The Last Dragon Lord

XXIII

XXIII

Dark screamed as he banged himself against a metal grill.

He was in a shadowed room and couldn’t tell where he was.

How long had he thrown himself against the darkness?

Hours, maybe. But there was no light, no sun in the sky for him to track, no moon for him to divine. Just a large skylight in the ceiling that showed neither the moon nor stars.

For the second time, he had awakened in a strange place. He was tired, bone-weakened and sore, but he had no patience for sleep. His father had always told him, Never go to sleep in a strange land. You may not like where you wake up.

He squinted at his surroundings. His left eye socket stung. He brought his fingers to it and noticed that he was wearing a black eye patch. He tried to remove it but a magical vibration hummed through his head—it wasn’t going anywhere.

He could make out several shapes in the darkness, but he couldn’t tell what they were.

Was he in the northern mountains? A very cold breeze blew through the room, and it seemed to come from above, stopping and starting at intervals.

What kind of wind blew this way, steadily then not at all?

He must be in a cavern. Yes, a cavern bewitched by magic, perhaps made from the snow or the coldest fringes of the ocean.

He thought about his trips to the mountains as a young dragon. One in particular stood out. He strained to recall the freezing air that made ice crystals on his wings. He felt the cold snow against his claws, the heat of his and his mother’s fiery breath to keep them warm. There had been no prey in the Northern Territory, at least none that they could hunt easily. They’d had to feast the day before, relying on their strength to make it through. They had trekked to the summit of the topmost mountain, into a dark cavern where an old dragon—a stout Keeper—bowed to his mother, dipped his tail into the aquifer and grinned as he gave them vials of poison.

They had used that poison to kill a dragon lord.

But this place was too unlike those mountains.

Everything he’d seen so far was unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life. His heart hadn’t stopped racing since the moment he’d opened his eyes.

“Release me!” he yelled. “Or I will kill every one of you!”

Silence.

“Release me!” he yelled again. “Release me! I am the Dragon Lord!”

Still nothing, only his voice echoing back at him, bouncing off walls that were far, far away. Hearing his voice inflicted back on him, he shrank against a cold wall and panted. Grief overcame him, and he fought back the urge to let his guard down.

He was the dragon lord. He had to remain strong.

Dragon lords weren’t captured.

Dragon lords weren’t weakened.

Dragon lords always showed strength.

They radiated confidence and forced respect.

What did he have to do to get what he deserved?

He thought of his mother’s voice. If you can’t command respect, you must create it, and that must involve the breaking of bones and the spilling of blood. For we are Darks, and nothing we’ve worked for was ever given to us, not even as Lords.

What would his mother have thought about him now? She would have been ashamed. His mind cycled back to his last images of her. Her mouth was stitched shut and she had to carve messages into the dirt with her long tail in order to communicate.

He heard her voice in his head.

We are the Darks.

We are the Lords of the World.

The sun does not set until we will it.

Her words made him hungry.

For meat.

For blood.

His gums ached as he thought about food. He wondered if he’d even be able to eat with his missing teeth. His gums were like raw scales torn open after a battle; the pain was always there, and worse when you were idle because you couldn’t take your mind off it.

He scratched the floor gently with his claws, but unlike dirt, this floor did not give. Unlike stone, it did not scratch.

It shone. And it was cold.

He sniffed.

A scent. Elven. Human. Two people on the far side of the darkness. They walked quietly, whispering to each other. Dark couldn’t make out the words, but he knew the familiar sound of whispers.

The area grew brighter and darkness disappeared in an instant as lights in the ceiling flickered on.

Suddenly he saw where he was. A giant room that seemed to stretch endlessly outward. The roof was made of iron beams, hundreds of them. Dark wondered how many blacksmiths had been required to forge that many beams.

The shapes he had seen glinting in the distance ... he still didn’t recognize them. There were long metal rails that circled up and down, iron arms hanging lifelessly over the rails. Stacks and stacks and stacks of white paper piled up twenty feet high. Dark had never seen paper shine like that, not even in a spell book. It must have been magicked. He was sure of it.

He sniffed again. The footsteps grew closer and he saw two people walking toward him.

He sensed their fear and growled.

They stopped just outside the metal cage.

It was the man from the tomb. Dark still didn’t understand the clothing, the layers, and the man’s floral smell that was more suited to a woman. He was thoroughly elven, and for that alone Dark despised him.

The woman next to him had also been in the tomb. She was a human. How she had cowered in his presence!

But now she stood upright, fearless, unflinching. He had never seen that kind of boldness in a human before, and he took a mental note of it.

Dark wanted to swipe them, but he knew his claws wouldn’t reach. So he decided to conserve his energy.

“It ... you ... eat,” the elven man said.

He thought he heard the word ‘eat,’ but he couldn’t be sure. He kept quiet.

“You … lucking … beast!” the man said, banging the bars with a metal rod.

Dark ignored him.

“Listen to me!” the man said.

Dark’s ears perked up.

The man with jewel-green eyes looked into Dark’s eyes. Though he was tiny compared to Dark’s giant frame, they understood each other for a moment.

“I am listening,” Dark said.

“It’s about … lucking … we … other,” the man said.

Dark sighed and turned his head.

The man banged on the walls again.

“Listen to me!” he cried.

But Dark kept his head down.

He smelled meat. A lot of it.

Several workers in what looked like white robes entered with giant buckets of raw meat. From the smell, it was beef. Tenderloin and rib.

The workers started to dump the buckets, but the man stopped them and said something sternly.

Ahh. So the elf is the one in charge.

The elven man took a hulking piece of beef and threw it into Dark’s cell.

Dark lowered his head and smelled the meat.

No poison. Of this he was sure.

“Eat,” the man said.

“No,” Dark said. “I’ll not eat a thing until you tell me who you are and where I am.”

The man laughed, doubled over and slapped his knees. Then he pointed at Dark angrily.

“Eat!” the man said.

“No!”

The man pulled out a white card from his pocket. It was the same as the cards that were piled up around the room. He held it in front of his face, and a pink wheel of light appeared around his head.

Magic.

This man wielded magic like it belonged to him.

Dark smashed his claws against the cage and roared.

A blast of energy hit him and pulsed through his body.

The man had cast a spell. Dark couldn’t move.

He fought as hard as he could, but he couldn’t move his legs. He tried to speak, but his tongue was frozen. All he could do was shake in place.

The workers opened the cage and entered. They dumped the buckets of meat across the floor.

Another group of men entered the room with a metal cast. They climbed onto his body and fastened the cast to his mouth, screwing it together with magical screws that shone like iridescent rainbows.

The men all exited the cage and locked it just as the spell wore off.

Dark seized control of his body and threw himself against the metal, filling the room with a deafening clang. He tried to roar, but the metal cast on his face prevented him from opening his mouth more than a few inches.

Meanwhile, the meat lay at his feet, and he began to salivate.

“If you ... lucking eat ... then lucking starve!” the man cried.

The man and the woman turned and walked away, followed by the workers.

Then the room went pitch black again, blacker than before.

All Dark could do was stare at the meat.

You elves never lost your sense of irony, he thought.