Chapter 25

The hero makes his way to the final boss fight

In the days that followed we helped where we could in making the armor that incorporated the tokens and discussed various ideas on how to destroy the Dragonlord and survive the process. We didn't come up with much, and we realized after testing some things that our stopspell magic was more limited than we thought. It could stop magic being cast on the person that cast stopspell, but magic targeting someone else, for example yourself, could still be used. It didn't stop all magic around the person that cast it, just direct spells. So even if we did manage to fight his human form to the brink of death, he could still still leave the castle with magic. Because he wasn't casting the magic on us, but on himself, stopspell wouldn't do a thing. I didn't know how long it took him to change, but I had to assume not long at all. If he got out, changed, and flew away, he could be anywhere in the world in hours and simply recover. Then come back to fight us again and again with a horde of minions until he won.

This was not ideal.

But what could we do?

This is what kept me up at night, pacing around various places trying to look for inspiration. I wandered the town, the castle, trying to think of a way to kill the Dragonlord quickly enough he couldn't just cast a spell and get away. Once he left the castle it was over, his dragon form was basically unbeatable. Our weapons are just too small compared to him. He's armored head to toe, can fly out of our reach, and still breathe fire or cast spells at us from the air. If only there was some way to collapse the castle on top of him while he was asleep. Loto, you thought about flying machines and wheels on boats, why not about something to make a castle crumble? You know, something useful?

I was wandering around the castle wondering how I would collapse it (and keeping an eye out for buttons or levels that would open secret doors to a lower level) when I saw something. Something I had come to hate since coming here, but a mystery I had never bothered to solve. It had given me trouble in the past, but now maybe it could be useful to me? But it was part of the castle, right? I couldn't just yank it out of there and…

Or could I?

A fantastic idea blossomed in my mind. Yes, I could see it now! It was a simple plan, so it didn't rely on too many things going right. And if magic worked the same there as it did here, and that would be easy to test, it could work. Right? It solved the problem nicely, but could it be done? I ran out of the castle and back to town, through the streets that were dark and empty now. But lights were on inside the various shops, as I had hoped. With the castle ordering their own basket, I figured every able bodied person that can hold a tool would be working on some part of it. I burst into the carpenter's shop, and those inside nearly dropped their tools in surprise. How must I have looked in that moment? Eyes wide, winded, hair every which way, and then bursting in on them like that? But I didn't consider that at the moment, I simply went straight to the man in charge.

"I need you to make something for me!" I demanded of him, looming over him as he was seated. "Drop everything else! You must finish this by the time the armors are done!"

"What?" the man asked nervously. "Make you something? What? Can't it wait until morning?"

"You have to get started now! I have a plan to defeat the Dragonlord, and you're going to help me!"

"Me?" he squeaked. "I'm just a carpenter."

"Exactly!" I announced, poking him from the side and making him jump a little again. "It must be you, there's no other way."

"Other way to what? You're not making any sense."

"What? Oh. Right. I should explain." I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. "Here's what we're going to do..."

I explained my idea.

The man protested it would never work.

I explained it would, given how I knew this world worked, and hadn't people told me things were the way they were and there was no way around it?

The man wondered if I hadn't cracked from the strain.

I told him I hadn't, and that I knew of several examples that I could demonstrate with not far from here.

The man thought about it for a while, drumming his fingers on the table.

I tried to contain my frustration at any delay. The work would take weeks, if it could be done at all, letting him think about it wasn't any sort of delay. Besides he would need to go to bed soon, and with no plan to work from he couldn't start building anything.

The man got a far away look in his eye. "It could work, couldn't it?" he finally asked.

"That's what I've been telling you!" I tried not to shout. "You see?"

"I'll get started right away."

The next day I excitedly told my friends the plan, and they too thought I was crazy at first.

"We have to do something crazy," I told them. "What other options do we have? We have to nail him with something so outlandish he's never even considered it. And this is a guy that trapped his own castle, I remind you."

"I would want to do some testing," Clarissa told me.

"Of course!" I agreed. "I'm not suggesting we don't. In fact it's critical we do because like Alita said we only get one shot at this."

"I did say that," she agreed. "I'm so smart sometimes."

"No one here would deny it," Rose told her seriously.

"They better not!"

"So let's test it!"

We spent that morning making sure every part of the plan would work, and they finally came around and decided there was no reason it wouldn't. Magic worked a certain way, and it produced the same results every time. We could use that fact, in conjunction with what I had learned along the way, and put an end to the Dragonlord's reign of terror. All he had to do was play his part, and we were pretty sure what we had learned from the survivor would insure that.

With the plan in motion we still had work to do. We raised our 'levels' as much as we could while the blacksmith and carpenter worked on our stuff, and finally it was all ready. We were ready. We needed to be as strong as possible just to fight our way through the castle, so gaining 'levels' was necessary. The other former maids were ready, as they had a part to play in all this too. "If the plan doesn't work, it's up to you to contain him until we get back," I told them. "We can't count on having enough magical power to leave the castle if he does. We may have to fight our way back out, meaning you'll have to deal with him for a time."

"We understand," they had said. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." I hoped that too, but they were strong and capable from all the work they had done, so I had faith in them to cover that part of the plan.

The morning we planned to attack the castle the three came out of the inn wearing their new armor. Each was painted a different color, and each had a slightly different style, but my heart soared to see them. It wasn't the clanking, ill fitting armor of old, that one might buy and put up with because there was no other choice. No. This was armor tailored to the person who wore it, following their every curve and looking more like a second skin than simply a metal barrel they had climbed into. The joints were hinged and reinforced, the token shined from their chests where it had been placed. They were truly Dragon Warriors. The townspeople as well quieted as we stood before them, I in my dragonscale and they in their shining and complete suits.

"Ready to go?" Alita asked me.

"As ready as I'll ever be," I told her. "Everyone?"

They nodded their heads. I turned to the assembled group. "We go now to face the Dragonlord," I told them. "We go, knowing that there is every chance one or more of us will never return." Please let Loto's journal be wrong. Please let this not be a mistake. I don't want to lose them because I wasn't strong enough to say they should remain behind, that this was my fight alone. But they were with me every step of the way, their own tokens prove that. This has to work, it has to! "But we go willingly, to protect you, and the world, from this great evil you all know. Before the day is out, the threat of the Dragonlord will be no more, or we will have died in the attempt. You have all worked tirelessly to support us. First with the basket, and then on my next idea, despite what misgivings you had. But the basket worked, you see one floating above you now." He's never attacked it, does he not care? Does he not know, just sitting down in his lair at the bottom of the castle? Much depends on this. "So too will this idea work. I have staked my life on it. I bid you farewell for now, please pray that we all return triumphant."

They cheered for us, and we climbed into the basket. All around it, former maids in armor not as nice as my party's grabbed hold of ropes and stepped into rope loops around the basket. It being only so big, and it taking too long to move back and forth, we had to deliver everything in one shot. We closed the flaps and waited, the basket started lifting off the ground. But will it be enough to lift everything? We hoped it would, and the dragons stood ready should this whole crazy scheme of mine work out. The bag floated higher, the ropes straining now to lift the other people and the crate the basket was attached to. Come on, come on, lift, higher! It stopped lifting.

"What do we do?" Rose asked, looking over the edge. Her hands gripped it tightly, she wasn't any more comfortable in the air but she seemed determined to show courage now. "It's not going to lift off the ground."

"Tie the other basket to it, quick!" Clarissa suggested. "The lifting power of the two bags might be enough!"

The people below hurried to accomplish that, grabbing the line the basket was tied to and dragging it over to us. Every person in town it seemed was there, straining to keep the basket from floating away as they worked.

We're all a part of this, look at what working together we can accomplish.

With the additional bag the crate started to lift, people were calling for all vents to be closed, for more heat to be captured by the bags. The operator did so, then climbed down, so his weight wasn't adding to the problem. (And not at all because he didn't want to get dragged to the castle, it was just the weight thing, he said so over and over) The former maids were holding on under the basket as the two bags slowly started dragging the crate, and then it worked, the entire thing lifted off the ground, and the dragons strained to move it to the shore and then over the water.

"You can do it," Rose whispered, knowing even shouting they wouldn't be able to hear. "It's not far, you can do this! I believe in you."

And they did. The dragons dragged the two baskets to Dragonlord island, across the swamp that surrounded the place and to the entrance of the castle. We didn't need to let out much hot air to thump the package to the ground and the soldiers (no longer simply 'former maids' I thought to myself, they are soldiers now the same as any other) got ready to heft it into position. But there was one more test we had to perform. The castle loomed large ahead of us, but we knew what we had to do. The four of us jumped from the basket, the dragons waving and pulling the baskets back the way they had come. They've done their job, now it's up to us. The castle door was open, what did the Dragonlord have to fear? So we went inside and Rose used her spell to go outside again. The final test was done, and we waited for her return.

"They're setting it up now," she told us. "I hope this works."

"There's every indication it will," I assured her. "Come on, we've kept the Dragonlord waiting long enough."

"Before we go further," Clarissa said, putting a hand up. "I just want to say, it's been great fighting at your side these last few months. I never believed when we maids decided to band together and learn how to fight that I would be marching into the Dragonlord's castle one day. Rose, Alita," she said my name as well, "it has been an honor." She stuck out her hand, and we grinned, sticking our hands out to rest on top of hers. "Let's do this."

"This" being a conservative slog through the castle, lighting torches and using herbs to preserve our magic as long as possible. As the soldier had told us the place was a maze, and we knew we had to make it to the Dragonlord looking like as much of a threat as possible. We fought as best we could as a unit, me in the lead, and it worked in our favor that monsters seemed to come at us one at a time. We could sometimes get around them, if the passageway wasn't too narrow, and strike from all sides. I don't know where Rose got all her arrows from, but she stayed out of harms way as best she could, firing again and again to cover us. (She picked up any unbroken arrows after the monster turned to gold of course) We marked passages with chalk so we knew where we had come from and didn't get turned around, and more than once came to a dead end and had to take another path. The girl's armor didn't look so new anymore, but mine was holding up nicely. The enchantment saving me from most blows, so I didn't need as much healing as I feared. It was completely worth it, without this armor we would have really had a much harder time of this. I can take the monster's focus, letting the others get around them, and even as strong as they are, we're high enough 'level' that we're doing okay.

Then we came to another dead end, and this one seemed to be a small stone chamber. We were about to turn and go back up the stairs when Alita put a hand on my shoulder. "Wait, what's that?"

Clarissa held the torch up, as we only used one at a time and both her and Alita switched off torch duty as one went out. (Rose couldn't use a torch and a bow at the same time, after all) We looked over at the far wall, expecting some kind of monster or other horror but it was something completely out of our expectation. Hanging on the wall was a magnificent looking sword.

"What in the world?" Alita asked, looking around. "Don't get too near it."

"Agreed, it could be a trap," I mused, crouching down on the floor to look at the stones that made it up. Are any loose? Does it look like the floor could give way to a pit trap or something?

"What a sword though, do you think..." Rose asked.

"Loto's sword?" Clarissa wondered. "I mean it could be. Look at it!"

The sword was long, but with a shining, narrow blade that reflected the torchlight like a mirror. Not a hint of rust could be seen, and the guard looked like a stylized bird, not uncommon for swords made hundreds of years ago or so the blacksmith had once told me. I had asked him what the last sword of Loto might look like out of curiosity, and what he described seemed to match the sword that was before us very closely.

"Must be a trap," Rose said. "Why keep it here otherwise?"

"Agreed," I told her. "Why not keep it yourself, even if you don't use a sword he wouldn't want me using it. He would have kept it at his side. It makes no sense for it to be here."

"Is there some way we could get it?" Alita asked. "I don't see any traps, no spikes, no threads to trip us or trigger a collapse. I mean it's right there!"

"Yes, it is," I agreed. "But consider, the Dragonlord's magic can turn him from a dragon to a human. It can hold back water, and make monsters out of gold. Could it not also turn a stick into a sword? I don't want to be holding a stick at a critical moment when I'm face to face with the Dragonlord."

"Agreed," she finally allowed. "Let's just leave it. It's too suspicious that's it here, and we should rely on what we know now. If it's still here when he's dead, well, fine."

"Agreed," I said.

"Agreed," Rose said.

"Agreed," Clarissa said.

We left, making our way back down the passage. It's for the best. We're not trying to kill him anyway, that way lies disaster I can feel it. This sword has served me well, and I paid enough for it. Let it be my weapon even now.

We continued downward, closer and closer to our confrontation.

Finally we saw it, the final level. Water held back on either side, just as the man had said. The Dragonlord was near. We checked our armor, tightened the straps on our weapons, and burst from the hallway to our final confrontation.

"Welcome," said a man sitting on blocks of gold. "I was beginning to think you were all dead. Shall we get started?"