At last, Osric got off the throne and stood. He moved languidly, as though wearied by some nuisance he now had to deal with. Everyone looked to him.
“Friends, nobles, countrymen,” he began. “My time here has ended.”
Before anyone could react, he raised his hands and his eyes warped into two black voids. When next Osric spoke, it was with a ringing, commanding boom.
“Be still,” he said and underneath his human voice was something greater, something ancient.
Holt was half-way through getting to his feet when he heard the sweet voice at the back of his mind. It was quite convincing and so he slowed himself down until his limbs barely moved. Everyone else suffered from the same effect. Talia raised her blade a sliver at a time. Harroway’s expression remained stuck in a silent gasp of surprise.
The sweet voice at the back of Holt’s mind told him again to “be still.” Holt froze in place, stuck in a half-squat. He could only blink and shift his gaze. He tried to shout but couldn’t, tried to summon magic but couldn’t.
Osric had just used magic. That meant he had become a dragon rider. And like Rake he had somehow cloaked his soul to prevent either Talia or himself sensing his presence. Not that either of them had thought to inspect him for a bond. The pair of them were outclassed once again.
“Stay still,” the sweet voice said. Holt fought it.
“Stay still,” it said. “There’s no need to move.”
“You can’t make me,” Holt told it. He pushed with all his might and his legs rose by another inch.
Gripped by his magic, Osric’s black eyes had lost their pupils but Holt knew he was now looking straight at him. The piercing stare had become literal. Lances of pain cut into Holt’s head like iron rods and Osric’s voice entered his mind like a dragon’s.
“You are not like the others.”
A harsh presence swept over his soul. Nothing gentle about it.
“Impressive for a bond to be so strong in one so young. And what is this song?”
Once again, stabs of blinding pain coursed through his head. Memories flashed before him, though he had not summoned them. They whisked through everything relating to Ash, lingering on the emerald Warden’s pleasure at discovering lunar magic. All the while, Holt continued his slow rise, pushing back against the power trying to keep him in place.
“Yes. You are the solution I’ve been waiting for.” “Get out of my head, Osric.”
The voice laughed, and as it laughed it lost all its humanity. Only the ancient, powerful, hateful part remained.
“Submit, Holt Cook. Know your place.”
No sweet voice this time. This time the need to stay still overwhelmed him. His knees buckled, and he hit the stone hard.
Why? Why did everyone want him to bend? He was his own man. He made his own choices, and he had faced the worst consequences already. For a lifetime he would feel the pain of those consequences. Once again, Holt fought back. Tears streamed from the effort and he worried his face would explode from concentration, but he lifted one leg to plant a foot firmly on the floor.
“Impressive,” the voice said. “You and Ash should join me, Holt. With your powers, my plans will be complete.”
Join him? Holt knew at once who this was now.
“I won’t join you, Sovereign.” “You will be mine.”
Holt’s head seared again. With a dawning horror, he realized this must be how Silas Silverstrike was turned. He wasn’t really a traitor after all.
“Oh, but I’m afraid he is, child,”’ the Sovereign said. “Clesh is the true believer in my cause. Silas is a begrudging pawn but understands he must
submit if he is to live. There will be space for you and Ash in my new world, if only you’ll join me freely.”
“Never,” Holt said, his inner voice trembling under the strain of the Sovereign’s will. “You killed Talia’s brother. You killed Brode. Your scourge killed my father. It’s all because of you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. Talia had started to defrost. Fire gathered in slow motion in her hand. Others were beginning to break free too, though much slower. Harroway backed away one glacial step at a time. Enough of the Sovereign’s will must be focused on Holt so the others were gaining a chance.
“I see them moving too, child,” the Sovereign said. Several things happened at once.
Holt gasped as the presence of the dragon left his mind and he collapsed. The magic holding Talia and everyone else broke. Talia released her Fireball at Osric. And from outside came shrill shrieks.
Osric – his eyes still black and possessed by the Sovereign – flicked Talia’s magic away as easily as Silas had. He drew his axes and cleaved through the guards attempting to subdue him with horrific efficiency. Talia ran toward the fight.
Holt only just picked himself off the ground when Ash cried out to him,
“Scourge coming!”
Even as Ash spoke, the huge stained-glass wall behind the throne shattered into a rainbow of glistening shards. Stingers poured in, alongside the heavier, beetle like bugs.
Holt spun around. “My sword?” he yelled to Eadwulf.
To the credit of the Twinblades they didn’t hesitate. Eadwulf tossed Holt his sword, and the pair of them drew theirs. Holt snatched his scabbard and belt out of the air, unsheathed his weapon and strode forward. The Twinblades flanked him like an honor guard.
Talia reached the steps to the throne just as the heavy beetles landed in the middle of the hall, cutting off Holt’s view of her. Their hardened backs lifted and out jumped, fell, crawled, dozens of ghouls that had been packed inside.
“Ash, we need you and Pyra in here now!” “We know!”
No more time to think. A ghoul swung a two-handed sword at his right side, but Holt’s new body allowed him to twist and turn the strike away
with ease. The dragon bond began to thrum, weakened from the day’s efforts it wouldn’t last for long. Ash was still too far away for Holt to draw upon the core.
Courtiers screamed. Everyone who wasn’t trained for combat ran for the exits to the upper or lower floors. Soldiers rushed to the center of the throne room where the carriers unloaded their ghoulish pay loads, but stingers picked individuals off.
Ash and Pyra roared their way in through the breach in the stained glass. Ash followed close behind Pyra as though she were a mother duck but dived for Holt upon entering. The dragon stumbled his landing, smacking into the back of a grounded carrier before toppling onto Holt’s side of the room. Ash scrambled up, sweeping his tail to knock ghouls over as he rose.
Holt darted to him. “We need to help Talia.”
As he spoke, she screamed out of sight and Pyra’s tail fell with a stone cracking thud.
Two more carriers entered, landed, and opened their backs. Ghouls shuffled at speed to join the melee in the center of the hall.
Holt couldn’t afford to hack his way through. Instead, he summoned Ash’s light, channeled it into his leg, and charged into the midst of the scourge, driving his foot down with force. Light spread across the floor, forming white veins as if the stone had turned to marble.
The ghouls didn’t react immediately. While a Lunar Shock would have blasted holes straight through them, this light weaving along the ground didn’t cause instant damage. Holt cursed, fearing he’d wasted his chance at an effective area attack. Purple-white light did begin to curl around the ghouls’ feet—they howled in pain but continued to fight.
Holt felt a surge of energy, perhaps a second wind. He struck quickly and fiercely at the nearest enemies, noticing that they seemed to slow with each passing second. Lunar magic began to climb up the ghouls’ legs, burning them as they stood on the light-crossed ground.
Whatever ability he had unleashed appeared to weaken the scourge over time. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something. The ghouls standing on the lunar-imbued ground became less agile, while he and the human guards remained unaffected.
Enough ghouls fell to open a path to their carrier.
“Come on,” Holt urged Ash. He softened the carrier’s shell with a Lunar Shock, and once they were close enough that Ash couldn’t miss, the dragon bathed the creature in his fiery breath. The carrier sizzled and slumped to the ground. Holt leaped, clearing the fallen insect, and landed hard on the other side.
Talia and Pyra were both directing jets of fire at Osric, who held them back with a spinning technique similar to how Rake had reflected Clesh’s magic.
Ash landed beside Holt with a beat of his wings and the pair of them started forward. Osric threw out a hand at them and clenched his fist. Once more, Holt felt lancing pain in his head and the total compulsion to stop moving. He dropped his sword.
“Do not waste your breath on this doomed city. They would not even defend you. They would have had you strung up for—” And just as suddenly the voice of the Sovereign broke off, replaced as though from far away by the human voice.
Osric’s voice. “Tell Talia I’m sorry. Tell her for me…”
His words trailed off into nothingness and the Sovereign returned. “Think on my offer, Holt Cook.”
With that, Osric swept both Pyra and Talia aside in an explosion of dark energy. Talia flew back, landing badly and rolled. Pyra reared her long neck back, roaring in pain.
Mixed with Pyra’s groans came a new ragged roar. The last panes of glass shook from the wall and a scourge risen dragon entered the fray. It moved unnaturally, scuttling quite unlike a dragon. Its milky greens eyes were fixed on Osric.
“It begins in your wretched land,” Osric announced in his dragonish voice. “You rodents will be purged. The scourge shall fulfill its purpose!”
Osric sheathed his axes, turned and leapt onto the back of the scourge dragon. They took off through the breach and what stingers remained in the hall buzzed out after them.
Holt sent a Lunar Shock after one but missed. His soul burned so he checked on the dragon bond. A flaw had appeared at the edge like glass beginning to crack under pressure. Time to stop.
Pyra looked, ready to chase after Osric, but Talia called her back. “Let him go.”
As the last ghoul sputtered to its death Holt moved to stand by Talia’s side. He said nothing, and she said nothing.
The enemy had struck at the heart of the kingdom. If there even was a kingdom left, after this.
