by Laynie Bynum
"Then why did you do it, damn you?"
"Honestly? I've never had as much fun as I have fighting you. I just wanted to shake things up, you know. Just to see how things would look if I ran the mortals."
"What was wrong with the way things were? I kept Iynia running smoothly—"
"It was my turn," Dag'draath said coldly, scowling, but then he tilted his head back and forth, cracking his neck, and smiled again. "Getting there is the fun part, though. Almost as much fun as getting Y'serra to leave you."
Onen roared, the bass in his voice bouncing off the curtain walls around them. "You did that? She would never join you of her own will."
"Oh, foolish hero-god. There's so much more about that story you don't know. I think your head might explode if I told you. Then my fun would be over."
Onen fell to his knees. Half of him had hoped it was all some misunderstanding, that Y'serra hadn't joined him, hadn't led an army of ur'gels for him, hadn't left him after telling him she was pregnant.
But she had done all those things.
Onen looked down at the dagger in his hand. Any god could harm themselves, if they wished. It would be so easy to end all this treachery and pain...
"Uh-uh-uh. Forget about that. You take that way out, you leave me bored and in charge with nowhere to go but down. This isn't about winning, Onen. It's about the fighting. That's it. So, fight. For yourself, if you don’t' care about your people. That's why Beru's here, you know."
"To fight?" Onen had a momentary glimmer of hope. Had Beru only launched his own attack on the evil one without telling him?
"Well, not to fight me. Do you see him here swinging his sword at my head and getting really frustrated? I don't."
Onen's brief hope crashed, taking him even lower than before., until another thought hit him. "You're doing all this—the war, the starvation, the disease, all of it—just to see if you could? You're bored?"
Dag'draath shrugged. "Weren't you?"
A grin slowly stole across Onen's face, and he began to laugh. And laugh.
"This isn't funny."
Onen still laughed, as hard as he could.
"You're supposed to get up and go fight me, out there. This isn't why I came here."
A tear streamed from one eye as Onen kept laughing.
Dag'draath's smirk vanished. "Listen to what I'm saying, fool." He stepped across the threshold.
The moment the evil one stepped into ground Onen's priests had consecrated—his temple—he stopped laughing. Absurd reasons or not, Dag’draath had to be stopped, and now he could be. Onen dropped his weapons and before they ever struck the ground, he roared, "I win!"
A shimmering curved sphere blinked into existence all around the temple, cutting off every view to the outside world. All went utterly silent, save for Onen's own heavy breathing.
"I won," he said again in a whisper. It didn’t feel like much of a victory.
Chapter Twelve
Onen stared out the tower window without moving. The only thing to see was the shimmering magic surrounding his temple. As always. He released a sharp breath, exhaling through his nose, and climbed to his feet. He walked down the stairs, into the great hall. Once, there had been weirdlocks and weddings and laughter and tears, there, but all those things were now gone.
All that remained were forty-nine people hovering motionless in the air, halfway between the ceiling and floor. The forty-ninth person wore armor blacker than night, and while the others' faces were frozen in peaceful sleep, the man in black wore an expression of rage and shock stuck in a sneer.
Onen went from person to person, hovering his hands over each of their temples before moving on to the next, and the next. Sometimes, he'd do two or three rounds in a row. What else was there to do?
The forty-ninth person, though, never got checked. He couldn't die anyway, not here.
Dragons, however, could.
But each time he did his rounds, checking on the welfare of his dragon friends—hopefully still his friends, when this was all over—he was almost certain they were providing less power than before.
If Ednund were there, the weirdlock could have made calculations for him. Or any number of his temple staff. But they weren’t there, and he couldn’t do those calculations. All he knew for certain was that the dragons’ energy powering the prison was depleting faster than he'd imagined it would. Had he not used enough dragons? Or perhaps their kind of magic wasn't well suited for the task. Either way, he couldn’t change a thing about it. Four dozen high dragons should have been enough. If he’d known, he would have had Arc’homir bring twice as many. Four times. Whatever it took.
Onen sat down by the fire. It was his only companion, other than his own depressing thoughts. All was silent as death in his temple. All the time.
So, when he heard a simple sound behind him, he spun around, startled. The mermaid queen was there, still in her fish-people form on the stone floor. He didn’t care whether she was good company or not, overjoyed just to see a living person. He didn’t even try to stop himself from grinning. "Talisala.”
She smiled back at him. She hadn't yet mastered the expression, though, and it came off lopsided. Slowly transforming before his eyes into a human—an utterly unashamed human with no ounce of embarrassment—her half-grin transformed as well. It shifted from vaguely creepy as a meremaid to downright charming as a rather colorful human.
He kept his gaze politely locked onto her eyes. Even though she never seemed to care what he looked at, he did.
"You know, it doesn't bother me if you see more than my eyes. Fish have scales, as the old saying goes. I am what I am."
He felt his cheeks grow warm, but he didn't accept the invitation. Of course she didn't care. Merfolk had zero use for clothing, in the oceans. She even seemed to take a weird enjoyment out of making him feel uncomfortable. "I’ve already seen more than your eyes. It's difficult not to, when you... under dress, like that. So, what brings you here again today?"
She tilted her head back and laughed, a pretty sound when she was in human form. "Onen, I haven't been here in two years. Things are busy in the real world while you take your vacation."
He nodded and checked another dragon's magic and health, mostly for something to look at besides Talisala. "I'm sure. There was a sudden, huge shift among the powers that be, after all. The ur'gels fled, the dragons are again avoiding the outside world while they talk about what to do in a few centuries, and the two gods whose war stretched across the face of Iynia have vanished. Humans and elves and others are, for the first time ever, truly on their own. Is that about right?"
"Yes. " She stood and stretched, momentarily distracting Onen. It was a requirement to avoid cracks and sores, as the last of her skin transitioned from scales to flesh. She laughed again as Onen looked away. "But those problems aren’t bwhy I'm here. We've enticed an elf voyager to cal-cu-late some things for us." She staggered a bit on some words, and that was one of them, but she'd picked up his dead language in very few visits. "The result is that this prison's energy levels are draining fast."
That got Onen's attention in a way merfolk indecency couldn't. "Calculations? I was just thinking about those. I felt the power growing less. Has your pet elf figured out how long it might hold up at the rate we're going now?"
For the first time he could remember, she looked down and away.
"Go ahead, Talisala. I knew the risks when I imprisoned myself here with them. How long?"
She raised her eyes and met his gaze. "At best, a couple hundred years. I'll most likely still be in my prime when the prison fails, if a shark doesn't get me first."
"So, it's not all bad news." He forced a smile.
"You pretend good spirits. But you don't need to, because I and all my kind are looking hard. We'll find something. We have to. There must be something better out there, somewhere, and if anyone can find it, the merfolk can."
"What of the stone my lieutenant stole?"
"The elves and others sti
ll seek it. Some want to free you, but others wish to free the evil one. For now, though, their chances of ever finding it are poor."
"I suddenly wish I had a god to pray to."
"You are a god."
"A stronger one then."
"What would you pray for?" Talisala raised one eyebrow. Her first expression developed on her own, and she wasn't yet very good at it, which usually amused Onen to no end.
"I'd pray my sacrifice hasn't been in vain, that I bought the world enough time to do what I couldn't—find a way to end Dag'draath once and for all. Or that mortals discover they're strong enough to stand on their own without gods to rule or protect them. Dag'draath couldn't do much harm if no one followed him."
"Nor could you do more good," she replied.
Onen let out a deep breath. All of this sacrifice and loss could indeed be in vain, if Dag'draath escaped too soon.
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Chapter Thirteen
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About the Author
J.A. Culican is a USA Today Bestselling author of the middle grade fantasy series Keeper of Dragons. Her first novel in the fictional series catapulted a trajectory of titles and awards, including top selling author on the USA Today bestsellers list and Amazon, and a rightfully earned spot as an international best seller. Additional accolades include Best Fantasy Book of 2016, Runner-up in Reality Bites Book Awards, and 1st place for Best Coming of Age Book from the Indie book Awards.
J.A. Culican holds a Master's degree in Special Education from Niagara University, in which she has been teaching special education for over 13 years. She is also the president of the autism awareness non-profit Puzzle Peace United. J.A. Culican resides in Southern New Jersey with her husband and four young children.
For more information about J.A. Culican visit her website at: www.jaculican.com