Dragon Souls, Book 3, Chapter 3

     Today was a fairly unproductive day.  I wrote a whopping 2 pages... But I'll share some stuff I wrote a long time ago.  Here's Chapter 3 of my third book.  I hope you enjoy.  I'm looking for beta readers for the whole thing when I finish.  I think this will be the last chapter I post here.  If you're interested in being a beta reader let me know.  I'd like to get at least 3, but the more the merrier.

Chapter 3

                Water slowly dripping from the ceiling and plopping into stagnant puddles was the only noise to be heard.  The tortured cries and wails of anguish from the other prisoners had finally given way to the dead quiet of exhausted sleep.  Cal had lost count of the number of days, weeks, months, or even years he’d been in the dark dungeon.  He never felt the warm sun on his skin, but the air always cooled at night, noting the passing of yet another day in the clutches of the Phantom Lord.  At first he had tried to keep track of the passing of time, but the hours of torture and exhaustion from lack of sleep, along with the bizarre physical training he was forced to endure, had all made him teeter on the brinks of sanity and the endless abyss of madness.  Dreams of his beautiful elven princess had been the only thing keeping him from falling over that edge.

                He didn’t know Erroyle. Not really.  Mother Gaia had “given” her to him.  Erroyle seemed instantly taken with him, but Cal had never had any experience with women.  He wasn’t sure if one could just love someone because Mother Gaia proclaimed it to be so.  Truth be told, he had never given any thought to love.  He was old enough, seventeen, but girls had never paid him any heed.  He supposed he must be something awful to look upon; blinded at birth, scars where eyes should be, countless grisly scars from years of working around dragons without the use of his eyes, not to mention the fact that he had never been able to do most of the things other boys did because of the loss of his sight.  What kind of life could he offer a girl?  No, he had never even dreamed of love… until she came into his life.

                It wasn’t fair!  His life had already been so horrible.  Why even have a love if he was to lose her in two days?  His heart ached for her, though.  He couldn’t explain it, but she was all he could think about.  He remembered, vaguely, that he had left home to save his parents.  At the time it seemed so important, but now the torture had made him forget all those cares.  The only thing left was her.  Erroyle was the last hope of sanity to which he tediously clung.

                Cal’s muscles ached from use.  Even at night he wasn’t given rest from his training.  His jailors would strap bands to his ankles and wrists.  Chains hooked to heavy weights and strung through pulleys pulled at him from every direction.  Cal had learned to pull his arms in fold them, and pull his legs in and cross them at night to keep from having dislocated limbs in the mornings.   Of course, this meant flexing his muscles all night.  At first, he couldn’t sleep with the weights pulled in, but over time he had learned to lock his muscles and drift off.  The results were that Cal was getting large with muscle.  He was forced to work all day, and sleep with his muscles flexed.  The jailors fed him more every meal than he would normally have eaten in a day.  He must have doubled his weight in the time he had been imprisoned. 

                He trained for hours at the sword and all other manner of weaponry.  Sometimes he was made to fight several opponents at once.  Had he never felt the dragon warrior’s spirit within him, he would have thought the feat impossible. 

The strange black dragon Cal was linked with had the ability to move his body through the link they shared.  And his battle prowess was without peers.  When Cal allowed the dragon to take control of his body he was an invincible warrior.  That too was over, now.  The dragon had been fatally wounded when Cal was captured.  He could no longer feel the bond with the beast.  His poor soul dragon was dead.

The Phantom Lord was training him to fight as if he were still possessed with the dragon’s spirit.  The use of his eyes, or rather the lack of their use, didn’t seem to matter to the tyrant.  His sparing partners went for blood with every swing.  Cal had quickly learned to listen carefully for their attacks and counter or be cut.

He had also learned more about the strange powers he possessed.  The Phantom Lord had all manner of dark sorcerers at his command.  Cal learned of spell casting, runes, enchantments, black magic, white magic, elemental magic, arcane magic, and all sorts of magic he had never heard of before.  He was physically exhausted from the training, but he was also mentally exhausted from the learning.  Some nights he couldn’t get his mind to stop, and he would stay up all night thinking about the things he was learning.

 He knew now that if he ever were to free himself from this nightmare, he would no longer be a helpless blind boy.  He could create a bubble of “sight” around him with magic.  He was able to do so with the aid of the dragon, but his studies had taught him how to do it for himself; how to feel the molecules of matter all around him.  They were all connected in a sense; the air, the ground, all living things moving about.  He could feel the molecules touching his body, and the ones touching those, and so on for about ten or fifteen feet around him in every direction.  It was a bit different from when the dragon had invoked the magic within him.  Not better nor worse, just different.  The dragon’s magic was like sight.  Cal’s magic was closer to touch.  He could feel his environment instead of seeing a mental image of it.

In short, Cal had finally risen above his disability.  Not only that, but he was becoming a powerful warrior and wizard.  He no longer felt like a victim of life.  He was now only a victim of the Phantom Lord; his play thing, only brought out to amuse its master.  But Cal swore that if his cruel captor ever let his guard down, he’d kill him.  As much as he abhorred killing, he would gladly rid the world of the Phantom Lord.  Then he would be free to find his Erroyle.

“Brooding over times past, or times present?”  came the grandmotherly voice from the cell next to Cal’s. 

Call had become fast friends with the old woman.  She had comforted him as he cried away the first helpless nights in the dungeon.  Unable to pull the weights in, then, he was in constant pain of being stretched in every direction.   He was terrified of being in the cold dungeon, and helpless against the trials and tests the Phantom Lord constantly placed before him.  The old woman was the only one to show him any kindness.  It was she who taught him how to pull in the weights and fold his arms and legs.  She helped him work the magics he had the most difficulty learning.  She walked him through fighting tactics which gave him an edge over his opponents in the Phantom Lords arena.  She was his savior in the times of his darkest hours.  And for all her help, he didn’t even know her true name.  She had claimed to have forgotten it years ago under the insanity of torture, so he took to calling her Nana.  She always laughed favorably at the title, so he tried to use it as often as he could with her.  Her cell was just outside of his magical bubble of “sight” so he never did get a chance to see her.

“Just brooding in general, I suppose,” Cal responded.

“What’s on your mind tonight, Cal?”

“Nana, do you know how long I’ve been down here?”

Nana seemed to think back, mumbling some calculations under her breath.  “I suppose it’s been close to a year now,” She answered, at last.

A year! Was it only a year? It seemed so much longer.  And yet, it seemed like only yesterday he was fighting for the freedom of the Three Free Kingdoms.

“Do you know if the Phantom Lord has pressed any farther into the central and northern lands,” Cal asked, hoping for the best, though he already feared the worst.

“No, Cal, the Chosen One showed up just after you were captured,” Nana answered, in a kindly reassuring voice.  “Most of the dragon armies from both sides were pulled into some sort of strange dark portal.  We haven’t heard from them ever since.  Besides, the Phantom Lord was injured during the battle.  His dragon was ruined and can no longer fly, and his army suffered massive losses at the hands of Mother Gaia.  She flooded the Dwarven stronghold with lava after the Phantom Lord’s army overran it.”

“The dwarves!  Did they… Were they all killed?”

“I don’t know deary.  I don’t get much more information down here than you do.  I do know that the whole mountain was flooded with lava, and the Phantom Lord lost close to a million soldiers.  Losing those and the several hundred thousand of the dragon army has left him pretty weak, but the Three Free Kingdoms have not pursued, so I believe their losses were just as great.”

Cal felt his heart sink.  Erroyle was with the dwarves.  He had assumed she was safe with them.  The stronghold seemed all but impenetrable.  He couldn’t imagine those gates ever falling.  And yet, they had.  They had fallen and the dwarves must have been killed.

Cal felt a warm tear scroll down his face.

She had likely been killed.

“What is it dear,” the kind old woman asked.

“Erroyle…” was all Cal could croak.

“Now deary, from what you’ve told me about that elven princess of yours, I’m sure she’s just fine.  She sounds like a gift from Gaia, that one.  I’ll bet she’s fighting to get to you as we speak.”

A year… Cal knew that nobody could fight for that long, all alone, against unfavorable odds, and still be alive.  And that was assuming she wasn’t killed by the lava.  Cal remembered the meeting with Gaia in the strange room at the center of the earth.  Gaia was not afraid of making sacrifices for the good of the whole.  He knew very well that she would kill her own daughter if it meant saving the world from the Phantom Lord.

He faked a smile for the kindly old lady, in case she was watching, and said, “I suppose you’re right.” 

Another tear scrolled down his cheek against his best efforts to control it.  It was all over now.  Even if he did, somehow, manage to escape the Phantom Lord there was no Erroyle to go back to.  He couldn’t go back to his old kingdom given the mess he’d made as he left, and he was certain his parents were dead now.  He’d been with the Phantom Lord a year and none of the other prisoners had heard a word about his father or mother.  Cal was alone.

  “Well, well,” came the raspy voice of the goblin jailor.  “Can’t sleep, eh?  I guess we need to work you some more, get you good and tired.”  Cal groaned inwardly.  “Up and at’em, then.  We’ve got the perfect sparring partner for you tonight.”

Cal could hear the keys clatter around in heavy cell door.  “Let those chains down,” The putrid goblin hissed.  “Don’t want any toes crunched like last time.”  Cal had to smile at the memory.  He’d crushed Slithar’s toes the day before by dropping the heavy weights on them when they came to unchain him.  The sound of the crunch was worth the beating after.

Still sore from the bruised ribs, he decided to comply. The weights pulled mercilessly at his joints when he relaxed his muscles.  As he grew stronger, they added more weight, so he must have had about a full grown man’s weight on each limb now.  His sore shoulders complained as the jailor took his time to unlock the shackles.  Cal could hear the heavy weights slunk to the floor as each band was removed.  He didn’t want to see the ugly goblins face so he didn’t bother to use his magical sight.

“Be careful,” Nana said, worriedly from the next cell.

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” 

The both laughed as the jailor prodded Cal from behind out of the cell and into the long labyrinth of tunnels leading to the arena. 

“Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine…” Cal counted aloud out of habit.  His old way of finding things was to count his steps everywhere he went.  He found himself doing it often when he wasn’t using his magic to see.  Now, he was doing it out of habit.  Regardless of what the jailor thought, Cal was exhausted.  He was also emotionally drained.  The thought of losing Erroyle had taken the last fight out of him.

The guard prodded him again from behind when he subconsciously stopped to wait for the metal door to be opened.  Cal didn’t move.  The goblin prodded again, much more forcefully causing Cal’s ribs to ignite with pain from the mornings beating.  Cal still did not move.  He knew he had reached the metal door.  He had been counting subconsciously, but his feet knew right where they were, and he didn’t want to run, face-first, into the metal door.  This was a favorite trick of the guards when he had first arrived.  They always wanted to see if he really was blind, and would purposely walk him into solid objects.  Cal was not in the mood to nurse a broken nose.

The guard swung his staff at Cal from behind. 

The magic within him ignited with vengeance.  Cal could feel the room all around him.  He could feel the floor.  He could feel the earth several feet below the floor.  He felt the air whipping around the goblin’s staff.  It was close, but not nearly close enough.  The ancient magic within him awoke.  Time slowed, and then stopped.  Time was his.  He was not as powerful as he was with the dragon, but he was far more powerful than the goblin. 

Cal turned on his attacker, the staff moving ever so slowly towards his leg.  He grasped the staff mid-air, and broke it in two with one hand, grabbing the goblin by the neck with the other hand.  The thick chain binding the shackles on his wrists together shattered as the magic added strength to his now powerful arms.  The goblin lifted easily from the ground and slammed harshly against the solid rock wall behind him. 

The blow had killed the goblin before it could react, and Cal was left holding the lifeless body of the foul creature against the rock wall.  Hot shards of metal from the broken restraints skittered across the floor.  Cal knew immediately that he was in trouble.  He hadn’t even dared to hurt a guard on purpose before.  Unless it was easy to disguise as an accident like dropping the weights on the Slithar’s foot.  But this was different.  He’d killed a guard, and there was no way to disguise what he’d done.

Cal reached out with his magic to see if anyone had seen him.  To his surprise, the metal door he’d been waiting for was already opened.  He felt regret for killing the guard over nothing, but the memories of all the bad things he’d suffered over the last year quickly washed away his remorse.  He needed to hide the body.  Maybe he could push it down some stairs to make it look like an accident.  He remembered there being stairs down one of the training halls, but his mind was too muddled to remember where.  He started counting steps in every direction he could remember.

“One-hundred and seventy-three steps that way,” he said, to the dead guard before hoisting him over his shoulder and running him down the tunnel.  When he reached the steps, he quickly lobbed the body down the stairs and turned to run back to the metal door.  He realized he’d broken the restraints on his arms so he decided to finish the job.  With a stream of fire magic, he melted the manacles from his wrists, feeling the fresh air on them for the first time in a year.

Cal knew that his freedom would be short lived.  He also knew that he’d be missed if he wasn’t in his cell, the arena, the mages’ study, or a training room.  He decided that since the door was already opened that he’d go to the arena.  He started towards the arena in a slow, steady gait.  The longer he walked, the more he felt justified by what he’d done.  He was, after all, a prisoner held under the cruelest of circumstances.  He hated the jailors, all of them, but he knew that that one had no family.   He didn’t even know his name after all this time because the vile creature only barked orders and offered no conversation.  He only knew about the family because of Nana. 

All that aside, he’d just learned that he lost his love, his last reason for hoping for a tomorrow.  What did it matter if he were killed? What did it matter if he were beaten?  It wasn’t like the beatings he got for acting out were any worse than what he went through on a daily basis.  He was going to be a slave for the rest of his life.  Maybe his only escape was to shorten that life. 

By the time Cal reached the arena he had made up his mind.  He was going to commit suicide by belligerence.  He’d try to kill the Phantom Lord, and in so doing, free himself either by death or by the death of his true captor.