three more wolves and riders and hurled them through the air like toys to slam into the sides of the building here with imagined crunches, dropping to the ground.
“Oh, clever dragons. They’ve done this before. It’s like their own little cul-de-sac to trap prey inside,” I remarked, returning the gaze of the ancient dragon that was gazing at me in unabashed curiosity as it tossed aside the crushed hobgoblins and rose from the pulped wolves.
There were other flashes of lightning, calls of more dragons, and I ignored them as the Blue Dragon rose and paced towards the open door, moving more like a hunting cat than a big lizard the size of an elephant, wings furled, long tail switching, and another smaller dragon banking by overhead, turning towards the pass to let loose another salvo possibly.
The sons of Skifner swallowed audibly as the massive head of the dragon advanced closer and closer, and I took another sip of wine before setting it aside.
The head opened its jaws and lunged.
The Flames on my Thorns turned a very particular shade of blue-red. I did not move, even as the Skifnersons grimaced and prepared to die.
The lunging jaws snapped shut just in front of the door, and the dragon stared at me.
I extended Dread out and very pointedly touched the Ward on the door. “Oh, do come inside, elder,” I said in fluent Draconic. “Perhaps you’d like to try a little lightning to lead the way?”
My utterly bored voice, and the fact she could hear me, had her pulling back in surprise, while magical black vines rose all around me, and a full score of Thorns blazed to life with Bane to Dragons on them.
“What an interesting little elf,” she replied in her own tongue, white eyes flickering across the brothers and dismissing them as a threat. “You are very confident, little morsel. What makes you think I won’t reach in there and snatch you up?”
“Oh, there are several reasons, elder,” I replied calmly. “The first being that if you stick your head in here, you’re never going to be able to draw it back out.” I held her stare with icy calm. “You’re far too intelligent to not have noticed nothing comes out of here. Why, I imagine you might even have lost a child or two to that fact, stupidly following some prey into here and being unable to exit. Did they suddenly disappear one night of the full moon, going crazy trying to escape and not being able to leave so much as a scratch upon the interior of this place?” I tilted my head as she stared at me with reptilian calm. “Yes, I think that is what happened. Wise of you not to break the Doorward.”
She wanted to lunge at me, but restrained herself. “And the other reasons?”
“Well, there’s your curiosity of knowing what actually is going on, where I came from since you didn’t see me enter, why I seem so confident, how quickly I took command of these famously belligerent Northmen, and why I am not in the slightest bit frightened of you.”
And I began to smile slowly. The great dragon tensed and shuffled backwards a step in sudden realization.
“That’s right. The main reason is that you don’t know what you are dealing with, and I do,” I purred in a deadly calm voice. “And if you seriously tried to attack me, you would die where you stand with two blinks of my eyes. As my voice can reach you, and your lightning reach me right now, so my magic can reach you, and if I desire it, right now you are absolutely and completely going to die.”
She stared at me, motionless save for a twitch of her tail, trying to read the magic that was leveled at her, trying to determine if I was bluffing… and reading nothing of the former, and hokey shiznit, I was not bluffing in the slightest.
“I see. And yet, you cannot leave that building, either,” she observed shrewdly, slowly lowering herself down and adopting a more relaxed, conversational approach.
“Astute. I will vanish into oblivion if I advance past the Doorward. You wouldn’t even get to taste my blood.”
She eyed the men behind me, who shivered slightly, aware they were being sized up like dumplings. “And the foolish humans behind you?”
“Oh, they could leave. They entered through the door, they can leave through it. There’s just a little problem of several hungry dragons and a horde or two of natives in the way of them getting home, and I can’t help them with that. Except maybe killing the oldest of the dragons sitting in front of me in spellcasting range.”
She elected to ignore that aloofly, not that the tip of her tail didn’t indicate that she totally believed me. “I would learn what became of my daughter who entered the building,” she replied to that aloofly.
“How long ago, elder?” I asked reasonably.
“Twenty-eight solar cycles ago. I have watched over this cursed place ever since.”
“And likely eaten a lot of unlucky creatures,” I mused to no one in particular. “I can certainly try to ascertain that, but getting word to you might well be difficult. I have seen not the slightest sign that a dragon is present here. Your child could very well have simply run into something that disintegrated her, and that was that.”
She hissed in displeasure at the ease with which her daughter might have died. “Return to me with news of my daughter Cirruluxul, and I will owe you a favor, elfin,” she deigned to grant me.
“You may call me Lady Edge, elder. And what dragon will I ask for, when it is time?” I inquired easily.
She rose to her feet, the conversation over with. “Shmvoxxayl the Skymother!” she declared loftily, lowering her head for just a moment to peer into my eyes. “I will know you or your blood, elfin. Do not disappoint me!”
“An elder Blue Dragon owing me a favor. I will consider the implications with due weight, Skymother,” I replied neutrally, and let the Doorward collapse.
Her eyes turned towards the dead all around as I pushed the door shut.
“Well,” I told the brothers from Frokki, and all the Northmen who’d come back into the dining area, all of them staring at my unmoved visage. “I think you’re going to have some difficulty getting out that way. Would you all care to join us on a great adventure into the past?” I inquired, seeing the wings of another elder blue, probably her mate, descend at the edge of one of the other windows.