The Lost Mage (38 page)

“What weapon?”

“Here,” she points to the screen. “These are your choices: broadsword, short sword, daggers –” she stopped as Darakin scoffed. “What?”

“Nobody in their right mind would try to kill a dragon with a dagger.”

“It’s a game, Darakin.”

“But still –”

“’Scuse me mister, are you gonna play?” a young boy of about twelve asked.

Nora pulled Darakin back from the game. “No, sweetie. You go ahead and play.”

The boy walked up to the machine, swiped his game card and proceeded to press a bunch of buttons in some weird order.

“What’s he doing?” Darakin whispered to Nora.

“I don’t know.”

Darakin leaned forward. “Don’t use the daggers, son.”

“No kidding,” the boy said without turning.

Darakin gave an approving nod at the boy’s words.

After a moment, the game screen loaded. A huge dragon appeared, flying toward the screen. The boy pulled back on the joystick to view his own weapon. Darakin and Nora’s heads both tilted to the side in unison.

“What is it?” asked Darakin in a hushed voice.

“It’s a gunship.” Nora replied.

“What’s that?”

“A war machine.”

“Ah.”

“I didn’t see that under the weapon choices,” Nora said to the boy.

“Duh, lady. You have to know the code to enter.” The boy moved the joystick to the side and maneuvered his gunship to the side. He began pressing the fire button and automatic machinegun fire burst forth.

“It kind of seems like cheating, doesn’t it though?” Nora asked.

“If they didn’t want you to use them, they wouldn’t make ‘em, would they?” the boy asked in exasperation.

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t have things like that whenever or wherever this game is supposed to take place.”

“Who cares?” the boy asked.

Nora didn’t respond.

Darakin watched the boy play for a few more minutes. Then he shook his head and said to the boy. “You’ll never kill the dragon that way, son.”

Nora whispered urgently, “Hush. What are you doing?”

“I’m just trying to help, Nora. Do you know how thick a dragon’s skin is? It’s impenetrable unless you’ve first fed it Dragon Lily – which, now that I think about it, is a strange name for the plant because dragons avoid it like an Acarandian avoids work.”

“A what? What are you talking about?”

“Acarandians are reputed to be the laziest nation in my realm. It’s just a saying we have.”

“Okay, but what’s this nonsense about Dragon Lily?”

“It’s a poisonous plant that renders a dragon’s skin penetrable. Once done, though, you still need to stab them in the heart with a blade poisoned with the lily. That’s why you need a long sword and not a dagger. Dragons’ hearts are deep in their chest. No one but the most foolhardy of warriors would even attempt to get close enough to try.”

Meanwhile on the screen, the boy’s helicopter has decimated the landscape and slaughtered the dragon. He turned to look at Darakin. “Whatever, dude. I still have the high score.” The boy sauntered away from the crazy man.

“Darakin!” Nora hissed at him. “I told you, you can’t just go on and on about dragons, here. They don’t exist, remember? And if the game designers programmed the game so the dragon can be killed by a dagger, then it can. It’s not real. They’re going to lock you in the loony bin if you’re not careful.”

“What’s a loony bin?”

“The nut house.” Darakin’s expression was blank. She tried again. “A psychiatric hospital? An asylum? A place where they treat crazy people?”

“Oh. I see. You think people will think I’m crazy.”

“If you walk around talking about killing dragons, yes, they will.”

“You’ve called me crazy several times. In fact, so have most of the people I’ve met here.”

“That’s because you sound crazy when you talk about this stuff.”

“Okay. I’ll try to be more careful.”

“Thank you. Now let’s find a game you can play.”

The couple spent the next two hours there. Darakin found that he liked skee-ball and was pretty good at it, too. “This reminds me of a game we have at home only we use paddles to hit the ball toward targets that are much farther away.”

“Gather up those tickets, we can buy something from the gift shop with them.”

“Why would you buy anything from a gift shop? Is it not full of gifts?”

She laughed. “Yes, but they’re gifts you buy to give to others.”

“Oh. We don’t have those.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

They took the tickets to the gift shop and found that he had enough to buy a pair of beer steins with the word champion on them. “We’ll use these to toast our success when we finish off your demon,” Nora said as she tucked them in her bag.

With that, Darakin looked out the door and realized that it had already gotten dark.

“Nora! I wanted us to get to the summoning spot and be hidden before darkness,” he said urgently. “I don’t know what time they’ll show up to perform their summoning.”

Nora looked at the dark sky. “Oh my! How long were we in here? Okay, let’s go.”

The couple left the arcade, crossed the street and began racing through the park toward the place where Darakin had been summoned. As they got near, Darakin grabbed Nora’s arm to stop her from running. “We’re too late, they’ve already begun.” Darakin pointed through the dense trees where an orange glow could be seen. “Hurry, but quietly.” He headed through the trees, keeping a tight grip on Nora’s hand.

As they got closer to the light, they could hear the low murmur of chanting voices. Darakin pulled Nora down to the ground and they moved forward in a low crouch. The voices were now audible, but Nora couldn’t understand the words.

“What language are they speaking?” she whispered.

“I have no idea. Some sort of demon tongue, I suspect.”

“Demons have their own language?”

“Of course. Thousands of them. But I don’t know where these men learned theirs. It could be from any one of the infinite realms out there, so who knows.”

They inched closer. Light was glowing from the runes the group had traced in the dirt, just as it had when Darakin was summoned. A collective gasp went up from the group as a beautiful creature materialized in the center of the ring.

“Who, I mean what is that?” Nora asked.

“A dryad.”

“You mean as in the nymph that lives in a tree?” She stared in wonder at the beautiful nymph, whose long hair draped her barely clad body.

“In or near a tree. And yes. Also, the mortal enemy of the krekdapop demon. I have to stop this or there’ll be a war here. Stay here.” Darakin stood up and strode toward the group.

Nora’s gaze followed the graceful movements of the almost naked dryad. “Don’t they have seamstresses in their realm?” She eyed the flawless appearance of the dryad with jealousy. “Well, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit here helplessly doing nothing,” Nora said when Darakin was out of earshot. She got up and followed him to the circle.

As Darakin approached, the dryad stepped out of the circle, looked at her summoners and ran for the tree line. Darakin went to run after her when Howard, the leader of the group, stepped in front of him. He gaped in wonder at the mage. “Kwok? Is that you?”

“Who’s Kwok?” Nora asked.

Darakin turned to look at her. “Nora, I told you to wait over there.”

“I’ll not be told to wait behind like a helpless child.”

“Kwok! You came back. Are you ready to do our bidding?”

Darakin looked in the direction that the dryad had run, but she was gone. He turned back to the group. “You stupid fool. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Yes, Kwok. I’ve now summoned several creatures from your demonic realm. I, ahem, I mean we are most powerful and you will do our bidding.”

“Powerful? You don’t even know what you’ve done.”

Nora repeated her question. “Who is Kwok?”

Howard pointed at Darakin. “He is.”

“His name isn’t –”

Darakin cut Nora off before she could finish. “It’s okay, I don’t want him to know my name,” he whispered. “Kwok means ‘what’ in my language. It’s the first thing I said to him after he summoned me and he must think it’s my name.”

“What are you whispering? And who is this?” Howard demanded.

“You’ll make no demands of me. I am not your servant.”

“But I summoned you here and now you’ve returned,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard by his followers. “As I knew you would.”

“I only came back here to stop you from doing any more damage.”

“Stop me? Us? You can’t stop us.”

With a heavy sigh, Darakin said, “Look. I don’t have time for this. I have to go find the dryad.”

“Dryad?”

“Yes, the creature you just summoned.”

“That is a succubus, Kwok. A demon that will help us spread anarchy.”

“You idiot! That was a dryad, a divine creature that has no place in this realm.”

“Idiot? You dare to call your master ‘idiot’?”

“I’ve told you before, you’re not my master.”

“Now you listen here, Kwok –”

Darakin stepped forward and grabbed Howard’s collar. “No, you listen. You will stop opening these portals. You’re bringing creatures from my realm, not from some hell dimension. I am a mage, the krekdapop is an uncontrollable  demon, and the dryad is a magical creature that prefers the solitude of her own grove and has no place in this populated land. This is a dangerous game you’ve been playing and now you’ve lost the dryad, just like you lost me and the krekdapop.”