XIX: The Cost of Victory
Valentean’s heartbeat pumped through his ears. The oncoming footsteps of the Skirlack horde shook the ground beneath him, but the flames of chaos were fully alive, spreading the heat of confident strength through every molecule of his body. He leapt and spun, the blades he held in each hand whirling around his body as he soared over the heads of the two behemoths. As Valentean landed amidst the Skirlack soldiers and hounds, he spun in a graceful arc that instantly claimed the lives of ten demons.
As he impacted the ground, he released the barely contained energy of chaos, and a massive fiery explosion erupted from beneath the Skirlack, incinerating many, scorching many more, and hurling a number of demons back and away from him. He rose from his crouch and leapt at the stumbling crowd that rushed in to replace their fallen comrades. He slashed and hacked and sliced his way through the monsters, each of them baring the face of the creature that so many years prior had tried to take Seraphina from him. He called upon this imagery to fuel his rage and fan the flames of chaos.
They came at him with swords and axes and chains, but Valentean’s blades were spinning about his body in a defensive flourish so fast and so complex that he was covered from every angle all at once. His counterattacks were fatal every single time. He swung his blades, and Skirlack died. He lashed out with the flames of chaos that birthed these monsters into existence, and Skirlack died. He kicked and punched and thrashed against anything that moved, and still, Skirlack died. He was a machine of malevolent violence, and he reveled in every cauterized slash, every stump and decapitated corpse that fell before his blades.
The herd showed no signs of thinning. It seemed for every demon that fell before his blade, five more rushed in to replace them. But that was fine; he had not slowed or weakened or tired in the least. If anything, the longer the battle raged, the faster he moved, the stronger he felt, and the more invigorated his mind and body became. In the beginning, he had done his best to try and keep a score of fodder between himself and the behemoths, but now Valentean felt confident enough to test himself against these new unknown creatures.
He pushed mana out through his legs, flipping through the air and lashing out with his blades to carve into the unsuspecting flesh of his adversaries until he landed at the feet of one of the behemoths. The creature raised one beefy fist and attempted to bring it down onto his slight frame. Valentean sidestepped and slashed up, cleaving the creature’s arm from its body at the elbow. The behemoth bellowed in pain and recoiled, holding the cauterized mess. Valentean sent a wall of flames to push back the oncoming Skirlack soldiers and hounds with a gesture, giving him room to turn and face the other behemoth, who charged him at full speed.
Valentean hurled one of his flaming swords at the creature, and the hot blade stabbed through its throat. He sprinted at the staggered monster as the horde began to charge at his back. With one jump, he rose up the beast’s body, gripping the handle of his blade as he did so. He pulled the weapon up through its face, splitting its skull, and perfectly bisecting its spine as he fell down its broad back.
The Skirlack soldiers encircled him once more, and Valentean stabbed the blazing point of his blade into the ground. Flames erupted from the stone several meters away, burning a large portion of the demons who were charging at him, while keeping hundreds more at bay behind a towering inferno. That left Valentean to spin in against those who had been closest to him, lashing out with his one remaining sword and a glowing, green, mana-soaked fist. Each punch caved in faces and chest cavities as he moved from one enemy to the next, untouched, unscathed, and unstoppable. A flash of light caught his attention, and Valentean glanced back at the one-armed behemoth, whose flesh cracked and glowed. The creature even seemed to grow a bit, its muscles bulging. Looking out beyond the fire’s glow, he saw the remaining six hundred or so Skirlack glowing in the same manner. The demons all stepped back and, to Valentean’s shock, spoke in unison.
“The gift of the Goddess’s love suits you well, Valentean.” The voice was garbled, deeper than usual, but there was no mistaking it.
“Aleksandra,” he growled, and the demons laughed together.
“A truly impressive feat to have come so far, Dragon-Lord,” she mocked him with the tandem sound of hundreds of identical voices.
“I haven’t even begun to fight yet. You’ll find that out very soon.”
“You delude yourself, fool. You believe yourself my equal, but you shall learn soon how truly wrong you are.”
“Are we going to talk all day, or are we going to finish this?”
“So eager.” There was now genuine amusement in the unnatural voices. “I know how hot the flame within you burns. Patience is not a strong suit for a child of the blaze.”
“I’m not a part of your…” he trailed off, tired of this pointless yammering. He turned and flung the flaming sword still clutched in his hand toward the behemoth. The blade embedded right between its horns, piercing the creature’s brain as it dropped dead. Then, Valentean dove through the fire, hands bared like claws as he tore the throats out from two chuckling Skirlack soldiers. The demons ran in, controlled from afar by their heinous empress. Valentean could feel the push of rage clouding his mind, driving him into a frenzy as he countered their blows one by one, hammering his fists and feet and face into their disgusting, rubbery bodies. Bones splintered, chests, faces, and spines snapped as the Dragon-Lord pounded and pulverized his way through the overwhelming number of smirking, giggling Skirlack.
The sound of his tormentor’s voice made the flames erupt within his heart, and Valentean lashed out, heaving balls of fire in every direction, striking anything that was moving. He stopped seeing, stopped feeling; all he could do was hear, and all he heard was that maddening laughter. Over and over he struck again and again as if hammering their faces into pulpy, gore-soaked chunks would make the relentless taunting cease.
A Skirlack soldier leapt at him, and Valentean easily smacked it from the air with a flaming fist. Then another, then another, and another all jumped at him in the same manner. Finally, one of them scored a hit, wrapping its arms around his waist and tackling the hot-blooded Rosinanti to the ground. The demons continued to pile on top of Valentean, pinning him beneath hundreds of bodies piled higher and higher. He thrashed and fought but could not move. One of the Skirlack brought its face centimeters from his ear. He could feel its warm breath tickling his earlobe as the constrictive pile spoke in unison once more.
“Your home has burned. Your friends are burning. Your princess and your father will burn as well.”
Valentean screamed in rage and hatred as his eyes turned from scorching red to blazing white. His body followed soon after, erupting in the alabaster glow of transformation. Skirlack bodies were thrown through the air as the white dragon exploded into being, tossing the tiny demons from its scales, bowling them over with its massive tail, and swiping them aside with its serpentine neck.
Valentean looked down upon the possessed demons and roared in their faces. Energy began to gather at the back of his throat, and he let loose with explosive energy.
Magic sizzled over Maura’s head as she darted toward the Skirlack cleric. Auron whirled and nimbly dodged away from her swirling blades. As he rose a hand to counteract a bolt of green energy Nahzarro hurtled at him, Maura managed to score a glancing slash across his back. The brown-robed demon screamed in pain and swung his arm, striking her in the face and throwing the young girl back onto the floor.
She landed at Aurax’s feet. “It would be easier to simply surrender,” the cleric stated.
Maura ignored him, gritting her teeth and turning her attention back to the battle. Nahzarro dodged a red burst from Auron’s hand and responded with a caging storm of blue lightning. The cleric caught the bolts in his outstretched palms and strained with difficulty while holding them back. The two sorcerers continued to struggle, with Nahzarro’s face twisting in concentration and a snarl of fury. Maura looked beyond the arcing bolts of
magical mayhem to see Matias weakening.
The once stocky ruler now looked like a skeleton as his skin drooped, hanging off his bones. His robes sagged, and even his bushy beard had begun to fall out. The king’s head slumped in fatigue, and Maura was overcome with a desire to be at his side in this moment of need. She sprinted to him, dodging around displaced bolts of wayward lightning that ricocheted off Auron’s arms.
The air sizzled as Maura jumped and rolled toward the machine, feeling the static storm pull at her hair as she rose to her feet just before the king. “Your Highness.” Maura laid a soft hand upon the king’s sagging cheek and gasped at how thin the flesh of his face felt. But despite the frailty of the physical form, she could feel a heat spreading beneath his skin. The power of the weapon was coursing through his body.
“Maura…” Matias groaned. His sunken eyes fluttered open at her touch. They were dark and bloodshot. He gazed at her with heart-wrenching weakness, his eyes motioning down toward his chest. “The…medallion.” Maura looked and saw the small, white circle that hung from a chain around the king’s neck. Carved into its surface was a rendering of a reptilian-slitted eyeball. She remembered it well. This was the sigil of The Collective of Light, the secret society that strove to aid The Rosintai in banishing the Skirlack from Terra. “Take it…”
Maura reached behind the king’s neck and gently unclasped the golden chain, removing it and holding it close against her own heart. Matias gestured with his chin toward Nahzarro as he continued to struggle through the mystical stalemate.
“Make sure…he will finish…our work.”
“I will. I promise.” She fastened the bauble around her own neck for safekeeping and looked deeply into the king’s fading stare. What could she say to him in a moment such as this? What parting statement could she make, knowing they were likely the last words this powerful monarch would ever hear. A jolting eruption from the room’s center drew her attention, and her head snapped back to see Nahzarro violently flung, his body sparking with coursing waves of crimson magic.
Auron, righteous rage ablaze in his jaundiced stare, gestured sharply at her. She felt the unseen, restrictive force of his magic clamp down around her torso, and with a wave of his hand, she was forcefully jerked away from the king, crashing to the ground at the demon’s feet. He sneered at her, black blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Upon his palm, there pulsated an orb of crimson light.
“Now die,” the demon hissed. He threw the ball of death down at Maura, but it was intercepted by Nahzarro, who threw his body over hers, forming a blue shield around them as he fell. The spell rattled the shield and shook the two humans within. Nahzarro gritted his teeth in concentration. His hat had blown off his head, and his normally meticulous purple-streaked, blond locks were wild and untamed as they blew about his face from the force of Auron’s attack. With a cry of exertion, Nahzarro sent the energy of the shield shooting out, slamming into Auron and blowing him into a nearby wall.
As the cleric crumpled, the room around them shook, the force accompanied by a bestial roar that Maura knew well—that of a dragon. Had Kayden leapt into the battle? Was he decimating yet another city she had come to love? The thought made her heart ache. Then she heard the roar again and realized it wasn’t Kayden. She knew his bellow. She heard it in her nightmares. This was different, as unique as a voice. And suddenly, Maura had hope again.
“Valentean…” she whispered, a smile tugging at her lips. Nahzarro looked over at her, and she could see hope blossom in his stare. The momentary distraction, however, gave Auron a chance to regroup. The all-consuming grasp of his power compressed around them from all sides, violently grabbing both warrior and sorcerer into the air. Caught unaware, they were both completely helpless in the cleric’s grasp.
“Now,” Auron snarled as his fingers closed into fists, “you’re finished.”
Maura grunted in pain as the force holding her began to squeeze. Her vision blurred as a searing blast of agony impacted her constricted rib cage. She looked to Nahzarro. Magic flailed along his hands, but the emerald energy was less than useless if he could not use his arms. Through the blurring agony, she caught Aurax looking at her from over his fellow cleric’s shoulder. His grin was maniacal with twisted glee. Somehow it made the reality of her impending death that much worse, knowing how happy it would make the vile demon.
Just as the light of life began to dim around the field of her vision, another quake shook the small chamber. This was different than the shudder that had accompanied Valentean’s bestial roar. This was originating from inside the room.
“Halt!”
The voice rang out around them, filling every centimeter of the chamber. It almost sounded like Matias, but the weak-bodied king she had observed not mere moments ago could not speak above a whisper. Auron’s eyes went wide, and in his apparent terror, he released his hold upon the pair. Maura and Nahzarro fell to the ground as a bright light exploded to life around them. Maura looked back to see the king’s body slumped in the machine, head down, unmoving. In front of him, there was a pulsing globe of white light that flowed and glowed above the floor, three meters in diameter.
“The forces of chaos shall proceed no farther through the city of Grassan.” With every word, the light shook and pulsated.
“What is this magic?” Auron questioned. He turned to Aurax whose lips pulled back into a sneer that Maura believed to be barely concealing rising panic. Nahzarro looked back in horror, watching the light pour from his father’s body as though it were blood. The old man was dying, and nothing could be done to stop that now.
“You red-skinned whelps are about to be schooled in what real magic can do!” The king’s distorted voice sounded rejuvenated, mighty, and excited. The force of the light ball’s power began to cascade throughout the room, and Auron’s robes and hair billowed in response. Then, to Maura’s awe, Aurax’s hair and robes started to move as well. Aurax looked far more shocked than she as his eyes bulged with alarm. The red skin of his cheeks blew back in the magical maelstrom that tore through the chamber. Then, the light shot forth, enveloping the clerics and bursting out from the palace walls.
Nevick was awe struck. Over one thousand demons had filled the castle courtyard not ten minutes prior. Now, there was scarcely a handful. Valentean’s dragon body crashed into them, squashing the demons or incinerating them beneath superheated bursts of destructive energy that poured from his mouth.
The dragon’s dominance was impressive but hardly shocking. What was cause for both elation and terror simultaneously was Valentean’s formidable display as he carved a flaming swath through the horde prior to his transformation. His speed, his strength, and the ferocity that fed the flames of chaos within him were unlike anything Nevick had ever seen before. At one time, he believed himself nearly a match for the Kackrittan animus warrior. Their battle in the woods behind Casid was still fresh in his memory. On that day, they had fought to a standstill. But Nevick had fought a man; what stood before him today was so much more than that.
The Skirlack, to their credit, were not retreating. They stabbed and slashed at the gargantuan reptile with swords and claws, but not one drop of the mighty dragon’s blood was shed. The remaining Skirlack hounds, now less than twenty, clamored over Valentean’s scaly flesh, biting and slashing like ticks. Valentean whirled and roared and rolled on the ground, smashing many of them. Finally, there were no more than a dozen Skirlack remaining, and he destroyed them with a mighty blast of alabaster energy, matching that of his eyes. The courtyard was covered in red bodies, black blood, and upended, overturned stone and grass, destroyed in the dragon’s destructive onslaught.
Valentean snarled, exhaling twin puffs of steam from his snout, looking around the courtyard. Nevick finally shuddered, trying to move, and Valentean’s head snapped toward the subtle shifting motion. As those ablaze empty eyes stared at him, Nevick felt his blood freeze. Was Valentean so far gone that he could no longer distinguish friend from foe? Had Nevick survived
his fall from the airship and the subsequent ground battle only to fall at the hands of his friend and ally? The dragon’s white lips pulled back baring fangs longer than Nevick’s leg. A low growl filled the air, and the big man suddenly forgot how to breathe.
Then, a shadow passed over them from on high. The dragon’s head snapped toward the heavens. Looking up, the warrior of Casid saw the dreadnaught airship hovering above them, cannons prepped to fire at the palace. In other areas of the city, the smaller Aleksandryan airships were dodging and weaving away from their Grassani counterparts to open cannon fire upon the city itself. The air was suddenly filled with the sound of explosive carnage. Valentean roared up at the ships as though they were some new unknown challenge to his bestial mind. He roared again, this time shaking the entire palace with the force of his bellow.
The dragon leapt into the sky, wings unfurled. Valentean’s titanic body bowled into the side of the dreadnaught, veering it off course as he tore at it with tooth and claw. The dreadnaught attempted to climb and escape, but the dragon held fast to it. Valentean opened his massive jaws and fired a concentrated blast of energy into the side of the ship at point-blank range. The burst entered through one side and exploded out the other. The animus-turned-dragon’s wings flapped hard as he dragged the ship up farther and farther into the sky, all the while ripping and tearing at metal and wood as he rended chunks of the ship asunder. Debris crashed into the courtyard, and Nevick found enough strength to scramble up the stairs away from the raining mechanized death.
A rumbling could be felt in the ground beneath Nevick’s body. Then, without warning, a blinding light erupted from the palace like a silent explosion. As it washed over him, Nevick heard a voice echo through his mind, a familiar one.
“Well done, lad. Now leave the rest to me!”
Rosinanti: Rise of the Dragon Lord (Rosinanti Series Book 3) Page 24