Ivy's Dragon: Dragons of Telera (Book 7)

by Lisa Daniels

  “That, ladies and gentleman,” Kell said between clenched teeth, “is the creature that blessed the first werewolf. This thing you’ve just risen out of the grave is the ultimate ancestor of all werewolves. Well done.”

  “The source of all werewolf magic?” Helena examined the snarling guardian in interest as it stepped after them, legs trembling at first from lack of use. “It wasn’t the first werewolf that you people visited in the mountains?”

  Kell didn’t even bother to deign that ignorant question with a response. She focused on drifting them to the mausoleum, aware that the wolf might be tall enough to just lunge onto the roof. The others seemed aware of this fact as well, and watched it in fear. Loras clung to her tighter, certainly not offering her comfort at this point, more to offer himself comfort.

  “Use magic from my body if you feel yourself running out,” he hissed into her ear. “Let’s pretend I can be useful in this situation.”

  “I’m not sucking you dry. I might kill you.”

  “Well, we’ll all die if you don’t save us, so I think that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” he said.

  “How noble of you…” Kell rolled her eyes, still irritated and frightened beyond measure. If they ever made it out of this… she’d kill them herself later.

  The headache worsened, until every inch of her brain felt like it was on fire, but she kept pushing them, until they finally settled on top of the crypt, and she collapsed, groaning, clutching her head.

  Loras hovered over her anxiously, stroking her head, and she rolled to her side to observe the massive guardian wolf loping over to them, lips bared in a vicious snarl, ready to bite.

  Echo stood ready to rebuff it with Monster. Helena stepped forward as well. Kell didn’t know the Supreme’s powers, didn’t want to ask, really, but hunched up, shivering at the sight of the huge wolf.

  It lunged at them, and Monster coalesced out of the darkness, rapidly matching the guardian in size, buffeting him backwards. The guardian took great bites out of Monster, who simply regrew the lost parts, pushing, before expanding in size, gnawed on now by the myriad other werewolves flanking it. Monster whirled its now bulbous arms like a windmill, sending everything flying, increasing in size until it now towered above the mausoleum, and its limbs formed into multiple grasping extremities, pushing everything away.

  Despite herself, Kell felt impressed by the malleable nature of the magic. “Can we escape on that?”

  “I don’t think so,” Echo muttered, the veins on her head protruding. “There’s too many. The only thing I can do right now is repel the big one.”

  “Don’t destroy any of them,” Helena said, and Kell stared at her sharply again. Now she turned to Kell. “Look, you’re an Islander. Is there anything else we should be aware of, here? Any other objects? Anything we’re supposed to consult?”

  “Yeah, how about you consult with my fist,” Kell growled, scrabbling upright. “Because you’ve ruined it. Unless you reverse this debacle, we’re doomed!”

  Helena pursed her lips. “By all intents and purposes, this spell should have worked. There’s something we’re missing. So, please, stop dissecting us in your minds and work with us here.”

  Kell growled to herself, nervously watching as Erlandur stared at the Cursed Queen’s skull, at a loss for words.

  Off the top of her head, she couldn’t think of anything. Not that we ever took stock in raising the dead anyway. That’s a Shadow skill, and they’ve never been able to get near enough to the Island or obtain any objects of power to do any real damage.

  One thing her intuition told her, however, was that she did know the answer. She could help them.

  Of course, it didn’t want to show her exactly how. That would be too easy.

  I’m supposed to help. I know this much.

  “There’s nothing I can think of with the Island. Erlandur already wields the sacred armor. He’s got the Cursed Queen’s skull, moon knows where you got that.”

  “Lunehill,” Erlandur replied, finally waking up from his stupor, the night casting swathes of darkness upon his face. “She was buried there.”

  “Right, good. Deduction. Keep going,” Helena said, eyeing the guardian as it chomped at Echo’s Monster. The strain began to show on Echo, though she clung onto her magic as best as able. Faith sidled next to her, taking out a strange amulet, which Kell sensed contained a potent branch of magic. Echo gasped and seized it, nodding her thanks.

  “Problem is,” Yarrow said then, “is maybe Erlandur’s just not strong enough.”

  “Wait,” Kell said. “You… what’s your power, again?”

  “I can control Shadows.”

  Kell slumped, groaning. “These aren’t Shadows, though. Not really. They’re something else.

  “I can still control them,” Yarrow replied. “Just not so many. And certainly not the guardian. There’s something there resistant to suggestion.”

  Whilst they kept talking, their voices high and frantic, Monster expanded again, trying to compensate for the numerous undead taking chunks out of its amorphous body. From this angle, it looked like a collapsing house, the foundations constantly being scooped from under, only to reform at the top.

  Smart.

  “We hold no additional relics,” Kell said. “About the only thing that might help is if Erlandur is accepted by a wolf spirit, but as you know, that didn’t work out the first time. They’re picky about who is given the magic.”

  Listing the problem helped bring some clarity to their hopeless, nightmarish situation. Loras continued stroking her hair, also helping to relax her, to make her less inclined to freak out.

  “Remember,” he whispered into her ear, “if there’s anything I can do, use me. There’s little else I can help with otherwise.”

  “Thanks,” she whispered back. She liked this werewolf, honestly. Genuine person. Strong and self-sacrificing and all that.

  Shame they probably wouldn’t make it past the night.

  “Well, what should we do, then?” Faith was the one to now ask, obviously offset by the fact she couldn’t leap down and start bashing things with her superior combat skills.

  “If you can’t get Erlandur to accept the wolf spirit, maybe the bones of the First Wolf can help,” Kell said dubiously. “It will compliment the skull here. But honestly, I have no idea. I’m just guessing at this point.”

  “It’s a thought.” Helena scowled. “But now we have an extra problem. The bones of the First Wolf are a little far from here, aren’t they?”

  True, Kell thought. She didn’t think much of her idea, but the others seemed to latch onto it with a will. Desperation, it appeared, made people do strange things.

  Kell could almost see the cogs churning in Helena’s brain, as she likely considered ditching the operation and extending time to grab the bones.

  Monster kept up the fight, though it became abundantly clear that Echo couldn’t continue the magic for much longer, even with her tapping into the reserves of the magical object Faith had given her.

  Helena sighed then. “We won’t reach such a thing in time, even if we can extend our deadline by a few months. There has to be another solution.”

  Echo let out a scream as the undead finally tore through her defenses, and Monster dissolved into nothing – along with the witch collapsing in an unconscious heap. The guardian snarled and advanced forward, reaching the mausoleum in a few long bounds.

  Kell felt Loras morph behind her, his human voice deepening to the guttural growl of the werewolf. Yarrow let out a gasp as Loras bounded past the group, attempting to face off the huge guardian, though he appeared small and pathetic in comparison. The guardian’s jaws snapped at him, and Loras howled, his hackles rising, a lone defender against an impossible enemy.

  Brave, Kell thought, heart sinking. Brave and foolish. She considered levitating him, though her magic reserves had now begun to scrape at the bottom of the barrel.

  The guardian hesitated at the howl, blue eyes fli
ckering ominously, before lunging at Loras. Loras avoided the attack and jumped onto the guardian’s back, trying to gnaw into the dead flesh.

  Yarrow concentrated, extending her control to a few more undead, now directing them to attack the guardian as well. Kell watched in dismay, not wanting to see the fall of the guardian, even though he had died many years before. This was history, after all. History they’d disturbed and offended beyond measure.

  Echo stirred feebly, even as Helena now went towards the guardian, raising up her hands. Kell almost laughed out loud when she saw black icicles shoot out of Helena’s hands in a rain of spikes, scattering amongst the undead and freezing many in their spots.

  “A Shadow that uses ice magic? How ironic.”

  “Tell me about it,” Helena replied, giving a sardonic smile to Kell, even as she increased the barrage, mainly focusing on the guardian. The guardian kept moving, until Kell allowed her magic to punch through and freeze the guardian in place, levitating him above the ground so that he flailed feebly. Yarrow’s werewolves gnawed at the guardian’s legs, Helena’s icicles shot into it, Loras chomped into his neck.

  Erlandur did the same as Yarrow, abandoning his attempt to control everything, to instead focus on the few weaker minds.

  “Get it closer,” Faith ordered, and Kell obliged. Faith then leapt onto the guardian with precision, avoiding the snapping jaws and slashing her sword into its mouth. With the combined onslaught upon the guardian, it eventually fell limp mid air, shredded to pieces by everything that had attacked it.

  Faith continued hacking into the flesh. No blood spurted, it couldn’t from something that had been dead for that long, but the sound made a horrible grating noise.

  Then came a snap, as Loras helped her pull out one of its ribs.

  “Will the bones of the guardian do instead?”

  Helena grinned wildly. “You know, that is an excellent idea.”

  Loras grabbed the ribs from Faith and leapt back onto the roof. Kell released the guardian’s corpse once Faith clambered to safety, and Erlandur took the rib off Faith. He held it along with the Cursed Queen’s skull and focused once more.

  “It’s working,” he said. “I don’t feel any limits now.”

  “Really?”

  In answer to Helena’s question, all the undead in the cemetery suddenly stopped moving. Eerily still, they waited for something. Erlandur flicked his hands, and they all got into line.

  Grinning, Erlandur said, “Well. Guess we got ourselves an army, now.”

  Kell stared at the undead sadly.

  She knew all the cemeteries across the Island would have cracked stones and disturbed earth. The old now walked with the new.

  The dead had risen to assist them against the Fractured City.

  Chapter Five

  Kell sat once more at her favorite vantage point, overlooking the tundra, where the undead army planned to march across in a week’s time, to begin their pincer attack from two sides of the Fractured City.

  Mixed feelings plagued her. On one hand, she understood the logic behind raising the undead, even if the thought of such powerful and destructive magic crawled under her skin. On the other, it still felt wrong, to look into their glowing blue eyes, to see the rows of them standing side by side in silent vigil.

  The total number of undead under Erlandur’s control and Yarrow’s respectively, since she too wielded the bones of the guardian, was forty-six thousand.

  Still below the Fractured City’s numbers, but close enough to deal real damage if they took them by surprise. The City now barely had twice their number, as opposed to four or five times as much.

  Loras glided beside her, bound in his human form, placing a hand upon her shoulder. She leaned into his touch, happy for it, but also sad.

  “I’m going tonight to inform the resistance in the underbelly that we secured our objective. This might be our last time together for a while. You’ll stay upon the Island, yes?” His yellow eyes examined her with warmth, and she flicked a strand of lustrous brown hair back.

  “I don’t know. I feel like my powers might be better suited to help your friends out. But I’m not happy with the fact you did this. Even if it’s good intentions. So much might have gone wrong. If you guys never managed to find control of them, we’d have an Island overrun by the angry undead. And your precious plans to conquer the Fractured City would be nothing but dust. Some things should be left alone.”

  Loras nodded, not bothering to contradict her. “I agree with you. I just didn’t see us gaining the numbers any place else. And everyone seemed so confident in Erlandur, you know? “

  “I don’t.” Kell shook her head, kissing his stubbled cheek, running her fingers over his jaw. “He’s not my leader. Neither is Helena. But I’ll help because of you. You’re genuine, you know?”

  The werewolf’s eyes dilated slightly, and he kissed her neck, and she pressed her back against the glowing blue bark of an evergreen tree, sighing.

  “Did you ever leave your homeland much, Kell? Have you seen the world, apart from your pilgrimage and a little bit of the Lunar Wastes?”

  “No. Not really. This has been my world for a long time. The quiet. The spirits. Telling our stories to the travelers, about the long ago, when the Wastes used to be an oasis of green and a land of paradise, and the world was a much bigger place, a better place. The most exciting thing that happens is when we get visitors. At least, until this little event happened.”

  Loras let out a choking laugh. “Right. And we only had to defile the graves thousands of heroes to do so.”

  “Yes. I’m not happy with your lot.” Kell closed her eyes, thinking back to the years of her life, how gray and dull they seemed.

  “I’ve not lived the most exciting life, either,” Loras confessed. “You’d think living in the Fractured Spine is a good place to get some action, because we’re so close to the city, but it’s not all that it’s lived up to be. Our defenses are usually sound. Most who want action try to go on long patrols around the Wastelands, visiting other tribes to either forge alliances, or to seek out any women past the borders. We don’t get so many.”

  “Really?” Kell now placed her hands under his robes, brushing against his smooth, lightly haired skin, enjoying the rough texture against her palm. “Maybe you should come to Crescent Island more often. We have a lot of women here.”

  “You’re all weird star readers on the wrong side of the map,” Loras said with a wry smile. Kell smiled back at him.

  All things considered, she liked the werewolf. In the short time they shared together after the rising of the dead, she made a lot of excuses to go and visit him, just so she could take in the scent of his animal musk, and enjoy the soft rumble of his voice, the piercing gaze of his yellow eyes and the wonderful muscle structure he hid under the robes that kept him warm at night, when he didn’t resort to wolf form.

  None of the elders in Crescent Island wanted to associate with these people anymore, but given that they control an army of forty thousand ruthless undead, it was best not to aggravate them further – even if they did destroy the entire homeland and most of the history buried under its surface.

  Loras, at least, cared. They talked, they shared, they learned to love the world and the moment a little better, instead of losing it in the future of the stars, or over the sadness of a past that seemed dull and devoid of color.

  Loras kissed her under the evergreen tree, his cold lips warming up against hers, his fingers hot against her skin, seeking out her heat and her thudding heart.

  “I’ll come with you to make sure you don’t die,” Kell said, grinning. “I’ll lift you above the mess and we’ll fly away when needed.”

  He smiled at her as well. “Maybe we can go live on a mountain or something. Less likely to be bothered up there, on the side away from the Fractured City.”

  “Maybe,” she said, though they both knew the only place for them right now was the oncoming war.

  The battle of their li
fetimes.

  Kell began kissing him in earnest, eyes fluttering shut in pleasure as she drank in everything about him. Their hands dipped under each other’s robes, and in the chill morning, they clung to one another, making sure no warmth was lost.

  “Stay with me,” Loras whispered into her ear, his hot breath sending spikes of pleasure through her spine. She lipped at his nose, before kissing him again, allowing her tongue to probe out and touch his.

  They did attempt to take off clothes, but one jab of the cold air made Kell squeak, and Loras pulled down her robed shirt again with a laugh, nuzzling into her neck with a cold nose.

  She tugged at his pants, cheeks burning in desire, eyes wide in lust. His big rough hands soothed her, and he now nibbled at her neck, before sucking at the soft flesh there. She felt his hardness press against her thigh and spread her legs to accommodate him better. She rubbed against him, moaning, and he groaned as well, aroused by the sound and her eagerness to take him.

  She finally pulled down his pants enough to allow his erection to spring free, and he ripped at hers, exposing enough for him to be able to slide into her core, noting how easily she took him in.

  Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she tilted her body backwards, gripping onto his shoulders hard as he moved in and out, keeping up the steady motion. She was already near enough to popping even before he’d started, since she anticipated him intensely, desperately, craving the intimate contact.

  The cold became unnoticeable as the area around them heated up. Their cheeks flushed, hazed in arousal, and their heartbeats pulsed faster, pumping the blood to every extremity and tingling them from head to toe. The orgasm roared inside her, unrolling with a deadly force, like a shipwreck, as he continued thrusting inside her, close to climaxing himself. As her body shuddered and convulsed, he came shortly afterwards with a long, gasping moan, stiffening, before he extracted himself from her and helped roll up their pants again.

  They cuddled together a while longer, happy to have experienced this moment together, even if the way they met at the start came with some deception in it.