All The Skills - Book 4 Chapter 22: No More Nice Dragon (2)

Brixaby

“So, you’re telling me you do not have the skills to fix my rider?” Brixaby asked in a dangerous tone of voice.

“What I’m saying,” the healer said slowly, as if Brixaby were a beast and unable to understand, “is that we have given him several health potions, and cast several revitalization spells, but it appears this young man has shattered his card anchor. The trauma is in his soul, and that will take some time to recover from.” He paused and then went on, again, as if Brixaby were slow. “A card anchor is not like a heart deck. It is only attached to the soul, not part of it. And he was lucky in some ways because at least this anchor was attached competently. But it’s gone now, and unfortunately, I don’t know the state of the cards within.”

Brixaby growled under his breath and flexed his claws. He longed to rip out the Rare cards he felt in the healer’s own heart deck, consume them, and then try to heal Arthur, himself.

But he had been close enough when the healer had cast the spell to copy them using his Charlatan Siphon card.

The man had indeed used a revitalization spell called ‘Full Body Rebalance’ which had visibly closed Arthur’s remaining minor wounds, rehydrated and restored his natural energy.

Brixaby knew this much because he had cast it himself when no one was looking. Arthur still hadn’t woken.

“Is he in danger?” Brixaby demanded.

“No,” the healer said with clearly stretched patience. “As I just said, physically he is a healthy young man. But he must rest and recover from this ordeal to his soul. Hopefully when he wakes, he’ll have the ability to reattach another card anchor. But that will require a heart deck specialist, which I am not.”

“Then go fetch one,” Brixaby said.

The man gave him a very unimpressed look. “Not until he rests. Now, I’m sure while your rider is very important to you, I have other patients to attend to – people you pulled me away from when you entered the hospital bellowing like the world was on fire.”

Brixaby’s bellowing had worked very well and gotten them a room immediately. The same room, in fact, as last time.

Brixaby showed his teeth to the man. “Then if you are going to leave to attend to other patients, I insist that your assistant stay here and attend solely to my rider.”

The healer scrunched up and made a face of distaste, but he nodded.

“Very well then, but that will cost extra.”

“I don’t care about your costs,” Brixaby said.

“No,” said the assistant, Marion, who had taken a seat nearby and was reading a book, “but your rider might.”

The healer looked like he was getting a headache. “Marion, sit with the dragon rider, though by the first card in my deck, you could be doing more important things…” He continued grumbling as he made his way out.

The door closed and Marion looked at Arthur, then at Brixaby. “So, what really happened?”

“What do you mean? ” Brixaby snapped, wings flaring.

He shrugged. “It’s just that with Arthur, things always are more than what they seem.”

Brixaby hissed under his breath in irritation before he spoke. “My rider took on the duty of your so-called Sheriffs to resolve a situation, but unfortunately, it damaged his card anchor.”

“By over-stuffing it with cards, right?” Marion shook his head and then pushed up his glasses. “That’s the usual way it happens, and if people know that, they’ll think Arthur was trying to steal extra cards.”

“That is not what happened,” Brixaby said quickly.

Marion shrugged and picked up his book, though Brixaby could tell he had half his attention still on the sleeping Arthur.

Brixaby looked down at his rider who was now cleaned of blood but was sleeping peacefully on the bed – the same bed that he had been in last time. This was becoming an unfortunate habit.

“You,” he said to Marion, “will make my rider as comfortable as possible.”

“He’s sleeping. He couldn’t be more comfortable.”

“And when he wakes,” Brixaby continued, “you will give him more of that food. Perhaps that chili in a bread bowl he enjoyed so much. And fruit. Fruit is good for humans.”

This made Marion look up from his book. “You sound like you’re leaving.” He sighed. “You really are a dragon with a mind of his own, aren’t you?”

“I have business,” Brixaby said shortly. “Not that it concerns you. Your task is to ensure Arthur wants for nothing until I return.”

“What busin–… Never mind,” he put down his book with an exasperated sigh and looked at Brixaby with an expression that Brixaby couldn’t exactly read. “You know,” he said, “I was once in competition for your egg.”

Brixaby knew that already. Though his hatchling memories were blurry, he thought he had vague memories of Marion. Certainly a much sharper memory of the taste of his Time card he’d had in his heart. It was where Brixaby had received his danger sense.

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“I would not have picked you,” he said sharply.

“I didn’t think you would. If I had wagered money on it, I would have thought you would take Penn Rowantree.”

Brixaby sneered. “That worm. Never.” Though, if he was being honest, he had thought Penn had been a slight possibility as a hatchling. But he had only been minutes old at the time and hadn’t known any better. Arthur was a much better choice.

“The worm had one powerful card, true, but Arthur… He had two,” he said with pride.

“Yeah, another secret he managed to keep from everybody.” Marion frowned and looked at the door. “You know, the healer wasn’t kidding. Another night in the hospital, me playing babysitter, and a heart deck specialist? This is really going to cost.”

He made a dismissive noise. “Take care of my rider. I will take care of the cost,” he said, then used his dexterous claws to open the door.

There were people in official uniforms standing not far away. From their sudden guilty expressions, it looked like they were in mid-gossip. They saw Brixaby and quickly beat a retreat out the other side of the hallway.

Brixaby again went to the stairwell and up to the rooftop. There were some men who appeared to be readying themselves to fix the door to the rooftop again, as it was off its hinges. One had his hand on the wall nearby and was visibly repairing the wood using a card power.

Uncaring, Brixaby started to push past them.

“Hey, now wait a minute here,” one started to say. “You can’t keep busting through this door. It’s a safety hazard. Other people have to use it!”

Brixaby had never seen any other people come through this door, though… He supposed that since this was a hospital, it might be better if the doors were not constantly broken open. “Then you may make this door larger next time,” he told them, then paused to consider. “Actually, make it as large as you can because when I come back later, I may be bigger than I am now.”

The man started to sputter something, but Brixaby shouldered past him again, banged the door open — which, as the hinges were currently being worked on, fell completely off.

Once out into the open roof, Brixaby immediately took off into the sky.

He gained more and more altitude, past where he thought he might ever take his rider. During his abbreviated classes back at Wolf Moon Hive, he had learned that unless humans had a body modification card, they could not breathe as thin of air as dragons could.

Unencumbered, and riderless, he could climb as high as his four wings could take him. That way his form would be lost to those looking up from below. He would be tinier than the tiniest sparrow, and unseen against the sky.

Up high, the sky grew curiously darker, and the great bright horizon beyond had a curve to it. He wondered vaguely if Joy and Sams would be visible beyond that curve, but as much as he focused, he could spot no other signs of other dragons.

A whole kingdom without dragons. That was indeed a sad thing.

Once he had reached the appropriate height, he started toward the eastern interstate. He kept an eye down and caught the slow train of adventurers and sheriffs making their way back from the scourgeling nest.

He didn’t know if the adventurers had decided on another method to distribute the cards after he and Arthur left, or if the sheriff had managed to keep his hold on power. Either way, most people seemed to be alive. He supposed that Arthur would be grateful to hear that, at least.

He felt another twinge of guilt that his rider was, once again, resting in the hospital. Well, hopefully this discovery would make Arthur happy when he awoke.

The former nest was easy to spot, looking like a darker crater on the featureless desert surface. Brixaby descended slowly, circling, and looking around carefully for signs any adventurers had noticed what he had and held back. Or that any scourgeling had been missed.

His instincts were sharp and correct, of course. A Common scourgeling, withered and wet with recent hatching, erupted out of the soil at the bottom of the pit as Brixaby watched.

It had barely taken its first glance of the sunset before Brixaby swooped down on it, bisecting it in two with his claws. He pulled out a Common card shard for his trouble. Flipping the shard into the air, he consumed it.

Now, Brixaby thought, throwing the carcass to the side. How do I get down there?

Unfortunately, without an earth card, it meant the hard way.

He hadn’t picked up Arthur’s knack of storing every conceivable item that might someday be of use into a storage space, but he had general tools. One of these was a trowel. Dragon wrists and shoulders did not work in the same way humans did, so he could not dig and flip dirt over the side, but he could use his forelimbs and the tool to scoop.

He started at the point where the scourgeling had crawled out, figuring that it had possibly made a path for him. They were already at the bottom of the pit, and therefore quite a ways from the surface.

Sure enough, several feet down, the hole opened into a wider cavern, and from it came the smell of scourge rot.

Brixaby wrinkled his muzzle. It smelled too much like the Free Hive that had been taken over by the Mind Singer. But he sensed the presence of more shards down there.

This is what he had discovered when he had sniffed at Arthur’s wound, the presence of shards, deep under the soil, lying in wait.

Brixaby kept on digging.

It didn’t escape his sense of irony that had he been much smaller, squeezing into a small hole in the ground would have been no problem at all. On the other wing, he did enjoy being large enough to fly with Arthur.

Also, Brixaby fully expected that he would grow to an even larger — no, monstrous, no, stupendous size in due time, especially with enough cards to consume.

Brixaby continued to dig around the soil, cursing the fact that he lacked an earth card to expedite the process. Perhaps he should have stopped by the city to copy a spell from some kind of earth user.

Well, there was always next time. He doubted that this was the only nest in these cursed lands.

Eventually, though, by chipping away at the hard-packed soil and taking small breaks to breathe clean air — the smells coming out of the nest were truly foul — he widened the hole enough to peer inside.

“I need a light,” he grumbled, reaching into his Personal Space for an oil-soaked rag and a torch. He was a dragon who had leveled up his chain mail skill to its maximum without a class. Of course, he knew about using forges, and how to start a fire.

With the lit torch gripped in his claws, he entered the depths. What he found was… interesting.

The scourgeling nest was aptly named in every sense of the word.

He had dropped into a tunnel, its walls coated in a glowing blue light — some sort of mold that glowed dimly enough for him to make out shapes. There was no need for the torch after all. Quickly, he stuffed the lit thing back in his Personal Space, then looked around.

Clustered against the wall, resembling bunches of grapes, were wet ovals. He couldn’t rightly call them eggs, for they lacked the appropriate outer shell. They were more like sacks, akin to frog spawn he’d seen a time or two in a pond.

Curiously, he reached out and skimmed the tips of his claws over the closest sack. It gave way instantly, and the half-formed creature inside tumbled out. It was so underdeveloped that it barely had a shape, and died immediately. Brixaby drew out a Common shard from it.

“Interesting,” he murmured, scaled lips curling back in an expression that was half snarl, half grin. This cluster was one of many in the tunnel.

The Mind Singer had farmed out dragon hatchlings for cards, and dragons newly born were far more self-aware than any of these scourge-spawn.

Perhaps it would be fitting, then, for Brixaby to return the favor.