Unwavering, she stood before it, her flame cloak burning brighter.
Rielle, damn it all—
Opening its maw, it lunged for her.
Leaping, Brennan tackled her out of its path as Jon stepped aside. That maw snapped shut, and the dragon pulled its head up, staring down at them, and roared.
Pulse racing, Brennan completely enveloped Rielle, shielding her with his body, as the gust of the dragon’s roar hit them, dowsing her flames, pushing him back like a hurricane. With Rielle clutched in his hold, he slid along the floor with her as everyone in the great hall was pushed up against the fractured back wall.
Praise Nox he’d sent their family home.
The roar—and the gust—stopped, and Rielle fidgeted in his hold, spelling a force of fire at the dragon’s head.
Nox’s black breath—
A great wind wall instantly rose before the dragon, deflecting the flames, spreading them in every direction.
She gasped. “It’s not immune to magic,” she whispered.
The dragon roared another gust that rattled the hall, and Jon stepped before them, his sword up, bracing against the force and dispelling it with his arcanir.
A huge set of claws swiped, and Brennan shoved Jon out of its trajectory as he leaped away with Rielle.
Daturian Trey hovered a diamond shield before himself and conjured a winged air elemental, ethereal, beating its wings to blow strong winds that the dragon shielded with a low rumble in its throat.
“Brennan,” she breathed, awestruck. “It’s not immune to—”
“We are not immune to gigantic claws or teeth,” he hissed to her. Was she dead set on getting herself killed, and him? Not a chance. He would not let her throw her life away, nor stupidly agree that both of them stay and fight. They were getting married in three months, they’d agreed on a compromise, and his son would soon be born. They had too much to live for to be running straight into the maw of certain death.
His gaze fixed on a small space between the debris and the top of the doorway, he hefted Rielle over his shoulder and clambered up the debris, then nodded to Marfa.
“Brennan—” Rielle protested, wriggling in his grip.
“We are leaving,” he shot back, chancing a look around before shifting his claws to climb up and through. He slid down the stone to the other side, Marfa after him, while Rielle thrashed in his hold.
“Dragomaestru,” Marfa said, shaking her head and shivering. “Run is good.”
“We can’t leave!” Rielle screamed at him, and he winced at her volume. “Olivia is still in there, and Jon, and—”
“Olivia and Jon can make their own choices.” Running to the exit doors, he swung her forward into his arms and pinned her with a glare while the great hall quaked, rippling through the floor. “That is a dragon, Rielle. A dragon.”
Scowling, she opened her mouth, but he continued, “It has teeth the size of great swords and claws the size of me.” He presented his Changed claws to her on his hands. “This is what I have.”
“But magic—” she objected, her face contorted in a snarl.
“I don’t care if it’s not immune to magic,” he snapped. “We are not immune to getting crushed, clawed, or eaten. Did you see your new magister, Mac Carra? He is currently in a state of fleshy paste.” He would not let that happen to her, or to himself.
She shook her head vehemently. “But we can’t just—”
“We are.” They were getting as far away from this place as possible, even if he had to drag her away, kicking and screaming, like a barbarian.
Chapter 60
Olivia cast a protection spell on both herself and Jon to heal the next injury, while he stared down the dragon, shoulder to shoulder with Daturian Trey.
The dragon dove into the great hall, scattering the crowd, and both Jon and Daturian had less room to evade physical attacks, even if Jon could dispel the dragon’s aeromancy with his sword.
Daturian conjured an ice elemental, an animated icicle, atop a huge chunk of ceiling debris, and it shot a force of frost at the dragon, icing its rocky scales.
Divine, why was it here?
Her mind immediately summoned memories of the coronation and the Aurora, and her theory—
It’s after Jon.
That... Vision the dragon had shown, the black tower, it… it was clearly searching for something—someone—that the black dragon had sought. The Dragon King.
A dragon so strong, so powerful, that all the Dragon Lords had bowed to him…
Until he’d been betrayed by the wild mages he’d helped create.
Just like Sangremancy Rituals of the Ancient World had said. She stifled a gasp.
The dragon raked claws through the ice elemental, dispelling it, while Daturian cast a fire elemental on top of another piece of debris behind it.
Daturian’s constructs kept it busy for a time, but didn’t do enough damage. With a gesture, he drew a conjured blade larger than himself, wavering white energy that burned in white spirit flames. An anima weapon. With his other hand, he gestured the white energy over every inch of him—an anima skin to protect him.
He and Jon angled for strikes, but they could inflict little more than superficial cuts.
They needed damage. And she couldn’t cast non-healing magic because it would dim her anima too much, and if Jon needed her, she had to be able to heal him.
Who else is there?
After her duel with Mac Carra, Ariana Orsa was in the infirmary, getting her arm reattached—
Jon buried his sword in the dragon’s foot, but as it swept its tail, he rolled away, losing his sword in the fray.
His arcanir sword.
In the abbey during the coronation, when Jon had touched the arcanir pommel of his sword, that dragon had moved on. Then… one had attacked the Aurora, of all ships, with him aboard, and once he’d touched the Queen’s Blade, the arcanir Queen’s Blade—the water dragon had lost interest.
Both dragons had left him alone after he’d come into contact with arcanir.
Arcanir disrupted magic… All kinds of magic. Even a dragon’s.
“Jon!” she shouted, and he jerked his head back as she ran to him. “Touch arcanir!”
His eyebrows creased together just for a second as he returned his attention to the dragon, then lunged for his sword.
He immediately rested a hand to the blade.
The dragon froze. It stopped moving completely, just perched there before them, then looked up and began flapping its gigantic sky-blue wings.
Across the hall, the Grand Divinus dispelled her repulsion dome and ventured forward with confident strides.
A force mage.
Damage.
Gesturing, she rooted her force magic somewhere in the dragon, then clenched her fist and dragged it off to the side.
The dragon pulled across the floor while the Grand Divinus kept pulling her fist, growling with effort, hauling the dragon up against an enormous chunk of the great hall’s dome, and pulling, pulling, pulling—
Flesh tore and bone crunched as a giant wing rent free.
A great choral cry pierced the air, ear-splitting and mind-breaking.
With a toss of her hand, the Grand Divinus threw the severed dragon’s wing against the back wall, where the crowd scattered. She rooted force magic all around the great hall with one hand, then spelled a repulsion shield as the dragon roared, its gust deflected around her shield.
This was Magister Samanta Vota in the aura of her famed glory.
With a raise of her hand, heavy chunks of the building’s debris lifted into the air and, as she brought her fingers together, converged on the dragon.
Olivia gasped.
The discordant cacophony of cries bolted through the air like lightning, blinding-white in her mind, searing, cleaving painfully until it wavered, weakened, and faded.
The Grand Divinus kept her fist raised, tightening and tightening as blood seeped from her force-magic convergence, flooding the
hall with black, seeping over every inch of the white marble until it was sleek with dark death.
The convergence compressed and compressed as she kept feeding it her magic, until finally, with a sharply exhaled breath, she let it drop next to the dais.
The Grand Divinus climbed the bloodied steps and settled onto her throne.
“Now,” she said, clearing her throat. “As I was saying, the world has changed. There are Others among us, predators, who must be cleansed like an infection.” She leaned back with a sated sigh. “Times like this require a firm hand. Mine.”
Gaze fixed on the blocked exit, she raised a hand, rooted her force magic in the chunk of debris blocking the doorway, then tossed it aside with a grunt.
* * *
His gaze fixed on Ava's blinding white aura in the distance, Leigh strode through the caverns, with Katia alongside him, and Ambriel and Della close behind.
They'd been walking for hours, and he couldn't tell if it was day or night, or how much time had even really passed, but it didn't matter. The blinding white aura grew and grew in size as they neared, and that was all that mattered.
Wisps of faint white ghosted around that aura, the corpse golems, and he didn't care that there were four—there could be a hundred, a thousand—and it wouldn't change a thing.
As he walked, something jerked him and caught his back—Ambriel—and he blinked to dispel the earthsight.
Under the light of Della's candlelight spell, before him and Katia, darkness lay beyond, deep and stretching—an abyss spanning almost fifty feet between them and the other side of the cavern.
Katia was a geomancer, and normally constructing a bridge made of stone would be a simple thing, but her anima was finite, and his wasn't.
As she raised her hand, he nudged her back. "Save your strength," he said, "because you may need it later."
He could face four corpse golems, but he wasn't sure the rest of them could. As long as they stayed with him, they'd be safe, but…
No, they wouldn't separate from him. They'd stay together.
Gesturing, he rooted his force magic in the stalagmites down below, then with a curl of his fingers pulled them up, his fists tightening to meld them together into a rough stone bridge.
He proceeded across, forging the path before him as he walked, and the others followed him. When they finally made it across, he left the bridge as it was.
They might soon need it again.
He spoke the earthsight incantation again and strode ahead. The path narrowed into a jagged tunnel, its confines tighter and tighter, until he could only just squeeze through, and the others followed, solemnly, the only sign of unease the uncertain curl of Katia's lips. Clearly she wasn't fond of tight spaces.
The corridor let out to a massive cavern, and as gasps sounded behind him, he dispelled his earthsight. Long spikes of stalactites and stalagmites came together like an ancient stone maw, with gaps between its pointed teeth.
Della sent her candlelight spell arcing across the cavern, all the way to the other side.
Beneath its glow, the darkness of the cave was illuminated—and a black pool of water, with massive, bone-spiked monsters prowling on the other side. Each of them was as large as four bears put together, and that very well could've been—they looked like many bodies fused together, melded so tightly to form a new creature.
Corpse golems.
Four of them circled a raised stone platform so like a dais, where on its raised center two small figures lay, both curling toward each other on their sides, eyes fixed on one another in fascination.
One was a boy, no older than fourteen in bracers and leather armor, his dark-brown hair wisping from his face, as if it were wind tousled, revealing a square jaw and intense eyes, far more intense than he'd ever seen, with irises that glowed violet—so vividly that he could see them even from here.
And facing the boy—
Straight black hair fanned out around her, she was slight, just like her mother, with a heart-shaped face and full lips that reminded him of his own mother. She was beautiful. The most beautiful, precious thing he had ever seen.
Ava.
Next to him, Della gasped, darting a few steps forward, and she clamped her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face. Her brow creased, that familiar determination as she kept her eyes fixed on Ava, her fingers gesturing.
Mind-control.
If Della could just mind-control Ava long enough, they could touch her with arcanir—or Della could break through the fureur.
But almost as soon as that gesturing began, Ava shot up from her stone dais, turned her head in their direction, and pointed. The boy rose up to sitting next to her, a little too stiffly, a little too woodenly, and those vivid violet eyes stared at them vacantly.
The prowling stone golems ceased their movement, and in unison, they wound their bone-masked faces in one direction.
In an instant, they launched across the cavern, those massive bodies belying their speed.
Leigh barely pulled up a repulsion dome in time for the first of the corpse golems to collide with its translucent force. Over fifteen feet tall, it dwarfed them all. Pounding a rotting, fleshy, bone-spiked arm against the repulsion dome.
He fed it power, strengthening the spell as the next corpse golem crashed into it, and the next, and the next.
Surrounding them, the corpse golems pounded against the repulsion dome and pounded, the impacts rippling against his magic, stronger than any force he'd ever had to repel, even armies.
He kept drawing power from within, feeding the dome, imbuing it with so much anima that it nearly destabilized—and it faltered against the impacts, threatening to break even as it nearly burst.
If he destabilized the dome, it would knock back the four corpse golems, but then they’d charge right back, and he'd have to recast the repulsion dome, and they'd be back where they started. And even if he did break them, Ava could just put their flesh back together and form a new corpse golem to attack them.
An endless loop.
Della kept her eyes fixed on Ava, gesturing. Still struggling with her mind-control, then—Ava's will had to be immensely powerful to withstand an invasion from an experienced mentalist like Della.
Katia bobbed her hand at points around the cavern, and as she swept it toward herself with a twist of her fingers, at least a dozen stalactites broke free of their anchors and flew toward the dome.
One plunged into a corpse golem, and then a series hit the dome. He tried to strengthen it as the corpse golems jumped clear, rolling away through the stalagmites.
Snarling, Katia kept pulling stalactites, kept aiming them at corpse golems, but even the one with stone buried deep in its fleshy body still beat against the dome, unperturbed.
Stone debris piled around them, a wreath of ruin ringing the dome.
The other golems renewed their assault, slamming against the dome, completely unaffected.
"It's not working," Katia bit out. "It's like they don't even care—"
"They don't." Under the assault's pressure, he groaned. It wouldn't hold—he couldn't hold it—he'd have to destabilize it—
Next to him, Ambriel drew his bow, nocking an arcanir arrow, and slowly aimed toward Ava.
Something sparked inside of him, a fire, devastating and vast and consuming, and even the thought of that arrow pointing at Ava was—
"Do it, dreshan," Ambriel shouted. "Drop the spell, and I'll save Ava!"
Save.
This would save Ava.
"Prepare yourselves," he warned around pinched lips. "I'm going to destabilize it."
The others stiffened around him, and Ambriel lined up his shot.
Feeding the repulsion dome more and more power—more than he could bear—he pushed past the limits of its stability, and it burst.
An aura of force magic exploded from his location outward, sending the corpse golems flying across the cavern, through stalagmites, crashing into stone walls.
An arr
ow flew toward Ava's leg, but was beat aside by the boy’s bracer. Another shot, but the boy pulled Ava aside.
As the first corpse golem leaped toward them, Leigh brought up the repulsion dome again as Ambriel nocked another arcanir arrow.
"Last one," Ambriel hissed under his breath.
"I can't get through to her," Della breathed, drawing in irregular breaths. “Her will is too strong."
"I'll take care of the boy," Katia said, stepping into a ready stance. She clenched her fist and glanced at Leigh. "Do it again. I'll be ready."
He nodded. Ambriel's aim had been true, and if Katia could deal with the boy, then Ambriel could save Ava.
Katia gestured around the cavern again, rooting her geomancy in the stone.
As the corpse golems threw their massive bodies against the repulsion dome, Leigh overfed it again, destabilizing it, and the blast shot the corpse golems back deep into the cavern.
With a gesture of Katia’s hand, narrow stalactites broke off the cavern ceiling like icicles and converged on the boy, while an arcanir arrow shot across the distance to bury in Ava’s thigh.
The force threw her back toward the edge of the stone dais, and Leigh cast a repulsion shield beneath her, curling under her, catching her floating in the air.
Charging corpse golems fell apart into lumps of flesh and bone scattered across the cavern floor as he raced toward the stone dais.
He caught Ava in his arms as he dispelled the repulsion field, and Della embraced her while Ambriel took hold of the arrow.
As Ambriel pulled it out, Ava cried out, curling against his chest and his hold, and Della placed a hand to Ava’s head and cast a spell.
"She's still so distraught—” Her voice hoarse, Della shook her head sadly. "So much pain—”
“Sundered flesh and shattered bone, / By Your Divine might, let it be sewn,”Leigh whispered, the healing spell closing the wound in Ava's thigh.
Katia spelled the stalactites free of the boy, while Ava blinked up at Leigh, and her brow creased together over weary eyes, weary dark-blue eyes, like her mother's.
Smiling tensely, Della leaned in, taking Ava's hand while she stroked her hair, tears trailing from her eyes. "It's okay, baby. You're safe. I'm here."
Court of Shadows Page 51