Page 134 of Courting the Dragon King

Chapter

Sixty-Five

Konrad watched in horror as the warrior monks approached Wraith, weapons at the ready. Konrad shouted and thrashed against the stone altar and the hands holding him down.

Then Gerard stomped forward. His head darted, and he bit one of the warrior doves holding Konrad. He swung his head and threw the monk. Konrad shoved the other off him.

But he didn’t bother finishing him off. He just grabbed a discarded sword from the ground and ran to Wraith’s aid. He jumped in front of Wraith, holding up the sword.

Umbra ran to Wraith’s side. But they were still so outnumbered.

But then Gerard, Luther, and Barrett were on the monks, snapping and tearing at them. They scattered and screamed as bone crunched and blood burst. Luther swung his tail and knocked two monks out the window. One of them was Clara.

The rest of the monks scattered.

“Stay and fight!” the grand shield shouted as she brandished her sword.

With a cry, Konrad ran straight at her. He lifted his sword. She turned towards him and raised hers to block. But she was too late. He swung and cut straight through her neck. Her head rolled on the floor.

Konrad didn’t pause. He returned to Wraith’s side to fight more monks and undead. Meanwhile, Umbra barked and attacked, defending Wraith with everything she had.

The undead army now also fought the monks, the necromancers having realised that they, too, were no longer bound to not harming them. Yells and shouts filled the air. The scent of blood, rot, and smoke hung thick. All around was a blur of activity and noise.

Elias stood in the middle of a group of the reanimated. Lightning flashed as he zapped the skeletons and corpses. But his lightning didn’t seem to have much effect on the skeletons. And although it seemed to incapacitate the corpses, it only did so temporarily. Elias stepped backwards as the reanimated pressed closer.

Gerard barrelled forward. With a roar, he cleared the skeletons and corpses from around his husband.

Then King Alaric returned, flying in through the window. His fiery eyes fixed on the grand monk’s corpse. He tromped forward and lowered his head. He sniffed. Then he opened his mouth and chomped. In three bites, he ate the grand monk.

Or … kind of ate him. The dismembered parts of the grand monk fell into the dragon’s stomach. Or what would have been his stomach, if his father wasn’t just bone, shadow, and fire. The grand monk’s dismembered body fell through his skeleton, landing on the floor beneath. His robes caught fire.

Because the ceiling angled downwards towards the back of the crypt, the dragons could only stay at the front. The dread knights, the necromancers, and the remaining monks seemed to have realised this and had retreated to the back. And the dragons could not shoot dragonfire towards them, since a lot of their own forces were back there too.

The shadow queen stood in a back corner of the crypt. She lifted her hands. “Rise and fight!” she screamed.

The tombs rattled. The dread knights grabbed the stone slabs on top of the tombs and shoved them to the side. Skeletons and rotting corpses of dead monks crawled out from their tombs.

They immediately fell on the living monks. Screams of horror bounced off the walls. The monks’ numbers had already dwindled greatly. The last of them were killed, torn apart by their undead brethren.

“To the front. Come towards us!” Konrad shouted.

But the dread knights, about forty still remaining, were blocking their own forces from reaching Konrad and the other dragons.

A Draconian guard shoved their blade straight through a dread knight. But the dread knight just stabbed her in the throat.

“How can we defeat them?” Konrad asked. “If we could kill the necromancers, that would take out all the reanimated. But we can’t reach them. They have the undead surrounding and protecting them. And even if we managed to kill the necromancers, it would still leave the dread knights.” And Konrad knew from experience how hard they were to destroy.

“I … I think I can take care of the dread knights,” Wraith said.

“Can you?”

Wraith swayed on his feet. Freeing Konrad’s father from the grand monk’s control must have taken a lot of his energy.

“Are you okay?” Konrad asked.

Wraith nodded. “I think I can get rid of all the dread knights.” He closed his eyes. “Open the Bone Door,” he whispered.

Konrad could see no Bone Door, but that didn’t mean anything. He could never see it. An icy wind blew. Konrad shivered.