Chapter 59 - The Gauntlet
You ever had those moments where you just regretted absolutely everything you’d ever done in your life?
Handy was having that moment right now. Again.
“I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU DON’T SLOW DOWN, I’M TEARING OPEN YOUR GULLET!” he bellowed over the billowing winds, apparently just loud enough for the dragon to hear him. The black-winged beast seemed to have a more sullen air to it as it acquiesced and slowed. Apparently, it had been hoping to have shaken Handy from its back with its take off.
Unfortunately for Pebble, Handy had quite the death grip when he was terrified out of his skull. He wasn’t going anywhere, much to his own chagrin, mind you.
“That’s better, Pebble. Be a good lad now and you might live to see again.” The dragon snarled but resigned to simply trying in vain to snort the gunk out of his nostrils. He had attempted to burn it out with fire earlier but had apparently made it worse. Handy almost found it funny before he recalled his precarious situation. It was not every day one hijacked a dragon, after all. He was still new to this, but he figured paying attention and maintaining a serious, domineering demeanour was probably a good idea.
They had remained down there in the darkness and the dust for hours, waiting for the sun to poke its head up above the horizon just enough that Handy could direct the blinded lizard where he wanted it to go. He had no idea where that was, but it gave him some measure of control over the situation. The moment the orange fingers of dawn stroked the fields of clouds above like a drowsy sleeper throwing off a blanket, Handy provoked Onyx into flying before someone else spotted them. Up in the air, it’d be harder to spot a human on the back of a dragon, after all.
“So, Pebble.” Handy attempted to peer through the rush of the air into his eyes, desperately scanning the skies for other dragons. “Care to tell me what all this is about now?”
The dragon did not care for being addressed as Pebble. Handy noticed the turn of its head downwards, spotting the gunk still blinding its eyes. His expression grew hard as he pressed the silver of the dagger’s tip just ever so much into the open sore on the neck. The dragon growled in pain and turned to face forward once more. Handy smiled grimly. He had guessed accurately—it was thinking of doing a roll to try to shake him off. That was not happening.
“Now, what is this all about?” Handy repeated, shouting to be heard, his head snapping to the right as he spotted a silhouette in the far distance. At first he thought he had imagined it. Then he spotted a large dragon weaving in and out of the clouds far off to the south, passing them by unawares. He breathed a sigh of relief, glad his dragon taxi couldn’t see it. The dragon snarled, remaining silent for a long time.
“We know of you, human, and what you have done,” Onyx finally said, his voice having this odd quality about it now that his nose was blocked. It was almost comical compared to how utterly terrifying it had been the night before.
“Right… the dragonslaying and all that,” Handy managed, the sheer wind chill a shocking change from the dry heat of the dragon lands below, and he fought not to have his teeth chattering. The dragon chuckled, a gravelly rumbling from deep within its chest.
“Ferix’s death was his failure, not your victory, ape.” Handy’s ire almost got the better of him, and the temptation to press the dagger just that much harder, and press the point about what this situation meant for Onyx, was a strong one. “Had his scales not grown weak from the wax, none would have pierced them, diamonds or no diamonds.”
“Again, what is this about wax and candles you are on about?” Handy asked, reckoning that keeping the dragon’s mind on the conversation would keep it off thinking of ways to escape.
“The pony and the horned one…” Onyx replied, “They brought this curse down upon us. They were found with the stolen sceptre. We took from them the chains of cursed ice.”
And just like that Handy got a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“Chains of ice?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“Magic to control the air and the wind.” Onyx snorted, confirming Handy’s fears. “The pony who was with him, the unicorn took it from us after we had our vengeance and stole it away.”
“...That weasley motherfucker,” Handy breathed. Fancy Pants, that fucking pony. Not only was the entire trip to deliver the crown of winter to the deer a drastically dangerous enterprise Handy had been woefully underprepared for, but apparently whatever happened ‘in the east’ had involved the dragonlands. That… was a pertinent bit of information Handy could well have been informed of, given his reputation and the likely insinuations the dragons might take from that.
Scratch that, they did take insinuations from it. That was why Pebble here had such a desire to turn Handy into a pillar of ash.
“He was most duplicitous. We were outraged when the dragon lord did not order a flight upon Equestria to take our revenge on the one pony. But that was before we realised what they had done.”
“The candle curse.” The dragon did not reply. Apparently, it did not want to elaborate on it. However, as the light increased, and the more clearly he could see, he noticed the wound he was busy poking with a dagger appeared as bad as it smelled. It was an open sore, the scales having fallen away and looking sickly compared to the sleek black of the healthier portions of its body, shot through with green-yellow spider web cracks, the occasional one even flaking off under the stress of the flight. No wonder his hunger had not risen to the surface when he first spotted the vulnerability the other night. Subconsciously, the vampire within him wanted nothing to do with that sickness, whatever it was.
Handy put it out of his mind. Dragons’ problems were their own to solve. He had to find Spike.
“The dragon lord,” Handy said, changing the subject. “Where is he?”
“The dragon lord resides in the obsidian peak, taking council,” Onyx replied helpfully.
“...And? What does this obsidian peak look like? Where is it?” Handy pressed.
“It is a mountain of black, a sleeping volcano.”
“Well, that’s where we are going then,” Handy declared, having spotted it now that the dragon had given him the details. It was a gargantuan eyesore that stuck out all on its lonesome, far away from the other mountains. He would only need to direct the dragon a little more to the right for it to take him right to it.
Which was exactly why he had the dragon turn left.
He had what he needed. He now knew which way was east and had the light of day to guide him. He knew where Spike was located and could roughly estimate how long it would take him to reach it from his actual destination. Now all he needed to do was safely get off this dragon without it alerting any of its friends. He gripped the dagger more tightly. He’d have to time this right.
--=--
“I spy with my little eye—”
“Can you just stop… please?” Spike begged hoarsely.
“Well, I could, but what else do you want to do instead?” Whirlwind asked, bouncing a rock up and down on his hoof as he lay on his back. Spike didn’t know how he did that with those antlers, but he was too tired to care.
“Help come up with a way out of here, for starters.”
“Tried that, didn’t work,” Whirlwind declared, voice still cheerful if somewhat muted. He hoofed the stone into the air again, catching the thin sliver of light from the crack far up. Must be morning then. He just watched as the deer threw the rock up and down, catching the light occasionally.
“Yeah, well, just bouncing rocks isn’t going to help much either.”
“Well, now that you’re here, I can’t pace anymore, so this is about as much exercise as I am going to get so… Yeah, it actually does help,” Whirlwind replied. Spike rolled his eyes and snorted, idly drawing in the dirt of the stone floor with his claw, accidentally raking out an entire clump in his claws. Tsking, he let it slip from his claws and went back to dragging his limbs across the floor.
Then he stopped.
Thinking for a minute, he ran his claws on one patch of the floor, raking across stone, to another, raking across more dirt until his claws hit the edge of a stone again, then lifting it up. Soon enough, Spike was tearing across the dirt floor in a frenzy of dirty claws and victorious laughter.
“That’s the spirit!” Whirlwind encouraged from his position on one side of the cell, which was more of a naturally formed oubliette than anything deliberately constructed by the dragons. “Digging isn’t my cup of tea, but anything to keep you from going crazy, I sup—Hey!”
Spike, grunting with effort, dug his claws underneath the bulk of the deer, and all but threw him up as he continued digging under where he had lain.
“What's the big idea?!” Whirlwind asked, the obsidian chains rattling as he moved.
“Stop talking and help me dig!”
“Dig?” Whirlwind looked down at the floor, barely making out anything distinguishable in the near complete darkness. “Spike, buddy, we’re in a dead volcano. I don’t think—”
“Yes, a dead volcano, a dead volcano that naturally formed this cave section that goes down.” Whirlwind continued to wait for him to elaborate. Spike sighed in exasperation. “Any magma that went down here and was stuck would have cooled and turned to hard stone.”
Spike continued to dig deeper into the dirt below, throwing the detritus of his labour everywhere. “Yet it isn’t. This is full of dirt and loose stone, which means someone deliberately filled this in. Why?” Spike asked.
“You know, mountains are kind of old. This could have just filled in naturally over the centuries,” Whirlwind pointed out.
“So would you rather stay here doing nothing, or take the chance I might be right and this leads somewhere?” Spike asked.
“You’d think the dragons would have thought of that,” Whirlwind countered.
“How many prisoners do you think the dragon lord usually takes over the years? And how many of them would have the same doubts you’d have?” Spike retorted. Whirlwind screwed up his face in thought, then smiled.
“Ah, why not? It’d be good exercise!” he said enthusiastically, digging with his forehooves. Spike rolled his eyes.
“That’s the spirit,” he muttered sardonically.
--=--
Onyx flew low near the hot springs. The naturally formed pools of near boiling water descended from the top of the hill where natural spring water burst forth from the Earth below. Each pool descended from the one before it in concentric circles, each distinct from its neighbour in size and shape. Handy glared down at them, timing it in his mind. He’d only have one shot at this.
“Land,” he ordered the dragon, steeling himself as best he could, preparing to plunge the dagger and leg it as soon as he could. The dragon didn’t move, maintaining its altitude. Handy ground his teeth. “I said land!”
The dragon sniffed, breathing long and deeply through its nostrils, the air of the springs below evidently cleaning them. Onyx smiled.
“As you wish.”
And then Handy lost the grip on his dagger, his body almost lifting completely from the dragon had he not had his death grip on one of its back spines, as the dragon fell at frightening speed. Of all the things Handy had mentally braced for, the dragon simply falling like a stone wasn’t one of them.
He barely got a word out before they hit the ground, the dragon splashing scalding water as Handy landed hard on Onyx’s back, losing his grip and falling down the wing into the water. For a brief moment, Handy’s entire world consisted of nothing but confusing shapes, lights, blurred vision, and scalding hot water. The dragon thrashed about in the water, and Handy was thrown out of the upper pools down into a lower one, this one, thankfully, not nearly as hot. He gasped for air, erupting from the water, arms waving wildly as he searched for any kind of leverage or support to grab onto, coughing up water.
Waterblind and reeling from the sudden temperature shock of the pool, he struggled to pull himself up over the ledge of the pool he was in, only to part of the way stumble down into the next one before getting his bearings. The dragon was still thrashing in the topmost pool, washing the gunk thoroughly from its face. Handy had missed his window for getting rid of the dragon for good and now…
And now he had to run.
He pulled himself up over the lip of the pool, skidding down the rough water-carved rock to the lip of the next pool, getting a few steady steps across before slipping on the slick rock and tumbling down yet another level, hitting his head and crashing into the water in a daze. He struggled back up and gasped for air. He couldn’t hear the dragon thrashing anymore. He sat there in the almost intolerably hot water of the lower pools, head obscured by the steam rising from the waters as he looked up. The dragon had to be up there somewhere, but he dared not move lest he gave away his location.
A wall of flame washed over the southern portion of the hot springs, boiling water and casting up a bank of steam. Welp, that decided it. Handy had to move if he didn’t want to go the way of a boiled lobster. He barely reached the edge of the pool before another fiery column cascaded across another portion of the pools. Handy took a breath, slipped over the edge, and slid down to the next pool.
Except it never came. He kept falling, scrambling to grab a handhold before the slope he was on became uneven and he was left tumbling down the rocks until it evened out, depositing him at the bottom of a shallow gorge. That… had hurt. He pulled himself up, but a sharp pain in his side almost brought him low again. Another burst of fire from the pools overhead lit up the gorge, and the heat wave washed over him as the dragon covered the pools where he had been hiding not long before. The trickle of water washing down into the gorge dried up until the pools could refill and spill over once more. Handy waited… and waited. Eventually, he was rewarded with the dragon moving on, breathing fire on another section of the springs. He released a breath.
It would have to do. Now he had to get out of here before Pebble called for more help or he’d be swimming in dragons. He limped on sore legs down the gorge, hoping to find some way out. He had desired to use the hot springs when he spotted them to quickly wash off the gunk on his own clothes that Onyx had used to find him the other night to begin with. He hadn’t considered the possibility the vapours would help clear the dragon’s nose, help it know where exactly it was. And he hadn’t accounted for a dead drop.
Now he was unarmed bar his hammer, had a single jar of potion left in case of he caught a bad case of dragon fire, separated from his friend and miles and miles away from the closest transport out of the dragon lands. He had no food, and clean water was hard to find, and the skies were heavy with fire-breathing murder lizards.
“Yeah…” Handy breathed raggedly, pushing along, “Yeah, I can manage that. Sure, why not?”
He managed to find a cranny leading upwards, gingerly reaching up and climbing. He could just about make out a path leading further up the mountain that would be relatively hidden from the dragon. If he was careful that is.
“Yeah… I can do that.”
--=--
Handy peered out from the crevice, glaring down at the hot springs and the four or so dragons that had gathered there. All of them were around Onyx’s size, or smaller, none of the adults, thankfully. Handy hurriedly squeezed himself back behind the rocks blocking the crevice from sight as two of them took off again.
“Right. Okay. Lost my scent. Fun times,” he muttered through laboured breaths. Climbing even this high on the mountain was not the easiest, as hard done by as he was. His side still ached, his limp gone but his legs still throbbing. He had lost count of the knocks on the head he had received, and his gloves had been worn away with the climbing, resulting in his hands being cut and bleeding. He sat back in the crevice, wiping the dirt over his feet and ankles as he waited for his socks to dry.
One thing he had learned the hard way, through all the trekking he had done, was to always take care of your feet, and that meant dry socks. If he was caught out in that blasted wasteland and his feet began to hurt, he was more or less fucked. The dirt on his ankles was to soak up the additional moisture. Probably not the best idea, but he hardly had anything to dry them properly with.
With that done, he checked again. The dragons had left the hot springs but there was still one circling in the air. It was midday by the time it had gotten bored and flew off, so Handy decided it was time to move. Getting down the mountainside was something of an adventure in itself. Handy counted at least three distinct times he almost got his ankle caught and broken. He never before envied the ponies or the griffons personally about anything, but having two additional legs in case one broke or a pair of wings allowing him to literally fuck off into the sky sounded pretty great.
He skidded the last few metres down the mountainside, landing in some thorny bushes of some scraggly, hardy plant that forgot it died fifty years ago, but was still aggressively clinging to its existence anyway. He had his route more or less planned out to the obsidian mountain, or as best he could from where he had sat on the mountainside. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do when he got in there, but that was future Handy’s problem. Right now, he just needed to get there, get Spike out, and get the fuck out of Dodge. If the princess wanted to have Spike taken care of, she could deal with this shit. He’d even void his demand in the deal if need be.
Right now, though, he was Handy’s responsibility. He stood up and prepared to head towards the mountain.
Then he saw a small explosion at the base of the dead volcano.
“What the—?” he managed to blurt out before a shadow passed over him as a dragon flew through the air, speeding off towards the mountain. And another from another direction. There were more explosions, gouts of flame, and an awful racket being made that he could hear even from nearly two miles away. “What the hell is going on over there?”
--=--
The earth of the wall shuddered, with bits and pieces of soil falling to the cavern floor. First it was a trickle, then soon clumps of dirt and stone fell to the floor until, eventually, the wall bulged out and burst, a small avalanche of dirt, dead plants, stones and a dragon fell out across the floor. Spike spluttered heavily, more out of the lack of air and lungs full of dirt than out of his sickness.
“S-See?” he coughed. “Told you it had to go somewhere!”
A bundle of deer, antlers, and obsidian chains fell after him, landed on the floor beside him with an audible ‘oof’, and shook off the dizziness from his head.
“You do realise it could have been a dead end,” Whirlwind chided, his characteristic cheerfulness somewhat dulled. Spike shrugged.
“Magma has to go somewhere, so unless the dragons dug a lot of solid rock out of that pit and filled it with soil, it had to have gone down here… or up there. It is a volcano after all.” Whirlwind just shook himself and stretched, yawning, grateful for the extra room.
“Well, can’t argue with results! What next?” he asked, jogging in place, chains rattling all the way. Spike, who had puffed his chest out in pride, simply blinked.
“What?”
“The next step of your suddenly inspired plan? I mean, you got us this far, so what's next?” Whirlwind asked, seemingly getting more and more of his energy back the faster he jogged in place. Spike rubbed the back of his neck nervously.
“Eh… I didn’t really think that far ahead,” he admitted.
“Oh,” Whirlwind said, stopping momentarily before jogging back in place, his smile re-emerging on his face. “Alright, we'll pick a direction to go then. You were right last time; let’s see how far we can ride that wave of luck.”
“I don’t think that’s the best—”
“Hey! Where did they go!?” a shout echoed down from the hole behind them, and an orange light illuminated the tunnel to their left, revealing a descent from the caves above and likely where a bunch of angry dragons would be traipsing down looking for them.
“This way!” Spike pointed to the right, running off with the annoyingly loud chains of the deer clanging behind him. They sprinted through the darkened tunnels, more often than not tripping in the darkness and running into walls. Whirlwind stopped laughing after the fifth time, since even the brightest of moods would be soured by that many obstacles to their freedom.
After only a few minutes of hard running, with Whirlwind overtaking him on the straight sprint uphill towards the light that had just emerged after they turned the last corner, he felt a breath of fire scorched the rocks just behind him. He would be fine, of course. Whirlwind? Not so much. He threw all he had into the sprint towards the exit, before the dragon behind him had another chance to catch up. He reached the lip of the cave mouth and promptly caught his foot, tripping and falling into the sludge on the ground.
“Ugh…” he groused, pushing himself up. The air utterly reeked here. There was strange brownish-black sludge everywhere, small mounds with vapour pumping up into the air so thick he could practically see the colour of it. His only saving grace was the heat of the gas took it up, leaving the air near the ground more or less breathable.
“Quick!” Whirlwind bounded over to him through the muck, grabbing him with a hoof and trying to leverage an antler under him to get him to his feet faster. “We have to move! This is bad! This is really, really bad!”
“W-What?” Spike asked coughing, “What's wr—”
“The gas! The gas; we need to move!” Whirlwind shouted. The deer had surprising strength in him, more or less tossing Spike to his feet and a metre or two across the muck with nothing more than raw neck strength. Spike turned just in time to see Whirlwind bounding across the muck, trying to get as far away from the mounds of gas, managing to get to a creek of stagnant-looking water and tossing himself under it wholly. Then Spike spotted a familiar crimson dragon from the cave mouth.
“There you are!” Garble said and inhaled deeply, igniting the pilot light in his chest. Spike saw the orange glow in his gullet, then looked to where Whirlwind was hiding, and finally put two and two together.
“Oh no…” he groaned, taking in a breath, closing his eyes, and bracing himself for the inevitable.
The explosion was a spectacular affair, the air itself igniting as an expanding fireball covered the mountainside. Garble and the dragon behind him were knocked back far into the tunnel by the force of the blast, and any dragon within a seven mile radius was made aware of their escape attempt. That didn’t matter to Spike, who was busy trying to extricate himself from the sucking mud of the ground. He gulped in air greedily, gasping and coughing and aching as he moved. The explosion didn’t so much as char his scales, but the sheer pressure of it had pushed him into the ground with incredible force. He brushed off the fried clay from his arms and back as he watched Whirlwind slowly make his way out of the stinking, stagnant creek.
“You okay? You’re okay!” he said jubilantly, hopping happily out of the water towards him. “I thought you had gotten to cover, but when I saw you standing there after the explosion, I thought you were a pillar of ash. I heard that happens sometimes if a fire burns hot enough, fast enough, but then I thought an explosion would have scattered your ashes everywhere, but then I saw you move and then remembered you were a dragon, so of course you would be fi—”
“Duck!” Spike jumped up, grabbed the deer by his stupid antlers, and pushed his yammering mouth into the muck as a gout of flame tore through the air, burning a path through the mud. The gas mounds had not yet projected enough of the flammable gas to create a second inferno, thankfully. Looking up, he noted with dismay that another dragon had joined the party, hovering in the air above them. Further afield, he saw more dragons approaching by air. “Oh, come on!”
His words were ignored as Whirlwind scooped Spike up in his antlers and onto his back as he took off at a gallop. The deer was slowed considerably because of the soft, yielding ground, and the dragon was joined by a second who went to the cave mouth to see to the two other dragons that had been following them. The purple dragon, however, came around and followed after them.
“Come on, come on, faster! Go faster!” Spike urged.
“I am trying!” Whirlwind bellowed, nearly tripping in a particularly deep pocket of mud before finding his footing again. He managed to get his hooves onto some solid ground, and then he really took off. The purple dragon swooped down and tried to grab them, but Whirlwind bounded left from the crest of a deep crevice into the far edge. The dragon snarled as her claws tore through the ground instead.
Whirlwind dived, the momentum causing him to slide downhill on gravel and stone, cutting into his barrel, but it had saved them both from another gout of flame roaring through the air. Spike held onto the chains for dear life, not that he had much choice since he had managed to get his foot caught in them. He slowly pulled himself up and back to the antlers just before Whirlwind took his dive to the ground, knocking Spike off and to the side. Dragged across the ground, now only connected to Whirlwind by his foot, Spike was in a precarious position.
“Hang on!” Whirlwind called as he jumped back to his hooves, yanking Spike by his foot. He couldn’t respond as the air was knocked out of his lungs with each time he struck the hard ground. The dragon swooped left and right, Whirlwind dodging and weaving under its swipes, and Spike suffering every step of the way.
“Stop!” he managed to call out, and Whirlwind did, skidding to a halt, with the dragon overshooting him. He attempted to help Spike get on his back, but a third dragon, the size and colour of an immense boulder, all but crashed into them, and Whirlwind had to pull Spike in behind a rocky pillar. The dragon crashed into it with a tremendous noise, cracking the rock.
“Hurry hurry hurry!”
“I’m trying!” Spike shouted, trying to undo the tangle his leg was in the chains.
The purple dragon circled back, hovering in place before diving towards them. Whirlwind’s eyes widened, looking between it and Spike, taking note he was not even remotely scuffed or cut from his dragging across the ground.
“Spike, how hard are your scales?”
“What?” Spike asked in bemusement. Whirlwind took a breath.
“Sorry about this.” Whirlwind jumped back to his hooves, stomping on his forehooves, spinning his rearmost behind, and dragging Spike around with tremendous force as the deer’s head followed around. The momentum actually lifted Spike off the ground. The dragon barely had time to show her surprise when Spike came barrelling around on a length of obsidian chain, crashing into her face like a terrified, screaming Morningstar. The blow wasn’t the most powerful, but it was enough to knock the dragon off course and force her to create a shallow trench as she crashed to the ground to their left.
Spike, dazed and nursing his spinning head, was hurriedly lifted up onto Whirlwind’s back before either dragon could recover, and he once again bounded across the blasted Dragonlands before them.
--=--
Whirlwind had chosen the path of most resistance, namely the one with the largest rocks to hide behind and dash between. Frankly, it had been the best decision since it bought them significant time between each failed swipe by the three dragons behind them, not to mention the two others from the base of the mountain who had now recovered from the explosion and were quickly catching up with them.
Whirlwind was beginning to get tired, but kept on going nonetheless. At this point, what other choice did he have? Spike had come to his senses and promptly chewed him out for using him as a living weapon, but soon he too was preoccupied with warning the deer of incoming attacks from above and behind than he was at getting an apology.
“Right!” and Whirlwind bounded right, a gout of flame turned the ground to his left black, the air scorching his side. “Left, left!”
Whirlwind jerked left as a boulder fell from the sky above, crashing into the ground where he had been only moments before.
“Incoming!” and Whirlwind sharply turned, diving behind a large sharp rock, a yellow dragon’s claws crashing into the rocks as it swooped, then kicking off back into the air as it had missed its chance. Whirlwind followed the new direction downhill and turned right, the flight of dragons a persistent shadow.
They had lost track of how long they had been running now. Whirlwind was panting heavily, his steps uneasy and less sure than they had been a mere minute ago.
“Come on, keep going!” Spike urged.
“Can’t…” Whirlwind panted. “Can’t keep…. Can—” Spike eyes bulged and he pulled back on the stag’s antlers. Whirlwind skidded to a stop, almost tripping over his own hooves. A black dragon landed heavily on the ground in front of them, mouth full of fire and eyes full glinting malevolence.
“Well, well…” Onyx said. “I think this will cheer me up. How about you two just give up? You’ve given us a good chase, but now I think it’s time I took both… no, one of you back.”
The dragon looked hungrily at the panting Whirlwind in particular. The deer glanced to his left and to his right. His unthinking run had delivered him in between two stretches of uneven ground and a shallow valley between them. There was no way they could just jink around the dragon that it could not catch them, either physically or with dragon fire.
“Wait! Hold on!” Spike urged.
“No,” Onyx replied, rearing back his head, fire gathering in the depths of his gullet that would roast Whirlwind alive and leave Spike helpless and friendless on his own. Then a silver hammer fell down from above, crashing into the top of the dragon’s skull with all the weight and momentum of the man that swung it. Too bad he crashed bodily into the dragon after all but giving it a concussion. The dragon hit the ground as Handy fell to the floor, losing his grip on his war hammer and yelling in pain as one of his legs finally gave way.
“Handy!?”
“Handy!”
Both Spike and Whirlwind shouted in unison, though Handy was too busy fighting through the pain to notice which was which in terms of happiness versus surprise at his entrance, let alone notice there were two voices instead of one. Onyx was dazed, his head on the ground as he struggled to return to his sense. Handy, meanwhile, could no longer stand on both legs.
“Come on! Come on, I can… I can get us out of here!” Handy finally pulled himself back to something resembling verticality. Then he noticed the deer who was smiling way too much to be an illusion. “... What.”
“Alright! Get on!” Whirlwind said, apparently getting a second wind and rushing over to the downed Handy.
“Wait, you can’t carry both of us!” Spike said.
“Get off then!” Whirlwind shouted, before turning to Handy. “Handy, where do we need to go!?”
“What the hell are y—?”
“Handy! Shock later, running now!”
“A cave, a cave up the way. You can lose the dragons in a maze of crags nearby.”
“Right!” And so Whirlwind forced the wounded human onto his back. Grunting with the effort, he hurriedly carried him past the larger dragon, Spike running alongside them. The other dragons, who had overshot their location, doubled back and found them and the downed Onyx. Whirlwind threw everything he had into one last sprint down the short valley which ended up on the open plains ahead. “Handy…”
“I know! Drift closer to the right!” Handy ordered. Spike, beginning to drag behind, redoubled his efforts, thankful his legs had finally grown long enough that he could do a proper sprint. They followed his directions, running close to the right side of the increasingly tall and cliff-like side of the valley. The dragons were hovering in place, apparently bickering over who should get the glory of catching the three of them.
They had apparently came to an agreement, as a crimson dragon pulled forth from the five of them and dived towards them at a terrifying speed.
“Handy...”
“Just a bit further!” Handy called. Whirlwind couldn’t see what Handy was looking forward to, with only a seemingly endless stretch of rocky wall and an upcoming open plain ahead of them that would surely spell their doom.
“Handy!”
“Turn right! Now!” Whirlwind followed the instructions, and veered right, Spike diving after them. He squeezed his eyes shut, expecting to run straight into solid rock, but the crash never came. Instead, it felt like the ground had disappeared under him, and he was sent careening down a steep slide of gravel and sand. They came to a rough halt as they heard the dragon, Garble, breath a gout of flame, burning the rock behind them and covering their escape in his hubris.
Whirlwind pushed himself up, chains rattling, but a hand roughly pushed him back down.
“Shh!” Handy hissed, to Whirlwind and then to Spike.
“Where’d they go?”
“They were right there!”
“Did you burn all of them?”
“I must have.”
“Surely even Spike would have survived that.”
“Are you saying my fire isn’t hot enough?!”
Handy waited for a moment for the dragons to fall to arguing. Then, he removed what remained of his cloak and bundled the chains on Whirlwind’s head to blanket them and cause them to rattle less. Afterwards, he indicated for them to crawl away from their position.
Looking back, Spike saw that they had dived through what amounted to a small hole in the rocks above which specks of daylight squeezed through. They followed Handy’s direction for a time until he deemed it safe enough for them to walk again, Whirlwind helping him along, and Spike nervously looking up for any signs that dragons were closing in on their hiding spot. The fact that he jumped at every slight movement of shifting rocks or skree falling from above was not helping anyone’s nerves.
“Where are we going?” Whirlwind asked in a hushed whisper.
“Up, eventually,” Handy replied, trying his hardest to block the pain radiating from his left leg, now surely broken. “Till then, I have no idea. I told you it was a maze here.”
“How did you find out about this?”
“By nearly falling into it five times running overland trying to get to you, Spike.”
“How… How are you alive?” Spike asked. “I saw you fall.”
“Honestly, I ask myself that every day,” Handy replied honestly. “There, we can rest in there.”
Handy pointed to a large cave mouth. It was across an open portion of the crag maze, enough to be sighted from above if they were not careful, but a little patience was all it took to cross the open ground, using the large overhanging rocks that kept most of it in shade to cover their approach.
With that, they gratefully stopped to rest far enough into the cave to not easily be spotted from the outside, but close enough they could still use the daylight to see. Handy gingerly sat down, taking back his cloak from Whirlwind to tie up his leg. Merely touching it shot spasms of pain up and down his body. Yep, broken. He was properly fucked this time. He rested his head back on the cave wall, grateful to be out of the day’s heat, but dying of thirst all the same.
He looked over to Whirlwind, who was lying down not far away, spying the Crown of Winter under the black chains tying down his antlers. He noticed the deer still had them attached to his antlers, where they had fused to the bone in the midst of that lake way back in the depths of the Greenwoods. He recalled what the dragon had said about the deer and the unicorn, and he gritted his teeth. It was haunting him still, for now it made sense why the deer would be here of all places. Winter was over and spring was beginning. It must have come early in the Greenwoods, and he had travelled here.
“Stupid,” Handy cursed himself quietly. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. The last lord died in the West. I made him swear to God to follow through with that lake thing’s demands. Of course he had to be here. Of course he had to find out what was powerful enough to break through her magic.”
“Hey.” Handy turned to look at the dragon who had been pacing up and down the cave while they rested. “How’s the, uh, leg?”
“Broken,” Handy muttered. “How’d you get out of the mountain?”
“I dug,” Spike admitted. Handy just stared, before snorting.
“Right, with claws like that, why wouldn’t you?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Handy shook his head, letting out a breath in the quiet. “We just need to focus on getting out of here.”
Spike started to reply, but held his tongue, thinking back. He sighed. “Thanks for coming to get me, I mean.” Handy grunted. Besides them, Whirlwind snored loudly. “Seriously?”
Handy genuinely laughed. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least, knowing that man. Could sleep through a thunderstorm if he had to.”
“You know him?” Spike asked.
“Long story.” Handy waved it off. “Why is he wearing those chains? Magic?”
“Yeah. Can’t use his magic with it.”
“How do we remove it?”
“Dragonfire.” Handy just looked at him, before letting out an exasperated noise and sinking even further into the position he had adopted against the wall. Exhaustion and pain worked wonders at making anything comfortable enough to sleep on. Furthermore, Handy was running on nothing but fumes and adrenaline that had wound down half an hour ago.
Spike walked over to Whirlwind, his feet trailing in the soft, green mist that clung to the dirt. He examined the chains more closely now that he had some light. What had first seemed to be obsidian was in actuality a kind of roughly hewn crystal. Dark and dim, it didn’t reflect much light, but at the right angle, it was clearly translucent. Spike could even swear he saw something floating inside the crystals, but couldn’t make out the rare, fleeting shapes.
Handy was so out of it with exhaustion that he didn’t initially realise what was odd about the situation. It was Whirlwind sneezing as the mist entered his nose that brought their attention to the growing green mist rising from the ground.
“Uhh, what’s that?” Spike backed up from the sleeping Whirlwind, who would not wake when he shook him. Handy, rising up slowly from where he sat, saw the tendrils creep up on the low rocks, clinging to him as he moved before letting go and falling slowly to join the rest of the mist. He had seen its ilk before.
“Not here,” he said, almost pleadingly. “Not now.”
“What!?” Spike cried.
“We have to go, now!” Handy demanded, turning towards the exit. Horrifying whispers, as if from a dozen mouths but with the same mouth, rushed past him like a physical force, and columns of rock burst from the ground at angles, cutting off their retreat. The mist grew thicker on the ground, Handy releasing an inarticulate shout of frustration. He turned around, almost falling again before steadying himself with one hand on the wall and the other on his hammer.
“You really should be resting that leg.” The voice reverberated through the cave, though it was still barely more than a whisper. It sounded massive and close. Handy just grimaced and looked down at Whirlwind, now half-covered by the growing mist. Ethereal tendrils reached out, hanging in the air, flowing above them.
“Spike, listen very carefully.” Handy said. “Whatever it tells you, whatever it says, do not believe it.”
The mist slowly gave way to the wispy form of a dragon, seemingly too large for the cavern it was in.
“You’d do well to listen to him, boy,” she said. “But even so, it would be so much easier if you would indulge me just a little bit. Can you not grant a stranger such kindness?”
“I owe nothing to the Mistress and her slaves,” Handy spat.
“Mistress?” Spike asked, utterly at a loss.
“Oh, I think you’ll want to hear what I can say, human.” the dragoness said, piercing blue eyes, washed away under the white-green glow of the old magic. “I am Meranax, and I have been looking for you.”
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PRAISE THE MONDAY, THE NIGHT HAS PASSED!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzJDimvPW1Y
Your upload time cant stop me hahahaha
Still counts! Huzzah, for today is truly a Bad Monday!
pffft everyone knows that time doesn't exist outside of australia. like cmon that's basic geography
Huzzah! My usual excitement at seeing a Bad Mondays update has been doubled!
Went to bed yesterday at a late hour thinking this was doomed to be cancelled, but was very pleasantly surprised to wake up today to see a new chapter.
This made my day
OUR SAVIOR HAD BEEN GRACED WITH MOTIVATION.
Handy: "Now look, I gotta long way to go, and you're gonna take me there. And you're not gonna give me any trouble about it. Right?"
Pebble: *quickly shakes head*
Handy: "Now get."
Old Magic is the Candle Curse?
Too obvious. The price for such a spell, to effect all dragonkind, would be way outside any budget except that of the Old Magic Spirit.
What could it be?
You did it! Always a good day when Handy's having a bad day.
The only hiccup I saw was this one:
Missing the other quotation marks between "then, Whirlwind"
Also, I have to say Handyman, I've been silent on this fic for a long time. I started reading back in chapter 3 I believe, and just so you know, it's been on hell of a ride. Take the time you need to write, don't force it, although sometimes you need to give yourself a good ol' kick in the ass to get motivated. God knows I need it, too. Feel free to ask if you ever need some help, or motivation, or a general ass kicking. For giving such an enjoyable read, I think I could manage to lend a hand.
Also also, "What's Left of the Flag" came on my MP3 player yesterday, and I knew you were going to update. Every time I hear that song, I just think of Handy shouting "ALRIGHT, FUCK NUGGETS."
So, in short:
68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6zovtM9C61r30vtx.gif
Oh shit boi you did it.
Still counts!
IT HAS RETURNED
PRAISE BE
I'm glad this story didn't get cancelled. One of my favorites on the site.
Looks like Handyman is using Handy as an outlet for his frustrations again. That does seem to enable his best writing, but I still can't help but feel kinda sorry for the sod for what's about to come.
yey
And from the mists of forgetfulness arose such words as to inspire Helen of Troy to get a tattoo on her arse in the form of Luna's cutie mark.
Or there was just nothing else updated and I decided 'fuck it, horse words are horse words' and started reading.
Sweet! Update! Looking forward to more!
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
IT LIIIVVVVEEEESSSS
One: Woo! Update!
Two: Dun DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN! Wait, there's someone who could do that better than I.
8436483
Oh, you don't even know the half of it.
fucking meranax, I can already tell this is going to go poorly.
It would be the worst absolute thing if this story were to die.
Good thing that'll never happen.
Whirlwind
hear
Out of the frying pan, and into the Horse Do Over?
Dear God, he actually did it.
Glad to see you back in any form, this really helped recover a shitty day.
Welcome back! Love this story no matter how long the chapters take. Seriously this is what made me want to write my own story.
That was an excellent chapter, but unfortunately I don't really remember enough details to comment on it as effectively as I would like to because it's been more than 14 hours since I finished reading it. That said, your description of the bush that forgot it died stands out in my memory for some bizarre reason, and I also remember thinking that this could use an editing pass for silly details like wrong caps because a fair amount of it felt like you cut corners there to rush this out the door.
That was a pretty intense chapter. Good to see Spike promoted to Morningstar from comedic relief, though. But a cliffhanger? Must you, Handy?
who was meranax again? its been a while.
Glad to see you made the deadline, but I think you ran your editor into the ground.
Whirlwind snorted
Thanks for
those chains
across an open
this place was a maze."
Shock later
roasted Whirlwind alive
GREAT WORK MAN !!! i just about recaled every thing partly that he vas in handy and this is trully intresting.
keep it and don't lose hope!
A bit on the short side this chapter, but man you sure filled it with the juicy stuff.
As always a nice good work, but my man Handyman, you just left me wanting for more with that Cliffhanger.
Wait has he been posting chapters on mondays?!?!?!
It's been while, who is this mist and when did we meet her?
I believe you meant Whirlwind.
8437701 8438806
I think she was one of the Old Magic users who, along with whatshisface (the guy who got universally erased from all records and memory in the previous arc, after Handy spent ages hunting him down), started shit at the tournament after Handy beat Ferix and they saw he had the Crown. Which led to Handy risking Whirlwind's blind teleport to escape, his apparent death, and the entire Forest arc.
So yeah, she was one of the two who pretty much destroyed a massive international event and caused absurd amounts of damage and political fallout. With only two people.
Thanks for the update!!
8438902
No that was the dog. Meranax was one of the ones who spoke with the Mistress by means of a watery bust during one of the scenes where we got to see her perspective, right before the Voice from the first arc found her.
8439069
In that case, how does Handy seem to know instantly what's going on if they've never met and he's unfamiliar with her M.O. and what she uses?
The moment the somewhat odd mist shows up he's instantly all "Oh shit, Old Magic. BadbadbadRUN. Follower of the Mistress is here."
I may be missing/forgetting something that means the mist could have only been Old Magic, and thus one of the Mistress' pawns had to be there.
But it does feel like it implies he's seen her work/spellcasting before and recognized it.
8439232
It had to do with the consistency and how odd it would have been in that situation. Various gases and even mist and steam are not that uncommon even in the volcanic Dragonlands, depending on the surrounding environment: Hotsprings, rents in the Earth where pressurised air mixed with noxious chemicals and other things under the earth pushed to the surface due to volcanic activity (Handy fell down one in the previous chapter for reference) even gas pockets escaping to the surface through mudflats as seen in this chapter at the base of the dormant volcano. The problem was where Handy was located at the time, in a dry cave in the midst of a veritable maze of gulches, away from any water sources, after midday with no obvious volcanic activity nearby, and no gaseous, noxious or otherwise chemicals floating through the air that wouldn't have been either A) noticed by the three of them before they entered the cave if it came from there or B) been dissipated due to the relatively open air if it was scentless. That and the behaviour was off, it stuck close to the ground, was heavy and clinging when you moved, gas would have rose and normal mist wouldn't even stirred that much unless it was exceptionally thick and you were standing in a literal swamp or something else that was producing prodigious amounts of water vapour and gas. It was also green and Handy had seen its like before on multiple occasions, first being with his confrontation of Crimson, and the other times with his confrontations of Thunder, though he doesn't remember him, he remembers the situations around him and that old magic was involved, and what it looked like. (Thunder himself being an annoying hole in his memory he doesn't really notice unless someone who does remember him explicitly, like Crimson, tells him about it, in which he only really recalls how odd his memories of events are without a specific old magic user to pin things to.) So drawing the obvious unnatural origins of the mist and its other properties, and given his history of troubles with the Mistress, it was not that illogical for Handy to draw the conclusion he did.
Who else thinks Handy elects to solve this dragon diplomacy with rigorous application of his hammer?
Seriously though, as much as i'd like to see a repeat of his original dragon-slaying feat I'm pretty sure this'll end in either another arm-twisting deal or sudden third-party intervention.
8439269
Damn. Excellent and well thought-out response.
I tip my hat to you, whether for putting that much thought into your story beforehand or for putting that much thought and time into a single random's comment.
I do wonder if Meranax is going to tell handy about his predecessor a.k.a. Megan Williams.
and if that happens, just how much it's going to change his perspective of the world he's in.
Unlikely , but a man can dream.
I see some mistakes here and there. Have you thought about a proofreader/editor perhaps? I'd gladly offer my help if such was the case
8440203
I have three, and I thank you for your offer. But this was a rush job to meet a deadline and only one editor got a chance to look over the first half of the chapter. It won't happen again.
8440383
I wouldn't mind if it means we get the chapter early. Keep up the good work! This story is great!
yay 18 hundred people now liked your story man, that's a milestone right there.
He's back! He's alive and still going. I thought my favorite story had died on the worst. CLIFFHANGER. EVER! Good to see your still around.