by Aaron Pogue
I turned back toward my stronghold, still unafraid of the monster bonded to me, and stretched my will toward the safety of my lair. But there was something in between, something waiting on the threads of earth, something dense enough to bend reality around it.
Dragons. Even as I looked I saw them settling all around me. Thousands of them, black as ink, spilled across the world. And from the west I felt Pazyarev coming. He washed over the earth like the sunset's shadow, the vastness of his power blacking out reality for miles.
I reached for home. I pulled, and the world shifted around me. But I didn't make it back to the tower—the ring of dragon black welled up before me, and my will slammed against it hard as a wall of stone. I stumbled, stunned, and looked up to find myself upon the road less than a mile south of Teelevon.
A piercing shriek clawed at my mind, but I walled the pain away and called two blades into my hands. I didn't even have to look; I felt the monster's presence through the land. I dove aside and twisted as I flew and lashed out at the dragon's form as it swooped low. I felt the sword bite through the brown and orange scales, tasted the stink of its blood in the air, and grinned as the beast roared.
Its head snapped around toward me, teeth flashing in the night, but I stepped lightly to the side and slashed upward, carving a long gash up the dragon's plated shoulder. It screamed in pain and leaped away, hanging in the air above me. I saw it draw a breath to hurl fire.
But I did not pursue. I turned on my heel and sprinted south, away from the thing, and cast ahead already with my will. But there was no way clear. I saw the wide ring of dragons that had circled Teelvon now washing past me to the south.
And more. For miles to the south, there was a raging flood of dragon shadows touching down. The whole of the plains seemed to be filled with them. My tower. The walls. The king's encampment. Distantly, I felt the clamoring panic of my stronghold under direct assault.
Too many hearts, too many fears, but I could see shades in them: the careful, measured worry of the hunters who'd been trained; the cold, pathetic helplessness of soldiers ready to fight an army but useless against a swarm of dragons; the heavy weight of responsibility among the officers, Caleb and Lareth chief among them. And Isabelle. I could feel her like a balm. Concerned for me and waiting full of hope for my return. I reached for her, but there was no clear path. I tugged anyway and found myself face-to-face with another brown dragon.
I'd barely gained a hundred paces, and the beast I'd injured came up hard upon my heels. I hit a sprint straight toward the newer one, wrapped myself in threads of air, and fashioned steps of earth no larger than my feet that hung in empty air.
I sprinted up the steps and sprang with all my might. I twisted in the air, both arms slashing down, across, and with one swipe of rage I took the creature's head off. I hit the ground and rolled, and as I found my feet, the wash of viscous Chaos power flooded into me.
The first dragon had lost sight of me, but now it crouched, blocking any escape to the north. It shook its great head in impatient rage, scattering heavy black drops of blood. I stood motionless and silent for a moment, catching my breath, and as I did I saw a new shadow drift in from the north. The mottled orange turned its head and hissed a threat, but then looked back to me.
My thoughts were far away. I felt the battle raging in my stronghold. There was worse than fear within the walls now. I felt my soldiers' pain. I felt them fall. A dozen men at once turned into cinders. A Captain of the Hunt disemboweled by a dragon's tail. A carpenter who tried to stand and fight was torn to pieces by half a dozen hungry drakes. I sought desperately for some way through, but the world swarmed with dragons now.
And still Pazyarev came, rolling like a storm down from the north. He was miles off yet, still not visible on the horizon, but he was coming.
I turned back to the dragons right before me. The mottled one was stalking forward now, head held low and tasting at the air with its long forked tongue. I flung one of my Chaos blades almost casually toward it, too high, soaring in an arc above the beast. Just as it passed overhead, I caught it with my will and slammed it down, point-first, driving through the dragon's skull to pin it to the earth. Then I took a step toward the other, black as night.
"Vechernyvetr. Help me. They're slaughtering my brood."
He laughed within my mind, dark and cruel. Your family? Your friends? You may use the words. I've learned their treacherous meanings.
Pain like heartache, pain like human loss welled up in the back of my head. I felt it from him, the same emotion he had shared when I'd left, but that was just the first of it. I felt the crushing weight of grief, as well, the devastating helplessness of love.
I hit my knees. This was raw emotion—his emotion—but nothing native to the dragons' animal desires. "What happened to you?" I gasped. Even through the walls of my defenses there was pain enough to overwhelm me. "How? How could you feel...."
My brood, he answered, bitter. My dame. Were torn to shreds. He showed me. The same lair I'd helped him win, and some of the same drakes. But there were more. There was a dame the shade of moonlight and a dozen drakes that looked newborn.
Dead. The cooling pool was thick with blood, the modest hoard stained black and red. And as I looked on the devastation, I could feel an echoing grief within my soul. I saw Vechernyvetr's lair despoiled even as mine was under attack.
"Help me," I begged again. "They're doing that to mine. You brought me away just in time—"
I know, he said. That was the plan.
"But why? I didn't do this thing to you. I've never let my hunters near your lair."
It wasn't you. It was Pazyarev's brood. They found me in my lair.
"And now they're raiding mine!" I screamed, frantic. "Take me to the fight! For violence and blood."
He shook his huge head slowly back and forth, a very human gesture. There is nothing left of me to love the taste of blood. There is nothing but this pain in all my soul.
"For vengeance, then," I tried, stomping toward him. I reached inside myself, for the wild ferocious hunger of the Chaos heart, and pressed its thunder at his mind. "That is your language. Destroy the ones that did this thing to you."
You did this thing to me. And dreadful though the words were, there was no sense of rage. Only weary resignation. You poisoned me with your human heart. My kind should not feel pain like this. The moonlight only makes it worse.
"Then blood," I tried again, but once again he shook his head. "Why would you help them? Why would you give me up to them after what they've done? Why won't you fight?"
Instead of answering, he bent his neck to look back lazily toward the north. Pazyarev comes. He hates what you have made here.
"I hate him too," I growled. I turned south and began to run. I cast ahead, but still the shadows boiled around my tower. I caught myself in threads of air and flung myself like a shot. It wasn't enough, but it was faster than I could run. Lashes of air hurled me south across the miles while my people died.
Vechernyvetr came up on the wing. He made no move to strike at me. He only drifted idly along. "Carry me," I said. "If you will come with me, at least carry me."
No. No, I can't do that. It would cost me my reward.
"Reward?" I asked. And then a moment later, "Ah. Yes. For bringing me away."
He has been waiting weeks. For weeks he has not raided, he has not hunted, he has only watched and waited for a chance to strike at you. Two thousand bodies in his brood and every one committed to this assault.
"How can you know this?"
I have been with him. All this time. Begging my reward.
"What can that monster possibly give you? Power? Wealth? I'll give you both if you but get me to my tower."
No. None of that. He will take away what you have given me. He will take my human heart.
It took a moment before I understood, then I spun to stare at him. "You will allow him to subsume you? To destroy your will?"
I have begged it of him. He has r
efused. But for this night's work—
"That will destroy you! Why not fight him? Why not die, if that's all you desire?"
He will not kill me. He can see my torment. He enjoys my torment.
"No. Do not give yourself to that. Fight him."
There is nothing to be gained.
"There is victory to be gained. Just look at me. Just look at what I've done. Look at the power I have gathered."
I see how easily it gutters—
"But it need not go out. Stand with me. Help me fight."
He gave no response to that. After some time I stopped my desperate flight. The pain and fear still seared throughout my tower, clawing at my mind, and it wrenched my heart to abandon them. But it would take most of an hour still to fly myself that far, and then what would I do?
I could kill them easily enough, even on the wild wing, but I could not save my brood. Two thousand dragons in the sky? I could not kill them all. And even as I tried, that terrible shadow would be constantly approaching from the north.
I turned in place. Vechernyvetr registered surprise, then curiosity. I showed him my resolve and felt his astonishment. "I will fight him instead," I said.
You will die.
"And what if I win?" I asked, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. I watched the storm of Chaos power roll across the earth toward me. "What becomes of his vast brood if I kill him?"
You are a fool to even hope. For all that you have grown, your power does not match his.
"I am nothing like him," I said. "He is just a monster. I am a man." I gathered up my will, caught the threads of air, and sent myself skimming back north. "He may destroy me. Or I may win. What would happen then?"
If you killed him? He would die. Every part of him would die.
I looked south, where every part of him swarmed against my fortress. I breathed a silent prayer.
You have no cause for hope, Vechernyvetr said. You will die this night.
"Or I will save my brood and end Pazyarev forever. Either way, you should be at my side."
I am not one of your broodlings, little dragon prince of men. You do not control my will.
"That is not the way of men," I said. "Every soldier in my brood fights by his own will."
Against the dragonswarm? That is impossible.
"That is the human heart," I told him. "It is not entirely a wretched thing."
And then, despite myself, I forgot about him. I forgot about my people in the tower. I forgot everything except the shadow in the sky, crimson stain against the sunset, and large as a mountain.
Pazyarev came for me, and he did not come alone.
19. Vengeance
I hung suspended in the air, a hundred paces above the earth, while the northern sky filled with the terrible bulk of an elder legend. Around him buzzed a handful of retainers, perhaps a dozen winged adults, and among them the sleek gold dame that had watched me so closely in his lair. I watched with narrowed eyes as they approached.
But through my territory sense I felt the others come. Across the land to east and west, whatever broodlings he had set to pin me in now rose up and flew toward me. Another dozen? Two? I cast one last, desperate glance south, but there was no way to my tower. Those did not break off their attack.
It mattered little anyway. I would have to kill this one to win. Even if I tore his every broodling from the sky, I'd have to fight him when he came for me. Far wiser, then, to fight him here.
But I would not idly wait. I summoned stone as I had done fleeing his lair, shaped it into javelins, and flung them with my will. I focused on the reinforcements coming from the ground and tore one dragon's wing to shreds, then speared another through the eye. Seventeen in all approached, and I accounted for six of them with that first volley.
Then Pazyarev was close enough to strike, and he struck with many limbs. The gold dame hung back, but all the others rushed toward me. Not in a perfect circle. Not all at once. A dragon on the wing is too versatile a foe to crowd them all together. Instead one came forward faster, mottled green and brown, and belched a lance of fire at my position. The beast could not have seen me clearly, wrapped in elemental air, but I disturbed the world around me enough that it could make a guess.
A good guess, it turned out. I had to fling myself downward and barely dropped a pace below the searing flame. But I carried the motion on, swinging up and under toward the creature's jaw. I wrenched my shoulder as I passed beneath it, stabbing up behind its fangs. My sword parted scales and flesh and cut deep into the dragon's head. Yet even as I struck I saw the forward talons reaching for me. I left the blade inside its skull and whipped the bands of air around me, darting off to safety.
But straight into another dragon's strike. It snapped at me. I tried to stop, to swing myself away, but still its razor fang bit into my left shoulder. It traced a painful line down and over to my spine before I could pull myself away. I spun around in time to see the spike-tipped tail coming around toward me.
I speared my remaining Chaos blade bone-deep in the monster's passing shoulder and let my weight hang on it for a moment. That left me free to whip the threads of air out with my will, wrapping them around the dragon's eyes. They should have left the dragon blind, should have drawn a scream of rage and sent it tumbling from the sky. But this beast was Pazyarev. It was just one little part of a mind that watched me through dozens of eyes. And now it saw me clearly.
The tail struck, shearing with expert precision above the dragon's scales, straight at me. I planted feet on the shoulder and kicked desperately away. A heartbeat later, the tail tore the abandoned Chaos blade out of its flesh.
Then a roar of triumph shook the night around me. I was revealed. A dozen blasts of fire shot toward me. I wrapped myself in air and again dove away.
But I could not survive this fight. There wasn't time enough to look ahead, to stop and think. It took my whole attention to face one dragon, and here two dozen hung around me. My blood-soaked shirt clung cold against my back, and the injury put pain in every motion.
I'd felled the first, I thought, with that jab up through the jaw. The second I had barely hurt. I glanced back now and saw it dropping from the fight, but night was coming soon. In half an hour it would be made whole.
I snapped my eyes back ahead in time to see sharp talons stretching toward me. I jerked myself upward, planted a foot on the top of one plated knee, and sprang higher still. From above, I made a rain of fist-sized stones and sent them slamming hard into the creature's skull.
It fell away, another beast already flapping up behind it. I summoned just one stone for that one. It was a paving stone four paces wide, four paces long, manifested half a pace above the dragon's shoulders. The long, strong bones that held its wings snapped like twigs, and that one, too, went down.
More waited. A pair this time, coming fast from opposite directions. I sprang away and dodged a bite and sprang again. I crashed against a scaled hide hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. I skidded, tried to catch a grip, and then began to fall. Talons long as sickle blades snapped around me, but they did not pierce. They didn't crush. They held me almost tenderly.
The scales were black. I made two Chaos blades again, but before I struck, I looked up. Then I reached out with my mind. "Vechernyvetr? What do you intend?"
The great wings slammed against the air as he climbed up through the fray, toward the waiting elder legend. His nervous indecision rattled in the back of my mind.
They should call you dragonbane, he said. I've never seen a man do anything like that.
"I could do more," I thought. "I mean to kill them all."
But that's impossible, he said, without any real emotion. Even you know it. I can see it in your heart. You fight, and you grow tired. You cannot kill them all.
"If I could get to Pazyarev—"
Be still, he said with force enough to shut me up. He flew up through the crowd of dragons, and I saw them washing around him, following in his wake, until we all we
nt as one before the massive elder legend. He scudded through the air like some solid thunderhead. As we grew closer, I could feel his hatred like a fire beneath my skin.
You've brought the boy to me, Pazyarev crowed. I heard the words, but with them came the monster's bloody satisfaction, his overwhelming rage, so vast, so strong they threatened to wash away my own emotions. I gasped for air, fought to hold some shred of my defiance, and walled Pazyarev away.
I'd had much practice. I forced the elder legend's thoughts out of my head, but still I felt the hammer of his rage.
Vechernyvetr's thoughts yet rang out clearly. We had an understanding.
I felt the pressure of the elder legend's answer, but not the words. Whatever he had to say, it calmed the indecision in Vechernyvetr's head. I felt his heart grow hard, felt his intentions narrow to a point. He was decided.
I shifted awkwardly within the talon's grip and hefted the two sleek blades within my hand. I wouldn't go without a fight.
Then Vechernyvetr spoke to me. I remember when we met, he said. I remember what you did to me. You were just a tiny man, and I was a monster, but still you brought me low. In spite of all my power, you broke me.
Vechernyvetr couldn't kill me on his own. But now he brought me up before Pazyarev's massive maw. The golden dame came drifting over, shining like sunlight on a pool, but I saw murder in her eyes. For one terrifying moment we both flew in place ahead of Pazyarev.
The talons opened. I was ready with threads of air. I caught myself and snapped them to get away. I had one astonished moment to see Vechernyvetr turn mid-air and strike the golden dame. He tangled his body around her, fangs and talons tearing. The taste of blood seared bright within his mind, and the dame screamed as she fell away.
And then my world was darkness. Hot and rank and crushing. I'd had the barest hint of warning, the bright white flash of teeth as thick as tree trunks, then the monster's maw had slammed shut around me. It was so fast. Nothing as large as that should be so fast. But it had struck even as I tried to fly away, and it had caught me, severing the threads of air.
