Servant of the Axe, 52 - Enter the Dragon

Servant of the Axe

Chapter 52

Enter the Dragon

I awoke in a hammock, still in the sack, tied in a manner that contorted my body. Fools, I could just pull my knife … no, Dimmihammas still had that! Well, FINE, it was clearly time to buy a new knife.

As I worked to get a fold of the bag in my mouth, I noticed the soft swaying of the hammock. Okay, I was already on a ship of some kind.

Okay, I had an idea. Calling Ocean mana to my ears instead of my eyes, I attempted Mystic Hearing. I got my ears filled with muffling water.

Clearly, I needed to work on my invocations.

Okay, my hands were tied behind me, but I'm surprisingly flexible. It turns out I needed to work on my flexibility as well.

It was like they were professionals or something.

Well, if I could reach my ankles to my wrists…

Someone shook me mercilessly. "Oi, you stop that! We're under sail, there's nowhere to go even if you do get loose."

Clearly, someone didn't understand that Amphibian Lungs existed.

"Might I know where we're going?"

"Sure. Dragon wants to see you."

Well, the Dragon had an odd sense of how to invite someone. "Thank you."

"Whatever."

Okay, so at a minimum, half a day to the dragonwyr, two days (maybe one) to Dragonheart Island… Depending how long we'd been sailing, we were almost there.

I didn't get it. As the dragon flies, this whole thing would take less… Ah, but coming to someone else makes them the host or hostess. Okay, I guess I did get it.

Maybe that didn't require me to ride in a sack, though. I checked my nutrition.

Okay, I had a plan. A dumb plan, but it was a plan. I just needed to wait until the guards were distracted.

"I do have another question."

"No, you're not getting out of the sack."

"How do you intend to feed me without opening the sack? Pour broth through the burlap?"

"Well, now that's an idea, but no."

"May I ask why not?"

"I suppose."

"Why am I not being fed?"

"Cause through some wild type of biomancy, you gain power when fed."

"Not entirely accurate, but a reasonable precaution. Thank you."

"I see what you're doing."

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"You're trying to get me talking, make me think you might be a friend."

"That doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would work."

"It won't."

"Good."

"Why good?"

"I'd hate for you to feel betrayed if we came to odds later."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about that. There isn't very much later left for you. Dragon wants to see you, and from what I hear, Dragon's angry with you."

Oh, so it was like that. Again.

And I was tied up and supposedly helpless. Again.

I got angry, and almost thrashed about in my bag, before I realized they'd just hit me with clubs. A lot.

[You have 0/30 health remaining.]

Yeah, better to wait.

#

My original plan of breaking the bones in my hand and healing it in a week began to look increasingly reckless. But, the alternative of doing nothing also had its risks.

I guess the deciding factor was that they weren't going to feed me during the trip. If I didn't act that night, there wouldn't be the biomass to act later. So, during shift change, I slipped my left hand out through the knots.

It sounded impossibly loud to me, but apparently not so loud either of my guards heard anything suspicious.

I only had two broken bones, a bunch of strained ligaments, and a lot of dislocations. Either I was getting better at this, or somebody needed to go back to knot tying school.

Slowly, slowly, I worked my free hand down to my ankles. During this time, my guard's breathing became more rhythmic, although he never broke out snoring.

My claws encountered burlap. Dang it! Yeah, they had tied the rope outside the sack. It took about half an hour of clawing, but then my ankles were free. Why couldn't I get high quality rope like this?

By the time I was out of the sack, I was hungry enough to eat it, ropes and all.

I slipped carefully to the floor, and then to the door. I stepped directly onto a squeaky board.

My guard woke.

"Slumber!" I cast, and he slumped right out of his chair.

Okay, then. The door… wasn't locked.

Nobody to the left, nobody to the right… Okay, I made my way toward the wooden steps leading upward.

The edge, I remembered. Steps are less squeaky toward the edge.

[You have taken eight points of bludgeoning damage. After armor, two points have been received. You are at -2/30 health. Your health is negative; you will experience a period of unconsciousness.]

Well, I tried.

I awakened with the taste of garlic, ginseng, sage, and … mandrake? Some variant of the woodsman's healing potion, then.

[You have 4/30 health remaining.]

This time, I was in manacles of iron with silver bands. There was no scent of straw, but everything else about the scent said underground jail cell.

It took twenty minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness; it was an evolution I kept close at hand.

In the meantime, I took note of smells. Someone had washed the cells with salt water, but it couldn't hide the scent of blood and feces.

[You cannot Commune With Nature in non-natural environments.]

Okay, didn't think so, but it never cost mana to check.

Simple Mystic Sight verified my cell was warded (aversion ward and anti-escape), and the lock enchanted. I tried clicking my claws together…

Some ASS had filed my claws down, below the quick, near the skin, and those on my feet as well! It wasn't as if I could pick the lock with them. <1>

It was clear I was going nowhere.

#

Someone had removed everything from my inventory. Perhaps as an insult, my coins were untouched.

On the far wall, beyond the bars I didn't want to go near, hung a ring of keys. I was reasonably sure there was an alarm ward or similar upon them, and that they did not actually fit the lock on my cell.

Okay, I lacked the biomass to evolve anything new, and the unlock would take days in any event. If my captors had used a healing potion, they wanted me awake and aware.

In the darkness to my right, someone screamed and flailed against the squeaking of a rat. After the higher-pitched rat had gone silent, the screams faded to weeping, and then to silence.

Oh, gods, were they trying to break me with boredom? My mouth watered at the thought of fresh rat, but none wandered into my cell.

After a time, I decided to perform my various regimen. Not the physical, because [Serious Injury: Concussion], but I completed the mystical and was a good portion into the psychic when there was a loud booming noise to the left of my cell.

Some inmates gibbered, some begged, some shouted out to the guards. You'd think that most of them had never been interred before; guards almost universally hate talking to prisoners, unless torturing them for information.

With a loud CLUNK, they unlocked the door. I began the process of returning my eyes to normal, but didn't beat the wave of painful light when the door opened. A faint breeze wafted in the scent of garlic and roast chicken.

Four guards stomped up to my cell, opened the door (without touching the key ring on the wall, as I had suspected), and bade me to exit.

My snout came up firmly to the average of where their xyphoid processes, at the tip of their breastbones, were.

They did not push or shove, but the chain between my ankles allowed only for waddling steps. They led me upstairs, to a courtyard lit by noontime light. Even without the night adaptions, my eyes registered it as too bright to properly see by. How bad that would have been with them!

They marched me through two buildings and their courtyards, before handing me off to formal Wyvern Guards, hard men clad in hard steel, the gaps between fitted with steel mail. There were no runes spared on their helms, their armor, their swords, even on the heels of their boots.

They took grasp of my chains, and hauled me into a cathedral-like structure, the back of which was a natural cavern. They hurled me to the floor, and fell back, allowing me to stand.

"Well," a deep voice boomed, "that certainly took long enough."

My host, the dragon, had arrived.

#

<1> Animal biology: The quick is the interior of the claw bone, the living part of the claw. It is extremely painful to file off, so I should probably be glad that I was already unconscious at the time.