Bad Mondays

by Handyman


Chapter 58 - Pebbles and pitfalls

He woke up screaming, but his voice was stolen from him by the rushing wind. The whiplash he had suffered as the dragon scooped him into the air had been severe enough to not only disorientate him but to temporarily cause him to lose consciousness. It took him a few seconds to register that memory, and what was happening around him. He could barely keep his eyes open as the dragon let his claws drift through the cloud layer, soaking Handy with water vapour.

His heart pounded in his chest loud enough that it almost drowned out the noise of the air blasting past his ears. The heat radiating off of the dragon’s scales as they closed around his torso was sweltering, forcing him to deal with the conflicting extremes of hot and cold. The clouds broke briefly, allowing him a view of the landscape below: a blasted wasteland of cracked stone, pools of boiling water, vast pits where noxious gases and sulphurous smoke billowing forth and… dragons.

So many dragons.

So much fire.

As that thought registered, the animal in the back of his mind roared as it thundered forth, overtaking his rational mind in an avalanche of raw instinct. He thought he screamed but would not be able to recall, as his free arm which had been hanging limply over the dragon’s claw scrambled uselessly at the limb before eventually reaching for the bandolier across his breast. Several of the bottles he had brought with him had been crushed, but he couldn’t worry about that right now. The dragon was already descending.

He scrambled—his knives were too low, his hammer would be useless in this predicament—so he grabbed what he could, and lifted a long shard of broken ceramic in his clenched fist. It was sharp enough to cut through the fabric of his glove. He looked at the claw around him. Scales, scales, more scales, all impervious.

Then he noticed where the claw of the dragon met its toe, and stabbed the ceramic into the breach of the scales with all the force he could manage, though not so deep that he could see blood flow.

However, it penetrated deep enough to make the monster above him roar in sudden pain and fury. That was all Handy was aware of before he was suddenly falling. He looked up as his body twisted and turned to witness the sea-green dragon circle in the air as it inspected its claw. Briefly he glimpsed the tiny and increasingly shrinking purple thing that had to be Spike gripped in the claws of the blue drake before his fall came to an end.

--=--

Spike saw Handy fall suddenly from the roaring dragon to their right. As a dragon, he had little difficulty seeing through the rushing wind, which was odd given that he had quite a bit of trouble with it when he was younger.

“Hey!” he shouted up at his captor, alarmed. “Hey, what happened!?”

“What is wrong, Coralwrought!?” the blue dragon called to its fellow, seemingly ignoring him. Spike briefly thought the name was odd for a dragon, but tucked that thought away for later. He just saw somepony fall.

“Are you listening!? You just dropped him! Most poni– humans aren’t like dragons! They can’t survive a fall like that!”

“Wretched creature tried to pry off my claw!” Coralwrought growled.

“Well, don’t just linger! Get after it! Perhaps its remains will be enough to be done with this farce...”

Coral rose up and then dived after the human, Spike’s protests drowned out in the wind as his captor flew on, leaving the other two behind. On and on they flew, descending slightly until the familiar site of the Dragonlands filled his vision. He had never seen as much of it from above as he did now, filling him with a strange sense of calm he could not account for, but also a strange emptiness. It was as if the desolate beauty of the brutalised landscape and the unforgiving mountains naked of any snow or trees at once filled a hole in his heart that he didn’t even know existed, but at the same time exacerbated a quiet hunger he thought he had banished years ago.

They flew low to the ground towards a monolithic, dormant volcano. The massive blight upon the landscape stood black as night as if it was made out of raw obsidian, devouring all light around it whilst reflecting a dull splendour. He had never seen this thing before. They flew right towards it and Spike released a cry, believing they would crash right into it, but found they simply entered a vast cave mouth.

They drifted lazily in the air for a short time, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Before long, he saw a dull red glow in the distance and realised his captor had come to a halt, hovering in place. He was suddenly dropped and struck the dusty ground hard. He pushed himself up, dusting himself off as he looked around.

“That’ll be all, Azurefury,” a familiar voice called.

“Yes, Dragon Lord,” Azure replied. And with a rush of wind, the dragon left the cave, leaving Spike on his own in near-darkness. He took a breath to steady his nerves—he’d be no good to Handy if he freaked out now. He turned to face the red glow.

“Ember,” he said, more in a statement than as a greeting. The glow increased in intensity, casting the Dragon Lord in relief. Spike had to bite back a gasp as he saw what had become of his old friend. Red flames erupted in gutters along the walls, backlighting more of the young dragons that made up the borderlands’ domain, little more as backlit silhouettes with angry, judging eyes.

“Hello, Spike,” Dragonlord Ember said without emotion. “You have five minutes to explain why you are here before I throw you into the pit.”

--=--

Handy gasped as he emerged from the scalding water. He stumbled forward and crashed down into the water once more before pulling himself free from the pool. The water should have completely destroyed him, but it felt like little more than a warm shower would. It seemed like the fire potion he had downed had been worth the investment. He stumbled forward, struggling to think, but every direction he looked he spotted another dragon, far off in the distance or up in the air. It didn’t matter to him—the vampire was in control now, not the man.

He stepped forward, once, twice, looking around him desperately before looking up and seeing the immense form of the sea-green dragon from before diving down towards him. He simply acted, jumping behind a large rock as the dragon landed with tremendous force, shaking the earth and knocking him even further to the ground.

The quaking footfalls magnified to cyclopean heights in his fear-addled mind, forcing him to launch at a dead sprint from his hiding place, just as the dragon’s head emerged around the side of the rock. The dragon roared in triumph as it located him, and a claw shot forward.

Handy, on instinct, dove to the ground as the claw swept over him, rolling to his right and then back to his feet. The dragon struck the ground with a closed fist, knocking Handy from his feet, facing the dragon as the claw reached forward again. Handy rose suddenly and rolled forward as the claw hit bare earth. The dragon snarled and opened its mouth to roar. Handy’s eyes widened as he stared into the fathomless depths of that horrible maw.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined the terrible skull of the very first dragon he had met as it prepared to reduce him to ash. He grabbed a stone and flung it for the back of the dragon’s throat, the sudden impact causing the dragon to jerk its head back as it coughed into the air. Small gouts of ash and flame burst forth and the vampire fled, lost in its mad obsession with self-preservation.

In his haste, he stumbled into one of the breaks in the earth. Panicking, he grabbed onto the passing rocks in a desperate attempt to slow his descent, blinded by the noxious gases billowing forth from the hot interior. His efforts only proved fruitful in causing him to hurt himself as he fell down the roughly formed shaft, hitting the walls. It began to level out, but not before Handy was left with numerous gashes along his knee and leg. He came to a stop, blinded and choking at some point, with a surging pain in his leg. He groped for his hood, tearing it off and wrapping it around his face, which did little to help him breathe but kept most of the gas out. He was running out of time.

He struggled in the dimness of that shaft towards the only source of light, dragging himself through the tight confines and shouting in frustration more than once when he felt stuck between the rocks. He persevered and pulled himself through until he finally felt free of the noxious gas. Then he fell again as he spilled forth from the crack in the wall. He tore the rag from his face and hacked violently, taking in greedy breaths as his eyes stung and watered. He couldn’t see, but just barely made out the bleary source of light ahead of him.

He slowly pulled himself forward. Wherever he was, it was warm. He couldn’t make out any sunlight directly above him, and a balmy current of air buffeted him even while he lay on the ground. It was probably the only thing keeping the gas from filling whatever chamber this was.

His hand splashed on some water on the spongy ground. He paused for a moment before hurriedly splashing the small amount of water onto his face. His vision cleared and he took in his new shelter.

It was a cave, with another break in the earth far above which allowed sunlight to filter through to shine upon a small spring of water. It was like a miniature ecosystem onto itself: the ground utterly covered in a thick carpet of moss, grass growing on the far side of the spring, with a small, twisted, naked, white barked tree managing to eke out a hardy existence down here.

The current of air came from a break in the wall further to his right and was siphoned out through another chasm at the far end of the cavern. It was probably the only thing that was keeping the noxious gas from emptying into the cavern and smothering him. He heard the distant roar of a dragon from above and flinched instinctively before he pulled himself together.

“Come on…” he said through gritted teeth as he fought down the fear that was causing his skin to crawl and the hairs on his arms and neck to stand up. “They can’t find me here, come on…”

The vampire was hard to calm, but in time he managed to fight it down. He wasn’t going to survive long running around like a scared animal in a land ruled by apex predators. The calmer he felt, the more the pain registered. His leg was bleeding from several gashes and there were stones lodged in his skin. He was bruised in several places but nothing was broken… yet. He winced as he touched his leg, eying the water suspiciously. In a place like the Dragonlands, that water may not be entirely safe to drink. It was clear as crystal and deceptively deep. Perhaps it’d be enough to clean his wounds?

He heard another roar above and decided if he was going to do it, it might as well be now before the dragon got enterprising enough to start ferreting out the holes in the ground. He reached over with cupped hands and started cleaning his leg and other cuts. He then tore more of his hood off and wrapped it around the worst of his wounds before hurriedly scurrying away into the darkest corners of the cave, away from the break in the roof.

There he hid until he could stand on his leg, breathing raggedly as he listened to the sound of dragons overhead, pondering his state of affairs.

“What am I doing?” he asked himself quietly lest the dragons could somehow hear. “This was never going to get me home faster. Why did I agree to this? Why am I even here?”

He let the bitterness and anger flow, knowing it would be tempered with the spike of real terror every time he heard a dragon that was altogether too close for comfort. He sank into his misery as he thought of any possible way out. His airship was miles away, civilization was even further, this was a barren land where dragons ruled and where fire was as common as water, if not more so.

He thought of his supposed cleverness and of his manipulation of the young princess, then cursed himself for leaving the very prize he had won from her back in his airship. He hit the back of his head against the wall again and again as he cursed his own hubris.

“No good to me here now, is it?” he asked himself. “Stupid bastard. If you had been a bit more circumspect, you could’ve thought of another way around this. But no, you trusted the dragons to have no real reason to hate you. So you killed some skeletal abomination. Who cares? So you killed some young drake at the tournament. Those things happen; why would they hold a grudge? Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

He rested his head against the rock and stared up at the ceiling, hating it. The revulsion suddenly melted away in a wave of terror whenever he heard another dragon roar above, freezing him in place

As he sat there, cursing himself, he could not help but look up and be reduced back to dreadful silence every time he heard one of those lizards above him. He scurried further back into the cave, pressing up against the wall and praying none of those monsters poked their faces into this particular hole. So he lay there, huddled in the darkness, waiting for his chance to escape, trapped underground like an animal.

Which was something he was quickly growing tired of.

--=--

Spike was thrust into the pit. He stumbled backwards into the darkness until his foot caught the edge and he fell over, yelling as he descended. He slammed into the ground firmly, but that was nothing to a dragon, even one as young as him. Growling, he pushed himself up and rubbed his shoulder which bore the brunt of the fall.

“Hey!” he called up, but his only response was the dimming of the light above from a blaze to a faint glimmer as the stone was slammed over the entrance, leaving only a thin wisp of light into the depths. Spike sighed and sat back against the wall. So much for appealing to Ember’s reason, he grouched as he studied what little of the ground he made out in the darkness before his dark vision kicked in. He picked up a rock and rolled it between two claws before flicking it up into the air and waiting to see it fall, unable to get the sight of Handy falling out of his head.

As the stone hit a puddle of murky water, the sound of shifting chains caused him to take a sharp intake of breath, spinning to face the area of darkness the sound came from.

“Who… Who’s there?”

“Mm?” said a raspy voice, followed by a long, drawn out yawn, slapping gums, and a sound like someone shaking himself awake, which only caused the chains to rattle more. Spike noticed many, many sharp points in the thin wisp of light as the creature moved, with tiny glints of what might have been scales. It had not occurred to him that there’d be another dragon down here with him. It spoke, this time more clearly, “Is it breakfast time already?”

“What!? N-No! I uh…” Spike hurried to think of an excuse. He had heard stories of dragons eating each other, mostly from more ignorant city-dwelling ponies who didn’t know any better. But, well, giving what was happening… “I’m the uh… cleaner! Yeah!”

“Oh? Oh! Oh good, good, terribly dusty here. Worst halfway house I ever stayed in, simply awful. Why, you didn’t even clean the chains before I got here!” the voice said jovially, as if he was suddenly Spike’s best friend.

“Uh—”

“Horrible service, but hey, I forgive you. Don’t suppose you could turn on the lights on your way out? Oil for the lantern ran out an hour ago.”

“I just—”

“Oh! And ale, if you have any. There’s a nice tip in it for you if you do.”

“Okay, listen—”

“I mean, I’ve been to a lot of dives before, but they all had ale. I mean, it’s not as if I have hit rock bottom here, have I?”

“Okay, stop!” Spike shook his head and waved his arms uselessly in the darkness, slowly making out a shape lying couchant on its legs in the darkness. It had an awful lot of horns that seemed to sparkle dully in the dark. “Look, I’m stuck down here too. I don’t know what all…” Spike waved his hand to emphasis his confusion, “this is about.”

The creature laughed. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I was just doing a bit—don’t get the chance to talk to others much down here is all. Oh! Don’t suppose you got magic by any chance, do you?”

“Uh… nothing too spectacular. I mean, I know a lot of theory, but I never actually…”

“Darn. Well, worth a shot. Hey! You got cards? I know a fun game we can do with cards in the dark, but it really strains the eyes and will probably result in problems when you’re sixty, but that's not your problem today, now is it?”

“Um…”

“Oh, how rude of me. How’d you get here? You don’t sound like a local; that's a Canterlot accent, right? Sounds like it but different. You a traveller?” The thing gasped. “Oh, you’re an adventurer too? This is perfect! Man, this will make a fantastic story! How’d you get here!? No wait, don't care. Well I do, but not yet; it can wait. What can you do? Can you pick locks? I mean, I don’t think these chains have locks. Normally I’d break off a bit of an antler and work that way, but mine have recently come across a bad case of unbreakability. It's more inconvenient than it sounds.”

Spike waited for a minute until he was sure the guy was done interrupting him. He cocked an eyebrow. “Right. Look, I’m not an… Well okay, sometimes I am an adventurer when the girls have me tag along, but I don’t know how to pick locks or, well, any of that sort of stuff. I’m just a dragon. I just help out where I can,” Spike explained. The figure seemed to deflate.

“Oh, well. Pity.” He sounded disappointed, which just as suddenly rebounded into enthusiasm. “Wait! You’re a dragon!?”

“Uhm, yes?” Spike asked.

“Fantastic! Even better!” The creature literally jumped, and Spike had to step back at the sudden movement in the darkness. “How did you get here then? Can you fly? That’d be a big help!”

“No, no, I can’t fly. I got here by ship but…” Spike hesitated and looked down at the ground. “I, uh, don’t think I’d be much welcome to ride again after… what happened to the guy who owned it.”

“Oh, I know how it feels. I too have gotten on the wrong side of many a captain. It’s not my fault she happened to share my cabin, and he’s the one who brought her along. I mean, who even does that?”

“What? No, I mean… Look, forget it. I can’t fly us out of here.” Spike sighed as he sat back down and crossed his arms. “Not without Handy... I mean, assuming the ship is even still there after the captain saw us both be taken.”

His interlocutor was quiet for some time after that, only occasionally shifting in his place. “Well now, that’s an interesting coincidence…”

“Huh?”

“Hm? Oh nothing, just thinking to myself is all. Say, what would you do if I told you not to worry about it?” the creature asked.

“Worry about what?”

“Precisely! Excellent, we’re halfway there already. Now listen, I may not be able to get us out of the Dragonlands, buuuuuut…” The creature was suddenly in Spike’s face. He was able to make out a muzzle and a pair of dark pink eyes. “I can get us out of this hole in the ground.”

“You can?” Spike asked, perking up before slowly becoming suspicious. “Then why haven’t you already escaped?”

“Well because I needed help, silly! I can get us out of here and probably get us to Handy’s airship. I didn’t know he had an airship. Good on him, he’s really moving on up in the world. Literally! Sometimes, anyway.”

“How?” Spike asked.

“Because I can run as quick as the wind! Faster than any dragon by far!” he answered. “I’m a bit of a whirlwind, you might say. I just need to solve one little mystery and that’s that. You don’t happen to know where you last saw Handy, by the way, would you?”

“I… could find our way there, yeah,” Spike said, now feeling slightly better. “Who are you anyway?”

“I already told you!”

“You did?” The creature was at his side with a foreleg around his shoulder. He just made out the other leg outstretched in a grand gesture.

“Yep! We can find Handy, I can finish my mission, and we can get out of here! And we’d rely wholly on your help!”

“R-Really?” Spike asked, smiling for the first time that day.

“Of course!” He rounded to face Spike again, this time the thin sliver of light exposing his smiling face for the first time, his sparkling antlers covered in obsidian chains. “I just need a whiff of dragon’s fire to get free of these chains and my magic can get us out of here!”

At that revelation, Spike’s smile faltered and he looked down at the ground, tapping his foreclaws together and smiling sheepishly.

“About… that…” he began, coughing once.

--=--

Night fell by the time Handy worked up the courage to pull himself out of the ground. Climbing the tree had been a risky venture, but it was his only way up without climbing up through the toxic vapour rent in the earth he had fallen down. He knelt on the ground to catch his breath as he studied his surroundings. The sky was thick and heavy with clouds, the stars nor moon unseen. The landscape was as desolate as it had appeared from the air, nothing but dry, cracked ground, craggy peaks, distant, harsh-looking mountains, and rents in the earth from which gases erupted forth.

Hardy plants clung to life around the edges of the pools of hot spring water that looked too murky and filth-driven to be drank safely, and here or there he spotted glowing lights in the distances where fires burned. Even this far north, the air was warm and dry, but paradoxically chilling when the wind bit deep if he stood somewhere where he was too exposed. The Dragonlands, it seemed, was a harsh wilderness unfriendly to life.

At least now there weren’t any dragons afield. At least none he could see, so he did his best to keep an eye on the sky in case any would suddenly emerge from the cloud bank.

“Come on, come on, just a glimmer, that's all I ask,” Handy whispered to himself, cursing the sky for hiding the moon. The unnatural cosmology of this world threw a lot of his preconceptions out the window, but one thing that had been more or less consistent was that the sun and moon always rose in the east and always set in the west. Nightfall hadn’t been that long ago, so it’d still be somewhere in the east… Now if only he knew where east was he could find his way back south to his ship.

It was a futile endeavour, so he attempted to see if he could find the coast. That way he could follow it more or less back to the ship. They couldn’t be that far, could they? He climbed a craggy outcropping and tried to discern where the coast might be. He couldn’t hear any waves, nor were there any birds flying around, so he couldn’t tell if he was close by the presence of sea gulls.

“Of all the stupid times not to have a friggin’ compass,” he cursed, then ducked suddenly as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He looked back and forth, searching for danger, for anything that might have set him off. Nothing. He reached out with his senses to see if his auspex could pick up what he could not. Again, he sensed nothing. There was no living life within his range apart from crawling insects too small to be registered most of the time. Some rocks crumbled nearby and he snapped around. It was just a part of the nearby crag falling apart as he watched it. That must have been what set him off.

Leaving nothing to chance, he slowly descended where he was perched and crawled over to the offending crag, looking for signs of recent disturbance. Finding none, he released a sigh as he patted down his front. Four of the potion bottles had been crushed under the dragon’s grip, and the front of his travelling clothes were utterly covered in the pungent filth that was the disgusting fire resistance potion. He took off his gloves and felt the cold of the air and the heat of the ground. Yep, the potion’s effects had worn off. He no longer felt leaden and heavy and could feel his skin again.

Would two bottles be enough to see him safely back to the ship? What if the dragons he encountered didn’t bother to roast him and opted instead to just snap him up, as if he were no more than a Jurassic Park extra? What if the potion was only good for ‘normal’ fire, and not whatever magical potential dragon’s fire had? Would Silvertalon still even be there waiting on him? Would he have left looking for him or went back home? What if the dragons burned down the ship?

If, if, if, if, if. He pushed those thoughts aside as he forced down another bottle of the terrible alchemical filth and prayed that shit didn’t have any lasting negative consequences on his physical health. He tossed the bottle aside and wiped his mouth, coughing, standing still as his skin tingled and then slowly deadened and felt leaden once more.

He briefly thought about the young drake and wondered where he had been taken, but then again, on the other hand, fuck that noise. He tried, the dragons attacked, and he was gone now. That was Equestria’s problem—Handy wanted to fucking live.

He skidded his way down the side of one crag and rushed to the nearest shadow, not sure where he should be going, but it would only progressively get darker as the night wore on, so he had to keep moving. The wind picked up as he traversed the blasted landscape.

‘My reputation will be shot,’ he grimly pondered as he wore on. ‘Handy the Dragonslayer? More like Handy the Dandy, the man who ran.’

He snorted and shook his head. His pride could take the hit. Nothing in the agreement had said anything about actually fighting the dragons. He had made his delivery, so the princess would just have to get the drake back herself. Though the thought about what it’d do to relations between the two countries did bother him, the more rational part of him reasserted himself. Worst came to worst, by the time he made it back to his ship, he could just make it as if he had died again and fly elsewhere in his ship. It was not as if he didn’t have the power to hide himself now. He could put all this aside and start searching for a way home and sidestep all this political nonsense.

Still, there was the question about what would become of Crimson… or his promise to Shortbeak. That made him pause. He had given his word, hadn’t he? Perhaps… he had given his word but he had not properly sworn. Wouldn’t be the first time he lied. But that thought didn’t sit right with him—lies by omission, obfuscation, misdirection, or just flat out untruths, he had done them all one way or another, but none of them relied solely on a promise, did they?

“Enough,” he snarled at himself. “I am in a blasted wasteland, ruled by fucking dinosaurs who couldn’t take a meteor as enough of a hint. And it’s not as if I can actually do anything about it even if I wanted to!”

That thought gave him some comfort. It was true enough. What could he do against an entire country of dragons, just to get back one little drake? That rationale made sense, but still something did not sit right with him about it. The drake had never wronged him, not once. It had been nothing but respectful, honest, and despite having been expecting it, the dragon had not once nosied his way into either his or Silver Talon's business. It wasn’t like Chrysalis, whose treachery, deceit, and cruelty Handy could return joyfully and viciously without remorse or regret, or the ponies who had so engendered his hatred.

He was still a dragon, but he was also a charge whom Handy had been paid in good faith to look after, and whose yearlong service he had been awarded. That, for the time being, made the dragon one of his own.

Handy stopped, his feet kicking up clouds of dust in the dry landscape. He grounded his teeth as he attempted to come to terms with the realization. He was responsible for that little bastard, and the thought of that as he observed his dreary surroundings did nothing to alleviate the guilt. He had no idea where the drake even was, even if he wanted to, so he couldn’t find—

Lost in his thoughts, Handy had not been paying attention to his surroundings and so had not noticed the black thing that slithered out of the shadows of the rocks behind him. Yellow slitted eyes broke the living blackness that seemed to constitute the creature as it slowly moved out, one large draconic claw after another pressing down into the soft blanket of dust on the ground, masking its movements as it closed on the human.

The first sign Handy had that he had made a terrible mistake was when the wind suddenly changed and the smell of rotten flesh assailed his senses. He coughed and covered his mouth, turning to identify the source of the smell. He ended up staring into the piercing glare of a young black dragon as it closed on him.

Handy let out a yelp and, stepping back on his bad leg, collapsed to the ground. The dragon’s head launched forward, snapping its jaw shut where Handy had been. He grabbed a dagger by his side and slashed at the dragon’s neck. The weapon knocked off several scales but did no damage to the dragon. And yet the creature reeled back as another blast of rotten flesh smell assailed his senses. Handy gagged on the smell as the dragon reared up. He rolled out of the way and stumbled back to his feet. It was nowhere to be seen in the darkness of the night. He lifted out the brick and shone the light, though it only penetrated a few feet in this environment.

Something struck his back and sent him flying to the ground, the brick slipping out of his hand and tumbling away into the dust. Handy got up and slashed with his dagger at nothing but empty air. He got up and sheathed the dagger, breathing hard, trying to control his fear. It was okay, he could handle this. It wasn't that big of a dragon. Sure, maybe it was unnervingly quiet, and smart, but it was small and… he could knock its scales off?

He looked down at several dark splotches on the dust. The light from his fallen phone helped illuminate them. The scales were… broken, cracked, black with sickly yellow-white lines crisscrossing their surface and sickening brown sludge soaking the dust around them. It didn’t smell anything remotely like blood. He looked at his dagger again. There wasn’t anything on it. He hadn’t cut those scales off, just knocked them off.

The dragon was already wounded.

He took several deep breaths and slowed his breathing, gathering himself. He couldn’t see anything beyond the halo of light from the brick, but he didn’t need to see. He closed his eyes and concentrated, reaching out with his auspex and… there. The pinching sensation in his mind’s eye—the dragon was to his right, stalking him slowly. The more he concentrated, the more he could read. The creature wasn’t scared or hungry. It was angry, furious even. Its emotions seemed… confused somehow, and it was hurting badly from whatever had wounded it.

The dragon could see him in the dark most likely, so running and hiding would not be much of an advantage to him. Why, then, hadn’t it taken to the air and gotten the drop on Handy from above? Handy spread out one leg across the dust and watched as it lifted into the air at the disturbance. Ah, that was why.

Handy swung his leg around, kicking up vast amounts of dust into the air to blind the dragon. He heard it hiss in frustration as he dived for the brick. He felt the rush of the dragon leaping over him through the cloud of dust and landing hard on the ground not far from him, kicking up even more dust to hide Handy as he made a run for the nearest rocky outcropping and turning off the light.

“You can’t hide!” the young dragon shouted, his voice not possessing the deep resonance of the greater dragons that had gotten Handy into this mess. “I’ll find you! You can’t hide your scent from me!”

Scent? Handy patted his bandolier and lifted a bit of the potion remnants to his face and sniffed. It was… pungent to put it lightly. The wind had been against him for a long time now. The dragon must have picked it up and followed it. Damn it. The toxic fumes from before had probably masked it while he had been hiding in the cave earlier. He lifted mounds of dust and started dumping it on himself. Hopefully it’d stick to the stuff and mute the smell somewhat.

“I know what you are, human,” the creature hissed. Handy couldn’t hear it move. It was a quiet one, but he could tell where it was and moved to keep pace with it. “It’s your fault, the Dragon Lord is sure of it.”

Handy didn’t answer as he kept manoeuvring out of the dragon’s reach in the darkness. He tripped on several out of place rocks and stumbled, scrambling to a new hiding spot just as the dragon rounded the rock to grab at where he had just been. The dragon growled in frustration as it continued searching the dark in the cover of the dust cloud.

“You did this to us, you and those pony things with the dragon horns!” the dragon cursed. “You afflicted us with the curse of the candle!”

‘I have no idea what you are talking about, you overgrown, terrifying gecko!’ Handy thought to himself. Keeping one step ahead of the wyrm, the dust was beginning to settle. He had nowhere to run to, and using his phone to see his way would only cause the dragon to descend upon him.

“We heard you killed the worthless exile. You work with the pony who stole our prize we clung from the horned one. And now you are here!” the dragon went on. “Face me! The Dragon Lord may have a soft spot for the ponies, but I can take our revenge out on you!”

This dragon was deranged. What in the hell was he talking about? The exile? He recalled Spike mentioning something about that. Was the dragon he killed an exile? What the hell did that have to do with dragon-horned ponies? And the Dragon Lord… the dragons who had snatched him were going to take him to the Dragon Lord, weren’t they? That’s where Spike would be.

The dust settled, and the black dragon cast its baleful gaze in Handy’s direction across the grubby loam. Handy thought fast. He could rush the dragon, try to stab it in the neck at that weak spot. But he couldn’t see it. Being able to tell where someone was in the dark didn’t mean dick in terms of aiming for weak points. It could easily overpower him as well, so tackling it was retarded. He could probably take one full-on blast of dragon’s fire, assuming it wouldn’t bypass his potion’s effects somehow before his vampiric side freaked out and took over the wheel. It had already done that once today, and God knew that wouldn’t do well for him in the dark like this.

The dragon drew closer. Handy’s heart thumped faster and he forced himself to remain calm, to think. If he had any decent blood in him, this would be a significantly less dangerous proposition, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Run.

The dragon came closer, and he spotted tinges of orange creeping on the dust around the edge of the rock. He felt himself starting to panic. The orange light crept closer and reason started to desert him. He shifted in the dust, grabbing the sides of his head as he fought down the terror. His body wanted to run but his mind screamed at him, yet he had nowhere to go.

RUN.

He bit down on the edge of his cloak and worried away at it with his teeth. The vampire in him was trying to take control now and he could feel it. If he let it have its way now, it would only make it harder for him to resist it later. The dragon was almost upon him.

RUN!

Handy ran. He launched himself around the rock that he had hid behind, the dragon’s yellow eyes widened in surprise as a ball of fire billowed in its mouth. More’s the pity when the thick glass of the last bottle of potion shattered against the dragon’s snout, spilling its contents into its mouth and face, extinguishing the flame, drenching its nose in the foul liquid, and blinding its eyes. Handy screamed every second of the movement, his every fibre fighting against him as he moved, but the roar of the dragon drowned out his vampiric cry, and that jolt helped him regain his senses.

The dragon’s arm swept out and clocked Handy on the face as it flailed. He went down hard, dazed. The dragon swept out with its claws in the sudden darkness, beating its wings in frustration, blowing up billows of dust. Handy scrambled away. The dragon would eventually start using its fire in frustration again, so he had to make his move before that. He could barely think beyond the screaming in his mind, so he let it out verbally.

The dragon turned, opened its bleary, blinded eyes, just in time for Handy’s brick to shine at its full, unnatural luminosity right in its eyes as they were weakened and used to the dark. The dragon yelled and reeled. Handy ducked under its outswung arm, grabbed it, placed his right foot onto the knee of its rear leg, and threw himself up onto its back. His free leg pressed down hard on its wing joint, causing it to shout in pain.

It quickly stopped its thrashing as Handy pressed the blade of his dagger into the wound at its neck. The putrescent flesh reeked of corruption as it leaked brown pus and coagulated blood.

“Now…” Handy said, breathing heavy, his heart on the verge of an outright attack, his body rigidly stiff as he struggled to prevent the fear of the dragon itself from overwhelming him again. It had its ups and downs. It was good because it meant he wouldn’t fall off the dragon after what he had planned next. The bad news was that he couldn’t make him shift around because resting on top of draconic spines was the exact opposite of comfortable. “What’s your name, lizard?”

“...Onyx,” it answered slowly, still blinded but not moving while Handy had the dagger poised to plunge deep into its exposed flesh beneath its scales. That was good, because without vampiric strength, Handy was utterly unsure of how much damage he could do to draconic flesh, exposed or not.

“Alright, pebble, here’s what we’re going to do,” Handy said, still not feeling any better being this close to a dragon. “You’re going to take me to see this Dragon Lord of yours. Get this nonsense straightened out, yeah? Sound good? Sounds good. Get moving.”

The dragon didn’t move, and Handy took the moment to mourn the loss of his last fire resistance potion, the stupidity of his situation, and to shift his leg off of the wing joint, instead moving it to a lower spine to help keep his balance.

“Well? Get a move on!” Handy demanded before his nerve left him and he bugged out from this plan.

“I can’t see where I’m going…” the dragon admitted. Handy blinked.

“Well smell your way there then!”

“I can’t… This… stuff is all over my nose,” the dragon explained. Handy took a moment to let that sink in and quietly raged that he had just sabotaged his plan before it even began. He let out an exasperated sigh.

“Bollocks.”