Brindle Dragon Omnibus 3

by Jada Fisher

  “There we go,” Eist murmured. “Take them to the edge, Fior.”

  He let out a happy warble, ducking between two tentacles as they passed, and shot toward the outer rim of battle. A few of the monsters were caught in the pass, slamming into the limbs and spiraling to the ground.

  Eist allowed herself a small laugh, then looked to the center of the battle, where she half-expected him to be staring right at her with malevolent glee. But instead, he seemed entirely occupied by several figures in front of him.

  It was hard to pick all of them out, but she saw Dille, sending white-hot beams of light from her palms while her two dragons were breathing literal whirlwinds of fire. Ain and Athar were there too, one of them firing unlit fire arrows through the clouds of flames while the other seemed to be running in tight circles, keeping the monster at bay.

  Fjorin, Dryss, Ale’a, and Elspeth were there too, along with a couple of others that Eist didn’t know. But she couldn’t pay them much mind, as her eyes were already searching for the rest of the brindles.

  She couldn’t see either of the witches, but she saw that at least five of the dragons had gotten to the edge of the field and were firing off mighty roars. Her friends were doing a good job, because Yacrist didn’t seem to realize that a single one of the saved dragons were on the field.

  But they weren’t all in formation yet.

  Eist and Fior circled back down before spiraling up. She tried to keep her magic contained to the two weapons she had, worried that if she leaked too much that she would draw Yacrist’s attention. And it was too soon. They just needed another moment…

  “I believe they are in position,” the All-Mother said, startling Eist. She’d been so focused on the fight that she’d almost forgotten the ex-deity was even there.

  “Hold on,” Eist said, looking to her right and left, making sure that the brindles were indeed spread evenly around the field.

  “Yes, that is what I have been doing this whole time.”

  Eist bit back a reply, if only because she suddenly very much felt the last of the brindles slide into place, connecting them through a ring of power that she had never felt.

  Oh…

  Oh dear.

  It was like honey had been poured directly over her brain, warm and syrupy and oh-so-nice. It made her feel like she could float away, carried on a gentle, warm breeze that never had a single problem or trouble.

  “Eist, you can’t let it pull you away. You have to control it.”

  “Hmm?” she answered, tilting her head up.

  She couldn’t remember a time that she had ever felt so good. It was like every ache was gone from her body and every worry from her mind. There was nothing bad that could touch her, and she could just move all the magic around her through her body without a hitch.

  “You’re letting the lure of it pull you under. You have to remember what you’re doing. You’re calling on the old spirits to tie you to the very foundation of your world.”

  “Yeah, the foundation…”

  “Eist! You must concentrate!”

  Something about the sharpness of her words brought Eist back from the edge that she had been mentally traipsing across, and she let out a gasp. Blinking rapidly, she saw the brindles looking to her, waiting for her signal.

  “Thanks,” she gasped, shaking her head.

  “You have nothing to thank me for. If it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t even be in this mess.”

  “True,” Eist agreed, catching her breath and finally coming back to herself. “But that’s why you wanted to come, isn’t it? So you could fix it?”

  “Yes,” the All-Mother said with a steely sort of determination that Eist didn’t quite understand. “Today, we make up for our sins.”

  Instead of trying to understand or asking, the young woman just nodded, then raised her hand. Focusing the energy that she felt rushing through her so vibrantly, she shot a short bit of light right into the sky.

  The results were instantaneous, with all of the brindles moving forward at once. They surged toward Yacrist, who was slamming two of his tentacles on top of what looked like it had once been the mess hall, sending the roof crashing down.

  “Come now, Dille, there’s no need to draw this out,” Eist heard Yacrist bellow, sounding more annoyed than his earlier laughter might have let on.

  “What? You want to draw this out?” Dille shouted back. “I can do that for you!”

  She lifted both of her hands, throwing her head back as she shouted some ancient words. Eist watched, utterly rapt at the spectacle, as blue light shot down from the sky and straight into Dille’s mouth. It lasted just enough for the brindles to finally close ranks…

  And that was right when Yacrist finally noticed them.

  “Trying this again?” he asked, still floating in the middle of that darkness. His tentacles all suddenly withdrew, almost making a popping noise as they cut through the air, and for a moment, all the bridles had to scatter slightly.

  But before Eist could even be concerned about their movement, Dille righted herself and clapped her hands.

  Blue light flashed out from her, spinning in an overcomplicated pattern. It seemed that even the wind around them echoed its shape, twisting and looping until seven symbols of shining blue appeared around Yacrist. He let out a singular snarl before they all slammed into him, covering his body with hard crystal.

  “Now!” Dille cried, falling back with both of her dragons.

  They didn’t need to be told twice.

  Eist started speaking the words that the witches had taught her, clinging to every syllable and focusing every breath. She felt her connection to the entire world, the natural flow of things, how life was supposed to build then ebb then build again. She felt the cycle of life and death and rebirth. She felt the old scars that the old spirits had once occupied, and how the earth cried out for them to be filled again.

  And it was with all of those connections flooding her mind, blanketing every part of her, that she finally released everything that it built up inside of her.

  “Release!”

  There was no feeling that compared to the rush of those few moments. Fior reared back, his chest expanding and expanding before he let out a truly intense roar. The others all did as well, and in less than a breath, they were all hitting Yacrist at once.

  The dark magic around him reacted instantly, trying to coil protectively around the crystal encasing him, but the more the roars of the brindles hit it, the more it retreated inward on itself, vanishing like smoke dispersed from a flame.

  Eist kept chanting, making sure she never dropped a single word. She could hear the All-Mother doing the same behind her, even if the woman no longer had a drop of magic to her name.

  The whole world seemed to be responding to them, the energy of it gathering around them and building up like an explosion. She didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that when it blew and focused instead on picturing the Blight being torn apart piece by piece.

  It took her several moments to realize that there was a cracking sound trying to fight its way past the roars of the brindles, barely audible over the maelstrom. When Eist did finally catch the noise, her eyes went to the crystal containing Yacrist.

  It had dozens of vein-like fissures running through it, thinner than a finger and all interconnecting. She knew then that it would only be a breath or two before—

  The cracking sound turned into a boom, and the entire thing shattered, sending shards everywhere. Eist could see the sharp pieces in her mind’s eye flying out and burying themselves in everyone nearby, so she waved her other hand as if that would do something.

  But it did. It caught all of the sharp missiles and sent them straight upward where they then burst into a fine mist. Eist hadn’t even been planning that particular reaction, and it took all her concentration to not lose her place in her chant.

  “You really are this world’s way of resetting itself, aren’t you?” the All-Mother breathed behind her. “Fix
ing everything that we so inadvertently ruined.”

  Eist couldn’t answer, because now that Yacrist was freed from his binding, he seemed more enraged than ever.

  “Really, Eist!” he screamed, whipping toward her with eyes now entirely red. “Must we really go through this again!?”

  “You could give up,” she countered, taking the risk to stop chanting long enough to answer him. Because if she was answering him, that meant he wasn’t fighting, and if he wasn’t fighting, it would make the spell that much more likely to succeed. “You could stop this all now!”

  “When I’m so close?” He lifted his hand as if he was going to lash out with a spell, but a brindle’s cry hit him and made the limb jerk back. Eist saw the darkness roll up his arm and into his chest, leaving his limb the regular, slightly gold color it should be. “Eist, surely you grow tired of this pointless fight. We’re destined for each other. Destined to right all the wrongs of the very usurpers who sit behind you!”

  “You know, I’m getting sick of that word,” Eist countered before setting her hands against Fior’s spine and pouring everything she had inside of her through him.

  Light burst through his scales, sending gold rushing up his body before the light coalesced right in his jaw. It stayed there for a moment, building and building, until it finally released in a blinding flash of power.

  It hit Yacrist right in the chest, driving him back only for him to be buffeted forward by the roars of the dragons. She could see more dark smoke rising from his body, dispelling into nothing, and a pained yell ripped out of his throat.

  “I’m going to get my friend back,” she cried, feeling hope and victory bubble up inside of her. “And I’m going to banish you from all existence!”

  “You think so?” Yacrist shouted back, his voice cracking. Once more, she could see bits of him being revealed to her, washed clean of the possession that had taken him from her.

  “I know so.”

  “Poor Eist,” he wheezed, black liquid starting to trickle from his nose and eyes. “Didn’t anyone tell you that pride comes before a fall?”

  8

  From Beginning to End

  Eist had maybe one moment for dread and curiosity to well up inside of her before Yacrist let out a deafening scream and jerked backward. She winced against the sound, only to barely see the wave of power shooting out from his center like an explosion of green dragon gas and silver venom.

  She brought her hands up without thinking, that same instinct rising again. Thankfully, just like before, a shield raised in front of her.

  The rest of the brindles weren’t so lucky.

  The power hit them like a storm, sending them all spiraling away. The torrent of magic tried to shove Eist back as well, but she held fast, gritting her teeth and crying out.

  It beat against her, hot and violent and slick with so much of that slimy unbelonging. It tried to wiggle through cracks in her barrier, to lick at her and invite her into its perversion. She could almost hear it whispering to her, beckoning her to give up.

  To give in.

  But she held fast, refusing to listen. She screamed, as loud as she could, and pushed her shield outward until finally the assault ended.

  She nearly toppled forward, the All-Mother’s arms around her waist the only thing that kept her upright. When her vision cleared, she was breathing hard, and she surveyed the damage.

  The other brindles were gone, either knocked back to the edge of battle where they were now being swarmed by the abominations or falling to the ground, unable to withstand what they had been hit with. The only two that remained were the ones with the witches on them, and Eist guessed it was because they had used the same shield spell that she had.

  “That… That should have worked!” the woman cried, her face the perfect picture of dread.

  “It was never going to work,” Yacrist said, his body quickly healing in front of them as he laughed again. All around him, his power grew greater and broader, and that was when Eist truly realized that they were all going to die. “No matter how much of this world’s power you throw at me, I’ll have Yacrist to circumvent it. There is no surmounting me, no reaching my limit. As your planet returns to its former glory, I do too. There is no escape.”

  “This… This can’t be,” Eist whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “Give over the Three and let us end this peacefully. I have so, so much I want to show my betrothed before we fulfill our purpose.” He smiled, teeth wolfish and sharp. “That is why you brought them, isn’t it, my dear? Deep inside, you’ve always known that this is how it must go.”

  “No,” Eist groaned, trying to reach down inside of herself and find something, but once more, she was out of options. “No, no, no!” She wished she had other words, some sort of daring and defiant final lines before she gave her last hurrah, but all there was inside of her was despair.

  “He’s right, you know,” the All-Mother murmured behind her, surprising Eist again. “There’s no way to defeat him with your world’s magic.”

  “You sound like you already knew that.”

  “I may have had an idea.”

  A spike of anger shot through the anguish. “You might have said something earlier!”

  “We could have, but we have another theory.” She took a quick breath and then leaned close to Eist’s good ear, whispering as quietly as she could while still having the hard-of-hearing girl hear her. “Power from your world will not defeat him, but it is only us that keeps him from taking over your world.”

  “Yes, I’m familiar. It’s why you said we shouldn’t kill you. That you were the last thing stopping him from completely taking over our world. Something about him needing to absorb you to finish his destruction of your world?”

  “Yes, exactly. He has to devour us before he can move on to you.”

  “Why are you bringing that up now?”

  “Because, what if he can’t absorb us?”

  “And how do you suppose we do that? We can’t do anything!”

  As if he heard them, dark thread shot out of Yacrist, sharp and spiked as if he was trying to spear through Fior. Thankfully, the dragon rolled, and the whips retracted.

  “Someone could absorb us first.”

  “What!?”

  “We saw what happened when you found your center during training. We could feel that you were surrounding us, sizing us up as prey.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “It’s fine. We know that the Blight gave you a part of itself and you absorbed it as your own. It makes sense that you would be able to devour us just like him. That you would want to.”

  “But I would neve—”

  “Eist, the three of us discussed it. We’ve been alive for thousands and thousands of years after the destruction of our world. Maybe it is time we laid down to rest and joined our brothers and sisters.”

  “But—”

  “You are the one sent to save this world, Eist. I am asking you, please, to absorb us. Before he can.”

  “You’re asking me to, to…devour three gods!” Eist snapped. “How can I possibly do that?”

  “Well, that’s the easy part,” the All-Mother whispered, and Eist could almost hear the smile in her voice. “You just close your eyes and breathe.”

  Another sharp whip, then a tentacle slamming downward. Fior did his best to dodge, barking his concern.

  “I can’t do this.” It was another thing to fight something, to have to kill in the heat of battle, but it was another thing entirely to consume another living entity. Especially one that she had known and had once worshiped.

  “You have to, Eist. It’s time. Consider this our recompense for everything we’ve done. We never meant to bring your world to the brink.”

  “…I know.”

  “Come now, Eist! Give in. I’ll make their ends so short and sweet! It will almost be a relief!” Yacrist’s bold words cut through her and from the corner of her eye, she saw one of the witches ripped from their mount and
thrown to the ground. Thankfully, another dragon swooped by to save him, but then they were both swarmed by abominations.

  This was it. This was the brink. She had to make a choice, either to go quietly into the night and let the Blight win or do exactly what her goddess was asking of her.

  She… She couldn’t let everything die. They had fought so long and so hard, she couldn’t fail them now.

  So, letting out a shaking breath, she leaned back into the All-Mother and let herself go.

  Breath in. Hold it. Breathe out. Hold it. Feel the connection of everything. Breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out.

  It was easier to slip under this time, the warmth of it covering her in a smooth blanket. Within moments, she could feel the world flash into existence before her closed eyes, a giant inky mass in front of her, but three delicious points of shimmering cobalt around her.

  “That’s it,” she faintly heard the All-Mother urge. “We’re right here.”

  Eist felt her mind spread out, ignoring the maelstrom that was the Blight and all of its destruction. She let herself stretch, and stretch, until she was surrounding each point of brilliant blue.

  They really were so beautiful, tantalizing and sparkling in her mind. They beckoned her closer, speaking of magic, knowledge, and life that wasn’t like anything else she had ever known. She could feel her mouth water, and her body cried out for her to just…touch them. Just the tiniest touch. She would go mad if she didn’t.

  She hesitated for one more moment, part of her wondering if this was something that she could ever come back from, but then she felt the All-Mother bury her face in Eist’s thick blonde tresses.

  “It’s okay,” she urged, her voice sounding very strange in whatever state the young dragon rider was is. “We’re ready. And thank you, Eist, for giving us the chance to make this right.”

  The All-Mother pressed her lips in a gentle, motherly kiss onto the top of Eist’s head and that was the last straw. Everything that was Eist surged forward, enveloping the three cobalt spots and yanking them into herself.