Her head snapped around, tracking the sounds of the fight automatically. Both dragon bodies slammed hard into a building, sending it crashing around them in broken timbers. It didn’t seem to impact them much. They were up again in a moment, tails lashing as they bellowed fire at each other. Shunlei seemed to be holding his ground, but the sight of it still worried Mei Li. For once, he wasn’t facing someone younger. This dragon was a much darker red, closing in on becoming a Green, perhaps. It was hard to tell in this lighting and from a distance.
Hawes turned to her immediately. “Does he stand a chance?”
“Yes.” Logically, Mei Li knew Shunlei would survive this battle. Even if he didn’t win it, he’d survive it. But her nerves still sang with tension as she watched because she’d never seen him so desperately hold his ground before. She winced as he was thrown, landing against another building and cracking the brick wall with his back and head. Just the sound of it made the back of her head ache in sympathy. “He’ll win this, I think. We need to focus on the town!”
“Let’s get this fire out.” Hawes directed them with a snap of the fingers. “Lady Kiyo, you and I will make for the top part of the town, start warding it so it can’t catch on fire as well. Nord, Lady Mei, Melchior, get to the docks.”
Putting out fire she could do, especially when she had an ocean right there to work from. Mei Li nodded sharply and kicked Peanut back into motion. She’d work from his back as much as she could—getting off right now would only make her susceptible to being jostled in the crowd, which wouldn’t do anyone any good.
Nord and Melchior were right with her as they fought their way through the panicked throngs in the streets. Mei Li pulled out talismans from her belt pouch, working with the selection she had readily available. She had two of each type of what she thought of as emergency talismans at hand: two water, two earth, two traps, and two healing spells. The rest were in the top of her bag, and she’d have to twist to reach them, but not until she had a clear line of sight to the docks. The smoke was thick in patches, making it hard to breathe, and her eyes watered from the sting of it all. Mei Li steeled herself to deal—she had no time to try to cobble together protective gear.
They finally gained an open patch of ground, the docks within range of her. “Nord, take the ship?”
“Yes.”
Mei Li pulled her first water talisman and held it sharply toward the dock, activating it and directing its source at the same time. The ocean water, choppy from the wind, rose immediately at her bidding and flowed over the wooden docks and the people frantically working to put out the fire. She controlled the flow enough that it stayed low, washing over the wooden dock and piers without knocking anyone into the ocean. The flames went out within minutes, and a ragged cheer came up before they turned, spotting the trio.
The nearest man jogged to her, waving a hand over his head, splashing in the water still lingering on the docks. “My lady mage! Have you come to aid us?”
“As I can!” she called back to him. “We’ll focus on putting out the fires first! If there’s any grievously wounded, pull them together into one location if you can, so we can more easily attend them.”
“Bless you, yes, please come. We’ve several heavily burned by dragon’s fire. There’s many trapped under that building, but we’ve no leverage to help pull them out!”
Swearing, she promptly kneed Peanut around. “Show us.”
The man—he looked the part of a fisherman—immediately led them to the building behind one that was in absolute cinders, still smoking and raw with heat. Mei Li’s eyes stung from the smoke and teared up, but she blinked past it as best she could and focused on following him.
Then she didn’t need to, as she saw the problem very well indeed.
The building was still aflame, part of it burning with the intensity that only dragon fire could produce. It had destroyed the frame of the large, two-story building and warped it, collapsing the other side and trapping two different people. She saw a head there, under a pile of timber, and a pair of legs on the other side. “Melchior, can you attend me? Nord, can I leave the fire to you?”
“I can handle it,” Nord assured her. He was already off his horse and heading that direction. “You can get them out?”
In the same beat, Melchior promised, “I’m on your heels.”
“I have a trick up my sleeve.” Only one, though, and Mei Li prayed it worked. As Nord scrambled to the other side, she rummaged through her talismans, speaking quickly and loudly to both Melchior and the fisherman still standing anxiously nearby. “I’ll need both of your aid in a moment. I’m going to apply lightening spells to both of those heavy beams. It should mean we can lift them enough to haul the injured people out from underneath. Do so with care—we don’t want to cause further injury, and the talismans will do their job as long as they’re applied.”
“But do so quickly because the fire is spreading alarmingly fast?” Melchior grimaced. “A race against time.”
Yes, and those rarely fared well. Time was not usually humanity’s friend.
Mei Li didn’t voice that aloud. She found the two talismans she was looking for and slapped both on the heavy beams crisscrossed in a jumbled angle. The man on the left, with only his legs visible, gave a groan of what sounded like relief. Mei Li called to him, “We’ll attend to you in a moment!”
“Get my wife out!” was the muffled shout in reply.
Melchior already had a hand on the beam, lifting it easily. Mei Li stooped, cradling the woman’s head and torso, the fisherman on the other side, grasping hips as he could, both of them dragging her free. She was not a small woman, so it took all of Mei Li’s strength to manage just this.
“Ru-Rupert,” the woman gasped, her hands pointing to the side.
“We’ll get him next,” the fisherman promised, gasping and straining under her weight. “I think she’s clear enough.”
Mei Li agreed and carefully lowered her. As she did so, she anxiously looked at the other side of the building, where the fire was spreading at an alarming pace. “Melchior, let it down. NORD!”
“I could use some help!” Nord called, his voice high with panic. “Nothing’s working against this fire!”
Had he never tried to subdue dragon’s fire before?
Melchior was already waving her to the other’s aid, so she lifted her skirts and darted around, anxiously looking at the magic already employed. Yes, as she thought, he was trying to fight fire with fire, so to speak. Talismans designed to subdue fire were spaced out every few steps, but it wasn’t even making a dent.
Skidding to a stop next to him, she once again frantically dug through her talismans for what she needed. “You can’t use fire suppressants on dragon fire, it’s considered an element of its own, separate from fire itself. You have to counter it with the elemental opposite, either earth or water.”
Nord quickly jammed his hand back into his pouch and came up with several water talismans. There was a look of determination on his face, as if he were not to be bested by mere fire, even if it was from a dragon. “Let’s both use only one, can’t flood the place.”
Yes, water damage on top of fire damage wouldn’t do anyone good in the long run. “On three. One, two, three!”
The ocean heeded their call, supplying a steady line of water, and they doused the flames carefully, talismans held in hand so they could move the water, panning it along the side of the building. She saw from the corner of her eye a small group of people racing toward them, calling out names in tones of relief. Friends or family to those trapped? Melchior’s baritone was soothing as he reassured them, and someone ran off again to fetch a cart. To help move the injured, she assumed. Mei Li could only catch parts of what they were saying.
Nord let out a sigh and lowered the talisman. “That’s out. How many of those do you have?”
“I think three altogether. Nord, I’m worried about the injured. I have more healing ointments and talismans than I do water talismans. You
?”
“I have about an equal amount.” He opened the pouch and rifled through, quickly counting. “A little less, it looks like. Do you want to divide and conquer? I can give you the healing talismans, and you let me handle the fire. We’ll lose people if someone doesn’t apply some magical healing—and quickly.”
The shock a body sustained due to burns and injury was no laughing matter. Mei Li wasn’t an expert in healing by any means, but she knew a great deal in theory, and she’d been able to apply some of that in practice. Even the limited assortment of things she had on her was better than nothing at all. “Let’s do it.”
They made the swap. Nord untied a satchel from his horse and handed it over to her, which she tied across her own chest. As soon as she had it in hand, Nord turned on his heel and rushed off, looking for any hint of flames.
The cart came, they loaded up the husband and wife, and one stocky, soot-covered man took charge by leading them quickly toward the center of the docks, into the only building (remarkably) untouched by fire. Mei Li retreated back to where Melchior stood, their horses’ reins in his grip, and grabbed her bag from the back of her horse. She trusted Melchior to handle tying Peanut to a hitching post somewhere.
Inside the building was chaos. Mei Li spotted a charm engraved into the wall near the front door that was a fire prevention spell and absently realized that was why they were gathering here—probably one of the few buildings offering any protection. It was a warehouse, covered in boxes and padded bundles, most of it shoved aside to make room for the wounded.
And there were far too many of those. People lay out on blankets, some on the cold stone floor of the building itself, clothes and skin burned off, whimpering with pain even as loved ones tried to help. It enraged Mei Li to the point that she was sorely tempted to storm back out and battle that dragon herself.
“Who’s touched by dragon fire?!” she called out strongly over the crowd.
“Here!” a woman called out immediately, lifting a hand. “My husband!”
“Here!”
“Here!”
“Here!”
Too many, too many. Growling, Mei Li pushed the bag into Melchior’s hands without a by-your-leave and started rooting through it. “I’m going to activate several talismans; I want you to apply one each to every person burned. It will alleviate the pain until I can get there. This jar of ointment, it’s for burns. Apply that in a thin coat to the more serious raw wounds.”
“Got it.” Melchior accepted everything she handed him and then headed in the other direction.
Finding what she needed, she pulled several things free and then hustled over in a flurry of skirts to the first woman who’d raised her hand. She took in the sight with a wince. The man lying with his head pillowed in his wife’s lap looked half-raw. Dragon’s fire was incredibly destructive, even a graze of it would do this.
Sinking down onto her knees, she flashed them both a smile. “I have two pieces of good news for you.”
The husband gasped shallowly for breath, eyes barely tracking her, but the wife was keenly listening.
Mei Li’s hands applied a healing talisman even as she spoke. “First, the dragon who did this is being fought even now. My friend Shunlei is battling him, and Shunlei normally wins his battles with other dragons, so I have faith he’ll put a stop to this insanity.”
The relief in the woman’s haggard face was unmistakable, as much as the choked off sob. It had to be horrifying, sitting here, guarding her injured husband, not sure if it was safe enough to go back out for the supplies she would need to help him. And this place was warded for fire, certainly, but it wouldn’t stop a dragon from smashing into it.
“Second, what I have here in hand is specifically made for dragon fire burns. I’m going to apply a coat of it—”
The husband shivered, and the pain lines around his mouth and eyes relaxed.
“—better already, right? Good stuff, this. I’ll coat everything here, then you lay still. It’ll harden, like a second skin, and stay like that until your skin knits back together again. We’ll get you moved to a more comfortable location when we can, but bear with us. We’re trying to keep people alive right now.”
“Thank you, Lady,” the woman choked, tears streaming down her face. “Will he…recover?”
“Fully.” Mei Li gave her a tight smile, and then she darted to the next patient.
It became a blur after that. Mei Li kept repeating the same assurances, applying talismans, creams, bandages in a few places. Resetting broken collar bones, arms, legs, piecing together a sheared ear and stitching it back to the man’s head before he lost it altogether. Mei Li was trained in medicine—all Tomes were—but she wasn’t a healer. These people needed a proper healer.
They made do with her. Although she’d find a proper healer before this was over; she was determined on that point. Even if she had to go fetch him or her from another town.
Nord appeared at some point—she nearly tripped right over him—and with him came a new wave of patients. Mei Li only had time to demand if the fires were out. He nodded, but his eyes and hands were focused on the child in front of him. She gave back his bag so he had more to work with, then darted for the next patient.
Time passed in a blink, and Mei Li couldn’t say if she’d been there an hour or all night when Hawes appeared and grabbed her. She was so startled by his abrupt grip on her arm that she nearly dropped everything in her hands. “Hawes! For pity’s sake, my soul nearly left my body.”
“Shunlei,” he told her, urging her out the door already.
Come to think of it, the sounds of battle had abruptly died off several minutes ago. A part of Mei Li’s mind had made note of it. “Did he win?”
“If you can count it as a win.”
With Hawes’ guidance, Mei Li raced up to the side of the hill, just on the edge of town, where two dragon bodies lay prone. Her heart was in her throat even as she tripped over debris and splashed through ash-colored puddles. Shunlei lay with his wings in an odd, splayed out angle, his head turned from her, lying like he hadn’t the breath or energy to move. Some of his claws dug into the earth, gripping in a way she’d never seen a dragon do before. She could see him breathe—his scaled sides panted for air—but that wasn’t as reassuring as it should be. With the fiery red hue of his scales, it was hard to see if he was bloody, but she did see more than a few gashes. Superficial, judging by the sluggish way they were bleeding.
“Shunlei!”
He rolled his massive head to the right, turning enough to see her even as she scrambled toward him. Tears streamed from the edges of his light blue eyes, unchecked. Alarm shot through her all over again, racing like chills up and down her spine. What had happened?!
The other dragon lay nearby, still as death. He was larger than Shunlei by a good length, nearly a third longer. The size of his leg alone dwarfed her. There were more rips and gashes in his side, or at least deeper and more obvious. She thought he was in the same poor shape as Shunlei for a split second until she realized that initial impression was correct. He was dead.
Understanding swept through her, and she didn’t hesitate to put an arm around Shunlei’s head, touching her forehead to his brow. “Oh, Shunlei.”
“I didn’t want to,” he whispered, voice broken. “I tried so hard to get him to surrender. To just stop. If he’d just been willing to stop… But they’d done something to anger him. I didn’t understand what. He said something about territory, and rights, and he wouldn’t stop.”
“Shhh, I know, I know this isn’t your fault. You had to stop him to protect us. You did the right thing, as hard as that was.” She did her best to thrum at him, forcing her smoke-abused throat to mimic the sounds of comfort and affection.
He sighed, the sound nothing but grief and pain, and rolled his head further into her body. “Why wouldn’t he stop?”
“When a man answers only to the base needs of anger and greed, he becomes lost. You can’t reason with such people,
Shunlei. Sometimes, force is the only answer.” Hawes put his own hand on the other side of Shunlei’s head, stroking down his neck in sympathy. “Thank you for taking on that burden. I’m sorry I left you alone to do it.”
“The dragons aren’t your duty, Hawes.”
Hawes kept stroking, a sad smile on his face. “Perhaps, perhaps not, but I’m willing to help you shoulder the goal you’ve set. You’re not alone in this.”
“No, you’re certainly not.” Mei Li didn’t want him to doubt that for a moment and made her voice firm. “We’ll talk properly about how to handle situations like this in the future. But for now, can you change forms? I can see some terrible gashes in your side. How badly are you hurt?”
“It’s not life-threatening.” A visible wince shot through his frame. “I’m not sure if I can shift easily, though. It’s always harder to do it when injured.”
“I don’t have enough medicine or bandages to cover a dragon form.” Mei Li looked him over, chewing on her bottom lip in thought. “I’m not sure how much I can help you like this.”
“I can—” He grunted, body shuddering again. “I can do it. I think. Give me a minute.”
Mei Li stepped back to give him room. Her heartstrings tugged painfully, sympathetically. It was hard to see him in so much pain, both physically and emotionally. Knowing his goals, knowing what he accomplished in the end, it all seemed easy enough in context. Sometimes she forgot he’d had many mishaps. Like now, even when he won, he still felt it a loss.
Shunlei’s true aim wasn’t just harmony between the species. He wanted to save the dragons from their path of self-destruction. Picking a fight with an entire race would ensure their demise eventually. He’d realized it. It’s partially why he was able to convince the other dragons to heed him, because he could convey that logic to them in rational terms.
Killing a dragon meant he’d failed to save him. Shunlei wouldn’t look at it any other way.
The strongest urge to wrap him up in her arms and hold him, hug him through the worst of the guilt, came over her. But attending to the many wounds on him was the first order of business. He may think these weren’t life threatening, but he was losing a great deal of blood. Too much for her peace of mind.
First of Tomes (The Tomes of Kaleria Book 2) Page 18
