by Brian Beam
The flame reflected off of the eldrhim, shooting off in all directions. The eldrhim’s scales took on a white-orange glow as they heated, filling the air with the metallic and smoky smell of an iron forge. The heat radiating from the flames threatened to singe the choppy hair from my head even at our distance. As the flames dissipated and Bhaliel took back to the air, the eldrhim’s scales quickly turned back to their original silvery sheen.
I took full advantage of the attack on the eldrhim and turned Telis towards Sal’s light, keeping him at a gallop until I reached her. I still had no illusions that I could do anything to hurt the eldrhim, but maybe Sal’ and Max had come up with something that could be used against it to help in Bhaliel’s attack.
“What just happened? Was that Bhaliel?” Sal’ questioned anxiously.
“Bhaliel just knocked the dung out of that eldrhim,” Til’ replied excitedly.
“Can you help her?” I asked, looking back towards the battle raging between dragon and eldrhim.
“I think so,” Sal’ breathed. “I think I have an idea on how to kill it.”
“I think it will work too,” Max yawned. “It is a good idea, even if it is not mine. You have a smart one here, Korin.” In the soft glow of Sal’s light, I almost thought I could see her blushing.
Part of me wanted to just let the eldrhim and Bhaliel battle it out. I didn’t want to put Sal’ in danger again, but it was her choice to make. If the eldrhim killed Bhaliel, the world would be losing two dragons since only Bhaliel could hatch the egg. After discovering how Sal’ felt about what wizards had done to dragons, I knew she wouldn’t let two more lose their lives if she thought she could do something about it.
We turned back to the battle between the giant creatures and set our horses at a gallop to get close enough for Sal to do what she needed to do. I didn’t know what I could do to help, but I wasn’t going to leave her side.
Ahead of us, Sal’s light finally illuminated the metal-monster eldrhim and revealed it to be back on its feet with rips all over the front of its body that spilled out ink-black blood. The eldrhim’s attention was on the sky and its arms were tense with hands balled into tight fists. I could see its breath misting from its mouth over rows of jagged, sharp teeth.
Bhaliel swooped down for another attack and the eldrhim’s arms shot upwards to grab for her. Bhaliel maneuvered away from its grasp, slicing through one of its arms with her back claws as she ascended back into the dark sky and out of Sal’s light.
Sal’ came to a halt and dropped a hand to her case, holding her other hand up with her palm facing the eldrhim. Her eyes were closed in concentration. In front of Sal’s hand, I could see hundreds of tiny, jagged, iridescent crystals arranging into a rectangular shape that was as tall as Til’ and twice that in length. They looked like miniature versions of the crystal projectile I had seen her use against Bhaliel at Nansunic’s temple and the metal-monster eldrhim just minutes prior. Sal’s light hit the crystals, rays of light reflecting prismatically in all directions from their jagged angles. For the moment, Sal’ just sat there with the crystals before her and her eyes closed, doing nothing.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked impatiently.
“She has to make sure not to hit Bhaliel,” Max responded for her, clearly irritated at my question as Sal’ continued to hold the crystals before her with her eyes closed in concentration.
As I looked back towards the battle, I realized that there were only seconds between Bhaliel’s swooping attacks. Everything was all metallic flashes of silver and green; high-pitched screeches and basso roars; gusting wind from wings and shaking earth from massive feet. Bhaliel had come back around and knocked the eldrhim to the ground. She then doubled back and grabbed one of the eldrhim’s outstretched arms, taking it up into the air. The eldrhim’s weight was too much for Bhaliel, so she didn’t make it very high before dropping the eldrhim with ground-shaking results. The eldrhim leaned away from Bhaliel’s subsequent attack and made it back to its feet as Bhaliel banked into a turn for her next move. All of that happened in less than a minute. Max had reason to be irritated about my dumb question. There were no safe openings to use a spell against the eldrhim with Bhaliel’s attacks being so frequent. Bhaliel was saving us. Killing her with an attack meant for the eldrhim would not be much of a thanks.
I’m not sure if the next few moments actually seemed to occur in slow motion at the time, or if it is only how my memory processes them in hindsight. Bhaliel came back down towards the metal-monster eldrhim’s hammer-shaped head with claws spread wide and ready to rip through more of the eldrhim’s metallic scales.
The eldrhim, after so many failed attempts to parry or return Bhaliel’s attacks, took a new approach to its defense. Instead of reaching out towards the attacking dragon, it bent its massive legs at the knees into a slight crouch as Bhaliel’s front claws missed the eldrhim’s head by mere inches. In the split-second when Bhaliel’s golden-scaled underbelly was directly above the eldrhim, the eldrhim’s muscular arm, half covered in its own black blood, shot up into the air.
As the scene unfolded slowly before me as if in a dream, I felt like I had all the time in the world to shout to Bhaliel to watch out for the eldrhim’s attack. I felt like Bhaliel would have plenty of time to recognize what the eldrhim was doing and bank away from the eldrhim’s rising arm. However, in reality, the whole scene took only a couple of seconds.
The eldrhim’s hand ripped through the golden scales of Bhaliel’s underside, spilling viscera that glistened moistly in Sal’s light. Time went from slow, to crawling as we all watched in shock. Bhaliel let out a massive roar that was so filled with pain and agony that it seemed to take a part of my soul with its release. As her forward momentum ripped her body away from the eldrhim’s hand, she crashed to the ground with enough force to stagger the eldrhim along with the horses. Her body rolled out of Sal’s light and into the darkness beyond, her wings smacking with bone-breaking intensity with each turn.
Then, for a single moment that felt like minutes, all was still. The only sounds were the heavy breathing from the eldrhim as its breath misted in front of its mouth, and a deep gurgling sound coming from the shadows where Bhaliel’s body had fallen.
“No!” Til’ shouted with an emotional intensity I wouldn’t have expected from the Kolarin. Only my turning in the saddle to grab a hold of him stopped him from jumping out of the saddle. More than ever before, I was aware of how strong the Kolarin value of life truly was. Well, maybe not the life of evil creatures like eldrhims. In that moment, I completely felt Til’s pain and anger.
I couldn’t determine if the heaviness of my heart was from seeing something so violently attacked by such an evil being, the fact that dragons were now one step closer to extinction, or mere guilt that Bhaliel was likely dead out there in the darkness because she had tried to save us. Most likely it was all three. All I knew for sure, though, was that I wanted to jump out of that saddle along with Til’ and kill the eldrhim with my bare hands.
However, our only real chance in killing the eldrhim lay with Sal’. I turned to her to see her eyes still closed and the hundreds—possibly thousands—of tiny jagged crystals still hovering in a sheet before her.
Bringing my attention back to the eldrhim, I could see it turn towards us, pulling its wide mouth into a wicked grin between its beady black eyes. It didn’t seem to be bothered by the multiple gashes covering its body or the fact that black blood poured from its wounds.
Just as it looked like it was going to advance on our position a couple dozen paces away, I heard Max scream, “Now!”
Ahead of me, I saw a flash of glittering light that must have been from the crystals. They were moving so fast, that I saw them as only lines of light as they shot forward. As they reached the eldrhim, I could understand exactly why Sal’ had created so many of the tiny crystals.
Sal’ had made the large amount of the small crystals over such a large area so that they would hit every square inch of the
eldrhim’s hammer-shaped head. Most of the miniscule crystals bounced off of silver scales and ricocheted to the ground or out into the darkness beyond Sal’s light. Many missed the target completely and were swallowed into the night. It was the crystals that made contact where there were no scales that the spell was intended for.
Lines of light ripped into the eldrhim’s eyes, mouth, and into the gashes on its upper torso. The eldrhim staggered back with an earthquaking step and grabbed for its face with hands the size of my chest, clawing at its eyes. The elrhim let out a high-pitched screech that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I imagined how those tiny crystals must be ricocheting throughout its brain, the silver scales covering its head keeping them from exiting the confines of its skull.
The metal-monster eldrhim’s death was quicker than it deserved as it fell to the ground shortly after the crystals had ripped through its eyes, mouth, and wounds. After a couple twitches, it lay still. Silver scales that were not covered with its black blood reflected Sal’s light to wrap its body in a soft halo.
For several seconds we all sat still and silent as if to make sure the eldrhim was going to stay down. The wet gurgling noise still sounded from the darkness beyond Sal’s light. My hand must have released Til’s shoulder at some point because I felt his body slip off of Telis behind me and saw him go speeding towards where Bhaliel had fallen.
I directed my attention to Sal’ and Max on Windmane. “Are you two okay?” I asked, wanting to make sure they were alright before going to Bhaliel.
Looking back, I may have just been stalling. If it hadn’t been for me, Bhaliel would not have been taken down by the eldrhim. She probably would have found her egg while Brennor still had it or gotten it from Til’ if he managed to take it from Brennor. Now she was probably dying and I doubted that Max or Sal’ could heal a creature that size. With her death, her child would never have life either. All because I took on an Activated Contract with Galius.
For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why Bhaliel had saved us in the first place. It may have been solely to protect the egg, but she could have simply used her bond to lead her to Til’s belt pouch and snatched him up, leaving us to the eldrhim.
“I’m fine,” Sal’ answered.
“I may have lost some hearing with all that noise, but I am alive,” Max added with weary raspiness.
I nodded. “Let’s go check on Bhaliel then,” I stated, heeling Telis forward.
Sal’ started Windmane forward as well, her light illuminating the way to where Bhaliel had fallen. As the light started enveloping Bhaliel’s body, my stomach threatened to spill its contents. The rotting smell coming from the ripped-up eldrhim behind us wasn’t helping.
Bhaliel was lying on her side with her belly exposed. The rip through her stomach was longer than I was tall. Her innards spilled onto the ground with her intestines stretching off towards where she initially fell. The gurgling we had heard was from Bhaliel’s attempts at breathing. Bright red blood oozed from her mouth. Her eyes had dimmed, but they were open. She was still alive, if barely.
We stopped a few paces from her body and dismounted. I slid my shortsword back into its scabbard. Max was on Sal’s shoulder. Til’ was crouched down by Bhaliel’s face. Sal’s light reflected from the tears falling from his large, silver eyes.
“You have my egg,” Bhaliel gurgled, her thunder of a voice hardly clear enough to be understood. It was not a question.
Til’ nodded his head and fished it from one of the two belt pouches hanging to the sides of his legs. He held up they shiny, red egg. Light shot through it and bathed Bhaliel’s head with a red light that helped to mask the blood spilling out before her. Her mouth drew up into a smile.
By this time, Sal’, Max, and I had approached her and Til’. I put my arm around Sal’s shoulder as her eyes began to glisten. Tears threatened my eyes as well. The dragon before us was such a beautiful creature whose entire race was threatened. For Chralex’s sake, she was the queen of that race.
Bhaliel’s dim red eyes took us in along with the weeping Kolarin before her. “Thank you for bringing me the egg,” she coughed. “Place it in my hand,” she continued, weakly raising a massive front leg a few inches from the ground. Her clawed, green-scaled hand rotated palm up. The scales of her hand were dull in splotches where eldrhim blood must have made contact with it. Most of the webbing between her fingers looked shredded.
Til’ wiped his nose with his sleeve and rose to his feet. He rushed over to Bhaliel’s giant talon of a hand and placed her egg onto the scales of her palm. Her fingers slowly, and delicately, folded over the egg. Her eyes closed and a red glow seeped from between her fingers.
“What’s happening?” I asked in a whisper.
“You are witnessing the birth of a dragon,” Max replied, his usually dry voice filled with awe. Sal’s arms wrapped around my middle and I squeezed her shoulders. We were probably the first to witness such an event in a thousand years.
The glow brightened until it made Sal’s light a candle flame next to a rising sun. The entire area around us was illuminated so brightly that all I could see was red. Even Sal’ was lost to me in the light. I closed my eyes and threw my arm across them. The only sound aside from the light breeze was a deep humming noise that I could feel as a vibration throughout my body. I wasn’t sure if the humming was coming from the egg or Bhaliel.
Just as I thought the light would burn out my eyes even when closed, the red that I could see through my eyelids disappeared. When I opened my eyes, I caught a brief glimpse of the light retreating back towards Bhaliel’s hand as if being drawn back into the egg. Once the light was completely gone, Bhaliel opened her hand.
I squinted, looking at Bhaliel’s opened hand. The brightness of the now retreated light had made everything seem as if in shadow as my eyes tried to adjust to the dimmer light coming from the sphere above Sal’s head. Sal’ must have also been having trouble adjusting to the comparatively dim light as she leaned forward with narrowed eyes. On the palm of Bhaliel’s hand, I could see movement of some sort and heard a raspy whine.
“Oh quit being such Hindren-blooded lunkheads and get us closer to the newborn dragon,” Max huffed. Hindren is the god of cowardice by the way.
Sal’ grunted in offense at being grouped with me as a lunkhead, but let go of my waist to set off towards Bhaliel. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed.
Til’ was standing by Bhaliel’s hand with glistening silver eyes filled with a mixture of awe, happiness, and sadness. He looked back at us as we approached. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered, turning his attention back to the newborn dragon wriggling in her hand.
Finally, as we were just a few feet away, I could make out the baby dragon. It was only the size of my hand and was covered in tiny red scales that shone just like the egg had. The baby dragon was lying on its side with closed eyes and its neck writhing around as it let out its high-pitched whimpering. Tiny wings stretched out and then retracted repeatedly as if it didn’t know how to control them yet. It looked like a miniaturized version of Bhaliel, only red and with more horns covering its head.
“My son, Xalis Bhaliel Chralexian Stormwing, named for the parents he will never know.” I almost jumped back as Bhaliel spoke from only inches beside me where she had craned her neck around to gaze at the tiny dragon child in her hand. Her rumbling voice was weak and blood dripped from her mouth as she spoke.
Til’s eyes widened. “No, you can’t die Bhaliel! Sal’, Max, save her! You can heal her!”
Bhaliel let out what I can only describe as a chuckle, though it sounded more like a swarm of bumblebees zipping past. “They would not have the power to heal such a wound on a creature my size.” In my peripheral vision, I could see Sal’ nodding sadly. “I accept my death. However…” Her voice trailed off as she brought her head towards her baby and pressed her cheek against it. Her red eye on that side started to shine a little brighter, though still dimmer than when she had not been so close to deat
h. A large, light-blue, pellucid tear dropped from her eye and splashed down onto the baby. Instead of just sluicing off of its scales, it seemed to solidify into a gel-like substance that enveloped its entire body. The baby, Xalis, stopped moving as it became wrapped in a translucent sphere of blue.
Bhaliel then brought her head away and turned her attention to the four of us. “I have put Xalis into a state of hibernation. He will be safe in this barrier until another dragon releases him from it. You must take Xalis to the Snowy Waste so that he may be released and live amongst his own kind.”
My heart dropped. How could I refuse the dragon’s request? I had to find Raijom before he or his eldrhims killed me, or anyone else. The Snowy Wastes were not on the way to Gualain. What if we didn’t live through our journey to Gualain to take Xalis to the Snowy Waste afterwards? For all I knew, with Raijom able to summon eldrhims after me, I could theoretically die any second.
Before I could worry any more about how to handle her request, Til’ stood as tall as a Kolarin could and announced, “I will take it for you, Bhaliel.”
Bhaliel’s mouth curved upwards as Til’ reached with both hands to grab the blue orb with the red dragon child suspended inside. The orb did not flex at his touch, showing it not to be a soft gel as it appeared. “Somehow, I am not surprised that a Kolarin would take on such a task,” she gurgled, spilling more blood from her mouth to the ground.
Til’ smiled through his tears. “You can trust me, Bhaliel. Xalis will make it home.” Bhaliel nodded in appreciation.
I should have been relieved that Xalis would be taken care of. I mean, we owed at least that to the dragon that had saved our life. But it meant losing someone I had started to view as a great friend as they left for the Snowy Waste and I set off towards Gualain. This was no time to be selfish, though.
Bhaliel’s eyes continued to dim as she stared lovingly at her child in Til’s hands. She did not have much time left and I had to know why she had saved us. I stepped forward.