Chapter 88 - Envoy

  While he was mostly okay physically, mentally he was exhausted; he’d gone from fighting the Tree monster to being mind fucked by a house straight into another fight with two Others. He was in desperate need of a rest, and now he had to deal with whatever this ended up being before having to rush off and save Sparksford… Again! It was definitely a dick move to use a taboo word and then run away, but he had truly fucked up by repeating the word. From the look Mayry was giving him, he knew he was going to be in deep shit if they survived this. He didn’t blame her; he hadn’t been thinking and it had just come out.

  He downed a mana potion and, on a whim, tried a health potion too; no notifications had popped up, meaning his resilience stat had finally gotten high enough that it counteracted the Toxic effect he usually got from drinking too many potions one after the other. That was one plus, at least. He threw a still-angry Mayry a health potion and readied himself for whatever was coming. He was still mentally drained, but at least now he physically felt up for a fight.

  He had no idea what the word being said twice would mean. Would two bad things happen, or would one really bad thing happen? Either way, he swore to himself that he was going to kill Rhott if he ever saw him again.

  The idea of invoking a taboo as a way of getting revenge when a fight wasn’t going your way was such a foreign concept, but he had to admit it was effective. He was pretty surprised he hadn’t encountered it more often. Each time the word was said, the spell keeping the gods asleep weakened ever so slightly, hence why Chaos had made the word taboo and bad things happened. He had no idea how many sapient species this world had, but it made him wonder how many times more it would take for the spell to wear off completely.

  The fact that nothing was happening should have given him hope, but he knew by now that he didn’t have the best of luck in these sorts of things. Something was going to happen, and it was going to suck

  Seemingly out of nowhere, the night sky was filled with stormy clouds, thunder and lightning echoed high above them. The suddenness of it all was unnerving, but it was clear this was no natural storm this was the result of reality itself being tampered with.

  He glanced at Mayry, who had just caught the potion he’d thrown her. She downed it quickly but didn’t take her eyes off the darkening sky for a second.

  The noise around them was deafening: the sound of the wind, the thunder and the torrential rain made it impossible for them to say anything to each other.

  All at once, it stopped.

  The dark clouds remained, but everything was silent. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, the part that could feel optimistic wondered if that storm was all that was going to happen.

  The ground shook violently under them, and the tiny bit of hope he had had faded.

  They were both knocked off their feet as the ground before them began to split open. Two colossal black claws were tore the ground apart. Grass, stone, and dirt flew in all directions; the landscape itself was warping under the sheer force of the creature's emergence. A deep, guttural growl rumbled through the air, followed by the sight of another set of claws gripping the edges of the chasm. A dragon’s head emerged from the depths; Its eyes glowed with literal flames, its skull bore a circle of horns that resembled a crown of bone. The black dragon pulled itself from the hole in the world and looked at them with an unreadable expression.

  It stretched out its gigantic body, and the two of them were taken aback by just how big the creature was; its wingspan alone had to be bigger and wider than a semi-truck was long. It had to be a hundred times bigger than Nina’s biggest form. Mason was knocked out of his awe as the dragon bellowed out words so loudly that it took them several seconds to understand. “I am Envoy. I have been awakened from my rest in the molten core of this world. Speak or burn.”

  As Envoy spoke, Mason took the chance to use Identity on it; what he read scared him more than the monster itself did.

  Envoy - Dark Dragon - great servant of the gods - Level 112

  Envoy was the only Dragon ever to serve the gods of this world directly; most refused to acknowledge them in favour of their own older gods. Envoy disappeared soon after the fall of the gods, thought to have fallen himself. It was never clear which side he served. His return is not a good sign of what is to come.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He was pushing his brain as hard as he could. He had no idea where even to begin fighting something so huge. He needed to be careful not to use the taboo word again, but the description of the dragon had given him an idea. He dropped to his knees, “Envoy,” he shouted, “We are but humble servants of the divine,” He withdrew Nightblade slowly so as to ensure the dragon did not perceive it as a threat and held the blade up. “I wield Death’s own blade. It was not us who summoned you, but we welcome you back to the surface nevertheless.” Mayry gave him an unsure look, but she followed his lead and dropped to her knees.

  There was a long silence, and then Evoy lowered his head and blew a cloud of black smoke at them. “You claim to serve Death?” he asked.

  “We do,” Mason replied, relieved that his lie had worked.

  His eyes narrowed, “Then why do I sense the traitor in you both?”

  Traitor? The only thing he could imagine Enoy was referring to was the sliver of Chaos he had in him and the fact that Chaos was Mayry’s father. He replied quickly, using as much of the truth as he could, not wanting to be caugh in a lie. “When Chaos fell, he shattered into many pieces; we mortals have been harnessing those pieces to access a small part of his former power.” He left out that there were also peices of Chaos that were around that were still conscious.

  Evoy seemed to consider this. “I do sense small pieces of chaos all around us.” A pulse of Magic emanated from the dragon, almost knocking the two humans off of their feet again. “If what you say is true, then why are the divine still in their slumber?”

  Mason hesitated, and Mayry jumped in, “They have begun to awaken, but the process is a slow one. We need only wait for them to rise fully, and then we will be reunited with the great ones?” The pitch of her voice went up as she finished her sentence, making it seem more like a question than she had intended.

  “Very well, I must return to my long neglected hoard; I have many tomes and grimoires that may have ways to speed up their rise. You two will accompany me.” The dragon’s voice had lowered to a more reasonable volume now that it believed them to be allies.

  “While seeing a hoard belonging to such a great dragon would be wonderous, we are already on a quest of our own,” Mayry replied.

  Mason added quickly, “Yes, Death himself appeared to us in a dream and told us to seek out a powerful ally.”

  “An ally more powerful than I!?” The dragon roared, “Who is it you seek that dare claim to surpass me?!”

  His mind went completely blank, and as the dragon continued to stare at him, the only name that came to him was “Santa!” He regretted it the moment he said it but doubled down and added, “A powerful Fae wizard who commands an army of…Elves! He is said to be able to circle the entire world in one night.”

  “I have not heard of this Santa. Leave now, find this Santa and bring him to me, If he truly is as powerful as you say, then perhaps he will be able to assist me in my research.” When neither of them moved, Envoy shouted, “GO!”

  They scrambled away, as fast as they could. Turning their back to the massive dragon wasn’t ideal and they both felt as if they were going to be burnt to a crisp any second but the heat never came.

  ***

  “Well, I think that went pretty well, actually,” Mason said when they were far away enough from the dragon that he didn’t think it would overhear them. If nothing else, they were alive, Rhott’s hail Mary hadn’t worked which meant they had one. Though the fact the two Others had gotten away irked him to no end, he had been looking forward to getting a few new abilities from killing them, the added Essence would have been nice too.

  “Are you insane?” Mayry said looking at him incredulously. “This was one of the absolute worst-case scenarios! If it had just been a monster, we could have killed it! But no! Now a servant of the,” She pointed upwards. “Is back, and there is no telling what kind of damage it is going to do! And if it realises we’ve lied to it, and it ever finds us again, we are going to be so screwed. Did you see the size of that thing?! There are islands that aren’t as big as that! If that was just one of their servants, how are you ever going to be able to fight one of them?!” She started breathing heavily, and her words were coming faster and faster. “And we really need to get to Sparksford, Mason; what if we’re too late?!”

  Mason pulled her into a hug, she pushed back, “There is no time for hugs Mason! We need to get to Sparksford right now! I’m freaking out, we need to go!” She had started hyperventilating, her breaths coming faster and faster.

  Mason, arms on her shoulders lowered his head and looked her in the eye. “Mayry, you’re having a panic attack. Try and breathe, okay? Take deep, slow breaths. I need you to listen to me. Can you tell me three things you can see around here?”

  She looked back at him, and started trying to take deep breaths, “Erm, I see trees, rocks, and you?”

  “Okay, great. Now, can you tell me three things you hear?” he asked her softly.

  As a teen he had had friends who struggled with anxiety and had been on the recieving end of panic attacks, most of the time some variation of this had helped calm them down.

  “I hear the wind, a bird and- wait, what’s the point of this?” She asked him, confused.

  He smiled at her, “It’s a thing from my world, a way to snap someone out of a panic attack. You get them to name three things they see, three things they hear and then get them to move three parts of their body.”

  “That stupid.” She scoffed at him.

  He laughed and asked her, “Well, are you feeling better?”

  “I mean, yeah, I am… but it’s still stupid.”