Dragon Chess (pt. 5)

[moonshadows]

Lina and her little friends are accustomed to me vanishing for days at a time. Filia is not, but she doesn’t object when I do, and My Lord Beastmaster agrees that there is no reason to have me trudge along behind the arrogant little dragon for the whole trip to the Fire Dragon’s Temple. I can keep tabs on Lina through my anchor in her aura; in the meantime, I spy on the foreign Queen and try to figure out why his aura feels so…wrong. The answer to everything is there, waiting to be grasped, but it eludes us. Alumace just sits on his throne, letting his Knight do all the work. There are a handful of opportunities for engaging that abomination in combat, but My Lord Beastmaster stays my hand. We don’t know enough of the board to risk taking out that Knight. Him, we can deal with. It would take our Queen to deal with Alumace, and if we removed his Knight, he would surely face us himself.

Through the seed of my substance planted in her aura, I can feel Lina’s curiosity.

::Go, my pup. We can do no more here.::

::Yes, My Lord Beastmaster.::

I let my anchor draw me to Lina, who is in some kind of temple imbued with dormant magics. I can feel My Lord Beastmaster’s amusement, and she wordlessly commands me to aid them – but gives no hint as to the nature of this ruin. It’s slightly before my time, and this was all dragonkin territory when it was constructed, so I never had the opportunity to investigate. When Filia’s bracelet activates the dormant magics, it’s all I can do to stay in the Astral Plane, laughing and whooping with glee. A dragon train! How marvelous! Giant wheels emerge from their bases, and the whole ruin slowly gains momentum, using the strange wall that runs through this region as a track. The possibilities for mischief spread before me, and I can’t choose. I’ll just let my lovely little friends play with their new toy, and watch the fun. That said, I can’t resist popping in just for a moment to point out how much this will reduce travel time. Predictably, the dragon tries to pin this on me. How it can be my fault when it was her race that built it and her magic that activated it, I’ll never know. Her panic is most delicious, however.

The havoc is glorious. Bridges that have stood for thousands of years, strong enough to bear the inconsequential weight of humans but brittle beyond belief, hold just long enough to support the weight they were built for before crumbling into enormous rockslides. Villages that huddled under the protective bulk of the gigantic track are torn to shreds by the force of the passing draconic train, their inhabitants terrified beyond words or deafened by the noise of its passing. It’s dinner and entertainment all in one. I’m not any more bothered than Lina is by the fact that the presence of the Sword of Light is giving the train more power than it was built for, or that the brakes long ago ceased to work. Her life comes before draconic architecture. But for some reason, the thought of the train smashing into the temple of the Fire Dragon King doesn’t sit well with Filia. She’s got a brain in there, behind her prejudices – she threatens our Queen obliquely with the possibility of relaying this incident to the Flare Dragon’s Knight – Lina’s big sister.

Well, can’t blame Lina there. I’d stop the damn train myself to keep on the Flare Dragon Knight’s good side. The train crashes through a good-sized city that managed to build itself on and around the track. It’s slowed by the buildings, but not enough. Filia manages to come to her senses long enough to admit that breaking the ‘engine’ is the only way to stop the thing, but then descends into hysterics when my little friends actually start doing so. Surprisingly, the two bumbling Pawns come in handy for the ‘breaking’ part, but inertia keeps the monstrosity going, and there are no more handy cities to slow it down. Lina casts a Dragon Slave on the thing, and her pleasure at feeling the power course through her trickles through me, too. Unfortunately, it’s not quite enough, and a relatively small chunk still winds up hitting the temple. It causes very minor damage, really, and my little friends have arrived just in time for breakfast. All in all, quite satisfactory – for our side, at least. The dragonkin may have a different view of the incident. Ah, and speaking of the dragonkin, here they come. I’ve been bound, so they haven’t detected me, but they’re likely to want to blame this on me and for once, I had almost nothing to do with it. I slip back to the Astral Plane, Lina shrieking for me to take her with me as the golden dragons land to confront my little friends.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, the elders of the temple opt to treat Lina and the others as honored guests. It seems that for all of Filia’s posturing, the dragonkin aren’t quite as secure in their choice of Queen as we are. Or rather, they aren’t confident that Lina will consent to be their Queen on this chessboard. Regretfully, I cannot follow Filia and her Elder. I would be detected almost immediately in this place; I must content myself to hovering outside the temple and spying through my anchor in Lina’s aura. Whatever Filia told her Elder, it seems to have made him doubt the wisdom in choosing Lina for their champion. The higher-ups of the temple retreat back inside it, leaving our chess pieces to fix the mess they made. Yes, staying out of sight was definitely a good choice. As much as I wish I knew what the Elders were discussing inside, watching Lina apply her steel-and-fire aura to this most menial of tasks is a pleasure. Seeing her bully golden dragons into helping is a bonus, and the architectural scribble that results will keep me laughing for years. It looks like a hallucination sprouted from the Temple of the Fire Dragon King, and with the high horses the golden dragons ride, they’ll likely spend the next few centuries telling each other in outraged whispers how unseemly it is – but never actually get their hands dirty fixing it.

Finally, my little friends get summoned for an interview, and I start paying attention. The chimera interrupts almost before it gets started, demanding to know why the dragonkin don’t just take care of it themselves, if they don’t trust mere humans to do it right. Trust the Rook to go straight to the point. The Supreme Elder counters with a runaround that the very prophesy forbids them from actually doing anything about it. One of his juniors jumps in pompously, declaring that they have to keep the whole thing secret from the Mazoku. Too late for that! Silly dragons. They think we’ve grown impatient now that Lord Hellmaster and the Chaos Dragon are out of the way? They obviously have no idea about what really happened – or that My Lord Beastmaster had any involvement. It’s true, our goal is within reach, but I’d hardly say that seizing the moment makes us impatient. Trust the Golden Dragons to continue their unchallenged arrogance, thinking that the loss of those two makes the whole race somehow weaker, and that we have nothing better to do than plot against them. I suppose the fact that we released the Water Dragon King just as soon as we could was a show of weakness, never mind that we’d been providing protection for the Water Dragon King and all the dragons trapped within the seal, and not killing and torturing them as we could have.

::Easy, pup.:: My Lord Beastmaster chides me.

Well, whatever their pathetic delusions of grandeur, Lina is still our Queen and they have not won her over to their way of thinking with their sniveling. The sorceress is unimpressed by how much the dragonkin are unimpressed with her, and not flattered to be considered a gamble. Just as she starts threatening to not go along with the dragonkin, however, the foreign Queen comes screaming through the Astral Plane like the draconic train through one of those demolished cities. I follow in his wake as he passes; with power like that invading the temple, who’s going to notice one little mazoku Priest-General?

The Supreme Elder is in shock that the temple could be violated so easily. What is wrong with the dragonkin? Can’t they feel his power? Don’t they understand that he’s neither dragon nor mazoku, and the power of the Flare Dragon or Lord Ruby Eye won’t touch him? Can’t they see that he’s easily the equal to Lord Hellmaster – or the Fire Dragon King?

::Watch him carefully,:: My Lord Beastmaster commands, and I can feel her tension. ::Protect the Queen if you must. I feel we are about to learn what troubles this foreign Lord.::

I watch carefully, in full agreement. Whatever happens here, I get the feeling none of us will like it.

Queen faces Queen. Knight draws the Sword of Light, but its blade and the blade of the foreign Queen’s double sword start flickering, then pulsing in time with each other. No one moves.

Well, if he’d wanted to destroy us, he would have started already.

“My name is Alumace. I come from the Overworld.”

Lina briefly explains that he comes from another world, and I remember the glimpse I got just after Lord Hellmaster was obliterated. The Sword of Light was created during a period when Lord Dark Star and his opposite were working together. Alumace bears a double-bladed sword made the same way, and the bow taken from the foreign Lord and sealed by the Ancient Dragons was the same. Thus, Alumace must be the third of these Lords – presuming the pattern of five Lords per god holds for the other worlds, we may have to deal with two more of him.

The dragonkin demand the foreign Lord’s reasons for coming here, and are told that he is seeking the weapons that were lost here so long ago. Well, I could have told them that. They try to smooth things over, offering Alumace the Sword of Light if he’ll just leave, and then ask what he’s going to use it for.

“What I desire is to summon the Dark Lord Dark Star to this world.”

Oh, hell no! We have enough problems with the fragments of Lord Ruby Eye!

No one is pleased to hear this. Lina demands to know why, Amelia assumes his goal is world domination, and the dragonkin – predictably – ask why he can’t just do it somewhere else. Again, they try to bribe the foreign Lord with the sword he seeks if he’ll just go make his messes elsewhere, and even Filia is shocked by the disgustingly self-centered suggestion. Alumace agrees to the terms, however, and the Supreme Elder is obviously not afraid to take the sword by force. Typical. The dragonkin are losing major points with Lina, Zelgadis, Amelia, Gourry, and even Filia.

And then, of course, the abomination-Knight crashes the party. Hmm, friction in the ranks of the enemy – Alumace is desperate, was desperate to use Valgaav as his Knight. Something’s not right. But with that mismatched aura unbound and so close to me, it’s suddenly clear.

Alumace’s aura is also tainted.

Knight attacks his own Queen, and the seed of foreign substance in him means that Alumace actually has to block the blasts. But that’s all he does. My little friends take the opportunity to run, and the foreign Lord follows them, offering to spare this world if they hand over the sword. Lina would rather go down fighting than sentence another world to the fate this one would have escaped, and surprisingly, Filia joins our side of the chess board. I smirk a little; her Superior Elder isn’t happy about that. I pop out to applaud her, and the older dragon about has a fit. The slightest show of support further alienates her from her elders, but I’m not here for that. Not really. Not with the Chaos Dragon’s abomination offspring poised on part of the temple, watching. My little friends realize that the chessboard has three sides just as Alumace launches a purely physical attack. The Supreme Elder keeps his dragonkin out of my way – a wise move, because I’d sacrifice whole countries to protect Lina. Abomination-Knight attacks my Queen; Knight blocks Knight. Lina leaves me to my job and focuses with the others on Alumace. I might have worried about them, but he’s limiting himself to physical attacks and defensive magic only. It’s a stalemate, and I have my hands full with the wretched half-mazoku who should have been dealt with years ago. It’s almost no contest; he’s not good enough on the astral plane to really be a threat, but I can’t get in close enough or deep enough to rip out the seed of power Alumace gave him. Both fights continue fruitlessly for a while, and then I feel the words of the Ragna Blade being spoken. My domination of the fight slips as I split my attention between Valgaav and Lina; the double-bladed sword manages to withstand the Nightmare blade, but Lina succeeds in getting a hit in before the power of the spell is too much for her and she releases it.

The panic of his Queen overwhelms the abomination-Knight, and he invokes the power of his natural form – the Ancient Dragon. Filia’s superior shamelessly explains that the dragonkin slaughtered them all long ago, but my mind isn’t on that. Valgaav is focused on one thing, and the two halves of his aura aren’t fighting each other. He knocks me out of the way and strikes his own Queen, doing more damage than the Ragna Blade did, and takes the double-bladed sword. This is what the Golden Lord was trying to show me when Lina summoned Her and She obliterated Lord Hellmaster – dragonkin and mazoku working together are a hundred times more powerful than either of them alone. She wouldn’t have made things this way unless She had intended for the two races to work together. My Lord Beastmaster was right, but it doesn’t help us. Not when the thing which is both dragon and mazoku has armed itself with the equal to the Sword of Light and is threatening Lina. Luckily, his hatred quite overwhelms his dragon part, and the mazoku aura attacks the dragon body. A bit of bluffing on my part, and he retreats. Alumace has retreated, as well, and very possibly for the same reason.

Well, this hasn’t been a disaster after all. The dragonkin accept Lina to be their Queen, and Filia joins our side of the board. In effect, the dragonkin are bowing out of the game. They only had two pieces, and My Lord Beastmaster has control over both of them now. On top of that, we’ve learned quite a bit about the other side of the board. Perhaps, with Valgaav wounded, I can sneak around and have a chat with the other Queen…