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His New Hoard

Chapter 2: Fire and Ice

Sponsored by Taiko

By Draconicon

In the end, Jaceb had to drag him back inside the bone house. As soon as the dragon passed through the skeletal doorway, the rage subsided. It didn't die, but it no longer burned hot enough to consume his mind.

As Draconicon panted for breath, forcing himself to swallow to calm his throat, the mole ran his fingers along the walls, shifting the bones around. The black dragon shook his head.

"That's what...this part of Hell does? Makes you angry?"

"Makes y-you feel t-things...feel t-things...strong..."

"Anything?"

"Anyth-thing."

He looked out the door again, the raging red storms in the sky swirling as if the realm itself was waiting to catch him again. During the fall, he must have come through the skies too fast for it to grip him. Now, it was waiting for him to experience the true power of this little realm.

Getting to his feet, the robed dragon walked over to the doorframe. He hesitated, then pushed his hand past the border of the house.

Nothing.

He tried exposing both arms, then his legs and tail.

Still nothing.

Either the whole body needs to be out, or it just affects the head...or heart, perhaps.

He leaned his head through the door -

"RRRRRRRRRRGH!"

And promptly pulled it back in. The rage had come back so fast that it had left him with a migraine, and a big one, at that. Everything was doubled, forcing him to lean against the wall and rest his head against the cool bones to try and soothe the worst of it away.

Despite the pain, the dragon managed a small smile. Information. He had information.

"Jaceb...how does this house protect us?"

"Deadening spells."

"Deadening - oh, ha ha..."

He rolled his eyes, promptly regretting it.

"Can you make a portable version?"

"I...already did..."

The necromancer pressed something into his hand. Taking a few deep breaths and hoping that the worst of the headache was passing, Draconicon lifted it up to take a look.

It was a rib bone, carefully polished and bent. He wasn't sure how Jaceb had managed it, but the mole had managed to twist the rib about until it had almost come full-circle around itself. The pointed end was within a millimeter of tapping the flatter end, and all along the band were more of the angular, pointed letter-scratches.

Knowing what it was now, he could translate bits and pieces. Not enough to read the whole thing, but enough to know how Jaceb had made it work.

Rib bone, a protector of the heart. Dead, but infused with enough life to attract this part of Hell while shielding your own emotions. Very clever.

He looked back at the mole, nodding his approval.

"Do you have one?"

Jaceb shook his head.

"Why not?"

"N-never n-n-needed one..."

"You...how? How can you handle all that?"

The mole answered him with a shake of his head as he tucked a skull under his arm. Draconicon didn't even know what species it was, the features too worn down to tell, but if the rib bone ring was covered in spell-work, then the skull was swarming with them. There was hardly a white spot left to be seen.

If even half of those are names...

He didn't know enough about necromancy to question it, he reminded himself. And if Jaceb believed he could take it, then there was no reason for the dragon to doubt him. The mole had been here long before he'd arrived. He'd take the necromancer at his word.

Slipping the ring on, the dragon walked over to the door to test it again. The pain was still fading, and he winced at the idea of feeling something like that again. A new dose of it on top of what hadn't faded yet could easily knock him out, and that would slow him down even more.

But he wasn't going to get out of Hell without trying. He stepped forward...

And felt nothing. Almost nothing. The rage flickered inside of him, like an ember that had caught the edge of a breeze, but it lacked the buffeting, consuming force of the inferno that had leaped up inside him last time. The ring was working.

Smiling, he looked back at Jaceb. He opened his mouth to say thanks -

Only to see the necromancer crumble as he stepped out of the house. The mole's glasses fell off his face, hitting the ground and bouncing in the dust. The skull rolled a few feet away, coming to a stop with eye-holes down. Jaceb lowered his head to the ground, his hands clenched into fists, and his shoulders hunched in the all-too-familiar motions of suppressed sobbing.

Before Draconicon could do anything, though, the mole grabbed for the skull, fingers raking through the loose dirt until he found it. He squeezed it, shaking harder before he managed to get himself under control.

"Jaceb?"

"Nnngh...mmph..."

"Let me -"

The mole shook his head, his fur turning crimson as the dust stuck to the tears running down his face. Draconicon waited, giving himself a count of five before he would help the necromancer, protests or no protests.

Jaceb managed, at the count of four, to get a knee under him. The mole pulled his head from the ground, fumbling about for his glasses until the dragon handed them over. They were dusted with the same red as the lines running down his cheeks, but the necromancer didn't bother wiping them. He just forced himself the rest of the way to his feet.

"I'll b-be...ok-kay..."

"That didn't look okay."

"I'll b-be ok-kay. I...let's...k-keep g-going..."

"Alright."

I was almost taken by rage. What is this? Sorrow? Or guilt?

Whatever it was, it continued to pull the mole down as he walked. The pair of them walked at a snail's pace from the house, and it was only partially from the dust on the air.

Some of it blew into the dragon's face, and a hint of it touched his tongue. He shivered.

It wasn't dust. It was dried blood.

#

It felt like hours later when the bone house no longer loomed on the horizon. Draconicon looked back in the direction they'd come, seeing the tracks of his robe and their footprints in the blood dust that littered the ground like red snow. He shook his head.

"I'm...sorry about your house," he said, attempting to fill the silence.

Jaceb shrugged.

"I didn't mean to come crashing through the roof...or bring lightning with me, come to think of it." He remembered the bodies in the basement. "I...hope that those weren't friends down there."

"Drained."

"Huh?"

"Drained. N-not dead. Drained." Jaceb shook his head. "Couldn't...s-save t-them. T-tried, t-though."

"So...they were just empty?"

The mole nodded.

Well, that was something of a relief. At least he hadn't accidentally killed the necromancer's friends awaiting reincarnation or something.

He looked out across the fiery plains ahead. This particular part of Hell was flat and broad, the geography consisting more of fire and plumes of smoke than rock and vegetation. Infernos rose in vast ranges, and the dark clouds that came from them painted the sky in shades of night, broken only by the jagged cracks of perpetual lightning.

It shouldn't have been surprising that no-one else was stupid enough to be walking around under that maelstrom of destruction, yet he kept expecting to see someone.

"Where's all the other damned souls?" he asked.

"Reg-generating."

"Oh." Draconicon sighed. "Great."

Regenerating dead. Not too surprising, but very frustrating if they ended up having to deal with them.

It also explained where all the blood was coming from. If the damned kept coming back, then they could keep bleeding. Those filled with rage would need others to kill, while those filled with fear would need others to flee.

Or to lash out at, he supposed.

He looked past the fires. On the horizon - though in Hell, who knew how far off that was - he could just make out the edge of an icier realm.

"Have you been there before? In the ice?"

Jaceb nodded.

"Came f-from t-the other w-way..."

"..."

He looked at the necromancer, slowly shaking his head. He doubted that Jaceb saw the look of curiosity sent his way, but it was there, nonetheless.

What sort of person crawls their way deeper into Hell? What sort of things were waiting for them out there?

Wishing that he'd put more effort into studying Hell before his banishment, Draconicon kept walking. The pressure of the emotional 'booster', for lack of a better word, continued to swell around him, but the ring was keeping most of it off. Only the occasional bursts of irritation managed to get through his self-control, and those were quashed quickly enough.

After Jaceb's second collapse, he supported the necromancer on his arm. After the fourth, he carried him on his back. The mole complained, but the dragon shook his head.

"I told you that I'm going to get you to a better place. That place doesn't happen to involve digging to the center of the universe."

"Mmmph..."

"Just keep an eye out, okay? Make sure nobody's sneaking up on us."

"O...Okay..."

With the mole leaning against his back, Draconicon turned his attention back to the task at hand. He wasn't going to go much faster with that much weight on his back, but it was better than trying to make good time with one of them collapsing every few minutes.

He had plans. The closer they were to the edge of Hell, the further he'd be able to send them when he gathered the strength. Considering the chances of someone watching for an escape attempt, he needed as little space between him and the edge of this universe as he could manage. The less energy he spent building up escape velocity, the more he had to punch through whatever they had set up to keep him here.

Fire was the center. If he could cross ice, that would at least put him halfway to the edge of this universe. From there...

Well, he'd figure it out when he got there.

#

Though there was no night, rest was still required. Draconicon swept his tail from side to side, clearing a place in the blood dust before setting Jaceb down in it. The necromancer had fallen asleep, the skull clutched against his belly. He didn't move, nor did it, as he was laid on the ground.

Even in sleep, however, the little guy's body was hunched over, twitching and trembling in obvious agony. He hunched forward, his breath coming in short, desperate gasps, and he mouthed something again and again to himself.

"My fault...my fault...all my fault..."

Shaking his head, the dragon looked down at the rib-bone ring. He didn't dare take it off, not after what happened last time, but he couldn't let the mole suffer like this. It wasn't fair.

No. It wasn't right.

Draconicon reached inside again, pulling at his power and summoning it once more. Not the orange-red flames this time, but the black fire.

He tilted the ring into the flames, letting the flickering darkness play over the bone band. The glow of the letters dimmed as the black fire filled the scratching in, taking on their shape. He rotated his hand, making sure every single one was filled before finally pulling his hand back.

Bending his will over the letters, he extracted the black fire with a thought. It came away writhing and twisting like a blaze in a high wind, but the shape of the runes remained.

The first step was complete, but the blood dust wouldn't hold the shapes properly. Even if they did, the constant wind and smoke would blow more around them, eventually covering the magic. They needed more than this.

Maintaining the black fire with one hand, he kneeled down and pressed the other to the ground. His magic surged through his palm, burning into the earth beneath the dust, beneath the blood, beneath the bone. He closed his eyes, feeling for the stone that had to be beneath it all.

It was there, but it was far from the pure earth that he was accustomed to working with. Frowning, he tangled the black fire of his magic with it anyway, and ripped it upwards.

The ground cracked around him as scab-ridden rocks and chunks of dead and live bodies alike were ripped from the ground. Swallowing his distaste, the dragon flicked the living ones over the other side of his new wall, lifting it higher and higher until he felt the beginnings of cracks in the foundations.

He let it rest at twenty feet in height, finally pressing the new runes to the sides. They had warped and shifted slightly in the wait, but he still felt something as they embedded themselves in the red walls. Maybe it would be enough to keep Hell's power away for the night. Maybe.

Checking on the mole again, he found that not only was his companion no longer shaking, but he was awake, too. Jaceb sat up, looking around. He read the runes on the walls, then turned to him.

"W-what...wh-what did y-you do? I t-thought y-you didn't k-know -"

"I know very little necromancy, but I have my own talents."

"T-the fire...wh-what is it?"

"That?" Draconicon chuckled. "That is my special magic. The fire of adaptation."

The familiar urge seized him, and he held up his hand, letting the fire dance about again. The black flames leaped high, then pulled in close to his palm. Little baubles of flickering darkness leaped about his fingertips, the blaze at least half-alive as it jumped from one digit to another.

"Most dragons have a skill buried within their magic. Some of us think that it's a bloodline thing, but I have my doubts. Nobody in my family had this gift, for one. For another, everyone who finds their unique magic ends up finding something of a mirror. It's suited to them, even if it's not what they expect when they find their fire.

"For me, it is adaptation." He curled his hand into a fist, dispelling the smaller flames. "I've always been good at figuring out how something works and making my own version of it. This is just the logical, magical extreme of that."

"...Y-you s-sound like a teacher..."

The dragon's smile slowly disappeared. He sighed, letting his hand drop back to his side as he sat down, leaning his head back against the blood-rock wall.

"I was."

"W-what happened?"

"...A lot of things." He shook his head. "A lot of things that someone's going to answer for."

Jaceb watched him in silence, but he knew that trick. He didn't need to fill the quiet when someone else wanted an answer. Instead, he looked to the sky, shaking his head at the storm dancing overhead. The lightning had moved further on, closer to where the bone house had been. They'd be safe. Probably.

"Get some rest."

"...O-k-kay."

The mole rolled over again. At least he didn't seem to be in pain anymore.

Draconicon looked towards the sky, imagining what he might see if the clouds weren't in the way. All the way across existence, he wondered if reality had a sufficient curve for him to be able to see back to his home, to the clouds and mountain peaks of the dragon realms and the many people he'd been separated from.

He imagined their features on the clouds until they grew entirely too familiar.

One of the big red clouds took the aged features of a dragon with a bulbous snout, suffering from scale-wart and having a grotesque bulge along the side of one nostril. Another took a shape of a narrow snout with high eye-ridges, with a cunning light lent to the eye with a bolt of lightning dancing away.

They sneered at him from above until he turned away, his hand clenched into a fist and his claws on the verge of drawing blood.

"They'll answer for it." He took a deep breath, let it out. The ring was still whole. The ring was still intact. "They...will...answer for it."

He forced himself to turn away, closing his eyes. He doubted that he'd get much sleep, but some was better than none.

#

However long they slept, it didn't feel like enough. The dragon rolled over with kinks in his back and stubborn tensions in his wings. Draconicon reached over his shoulder, rubbing them slowly until they were tolerable, then sat up.

Jaceb was already awake, the mole sitting cross-legged with the skull he'd brought along in his lap. His fingers traced the letters and his mouth moved slowly, as if he was reminding himself of what he'd put down.

Recognizing the signs of meditation, Draconicon left him alone. He unfurled his wings, flapping them twice and carrying himself out of the protective barrier that he'd raised.

The landscape had changed. The fire mountains were behind them now, and the path to the ice in the distance was clear. No smoke, no barriers, just a flat run.

Which probably meant that it would be anything but as easy as it looked.

Soul-eaters, flesh-flayers, pain-suckers. Jaceb had listed a series of monsters that the house had protected him from. So far, they hadn't encountered any, but there was always the chance that one was just waiting for them beneath the blood dust. The damned were probably about ready to start fighting again, too.

The dragon dropped back down from the edge of the wall. Jaceb opened one eye, the mole pulling himself to his feet.

"Are w-we g-going?" he asked.

"Yes."

"How...how far do w-we have to g-go?"

"As far as we can. I don't want us bounced back to Hell if this goes wrong."

The mole nodded.

There was no need or way to bring the blood-rock wall with them, so he let it crackle into pieces. Old blood had been the main component of the wall, anyway, and as soon as he took away its support, the rest of it crumbled away.

The wind picked up as they started walking, and so did the effect of Hell on the mole. This time, however, he started out leaning, allowing the dragon to support him.

#

They were about fifteen minutes of walking from the ice when the ground shifted. Jaceb felt it first and pulled him to a stop.

The ground before them split, a crack more than fifty feet across opening instantaneously. Still-regenerating bodies spilled from it, some with limbs whole enough to run, others barely able to crawl. Regardless, they fled from the opening, desperately dragging themselves away if they had to.

What followed was a swarm of red and gold, blurs of light darting through the air with a frenzy that defied the senses. Clash, clack, clash, the sounds of their weapons and their flight filled the air with a cacophony of chaos.

The bodies started to fall almost instantly on both sides. While most wore a red-black armor, a material that resembled leather if leather moved like water (or blood), the others were adorned in golden armor that covered them from neck to waist, and along the legs and arms. The latter had wings that moved on gears and sockets, and the feathers were made of sharpened metal.

As the fight raged above, the dragon reached for one of the latter. It was dead, for sure, but it carried a spear that was long enough to function as a good staff, as well. He managed to tug the weapon free, slinking back a bit to examine it.

"W-what are you doing?!" Jaceb hissed. "T-they might...t-they could..."

"If they see us, they see us. Do you know what they are?"

"J-just t-the g-gold ones," the mole whispered. "Angels."

"Really?"

He turned the spear around, checking the tip. It was definitely more than a simple metal, from what he could tell, but that could mean just about anything. Existence was filled with many things that defied the physical materials that they were placed in.

Running his finger down from the blade - which was definitely sharper than steel, at least, should have been able to be - he traced the gold lines that ran along the shaft. No wood could be felt through it, but it was too light to be fully metal.

An explosion rang out above him, but the dragon was too fascinated with the weapon to be bothered. Jaceb's anxious twitching, however, was a little more distracting.

"Stay down. As long as you don't move, I don't think they're going to bother with us."

"How do y-you k-know?"

"I don't. But we're not moving, we're not fighting either side, and we're not making ourselves a target. And they seem to have bigger problems."

Considering the rain of bodies, it certainly seemed so. Though the red-armored ones were dying more frequently, the gold ones were still outnumbered, and every time that one could be swarmed sufficiently, they fell to the red earth. Doing his best to ignore the wet thumps occurring between the crashes of metal and other material, the dragon continued examining the spear.

Not quite a simple weapon...how do you work?

He pressed one claw to the metal at the base, twisting it around until the thin outer layer started to bend. It flexed in, denting, then split -

And he nearly blew his own hand off. Only the fact that he'd loosened his grip on the other end of the spear kept the sudden backwash of golden light from incinerating everything below the wrist. Even so, his fingers were scorched, and he couldn't quite feel his palm.

The spear rocketed away, launched into the air by the blast shooting out the butt-end of it. The point found a warrior somewhere in the crowd, and it fell from the skies.

"Well...that explains that...Ow..."

He hissed, pinching his arm above the wrist as he looked at the damage.

It wasn't as severe as it could have been, but it certainly wasn't good. Several scales on his fingers were melted down to almost nothing, fusing so that two fingers were pointing straight ahead and unable to move. His palm had been scorched white, and when he tentatively touched it, he couldn't feel anything.

He still had his hand, but he sure couldn't use it very well.

"Well...that was stupid..."

"Here...let...let me..."

The dragon offered his hand to the mole, turning his eyes to the sky. The fight was almost over. The red swarm was diminished, nearly two-thirds of them killed, their blood adding to the dust on the fields. The angels, as Jaceb called them, had lost far more, though. He could only see two fighting in the sky, flying back to back to keep the others from getting behind them, but without their maneuverability, it was only a matter of time.

They fell less than a handful of seconds later, crashing into the ground.

The remaining defenders went back into the hole in the ground, the split closing up behind them. Their dead disintegrated, faceless forms descending into the earth, becoming nothing more than shells of armor. And soon, that disappeared as well, fading from existence until only the bodies of the angels remained.

"T-there. Should be...ok-kay."

Draconicon blinked, looking down at his hand. Two fingers were still fused in a pointing gesture, but the burn mark on his palm was gone. He touched it, felt it. Not perfect, but once he could find a way to induce a shedding, he could probably find a way to fix his fingers.

If he could find a way to induce that. He hadn't tried before.

"Thank you. That's...a lot better than I expected, really."

"B-burns are easy. Dead s-stuff w-wants to b-be alive again. J-just need to talk to it right."

"I'll take your word on that."

Making a mental note to not play with the spears for now, he still grabbed another one to take along for the journey. If nothing else, it would serve well as a walking stick, and he would probably want that the further out of Hell they went.

As they walked through the bodies, Draconicon saw other details that he'd been too busy to see before. The 'angels' might have been flying, but their wings were definitely not part of them. Their armor, too, was different. Not just enchanted, but covered with little indentations that seemed to lead to different power sources, each one waiting to trigger a different effect if the little buttons were pushed.

After what happened with the spear, he was not about to experiment without having a better idea of what would happen, and the bodies weren't exactly letting go of their armor as easy as they were their weapons.

"Could you bring one of them back?" he asked. "They're definitely not from around here. They could have information."

"Maybe, b-but I don't t-think it w-would b-be a g-good idea..."

"Why not?"

"T-they...t-they don't w-want it...I can feel it...T-they'd come b-back...angry..."

As if there's anything here that isn't right now, he thought, looking around. Still, better not to bring that swarm back. If that was the whole reason they were here...

He had confidence in his magic, but he knew that he had to preserve most of it in order to get them out. Jaceb seemed to have power, but he doubted that it was battle power.

No, better to keep sneaking around for now if they could.

For all that he didn't understand what was going on around them, he understood what they needed to do. They had a goal: get out of Hell. In order to achieve that goal, they needed to get out of the fire, and then go as far through the next ring of Hell as they could. He had no idea as to how they were going to do that, but it was better to keep moving and figure it out for the moment. There was no way to gather information by staying still.

He stood up, then paused.

Something had moved.

The dragon looked over the bodies until he saw what it was. One of the sets of wings had flopped down, and not in the way of something just falling on its own.

"W-what is it?"

"Someone's still alive."

Draconicon bounded over the dead, finally reaching the one that had shifted a bit. He used the butt-end of the spear to roll the figure over and found himself face to face with a living 'angel.'

The figure was definitely injured, and badly, at that. Both arms were shattered, dislocated at the very least and with bones sticking up to create lumps in the armor. He groaned in obvious pain, his eyes glazed with the agony. No muzzle or snout, but rather than fleshy sort of face, something that didn't quite look right to him.

Still, he was alive, and that meant that he could be helpful.

Draconicon knelt down at the angel's side, leaning forward so that he was in clear view. He nudged the warrior's face to look up at him, speaking slowly and clearly.

"We are not your enemies. You are still alive, but I don't know for how long. Can we help you?"

The angel rattled as he breathed, slowly nodding with his chin towards a button on his chest.

"Gold button...blue symbol...Push it."

With a quick glance back at Jaceb for confirmation - and getting nothing but a shrug in return - Draconicon located the button. It wasn't clear what it would do, but as long as it wasn't a self-destruct button, they should be fine.

He pressed it.

No sooner has the button gone in than the armor lit up, letting out more of the gold light that he had seen from the spears. It spread beneath the protective layer, running up and down the body. The bone bumps pulled in, the arms clicked back into place, and -

Draconicon didn't want to listen further. He covered his ears, blocking out the squelching and cracking and grinding sounds of the body putting itself back together.

It took little more than a minute. The angel grabbed his weapon and pulled himself to his feet, shaking his head. He was pale, but he looked like that was his natural coloring, anyway. He nodded his head.

"...Thank you. I expected nothing but the damned and their tormentors here. I'm glad to be mistaken. And -"

No sooner had the angel turned his attention from the dragon to the mole than his face changed. The spear came whistling around, speeding right for the skull in Jaceb's hand.

Blood sprayed, Jaceb screamed, and a severed hand hit the ground.

"Necromancer..."

End of Chapter