End Game Charlie: The Dragon Mage 12, page 1
End Game Charlie
The Dragon Mage 12
Scott Baron
Copyright © 2022 by Scott Baron
All rights reserved.
Print Edition ISBN 978-1-945996-49-8
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
"You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain."
- Miyamoto Musashi
The Heroic Sponsors
Many thanks to the awesome supporters of this series. You all are heroic in my eyes, and the audiobook of Castaway Charlie (book 10) would not have been recorded without all of you coming together to help get it done. Your sponsoring contributions are what made it possible and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
~ Scott Baron ~
* * *
(Listed in Chronological Sponsorship Order)
Greg Moore
James MacKay
Alex McDonald
Rodney Garrett
P.J. Pinto
Larry (Poric) Rainey
Samuel Maganaro
Jason Marroquin
Dustin Higgi
Przemyslaw Kordys
Dusty Arrington
Jeffrey O’Neal
Timothy Leidig
Frentaken
Ivey Coor
Harry Fink
Vancil Clayton Thomas
Paul Smith
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 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
Afterword
Also by Scott Baron
About the Author
Chapter One
Charlie ducked aside, a meaty fist swinging through the air where his head had just been. He replied with a flurry of elbows, driving them into the thick-skulled attacker’s jaw until he crumpled to the ground in a heap.
He flashed a look at the assassin at his side, likewise introducing an angry man to his new friend, Mister Ground.
“I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong, Bob,” Charlie blurted as he stepped over the unconscious attacker now lying at his feet. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked, his jaw all but hanging open in shock.
“You did not hear me wrong,” Bawb replied, slowly walking backward around the downed man, his hands still empty but ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. “I am positive the two of them and their dragon friends were most certainly here. And they have clearly made quite a mess of things.”
Here was a dangerous planet in a deadly system. A system where Allpower could not function and technology was king. The forbidden planet upon which they had found the Vortaxis.
Of course, the massively powerful artifact had been inadvertently destroyed by Charlie and Ara as they attempted to fight off the Urvalin and force their way back across the trap portal that had dragged them into this galaxy. A fluke of their incompatible flavor of magic, apparently, and one that obliterated the oldest, most powerful relic this galaxy had ever known.
Fortunately, the more than slightly fanatical religious order protecting it hadn’t even realized that they’d stolen the actual Vortaxis right out from under their noses. In fact, when Charlie and his friends had last departed this world, they’d taken their leave, confident that a new alliance had been formed. One built on a mutual hatred of the Urvalin.
Now, however, it seemed Arlo and Ripley had gone and blundered into things in epic fashion and had stirred up one hell of a hornets’ nest in the process.
Space beasts similar to dragons had been extinct here for millennia, so when the two dragons had landed on the planet, they’d made quite a stir in the system where magic should not have been able to function and their kind did not exist.
For the local inhabitants, going from confidently superior in firepower on their home turf to a state of doubt, unsure what destruction these magical beasts might be able to bring upon them, had put the entire world on edge.
It wasn’t a lost cause at that point, but, unfortunately, Arlo and Ripley lacked the vital skill of tact and nuance that might have defused that situation. Diplomats, they were not. They were bulls, or more accurately, dragon riders, in a china shop.
Charlie batted aside a stun grenade of a rather novel design before it could discharge, knocking it from the air with a vicious slice from the long knife he wore on his hip. This was only getting worse, he realized. Any minute now it would turn into a free-for-all. He just couldn’t believe how they’d wound up in this mess to begin with.
From what they had heard before being attacked, it seemed that upon entering this new galaxy, the dragons the teens were riding had not only managed to avoid the magic-sucking deathtrap of the black hole-ensconced portal, but they had gone on to do much along the lines of what Ara was doing now. Namely, backtracking the scent of a familiar friend.
And that scent had led them here, of all places.
It was a mess to be sure, but worse yet, in the middle of the locals’ panic and confusion, the intruders had asked for Charlie and Bawb by name.
That was pretty much all that Bawb had managed to glean from the head priest he had gone to see upon their return to the planet before the angry locals took up arms, surrounding the newcomers. Some of the mob even foolishly engaged them. Fortunately, the priest had the wherewithal to restrain himself, at least for the time being. The common rabble? Not so much.
“These guys look really pissed, Bob,” Charlie said, his fingers loosely resting on his pulse pistol’s grip, a spell on the tip of his tongue, ready to fly if things escalated further.
“That is because they are pissed. And with good reason,” Bawb said, quickly stepping aside and delivering a carefully placed incapacitating blow upon the man charging at him. He made sure he spoke clearly, remembering that these people possessed robust translation tech.
He, Charlie, and Ara could still communicate with one another through their silent bond, though the Zomoki was currently hiding out on a nearby moon. With the whole damn planet on full alert, Charlie and his friends were of the belief that these technologically advanced people might very well possess the means to even detect magic. And that could just make things much, much worse than a fistfight with an angry mob.
As it was, the head priest who had so recently been a welcoming host to them had given in to the will of the crowd and was now leading the substantial and well-armed group surrounding the visitors. Worse, not just a mere handful of guards. At least two dozen ships now hovered in the sky above them, armed to the teeth and ready to engage.
Whatever the kids and their dragon counterparts had done, it had made quite the impression, and it had not been a good one.
“What did they say to them, Bob? What the hell did they do? We’re all friends, here. These guys know we don’t mean them any harm. We’re all on the same team, fighting the Urvalin,” Charlie said, hoping their translated discussion amongst themselves would perhaps sway the native from attacking.
“It sounded as if Arlo and Ripley flew to the surface in something of an overly ambitious rush, flaring magic and with weapons hot.”
“Why the hell would they—” Charlie began to say when a stun blast hit his shielding. “Hey! Knock that shit out. We don’t want to hurt anyone!”
Another shot flew, then another. Charlie clenched his jaw when a full-fledged volley threatened to drop his tech shields.
“Oh, the hell with this. Enough is enough!” he growled, flaring his magic into a protective bubble.
That certainly got the natives’ attention, and not in a good way.
“Charlie, what have you done?” Bawb groaned just as three large warships dropped out of orbit, orange-hot from their scrambled descent, the sonic booms shaking the ground around them.
The priest at the head of the mob took his hand from the glowing symbol on his tech-thread-embedded sleeve, looking at the pair with distrust, scorn, and disapproval. Apparently, he had just called in the big guns, both figuratively and literally.
“So, you also wield Allpower?” he spat. “All this time, nothing but lies and subterfuge.”
Charlie raised his hands. “You don’t understand. We’re only trying to—”
A thundering crash the likes of which Charlie had never heard before rang out, then darkness surrounded him.
“Bob, what the hell?”
“I do not know,” the assassin replied, quickly casting an illumination spell, the locals’ distrust of magic be damned.
A slight rumble vibrated through their feet as their surroundings lit up. What he saw chilled his already frosty blood.
“What in the world…” Charlie trailed off, and with good reason.
Surrounding the two of them was a metal orb perhaps ten meters across at its widest. There was a seam at the top with bits of dirt and pavement still clinging to the edges. Not a sound penetrated from outside, nor any light. They had been sealed off.
Bawb increased the spell’s brightness and studied the trap. He cast a force spell, attempting to open the orb, but rather than freedom, quite the opposite happened. The orb, it seemed, had contracted slightly, the ground at their feet buckling as it did.
“Interesting,” he said, testing the orb’s seal again with his magic, but this time using far less.
Again, their prison shrank around them.
“Bob?”
“Release your power, Charlie,” he replied. “Do not attempt to cast.”
“But we’re strong casters. And you’ve got your wand.”
“True. But these people have had a very long time to prepare to counter such powers, and it would appear we are now locked within a most ingenious of cages.”
A memory of childhood flashed through Charlie’s head. Finger cuffs he had played with in his youth. A simple toy, but effective. The more you pulled, the tighter they became. Resistance only worsened your situation, and that was exactly the predicament they were in now.
“What can we do, Bob? We need to get out of here.”
Charlie’s pale friend slid to the ground, sitting cross-legged and looking as relaxed as one could, given the situation.
“Do?” he replied with a somewhat amused grin. “We do nothing,” he said as he began releasing the illumination spell, the slow rumble at their feet lessening as he did. “What we do now,” he said as they settled into darkness, “is wait.”
Chapter Two
It was an unfamiliar feeling for Charlie, not being able to use his power even though he could feel it just begging to be unleashed. Unfortunately, if he did so he and his friend would be summarily squished into a compact and bloody ball. Not exactly his idea of a good day.
So he held back, kept his power in check, and waited. And waited. And waited some more. The tedium was horrible, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it didn’t. It seemed that the head priest who had trapped them here had no intention of finishing them off. At least, not yet. There also did not seem to be any rush to bring them in for questioning, so it was here they would stay, sitting in the dark.
Charlie hadn’t planned on being locked inside a magic-sensitive deathtrap when he started his day, but then, most of what had happened to him over the past several years was well outside the parameters of what anyone would call a normal life.
First, he had been sucked into yet another new galaxy, which would be a wild enough experience if it happened only once. But twice? Charlie felt like he was winning the universe’s shittiest lottery. But it only got worse from there.
Battling to survive a world where his power was gone had proven a challenge he and his friends were up for, but only just. The planet, surrounded by multiple black holes negating all magic, or Allpower, as they called it in this realm, forced them to rely solely on the limited technology they had with them. That, and their wits.
Ara had nearly met her fate on that day, losing her power and burning horribly in an out-of-control descent. Only quick thinking by her friends had saved her. Griggalt, the dragon from Charlie’s realm, however, had not been so fortunate, nor had Gustavo, one of the two AI ships pulled into the trap with them.
Fortunately, at least one of their ships had survived the crash landing with his systems intact. Kip was as chatty and functional as ever, unlike Gustavo, who had broken up on impact. They learned quite quickly that the Urvalin had designed this planet as a prison of sorts for their enemies and surrounded it with energy-dampening microsats that killed the systems of any craft that flew through it.
But others had survived, and with their leader, Nakk, and his right hand, Skohla, they had managed to form a respectable fighting force and turn the tables on the Urvalin, breaking their friends out of captivity while escaping the trap world.
It was a challenging experience, and all of this had been going on while Leila was waiting for him back home, pregnant and ready to pop any time now. At least, they thought that was the case. The couple had no idea what the intergalactic, interspecies union might mean for gestation, but it seemed relatively normal thus far.
The important thing was, she needed him with her for the big day, and here Charlie sat, stranded in an entirely different galaxy.
At least he could count on the Magus stone she wore around her neck to keep her safe. The deep-green pendant contained a great depth of power handed down over generations, bound to her family line. It would protect her at all costs, though sometimes the lines between friend and foe became a bit blurred, as Charlie had learned firsthand, and a bit painfully at that.
Another couple in their circle of friends was expecting as well, but that pair certainly didn’t need a Magus stone to defend themselves.
Bawb was one of the deadliest killers in not two, but three galaxies now, and his mate was equally skilled. Hunze was also an Ootaki, whose power-generating and absorbing race had never been able to use their own magic. It was a quirk of their physiology. They could produce and store it in their golden hair, but they could never use it for themselves.
Her union with Bawb had changed all of that when he gifted her power back to her in an act of love. The two were bonded in multiple ways, their power as well as their hearts forever intertwined. And that pair would lay waste to worlds to protect their unborn child.
When he’d heard the news, Bawb was both shocked and delighted. Family wasn’t the sort of thing a Ghalian assassin ever thought about having, but his life had taken more than a few drastic turns since the fateful day he had met the man from Earth. The man he now considered more a brother than a friend.
“We’re going to be dads, dude,” Charlie had said one cool evening on the beaches of Malibu, where they had taken up residence. “Holy crap. I mean, think about it. Us, of all people.”
“It is a life I had not considered within my reach not so long ago,” Bawb replied.
“Hunze is gonna be a great mom. And you’re gonna be an awesome dad. Seriously. You’ll be great at it.”
“And so will you, Charlie. I find it pleasant to think that one day not too long from now, our children will grow up together, much the way Daisy and Sarah’s children have.”
“Arlo and Ripley are thick as thieves,” Charlie said. “And damn competent for their age.”
