Fyre Fly: Chapter 36 - Dragon Slayer

To my disappointment, the gods don’t leave after we haul Sandro off the transport. They also don’t reveal themselves to anyone else, instead preferring, I suppose, to continue providing me with a personal haunting. I privately let Mirzayael know but otherwise ignore them, too busy keeping an eye on The Dungeon Core—and Sandro’s cape.

“Good job, Salvia,” Mirzayael says to them as Sandro is turned over to us. “You may return to your duties with Gardi.”

The young guard scowls. That means letting the Jorrian out of their cell so the two of them can join in with the activities of our city’s visitors, which is an extremely fair punishment, in my opinion. But they don’t object. “Yes, my lord.”

Mirzayael looks Sandro up and down. “So this is the one.” She leans over him with a scowl, in a manner that looks very intentionally intimidating.

Sandro appears thoroughly intimidated.

“Look,” he says, nervously glancing between the two of us. “I don’t want any trouble. I was just trying to satisfy my Role. But I don’t want to hurt a kid—I didn’t know what he was. I’m really sorry.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s why I brought you back with us. You’re not the only one with an unfortunate Role, but I’m hoping we can work together on figuring out how to resolve them.” I make eye contact with Blair and Shirasil (well, with Blair anyway) as I say this. “There are other questions I want answers to as well. But let’s find somewhere more private to chat.”

It’s a long walk back up to the palace, and Sandro turns his head every which way, looking at the city in awe as we march him through the streets. In the end we settle on one of Ollie’s outdoor pavilions, so he can also be part of the conversation when he returns from his Dungeon Core errand. This platform is just outside the throne room, so no one else is around. The balcony gives us a stunning view of the land and clouds beneath us, shadows stretched far to the east as the sun lowers in the sky.

I lost track of Blair and Shirasil when we were heading through the city and palace, but now that we’ve reached the private pavilion, they reappear once more. I’d dared hope they had decided to leave us for a time.

“...rather rude, don’t you think?” Shirasil is saying to Blair. “I mean, I provided the tip.”

I try to ignore them as Mirzayael and I figure out what to do with Sandro. The stuffed-up bundle on his back that’s covered in about a hundred loops of spider silk trembles.

“Can I trust you to be untied?” I ask Sandro. We settle him on a stone bench designed for those of us who are not dragon sized. It has another bench on either side, situating us like a U around a small central table. It’s designed for casual chats between friends, but I’ve never had the time or opportunity to use it.

Sandro nods eagerly. “I won’t do anything—I promise. I don’t even have a weapon if I wanted to. That one harpy took it.”

“Your class is a spellsword,” I note. “What kind of spells do you have?”

“Oh,” he says, as if he’d forgotten. “Right. Uh, they’re all sword related. Making the blade hot, or poisoned, or move faster—stuff like that.”

“And your cape?” I ask.

Annoyingly, Blair and Shirasil are continuing to speak with each other in the background.

“This time, at least,” Blair says. “But what if it encounters a stronger remnant?”

“Do you know of any?” Shirasil asks.

Blair hesitates.

I’m not sure if they have forgotten about me, or are intentionally doing this to remind me of their presence. Shirasil might just be doing it to annoy me.

Sandro winces. “The Shuddering Shroud. It’s, um, a bit different. It has a mind of its own. It won’t attack you unless it feels threatened.” He pauses. “But it sort of always feels threatened.”

“How reassuring,” Mirzayael says dryly. She turns to me. “Your call.”

“We can untie his hands,” I decide. “He didn’t pose much of a threat with his sword, anyway.”

Sandro grimaces.

“But we’re leaving your cloak secured for now,” I add. “Alright?”

Sandro looks downright miserable. “Sure.”

Mirzayael cuts his bonds, and Sandro mumbles an awkward thanks, rubbing his wrists, then tucks his legs up onto the bench as well, as if he’s trying to make himself appear as small as possible.

Given he’s an elf, it’s a bit odd to watch him acting so awkward and nervous—though perhaps that’s Tolkien biases playing into my expectations. I ask Echo to Check his age: 25. An adult, then, but it’s hard for me to not think of him as a kid. Twenty-five was half a lifetime ago.

“So, um, you guys are all from Earth, too?” Sandro asks, nervously glancing around at us. “I thought it was just me. Do you know if there are more?”

“Sandro,” I interrupt, suspecting he was about to continue nervously asking questions until we cut in. “I’ve a few questions I need to ask you, first, before anything else.”

“Oh! Sure, sure.” He hurriedly bobs his head.

“That depends on if and when we find this Kanin fellow,” Shirasil is saying, despite my efforts to tune them out.

Blair shakes her head. “That’s tangential. They will remain a problem no matter the reason for their summoning.”

“You can’t tell me you’re not curious,” he says. “You especially.”

“My duty is to the realm before all else.”

“Fyre,” Mirzayael mentally prompts.

I drag my attention back to her and Sandro. “Sorry. They’re distracting. What was I saying?”

“Questions for Sandro.”

“Right. Thank you.”

“Your Role, Dragon Slayer,” I say, focusing on Sandro. “What are its requirements?”

“The Dragon Slayer has to slay a dragon,” he recites with a shrug. “It’s pretty straight forward. Unfortunately. Do you know how many dragons I’ve found before today? None.”

“Sandro, focus,” I say. “How does Echo define the term ‘slay’?” Maybe there’s a loophole here that can be exploited. I’ve already asked her myself—and provided the obvious answer—but I have to make sure there aren’t any differences between our interfaces.

“Um.” He pauses, tipping his head with a wince. “She says it means to kill or permanently maim.”

My budding hope withers once more. But this is only a part of the picture, I remind myself. “Your sanity stat is at eighty-five percent,” I note, Checking it again. It’s the same as it was when I first met him. “Has that changed at all since you arrived here?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “It started at one hundred percent, but it’s been slowly ticking down. I didn’t notice it at first, but now there’s this… buzzing in the back of my mind. It’s kind of annoying.” His brows pinch together in sudden worry. “Is that bad? Will I be okay?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine,” I lie.

If it started at one hundred percent, and it’s decreased fifteen percent in the last few months, it sounds like he loses a point every four days or so. Theoretically, that’s almost a year before he hits zero. But does he have that long? When my sanity stat was plummeting, I lost all sense of self far before that point. And if his Role Requirement is starting to bug him now, then it might be more than he can ignore before long. I estimate we have two, maybe three months before it becomes a serious problem.

And even if I find some other dragon for him to kill in that time, what then? Will the number reset to one hundred percent, just to start ticking down once more?

This is even worse than the Requirements Ollie and I are bound by.

And what a cruel Role this is. Why would this System want to force someone into violent conflict? I don’t understand it.

But perhaps there is someone who is willing to enlighten us.

“You’re not holding out on me, are you?” Shirasil asks. “I thought introducing you to Fyre, here, was more than a show of good faith.”

“It’s a start,” Blair says. “But if you want to sway Yua Tin, you’re speaking to the wrong person. I’m no longer her—”

“Would you care to join the conversation?” I ask, raising my voice. Trying to speak with Sandro and Mirzayael while the gods continue to talk over us in the background is absolutely maddening. “I assume there is some reason you have remained.”

Sandro nervously glances around. “Who… who are you talking to?”

Blair regards me coolly, and I realize my frustration may have resulted in me addressing them a bit too casually. “With all due respect,” I weakly add.

“You should not have been privy to that conversation,” Blair says. She looks at Shirasil.

“Wait, was I supposed to conceal us?” he asks with blatantly transparent surprise. “Oh, no! Sincerest apologies.”

Blair lifts her eyes to the sky in a moment of exasperation before collecting herself and turning to me. “The reason I have remained is because I still have some time left in the mortal realm before I need to depart. I am here for Sandro, not you. I’ve been shadowing him to gauge the danger of his cloak. After today, I think it is safe to say it poses very little threat.”

“Oh,” I say awkwardly.

“But thank you for the invitation!” Shirasil says. “What do you say, Blair? The more the merrier.”

“Shirasil, do not—”

Sandro gasps, and Mirzayael jumps, her head whipping toward the gods. Well. I guess everyone can see them now.

Blair pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Erm,” I say. “Sandro, Mirzayael. This is Blair and Shirasil. They’re gods.” That part probably wasn’t necessary, given their appearances.

Mirzayael’s grip on her spear tightens, but to my relief, she doesn’t do anything rash. Yet.

Sandro, meanwhile, starts shaking. “Oh no. Oh, no, no, no. Please don’t kill us! Please!”

Mirzayael gives him a disgusted look. “Pull yourself together! This is embarrassing.”

It does seem like an extreme reaction, but he’s been shaking worse than a chihuahua since I first saw him.

“It’s not entirely his fault,” Shirasil says, strolling over to us, hands clasped behind his back. “It’s the remnant’s influence, most likely. Their personalities can be strong, but… one dimensional. Though he does seem particularly bad at shutting this one out. It’s not even that powerful.”

Similar to how the Dungeon Core only cares about eating? I recall what Sandro said about his cloak a few minutes before. “You’re saying his cloak is… anxious?”

Shirasil shrugs. “That seems to be a fair assessment.”

I’m still digesting this as I feel Mirzayael’s shifting mood. There’s a smoldering anger inside her that is never quite extinguished. Sometimes it’s only a few embers, buried far in the back of her mind. But right now it’s growing, flames licking up her subconscious.

I put a hand on her arm. Her muscles are so taut, it feels like steel wires lay beneath her skin. “Steady.” I try to soothe her.

“These… remnants,” I say, turning to Blair and Shirasil. “Why do they want to harm each other?”

Shirasil brightens. “Excellent question!”

“That we will not be answering,” Blair cuts in.

Not that I want the gods to come back, but I’m going to need to pin Shirasil down by himself one of these days.

“Fine,” I say. That question was out of academic interest anyway; what I really need to figure out is a way for Ollie to not become a target of Sandro’s. “Perhaps you can help us with something else. Blair already mentioned that you can’t change or alter our Roles. But can you at least help us manage them?” I gesture to Sandro. “His Role is forcing him to commit violence. And it might put Ollie in harm’s way. Is there anything, anything about these Roles you can tell us that might help?”

Blair’s frown softens into a sympathetic look. “You all did not receive Roles through the proper process. We are still trying to understand how and why each of you received the Roles you did. It’s possible they were applied randomly.”

“Some of them don’t even make sense,” Shirasil adds, gesturing to me. “What even is a Dark Lord?”

“Oh.” I look at the two of them in surprise. The gods didn’t know about this. “It’s the name for a common storytelling motif from my world. It refers to a villainous leader.”

Both gods appear surprised to learn this. Then Shirasil starts laughing. “You? Villainous?” He laughs even harder.

Mirzayael gives me a pointed look. She doesn’t speak into my mind, but I can hear the “I told you” anyway.

I frown, chewing on a nail in thought. “Then the System is creating Roles based on knowledge from our world. Yet, my Role seems to have been influenced by Fyrethian history. Fyreneth, from an outside perspective, would have fit the ‘Dark Lord’ trope. She was a leader of a country that was deemed ‘evil.’ Or at least, Forsaken. And I ended up being given a Role that fit the hole she left.”

“The System is drawing on concepts from Travelers, but merging them with relevant context where they appear in our world,” Blair muses. “I assume the boy’s Role also means something to you?”

“Ollie? Yes,” I say. “The Dragon is another motif. It refers to a powerful entity who works for the Dark Lord. Which can be a dragon, but doesn’t have to be.”

“Oh,” Mirzayael says. “I was wondering why it was ‘the dragon’ and not simply ‘dragon.’”

But why did we receive these Roles specifically? If they’re random, as Blair suggested, but based on some initial conditions around where we manifested in the world… In programming speak, we’d call this a seed. Perhaps this System really is some sort of magical computer.

“See?” Shirasil says, spinning to Blair in delight. “I told you speaking to them would be a good idea. Now we know why some of the Roles appear nonsensical.”

I look between the gods skeptically. “Are you saying no one had even asked any of us about the significance of our Roles before now?”

Blair actually looks uncomfortable.

And oddly, Shirasil seems to lose some of his amusement with the situation. “Why, yes, Blair, why haven’t we been speaking with the Travelers?”

“It was not my order to suspend them,” she says.

“Oh, of course. Following orders absolve one of all responsibility,” Shirasil says, a hint of bitterness entering his tone. This shift in his character sets me on edge.

“Could you not speak with those who have been taken into the custody of the gods?” I ask carefully. Blair had mentioned this ‘suspension’ before, but only briefly.

Shirasil gives a mirthless laugh. “They’re not really in a talkative mood.”

I look back to Blair for elaboration, hesitant to push this clearly dangerous subject too far. We’re also getting off track from my original ask. None of this helps with Sandro or Ollie’s Roles.

“Then about Sandro’s Role,” I say, trying to shift back into safer territory. “To kill or maim a dragon. Is he going to have to continuously perform this Role? Or will it be complete after he does it once?”

Both of the gods are silent for a moment. Sandro is hunched in on himself as if trying to appear as small as possible.

“It will reset,” Blair says, sounding disappointed. “He will need to achieve this feat at least once per year.”

“But that’s…” I don’t even know how to finish the sentence. Horrific? Cruel? Unfair?

“This is the danger of harnessing a hurricane,” Shirasil murmurs.

“Suspension seems a mercy in this case,” Blair says to him.

Oddly, he doesn’t reply. He seems lost in thought.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “You said the Travelers who have been taken into the gods’ custody would be kept from their Role influencing them. Can you elaborate?”

Shirasil appears to snap out of his thoughts. He scoffs, turning to Blair. “Is that what you told her?”

She stands a little straighter, looking indignant. “It’s the truth.”

“The truth,” Shirasil says, turning to me, “is that every Traveler who has been snapped up has been frozen, slowing any passage of time they experience a thousand fold. This renders them mostly unaware of their surroundings, and delays a lapsed Role Requirement from enforcing a decrease in their sanity stat.”

“Mostly unaware?” I repeat.

Blair remains quiet.

“Over a few decades, they will experience a few days of consciousness,” Shirasil says. “And their Sanity Stat will still decrease—excruciatingly slowly. But that won’t stop it. They’ll exist in that null space until a solution can be reached. And study on Roles has been ongoing for… about what, Blair… two thousand years?”

I physically recoil. “These people will be imprisoned for eternity, slowly and inevitably going mad? That’s horrific.”

“Depending on what Role the individual is being compelled to fulfill, it can be a mercy,” Blair objects.

“Can be,” Shirasil shoots back. “And tell me: How many have been suspended out of mercy?”

Blair shakes her head. “I do not have time to argue this with you now.”

“Of course.” His voice drips with sarcasm. “Don’t let me keep you from more important matters.” He turns away from Blair and walks toward us. Mirzayael goes taut once more.

“Find a bestiarian,” he tells me, still walking toward us with no sign of slowing. “Your kid isn’t the only dragon in the world.”

I take an alarmed step back right as it seems he’s about to walk into me, and he abruptly evaporates, collapsing into a cloud of smoke that dissipates into the air as it washes over me.

Blair shakes her head. “He means well. But he’s lost sight of our purpose.” Then she also walks over to us. Unlike Shirasil, she stops, looking at both Mirzayael and I.

[Permissions Updated,] Echo abruptly says.

“It is a mercy,” she insists, voice low. Her gaze briefly flickers to Sandro. “If you can find no solution, don’t forget there always remains another option.”

And then she, too, simply vanishes.

We both stand there for a moment, stunned.

Behind us, Sandro whimpers. “Are they gone? Oh, thank god.”

Mirzayael’s lips peel back in a sneer. “No. Fuck the gods.”