Lazy scales, p.1
Lazy Scales, page 1
part #1 of Lazy Scales Series
Cover Art by Lugh Delaney Boyle
© 2020 DM Gilmore
All rights reserved
More books by DM Gilmore
The Lazy Scales series
Lazy Scales
Idle Claws
Dull Teeth
Broken Horns
Kindled Flame
Beating Wings
The Centre of Magical Affairs series
Drake
Trace
Poach
Prologue
The circle was finally complete. The dragon gazed down at his work, inspecting every claw-hewn rune, every inch of the spell work, to make sure it was correctly done. He had been painstakingly building this spell for a decade, making sure every single inch of it was perfect. Twice before, he had melted the stone with his fire to wipe away the work and start anew.
He would not have time to do it again.
The hunters were coming for him, after all these long years.
They were in the cave system. He could smell their foul odor, hear their guttural language. They were drawing closer by the second; time was running out!
“Ancestors,” he said, whispering a brief prayer in the long since forgotten language of his kind, “please watch over me. I need to finish my work.”
With delicate claws, he pushed a poultice of dried leaves and various herbs into the grooves of the spell work before breathing a spark of flame and setting the entire thing alight. At first, the circle glowed red as the leaves burned. Then the fire turned a violent shade of blue.
“Ancestors, guide my path, to be born anew and fulfill my duty,” the dragon chanted in the ancient tongue, clasping his talons in front of him. His ruby red scales gleamed in the pale light of the spell circle. “Burn my soul into another, so I may be reborn and live again.”
With every word, a rune in the spell circle grew brighter and brighter, the flames rising higher and higher.
The hunters were drawing in. He could make out the words they were saying now.
“This way,” one of them called, “I can hear the beast in here.”
The dragon did not move. “Ancestors, guide my path…” he repeated the chant and felt his scales grow cold as the magic pulled from deep within him, grasping for the very part of himself that made him him. “Burn my soul into another…”
“There he is,” came the voice. The dragon dared not move to see him. He knew who this human was.
A blonde-haired man stepped up to the carved spell work circle and looked it up and down as the dragon continued his chant. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man bend down. He took a dagger in his hand and prod at the ash within the circle.
“I’ve come a long way to find you, dragon,” the man said, rising to his feet and staring up at the dragon with his piercing blue eyes. “You’re the last one, aren’t you?”
“Ancestors, guide my path,” the dragon continued, ignoring the human. The spell must be completed. He could not stop now, even if he wanted to. If he died here, his race would be extinct forever, but if he succeeded, if his spell was cast, he would have another chance. He would have a new, youthful body. “… so I may be reborn and live again.”
“What are you doing?” The hunter asked, putting a hand on the dragon’s haunch and feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. He poked at the dragon’s scales with his knife, and the dragon’s chanting faltered for a moment as he felt the prick of the blade grab him by his very soul.
The dragon picked up speed. He could not afford to let this human do to him what was done to so many others of his kind before, but he was powerless to oppose him. The spell required his absolute attention.
The circle responded to the dragon’s pleas as the blue flames slowly turned gold. One by one, each rune changed color and grew brighter. The hunter cocked an eyebrow at the spell and waved over one of his companions. The second hunter, a stocky man with ginger hair, carried a red metal canister with a black nozzle.
“Sorry, chap,” the blonde-haired hunter said, patting the dragon on the haunch again, “but I’m afraid I cannot let you finish whatever it is you’re doing. I’m sure you understand. It’s not that I’m not curious, this is a fascinating looking spell, but we just cannot afford to see what it does.”
The dragon ignored the hunters and continued his chant, his eyes focused and hard.
The blonde man sighed. “You’re boring, you know that? Your father had some banter in him. ‘You’ll never take my whelp! The hope of my kind!’ he’d roared. He fought gallantly. He died fearlessly. You, however,” the hunter said, tapping the knife against the dragon’s leg again, “are just sitting there, chanting. You’re boring. Put up at least a bit of a fight.”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed at the mention of his father. He could scarcely remember the elder dragon, who’d died when he’d been nothing but a small whelp. His mother had been dead long before that. Their parents, too.
He was the last of his kind. He knew this.
Did the hunter take pleasure in reminding him that there were no more dragons left in the world? That, once he was dead, the dragon race would disappear from the earth, never to be seen again? Of course, he did. Sick, twisted humans. All they ever did was take pleasure in the suffering of others, in hurting that which they could never understand.
“Take it out,” the blonde hunter said.
The dragon continued chanting, even as the ginger hunter raised the canister and squeezed on the handle. A splash of foul white foam shot out and began covering the dragon’s meticulously laid spell work. As the flames in the runes sputtered out, the dragon felt an overwhelming sense of cold wash over him. It was over. They destroyed the spell. There was nothing more he could do.
The dragon felt tears welling up in his eyes. A century of planning, research, and practice had gone into the design and development of this spell. It had taken everything he had to cast it. Whether or not by the hunter’s hand, the dragon knew he would not survive this day.
The dragon’s heart slowed as the fires of his spell went out. He kept his claws clasped together, determined to try to finish the spell, even as his fingers went cold and numb. His toes went next, leaving him with a prickling sensation where the icy stone ground of his cave should have been. His tail vanished next. It was still there, but he couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything.
When he lost sensation in his wings, he knew that it was all well and truly lost. He had failed in his duty. He had been unable to find a way to save his race. There was nothing more that could be done.
And yet, even as more and more of his body grew stiff and cold, his mouth refused to stop working. His eyes glazed over, and his vision went blurry, but his lips still formed the words, his tongue again formed the sound.
His body was dying around him, but he could not stop chanting.
The blonde-haired hunter watched him curiously, even as he continued to speak the words. The last remnants of the spell vanished with a puff of smoke, casting the cave once more into darkness. The hunters lit their flashlights, drowning the cavern in an unnatural white light, and the hunter scraped his knife down the dragon’s scales.
The dragon couldn’t feel it anymore. He knew that the knife was there, only by the way it seemed to grab what little essence he had left, but there was no pain, no sensation of metal against scale.
“You’re determined. I’ll give you that,” the hunter said, nodding in mild approval as the dragon’s body sagged. “Even when all hope is lost, you attempt to cast your foul magic. I suppose you’ll never do me the courtesy of telling me what it does.”
Against the dragon’s will, his body collapsed to the ground, heavy and stiff. Even as his chin rested against the cooling remains of his spell work, his mouth continued to speak. He croaked the last few lines of verse, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“You’ve lost, dragon,” the hunter said, his voice rising, “accept your death with dignity! Fight me! Bathe me in your flames! Do something!”
The dragon paused his chant only long enough to laugh. Who’d have thought ignoring the hunter would frustrate him? There was only one verse left, and then the spell would be finished. The dragon figured that there would be no harm in saying it in the hunter’s own, disgusting language.
“Ancestors,” he growled, the words squeezing out of his throat with great difficulty, “guide my path, to be born anew and fulfill my duty.”
The hunter’s eyes grew wide. “Stop him!” He barked at his companions.
Before another word could slip through the dragon’s lips, the hunters wrapped a chain around his snout, squeezing it shut. And yet, despite the restraint, his tongue still formed the words. His voice struggled out, but he spoke the chant.
It was harder to speak the human tongue. The words felt alien against the dragon’s teeth and were difficult to shape, especially with his snout squeezed shut. And yet, he continued his chant until there were only a few words left.
The hunter didn’t give him the chance to say them. The dragon stopped, the last word he uttered being reborn, as he felt the hunter’s dagger plunge into his side.
“Let no creature born of dragon blood survive this blade,” the hunter said, in a language not his own.
The dragon had thought his body was cold before, but this was a whole extra dimension of chill. Every fiber of his being went still.
His heart stopped beating in his chest.
His lungs stopped filling with air.
His tongue stopped moving.
The dragon stared down at his body in
“Is it dead?” The blonde hunter asked, wiping the dragon’s blood off the blade and carefully slipping it back into a sheath.
“Yes, sir,” called the ginger hunter. “He doesn’t breathe or speak.”
The blonde hunter nodded. “Let’s pack up and move out. Take the skull with us and give this place over to the Crone. She has to make sure he really was the last of his kind.”
The dragon stared in awe. How could he see this? He was floating, weightlessly above his body. He tried to look down at his claws. They were still there, but his ruby scales were now white, almost pale green. He raised them to his eyes. He could see through them!
It took him a second to realize what had happened. His body was dead, and he was now a naked soul, a spirit floating through the world.
Did that mean his spell had worked? Did that mean the Ancestors were guiding his spirit to a new body that he can change and shape to suit his will?
As the hunters hacked and carved away at his corpse, the dragon looked off into the distance. He could feel that he was trapped here. He could not move too far away from his body. But there was something else… He could sense another place he could be ensnared, somewhere else he could haunt. It was far away, on the other side of the world. Good. It would be secure, for a time, from the hunters. That should give the dragon enough time to prepare his new self for the battle ahead.
The dragon took one final, pained look at his corpse as the hunters began sawing his head from his neck. He felt a rage building in his gut at the sight of such desecration, but when he breathed, there were no flames, only a harmless cloud that did nothing but make the slayers shiver. He was powerless to stop them in this state.
No, he had to move on. There was nothing left for him here.
“Until we meet again, in the next life, Lambton,” the dragon whispered into the ear of the blonde hunter, “then I will finally taste your accursed blood.”
The blonde hunter didn’t so much as shiver at the dragon’s words.
The dragon snorted a cloud of white vapor at his hated enemies. Then he was gone.
Chapter 1
There was a ghost floating in Lewis’s classroom.
He stared at it, jaw agape, as the teacher continued her lecture. She was droning on about Arthurian myth this and Merlin the Great that. Lewis couldn’t bother to pay attention, not while there was suddenly a giant ghostly dragon floating above his head.
He gripped his desk in shock as the massive beast’s spectral visage swiveled to look around, glancing at every student in the classroom. Nobody else looked up or showed that they were aware of the intruder in their midst. Jeremy tapped Lewis on the shoulder, catching his attention.
“Are you okay, dude?” Jeremy asked, adjusting the glasses that had once again slipped down his nose. The smaller, weaselly looking boy met Lewis’s gaze and blinked in surprise. “You look like you saw a ghost!”
Lewis’s eyes were wide. He had seen a ghost. By now, the ghost dragon had noticed him and watched him thoughtfully, his spectral tail swishing ominously through the crowd of students. The translucent beast licked his massive chops as though expecting Lewis to run, so it could chase him.
“Interesting choice,” the ghost whispered, his voice like claws on stone as they scraped across Lewis’s ears. “I would have chosen someone else, but you will do nicely.”
Lewis blanched again and bolted upright, knocking over his chair. His seat crashed to the ground, making every other student in the classroom jump with surprise.
“Lewis,” the teacher asked, drawing his attention away from the ghost for a moment, “is there a problem?”
“B-bathroom,” Lewis stuttered, his tongue numb and barely obeying his commands.
The teacher rolled her eyes and waved a hand at the classroom door. Lewis lowered his head and walked at a brisk pace out the door and into the hall. Jeremy watched him go with a frown before shrugging and turning his attention back to his notes.
In the hall, Lewis watched the ghostly dragon drift through the wall to follow him. “It’s not real,” he whispered to himself, “it’s not real. It’s just a daydream. Go splash some water on your face, go wake up, just ignore it.”
“Oh, I am quite real,” the ghostly dragon said with a grin, its massive snout floating next to Lewis. “No sense running from me. It would appear that I am haunting you.”
“Leave me alone!” Lewis shouted, breaking out into a sprint and running down the school hall.
He passed the janitor, mopping the floor and giving him an odd look. He weaved through two other kids his age as they blocked the hall and talked about nothing important. He noticed the principal as he was walking the halls with his phone out. Lewis slipped on the freshly mopped floor as he passed the older man and fell on his back.
The principal sighed as he looked down at the dazed boy and shook his head. Lewis stared up and caught the ghostly dragon mirroring the principal’s expression.
“Hi, Mister McNally,” Lewis mumbled, waving shyly up at the principal.
“Mister Cooper,” the principal said, offering a hand down to the boy, “what are you doing out of class?”
“B-ba-bat,” Lewis tried to stutter as his eyes flicked between the ghost and his principal.
Finally, he took Mister McNally’s hand. He allowed himself to be dragged off the ground and back to a standing position.
“Bat?” Mister McNally asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Bathroom, sorry, I’m not feeling well,” Lewis mumbled. Before the principal could ask for further explanation, Lewis had broken into a run again before turning the corner and practically diving through the bathroom door.
He tried to slam the door shut behind him, but the door resisted his push and closed at its own leisurely pace. The ghostly dragon stuck its face through a urinal and looked around the room. Lewis tried to ignore it even as he rushed into a stall and plopped himself onto a toilet.
“Hiding from me is useless. Again, I am haunting you,” the ghost said. “This would be much easier on us both if you cooperate. I promise it will not hurt much.”
“Leave me alone,” Lewis whimpered, burying his face in his hands. His hoodie felt tight against his skin, and he tugged his hood over his head before pulling the drawstrings tight. His hood squeezed around his head until only his nose and mouth could be seen through the hole.
Even with Lewis’s eyes closed and blocked, he could still see the ghost. It floated through the dark of his mind, playing with the shifting colors behind his tightly squeezed eyes. It batted at the swirls of color with a claw and sent them spinning away until it was the only thing that Lewis could see.
“I am afraid I cannot. I have too much work to do, and you have become essential to it,” the ghost explained with a shrug. “Sorry, but you are stuck with me until the day you die. Hopefully, that will be soon. I would hate to do all this work and then need to wait a human lifetime to reap my rewards.”
“Leave me alone!” Lewis shouted, his voice echoing through the bathroom.
Suddenly, there came a sharp knock on the stall door. Lewis jumped in surprise, tugging off his hood to get a better look at the shoes just beyond the door. They were black and shiny.
“Lewis,” the principal said, knocking again, “are you okay in there?”
“Go on,” the dragon ghost urged, “tell him you see the ghost of a dragon. See what happens.”
“I’m fine,” Lewis squeaked, hugging himself for a moment. The truth was, he was terrified! He didn’t understand what was going on. A ghost dragon was haunting him, whispering things to him, and it looked like nobody else could see it!
Had he snapped? Had he gone crazy?
Was he experiencing some kind of feverish hallucination?
Or maybe he had schizophrenia, and just nobody had ever diagnosed him properly?
“Excellent, then you wouldn’t mind accompanying me to my office?” Mister McNally asked through the stall door. “I’ll wait outside for you, don’t be too long.”
Lewis waited until the sound of the principal’s footsteps were gone before he unlocked the stall door and stepped outside. There was the ghost, still phased through the wall, watching him with an icy grin on his reptilian snout. He rested his chin in his claws as he floated three feet off the ground, as though propping his elbows up on thin air.
