Broken horns, p.1
Broken Horns, page 1
part #4 of Lazy Scales Series
Cover Art by Lugh Delaney Boyle
© 2021 DM Gilmore
All rights reserved
More Books By DM Gilmore
The Lazy Scales Series
Lazy Scales
Idle Claws
Dull Teeth
Broken Horns
Kindled Flames
Beating Wings
The Centre of Magical Affairs Series
Drake
Trace
Poach
Prologue
The Crone ran around the cave system at a speed that seemed impossible for any living being. Her aged appearance belied a level of physicality that would have left anyone surprised if they didn’t know her true nature. She moved like a blur as she stacked books on a table and scoured them for information. She flipped through the pages at such a pace that she narrowly avoided tearing the ancient tomes to shreds.
She was inside a library, a place so sacred and ancient that it had never before graced an outsider. At least, until recently, it hadn’t. The shelves were carved directly into the rock and lined with thick red material that was dry to the touch, likely to keep the books safe from moisture. The ceiling stretched high into the air, impossibly so given where she knew the cave was currently located. There was a single table in the library, on which she was presently standing to read the massive books that nearly dwarfed her in size.
Perhaps the most peculiar accoutrement in the entire space was the massive golden contraption in the dead center. It looked like a giant metallic sphere, with two bands wrapped around it and crossing each other. Five small golden arms stretched out from the globe's base, and from those arms, other smaller spheres were situated. The smaller spheres rotated around the central orb at a leisurely pace, occasionally passing one another. There was a word for such a contraption, but the Crone neither remembered nor cared what it was. She had tried several times to activate the device, but it refused to bend to any of her commands. None of her spells could awaken it.
Whatever, it wasn’t important anyway. There were more pressing matters for the Crone to attend to. She bit her lower lip and turned her attention back to the books in front of her, flipping through its contents before slamming it shut.
“Blast that dragon,” she growled, her teeth momentarily going sharp and shark-like. Screeching in rage, she lifted the giant book and threw it across the room. Loose pages tumbled free as it reached the peak of its arc, and for a brief second, the Crone felt guilty. Destroying knowledge was an unforgivable crime, even for one such as her.
“Confound him and his entire kind,” she hissed, calming down as she hopped off the table and shuffled over to the discarded book. With far gentler fingers than before, she slipped the loose page back between the bindings. “Could he not have had the decency to at least write down his research?”
“He probably had,” she answered herself, stomping around the library, practically wearing a groove in the stone floor with her rage. “He probably wrote it all down and then burned it to cinders or hid it somewhere just to spite me!”
“He likely didn’t know you existed,” she told herself, stopping in her tracks and facing towards the strange golden orbs. “More likely, it was a self-preservation tactic. To ensure nobody could undo the spell.”
“It changes nothing,” she said, turning towards the door. “By denying me his research, he has doomed us all.”
“Not quite,” she said, once again turning to face the orbs. “There must be a way to break it. Maybe we have simply not tried every option?”
The Crone rolled her eyes at her own suggestion but sighed and conceded the point. With another frustrated growl, she shuffled out of the library. The vast network of dark tunnels that comprised the bulk of the caves was there to greet her. She hadn’t bothered lighting a torch, as the dark didn’t bother her. Her eyes adjusted in an instant, and it was as though the world was filled with daylight. To her right, she knew lay the cave entrance and other tunnels that led to different chambers. Right in front of her was a tunnel that intersected with those, giving direct access to other rooms right from the library.
It was the tunnel to the left that scared her the most. The walls were clumsily hewn, as though made in haste rather than carefully constructing them over centuries. From the pit of the leftmost path came an eerie blue-silver light. It felt like icy talons as it danced across the Crone’s pale skin, as though warning her not to approach.
But she needed to. Glowering at the light, she stalked through the vast cave until she came upon a single, enormous chamber. Stone teeth hung from the high ceiling of the room, but the floor had been smoothed flat. Carved in the middle of the section was an intricate spell circle, so confusing in its construction that the Crone scarcely knew what it did.
Were it not for the ominous glow that filled the entire cavern, she would have assumed it already useless and inert.
As the Crone approached the circle, it glowed brighter. She felt her skin prickle and go cold as she drew close to it. It was almost as though the horrid thing was draining her of her power, her magic, her very soul. For all she knew, it probably was. She didn’t understand how this particular spell worked, only that it did.
The Crone drew close and crouched over the circle, reaching out with one finger to trace the lines in the stone. The various letters and characters carved into the very earth leaped out to greet her, but some of them were so strange, so very alien…
The blasted dragon who had created it had used a strange nomenclature when scrawling out the spell. The Crone was familiar with the Old Draconic language and several other dialects frequently spoken by dragon kind. Yet, try as she might, she could not fully decipher this spell circle! It was as though it was written in a wholly unique language to the dragon who created it!
For all she knew, it probably was. What better way to ensure that the spell couldn’t be disturbed than by writing it in a wholly unique script? The Crone scoffed and ran her gnarled fingers down a claw hewn rune. It was one of the few that she recognized, although its context had been previously unknown to her.
The rune was the Old Draconic word for human.
Why this rune of all of them was written in Old Draconic was beyond the Crone. Why the dragon did anything was beyond her. She couldn’t understand him.
Granted, she didn’t want to understand him because understanding could lead to compassion. Compassion for dragons would get in the way of her goal.
“For thousands of years, my entire purpose in life has been the extinction of dragons,” the Crone muttered.
“Your purpose was to bring the Fair Folk back to the mortal plane,” she reminded herself, giving the empty air to her left a stern glare.
“Shut up, you know what I mean,” she hissed, glaring to the right.
“Focus,” she growled, returning her attention to the circle. “Remain centered. Now is not the time to split my attention.”
“But that blasted dragon ruined everything!” Her right-facing side shouted. “Three human lifetimes of work! Up in smoke!”
“It is in the dragon’s nature to destroy,” her left-facing side patiently reminded them. “Large trundling brutes that they are, they cannot help what they accidentally step on.”
“And what they happened to step on was our Fairblood!” The right side growled.
“Focus. Center,” the Crone said, shaking her head. “Control. I must…”
“To hell with control!” The right side screeched. “We know where the dragon is! We should go right back there and kill it!”
“We cannot just kill it. Killing the dragon ends a powerful line of Fairblood. It would mean centuries of setback,” the left side calmly said. “Remember, the dragon didn’t just transform a regular human. He transformed our great-grandson.”
“Three generations of work gone up in smoke because the dragon used our Fairblood as a jumping-off point for his stupid spell,” the right side exclaimed.
“Taken the power we infused into our bloodlines and turned it against us,” the left concurred.
“Stop it, stop falling apart,” the Crone growled, grabbing the sides of her head and falling to her knees.
“Oh, get over yourself,” her right side growled.
“Whether by accident or design, the dragon succeeded in foiling your plans,” her left concurred. “Your attempts to right the wrongdoing have left you drained and weak.”
The Crone’s blood went cold. She might have been talking to herself, but she knew it was true. Even standing amongst the chill of the glowing spell circle, the Crone could feel her soul.
Or rather, what little remained of it.
Her poor soul was weak and drained from a heavy abuse of magical power. It had already been a day or two since she’d attempted to slay the dragon with her own two hands. It should have worked, but she hadn’t accounted for human error.
“They were able to resist us,” the right side growled. “I still don’t understand how.”
“You never understand anything. You aren’t made to understand,” the left reminded her right. “As I am wisdom, you are rage.”
“Both of you be quiet,” the Crone growled, rubbing her temples.
Two days wasn’t nearly enough time for her heavily drained soul to recover. She’d used up too much of it, both in the initial fight and in the days since. She glowered at the circle, as though daring it to try and defy her again. She did not, however, try to use magic on it again.
Once before, she’d made that mistake and tried to use a spell of her own design to coun
It was a miracle that she was still standing, let alone well enough to process thoughts. Then again, her wisdom and rage were currently at war within her psyche. It was difficult to tell whether she was falling apart or merely collapsing from the burden of using her body.
The Crone stifled a groan of frustration as she raised a gnarled hand and made an arcane gesture at the spell circle. “I command you to cease at once!” she barked.
“Sure, like that will work,” Rage muttered, shaking its head.
“An attempt, to be certain, but a useless one,” Wisdom agreed.
It wasn’t really a spell, but rather a desperate plea for something to work. The Crone didn’t expect it to do anything and was unsurprised when the circle remained unchanged.
Every attempt to disable the spell ended in failure! At this point, it was a matter of pride that she couldn’t dismantle a single blasted circle! Her frustration reached its peak, and she loosed a screech of fury. How dare this faulty circle disobey her!?
“My turn,” Rage whispered in delight.
“Do you know who I am!?” The Crone screeched at the circle, her proper form momentarily slipping through the cracks in her control. She appeared to be eight feet tall for a split second, with bird-like talons where her hands and feet should have been. Then, her control snapped back into place. “I am the Crone! The last of the Fair Folk! Whatever foul power keeps you alive, I demand you be gone!”
The circle, unsurprisingly, remained inert and stubbornly disobedient. The Crone let out a shrieking hiss and threw her hands up in defeat.
What was she doing wrong? It was just a rudimentary spell circle! All casters learned how to create them as babies and slowly grew out of needing them! The Crone herself hadn’t needed spell circles in millennia, although she was still quite fond of using runes when required.
And yet nothing she did was enough to disable the spell! What was she doing wrong that all attempts to break it only ended in failure? The Crone paced through the room, rubbing her temples angrily. She’d tried every single counterspell and disenchantment she could think of!
Nothing was working.
“Perhaps we are approaching this from the wrong angle,” Wisdom suggested. “Nothing we have done has had any effect.”
“Perhaps… only a dragon can turn it off,” the Crone mumbled, staring at the glowing circle. “Or worse, only the dragon who made the circle…”
As the Crone pondered the nature of the enchantment and how she was going to shut it off, the glow suddenly grew too bright, and she had to shield her eyes and look away. It was over in an instant, and she was once more able to see the room with clarity.
Some of the glow had died down in the circle, but it still filled the room with brilliant, ghostly light. The Crone’s eyes widened. No more did she feel the chilly grip on her soul. The ambient power in the room, which had momentarily been so thick and soupy that she could grab it in her hand, had dissipated. Now, the lingering chill in the room was less one of cold power and more the absence of it.
Had the spell just… discharged?
“Oh no,” she murmured, her eyes growing wider in horror. “No, no, no, no, no!”
She reached for the spell, running her fingers over the glowing runes. They felt colder to the touch than before. There was a distinct lack of power where before had been a veritable font of energy.
Had the spell just gone off again?
“No!” Rage bellowed.
The Crone shut her eyes and willed her consciousness to widen, to seek out every bloodline link she had. She counted them off in her head as she tried to locate who might have been hit by the spell.
It had glossed over two of her more promising candidates, but one of the connections was definitely broken. It trailed off into the void, ending as abruptly as it began. The Crone’s jaw tightened as she opened her eyes and shook her head.
“Not again!” She hissed, pacing around the room.
That proved her worst fears. For a spell with no discernable targeting clause, it was definitely prioritizing people with a bloodline connection to the Crone.
People with the Fairblood.
Was the spell using it to merely locate potential candidates, or was it using the Fairblood as a jumping-off point?
Probably both. It didn’t matter.
However, what did matter was that even after the spell was discharged, it remained active. The glow was lesser, but it would not stay that way for long.
Already she could feel the circle drawing in new magical power, though from where she did not know.
Would the spell stop once it no longer had any viable Fairblood targets? Would it even be able to stop? She didn’t see any recognizable end clause in the spellwork, nothing that would suggest to her that the spell was ever capable of shutting itself off.
“There is one who would know,” Wisdom whispered. “If there is a way to shut it off, surely Lasthope would know it.”
“A waste of time,” Rage muttered, dejected. “There is no way he would ever help us.”
The Crone supposed he likely wouldn’t. Lasthope’s entire reason for being was to create more dragons. If the spell was still running, that meant his duty was fulfilled. His goals were in direct opposition to the Crone’s, and as such, they would never be able to see eye to eye on anything. Dragons and the Fair Folk had never been on good terms with each other, but that was to be expected when one side regularly ate the other.
“I suppose it doesn’t help that we just tried to kill Lewis,” Wisdom added, shaking her head.
“That brat had it coming,” Rage growled.
“Both of you, be quiet,” the Crone growled. She put her fingers to her temple and took deep breaths, slowly focusing and recentering herself. The voices of her rage and wisdom slowly but surely softened until they returned to being little more than parts of her psyche.
Her mind once again her own, the Crone took slow, deep breaths. It didn’t matter that she had recently attempted to slay Lewis, her own great-grandson-turned-dragon. It didn’t matter that she and Lasthope had a feud that went back thousands and thousands of years.
It didn’t matter that she had barely enough power to make the trip, let alone to shield the few of her Fairbloods that she could reach.
Lasthope was the only one who knew this spell well enough that he might see a way to stop it. The Crone had to return to Barrington Hills and beg for his assistance.
The Crone sighed and turned her gaze inwards again. She had so little power left, maybe enough to make the trip but not much else beyond that. Perhaps if she rationed her power and traveled through mortal means, she could have enough energy left over for a shield spell or two?
The Crone shuddered. Mortal means of transportation had never really agreed with her. It was going to be a long flight…
Lucy slept uneasily in her hospital bed. Her skin was dry as a bone and hot as the desert. Her blonde hair was tangled and knotted from all the thrashing and turning in her sleep. Her hands gripped the bedsheets tightly, and several fans blew on her body. There were bags of slushy ice strewn all around her and an IV drip of fluid stuck in her arms.
None of it helped. None of it eased the burning beneath her skin nor quenched the flames eating her from the inside out.
Lasthope floated above the twitching, writhing girl and had to stifle a grin. He didn’t want the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes to be him, grinning down at her malevolently. “Wake up, Lucy,” he purred, floating closer and carefully moving some bag of ice aside.
Immediately, the young girl’s body tightened and twitched all the more. Lucy gasped for breath and clutched at the sheets beneath her. Her eyes snapped open, ruby red and bloodshot. She gasped as she saw Lasthope, but the pain was too unbearable! She was so hot! Why couldn’t she cool down!?
“Wake up, my dear,” Lasthope purred again. Slowly, he began to sing a song in Old Draconic. It was an ancient song, one that he only remembered through the shell of his egg nearly a thousand years earlier. “Rise, little one, for today is a gift. Rise, little one, for the sky is clear. Rise, little one, for the prey is fresh.”
