The spawn defiantly inhaled to fuel yet another gout of its caustic breath, but the spikes had caused mortal wounds, and the spawn burst in an explosion of its own acid. The manticore howled, as it bore the brunt of the blast. The acid ate away part of its mane and bubbled and hissed against the hide of its forelegs. The manticore had caught some of the deadly acid directly in the face and on the undersides of its wings, too.
Its wings slowed, the keening subsided. The pounding against Dhamon’s temples stopped too, and he could breathe easily again. Dhamon released Fiona and felt around behind him to make sure she was OK.
He saw she had dropped her sword.
“Fiona.” Louder, “Fiona!”
“I’m all right.” Dazedly, she placed both hands around Dhamon’s waist.
Ragh was grumbling behind her, glancing down to make sure no more spawn were coming. He gingerly withdrew his claws from the manticore—they were covered in the creature’s blood, he’d dug them in so deep.
The three spawn were but a token force from Shrentak, a city rife with spawn. At least Dhamon felt certain the spawn had come from Shrentak, no doubt sent to exact revenge for the trouble he had caused there. In that city, several days earlier, Dhamon, Ragh, and Dhamon’s best friend Maldred had located an old sage whom they believed had the power to cure Dhamon’s malady—the dragon scale embedded in his leg that haunted and tormented him. While the sage was indeed able to remove all the newer, smaller scales that had sprouted around the original scale, she’d done nothing to remove the large scale. In fact, she had disappeared, leaving him and Ragh alone in the catacombs beneath her tower. Maldred had become separated and lost.
Trying to find Maldred or leave, Dhamon and Ragh took a wrong turn and found themselves in the dungeons of the black dragon. Among the prisoners they freed were Fiona and Rig, two old comrades on a foolish quest of their own. During their struggle to leave the city, Dhamon had freed this manticore from a cage in the marketplace. They had left Maldred behind, fleeing to save their lives against overwhelming odds.
“Left Maldred behind,” Dhamon muttered to himself. “Perhaps he’s dead, too.”
Dhamon guessed that despite the still-ferocious wind, it would take the manticore less than two hours to cross the New Sea and reach the coast of Abanasinia. He was right. It was dawn by the time they made it to the mountains. The creature landed clumsily along the edge of a trail, clawed feet scrabbling in earth made slick by the light rain coming down. Dhamon attempted to examine the manticore’s wing, but the creature would have none of his indulgence. It licked the wound, then curled up as a dog might and quickly fell asleep. Ragh settled himself nearby and stared grumpily up at the clouds and the thin arcs of lightning that played overhead.
The landscape was as dismal as Dhamon’s mood, the scrub grass dead and plastered against the ground, the scant trees leafless and wedged between rocks—everything brown and gray and chill. Fall had a firm grip on the place. He knew all of this country probably wasn’t so depressing, that farther down the trail in either direction would be villages, and that quite a bit farther to the north would be larger towns. There would be fires burning. Pleasant conversation and warm food inside dry homes. There would be life.
“And I all I think about is death,” Dhamon muttered to himself. He stood several yards away from the others, keeping a wary eye on Fiona. He saw that the skin of her sword arm was bubbled and scarred from the spawn’s breath and that part of her hair was melted away. Her cheek and neck also had been hit by the acid, and Dhamon knew she would never look beautiful again. Yet she behaved as though in a trance, showing no awareness of her injuries.
“You’re going back to Shrentak, aren’t you, Dhamon?” the draconian asked after a long silence. His eyes continued to follow the flashes of lightning. “For your big friend Maldred?”
“Aye,” Dhamon said, watching Fiona stretch out under a rocky overhang. The ground looked reasonably dry there. “As soon as possible I will go back. Maldred will trust I’ll come looking for him.”
He paused. “If he’s alive.”
“You’ve still got Nura Bint-Drax to slay,” Ragh added. “She might still be in the city.”
“If she crosses my path.”
Nura Bint-Drax, a naga and agent of the black dragon, had caused Dhamon all manner of problems in the past months. Ragh had been her slave, and she’d bled him countless times to create spawn and abominations. Ragh would be her slave still, had Dhamon not liberated him.
“I will make sure her path crosses ours, Dhamon Grimwulf. We will slay her together.” The draconian studied him, waiting for a reply and receiving only silence.
The rain had plastered Dhamon’s long, black hair against the sides of his face and made his tan skin gleam.
He was striking and formidable looking, with intense black eyes that held mystery, a firm jaw, and a thin but muscular body that was draped in acid-ravaged clothes. Through a rent in his right pant leg, a large black scale was visible. It was shot through with a line of silver. All around it Dhamon’s skin was pink, tender-looking. Ragh had been with Dhamon when the old sage removed the smaller scales.
Dhamon was unconscious when the sage proudly told Ragh that she could remove the larger one, too, cure Dhamon completely—for a price. She said Ragh was the price, and the draconian reacted violently, slaying her and hiding her corpse. When Dhamon woke up, the draconian told him that the old woman had given up and left.
The draconian was convincing. Dhamon believed him.
Ragh felt only mildly sorry about the lie. The draconian had come to… he mulled over the words, finding like too strong, but tolerate inadequate… he had come to accept the company of the human.
Ragh appreciated Dhamon’s strength and drive. And he intended to keep him close by to aid in the matter of Nura Bint-Drax.
“She will cross our path, Dhamon Grimwulf,” the draconian repeated his vow firmly. “I promise you that. And we will slay her.” Then he lay down, and despite the rain fell quickly asleep.
Dhamon woke the draconian several hours later with a none-too-gentle nudge. “I was a fool to let us rest in the open.” It was still raining, a spitting drizzle. He nudged the draconian again. “Move, and be fast about it.”
Ragh lumbered to his feet, catching a glimpse of Dhamon’s leg. A dozen new small scales already had sprouted around the larger one. “Dhamon…”
“Fast.”
The draconian scowled to note that a puddle had deepened around him while he’d slept and that half of his body was now coated with mud. He began brushing at the dirt and mud, but Dhamon repeated the order and gestured toward the manticore, with a drenched and blank-faced Fiona already perched on its back. Then Dhamon nodded east toward the New Sea. Above it, specks of black hung like ink spatters in the dismal-looking sky.
The draconian squinted and shook his head. “You’re thinking that’s more spawn?” A growl grew from deep in his chest. “Could be birds. A flock of big ones.” But there was that prickling at the back of his neck again.
“Aye, they’re spawn.” Dhamon headed toward the manticore. “From the look on your ugly face, I don’t think I have to tell you.”
“I’d rather face such a foe on solid ground.”
Dhamon would have preferred to face the spawn on land too—Maldred was at his side, and if Fiona had her sword and her wits about her. They might stand a chance, then—a small chance. When he spotted the spawn minutes ago his first thought had been to fly on the back of the manticore to safety in the closest town. But spawn wouldn’t be deterred by a town, and their presence would only endanger the citizens there. No, the best chance was to lose them in the sky, evade a fight, something Dhamon found decidedly distasteful.