Into the Dragon's Den (Axe Druid Book 2)

  INTO THE DRAGON’S DEN

  Book Two of the AXE DRUID Series

  Written by Christopher Johns

  © 2019 Mountaindale Press. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by US copyright law.

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

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Newsletter

  The Story so Far

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About Christopher Johns

  About Mountaindale Press

  Mountaindale Press Titles

  GameLit and LitRPG

  Appendix

  The Good

  The Bad

  And The Ugly

  Dedication

  Dedicated in loving memory to Jaken “Warmecht” Fox.

  I hope that, wherever you are, you see the lives you’ve touched and know that there many. I only hope that the one who matters knows who loved her as much as your friends always have. Little Moon, wherever you may be—Dad loved you, kiddo.

  Acknowledgments

  A special thanks to my amazing family, my loving fiancée, and my friends. Without all of you, this story would lose its meaning. Thank you.

  To my son: Someday, may you walk these worlds as I have and feel your creativity flow as surely as mine did. My most precious gift I give to you is a view of worlds inside your mind and the imagination to walk there and find something of your own.

  I love you, son.

  Newsletter

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  The Story so Far

  I still couldn’t believe what just happened. One of my greatest friends had just disappeared in a plume of sulfurous smoke after a knock-down-drag-out battle with one of War’s generals.

  Sorry, War is this galactic assho–forgive my language—being who takes his vast armies across the cosmos and conquers one planet at a time to add to the fold before moving on to the next one in-line.

  Know what? You guys know me by now, right? Let’s let me have my fun and swear like the Marine I am, yeah?

  Typically, each place he’s gone to before, he's taken without much of a fight. I can’t really speak on that myself because I still don’t know all that is possible on the situation in the rest of the cosmos. Just that the gods here, led by Lady Radiance, are keeping him and the main host off of this world and away from Earth by extension. They had just enough juice to bring us here through a dream and are doing everything they can just to slow him down long enough to get rid of his vanguard and generals so that he stays out for good. They have this theory that if he can’t collect a world in the line he’s working in, he will just stop because of his own pride.

  It hasn’t been easy for them, and nearly all of their focus is needed, so they need us to hurry. With the magic of this realm and whatever the gods can spare, we’ve been hunting down War’s scouts and generals who managed to get on to the world before Radiance and company knew what was going on. Luckily, that handicap leans even further in our direction because the Gods of this world based their civilizations and realities off Earth’s most recent iterations of video games and the great galactic conqueror’s people can’t sense our presence the same way they can with the Brindollans.

  Thank God—the gods—for that.

  We had the opportunity when we first were brought to this world to choose an avatar, our physical manifestation here on Brindolla. That could have been any number of creatures and races.

  Could I have chosen a human? Yes, but that’s like asking someone with a lot of money to go out and get you a plain, bland, vanilla cake. And we all know that you want some of that good chocolate cake with the whipped cream icing and—shit, I’m hungry now. Regardless, I wasn’t going to be a plain-Jane human when there were other options.

  So I had chosen a Kitsune, an anthropomorphic fox person—fox-man—with glossy, raven-black fur and electric blue eyes. That had been all until my recent adventures in the realm of the Fae, where a Blood Rite made me a Celestial Kitsune. It wasn’t too different from normal, except now, there are constellations of stars represented in my fur, and I have two tails, though the second tail had actually been awakened by another Kitsune druidess. But I didn’t feel much like wagging them at this point.

  On top of that, we even got to choose our classes and even take on some crafting classes as well. Me? Why, I’m a shapeshifting, spell-slinging Druid. Of course. Who turns even furrier thanks to a curse given to me by a crazy alpha Werewolf—but more on that later.

  My friends and I—Bokaj, Jaken, Balmur, James, and Yohsuke—we’ve had some successes, gotten some major bruises, kicked some serious ass, and made friends with ancient and powerful beings and probably more than our fair share of enemies. Maybe. But hey, can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and punching a few faces, yeah? Wait, that’s not right.

  Or is it?

  Whatever. This whole thing is confusing. Look—what you need to know is that we just took out one of the big guys, and now, shit has gone tits up. Fuck. This will not be pretty. Wish us luck.

  Chapter One

  Balmur was gone. POOF, cloud of sulfur-smelling smoke, and he was no more. Rowan, the physical body of Blight, one of the five generals War had sent ahead of his planetary raid, was now dead. To be honest, I didn’t give a damn about the notifications blinking in the bottom left-hand corner of my vision. All that mattered was that my friend was gone.

  I looked to my left and saw my other friends were walking toward me slowly. Some of them were nursing health potions to replenish their HP—hit points for the uninitiated—lost in our fight with the jackass.

  “You guys catch what just happened to Balmur?” I asked. I scratched my chin, the fur rustling under my claw-tipped fingers.

  I was doing my damnedest not to freak out—maybe this was a trick. Right? That was possible still.

  Yohsuke, my brother-from-another-mother was the first to respond, “I caught a bit there at the end. I saw him disappear. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  His half-Drow-half-High-Elf gray skin glistened with a bit of sweat in the afternoon light. He wore a black cloak around most of his body but only raised the hood when needed. His white hair blew slightly in a cool breeze, and his yellow eyes flashed to our other friend.

  “Think it was the Hells he was taken to?” James asked as he jogged over.

  Fuck. I groaned mentally. It hadn't been a trick

  James, called Aaro
n at home, was another friend from the Marine Corps that Erik—Yohsuke—had introduced me to.

  It was on our way to hunt for the generals that we had found James the Dragon Elf sleeping in the cave entrance of a Goblin lair. His black scales provided the same protection for his body as our armor, and he seemed cool with that. His monk training had also given him some monstrous abilities and physical endurance. The man could take a hit.

  “It sounds like it,” I confirmed with a shake of my head. Fuck. “We’ve got a link to the Hells through you, right, Yoh? Can you ask him to get us there?”

  “I can try.” He nodded and began to step toward a shadowed alleyway. “I’ll see what my asshole ‘patron’ thinks, the fucking piece of shit.”

  “Yo, where’s Balmur, man?” a large, metal-clad figure asked as he stepped over to us.

  Jaken, our resident tank and one of our healers, had chosen the Fae-Orc race, his almost-lilac-colored skin was hidden under the bulk of his mithral armor. His large sword and shield were strapped to his back, and his black hair would need to be put back in a ponytail as it was severely messed up and whipping about his face in the breeze. His black goatee and mustache were really quite dashing and made me wish I had deemed it fit to check into facial hair when I had been making my own avatar.

  “We think he was teleported to the Hells,” James answered before I could.

  “He was WHAT?!” Our final party member had just poked his head around our seven-foot-tall Paladin, and he looked pissed.

  Bokaj, the other Jake in our party, was a former coworker of mine and a friend I gamed with on occasion back at home. He had chosen an Ice Elf as his avatar’s race. Lot of Elves in our party, yeah, I know. Wanna fight about it? He also happened to be our now-missing Rogue’s, Balmur, best friend. The two had known each other for years and years, and it was starting to manifest in the Bokaj’s obvious outrage at his friend’s predicament.

  “Look, man, we don’t know for sure, but we think he could have been taken to hell. We really need to stop repeating ourselves like this. Give Yoh a minute to let us know what the demon knows, and we will try to make a plan.” I tried to pat him on the shoulder, but he just stepped back and hugged his panther familiar Tmont.

  The nearly full-grown black panther butted her head against his chest and eyed me knowingly. When she was smaller, she had a penchant for biting my tail. She had continued to do so until I threatened to beat her ass.

  Kayda, come here, please, I thought to my own companion, well, familiar. The bond’s a lot more in-depth than someone’s bond with a pet. I could feel her presence—our bond—in my mind.

  A second later, I heard a screech that sounded like a peal of thunder in the sky signaling her approach. A large azure and ice-blue bird dropped from the sky, her feathers ruffling in the wind. Her six-foot-tall frame touched down with a soft thwumph, and the Storm Roc cooed over me. Her feathers, the azure-colored ones, fluttered in a soft breeze, their color close to that of her lightning—it’s blue as well—but her shimmering, lighter feathers were the color of ice and almost as cold at times. Some of them reminded me of icicles with how they were shaped, but as she looked me over head to toe to see if I was hurt, I could feel the warmth of her and her affection. After she was satisfied I didn’t have any grievous injuries, she turned in Yohsuke’s direction and hopped off toward the alleyway.

  He stomped forth from his shadowed hiding place and waved Kayda away. Yohsuke had a special place in her heart because he had helped me rescue her from a raiding party full of Goblins.

  “Fucker can’t get us to the Hells.” He growled. “It’s beyond his means to get us all there, and he says we aren’t strong enough yet to go there anyway. Though the two levels I just got went a long way to juicing me up. How about you guys? Any loot on the general?”

  “General didn’t drop shit,” James spat. “Gave a ton of experience, though. Got me all the way to level 20.”

  I thought for a moment before speaking, “Let’s allocate our points. Then we can try and find his base or whatever and raid it.”

  I opened my stats screen with a thought and looked it over. Yes! I thought with a clenched fist. Turns out killing the general had leveled me three times. Bittersweet as it was, levels would help us get Balmur back.

  Name: Zekiel Erebos

  Race: Celestial Kitsune

  Level: 20

  Strength: 40

  Dexterity: 31

  Constitution: 30

  Intelligence: 45

  Wisdom: 34

  Charisma: 17

  Unspent Attribute Points: 15

  Trying to decide my best route from this point on would be a little difficult. The Druid class as a whole is a heavy hitter depending on how you build it, as most classes would be, but I wanted to be more of a utility to my friends. So far, I had been trying to be well rounded, filling into whatever the party needed me to do. I could help heal, do some serious physical damage, and blast the hell out of some people with magic. Didn’t hurt that I had a familiar and I could shapeshift too, which was a great deal of fun and pretty deadly. For the other guy.

  Before I decided to pour my points into some crazy stats and possibly screw myself over, I decided to look into my other notifications.

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  You have reached a milestone in your advancement and have unlocked the following abilities.

  You may now have one additional animal companion or familiar.

  Why had no one ever mentioned getting another familiar? Dinnia didn’t have one. Was that because she hadn’t found one that she wanted to take as a familiar, or was she waiting for the right time? Could she even take another? Too many questions.

  Limitations on shape shifting abilities have been lifted slightly. You may use a form with the ability to fly. Flight time and ability will be calculated by constitution, dexterity, and strength. Newest limitation is set to non-mythical creatures. In example: the caster could not take the form of a dragon, phoenix, or roc of any sort until later in their advancement.

  Interesting, I grumbled in my head. Honestly, the thought to fly had occurred to me, but I never found a bird cool enough to want to turn into, so I just kind of kept putting it off until I no longer thought of it. And non-mythical creatures are the new limit? How dope would that be to become a dragon? Moving on.

  You have unlocked another tail, as a nine-tailed Kitsune. This tail will allow you to choose an extra spell to learn from current and past spell choices. Would you like to choose now?

  I chose not to in hopes I unlocked other spells with my recent levels.

  ABILITIES UNLOCKED

  Teleport – The caster and a number of creatures equal to the caster’s (intelligence divided by five) can travel to a place the caster has been before within a distance equal to the caster’s (intelligence multiplied by ten) in miles from the spot where the spell is cast. Cost: 300 MP. Cooldown: 30 minutes. Range: 450 miles. Creature load: 9 creatures.

  Snare – Caster summons the elements to hold one subject. Subjects with higher strength may only be hindered, while others may be unaffected completely with even higher strength—plan carefully. Cost: 50 MP. Cooldown: 1 minute. Range: 100 ft. Duration: 1 minute.

  Lightning Storm – Caster summons a cylinder of electrical energy on a chosen point. 60 ft wide and 120 ft tall. Cost: 250 MP. Cooldown: 30 minutes. Range: 60 ft. Duration: 15 Seconds. Restriction: Can only be used outside.

  Wind Step - Caster levitates as if walking on the very air we breathe. Cost: 46 MP. Range: Touch. Cooldown: 3 minutes. Duration: 2 Minutes.

  Oh, oh my giddy-great aunt! TELEPORT. It was all I could do not to scream aloud at the fact that I had finally gotten the one spell I had always wanted.

  There are several different brands of goodies in a lot of games that need a little looking into, yeah? As to why the above are called ‘abilities’? It’s because I have the ability to cast them. It’s an ability. Weapon abilities are kind of the same, but they are on a cooldown basis. Yo
u use them once, they cooldown, you can use them again. Some spell abilities have cooldowns and costs. Following? Me neither, but the ability to cast spells like this was important to me, especially as a Druid.

  Don’t get me wrong—I got spells, baby. I had Fox Fire, Lightning Bolt, Filgus’ Flaming Blade, Winter’s Blade, Regrowth, Mass Regrowth, Nature’s Voice, Fireball, Nature’s Path, Water Sphere, Heal, Diamond Skin, Blade Shift, Star Fall, and finally—Polymorph. All of those have a myriad of uses and have saved my neck more times than I cared to admit. Hell—they had saved my friends and I more times than I could count. I was packing.

  But to be even more candid, I had some abilities that I had gotten from the Primordial Elementals too. One of which was Diamond Claws, the only kind of ability that carried over to my actual base physical form. The others I had to take on Elemental form to use.

  But these? Holy crap. Teleport would speed travel times up so much it was ridiculous.

  I could choose two of them, so I took that one—duh—and I also nabbed Lightning Storm. I went back to my tail option and chose Snare. That spell had a decent amount of utility to it, and I needed another crowd control spell. Wind step seemed unnecessary since I had the ability to fly now as a shapeshifter.

  The next notification was one I hadn’t expected at all.

  CELESTIAL ABILITIES DISCOVERED

  Shadow Blessing – The caster chooses one creature within range and gives them the ability to become one with shadows. Whether it is to assist in dodging attacks or sneaking, the shadows will help how they can. Cost: 50 MP. Cooldown: 5 minutes. Range: Touch. Duration: 20 minutes.

  Star Blade – The stars themselves bless a weapon within range, causing it to deal holy damage. Cost: 25 MP. Cooldown: None. Range: 30 ft. Duration: 1 hour or until dismissed (by caster or wielder).

  Summon Celestial – A Higher Celestial being is brought forth to render aid at the request of the summoner. The nature of that request and the aid rendered may vary, and help is not always guaranteed. Cost: Full mana bar. Cooldown: 24 hours. Duration: Dependent on the request of the caster. Restrictions: Caster cannot request the Celestial become a familiar, stay in the Prime plane indefinitely, or sacrifice their power for the caster or any other creature in the form of experience.