Just leaving with their tails tucked between their legs after the first sign of trouble could hardly be called a patrol. Caltyr and the rest of the gifted casters had been given enough supplies for at least three days, so he was determined to sleep out in the wilderness for at least one of those three expected days.
The five of them had taken to the grass, and were sitting uncomfortably close to the place Caltyr was trying to ignore the proximity of. They hadn’t said much; they seemed stunned by what they had witnessed and what the circumstances could entail.
“Should we contact Kraven?” Vermonysis inquired, breaking the silence. He thumbed the smooth rock of the communication necklace around his neck. “He might know what to do.”
“Have we done enough to warrant contacting him? He did say he didn’t want us just calling to chat,” Caltyr replied pensively.
“He would want to know about this. This is enough,” Vernonysis confirmed heartily, wagging his head up and down. He pulled the necklace from around his neck, which was somewhat comical due to the nature of dragon necks; long, with several places a delicate necklace could get snagged along the way.
When it was off, Vermonysis held it in his one hand and snapped his fingers with the other. A puff of smoke appeared between his snapping fingers, which ignited as if he had flint on him somewhere. But of course, he didn’t. This was the inherent magic of a fire dragon.
The homely spark grew into a flame, which the red-and-yellow dragon held still in the air, despite its volatile nature.
“Kraven?” He asked the flame, tied to the communication necklace. This too was strange to watch, but Caltyr remembered the young Emily screaming into the space under her bed. Between the two methods of speaking into the relevant element, this one won the battle of being less ridiculous.
Caltyr could hear a rustle coming through their necklaces right away. When he started to talk,. His voice sounded raspy and far away, as if he were answering from across the room.
“Huh?” Groaned the auburn dragon groggily. “Which one of you is this coming from? You’re not the only group out on patrol right now.”
“It’s me, Kraven,” Vermonysis said with a furrow in his scaled brow. “Vermonysis.”
Caltyr wondered how he could have not seen before that Vermonysis and Kraven had some kind of special relationship, like what humans might consider a father-and-son relationship. It mimicked what he and Miss Tavren had once had, where he cared a whole lot but had no idea if his familial fondness was returned by the older dragon.
“Vermonysis. Right.” More rustling from the other end. “That’s the group with Caltyr and that Fellithe kid, right? Always getting in my damn hair. Not that I have any of that, but it’s the principle of the thing. Those two can’t just leave well enough alone. Oh, can they hear me right now?”
Caltyr snorted.
“Yes, they can hear you,” Vermonysis replied with a nervous smile. Fellithe had her hand up against her mouth in what appeared to be shock, but then the shock passed and a fire lit in her blue eyes like a storm in the sea.
“Always getting in your hair? Why, because sometimes I want some kind of recognition for all the stuff I do? Sorry all of you don’t seem to care, but maybe you should look at if you’re overextending yourselves and not giving yourselves any rewards for your efforts. Sometimes people can just deserve something good in exchange for the stuff they do, including you!” The earth dragon puffed air dramatically through her nostrils, which didn’t produce the smoke a fire dragon’s would have in that moment.
“Look man, I don’t know if I want to be siding with them on this, but you do get a little light on the rewards and recognition sometimes. You’ve been going non-stop since I’ve known you, which has been almost half my life. Just somethin’ to think about. Anyway, as for why we contacted you…” Verrmonysis trailed off after giving Fellithe a look to let her know the time to talk about this was done.
She complied, but started pacing poutily to get some of her pent up energy out.
“We saw what we think were a lot of demons. They were moving through a human city, and here’s the worst part; we think they were eating the magic out of the humans. Like, our magic.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Fuck,” Kraven swore. “That’s what I was afraid of. Were there any different kinds of demons, or just the one kind?”
“Just the one kind, but there may have been some… different types of horns in there, if that’s relevant. We were watching from kind of far away. They had this purpley-black skin that repelled anything the humans threw at them, even fire magic.”
“Yeah, we knew about that part.” There was a gravelly quality to Kraven’s voice as he worked his way through his sentences, as if the energy were slowly draining from him. “Did you see them do anything that hurt ‘em at all? Weapons?”
“No, but they weren’t really using weapons.” Vermonysis put his fingers up to cradle the end of his face, much like Kraven did when he was thinking.
“We might be able to isolate some of them from the group,” Caltyr mused. “Shriken, have you started shadow trapping?”
Shadow trapping was exactly what it sounded like, trapping people in one spot using their shadow, like standing on their tail.
“I’m past shadow trapping,” Shriken confirmed. But of course he was; Caltyr was only starting to hear about it in his lessons with T’allyandria, and it was Shriken’s main element, from the looks of his scales.
“Well, like Kraven told us before we left, we might have more luck trapping them than hurting them. But we’d need to go get one or a few to experiment… Fellithe, I’ve never tried using earth mana before. Can you make a big rock pillar to catapult some of them over here without the others noticing?”
“I can make rock pillars, yeah, but I don’t know how smart these things are. They could totally still notice. Maybe that’s where one of you comes in; can you make a mist to distract them so they don’t notice? That might be a water thing.”
“It sounds like you kids have this under control. Approach carefully, isolate no more than three of them, and try anything you can think of to kill one of ‘em.” There was a brief pause. “Almost anything.”
Caltyr figured he knew what Kraven meant.
“Sure. We’ll report back to you later,” Vermonysis said. He tugged the necklace back on and got rid of the communication flame with a wave of his hand. It sizzled and dissipated, leaving a streak of smoke behind.
“I can make mist,” Caltyr confirmed. He hadn’t tried playing with its density to make it so he could stand on it, but just producing it was simple enough.
“When they get here, I can try using my lightning to see if I can just shock them to death. But from what I saw while we were in the sky, I’m not sure it’ll work; I think one of the humans was using lightning.” Vermonysis frowned at the situation; both of his elements were known for being effective in battle, but the evidence so far was pointing to him being useless this time around.
“I wonder if you could use your lightning to push them further off the pillar. I’m worried about them not going far enough with the push from the rocks alone. We’d have to stand uncomfortably close…” Caltyr glanced over to the city in the distance.
The orange-hued dragon’s face frills perked up at the notion. “Yeah, I could do that. Vallath could help me out if he wanted; we could co-cast, if you’d be cool with that. Could I form the lightning while you aim and focus it? Or the other way around.”
“Let’s do the other way around.” Vallath placed a hand at the back of his neck and shifted in place. “You’ve seen me in class. I’m more of a power guy, not so much a control guy.”
Vermonysis squinted an eye as he searched through his memories. They weren’t in the same lightning class, he and Vallath, but they intersected occasionally when a mentor was ill or on vacation. He did seem to remember some of the teacher’s wails when it was Vallath’s turn to cast. “Alright, I’ll take over with that part. No problem.”
Caltyr noticed the other four dragons turning their attention to him, as if they were awaiting his instructions, subconsciously or not. An inkling of discomfort filled his chest, intertwining with his thread of pride from earlier. “It sounds like the plan is this, then. I form a mist around the outskirts of the demon horde, and then Fellithe makes a rock pillar to throw some of the demons our way. Vermonysis and Vallath will electrically charge the pillar to send them flying over here, where Shriken will shadow trap them as soon as they land. Is that correct?”
The four of them bobbed their heads in unison.
“Then let’s get within casting distance. Leave your bags here. We’ll come back for them later.” He started to pull his bag off as he spoke, and dropped it into the grass. Then, he took to the air.
The others followed suit, and within ten minutes they were nestled in some bushes on the outskirts of the city. The demons had broken into the core of the area now, and the screams of the humans sweetly caressed his ear holes. He felt a little bad reveling in their pain so intrinsically, considering Emily existed and that must mean there were other humans who didn’t suck, but right now wasn’t the time for his moral musings.
“Can everyone cast from this far?” Caltyr whispered.
“Yeah,” Fellithe responded vocally, and the others gave a single and decisive nod each. They were in plan mode, which the water dragon appreciated. He tended to have more luck with plans than people.
“I’m going to start fogging up the area. Fellithe, pick out the demons you’ll be shooting into the air and tell Vermonysis and Vallath which ones they are, and then count down when you’re about to launch them. Launch them toward us. If they get out of control, I’ll catch them with my water.”
They didn’t respond with anything other than beginning to urgently whisper to each other, which Caltyr took to mean they were following through.
Which meant it was fog time.