by Simon Archer
When the bandits made it a third of the way downfield, I started walking forward myself, Petra falling in at my side. Wodag gave me a quick glance, and I flashed him a single finger held up, the signal to be ready. He gave me a quick nod and grunted something inaudible to Sullah.
They’d be ready.
The dragon-girl seemed to notice the two of us advancing and raised a fist, a signal that made her entire force stop right in their tracks. That was just close enough for me to make out two more details about her. First, she was strikingly beautiful, the finest steel compared to Petra’s silkiness, and second, there was a sickening, black brand scorched right through the thick red scales on her right hip. It was perfectly placed to let the brand be seen clearly as a mark of ownership. More importantly, though, it was also in a position that would allow a skilled fighter to guard it with a proper side stance.
I took the dragon-girl’s gesture as a sign to stop myself. We didn’t want to be too close anyway, not with what was about to happen.
“Hey!” I called out. “I know you probably can’t do anything about this, ma’am, but I’ll give this a go, anyway.” I cleared my throat. “I’d really appreciate it if you would kindly stop this army and take it back from where it came peacefully. If you don’t, well, there’ll be a lot of killing, a lot of dying, and I’m a nice enough guy that I don’t want to orphan a bunch of spider-people today.”
My sheer audacity had the desired effect. Chittering laughter rippled across the line of ettercaps, but the dragon-girl didn’t laugh, not one chuckle. Instead, her brow furrowed, and her jaw twitched with restrained emotion. After a few moments of laughter from her army, she abruptly raised a fist again, and they shut right the fuck up.
“Uplander!” she called back, her voice surprisingly soft even as it echoed like thunder across the battlefield. “I beg you, take these people, and flee. Run as far and as fast as you can. If you do not, know that I have been ordered to burn Kaulda to ash, and every single person I find in my path there will be put to flame and blade.”
The glittering in her eyes wasn’t fury, I could tell now. It was the shine of held-back tears.
“Don’t make me do this, Brand-wielder!” she added. “There’s no freedom in death.”
I took a deep breath as I focused myself. War sucked, but sometimes, you had to fight to be free. As I let that air out through my teeth in a sharp hiss, Petra put a supporting hand on the small of my back, and Libritas simply chimed once in my ear.
“Sorry, lady,” I called back. “Just know that I’m going to free you, okay?” I glanced at the ettercap lines. “And I suggest you guys run. But you won’t, so… well, sucks to be you.”
With that, I plunged Libritas sharply headfirst into the ground. As we had arranged, she erupted with pure, golden light down her length, a beacon that could be seen for a long way on these rolling plains. The dragon-girl and her army all hesitated that one crucial moment, no doubt fearful of what tremendous magical wrath the Brand of Freedom was about to throw down on their happy asses.
But they had nothing to fear from Libritas. They didn’t even have anything to fear from the flaming arrow that arced with pinpoint accuracy over my head. In fact, Sullah’s arrow thunked harmlessly deep in the grass in front of the left flank of the ettercap forces and set the grass aflame.
What they did have to fear was the thin casks of wyrm-fire we had buried at that point, nestled next to chunks of Sola crystals and covered by a very flammable layer of woven grasses courtesy of Petra’s dryad magic.
The poor bastards didn’t even realize what was happening when the ground in front and under them exploded in a series of chain reactions. Whooshing gouts of wyrm-fire shot into the sky, followed by the thunderous whumps of the Solas exploding with all their absorbed solar energy.
Then it got worse, as the Wyrmtooth tribe burst out of their cleverly camouflaged niches along a hill north of the battlefield. As they threw their ghillie cloaks aside, the orc hunters let out a squealing battle cry as Aroch Steeltusk swung his mighty staff-sling and let fly a flask of wyrm-fire. Thirty more followed after, even as Sullah launched flaming arrow after flaming arrow into the other fire-traps we had buried, firing as fast as Wodag could feed him ammunition.
It wasn’t even a contest. Fire, blood, explosions, and death transformed that shallow valley into a bloodbath.
But I wasn’t really watching. I was charging downfield, into the storm, because the moment the first burst of flame erupted, the dragon-girl broke into a sprint for our front line. The inferno didn’t stop her, and the shockwaves of the exploding crystals only rebuffed her slightly.
If she got past Petra and me, she would kill everyone. That much was certain… but she wasn’t going to get past us, not while I drew breath.
22
The dragon-girl didn’t waste a second. While we were still a good twenty yards from clashing, her chest puffed up just a bit before she breathed out a short, controlled burst of red-gold flame, as easy as you’d stroll down the street. I rolled right, and Petra dove left as the fiery gout incinerated a clean two-foot wide path where we had just been standing.
“Run, you idiots!” the dragon roared as tears rolled down her cheeks. “You can still help others if you run, but I will have to kill you if you stand in my way.” I rolled to my feet as she slowed her run into a stalk, her stance already shifting so that her left side led forward to guard her brand. “The master and his master both know that Libritas is weak now… but that means if you flee, you can grow--”
I already knew that trying to reason with the draconic powerhouse would go nowhere, not if she’d been ordered by the Weaver to do this, and Petra knew too. Vines and roots burst up out of the earth to cut the dragon-girl’s words off. They wound around her muscular arms and legs, crisscrossed like chains around her chest, neck, and forehead before pulling down into the grassy ground.
I was already back on my feet before the first vine took hold, and I sprinted for all I was worth. Maybe Petra could hold the dragon down, but I wasn’t going to bet on it. Already, vines were snapping away faster than the dryad could summon more under our foe’s unearthly strength, and the dragon-girl’s neck tightened as she strained to pull her head free so she could unleash more of her flames.
A sickening crack of wood echoed through the waning booms from the conflagration behind the scaled woman as she tore her right arm free, right when I was a step-and-a-lunge away from her. I saw those glittering talons begin to sweep at me, so I turned my sprint into a knee slide. Turf tore up in my path as the air whistled from the raw power of her blow, and as I passed by her front, I swept out with Libritas, aiming to knock the dragon’s feet out from under her.
My aim was dead on, and I had momentum and surprise on my side. Libritas slammed full on into her leading shin, a blow that would have knocked an ape off its feet… and it was like smacking a tire iron into a brick wall. The shot rebounded off the dragon-girl’s shin, which only slid her leg back a few inches before her foot-talons found purchase in the earth.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
She didn’t even try to skewer me with her claws. She simply twisted to one side, vines and foliage tearing free from her form, as she swept her tail around like a flail right at my kneeling form. I managed to tense up and get my arms up in a block just before it hit me like a Mack truck. It was a pure miracle that I didn’t break any bones as the tail slap sent me tumbling through the grass away from her.
It hurt like hell, I won’t lie, but I still rolled through it and was scrambling to my feet a moment later, just in time to see the dragon-girl exhale another cone of flame right at Petra. The dryad’s eyes widened, and then she was gone, hidden behind a woven wall of saplings covered in greengum sap. The flames coursed over the wood, evaporating the sap in mere moments… but that was just enough time for Petra to make a break for safety before the trees were rendered to ash.
Damn. This was not starting well. At range, the scaled wo
man’s dragon-fire would win the fight for her easy, and up close, she was insanely tough and powerful. Still, all I needed was one opening, one strike to that right hip, and it was all done. We just needed to make that opening happening.
“Hit her with everything, Petra!” I called out.
I didn’t need to say it, she knew what to do, but it was something to distract the dragon-girl. With the screams, explosions, fire, yelling, and both of us coming from different directions, maybe she’d lose focus, get us that opening. Instead of another charge, I circled away from where Petra was, forcing our foe to keep her brand away from me and opening her up towards the dryad.
Just to add that little something-something, I threw some quick thrusts with Lib, aiming for the softer belly of the dragon-girl. The real trick was to strike just well enough to force her to guard her less armored parts, but not so well as to hit. Injuring the woman was the last thing that I wanted, after all.
It was obvious that the enslaved dragon possessed training in addition to her immense strength… but not trained enough to see through my ruse. She expertly blocked each thrust with the thick armored scales on her forearms, her slitted golden eyes flitting to keep up with the Brand of Freedom’s glowing head. In fact, she was so focused on that, she didn’t catch the bursting earth around Petra or the massive bronzewood tree rising up around her form.
Instead, the dragon-girl growled and counterattacked with a flurry of claw swipes, a relentless assault that would have turned most people into coleslaw. Me, I just stayed calm and remembered my training. Left swipe, parry with Lib, push her off-balance just a hair. Right thrust, sidestep to let it pass, bring Lib around for a pommel strike, let her block it so I can push her back. It was tiring work, each block sending a ringing shockwave through me from the dragon’s power, but I only needed to do it for one… more… second…
That’s when the reptilian warrior finally managed to creep through my guard. She countered a swing by grabbing Libritas by the haft, a grunt roiling in her throat as it impacted into her palm, and her free hand lashed out to grab me by the collar. Flames licked between her lips as she lifted me up off my feet.
“You should have run when you could have,” she growled.
I only grinned. “And you should really have watched your flanks,” I calmly replied, one second before a huge gnarled branch slammed right into the dragon-girl’s side.
The Amazonian woman dropped Lib and me both as she was thrown to one side, right before another massive bronzewood branch slammed her in the back to pitch her forward onto her knees. As I hopped to my feet, I saw exactly what Petra had done. She hadn’t just animated another mighty tree as she had before. The dryad had shaped the towering tree around herself like the world’s most eco-friendly suit of sci-fi power armor.
“Stay down, sister,” Petra yelled from her seat at the trunk of the bronzewood tree, wines and branches holding her tightly in place. “We can heal you.”
“You know that I--” the enslaved woman tried to say… but Petra wasn’t foolish enough not to press the attack, and neither was I. The dryad reared back her arms, two gnarled limbs of the tree moving in response before coming down with a massive axe handle blow to try to flatten the dragon-girl as I swept in on the flank…
And the scaled warrior shoved back up to her feet with a roar, catching the two wooden fists rushing down on her with her own clawed hands just as her tail lashed out once more at my chest. This time, though, I was on my feet and slipped past the blow, but Petra’s tree wasn’t so lucky. The dragon’s claws tore into the bronzewood as she shoved the thick branches up and back with so much force that the tree’s roots were wrenched halfway out of the ground.
Petra was off balance, and I could hear the sharp inhale that presaged every burst of flame the enslaved dragon let loose. She was about to turn my dryad into so much kindling, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Don’t forget about me,” I shouted as I brought Libritas forward, my other hand slipping to the pouch of Silver’s droppings at my side.
“William!” Lib cried in my ear as time seemed to slow and the dragon-girl whirled on me, an inferno roiling in her open mouth. “You don’t have an opening, and you can’t dodge this close!”
I never planned on hitting… at least not at that moment. The dragon-fire began to leap out of the woman’s mouth as I pulled my thrust short, ripped the pouch from my belt, and tossed it underhand right up into the enslaved girl’s face. I didn’t even look at what happened next. It was either going to work, or it wasn’t, and either way, I needed to move.
As I clenched my eyes shut and threw myself to one side, the first licks of dragon-fire touched the raw wyrm-fire. The brilliant white flash of fire that followed almost blinded me through my eyelids, even as a shriek of surprise and pain tore through the air. I forced my eyes open despite the burning in my eyeballs, and even though my vision was filled with spots, I was doing way better than the dragon-girl at that moment.
Her clawed hands were over her face and eyes as she staggered back from the flash, and from my crouch, I could see, right at eye level, the twisted web of a brand burned into her hip.
“Amazing job, William!” Libritas cheered as her golden light surged and filled her form before her runic tip flared with silver. “We won’t have another shot!”
She didn’t need to say anything else because I was already taking that shot. I summoned up every bit of willpower in my mind, every desire to see this poor girl be free, and every bit of disgust I had for the Weaver, the bastard that would turn a woman into a living weapon, then force her to kill in his name. With pinpoint accuracy, I slammed Libritas’s runic head right into the inky black brand.
Gold and silver magic lit up the battlefield, pouring out of the Brand of Freedom in a cascade of light. The inky blackness burned away, unable to stand in the face of such pure, perfect light, and the cry of pain and confusion that came from the dragon’s perfect lips fell away, only to be replaced by a cry of sheer joy. As I pushed my brand in further, trying to purge all the evil from the wound, I caught sight of her taloned hand grab hold of Libritas’s shaft and pull it closer. When I cast a glance upward, I saw her face as she looked down at me, her eyes clear, the look of anger and fear and distress gone, replaced by near-orgasmic happiness.
Tears of joy instead of guilt rolled down her cheeks as the scarred scales mended under Libritas’s tender touch, and her spiral rune spread over the newly regrown flesh. That’s when it hit me, the same intense rush of emotion that I’d felt when I freed Petra, and I was no better prepared for it than I was then. How could I be? It was like having every bit of the dragon-girl’s quintessence slammed into me all in one intense moment.
And, at that moment, I knew her. Shikun, who should have been a champion of her kind, born from a great draconian king, but torn from her family before she even knew them. Shikun’s pain, the anguish of being chained to the Weaver, and then the guilt, the shame at all the terrible deeds she was forced to do in his name… and then something so much worse. The torture that scarred both mind and body, the feeling of being broken in every way and then rebuilt into a twisted caricature of oneself. I could practically hear the clicking laughter of the Weaver as he pulled the chains taut on his wheel of correction, could feel the vicious Brand, Karthas, burning my own skin.
It was almost too much… but then, breaking through the black tendrils of despair, the shining pleasure of freedom, joyous freedom cut through. It was the promise of redemption, the chance to wash the blood off her hands, and the slimmest possibility of finding a place in the world where she could find something more than violence, slavery, and death.
And then it passed, that entire sharing of heart and soul happening in the blink of an eye. I fell forward on my knees as Shikun did the same, not just collapsing to her knees but into my arms. The tears still fell as she buried her horned head into my shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered fiercely. “I didn’t think… I didn’
t think it would ever happen… but--”
I put my arms around the dragon-girl and pulled her closer. “Don’t worry, I’m here for you.” My eyes turned up to see the wooden goliath fall away from Petra, the dryad swooping down to put her arms and vines around us both.
“We’re both here for you,” Petra added, “and we will never let you go.”
Shikun managed to get another sobbing, “Thank you,” but I shushed her with a kiss on the cheek.
“Enough of that,” I said softly. “Just breathe, Shikun. You’re free now. Now and forever.”
Before I said that, I think she didn’t quite believe that this was real, but something in my tone of voice, or maybe simply that Petra and I hadn’t gone away yet, managed to break through to the tortured draconian’s mind. She nuzzled in close to me, and we simply sat there for who knew how long, embracing the crying, grateful dragon-girl.
And as the combined forces of the plainsfolk of Kaulda and the hunters of the Wyrmtooth tribe cheered in victory around us, my anger towards the Weaver turned from a burning coal into a towering inferno.
Uruk had been a sick bastard… but the Weaver was a true monster, and I wouldn’t rest until he was dead, and his Brand was no more.
23
Shikun
I risked a glance up from where I stood in the middle of that blasted field to look at my new master. The very word felt wrong in my heart, but how else could I see it? I had never had anything else in my life, save for the dimmest of memories after my birth. My father, my mother, and the faintest remembrance of my wings…
But that wasn’t real, not in this world. The reality in Etria was that we were all ruled over by masters, all slaves whether we were branded or not. Perhaps this master would be kinder, I felt in my heart that was true, but in time, he would grow cruel. How could he not? I was a hideous monster, after all, a beast that none could love.