Fire Starter
Just as Ravi Matriya is finally falling asleep, a stern feminine voice tells him that the weather for tomorrow is dragons. He jerks awake again, before realising that one of the dryads is relaying this to the entire city via the wood of its buildings. She lays out the choice between sheltering in their matronly arms and going it alone in the vast, dark, scary forest, and it doesn’t surprise Ravi when, shortly thereafter, people begin gently dribbling in towards the centre of the city and the lumpy form of Ilintorphrassil.
He is woken again later by another voice, this one belonging to Tremythanira. Her tone is just as playful as the last time they spoke, but her message is one with a sombre heart: the dragons come. It is time to prepare.
These preparations hurry around and away from Ravi. He ghosts through them, with nothing to contribute and only his own thoughts to entreat him. They do this by ruffling his feathers and doubting his courage, pushing him towards the park and the safety of the dryad’s big, fireproof tree. He has been listening to them for too long, though. Instead, his feet take him to where a grand wooden gate is fastened tight against the silent forest and the looming shape of an angry volcano.
There are stairs leading up the ramparts, somewhere, but Ravi leaps to a second-floor window then bounds across the road onto the opposite roofs. From there it’s another three stories to the top of the gate. He is not the first person to arrive.
Tremythanira and Aetokelishpa stand either side of Clara, and Fire Chief Torglif stands at the centre of the gatehouse, broad arms folded across his barrel chest.
“Welcome to our grand army, Ravi Matriya,” Tremythanira says.
Ravi looks up and down the walls. They are conspicuously bare.
She smiles her cheeky smile. “It may feel lonely, but this is our strategy. There is nobody else in the city who could hope to hurt a dragon. To field a conventional human army would be to condemn everyone in it to death.”
“They may serve as a distraction,” Aetokelishpa says.
“And this is why you were vetoed out of the strategy meeting.”
“I do not wish to waste lives,” Aetokelishpa says, meeting Clara’s eyes earnestly for a moment, “but this is a war. Casualties are in the nature of war.”
Tremythanira sighs and looks back to Ravi. “You see?” she says. “There is no place in a strategy meeting for someone so bad at strategy.” She winks at him as Aetokelishpa’s face draws down into a scowl.
“What of the other dryads?” Ravi says, to forestall further argument. Tremythanira is right. Seeing hundreds of people die before them just for the sake of buying time would be utterly horrifying. The demoralising effect it would have on their effective forces would outweigh any benefit the extra time might bring, even ignoring the ethical implications.
“We are only five,” Tremythanira says with a shrug. “The other three will be holding the fort. You know, keeping the people calm, trying to stop fires from spreading, being the last line of defence for if we all die.”
“We won’t,” Clara says, soft but fierce. It is the first she has spoken since Ravi arrived. “We can’t.”
Aetokelishpa takes her hand and squeezes it. “Do not worry,” she says.
Clomping boots on the stairs herald the arrival of Rolleck the Lost, and he has Riyo slung over his shoulder. She is snoring.
“Hopefully she won’t sleep through the entire thing,” Rolleck says, “but…” He shrugs her off carelessly, just grabbing her wrist as it passes his hand to keep her from slamming her head on the floor. She jerks to an uncomfortable halt, then lets out another loud snore. Rolleck lets her flop the rest of the way to the floor.
“Are we worried about that?” Ravi says, glancing at the chief.
He shrugs his massive shoulders uncertainly. “To exert yourself in our arts causes some blowback, after a while. If we keep our realities open for too long, it hurts when we close them. For it to hurt other people upon closing…” He shakes his head. “That’s a new one on me.”
That draws in the silence, and an ominous rumble pulls their attention back to Yl Torat.
“Could they make her erupt?” Rolleck asks.
“Yes,” the chief says, “but to do so would mean carving out their entire city anew, so they won’t.”
Rolleck grunts.
Yl Torat continues grumbling like a sulking teenager, letting out wisps of smoke that are just visible in the gloom.
The next one to arrive is the sun, pitching streamers of energy up from beyond the horizon and into the undersides of the clouds behind them.
“What of Emerald?” Ravi asks. Her absence becomes an ever more pressing issue as the sky grows lighter.
Aetokelishpa growls. “She left the city last night. She passed into the forest, but then she left it again. The trees do not see her. It is possible I was overly dismissive of the Mayor’s fears.”
“It doesn’t mean she’s betrayed us,” Ravi says. He has met the dragon woman all of twice, and briefly both times, but even so she does not strike Ravi as someone who would easily go back on her word. “She might have done something noble but stupid, like trying to take down her brother by herself.”
“Or the trees do see her, they’re just not telling you.”
Everyone turns. Riyo is sitting up. She yawns at them, stretching her arms, then stands.
“She would have to be a dryad,” Clara says. “And she’s obviously not…”
“Nor are you,” Riyo says. She wanders over to the edge of the gatehouse and waves into the forest.
Emerald steps from the shade beneath one of the closest trees, touching its bark tenderly as she passes its trunk. Both dryads and Clara gasp at the same time.
“I never would have thought it was possible…” Tremythanira says as Emerald leaps, beating her wings only once to carry her up to the gatehouse.
“If there is anything I have learned,” she says folding her wings and turning to the dryads, “it is that almost everything is possible. We are all so much younger than the tress, and they, younger than the mountains.” She looks up at Yl Torat. “And even they are young, in the grand reckoning of things. To believe anything cannot be so is hubris.”
“This is it, then, huh?” Riyo says, because it is too early in the morning for profound thoughts delivered so sternly. She looks over their league of dragon slayers.
“It’ll have to do,” the chief says.
Yl Torat roars. A burst of ash and smoke billows up into the sky, and a tremor runs through the ground.
“The mountain is upset,” Emerald says. “It has become accustomed to peaceable dragons. The new tension is disruptive.”
“She’s quite sensitive, for something so large,” Rolleck notes.
“My father cultivated a relationship, of sorts, with the mountain. It is not alive, but, like the trees, it is affected by the things that happen around and within it. In some ways, it reflects the emotions of those it shares its earth with.”
Ash falls from the sky. After a time, it becomes clear that some of the airborne specks are not small and nearby, but large and far away. The tension of the moment presses in, the sense of coming conflict making the space feel closer.
Until Riyo starts laughing joyously. They all look at her.
“Count them.”
There is a pause.
“Thirteen,” Ravi says.
“Thirteen!” Riyo squeals, bouncing on her toes. “Bracken took out seven of them!”
“But thirteen of them got past him,” Clara says. “I hope he’s okay.”
“He’s fine,” Riyo says. “Well. Maybe not fine. But he’s alive.” She glances at Emerald, briefly, but then returns her eyes to the approaching dragons. “All we have to do is clean up for him.”
“Easy,” Rolleck says. “Thirteen means less than two each.”
His sarcasm is, of course, lost on Riyo.
“Exactly. And dragons suck.” She looks at Emerald again. “Uh…”
“It’s fine,” she says. “Today, I am not so fond of them myself.”
“So, what’s the game plan?” the chief asks. “I have matched up with your brother a few times and have never been able to truly hurt him. It has taken myself and at least a trio of the dryads to drive him away all the times he came before. Are they all as strong as he?”
“No,” Emerald says, shaking her head. “To be honest, I don’t know much of those who follow Black, but only he and I were taught extensively by Bracken and my father. Bronze was always a close rival to my brother, so their strengths are likely still similar.”
“Bracken was the dragon you just claimed defeated seven other dragons, yes?” the chief says.
“Yes. But do not worry about them.” Emerald clenches her fist. “They are mine. Perhaps once they get a little closer I can give you more information about the rest.”
“Black flies in the centre of the formation,” Ravi says.
Emerald turns to him, then back to the oncoming flight. They are still dark flecks against grumpy cloud to her.
“To his left is a bronze scaled dragon. They fly close together. To his right is an enormous, grey-green-scaled dragon.”
“Rival,” Emerald said. “She is the largest dragon ever born in Yl Torat, and her strength reflects it. She cannot match Bronze or my brother, but she is likely the closest among their followers.”
Ravi describes the remaining dragons but, though Emerald can name them all, only Essence, Spirit and Riot stand out in her memory. Smaller than most, Riot has a short neck and shimmering silver scales that refract the light. Emerald remembers fragments of their time spent scrapping and playing together, so young that there is little left that pierces through the misty veil of her memory.
“She was always much faster than me,” Emerald says. “I suspect she may have grown faster still in the time I was away.” Their colours are coming visible to her own eyes by now. “Essence and Spirit are twins, perfectly balanced and synchronised. Even before I left they were winning sparring contests against any other pair that would challenge them.” By their shapes, she is reminded that they are ultimately the same. And yet she must kill them. A young, excited Riot flits through her mind, crossing an arbitrary finish line in the crater of Yl Torat and laughing as Emerald comes in a sorry second place. A pair of grey-scaled youngsters stand in the centre of the crater while a crowd of their elders cheer and praise them.
She crushes those images. Replaces them with one of her father, smiling. A smile she will never see again. Because of her own mistakes, but also because of Black.
Ravi unshoulders his bow and checks it over as the dragons get closer. When they are a little over a kilometre away, he sighs and steps forward.
“Riyo.”
“Huh?”
“I’d like to apologise for not coming with you to the crater yesterday.”
“Eh?” She says, then shrugs. “It’s fine. You don’t need to apologise.”
“It isn’t really for your benefit. You may not have cared, but it bothered me. It made me ask a lot of questions of myself that don’t have simple answers.” He slips an arrow from his quiver, knocks it to his string. “I think travelling with you might help me find some of them, though, so I was going to ask: is it alright if I continue to tag along?”
“Of course,” Riyo says. “You’re my friend.”
Ravi smiles, and sees Tremythanira wink at him in his peripheral vision.
“Thank you,” he says. “And you wished to learn how to squash dragons because the place you wish to go holds threats far greater?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think I’m getting the knack for it, too.”
“Well then,” he says, and draws his bow. His cursebreaker crackles amidst his feathers, wrapping around the arrow in jagged spirals that leave soft afterimages. “I suppose I had better develop a knack for it, too.”
He looses the arrow, and silence pours into the space behind it. He counts the seconds as they waddle by. Once five of them elapse, the earthen-scaled dragon at the left edge of the formation, the one named Entropy, loses a chunk of his wing, close to where it meets his shoulder.
He slumps in the air, no longer able to hold the wing properly, and begins a drunken corkscrew down towards the forest. Not the perfect shot, but acceptable given the wind and distance.
Riyo is grinning at him, Rolleck smiling faintly, while the others are wearing varying degrees of gobsmacked.
“They will be prepared for the next one,” Ravi says.
Ravi scores three more hits before the dragons close on the city, but only one forces the creature to earth. Ravi suspects neither of the downed dragons is out, but perhaps they will forgo the assault in favour of licking their wounds. Perhaps.
The sound of their landing rocks the foundations of Folvin, shakes dust from the rooftops and drives birds to terrified flight all across the Song.
Emerald and Black stare at one another over the short stretch of road before the gate. Emerald knows that words are useless at this point. That Black must be destroyed to end his ruinous ambitions.
And yet.
“This Song is our home, brother,” she says.
“And it is infested,” Black roars. “I will purge its vermin, make it fit for us to live in.”
“Those ‘vermin’ have thoughts and feelings, just like us,” Emerald says. “They may not have our longevity, but they have a thousand other things that we do not. All you’re doing is cutting us off from the rest of the world, making enemies where we could make friends.
“Black, this is our last chance. Father built our kingdom and opened it to the world. He wanted us to thrive alongside the other races, not above them. Please turn back, before they are beyond forgiving you for what you’ve already done.”
“I am king,” Black roars. “And this is my will.”
Emerald grits her teeth. “Then come. Roar blindly into the faces of those who’ve done you no wrong and see what you’ve wrought against your own people.”
Black breathes flame in response, and the other dragons take up the rally. Streams of colourful fire merge and infect one another, creating a muddy orange ball of intense flame that fights the sun for prominence over the dawn.
Water rushes down the front of the gate, splashing the ground below into mud. The wood beneath Emerald’s feet groans and creaks, as if it is tensing for a blow. The fireball crashes into a waterfall and births a pillar of steam that washes over them. It should scald the humans among them raw, but instead billows up and away from them.
Riyo frowns. “That was good for drama, but we probably shouldn’t just sit here eating their attacks. We’ll tire ourselves out.”
“The more of Folvin we can save, the happier I’ll be,” Chief Torglif says.
“Let’s take this to them,” Rolleck says. His sword is humming its hungry song in his head.
“I’d rather not, to be honest,” Ravi says, then raises his hands defensively. “I’m an archer. I’m no use up close.” He draws his next arrow. “Besides, they’ve given me cover that I can see through and they can’t. I’d be mad to leave the gatehouse.”
“The archer knows what he’s about,” Tremythenira says with a smirk. “As do we all. Once the steam is cool enough that we can traverse it, we begin.”
“Several of the dragons are not waiting that long,” Ravi says. He is reluctant to give up their element of surprise by firing, but the longer they wait, the less use their cover is.
“Eh, let’s go now,” Riyo says. “Ready?” She looks to Rolleck and Emerald.
Emerald inhales her pilot. Her heart is already beating an angry rhythm thanks to her brother’s foolish bigotry, so it is no time at all before an indigo inferno erupts from beneath her scales.
Rolleck simply nods.
Riyo hits the guard rail at a run, and feels her companions leap up behind her. She crouches, then falls, past the point of no return. The moment she is in the right position, she weighs nothing. She pushes off from the railing and shoots through the steam like a bullet, parting it before it can touch her. An arrow whizzes by her, and as she breaches the cloud she sees the dragons charging. It is undisciplined. They are here to stomp on insects, not fight a battle. They do not see any danger before them, and so they cannot react when it arrives.
Riyo leaves Emerald to her own devices. Rolleck, however, she trusts to mimic her, and he does. One of the dragons a little further back takes a flickering blue arrow in the eye. At this distance, Ravi’s shots are difficult enough to avoid when they can be seen. From behind the steam, they are nigh unavoidable. The dragon stumbles, screaming, and distracting his companions enough that they do not see Riyo.
With some delicate adjustments, she hits the foremost dragon in the throat. Her new sword crushes scales and parts flesh, hooks in such a way that she now has a handhold. Then, she weighs a ton, and so does her sword. Her gravity drags her to earth, carving a track of acrid, sulphurous blood straight down the dragon’s chest.
Rolleck feels it when he loses Riyo’s help. His momentum is such that his sudden weight does not end his flight, but it does arch him sharply downwards. It doesn’t matter. He has been fighting without Riyo for as long as he can remember. He sees Riyo hit her mark, and then sees his own. He has angled his flight slightly to the left of Riyo’s, and so he is coming in hot on the dragon to the left of hers. His dipping arc lets him stick out his sword arm and cleave clean through most of the dragon’s right foreleg. He hits hard but rolls to his feet and into a run. He jams his blade into the dragon’s belly, letting out a yell as he drags it towards the creature’s tail and ripping free just in time to dive aside as it comes down.
Another arrow streaks from the mist and hits the same target, this time in the back of the neck as it arrests its charge and turns to flee for safety. A fourth dragon, to the right of Riyo’s first finds itself on the end of a jet of water so fierce it is like charging into the rock of Yl Torat. It stops dead, and Riyo is already darting towards it. Her strides are impossibly long, and she gains speed with every one, twitching and tweaking the way gravity does and does not touch her. She leaps, and it carries her onto the creature’s shoulder just as another jet of water hits it in the face. Chill white scales rend and crunch to give way to hot black blood.
Riyo hacks at the back of the creature’s neck as it writhes, her sword as light as air as she raises it and as heavy as a mountain as it falls. She holds on until the dragon tries to roll, then she springs free, flipping neatly through the air and landing beside the fire chief, who drives the wounded dragon to the ground with another powerful blast.
A rare silence descends upon the morning as the fallout of the last minute settles into place. Emerald stands atop Thrift, a dragon she had barely known or cared for even before he came between her and her brother. His left wing is now a tangle of melted flesh and charred bone. His left foreleg is snapped backwards and gouged into ruin. Her talons rest on the back of his skull, promising that movement will spell his death.
Black stands before her. He hasn’t joined the charge. Nor have Rival or Bronze. They still flank him, honour guards with no honour. Riot has waited too, along with the twins, Essence and Spirit. They linger beyond the other fortunate mooks who had committed to the charge a little late. Like the back line of a chess set.
Even so, losing so many pawns so quickly has upset Black, and the other fodder will now be hesitant to take up his battle cry. Emerald can see the hatred in his eyes, and she hates it right back. It has no basis, no reason. Blind fury towards people he has never met, never even tried to understand.
Bronze steps forward and Black leans down to heed his counsel. Soft words pass between them, then Black nods and yells, “Scatter. Destroy this wretched wooden nest.”
The dragons roar, some, as Emerald has predicted, a little late and a little quiet. Still, they take to the sky, powerful wings rushing dust from the ground into grand swirls.
Emerald raises her foot and slams Thrift’s head against the floor, knocking him senseless. She keeps her eyes on Black, but neither he nor Bronze make to join the attack. Instead, they face her down.
The other four members of the inner circle stir. The twins bound away together, their movements as synchronised as always. Rival leaps into the sky, her massive wings eclipsing the rising sun. Riot tenses, then streaks past her towards the city, twinkling like pouring water and leaving a haze of sparkles behind her. She is almost too fast for Emerald to see.
None of them matter. Black remains.
“Are you not worried, brother?” she asks. “Do you see, now, what Bracken sought to teach you?”
“Your little coterie is strong,” Black growls, “but they are all you bring against us, from a city of thousands.”
“Exactly,” Emerald says. “Folvin is small, as human cities go. You would know that, if you ever listened to their words, read their histories. Beyond this Song there are twenty-three others, all of them populated by humans, all of them with one or two in every thousand to rival the strength of a dragon.
“In the Tower’s End Song sits Ragg, a city of millions. In just that city alone, then, is enough power to wipe out our kingdom with ease. Riling them, making them our enemies for no reason other than your own selfish desire to burn this forest, is doom for us all. Do you care so little for father’s work that you will destroy it before his blood is even dry on your claws?”
Bronze steps in front of Black, growling. “Perhaps you are right,” he says. Perhaps the humans will come. But by the time they get here, they will face more than just dragons.” He grins. “They will face a whole new power.”
He closes his eyes, and the silence stretches. Something silvery flickers on his neck, and Emerald realises what this pause is for.
“No,” she whispers. But Bronze’s flames grow stronger and brighter, billowing out around him.
He laughs, then, his cowl shuddering with him. “Who could stand against us with this power, Princess?”
Ravi’s spirit is buoyed by the team’s success. His fluffy cover is dissipating now, but beyond it lie four defeated dragons. Somewhere in the forest, two more are rendered flightless. What was once an oncoming avalanche of scaled fury is now a wall with a handful of jagged breaches in it, and through them spill hope.
The remaining dragons begin to move. Most take to the air, but one simply grows bigger. This, Ravi realises, is because it is coming closer. Very, very quickly.
“Clear the gatehouse,” he shouts at Clara and the dryads. While the words are coming out he is knocking another arrow and moving backwards. The arrow flies as true as any he’s ever fired, straight for the prismatic dragon’s eye.
It hits her claw, and for a moment there is a rainbow painted across the remaining wisps of steam, arching over them like a second gate to the city.
Ravi pushes off the back railing of the gatehouse just before the dragon hits, and the first gate explodes into splinters. He lands in the middle of the road and knocks another arrow, pointing it at the cloud of wood and dust. A silvery shape shifts the shrapnel, but as Ravi lets go his shot it moves.
The arrow hits nothing, and Ravi watches in horror as the dragon bounds off the houses to his left like a cat and lunges towards him. She’s too big to dodge aside from, too fast to outrun from a standing start. Ravi yells and takes his only safe course, diving under the strike and then leaping up to the rooftops just as the dragon’s tail swipes across the lower floors of the houses, crunching yet more façade into firewood.
Ravi has another arrow airborne as soon as he turns, but Riot’s claw is a twinkling blur as it swipes across the arrow’s path. Ravi’s supernatural eyes follow it, this time. She isn’t fast enough to truly deflect his shots, only intercept them. Both of the arrows she has blocked are buried in the flesh at the centre of wounds that make craters in her foreleg.
She coils her body and snarls. Ravi digs his talons into the slant of the roof, ready to propel himself out of the way of whatever comes next. He’s at a severe disadvantage – her speed allows her to make his every attack an inconsequential nuisance, while she need only land a single strike to turn him into giblets. He can feel his legs shaking, feel the anguish of adrenalin begging him to run. His heart thrums and the breeze slips past his feathers. He feels as though he is flying.
Riot’s throat contracts, and that is all Ravi needs. He dives over the peak of the roof and slides down the other side as a roiling wave of amaranthine fire scorches the air he has just vacated. He grabs the eave and swings through a window, into a world of thick, black smoke. His eyes might pierce it, but he is no more able to breathe it than anybody else. He holds onto his last breath, slipping into the next room that fronts onto the street where the dragon waits.
He spots her through the window, and she is close enough to the smoke of her own roiling flames that her chance of seeing the arrow coming are slim. It whips through the cloud on flickering blue wings, straight for Riot’s right eye.
And before it even leaves the smoke, she ducks.
Ravi almost inhales his own tongue along with two lungs worth of smoke. Even while he chokes he’s running, pitching himself out through the same window he’d entered by as a new inferno explodes into life behind him. He feels it like the sun on his back, feels the tips of his tail feathers char and wither.
He lands with none of his former grace, stumbling across the alley and slumping against the wall opposite. Behind him, what had once been a neat, sturdy house crashes into an infernal ruin. Through its flame and fume, Ravi sees a massive silvery shape coming towards him. He turns and runs.
Rolleck the Lost chases a dragon. In all of his prior imaginings of such a scenario, the characters are very much in reverse positions. For a moment, he baffles at the strange turn his life has taken ever since he found Riyo Falsemoon cooking a dead bear. That was barely more than two weeks ago.
His quarry, the largest of the dragons, lights upon the largest building – possibly the city hall. Whatever it is, it will not remain so for long. Rival rams a massive claw through the artfully-grown wooden dome, rips a hole in it, then breathes liquid turquoise flame down through the building’s interior. Rolleck comes to a halt in the plaza before it and watches a wave of fire burst from the ground floor windows and doors, rushing hot air into his face. He breathes it in, tasting sulphur.
Rival roars and beats her wings, making Rolleck scowl.
“I never thought I would be annoyed that a dragon kept running away from me,” he says.
“Perhaps I can help,” Fire Chief Torglif says.
Rolleck glances at him. He is leaning against the last house before the plaza, watching the dragon as intently as Rolleck.
Rolleck refuses to give him the satisfaction of being surprised. “You got here quickly.”
The big man shrugs. “The city is already done for, but that doesn’t matter. As long as the people remain safe, we can just regrow their homes. Eventually, the dragons will realise that, too.”
Rolleck glances to his right. Sure enough, the plaza edges onto the orchard with Ilintorphrassil at its centre. As far as he can tell, Rival is the dragon closest to the arbour fortress, and she is eyeing it hungrily.
“You said Gruff couldn’t scratch the thing.”
“He never tried that hard – the dryads were much slower to help me fight him off if their home wasn’t directly threatened. I imagine, with enough dragons breathing on it, even their sacred tree will catch.”
“Well then,” Rolleck says, “how do we stop them if they won’t sit still?”
“We make them sit still,” Torglif says, then narrows his eyes.
Just as Rival lifts off the roof, a jet of water materialises above her left wing and slams down into it, killing her upward momentum on that side and driving her heavily into the steadily-growing inferno that used to be the city hall. She flounders, wrecking more of the wall as she tries to disentangle herself. The fire chief doesn’t let her. More jets blast her every time she looks like she has righted herself, and they keep her on course until she crashes into the paving stones of the plaza, accompanied by a cacophony of crackling flame and rent wood.
“All yours,” Torglif says. His breath is much heavier now.
“Are you sure?” Rolleck says, raising his eyebrow. “Why not just finish it now?”
“I can’t.” The chief scowls. “My reality can create water jets with enough pressure to blow a hole in a man’s chest, but that isn’t even close to enough to pierce their hides. All I can do is bat them about a bit until I run out of stamina.”
“Huh,” Rolleck says. “Could you also keep her from setting me on fire, by any chance?”
“That I can.”
“Then I’m in your care until I’m close enough to stab her.” Rolleck starts jogging towards where Rival has fallen. She regains her feet with a roar that bounces off Calis, her wings sending soot and embers out in a halo around her. She spots Rolleck and lowers her head, flickering turquoise light visible between teeth as long as Rolleck’s legs. It unfolds towards him like a sunburst from a dying star, near-blinding in its intensity.
There is water in front of Rolleck. The wave has folded over him, and he stands in a tube of chill air, like a surfer rushing in towards the beach. Fire crashes against the wall of water, and Rolleck can see it flashing into vapour, bubbles forming and frothing the clear water to billowing white and grey. He darts left, following the corridor of air as the wave curls around towards the dragon. Behind him, an underwater explosion sends spray and steam climbing hundreds of metres into the morning sky.
He breaches the surf right by Rival’s right foreleg, and rams his sword into her ankle, dragging it through scale and muscle until it comes free. She screams, then. Not a roar, but a full-throated screech that reminds Rolleck of a bird of prey. She brings the foot up and slams it down on Rolleck, but he jumps aside and adds another slash beside the first.
Rolleck’s hearing seems to fade away, leaving only his own breath and that of the dragon. The world of flickering flame and sloshing water outside their dance floor blurs, and the stench of acrid smoke becomes softer, like incense. The focus slows everything down. The dragon’s movements are huge, allowing him to twitch between them and score hits by striking out in almost any direction.
Hits that land like papercuts. He cannot risk becoming entangled, cannot afford to stop moving. Even given a stationary target, he is not sure he can physically stab her deep enough to do any significant damage. He needs her to make a mistake.
For one who runs so hard, you certainly enjoy fighting.
Rolleck doesn’t let the voice touch him. He can feel his sword even more intimately, now. As though his blood flows through it, as though his nerves reach into its iron.
Rival roars and leaps into the air, her wings slamming enough air down at him to force him to his knees. The fire chief intervenes once more, misbalancing her before she is truly airborne. Thankfully, he tips her away from Rolleck, rather than crashing her directly into him. He feels the ground move as she comes down, but he’s expecting it and it doesn’t trip him. His sword slides into the dragon’s exposed belly easily, until his hand bumps against her scales. He wrenches the blade downwards quickly, yanking it out at the bottom of his strike and stumbling back before the creature’s caustic blood can bathe him.
Rival shrieks once more, thrashing to her feet. Rolleck retreats further, almost losing his head to her unpredictable movements.
“Enough,” she screams. “Your magic tricks and chicken scratches are futile.” She rears up on her hind legs, her neck extended. She reaches halfway to the clouds, and Rolleck sees just how right she is. On him, the cut he has made in her belly would be the result of straying a little too close to a thorn bush. His only hope is to find a weak spot, and it seems only her head will do. He has to crane his own neck to even see it, from here.
“I will show you what awaits this city, this forest, this whole world. Humanity will know nothing but flame and death.”
She inhales. Rolleck sees her chest inflate, drawing in more air than any dirigible could hope to contain. Twinkling in her throat is her pilot flame, seemingly unruffled by the gale rushing past it. It looks so delicate, compared to the conflagrations it has helped to create. Rolleck cannot help but wonder what might happen if it were extinguished.
Yosht Torglif cannot help but wonder either. A jet of water bursts from the air before her gaping maw, rushing towards the fluttering lantern.
Rival’s jaw closes with a crash like a portcullis falling. The water sprinkles her teeth. Harmless.
Then she exhales, and the entire plaza burns.
Riyo Falsemoon sits in a tree. It is the largest tree she has ever climbed, and it has a long name that she has already forgotten. The city around her is on varying shades of fire, and actually looks quite pretty.
To add boring dragon insult to boring dragon injury, none of them will fight her. They swish around in the sky, breathing beautiful arcs of flame onto beautiful wooden houses, and every time she tries to engage one it swoops beautifully away. She has caught up with one, so far, and it turned out tripling the weight of something that physically shouldn’t be able to fly at all while its hundreds of feet above the ground is enough to do some serious damage, crafting-resistance or no.
In theory, Riyo should be able to use her reality to fly. She has experimented and found that doing so for any notable period of time tires her out extremely quickly. Far quicker than any other use of her crafting. It frustrates her, because she doesn’t understand why. One day she will figure it out, but until then the best she can do is jump around weightlessly. Certainly useful, but not flight, and not enough to catch up with a soaring dragon.
So, Riyo waits and hopes it doesn’t take too long for them to realise they can only truly achieve their goal by coming to her. A pair of them are circling close by, and after torching a few more houses they drift towards her. While the dragons Riyo has seen so far have all varied wildly in their sizes, colours and features, these two are mirror images. Emerald had called them twins, but Riyo has already forgotten their names. She is quick to forget names that aren’t particularly important to her.
The two ignore her, flapping their wings lazily as they approach, allowing them to rise above the monster tree and breathe down on it. True to the dryad’s words, this does nothing. A few charred leaves drift past Riyo, but even these have not caught properly. This perplexes the dragons, and they both land on bulbous branches large enough to house a small village to give it another shot from closer up. Riyo grins and bounds up to one of their perches.
“The people of Folvin are inside,” she tells the first dragon. He looks at her with angry black eyes, a growl somewhere deep in his throat shaking the branch. “If you’re really willing to kill that many people just to prove how special you all are, all you have to do is get through me.”
“Humans are nothing,” the dragon says.
“We would disagree. We could have a civil discussion about it, if you like.” She gestures towards him. “You must have reasons you think we’re worthless, reasons I could maybe convince you are wrong. How about it?”
The dragon breathes fire at her, but that’s a trick she’s seen before. Dragons continue to suck.
“Thought so,” she says, once the flames have passed her by. “Question is, will you believe I’m far from nothing if I kick your arse?”
She pulls her sword from her back and doesn’t even bother redirecting the next breath. It’s easier for her to fall to the branch above her, then invert gravity again to fall straight into the dragon’s face before he’s even realised she wasn’t engulfed in his flame.
The other dragon swings a massive claw at her. It clashes against her claw-sword, and she manages to switch her fall direction again so that his push just assists her escape, rather than breaking her arms. She comes down on the trunk of the tree and looks up to where the two dragons now squat beside one another. A few vibrant orange flames burn along the branch, but they quickly begin to fade, refusing to eat the dryad’s home.
Riyo shrinks her reality down around her. There are no convenient masses of rock she can break open to use as projectiles here, and she is now stuck in a two-on-one. This may prove to be a challenge.
The dragons come on as one, teeth flashing clean and white, contrasting with their dull grey scales. Twin roars mingle with each other, creating a sound that pushes down against her. She tightens her grip on her sword and roars right back, feeling a rush of excitement thrill through her muscles. She leaps out to meet them.
It’s a mess. Riyo shifts her gravity constantly, never giving the two dragons time to adapt to her movements. She bounces between them, changing direction in mid-air to dodge their swipes and land neatly on exposed parts of their bodies, leaving gouges in their scales and coating her blade with caustic blood before sliding away through the air. Shallow wounds, for dragons, but she starts adding them up, one by one by one. She feels the dragons’ fury growing, feels their movements becoming less precise. Meanwhile, she rests on the edge of the blade in her mind, just as her master has taught her. It gives her balance, synchronises her movements with the changes in her reality, makes her reactions quick and precise. It’s exhilarating.
She sees an opening. One of the dragons swings at her too slowly, and she rolls neatly over it. Her reality expands at the speed of thought, engulfing the huge talon and magnifying its weight. Claws meant for her instead rip devastating tracks of sulphurous blood across the other dragon’s neck. Its acrid stench builds in the air in the moments that follow. Riyo can hear it; the relentless glug-glug, like decanting wine. The silence of shock contains everything else.
She orients herself to the branch they are fighting above. During the fight it was irrelevant – her position only mattered in relation to the dragons. Now she lands, the sound of her boots scuffing the bark seeming to start the flow of time once more.
The wounded dragon screams, a gout of undirected flame billowing in a wild arc as the creature flails. The whole branch shakes, claws raking away its bark, digging deep into much softer wood beneath. Glowing amber sap spills forth from the wounds, fizzing where its pools meet those of dragon’s blood.
“No,” the twin dragon says. It’s soft, still coated in disbelief. “No!” This one is a roar that hurts Riyo’s ears, carries its anguish over the city like a death knell.
The dying dragon falls still, bringing back the silence.
The one that remains turns to Riyo. There are tears spilling over its scales.
“What have you done?” it growls.
“What you wanted to do to every human being in this city,” Riyo says, narrowing her eyes. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll kill you,” the dragon promises.
“You’ll try.”
The dragon roars, but he does not lunge forward. Instead, he jerks in place, as though his desire to strike outstrips his body’s willingness to do so.
Riyo’s eyes find the dragon’s legs and widen. The bark beneath the creature has split, glooping more sap out into the air. From that sap, thick vines slither and coil, wrapping themselves around the dragon’s limbs and holding him fast to the branch.
Riyo starts at a presence beside her, then frowns.
“That was going to be a good fight,” she says.
The dryad – not one she recognises from earlier, but just as naturally beautiful – shrugs. “We appreciate your help in this matter, crafter, but this is our home, and we will defend it. Your desire for a challenge is irrelevant.”
Vines are creeping all over the dragon now, and a particularly thick one finds its neck.
“I hope your empty hatred is enough to keep your spirit warm while Illintorphrassil consumes your body, dragon.”
The vine curls, thickens, and begins crushing. The dragon lets out a roar, which is quickly choked away.
Riyo turns away and sighs.
“You find this distasteful, but not your own kill?” the dryad says.
“It’s not that.” She scratches her head. “It’s more like I’m frustrated. I hate it when even winning feels like losing. Killing these two didn’t do anything. Whatever it was that made them so hateful didn’t even die with them.”
“It is in the nature of dragons to hate, human. Take it from one who has lived a long time and seen them go unchanged for all of it.”
Riyo shakes her head. “Everyone’s capable of fighting their own nature. It’s what makes us different from the animals we eat.”
“You can’t fight other people’s natures for them, though.”
“You just have to convince them to do it.” Riyo says. “Once they try, it’s really easy.” She looks over towards the gate beneath Yl Torat. “So that’s the plan. Show them how easy it can be.”
“Luck to you, crafter.” The dryad steps over to a pool of the giant tree’s sap. “You will need it.” Her bare feet make ripples in the amber liquid, and she sinks into it like it’s quicksand until she is gone from sight.
Riyo cocks an eyebrow. “Neat.” She turns back to the city and its dragons. A pillar of wicked silver flame rises near the gate, spinning up into the heavens for a moment before bursting apart.
“If you can do that,” she says, “then you can learn to not be a jackass.” She hops from the branch, leaving the twin dragons to their eternal rest.
Ravi feels like a mouse. Riot the cat stalks him through the streets, roaring every time he skitters into another window or doorway. The difference, of course, is that a cat would flounce and prowl and grow more frustrated once he disappeared into his hole. Riot simply breathes a jet of purple fire after him, pushing him out into the street so that the chase can resume.
She dodges all of his arrows. Even those fired through smoke or from blind spots. Somehow, she senses the danger – or possibly his intent. Powerless to hurt her, all he can do is flee.
“She didn’t dodge the first two,” he pants to himself. He has won a moment’s respite, hunkering down beside a shed outside a blacksmith’s. Soon, the workshop will burst into flame, and he will have to move again.
“Was she too far away?”
A coarse roar precedes the arc of flame that he anticipates, and after another couple of smoky breaths he is off again. He moves like an arrow himself – straight lines that don’t stop until they meet a wall. The longer he is out of cover, the more likely he is to become fried chicken.
Even if distance is the deciding factor, he has spent the last half-hour trying to achieve it and still the dragon is right on his heels. He cannot escape her. He needs to figure out, specifically, why he cannot hit her. That means taking a risk.
Another cascade of flame gives him a window. He spies her twinkling scales amidst the roaring fury and fires. The arrow, twisting with the energy of his curse-breaker, blows apart the wall on the upper floor of the house behind her. She didn’t dodge it, though. It simply missed. She flinches away from the shot after it has passed her.
Ravi leaps from window ledge to roof, then drops into the street below. He lands like a feather, mind spinning. She hadn’t known the arrow was coming because it wasn’t aimed at her. If she knew his intent then she would have known from the moment it was fired that it was coming, and that it wouldn’t hit her. She hadn’t. All she’d known is that she wasn’t in danger. The arrow had surprised her because it wasn’t dangerous.
One final confirmation, then.
At the next opportunity, he scores a hit on her chest. The arrow, bearing not a flicker of the curse-breaker, bounces harmlessly from her steel-tough scales. She looks down as the arrow clatters on the cobbles between her front legs. Her short neck and thick mane give her more the look of a reptilian lion than the typical dragons that Theo used to paint. She is wearing a terrible, terrible grin.
“Finally beginning to tire, bird?” Riot shouts. The bird is a little outside the range of her flames, and he will move again as soon as she does. He is so very quick. Her speed hasn’t been challenged like this since Emerald left Yl Torat all those years ago. This chase reminds her of those races around the crater, of being pushed. Challenged. Her blood thrums, her muscles ache, and she can’t keep from grinning.
This is why she signed on for Black’s campaign of carnage. Now she has a chance to prove that she is not just the fastest among the dragons, but the fastest in the Song. The fastest in the world.
And if she isn’t? If Black is proved wrong by humans, or some other species? Then she has a target. A bar to rise above. Perhaps the first bar is this bird-human. If he is quicker than her, then she needs to exceed him. Catch him. Beat him. She digs her claws into the earth, reaches inside herself for the next burst of speed.
Ravi is indeed tired. He has kept himself ahead of Riot’s jaws and flames by the breadth of a whisper, and it seems unlikely to him that he has more stamina than her. But perhaps… perhaps he can be quicker than her.
She gathers herself. Tiny movements in her muscles translate to tinier movements across her scales, but his eyes see them. He leaps from the building’s second floor window to its roof, then launches himself left across the next street. He hears the crash of her claws crunching the eaves of his most recent perch, and knows she has the reactions to change direction after him. He can feel the heat of her breath on his tail feathers.
They bound across the city, wood grain blurring and swirling beneath them, interspersed with flashes of cobbles. Ravi changes direction at every opportunity. He is not sure, but suspects the dragon could outpace him in a straight line. Her turns are slower than his, though. Possibly because she is fifty times his size and the wood breaks beneath her when she tries to halt her massive momentum, slowing her down.
Ravi has one chance. Riot’s reactions are quick. What she senses, however, is danger. She cannot sense his intent, does not know what he will do before he does it. She does not know that he is slowing himself slightly. Running in a straight line a little longer before changing direction. She thinks he is tiring. She thinks he is trying to escape.
Ravi has been trying to escape for a long time. From his curse, from his own weakness. From his regrets. Riot does not know that he has already escaped all of that. That he is done trying to escape.
He can almost feel the sharpness of her claws on his back when, instead of turning, he pushes himself backwards, arrow drawn to his cheek. His curse-breaker flares like aquamarine fire, strikes towards the sky like lightning in reverse. Straight through the dragon.
Ravi hits the roof on the other side of the road with a crash. The wood splinters and cracks, and the air leaves his lungs in a strangled gasp. His bow jerks from his hand, tap-dancing down the slanted roof before sliding off the gutter and disappearing from view. He lies there with his eyes closed. Dragons are resilient. Riot is not dead, because Ravi has missed her heart and spine. He is not sure whether that was his intention or not.
Even so, he does not combust. Slowly, he sits up, wincing at the pain in his back that will surely become a monstrous bruise. His own impact has hidden the cacophonous crunch of it, but Riot has smashed through the opposite house and come to rest against the one behind it. She is not moving, and the smell of sulphur reaches Ravi’s nose even from two streets away. The sight and scent make him uncomfortable, and he decides that, subconscious or not, he wanted to miss the kill-shot. It seems, however, that missing her vital organs may not have been enough.
He drops from the roof, scoops up his bow, then hops over what remains of the house between him and Riot.
“You fly well, little bird,” Riot says, making him jump. A giant purple eye opens and pins him in place. A staccato wheeze escapes her, and Ravi realises she is laughing. It doesn’t last long, though.
“Ow.”
“I’m not sure I could laugh with a hole through me,” Ravi says slowly.
“Mmm,” she says. “But it’s funny.” She sighs. “I scoffed at Emerald when she left. I said there wasn’t anything to learn out here. To think I’d meet my match in a city a handful of miles from home.” She coughs, then, and the cobbles are splattered with more blood. It fizzes softly as it begins to dissolve the stones. “I think I was just jealous. Jealous that she had the courage to escape, while I convinced myself that Black was right. If dragons are superior, then being the fastest dragon meant being the fastest anything. I needn’t come out here alone to prove it.”
“I don’t think you’d lose to me in a race,” Ravi points out.
“Doesn’t matter.” She coughs again. “There’s more to being fast than covering distance. No use being able to move your body if you can’t think quick enough to avoid getting a hole punched through it.”
“Um.” Ravi glances at said hole. “Will you, er…”
“Will I live?”
Ravi swallows and nods.
“Who knows?” Another cough seems to answer her question for her. “Dragons heal well. Perhaps I’ll see you again, bird man.”
“Ravi. Ravi Matrya.”
“It was a good contest, Ravi Matrya.”
Her eye closes. Her great chest still fills and empties, but blood still leaks out onto the street.
Ravi might be able to perform adequate first aid, if the patient were a human child with a scraped knee. A dragon with a hole all the way through the chest is far beyond the antiseptic herbal salves in his belt pouch, though. He will have to hope she is right about her race’s tenacity.
On the other side of the city, a pillar of silver fire divides the sky in two. Its light is somehow dark, casting the warm morning into shadow before it fades. One of his allies is near that, and if there is one thing that Ravi has learned from his time in Folvin, it is that he is good at helping people. He finds his way back to the roofs and makes for the gate.
Rolleck the Lost drinks the sea. He tastes the salt of it in his sinuses. For a single, horrific moment, he drowns.
Then he breathes air. He splutters, blowing out of his nose and coughing. His eyes spring open and sting with the water’s touch, but he does not blink. It will not let him. He must survive, and to survive, he must be able to see the danger. To escape.
You will struggle to run, here.
He is airborne. The geyser that brought him up is splitting and raining back to what was once the earth. It is now a vision of hell. Paving stones melt, buildings burn, smoke and embers wash the space from the edge of the forest to the former city hall. The very air beneath him shimmers like water. The dragon stands at the centre of her new domain, looking not to Rolleck, but to the other end of the plaza.
A small patch of pristine pavement marks the last stronghold of Yosht Torgliff. Steam rises around him from where his defence met Rival’s monstrous breath.
“Die,” Rival screams, lunging forward.
Rolleck falls. Without Riyo around, he falls directly downwards at the same speed he has always fallen.
It feels so slow.
Water streaks out of nowhere into the side of Rival’s face, but she barrels through it. Another stream crashes down on her, but it barely bows her head.
Rolleck isn’t even half way to the ground.
The fire chief yells, throwing everything he has forward towards the oncoming wall of scales and teeth. A huge cascade bursts across the dragon’s scales, spilling out over the plaza and drenching everything. The flames of damnation are quenched in the flood.
But the dragon breaks through.
A talon the size of a green bear comes down on Torgliff, and his roar of defiance becomes a scream of anguish. The silence that follows is so deep that the crackling of flames and the swash of water do not touch it. It is a silence that exists only for Rolleck.
You can’t run away in anger.
“Then I won’t.”
When you stop, I get closer.
“So be it.”
Marvellous.
Rolleck lands in half an inch of water. The impact should break him, but his bones are iron. His sword runs its barbs through every facet of him, pulsing in time with his anger. Its laughter is a quiet menace that is not quite confined to Rolleck’s head. Deep, black oil drips from his pores, but it does not slick his grip on the hilt. That is so fierce that not even the sundering of the world could break it.
Rival turns to face him. She meets his eyes, and even the colossal dragon hesitates. His right is bloodshot, but his left is pitch black with a vertical smudge of crimson down its centre.
“Nothing you do will stop me, human,” she says after the moment has passed. “And now, my flames can reach you.”
A turquoise fireball lashes across the ruined plaza, gleaming with a promise of incineration for everything in its path. Rolleck raises his blade and grinds his teeth. His slash rips the air apart, ripples around the plaza and slams against the surrounding buildings. It leaves marks in the wood, and the shockwave blasts the fireball into flickering streamers of nothing.
Rival looks around. Every fire in the plaza has gone out. She looks down. There is a gash across her chest, just beginning to bleed. Her heart stops as she returns her gaze to the human.
“Nothing can reach me now, dragon.”
“Impossible,” Rival says.
It is her last word.
She blinks, and Rolleck is gone.
She blinks again, and finds she is looking at the ground.
She blinks a third time, and her sluggish thoughts cannot comprehend what she sees. Scales. So deep and green. Like the depths of a storm-driven sea. Scales like her own.
Her head hits the ground, and she is looking up at herself. And it is growing dark.
She blinks a fourth time. And she does not open her eyes again.
Rolleck does not turn to watch the dragon fall, though he feels her body shake the floor with its collapse. Instead, he looks down at Yosht Torgliff. The burly man has almost been torn in half. The massive claw that ended his life passed through most of his midriff and into the ground below, making a divot for his blood to pool in. The dragon’s foot has crushed his legs to the point that they are unrecognisable.
Rolleck lets out a breath.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t… I can’t let it any closer.”
It’s too late for that.
Laughter rings out. The wires tighten, the barbs dig deep, and Rolleck feels his heart being constricted.
Keep running, but eventually, this is all you will know.
It would be fortunate if the pain made him pass out. It never did, though. Losing track of time did not help, instead turning it into an eternity. His screams echo around the plaza, straining his voice hoarse. He writhes, unaware of anything but pain, until everything around him is blackness and everything within him is fire. Then it fades.
Run, the voice says once more.
Then it is gone.
Rolleck lies in a mud born of water and ash, staring at a pleasant blue sky that makes a stage for warm, golden sunbeams to dance across. Every breath comes slower, until his suffering is a memory once more. Then all he can feel is his sodden waistcoat clinging to him, his sore muscles complaining about the strain. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he has just finished a workout, and that his greatest problem is how to get the stains out of his clothes.
The blue of the sky is briefly stolen by an arcane silver light that adds shadow where shadow should not be. It brings Rolleck back to a gradually burning wooden city under siege by dragons. He drags himself to his feet. No matter what he does or does not do, it still follows him. It will still catch him. So even if it may cause him pain, he will use it to help his friends.
Emerald feels a sensation she has never known before. A sensation, perhaps, that all dragons should feel at least once. She burns. Not the aching, nagging sensation of her bloodflame, but her skin. The scales of her left arm have melted, the skin beneath a fierce red that almost glows where it hasn’t turned the black of char. Her left wing stings where it has been graced only briefly by Bronze’s flame.
“What creature could stand before us, armoured in flame?” he roars at her. “We will melt this world!”
“And then destroy ourselves,” Emerald says. “Bronze, you have to stop. You’re burning too quickly.”
He breathed at her again, and she darted aside, pitching her own flame out in a controlled burst to counteract his where her speed wasn’t enough to avoid it. Her move brings her closer to Black, who is grinning as though he is watching a performance in his honour.
“Black, please,” she said. “This power will kill your mate.”
“Silence,” he growls. “You and Bracken sought to keep this gift from us, all because you knew it would let us rule this world. You are both traitors to our kind, and now you beg for your pitiful life.”
Emerald grinds her teeth. Behind her, the city she promised to help protect sits aflame in spite of the dryads’ efforts. Ilintorphrasill squats resolute at the centre of an inferno that will burn until all that remains is ash. The tree being intact, however, gives her some hope that the dragons are not simply rolling over her newfound allies.
Bronze will not listen. Black will not listen. She took nearly a decade to master this ability, to avoid burning herself from the inside out. The power that flows through him is numbing him to the searing of his veins, but to make his flame hot enough to burn through her scales will eat that power, his very life energy, away to nothing in a matter of minutes.
She growls as another wave of silver fire rolls towards her. A pinpoint burst of indigo pushes a hole in the wall and lets her slip through, and a powerful leap brings her inside Bronze’s range. He rakes his claws through the empty air where she’d landed, only to find her driving an uppercut towards his face.
He roars, and the intensity of his cowl becomes overwhelming, exploding outwards and forcing Emerald to blaze hers to protect herself. She stumbles back, fists clenching. Her cowl fades, while Bronze’s does not.
“If you won’t let me save you, all I can do is watch you die, Bronze.”
“Then lie down and watch,” he snarls, “but I will not die. I will simply shine beyond anything any dragon has ever achieved. I will carry Yl Torat’s will to the very ends of this world.”
His cowl grows even brighter, billowing up towards the clear skies.
“Bronze…” Black says. There is a hint of uncertainty in it, but it comes far too late.
Bronze roars, filling Emerald’s existence with fire and pain. She wraps herself in her wings, burns her cowl to its safest limit. Still she feels her scales begin to melt. Crackling agony wracks her, drives her to her knees. It pares back the skin of her wings and scorches her very bones.
When the heat falls away, she is barely able to see. Her wings droop to the ground behind her, oozing blood onto the earth. She meets Bronze’s triumphant gaze, and lets her cowl fade away to nothing. His silvery light now competes with the sun in its brightness.
“So you finally kneel before your king,” Bronze says.
“I’m sorry,” is all she says in response, and looks away as his cowl begins to soar.
“Bronze!” Black says. “Extinguish it, now.”
“I… I can’t.” There is panic rising in his chest. He can feel his every blood vessel, as though needles flow through them.
“Do it!” Black roars. “Put it out!”
“Help me…” Bronze says.
With an almighty rush, Bronze’s cowl reaches for the heavens, enveloping everything around him. Both Emerald and Black are blown away by the force of it, and the swirling column of flame spins for almost a full minute before fading away. Ash and embers flutter down like snow, settling on a scorched, empty field.
“No!” Black screams, leaping to the centre of the scar where Bronze had been standing. He digs at the pile of soot, then jerks his head from side to side, the desperation in his eyes heart-breaking even to Emerald.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
Those eyes find her, and another scream escapes him.
“You did this,” he wails. “Why did you have to stand in our way? Why would you defend these humans?”
“You need to be stopped,” she says. She is tired and hurt, and her voice reflects it. “We’re filled with a need to destroy, Black, and it’s the reason that, despite all our advantages, the humans are better than us. Because even if we destroy them, burn their cities and claim their land, it isn’t enough. We turn on ourselves, again and again. Why do you think father, just one generation before us, had to build our kingdom from nothing?” She met his eyes again, urged him to hear her. Urged him to see his heartache as a reflection not of the humans’ actions, but of his own. “Its because we destroy ourselves more thoroughly than anything we might breath our flame on, rip apart with our claws. It’s a cycle that we have to break ourselves. Father knew that. He started us on a path to redemption by building something, rather than destroying it. We’re all capable of continuing down that path after him. Even you, who see only the fire of destruction, managed to make something beautiful with Bronze.”
“And now he’s gone.”
“That’s right. The path of destruction has destroyed him. This will be your legacy, too, Black.”
“It will destroy you too,” he says, springing forward and bringing his claw down at her.
Emerald closes her eyes. She has tried, at least. She hopes her father would be proud of her.
“That’s not quite right, Prince Gruff.”
Emerald opens her eyes. Riyo Falsemoon stands between them. Black’s claw presses hard against thin air a little above her head.
“We own our own paths, and Emerald doesn’t walk one of destruction.” Gravity shifts, and Black stumbles back, unable to resist. “While you were out setting fire to things, she made friends. She learned and taught and became better by enriching others. That’s the path of the saviour.”
Someone steps up next to Emerald. She glances right and finds the swordsman, his wolf pelt soiled but still somehow shining, his left eye black and horrifying. She looks left and finds the bird man, his feathers caked in soot but rippling with holy blue light.
“So, while your destruction has wrought it back to you in turn, your sister will be saved, body and soul.”
“Those who followed you down your path have seen it reflected at them,” Ravi says.
Rolleck gestures back at the city. “The sky is empty of dragons, the people of Folvin are safe, sheltered by those who also walk the path of the saviour.”
“Your conquest ends in failure. All that remains is you.” Riyo lets her reality go, then turns and helps Emerald to her feet. “What will you do?”
“I…” Black says.
A shadow falls over them, and a second later, Bracken slams into the ground behind the prince. He shows very little sign of having fought twenty of his peers the previous evening.
“Come, Black,” he says, voice almost kindly. Like a teacher encouraging a surly student. “Let us go home. Let me tell you of your father. Of what he did, and what he wished to do. Of the path he forged, and that we all can still follow, even now that he is gone.”
Black turns to face his mentor. He sees compassion there. Recognition of what he has lost. He sees it in his sister’s eyes, too. Even the humans share it. He wants to hate them for it. He wants to crush them, show them that he does not need their sympathy. He should be stronger than this.
But he isn’t. He looks to the place where Bronze was taken from him. If he had been strong, his mate would still be there. His soul would still be whole. He digs his claws into the earth, lowers his head, and lets go. Even when the emptiness forms anger and tries to point blame at someone or something, memories rise and tamp it back down. Memories of Bronze. Of their time together. Of their shared life. Memories of his father. His friends. Even his sister. Times when he was happy. His tears make craters in the ash before him.
He feels Bracken approach.
“Time will help,” he says, “but the heart does not heal the way the flesh does. This wound will remain tender forever. Such is the mark he made on your life. Remember him, and remember what your anger, your hatred, has cost you.”
Black can only manage a small nod. He turns to face the mountain. The kingdom he thought he wanted. It’s a dream as empty as any other now that Bronze cannot be in it. He trudges toward it, seeing nothing. Feeling nothing.
Riyo lets out a soft breath as Prince Gruff walks away from his conquest. He walks a new path now, but she still doesn’t know what it will look like. It could be a better one, but it could equally be a more dangerous one. It may be easy to fight one’s own nature, but the reasons could be bad as well as good. He could fight down his hatred and live a better life, or he could fight away his compassion and become fixated on revenge. It was the knife’s edge.
She can no longer play a role in that. She turns to her friends. They look like they have been put in a tin together with some rocks and mud and then shaken vigorously. Rolleck’s eye is weird, Ravi’s tail feathers are noticeably shorter, and Emerald’s wings are practically skeletal.
“You all could use a bath,” she says.
“You don’t look so presentable yourself,” Rolleck says.
“I look stunning, thank you very much,” Riyo says. She looks past them, towards the gate. “This city could use a bit of a make-over, though. Where’s the Chief?”
Rolleck shakes his head. “I’m sorry. He didn’t make it.”
That hits Riyo right in the gut. The giddiness of victory had finally been dawning on her, but now it falls out of the bottom of her stomach.
“Clara and the dryads?”
The four of them look between each other, reflecting each other’s uncertainty.
“We are mostly alright,” Tremythenira says.
They all turn to the nearest tree.
“What do you mean by mostly?” Ravi says.
There is a pause. “The dryads of Folvin were five. Now we are four. Aetokelishpa has passed.”
More rocks find their way into Riyo’s stomach. “How is Clara?”
“Upset.”
“Is there anything we can do to help her?”
“Not right now. She is resilient, and we will help her, but she needs time to grieve. It is both a blessing and a curse that Aeto is the mother to her first child.”
“Oh,” Riyo manages. “Please pass along our thanks for all she’s done to help us when she’s recovered.”
“We will. We would also like to thank you all for saving this city. I’m sorry I cannot convey that in person, but what was destroyed must be rebuilt before people can be moved out of Ilintorphrasill. And the dead must be buried.”
The tree fell silent, and they were all left feeling glum whilst staring at a tree.
Riyo turns to Emerald.
Emerald turns to Riyo.
“Thank you. For everything,” Emerald says. “Both Folvin and Yl Torat owe you more than can ever be repaid.”
“You already paid,” Riyo says. She taps the hilt of her sword. “I have this.”
“It’s a small thing, compared to what you did today.”
“Small things are easier to carry,” Riyo says.
Emerald smiles. “You are truly a special woman, Riyo Falsemoon. I hope we meet again.”
“Me too,” Riyo says, then leaps forward and hugs the dragon around the waist. “Be a good queen.”
“I’ll do my best,” she says. She hates saying it. Having almost been burned to death in the defence of her father’s legacy, she still dreads carrying its weight. “Travel well, Riyo.”
Riyo nods, and then watches as Emerald begins her long walk back to Yl Torat, her wrecked wings drooping behind her.
“I hate when winning feels like losing,” she says.
“It tastes sour,” Ravi agrees.
“From my experience, there is no winning,” Rolleck says. “You just try to mitigate your losses until you die.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Ravi says.
“Well, if it’s the best we can hope for, then I’d say we mitigated this one pretty well,” Riyo says. “A lot more people could have died if not for us. Plus, making new friends is never a waste of time as far as I’m concerned.”
“What now?” Ravi asks.
“We keep going,” Riyo says. “The sunlight stone is still wherever it is, and that just won’t do.”
“We’re not staying in Folvin?”
Riyo shakes her head. “We still have the whole afternoon left for walking. Besides, Folvin is still on fire.”
“We could help with that.”
“We’ve done enough,” Rolleck says. “After something like this, people need to do what they can do. Only we could fight the dragons, but the people of Folvin will feel better for being able to deal with the aftermath.”
“So that’s it? We just keep walking?”
“Yep. The Reach is still a long way away.” Riyo looks up at the sun, looks left, then looks right. Then turns around.
“It’s that way,” Rolleck says, pointing east.
“Right,” Riyo says. She takes a step, then frowns back up at Yl Torat. “Actually…”
Emerald looks at her people. A spectacular array of omnichromatic faces looks back at her. There is no jubilation, no expectation. There is barely even curiosity. They don’t know her. Earning their respect will take years. Escaping the contempt of those who held her brother and his mate in high regard will take far longer, if it is even possible. Her new path is one of hardship and leads to a place that she is not sure she wants to go. But it is one she has chosen herself, ultimately. So it is the one she must walk.
The silence in the cavern seems to stretch into eternity. Beside her, Bracken sighs and rolls his eyes.
“You are a lot like your father, Emerald,” he says quietly. “Like you, he looked to the humans and other races to find a template for his escape from our cycle of destruction. But he looked to their leaders for answers, while you looked to the people themselves. He adapted what he saw to his needs. Now, you must do the same.”
Emerald nods, slowly. In her mind, she sees a crown made of water break apart and splash onto a blonde head.
She steps forward.
“I am your queen,” she tells the gathered crowd. Her voice echoes through the massive space, but those who hear it do not know what to do with it. They don’t cheer. They don’t wail. They don’t know her.
“And yet, you don’t know me. I left this place because I wanted to see what lay beyond these austere rocks and burning air. I found a home out there. I found something better.”
That elicited some reaction. It was mostly anger. It didn’t burst against her, but she could see it beginning to seethe in their breath.
“Even so, I came back. My father made this kingdom because he believed dragons could be more than just their anger and their hate. More than just destruction and death to all who looked upon them.
“And he was right. Because when I told you how I felt about it, you growled in your throats. You held this place close to you. You said, ‘Who is she, to insult us so?’.
“Because this is not my father’s kingdom. It is your kingdom. You take pride in it. You defend it. You see what my father saw. A home. A family. Something better than hate. Something better than destruction.
“So here is my first act as your queen.” Emerald inhales her pilot. The gathered dragons are watching her with interest, now, and there are gasps and roars of surprise as she is enveloped in her cowl. With the strength of a raging fire flowing through her, Emerald leaps into the air. Bracken has the good sense to vacate the ledge, and with a crash that thunders through Yl Torat, Emerald smashes it asunder. While the dust settles, she lets her cowl fade, her blood cool.
“From now, there is no queen, no king. You will choose a leader, together, and they will speak with the voice of all dragons. You will all shape this kingdom. You fought your need to destroy for my father and look what you built. Now, fight it for yourselves, and see what your future can be.”
Now there is jubilation. The roar slams into the walls and the mountain shakes in sympathy. The cacophony blooms, then fades, then blooms again in waves of sound that last nearly ten minutes.
Eventually they level out, taking her metaphor of a unified voice and making it true. It forms a single word.
“Bracken.”
The old dragon looks at Emerald and smiles.
“You’re okay with this?” she asks once the chant has fallen off to a level where words are possible once more.
“It is the will of the people, and I could never let your father down.”
“Thank you.”
Bracken shakes his head. “You may not have much love for this place, but you have done her the greatest service you could. If a better world is born from this, then it is by your strength. Now, I imagine there is somewhere you wish to go.”
“There are a lot of places I wish to go,” Emerald says with a smile.
“Then go, child,” Bracken says. “Spread your wings once more.”
“How long are we going to wait, exactly?” Rolleck asks.
“It shouldn’t be long,” Riyo says. “I probably won’t have to strip down to my bra like last time.”
Ravi raises an eyebrow.
Rolleck shrugs. “It’s even hotter down in the caves, and this idiot decided to get in a fight with a dragon down there. It’s a wonder she didn’t combust from the inside out.”
“You can hardly make insinuations about decency,” Riyo says. “I’ve never even seen you wear a shirt.”
“My feathers keep me modest,” Ravi says. “Besides, it’s really hard to find shirts that fit me.”
“I’ve met some very skilled tailors, in my travels,” Rolleck says. In spite of their recent ordeals, his waistcoat and trousers are surviving quite well. Neither show any rips or signs of fraying. “I’m sure we’ll happen upon someone up to the challenge eventually.”
Ravi frowns. “Even with a shirt that fit, I wouldn’t be able to pull anything off as well as you, Rolleck.”
Rolleck smirks and twirls his moustache. “Clothes maketh the man,” he says. “It’s all about finding the style that works for you. If you try to imitate, you’ll always look like that’s what you’re doing. If you find a way to complement your own uniqueness, you’ll shine above all the copycats.”
Riyo stares at Rolleck for a moment as the silence stretches into uncomfortable territory.
“What? A man can’t pay attention to his appearance?”
“A man with a scary sword stuck to his arm?”
“That’s what makes the extra effort necessary. Offsetting or lightening the impact of flaws is one of the most important aspects of fashion.”
“Well, I appreciate it, Rolleck,” Ravi says.
“Thank you, Ravi.”
Riyo rolls her eyes. “I’ll be glad to have another woman along. At least then I’ll be able to talk about feminine things. Like fighting and eating.”
“You seem very confident about that,” Rolleck says. “Don’t underestimate the compelling power of duty. People with strong wills choose to do the right things in spite of their difficulty.”
“Yeah, but only dumb people choose to do the hard right thing when there’s an easier option that’s also the right thing.”
“You’re weighing monarchy against democracy in very simple terms, there. Changing the entire political framework of a kingdom is no small shrug of the shoulders. I bet-”
“Bet taken,” Riyo says, just as Ravi says, “She’s coming.”
“Boom. You owe me your eternal loyalty.”
“That was not what I was going to wager.”
“Too late. You lost. Take your lumps.” Riyo throws the last over her shoulder, as she is already running down into the crater. She leaps at Emerald and almost knocks her over with a hug.
“You waited,” Emerald says once Riyo lets go of her. “How did you know?”
“It was a hunch,” Riyo says. “Come on, let’s go.”
“You’re really leaving?” Rolleck asks, he and Ravi arriving at a more leisurely pace.
“They elected Bracken to lead them,” Emerald says. “He is far more capable than I.”
“What about your brother?” Ravi asks.
“Imprisoned, along with those who survived the attack on Folvin. Time will tell how he feels once he has had time to grieve, but for now he has accepted his punishment quietly. There is nothing left to tie me to this place.”
“Good,” Riyo says, “because I’m hot. The next place we stop should be somewhere cold.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Rolleck says as they begin walking. “The next town will probably be another cluster of wooden houses in the endless shadow of the endless forest.”
“It’s called Risselle,” Emerald says. “Assuming you’re going east.”
“It’ll be useful having someone so knowledgeable about the Song with us,” Ravi says. “At least we won’t get lost.”
“We won’t be in the Everstall Song for much longer, though,” Rolleck points out.
“Which is next?”
“Frosthold,” Emerald says.
Riyo grins. “Somewhere cold.”
“It’s just a name,” Rolleck says. He sounds sullen. “It’s not even that cold.”
In the Heart of Yl Torat sits a dragon with onyx scales and an air of contentment about him.
“I was sorry to hear of Trenchant’s loss,” a voice in his head says. “I know you were close, for what such things mean to your kind.”
“Thank you,” Bracken says. “But I think the events of these few days will benefit the dragons, in the long run.”
“Because you are their leader?”
“Because our eyes have been opened wider than they ever were before, especially young Black. I am not so much younger than Trenchant was, and when I am gone the people will choose again. I hope by then, I will have made him worthy of the leadership his father wished for him.”
“And the hero of this episode?”
“She is very interesting indeed,” Bracken says, smiling. “I think you are worrying for nothing, Elvolar.”
“We will see, old friend. We will see.”
The Bridge Over Heaven 