Dragon Sorcerer – Bite Down

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  Dragon Sorcerer- Bite Down

  Copyright © 2023 - Sean Oswald

  Cover art copyright - Sean Oswald

  Cover art by Luciano Fleitas

  Table of Contents

  The Story Up Till Now

  Prologue - Galbrecht and Tolston

  Chapter 1 - What to Think

  Chapter 2 - Lord and Lady

  Chapter 3 - The Birds and the Dragons

  Chapter 4 - Hungry

  Nico’s Stats 4.1

  Interlude 1 - Changes

  Cami’s Stats 4.2

  Chapter 5 - Ways to Grow

  Chapter 6 - Royal Advisor

  Chapter 7 - Preparations

  Chapter 8 – Blue is My Color

  Chapter 9 - Scolded

  Chapter 10 - When Smaller Is Better

  Chapter 11 - Life and Death

  Interlude 2 - Dancing

  Chapter 12 - Bones and Magic

  Chapter 13 - Never Submit

  Chapter 14 - Alliances

  Interlude 3 - Healing

  Chapter 15 - Resistance

  Chapter 16 - A New Nico

  Chapter 17 - Bare Bears

  Chapter 18 - Connected…

  Chapter 19 - Primordial Cause and Effect

  Interlude 4 - Divine Issues

  Chapter 20 - Next Steps

  Chapter 21 - Unexpected Guests

  Chapter 22 - Elves

  Chapter 23 - Blood and Curses

  Chapter 24 - Clearing the Air

  Chapter 25 - Questions and Chaos

  Chapter 26 - Lost Sheep

  Interlude 5 - Oblivion

  Chapter 27 - Travel

  Chapter 28 - Soul Pig

  Interlude 6 - Modessa’s Wild Ride

  Chapter 29 - Soul-Bonded?

  Chapter 30 - Primordial Remnants

  Chapter 31 - Planting Souls

  Chapter 32 - Dark Side of a Soul

  Chapter 33 - Root of the Problem

  Interlude 7 - Cami’s Eyes

  Chapter 34 - Restored… Now What?

  Chapter 35 - Results

  Interlude 8 - Scouting South

  Stats 4.3

  Chapter 36 - Mommy Dearest

  Chapter 37- Foundations of Flame and Spark

  Chapter 38 - Dungeon Overload

  Chapter 39 - Cleaning Up the Yard

  Chapter 40 - Small Spaces

  Chapter 41 - Beginning of the End

  Chapter 42 - Reality and Revenge

  Epilogue - Necessary Steps

  Stats at the End of Book 4

  Cast of Characters and Places

  Other Books by the Author:

  The Story Up Till Now

  This began as a story of a young dragon fleeing his home because adventurers attacked the nest where he’d been born. Nico has learned a great deal since then. Largely, because his magic activated in the presence of a fifteen-year-old farmer’s daughter. Cami and Nico bonded through that magic.

  At first, it looked like Cami was the only one benefiting from the bond as she gained magical abilities and a small percentage of Nico’s stats. But by the end of the first book, Nico had gained several advantages: easier DKP (the dragon equivalent of XP) and very rapid advancement through the age categories (the dragon equivalent of levels) as it was linked with Cami gaining levels.

  Since Nico was initially hiding from the adventurers, he and Cami passed themselves off as youngsters who had discovered their magical ability. Nico’s shape change ability allowed him to so completely take the form of a human, that he would be able to fool all but potentially epic level divination magic.

  The very adventurers who destroyed Nico’s home became his chaperones. Some, like Galbrecht, the paladin, were more than willing to help because it was the right thing to do. Others, like the rogue Modessa saw Nico—with his strange expressions and mannerisms—as a wild mage worthy of death. The other adventurers—including Lisella, the priestess of the goddess of healing; Serius, the team’s leader and a wizard; and, Liam the quiet half-elven ranger—had varying degrees of acceptance for the pair who kept their bond hidden.

  In exchange for saving her paladin from an eldritch horror, the goddess of healing, Miseria, had agreed to hide Nico’s secret—but the truth always comes out. Eventually, Nico had to reveal his true nature to the others.

  Lisella became Nico’s mentor, offering to teach him how to be the best mage he could be and hinting at other offers. Modessa, in turn, took Cami on as her apprentice. As they traveled the long way to the Imperial University, it became apparent that Nico was a magnet for monsters and they encountered a variety of dangers related to an ancient threat known as the Horrors. This included mutated monsters and a possessed kraken.

  Throughout it all, Nico refused to see the humans as his equals. He was a dragon, after all, and possessed the memories of his ancestors through the Dragon Dream—a type of genetic memory which just might be more than it seems. It showed him bits and pieces of his kind’s past and the origins of the bond between dragons and the other races. But it created more questions than it answered.

  After they arrived at the university, Nico finally encountered another dragon. This domesticated dragon was far from what he had expected—and, in fact, the system no longer deemed her to be the same species. Matilda was cut off from the Dragon Dream and, as far as Nico could tell, was little more than an intelligent animal.

  By the end of book 1, Nico accepts a quest to determine how this was done to her and the other dragons who are kept captive. He still has his sister to save, too, and his deep-seated curiosity about humans to satisfy. Let’s not forget that old monsters keep reappearing and the gods are meddling with the world once more—though they appear to be constrained by some mystical ‘pact’.

  And it all seems to be connected somehow to Nico.

  In book two, Nico has to work through his rage over the treatment of dragons while continuing to grow closer to Cami. He meets a few humans who seem better than the others, while at the same time encountering those who fail to understand what dragons truly are.

  He and Cami learn to work together better as they fight an ancient enemy of dragons. This also reveals some of the weaknesses of their current capabilities.

  Nico took the first step to freeing future dragons by forging a connection with the three hatchlings so that they develop souls and will be full-fledged dragons. Not that Nico wants to be a babysitter for little dragons, either.

  He also upgrades his first class to dragon disciple after training with Edgar Lev from the Clan of the Dragon. The training proves invaluable as it helps him master his body, which is growing faster than his experience. Cami also gains a legendary crafting class as she learns to forge weapons infused with a piece of her soul so that they can grow just as she does.

  They also finally meet with the greatest of the living dragons. Nico is underwhelmed by the meeting, but it points to some of the greater problems for dragons. In many ways, their own isolation and apathy is the greatest threat. Nico is however, named by the system as a Balance Warden, meant to maintain the Pact between dragons, gods, and horrors. He just doesn’t understand what that means yet.

  Book 3 brought more progress and more confrontation. When Nico and Cami returned from their encounter with the red Draconis, they were caught in a magical trap upon entering the university. The headmaster, Tolston, confronted them, but this led to a battle between him and the adventuring party. Tolston, was a legendary level Archmage and so quite formidable. The trap however, served as the stimulus for Nico to develop another DKP power, his Anti-Magic Pulse.

  Once, Tolston was stopped, with promises of recompense to Nico and Cami, Nico started training with the storm mage, Rizal Atreides, who was supposed to help him master a new class. Nico revealed himself to Rizal as he was becoming more and more impatient with hiding as a human.

  After not gaining any class options that he wanted, Nico chose the Mind Evolution as a way to enhance himself. It cost the bulk of his stored DKP but altered him. However, it went partially awry because he triggered the evolution in his human form. This produced a great emotional awareness but also a bit of an emotional crisis while Nico’s sensibilities tried to stabilize.

  During the evolution, he was attacked, but Cami was standing watch. The oni, who had attacked them in book 1 was back with more monsters working for the horrors as they sought to kill Nico. Apparently, they consider him an obstacle to their claim on Ileria.

  Serius, Galbrecht, and Liam killed Tolston during this battle, but the lich of the former emperor managed to save his soul for further use. Modessa joined in fighting with Nico and Cami even throwing herself in front of an attack meant for Nico. Unbeknownst to her, he would have been largely immune to it, but she was not so fortunate. The attack severely damaged
her soul and had made it impossible for her to use any of her magic or abilities without unbearable pain. She can’t even allow her physical stats to manifest above what a normal human could do.

  After surviving the attack, Nico and Cami went to claim his new lair and the hoard promised to him by the goddess of the sea. They took Modessa, his newest minion, Clarissa the alchemist, the now fully grown bear cubs Rollie and Patch, as well as the dragon hatchlings and the other freed, domesticated dragons.

  While on his new island, they encountered ships full of soldiers, builders, and settlers sent by the emperor to work for Nico, who he made a noble, Lord Sandumas. A few of the top soldiers and builders were made into minions to ensure their loyalty.

  Then they encountered a red dragon, Beliciosia, who was also bonded and from the Clan of the Dragon. She was testing Nico and seeing if he would be suitable to join the clan, while they hunted leviathan for sport. In the end, Nico realized that while the Beliciosia was different from Draconis that she still didn’t have his level of empathy for the domesticated dragons.

  Eventually, Nico stopped putting off going to the City of the Dawn. His encounter with his sister didn’t go at all like he thought and he was forced to subdue her. She submitted to his greater power but had no interest in helping other dragons. She was only willing to deal with a threat when it appeared in front of her. She didn’t even want to fight the monsters obeying the horrors.

  The emperor offers Nico the entire Taleian desert if he will fly to Forlay and repulse an army of monsters coming down out of the mountains. Forlay is one of the of the nations in the empire which borders upon the western mountains and serves to protect the rest of the empire from those that dwell in the snowy heights.

  It turns out that this was a type of trap set for Nico as the mountain giants were equipped with a collar to place on Nico. The anti-cursed item power of his choker protects him but the entire encounter lets him know that there is someone hunting dragons or maybe just him.

  Finally, in the last act, Nico goes to Forlay. There he has some interaction with Lisella’s uncle the King, who offers him Lisella’s hand before realizing that he was a dragon. While at a banquet to celebrate the heroes who had saved Forlay, an ancient white dragon attacks and calls Nico out. He transforms revealing his secret to all and engages in a battle.

  The ancient white was seduced by Tolston working for the lich emperor and had begun the process of transforming into a Dracolich. Galbrecht engages Tolston and the fate of their battle is left unclear. Nico and Cami fight the ancient white dragon in a hard fought battle. In order to survive the monstrous blizzard created by the Dracolich, Nico pushes his storm magic and gains the legendary class of Living Storm. With that extra power he is able to finish the undead dragon but many questions are left unanswered.

  Prologue - Galbrecht and Tolston

  Looking at the desk covered in papers in front of her, Modessa groaned in frustration. She hadn’t signed up for this. Where had they even found a desk in the first place?

  Her home on Dragon Isle, as it was starting to be called by the residents—minion and non-minion alike—was more than comfortable. Still, Modessa had never been a woman to settle down and play house.

  She’d agreed to keep watch over Nico’s island while he and Cami were gone. She owed him that much, and it wasn’t like she had much else to do. She was slowly learning to live with the pain and as long as she moved slowly, or at least at normal human speed, she rarely had flare-ups. From time to time, she instinctively started to activate an ability, but the debilitating pain which always resulted was quickly breaking those habits.

  Now, though, she glared at the stack of papers on her desk. Despite her frustration with the seemingly endless paperwork, she was proud of how smoothly things were running on Dragon Isle. Modessa might not be a natural born administrator, but she always gave her all to anything she did.

  Whether it was Bob coming to her to get authorization for the next building project, or settling a dispute between Sir Michael and Sir Thomas about the deployment of troops on the island, she did her best. Sometimes her method involved threats she couldn’t make good on, but of all those now on the island, only Cassandra knew the extent to which she was impaired.

  She’d even handled it when Emilio, who was the head servant but fancied himself as Nico’s butler, nearly fell into one of the remaining lava pits deeper in the mountain. The man’s foot was still blackened, even after Cassandra’s potions had restored his HP. Apparently, the heat had destroyed the nerve endings in that foot, meaning he couldn’t feel pain in it anymore. Of course, that didn’t mean it didn’t look terrible.

  Not that Modessa could do anything about it. It would take an amputation and a powerful healer regrowing the man a new foot to fix it. She almost wished for that kind of emergency to provide her an escape from paperwork.

  She sighed and starting leafing through reports. So far, she’d been paying for everything on her own. As an adventurer, she had accrued a small fortune. Well, maybe not that small, but now she was burning through it.

  Almost every day, ships arrived with settlers, soldiers, cattle, and you name it. Amos was having it shipped over. Modessa knew better than to spend any of Nico’s hoard without his permission, but she only hoped that he reimbursed her for at least some of this when he returned.

  That led her to thinking about what her role in the future might be. Was Nico ever going to forgive her? Would he help her? Was he even able to? The questions piled up higher than the documents on her desk.

  She let out a sigh. At least the security she’d set up for his hoard was good. As a former thief, she knew best how to get into a treasury, and she was using all that experience to reverse engineer a set of safeguards and security protocols to make Nico’s hoard thief proof. Anyone wanting to get at his gold would be more likely to succeed with brute force.

  To be honest, that was the one thing that they still couldn’t contend with.

  The Emperor had now sent a total of three hundred soldiers and knights and three battle-mages, though none of the mages were over level ten. Cassandra took care of taking oaths from all the new arrivals. It was the one thing the woman insisted she had to do personally, because Modessa wasn’t a minion.

  The alchemist left everything else to Modessa. They now had a hundred farming families with more expected and nowhere near enough housing. The one hundred and fifty builders working virtually around the clock couldn’t keep up with the new arrivals.

  At least Modessa had a house. Still, the frustrations continued to build. All of this frustration drove one point home to her more than any other—she missed Galbrecht.

  One thing she did know, wherever Galbrecht was, he had to be having a better day than her. She was certain that, if nothing else, he was having more fun than she was.

  ____________________

  If anyone had told Galbrecht that morning he’d jump from the back of one flying dragon to tackle an enemy off of the back of another dragon, he would have laughed. What else could you do in response to something so preposterous?

  Yet, that was exactly where he found himself. Just as bad was the fact that the enemy he had tackled was no longer a man. Tolston, should have been dead. He’d seen the man die in the trap Serius had laid. There hadn’t been anything left of his body.

  Now, even the wind whistling by him as they rushed to the ground wasn’t enough to push away the smell of death that clung to the former Archmage. No, not death—death was a pure and natural part of the life. Even his goddess conceded that death was the natural end of all mortals, and then came judgment.