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  “Quickly, roll him over on his side before he chokes.” Benny and Dale rolled Marty onto his side.

  Helena stirred. “What the bloody hell!?” she screamed.

  Marty began to moan, and Dale sat down beside him. “He’s fine now. He’ll have a hell of a hangover, but he’s okay.”

  They sat in silence for a while before Marty began to stir, looking up at Helena with a dazed look of ecstasy. “I’m pooping,” Marty muttered, grinning like an idiot. A bubbling sound issued from his rump, and a putrid smell followed. Benny nearly choked and walked to the other side of the room, followed by Helena. Dale stayed by Marty’s side, pinching his nose.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” he said, “We’ll worry about it in the morning.”

  

  Helena, despite being knocked out briefly by Marty earlier, offered to watch him for the night to make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit. As the morning hours drew close, the effects of the alcohol wore off and Marty slowly aroused. He was obviously hung over, talking slowly and not moving much except to clean up and change clothing.

  “When did you guys get here?” Marty said, picking up a chair to sit down in the dining hall.

  “Shortly before you gave birth to the brown monster,” Helena said, motioning to the stain on the floor where Marty had soiled himself. Marty looked ashamed.

  “I haven’t drank like that in years. We received word from a scout that the Kudgels were coming this way, and I got upset and began drinking. I don’t remember anything since.” He looked down at a dead Kudgel. “Did I do all this?”

  “Let’s just say we had a little sparring session of our own when we arrived. You ranted about strange stuff and then attacked us. I managed to convince you of who I was, so we filled you up till you burst your bubble,” Dale said.

  Marty shrugged. “About the only thing you could do, I reckon.”

  Benny stared at the now sober Marty. To look at him, Benny didn’t see how he could have been capable of killing so many with his bare hands. He was tall and scrawny, and aside from the short shock of brown hair and missing earlobes, had no distinguishing features. Then Benny remembered as a teenager how alcohol made his older brother Aiken belligerent and uncontrollable, and understood.

  “Do you know if there are any survivors?” Benny asked.

  “Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Probably not. Most left after we heard the Kudgels were coming, and only myself and a few others stayed to try and protect the castle.”

  “What about the bell tower?” Dale asked. “Did the wizard and his dwarf pull through?”

  “Dunno…you’ll have to check it out for yourselves.”

  “Well, we’ll leave you to take care of this. We have bigger fish to fry,” Helena said.

  “I guess this initial attack isn’t the last of their tricks?” Marty asked.

  “Not if we don’t stop them.” Then Dale quickly filled Marty in.

  Marty nodded. “Well, you’ll want to get going I guess. I’ll be okay. Thanks for looking after me. Sorry Benny and the lass had to see my ugly side. I’d like to repay you somehow.”

  “We’ll take a rain check.” Dale laughed and shook Marty’s hand before leaving with Helena and Benny.

  

  They arrived at Siegfried’s Bell Tower to see the wizard’s assistant, the randy, purple-haired dwarf, stacking dead bodies. His right hand was wrapped and stained through with blood. He smiled upon seeing Helena, but frowned when he realized Benny and Dale were right behind.

  “You won’t get very far. That old coot fled through the portal, blowing it to pieces behind him. Left me to fend for myself.”

  “Damn!” Dale yelled.

  “At least you still have all your digits, scarface.” He held up his bandaged hand. “Got my thumb bit off.”

  “How’d you manage to survive?” Helena asked.

  The dwarf puffed up his chest and picked up a hefty battle ax that was lying by his feet. “Pleasing women ain’t the only thing I’m good at,” he winked at Helena and ran his tongue across his lips. Helena rolled her eyes.

  “Cool it, lover boy,” Dale said.

  “Oh, come on. I was nearly killed. Humor me at least!” He dropped his ax and began dragging a dead Kudgel towards the building pile.

  “Is there anything you can do about that portal?” Dale asked.

  The dwarf laughed. “Not in this lifetime, butt face.”

  “We have to get to the Northern Mountains…to the city of the frost dwarves. That portal was going to save us valuable time.”

  “Frost dwarves? You mean Alfen Gulfadex?”

  “What’s that?” Benny asked.

  “That’s what they call it…Alfen Gulfadex…holy city of the frost dwarves. I got some cousins who live there,” the dwarf said.

  Dale frowned and crossed his arms. “Well, since the portal is null and void, what’s the best way to get there?”

  The dwarf pointed to Dale’s feet and started laughing.

  “Great!” Dale complained.

  They turned and began walking back down the tower. The dwarf ran after them. “Wow, hold on a sec. You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “I’d say join us, but I doubt you’d be much help…aside from trying to get between my legs,” Helena said.

  The dwarf held his ax in front of him. “I know how to fight. And I can help you get to Alfen Gulfadex.”

  Dale shrugged. “Come on, then. What’s your name, horny toad?”

  “Burgundy,” the dwarf said. “Just call me Burgundy.”

  

  Virtue was lonely without Benny. It had only been a day since they’d departed, but it seemed like a lifetime. Virtue lay curled up in bed, wrapped in blankets to stave off the cold mountain air. She didn’t notice the smoke that breathed in from under the door and windows. Black as night, it crawled across the floor to the far corner of the room. Slowly it began to take form, feet first, until a dark figure stood concealed in the shadows.

  “Laurel,” he called.

  Virtue recognized the voice even from sleep, and the name which had once been hers. Memories of the past came flooding back. The voice was distant and hollow: a dark, brooding accent that had once made her feel so loved and protected.

  “It can’t be,” she gasped.

  “So quick to doubt, my love?” he said.

  “I thought you were…”

  “Dead?” he cut her off. His voice remained calm, but Virtue could hear the menace growing within it.

  “Why didn’t you come sooner? I didn’t know you survived.”

  “How could you not know? You were there when it happened! You could’ve checked my body…you could have known!”

  “I was scared…the vampires tore you apart. I was injured.”

  “Excuses are like armpits, dear. Everybody has one.” She saw a gloved hand rise into the shaft of moonlight emanating from the window, pointing at Benny’s clothes draped across the chair beside her. “And yes, I do know about him.”

  Virtue grew terrified. “What are you going to do? Please, don’t hurt him. He doesn’t know.”

  “So you lied about your past? How quaint!”

  “You don’t understand! I beg of you, please…”

  His laugh was loud and callous. “Don’t you worry, love. I won’t harm a hair on his head. I’m under direct orders not to…and besides, it’s not his fault you fell in love with him.”

  “I never stopped loving you…but he is my husband now. I love him, too. Don’t you understand? I thought you were dead. Did you want me to suffer through life alone?” Virtue’s voice was shaky, and tears streamed down her eyes.

  “You’ll get yours soon enough, dear Laurel. It’s just a shame that poor Benny had to get involved.”

  “Wait, how did you know his name?!”

  He laughed again, and the wickedness that filled it scared Virtue unlike anything she’d ever experienced in her entire life. “We have good plans for ol’ Benny boy…and for you.”

>   With that, he dissipated into smoke, and flew like a torrent into Virtue’s face. She gasped for air, the life squeezed out of her like a vice. Laughter filled her ears and soon she was unconscious.

  Chapter 2

  Helena

  O ne moment she had fought for her life, fleeing from Kudgel ghouls and the shadow of their wyrm circling overhead. Then, after a split second blackout, she was coming to her senses, buried underneath a pile of animal furs. She erupted from sleep, sitting in her bed, fists raised and ready for battle. She absorbed her surroundings as her eyes adjusted. Dim candlelight glowed beside her bed, and Helena looked over to see the grinning face of a young, fair-haired girl. It was nighttime, judging by the window above the foot of Helena’s bed, but she could see a garland of wildflowers hanging on the child’s brow, with the moonlight illuminating the gap-toothed grin as the child sat silently. Finally, after staring Helena down, the little girl spoke. “You could thank me, you know.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s common courtesy to thank people when they save your life.”

  “I was chased by Kudgels…” Helena sat up, dizzily, “and then a dragon. How did you scare them off?”

  The girl shrugged nonchalantly. “Scare them off? Well, my illusion did.” She stood up and lit a few more candles on the dresser with the one she held in her hand. “What were you doing in the woods by yourself, anyway? And unarmed nonetheless! I thought grown-ups knew better.”

  Helena strained to remember what had happened. She knew that Dale, Benny, and herself had been making the long trek by foot into Upper Sultry when they were ambushed and tortured by Kudgel soldiers, and she remembered fleeing through the wilderness, the Kudgels and their dragon hot on her trail. But then there was a blank spot on the canvas. “I was traveling with some friends and I think we got separated.”

  “They dead?”

  Helena was a little taken aback by the casual way the girl asked the question. “I hope not.” She noticed her wrist was bandaged. “Where am I?”

  “Daddy and I were hunting…well, Daddy was hunting… and I snuck along, following him. He was gonna fight off those creatures, but I spun an illusion that an army of giants were charging behind us, and they scattered. Daddy was upset that I’d tagged along.” She laughed at her last remark.

  “Daddy?”

  “My pa…he’s sleeping now. You’ve been out cold all afternoon since we found you. He didn’t want to bring you home, but I made him. He thinks I’m in bed too, but I wanted to stay here till you awoke. I wanted to look at your scars and tattoos. I like them, but Daddy thinks they make you look trashy.” She danced around, her attention span obviously waning.

  Helena touched her head. There was a kind of bandage there. Oh—that was the result of her torture. “Did you put this on?” she asked.

  “Yes. You must have caught your hair something awful. I put some magic salve on so your hair would regrow, and the bandage. It'll be okay in a few days if you leave it alone.”

  “Thank you,” Helena said sincerely.

  “Sure.”

  “I need to speak to your father.”

  “Later.” The girl walked towards the door. “He gets upset when you wake him. He’ll probably be out fetching squirrel for breakfast when you wake up, but you’ll talk to him, don’t worry. But don’t be shocked if he doesn’t take too kindly to you.”

  The girl disappeared through the black doorway. “Wait, I don’t even know your name!”

  The girl poked her head back through the door, with the same grin stretching from ear to ear. “I’m Noletta,” she said.

  “And your father? I’d like to at least know who I’m bunking with.”

  “Nolan,” she said. “Nolan Ducat.”

  Helena was shocked when she heard the name. Ever since she was a child, the myths and legends of Nolan Ducat, the Dragon Slayer, had ruminated throughout Lower Sultry; tales of an adventurer who’d killed a dragon with his bare hands. Helena had always been inspired by the tales in her youth, and often impersonated Nolan’s character when hunting for her tribe. Helena knew that most people, even today, throughout Upper and Lower Sultry, claimed Nolan was long since dead, the exact details varying between accounts. Once an adult, Helena had passed the stories off as simple fables…fabrications made to entertain little children. There was no way the girl could be telling the truth.

  “Nolan Ducat? You mean the Nolan Ducat? The Dragon Slayer?” Helena was skeptical.

  Noletta giggled. “He don’t like people knowing his name…but I like seeing the reactions on people’s faces when I tell them. He’ll probably tan my hide for it, but when your daddy’s famous, you gotta milk it for all it’s worth!”

  Helena was once again left in silence, wondering if the man she’d meet tomorrow really was her childhood hero.

  Helena was awoken the next morning by the distant call of dragon fire. It was a deep, bellowing noise that shook the walls and lifted the floorboards. Jumping naked from the bed, she panicked when she couldn’t find her weapons. Leaving the room, she found herself on the upstairs balcony of the log cabin, looking down into the living area where Noletta sat by the hearth, calmly eating a muffin.

  “Don’t just sit there, you stupid child! Bring me my sword, find a crossbow! Didn’t you hear the dragon?” Helena, ignoring the stairs, leaped over the wooden handrail and fell some ten feet onto the floor below her. Noletta, instead of jumping into action, clapped at the display of acrobatic skill.

  “That was amazing! What else can you do?” She dropped the muffin and mocked Helena’s jump with her own over a chair.

  Helena ignored the oblivious child and looked around for her swords. Finally, she spotted them sticking out of a barrel at the other end of the room. Not even stopping for the door, she snatched them and slammed through the crude wooden door of the home. She found herself standing on a roofed porch in the chilly air of the forested foothills. The home seemed to be at the crest of the hill, and at the foot Helena spotted the coming danger. Several dozen Kudgels were charging up the rise, screaming and waving their swords in the air. And above them, in the air, Helena spotted the form of a great red dragon, with a Kudgel rider mounted on its back. If it were only the soldiers she wouldn’t be worried, but it would take an entire party of warriors to even think of fighting a dragon.

  Nonetheless, she would kill them all or die trying. Just as she raised her sword to charge towards the Kudgels, a mighty hand grabbed her and threw her back with a strength that surprised her. “Fight smart, not hard,” a gruff voice said.

  Helena looked up to see a man dressed in animal skins, a hood concealing his head and face. He was large by human standards, but not enormous, and it looked at first as if his left arm was wrapped within his cloak. He was walking to a large crossbow mounted to a pillar supporting the porch. Helena had failed to notice it at first, and noticed that, unlike most crossbows, it had a crank and pinion on the side to draw back the string and set the arrow. With his right hand he quickly cranked back the string and set a slender arrow with a red ball on the end into the flight groove.

  “You’re slow as molasses! It’s going to take more than one arrow to stop them,” Helena snapped.

  Then the man released the arrow, which went flying into the crowd of incoming Kudgels. Suddenly, an explosion rocked the hillside, and Kudgel body parts spewed into the air like the burst of fireworks.

  The man pulled back his hood to reveal long gray hair and a beard, a single strip of brown streaking down from under his lip, “Noletta? Get your ass out here and bring another red hot!”

  The girl came skipping out onto the porch nonchalantly, handing another of the explosive arrows to the man. Clinching the rod in his teeth, he cranked back the string again, set the bolt, and with tremendous strength ripped the entire crossbow from the mount.

  Helena was impressed by the man’s take-charge attitude, but doubted the crossbow, as large as it was, would effectively reach a moving target like the dragon. Out of th
e corner of her eye she noticed Noletta, giggling.

  “Daddy knows what he’s doing,” she said.

  “That’s Nolan?” In the rush of adrenaline brought on by the attack, Helena hadn’t stopped to guess at who the old man was, but now she guessed it had been obvious. The dragon circled closer and closer. Though it was doubtful Nolan’s crossbow could reach that sort of distance, neither Nolan nor his child seemed worried, and Helena decided to let Nolan take care of things. Time to see if this man really was the dragon slayer of legend.

  “Might as well pack it in and go home. It’ll never reach!” Helena teased Nolan, testing his mettle.

  “That’s why I’m letting ʼem get closer, you bitchy old screech owl!” Nolan raised the crossbow into the air and aimed into the sky. “They need to be real close.”

  The dragon, upon seeing Nolan, took a nosedive, spinning through the air as he flew straight at the man. The wyrm flew closer and closer, until it was only a couple hundred feet away. Helena set down her weapon, crossed her arms and waited for events to unfold.

  The dragon was getting close, less than a hundred feet, and Helena could see its mouth opening, the glow of fire deep in its throat. Just when it was about to roast Nolan, the old man released the arrow, which Helena saw fly straight into its mouth. There was a marvelous explosion, and what was once the dragon's head and neck came raining down on Nolan in what was almost a mist. Larger, cindering chunks fell afterwards, and the rest of the dragon's body fell in a quivering lump only a few feet from Nolan. The Kudgel rider, covered in war paint, erupted from the charred body in a fury, and came at the unsuspecting Nolan, who was picking up a chunk of the dragon’s meat.