The spiked flail attached to Boviss’s tail whistled through the air, missing Myn’s belly by a hairbreadth.
“If we do not do something soon,” Deacon warned, “we may not survive to learn if you are correct.”
“I have an idea. But it will take all of us. Help me contact the others. We may not get a second attempt at it.”
#
Boviss’s frustration grew as the blasted wizard remained tantalizingly beyond his grasp. The young dragon she rode was no match for him. A single blow would shatter her, but she was nimble. More irritating were this bizarre, swirling knot of magic and wind that harried him from one side and the more skilled dragon and Dragon Rider who attacked from the other. It was like flying through a cloud of insects. No one of them was enough to be anything more than a bother, but combined they were pushing him close to madness.
Myn drifted nearly to the ground, skimming along with both feet and wing to better dodge, but he’d seen her do it before. It would not work so well this time. Whipping his wings and surging forward, he closed in on her. She was near enough for him to practically taste her when Garr swept in and directed a blast of flame into his eyes. The attack did little more than obscure his vision, barely singeing his scales and stinging his eyes. He swatted away the beast and turned back to his prey. Myn had set down and dug in her claws, ready to make her stand. Myranda had dismounted and was focusing her strength. It would do no good. He lashed out with his iron claw, bringing it down upon her. The air above her wavered and rippled, a conjured mystic barrier barely preventing the blow from hammering her to a paste. Other warriors swept in, pounding at his hide to little effect. His grin widened as he watched the wizard’s form struggle to keep the spell protecting her in place.
“Perhaps I shall allow your friends to survive. If only to tell the tale of what happens to those who tread upon my land.”
He took a deep breath and let the flames well up within him. The others redoubled their efforts, to no avail. He belched a blast of flame. The shield shattered, and his claw came down upon her, pinning her unseen form to the ground to writhe beneath the iron as he roasted her. She was powerful, more powerful than even he may have realized, so he would not be so foolish as to relent until she was nothing more than a pile of ash. He sustained the flame for as long as he could manage. His iron claw was glowing cherry red by the time he finally relented… but when he ceased the rush of flame, it lingered. Not in the smoldering glow of baked earth, but as a white-hot roiling ball of fire.
“What is this?” he rumbled, taking a step back.
Boviss stole a glimpse of the surrounding field. Myn was gone. He’d not seen her leave. It was as if she’d simply vanished.… or that she had never been there. Illusion? Deception? Perhaps. But the fire was genuine. He could feel its heat. Shapes within the flame began to coalesce. It looked almost human…
A moment later, something burst from the ball of flame and wrapped around his throat. It was so hot it seared even him. Fingers closed around his neck. A face and body resolved before him. It was the same ball of magic that had pestered him with wind, her face smug and defiant as she squeezed his throat.
“A lesson even immortals can be slow to learn,” she said, wrapping a second hand about his throat. “It is unwise to squander your power when you are not certain of the outcome.”
She stood. Her brilliant flaming form had been strengthened by his breath. She was now a match for his own size. The heat about his neck was becoming painful. It was difficult to breathe. He spread his wings and worked them hard. Though she was large, her body was composed of flame and had little weight. He dragged her into the air, but this small victory was short lived. The brilliance of her form darkened. Wind rushed in around her. She shifted from flame to stone, and suddenly was far more than he could ever hope to lift. Her feet struck the field. With a fluid shift of her arms, she slammed him to the ground, pinning his chin to the earth.
“I give you a chance to yield,” Ether said.
Boviss rumbled with fury but didn’t allow it to burst free in a fresh breath of flame. If this creature could draw strength from it, the last thing he would do is feed her. “I will never yield!” he roared, struggling against her grip.
“Then you will die.”
“If you could kill me, I would already be dead.”
He attempted to raise his head. She forced it back down, but with far greater effort.
“The power you use against me. It is stolen from me.” He struggled again and heard the stone of her hand begin to fracture. “You arm yourself with the powers of others. Just like the malthropes with their precious gems. But if you rely upon the strength of others. You can never become more powerful than they. You will always fall to them.”
Ether leaned low, her massive mouth beside Boviss’s head. “There was a time I would have believed that, dragon,” she said. “But I am wiser now. Because you forget. I do not fight alone.”
As he focused his eyes on the field before him, the flickering half-seen forms of malthropes rushed toward him. They let their enchantments drop away, revealing dozens of creatures, weapons in hand. Memories from over a century ago dragged themselves from his mind. The searing pain of when he’d lost his claw. The agony of losing his tail. And it had been at the hands of these creatures. They were swarming, vengeance in their eyes. Emerging from among them, Reyce. He moved with pained determination and barked orders causing his soldiers to fall into line and separate into waves. And Boviss was held, helpless, as they approached.
The thinking part of his mind abandoned him, instinct insisting he not allow the horrid creatures to have their victory again. He tried to pull away, but Ether held him firmly. The other dragons dropped down, tearing at him. The malthropes leaped to his neck, hacking with their weapons. Punishing blows from Ivy’s blades raked him. He felt the distant prickle of elven arrows peppering his sides, the crackle and burn of magic as the blasted wizards cast their spells.
Boviss thrashed and struggled, making slow progress against both the stony grip around his throat and the unfamiliar feelings of panic and anxiety. They were focusing their blows on old wounds, hacking and blasting away at scars. Reyce scrambled atop his head and over his horns, dropping into the place that he had for too long ridden like a king atop his royal steed. A chain jingled. Reyce lifted the same plate he used to mount the gem that had concealed him and the dragon alike. Then, the blow. Reyce drove home his blade in a place between two scales on his neck, a place weakened by generations of exposure to those wretched gems. The pure, sharp pain of it finally pierced the cloud of panic. He gathered himself, dug his hind claws into the earth, and thrust himself back.
Ether’s stony grip literally crumbled. Malthropes rained down from him like ticks exposed to flame. A field littered with elves, malthropes, dragons, and wizards stood ready to finally face his might once more. But Reyce remained, driving the blade deeper and twisting it savagely.
“I will not be defeated again. Not by your magic. Not by your weapons,” Boviss roared. “None of you have the power to defeat me. You will all fall!”
He launched himself skyward, streaking up more quickly than the other dragons could follow. Ether was still shedding the excess mass of her hulking form and fell far behind. But Reyce had been trained almost from birth to endure the rigors of traveling atop the elder dragon. He worked his blade still deeper.
“You would betray my people!” the chieftain hissed. “You would lead us all to ruin! I will remind you why you were locked away. Why you were right to fear us!”
Boviss lashed at his neck with his flesh-and-blood claw, wrenching Reyce away and clutching him tightly. He held the struggling, broken form of the malthrope before his eyes.
“You are nothing! You are less than nothing! A mewling, pathetic insect.”
The claws squeezed down. Reyce’s body was broken beyond hope of recovery. He was breathing his last. And yet he kept his eyes fixed on Boviss, unafraid.
“Perhaps
we are nothing…” he breathed. “But we have beaten you…”
Tiny forms, almost too small to see, buzzed on either side of Boviss’s head. The wasps, released from the sack that Reyce had carried, which even now was pinned to the behemoth’s neck. He snorted, ready to heave a final column of flame that would roast his hated former master to nothing. The breath carried with it a tiny, familiar scent. Poison.
Reyce had opened a deep, raw wound. And even now, he could feel where the fairies had driven their thorns into it. A single thorn had been enough to lay Myn low. Many dozens of times that dosage now coursed through his veins. He could feel the withering weakness. His wings were already beginning to fail him. Perhaps it would be minutes. Perhaps it would be hours. But the poison would be enough to claim him. He was already dead.
He looked to Reyce.
“You have killed me…” the dragon rumbled. “But know this. With my final breaths. I shall take the lives of all that I can. And you are the first.”
#
Myn and Garr streaked skyward, Ether surging up from below. High above, Boviss had faltered. His wings rustled and slackened, like a ship suddenly without the wind to fill its sails. The elder dragon curled his head and belched flame into his claws. Boviss seemed more focused on heaving ever more flame into his claws than gaining control of his wings and ending his uncontrolled descent.
“The dragon has killed him…” Ether uttered. “The dragon has killed him…”
She launched past the dragons as Boviss discarded the blackened remains of his former master like so much refuse. Ether snatched up the form and spirited it earthward.
“The dragon is weakening,” Deacon said, clutching tightly to Myn’s back. “Can you feel it?”
Myranda clenched her fist about her staff. “If he’s given his life to give us this chance, let us not waste it.”
Boviss struggled to catch the air again, angling his wings to glide toward Rendif once more.
“He’s heading for the city,” Deacon said.
Myranda narrowed her eyes. “He won’t make it.”
She pulled the edges of her ragged mind together and reached for teachings she was loath to use. Black pulses and tendrils of energy formed about the head of her staff. Black magic—the simplest, purest form of mystic attack. It was not evil, no more so than a sword or a hammer was evil, but it represented the failure of all else in Myranda’s mind. Sometimes there were simply no better options.
The bolt of black lanced forward and curved under the guiding influence of her mind. It struck Boviss at the base of his wings. She’d seen this attack pierce some of the stoutest defenses she’d ever encountered, and with the force she’d cast it, most creatures would have been struck down. Not so for Boviss, but even the mighty elder dragon was not immune. His jaws spread in a growl of pain, and what little control he had over his wings vanished in a wave of shudders and spasms. He flailed and writhed in the air as the ground swept closer, and finally, he struck.
Dirt spewed around him, launched like water by his heavy form as it struck with punishing force. Malthropes and soldiers alike, wisely having kept their distance, dove for cover as stones the size of melons were heaved in all directions.
It would be too much to hope that the landing would have killed the beast. Though his iron claw was bent by the impact, he dragged himself to his feet and lumbered forward, eyes fixed on Rendif and fire curling between his teeth with every breath.
Myn and Garr tucked their wings and dove toward him. Below them, two red streaks flared across the landscape. One was the fiery glow of Ether, vengeance in her radiant eyes. The other, the crimson aura of Ivy, anger having seized her once more.
The two Chosen struck the dragon one after the other, each splitting the air like thunder. Ether was a blur, burning off the power she’d absorbed in the form of a thousand shifts and changes—now wind to evade an attack, and now stone to pelt Boviss with heavy blows. Ivy had already squandered strength on her previous clash, but what she had left, she poured directly into an assault, heedless of counterattacks.
She drove her daggers deeply into his hide and swatted him with blows that staggered him, but Boviss shrugged off the attacks. Enough of them would end him, just as surely as Reyce’s final act and the rain of arrows from the forces protecting Rendif might. Any sane creature would have been turned back by the savagery of the attacks, but survival was clearly no longer Boviss’s aim. His hide was leaking blood from a half-dozen savage wounds. A tooth was shattered. His horns were splintered and damaged. Still he thundered forward. They simply lacked the strength to deliver enough damage to the dragon to stop him before he reached the city and did in the space of moments what it would take an opposing army hours to do.
“Shah…” Myranda said. “Where is Shah!”
She shut her eyes and found the clean, pure pinprick of light, the fairy’s soul in her mind’s eye. It was paired with the corrosive influence of the D’Karon gem she held.
“This way Myn. We can end this now!”
#
Ether could feel her power waning. Not since her earliest battles had she consumed such power in pursuit of a single target. She didn’t care. Lain had been taken from her, and the one responsible had been killed before she could make him pay. For a brief, precious moment, seeing Reyce had been like getting a glimpse of Lain again. Fate had seen fit to take him away as well, but at least it left the creature responsible. She’d existed long enough to know that second chances of any sort were too rare to let pass.
Ivy leaped and bashed Boviss’s jaw, shattering another tooth. Her gleaming red aura was flickering. Soon even her mighty soul would reach its limit.
“Ether!” Myranda called. “Just slow him.”
The shapeshifter looked to the sky. A smile came to her face. Yes… that would do. Below, Ivy was streaking toward the dragon’s tail. It wasn’t clear if she’d heard Myranda’s instructions or if her anger-drenched mind simply latched on to a new target, but she threw down her daggers and grasped the spiked ball at the end of Boviss’s tail. Her feet sank deep into the ground as he dragged her like a plow through the tough earth, but sheer strength and raw will slowed him slightly. It was Ether’s job to finish the task.
She dropped to the ground and shifted to earth. The soil and stone parted beneath her as she sank down, and a twist of will sent a spire of stone up from below. It passed through one of the thick chain links of the dragon’s augmented tail. When the chain drew tight, he continued walking, fracturing the stone, but with a second curl of will, she shifted herself and the spire to iron. Boviss came to a sudden and complete stop. He turned his head and roared, pulling with all of his considerable might and beginning to bend and tear the very links of his tail. She summoned additional spires to spear the rest of the links.
For the first time since he’d struck the ground, Boviss took genuine notice of the attacks. He curled back and swatted at Ether, knocking her metal body aside.
“I will have this city. My dying breath will be a gout of flame to blot it from this wretched world.”
“You are wrong,” Ether said calmly. “Because this is your final breath.”
A flash and surge of violet light poured down from above. Boviss looked up to find a portal had opened quite far above him. A form dropped through the portal and picked up speed. It was the golem. Deacon’s sabotage had done its job, as it had become entirely motionless. Even the smolder of its eyes had dimmed. But that did not change the fact that it was a titanic mechanism, gaining speed as it plummeted toward him.
He gathered his strength and dove aside, attempting to pivot around his pinned tail. Ivy, with the last glimmer of her strength, surged forward end delivered a blow to his chin, staggering him. Ether delivered a second, knocking him back, then collected Ivy and retreated.
#
The golem struck. The sound was like something from the end of the world, a deafening rush of shattered stone and battered flesh. The whole of the field vanished in a cloud of
dust and debris. The impact shook the ground and caused the nearest section of the wall to collapse. The echoes lasted for minutes, and the dust cloud lingered for minutes more.
All around, the warriors watched and waited. Bowstrings remained taut. Weapons remained at the ready. Myranda and Deacon held their crystals high, spells coiled to strike. Ivy’s strength gave out, and she was resting peacefully. Finally, Ether summoned a wind.
Clouds of dust cleared away. The golem was little more than a pile of rubble, the dragon buried beneath it. All watched and prayed. There was no stir of motion. No rise and fall of breathing. Myranda shut her eyes and reached out with her mind. The mighty furnace of the dragon’s mind and soul had gone cold.
“It is done,” she said.
A cheer rose in a single voice. The Chosen, the elves, the malthropes, the fairies, all of them joined in. In a field churned and scorched by battle, beings who minutes before would have been after each other’s blood rejoiced in mutual victory.
It would have been nice to believe that, in that moment, any bad blood or ancient hatred could have been forgotten, but fate is seldom so obliging. Old distrust stains the heart and mind. It takes more than the rise and fall of a common enemy to wipe it away. This was a truth the malthropes knew well, a wisdom to which they owed their continued survival. One by one, while the others still reveled in victory, the malthropes and their fairies vanished.
Myranda leaned heavily on her staff. Her soul and body were drained from the experience, and now that the danger was gone, the raw force of will she’d conjured up to endure the trials until now seemed to vanish, its job done. Deacon wasn’t much better off, but he loaned her his arm for her to steady herself. A heavily panting Myn wedged her head between them.
“Safe…” she rumbled.
Myranda scratched the dragon’s brow. “For now.”
The Crescents Page 32
