Dragon conjurer 7, p.1
Dragon Conjurer 7, page 1
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Chapter 1
I stretched in my seat and tried to drive the ache out of my limbs from the extremely long flight back from Egypt. My team and I had said goodbye to our new friends Bo and Binta and left MIA yesterday, and we’d been on the jet ever since.
Nick had struggled to say goodbye to his dream girl Zahra, and he’d been unusually quiet during the entire flight. My best friend’s shoulders slumped in his seat in the row in front of me, and I could tell his heart ached for Zahra. The two had only met a few days ago, but they were already so entwined with one another.
“It’s like I’m leaving part of myself behind,” Nick had said to me as he waved at Zahra on the tarmac. The blond nymph had stared out the window long after the African Academy had faded away into the distance.
“It’s not forever,” I consoled Nick. “You’ll be together again soon.”
“Ugh, ‘soon.’ I hate that word,” Nick grumbled and leaned back into his seat to mope for the rest of the flight.
We’d all spent several hours asleep, and my mind had been plagued by images of the Aigamuxa and its rasping voice. The twenty foot giant had cackled at me mercilessly and repeated its taunts of our inevitable failure and demise. I hadn’t been able to get the idea of The Great Scaled One out of my thoughts since my meeting with Dr. E. in the basement of MIA.
Once it was clear to me that Zofia’s mind attacks had broken something inside the Aigamuxa’s brain, I’d turned to the Mrs. Claus scientist and shook my head with frustration.
“It’s not saying anything that even makes sense anymore,” I’d explained.
“It looks quite mad now.” Dr. E. had looked at the giant and frowned.
“I think Zo’s attacks may have pushed it a little too far,” I sighed, and I turned to look at my dark purple dragon. “We’ll have to work on that a little bit.”
Zofia stared at me with what looked like contrition and bowed her scaly head low to nudge against my shoulder.
“It’s okay, girl.” I patted Zofia’s neck. “Búcsú.”
The eardrum-popping fwoomp sound of Zofia’s departure had echoed harshly through the room as my mind-control dragon slithered back around my right thigh.
“It is very troubling, what this creature has said,” Dr. E. said as she readjusted her glasses on her round face.
“Do you think it could be real?” I asked. “A great scaled monster pulling the strings behind the scenes?”
“I do not know, Mr. Cooper,” Dr. E. sighed. “But I would not throw away this information lightly. Even if there is only the tiniest chance that the creature has shared with us a small hint of the grander picture, it would be very valuable information to have.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I grumbled.
“I will share this information with Headmaster Mahrous.” Dr. E. jotted down a few notes on her clipboard, and then she gazed at me over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses. “It would be prudent for you to do the same when you return to AIMM.”
After a few hours of tumultuous dreams, the jet’s engines finally lulled me into a dreamless sleep, and when I finally woke up, I glanced out the window. I kind of recognized the wide expanses of the desert that made up so much of the southwest of the United States, and I guessed we were around Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona, which meant we were almost home. Hopefully.
I couldn’t take it anymore, and I stood up from my seat to shake the stagnation out of my legs.
Steffi started to rouse from her sleep as I passed by her seat beside Nala in the last row.
“Mmm, are we home yet?” my fairy-girl asked as an intense stretch took hold of her entire body, and her shoulders and hips popped in response.
“I think we’ll be coming into California pretty soon,” I said, and I leaned down to kiss her pink hair.
“Oh, good,” Steffi sighed. “It’ll be really good to get back onto solid ground.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Nala yawned as she began to wake up as well. “What time is it?”
“I’m not really sure, afternoon, I think,” I guessed as I looked out the window and did a terrible calculation of the sun’s angle over the land.
“I hope we can have a day or two of downtime when we get back,” Elisabeth sighed as she stretched in her seat. “I could use a little relaxation.”
“That would be lovely,” Ronin agreed.
“Yeah, it would,” I chuckled. It felt like we’d been going non-stop for a while now except for the extended flight time.
I made my way back to my seat and glanced at Nick again. He hadn’t moved much since he’d settled into his seat somewhere over the borders of Morocco. I’d known it was going to be hard for him to leave MIA and say goodbye to Zahra, even if it was only temporary, but I was still a little worried about my friend. I spent a while planning out some strategies to try and cheer Nick up, but I knew this melancholy would probably linger until Zahra was by his side again.
Which was only what was to be expected of someone pulled away from their love and then forced to put thousands of miles between them.
I knew that if I had to say goodbye to any of my girlfriends, I would feel the same way Nick was behaving right now. Then a spiteful voice in the back of my head reminded me of the ticking clock on my time with Ronin. Elisabeth had received a long-term assignment with AIMM, but Ronin was on a much more tenuous timeline for MAJK.
For several minutes, I wondered if it was worth trying to convince Headmaster Burkhard that Ronin was crucial to the effectiveness of our team.
I smiled to myself as I realized that she really was an integral part of our success. Ronin’s astral-energy powers were so versatile and helpful in just about every situation, and I decided I would speak up and request that Ronin stay long-term with AIMM and my team when the occasion presented itself.
“We’ll be coming into AIMM pretty soon, kids,” Captain Silva announced through the comms system, and I could hear the exhaustion in his voice.
“Finally,” Nala sighed.
“I greatly look forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight,” Elisabeth mused.
“There is something pretty great about sleeping in a familiar place,” Steffi said, and she threw me a smirk that made me think she wasn’t talking about her own bed at all.
A pleasant shudder raced down my spine, and I suddenly felt way more awake than I had just a moment before. Then my gut lurched a little as we started to descend toward the ground in a series of unsteady drops.
“Kids, we might have a little delay on our hands here,” Silva’s voice crackled over the comms.
“What’s up?” I asked, and I turned to look out the window. I couldn’t see anything on my side of the jet, but Nick suddenly perked up from his moping.
“Woah…” Nick breathed. “Guys, you gotta see this.”
I stood up from my seat and stepped across the aisle to gaze out the window behind Nick. We were relatively close to the ground, and a dozen or so huge, hulking creatures stomped around the rolling hills below us. They were easily as large as the Aigamuxa had been and moved at an awkwardly fast pace.
Then I spotted a flash of bright orange flames fly overhead and blast a ball of fire at one of the giants’ heads.
“Holy shit, that’s Phoenix, isn’t it?” I asked as my ladies joined us at the windows.
“Yes, it is,” Ronin answered as we watched her twin brother destroy the monster with his astral flames.
A short distance away, a second, heavily-muscled, blond figure blasted out green flames at another hairy giant that stomped through the thin forest.
“Wait a second.” Nick perked up more in his seat. “Is that Bruce?”
“What? Where?” Steffi gasped and stared out the window in search of the bully.
“Oh, my god, it is!” Nala laughed.
“My poor brother,” Ronin chuckled. “He has been shackled to Bruce’s team while we were away?”
A blur of a person flashed past Bruce’s white-green flames, and a line of rope trailed behind the speeding figure. I recognized the distinctive movements of Kitsune, and as I glanced around the battlefield below us, a thick fog rolled in from the short-haired Japanese cadet, Wisp.
I studied the various hulking giants a moment longer but couldn’t spot any of them acting differently than the others. I wondered for a moment if Doppelganger had been split from the other Japanese cadets, but then one of the hairy giants caught my attention.
It moved differently than the others, less awkwardly, and its gate was a little narrower, and I knew this one must be Doppelganger in monster form.
My theory was proven correct a moment later when the more graceful monster lunged suddenly toward another giant and wrapped his arms around the beast’s waist. The two creatures thudded heavily to the ground, and Doppelganger began to punch the other aggressively in the face. I winced when the real giant jerked up and slammed its thick skull into Dop’s face and knocked him hard to the ground. The shapeshifting Japanese cadet lost his advantage and was quickly being throttled by the gi ant’s hairy fists.
“Looks like all the MAJK cadets got shackled to Point Break,” I said.
“Looks like they’re struggling,” Steffi pointed out.
One of the giants stampeded directly at Wisp, and she was about to get trampled when an intense stream of white-green fire burned through the monster’s back. The trees in the immediate area shook as the monster’s huge body dropped dead to the ground.
“We should go down and help,” Nick said with a smirk.
I had a feeling my best friend wanted the opportunity to show off in front of Bruce, but I also could see that Bruce’s team was indeed struggling. There were more than twice as many giants as there were cadets down there, and they didn’t look like a super cohesive team.
Johnny had a really powerful magical ability, but there were no electrical sources for him to feed off of out here in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t seem to be much help at all, and I had very little understanding of the other two guys on Bruce’s team or their powers.
“I think you’re right.” I nodded and glanced at my girls.
Steffi and Elisabeth nodded in agreement, and Nala smirked as she punched her fist into her other hand.
“Yes, let us go assist my brother,” Ronin said firmly.
“Silva!” I called to the cockpit as my team started to make their way over to the jet’s ramp. “We’re going down to help them out, open the ramp.”
“You got it, boss,” Silva chuckled back at me.
Steffi quickly dug several earpieces out from their storage compartment and passed one to each of us.
Intense wind forced its way into the jet and whipped the girls’ hair around as we stepped closer to the open air.
“Bianxifa!” I called over the rush of wind, and Beyblade appeared in an intense flash of orange light.
My fire dragon hovered just outside the jet’s open ramp, and Nick didn’t hesitate to jump onto his back. The pair raced down to the ground together, and Beyblade’s fire-breath immediately struck out at the nearest giant.
Steffi stretched her dragonfly wings out from her shoulders and fluttered after the pair, and she shaped a golden energy shield with one hand and started blasting dense balls of energy out from her other hand.
Elisabeth’s body shifted gracefully into the form of a huge eagle before she soared out into the open air. Then she dove down at a sharp angle toward the head of one giant and shifted rapidly from her eagle body into that of an enormous gorilla. Just as the French beauty’s gorilla shift finished, she dropped onto the giant’s shoulders and started to crush the beast’s head with her huge hands.
Nala dove out of the plain like an Olympic diver and turned in mid-air as she dropped toward the ground. My heart leapt into my throat as I watched her descend rapidly toward the ground, but Nala threw her hands up and formed a wave of earth to catch her. Then my earth-bending girl rode it like a surfboard toward the nearest giant, and when she reached the monster, she plowed it down with her wave of stone.
I turned back to look at Ronin and saw she had already projected her white astral armor around herself and formed a double-sided axe with a short handle in her hands. My Japanese girlfriend smiled and took a step toward me, and I knew she was waiting for our ride to the ground.
“Trylle frem!” I called over the rush of wind from outside.
Thor burst forth from my tattoos in a zinging flash of indigo light, and he waited for us just below the jet’s ramp.
“Let’s go!” I shouted to my Samurai warrior and extended my hand out to take hers.
Ronin placed her small hand in mine and held onto her large astral-energy axe with the other. Then we jumped out of the jet and landed expertly on my storm dragon’s back. We were hit with another rush of wind as the jet maneuvered away, and then we followed the rest of my team to the ground.
I glanced around the scene as Thor lowered us closer to the forest floor, and I finally got a good look at the giant monsters Bruce’s team was battling.
There were still several of the hairy, lumbering beasts stomping around the battlefield. They had thick gray-brown hair all over their bodies and huge foreheads. These beasts were vaguely sasquatchian in appearance, but their proportions weren’t quite right, and I suspected they were closely related to Bigfeet. They had smushed-in noses that took up a large portion of their leathery faces and moved slowly and clumsily.
“Let me down,” Ronin said to me as we got lower. “I will be more useful on the ground.”
“You got it.” I silently commanded Thor to move low enough to let Ronin hop down.
Ronin swung her leg over Thor’s back, slid down to the ground, and began to raise her double-bladed axe over her shoulder. Then the Japanese girl swung her astral blade like a home run slugger right into the upper thigh of a giant before it even noticed she was there.
The beast roared with pain and swung its head around in search of its attacker, but before the monster could locate the petite Samurai, Ronin slammed her axe into the back of the monster’s other knee. The sasquatch-like beast howled again as it fell forward onto all fours, and blood sprayed out behind it.
Ronin wasted no time in delivering a killing blow by expertly freeing the monster’s head from its shoulders.
The beast’s hairy face rolled a few feet before it came to a stop, and its dead eyes stared up at the sky.
“Well done, dear sister!” Phoenix called.
“Thank you, brother.” Ronin smiled brightly and gave a little bow to her twin.
“Hey, Phoenix!” I called out. “What are these things?”
“They are called Skookum!” the Japanese guy shouted back. “Very similar to the legends of the Sasquatch.”
Phoenix flashed past me and gave me a huge grin and a quick wave. Then he turned around and blasted a long stream of orange flame at one of the Skookums.
Bruce was on the far side of the battlefield, and white-green flames shot out from his fists and feet. He scrambled to back away from one of the giants as it lumbered toward him and roared so forcefully that huge globs of spit splattered out of its mouth.
Wisp came up behind the giant and lifted a dense fog of water vapor directly around the giant’s head. That gave Bruce just enough time to clamber back to his feet and shoot out a devastating fireball with both of his fists to finish off the giant.
Once the Skookum’s body thudded heavily to the ground, Wisp sighed with what looked like relief, and Bruce shot her an almost charming smile.
“What the fuck…” I muttered to myself.
“Hey, Red!” Johnny Grimm shouted.
Bruce’s skinny teammate and perpetual hype-man stood with his feet braced apart, and his hands cupped in front of his mouth as he yelled up at me.
“What?” I shouted back.
“That’s your lightning dragon, right?” Carrottop called and gestured at me with child-like grabby hands. “Give me a little juice!”
“How much do you want?” I smirked. I knew Thor could put out a ton of voltage, and I only knew a little about Johnny’s powers, and even less about how much electricity he could handle.
“As much as you can give me!” Johnny said with a smug expression.
“Give him half,” I said quietly to Thor. I didn’t want to be responsible for sending this jackass into cardiac arrest because he wanted to prove himself.
Thor grunted a little and took a deep breath, and arcs of electricity jumped across his back. The tingle of sharp static raced up my legs as the lightning gathered in Thor’s mouth, and then my storm dragon let loose.
The indigo lightning forked across the short distance between Thor’s mouth and Johnny’s body, and a spike of anxiety jumped in my throat as the beak-nosed bully’s eyes slammed shut from the strike. His gangly arms curled into his chest, and he hunched forward around where the lightning strike had entered his body.
“Aaaahhh!” Johnny roared a second later and launched himself at the nearest giant.
The red-haired guy’s fist connected with the burly chest of the hairy monster like a battering ram. Air whooshed out of the creature’s lungs as Johnny pummeled the Skookum into the ground until its ribcage was crushed under the force of the skinny cadet’s powerful punches.
“Woah,” I breathed. It was impressive to watch, and I finally understood why Johnny was an Orange rank.
Then I spotted two of the giants wrestling with each other, and I knew one of them was Doppelganger.
