Dragon Breeder 3 Read online

  Dragon Breeder 3

  Dante King

  Copyright © 2021 by Dante King

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

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  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I dropped through the thick swirling clouds like a stone, like a falcon falling upon some luckless rabbit.

  The wind rushed in my mouth as I tucked myself tighter to the neck of Garth. The Pearl Dragon was, strangely enough, also my son.

  The air was cold on my teeth. My cheeks wobbled like when a skydiver was in freefall, but I couldn’t have closed my mouth if I had wanted to—my smile was just too damned wide.

  Garth’s pearlescent pink hide was as smooth as glass, yet as grippy as neoprene. Beads of moisture skittered across my armor like globules of mercury as we punched our way through the chill cloud layer. My sleek battle armor was aerodynamic, clearly designed by armorers and smiths who knew their clientele.

  I felt damn good attired in my armor. Nigh on invulnerable. With my dragon-enhanced strength, I could move in the mail, leather, and armor plates like they were made of cotton and cardboard.

  Over my linen shirt and breeches, I wore a brigandine. This was a lightweight armor for the body; leather with tiny steel plates stitched into it. It was the Mystocean equivalent of a stab-proof vest. It would stop a casual knife cut or thrust, or an arrow if you were lucky.

  Over this brigandine I wore a thigh-length shirt of incredibly fine mesh finished in a burnished bronze color. This was my hauberk and was far more flexible than the gear the regular foot soldiers of the Drako Academy were issued, and was about eight times stronger. This armor was tough enough to stop a crossbow bolt, if it wasn’t fired from point blank. It would also drastically reduce the damage from a longbow arrow—the weapon of choice for anyone stupid enough to try to harm a dragonmancer.

  My arms were covered by vambraces and gauntlets, exquisitely made by the skilled armorers of the Drako Academy. Matching greaves and thigh guards protected my legs.

  In my hand and pressed close to Garth’s side was the long spear favored by, and modified specifically for, dragonmancers: ash, six feet long, with wickedly sharp speartip.

  I was riding Garth instead of the more experienced Noctis today because today’s mission was fairly low key. I wanted the younger, less world-wise dragon to gain as much experience as he could early on.

  “It is sound logic,” Noctis said from inside my head.

  The Onyx Dragon was stationed in my Right Arm slot, where I could tap his power and magic to produce Shadow Spheres. These were Chaos Magic spells that vanished the part of an enemy that they struck—very bad news for those foes I shot in the face.

  Since I had defeated Cade and met with the Overseer Council two months ago, I had been training tirelessly. This practice had made me more adept at using my slots, particularly casting the Shadow Spheres with greater finesse. Now, I could vanish the sacking off a straw practice dummy without touching a single strand of the straw inside.

  Saya had commented that she couldn’t wait to see me vanish the skin off a goblin and have its organs just fall into a pile on the floor. For someone who looked like a Playboy pin-up model, she could say things that would make the balls of our enemies shrivel up like salted slugs. This ruthlessness contrasted heavily with her maternal nature, which I had come to know well since she was one of my dragonling baby-mommas.

  As Garth and I dived through the gathering storm clouds, I mentally ran through my inventory slots.

  Head Slot: Noctis (Aura: BLINK) – short range teleportation.

  Chest Slot: (Defensive Item / Offensive Spell : ONYX ARMOR) – Sleek, black armor that absorbs kinetic damage and transforms it into offensive chaos magic, which can then be fired at a chosen target through a conduit set into the breast plate.

  Right Arm Slot: Noctis (Offensive Spell: SHADOW SPHERE) – vanishes whatever part of the body it hits in a burst of black misty particles.

  Left Arm Slot: [insufficient skill]

  Legs Slot: Noctis Travel

  Weapon Slot A: Chaos Spear - Sleek spear with an ebony handle and tip that can pierce armor like a hot knife through butter. Black and silver Chaos Magic roll of it like heat waves.

  Weapon Slot B Slot [[insufficient skill]

  Wings Slot [insufficient skill]

  Titan Slot [insufficient skill]

  As far as I was aware, I was the first dragonmancer in recorded history who could ride and access the magic of two different dragons. I could utilize the abilities of both Noctis and Garth at the same time. However, as of yet, the young Pearl Dragon had yet to acquire anything other than his Leg Slot.

  “Gee, Dad,” Garth said, “why not rub it in a little more?”

  As Noctis had done a moment before, Garth spoke to me using the unique telepathy that existed between dragonmancers and their dragons. It was a gift, a link, opened between rider and dragon during the Transfusion Ceremony. It resulted in an intimacy and fluidity of battle awareness that was said to be unparalleled.

  That might have been so, but when three minds shared a single space, I couldn’t help but be reminded of sitting at a table with three people all trying to talk over one another.

  With an abruptness that tore an involuntary gasp from my throat, Garth and I speared out from the underbelly of the cloud layer. Suddenly, the world below us transformed from a blank, misty gray into a patchwork of rolling, living topography.

  Garth turned his head sideways, peering at me through one of his all-black, silver-pupiled eyes. Fronds surrounded his head in a captivating crest, pulsating red in time with his heartbeat. They were pressed to his neck by the wind of his speed.

  He opened his mouth and gave me a dragon’s approximation of an excited grin.

  I snorted and grinned back.

  “All right, slow down and let’s get our game faces on, eh?” I thought.

  “You’re the boss,” Garth replied, his head facing forward again, though the toothy grin remained.

  “And don’
t you forget it, kiddo,” I said.

  Garth’s wings opened, and the rate of our descent slowed.

  Simultaneously, on either side of me and from behind, there came the snapping and popping sounds. The dragons of my three companions—Penelope, Saya, and Tamsin—had also all opened up their wings.

  A smile lit my face at the sound of my fellow dragonmancers following my lead. This smile dimmed a little as I realized that the only person missing, really, from our formation was Elenari.

  The red-headed elf was currently caring for my other son, Wayne. He was a dragonling in need of a special crystal before he could mature into a fully-fledged dragon, like his half-brother, Garth.

  The worry that accompanied the thought of Wayne gnawed at my insides, but with some difficulty, I pushed it to the back of my mind.

  Dragons did not feel empathy, not as humans did. That was what made them such ruthlessly efficient hunters and killers. It was what made them so feared in battle. It was why they could live for hundreds and hundreds of years and survive where most other things perished. Even though Garth was Wayne’s half-brother, the Pearl Dragon showed little concern for the danger posed to his dragonling brother.

  “He will either survive or he won’t,” he told me, tapping into my thoughts as I ran my eyes over the countryside spread out far below us. “It’s not like we can do anything from here, so why waste time thinking about it?”

  Before I could think of a fatherly way to tell Garth to shut up and be less of an asshole, Noctis said, “The young one is right, Mike. Face one battle at a time. Focus on the one in front of you now and prepare to fall upon your foes like a thunderbolt. Decimate them and then waste your energy worrying about that which you cannot yet change.”

  I gave my head a little shake. Tried to instill myself with some of that coldblooded dragon mentality.

  “Good team talk, boys,” I thought drily. “You’d make a hell of a pair of shrinks. Remind me never to call you in to help me talk someone off a ledge.”

  “There!” Tamsin the red-skinned hobgoblin yelled from my right. She leaned forward across the neck of her Force Dragon, Fyzos, so that her long black hair streamed behind her like a pennant. “I can see our coteries just to the south of us, about fifteen hundred feet below.”

  I followed where her yellow eyes were gazing and saw that she was right.

  Our coteries—the trio of specially selected soldiers that acted as each dragonmancer’s personal squad of bodyguards—were, indeed, a head of us. They had set out that morning, well before us, in the magical floating skiffs that reminded me so much of Viking longboats. With the aid of my dragon-boosted vision, I could just make out the gleaming white skin of Bjorn in the lead longboat. Although from this distance, I couldn’t see the details, I did not doubt that the half-Jotunn warrior would be clinging to the mainmast like a princess to her virginity.

  “How do you want to go about this, Mike?” Penelope called over the rush of the wind and the thrum of the taut membrane of our dragons’ wings. The all-blue Knowledge Sprite was hunkered down over the neck of Glizbe, her Rooster Dragon. Penelope’s navy Librarian robes whipping about her.

  I considered her question. War and battle, or so our preceptors at Drako Academy tried to tell us, was often one big game of deception. It was the ultimate life and death competition. Oftentimes, it was the smarter, subtler, and more patient warrior that walked off the battlefield victorious.

  Except, other times, you had to make an example. Sometimes, there was more to be gained by charging into the fray like a bull elephant on bad acid running through a glassware shop. It was important to remind the bastards of the Mystocean Empire what would happen to them if they stepped out of line.

  It was like medieval public relations—rain down hell upon your foes today, and maybe the next bunch of professional dickwads will think twice before they do something naughty.

  I remembered something one of my favorite authors had said about how building a man a fire for a day only keeps him warm for a day, but if you set that man on fire, then that lucky guy will be warm for the rest of his life.

  I liked that saying.

  Sometimes, you’ve got to help the assholes of the world help themselves by turning them into roman candles.

  I glanced around at three women surrounding me.

  Saya, riding on the back of her gray Gargoyle dragon, Scopula, flashed me a knowing smile. She knew precisely how my mind worked.

  “I was thinking we rip down past our coteries and do our best impressions of sharks falling on a shoal of fish,” I said. While the wind was rushing around us, we could easily communicate. Anyone else would have had to yell, but a special kind of magic allowed dragonmancers to communicate with each other easily while astride their dragons.

  “I can follow that.” Tamsin bared bright white teeth as she snarled in anticipation. Her predatory eyes narrowed against the blasting wind.

  We had been sent to subdue a couple of clans of wildmen. These assholes were robbing the merchants and caravans that used the Watervale Pass to avoid the more dangerous Granite Belt mountain route to the north. But that wasn’t all. The wildmen had started getting creative. They had been shoving stakes up the asses of the merchants that they overwhelmed, Vlad the Impaler style, and leaving them out for the crows to pick at.

  As savage and, well, wild as the wildmen looked, there were some dudes among them who had quite the knack for keeping people alive for as long as possible, even with about four feet of sharpened pine stake shoved up the fartbox.

  This practice of theirs probably sat only a little less comfortably with the Empress Cyrene as it did with the poor people being rogered with the great, big splintery dildos.

  The reason that dragonmancers, and not regular troopers of the Drako Academy, had been called in to deal with these particularly enterprising wildmen was because the regular guard already had been called in to deal with them.

  The Empress had stipulated that a spice caravan be sent out into the hill country of the Watervale Pass and used as bait, along with a contingent of soldiers, to draw the wildmen out.

  We of the Crystal Spire had received word early that morning from a messenger drake sent from the captain of the company of Drako Academy soldiers. He said that the troopers and the caravan had been surrounded by hostiles of far greater numbers than anticipated. The soldiers had formed a defensive perimeter around the merchants and their spice caravan. They were doing everything they could to keep the wildmen at bay, but they were in need of some immediate aid.

  So, that was how things lay, as I signaled for my three fellow dragonmancers to follow me down.

  The four dragons cocked their wings back, once again adopting the flight position of peregrine falcons, and dived toward the Watervale Pass. The world below smeared into streaks of watercolor as we rocketed toward the ground.

  Penelope, Saya, Tamsin, and I shot past our squads in their flying longboats like they were sitting still. As we streaked by, I heard Rupert—my twitchy medic and engineer—give a long whoooooop of encouragement.

  Below us, there wound a ribbon of dirt road, running through some strangely even hill country. The road cut perfectly through the hills, ten huge perfect mounds of grass-covered earth that sat, five aside, on both sides of the roadway.

  In the middle of this snaking piece of highway was the besieged caravan. There were half a dozen great wagons, pulled by two pairs of oxen of each, strung out in a line on the road. The four oxen of the lead wagon had been shot full of arrows, as had the ones attached to the rearmost cart. This had effectively made it impossible for the other wagons to get the hell out of the killbox that the wildmen had created.

  The Drako Academy soldiers had formed an oval shield wall, using the wagons as cover. They were obviously well-trained, and had clearly been in that same position for quite some time. There were a few dead men and women wearing the armor of the Academy dotted around the battleground, but I guessed that they had fallen when the convoy had been
initially ambushed, before the troopers had gotten into a defensive formation.

  The wildmen milled around the paralyzed caravan like a swarm of thoroughly enraged locusts gathering about the last cob of corn in the field. They were clad in a motley assortment of furs and skins, and they carried crude but lethally efficient weapons. The men sported the kinds of beards and hair that made Hagrid look like Ryan Gosling.

  Arrows and spears periodically rattled down on the upturned shields of the defenders. At least twenty dead wildmen were scattered around the caravan. Blood stained the dust of the road where they had been hewn down by the Academy soldiers.

  The dragonmancers fell upon the wildmen like a firestorm sweeping through dry grassland. Our quarry let out harsh, croaking cries. Some of the quicker thinkers among them lobbed spears at us as we descended, but they may as well as have tried to kill armored knights with peashooters.

  Bursts of flames in various colors engulfed the shaggy-haired warriors as we swept over.

  Garth’s dragonfire was the palest rose color. It cut a short swathe through the ranks of the milling wildmen, blowing some of them into the air. Penelope’s mount, Glizbe, had a deep blue flame that burst out of him like a withering mushroom. Scopula’s flame came out in a blistering streak of dark gray, crackling as it made contact with the helpless enemy. The dragonfire produced by Tamsin’s dragon, Fyzos, was a barely discernible burst of pale yellow. It did not burn so much as punch through the ranks of wildmen fighters like a snowplow, flinging them every which way. I guessed that was because he was a Force Dragon.

  A ragged cheer went up from the circle of Drako soldiers. Arrows flickered out of the shield wall, as archers took advantage of the distraction we had provided and used it to thin the wildmen even more.

  As I passed over the top of the caravan, I saw one burly wildman dressed in a bear skin take an arrow through the mouth. The tip stuck out though the back of the warrior’s neck in a spray of bright blood, and he fell thrashing backward.