How to Lose Your Dragon (The Immortality Curse Book 1) by Peter Glenn (beach read TXT) 📕

handful of times in written history. The events were hard to miss, though as a regular human you probably wouldn’t have noticed. The dragons took on human forms when they went on these types of conquests. It was easier to convince other humans to do their bidding that way.

You’ve probably heard of a few of these dragon wars yourself. Alexander the Great? Dragon. Attila the Hun? Dragon. Julius Caesar? Yep, you guessed it. Another dragon in human disguise, waging war for his own ends.

It was no wonder that their reigns were so short-lived once their tasks were completed. That was the easy escape. A way out that didn’t require brainwashing thousands or a crazy story. Alexander’s untimely death? Faked. Caesar getting stabbed? A subtle distraction. Attila turning back around after sacking Rome? Just a ruse.

But the legions of bodies and untold destruction left in their wakes? Now that was very real. And the tools they’d had to do it with had been primitive. War machines and weaponry had advanced considerably since those ancient times. To think about what a dragon could do in today’s world with those kinds of weapons…

A shudder ran down my spine, and I gulped down hard. “Understood, Lao. Don’t worry, I’ll find her.”

“Indeed,” he said. It wasn’t so much acknowledgement as it was a promise.

With that, he turned and left.

I slammed my door shut and slumped against it, the whole encounter leaving me feeling drained and exhausted. I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves and steady my heart rate, then glanced down at my watch. It was seven o’clock.

Ugh. Three days. If Mei hadn’t been found by seven o’clock three days from now, the whole world would be in danger. It was a huge weight to have on my shoulders.

Kind of a downer, really.

“Well, I think this calls for a good FPS to take my mind off it,” I said aloud.

I walked over to the stack of discs next to my gaming console and picked out a good one, slipping it into the machine as it whirred to life alongside my TV.

Easing into my comfy chair, I picked up my wireless controller and killed some aliens for a good hour or so. It’s as good a way to ease tension as I’ve ever found, and as far as habits go, it was one of my cheaper ones.

Right as I blasted the head off some xeno-looking monstrosity, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I picked it up and looked at it. The number wasn’t one I recognized, but it was a local number.

My mind instantly went toward bill collector, but I was pretty sure I was all caught up on those.

I shrugged and answered it anyway. “Hello?”

“Yes, Damian?” It was Rick’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Rick? Is that you, buddy?”

“That’s right.”

I groaned a little. “Listen, if it’s about your payment, I’m sorry, I totally spaced it, but I’ll send it just as soon as the banks reopen, I promise.”

“No, it’s not about my fee,” Rick answered. I couldn’t quite tell, but I felt like there was a bit of an annoyance in his tone about that anyway.

“Well what is it, Rick? Spill the beans already!”

“I’ve been going over the inscription on that cloth of yours.”

“Uh huh.” I pressed a few buttons rapidly, trying to fend off another alien that had gotten a little too close. “Go on.”

“Well, I’ve deciphered their origin. They’re definitely Celtic runes.”

I rolled my eyes. I could have told him that much. Did tell him that much, in a way. “Yeah, and?”

Another alien grappled me, and I gave it a solid uppercut, followed by two rounds of shotgun fire right into its dirty little skull. Gaming could be so therapeutic.

“Well,” Rick said, “it struck me as odd, but the lines, the way they’re written here, they match the runes on that sword of yours almost exactly.”

“Good old Grax’thor?” I groaned. “What’s he got to do with it?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Rick replied. “It’s just odd. The thing with runes is they’re like any other form of handwriting. The way they’re written down can give you a clue as to the person who wrote them. It’s not as exact as handwriting analysis in today’s day and age, because carving runes into metal and stone is a far cry harder than writing them down with ink and paper, but there’s still slight variations in how each rune is written based on the writer.”

“Get to the point already, Rick. You’re starting to bore me.”

I switched to my railgun and let loose on a bunch of aliens that were loping in my direction. No way I was falling to their sorry asses. Not after the day I’d had.

“What I’m trying to say is I think the same person that engraved your sword also wrote these runes. Which should be impossible, of course, but there you have it.”

My blood froze and the controller fell from my hands, the gnashing aliens momentarily forgotten.

“Come again?”

“The person that forged Grax’thor is the same person that wrote your little inscription.”

My phone buzzed, signaling there was another call incoming, but I did my best to ignore it. It was probably Lao again, hoping to scare me further.

“How is that even possible?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. At the very least, the two writers probably existed around the same time. Much more than that is hard to decipher, though. It’ll take a while before I make much headway.”

“Sure, sure.” I still had no idea what the point of it was, but I figured he’d get there eventually.

My phone buzzed again, this time with a text message. I moaned again, but decided I’d check it out anyway. I didn’t need forty-some missed messages again.

“Hang on a sec, Rick,” I told him.

I pulled my phone away from my ear and looked at the notification. It was Sevin of all people. “What do you want, Sevin?” I muttered.

“What now?” Rick’s voice boomed from the phone.