ATS B5 Ch40: Assassins (Patreon)

Brixaby buzzed straight up, getting altitude so he and Arthur could get a read on the situation. It wasn’t good. It seemed that the leading wave of scourglings had indeed reached the farm. Arthur didn’t see anybody running for their lives, but not all the paddocked animals had been saved, either.

The buildings were already aflame, courtesy of fighting dragons that were trying to stem the outward push.

But as many scourglings as the dragons killed, more flowed to take their place. There were so many, in fact, that Arthur saw quite a few scourglings pushed into the fires from the sheer weight of the crowd around them.

They need to stem the flow at the crater.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one to think that.

A smoke or dust haze had been kicked up at the top of the crater. Through it, he saw flashes in every color of the rainbow—including violet—which made him think that Horatio might be out there.

And Cressida, he thought, with a pang of worry.

But she and Joy would keep each other safe. He had to trust in that.

With effort, he tore his gaze away and focused back on the map. Brixaby turned toward the east. There may be a survivor out there in that direction.

He quickly refreshed his map, first by focusing on more Uncommon-type scouts—and there certainly were a few of those running around—luckily, none were near his location.

With the last search cleared, he cast the card once again on the survivors.

His heart sank. That dot that they had been heading for was gone. And so were many others.

There were still a few clusters here and there. He sent Brixaby toward the southeast instead.

As he did, he turned to check on Sunny and the other purples. They were heading straight back toward Blood Moon Hive’s portal. Unfortunately, that path would overfly the farm.

That would be disturbing to their passengers, but there wasn’t much he could do. He wasn’t going to ask Brixaby to use mana and open the dark rower’s portal. That would likely disturb them even more.

Brixaby flew with his usual breakneck speed, but suddenly a feeling of uneasiness slithered up Arthur’s spine.

He glanced around. The air was clear of scourglings, and all the non-purple dragons were behind him and Brixaby, still fighting at the leading wave.

So far, this eruption had not produced any flying-type scourglings. There was no threat in the sky.

“Okay, Brixaby,” he said, consulting the map again. “See that river out in the distance? Where it curves into the U? I think the next group is just past that—”

The uneasiness sharply increased. In that moment, he realized it wasn’t a random bad feeling at all. His Stealth skill screamed at him.

He reached down and yanked Brixaby into his Personal Space, then followed right behind.

Brixaby had been in mid-flight and immediately braked. But if he hadn’t been a purple, able to stop and hover almost instantly in midair, he would have struck one of the walls.

Still, he pulled up so fast that Arthur actually lost physical contact with him for a second, which froze Brixaby in place and time. Then Brixaby’s natural nullification magic kicked in, and he began to move in a stuttering, unnatural way.

It lasted only for a moment until Arthur’s butt hit scales again and he put his hand on Brixaby’s neck.

“What is this?” His dragon swung around, tail knocking into a bunch of pallets that Arthur had stored, sending bolts and nails everywhere. “Why am I here?”

Arthur spoke quickly, more due to adrenaline than anything else because here in this space . . . they had all the time in the world. “Someone is coming out of stealth right above and to our left side.”

Brixaby’s nostrils flared. “Scourglings?”

“I don’t think so. They’d have to be high powered enough to have full cards, and we haven’t seen anything like from this eruption yet.”

“I would have smelled a Rare scourgling from a mile away,” Brixaby growled.

Arthur nodded. “One more thing. I haven’t had time to tell you, but Larry, my spy, told me about a very interesting conversation . . .”

Brixaby landed, and Arthur quickly relayed the gist of what Larry had overheard.

By the time he was done, Brixaby was standing very, very still. “Card wielders, then, not scourglings,” he said. “It appears that they have chosen to die.”

“We only have a few seconds to react in real time,” Arthur said. “They’re coming out of stealth now, which means they’re about to begin their attack. Ideas?”

“Several.”

 ****

Arthur and Brixaby emerged from their Personal Space.

While in there, Brixaby had lost all of his momentum, so he used that standing start to instantly shoot straight upward.

Liquid fire and a bloom of ice hit where they had been a moment before.

Just behind and to the side of that spot, the air seemed to fall away in tatters as two dragons, a red and a blue, erupted out of stealth.

The red was every bit as big as Sams, Horatio’s mature dragon. And he had an orange belly, indicating that he’d had at least two riders in his lifetime. The blue was a delicate shade Arthur had seen a few times when looking into deep old ice.

Neither carried riders.

That was all he had time to note before Brixaby bent his neck down and let loose his Stunning Shout. It came out in a crescent large enough to hit both of them.

But the blue had recovered from the shock of the first missed attack and coalesced an ice shield between them.

Brixaby’s Stunning Shout had come from a Legendary card, and these two had the feeling of Rares. The ice shield shattered, but the energy it took to break through meant that when the shout hit the blue, it didn’t cut him in two. It just stunned him for a moment.

Meanwhile, the red had turned quickly for a very large dragon and began surging straight up toward them. Every beat of his wings brought him closer—he could actually fly upward faster than Brixaby.

That was when Arthur dived off of the side of his dragon’s neck.

The red hadn’t expected that. His wing beats stuttered for a moment in surprise, but he collected himself and shot out a burst of hot liquid fire.

Arthur used his Phase In, Phase Out to dive neatly through it and emerge on the other side.

But Arthur was falling, and it was obvious he didn’t have any flight capabilities.

He saw the moment that the red dismissed him in his mind and focused again on Brixaby.

The blue, recovered and angered at getting hit with that Stunning Shout, was pumping his wings. And while he was not ascending as fast as the red, his focus was on Brixaby.

Arthur sort of wanted to look up, too, but he knew better. He watched the enemy dragons, and so he saw the moment that Brixaby used his Night-Mare Fire.

The dragons’ reactions were instant, shrieking and stalling midair, looking like they wanted to run, wanted to flee in any direction, but weren’t sure what to do.

And that was when Arthur, still falling, peppered the red dragon right in the face with metal shrapnel. The dragon jerked his head back, but not before Arthur struck him in an eye.

He was falling past the dragon now, and that was when Arthur grabbed a rope tied to a metal weight from his Personal Space.

He tended to use his Makeshift Weaponry card only in conjunction with his skills. It gave a boost to telepathy-enhanced Knife Work and Butchering skills, especially when those knives were not standard. Such as the sword-like knives that Brixaby had given him a bit before.

He focused solely on his Makeshift Weaponry now and used it in conjunction with his Throwing skill.

The metal weight sailed through and managed to hit the very large target that was the dragon’s neck, coming around the other side and catching the rope again.

New skill gained:

Lasso (Cowboy Class)

Due to your card’s bonus traits, you automatically start this skill at level 5.

Huh, new skill. That was rarer nowadays. Interesting class, too. He’d heard that word in New Houston a few times.

That was the last thing Arthur thought before the rope went taut, and he realized he had forgotten to put on gloves. His hand slipped down the rope. He grimaced but forced his fingers to close despite the fiery pain.

Somehow—the fear of falling to his death, probably—he managed to keep his grip.

It didn’t help that the dragon was thrashing, both from the lingering effects of the Night-Mare Fire and Arthur’s shrapnel to the face and eye.

Meanwhile, Brixaby dived straight down and landed on the blue. His fight was much simpler. The blue was still caught in the grip of terror from the Night-Mare Fire and barely knew what was happening.

With the callous move of an executioner, Brixaby ripped three cards from the dragon’s core.

Dragons were magical creatures, literally hatched and built around their cards. The moment his cards were gone, the dragon was dead. The corpse seemed to sink in on itself, becoming smaller and less substantial.

It fell and Brixaby buzzed away.

At that moment, the red seemed to realize what was going on and noticed the rope with Arthur climbing up it.

With a snarl, he bit at Arthur, who simply used his Phase In, Phase Out to avoid it and kept climbing. He only needed another couple of feet.

Then the dragon gave it to him. As its neck sailed by, he muttered “Sorry” and grabbed the two cards he sensed within the dragon.

He kicked off as the red, immediately dead, started to fall away.

The trees were close now. But Brixaby buzzed to put himself under Arthur’s falling body, coming up to catch him.

He and Brixaby silently watched the bodies of the two dragons fall into the forest. They hit with thuds that brought up dust.

Arthur didn’t feel good about any of this, but they had decided in their Personal Space that there would be no survivors.

He looked around, feeling somewhat ashamed. Killing them had been so easy.

The farm was a smoking ruin, and he saw only the darkness of oncoming scourglings where the land had been. Even the dragons who had been following the leading waves had moved on.

Brixaby landed near the blue first. There was no insignia of a hive on him, nor any indication from his scales that he had recently worn a saddle. Dragons tended to shed their scales, so anything that might have been crushed recently by buckles or fast maneuvers that would tightened the straps would be covered up within a year.

“These were wild dragons,” Brixaby said with a tinge of disgust in his voice. “ I did not feel a link to a rider when I took his cards.”

Arthur hadn’t noticed the same, but Call of the Void wasn’t his card. He had only used it through Brixaby.

“The question is,” Arthur began, “was it a crime of opportunity—did they just see a purple pair flying alone and decide to try their luck—or were they paid?”

Brixaby was silent, and Arthur knew that he didn’t have an answer either.

Quickly, Arthur dropped down and went to the bodies. They had been harvested, so he felt nothing from them. No sense of power.

That was good, because he did not want to waste a Rare shard on assassins.

Grabbing two Uncommon shards, he used his Phase In, Phase Out to plunge his arm into the chest of the blue. He left the shards behind and withdrew his arm. When the oncoming wave of scourglings came, they would sense the magic in this body, and they would tear it apart to find the shards. That would conveniently cover up what Arthur and Brixaby had done.

After all, Brixaby had not been quiet about his capabilities as a hatchling.

Neither he nor Arthur wanted any link between Brixaby, the Legendary card-stealing hatchling, and Bisbee, the Rare purple.

The red dragon had not fallen far, and Arthur repeated the process.

“Well,” Arthur said, “let’s take a look at the cards.” He pulled Brixaby again into his Personal Space.