The Circle of Duty Read online

  As soon as the last part of the sentence left her lips we both knew that we had just undone our rousing and confidence fanning. We had just reminded Frederico that his family had been experiencing this same situation but with devastating results on more than one occasion. Damage control.

  “We don’t need any more Dragon help here Freddy and we’ve got enough muscle to demolish any army that they send our way.” I stopped walking and turned to face the young Guardian.

  “I know that we've been here doing the same thing over and over again but we will stop the attack and we are aiming to keep everyone alive. No-one is expendable.”

  Andrea added, seeing that he needed convincing “The prison will be maintained. Do not fear, we will all do our duty.”

  Frederico simply stared at us each in turn, blankly checking his feelings on everything we had to say.

  “I don’t want to lose the power of the Dragon but, more importantly, I need to protect my family. My sister is the next in line for the Guardianship. I don’t want her to have to face this. There is more than The Circle to let down by failure.” He hung his head at the thought of what was at stake. His mop of jet black hair was wafting gently in the breeze and it was easy to see him struggle with his own fears and the expectations that he was dealing with. I had met his sister. She was six.

  “We will not let what happened before happen again. You are not going to die.” I needed him to snap his attention back to what we were about to face rather than dwelling on the past and his loss and I was starting to get impatient.

  He looked into my eyes and I could see the resolve climbing rapidly within him and a darkness climbed with it across his features.

  “I will not let the fate of my family befall me. I will see them avenged.” The final word was greeted by a shuddering within him, a blazing green light flared from both of his eyes, and he grew by roughly a foot. The Fire Dragon power within him was stirring as his anger grew and his transformation kicked into place. His rage was starting to drive him and he was still very young in terms of controlling his power. The temperature surrounding him fell by several degrees, covering the ground within a radius of about four feet in a slight sheen of frost. I could recognize what was happening. Andrea and I had been working with him over the last ten days to give him as much grounding in his abilities as we could but he was still very quick to get riled up. It reminded me of someone.

  I reached an arm out to him and tried to calm him. The last thing we needed was an angry teenager with massive magical ability to lose it before the battle commenced and start torching his own troops. At least he wasn’t scared anymore. I almost reached his shoulder before all hell broke loose.

  Around us, explosions of greenish tinged power erupted and showered us in earth and debris which they had ripped from the ground. An odd smell of what can only be described as being somehow – cold, wafted through the air as the clouds of earth settled and we were left with a loud ringing in our ears from the impacts. Looking up and around the three of us all struggled for focus on to what had sent out the attack.

  We all found them quickly.

  3

  Spearing through the air above us, their spindly bodies held aloft by gossamer thin wings, was a swarm of horrors which were all too familiar to both Andrea and I. They had made up a large portion of the enemy on the two previous occasions The Hive had attacked this site in the last six weeks. Andrea had called them the Tayne. They were creatures who were similar to the Wraiths that had attacked me in my own estate six weeks earlier but they were winged and didn’t seem to have the ability to become living shadows. They all had the same emaciated bodies with stick thin bony arms protruding at angles which made them look pained just to exist but the Tayne had no legs. Instead they had a wisp of body which looked as if it was desperately trying to become a tail but had become stuck as a ghostly whisper of an appendage, more a stump than a limb.

  The closely packed group of what appeared to be eight, maybe nine beasts shot through the air above us after unleashing their magical attack and speared onwards towards the edge of the shield perimeter surrounding the prison. We all watched them go and knew that the careful planning which had been put into the defence of this site was not totally useless but was certainly having to be massively rewritten.

  “Now it’s my turn,” rumbled Frederico as the enemy powered on overhead.

  The temperature plummeted and I could hear the tearing of fabric as Frederico burst from his clothes and became his Fire Dragon. His body grew and twisted, contorted by the change from human to mighty lizard, wings erupting from his back and his legs re-jointing themselves. In seconds, his transformation was complete and a mighty armored beast stood on the hillside where a once puny, gangly teenager had stood.

  He may have been a Fire Dragon and shared the same magical grounding as I did, but his appearance was very different to me. Instead of the small scales of armor which covered my frame, Frederico was covered by much larger plates of what looked like bone. They were all coloured a very deep green and linked together over his crimson flesh which was visible at different points through the plates. He carried much larger slabs of protective shielding than I did and seemed to look slightly more aggressive for it. He did, though, still retain the same gangly dimensions in his Dragon form that he had as a human being. When he filled out he would look really imposing, but as it was he didn’t look like he was quite finished. He looked exactly like what he was. A teenage Dragon, who’d a thunk!

  His huge lizard frame orientated towards the departing squadron of enemy creatures and he unleashed a wide spray of flame from his mouth, somehow managing to release a full battle roar at the same time. His volley came nowhere near the Tayne who had fired on us but Frederico didn’t seem to care. Without stopping his jet of flame, he spread his wings out to their fullest expanse and crouched down slightly as he prepared to soar after them.

  Andrea and I moved quickly enough to transform ourselves and grab hold of Frederico before he could take off. In seconds, three terrifying monsters were occupying the space where three people had previously stood, one screaming at the departing attack while the other two held it down.

  Frederico struggled and forced against both of us as he strained to break free and follow the enemy, his fire dying as he tried to claw his way from us. His young frame was no match for the combined strength of Andrea and I and we held him firmly in place. A second later, the enemies planned trap was sprung as a second, much larger group of Tayne hammered by overhead, raining down casting after casting at the three of us. In our Dragon forms, we were in no real danger from the magical attack which was pouring down after us from a great height. The power they were sending down at us would be easily deflected by our collective armour and would feel like a buffeting you might get when you’re in the centre of an enthusiastic crowd at a concert, nothing life threatening but still something you need to concentrate on to control. If it had landed on one of us alone we would have probably been knocked over by it but the three of us were very close together so reinforced our collective strength. If they had managed to draw Frederico into the sky as they had planned then they could have done considerably more damage. Not by the power of their magics, but by the fall. The razor sharp jagged rocky outcroppings and uneven ground had been responsible for several injuries and a great deal of pain for me during the previous encounters here. I had fallen into the trap the Tayne had just tried to use during the last battle where Frederico's sister, Bethany, was lost.

  After the fall, I had damaged my right wing badly enough to prevent me from being able to fly. It hadn’t been the direct reason for Bethany’s death but everyone was determined to make sure that all of the Dragons available to us were going to remain battle ready for as long as possible. I was feeling guilty anyway. When I was chosen as part of the defensive effort when this site was first attacked, there had been several raised eyebrows from other members of The Circle. Despite my natural deep red colour and huge self-belief, in magica
l ability and awareness terms, I was greener than Frederico. I had completed a massive victory over the enemy when the prison I had been charged with guarding had been breached and the evil demon entombed within had escaped. I had managed to put The Zarrulent, one of the original horrors, back in his box. I think, for a short time, I must have been viewed as being something of a star player. The power within The Circle must have thought it beneficial to have someone with a big win under his belt on the battlefield as a motivation to the other troops.

  Frederico stopped struggling as he watched the enemy creatures surge towards the centre of the magically shielded valley. His control returned as he realized that he had very nearly fallen into the trap which had been set to play on his fiery nature. He breathed deeply as he stared after the winged creatures which had attempted to goad him towards his demise.

  Andrea and I slowly released Frederico and we all stood scanning out over the valley before us. We weren’t where we needed to be according to the information we had received from our intelligence forces but we seemed to have been exactly where the enemy had wanted us to be.

  Before us, our waiting forces started to react to the appearance of three Dragons and a fly past of horrors from The Hive by opening up with magical volleys of their own.

  From well hidden fortified positions on either side of the valley, blasts of energy lanced out towards the aerial forces as they headed on towards the edge of the shield perimeter which shrouded the prison. Reds, blues and greens poured out into the early evening air from various locations around the wide area we surveyed and started to tear members of the enemy from the sky.

  Sparks flew in different colours as the impacts of magical energy ripped into the unlucky group. They had been used as simply cannon fodder to draw the youngest Guardian into the open, knowing that the Fire Dragon is prone to acting purely on impulse. The enemy had seen some success with the tactic of drawing their target into the open and had opted to use it again but when they failed with their initial objective, the Tayne were now horribly exposed to the defensive fire of the hundreds of hidden Circle forces.

  One by one, members of the aerial attack were being picked off, their smoldering and flaming corpses tumbling from the sky to slam into the mountainous landscape below. The strategy that had been employed against us was being ripped apart and shown to be a failure.

  I stood, still clutching onto Frederico and felt surges of pride as our previously hidden troops ripped through the enemy. Frederico stood next to me breathing deeply still, but with a violent pride much like my own radiating from him. I didn’t have to use any magical skills to sense what he was feeling as he watched the demise of creatures that had been sent to kill him. He was intermittently growling and snorting as he watched the screaming animals fall to their death.

  “Let them all fall,” he snarled. His sentiments were painfully clear for all to see. He wanted to see the forces of The Hive defeated in the most painful way he could. He wanted to have the most awful revenge on those who were responsible for the death of his family. I could see that, when you drilled down through all of the duty and training, he wanted to make them pay for what they had done to his family. At that point, his duties towards The Circle had been completely forgotten.

  For a second, I agreed with him.

  My own loss of family was something that had been weighing on me for most of my life. I had seen both of my parents taken from me at an early age, in what I had been told, was a car crash. I had since found out that they had been killed in an attempt to destroy my own power line. They had been taken from me in an attempt to shatter the control over a demon of ancient power who could have been responsible for the deaths of millions of people had he broken free. The subsequent loss of my Uncle who raised me, and of my brother, to the same forces, would always be at the centre of a burning ball of hatred for the enemy that I knew would be alight for a very long time.

  We stood watching as the opening skirmish of the latest battle here looked to be coming to a close firmly in our favour. There were only a small handful of the Tayne who had managed to evade the defensive fire from our hidden batteries but they were still heading onwards, spiraling through the beams of power coming from the surface and the falling mounds of their comrades coming from above and around them. I had to hand it to them, they were certainly committed.

  I cast an eye around the newly formed battlefield, checking for any sign of another force making a move on us and watched the bright columns of light as they were being fired skywards. They all danced through the sky in a display of colour which I knew would be described away as a firework celebration in the press if and when anyone asked what had been going on.

  We had brought in some seriously powerful magical artillery to make certain that the latest attack on this site would be dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly. It was plain for all to see that The Circle didn’t like to lose. We had brought people in from almost every location around the globe, including a large number from my estate. As my eyes wandered over the valley before us, I could make out the familiar deep blue tone of Mark Howells’ magic hammering upwards from what I knew was a magically shrouded, heavily fortified rocky location. Mark was the Head of the Kitchens at my estate, a title which meant he was responsible for the smooth operation of the kitchen and serving staff at the mansion. It also meant that he was second in command of the whole staff of the house in a military sense. He was very powerful in a great deal of the magics which were based around the use of sheer brute force and the manipulation of energies for strength. Mark gave off the feeling that he was more than ready to tear anyone he needed to, to pieces. He stood seven feet tall and was built like the side of a, very large, house. His jet black skin seemed to absorb all of the light around him and I swear it made him look even bigger. If I hadn’t known him, he would have scared the life out of me, despite my inner Dragon. Like the Fire Dragon, not subtle, but very effective.

  In the last six weeks, though, we had worked very closely together and had developed a very close bond as more than just lord of the manor and staff member. I would like to think that he was now my friend. He and Mike Christian, the Head of House, were my closest confidants and were helping guide me into the life of The Circle in ways Andrea couldn’t match. They had been able to give me answers in a more user friendly way and weren’t treating me like some kind of savior. I had needed someone to speak to me like a normal human being since I had entered this world of magic and monsters and that had been exactly what they provided. It was good to know that I had people around me who I could turn to, especially after Lloyd’s death.

  I shook the melancholy away.

  “Come on Howells, there’s only a few left,” I muttered to myself as I watched the ever decreasing enemy force continue onwards. We all wanted the enemy to be brought down but my competitive edge was starting to poke at the surface. I wanted the monsters who were bent on the destruction of mankind to be vanquished, don’t get me wrong, I just wanted my team to be the ones who did it.

  “They’re getting very close to the shielded area of the valley.” Andrea had moved forward and had locked her eyes on the Tayne which remained. Her voice was still rolled thick with a Russian accent but it was now coming with a rumbling growl from her own Dragon form. The growl, though, couldn’t disguise the hint of apprehension. I lifted my eyes from the ground positions and tried to establish where the line of invisible magical power was which was swirling around the South American prison.

  “Let them hit the shield,” boomed Frederico from my side, the purest violence coursing through his voice. I turned to face him and I was greeted by, not an unsure monster, but by a Dragon with hatred in his eyes. He was stood with his shoulders forced out squarely, his lips curled back in a vicious snarl and his teeth bared. He was really starting to feel the full terrifying beauty of vengeance.

  I let my gaze wander over to Andrea, thinking silently to myself that Freddy was bang on with his desire to let the enemy burn on the boundaries of his
power base. When my eyes finally landed on Andrea, though, I could see that she was truly concerned.

  “Those little things are never going to damage the shield. Let them hit it if they want to, it’ll save our troops power from having to take them out of the air.” I couldn’t see how there was anything we should need to be worried about. The Tayne were vast in numbers but they were also so fragile. We had broken them without any real trouble on more than one occasion and in every previous encounter, the outer shield was always far too powerful an obstacle for anything that The Hive had been able to throw at us. I looked on and couldn’t see why Andrea was looking so worried.

  “They have no real power and they have tipped their hand. Let them go. The shield we have in place is more than strong enough to burn away a swarm of barely solid, demonic ghosts like the Tayne. Don’t panic.” I meant every word of it, feeling supremely confident that what we had in place defensively was more than enough to stand against our foes. I faced Andrea and knew that we were in no real danger. I was already checking the surrounding area for other enemy troops hurriedly trying to work out what to do next.

  Until the first Tayne hit the shield wall.

  4

  Over my shoulder, the leading Tayne had reached the domed boundary of the prison of the Hive beast we were trying to defend. One by one, they smashed into the invisible wall of power which was cast over the landscape which, in turn, surrounded the entrance to the stronghold. Their impact should have only been greeted by a small snap/hiss of incinerated flesh and the slightest ripple through the shell of the prison. After all, they were nothing to really worry about.

  Instead, we were shown that the enemy hadn’t been relying on the same tactic which had served them so well in the past.