In which Jerich sees more than any mortal probably should. For the first part of the story, read Part One: Crystal Halls, in which our hero enters a cave and finds something astonishing.
Part Three: Necromancer
A snort. Crystal dust swept over him, stinging his eyes and skin. He tried to move away, but the creature had him pinned to the ground with a glittering talon.
“Puny, foolish mortal,” growled the drake. Paraxyl shifted a claw, squeezing Jerich painfully against the shining floor.
In that moment of grinding pain, all thoughts of seizing any power here fled. His mind could think only of escape, of somehow extracting himself from under Paraxyl’s claw and making for the exit as fast as he could. He tried to think how he’d scramble up, and then what he’d do once he was out, if he ever made it that far.
He could try to evade his troupe, but he’d have a price on his head forever after for desertion. Were he to return empty-handed, though…
Lord Welkind was not a forgiving man, and there was no telling where his temper would carry him.
Another rumbling growl. “I give you leave to depart, and you stare dumbly, torn between loyalties that scarcely compare.”
Perhaps he could return with a crystal from this cave? But no, the broken shards all went dun, empty of power. It was the dragon or nothing.
Seeing the size of the beast, it seemed well decided that it would be nothing. Jerich regretted leaving his sword behind, but what good would mere steel do against such a creature anyway?
Unless… Jerich shuddered, his memories of that fell day still dancing across the dragon’s wrathful features.
Yet, as if by fate, Jerich found his hand close to his boot. Just a little shift—ah, there! With his options being death, death, and maybe death, it was worth trying, at least.
The dragon rumbled again. “This time, I give no leave, but a command: depart!”
With that, the talon closed, hefting Jerich into the air. Paraxyl drew back to throw, but Jerich drew back his own hand, a knife in his grasp, and yelled, “Callandhi!”
A sharp, resounding crack marked the knife’s impact with the dragon’s scales, followed by a landslide bellow from its maw. The creature threw, and Jerich struck the opposing wall a foot below the tunnel, clattering to the floor again. Only the padding he wore saved his back. Warily, he stood again.
The creature glared at its talon, pain and rage flashing across its shimmering features. Jerich couldn’t see any wound, but apparently he’d hurt it with his stab.
Paraxyl fixed a wrathful gaze upon him. “Necromancer!” it roared.
Was that what he was? A necromancer? A speaker of the dead? It made sense, he supposed.
No time for that now, though. Jerich charged, gleaming knife in hand and spirits higher than he’d ever felt in his life. He felt almost jovial, in fact, as his feet pounded the crystal floor.
The dragon reared up, inhaling a deep breath.
The man was nearly within ten paces of Paraxyl when the beast bellowed forth a streaming cloud of glittering dust. He ducked his helmet against it and swerved behind a stalagmite, evading the tearing sting of the crystalline breath which blasted a scar into the faceted floor.
The cloud dispersed, and the chamber shook as the dragon bounded forward. Only just in time did Jerich roll away from a great, sweeping claw.
Then he was under the beast, stabbing at a leg. Crack!
An opalescent scale shattered loose, gleaming as it skittered across the floor. The monster reared again, roaring in pain, and Jerich slashed again as he made his way out from under its belly, sending two more scale shards shining through the air. The ground heaved as Paraxyl crashed into the ground.
A talon struck and Jerich jumped back, then darted back in to be caught by another blow that sent him sprawling across the chamber floor. He looked up as the creature heaved itself up from the battered floor, two dozen scales gleaming in the dust.
Jerich paused. Gleaming in the dust. Dun, crystalline dust, but the scales still shone. He didn’t need the dragon.
A few scales would do.
The creature was crashing toward him again. Dashing to the side, he evaded the heavy charge, arcing tightly toward the glittering pile Paraxyl had left behind as the crystal drake slid into the wall.
He dodged a falling stalactite, scraped a handful off the floor, and made for the exit, stuffing everything into his purse, knife, scales, and dun powder all.
“And now you depart?” roared Paraxyl, clattering up from the wreckage of the chamber wall. “Sought you only to pain me? Sought you only petty spite?”
Jerich scrambled his way up the sloping wall, his boots slipping on powder-laced footholds, his hands cut and bleeding as they slid off crystalline edges. His heart raced, his breathing blew dun clouds from the polished wall, and the tunnel seemed to draw no nearer as he heard the great dragon approach again.
“The folly of men, to vault themselves above the ancient!” The words were a cascade of crystal boulders. “The foolish pride of mortals, to seize power they do not comprehend!”
Jerich looked back. A talon swiped at him, and he released a bloodied handhold to slide to the floor beneath the crashing blow.
“I rescind my command,” came the low growl. “Mortality finds you this day.” Jerich rolled away from another crashing claw, fumbling in his purse for the knife.
His hand closed instead on a crystal scale, and his view flooded with the titanic fear.
Crashing worlds. Raging gods. A blessing, a curse, a betrayal at the hands of weak-willed men. A thousand wars and an ultimate expulsion into the depths, where darkness gave way to the spreading, glowing essence of the crystal dragon’s power.
All laced with a suppressed knowledge that his decreed banishment was as eternal as the gods’ demands, that this cavern of power was also a prison, and that it—well, he, Paraxyl—had no power to escape.
For all of Paraxyl’s pride and strength, he was, in the end, powerless, a fact which he refused to know.
All this flashed in an instant, and a frantic idea came together in Jerich’s mind.
“I faced down my darkest fears in this cave!” he cried.
Paraxyl paused, claw held high, snorting out a cloud.
The man continued. “Can you do the same?” And with that, he drew forth the scale, holding it to the dragon’s view.
Opal eyes narrowed, then spread wide, and Paraxyl averted his gaze. Claws clenched and unclenched, eyes shut tight, then flew open again, then shut once more against the memories of the drake’s own powerlessness over his fate.
“Mortal weakling!” he breathed.
“Yet I know you now,” said Jerich, another idea forming. A lie, or maybe it was a truth. A promise either way. Leverage above all. “I know your curse. And perhaps, knowing you and your curse, I may find a way to free you.”
“I will not again be betrayed by mortals!” hissed the dragon.
Jerich reached for his purse again, causing Paraxyl’s eyes to narrow once more. Slowly, he drew forth the knife, earning another hiss, and tossed it to the dragon’s feet.
“This belonged to a close comrade. You know it to be true, and you know why I have kept it.”
The creature couldn’t answer, “Necromancy.” He knew Jerich’s loss, just as keenly as Jerich now knew the great beast’s pain and frustration. The knife and all it meant was something not easily let given away, yet here he offered it.
“You who have no equal,” Jerich said with reverence, “Deserve loyalty. This I offer you by the token of a fallen friend’s memory.”
Paraxyl’s shining gaze went from man to knife to man again, pride striving against need in his many-hued eyes. Finally, with a great huff of crystal dust, the great dragon asked, “You swear to seek an end to my curse?”
The man swallowed and nodded. “I do swear it.”
Paraxyl returned the nod. “Then I accept your token, mortal. I will await the fulfillment of your promise. Though…” The dragon’s eyes narrowed again. “One thing more I require from you.”
Jerich’s heart leapt into his throat. He knew that any control he had over this situation was tenuous at best. He had little bargaining power against so mighty a creature, and his mind raced to think what more Paraxyl could ask.
“Leave the sword also.”
Jerich let out his breath. If that was all. Still, his heart remained in his throat. Why the sword?
“If you betray me,” rumbled the dragon, “know that you are not the only mortal with power over the dead, and I will remember your name in vengeance for whoever next finds my lair.
“Not even your death will deliver you from the promise you have here made this day. I, Paraxyl, will see to it.”
Jerich swallowed again, a quiet chill creeping over his heart in silent terror of the promise he had just made. Still, he nodded and, voice cracking, said, “It is agreed then.”
Another nod. “Then you again have my leave to depart.” And with that, the great dragon turned about to curl up on the cavern floor, one eye open and watching, Jerich’s own thoughts dancing across the beast’s crystalline features.
“Leave the sword,” came one last rumble, and the eye shut. The deep, solemn ringing filled the chamber once more, sealing their pact with its own vibrant, ever-present witness.
Jerich nodded weakly, then turned to claw his way out of the cave.
It was long going, but he made it to the tunnel. Upon seeing his sword’s tangled belt anew, he paused to consider taking it anyway. The idea was followed by visions of crystal breath filling the narrow space, shredding skin from bone, and he decided to leave it. This cave being an extension of Paraxyl’s power, he could only assume the dragon would know immediately if he broke his promise.
Exiting the cavern was as long and arduous as his entrance, and only dour memories surrounded him. Fortunately, the trek out was no more eventful than the trek in, and the stars greeted him as he emerged from the glittering depths, winking almost knowingly of the pact now sealed in the crystal cave. Jerich returned their flickering gaze, and fingering the scales in his purse, he set his course back toward Lord Welkind’s camp.
He counted them. Seven scales he’d recovered from the shining hall. Seven eyes through which to see the hearts of mortals.
Seven tokens of power by which even immortal dragons could be conquered, power which he now went to deliver to a man he could not trust.
Somehow, that burden seemed even heavier than the pact he’d made in the cave.
And here is where we leave our hero Jerich as he marches off to whatever fate awaits him. If you’d like to see more of this type of content, check out the Patreon page for The Astral Wanderer, or find additional fiction here. All proceeds go toward grinding opalescent dragon scales into lenses and fitting them to spectacle frames for reasons of convenience. Really.