Fiction: untitled fantasy story

After a conversation with Archangel about the setting and possible options for his next game, this story popped into my head. I decided to put it out here and get some feedback if anyone should care to read it.

Kent checked his datapad for the third time in the last hour. Still no signal. Wasted battery or not, he needed to know if he was getting close. The walking had been excruciating. Armes had been slain by bandits, and it had been years since he had to travel without a horse.

He was a fool to try to run their little blockade. He hadn’t made it off Armes when he collapsed. The poor horse had taken only two arrows before he fell, one right through the eye. There he was, stuck under a dead horse and twelve bandits surrounding him.

Kent took a gamble that they would recognize his last grenade when they saw it. They weren’t ignorant of what it was, but they also weren’t savvy enough to notice the firing pin was bent too far to trigger the device. The encounter had still cost him his breastplate and shield, but they weren’t doing him much good in his saddlebags anyway. It was too hot in the desert to wear or carry steel.

So for the last three days, he’d been trudging through the dunes on foot, looking for any sign of civilization. Two days ago, he’d come across a solitary witch, living in a hollowed-out rock formation. The woman was in astral contact with another of her kind in Poseidonis, and pointed him towards the place, but she wouldn’t let him rest or share any food.

Suddenly his datapad beeped. He pulled it out of his rough leather satchel, and shielded his eyes so he could read the screen. He sighed with relief. A network connection had been found. He powered up his gloves and glasses, and linked up his PAN. A giant sign appeared in his vision.

“GLACIER REEF EXPEDITIONS! ONLY TWELVE COINS, AND ONLY WITH MERCANT ADVENTURE COMPANY OF POSEIDONIS!”

It was a damn ad. From before. This firking desert was once an inland ocean, until some uppity water mage of the last age decided to make it his personal plaything. When the magic disappeared, so did the water. When the magic came back, it destroyed a lot of essential technology. The weather manipulators went haywire, leaving this place dry and barren.

Kent’s glasses were getting filled with advertisement and videos for all sorts of underwater products and tourist merchandise. He knew that none of that stuff mattered anymore, but no one bothered to turn off the AR node. According to the datapad, it was close. He powered down his PAN and headed in that direction.

An hour later, he found the spot where it was supposed to be. There were three dunes, and a little iron pole sticking a few feet out of the sand between them. There was no actual door or building that he could see.

He fell to his knees next to the pole, and started digging with his hands. About two feet down, buried in the sand, was a small hatch. It was locked. Kent pulled out a cloth bundle from his left boot, and opened it to retrieve two delicate tools. Lockpicks from his dad’s shop. He’d learned that trade at his dad’s feet, and could still setup shop doing that any time he wanted to. At the moment, though, getting into places he wasn’t supposed to be was more profitable.

The tumblers on the lock rolled into place, and he gently replaced his picks before pulling the hatch open. A ladder leading down about twenty feet was waiting for him. He climbed down, pulling the hatch shut behind him. This was just maintenance access to the AR node, allowing repairs to be made and/or changes in function to be performed. However, Kent knew that before, techs would maintain a presence in places like this, so they may have a crawl space to sleep and cruise the Matrix. There would likely be a food and water stash, which is the real reason Kent was down here.

He went first to the terminal, jacking in. He ran program to cripple any IC while he hacked himself a legitimate passcode. He then logged in with that code, and immediately shut down the node’s functionality. He added a passive signal in case he ever wanted to find this place again.

Logging out of the terminal, he kneeled next to the service panel most likely to hold a hideaway. Sure enough, a hollow sound rang out when he knocked on it. He removed the panel to see a wide tunnel, which went on past his field of vision. Sighing, Kent reached into his pack and pulled out his tinderbox. Lighting one of his two remaining torches, he crawled forward into the darkness.

A long twenty minutes pass in silence, except for Kent’s heavy breathing and the crackling torch. The tunnel started as an access point to the computer machinery, but broke through the metal wall and turned into a shaft cut into rock. Kent found the rations he had hoped for, but after devouring them, he grabbed a waterskin and kept on going.

The tunnel ahead sloped downward, and as Kent crawled towards the decline, he could see bright torchlight ahead. Extinguishing his own torch, Kent unsheathed his gladius. The rough-brushed bronze blade didn’t reflect light, so it made a perfect stealth weapon. He peeked out into the chamber at the end of the tunnel.

Ahead of him, a chiseled-out room, completely cubic, was filled with gold coins. Trinkets of jewelry, armor and weapons were distributed throughout the pile. Sconces in each wall held torches burning brighter than naturally possible. Kent’s eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped as he took in the scene. Then, he noticed that he wasn’t alone.

Sitting in the corner, next to the tunnel entrance, was a figure the size of a large dog. Blue scales covered the creature from head to toe, and his reptilian face was filled with rows of sharp teeth and eyes that looked at Kent with a sort of… amusement.

Kent jumped into the chamber to get room to maneuver, holding his gladius out in front of him. He pulled his pistol from his belt, knowing that the three bullets he managed to scrape together weren’t going to be enough. The dragon lunged forward and bit the gladius, snapping it in half. Kent fired, aiming at the creature’s eye.

Blood gushed everywhere as his shot hit home, but the dragon was upon him, slapping his pistol away with his tail before pouncing on him, landing with all four sets of claws tearing into his torso. Kent’s vision erupted in white and blue as an arc of electric dragonbreath hit him square in the face.

And then everything went black.