Dragon Breeder 3 by Dante King (e novels to read online .TXT) 📕

its neck. Its hands were like those of the gnolls, in the way that they were three-fingered. These fingers though, were not stumpy. They were long and dexterous looking, tipped with claws the color of dull iron.

The kobold stood man-tall and was completely bereft of anything that resembled armor, which I imagined was because its skin looked about as tough as that of a crocodile’s. Its muscles were well defined and laid out in slabs on its athletic frame. No boots covered its clawed feet. In fact, the only item of clothing that it wore was a tattered loincloth tied about its waist. A tail that would not have been out of place on a velociraptor stuck out behind it.

The creature was holding a bow of horn in one hand and had a bugle of sorts slung over one shoulder. As Pan and I popped up into view, traveling at what must have been close to fifty miles per hour, the kobold’s wicked yellow eyes widened in shock. The vertical black pupils contracted, and it let out a gargled little cry.

My Chaos Spear—Noctis’ magic made all too real—was in my hand and ready. As soon as I had a clear shot at the sentry, I let fly from Pan’s back, standing so that I could get every ounce of muscle behind the throw.

The spear went through the middle of the scout’s muscular chest like a cauterizing lance through a boil. The kobold didn’t get anywhere near the bugle that it attempted to raise to its lips. The spear passed clean through my foe and struck the roof behind it, burying itself a foot into the solid stone.

The kobold opened a mouth full of sharp yellow teeth, but all that came out was a glutinous stream of green blood. It staggered forward a couple of steps, pawing weakly at the air, and then fell off the side of the building that it had been standing on and landed in the street below with a dull thud.

Pan and I were already gone before the kobold had hit the deck. Judging by the complete lack of an outcry behind me, I imagined that the other kobold scouts had been taken just as acutely by surprise as the one that I had killed.

Pan and I sped onward, making a beeline straight for the tunnel entrance. As it loomed up ahead of us, I saw that it was a far bigger tunnel, both in girth and height, to the one that the wild dragon had forced its way up less than a week ago. This underground passage looked far more like it had been built with the intention to move many people or goods through it simultaneously. It was easily wide enough for ten humans to walk abreast, and more than high enough for Pan to fly through without difficulty.

The enormous chamber and the ratfolk’s township had been lit by strange bioluminescent worms that moved their glacially slow way across the roof. This tunnel, however, was illuminated by torches hanging from brackets hammered into the rock walls.

After the gloom of the previous chamber, the roomy tunnel was comparatively ablaze with light. Deciding that speed was better than caution here, Pan rocketed down the tunnel like a bolt of lightning, his wings humming under the strain, little blue fingers of electricity dancing down his flanks and across his wing membrane.

I chanced a glance over my shoulder but could not see any of the others just then. I imagined that they had probably been held up only slightly by the extra guards that they had to dispatch and would be along any time.

I didn’t like their chances of gaining on Pan though. The youngest and least inexperienced member of my growing clan was moving quick enough to catch up with tomorrow.

The well-carved passage was about a mile and a half long, yet we saw only a single pair of guards when we were halfway down its length. These two scouts were armed with the same bow and bugle combination of the others back in the main cavern. It looked as if the kobolds were only a little better at military strategy than the ratfolk. Evidently, in the case of an emergency, at least one of the scouts behind us was meant to have produced a horn call. Presumably, that blast on the bugle would have echoed and reverberated its way down here to be picked up and passed along by one of these two guards. It was simple, and might have been effective had it been your run-of-the-mill soldiery attempting to sneak up on the rear of the kobold line.

Clearly, the lizard folk had been putting a lot of faith on that initial string of sentries to get their warning out. Obviously, they had not reckoned they would be attacked by enemies that could move at the speed of a cheetah shot up with adrenaline.

I wasn’t sure what Pan and myself soaring through the tunnel must have looked like to the two kobold guards. Needless to say, they did not recognize us as a threat until it was far too late. One kobold managed to touch bugle to its lips this time, but in the next instance, Pan was on them and visited them with a violence that was faster and more deadly than a knife fight in a telephone booth.

Both kobolds dropped in twin sprays of green blood as the Tempest Dragon lashed out with his unforgiving talons. Within mere moments, Pan and I were through the end of the tunnel and out into the huge void that opened up beyond us.

To call the space that we emerged out into a cavern or an underground cave would have been like calling the Himalayas a bunch of hills.

It was fucking enormous. Stupendously vast and titanic.

Pan exited the tunnel mouth and, showing a great deal of savvy for a dragon