Book 3: Chapter 35: The Final Waves
Arthur blinked at the two dragons. Their arrival had been so unexpected that, for a moment, he thought that they might be some sort of hallucination borne out of either exhaustion or hope for rescue.
He immediately rejected that. He didn't want a rescue. He wanted to see this through.
Of course, Brixaby saw things in a completely different manner. "How dare you intrude on our fight! We have matters well in hand, and we will be the ones to win the prize. Go away!"
"By the looks of things, you should be thanking us for our swift arrival," Laird said.
"Which wave is this?" Shadow asked, looking around at the mounds of rapidly disintegrating scourgelings.
Arthur exchanged a worried glance with Cressida. "We're about to start our eighth."
Now that the shock had worn off, he was growing concerned. If Laird was here, that meant that the council likely knew what they’d done. That wasn't good.
Though… drained of mana and weighed down by fatigue, Arthur wasn't sure there was anything he could do to stop them if Laird and Shadow had a way to drag them out of here.
He grit his teeth, frustrated by his weakness.
"Oh, look! We have a little time before the next wave," Joy said casually. She pointed to a scourgeling lying on the edge of the hill. There were so many that Arthur hadn't taken notice of it. Unlike the rest, it wasn't rapidly disintegrating. It hadn't truly died yet, which meant they had a bit of a breather.
He would take any time he could get.
He turned to Laird and Shadow who were exchanging surprised glances.
"What do you want?" Arthur asked, "Why are you here?"
Shadow half extended his wings in a shrug to Laird as if deferring to the other dragon.
Laird looked at Arthur. "Isn't it obvious? We want the same thing you do: Combat cards."
Arthur heard Cressida take in a sharp breath of surprise.
His face remained stony. "Explain," he demanded, glancing at the scourgeling which was still not disintegrating but didn't seem far off from death. "And do it quickly."
Brixaby buzzed over and landed heavily on Arthur's shoulder as if to provide silent reinforcement.
Laird nodded and spoke. "The same cards that myself and my wing of dragons fight and bleed for are often sent right back to the hives and kings and queens as bribes to leave our community alone." His scaly lips ticked up over his teeth in an unconscious grimace. "I have personally seen the same cards liberated from one noble library only to be sold back to a kingdom to be sold again to the nobles. It's an endless cycle, and I've grown weary of it. Especially when part of the agreement means that we are not allowed to keep any of them."
"Why don't you keep them anyway?" Brixaby asked. "Who would stop you? Who would know?"
"There are many dragons who believe in what the council tells them. They think that because we have not been attacked so far by scourgelings or by kingdom hives we never can be."
"They're fools," Shadow added. "I've fought scourgelings my entire life. They don’t stop. Anyone who’s heard rumors of our King knows he changes his mind on a whim. I’ve grown to like this place, but the council keeps its people like defenseless lambs, ready for the slaughter."
Arthur's eyebrows raised. He felt Brixaby's weight shift subtly on his shoulder — his only outward sign of unease. He knew that his dragon was thinking about the Mind Singer and the threat it posed. Laird and Shadow needed combat cards more than they even knew.
But at least the dragons had all but confirmed that this was where the council locked away their combat card library. Fighting through these waves wouldn't be for nothing.
"So, you want access to the combat cards, but you don't want to tip the rest of the council off about what you’re doing," Arthur guessed.
Laird nodded. "You should have come to me first before trying this stunt. I would have been able to gather several more interested dragons." He looked sour. "And we all could have properly shared in the reward."
Joy cut in. "Okay, but how did you know you were here– wait, how did get in here in the first place? I thought nobody could come in and out? Not that I'm unhappy to see you here." She heaved a sigh. "These waves are getting really tiring. The boys don’t want to say it, but we could use some help."
Laird shrugged. "This dungeon is meant as a death trap for those who don't have the key. In short, that means those who wish to test the dungeon can come in. But they can never leave until the waves are complete."
“You didn’t answer her first question,” Cressida said. “How did you know we were here?”
Laird gave her a flat look. “You didn’t think the council would allow a Legendary and a Rare complete free reign did you? Ghost has been following you, under Stealth. He reported to me the moment you broke into the enchanter’s complex. I brought Shadow in hopes of shaming you into good behavior again before things spun out of control. By then, you’d already entered the dungeon.”
“I knew I wanted that Uncommon in my retinue,” Brixaby said to Arthur.
"I don't get it," Arthur said, speaking aloud a thought that had been nagging at him since he first learned of the dungeon. "Why would the council even allow the risk? It just takes one group to complete the waves and then they’ll have access to the combat cards."
"That's where you're wrong," Laird snorted. "No one within memory has completed this dungeon without the key."
His words hit like a blow. Brixaby snapped open all of his wings. Arthur stepped back, and Cressida put a hand to her mouth.
"That is absurd," Brixaby said. "We have fought through the waves just fine."
But they hadn't. They had been on their last legs. They still were, Arthur thought, glancing over to the final scourgeling. It still wasn't disintegrating, but it wouldn't be long now.
"No one?" Cressida asked in a horrified whisper.
"The only ones who have survived were those who were rescued by somebody with the key before they were swamped over in the final waves," Laird said. "I've accessed the notes from the original dungeoneer, over fifty years ago. The waves begin sharply accelerating in difficulty starting from the seventh."
Arthur's spike of fear turned immediately into irritation. "Then why are you here? Are you looking to die?"
Shadow snorted. "That's the problem with you Legendary riders. You're never grateful for any help from the lower ranks."
That was hardly fair, and Arthur opened his mouth to say so, but Laird beat him to the punch. "You are lucky that we arrived at all. The dungeon only allows new participants to enter between waves, and we couldn't linger near the entrance for long or else risk being seen by spies. We are cutting it close."
Then the dragon reached to the side, there was a brief flash of light and he withdrew a net gleaming with runes. Laird must have some sort of Personal Space ability of his own.
But that wasn't all because he began withdrawing items from the rune-etched net. One was a green-tinged sword and shield he handed to Shadow. Another was a giant, dragon-sized bowl filled with steaming... oatmeal?
Arthur briefly wondered if this was a hallucination, after all. Things had just turned too strange. But in the next blink, he realized what that oatmeal had to be. He took an eager step forward. "Those oats were grown in the experimental caverns, aren't they?"
Laird glanced at him. "You know about those?"
"I worked down there for a time. What does it do?"
"These oats rapidly regenerate mana," Laird said. Then he paused. "Soaking and cooking it makes it go down easier," he added, as if it was shameful that he didn't want to eat raw oats.
Arthur didn't care. He gestured for Cressida and Joy to approach. When Laird didn’t object and indeed seemed expectant, Arthur grabbed up a ladle from his own Personal Space. Dipping it in, they took turns sipping.
It was exactly as bland as oats boiled in water could be, without a hint of spice or salt. But immediately, he felt his mana reserves start to refill. It wasn't an instant process, but he had a feeling he'd be mostly full within a few minutes. Tipping the bowl back, Laird finished the rest.
"What other weapons do you have?" Brixaby asked, eyeing the net with interest. "I will accept a sword, as well."
Laird looked slightly embarrassed. "If I had time to prepare, I would have brought more. These are my personal items.” Then he straightened in pride. “But you have two more dragons at your aid."
Arthur still had questions for the dragon, some of which had been hovering since the first day he was brought to the Free Hive. But that had to wait. They weren't in the position to be choosy. The final scourgeling of the last wave had fallen and was starting to disintegrate. They were nearly out of time.
"I've seen what you can do," Arthur said. “You’re welcome to fight along with us and share the cards at the end. How many more scourgelings should we expect for the next wave?"
"Two hundred," Laird said, easily, as if this weren't a devastating number.
Two hundred.
Arthur wanted to blanch, but that would not be helpful. He felt everyone's eyes on him. He was the Legendary rider. He was the leader.
"Then your place will be up in the air. The scourgelings will slow right before they start climbing the hill. Hit them with all the fire you can while they're bunched up. That goes for everybody." He looked at the others, one by one, and saw that their expressions were grim... but not despairing. "Hit them with everything we have. No holding back."
As he spoke his last few words, the terrible whistles started again.
****
Now that Arthur had gotten a broader view of how this dungeon was supposed to work, he saw how it made such an effective trap. By the eighth wave, people would be exhausted. Their mana levels run low.
Any help that came from the outside would be chancy at best — the one-way door opened only between the waves. And once someone was in here, they were committed to either win or die. And they’d be coming in blind, not knowing what shape their friends were already in.
However, if there was a team loyal enough, or desperate enough, it seemed like this dungeon should have been conquered before.
It still felt like he was missing a vital piece of information.
His first worry that the scourgelings in the last wave would not only be more numerous, but significantly stronger didn't play out. They were still the same type of scourgelings as before. It seemed that the dungeoneer only had a blueprint for one. But numbers were on their side.
Laird's fighting made the biggest impact.
He was fresh to the battle, full up not only on mana, but on strength. Corrosive purple candle-top flames drifted down from the sky like evil snowflakes. Wherever they touched the scourgelings, they burned. And they continued to burn right through the body and out the other side without either spreading or stopping.
Arthur suspected Laird had quite a few aspects to his flame powers as this was subtly different from the ones he had seen before as a child. But he wasn't complaining.
Using the enchanted metal bar, Arthur heated his own metal rivets and sent them flying to the scourgelings that escaped Laird's wrath.
Meanwhile, Shadow used his teleport power to pop right in front of the dark forest. His jade sword flashed – he wielded it more like an expert swordsman than a dragon. It was either enchanted, or he had a card power to help. He popped out again to another location down the line of trees before the scourgelings could properly turn and swamp him. Each teleport was a mere blink of time – hopefully not enough for the monsters that lived in the shadow space to find him.
Meanwhile, Joy and Brixaby continued their hit-and-run attacks with poisoned claws and void fire, respectively. Cressida's three bears, empowered by a renewal of her mana, rolled down the side of the hill like unstoppable forces, burning paths through the scourgelings.
They were an effective team. So effective that the two hundred scourgelings were whittled down to less than forty that managed to crest the top of the hill. Arthur was forced to shelter in Cressida's shield bubble a couple of times. The mana renewal oatmeal didn't affect his Phase In, Phase Out card. He once again ran out of time.
But forty scourgelings were much more manageable, especially when Shadow and Laird came to assist.
Before Arthur knew it, the last of the scourgelings was disintegrating.
Laird pulled a second bowl of oatmeal out of his rune net.
“How does that not tip over and spill everywhere?” Joy asked, cocking her head to the side.
He shrugged. “I don't know much about enchantments. I just know that it doesn't.”
“I would very much like to examine the runes on that net after this is done,” Brixaby said, again eyeing it. Arthur had originally thought it was because he wanted the treasures inside. It turned out, he just wanted to study the runes.
The other dragon gave him a bland look. “We'll see.” Then he pointedly tucked it away before Brixaby could get too close. As before, he did share the bowl around.
“Two more waves,” Arthur said. “We can do this. We're almost done."
“I thought you said...” Shadow trailed off and looked at Laird in confusion.
Laird grimaced. “One more wave, technically. One thousand scourgelings.”
Cressida, who had been taking a delicate bite of the oatmeal, nearly coughed it back out. “One thousand?”
Arthur felt the same.
“Yes,” Laird said. “This requires a dragon's assistance, which is a reason human teams have failed in the past. I suggest we fight them from the air.”
Brixaby grumbled at that, but he didn't outright object.
Cressida and Joy went up as a pair, and Arthur sat on Laird. There was a little bit of irony there. He never thought that he would be able to ride the dragon that had given him his first big break in life. For the sake of Brixaby's feelings, he didn't make a big deal of it.
Instead, he looked to his dark dragon. “If we can get you enough cards, we might be able to fly together soon.”
Brixaby looked slightly mollified.
The ninth and final wave was... immense. So many scourgelings came out of the forest that they toppled the trees. The weight of them — the physical effect of so many clustered together — killed the grass underfoot, leaving blackened rot behind. The shrieks were so loud that Arthur had to resist clapping his hands over his ears.
Instead, he grimly got on with the work, pelting the things from above. His once finely crafted chainmail shirt was in tatters from using all of the rivets.
When he ran out of those, he started pulling heavy objects out of his Personal Space and just tossing them down. He had one sturdily built chair and several large rocks that were sacrificed to the cause.
And when he ran out of that, he copied the spells Laird was using:
Candle-flake Fall (Spell)
Time remaining: 59 minutes, 59 seconds…
Ever-flame (Spell)
Time remaining: 11 Hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds…
Corrosive Flame (Spell)
Time remaining: 59 Minutes, 59 Seconds…
The last wave wasn't exactly dangerous — but it was a pure slog. Laird and Arthur could only rain down so many flames at a time, and Joy’s movements were restricted when she had to worry about the safety of her rider on her back.
They did what they could, and slowly but surely, the scourgelings were whittled down.
It was Brixaby who killed the last one. On a hill now blackened of life and covered with so many disintegrating scourgelings that they didn't realize it was over until the whistling finally... finally stopped.
Laird landed, and everybody else followed. All stared around at each other as if they couldn’t quite believe that they’d done it.
“What happens now?” Arthur asked, looking around. He half expected trumpets to blare out of triumph, and combat cards to rain down from the sky. But there was nothing.
Again, Laird and Shadow exchanged a look. This one was grim.
“The tenth wave,” Laird said.
Brixaby let out a sound suspiciously like an undignified squawk. “You said there were nine!”
“The last wave is not a fight, but a test.”
As he spoke, a bright line split the air and then expanded, resolving itself into a gleaming golden doorway.
Laird continued, “By design, only one is allowed access to the reward — the library. We either decide here who among us goes in, or we fight one another for the privilege.”
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