Dungeons & Dragons - The Movie Read online

  DUNGEONS

  & DRAGONS

  THE MOVIE

  Neal Barrett Jr.

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  She woke up dying, woke from the cold eternal night, woke strangling on the dark and viscous bile, on the vile, odorous corruption that coursed through her veins, through the wings pressed tight against her sides, through her head and her heart, through her thick and scaly hide. The deadly fluids filled her throat, filled her lungs, spilled from razored jaws, coursed down her breast, bathed her talons and her claws.

  She ripped and she tore, thrashing frantically about, struggling through the fleshy shell that held her back. She had lived a thousand lives and died a thousand deaths. She knew this horror was the way of all her race, that she was born with a rage, cold, pure, and undiluted by the small, pitiful emotions of men and creatures of lesser kind.

  Blood was made to kill her. Rage kept her alive. If rage was too weak to conquer blood, then she would die. Thus it had ever been, and thus it would ever be. For only a dragon whose anger is afire could come into the world and live again….

  CHAPTER

  1

  In a place far below the deep and stony roots of the city, in a darkness darker than night, a thousand ancient tunnels, shafts, and murky passageways cut a tortured, twisted maze. Here lay the bowels of mighty Sumdall, greatest city of the Empire of Izmer. Most of these ways were long forgotten, like the trail of some massive, blind, and pallid worm. Many were clogged with the mud, silt, and secrets of centuries past—traitors, lovers, counts who laughed at kings, kings who drank a cup of poisoned wine, bits of offal, slops and mire, and over all the waste of some magician’s gross miscarried spell. Some of these forgotten ways carried sluggish waters through the depths of stone and out again, finally emptying into the river that crossed Oldtown below the city walls. Other tunnels led into the unknown dark, and where they went, none but those dark things that dwelled there knew, and no one from the world of light had been so foolish as to brave their depths in generations.

  In one small part of this subterranean dark, torches shed a pale, unhealthy light on the brackish water below. The water turned a waterwheel, a big, clumsy device built of wood and rusted iron, which, in turn, drove whining, grinding winches and crude metal gears. In the hollow cavern here, the noise of the machine was bone jarring, a high-pitched shriek that set the nerves on end.

  The man standing high above the waterway raised his fists and spent his rage on the workers down below.

  “Stop that sound!” he shouted. “I’ll have it stopped—now, or I’ll have your worthless heads for it!”

  The workers cringed and clutched at their skulls as the terrible pain of the spell turned their heads to molten lead. Quickly, they stumbled over the waterwheel with buckets of oil, swabs of heavy grease, rags, wedges, and wooden pegs, anything that came to mind, anything to avoid the wrath of the man again.

  Profion muttered under his breath. The noise didn’t stop. It never did, but it softened for a moment to a less annoying pitch. He hated—no, loathed—the miserable workers, the half-men he’d created with tiny brains and massive legs and arms. They were ugly and vulgar, and daily they tended to fall in the fast-moving rods and gears. Still, when they didn’t kill themselves, they managed to do a halfway decent job.

  “You won’t have to look at them after today,” said the man at his side, seeming to read his thoughts. “I’ll have them removed.”

  Profion showed the man a cutting smile. “Don’t be in such a hurry to perform your duties, Damodar. I shall let you know in good time.”

  “Of course,” Damodar said, lowering his eyes. “You must know, sire, I would never act without your word.”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t, dear friend.”

  Profion looked away, knowing the greed, the hatred in Damodar’s eyes, feeling the murder in the man’s heart.

  He was no longer interested in Damodar. His eyes, his every thought was on the sight below. At the heart of the strange device, a cylindrical rod somewhat longer than Profion’s forearm was spinning at breakneck speed. The foreman of the work crew, a human, glanced up at Profion. Profion nodded. The foreman shouted commands, and the machine began to howl, shrieking up to high-pitched whine. The spinning rod was now no more that a blur.

  Profion watched it, his eyes black as stone, his hands clutched tightly around the railing, every bone, every atom in his body vibrating with the intensity of his power, of his need.

  Behind him, Damodar waited. No expression crossed his features, but Profion knew his feelings well. Damodar’s eyes, his mouth, no part of his body would betray him. He had not gained his high position by letting a weakness such as emotion give him away.

  A stranger seeing the two together might think he had come upon two fearsome night creatures of the air, creatures with darkness in their hearts and black murder in their eyes. Indeed, both of the men were predators.

  Profion, the eagle, would, to fill his needs, tear at his kill without mercy in the sight of other men. His clothing mirrored his manner and his soul. He wore a blood-red cowl that swept like wings past his shoulders. Under that flowed a purple robe of spider silk cut into intricate patterns, squares, angles, and twists, a pattern near dizzying to the eyes for those who did not know what they meant. Finally, and perhaps most frightening of all, were the two mantles of runics that trailed from his chest to his knees. If anyone was fool enough to doubt the power of the most feared mage in the land, the runes would tell the tale.

  And Damodar? If Profion was an eagle, then Damodar, with his lean and angular face, his haughty manner and his quiet and deadly grace, was a predator of a different kind. Men like Profion, who sought power and honor for themselves, were very good at that. Damodar was a raptor who flies in shadow, in the dusk and in the dawn, a scavenger, cunning and sly, who feeds on the kill of his betters and has no heart for meeting those foes who might deign to strike back.

  Profion watched the spinning rod, his eyes bright with fascination at the energy, the force, locked in that rippling blur of motion. He waited for the moment and cursed the seconds that held him from his prize.

  Too long. It has been too long.

  Taking one deep breath and then another, he threw back his head and slowly raised his arms, the long magician’s robe filling with the rush of heated air from the humming, high undulation of the machine. His lips scarcely moved as he chanted a toneless spell, words nearly lost in the countless ages of time.

  Behind him, braced against the shadowy walls, soldiers of Damodar’s Crimson Brigade shifted uneasily and muttered among themselves. Without looking at them, Damodar moved his head a bare quarter inch. At once, every warrior there went silent as the dead.

  The spinning rod began to glow, pulsing like a living thing and shifting from one brilliant color to the next. Profion’s arms began to tremble. His hands began to shake. Dim auras of power danced like tiny veins of lightning about his fingers and his wrists. The lightning brightened and expanded to a nebula of energy, a swirling, angry mass of atoms set afire, a cloud of tiny stars.

  With a sudden, blinding flare, a jagged beam of blue light exploded from Profion’s fingers and struck the spinning rod. Profion shuddered, closed his eyes, and opened them again. The rod began to glow, throbbing first a thousand, then a million times a second, so fast it appeared to no longer have motion at all, but Profion felt every pulse like a hammering in his soul.

  Sweat darkened Profion’s brow, stinging the sunken hollows of his face.

  The rod, now bright and searing as a captured sun, rose slowly from its nest among the cogs, gears, and singing wires of Profion’s device. At once, t
he machine gave a final, clattering sigh and hummed down the scale to a stop.

  Profion stepped forward, and the rod dimmed to a pale red glow, the color of embers in a late evening fire. He stopped, hesitated an instant, then grasped the rod in his hand. The stunned, wide-eyed workers shrank back in shadow, nearly mad with fear.

  Profion smiled and let his hands run over the surface of the rod, a surface smoother than the rarest eastern silks, slick and polished as any glass.

  “At last, it’s done. It is done!”

  His words struck the cavern walls and came back.

  “It’s done…

  “…done…

  “…DONE!”

  He looked for Damodar and nodded in grudging satisfaction. Damodar and his Crimson Brigade were gone, as Profion had willed them to be.

  Someday pride will prove too great a temptation, Profion thought, and then he’ll disobey, and I will find great joy in that.

  Holding the precious rod against his chest, Profion climbed the steep stairway from the now silent machine, from the dank and sluggish river. The stairwell circled up to a high, weathered stone tower that loomed above the heights of the city. Even before he entered the large room, the terrible odor reached out and drew him in, held him, and smothered him in its loathsome shroud. It was the smell of rotting flesh, the stench of offal, the heavy, cloying smell of smoke and fire. Most unnerving of all was the stink of anger, unremitting rage, and hatred of every living thing in the universe.

  Three of Damodar’s guards stood at rigid attention on each side of a high, rough-hewn arch. Profion loathed the creatures of the Crimson Brigade. Damodar chose only the most debased, ruthless men in the Empire for this corps of villains, men whose only virtue was their blind obedience to Damodar. He dressed them in outlandish uniforms of brilliant scarlet, garish armor, and spiked iron helms. As a final stroke of irony—to amuse Damodar himself, Profion guessed—he adorned these brutes with the hideous half-masks of horned and snouted beasts, creatures both real and imagined, whose very visage struck terror in all who faced their wrath.

  “Serves a purpose,” Profion muttered to himself, as he passed the ugly louts and marched into the great room. But they move at Damodar’s will, he thought, and there’s a danger there.

  Past the high arch, Profion turned down a narrow corridor to his left and into the vast central hall, a large, stone-walled room that stretched up into the dark.

  He stopped and let his glance sweep the great room. Massive iron doors stood at the far end of the chamber, a door lined with broad bands of hammered metal, pounded into greater strength, and finally pierced with iron bolts the size of a mans head.

  On each side of the door stood seven half-naked workers, each grasping lengths of an enormous chain connected to a derrick that held a massive winch. The workers were larger than those who worked Profion’s device down below. These fellows were broad of chest and back, bred for strength alone, with scarcely any wit at all.

  Profion glanced at Damodar, who stood before a full troop of Crimson Guards, long lances and cleaving axes at the ready.

  “Ah, Damodar, nicely done,” Profion said, with only a touch of acid in his voice. “However, there will be no need for weapons. We will not be assaulted here.”

  Only Damodar’s eyes betrayed the slightest hint of displeasure, and only one such as Profion could have read what was there.

  “They only salute your success,” Damodar said. “They would beg me to tell you they are honored to be present at such a wondrous occasion.”

  “Are they, indeed?” Profion relished the moment, for there was half a truth in Damodar’s words. Even those ugly masks could not hide the guards’ awe of the mage’s power and the moment that was to come. Every one of the overdressed brutes was as frightened as the poor devils hunched by the iron door. Only Damodar himself showed no trace of fear, but Damodar, Profion knew, had barely enough warmth in his heart to feel anything at all.

  With a last glance about the room, Profion faced the great door.

  “Now,” he said, his voice scarcely rising above a whisper, “now we begin. Release him.”

  The workers stared, dull eyes wide with fear. Near witless they might be, but they knew what lay beyond the door.

  “Do you hear me?” Profion’s form seemed to grow and swell with sudden rage. “I said release him. Obey me now!”

  The workers whimpered, sweat coursing down their backs, their limbs quivering with fright, but they did as they were told, for their fear of the terror Profion could bring down upon them was beyond anything that lurked behind the door.

  Grasping the bars of the great winch, the workers strained against the weight of the chains. With a deep, metallic rumble that shook the very floor, the heavy iron door began to rise.

  At once, a black plume of smoke billowed from under the door, curled like a creature alive, blossomed into a greasy cloud, and choked the vast chamber with the foul odor of gastric vapors, putrid flesh, sulfur, and pitch.

  The workers cried out and began to flee. Profion stopped them with a single gesture, a motion of the hand that clutched their hearts and left them gasping for breath.

  Something massive threw its weight against the iron door, slamming against the heavy portal until the stones that held it in began to shake. Something beyond the door bellowed with a roar from the deepest pits of hell.

  “Yes!” Profion shouted. “Come out and show me your strength! Come out and face me with all your fury!”

  Profion glanced at Damodar. Damodar hadn’t wavered. The line of Crimson Guards was not as straight as it had appeared a moment before, but to their credit, not a man of them broke and ran.

  The iron door clanged open. A deafening roar of rage echoed through the room. The dragon’s massive head appeared through a veil of smoke, then a ponderous foot slammed against the floor. The thing was a beautiful nightmare, every man’s horror and hope, a great and writhing beast with a hide of gleaming golden scales. Standing solidly on its taloned feet, it arched its furrowed back and lashed its tail about like a cutting whip.

  It stood, then, in all its height, leathery wings outstretched. Lowering its monstrous, serpentine head, it looked directly into Profion’s eyes.

  Profion was close enough to smell its choking breath and count every tooth in its cruel jaws. The dragon rumbled deep within its throat, stretched its neck, and brought its snout within an inch of the mage’s chest.

  Profion stood his ground. He didn’t move and didn’t blink. To move, to show fear now…

  A terrified yell broke the near silence of the room. The dragon jerked straight up at once. One of the workers, blind with fear, had bolted across the room.

  The dragon seemed to move in a blur. A searing blast of white-hot fire exploded from the creature’s jaws, reached out, and caught the fleeing man. He shrieked and burst into flame, flailing his arms about as he stumbled down the stairs. In three heartbeats, the screams had weakened, and then died.

  The dragon twisted its long neck and faced Profion again. It breathed slowly, and with each breath came a small burst of flame.

  Fire left from .its wrath, Profion wondered, or what it has in store for me?

  As if in answer, the dragon dug its great talons into the floor, grinding mortar and crushing stone. It threw back its massive head and loosed a frightening roar. With uncanny speed, its jaws snapped open, and it came at Profion…

  … Came at the mage and stopped, stunned and bewildered by the small, insignificant human in its path.

  Profion stood rigid, unmoving, the rod extended straight at the dragon’s open jaws. A low, menacing rumble came from the creature’s chest. The rod began to glow, pulsing in Profion’s grasp. The steady, measured oscillation seemed to hold the dragon transfixed. Profion never looked away from the beast, answering its malevolent stare with a force that came from deep within, a mage’s practiced power and the strength of the magic rod, an instrument forged in fire that now belonged to him.

  “Come.
Come to me,” Profion whispered. “Come to me… now.”

  The dragon hesitated, muscles tensing beneath its leathery skin. Then, slowly, it took three steps toward Profion… and stopped.

  Its ruby eyes glowed with a hellish fire. It stared at Profion with a hatred as old as the age of Man, perhaps older still. Profion returned its glare with a small, triumphant smile.

  “I told you, Damodar. I told you it could be done.”

  “Great mage,” Damodar said softly, “never did I doubt your power.”

  “Hah!” Profion turned on Damodar with a scornful burst of laughter. “You thought that brute would roast me for supper. A little tough and stringy, perhaps, but a mage all the same.” Profion brought a finger to his chin. “It is said, and I doubt not it’s true, that next to virgins, a dragon prefers the flavor of an experienced, mature mage. We’re full of tasty spells, you know.”

  Damodar didn’t answer. He watched Profion as he strutted about the room, now and then glaring at his newly captured dragon in disdain.

  “You’ll stand there and starve to death if I will it,” Profion boasted from across the floor. He reached out and touched the dragon on its nose, turned, and loosed a great roar of laughter at what he’d done.

  “I’ve tamed it! You were there. You saw it happen, my friend.”

  “You have the power of the Immortals,” Damodar said, awestruck. “You can control a dragon.”

  “No, not ‘a dragon’.” Profion turned his dark eyes on Damodar again. “Dragons. An army of dragons at my command. An army that will crush everything in its path once that prancing fool of an emperor is dead. Maybe I’ll feed his flesh to this fellow right here. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, beast? A little bite of royalty for a snack?” Profion tapped the dragon on the nose and glanced at Damodar. “That little matter of the emperor’s imminent demise. There will be no problem there, I trust?”

  “Even as we speak,” Damodar said.

  “Ah, good, good.” Profion leaned down, as if to whisper in the dragon’s flaring ear. “Go on, hate me, despise me for what I’ve done to you. I want you filled with every bit of your terrible anger, every ounce of your rage.”