XVII
839 Words
XVII
Dark twitched as Gus and Orion cleaned his cage. With brooms they swept up hunks of meat. Dark could have crushed them both with a swipe of his tail, but he was helplessly immobile.
The two men were quiet this time, working quickly. They threw buckets of water and soap across the floor and mopped blood from underneath Dark’s feet. Soon the cage floor was covered in suds that they pushed toward a drain in the corner. The drain gurgled as it accepted the water, and a clean, antiseptic scent filled the room.
The whole routine had made him numb. The taunts, for the most part, had stopped, and Dark was glad for it. Now they just grumbled as they went about their routine.
Dark closed his eyes and tried to ignore the binding pain that constricted his scales. He had learned to dull it by thinking positive affirmations.
They will die.
I will rip them open and savor every moment of it.
I will do it slowly.
They won’t know it’s coming.
I will strike swiftly.
I will take back what rightfully belongs to me.
I will be revered once again.
“You ready?” Gus asked, setting his broom against the wall outside the cage. “The spell’s almost done, so hurry up.”
Orion was almost finished mopping up his side of the cage. He tried to get the suds out of one of the corners.
“Who cares about being a perfectionist?” Gus asked. “Just finish so we can get out of here.”
And then Dark sensed it.
He felt it in his scales first. A tingling.
He knew the sensation. He would have known that feeling anywhere. His body stiffened.
Something was coming. His body was preparing itself.
Dark wanted to grin, but his face was still paralyzed.
Then with a flash the room was covered in bright light.
“What the?” Orion said.
Dark breathed in deeply as the shimmering light blinded him.
The wisps of magic streamed into his chest, flowing through his entire body.
Magic. From his own personal collection. He had taken it from the aquifer a thousand years ago, already paid the price on it. It was one of many personal caches.
And Miri had just sent it to him.
Slowly, his paralysis faded, and Dark regained feeling in his legs as he dropped to the ground.
The light faded, and when it did, Dark stood upright and felt taller than he’d ever been.
Orion was on the floor at his feet, looking up in fear.
Dark rolled his neck side to side, and then he spread his wings as wide as he could.
The bandages around his wings burst and fluttered down like snowflakes.
“I am risen,” Dark said.
He glanced at the electrical box in the distance. He reached deep within himself and sprouted a plasma boomerang from one of his claws. It felt good to use his cache. The smoothness of spell casting made him feel all-powerful again.
He hurled the boomerang at the electrical box. The box erupted in a fan of sparks, making the room go black.
Dark grabbed Orion in one claw, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gus running to shut the cage, but he slapped the door with his tail, sending the man flying.
Gus crashed on a conveyor belt and in the impact knocked the wind out of him.
Orion wriggled in Dark’s claws, and the dragon laughed.
But then Orion’s hand flashed.
A grimoire.
Pink light projected from Orion’s grimoire and the cage sealed itself shut.
“You can kill me, but you’re not getting out of here,” Orion said.
“Oh?” Dark asked. He closed his eyes and imagined the cage exploding. An explosion ripped from his chest and it broke the steel bars. Dark leapt out the cage and landed on the floor with a boom.
Orion yelled as Dark slammed him on the conveyor belt next to Gus, who was breathing heavily.
“I should kill you both right now,” Dark said, “But I’ve decided to be generous. You will not die today.”
The energy bubbled in his body and he could hardly contain it.
He pointed to Gus. “You are going to deliver a message to Lucan Grimoire.”
The dragon put the man’s ear to his lips and whispered a message. “Do you understand?”
Gus nodded.
“Excellent,” Dark said, waving a claw over the man’s face. Gus breathed in magical spores and he looked he had just been hypnotized. “Deliver my message and then await your punishment.”
Gus fell off the table, scrambled away on all fours before running out of the room.
“As for you,” Dark said, grinning at Orion. “You can go.”
Orion looked at him curiously. “I—I can go?”
“Yes. I have no need for you.”
Orion didn’t waste any time, and he ran out of room. But before he exited, Dark called his name.
“Orion!”
The man turned around just as a sickle of plasma vaporized his entire body.
“I said I had no need for you, but I didn’t say you could live,” Dark said.
He spread his wings and regarded the factory, his prison.
With three heaves, he vomited up the grimoires and left them in a pile on the ground. That would be his goodbye note.
“Now it’s time to figure out how to get out of here,” he said.
- Writer
