Book 1 | Agent 34 and the Desert of Beasts

Chapter 32 | A Fatal Mistake

The archers rained their arrows down upon the battle, trying to avoid the obvious wooden cover that housed the three elves and a dragon.

"Veniö! I think I see a dragon in the distance!" Marque the archer called to his fellow archer, Veniö. "Don't alert the gemmers yet—wait for the dragon to be near!"

Veniö and Marque avoided the hole and shot the skeletons from above, which didn't seem to do much harm to the boney battlers.

Suddenly, the tower that the archers had been perched on exploded, sending Marque and Veniö plummeting nearly twenty feet down.

As they fell, Marque fumbled for an arrow and didn't aim. He let go of the string and it shot directly where he didn't want it to go.

The arrow went through the cracks of the wood and into the hole where the gem-wielders waited.

Marque's face turned to horror as he realized what he just did. Before he could react, his body slammed against the ground, knocking the air out of his body. Gasping for a breath, he saw a golden dragon tear out of the ground and emerge into the battle. The dragon roared ferociously looked confused as to why there wasn't another dragon battling him.

"Marque!" Veniö called. Marque looked over and saw some bricks that had fallen off the tower they had been perched at had fallen on Veniö's legs. "Veniö! Get up, quick!" Marque called back.

"I can't! My legs are broken, and a giant chunk of rubble fell on my chest as well. I'm dying, Marque, but that doesn't matter. What does matter, is saving that dragon and the elves. Look," Veniö weakly pointed to the opposite end of the battlefield near the entrance, where a single cannon stood. The cannon had skeletons behind it, and it was aimed at the other tower where some archers were perched at. The skeletons shot the cannon, and the archer's tower exploded in a fury of dust and rubble, and all of it collapsed.

Then the cannon aimed at the dragon in the middle of the field.

"Stop the cannon, Marque! Do not let it shoot!" Veniö told the archer. 

Tears glistened in Marque's eyes. "What about you?" He asked quietly.

"Forget about me! If those elves die, then Renya will fall to Braunick's clutches!" Veniö said as the large bricks on his legs held him down.

Marque nodded determinedly, and grabbed a brick off the ground and ran towards the battle. 

The archer tucked the brick under his left arm, and pulled out his bow. He started shooting the skeletons as he shoved through the skeletons and soldiers battling, sometimes missing a few and shooting some soldiers. "Oops," Marque muttered to himself.

Marque shoved past a skeleton, and the skeleton turned around evilly towards Marque, stopping him in his tracks. The archer slammed the bricks down on the skeleton's skull, making the skeleton shutter. When it didn't kill the skeleton, Marque threw the brick down on the skull again, creating a large crack from the impact.

Then, a soldier came and chopped off the skull from the skeleton. The remaining bones fell to the ground, and Marque quickly thanked the soldier and continued running towards the cannon.

Marque saw the skeletons were loading the cannon with multiple cannonballs and were trying to aim at the dragon's wings. He sped up his pace, and quickly shoved past a few skeletons and knocked them all to the ground, which let the soldiers behead them.

Marque stopped in his tracks as he saw the cannon about to fire. He looked down and untied his belt, and felt like a fool. He tied part of the belt to an arrow, and held onto the other end. He then aimed and shot the arrow at the wall behind the cannons, and the arrow dug into the stone.

Marque tugged on the belt a little, the tied the opposite end to another arrow and dug it into the ground. The skeletons didn't seem to notice the belt hanging above them.

He then started to climb across the belt. The belt was slanted, so he was climbing higher and higher. Soon, he was above the skeletons controlling the cannon. He climbed a little further, then dropped to the ground behind them.

The skeletons were completely clueless. They didn't notice Marque or the belt above them. The archer quickly counted how many skeletons there were, and he found that there were only three in charge of those cannons.

Swiftly and quietly, Marque slammed the brick down on each of their skulls as hard as he could. Each of them cracked slightly, and all three of them dropped to the ground, but didn't die. Marque then beat their skulls until they collapsed on themselves, killing the skeletons.

Then, he saw the cannon was about to fire. Quickly, Marque tried to turn the cannon, but it was too heavy. He couldn't turn the direction it was in, so he tried to push it forward. The wheels on it squeaked as they rolled, and Marque quickly pushed the cannon towards the battle before it fired.

He aimed it at a skeleton battling a soldier, and then the cannon went off, releasing all the cannonballs inside of it. All of the shots hit the skeleton, completely cracking every bone visible on the skeleton's body.

"I did, Veniö," Marque muttered to himself. He then gasped and started running to his fallen friend. "Veniö!"

When Marque reached him, Veniö was on the edge of death, lying in a puddle of blood. 

"You did it, Marq," Veniö said weakly. 

"I saved them," Marque said. "I saved Renya," 

"No," Veniö sputtered. "You saved them from the cannon. You didn't save them from that," Veniö pointed to the sky where a big brown dragon flew towards the golden one. "Save them," Veniö requested. "Make sure they don't die. Make sure they stop Braunick."

Veniö coughed, and then slowly closed his eyes, and fell backwards onto the rubble.

Marque stood tall, and looked up to the brown dragon in determination. "I will not let you kill them," he said to himself, and picked up Veniö's sword that was tied to his belt, and raised it in  the air. "For Renya!" He cried, and ran into battle.