Dragon Breeder 3 by Dante King (motivational books for students txt) 📗

It was a gesticulation that was not just graceful, but also magical.

An enormous bear materialized below the woman as she plummeted toward the ground. It was a bear of such hulking immensity that it would have made even the most gigantic, black-hearted grizzly of the Rocky Mountains look like a Pekingese dog in comparison. It was the size of an eight-ton box truck, covered in bristling gray fur, and wearing armor that looked more like porcelain than steel. It also, unlike any bear species that I had ever seen, had a pair of deadly-looking curved horns protruding from its head.

“Butter my butt and call me a b-b-biscuit!” Rupert yelled. “She’s a bearmancer!”

The bear swept a paw the size of a snow shovel sideways and caught a couple of Renji’s squad with it. They were flung twenty feet across the temple and crashed through a selection of pottery urns in which herbs and dried meat had been stored.

The woman landed on the bear’s back a moment later, as lightly and easily as if she had dropped four feet, rather than forty.

“Fucking magic,” I grunted as the bearmancer took off on her unorthodox steed.

I really did not have the time for this sort of malarkey.

I really was not in the mood to put up with this shit. Not with Wayne’s life hanging in the balance.

Without pausing to consider anything, I let loose with Garth’s new spell, which the young Pearl Dragon offered to my mind like someone holding out a sword for me to wield.

The spell manifested itself as a pale pink harpoon-like dart that burst from my open left palm. It shot across the space that separated me from the fleeing bearmancer, trailing a length of pale pink chain behind it.

The magical harpoon smacked into the rear haunch of the monstrous bear, just under one of the segments of porcelain armor. Acting on impulse and instinct, I let loose a burst of mana from the reserve within myself and channeled it down the links of the thaumaturgical chain.

The bear, enormous as it might have been, was apparently no match for the stunning magic that I sent through the harpoon. The great beast might have possessed claws the size of chef’s knives and a head that could barely fit in the back of a pickup truck, but it spasmed in mid-stride and went down like a goddamn Cessna crash landing all the same. It plowed through a bunk of detritus left behind by the wild dragon, sending wood, pottery, and other junk flying.

With surprising agility, Diggens just managed to throw himself off his bucket perch, before both bucket and chair were crushed by the massive bear.

The magically conjured beast flickered and then vanished in mid-skid, as the spell that had brought it into being failed. The cloaked woman was thrown across the floor, tumbling head over heels.

She just about made it to her hands before I was on her.

She looked fit and lean, but I was a dragonmancer, and I was not in the fucking mood for games. I felt hard muscle under me as I pressed her to the cold stone floor, unceremoniously wrenching her arms behind her back.

Gabby arrived a moment later and produced a strip of rope he had procured from somewhere. With the consummate skill that he did everything, the mute bound the cloaked woman’s hands tightly behind her, while I held her and stopped her furious thrashing.

“You might be a fucking bearmancer, but we’re dragonmancers of the Mystocean Empire. And you have what I need to save my son,” I growled into her ear.

Firmly, but without any vindictiveness, I pulled the woman easily to her feet. I leaned in close, eager to get my hands on the crystals at her belt, and she tried to headbutt me with the speed of a striking cobra.

Unfortunately for her, she connected.

When my squad and I had been testing out just how strong the Transfusion Ceremony had made me, Rupert had struck me over the back of the dome with a sturdy length of wood. He had also stabbed me in the bicep with a dagger.

Neither test had proved effective.

There was a hollow thud as I allowed the woman to try and brain me with her noggin, and the cloaked figure went limp in my arms.

Puffing a little as he jogged up, Bjorn said, “See, I knew that your head was bone all the way through, boss.”

Gabby cracked a grin at that one.

“Laugh it up while you can, big man,” I said as I pulled the crystals off the belt of the woman who had slumped unconscious at my feet, ”because you’re carrying her until she wakes up.”

Bjorn’s grin slid off his face like porridge down a wall.

Once I had retrieved the two crystals, I tucked them into the pockets of my breeches. Gabby cut another length of rope and bound the woman’s feet.

“What about her c-c-crystal?” Rupert asked, nodding at the still cloaked bearmancer.

“I got the crystals,” I said.

“No, her c-c-crystal,” Rupert said. “As a bearmancer, she must have a crystal in which she stores her bear, just as you do to store Noctis and Garth.”

I blinked, feeling a little foolish that I had not thought of this myself.

Searching the woman, I found a likely looking crystal, carved into the shape of a miniature bear claw, hanging from a twine bracelet around her wrist.

“That would be the one, I am guessing,” Renji said, peering with interest at the gray stone.

Jazmyn held out her hands to me, and I saw that she was carrying this strange black bag, which looked to have been made from ultra-fine, black chainmail.

When I asked her what the bag was for, as it was obviously