by Rosie Scott
“He's doing that because he can,” Azazel said breathlessly, sheathing his karambits and preparing his bow. It wasn't said out of annoyance but to calm my worry.
“I didn't even think to paralyze it,” I lamented, watching the dragon circle in the sky to the east as it prepared to fly over us once again. I started refreshing shields with excess energy as Uriel did the same.
“I did,” Azazel replied, aiming his bow at the dragon's head as it started to swoop down again. He didn't shoot yet as if waiting for the opportune moment. “Paralyze didn't work. I don't know why, but it had no effect.” Azazel hesitated. “Kai, do me a favor.”
I frowned. “Sure.”
“Imbue my arrowhead with lightning.”
I summoned the spell and reached out to Azazel's bow, fulfilling his request.
“Now do me another favor,” Azazel requested, a small smile brightening up his handsome face. “Get back. Stay back. And whatever you do, don't try to save me this time.”
My heart picked up its pace at those words. Even though I feared for him, I hurried back as the dragon roared during its downward flight. “Azazel,” I protested.
Soldiers scattered out of the way as the beast neared. Azazel still stood directly in its path, aiming his bow with an exacting eye. “I know what I'm doing,” he promised me, just as the dragon's stomach started to rumble with the preparation of its spell.
Rows of giant teeth revealed themselves as the dragon opened its mouth, preparing to shoot metal into the masses. Azazel's nostrils flared as he focused. He waited for another second, then two, and finally the ammo was released.
The sizzling arrow was a flash of black and sparkling blue as it flew straight into the dragon's open mouth, continuing down its expanded esophagus. Azazel fell to the ground and rolled over grasses to get out of its path as it hurtled past. He hurried to stand and watch his plan come to fruition. Just moments after passing us, the dragon closed its jaw and started to tremble. It landed on the battlefield of its own volition, lowering its massive head and hacking toward the grasses as if it were sick. Hissing and bubbling noises were muffled beneath its hide as the electricity in its body fed on moisture and metal. The magic wasn't strong enough to affect its entire body, so Calder was safe as he continued to rip and tear at its wing. It also didn't electrocute the beast, but it did temporarily stop it.
The dwarves fired their onagers, and balls of acid collided into the dragon. I screamed warnings at Calder, but they came too late. His entire right side was splashed with flesh-eating acid. The lizard-kin hissed as he felt the pain, before red reptilian eyes found the liquid eating through his thick scales, causing him to panic as he realized what he'd been hit by.
Calder leaped from the dragon's wing so fast he was a blur. Smoke rose from his right side, almost as thick as it would have been if he were on fire. He rushed toward me in the midst of hysteria.
Deplet le toxin de material. The life energy that started to swirl above my hand was white, but it had wisps of light green, reminiscent of budding New Moon plant-life. I pleaded for it to work as Calder stood beside me, trembling with pain and stinking of burning decomposition. The thick scales of his arm, side, hip, and part of his upper leg were dissolving into a bubbling liquid. Before I transferred the healing energy to him, I first used water magic to rinse the majority of the acid off of his body and into the grasses below, where it sizzled as it started eating through plant matter. Many of Calder's scales were melted entirely, and now the remaining acid was eating through the pink muscle beneath. If I didn't heal him quickly, his body would produce scar tissue and become permanently disfigured.
I moved my hand down the length of his side, transferring life magic into the affected areas. As soon as it sunk into raw muscle, the smoking of Calder's flesh came to a stop. Clear pus oozed out of the wounds, entrapping the remaining acid and preventing it from sinking farther into his system. I used water magic once more to rinse his injuries. Now that they were detoxified, I could heal them.
Calder couldn't speak to me at the moment, but I heard his heavy breaths of relief as the scales reformed. When he was completely healed, he grabbed me into a tight hug in thanks.
Mirrikh took the assault on Calder as a personal affront. Because he was kin with the Naharan scorpion, seeing him in his beast form for the first time was jarring. I hadn't seen one of the armored beasts in nearly a decade, and I certainly hadn't ever expected to see one outside of Nahara. Instead of focusing on the dragon, Mirrikh clattered over to the dwarves with onagers. As soon as he was in the range of one, he stabbed his poisoned tail forward, and the sharp stinger cleaved through the man's eye. As the other soldier rushed to Mirrikh's side to battle, the beastman snapped his thick pincer through the man's leather torso armor even before his stinger was free. Both dwarves fell at the same time, one dead from a punctured brain and the other dying of leaking organs.
I left Mirrikh to his personal quest. As much as the dwarves had been helpful in attacking the dragon from the north, we couldn't allow them to use their siege weapons on both our allies and the beast. The dragon was doing enough damage to our armies as it was. It was not paralyzed, and Maggie couldn't direct our men to shoot it with poisons since we surrounded it.
“Kai!” Uriel rushed up to me as I finally reached the dragon's side again and started to leech. “Whatever spell you gave me earlier...” he hesitated. “Can you do it again?”
I glanced over at him. The healer sounded desperate, and with all of the unknowns surrounding the spell and its effects on others, I was hesitant. His light gray eyes were sharp with urgency. I finally asked, “Why?”
“The winds are gone,” Uriel replied, calling attention to the fact that the cool breezes of the morning had been depleted by our mages. “Our men need shields.” He nodded to the soldiers hanging back from the beast, all of which were unprotected. “I need energy to protect them.”
I dispelled death magic from my left hand and built the life spell he wanted. Uriel was being honest, and the majority of the energy I'd gifted him earlier had been used to protect our men. After I transferred the power to him, the Sentinel hurried off to aid allies just as he'd promised.
The dragon was slowly recovering from Azazel's lightning arrow, and it started to react to its injuries and frustration with rapid movements. It swung its thick tail around as if to swat the soldiers away like flies, and it worked wonders. Vhiri soldiers were flashes of yellow and black as they flew through the air, some with broken bodies and others with flickering shields. The dragon lifted up its giant head, and the clattering of metal rumbled from its gut.
Soldiers scattered out of the way, but many of them were too slow. Azazel reached out to one of them, using telekinesis to pull her to safety. The rest were in the direct line of fire when metal shards spewed forth from the dragon's open mouth, some of the shards clattering against the beast's teeth on the way out. Because our allies were in such close proximity to the animal, they were overwhelmed with sharp metal, and the ground just before the dragon was covered in bloody mush seasoned with silver. Even the Vhiri with life shields hadn't been safe.
The dragon snorted with a mixture of pride and annoyance, its silver eyes gazing over the damage. It lifted its wings and raised up into the air, eager to be in the safety of the skies. As it started to fly, arrows and magic followed in its wake. I shot two death bombs after it, and one of the spells hit, pulling a cloud of black energy from the creature before it raced back to me. As I waited for the magic to travel over our distance, I noticed movement coming from the northern skies.
Zephyr and her troop of griffons were flying toward the battlefield, returning from their reconnaissance mission along the eastern Griswald Forest. The Sentinel was immediately noticeable while at the front of the group on a pure white griffon that mimicked her own pale skin and hair. She took note of the dragon swooping through the skies, screaming orders to the other griffon riders. A white bubble of life magic surrounded Zephyr's mount as she prep
ared for battle.
The dragon had been in the midst of making a circle back to battle, but the presence of the griffons in its airspace pulled its attention elsewhere. It hovered in the skies, its two massive wings leaking blood from hundreds of wounds which fell to the grasslands like heavy red rains. The beast snorted roughly as it surveyed its new contenders.
Zephyr lifted her hands to the sky, and gray storm clouds developed over the dragon's head. The heavens rumbled like an impatient stomach eager to feast, and a thick purple lightning bolt lashed out, striking the beast in the head before sizzling over its metallic scales. Though the creature did not fall, it did screech in pain and lose its focus, flapping its wings frantically as it tried to right itself in the air. The griffons used the distraction to swarm the giant reptile, swooping in with a variety of weapons and spells. A few of the riders used bows and stayed at a distance, but the others pulled weapons from their belts and went to work tearing into the wounds our army had already made.
Watching the griffons fight in mid-air was fascinating. The beasts seemed to be more intelligent than most, for when their riders let go of reins to use their weapons to fight, the griffons stayed where they'd been directed, using sharp beaks to pierce through the dragon's hide and tug muscle and tendon out between shiny scales. The animals also had fantastic reaction times, for as the dragon lashed out to defend itself, most of the hits missed. It reminded me of our fight with the Twelve almost a decade ago, when the griffons had dodged a number of my lightning bolts.
Zephyr fought like a one-woman army at the dragon's head. Her griffon dug its pale beak into the dragon's left eye, and after a few jerks of its muscular feathered neck, the organ was torn out of its socket, still attached to the reptile's head by strings of pulling muscle. As the griffon yanked at the organ, Zephyr used the blade of her chain-sickle to hack straight through the rope of muscle, disconnecting it for good. The animal let the eye fall, and it hit the battlefield below with a splatter of juices.
The dragon roared with pain and panic, and it beat its wings frantically through the air as it attempted to escape the onslaught. One of them clipped a griffon in mid-flight, and the animal tumbled back, desperately trying to right itself with angled flaps of its feathered wings. As the mount and rider duo spun, the rider dislodged from her saddle, screaming hysterically as she fell through the skies. Her griffon finally righted itself near the forest and hurried toward its rider in an attempt to save her. The animal was too late. The woman landed so hard on the ground that her broken body bounced back up from the impact surrounded by sprays of blood. Her griffon was close enough to be hit with it, and it screeched with anger and fear. The animal landed beside its deceased former rider, nudging at her body twice before looking back to the skies. Perhaps seeing the other griffons still fighting encouraged it out of its fear. It took off into the skies again, joining the others in their attack.
HUUURRRNNNNN!
I whipped my head toward the broken wall of Olympia, where the war horn's warning echoed out from the depths of the city. I couldn't see the Sentinel requesting help from here, but I understood what the concern was. While our armies had been dealing with the dragon, the Hammerton Army had gathered its remaining forces and was infiltrating the city through the newly broken wall. The dwarven cannons in the forest were now abandoned. Hoarse cries of dwarven men and women encouraging rebellion echoed out from the city streets.
That was their plan. The dwarves knew they would be outnumbered. They'd also known the Vhiri lusted for battle to the point of arrogance. By convincing the Sentinels this would be an easy battle and luring half our army out of the gates, they'd not only devastated Olympia's wall and its defending men with siege weapons, but now they had direct access to the city. A once smaller army was rousing up the dwarven populace to fight so they could add to their numbers. And now, most of the enemy army was reclaiming their city while many of us were out of it. By assaulting the wall so quickly after showing up, they'd prevented us from being able to think strategically and plan for this.
“I actually have to hand it to the bastards,” I breathed, my eyes watching the enemy army filing through the crumbled gaps of the wall, “they outsmarted us.”
“And now we have the dragon to deal with,” Azazel commented beside me, still shooting arrows into the sky at the beast as it contended with the griffons.
“Fuck the dragon!” Altan's booming voice called my attention to where the Sentinel was gathering his men. He glanced at me and pointed at the wall. “The metalhuggers are gonna retake the city if we don't stop it. That's our main concern. The dragon can write down his name and take a seat to wait, for all I care.”
“Moving our armies back to the city might lure the dragon there,” Uriel argued. “We'd be putting everyone in danger.”
“Everyone's already in danger,” I replied, motioning to Calder to gather his beastmen. “Cyrus and the other injured might be targeted in the hospital, Uriel. We need to protect them. And we need to stop the dwarves from releasing the prisoners of war.”
Uriel cursed. “You're right.”
I noted that Kirek already had her army marching across the grasslands toward the city. She had never been interested in fighting the dragon, so she had been first to notice the dwarven breach. In the field behind her were thousands of casualties from both armies, many of which were boars. As we started back toward the city, these casualties rose from the dead as Cerin, Calder, and I took turns calling them to arms. In the skies behind us, the dragon's cries continued to reverberate, and at one point I heard shards of metal zipping through the air before the pained screeches of griffons. I hoped Zephyr and her griffons could keep the dragon occupied long enough for us to focus on Olympia, or else all would be lost.
Twenty-seven
Olympia was in the midst of open rebellion. Citizens who had once taken shelter in their homes as the cannons bombarded the mountainside were now fighting in the streets. Not since our campaign in the underground had I seen so many children join the fight, for many young dwarves were in the middle of battle, their arms bulging with muscles that generally were reserved for bodies much older. Dwarven children clearly were not coddled. They fought with little fear even to the point of death, and like the juvenile Alderi assassins, they were some of the most ruthless fighters due to their lack of empathy.
The lower streets of the city were cluttered with fighting soldiers, both armies so mixed in among each other that using enervat would have been impossible without hurting allies. While leeching through funnels, I set my sights on one of the dwarven dungeons a few roads up and decided to head there. The last thing we needed was for the prisoners of war to be released and added to the Hammerton Army.
Once a leeching high throbbed in my temples, I raised my hands to the sky and summoned aid for nearby tiring allies. Turquoise rains fell from the bright afternoon heavens, refreshing the mages in the immediate area with new energy. The rare spell called attention to me, and I was soon targeted by many foes. Azazel shot most of them before they could get to me, but one dwarf was killed mid-scream when a throwing ax sunk so far into her neck it hit the spine. The woman fell, her body twitching with severe nerve damage before she succumbed to darkness.
“Kai!” Dax rushed into view, holding the corpse's head to the cobblestone with a boot as he jerked his weapon out of her spine with a smooth movement. “Thanks for coming to my aid,” the Sentinel continued, not hesitating before taking on another dwarf in melee. “I desperately need energy. Your rains are helping, but not quickly enough for me to heal my men.”
Cerin built the charged life spell in his palm, having seen me use most of my energy for the rains. “I'll give you energy,” my lover offered him, “but it might hurt like hell.”
Dax frowned with confusion, but he didn't question it. “That's okay. I need it.” Cerin transferred the spell to the Sentinel, who immediately grimaced and grasped at his head. “Agh! Shit.” He blinked rapidly through tears of pain, but his turquo
ise eyes were instantly energized and extra aware. He thanked Cerin through a restrained voice before rushing back into battle.
“That was risky,” I told Cerin as we continued on our way.
“You did it for Uriel,” Cerin reasoned. “Dax needs to heal his men.”
“Yes, but you didn't have to give him a high. What if word gets back to Kirek?”
“Kirek can kiss my ass,” Cerin retorted. “I'm not going to tiptoe around out of fear of offending her. She'll find reasons to hate us regardless.”
“I suppose you two forgot that I'm here,” Uriel spoke up behind me as he tugged his spear out of his last victim's chest. “If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you've been keeping secrets from us.”
Black tendrils raced through the streets as I called forth the recent dead. “For reasons that have more to do with our situation than you, Uriel. Cyrus has known for the better part of a moon. If I wanted to keep things from you, I wouldn't have given you the spell or any explanations out on the battlefield earlier.”
“I understand,” Uriel replied, regenerating his life shield with the extra energy that still coursed through his veins, “and considering the circumstances, I'm flattered you gave me the spell at all.”
The healer and I exchanged glances. His light gray eyes portrayed the fact that he'd connected our conversation with the effects he felt and understood he'd gone through an energy high. Even still, he didn't say more, respectful of my earlier request to speak of it in privacy.
We finally arrived at the first dungeon I'd wanted to defend, but it had already been breached. Dwarves still in prisoner garb were fighting in the main street, arming themselves with whatever weapons they could find from the nearby selection of corpses. Leura was in the midst of battle with her men. Evidently, she'd had the same reasoning I had about preventing the release of prisoners but had also gotten there too late. The Sentinel was attracting so much attention from the nearby dwarves that I was confused until I heard one of them call her Kai Sera.
