by Effie Calvin
He could have outrun any horse in the world easily. Esofi had wanted to ask him more questions on the way to the city wall, but now she was afraid that she’d bite off her own tongue if she attempted to speak. She gritted her teeth together and watched the assorted districts of Birsgen fly past, occasionally catching a glimpse of an openmouthed citizen staring at her in wonder.
As they drew nearer, Esofi could see the dragons hovering in the sky, occasionally swooping down to engage with the guardsmen that had flooded out to defend the wall. But they weren’t truly attacking, not yet.
The unicorn skidded to a halt. “I will go no further. I do not wish for them to catch my scent.”
Esofi slid off his back and tumbled to the ground. Her legs felt strange and numb, and she couldn’t feel her fingers at all, but now she was close enough that the shouting of the city guards, followed by echoing roars, reached her.
“Which one is the emperor?” Esofi asked.
“I could not guess, Princess.” The unicorn lowered his head for a moment. “I wish you well.”
“Thank you,” said Esofi solemnly. “And I meant what I said—if I live, I will make this country safe for your kind.”
“I know,” said the unicorn. “I would not have carried you if you had lied.”
Esofi felt her eyes widen. “You are a Truthsayer? But that is Iolar’s magic! You are a creature of Talcia.”
“And you are a creature of Iolar who carries Talcia’s magic,” the unicorn reasoned. “Is that any different?”
Esofi swallowed. “Thank you,” she said again.
The unicorn nodded at her before turning and galloping back in the direction of the castle.
Esofi hurried the rest of the way to the wall. But as she neared, she realized it wasn’t just city guards who had gathered. There were some priestesses of Reygmadra in their heavy plate armor and some paladins from the Order of the Sun in their chain mail and even some artisans from Inthi’s District, their hands alight with orange flames. A few bright spots of color caught her eye, and she thought her own battlemages stood among them, having somehow beaten her frantic dash to the wall.
It was only when she emerged from the guard tower and onto the wall that she realized that they were not Rhodians at all—they were her own students, the newly gifted Ieflarians.
They gathered around her when they caught sight of her, hope and joy in their faces. They weren’t ready. They barely knew how to maintain a shield. They would be slaughtered! Esofi felt sick as she searched for a diplomatic way to order them back to the dubious protection of the temple. Talcia could not have meant them to die so soon and so terribly. It was unthinkable.
“Who is in charge here?” asked Esofi. There was a moment of silence as all the gathered Birsgeners looked around at one another.
“You are, Princess,” said one of the neutroi of Inthi at last.
Esofi had been afraid of that. “Where is Captain Lehmann?”
“We sent for him,” said one of the guardsmen. “He was at the betrothal. He’s on his way, I’m sure of it, along with the battlemages.”
“We’re battlemages!” objected one of Esofi’s students, a skinny woman who had worked as a shepherdess just outside the city before she’d been gifted.
“The true battlemages, then,” the guardsman retorted dismissively. Esofi’s students seemed prepared to show their disagreement, but she cut them off before the infighting could begin.
“That’s enough!” she said. “I’m going to try to talk to the emperor. Nobody attack, not for any reason, unless the dragons try to overtake the wall. Even if the emperor engages me, do not attack. I want to try to end this without any loss of life. Does everyone understand?”
“You cannot reason with a dragon,” said someone close by. Esofi looked around to find who had spoken, and a woman wielding a massive war hammer stepped forward. It took a moment for Esofi to recognize her—Gertra, Archpriestess of Reygmadra.
Esofi decided that there was no time to attempt to justify her actions. She walked toward the edge of the wall, gazing up at the dragons. “If I am killed,” she announced to nobody in particular, “please tell King Dietrich and Queen Saski that I am deeply sorry for the inconvenience and that my sister Esybele might be willing to come replace me if they ask very nicely.”
Then she leapt from the wall, bringing her magic to her hands to slow her descent enough to land safely on the long grass outside the city. She looked to the sky, but none of the dragons approached her. They seemed to be waiting for something, though Esofi could not guess what. But she knew what would get their attention.
Turning her attention to the fields before her, she called her magic to her hands. She took a few steps back to examine her canvas and began to sear designs into the long grass. She had done this as a child, as a game, admiring the glowing pink marks until they faded away or the gardeners spotted her and began screaming.
Now, she drew a luminous pink waxing crescent, followed by a half moon, then a full moon, and another half moon, this one waning, and then finally a waning crescent. It was a simpler version of the tattoo on her back, and she knew she had been successful even before she was completely finished with it, because one of the dragons, the largest one, was moving quickly and purposefully through the sky.
It dropped to the ground before her, the force of its landing almost knocking her over. Esofi kept her balance, though, and stepped forward to address it.
“Are you the emperor?” she asked.
The dragon said nothing.
“Please answer me,” said Esofi, allowing her magic to envelope her skin in a protective barrier. “I know you can speak.”
The dragon opened his mouth and roared. Esofi screamed back at it, a wordless sound of pain and outrage.
As the last of the sound died away, the dragon made a sound that sounded not unlike a laugh. He lowered his massive body onto all four of his legs and brought his head down to Esofi’s height.
“So, you are the one who has been killing my scouts,” he rumbled. “I was told to fear you, but you’re no different from any other Man.”
“This is my city,” said Esofi, surprising herself with how strong and clear her voice was. “This is my country. You and your soldiers will leave.”
The emperor threw back his head and bellowed out a laugh that echoed across the sky. “Little hairless rat! You think to order me? I rule the skies and all below!”
“Be reasonable,” said Esofi. “Talcia has already warned you—”
The emperor struck her lightly, almost casually. Esofi went flying back into the stone city wall. Fortunately, the magical shield over her skin buffered her from all but the worst of injuries. She staggered forward, and a few shattered pieces of rock fell from her shoulders and onto the street. Up on the wall, the Ieflarians shouted, but she gestured at them to hold their positions.
“You speak of things you do not understand!” roared the emperor. “When Mother sees how easily I have destroyed her new favorite, then she will finally realize how pathetic your kind is!”
“Is that why you hate us?” asked Esofi. “You think she favors Men over dragons?”
“She has favored Men for generations!” the emperor shouted in her face, the force of it knocking the last of the pins from her hair. “She has given blessings to your kind and revoked them from us!”
“The people of Ieflaria have learned that Talcia revokes her gifts when her will is ignored,” said Esofi. “But if you repent, she will forgive you, and you will find yourself blessed again. I can help you in this, if you will listen to me.”
The emperor laughed like an earthquake. “Men have nothing to teach dragons. I would be offended if I were not so entertained. When I finally rule over your lands, I will remember you with fondness.”
Esofi raised her head to the sky where the other dragons were waiting. She wondered if they believed in the emperor’s promise to eradicate mankind or if they were as unwilling as the one that had spoken to her.
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But before she could ask any more questions, the emperor flared his neck in the way that signaled he was about to flame. He opened his mouth wide, and the scent emerged of noxious fumes gathering in his throat that would explode into magical fire in only a moment. She leapt aside just in time as the flames struck the wall behind her spot of just a moment ago.
From the skies above came a symphony of shrieks and roars, and the dragons began to move en masse toward the city wall. Esofi gritted her teeth together in despair, but she knew she had to trust the people of Ieflaria to protect their own city. Her opponent at the moment was the emperor.
He swung his head to follow Esofi’s progress across the field, keeping his body lowered to the ground so that she could not pierce his heart as she had so many dragons before. Deprived of her most familiar attack, Esofi was forced to think creatively. A dragon’s back was heavily armored, but the wings were comparatively delicate.
She called her magic to her hands again, releasing it from her palms just enough to propel herself a few meters off the ground, just high enough to leap onto the emperor’s back. Her hands grasped at his coarse scales, which jutted enough from his body for her to pull herself up. He made a sound of outrage and twisted his body around, trying to shake her free, but Esofi found his enormous wing joint and wrapped her hands around it tightly. Her head slammed against his body as he flailed, but she forced herself to hold on.
Finally, perhaps deciding that this course of action was undignified, the emperor spread his wings and launched himself into the sky, spiraling up toward the distant clouds. The delicate warmth of springtime quickly gave way to icy cold, and her hands began to slip. Esofi allowed her magic to race up her arms and gather in her hands, forming a pair of long daggers that manifested half within the emperor’s body. Instead of giving them hilts, she made the ends into gauntlets that clamped tightly around her wrists, leaving no chance that they would slip from her aching hands.
The emperor’s flight faltered as the sudden pain in his wing registered. His other wing still beat, but he was losing altitude. Esofi poured more of her magic into the blades, lengthening them and digging them deeper into the emperor’s wing.
He crashed to the ground inelegantly, rolling over onto his back. Esofi barely had time to dismiss the daggers and leap to safety. Pain shot through her leg as she connected with the ground, but she ignored it.
“You little worm!” he bellowed, blood trickling from his wing. “I will tear your disgusting fleshy hide off, one strip at a time!”
“Come try it, then,” said Esofi, gasping heavily. She spared a glance back toward the city, where the Birsgeners on the wall were engaged in a hundred battles with the other dragons. She could not tell who was winning and did not have time to evaluate their situation.
The emperor flared his neck, preparing to breathe his flames once more. But this time, Esofi knew what she had to do. She called her magic to her hands once more and let it propel her forward and directly toward him.
Alight with rage and magic in equal measures and lacking a more sophisticated plan of action, Esofi leapt into the emperor’s mouth.
A cry of shock emerged from his throat, and for a moment, all she could see was her own magic glinting off sharp teeth and rippling muscles. At the back of his mouth was a cavernous pit of darkness, and that was what Esofi hurled herself toward now. The stench was unbearable, but she hardly had time to consider it before the world burst into painful flames that tore at her protective shield and singed her hair.
Esofi did not waste her energy by screaming. Instead, she struggled to move on the soft, squishy interior of the emperor’s mouth. It was his tongue, she realized, and he was curling it, trying to force her into the path of his teeth.
Using her magic, Esofi forged a lance and plunged it into the base of the dragon’s mouth, clinging desperately to it. For just a moment, she caught a glimpse of the night sky as the emperor opened his mouth and bellowed in pain. His head tilted upward, so she released the lance and rolled toward the back of his throat.
As she moved, she pulled in every drop of magic she had, sinking it back into her core. Even the shield was sapped away as she funneled it into its source at the heart of her very self. She drew it in, in, in, compressing it down as tightly as she could force it to go. It trembled within her, straining to go somewhere, burning and aching—
Finally, when Esofi could stand the pain no longer, she released it.
A single wave of light seared her vision for the briefest of moments before the blackness overtook her.
ESOFI OPENED HER eyes and gazed into a sapphire sky studded with stars, clear and bright and oddly close. Her head was rested against soft leaves, and she sat upright carefully, surprised by the lack of pain in her body.
Birsgen was gone, instead replaced by quiet wilderness.
She looked around, shaking dry leaves and flower petals from her hair. In front of her were the smoldering remains of a campfire, and just beyond that was a woman, dressed in the heavy, coarse clothing of a hunter, who poked at the embers with a long stick.
“What happened?” Esofi murmured.
“You threw yourself into the emperor’s mouth,” said the woman. “An unorthodox strategy, to be sure.”
“I’m dead, then,” said Esofi, with the distinct feeling that she’d been cheated of something. Tears of bitter disappointment sprang to her eyes as she thought of everything she hadn’t had time to accomplish.
“No, Princess,” said the woman patiently, and it was in that moment that Esofi knew that she was no more a woman than the unicorn had been a horse. “You are not dead. You are, however, badly injured. But you will live. I only brought you here because I thought it was time we talked.”
Realization struck Esofi, and it was like waking from a dream. “I—I’m sorry!” she babbled. “I had no idea—I only—I was taught they were animals, wild animals, nobody knew, none of us knew—they would have destroyed us if we hadn’t—”
Talcia raised a hand, and Esofi immediately fell silent. “I know. How quickly things have changed. Once they were wise and noble. But now you have surpassed them. It has been…difficult.” Talcia looked away. “In the beginning, I only granted my gifts to my children. But the races of Men were so numerous and so full of love. So many voices, so many prayers. I could not resist you for long.”
“And the dragons became too wild even for you?” guessed Esofi.
Talcia’s mouth lifted in a brief smile. “Never. Impossible. Make no mistake—it is not wildness I object to. It is evil. Cruelty. Greed. Gluttony. That is why I revoked my gifts.” Her gaze met Esofi’s, and Esofi had the sudden sickening sensation that she was falling through the sky. But then the goddess blinked, and she was back in her body again.
“Perhaps it was my own error,” said Talcia quietly. “To make them so magnificent that they believed themselves infallible.”
“The emperor was angry,” said Esofi. “He was jealous. He believed you loved Men more than the dragons.”
Talcia laughed, and for a moment, Esofi caught a glimpse of her the way the dragons saw her: an enormous dragon, twice as large as the emperor had been, with gleaming ebony scales and burning yellow eyes.
“Men?” she asked. “With your carefully tended fields and elaborate palaces? With ribbons in your hair and bread in your hearths? You play in the woods for an hour and think you know wildness. You have touched it with a fingertip, nothing more. Still—” She seemed thoughtful. “I will see to him next. I expect we have much to discuss. But you need to focus your worries upon the living.”
“What do you want from me?” asked Esofi.
“The very thing you want from yourself,” said Talcia. “You mean to be the queen of Ieflaria, do you not?”
“I don’t know if that’s going to happen,” Esofi admitted sadly.
“No?” Talcia tilted her head. “After everything, you have lost your desire?”
“It’s not that simple,” said Esofi. “I wou
ld have chosen Adale. But it would seem she has not chosen me.”
“How very mistaken you are,” said Talcia.
Esofi opened her mouth to ask what she meant, but the goddess interrupted.
“You doubt me? I think not. Now go. And I don’t want to see you here again for another sixty years.”
She awoke.
ESOFI OPENED HER eyes again. Stony pain filled every inch of her body, and her vision was blurry. Something was dripping into her eyes.
“Princess?” Esofi was just able to make out a woman’s shape before her. “Can you hear me, Esofi?”
Esofi nodded, but the motion sent a wave of nausea shuddering through her body. “The emp—” she began, but her mouth was filled with dry ash, and the rest of her words were lost to a hacking cough.
“We need a healer!” bellowed Adale to someone she could not see. “Don’t move, please, please! We’ll get this all cleared in a moment!”
Already, some of the heavy pain was being lifted away from her, but there was still something pressing uncomfortably against her stomach and arms.
“The emperor?” Esofi asked again, wiping her face on her shoulder, but it did no good—her shoulder was similarly stained. Someone—a healer wearing the robes of a priest of Adranus—wiped at her face with a cloth, and Esofi could see again. She realized the heavy things crushing her body were not stones, but enormous chunks of dragon flesh, and it was blood that stained her from head to toe.
Adale was still gazing down at her, face streaked with tears, her arms wrapped around Esofi’s shoulders.
“I’m so sorry,” whispered the crown princess in a broken voice. “Gods, Esofi, I’m such a fool. I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” asked Esofi, still feeling a little dazed.
“Princess!” That was Captain Henris. “Thank the gods! Are you all right?” He entered her field of vision, and the toll that the battle had taken on him was obvious. His robes were torn and singed, and his face was covered in dry ash.
“What happened to the emperor?” Esofi insisted.
