End Times in

Dragon CityShotguns & Sorcery Novel #3

By Matt Forbeck

Also by Matt ForbeckHard Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #1)Bad Times in Dragon City (Shotguns & Sorcery #2)

Leverage: The Con Job

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World: RevolutionMatt Forbeck’s Brave New World: RevelationMatt Forbeck’s Brave New World: Resolution

AmortalsVegas Knights

Carpathia

Magic: The Gathering comics

Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon (with Jeff Grubb)Mutant Chronicles

Star Wars vs. Star Trek

Secret of the SpiritkeeperProphecy of the DragonsThe Dragons Revealed

Blood BowlBlood Bowl: Dead Ball

Blood Bowl: Death MatchBlood Bowl: Rumble in the Jungle

Eberron: Marked for DeathEberron: The Road to Death

Eberron: The Queen of Death

Full Moon Enterprises Beloit, WI, USA

www.forbeck.com

Shotguns & Sorcery, Dragon City, and all prominent fictional characters, locations, and organizations depicted herein are Trademarks of Matt

Forbeck. © 2013 by Matt Forbeck.

All Rights Reserved.

12 for ’12 logo created by Jim Pinto.Shotguns & Sorcery logo created by Jim Pinto.

Cover illustration by Dvarg. Cover design by Matt Forbeck.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Dedicated to my wife Ann and our kids Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen. They always remind me that even the end times mean new beginnings too.

Thanks to Robin D. Laws, who encouraged me to write the first Shotguns & Sorcery story, and to Marc Tassin for asking for the second. Also to

Matthew Sprange and the rest of the crew at Mongoose Publishing for chatting with me about this setting when I thought it might make a decent

roleplaying game.

Extra thanks to Ann Forbeck for serving as my first reader and constant motivator.

Huge thanks to all the readers who backed this book and the rest in the trilogy on Kickstarter. See the end of the book for a full list of their names. Each and every one of them is fantastic, and I can only hope that this book

justifies the faith they showed in me.

12 for ’12This is the standard edition of a book first released as a reward for the backers of my second Kickstarter drive for my 12 for ’12 project, my mad plan to write a novel a month for the entirety of 2012. Together, over 330 people chipped in almost $13,000 to successfully fund an entire trilogy of Shotguns & Sorcery novels.

Thanks to each and every one of you for daring me to take on this incredible challenge — and for coming along with me on the wild ride it’s been. And thank you to all my readers, whether you’re backers or not. Stories have no homes without heads to house them.

Chapter One

“Well done, Gibson. You’ve killed us all.” The immortal Captain of the Imperial Dragon’s Guard sneered at me through the iron bars set in the wizard-locked door of my cold stone cell lodged in the highest reaches of the Garrett, the most impregnable prison in Dragon City. He was so angry at me that the tips of his pointed ears burned a bright red.

“I think we’ve known each other long enough now, Yabair. Feel free to call me Max.” I kept my back to him as I stood on the far side of the cell and gazed down through the single barred window set deep into its yard-thick walls, looking over the city splayed out below me. I might have been beaten bloody after my arrest and all the way up the mountain until Yabair and his subordinates had thrown me into this unforgiving cell, but I had to admit, it had a damn fine view.

I could see the distant spot where I’d killed the Dragon Emperor from here, a gigantic gash that he’d torn out of the rotting flesh of Goblintown, right there up against the massive stone wall known as the Great Circle. It had been a crystal-clear act of self-defense, but I knew that wasn’t going to fly with the Guard. If the Dragon Emperor wanted you dead, that superseded any other concerns. You just let it happen, laws or rights or other useless words be damned.

Not that you usually had much of a choice. I’d gotten lucky. I’d been in the right place at the right time with the right weapon in my

2 Matt Forbeck

hand, and I’d shot him in the right spot. The fact that he’d been distracted by his son — the young

dragonet who’d imprinted himself on me at the moment of his accidental hatching —  had helped. The Guard couldn’t haul in the heir to the throne, of course, even if they could have caught him, but with me they had a much wider slate of options. To my own benefit, they’d skipped over instant execution —   which I’d been half expecting — and chosen to throw me into prison instead.

What that meant for my ultimate fate, I couldn’t say. I suspected the only reason I could still breathe at all was because of the dragonet’s affection for me. Without that, I’d have been hauled off to the morgue instead.

Yesterday, that meant my remains would have wound up in the Dragon’s stomach, part of a secret agreement he’d made with Dragon City’s founders to protect them from the undead hordes of the Ruler of the Dead. Today, we’d entered new lands, and none of us had any maps nor even as much as a decent rumor of a path to go on. That meant I got tossed into the Garrett instead, at least for now.

“I didn’t pick out this cell for you by accident, Gibson,” Yabair said. “I want you to be able to look out there. I want you to be able to see what you’ve done, to bear witness to the ramifications of your crimes.”

“I shot someone who was about to eat me.” I searched my heart once more and found the same thing as I had every time since that fateful moment: not one crumb of regret.

I had some legitimate fears about what would happen next, but not only had the Dragon been about to eat me but also devour just about everyone else I’d ever cared about in the city that bore his name — or at least the name of his kind. Should I have let that happen? Would it have been better for everyone else if I had?

I couldn’t say for sure. It meant big changes ahead, the kind that could shake the mountain to its roots, but at least I stood a decent chance of being around to see them. Yabair might be able to take that away from me, but at least the Dragon couldn’t.

And he couldn’t eat any more of his loyal subjects. Not ever again.

End Times in Dragon City 3

“Look out there,” Yabair said. “Tell me what you see.” From his vantage point at the door of my cell, the elf couldn’t

enjoy the vista with me, so I decided to grant his request. “There’s smoke curling up from the spot where I shot the Emperor. Is his body hot enough that he’s self-incinerating upon his death?”

Yabair gave a cold and unfriendly laugh. “Those are rioters in the streets of Goblintown. They’re falling in on themselves in terror.”

I wanted to pretend I didn’t know what they could be afraid of. After all, the Dragon Emperor was dead, and he’d been eating their bodies for generations —  although they didn’t know that last part, of course. But I only had to let my gaze wander past the Dragon Emperor’s open grave to know what put such fear in the hearts of the toughest and most hard-bitten people in all of Dragon City.

As the sun set in the west, just beyond the stolid lines of the Night Tower that marked the far edge of the Great Circle, the undead creatures that formed the ever-hungry army of the necromancer who called herself the Ruler of the Dead gathered. I couldn’t see the base of the wall from my vantage point, but from the trails of zombies shambling toward us from the wilderness, there must have already been hundreds if not thousands of the creatures massing against the cut-stone barrier that towered above them. The wall had protected the people of Dragon City for hundreds of years, but that was because the threat of the Dragon’s wrath had kept them from coming at us in large numbers.

And now that threat — and the protection that went with it — was gone. I’d removed it myself.

“Don’t you think the wall will hold on its own?” I turned back to Yabair.

He grimaced, his anger at me sliding away as he considered the threat against our common home. “I don’t know,” he said. “The Dragon helped keep the army of dead away from us long enough for the dwarves to build the Great Circle. It’s possible it could hold on its own. Or maybe it could have back then.”

I could hear a “but” attached to that statement, and I decided to supply it. “But now?”

4 Matt Forbeck

“Now the Ruler of the Dead has had centuries to prepare for this moment. The only thing that kept her in check to this date was the presence of the Dragon. She has more minions than ever to hurl against us, and there’s little we can now do to stop her. To my mind, it’s not a matter of if the Great Circle will fall but when.”

“Don’t you think you ought to let me out of here then?” I put up a hand to stave off his reflexive protest. “No matter what I’ve done —  whether you honestly think I doomed us all or not —   I’m not doing anyone any kind of good trapped in here. Why not put me on the front lines of this battle, someplace where I could help?”

Yabair gave a soft grunt at this notion and seemed to take a moment to consider it in depth before he spoke. “If the Great Circle falls,” he said, “there’s little that you or anyone else will be able to do to stop the destruction of everything we’ve built here over the centuries.”

“But doesn’t it make sense to let me at least try?” Yabair shook his head with menacing purpose. “You don’t know

what you’ve done here.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he waved me silent. “You are too young. You humans — all of you together — are too

young. The eldest among you has lived, what? Perhaps a hundred years. You’re children, every last one of you, and you act like it, like petulant, spoiled youths who have no way to even start to comprehend what your elders and your betters sacrificed to bring you the comforts that you enjoy.

“You think that it’s hard in the Village? Or atop the Big Hill where you reside in that office of yours above that fat halfling’s restaurant? Or even down in Goblintown where we let the dregs of our society drain?”

He granted me a bit of the truth to that with a nod before he continued. “Sure, life there can be a challenge. It can be brutal and all too short. It’s unfair.

“But at least it’s life. When the Ruler of the Dead arrives — when her unstoppable armies come marching through our streets, working their way up the side of the mountain until they can claim

End Times in Dragon City 5

every inch of it from its swampy foothills to its frozen peak — then you’ll understand. Then you’ll realize how good you had it here under the Dragon Emperor’s rule for so long.

“Not only that, you’ll thank his memory for how many generations of you wouldn’t have even been whelped if it hadn’t been for him. You’ll weep for his loss. And every damn one of you — even you, Gibson — will curse the bastard that took him from us and left us all exposed to the horrors of the wider world.”

I laughed at him, and I saw his anger well up inside him and threaten to burst forth again. The only thing that prevented it from boiling straight over was the door that stood between us, protecting me as much as it kept me captive. That just made me laugh harder, so hard that I could barely breathe.

“What’s so funny?” he said, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flaring. “I put you in this cell so you can be the last of your people to go. So you can hear them curse you and your entire bloodline from one end to the other, right up until the moment some zombie tears out your throat, and you laugh?”

I wiped my eyes as I caught my breath. “The joke’s on you,” I said. “You and everyone last one of us. We think it makes a difference that we had an Emperor rather than a Ruler, right?”

He nodded at me, unsure where I was heading with that. “They both wind up devouring us, defiling us. They don’t want

us. They don’t care about us. All they need are our bodies, our remains. We’re just grist for their mills. Chickens for their pots.”

“The Dragon gave you safety. He gave you society. He gave you life.”

“My parents gave me life. My friends gave me what excuse for society I could find.”

I turned back to the window to watch the zombies herd against the wall as if someone had rung the dinner bell for them, and to see Goblintown burn. Lights from uncapped glowglobes had appeared all throughout the city to fight the coming darkness, and the streets arrayed before me sparkled like constellations in the night sky. War was coming to my city, and I wanted to be out there to fight it.

6 Matt Forbeck

“The Dragon just failed to kill me before I killed him,” I said. “And I can’t see how I should feel bad about that, not even for an instant.”

Chapter Two

Yabair left me then with nothing more than a snarl. I kept staring out the window and wondering what was happening down there, not just to Goblintown or to the Great Circle, but to my friends and family, as scattered about the place as they might be.

After I’d shot the Dragon and Yabair had arrested me, we’d sat there for a few moments, taking it all in. Belle, Cindra, and Danto had somehow escaped from the pit the Dragon had dug to get at us. Moira had slipped back into the surrounding wreckage above, disappearing into Goblintown too. Kai, now that I thought about it, had vanished in the middle of the fight.

Kells and Johan had hovered overhead for a moment in that well-armed palanquin they’d rigged together, but Yabair had started firing on them the moment they got close. I knew they meant to rescue me, but I waved them off despite that. Enough people had died that day already. I didn’t need them getting added to that total — or even Yabair for that matter.

I didn’t blame any of them for getting away. I would have done the same myself. It was one thing to take on the Dragon — who’d literally dug up a full city block to pull us out of a sub-basement. It was something else to voluntarily fight the Guard, a foe from which you could actually get away.

I hadn’t even argued the point myself. When Yabair had flown his chariot down to grab me, I’d dropped my gun and let him take me

8 Matt Forbeck

in. Sure, the fact that I’d run out of bullets and had been clinging to the side of that fresh-dug pit had more than a little to do with that.

I had thought perhaps Yabair would just haul me straight off to the Garrett, but he hadn’t been quite ready for that yet. The Dragon was inarguably dead, but there might have still been a chance for the Voice of the Dragon, the flame-robed elf who’d rode into battle in a basket suspended from a chain around the Emperor’s neck. He’d taken a number of bullets from Kells’ machine-gun, but he’d been alive enough to shout at me after that —   right up until he succumbed to his wounds.

Yabair had sent his chariot’s driver off to check on the Voice while he cuffed me and slapped me around. By the time the other elf got to the Voice though, he was long past anyone’s help.

I didn’t know that just from the way he didn’t move or the fact he’d stopped breathing though. I figured it out from how he stood straight up in that damned basket of his like there wasn’t a thing wrong with him. And then, as if that hadn’t been enough, he’d opened his mouth and laughed.

I recognized that horrible sound right away: dry and triumphant and devoid of life. I’d heard it just moments ago, emanating from the remains of Belle’s dead sister Fiera. It belonged to the Ruler of the Dead.

The guard had already recoiled from the Voice as he rose in his basket. Now the hapless bastard scrambled back so fast that he tripped over his own feet while trying to get away. He stumbled down off the pile of rubble on which the Dragon rested and tumbled head over heels all the way down into the bottom of the pit I’d just climbed out of myself.

I would have laughed that that if the sight of the Voice standing up and staring out at Yabair and myself hadn’t been so horrifying. And then the Voice opened his mouth and spoke in the tone and words of the Ruler of the Dead.

“I hope you didn’t think this was over, son of Gib,” the Ruler said. “Oh, no no no. I’m afraid it’s just beginning. As I speak through this shell —   through the former voice of your Emperor —   I’ve already

End Times in Dragon City 9

begun to summon my armies to Dragon City.”“The wall still stands,” I said, summoning up every bit of defiance

I had left in me to keep from crumbling into a trembling heap. “We’ll fight you until our last breath.”

“Oh, I’m depending on that,” the Ruler said, curling up the corners of the Voice’s mouth in a disgusting sham of a smile. “But my army will be like the tide: powerful and ceaseless. We will pound against your bulwarks, chipping away at your defenses day by day, hour by hour, until we erode them away. And the moment your insignificant levee gives way, we will rush into this pathetic settlement of yours, and we will wash you away on a tide of mayhem and blood.”

Yabair pointed his pistol at the Voice then and fired. The bullet caught the creature in the chest and knocked it back against the dead Dragon’s scaly chest.

I glanced at the Captain of the Guard. “Thanks.” He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes fixed on the basket into

which the Voice’s body had slumped. “I didn’t do it for you.” A wheezy noise came from the basket, echoing against its metal

shell. “You’ll need to be a better shot than that, Yabair,” the Ruler said, her voice rattling inside the dead elf’s chest. “The years have not been kind to your aim.”

“If I’d wanted to put the bullet between your eyes, I would have done so,” Yabair said, his words calm and assured. “For now, it’s enough to disable your unfortunate pawn.”

I understood. Yabair hoped to be able to chat with the Ruler of the Dead through the Voice’s body, but that would mean playing a dangerous game. He might want to trick her into revealing something that the Guard could use against her and her army, but it seemed to me just as likely that he or one of his soldiers would slip up and accidentally give her an advantage instead.

“Not a word, Gibson,” he said to me, “or you’ll suffer a similar fate.”

That had made me shudder all the way back to my cell.

Chapter Three

I was still shivering with thought of the Ruler of the Dead as night fell across Dragon City. Or maybe that was just the cold that seeped into me through my cell’s cut stone floor. The jailers there hadn’t provided me with a pot to piss in, much less a blanket to stave off the evening’s chill.

It was cold enough at the Garrett’s altitude during the day, but I could see my breath fogging the air in the little bit of moonlight that filtered in through my cell’s glassless window. Yabair had thrown me into the highest and most isolated of the cells, which sat atop a lonely tower that stabbed out from the mountain’s highest crag shy of the Dragon’s Spire itself. The wind howled around it like a banshee, its wailing harmonizing with that of an actual ghost secreted away somewhere in the prison’s lower levels.

As you went down through the prison’s levels, the cells became less like rooms with a view and more and more like actual tombs. By the time you reached the bottom, you’d find yourself inside of rooms reputedly more secure than even the dwarves’ Vault, which hunkered deep in the heart of the Stronghold. Maybe I should have been grateful I’d not been locked up in one of those living graves, but at least then I’d have been warm.

Yabair had confiscated my wand, but like any other wizard, I didn’t need it to cast spells so much as focus and direct them. I didn’t have much mojo left after the day I’d had, though, and the

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Garrett had been ensorcelled to be proofed against all sorts of magic. I took a gamble though, and I laid my hands on a section of the floor beneath me and muttered a few secret words. It began to glow with a soft light and — better yet — a hint of warmth. I curled up on top of it and tried to find sleep.

The winds seemed to carry the noises from the city below right up to my window though. I could hear people screaming in the distance. Gunshots seemed to echo from all over the place, coming in sporadic bursts. And the dull roar of the zombies’ groans as they battered themselves against the Great Circle rose and fell like the waves of a raging sea.

Sleep still hadn’t found me when I heard the door to my cell unlock with the grating of metal on metal, followed by a solid click. I considered pretending to be asleep, but I didn’t see how that would grant me much of an advantage. In any case, I was too curious to just lie there, so I spun about, sat up, and waited.

The door creaked open on rusty hinges that maybe hadn’t seen oil since before I was born. Someone slipped inside then and shut the door behind her. “Good evening, Max,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Not long enough, Alcina.” I suppressed an urge to get up and choke whatever resembled life out of her.

She stepped into the moonlight streaming in through the window, and she was just as gorgeous as ever, a stunning, raven-haired beauty with violet eyes and porcelain skin. The sight of her stole my breath away —   not because of her looks but because she was supposed to be imprisoned in one of the most secure cells in the Garrett.

I ought to know. I put her here. “Is that anyway to treat an old lover?” she said, running a delicate

finger across her pale lips. “I thought we’d meant something more than that to each other, once upon a time.”

I pushed myself to my feet and kept my back toward the wall with the window in it. “We didn’t exactly end our relationship on a good note.”

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“Oh, that?” she said. “It’s all water under the bridge, Max. Long forgotten, I’m sure.”

“I still remember.” She’d tried to rip my throat out. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was going to forget.

She flashed a coy smile at me. It showed all her teeth, including the fangs that stabbed down where her canines should have been. “I don’t blame you for dumping me,” she said. “I might have done the same thing myself, in my breathing days. You should know, though, that I never meant you any harm.”

“That’s not how I remember it.” She smiled. “Not in the long run, silly. Sure, it might have hurt at

first — a lot, even — but you’d have gotten over it. And you’d have been so much better after you joined me.”

“For the last time, no thanks.” She pouted at me, feigning hurt feelings she didn’t really have.“What are you doing here, Alcina?” I said. “This can’t be a social

visit.”“Why can’t it? It’s not like you get up here to my shelf of the

mountain all that often, right? I thought I’d take the opportunity to offer you a proper welcome.” She edged toward me.

“You’re a prisoner, not a jailer.” I stepped backward as nonchalantly as I could manage.

It was an old reflex, wanting to keep my back against the wall. It wasn’t like she, as a lone person, could circle around behind me without me noticing. She was so damned fast it wouldn’t likely matter anyhow. I’d been damn lucky to get the drop on her the last time we’d met, and I’d been prepared, with my gun and wand in hand.

Right then, I don’t think I’d ever felt so naked in my entire life. “That’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?” she said. “I reside here,

that much is true, but it is at my choice and under my conditions.” I had a strong urge to call for a jailer then, but if what she said was

true, it wouldn’t do me a lick of good. I’d only seen one of them once so far, when he’d come to bring me a bowl of cold gruel and a mug of dirty water for my dinner. He’d been a cruel-faced man

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who’d not said a single word to me, just sniggered at my plight. I didn’t think he’d be much help to me either way.

“I’ve been stuck in this prison for years now, Max,” Alcina said, a vicious smile on her face. “How long did you think it would take until I was running things here?”

I shrugged. “To be honest, I hadn’t given it — or you —  much thought.”

“That’s so human of you.” She pulled a glassy globe from a pocket in her skirts, where she must have been holding it the entire time, and she gazed into it, watching the moonlight catch and refract in it. “You people never think of the long-term effects of your actions, do you? It’s always about what works for you at the moment instead.”

“That’s hardly fair. Weren’t you human once too?” “That was a long time ago, love, but that’s why I know.” “Maybe it’s been too long,” I said. “It’s been so many years since

you drew your last breath you’ve forgotten what it’s like.” I’d meant that as an insult, but from the way Alcina smiled at my

words, you’d never have guessed it. “Isn’t that exactly how you got yourself tossed in here in the first

place? Thinking for today, and tomorrow be damned?” “You’d rather I thought like an elf? Or a dragon?” “They’ll all likely live a lot longer than you.” “Tell that to the Emperor. I’m sure he’d love to hear it.” She peered at me, curiosity dancing in her eyes. She’d looked at

me like that back when we’d been dating too. It had taken me a long time to realized that she’d been sizing me up for a meal. The only thing that had saved me then was that she liked to play with her food.

“Are you saying you’ll live longer than the Dragon?” She giggled. “Such bravado.”

“I’m here, and he’s not.” I shrugged. “Those two facts are tightly connected. I may not live longer than him by the number of years, but I’ve already lived later. Since I was never going to rival the centuries he spent here, I’ll have to satisfy myself with that.”

She twirled the glassy ball between her fingers, and it sparkled in

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the moonlight. “What’s that?” I asked, which I knew was just what she wanted

me to do. “A present,” she said. “From Yabair.” That got my attention. “Couldn’t he just give it to me himself? He

knows where I am.” “He could have,” Alcina said, “but he left it to me.” She tossed me

the ball. I caught it, grateful I was able to react fast enough, before it

landed on the stone floor and shattered into a million useless pieces. Wary of what it might be and what it could do, I refused to look into it and kept my eyes trained on Alcina instead.

“Don’t you want to use it?” I shook my head. “I don’t think I need anything you or Yabair is

willing to offer me.” “Hold on to that thought,” Alcina said. “You’ll come to regret it.” I hefted the globe in my hand. It was bigger than my fist, and I

could barely fit my fingers around it. I had an idea what it was and why she’d given it to me, and if I was right I didn’t want to mess around with it. I whipped it at her head instead.

She dodged out of the way with inhuman speed. She was fast enough to avoid the incoming globe, but not to catch it. It zipped straight past her and smacked into the stones of the far wall.

Rather than shatter, though, it bounced off the wall with a clunk and dribbled back in my direction. Alcina laughed at me as she threaded her way back out through the door behind her.

I leaped for the door as it closed, but I wasn’t able to get my foot wedged between it and the jamb before Alcina yanked it shut. I heard the thick sound of its the lock’s bolt being thrown.

“Be careful of what you toss aside, Max,” she said to me through the cell door’s bars — which made me feel safe from her for the first moment since she’d arrived. “You never know how useful it might prove. You have a hard road ahead of you, and you’re bound to need all the help you can get, no matter from which quarter it might come.”

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With that, she melted away into the darkness of the hallway beyond, leaving me there alone with my thoughts and that damn crystal ball on the floor.

Chapter Four

I resisted picking up the crystal ball for as long as I could. The noises continued to rise up from the city though and kept me awake, and my mind kept concocting all sorts of wild stories about who or what had made the noises and why. After fighting it for the better part of an hour, I gave in.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of the crystal ball itself. They were hard to come by, sure, especially ones as sturdy as this particular model, but I knew how to operate it just fine. That was the kind of thing they taught first-year apprentices at the Academy, and while school might have been a distant memory for me, I recalled enough of what I’d learned there to be able to fire the damn thing up and get it working.

What bothered me, though, was why Alcina had given me the crystal ball and whether or not she’d really done so with Yabair’s blessing or that of the Garrett’s jailers. The fact that she could just walk in and out of my cell with impunity put me on edge. I’d figured at that the least I’d be safe inside the Garrett — at least from everyone except Yabair and the jailers. I’d never guessed I might have to worry about the other inmates.

I’d put a fair number of people in this place over the years, and I didn’t relish the thought that any of them might be able to take advantage of the confusion and terror gripping the rest of the city to take their revenge on me. It was bad enough just having to deal with

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Alcina. As Yabair had intimated, he’d have to look long and hard to find anyone in the city who would miss me if I died tonight, and I can guarantee you he could skip right over the Garrett to save himself time.

So I put my back against the door and sat down in front of it, then gathered the crystal ball into my lap and peered into it.

Some people liked to lock their crystal balls with catchphrases you had to mutter to get them going. Most of them were things like “Show me” or “Let’s see what we can see” or some other abracahooey, but this one hadn’t been magically locked. As soon as I concentrated on its darkened surface, a light grew inside of it, beckoning to me.

I concentrated on what I wanted to see most, and nothing happened. I’d hoped to have Belle’s face leap into focus inside the glass, but the ball wasn’t attuned to her — and I didn’t have enough control over it to force it to find her — so it came up blank. I’d have to try something else.

Rather than think of a person —  which was hard to find because they rarely stayed in one place —  I mentally conjured up an image of the Quill instead. This time, the light that glowed inside of the crystal changed to the color of the glowglobes I had hanging all around the bar, and the main room snapped into sharp focus. I spotted Thumper behind the bar, right where he was supposed to be, but the place stood mostly empty.

At this hour, the bar should have been hopping with activity. It would have been on just about any other night. Today, though, most of the chairs remained resting upside down on their tables, indicating that Thumper had never opened the bar up to the public today.

I couldn’t say I blamed him. We’d had a terrible day there, and by the time he would have been thinking about opening up the Quill’s doors for the evening, word should have reached him of the Dragon’s death and at whose hand the Emperor had died. I mentally moved the viewpoint about the room and saw that he’d barred the doors from the inside.

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I turned the viewpoint back to the bar area, and I saw Thumper talking to someone. The ball didn’t allow me to listen in on the conversation, but that was probably by design. For one, it was damned hard to create a crystal ball that could not only spy on anyone in the city but listen in on them as well. They were rarer than tombstones around here.

For two, I felt sure that Alcina didn’t want me to be able to set up communications with anyone outside of my cell. It was one thing to let me watch my home city burn. She knew how that would tear me up inside. But if I could hear my friends’ voices, I might have taken some kind of comfort from them, and that was something that Alcina couldn’t tolerate.

Despite that, my heart leaped when I saw that Thumper was talking to a group of people sitting at my table in the bar. They included Moira, Kells, Cindra, Kai, and — best of all — Belle. They looked grim as they discussed topics I could only guess at. They were battered, scratched, and muddy, and some of them had been badly bloodied, but they were there.

And they were alive — at least for now. They spoke to each other with purpose. Belle seemed angry about

something, but I could only guess what it might be. Moira looked as scared as I’d ever seen her. She kept massaging the stump of her wrist and glancing at the thick length of wood that barred the front door,  as if it held both promise and peril. Cindra moved her arms with energy and abandon as she spoke, only settling down for a moment when Kells reached out and took her hand in a tender grasp.

Kai looked pissed. I’d known him for years, and I’d often seem him angry about one thing or another. When you’re an orc living in Dragon City, there’s plenty to be mad about. Right then, though, he looked like he wanted to snatch up his shotgun, march down to the Great Circle, and take on every last member of the Guard there, just to prove a point. He seethed with fury that he couldn’t begin to comprehend how to control, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before he gave up trying.

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I wondered where the rest of them were. Danto was missing, as were Johan and Schaef. I wasn’t surprised about the dwarf and the halfling. They weren’t part of our original crew, after all, as much help as they’d been over the past couple weeks.

Danto’s absence, though, worried me. I’d expected him to be with the others. Had he been hurt while escaping from the Guard? Had the Dragon killed him without me noticing it? Or was he just busy somewhere else?

I decided to take a peek into his tower, and with a few mental acrobatics, the viewpoint inside the crystal ball shifted to the main room of his place. I didn’t see him there, but I spied his apprentices rushing back and forth, shouting at each other about all sorts of things. I recognized the looks on their faces right away: determined yet scared. They were preparing for a fight, perhaps even war.

Danto had shielded the rest of his tower from prying eyes like mine. Even with as wonderful a specimen of a crystal ball as this, I couldn’t spy any further into his place. After casting around for him on the lower floor for a few minutes, I gave up.

I decided to try the Wizards Council instead, but the Academy had just as many seals protecting it as Danto had placed upon his home, perhaps more. Still, I was able to peer into the main courtyard, where I could see seasoned wizards shouting at green apprentices, ordering all sorts of preparations to be made. The young wizards there —   the students —  wore the same looks of terrified stubbornness that I’d seen among Danto’s apprentices.

The older wizards, though, all looked plain terrified instead. They knew all too well what they were about to face, and from the pain on their faces, I could tell that few of them believed the city would survive. The best they could do was delay the inevitable, if only for their students’ sakes.

These were only the wizards charged with supervising the apprentices. The wisest of their kind were missing, probably sequestered in the council’s chambers, arguing about what to do. I wondered if my father was among them and if he’d heard that it was me who’d killed the Dragon.

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I didn’t know what he might think of that, but I suspected if he’d been able to visit me, he’d have shaken his head and given thanks that my poor mother hadn’t survived long enough to witness this horrible disaster their only child had heaped upon the Gibson family name. That might sound harsh, but he’d done that exact thing the day I’d left the Academy, ignoring the question of whether I’d quit or been expelled, much less the reasons why. That had been the final wedge driven between us: the idea that I was such a rotten son that it was a good thing that my mother was dead.

We hadn’t spoken much since. Despite that, I found myself worrying about what might happen to him now. Would the rest of the council find some way to lay the blame for my actions at his feet, no matter how unfair that might be? Would he join the fight against the Ruler of the Dead’s army of the unliving, or would he figure out a way to get ferried to the coast instead? Not that it would be much safer there in the long-abandoned seaside village of Watersmeet, but with the Ruler rallying her forces around Dragon City, there might be a chance to find a half-rotted boat there and escape.

What kinds of plans would the Wizards Council explore? Would they stand and fight? Would they reinforce the Great Circle with their might? Or would they send a desperate plea for help to one of the rare skyships that sometimes brought visitors and trade from distant lands to our ravaged shores?

Could they amass a shred of hope in their collective heart, or had they already given up?

Either way, it seemed the fates of both Danto and my father would remain a mystery for now. Frustrated, I decided to do what I’d been trying to avoid ever since Alcina had left me alone with the crystal ball. I turned my attention to the Dragon’s corpse and the Great Circle just beyond.

Chapter Five

I found the Dragon’s body right where I’d left it, the massive corpse sprawled out across the lip of the gash that he’d torn into the city’s flesh. The Guard had set up a perimeter around the cadaver and marked it off with extra-bright glowglobes, defying the shroud of night that would have otherwise enveloped it. From above I could see that it covered more than a city block, which even down in Goblintown made for a lot of ground for a single creature.

The Guard had roped off the Emperor’s corpse with a silver chain I’m sure was enchanted from one end to the other. Maybe it was there to keep the Ruler of the Dead from taking over the Dragon’s corpse. Or it could have been some kind of elf idea of funeral decoration.

I don’t know the last time anyone had tried to bury a dragon. Of course, we hadn’t had any burials in Dragon City ever, as far as I knew. It had been all cremations or — as I’d recently discovered — a spot on the Dragon’s dining table for centuries, ever since the Imperial Pact had been forged.

We were in new territory here, at least for most residents of Dragon City. The Dragon Emperor had ruled over the city since its founding, and we knew little of any kind of life without him. Some of the elves here were old enough to remember what the proper thing to do with a dead body was, but even they probably hadn’t had a lot of experience with getting rid of a corpse that must have

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weighed several tons. I don’t know if the Dragon was unique or not. The existence of the

dragonet pointed to not, of course, but I’d never seen or even heard of another dragon of any kind outside of the legends parents told children to scare them into staying in their beds all night. There were other eggs besides the one the dragonet had hatched from, I knew, but I didn’t have any idea who had them or what could be done with them.

Then the real reason the Guard had fenced off the body with a silver chain struck me. The Dragon was the greatest source of dragon essence in the entire city. A single scale from his armored hide was worth more than most people made in a year. If you added up the value of his corpse, it might be enough to purchase the entire rest of Dragon City, and it was just sitting out there in the open.

Worse yet, it lay in Goblintown. Every bastard who’d ever felt the Dragon had done him wrong not only had a chance to literally get a piece of the Emperor’s hide but also to make a fortune out of whatever he could carry away. The fact that the corpse wasn’t swarming with goblins stunned me.

Then I remembered the zombies gathering against the Great Circle, right there in easy earshot of the Dragon’s corpse. Anyone who got close enough to the cadaver to pluck a scale from it wouldn’t be able to escape the rising tide of groans and moans and ever-more-insistent scratching and pounding and wailing washing up against that massive wall. That might be enough to scare even the greediest ogre away — at least for now.

I was about to turn away when I spotted something come flapping in from the moonlit sky. For a moment it hung framed against the silvery sphere itself: bat-like wings spread wide, lizard-like head darting forward, prehensile tail arcing down below it. I knew it in that instant.

The dragonet had arrived to check on his father’s corpse. He dove down out of the darkness and pulled up at the last

moment to perch upon his father’s shoulder. Some of the guards turned and pointed at him, and one of them raised his wand at the

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dragonet. Another guard slapped the weapon down and with a single disgusted glare shamed the would-be attacker into putting his wand away.

They didn’t take their eyes off the little guy though, watching him with as much curiosity as me as he crept sideways along his father’s massive shoulder. Once the dragonet reached the hollow of the Dragon’s neck, he dropped his head forward and nuzzled up against the cold and still corpse as if he might somehow manage to rouse the Emperor from a long and dreamless sleep. He kept at this for a long while, flames dribbling from his nostrils as he snuffled against the cadaver’s scales.

In the end, frustrated with the lack of response from the Dragon, the dragonet drew back his head and breathed fire at the Emperor’s neck. He bathed the Dragon’s throat with golden blazes, sweeping his flames back and forth, but the corpse didn’t respond with even the slightest twitch.

The dragonet threw back his head then and hurled himself up into the sky. Once he was a dozen yards above his fallen father, he snapped his snout back down and unleashed every bit of fire he had in his belly at the Dragon’s chest.

The guard who’d had his wand out before went for it again. This time the guard who’d stopped him before slugged him across the jaw, knocking him sprawling away from the pit. None of the other guards did a damn thing to stop him.

The dragonet’s fire brought the scales on the Dragon’s chest to a glowing-hot broil. Once the little guy let up with his incinerating onslaught, I could see that the Dragon’s scales there had fused together under the tremendous heat. Despite that, they still held.

And still the Dragon lay dead. I saw the dragonet spiral away up into the air then, unleashing a

howl that chilled my blood. At first I wondered how I could hear such a plaintive wail through the silenced crystal ball. Then I realized that it had been so loud that it had reached my cell’s window from all the way down the mountain. A moment later, I realized the sound of that anguished cry had also echoed through

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my mind. It’s all right, I thought as hard as I could. It’ll be all right.I didn’t know what I was doing. The idea that I could speak to the

dragonet telepathically was too new. We’d only managed it once, and that was right before I’d shot the Dragon dead. I wasn’t sure I hadn’t just imagined it.

Right after that, the dragonet had disappeared. I’d been too busy not getting killed by Yabair to be too bothered by it at the time. I had assumed the little guy could take care of himself. If he could survive getting backhanded over the wall by the Dragon, he could handle anything the Guard could throw at him. It wasn’t until I’d been brought up to the Garrett that I’d started to wonder just where he’d gotten off to.

I tried to follow him with the crystal ball, but the night was too dark and he was too fast. He disappeared before I could even track the direction in which he might be headed. I scanned the sky for him for a few moments but soon gave it up as a waste of time.

Since I had the crystal ball’s point of view already up in the air over the Dragon’s corpse, I turned it away from the city instead. The Great Circle stood there before me, the crenellated parapet that topped the high stone wall lit up from one end to the other. The bright, glowing line cut through the darkness like a magical border someone had drawn on a map, separating Dragon City from the encroaching dangers beyond.

On most nights, the guards on top of the wall would patrol the dimly lit walkway that stretched along it — which was wide as any road in town — keeping an eye out for the random creature trying to mount it. Most times a sharp-eyed lookout in the Night Tower to the west or the Day Tower to the east would spot any such creatures before they got even halfway up the high, sheer wall of the finest dwarf-cut stone. The snipers there often made a game of seeing how many shots it took to knock such a damn thing away. They got extra points if their targets died — well, ended — before they hit the rocky ground below.

Tonight, though, every guard from both the Imperial Dragon’s

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Guard and the Auxiliary Guard had been called to arms. They lined the wall from one end to the other, fixed at posts overlooking the drop to the foothills beyond. Most of them carried rifles, but some of them had bandoliers of grenades strapped across their chests as well.

Others —  mostly elves —   bore wands out and ready in their hands. A few of these flew in two-guard teams flying chariots or carpets fitted with straps for tight aerial maneuvers. One of them took the controls while the other zapped spells down at the creatures threatening their city.

Not that they were doing much good. In the beams of magical light that swept down from the parapets

and towers, I could see thousands of the walking dead massing up against the wall. From this height, they moved like a creeping rot oozing toward the city, threatening to surround, envelope, and devour it. The attacks the Guard hurled at them caused the edges of that ooze to recoil where they struck, but the mass of creatures only pulled back for a moment before advancing again.

I zoomed down to get a closer look at this filthy disease that threatened to swallow the wall, the exposed bits of which glinted like the shaft of a sword in the moonlight. It was composed of bodies in various states of rot and disrepair, each and every one of them long dead. They crawled over each other like ants, using their collected bulk to build ladders from their bones and shredded flesh that the ones that came after them could use to climb higher and higher.

It seemed impossible that the lands outside of Dragon City held so many corpses, but I’d heard the legends of the thriving civilizations that had once sprawled there. They’d been filled with millions of souls before the Ruler of the Dead had triumphed over them. As far as we knew, Dragon City was the only holdout of life on the entire continent.

That put all of those dead bodies at the Ruler’s disposal. Something about her magic, her control of them, must have kept the creatures from falling apart. Otherwise, they should have all rotted

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away to bones and dust long ago. Instead, she’d preserved them in their horrifying state of undeath for untold centuries.

Given enough time, I had no doubt that the Ruler’s army of the dead would be able to surmount the wall, and soon after that happened, the city would be theirs. I wondered if the Ruler of the Dead had tried something like this before, in the city’s early days. If so, I imagined that the Dragon would have taken to the air and swept the wall clear with his cleansing flames. After enough failures, even the Ruler of the Dead would have given the assault up as a bad job and contented herself with lying in wait.

Now that the Dragon was gone, though, there was no reason for her not to try her luck again. Without our great protector, it fell to the Guard and the people of Dragon City to stop the advance this time — if we could.

The way the dead kept crawling up the wall, clawing their way higher and higher over each other, I had to admire the Guard and their resolve. I could only hope that their leaders had some other plan in the works instead of just trying to hold the wall with rifles and wands. Otherwise, those brave people would be the first among us to die — and join the Ruler’s ranks.

Chapter Six

I was still staring at the surging tide of death threatening to top the Great Circle when I heard the sound of wings beating at the window of my cell. I dropped the crystal ball, and it clanked away from me, the vision it had brought me falling with it. I rushed to the window and spotted him there: the dragonet.

He gave a little, high-pitched roar of glee when he saw me, and he perched there on the sill of my window, clutching at the bars with his upper claws. I reached through the bars and stroked his head, and he nuzzled up against my touch.

Voice, he said in my head. My Voice.I knew instantly what he meant. His words were less like words

and more like wholly fleshed concepts. I couldn’t have misunderstood him if I’d tried.

“No,” I said out loud. “I’m not your Voice. For one, I can’t wear a burning robe, right?”

I am the Dragon. That one shocked me a bit. I pulled my hand away from him, then

reached out and raised the end of his snout so I could look him in the eyes. “No,” I said. “The Dragon was your father.”

That word “was” felt strange in my mouth, but I knew that he would understand me completely.

The Dragon is dead. Long live the Dragon. I shook my head at the little guy. “It doesn’t have to be that way.

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You’re too young to be an emperor. You’re not ready for it.” The city needs an emperor. It needs the Dragon. I nodded at that. Having just seen the Ruler of the Dead’s army

massing against the city’s wall, I couldn’t deny the truth of the dragonet’s thoughts. “The Dragon’s gone. We can’t rely on him anymore. We have to defend ourselves instead.”

Is the city ready for that?“I honestly don’t know.” Then I must be the Dragon. You must be the Voice.“The Dragon and his Voice are dead. We aren’t them. We can’t

replace them.” We must. “It took the Dragon decades to grow to his full size. Maybe

centuries. You’re not even two weeks old. And me, I’m no ancient elf.”

Who am I if not the Dragon?“That,” I said, more to myself than to the dragonet, “is an excellent

question. I’m looking forward to figuring that out with you. Maybe someday you’ll be like your father. Maybe you’ll be something entirely different. All I know is you’ll be you.”

Who am I? “You’re you.” I knew what he meant. I just didn’t have a better

answer for him. What’s my name? I rubbed my chin and looked at the little guy. The moonlight

streamed in around him, silhouetting him in the window and against the bars that kept him out of my cell and me in. He snuffled at me, and fire edged from his nostrils, casting him in a warm and golden light.

“I don’t know how that works with dragons,” I said. “With most people, parents name their kids right after they’re born.”

My father never named me. “Do you have any idea about your mother?” He shook his head at me, his snout wobbling back and forth. Not

at all. She might be dead too.

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I reached through the bars and scratched him behind his ears. “I’m not your parent,” I said.

You’re all I have. “Did the Dragon even have a proper name?” I asked. “He couldn’t

have always been known as ‘the Dragon,’ right? I mean, that’s more of a title or a type than a name.”

That’s all I knew him by. I shrugged. “I suppose we have lots of names in our lives: child,

parent, purpose.” You are Freelance?I smiled. That’s what had been stenciled on the door of my office

before it had been destroyed. I wondered how he knew that. Could he read my mind? Did he somehow see that while he was still inside his egg? Or had someone just told him?

“I am,” I said. “Still.” What is Freelance? “It means I work for myself, and I hire my services out to others as

I like. I make my own decisions. I take responsibility for my actions. I’m my own boss.”

Not the Dragon? I sighed. “Not anymore, for sure.” Give me a name. “I don’t know if I should. I don’t know if that’s my place.” The Dragon is dead. You are all I have. I couldn’t help but grimace at that. I’d killed the little guy’s only

parent. I suppose if I hadn’t felt responsible for him before, I’d earned every damn bit of it now. His imprinting on me had been an accident, after all, a case of serendipitous timing, but with the death of the Dragon he had no one else left in his life. No one he could trust.

No one but me. “All right.” I stepped back and looked at him in full. He was a handsome

creature in his own way, a tiny version of his father, a creature of ineffable power. Although he wasn’t the Dragon, he held that

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potential within him. He was not the great conflagration, the unstoppable fire. Not yet.

“You’re the spark,” I said. “Not the fire but the fire starter.” Spark. The dragonet moved his long head from side to side as he

contemplated that, as if he was rolling the thought around inside his brain. I like that. I am Spark.

Through the bars of my cell, I leaned forward and put my head up against his and held it there for a moment, smiling the entire time. “Hello, Spark,” I said. “I can’t tell you how good it is to know you.”

Chapter Seven

After the dragonet — Spark, I mean — left, I finally managed to grab some shut-eye. I stuffed the crystal ball into my jacket pocket, curled up on my warmed-up spot on the floor, and did my best to ignore the sounds wafting through my window from the battle slowly being met below.

By the time morning came filtering in through my window, the stone slab below me had cooled, and the chill from it had crept into my bones. I rose shivering to the sound of another bowl of cold gruel being shoved through a slot at the bottom of my cell door. I ignored the pasty slop but got to my feet and began pacing my cell in an effort to restore some circulation to my limbs.

I could have cast another spell on the floor to warm it, but I wanted to save whatever mojo I had. I was stuck inside that cell, but with the Ruler of the Dead knocking on the Great Circle, I had no idea how long that would last. If a rallying call came that I could answer, I needed to be sure I was ready for it.

Barring that, I was determined to go down fighting, whether that meant struggling against my jailers or battling until my last breath against the walking dead as they tore down the door to my cell. Yabair had taken my dragonfire flask along with my wand and gun when he’d arrested me. I only had myself to rely on, and that meant conserving my energies for when I might need them most.

While Alcina had brought me the crystal ball, I wasn’t convinced

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my actual jailers were in on that fact, so I kept it hidden in case they wandered by to check in on me. It seemed prudent. When I was sure they weren’t around, I went to the window and pulled it out of my pocket to gaze into it again, keeping my body between it and the door to my cell.

The sight of the city hauled me up short before I could look into the globe though. While Dragon City had seemed almost peaceful under the blanket of night, the harsh light of day conspired to expose all of its troubles.

Smoke curled into the sky from at least a dozen different fires scattered throughout the city. No neighborhood seemed untouched, from Goblintown all the way up to the Elven Reaches. I couldn’t see the Dragon’s Spire above me, but I wondered if the Ruler of the Dead’s reach had managed to reach even that high.

I suspected that the Ruler’s army of the dead wasn’t behind every bit of destruction I could see. The panic that the approach of her forces inspired would be enough to set people against each other. Tenuous peaces would be shattered. Old grudges would reawaken. Long-buried suspicions would be dug up again.

It almost made me glad to be trapped in that cell. At least the Great Circle seemed to have held through the night.

From my vantage point, I could see bursts of magic and flashes of gunfire lancing along it, but they were all still pointed outward. The walkway along the top of the wall held only the living, as far as I could tell, and the wall remained unbreached.

Then my gaze wandered past the Great Circle, and my heart stopped cold in my chest.

The Guard had long ago cleared the forest away from the Great Circle to give themselves plenty of time to spy any walking dead shambling our way. That bare land between the wall and the woods beyond now teemed with creatures shuffling toward Dragon City. Past them, the woods shivered and trembled as untold numbers of the dead crept through the undergrowth there, answering the Ruler of the Dead’s silent rallying cry.

From as high up as my cell stood in the Garrett and on the

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mountain, I could see for miles. Beyond that patch of forest, lines of the dead snaked at the city, marching toward us from distant lands long unknown. They grew thicker as they came closer, and there seemed to be no end to them.

I was still staring out at the death-packed plains beyond Dragon City when I heard someone at the door to my cell. I spun about and stuffed the crystal ball into my pocket. A moment later, a dwarf jailer with a short-cropped beard opened the door and let in the last person I wanted to see.

My father. He looked haggard and disheveled, as if he hadn’t slept for days.

He’d aged overnight, the wrinkles on his face now deeper and more desperate, carving his disapproving frown so deep into his face that I wondered if his jaw cave under the pressure. He seemed so much like he might fall over at any moment that I wanted to offer him a hand, even though I was the one who’d spent the night in the Garrett.

“Hello, Max,” he said, his voice rough and worn, his eyes watery. “How are they treating you?”

“I’ve slept in worse places,” I said. “But not by much.” He nodded at me, then averted his eyes. “That’s good, I suppose.” “Are you here to bail me out?” It was a joke and a bad one, and I knew it. You didn’t get bailed

out of the Garrett. You stayed here until you were brought before the Dragon — at his leisure — and then you were sentenced. With the Dragon dead, I might wind up in there for the rest of my life, no matter how short that might be.

He recoiled at the idea, goggling at me. “What? No. No!” The vehemence of his denial seemed to shock even him, and he took a moment to collect himself. “I just came here to — well, to talk.”

I folded my arms across my chest, all the better to hide the bulge of the crystal ball in my pocket. Behind my father, the jailer closed the door with a firm slam. The noise made my father jump

“What about?” I asked. He’d turned to give the door a longing look, and he came back to

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me as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of a deep thought. “What’s that?”

“What did you want to talk about?” He steeled himself before he tried to open his mouth, and then he

failed to follow through. His lips parted, but no sound emerged from between them. He bowed his head, his cheeks flushing red, and then tried again.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” He said it as if it was an honest question, so I decided to treat it as

such. “I’ve been appraised of the consequences of my actions.” “So you’ve seen the Ruler’s army massing outside the wall?

You’ve seen the fires burning throughout the city? You know —” He had to stop to swallow, fear shimmering in his eyes. “You know that we’re all doomed?”

Too many responses leaped to mind. I didn’t know how to choose among them. I went with the one that shouted loudest in my head.

“Did you know that the Dragon ate Mom?” He froze, and I could see by the way his gaze darted toward the

door that he understood exactly what I meant. “You knew, and you didn’t do anything about it. You never said a

word in protest, did you?” “Now, hold on. This isn’t about me.” “What’s wrong with you?” I found my voice rising as I spoke to

him. “The Dragon ate my mother — your wife. He ate your parents and hers too. And theirs too. All the way back to the founding of the city. And you’re all right with that?”

He frowned even deeper at me. If you’d asked me beforehand, I would have sworn that wasn’t possible. “They were already dead, Max. They would have been incinerated anyway.”

“Respectfully. Not served up on silver platters so that bastard could pick his teeth with their bones.”

“And for that you killed him?” My father’s voice cracked as he spoke. “For that, you took your petty little revenge on him?”

“Of course not. He was trying to eat me too. While I was still breathing!”

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My father’s eyes grew wide with horror, and his reply caught in his throat. I pressed on.

“He was going to kill Belle and eat her too, because her parents couldn’t produce her sister’s corpse. Do you get how insane that is?”

“An undead elf is a mortal threat,” he said, his voice much softer now.

“You don’t have to tell me that. But how does killing an innocent elf change that? All it did is fill that fat lizard’s belly with what he cared about most: people meat.”

My father threw up his hands. “But without the Dragon, we’re all dead. Of course it was a bad deal — an awful, horrible deal —  but now instead of the Dragon eating our dead, the Ruler will eat us all!”

“We’ve had hundreds of years to prepare for this. We built the Great Circle since then, right?”

My father put his hands over his face. “At least your mother wasn’t here to see —” 

I stabbed a finger straight into his chest. “Stop it, Dad. Stop it right damn there.”

He opened his mouth to protest, and I stuck my finger in his face instead.

“You say one more word about how fortunate it is that my mother isn’t here to be as ashamed of me as you are, and I’ll shove you through the bars in that window over there before the guards can stop me.”

He glanced over my shoulder at the window and took note of how close together the bars sat, then met my glare again. “Fine,” he said. “Let me just say I wish I’d died with her than witness this day myself!”

I felt like he’d kicked me in the stomach. Rather than stagger back a step, though, I snarled at him. “I can put you out of your misery right now if you like. It’s not like they’re going to punish me any worse at this point.”

He slapped me then, for real this time, and I took it. I let the impression of his fingers sting where they’d crossed my cheek, and I

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spent the next moment struggling with an almost overwhelming desire to return the favor to him a hundredfold. Instead, I just said two words to him: “Get out.”

“I’m not done with you yet.” I turned my back on him. “Yes, you are.” He put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off and strode

over to the window, still not turning to face him again. “The council sent me here,” he said. “I wouldn’t have come on my

own.” I knew he was telling the truth about that, and it felt like the most

hurtful thing he’d said to me yet. He wanted me to ask what the council wanted, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him now. It didn’t take him long to crack.

“They want to know what you did with the dragonet.” That did get me to spin back around to gape at him. “He’s just

fine,” I said. “Now that the Dragon’s dead, that is.” My father snorted at that. “Sure. I suppose he can always fly away

once we’re overrun, can’t he?” “He can’t take on all those zombies, Dad. He’s too small. Not by

himself.” “You don’t get it, do you?” he said. “Of course you don’t. You’ve

always been that way. Your sense of righteousness makes you blind.”

“Justice.” “Whatever you care to call it.” “Explain it to me like I’m five,” I said. “It’ll be just like back when

I was in the Academy.” He shuddered at me in his frustration, holding his hands up as if

he wanted to shake some sense into me. “He’s the heir to the empire, Max. Where he winds up matters. Even if Dragon City is doomed, there’s still a chance the line can continue on.”

My jaw dropped. “You want to rescue him? You’ve already given up on the city, and you want to see if you can get him to join you on some kind of escape plan you cowards have stuffed up your robes?”

“The council is only exploring contingencies,” my father said. “At

End Times in Dragon City 37

this point, I’d think even you would see how that might be prudent.”

“Guard!” I walked over to the door to my cell and shouted again. “Guard! Come get this man out of here. Now!”

The dwarf ambled up a moment later. I spotted two more dwarves in their dark blue uniforms behind him, pistols stuffed in their meaty hands and pointed at the door. “Your little family reunion gone sour?” he said as he pushed open the door.

My father grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me to face him as he stood in the opening doorway. “If you see the dragonet, Max, send him to us. We’ll take care of him. He’ll be safe in our hands.”

I grabbed my father by his collar and shoved him out of my cell. “I love you too, Dad.”

The lead jailer pulled the door closed behind my father. The old man turned around to look at me one last time through the grate in the oaken slab. He licked his lips as he struggled to find something to say to me.

Finally he spoke. “Good luck, Max.” And with that, he was gone.