Jack Of All Trades ✓ | steampunk, dragons, trickery

Chapter 7.3: So Close!

At last, Jack's legs dragged across flat ground. The monster of a man discarded him on a pile of soft leaves. The man grunted something, and a woman responded. Jack groaned and got to his feet when ropes lassoed around his body. He was in a cavern of sorts. Torches hung on the rock walls and in front of him was a stone throne where a woman in black robes sat. 

Her entire left side was automaton, including her face. She had no hair, and her one human eye was just a black hole. A cog on her throat creaked as she moved her head around.

Stones scraped against each other behind her throne. The wall opened up to a tunnel leading into a darkened forest where trees with snarly branches made jagged arches over a pathway.

Dragon's Wood! My family! Serena said and the green dragon's breath around his neck began to glow.

A wiry arm stretched to remove his mask. "Jack, we meet again."

Jack blinked at her. He would have remembered her. Half-automatons were an illegal and rare sight. "You must be confusing me with some other Jack."

"You really don't recognize my face?" The human side of the woman furrowed her brow and her lips turned down. "You really don't? My son."

"You can't be Mary C." He scoffed. Mary C. had been a moderate looking woman with blond hair and blue eyes. He did look so much like her, coincidentally.

"Not Mary C., no. Your real mother."

Real mother? What was she getting at? Jack scowled. Whoever this woman was, she was just playing him. But false sympathy didn't get to him like it did some people. "What do you want? I have things to do and places to go. No time to be messing with a machine."

Her head jerked. "Machine?" she shrieked. "I am Queen Plantagenet!"

And there she went again, trying to get his false sympathy. He knew his mother was sick or something. Eli had said so.

Is that really Dragon's Wood? he asked Serena.

It is! I can feel them!

"I can lift your curse if you give me the dragon's breath."

She's the Enchantress.

Jack could either believe a shrieking machine, or a supposed dragon. Suddenly footsteps sounded behind him. The burly man thundered away. Jack heard a knife whistle through the air and he twisted his body to the right as it sliced the ropes on the left. The sharp-edged boomerang whipped around and sliced the other ropes. He turned to Jett, pale-faced and looking twice as sick with, who would have guessed, but Eli. She had her skirt tied up like pants and her hair was in a bun on her head. The boomerang in her hands.

"Looks like you need me after all, Jack," she said with a smirk.

"I was fine," he snapped and turned to Jett who shrank under his gaze, "I'm going to ask you how you two found each other later."

"I am Queen Plantagenet, my son!" the woman was saying. "Come home my son and let me lift your curse!"

Eli rolled her eyes as the barbaric men advanced on them. "I think that's enough talk."

"For once I agree." Jack backed up and eyed their opponents. Two men and two women, but he could already hear more thundering down the steps. But they sounded strange, like they were hopping instead of running.

"I might have helped," Eli said as the first man with a bloodied leg came in and fell over, squealing like a pig. More toppled in dripping and some missing limbs, falling down dead. He'd seen too many pigs today. But then the next set that came in, he knew he did not need her help.

"What did you do, scream my name on your way here?" He glowered at her as Norman and his henchmen came in. Now it wasn't just pigs, but his nemesis with guns. He glanced at Jett.

"Dragon's Wood," he whispered, and Jett nodded. If they could make a run for it, at least maybe they could outrun the chunky barbarians.

"Ah, so this is the place!" Norman said, cracking his knuckles. Behind him was the street vendor, Timothy that Jack did not think he would ever see again, nor did he want to. Timothy looked like shame was written on his face too many times.

"What are these people? Get them!" the woman shrieked.

"Norman's mine," Jack called to Eli who swung up her boomerang.

"Mine or yours' doesn't matter if we're both going to die!" Eli aimed at Norman who took something out of his pocket. Before she could try to decapitate him, Jack saw a gas ball fall to the ground.

Dungshit! Jack kicked at the nearest barbarian's crotch, grabbed Jett and Eli, and ran. The entire cavern was filling with green gas. Eli began to cough as they made it to the door. Bullets bounced off walls. Jack pushed them both into the tunnel to Dragon's Wood. He could, if he wanted to, try to kill Norman now while he had a mask and while the barbarians were getting gassed.

"Jack!" Jett called. The rocks were scraping together, and the door was closing. There was no telling when it would open again and besides, his mask was the old one and it didn't do well against gasses for too long. The new one was in his bag.

"Dungshit!" he swore and slipped in between the closing doors.

"Jack Ogswold!" Norman shouted after him. Jack clicked his tongue. Missed opportunity.