Free End Times in Dragon City by Matt Forbeck

that day. “The Guard abandoned the Garrett and left me here. We need to figure out a way to bust me out.” 
    I have brought help . 
    “Help?”
    “Next time, try asking a little louder!” Moira said from the front of Schaef’s flying carpet as it rose into view behind Spark. 
    She crouched next to the halfling hack controlling the thing. Danto and Belle sat behind her, their wands out and ready, and Kai knelt behind them, scanning the skies around them, his shotgun at the ready. 
    I flat-out whooped with relief. 
    Get back.
    “Wait!” I said to the people on the carpet. “This is the most impregnable prison in the entire city. The whole place is enchanted with all sorts of protective wards. You can’t just fly in here and grab me.” 
    “Why not?” Danto spoke with the kind of bravado I hadn’t heard from him since we’d given up adventuring a decade back. He’d taken Gütmann’s death as hard as anyone, scorning what we’d been doing as childishness and thrusting himself into his wizardly studies instead. The fact that he’d built his tower with the fortune we’d made during those adventures wasn’t lost on him, I’m sure. If anything that had made him more determined to make the best use of that money. 
    “Guards are gone,” Kai said, still glancing about everywhere as if one of them might pop up out of nowhere. “Otherwise we’d never get this close, right?” 
    “You have never convinced me to try,” Schaef said. “I don’t care what you got that gun of yours loaded with.” 
    “The Guard relies on the Garrett’s sentries and the place’s reputation as much as anything,” Belle said. She waved her wand at a thick chain pooled near her feet, and it snaked into the air with a clanking of its links. “We can do this.” 
    “These bars are enchanted,” I said. “You can’t just pull them out of the wall with a chain. Schaef’s ride doesn’t have that kind of power. Where’s Johan and that dwarf palanquin of his?” 
    “He’s busy with Cindra and Kells,” Moira said. “But it’s all right. We got this all planned out.” 
    “The dragonet is the key,” Belle said. 
    “His name’s Spark.” I reached out and rubbed the top of his head, and he leaned into it. 
    “How cute,” Moira said in a dry tone. 
    “Belle’s right,” said Danto. “Do you know why a dragon’s fire is one of the most powerful things on earth?”
    “I must have dropped out of the Academy before we covered that bit.” I glanced back over my shoulder, but no one had come to the door of my cell to see who I was talking to. The jailers really were gone. 
    “It negates all magical protections. I don’t care how strong the charms might be, they’re as effective as a broken promise against the flames from a dragon’s breath.” 
    Step back. Please. 
    I looked up at Spark and rushed backward and then to the side. I didn’t want to be anywhere in the path of his breath. It might not have been nearly as powerful as the Dragon’s, but I’d seen what it had done to Fiera. I had no desire to share that fate. 
    Spark shoved off from the windowsill, flapping his wings hard. The updraft that chimneyed past the side of the Garret helped him hover just spitting distance from my cell. He hung there for a moment, then drew back his head then snapped it forward, unleashing a torrential gout of fire. 
    The flames licked at the wall around the window and flowed straight through the bars. The temperature in the room rose until I felt like I’d gone from living in an icebox to an oven. I raised my arms to shield my face from the roasting heat as Spark played his fiery breath back and forth, hosing down the entire window with his magical blaze. 
    “That’s good!” I heard Danto say. “Belle?” 
    I stayed back. The bars in my window glowed a bright red, and even the stones in the wall around that had changed color. I felt like if I touched them I might burst into flames too. 
    One end of the