The Chronicles of Dragon Collection (Series 1 Omnibus, Books 1-10)

The Chronicles of Dragon Collection, Series 1

This Boxed Set includes Books 1 thru 10

The Hero, the Sword, and the Dragons

Dragon Bones and Tombstones

Terror at the Temple

Clutch of the Cleric

Hunt for the Hero

Siege at the Settlements

Strife in the Sky

Fight and the Fury

War in the Winds

Finale

The Chronicles of Dragon Collection

Series 1, Books 1 - 10

By Craig Halloran

Copyright © 2015 by Craig Halloran

Amazon Edition

TWO-TEN BOOK PRESS

P.O. Box 4215, Charleston, WV 25364

ISBN eBook: 978-1-941208-40-3

ISBN Hardback: 978-1-941208-41-0

http://www.thedarkslayer.net

Illustrations by
David Schmelling

Joe Shawcross and Randy Linbourn

Map by Gillis Bjork

Edited by
Cherise Kelley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Publisher’s Note

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Awesome Audio Edition
by Legendary Narrator Lee Alan. Great voices, background noises and special effects. This series has it all!

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Dedication

To my son, Nathaniel Conan. Words can never express how much you mean to me, but I wrote you a book anyway.

The Hero, The Sword and the Dragons

Book 1

CHAPTER 1

I was running hard, pushing myself past human limits, to the only place I knew could help. Home. I already could tell that my wound was fatal, and with every step the loss of blood made me more woozy. Orcs were hot on my trail, at least a dozen, howling for my head. I was certain they would not stop; they were stubborn and stupid, slow as well, but I was smart and fast. I was a dragon, after all… in a very man-like sort of way. By appearance, I was a man: big, long haired, and rangy—more than capable of whipping a few lousy dragon-poaching orcs, until they got the drop on me. So now I was running for my life, my dragon heart pounding in my chest like a galloping horse, mile after mile, until I had no choice but to come to a stop. I looked down at the crossbow bolts protruding from my side, through my back.

“Egad!” I exclaimed, checking the wounds. The blood had already stained a patch in my armor, and I knew it was still worse than it looked. Every breath I took was painful and biting. I knew I was bleeding inside, and I had to stop it or die. I pulled the lid from my canteen and drank, which did little to quench my thirst, but it brought some relief. I reached inside my satchel, my little bag of tricks, and fumbled for a vial.

Over the years, I’ve picked up a few useful things, like potions. Magic potions. They can do many things. Turn you invisible. Make you bigger. Smarter. Faster. Stronger. And even heal. In this particular case, it was a healing potion in a vial as big as my index finger, which was pretty big, but it only looked to have about one drop left as I shook it before my eyes.

“Ugh,” I moaned, the pain not getting any better, “I don’t think this will do it.” I looked down at my wounds and tried to decide: should I take out the wooden shafts first or afterward? I’d been hurt before, plenty of times, but this festering wound was a tricky one.

“Just do what you always do, Dragon.”

That’s what I call myself, and I talk to myself a lot. My real name is much longer, difficult to pronounce and spell, but part of it is Nath. So, if a commoner ever asks, Nath Dragon is my name; saving dragons (and other things) is my game.

I tore a piece of bark from a tree, pinched it between my teeth, and bit down. Beads of sweat erupted from my forehead as I began pulling the first bolt through my skin. The good thing about them being crossbow bolts was they weren’t as big as arrows, but they sure did pack a punch. I groaned, certain I was going to die as I ripped the rest of the shaft free.

I felt sick. My skin turned clammy, and the sound of the woodland crickets became loud and irritating. In the woods there are many dangers, and I wasn’t anywhere close to being out of harm's way. Anything could pick up the trail of the wounded: overbearing bugbears, wily wood elves, pesky witches, dog-faced gnolls, transforming wolves, tricky sprites, were-shadows, or even worse … dragons. Yes, there are bad dragons, too, but it wasn’t likely I’d run into two dragons in one day or that a dragon would want to fool with me, for that matter. But they did on occasion; I’d seen it for myself. The most beautiful and dangerous creatures in the world. The noblest and greediest, too.

“Do it, Dragon!” I was gritting my teeth on the tasteless bark once more. The pain was excruciating, each bloody inch I tugged free twice as painful as the last.
Don’t black out.
A wave of wooziness assailed me as I got the last bolt free and slipped to my hands and knees, trembling like a leaf. I put the healing vial to my lips and watched that last pink drop slide down the tube and land on my tongue. Elation. Exasperation. It coursed through me, head to toe, mending every fiber, sealing every unnatural pore. The relief was astounding but the healing incomplete. As quickly as it had started, it stopped, but at least I wouldn’t be dripping blood anymore. Spitting it, perhaps.

Clatch-Zip!

Clatch-Zip!

Two bolts ripped past my face and quivered in a nearby tree.

“Stupid bloody orcs!”

I pushed myself to my feet with a groan and began sprinting through the woods, each step feeling like a punch in my stomach. I had to get home, find my father, and explain to him how I had gotten whipped by orcs, which never would have happened if I’d been allowed to kill them in the first place.

Zip! Zip! Zip!

My legs churned harder and harder as I began to outdistance my pursuers, cutting across the grassy plain, and the barrage of bolts began to subside. So on I ran, the sounds of the angry orcs fading away, leaving only the wind in my ears and the sharp throbbing pangs in my stomach. I just hoped I had enough strength left to return home.

Of course, my father probably wouldn’t be too pleased by my return, either. I had his sword that I named Fang, a beautiful glimmering object of steel and magic woven together like its own living thing. Well, it hadn’t been given to me; I’d sort of borrowed it, and by then I was pretty sure my father would know it was missing. He wasn’t the most understanding when it came to such things, either.

So I ran, through the shallow waters, over grassy gnolls, by shining cities whose towers almost reached the clouds, each long stride a hair shorter than the last, until I made it to just within my keen eye's shot of the Mountain of Doom and collapsed.

CHAPTER 2

As the sun rose, warming the chin hairs on my haggard face, the last thing I remembered was the blackness of the coming night. For all I knew, I’d been asleep for a day. I don’t think a screaming ogre could have woken me. At the moment, everything felt fine. Then I moved.

“Ugh,” I said. I wiped the morning drool from my mouth and spat out the tangy taste of my blood. I still had miles to go, and I wasn’t so certain I could make it. Upright as I could be, I staggered forward. My stiff legs were no longer capable of churning after days of running off and on, but I knew I had to keep going, seek help, and not die.

Ahead was the Mountain of Doom, which isn’t its real name but a shorter name I’d given it because I never cared to take the time to say things properly. I swear, long names are given to things just so others will have something to talk about or just to give some little wretch yearning for knowledge something significant to do. I can spell it, backward as well as forward, but I'm not going to. Learning it once was more than enough already, and I see no need to repeat myself. It's just a word. But the Mountain of Doom, my home, is beyond words. It's something you just have to see for yourself, and if you ever do, and you're wise, you’ll gape in wide-eyed wonder, turn, and run away.

The base of the mountain is miles wide, maybe a league or two. I used to have to run around its base as a boy, every crevice treacherous, loosely footed of shale and streams of lava hot enough to burn your leg to the bone in an instant. That area is called the marsh of sulfur. The peak’s nose reaches into the blue, snow caps blending into that cloudy sky (such as it was that day) before disappearing. Steam. Smoke. Those gases billowing from cave mouths, some small, others large and even enormous, seemed to illustrate that the mountain was more than a clump of rock and clay, a living and breathing part of the world itself.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and fought for secure footing over the shale as I made it two miles deeper into the rising heat. The heat didn’t bother me; I was used to that, but it wrought damage on my glorious mane of recently mangled hair.

I stood straddling the crest of a ravine, where a small stream of lava was flowing below. The face on the mountain, a frightful grimace it seemed, some said was a coincidence or a design of arcane wizards that once took shelter there. Or it was a massive scarecrow created by dwarves that wanted to be left alone. It was, without question in my mind, the face of a dragon. A massive cave filled with rows of teeth could be seen, smoke rolling from its mouth. The eyes shimmered with fire, and the nostrils dripped lava. It would be hard to argue that it didn’t look like a dragon, that it was just happenstance, an illusion, something the feebleminded shared to encourage fear to be spread by other feeble minds.

I sighed. It was pretty much the reason no one came here very often and lived. Mile after mile I trudged along in agony, deeper into the valley of living lava, until I had nowhere else to go but up. I looked back, the green grasses and tall trees no longer within sight, the rising mist now hiding my view of the gentler, softer world.

The base of the mountain was sheer, black rock, no smoke or stairs or solid footholds. Not smooth but rough and spanning hundreds of feet high. This was the part that kept the adventurers at bay: the curious, the daring, the foolish, and the greedy that wanted the dragon's hoard, rumored to be large enough to fill every household in an entire kingdom or more. It was impossible to get in, but to get out, with loads of treasure, would take at least a thousand of the stoutest men. Unless of course you knew a secret way, which it so happens I did.

A natural archway greeted me like an old friend as I fell onto my knees before it. No runes, no nothing, just a familiarity that I had from long ago. I began to speak to it, my raspy voice struggling to be clear, as my tongue was thick and swollen with fever. Word after word, minute after minute I chanted in a language more ancient than man, more difficult than women, more lengthy than a river. It took thirty minutes before I finished, and nothing happened.

“Open,” I tried to shout, slamming my fists into the rock. My voice was gone now, withered away like the ashes of a burning log, my efforts spent in failure.
Nooooooooo!
I collapsed, holding my belly, the taste of blood filling my mouth, my last flavor before dying.

The archway shook and quaked, angry. From the corner of my watery eye, I saw a sheet of rock lifting.
Thank goodness.
I lay there in pain, misery, and suffering, eyeing the portal open to safety but unable to move. How long, I did not know. The archway shuddered and buckled, and the doorway began to sink, a mouth closing, lips soon to seal shut.
Move!
But I could not. It seemed my death was likely to come first.