Dragon Slayer: A Pulp Fantasy Harem Adventure Read online

“That won’t be necessary,” I told them. “I’ll be no trouble.”

  “Good.” Dulgin nodded. “Got enough of them down here, we do.”

  The men holding my arms shoved me toward Dulgin, who grabbed my manacles and pulled me through the heavy iron door. The foul smell hit me the moment I stepped into the cramped room. It was like the worst cesspit had been emptied onto a fresh pile of compost in a twenty-year-old garbage pile with a dead body thrown on top for good measure. I gagged and had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting.

  The door boomed shut behind us, and we were plunged into the near-darkness of the dimly illuminated room. The smell worsened without the hint of fresh air leaking through the door, and most of it was coming from my jailor. He smelled like a pair of socks that hadn’t been washed for two years, with a generous helping of body odor and alcohol-soaked breath.

  “Oh, Ethan,” Nyvea hissed. “You cannot stay here. It’s disgusting. You are much too classy for this place. I say you kill this man and escape.”

  I was about to whisper to the woman that it would be hard for me to see the king if I killed his jailer, but the man had his full attention on me, and I didn’t want to risk him searching me and deciding to take the amulet.

  “Let’s get you settled, then,” Dulgin said as he tugged on my manacles. I followed him to the back of the small room and found there was a stone staircase around a dark bend. My feet stumbled on an uneven step, and I had to catch myself on the rough stone wall. A dull ache ran through my left shoulder, but I had dealt with worse pain before.

  I could hear the moans and groans of the other prisoners once we reached the tenth step down, and they grew louder as we descended. The staircase went at least two floors underground, then opened onto a long stone corridor lined with jail cells. Dulgin pushed the thug into the first cell on the right, then led me to the second cell on the left. He unlocked the door with a heavy steel key and pulled it open.

  “Welcome to your home for the next two weeks,” he told me as he shoved me into the cell.

  “Wait, what?” I spun toward the door just in time for it to clang shut in my face. “I thought I was just staying for a short time before my trial with King Obragar.”

  “You are.” Dulgin gave me a broad grin that showed three teeth and a whole lot of brown-stained gums. “But the king isn’t holding his next trial until the turn of the month, two weeks from now, so get comfortable. You’re going to be here a while.”

  “Fuck!” Fury surged in my chest, and I gripped the metal bars in my anger. They were made of steel and easily as thick as my middle finger. Even with my enhanced strength, I couldn’t bend them.

  Dulgin laughed, a crude sound that set his belly and chest shaking like a bowl of Jell-O in an earthquake. “Best get that out of your system now, else I’ll have to starve it out of you.”

  I released the bars and took a step back. My hands were trembling with both anger and the exertion of trying to break free, and I forced myself to calm down. I wasn’t going to get anywhere by getting angry. I needed to focus on kicking dragon ass.

  “Look, I have to speak to the king. I’m here on a very important mission—”

  “I don’t care,” Dulgin cut me off with a shake of his hairless head. “Everyone’s in here for a reason, but I don’t give a damn what it is. Captain Ladril tells me to lock someone up, I lock someone up. He says bring ‘em to the king, I bring ‘em to the king. You’re here until he tells me otherwise.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said with a growl. “I’m not from Whitespire. I’m just here to see the king.”

  “And see him you shall,” Dulgin said with a mocking grin. “In two weeks with all the rest of your comrades.” He gave a nasty laugh and turned to climb the stairs.

  “Wait!” I called after him. “You didn’t take off the handcuffs.”

  “They come off once I know you won’t cause me any trouble,” the jailer’s voice drifted back toward me as his wobbling lower half and grime-covered boots disappeared from sight.

  With a growl, I gripped the bars and heaved at them once more. The steel might have been far cruder than the metal I was accustomed to, but they did little more than creak at my efforts.

  “You’re strong,” Nyvea told me, “but not that strong.”

  “Alright,” I laughed as her words sunk in. “I might be getting a bit ahead of myself. I kind of don’t want to wait until the guards come back. Is there any magic I can use?”

  “Not that I know of. Barodan’s power is limited, as he told you. He had just enough to bring you here. Until you kill the dragons, there’s nothing more he can do.”

  “Okay,” I said as I started to put another plan together. “I’m just going to--”

  “Shut up!”

  The furious shout came from the bench beside mine. I turned to see a heavy-set man with a bushy black beard, curly hair, and dark eyes shooting me an angry glare. He adjusted his thick cloak and settled back onto his side. “Some of us are trying to sleep off a bender,” he snapped.

  I swallowed my angry reply and crossed my arms. I’d spent the night in a Chicago drunk tank once before, after going on a drinking spree on the two-year anniversary of my parents’ death, and I knew it was better not to piss off your cellmates.

  There were three other men in the cell with me. The trio all wore the same dark gray cloaks pulled over their heads to block out the flickering light of the torch hanging on the wall. The cloaks were in good condition and free of the grime that seemed to permeate the cell, so they couldn’t have been here for more than a few hours or a day longer than me. All of them reeked of strong alcohol and foul breath, and a pile of reddish-orange vomit beneath one man added to the foul odors filling the cell.

  I studied my cell. It was fifteen feet wide and ten feet long, with a ceiling about seven feet high. The straw covering the floor had been trampled to individual fibers or soaked by water. The closest thing to creature comforts was the five short wooden benches lining the wall, and a disgusting-looking toilet bucket sitting at the far end of the cell.

  “You can speak to me in your mind without talking out loud,” Nyvea said. “Just pretend like you are talking but make no words, and I’ll hear you.”

  “Like this?” I asked as I followed her instructions.

  “Perfect! My, you are such a quick study.”

  “It wasn’t that hard,” I said in my mind.

  “Maybe for you, Ethan,” she replied in a husky voice. “You are special though.”

  “I’ll feel more special when I get out of this cell, talk to the king, and then take care of this dragon problem. Got any ideas?”

  “I know this looks bad, but it could be worse. You could be as ugly as the jailer,” Nyvea told me.

  That brought a little smile to my face. “Thanks,” I replied in my mind. “But let’s not get that extreme.” I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. “Any magic tricks up your sleeve you can pull?”

  “Let me out of the amulet, and I’ll be able to do all sorts of things,” she purred. “I’d have you out of this cell in seconds.”

  “I don’t think I should.” I replied in my mind. “Barodan said I shouldn’t let you out. Will you tell me why he told me that?”

  “Pffft,” she sighed. “He just doesn’t want you distracted.”

  “Distracted?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she purred in my mind. “You and I would have fun for days. And when I say fun, I mean we’ll fuck each other’s brains out until we can’t move.”

  “Sounds like I need to let you out really soon,” I laughed in my head.

  “Ethan DePaolo, you little tease.” She giggled, but I heard the edge of irritation. She was going to keep trying to convince me to let her out. Until I found out a bit more about her and why she was in the amulet, I couldn’t give in.

  “So, I take it that means no magic is going to get us out of here?”

  “Not until you’ve acquired a bit more power,” she replied.


  I stood and strode over to the bars. “What if I try to siphon the magic out of the iron?”

  “There’s no magic in metal,” Nyvea told me. “Only in living things and forces of nature.”

  Crap. So much for that plan.

  There were no windows this far underground so that ruled out that way of escape. I studied the ceiling, but that proved equally useless, as did the stone walls. Everything was too solid to break through.

  I ran over potential escape plans. My DePaolo charm would only go so far with a guy like Dulgin. I could try to knock him out and race up the stairs, but being a fugitive on the run wouldn’t help me see the king any quicker. Maybe I could sneak into the palace and find the king myself.

  My heart leapt as the jailer appeared carrying a large cauldron of something steaming, and my stomach growled a loud reminder that I hadn’t eaten anything in a long time. My last meal had been six hours before the alarm bell went off. Add to that another four or five hours of walking and however much time had elapsed while Barodan transported me to Agreon, and I was ready for a meal. Escape after food, I decided.

  However, the moment I caught a glimpse of the watery liquid he served in the filthy wooden bowls, my stomach sighed. The soup didn’t look so bad, but the chunk of stale bread on the side looked like it had white and blue mold growing on the crust.

  My three cellmates groaned when Dulgin rattled the bars with his wooden club, but they stumbled upright at the prospect of food. They each took their bowl of soup and scrap of bread, then retreated to slump atop their benches.

  Dulgin gave me a long look before passing me a bowl. Evidently, he’d decided that I wouldn’t be trouble with my hands still shackled together. I didn’t bother thanking him, and he didn’t seem surprised by my lack of gratitude. Prisons tended to be a place where manners were low on the list of priorities.

  I eyed my bowl of soup as I sat on my bench. It had about as much in common with soup as it did with the ocean and roughly the same amount of salt and fish. A single leafy carrot top floated in the pale brown water, along with a chunk of white that I guessed was a potato, a radish, or a lump of wax. It had about as much flavor as wax, but I was really fucking hungry, so I ate it anyway.

  I had the spoon placed to my lips when a looming shadow blocked the light of the flickering torch, and I looked up to see the man who had shouted at me earlier.

  “I’ll take that,” he growled and moved to take the bowl from my hands.

  “No,” I said as I pulled my food away from his arms. “Go fuck yourself, this is mine.”

  “What did you say?” the man growled.

  “I said that you can go fuck yourself.” I put the bowl on the dirty ground and then stood so I was chest to chest with the man. As soon as I touched him, I realized he was rather muscular.

  Then his two buddies stood up, and I realized that they also had the bodies of fighters.

  “Time for a bit more fun, big boy,” Nyvea purred in my ear. “Show them what you’re made of.”

  Chapter Five

  I felt my fists clench as I sized the trio up. The man I had my chest pressed against was a few inches short of six feet, but he had broad shoulders, big biceps, and thick hands. His scruffy beard gave him the grizzled look of someone who knew their way around a barroom brawl. He didn’t back down as I pushed into him, and he met my eyes without flinching.

  “We going to have a problem, boy?” asked one of the man’s companions as he moved to my left. He was smaller than the first man, with narrow shoulders, slim fingers, and a chin I could only describe as angular. The third man had a broad, square face and a thick nose just begging to be broken. His shoulders weren’t quite as heavy as the first man’s, but his gut threatened to spill out of his tunic.

  “They have no idea how big of a mistake they have just made,” Nyvea whispered.

  “Damn straight.” The words left my mouth at the same time as I stepped back and brought my manacled hands up. The steel cuffs caught the man under the chin, snapped his head up, and sent him staggering backward.

  I whirled to face the second man and raised my arms to block his wild punch. He grunted as his knuckles struck my shackles, and the sound turned to a gasp as I drove my knee into his groin.

  The third man got off a lucky punch while I was distracted with his comrade. I winced as his fist plowed into my stomach, but I tensed my abs in time to stop the blow from knocking my breath from my lungs. Then I danced back before he could strike again.

  “Come on, then!” I shouted and squared off in the MMA stance I’d learned during my Academy training. It would be damned hard to fight with my hands shackled together, but I wouldn’t let them push me around.

  “You’ll pay for that, you bathtard!” said the big man as he spat blood from where his teeth had cut his tongue.

  He took a quick step toward me and threw a punch that would have caught me square across the face if I hadn’t already been moving. Instead, I pivoted to the left and shuffled backward a step until I was inches from the cell’s bars. The man stumbled forward as he struck empty air, but my quick kick to his gut didn’t miss. He folded up and fell to one knee, just in time to meet my kneecap to his face. Again, the blow caught him beneath the chin and rocked his head back. He fell to the cell floor with a wet squish as he landed in a disgusting pile of muck.

  Before I could kick the fallen man in his face, his heavy-set companion charged me. He was bent low, and his arms were outstretched like a football linebacker. I jumped up to grab the bars, and then I lifted my feet up. The asshole crashed head-first into the bars below me, and his head got stuck in the gaps.

  I dropped down from the bars and drove my elbow into the back of his neck below the base of his skull. The tip of my elbow smashed into the muscles beside the spine, and he sagged to his knees. I grabbed his collar, yanked his head free of the bars, and shoved him hard into his grouped-up companions. The three of them collapsed in a tangle of flailing limbs and splintering wooden benches, and I took a step toward them.

  The slim man was the first to spring up, and he attacked with hard anger burning in his eyes. He didn’t charge or throw himself at me, but kept his movements small and controlled, like a man who actually knew how to fight. He threw short, quick jabs mixed with cross punches that could have hurt, but I ducked and dodged his blows with surprising ease. It turned out all that training at the Academy had paid off.

  “Stop playing with him, Ethan. Take him down,” Nyvea insisted in my mind. “He’s ugly enough his face won’t look any worse once you beat it to a pulp.”

  “You got it, babe,” I said with a grin.

  I dropped my hands a little, and I saw his eyes sparkle as he caught the opening. His right fist came swinging around in a haymaker punch aimed right at my jaw, but I leaned backward to dodge the blow and raised my right foot in a high front kick that caught him under the chin. The force snapped his head back, and sent him stumbling backward into his friends. Before he could recover, I brought my steel-toed boots right up between his legs. He crumpled to the ground with a sort of pathetic mewling grunt and lay very still with his hands clasped to his nuts.

  The other two attacked together as if that would give them a better chance of beating me. The man who had tried to steal my soup snapped a low kick at my knee at the same time the heavy-set man threw a punch at my face. I had a split second to react but knew I couldn’t block or dodge both. I lifted my leg to catch the kick on my shin as my MMA instructors had taught me and grinned as the man cried out in pain. At the same time, I turned my head to the side and tucked my chin against my shoulder. The punch aimed at my jaw crashed into the top of my skull, and I felt finger bones crunch against my noggin.

  The heavyset man groaned at the pain in his shattered fingers, and the soup-thief limped toward me with fury and hatred blazing in his eyes.

  “The guys always did say I had a hard head,” I said with a mocking grin.

  “When we’re done with you—”

&n
bsp; I didn’t give him a chance to finish his sentence. Instead, I pushed off the wall in a leaping front kick that collided perfectly with his jaw. His head snapped around, and I heard an awful crack from the vertebrae in his neck. He sagged to the ground, and his falling body crashed into the only bench not yet destroyed. His skull gave a loud thump as he bounced off the hard wood, and he rolled onto his back. Blood leaked from a gash in his forehead, and his neck twisted at a gruesome angle.

  My jaw dropped as I realized what I had done. Once again, I’d forgotten how much stronger I was here on Agreon, and I’d killed someone. I didn’t mean to, but the men had tried to steal my food, and I wasn’t going to let anyone push me around.

  The only man still standing looked at me, at his companion, then down at the hand he clutched against his chest. I fixed him with a hard glare and raised my fist to strike. He scuttled away from me, and for the first time, fear filled his eyes.

  “What’s going on over there?” Dulgin’s voice drifted up the row of cells, and a moment later the bald man himself appeared. His eyes grew wide as he saw the fate of my three cellmates. “What the hell happened to them, eh?”

  “He tried to take my soup,” I said as I pointed to the man lying in the middle of the cell.

  Dulgin’s eyebrows rose, and he glanced between the two men and me.

  “B-But you…” He scratched his pockmarked face. “You did that, to three of them? With your hands in manacles?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a shrug.

  “Bloody hell,” Dulgin breathed. “Do you know who they are?”

  I glanced at the two men, who had huddled together at the far side of the cell. “Right now,” I said with a nasty grin, “two bullies who learned not to pick a fight with strangers.”

  Dulgin’s eyes bulged, which somehow made him even uglier.

  “They’re Gray Hunters,” he said.

  “Judging by your tone, I should know who they are, but I don’t,” I told him. “Mind filling me in?”

  “Mercenaries, the best in the human realms, some say. They’re on King Obragar’s payroll.”