by Meg Cowley
I have to leave now, Soren realised. This was a fool’s mission. He mentally kicked himself, but pushed the thought aside. There was no time for chastising. His life depended on being able to reach the castle safely.
The huge cathedral door was half open. One leaf trembled on its hinges. As he stepped from the cool dark of the cathedral and outside into the murky light of the smoky day, several dragons plummeted from the sky to land in the square before him.
Soren took a step forward to greet them when one opened its jaws and sent a jet of flames spilling around the square, lighting up anything that it touched. With a gasp and a suppressed cry, Soren jumped backwards into the shadows once more, his heart leaping from his chest. I cannot get out! He hoped his men had made it to safety. There were no other exits he knew of from the cathedral.
“Tarrell! Farran!” he shouted in his mind, hoping they would hear. “I’m trapped in the cathedral!”
“We’re coming.” Tarrell’s reply was grim.
Soren peered around the edge of the door. The dragons had not noticed him, but they blocked his way. The shadows deepened as another dragon, larger than them all, landed. Silver. Cies! Soren forced down the rising panic that threatened to bubble over. Cies was huge—even larger than Farran—and corded with muscles which bulged under tightly knit glistening scales that formed an impenetrable armour.
“Cies is here!” he shouted to Farran, who growled in response.
Soren fingered his sword, which had been coated with ice-fire. He was sure that might annoy Cies, but he had no doubt about the abilities of his blade. What use is a needle against a giant? Can it even pierce his hide?
He swallowed and his other hand tightened on the bow. The quiver still hung on his back. He felt. Three arrows, all tipped with ice-fire. They’re better than nothing. He stood inside the door, mostly hidden from view, and lined up a dragon through the open crack. In quick succession, he nocked, drew, and loosed the three arrows, threw the bow to the floor, and put all his weight against the door to close it.
The hinges were oiled and smooth and it closed without a sound, but he could not hear over the squeal of outrage from the dragon he presumed he had hit. He did not pause to look, and thrust harder. The hinges might have been smooth, but the door was not meant to be moved by one man. For all his efforts, it shut frustratingly slowly, leaving a yawning gap that did not seem to shrink between the two leaves.
As the door clanked shut, Soren peered through the keyhole to see a blur of silver approaching. A great bulk smashed against the door, catapulting him backwards. Soren sailed through the air and smashed into the unyielding stone floor. He gasped for air and blinked, but all he could see was black and stars for a moment. As his head cleared and his lungs relaxed, his senses came rushing back. Everything hurt. His shoulder particularly, where it had leaned against the door, and his back and legs where he had crashed into the floor. The sound of the impact had been deafening, and as his vision cleared, he froze.
The gutteral roar silenced even Soren’s pounding heart, which rattled against his ribs; each beat a kick in the chest. He trembled from head to foot, faced by the gaping maw of the giant, silver dragon before him. Cies’s head towered above him, and his hot fetid breath made Soren gag. His head snaked through the doors, but his shoulders would not fit through. Cies gnashed his teeth in frustration, stretching as far as he could reach. About Soren lay shards of stone, torn from Pandora’s cathedral by Cies’s jaws, which darted towards him, coming just short. Claws screeched furrows into the stone-flagged floor. The muscles in Cies’s neck corded and bulged as he strained.
Soren lay on his back, just a few feet out of reach, but already, under Cies’s battering, the stone was grinding and shrieking, as if it might give way at any moment. Slowly but surely, Soren was certain Cies would succeed. Soren looked to his blade. It seemed so short and frail compared to even one of Cies’s enormous teeth. Its reach was too short, and even if it could cut Cies or harm him with the ice-fire, Soren would be incinerated by fire, or caught in those unrelenting jaws before he could do anything about it.
The stones quivered and chunks began to crack off the door frame. Cies squeezed closer. Soren scuttled backwards, scrambling with his hands to drag himself away. Cies pushed forwards as far as he could, wriggling his shoulders; he roared in frustration and snapped his teeth as Soren moved further away.
It was all the encouragement Soren needed. Ignoring his complaining body—pain seared through him with every movement—Soren took his chance, scrambled to his feet, and ran. He jogged awkwardly, lopsided, as his body tried to compensate for its injuries.
A mighty crash sounded behind him. Soren chanced a glance backwards. His heart leaped into his mouth. Through the door, or what was left of it, the silver dragon leapt forward, through the collapsing wall as stones that would crush a man fell around Cies like pebbles. Each pace of Cies was worth ten of Soren’s, and each step shook the very foundations beneath them.
With a cry, Soren doubled his efforts, forcing his screaming body into a sprint. There was no way Farran and Tarrell would be able to save him now. He gritted his teeth against the pain. Safety. The tiny door behind the altar that might offer shelter was too far away. He would never make it. Why is this cathedral so damn big, he fleetingly thought, desperately searching for an alternative. No pillar or pew would shelter him.
With his last strength, not daring to look behind him again, Soren dashed up the wide stairs of the dais and threw himself towards the dragon throne. A pitiful shelter, Soren knew, but if he could just make it behind Brithilca’s frozen wings, made of the strange, impenetrable material that no one could fathom, perhaps he stood his best chance.
The ringing in his ears crescendoed with the pounding in his head and the rattling of his body, which felt like it would shake itself apart from the weight of the behemoth pounding behind him. As he dove, ducking under the protective shield of the wings, a shiver rippled through him and a wave of golden light rippled across his skin.
In the instant that he stopped, the throne of the dragon kings, guarded by what some said were the petrified remains of Brithilca himself, moved. Soren’s breath caught as Brithilca’s wings snapped shut about him. Silence and darkness was immediate. All Soren could feel was the floor shaking beneath him.
Chapter Thirty
Soren froze, unsure what had happened. Every muscle was tensed. Every sense tingled on high alert. The floor jolted him repeatedly. Cies must be trying to find a way through Brithilca’s protective shell, Soren reasoned, because they were growing more intense and frequent. His mind detached from his emotions, and, for a moment, the world dropped away. I’m going to die, he thought quite calmly. Not even Brithilca’s statue could survive a dragon attack for long, magic or not, Soren was sure.
“I can endure for as long as you need me to.” The deep, calm voice of Brithilca spoke into Soren’s mind.
Soren gasped and looked about, but it was pitch black; not even a chink of light entered. He placed his hands upon the wings that surrounded him. They were warm to the touch, as if alive. “Brithilca?” It cannot be.
“It is I. Do not give up. Do not despair.”
“How can I survive? If… If you release me, there is no way I can withstand Cies.” Soren did not want to think about what awaited him on the other side.
“Soren, the pact must be rebuilt between man, Eldarkind, and dragon at any cost. The elementals must not be allowed to rise, for they will destroy us all. Cies is but a small test.”
“I cannot defeat him, though! What can a human do against a dragon?”
“You are not alone. Help comes. Worry not. I will release you not a moment too soon, or too late, but you have a part to play in this. You can make a difference.” Brithilca growled, cutting off Soren’s protest.
“We have no time! Listen. I must share with you how to remake the pact!” Soren could hear the urgency in Brithilca’s voice. “The knowledge has been lost to me for centuries. The element
als clouded my vision with their magic as they sought to undo the pact. I must impart it to you, now, lest it be lost once more!”
All of a sudden, Soren was in another place and time, in a body and mind not his own. Thoughts raced through his head—someone else’s thoughts, someone else’s knowledge.
“Beren,” Brithilca’s voice said into his mind.
The sky was dark and the air was clogged and choked by the night’s fires. Lurking in the heart of the murk was a figure of darkness.
“Bahr,” Brithilca growled.
Bahr faded in and out of sight, wreathed in flames and black, roiling smoke—a great curtain of black that darkened all as far as the eye could see. This close, Bahr was a truly terrifying sight. Three times the height of a man he stood. His skin, if it could be called such, was so dark that his face had no features beside eyes that burned like fiery pits and a white hot maw that looked like the bowels of the earth. Standing tall and immobile, he loomed forebodingly, his black form visible by the void of light it created.
Men, Eldarkind, and dragons waited in silence, ready in their positions. All night, the dragons had worked upon the lofty heights of the glacier, under the shroud of the smoke, the dark, and the Eldarkind’s concealing magic, blasting away at the glacier until a great lake of water and slush had formed. It pooled behind the cliff of the glacier wall, which held it back from the valley like a dam. Beren, Falykas, king of the Eldarkind, and Brithilca, chief amongst dragons, waited for him, too, ahead of their forces and first in the line of danger.
Soren stared at Falykas. He was so like Tarrell. And Brithilca. He had never seen anything as impressive as the glittering blue dragon. He was not so muscular as Cies, whose form was twisted out of proportion. No, Brithilca was everything a dragon should be: sleek, powerful, and beautifully deadly.
Cracks rent the air as Bahr moved towards them. Not a word did he utter, but he did not need to. They had seen his mind and knew his intentions. He would not waste his words before he crushed them, they were sure.
It was time.
“Prepare!” Beren ordered his men. Soren felt the body he inhabited move. He was only a spectator. Behind him, swords hissed as they were drawn, bows creaked as they were pulled, and axe hafts thumped upon the ground. His soldiers were grouped with bands of Eldarkind; they would be casting spells, protected by the iron of his men.
At a seemingly unspoken instruction, the dragons took to the wing as one, to soar high above those left on the ground.
All too soon, Bahr was upon them. As before, they were engulfed in thick smoke that clogged their lungs and veiled their sight. Beren stood ready with his men to defend their Eldarkind counterparts, who had already raised their hands to the sky to begin chanting. All pointed towards the glacier to combine their magic as one.
Roars and shrieks sounded from overhead as dragons attacked Bahr with fire and physical might. They, and Bahr’s loud responses, masked the cracks and groans of the collapsing glacier as it cracked, but did not break.
Beren’s men stood in protective circles around the Eldarkind as Bahr drew closer. Some drew close enough to strike him; not all were fortunate were enough to live. Their iron blades melted as they penetrated him, yet Bahr’s screams indicated they had caused some pain.
His giant, black hands raked from the heights to indiscriminately grab anyone within his reach. Each man he grasped died a painful death. He tossed them into the heights to fall to their death, incinerated them in an instant, or slowly burnt them to death and fused them with their melting armour as he held on his burning grasp and squeezed the life from them.
The Eldarkind renewed their spells, chanting louder, faster, and with more vigour than before until the cracks in the glacier became a rumbling that engulfed them all. Now would be the difficult part: stopping the water from drowning them all. Their voices rose in intensity as the storm mirrored them. It battered them all with gusts that were hard to stand up in, and the dust raised from the ground sliced unprotected flesh and dashed itself into open eyes.
“Forward!” bellowed Beren. They surged as one mass, surrounding Bahr as the glacier gave way. Huge blocks of ice tumbled down from the heights to smash into a million shards upon the ground, which annihilated anything that got in their way. The groan and roar of countless gallons of displaced water followed as the Eldarkind frantically gesticulated at it, now crying their incantations with hoarse voices. The water tumbled down upon them all, bouncing off the valley bottom and twirling up into the sky in great spouts that formed rivers in the air, which soared towards Bahr.
He snarled in anger, deafening them all, and battered those surrounding him with fiery globules and his massive limbs, sending swathes of men and Eldarkind falling. It broke some of the magic, and swathes of water fell from the sky, battering those below like a waterfall. Bahr screeched as he was caught by it, and a great hissing went up as fires were extinguished around them.
Then, Bahr attacked anew, raining fire and death upon them all. Beren looked up. Giant water snakes wrapped around Bahr. He vaporised them with fireballs wherever they drew too near him, all the while, raining devastation on those below. Dragons harried him from above. Bahr batted them from the sky as if they were flies, and wreaked his own painful magic upon them. Beren’s mouth fell open in despair.
“We must act now! We must bind him!” Falykas shouted, fighting his way through to Beren across slippery ground covered in mud, blood, and bodies. Brithilca darted out of the sky to join them. “Are you prepared to do whatever is necessary?”
Beren hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes.”
“Take my hand!”
Beren rushed to comply. Falykas grabbed his hand in a vice-like grip and placed his other palm on Brithilca’s flank.
“We cannot kill him, so we must bind him,” Falykas explained quickly. “My people do not have the strength to do this alone. I must ask of you possibly the greatest sacrifice. Brithilca, I need your strength and Beren, I need the wards of your iron. We must bind ourselves together—combine our strengths—to have what is needed to succeed. I do not know if we shall live to see the end of this.”
Beren swallowed. There was no other way. Every moment he hesitated, another of his men died, and the threat to his home grew with Bahr’s strength and lust for vengeance. He squeezed Falykas’s hand tighter in response. Brithilca curled himself around them, his head level with theirs, to protect them from the worst of the battering gusts.
Falykas bared his teeth, took a deep breath, and shouted into the sky in the tongue of his own people that Beren did not understand. His words were snatched away into the maelstrom. “Storr andas, ia kaskea uan att aslura, inge flytte, inge tenkir, inge endra, ja inge eiende. Brun anda Bahr, ia sinuar uan nedan isen ja foss. Ia sinuar uan yta detthe, mina ethera, a ethera ro mina Eldarkin, a jarn ro ungrkin, ja a styrkr ro dragonkin, asti a lok ro timi!”
Soren heard the unfamiliar words as Brithilca translated them into the speech of man in his mind, “Great spirits, I command you to sleep, unmoving, unthinking, unchanging, and unyielding. Fire Spirit Bahr, I bind you under ice and water. I bind you with this, my energy, the energy of my kin, the iron of man, and the strength of dragonkin until the end of time!”
Beren felt Falykas’s magic rip through him and he braced himself against Brithilca’s hot scales, which hummed under his fingers with Brithilca’s strength. His body felt both on fire and doused in cold water as ice-fire rippled through every nerve to the tips of his fingers and toes. He could barely see past the hump of Brithilca’s body. Outside that protective shield, his own men fell to the ground as the same energy rushed through their veins.
As one, every piece of armour on his body shivered and melted into liquid that fell up into the sky. Rivers of metal twisted and turned, glinting in the darkness with their own light as they joined with the liquid iron of his men’s armour and weapons. They tumbled together towards the heart of the darkness, not touched by the cutting winds or dissuaded from their path
. The giant darkness at the centre of the storm that was Bahr was soon swathed in the constricting threads of metal and the water that remained, like a shining cocoon in the sky.
Dragons hurled themselves out of the way, struggling to land in the gale-force winds. Eldarkind stood tall with their arms stretched to the heavens, their lips locked in a silent chant that mirrored Falykas’s words.
Bahr’s dark form struggled against the bond, and the rings of metal and water expanded as he fought. Falykas dropped Beren’s hand and grasped his knife. He swept the blade across his palm and grabbed Beren’s hand to open a long gash in his palm, too. Swirling around to Brithilca, whose eye regarded him for a moment, before his head dipped in acquiescence, Falykas plunged the short blade into Brithilca’s soft, fleshy underjaw.
Boiling hot, giant droplets of purple blood rained down upon Beren and Falykas, who lifted up his hand to catch the violet liquid on his own crimson palm, before locking his hand with Beren. Their three bloods mingled as he shouted the incantation one last time.
Brithilca howled a shriek that added a new layer of deafening noise to the storm and began, scale by scale, to disintegrate before them. He glowed as bright as molten metal as he disappeared in a shower of sparks. Tears streamed down Falykas’s eyes and he raised them to the heavens to follow the sparks as they sought the eye of the storm.
Beren closed his eyes to the storm as it intensified around them, and prayed to the skies they would succeed. Without the shelter of Brithilca, debris and wind battered them, forcing Beren away from Falykas. In the muddy air, he could see nothing and no one around him. Beren fell to one knee and hunkered on the floor, swaying with each blow until his senses abandoned him and he sunk into darkness.