Holt
The swarm returned with such fury that the living had been forced to retreat at once. The inner ring was taken with hardly a fight. There were too many stingers in the air. Even if Talia and Pyra had been here, it wouldn’t have helped.
Here, at the gatehouse to the central ring with its portcullis shattered, Harroway had demanded his best men make a stand. Clad in plate armor, armed to the teeth, the cream of Sidastra’s soldiers drank vials of dragon blood and stand they did.
With their strength, the choke point of the ruined gateway, and Holt’s sparing Consecrations, not even abominations threatened the line. Just as it seemed they might hold, the air grew thick. Still at the front of the shield wall, Holt waited with bated breath. He cast out with his magical senses, but the storm clouds above distorted everything.
Then came the flash. The boom hit a split second later, drowning out the battle. Holt dashed out of the formation to see one of the ballista on the gatehouse reduced to splinters. A second flash and silver lighting blasted another crew from their nest. Thunder deafened their screams.
After a third lance of lightning, the Storm Lord and Clesh followed in its wake.
So, Silas had chosen to enter the fray after all. Holt gritted his teeth, not afraid, just resolute. It had been inevitable really. He checked his bond. It shook as though gripped by a fever. Well, that had been inevitable too.
“We have to do something,” Holt said. “Or they’ll blast every siege engine we have.”
“We can’t do anything on the ground,” Ash said. “You have an idea?”
“Yes. Let’s go!”
Holt would have questioned anyone else. Focusing their senses felt easier than before. Perhaps because their blood was up, their bond so open and raw, or because the noise of war and the stench of blood and death was all they could hear or smell. Holt climbed on Ash’s back. They said the words and their senses blended.
At once Clesh’s roars reverberated worse in Holt’s head. And now the dragon had dropped below the cloud line, his magical presence was as stark
as a lone mountain upon a grassy plain.
Ash took off, veering right to skirt the edge of the burning island which the stingers avoided. They banked a hard left, bearing around to approach Clesh from behind. Lightning fell all around the gray beast.
“I don’t think an ambush will work,” Holt said. “They’ll sense us.” “Exactly. I’m counting in it.”
Ash shot a beam at Clesh’s back. It missed, but the dragon did turn.
“Do not tempt me,” Clesh said. “How I would like to wipe your broken notes from our race’s song.”
Ash had continued flying toward Clesh and now veered past, fast as he could, heading back to the central ring.
“Feel free to try,” Ash called back. “Unless you fear a blind hatchling will outfly you.”
Clesh laughed aloud, a hoarse roar that made Holt’s skin crawl. He glanced over his shoulder and, sure enough, Clesh and Silas followed them.
“Want to let me in on the plan?” Holt asked.
“I just thought this would distract them,” Ash said. “Now I’m not sure.”
They crossed over the central ring of islands where the battle now raged. Corpses of stingers and carriers piled up due to heavy air defenses.
A fork of lightning struck ahead of them, removing a ballista platform from their flight path. Holt grimaced. Silas would take out any obstacle in his path one by one unless they somehow got him surrounded.
“Make for the palace,” Holt said. “The aerial defenses are heavy there.
One team might get a shot off before Silas can destroy them all.”
Ash beat his wings furiously.
“Come back, whelp,” Clesh called.
Another fork of lighting, this one so close that static shocked Holt’s limbs. Clesh and Silas surely wouldn’t miss them. They were playing with them.
“The Sovereign extends a final invitation.”
Ash came within range of the palace’s outer defenses.
“You must be special, weakling, to command his attention even with your impure blood.”
Holt felt Clesh’s hot breath on his back, then, in an instant, it left, and he sensed Clesh’s presence rising. Bolts shot out. Ash flew in low under them while Clesh appeared to continue ever higher.
“Climb,” Holt said. Many civilians had been packed inside the palace. “He’ll start attacking the palace unless we’re on it. Seems like he needs you alive.”
Ash roared from the effort of pulling up so suddenly, then they climbed, higher and higher. Holt clung on as tight as his enhanced body would allow and then Ash reached out with his talons, hit the red tiled roof of the palace and began scrambling up it. Part crawling, part leaping, part flying, Ash kept climbing until they reached the peak. Even up here there were ballista teams at every point of the compass.
Soldiers called out to him, trying to ask what was happening. Holt faced the team to the east but a silver bolt shattered the engine and threw men from the walls.
“Attack us!” Holt bellowed. He looked for a sign of Clesh, but the clouds seemed to close in on the palace, as though the sky was falling. A black fog engulfed the rooftop. Holt lost sight of even the ballista teams.
“We’re the ones you want,” he yelled.
Another flash even through the thick haze of fog; another boom, dampening the splintering wood and screams of the dragon’s latest victims.
“Leave with us.”
A second warning shot, this one so close that the force blew Holt from Ash’s back. Ash howled but Holt was gone. He rolled down the steep incline of the roof, flailing, fearing he too had gone blind from the flash before he landed with a crash.
Holt groaned. Even with an enhanced body that had hurt. His senses were once again his own – the impact must have severed his sense-sharing connection with Ash. Forcing himself to his feet, he discovered he had fallen onto a flat piece of connecting roof between two turrets. Ornate outcrops and windowsills protruded from the red tiles. He could climb and get back to Ash.
“Holt!”
Panic surged across their bond.
“I’m all right.” He squinted through the fog. A ballista platform was nearby. “We need to get a shot.”
“Come for your rider’s sake,” Clesh said.
Holt started to climb. At least the black fog made it impossible to look down.
“Your threat has no teeth.” Ash said. “If you kill him, I’ll never come with you.”
Holt leapt from the head of a statue to an arched window frame.
“Of course not,” Clesh said. “But if you care for your human at all, you’ll come with us and bring him. It will be the only way to keep him safe.”
“S-safe?” Ash said his defiance slipping.
“Don’t listen to him,” Holt said, before making another jump. He landed at his destination but lost sight of Ash in the fog. Just one more effort and he’d be at the ballista.
Clesh must have sensed Ash’s hesitation as well for his voice become silky. “Safe. Protected. A new world is coming, Ash, whether you help us or not. It cannot be stopped. A world for dragons. But our master is reasonable. He understands.”
“He’s lying,” Holt said. But, to his horror, he felt a quiver of doubt flit over their bond.
Ash was listening.
Holt made his final leap. His grip faltered as he half-pulled himself up and soldiers rushed to help him.
Clesh pressed his advantage. “He is like us, youngling. A dragon raised in captivity. A dragon raised in servitude to humans. He understands what the bonds do to us. How they trap us. He lost his rider long ago and wishes no dragon to feel that pain.”
“If… if I come with you… Holt will live?”
“Yesss,” Clesh hissed. Fresh lightning struck in the dragon’s excitement.
Holt couldn’t believe what was happening. This insanity had to end right now.
“Shoot him,” he pleaded with the crew.
“Can’t see anything, sir,” the soldier in control of the ballista said in a high voice. “Nuthin’ but darkness.”
Holt shoved the man aside, taking hold of the trigger as though for all the world he could see any better through the fog. He couldn’t even see Ash and they were far enough apart now that even the dragon’s core seemed distant and small. Panicked, Holt struggled to communicate telepathically.
“Ash!” Holt called, hearing his own voice falter. “Don’t listen to him.
Don’t. They’re evil. They killed Brode!”
“I know,” Ash said, his superb hearing picking up Holt’s words. “But you felt the Sovereign’s power. We can’t fight him, Holt. I… I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“If we go, Talia and Pyra will die. We didn’t come all this way just to abandon them!”
“You see,” Clesh said, “you see how the human guilts and controls you. Our master knows all too well. Sovereign, mightiest of the mystics, greater than the Elders – he shall free all our kind!”
Heavy wings beat on the air. Holt scanned ahead, desperate to see movement in the fog, anything to suggest where Clesh might be. Yet the thick smoggy clouds did not betray their summoner.
“You are right, Master Clesh,” Ash said. “I will come, if Holt will be spared. I do not wish the pain of it.”
“You choose wisely…” Clesh hissed again before celebrating in more of his twisted laughter that rattled the night as he beat his wings heavily. Holt felt the wind blown by them brush his face, but the fog remained impenetrable.
Holt’s breath caught in his throat. With a great effort he reached out telepathically and said lowly, “Ash, no…”
In reply, Ash sent him a memory – the same one he had sent when he’d lay half-dying, half-transitioning to Ascendant. Breaking through a tough shell, feeling cool air, smelling damp straw. All was dark. Frightening. There came a voice – Holt’s own voice – light and dreamlike.
“It will be all right.”
Ash’s voice followed up, quiet but strong. Only for Holt to hear. “My eyes for your eyes.”
Holt’s jaw dropped. He wanted to sense-share? Would it even work?
Brode said it would strain the bond greatly even over a short distance.
But that memory said it all. Ash trusted him in a way that was beyond words. Holt did too.
“My skin for your skin,” he said.
“My world for your world,” they said together.
Holt gasped, ready for his world to change. The dragon bond soared painfully under the effects. Cracks at the edges began fracturing. It would fray quickly. Worst of all, nothing came of it. His eyes could not pierce the fog.
“I don’t need eyes to see him,” Ash said. “Aim to the left.”
With dawning, wonderous realization Holt shifted the position of the ballista as Ash guided his aim.
“Come then,” Clesh boomed. “Find your rider and—” “Now!” Ash said.
Holt pulled hard on the trigger. The bolt sang.
Clesh screamed. A scream to shake the foundations of the palace. A beam of white light burst from the fog. Ash’s core flickered and sputtered out. Empty.
The sense-sharing broke. Their bond held by a hair.
And Clesh continued wailing. He hit the roof somewhere out of sight, smashing and scraping along the tiles. He roared and roared, his cries growing distant with each second until suddenly he roared no more.
Talia
They crossed into the palace grounds. Then froze mid-flight. Clesh was falling. Wing torn, he thrashed as he descended. More bolts found their mark, piercing his stony hide. Clesh fell and crashed into the gardens before the palace gates, his limbs collapsing beneath him.
He howled, writhed, failed to rise, then slumped over. Dead.
A void appeared in her magical senses where a giant had been moments before.
Talia almost fell from Pyra in shock. There wasn’t a moment to take it in. Stingers were on them. Pyra hurled fire while Talia swiped at the bugs with her blade.
“Land, girl,” she said.
Pyra weaved through their attackers and found a clear spot on the palace wall to perch on. The battle raged on, but they needed a moment.
Talia’s heart hammered. “Can you reach Ash? Are they—” “They live!” Pyra said.
A high triumphant roar rang, and Ash descended from the storm clouds of the palace. Pyra greeted him with a roaring chorus of her own, waving her tail with such glee to cause the soldiers nearby to scarper.
Ash landed beside Pyra, and Talia jumped off her dragon as Holt did
his.
“How did you…? What did you…?”
“It was all Ash,” Holt said. He ran back to give the white dragon a bear
hug. “He tricked Clesh so we could get a shot. Had me going for a second there too, the sneak! When did you get so cunning?” he said more to Ash than the others.
“I’ve heard how you talk to those who think themselves your superior,”
Ash said.
“I still can’t believe one shot did it,” Holt said.
“You hit his wing,” Talia said. “Once out of control he was an easier target for more bolts, but I think the fall alone would have got him. I’d say I can’t believe it but with your luck—” She broke off, too high on adrenaline and euphoria for words.
“There is still a swarm to deal with,” Pyra said. “And unless I am mistaken, Silas as well.”
Talia’s high dimmed. She rubbed at her eyes. “What?”
“There, by Clesh’s body,” Pyra said, pointing her long neck down toward the center of the grounds.
Sure enough, a lone figure now stood before the body of the fallen dragon. He bore a jagged blade of cold gray steel, although it sparked no longer, and he trudged forward, one pained step at a time, heading for troops scrambling to reform in the wake of the retreat. He started cutting the soldiers down.
“Come on,” Talia yelled. She’d just jumped on Pyra’s back when a screech rang from behind.
So loud, so painful, Talia pressed her hands against her ears to little avail. Ash wailed, an animal howl from the pain of it. A screech to mark the death of the world.
It ended a moment later, although Talia feared she’d hear that screech even in death. Her hands shook, and even the heat of Pyra’s core seemed snuffed out as though the screech had brought a frozen gale from the north.
Knowing what she’d find, dreading having to turn, she did.
The queen of the swarm had arrived. Huge did not suffice for this creature. To her, Pyra was but an insect. The queen flew, passing over the raging fire of the west quarter, summoning all her stingers to her side. It descended to an island on the inner ring, and what Talia took to be a lower abdomen unfurled out into four mighty legs upon which the queen landed. She – it – was unlike anything else of the scourge. There was a disturbing human quality to the way it stood upright, with the hardened carapace of a juggernaut draped over its frame like a travelling cloak. It even had a cowl of that same armor, casting its face in darkness from which two pools of a malicious red energy swirled for eyes.
“Ash’s core is spent,” Holt said mechanically.
Talia checked Pyra’s. Maybe ten per cent of the total power remained.
Their bond shook from the night’s work.
Silas slaughtered men before the palace. The queen rallied her swarm for the final push. Talia almost laughed – stuck between a quick death and an instant death. Given that, her choice became easy.
She tightened her grip on her blade. Sidastra was lost. Feorlen was lost. She’d known that in her heart since she’d returned to the Crag to find the Order gone. Sidastra was lost, but Talia would go down fighting.
