Dragon Conjurer 8, page 9
“What is it, Thompson?” Dr. Hastings hissed, and as a frown of frustration formed between her blonde eyebrows, the man withered slightly under her gaze.
“We need your expertise on something,” Thompson said hesitantly. “I’m sorry, but it’s urgent, and we need your help.”
“I will be right there,” Dr. Hastings sighed, and she placed her glasses carefully on the bridge of her nose. “Please, do knock next time, Thompson. It is incredibly rude to burst into a private room like that, Mr. Cooper and I could have been having a confidential conversation or conducting a sensitive experiment that you may have ruined with the fluorescent lighting from the hallway.”
“Why would you be conducting an experiment in the confere--” Thompson began to ask, but he stopped short at the withering look Dr. Hastings gave him, and his tone became painfully contrite. “Yes, ma’am. I’m really sorry, it won’t happen again.”
Thompson lowered his head and ducked out of the room like a scolded child, and Dr. Hastings turned back to me.
“Terribly sorry about that, Mr. Cooper.” Dr. Hastings removed her glasses and wiped them clean with a cloth from her pocket. Then she perched them back on her face, and she walked over to me and stopped close enough that the tips of her breasts brushed lightly against the front of my shirt. “I rather enjoyed our time together.”
“So did I,” I murmured, and I took one last chance to caress my palms over the perfect curve of her ass before I gave her one more good slap for the road.
“Mmm.” Dr. Hastings bit her lip, and then she walked over and opened the door. “Enjoy the rest of your day, Mr. Cooper. Your second EEG will, unfortunately, have to wait for another time.”
I watched Dr. Hastings as she hurried away, took a moment to make sure my clothes were decently straight, and smoothed my hair down. Then I left the conference room and walked back to the elevator. I didn’t run into anyone else all the way up to the sixth floor or in the hall on my way to the suite.
I could hear the sound of my teammates’ voices chatting comfortably from inside the common room, and when I opened the door, they were all seated around the TV. Zahra was snuggled close into Nick’s side, and Elisabeth sat on the other side of the couch. Steffi and Ronin sat in the various armchairs on either side of the seating area, and Nala sat crisscross at the coffee table. Some action movie played quietly on the TV, but it didn’t seem like anyone was paying attention to it, and I noticed that Katie and Alice were absent from the room.
“Hey,” I said casually as I closed the door behind me and walked toward the kitchen.
“Hey, cutie,” Steffi said brightly.
“What are you up to?” I asked as I opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water.
“Just hanging out,” Nala said idly. My curly-haired girl was in the middle of applying an even coat of polish to her nails. “I don’t know about this. It seems like a waste of time.”
“Not if you use the right top coat,” Steffi said. “Gel nail polish holds way better than normal polish does.”
I grabbed a bag of beef jerky and settled into the empty armchair beside Ronin as I leaned in to get a better look. My curly-haired girl was fully focused on carefully painting the shiny gray polish on her nails, and when she readjusted her hand to move onto the next finger, the polish shone with a holographic finish.
“What are you girls up to?” I asked. “I like that rainbow effect.”
“Thanks.” Nala smiled up at me. “I used to paint my nails all the time, but I sort of stopped doing it when I came to the Academy. Elisabeth suggested I try it again since I rarely touch anything with my hands during a mission.”
“I do not believe you are in danger of chipping the polish,” Elisabeth said with an exasperated smile.
“Steffi is also right about the nature of gel polish,” Ronin pointed out. “It has much more structural integrity than other polishes.”
“I’m just glad Katie lent us the supplies,” Nala said as she bent her head back over her hand. “No way would I have even bothered if I had to buy one of these funny lights.”
“Where did Katie and Alice go?” I asked.
“They had some studying to finish up,” Zahra replied.
“I feel like we haven’t gone to a single class in weeks,” Steffi said, and a guilty smile spread across her face.
“That’s because we’ve been on, like, non-stop missions,” Nick chortled. “Both the monster and the diplomatic variety. We don’t have time for classes.”
“Or the energy,” Elisabeth mused.
“So how was your meeting with Dr. Hastings?” Nick asked, and even though his tone of voice was normal and casual, there was a touch of a smirk on his face.
“Interesting,” I said in a casual tone, and I threw a sly glance at Nick. “She said my DNA seems to have reached a peak in the mutations.”
“Wait, what?” Zahra asked, and her eyes were wide with surprise. “Your DNA is mutating?”
“Oh, yeah,” I chuckled. “I forgot you didn’t know about that.”
Zahra just stared at me with an intensely puzzled expression.
“Dr. Hastings said Dylan’s dragons are affecting him down on a molecular level,” Ronin explained concisely. “This is also why he can understand many sentient monsters.”
“I need to process this,” Zahra chuckled. “Don’t wait for my brain, I’ll catch up.”
“We can go over it more later, babe,” Nick murmured quietly to his girlfriend.
“Thanks,” Zahra whispered back.
“So your DNA is stabilizing?” Elisabeth prompted me to continue.
“Yes, at least that’s what it seems like,” I said. “Dr. Hastings said the mutations in my genetic code after I conjured Griff were a lot less drastic than any of the other changes from my other dragons.”
“Soooo, no cool horns or scales or anything like that?” Nick asked with a little pout.
“Dude, that’s what I asked,” I laughed. “No, I guess not. I think the biggest impact the mutations have had is the whole ‘being able to understand monsters’ thing.”
“I, for one,” Steffi spoke up, “am very glad that your handsome face is going to remain exactly as handsome as it is.”
“I gotta agree with Steff,” Nala laughed.
“You might look good with a cool scar, though,” Ronin said thoughtfully.
“What?” I chuckled.
“Oh, you know.” Elisabeth nodded in agreement, and she drew an invisible line over the tail end of her left eyebrow. “Just a little slash here.”
“It would give you a ‘don’t fuck with me’ kind of look,” Steffi giggled.
“In all seriousness,” Nick mused, “you do have the kind of face that could pull off a badass scar.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Maybe you ladies will get lucky, and I’ll get just a little bit maimed on a mission one day.”
“That’s all we can ask for,” Steffi giggled, and she smiled sweetly at me.
“Anyway,” I chuckled, “Dr. Hastings said the mutations are probably about done now, and I shouldn’t expect any more. I think she’ll probably continue to take a blood sample occasionally, though, and probably after any new dragons, just to keep an eye on it.”
“That sounds very reasonable,” Ronin said.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “She also said she wanted to do another EEG, but some other scientist came and got her before we could talk about that more.”
“That’s…” Nick smirked at me as he searched for an appropriate word, “interesting.”
“We were pretty much done,” I said, and then I caught myself and casually added, “with our conversation.”
I glanced inconspicuously at my ladies to see if they’d caught anything weird about the exchange between Nick and me, but it didn’t seem like they’d noticed anything.
“What does she think she’ll find on another EEG?” Nala wondered aloud.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, and I thought back to a conversation we’d had several days before when I’d told Dr. Hastings about all the nightmares I’d been having. “I wonder if Dr. Hastings will want to do one of those sleep EEG tests.”
“To look into your brain activity during your nightmares?” Elisabeth asked, and a touch of concern laced between her eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Ever since Dr. Hastings and I found those huge monsters that we thought might be The Great Scaled One, my sleep has been just… shit.”
“Wait!” Steffi held up both of her hands.
“What?” Nala gasped at the same time.
“What monsters?” Ronin asked.
“Uh…” I fumbled for a second. “I didn’t tell you guys about this?”
“No.” Everyone but Zahra said in perfect unison, and there was a wide variety of looks from mock-offense on Nick’s face, to worry and concern on my ladies’ faces.
My mind raced over the last two weeks, and I realized I’d tried to come up with a good way to share the information with my girlfriends that wouldn’t drown them in the same anxiety I’d been swimming in. I kept putting it off and thinking that, eventually, I would somehow come up with a good way to tell them, but I guess I just pushed the thought process so far into the back of my mind that I forgot I hadn’t told them about it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I made a point to make sincere eye contact with each of my girls, and even with Nick, but he just waved away my apology. “I didn’t want to worry any of you.”
“Well, too late,” Steffi said, and her voice was full of love. Then she looked quickly at Nala, Ronin, and Elisabeth. “I don’t know about you guys, but I tend to worry about you on a regular basis.”
“Precisely,” Ronin agreed emphatically. “I prefer to know exactly what it is I should be worried about, in order to direct my anxiety to the appropriate places.”
“What she said,” Nala said, and she cocked her head in Ronin’s direction.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I said again. “You’re right, I would want to know what was going on with all of you, especially when it’s the bad stuff.”
“So tell us about the possible Great Scaled One suspects,” Steffi suggested.
“How long did it take to go through all of AIMM’s and MAJK’s databases?” Nick said with a grimace.
“Actually,” I began. “AMIE has given us access to their systems, too, so Dr. Hastings and I had three whole archives to dig through. It took us probably a total of like eight or nine hours, but we did it in three chunks, so it wasn’t that bad.”
“Psh,” Zahra scoffed. “That’s just a good night of studying for any true Egyptian student.”
“Right?” I laughed. “So we found three pretty decent suspects.”
“That’s all?” Nala asked with wide eyes. “In all three databases, you were able to narrow it down that much? Wow.”
“Well, His title does kind of give a lot of detail as to what you’d be looking for,” Nick mused. “I mean, ‘Great Scaled One.’ It’s gonna have scales, and it’s gonna be big.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” I said. “And Dr. Hastings and I also cut out anything that lived less than a hundred years, so we had a really decent set of details to use as our search parameters.”
“That makes sense,” Steffi agreed. “One of the monsters did say He’d been alive for hundreds of years, right?”
“The Aigamuxa.” I nodded. “It said ‘for centuries He has planned’ so, yeah, that was a pretty decent piece of data for our search.”
“The suspense is killing me,” Nala groaned, and then she perked up and stared at me like an excited puppy. “What are your suspects?”
“Well, the first one is a god of water,” I started. “It’s from a legend from south-central Chile. It’s basically a huge water snake, and according to the legend, it’s the supreme ruler of the sea and sea-dwelling creatures.”
“That sounds like it could fit,” Elisabeth said thoughtfully. “What else did you learn about this creature?”
“Dr. Hastings thought it was especially interesting that Coi Coi-Vilu is often referred to as female instead of male,” I said with a shrug. “I didn’t think that was a particularly important detail, but she commented on it.”
“I thought The Great Scaled One was male?” Ronin asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “All the other monsters that have ever mentioned The Great Scaled One have referred to Him as a male creature. I don’t see any reason not to believe that.”
“So, what was the next potential suspect?” Steffi asked.
“The Master Stoor Worm,” I said, and without even meaning to, a ripple of ominous foreboding colored my tone.
“Well…” Zahra murmured. “That sounds… horrifying.”
“You should have seen the painting in the file,” I sighed.
“What does this thing look like?” Nala asked, and her voice trembled slightly.
“It was a lot more like a ginormous snake than a worm,” I said, and I moved my hands out from my temples. “It had huge fucking horns that spread out from its head like rhinoceros horn antlers, and a flat snout like a snapping turtle, but with rows of teeth that looked as long as I am tall.”
Everyone looked back at me with horror painted clear on their faces, and Elisabeth had clasped a hand over her mouth with terror.
“That’s terrifying,” Steffi breathed.
“That’s not even the best part,” I sighed. “The file said a Master Stoor Worm has never been measured, but that they’re somewhere between a half and two kilometers long.”
“How long is that?” Nick asked, and I could see the gears turning in his head as he realized just how long that could possibly be. “Like in… miles?”
“Between one-third of a mile and a mile and a quarter,” Zahra answered. “Not that this is exactly small or anything. In fact, that’s enormous.”
“I can’t even imagine a monster that is as long as a kilometer.” Ronin lowered her head into her hands and took a deep breath. Then she peeked back up at me over the ends of her fingers. “How would you even fight something like that?”
“I haven’t really allowed myself to think about it much,” I admitted. “I kind of hope the Master Stoor Worm is one of those legends that’s never actually seen. Maybe they’ve died out, and it really is just a legend now.”
“I wouldn’t count on that, Dylan,” Steffi said sorrowfully. “You always tell us we need to be prepared for anything, and that includes The Great Scaled One being this astronomically large worm thing.”
“Steffi’s right,” Nala sighed. “We should try and come up with some kind of plan for each of these suspects. You said you and Dr. Hastings found three suspects…”
“Do we want to hear about the third one?” Elisabeth asked, and there was a slight tremor in her voice.
“No sense in stopping now,” Steffi said, and she tucked her legs up in front of herself. “Tell us about the last suspect, Dyl.”
“Azhi Dahaka,” I said, and I let the name linger in the air for a few seconds longer before I continued, “is a three-headed dragon.”
“Excuse me?” Nala asked incredulously, and her dark brown eyebrows rose so high that they nearly disappeared into her hair.
“Please, please, please!” Nick said with increasing excitement. “Tell me this thing is blue?!”
“Um…” I cocked an eyebrow at my best friend. “No? It was red in the painting.”
“Aw, man,” Nick pouted. “So close to a totally perfect Kaiba, Blue-Eyes White Dragon reference.”
“Oh, that would have been so good,” Zahra giggled. “Except if it was the three-headed version of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, it would have been the blue-eyes ultimate dragon.”
“Ugh, excellent point, babe.” Nick grinned at his girlfriend. “God, you’re so perfect.”
“I’m sorry, a what?” Elisabeth asked with a very confused look on her face.
“Yu-gi-oh,” Ronin explained dryly. “It was a card-playing game and a television show that began in the late nineties. It was similar to Pokémon, but not nearly as popular. Phoenix was a big fan of the show, and of Kaiba.”
“Of course, he was,” Nick said proudly. “My guy has good taste.”
“Anyway…” Steffi laughed. “Back to Azhi… what did you say it was?”
“Azhi Dahaka,” I said. “Yeah, it’s a legend from ancient Persia. Basically, a demon was trying to destroy all goodness in the world and replace it with chaos, and in order to do that, he created the fearsome beast, Azhi Dahaka. Eventually, a brave human man came forward and was like ‘naw, this has got to stop,’ and he decided to do something about the monster. The hero wanted to kill Azhi Dahaka, but he couldn’t because apparently, this monster has the ability to immediately sense threats, and killing it would release thousands of demons out into the world.”
“Not exactly something a good hero would do,” Steffi mused. “So what did this brave man do instead?”
“Hold on a second.” Nala narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously. “Did you just casually throw in the fact that this Dahaka monster can sense threats? What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I admitted. “The file just said Azhi Dahaka is instantly aware of any kind of threat.”
“Fucking shit,” Nick breathed. “I really fucking hope this Azhi dude isn’t our Great Scaled One.”
“Me, too,” Steffi said, and she wrapped her arms around her knees. “How would we even go about fighting something that could know our every move before we even made them?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed.
“We can freak out about how to fight this thing later,” Zahra urged. “You still haven’t told us what the hero did.”
“Oh, right,” I chuckled. “Apparently, this guy imprisoned Azhi Dahaka in the bowels of Damavand Mountain, which is in modern-day Iran. I looked it up, it’s the highest peak in Iran, and the highest volcano in Asia.”
