Dragon Apocalypse (The Berserker and the Pedant Book 2) (7 page)

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you must not be very comfortable with your masculinity if the thought of being a woman makes you so uncomfortable.”

“That makes no sense. In order to show that I’m comfortable being a man, I need to be comfortable being a woman?”

“Exactly.
 
See, you understand.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

It was a dreary, overcast day, the fog settled over the forest like a blanket of cotton, disguising the encroachment of snow banks as they journeyed north.
 
The cold bit into their feet as they crunched through the snow, even as the maudlin light chipped at their determination.

“My feet are cold!” Gurken said.
 
“I didn’t bring any snow boots, it was summer!”

Pellonia’s teeth chattered and she wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.
 
Ohm strummed his lute, shirtless atop the unicorn, warmed by inner dragon fire.

Maximina strolled atop the snow wearing a pair of snow shoes over winter boots that she’d conveniently pulled from her magic sack.
 
She was covered in a thick winter coat made from the pelt of winter wolves, her ears and head covered by a furry hat made from the same, also from the sack.
 
Pellonia and Gurken eyed her enviously.

An enormous wall loomed through the fog as they approached.
 
They were a hundred feet from it as it pierced the fog and came into view.
 
The wall stretched as far as they could see in every direction, including up.
 
A wooden door thirty feet tall was embedded in the wall.

Gurken walked up to the door and pounded on it with a mailed fist.

“Gurken!” Pellonia whispered.

Gurken turned around to see Pellonia and Maximina glaring at him.
 
The music of the lute stopped as Ohm ceased to strum and he looked at Gurken with curiosity.
 
The unicorn turned its head to one side.

“The element of surprise!” Maximina said.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Above them, obscured by the mist, came a booming voice.
 
“Ko ide?”

“Ko ide?” Maximina said.
 
“What kind of language is that?
 
Hold on a minute…”
 
Maximina rummaged through her magical sack and pulled out a scroll.
 
She opened the scroll and read it aloud.
 

“Transferendum linguae ignotae!”
 
The runes on the scroll glowed a deep orange and floated from the parchment, swirling in the air in a linguistic vortex. The sound of a child whispering filled the air and the runes twisted around and around and down and about and flew into Maximina’s mouth.
 
She choked on them, coughing.
 
Then she stood up straight, looked into the air, and called out.

“Zao mi je.
 
Kazu da jos jednom,” Maximina yelled.

“Ko ide!” the voice bellowed.

“They said, ‘who goes there?’” Maximina translated.

“What language are they speaking?” Pellonia asked.

Maximina shrugged and looked up in the air again.
 
She yelled, “Koji jezik ti govori?”

A confused sounding voice yelled back, “Istim jezikom govorite.”

Maximina nodded.

“What did they say?” Pellonia asked.

“They said that they’re speaking the same language I’m speaking.”

“That’s not very helpful,” Pellonia mused.

“Ali, ono sto se zove,” Maximina yelled upwards.

The still very confused voice said, “Jezik hladnog divova.”

“Oh,” said Maximina.
 
“That’s more helpful.
 
They’re frost giants.”

“Ask them if we can pass.
 
We need to go through the wall to get to Arendal.”

Maximina coughed, glowing runes flying from her mouth, dissolving into the air.
 
She held up a finger, asking for a moment.
 

“Maximina, quickly!
 
Before the spell runs out!”

“Molim te dole!” Maximina coughed out one last burst of runes.

“Sorry,” she said.
 
“I could only manage to ask them to come down.
 
We’ll have to try something else.”

“Do you have another scroll?” Pellonia asked.

“Sorry, that was the only one.”

Pellonia looked at Ohm.
 
“Do you speak frost giant, by any chance.”

“Sorry, Pellonia,” Ohm said, a handsome smile on his chiseled jaw.

Pellonia looked at the unicorn, who shrugged, bouncing Ohm on her shoulders.

The sound of wood creaking against wood came from behind the enormous door, followed by the echo of an enormous wooden beam striking the hard icy floor.
 
The door groaned against the iron hinges as it creaked open.
 
An enormous blue figure with an icy white beard strode out, wearing the gray pelts of enormous dire wolves.

Pellonia, Maximina, and the unicorn backed away reflexively.
 
Gurken stood his ground.
 
The giant craned his neck down and spoke.

“Dobro upoznala mali prijatelju.
 
Kako mozemo biti od pomoci,” the frost giant boomed.

Gurken considered the frost giant and how to best communicate his desire to cross the wall.
 
They did not seem to understand the common tongue of the land, so it seemed best to resort to pictographs and gestures.
 
Gurken drew an axe loaned to him from the dragon’s hoard and used the tip to draw a line in the snow.
 
He pointed the axe up at the giant and growled quite loudly so the giant could hear.

“Linije u pijesku, ti mi preti?”

“Yes, I do believe you understand,” Gurken said.
 
Then he pounded the axe against his chest and stepped over the line, to indicate his desire to cross the wall he had previously drawn.

As Gurken stepped over the line in the proverbial sand, Pellonia said, “Oh, no.”
 
Maximina’s eyes grew wide in fear and she rummaged around in her magical sack.

The frost giant’s eyes grew wide with anger and he sneered at Gurken.

“Kano se usudujes me threanted!” the giant bellowed.
 
He crouched over and screamed at Gurken, who stood there quite confused.

“Is that a yes?
 
We can cross?” Gurken asked.

The giant pulled back a leg twice Gurken’s height, and kicked the dwarf.
 
Gurken flew up, sailing along the winter breeze.
 
Pellonia and Maximina watched him fly overhead and out of sight.

“Ohm, do you think you can do something to help us out?” Pellonia asked.

“Absolutely!” Ohm played a tune with a fast tempo on his lute.

“What are you doing?” Pellonia yelled.

“Playing an inspirational battle ballad!” Ohm said.

“That’s not helping!” Pellonia said.

“That’s because you’re complaining, not fighting,” Ohm sniffed.

Maximina pulled three vials from her sack.

“Aha!
 
Found them!” she said, dropping the magic sack and brandishing three vials of liquid, one gold, one blue, and one clear.
 
“Potions of telekinesis, flight, and gaseous form.
 
I will fly around and fling the giant about with mental powers and it won’t be able to touch me!”

She pulled the stopper out of the vial with clear liquid and quaffed it in one gulp, then pulled the stopper on the second vial and poured the golden liquid into her mouth.
 
The liquid dropped through her body and splattered into the snowy ground, then the vial fell through her hand and into the snow.
 
The other vial fell from her other hand, shattering on an icy spot and spilling blue liquid about.

“Oooo,” Maximina said, her body turning transparent and diffusing slightly into the air.
 
“Drink the potion of telekinesis first, then flight, and only then the potion of gaseous form.
 
Sorry, Pel.”

Pellonia smacked herself on the forehead.

“I’ll see if I can distract them while you get away,” Maximina said, floating through Pellonia and over to the frost giant.

The giant leaned over and bellowed at Maximina, a cold wind blowing through her body.
 
He reached over and snapped a dead twenty-foot pine tree off at the base, shearing the branches off by running it through a huge meaty fist.
 
He slammed the newly fashioned club down on Maximina, but it passed harmlessly through her body as if through a thick fog.
 
Little whorls of mist swirled off her.

“Hey, ya big oaf,” Maximina yelled, waving her arms about.
 
“That the best you can do?”

The giant swung the club through her a few more times, the foggy substance of her body flowing away as the club passed through and then flowing back together again.

“Ha!
 
You’ve got nothing!” Maximina yelled.

“Maximina,” Pellonia said, “how long does that potion last?”

“I… uh, that’s a good question.
 
I’m not really sure.
 
You better get out of here fast.”

The giant sucked in a huge breath and exhaled an enormous freezing wind at Maximina.
 
Insubstantial as she was, the cold chilled her to the core.
 
She’d never felt so cold.
 
She tried to get out of the way but found her limbs wouldn’t follow her thoughts.
 
She couldn’t move; she was frozen in place.
 
“Oh, no,” she thought as the frost giant’s club shattered her into a thousand tiny pieces.

“Ohm!
 
Help us, you’re a dragon!
 
Breathe fire on the giant or something!” Pellonia pleaded.

Ohm chuckled.
 
“I can’t do anything like that, Pellonia.
 
I’m a bard.
 
I’ve never been a bard before. I have to play by the rules or I’ll never get to experience being one.
 
I’ll do what I can to help as a bard though.”

“Ahhhh!” Pellonia yelled in frustration.

Ohm strummed his lute, cleared his throat, and sang in a beautiful, deep baritone.

Sa Gradacca b'jele kule

 
Zmaja od Bosne

sokolovi zakliktali

kajde zalosne

The frost giant stopped its rampage and listened to the song.
 
Ohm looked at Pellonia and whispered “It’s an old frost giant folk song about a dragon.”
 
Ohm continued to play and sing.

Umrla je vjerna ljuba

Husein-begova

jer izgubi gospodara

srca svojega

Ohm whispered to Pellonia, “The melody is really quite touching, I wish I knew what it meant.”

The frost giant sniffled, a tear running down the side of his face and freezing to his cheek.
 
“A tuzne pjesme, molim te unutra,” the giant said.
 
He turned and strode back into the great doorway as Gurken came running back through the snow, wielding the borrowed axe above his head and roaring a battle cry.

“Woah, woah, woah!”
 
Pellonia shouted, stepping in front of Gurken and waving her hands. “It’s okay, we’re going inside.”

Gurken pulled to a stop in front of Pellonia.
 
“Oh,” he said, lowering his axe.
 
“What happened to Maximina?”

“She drank a potion and became an insubstantial fog, got frozen by the giant’s breath, then shattered by its club.
 
She’ll probably come back together again if she melts.” Pellonia said. “I hope.”

Pellonia looked up at the baby dragon sitting on Ohm’s shoulder.
 
She patted her thighs with her hands and made kissing sounds at the dragon. “Come here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” Pellonia sung.

Ohm furled his brow. “His name is Apocalypse and he is to be feared!
 
He is the harbinger of the en-”
 
Ohm stopped mid-sentence as the little dragon jumped off of Ohm’s shoulder and fluttered down to land in front of Pellonia.
 
Apocalypse made a croaking sound and rubbed his head against her hand as she patted him.
 
“Who’s a good Kitty?”

Gurken nodded in understanding.
 
“Kitty Apocalypse, perchance you might magic us some flame?”

The dragon let out a sound like a cross between a frog and some sort of bird, and let loose a gout of flame over the area where Maximina had been frozen and shattered.
 
The little chunks of Maximina melted and dissolved back into a fog and floated together.

“Oh, thank you,” Maximina said.
 
“That’s so much better.
 
I thought I’d never come together again.
 
My thoughts were so fragmented.”