Dragon Treasure by SJ Sanders

Chapter 30

The chapel was destroyed, pews thrown over and tapestries hung ragged from threads. The pilgrims perhaps in fleeing? Or the creatures now locked in the baths? There was no way to know. Even the glorious tapestry of Tarachna that had covered the gate of the Dragon’s Keep was torn, revealing the battered metal gate behind it. It still held, but just barely. Whatever had tried to get through had apparently given up before it had managed to break the last links keeping it together.

As Dorienna had said, the serpent creature no longer rested over the door, but Tania didn’t see any evidence of it inside the chapel itself. Despite the ruin everywhere, everything was silent, the terrible sounds coming from the bath muted by their distance.

Scanning the room, Tania’s gaze fell on a trio of elegant statues on an altar against one wall. The altar itself appeared to be little more than a large slab of stone that was hauled in and shaped, but she knew appearances could be deceiving, especially when it involved hidden doorways. The golden statues stood side by side, perfectly spaced on the table. If it had been daytime, light would have poured in from either of the windows flanking their left and right sides, bathing the golden statues in splendor.

Just behind them, a tapestry was draped, depicting the landscape of the mountain where the monastery sat. Old and weathered, it seemed to have been either made before the city was established there or in reference to that period. She wasn’t a specialist in ancient art, so the odds were favorable either way as far as she was concerned.

“All right, ladies,” she murmured, “let’s get you in position.”

The first two were easy enough. The statues to the right and left she turned to face the eastern and western windows, addressing Tarachna’s power over time and the seasons. Each statue clicked as if ticking positions on the hours of a clock until she had them in place where she wanted them. Clearly, they were indeed part of some mechanism, but the third statue in the center continued to remain a puzzle.

The third watches the unknown beyond.

By the gods, she hated riddles. Especially obscure ones made by clergy who had too much time on their hands and felt the need to create secret fucking rooms.

So what was the void? Tarachna existed beyond all things, according to legend. The veils were created by her to separate the worlds so they could thrive peacefully. The void rested beyond all of that, the place where she resided, created, and destroyed. She always looked toward the void because she and the void were considered much the same.

Tania risked a glance at a golem crouched on a nearby column. More humanoid in shape than many of the others, it seemed to grin at her, promising her a most painful, drawn out death. She took a deep breath and tore her eyes away from it.

When these things were expelled from the worlds, there had to have been powerful magic to do it. Did Tarachna ensure that they were leashed close to the void, keeping them contained lest someone be foolish enough to work against her will to draw them forth?

Biting her lip, she looked around helplessly, her gaze falling on little of use—worn books, upturned benches, beautifully painted icons—until her eyes were drawn to the tapestry once again. There was the valley blooming with life and the severe mountains. Just beyond them, the heavens seemed almost partitioned. Sunrise and sunset shared the heavens with the moon. A starry banner washed above them in the darkest royal blue. And there on the mountain, slightly off angle in the scene, the monastery in a rougher style than what it now possessed.

She blinked slowly. Gods resided in their temples. The unit of the domain and the temple of the god were one.

“The void,” she murmured.

Grabbing the center statue, she turned, the metallic clicks as it moved grating in her ears it until its stone eyes were at last level with the monastery. She jumped when a louder click of a lever being released echoed in the room, and a panel jutted open from the wall.

It was far darker than the room when Tania stepped inside. On the other side, there was no pit waiting but a long staircase that wound deep between two rock walls. She took the stairs cautiously. At first, she neither heard nor scented anything out of the ordinary. The same musky smells of catch places where few living things but rodents passed, lingered there.

But as the staircase dropped deeper, the putrid scent of death climbed into the stairwell. Then a few stairs more and she heard the screams and cries for help. They shook her and made bile rise from her stomach as she quickened her pace. But it was the dragon’s roar that had her taking the stairs two or three at a time, no longer caring whether she was silent or not.

Her mate sounded as if he were in pain and angry both, his fractured bellows crying out to her. They called to her and so she ran to him, but when she entered the room below—one that spread wider than any ballroom and taller than any cathedral—she skidded to a stop as a dragon prowled before her. Her heart hammering in her chest, she stayed in place, hiding in the shadows as he moved on, her mate barely recognizable in the savage male she saw before her.

His pale scales smeared with drying blood and his pupils blown out, taking up his entire eye, he looked like a true monster.

Her breath choking in despair, she watched him, his scales darkened with blood as he turned and rushed the group of women clinging to each other. They screamed again—no doubt the source of the cries she heard just seconds before—and scattered. His head swept down, his jaws wide to pluck off another woman as he had done repeatedly before from the gore that coated him. The woman shouted and evaded, her fingers slipping from the grip of another nun she ran with. Both women screamed and dodged, sacrificing their safety together for a chance to survive.

The dragon hissed, relishing in the chaos, the tip of his cock exposed beyond his sheath. A dewy drop of precum had gathered at its tip in his excitement, and Tania shuddered at the sight of it.

Dorienna was right. There was something wrong with him. This wasn’t Drathnor. This was not even the madness of her mate when he was lost to his mating frenzy as he was when they met. This was a creature hellbent on destruction, thirsting for the blood and pain that clearly aroused it and little more.

Her heart hurt watching him and so she turned away, her mind working fast. She had to figure out a way to get him away from those women before he killed them too. There was nothing she could do for those women who lay dead and torn apart, or those who lay a short distance away who were curiously burnt. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of charred flesh.

What happened there?

She tried to tune out her mate’s brassy bellow as she focused on the remains, her brow dipping low. Drathnor didn’t have fire.

Her mate bugled, drawing her attention and she watched as a small splash of precum jetted from the tip of his cock. Rather than fall onto the stones, however, the drops looked as though they were surrounded by light before being drawn through the air. She had fucked her mate enough to know that his cum certainly didn’t float or glow. Magic was affecting it. That meant someone was using this scene to steal it.

Crouching against the wall, she tried to shut out the frightened screams of the women as she focused on the direction the glowing drops were heading. The figure of a heavily robed man stood there, just watching everything. He had something in his hands, but she could not see exactly what it was from where she was at.

Cursing under her breath, Tania made her way closer, moving as swiftly and silently as possible. Her eyes were trained on him, but she tripped, scattering rocks when he turned in profile and she was able to see exactly who it was.

Jerard! In mage’s robes?

Dorienna’s ramblings suddenly became a lot clearer. He was the source of this horror, and she had just alerted him to her presence!

His head turned, and despite the clinging shadows where he stood, away from the torches lighting up the center of the room like a stage, his eyes glowed with the same unnatural glow hers took on in the dark.

Her arms constricted at her sides, and she was jerked off her feet with the movement of his staff as he drew her toward him with one hand and with the other collected the tiny drops into a glowing bowl in his hand. He shivered as they made contact and hissed between his teeth.

“Feed, nasgaths, the cast away children of the void, awaken, awaken again,” he rasped, his breath caressing the bowl.

The bowl flashed and his lips curved into a pleased smile before his eyes turned toward her, their silver glow surrounding the iris barely containing the vivid gleam within.

Her breath shuddered out of her. A tainted mage. A butcher. They claimed to follow the work of certain wizards of old, but everyone knew to stay away from them. And Jerard was one of them.

“My dear Tania, I see that you are not so easy to kill,” he murmured, his eyes caressing as they took her in.

She resisted shuddering, not wanting to give him the pleasure of any sort of visible reaction to him.

“It’s one of my least attractive characteristics, I’m told,” she replied, her voice cool as she met his eyes unflinchingly. “Usually by men who want to murder me.”

“Ah, yes. No doubt there is no shortage of those,” he observed, his grin widening.

She shrugged. Drathnor aside, she couldn’t really say that he was wrong. Most of her ex-lovers at one time or another sought to have her at the other end of their knife—usually after she retaliated when they knifed her in the back. Then she was the villain they wanted to see killed. His current murderous spree aside, her dragon definitely had one up on all previous romantic entanglements.

Her eyes hardened on the mage. “Enough bullshit. Release my mate from whatever you’re doing to him.”

Jerard gave her a keen smile. “I wish it was that easy, but he did refuse to do easy. In a way, he asked for this. Sadly, once I have set things in motion, there is nothing I can do to recover his mind. But I get what I want in the end,” he said, lifting the glowing bowl in a small salute.

Tania’s jaw tightened. “You have no right.”

His expression flattened, his eyes dead as he regarded her emotionlessly. “You are wrong. I am at liberty to do whatever is required to release the nasgaths and take my place in this world as Tarachna’s champion king. I will rule far from these mountains, and the nasgaths will extend my influence wide.”

“You’re insane! They are monsters! They won’t feel any allegiance or loyalty. They just destroy. Every creature you have released hasn’t come to your hand but is running around through this monastery killing people,” she snapped, advancing a step forward despite the burning constraints of the magic around her.

“Once the spell is complete, they will,” he argued, his voice suddenly containing a raspy note, a thread of something bordering on pleasure.

Then his head tilted back in ecstasy, and he moaned with pleasure as new glowing drops rose on the air. With a whisper, he left his staff suspended in air as he fisted his dick, the length of it pressing against his robe. He rubbed himself. Her eyebrows flew up. He was coming into close contact with the aphrodisiac qualities of a dragon’s precum. His breath hitched, and he rubbed himself harder as the drops gathered closer.

As the musky fragrance of the dewy pearls drew her in, she narrowed her eyes on the mage. She could feel the magical bindings loosening with his fluctuating focus. Gritting her teeth, she drove forward, taking one step at a time. His eyes snapped over to her, his face flushed and sweaty, and he twitched his hand toward his staff. It immediately brightened as a searing pain curled inside of her. As intense as it was, she didn’t have time to even scream before it flickered out. In his aroused state, he couldn’t maintain it and whatever other spells he had ongoing at the same time.

Her lips curved in a smirk despite the fact that his magic was still holding her.

“It’s a real bitch isn’t it?” she observed softly. “You don’t notice it at first, not until you’ve become so exposed that there is no coming back from the need that fills you.” She gave him a critical look and tsked. “You idiot. How many times did you draw it to you?”

His breath shuddered out of him as he gripped himself tighter.

She cocked her head curiously, the little movement that she could currently manage against the spell, as another thought occurred to her. “With you releasing sex pheromones over here like a freight train blowing steam… how is it that you’ve not attracted the attention of the dragon? I bet you might just smell good enough to eat in his current state—one you put him in,” she said. “I just wonder how long this is going to last before you break and beg him.”

Strands of brown hair escaped his intricate coiffure, dropping damp around his face as he shook his head, his body hunching as a soft whine left him. The hand holding the bowl trembled as the drops gathered to it, but he seemed unable to focus, to bring it up near his face and whisper his spell over it. In result, the drops just pooled together, shining brighter in the bowl.

“I will overcome this. The magic of my staff shields,” the mage hissed. “I will suffer what is necessary to collect as many drops as I can. But first,” his eyes flashed over to her, “I will finish what my puppet could not. I will see that you are dead and unable to be a thorn in my side for a moment longer!”

Tania gave him an answering grin. “What makes you think you have that ability?”

He snarled, his expression becoming feral as whatever masks he wore dropped completely away, revealing the chaos within him.

“My staff is a relic of the ages, the staff of a great wizard who first commanded the nasgaths. It has more than enough power to destroy some dragon’s bitch. You don’t have the whole sanctity to harm it.”

With what appeared to be considerable effort, he dragged his hand away from his prick and reached for his staff, his hand trembling. A boot kicked his hand away with enough force that Tania heard the crunch of bone. He screamed pitifully, and Tania’s grin widened.

“You mean to tell me that this stick here is the cause of all these problems?” a piqued feminine voice demanded. “She may not have the ability to destroy this fucker, but I do.”

Tania’s gaze snapped over in surprise. Of anyone she had expected to come to the rescue…

“Dorienna?”

Red hair flowing down her back, the nun stood over them, her habit torn, baring her arms and thighs. The exposed skin and material were stained with dark blood and splattered bits of tissue. She balanced an improvised ax on her shoulder made from the large blades that Tania recognized from the tail of the serpent nasgath bound to a pole. Numerous glyphs were cut up and down her arms, shining with magic. The woman gave her a quick smile and then focused, eyes narrowed on the staff.

“I couldn’t just stay there, waiting and scared. I won’t be scared any more. I will serve Tarachna and save these women if I can… but first, let me give you a hand here. Tarachna delviathia!” she shouted, her ax shimmering for a moment, pulsing with power as it came down on the staff.

“No!” Jerard screamed.

A shockwave recoiled, throwing Tania back off her feet as a spray of splintered wood flew in every direction. She lay there flat on the ground, her breath knocked out of her as she blinked at the ceiling of the underground room. Shaking her head to clear it, she rolled to her side and cast a grateful look at the nun, slowly getting to her own feet.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now give me a moment to attract lover boy’s attention there and get these women out of the monastery.”

Dorienna gave a sharp nod. “You got it.”

She ducked away, leaving Tania with the collapsed male shaking just feet from her. Distantly, she was aware that the screams had subsided to frantic cries and that Drathnor no longer bellowed. She wanted to look over and see what was going on to have caused the shift but didn’t dare. The percussive stomp of the dragon’s feet told her all that she needed to know—the dragon was still alive and mobile.

Staff or not, as mage, Jerard was still dangerous.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the mage dragged his head up. Despite the flush of need riding high in him, he pinned her with burning eyes.

“Fucking bitch!” he spat, his arm rising up.

Snarling, Tania stabbed up with her knife, burrowing the end into the wizard’s chest just as, with an earthshaking crash, Drathnor dropped in front of them. Blood-tinged spittle dribbling from Jerard’s mouth, he barely had time to look up in shock at the presence of the dragon when the head snapped down with a loud roar, snapping up the mage’s body whole.

Tania gawked at her mate as he tipped his head back, bolting Jerard down. It was pretty disgusting, but she could live with it as long as he thoroughly cleansed his mouth afterward. But if he could live with loving on her after spewing up some sewer beast, she wasn’t going to be a total nag about it.

Not that the particular incident wasn’t going to give her nightmares for a while. If she thought daddy was bad enough, that had been the next level of horrifying. She shook her head in irritation as she hoisted herself to her feet.

“Fuck, there goes my favorite dagger,” she grumbled, brushing her hands off.

She froze as the dragon’s dark eyes turned on her. His neck curled, and a loud growl rumbled from his chest as her heart skipped and her breath drew in raggedly.

“And apparently this is not going to be a case of evil magic staff broken breaking the spell so we can all live happily ever after,” she observed as she backed up a pace.

Drathnor, despite his impressive leaping ability demonstrated moments ago, puffed out his chest and bugled at her in warning.

She didn’t know if that meant stay or time to eat. All she knew was that there was no way in hell she was lying down dead there, especially not between a room full of women and the exit.

“Okay, honey, I’m going to move nice and slow. You can have me, but first we’re going to give all these nice ladies some space.”

His growl picked up as his eyes followed her, and Tania shot a glance at Dorienna. The nun, already gathering women around her, waved her arm.

“Go, go!” she shouted.

The dragon’s head twisted, giving Tania just the head start she needed as she spun around, racing full-speed toward the exit. The enraged bugle of her mate sounded behind her, but she increased her speed, taxing every limit of the enchantment, her arms and legs pumping. Grabbing the wall edge of the stairwell, she flung herself inside, the impact of Drathnor crashing into a wall behind her giving wings to her feet as she flew up the stairs as fast as she could until she burst out in the chapel. Feet skidding on the rugs, Tania hopped over benches as she tore through to the exit.

Though her lungs burned and her chest ached, she did not stop. She could feel the dragon right behind her. She heard the explosion of rock as the male, forgoing the stairs altogether burst up from the floor, splintering wood and tearing apart masonry in the process. Only the ghost of a glance back confirmed that the entrance with the stairs was still intact, but she gulped as the enraged dragon filled the entirety of the chapel just as she passed under the arch into the main hall.

Behind her she heard a nasgath’s shriek and a dragon’s bellow, and the sickening snap of something being caught out of the air. The shriek turned to a scream before it was silenced with a final crunch of bone. Shuddering, she made for the exit, not so much as looking behind her when she spilled out into the courtyard.

“Devouring women, mages, and now nasgaths, he is so fucking washing his mouth!” she spat out, her eyes searching for any sign of her cog mare.

Licking her lips, she gave the code, a shrill two-tone whistle that echoed off the surrounding stone.

Stone that buckled and crashed as Drathnor’s enormous guardian form broke through the entrance. That time, she couldn’t help but to look back—and she immediately wished she hadn’t. His mouth gaped wide as he chased after her, his wings flapping as he knocked away the rubble.

He was about to take to the air!

She wasn’t going to make it far enough. Straining her muscles, she ran harder, whistling the code again and again for her mare. However this ended, she would give the women as much space as she could.