Xavier had never thought he could be so happy to see someone who hated him, and it seemed endlessly ironic that the only thing standing between him and certain death was a sip of enchanted water.
Simi took the stairs two at a time with another of the enchanted water flasks gripped tightly in his hand. The beast yowled with the fury of an angry cat as the villagers rushed it.
Xavier couldn’t harm the wraith. They could. And they had no business putting their lives on the line to save him, but their cuts were furious and graceful despite the sweat pouring down their faces and the steam wafting off their clothes.
Slowly but surely, they were cooking to death within their own former city, a place where they should have thrived if not for his selfish grandfather.
Ahrak’s bravery only got him so far. He missed a parry, then the volcanic blade plunged into his muscular thigh. Hyraj shrieked in dismay and hurled a satchel at the wraith. The leather skin ignited on contact, then a white substance billowed around it and muted the flames. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary reprieve while Simi dragged the injured Ahrak away from the wraith.
The panic in her voice filled Xavier with anger. They shouldn’t have come. They shouldn’t have followed him, and whether it was distrust or to help, he didn’t know.
What he did know was that he couldn’t stand by as it killed them too, regardless of how much his body still longed for rest after the dragon’s bane poisoning.
The shift was not painless, as it should have been—his body was too worn down, shoulder bleeding and hands throbbing. Damaged tissue elongated and stretched, tugged his joints, and pulled the wound until the minor bleeding became a gush of dragon blood. He was torn apart and made anew, his shapeshifting raw and hurried, breaking bones and reshaping them in the most agonizing way, all without time to prepare himself for the transition.
The villagers stumbled back onto the main platform, Hyraj and Simi dragging Ahrak out of harm’s way. The wraith snarled at Xavier, flames flickering angrily at the sudden appearance of the dragon that towered over it.
Assuming a form larger than a common desert lizard taxed him soul-deep. His time was limited. He knew that for a multitude of reasons, the least of them being that he might bleed to death from the wound if his regenerative ability hadn’t recovered.
Burdened by the unnatural heat, the bleeding, and his own desperation, he sank his claws deep into the flaming wraith’s shoulders and chest.
He wasn’t a fire dragon. No matter how he masqueraded as one, he could never truly compete with the vengeful wraith spewing magma onto his talons. One push with his wings propelled them from the platform into the air, and another sharp beat sent them hurtling higher into the sky. His claws sizzled and the flesh blistered.
He didn’t let go. His roar and the wraith’s enraged bellows harmonized the whole while they soared toward the black, ash-filled clouds swirling above Mount Mori’onga.
His shoulder tugged painfully with each powerful wing stroke sweeping them into the atmosphere away from the villagers and the volcano. Blinded by soot, he pushed higher until the cold was biting and the flames of the wraith had all but died away. No flame could burn at such a high altitude.
And a dragon could not breathe. Fighting against blood loss and the elements, Xavier blacked out and plummeted back to the earth still clutching the crumbling, blackened husk. No spell nor assault from him could harm the wraith of vengeance.
The elements did it for him.
11
To Sacrifice in Love
Mind-numbing agony seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Rosalia had read many books and couldn’t help but remember an astronomy tome she’d once read in a wealthy noble’s library that said stars were celestial bodies like their planet—but made of energy and magic.
Rosalia now knew what it was like to be a combusting star. Thousands of particles collided and fused. Skin peeled from bone that splintered and cracked, blood evaporated in a wave of heat. One moment she was in pain, the next was beautiful euphoria. The sensations overlapped and split as her world dissolved and reformed. She was everywhere and she was nowhere, no longer present at the temple altar, but aware that Xavier had called her name.
His presence was there.
Don’t panic.
The pain ended, and she opened her eyes to find herself surrounded by a sea of red heat. When she opened her mouth to take in a deep, ragged breath, liquid poured down her throat, yet it didn’t drown her. It enriched and improved, and it soothed.
Moments passed before she realized she’d been transported from the temple to the magma itself, her body drifting weightless within it like a child in the womb.
Before she could even begin to process that discovery, the waves of bubbling orange arose and swept her from the comforting embrace onto dry land. She touched down on her bare feet harmlessly. She wore nothing, but she was not naked. Ribbons of molten rock served as a garment and all that remained of her modesty as she took in a landscape of smoldering ruin beneath a sky painted violet dusk.
The wave of magma arose once more from the pool and poured onto the ground beside her into a vaguely masculine shape. Broad shoulders, legs, and powerful arms emerged from superheated liquid rock, and tides of lava rolled with a vengeance, splashing against the edge of the pit before receding, leaving only a regal figure.
“Moritan,” Rosa gasped, gaping at the deity. Wonder stole away any other words she might have said and froze her on the spot. Despite the wonder of the moment, she couldn’t help but notice the exhaustion in his features and the pervasive sense of wrong.
He’s weakening. It weakened him to bring me here to his realm.
“I have waited for you.” A distant rumble shook the ground as he spoke, and the lava bubbled vigorously behind him, settling only when he crouched and ran his fingers over the ground in a soothing stroke, as if by touch alone, he’d calmed a volcano.
“We don’t have long, Rosalia.”
Time alone had not weakened him. Whether it was the toll of restraining the volcano, or the betrayal that bound the gods, it would only worsen with time.
She wanted to say many things, and needed to ask too many others. “Tell me what to do,” she said instead, unsurprised that the god knew of her mission. Nothing could surprise her any longer. She’d spoken to gods, tumbled off mountain cliffs, and she’d swum a stream of magma into another world.
He smiled. She found it utterly fascinating that a face composed of rock and lava could convey amusement.
“Yes… You will do. I have seen your heart and deemed you worthy,” he spoke softer, as if scared to startle the volcano once more. Lava still rolled beside them like waves in an ocean, but it was gentler now, an almost-sentient force brushing and lapping against Moritan’s ankles.
“I did nothing special.”
“On the contrary. You have sacrificed, and you have suffered. You endured obstacles few others could overcome and crossed the desert to find me. Yet your work is not done, and you must accomplish so much more. You must cleanse the stones.”
“Cleanse them?”
“Yes.”
“But how?”
Another tremor vibrated beneath Rosalia’s feet, and fleeting pain passed over Moritan’s stony features. She wished the gods weren’t so cryptic when delivering desperate instructions.
“The Rod of New Life is not the only way to free us… There is another way.”
“Tell me. Tell me, and I’ll do whatever you need.”
“As a dragon defiled our gifts for greed, only a dragon’s blood and sacrifice can undo what was wrought.”
Rosalia stared, chilled by his words—one word in particular. “Sacrifice?”
“A sacrifice of love. It is the only way to destroy the Eyeglass for good and to ensure our gifts to the world no longer corrupt and weaken us. I, as well as the other gods, are bound to our respective planes, and here we shall stay until we are no more.”
The terror didn’t abate. Her mind wra
pped around his words again and again—sacrifice.
“I give this to you freely, a gift once given to my people, my children of fire.” He extended his hand to reveal the ruby. At its heart, it shone with inner light.
Realization snapped into place when she stared at the scarlet nugget. It pulsed with life force as she took it into her hand, and she realized for each second the deity had held it, he dimmed and the heated rock of his exterior cooled.
It was actively draining him.
“You’re unable to guard the stone because it will kill you. Why not destroy it?”
“We cannot. To destroy them would destroy all magic. We created these gifts to mortalkind as a labor of love, but we were all deceived by one with darker designs. To destroy the Legacies would be to destroy us, for a part of our heart resides in each. It is the concentrated essence of our divinity, and thus defiled by that foul dragon, they are now killing us.”
“Xavier’s grandfather.”
“Yes. Once, we trusted Iblis long ago, before we learned the truth of his nature and wicked desires to corrupt mankind. When Arcadian smote him, we thought it the end of his nefarious deceits. We were wrong. He found a new servant and the greed of dragons prevailed over what is right. This mortal king believes the army of Gehenna will serve him. But he is wrong, for the creatures of darkness follow only one leader.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“The rod waits for you in the possession of your enemy. Return now to your plane with the gift of my magic.”
Before she could reply, she felt herself tumbling toward the molten pool, and engulfed by the splashing waves. She slipped under, but she never released her grip on the stone even when the cooler air of the volcano and sounds of battle reached her ears on the other side.
A cocoon of agony enveloped Xavier as he fell to earth. The wind whipped around him and howled a promise of the impact to come. Where he would land, he didn’t know, unable to see the world around him through the haze of pain.
His uncooperative body refused to move, the extremities paralyzed with pain and exhaustion. His foggy mind tried to calculate the seconds until he hit the ground.
Natural survival instinct had sent him into a state of semi-hibernation. Were he in his hoard, he would have slept for a decade or more to recuperate.
At that moment, Xavier wanted nothing more than to crawl into the darkest recesses of the hoard and submerge himself beneath thousands of pounds in gold coin and gemstones.
He fell a few thousand feet more and realized that was a lie.
What he desired more than he wanted his hoard was to see Rosalia one last time. It seemed cruel of fate that he wouldn’t be there to welcome her when she returned from wherever Moritan had taken her.
Crueler still, that she’d be forced to battle both a king and his army alone.
His ice-numbed wings twitched, followed by pins and needles racing from the base of one to the pointed tip. One twitch led to another.
The world below came toward him extraordinarily fast, rushing quickly enough that he had less than a minute if he wanted to avoid splattering on the ground.
As a child learning to fly for the first time, his father had forbidden him to fly too high until he’d mastered flight. He’d taken numerous tumbles over those years and learned to come out of a crash without shattering on the ground. Then he’d practiced it over and over again at his father’s behest, because the old wyrm had told him one day, he’d appreciate that he had.
Doing the math in his head told Xavier no amount of prior practice would be enough. Yet every fleeting thought of Rosalia and the memory of her voice told him it would have to be enough.
His wings did more than twitch this time. With great effort, he partially extended one, though without its twin he failed to catch any air. The wind tore past it and his fall continued while he battled for control of his extremities. His shoulder ached from the wound he’d sustained during the fight and resisted the effort until, roaring with fury, Xavier snapped out both wings to their full span, tearing open the healing wound anew seconds before striking the ground. The shock ripped through his body and thrust him high, though the agony felt as if both would rip from their joints. Off balance, he flapped desperately, only to lose the rhythm and go tumbling to the ground.
He struck the rocky ground in an area of vast desert and skidded for what felt like miles. His tough exterior saved him, sustaining minor scrapes but otherwise unharmed from the fall. Thick draconic bones took the shock of the landing.
At the end of it all, he groaned and lay sprawled against the heated desert, resisting the siren’s song of slumber until sensation returned to his limbs.
Then the vibrations of many footsteps on the ground told him he was not alone.
12
Friendship Made, Respect Earned
“How is he?” Rosalia asked the village elder.
Isabis stood beside her, puffing fragrant smoke from a corncob pipe while observing the team of healers working over the dragon’s prone body near the village center. “As well as one could expect of a dragon,” Isabis said while observing Xavier’s sleeping breaths. “Were he any other creature, I doubt he could have survived such a collision. He will heal. Without medicine, it may have taken years.”
“And with?”
Men and women had traveled from a nearby clan a day’s journey by the power of their desert-loving reptilian mounts, for the number among Isabis’s community hadn’t been enough to heal a creature as large as Xavier.
Ever since her return from Moritan’s plane, she’d guarded the magical ruby with her life and allowed no one but Isabis and the siblings to see it. At the elder’s suggestion, she’d concealed it from all others.
While her people were honorable, a temptation as great as the Heart of Moritan would sway even the staunchest of souls, for none had seen their ancestral heirloom from the deity in decades. Isabis thought if the remaining villagers knew of their mission, there would be outrage among them and anger that an outsider had taken it from the altar.
When she returned to find the two brothers and Hyraj desperately staggering to the exit of the volcano, injured and perilously close to death, instinct overcame Rosalia—and she’d clutched the stone and drawn the ambient heat into the gem and absorbed it, cooling the area within seconds.
For two days, Rosalia feared the wraith would return. For two days, Xavier had slept as still as stone, barely appearing to breathe at all. Those two days since returning from the volcano felt like years.
“Only he can decide that. He has fallen into a deep healing sleep. He was fortunate the fall brought him so close to the village. Even more fortunate we heard the crash. He broke a leg, and that is no easy feat for a dragon.”
Rosalia shuddered. Time and time again she came close to losing him. If anyone had sacrificed for their mission, it was Xavier.
“What about Hyraj and her brothers?”
“Stable. While Ahrak’s injury was great, the wound is nothing time and good medicine will not cure. Hyraj and Simi need only a few days’ rest to recover from the heat sickness. They’re all fortunate to be alive. Now, come with me. There is someone you must speak with.”
“But…” Rosalia glanced at the sleeping dragon, his face pinched with discomfort even during the deep sleep of hibernation.
“He is well tended and you will be at his side again soon enough.”
“All right.”
It surprised her that the Moritta would set aside their differences and disdain toward dragons to care for him. At least, it had initially startled her until she accepted the simplest, most apparent truth: the Moritta were far better people than the humans she knew. Far better than the citizens of Enimura.
Rosalia followed Isabis into the adjacent building, a meeting hall of sorts with a low, round table surrounded by elaborately stitched cushions in a multitude of vibrant colors. Two women and a man were already sitting at the table.
“Lillani, Miriam, Horan, l
et me introduce you to Rosalia. Rosalia, our honored traders. If anything occurs in the desert, they are aware of it.”
Rosalia sat opposite them and searched their stoic faces. All three were of middle age and clad in sand-colored robes, their darkly tanned faces creased from long hours spent beneath the sun. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure is ours,” Lillani said. “Isabis tells us you are the child of the one who returned our jewel.”
“I am.”
“And now you wish to take it away again,” Horan said, his voice smoother than velvet night. He had an intensity to his golden eyes that shone bright as starlight, and Rosalia feared for one moment that he saw her mind and innermost thoughts.
Shoving her paranoia aside, she dismissed that thought and cleared her throat. Her gaze darted to Isabis, and she remained silent until the elder nodded. “You may tell them what transpired in the volcano. There are few others more trustworthy.”
“All right.” Rosalia drew in a nervous breath. “Yes, I do need to take it. I don’t want to deprive your people of the Heart, but it’s very necessary. There is a man seeking the Legacies.”
“Your king, yes?” Miriam asked, arching one thin brow.
“Yes, but he isn’t my king.” Rosalia wet her lips nervously then began the story. It didn’t help her dry mouth. All the while that she relayed the tale, their unchanging expressions scrutinized her, and she felt like an insect pinned to a display board for their examination.
At the end, Miriam steepled her fingers. “Then it is as we feared, and there is nothing to be done if Moritan’s strength wanes. Do what you must, and we will assist you, but I fear more trials lie on the road ahead of you. At times, it is necessary to trade our goods with outsiders for reagents and materials we cannot acquire on our own. When our recent travels took us near Enimura, we passed a caravan turned away from the city. We were told it was no use to head to the gates—that the city is under a lockdown.”
Diamond in the Rough: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 3) Page 8
