Free Hidden Spark (Dark Magic Enforcer Book 6) by Al K. Line

so my sciatica flared up and I had to use a touch of magic to ease the pain, and endless, monotonous halls, we seemed to get somewhere. The atmosphere changed, felt charged, and I just knew we were getting close.
    "Urrad," I called to the child that was not a child, "how long has this been going on, the thing with the dragon?"
    "Oh, about three centuries, maybe four," he called over his shoulder. "No, make that five, I think. He gathered up so much, but still wasn't happy, so it's a bit of an ongoing thing. Everyone's utterly depressed. Everyone says there's no point mining for gold if you can't have it to look at in your own private hoard room. Sure, we have the main one, where he is, but everyone has, or had, their own, too. Only stands to reason, right?"
    "Right," I agreed. He was coming out of his shell now, talking like a proper person, not like a teenager with some serious attitude to boot. I almost, kind of, sort of liked him. A bit.
    I could feel magic thrumming in the air and knew we were nearly upon the lair of the dragon, guarding a dwarf fortune in gold. It crackled and popped as we walked down a plain corridor, walls nothing but rough hewn rock as if to say, "Nothing here, carry on, don't go looking through this ordinary wooden door at the end of this boring old corridor, it will be rubbish, honest."
    Urrad slowed, then came to a halt and turned to us, looking not so much nervous, as pitiful. "Did they tell you about the guardian?"
    "No, they bloody well didn't."
    "Oh. Okay, see ya. Or not." He ran back past us as fast as his muscular legs would carry him. No sooner was he gone around the corner than I felt the air change from comfortable to cool, then to icy.
    Did I say I'm not too keen on dwarves? No? That's weird.

 
     
     
     
    Not on a Full Stomach
    There are some enforcer jobs I've been on where I lost my latest meal because things got so out of hand, or what I saw went beyond anything the human body could cope with without purging at least something. This was one of those jobs.
    I felt the bile rise and got that strange excess of saliva that seems to appear from nowhere, signaling the evacuation of half-digested food to come. I forced my body to calm, using my will to shunt away the reactions that would otherwise put me at a distinct disadvantage.
    Mithnite was already puking his guts up, doubled over and looking like he was breathing his last, or trying to between the vomit.
    "Let it ride over you, Mithnite. Tell your body to relax, that there's nothing left to do but harden its resolve. It's inside of you, anything you want, you just have to believe."
    He just carried on puking. I'd have to think about how this whole teacher thing worked—so much of what I did was instinct now that I could hardly even recall the lessons that brought me to this point.
    I've seen zombies decapitated and their rotten insides spread out in front of them. I've seen humans and all manner of Hidden explode, sometimes right in my face. I've felt unbearable sadness, been touched by madness on more occasions than I can count, but I'd never seen what to all intents and purposes was an actual monster.
    Otherwise known as an ogre.
    Twelve feet tall, as pale as an albino yeti in a snowstorm, flesh pockmarked, scarred, dented and mutilated in a thousand different ways. Livid lines of raw flesh where wounds went deep and festered through the ages, it had it all, and more. Its head was huge, utterly out of proportion, nose gone, if it had ever had one, huge brow thick and calloused. It had no hair, not a single one, and it had pointy ears adorned with rings, completing the look with a slender bone through each lobe.
    As it snarled at us, blocking the way forward, it revealed two rows of needle-sharp teeth filed to points, but that wasn't the half of it.
    It's chest was so deep, so dense with muscle, it was as if it was split down the middle, the sternum lost to deep shadow like a ravine. Elongated arms hung low to the floor like an