Chapter 68

  The top of Drakko’s head let out a thin puff of smoke. A bit of blood dribbled down his teeth and over his lips. His eyes turned deep red. The crowd in the square watched in anticipation, waiting for the dragon to get up and brush himself off.

  He did neither.

  Dalex let out a deep sigh, “Whoa that was a close one.”

  The crowd in the square dissolved into a confused clamor. A few people cheered, but most were just baffled. Someone even shouted the question, “Is it dead?” No one could give an answer. It seemed unbelievable.

  For Hitasa’s part, upon hearing Dalex’s voice, her shoulders stiffened. She turned around slowly, wide eyes finally landing on him.

  “Wa— was—” she stammered. “Was that you?”

  Dalex gave her a wide grin, though he was almost too tired to manipulate his facial muscles. “Thought I wasn’t going to make it, didn’t you?”

  Hitasa lowered her head and slouched, suddenly looking very drained. She staggered toward him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  When she didn’t say anything, Dalex said, “I thought I might be too late myself… hey, are you okay?”

  She embraced him, putting all of her weight on his shoulders and letting out a groan that was half sob, half laugh. “WHERE WERE YOU!?”

  Dalex staggered under her weight. “Whoa, careful there. I haven’t slept in a few days. I’m kinda dizzy.”

  Her hug did not relent. It felt like she was trying to break his bones. But he managed to support her with a hand behind her back.

  “I was so sure it wasn’t going to be enough,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I thought it was over. But you came! You showed up just when we needed, like you always do.”

  Dalex scanned the ruined portions of Batulan-bar, noting in particular the blaze that was still running through the northern section of the city around the dragon’s body and the remains of the hunters’ lodge.

  “It looks like earlier would have been better,” he said.

  He felt her shake her head.

  “No.” She finally relaxed her hold on him, pulling back so that only her hands rested on his shoulders. Tears ran down her cheeks. “No, you were right on time.” But then her eyes narrowed and she asked, “Assuming we aren’t about to be visited by an army of mutts?”

  Dalex chuckled. “No, they’re not coming. Gaia Eta’s mutt population has been significantly reduced. I don’t think I got all of them, but Seventh is pretty sure they shouldn’t be a threat for a while. She’s scouring the eastern regions right now, looking for any stragglers that might have gotten past me.”

  In the end, Dalex’s battle with the mutts had been a simple contest of attrition. He could kill them just a bit faster than they could make more. Once the mutts had been sufficiently dealt with, it had just been a matter of Dalex sending the {voidstalker} back into orbit so he could pop into the city with {teleport} and drop a {Newton’s hammer} on the dragon’s head. Dalex had considered using something a bit more fast acting than a skill that needed to drop from orbit, but he wanted the first blow to be the final one.

  But things were not so resolved as they appeared. Unfortunately, Seventh suspected that the mutts would persist, even after the final remnants of the attack were wiped out. The probe the enemy {far realmers} had sent to Gaia Eta was still unaccounted for, and that was likely the ultimate source of the mutts. The {far realmers} probably didn’t have the {adamantine} reserves to recreate a new army, but they could gather more. Apparently, even an ounce of the metal was enough to make creatures of the caliber of mutt hydras.

  Hitasa seemed at ease with Dalex’s accounting of his whereabouts.

  “We’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do,” she said.

  Dalex nodded. “Now that I’m here, I should be able to help with that.”

  He was just about to start casting support spells when he sniffed the air and smelled rancid cooked meat. He noticed someone at the edge of the platform. The poor soul was on his knees, so badly burned that Dalex couldn’t tell if he was human, beastkin, or elf. Dalex rushed past Hitasa and stood over the burn victim, casting, “{Full heal}.”

  The {astral mortar} went to work, covering the stranger’s burns and soothing them back to soft, natural skin. The guy was missing a hand, but the {mortar} had no trouble forming a new one. Within a few seconds, he was staring at the restored appendage with awe.

  “Um, Dalex,” Hitasa said, “do you know who that is?”

  “No.” Dalex paused, looking at the person closer. “Don’t tell me it’s Staja?”

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  The mysterious burn victim had a male build that wasn’t right for Dava. An alert popped up in Dalex’s peripheral vision.

  At the same time realization dawned on Dalex, Hitasa said, “It’s Castreier.”

  “Stop,” Dalex ordered, and the {astral mortar} halted the healing process. It bled off Castreier’s body and returned to its place in Dalex’s armor. But the {mortar} had worked too quickly. Castreier’s most grievous wounds had already been fixed.

  Dalex stepped between him and Hitasa, making himself a shield in case Castreier tried to pull anything. But the man only knelt on the wooden beams of the platform, marveling at the return of his hand.

  “Did he hurt you at all?” Dalex asked.

  “He gave me a few scrapes,” Hitasa said. “Maybe a bruise. But I’m fine.”

  Dalex relaxed a little. It seemed like the man wasn’t a threat. But Dalex still summoned the {blunderbuss} and pointed it at the back of Castreier’s neck. He had a knack for slipping out at the last minute before he had been excused.

  But Dalex wasn’t sure what to do with him. If Castreier wanted to surrender, it didn’t seem right to just execute him in cold blood anyway. Was there a surefire way to take him captive without risking the chance he would try to hurt someone again?

  “What do you think, Hitasa? What should we do with him?”

  Hitasa stepped up next to Dalex. She stared at Castreier’s back in silence.

  Dalex started to mull over the possibilities. Castreier would know a lot about the enemies of the resistance. If they could get him talking, future battles might go a lot easier. And considering Drakko had been about to immolate the entire city with him in it, Castreier knew he was no longer in the other dragons’ good graces. Maybe he was a potential ally. Dalex had read more unbelievable redemption stories.

  “He could be useful,” Dalex suggested.

  Hitasa walked forward until she was in front of Castreier. Her face was serious. Dalex decided to shut up.

  “Jean,” she said.

  He looked up at her, eyes half vacant.

  “Stand up, Jean.” She reached down and grabbed his new hand. He flinched at her touch, but she took hold of him anyway, pulling him to his feet. “Look at me.”

  He obliged, becoming a little more alert as he met her eyes.

  “Can you be useful?” Hitasa asked.

  Castreier’s eyes started to drift to the dead dragon behind her. In a dreamy voice, he asked, “Is he really gone?”

  Hitasa slapped him across the face, leaving a red mark on his cheek. No barrier stopped her hand. Even if Dalex had healed most of Casteier’s wounds, the treatment hadn’t replenished his mana.

  “Wake up, Jean. This is important. I need you to focus.”

  Castreier’s eyes turned to her again. “What?”

  “Can you be useful? Tell me.”

  “I— I can—”

  “Tell me,” Hitasa interrupted him. “Can you be useful?”

  His eyes widened and he nodded. “Yes, I can be useful.”

  “Tell me,” Hitasa repeated. “What can you do for us? What can you do for the resistance?”

  “I— I know things. Secrets about the dragons, about Ulenbeter’s defenses. You’ll be going there, right? To the Waterfall Portal?”

  “That’s good. Very good. Tell me, what else can you do?”

  She went on grilling him as he spilled out a dozen different things he thought would make her happy. While the interrogation continued, Dalex cast a few spells to get the Batulan-bar cleanup going, starting with {candle snuffer} to extinguish the flames running rampant through the city.

  The {voidstalker} shot down several dozen large canisters that stopped themselves before they hit the ground, floating over the city at even intervals where the fire was most severe. Each canister opened and let loose a blue foamy substance onto the fires. The foam worked more effectively than any fire extinguisher Dalex had ever seen, putting the fires out faster than an army of firefighters. The foam didn’t need to touch a flame to put it out. Just being within a few feet was enough to take fuel out of the fire.

  Dalex was in the middle of opening a map of the city to find any orc stragglers when he caught Hitasa’s next question for Castreier.

  “Tell me, can you bring my brother back?”

  Dalex paused what he was doing to watch. Castreier reflexively opened his mouth to respond, probably intending to say, “Yes, I can do whatever you want me to do,” but the nature of the question dawned on him half-a-second later. He paused and his face went pale.

  He began to stammer, “I— I— I—”

  Hitasa slapped him again. “You’re the one who killed him, aren’t you? You’re telling me you can’t bring him back?”

  Castreier’s eyes flicked to Dalex. Dalex did not move a muscle.

  “Please,” Castreier begged. “I can—”

  “NO!” Hitasa shouted. “You can’t. And what do you think that means?”

  Castreier shook his head, mute.

  Hitasa gripped his shoulders as if keeping him in place. “It means you’re awake enough to understand when I say, astregn means the crushing star.”

  Castreier looked confused. Hitasa stared at him, flat faced. A moment later, a brilliant white light fell from above and struck him in the top of his head. It passed through his skull and brain, traveling down his neck and into his chest and stomach. The light zipped through one end of his body and out the other, putting a hole in the wood of the platform before sticking in the ground below. It sizzled for a few seconds and then went out.

  Castreier didn’t howl or yelp in pain. His body did not convulse or spasm. He made no complaint at all. He didn’t even bleed. His body went limp and his eyes dimmed. Hitasa let go of his shoulders and he fell to the platform boards with a dead thump. He would not slip away this time.

  Dalex approached the body and stopped opposite Hitasa. “That was a little quick, wasn’t it?”

  “Should I have tortured him?” Hitasa asked.

  “It was certainly an option.”

  With a shiver, Dalex imagined there were quite a few ways he could have made Castreier’s life a living hell.

  “No,” Hitasa said. “I wanted him to be dead, and I wanted to be done with it. He understood why it was happening in the end. That was enough for me.”

  She turned away from Castreier’s body and hopped off the platform, walking toward the dragon’s corpse. “I am going to see if Lodge Mother Sarnai is alive.”

  “Was she hurt?” Dalex called after her.

  “Most likely.”

  Dalex walked to the edge of the platform himself, intending on following her, but he paused and turned back to face Castreier’s body. Dalex cocked his head to the side, looking at the corpse at an angle, somewhat expecting to see it twitch or move. Did the man have a way out of death?

  “Seventh, can you {teleport} him into the sun?”

  The body vanished from off the platform in a flash of light.

  “The local star is too distant for accurate matter transmission,” Seventh said in Dalex’s ear, “but I will prep a [probe] to take him there. The body will be fully disposed of.”

  “Good,” Dalex said. He jumped down off the platform and trotted after Hitasa.

  This Machine Slays Dragons - Book One. I will post a four chapter epilogue on Friday. Book two will begin next Monday.

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