The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  “You were like a fucking storm of death up there,” said Barph. He was smiling at her. “You taught them how to have faith.”

  Lette wasn’t sure she had meant to tie those two sentiments together, but she was honestly too punch drunk to give too much of a damn.

  “Just fucking heal me already,” she told him.

  “Your wish.” She could just make out Barph’s smile in the dark. “Now close your eyes and concentrate with me. It’ll be easier that way.”

  She complied. And she felt warmth.

  But … not in her arm. In her … her neck.

  And then warmth was fire, was pain, was a slash across her throat. She gasped. But no air came. Warmth flooded down her chest. A bright red arterial gush of heat flooding out of her. She dropped to her knees.

  She could see Barph standing over her. She could see his smile, like a crescent moon in the heavens, like a knife wound in the sky. And she could see the knife in his hand. She could see the blood on the blade. She gasped again. There was no air. No breath.

  “There,” said Barph. He reached into a pouch hanging from his belt and pulled out a jeweled chalice. “I’ve taken all your pain away.”

  He knelt down in front of her, pressed the chalice to her neck. Her blood gushed into it, splashing and gurgling.

  Stop, she tried to tell it, but she had no strength, no breath, no will left. The world was racing away. It was shrinking down to that terrible white smile.

  “You want to ask me why,” said Barph, and he was right, but she didn’t have the air. She was so cold now.

  “But I am a god,” said Barph, “and you are not.” He leaned in a little closer. “And I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  He dropped her. She barely felt the impact on the floor. She could hardly feel anything anymore. Only the cold. Only the dark.

  And the last thing she saw was Barph standing over her, putting the goblet to his lips, drinking deeply, her own blood running down his chin.

  74

  Cutting the Puppet Strings

  Barph looked down at Lette’s body and thought he was going to weep. She looked so fragile now. So weak and broken. Everything she had been in life was gone from her. She had become a mockery of her own existence, the antithesis. What was left of her blood was pooling around her head, soaking her hair, matting it with the dirt and dust.

  He had done it. He had finally fucking done it. After all his planning, it was actually happening.

  He could feel the others now. Feel the power within them, reverberating through the world.

  Could they feel him yet? He wondered. They were new to their powers, weak and foolish as newborn babes. But perhaps still they could feel him.

  The power of Betra, and Klink, and best of all Toil, his stupid, absurd father, swirled in him, fresh supped from Lette’s veins. He felt almost drunk on them. He felt like he could do anything.

  Who next?

  Lawl. It had to be Lawl. If he could have taken the old fuckhole first he would have done. For everything that had been done to him. For every insult laid at his feet. For every injustice. For his grandfather being the sanctimonious prick he always had been.

  How it had hurt, to bend, and scrape, and pretend he shared their desperation. How he had wanted to spit and scream in their faces. But he was glad now. This was better, playing the prodigal son, and then tearing it up behind their backs. Knowing that his betrayal would sink into them slowly, like poison in their bones that would never relinquish its grip. To know that this would pain them forever.

  He had needed to take Lette first. She had been the most powerful, with the divinity of three gods held within her. But now. Now it was Lawl.

  He lost his focus on the physical world, chased lines of power, traced them to the locus that was Balur.

  The world resolved around him once more. And he was somewhere else.

  He was in an attic apartment, perhaps five hundred yards from where Lette’s corpse now lay. The apartment’s roof was gone, the floorboards exposed to the skies. Rain had started to fall, fat droplets soaking into floorboards, into ruined sheets and smashed furniture.

  Balur stood by the shattered edge of the room, looking down over the bowl of panicking dragons and worshippers. The lizard man had his arms spread and his head thrown back. He was laughing at the sky, laughing as rain pelted him. Lightning lanced down from the heavens, illuminating him. Every muscle appeared to be flexed, every sinew tight, veins standing out beneath his skin. Barph snorted quietly. Balur was so much like Lawl he could almost taste the bile at the back of his throat.

  Balur still hadn’t noticed Barph, standing ten yards behind him, materializing out of nowhere. The Analesian was too focused on what was happening below, too deafened by the peals of thunder ringing out in one continuous symphony of discord.

  Barph grew. He increased his height, his weight. Just a little. Just enough. This would need to be quick. He wanted the right angle. He stepped lightly toward Balur. As he drew closer he glimpsed how events were progressing in the bowl.

  Lightning slashed down, striking dragons, smashing them to the ground. One beast lay writhing, as bolt after bolt left black welts on its skin and the stink of burned flesh in the air. Balur cackled as each one hit home.

  Not every thunderbolt flew true. Some struck mortals, and houses. Lives ended in shivering, twitching moments, and for each drop of blood that was shed, Barph felt the power in his body grow.

  Barph looked down at the knife he still held. No. This would be better with his hands. Tooth and claw. Balur would want it that way.

  He put one hand on Balur’s shoulder. The lizard man barely even twitched. He was too lost in his own power, in the destruction of the storm.

  Barph casually reached over the lizard man’s shoulder and tore out his throat.

  Barph let go. Balur reeled. The lizard man staggered around drunkenly. The spray of blood made Barph think of someone pissing red out of the Analesian’s neck, and he laughed. The lizard man stuck out a hand and pointed at him.

  Barph nodded, and bowed. He enjoyed these moments. Had always enjoyed these moments, until for eight hundred fucking years he had been condemned to walk this earth without them.

  “Do you hear me in there?” he couldn’t help but shout at Lawl across realities. “Do you hear me, you old fucking man? I have beaten you. I have consigned you to your own Hallows to rot forever at my leisure. This is my world now. Mine!”

  Balur tried to say something. Blood burbled from his neck. Barph grinned.

  Then lightning lanced down, smashed into Barph, ripping through his body. Balur’s desperate attempt to go down swinging.

  And Barph laughed right into Balur’s face. Because it was too late. He was too powerful. Even as the lightning poured through his muscles, he reached down, pulled out the chalice that had once held his own blood, and held it up in front of Balur’s increasingly glassy eyes.

  “Do you see this?” he spat. “Your own goblet. You gave me the tools to do this to you, old man.” He collected the last dregs of blood dribbling from Barph’s neck, sucked them greedily down.

  The power hit him like a gallon of wine injected directly into his brain. He reeled. And gods, gods, gods this was so very good. He dropped to his knees laughing.

  Two left.

  Quirk was trying to flee. Barph couldn’t tell if she knew what was afoot. Of all of the mortals, she had been the closest to working it all out. Knole had always been suspicious of him too. But the Tamathian was too locked up in her own head. The passions of revenge were a mystery to her cold heart.

  Quirk was down on the street, hand in hand with her stupid mooning friend. That one knew about the heart. Knew far too much. But she was nothing to him.

  People were running pell-mell through the rain, running for the lives. Their terror was a palpable tickle at the back of his throat, making him grin. He tried to touch them as they ran past, to luxuriate in their emotions. Humans always seemed to experience things
so shallowly. They couldn’t appreciate the full depth of experience, with their brief flickering lives.

  Quirk and Afrit stumbled through the crowds, fighting forward, trying to keep their footing in the mud and rain. Trying not to be knocked to the floor and trampled.

  Quirk saw him first. She skidded to a halt. Afrit pulled at Quirk’s arm, but she wouldn’t move. She was rooted to the spot. Afrit looked up, saw him too. The woman’s brow creased. But there was only realization in Quirk’s eyes. Now you see, Barph thought. Now you know.

  The crowd broke around her like a river around a rock. They spilled to either side of the divinity they felt instinctively inside her. The mad dash closed once more behind him. A little oasis of calm. The eye of this particular storm.

  “How long?” asked Quirk. “How long have you been planning this?”

  Barph had no answers for this curious little mortal. He just slowly closed the distance between them.

  “Before the copse in the trees?” Quirk said, only half to him. “Back in Vinter?” She cocked her head to one side. “When you sent Will and the others looking for Barph’s Strength? Were you in control then? Pulling the strings.”

  He was only a yard away. “The sad thing is,” he said in a conversational tone, ignoring the people scrambling for their lives only a hand’s breadth away, “that you could probably figure it all out, even how to stop me, if only you had the time.”

  He would use the knife this time. He bore Knole little ill will. She was barely aware of anything going on outside of her precious books. She would die for her ignorance, but she didn’t have to die in pain.

  He brought his arm back—

  Something crashed into him screaming. A whirling dervish of teeth and fists. It didn’t hurt, but it caught him off guard, sending him spilling sideways into the stampeding crowd. Someone was on top of him scratching, and clawing at his face. Afrit, he realized. The two-bit Tamathian professor who was forever panting after Quirk. The mortal did not want to see the object of her unrequited love reduced to nothing more than a meat carafe holding the blood he wanted.

  How touching. How futile.

  Still lying sprawled in the mud, he reached out a hand, and she went rigid, sitting astride him, arms still raised, immobile, frozen by his will.

  Then someone kicked him in the forehead, tripped over him. He grunted, feeling his head snap sideways. Someone trampled over his midriff, another tripped over his ankle. He growled. More and more people, stepping over and onto him, stubbing their toes on him.

  He roared, stood, bodies flew.

  A boot hammered into his nose. He felt the bone break, the cartilage smear across his face. Quirk was standing before him, brandishing one of her boots like a weapon. He threw Afrit at her. The two women fell in a tangle of limbs. He spat after them. “Not so smart now.” He pulled out the goblet, held that in one hand, his knife in the other.

  He was a yard away when one of the women sprang at him. He couldn’t tell which one. It didn’t really matter. And then suddenly there was a lancing pain in his crotch. He looked down. A stiletto. She was holding a fucking stiletto. She had speared him in his fucking balls.

  With a bellow he grabbed the woman, dangled her aloft by the ankle. She was all falling fabric and hair, fluttering like a bird with a broken wing. He was tall now, growing as he needed to. She swayed above the earth. He reached down, tore the blade out of his body. He roared again. The other one was down at his feet, grabbing and clawing. He kicked her hard, was vaguely aware of her crashing into the crowd, going down beneath their stampeding feet.

  He heaved the woman’s body up with a shout, closing his wounds even as the blood started to pool in his shoes. He held on to the stiletto they’d used against him, imbuing it with new powers even as he did so, feeling it thicken and elongate in his hand. There would be some poetry in this after all.

  He swung the newly made sword. Its blade bit into the woman’s neck, tore her head from her shoulders. He punted the tumbling skull before it even hit the floor. Then with another roar he heaved the decapitated body up into the air, growing as he did so until he held what was left of her over his head. Her blood splashed down over his chin. He reached up, held the cup so the blood splattered against its golden sides, swirling around before falling into his open mouth.

  He felt the power crackle through him. Less than he’d hoped. But Knole’s worshippers were thin on the ground here. And power was power, after all. And soon it would all be his. Not a dragon’s, not a god’s, not a mortal’s. His.

  He stepped out of the physicality of the world, and went to find Will.

  75

  Even Heroes Fall

  Will couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. No matter how hard he tried, it remained there. And, yes, people had died. And yes, this was a mess. But … but …

  The dragons lay dead! This wasn’t just his plan working. This was his plan blowing all expectations out of the water. Half the dragons lay dead and bleeding on the floor. Lette had torn the life from four of them. Balur’s lightning bolts had taken another five. He had managed to mob one more with every flying beast in Vinter he’d been able to find. It had fallen in a black cloud of wings, feathers, and chitin. Then the foxes and rats had come. Now half the natural wildlife of Vinter also lay dead, but so did the dragon.

  His plan. His plan.

  The moment was passing, he knew. The crowds were fleeing. He still felt flush with power, but soon he would need to break off from this assault. Then he could meet up with the others, and they would take the next step toward reclaiming Avarra, returning it to its people.

  A creak on the floorboards startled him, made him turn. He had thought he was alone. But it was just Barph. And, in that moment, the god looked so much like Firkin, so much like the old man who had helped raise him as a child, that Will couldn’t help but run to him and grab him by the shoulders.

  “Did you see?” he shouted. “Did you fucking see? They fell!”

  He was almost dancing. He was half-drunk on divine power, he knew, but he didn’t care. This was worth it. He shook Barph. “We did it!” He whooped.

  “Yes, Will,” said Barph. “I saw. We did.”

  Will was laughing. And he suddenly, desperately needed Barph to see the scale of this achievement. Because whatever he was now, he had been Firkin, and Firkin would have loved this. “And … And …” He struggled to get the magnitude of it out. “It wasn’t for any poxy, pissing gods. It wasn’t for any king, or any country. It was for us. It was for the people. It was a victory for all of us. This could be the beginning of …” He cast about trying to imagine it. “I don’t know,” he said after a second of achieving nothing. “But something different. It starts here.”

  “Yes,” said Barph. “Yes it does.”

  “When I was kid”—Will couldn’t stop himself from gabbling—“we used to talk about rescuing all of Kondorra. This was all the world, Firkin. I mean … I’m sorry. Barph. I meant Barph. And I know you’re a god, so I’m sorry, but gods … We did it.” He grabbed Barph again. “We did it.”

  “And what will you do with it, now you have it?” asked Barph.

  Will was caught wrong-footed. He stared at Barph. “What?”

  “The power,” said Barph. “What will you do with all this power now that you have it.”

  And that was the whole reason Will was in such a good mood. “I’ll give it away!” he said, grinning. “I’m going to give it all away. Give it back to everybody. Everyone will carry a little piece of divinity within them. Everyone a god. Everyone with power. Everyone in charge. No dictators. No kings. No dukes. No earls. No emperors, or chieftains, or warlords. I’m going to give it to everyone.”

  Barph put both hands on Will’s shoulders, and there was such a smile upon his face. “You know,” he said, and the sincerity washed through Will like a balm, “not much of my time as Firkin is left to me now. But I do remember … he always thought of you as more than a child, Will. You were never his employer�
�s son. And you were more even than a friend, Will. A kindred spirit. That’s how he thought of you. Someone cut from the same cloth.”

  Will was so touched he honestly didn’t have the words.

  Barph nodded to himself. “Firkin,” he said, sounding almost amused. “He was such a fucking idiot.”

  Will still looked confused when Barph killed him.

  76

  Hail to the King, Baby

  Barph strode out into the center of the bowl. The wind played with his hair and his beard. Birds swirled around his head. He stood astride the world. Massive. A titan. A fucking god. The god. The people of this shithole of a city were but ants to him. They were paralyzed. Their fear was absolute, an obliterating totality in their thoughts, pressing down, holding them still. But they believed in him. Oh by all the ghosts in all the Hallows, they believed in him.

  The remaining dragons were swirling, just so many confused beasts, looking to escape. He reached out, snagged one from the air. It curled around his fist, snapping, biting, achieving nothing. He squeezed and its life ended.

  One tried to flee from him. Twenty lightning bolts reached out and batted its corpse from the skies.

  He simply made the insides of another boil. It exploded before it hit the ground.

  One by one, he killed the dragons of Avarra. They were nothing to him now. No longer was he the weak stripling they had left for dead on the walls of this city. No longer could three of them hold him to a standstill. Now he held the power of seven gods within him. Now the whole world worshipped him, and him alone.

  The last two dragons came and knelt at his feet. The blood of their brothers and sisters dripped from his knuckles, fell upon them like red rain.

  “We worship you,” they told him. “You are our master. This is our obeisance.”

  He trod upon them, ground them beneath his heels.

  There would be no more dragons in Avarra. He had not lied about that. History would forget them. History would forget whatever he told it to. He was history now. He was the future. He was the present. He was everything. He was the one god. The only god.