A Dragon at the Gate (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  A Dragon at the Gate

  Book Two of the Chained World Chronicles

  By Daniel Ruth

  Dedication

  To the three wonderful women in my life, Wendy, Krystal and Amberlyn

  A Dragon at the Gate

  Book Two of the Chained Worlds Chronicles

  Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Ruth

  All Rights Reserved

  ASIN:

  Revision 1

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 1

  As I stepped through the portal to the dimension I had called home for the more than a year, I stopped and stared at the gigantic cannon that was pointed at my face a handful of meters away. “That’s not a good way to greet friends. Whose porridge did piss in this time?”

  “That would be my porridge and the good citizens of this city,” announced a voice off to the side. I glanced over and saw it was coming from a middle-aged military soldier. I didn’t know much about the military since they had been remarkable only in their absence since I arrived. The four stars pinned to his shoulders seemed indicative of a high rank. “I am General Armbridge. Give me a reason not to obliterate your sorry naked ass.”

  Well, looking down at myself, I certainly had to admit I was pretty much naked. Growing to my maximum height and then plowing through dirt and rock had pretty much had sent my clothes to the afterlife. The little that hadn’t been burned away by hellfire. I shrugged. The cannon was unlikely to do much to me. Unlike vampires and weres my durability scaled directly with the environmental energy available. Standing in the middle of a permanently open portal, feeling the invigorating sensation of mana rushing from one world to another... I felt invincible. I wasn’t, of course, but that cannon wasn’t going to do much to me. “I am Derek. You may have heard of me from Conrad...”

  “The Professor,” the soldier said dismissively. I opened my mouth to comment but then shrugged again. He was extraordinarily brave for a human standing in front of a man holding several tons of concrete on his shoulder. Speaking of which, I let it go and it rolled off to the side, shaking the ground as it landed. Hmmm, still no reaction. Ah, a faint shimmer from the buoy floating behind him. A hologram. Not actually very brave after all. “I read about you. A vigilante who got in over his head and decided to try to direct those who know better...”

  “And I assume your knowledge extended to firing your satellite super gun at ground zero here and killing about half of our forces?” I asked casually. If they hadn’t shot me yet, it wasn’t going to happen. My gaze wandered around the area. It had taken me a day to slowly walk back. I had healed completely by then. As chewed up from the hellfire as I had been, the increasing energy from the portal as I neared it had charged my regeneration along with my other abilities.

  The circle was there on the ground under me. Of course. It was effectively permanently etched into the ground and would remain there until the end of time. Or the ambient energy faded away. As I said, the end of time. The protective circle was down, which explained the presence of the military. I couldn’t remember when it went down. Perhaps after I had been blown through the portal.

  The crater walls were still there and along the edge was mounted military grade force field generators interspersed with large vehicles that looked like tanks. Naturally, their turrets were pointed at me as well. That forest I had walked through was looking nicer and nicer. Of course, I had left all my stuff here so that option really wasn’t on the table.

  “How dare you question my decision,” the general shouted hoarsely. “I had to make a hard call in order to stop the Armageddon you and your kind were unleashing! It’s unfortunate that some brave men had to be sacrificed but they knew the risk....”

  “I somehow doubt they were expecting to be vaporized from above. After all, they were expecting to be called on to fight the minions of a demon lord. A demon lord who was actually safely ensconced behind an indestructible barrier.” I shook my head in mock sadness. “But that’s okay. You ignored the advice of the experts, did your own thing and the only people we lost were a few supernatural filth. Does that sound like what you were thinking?”

  “Their race had nothing to do with my decision...” I ignored him as I noticed that there were actually some human corpses in slightly singed robes. Odd, they must have died outside and been blasted inward past the field. I walked over to him and started to take off the robe. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Getting dressed. Or do you like my nakedness?” I replied absently to the raving loon. Better, but I would have to get this cleaned and pressed. The holes and singed patches made my teeth itch. Or I could simply throw them out once I got home. Boy, I could really use a shower.

  “By God, you better start taking me seriously, son,” the crazy man stated. “I expect you to go up and turn yourself in.”

  That got my attention. “Say what? Exactly why would I turn myself in? I’m not the one that killed half the special forces in the city.”

  “Right, and I suppose that kinetic strike wasn’t your doing?” he said while pointing to a large break in the edge of the crater. That hadn’t been there before. Edging over I lined myself up with the opening. There was a large furrow in the ground that slowly sloped upward and lead to a massive opening torn into the building adjacent to the park. And the building behind that. And the building behind that. And so on.

  How about that. I suppose it was the best of bad alternatives. Wow, I hope no one I knew died. I turned to the projection and immediately started to lie. “General, it’s absurd that you could attribute that amount of destruction to me. What kind of monster do you take me for? I would have to have the power of a veritable god in order to do that.”

  “Then how do you explain...” he blustered angrily.

  “What actually happened is that my fellow defenders of goodness threw ourselves into harm’s way, in the desperate attempt to stop a demon lord from bringing his armies into our world. Brave Mei Ling tore at him with furious sword blows,” I paused a moment to verify Mei’s sword was gone. “And the stalwart Faramond wrestled with the mighty creatures channeling his fairy power,” I paused a moment to suppress a chortle. It definitely would not fit the narrative.

  “So while Estella’s minions distracted him, I was able to mitigate the circle enough stop the army of demons from crossing over. Unfortunately, this angered the fierce demon enough that he empowered a monstrous spell to kill us all with this runic boulder,” nodding to the anchor I had tossed to the ground a moment ago. “Thankfully, I am dreadfully clever and I was able to reverse our position at the last moment and he was struck by his own fateful blow.”

 
I stared at him with as a sincere look of innocence as I could muster. It was mostly lies, of course. Yes, my companions had indeed distracted the demon lord so I could modify the circle to block the demons, rather than to give access to our dimension to them. I had hoped to dismantle it altogether but there had been too much energy built up already. However, now no demons or similar supernatural horrors could pass through the linked gates without using either my blood or their master’s blood.

  The false part was that the kick ass magical boulder was part of the magic that bound me to this plane of existence. I had figured that I might be able to modify the definitions of the anchor rune stamped on my chest enough to draw it to me instead of me being drawn to it, in the instant that I crossed the dimensional barrier and the backlash disrupted the spell. Instant kinetic strike with an indestructible runic asteroid. Well, almost instant. It was up in the air for a few seconds whether the demon lord would kill me before it hit him.

  “And the magic symbols on your chest that happen to match this cannonball of your?” the general drawled skeptically.

  “An unfortunate side effect of interfering with the demon’s work,” I nodded humbly, peaking up through my bangs.

  “That is the biggest load of shit I have ever...” he started to shout out in fury. However, a disembodied hand reached out of the air behind him. I was puzzling over this when the holographic image expanded to include Conrad. For the first time ever in my experience, he was out of his armor and he looked terrible. The uniform he wore was folded up at each knee and his left forearm was gone as well. Strangely enough, he was still upright and seemed to be floating in midair. He was wearing a large belt with multiple blocky cells on the side, so I could only assume it was some sort of levitation assistance he was using while his regeneration grew his legs back.

  “That’s enough. You had your chance,” Conrad growled in a low angry voice. “The Professor’s answers match what we know. What we expected. Now you need to get out of my city.” His eyes flashed with barely suppressed violence. “You have a court martial to prepare for. Good luck.”

  The General stalked out of the projection area. I didn’t pay any attention. My mind was on other things. I slowly climbed up the slope of the crater and peeked over the sides. It was a little difficult to see through the tanks, cannons and unmanned military paraphernalia cluttering the park grounds, however, once I was up against the glowing blue surface of the force field the military had conveniently left around the portal, I could partly see the surrounding cityscape. I personally questioned the effectiveness of the barrier since it only went up a hundred meters and the portal towered above that as far as I could see. It was like putting a fence around a Sequoia and patting yourself on the back for keeping out the man-eating trees.

  The city looked pretty good for a post-apocalyptic landscape. Sure, smoke billowed up from the various buildings for as far as I could see and the lack of civilian traffic was made up by the horde of military vehicles speeding to and fro among the skylines. Seriously, was there really a point to putting camo green on a flying truck with strobe lights and sirens? Yet I didn’t see any active fires, there were hardly any screams of panic and pain and the walking wounded winding their way in between the smashed hover cars littering the streets seemed mostly calm and barely bleeding.

  “It’s terrible,” a female voice drifted over to me from behind the armored vehicles. Mei walked out from behind one and over to the field. She looked tired and somewhat bedraggled. The clothing she wore still bore the rents and tears from the fight with the demon lord. However, the dried blood was at least a day old and she looked completely healed. “I am glad you made it back to us. The force of the... um, rock, had us worrying there would be anything left.”

  “Eh, it was nothing,” I waved negligently with one hand, still taking in the view. “Without the rock of doom I would likely be dead and the world overrun with hordes of minor demons. This is actually way better than I thought. In fact, this is the best end of the world scenario ever!”

  Mei had come up to the barrier and I could see in more detail. Lines of worry and tiredness etched her face. For a moment I thought that the magics the crazy wizard had cast on her to arrest her age had failed, but I think it was merely stress and exhaustion. Mei suppressed a laugh under a cough and shook her head. “If this is a good outcome I am glad I didn’t see the bad one.”

  “I’ll need a more detailed account of what happened,” Conrad’s voice echoed behind me from the buoy’s hologram. “We made plans for a lot of scenarios, but you seemed pretty confident there would be demons and random rifts tearing through the town. So far most of the city’s infrastructure is down and there are very brief tears it’s been mild compared to what we expected if we had failed.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said magnanimously.

  “Perhaps you could clarify,” Conrad replied dryly.

  “While Stella distracted the demon lord, I was conducting shenanigans on the circles. Suffice to say I was able to modify it to mitigate the worst of the effects. I’ll go over it in more detail when you come over.” I looked over at Mei with some trepidation. “I still have a home, right?”

  “Yes, Jeremy, Beth, and Matt are all okay. Once the power failed they went around the neighborhood and helped with the disaster relief. There’s been a lot of fatalities, mostly from floaters that failed when the portals opened. Most of the vehicles had impact foam but a lot of the mechanisms failed. Where they didn’t have fatal head trauma the military is providing temporary cryogenic storage until they figure how to shield the hospitals enough to provide resuscitation services...”

  “Great, glad that turned out,” I replied distractedly. As long as my people were okay I really didn’t care about a bunch of strangers. “Conrad, as much as I like hanging around and chatting is there any way you can turn off the barrier for a moment? So I can actually leave?” I gave the glowing transparent wall a poke, which elicited a fat spark. My vision allowed me to perceive the invisible but it often took on just such an appearance. Of course, it may actually be very visible which made me a bit hesitant to point such things out. It can be a bit embarrassing.

  A moment later the glowing wall flickered and faded. As I stepped through, I heard the crackle of the energy reforming behind me. I took a deep breath and sighed. “Home again,” I glanced around at the damage and smoke. “It feels even more like home this way.”

  I heard a crackle and a wet cracking thump as something impacted the barrier behind me. Turning I saw an eight-foot tall creature resembling a pterodactyl laying sprawled on the sloping crater wall.

  “Apparently, the other side houses a large number of very aggressive dinosaurs. The flying ones often come in low enough to hit the shield and die on impact. Fortunately, they are not supernatural in any way and die on impact.” She was gazing at the body with some ambivalence. “The remaining flyers go over the field and into the city if the guns somehow miss them. Very hazardous to children and even adults if they are taken unaware. The city has put a bounty on them and the shifter population loves to hunt them. Apparently, they are delicious.”

  I nodded my head enthusiastically. “They are, way better than cloned chicken. I like the bigger breeds, though.”

  “How do the bigger one’s fly?” She asked as we made our way to the edge of the park. The smoke was getting thicker as were the sirens and various humans shouts. “Nothing that has come through has a bit of magic.”

  “No, not the flyers, I meant the land bound ones. I think they are similar to a tyrannosaurus rex.” I shook my head as I savored the memory. “Though it might have been an allosaurus for all I know. I never thought learning about extinct species would matter.”

  “Damn! Is that going to be a problem?” Mei asked worriedly.

  I waved away her concern as we got to the rickshaw. It had been knocked over but I had paid for the most durable materials available and even the paint hadn’t been scratched. “Shouldn't be, as you pointed out they are
pretty fragile. The barriers the military have up should stop them here. The ones that get through any of the smaller spontaneous portals that crop up may cause a wee outbreak. The bounty should help, though.”

  “Well yes, but what about the more fragile humans?” she inquired in concern.

  “Hmm,” I muttered thoughtfully. “Good point. One of us will have to stay near Jeremy and Beth until the city has some automated defenses in place.”

  Mei looked at me flatly for a few moments as we strapped into the seats of the rickshaw. “And what about the rest of the city?”

  I glanced at her blankly for a moment before I realized what she was concerned about. “Oh, right. I guess we can set up some sort of neighborhood watch...” I tapered off as she glared at my unenthusiastic reply. “Or maybe I could adapt a ward to keep vermin away...”

  Darn, that was not how I wanted to spend my time. Also, they weren’t magical. Without some special characteristic, it would be almost impossible to key a ward to work on a dinosaur and exclude a human.

  We wound our way through the smoking remains of crashed flyers. Several times we had to get off the bike to move a fallen vehicle or piece of a building out of the way. As a were-tiger Mei had some very significant strength and of course even as a young dragon my strength exceeded anything I was likely to encounter, now that the demons couldn’t easily transit through the gates.

  It was during one of these slowdowns that I felt a fluctuation of the ambient energy levels and almost immediately afterward I heard a wailing siren go off through the city.

  “Crap! This is terrible timing. I don’t think there's much cover except the alley over there,” Mei exclaimed as she frantically gestured for me to stop again. I slowed down, giving her a rather puzzled look.

  “Is that an air raid alarm? I thought that only happened in Jeremy’s shows.”

  “Welcome to the modern age. They have been repurposed to alert people to get cover from the energy surges.”

  “Ah. That's what that was. Wow, I never thought I would see one of those again.”