“How bad are your wounds?”
“Flight will be ill-advised until I recover. It will take me a few days to know how quickly I am healing.”
“Your kind has healers, right?”
“We do.”
“We should get them to help. I think someone who helped eliminate an ancient threat after a long imprisonment deserves that much.”
“Perhaps… They won’t revel in the fact you used another ancient threat to summon that aid.”
“Only one way to find out for sure, no?”
“The dragon realm will hear from Mytariss or the minotaurs about my part in this. If they wish to contact you, they will.”
“Can’t hurt to be proactive. Iterra can probably set something up. If we can agree on a more active partnership, even a temporary one, that should help us understand what we should and shouldn’t be doing to aid in the defense of our realms.”
“It sounds as if you wish to speak to the dragons about more than my confined state.”
“Well, it’s connected to it… I was just thinking how much Omen and the Advent wished to make Orda stronger. It could be that was just an excuse to find more power for themselves, but I want to know how valid their claims were. What do you know of it? Is the corrupted realm or yours destined to ravage Orda?”
“I’ve been excluded from knowing the exact state of matters in other realms. I do know the dragons that burned the nismerdon out of existence are seen as barbaric to my culture as humans who sacrificed virgins are to yours. Those ancient dragons would have burned Orda after humans were seen as unworthy to share in our flame.”
“So you learned burning everything you don’t like wasn’t the answer.”
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not. My lords must have simply decided that your kind has shown the potential to contribute to balance someday. We have to wait and see… What will you do without wings for the foreseeable future?”
“There’s still probably a giant or two out there, plus some Advent worshipers. If we don’t catch them, they could go back to sleep and try all this again another century or two from now. That should keep me busy for a little while.”
“It’s best to not always be looking for a fight.”
“Aye, it’s not… Don’t sleep too long, dragon. I gonna need to send more stones your way soon.”
He grunted. “I’ll sleep as long as I please, Veknu Milaris.”
Severing the link himself, the dragon vanished.
Epilogue
Kiku Du picked up the beat of her tired feet when she noticed the familiar groupings of Pukam trees that marked the boundary of her home. It had been a long stroll from the western edge of Pukam to its eastern side, but with the promise of good company and a hearty lunch so near, a revitalized worshiper of strife forgot what weariness even meant.
With a few blissful skips Kiku arrived at the sheer precipice of a large sinkhole twenty-five hundred feet across and a thousand feet deep. One of several in the region, this sinkhole’s white walls were still unstable in most places, but she knew of a few spots where creating little ledges out of the rock face would not suddenly give way. So she descended the steep wall one ledge at a time, pushing it back in when she finished using it.
After hopping down in this manner nearly two hundred times, she came upon a natural, sloping overhang that allowed her to walk down the cliff much faster and less precariously. The bottom of the sinkhole mirrored Pukam Forest’s greenery of above, though it darkened faster here. For the moment, darkness was not a concern with the sun almost directly overhead. She once again skipped and sprinted under the shadow of the trees, not caring exactly where she headed, for she knew she would run into someone familiar at some point.
That “someone” nearly ran into her first. A young woman robed in dark purple yelped in delighted surprise. “Ha! I knew it was you!” she professed in the Jegeru tongue. “I saw someone climbing down, and I thought to myself, ‘She climbs down like Kiku.’ I was right!”
As her friend spoke her last words, Kiku opened her arms wide to take in her friend. Hugging her tight, Kiku said, “You know me so well, Uchi! I’m embarrassed to say that I remembered you with your mole over your other eye!”
“Oh, that’s okay. Just tell me everything about the dragon knight and you’ll be forgiven! Is everything master said about him true?”
“Not everything, but the big details he mostly got right.”
Hands clasped, the two women ambled toward the center of the sinkhole. Within five minutes, two more strife worshipers encountered Kiku. One was an older, equally excitable woman with rich black hair that loosely reached her waist. Her skin was pale and her facial features northern. The other was a middle-aged man of serious temperament, but his demeanor had actually softened by a perceptible amount soon after joining this sect of lively people.
They entered a small clearing where five more people sitting by crude wooden tables greeted them. One of these men, the oldest, sat on a stump in the middle of the clearing. Creamy skin, a white robe, a shining bald head, and a long white beard would make anyone believe that he belonged in a northern temple. At a certain light and angle, his light brown eyes might appear red to those who looked at that instance. In his left hand he held an unadorned staff of brownish gray, its peak twisted around the lower half of a hefty red vlimphite crystal.
Once Kiku greeted the others, she became somber and went on her knees in front of the elder, her master. Everyone went quiet.
Bowing her head, she asked, “Have I satisfied your expectations, master?”
In a grandfatherly, remarkably virile voice, her master replied, “My dear Kiku, it is only my farthest visions that see you disappointing me.”
Lifting her head, the unconvinced Kiku said, “But his whole soul is not corrupted. He was able to keep a piece of himself for himself.”
“There’s little chance he will choose to keep it that way. The power will ultimately tempt the rest of his soul. Even if that does not come to pass, I expect it will present us little trouble in the long run.”
“Forgive me for doubting you, but why encourage his corruption at all? His black fire is strong. He will only become stronger still. He helped quell the Hoic-Dro for us, but he may yet become a greater threat to our plans than they.”
The master chuckled. “Ah, yes. You left before I imparted my reasoning. Sometimes I forget what I say in my visions and what I say in reality. No matter… The dragon knight will indeed be a tall obstacle, but my visions did not point to him as being our greatest threat.”
“Then who?”
“His children. More precisely, his royal children. There may come a day where I see an opening to eliminate the dragon knight from our list of rivals, but until then, I settled for eliminating a devastating future he spawns for us were he to lay with a queen. Now his corrupted soul, a soul he desires to keep, will preclude him from such a prospect. Indeed, there’s a good chance being corrupted so often has exterminated his potential to impregnate any woman at all.”
Kiku giggled. “Of course! Always looking beyond the now! Oh! And the dragons won’t be inclined to help a corrupted soul either!”
“They still may help him, but the dragons surely would have continued abetting his royal children if he proved himself worthy. So you see now, Kiku? While a single dragon knight may prove troublesome, a guild of them would be nearly insurmountable. Thanks to you, my dear Kiku, we can proceed with much less dragon fire in our future.”
“Any one of us would have done just as well for you, master.”
“Of course. All of you are here because I believe in you. The world threw you away, but I saw what you can bring. Kings, valkrean, and dragon knights will discover that it is the downtrodden that will determine Orda’s course. Her final fate. It’s happened in so many worlds already, and it will happen in this one.”
The small crowd cheered. One of the men lifted a giggling Kiku back on her feet.
Then, as Uchi brought over a pl
ate of chicken she was warming up with a flame spell, the elder said, “Ah, Kiku. You spoke with my son, yes?”
With a half grin, Kiku answered, “Yes. He’s both like you and nothing like you. Very smart. Not good with people. I really wanted to tell him you were alive just to get some emotion out of him!”
A chuckle. “Then he’s changed little.”
“Don’t you see him in your visions?”
“Quite often. Too often. His range of potential is wide and plausible. It makes him difficult to read. Exactly as a Rathmore should be.”
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 47