Dragon magus 2, p.1
Dragon Magus 2, page 1
Dragon Magus 2
DB King
Copyright © 2021 by DB King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
v003
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Contents
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Contents
Series by DB King
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
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About the Author
Series by DB King
Dragon Magus
Dungeon of Evolution
Kensei
The Last Magus
Mage’s Path
Shinobi Rising
War Wizard
Chapter 1
Above a ruined cityscape of crumbling buildings, the fading sun cast its brazen rays over burnished black scales and gleaming silver horns.
Massive wings spread skyward, ten times as high as a grown man would stand. Packed, arid dirt crunched beneath sleek, powerfully muscled limbs ending in curved talons. Atop a winding, sinuous neck, a colossal, diamond-shaped head sank down.
Catching the day’s dying light, reptilian red eyes blazed beneath cavernous brows as they met Raphael’s gaze.
“Thank you, my son,” the dragon said.
Raphael placed his hand against Koshi’s scaled cheek. It was cool to the touch.
He could see his own reflection in Koshi’s eyes: a tall young man, torso and limbs corded with muscle and sheathed in leather armor, dark eyes and windblown hair.
“I have so much to tell you, Koshi,” he replied.
“As do I.” Koshi’s voice was deep and rumbling, its sheer force swirling spirals of loose sand and gravel from the ground.
Rayne swooped over. The faerie dragon danced in the air, a swirling bundle of blue-green scales no bigger than a housecat. It bumped its head gently against Koshi’s snout.
“Knight! Knight! Knight!” Rayne chirped excitedly, its mental voice ringing inside Raphael’s mind.
Koshi, it seemed, could hear Rayne too. The dragon winked at its tiny brethren. “And a good evening to you too, little one.”
“Hey, old man. Good to see you alive and kicking,” Sylvia said, limping forward and tucking a stray lock of dark hair behind a pointed ear.
The elf had a huge grin on her bruised and bloodied face. Her armor was similarly battered, with many of its silver plates buckled and crumpled. Numerous rips streaked the dark, form-fitting garment gloving her body.
Koshi seemed to return her grin, if such an expression were indeed possible among dragons. “Likewise, Lady of the Misty Green. Thank you for taking Raphael under your wing. He must have learned so much from you.”
“Oh yes! For example, he now knows how to take a cucumber, along with some strawberry jam, and—” Sylvia managed to say before Raphael clapped a hand over her mouth and shook his head.
“…I suppose there are some things I don’t need to know about,” Koshi mused, his draconic features somehow managing to convey a sense of awkward discomfort. “After all, Raphael, you’re a grown man already. Just… remember that talk we had about treating women with honor and respect.”
“Koshi!” Raphael protested.
“Oh, don’t worry, old man,” Sylvia said, prying Raphael’s hand away from her face. “He’s a natural at it. Just look at how he has his way with me, like he always does. So forceful! So—”
The elf’s next few words came out as unintelligible mumbles as Raphael managed to cover her mouth once more. He exchanged a glance with Koshi. They nodded in unison, coming to an unspoken understanding to ignore Sylvia.
“Hello, Koshi,” Eliza said, coming up to stand by Raphael’s side. The blonde swordswoman’s face was streaked with sweat and dirt, but her blue eyes were radiant with joy. “It’s good to see you. Are you feeling all right?”
“Greetings, young lady.” Koshi bowed his head. “I am feeling fine, stronger than ever. I witnessed your blade-mastery in the battle just now. It was truly magnificent, as was your ability to fight alongside Raphael, complementing his every move perfectly.”
“Thank you, Koshi. I’ll always do my best.” Eliza blushed, shuffling her feet and straightening the collar of her leather armor.
Fenix approached hesitantly. The battlemage held his wide-brimmed hat in one hand as he dusted off the complex suit of buckles and leathers he wore over his lean, rangy frame. He bowed, pushing back the red, flowing cape that fluttered from his shoulders.
“Hail, Dragon Knight Koshi. My name is Fenix Hellstorm, and I am very honored to meet you, my lord.”
“Ah yes, we haven’t actually met yet, Mr. Hellstorm,” Koshi said. “And none of that ‘my lord’ business. Call me Koshi. Thank you for aiding my son.”
“Raphael is my comrade-in-arms. I could do no less,” Fenix said, his face pale and his eyes wide with awe as he met the dragon’s gaze.
“You have my gratitude nevertheless.” Koshi nodded, before casting his gaze past the battlemage’s shoulder to where Gabriella stood.
The princess’s features, nearly identical to Eliza’s, were frozen in disbelief and fear. Her white-blue mage robes fluttered across her petrified frame. She had her hands clasped over her chest.
Raphael and Koshi exchanged another uneasy glance.
“That’s the Crown Princess of Lucario?” Koshi asked. “How…”
“It’s a bit of a long story, Koshi,” Raphael replied.
“No, it really isn’t,” Sylvia chimed in, shrugging Raphael’s hand away and giving him a mischievous pinch on the cheek. The elf stalked over to Gabriella, caught her by the upper arm, and dragged the princess over.
“Through a combination of luck and stubbornness, Gabby here got entangled with us. And, if she keeps this up, I figure she’ll be sticking around for quite a while,” Sylvia explained. She jabbed her fingers into the princess’s side. “Hey, Gabby! Snap out of it! Come say hello to a dragon!”
“Ouch!” Gabriella yelped, flinching away from Sylvia and clutching her side. “You can’t just touch people like that, Sylvia! It’s… inappropriate behavior!”
The elf leered. “You mean the best kind of behavior.”
“Sylvia, I am going to…” Gabriella’s words died away as she remembered where she was: in the shadow of a dragon dozens of times larger than her. “What…”
Koshi flattened his facial spines behind his head in a gesture that Raphael recognized as an attempt to be as unthreatening as possible.
“Good evening, Your Royal Highness,” he said. “I am Koshi.”
The formal tone in Koshi’s voice seemed to strike a note in the princess. Gabriella blinked, shook her head, and curtseyed. “I greet you, Sir Dragon Knight Koshi, and I thank you for defending my people. Lucario’s gratitude knows no bounds, mighty hero.”
Koshi gave Raphael a sideways look. The dragon seemed embarrassed.
“I… uh… I am pleased that I was of service,” Koshi managed to say. “Thank you for helping my son.”
Gabriella seemed to be similarly uneasy. “You are very welcome, Sir Dragon Knight.”
“Should we start heading home?” Raphael suggested after a few moments of awkward silence.
“Yes! Let’s do that!” Sylvia said, rummaging in her belt pouch. A disgusted frown came over her face. “Ugh. I forgot. We used up our recall charms returning from Vitoria, and I forgot to bring more!”
“I doubt those would work here anyway,” Fenix point ed out. He swept his arm in a wide arc, as if to encompass the junkyard in its entirety. “We managed to defeat the draco-lich, but currents of strange Time and Spatial Magic are still everywhere. They’re old, like they’ve always been here, before anything else existed.”
“Aw, but I don’t want to walk all the way back or even fly on my sword,” the elf complained. She shook Raphael by the shoulders. “Come on, think of something!”
“We can return the way we came,” Raphael said. “Everyone can hop into your Pocket Dimension, and Rayne can fly us out with Koshi following behind.”
“I have a better suggestion,” Koshi rumbled, turning slightly and lowering one of his massive, sweeping wings to the ground. “Climb on my back, all of you, and I will fly us away from this accursed place.”
“Sounds great, Koshi!” Raphael agreed. He scaled the dragon’s wing quickly and found himself atop Koshi’s broad, scaled back.
Rayne squealed in glee and plopped down beside him.
Sylvia and Eliza were next to follow; Fenix hesitated for a moment before scrambling up the dragon’s wing.
Soon only Gabriella was left, pale and wide-eyed at the prospect of climbing aboard Koshi’s back.
“Trust me, princess,” Koshi said. “I will allow no harm to come to you.”
Gabriella nodded wordlessly. With Raphael and Fenix’s help, she eventually made the ascent and found herself perched amidst shining black scales.
“Um. Sir Koshi,” Fenix said uneasily. “How will we not fall off mid-flight? No offense, but there isn’t the most secure of footing astride you.”
Just as the words left the battlemage’s lips, a sphere of golden light sprang up to encase the war party. Raphael brushed his fingers against the sphere. It was made up of Ryu-To-Ki, the spiritual energy roiling within the depths of every dragon’s soul.
“Nobody’s going to fall,” Koshi told them, the draconic equivalent of a grin creasing his features as he looked over his shoulder. “But I don’t recommend jumping around during the flight either.”
Eliza, Fenix, and Gabriella nodded numbly. Meanwhile, Sylvia did cartwheels around the sphere’s rim, whooping wildly with every rotation.
“…isn’t she badly hurt?” Koshi asked Raphael.
“I… I think we should just go,” Raphael replied, shrugging.
Koshi nodded, and with a beat of his mighty wings, he rose into the air. He turned his massive head in the direction of Lucia City and soared toward it.
The shifting landscape of the junkyard streaked by, nearly faster than the eye could see, but the golden sphere of Ryu-To-Ki kept the rushing air at bay, preventing it from tearing any of the war party off their perch.
Raphael grinned, watching his friends’ expressions. Fenix’s jaw was agape as he flew through the heavens. Eliza clutched Raphael’s upper arm close, her lips curved into a smile of equal parts awe and wonder. Gabriella was similarly entranced, her eyes bright with delight. Sylvia, of course, was exultant, raising her hands into the air and shrieking with joy.
“Amazing! Dragonflight! Never did I expect to experience this!” the elf cried.
“Stick around and there’s plenty more of that to come,” Raphael promised.
Sylvia winked at him. “Oh, I plan to, Raphael. You’re stuck with me now, whether or not that’s what you want.”
“Of course it’s what I want, Sylvia,” he replied. “You by my side.”
The elf fell silent, her flippant demeanor crumbling. She held Raphael’s gaze for several moments, but before he could say anything, the grin returned to her lips once more, and she gave him a thumbs-up.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she said. “Because you just might get it.”
Spreading his wings even wider, Koshi tore through the evening sky.
Chapter 2
Guided by the light of the Dragon Meridian, Koshi streaked unerringly toward the southern gates of Lucia City. Like Raphael, the strange magic hanging over the junkyard held no sway over him.
Raphael cast his gaze over Koshi’s shoulder, looking down at the ever-changing landscape beneath the dragon’s wings.
What a curious place, Raphael thought. I’ve been here so many times, but this is the deepest I’ve gone into the junkyard. Even then, the location where we found Koshi didn’t look any different from anywhere I’ve seen during my foraging trips. Perhaps we should come back later and explore it a bit more.
Koshi seemed to sense Raphael’s musings. He glanced over his shoulder. “The junkyard wasn’t always here. I remember when it first appeared, almost two hundred years before Platina and her kin went mad. Back then, the Kingdom of Lucario didn’t even exist. Instead, there was a small collection of city states.”
“Some of which were swallowed by the junkyard, their citizens never to be seen again according to many mainstream and commonplace historical accounts,” Eliza said. “Fearing for their lives, the people of the remaining cities left. The entire region was abandoned, and for centuries, it lay desolate and lifeless.”
“Until Lucian the First, my ancestor, settled it and founded the Kingdom of Lucario,” Gabriella chimed in, her voice laden with more than a note of pride. “As a show of strength and courage, he founded his capital right on the edge of the junkyard, so that he might best defend his realm against any fiends that emerge.”
“I remember him,” Koshi said. “A proud and audacious man, as cunning as he was brutal, but in those dark times, with the ogre hordes laying waste to all they came across, he was what his people needed.”
“Sir Dragon Knight. Our royal histories mention you several times, and your name echoes through local mythology.” Gabriella leaned forward, meeting Koshi’s sidelong gaze. “Many soldiers and knights take your name as a mark of honor, yet from what I understand, having questioned Eliza and Fenix, you’ve been living in poverty outside the southern gates of our capital all this time? Why?”
“My strength was fading,” Koshi said, “and there were newer, more capable defenders of your realm, such as Sylvia over there, even if I never really condoned, and still don’t condone, their means and measures.” Koshi turned his head to the front, looking away.
Sylvia grinned, but before she could say anything, Fenix spoke up instead.
“Sir, I know you’re talking about Spell Dust and Vector magic,” the battlemage said. “Sylvia and Eliza have told me about your distaste for it. But, with all due respect, how else did you expect us to defend ourselves? You and Raphael are Dragon Knights with mana flowing in your veins, so you don’t need Spell Dust for magic, but what about the rest of us? Do you think a regiment of men with sharpened sticks would be a match for even the smallest ogre raiding party? If not for Spell Dust and Vector magic, the entire world would have been overrun by ogres, dark goblins, or other monsters by now.”
Koshi sighed. It was a deep, rumbling sound that rolled through his entire body. “You are right, Mr. Hellstorm. Since my bout with Sylvia, I have given the matter of Spell Dust and Vector magic much thought, and my sentiments run alongside yours. Who am I to judge those fighting for their very survival? Though my distaste for Vector magic will never change, I bear no ill sentiment toward those who use it, unless of course, they give me other reasons to.”
“Your honesty and openness humble me, sir,” Fenix said, giving the dragon a seated bow.
“You are wise beyond your years, Mr. Hellstorm,” Koshi replied. “Greatness awaits you in the decades to come, I’m sure.”
Raphael clapped Fenix on the shoulder. “I’m with Koshi on that. You and Eliza have helped me so much. I couldn’t ask for better friends.”
The battlemage nodded. “Just doing my best, Raphael. As I’m sure you always are.”
“Wait,” Gabriella said, raising her voice. “Something just occurred to me. Lucia City was attacked by monsters. What do you think is going to happen if a massive dragon flies up to its city gates?”
“Yeah, we’ll probably just get blasted out of the skies,” Sylvia said. The elf was laying on her back, her hands behind her head and her feet crossed.
“We’ll land just outside the junkyard and walk the rest of the way into the city,” Koshi announced.
