Fluff Dragon Read online

  Max tentatively touched the cover of the book again and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t shock him. He carefully picked it up and turned to a random page. It opened to an illustration of an orc—just like the one outside—with green leathery skin, sideways-pointed ears, and a broad, curved nose. The caption below read, Orcs—Good Warriors but Notoriously Bad Tippers. But instead of the sprawling, handwritten text that Max was used to, the words in the Codex were blurred and vibrating as if it were all they could do to hold themselves together. Max flipped the page and read on:

  A special note to travelers in the Magrus. Anything green and smaller than you is probably harmless (except for the Berserking Grasshoppers of Schil). Goblins and gremlins are generally runtish in size, followed by hoblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and ogres. Both orcs and ogres are known to eat unwary bystanders, so avoid them when possible. And never try to make an ogre laugh, as chronicled in the infamous “an ogre, an orc, and a rabbi walk into a bar” joke told by Manu the Horribly Mangled.

  Suddenly the words on the page fell apart, sliding down the paper like black drops of wet ink. Then the book shuddered, slipping from Max’s hands and landing on the ground with a thud.

  “That’s a magic book,” the self-proclaimed dragon said. “I know about such things, and you’re far too young to have something like that. Where’d you steal it?”

  “I didn’t steal it!” Max exclaimed, his frustration getting the better of him.

  “I suppose that’s true. . . . You’re too pudgy to be a thief.”

  Max fumed. “Well, you’re too fluffy to be a dragon.”

  “Ha!” the creature said. “Don’t you know anything? That’s exactly what I am—a fluff dragon.”

  Max took a second look at the creature and realized it did have a certain dragon quality about it, if you shrank it down, squished it together, and then covered it in fluffy fur instead of scales.

  “Obviously you’re not from around these parts,” the fluff dragon continued, “so let me fill you in. Dragons and unicorns are the most powerful creatures in the Magrus.”

  “I already know that,” Max said, sounding a bit defensive. “But I’ve never seen a dragon that looked like a giant Q-tip.”

  The fluff dragon frowned. “It’s not like we’re born this way. So you know how dragons and unicorns are the only creatures that can go back and forth between human and animal forms?”

  “I guess.”

  “So dragons have scales, and scales are soft on the inside and hard on the outside because that just sort of makes sense when you think about it. Understand so far?”

  “It’s not that complicated.”

  “Good,” the fluff dragon continued. “So scales are basically armor, except dragons have a special scale right over our hearts called the serpent’s escutcheon. That scale is impervious to lance and sword and reflects magic. So as a dragon changes from human to dragon form, we’re getting back into our armor. Think of it like slipping into a shirt. I mean, it’s obviously more complicated than that, but I’m trying to use words you’ll understand.”

  Max was growing impatient. “I’m sorry, but is there a point to all this?”

  “A point? Oh yes, there’s a point. You ever wake up first thing in the morning, grab a shirt, and accidentally put it on inside out?”

  “Of course,” Max replied, remembering the unpleasant day at school when he’d worn his shirt and pants inside out.

  “Well, there you go,” the fluff dragon announced. “Simple mistake, right? Only when a dragon puts his scales on backward, the serpent’s escutcheon reflects all the magic back—and since we’re magical creatures, this isn’t such a good thing. We grow smaller, lose our spells, and our skin becomes hard on the inside and soft on the outside. Soft and fluffy, and we’re stuck that way for the rest of our lives.”

  “So why are you telling me this?” Max asked, wanting to get back to the Codex.

  “Why . . . ? Why do you think? Just look at me, chained to a tent pole and used by my captors as a pillow—a pillow! Do you know how humiliating that is?”

  Suddenly Max felt sorry for the fluff dragon. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you at first,” he apologized. “Let’s start over. I’m Max Spencer, and I really need to figure out a way to save my friends.”

  “And I’m Puff,” the fluff dragon replied.

  “Wait, your name is Puff? Puff the fluff dragon?”

  Puff frowned. “I assure you nobody thought twice about my name when I was swooping down and scorching castles.”

  “You there!” the orc bellowed from outside. “You talking to pillow or making mittens?”

  “Just getting the, uh, right pattern,” Max called back, retrieving the Codex and doing his best to look like he wasn’t panicking. Thankfully the book didn’t shock him again, so he began flipping through its pages.

  The last time he’d seen the strange pattern was some time ago, which happened to be in the future when he was preparing to fight a robot army. Now, however, the Codex wasn’t cooperating. All the pages were filled with strange symbols and shapes, none of which Max could read. He shut the book, his mind scrambling to come up with a solution. Clutching the Codex in both hands he concentrated on the ancient tome, commanding it to obey him. He’d had some success connecting with the book before, but this time it didn’t feel like anything was even out there.

  “Are you really sure you want mittens? Maybe there’s something else we could trade?” Max called out.

  The orc spat in response. “Need orc husband—but they no want wife that can’t cook. Need mittens to cook good. So make now or friends go in stew.”

  “Okay, okay,” Max pleaded. “Just don’t cook anybody.”

  The orc harrumphed in response. “Better hope ogres hunt good,” she added, hopping around on her peg leg and grabbing a rotten head of cabbage from a sack. “If not, you go in pot for sure.”

  “Hey, Max, listen,” Puff said after the orc had turned her back. “Get me out of these chains and we can make a run for it. Come on, just you and me.”

  “I can’t,” Max replied, opening the Codex again. “I’m not leaving without my friends.” Puff’s expression fell as Max worked on finding a way out. What he needed was a spell—he’d gotten pretty good with some of the lower-level spells, fireballs mostly. He ran his finger down the side of the ancient page and watched as the symbols suddenly shifted and became legible again: Attack squirrels favor more traditional military formations, such as the classic L-shaped ambush, rather than a mad scampering toward the enemy . . . But then the text shimmered and turned back into the pulsating mishmash of unreadable characters. Max slammed the book shut.

  “When the ogres come back—and believe me, they will—it doesn’t matter if you make mittens or not,” Puff said. “They’re going to eat all of you.”

  Max put the Codex down and reached for his backpack. Inside he could see Glenn, his magical dagger. The fact that the orc hadn’t bothered to take it said a lot about how much of a threat she thought he was. And that was without knowing that Glenn was probably the most useless magical dagger ever created. Max set the pack between his legs and tried to think. Time was running out, and he didn’t have a clue what to do to save his friends.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A HAIRY SITUATION

  IT WASN’T REZORMOOR DREADBRINGER’S HABIT to be summoned. If somebody wanted to talk to the regent of the Wizard’s Tower, they came and added their name to a very long list. And if that name was deemed important, it might, at some point, warrant a screening by some low-level wizard who would then determine future appointment worthiness. But to be summoned by a guild? Unheard-of. Not the Assassins’, Thieves’, or Mercenaries’ guilds would dare risk the sorcerer’s wrath by commanding his presence. Not any guild, that is, save for one—the guild whose very name was whispered by the most powerful throughout the Seven Kingdoms: the Guild of Toupee Makers.

  Most citizens of the Magrus understood that to rise in power requires time�
��time to strategize, to influence, to strengthen, to overthrow. Rulers, usurpers, despots, high wizards—such have all paid their dues to become who they are. And the unfortunate consequence of a lifetime cultivating and building such power? Male-pattern baldness. And so it was that the Guild of Toupee Makers served a very particular clientele. A clientele, in fact, who did not become figures of menace and fear just to be called “chrome dome” or “baldy.”

  It was with such thoughts that Rezormoor Dread-bringer rode in the back of his black coach as it traveled along Aardyre’s Guild Row. The zombie duck was harnessed in front as usual, and did the work of an entire team of horses. No citizen with even a modicum of self-preservation would hang around when the flapping sound of webbed feet echoed across the cobblestones. Zombie ducks were notoriously evil.

  When the carriage stopped, Rezormoor stepped down to the empty street. It had long passed midnight, and he walked to a nondescript gray building and read the sign above the doorway: THE FRATERNAL BROTHERHOOD OF MIMES. Rezormoor, like most intelligent beings, couldn’t understand why someone would want to be a mime. But he’d been told to come here, so here he was.

  The sorcerer knocked three times, and in response a narrow slat slid open and a pair of eyes regarded him.

  “Why did the miner have a bad temper?” the voice asked through the door.

  “Because he had a short fuse,” the wizard answered, delivering the code words—painful as they were—exactly as he’d been told. The slat closed, followed by the sounds of several bolts opening and locks unlatching. Finally the door swung inward.

  A nonmime human of the old and mostly toothless variety poked his head out from behind the door. “Follow me,” he said. He led Rezormoor through various rooms and twisting hallways before opening a door to a utility closet. He motioned for Rezormoor to enter.

  “You want me to go in there?” the sorcerer asked.

  “It’s perfectly safe.”

  Rezormoor grunted and stepped in, doing his best to keep his black robes from touching the dirty mops hanging nearby. As the door shut, the far wall slid away, revealing a long set of stone steps. Rezormoor pushed his long black hair—hair that was straight and shiny and according to the Tower’s staff, made him look ten years younger—over his shoulders. It was proper wizard’s hair, provided by the master artisans from the very guild he was now visiting. He descended the steps, muttering a spell and lighting the passageway. At the bottom he found another door, which he pushed open and walked past.

  The room beyond was oval shaped, somewhat like the top of a human head. Seated on a raised dais in high-backed chairs were seven figures looking down at him. Hooded robes shadowed their faces.

  “Come before us in our secret chamber,” the one in the center commanded. His voice was old and raspy, and as Rezormoor walked to the center of the room, it reminded him of when, as a student, he was taken before his instructors to pass various magical exams. “You know of the list,” the man said, and the others echoed the last word:

  “The list, the list, the list . . .”

  “And your name is written upon it,” the man said.

  The list—the client list. All the names of the most powerful members of the Seven Kingdoms who hid their baldness from the world were on that list.

  “I am aware,” Rezormoor answered. He had to fight the urge to flick his hair back.

  “So tell us, sorcerer, how do you like your hairpiece? Does it fit? Is it itch free? Can you take it swimming? Does it not grow?”

  “Yes,” Rezormoor replied. “It is all that was promised and more.”

  The hooded figures nodded, apparently happy with the answer. They did, after all, have a certain pride of craftsmanship.

  “Then you must understand our concern,” the center figure continued. “The dragons . . .”

  Yes, the dragons, Rezormoor thought. He’d been hunting them, but not officially. The king had begun his own eradication campaign, but word moved through the black markets of the various cities around the Seven Kingdoms that the Tower was paying gold for dragon scale, and in particular, that most singular of scales called the serpent’s escutcheon.

  “I don’t see how that should concern the guild.”

  “Tell us, sorcerer, do you hunt all dragons? What of those that have . . . transformed?”

  “Into their human form?” Rezormoor offered. “They always turn eventually. It’s the scales, you see. I need them for my research.”

  “What of fluff dragons?”

  Suddenly Rezormoor understood. The construction of the guild’s hairpieces was a closely held secret. Most assumed it involved some complex combination of magic and rare materials, but now he realized it was something simpler—something more natural.

  “The toupees,” Rezormoor said, looking up at them. “You fashion them from the fluff of fluff dragons, don’t you?”

  “Yes!” came the thundering admission, and the word echoed around the small chamber. “Now you understand. If all the dragons are destroyed, the fluff dragons will follow, for the one springs from the other. And without fluff, there can be no more hair!”

  It was a stunning admission. Without toupees, the powerful were at risk of being scoffed at. And it took only a little scoffing before other ideas began to form in people’s heads, and then you had uprisings and rebellions to deal with.

  “What do you propose?” Rezormoor asked. “What has been set in motion cannot be undone.”

  “If only King Kronac were a client, this could be dealt with easily, but those northern barbarians have great heads of hair! So instead we demand that the fluff dragons be rounded up and taken to a place where they’ll be protected.”

  “And sheared.”

  “Well, of course. But fluff dragons can’t be bred, and with the dragons gone, they’ll eventually die off. But their fluff, in theory, could be duplicated.”

  It is possible, Rezormoor thought. But harnessing the kind of magic to duplicate something organic wasn’t like lighting a candle. He would need the only spell book capable of such a thing: the Codex of Infinite Knowability. Fortunately the search for the book was already under way. More importantly, such an arrangement could solve another problem he’d been trying to work out—one that dealt with acquiring a vast amount of gold.

  “What you ask is not easy,” Rezormoor admitted. “Not easy at all.”

  “But not impossible?”

  “No. Not impossible.”

  “Good. Then it shall be done.”

  “Of course,” Rezormoor replied, bowing slightly. When he rose, however, his countenance was as hard as steel. “But there are . . . terms.”

  “Terms?” came the shocked reply. “Did we not already impress upon you the fact that your name is written upon the list? Do you know what would happen to your reputation if your baldness was exposed to the world?”

  “Oh yes,” the sorcerer answered. He remembered the peasant children painting his face on smooth chicken eggs. They were painful memories. “But at the risk of our mutual demise, I must insist on compensation.”

  “Compensation? All of this is because you had to go off and hunt dragons in the first place!”

  “Be that as it may, we must come to terms. If not, I shall endure being disgraced and you will endure the demise of your guild.”

  “You seem to leave us with little choice,” the voice hissed at him. Rezormoor smiled—who’d have thought he’d have the powerful Guild of Toupee Makers under his thumb?

  “Then this is what I require,” Rezormoor continued. And when he was done, he had forged a deal that would make him rich enough to fuel his ultimate desire.

  Rezormoor returned to the Wizard’s Tower. He exited the carriage but did not go inside. Instead, he dismissed the zombie duck and walked across the moonlit grounds to the place where he knew the thing was waiting for him. The creature had carved a path of destruction through the very heart of the city until it found itself at the Tower’s gate, drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It was, in
truth, like nothing the sorcerer had encountered before. It wasn’t a demon, or anything born of the Shadrus. And while it did have a certain taint about it, its origins remained a mystery.

  The old well had gone dry decades ago, but it made a convenient hiding place for a creature over seven feet tall. Rezormoor found the well and squatted next to the opening.

  “Do you know how long I’ve been stuck down here?” the creature asked. It sounded much more boyish than Rezormoor had first expected.

  “It’s called hiding,” Rezormoor replied. “And considering the mess you made, this is the safest place you can be.”

  “Well, it totally bites.” It had a strange vocabulary as well.

  “Can you hunt something?” Rezormoor called down.

  “I can do anything I want.”

  “I see. Well, I’d like you to hunt something for me. And if you serve me well, I will find you better accommodations.”

  “What do you want me to kill?”

  Rezormoor smiled; the creature seemed to have the right attitude, at least. “They’re called fluff dragons. But I don’t want them dead. Not just yet.”

  “Fluff dragons? That’s, like, the stupidest name ever.”

  “Yes, well, it does describe them,” Rezormoor replied.

  “Sounds like a hassle.”

  “You could always refuse and just sit there in the dark.”

  “Fine,” the voice called back. “You don’t have to be a dweeb about it.”

  “Fair enough,” Rezormoor sighed. He was growing tired of talking to the thing, but it was an important errand he required it to accomplish. “By the way, what should I call you?”