Clash of Heroes: Nath Dragon meets The Darkslayer

CLASH OF HEROES

Nath Dragon Meets the Darkslayer

Part 1

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NATH DRAGON MEETS THE DARKSLAYER

PART 1

Copyright © December 2015 by Craig Halloran

Amazon Edition

TWO-TEN BOOK PRESS

P.O. Box 4215, Charleston, WV 25364

ISBN eBook:    978-1-941208-42-7

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-941208-43-4

THE DARKSLAYER is a registered trademark, #77670850

http://www.thedarkslayer.net

Cover Illustration by Joe Shawcross

Edited by
Cherise Kelley

Map by Gillis Bjork

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Publisher's Note

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

CLASH OF HEROES

Nath Dragon Meets the Darkslayer

Part 1

Introduction

Before diving into this one-of-a-kind adventure, I wanted to cover a few things. First, you’ll be bouncing between two worlds, Bish and Nalzambor. Second, you will be dealing with two different time lines from each series. Nath Dragon begins this journey at some point in series 2, Claws of the Dragon. Venir, the Darkslayer, is in part of his life that occurs before Series 1 begins. This is after he gets the armament, but before book 1,
Wrath of the Royals
, begins. Third, well, there isn’t really a third, but be prepared to be reacquainted with some familiar faces. My, my, my, what will happen when Brool and Fang clash?

Battle-savvy regards,

Craig

CHAPTER 1

Nalzambor

Reaching down, Nath extended his scaled arm, clasped Brenwar’s thick wrist, and hauled him up onto the rock.

“I could have handled it,” Brenwar said.

“Oh, I know, I just wanted to move a little faster,” Nath replied.

“You don’t need to hold up on my account.” Brenwar, built like an anvil, stood proud in his dwarven breastplate, combing his powerful, meaty fingers through his black and grey-peppered beard. “I’ll catch up. I always do.”

Nath took a swig of wizard water from his flask and offered it to Brenwar. “That’s only because I let you.”

“Har.” With his skeleton hand, Brenwar snatched the flask from Nath and guzzled it down. “Ah!”

“You might want to save some, just in case the journey turns out to be longer—”

“Don’t you go and worry about me!” The dwarf stuffed the flask into Nath's chest and resumed his climb. “I’m fine.”

Shaking his head, Nath watched Brenwar march up the hillside.

They were in a peculiar area of Nalzambor, several miles south of the Shale Hills, where the landscape was still green and coated in spring flowers. In was a nice sunny day in the beautiful land, the kind Nath was most fond of. The critters scurried in play and searched for food. The birds chirped. The river rapids cascaded over the rocks in the canyons far below.

Nath rubbed his forearm. His black scales glinted, seeming to soak up the sun with vibrant energy. Energized, Nath followed after Brenwar.

The pair had been tracking for days.

Weeks ago, a caravan of elves and dwarves had been attacked while moving the mystic Thunderstones from the home of the elves, Elome, to the home of the dwarves, Morgdon. After using them in the final battle of the last great Dragon War, the two races—after months of heated debate—had agreed to exchange custody of the Thunderstones on designated years. The first transport year had turned into a total calamity. The heavily armed envoy had been taken by a superior force of gnolls, goblins, ogres, orcs, bugbears, and even giants. The elven and dwarven forces were wiped out, and by the time the message of the fallen troops and lost stones reached the leaders' ears, the enemy was long gone, their tracks scattered in all directions.

Nath sighed.

Many of his and Brenwar's friends had died that day. The loss was heavy. Jolting. Deflating. The funerals lasted more than a week in celebration of the brave dwarves and elves who had died in a valiant battle.

As soon as Nath arrived on the scene, he had been able to picture what happened. The caravan had been outnumbered ten to one. Heavy footsteps were all over the bloodstained road and grass, the wagons toppled and torn apart.

As they all gathered there, the elves and dwarves had formed search parties, assigning Nath and Brenwar their own: a trail of goblins. Over a dozen had scurried through the highlands and hills. It seemed unlikely that goblins had put anything this big together, but he and Brenwar had reluctantly agreed.

“They leave their stink on everything, don’t they?” Brenwar stood on a bed of pine needles, inspecting a tree. A small broken branch was pinched between his fingers, and his nose was crinkled.

“I haven’t gone a moment without a whiff of them yet.” Nath kneeled down. The goblin trail was getting more recent. They were closing in. “We should catch up with them in another day or so, don’t you think?”

“Aye, but it seems like a lost cause. Goblins couldn’t have pulled off that raid. I think they were just paid to hit and run. Cheap hired hands. Probably paid in sandstone coins. Stupid, smelly things.” Brenwar kicked the tree, rustling the branches. “They’ll pay. All of them.”

“We're after the stones, not blood.”

“If we were after the stones, we wouldn’t be hunting the goblins. I can’t figure why we were given this task. It makes me want to spit through my beard.”

“The goblins are just as clever as the others. Truth be told, I can’t figure any of them being able to harness the stones' power. They aren’t capable. Someone else is behind this.”

“Who else could it be other than the titans?” Hefting his war hammer, Mortuun the Crusher, up onto his shoulder, Brenwar started moving on.

“The titans are trying to run things, but they can’t run everything. No, not at all. There’s plenty of other forces that would want those stones.” Nath ducked under the branches and headed after Brenwar. “Humans, perhaps.”

“Men couldn’t control those ugly goons. Not in a century or a millennium.”

“We can at least eliminate the possibility that they have them. Who knows, it’s possible they don’t even understand what they have.”

Waving his war hammer over his head, Brenwar replied, “Well, they aren’t going to be ready for what they are going to get. I’ll tell you that much.”

Nath chuckled. It didn’t help the grim feeling that had set in, though. When he’d been younger, the unknown had been exciting, but the older he got, the more danger filled it became. People died. Friends were lost. And now, great power was in the hands of another unknown enemy.

Let’s just eliminate the goblins as suspects and move on.
Hopefully the others will have tracked down the perpetrators when we return.

After a short night of rest and another half day of travel, their trek led them across a broad stream that was very familiar.

“Say, Brenwar, do you remember the last time we passed through here?”

Stomping through the knee-deep waters, his friend said, “No.”

“Aw, of course you do. Sansla Libor. You know, the winged ape? He chucked you through those trees. Ha! Now
that
was astonishing.”

“Are you going to talk, or are you going to track?”

Nath didn’t reply. Instead, he resumed the lead.

The goblins, though crafty, weren’t too hard to follow. They were bold and often traveled in heavy numbers so it wasn’t likely anyone would mess with them. It was past midday, just when the sun crested and started to dip, when Nath's boots landed on the edge of the Shale Hills. Aptly named, they were covered in black fragments of stone from one massive hillside to the other. Still, underneath was fertile soil, and trees burst out of the ground like flowers.

Standing beside him and staring up the hill, Brenwar said, “Odd.”

Nath nodded and kept on the trail. By the end of the day, he found himself staring at a very familiar cliff face lined with caves and crisscrossed with stone footholds. The rows of openings made out a pattern of skulls with vines and ivy oozing down the sides. He glanced over and found Brenwar’s eyes on his. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Aye, we should have killed him.”