I was forced to slam behind a pillar as he shot another streak of black. It blasted the wall a ways, back and then the pillar against which I craned.
"Come out, princess. Come out. What sort of dragon lady, won't face her dragon lord?"
I knew no meaning to these words. I only knew, first, for a moment, that I hadn't taken care in hiding myself from Luffie—so had she seen me? And second, that another streak of magic was bolting towards me, slicing through the air that same way that chimera's bolts did, only thinner—like a knife sharpened to the fiercest point.
I jumped off from the pillar, back towards the middle of the floor. I disappeared again, to avoid a string of his magic. I could see it waning, and I reappeared again, to conserve my energy. I disappeared again. I kept my ground this time. I didn't move. I thought to myself, that if I died, the Warriors would still kill him. He was mad, for thinking that he might get away. Did he have an ivoronsu, as Cyric had? He thought that was fast as a chimera? And where had he hid it? Here in a corner of this room, that he might drive it out?
I took a step forward. Even as he shot out another stream of magic. I put all of myself into disappearing. Truly I was utterly unguarded from Luffie now. I could only hope, that she was too far away to tell me. Those shadows moved beyond the sun-lit tapestry, then I saw the break in his magic. I reappeared just as it quit. He shot again. This time—I saw—it was weak enough, short enough, that I might simply duck it. It was not a stream. I did so. It crackled and exploded past me. I heard a pound, that could not have been from his attack. There were men at the door then? They'd gotten through past those three, or was it those three worried for Lox? When I heard Commander, shouted loudly, I knew it must be them. But Lox didn't answer. He only struck at me again. I disappeared. He struck. I disappeared. He was wearing, he must have been, for his strikes became shorter and shorter.
"Stole it from a dispel stone!?" I shouted.
His return remark was only another strike, which I ducked under.
"It'll only be very weak."
He pulled his hand back, breathing heavily. But his smile, hadn't quit. In fact, it seemed, as if he almost appreciated (like he enjoyed the fact) that his missile hadn't struck me.
"You'll be more a treat, then I thought, princess."
"You speak that now. Draw your sword. I mean to end this; you won't beat me with magic."
"Oh, I don't think I will," he spoke.
I couldn't tell whether he meant, that he wouldn't beat me, or that he wouldn't draw his sword. But he was cradling his arm, in his hand, so that I thought: he couldn't be thinking now that he would win with magic. He meant to draw his sword; he only thought I wouldn't be a challenge. I reached for both my swords. I drew one and then the other, I drew them as I approached; I didn't feel afraid anymore. I felt that weight of standing with Cole on the platform in Yanartas, having him glance me over, as if he held his very hand to his chin in consideration, and then going back to grab a second sword, and then to hand it to me. I remembered turning, and ducking and twisting to best—like a dance—to best Cole! Cole, who I'd seen, fight beautifully, wonderfully.
I saw Lucian with his crossbow, ticking it this way and that, setting off, one then the other, bolts, just to his targets, just where he meant—killing blows, even. Or Gael, spinning his mace within his hands, shoving it forward, flipping it up through the air, even ten feet up, then catching it in perfect time to strike. I saw Estrid, heaving her great sword above her in an arc, this way, then that—demolishing anything it so much as tapped.
With all this in mind, and adrenaline through my veins, I mounted those short steps. And I was just in front of Lox, and he still hadn't drawn his sword, but he was laughing.
Did he think I'd let him live, if he didn't fight back?
"The day a woman thinks that she can best me," he spoke. "Dear princess. What should I thank you more, for. For that Lieutenant which was my greatest?"
My breath caught short, just a snapped pause, but it was enough, enough to keep me stayed back from him as he spoke again.
"Or for that creature which will keep me from death?"
I narrowed. It was the first thing to halt me from my approach since we'd begun. How many foolish things had he mentioned? Mad things, which couldn't make sense, or be so. Things simple to ignore. But this—was it really mad?
I was truly frozen now. I felt a war within me, crying out that I should kill him, and yet I couldn't—for the information he might hold.
Like this, his sword still undrawn, he tipped his head upwards.
At the first, I took it as a mark of sneering, for he had sneered as he'd made the motion. Sneered and smiled even—how evil was this man? But then, it was like a vibration, going off in my chest, a sudden deep-seeded fear. Terror. Not at what I guessed—but for what I felt nothing of. No, it couldn't have been. It couldn't have been. It couldn't have been. It couldn't.
With these passing through my mind, I turned my head up, tipping my chin high for what seemed to me to be the millionth time of my life, but with the opposite feeling I'd ever had to it.
"Let's not fight, you and I, princess," Lox said, just as I saw, there, in the rafters of the war-room...
Those pillars came up, on either sides then circling back forwards towards the walls, but where they met the ceiling, they made alcoves, and then, at the center, was the largest alcove, and in this, like a painting come to life, like something beautiful that some master had toiled a lifetime to create, there was a dragon. Her skin was slick black, lit purple and turquoise, and green, and blue, all in iridescent hues. Her eyes were vivid violet. Her claws, one was pressed up against the top of a right pillar, and the other, a front claw, was pressed to a left pillar. The two read claws, were dug into the ceiling, clinging there and cracking the stone. Her wings, were craned into the space behind her, not extended, but smashed, but still like a perfect backdrop, terrible, and torn, like some raging storm clouds. Her teeth, they were bared out. Her gaze for me. She was four times the size since I'd last seen her.
I saw her, cracking from her egg; a pearl and blackish one. I'd come too late, that day, to see her born. I'd been waiting for so long, and then I'd been off practicing dances and I'd missed most of her birth, hadn't I. And so to make up for it, I'd slept outside her resting place that whole night. I saw her, just a little older, washing her in the dragon's pool, smoothing her scales with oil. I felt that first time, I'd been allowed to her back. I'd been near fourteen. She was still too small, to fly, but for practice, she'd been mounted with a saddle, and I'd been set there in my skirts, to accustom her to me. There had been so many of my people that day, come to watch the princess ride her dragon for the first, but I'd remembered, I'd stretched my hand forward, and touched her neck, just near her shoulder—where there wasn't anything between us. Where it was just her scales. I'd leaned forward like that, even stretched fully against her, and I'd closed my eyes, and I'd felt her, simply felt her, just her and I. "We're just the same." I couldn't understand her. I couldn't tell if she'd liked her name, as I'd wanted to know. I couldn't tell whether she were excited to begin to fly, or whether she preferred cold or warmth, or whether she preferred the snowy mountains, or the thick trees. I only knew that our hearts were connected. Two souls like one. I could not know anything of her, I could only sense her.
I heard two swords clatter to the ground. I heard a laugh.
I could not feel anything there! I could not feel anything there! She was nothing to me! I felt two hands against my head, squeezing at my hair. They were my hands, and then I heard a scream and it was mine as well.
That set her off. With a hiss, and flush of wings, she dropped from the ceiling, slamming, one foot, then another, then a third, then a fourth, all around me.
"She obeys me. We are one," I heard.
Was it Lox's voice?
He obeys me. We are one, I heard him say in time. He took Cyric. He took Kraehe.
She put her teeth, close to my body. I only knew
or realized then that I had fallen to the floor. I was lying there on my back. Her teeth were dripping, wet, like Lox's eyes. Her body was coiling, her scales, like the perpetual moving of the Vermillion Bird's tails, only this was her own skin, as with a snake, constricting into her.
Her eyes were darkish purple, nothing like they'd been. Not that rich color, not that simple-ness. There was nothing there! There was nothing for me! She was inches away, and she was nothing to me!
I screamed again. And Lox laughed. Then three things happened in succession. First he made some gesture with his hand, that had her craning her neck back, had her opening her jaw, and screeching, and baring her teeth to make ready to strike. I wondered if it were what Cyric had seen—had this been Kraehe, as she'd killed him? I'd never been able to imagine it, no picturing it, but if this was her, then I could see it. He'd have been so scared. Oh, he'd have been so scared.
The second thing, was myself reacting, finally reacting. With a groan, I pushed my body away, even with tears spilling down my cheeks; feeling as if my legs had failed me in working, I dragged myself backwards. I got hold of one of my sword's hilt, I kept dragging on. But it was not enough. And I was crying, and sobbing, and she would kill me, and I would have been killed by the soul that I was once one with.
But then the third thing, just as her neck snapped down—like a set loose bow, it snapped—but before her teeth had struck me, there was a clash from the window from outside. As soon as it came, even before I saw the flash of gold, I knew it was Luffie there, for her thoughts were mine, and she watched a dragon craning over me. She shot lighting against glass, then thought to strike that way again, but in urgency, only rammed herself full-force against the dragon's body.
They spun in a roll before me; this for my own eyes. Crashing from the wall, down to the floor. Kraehe was five times Luffie's size. Neither of them had room to take flight. Luffie kept her paws extended into claws. She got free of Kraehe, to rest upright on the wood. She glanced for me. Truly, she looked with her own eyes, carefully, back to watch me. —While I didn't even have to sanity of breath to warn her of Kraehe's oncoming swipe, then her snap with her teeth for Luffie's wings. But Luffie was swift, avoiding both of these. Ducking back under Kraehe, coming up to swipe her chest.
I was torn with sobbing, and still half-laid out on the floor. The door was pounding beyond Kraehe and Luffie, and even as I watched, it broke through. Those guards, of Lox's, two of three of them, came through, swords raised for me, only to be swiped across by Kraehe's claw. And then her tail, she spun to dash one against a wall, and then as he fell to catch him in her teeth, then giving one great clamp that made him shout out in pain, but she must have thought him distasteful, for she dropped him out all crumpled, and by now, Luffie had gotten time on her. She was with her back legs against a wall. I saw what she meant, before she did it: kicking up and flushing her wings, to give her momentum; and she did so, on to bite Kraehe, sinking her teeth in, clear against Kraehe's neck.
I screamed out as Kraehe did. I saw Luffie's eyes switch to me, and was reminded just of Tobias, pausing in his fight with Cyric, not so very far from here, to watch me when I'd screamed and hadn't I distracted him that way, causing his injury, if not his death. But Luffie was wiser, wiser maybe then Tobias: she released Kraehe's neck, in a flurry, then dived for the floor, across from me, even ramming into Lox, knocking him backwards. She'd meant to sink her talons, into him—had she been able to? Now she paused at the window, the broken shatters of glass all around her, and flushing her wings, she threw her head back and roared out in challenge.
Kraehe's darting for her—was like a small girl, gathering up her skirts to chase off into a run. The dragon's body coiled in, she twined her neck, she pressed her claws into the wall, and then she kicked off, crumbling the thing to stone bits which blocked the doorway from which soldiers had been pouring—they were all crushed now. So Kraehe was off, darted after Luffie. Luffie took to air. She did not glance back to me for a second. She did not glance in her thoughts. She would not, do anything, but lead the dragon away, as she had done once with a wyvern—only when we'd first met. And she was angry with me (even as she paused mid-air and turned to shoot back a bolt of lightning, clear back at Kraehe. Even as Kraehe, let a stream of fire from her mouth, and all of this outside where I could no longer see them for myself) she turned her thoughts off to me. She locked me away from her completely. I could not even stop to think, I didn't, I wasn't in the mind to, to wonder that she would have let me alone with Lox—had she killed him?
I screamed again. I'd gotten to my knees. But my hands were to my head, and I was crying.
I felt hands added to mine, to my face, to my shoulder. Lox had come back. Lox had found me. Luffie had not struck him. He would kill me. But they were not Lox's hands, they couldn't have been. They were soft, and much smaller, and touched my skin like pulling static, and there was such a gentleness to them, so that I could not think of any who had ever touched me like that but Cyric, or my father, or—
"Cole, Cole. She's gone. I can't feel her. Help Luffie. Help Luffie. Please."
He was speaking. He already had. He'd said my name, a dozen times already. He was feeling all about me for injury, but I only kept screaming.
"Help Luffie, help."
"Ellia, get up. You have to. Where's Lox? Is he dead?"
I shook my head. Or I tried to. I had to do something useful. I thought that perhaps that I was dead already, for how else would Cole have gotten here? Was I talking to Cole at all?
I tried to open my eyes, and there he was, in black, with eyes. "I can't feel her, Cole," I tried to explain to him.
He didn't reply. There was just matching pain, and he glanced around, as if in the rubble of fallen stones, and shattered glass, he was still searching for something, Then he turned to me, his hand under my shoulders, trying to drag me up. "I know. I'm—"
Had he meant to say that he was sorry? But I didn't get to hear it, for just then, I saw first a flash from Luffie, that told the dragon, was coming back towards this place. Then she came, her body crashing, clear through and into Cole, knocking him side-ways.
With a scream, for him, I jerked upwards. I saw a dozen things. Luffie, injured, out to the sky, a single wing keeping her hovered. Gael and Yurei, as she tried to call for them, even as far as they were, off with wyvern. I saw other chimera, and Vermillion Birds, and wyverns in the sky, and didn't know whether I was seeing them out the window for myself, or in Luffie's vision. I saw Lox rising up, in his armor, from under bits of table, with a sword in his hand. I saw Kraehe, stretched across the room, from pillar to wall, snapping across at Cole. My Cole! He was standing. He was alright. But he didn't have a sword, and he was staring up at a dragon, so much greater than him.
It must have been these things, somehow to rock me clear, one of these things, because before I knew what my own feet had done, I heard my voice, screaming out Cole's name, and then saw orange, flashing through the air, and his hand stretched up to catch it. He looked to what I'd thrown him, then I turned the same second to Lox.
What had I been thinking?
Not well—presently. But I'd thought before. I'd thought that night, some nights ago, when Cole and I had been replaying the battle in the throneroom, and I'd set the black dragon figurine in Lox's war room, I'd thought even before that. If I knew Lox, if he was as I thought he was—who he'd been with Cyric—wouldn't he keep his greatest assets close? Wouldn't he want them near? In the commotion of the battle, the fear, and not feeling any of her, not the smallest bit of Kraehe, I hadn't even considered that had been what Lox had meant when he'd said he could leave. I hadn't thought of her being there, at all until I'd seen her there above me. But before that, in case of it, and in case of her being evil I'd brought that vial of endless fire, and I'd fully prepared myself to use it should I need to against her—should she have been evil, evil enough to hurt. To kill her before the chimera, or Vermillion birds had to, in whatever way that might pain her worse
; the fire was swift.
But I hadn't prepared myself fully, as I'd thought; I'd been wrong. I could never have killed her like that, even if it would have been quick. Even now, seeing her evil, and not feeling her at all. Seeing her vicious and serving Lox.
But Cole, perhaps he could. I, for myself, had turned to Lox, and now I gathered up my swords. I hadn't been imagining it when I'd seen him rise. He was standing there, but he was angrier than ever. He looked as monstrous as Kraehe. I did not feel strength in my own arms, but he was marching for me, his sword raised—that way he had when Cyric and Tobias had been fighting, and I'd called to stop them—and so I brought my blades up with what strength I could.
CYRIC:
I'd been almost to the top of the wall, my body strained, and panting, my fingers slipping, and choking on red dust for the gasping of my speed—when I'd seen Luffie shoot above me.
I'd opened my mouth, but hadn't cried out to her, since not seconds later I'd heard a buzzing silence like that noise before she shot her lightning bolt, and then a crash of glass that must have been the back wall of the war room shattering.
"ELLIA!" I cried instead. But my voice was hardly anything.
Somehow, I didn't know how, but somehow I got my body moving faster—so fast I thought some insect of my size, wouldn't have been able to do it better, then I was pulling myself up over the ledge of the cliff. I went so quickly from that, on to running, that I clawed against the ground, then scraped up to my feet, chasing after Luffie.
The glass had long since shattered. I heard a cry, like that screeching storm of sound; guttural and deep. For me, with the brightness of outside, I could not see well within, but there was a shadow there, black and slashing out, and then gold, like a speck beside the shadow, dodging this way then that.
"Ellia— Ellia!" I shouted, nearly cutting myself off with my own words. I jumped clear over the glass, even piercing my hands to grab hold of it and leap. Then I saw, there she was on the ground. She was beautiful. Her hair was glowing pale for me to tell. Everything between that and the glass where I stood was a mess of wood and crumbled stone, and torn tapestry. I could see nothing of Lox, but my mind wasn't there for it. As my eyes adjusted to the inner light, even as I scraped my way towards Ellia—recognizing that it was her filling the chamber with screams—I saw that blackish shadow, for what she was. A dragon made of more pounds of muscle, and claw and teeth, and ability to burn, than a chimera, and tiger, and Tortoise, and fire-bird altogether. And there was Luffie, pressed back from her, to a wall. Something—Lox? No. A soldier, all in black was in the Dragon's mouth, but he dropped even as I watched, then Luffie shot out quick and grappled Kraehe's neck. There was blood, and tearing, and a cry—from the dragon? No, from Ellia. From both, but I was almost to her. Then it was Luffie, darting past me. For a moment, I saw her talons outstretched—I thought she was going to kill me—then she crashed to something else. Something behind me? A fallen table? I did not know what. But no sooner had she, then she'd let out a furious roar, and then the dark shadow of Kraehe, was coiling back and launching out above me—so swift I felt the whipping of the air, so close I had to drop to keep from being struck—as if I hadn't even been there for her.
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