Five minutes before things go wrong, like usual…
Drenar knew something was amiss. Something was not right with the way the guards were lurking around. And his danger sense had been tingling in overdrive ever since they got to the prison facility, a hop, skip, and a beat away from Washington, DC.
He knew that his current global travels were setting some kind of speed record he was not proud of, and he eyes Levine peering around. At the guards at the booth in the waiting area, to the surveillance cameras, to the auspiciously quiet courtyard of prisoners. He paced by the window, in his armor, and glanced outside.
“How many are in here?” he asks finally. Levine grunts and stands beside him, peering out at the row of inmates being filed back in after a brief recess outside.
“About twelve hundred. Give or take. Overcrowded, actually. I think this facility is only meant to take about eight hundred.” It’s the way Levine keeps doing casual glances out of the corner of his eyes that sets Drenar off.
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“Guards rotated in, just after we were cleared at that facility entrance. I see additional vehicles parked on the far side, outside the gate. And they’ve been here since before we got here.” He taps impatiently on the strap on his sidearm holster. “And, they let us keep our weapons. The first rule of any prison facility is, that you never let weapons in.”
“We’re the Luminaires, and we get to keep our guns. I’ve been in two firefights inside a day, Levine,” he states impatiently and rubs at a bruise on his cheek. “This is getting so messed up, how bad are the optics on our stint in Jersey?”
“Bad. I was led to believe that the containment team was not able to contain all the witnesses, there’s going to be follow-up work,” Levine explains. “We didn’t make that scenario. Val did. This kind of chaos, works in her favor. Because they can work regardless of the blowback on exposure of the magical world to the masses.”
“Feels like we’re playing with a distinct disadvantage.” he lets out a measured exhale, trying to ignore the stinging sensation of partially healed wounds. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this, Levine. All our plans fall apart in an instant.”
“If we had arrived any later at Rick’s residence, we would have missed that opportunity forever and lost Rick’s trust for good. We did the right thing. We can’t plan for the Talon's every move, or their disregard of safety or rules. But we must react accordingly, and proportionally. Dragons flying through the sky was probably not a great move. Even in the dead of night.”
“Like I care. You guys have been living under a delusion this was ever going to stay under wraps. And the conclave–” he glances at the guards, still paying attention nearby, and pauses for a moment. How many were there now, lingering around?
He clicks the radio on his armband. It should function, even with Joey’s and James’s sets not activated. “Guys, give me a sit-rep. Do we have Jonaleth talking yet?”
Silence was his answer. That tingle of dread is still present. He clicks again. “Guys, pick up.”
Now it’s discomforting silence. He glances over to Levine, who has his hand on his sidearm, and Nick is tuned in and walks over calmly after Drenar does a subtle nod. Levine speaks up first. “Drenar, this move could have been anticipated. King is either baiting us with this after getting Rick. Or Val knows Jonaleth is a direct link to them, and is cleaning up. Why she waited this long to kill him, is beyond me.” He speaks barely above a whisper.
Drenar notes the guard's weapon holster is unbuckled now, on his thigh. And he rubs at his neck uneasily, and then, Drenar sees it. A hint of a tattoo on his neck, just below the opening of his uniform. “Hey uh, I’m about to do something really stupid, or something really genius. Follow my lead.” Nick also is clued in with a subtle head nod.
There’s a sense of dread building. How had Val gotten to Rick’s place so fast? How had the Ravagers trailed Amaranth so quickly? It was like they were anticipating their every move, somehow. Amaranth had been dumb luck, maybe. But Rick…if someone in their organization was spilling information to the Talons…he shuddered to think about it. Not a single one of his friends would have ever done that.
Every single one of them was united in a common cause: they’d all suffered loss at the hands of these monsters. There was no way it could be them. Nor, the Valkyries–
He froze for a second. Kiera’s warning. That she suspected one of their own had given up his father’s location. Kiera had dismissed it as impossible, that the Valkyries were incorruptible…but were they?
Either way, he’s about to find out something, based on what he saw earlier yesterday. Alex. I need you to go do your ghosty thing. See that guy? He has a tattoo partially obscured on his neck.
One slightly disenfranchised dragon, at your service! The device instantly powered up and Drenar felt the lightest of breezes on his skin as Alex materialized, and spooked the guard, who jumped backward.
“Whoa, what the hell is that?” he screamed, and the other guards took notice as Alex swooped around on the short range of the tether, while Drenar drew close.
“Oh this guy is a giant pain, he gets out sometimes. Alex, you’re in the doghouse!” Drenar feigned with annoyance, while the guard followed Alex twirling around. “It’s aether energy, a projection. Utterly harmless! That said, this drakensoul of mine, is a bit more harmful to my nerves. He sings when I’m trying to sleep.”
Alex flashed a toothy grin. “He’s just a poor boy, from a broken family, spare him his life from this monstrosity! Now where’s my vocals?! I was promised backup singers for this one!”
“The hell you say?” the guard stammered, turning his back to Drenar for just a second too long. Drenar could see it. That skeletal sigil on his neck, that he had seen just last night.
Remari flew into his hand by his telekinetic retrieval, and he grabbed the man, kicked out his knee, and put the knife to his throat. The guards had been too distracted by Alex, who was now wearing a furious glare. “Looks like you were right, Drenar.”
“Ravagers, stand down,” Drenar stated with ice-cold contempt, as the men scrambled for their weapons, and the man in his grasp squirmed. He was no match for his strength. “Guessing you’ve been waiting for the right moment, huh?"
One man had been reaching for a pistol tucked into a boot, and froze after Levine and Nick drew their weapons. He leered at all of them, hand hovering over the weapon, his other hand on a radio. “You have no idea who you’ve pissed off, you goddamn lizard. You should have died in the depths of Asqualia, because it would have been a mercy, compared to what’s coming for you.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Where’s the rest of the staff? You kill them, too?” Drenar demands, icy fury running through his veins. That man grinned madly, and laughed in a mocking tone, shrill and uncontrolled.
“We’re everywhere, Rashalda. We’re the guys who get the jobs done that the Conclave can’t be seen having hands-on. When an atrocity is called for…we deliver,” he grinned. “We knew you’d come for Jonaleth eventually. We left him alive for this purpose.”
“So Ravagers, Talons, and the Conclave are all sides of the same demonic dice, huh?” He growls. “That tracks. You think I won’t tear apart the mage world, until I find the person on top? For what they’ve done to my friends? To me, personally?”
“You won’t have to look far,” the man grinned, clicked the radio, and screamed out a distress call. “Luminaires uncontained, send–”
He never finishes his statement because Drenar flings Remari dead-center for his throat, stopping the man’s warning a smidge too late, and delivering a plasma shock to the one right next to his temple, dropping the man. The man gurgling on Remari doesn’t have to hold onto the dagger for long as he grapples it back.
Nick and Levine had already taken cues and fired on the two remaining men, who dropped onto the floor, dead from effective shots. Distantly, Drenar hears an alarm going off, joined by several more. “Fates damn it if I find out someone’s been reporting our movements, their ass is dead,” he snarls before hopping over the counter and finding a healthy stack of weapons. He unfurls his autobow and loads a magazine. “Close quarters, we get Jonaleth, we get out!”
“Radio’s are out–hang on.” Levine leans down to grab the radio, and pries open the casing to pull out a small SD card and inserts it into a port on Drenar’s wrist display. “Try now.”
What he got as a response was that Joey and James were in a panic situation, and they were rudely interrupted by more corrupted staff that had no qualms about adding themselves to the growing body count, while he was trying to make a call.
All he does know is that after they care of nasty business and that the Ravagers were indeed in the building, and likely killed several guards and taken their uniforms, or were undercover agents. After telling them to get Jonaleth the hell out, and that Davos is here, Drenar is dashing up the corridors, fighting past panicking inmates, who he disperses with telekinetics and plasma at a low capacity so he doesn’t fry the poor souls.
“Drenar, slow down!” Nick screams out. “We need to wait for backup!”
“Joey and James can’t hold their own in a firefight of this scale, even as good as they are! We need to move!”
More guards get in his way, with hastily stamped ravagers markings. Now that stealth is out of the picture, they are making sure they don’t kill their own. It makes it easy to pick them out of a crowd and know who he can put in a body bag without remorse, considering a few guards with slit throats he dashes past.
He can’t help them, now. But he can get Jonaleth out of here.
This prison campus is sheer chaos. The sterile white walls, black tiles, and prism-shaped and uninspiring walls and black bars are now stained with violence. Craters where violent impacts occurred. Mage fire. Bodies being left in poses indicating they’d been subject to the worst hands of humanity, battering their physical forms.
All the while, he keeps pushing.
A burst of gunfire nearly mows him down when he skids backward–the Ravagers are setting up gunnery positions, and trying to hold the fort. He decides that the area’s big enough for a size upgrade, and he shifts to his dragon form, and clamps down the quick-fold helmet that came with the armor. Getting shot in the head is still going to hurt, armor scales or not. “Stay in cover wait till I draw fire!” he barks out before charging into the fray.
He has to applaud the Ravagers only a tiny bit–they are efficient killers, judging by the strewn bodies on the floor, they were a cut above the Talons. When he teleported into their midst, he was a fury of claws, a smashing tail, and surging plasma that left no men standing.
“Drenar, you’re being reckless!” Nick screamed out and nearly got his head taken off by an autobow bolt pinging so close that it flared his arcane barrier from a distant corridor. “Don’t run off and be in a hurry to die!”
But he can hear Joey and James nearby with his sensitive ears, amidst the chaos of the firefights. They’re in a large area smeared with destruction, and the Ravagers are thinner in number, and fall to return fire by a few of the noncorrupted guards, who amazingly, don’t shoot at the pissed-off azure and silver-scaled dragon. “SAF, we’re friendlies! I need a sit rep, where is the visiting area?”
“You guys Luminaires?!” one woman with short blond hair gasped. “Some of the guys started marking their uniforms, I knew something bad was going down. There are more of us pinned down in lockdown areas! Radio has been spotty, I think the Ravagers are using some kind of jamming magitech!”
“They have SD chips that allow them to communicate. Our radio's are hindered but it works for the moment. Stay here, radio for backup, and call the Valkyries!” Levine barked out. He picks up a discarded long rifle, and gives it a grim look. “How long were the Ravagers planning this?”
“Must have been several weeks. New guys were showing up, after the attacks two months ago across the global teleportal platforms. I think some of our guys were trading prisoners for cash,” the woman snarled. Even a few of the inmates were now cowering and trying to stay out of the fight in this room. “Booths for talking with inmates was down and to the left, whoever you’re here for, get them out of here, fast!”
“Will do!” Drenar straightened his lithe body and kept his armor powered up with maximum barriers, and proceeded to clear a path through the remaining Ravagers, who were firing everything they had.
It wasn’t until he got to a large cafeteria that he saw Joey and James rounding a corner on a monitor, very close by. But, before he could call out to them, screams and a gruesome slice of flesh interrupted him. Just ahead, on the monitor, he looked on with horror as a metal-clad man over two meters tall, and wearing massive armor, shredded through two people with a single swing of his axe.
Every bit of fear was realized when Davos called out to Joey and James, still trying to drag Jonaleth to safety. “I was looking for the bitch with the sword. But you’re a worthy consolation prize, Joey.”
“Joey, get out of there and run!” Drenar screams out into the radio, pushing past resistance and rioting prisoners alike, with Levine screaming for him to not rush headlong into danger.
He rounds the corner in a skid of talons and sees Davos stalking toward James and Joey, and he flings out a telekinetic lasso that should crush that man easily. But it barely budges him, and Davos swerves to face the new threat, with Joey calling out to Drenar.
But he ignores it. He charges telekinetics to his claws, and levels the dragon-sized autobow he’s been waiting to use. “Davos Renshrak. Drop the axe.”
That man with the coal black eyes gives him a haggard grin, and hefts the axe to a readied position. “You have the look of someone I've orphaned, little lizard. It's in the eyes, you know."
"Must happen a lot, for the amount of people you slaughter on daily basis." Something reads wrong with this man, in the same soul-sickening way that Valosterla does, but worse. "Drop the weapon. Last chance."
Davos laughs mockingly at this. "You know what? Come to think of it, I’ve seen one other azure and silver mix in my time. You happen to be related?”
“I’m the son of Victor One, Davos. I'm the leader of the Luminaires. The one who went up against Valosterla, and came out alive." He raises his weapon. Davos has a theoretical mages arsenal housed inside his armor, he is by far the most dangerous foe he's ever gone up against.
“The son of Trisha Rashalda? The woman who put me at deaths' door?" That feeling of malice increases in the room tenfold, and Drenar can feel that crawling sensation against his scales. Something twists on Davos' face that looks like something is wearing him. A shadow that defies light. "That fucking whore signed the death warrant of every child she's ever sired, so why don’t you take your best shot–”
He does take his best shot, with a supercharged, plasma-enhanced bolt from the massive autobow that he’d pulled out of Nick’s pack. It skewers through Davos’s barrier, and punches a hole through his armor–and him. Drenar waits for the man to fall…
…and doesn’t. Davos looks at the wound, eyes darkened. And then, something comes to life in them–a grim, bloody aura surrounds that hulking menace, and his eyes alight with a dull crimson color. Davos grins maniacally and takes a readied stance. And speaks with a maddening slither to his words, which is an affront to the world itself.
“Valkyries and Luminares, my oh my! Just squishy flesh and strained screams, as you die!”
“Drenar?! This just became a horror film!” James screams out.
He’s not inclined to disagree, for once.