by Jodi Meadows
A faraway roar echoed in my ears. LaLa. She was still here.
For her, I summoned the last of myself and reached ahead of me. Nothing but air. Nothing but rock. Nothing but sharp teeth clamping around my fingers and pulling until finally I touched bone.
At first, it was static. A shock through my body. But it shoved me back into awareness, and when I stretched my fingers again—LaLa’s teeth still firm around my knuckles—power erupted into me.
I jolted, gasped, and lurched forward to fully grasp the delicate wing bone LaLa had pulled me to. My breath caught, and for a second it seemed like I could just stop here, letting the first dragon’s power wrap around me, but now that my sight and hearing were clearer, the thuds of Paorah’s footfalls propelled me into motion.
Letting go of the first dragon, even for a moment, was torment, but I threw myself against her ribs and clawed my way upward, blood staining the white bone. My shoulder and back lit white hot with pain, but I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t.
Then, somehow, I was up.
The moment I reached my perch between the first dragon’s great wings, the moment I let my thoughts melt into hers, the burning eased and the blood clotted and it seemed like I might be able to heal after all.
LaLa was already there, waiting for me. Her golden eyes were wide and worried, filled with fathomless love and grief.
“We’re going to make it, little dragon flower.” I stroked down her spine, down those bright, smooth scales, sharp under my teeth-marked fingers. “We’re going to make it because of you.”
She chirruped and gazed north—toward the ruins.
“Don’t do this!” Paorah’s words came from below, garbled with the burn of LaLa’s fire. His face was a mess of melting flesh, no longer soft. “You can’t do this!”
“I can do anything,” I murmured, but now, here, connected to the first dragon of all, my words were thunder. Wings poured out of my back, fanning into the skeleton in a blend of fire and bone. Black, galaxy-filled scales glimmered across her body, flickering in and out of view, gleaming over the hints of muscle and sinew and organs. The glow of our inferno heart brightened into a small sun. And there, in the back of her mouth, the spark gland shimmered into existence, and when we exhaled out of our second lungs, fire unfurled.
I shifted at the last moment, so the flames spilled across the sand at his feet. It must have been incredibly hot, regardless, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—kill him. I never wanted to be the kind of person to destroy my enemies, even if I could breathe fire over them. Maybe especially if I could breathe fire over them.
I could do anything. I could be merciful.
Instead, I let the power of the first dragon thrum through my heart and mind and soul, and when LaLa was settled, we pushed into the air, fire streaming around us.
And there on the desert floor, burned and bloodied, Paorah dropped to his knees.
Maybe I wasn’t that merciful after all.
CHAPTER FORTY
SCREAMING WELCOMED US AS WE APPROACHED THE ruins.
It hadn’t taken long for us to reach them, and with every wingbeat, the first dragon grew more substantial. Our shadow flickered over the hot red sands of the Anaheran desert, skeletal and strange as my power fed her, and hers fed me. A few times, the dark shadow skimming over rocks and crags looked solid.
Then there were the ruins. Tall. Ancient. Impossibly white against the red landscape, and glowing with the fire of Noore.
As we rounded one of the broken spires, light arced off and shot into us. Then another, and another, and after one circuit of the ruins, one thousand two hundred and three threads of noorestone energy bent toward us, surrounding us in a nimbus of white-blue light, filling us up. It was strength, fire, and a strange sense of coming home. As we landed on the central building with a tremendous crash, I realized something incredible.
She was whole.
For the first time in more than two thousand years, the first dragon was completely whole, with muscles and organs and arteries and scales black enough to make midnight jealous. Even her wings were complete, no longer filled in with the fire of mine. She was here. Alive. Beautiful. Fierce.
Drakontos celestus. The first dragon.
Then, slowly, she turned her head around, neck muscles flexing gracefully, and looked at me just long enough to give me a chance to notice the scar on her left cheek.
Not the first dragon.
Not only the first dragon.
And I understood. My heart beat in time with hers, and I could feel every muscle stretch and flex when she lifted her wings and straightened her body. Every motion echoed in me, though I didn’t have wings or talons or a tail; it didn’t matter, because we were the same.
We roared fire, making the desert tremble beneath us. A few people kept on fighting, determined to kill one another before the island beat them to it, but others stared up at us, dropping their weapons to the wet, red dust.
My whole body—my human body—still trembled with the blood loss and the last dregs of pain; the noorestones had finished healing the wounds, but it was much harder for the mind to recover after such trauma.
Still, I gazed down at the battle below, talons crushing the fragile stone, and soon even the people fighting surrendered.
It must have been so hard for them to look at us, what with all the white-blue light, but as I shifted LaLa to my shoulder and climbed to my feet—standing atop the Drakontos celestus, where everyone could see me clearly—I held everyone’s attention.
“This is the day.” It hardly sounded like my voice, filled with noorestone fire and dragon smoke. “When the day and the night are the same. When the first and the last become one. When hope and despair meet on the field of battle.”
Shouts rose up, buried under the rush of fire.
I found my friends and met their eyes. Chenda’s hands rested protectively on Safa’s shoulders, while Gerel stood guard nearby. Hristo clutched at his heart as he gazed up, while Ilina and Zara stood near Mother, who was bleeding but might live. Then there was Aaru, wearing that same expression as before. A smile, all sadness and perfect understanding.
“Remember,” I whispered, as the world began to rattle beneath us, “‘Hate cannot abide where many stand in love.’”
Then I dropped back to the dragon, breathed in, and reached through the noorestones to the goddess of destruction herself.
It was bold. Presumptuous.
But the gods had given me this power. It was their will that I use it, that I fight for the survival of my people. So I reached, my thoughts plunging downward through pure noorestone fire—bright, hot, flawless in every way.
People had long speculated that these noorestones were still connected to the world, to the gods, and as I followed the path that blazed ahead of me, I wished I could tell them that they’d been right.
At last, I landed in a place neither light nor dark, neither loud nor quiet. A between world, burning with brilliant noorestones and images of every part of the Fallen Isles.
This was what the gods saw:
Coins exchanging hands as men and women tried to buy their way onto ships.
People reaching out to pull strangers aboard, and others pushing the helpless into shuddering waters.
Mothers and fathers gathering children into their arms as the island began to tremble and they had no way to escape.
Birds taking flight, all their feathers black against the sun.
Ground-dwelling animals tunneling deep into their burrows, while deer and squirrels and other creatures ran for safety they wouldn’t find.
Dragons all over screaming in anguish as yet another god prepared to pull herself free of the ocean floor.
Two moons closing in on the sun.
Dozens of people standing in front of ruins, some in flame-blue jackets, others in their regular clothes. The dust around their feet shivered upward. Their weapons littered the ground, and many wept openly as they stared at the biggest dragon any of them had ever seen, w
reathed in noorestone fire.
I saw everything: the good and the bad and all the reasons the gods might want to leave.
The stars. The vast and perfect darkness between them. The holes in the sky where these seven deities used to dwell.
The Upper Gods and their longing to reunite with their Fallen brethren.
Stay, I prayed. Stay, stay, stay.
With every beat of my heart, I begged her to listen. The first and the last were here, together. Wasn’t that what she and the other Fallen Gods wanted?
Please, stay.
I came to the goddess of destruction as a child might a mother: yes, people had behaved poorly, and yes, we deserved to be punished, but maybe, more than anything, we needed mercy—a chance to do better.
Please.
And then, with a voice like stars colliding and oceans boiling and mountains shattering apart, the goddess of destruction said no.
No.
No.
No.
Shock and despair ripped through me. I shot straight up, out of the in-between world, and screamed as my connection to every single one of the Archland Ruins’ noorestones stretched—and snapped. Then all of them—all one thousand two hundred and three of them—went black. Not just dark, but black, burned out from the inside.
Shrieks of terror rent the air as red dust billowed, and people began to flee south—toward the harbor. But we were too far inland; even if there was space aboard ships for this many people, they’d never make it there in time.
The ground gave a mighty lurch, throwing dozens to their hands and knees.
This didn’t make sense. I’d brought the first dragon here; I’d become her; I’d begged the Fallen Gods—all before the eclipse began.
I’d been willing to give up my humanity to save these people. Wasn’t that enough?
Hopelessness clawed at me, beckoned me toward it—but I pushed away the temptation to sink into the spiral of fear and regret and self-blame. Anahera was rising now, which meant these people would die unless someone acted.
Me. I had to do something.
I clenched my jaw and reached for every dragon I’d ever met. Big, small, everything in between. It was hard to break through the howling grief, but first I found Kelsine, shrieking below, and then Hush. Others came more quickly, then: Lex, Siff, Tower, the seven empire dragons, and dozens of others whose names I didn’t know, but whose hearts I did. Their roars reverberated through my soul, and then they were coming.
In front of me, LaLa squawked and flapped her wings, and through our connection, I could feel her urgency.
“Go,” I whispered. “Find your sister and get to safety.”
She bumped her nose against the tip of my finger and pushed off in a flurry of gold wings, and I—the first dragon, the last dragon, the Drakontos celestus—leaped off the roof of the ruins and landed with a thud on the trembling ground.
I found Aaru first. He wore an expression of anguish, as though fighting the urge to put his hands over his ears to block the noise of Anahera struggling to rise. But when I called for him, when I stretched out my hand, he came, climbing onto the dragon.
Thumps sounded as more big dragons arrived, bending low to accept passengers. And they weren’t alone. All across the island, dragons swooped in to find families and allow people to climb onto their backs. Only a few hesitated; after all, the Mira Treaty had made riding dragons illegal, and most people had never seen one up close. But in the end, they scrambled up and held on tight as the dragons pushed into the air.
I could feel them all—every single dragon in the Fallen Isles—soaring over the mountains and plateaus and canyons and cliffs, their keen eyes searching for movement on the ground. A child. A man. A person reaching up, desperate for help.
And here, at the ruins, dragons launched into the air with four and five people clinging to their backs. Their wingbeats were heavy, strained under all the extra weight, but they rose into the brilliant blue sky.
Then, finally, when they’d all gone, I pushed off, spreading my wings wide, feeling the muscles work, the sinews stretch, the starlight blood pumping through my veins. Three more people had climbed onto my back—Safa sat behind Aaru, and then two I didn’t know—and their screams were wild and terrified and euphoric. Because we were flying, and because just behind us, the island pulled herself up tall with a deafening roar and splash, and the place where we’d all been standing minutes ago surged underwater.
We’d escaped, barely.
We shouldn’t have needed to.
“Seven gods.” Aaru’s voice was almost lost to the wind.
They stood all around us. Gods.
Bopha was a great darkness, pure shadow even in the noon sun.
Khulan kept his mace raised, while Damyan reached for his Fallen love. Harta curled her arms around her belly, and Idris remained far to the west, isolated even now. Behind us, Anahera’s arms were lifted in joy, caught in a dance to music only she could hear.
Darina alone remained in the sea, all mountains and river valleys and green fields. Knots of civilization dotted even the north end, though I couldn’t see any movement—not from this height, and maybe not even if I got closer.
The last Fallen God.
I bit back a horrified cry. The eclipse was close. There was no time to discuss with my friends, or read through all the holy books again. It was done. Over. I’d failed.
In the back of my mind, another great wave of despair crashed through me—through all the dragons—as Darina began to stir.
“No,” I groaned. “Please no.”
But I hadn’t shed my human soul, and apparently I didn’t know how, so there was no reason for her to listen to my prayer.
Still, I might reach the dragons.
“Be strong,” I whispered. “Stay here.” They couldn’t lose their passengers; these were some of the last people born to the Fallen Isles, and everyone we’d failed to save was a star in a sky full of tragedies. “Please,” I breathed. “Please keep them safe.”
Quiet code tapped against my arm. ::Let me onto one of the ships.::
I flew downward, catching the crash of waves and scream of wood as the ships all strained to avoid getting caught in the wild currents. The vessels rolled over huge waves, struggling to remain afloat as the water betrayed them.
“Are you sure?” I called, my voice almost lost under the wind and roar of the sea.
::I will silence the water, like Safa did after Idris.::
I just nodded, wishing I understood what I’d done wrong, and how I could make it right. I wished I could talk to him about it, but even as we neared the water, a pressure of silence built up around us and expanded toward the nearest group of ships.
After the noise and cacophony of the world ending, my ears rang sharply with the sudden silence. But it was working. Waves rolled out from Anahera, breaking against the bubble of Aaru’s power. It was incredible, seeing the edge of silence like this.
As ships began to steady, other nearby vessels moved into the space Aaru was protecting. It was slow, agonizing work for them, trying to maneuver in such nightmarish conditions, but soon, two dozen ships had gathered into this small area of relatively calm water.
Carefully, I lowered until I was even with one of the ships—the Chance Encounter, I realized—and started to let people off. First the two strangers, then Safa, and then Aaru.
When I didn’t follow, Aaru turned around, curiosity and concern written in his expression. “Mira?” No sound came out—the world was perfectly silent.
I offered a tight, sad smile, and tapped against the first dragon’s starlight scales. ::Sail toward the Algotti Empire. Maybe she’ll change her mind.::
A thousand emotions passed between us—grief, sorrow, longing—but there was no more time for us.
::I love you,:: I said. ::Tell the others, too.::
Aaru’s mouth opened, as though he wanted to speak through the solid silence he’d cast, but I didn’t give either of us a chance to change
our minds. I ducked back into my place and flew, climbing and climbing, not looking back because I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing his face when he figured out why I’d said good-bye.
They needed to go—all of them—but I couldn’t give up while there was still one island left.
My island. My home. My birthplace.
I had nothing to go on this time, just hope that Darina would listen to me.
I burst from the bubble of silence with a roar that could shatter stars. All the pain, fear, and despair—I screamed it away as I wheeled toward Darina, rounding Damyan as he still reached out for her. I soared over the green mountains and valleys, the farms and fields, and the pristine beaches. I flew as fast as I could, taking in the last Fallen Isle with tear-distorted yearning.
I would not—could not—give up.
Then I saw it: Crescent Prominence. My city.
The prominence itself was still there, a seven-fingered hand stretching to the ocean, and utterly still, like no one had dared return to the houses there after the evacuation. The harbor was empty: no ships, no fishing boats, no people searching the abandoned crates for supplies.
As for the main part of the city, all the smoke had long ago cleared from the air, but the evidence of the explosion was still present. Blackened buildings crumbled in the sunlight, and the streets were a mess of debris from the attack that day . . . and other tragedies, which must have occurred after I’d left. Maybe there’d been anarchy after the Luminary Council was killed. Or panicked looting and trying to escape, after Idris rose. Or rioting, after Paorah declared the Mira Treaty—and me—dead. It was impossible to say.
My heart ached to see my home this way, but it was better empty than filled with people. In the back of my mind, I could feel the island shuddering, and with my dragon eyes, it was just possible to make out debris starting to jump over the empty roads.
Soon my goddess would leave, too. Unless I could persuade her to stay.
There was no time to look at the city more closely. I flew past, pushing my body—both bodies—as hard as it would go, until finally I reached my destination: the sanctuary.