When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by K. Scott Lewis

  The one called Arda struggled against the tentacles, but the more she moved the more they tightened until she lay still. “Aradma,” Arda said. “He’s cut me off from the Light.”

  “And made you his servitor,” Sidhna remarked.

  Arda’s eyes narrowed at the vampire. “And you, his bitch.” The pod shell started to close over the darkling. “Fight him, Aradma!” Arda screamed as she struggled. “You’re stronger! Fight him!”

  The darkness closed in around her mind, but this time she fought back. Her temples exploded in pain, and she fell to her knees, clutching her head.

  Sidhna knelt beside her, holding her. Graelyn let out a moan. She was no closer to integrating her mind, but she resisted the mental blank that usually came when thinking of fighting him.

  The shell closed over the darkling, muffling her screams.

  “You need not fight me, Graelyn,” Athaym said coldly. “You are life’s only advocate in the time to come. Consider that when you think about resisting. If you want to preserve life when I am done with this world—”

  An explosion sounded and a bright light flashed from above Taer Koorla. Dark energy flowed around the tower-mother and gathered into a vortex that opened a pathway through the ceiling above and into Dis.

  Demons fell to the ground, burning, infernal comets that crashed into the rock and formed craters. Hundreds fell. Thousands. Troglodytes warriors ran for cover into the safety of their female buildings.

  Athaym howled.

  Something’s gone wrong, Graelyn realized. His plans are not absolute. “Naiadne!” she cried out and stood, concern for her daughter pushing away the pain in her head.

  Athaym’s rage emanated in cold black mist, and Graelyn stepped away from him.

  Finally, the brightest streak fell and slammed into the ground at Athaym’s feet before the vortex to Dis closed.

  Naiadne landed crouched, cracks in the stone spreading out from where her heels impacted. A protective shield formed from the Dark surrounded her body. She stood and let the shield drop.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” she said, casting her eyes to the ground.

  Athaym’s eyes narrowed. Graelyn rushed to her daughter’s side, but the girl hurled her mother away with a bolt of darkness.

  “How many before she cast you out?” Athaym asked.

  “She was too strong,” Naiadne replied, her voice trembling. “The Queen of Dis… one-third, Father,” she finally answered. “One-third of the hosts of Dis fell with me and are yours to command.”

  Athaym looked around at all the demons. They struggled to their feet, and now the mass of them crept forward in supplication. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the yellow in his red gaze shone with blazing fury.

  “Dis is closed to me!” he shouted. “You have lost the Demon City!”

  He clenched his fist, and black lightning snaked around Naiadne’s small frame, twisting and contorting her into a ball. She screamed, unable to contain her agony.

  Graelyn rushed at Athaym, and he was so angry he didn’t even channel the Dark to punish the Green Dragon’s dreamwalker. He balled up his fist and struck Graelyn’s elven face, over and again while Naiadne thrashed beside them on the ground, screaming in the eldritch energy.

  He finally tossed Graelyn back, sending her flying. She crumpled on the dirt.

  A pack of hellhounds rushed up to her, but Sidhna was there, gathering the elf in her arms. She hissed at the demons, baring her fangs and flashing red light from her eyes. They backed away momentarily, and then the vampire rushed Graelyn back to Taer Koorla, moving with unnatural speed.

  “My daughter,” Graelyn murmured through blood-caked lips. Her entire face ached and throbbed, and when she touched her cheeks, her fingers came away with green blood.

  “She will survive,” Sidhna whispered, “but you would not have. The demons are uncontrolled until he calms himself.” The vampire frowned. Then: “He’s never lost control like this.”

  “Yes, he has,” Graelyn replied, remembering the Black Dragon in his fullness.

  “Shhh…”

  The demons would not approach Taer Koorla, and Graelyn thought it had something to do with the sorcerous energy coursing through the tower. Eventually, the demonic throng became quietly ordered and then dissolved into smoke and vanished.

  They were still there, ready to be summoned at his command. But to whom did they belong? No, not him. Naiadne. They fell with her. They were bound to her. Sidhna was right—he would not kill her. He needed her now more than ever, because he had failed to become their king.

  The reminder that something had not gone according to his designs replenished her hope.

  Athaym strode past them deeper into the tower. He was actually muttering to himself.

  “It’s not enough. Not for the world.” He stopped and turned to Graelyn. “The revenants and dragons are more important now than ever. It will take longer, but I will destroy faith and hope in this world. I will starve the gods.”

  Graelyn glared at him. Stoic patience had been replaced by rage, but she couldn’t act on it.

  But I can feel it now, she realized without falling unconscious. More hope filled her.

  Athaym frowned. “No,” he said. “There is no hope. I go now to Windbowl. When I return, we’ll talk about your hope.” Then he gestured towards the prison pods, where Naiadne still lay on the ground. “The demons are subdued. Go to our daughter and bring her back to the tower so she might heal. I’ll have need of her soon.”

  The other motes of her being pressed in fiercely on her mind again, and pain burst through her head. They could not push through, but for one head-splitting thought. “She is not your daughter!” she screamed. She tried to rush at him, despite her weakness, but it was too much. Her mind shut off and she stumbled to the floor, slipping away into blackness.

  Graelyn awoke in Sidhna’s arms. Her face didn’t hurt anymore. The vampire stroked her hair, sadness in her eyes.

  “I brought Naiadne here,” the vampire said. “She’s asleep. I healed you both with my blood… but I need to feed again.”

  Graelyn nodded, and Sidhna leaned down, piercing the skin of the seelie’s neck. Her venom soothed and calmed Graelyn’s fears, and she relaxed into the moment of shared peace.

  Finally, Sidhna let her go. “There’s something you should know,” she said.

  “What?” Graelyn asked.

  “He’s taken another prisoner. A seelie man.”

  Graelyn stood. “Where?”

  “Next to the darkling. I’m scared.”

  Graelyn turned to regard the vampire. That was not something she expected Sidhna to admit aloud.

  Sidhna tightened her lips. “He’s happy. Ecstatic. He found something unexpected, and it has to do with the darkling and light elf he brought back.”

  Graelyn spun on her heels and strode out of Taer Koorla with purpose. A little knot balled in her stomach, sending a wave of anxious nausea through her. She ignored it. She wanted to see this seelie man for herself.

  Athaym stood there in the prison-pod farm. The two clam-shaped vises lay wide open, displaying his prizes in tentacle-wrapped flesh as he regarded them with satisfaction.

  Graelyn came up behind him and stopped when she saw the man.

  Her knees weakened.

  She did not recognize him, but her heart thudded. She opened her mouth to form his name, but the memory would not surface on her tongue.

  The horned man was naked and bound just like Arda, limbs wrapped in the constricting tentacles. Dark green bruises spread over his golden face, and emerald blood trickled from his nose.

  She felt the Dragon within him and ran forward, past Athaym, into the clammy flesh of the pod. It’s tentacles sprang forward to bind her too, but then shrunk away at the skin-suit that marked her as choros.

  Graelyn took his face in her hands and looked into his eyes. He seemed dazed, unsure of where he was. He tried to focus on her.

  Their eyes met,
and a flash of recognition sparked between them.

  They were both Graelyn.

  She was the dreamwalker, bound in flesh through lightfall. He was the focused will of Graelyn’s greater conscious mind, who had compartmentalized the part of the Dragon’s self and sent her out as the dreamwalker. He had kept the watch in dragonsleep and enforced the disciplined concentration of the rest of Graelyn that continued to keep Klrain in slumber for millennia.

  He Who Masters!

  She remembered.

  He—she at the time—knew of her suffering in the Otherworld at the hands of Klrain’s dreamwalker and understood its necessity. He—she at the time—had welcomed the dreamwalker back into herself when it was finished, rejoined as one to awaken and help Aaron in the battle against the Black Dragon. The dreamwalker had gratefully surrendered into dissolution into her higher self, and they rose to fight until the Champion channeled the full might of Karanos.

  They hadn’t thought that Klrain’s dreamwalker, still bound in the Otherworld, might be unable to rejoin his greater mind. There he lay behind as Aaron brought heaven’s wrath down upon the Black Dragon.

  The Otherworld shattered at Klrain’s death, and Graelyn, of unified purpose, sacrificed herself to save Ahmbren. She broke apart, rent asunder by the Otherworld’s jagged shards into 144,000 pieces, gathering the millions of faerie motes to themselves.

  Graelyn’s mind had dissolved, and the dreamwalker had fallen out whole. The greater mind’s central point of will kept its purpose, intent on saving as much as it could, until its singular focus was all that remained of the Dragon, stripped of everything else down to its most subtle aspect, and then it too fell into the dust of the Otherworld and gathered faerie shards unto itself.

  “Tiberan,” she echoed the word that pressed through the shadowy film in her mind. The Fae presences beat at the wall, and that other light, the distilled elf mind, tried to break through even more.

  “Oh, Tiberan,” she repeated.

  “Aradma,” he breathed, lips caressing her name as if the sound of it shielded him from Athaym’s darkness.

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she whispered. “He’s taken that from me.”

  “Come away from him, Graelyn,” Athaym commanded.

  Compelled by the pact-bond, she stepped away from the horned man. Klrain doesn’t understand this man, she realized. Tiberan’s spark of the Dragon… it’s too primal, too subtle, for Athaym to sense. Then: He has bound them as he bound me. He can command them to stay, and they cannot flee. The prisons are for their protection, not to keep them. They are too valuable to chance to demons or troglodytes seeking to purge their city of foreign bodies.

  “What do you intend with them?” she asked.

  Athaym laughed. “Graelyn, we are the keys to Artalon! We are the four seals, together, here, at last! This thing that the gnomish builders thought would never happen has come to pass. The northern dragons and revenant wizards are irrelevant now. I’ve no need to take the world; just Artalon, one city, and the Kairantheum will be mine!”

  Athaym’s voice grew quiet, and a satisfied smile spread over his face, so slight and genuine. “And I will use the gods to destroy all the peoples of hope. The gods will be the instruments of their undoing; they will starve with no one to worship them, and the Kairantheum will crumble.”

  “I will not help you,” Graelyn responded.

  “I grow tired of this game,” he replied. “You have until I take Artalon to make your choice. I want you at my side. If you do this, if you join with me willingly, you will be Life’s Advocate. You will shape the world after the Turning of the age. If you do not, you will die along with the rest of them, and I will rule alone.”

  “You’re mad,” she murmured. “Once you were not, long ago. You will rule over a dead world.”

  Athaym’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral grin, and the dark countenance overshadowed him. Graelyn remembered Klrain’s words from so long ago when Artalon spanned the worlds. I will devour this world, and all the worlds across the stars.

  “Seal of Life,” Athaym whispered, “I will compel you if I must. I don’t need your consent to reveal the Stag Throne; just your presence. But consider again. You are Life’s Advocate, and your love of life will compel you to join me in the end. It is your nature.”

  “You think you understand life, but you don’t understand living,” she replied.

  Taer Koorla let out another disturbed moan. Athaym immediately looked away towards the tower-mother. “Someone has followed me. The revenant…”

  With that, he shadowjumped away.

  Graelyn stood before Arda and Tiberan, with Sidhna behind her.

  “Aradma,” Tiberan said. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

  Graelyn shook her head. “The one you call Aradma… she has been taken from me. I am only the dreamwalker now.”

  Arda’s eyes widened at that. “Well, that explains some things,” she muttered.

  “I dreamed you were alive,” Tiberan said, “and in his hands again. I didn’t understand it.” He stared at her intently, and she felt the pressure of his gaze trying to penetrate her mind and set it free. It was no use.

  “Klrain has won,” Graelyn said suddenly. She stared at them both. What could they do? They were compelled, and he would use them to reveal the true Stag Throne of Artalon. With the gods at his command, what hope did mortalkind have?

  Unless…

  Unless I go to him willingly. Unless I marry Life to the Dark. Life always finds a way to survive…

  But it wasn’t about survival. Life wasn’t an end unto itself. Joy is Life’s purpose. There is no joy in Klrain’s path. Even for him.

  Athaym was the most joyless creature she had ever witnessed in her aeons of existence, a black sucking void of a man who sought to consume the joy of others. He has fallen to be nothing more than Malahkma’s shade, no better than a vampire.

  She heard the rustle of feathers behind her. Arda sucked in a breath of surprise. Graelyn whirled to see an owl and crane descend swiftly from Taer Koorla’s pinnacle and land at her feet, shifting into a troll and…

  “Mom!” the seelie girl cried out and ran to her. She was as tall as Graelyn, fern-green hair bunched up into two ponytails. She threw her arms around the elf with the Dragon soul.

  Emotion welled up in Graelyn. “Fernwalker,” she murmured. All she could remember was the name, and she accepted the understanding that Fernwalker was Aradma’s daughter. But Aradma was gone, banished from her being.

  Fernwalker stepped back. “Dad, she doesn’t remember. Something’s happened to her.”

  “Aradma,” the troll said. “You must remember yourself. Your nature. You always saw the truth of things. See the truth of yourself!”

  “Odoune,” Graelyn named him. Her temples ached, then pain exploded over her skull. She swayed on her feet, and Sidhna caught her.

  Fernwalker noticed the vampire for the first time. She stepped back and raised her right hand, lightning condensing around her fingertips. “Step away, Mom!” she told Graelyn.

  “No,” Graelyn shook her head and waived her hand. “Release your power. She is not who she once was.”

  Fernwalker lowered her hand with a skeptical eye.

  Tiberan’s voice called out from behind her. “Aradma! You have forgotten the truth of your being! Do not stop fighting for it. Those who love you surround you. Reach into yourself and find that connection. Odoune is right, focus! You must find your self!”

  Graelyn shuddered. The dark barriers in her mind flexed and resisted, and she cried out in pain.

  Fernwalker handed her rifle to Odoune. She stepped forward. “Mom,” she said, “I can see your essence. Remember how you used to see the music of people’s souls? I see your soul music, and it’s still you. It’s all there! He’s just hidden it. Find your soul’s song.”

  “I cannot!” Graelyn gasped. Darkness clouded her vision.

  “Mom,” Fernwalker breathed softly
. “Here, let me show you. Listen!”

  Fernwalker closed her eyes. Light crept along her skin and sparkles flashed in the air. The space around her vibrated and hummed, and then Graelyn heard it. They all heard it. Music gathered and built. Graelyn heard the rhythm and cadence of her own soul reflected back at her through her daughter. More than the Dragon… even more than the Fae. She was a new being, having emerged from struggle, from limitation, and from growth through struggle. She had experienced living in the fullness of Ahmbren’s bounty, not just overseeing life. Dragons were powerful, primal… but primitive. Life had moved on, evolved. Smaller, yes. More delicate, perhaps. But life grew, it created, it loved… and their capacity for joy was greater than any Dragon could know.

  The music her daughter created through Ahmbren’s life force resonated in her own soul—for it was her own music—setting up tremors and vibrations in her psyche. It built in her until the song exploded through her being, tearing away the psychic barriers.

  Aradma threw back her head and screamed in joy and pain, triumph and realization of loss. She fell to her knees, and she was her! She was Aradma! The red stripes spread over her body once more, creeping out from the mollusk skin-suit.

  “Oh, Fernwalker!” she cried and held her daughter in her arms. Fernwalker cried with her.

  Aradma stepped away. A great calm flowed from the center of her being. She was Aradma, with all the Dragon and Fae memories, but even more than she had been before. Athaym had set her free in the end. The elven woman had once been timid, afraid to affect other people’s lives. Afraid to touch the world too firmly. But now she took ownership of her self. She had become who she was, survived the death of the Otherworld and lightfall, for a purpose. Her own purpose. And now the elf looked upon the world with the full awareness of the Dragon’s dreamwalker. She stood whole for the first time.

  But she was still bound to Athaym, cut off from channeling Life.

  Athaym!

  “Go!” Aradma said. “You must leave me here. Go quickly, before he returns! I cannot protect you.”

  Fernwalker shook her head as if someone had batted her nose. “What? No! No, Mom, no. There’s no way we’re leaving you here.”