Brindle Dragon Omnibus 3

by Jada Fisher

“Eist, wait!” she heard Dille cry, but she wasn’t going for Yacrist. No, despite all her heat and bravado and rage, she wasn’t ready to face him head on. Not when he looked so confident and refreshed.

  But the abominations? Those she could deal with just fine.

  She swooped low, aiming for one of the cracks the creatures were crawling up from. She could feel a strange sort of resonance, as if Yacrist had dug into the very earth and called on what little magic there was there.

  Actually… Now that she thought about it, that was probably exactly what he did. All of that time spent in the mines of the old kingdom probably gave him insight on how to better connect to the veins that she had seen spanning the ground at Margaid.

  “Fior,” she breathed, and that was all she had to say. He seemed to instinctively know what she wanted, breathing in deeply and letting out a mighty bellow. Although she couldn’t hear it, she saw the dragons in her peripheral quickly veer away. She didn’t pay them much mind, however, and instead focused on the fissure below.

  Fior’s roar hit true, air rushing past her face as the sound of it bounced through her body. The walls of the crevasse shook violently, crumbling in on itself and knocking thousands of monsters back into the depths. But it was just one of four, and the entire landscape began to shift.

  Grass rippling and path buckling, the entire scene was in upheaval. The sky broke open, split by all the blue dragons summoning rain and lightning. Green dragons swooped down, blowing their gas over the hordes of dark creatures swarming the walls.

  Red dragons, with their huge mouths and massive fire, set upon Yacrist, surrounding him in a blaze as thick as a storm. All of the metallic dragons surrounded the edges of battle, crowding abominations inward with their acidic spray.

  It was as magnificent as it was terrifying. It was a growling cavalcade of flapping wings and ear-piercing roars. Or at least Eist assumed they were ear-piercing, considering that the volume of it all was making even her ears ring.

  Fior swerved up from the collapsing ravine, twisting over himself several times before diving deep into another one.

  Eist drew her sword, cutting away limbs and claws and tails that tried to lash out at them. She trusted Fior to take her to the weak spot that had to be there, tucked between the stones and the monsters and all the evil. All she could see were the abominations and the drab lifelessness of the earth, all energy drained from it. If only the Three hadn’t been so blinded by their own desire for power, maybe they would have more of a chance of fighting the Blight. Then again, if they hadn’t done so much damage, would the Blight ever have come to Eist’s world at all?

  That thought struck her strangely and she tucked it away for later. She had a battle to worry about and two more growing canyons to collapse.

  The ground was essentially like an ocean, churning in waves and breaks. If there were any ground troops, they would have undoubtedly been either swallowed up or thrown to their feet by the movement of it all, which was curious considering Yacrist’s creatures were earth-bound.

  Fior spiraled toward the penultimate crevasse, his wings tucked in tight. But before they could reach it, there was a blast of energy. It slammed into them like a sticky wall of nausea.

  They went rolling through the air, pushed to the edge of battle. Eist’s stomach churned and her head spun, objecting violently to the upheaval of it all. When they finally righted, she saw that all of the dragons except for the white one and Elspeth had been pushed out in a wide ring, framing the edges of the battle while all the creatures continued to fight their way to the wall.

  It would have been piteous if Eist didn’t feel dread spreading through her. Yacrist may have been overdramatic and gifted with an intense superiority complex, but he wasn’t stupid. Not in the slightest. If anything, he’d always used his amiable nature to make people underestimate him.

  “Fior, we need to—”

  She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Another blast of power rushed out of Yacrist and covered the entire battle. But instead of being just a wall, or a wave, or anything like that, it was like being absorbed by a violent, slimy bubble.

  For a moment, Eist couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. There was just an inexplicable pressure as Yacrist rose from the ground, completely surrounded by incredible power. When it was finally over, even Fior lurched forward from the sudden release, and the entire dragon fleet seemed to stutter for a moment as they figured out what happened.

  That moment of uncertainty lingered for a solid beat, then a rumble began to grow. Several dragons tensed to rush forward in another blitz, but that stalled when a truly hideous series of shrieks issued from the monsters below.

  The abominations all began to shudder and seize, terrible noises rending from their multiple mouths. Crooked teeth gnashing, even Eist had to clap her hands over her ears at the cacophony. What was happening!?

  She got her answer as the abominations all either doubled over or fell to the ground, their crooked spines bucking and warping until bony wings burst out of their skin. It was horrifying to watch on several levels, and her heart utterly stopped when the first one shakily took to the air.

  Yacrist was evening the playing field, the devil.

  And they were all heading for the white dragon.

  “Protect Elspeth!” Eist called, rushing forward as soon as she realized what was happening. She was no fool. With the black dragon already gone, the white dragon was the only leader of all the dragons they had left. Able to communicate to all of her subjects at once, she was a powerful and very old creature. She could draw on all of their power and release it as a weapon. And, most importantly, dragons were stronger the closer they were to her. Losing her would be a blow they would be unlikely to survive.

  This time, there were no objections for her to stop. They all raced forward, Fior leading the charge as the fastest of all the dragons, with the metallic ones right behind him. There was a moment filled with only the flapping of wings as the decrepit beasts all flew upward and the dragons rushed to intercept them.

  Then the two forces hit, and it truly was a battle. Claws bit into flesh. Teeth gnashed, wings clashed against each other, tangling and sending foes spiraling downward. Lightning flashed overhead while the wind picked up, but in such close quarters, there were few secondary powers that wouldn’t be just as harmful as they were helpful, so it was jaws and talons and plumes of fire.

  Eist wished she had full armor. The traditional gift to each graduate was a set of scale-male made from the castoffs their dragons had shed since hatching. She could feel the heat of all the attacks around her like the sun on her back, but she ignored it. If she got burned, she got burned. She would deal with it later.

  She pressed her knees into Fior’s sides, and he shot forward even farther in a series of impressive surges. They reached Elspeth before even the metallic dragons, just as Yacrist began to surge forward.

  But there was something strange about his movement, something different than that sticky, slimy hovering he had been doing before. It was only as he grew closer that she realized he was perched on the back of Alynbach.

  Except Alynbach wasn’t quite Alynbach anymore. Instead of a brilliant purple, his scales were pitched in black, his claws were longer, and the maws on both his heads had grown, lined with rows of jagged teeth.

  “That’s… That’s…” Eist had never heard Elspeth stutter before, but that was exactly what she did as she stared in horror. “It can’t be him! He’s dead!”

  “Who’s dead?” Eist squinted at the rapidly-approaching dragon, trying to understand what had Elspeth so thoroughly terrified, when it suddenly hit her.

  The dark wings, the treacherous roar ripping from his throat, the jagged claws and teeth. Somehow, Yacrist was channeling the fallen black dragon through his own mount.

  “That’s not possible,” she breathed, staring in shock.

  “And yet that’s exactly what’s happening, isn’t it?” Elspeth said. “Yacrist is calling…is calling…”
She shook her head and when her eyes opened again, Eist saw only strength and determination.

  “Eist, you and Fior come here to our front. On my word, have your charge let out the mightiest blast he can.”

  “What are you—”

  “Eist!”

  Of course. There were mere seconds. No time to ask questions. Eist leaned forward and Fior surged to the spot, arriving right at the massive white dragon’s chest and turning to face the oncoming Alynbach.

  Within only a breath or two, he would be upon them, scales growing darker by the moment and form expanding in heaps and waves. Yacrist had wicked murder in his eyes, grinning from ear to ear like the violence and chaos was the biggest treat he could ask for.

  For a moment, Eist felt pure, undiluted terror, sandwiched between the rapidly-growing Alynbach and the already massive white dragon. Even Veralda, as large as she was, or Dille’s newer (older?) red dragon, would have been dwarfed next to the beautiful queen. So naturally, Fior and Eist seemed incredibly tiny in comparison.

  “We can do this, my girl. That’s not our loves. It’s not.”

  Eist’s heart hurt at those words, but she didn’t have much time to ache. The pressure changed all around her, then there was a deep, soulful rumble as the white dragon drew in a deep breath, then let it go.

  Eist had been expecting fire, burning and consuming and bright. But what she had not been expecting was a blinding, violet flame to shoot out of the dragon’s mouth in a thick pillar of power, magic radiating from it and glowing gold in her vision.

  Oh...wow.

  “Now, Eist!”

  She almost missed the cue, so caught up in the beauty of the violent column. Her knees squeezed Fior’s sides, and he too drew in a large breath of air, then roared right down the center of the queen’s violet-blast.

  Eist wasn’t sure what she had anticipated, but it wasn’t anything like what happened. The moment Fior’s invisible force hit the white dragon’s purple fire, it combined into a vortex of swirling colors. It burned gold in Eist’s vision so harshly she had to shield her eyes, peeking out from under her hand at the tumult happening right in front of her.

  Yacrist had no time to block, no time to slow. One minute, he was bearing down on them, power swirling and threatening and huge, and the next, he was flying backward, all the darkness fading from Alynbach’s body.

  It wasn’t until the dragon’s form almost hit the ground, Yacrist struggling to free himself from the saddle, that Eist noticed the lifeless tilt to both of Alynbach’s heads and how their tongues lolled lazily between their increasingly normal teeth. It was then that the truth struck her.

  They’d killed Alynbach.

  All of her breath froze in her chest, creating an icy, painful cavern of torment within her. She’s seen the dopey, two-headed guy grow from a hatchling, so delicate that Yacrist had to monitor each of their heads and necks with care.

  And now she had helped kill him.

  There were no words for what she was feeling, her heart squeezing so painfully that she thought she might just turn inside-out right then and there. The two figures crashed through the ground, none of the flying abominations paying their leader any mind. But while the maelstrom continued to surge around her, Eist only had eyes for the fallen.

  Some part of her hoped that maybe they were lucky, that somehow they had taken care of both Yacrist and his mount. But she knew, deep inside, that it would take so much more to end him.

  Possibly more than she had.

  Than any of them had.

  If only they had found the brindles! All that work, seemingly for nothing. She still hoped, in the very back of her mind, that they were just hiding somewhere that made sense, but that hope wasn’t going to do anything now.

  “Eist, to me!” Elspeth cried, holding her sword downward as she dove. Eist followed after her, Fior quickly catching up with the giant, alabaster queen. All the monsters certainly took notice of their movement and tucked in their own wings, diving after them.

  “Elspeth!” Eist called, pointing up. The dragon riders were chasing after the abominations, but the tangled beasts were lighter and faster. In such close quarters, it wouldn’t take long to completely swarm both the white dragon and Fior. “Fling us up!”

  Thankfully, the warrior understood Eist’s vague shout and said something to her dragon that Eist couldn’t catch. But the young woman knew she needed to warn Fior before they were flung anywhere.

  “Brace yourself,” she said, and just in time too, because the white queen bent her head down and caught Fior’s tail, yanking him up so hard and fast that Eist almost slipped from his back.

  Fior let out a loud squawk but seemed to recover just as the queen released them, sending them hurtling right up toward the coming abominations in a tight spiral. The brindled dragon somehow managed to sense when he was upright, and Eist felt him drag in a large draft of air.

  She waited until they were level with a good crowd of the beasts, most of which ignored them in favor of the white dragon. Too bad they weren’t going to be around long enough to realize what a terrible decision that was.

  “Now!” Eist cried into Fior’s shimmering scales, her face pressed into his back while she held on with all of her might.

  He let loose his roar, not his greatest one but certainly nothing to scoff at. It hit the beasts with a force that she could see, ripping through the closest and blasting away those further out. Fior kept going until the entire horde was pushed far enough out for the rest of the dragon riders to catch up, then seeming to sense that his work was done, he tucked in his wings and fell backward.

  It was a freefall, and for a moment, Eist allowed herself to feel elated. She had always dreamed of flying on her mount, air rushing past her, but she had worried she and Fior would never get there. His growth was still so new to her, they’d really only flown together in battle. Maybe, if they lived, they’d go on a long trip together for fun. Just the two of them, relearning each other and enjoying peace.

  But then Fior pulled up short as a blast of magic went straight for them, jerking her back to the present. She held tight as they spiraled, her eyes going back to the ground.

  Yacrist was standing there, staring up at her with pure malevolence from the crater that he had landed in. Alynbach’s body was pushed to the side, lifeless and cold, with all of the darkness gone from his shattered form. It was a heart-wrenching scene in so many ways.

  “What have you done?” Yacrist cried, collapsing to his knees behind his long friend. Fior paused, no doubt concerned about another attack, but their enemy turned his attention from them. It was an awful sight, seeing Yacrist’s hands hovering over his scaled friend, as if he wasn’t sure where to set them down. “Eist, how could you kill him and still think you’re on the side of good. This is murder!”

  “You have murdered countless and you dare to posture at righteousness?” Elspeth cried, barreling downward. At the last moment, the white dragon pulled up, and Eist could feel as the white queen called upon the energy of all of her subjects.

  It was a heady ability, and one rarely used. But as the eldest, wisest, and strongest dragon, she could summon the power from every one of her charges. It was always a gamble, as it left every beast who aided her in a weakened state, and she could only hold onto it for a few moments lest her own body burst from it all, so it was only used as a last resort.

  Fior barely spiraled away as the air split in two and a truly magnificent blast of violet power shot out of the white dragon’s mouth. It was wider than most dragons’ wingspans and so bright and heated that Eist actually had to shield her eyes.

  Fior let out a whine that was barely audible above the crackling, churning, popping miasma of light, and Eist held tighter to him. “Fall back,” she shouted over the roar, hoping he could hear her.

  Of course he did, halting his strain against the sheer force of power and letting them fall away. But what neither of them counted on was the white dragon’s blast growing bigger and st
ronger, sending them tumbling head over tail in an uncontrolled spin.

  Eist saw the flash of green below her, her stomach spinning violently. “Fior! Ground! Pull up! Pull up!”

  He tried, he really did. She could feel him straining, fluttering his wings hard to diminish their speed as they hurtled toward the earth. But she could feel that they were closing too fast and braced for impact.

  “Fior!” she cried, bringing her hands up to cover her face.

  The movement was instinctual, without thought or plan, but she still felt magic surge out from her in a wide bubble. But instead of exploding, or making itself into a weapon, a thin layer of golden light enveloped the two of them in a brilliant orb.

  A shield?

  Before she could fully comprehend what was going on, they slammed right into the earth, and orb or not, it hurt.

  The world spun violently, jerking her this way and that. She could feel muscles screeching in protest, and her skull felt like someone had rattled it with a real sense of vengeance. Things hit her, too hard and too fast for her to even get a glimpse of what they were, each one driving the air out of her with force.

  By the time she slid to a stop, she was completely covered in dirt and it felt like the skin of her back was scraped raw. Her eyes fluttered open, and she was greeted by a deceptively blue sky interrupted by small storm clouds that told of blue dragons using their secondary ability. She couldn’t hear anything, and the edges of her vision were wavering, leaving her feeling like she wasn’t quite real.

  A high-pitched whine sounded from beside her, and she barely managed to sit up. There was a whole lot of violent head-spinning after that, but she managed not to throw up and find the source of the noise.

  It was Fior, laying on his side and breathing heavily. That jolted her, and Eist stumbled to her feet.

  “Hey… Hey, boy, are you okay?”

  He let out another whine, lifting his head lightly and giving her a weary look with his crystalline eyes. So, alright but definitely banged up and hurting.

  “I’m here,” she said, stumbling over to him. “I’m here, I promise.”