“He’s right. Let’s not endanger her life over something as miniscule as wounded pride.”
Arius stepped forward with his arms outstretched, offering himself to be frisked. In seconds the helmed Demon Priest patted him down thoroughly and discovered that he was in fact unarmed. Brom nodded and turned to Dregan, who returned the nod, seemingly satisfied. Both Demon Priests hurried over and helped Evaline dismount. As they led her over, they stopped exactly halfway between the parties.
“I sure hope that this works.”
“Me too,” Arius answered, squaring his shoulders and steeling himself for what was about to come.
Chapter 25
Evaline visibly trembled as she stood waiting in between the Demon Priests. Though she looked stately in a lush lavender dress, she also looked very small and fragile in that moment. Arius wanted to comfort her in some way as they finally reached her, but he was feeling far from confident himself. Besides, that cool look she kept shooting in his direction kept his mouth firmly clamped.
“Alright, archer. We will do this as one,” Brom stated.
“On three, then,” Xavian agreed.
As the countdown reached three, Brom bent down and whispered something to Evaline, and she giggled in response. A spike of jealousy shot through Arius at the exchange.
“Don’t just stand there gaping like a fool, get moving!” Xavian growled, prodding him in the back with his bow. “And Arius… good luck,” he said more somberly at his retreat.
Stumbling a bit as he moved onward to take Evaline’s place, he locked eyes with her and as they walked passed one another. He gave her a sanguine smile and a nod in an effort to convey some confidence. Her reaction was worth it; she actually smiled warmly in return and said, “Thank you, Arius.”
Hearing his name in that rich melodic voice gave him some actual strength and the focus he needed to get through this.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Arius responded more for himself than for her benefit.
Evaline looked perplexed, but she joined Xavian and the two of them hurried back to his waiting dragon, Rotu. The two of them didn’t waste any time and for that Arius was grateful. Both were mounting the Blue dragon while Arius took his sweet time ambling like Brom had over to his captors.
“Hurry it up!” Brom yelled at him.
Instead, Arius stopped dead in his tracks, looking over his shoulder as Xavian and Evaline took flight on the speedy Blue dragon. Raising a hand in farewell, he stood like that until they had flown out of sight. Brom continued his verbal bombardment, but Arius fastidiously ignored him. He concentrated solely on the two who had escaped.
Only a few minutes passed, but Arius was sure they were at a safe enough distance by now. It was time.
“I don’t think I’ll let you take me today, Dregan,” Arius said over Brom, who blanched and sputtered at his interruption.
“Is that so, little brother? I fail to see how you have a say, or any alternatives in the matter. Care to let us in on your little secret?” Dregan laughed like it was the funniest thing in all the world.
“Absolutely.” It was Arius’ turn to sound amused now.
Readying his Elemancy, Arius crouched, clapped his hands, and placed his palms to the soil of the dunes. Using fire, he flash-cooked the sand, creating a massive sheet of glass that extended in front of him and deep into the ground. Clapping again, he used a mixture of earth and air to rip the giant boulder of crystal he had created from the dunes. The slab itself was only slightly smaller than Dregan’s Gold dragon, so heaving it took every last bit of his Elemantic energy.
The giant projectile rocketed towards Dregan, while Brom and Korac barely had a chance to react. Needing to rest his Elemancy for at least a few hours, Arius tapped his Adimus Aura and cast forth a mountainous energy blast that shattered the glassy missile into millions of razor-sharp pieces of shrapnel. Korac and his Black dragon took the brunt of the attack, and a flood of scarlet tore across the landscape, blanketing the dunes in gallons of dragon’s blood. The beast and its master had been reduced to what could only be described as a gargantuan pile of steaming meat.
Unfortunately, Dregan had cast forth some sort of shield which had blocked him and Brom from certain destruction. Brom’s dragon, however, did not escape. The poor Black dragon was riddled with cuts and lay on the sand bleeding out and breathing shallowly. Finally it lay still, its suffering ended.
No counterattack came. For a few heartbeats, everyone stood stupefied by the magnitude of violence that had just occurred. Even Arius, who had initiated the attack, was dumbfounded by how successful it had been.
But that didn’t last long. Brom snapped out of his stupor first, and with an ear-splitting, inhuman howl, he gave birth to his demon in a fulgid aura of blue.
Arius somehow knew Dregan would live, but he had hoped neither of the Demon Priests would survive the onslaught of his surprise attack. That didn’t mean he wasn’t prepared for the event should they remain, however.
He sent for Alrukar, who was buried in his Genai Sphere form just behind him at the spot where he and Xavian had been waiting with Rotu. His Black dragon erupted forth already in his Defender form, sword in hand flipping and twisting as he landed at Arius’ side. If Brom was surprised, it didn’t show as he rushed Arius. His demon, in contrasting behavior, prowled slowly, stalking Alrukar.
In the few seconds it took before Brom launched himself at Arius, he caught sight of the beginnings of perhaps the most ferocious fight that had ever transpired. Alrukar in his Defender Form was more than ten feet tall and wore incredibly detailed and bulky armor. His size notwithstanding, he moved as gracefully and swiftly as the wind itself. The demon that engaged him was of roughly the same size but was comprised of jaggedly sharp plated armor, fangs, and claws. If Alrukar was the wind, this creature was the storm that rode those currents. Arius tried to keep track of their movements, but it was lost to him.
The Link would keep him aware of the situation no matter the outcome, so he put Alrukar from his mind for the moment and concentrated on his own ensuing fight.
Dregan seemed more entertained than anything else, and he didn’t move to intercede at all. Arius had anticipated this as well. Knowing an enemy as well as he did Dregan made battle strategy extremely convenient. Dregan looked like he was enjoying a Ryuken tournament in a luxury box as opposed to someone who was engaged in conflict.
Arius would give him a show all the same. In the rage of losing his compatriot and his Black dragon, all the whimsical rhetoric had died on Brom’s tongue. Arius took the opportunity to land a few verbal jabs of his own.
“If I had known that’s what it would have taken to shut you up, I would have slaughtered them from the get-go.”
Brom didn’t have any discernible weaponry, and Arius soon discovered why. As he lunged for Arius’ throat, his black gauntleted hands stretched and transformed themselves into monstrous claws that looked sharper than knives. Arius ducked and spun out of the way but not before being cut deeply behind his right ear down onto his collarbone. A savagery replaced the humanity behind Brom’s eyes, and the scars, which had just been ugly before, added to the inhumanity of his bestial fighting style. It took all of the dexterity and cunning that Arius possessed to keep from being sliced into a dozen thin strips. Still he goaded the Demon Priest on.
“Was that your friend that I turned into dog meat over there?”
He sidestepped and dodged another barrage of claws, except this time he had his opponent’s timing down better and didn’t receive any damage. Evade, retreat, taunt. That was his tactic for now.
“That’s the flaw with you Demon Priests, isn’t it? Your kind is always relying on your demon to do your dirty work.”
Arius began to laugh at Brom as his assaults became wilder and sloppier. He effortlessly avoided all the attempts to maim him that this foe had to offer. In the distance Dregan laughed, too, clapping as though this were some marvelous game they were all playing. Brom was panting with exertion
and was slowing dramatically, but to him this was no game. He had put everything he had into trying to defeat Arius..
“You should have stayed away from her,” Arius stated coldly.
With that, Brom lunged one last time, and Arius sent one word to Alrukar through the Link. The Black dragon was still tussling with the nightmarish demon, but it soon wouldn‘t matter.
Sword!
Without hesitation, his dragon threw his weapon straight and true. Arius scrambled behind his adversary, snatching a hold of that ridiculous green braid, and he leapt to meet Alrukar’s airborne blade, dragging Brom with him. In one canny move, Arius caught the oversized sword and cleaved his foe’s head from his neck mid-flight. Brom’s body hit the ground at the same time he landed, panting from adrenaline and from the fight itself.
Arius raised his butchered prize aloft by the braid for Dregan to see as it bled freely onto his arm and torso. Dregan locked eyes with him in that instant, and Arius took the opportunity to spit and chuck Brom’s head aside.
The moment Brom had been decapitated, his demon had disappeared and died with him. Arius commanded through the Link that Alrukar return to his Dragon Form. A blazing flash occurred, coupled with a sound like lightning crackled and a haze of smoke billowed forth. Where an armored warrior once stood was now a Black dragon in all its glory. Alrukar roared mightily, and fire flared from his nostrils as he echoed his master’s triumph.
“So I suppose I am next?” Dregan inquired
The wound on his neck stung and throbbed badly. It was bleeding quite extensively, and he was getting lightheaded as a result. Luckily, Arius had the barest trickle of Elemancy left to him.
Using fire to heat the flat of Alrukar’s sword until it was red and angry, he pressed it to the gash, cauterizing it. His fleshed made a sickening sizzling sound and hissed gruesomely. For an instant, he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness. He shook his head to maintain his senses and gritted his teeth against the pain, trying to ignore the cooking smell that reached his nostrils. Finally, he hooked the great sword onto his back, as ready as he would ever be for this confrontation.
“Now that it appears I won’t bleed out, it seems the most logical thing to do, doesn’t it? Care to meet me in the sky?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Dregan smirked, and The Shadow Priest kicked his Gold dragon into motion. The impossibly wide wings sprang out in response. The indomitable force kicked up a flurry of sand as the Gold dragon beat its wings, lifting Dregan upward. His brother ascended quickly, so Arius sprinted to Alrukar and climbed into his saddle faster than he ever had in all his years as a Gunner to keep pace. Dregan was already circling far above as Arius finally flew to meet him.
The saddle for a dragon was a complex thing. It was located on the second vertebrae of the dragon’s spinal column and was more like a bucket with leg holes than anything else. The intricate series of leather straps crossed his shoulders, chest, and lap, which left his arms free for swordplay or wielding his magical abilities. Arius had just fastened the last of the buckles as he finally made it eye level with Dregan.
The air was much colder up here, and the wind was far harsher. A lot of Gunners wore goggles when they flew, but Arius had learned a trick using his Elemancy that continually shielded his eyes from the onslaughts of nature while he was airborne.
Arius was reminded of a particular recurring nightmare as he and Dregan circled one another a mile over the ground. He did his best to dispel those thoughts, but with little success. Seeing that Gold in action was a far too surreal encounter.
Throwing caution to the wind, Arius again reached into the depths of his immense store of battle energy, and he let loose a blaze of energy that would have unseated him in an instant had he not been strapped in. Dregan, flying around fifty feet away, spotted it and easily dove to avoid it.
The attack hadn’t really been meant to succeed, as Arius was testing the Gold dragon’s agility. It was as he feared: Dregan had the advantage in that department. Alrukar would be outclassed in every facet of aerial combat, it seemed.
Again, Arius had foreseen this, so he did what one could only do when they were ridiculously outgunned and unmatched. He attacked full bore, catching Dregan off guard.
Arius dove directly at him, and Alrukar belched cascades of flame while he himself throttled him with an unrelenting cannonade of Adimus Aura-based energy strikes. The blitzkrieg had the desired effect: Dregan was forced to turtle up and shield himself to avoid being annihilated outright, or unsaddled so he plummeted to his death. After two more passes like that, Arius had him on the run.
Dregan dove and darted in and out of the cloud cover as he tried to create enough distance for himself so that he could counterattack, but Arius never relented. The Duncar shield Dregan was utilizing was impregnable, but it was wearing down. It had once covered the Shadow Priest and his Gold dragon both, but now it only covered Dregan. Arius was landing strikes on the Gold dragon and wounding it ever so slightly.
The problem with fighting at this pace was that it was impossible to sustain this kind of brutality. Arius felt himself wearing down, and Alrukar was wearing down with him. It wouldn’t be long before he would be completely drained of all his magic, and he and Alrukar would become nothing more than target practice.
Dregan was putting on a display of defensive flying that was nothing short of genius. Arius prided himself on his abilities as a Gunner, but he was struggling to keep pace with Dregan. The clouds were relatively thick, and at times he was losing sight of his brother for elongated stretches, which was beginning to unnerve him greatly.
Finally, after a particularly gutsy maneuver, the Gold dragon barrel-rolled and flipped, climbing at a rate Alrukar couldn’t hope to duplicate. Just like that, they were gone.
Arius flew alone, craning his neck in every direction in an effort to spot his brother. A couple of tense minutes passed by as he swooped in and out of the clouds trying to get above where he thought Dregan might be.
So far the weather had been docile, with no storms to speak of. The only thing that had fallen from these clouds were fat, lazy raindrops. In an instant, that changed. The sky went from a dreary gray to the pitchest black in the blink of an eye. Lightning clustered like swarms of locusts and danced from cloud bank to cloud bank. It was unnatural, too controlled. It was the work of Dregan.
Arius had gone from hunter to game as he now flew with all the agility he could muster. Lightning chased him like a pack of feral dogs, and he could feel the hair standing up on his body and a metallic taste coating his tongue as each electric strike drew nearer and nearer. Alrukar bellowed flames of frustration as he absorbed lightning strike after lightning strike. Arius echoed him, letting go a frenzied scream that was drowned out by the maelstrom of the storm. Twin bursts of lightning reached out like skeletal hands directly in front of Arius, and he knew all was lost. He and Alrukar wouldn‘t be able to escape it. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for death to claim him.
When nothing happened, Arius tentatively opened his eyes and saw that the lightning storm had dissipated. Dregan had only been toying with him.
Arius wasn’t sure if he should feel happy to be alive or disgusted that it was Dregan who had allowed him to live. He didn’t have long to contemplate it, though, because his brother plunged in on him, the Gold dragon ripping into Alrukar’s back. The brute force of the pounce sent Arius and his dragon down helplessly towards the ground.
“You must have known this would be the end result of your insolence, Arius!”
Before he had latched on, Dregan had raised both of his hands, and a purple mist flared out, dousing Arius in the face along the left side. A savage burning flared to life, and his skin felt as though it were melting off. After what seemed an eternity, it finally stopped, and Arius sat slumped in his saddle, breathing raggedly. The pain had been so intense that for a few minutes he had completely forgotten where he was or what he was doing. Slowly his senses came back to him, a
nd he tentatively reached up expecting to find half of his face melted away. Mercifully, it hadn’t.
Arius had been so out of it that he didn’t realize that Dregan was actually speaking to him. His head was fuzzy from exhausting his magic, and his ears rang from the storm and the strange Duncar magic Dregan had used on him. He strained to listen despite his rough condition.
“What was that?” Arius mumbled loudly, his tongue thick for some reason.
“Weren’t you listening?” Dregan shouted from above. “I must have used too much Acid on you. No matter, I was just explaining that I’m guiding you back to Axion where you’re to be publicly executed.”
The skies were amenable again. There was no evidence at all that Arius had just survived a tempest created by a madman. Through the Link he could sense that Alrukar was unconscious. Arius delved deeper and found that Alrukar’s wounds were terminal. Arius didn’t cry out, but he did shed tears for his friend, holding in sobs. It was over. Dregan’s Gold dragon carried them along unhurriedly with Axion growing ever larger in the distance.
“I was thinking that I would do the deed myself,” Dregan continued, “but I haven’t quite conceived of a lurid enough torture befitting your station yet.”
Arius didn’t respond. It was taking all of his energies to just remain conscious.
“Flogging? No, that won’t do. Stoning? No, that’s far too provincial for the likes of you. Burned at the stake, perhaps? That has a nice ring to it, I’ll call that option ‘One A.’ Hmmm, what about castration? No, far too perverse. After all, what would Father think of such an act?”
Dregan laughed his crazed laugh as he continued to come up with more and more cruel ways to execute Arius. He was too distracted by his own witticism to notice the Blue dragon that flew up to their right, with its rider poised and ready to shoot the bow he had drawn. Arius did.
Excellent, he got Evaline to safety.
As Dregan continued to taunt him, a satisfying thunk and a surprised sputter announced the arrival of the arrow. Arius kissed his dragon’s back, tears streaming over his black plates saying a quick goodbye. Alrukar deserved better, but he had to move quickly, so his grief would have to wait.
Dragons of Destiny Page 24
