by Jada Fisher
“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate having such a smart enemy?” Dryss groused. “For being a mindless machine bent on devouring and destruction, it sure does learn well.”
“It wouldn’t be a trans-dimensional being capable of wiping our multiple deities if it wasn’t smart,” Dille said with a shrug.
“A multi-what now?” Fjorin asked.
“Another time. I really don’t want to explain that right now.”
“What did we say about no secrets?” Ain asked.
Their group wasn’t normally in the head tent, as they were normally too busy either researching or functioning as the second string, but they weren’t in headquarters at the moment. No, they were all sprawled across the ground in a circle after relief from the city had come to cook them food. Eist was incredibly grateful for all the civilians helping with the war effort, because she didn’t think she could so much as burn a bit of bread for herself, she was so exhausted.
“It’s not a secret. It’s just complicated. All we need to know right now is that we’re being repeatedly attacked by a giant monster that’s capable of severing our very connection to the gods.”
Something about what she said clicked in Eist and she sat bolt upright, all the exhaustion fleeing from her system.
“Wait. You said that Valatos was trying to do the ritual to sever that connection when you and him got pushed into the portal?”
“Well, more dropped or fell than pushed, but—”
Eist waved her hand, cutting her off. “That doesn’t matter.”
“I dunno, it seems like it matters to—”
“If Valatos could sever our connection to the Three, can we sever the Blight’s connection to us?”
Suddenly everyone was sitting up and regarding Dille with an intense expression.
“I… I don’t know. I mean… The logic stands to reason. We’d have to alter several things about the ritual, call upon some different incantations and runes…but I don’t exactly see how it would be impossible.”
Elspeth was up on her knees, leaning forward so her white hair almost curtained both her and Dille’s faces. “How soon can you find out?”
“I…I don’t know. There’s whole chunks of the archives that I haven’t—”
“You’re off second wave, consider yourself dedicated to the research wave which I’m making right now. I’ll be sending all injured that are still ambulatory to help you. You follow this lead, you got it?”
Dille nodded, looking just about as shocked as Eist felt. “Got it.”
“Good. Who knows, maybe this will be our chance to turn everything around.”
5
Boot on the Other Foot
“Release the rocks!”
Eist saw Ale’a’s mouth move and rushed to comply with the order. They had guessed that the Blight was going to use the crevasse as a sort of focal point for summoning its troops, and they had spent the past two days gathering rocks from mountains far and wide to rain down on the gash.
Fior dropped his large net of boulders, which tumbled down into the horde of abominations trying to claw their way up from the bottom of the chasm. It was satisfying, in a malicious way, to see the beasts smashed to smithereens. Crushed under the assault.
But what she didn’t find satisfying was the cold, wet feeling that dragged down her spine in a warning. Whirling Fior about, she saw the clouds part a small ways away and none other than the dark belly of the Blight settle into focus.
It wasn’t a kraken from myth this time, or even a perversion of a dragon’s form. Instead, it was much like that first night, a writhing, wriggling cloud with whipping, cord-like legs and churning boughs of power.
It moved over them, and for a moment, Eist wondered if it was going to just descend and devour them right then and there. She had never been so acutely aware of the absence of Dille at her side, but for the past three days, she hadn’t left the archives in the city.
It didn’t try to swallow them all up at once. Instead, its belly opened like a many-toothed maw and dark liquid rained out.
“Is… Is it drooling on us?” Ain asked incredulously, trying to block his face with his arm from the sudden torrent of dark liquid.
“No,” Eist said slowly, feeling that cold, wet feeling increase tenfold. “I think it’s tired of dealing with flying enemies.”
“What do you—”
Athar never finished his sentence, but that was probably because an abomination crashed down right on top of him, teeth snapping and claws slashing. Of course the giant of a man just ripped it off and chucked it to the ground far, far below, but now dozens were raining from the sky.
“Really!?” Ain shouted, loosing his bow like a madman. “It’s just going to drop things on us?!”
Eist didn’t answer, but she couldn’t just stand there. Tapping her hands against Fior’s side, he tilted his nose up and tensed to shoot upwards.
Only to have Allynbach fly right in front of her.
“Hey, watch it!” she shouted, releasing the pressure she had been holding on her mount’s side.
“You’re not thinking of taking on a giant force on your own, are you?” Yacrist snapped, barely getting his sentence out as he raised his blade and cut down a small abomination trying to hold onto Allynbach’s wing. “You promised you wouldn’t do that.”
“I promised I wouldn’t try to take on the world on my own,” Eist said, pressing her fingers against Fior’s neck. “Not that I wouldn’t ever do anything risky.”
With that, she shot by him, hurtling higher until they were entirely too close to the gaping not-a-mouth of the Blight’s roiling middle.
“Eist! Stop!”
She didn’t, of course. Instead, she held on and narrowed her gaze at their enemy. “Let’s have it,” she hissed.
Fior let out another roar, the reverberations from it soaring up into the Blight’s middle. It pushed much of the liquid and beasts raining down on them back toward its belly, but Eist knew that wouldn’t be enough.
Leaning so far that her face was pressed against Fior’s back, she laid her palms flat on his cheeks. Reaching deep within her, she searched for that same feeling she had gotten back when Dille had used old magic against the Blight.
Pulling out as much as she could, she urged it into the energy pouring from Fior’s mouth. She could feel rather than see it combine with his power, spiraling upwards until it slammed into the Blight’s gaping mouth.
The recoil was almost instantaneous, but a shuddering cry erupted from the mass and it spiraled upwards, disappearing above the actual cloud. Eist watched it, wondering if she had managed to chase it off once again, only for hundreds of thin, spear-like limbs to shoot downward all at once.
For all her magic and Fior’s ability, the two of them would have been impaled right through unless Allynbach hadn’t tackled them. They went hurtling through the air, only coming to a stop as the rest of the second wave set upon the attacking limbs.
“Please, Eist. That was too close.”
She had expected him to be angry, maybe even reproachful. Not mournful as he looked her over, inspecting her for hurt.
“It worked, though, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but what if it didn’t? What if I wasn’t there just now?”
Eist didn’t know what to say to that. “I think we’ve got enough on our plates to worry about what-ifs. Let’s just get back to the battle, okay?”
He didn’t respond, but she didn’t either. Instead, she just flew back into the fray. They could have a whole talk about her being irresponsible and him being in her way later.
If they survived that long.
Eist parried a blow with her halberd, focusing only on the three creatures that she was facing off against on the deck of a naval ship. She certainly hadn’t meant to be grounded, but after attacking some creatures that had been trying to rip off the masts of the ship, she’d been knocked from her perch. If it weren’t for Fior swooping low to catch her and gliding them to the woode
n surface, she was sure that her back would be a lot sorer.
Or broken.
Soldiers were all around her, some fighting, some trying to secure the sails, and even more of them loading more dragon’s-light coated spears into their ballistae at the front and back of the ship. She knew there were even more below, dutifully rowing to make sure they stayed out of range of the Blight’s slamming legs.
It wasn’t a kraken this time. Nor any other sort of creature that she could place. Once more, it was just a churning, violent cloud of thrashing limbs and darkness, doing as much damage as it could.
And it was doing quite a lot of damage. Eist was beginning to realize that all the other times they had battled in the past month, it had been testing them out. Learning their responses and how they reacted. Their strengths and their weaknesses. And even though Dille had warned them all of that, it was entirely unnerving to see it in real time.
Several of its arms shot into the water, curling around the ship beside her and hauling it into the sky. Eist tried to race for Fior as the entire boat lifted, but a strong grip caught her below the wrist.
It was Yacrist again, Athar not far behind him. Both had their weapons drawn and started beating back the abominations that had been outnumbering her and Fior.
“Don’t,” he said, not as a command but more as a desperate plead. “Even if you get it to drop it, that boat will shatter to pieces when it hits the water and take down everyone with it. This way, the men can jump overboard.”
“I don’t need you watching everything I do!” Eist snapped, ripping her wrist from his grip and spinning to sweep her halberd in a wide arc. It caught in the waist of one of the charging beasts and Fior followed up by latching his mouth on the creature and flinging it overboard. “You need to trust me!”
“Yeah, but were you or were you not just about t-to try to s-s-save that ship entirely on your own?” Athar asked, blocking a swipe from a creature and running it, another, and one more beast through with his broadsword.
Okay, maybe they had a point, but Eist didn’t like it. She’d been in plenty of intense situations all on her own and had managed to survive. She didn’t want them hanging over her shoulder at every moment. “I don’t need the two of you babying me.”
“We’re not babying you,” Yacrist objected, kicking away an attacker and spinning around so that his large back was pressed up against hers.
It was so similar to how she trained that she couldn’t help but fall into their usual patterns.
Blocking, striking, Fior snapping and tossing while Allynbach summoned whips of water from the sea below. Athar moving on the outskirts to keep them from being overwhelmed, and Ethella swooping down every moment or two to swipe up beasts in her mouth and feet.
They worked together as a unit, breathing together, moving together. It was comforting, or at least as comforting as a battle could be, until a cracking noise sounded from above.
Eist looked up to see a half-dozen or so creatures trying to break the crow’s nest off, their claws and teeth and extra limbs jerking it this way and that. If it came tumbling below, it could hurt a lot of the soldiers and sailors.
“Watch your back.” Eist said quickly before vaulting onto Fior’s low back.
“Wait, Eist, by the Three!”
But she was already in the air. She directed Fior to take her to the crow’s nest, where she slid off, already spinning her halberd, and he set about ripping them away with his mouth.
Eist knew that it would take just one roar from him to send all of them absolutely flying into the water, but it would also destroy the mast in turn. And she hadn’t spent so many hours on naval strategy in class to forget that a mast and everything that came with it was incredibly important to ship battles.
So instead, they were stuck with manually removing them, which really meant vicious physical fighting. Eist didn’t mind, however. As sore as she was, as tired as she was, there was so much anger in her that she needed to burn off.
This wasn’t how her future was supposed to be. Her grand debut as a dragon rider was supposed to lead to defeating a local bandit lord, maybe saving a small town, and incurring the favor of the council. It was never supposed to be getting embroiled in a world-ending, eternal battle with a creature that wanted to devour everything she loved.
She felt a shape lunge at her back, and quickly swung the blade of her weapon backwards, where it stuck in something that was definitely at least somewhat fleshy. She then felt a sort of gasp across the back of her neck before she saw a shape tumble off the side of the nest.
She smirked, fairly pleased with how well she was handling her new weapon when she hadn’t even passed her live-steel test yet, but that smile quickly vanished when the wounded creature’s hand shot out and grabbed onto her tunic.
“Fior!” she half-managed to shout as she tumbled over herself. Somehow, she managed to grab onto the edge of the wooden nest, but her halberd clattered to the deck far below. That was what she got for being cocky. She should have known better.
But of course her not-so-little guy was on it, swooping to her rescue with his mouth open, once nubby teeth now sharp as daggers. Those jaws snapped closed around the abomination, ripping it away as Fior flew off into the night, leaving only its scraggly hand with too many fingers gripping onto Eist’s tunic.
“I got you!”
Eist twisted her neck to see Yacrist soaring up toward her, his arms raised to catch her. A quick glance up told her that the remaining creatures were about to swarm her in her vulnerable position, so she let go.
He caught her just a few feet later, although her impact still drove the breath from his chest. Allynbach spun slightly, their lithe, two-headed form not used to catching densely-muscled dragon riders falling from the sky. They managed to steady themselves quickly though, and Eist found herself staring up at Yacrist a little bashfully.
“We should probably stop meeting like this,” she muttered.
Before he could answer, there was another thud behind him and Allynback was spinning again. The abomination that had leapt off the crow’s nest didn’t hesitate, however, its split-jaw clamping right down on Yacrist’s shoulder.
“No!” The words escaped Eist’s mouth in horror while the young man let out an anguished cry. Without a moment’s thought, Eist quickly ripped his shortsword from his sheath and drove the blade straight through the bizarre creature’s skull.
When she pulled the weapon away, it fell from Allynbach’s back and Yacrist just slumped forward, bleeding intensely.
“Allynbach!” Eist cried, fighting hard to keep her voice steady. “Please, get us to a healer. Now.”
She had always thought that Yacrist was being a little dramatic when he said he didn’t think he could survive if he lost her while she was doing something reckless, but suddenly, she understood exactly what he meant.
6
Last Ditch Effort
“I’m just saying, you don’t have the gift of sight, so why do you think you know better than I do when I should go into battle or not?”
“It doesn’t take the gift of sight to know when you’re about to go and do something reckless.”
“So says the man who nearly has his throat ripped out by a monster!”
“And the only reason that I was even in that position was because you decided to go and get reckless.”
“How was saving the crow’s nest reckless!?”
“It’s not the act, it’s the fact th-that you didn’t even th-think to ask any of us for help, or to attack it as a group. We were both th-there with you, but you chose not to let us help you at all.” While Athar’s addition to the conversation was much quieter than Eist and Yacrist’s yelling, it didn’t make her feel any better.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dille said, looking up from the book she had been poring over. “What’s going on here?”
Eist whipped toward her friend, more than a bit irritated. “Yacrist just got out of the healer’s after he was injured two days ag
o, and he has the nerve to lecture me about how I fight.”
“Is this about your tendency to constantly sacrifice yourself even if other resources are around?”
“What?! I do not sacrifice m—”
Eist.
She stopped in the middle of her sentence, craning her neck this way and that for the source of the noise. “Did you guys hear that?”
“Hear what?” Dille ask, her expression growing all too knowing.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Yacrist said. “You made a promise and you’re doing a terrible job of keeping it.”
Eist. This way.
“That… That sounds like my mother.”
“Wait, what?”
Her friends said more, but she couldn’t hear them. Instead, the normal rushing silence in her ears grew even more, until the only things she could sense was the lilt of her mother’s voice.
“Is that you?”
Here.
Her voice was coming from somewhere else, somewhere deeper in the archives. Eist followed it, her heart beating hard in her chest. If her other friends kept talking to her, she didn’t notice it. The only thing that mattered was finding that voice.
As she passed deeper in the archives, cobwebs drifted across her body in unwelcome caresses, and the torches ran out, letting her vision take over. Soon, most of the shelves and things around her were glowing a light blue, with a ribbon of gold stretching out in front of her then around the corner.
Eist.
My little Eist.
She picked up her pace, hoping against hope she was about to meet someone who couldn’t possibly be there. That maybe when the Blight was freed from its prison, her parents too had been released from whatever spell they had sacrificed themselves for.
But the voice faded as she rounded another corner in the very back of the room, leaving her alone. What she could hear came rushing back to her, and she was faintly aware of her friends calling after her.