ΔV Pt. 04

"Psst!"

The voice came from the cell across from his. Kaleb frowned and stepped over. "Yeah?" he asked. He focused and tightened his eyes ever so slightly, trying to get them to narrow. Once they did so, the colors of the world bled away, and the figure in the cell bloomed with the karshko – the colors of darkness. The number of times he had seen karshko moments before some goblin son of a bitch leaped into some boarder fort he had been paid to guard went well into the hundreds and left Kaleb's stomach tightening and spine prickling. He wished he had his sword. As it was, he simply clenched his fists under his armpits.

The figure in the far cell was shorter than he – so, not an orc or oni or elf. There was enough shrouding around his head for him to have quite a bit of hair and a serious beard, but what tipped Kaleb's guess about him was the nose. It was huge.

"I see you too have fallen prey to our Draconic overlords, eh?" the gnome asked.

"What's it to you?" Kaleb asked.

"I was the mine foreman," the gnome whispered, his voice husky. "I was, until the Surlord bent his knee to the jade throne." He spat on the ground. "Then the Surlord stole my red hat."

"Your...red hat?" Kaleb asked, his brow furrowing.

The gnome nodded. "That's where I got my power."

Ah, Kaleb thought. The closer one was to the fey, the more...odd things got. The more complicated they got. The more easily power could slide from one grasping hand to another. It was one of the few things that made him glad to be born with green skin.

"If we work together..." The gnome whispered.

Kaleb laughed. "What? Do you expect me to kick the bars out with my ferocious, barbarian strength and wrest your red hat from the Surlord's offices?" He shook his head. "Have you ever seen an orc in a rage?"

The gnome stammered. "I've heard-"

"An orc in a rage is the most easily slain warrior I've ever seen," Kaleb said, leaning against it. "I've been in my merc band near on five years. I've seen two dozen hunks of fresh, green meat. Each time a battle starts, if they go into their battle rage, they break ranks, run forward, and guess what? They get cut to fucking ribbons by people who keep their shields up and their spears at the ready." He shook his head.

The gnome crossed his arms over his chest. "Well." He scoffed. "Well!"

"I know you feylings hate it when stories don't work out," Kaleb said. "But get this: Orc's in a rage are useless in a fight, oni can be bribed if you're lucky, and humans don't come soaring out of the sky in the nick of time to save you except in old stories and legends."

Which was when the unearthly scream roared through Kaleb's ears. The gnome cried out and clapped his hands over his ears and Kaleb stuck his fingers between his ears. His teeth clenched and he scowled. "What the fuck?" he snarled, turning around and craning his head upwards to look through the window, trying to get some idea of what the fuck was making that noise. He saw it a moment later: A broad, gull winged bird. For a second, he thought it was a dragon – but then he saw that the flames were coming from the wrong end. Then it was gone, flashed right past him. It hadn't beat its wings once.

"What was that!?" The gnome cried out.

Kaleb tugged his fingers out of his ears. "I...don't know," he said, slowly.

And what he didn't know definitely could fucking kill him.

Kaleb wasn't sure how long he stood there, gaping at the slowly drifting smoke-streamers that the not-dragon had left behind. He just knew that the first thing that drew his attention from the window was the sound of the guards levering open the bars in his cell. One of the oni stepped to the side and then a figure that Kaleb recognized as the local magistrate stepped up. He was dressed, no matter the weather, no matter the culture, in the outfit used by all magistrates used by the Dragon Empire: The flat topped cap, the large jade gemstone set in the middle of it, the silken robes. These were red and gold and emblazoned with coiling dragons. Under the robes, the man looked a great deal like his oni guards: Red skinned, horned, black haired. His eyes flicked over Kaleb and he nodded. "Do you wish to have your sentence commuted, thief?"

"Yeah," Kaleb said, with the same feeling he felt when Galzon asked for a volunteer to go scouting in woods filled with webnachts.

The magistrate nodded. "Our visitors have asked for a hostage. You shall serve."

Visitors? Kaleb thought. Hostage!?

"W-Whoa, wait, I'm just a merc, you can't use me as a hostage, you won't give a fuck if I get my throat slit!" Kaleb stammered, while the two oni dragged him out of the cell with the same indifferent strength they had used before.

"...yes, that...that is exactly the idea," the magistrate said, with the brutal honest that typified the Dragon Empire. "You are quite clever for a greenskin."

The oni dragged him through the city – past the crowds of people who were out, pointing at the smoke trails, muttering to one another. Several elves, as nearly naked here as they might have been in the Feylands, were already beginning to strum on lutes and play flutes. The jaunty, cheerful tune and the snatches of their song made Kaleb feel as if he was in an even more terrible nightmare. Then he was dragged past his shield brothers from the Bastards: Torin, Yark and York. The three other orcs, still clad in their street clothes, gaped at him. Yark was holding a large chicken leg in his hand, his mouth still poised open as if he was about to take a bite.

Kaleb shot them a desperate look – but then the oni were pushing him out of the front gates.

As always, the first thing that struck Kaleb when he left the walls of any city in the Sur was the vastness of the place. Endless, endless plains, endless dark forests, endless stretches of nothing between the scant few cities. It made marching through it an absolute bitch – and also, kept up a constant stream of income for mercs. There was always room for wild brigands, monsters, and worse to find places to hide, and always a burgher or a mayor or a Surlord who wanted someone other than themselves go out and clear it out.

But today, under the cold light of the sun, something new had come to the Sur.

About half a mile from the city, the not-dragon had landed. And as the magistrate, riding a snorting, slightly panicky horse, and the oni guards advanced, dragging Kaleb with them, he saw more and more detail. The not-dragon was clearly some kind of...well, it had been built, like armor or a sword. Yes, the wings were almost like a living creature, but they were more sturdy, more solid than any wyvren or roc that he had seen. The belly had opened and figured in full armor emerged. For a moment, he tried to rank them on par with noble knights: Face concealing helmets, bulky armor plating. On horseback, unstoppable. On foot, terrifying. On their backs, deliciously easy prey. Not that Kaleb had ever actually gotten a knight on their back – but old Finon loved to tell the story of the time he knifed one of them through the visor and the whole of the Bastards had sold the plate armor for more than the entire mission's purse.

As they came closer, Kaleb adjusted his attitudes down.

Then up.

Because one of the men in the heavier, bulkier armor – which looked as if it left a great deal of the arms and legs exposed between the strange wires and tubes – lifted a crate that looked as if it might have weighed a ton or more. He swung the crate out of the belly of the not-dragon and set it down, while a trio of the lighter armored figures stepped forward. Their leader was the only one not wearing a helmet.

And Kaleb immediately...instantly...fell in love.

That was the only word he could use to describe what he felt, looking at that face.

She – for she was clearly a she – had hair as blond as an elf, but the jawline and build of an orc, or something close. Her eyes were clear blue, save that one had turned milky white thanks to a massive, furrowed scar that covered her entire face. It looked as if she had faced down boiling pitch or been struck in the head by a firebolt and...was not only living, but walking. That meant she had to be the toughest bitch that Kaleb had ever met in his life. He felt utterly unmanned, imagining the infection, the fever, the sweating she had to have gone through – magic healing would have left no scar, after all. The fact she approached the group unarmed and flanked by only two guards, who were also...no, they weren't unarmed. He couldn't quite make out the weapons slung over their backs, but he was fairly certain they were some kind of majile.

The magistrate rode to within ten paces, then stopped their horse. He made a gesture and magic flared – and even someone as magic illiterate as Kaleb could recognize the most familiar cantrip, the translation spell used by half the Sur to understand the other half. The magistrate spoke, loudly and clearly: "We, of the Dragon Empire, welcome you to Cuzjagi. I am Magistrate Feng. You wished a hostage?"

The beautiful, exotic woman nodded curtly. "I am Captain Zlata Lyudmila Markova of the Russian Federation. We have come a long way to visit this land." She lifted her chin. "We desire one of your people who you are willing to part with. In exchange, we offer some trade goods that our leaders have deemed appropriate for exchange – in hope of better relationships between our two great nations."

She gestured to the crate. The crate swung open and sitting inside were the oddest looking majiles that Kaleb had ever seen: They were too narrow, and they lacked the gilt and golden luster that he was used to seeing. No gemstones, no magifocus. Instead, they were all wood and steel that had been painted a matte black. They also had strange, curved pieces of metal. Only once one of the men beside Captain Markova stepped forward and hefted up the majile did Kaleb see what the metal pieces were for. The man attached it to the bottom of the weapon, then placed it to his shoulder. Several of the other men had set up what was clearly a targeting dummy – though Kaleb had no idea how they had made it look so lifelike and real.

He waited for the man to demand the target be moved closer. Instead, the men who had set it up sprinted away.

The weapon that was not a majile opened fire.

If Kaleb hadn't been held between two Oni, he would have jerked backwards and dove for cover at the sound it made – the rata-tata-chat noise. The weapon bucked against their shoulder and a strange powder flew from the side of the weapon, dusting into the air and fading away like the smoke from a small cookfire. The front of the weapon belched far more impressive flames, and the target bust apart as if it was being struck by heavy maces. There was no blasts of searing energy. Just invisible, tearing death. In a terrifyingly short time, the target had been reduced to their strange boots.

Captain Markova turned to the magistrate. "There are twenty in the case, with five magazines each. A magazine contains a hundred shots of caseless ammunition."

"By the Dragons..." the magistrate whispered. "What...what did you call it again?"

The Captain smirked, ever so slightly. "Their name is Avtomat Kalashnikova, model 2147. We call them AK-47s for short."

The Magistrate nodded hurriedly. "How soon can we get more?"

"That will depend on how our..." She paused for a moment. "Tzar and your Emperor agree on initial demands. But I believe that it shall be easy enough to transport as many as required here – or to begin producing them locally." She smirked, slightly. "You are quite certain that we can have the territory you ask?"

"In the drakelands?" the magistrate chuckled. "I have, officially, to say that the Empire will never give over even an inch of territory to barbarians. But unofficially?" He leaned in close and whispered – either not caring or not knowing that Kaleb could hear him: "The Drakelands are so frozen most of the time that the only thing that can live there are white dragons and their kin. If you want the entire damned mass of it, who are we to complain?"

Captain Markova let a tiny little smile cross her face.

And Kaleb knew, to his bones, that the Magistrate was letting himself get royally screwed.

The magistrate and the oni began hefting off the AK-47s, while the Russians took hold of Kaleb. He was dragged up to the captain, who looked him over. She whispered, softly. "That is goddamn uncanny..." She looked him up and down. "Do you think that Dr. Ivanov will find what he is looking for with this fellow?"

One of the other soldiers shrugged. "I don't know, Captain."

"You know the translation spell is still working, right?" Kaleb asked. He felt too tired, too worn out by shock after shock to feel too much fear.

The Captain didn't start – but her two guards did snap their heads around to look at him. The Captain shook her head slowly. "Then I might as well ask you some questions. What is your name?"

Kaleb blinked. "K...Kaleb of the Plains," he said, then shook his head, trying to stand up a bit straighter. "I'm a spearorc of the Bastards. One of the best sellswords in the whole Sur."

"A mercenary?" Markova narrowed her eyes. "No wonder they were so eager to get rid of you." She smirked, slightly. "I haven't met a real mercenary in my entire life."

"Well, I've never met a human before," Kaleb said.

Markova frowned. "How do you know I'm human?"

"I've heard all the stories," Kaleb said. "My Ma would tell me if I didn't clean up after the chickens, humans might come down from the hill with their metal machines and snatch me up. And Da would scare me silly with stories about human machines – big snarling beasts that spat dragonfire, armored like behemoths. That kind of thing." He looked at the not-dragon. "I never thought you were real."

He knew it was an absurd thought. But he badly wanted to impress the exotic creature – stepped straight from legends. The hope flared inside of him as he remembered the legends his parents had told him: The seductive wiles of human women made their way into half the tales about the ancient legends. Elves were quite fond of retelling those stories – of how prodigiously fecund humans were, and how they were so utterly two faced about it, preaching of their chastity and purity, while spreading their thighs at the drop of a copper coin the next.

Markova shook her head slowly. "We are real, Kaleb of the Plains," she said. "And we're here to stay."

And with that, Kaleb was dragged aboard the Not-Dragon and his uncertain fate.

***

Qasim woke in a bed of silken sheets and heavenly soft pillows and thought to himself: God be praised, I am in heaven!

Then, damned memory came back to remind him. One did not simply awaken in the afterlife after death – there was the long time in the coffin to wait, the questioning of the angels, the great final penultimate acts of God to ready the universe for a second birth. But he remembered none of that. He had not needed to name God's prophet, nor his faith. He had not felt the fires of hell burning his feet, nor needed to walk across a narrow sword to be judged. None of it.

There had just been...

The choking breathing.

The tight grip of Ning's hand, sweaty and trembling. Her voice, lost in the scream of the wind, the tearing sound of metal. The sudden blackness. A blackness more infinite and deep than anything he had ever felt before – less like sleep and more like...nothingness. An utter nothingness that, when he thought on it, filled his bones with ice. Qasim might have laid there in the silken sheets, sweating and trembling and thinking of the infinite nothingness for hours, had it not been for the sudden pressure upon his chest. For a fleeting moment, he thought a child had crawled atop him – but then he realized it was actually something lighter, and quadrupedal.

A cat?

But then a scaly snout stuck itself up against his nose, craning over the rumpled edge of the massive blankets that shrouded Qasim. The head was narrow and almost triangular, with a flat tipped nose, a tiny horn thrusting from between slitted nostrils. It had black scales and golden eyes and a small frill of pale white hair that shrouded its head like a lion's crest. The body of the thing was cat-sized and greyhound shaped in proportion, with a pair of leathery wings folded back against its flanks and a tail nearly as long as it was, whipping eagerly from side to side. Qasim froze, not knowing if it was dangerous. Reptiles often had venom, correct?

The small creature...

Spoke.

"Good morning?" It asked in a piping, high pitched voice that rode the line between masculine and feminine.

Qasim closed his eyes.

When he opened it, the reptile was still there, still cocking his head.

"Did you damage your brain?" The creature asked, sticking its nose up against Qasim's forehead. "Sniff! Sniff!" It said as it sniffed at him, darting out its tongue. It's warm, leathery tongue. "Sniff. I don't smell any damaged brains..."

Qasim closed his eyes again.

The weight on his chest did not vanish. Instead, nimble, handlike paws mashed up against his face. "Oh no, no, no, did they mess it up? Please, don't worry, I'll fix anything that's wrong with you!" One of the creature's toes tugged on Qasim's lower lip and he lost all control.

"Auuuuuuuuh!" He sat up, flailing his arms.

The creature was gone. Gone like a popped soap bubble. Qasim looked around wildly, realizing that underneath the sheets, he was quite naked – the sheets puddled around his hips, revealing his chest to the room. The room that looked as if it had been cast in solid gold. The walls were gold. The floor was gold. The ceiling was gold. A broad, rectangular window looked out in a garden full of lilies and flowers and willow trees, complete with a small brook running from two ponds that had been artfully designed to be just large enough for sitting at without being overwhelmingly huge. A curtain wall separated that garden space from the rest of the world. The sky overhead was blue and clear of clouds, though birds did wing in the distance.

"It's gone," Qasim whispered.

"What was it?" The reptile asked, peeking its head up from behind the headboard.

"Auuuuuuuuuuuh!" Qasim leaped from the bed and scrambled backwards. His back mashed against a wall and he grabbed up a vase, hefting it up, the flowers nearly tumbling from the narrow top. The vase was made of solid porcelain and felt nicely heavy in his hands. He looked right at the reptile, willing his heart to slow its beating. To think like himself again – to be calm and impassive and stolid. It half worked. "What are you?"

"Uh..." The creature crawled up onto the headboard. "Definite brain damage. You must have gotten the loss of memory that Glorious Mendicants of the Body Divine said you might have!" It nodded. "Okay! I am..." He said, slowly. "A dra...gon."

Qasim blinked.

The small creature spread its wings. "Draaaa. Gonnnnn."

Qasim lowered the vase. "A dragon," he said.

"Yup!" The dragon said.

"You are a dragon," Qasim said.

"Yes!" The dragon did a little dance – hopping from forefeet to hindfeet to forefeet again. "Okay! Now, we can move on to introductions. I am T'ien Lung Hua Ling, Celestial Dragon of the Magnificent Dawn. Welcome to your humble abode, Glorious Prince of Heaven, whose Passage will Right the Ways of a Fallen World, and Who will Strike Down the Dark Lord from his Perch of Bones!" He spread his wings, flapped them once, then flew from the headboard to one of the small posts at the foot of the bed. "You can call me Hua for short, since we're to be bonded companions."