Breath fogged up Grie Khuda’Mundi’s HUD inside his helmet. The dark red of the display provided just enough light that he could see a faint reflection of his face on the heavy ceramic of the visor. Designed to be used in the deepest regions of space or in the hottest areas in a TMDS driver, his armor kept him a comfortable temperature even as the blizzard persisted all around him. The extra-visible filtering in the cameras mounted on his helmet allowed him to maintain his 360 degree visibility even in such conditions as these, which allowed him to see the escaped ice wyrm in front of him.
Commonly known as the King of the Rime, the ice wyrm was a beast on par with the drig in its native environment, which just happened to be conditions such as those surrounding it right now. Normally, the ice wyrms were kept in a well-heated enclosure in a sedated state, since they had extremely slow metabolisms and wouldn’t atrophy as quickly as other animals, making it an ideal fresh food supply on long journeys through space. While its meat was a bit tough and gamey, a single ice wyrm could feed hundreds of men for a week, so it was a common meat on ultracarriers.
Where its presence was particularly less common, however, was on the ice and snow-covered tundra of Antarctica. Here, the ice wyrm would be a predator unsurpassed. And since ice wyrms were capable of reproduction by parthenogenesis, this single ice wyrm escaping into the wild could turn into a very big problem, completely displacing the natural balance of Antarctica’s ecosystem. Even in the warmer environment of the deep sea, it would be more than a match for any creature that would dare challenge it.
Which brought about why Grie was quietly approaching the ice wyrm to kill it before it had the chance to reproduce. As a Dragon Rider, he was the type to be assigned tasks dangerous as this was. He had been tracking the majestic beast for the past several hours, but now, it was time to attack. Grie slowly reached down to his leg, where he kept his assault knives. Today, they would be little more than a source of surprise since they would barley be able to penetrate the tough leather surrounding the wyrm’s thick flesh. He had to be very careful with the timing. Ice wyrms were typically lured into an area where they were heated and then beheaded with a hydraulic guillotine. He only had his knives and swords, along with a repeater he had brought along, just in case.
As he slowly pulled the knives from their sheathes, he had to remind himself just how sensitive the hearing of the ice wyrm was. Since it had long ago adapted to the dark of the Nivlahimi seas and caverns, the ice wyrm had no eyes, but its watertight ears were capable of picking up even the tiniest noises, and the beast could pick up a scent from distances exceeding the lengths of continents. Grie’s only advantages over this beast would be his Drigarmr, what little surprise he could muster together, and the fact that the ice wyrm hadn’t eaten in several cycles, leaving it thoroughly weakened but still powerful enough to tear through the hide of a whale with a nonchalant swipe.
Grie raised his arm behind him, aiming intently at the massive beast before him. Ice wyrms had taken out Valkyries who hadn’t been paying close enough attention. He loosed the first knife, the second aligned for aim before the first had even reached the beast. By the time the ice wyrm had picked up the sound of the blade specifically designed not to produce noise, it was already within arm’s reach of the beast. When the beast turned toward the approaching second blade, Grie could see that the knife was only protruding by about a hand’s width. That was good. It meant the wyrm wasn’t fully mature, leaving its hide slightly less toughened than the older wyrm’s nigh-impenetrable leather.
The second blade was much more fortunately placed than its predecessor, its tang fully penetrating into the softer flesh of the ice wyrm’s throat. The beast reared back onto its hind legs, its outstretched claws a silent reminder of just how quickly Grie could be dead if he missed the timing. He gritted his own teeth and leaped forward, his arms almost automatically drawing his swords. He spun out of the way of the wyrm’s swiping claw just in time to avoid a swift death.
Unfortunately, the ice wyrm had more than one form of attack. Just as Grie landed, sliding to a stop and prepping for another leap, the wyrm’s left tail-fin collided with his side, loosening his grip and toppling him in the other direction. Grie tumbled to a halt just in time to use his rattled arms to push himself directly up and out of the way of the wyrm’s second claw-swipe. He pulled himself into a flip, landing only moments after the claw had passed. He gripped his swords more tightly and pressed the backs of the blades against his sides as he jumped into another spin.
Just as he had predicted, the wyrm’s right tail-fin had found its way to him. This time, though, he was ready. His blades were positioned precisely where the fin struck, and the ice wyrm pressed into its own injury, cutting the end of its tail off entirely. Using his feet to regain a sense of balance upon landing several arms’ lengths away from his intended destination, Grie brought the blades forward and lunged toward the pained beast’s torso.
This time, Grie didn’t have time to spin out of the way of the wyrm’s attack. Just as he finished pressing his swords into the beast’s chest, the heat of a rather large paw came sweeping into Grie’s view. Fortunately, the wyrm had been painfully aware of how close Grie was to its own flesh, so it had retracted its claws to get closer.
Grie had only been knocked aside, but as he rolled across the snow-covered ice, he remembered that he no longer had his swords. He drew the repeater from its holster and aimed for the beast’s nostrils. Just as he suspected, the wyrm’s nostrils were flarin
g as the beast roared in fury. He fired with an adrenaline-driven precision he had learned to summon in his training as a Dragon Rider. The hot bolt seared the air through which it passed as it journeyed toward the beast, leaving a trail of superheated air behind it hot enough to light up, creating the appearance of a beam of light passing from Grie’s repeater into the beast’s skull.
Its brains properly scrambled, the ice wyrm fell to the ground, dead, its massive chest creating a plume of snow upon impact. Grie holstered his repeater, removed the blades from the ice wyrm’s flesh, and activated the signal marking the completion of his mission. Once he saw in his display that the signal had been received, he gave in to the pain of his shattered bones and slumped to the ground against the wyrm’s warm side. He lost consciousness quickly due to the internal blood loss now taking place all across his battered body.
“And what, pray tell,” said Larry, “should I know at this point, Grie?” He placed his deck on the table between them.
“Well,” Grie replied rather plainly, “I imagine you’ve probably figured out that Baker was planning to take out New Qzcivden during this tournament. Carden’s dead, by the way.” Grie drew his hand in time with Larry as the latter absorbed the impact of Grie’s final comment.
“So who registered for him?” Larry placed his first card face-down, leaving him open to place another card face-up or end his turn. A swipe of his hand indicated that he was finished.
“That would be a man by the name of Gordon.” Grie placed a face-down card of his own before playing the loptr card, a play indicative of his experience. Larry raised his brow slightly at this before drawing a card and immediately placing it face-down. “Apparently, Gordon is just meant to draw suspicion away from Carden’s absence.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Larry said, playing the rime card face-up, negating the advantage of the loptr. “Carden came in third place last year. It’d be suspicious if he didn’t show up. It’s too bad about his death, though. He was a good player.”
Grie drew his next card, passing his turn. “Anyway, we think there’s a good possibility someone plans to bomb the city, so we’ve got everybody acting like nothing’s wrong at all while putting extra personnel in place all over the city in civilian gear.”
“We?” Larry questioned the word’s use as he drew his own card, placing another in his hand face-down. The door opposite the one through which the men had entered opened, and Larry dropped all pretenses along with his cards and stood to face the man he knew as Drake Kendrick but was known to the world as Drigondii Sheii’Cronell. “Drake! What are you doing here?”
Drigondii smiled at his old friend sadly. “It’s not Drake anymore, Lar. You know that. I’m here to make sure nothing happens. I can feel the bombs, and I’ve sent Terira to take care of them. You can call off your team. Nobody’s sinking my new Atlantis.” Larry swallowed, and he fought back tears as he realized that Drake’s eyes were burning a bright red. He just nodded silently and put up his deck, placing his helmet back over its seal.
Before opening the door that would enable communication once more, Larry turned the visor of his helmet to Drigondii. “What would your dad say to you today, Drake? Could he have survived this much heartbreak?”
Silence followed for a few secconds, and then, “You know it has to be done this way, Lar. If I did this any other way, we wouldn’t be able to do all of what must be done. We need their attention. But no, I don’t think he could have, and for that, I am sorry. Goodbye, Larry.”
“Goodbye, old friend.” With that, Larry opened the door and began to speak orders into his helmet. He hoped in those moments that Drake was still in there somewhere, and that Drigondii was right. He looked up and prayed. When would they come? How much longer would the wound have to fester before they came to clean it?